Five Questions from Countertop

1. This first one is a multipart one. You claim to be Cowboy Bob, but yet there have been many before you. These include real horse riding dudes, trick roper rodeo dudes, aspiring country music stars, rodeo riding wrasslers, and of course, the aforementioned Cowboy Bob Weir.


Is Cowboy Bob your SASS registered name? If not, what is? How do you compare to each of these other Cowboy Bob's and do you possess any of the skills they have, at anything close to their level of skill? If you can't sing a Cowboy song as good as Bob Weir, can you play a cowboy song on an instrument? If so, which one (instrument) and what is your favorite cowboy song (Dead and otherwise)? After considering the competition, are you still certain your the biggest and best and legitimate claimant to the Title Cowboy Bob??

For one thing, I'm Cowboy Blob, but don't worry, lots of folks make that mistake. "I'm not a real cowboy, but I play one in the movies." I already had the nickname "Blob" (endowed by flight members with no imagination for someone with no personality named Bob) and added the Cowboy when I moved to Arizona. I'm not a member of SASS, but I'd like to try Cowboy Action Shooting sometime. I'm pretty heavily into IPSC 3-Gun at the moment, but maybe I can work it into my schedule some day. I have no cowboy skills at all: I refuse to sing if there is another human being within earshot, I don't play an instrument, and I haven't ridden a horse since I was seven years old (it decided to bolt for the barn ignoring any input from me--very terrifying)...my favorite cowboy song is the Theme to Rawhide, the old TV show. By the way, I have a extra's casting call for a short movie in about five hours. I should get some sleep.

2. Ferrets, explain them. Do they ever smell good? How many do you have? What are their (its) names? How long do they live for? Are they carnivores? omnivores? vegetarians?

Ferrets, nature's carpet sharks, are entertaining pets that combine the crankiness of a cat with the curiosity of a two-year-old. Properly descented ferrets don't smell at all...just change their bedding and litterbox often. Mine are Lenny and Squiggy, two males. They live 7-to-9 years, but are susceptible to tumors and cancers that often shorten their lives. They live on a high-fat protein diet. Kitten chow is a viable substitute for purpose-made ferret chow. Some ferrets like fruit as a treat; Squiggy is the only ferret I've ever had that did not like raisins.

3. You say there is little you can't fix with $700 and a thirty ought six. What exactly have you fixed with $700 and a thirty ought six and is there anything you don't think that combination will fix?

I didn't say it, the great Jeff Cooper did. Although it won't fix my broken garbage disposal, the combination of cash and kinetic energy is a powerful deterrent against many of life's problems. I prefer a Visa card and a 12 gauge, but that combination is a tad less poetic.

4. You were in the military at some point. When and in what branch of the service? What did you do and did you blow things up? What was the biggest thing you ever blew up?

I was in the Air Force from 1979 to 2002, spending most of my time as a Cryptologic Linguist (Korean) in Air Intelligence. I never blew anything up, but I was almost blown up in a 1986 explosion of a jet fuel tank next to my building. I evacuated from the building on the fire side (it was downhill and upwind from me) and gazed into the depths of hell for a second before beating feet to safety. I was also an analysis operator aboard the EC-130 comms jammer where I got to shutdown Red Force radio traffic at Nellis' Red Flag until the "bad guys" scampered off to protected frequencies.

5. Arizona. . . . .about as bad-ass-pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps-freedom-rules-cowboy-kind-of-state as you can find. Please explain John McCain? What has happened to him and how have the good folks in Arizona reacted? I think his head exploded and his mind disappeared after his stellar run in the 2000 primary. Is that correct, or has he always been a liberal loony? Any chance of the citizenry rising up on removing him from office? And can we really ever trust any elected official from a state that is sometimes an hour ahead and sometimes an hour behind, but for some reason insists on messing with everyone's clocks? What is the reason for the weird time thing going on in Arizona and how does it impact your TiVo scheduling?

As much as I admire McCain for his past experiences and accomplishments, I didn't vote for him in the last election. I tossed my vote away on the Libertarian guy. I think he's trying too hard to apeal to both sides of the aisle and ends up pissing off both. I don't think he'll ever be President...I wish he'd come back to AZ, have a beer with us, and go into show biz, where he belongs.

Personally, I love continuous Mountain Standard Time...we never have to touch our clocks! We get the first month of Monday Night Football right around dinner time! Daylight Savings Time? We've got more daylight than we know what to do with! We look forward to sundown in the summer!

Thanks for playing Cowboy Bob - and while its actually slightly more than 5 questions, they are all at least somewhat related. If anyone else out there wants to give it a try, let me know. I still have a few more of these I am obligated to do.