.My Kid said that I need to have my own “Blog”. So here it is. This is my graffiti on the wall.
Some of the thoughts I record here are short and some of them are long. Probably the short ones are better reading because they waste less time.
If you feel like reading it; go ahead. If you really would rather not; then I won’t be offended.
====================================================================================
There is a big difference between saying that two things are different and saying that one is better than the other. I’d like to know just when we became too stupid to understand that. Society seems to now be under the impression that we are all the same color, same gender, same weight; same everything. To recognize any difference between ourselves as individuals is now deemed to be the same as inciting hatred for anybody who is of a different color; gender; weight and whatever. I think that the only “same/equal” thing about any of us is the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. But since we are all too stupid to understand that; we have to draw the line at the very top and ignore any difference between ourselves. Because we cannot be trusted to think for ourselves. Society; you make me sick.
=============================================================
I don’t agree with everything that Frederick Douglas said. But he was right about this… ” Infinite wisdom has seldom sent into this world any man better fitted for his mission than Abraham Lincoln”
=============================================================
Those were the days…..
.
.
==================================================================
Just found these photos while kicking around the net. Apparently there used to be giants. I never knew that.
=====================================================================
I just got back from a resort in the Dominican republic. While there, I found that the price of an apple pie is only $1.50 for a full pie. While further south in Jamaica, the cost is a dollar per slice. Probably the worst deal is over in Barbados where you would have to pay over $10 for the whole thing.
Those are the pie-rates of the Caribbean.
.
=====================================================================
Nobody ever talks about Herbert Hoover any more. Not since “All in the family” went off the air.
Herbert Hoover had guts.
While working for a Chinese mining company at the time the Boxer rebellion broke out, he led the effort constructing barricades around the western enclave of Tientsin. He braved enemy fire to rush out and save Chinese kids caught in a cross-fire.
As the head US government official in charge of feeding the population of war-torn Europe in 1919 millions didn’t starve that may have under the care of a lesser organizer/bureaucrat. Even those in villages of Russia trying to get through the war between reds and whites. He swore that nobody deserved to starve; regardless of their politics. And he stuck to that no matter what the newspapers said. You think anybody today who has his eyes on a political future is going to take such an unpopular stance?
So Wall street crashed during his first year in the white house. Who out there understands that the great depression was not created by Hoover; but rather created for him?
Herbert Hoover rocks.
.
=====================================================================
They tell me that you should “look before you leap” but at the same time, they say that “He who hesitates is lost”.
Many hands make light work…. but too many cooks spoil the broth.
It’s the squeaky axle that gets the grease….but silence is golden.
Can’t anybody make up their mind any more?
=====================================================================
At the moment, I am thinking about addiction. There is one thing about an addict that most of us don’t consider. We cannot understand him or her unless we know what it is like to be without the dignity of choice. That is the most elemental thing which addiction can strip from one or force one to abandon. Choice is literally the principle upon which all of our lives are built. Once choice is no longer an option, then the bottom falls out. How far the addict will fall is left to forces beyond his control. You can love an addict; only as long as you comprehend and accept that addiction is stronger than the addicts love for you and that forgiveness becomes immaterial. You can maintain hope; but only as long as you are aware that you do so at your own peril.
=====================================================================
The below photograph was taken by my good friend Larry O’connor of South Dakota when he visited the German military cemetery at Recogne/Bastogne, Belgium. It has not been altered; it has not been photo-shopped. The names in the photo are exactly as they appear on the headstone of these two German soldiers. I am in no way implying or hinting at any form of disrespect toward these two fellows. But looking at the names and realizing that these two men were picked to share the same grave simply shows us how unaware Germans are of English slang terms.
.
==============================================================
“quod est necessarium est licitum”. (“That which is necessary is legal”). I was watching Big Bang theory and Sheldon Cooper used this phrase while pleading his case in traffic court. Now; I never got very far with my one-time ambition to be a lawyer. I am thinking of taking it up again; not by attending law school but by studying to read for the BAR, like Lincoln did. (yes, you can still do that) But I digress….
Anyway; I like the phrase. I like how it sums up in a tidy way; the notion that an act committed through necessity; while in itself a criminal act; is to be forgiven if successfully demonstrated that it was committed with the express intent of preventing an action or occasion of an event which would be more dangerous or unlawful than the act itself.
While researching the origin of this phrase or the first time it was successfully employed; I find that the general consensus of opinion among legal scholars is that the phrase did not exist or was never used under Roman law. The fact that it is quoted in Latin is a mere contrivance to add strength or prestige to the phrase or the notion itself. Somebody just thought it up and then translated it into Latin. Lawyers. Can’t trust ’em. Shouldn’t trust ’em. Don’t trust ’em.
