Most Commented Society Blogs (899)

near me, there was no Karaoke. Instead there was a DJ, somehow booked there from Baltimore over 100 miles away.I got there after 9 having decided my best priority tonight was to barbecue some NY Steaks on sale for only $4.99 a pound.



Very tasty.

If you know the place you know most of the Karaoke crowd is both regulars and they are there to belt out 1960s Country Western music. Yeah sure, sometimes they wil jump yp into the 70s and try a little Meatloaf or Blondie, but mostly Merle Haggert and Johnny Cash. To say inner city Baltimore contemporary left them cold is perhaps an understatement. Maybe we could blame the profanity or the words bragging of robbing stores and shooting moms, whatever. The bartender told me most of the regulars had left by 8pm. In fact almost eveyone had left and the place was nearly deserted. Out on the deck in back where the music could not penetrate the steel door a few former employees were smoking cigarettes, nursing fireballs and complaining about the booking agent.

A car pulled into the parking lot and three of the aging, drunk, (2 former but fired) female bartenders went inside to scope out the new arrivals. In minutes they returned horrified that although 4 women had arrived, one of them was a tranny. I and the other customer hiding on the deck were told 'it is over 6 feet tall, and has a choker on her neck so you can';t see the adams apple.

Eventually an attractive woman over 6 feet tall with a choker on her neck came out to smoke a cigarrete. To the obvious discomfort of the older crones she stayed and attempted to talk to the other man. He stated he had to go to the bathroom and went inside. I asked her to sit at my table and she did not, but she did come over to talk. I learned she was born in the US but had gone to Germany a decade ago and was only 1 week back in the US with her female HS buddies of long ago...We did not speak of sex changes. Instead we talked about music. We talked about N. Tesla. We talked about the G-7 and how she felt about it living in Germany. We talked about Syrian refugees. I found her to be much more knowledgable about current events than the usual patron of the establishment. I learned she spoke multiple languages and currently teaches English ESL in Europe. I found her to be one of the most pleasant and enjoyable persons to speak with I have encountered there in over a decade. She shared her Facebook page with me and I sent a friend request so we could meet another time. Her friends grew bored and left and she with them. Hopefully we will communicate later this week.

The red neck former female employees on the deck were very catty about her after she left. I was curious so using the information on the Facebook page I did some googling. The redneck women who were opposed to her even existing, well one lives in a rented trailer and the otehr one takes turns shacking up with different male customers of the place. However my new friend with the neck chokler, she owns 3 companies in Europe and owns 4 web pages. I can document she is fluent in at least 4 languages. She is heavily involved in Me Too at a protest organizer level. She has bonafide (i.e., she owns) residences in 3 countries. . She got speeding tickets in S. Carolina but has had no other run ins (compared to the jealous crones, all 3 of whom are convicted drug felons).

My take? I am happy to have met my new friend and hope to see more of her before she goes back to Europe.

You can take a self made millionaire & a poor guy and drop them both off in a strange city with $5k each to start a new life. 
10 yrs later the former millionaire will probably be a millionaire again & the poor guy will probably be poor again. 
It's the person & the mindset that makes the difference. Even if we took all the wealth & divided it up equally amongst everyone. Given enough time most the money would be back where it was before it was divided up. Some might call bullsh*t. I say the people that do complain a lot & have a lot of excuses.

Why do this occurs when your one of the nicest person on earth and do anything for anybody

World wide. The EU, first in the east, then thanks to liberal self loathing guilt driven Dr. Merkel's open doors to poor, proto State dependent, unskilled Muslims, and black Africans, in the fourth reich. Now spreading neatly world wide. It's a double danger whammy, as in the 1930's, where the "us and them" Jones gets fueled by recession, or worse. To these old eyes, a lot drives it, but the deepest is a feeling among the every day Volk, that their safe identities are being torn away, by easily identifiable big government "progressive" forces. As in former communist lands, the same folks, higher ups in the parties, who live fat, while the lumpen proletariat, and middle classses, get to eat cake. To borrow a line from a Pink Floyd hit---"and who'll deny, it's what the fighting's all about". So we see a (brilliant) President Trump, and recall the words from the Fuehrer himself--If we loose this war, it's all over for Germany. (Wenn wir diesen Krieg verlieren, ist es fuer unser Deutschland doch alle). The biggest misreading ever of everyday people by the liberal fatties. Many are either trust fund babies (like Marx and Engels), or wannabees of such. Plus cela change, plus c'est la meme chose, n'est pas? But what do I know?

