10.  The sun
9. My handsome face
8. The skill of orthopedic surgeons
7. My car
6. Derek Jeter
5. Banana Milk
4. Good friends
3. My edumacation
2. My great job
1. My wonderful girlfriend

Why is 'communist' such a dirty word? 

 I was just walking through the main lobby down on the ground level and I overheard some guy talking very loudly to a woman several yards away.  All I heard was this:

 "That's not very capitalist, Mary.  Maybe you should move to a....communist country"

He said 'communist country' so softly that she could barely hear him.  It was like he thought twice about saying it, but figured he had to because he couldn't just leave the sentence fragment he had already said loudly.

 Communism is just another political ideal, right?  Why is it so taboo?

I worked with a Bulgarian guy at the gas station and we talked a lot about Bulgaria.  He told me that everyone there wanted communism back really badly, but it would never be as good as it was, even if they elected a communist leader.  He says that everybody got paid relatively the same wages, whether you were a doctor or a streetsweeper and there was little class-based conflict.  The real difference was in the quality of work you had to do.

Nobody had to find jobs either.  The government gave you jobs and it was illegal not to work.  Now, in Bulgaria, people are having tremendous difficulty finding jobs.  The poor resent the rich.  People are just unhappy and confused about what to do in life. 

I was thinking about writing about 10 things I want to do.   Here goes.

 1.  Build a go-kart.  I never had a go-kart as a kid and now that I think of it, I'm glad I didn't.  That's because if I had had a go-kart as a kid, I would probably be burnt out on the idea.  Also, my parents probably woulda gotten me some lame ass slow go-kart and it would like barely be able to climb hills.  Now that I'm older, I could make a kick-ass go-kart.  Unfortunately I don't know anything about building motorized stuff so I'm gonna need some help.  Joe?

 2.  Hang glide.  Hang gliding always sounded like it was really cool to me.  Its like strapping a giant kite on your back.  I want to run off of a cliff also.  I saw people doing this in France and I thought it must be the coolest thing ever to jump off a mountain top in the Alps and fly over the patchwork array of farmlands.

 3.  Play a 9 inning game of baseball at Yankee Stadium.  We play 'pick-up' games during the summer months in Newington.  Its so much fun its unreal.  We usually have two full 9 person teams and everything...umpire, catchers gear, the whole works.  I figure that since they are building a new Yankee Stadium next to the current one, they might let us play a game there.  That would be the highlight of my life.  Coming to bat in the same batters box Mattingly, Mantle and Ruth used.  Frickin' surreal.

 4.  Climb a pyramid.  I'm pretty sure that this is totally illegal and stuff, but I think it would be cool to camp out on the very top of the pyramid.  Like overnight and all that.  I bet you could see the sun start to rise before the light hits the bottom of it...maybe.  Who knows, never been up there.

 5.  Build a trebuchet catapult.  But not some scaled down replica or anything.  I know that meg has something like this in her profile, but I've always been amazed by this catapult ever since I saw one throw a piano across a farmers field.  I wonder if you have to have some kinda license to build and work one of those.  Seems like you could do a lot of damage with one.

6.  Tape a lit cigar to one of those gas station vacuums.  I wonder how long it would take to burn the whole thing to the end.  There would definitely be lots of smoke billowing out.  

 7.  Build a luxury treehouse.  I used to build tree houses all the time as a kid.  My really good friend Jamie and I had a thing for tree houses.  I think all-in-all we built 9 of them.  One of them was a triple decked one.  I think that when I get older, I'd like to build a real sweet one with a porch and insulation and cable tv and electricity.  Then I could go out there and watch Yankees games and everyone would want to be my friend.

8.  Buy my parents old house.  I think it would be really cool if I would be able to buy my childhood home back.  I'm sure I would be disappointed though because the people that live in it now really screwed the place up.  I guess they're like the beverly hillbillies...

 9.  Fix my piano.  I have a player piano that in inherited from my grandmother and it kicks ass.  My mom got it all restored and tuned up and all the rotten wood was replaced by new wood and it totally looks great and plays great also.  Its just that the player part doesn't work.  Like the part that reads the music and plays by itself.  That would be so frickin' cool if that worked!  It would look like it was being played by a ghost.  Old school player pianos kick so much assssss!

10.  Build an RC plane from scratch.  This is one of those things that would take years and years because I would first have to acquire a workshop of sorts.  Then tools.  Then supplies.  But it just seems like one of those cool projects that I could go do after work when I was bored.  

11.  For some reason, I want to learn how to knit also.  But I wouldn't knit regular things like scarves or mittens.  I want to knit like weird stuff...like maybe some camo cargo pants.  That would be cool.  I'm sure it would be cool to knit sweaters and mittens too...but they would have to be really cool patterns and colors and stuff.  Stuff you don't normally get from grandma.  I really dig those knitted bikinis too... 

The one above is my old 1979 Honda CX 500 Custom...crashed it into a guardrail in 2001.  Broke my femur into 6 peices, shaved off most of my left elbow and now have 14 screws and a plate there.  Lost a peice of bone in my right hand and now have 5 screws and a plate there also.  Good times!  Now I ride a slightly smaller hog.