Another visit to Memory Lane

About pictures....

I'm old-fashioned maybe, but I like the porn we've got just the way it is... and no machine is ever going to do nudes like Vargas or Playboy I betcha....

Question Everything:-

1.) How many gallons to the mile do you get with this piece of junk?
2.) Which war is it surplus from?....the War of 1812?
3.) Are you guys pretending to be Israelis battling Palestinians?
4.) Do you imagine that gives you the right to shoot at unarmed civilians?
5.) Which one of you is General George S. Patton?
6.) Haven't you been dead for 69 years? Or does your mouth live on?
7.) Does playing soldier make you feel 'Strong Like Bull'? Or just smell like one?
8.) Will you really be missed at your 'Gone Away Party'?
9.) Have you been shaving for two years and cut yourself both times?
10.) Have you applied for your Purple Heart yet?
11.) Why is the First Amendment number one on the list?
12.) Have you ever read it, even while moving your lips?

More Gourmet Cooking: This one's for Tommy....

Tommy says, "You guys are too much!" - And he's probably right.... Take this cheddar cheese singles ice cream, for example.....Please!

Today's 'Question Everything'

Are we being 'photoshopped' by deranged sickos trying to escalate a conflict?

The world has definitely gone crazy. We don't need any further proof. We need better means of returning it to sanity, and we could begin by suppressing the widespread distribution of provocative material like this, at least until it has been properly authenticated by reputable authorities. One of the main things wrong with the world today is that there's too much malicious shit-disturbing by the lunatic fringe, because it's too easy.

Added later:

I wrote the above earlier, because it seemed from news reports that the Brits had real concerns about the possible authenticity and actual occurrence of the event in question, implying that the whole thing might be some kind of elaborate but bizarre hoax. I'm sure most of us wish it had been, but at the same time, I hope we don't overreact to this, because that seems to be its intended purpose. 

More musing from 'Oldest Living Blogger'....

It's too bad I can't speak to all those kids in Ferguson, Missouri who have been running around with handkerchiefs and bandannas tied over their faces, pretending to be real desperadoes while just looking really stupid and ridiculous, doing things they'll very likely grown up to be ashamed of one day. And what would I tell them?

I woke up this morning with the usual aches and pains of old age; my lower back was aching, and the lower half of my right leg felt cold and numb, like it was maybe trying to die on me, but not succeeding very well. I had indigestion because I'd fallen asleep again with the wireless headphones on, still blaring away on some really mind-numbingly stupid commercial, the subliminal traces of which were still fading as consciousness returned. And I had to go to the bathroom rather urgently....

In there, in the Thundermug Lounge, ruminating on the mysteries of life, some 
cogent observations came; it's said that dying's easy - it's the living that's hard.
Not exactly. Both can be rather difficult and confusing and mysterious. Dying's only easy for those who haven't had a lot of practice at it, and aren't yet that close to its inevitable, inexorable, relentless arrival. Those of us who are far enough along the road of life to be able to clearly see that big checkered sign down there ahead reading 'Dead End' have a much more intense appreciation for that which is behind us and that which may also be ahead.

Most of us don't really appreciate something that we've mostly been taking for granted until we become keenly aware that some day soon, we're going to be losing it, and there isn't any way to stop that whole process, because, as some wit said, 'Life is a terminal illness'.

So no matter how strong your feelings, no matter what your politics, no matter which religion you prefer not to attend but claim to belong to, no matter who you think you are, don't be too anxious to jump into something that might easily shorten your stay amongst us very significantly. Living, after all, being infinitely preferable to most of the alternatives.

And lastly, in the wider Universe, in that infinite space/time Continuum that we know so very little about, it's a fairly sure thing that our most momentous and earth-shaking problems here are not just insignificant there, but our whole world is so infinitismally inconspicuous it's practically non-existent. So please ask yourselves: "What the hell are we fighting about?"

A little comparison, may I ?

This......

Is infinitely preferable to....

                                                    ....this!

Run out of topping for the ice cream?

Try Old Gramp's latest concoction: Smucker's Orange Marmalade and a dusting of Kraft's Cheddar cheese powder over your vanilla ice cream. MMMmmmm!!!
It's not only color co-ordinated, it's delicious. Your taste buds will smile....

Cloudy sky....

There are three aircraft in this picture.  The one at 9 o'clock, level with the sun, looks like this......

And this is why a 'superzoom' compact digital is so much fun to use. This was taken on a Fuji SL-1000 at 50X freehand. (Sometimes, I get lucky...) It's not terribly sharp, but on the other hand, it was a long way off - several miles.
Here's a 'doctored' version of the above.....

