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Christmas Gift Selection # 9 For 2017 – 5 lb. Ham

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Note: This is a repost of one of our Top Ten Gifts for the discerning buyer originally published in December of 2013, a year that will live in infamy. In what has become a half-assed tradition here at The Institute we have been irregularly reposting these now famous gift selections when we remember to do so in a lame attempt to create a Holiday Tradition and mostly because we suddenly realize it’s Christmas time and we don’t have squat done. It’s fun and we don’t have to spend the time making new stuff up. Enjoy.

The Original One Of A Kind, Never before offered to the American Public, still in its original metal wrapper, It’s *The Institutes very own

5 lb. Ham

This is a very special item for the next to last gift choosing day. You’ve all heard the old joke about the guy who comes to his boss and says “I have to attend a ( Polish**) wedding and I need the weekend off.”

The boss says sure and two weeks later the guy comes into the office and the boss says “hey, you asked for the weekend off to got to a wedding and it’s two weeks later. Where you been?”

The guy says “They had a drawing and I won 2nd place, which was two weeks in Hawaii with the bride.” The boss says “Two weeks with the bride! Geez! What was first place?”

The guy says “A 5lb ham.”

Well, this is that ham! This is the original 5lb. ham awarded to that 1st place winner at that Polish wedding way back then and we got it! What are the odds? It was never opened because the winner knew that this was going to be history. That ham, that 5 lb. ham, would eventually be enshrined in the halls of legendary humor. Our gift researchers found it on eBay and bought it just for this round of gifts. This makes Monet’s Bridge look like a stocking stuffer. There is only one of these and it’s only available here.

Now each of has that one joke that we heard, probably way back in the pre-sexist, pre-politically correct era of humor, before every knee-jerk, thin skinned, I need my fifteen minutes of fame even if it costs you your right to free speech, humor regulator started whining about their feelings getting hurt. Some were about people, some were about sex, some were political or religious things, some were rights of passage things that taught you about life in general even if they were offensive to someone. They were funny, shocking, stick in your mind jokes that etched themselves indelibly into your humor center. Ever been somewhere people watching and you see someone start laughing for no reason at all, then look around guiltily to see if anyone was watching, they’re remembering a joke exactly like this. We all have them. So if you laughed at this one just before your politically correct monitor kicked in, you’re not a bad person. You’re just normal.

Man! You got to be excited about this one. That joke has had to have been told for 50 years. I remember snorting milk out of my nose the first time I heard it. It was in the mess hall at the Naval hospital on Guam. We were fighting one of those wars that wasn’t that funny and needed anything that would make us laugh to take away the days horrors. This is like one of those moments when someone asks you where were you when Kennedy got shot. You remember. If we seem a little excited about this gift choice it’s because we get a lot of stuff in here that is one of a kind, or really special, or unique even fancy, but this, the original 5lb. ham from that wedding, well it’s priceless. In fact you know what? I’m not even going to sell it to you. I’m keeping it. I just wanted to show it to you so you tell your grandkids you saw the original 5lb. ham.

So there you are. NO gift today, just history.

Original Legendary 5lb Ham   NFS    because it’s priceless.

Note from the Director: I would like to take this moment to let you all know that we here at The Institute, and that of course includes me the Director, the head PooBah, do not condone any Politically Incorrect humor at all. We realize that what may be funny to the majority of Americans may cause some individuals with a limited sense of humor to feel uncomfortable. If Polock jokes make you feel kind of weird like you might want to laugh when you hear them, but you think you really shouldn’t, we want you to know that we feel your pain. Just know that in some parts of the country like “Wisconsin” the Pollock’s tell Belgian jokes, but they’re not nearly as funny as Polock jokes. In fact in Chicago and other parts of Illinois they tell “Cheesehead” jokes but those, those are really not funny and should be stopped at once. As an ex-Wisconsonian I can tell you those are mean, humorless jokes and should be banned. The joke related above is simply a reporting of humorous fact as it was presented back in the heyday of humor, like when we were kids, when you could laugh at whatever you wanted to and it wasn’t meant in a mean-spirited way, which reminds me of another story about when A Rabbi, A Priest and a Duck walk into a bar….. but then that’s a story for another day.

