Don Adams,Dead at 82

Sorry about that Chief!

Well, would you believe....

Go Go Gadget legs!

The depressing news that Don Adams is dead is the perfect topper of a dreadful week.
http://jam.canoe.ca/Television/2005/09/26/1236535.html

In a 1959 interview Adams said he never cared about being funny as a kid: "Sometimes I wonder how I got into comedy at all. I did movie star impressions as a kid in high school. Somehow they just got out of hand."
In 1941, he dropped out of school to join the Marines. In Guadalcanal he survived the deadly blackwater fever and was returned to the States to become a drill instructor, acquiring the clipped delivery that served him well as a comedian.
After the war he worked in New York as a commercial artist by day, doing standup comedy in clubs at night, taking the surname of his first wife, Adelaide Adams. His following grew, and soon he was appearing on the Ed Sullivan and late-night TV shows. Bill Dana, who had helped him develop comedy routines, cast him as his sidekick on Dana's show. That led to the NBC contract and Get Smart.
Adams, who married and divorced three times and had seven children, served as the voice for the popular cartoon series, Inspector Gadget as well as the voice of Tennessee Tuxedo. In 1980, he appeared as Maxwell Smart in a feature film, The Nude Bomb, about a madman whose bomb destroyed people's clothing.

my new clock

Luddites areound the world may now rejoice in the production of my new clock.

http://www.lares.dti.ne.jp/~yugo/storage/monocrafts_ver3/03/index.html

Women are like apples, Men are like grapes

Apples and Wine

Women are like apples on trees.
The best ones are at the top of the tree.
Most men don't want to reach for the good onesbecause they are afraid of falling and getting hurt.
Instead, they just take the rotten apples from the groundthat aren't as good, but easy.
The apples at the top think something is wrong with them,when in reality, they're amazing.
They just have to wait for the right man to come along.
The one who's brave enough to climb all the wayto the top of the tree.
Men... Men are like a fine wine.
They begin as grapes and it's up to womento stomp the shit out of them
until they turn into something acceptable to have dinner with

thanks to http://hyuppie.blogspot.com/2005/08/apples-and-wine.html

How true to history was the "Last Samurai"?

This cut and paste was pulled from Mr. Dresner's history forum. Here is the URL. I felt that Mr. Dresner would not object to this publication providing that I not only credit him full, but publish it its entirety. Is a bit long. Might I suggest that you check out Mr. Dresner's forum for yourself, and read the comments. Some of the comments are even longer. Its great fun!

