Sunday, May 31, 2015

I hit 70 next January 8, and was interested in this piece:

John Derbyshire writes in Taki’s Magazine:

“Making it to seventy is not much nowadays. ‘Seventy is the new fifty,’ my friends assure me. As the scriptural limit, though, seventy is a good point at which to take stock, to look back and get some idea of the shape of one’s life.”

http://takimag.com/article/follow_heart_whatever_desire_john_derbyshire/print#ixzz3bjWXNady

“As the scriptural limit …” Well, yes and no.

“The days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labour and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away.” – Psalm 90:10.

Nobody knows what that 70 “days of our years” means. Used to be, explainers would say, “Well, people didn’t live as long then,” meaning the writer wrote for the then population of Israel/Judea.

Anyway, that’s not the point here. The point here is about taking stock, looking back, to “get some idea of the shape of one’s life.”

Here’s the deal: It happened, whatever and however it was. You can’t change it; you can’t go back and re-live the good parts or the whole thing. It was.

(I thought about writing: “Fuck it. What my life has been, it has been.” Then I decided that might be … I decided not to write that.

(On reflection, though, my first inclination was right.)

OMG! moment by non-aviation person

It ain’t duct tape. It just looks like duct tape.

"Pictures taken by a shocked passenger of an airport worker sticking tape onto the engine of an easyJet plane just moments before take off have been shared by tens of thousands of people online.

"A passenger snapped the DIY fix it job in action of the worker applying tape over a join in the turbine casing yesterday.

"The nerve jangling image has already been viewed by more than 20,000 people online.

"@adtomwood posted the snap on Twitter saying: "Always worrying when easyJet are duct taping the plane together :-s #finaldestination"

"The image of a man in a fluorescent yellow jacket sticking down a long line of silver tape has been widely shared on the internet.

"But contrary to popular belief, it is not duct tape, the Daily Mail reports.

"The silver sticky strip is believed to be speed tape, widely used in the aviation industry to carry out quick repairs on flights so as to avoid delays."

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/shocked-passenger-snaps-airport-worker-5789181

Link at www.fark.com

City folk will be the ruin of us all

“(BERLIN) — Police in rural northeastern Germany rushed out to track down a reported mob of up to 15 people armed with knives and sticks. Instead, they found a group of asparagus harvesters.

“Police in the town of Ludwigslust said a man called their emergency number Saturday to report having seen '10 to 15 people armed with knives and sticks' on a local road.

“Within minutes, six police cars were on their way to the scene. Officers quickly discovered, however, that the group was asparagus harvesters walking along the road with their work tools as they went to take a lunch break.”

http://time.com/3902640/germany-police-mob-asparagus-pickers/

Link at www.fark.com

Migrants spoil Greek island for tourists

“Picture this... tourists relaxing on a sunny beach without a care in the world.

“A few metres away, dozens of migrants sit in make-shift camps with cardboard boxes for beds, surrounded by rubbish. Welcome to Kos.

“Hundreds are now sleeping and washing on the streets, while struggling to get food and drink.

“So far in 2015, 7,500 migrants have arrived on the Greek island, which has a population of just 30,000.

“But 6,000 of those arrived within the last month alone and local authorities are completely overwhelmed.

“That's led some tourists to complain it's ‘disgusting’ and ‘spoiling the atmosphere’ of Kos which is promoted by holiday firms on the back of its ‘hidden bays’ and ‘little-known coves’.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/article/32934800/kos-migrants-the-stories-of-those-spoiling-the-atmosphere-for-holidaymakers

From the other side: “Migrants in Kos are accusing Greek authorities of taking too long to sort their paperwork so they can move on to rest of Europe.”

(If those fleeing the Middle East and Africa make it to Europe, they have a better life with a first step onto a beach. After that, any European Union member state must see to their needs.

(EU states: You made the rules so Germany and France could rule, so either shut up and follow what you decided or change the rules.)

Link at http://gatesofvienna.net/2015/05/gates-of-vienna-news-feed-5302015/#more-36466



Georgetown, Colorado, Zip 80444

Georgetown is county seat of Clear Creek. Founded in 1859, Georgetown became a center of commerce for the county following the discovery of silver in 1864. The town’s population was more than 10,000 at one time during the silver boom.

Downtown was used in Every Which Way but Loose in 1978.

Population – 1,283 in 2000; 1,080 in 2010; 1,344 in 2011 (estimated). Racial makeup is estimated at 95.96 white.

Median house price: $55,000 in 2009; $275,000 in 2012; $95,000 first quarter 2014; $205,000 fourth quarter 2014.

No gay or lesbian households reported. (As if that is the business of government.)

Seventy-seven percent of working residents drive to work alone.

Foreign-born residents: 42% from Mexico; 25% from Switzerland.

A ton of percentages: http://www.city-data.com/zips/80444.html

Some nice photographs of Colorado area, the Dakotas and Kenya here:

http://www.grizzlycreekgallery.com/portfolio

Almost all search hits link to touristy stuff; no history, other than mining.

Sounds like a boring town.


Saturday, May 30, 2015

Before the federal government got involved

… in much of daily life, we missed out of a bunch of things. Most of us did not have pre-K, or even K for that matter, even though “90% of brain development (occurs) by age 5.”

http://www.campfirefw.org/am-site/media/universal-pre-k-impact-study.pdf

So, how did we survive? Seriously. Before government began bribing schools with classes for kids not too far removed from learning how to walk, how did we manage to learn to read or write or do math? Were standards lower then? They must have been. Our parents were ignorant, too, because there were no parental-involvement classes, no instruction on how to raise children.

In the same vein:

“Our children are soaked with the cult of safety the way they would once have imbibed religion or patriotism. At school, teachers ‘street-proof’ children—that is, they teach them that kidnappers and child molesters lurk in every playground. Television excites children with environmentalist fears that the air and water they breathe and drink teem with toxins, that the food they eat is saturated with deadly pesticides, and that the juice bottles they discard will soon cover the entire surface of the earth.” – David Frum in What’s Right, quoted by Mollie Hemingway at http://thefederalist.com/2013/09/20/what-your-neighborhood-list-serv-tells-you-about-the-demise-of-america/ and linked at http://chicagoboyz.net/





Thursday, May 28, 2015

Another Putin enemy

“Vladimir Kara-Murza is a leading opposition figure in Russia. On Tuesday, May 26, 2015, he collapsed suddenly and lost consciousness in his office at Open Russia in Moscow. He was rushed to Pervaya Gradskaya (First City Clinical) hospital where he remains on life support, unconscious with an undiagnosed illness of undetermined origins.

“Given the sudden, mysterious, and incapacitating nature of the illness, and the Putin regime’s appalling record with respect to the murders and mistreatment of prominent dissidents, there is widespread concern that Vladimir has been poisoned. His doctors have not ruled it out though one can imagine the pressure they are under.

“Vladimir’s wife, Evgenia, has attempted to have him evacuated for treatment outside the country. However, it has been determined that his condition is too fragile for him to be moved.”

http://www.worldaffairsjournal.org/blog/

He spoke out and lost his RTVi job, and for continuing to speak, possibly will lose his life.

Wednesday, May 27, 2015

Bristol Blenheim Mk.1 and two Spitfire Mk.1 in formation

https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=61&v=h1GZ8-k-b74

Taking care of livestock

Every day.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=286&v=tc1X0CMDDNY

What happened to all those illegal immigrant kids?

This started out as a short piece on Clint, Texas, Zip Code 79836. But, as with almost every other town, Clint has a bigger story.

El Paso County, 2010 population 926, Hispanic or Latino “of any race were 83.98% of the population,” according to

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clint,_Texas

Family households made up 64.2 percent of the population. Percentage of households with unmarried partners – 3.5 percent, compared to 5.2 percent statewide. And an interesting piece of information: “No gay or lesbian households reported.” Which state and/or federal agency requires heterosexual/homosexual reporting?

Here are more stats than you can shake a stick at:

http://www.city-data.com/zips/79836.html

Proving money can be made from any emergency or event, the Associated Press reported in July 2014:

“CLINT, Texas (AP) - Authorities are considering a bid to build a shelter in West Texas that would be the largest in the U.S. to hold unaccompanied children who enter the country illegally.

“A number of sites in Texas and elsewhere are being considered as detention facilities for many of the more than 57,000 unaccompanied children who have entered the U.S. since October.

“But with 3,500 beds, the proposed Abraham Lincoln Transitional Lodge southeast of El Paso would be far larger than other centers. A temporary processing facility in McAllen holds about 1,000 children.

“The lodge's marketing director, Charles McGuire, tells the Houston Chronicle (http://bit.ly/1AmXUMR ) that the principal backers of the bid previously have invested in housing for oil workers in Texas.

“The Texas Department of Family and Protective Services is reviewing the proposal.”

http://www.elpasotimes.com/latestnews/ci_26228111/proposed-immigration-detention-shelter-near-clint-would-be

Note that the story does not say any government agency asked for such a shelter, only that an unnamed company proposed the facility and the state “is reviewing” the plan.

The “lodge” is incorporated in New Jersey. “The Abraham Lincoln Transitional Lodge Inc. is a small, new organization in the individual and family services industry located in Montvale, N.J. It opened its doors in 2014 and now has an estimated $51,000 in yearly revenue and 1 employee.”

http://listings.findthecompany.com/l/34034568/The-Abraham-Lincoln-Transitional-Lodge-Inc-in-Montvale-NJ

The story of illegal immigrant children is so last year that few news networks or newspapers even follow the border crossings. So, what happened to all those kids?