** Insert the nationality of your choice here that you’d like to slander, I like Polish because I’m part Polish on my sister’s side and proud of it, but you can use any nationality you think is funny.

* Note: For those of you unfamiliar with The Institute and what it does, please see the page labeled The Institute on the Menu Bar above. That should explain everything. You shouldn’t have one single question remaining regarding The Institute after reading it. None. For those of you favored few who already know about the Institute, Nevermind. Return to your daily activities. Thank you for your support.

High Country Magic

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There are probably one or two of you out there who don’t believe in magic. Don’t be ashamed. It’s all right. You were most likely dropped on your head when you were very little and that part of your brain, the part that believes in magic, got a little scrambled. This is not your fault. If you want to blame someone, blame your clumsy parents. Or even that monster that lives under your bed who in trying to get you, caused you to fall out of the bed right on to your stubby little noggin. In any event that fall likely caused a serious disturbance in your parietal cortex. Many physicians feel that this is bad. Your parietal cortex is needed for many daily functions and shouldn’t be screwed up if you want to live a happy normal life. Or believe in magic.

There is hope for the afflicted however. They can be brought back to the straight and narrow where they can see, feel and believe in magic again. Sometimes this is occasioned by another blow to the head and the bent and/or twisted part of that old parietal cortex is slammed back into its rightful place again. This could allow for the acceptance of magic to be reestablished.

Another possibility is seeing your sister Agnes’s kid Alfie turned into a toad by an irritable wizard and left to hang around in the garden eating flies and other disgusting things for the rest of his life. He was a miserable little buttock anyway, so that might be an improvement. That might do it. That might be just the shock you needed to get that old magic rolling again.

 Another possibility is you’re just a late bloomer. For most of your life you didn’t have time for magic. You were working too hard. You watched a lot of daytime TV. You didn’t get out much. Your Mom and Dad, perhaps the ones who dropped  you on your head in the first place, told you there was no such thing as magic so just shut up. They probably had things to say about Santa, The Easter bunny, and honest politicians too. This has the result of hardening your parietal cortex and creating a no magic zone in your outlook on life. However listen up as this is a big however, as you age your brain softens, it gets the consistency of a blueberry pudding or even in some cases cottage cheese. This has been well documented by real Doctors and the occasional serial killer actually looking into your brain cavity with special tools to see what’s going on in there. This brain softening has both good and bad results. The good is you are now free to see and observe magic again, like you did when you were a kid. Common place things take on a new life, a beauty you had forgotten exists. Such as the beauty seen in the photo above. Tell me it doesn’t take magic to create something as beautiful as that.

The bad of course is you begin to lose all motor functions and are well on your way to becoming a total vegetable. You’ve seen this, your brother’s wife’s father has all the cognitive responses of an overcooked cauliflower, he was never much brighter than a four slot toaster anyway but even if he was like a major brainiac before, he’s a mental dribbling idiot now. This is too bad and often unfair but since when has life been all that fair.

Remember magic comes in all forms, from great big events, like getting the tax code straightened out, to smaller but no less magical events than finding beauty in the middle of the gently falling snow. For now I’m gratefully accepting the small events in the magical world such as this High Country Magic seen while walking in the woods one day. Here’s hoping you still see magic in your life.

Announcement ! We’re On A Mission

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Or more accurately we were on a mission. That’s why there have been a dearth of posts lately here at BigShotsNow-The Blog. Saving lives and getting huge ATTABOY’s are what we live for. We’re back now. The patient lived and is properly grateful. Some of you know, at least the ones we’ve rescued from certain disaster before, that *The Institute has a search and rescue facility on site. We get distress calls from individuals all around the globe who have gotten themselves into some sort of medical emergency and needed our immediate response. Consequently we have semi-trained technicians, although they are not always medically trained, that can provide life saving procedures if necessary. Usually they just stand around leaning up against the mess hall wall, looking for someone bleeding or dragging around a severed limb so they can jump on them and save ’em. There have even been unsubstantiated reports of an unsuspecting new-to-be patient getting struck in the brain pan area with a brick or small length of two by four to induce what they call “patient-dom” so they have something to do. Otherwise they serve no useful purpose until a call come in.

