Monthly Archives: May 2008

Happy, happy

Update!

Thanks to my wonderful sister Mavis, I now know the name of the ship my dad served on during the Korean War. This picture of the heavy cruiser USS Salem was taken in June 1952 — heck, Dad could have been on it when the photo was snapped. Cool.

Thanks, Mave!

==============

And a fond Memorial Day to all. How about a tribute to a veteran this morning?

Today I shall honor my wonderful dad.

If you’ve read me for long, you know that he was not my biological father. But I he was always, and always will be “Dad” to Mavis and me.

Charles Collins was born on 26 July 1933 in extreme southern Illinois, in a town of about 6,000 called DuQuoin. It doesn’t even rank a name on the map, so I gave it one myself. (It’s about 90 miles southeast of St. Louis, MO.) Anyway, we’re talking bigtime hillbilly country. Yowza. I remember visiting my great-aunt Nina (pronounced Nye-nah, of course) one weekend, and she was cooking cabbage to make for the week’s meals. Dear God in heaven. I had to stay outside in the sweltering heat, as opposed to going inside (where it was also sweltering) and smelling the cooking cabbage. I about gagged. Dad was amused, however. Anyway, I have never been able to stomach cabbage since.

Dad graduated from Geneseo (Illinois) High School in 1951, as the Korean War was heating up, and enlisted in the US Navy. He served in the Mediterranean, on a destroyer whose name I can’t recall, and I’m too lazy to go upstairs and unearth his Navy records from the attic, so it shall remain nameless.

I *think* this photo was taken in St. Mark’s Square in Venice. Let me know if that doesn’t look right. (Click on the photo for a larger view.)

Somewhere — maybe Mavis has it — is a picture someone took of Dad diving off the side of the ship, into the Mediterranean Sea. For those who don’t know, the deck of a Navy ship is extremely high above the surface of the water. You’d never get me to do that in a million years…

Anyhow, after his years of Navy service, Dad came home, worked and saved money, and then went on the GI Bill to Augustana College in Rock Island, Illinois. This is his college graduation picture. Shortly thereafter, he met my mom, and the rest is history, as you may have read before.

He gave Mavis and me a great life.  He adopted us and loved us like his own. He and my mom never had any children together, so Mave and I were “it.” He didn’t ever mention that fact, or seem to care about it. We were enough for him — likely in more ways than one. We probably drove him insane; he just never let us know it.

This is one of the last photos taken of Dad, circa early 90s. Even in his 60s, he had like 5 gray hairs. Not fair. He died in December of 1995, and is buried, alongside my mom, at the Florida National Cemetery in Bushnell.

He is my favorite veteran, and I’m thinking of him on Memorial Day.

Love you, Dad.

You couldn’t torquemada anything

Yes, that’s probably my all-time favorite production number in any movie musical. It’s embarrassing to admit, but there you have it.

Have you ever seen Mel Brooks’s History of the World Part I ? If not, then nevermind. It’s like an auto da fé : it’s what you auto not do, but you do anyway.

:-)

But seriously – speaking of the Spanish Inquisition…

There really was a bad guy named Torquemada. And what’s worse, he was a bad guy for God. (I’m sure God was not happy about this — at least I hope He wasn’t.) Funny how, in the history of humankind, much of the cruelest and most hideous physical, mental and emotional torture inflicted on people by other people was in the name of God.

It’s all over the place today, too, but once again, I digress.

Anyway, my sis and I are reading a series of books (historical fiction) about the reign of Henry VIII of England, and the drama that followed him around on account of his six wives. One of them, Catherine of Aragon, was the daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain — Ferdinand being the guy who started the Inquisition to make sure people behaved themselves and didn’t think any thoughts except those deemed acceptable to the Catholic Church.

See, Ferd was a smart guy. He needed money for his wars against the Moors and Jews (who stood to net him lots of loot, since they were a prosperous lot), so he conspired with the Pope to start rooting out the heathens, initially forcing them to “buy” a pardon from the Vatican. When that wasn’t enough, they had to find a way to make everybody sorry. Enter Tomás de Torquemada.

The torture used in the Inquisition is part truth, part folklore. Of course, you had your standard-issue burning, whereby a heretic would be dragged to a huge wood pile, chained to a stake in the middle of it, and torched. But there were other, more hideous ways of getting someone to admit he had an impure thought against the Christian church, and Torquemada was the heavyweight champeen of coming up with them.

I won’t elaborate on it here, but if you do a search on “waterboarding,” you’ll see all you need to see on it. The most often-used method was the rack, where limbs were slowly pulled from their joints. Nice.

Did I mention that all this was done in the name of God? (Ok, and money.) Oh, and get this. If you were penitent — that is, if you admitted your guilt and said you were really, really sorry — you got to be garroted (choked to death) before you were burned. How cool is that?

