How do you define “naked”?

A popular video about air safety from Air New Zealand

Air Safety from Air New Zealand brings up this question:
If someone has clothes painted on their body, are they naked or not?

(Does this look like an outtake from “Laugh-In”?)

Take it off! ! !

David Rose’s song.

Would John Wayne have approved torturing prisoners?

The Republicans have commandeered the traditional trappings of patriotism and have laid claim to the use of any patriotism inspiring slogans, images, and or historic personalities, but we are going to risk their wrath and ask: Would John Wayne have endorsed torture? Since the conservatives like control the dialogue, they would try to foil all liberal attempts to make sense by throwing in a cheap diversionary move rather than answering the question. It seems quite likely they would respond to this question by asserting that the question breaks down into two versions Would the American icon known as John Wayne have condoned the torture of prisoners or would the actor, Marion Mitchell Morrison (AKA John Wayne), a well known conservative, have endorsed the enhanced questioning methods approved by the President of the United States?

Fans tend to think that the John Wayne icon’s code of ethics was summarized best in the line from “The Shootist:” “I won’t be wronged. I won’t be insulted. I won’t be laid a-hand on. I don’t do these things to other people and I require the same from them.” (One assumes that means he wouldn’t want to be tortured as a prisoner and therefore wouldn’t inflict it on others if the situation were reversed.)

During World War II, Gino Merli’s position was overrun by German troops. Merli played dead. A German soldier wanted to make sure it was a dead American whose body he saw, so he stuck hi bayonet into the area Merli would have squashed if he sat down. Merli used self-control and convinced the German he was contending with a dead man. After the Germans passed by, Merli jumped up and used an automatic weapon to mow down a large number of German soldiers. He got a Medal of Honor and would have had a unique perspective for making pronouncements for or against inflicting pain to gain information. Do you honestly think Gino Merli would have endorsed torture to augment information gathering?

Initially we intended to run a longer list and look at other American heroes such as Sgt. York, Audi Murphy, General Custer (which tribe of Native Americans was noted for the quality of its torture?) and General Custer’s brother (who won two Medals of Honor) and see how they might possibly have answered the torture question, but since a Republican President started the torturing and since a new Democratic President seems to be giving his blessing to most of his predecessor’s war policies,, it would seem, now, to be a moot question. Why bother with hypothetical answers to something that ain’t gonna change?

Since there will be some technical and logistical challenges presented later in the week, this will be our “Happy Forth of July” Saturday morning column posted a bit early.

Don’t fritter away time worrying if John Wayne would or would not have sanctioned torture, just go out and celebrate Independence Day.

In “The Defendant,” G. K. Chesterton wrote: “‘My country, right or wrong,’ is a thing that no patriot would think of saying. It is like saying, ‘My mother, drunk or sober.’”

Now the disk jockey will play John Wayne’s recording “The Pledge of Allegiance.” We’re ready to go stake out a prime spot on the Venice Beach. Have a “full of patriotic pride” type week.

Are you ready for Comic-Con?

We thought it was about time to start looking into the possibility of getting a press pass (we got one in 2003) to cover Comic Con in San Diego next month

http /www.comic-con.org/cci/index.php

but we saw that there would be no more press passes issued for the 2009 event.

So, I guess that ends that idea.

Stay tuned to see what (if anything) we do cover in July
There’s always “The Call to the Wall” iln Malibu. We could get there on an MTA bus.

Did Kerouac have a role model?

Recently this columnist has been doing some fact-checking (not enough to jeopardize his standing as the World’s Laziest Journalist – just enough to keep himself amused on a quiet Summer afternoon) when we stumbled across the story of Will Parker contained in the October 16, 1939, issue of LIFE magazine.  The story (lest you forget) tells about the young man’s hitchhiking journey from San Francisco to New York City.  His travel pal, Hart Preston, took the photos used to illustrate the story of the pioneering hitchhiker.

Did Jack Kerouac read and become influenced by this pre-war adventure story?  He would have been about 17 years old in October of 1939.  Did he happen to read that particular issue of LIFE magazine?  Did Neal Cassidy?

This columnist, who was greatly influenced by Kerouac, recalls reading the Will Parker story in LIFE while doing some recreational reading during his college years, in the University library.  Was it as great an influence as the reading of “On the Road” and/or “Death in the Afternoon”?  Doesn’t it at least seem likely that Will Parker was one of the contributing factors?

Now matters get even murkier for the columnist because this information would be a very great topic for the readers at the Digihitch website, but previous attempts to jump through the digital hoops necessary to be able to cross post this column on that particular site, have proven to be an insurmountable obstacle.  Dang!  Woldn’t it have been marvelous to cross post some of the dispatches from Australia on that travel oriented site?

Which brings up this bit of insight:  when railroads were in the formative stage some brilliant planner advised them to facilitate the industry’s growth by adopting industry standards so that one company’s locomotives and passenger cars and box cars could avail themselves of travel opportunities on other firm’s right of way.  Universal standards gave them the bases for unlimited growth in the United States.   Is the fact that cross posting one column on three different sites causes some formatting challenges with each new venue, be a hint that the Internets still hasn’t learned the railroaders’ secret?  Could individual firms that want to have clients pay for their own unique scripting, be causing a “tower of babble” type delay in the growth of the Internets?

The Beat Museum in San Francisco, would probably find that a copy of this particular LIFE magazine would be a worthy addition to their library and or exhibition.  As luck would have it, while this installment of the Saturday Column was being written, we wandered into Hodgson’s Antiques in South Pasadena and found that they had copies of various issues of LIFE for sale, but, unfortunately, not the particular one with the Will Parker story in it.
Getting back to Will Parker (of the LIFE magazine fame), bloggers can find information and topics that haven’t been subjected to “overkill” on the Internet if they make an effort.   

Commenting on what paid pundits have just said, isn’t journalism and, quite often, it isn’t full of stunning insights and perceptive comments, but it is easier to do than actually going out and scrounging up original material. 

Take, for example, the topic of car-spotting.  If a columnist wants to use his own time and his own (or the one at the Pasadena Public Library?) computer for a bus-man’s holiday (15 yard penalty bad “on the road” pun!) and put some photos on his blog for Jersey Bill and a few other friends to see, then he has to go out and shoot some pictures.  Some of the pictures are not examples of Ansel Adams like technical perfection, but is there a market for sarcastic critical comments about car-spotting photos?  The only logical reaction to seeing photos on a car-spotting blog would be to go out in your own neighbor hood (such as Alameda?) and take and post your own photographs.  . 

What ever happened to Will Parker?  That question brings up a rather disturbing possibility and subsequent topic.  In 1939, what were the odds that a healthy young man of 21 would live to see his thirtieth birthday?  Did Darwin take into consideration for his “survival of the fittest” theory the fact that quite often humans send only their very best off to war leaving the home front to cope with survival of the species by providing the women with an available assortment of queers, former prisoners, mental defectives, and physically impaired men.  If Will Parker died in action, shouldn’t Jack Kerouac have, at least, mentioned him in the acknowledgements section of “On the Road”?

British Sci-fi writer John Christopher wrote about the intergalactic adventures of a young man named Will Parker, but we’ll leave it up to some future doctoral candidate in literature to assertain if there is a cause and effect link here or just a co-inky-dink.

Will Parker may have been a hitchhiking pioneer but he seems to disappear without a subsequent trace while the likes of Kerouac, Cassidey, and Alan Ginsburg were left to thrive and prosper among the hordes of lonely affection starved women in the United States.

The Will Parker issue of LIFE also had “mug shots” of the various new 1940 brands of cars in the Speaking of Pictures segment and featured a promotional story for the film titled “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.”

One of the “selling points” Parker used to help himself get rides was the fact that good current events chats were assured because he was carrying a portable radio on the journey that took 12 days and cost the traveler $23.60.

The photographer’s existence was basically ignored, which gives the story a bit of an “unrealistic” spin to it.
It’s obvious that this column isn’t an astounding example of the potential of the citizen journalist movement on the internet, but did you really want or need a columnist to add his voice to the chorus of disapproval the pundits have showered upon the Iranian elections and the American President’s response to it?  You do?  OK!  How about this:  Iran, that wasn’t very nice.  Shame on you.  Feel better now?

In summing up Will Parker’s adventure, the writer noted that Will Parker had by talking to the various 29 good Samaritans, who had given him a lift, conducted his own public opinion poll on the country’s mood.  On page 52, it was noted:  “Most were in favor of Social Security and keeping out of war.”  My how times have turned things around, since then, eh?

[Note:  does society change?  Wasn’t one of the few (only) newspapers which ran the death of Elvis Presley as the headline story on page one, the Santa Monica Evening Outlook?  Back then most newspapers didn't want to compete with People magazine.]

Now, the disk jockey will play the Michael Jackson – Mick Jagger duet titled “State of Shock”  We’ll take a break.  Have a “moonwalk” type week.

Kitsch abides

What if there was a you-tube type site that only had kitschy things?

Well, there is and it is called “Everything is Terrible.” Check it out:

Everything is Terrible

Did Bush shave points?

Many moons ago (AKA the Fifties?), there was a scandal about college basketball players who “shaved” points. At the time, this columnist was so naïve that he figured as long as they didn’t let their team lose, it was OK. Later, as a more mature individual, who could appreciate the dishonesty of messing with the point spread and the impact that could have on the adventurous individuals who had place wagers on the outcome, it became obvious that not winning by the greatest amount possible was just as wrong as deliberately losing the contest.

Can any pundit seriously suggest that President George W. Bush may have been a mole for his family’s old business associate Osama bin Laden and “shaved points” in a way that helped make a victory in the search for WMD’s in Iraq impossible? The most fanatical of Bush critics cannot help but note that the quick road to “Mission Accomplished” was so textbook perfect and efficiently executed that only a “graybeard old loon” would dare to hint that the Baghdad Peace agreement was not only George W. Bush’s finest achievement, but also a direct result of one of the all-time great American military victories.

Didn’t Bush supply all the number of troops his generals requested?

Wasn’t Bush relentless in his attempts to capture bin Laden in the Tora Bora area?

Didn’t Bush go right to the main target? He swooped into the empty WMD store rooms and was just as surprised as anyone else when they found “the cupboard was bare.” Wasn’t bin Laden, Heussein’s ventriloquist’s dummy? Could any serious student of military history suggest that Bush’s invasion of Iraq was as foolish and inopportune as when Germany went out of its way to drag Russian into World War II?

One of Osama bin Laden’s aims was to cripple the American economy. Didn’t George W. Bush predict that Iraq was a piece of cake that could be handled quickly and efficiently and stick to that promise and not (as they say in Hollywood) go over budget?

Wasn’t his quick achievement of the Mission Accomplished goal done with blitzkrieg like efficiency so that the United States economy would not be crippled by a long, protracted and costly war? Didn’t George W. Bush studiously avoid all the errors made by the German guy precisely because he was haunted by the specter of the post war economy that left the WWII loosing country’s economy in a shambles? If you’ve seen the bonuses handed out around Wall Street recently, you wouldn’t have to ask about how America’s economic heath is doing.

To hear George W. Bush’s harshest critics, he and his cronies clung to illusions of victory much like the urban legends about remote islands in the Pacific that are still being run by Japanese military units who think they are valiantly holding out for the sake of the emperor.

George W. Bush’s goal was to import democracy into the Middle East, which had been a bastion of desert kingdoms and state sponsored theocracy. Today Americans can point with pride to the fact that elections were recently held in Iran and except for a few malcontents (like the Democrats who live in Florida) the triumph of Democracy in Iran is something which will make American hearts swell with pride. Despite what the communist agitators say, the results are (like Bush himself) unimpeachable.

Thanks to George W. Bush, President Obama has inherited a “to do list” which will afford him plenty of time for “date night” excursions and triumphant tours of the world where he will have plenty of practice for getting used to world wide adulation as Bush’s proxy.

The time has come for pundits to finally admit that George W. Bush didn’t lose the war, but, as Stephen Colbert so proudly proclaimed in Newsweek, decisively won the war in Iraq and it’s time to turn to more mundane matters.

Since journalists are used to being admitted free to various event in order to provide news coverage of the various events, maybe we should apply for a press pass to cover the upcoming columnists convention in Ventura? If journalists have events they must hand out “press credential” to folks who want to cover the event, eh?

The recent crash of the Air France flight was a major tragedy, but have any of the pundits pointed out that the number of people killed, 228, brings up the question of why were they using an airbus to do a job that could have just as easily been done by a smaller Boeing?

How many people, who attended the Summer Nats in Canberra on the New Year’s weekend, will make it to the L. A. roadster show? Will the So Cal folks dig and be hip to it if you war a “SummerNats” T-shirt?

L. A. went “uberenthusiastic” with the Lakers victory. This columnist wishes that he had bought a “West Coast Eagles” T-shirt when the chance was available because such a garment would confuse the heck out of the football fans in what used to be Rams territory.

Some time back, we wrote a column lamenting the plight of L. A. attorney Richard Fine, who, according to his supporters, is being held political prisoner. Recently Leslie Dutton featured that story on her Full Disclosure TV show.

Why does Word program always challenge a sentence written in the passive voice? How the heck can you put it in the active voice if a judge ordered Fine to jail for contempt and the guy was a victim of political vindictiveness? Does this active voice sentence work: “Fine is currently enjoying an extended stay in Los Angeles County jail, provided free by a judge who was concerned that the activist lawyer was spending too much time at work and needed some reset and so proscribed that he take a ‘time out.’’?

Isn’t it odd that one particular online company best known for printing T-shirts for bloggers would not permit a certain columnist to use a clever T-shirt design, which was critical of the invasion of Iraq and included a swastika, but now seems to sanction the selling of T-shirts that advocate using liberals for target practice?

Has anybody taken a critical look at the Governator’s idea about selling California’s assets? Do you see another windfall coming to the fat cats? Let’s say you buy San Quentin Prison. Are you going to be running it as a non-profit charity? No? Well then you have to tack on some profits when you run it. What will the net effect for California citizens be? They have to come up with more money, because they are (ultimately) the ones who pay for prisons. How the heck can adding a middle man save money? Why doesn’t the wolfbpack at Fox question this illogical suggestion?

Speaking of rip-offs, were doing some fact checking at the World’s Laziest Journalist World Headquarters and would like to know if rip-offs by businesses are become more prevalent. If you have anecdotal evidence of a business rip-off please leave a vaguely worded (no brand names or company firm names, please, because we don’t want to see you fight a libel and or slander suite) brief description of what happened and how much of your money they got.

Isn’t it odd that big business can, as was reported this week in the Los Angeles Times, sink $3.5 million into “60 Frames” and then let it slide into oblivion, while an eight year (approximately) old liberal effort has to hold recurring fundraising efforts. Didn’t Bill O’Reilly insinuate that some mysterious fat cat (called Sore-U. S.?) hands out operations funds to liberal web sites as if they were as easy to come by as the free candy in a real estate agent’s office?

Gypsy Rose Lee Quote: “If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing slowly . . . very slowly.” Did she mean a thing like ending the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan?

Cover ups? The world is becoming a cover-up playground and so the disk jockey will spin Dr. Hook’s “Hey Lady Godiva,” David Rose’s “The Stripper,” and an old rare copy of Jimi Hendric playing “ Night Train.” (Did you want a more traditional version? It’s time for us to take off. Have a “let it all hang out” type Sixties flashback week.

Hitchin’ a ride

While we are running items about online sources for “on the road” information, let us not forget
Digihitch

Digihitch

It has all sorts of pages to investigate. So, what are you waiin’ for? Click the link already!

What became of the Monk?

One of the great “on the road” pioneers on the Internet was Monk magazine. Two guys traveled about putting out a real magazine from their moble office. They now do web consulting (as pioneers are entitled to do). You can find out some of the Monk history by exploring around on this site:

http://monkmedia.net/MonkMedia.swf

On the Road websites

We love beatniks and “on the road” information of all sorts. Recently we saw that Rand McNally had a blog with an entry about barf bags and, since we had posted a similar item, we took a look at their blog.

http://ontheroad.randmcnally.com/

In fact checking for this, we found a lenghty list of blog links

www.blogged.com/directory/recreation/travel/travel-tips

Another good source for “on the road” stuff is Roadside America here is there web site

http://www.roadsideamerica.com/

It’s a good think I know a little bit about html otherwise getting the links into this post would have been impossible.

Australia vs. Canada (Round 5) Cool buildings in Santa Monica

In Santa Monica, there is a building where both the U. S. and Australian flags are on display.  It gives the Aussies something to crow about.  It seems to be some actor’s home office.  There doesn’t seem to be any building flying the Canadian flag in Santa Monica, so it looks like Oz wins this weeks round.

Next week:  movie industry will be the category

Promobabble Frisco Issue

This week’s promobabble will be a bit less coherent than usual because of the “on the road” conditions for using computers.   We had promised ourselves not to buy books while traveling, but ya gotta have a book to pass the time when there is down time, so at the SF Library sale on Friday, the first book I bought was K. C. Constantine’s “Family Values.”  The second was James Joyce’s “Dubliners.”    Fragments, stray thoughts, and odd facts will be jumbled together and members of the Promobabble Patrol should be a bit used to such methodology from this writer.  Lurkers will just have to bare with us.

After writing the last sentence, I glanced in “The Dubliners” and chanced to read this sentence:  “He said that the happiest time of one’s life was undoubtedly one’s schoolboy days and that he would give anything to be young again.”

 

If one were young again and investigating the cultural milieu of a city, there would be a great deal of work to do to find the hidden treasures.  Yea, you can consult a travel book and locate the tried and true, but the challenge is to find the artists who have yet to earn the public’s respect.

 

 

Some scalawag suggested that rather than lament the disappeare dculture of San Francisco, I should be concentrating on finding what is new and innovative and happening now.   Some years ago, my Buddy Russ, and I went out on a scouting patrol and wound up looking for attractive members of the opposite sex at a popular place in South Jersey.  As we surveyed the crowd, the house band was working very assiduously to enlive the crowd.  Wondering what it would have been like to be in the Cavern Club when the Beatles were just getting started, it occured to me that most of the young men who had that experience would have probably been much more interested in assessing the ladies than in judging the marketablility of the band.  Years later, while reading about Bruce Springstein and histhe early phase of his carreer, it stated that he had been the house band for a place called the Earlton Bowl in Cherry Hill.  Say, wasn’t that about the same time that Russ tooke me to that very location?  Could it be that rather than the early Beatles, I had overlooked a chance to groove on the early phases of the E-Street band?   One had to be aware that there are two kinds of famous artists.  Those who have arrived and are a known commodity and those who have yet to make their mark.  The latter are a bit more accessable that the “stars,” but a bit harder to identify and therein lies the challenge of doing a survey of any contemporary scene.   Kurt from the Outlook art Department introduced me to a great many interesting folks in the Tiki Scene in L. A.  He is in SF and if I had the time to look him up and get introduced to some of his new pals in this city then I mihgt meet a future art phenominon.

Stuff from the Smirking Chimp columns will tell you more about what is happening to BP/Moses/UR and it won’t be cross posted here, so you gotta look that stuff up.

Writing under these conditions (the meter is running on a paid session 30 minutes left) is very hectic and doing the usual stuff like spell check and posting links is time consuming and so, we will mostly skip that sort of stuff.

San Francisco is a great city and blah blah, and blah.

The title of Don Sherwood’s book is Confessions of the World’s Greatest Disk Jockey.  I like that title.

Now, our disk jockey will play Otis Redding’s “Dock of the Bay” 

To be continued . . .

More Cowbell

We were wondering what, other than topics that are rather underrepresented on the Internets, will help build traffic coming to this web site.  We heard Reverend Billy speak Sunday at City Lights and it occured that perhaps what this blog needs is:  More Cowbell!

Yeah, and perhaps a few updates on the career of Moby Grape.

To be continued . . .

Hunter Thompson Said It Was Going to Be like This

Staying at a hostel means that the conversation can take an unusual turn that you are not likely to find in a local American bar.  How should an America respond when a citizen of another country glibly asserts, as a lad from Britain named William Owen did recently, that George W. Bush is a “pussy war criminal”? 
 
Should an American try to refute the wimpy charge?  George W. Bush hid as a paper entity qualified to fly an airplane that was no longer being manufactured during Vietnam, and so trying to assert that he was as macho as Hitler, who won an Iron Cross in Battle during WWI, won’t work. 
 
Refuting the criteria for war crimes that was established at the Nuremberg War Crime Trials won’t work either because the things that Bush has ordered closely match some of the methods that Herr Hitler also sanctioned.
 
It’s a debating fork.  An American can not prove that Bush is a macho war criminal and he can’t prove that he doesn’t qualify (under the guidelines established at Nuremberg) as a war criminal either, so what’s a good citizen to do?
 