Their 'fifteen minutes of fame'....

That expression, attributed to Andy Warhol, seems to accurately describe this family's vigorous embrace of the media circus surrounding the demise of their son. Customized T-shirt, new baggy-assed jeans, freshly-styled and colored hairdo, special commemorative and ostentatiously large button prominently displayed on her shirt, depicting a 'surrender posture' that in no way expresses the true feelings of the black community, but makes for great 'PR' they think....
What the hell's going on here? Is this Showbiz? What about the Movie Rights?

Obfuscatorially speaking, the real facts appear to be shrouded in mystery, with the police handing out one story, and others contributing various other versions, and the whole thing has become distorted by all kinds of meddling opportunists jumping into it for fun and profit, and the whole thing has become disgusting.

Whitey, the brainless young idiot, in a panic, shot repeatedly a big black kid whom he feared might easily harm him if not immediately immobilized by the most effective means available, his gun. And in that moment when his better instincts deserted him and he acted impulsively, he re-opened age-old wounds never properly healed within the black community who are still waiting for their rightful share of that 'freedom' that white America makes so much noise about.

And all of this immediately morphed into yet another chapter in the struggle between blacks and whites in America. At the risk of waxing philosophical here for a moment, this is the very kind of situation exemplified by the Biblical references to the sins of the fathers being visited upon their sons in future generations. And it all started with those slave-owners who didn't really give a damn for 'future generations'. And here we are, still trying to clean up their mess, and not making much useful progress. 

May I suggest? Take off that riot gear, put away the machine guns and the Molotov cocktails, put on your shorts and T's, and take each other for a beer,
and try to find some common American ground. You Whiteys should remember that those blacks you're using for target practice are the very same blacks who have been doing the bulk of the fighting for you in your military in those idiotic wars that assholes like Dubya too easily start; and you Blacks need to remember that those Whiteys, like it or not, include Daddy Bigbucks who finances the places where you make a living - except for the ones they move offshore - and his forefathers made the rules you still haven't managed to change more in your own favor. So you both need to work together, because you're stronger that way than you are separately, if only you're smart enough to realize it.

If I had to sum up America in one word, that word would be 'confrontational'.
And it's going to be your national epitaph. Mark my words.

The land of the free and the home of the brave ???

What's wrong with this picture?

Days like this past few, I thank God I'm not an American living in that kind of "land of the free and home of the brave". Oscar Wilde was right on when he said "America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between." 

George Bernard Shaw said, "The 100% American is 99% idiot."

And Gloria Pitzer said, "In some parts of the world, people still pray in the streets. In this country they're called pedestrians."

It's a small world....

I'm not 'setting the world on fire' but with that little Google Translate gadget in the right-hand sidebar, almost anyone in the world can read this blog if they wish to, and many do. I thank everyone for visiting this blog, and I hope you have enjoyed your visit.

If I had a wish, it would be for more of you to leave your comments, so that we can share our thoughts.

Your 'Tip of the Day' - Desktop Penholder

The world is still watching...

The world is still watching. It's like watching an old movie about the Nazis in Germany before and during the Second World War. Or watching a train wreck -
you know how it's going to end, you know why, you're horrified by all of it, and you can't stop it any more than you could repeal the law of gravity.

Has America gone crazy? The evidence seems to be speaking for itself. And the rest of the world, not to be outdone, is following the old 'Monkey see, Monkey do' principle, with wars breaking out with disgusting regularity, because what's good for America must be good for the rest of the world, because while America may not always be right, it is damned-well never wrong, and it tells us so with every means possible as often as it can, whether we need all that repetition of
bafflegab and bullshit or not. And actions still speak louder than words.

"The world is watching..."

On this coming December 6th, it will be 149 years since the 13th Amendment abolished slavery in the United States of America, on December 6th, 1865.

Today's Question Everything is: "When will the law enforcement community and
the Governor of Missouri begin recognizing that Amendment and honoring its spirit and intent, and begin treating all of the citizens of Missouri accordingly?"

And Yes, Governor Nixon, the eyes of the world are indeed watching, and the spectacle we are seeing is telling us that America says one thing and does another. America pays lip service to laws and principles it regularly violates when that suits the circumstances of the moment; America, in the words of a famous native Indian, 'speaks with forked tongue', and the world is most certainly not only watching, but paying very careful attention to how this is being resolved - assuming it ever will be.

