Ground Beef for the Mind

© 2008 Tema Kuda. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system,

or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

First published by AuthorHouse 12/23/2008

ISBN: 978-1-4389-0616-4 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4678-6599-9 (ebook(

Ground Beef for the Mind

We rarely have the guts to say it, but this book does! It eclipses, principally, issues and topics that would be beneficial if discussed openly. But sadly, we seldom, if ever, have the gall to do so. It slam dunks you with food for thought—raw. In all there are 146 discussions (most have a complementary illustration) that include the following (paraphrased): The Virginia Tech myth about guns; How society thrives on juvenile road kill; Our natural supernatural world; How to marry a Canadian murderer; Why some speeding tickets are Legal Highway Robbery; The genetic code for sexual orientation; The Pantyhose-Diamonds connection; The Life on Mars charade; Dump your wife because life is short; The prostitution solicitation mystery; IQ and geography; The FSBO myth (for sale by owner)-and how they mislead each other; Time to put some prosecutors in the slammer; Is Rush a new four letter word? The brain evolution puzzle; Your Meaningless vote; The intelligence behind dumb political ads; The follies of Child Support Court; No place to pee in Brooklyn; Gene mutations in Polygamist Wives; Legal Child Abuse; How not to deal with a cop when stopped; Expensive cheap stuff from the Far East; How Chambers of Commerce are fooled by Megamarts; The Long Arm of Outsourcing; The Daytime Soap-Talk Radio Connection; A High Wire Jamaican adventure; Mabel’s demise while traveling with a dish of delicious chicken curry; and much more.

You will encounter some satire and much humor as you embark on an adventure through Ground Beef for the Mind. You will be enlightened! Enjoy!

If you recognize things about yourself in any single discussion it is by pure chance, since this is all about society and its values.

The writing style as you will see emphasizes a conversational ingredient rather than grammatical correctness. You’ll even see a few unfamiliar or new words.

Illustrations are by Annette Davis. Cover design by Rwanda Green. Thanks to Violet and Okito for their contributions.

Tema Kuda.

Book Insert.

Enter this contest for a chance to win big prizes.

To enter, read Ground Beef for the Mind and notice the conversation captions left blank. Try to imagine what the person in question might be saying. For each one, name the topic and state your rendition of possible words.

Visit the website: Groundbeefforthemind.com for further details.

Legalized Child Abuse

Some years ago a tourist from a European country where pedophilic episodes are rare, came to the US. The tourist came from a place where they park their infants’ strollers outside the window of eateries while they sit and have something to eat inside. In North America we would never even dream of doing such a thing. Why? Well, we all know why. So this tourist, not being very cognizant of where she was, parked her stroller in front of a restaurant and proceeded to park herself inside where she could see her child as she ate. This turned out to be a despicable and obnoxious scene to some on looker who proceeded to call the authorities.

So far nothing was really really wrong in this episode. After all, this was a city in the US. Where things got really hairy was what proceeded. It was a big scene. This mother had committed the worst child abuse crime anywhere. The mother of course explained to the authorities that it was all a mistake based on what she was accustomed to doing back where she came from-a no incident where she was from. It must be that some one or entity decided to use the incident to make a name for himself/itself, because the corrective action taken spells out unreasonableness and lack of intelligence. Instead of letting the visiting mother know in strict terms that that was a No No around these joints and perhaps given a strict warning, the child was of course removed from the mother’s care and the case was handled in the regular child abuse manner. The woman of course could not return to her country for a while during the legal proceedings.

While this infant was removed from her dear loving mom, where was she longing to be? With whom was she crying to be? Why was this child classified as being in danger in the custody of her mom? Where was commonsense? Did commonsense take a long slow stroll around a city park with a large lake? Wasn’t this child being abused by those that took charge? When a child is being deprived of what it needs isn’t that child being abused?

Child protection agencies by far work for the good of society but they have the power to be abusive with impunity and it happens too many times. In spite of their good intentions, many commit legal child abuse when they rob a child of its parent’s care. Especially when it is clear that the child is in no danger whatsoever. Especially when it is as clear as daylight that the parents just simply made a mistake that they should be warned about! If the child is in no danger, shouldn’t one of the concerns be: Where would that child be the happiest? In some strange place with strange people or smiling when she looks at her mother’s face?

Women’s Restrooms

In the public that is. Yes, where it’s crowded like at theme parks and other public attractions. Who are the engineers? Don’t they know that women not only generally go more frequently than their male counterparts but also they use stalls? Granted we generally see more stalls in women’s restrooms in these places. But the obvious problem is that there are not nearly as many as needed. Is this discrepancy hidden knowledge or is it a glaring fact. It’s also surprising that women don’t speak up for themselves on this issue.

Take a look at almost any women’s restroom in any crowded place. How long is the line? How long do these poor souls suffer? What if she is pregnant and can’t hold on to that fluid as long as the person in front of her? Do we need rocket scientist here? And how long is the line into the men’s? Never seen one yet. Anywhere! Does this mean that men are the ones that design these facilities?