Not as many are crossing this year, DHS says. Still, it is difficult to learn about the ones who did make it into the U..S.

“(T)he government is now even meeting its legal 72-hour deadline for processing the kids at the border and releasing them to social workers, who are quickly placing the children with their relatives or foster families here in the U.S.”

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/may/11/illegal-immigrant-children-border-crossings-down-5/#ixzz3bLxEFZTP

The story doesn’t answer the overall question: Where are all those kids now?





Tuesday, May 26, 2015

Collaboration horizontale

http://worldwartwo.filminspector.com/2014/09/collaborator-girls.html

When first seeing films and pictures (around age 14), I had compassion for the accused women, mostly because of their embarrassment. My father, Army Air Corps, said the collaborating women were just doing what they could, to feed their families.

Or, maybe he said they should be shot. It was a long time ago.

Too, these pictures are from civilized France, Belgium and Holland. I have never seen a picture of what happened to collaborators from the Easern Front. But I have an idea their punishment was far greater than public humiliation and shaving of heads.

She is a wolf-dog hybrid, spiritually and mentally, don’t you know.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=komph9TxTbI

Watching the video of Ms. Loopy Canus, one has a new image of getting tail.

Link at http://politicalhat.com/

Wierd people always say about their school years: "I knew I was not like everybody else."

Here's a truth, dufus: Nobody is like everybody else. What you have is Narcissism.

Royalty, Texas, 79779

Some places are out there for a time, serve a purpose, and then fade away. Royalty is still out there, the Handbook of Texas online says. But barely.

“ROYALTY, TEXAS. Royalty is at the intersection of Farm Road 1219 and State Highway 18, two miles north of Grandfalls in southern Ward County. It was named for royalties paid to landowners after the discovery of oil at Grandfalls in 1927. Royalty was established to serve the neighboring oilfield and its workers. Before a post office was opened in 1929, it was known as Allentown, after an early landowner. In 1933 Royalty had an estimated population of twenty, and a hotel, drugstore, cafe, pool hall, barbershop, and laundry. Its population peaked at 750 in 1940, when it reported thirty-five businesses. By 1950 Royalty had an estimated 280 residents and five businesses. With declining oilfield activity, the population had fallen to about 190 by 1968. In 1990 the population was reported as 196. The population dropped to twenty-nine in 2000.”

https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/hlr49https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/hlr49

(1933 – You have a place to stay, a place to get aspirin, a place to eat, some entertainment at the pool hall, a place to get your hair cut and a place to get your clothes washed. Sounds OK. Surely, though, there was a church. We’re talking about Texas here.)

Satellite view: https://www.google.com/maps/place/Royalty,+TX+79756/@31.3723611,-102.8670981,2636m/data=!3m2!1e3!4b1!4m2!3m1!1s0x86faf4eef47b5ccd:0xb711787175445006

If you are in Royalty and want to eat out, you’ll have to go to Monahans.

Royalty is in Ward County, as mentioned above. In 1890, the county population was 75. That means everybody knew everybody else. Or should have.

Also in Ward County is what remains of Pyote Air Force Base. As an Army airfield in World War II, Pyote at one time had more than 6,500 Army and civilian personnel. After the war, the base was used for storage. The Enola Gay and the Swoose were there for a time, as was an XB-42 Mixmaster.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyote_Air_Force_Base

Monday, May 25, 2015

Still bitter, after all these years

Wonder why the writer wants to talk about only what was? Aiding and abetting anger.

Art Garfunkel talks about Paul Simon.

"But I've been in that same place for decades. This is where I was in 1971."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/music/rockandpopmusic/11626027/art-garfunkel-interview-paul-simon.html

Orla, Texas. Population 2, plus some dufus tourists and in 1930 on a return route from Alaska

Zip Code 79770.

Orla is in that western part of Texas that pokes into New Mexico. Orla is in Reeves County, about 40 miles north of Pecos. Wikipedia says, “It is believed to have two residents.” Yep. Two.

The Handbook of Texas online disagrees somewhat with Wikipedia.

“From 1970 through 2000 its population was reported at 183, and it had variously anywhere from one to sixteen businesses.”

https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/HLO21

Pictures at https://anygivensundry.wordpress.com/2012/09/10/orla-texas/ lend agreement more with Wikipedia, although I question the veracity of someone who says, “We were in no way comforted by the appearance of a big suspicious looking Haliburton truck.” It’s an oil field or gas field service truck, dufus. Remember where you are. Just because you see a truck marked “Haliburton,” doesn’t mean there’s a secret Blackwater training/concentration camp nearby. Some people are just downright stupid.

Two oil field workers were killed and nine injured in a pressure explosion near Orla in April 2014.

http://www.currentargus.com/ci_25664078

Satellite image: http://www.mapquest.com/maps?zipcode=79770

Nearby towns: Red Bluff, Angeles, Riverton and Robinson Arms Landing. From the last two, you might conclude Orla is near a body of water or a river. Well, sort of, if the Pecos River counts. Red Bluff Reservoir is a few miles north.

On Aug. 17, 1930, Lawrence Lombard and Frederick Blodgett left Boston, Mass., in a de Haviland Gypsy Moth named “Flit.” The two men flew across the U.S. to Seattle and then up the coast to Juneau, Alaska, arriving on Aug. 29. The return trip took the pair all the way to San Diego. From Gila Bend, Ariz., Lombard and Blodgett set course for Roswell, N. M., but the Gypsy Moth was blown off course, causing an emergency landing near Orla on Sept. 15. The pilots landed in Boston on Sept. 19, after flying 12,000 miles.

http://generalaviationnews.com/2010/09/15/an-aerial-adventure/

Sunday, May 24, 2015

The Three M’s

The chief deputy in Red River County, Texas, said one day: “Men I used to arrest for moonshine, I’m arresting their grandsons for marijuana and methamphetamine.”

Saturday, May 23, 2015

Number doesn't exist, yet it called me

Shortly after noon Friday, my phone indicated I had missed a call. The phone had not rung or buzzed on in any other way done what it is supposed to do – make a noise at the time of reception. No. It just had an illuminated face with the message:

1 Missed Call
View Now
View Later

I decided to View Now. The number was 501-515-7201. That is the Little Rock area, and since Priscilla and I have been out of Arkansas around six months, I figured somebody might actually be calling. I highlighted the number and pressed “Send.” After one ring, I got a recorded message: “Thank you for using Verizon. The number you called has been changed, disconnected or is no longer in service.”

The time on the missed call was 11:20 a.m. So, between then and before 12:30, the caller lost his/her/its service. Right?

Or, something more ominous is at work here.

I just did a number lookup. Whitepagesdotcom informed me: “Heavy spam activity suspected.” The site also told me the phone number is in Little Rock.

Reversephonelookup.com said, “Scammer calls for money.”

Question: How does a caller identify with a number that has been changed, disconnected or is no longer in service?



ISIS message to the White House

“Leave us alone with your burping and wait for a Khilāfah that Obama comes to you with… And who knows, maybe Michelle Obama’s price won’t even exceed a third of a dīnār, and a third of a dīnār is too much for her!”

http://www.frontpagemag.com/2015/dgreenfield/isis-we-thank-allah-for-letting-us-rape-non-muslim-women/

Speaking of oil

On March 12, 1943, a crew of 42 “drillers, derrickmen, motormen and roustabouts embarked on the troopship H.M.S. Queen Elizabeth.” Their destination was Sherwood Forest, where the oil workers would, by January 1944, complete 76 producing oil wells.

http://aoghs.org/editors-picks/roughnecks-of-sherwood-forest/

Wickett, Texas, Zip Code 79788

Population 455 as of the 2000 census.

Wickett is one of those “out there” places in West Texas, right before the really large counties begin. It is Ward County, population 10,658 by the 2010 census. The Pecos River forms the southern boundary of Ward County.

”Wickett is at the intersection of U.S. Highway 80 and Farm Road 1219, on the Missouri Pacific Railroad in northeastern Ward County. The town was named for Fred H. Wickett, an oil operator who promoted the townsite after the discovery of oil in 1927. Previously, Wickett was known as Arroya, a switch on the Texas and Pacific Railway built in 1881. The opening of theHendrick oilfield in 1926 established Wickett as a tank and refining center. In 1927 the first oil pipeline from the Hendrick field to a tank farm and railroad loading rack began operation, and a post office was established. In 1933 Wickett had a refinery, several oilfield supply houses, and an estimated population of 200. During the 1930s Wickett attracted several oil industry processing plants, including a Gulf Oil gasoline plant and a Cabot Company carbon black plant. By 1940 the estimated population had grown to 350, and the town had fifteen businesses. The population peaked in 1964 at an estimated 1,000 residents. By 1982 Wickett, incorporated since 1965, had a population of 689. The population was 560 in 1990 and 455 in 2000.”

https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/hlw33

For a town that has made people wealthy, Wickett has its share or more of citizens living below the poverty line.

“About 16.1% of families and 18.0% of the population were below the poverty line, including 28.0% of those under age 18 and 4.2% of those age 65 or over.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wickett%2C_Texas

Here is a satellite view: http://www.mapquest.com/maps?city=Wickett&state=TX

Most of those white dots are gas wells.