.
=============================================================
There are three things that I enjoy in life; eating my family and leaving commas out of sentences.
.
==============================================================
I am told that Cell phones have been determined to cause Cancer in white rats. Red dye No. 6 has been determined to cause Cancer in white rats. Aspartame (synthetic sweetener) has been determined to cause Cancer in white rats. Proximity to high-tension power lines has been linked to the occurrence of Cancer in white rats.
I wonder if it is simply true that white rats are genetically predisposed to contracting Cancer.
.
.
=============================================================
During WW2, The Germans spent about $300,000 to build a single Tiger VI. The American government spent $35,000 for each Sherman tank delivered to the US army. And we were the rich ones.
.
.
================================================================
I am struck by the fact that in 1606 Galileo Galilei put forth the scientific theory (which was much later proven as fact) that objects which are of equal mass but of un-equal weight will fall at the same speed. (one cubic foot of concrete vs one cubic foot of wood). This theory contradicted known wisdom of the time. It contradicted scientific principles as taught by Aristotle since the 4th century B.C.
One has to realize what a hold the teachings of the Greek classical age still held on civilization even during the enlightened period of the renaissance. Teachings on subjects of the arts, of literature, sociology, medicine, physics…
He contradicted Aristotle. What balls.
.
==========================================================
So this friend of mine; Barry was at McDonalds getting a coffee. He was in his usual hurry. When they gave him the coffee, he took it and quickly turned around to head out the door. There was a midget standing behind him. I mean a really short midget. Barry is a tall fellow and the midget’s head came up to about Barry’s naval. Barry never looked down. He walked smack into the little guy and tripped over him; knocking him down and falling on top of him. They both started to get up when Barry slipped and fell on top of the midget again. The Midget was wearing a nice three-piece suit and carrying a briefcase that went sliding across the floor. Barry was full of apologies as he finally helped his unintended victim from the floor.
Now; honestly, I have ever met a midget. The only times that I happen to see them, they are piling out of small cars at the circus or engaged in some other humorous frolicking. It never occurred to me what it would be like to see an angry midget; and believe you me, this little guy was pissed.
I must say that I don’t know if the word “midget” has been decided by somebody to be offensive to midgets. I do hear them called “little people” sometimes, but just not sure if the word “midget” is now one of the many social taboos that the world of PC keeps coming up with. If any adult person who is under 4 feet tall reads this and is offended by my use of the term; please accept my apology. I do not mean to offend.
But man, oh man, that little person was pissed.
.
========================================================
According to “23 and me”; I apparently share DNA with the Romanov family. There’s nothing in my written family tree of course so I am sure it must be from some illegitimate liaison way back when
Nicholas II was a real Idiot. I’m his cousin so I am allowed to say so.
But I think he was lovable in his own way.
.
.
============================================
My brother was finished with his meal at a Diner. He wasn’t as hungry as he had thought when he ordered his meal and there was a significant portion still left on his plate. The Waitress brought the check. She looked at his plate and asked him “Do you wanna box?”
Without missing a beat, my brother informed her that he had no gloves with him; but if she cared to, he could wrestle her.
The result of this is that I have to go to a different Diner these days.
.
===============================================
People Kill people for many reasons. I mean individually. A man might kill a man because that man massacred his family; or ran off with his wife. An assassin may take out a political leader because the assassin is crazy or the leader is a despot. A soldier may blow up an enemy on the battlefield, hit him with sniper-fire from 500 feet or choke him to death in hand-to-hand combat. A grieving man may pull the plug on his cancer-ridden wife; or even his child. An addict might bludgeon an 80 year-old woman to death because she won’t let go of her purse and he himself may be executed by lethal injection on order from the state. As a society we discern between the various reasons for; or means of taking the life of another. Consider boiling it down to that single moment when one human being commits the act of taking another’s life. Cut out all the events that led up to it or the considerations surrounding it. Eliminate for the moment; any thought as to the motivation or cause. It is a tall order to do so. But if you can attain that perspective; it may be something to think over whether right is always right or if there really could be varying degrees.
It’s a thought that most likely is best left to better minds than mine; but I happen to believe that life is something which was bestowed upon us by something/somebody. From wherever it is that gift comes; I wonder how much consideration is given for the causes and whether such distinctions are made.
I do wonder that. But until the time that I find out, I will most likely continue to support the death penalty.
=====================================================
.
.
