February 28, 2010
Ye Olde Scribe Presents More Spam
wiki
“Let it snow! Let it snow! Let it… damn stuff.”
Spam from the great white North: no relation to Ollie…
December 8 – 6:00 PM
It started to snow. The first snow of the season and the wife and I took our cocktails and sat for hours by the window watching the huge soft flakes drift down from heaven. It looked like a Grandma Moses Print. So romantic we felt like newlyweds again. I love snow!
Comments Off
February 27, 2010
February 25, 2010
February 23, 2010
February 22, 2010
Back when the good guys were the good guys
Since it is slowly becoming obvious that the Bush Administration will accomplish what the Nazis couldn’t (be forgiven for committing war crimes); it seems concomitant to find some other topics for columns to be posted online. It would be best to come up with topics which will be previously untouched but will proved a “Eurika!” moment/reaction with this site’s regulars.
One hypothetical question which has always been a concern for this columnist has been: “If you could travel back in time to anyplace to see history happen; where would you be going when (not if) they actually invent and activate the “Wayback Machine”?
At this point we direct readers’ attention to the comments section below.
For this columnist, the first response has always been: I’d go to Paris to watch the Liberation during WWII occur.
We used to work with a guy who was, according to the judgment of the other workers, very boring. We made a specific effort to get to know him hoping that he would have some hidden trove of memories that we could get him to share. We’ve always been anxious to hear the experiences of the men who fought in WWII. When this fellow mentioned the Army, we hauled out our verbal questionnaire form. What theater of operations, what unit, what time frame, etc.
The guy didn’t offer any spectacular possibilities for combat stories. He had been wounded in action but it wasn’t life threatening. Then he proved my point by dropping a game winner: while he was in a military hospital, he and a nurse who spoke French went AWOL and snuck into Paris three weeks after the Liberation. He succinctly reported “We had a good time.”
The highlight, according to his reminiscences, occurred when he went into one of the best restaurants and ordered up a “once in a lifetime” dining experience. When the bill wasn’t presented, he asked for it. The waiter explained that it was impossible to present a bill to a member of the very same Army that had Liberated Paris. Sweet.
One might assume that living in Berkeley wouldn’t offer much possibility for finding some vicarious material for flashbacks to the aforementioned historical series of events that transpired in August 1944. Thanks to some items found in the Berkeley Public Library book store, such an assumption would be misguided.
In a copy of “By-line: Ernest Hemingway,” we found (on pages 382 – 3): “We ran through the road where the munitions dump was exploding, with Archie (his driver), who has bright red hair, six years of regular Army, four words of French, a missing front tooth, and a Frere in a guerrilla outfit, laughing heartily at the noise the big stuff was making as it blew. . . .
“We were going downhill now, and I knew that road and what we could see when we made the next turn. . . .
“‘Yeah,’ I said. I couldn’t say anything more then, because I had a funny choke in my throat and I had to clean my glasses because there now, below us, gray and always beautiful, was spread the city I love best in all the world.”
A day or so later, in “Wayward Reporter: The Life of A. J. Liebling,” we found (pages 4 – 5): “For the first time in my life and probably the last, I have lived for a week in a great city where everybody is happy. Moreover, since this city is Paris, everybody makes this euphoria manifest.”
We’ve read some of the articles that Albert Camus wrote for Combat, the resistance newspaper, but were surprised to find that Liebling had written a book that critically evaluated the journalism produced in Paris during the Occupation. Where the heck are we ever going to find a copy of “The Republic of Silence”? Now we have a reason to go to bookstores.
Somehow George W. Bush thought that the troops he sent into Baghdad would get the same tumultuous reception that the Parisians gave to the American troops who arrived in Paris in 1944. Unfortunately, Bush miscalculated. Bush ultimately came off looking like a guy standing in the rain watching his girlfriend and her husband boarding a train that was leaving Paris.