Real estate sites indicate there are no homes or land for sale in or in the immediate area of Wickett.

Two railroad engines met nose-to-nose in 1908.

http://www.texaspacificrailway.org/wrecks/texas-and-pacific-railway-wrecks-wickett--texas-1908---glenn-justice-image-7.html

Up the road in Monahans is the Million-Barrel Museum. The storage tank there was built to hold 5 million barrels of oil. It didn’t.

http://aoghs.org/energy-education-resources/monahans-oil-museum/





Friday, May 22, 2015

Kent earthquake devastation in pictures

Tweets:

Highways out of Kent choked with refugees fleeing the quake zone.

Scenes of utter devastation here.

The horror.

Before and after pictures of Sandwich in Kent.

Jerry can't defeat us and neither will an earthquake. It's time for Kent to rebuild.

http://www.breitbart.com/london/2015/05/22/in-pictures-devastation-caused-by-kent-earthquake/

There are more where these came from

Liberal/Progressives/Democrats talk about the Aging of the Republican Party, but forget a surety in life: Everybody gets older.

“’The party’s core is dying off by the day.’

“Death cults like American Liberalism are fond of these sorts of fantasies. Faced with disconfirming reality, they have two choices. One is to accept that there is no heaven on earth and there’s no way to arrange things to attain it. That means abandoning the one true faith. The other option is to blame enemies of the revolution, spies and saboteurs. Shockingly, every Rousseau-ist cult goes for door number two.

“To the great consternation of Progressives everywhere, murdering the enemies of the revolution is not an option in America. Instead they have to sate this urge with revenge fantasies involving the natural death of those they believe are holding them back. Five years ago, they claimed the people voting against Obama’s party were old farts ready for the grave. Now, those same old farts are in the way, but time is on the side of the anointed!” – ‘Death to the Old Farts!’ -- http://thezman.com/wordpress/

Early on, you will find you really don’t care

“so the mother of all meta-analyses of twin studies and the heritability of human traits was published the other day: “Meta-analysis of the heritability of human traits based on fifty years of twin studies” [pdf].

“the authors looked at “17,804 traits from 2,748 publications including 14,558,903 partly dependent twin pairs, virtually all published twin studies of complex traits.” 14.5+ MILLION twin pairs! as james thompson said, this study pretty much represents “the mother of ‘F*** Off’ samples.” (~_^) in future, if someone says to you that twin studies were debunked a long time ago, blah, blah, blah, just point them to this paper.

“and the upshot is: we are not blank slates. we never were.”

https://hbdchick.wordpress.com/

Linked from http://thezman.com/wordpress/

(I don’t know why hbd chk dislikes capital letters leading paragraphs. And, as with the study, I don’t care.)



Cruz to reporter: Do you have a personal animosity against Christians, sir?

More Republicans should be asking about a reporter's agenda.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A9Pr9GRWAbI

London cab driver murdered US soldier in Iraq

"I'm holding him in my arms and I'm trying to talk to him, and I'm telling the medic we need a medevac...and then a scary thing happened. He just came to, came back alive and he was pulling me close to him...telling me, 'Don't let me die.'

"The medic tried to give him the IV but his veins were flat," he added. "Then from him pulling me to him, he just let go and that was it."

http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/cabbie-anis-sardar-convicted-iraq-bomb-death-sgt-randy-johnson-n345626

Sgt. Randy Johnson was on his second tour in 2007.

Sgt. Johnson’s widow: "It's not a place he wanted to go back to. But it was his duty. He was a passionate soldier and that's what he needed to do."

Dumbass stupid

Synopsis for an HGTV log cabin episode: A family wants a getaway cabin to leave their hectic lifestyle in the Great Smokey Mountains near Columbia, S.C.

(Anyone who lives in the Great Smokies and has a hectic lifestyle deserves to be stranded in a reality TV show.)

Thursday, May 21, 2015

Unpleasant discovery

Lithuanian electrical substation made of tombstones from Jewish cemetery.

“Lithuania's once-vibrant Jewish community was nearly annihilated by the Nazis and the few who survived found little sympathy from their new communist rulers.

"’Hitler wanted to destroy Jews physically,’ said Simonas Gurevicius, whose family escaped the Holocaust by fleeing to Russia and returned to Lithuania after the war. ‘Stalin came, and he wanted to destroy the whole memory of the Jewish people, making sure that nothing will stay.’"

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2015/05/19/lithuania-discovers-power-substation-dark-secret-buried-in-nazi-and-soviet-past/?intcmp=obnetwork

”More than 90 percent of Lithuania's prewar Jewish population of 240,000 was killed.”

Link at www.fark.com




Tuscola, Texas, 79562

South of Abilene in Taylor County.

Population 714, in 2000 census.

What $1 million will get you in Tuscola:

http://www.movoto.com/tuscola-tx/126-phoenix-ln-tuscola-tx-79562-402_13138322/

Big kitchen, big bathroom, big outdoor patio grill, humongous bath tub.

Tuscola has a couple of famous people: football player Colt McCoy and former player and coach Ed Sprinkle.

Sprinkle played college ball at Hardin-Simmons and the U.S. Naval Academy in the 1940s and 12 years with the Chicago Bears. He was known as “the meanest man in pro football.” Wikipedia says he was born in Bradshaw, in southern Taylor County, and was graduated from Jim Ned High School in Tuscola.

McCoy also was graduated from Jim Ned High School, where his father was football coach. He was 2008 Heisman runner-up and a 2009 Heisman finalist. McCoy has a ton of college records and awards. His grandfather Burl McCoy is a member of Abilene Christian University Hall of Fame.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colt_McCoy

Tuscola restaurants include Anna’s Grill, Tuscola Café, Café Cozumel, Alejandras Restarante, The Home Place and V’s Pizza. Too bad there’s no real restaurant, like McDonalds or Pizza Hut or Taco Bell.

If you want to stay in a hotel, you’ll have to go to Abilene.





You've probably not seen Vivaldi performed with such verve and vitality

A big fiddle, 2 regulars, and a grand piano.

Antonio Vivaldi's "Sommer" wird zum Schauplatz eines musikalischen Wettkampfs. Salut Salon fechten ihn akrobatisch aus, und mit viel Humor - ein Klassiker des Hamburger Quartetts. Ein Konzertmitschnitt aus dem Film "Salut Salon. Der Film" von Regisseur Ralf Pleger.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKezUd_xw20

Link at http://americandigest.org/index.php

'Love Walks In'

Personal ads from the New York Herald in the 1860s:

IF THE LADY WHO, FROM AN OMNIBUS, SMILED on a gentleman with a bunch of bananas in his hand, as he crossed Wall street, corner of Broadway, will address X., box 6,735 Post office, she will confer a favor. (March 21, 1866)

ON WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON A LADY WITH black silk quilted hat walked nearly side by side with a gentleman in a drab overcoat from Tenth to Fourteenth street, in Broadway. Both were annoyed by the wind and dust. Her smile has haunted him ever since. Will she send her address to Carl, Union square Post office? (March 8, 1861)

BOOTH’S THEATRE, THURSDAY EVENING, 11TH. Will the lady who met the gent’s gaze through an opera glass and smiled please address, in confidence, Harry Wilton, Herald office? (March 13, 1869)

A YEAR AGO LAST SEPTEMBER OR OCTOBER TWO ladies with a child were travelling on the Hudson River cars, one of whom offered a seat to a middle aged gentleman, with light whiskers or goatee, slightly gray, who kindly pointed out to her the red leaved trees, and said he had a number of them on his place, and made himself otherwise agreeable; and when she was leaving him (ten miles this side of where he stopped) gave her a parting embrace, which she has never been able to forget. If the gentleman has any recollection of the circumstance he will greatly oblige by addressing a note to Lena Bigelow, Madison square Post office, giving some description of the lady, also name of the paper he gave her. (Jan. 25, 1862)

http://www.futilitycloset.com/2015/05/20/love-walks-in/

Link at http://americandigest.org/index.php

KGB prison in Latvia

KGB prison in Latvia

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-32788317

Not surprisingly, senior Latvian politicians don’t want release of agents’ names.

Emunds Johansons, last KGB commander in Latvia: “Opening up the files … would tear Latvian society apart.”

Link at http://jungletrader.blogspot.com/

A future best-seller

The Little Train That Could, but Which, Recognizing its Individual Responsibility in Collective Society, Did Not Climb the Hill, Because to Have Done So Would Have Meant He Was Superior to Other Trains.

No, no.

You are hereby cited by the Department of Gender Applicability. You will immediately make the following correction(s) in your post: Replace the gender-specific pronoun "he" to "their." Future writings will be under GPA scrutiny. Failure to make recommended changes or refusal to abide by GPA codes could result in: suspension of writer's license for one (1) year; a $10,000 fine; 100 hours of community service; or all of the above.


Wednesday, May 20, 2015

The place for Christian leaders is in the Middle East, facing Islamists

“the pope is not an idiot. nope. he is a coward. as is the archbishop of canterbury, and the patriarch of the orthodox. and, the heads of the ‘great’ protestant faiths.

“they are the shepherds to their christian flock, the disciples of christ. they should be in the middle east w/ their brethren, and when their brethren die, they should die first at the head of the flock dealing the first death blows in return to the aggression of the arab muslims.
simple as that.