http://hnn.us/articles/2746.html

How True to History is Tom Cruise's The Last Samurai?
By Jonathan Dresner
Mr. Dresner is Assistant Professor of East Asian History at the University of Hawai'i at Hilo. His research examines Meiji-era (1868-1912) social history. And he is a member of the HNN group weblog Cliopatria.
From the opening voiceover and title to the final scene, The Last Samurai is an historical disaster. I expected it to be bad, based on early reviews (e.g. Paul Dunscomb's social critique and Tom Conlan on samurai mythology and discussions on H-Japan). This isn't surprising, of course: popular representations of historical circumstances are often badly done. But this is distinctively and truly awful. There was real drama and adventure in late nineteenth century Japan that could have been even more powerful, but instead we get a pastiche of Dances With Wolves , Karate Kid , Kagemusha and Shogun .
A quick summary of the movie for those who haven't seen it. Yes, I'm going to give away the ending, but if suspense is what interests you, this is the wrong movie anyway: there is almost nothing about the plot or characters that is surprising or original. In 1876, Nathan Algren (Tom Cruise), a PTSD victim who was once a U.S. cavalry captain under Custer, is hired by Japanese industrialist/politician Ōmura (noted actor/director Masato Harada) to train Japanese military conscripts for combat against a gathering storm of rebellion by "the samurai" who do not wish to modernize their ways. In an early skirmish he is injured and captured by the rebels, and recovers in their mountain village encampment over the course of the Fall and Winter when the snows cut them off from the outside. (This begins the Dances With Wolves section.)
As he recovers, he gains remarkable facility with the language -- and the rebel leader Katsumoto (Ken Watanabe) speaks excellent English -- and becomes impressed with the purity and simplicity of the samurai way ( bushidō), not to mention getting really good at Japanese-style armed and unarmed combat (that's the Karate Kid part). Algren joins Katsumoto to lead the rebels against the Imperial forces trained and led by his former commander (Tony Goldwyn, not Custer, but representing the same mindset). Though the rebellion is tactically innovative, the rebels are limited by their adherence to traditional weapons and are obliterated by modern military technology. (Kagemusha, though in that story the leaders were taken by surprise and had the good sense to be horrified at the slaughter of their followers.) Their purity of spirit and devotion to duty nonetheless moves the Japanese Emperor (the Kabuki-trained Shichinosuke Nakamura II), once a student of Katsumoto, to reject a U.S. arms-for-trade treaty brokered by Ōmura. Algren then returns to Katsumoto's village to take up with Katsumoto's sister, Taka (Koyuki), and her children, whom he has converted from hatred (since he killed the man of the house in the course of getting captured) to deep affection with his simple honor. ( Shogun 's romantic plotline was equally implausible, though for different reasons.)
To be fair, some of the background to the story is reasonably true to life. Japan in the 1870s was in the throes of industrialization and radical social and political changes, the process we used to lump together as "modernization." There were samurai who objected to the changes that directly affected themselves, some of whom took up arms in rebellion (more about that below). There was even a plot to assassinate the historical analogue of Katsumoto (though it certainly did not involve a corps of crossbow-wielding ninja). Westerners in 1876 generally considered the Japanese to be an uncivilized people, inferior to Caucasians in culture, intelligence and character. The Japanese government did pay extravagant salaries to foreign experts in fields ranging from history and law to military technology and technique who could teach Japanese to be experts in those fields. Most of those Westerners spent a few years in Japan and then returned to their homelands. Some Westerners, though, became so enamored with Japan that they remained and became quite expert at Japanese culture, even living and dressing in Japanese style. The Meiji Emperor was indeed a young man (about 25 years old in 1876-77) who was largely a puppet of his advisors.
The score will probably get nominated for an Oscar, though its predictable pseudo-exoticism -- wooden flute and twangy strings leavening an otherwise competent musical backdrop -- is a pretty good metaphor for the entire film. The costumes and sets and scenery and military hardware are precise and proper and the swordplay is first rate (aside from some highly implausible sword-throwing). Even the Japanese language material was fine, though the subtitles were idiosyncratic. The consultants (including Mark Schilling, who chronicled his experience in the Japan Times) did their jobs well enough. And I'm pleased that they showed even a brief snippet of kyogen (comic theater) or a country variation, including participation by the leader Katsumoto. Japan 's deep tradition of humor, including slapstick, sexual and situation humor, is too often lost in the haze of "serious" traditions like Zen and samurai and Nō.
The acting is mostly competent, though there are some standouts. One of the best roles in the film is played by Seizō Fukumoto. Fukumoto is a four-decade veteran of Japan 's samurai and yakuza movies, describing himself as a kirareyaku -- literally, "the actor who gets cut," whose main role is to be killed by the hero in a climactic fight scene. In The Last Samurai he is "The Silent Samurai," whose wordless watchfulness draws Algren's ire and derision, but whose martial skill and valor are undeniable by the end. Though standard Japanese TV samurai dramas are a little less bloody than this film, they feature most of the same good qualities: historical scenery, redemption through honor, and neat swordfighting. When I lived in Japan , my favorite regular hour of TV was Mito Kōmon , the tale of the retired daimyō lord and his samurai retainers who travel the countryside incognito, righting wrongs. I wonder why more of them haven't been made available in the U.S., when there is clearly an audience.