When we started flipping through a recently acquired copy of “Anthology: Selected essays from the first 30 years of The New York Review of Books,” we came across Bruce Chatwin’s piece titled “An Aesthete at War.” It tells about the life of Captain Ernst Junger who won Iron Crosses in both World Wars.
Part of fact finding for our imaginary time travel trip had been a reading of “Is Paris Burning?” many years ago. “An Aesthete at War” mentions that General Speidel “forgot” the order to V-bomb Paris. How did we miss that bit of trivia? It seems that Paris was doubly lucky to survive the Liberation relatively unscathed. We also just read (In Joseph Harsch’s book about covering WWII?) that the night they left Paris, the Germans did send some airplanes on a bombing raid over Paris’ outskirts.
Junger loved war, but he also loved Paris. According to Chatwin’s article it seems likely that Rush Limbaugh would cherish Junger’s book about WWI titled “Storm of Steel.” Apparently, if you like war; you will love Junger’s book “Storm of Steel.” A guy who was wounded 14 times in World War I and then fought again in World War II would be the kind of guy Uncle Rushbo would urge all American kids to emulate. Uncle Rushbo would agree with the warmonger aspect of Junger’s personality and it isn’t hard to imagine the fat man also wishing for an alternative history where Paris was leveled by the retreating German Army.
It seems that Dick Cheney will never stand trial for war crimes and that time travel back to the days when the Americans were “the good guys” will never be perfected, but a columnist can dream, can’t he?
Chatwin delivers an occupation era quote from Madame (Mrs. Paul) Morand: “For me the art of living is the art of making other people work and keeping pleasure for myself.” (Does Uncle Rushbo need a motto for his radio program?)
Now, we’ll pry the disk jockey away from his transistor radio (where the True Oldies Channel delivers a limited dose of time travel) and have him play “The Last Time I Saw Paris (the song was inspired by the fall of France),” “Paris vor Hundert Jahren” and Waylon Jenning’s song, “He Went to Paris.” (What? You were expecting “As Time Goes By”? The boss don’t like to hear that song.) It’s time for us to go do some fact finding about the new John Cusack movie with the intriguing title “Hot Tub Time Machine.” Have a “filled with those events which alter and illuminate our times” type week.
Comments Off
The Tattlesnake – In Defense of Tiger Woods (Sort of) Edition
The Abridged Tiger Woods Apology Speech, After a Quick Spray with the Truth Ray
TIGER WOODS: “Hello to you all. I am here to publicly apologize for cheating on my wife Elin with other women. (Why am I apologizing to the public? I didn’t cheat on them. Oh, right, kids look up to me as a role model. Kids are watching golf now? Jeez, can’t they look up to someone besides a golfer as a role model? Basketball players, baseball players, football players … okay, never mind.)
“While my publicist and marketing people actually wrote these words, I can assure you they come straight from my heart. (And a billion dollars a year in endorsements.)
“In a sane world, I could just be respected as a great golfer and my private life would be my own business, but you self-righteous hypocrites in the media and you sex-starved moralists in the celebrity-obsessed public need some cheesy scandal to drool over, and right now it’s me. (Why don’t you all get a life?) You know, you don’t make rock stars and movie idols apologize like this – at least I haven’t seen Mick Jagger or Warren Beatty pestered endlessly for cheating on their wives, but then I guess you can’t play golf and then pose with a car or disposable razor unless you have a spotless personal life. Hey, why don’t you ask the CEOs of the corporations that pay me for endorsements to publicly apologize for their marital infidelities? Oh, right, they aren’t celebrities. Besides, many of you in the media pull a paycheck from one of those corporations. What amazing courage.
“Okay, sorry, I was told by my handlers not to go off script. So, here, I’m just apologizing all over myself for being a kid and young man who never had much of a life outside golf, with a Domineering Stage Father who forced me to practice all the time so that I could fulfill all of his unrealized dreams, and once I was out from under his influence I went nuts and took advantage of my fame and got laid as often as I could. Every honest man listening to me, if they had grown up the way I did, would have done the same thing. Most of you men would do the same thing even without having a Domineering Stage Father, if you had the chance, especially you sportswriters.
