Monday, July 22, 2013

Для России с любовью

От имени свободолюбивых американцев и тех, кто желает свободы во всем мире, позвольте мне поблагодарить вас, русских, и президент Путин за проявленное мужество, чтобы сказать "НЕТ!" В Уголовный и коррумпированным американским правительством. Ваша свобода светит как маяк для мира! Да здравствует матушка-Россия!


Roughly, the above: “On behalf of liberty-loving Americans and those longing for freedom around the world, let me thank the Russian people and President Putin for having the courage to say “No!” to the demands of the criminal and corrupt American government.  Your gesture to freedom shines like a beacon in a darkening world!  Long Live Mother Russia!” 

On a related topic. . . .

Just occurs to me of the holiday just past: By far the most limp and insipid 4th ever on this island.  Zero flag-waving, zero chest-pounding, zero clichés about “fighting for our freedoms,” “heroes,” “sacrifice,” and other such nonsense.  I suppose it comes with the territory.  Few beyond brain-dead sports fans and tattooed Wal-Mart shoppers are too excited about any nation that tortures it prisoners—even brags about it—and fewer still are thrilled to learn that the federal eye in the sky is spying on virtually everything we do.   Somewhere in all this it occurs to even a few of the sitcom-watching unthunkers that the welfare/warfare state is utterly and perhaps terminally out of control.   
A nation is really just a large, living organism.  At some point it realizes it is sick; more importantly, at some point it realizes why it is sick.  Then, the organism either dies or it heals itself.  I’m not sure this dying organism we live in can save itself; nor am I sure there is anything left to save.
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Unthunk--About a year ago, there was a grand opening in Englewood for something called the New England Chowder House.  The place looked very spiffy as the ribbon was cut and the oldster partners who opened it looked very confident, but . . . what were they thunking?  New England?  Chowder?  Florida?  I suppose the owners had some loose savings to go along with their loose screws and they figured that with so many Northeasterners down here in the winters that these snowbirds would become not only nostalgic for the rock-ribbed coast of New England but hungry for hot bowls of clam chowder.  Wrong.  Chowder is associated with cold New England winters and indeed, these are favorite spots up north for locals and visitors alike in winter.  But big problem in Florida.  From beginning to end, top to bottom, inside out, there are not two days during a Sunshine State winter that would make anyone hungry in the least for steaming hot chowder.  Far from it.  Iced tea, chilled white wine, maybe a shrimp cocktail and salad, but hot chowder?  Nyet!
And so, the New England Chowder House situated on busy Highway 776 in Englewood, Florida, set some sort of Guinness land speed record for “Quickest Closing After Opening, Business Category.”  The place now sits like a dead dream, closed, locked, vacant, cars whizzing by but never stopping, and that has been the story these past six months, a mocking monument to man’s misplaced ambition and unthunk.  Hope and dreams are no substitutes for planning and thinking.  These old fools built it, but no one came.
I have seen other poorly planned, brainless boondoggles like this—cafes at cornfield crossroads with no homo-sapien in sight for a hundred miles, bridges ending half way across sandy stream beds because faulty math had the other half missing by a foot, paying a city employee of now-bankrupt Detroit $450K a year when the going rate in any other city is $80K per anum, tops . . . it pays to think before you do stupid.  Case in point:
With attendance languishing back in 1974, the Cleveland Indians decided to hold “10 Cent Beer Night” at a baseball game with the Texas Rangers.  No limit.  Well, attendance that night rocketed, of course, since every booze bag and party beast within fifty miles converged on Cleveland’s Municipal Stadium for the biggest pub crawl this side of Munich. Some arrived already blotto.  Other seldom-sobers quickly caught up and by the bottom half of the first the place was rockin’.   
Pretty quick, one wild woman ran wildly onto the field wildly flashing her fun bags amid wild applause.  She was followed by a man running naked to second base after a home run, his baloney-pony wagging in the wind, a rain of cups and bottles showering down on him from the outraged crowd.  Later, a father flasher and his idiot son ran onto the field, double-mooned the booing audience, then ran for their lives. 
When fans didn’t like a certain call, a certain play or a certain player, they hurled liquor bottles and pop cans.  When one Texan was purposely spiked and the offending Indian player was ejected from the game, the by-now utterly crazed and furious mob threw everything onto the field that wasn’t bolted down. Then, with the score tied, a drunken fool ran onto the field and attacked a Rangers outfielder. This initiated a bench-clearing brawl, which in turn ignited a full-blown riot with Cleveland fans racing onto the field armed with knives, chains, and metal seats.  The violence got so bad that the Cleveland manager ordered his entire team onto the field–bats in hand— to protect the visiting team from attack.
Finally, the head umpire eventually declared the game a forfeit in favor of the Rangers because order could not be restored . . . to put it mildly.  And besides, since the bases had been stolen and the diamond was littered with debris there was no way the game could continue.
And so, a well-meaning, but totally lame-brained, promotion turned into a outrageous riot; clearly, a major catastrophe was dodged by only the thinnest of margins because of foggy unthunk.
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As I reached the library today I noticed a really beastly bad sight of a large woman bent over with her enormous broad dumpster pointed my way.  Ugh!  As I parked the bike I asked with a laugh, “What’s down there?”
“Oh, it’s these tiny frogs.  I was trying to keep them off the sidewalk.  Look at them!”
Ha.  Two or three almost microscopic frogs, about the size of lady bugs were indeed down there on the dirt.  These were, by far, the smallest frogs I had ever seen (I thought wrongly that all frogs came from tadpoles, but these were apparently tree frogs).  Small as they were, since they still managed to jump about four-times their body length, or maybe an inch or two, there was no doubt that the tiny mites were froglets.
Now, wouldn’t it be rich to put some of these mites in a shoe box with some of the baby lizards were have removed from the cabana lately, then add one of the tiny sea turtles just beginning to hatch on this island?  It would truly be a miniature circus; a study at just how small and fragile nature starts out.  Both frog and lizard babies could easily sit together on the baby turtle’s shell with plenty of room to spare.