Passing Thoughts

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profound reflections upon life, death, events and anything else that pops into my head.  

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                                 ‘Passing Thoughts’

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A Rerun From Overflow

I’m tired, don’t feel much like working, but I liked this posting.  God, I loved that bike!     My Teen Wheels    – Steve

Harvey

  No, not Paul, he’s dead and his son just isn’t the same.  Paul was pretty conservative but kind of a part of childhood, and growing up, and even ageing.  Hell, he was always around.  Sort of like Walter Cronkite.  A comfort figure, you knew he’d always be there.

  But this is about Jimmy Stewart, another comfort figure you knew would always be there.  He was an iconic ‘good guy’ like John Wayne was the iconic  tough, straightforward American hero.  It was a good to know they were there.

  I feel sorry that future generations will grow up without those examples of what it  means to be a man; one the kindest, most gentle person you could ever hope to meet, the other fearless and a defender of the weak.  Images, sure, but isn’t that what we seek in our search for meaning and order in life? 

Someone  told me recently that they hope that I accept Jesus as my Savior and recognize his message.  Well, J.C. is still up in the air to me (no pun intended) but I’ll go with the message part.  I condense that to the most basic and important part: ‘Love thy neighbor’.  I’ll buy that, and I don’t need to believe in a flying god to accept it.

Jimmy and John aren’t gods and don’t pretend to be, but the messages they conveyed are real: be compassionate, be kind, be strong in your principles.  Not so  bad.

  Which finally takes us to Harvey, the movie.  Took a while to get there, huh?

  Well, really don’t have much to say about it except Angie & I watched it last night for first time in many years.  This DVD version had an intro by Jimmy, and was absolutely wonderful.  Sometimes we forget how good they could make movies without Rambo and a dozen machine guns.  Like I said, we feel bad that the sheer pleasure of watching a performance like this will be lost to most of our children.  And the message it quietly conveys.  It’s funny as hell yet teaches compassion and tolerance through example, not by by thumping a bible or ranting at a podium.  It’s a message we should all take heed of.

But then again, that’s our Jimmy, right, how could we expect less?

Related:  If you’re a sucker for patriotism (ok by me), click on John over there and there’s a site full of stuff.  You can even hear him do the Pledge of Allegiance.  Much as I loved him growing up, remember that he spent WWII in Hollywood while Jimmy was flying combat missions.  Kind a weird reversal of roles, huh?  

   .

A Letter to my Brother

I wanted to share this with my bro, liked it, so you get it too.  Not Pulitzer material but kinda fun, I think:

Just saw this on the Military Channel.

You’ll appreciate this classic military clusterfuck.  Panama invasion.  Mission: Don’t let Norieaga escape.  So they sent a team of Seals in to disable his plane (must have been before cruise missles) and they did it, lost a few seals though.

Next, take out his escape gunboat.  More Seals, magnetic mines.  Oops, aluminum boat.  Gee, and we probably gave it to him.  Military intelligence?  Uh huh.

So they tied explosives to the prop, just as the motors start up.  Oops again.  Run away!  Meanwhile, as they stealthily are sneaking around stealthily, the soldiers are dropping grenades on them.  Hmm, not so secret after all.

At the same time, the motor on their waiting escape Zodiac pukes out and has to be replaced.  Guess they should have used a Honda.

As our guys are slowly escaping, with their 25 foot max depth rebreathers, they almost get run over by a freighter (who would’ve thought, in the Panama Canal?), have to dive to 50 feet.  Did we say ‘oops’ before?

Oh, that was after they ran into an unexpected underwater fence that blocked their way.  Hey!  Where did that fence come from?  I’m going to run out of ‘o’s for ‘oops’ if this keeps up.

They surfaced under a dock in the middle of a gunfight.  Did I mention that the dock was an ammo dump?  Shit in a basket.  40 pounds of C-4 tied to a heavily armed gunbout over there, ammo dump up above.  Shit.  Guess that’s what hazerdous duty pay is for, right?

To make a short story long, they got away.  Democracy was restored to Panama, American business interests were protected, the world is still gratefull, and Central & South America  love us tp pieces.  Only cost a couple dozen American moms their sons and Clint Eastwood got to make a crummy movie.