My latest variation on KD....

Ingredients:
____________________

1 pkg. 200 grams Kraft Dinner
1 can  680 ml Four Cheese Pasta Sauce
1 pound Extra Lean Ground Beef Sirloin

Preparation:
_____________________________

Open the KD, remove the envelope of powdered cheese, and save that for some other time. Cook the macaroni in boiling salted water for about ten minutes or until tender.
In a 10-inch frying pan with three or four tablespoons of melted margarine such
as 'I Can't Believe It's Not Butter' cook the Ground Beef Sirloin until well done and nicely browned. Cover and keep warm until the pasta is ready.
When the pasta is done, drain it, add the can of Four Cheese Pasta Sauce and also add the pound of cooked Ground Beef Sirloin, stir, and put it back on the heat as you continue stirring the mixture until it is thoroughly blended and hot.

Remove from the heat, and serve. This makes a respectable pasta with meat sauce, without a lot of left-overs, and it's quite tasty.
 

Car of the future ?

If this was made by Kawasaki, I'd plunk down a deposit right now. And today's Question Everything is: "Will it come in a ragtop?"

Browsers: Lunascape

This is Lunascape, and if you want a browser with lots of 'bells and whistles' this has them. Notice on the line where it says 'Welcome - Search - Blogger' on the right-hand end of that is a live RSS feed streaming the news, so while you're surfing or doing something like I am right now, you can still see the latest headlines. And you don't get that in Internet Explorer!

While you're downloading this, you may find it takes a while to finish getting the Gecko plug-in - that's because it's coming in separately over a slow (36 Kb) connection - probably from somewhere that's a lot of hops away - but it does arrive, and as you see, it works. This promises to be a fun browser, and you should check it out.

Another browser test... SRWare Iron

First of all, I'll take a screenshot of this, so you can see what it looks like....

The rainbow colors along the top edge are because I'm using an alternate theme on it at the moment, also to try it out. This is based on Google Chrome but they've tweaked it to remove Google's hidden information-collecting stuff,
so that you've got more privacy. It also runs the same Apps as Chrome, such as "Lights Out" for when you're watching a YouTube video and want to have a movie theater effect to darken the screen. It's made in Germany, so you have to pick your language or you may need Google Translate.

How did I like it? I couldn't get that 'Lights Out' App to work, and I didn't have much success changing the default search engine page back to Google, so it is
no longer on here. 

Computer browsers: Internet Explorer

Many of us have objected to Microsoft's habit of trying to force us into using 'everything Microsoft' with their operating systems, instead of allowing us to choose components like the browser, or the media player, and that's given them a lot of backlash, and deservedly so.

There are a lot of browsers available out there in cyberspace, and some, like Lunascape, made in Tokyo, use three different rendering engines instead of just one. That's like having three browsers in one almost.

There are others, like Opera, with its 'Speed Dial' and 'Stash' that offer some novel features to speed up the surfing process and make browsing easier.

And there's my old favorite, Firefox which has a wide selection of very useful add-ons, such as 'Better Privacy' to find and remove those LSOs, Local System Objects, better known as 'Supercookies' which, unlike regular cookies, can't be detected by your normal cookie-handling programs, and never expire, and are
bigger than usual cookies, and can and do call home to pass along your personal information to whomever sent them to you. They can also act like other executive programs to make changes to your system and perform their own operations, completely unknown to you. And 'Better privacy' is the only add-on I know which can find and remove these 'supercookies' - and you can set it to work with your regular browser options for handling history and other cookies, so that your "clear history" setting also includes these others you didn't even know about until you got 'Better Privacy'.

And these are just some of the reasons it's nice to have choices, and a quick look at a couple of those. We aren't limited to Mighty Microsoft's pet projects.
In PC-BSD for example, when you install it, there's a list of approved programs
to choose from, and you aren't compelled to accept the native browser if you prefer some other one, and one of those on that list is Firefox, and another is
SeaMonkey, which is also a Mozilla creation like Firefox, but with different features. I use it on there because I'm already familiar with Mozilla's Firefox, and I know it works. And the point is, nobody's twisting my arm, nor should they. If we're brainy enough to be selecting an operating system for a computer then hopefully we're also smart enough to decide which  of a dozen or a dozen and a half different browsers we'd like to use on it. 

And you aren't limited to one. You can have several, if you like. I usually have three or four, because if I'm working on one, doing something like this, it's nice to have another to use if I need to look up something else while I'm doing this, or get these screenshots that I've included here. Here are some other alternatives.