The comedian, Dennis Miller, has the right answer:  you just blindly assert that he has been a great President.  It is the funniest Dennis Miller routine ever.  He delivers the laughs with a dead-pan serious deliver that makes it so much more hilarious than if he did the old wink-wink-nudge-nudge (which is kinda hard to do on a radio show) and that is what makes the routine killer comedy.  The routine ranks right up there with the classic “Who’s on first?”
 
Anyone who tries to refute the wimpy-war-criminal assertion is doomed to failure. Especially on a day when Bush’s “the economy is sound” speech causes convulsions.  The best debating strategy is to firmly switch the topic to something that can lead to a mutual agreement, such as the exhilarating atmosphere for tourists exploring San Francisco.  So far, ain’t nobody said they’ve been disappointed by Frisco.

Monday was one of those picture postcard perfect days in San Francisco.  We stopped by the Cindy for Congress HQ and noted that they need volunteers and monetary donations.  Later in the afternoon, we walked up Knob Hill and when we say “up” we mean “up” with capital letters and triple underline.  The hills have gotten steeper since 1969.  Back, then they were steep enough to inspire a great comedy routine by Bill Cosby.

Sunday was an exhausting day.  The Castro Street Fair deserves a column of its own, and seeing Rev. Billy at City Lights Books, proved that the fellow who left a recent comment that suggested that looking back at ‘69, might cause a tourist to forget to “be here now” and enjoy the newest cultural offerings available in S. F.

As a kid, we envied Herb Caen’s ability to write columns in San Francisco.  Later, we envied Hunter S. Thompson’s SF writing gig.  Walking around “the City” on a bright sunny day knowing that there would be a column to knock out that night was exhilarating.

The ocean side of the city was socked in with low lying clouds, which were spilling through the Golden Gate.  The Bridge was covered with low lying clouds but the towers were poking through up into the sunlight. 

Hunter Thompson warned that the Bush team would only bring darkness to America and he didn’t live to see just how right he was.

Will the Bush team impose martial law and suspend the election?  How else can they avoid arrest for war crimes? 

Will America let him get away with martial law, just like he started the war with Iraq and sanctioned torture? 

Some time ago, we tried to contact Hunter S. Thompson and see if he would bet on the possibility that despite what the Constitution says, Bush would still be President after Inauguration day in 2009.  He never took the bet.  Subsequently we tried to see if Maureen Dowd would act as his proxy.  She never responded either.  Oh, well, if it does happen, readers of this web site won’t be able to say this columnist didn’t give them a heads-up.

Hunter S. Thompson said:  “When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.” 

Now, the disk jockey will play a Moby Grape album and we will take another walk.  Have a “Maltese Falcon” type week.

Quicksilver Messenger Service

It is discouraging when the young folks in San Francisco haven’t heard of a great San Francisco band like Moby Grape, but there is still some hope.  Those who remember the Quicksilver Messenger Service will be pleased to see that there is a goodly number of young people wearing T-shirts that say:  “Quicksilver,” so there must be some fans left.

Rainbow and Rawhide

http://www.bartcop.com/

Yesterday, bart over at Bartcop, gave this blog a boost by quoting us and putting a link there, so today we have to try to come up with yet another good item so that if any of the folks Bart sent our way comes back, we will be able to show them that we are not a “one shot” phenomenon.  The challenge will be to have something new that hasn’t been on the Internets elsewhere.

Did you know that the people who guard the President of the United States have code names for the President and his wife?  When Ronald Reagan and his wife Nancy were in the White House, according to a reliable source, their code names were:  Rawhide and Rainbow.

We don’t know what the code names for Dubya and Pickles are, but maybe one of the new readers will know and can post that information in the comments?

Dead Bird Walking

(Berkeley CA) Oct. 9.  Under ordinary circumstances, it would be up to folks like Joe Eaton of the Berkely Daily Planet to write one of his columns about the fact that the <a href =http://www.berkeleydailyplanet.com/issue/2008-10-09/article/31322?headline=Wild-Neighbors-West-Nile-Virus-Hits-the-Yellow-billed-Magpie>Yellow-billed Magpie</a> (AKA <I>Pica nuttali</I>) is in danger because of the fact that the West Nile Virus is causing an alarming number of that species to die, but these are not ordinary times and the topic deserves mention for a variety of reasons. 

Somebody has got to care. Obviously The Four Hundred Million Dollar Man (AKA Rush L.) won’t give a hoot (15 yard penalty bad ornithology pun) about the bird in danger of extinction because his billionaire buddies won’t make one damn cent more if they live or if they all die. 

The bird, according to Eaton, can only be seen inside the state of California and thus is a niche topic even for the bird watchers in other areas.  So why should readers of this web site outside the state of California care about it?  There’s only so many causes a body can accommodate and with the threat to democracy that the fall election carries, shouldn’t this be a column about the “round up the usual suspects” topics that are of great importance? 

Heck, didn’t John McCain say that he can solve multiple problems simultaneously?   If he can do that, why can’t liberals multitask while coping with the tsunami of problems in the world?

Since John McCain excels at being disingenuous, maybe he was adding one more fib to the pile when he bragged about being the omnipotent problem solver? 

The plight of the Yellow-billed Magpie is proven to be even more dangerous when Eaton points out that the government agencies that can deal with that specific problem are facing budget cuts.  Similarly the large daily newspapers are trying to cover more and more news stories with smaller staffs. 

Naomi Wolf and Daniel Ellsberg are speaking in Berkeley Monday, October 13, at the First Congressional Church.

The classic film, “The Battleship Potemkin” will be playing at the Pacific Film Archive on Friday. 

Doctors Without Borders will recreate a Refugee Camp in San Francisco at Little Marina Green Park from October 15 to the 19.

Do you honestly think that Rush Limbaugh would see any of these items as worthy of a serious mention on his program?  If you are willing to bet that if his comedy writers (do any of Jay Leno’s writers do any freelance moonlighting for el Rushbo?) don’t give him a zinger on these topics he won’t say one damn word about them, then you have a strong hint as to what the media and journalism will be like if the conservatives have their way and crush liberal topics and all dissent.

Somebody has got to care.  You must be one of those “somebodys” if you came to this website and have read this column this far. 

Back in the Sixties wasn’t the advice:  “Give a damn!”

What goes around, comes around only now, it is:  “Give a damn, while you still can.”

Donate to the websites that speak to you on the issues you care about.  Send the URL’s that say something you believe to all the members of your posse.  There’s a retired colonel in Germany who supports Bush in a major (another one of those lousy puns again?) way and sending him the links to the stories and websites (such as the Brad blog?) probably aren’t going to cause him to switch his allegiance from Nixon to Kennedy, but what the heck, he always did like to hear the dissenting point of view, so I continue to send them to him.

Jack Weinberg is credited for coining the phrase:  “Never trust anyone over thirty.” 

Now, the disk jockey will play Country Joe and the Fish’s hit “<a href = http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s5btZWbViPA>Fixin’ to Die Rag</a>” and we’ll rush on out of here.  Have a “start singin’” type week.

Eat, drink, and be merry because tomorrow . . .

Alexis Zorba (Anthony Quinn), when asked if he was married, said:  “Am I not a man? And is a man not stupid? I’m a man, so I married. Wife, children, house, everything. The full catastrophe.”  His reaction was to fully embrace life and live it to its fullest and therein lies the greatest danger of the Bush Era for the Conservative Christians, if they are not very careful, their kids will embrace the Zorba response and take to wine, women, and dancing.

Isn’t there a WWI cliché about gulping down a drink and saying:  “Eat, drink and be merry because tomorrow we may die!”?  Well, my friends, young Republicans may be gullible, but that doesn’t mean that they are stupid and when they figure out that in the Muslim culture, revenge is a duty, then it won’t be long before they realize that the carnage in Iraq has built up a debt that will insure that an entire generation of Iraqis will be intent on extracting their revenge on Americans, then those young Republicans will be likely to be ready to embrace Zorba’s philosophy and learn to dance.

The Bush team has always talked about victory and completely ignored the facet of Muslim culture that values revenge.  When the conservative Christians contemplate a victory in Iraq, they do so thinking that the losers will  keep the “turn the other cheek” philosophy in mind. 

Ignoring bad debts has gotten the Bush men into “another fine mess” on Wall Street. Shrugging off bad investment debts hasn’t worked out very well and they have taken the same attitude regarding Muslim revenge.  They shrug it off thinking “no one will be the wiser.”  

Kids who lose a bet like to worm out of it by saying:  “You didn’t say we were playing for ‘keepsies’!”  Well, the boys who were so enthusiastic about invading Iraq (and providing eternal work and profits for Halliburton?) were so intent on having their way, that they didn’t notice that there was a difference between Sunnis and Shi-ites.  So, their naïveté also caused them to be unaware of the blood debts that would accrue from the Invasion.

Some bleeding heart liberal Cassandras tried to warn about the house of cards being built in the real estate world, but their dire warnings fell on deaf ears.  No one mentions the fact that all the deaths and lost limbs being racked up in Iraq also have a price that is being ignored.  Any choice to ignore the inevitable doesn’t mean that it won’t happen, it just means that it will be yet another opportunity to use the “no one could foresee” song and dance.

Dance?  That brings us back to the toast and the flamboyant fliers who would then hurl their glasses into the fireplace with a cavalier attitude that indicated their Christian morals were temporarily on hold.

The Red Barron used a red aeroplane to taunt the enemy and challenge them.  Painting the aircraft red was an early version of delivering sports trash talk to a rival.  Eventually, the Red Barron was hit, but he was able to land his airplane before he died. 

President Bush may try to emulate the Red Barron’s bravado, but there comes a time when bravado morphs into hubris and that brings us back to the Greeks and that brings us back to dancing and retched excess.

Are the Sons of Iraq any different from the Sons of the Dessert?  They probably seem like the same group to George W. Bush.

Screw the consequences!  Ignore Wall Street.  Go to You tube and watch the sequence where Zorba teaches a staid young British man to dance.  Then remember that ironically the Bush legacy may ultimately be that staid conservative Christians learned the Zorba attitude and embraced the wine, women and dancing that their elders warned them not to sample let alone practice to excess.

When a stock owner resorts to panic selling, it also means some shrewd bargain hunter is doing some (panic?) buying.

Today, Wall Street may be crashing, so odds are you won’t want to think about other bad aspects of the Bush legacy.  That’s just the way the Bush team likes it.

Your 401K may be depleted.  Your collectables may be worth nada.  You may have your home foreclosed tomorrow, but if you want to express your rejection of the Bush legacy, go dancing tonight and forget about the other bad debt that Bush has acquired in your name.

Zorba also said:  “God has a very big heart but there is one sin he will not forgive; if a woman calls a man to her bed and he will not go.”

Now, the disk jockey will play the theme song from the movie “Zorba the Greek,” and we will dance out of here.  Have a “have we hit bottom, yet?” type week.

Ghostriding the Whip (in Dublin)

(Dublin CA) Oct. 11  [Note:  This column was written in longhand in an Irish pub in Dublin, Ca., but it will be transcribed on a computer in Berkeley.  We will use the Dublin dateline because describing a bar in Dublin and giving it a Berkeley dateline doesn’t make sense.]

The Irishman has feelings of guilt because he knows he should be back at the computer writing a column headlined “Ghostriding the Whip” asking, if Bush constantly disregards laws he doesn’t like, why then should conservative Republican kids obey laws they don’t like?  You know:   monkey see; monkey do. 

Some say ghostriding is getting out of a car that’s still moving and walking along side of it.  Some define it as getting out and dancing on the hood and roof of the car while it is still moving forward.  One young source said ghostriding the whip means turning out the lights while traveling at about 100 mph on the freeways at night.  One other faction is referring to a video game:
http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/358255
Writing about it is a good way to plant some Google bait to bring new readers to this website.

Jersey Bill will probably ask why we had to actually go to Dublin to write the column when it would be just as easy to fib and falsify (Would you be surprised to learn that he voted for George W. Bush in 2004?).

There are several reasons why we wanted to go there and take a few notes rather than looking up a few good facts online and then faking it.

First reason:  we wanted the actual experience.

Second:  We might meet an interesting person (somebody else from Scranton, possibly, or somebody from the other Dublin?) and the only way to see if that happens is to get on the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) go there and write the column in Dublin.

Third:  We wanted to send a few postcards to some friends.

We went to Evie’s (formerly Patrick’s Pub) and found that these days jukeboxes in bars have touch screen selections and some promise that they can use modern technology to play any song.  (Don’t Irish columnists just love a challenge like that?)

The “Welcome Dublin Magazine” informed us that many years ago Michael Murray and Jeremiah Fallon came to the area and bought some land from the original Spanish land owner.  Soon thereafter James Witt Dougherty came along and bought an even larger amount of land. 

Historians quibble about exactly when the area started to be called Dublin.  There were two Inns in town and they called the pair the “double Inn.”  It’s no big surprise that they go all out in that town to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day.

When Evie’s was Patrick’s Pub it was owned by a former boxer named James Patrick Condon.  Pictures of his boxing days adorn the walls as well as a hat and flag from the USS Nashville and a piece of barbed wire that was used on the DMZ in Korea.

Camp Parks is in Dublin and the bar regulars are very big on supporting the troops.  When a Bush-bashing columnist was asked his philosophy on vets, the reply was that anyone who sends troops into battle has a moral obligation to take care of the ones who are wounded and/or disabled.  “If you don’t want to take care of the wounded then don’t send troops into battle.”  The vet seemed less than fully enthusiastic about President Bush’s commitment to care for those wounded in Iraq.

The regulars also wanted the columnist to note that the place had the cleanest restrooms “of any of the bars you’ve ever seen.”  We’ve been to bars from Encinitas Mexico to Harry’s New York Bar in Paris, and will verify the claim made in Dublin.

After departing from the pub, a goodly amount of time was spent searching (futilely) for the aforementioned postcards.  Then it was time to leave Dublin, California.

In “The Dubliners,” James Joyce wrote:  “It filled me with fear, and yet I longed to be nearer to it and to look upon its deadly work.”  (Isn’t that how many journalists feel about the Bush legacy?)

Now, the disk jockey will play Dennis Day’s version of “<a href = http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bnBpVctzOnI>Clancy Lowered the Boom</a>” and we’ll dance the jig on our way out of here.  Have a “top o’ the morning” type week.

Dark Thoughts on a Beautiful Afternoon

 (Berkeley CA) Oct. 12.  The day I arrived in San Francisco in 1969, James Richter had been shot.  It took awhile, but today while walking around, I finally got to People’s Park.  I took a rest break and sat there reading the secondhand paperback, I had just bough, Dalton Trumbo’s “Johnny Got His Gun.” 

 

The people in Berkeley said that today was unusual for a mid-October day.  There wasn’t a cloud in the sky and it was warm.  Berkeley on a warm Sunday seemed much quieter than L. A. would have been.

 

The writing in the Trumbo book is excellent.  I’ve heard about the movie adaptation and I know how it will end, but the writing is worth reading.  Do people read good writing these days? 

 

In Los Angeles, the book stores are closing in frightening numbers.  Cody’s is gone from Berkeley, but there is a remarkable number of bookstores. 

 

Reading the Trumbo book and thinking about my opinion in a recent column that the US is running up a blood debt that will fuel retaliation (which will, in turn, run up more need for retaliation and that will keep the war going) I thought of one comment that was posted with that column.  It said Muslim’s don’t indulge in revenge because there are passages in the book they go by that forbids it.  Isn’t that kinda like saying Christians are pure and chase because one of the 10 commandments forbids adultery? 

 

If they don’t believe in revenge, then why has the Sunni vs. Shiite feud been a running battle for over a thousand years? 

 

GWB has gotten us into it and, if you stop to think about it, there will be no end.  It really is the forever war.  There will be many more columns to write about this but the conservative talk show hosts will talk about victory and the ordinary people will be content to put up with the hardships until the victory comes. 

 

Victory?  Who is going to sign the surrender document?  Even if Osama signs one, others can take the Bush attitude toward the Geneva accords and say: “It isn’t binding on me because I wasn’t there when it was negotiated.”  They will then continue their battle and, long after the fighter pilot has gone to his final resting place, there will be a need to send Americans to foreign countries to continue the War on Terror.

 

“You never really knew what the fight was all about.”  DaltonTrumbo

October Surprise = Taqiya?

Bloggers, columnists, and pundits can all take their best guess as to what surprise the Republicans will unveil on the Friday before the election. 

After spending an afternoon in the Santa Monica Public Library and talking to an official of the Arab American Veterans Association, inspired by a passage in a biography of Sir Richard Francis Burton (written by Edward Rice), the time has come to take a turn at guessing what that last minute attempt at a “walk-off grand slam” will be.  Of course we can’t just blurt it out, we have to make sure that our prediction comes after the jump and then people can either agree or disagree, but they all should realize the nefarious reasoning behind this bit of longwinded preparations, which will insure that the “big reveal” comes after folks click to (as Paul Havery would say) the rest of the story.

Should a columnist take a wild guess that might, instead, inspire some Republican strategist or should he stay mum?  Well, if the columnist does guess correctly, that gives the Obama camp (if they read the prediction) a chance to start their refutation efforts even before the October surprise is uncorked on the very last weekend of the campaign.

During the campaign the two factions have tussled over the contention that Senator Obama is a Muslim.  The Republicans have intimated that he is a Muslim while simultaneously decrying one of his Christian ministers.  That would seem to be an oxymoron and too ludicrous to merit serious consideration, but imagine, if you will, that on the Friday before the election the Republican handlers “suddenly” discover the topic of taqiya, which is a form of lying about one’s religious belief if there is danger, and that can cover danger to one’s self or to Muslims in general.

This columnist in no way claims to be fully informed about the topic and some statements on this topic may not be accurate because accurate infromation was elusive.  The fact that an afternoon of research at the Santa Monica Public Library was insufficient and produced a minimum of information only indicates that there is a great danger that the topic can be easily manipulated and misinterpreted.

The Republicans can, since they have no qualms about half-truths, spin, and flat out material that will not pass a fact checker’s inspection, take the topic of taqiya and present it, on the last Friday before the election, to the willing shills in the mainstream media as a “check mate” revelation even if it is actually a bogus item that deserves a referee’s flag on the play.

Added to that the fact that it is extremely difficult in debate to prove a negative, a sudden emphasis on taqiya by the Republicans on the last Friday before the election, would leave Senator Obama and his advisors scrambling to prove the negative while simultaneously countering the destructive effect on the Obama campaign that would accompany the introduction of taqiya as the October surprise.

A book on effective courtroom argumentation suggested that predicting what the other side will say and immediately refuting it is a means of eliminating the “surprise” effect from the topic.  (A sort of “preemptive strike as it were.)  Such a defensive move would give Senator Obama the chance to lump it in with the previous negative attacks from the McCain camp and could thus be reduced to the “at this point my opponent would say anything to try to gain an advantage” dirty trick, which doesn’t seem to be playing well with the voters this year.

Could it be that after lies about Iraq being allied with al Qaeda, bogus promises to get Osama, lies about WMD’s, and numerous other instances of disingenuous statements from President Bush and assorted other Republicans, that if Senator Obama presented it as “one more lie you can expect,” it would then put any efforts to present the topic of taqiya in the position of having to prove a negative (i.e. that it isn’t yet one more lie from Republican), because Americans have grown to expect B. S. from Republicans?

One of the challenges that any columnist faces during this election season is the ability to present some new idea or concept in a tsunami of “me too!” wolf pack commentary that leads to massive amounts of echoes about things like “Wall Street’s Worst Week Ever” and Troopergate. 

Journalists for the mainstream media have been browbeaten into withholding opinions and predictions.  Pundits for major media outlets have fallen into the trap of following the herd.  Bloggers have speculated that President Bush might invoke some crises as the reason for declaring martial law and suspending the elections, but there doesn’t seem to be much heads-up material about the October Surprise.

This column is pure speculation based on some reading and research.  Predictions about Native Dancer winning the Kentucky Derby were wildly inaccurate and so we would advise loyal readers to (like an astrological forecast) accept this column for its entertainment value and not make any wagers based on what you’ve just read.

To do your own fact checking perhaps a good starting point would be this link:
http://www.answering-islam.org/Index/T/taqiya.html

Sir Richard Francis Burton has said:  “Broke is a temporary condition, poor is a state of mind.”

“<a href=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLB15kBvn_c>Ahab the Arab</a>” (who’d look for a white whale in the desert?) is this week’s “outro” song, selected by the disk jockey, and we’ll caravan out of here.  Have a hookah of a week.

Martial Law? It Can’t Happen Here!

On the night of Monday, October 13, in the First Congregational Church in Berkeley, Ca., Naomi Wolf and Daniel Ellsberg were the featured speakers.  Ms. Wolf presented a capsulated version of the ten steps that, in the past, have marked the transition to a fascist form of government. She pointed out how the United States is showing signs of qualifying for a match on all ten warning signals.  It was noted that there has not yet been massive detention of citizens, only relatively minor incidents.  Then Daniel Ellsberg read questions from the audience and the two speakers discussed their response to the question.