“it is in the job description. in return for their positions, they dine in ermine, feasting on the finest of meals, and they sleep on the finest of silk and woolens. not to mentioned, being waited on hand and foot for their slightest "need." in return, they are to protect those who worship christ, and in my view, should be quite prepared to die protecting those worshipers, and protecting christ.

“this is not unfair of me. it is what they demand of their flocks. to die in their faith, as martyrs to their faith, and nothing left else. they should do no more than what they demand of the faithful. in the end, are not these worthies also the faithful?

“it is not a rhetorical question.”

http://wintersoldier2008.typepad.com/summer_patriot_winter_sol/2015/05/confirmed-the-pope-of-the-catholics-is-a-fucking-idiot-.html

Link at http://www.theospark.net/

Wanted, a few good beheaders

“Saudi Arabia is advertising for eight new executioners, recruiting extra staff to carry out an increasing number of death sentences, usually done by public beheading.

“No special qualifications are needed for the jobs whose main role is ‘executing a judgment of death’ but also involve performing amputations on those convicted of lesser offences, the advert, posted on the civil service jobs portal, said.”

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/may/18/saudi-arabia-advertises-eight-new-executioners-beheadings-soar

Eighty-eight people executed in 2014, 85 so far in 2015.

Note at www.doubletapperblogspot.com and www.theospark.net


Tuesday, May 19, 2015

Michigan man flies Nazi, Confederate flags; neighbors not worried

Or, TV reporter trying to make a story, unsuccessful.

http://www.mlive.com/news/flint/index.ssf/2015/05/nazi_and_confederate_flags_fly.html

At www.fark.com

Spain declares war on EU president

OK, not war, just a severe letter of “You dumbass.”

Official documents list Catalonia as an EU member, which came as a surprise to Spanish officials.

The EU president apologized and said the documents will be corrected. For 2016.

http://www.thelocal.es/20150518/eu-parliament-pres-apologizes-for-catalan-error

Link at www.fark.com

Hackman, Duvall and Hoffman

Friends for a very long time.

Gene Hackman: “No one starts at the top in the theater, and the bottom is a very ugly place.”

Dustin Hoffman: “The actor who got the part was always a piece of shit.”

http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2004/03/gene-hackman-dustin-hoffman-hollywood

Was a time people found driftwood on beaches

Bags of cocaine, worth $175k, wash up on Galveston beach

GALVESTON, Texas (AP) — A beachgoer in Southeast Texas has found about $175,000 worth of cocaine in unmarked bags that washed ashore.

Galveston police said Monday that the more than 30 bags do not contain any information on the source of the drugs.

Police say a man reported finding the bags Sunday morning on the shore just south of Galveston Island State Park. The bags yielded about 15 pounds of cocaine.

http://www.myssnews.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=29278:bags-of-cocaine-worth-175k-wash-up-on-galveston-beach&catid=94:state-news&Itemid=351

Lubbock, Texas, 79490

That Zip Code takes in an area roughly from Iola Avenue on the west to Slide Road on the east. Places to dine include McDonalds, Fazio’s and Dairy Queen. Gene Messer Ford and Messer Toyota are north of 19th Street (Texas Highway 114). The Social Security office is near the intersection of Texas Highway 289 and 16th Street, just north of Academy Sports. Resthaven Cemetery is between Frankford Avenue, Elkhart Avenue and 19th Street. Preston Smith Park is northeast of the cemetery. South of 14th Street are the Greenlawn Church of Christ and St. John Neumann Catholic Church.

What’s living in Lubbock like?

“You will be in such shock coming from Seattle that I don't recommend it. Lubbock is a barren and dry land of nothingness. It smells bad because of the lack of environmental standards on industry in Texas. You'll be 400 miles from nothing. It's very hot 8 months out of the year and cold in the winter. Cotton and cattle are king in that part of Texas.

“There is no culture and fine dining consists of chicken fried steak, nothing wrong with CFS, but Seattle is a wonderland of farmers markets, fresh fish, vegetables and excellent restaurants. Did I mention the lack of trees and water in West Texas? A large portion of the town is dirt-poor.

“Going to a fundamentalist Southern Baptist Church will be expected of you or else you might not ever advance in your job. You also better be a right-wing Republican and pro-gun.”

https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20090320225102AA9a1me

(Damn, girl! I bet you are a hippy. Yeah, with your “coming from Seattle” and all. I’ve been to Seattle, and … Well, to put it as nice as I can, Seattle sucks. Nothing but fir trees, clouds, rain, and my wife and I had to stay there four days because of a snow storm. Your post describes a whole lot of Texas, not just the Lubbock area. I’d bet your ancestors did not get to Seattle by way of a wagon train on the Oregon Trail, but by car. Yeah, I’d like to see you on the prairie, making biscuits and cooking over a buffalo chip fire.)

Now back to the information.

People born in Lubbock include Buddy Holly, rock and roll singer, who was aboard Miss American Pie; Mac Davis, whose hits include “Happiness is Lubbock, Texas, in the Rear View Mirror” and “Oh, Lord, it’s Hard to be Humble”; and Natalie Maines, who forgot where she was from.

Lubbock has a lot of recognized colleges and universities. A relatively new school is Virginia College, with 27 locations to serve you. The picture at the web site http://www.vc.edu/campus/lubbock-texas-college.cfm looks like the school is in a mall parking lot.

(I am sure it is a fine school.)

In stupid headline department: “4-year-old boy killed by falling gravestone, could it happen in Lubbock?” I don’t know. Got any cemeteries? You do, huh. Well, then, that sort of answers your question.

http://www.topix.com/city/lubbock-tx

Science explains ‘why men exist’

Seems as though men are necessary for human reproduction. No, honest.

‘Population benefits of sexual selection explain the existence of males’

New research shows that an evolutionary force known as 'sexual selection' can explain the persistence of sex as a dominant mechanism for reproducing offspring.

“Research published in “Nature shows that sexual selection -- when males compete and females choose over reproduction -- improves population health and protects against extinction, even in the face of genetic stress from high levels of inbreeding.

“The findings help explain why sex persists as a dominant mechanism for reproducing offspring.”

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/05/150518111547.htm

(To put the research into man talk, “Men exist to have sex with women.”

(Oh. Killing spiders and lifting heavy boxes of secondary importance.)

Scientist: "’We wanted to understand how Darwinian selection can allow this widespread and seemingly wasteful reproductive system to persist, when a system where all individuals produce offspring without sex -- as in all-female asexual populations -- would be a far more effective route to reproduce greater numbers of offspring.’’

Russian soldiers far outnumber foreign volunteers in Ukraine

"Extensive research, based on analyzing open sources, media reports as well as based on information from Ukraine found that both ‘NATO’s foreign legion’ and ‘Donbass International Brigades’ are a myth. The Russians overwhelmingly exceed all foreign volunteers. However, since most of them are soldiers, they cannot be counted as genuine ‘foreign volunteers’. The numbers for all the other volunteer participants do not even come close to that of the Russian military involved on the ground in eastern Ukraine."

http://www.civil.ge/eng/article.php?id=28194

(Russian propaganda is the same as Soviet during the Spanish Civil War of 1936-39, but less in volume.)

President George W. Bush Street

In Georgia. Republic of. In Tbilisi, the capital. Where most people appreciate 43. And 41. The defacer was probably from Code Pink.

http://www.geotimes.ge/en/index.php/en/2014-05-06-22-53-28/item/3691-vandalized-banner-of-george-bush-removed-in-tbilisi

Monday, May 18, 2015

Dunn, Texas, 79516

It’s one of those places, if you are there, it’s because you want to be.

"Started as change station for teams hauling goods north after T. & P. Railway reached Colorado City in 1881. Freighters camped here beside creek. A blacksmith shop and store were started to supply them. In time a town developed. Mail was dropped at home of Mr. and Mrs. A. T. Dunn. Post office, granted 1890, was given their name; Mr. Dunn was first postmaster. In 1890, the first school was built. A well, windmill and trough were added for travelers and town. Because it was in middle of the road, well was covered when highway was paved in 1938. (1966)"

http://atlas.thc.state.tx.us/viewform.asp?atlas_num=5415001300&site_name=Dunn&class=5000

Population 2000 around 75.

Here is a satellite shot.

http://www.mapquest.com/maps?city=Dunn&state=TX

Lots of terraced areas. Two major creeks, Sulphur Creek and Deep Creek.

According to http://zipcode.org/city/TX/DUNN the community’s population is 0.

Sunday, May 17, 2015

Snow, ice, trees, maybe some vodka – It’s Russian traffic videos!

There are some heavy crashes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6syBu8KjcIQ

Listen to Marche Slave while watching. Both are about the same length.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5poSw7tFLB4


Parnell, Texas. Between Childress and Turkey


“PARNELL, TEXAS (Roberts County). Parnell, founded in 1888, was twenty-five miles northwest of Miami in central Roberts County. The town was originally named Oran, after the county's namesake, Governor Oran Milo Roberts. Parnell became the seat of government in December 1889, when the election that gave Miami that honor the previous January was declared fraudulent. For the next nine years, the two towns wrangled over the courthouse site. At one point the controversy, which became centered around the appropriate location of the county records, became so heated that Texas Rangersqv were called in to keep the peace. The Cresswell Land and Cattle Company favored the central location of Parnell because of its proximity to the ranch, while the citizens of Miami argued that their town's railroad made it the logical choice. After Miami won the final election in 1898, Parnell's post office was closed, and its residents moved to Miami, Canadian, Pampa, and elsewhere. The townsite soon reverted to ranch land, and few traces of it remain.”

https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/hvp10

Here is a satellite photo:

https://www.google.com/maps/place/Parnell,+Texas+79233/@34.5231142,-100.6037381,636m/data=!3m2!1e3!4b1!4m2!3m1!1s0x87aa9d9a3c37ecdd:0xf1956d0e17b5728b

Those dots in the NW quadrant are round bales of hay.