======================================================
This is a cool old “retro” motel in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. It’s been around since the early 70s at least. The architecture hasn’t changed much but the decor has been updated a few times. In the 1980s, it was called “The flying cloud” motel and it was owned by Donald and Gloria Koziy.
There real names were Bohdan and Jaraslava. Originally from Western Ukraine, they immigrated to the US in 1949 from West Germany under the displaced persons act; a U.S. government program which offered immigration status to people of Europe who had been dispossessed by the social upheaval caused by World War Two.
Donald and Gloria were model citizens. From the time they entered the US, they were hardworking and industrious. They raised two kids and saved their money until they bought a motel in New York. Eventually they moved to southern Florida where Donald managed another hotel while he worked to pay for “The flying cloud” which they bought for themselves. Well-liked and known among the community as clean and hardworking; they were pillars of the local beach-side area.
But Bohdan Koziy was a Nazi War criminal. From 1941 to 1944 he was a member of the Ukrainian auxiliary police who worked for the occupying Germans in the Galician region of western Ukraine. Beginning in 1979, the US office of special investigations assembled a lengthy dossier on Koziy. The contents are quite chilling. A cold-blooded hunter of Jewish victims; witnesses were found to testify they had personally witnessed him committing several Murders; particularly of Ukrainian Children and one in particular; 4-year-old Monica Singer who was torn from her mothers arms by Koziy, dragged her to the police station where he shot her in the head; in front of her hysterical and bereaved mother.
Koziy’s comfortable life in Florida started to unravel in 1979 when he was charged with lying in the deposition of his wartime activities when he filled out his entry visa application in 1949; the same lies told in his application for citizenship in 1955. By 1983 the legal maneuvering was done; Koziy’s citizenship was revoked and he stood to be deported to Poland to face the specific criminal charges. When they came for him, he was gone. He had sold “The Flying cloud a year or so earlier and left the country disappeared.
Bohdan Koziy outside the West Palm beach federal court building in 1982
Where can a man run to when he has no citizenship? ie; no passport? Costa Rica. This central American country will ( or at least did in the 1980s) let anybody move to and apply for a residence permit as long as they have the capital to buy their own place and help support the local economy. (Koziy had cleared at least several hundred thousand dollars by the sale of the Flying Cloud)
The next 20 years were spent in various legal strategies on the part of Koziy to be allowed to stay in Costa Rica and several government and private parties engaged in attempts to have him extradited. None were able to do it though and Koziy lived out the rest of his life in peace and comfort. He died in 2003 and thus got clean away with whatever crimes he’d committed for the Nazis
Last week, I was in Fort Lauderdale so I looked up the old “Flying cloud” motel; it’s name now changed and the new owners who don’t really put Koziy’s story in their tourist pamphlets.
It looks like a very nice place. I took a picture of it. Maybe I’ll stay there next time I’m in the neighborhood. Unless of course the motel owners see this blog and recognize the photo. I probably won’t be too welcome then…
===========
.
My Favorite character in “Cross of Iron”
.
For those of you who are familiar with the film, I thought it might be cool to discuss our favorite characters.
.
Mine is the Rat; Jayjay, who co-inhabited Stransky’s Battalion command bunker. I’m sure you remember him.
.
I feel that Jayjay is perhaps the least understood and the most multidimensional of the characters. He detests Stransky’s possessiveness of him; his often referral to Jayjay as “My Jayjay”. Yet he does seek out protection from not being treated correctly.
.
He is certainly the most underrated characters in that film. We also don’t know what happens to him in the end? Did he get killed? Did he live? Did he stay in Russia? We just don’t know.
.
If one is familiar with the behind-the-scenes part of the movie, one will know that there are several scenes which were filmed but later cut from the final print. They detailed Jayjay’s exodus across the taman penninsula straight to Crimea where he was unrecognized as the German sympathizer that he was. When the region was retaken by the Red army, Jayjay opened a small box-lunch delivery business until exposed as a Kulak and arrested by the NKVD. He ended his days in Beria’s Moscow apartment serving as a punching bag for Beria’s cat who was an aspiring boxer.
.
But back to reality…. it was merely a film; you know. Jayjay is actually the actors real name. Being a right primadona, he insisted on using it as the script name or else he would not accept the role. Sam Peckinpah was reluctant to allow this but was forced to accept the rat’s terms. The only other available rat-thespian who could have handled the part was the well known character actor Jojo.
.
Jojo had originally been given the part but when the time came to film the bunker sequences, Jojo came down with the same strain of intestinal disorder that Captain Keisle suffered from; having reactions to the local Yugoslavian caterer’s menu.
.
After the completion of the filming, James Coburn was heard to remark “I didn’t care for either of those little fellows very much.”