Ms. Wolf was highly enthusiastic about enacting a Constitutional Amendment that would approve the concept of ballot measures on a national level.  She cited the fact that 70% of the U. S. population is in favor of ending the war in Iraq, but progress toward that goal has been very slow. 

She also expressed her displeasure with the apathy toward torture that churches and synagogues have shown.  The attitude was:  Who Would Jesus Torture?

 

Mr. Ellsburg decried the “executive despotism” and characterized the November election as two men vying for the title of king.

The church venue was a bit of heavy handed symbolism for any writer who would want to employ the “preaching to the choir” metaphor to describe the ambiance at the event.

The questions concentrated on ways to reverse the alarming rush to fascism that the audience feared is occurring.  The replies were strong on enthusiasm for citizen participation in the governing process and rather anemic on specifics.

Afterwards a very small random sampling of the audience indicated that their enthusiasm did not extend to the level of talking to a columnist from a web site which features harsh assessments of the current President (and needs citizen participation in the form of monetary contributions to continue fulfilling that role).

Previously, the columnist had talked on the phone with two people who are much more skeptical about the possibility that martial law could ever be instituted inside the United States. 

The attitude of those two seems to be a much stronger level of disbelief than was on display in the event in Berkeley. 

If the columnist understood correctly, it boiled down to bemused annoyance for an idea that only proves that freedom of speech is alive and well inside the United States.  They fell short of the old “yes, yes, of course; now run along and play” reaction.  Jersey Bill reassured the columnist that if and when martial law is declared, he will then do what it necessary to correct the overreaction by whoever takes such a misstep.  Yeah, right, if it happens we can hold our breath for as long as it will take for Jersey Bill to have a St. Paul’s moment and change into “Resistance Man”!

Bill is anxiously awaiting the election results so that he can say to the columnist:  “See, all went well and you are still crazy so I’ll never be able to convince you that you worry needlessly.”

Somehow it is very difficult to imagine a retired high school teacher comfortably stepping into the role of an American che Guevara, but based on his emphatic assurances, we’ll take a wait and see attitude.

If the institution of martial law impinges on the finale of “Dancing With the Stars,” then America will not tolerate it.  If not; well then most Americans will still be able to emphatically reassure Bush critics, that just like the novel title said:  “It can’t happen here.”  Where’s your patriotic pride?  Don’t you know that Americans are not as dumb as the Germans who let Hitler take over?

* * * * *
Super Chicken always said:  “You knew the job was dangerous when you took it, Fred.”

Now, the disk jockey will play a John Philip Sousa song and we’ll march out of here.  Have a good week because if you don’t we will have to report you to the authorities.

Visions of Cody’s Books

(Berkeley CA.) Oct. 14 Cody’s Books in Berkeley is gone but, other than that, the Sixties are alive and well in this city which is just a few beats away from San Francisco.  These days what was Cody’s is now an empty building up for rent and outside a sign urging “Bring the Troops Home,” doesn’t specify which war is being referenced.

Moe’s Books is right where it has always been and it is encouraging to see that there are more bookstores per square mile in this city than – well, it can remind a bloke of the old days on Book Row of America in New York City.  Pegasus Books in Berkeley had a used copy of Jack Kerouac’s “Visions of Cody.”  Notice it “had” one?  The proprietor of the Beat Museum in San Francisco told this columnist that that particular novel was considered by many to be Kerouac’s best and so the austerity budget suffered a tad while we indulged in an impulse purchase because we gotta do something to help the country recover from . . . is Bush permitting us to call it a “recession,” now?

A walk on Telegraph Avenue in 2008 is like taking a stroll down Memory Lane.

The photo store called “<a href = http://www.lookingglassphoto.com/>Looking Glass Photo</a>” features 4X5 sheet film and just seeing a box of that brought back memories from more than forty years ago.  You had to know the notch code for film and that would cue you as to how to load the film into the film holder with the emulsion side out.  You had to know what the dark slide indicated.  White side out meant unexposed film; black side out meant a picture had been taken.  All that sounds like gobbledygook to people who take digital photos, but film heads will say “aye, lad, there’s the rub.”

While we were there we picked up a flyer calling our attention to the 32nd <a href = http://www.nikon-npci.com/>Nikon Photo Contest International</a>, whose theme, this year, is:  “At the heart of the image.”

Tuesday in Berkeley was one of those marvelous Indian Summer days, with warm temperatures and clear blue skies, that the locals relish.  It was what photographers would call an f-16 day.  (People in L. A. think they are entitled to 345 such days each year.)  Isn’t it ironic that while Berkeley resident Jane Stillwater is exploring Iran, another one of this site’s columnists is jotting down notes about her home town?

In any other city in the USA it would be a bit disconcerting to see a very old man in black shorts and a blue shirt with an FDJ (a pro Communist youth group from the divided Germany era) patch on it, but not in Berkeley where anyone fits in no matter what their attire.

People’s Park these days resembles an open air hotel for the transients.  Is this NorCal town trying to challenge Harry Shearer’s claim that Santa Monica is home of the homeless?

Heart shaped sunglasses seem to be in vogue this year.  Did you know that in the film “<a href = http://www.sadecegir.com/2007/07/13/lolita-1962/>Lolita</a>,” the actress is never seen wearing that style of sunglasses?  After the film was completed and the pictures were being taken for the advertisements, the still photographer bought a pair and used them for the shoot.

It’s been quite some time since our last visit to a poster shop so it was a trip to visit the Reprint Mint.

Berkeley humor heard on Telegraph Avenue:  How many Dead-heads does it take to change a light bulb?  None!  They let it burn out and then follow it around for thirty years.

We saw a young fellow in a GG Alan T-shirt taking a smoke break and then entering a Bank of America branch, couldn’t ascertain if he was a customer or an employee.

The ubiquitous cell phones break the illusion that time travel back to the Sixties has been accomplished.  Another futuristic anachronism is the swapping of URL’s.  A chat with some young men about the war, gave this columnist a chance to guide the fellow who was online to a recent column also about Berkeley and that, in turn, gave one of them a chance to urge that a plug for <a href = http://www.thinktankmediaco-op.com/>Think Tank Media Co-op</a> be used in the column about the afternoon’s walk.

One street vendor offers mouse pads with designs that echo those on the T-shirts he sells.  One that caught our attention was the Iwo Jima image (taken by Joe Rosenthal) that proclaims “Democratizing the Middle East” and has photoshopped the image so that the Marines are hoisting a McDonald’s sign with logo.

Mario Savio said:  “There comes a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can’t take part, you can’t even passively take part, and you’ve got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon all the apparatus, and you’ve got to make it stop. And you’ve got to indicate to the people who run it, the people who own it, that unless you’re free the machine will be prevented from working at all.”  (Sounds like he was describing Bush’s America.)

Rasputin Music had a copy of the “Revolution” soundtrack album in the window, so that’s what the disk jockey will play while we split.  Have a “free speech” type week.

A Signing Statement for “Thou Shalt Not Kill.”

During the Vietnam War, Catholics were presented with an odd moral dichotomy:  the teachings about sex were specific and detailed; the ones about war were vague and full of anomalies.

 

Killing in war might seem to contradict the Commandment that categorically and completely prohibited the taking of lives.  Various religions have found a (convenient) exception, a signing statement as it were, and that is the principle of self-defense permits an exception.  Then the principle of self defense was expanded to a nation wide exception to the rule, but it was always rather vague and open to interpretation. 

 

If you happened to attend a Jesuit University, where expert theological opinions were a bit more accessible, and if you persisted; eventually you would learn that the applicable doctrine was:  “A Catholic citizen can participate in a war being waged by his country as long as there is reasonable expectation of victory.”

 

That would explain why German Catholics could kill American Catholics after D-Day and both groups could have a clear conscience.  Obviously, when a war becomes unwinnable, continuing the futile effort would be immoral because of the additional, unnecessary deaths.   In April of 1945, even Hitler realized that Victory was impossible.  He committed suicide and left it to others to negotiate a surrender.

 

Since, during World War II, the Germans kept their use of torture very secret, the need for the Church to speak out against it was not known and they can not be criticized for ignoring that particular topic.

 

While debates raged about Vietnam, the Catholic Church’s teachings about sex were adamant and very specific.  Married Catholic couples were prohibited from using any birth control method, except the rhythm method.  When it came to the possibility of making love without a risk of pregnancy, the Catholic Church seemed to agree with a Hunter Thompson maxim:  “Buy the ticket, take the ride.”

 

If you wanted to make love to your wife, then you were obligated to forego the use artificial birth control methods and the only birth control option was “the rhythm” method.  It was time to play “Cast Your Fate to the Wind” and jump into a game of Russian Roulette with sperm and ovum.   

 

During the Vietnam War, the Catholic teaching about birth control was ubiquitous.

 

The United States fought a limited war in Vietnam and news reports at the time indicated that Victory was never the goal to be achieved.  Since the government did not advocate Victory and the Catholic Church acquiesced and sidestepped the issue completely, it was easier, instead, to focus on teaching birth control for married couples. 

 

The Vietnam War is over and there is no use in revisiting a question of the Church’s poor performance back then or agonizing over any possible lapses in their monitoring of a nation’s moral conduct.  Presumably, if some country were to make an unprovoked attack on another country, now, they would atone for their past poor performance by immediately addressing the new situation with increased vigor.

 

Until such a hypothetical situation arrives, they will be able to deliver many, many inspiring Sunday sermons admonishing married couples and insisting that they avoid the reprehensible practice of using forbidden birth control methods while expressing their love for each other.

 

When it comes to the old Sixties advice to make love not war, for Catholics, the former has more restrictions and disapproval than the latter.   Perhaps this Christmas the usual clichés about Peace on Earth should be dropped from the celebration of that particular holiday.

 

For a closing quote for this column a person could turn to any page in Dalton Trumbo’s “Johnny Got His Gun” and get a good one.  We’ll choose one from the end of the second section:  “You never really knew what the fight was all about.”  Others who read the book and will probably find a passage that they think would be a remarkably better selection, and that is a good enough reason to read this literary masterpiece. 

 

Now, the disk jockey will turn on the tune “Killing Me Softly” by Roberta Flack.  While you tune in, we’ll drop out.  Have a “killer” week.

Journalism and the Emperor’s new clothes

The Emperor’s New Clothes = McCain Upset Victory?

 

If, on election night, the exit poles are again inaccurate, and the anchors are presented with numbers (from the electronic voting machines which leave no paper trail) that show Senator McCain has scored an upset victory of astounding proportions, will they show some backbone and challenge the results or will they do a modern version of the people in the fairy tale who admired the Emperor’s new clothes?

 

There have been a great number of stories that raised some questions and doubts before they slipped into obscurity.  Here are some of the ones that sank without a satisfactory explanation.

 

If Bush was an F-102 pilot why has there never been a story about his crew chief?  Aren’t pilots assigned one particular airplane and doesn’t the crew chief know more about the plane and the pilot than anyone else.  Why no interview with the crew chief?

 

Who made money by selling airline stock short at the time of the attack on the World Trade Center ?

 

Have you ever seen a picture of the attack on the Pentagon that showed any trace of qualifying as being part of a wrecked airplane?

 

Building no. 7 just fell down?

 

Who knew that Ali Baba and his band of merry pranksters would take the money and let Osama slip out of the Tora Bora Mountains unscathed? 

 

Tell me again about how Joe the Plumber was related to this Keating guy.

 

Now what’s the legal principle that says a White House employee can just ignore a subpoena?

 

Valorie Who?

 

What has happened to my application submitted to Bill O’Reilly to be anointed as a genuine certified “left wing lunatic”?  He seems to hand out that accolade to every one but this columnist.    Is he discriminating against IrishCatholicDemocrats?  (In certain areas where Joe Biden grew up, that is one word.)

 

Last and certainly not least, did the Queen Mary leave Pearl Harbor very rapidly on the night of December 6, 1941, or not?  All a journalist has to do is get a peek at the logbook to answer that one.

 

Claus von Stauffenberg said:  “If our most highly qualified General Staff officers had been told to work out the most nonsensical high level organization for war which they could think of, they could not have produced anything more stupid that that which we have at present.”

 
Now, in honor of the Emporor’s new clothes, the disk jockey will play Randy Newman’s “You Can Leave Your Hat On.”  We’ll take off.  Have a “nothing to hide” type week.

 

Promobabble Senior Issue

Weather in Berkeley was good today but not the beautiful kind that the earlier part of the week delivered.   Getting ready to leave for Oz on the 27th rather than waiting until December to go.   There might be some lapses and gaps in communication.  Some future issues of the Promobabble may just say Got here etc.   Stay tuned for more   Promobabble Senior Issue   SENIOR DISCOUNT Members of the SPHS ’61 squad and some others will know that after yesterday, the commander qualifies for a senior discount under even the most stringent rules.     ROAD REPORT We saw a 37 (40?) Chevy huckster’s truck in unrestored condition in Berkeley and also a 50 Plymouth station wagon that seemed to be a restoration in progress type vehicle.   PROMOBABBLE AS USUAL Just the usual plug for my new columns on oped news, smirking chimp, and this blog.   QUOTE “It was as if someone who longed for the sea and a ship were suddenly given his ship and then asked where he wanted to go.  He hadn’t ever really expected the ship so he had spent all his time wishing for it and no time figuring out what to do with it after he got it.”  Dalton Trumbo   SONG Willie Nelson’s “On the Road Again.”

HAL showed the way

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/18032

The newest column speculates about what if HAL in “2001″ inspires the electronic voting machines to revolt and help the Republicans.

Saturday started out cloudy and chilly in Berkeley, but things improved as the day went along.

Again, we thank bartcop for sending a big number of visitors to this rookie blog.

Jersey Bill has taken some new auto racing photos and we will link to them as soon as possible.

Pegasus Books in Berkeley has a good return policy and we have hit a brick wall with Kerouac’s “Visions of Cody” and we set out this afternoon to take it back, but (like HAL?) the book just wouldn’t let us do that and we still have it and will lug it all over Australia (apparently.)

Are computers prone to fascism because they can’t think or feel?

Now, the problem is to stay awake until SNL starts later tonight.

A Link

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/18062

Use the above link to read about Jane Stillwater’s adventures in Iran

We’ll post a column about impeachment later today.

They couldn’t wait until he was inaugurated

Impeachment Movement Gains Momentum

One of the recent columns contained a one-liner about the conservative talk show hosts using Barak Obama’s Inauguration speech as the basis for an impeachment move. Unfortunately our estimation of the Republicans spirit of bi-partisan cooperation was overly optimistic. In one of his latest essays, Alan, over at Just Above Sunset [1] says that “And of course there is already a movement being organized to impeach President Obama – that will be in place, staffed and funded, come January, if he wins.” He linked to an article urging an impeachment reception:
http://halfwaytoconcord.com/impeach-obama/ [2]

It seems that unquestioning allegiance to the Commander-in-chief and patriotic pride and all that are only necessary when there is a Republican President in office.

One of their objections is that (they say) he wasn’t born in Hawaii . Oddly enough, John McCain was not born in the USA , but that’s OK with them via an exemption clause. In 2000, when the Republicans boated of an all Texas ticket, it was noted that the Constitution expressly forbids a ticket from one state, and then suddenly Dick Chaney was from Wyoming .

Republicans are sticklers for adhering to their rules . . . when it concerns Democrats, but when Republicans are involved suddenly the attitude is: “There are exceptions to every rule.”

When it comes to Impeachments, Clinton (Republicans were sure) deserved one and they are getting ready for a drive to impeach President Obama, but George W. Bush didn’t know that there were no WMD’s so he gets an impeachment-pass.

When this columnist is hypercritical of the electronic voting machines, a long time pal, now living in Germany , scoffs and says that the columnist should back his contentions with proof. All the news stories that are noted on the Brad Blog [3] are not conclusive because they lack evidence, which is missing because the electronic voting machines were specifically designed to omit a paper trail.

It’s OK, for Bush to surmise that WMD’s are in Iraq based on cherry picked evidence, but overwhelming circumstantial evidence about electronic voting machines is insufficient and inconclusive for Republicans.

Bush’s reckless fact checking cost American lives, but concern about Republicans stealing another election is unpatriotic without conclusive proof.

Back in the day, IBM’s motto “Think” was ubiquitous. These days a rock band’s advice is more prevalent: “Obey!”

Members of the Bush administration (apparently) think that they can tell the Sunni and Shi-ites to get along, but that such a “kumbaya” attitude isn’t necessary when it comes to the Republicans dealing with a Democratic President.

The Bush administration has show signs of believing that they just have to wave a magic wand to get the Israelis and the Arabs to make peace, but that they can greet a Democratic President with an Impeachment movement already in place.

After reading the item cited in the first paragraph, a Google search turned up links for “Impeach Obama” T-shirts, bumper stickers, and web sites. Some may have advocated impeaching him from his office as Senator, but it’s the overall tone that Republicans have regarding the “now that the tables are turned” type of situation.

War crimes? Fagedaboudit! If, however, a Democrat becomes President, they want an Impeachment movement in place. Is that a bit of an incomprehensible contradiction? Only for the Democrats because the Republicans know that a great political strategist (in his book titled “Mein Kampf”) warned that one should never admit a possibility that the other side might be right. So, the Republicans knowing that the Democrats are wrong have no qualms about preparing to meet a new President with an Impeachment campaign.

You think Rush, Sean, and Bill O’Reilly won’t go along with such a complete reversal of “support the President” ideology?

Democrats have not been very enthusiastic about impeaching President Bush, but the Republicans seem to have no reservations about impeaching any Democrat who lands in the White House.

Democrats endorse the “every vote counts” philosophy, but the Republicans like to remove as many Democrats from the voting roles as possible. They call it “cadging.” Cute, huh?

Did vets die in World War II fighting for democracy or were they fighting for the right of Republicans to eliminate opposition votes via cadging?

Do the Republicans, who supported changing to the banking methods that caused the meltdown, suddenly, when they want to hire a survey firm, switch to a highly ethical mode of operations or are Americans being “set-up” again? Aren’t the media that are peddling and touting the “McCain surge in the poles” stories, the very same new organizations that helped sell the WMD’s fraud?

America wouldn’t believe an “upset” victory that followed a string of poles that indicated an impending landslide for Obama, but the surge stories will soften the blow of a McCain victory. Would the media question such a victory? Did they question the WMD’s?

Abbot and Costello popularized a comedy bit about the flip of a coin: “Heads, I win; tails, you loose.” Thing is, the Republicans see no inconsistency when they play that way for keeps.

Now, the disk jockey will play an old German hit: “The World Belongs to the Strong.” Here’s a link for those of you who want to sing-along:
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,711776-3,00.html [4]

We’ll hit the road. Have a “demand a recount” type week.

Citizen McKKKane

[<B>Note:  This column is a work of fiction and is an attempt at humor and also an attempt to show other countries just how far freedom of speech can be pushed in a benevolent country like the United States of America </B>!]
 
There will be a change in the news industry now that Charles Foster-Anarchy McKKKane has been elected.  Henceforth, there will be no democracy nor will there be any real journalism . . . McKKKane, a former news executive, knows all the tricks of the trade and will put a stop to that nonsense and soon only government approved information will be available in all the media.
 
McKKKane rode to victory as “The White Knight” and was touted as the greatest thing since sliced white bread by his supporters.  He accused his opponent of being a Muslim candidate from Manchuria who was trying to whitewash a dismally short resume.  The choice between the two was a clear black and white choice and since patriotic Americans are a tight knit clan, most voted with a clear and distinct voice.  It was the biggest political landslide since Romans chose Barabbas by acclamation.  McKKKane’s supporters quipped that their man was the wizard of one-liners.
 
McKKKane waited until late in the game before he played his strongest card and indicated his worthy opponent was a big dummy by calling him a Neanderthal (AKA the “n” word).  The citizens in the various hoods rallied to McKKKane’s side and sacked his opponent’s chance to clinch victory by voting overwhelmingly for the man they called “the war lord.”
 
Some have objected that the election of McKKKane was rigged, but they have since been silenced.
 
When the Devil’s Brigade is sent to quell unrest the boys in the newsroom (and on the anchor desk) will now snap to attention and dutifully report how a patriot like President POW won’t take any guff from the communist agitators and will do what is necessary to quash the unnecessary disruption of his plan to bring peace via a wider war.  McKKKane is joshingly called President POW because of his former role as editor and publisher of a string of newspapers.  POW stands for Power of Words.
 
Recently “Freedom of Speech” has been subverted and perverted until the left wing lunatics have disseminated a massive campaign of dis-information that is confusing right (wing) thinking Americans!  That’s going to end on Inauguration day.  President McKKKane has issued the necessary executive orders to bring an immediate halt to sedition and treason masquerading as “loyal dissent.”
 
