IT'S NOT MY FAULT I'M IGNORANT

Blog number 221                                                              17 September 2008

Judge Joe says to the defendant, "You know that the constitution prohibits incarceration for debts." 

The defendant responds, "No.  I didn't know that."

Judge Joe, incredulously, "you didn't know that the constitution prohibits anyone from being thrown in jail for owing money?"

Defendant replies, "No. I was educated in Kansas." 

I LOVE IT TO PIECES

Blog number 220                                                              11 September 2008

I just read this and I gotta share it.  It's from one of Booth Tarkington's books.

He sent Bibbs to "begin at the bottom and learn from the ground  up" in the machine-shop of the Sheridan Automatic Pump Works, and at the end of six months the family physician sent Bibbs to begin at the bottom and learn from the ground up in a sanitarium.

CHARLEMAGNE'S SON ROLAND, WAS MY FIRST ROLE MODEL

Blog number 219                                                              11 September 2008

I got to thinking about this guy this morning.  When I used to hang at Weatherstone's, there was this guy that used to come around a couple of times a month.  He never sat down and drank coffee.  He would say, "hi," to a couple of guys, and then he would engage in a short conversation with one or two of the regular hangers -- like he knew them.  He was always smiling, very pleasant, very clean, but he seemed different somehow.

One day a friend and I got to talking about him.  This guy told me that he and that guy used to be meth freaks.  He told me some of the things they did.  He found the guy one morning passed out on the hood of a car -- his feet on the ground, his chest and head on the hood, dried puke under his face.  That's just an example.

He then said that there came a time when he didn't see the guy for a very long time.  Then one morning, there he was. He said he looked so weird, so different.  He asked him what had happened.  The guy said, "I got cleaned up."

"Yeah, I know, but WHAT happened?"

"I got cleaned up."

The guy I was talking to thought the guy meant that he had taken a bath or something, but that wouldn't account for his radical appearance.  Finally my friend said he got it through his thick skull that the guy meant that he no longer took drugs, and that THAT was what accounted for his radical appearance. 

He had met the guy when they both were on drugs, so to him this was an entirely new and strange person.  He had had no idea that doing drugs made that big a difference.

This guy that I was talking to, I never suspected that he had been a druggie, not for a moment.  What had happened I guess, was that the guy's shocking appearance had so impressed my friend that he too got off drugs.  I then realized that what the guy had been doing, and now it made perfect sense, and in hindsight, I kind of suspected something like that, that he was trolling for users, using himself as an example of what one could become.  He never preached. He just "presented himself."  He  was a role model.  One of the best I have ever seen.  A lot better than Donald Trump, lemme tell you.

STILWELL

Blog number 218                                                              10 September 2008

General Stilwell was not only a magnificent soldier's general, but a prolific writer.  Notes, messages, diary entries, poems, plays, treatises, plans.

Here's one of his short "plays."

                                             The Messenger

The Messenger has returned from (presumably) delivering a letter.
Q.  Did you deliver the letter?
A.  Yes.
Q.  To whom did you give it?
A.  I gave it to Mr. Oleson.
Q.  But Mr. Oleson was not there.  He is here now.  You could not have given it to him.
A.  Oh, no.  I gave it to the interpreter.
Q.  But the interpreter is also here with Mr. Oleson, and says you did NOT give to him.
A.  Oh, yes.  I gave it to the cook.
Q.  What cook?
A.  The cook up there.
Q.  Up where?
A.  At Hsich Kung Ling.
Q.  But there is no cook, or house, or anything at Hsich Kung Ling.
A. Yes.  I really gave it to the cook.
Q.  But listen to me!  There is NO COOK there!  To whom did you give the letter?
A.  I gave it to the ma-foo [groom].
Q.  What ma-foo?
A.  Mr. Oleson's ma-foo.
Q.  But Mr. Oleson has no ma-foo, so you did not give it to him.
A.  Ma-foo?
Q.  Yes, ma-foo-ma-foo.
A.  Oh, I gave it to the letter carrier.