The movie actually gets some of the deeper historical context right, probably accidentally: After a decade of intense social and economic change, the Imperial government in the 1880s began a deliberate program of moral and ethical and historical propaganda, the aim of which was to instill in Japanese a sense of unity centered on the Emperor, particularly on his mythological status as a "living god," a direct descendant of the deities which created Japan. (see, for example, the preamble to the 1889 Constitution) The tropes and themes of this newly constructed nationalism were drawn from Japanese Confucianism, Bushidō and Shinto, with a bit of Prussian constitutionalism for legal structure, and it was transmitted through the most modern institutions of the day: the national education system and the military. This retention and reinvention of tradition led pretty directly to Japan 's imperialist expansion into Asia and the Pacific, so it's a little hard to see the ending of The Last Samurai as a victory for good and right.
Another accidental truth: the Satsuma rebellion, and quite a few of the other samurai rebellions, were rooted in the inability of those samurai to envision duty and honor without status, or to be a part of a nation striving for growth rather than a privileged class with inherent qualities. In this movie attachment to the symbolism of the sword trumps the fulfillment of duty, or common sense. In the real history, a few thousand samurai's belief in their moral superiority as a class, their refusal to relinquish the privilege of offering special service to the nation, and their attachment to the symbols of the past, trumped participation in the political and technological growth of Meiji Japan. But hundreds of thousands of samurai -- the samurai class was about 5 percent of a population of thirty-five million -- transformed their sense of duty and purpose into new forms, serving in national and local governments, working as police, military officers, and teachers, and investing their time and energy and wealth in modern economic development.
What's wrong with this film, then? Well, almost everything else, starting with the basic premises of the plot. Stephen Hunter's deconstruction of Cruise's Algren character is singularly thorough. Japan did use U.S. surplus military equipment, particularly around the end of the U.S. Civil War (1861-1865), but by the 1870s Japan had settled on other models: the British Navy and the Prussian Army (they had started with the French model, but switched in 1871, though they continued to use French officer instructors for a few years). So it is highly unlikely that the Japanese would have hired an American.
By 1876, the Imperial Army was, indeed, a conscript army, but had a strong core of volunteers, mostly samurai, and a pretty well-defined training program. They were not using primitive muzzle-loading rifles at that point, either. Japanese commoners, who are so inept at the beginning of the film that they literally can't shoot if their lives depend on it, had proven quite adept with military technology in the 1860s, when small mixed samurai-commoner militias with breech-loading and repeating rifles defeated much larger Shogunal forces still heavily reliant on traditional spear, sword and arrow weaponry. Those militias formed the core of the post-Meiji Restoration (as the 1868 transition is usually called) Imperial Army. And Imperial forces had a few adventures in the 1870s, including the Taiwan expedition (1874) and the mission to secure the Kanghwa Treaty in 1876, not to mention suppression of a number of domestic disturbances, including both samurai and cultivator uprisings.
The rebellion led by Katsumoto in the movie is supposed to be a scaled down version of the 1877 Satsuma Rebellion led by SAIGO Takamori. It's a shame that the moviemakers didn't take that more seriously, because the uprising, known in Japanese as the "Southwestern war," was a true crisis. Every resource of the new government was called upon, including its modernized shipping lines, rail transport, police forces (who were reorganized into military units), samurai volunteers, officer trainees, and fiscal reserves (the Matsukata Deflation of the early 1880s was partly necessary because of the excessive costs of putting down the rebellion). The rebels, protesting the loss of the traditional privileges and domainal autonomy, were quite well-armed, having seized several local armories early in the uprising: many of their officers were trained in modern methods, and they led both artillery units and riflemen. The rebels were only outnumbered by two-to-one; there wasn't a long, tense run-up to the conflict, as the movie insists; Saigo Takamori was not the leader at the beginning; and the fight ran constantly from February through September, rather than being a pair of battles separated by winter storms. There were other samurai uprisings in the years leading up to the 1877 Satsuma Rebellion, some of which actually resemble the movie more closely, at least in terms of scale and the ease with which they were suppressed. But none of the others were led by men who had been Imperial advisors, as Saigo had been. After 1877 there were no more samurai uprisings. (For more details on Saigo, see Mark Ravina's biography, The Last Samurai: The Life and Battles of Saigo Takamori, which is currently selling considerably better than the official movie guide.)
One intriguing element that the film could have exploited but didn't was the analogy between the Native American tribe and the samurai clan. Very different social institutions, of course, but historians of Japan have long recognized that the failure of samurai rebels to ally across clan lines in the Meiji era (1868-1912) doomed them to failure against the increasingly coherent national polity. Domainal loyalties plagued Japanese politics and military affairs well into the twentieth century. But the movie clearly can't differentiate between the individual samurai clan and the samurai class. The vast majority of Japan 's ruling elites, the modernizers who are so thoroughly evil in the film, were also samurai (many of them from Satsuma), who made the decision to eliminate their own aristocratic privileges. The vast majority of samurai did not protest, did not rebel, and were rather relieved to be freed from the samurai restriction on earning an honest living to supplement their increasingly meager official stipends.
