OT WE 21 MAY 25 ~ Voyage
Writing is a strange hobby. Sometimes the ideas flow like water from a mountain stream. At
other times the well is dry as dust. This is one of those other times. Try to keep-up with the
same sources of political dialog as most folks here apparently do. And there are plenty of
topics to discuss If one feels so inclined. So am asking y'all to fill-in the blanks for me today.
Had a funny episode here the other day. A lady down the way keeps about 20 donkeys.
One of the clever ones figured out how to open the gate so most of the herd made a jail
break and scattered all up and down the road. The neighbors and passers-by did our best
to rope them, entice them with grain and lead them back to their paddock. The stubborn ones
just held their ground. You can't push Pokey where Pokey won't go. Learned a trick to tie their
lead to the bumper when I was a kid. The steady, slow pull would lead them back to their pens.
We had a motley crew of wranglers with no accidents or serious injuries (small road). The asses
big night out!
Credits ~
The Voyage art print by Eric Fan.
Open Thread, so share your stories below the fold.
Comments
Donkeys have a mind of their own...
and they can be pretty funny.
(10 min)
Headed South today. See you next week.
Thanks for the OT! Cool picture of the butterfly ship.
“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”
Brain wise, they are different from horses
.
Enjoy your trip down south!
Zionism is a social disease
Aw, man!
That brought back great memories of my donkeys!
Safe journeys, enjoy your festival!
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981
Good morning, Cap'n!
I am linking to an article with a headline that says it all. Read it, and then ask yourself, do you know much more after reading it than you knew after reading the headline?
https://www.cnn.com/2025/05/20/style/jim-morrison-grave-bust-found-intl-...
Gorgeous picture, friend! Thanks for the OT!
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981
Well, at least they found his head (stoned)
.
Doubt he missed it much.
The album LA Woman was my favorite.
Thanks for adding to the mix!
Zionism is a social disease
Yes, I learned
...when the bust was placed on the gravestone. I was curious because I visited the cemetery with a French acquaintance I had met on a trip there in the summer of 1972. At that time the bust wasn't there. Neither was the fence or all that graffiti. There were a few scribbles on the gravestone but nothing like in the picture. I scratched some dumb platitude with a stone in French on the gravestone, I was going thru my francophile phase at the time. I had just written an honors thesis on Vichy. We were both fans, I guess that's why we went. I thought that Morrison was definitely living the mad artist lifestyle. Didn't learn much other than that from the article.
Thanks for posting OTC.
語必忠信 行必正直
Basic who, what, when, where, why, and how
questions went unanswered. Ok. The authorities were searching someone for suspected bribery. Who? What else did they find? Where was it found? Why was nobody arrested? What was the reason it was taken? Oh, well...
One evening last week, I watched an interview Grace Slick gave about hew brief 1 day fling with Morrison. She said there was no point to trying for some lasting relationship with him because he was just crazy into drugs and she and everyone else knew he would did from the drugs.
It is evident he had a blast killing himself. He knew drugs would kill him.
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981
Yes, they rarely do
I'm usually dissatisfied with accounts of crimes in the news. The most rudimentary info is rarely provided, particularly in high profile cases.
語必忠信 行必正直
Happy Belated Birthday to Fred Neil
probably best known for writing this song.
Made famous by Harry Nillson in Midnight Cowboy.
Music trivia.
Zionism is a social disease
Good morning Cap'n Q. Lovely picture, somehow triggered
thoughts of Slocum's Spray. )Of course, on thinking it through, that would have to be before it was converted into a yawl.)
I find that one way to keep abreast of current political dialogue is to start re-reading Machiavelli's The Prince, or, alternatively Lewis Carroll, either Alice or The Hunting of the Snark, that or Camus.
be well and have a good one
That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --
Video discussion of Machiavelli
In the current US context. It's 29 minutes. It was posted a month ago, so it was probably prompted by Trump 2.