Nothing to do with the ghost town of Parnell, but plenty to do with horse thieves.

In June 1996, someone stole Marisa McNamara’s sorrel mare, Penny. That was a big mistake. When discovering the theft, Marisa immediately called her father, Deputy U.S. Marshal Parnell McNamara.

A bad man: “I’ll screw you out of your last penny and laugh when your kids go hungry,” he boasted. “But I never stole a horse!”

http://www.texasmonthly.com/content/last-posse

McNamara was also instrumental in catching the murderer Kenneth McDuff.

http://www.texasmonthly.com/story/free-kill

A letter from the bank

“’Your account with us has been brought to my attention to review, and it has been found that we will require additional information to ensure that we are able to continue managing your account.

“’Can you please confirm the source of funds… which have been deposited in your account? If these funds are work-related can you please confirm the nature of the work, who your employers are and if you anticipate this to continue? Can you please advise why the funds are paid to your international account, rather than being paid direct to your UK account.’”



“The excuse for the dispatch of the e-mail was that it was ‘to comply with legislation and as part of our drive to reduce fraud, identity theft and financial crime by maintaining accurate and secure records.’”

http://takimag.com/article/someone_must_be_telling_lies_theodore_dalrymple/print#axzz3aPjpbyO1

(Too, there are the letters noting “We at FYou Bank value the private information of our customers.” At that point, I know: (a) the bank has been hacked; (b) the bank is expanding the information it is selling to other financial organizations; or, (c) NSA or some other lettered bureaucracy has demanded every piece of information the bank has, and threatened to remove the last vestiges of banker’s cajones if the bank does not comply.)

How many dragons’ heads will fit on a needle?

One, if excavation is an indicator.

"A tiny dragon's head, one of the most famous symbols of the Vikings, has been found during excavations in the harbour at Birka in Lake Mälaren.

"Birka, on Lake Mälaren, 40kms from Stockholm, is thought to be Sweden's oldest town and has been the site of excavations since the 17th century. But the discovery of the dragon's head is one of the most exciting finds in recent years.

"'We did not understand immediately what we had found - it took a few minutes,' said Sven Kalmring, professor at the Centre for Baltic and Scandinavian Archaeology, who's been digging in the ancient town's port together with the Department of Archaeology at Stockholm University.

The little dragon's head had been on an ancient costume needle but the needle had long disintegrated.

"'To the trained eye it's obvious that the dragon is of a design peculiar to Birka,' said Kalmring. 'It's very exciting.'"

Now Kalmring will spend time analysing and cleaning the find, checking it against similar artefacts uncovered at other Scandinavian sites, such as Funen in Denmark.

Established in the middle of the 8th century, Birka was the Baltic link in the river and portage route to the Byzantine Empire. Birka was also important as the site of the first known Christian congregation in Sweden, founded in 831 by Saint Ansgar.

Birka has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1993. A silver ring from a Viking-era grave in Birka was the first ring with Arabic inscription from that era found in Scandinavia.

http://www.thelocal.se/20150516/viking-dragons-head-found-at-birka

Link at http://gatesofvienna.net/2015/05/gates-of-vienna-news-feed-5162015/#more-36355


Moldavan protesters say ‘No’ to Russia

CHISINAU, Moldova – Shouting anti-Russian slogans, 3,000 people have rallied in Moldova urging the reunification of the former Soviet republic with neighboring Romania.

Moldovans marched Saturday from a central square in Chisinau past parliament shouting "Good bye, Russia! Don't forget Bessarabia is not yours!" using the historical name for Moldova.
Russia first annexed Moldova in May 1812. It was part of Romania from 1918 until 1940, when it was annexed to the Soviet Union under a Nazi-Soviet Pact. Moldova declared independence in 1991 as the Soviet Union disintegrated.

George Simion, a Romanian who heads Action 2012 that organized Saturday's rally, was expelled from Moldova this week for five years after Moldova's security agency said he posed a threat to national security.

Some 10 to 20 percent of Moldovans support reunification, polls show.

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2015/05/16/protesters-rally-in-moldova-to-back-reunification-with-romania-say-no-to/

Link at http://gatesofvienna.net/2015/05/gates-of-vienna-news-feed-5162015/#more-36355


Saturday, May 16, 2015

Another Lose Cause?

Hey, let’s put up a statue to the murderous dictator who starved a million and a half of our people!

‘Kazakhstan: The Ups and Downs of Comrade Stalin’

May 15, 2015 – 12:38 p.m., by Joanna Lillis


Former Soviet dictator Josef Stalin has been experiencing some ups and downs in Kazakhstan lately. The only full-sized monument to the iron-fisted leader remaining in the Central Asian state – where a quarter of the population died during a famine under his watch – was recently restored, and then quickly taken down.

Blown off his pedestal in a storm last summer, the silvery Stalin was reinstalled by jubilant villagers in Stariy Ikan, near the border with Uzbekistan, earlier this month. It was torn down again on May 15 amid controversy over the glorification of the brutal colonialist dictator.

The villagers “gave their agreement to the removal of the monument,” mayor Abdulla Saydikarimov said in remarks quoted by Bnews.kz. The authorities had said villagers had not obtained the paperwork to erect the statue. But there was plainly far more to Comrade Stalin’s fall than planning permission.

It was no coincidence that the monument – standing five meters high with its pedestal and showing a commanding figure in military greatcoat and cap – was re-erected on May 6 by Stariy Ikan community elders.

That was during the run-up to May 9, the anniversary of the end of World War II, known as the Great Patriotic War in much of the former Soviet Union and celebrated with particular gusto this month, the 70th anniversary of victory.

At the ceremony to re-erect the contentious statue, veteran Babadzhan Nishanbayev waxed lyrical about its symbolism for those who returned from battle. “More than 300 of us went to the front from [Stariy] Ikan, almost all the men of the village. And 58 returned,” he told local news site Otyrar.kz. “Throughout the war, we went onto the attack with the cry ‘For the Motherland! For Stalin!”

So distraught were the villagers by the toppling of the statue in last year’s hurricane that they raised the money to restore and reinstall it themselves, including through a social media campaign and a fundraising drive among local businesses.

Local authorities were not so keen to see Stalin rise again, however. “One official asked me: What are you fussing over this Stalin for? […] The Stalin era’s long past,” recalled villager Murat Yuldashev. “I told her: It’s not about the era – my dad erected this monument. Let it stand; it’s not for us to throw it away. When we’re gone, let our children decide.”

Yuldashev is the son of the collective farm chairman who had the original statue put up in 1954, the year after Stalin’s death. “I was 11 years old,” he recalled. “We rejoiced so much, it was the first ever monument in our village!”

Two years later, after the official denunciation of Stalin had begun in the Soviet Union, officials arrived in Stariy Ikan to tear the statue down, but backed off in the face of resistance from the villagers.

Stalin, who built himself a reverential cult of personality during his long rule, is still revered by some in Russia and elsewhere in the former Soviet Union, including his birthplace of Georgia, which boasts aStalin museum.

But he is reviled by many for causing the deaths of millions of people in his political purges – known as Stalin’s Terror or the Great Terror – which left a devastating legacy in Kazakhstan as elsewhere.

During his rule, Kazakhstan also suffered a pitiless famine in which at least 1.5 million people – a quarter of the population at the time – perished.

Stalin “is one of the most evil figures in the history of humanity, who should not be forgotten, but [should] not [be remembered] by putting up monuments,” said Yevgeniy Zhovtis, Kazakhstan’s most prominent human rights campaigner, in remarks quoted by the Kursiv newspaper.

“Hitler also provided jobs, developed industry, and built roads in Germany, but it doesn’t enter anyone’s head to put up monuments to him.”

http://www.eurasianet.org/node/73456


‘Boston in shock over Tsarnaev death penalty’

Well, it’s not like he killed a store clerk during a robbery or hacked off someone’s head in a rit of fealous jage. Those kinds of death penalty cases, Boston is familiar with and opposes.

“The jurors, seven women and five men, cast their eyes down or kept them closed while the sentence was read out.

“None of them glanced in Dzhokhar Tsarnaev's direction. It was as if they could not bear to look at him.”



“The jury's decision has turned liberal Massachusetts upside down.”

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-32762999

Probably not on the “upside down” part.

After the Timothy McVeigh trial, my wife said the government should not kill him, because he would become a martyr to people of similar persuasion, plus he should have years to consider the people he killed. With Tsarnaev, though, she said he should die so as not to convert and radicalize others in prison.

Assad hid sarin gas from inspectors. Duh.

“The U.S. government was informed months ago that an international monitoring body found traces of chemical weapons that President Bashar al-Assad had promised to turn over, including sarin gas -- a clear violation of the deal he struck with President Obama after crossing the administration’s ‘red line’ two years ago.