The most blazingly bad bit of history has to do with the arms-for-trade treaty, and I'm surprised that more commentators haven't noted this. The U.S. didn't need to parlay its military technology for trade advantages in Japan . From 1858 to 1899, U.S. trade with Japan was governed by the 1858 Japan-U.S. Treaty of Amity and Commerce, sometimes known as the Harris Treaty after U.S. ambassador Townsend Harris (played by John Wayne in The Barbarian and the Geisha ). That agreement fixed Japan's import duties at a very low level, established the right of Americans to practice their religions freely and to be tried in non-Japanese courts for crimes committed in Japan, and is considered the first of the "unequal treaties" that clearly established Japan as an inferior nation to the Western powers. The Most Favored Nation clause in the earlier Kanagawa Treaty (1854) meant that this was just a starting place: the U.S. would get every advantage negotiated by any other country with Japan . The Japanese were not in any position to make demands or set conditions in their foreign affairs: they spent three decades proving to the Western powers that they were a "civilized" nation that deserved more equal treatment. U.S. diplomatic treatment of Japan was heavy-handed and unpleasant, but it wasn't tawdry in a grovelling, money-grubbing way; it's bad enough, I guess, that the only American with any depth is the one turning samurai (the other respectable caucasians are British and Irish), but there's no need to pile on indignities.
There are a few minor points which I can't just let slip by:
The title of the movie is The Last Samurai but the Japanese ideograph which overlays it just says "samurai."
The opening voiceover refers to the creation of the Japanese islands by a divine sword, which was dipped into the ocean and dripped foam, but every version I've ever seen of Japan's founding myths describes the creation of a single island by foam dripping off of a spear, with the rest of the islands birthed by the gods. Swords don't come up until later.
The Meiji Emperor didn't speak English, and nobody outside of the most senior advisors saw him without an invitation. And he certainly didn't make important political decisions on the spur of the moment.
The Ōmura industrialist/politician character is difficult to pin down historically. He might be an amalgam of political heavyweight ŌKUBO Toshimichi, the younger but more radical and economically connected ŌKUMA Shigenobu, with some of the Mitsubishi founder IWASAKI Yatarō thrown in. Industrialists did not have the Emperor's ear (they didn't need it, having close ties to the samurai oligarchs) and Imperial advisors did not jaunt off to other countries to conduct job interviews.
Most samurai lived in large urban areas, though low-ranking Satsuma samurai were some of the few who lived in the country and also farmed. Even then, nobody lived in the mountains if they could avoid it.
The method of "no mind" is not "The Force" -- simply a matter of clearing one's mind of distractions and then the right thing will happen. It is a Daoist concept, originally, which became part of the martial arts tradition in China , then in Japan and elsewhere. It is a function of training constantly (certainly over more than four months) so that one can react instinctively, automatically, to a rapidly developing situation. Effortlessness comes after lots of hard work. The Karate Kid got that part right, actually.
The notion that the samurai have been "protectors of the nation" for nine hundred or a thousand years (and Katsumoto uses both figures) is absurd: the samurai began as rent collectors and estate protectors for the Kyoto nobility, and evolved into an aristocracy in their own right. Only against the Mongols (1274, 1281) can they be considered protectors of Japan ; it's highly unlikely that Katsumoto's clan was in one place that entire time; very few samurai clans survived the century-long civil war (15-16c) and most of those were relocated in the late 1500s. The Shimazu family which ruled Satsuma did originate in the 11th or 12th century, but Saigo Takamori wasn't a Shimazu. Like most samurai, his family attained warrior status in the 1500s and were unremarkable low-ranking retainers until Saigo.
Taka, attempting to refuse Algren's help with housework, says that "Japanese men don't do that." But many Japanese men did a great deal around the house, just not samurai. The Japanese very rarely referred to themselves as a collective, particularly on cultural matters, as early as 1876-77.
When they eat, they are consistently shown eating fluffy white rice, but only the wealthiest Japanese ate that regularly, and certainly rural samurai would have been more likely to eat rice gruel and other grains like barley and millet and buckwheat, either as gruel or as noodles, that grow better in upland conditions. And the movie glosses over Algren's introduction to chopsticks, which is not an insignificant event in acculturation.
By 1877, very few Japanese would have been particularly frightened of samurai, even samurai as backwards as Katsumoto's band, nor would they have bowed en masse. Urban Japanese had gotten over treating common samurai like daimyo lords a long time before.
Even allowing for Algren's remarkable immersion in Japanese language and culture, the likelihood is pretty small that he'd have run across the Japanese term for "President" in a rural samurai village, but that doesn't stop him from understanding the term when it comes up in a crisis.
Algren's first experience with armor on the day of the climactic battle is pretty implausible. Even allowing for superior physical conditioning and excellent training and the fact that Japanese armor is light and flexible relative to its Western analogues, there's almost no way he wears it as comfortably as he is shown.
The samurai warrior-cherry blossom (sakura) motif is so clichéd that I was surprised that it came up at all, and nearly laughed out loud when it came back just in time for Katsumoto's death. Judging by color, the blossoms were plum, not cherry.
Does it matter? Perhaps not. Perhaps it's too much to expect that our entertainments have a factual basis. But now I have to deal with the aftermath, with students who will think that all samurai (all five hundred of them, instead of nearly two million) were pure warriors who lived in the mountains, instead of as underemployed urbanite bureaucrats. I have to explain how rare seppuku (ritual suicide, also known as hara-kiri) was, how tenuous the samurai sense of loyalty, how the Japanese did not "Americanize," and I have to hope that my careful deconstruction can make some dent in the technicolor, surroundsound, adrenaline-enhanced images in their minds. The Meiji transformation of Japan is one of the most dramatic social and economic periods in modern history, and it ties directly to some of the most important turning points and processes of the twentieth century and present. But instead, The Last Samurai is another barrier to understanding, a step backwards in our collective education.
Note: Japanese names are traditionally written with the family name first; the movie credits put the family name last and I follow that for the cast members, but for the names of Japanese historical figures I have put the family name first and in all capital letters on first appearance: e.g. SAIGO Takamori.
Related Links