But I love that, magnetic mines, aluminum boat.  Geez.

Please, I’m not minimizing the valiant efforts made by our troops, it’s just a reminder that things don’t always work like they do in a Hollywood movie.  Rarely, in fact.

Old Lady Tasered

We’ve all seen this by now, a 72 year-old woman pulled over for speeding and mouthing off to the cop.  So he arrests her, she resists, and he Tasers her.  Oh my, big burly cop, little old lady, and he can”t cuff her without using (possibly) lethal force?  Isn’t a Taser supposed to be a last resort before shooting someone?  He tops her by a foot and maybe 100 pounds, and he can’t cuff her?  Over a speeding ticket?  Did he go home that night feeling proud that he’d done his job to ‘protect and to serve’?  What a fuckin’ wimp.

People, where are we heading when we let them do this to us?  What if he’d just swallowed his manly pride and walked away?  She’d still get the ticket, justice would be served.  Was this necessary or was he just pissed because he didn’t get laid last night?  Maybe he has a problem with his mother. 

If I tasered you and you died, I could be charged with murder.  If you didn’t, possibly attempted murder?  Assault, at least.

SS, Gestapo, KGB, County Mounties, what’s the dif?  Question is, who do they work for?

Related story:  Tasered

I’m Sorry, somebody just wrote a comment…

…about the Obama thing, and it was good.  Unfortunately the computer did one of it’s things and everything got wiped out.  Please try again.  Sorry!

Dead Kids

Nice topic, huh?  Just done writing to some folks about the death of an 11 year-old.  So sad.

Very emotional right now, need to talk, Angie’s in bed.

Then there’s my nephew a few years ago, nice kid, smart.  Liked him.  His sister found him in his bed after he ate a handgun.

Everybody in his high school showed up for the funeral; where were they when he needed them?  Where was I?  Where were any of us?

His parents were the greatest people in the world, they were the ones we wanted our kids to go to if we croaked suddenly.  Sure wasn’t their fault.  Shit happens.

I drive a cab.  Gave a ride to a young woman with a broken leg, took her to a really sleazy motel.  She wasn’t talkative.  Got her in and left.  Then she blew her head off.

Oh God, why?  If I had known I’d have brought her home, Angie would have ‘Momed” her, she would know love (Angie has an abundance of that), we would have have taken care of her.  We could have saved her.  But she had nowhere to turn.  So she died.  Had I known, we could have saved her.

I’m sorry.  I’m crying for Justin, for the guy I gave CPR to, for the motel girl, my nephew, and that poor child in the ER when I was in there Saturday getting a brain cancer scan.  Maybe even for myself, but not as much.  OK, yeah, I’m pretty down right now.  Ah, fuck it.  I think I’ve talked this out.  Feel better now. That’s what blogs are for, right?

Weird Animals

These critters cause problems with us, such as getting away for a weekend, and what to do about the animals?  The cats can survive for a couple days with water, food and a litter box.  Skippy the dog?  Yeah, right.  Problem.

Anyway, we love ‘em and are waiting for them to die of old age.  Try as we might, the cats seem to avoid cars pretty well.

So, Skippy the Dog and Mo the Cat are inseparable, real buddies.  Sure they have their tiffs, but who doesn’t with their best friend?

Dogs hate cats, and vice-versa, right?  Not that simple.  Skippy thinks he’s Alpha around here (and the whole neighborhood)  after Angie and I.  Mo also thinks the same, except, being a cat, we’re all inconsequential.  Those two haven’t quite worked out who’s boss yet.

So Skippy chases the cats around when he feels like it and Mo has figured out that when Skippy is in the yard on his rope, all Mo has to do is grab the rope and Skippy is stuck.  One cat fingernail on the rope is enough to stop Skippy in his tracks.   Woose dog!  It’s really weird.  Cracks us up.  We’re easily entertained.

   The pictures pretty much say it all.  This was 15 minutes of dog tongue bath on a cat, and the cat loved it.  Go figure.

   Why is it that a dog and cat can reach this point and we can’t?  We can’t get along with our neighbors, let alone other countries.  But these ‘dumb’ animals, natural enemies, can.  What the Hell is wrong with us?