=============
.
.
My Favorite Original WW2 German photo. (It’s your favorite too)
======================================================
.
I’m really upset about all this stuff about the Emancipation proclamation. I know. Seems a little bit late; doesn’t it?
Lincolns proclamation of 1862 didn’t really emancipate anybody. It wasn’t intended to and even if it were so intended; Lincoln didn’t have the authority even under the extended war-powers he’d been given (or seized). Although the words (and I am paraphrasing because I don’t have the text in front of me) said that Blacks would be “heretofore and forever free”, it meant that Blacks who were seized as contraband by the army would be set loose and would not be slaves as long as they were in territory controlled by the US army. Or basically every place that wasn’t under the control of the persons currently engaged in rebellion against the USA. If the fortunes of the south had prevailed the next year (which they came disturbingly close to doing) Any black falling into southern hands would be returned to a condition of slavery; and those remaining in Northern territories would still not be free under the constitution.
The move was made in order to send a message to Industrial, cotton-hungry foreign countries who may have been courted by Southern interests into recognizing the Confederacy and possibly willing to help out in America’s “second Revolution” as they had helped with the first one eighty years before. That message being simply “If you help out these people, you will be supporting the institution of chattel slavery and we are going to tell the newspapers all about it”. Europe was far too gentile to stomach such a thing. Oh, they didn’t mind buying the cotton which was picked and processed by forced labor. They just didn’t want their people to be reminded of it. The real responsibility for this affront to human sensibilities; so popular at the time in Paris and London…that went to the the rough-neck people of the new world.
Freedom for American Blacks was a separate issue from the Northern war-aims altogether. It was never a part of what their people were fighting for except by extension. Post hoc ergo propter hoc (Since event X followed event Y, it must be that X was caused by Y ) is thought to be a logical fallacy, but in this case; I think it is quite obvious.
But true freedom; which would be guaranteed by constitutional amendment; would have to wait until the war was decided; in theory, if not in actual fact. And it did wait. Until the closing months of the war and after Lincoln’s successful re-election. Then Lincoln brought it to the fore and championed the cause which met with the most bitter and dogged resistance among northern politicians. White America really wasn’t all that willing or enthused to put their money where their mouth was. They had to be dragged into it. And when they were; it was only to the effect that Blacks would be technically free and equal under the law. The social acceptance; I guess that would have to wait.
==============================================
I was watching this documentary about the Titanic.
You know? The swimming pool is still filled with water. That’s amazing.
.
=================================================
I ran across this old photo. It’s totally anonymous. No idea who these women are or where or when the photo was made. But it really makes me wonder.
I mean, really… Look at it…What the heck is going on?
========================================
What happened to “The”?
When I was a kid and somebody talked about the Titanic; they always referred to it as “The Titanic”. Now whenever I hear something about it on a documentary or where-ever, it is referred to as “Titanic” as in: “On April 10 Titanic leaves Southampton….Titanic hits the iceberg at 11:40 on the evening of April 14”. Why do they not say “The” Titanic? what happened to “the”? Its the same with other ship names. We used to hear about how the USS Arizona was sunk at Pearl Harbor. Now on the History channel they say “Arizona blew up and sank”. What happened to “The”? Why has it been removed?
One thing that really gets me is the movie about the Titanic in the 1990s. They have this old woman who is a survivor and when she is talking about her experience; she says something like “That was the last time I ever saw Titanic”. The script-writers had her talking like that as well. Certainly; because she is old, she would have; all her life been referring to it as “The Titanic”. But suddenly she drops the “The”…what is that about?
Before Perestroika; we used to talk about The Ukraine. Now it is referred to as simply “Ukraine”…”Hello, do you come from Ukraine?”…I am going to travel to Ukraine”.
I don’t like it. Not one bit.
==============================================
So; under Eisenhower’s administration in the 1950s America took a cue from other industrialized countries (Starting with Hitler’s Germany) and started to build the Interstate highway system; linking virtually all major cities with each other by modern freeways. I always considered Ike’s sponsorship of the highways almost as cool as his commanding the armies entering Europe to take out the Nazis.
I don’t know how close this idea is to becoming fact but I’ve heard that the government wants to sell the Interstates to private enterprises so that they can maintain them and charge us for using them. Our highway system is built upon an infrastructure and set of easements; assembled over the past 60 years which could never be duplicated by the private sector. But they don’t need to duplicate it. Washington wants to give it to them so they can charge us for the use of something that we have already paid for. Why?: because the government needs to take that upkeep money and spend it on throwing money at foreign allies that none of us want; sending the presidents wife to NYC on air-force-one to go shopping; at a cost of $500,000 per trip….or whatever.