High Holy Days....

Pete Silver is just too much for me...all his posts tickle my funny bone. PeteSilverBlog.com

This one just makes me weep!


Preparing for the High Holy Days
Tashlich TidbitsBy Rabbi Richard IsraelSome suggested tips for properly executing Tashlich (casting of sins into the waters. . . )
For ordinary sins, use – White bread
For exotic sins – French or Italian bread
For dark sins – Pumpernickel
For complex sins – Multigrain bread
For truly warped sins – Pretzels
For sins of indecision – Waffles
For sins committed in haste – Matzah
For substance abuse – Poppy seed rolls
For committing arson – Toast
For being ill-tempered – Sourdough bread
For silliness – Nut bread
For not giving full value – Shortbread
For political chauvinism – Yankee Doodles
For excessive use of irony – Rye bread
For continual bad jokes – Corn bread
For hardening our hearts – Jelly doughnuts
For excessive curiosity – Wonder Bread
For speed-limit violations – Russian bread
For usury – dough
posted by PeteSilver.com

Midnight Sunstone

The Girlzilla over at "Peebrain.blogspot.com has been producing some lovely poetry. Like...I know an Iambic Pentameter from a Jacobs Drill Chuck, but for some reason her poetry strikes a spark with me. Here is a sample...entitled Midnight Sunstone....