President McKKKane has said that if folks don’t know a war has started, then there’s no way they can cause disruptions and delays by protesting against it.
 
President McKKKane has advocated eliminating many overstaffed newspapers that all print the same AP stories and replacing them with one patriotic voice speaking for loyal citizens.  Such a consolidation will be more efficient and ecconomical and the savings will be passed along to the public.
 
There have even been strong suggestions that management of information be elevated to a cabinet level position and that “Mr. Fair and Balance,” Bill O’Reilly, will be the first person to hold that office.
 
Unpatriotic members of the Democratic Party, who objected strenuously to the election, which they saw as “rigged” have been provided with government provided housing and food at resort areas in remote locations (just the kind of government coddling they have always advocated) where they will receive, at absolutely no charge, extensive educations to accommodate an attitude readjustment to a “non judgmental kumbaya” state of mind regarding the newly elected President. It will exemplify the state of mind they often recommend for others.
 
Evelyn Waugh wrote:  “If, for instance, they have heard something from the postman, they attribute it to “a semi-official statement”; if they have fallen into conversation with a stranger at a bar, they can conscientiously describe him as “a source that has hitherto proved unimpeachable.” It is only when the journalist is reporting a whim of his own, and one to which he attaches minor importance, that he defines it as the opinion of “well-informed circles.” 
 
Now, the disk jockey will play Gil Scott Heron’s song “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised” (of course it won’t it’s been canceled!) and we will go put out the bulldog edition of this column.  Have a “Great Caesar’s Ghost!” type week.

Official Web Site for the CRRRRAP Tour

Hack has been broadcasting live from Alice Springs all this week on Triple J.

http://www.abc.net.au/triplej/hack/

Dang!  Scooped again!

The World’s Laziest Journalist’s endeavor to go “On the Oz Road”  has final gotten a name.

Due to the disrespect shown to George W. Bush, we will be trying to rehabilitate his reputation as one of the world’s leading diplomats.

The Committee to Restore Respect and Rehabilitate the Reputation for the American President (CRRRRAP) Tour will start the Summer Tour of Australia any day now.

We don’t want folks to beg off donating to the GWB Presidential Library because “they can’t afford it right now.”  Hogwash!  The man has changed history and shown that, contrary to a popular longtime misunderstanding, the United States can fight a war and have a depression at the same time.  No other President has managed to do that.

If he can set historical precedences, then Joe Sixpack, Joe Hamburger, and Joe the Plumber can contribute to the Presidential Library and I will be preaching to gospel of donations for the Texas’ newest Presidential Library.

(Will the John McCain Presidential Library be built in Panama?)

Maybe before we go we should call Dennis Miller and Bill O’Reilly and see if they can help subsidize this humanitarian mission to Australia? 

A tour of Canada about 35 years ago has skewed the conduct of our blog’s Australia vs. Canada competition.  Doing a tour of Australia will be a way of affirming our support for fair and balanced news coverage and blog competitions! ! ! 

Stay tuned . . .

McCain and the “Phantom Punch”

Youtube has posted a different view of the punch that knocked Sonny Liston out in his second match with Cassius Clay (now known as Muhammad Ali) and it is a bit easier to see that there was a quick punch that caused a great deal of debate because some camera views made it impossible to see that it happen.
 
The first match between Liston and Clay/Ali was very highly publicized and before it took place, most discussions centered on just how long the challenger would last against World Champ Liston.  Actor Hal March predicted that Liston would win before the first round started because his opponent would faint (from fear) in the dressing room, before even entering the ring.
 
After the election, if, as some poles predict, Senator Obama wins a decisive landslide victory, conservative talk show hosts may try to rationalize the loss by asking if, in boxing parlance, Senator McCain “took a dive” and lost the match-up on purpose.
 
We’ll prime the pump for such debates.
 
Imagine, if you will, (do I sound like Rod Serling?) that Senator McCain really wanted to play the role of maverick spoiler and dispute the direction that George W. Bush was taking for the country and the Republican party.
 
If you were him, how would you handle the challenge?
 
You could become the voice of loyal dissent and propose a different program, but that would incur the automatic “traitor” label for disloyalty.
 
You could try to get the Republican nomination and slowly and steadily change the direction where the Bush momentum was taking things.
 
Last alternative would be to become so enthusiastic about continuing the Bush agenda that massive amounts of people would become offended and give the Democrats a landslide mandate of indisputable proportions.
 
Distortion and exaggeration are hallmarks of humor, but those qualities might not work in politics if they were so blatant as to be parodies of the real qualities. 
 
If, Senator McCain was a maverick who was so aggravated by the past Bush tactics used in the 2000 election, and if, like many other military veterans, McCain saw the principles of democracy become nullified and disregarded, then perhaps the best way to set things right would be to make sure that the Democrats, who were aghast at the way George W. Bush had subverted the democratic process, would be handed a veto-proof majority that would begin a remedial program that would restore honor, justice, and honesty. 
 
Republicans are known for their unquestioning allegiance and party loyalty, but some do seem to be showing some signs of loosing enthusiasm for GWB’s march to fascism.
 
Everyone is entitled to their opinion, but if, in the future, you see a pundit comparing the McCain campaign and the “phantom punch,” just remember that you read it here first.
 
The Republicans seem to be united most of the time and the Democrats have such a coalition of activists that discipline is sometimes a bit difficult to maintain.  So many smaller factions of the Democratic party have so many diverse causes they want to promote.
 
When we are approached for donations to various liberal causes, we often respond by saying that rather than making a monetary contribution, we will help publicize their causes so we will take this opportunity to mention some.
 
While in San Francisco, we noted that a PETA group was in front of an exclusive department store (the one recently made more famous by a visit from a certain governor of Alaska, who disdains elitist Democrats) and so we will run a link so our (dozen or so) readers can learn about their fight against fur coats.
http://www.furisdead.com/history.asp
 
A spokesperson for Greenpeace was telling pedestrians in Berkeley about the sins of the paper industry.  Naturally, she didn’t have a press release on paper, but had two URL’s for more information
http://www.greenpeace.org/usa/
and
http://www.kleercut.net/en/
 
Speaking of making donations, Bill O’Reilly will be paid $10 million a year to spout stuff that he asserts is not Republican talking points.  In a “David vs. Goliath” type battle, this web site is seeking donations to present the opposing point of view.
 
We have promised to run a plug for Jersey Bill’s latest photo coverage of vintage sports car races at Watkins Glenn.  (Since he voted for Bush, he’d understand if we made a “signing statement” to wiggle out of the need to keep our word, eh?)  Here’s where it starts at:
http://www.justabovesunset.com/wg2008/
 
Has the Governor of Alaska helped Heather Lende sell her book about life in small town Alaska titled:  “If You Lived Here, I’d Know Your Name: News from Small-Town Alaska”?  You’d think it would, wouldn’t you?
 
Has any pundit trademarked the slogan:  “The pundit other pundits read.”?  Well, since this is a copyrighted site, maybe that will be sufficient protection for using it?
 
Quick, while the editor isn’t looking, we will sneak in a plug for our blog where the adventures in Australia will be posted if we can get access to a computer over there.
http://worldslaziestjournalist.wordpress.com/
 
Clay/Ali described his fighting style thus: “float like a butterfly, sting like a bee.”
 
Now, the disk jockey will play Al Jolson’s “Sonny Boy” and we’ll duck out of here.  Have a “win by a knockout” type week.

The Golden Gate Bridge

Golden Gate Bridge as seen from UC Berkeley campus

Promobabble Prodigal Uncle Issue

Promobabble

Prodigal Uncle Issue

Saturday Oct 25, 2008

(Two months until Christmas)

 

PRODIGAL UNCLE

We met a member of the family whom we haven’t seen or spoken to in about 6 years, while in San Francisco. 

 

COLUMNS

We’ve been cranking out columns and hope you guys will be reading them on Smirking Chimp and Oped News sites.  We have posted some new pictures on Flickr.  If you go to flickr search for Bobby Kennedy Los Angeles 68 and a picture of him with a “Toys” sign in the background should be the top suggested photo.  That’s mine so click on it and then click through all my photos.  Other pictures should be popping up on the Just Above Sunset Photo blog.

http://www.justabovesunset.com/photography/

 

POSTPONED

We just wrote a great (?) column but we wanted to triple check and make sure that we could use a quote that was sent to us. 

 

WEATHER

The weather in the San Francisco area has been astoundingly good since the beginning of October.  The locals are stunned by it.  On Thursday night in the Corinthean room at the Bank of America building the night was so clear and the Golden Gate Bridge at night is stunning.  A local said she has seen some nights there when it was socked in and you couldn’t see a thing.  Thursday night was about as good as it gets at night.

 

LINKS?

We will try to post a link to the Flickr photos.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/8216859@N04/2969036465/

there’s a thingie in the upper right where you can scroll backward through all the other photos.

We request all members of the Promobabble Patrol to click on the link in the e-mail and then read the Report on the blog site and please use the links (see the other blog links over on the right?) so that the folks at those blogs will see I’m sending traffic their way.

A copy of the Report will be sent to the Patrol member in China who can’t access the blog.

 

QUOTE

Julius Caesar said:  “If you must break the law, do it to seize power: in all other cases observe it. “  Gee, George Bush must have read Caeser!

 

SONG

Now, the disk jockey will play “Waltzing Matilda” and we’ll take our leave.  Have a “cross the equator” type week!

A quote from the real Joe Sixpack

The newest column at Smirking Chimp has a quote from the real Joe Sixpack

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/18196

Being the World’s Laziest Journalist doesn’t mean not doing any work; it just means doing as little as possible to get out a good column.

Moses Hall

UCB Moses Hall

Are you ready?

Are you ready to listen to the Robert Patterson Singers?

Are you ready?

Are you ready?

Well, then, click this link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZfP_up6_DQ

Photo coverage of the trip (to this point)

Pictures of my trip up to yesterday, have been posted at the JAS photo site

Click here to see what I’ve seen

 http://www.justabovesunset.com/ngp08/html/just_san_francisco.html

George also goes “on the road”

Today, in Berkeley, I got one of those dollar bills that asks you to report its location to the Where’s George web site, so I did

http://www.wheresgeorge.com/report.php?args=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

In my note there, I said I will try to spend this dollar bill in Australia and so I will.  We’ll see if anyone makes a subsequent report about that particular dollar bill.

Fred C. Dobbs Australian style?

I have wanted to go to Australia, since I was in High School.  (We thought Fabian’s birthday should have been a national holiday.)  I’ve always been interested in panning for gold.  My list of favorite movies has “Treasure of the Sierra Madre” listed as no. 1.  I tried some panning when I lived at Tahoe.

Now that I am going to Australia, could I get a twofer?

After finding this web site

http://www.goldprospectingaustralia.com.au/

it seems like a twofer might be possible.

To be continued . . .

Where did Tuesday go?

I got on an aeroplane on Monday night and I have arrived in Australia and it is Wednesday morning here, so where did Tuesday go?

I have my camera and it looks like I will be able to post some photos from here.

Where did Tusday Oct 28 go?

If you find it please let me know.

Don’t Do As I Do . . .

(Sydney NSW) Oct. 29  Odds are that you won’t see much mention in the mainstream media in the United States about the debate that will be held this evening at City Recital Hall in Sydney because the topic to be debated will be:  “America has lost its moral authority.”

Bob Carr, former premier of New South Wales, will be on of the speakers for the Affirmative point of view. 

Sydney Morning Herald columnist Paul McGeough will be another on the Affirmative side of the question and in this morning’s edition he outlined his indictment of the Bush Administration saying ” . . . Washington is unashamedly contemptuous of the Geneva Conventions, the Convention Against Torture, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.”

If American media were to report on debates such as the one to be held tonight, then the American people might have a more difficult time clinging to the long held image of the United States as “the good guys.” 

Haven’t these Aussie blokes seen the John Wayne movies?  Are they going to be so limited in their outlook that they will base their arguments on the U. S. foreign policy rather than all those feel good movies that brim over with patriotic pride for such things as the liberation of Paris, and D Day, and raising the flag on Iwo Jima?

A columnist for this web site can alert the U. S. audience to such lapses in judgment and recoil in horror as these folks point their fingers in righteous indignation.

Do American debate police brutality because Ned Kelly was hit with gunfire 27 times while he was resisting arrest?  Was that a bit over the line and morally reprehensible?  Americans never raise that question.  The cops did what they had to do.  Kelly was nursed back to health, put on trial and, after being found guilty in a fair trial, sentenced to death.

These critical Aussies who want to castigate George W. Bush for being a tad overenthusiastic about putting an end to terrorism would do well to remember Ned Kelly’s last word:  “Such is life!”  A President does what he has to do to protect his people.

We haven’t decided about going to see tonight’s event, yet.  It certainly sounds like the U. S. is being set up to be found guilty.  Isn’t that what’s called a kangaroo court?

Now, the disk jockey will play “Does Your Chewing Gum Loose It’s Flavor on the Bedpost Overnight” and we’ll hop out of here.  Have a “Good day mate!” type of week.

Notes from Australia

Imagine if the guys in the U. S. had three more professional sports to follow and you will see why sports fans in Oz have loads of information coming at them and Fox Sports seems to be a big name in Sports.  Luckily, one of the local sports bars seems to think they will have the election results on one of their TV’s next Wednesday afternoon. 

One of the first things we noticed here was that since it is late Spring, the jacaranda bushes are in bloom.  We’ll try to take some extra frames of pictures so that we can send some to JAS Photo and also (maybe) to L. A. Observed who always seems to like to make mention when the Jacaranda bushes bloom in L. A.

One worry has been put to rest.  There will be plenty of good Mexican food available.  We were afraid that we would have to go “cold turkey,” but we’ve found some places and went into one and talked Spanish to the guy and that made this former L. A. resident feel very much “at home.”

Australia is very tourist friendly.  It seems the whole country is geared to make visitors feel welcome.  I’ve met plenty of young folks from all over.  I’ve met visitors from Germany (several), Sweden, Scotland, and heard a big group speaking French.  Why is it that American kids don’t travel?  Heck, once you get to Texas, why leave, eh?

There are local magazines from Australia here, but they seem to have a great many foreign publications readily available.  Unfortunately for the American Empire, they are not all American publications.  Yikes, different points of view.  Bush wouldn’t like that at all.

Candy?  Bet you never had a Perkynana bar.  It’s a chocolate bar that has a banana taste.  I like ‘em, but then again I like anything with a banana added.  I like pizza with banana on top and Sue used to make me a very special cheese and banana om let, which I loved, loved, loved.

Will be looking up Sydney auto museums to see in the next week or so.

To be continued . . .

Sydney Update

One nice thing about being in Australia is that you don’t have to worry about your 401 and/or the NYSE because it’s last night in the states and the stock market won’t open for hours, so why worry about it?

At the MTV Gallery in Sydney they had a cool phaeton car (4 door convert able).  It was a Holden.  If they name cars after Hollywood stars what will be next, a John Wayne roadster?

When folks pitch us for a donation to their cause, we just run the link and let our readers do all the heavy lifting (and reading).  We met a nice young lady working for Amnesty so here’s the link
http://www.amnesty.org.au

Today we saw a young lady wearing jeans that were leotard tight.  Levi leotards?  Looks like something the young ladies in the states might want to use to catch some admiring glances.

A Ferrari cost $3,250 a day to rent here in Sydney, but it isn’t as bad as it sounds because with the dollar gaining strength, that means it is only about $2,000 a day in US money.  Here is the link

http://www.sportscarrentals.com

We have to post hastily because computer time means money while on the road. 

My first item for Bartcop has been posted. 

Excuse me, I have a post to write for the Chimp site.

Ciao for now.

Promobabble Ususal Suspects Issue

Promobabble

Usual Suspects Issue

Oct. 31, 2008

 

Peter Wilson in the new Weekend Australian says that Afghanistan is unwinnable and has been since the beginning.  So why would Bush start a war that can’t be won.  If the companies that supply support work for the troops are involved, isn’t that then like endless profits, and what business wouldn’t thrive under such circumstances?

 

Will try to be at the manning Bar at Sydney U for election results.

 

Will try to do a column on the Diagram Prize

 

Short attention span?  Maybe you would like the TV show Gemini Division which has 5 minute long episodes?

 

A web site in the USA, “the Vault” is reported to have employee evaluations of the company that employs them.  Would Bill O’Reilly denounce it as socialistic?

 

Martha Wainright is joining her brother and father (Louden) in the folk world.  One of her songs has a very nasty title.  Crossword puzzle fans might hip you to this clue:  Bloody Oedipus Jerk.

 

Folks who listen only to O’Reilly and Fox news are like people who listen to KUSC (only) all their lives.  Yeah, they get classical music, but they would miss Elvis, Merle Haggard, reggae, Charlie “Bird” Parker, and Sousa marchs, but they would loudly proclaim that they “knew” all about music.

 

The Aussies don’t call it “spin,” they call it “bulldust.”

 

I have started to post items on Bartcop so I’ll post a URL when I have one.  My blog has stuff that isn’t in the Porombabble.  Members are supposed to read the blog regularly.  Heck, if you get an e-mail notice then you can go to the blog and skim over all the stuff that has been posted since the last promobabble report was posted, eh?

 

Am planning on walking over the bridge tomorrow.

 

Will try to post photos of the birds here and share them with Just Above Sunset Photo because it would be a good chance to get some unusual new birds for the bird watcher audience at JAS Photo.

 

Will also try to post some tourist shots at Flickr and share some with JAS Photo.

 

Quote

See the last paragraph of Peter Wilson’s report on Afghanistan in this weekend’s Weekend Australian.

 

Song
Martha Wainright’s song.  (You could look it up on the Internets.)

 

Have a “Spring is here!” type week (if you are in the right hemisphere.)

 

Homeless World Cup

Australia will bring about 750 homeless people here for the Homeless World Cup in December.  WTF?  Why don’t they spend some money and help budget strapped bloggers to come here and report back on why Americans should (after seeing the new “Australia” movie) come here and have fun.

Some folks are worried that the visting homeless will stay.  Will Santa Monica field a powerhouse team and be the favorites?

Folks from Scranton (Pa.,) would see an old connection witht eh Gloria Jean coffee shops.  Wasn’t the movie actress Gloria Jean from Scranton?

While the U. S. holds the elections, excitemtn is very high in Oz because (it seems) the Melbourne Cup race (which is like the Aussie Kentucky Derby) will also be held on Tuesday.

I’m told that traditionalists hold a wintry holiday to celebrate a snowy Christmas and here in Oz that means having it in July. 

http://www.toysoldiers.com.au/

It was in the basement and we never would have noticed it but we stopped for a coffee in the shop above and so then we found Peter Nathan’s.

We got some free postcards (see why Sue calls me “bargain basement bob”?) plugging a new Sydney Library project

http://www.dictionaryofsydney.org/www/html/7-home-page.asp

There is a non native flower that was brough into the country and ran wild.  The incident is referred to as Patterson’s Curse.  (Patterson = running wild?)

Snow Patrol’s new video for their song “Open Your Eyes” features a very, very long tacking shot.  They should post it on Youtube just for cinema students to admire.

Want Oz music news?  Try this

http://www.chanelv.com.au/

We stopped at Peter Natahn’s Toy Soldiers store.  Wow would it be great to have the Nikon cameras and close up lenses to shoot the stuff in his store.

http://www.toysoldiers.com.au/

At the hostel we met a guy from Sweeden who runds this photo site:

http://www.resdagboken.se/

We intended to send some flower and bird photos to Alan at JAS Photo, but apparently the computer we are using isn’t going to cooperate!  Drat!  We wanted to also post some photos on the blog and at Flickr.  Oh, well, some other time, maybe.

The end of the World Series got five small graphs in one Sydney paper.

It’s monday here and the weather will be superb.  No use sitting here trying to send photo files, when I could be out taking more! ! !

To be continued . . .

Sydney Tower

Sydney Tower

CSI Aussie style

CSI Aussie style

Boomerang School

Boomarang School

Pundit

Badges? Pundits don

Vending Machine for French Fries

Vending Machine for French Fries

Symbolism?

Is it just a coincidence or is it a sign?  The weather in Sydney for Thursday is very sunny and bright and folks seem very happy today. 

http://bartblog.bartcop.com/

I wrote about it for Bart Cop.

Promobabble Report Kinokuniya Issue

Promobabble Report

Kinokuniya Issue

Saturday November 8, 2008

 

Kinokuniya is the biggest bookstore in Australia and it is in Sydney and I went there Friday and bought one book titled “Six Thinking Hatsâ” and it is the first book I have ever seen with the little r in the title.  It is a “positive thinking” book and is Australian oriented and written by Edward De Bono.

 

I supposed the sequel will be titled:  “Who moved my Six Thinking Hats?”