This is a copy of a letter which I recently sent to a prisoner.

Hello. I like your answer. At least you replied. Thank you. I hope that between the two of us there will be many more messages and that we will become great friends. I am just very concerned about people who are in jail. Please allow me to make my own interpretation about the phenomenon which is the wall murals of ancient Egypt showing everyone and every thing in profile. You are in jail. The most significant thing about that is that while you are there you will not be killed in a car accident or fall off of a cliff. If I go to see my doctor tomorrow I will be contributing to medical science which has the potential to benefit others. Is this true or false? There is no progress without patients. As I get older I may be seeing a doctor more often. I may undergo procedures and treatments and be prescribed medications. All of that has the potential to benefit other people because I will be contributing to medical science. If I die at a younger age I will have contributed less to medical science. By controlling people they are more likely to contribute more to medical science. You are being controlled. Maybe you should be in jail. Maybe you do need to be corrected. Many things are possible. It is also possible that there is no good reason to be keeping you confined in a prison. Maybe you are not a bad person. Maybe other people are the bad ones. I have not really looked at your arrest record or any of that. I don’t know why you are in jail. I don’t need to know. However let's imagine that you are in jail for selling drugs for example. Many people are. In that case would that mean that you are a bad person? If someone is enjoying drugs they might be so busy enjoying their life that they forget to go for an annual check-up at the doctors office. Therefore they would be contributing less to medical science. The argument to counter this is that people are not enjoying themselves. That is true however it is also true that there is nothing good to enjoy because of the laws and law enforcement which makes it very difficult to buy something to enjoy which is desirable. Therefore the idea that people are miserable because they are consuming drugs is a an argument which is ridiculous. Just because the only thing available to people is terrible does not mean that there is nothing to enjoy. Most likely your life and definitely the life of many, many other people is miserable because of the people in charge who want you to be a slave. I am asking you for my sake and for the sake of millions of other people to be very careful when you consider your own motivation in regard to the things that you support. Even a person in jail can have slaves. Oh yes the wall murals of ancient Egypt. I think that it would be better to discuss that later. My ambition is to get everyone out of jail, to change the laws and to start over.

I was reading ‘Do not go gentle into that good night’ by Dylan Thomas. It’s a poem about an old man who seems to have had his electricity cut off, and his son is imploring him to do something about it. To pay his bill, presumably. I prefer poetry that talks about the small, everyday matters of life; I find the more lofty themes tend to go over my head. I am a late comer to poetry -over 60 years late. For me, the purpose of poetry is not to teach us things we don’t know, but rather to bring more into our consciousness things we already know but haven’t paid enough attention to. Things like the importance of paying our bills on time.

I don't know what to blog about.

There are 3 more Star Trek TV shows coming. Piccard is supposed to be the next one. About the man's adventures after he retires from Star Fleet. Star Trek Discovery, Season 3 after Piccard season 1 ends. Then Section 31 will get it's own series (Yay! Section 31 is so cool, time traveling assassins or medlers. The dark side of maintaining an Empire or a Federation.) All 3 are filming now. Also coming are 'Short Treks' Little one hour stand alone episodes about life in the Federation. Tribbles are coming back. AND carnivorous Tribbles you really don't want breeding on your star ship.