Not a sapphire or a garnet,
I give you a midnight sunstone.
'tis rarer than diamond and gold.
How I found it, I did not know.
I was walking along a trodden path
When a sparkle caught my eye.
Gleaming red, blue, a fiery white
It lay there, poised for flight.
Legend has that the midnight sunstone
is forged neither by Nature or Man;
but plucked from the depths of all known miseries,
one tear after the next.
I give you this midnight sunstone
Wrapped in a skein of dying stars.
May this regard occlude you from blight
In darkness, love, you shall always have light.

On Writing and web content

A discussion with Shayne the other night about how to improve my web site resulted in several points of thought. One was "web content". I shall have to figure out how to improve my "web content". I'll try to see if "blogger bits" on my web pages will be useful, or whether they will just be a too much a pain to keep current.

I was on Ms. Scott-Lee's web site which details her difficulties in reining in her natural creativity in order to conform to a Creative Writing Class. One thing her class instructor wants her to do is to write a synopsys of her story. I am not sure what a synopsys of a story which has not been written might look like...I thought they were a sort of summary of a story written afterwards, but the importance of an outline before developing the story was kind of critical...and seemed to be what the instructor was getting at. I made a comment on her blog which was complete enough to be a whole post..so I thought I would publish it here... If any of my regular readers wish to add to this, please feel free. Its not often I get up on my soap box to discuss building things, especially novels, since I never got a novel printed in my life! But, I looked into it once, and for a while thought that maybe writing would be a career. Then I found out how much work it is

In David Gerrold's book "The Trouble With Tribbles", he details the trouble he had when he went to write a screen play for the first time. The rules were tighter than a sonnet! Two minor climaxes,(leading up to commercial breaks) one major climax, all within 20 minutes. Dialogue to be adjusted according to the space allotted to the actors, and the correct amount of "screen time" each actor needs in accorance with their contract. Plus variations for directors cuts and European distribution. He said in his book that he now understood why so few really good authors went on to write screen plays...that the discipline to write a screen play was completely different from writing a novel, but WAS similar to writing a poem. Because he teethed on screen writing (he wrote the most popular Star Trek episode of all time at the age of 19!) he found his regular writing skills to be blunted by the lack of both deadlines and tight discipline. So, he made his own. He wrote all his subsequent novels by creating the synopsis or outline first, and then working within that framework. Creativity of course was still there, but it meant changing the "framework" before allowing the novel to "run away on its own". Heinlein only wrote one book that he did not plan out in advance. As he says in "Grumbles from the Grave", his publishers advanced him money for a book of xxxxx words, and he would give them xxxxx words, not a word more and not a word less. The book he wrote in one 24 hour marathon...was Starship Troopers...a book not really very well received, but the emotion comes through loud and clear. The movie does not do justice to the emotional writing. (The only screen play the greatest Science Fiction writer of all time ever wrote by the way was "Red Planet". A totally forgettable B movie.)

Challenge.

Oh, I could challenge the world tonight! It was the first class of basic swordhandling instruction. I'm still on a high from teaching tonight...and will be for...oh, another ten minutes anyway!

Oh, heck, here is a challenge for you. While seated in a chair, make your right foot inscribe clocwise circles. Then, while inscribing clockwise circles with your right toe, pick up an imaginary chalk, and draw the number "6" on an imaginary chalkboard in front of you. See if you can draw that "six" and not have your foot change direction on you.

Tweeter and the Monkey Man

Some folks were askin' me why I thought Sin City was like a Traveling Wilbury's Album. Well, TW is great, and most of what they sing has been sung by others...For instance, Tweeter and the Monkey Man was most famously sung by Bruce Springsteen. Here are the lyrics, courtesy of http://www.lyricsdepot.com/bruce-springsteen/tweeter-and-the-monkey-man.html

Tweeter and the Monkey Man were hard up for cash,
They stayed up all night selling cocaine and hash,
To an Undercover Cop who had a sister named Jan.
For reasons unexplained she loved the Monkey Man.