Ignorance on the ‘Net; or, Anybody Can Have an Opinion

   Ya know, the Internet is the most democratic thing ever to happen to this planet.  Nearly anyone can say or read whatever they want, national borders disappear intellectually (except in dictatorship holdouts like China, but even those will fall eventually), ideas get shared by folks that never knew such thoughts existed.

  No wonder it’s seen as such a threat by Government, even ours. 

  All that aside, it sometimes makes me gag at some of the stuff out there.  And I don’t mean porn and kinks, they’re in their own category.  I’m talking about sites that try to present a reasonable (to them, at least) argument on a topic or point of view.  And God help us, the people that comment there.

  I do a lot of digging around, following links, in the course of researching postings on this little site and on others we’re involved in.  iTz abslooty Mazing th terBel ritinG und Gramer u findd Owt ther   uNowe wat i Meen&    (spell check had a total fit over that one!).  Don’t know if you’ve fun across any of these.   

   Yeah, maybe you have.  The creepy thing is that they’re on real .coms (which means that somebody’s actually paying to do this) and a lot of the comments are even worse.  The level of illiteracy, ignorance, intolerance, stupidity, racism, sexism. ‘ism’s’ of every kind is incredible to anyone with half a brain and maybe just a touch of compassion.

  Angie assures me that I do have a half a brain, and I felt really compassionate the last time I emptied a mousetrap…

   Anyway, these folks get to express their views, that’s freedom of speech, and I wholeheartedly support it.  It’s just that, geez, it’s kinda embarrassing to be part of the same species sometimes.  Does that make me an elitist?  Maybe.  Or maybe I just appreciate folks being able to express themselves coherently, even if they are whackos. 

  I don’t know what this rant is all about, really.  Maybe I’ve just lived in a liberal minded, intelligent community for so long that it’s always a shock to see what else is out there.  Barbarians at the gate, as it were.  Maybe I read too much science fiction in my youth and had unreasonable expectations as to where we’d be by 2009 AD.

  Instead I find myself crass, prejudiced, occasionally bigoted and quite cynical about the state of human affairs.  And I consider myself to be liberal.  Tsk, tsk. 

  On that cheery note, g’day!

  Not really related, but interesting:  Chalk and Talk

The Band, Southern Pride, KKK

Right now, first off, we’re gonna eliminate the KKK from this discussion.  Just because you’re a southern redneck doesn’t necessarily mean you’re a KKK supporter.  Is that clear?  OK.

   Angie, Jim and I just watched a documentary about ‘The Band’.  Great music, that was back when musicians had musical ability, played instruments, and actually knew what lyrics were.  So much for nostalgia.

  Anyway, it brought mind this whole thing of Southern Pride.  Confederate flags, etc.  The current impression is that this represents intolerance and racism,  the refusal to accept equality between the races.

Maybe, to some degree.  Racists are everywhere, on both side of the fence.  This ‘Sothern Pride’ thing has always been a sticking point for me.  OK, they lost, give it up, huh?  On the other hand, that war was more than a disagreement about slavery.  It was also about state’s rights, the right to leave the Union they hay had voluntarily joined for their benefit.  When it ceased to be to their benifit,they chose to leave that Union.  They felt that they were being treated wrongly and wanted to do things their way.  Kind of like the Colonies a few decades earlier.

They were denied that opportunity, fought hard to achieve it, suffered greatly and lost.  Their social structure shattered, their economy demolished, their way of life (not just the slavery issue) changed forever, all they had left was their pride. 

  How would we feel if we’d lost the revolution?  Would we not be pissed off?  Would we not be proud of our attempt at freedom from what we felt was an unjust regime?

   So I understand the Southern Pride thing to some degree, though I’m glad they lost, and I think they should get over it.  Most of the Southern boys who died for the Confederacy didn’t fight to preserve slavery, they died to preserve Southern Freedom (at least for white folks) as they saw it.  Remember, the Emancipation Proclamation didn’t free Northern slaves, just Rebel states.  We were the last civilized nation in the world to ban slavery.

So that’s why I can enjoy southern rockabilly.  It’s proud, unyielding, and basically says ‘fuck you Neil Young’!  Plus it’s good to dance to!