word!

You’d think if you’re running for a political office, you’d first want to be a people person. If you weren’t real great at that, next you may try to actually to meet and greet people as painful as that may be. It is how you get elected, getting enough people to A) know who you are, B) know what you are about, and C) believing in A) & B) enough to vote for you.

We had a local politician come by the other day and all I can say it is was amusing. Seems there’s a commissioner race heating up for the district basically surrounding Gaylord and Sibley Township. Currently there are 4 filed candidates. With a primary looming, the list shall be whittled down to 2 for the fall election. One of the candidates decided to pay a visit to our place on Labor Day. Fitting enough and given the right circumstances a good move as he was the one and so far only candidate to visit our place.

Given this start things looked promising. But then went south real quick. Candidate drives up as I am working on car and promptly asks “Is your mom home?”. Make no mistake, I am a voting age citizen and for the life of me only know this candidate for his dubious elected position history and family. So after blowing off me as a vote, he proceeds to the house. At the house, my mother meets this candidate as well. After coming to the door, she is effectively thrown a brochure for this candidate, with no mention of his name, why he is at her door or what she should do with said piece of paper. All that come’s out of candidate’s mouth is “…. um the primary is next Tuesday, um….” and with not much more than that proceeds to leave. What a riot! No discussion, no introduction, nothing.

Later, candidate is seen leaving neighbor’s drive moments after arriving. Which makes this even funnier is that driveway is some 1/2 mile long and candidate is seen backing out. Either he didn’t make it up the driveway or backed up the whole 1/2 after his flier was presumably thrown in neighbor’s general direction. Given the previous firsthand account, both would not be a stretch of the imagination.

What a moron. Why are you running for office if you are afraid of people? Was he put up to this as some kind of prank? How can this be campaigning? You may need to talk to people if they are to actually give a care about what it is you intend to do. This guy doesn’t stand a snowball’s chance in hell of doing anything with campaigning like this.

And he somehow got elected to the school board? How?

Browse back a few posts and you’ll see a breath-taking image of our fine township roads this spring. It’s taken the last few months to get over that seemingly endless ‘rut’ of a spring.

But wait, there’s more to this saga.

Seeing as leaving a frost-heaved road to it’s own devices is not sound township governing policy, the local intelligencia has come up with a few marvelous solutions.

Alfsborg Township to the immediate west of us has tried a few different tacts. First wise idea was to put rather large (think knuckle sized) rocks down, to ‘fill in’ the frost heaves and then put new gravel over that. While this has seemed to work, it scares the hell out of you when you’re driving and it sounds as though one of those rocks is coming up through the floorboards at you after you kick up one of these rocks. A tad disheartening. Not sure what to make out of it if one of those rocks were to fly/hit anything with so much as a pulse.

Alfsborg has also been ripping up the middle of some real troublesome spots that were pretty much pure dirt/mud and replacing that with pure gravel. Interesting take, haven’t had a problem with these yet, although a good dousing of rain could hamper things (maybe not this year though).

But the blockbuster, cake winner, hands down idiot award goes to the local township buffoons in good ol’ Sibley Township. Seems that in a effort not to be outdone by the upstarts to the west, Sibley Township came up with it’s own harebrained scheme to rid the township of previously mentioned frost-heaved roads. It started out peculiarly one morning with a fellow, presumed to be in the employ of the township, seen discing up the roadside slope of 481st Avenue. While this seemed like a ill advised attempt to dissuade neighbors from haying their ditch easements, it got wilder. A two mile stretch of this roadway was eventually worked up and left fallow.

In discussions with local governing officials, it seems the plan was to work up the ditches unto the road because they contained so much gravel and redo the road from these slopes.

WHAT THE HELL?

How the hell is putting black dirt on a gravel based, gravel covered road supposed to help? This is the rationale though, because someone somewhere heard that this may have happened somewhere else and worked? Whatever.

So today, these bozos went through with their little plan to screwup the road even worse. As I was coming home my normal route, I notice a completely black dirt covered road with two graders grading gravel on top of this. This effectively shut down this road, with no warning or heads up from the township other than to relay their plan when asked about it.

But they didn’t do all of the road, no. They still have roughly 1.5 mile stretch to go, once again on the main route I take to almost everything in Gaylord on a daily basis. I cannot imagine how this fiasco will end up. No doubt it will rain and create a soup hole the likes no one alive could imagine a township government would pay for. I can only imagine they hoarded all this money away from the last few comparatively mild to blow on the craziest frost-heave suppression scheme ever proffered.

Good riddance!

Surprise, surprise.

With a giant eye on the future of technology, the government has decided it no longer needs analog TV signals transmitting a loved and long cherished obsession. So out with the old and in with the new – digital TV.

Oh, but wait, the populous will need to either a) buy new TVs with a digital tuner or b) get a setup converter to dumb down digital broadcasts. This in itself has led to a great reason for most people to ditch the old clunker TV that in many cases would still work fine for years to come. This is regardless if they actually would need a digital TV for general viewing, do to the fact that cable and satellite TV are already digital pictures.

That leaves the rest of us, namely the poor and/or rural left with the other option – convert the digital to analog. The government in it’s wisdom decides that since these boxes will sell for 40+ that it will offer a discount on these boxes, which for almost obvious reasons will never cost just $40. Rather than provide the masses these setup converters free via a local federal institution (i.e. Post Office), they sell them at any electronics shop.

Wal-mart, the king of cheap, promptly has a run on these as they are about the only company willing to sell them near cost. This pushes the rest of the suckers out to the high priced outfits that sell these units for greatly inflated prices.

While a fairly easy device to set up, the devil is in the details. Now instead of one remote for a TV, you must either juggle two or figure out a quasi universal remote to function as your goto TV manipulator. Yuck. I don’t really wanna power on/off two things just to watch my old TV. No doubt this in itself is another great ploy for you to go out and upgrade TVs as well.

While is awesome to have a weather station affiliated with KARE TV and a FOX affiliate out of Mankato, it’s just another bunch of fairly useless TV options to flip through.

I can’t imagine what the uproar will be when all those poor, unenlightened and/or old people find next that things don’t work like they had. After all, that’s who will be the most effected by this turnover. The government will be to blame for selling out this demographic in return for the millions they can make by auctioning off the old TV spectrum we loved. They will also be giving the electronics industry a second boost by people scrapping out their old TVs for something that just plain works without all the trouble and pain this transition.

What a joke!

Wow is that a plowed field or a gravel township road?

Kinda hard to imagine having to drive through such a ‘plowed field’ just to get to town. Ah, only in Sibley Township,Sibley County Minnesota could we pay for such a convenience.

I like the township supervisor’s advice. That we should drive to the west, a few miles totally out of our way until they take down the road closed signs. Not to mention to the west is another township.

Good work boys. Maybe you can plow the furrow down the middle of our road before the next big downpour like you always do…

I finally got a gander at the fabled snowplow bearing Hummer in Gaylord,Mn of all places.

Why o’ why does the world need a snowplow on a $60,000 Luxury SUV? Does not a shitty old rusted pickup truck not do the same job?

This vehicle blew my mind.