Why the Most Foolish People End Up in Power – Machiavelli Knew This
Thanks for reminding me EL. I was going to post this link a few days back but forgot.
語必忠信 行必正直
Heh. OTOH, somebody, perhaps Mark Twain,
once argued that our elected officials are among the best and brightest among us because they fooled a majority of the electorate.
be well and have a good one
That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --
That song would have been a good theme song
.
for this ragtag bunch of rustlers. Have always enjoyed
Carrolls Alice. With the idiocracy going on now, it is
pertinent.
Hope you are well.
Zionism is a social disease
Shipping babies to overseas markets
...was the subject of this video on the US sponsored adoption racket and other human trafficking evils in South Korea. I'm posting the link here because I want to describe my reaction to this video more than anything else. I have a lot of respect for Rich and KJ, I just wanted to add my two cents on the historical context.
Korean International Adoption Scandal | How did it happen? | KJ Noh Interview
With all due respect to KJ Noh, whom I have been following in the media for quite a few years, it should be understood that slavery, and families selling children to satisfy debts preexisted contact with the US. Slavery and and an abusive rigid caste/class system was endemic in Korea for centuries, and the cultural residuals still persist despite a currently somewhat more enlightened culture and legal system (the treatment of immigrants in South Korea in the current labor markets is another topic that needs to be examined; In many instances they are treated like slaves to this day). Anyone with any meaningful contact with the Korean community or history is aware of this. Of course, Korean culture has a strong. almost puritanical, sense of shame, and does ostracize those in the lower strata socially. Many are in denial of this out of cultural pride. Additionally, the custom of recreational association with women (gisaeng) for "entertainment" including prostitution is an old Korean practice. In many instances such as in military "camp towns," it is little else than a prostitution racket, frequented by criminals and desperate and abused women. Sexual slavery is a crime against humanity. Note that the US media and government generally give the Japanese a pass on the "comfort women" war crime. The slave labor crime of Japan during WWII is also generally ignored by the US media and denied by Japan in an active ongoing effort of suppression. So did the recent Yoon administration, with US and Japanese encouragement. Human slavery, trafficking, and prostitution is always wrong. The hypocrisy of the community of "shared values" nations is well taken.
Take note that the chief judge presiding over the trial of former president Yoon Seok-yeol, Ji Gwi-yeon (지귀연), is tainted by revelations that he frequented a "room salon" where the services of "hostesses," were offered. Reportedly, Ji patronized the room salon, where he was photograhed with with a hostess, while others paid the tab, approximately a thousand dollars a visit, rounding off. This judge is the same judge who released Yoon from pre-trial confinement, on alleged procedural grounds, that legal scholars in Korea find to be wholly unsupported. The South Korean prosecutor general (appointed by Yoon) overruled the prosecution team's intention to appeal the patently legally erroneous decision by Ji. Along the same lines, Kim Gon-hee, the former first lady, allegedly met Yoon, in her role as a "hostess" in the Volcano nightclub, at the Ramada Renaissance Hotel, frequented by corporate elites and government power brokers. When Kim was young, her mother ran a place called "Love Hotel." Allegedly, it wasn't a place of prostitution but a rendezvous site for illicit lovers.
Hope everyone is doing well. Chal ginnesawyo? 다들 잘 지내세요?
語必忠信 行必正直
When it comes to writing
my well is always dry.
>
MAGA
Morons
Are
Governing
America
Ha ha
.
good cartoons, needed a laugh.
Thanks!
Zionism is a social disease
My old writing professor
had us all write 500 words a day, as a minimum requirement for his course. It was back-breaking at the time, because he treated his undergrad humanities-elective course as if it was the primary reason that all of us nerds were there (despite all of us having a full load of nerdy engineering courses in addition to that, that really *did* take up more hours than there were in the day). So many of us really labored to do it. It was damnably hard.