And the walls came down,
All the way to hell.
Never saw them when they're standing,
Never saw them when they fell.

The Undercover Cop never liked the Monkey Man,
Even back in childhood he wanted to see him in the can.
Jan got married at fourteen to a racketeer named Bill,
She made secret calls to the Monkey Man from a mansion on the hill.

It was out on Thunder Road, Tweeter at the wheel,
They crashed into paradise, they could hear them tires squeal.
The Undercover Cop pulled up and said "Everyone of you's a liar,
If you don't surrender now it's gonna go down to the wire."

And the walls came down,
All the way to hell.
Never saw them when they're standing,
Never saw them when they fell.

An ambulance rolled up, a state-trooper close behind,
Tweeter took his gun away and messed up his mind.
The Undercover Cop was left tied up to a tree,
Near the souvenir stand, by the old abandoned factory.

Next day the Undercover Cop was hot in pursuit,
He was taking the whole thing personal, he didn't care about the loot.
Jan had told him many times, "It was you to me who taught
In Jersey anything's legal, as long as you don't get caught".

And the walls came down,
All the way to hell.
Never saw them when they're standing,
Never saw them when they fell.

Some place by Rahwey Prison they ran out of gas,
The Undercover Cop had cornered them, said,"Boy you didn't think this could last?"
Jan jumped out of bed, said, "There's someplace I gotta go"
.She took the gun out of the drawer, said, "It's best that you don't know".

The Undercover Cop was found face down in a field,
The Monkey Man was on the river bridge, using Tweeter as a shield.
Jan said to the Monkey Man, "I'm not fooled by Tweeter's curl,
I knew him long before he became a Jersey Girl."

And the walls came down,
All the way to hell.
Never saw them when they're standing,
Never saw them when they fell.

Now the town of Jersey City is quieting down again,
I'm sitting in a gambling club called the Lion's Den.
The TV set was blown up, every bit of it is gone,
Ever since the nightly news showed that the Monkey Man was on.

I guess I'll go to Florida and get myself some sun,
There ain't no more opportunity here, everything's been done.
Sometimes I think of Tweeter, sometimes I think of Jan,
Sometimes I don't think about nothing but the Monkey Man.

And the walls came down,
All the way to hell.
Never saw them when they're standing,
Never saw them when they fell.


And if you think THESE lyrics are scary, you should see the lyrics by "The Archies"!

Come on home boys, your job is done!

Its good to know that the Canadians are useful. http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/Canada/2005/09/14/1217282-cp.html Somebody has to do the manual work getting public buildings cleared out...after all, there are no residents who can do it. And those relief supplies, put them back in the ships guys...they contain "gasp" Canadian beef, so it can't be distributed in Louisiana.
Maybe we could be useful if we all got our guitars out and led a nice chorus of Kumbaya....
Maybe they can use the supplies in Gulfport. I hear it voted Democrat last election....

Joke of the day....seems Hurricane Katrina killed upwards of 200,000 Mexicans when it brushed past the country. Canada sent milk and cookies, France sent a ship load of freedom fries, and Mr. Bush sent 200,000 replacement Mexicans...


Baaaah....US politics....its enough to turn your stomach. The only thing worse (of course) is Canadian politics. Heard about the campaigning involved in the leadership of the damned separatists in Quebec? (oops, my bad, I meant of course, the Bloc Quebecois) Of course not! Its not on American News so it doesn't exist!

I'll take my pills now....
nighty night...

Dear Tech support...