“You know who really owes the public an apology: The media vultures covering this story by obsessing on every minute detail of my personal life. Maybe you should try spending the same amount of time on explaining things to the public that really affects their lives – like health care reform, and the growing power of corporations over our lives, and the reality of war, and who’s lying about what in Washington. Oh, but that’s too controversial; instead you pick the safe route – go after the golfer. You know, it’s not going to put a penny in the public’s pocket, or make their lives one bit better if I apologize, but here it is, for what it’s worth:
“I apologize completely for anything in my private life that might have ever offended anyone. But I know this mea culpa won’t be the end — my bones haven’t been picked entirely clean yet.
“Just to sum up, my adulterous dalliances outside of my marriage, and any apologies I make for them, as I’ve said, really aren’t and shouldn’t be important except to those close to me. The only important thing about this story is how much valuable airtime and empty words of fake outrage the mainstream media are willing to waste to pursue the sordid details of my private life. Let me reiterate: For that, I don’t owe you an apology – they do.”
© 2010 RS Janes. LTSaloon.org.
February 21, 2010
February 20, 2010
February 19, 2010
Thank you, Mr. President
I got another change of terms letter from a credit card company today. Within the first paragraph I could immediately tell that something was different. This was not your ordinary “We are altering the agreement. Pray we don’t alter it further” letter.
No, the first paragraph stated that from now on, payments made over the minimum would first be applied to the balance with the highest interest rate.
In case you’re lucky enough to never have to know this, I’ll explain. Suppose you got this card with an offer of zero percent interest on balance transfers and put a couple thousand on it, thinking you’ll enjoy the respite from usury. Then, a couple of months later, you discover that you’re short on cash at Micky D’s and whip out this card. No biggie, just five bucks, right? You’ll pay an extra five or ten next month and you’re square.
Here’s where it gets fun.
The minimum interest charge for most cards is one dollar per payment cycle, so next month you’re charged a whopping 240% interest on your Happy Meal. Well, that’s only a dollar. But wait. Your extra ten didn’t erase this portion of your balance, because Visa applied it toward your zero-interest transfer balance. So this $5 – no, $6 – stays on your card, racking up another dollar month after month. You don’t even begin to pay this off until you’ve finished off the original $2000 you transferred to the card. That burger and fries could end up costing you a couple hundred.
Well now that’s reversed. Thanks to the current administration. You can be damn sure that the credit industry would never have made this change had they not been forced to do so. In fact it says as much right there in the letter – these changes are being made due to changes in FEDERAL LAW.
Thank you, Mr. President. This may not be the pony I wish I had, but it will help me make strides toward becoming debt-free. Or at least bigger baby steps. And, while it may feel like a personal gift to me, it affects thousands of others just like me. Maybe millions.
Don’t ever let anyone tell you that Obama did nothing worthwhile.
And take advantage of this before the next Republican President takes office.
February 18, 2010
February 16, 2010
88% (aka dumbasses) think their taxes weren’t cut
Excerpt:
According to a CBS News/New York Times poll released last weekend, only 12 percent of respondents think that their federal taxes were reduced under the Obama administration. Twice as many respondents think that their federal taxes have increased.
The results of this poll can only lead to one of two mutually exclusive conclusions: Either the President is lying to the American people about tax cuts, or 88 percent of the respondents of this poll are incorrect and misinformed.
According to a report by the non-partisan Urban Institute and Brookings Institution Tax Policy Center, President Obama is correct in saying that 95 percent of Americans have had their federal taxes reduced in 2009.
So, if the President is telling the truth when he says that 95 of Americans are getting tax cuts, why do so few think that is not the case?
CBS news writers speculate that may be the case because state and local taxes have increased, as well as cost of living expenses, to a level where the marginal decreases in federal taxes are not noticeable. A more plausible explanation may be that “talk of raising taxes in the future clouded the landscape.” CBS and the Times may be on to something with that statement. But who’s responsible for clouding the landscape? Look no further than mainstream media.