Well I guess it was only a matter of time before mismanagement of our financial resources would take away; literally the only benefit that we daily see from all those tax dollars we send to Washington.
What a bunch of cocks.
=================================================
I hate the term “Surrender Monkeys” that people tend to use when referring to the French. True; France has been a near comedy of blunders and mis-management since just after Waterloo. But I think we are inclined to forget 1914-1918. The WW1 French veteran is probably the most respectable thing to have sprung from French culture in the past 200 years. Mistreated and misused by their own commanders; these guys held the line against overwhelming pressure for 4 years; throwing back the best that Falkenhayn or Ludendorf could throw at them. My hat is off to them.
==============================================
Rumor has it
I love starting rumors. I call them “sociological experiments” designed to measure the gullibility of man. Oh; nothing major, mind you. I am not comfortable telling whoppers. Take for instance the weather. I’m standing with a friend in a check-out line and I turn and tell him (in a clear audible voice) that isn’t it something? We are due to get 12-16 inches of snow by morning. The lady in line behind us or even the check-out girl will hear this and repeat this astonishing prognostication to the next person they talk to…and so on, and so on.
My favorite so far is mentioning (to anybody with whom I may be chatting) how incredible it seems to me that United States currency is now actually printed in China; contracted by the government because they can do it cheaper. So far, nobody has called me out on that. Isn’t that a hoot?
It’s a perfect lie. One that nobody would suspect simply because of the total lack of motive for telling such a fib. Nobody is harmed. Nobody loses anything by it. If there has to be lies in this world; (and human nature apparently dictates that there must be) let them all be as trivial as these.
I remember in 2009 Michael Jackson died. I think he was a very talented guy; if a bit troubled. He certainly made more of a splash in this world than most people do and the world was a better place with him in it. During that summer, I was waiting in a line of a Dairy Queen and I turned to my friend, Kent and said in an audible voice “So who is this guy Michael Jackson? Everybody seems to be talking about that he died”
Kent is onto my ways ever since I gave him the idea that they were forecasting earthquakes one week in Lapeer Michigan. He answered without missing a beat; “I am not sure. But wasn’t he the president of Canada?”
“Yeah, That’s him. I guess that’s why everybody is talking about him being dead now.”
A kid; who was standing next to us says to me “Um, Mister… Michael Jackson was a singer”
“Oh really? What did he sing? Can you sing one of his songs here for me?”
“No, I can’t”
A minute later he had his Ice cream and was over with his family under one of those umbrellas. He was talking to them and pointing over at Kent and Me.
The fact that I am entertained by that sort of thing is something of which I am not particularly proud. I just recognize it as a fact and go on with things.
I mean; we live in a world filled with sickies. Andre Chikatillo; remember him? Killed about a gazillion people over 20 years and used to masturbate on their graves.
So how far from “Normal” are my little shenanigans?
====================================================
I just ran across this photo. What’s that about?
=======================================================
I’m sitting here re-watching “Band of brothers” for the umpteenth time. Currently at the episode where the veterans are re-capping their experiences; speaking of their re-unions at that point when they were old men; speaking of that bond they have with other members of the company.
I’ve not had a war. I was born at just the right time; so that I matured in between conflicts. I’m thankful to God that I did not have to endure and witness what they did. But as much as I didn’t endure that kind of suffering; I missed out on having that bond between myself and others. There is no substitute for it. No friendship; no romance, no relationship of any kind would have that same quality. So how lucky am I really?
====================================================
Have you heard that our United states currency is now being printed in China?
====================================================
Size matters
Halloween has come and gone again. My kid is 13 so I have to really savor these last episodes of trick-or-treating before he gets too far into puberty. Of course I raid his candy bag; wouldn’t you? But something there really got my attention. There was a small packet of “Mini M&Ms”.
…Mini?
Why would the candy designers feel the need to come up with a “mini” version of something which is clearly already mini?
I mean; think about it. Have you ever encountered an M&M that you couldn’t eat at one sitting? … “oh man, my wife and I split an M&M last night and I am still feeling full”…Have you ever noticed any weight-gain from the consumption of a single portion of M&M? Why would they feel the need to offer an M&M which is further reduced in size?
And what is next? “Micro M&Ms”? M&Ms that you need to isolate with a magnifying glass and a pair of surgical tweezers?
This comes after the years-ago revelation that “Fun size” snickers bars are not nearly as fun as the full-size version.
====================================================
.
That Lana Turner … just saw her in an old movie … what a dish. I mean; Wow!
.