“Officials from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons told the Obama administration early this year that its inspectors had found traces of two banned chemical weapons during an inspection of the Syrian government’s Scientific Studies and Research Center in the district of Barzeh near Damascus, two administration officials told us. A report by Reuters May 8 said that OPCW inspectors had found traces of sarin and VX nerve agent at the site in separate inspections in December and January.”

http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-05-13/assad-is-said-to-be-hiding-chemical-weapons-in-syria

“’The real danger is if the regime loses control of these chemical materials,’ one administration official who works on the Middle East told us.”
(Assad pinky swore to give up his gasses. Putin said, “Hey, you can trust him.” Obama said, “Sounds good to me.”

(So, the “real danger” is not Assad losing control of the stuff, but of keeping possession of what he said he would surrender.)

Link at http://maggiesfarm.anotherdotcom.com/



Maybe Labourites got the party they wanted

“For too long, we have been a passively tolerant society, saying to our citizens: as long as you obey the law, we will leave you alone.” – David Cameron, prime minister of Britain.

‘This is the creepiest thing David Cameron has ever said’

http://i100.independent.co.uk/article/this-is-the-creepiest-thing-david-cameron-has-ever-said--e1q_01xlZZ

Cameron continued: “This Government will conclusively turn the page on this failed approach.”

(Changing “this failed approach” is seen as cracking down on Islam, so in some quarters Cameron will get an atta-boy, and from others he will be a fascist.)

Link at http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-05-15/uk-pm-david-cameron-proclaims-it%E2%80%99s-not-enough-follow-law-you-must-love-big-brother

and http://maggiesfarm.anotherdotcom.com/

Sonni, Estonia, Postal Code 79217

Sonni is in west-central Estonia. There are 10 car rental companies within 110 kilometers. The closest in Padsiki, 36 km. Sonni is in an agricultural area, with forests. Small individual farms dominate.

http://www.maplandia.com/estonia/rapla/karu/sonni/

Sonni is in Karu Parish, Rapala County. Parish population is 676.

Here is a winter picture:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/ennraav/8538899227/

Here is a summer picture:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/whereareveikoandlissu/8034757010/

Other pictures of the area:

https://www.google.com/search?q=sonni+estonia&rlz=1C2BLWB_enUS565US565&biw=1152&bih=647&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=vFFXVaqqOImfggS9hYDgCA&ved=0CB0QsAQ#imgrc=Y0WpAt0BabF_9M%253A%3Bl2a37GA4_2u-2M%3Bhttps%253A%252F%252Fmw2.google.com%252Fmw-panoramio%252Fphotos%252Fmedium%252F28249623.jpg%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Ftrip-suggest.com%252Festonia%252Fraplamaa%252Fsonni%252F%3B500%3B375

Muslim prayer schedule for May in Sonni. And today’s Koran verse:

Allah says: "But there came after them an evil generation, who neglected prayers and followed sensual desires, so they will be thrown in Hell." 19/59

http://www.islamicfinder.org/prayerDetail.php?country=estonia&city=Sonni&id=10978&lang=

More pictures of the area and hotel list:

http://www.hgvq.stad.com/index.php?city_id=588625

That’s all. Now, back to solitaire.

Friday, May 15, 2015

Or you a boy, or are you a girl? Depends on what day it is

Fairfax County’s “gender fluidity.”

“’Students will be provided definitions for sexual orientation terms heterosexuality, homosexuality and bisexuality; and the gender identity term transgender,’ the district’s recommendations state. ‘Emphasis will be placed on recognizing that everyone is experiencing changes and the role of respectful, inclusive language in promoting an environment free of bias and discrimination.’

“Eighth graders will be taught that individual identity ‘occurs over a lifetime and includes the component of sexual orientation and gender identity’.

“’Individual identity will also be described as having four parts – biological gender, gender identity (includes transgender), gender role, and sexual orientation (includes heterosexual, bisexual, and homosexual).’

“’The district will also introduce young teenagers to the ‘concept that sexuality is a broader spectrum.’ By tenth grade, they will be taught that one’s sexuality “develops throughout a lifetime.'

“’Emphasis will be placed on an understanding that there is a broader, boundless, and fluid spectrum of sexuality that is developed throughout a lifetime,’ the document states. ‘Sexual orientation and gender identity terms will be discussed with focus on appreciation for individual differences.’”

The school board last week voted “to allow boys who identity as girls to use the bathrooms and locker rooms of their choice.” Other school districts have approved the same bathroom measure, only to discover some boys lie in order to make a trip to the girl’s restroom. I am shocked, shocked, I tell you, to learn that high school boys would lie simply to get into a girl’s restroom.

http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2015/05/15/call-it-gender-fluidity-schools-to-teach-kids-there-s-no-such-thing-as-boys-or-girls.html?intcmp=ob_homepage_opinion&intcmp=obnetwork

Link at http://ace.mu.nu/

Can NYC survive without rats? No, seriously.

“Last week, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, no friend of large rodents, announced that a $3 million chunk of the city's annual budget will be used to track and eradicate the city’s signature vermin, which, by the way do not outnumber humans as popularly believed. While $3 million may seem like a lot of cash to dedicate to an anti-rat crusade, it’s a small price to pay to put an end to a nightmare that’s been going on for hundreds of years.”

“As reported by the Daily News, the city’s stable of rat-catching mercenaries will expand from nine to 50 and include a trio of dedicated ‘rat biologists.’”

http://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/animals/blogs/mayor-to-nyc-rats-your-days-are-numbered

Link at www.fark.com

Can a modern metropolis (or NYC, for that matter) continue as we (or someone) know(s) it, but be rat free?

Bigger in Texas? Damn straight

Lazbuddie, Texas, Zip Code 79053

Lazbuddie is in Parmer County, on the western edge of the Panhandle. Parmer County abuts New Mexico.

https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/hll26

The county has three main creeks – Running Water Draw, Catfish Draw and Frio Draw. All three are intermittent, but, as with all creeks, ditches and gullies in West Texas, can be extremely dangerous when rain falls upstream. The creeks run northwest to southeast. Rainfall in Parmer County averages 17.5 inches a year.

“Apaches occupied the Panhandle-Plains until they were pushed out around 1700 by the Kiowas and Comanches, who ruled the Texas High Plains between 1700 and the end of the Red River War in 1874.”

https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/hcp04

That is something a whole lot of people don’t know or think about or would rather just kind of ignore, Indian tribes pushing each other from place to place. Kiowa and Comanche wound up in the Southern Plains of West Texas and the Panhandle after being pushed out of the High Plains by the Sioux. The Sioux went west because they were pushed across the Mississippi River by Eastern forest Indians. People want to remember only how dastardly European whites killed off as many Indians as they could and put the remainder on reservations to become alcoholic and perform badly in school.

Giving native lands back to the Indians would be a question of, “Which native lands are you talking about?” Like environmentalists who say, “We should keep the land in its natural state.” Of which century? Of which era?

In 1900, the XIT Ranch had 150,000 acres in Parmer County with 13,675 cattle. In the 2010 census, Lazbuddie had 248 people.

The XIT was also home to Cordelia Jane Sloan Duke.

DUKE, CORDELIA JANE SLOAN (1877–1966). Cordelia (Cordia) Duke, rancher, writer, and game warden, was born near Belton, Missouri, on January 10, 1877, the daughter of A. R. C. and Belle (Wingert) Sloan. She attended school in Overbrook, Kansas, where her family moved shortly after her birth. She passed the teachers' examination at the age of sixteen and taught school for several years in the Cherokee Nation, Oklahoma Territory, before moving to Sherman County, Texas. In September 1906 she began teaching in a four-pupil school on a strip of Texas land between Oklahoma and the XIT Ranch. There she met Robert L. Duke, then foreman of the Buffalo Springs division of the XIT. The story goes that after returning with her charges from a late roundup near El Frio Springs, Cordia was warned by one young cowboy not to "fool with that Bob Duke," who had fired a cowhand for mistreating a horse. She took her chances anyway, and she and Duke were married on January 9, 1907; they eventually had three daughters. Duke became general manager of the XIT under Henry S. Boice, and when the ranch ceased its cattle operations in 1912, he was retained to oversee that portion of the range leased to the Shelton and Trigg partnership.

During her years as a ranch wife, Cordia Duke kept a diary in which she noted details of a rapidly vanishing way of life. She used these and reminiscences of the ranchhands in articles for such newspapers and magazines as the Cattleman. Later, excerpts from this diary were used as the basis for a book entitled 6,000 Miles of Fence, which she coauthored with Joe B. Frantz. This book, published in 1961, was the first in the M. K. Brown Range Life Series of the University of Texas Press. In the 1920s, when the land around the Duke homestead was designated a wildlife sanctuary, Mrs. Duke was appointed game warden, the first woman to hold that job in Texas. She was warden for a number of years and became legendary for her rapport with the thousands of wild ducks that found refuge on the sanctuary during their annual migrations. After her husband's death in 1933, Cordia Duke moved to Dalhart, where she died on July 23, 1966, and was buried.

https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fdu11


Thursday, May 14, 2015

Will U.S. abandon Iraqis who helped us?

”You and I know that untold numbers have been slaughtered for being America’s allies, and American politicians looked away. This has cost neither America nor those politicians a thing.”

https://ricochet.com/the-ghosts-of-americas-allies/

“One interpreter, the Americans nicknamed ‘Frodo.’ He was part of some 20 firefights during the war. He, like the others, stuck his neck out. An American captain, Doug Vossen, considered Frodo his protector and adviser. Vossen told CBS News that, without him, ‘I’d have been dead’”

“Another interpreter, called ‘Alpha’ in the lawsuit, was shot in the back during the war. Upon recovery, he rejoined the effort. In 2008, someone threw a bottle of gas into his home, burning it down. Alpha and his son were injured but survived. He now, like the others, receives regular death threats.