He didn't specify a topic- only a word count. And many people in the class submitted papers that simply repeated the sentence "I fucking hate writing papers." 100 times x 7 days- he would accept that with relative equanimity, as long as they were properly typed. But for those of us that took it to heart, and tried to pull it off, it really did install a curious sense of discipline that paid off in priming the writing pump.
Now that I have my couple of social media outlets, 500 words a day is surprisingly easy to maintain, and often exceed, as I work on The Great American Memoir That Nobody Will Ever Read. And I find that I quietly thank the man, all these years later. If I absolutely have to throw down some semi-coherent words in a pinch, I can pull it off. And it really honed my love for the short-short as a story form.
But I gotta tellya: at the time, I'd have happily backed over him in the parking lot. That is, of course, if I'd had a car...
Thanks for the OT!
Twice bitten, permanently shy.
Writing has always been a hobby for me
.
except in the college years. Must be a product
of my free spirited nature. The un-bounding is
probably a byproduct of using the written language
as a form of self expression? Good thing you didn't have
a car then.
Take care.
Zionism is a social disease
Yale undergraduate course where students write 300 words per day
https://yaledailynews.com/blog/2025/05/17/the-most-human-class-at-yale/
Do members of (so-called) “Generation Z” really say “I cooked” and “I ate” to express having done something well?
Only 300?
Slackers!
Being a Boomer, and at best Gen Jones, I have no idea what Gen Z would say or write. Modern slang leaves me in the dark. However, on edit, perhaps it is an extension/bowdlerization of Heinlein's "grok", from Stranger in a Strange Land...
I wrote short-shorts, or articles dissecting the lyrics of a song I had just written (which helped tremendously with the word count target). At times, I'd write an essay about how I was up against it with a problem set for a nerd class, or analyze the news of the day. I was even able to stretch the story of the never-to-be-sufficiently-damned trust-fund baby with a BMW, whose alarm would go off for hours every night, into two whole weeks, like a serial from the old SciFi magazines.
Bunny trail: that saga finally ended one warm night when somebody with a baseball bat attacked the car, breaking every single piece of glass and damaging every body panel, then beat on the hood until it sprang open, and finally beat the battery to death until it split open, spilling its acid everywhere- and very effectively and permanently silencing the alarm.
As a note for the interested student, I did not own a baseball bat. But I certainly yelled my full-throated support out the window to the perp.
That was a nicely written article about the Yalies, and the true purpose of the write-or-die discipline. That which doesn't kill us makes us stronger (or at least wordier...)
Thanks for the link!
Twice bitten, permanently shy.
From internet tubes: Hemingway 500 words a day.
“When I am working on a book or a story I write every morning as soon after first light as possible. You have started at six in the morning, say, and may go on until noon or be through before that,” Hemingway said.
Not sure how to embed an X video
https://x.com/RyanPatrick1991/status/1924186964980617571
At any rate, this is about a depressed chimp visiting his former owners.
It will delight you, might even jerk a tear.
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981
Uh, matbe you could try asking whatsisname.
Hell, maybe you could con him into posting instructions for all of us to try, except moi, since I never read tht X rated stuff.
be well and have a good one
That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --
Yeah! Whatsisname might tell me!
Good idea!
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981
Well, well, well….
.
I posted a video last night on Biden in 2022 saying that he had cancer.
Today we were told that he hadn’t had a prostrate exam since 2014. Apparently it’s not worth doing one after age 77. Biden was 72 in 2014.
Isn’t it always the coverup that gets you?
The message echoes from Gaza back to the US. “Starving people is fine.”
Well, he got most of it right, except that last bit. Why
is it that all these seeming cognoscenti always scream treason at any and every offence? The asshole created and antagonized enemies, but did most certainly not give them aid and comfort.
That, of course, ignores the minor detail that we haven't declared war on anybody in one hell of a long time, and neither presnuts or other government nuts get to declare people to be enemies, even though they all do it.
be well and have a good one
That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --
Probably funniest video in SE Asia right now.