The problem is not so much what corporate media covers…it’s what is not covered.
Read more here: http://www.examiner.com/x-38220-Orlando-Independent-Examiner~y2010m2d16-Poll-Only-12-of-Americans-think-federal-taxes-were-cut-in-2009
Thanks for the chart, bart! I used it in this one.
Comments Off
One for the Conspiracy Theory Hall of Fame?
[Note: Conspiracy theories, like astrological forecasts, should be read only for their entertainment value. They belong in the file labeled: “fictionalized speculation.”]
When the Ayatollah Khomeini shot to the top of the current events chart for his shenanigans in Iran, it seemed to this columnist, like we had seen him before. One day while plowing through our massive collection of totally irrelevant cultural events file, we stumbled upon a photo of
Howard Hughes.
Voila! It wasn’t just one of those identical twins separated at birth things; it was a “same guy, different photos at different ages” type deal (IMHO). Just compare a photo of the Ayatollah and one of Hughes. Note the similarity of the folds in the ears, the nostrils, and the eyes. Eliminatory, my dear Watson, it’s obviously the same guy in different stages in his life.
We asked around. No one had ever seen Howie (we used to live in Marina del Rey, which has Hughes Aircraft as an adjacent neighbor) and the Ayatollah in the same room at the same time.
“Lois, have you ever noticed how Clark Kent always misses being able to write an eyewitness account of Superman’s greatest feats?” Nudge, nudge. Wink, wink. If you know what we mean.
We tried our best to pedal our theory to the mavens of contemporary American culture but alas we garnered as much attention as a voice crying in the wilderness would.
If a conspiracy theory (CT) is to flourish, it has to be theoretically possible. You can’t go for stories about the captain of the Titanic being found 60 years later with his pipe still lit. You have to cook up something that just might squeak by on a level of marginal feasibility.
We went back to the drawing board.
James Dean and Elvis were rumored to be still alive long after their deaths had been reported in the news media. So we asked our self: How much documentation was there for the death of Che Guevara?
What if he had promised to turn states evidence and rat out his amigos in the Cuban Revolution in return for amnesty? Could he have been taken in to the “Witness Protection Program” and given some phony ID and a few bucks to start life over after allegedly being “shot down in an attempt to flee”?
We came up with a mental image of Che being on a city council in a small University somewhere in California and fighting with the college kids. (Gosh now that we live in such a city, maybe one of these Tueday nights, we should skip Qi Gong class and attend a city council meeting?)
We ran this bit of unsubstantiated speculation past a high school buddy, several years ago, and he did his best to refute our theory. He reassured us that he personally had seen a photo on the desk of the guy who worked next to his that showed Che dead on the ground. Our good buddy mumbled some esoteric exotica about JM/Wave, Ted Shackley, Phat City, and the like as his evidence to substantiate his claim that Che was buried in Bolivia.
We countered that this guy, whom he called Felix Rodriguez, was most likely in on the ruse and had agreed to pose with Che’s prone figure for the photographic proof that the revolutionary had been mortally wounded while attempting to flee. (Didja know that in the days of B&W movies Hershey’s chocolate syrup was often used to simulate blood?) In return, we asserted, Che spilled the beans about such things as the kidnapping of Juan Manuel Fangio and other historic Cuban events which preceded Fidel’s putsch.
Now that photoshopping changes are readily available to any photographer with the bucks to buy the program and a lap top where he can run it, photographs are (to the best of our knowledge) no longer accepted as evidence in any court proceedings.
We used to work with an ad sales rep who, we adamantly asserted, used an assumed identity that had been provided by the witness protection program folks. They had assisted her in the efforts to erase all traces of her life as “Eva Braun.” She did a Dr. Strangelove-like denial of the idea.