Once I was at a crowded attraction with my wife and another female. When it was time for them to go for a bladder relief the line to the Women’s was at least a hundred feet long. For me, this was a bewildering situation. How long would the suffering be, I wondered? Meanwhile there was not a single man at the door of the Men’s. Men were just busily entering and leaving. I always look for solutions to problems and this was one-a problem. There was no bush nearby. What could I do to help? I told my wife to give me a second to check on something. Off I went to the men’s restroom. I checked the enclosed stalls. And even though the room was busy the stalls were all unoccupied. I hurried back to the two women and said, Follow me! They did not hesitate, and filed behind me into the men’s restroom, passing a few shocked men. I showed them some empty stalls and said, Use these. I stood on guard. When they were done we quickly left. What a relief?

If you are an engineer responsible for designing such relief facilities you may get yourself a few friends if you keep this story in mind and benefit from it.

Guns VS Knives

The problem is not the availability of guns, they say. If so and so wants to kill and maim a hundred innocent people, for whatever reason, that is the problem. That’s true. But if so and so wanted to take out many innocent unsuspecting work mates or school mates and he could not obtain an appropriate weapon to do the job he would have to alter his plans, obviously. In fact, he would not have a grand plan in the first place. He would have to plan on using a machete, a hammer or a knife. How many souls would he plan on destroying? He may succeed in stabbing one person ten times to make sure death results or maiming ten people with a stab each. Also, so and so might not make it too far. That’s because an average person next to him with some gall would flatten him out with the nearest chair.

Where is the logic when it comes to these occurrences? At Virginia Tech, how many lives would that guy have taken if he was armed with two knives? My feeling is that he would not have planned anything in the first place if he couldn’t get his hands on a glorified piece of bullet popping machinery.

Negativity in life has a strange way of coming full circle. For example, if you give full unwavering support to a tyrant, there is a high probability that some way along the line you may become one of his victims. That’s because you’ve helped to create a monster, and a monster is a monster is a monster. The point of caution here is: If you support the free availability of guns don’t be surprised if you get killed by one. Of course by then you’d be dead and can’t share in the surprise anyway. Good health to you!

Rebate gimmicks: I’m sure they won’t tell us.

Get it today. Yes, a so and so gizmo for $259 with a rebate of $90. Yes, pay $259 instead of $349. So you fly to the store and realize that you have to pay $349 and do a few things to recoup that $90. You always have to make sure you do it right. You have to keep this and keep that and fill this out and don’t lose this. Then you have to mail it in. The big questions are: How many people actually get these rebates? If the merchant really wants to give you a discount, which is really what a rebate is intended to be, why on earth doesn’t he just give it to you? After all, for all practical purposes he is selling the so and so for so much less. The only thing is that you have to wait for the discount. USUALLY FOR SEVERAL MONTHS. Well not so fast. Look at the first question. Because of my experience with these rebates games, it is obvious that only a fraction of people actually get around to collecting them. The others either forget to put all the info together and send them in on time or may lose the receipt or lose the container which has the product number and so on. This would happen since people are not generally accustomed taking care of such things on a regular basis. The merchant definitely knows this and he makes a lot of sales and profits using the rebate gimmick.

If something I need is advertised for $259 and I have $300 and still can’t get it, something is obviously wrong.

It would be interesting to know what percentage of people actually get these rebates. I’ll bet they won’t tell us.

More about Guns.

When I was a kid we used to play with toy guns at Christmas. We used to carry one or two gun sockets on our hips. Each socket had a gun with the name of some famous gun slinger. I can’t remember all the names. If your father were not rich then you carried a one-socket arrangement. But once you were a boy you walked the streets with a loaded gun on your hip, a toy gun that is. The boys in the neighborhood would engage in shootouts doing Wild West games. My family was considerably large. We had lots of boys to supply the neighborhood adequately. When I say family I mean three generations, all living in the same stone throw range. Right now I’m sure we number well over two hundred, starting from those two grand parents I knew. One of these days I plan to do a census.

As adults however, would you believe it, no one ended up in prison for any reason, much less for carrying a real loaded gun and perhaps using it. No, not a single one of us! How come our toy guns didn’t influence our little minds so much, causing us to develop a liking for the real thing? That is a question for the experts. You know the experts make big claims to the contrary. They claim to know it all. They get a masters degree in some life skill and suddenly they know everything about life and kids and influence and everything about almost everything. This is of course one of the reasons for toy guns following the dodo bird. The days of toy guns are nearly history now. No body wants their child to have a toy gun because it will have a bad subtle effect on his delicate mind. The experts told them that this would be the case.

So then why is it that the kid generation that grew up without toy guns are the ones using real guns the most? So why is it that too many of the progeny from the generation whose parents read all the books from all the experts are coming across as the most violent? Those experts made a lot of money on junk advice. Many are retired and living in luxury and silently looking on at their sad societal products.

Even though we surely had lots of fun with cap guns as children I’m not advocating that all boys have them to play with. With all the computer games etc, etc, etc that are around today, perhaps not too many boys would care to make time for one of them things. The point here is that the so called experts, (and there never seem to be a shortage of them) should not portray themselves as the supreme Mr. Know All. Too many were misled by them. I wasn’t one of their victims though. My grandmother who did not have a post secondary education was smarter than any one of them. Period.

Smoking—If the experts only knew?

Another thing we used to do as kids would have caused a lot of raising of eyebrows these days. Of course what we did was done when the adults in our lives weren’t anywhere to be seen. But the way how the child psychologists of today see things, we should have turned out different. We used to take grass fiber and roll it into cigarettes with note book paper. We would smoke and choke and cough our heads off. Our eyes would be teary and we would laugh to death. Then we wouldn’t do it again for another year.

In all my two to three hundred extended