Fat Old Guy

Speak roughly to your little boy And beat him when he sneezes For he can thoroughly enjoy the pepper when he pleases.

Ding, ding, ding! OGE, you win the prize and are showing your age. For 1,000 bonus points, who were the "spokesmen"?

Well, who are you? (Who are you? Who, who, who, who?) I really wanna know (Who are you? Who, who, who, who?) Tell me, who are you? (Who are you? Who, who, who, who?) 'Cause I really wanna know (Who are you? Who, who, who, who?)

We all know that old handbooks are EVIL because they contain old knowledge like stalking and Morse code. Well, I now have possibly the most EVIL book ever published, B-P's "Scouting for Boys." The Oxford Press reprinted it and for Father's Day I was presented with a copy of it AND a similarly evil book, B-P's "Aids to Scoutmastership." I've read most of "Scouting for Boys" and the only reference to tourniquets is that they are useful to stem bad arterial bleeding. Strange, no? What I do find interesting about "Scouting for Boys" is that most of it is what a Scout needs to know, no

Mangled Baby Ducks For 10,000 points, what do I mean?

"I want more freedom." Freedom? Freedom to do what? Go hiking? Go camping? Not have to worry about who's in the men's room with you?

"I do not like the idea of being controlled by the B.S.A." You'll always be controlled by someone. Remember, Big Brother is watching.

closing before I can chime in.

"Who do you think picks out the uniform for your local organizations?" For the sports leagues, there is a very small and select group of folks that make decisions like that. There might be a thousand kids involved in the baseball league but the league is controlled by about 20 adults. If one of the parents of a golfer didn't like the new uniform, would he have said, "Don't like it, not buying it"? Don't think so.

"Where ya been?" "Traaaaaaining, SIR!" :-) Actually, vacation.

"I respectfully disagree FOG. Parents are no different in sports than they are in Scouts. If anything, they are worse." How many refuse to buy part of the uniform for a sports team? Where the mandate comes from is irrelevant. My neighbor's daughter is a "cheerleader" and started at age five which is about six years ago. Mom grumbled, as did many of the moms, about having to shell out $75 for a team jacket which lasts about two years. However, no one said, "I'm not buying that jacket." The jacket can't even be handed down because the girl's name is embroidered on it.

Sheesh! Why do we worry about upsetting Indians? Africans paint their faces. Picts painted their entire bodies. Football fans paint their faces and bodies. I'd be more worried about upsetting a group of Packers fans than a bunch of Indians. Paint on.

I love . . . Little baby ducks, Old pick-up trucks, Slow movin' trains, and rain.

"We keep talking about sports uniforms, but I was a coach for 12 years and I can tell you if the uniform didnt look in style or have the right colors, we still had the same problems of boys hating it and not wearing it properly. All the same problems, just in a different arena." There's a difference in that in Sports you don't hear parents saying, "I'm not going to buy the uniform."

I'm partial to the large ALICE pack, I like milsurp equipment because it is usually built like a tank. I also like the large ALICE pack because it has a zillion pockets and has attachment points for hanging stuff off it. I did have a Jansport pack in college that I carried loaded with books for many years. I graduated before it died.

Ed, Moi-lin, like most liberals, thinks that he's smarter than you and knows what's better for not just him but you and everyone. He can't be too smart because he's married to a man . . . but enough about that. I don't know how United Way got that money but when I used to donate to UW before I realized that it was a scam, you'd specify where your money was to go. It seems that if I gave money to United Way with the specification that it goes to organization X and they gave it to Y, that would constitute fraud. Might not be fraud legally but it is morally. However, we know that

"he Girl Scouts have many different uniform parts which allow the girls some variety in thier uniforms. I like the idea that our troop has black hats and neckerchiefs. I know the goal of a uniform is uniformity, but allowing some sort of customization appeals to the age group we are recruiting." Girl Scouts don't really have a uniform. It can't be a uniform if everyone in a unit wears something different.

"thought the BSA had become a bunch of wimps who were stealing the boys masculinity away from them." You don't like his message because you know that it's true.

I don't think that Elvis, the Beach Boys or even Deep Purple ever called their mothers, girl friends and wives " **** es" and "hoes." But they weren't angels. In the late 60s, the music was about drugs and free love and kids did drugs and girls got pregnant out of wedlock. Now, the "music" is about sex without love, disrepect for women, and drugs. Look at what goes on.

The best places to learn about what can go wrong and how to deal with it are Roundtable and University of Scouting.

Having been involved in the process, I will concur that it may take a couple years to get things working well. The boys need time to realize that they are the ones who need to be making decisions. I know that in our case, the oldest Scouts just didn't want to step up to the plate, they just wanted to hang out and go camping. The first year, required some strong Guidance from the SM. He'd have to lead discussions to get the PLC thinking about the pros and cons of different events and then let them make up their minds. They were used to have the old SM just tell them what was going to ha

"Here are some doozies from Virginia:" Those are true of most states. Very few of the 50 states have outlawed talking on Cell phones whilst driving. As for junk in your yard, that's usually a county or city issue.

"Ponchus Pilate" Puh-leeze! If your going to preach, spell the names correctly. He was "Pontius Pilate."

Eamonn, why did your uniform have vacuum tubes? Was it a superheterodyne unit?

"I see Venture as an extension of the boy scout program" You might call it an adjunct to the Boy Scout program but not an extension. How is a Venture Crew that does Renaissance re-enacting an extension of Boy Scouting. Venturing is a different program. That's neither good nor bad, that's just what it is. Let's look at the big kettle of fish that you'll stir up if you'd open OA to Venturing. What happens when Crews that don't camp (see above) complain that the rules are biased against them. After all, camping is an integral part of Boy Scout but not Venturing. Will you then