About this time the average foreigner gives it up and either writes another letter, murders the messenger, or goes home by the next boat.  The next morning the letter is probably found on the dining-room table.

DON'T WORRY, IT'S JUST POLITICS

Blog number 217                                                             09 September 2008

President Franklin Roosevelt appointed General Hurley as an intermediary between General Stilwell and Chiang K'ai-Shek because of the "tension" between the two.  Hurley immediately asked to be made an ambassador, but that was refused.

Roosevelt then startled Marshall, who had recommended Hurley, by asking that a former Sears CEO, Donald Nelson, go too.  When Marshall asked why, Roosevelt said that he wanted to get Nelson out of the country. 

Marshall sympathized and consented on condition that Nelson was not to meddle with policy or strategy, but was to confine himself to selling razor blades.  For purposes of public announcement this was translated as "studying China's economy."

I GIVE YOU...THE BRITISH!

Blog number 216                                                             09 September 2008

Barbara W. Tuchman, the eminent historian and author of the brilliant, Stilwell and the American Experience in China, states in that book, "No nation has ever produced a military history of such verbal nobility as the British.  Retreat or advance, win or lose, blunder or bravery, murderous folly or unyielding resolution, all emerge alike clothed in dignity and touched with glory.

Every engagement is gallant, every battle a decisive action.  There is no shrinking from superlatives: every campaign produces a general or generalship hailed as the most brilliant of the war.  Everyone is splendid: soldiers are staunch, commanders cool, the fighting magnificent.  Whatever the fiasco, aplomb is unbroken.  Mistakes, failures, stupidities or other causes of disaster mysteriously vanish.  Disasters are recorded with care and pride and are transmuted into things of beauty."

Just so you know.

BITCH BITCH BITCH

Blog number 215                                                             09 September 2008

I don't visit the library in Casa Grande, where I live.  I go thirty miles to Phoenix to vist their library.  "Why?" you ask.  Because the library here doesn't have all that many books, the "new books" section is filled with magazines and "how to" books, and the Library circulars seem to be for the sole purpose of recommending films and lectures, and enumerating the many new features of the library's computers.  Anything ever about books?  Sure.  Book clubs.  That's it.

So I have noticed that whenever I try to put a hold on a new book lately (in the Phoenix library.  Good luck trying to put a hold on a book in Casa Grande), I have noticed they often have the book in CD form, or audio form, but NOT as a book!  I'm afraid books are on their way out.

The only things of value you can be sure will not be stolen except accidentally, is one shoe or a book.

I needed to get that off my chest.  I'm getting a bit crabby in my old age.

It'll get worse.

WELL, I LIKE 'EM.

Blog number 214                                                             09 September 2008

I am enamored with pithy, clever or funny sentences.  I was going to list my favorites from movies and TV and leave it to the reader to remember where they had heard them or wonder what they were all about if the sentences were unfamiliar to them.  Then I thought I might have a contest, and whoever guessed where the sentences came from, would have a chance at a $100,000 prize.  But I decided not to do that.  I decided instead to list them, and the circumstances of their origin.  So here 'tis.

"Didn't your masters teach you that before they sent you here?"  
Wife, fighting with her husband in The Ref. 

In Death Becomes Her, when Meryl Streep's character was told there was a warning after Streep's character had already taken the potion, she says, "NOW a warning?" .

Michael, in The Office, explaining to his girlfriend why he was breaking off with her, "It's not me.  It's you."

"Spider Pig, Spider Pig..."
Homer's song, from The Simpson Movie

From Brother Where Art Thou.  The really dumb one's partner has figured out that he will be eighty-seven when he finishes his sentence because of the added fifty years for their escape from a road gang.  You can see the really dumb one working out that this means he will also receive fifty extra years, and you can see his face light up as he proudly proclaims, "Why, I'll only be eighty-two!"