“Last October, a logistics contractor who worked with the Americans was driving in Baghdad. Men pulled up beside him and shot up his car. He survived. In November, someone texted him and said, ‘Don’t think we forget you, dog.’”

http://www.nationalreview.com/sites/default/files/nordlinger_iraqi-visas05-18-15.html


‘Modern Political Commissar: Resident Gender Expert’

“Taught like 6 coworkers what cis means today.
“I always forget how little straight people know.

“I also can tell that I opened the door for me to be their resident sexuality/gender expert. Though I’d never pass up an opportunity to educate the straights.

“We also covered preferred pronouns and gender/sex. They’re v cute and give a shit about learning what’s right and wrong behavior.”

http://politicalhat.com/


Somebody thinks a whole lot about herself.

Well, **** *** too

Most likely there are bloggers who think, “My opinion means something. I have wisdom and good writing to offer to the educated class.”

Get a life. You have a May West-inflated ego. Here’s proof.

There was an election in Britain. Pollsters and news readers were wrong – wrong, wrong – in their predictions. Liberal/Progressive/Labourites don’t know what to do. Ergo:

“Rebecca Roache, Research Fellow and Senior Research Associate at Oxford, was moved to anger by the Conservative victory in the recent British election.

“’One of the first things I did after seeing the depressing election news this morning was check to see which of my Facebook friends ‘like’ the pages of the Conservatives or David Cameron, and unfriend them. (Thankfully, none of my friends ‘like’ the UKIP page.) Life is too short, I thought, to hang out with people who hold abhorrent political views, even if it’s just online. …

“’[T]he view that I have arrived at today is that openly supporting a political party that—in the name of austerity—withdraws support from the poor, the sick, the foreign, and the unemployed while rewarding those in society who are least in need of reward, that sells off our profitable public goods to private companies while keeping the loss-making ones in the public domain, that boasts about cleaning up the economy while creating more new debt than every Labour government combined, that wants to scrap the Human Rights Act and (via the TTIP) hand sovereignty over some of our most important public institutions to big business—to express one’s support for a political party that does these things is as objectionable as expressing racist, sexist, or homophobic views. Racism, sexism, and homophobia are not simply misguided views like any other; views that we can hope to change through reasoned debate (although we can try to do that). They are offensive views. They are views that lose you friends and respect—and the fact that they are socially unacceptable views helps discourage people from holding (or at least expressing) them, even where reasoned debate fails. Sometimes the stick is more effective than the carrot.

“’For these reasons, I’m tired of reasoned debate about politics—at least for a day or two. I don’t want to be friends with racists, sexists, or homophobes. And I don’t want to be friends with Conservatives either.’”

(Well, I will not be friends with the sodomite, anti-democracy folks, either.)

http://neveryetmelted.com/

Wednesday, May 13, 2015

Regrets? She’s had a few, but, then again, too few to mention

Head of African American Studies “regrets” saying “white masculinity is THE problem for America’s colleges.”

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/black-professor-regrets-comments-critical-of-white-students/ar-BBjGH7v?ocid=ansnewsap11

Petition by supporters of Saida Grundy claims: "Calling Professor Grundy's tweets racist minimizes the very real effects of racism for people of color in the United States."

(Or, accusing people of color of racism takes away from the real racism of not-people-of-color.)

Show of hands of everyone who believes Grundy regrets her tweets.

Offensive? Offensive?

“LEG, or low-entry ground soldier, is considered offensive.”

Really? By whom?

http://www.wearethemighty.com/18-military-soldiers-slang-army-term-2015-01


I don't think "low-entry ground soldier" has anything to do with why a leg is called a leg. There aren't any leg units anymore. Leg refers to the main part of transportation.

Michael M. says: "Leg came from 'straight leg' appearance for one who does not wear jump boots with their pants tucked in."

https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20100912235518AAdVx3l


That sounds right. The first time I heard the term "straight-leg infantry" -- was in 1964 in basic training. It was later shortened to "leg."

Worrying too much about the end of us all

I read today: “I’m sorry, but there is no way I could handle it if my child chose to be straight AND cis. I’m going to start the cross-dressing regime from an early age to make sure it doesn’t happen. If it does anyway, I guess I could still love them.”

At http://politicalhat.com/ from genderbitch.

Gender says she is “An almost 30 queer, poly, crazy, autistic, white, skinny, poor trans chick w/disabilities & chronic illness.”

She probably has peanut allergy, gluten allergy and can’t go out in the sun.

At first I thought the quote made the message fake, considering the “chose to be straight,” since, if, as LGBT people claim, being gay is not a choice, how can one choose to be straight?

But then there is all that birth and parts stuff …

“straight AND cis …” I had to look up “cis” and discovered that has to do with “Cisgender and cissexual (often abbreviated to simply cis) describe related types of gender identity where individuals' experiences of their own gender match the sex they were assigned at birth.”

I guess that means, if you are a swinging troop and were born with swinging parts and recognize those parts as you, then you are cisgender male. Someone who is a crack troop and was born with the exterior and interior crack parts and who recognizes those parts as her, then she is cisgender female.

To add to Popeye’s “I am what I am” – I am what I was born with.

I did not realize until now that I had been “assigned” a sex at birth, but in this Brave New World, I learn something just about every day.

But if half the stuff I read about colleges and universities and urban schools is correct, kids are being told that stuff as fact. You don’t have to be like your biological birth parents, or like any parents. Even though you had a birth-assigned sex, you can be anything you want.

But wait, but wait, wait! LGBT is not a choice! It/they is/are a product of insemination. An LGBT is born that way.

Not so much straight, though. Straight can be fixed.

Just ask genderbitch.

Got coffee?

Health benefits “surprisingly large.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/12/upshot/more-consensus-on-coffees-benefits-than-you-might-think.html?smid=nytnow-share&smprod=nytnow&abt=0002&abg=0&_r=0

Here’s what I know: Get up at 0515, start APC engines at 0530 (all 17 at the same time so the bad guys can’t count individual engines), ready for another day, and then you wait for the mess truck to show up with breakfast, and especially are you looking forward to a canteen cup full of Army coffee. That’s what got my engine started. Health benefits? For my soldiers, my cup of coffee meant the platoon sergeant was defanged for a while.

Link at http://maggiesfarm.anotherdotcom.com/

Tuesday, May 12, 2015

Some baseball

Strange double play

April 20, 1928, Brooklyn vs. Philadelphia, at the Baker Bowl.

DP-Brooklyn 1. McWeeny-Hendrick-Bancroft-Hendrick-Riconda.

Or: P-3B-SS-3B-2B.

Could be: Ground ball to pitcher, throw to third, tag out … Beats me how it went.

Also odd: Brooklyn got 8 runs on 9 hits; Philadelphia, 6 runs on 5 hits. Normal spread is 1 run for every 2 hits.

http://www.baseball-almanac.com/box-scores/boxscore.php?boxid=192804200PHI

That year, the Dodgers’ record was 77-76; Philadelphia, 43-109.

Pitcher/outfielder/first baseman Rube Bressler

Nineteen years in the majors, 1914-32. Athletics, Reds (11 years), Robins, Phillies and Cardinals. Pitcher his first seven years, 26-32, ERA 3.40. Lifetime batting average, .301.

Never traded for another player. Sold by Harrisburg to Athletics; selected by the Reds from Atlanta in Rule 5 draft; claimed on waivers by Robins from Reds; released by Brooklyn; signed by Phillies; claimed on waivers by Cardinals.

“Bressler is one of six players since 1900 in the major leagues who started their careers as pitchers and ended up as position players while totaling more than 50 games pitched and 50 games played at other positions.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rube_Bressler

SABR biography: http://sabr.org/bioproj/person/57364bc9

Oh, no! We are surrounding Russia!

Just like we did 1945-89, aggressively returning democracy to Western Europe while Soviet Russia defended itself by bringing enlightened Communism to Eastern Europe.

“U.S. and Georgian forces began two weeks of military exercises in the South Caucasian republic on Monday, a move that is likely to irritate Georgia's former Soviet master Russia.

“About 600 U.S. and Georgian soldiers were taking part in the manoeuvres, for which the U.S. army for the first time transported an entire mechanised company, including 14 Bradley infantry fighting vehicles, across the Black Sea from Bulgaria.”

http://www.worldbulletin.net/world/159045/georgia-us-military-training-kicks-off

Almost a month ago:

“U.S. and Ukrainian troops have begun joint training exercises in western Ukraine in a bid to strengthen government forces that are fighting Russian-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine.

“Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said at the exercise's inauguration ceremony on April 20 that Ukraine's armed forces must be rebuilt from scratch to deter foreign threats.

“The U.S. Army announced last week that 300 U.S. paratroopers would train 900 members of a National Guard reserve unit that brings volunteers and pro-government militia under Kyiv's control.”

http://www.rferl.org/content/ukraine-us-troops-training-exercises/26968136.html


Tajikistan considers testing prospective grooms, brides for close kinship

Deputy head of the Justice Ministry’s Department of Civil Registry, Jaloliddin Rahimov: “People should ‘know what illnesses their partners have; some Tajiks have never in their life visited a clinic and do not know themselves if they have any diseases,’ he said. He cited an example where a premarital examination prevented what he described as a marriage that was bound to be unhappy. A young girl went to the doctor and found she could not get pregnant. Her grief-stricken parents called off the marriage.