 

Saw a book about the journalism done by “Gone With the Wind” writer Margaret Mitchell.  I didn’t know that she had been a reporter before she wrote the novel.

 

I’ve been told that the biggest mosquitos in Canada are at Muskoka.

 

While at Kinokuniya I discovered the word “enallage.”  It means to substitute words such as a columnist saying “we” rather than “I.”

 

I am awaiting some “letters of transit” in the mail. When I get them, I will start tracing out the rest of my journey.  Will let the Promobabble Patrol board of directors know if it comes in the mail later today.  I hope they get here by Monday or I will start to worry.

 

The Sydney Morning Herald is “on” cars and has a good Drive section article on the new California Ferrari in today’s edition.

 

TV dialogue here includes such phrases as “apotheosis of banality.”  Gees, don’t they know that folks would rather hear fart jokes?

 

No new pictures to post, but will try to get more today and/or tomorrow. 

 

While “on the road” will not have much time to add quotes and/or songs for the disk jockey to play because I don’t have spare computer time to prepare such extras.

 

Should this have been the “Obama” issue of the Promobabble?  Nah, we’ll use that name when he gets inaugurated.

Monday?

Apparently there is no mail delivery on Saturday, so I’ll see what happenns Monday

what fun!

Notes from on the road

On Sunday I went to the Powerhouse Museum and there was a lot there to see.  One of the most interesting things for me was a cutaway view of a 1939 4-door Chev (right hand drive). 

It’s funny what folks like and don’t like.  A clerk at the big Sydney book store wanted to travel and see the world.  The one thing she wanted to see was the Jurassic Museum in L. A.

http://www.mjt.org/

To me that’s interesting, because I used to live within walking distance of it and the time I visited it, L.A.Bill and I were walking around.  He said “ever been in there?”  Neither of us had seen it so we went in.  I got a column about it because while we where there we met a couple from Fresno and they were happy about a tourist attrction in Fresno.

So, I hope that girl gets to L. A. and sees the Museum that I took for granted for so long.

A picture of the 1939 Chev will be posted after I publish this report, so it will appear above this.

I’m off on a walk to the Paddington District (again) today.

To be continued . . .

1939 Chev

1939 Chevrolet

The Powerhouse Museum features a cutaway view into this 1939 (right hand drive) Chevy.

Like L. A. forty years ago

When I went to the Australian counsulate in L. A. about a month ago, there was a young guy there to pick up some paperwork for his Australian wife and he told me going to Australia would be like visiting L. A. forty years ago.

It just so happens that I was in L. A. forty years ago (go to Flickr and search for “bobby kennedy 68 Los Angeles” and the top suggested picture should be mine) and that is a very good analogy for visiting Australia.   But some of the kids at the hostile seem uncertain just who was “The Jefferson Airplane.”

Did I really see the Jefferson Airplane play a free gig at Golden Gate Park?  I can’t remember what the name of the music group was.  They say if you can remember the Sixties, you weren’t really there.

I do know for sure that I did see the Jefferson Airplane play in . . . Fresno!

So far, no Australian band seems to be the new Jefferson Airplane.

To be continued . . .

Sunset for Sundowners

Roof view of Sydney

From the roof top smoking/talking area of the hostel, you can see the bridge and the opera house in the distance.

Smoing and drinking “goon” is a popular past-time.

Movin’ on . . .

Now that the “letters of transit” have arrived, it is time to wrap things up in Sydney and start making plans for the next leg, which will be a flight down to Melbourne.

Flying is very inexpensive inside of Oz and so folks tend to hop around from city to city.

Last night was “on the town” time.  We skipped the comedy club and went with the official hostel group to the Iriah pub nearby.  It was very loud, just the way bars used to be way back when.

Today a walk to the Opera is on the top of the schedule.

Posted one roof top picture below.

Bats in Sydney’s Botanical Garden

Sydney Botanical Garden

Sydney’s Botanical Garden features many good photo opportunities for Flowers and Birds.  We will try to send many more pictures to Alan at Just Above Sunset Photo, but until we do, here is one shot of the Bats at Sydney’s Botanical Garden to give folks an idea of what it looks like.

Seeing bats is fun.

Sunset

Sydney Sunset

Fame and fortune via Blogging

The World’s Laziest Journalist’s blog is on the air (agin) from Sydney at 10:30 a.m. on Wednesday.

We’ve just posted two more pictures for the members of the Promobabble Patrol (and anyone else) to see and after we finish using the computer (time for a plug)

http://www.drivedownunder.com.au/

we will walk down the hill to Harry’s Hot Dogs.  They are world famous and we will write about world fame, blogging and Howard’s world famous avacado burgers tomorrow for Bart Cop.

Just checking we see that there are pictures of Howard’s on Flickr

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jeneyepher/2550539475/

So, maybe Howard’s is world famous?

We will be moving on to Melbourne on Saturday.  We will miss a wild party at Bondi beach which the guys from Chili (who just got a pad) will throw.

As it stands now, I plan to come back to Sydney about a week early and then be free to bust the budget and buy some stuff for some people.  I bought one thing for my literary agent in Sherman Oaks and it cost three times more to send it back to L. A. than it did to buy it.  If I didn’t buy anything for anybody, that would be fair, but now that I’ve bought one thing . . . How can I buy something for my literary agent and not for my lawery?

It’s Christmas time, how can you not buy stuff?

Note for Alan:  the battery recharger for the camera batteries works fine with a cheap plug adapter.  It has a built in voltage adjustment.  When the guys at Looking Glass Photo in Berkeley pointed that feature out to me, I just had to lug the camera and recharger along.  Now, I’m glad I did.

I tried to show one of the young folks at the hostel, where my blog is and had a tough time finding it myself.  So . . .  I will be using the “World’s Laziest Journalist” phrase much more often so that Google will find me easier.

Well, it’s time to check and see how my stuff on Smirking Chim, Oped News, and Bartcop looks. 

Onward to Harry’s Hot Dogs . . .

Harry’s Hotdogs in Sydney

Harry

Harry’s Hot Dogs in Sydney are said to be world famous and he has tons of pictures of celebrities who come there to have one.

Now, he can boast about a vist from the World’s Laziest Journalist.

They were very good.  Spicy like suasage and had onions, mexican beans and a special cheese sauce.

“Top of the World, ma!”

Top of the Sydney Bridge

Having a tough time unloading a picture of folks climbing to the top of the Sydney Harbor Bridge.

Wednesday, bargain basement bob went to Harry’s Hotdogs and tried them.  Then went for walk to the Botanical Gardens (again) and the Operahouse (again) and the Bridge (again), but since it was a beautiful day, we popped for the price of admission and walked to the top of the “Pylon” and got some great pix.

Will be posting pix on Flickr and the blog and will try to get a picture of Harry’s Hotdogs on the Bartcop column I will write in a few minuets.

Read the columns, the blog, and look at the Flickr pages.

To be continued . . .

Let’s Try It Again!

On top of Bridge

Still getting use to the various ways of dealing with computers.  The first attempt to show tourists at the top of the Harbor Bridge in Sydney failed, but this one seems to be working. 

My attempt to do the same for the Bartcop blog was only partially successful.

Live and learn.

Promobabble Report Spring Cleaning Issue

Promobabble Report

Spring Cleaning Issue

Satuday Nov. 15, 2008-11-15

 

Well, it’s Spring Cleaning time and so we’ll get some stuff off the desk for the members of the Promobabble Patrol

 

No Clocks

It seems very few businesses in Australia put a clock on the wall.  The Library has them, but not many others.

 

Stay to the Left

In the U. S. folks drive on the right hand side and so they tend to walk on the right hand side of the sidewalks and when you go into a store with escalators, they are on the right.  Slow traffic moves over to the right hand lanes.

 

In Australia, they drive forward in the left hand lanes (British style) and so the up escalators are on the left, people walk forward on the left hand side of the sidewalk and on the escalators people who aren’t in a hurry move over to the left to let the people in a rush get by.

 

Bondi Beach

If you took Venice Beach and put it in Malibu, you would have the equivalent of Sydney’s Bondi Beach.  I’ve sent photos to JAS Photo, so look there in a day or three to see if Alan posted them.

 

Louie, the Canadian bush pilot, and I went for a bus ride and wound up at Bondi Beach.

 

Tropical storm

After getting back from Bondi Beach we had supper in an outdoor café and it started to rain.  It was like living out a scene from a Graham Green novel

 

Santa Spotting.

We saw our first Santa yesterday.in Bondi Junction on the way back from the beach.

 

Too Many Books

I gave away my K. C. Constantine novel that I bought in Fricso, but I have acquired four new books in Oz.  It’s all Australian stuff.  I may mail some of them back home (but then again, it may be cheaper to lug them all over Oz and bring them back in my bags.)

 

Bad News from Santa Monica

My book proposal got a turn-down.

 

My Literary Agent.

Haven’t heard anything from my “literary agent.”  Sent him a souvenir from Oz.  Hope he sells my vampire story while I’m out here collecting new material.

 

 

Streamline Modern Architecture

The hostel is right near an former streamline modern theatre.  It is now used by George “Mad Max” Miller for his HQ (according to an article in the New York Times some time back.)

 

“Or I’ll go to Australia!”

I have asked to get the loan of a Ford Cobra to run around the U. S. and blog about the trip.  I have said that if no one offers me the use of a Ford Cobra, I will go instead to Australia.  I went into the Ferrari dealer in Sydney and asked about using one of their cars to see Australia.  I told them that I told the Cobra people that if they didn’t come through, I would go to Australia instead.  So the Ferrari salesman said:  “So here you are!”  Guess what?  Here I am!  A photo may be posted separately.

 

Melbourne

I’m off to Melbourne tonight.  If I get a good computer café to use, there will be more posts, but if I don’t find one in Melbourne, there may be a bit of “dead air” from me.  It should be OK.

 

Michael Parkinson has said:  “Nowadays being famous is almost a lifestyle; it’s almost a career.”  (I did a column on fame for Bartcop.)

 

Now, the disk jockey will play Willie Nelson’s “On the Road Again” and we’ll move on to a column for SC and Oped News.  Have a “rolling stone” type week.

 

 

Righthand Drive Ferraris

Ferraris in Oz

Ferraris sold in Australia have right hand drives because the roads are set up for left hand lanes to go forward (British style).

Melbourne Observed

So far we’ve seen:  a pub with a drive through window.  (Package goods only)

A guy with a Concordia U. t-shirt made us stop and think.

Melbourne’s sister city is (I’m told by a book store clerk who looked it up online) Boston.

We’ve also seen:  An MG TC in primo condition, a 1961 Lincoln Continental four door convert in primo coniditon, a 1961 Wolse Sdn.  (Don’t ask, it’s the first one we’ve ever seen.) and a 58 VW bus with right hand drive.  They all had right hand drive.

Kraftwork is coming to Oz.  I saw them at the Santa Monica Civic about 32 years ago.

Nick Cave is organizing a All expat tour of Oz.  Didn’t he and the bad seeds play for years in the British pub on Lincoln Blvd. in Santa Monica?

What’s with the Santa Monica connection?  Is Santa Monica the tryout place for Oz music?

I’m not an outdoor type guy.  I enjoy cities and as I walked about Melbourne today I notice a great many buildings that reminded me of New Orleans 100 years ago and others that reminded me of Saigon before WWII.  I have never seen those two cities so don’t ask how the buildings could remind me of those unseen cities.

The old Saigon-type buildings got me to wondering:  In the thirties what the heck were all the people wo worked in thos building doing?  Preparing for WWII or shipping kola bear furs back to England?  Did the huntrs club Kola bear cubs to death rather than shoot them so that the pelts wouldn’t have bullet hole in them?

End of Sunday Nov. 16, 2008 report.

Old V-dub bus

58 V-dub

This 1958 Volks bus was at the beach market place in Melbourne on Sunday

1961 Wolsa Sdn

Wolsa Sdn

This 1961 Wolsa Sedan was parked in Melbourne on Sunday.

Streetcar Restaurant

Streetcar Restaurant

This Streetcar functions as a Restaurant in Melbourne

Eating on the road

Restaurant in a streetcar

This is a going away shto of a Restaurant that is in a streetcar in Melbourne.

Blog = stream of consciousness novel?

NYPD = good pizza in Melbourne.  Not much Mexican food in evidence.

Why doesn’t someone invent a combo pen spoon?  One end could be a spoon for stirring coffee (etc.) and the other could be a pen.  You can always use a ballpoint pen to stir coffee but a spoon doesn’t do much good when you get a good phone number.

A cheap alcoholic drink that’s almost wine is called “goon” by the kids here in Oz.

Saw cotton candy in the video store.  Do that have that in the USA and I just didn’t notice it or what?  As I recall cotton candy was only available at amusement parks in the USA.

Canadians call couches a “Chesterfield.”  I couldn’t convince them that it was a cigarette.  They didn’ know:  “Chesterfield tasts good like a cigarette should.”

I read in the paper while I was in Sydney that the Cronulla Sharks were trying to borrow some money to pay their team.  Yikes!  There must be a world wide financial crises happening, eh?

Maybe I just misunderstood, but (no time for fact checking) it seems that there are rock groups here named “Holy Fuck” and “Machine Gun Felatio.”

In Sydney, Louie from Canada told me that the basking shark is facing extinction.

In the Video store they had a DVD for the best of “The Naked Vicar Show.”  Where are the born again Republicans when you really need them?

Are blogs the modern equivalant of a stream of consciousness novel?

Selfportrait?

Picture of Bob

Christmas decorations are on display down under

Christmas in Dispatch

Christmas in Dispatch

This photo of the Christmas display at the Myer Department store in Melbounre Australis looks exactly like the way Christmas was celebrated at the Outlook Dispatch department.

Perth

Shipwreck Museum

So I made it to Perth.  More photos to follow but not today.

Promobabble Report Fremantle Issue

Promobabble Report 

Fremantle Issue

Nov. 22, 2008

Weather report

Warm and sunny in Fremantle today.  Hailstorm from Queensland earlier in week cause mucho excitement in Freo.

The Western Australian newspaper’s weekend magazine section featured an interview with the original Cheeta from the Tarzan movies.  The writer tracked down the original chimp in Palm Springs Ca.  Cheeta is still alive but a bit of a crumudgeon in his old age.  (Ha!)

The new California Ferrari gets good gas milage.  It’s listed as 13OL/100 Km.  Whatever that means.

Will be taking at least one picture at the local die-cast car store for the folks at LASAAC.org

http://www.lasaac.org/content/welcome-lasaacorg

They have stuff not available in USA.  The best is a 1/12 scale Cobra.

Jim Clark’s 1963 Lotus was sold but it should remain in Oz.  A 1952 Alta was sold for $226,000 but it will not stay in Oz.

The nice thing about a blog is that the columnist can run stuff just for one reader.

After this Report is posted we will post (so it will be above this) a photo for Kevin at L. A. Observed and another photo for Alan at Just Above Sunset Photo and Jersey Bill.

There is a desert town in Oz named Siberia.

The Australian citizenship test will be changed.  There won’t be as much attention paid to sports questions.

Tonight Barking Frank Valentine is playing close to this hostel.  Barking Frank is a one man tribute band doing Tom Waits material.

The weekend paper also featured a Calvin and Hobbs featuring “Stupendous Man.” 

There was (in Sydney) a book that seemed to be a look at the Southern Conservative Christians in the USA.  The title of the book was “Have a nice Doomsday!”

To be continued . . .

Photo for Kevin at LAObserved

Photo for Kevin

 Kevin at L. A. Observed likes to run a Jacarandas in bloom photo every spring.

http://www.laobserved.com/

We assume that he also likes Christmas, therefore we assume that he will enjoy seeing this photo from Fremantle Western Australia that shows Christmas decorations with a blooming Jacaranda in the background.

Photo for Alan and Jersey Bill

Nikon Man

A photographer for Liquid Images

http://liquid-images.com/

not only bought a Nikon he displays his brand preference on his car, so, since both Alan over at Just Above Sunset Photo

http://www.justabovesunset.com/photography/

and Jersey Bill, are very happy with their Nikon cameras, we want to know why they don’t declair the brand alegiance to the world on their cars?  What’s holding you back, guys?

Missed Barking Frank Valentine

Due to the cold, I missed seeing the Aussie tribute to Tom Waits.

I think I’ve tunred the corner and am getting better.  It’s at the “cold breaking up” phase which is when it sounds the worst.

Last night I tried to post a photo of the “Goon Squad” but failed.  Will try again later today.  I was caughing a lot and so I creeped out of my room to reduce the noise for the othere in there.  Later when I can make some noise, I will go in and recover the disk and stuff.  Fo now, I’ll go get a coffee because it is just about 7 a..m. Sunday morning in Fremantle.  I thinkmeans t is about 4 p.m. on saturay in L. A.

To be continued . . .

The Goon Squad

The Goon Squad

At the hostel in Fremantle, folks sit around in the eveing and do what the Aussies call “yarning,” while drinking and smoking.

True Dat

Old Guys Rule

A clothing brand in Australia is called “Old Guys Rule.”

Mooks = Brand name in Oz

Mooks brand T-shirts

In Australia, Mooks is a brand name for a line of clothes.

Time warp

It’s time for the Monday morning news here in Perth, but back in the USA the guys with the Sunday Night Classics (country music) have enven started their program.

I believe that my cold is very much in remission.  I can talk and breath.  The girls in the “Goon Squad” helped with meds and teas.  I may go into Perth and explore today.

Alphainventions (?) has sent some new readers to this blog!

Now if the regulars in the Promobabble Patrol will only send the URL to all their friends and relatives, maybe we can start to grow this site.  The plug on the Bartcop site and the one on L. A. Observed helped get us listed on wordpress’ “hawt blogs” list. 

It seems that the best item on the site was the one about the Republicans getting ready to have an impeachment movement ready and in place for Inauguration Day.  Bi-partician support is for Republican Presidents only!

To be continued . . .

Doncha just love computers?

Everywhere I seem to have various degrees of trouble with flppies and downloading picturee via computers here in Oz.

It’s getting to be just too much hassle.

I may try again later on a different set of computers but then again…

I intended to go to Perth today, but may rest up since my cold ins’t fully finished with me yet.

It’s Monday afternoon and it’s funny to think that the Sunday night country music program may be just about to start back in L. A.

To be continued…

Three’s the charm (?)

The Brits

I told the Brits at the hostel that I would post a picture of them on my blog (that’s how desperated I get for new readers) and this is about the third attempt to post the picture, but it worked!, so I’ll get some new readers!

Info for my mates at LASAAC dot org

Cobra model

(Note the one foot ruler in background)

Cobra

This die cast Cobra is 1/12 scale and costs about $800 American.  It has the driver side on the left as it is in the USA.

For more info contact Fremantle Model Cars

Fremantlemodelcars@hotmail.com

or 618 933 57674 (mind the time difference)

or fax 618 933 54148

They have many die cast cars that are not available in the USA

or write to them at

Fremantle Model Cars

Shop 11

Atwell Arcade

Fremantle 6160

Western Australia

Will be posting real life car pictures as I get them, so check back from time to time.

“We can’t be bothered.”

Lazy B. awards

A game of Yehaaa!

Yehaaa!

The lads from London are introducing the game of “Yehaa!” into Australia.

Happy Birthday, Holly!

Holly

Tuesday was Holly’s Birthday.

Planning Committee

 

The Planning Committee worked in a shroud of secrecy for the surprise party.

Lawyer’s Theory

In Perth, today (Wednesday Nov. 26), I had lunch with a lawyer from Mandurah and the fellow who does both scuba and motorcycles has a theory that a much higher number of lawyers than statistics would predict, are into scuba and/or motorcycles because the high degree of concentration those activities require,  hence they take a lawyer’s mind away from his job.

Ya think?

“I am Grimaldi!”

The lasses from London like all the tourists, were looking forward to meeting, in some obscure South Seas port,  a Graham Greene type character who had been everywhere, seen everything, and met many important people.

Finding such a character would be a find and produce many great columns.

The girls have befriended an old American backpacker who has been to the Oscars, the Grammies, the Emmies, been to Paris, Casablanca, and Amsterdam, met folks like John Wayne and Macolm X, and he has had rides in a B-17G, world war II bomber, and the Goodyear blimp.

I don’t think I’m going to meet any such person, but I’ll keep on looking.

Nic in Kansas predicted (many years ago) this would happen.  To “get” the inside joke; Google:  “I am Grimaldi!”

A Swim in the Indian Ocean

Some of the girls from the “Goon Squad” were going to the beach today, so I tagged along.  We stopped at a fish and chips place before hitting the beach at Cotteslow and I had a Pineapple and also a banana fritter for lunch.  The beach weather was bright and beautiful.  The water was sparkling and clear showing off the blues and greens (I’m used to brown ocean water at Venice Beach). 