But when a call does come in, jump back, because then they go gonzo nuts grabbing their med kits, getting a fix on where the calamity is, piling into the our private medical dirigible,”The Mother Theresa”, and springing into action when necessary. There is no accident or mayhem or chaos that is too far away, or too huge for our team to handle. Their motto is “Yeah, Well, How bad can it be?”

Lets just say you’re in the tall grass just outside of Mburu Buro slightly north and west of JoBerg and you get bit by a Black Mamba, (also called the ex-wife snake) one of the fastest meanest snakes in the world. They’re so mean that if there is no one else is around to bite they’ll bite themselves. You call us, we fire up the dirigible and we’re on the way. Unfortunately in that case you’re SOL because Black Mamba bites are deadly in a about two and a half minutes. Sorry. But thanks for calling us any way.

In each of our med kits we have life-saving equipment, such as big gauzy pads to hide all the blood, point and shoot cameras for selfies and to document our procedures and maybe some scenery shots if we go someplace cool, little skinny bandages that are good for holding someone’s eyelids open when you don’t want them to go to sleep. Lots of different sized baggies for placing over stumps and the rolls of duck tape to hold them in place. Specially grown sticks off of the Hawthorne grove down in the valley to bite on in case we have to remove a limb or larger portions of torso. A small hammer wrapped in a resilient foam-like material to gently tap the patient out with. We cannot, due to a screw up with the licensing procedures, carry any anesthesia or pain medication so we found that a short-term, manually induced coma works just as well, and is more profitable for us. Anesthesia is expensive, just saying.

Recently a very good friend had a procedure done in a normal medical facility run by a For Profit corporation ( first mistake ) that sent her into a total tailspin causing a crash that nearly gave her severe whiplash along with the loss of her spine and resulted in her calling on The Institute to come to her aid. Which we did. Luckily for her we were able to call our team back from that Black Mamba incident and get to her location in time to assist her. It took a few days to get things completely under control, but we did, and now she is happy, not to mention pert and sassy, and in nearly perfect health.  Plus she looks marvelous. She’ll have a few scars but they’re tasteful ones and unless you know her well will never see them anyway. She has a new opinion of The Institute and its Director, which is favorable. Lets hope all that feeling of good will remains after we bill her.

So there you have it. That’s why we’ve been out of touch but there’s plenty of old stuff to read until we get back so don’t go away mad. Remember if you get into trouble “Who You Gonna Call?: The Institute that’s who. We’re standing by.

* Note: For those of you unfamiliar with The Institute and what it does, please see the page labeled The Institute on the Menu Bar above. That should explain everything. You shouldn’t have one single question remaining regarding The Institute after reading it. None. For those of you favored few who already know about the Institute, Nevermind.

Happy New Year

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A final Sunset. Normally this would be an opportunity to have a big blow out and celebrate the end of a good year and the promise of a better one to come. But instead it feels like it would be best to just ease on out of this one for a lot of reasons both defined and undefined, and see if we can’t do a little better next year. So I’ve elected to put up a sunset image taken from the deck here at blog central, to say good-bye to 2015 and wait for the dawn tomorrow to see what the sunrise brings.

Not to be all doom and gloom, there were plenty of good things happen in 2015. Things like, being in Washington DC to visit family and go to the space museum to see the airplane they named after my old pickup truck, the Enola Gay. Getting to spend time with new friends in the Blackfeet and Crow tribes up in Wyoming and Montana. Visiting Yellowstone yet again, not once but twice, Like how good is That. I was invited to shoot several rodeos in the area this summer and that brought back memories of when I was younger and could jump the fence with all my gear like a young gazelle, instead of staying up in the press box and using a long lens.

There were new people to meet. Some of them became good friends, one was very special. I got to oversee how The Institute came through the year, who got promoted (nobody) who got fired (mostly everybody), who lived, (most of who you wanted to) who died (most of the ones that needed to, some who didn’t and should have), all of the projects they managed to undertake and somehow manage to get through even with that clown show that normally operates there.