“’Think about it: What a scandal there would have been for the family if the marriage had gone ahead! And again the question of divorce would have come up. So that premarital examination prevented a divorce.’”

Opponent Manizha Negmatullozoda: “’You do not see people in developed countries being forced into medical examinations before marriage. There couples get the body ready before giving birth. They go through all the tests possible. And what happens to us here? Everywhere you go you are watched; there is a push to introduce a law on mandatory pre-marriage testing; you have got to follow their orders – dress like they tell you, name your child and so forth,’ said Negmatullozoda, referring to a draft bill that wouldban Muslim-sounding names and to recent raids on shops selling Muslim clothing.”

http://www.eurasianet.org/node/73356

Last week, PM David Cameron’s political career was dead

Dead. Dead. Dead.

But, lo! Voters speaketh not as pollsters, pundits, political analysts and Labour Party members were led to believe! Nay, nay.

Cameron’s Conservatives got 51 percent of the vote and 331 seats in Parliament, while favored Progressive/Labour polled 36 percent and 232 seats.

“The conventional wisdom held that progressivism, and its appeal to working class voters who have struggled to keep their heads above water since the onset of the global recession in 2008, would be the Conservative Party’s undoing.”

Said Labour’s David Miliband: “I am still fighting for the big issues in this election and I am still fighting because there is a huge choice between whether the country is run for the most rich and most powerful or a Labour government that puts working people first.”

http://hotair.com/archives/2015/05/11/has-the-british-silent-majority-shown-progressive-class-warriors-the-ugly-future/

Rather than put “working people first,” U.S. Progressive/Democrats want to save the Middle Class through more taxes and government telling people what to do and how to do it.

Profe$$ional football team$ paid to “honor” military

“The New York Jets, a professional football team valued at $1.8 billion and principally owned by Woody Johnson, whose net worth is estimated at more than $3 billion, has put a price tag on saluting ‘Hometown Heroes’ who serve in the military.



“What few knew is that the Jets and 13 other big-money franchises have been exploiting the celebrations as revenue generators. Over four years, the team milked the U.S. for $377,000 …”

http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/editorial-gang-greed-article-1.2218411

Link at http://hotair.com/archives/2015/05/12/shameful-nfl-teams-being-paid-to-salute-our-troops/

Sen. John McCain listed payment to NFL teams and NASCAR sponsorships as wasted money.

While everybody is correct on the distasteful and rather disgusting, whoever approved the idea at DOD and the National Guard Bureau needs to man up.

Also, remember this: The NFL exists to make money. That’s it. Period.

Monday, May 11, 2015

The death of Britain as we know it … Or something

Weekend Conservative victory means: end of National Health Service; sale of hospitals and all medical facilities to big drug companies and insurance companies; loss of jobs, pay and pensions for all workers; firing of all teachers, public servants and firemen; end of Free Schooling; no fixes to “the rampant inequality that is stifling this country, strangling growth and keeping everyone’s living standards flat-lining.”

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/general-election-2015-very-afraid-5657342

But not to worry, Labourites; there are Sharia neighborhoods to keep the Tories in line.

Link at http://maggiesfarm.anotherdotcom.com/

Oh, that free speech

Tweets from recently hired Saida Grundy by Boston University:

“White masculinity isn’t a problem for America’s colleges, white masculinity is THE problem for America’s colleges.

White males are a “problem population.”

“Every MLK week I commit myself to not spending a dime in white-owned businesses. And every year I find it nearly impossible.”

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/may/9/saida-grundy-boston-university-professor-white-mal/

Ms. Grundy is “exercising her right to free speech,” said BU spokesperson Colin Riley.

Link at http://thezman.com/wordpress/

Of course she is exercising her right to free speech. She can Tweet or say or write anything she wants, within the bounds of libel laws.

Why all the vinegarizing (as in people full if piss and vinegar) over her hiring?

You get somebody the Ruling Class defends with “free speech,” you make your claims and then shut up.

A show of hands by everybody who expects equal treatment from Dem/Lib/Progs. Now, a show of hands by everybody who is surprised that a university hired an anti-white to run an African American Studies program.

Commander failed to provide sufficient breastfeeding locations

Could be a new inspection item, along with weapons and vehicle maintenance and properly maintained personnel and finance records

“A new proposal from lawmakers would require the Army to ‘develop a comprehensive policy regarding breastfeeding.’

“The measure, placed as an amendment to a the House draft of the annual defense spending bill, looks to ensure that breastfeeding female soldiers have access to private and clean areas with electrical outlets for breast pumping along with work breaks to do so.”

http://www.military.com/daily-news/2015/05/05/house-proposes-army-breastfeeding-rules-in-spending-bill.html

Since proper and presumably private locations for breastfeeding are required, might one assume soldiers are bringing infants to duty locations? Who does that and where? Motor pool, ammunition supply point, POL refuel point, flight line?

When women complete combat arms AIT – weapons and tank ranges, artillery firing points, on board tanks and infantry vehicles …

Sunday, May 10, 2015

Koch v. Clinton, 2013

Evil Koch – $7.5 million charitable donations
$487,000 managerial overhead

Clinton Foundation -- $8.8 million charitable donations
$84.7 million managerial overhead

http://www.thefederalistpapers.org/us/the-real-difference-between-the-koch-and-clinton-foundations-perfectly-illustrated

Link at http://www.floppingaces.net/most-wanted/the-real-difference-between-the-koch-and-clinton-foundations-perfectly-illustrated/

Have you no shame?

“The Arab states and Israel, Obama said then, wanted Washington to be their proxy in the contest with Iran; but he adamantly refused to play that role. Instead, he envisioned, in Remnick’s words, ‘a new geostrategic equilibrium, one less turbulent than the current landscape of civil war, terror, and sectarian battle.’ Who would help him develop the strategy to achieve this equilibrium? ‘I don’t really even need George Kennan right now,’ the president responded, alluding to the acknowledged godfather of the cold-war strategy of containment. What he truly needed instead were strategic partners, and a prime candidate for that role was—he explained—Iran.”

http://mosaicmagazine.com/essay/2015/02/obamas-secret-iran-strategy/

Long and detailed analysis on how Obama has had an Iran strategy since Day One of his inauguration, and that plan pushes aside Middle East allies of the last 50 years.

We don’t need your government money and interference

So hints the sign at Skidmore Historical Society Museum: “Built and maintained by local citizens without benefit of state or federal funds.”

http://www.beeville.net/SkidmoreHistoricalSocietyMuseum/

Skidmore is in Bee County, Texas. Zip is 78389. Population is more than 1,000, double from the 2000 census.

Places nearby: Schulz & Wroten Pharmacy, 11 miles; Subway, .02 miles from downtown; Dairy Queen, .04 miles; Whataburger, .08 miles.

http://www.mapquest.com/us/tx/skidmore

Skidmore schools combined with Tynan’s in the 1940s and formed Skidmore-Tynan Independent School District. In 1990, Tynan’s population was around 200; by the 2010 census the population was more than 300.

A 100% increase for Skidmore and 50% for Tynan. Texas must be growing lots of people.

Friday, May 8, 2015

Your wish is my command, habibbi

“SO this week I was sitting on this park bench in Haifa with three other codgers and one of us kicks this thing out from under the bench, which turns out to be this ancient lamp. Out from the lamp comes this genie in a puff of smoke and offers each of us a single wish. The first guy at the end of the bench says: ‘I wish for there to be an escalating war on many fronts between the Sunni world and the Shi'ite world.’ You got it, says the genie with a swish of his wand. The second geezer says, ‘I wish for ISIS to enter Palestinian camps in Syria controlled by the Hamas and to behead the Hamas commanders and officials there.’ Your wish is my command, says the genie with a smile. The third codger says, ‘I wish for the US and Allied forces, together with Jordan and Egypt and other Arab armed forces, to bomb the bejeebers out of ISIS camps in Iraq and Syria.’ Piece of cake, says the genie. He then turns to me. So what is YOUR wish, he asks. ‘Let me get this straight,’ sayeth I. ‘The Sunni world is going to war against the Shiite world on many fronts? ISIS is beheading Hamas officials? The US and others are bombing ISIS camps in Iraq and Syria?’ That has all been granted, says the genie. ‘In that case,’ say I, ‘I think I'll have a diet cola.’"

http://www.zioncon.blogspot.com/

Rather English, but not around often enough

From ‘Chase me, ladies, I’m in the cavalry’

CHAT UP LINE: GUARANTEED RESULTS.

“Saw a girl on the bus today, bit of a fox, so I sat down opposite and attracted her attention by bursting a balloon. 'I am a tomato,' I announced, when she looked up. 'So am I a fruit... or a vegetable?' She didn't know, so I explained to her in a nerd voice that technically I am a fruit in that I grow above ground, but that the United States Agricultural Department considers me a vegetable for the purposes of import levy.

“Sadly, she did not speak English, otherwise we would have been getting naked within the hour. I have personally had over six hundred women using this method.”

http://chasemeladies.blogspot.com/2004/04/chat-up-line-guaranteed-results.html

That was posted 11 years ago.

Found at http://neveryetmelted.com/