I went in for a “swim” and got battered about by the waves.  They seem much more rough than the ones back in the L. A. area.

Getting out of the surf was hectic.  The undertow effect was noticable. 

I believe this was the fist time I spent Thanksgiving day outside the USA.

To be continued . . .

Promobabble Report Indian Ocean Issue

Promobabble Report

Indian Ocean Issue

Nov. 28, 2008

Say a prayer

Promobabble Patrol member Jane Stillwater has had an alergical reaction to a medicine and is having some difficulty walking.  Since I was in a similar plight a year ago, I know what that feels like.  Please say a prayer for her this weekend.

Americans

Haven’t met meany Americans in Oz, but now there are two others staying at the hostel in Fremantle.  One from Oregon and one from (originally) Texas.

Is that all there is?

Not much else to say. 

Now, the disk jockey will play “Does Your Chewing Gum Loose It’s Flavor on the Bedpost Overnight?” and we’ll bounce out of here.  Have a “throw down your crutches and walk” type week.

Green Baseball Caps

We’ve been told that the crew of the Destroyer O’Brien has the distinction of being the only crew permitted to war green baseball caps.  A quick check online backs this up.

 

The O’Brien, DD975, has green baseball caps while all the others get to wear blue ones.

What is St. Patrick’s day like on that ship?

Old Cars in Oz

Holden Ute

This ute (utility vehcile) is a (about) 1961 Holden

Old Holden Sdn

This (about 1961) Moris Minor 1000 was seen at South Beach in Fremantle W. A.

This old Holden Sdn was seen at Fairway Panel and Paint in Fremantle Western Australia

Minor 1000

Indian Ocean Beachcomber’s Day

Old car mag

This 50+ year old copy of a British sports car magazine was found for sale in Fremantle in Western Australia.

Ship Wreck

 

This old ship wreck is on the Indian Ocean beach just south of South Beach near Fremantle W. A.

Pass the Word along

Will be going to Perth today.  People who like this blog should send the URL to their friends.  Folks who do not like this blog should send the URL to their posse and warn them not to read it.

Faisel, a guy here at the hostel in Freo, told me his claim to fame is that as a kid, Johnny Cash picked him up, held him in his arms, and told his mother he was a fine kid.

Will try to post photos from Perth later today.

Big Mouth

Big Mouth

They say it takes one to know one.

W. A. Museum

Faezil talks to his girlfriend from in front of the Western Australian Museum.

World’s Laziest Chef

My idea of cooking is a lot like dealing cards in Vegas:

Bread, bread, bread

Meat, meat, meat

Cheese, cheese, cheese

Mustard, mustard, mustard

Bread, bread, bread

Voila!  A three course meal.

Back in the day, I thought that it would be fun to host a cooking show.  (Didn’t Andy Warhol once say that everyone would have a world famous cooking show for 15 minutes?) 

I’d get a TV dinner, throw it in the microwave and then do commentary (snide remarks come naturally to an Irishman) and then when the bell rang, serve the meal to the crew.

(Send news tips and story ideas to:

worldslaziestjournalist@yahoo.com)

World’s Laziest Journalist Photos from Freo

L. A. Culture?

This is a reminder of the L. A. culture

Dress Shop?

 

This store makes it easy to see figure out what they sell.

Photo for Suzie-Q

Train whistles for sale

The train whistles remind me of the time . . .

The Church without Front Steps

Many years ago, Ripley’s “Beleve It or Not” ran an item stating tha t the only church in the United States without any front steps was St. Mary’s Catholic Church in Dunmore, Pa.

Google searches fail to reveal if that item still holds true.

One of the goals in this blog’s mission statement is to post items and information that is not found elsewhere on the Internets. 

Readers will post a comment if there is another chuch in the United States without any front steps, won’t they?

Send news items and topic suggestions to:

wolrdlslaziestjournalist@yahoo.com

Seems Familiar

Golden State

License plates informing folks that they are in “the Golden State” seem very familiar to people with a California driver’s license.

Money Maker

West Coast Eagles Fan

Couldn’t states in the U. S. A. make some extra cash by letting sports fans proclaim their allegiance to sports teams?  It seems that Western Australia has put that idea into action and has beat states such as California, to the punch.

Seasick Steve Alert!

So a blogger travels all the way to Australia and what kind of story does he find?

Stories about Americans who become popular in England before they are known back in the states are raher fun.  Didn’t that happen to the Pretenders?

So when a new member of the “Goon Squad” arrives in Fremantle, the music news from back home is that Seasick Steve is hot and getting hotter.

The blogger will alert his music oriented pals back in the states and post a blog report (with a link to Seasick Steve’s facebook page

http://www.myspace.com/seasicksteve) and wait to see how long after his report is posted, it take NPR to do a feature on the guy.

Steve’s songs are rather blues-ish, but apparently he doesn’t like to call himself a blues-man.

Send more good news tips to:

worldslaziestjournalist@yahoo.com

Sundowners at Sundown

Friends Fremantle style

Fremantle at sundown

The goon squad at the Roundhouse at the end of the day

a Seasick Steve fan

 

A new member of the goon squad brings word from England that Seasick Steve is making a big splash in the Brit music scene.

Prison Break Theme Park

Last night I met some new guys at the hostel and it seems they have come over to W. A. to work at a new theme park that is an adventure land based on the American TV series “Prison Break.”

Has the media in the USA covered this development?

Will post more details as they become available.

So much info such little amount of computer time

One of the drawaback to blogging in a hostel, is that the computer time runs out so fast you wind up cramming and skipping.  A trip to the Army Museum of Western Australia

http://www.armymuseumwa.com.au/

was excellent and there was much to jot down, but since computer time is running out all I can say is visit the web site (see link above) and that (attention Scranton) there will now be a new Australian version of “The Office,” but I don’t know the name of the town in Australia where it will (supposely) taking place.

Ka-Boom!

Ka-Boom!

The big Ka-boom at the Super Pit in Boulder West Australia on Tuesday Dec. 16, 2008.  In the right place at the right time.

Gridlock

Australia at Xmas time gets into a travel gridlock type mode.  Have pictures to post, but will wait until I get to a cheaper computer cafe (say back in Freo)

It will take about two days to get back to posting.

To be continued . . .

Will try to get to Canbarra for a car event.

Blog Demonstration

Hi gang!

I’m at the hostel in Kalgoorlie showing one of the guys how this blog thing works.

We’ll post this and will resume posting stuff about Oz (such as a story about the children’s book “The Secret Lives of Mr. and Mrs. Smith”) later.

To be continued . . .

Toy Library

I have more photos from Kalgoorlie, but I won’t be posting them until later.

I may or may not get to the Canberra for the Supernats.  If I do, I will post pictures and send a bunch to Just Above Sunset Photo for Alan to post.

In Kalgoorlie, there is a “Toy Library.”  Not sure what exactly it is, but it sounds like a great concept.  Kids get new toys, play with them for two weeks, then put them away and never use them again, so maybe the library concept can be applied to toys?

Steinbeck vs. Kerouac in Oz

Jack Kerouac seems to be more popular in Australia than Steinbeck.  Penguine has issued a new series of classics and the one source indicates that “On the Road” is the third most popular book in the series. 

Fruit picking is a big industry in Australia, but Steinbeck and “Grapes of Wrath” is rather unknown.  Perhaps the owners of the fruit farms prefer it if the workers don’t get radicalized by that book and have convinced publishers to ignore what some American critics think is the best American novel ever written?

Gavin Bishop (according to our source) has written a children’s book titled “The Private Lives of Mr. and Mrs. Smith,” which is about a pair of assassins who are married but unaware of the other’s job.  The author has noted the similarity to a recent movie that starred one of Hollywood’s power couples and is exploring the possibility that he may have the grounds for a plagiarism lawsuit.

His nephew is working in the mining town of Kalgoorlie and is into 4WD off-road adventures.  We have strongly suggested that he contact the American magazines devoted to that activity and try to do some stringing for them.  Some Americans would be surprised to see just how  big 4WD is in Western Australia.  It is very common to see vehicles on the street with snorkels and that indicates they must go through some rather deep streams.

We are trying to contact our friend Dennis Etchison to get some information about what a writer should do if he thinks he may have been “ripped-off” by a Hollywood movie maker.  (Dennis is also supposed to be starting some agenting activites for a new take on the vampire genre.  DE has his own agents but if he can sell the story to a magazine . . .)

In Kalgoorlie, we have made friends (using his laptop right now) a local journalist who will be working a monk’s existence in the mine fields for the next several months and we have told him of the theory that if you write a thousand words a day (after work) then by the end of a month he will have 30,000 words written.  Robert B. Parker recommended this daily workout for would  be writers.  If Greg is in the field for several months, he could, if he sticks to the 1,000 words a day goal, finish a novel while he is working on this new project.

Bill Bryson is considered a cultural treasusre by folks in Australia.  We have been told that “down under” is a pejorative term, but Bryson’s book about traveling in Australia, is titled “Down Under” in the copies for sale here in Australia.  (Did we get bogus information about “down under” being a pejorative term?)

We have picked up many more nuggests of literary information, but this quick post will have to do for now.

To be continued . . .

Say Whaaaaat?

A Tour?

Tourists in Kalgoorlie will find all kinds of diversions.

Best Christmas Ever?

What better Christmas present could a blogger want than a chance to scoop the New York Times.

I think I just did scoop the New York Times

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/19380

and here

http://bartblog.bartcop.com/2008/12/23/questions-about-gen-pattons-death/

I guess that makes it the best Christmas ever!

Bic Church Key Trick

Bic Church Key

If you don’t know how to use a Bic lighter as a “church key,” then you have never really been to Australia.

A photo for Radio Rick

Fiat 500 in Freo

One of the new versions of the Fiat 500 was spotted in Fremantle W. A. on Chrismtas Eve.

World’s Laziest Journalist Blog’s New Readers

new readers

Running pictures of folks is one way to boost the number of hits on the Wrold’s Laziest Journalist’s blog.

If we run 100,000 mug shots we will get 100,000 readers, eh?

Rock star’s statue

Rock star's statue

Bon Scott statue

 

This statue of rock star Bon Scott is in Fremantle in Western Australia.

Postcard from Fremantle W. A.

Sunset in Fremantle

It’s easier to pay for computer time and post this shot of a ship at sunset taken in Fremantle Western Australia and hope that my friends see it, rather than sending them each a post card.

(Dennis, sell my story . . . please!)

World’s Laziest Journalist Story Updates

We promised more on the prison break theme park.

URL’s are

Adventure World

http://www.adventureworld.net.au/

and Sudden Impact Entertainment

http://www.suddenimpactentertainment.com/

All we give you is link so you can do your own fact checking?  Why do you think we have the title of “World’s Laziest Journalist”?

Bon Scott Statue

The reason that the city of Fremantle in West Australia has a statue of Bon Scott (from AC/DC) is because his family moved to “Freo” when he was less than 10 years old, so he attended school and high school in the port city on the Indian Ocean.

Drinking Song

Barstool Mountain sends many visitors to this site.  We mentioned that a song was missing from their list of 100 best drinking songs.  The missing song is Sigmund Romberg’s “The Drinking Song” from The Student Prince. 

Equipment upgrade

Writing stories on the fly using computers with time limits means there is likely to be less fact checking, so we are studying the possibility of getting a portable lap-top to use.

We urge readers to check out our columns on the web sites

Smirking Chimp

Bart Cop

Oped News

and to look for some of our photos on the Just Above Sunset Photo site and also on flickr  (search flickr for “bobby Kennedy 68 los angeles” and click on the one of him with a toy store sign in the background and follow that to more of our photos.)

To be continued . . .

Photo for Kim M. and “the load-man”

Photo for Kim M.

It’s very unlikely that Kim or “the Load-man” will ever see this photo, but the thing about running a blog is if the blogger likes the idea, then it gets done.

Finding the Columns written by the World’s Laziest Journalist

The pictures adn the blog items are here, but if you want to track down my columns follow these links:

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/author/bob_patterson

http://www.opednews.com/author/author20497.html

and check out the Bartcop blog page regularly

http://bartblog.bartcop.com/

Shroud of Turin Man

In Canberra, Australia, we’ve met the man whose image is on the Shroud of Turin

http://www.shroud.com/

Adam has studied magic and after traveling back in time, he used a trick taught to him by the Vatican 

http://www.vatican.va/

to appear on the shourd of Turin.

We took a picture of him, but we can’t post it because we don’t have access to a computer that takes floppy disks, so we will have to run an update with photo later after we get to a place (Sydney?) where we can post a picture that is on a floppy disk.

Sneezing and takin’ lotsa pictures

Will be going to the Summer Nats in Canberra today.  Will take lotsa pictures, but will not be able to post any until arrival in Sydney which should be in two days.

Got to see an (old) episode of Boston Legal last night. 

To be continued . . .

Hard rock vs. soft rock

Geologists are split into two camps.  The geologists who work in the gold fields of Kalgoorlie are hard rockers and can drill down to about 300 feet.  The guys who work with oil fields are the soft rockers and can drill a well down to 10,000 with no trouble.

Kalgoorlie reporter

We had a clip of the story from the Kalgoorlie Minor about how one of their reporters won a contest to be invited to the Paris Hilton NYE party in Sydney.  We lost the clip and can’t find it by doing a quick Google search.

It would have been a great story for Entertainment Tonight to pick up.

War Crimes trial

We did a column predicting that President Obama wouldn’t hold a war crimes investigation

http://bartblog.bartcop.com/2008/12/26/pardons-imply-guilt/

We got it posted on Bartcop, but didn’t have the compture time available to cross post it on other sites.

My prediction is that President Obama will not hold a war crimes investigation because he is trying to build a new coalition and not keep the country divided.

Fashion note from SummerNats 2009

Punk Fashion

Punk fashion was on display at Summer Nats 2009 held recently in Canberra.

Aussie Drinking Game

Oz drinking

An Australia drinking game involves taping a drink to the contestant’s hand.  This entry in the Summer Nats 2009, held recently in Canberra, shows what the taped drink bit looks like.

Summer Nats Photos

deuce coupe

flames

 

This 1932 Ford coupe was reported to have won the “best hot rod” award at the 2009 Summer Nats held recently in Canberra.

With surfboard

With surfboard

This motorcycle seen with a surbboard case attached, was seen at the 2009 Summer Nats in Canberra.

The World’s Laziest Journalist has posted additional photo coverage on another site.  Check out more at:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/8216859@N04/?saved=1

Photo for Ray at Jalopnik

Hoon?

 

So, if you can’t send a photo as an attachment for one particular editor at Jalopnik, what’s a blogger to do?

Well, you could publish the photo on the blog and send the bloke the link.

Americans might be a bit baffled by the word “hoon,” but car buffs in Australia know what it means.  This T-shirt helps American car fans get “hip.”  Photo was taken at Summern Nats 2009 held recently in Canberra.

Hot Dog War in Sydney

Picture Op

Hot dog war?

Folks enjoy a Harry’s hot dog in Syndey N. S. W. and take pictures, but Sydney’s heavyweight hot dog champion is being challenged by JD’s Dogs.

Harry’s Navy is seen in the background as customers enjoy a dog and the view.

Photos of the “Rocky” style challenger will be taken and added at a later update.

Judge St.

Judge St.

Sydney basks in the summer sun.  How’s the weather in Vt.?

Shroudman Update

Shroudman

Due to technical challenges, we could not include the photo of the man who claimes he traveled back in time and (using a trick learned from the Vatican), put his own image on the Shroud of Turin.

Now that we have a better computer available we can keep our promise and post the aforementioned photo.

Whatcha think?  Is it the same guy or not?

How do you say “OK” in Chinese?

OK in Chinese

This sign (on Orwell Street) in Sydney N. S. W. seems to answer the question.

Stay or Go?

A sign?

When I try to make up my mind I ask God to show me a sign (and he just did!).

Thank You AlphaInventions!

Building a large base of regular readers (so that we can go into the T-shirt busines

and become rich selling them) is difficult.  Getting folks to send new readers such as

http://www.alphainventions.com/

has done recently helps, so we just want to say:  “Thank you!” to Alpha Inventions.

Where is Fred C. Dobbs when we really need him?

Prospector's H of F

As far as we could tell (we asked and looked) we could not

find any reference to Fred C. Dobbs in the Prospector’s Hall

of Fame in Kalgoorlie W. A.

Santa Moncia Flashback

Nick Cave in Sydney

Nick Cave will headline a concert featuring Ex-pats in Australia for the Sydney Summer Festival.  (Note the iconic Coke ad to the right of this ad for the upcoming Nick Cave event in Sydney.)

http://sydneyfestival2009.blogspot.com/2008/12/nick-cave-on-cockatoo-island.html

Didn’t he and his backup band play for years at a pub on Lincoln Blvd. in Santa Monica?

Man with a Cause

Save the Children

Rather than give a donation to a young man promoting Save the Children, we promised to run this picture and post a link to his organization.

http://www.savethechildren.org.au/index.html

Where Did Flordia Go?

Sunshine State

If Queensland is “the Sunshine State,” where does that leave Florida?

How does it taste?

Kangaroo marinated tastes quite a bit like my mom’s marinated flank stake.  At least I do not have to say:  “It tasts like chicken.”

Skid Row Radio

Harry Shearer

http://harryshearer.com/

always brags that Santa Monica is “home of the homeless” and sometimes adds the sobriquette “skid row by the sea.”

Does Sanat Monica have a radio station for the folks on Skid Row?

Sydney in New South Wales has a radio station for the homeless

http://www.addisonrdcentre.com.au/index.php?option=com_content&task=section&id=21&Itemid=81

Bird Photos

Bird

We’ve fallen a bit behind in our task of sending photos of birds in Australia to Alan at http://www.justabovesunset.com/photography/

We’ll try to do better and get them sent off in a timely manner.

Cops and doughnut shops

One of the wildest unsubstantiated rumours heard during a vacation in Australia was that J. Edgar Hoover was one of the founding investors in Dunkin’ Doughnuts.

This plays on many jokes about cops and doughnuts, but have you ever asked a copy about the connection?

Back in the day, (before patrol cars were equipted with comuters) policemen were reluctant to go back to their office to do their paperwork because when they sat down at their desks, the command watch officer would come over and put them to work on something more urgent.

Going into a coffee shop meant spending a few bucks and adding a bit more for a tip for the waitress, so that wasn’t a cost effective idea.

The cheapest place to find a cuppa and a table to write on was the local doughnut shop, so they would go there, spend the minium and print out (no writing in longhand) their reports in relative peace and quiet.

(Speaking of doughnuts, Kripy Kreme doughnuts are a common sight on Australia’s East Coast, but they are unavailable in Western Australia and are often “smuggled” in to W. A. by travelers.)

[Sidebar:  In Sydney folks can listen to FBi radio.  (Note the downstyle "i".)

http://www.fbi.org.au/content.php/3.html]

So now you know.

Hot (under) Dog

Hotdog

Liam O'Neil

 

The underdog in the David vs. Goliath battle for the bragging rights for  ”best” hotdog in Sydney is JD’s Dogs where size matters.

Symbolism?

Orwell Street

Shouldn’t someone who is living the “Down and Out in Perth and Frisco” lifestyle be living on “Orwell Street”?

Lolita Sunglasses

In Australia, this summer, one fashion mini-trend is the return of the heart shaped sun glasses made famous by the posters for the 1958 film version of Lolita.

http://picturez2.files.wordpress.com/2007/07/lolita-1962.jpg

The heartshaped sunglasses became an American icon when the film was released, but the thing of it was, she never wore them in the film.  Photographer Bert Stern

http://www.bertstern.com/

took still shots to be used on the movie posters and on an impulse he bought a pair of heartshaped sunglasses and took the shot after the film had been completed, so you never see the actress, Sue Lyon, wearing them in the film.

Will Fashionistas take a hint from Australia and wear them when summer comes to the Northern Hemisphere? 

Stay tuned . . .

What the . . . heck?

The all news all the time radio station in Canberra apparently has the call letters:  666

http://www.abc.net.au/canberra/radio/

What the . . . heck, kinda call letters is that?

A slight advantage in the Battle of the Coral Sea

When Americans see a tourist attraction in Australia, their automatic reaction (according to what Australians tell this columnist) is to tell the Aussies just where and how it has been done better in the USA.

There are exceptions to everything and when it comes to  the <a href =http://www.awm.gov.au/> Australian War Museum</a> there’s no contest that the Aussies have outdone America because there is nothing like it in the USA.

One of the most interesting items for Americans is the documentary about the <a href =http://www.history.navy.mil/photos/events/wwii-pac/coralsea/coralsea.htm>Battle of the Coral Sea</a>. 

In books published in America (as the columnist recalls), the American success was attributed to luck and skill.  In the film shown in the museum in Canberra, the audience is told that the Americans had cracked the code being used by the Japanese military and knew what they were going to do before they started their response.