In Romy and Michele's High School Reunion, discussing a fellow alumni, Romy says, " She's like a little girl except she smokes and says shit a lot. "  By the way.  This is really a funny, funny movie.  Not a good title, but a good movie.

In The Perfect Murder, the wife's boyfriend, who was supposed to kill the wife, but things went wrong, is discussing with the husband what to do now.  After it is decided to do nothing for the moment, he says, " One thing.  Do I keep f***ing your wife or what?" 

In Once Upon A Crime, George Hamilton's character - a gigolo, is being questioned about his alibi during a murder, and when he says he was servicing a wealthy dowager for three or four hours, the police looked at him with disbelief and awe.  George shrugs his shoulders and says, "It's my job.  It's what I do."

In HBO's The Wire, the cry, Omar's coming!  Omar's coming! sends the street rabble scurrying for cover.  Omar carries a shotgun and uses it often.

On King of the Hill, Bobby has accidentally seen his cousin, Luanne, naked.  Telling this to his friend Joseph gets Joseph all excited. 

Joseph asks Bobby if she had on high heels.  Bobby says, "no."  Joseph says, with a dreamy look, "I'm gonna imagine her in high heels."

Near the end of the episode, after numerous futile attempts by Joseph to see Luanne naked, Luanne catches Khan, the Laoion neighbor innocently looking in her bathroom window and yells out, "Peggy, Mr. Khan saw me naked."  Joseph, riding outside on his bicycle, hears this and disgustedly says, "Aw, man!"

WAR MAY BE HELL, BUT READING ABOUT IT IS FUN 2

Blog number 213                                                             02 September 2008

Reading a book called, Iwo Jima in Barnes and Noble's this morning.  Found a bit of trivia.  That flag that was raised on Mount Suribachi, that is so famous?  It has a bullet hole in the second stripe. 

The way it happened was that the guys were so short of people because of their casualties that they were waiting for replacements, so they dug in and slept right by that flag.  The guy telling the story heard noises during the night, and thinking it was Japs, he fired at the noise, found out that the noise was the flag flapping in the wind.

There is an asterisk by the word, "Japs"  in this book.  The asterisk's explanation for existing is that "Jap" was commonly used during the Good War, but the proper word is, of course, "Japanese."  I thought that curious because I, myself have used the word, "Jap" in my blog, with the explanation that that is what we called them during WW 2. 

I was a little nervous using that word when responding to Maryanne's comment on one of my entries, because her mother is Japanese, but I expected that she would understand I didn't mean anything derogatory to the Japanese.  It's just the way I think of the WW 2 Japs, that's all.

WAR MAY BE HELL, BUT READING ABOUT IT IS FUN

Blog number 212                                                             01 September 2008

"Vinegar" Joe Stilwell was put in command of the attacking "enemy" forces during military maneuvers before December 7, 1941.  "His ideas and surprises and unexpected tactics, " included the breaking of rules by beginning his attack by jumping off ahead of schedule.

When I first read this, I thought, "well, that's not fair, to begin the games before the agreed upon time, " but then I realized that war doesn't go by any rules, so that what he did was right on target.  Best to expect the unexpected.

Before the great battle with the Japs at Midway, the Japanese were running war games on the way there, and once they lost a carrier, but they figured that could never happen so they brought the carrier "back to life."  When it actually DID happen that they lost a carrier - two actually, they had no backup plan for that eventuality, and it cost them dearly.

One Jap officer saw the American torpedo bombers shot down one after the other, and kept coming.  He had been told that the Americans would turn tail at the first sign of trouble, so observing this, he thought Japan might be in more trouble than they believed. 

The Japanese before this had always ran into troops that gave up long before they had to.  Singapore, Wake Island, Burma, China - all could have been victories sans idiots and cowards.  Not the troops - the leaders.  Troops mostly do what they are told.  Leaders do the telling.