Program Wife 1.0
Dear Tech Support,
Last year I upgraded from Girlfriend 7.0 to Wife 1.0. I soon noticed that the new program began unexpected child processing that took up a lot of space and valuable resources. In addition, Wife 1.0 installed itself into all other programs and now monitors all other system activity. Applications such as Poker Night 10.3, Football 5.0, Hunting and Fishing 7.5, and Racing 3.6 no longer run, crashing the system whenever selected. I can't seem to keep Wife 1.0 in the background while attempting to run my favourite applications. I'm thinking about going back to Girlfriend 7.0, but the uninstall doesn't work on Wife 1.0. Please help!Thanks,A Troubled User.
(KEEP READING)-----------------------------
REPLY
Dear Troubled User,
This is a very common problem that men complain about. Many people upgrade from Girlfriend 7.0 to Wife 1.0, thinking that it is just a Utilities and Entertainment program. Wife 1.0 is an OPERATING SYSTEM and is designed by its Creator to run EVERYTHING!!! It is also impossible to delete Wife 1.0 and to return to Girlfriend 7.0. It is impossible to uninstall, or purge the program files from the system once installed.You cannot go back to Girlfriend 7.0 because Wife 1.0 is designed to not allow this. Look in your Wife 1.0 manual under Warnings-Alimony-Child Support.
I recommend that you keep Wife1.0 and work on improving the situation. I suggest installing the background application "Yes Dear" to alleviate software augmentation. The best course of action is to enter the command C:\APOLOGIZE because ultimately you will have to give APOLOGIZE command before the system will return to normal anyway. Wife 1.0 is a great program, but it tends to be very high maintenance. Wife 1.0 comes with several support programs, such as Clean and Sweep3.0, Cook It 1.5 and Do Bills 4.2.However, be very careful how you use these programs. Improper use will cause the system to launch the program Nag Nag 9.5. Once this happens, the only way to improve the performance of Wife 1.0 is to purchase additional software. I recommend Flowers 2.1 and Diamonds 5.0!
WARNING!!! DO NOT, under any circumstances, install Secretary With Short Skirt 3.3. This application is not supported by Wife 1.0 and will cause irreversible damage to the operating system.

Double Meat Pizza...in 2010

http://www.adcritic.com/interactive/view.php?id=5927

Visitors!

I love visitors. Brad and his wife Chris are staying over. He spent some time building some armour yesterday, and if he had his way, he would be spending all his time today making armour. However, since they came all the way from Winnipeg, Chris wants to see some of the city. Well, who can blame her. She was very nice all day yesterday, being very bored while the men were playing. Now it is Brad's turn to check out the Pompeii exhibit at the museum, or the war museum or whatever Ottawa offers.

Don't know who will be dropping by today to make armour, but it sure is nice to have visitors!

I was originally going to rant a lot about something I found on the "cyber law" site, but I think I shall save it for my "rant" blog. http://yusefsjournal2.blogspot.com/

It is just too nice a day to rant. I'll get these few armour commissions out of the way, and then maybe see about dropping some deck blocks into place!

Finally back to work!

Well, except for hiding behind the computer blogging that is!

Just got back from doing a demo at a county fair. Never done one like that before. I think it went well. However a good solid "post mortem" needs to be done to see if this is where I want to move my business to. Like...what parts worked well, what parts sucked...that sort of thing. I know what the reporters want, but I won't moon the fair just so they can get the "perfect" shot. Kind of annoying though...I wanted to watch some of the other stuff (the tai chi demo for instance) and the press is getting a story of some kind. I have had so much contact with the press over the years...it is difficult to take them seriously. I am SO tempted to just tell them, take a picture, and make up a story...you'll do it anyway. oh, and here is a business card to make sure that you will spell my name right. They make up the story, but they never DO get my name right!

Oh well, maybe a lot of my old school buddies will see my mug in the paper and raise a glass to me.

On a different note...finally watched "Sin City". Interesting. Sort of a comic book version of a Traveling Wilbury's album. Remember, you heard it here first. (I asked her to marry me, she pulled out a knife. The parties just beginning she said, your money or your life! Now back at the bar, she went a little too far.........last night...talking about last night.....) or (Some days I don't think about anythin' but the Monkey Man!)

Has anybody noticed by the way that there are a LOT less spam sites lately? I am sure that last month every second site or more was a spam site. Now, as I hit "next blog", it actually goes to somebody's honest to gawd blog! Maybe the countermeasures are working....or maybe I have just been very lucky!

Well, those helmets won't make themselves.....