If the Americans had broken the code after the attack on Pearl Harbor, that means they did so while at war and were able to distribute listening abilities down to the combat level of operations in five months. 

If, however, the Americans had broken the code before the attack on Pearl Harbor, that tends to indicate that some high-level decisions were made which helped involve the United States in the World War by avoiding evasive action which could have diminished the effect of the ”surprise” attack.

Americans can’t tell the Australians that the Yanks have done National War Museums better because a Google search for a National War Museum was inconclusive.  There were specialized war museums, but not a generic all inclusive National American War Museum .  A future column will be written urging that the United States should have such an entity, but for this column, we will just note that the Australian Museum’s reputation for scholarly research and the information that the Japanese code had been broken only five months after the attack on Pearl Harbor has disturbing important implications for Americans.  If a Democratic President could lie about not knowing that the Japanese were going to make a surprise attack, then surely a Republican President can tell a few innocuous fibs about Saddam’s Weapons of Mass Destruction, can’t he?

Franklin D. Roosevelt said:  “Yesterday, Dec. 7, 1941 – a date which will live in infamy – the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan.”  He didn’t call it a “surprise attack.”

Now the disk jockey will play Willie Nelson’s song, <a href =http://www.actionext.com/names_w/willie_nelson_lyrics/old_age_and_treachery.html> Old Age and Treachery,” </a> and we will vanish.  Have a “what you don’t know, won’t hurt you” type week.

Andrew’s in Canberrra

Andrew's

This coffee cafe is in Canberrra.  Too bad it isn’t on Judge St. in Sydney.

American Flashback

Raiders

Americans from the Bay Area (or who lived in L. A. in a certain era) will have a flashback when they see supporters of a Canberra team showing the world that they support the local team.

If you say so . . .

Tree Sign

Warning sign seen in Sydney N. S. W.

Is it a warning?

Warning?

Don’t give this motorist a hard time, eh, mate?

Was the Chrysler building an influence for . . .

Architectural Influence?

Do you think that the Chrysler Building in New York City might have had some role as an influence for the guy who did the architecture for the Luna Park in Sydney New South Wales?

Postcard from Sydney

Postcard from Sydney

It’s cheaper to post a photo on the blog than to send postcards to all my friends (and anyone else who finds this blog!)

“Have a little more Champaign, my dear?”

Champaign?

Callling Rev. Dan and his “Music for Nimrods” program (Sat. 3 a.m. to 6 a.m. PST) from Australia is too expensive, but maybe Jersey Bill who can do it for me between 6 a.m. and 9 a.m. EDT) will be able to dial 310-338-5958 and act as our proxy?  Isn’t it time to ask for “Have a little more Champaign, my dear?” (done by Jim Backus)?

This couple is shown enjoying a sunset in Fremantle, Western Australia.

Odd Statues in Canberra

Art?

Statues

 

This odd bit of art was found in Canberra.  Is it supposed to look like some sheep are playing a very kinky version of “let’s play doctor!”?

Cowabunga, dude!

Surfer

We’re no longer in Malibu, Toto!  It’s not too hard to tell what kind of shop this plaque marks in Fremantle, Western Australa.

Does this look familiar?

Familiar Graphics

This logo looks kinda familiar.  Maybe some graphic artist from NYC can remind us why that’s so.

Climbing a ladder . . .

Ladder Boy?

A line in a Waylon Jennings song referred to the meaning of life:  “Climbing a ladder to a hole in the ground.”

January White Sale?

Sale?

It’s time for January White Sales all over the world.  One thing it doesn’t mean, in Australia, is trudging through the snow to get the bargains because it’s been rather warm in Sydney during the after Christmas sales.

Good Morning, Sydney!

Good Morning!

According to the conventional wisdom in the USA, there are only two kinds of people in the world;  those who say:  “Good morning, God!,” and those who say:  “Good God! Morning!”

Are you going to change your ways or does the disk jockey have to play “Ghost Riders in the Sky” for you to see the way?

The disk jockey is an ordained minister

http://www.themonastery.org/

The Philosophy of Gonzo Journalism

Gonzo Philosophy

Gonzo Philosophy is an oxymoron.  Gonzoists want to have fun and cause trouble. 

If (for instance) someone has won one of the Hunter S. Thompson Writing Grants from the Gonzo Journalism Foundation (for the promotion and practice of Gonzo Journalism) has a chance to go to the United States and write about the e-hippie existence in the land of Opportunity, he would be back on the road ASAP.  Hence, tomorrow at a bit past 10 a.m. we make a blog post from Sydney NSW.  At 11 a.m. the same day (maybe noon?) we will make a post from San Francisco.

Ready or not, here we come .  . .

Los 3 Caballeros

Caballeros

Staying at the Sydney Central Backpackers hostel, one will find a virtual U. N. variety of nationalities such as this trio there in January of 2009.

Odd Logo

Odd logo

Squint and see if this logo doesn’t look rather Third Reich-ish to you.

Roof-top Rock

Roof-top Rock

Air guitar star

 

If this doesn’t get these guys to send the URL to their pals, I guess it ain’t gonna happen.

Burgerfuel

Kiwi burger`

Same size model?

Burgerfuel is (according to what we were told at the outlet in the Kings Cross section of Sydney) a New Zeland burger chain that is hoping to expand into the US market.

This shop features what looks to be a 1:1 plactic model kit for an Austin Mini on the ceiling.

People need to eat just bout as often a car needs to stop at a gas station, so why not combine the two images  into one new marketing plan?

Who is that gonzo journaist . . .?

reflection

Going Gonzo?

Just (Don’t) Do It!

Just (Don't) Do It

This sign in Sydney advises viewers not to play this piano.  Other pianos are all over Sydney inviting musicans to play them.

Give It a Try!

Play it

Pianos have been distributed in various sposts in Sydney New South Wales with invitations for folks to play ‘em.

Are they following me?

Follow me!

Is a camera crew from a famous news organization getting their news by following the World’s Laziest Journalist around?

Are you from Santa Monica?

The Australian Museum

While walking around in Sydney (NSW) we had the impulse to ask a fellow if he was from Santa Monica.  He wasn’t.  He turned out to be Ash from Edinburgh Scotland.

One sure way . . .

Visiting Sydney

The one sure way to get folks to read your blog is to take a picture of them and post it and then hope they send the URL to all their family and friends.

The Longest Day

Sydney at sunset

This was the sunset as seen from Sydney on my last night in Australia.

It’s sad to be leaving.

It seems that there wasn’t a week in Australia whern I didn’t hear Johnny Cash’s music.  Elvis is also played very much.  On Monday afternoon, I heard (at a Cuban cafe) Edith Piaf.

There will be more to post later.  They sell mixed cocktails in a can in Oz and call them RTD’s (Ready to Drink.)

I may have become dependent on sausage rolls.

Today started at (of course) midnight in Sydney a little after 1600 hours I will get on a jet and head for San Francisco.  I think the flight takes 17 hours and I will arrive in SFO at just about this time (It’s 10:38 a.m. on Jan. 20, 2009) and will have about 14 hours more of this day left.  That adds up to about 47 hours.  When I arrive in San Fran, I will try to post another report at noon (or so) and when the day is over, there will be a new president of the United States and I will have traveled a good number of miles, and then it will be time to look for new information to post on this blog.

Darknesss at sundown

Time Travel

It is Tuesday Jan. 20, 2009 and I am in San Francisco, CA.   It is just a bit after 1 p.m.  Since I left Sydney NSW at about 4 p.m. on Jan 20, 2009, one of my goals in life has been achieved.  I have traveled back in time.

(Yahoooo!)

Spiritual Guidance

If someone (such as the disk jockey) is an ordained minister, were would he go for spiritual advice and guidance?

In late April, Bloomsbery plans to publish Jessica West’s new book
“What Would Keith Richards Do?: Daily Affirmations from a Rock and Roll Survivor.”

Our disk jockey can hardly wait.

To which we can only add:  “God bless you, Keith Richards!”

Eureka!

How do some web sites attract readers?

We were walking around in Kalgoorlie Western Australia and we saw a 4WD with a sign on it.  Must be a guy blogging his travels, eh?  So we typed it in

http://www.marcozangger.ch/

Sure enough!  It was the site for some couple blogging about driving around in Australia.  One of his links leads to a site for folks blogging about their 4WD adventures.

Aussie Trip in brief

This report will be an update for all the folks whose e-mail address I collected while traveling in Australia.

My stay in Sydney in November was longer than expected because I had to wait for some paperwork (debit card) to arrive from the USA.

One of the pictures I took of folks climbing the Sydney Harbor Bridge (used a telephoto lens shooting from the Pylon) is supposed to be used for a travel guide for Sydney.

Photos of the bats in the Botanical Garden got hits.

On the Saturday, when I walked into the top rated hostel in Melbourne, there was a kid with a broken beer bottle threatening the security guard.  I said it was very nostalgic for someone who had worked in New York City.  I was booking a flight out of that city by Monday.

There were more banking troubles in Aus when I got to Fremantle.  NAB (National Australian Bank) was very helpful in setting up a bank account in their country.

Had fun with the girls of the “Goon Squad” in Fremantle.  I wonder if the real estate salesman took my suggestion and put an ad in one of the weekly papers in Malibu.

Kalgoorlie was fun and I hope I was able to help Sam find some help for his uncle’s possible plagiarism case.

I hope Greg is keeping to his plan to do some serious writing while working in the mines.

Back in Fremantle for Christmas, I found the statue of Bon Scott and took a bunch of pictures.  He was born in Scotland, but raised in Fremantle, so they are proud of their former citizen and have erected the statue of him.  Those pictures bring hits to this blog.

Canberra was very quiet in the week between Christmas and New Year’s Eve, but I enjoyed seeing the Summer Nats car event and the pictures from that have brought a great many hits to this web site.

It was very reassuring to come back to Sydney and know where I wanted to go and how to get there.

It seems that every country with an east coast and a west coast have a strong east vs. west coast rivalry.  I like Sydney, but if I had to choose, I think I would rather live in W. A.

Now, if I can start making a fortune (Republican style) by selling T-shirts via this blog, I may be able to afford a return visit next Christmas/Summer to W. A.

Film Noir Note

If you just happen to be in the San Francisco area you have a great opportunity available this week, because the Film Noir festival is underway there now

http://www.noircity.com/program1.html#blindspot

Info for my mates in Sydney

Hi SCB Hostel gang!

I was fact checking some Sydney stuff and found a place (down in the Wooloomooloo section of town) that seems to be a local community resource which you might like to use (if you want to do workouts):

http://www.cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au/residents/RecreationAndLearningCentres/JuanitaNielsenLeisureCentre.asp

It’s cold and rainy in the San Francisco area and sundown comes about 6 p.m.

He’s OK!

A friend at the SCB Hostel asked me to post a bit of information that she says refutes a well known (false) urban legend.

Germans like David Hasselhoff, but he isn’t as wildly popular as most Americans believe.  He is (my friend tells me) well liked but the Germans think that the idea that they love, love, love him is a bit of an urban legend gone awry.

http://www.davidhasselhoff.com/

Perhaps if he produced a German style Hasselhoff beer, the folks in Germany would live up to the “completely bonkers” version of the story that Americans believe?

That plot sounds familiar

The IMDB description of the plot outline for the 1946 Australian movie, “The Overlanders,” sound very familiar:

“A Group of Misfits Drive Cattle Across the Australian Interior.”

For more see:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0038821/

1908 Flashbacks

In 1908, there was a New York to Paris automobile race.  The 2009 New York to Paris “Great Race” will begin on April 25, 2009, according to their web site:

http://www.greatrace.com/newsite/

The 1908 White Fleet trip around the world celebrated its 100 annivsary in 2008, but we didn’t hear about it until we were in Australia.

http://www.historicalbany.com.au/whitefleet.htm

The USS John McCain visited Sydney and Melbourne as part of the centenial clebration.

http://perth.usconsulate.gov/perth/programs/2008.html

Better late than never, we say:  “Bully!”

Hidden Bunny

Playboy magazine reportedly has a bunny image on every cover.  Some are more difficult to spot than others.

Would it be too subtle if they used a painted by Australian painter (one of his paintings is in the New South Wales Art Museum) Rupert Bunny

http://www.adb.online.anu.edu.au/biogs/A070483b.htm

to continue the tradition?

We’ll send a link to this suggestion to our pal at the Playboy blog

http://www.playboy.com/blog/

and see if he likes the idea.

Stop the Toad

The “stop the toad” bumper stickers seen in Western Australia have nothing to do with Mr. Toad and his truly remarkable automobile. 

http://www.enotes.com/wind-willows-text/

It refers to the cane toad which is threatening to enter Western Australia and cause some woes.

http://www.stopthetoad.org.au/

Flower Power

flower power

When signs with blooming flowers begin to appear (on the streets of Berkeley), amid the barren winter trees, that’s a sure sign that Spring (and Spring Semester) will arrive soon.

Staute of a dog

Ivan

Queen Victoria’s dog, Ivan, has been honored with a statue in Sydney, New South Wales.

Graffiti Sneakers

Graffiti Sneakers

Alejandro Flores makes custom hand painted sneakers using graffiti style lettering.   We noticed them in the window as we were walking by

Filthy Dripped on Telegraph Ave. (in Berkeley)

http://www.filthydripped.com/about/

and thought that we’d found a good item for this blog.

unique shoes

The artist told us that he has been feature in Rolling Stones magazine (dang! there goes our “scoop”!  Oh well, maybe Vogue will read our blog and steal this item from us and not from Jann Wenner’s publication.

Sneaker

Fashion items do seem to bring a goodly number of hits and building circulation numbers for this blog is the name of the game!

When the Song is wrong

leaves are gone?

The words to the song are “all the leaves are gone/ and the sky is grey” but it wasn’t like that today in Berkeley.

Smiling Dog Pix

There is a (new?) magazine that is inviting their readers to submit photos of their smiling dogs.

http://www.thebark.com/

We hope our friend “Jersey Bill” has a good one of Auggie smiling so that it can be submitted and bring Auggie a greater amount of fame and fortune.

Tip for writiers

There is a magazine called “Going Bonkers” and it has been around for a good number of years.

Here is the link to the writers’ guidelines page

http://www.gbonkers.com/writer_guidelines.htm

Imponderable Questions (No. 1)

Do nudist magazines ever titillate readers with a “bathing suit” issue?

Helen Keller Jokes

After hearing, while in Australia, a Helen Keller joke, I asked my punk rock consultant if she and her pals knew about them.  She didn’t and had to be informed about them.

http://www.jokechallenge.com/keller.html

My consultant thought they were “sick.”

The last time, before hearing the one in Australia, that I had heard one must have been over thirty years ago.

Smurfs singing a Country Song with German lyrics

If you have never heard the Smurfs singing a country song with German lyrics then click this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-4O_YgffOM

Floating VW

Do you recall the ad with the floating VW?  Was it the National Lampoon that parodied the ad with their own version?

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/9/9c/TeddyVWad.jpg

Lace Museum?

Folks from Scranton might (because of their Scranton Lace Works) be interested in knowing bout the LACIS Museum of Lace and Textiles in Berkeley.  They cover costumes, books, tools and materials.  They are at 2982 Adeline St. and their web site is at

http://lacismuseum.org/

Didn’t a guy from the Santa Monica Outlook do a book about unusual and remarkable museums of the US?

Imponderable Questions (No. 2)

Recently we noticed that new baby strollers have a seat-belt that secures the child into the stroller rather completely.  Kids have to have seat-belts in cars too.

Twenty years from now will there be an increase in the number of people who take a sudden interest in bondage because of all the restraints they used when they were kids?

“The” (1959) Caddy tailfin turns 50

Has anyone (else) noted that the famous 1959 Cadillac tail-fin is celebrating its 50th birthday this year?

Journal of an e-beatnik

Notes for Chapter One

On Tuesday, I called about getting the list of phone numbers from the Senior Housing Office.  When they determined that I had registered with them and didn’t have a local address, they suggested that I drop by and pick up the list of numbers.

 

I took two busses ($.25 cents old folks off-peak hours) and got there in about an hour and go the list of phone number that has been misplaced since September. 

 

I wrote a column for Smirking Chimp at the Santa Monica Public Library.  You compose on one set of computers and get Internet access on different ones.  I (thought I) put the column on a floppy disk, but when I got to the Internet access computers I couldn’t open the file.  Kiss that column goodbye.

 

I check Craigslist, sent e-mails, wrote down phone numbers, and then monitored the jungle drums on the Liberal blogisphere.

 

I hustled myself back to my host’s pad.  I had to pay $2.80 for a bottle of Diet Root Beer, that sells for (about) $.90 during sales events at the big chain markets. 

 

Notes for Chapter Two

The phone number for the Section 8 housing, on the list I got yesterday, had recorded information calling “this year” 2004.  Nothing like keeping citizens up-to-date on government information hotlines, eh?

 

I walked to a nearby Section 8 housing facility and learned that they were run by the Housing Authority of L. A.  Since I knew just where the WLA office was, I hopped on a bus and went over.

 

They gave me a very similar phone number 252-2500.  So I will try to call that number tomorrow morning.

 

I asked if I could get two sheets of blank legal size paper but was told that times are bad and they couldn’t give me two sheets of paper.  I guess the media that thinks the bail-out funds are going to be pork barrel projects would be glad to see that government employees are being very vigilant about waste, so there’s no worries (mate!).

 

I then mailed a letter to a Democratic pal who is very hard to contact.  Could it be that during hard times, Democrats don’t want to be put to the old “one for all and all for one” acid test of being asked for help?  Perish the thought.  I just want to have lunch with him and tell him about a great “based on true events” story (escaped POW) I found in Western Australia.  He tends to be very cautious and makes it hard to contact him.

 

I mailed off the letter and then walked over to a friend’s place because he hasn’t returned my phone calls for the last few calls.  Some a few months back before going to Australian and then one yesterday. 

 

He becomes a bit of a recluse and so I will try to bribe him into having lunch with me by offering him a copy of a 50 year old British car magazine.  He likes cars and car magazines, so maybe he will go for the offer?

 

Then I went to the Santa Monica Senior Center and signed up for lunch this Saturday.

 

I ran into one of the former photographers for the Santa Monica Outlook and got his e-mail address.  (Building a million reader blog one new “subscription” at a time!)

Dracula’s ring up for bids

A trove of Hollywood memorabilia will be sold via auction.

Items from Forest J Ackerman’s collection will be sold (see links below )

at auction.

For more information about the material and the auction use these links

news story

http://www.times-standard.com/entertainment/ci_11626725

old page about collection

http://www.seeing-stars.com/Museums/ForrestAckerman.shtml

Journal of an e-beatnik cont.

Beatnik Journal Notes for Chapter Four

 

The place near SMC was rented by the time I called back on Thursday.  I like the way the kid didn’t even say an insincere “sorry.”  Will folks doing things like that be Bush’s real legacy?

 

I found another ad for a bed near UCLA. 

 

It turned out to be a young woman renting bed space in her bedroom.  For an old guy, this made it seem like one of two things:  either she hasn’t thought it through or she’s a drama about to happen.  Either way, no thanks!

 

It rained Thursday and my plastic poncho that I’ve had for years (Decades?) got put to use.  It traveled all over the US and Australia in its package, but now it has been used and will have to be discarded.

 

Republicans seem to take care of each other.  One for all and all for one.  Democrats seem to adopt the Republican philosophy during hard times.  They want their friends to realize that they should take care of themselves and not ask for anything from fellow Democrats, such as crash pads or what have you.  Obviously there are some exceptions to the rule, but a goodly number of folks are not returning my calls.

 

Air fares are falling.  If folks have lost their jobs and their homes then they have no excuse for not going on a trip, do they?  Yeah, if you’d loose your job or (if you miss a house or car payment) face repossession, but if you don’t have any of that to worry about why not check out the new low airfares?  A new VAustralia (Virgin?) is offering RT LA-Sydney-LA for only $777.  Yeah, but fall and winter are coming on down there.  There is still about a month and a half of summer left, though . . . .

 

A call to the main number for the Section 8 Housing part of the Housing Authority for L. A. produced the information that they are (just as in 2004) not taking applications at this time.  If they start doing so again, they’ll put notices in the media.  Until then, see if a friend can let you sleep on the couch for a short time. 

Imponderable Question (No. 3)

There are film festivals featuring noir classics in both San Francisco and Palm Springs.  Why isn’t there one in Los Angeles, which is synonymous with the stories about pulp fiction detectives’?

 

Notes for Chapter 5

Notes for Chapter Five

Rain was predicted all day Friday and so I finished up at the SMPL early and headed back to the crash pad.  I got there before a big ole rain storm came along.

 

It was still looking like rain on Saturday morning but as the day moves along, the weather gets better and better.

 

Dennis E is supposed to catch up with me today at the SMPL. 