The self-righteously pious are so considerate. Hmm, did I use present tense here?

Funny? I think so.

But first – NEWS FLASH!

Prepare yourself………..

Wait for it………..

You can do it…………

Wait…………………..

Ready? Here goes.

Another professional athlete has been charged with a violent crime. But wait, wait wait! Don’t get upset. Don’t get up. It’s just manslaughter. Saints DE Charles Grant immediately posted bond, so he’s not in jail. Nor will he likely ever be. Thank God, Jesus, Mary, Buddha, the NFL, and really boss defense lawyers.

On to today’s clever grist.

Let me first say that I am no fan of the LA Times (or the New York Times, for that matter), for reasons that don’t really matter. But yesterday I ran across an opinion column written by Joel Stein of the Times. Loved it. It was actually quite funny. Truth be told, I wondered if I liked him because I recognized a bit of my own writing style in his. Is that a terribly vain thing to say? I don’t know. I’m older, so I say the writing style should belong to me. In fact, I should have his job. But I digress.

After I read one of his blog posts, I looked at a bunch of his other stuff and loved it all. You should read him.

Anyway.

His column included advice for celebrities on how to avoid the paparazzi — from the paparazzi themselves. He then spins it into something quite silly, but at the same time, gives it an odd ring of truth:

Go out early: Do your errands before 11 a.m. because, as you know if you’ve ever seen paparazzi, there’s no way they’re awake before 11. And make dinner reservations before 8, because there’s a window between 5 and 8 p.m. when they’re doing their equivalent of office work: uploading video, sending photos, killing puppies.

Don’t go to the Ivy for lunch:* Sure, the Cobb salad is good — but are you completely unable to find a salad at a less tourist-packed, paparazzi-stalked joint? If you’re going to the Ivy for lunch, you want your photo taken. This is the place where Melanie Griffith went with sudden-friend Sharon Stone last week in what will rank as the most desperate plea for sexual attention from a 50-something until whatever Kim Cattrall does in the “Sex and the City” movie.

Hire security: …Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes…are among the hardest celebrities to get pictures of….Cruise’s SUV has a dividing wall and window curtains. Also, he can melt film with his mind.

And the best piece of advice: Wear a burka. Heh.

* I’m thinking that isn’t the kind of free publicity the owners of the Ivy restaurant had in mind.

See, this is what I mean.

A cop in Los Angeles was recently convicted of staging fake raids of people’s houses. He’d go in, brandish his badge and gun, and “raid” the house for contraband. What he ended up doing was basically robbing people.

What did he get for doing this 40 times?

102 years. That’s one hundred two years. In jail. They’re calling it a form of armed robbery. Ok, I get the charge. I can see spending time in jail for it, too. It was a rotten, horrible stunt to pull on innocent people, scaring them to death and all. But here’s the thing…

Nobody died. Nobody was even physically injured. That doesn’t make what he did right – I’ll give you that and a cookie. So what’s my point?

Ray Lewis is my point.

Ray, who made millions, got in trouble with the law, made a few more millions, killed somebody, and then made some more millions. Oh, did I mention he killed somebody? And did I also mention his jail term?

Oh wait…he didn’t get a jail term. Where’s the justice here? A cop gets 100 years for playing SWAT commando, and Ray gets nothing for killing a guy? (You may refer to a previous rant on this subject, if you’re so inclined.)

I know, I know. It’s all about corroborating evidence. That still doesn’t make it right. Sometimes our justice system backfires, and criminals go free. Yeah, I know all that. But it depends on your definition of “sometimes.” I think “sometimes” translates to “too friggin’ often” — especially where professional athletes are concerned.

So says I.

Fink out.

PS – Here’s the original article about the ex-cop who will never see his family again.

Have I mentioned that this country’s going straight to the devil?

Random Weirdness II

Contest #3!

So yeah. Tell me what this picture is. I think I know, but I don’t have time to research it this morning. Big ol’ Hershey bar to the person with the right answer!

========================================

Harrison. Dude. Lose the aging swinger earring. It’s just me being a hag, I suppose. But I simply cannot — as hard as I try to be all cool and easy and stuff — reconcile myself to men wearing earrings. I love many men who do, mind you — but I just can’t bring myself to think it’s anything but girly, pretentious, or silly. Sorry.

This is one and the same person. Yikes. Not making a judgment, mind. Just observing that the pap can be extremely annoying when one is trying to have a day at the beach.

Some people looked just as cute without makeup as they did with it.

Since we’re almost the same age, this makes me feel a bit better. I should post one of these photos of myself, but I dassn’t. I already scare the kiddies.

Fink (weirded) out.

=====================

Winner!

Big ol’ Hershey bar goes to Adam R., who correctly identified the picture in today’s contest. The 1937 photograph of children wearing gas masks was shot in Leningrad by Viktor Bulla. Title: Pioneers in Defense Drill.