Our efforts to dabble in a one man plot to concoct something that would be described as a cutting edge conspiracy theory that belongs in the Conspiracy Theory Hall of Fame pale in comparison to what we have recently found on online. We were Googling around with things like “Blond Ghost” and “Dealey Plaza” when we stumbled on the most outrageous conspiracy theory we’ve ever encountered in a lifelong fascination with conspiracy theories for fun and profit.
If we couch the views in the form of a question that means that this columnist doesn’t personally substantiate their wild assertions. We just want to bring some new theories to the attention of the people who are connoisseurs of concocted conjecture.
Cub reporters are always urged, for legal reasons, to pepper their stories with words like “allegedly,” “reportedly,” “assert,” and to inundate the readers with phrases like “according to a police spokesman,” and “unsubstantiated conjecture.”
So we were sure that we found the next candidate for the Conspiracy Theory Hall of Fame when we found folks asking: “Was George W. Bush’s real father JFK?” They follow that up by asking “Did George H. W. Bush, play the role of jealous husband, and hire killers to rub him out in Dallas?”
Their wild assertions do seem to tie up loose ends and nagging question concerning JFK’s assassination in Dallas on November 22, 1963, in an Occam’s razor sort of way.
Folks (not just the good ole boys in Texas) can readily comprehend the “jealous husband” rational for using a gun.
According to this new way of explaining the Dallas Assassination, the common connecting thread is the CIA. Here are some links for readers who want to do their own play-along-at-home sleuthing and fact checking about this wild bit of speculation. (Embedded links seem so Tyler Durdin-ish.)
http://www.aviationbanter.com/showthread.php?t=4080
http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://bottleofbits.info/econ/faces/Lf-Ts.jpg&imgrefurl=http://bottleofbits.info/econ/faces/familiar_faces.htm&usg=__ZsOYgQppbwST7wF9SI28FdzQSPQ=&h=64&w=243&sz=9&hl=en&start=19&itbs=1&tbnid=gF8fVyuzydd8bM:&tbnh=29&tbnw=110&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dblond%2Bghost%2Bdealy%2Bplaza%26hl%3Den%26gbv%3D2%26ndsp%3D20%26tbs%3Disch:1
http://www.waynemadsenreport.com/custom/JFKsealgoss.jpg
http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.rumormillnews.com/pix5/bush_kennedy_assassination_dallas_11.22.63.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.rumormillnews.com/cgi-bin/forum.cgi%3Fnoframes%3Bread%3D161548&usg=__uQ0GAzNWQj3DAUbA6WOQ6_uQ6i0=&h=510&w=372&sz=42&hl=en&start=15&um=1&itbs=1&tbnid=jB5qGponYyUeBM:&tbnh=131&tbnw=96&prev=/images%3Fq%3Ddealey%2Bplaza%2Bbarbara%2Bpierce%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26tbs%3Disch:1
If a columnist writes about a new dance craze sweeping the discos, that doesn’t mean he has to be the fellow who “invented” the dance. It doesn’t mean that he has to be able to do the dance. It just means that, as a reporter and critic of the contemporary culture, he wants to point out what the latest development in that sphere of culture is. For those who are fascinated by conspiracy theories, this columnist just wants to bring their wild, intriguing question to the attention conspiracy theory fans. When it comes to drawing conclusions; you are on your own.
Herb Caen, who has his own room in the (imaginary) Columnists’ Hall of Fame, defended his columnistic style thus (From “Don’t Call it Frisco” Doubleday hardback pages 25 – 26): “That brings us to the third type – the “scattershot” column, crammed with short items on a variety of subjects. This kind of column is, obviously, a lot more work, but it attracts a wider audience, at least theoretically. As that great practitioner of the art, Walter Winchell, once expressed it: ‘People don’t get bored if you change the subject often enough.’”
Now, our disk jockey will play: Jimmy Dean’s song “Big, Bad John,” Dion’s song “Abraham, Martin, and John,” and Tom Clay’s overdubbed version of “What the World Needs Now.” (It is on Youtube and guaranteed to make surviving hippies weep.) Now, we gotta skedaddle. Have a “you’re not gonna believe this . . .” type of week.