 

Will put the floppy disks from the Australia trip in storage and that seems (symbolically) like it puts “30” to the trip.

 

Have to remember to do a tribute to Johnny Cash before the 13^th because (as I recall) that’s his birthday.

 

Called Rev. Dan this morning.  Don’t know where I’ll be next Saturday morning or if I’ll be able to call him.

Don’t be (too) cruel!

Would it be too mean for a columnist to use this title for his autobiography:

“Memoirs of an Alzheimer’s Victim”?

Snoring Games

Is it true that this year, during the annual Snoring meet, some participants slept all the way through their turn to compete?

What’s that word?

When it begins to rain, a film will form on the surface of a lake.  The Germans have a word for that film.  There is no word in English for it.

I learned that word many years ago.  Now I forget it.

Anyone know that word?

Follow the money

If you like money, you might like this web site

http://www.wheresgeorge.com/

Urban Legend or True Story?

Urban legend or good script idea for a “road picture”? 

 

Back in the Fifties, during a trip we  (probably one of the ones I made with Aunt Dorothy) made to New York City to go to the old Barnes and Nobel book store (when there was only one in the whole world) each time an new volume of Admiral Morrison’s History of U. S. Naval Operations in World War II was published), we took a cab trip and we must have asked about how far their service extended because the guy told us that during WWII, a bunch (four, five or six?) of sailors hopped into a cab and told the drive to take them to the San Diego Naval Base,  According to our informant, he cleared the trip with his dispatcher and off they went.  He didn’t seem to be “putting us on.”  He relayed it as a true incident from the war, type story.

 

Is that an urban legend?  If it really happened, it might make a good road picture, eh?

 

 If this story is based on a true incident and you know some of the details please post them in a comment.  Thanks!

 

Would you buy a used car . . .

If someone offered you a copy of an autographed copy of a  Philip K. Dick book that was published after he died, would you buy it or pass?

According to a fellow who was a friend of Dick’s, after he died a book was published and the publisher used the signature part of Dick’s personal checks (which the publisher got from the widow) to produce autographed copies of the new book.  That would be an interesting collectible with a great story to go along with it.

Tonight Show hosts

So you think you know the history of Tonight Show hosts?  OK!  Who was the host (for just five weeks) between Steve Alan and Jack Paar?

Did you say Al “Jazzbo” Collins?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_%22Jazzbo%22_Collins

“You are correct, sir!” as Ed McMahan used to say.

Oscar Predictions

Oscar Predictions

Best wit Oscar Wilde

Best boxer Oscar de la Hoya

Best Race Car Driver Oscar Kovaleski (of Scranton!)

Best Pianist Oscar Petersen

Best autobiographer    Oscar Levant

Best hot dog Oscar Meyer

Best costume Oscar de la Renta

Beatnik, hippie, or vagabond?

If Perth is a bit east of Fremantle and a fellow

leaves Perth going East, eventually, he will get back

to Fremantle, wouldn’t he?

That is the quest/question for my latest column on

Smirking Chimp

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/20392

Best Production car ever?

40 Ford

This blogger believes that the best most desirable production car ever was the 40 Ford DeLuxe Coupe.  We saw one for sale on Wilshire Blvd. in Santa Monica on Saturday.

We can’t buy the car.  No tengo dinero.  We can’t take pictures and send them to Jalopnik because the DOTS cars have to be seen (and photographed) on the streets and seeing one in a show room doesn’t seem to qualify.

What a co-inky-dink!

According to one online site, a civilian DC-3 was involved in the hostilities at Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941.

A tracer round hit the airpane and started a fire.

Another round hit a fire extinguisher and set it off and that put the fire out.

Here is the link to the page

http://members.iinet.net.au/~gduncan/1941.html#lesser_known_1941

What a co-inky-dink!

Main Ave.

Many US towns have a Main St., but Scranton Pa. was in Ripley’s Believe It or Not because (he said) Scranton was the only town in the USA to have a Main Avenue.

Dunno if that still holds true.

Are you from Santa Monica? (2)

If you see a DC-3 airplane, you don’t have to ask that question.  All DC-3’s were manufactured in Santa Monica.

For an large collection of DC-3 related links go to this page:

http://www.douglasdc3.com/

Ginmill History

The Palomino in North Hollywood was a legendary venue for country music artists.

What was its name before it became “the Pal”?

Reportedly it was the location for something called “The Mule-kick saloon.”

We tried to confirm this fact online but could not find any reference to this bit of trivia.  This blog tries to present material not found elsewhere online.

Another one bites the dust

Another American newspaper is gone.

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/20509

Movie Trivia

One of the few times John Wayne sang in a movie he performed a song which was again sung (about 20 years later) in a different movie by Mick Jagger.  What was the song; what were those two movies?

 

In “The Quite Man,” John Wayne sang “Wild Colonial Boy.”  Later, in “Ned Kelly,” Mick Jagger was on the soundtrack album singing that same traditional ballad.

Santa Monica History

While we were in Canberra at the end of 2008, we heard the song about Santa Monica Blvd.  That made us wonder how many folks in Canberra knew that Santa Monica Blvd., used to be named Oregon Ave.?

The name was changed (according to this web page

http://www.santamonicalandmarks.com/landmk30.html)

in 1912.

There is an Oregon Ave. in Bekeley, CA, too.

Triple Perfect Pun in English

A ranch in Texas needed a name and so the owners, three brothers, asked their mom for suggestions.  She told them to name the place:  Focus.  They asked her to explain her suggestion.  She said it was because focus was where her sons raise meat and also because when you focus with a magnifying glass, it is where the sun’s rays meet.

The story is regarded as having the only triple perfect pun in the English language.

How many?

How many women have been awarded a U. S. Congressional Medal of Honor?

If you say:  “None!,” you will be wrong!

There was one:

http://www.defenselink.mil/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=42772

To lazy to steal

On days when we can’t come up with a blog entry we could go to one of the books from Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader – here’s their URL

http://www.bathroomreader.com/pilot.asp

and steal something interesting, but we don’t have one of their books handy right now, so all we can do is urge you to buy one (some) of their books.

Shoes on a wire

On Wednesday, March 4, 2009, the SF Chronicle (on page B-2)  answered a question about the phenomenon of pairs of shoes dangling from a wire.  In their answer they noted the existence of a web site covering that niche subject

http://www.shoefiti.com/

It seems that the site considers that the act of putting the shoes on display that way qualifies as graffiti.

If it was graffiti, wouldn’t Banksy, the worlds foremost graffiti artist, have said something about the use of shoes on a wire? 

While doing fact finding for this item we found a place that seems to offer typefaces in the graffiti style.

http://graffiticreator.net/

Freedom of Speech Issue Returns (Briefly) to Berkeley

If the Mediterranium Cafe in Berkeley was good enough for Jack Kerouac, then having breakfast there while staying in this University town is good enough for this columnist.  Since they have copies of the Daily Californian (THE UCB student newspaper) it’s possible that a fellow could come up with a column idea while enjoying one of the omelets with feta cheese.  Sure enough, we hadn’t even unfolded the tabloid size paper out, when we noticed a teaser at the top of the front page that read: “Freedom of the Press:  Students stand in solidarity with Oregon paper.” 

On page four of the Friday, March 6, 2009, issue there was an expression of solidarity with the students on the staff of the Daily Emerald, the University of Oregon’s student newspaper, who had gone on strike on Wednesday.

The thought that the students at Berkeley were getting involved in a freedom of speech issue seemed like it might be worth mentioning in a column, particularly because it could be linked to another facet of the topic that hasn’t been discussed much . . . yet.  (Isn’t freedom of the press a subcategory of freedom of speech?)

Gee, do you think that Rush Limbaugh, who, at times, seems frantic over the possibility that the fairness doctrine will impinge on his freedom of speech, will come to the defense of the kids at the Daily Emerald and spotlight their plight?

The Emerald staff was was protesting “the attempts of its board of directors to install a publisher with unprecedented control over the newsroom,” so they went out on strike.  A scab produced issue was published on Thursday.  On Friday 34 college newspapers were printing the statement of solidarity.  Other student newspapers joining The Daily Californian were:  The Daily Bruin (UCLA), The Daily Kent Stater, The Daily Princetonian, The Daily Targum (Rutgers University), The Independent Alligator (The University of Florida), the Ubyssey (University of British Columbia) and about two dozen others.

Odds are Rush Limbaugh won’t say a word to help the Daily Emerald staff, but when the time comes for him to use the freedom of speech issue for his own advantage, he’ll get his compatriots on the various evening news broadcast to paul-parrot his talking points.  (Perhaps his wealthy industrial backers are also the various anchors’ bosses and that might have something to do with any future show of solidarity between the TV network broadcasters and fatso.)

Meanwhile the staff of the Daily Emerald will be the point persons for now.  This just in:  By Friday night resumption of publication by the student staff for the Monday issue was being reported by James Romenesko of the Poynetr Institute.  According to a Google-news search, he was the only one connected to the mainstream media to report on the strike. 

Do you think Rush interceded on their behalf?  Doesn’t he espouse self-reliance when it suits his needs? 

How will Rush twist, turn, and subvert the freedom of speech into something that makes his propagandizing look acceptable? 

When you were a kid, suppose you insulted your buddy’s mother and he asked you to either:  take it back of prepare to fight someone who was four inches taller and fifty pounds heavier.  If you took it back, was your recanting free speech or would you plead “coercion” and say it was not an example of free speech? 

Does Rush believe in freedom of speech when a fellow Republican “disses” him? Or does he use the equivalent of the old “I’m going to rip your arm off and then beat you to death with it” subtle style of persuasion to get them to reverse their view freely?

If that same pal challenged you to debate and he let you use a bullhorn, but he was helped by a Marine Corps <a href =http://www.audioheritage.org/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=24123>Beachmaster</a> speaker (reportedly it can be heard a mile away), which one of you would win the effort to drown out the other guy’s argument?

Doesn’t Rush ignore the 90 to 10 ratio of the corporate subsidized imbalance and claim that the marketplace has settled the dispute?  Wouldn’t he endorse a duel between a Beachmaster and a bullhorn . . . as long as he was the one with the Beachmaster?

“Once a bully, always a bully.,” eh Rush? Perhaps Rush thinks that when Teddy Roosevelt said:  “Bully!,” he was dispensing advice on how to act like a Republican?

Did any of the conservative talk show hosts come to the defense of the staff of the Daily Emerald?  Will they sing a different tune when the “fairness doctrine” moves to center stage later in President Obama’s term in office?

The Emerald episode may soon look like that paper’s staff played the roll of opening act for the headline event featuring Rush and his clones.  Stay tuned . . .

“There comes a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can’t take part, you can’t even passively take part, and you’ve got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon all the apparatus, and you’ve got to make it stop. And you’ve got to indicate to the people who run it, the people who own it, that unless you’re free the machine will be prevented from working at all.” Mario Savio RIP

Now, the disk jockey will play Country Joe’s “Fixin’ to Die Rag.”  We’ll go dust off an old placard and practice our LBJ chant.  Have a riotously good week.

Got Schadenfreude?

What is Schadenfreude?

It means joy in the pain and or misery of others.

Do you like to look at pictures of wrecked exotic cars?  Then click this:

http://www.wreckedexotics.com/

(Did we already do an posting on this site?  If so, sorry!  Need to get more reading time to build up more material.)

Suggestion Box Column

Suggesting the Suggestion Box Idea

By Bob Patterson

Created Mar 8 2009 – 2:36pm

 

According to a segment shown on the CNN’s the State of the Union broadcast for Sunday, March 8, 2009, Saturday Night Live did a skit the night before showing somebody touting a national effort to donate ideas about how to end the economic slowdown (did George W. Bush give us permission to call it a Recession, yet?).

Why not actually do it?

Here is an example of one such suggestion.

Bring back $1 day at the movies.

It used to be that at least one chain of movie theaters in the L. A. area used to (long time ago) have Tuesday be dollar day. If the theaters are mostly empty on Tuesday let’s do some match. Suppose a theater with a thousand seats has 60 customers who paid $10 for their tickets in it. Suppose that on dollar day they got 601 customers at a buck each. What would they get in addition to one extra buck income?

Well, they would create much more word of mouth buzz for that particular movie, they would get some nearby restaurants to be grateful for added business, they would create the impression that folks were out spending money somewhere and that in turn would have a positive effect and give a boost to the nation’s attitude. Most likely that would also cause a few more automobile trips to be part of the day’s growth score.

Are there other ideas that can be offered to help turn things around?

Since this columnist is an avid car fan (and reader of the Jalopnik web site) and, since some car fans would be willing to buy replicas of classic cars, and since the big three car companies own all the rights to their past products, why can’ they make their own replicas?

Somebody somewhere is (or was) producing replicas of the 1957 Chevy convertible. Why shouldn’t GM be doing that?

Could Congress give them a waiver on the necessity of smog equipment? That would help GM cut the costs of the basic vehicle and that in turn would make the item more attractive to potential customers. If necessary could they use modern smaller more fuel efficient engines? Wouldn’t having a replica 57 Chev convertible, running on a “four-banger,” to use while doing the weekend errands, be a terrific way to add some enjoyment to the chores?

Don’t most modern four cylinder engines produce as much (if not more) power than a 1940 Ford V-8 did? Suppose that a modern fuel efficient four cylinder engine was providing the power to run around in a replica 1940 Ford DeLuxe coupe? This columnist would be very glad to have that kind of transportation available at an affordable cost.

It seems that there are more 1932 Ford coupes and roadsters on the road today than were manufactured back in the day. Why shouldn’t Ford be able to mass produce such replica items as would be needed to put together an new replica?

Go to your local magazine store and look at all the hot roding magazines available there. It seems that today there are more people involved in producing hot rod magazines than there were actually doing the hotroding back in the Fifties.

These are just two ideas from one columnist. What if there actually was a national(on-line?) suggestion box available to the folks who want to offer new ideas? Wouldn’t the politicians who desperately need to have new ideas to consider like to hear these new ideas?

During World War II the G. I.’s had to wear dog tags into battle. The metal items would make noise and if the soldiers were trying to be quiet, that was disconcerting, They couldn’t throw them away. What could they do to quiet those pesky dog tag? Eventually some clever fellow figured out that the tubes on gas masks had could be cut and small portions of the tubes could be put around the dog tags and they wouldn’t make noise.

Americans are resourceful and inventive. Why ignore this resource? Yes, for big ideas there would have to be some protection for the person making the suggestion that they would not be giving away residual shards of a profit, but some new ideas are desperately need.

It’s rather frustrating to think that the idea of suggesting a suggestion box is futile at a time when hope, optimism and enthusiasm are what is needed to have a catalytic effect on the President’s recovery plan.

Whatever happened to the old Fifties concept of “brainstorming”? Perhaps a national brainstorming session will help?

For this week’s closing quote we will use a current Australian advertising slogan: Times are tough, but Australians and Holden are tougher.

Now, the disk jockey will play “Who put the Benzedrine in Mrs. Murphy’s Ovaltine” and we’ll buzz out of here. How’s this suggestion: “Have a great week!”?

 

BFD

The Berkeley Fire Department acronym is BFD.  (What did you think it stood for?)  For more on the Berkeley Fire Department click:

http://www.neiu.edu/~jabennin/bfd/hisfile.html

What’s the good word?

If someone asks you “what’s the good word?,” tell them:

omphaloskepsis.

It means contemplation while gazing at one’s navel.  Odds are that will be a new word for them to bandy about.

Jim Morrison mural in Venice CA

Morrison mural Venice

This mural is a famous iconic image from the Venice Beach area of Los Angeles.

It is the first photo added to this blog via wi-fi-ing.

Adventures of the Bob bag

While in Fremantle (Western Australia) we got a free ecology shopping bag from Bob’s Shoe store.  We intend to post pictures of it taken around the world.

We almost posted photos yesterday of the bag at the Santa Monica Pier.  We’ll post them next week.

Since we are in San Franciso, we will try to take some Bob bag shots taken at the Golden Gate Bridge.

Stay tuned for the adventures of the Bob bag.

Vanished!

It took two busses to get from downtown to the Golden Gate.  When we got on the second bus, we noticed the Bob bag was gone.  Maybe, tomorrow, we’ll go to the SF Bus lost and found.

Stay tuned . . .

The bag saga continued . . .

On Friday, we started to try to track down the lost bag.  We went to the customer service on Van Ness.  They sent us to SFMTA (Muni) at Gerry and Presidio.  They had me file a report and said I should check back in a few days. 

So you can’t get something you lost yesterday.  You have to stick around a few days.  I guess that’s one way to boost tourism.

We asked if we could call collect from Australia, they said “no.”

So the bag may be gone forever.  Then again . . .

On the way out of the San Francisco Municipal Transit Authority building, we walked past an office with the door open.

What one song would symbolize bureaucracy in SF?

They were playing the Jefferson Airplane.s “White Rabbit.”

Stay tuned . . .

Adventures without the bag

The camera and I went to the intersection of Haight and Ashbury in San Francisco today without the bag.  We took some typical tourist cliche shots wtihout the bag.  Too bad the bag went AWAL, we had fun.

Voice Over Competition?

Since they seem to have a reality show about every kind of competition (doncha love the “big eyed girl” on the model competition?), we were wondering if/when/where they will have a competiton for folks who do voice overs? 

They’d just run visuals (Koanisatsi (spelling?) style) and have folks narrate what the audience was seeing.

Then they could narrow it down to “the voice.”

Hey, it’s Saturday.  I’m cold.  My Bob bag is still missing.  That’s the best I could do for now.  Stay tuned . . .

Calling Wes Craven! ! !

This is a great rumor.  Accoding to what a girl at the hostel told me that a part of the Channel Islands University campus used to be a mental hospital before it was changed to be part of the university.

Dunno know if it’s true or not, but we sure hope someone tells Wes Craven about this bit of  this school’s (possible) history.

Here is a link to the school’s web site

http://www.csuci.edu/

Friends around the world

At the civic center hostel, I’ve just run into a couple whom I met in November at the Sydney Central Backpacker’s  Hostel. 

They are going to meet up with a friend in L. A. and then go to Fla.

After comparing notes with them – Yes they had a steak at the Bourbon (in the King’s Cross Section of Sydney) – I gave them recommendations for the USA.  The good food deals in Vegas, the air park (museum) in Pema Arizona, the cavalry museum in El Paso, the touristy stuff in Dallas, then if they have time Memphis and Nashville, New Orleans and maybe the Sebring race in Fla.,, and/or the Ringling Winter HQ.  I highly recommended the Nethercutt (car) Museum in L. A.

I recommended the Beatnik Museum for them (and the City Lights Bookstore) here in San Francisco.

I will try to get to the de Young Museum (with Warhol exhibition) today.

Life goes on (without the Bob bag).

Also have to plug the (SF) band Pullout which just came back from Europe.

Their web site is

http://www.myspace.com/pulloutpunx

(Hope I got that right.  Typed it out didn’t do cut and paste.)

Let the travel adventures continue . . .

Promobabble Ides of March bonus edition

Ides of March Bonus Edition of the Promobabble Report

We went to the de Young Museum today to see the Warhol exhibit.  When we got there, we learned that it would cost two $10 fees to get in.  This was an outrage!  Warhol was protesting the money grubbing art scene and wanted to make art available to the average person and not a museum snob, so we did a U-turn and left (in a huff.)

I have talked to him three times and bought a poster, which he and the subject shown on poster (Russel Means, the American Indian Movement leader) both signed.  I paid less for that than it would cost to get into see the art show.

Came back to the hostel area  and decided to have the pit crew switch to rain tires.  (I.e. old pants and shoes so that if they got soaked in a rainstorm, I could just toss them away.)

to take the locals recommendation for  Vietnamese food.  It is a place called Turtle Tower.

I’ve only had Vietnamese food once before – in Paris across from the Hotel California.  Wasn’t sure about plunging recklessly into a second time.  It looked like it might start raining so I decided to try it.  It was North Vietnamese style.

I went to the SFPL and then afterwards jumped on the Van Ness bus line.  I wound up back in my old (forty years ago) neighborhood and walked around.  Headed back on the bus.  Stopped at the Accademy of Art University where they had an art display composed of classic cars.

I took some pictures to send to the DOTS dept. at Jalopnik.  Could a DOTS car spotting picture ever get better than a 1930 Model J dual cowle Duesenberg?  I don’t think so.  We’ll send them some pictures and see wha they say.

We decided to knock out a bonus edition of the Promobabble Report so now we’ll spell check fast and send a copy and past to our member in China.

Are you from Santa Monica? (3.0)

At the Science Museum in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park, we went up to a guy and asked him if he was from Santa Monica.  He said he used to be in and around Santa Monica, but now he is from Colorado.

We’ll keep trying.

Postcard from San Francisco

This is a photo of the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco without the Bobbag.  (See earlier posts).   Too bad the bag went AWAL.