I have / had an acquaintance of 25 years. A guy named Ricky. In the mid 1990s I acquired some rental townhouses in the nearby town and joined their HOA and somehow soon became the President. Ricky's mom owned one of the townhouses in the development. She died and then Ricky owned it. He was a poly abusing drunk. Heroin, cocaine, meth, etc. I received complaints about him at least once a month. Noise, sleeping nude on the porch, excessive traffic coming and going, all the fun stuff. Plus frequent lateness regarding quarterly assessments. I had to deal with him a lot. Poor Ricky couldn't hold a job so when sober he did odd jobs. Mowing for neighbors, tree cutting, roofing repairs, clearing stopped up toilets for folks who would rather pay Ricky a few gallons of gasoline than hire a licensed plumber, etc. Most of it in the community. Ricky spent a lot of his Sundays in the local jail for being drunk in public on Saturdays, etc. His wife found someone sober and departed with his kid. Eventually someone got him into a program. It took a decade but Ricky eventually dried out and changed his ways. There was a lumber company and they hired him a lot to fell big trees on a property they had in Maryland. Also a local privately owned recreational park had him on their staff part time, picking up trash, directing visitors, collecting gate fees, etc. Small town and we had acquaintances and friends in common. When Ricky had gotten straight and I was no longer an HOA member (having sold those properties after my wife deceased) I ran into Ricky a few times on social occasions. I won't say we were good friends, but we were friendly. He was actually a nice guy and a lot of folks liked him. Two weeks ago after cutting down some large poplars they were stacked for shipping. While everyone was waiting for the crane to arrive Ricky decided to trim the branches sticking out from one of them. He had almost 40 years of experience. He warned the rest of the crew to stay back in case the logs rolled. Then he started cutting. A witness told me suddenly something moved and they yelled to Ricky but at first he couldn't hear them over the saw noise. Then he must have noticed it too because he turned to run, then turned back to pick up the saw before starting away. Then he stumbled and 3 16,000 pound logs rolled over him and death was virtually instantaneous. John told me, if he hadn't gone back for the saw I think he would have made it.
We held the memorial last Saturday. Cremated of course. John described him as looking like a tree frog someone had stomped with a boot. Ugh. Definitely nothing for an open coffin. There was no Workmen's Compensation payment because poor Ricky was a 1099 contract employee. The lumber company paid for Ricky's body to be transported down from the Baltimore ME office and the cremation and also the service as his now grown son has his own issues and no money for such things. About 200 people attended the half hour service (yes, me too). We did a small collection for the son. Some folks I knew, some I didn't. Ricky was the common thread. He had no Internet presence, so the photos for the service were kind of few, maybe 5 or 6 covering 30 years. I stood there looking at the little wooden box containing his ashes and wondered about our place in life.

In the Army its called a sit-Rep; the Navy, a big [ family ] wave
...at Notre Dame, a Hail Mary // army HAL 9
but in Fresno, we call it ball point radio ....
14. Neon Bible / arcade fire
-13. Halcyon digital / deer hunter
01. Sound of Silver / LCD soundsystem
..... K ilowatt ) ) ..... 23. Yankee Hotel Foxtrot / wilco
. E cho ...................-2. Funeral / arc. fire
.. X ray... ) ) ....... 21. writers block / pB & J
.. P o P ... Seattle WA
................ pop Quiz. } Radio is to skynet as sand / silica
is to_________ ? ... a] ok computer .. b] fresno raisins.... c] French frys....d] NFL 1/2 time
...........................................e] all the above
49. Dear Science / TV on the Radio
03. Doolittle / pixies
52. Lost in the Dream / War on drugs
..... The codified laws combine to speak for the sovereign power. And all constitute
but a singular statute. - WESTLAW, Educ. Code CA
....... XL. DESCENDING LIKE VULTURES / ROGUE WAVE
1740. WASHING................. XX. Passover / black angels
5892. TOWN.........................IX. You in Reverse / built to spill
----------------- .........................XI. born again / black Sabbath
7632. (2). flaming ruin
....... tongue of fire

My mom had a small collection of religious ornaments and souvenirs from various trips. She kept them on a mini-shelf unit in her place of business and one at home.
It wasn't until I got into furniture manufacturing where I heard the Jewish equivalent of knickknack that sounded like 'choch-ka' or 'choch-kee'
Designers, especially ones from New York used that work liberally. They told me it was a Yiddish word. Since the word was only spoken to me, I didn't have a clue how it was spelled.

Tonight, I was reading a news article and saw the word tchotchke and I tried to pronounce it with a 'T'
Puzzled about the word, I cut & pasted into dictionary.com to see it's chotch-ke (or alternately chahch-kuh)

Those are the things my parents called knickknacks. Mystery solved.

Yeah, these things:




Thanks for reading my blog!

Myself, I'll be more than happy with $500M. I could



buy me all the Cognac from all over the world.