There were some milestones. The blog broke the record for the number of countries who visited and hopefully read some of the posts here as well as look at the pictures, but hey, looking at the pictures is cool. I can’t read Estonian or Cambodian, let alone understand it, so I’d be looking at the pictures too if I went to see their blog. This past year 2015 we had visitors from 76 countries. The year before that we had 66. We even had one visitor from North Korea, but then, as we got hacked, I don’t know if we count that as a plus or a minus. Our readership has more than doubled, but as many of our favorite visitors are lurkers, (but nice ones) we don’t have an accurate count of how many people were here. Scads of them, though. More than ‘scads’ actually. One scad equals maybe 100-150 or so, which makes ‘scads’ up in the thousands, even with a conservative count.

Even with all the good stuff 2015 felt like the kind of year you just want to get away from, like that guy who stands too close to you while you’re trying to put your pin number in the ATM.  It was itchy feeling. There was enough bad stuff to satisfy even the folks from Depression Anonymous, but lets not go there. We don’t want that sticking to us as we scoot out the door into 2016.

I want to take some serious time here and say Thank you from the bottom of my heart to all of my friends and readers, from home and from all the over the world, and to say may you have a year that fulfills you, allows you to prosper and live free of fear and be as joyful as you allow yourself to be. Because you have the final say over that. Exercise it often as you need to. Peace and Contentment to you all.

Dwight Lutsey

P.S. Come visit us all the time in 2016. Don’t forget, put it in your calendar. “Go visit BigShotsNow today.” See you then.

Bryce Canyon Forest

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I’ve been meaning to show you the forest at Bryce Canyon National Park for a long time. It won’t take very long because this is it. Yup, all of it. 10 trees. And three of them are dead. You would think with all the taxes we pay to maintain our national parks that they could afford a few more trees. Jeez, Home Depot and Wal-Mart have sales all the time. In fact Home Depot has a Black Hills Spruce Evergreen in its own pot for 7.97, and a Cleveland Select Pear tree for 89.98, and a one quart Canadian Hemlock Christmas tree for 6 bucks on sale. Even Lowes has a 3-gal Southern Magnolia that will grow to 80′ for 24.95 and it comes with a three-year guarantee.

I mean, this is just embarrassing. To have one of our showpiece National parks with its own National forest and it only has 10 trees. You have got to be kidding. I guarantee if you go to Russia right this minute and look at their biggest National park, Siberia, they have over a gazillion billion quadrillion trees. They have so many they cut them down just for fun. They have a whole village called Bogorodskoe, I am not making this up, devoted to making wooden toys out of trees for like the last 600 years and they’re nowhere close to running out of trees. You’d have a hard time making a good supply of toothpicks out of our 10 trees.

OK, I didn’t mean to go off like that, it’s just whenever I see injustice I have to stand up and call a Ponderosa a Ponderosa. This is a national embarrassment and no one seems to be concerned about it. And to make matters worse, as if that could happen, I’ve been told that the big timber companies are lobbying Washington right now to log in Bryce Canyon. That’s right, to log in Bryce canyon. They feel with the price of lumber being what it is they can go in there with their big logging trucks and bulldozers and their hairy lumberjacks with their gang-saws and lunch buckets and take out those 10 trees and make a profit. Well I don’t know if that scares you, it scares the hell out of me.

We don’t even have any owls, spotted or otherwise, that like to live in these trees here in Bryce because they are too far apart. Owls want togetherness and neighbors to hoot at. So if those timber companies win we don’t even have an excuse to try and save those trees. I’m glad I got a picture of the forest when I did. Who knows how long it will be before there won’t be even those 10 trees to photograph. If things keep heading this way before you know it we’ll be friends with the Cubans again. No, that’s probably going too far, I mean, that could never happen.

Wish I had better news folk, but we call them like we see ’em here at *The Institute. If this makes you mad go to Home Depot or Lowes and buy a tree. Any kind of tree. Ship it to Bryce and say “Plant it.” maybe they’ll get the message. We can’t let those ex-commies have all the glory. Let’s make America great again.

*Note: For those of you unfamiliar with The Institute and what it does, please see the page labeled The Institute on the Menu Bar above. That should explain everything. You shouldn’t have one single question remaining regarding The Institute after reading it. None. For those of you favored few who already know about the Institute, Never mind. Return to your daily activities. Thank you for your support.