Rather than post the usual memorial…I thought, how about a rememberance of all the good this one entertainer did in his lifetime.? Through the film, you realize, just how many wars America has faught, and how many lives were givin up for our way of life..and all the entertainers of the past that went into harm’s way to bring the boys some cheer.
I took the day off and went to see one of the best botanical gardens in the world…right here in St. Louis. As you can see…I was in heaven. I took WAY too many pictures.
That’s my friend Pattie, standing in the middle of the “Mediterranean plaza” and smiling a great big smile for the picture EVEN though, her feet were killing her.
So, here’s the thing:
You cannot go through all this beauty and not help but think, “God invented evolution so as to give us all this wonderful beauty and variety.” I really don’t see how evolutionists can say God could not have thought up “evolution.” and therefore does not exist.
Jeez. And they give those people degrees!
I’ll be back tomorrow to complain about every little thing political, but for tonight…I’m enjoying the memories.
–just how long Maria Shriver and Arnold Schwarzenegger have been thinking about divorce, but if you look at this video, I think they stayed together MUCH too long. Probably for the children’s sake, but really…look at her. She is asking people, or sort of TELLING people, that there is no way she is supposed to know what she is going to do after the divorce. The fact that she can’t part her hair in any kind of simple straight line tells you, she is still in the shock stage.
Frankly, I’d say this is pretty refreshing.
I am so tired of watching divorces of famous people in the media who act like they are just perfectly okay after a marriage goes sour…Sandra Bullock and Sarah Jessica Parker are two that come to mind. I”d much rather see someone saying, “Well, how the hell do I know what to do, or even how to feel, moron!” than the usual ‘I have a career my dear, I don’t need him.’ type.
Maria, pretty much gave up her career to be Arnold’s wife, and no doubt she used her family’s considerable connections to help get him elected as California’s governor. I still remember the famous interview on Oprah that launched his way into politics. Oprah was Maria’s friend, not Arnold’s.
And then, the great Austrian Hope turned out not to be a conservative, but one of the biggest flaming liberals around.
I don’t know as much, but I bet the fact that he finally realized that he could not go on to become President, due to the Kennedy’s loss of power, Obama’s birth certificate issues, and the economic collapse of the country, is eating him silly.
Whatever…you can’t help but think, right about now, Maria is thinking…”Derminate him. I don’t vant him coming bac!” She just can’t say it, because she actually speaks better English. Once she gets her hair together again, she will be doing fine. I think she should take over Larry King’s old job…and Arnold can get a job playing old Norse Gods on the Sci-Fi channel.
Nobody Flashes Email: Today, I was happy with myself that I had gotten the whole house cleaned– everything was in its place, and then I came to my office. Just shoot me. There are papers everywhere: notes, books, shoe boxes filled with old receipts, closets dripping with so much stuff I dare not move anything for fear something will fall. I was feeling downright depressed about how I can’t ever seem to keep my “office” in order, when I got this email.
A Person’s Mind and His Desk.
There’s an old saying that seems to apply: Creative minds are rarely tidy. I’ve used that often to explain my desk/workspace. Here we see the workspaces of William F. Buckley, Nat Hentoff, Albert Einstein, and a guy from Kenya.
Nobody’s Opinion: Last week I went to Missouri’s wolf sanctuary and found out that gray wolves are an endangered species. In fact, it doesn’t seem that the wolf is doing very well in the world at all, which is a shame because they are such beautiful animals. There has never been a wolf attack on a human ever recorded in the United States. Coyotes killed 22 times more cattle than wolves do.
Here in Missouri, there are no wolves. We have “foxes.” Cute– but I wish we had more wolves. The “government” is not going to introduce them back into the wild. They are genetically monitored and strictly controlled, every single pup is accounted for—god forbid a wolf have too many.
So, are they doing this for OUR benefit?
I doubt it. BECAUSE…ladies and gents…we have WILD PIGS! And they’re not controlling them too well at all. What’s up with that? Compared to a pig, the wolves are angels They might kill a cow here or there, but pigs…just ask any Texas rancher. They can devour whole fields of sorghum, rice, wheat, soybeans, potatoes, melons, nuts, grass and hay. Corn is a favorite. And disease…they bring that too.
Texas and Florida have the most…but they are spreading, even to my state of Missouri. And as you can see by the picture, not all those pigs are little. Texas alone killed 24, 648 wild pigs in 2009.
So, how did this happen? Pigs are not native to America. Christopher Columbus brought them to the Caribbean, and Hernando DeSoto brought them to Florida, and some rich and bored hunters some time ago, brought some Eurasian boars over for hunting, and THEY managed to mate with the local feral pigs….which brings me to my story.
(What? I can’t have a story?)
***
When I was a kid, of about nine, I went on a wild boar hunt in the Everglades. Yes, there I was, little Miss Daniel Crockett…riding in the back of a swamp buggy (a swamp buggy is just a big jeep with airplane tires…sort of the first BIG FOOT)..Like I said, there I was, on a Friday night, with about seventeen other girls, all older than me. I was the youngest girl there, and there were actually three swamp buggies carrying these fine young women out into the Everglades…that night…to go…wild boar hunting.
I have NEVER figured out why two men would take seventeen young women out to hunt boars..and I don’t want to know. It’s not like they gave the girls guns, or taught them to hunt. No…they took them along just for the fun of it! Gotta love it.
I was not at the age yet— where screaming and giggling every two seconds had evolved into my brain, being a few years shy of puberty, so you can imagine I was more amazed at the girls, than the dark and scary ride out to a tiny little hut. Whatever danger lurked in the dark was miles away from the noise made by seventeen giggling girls.
When we got to our “quarters” it was one small hut, with ten bunkers, one fridge, one pot bellied stove…and an outhouse. I slept on the floor.
Don’t forget the outhouse. There was a spider that was on the top left corner of the inside that was as big as a hubcap. I kid you not. We went to the bathroom in pairs.
I talked to it. “Don’t you EVEN think about it!”
There were three adults on this trip…and they had all been evidently, the very MOST expert hog hunters— in the Philippines. None of them spoke English very well, but the small petite woman, who was going to hunt the boar, could tell, I was told, the most fabulous raunchy dirty jokes.—good thing I knew nothing about sex, because this lady did NOT shut up. To this day, I have not heard a comedian match her memory of jokes anywhere. I always knew when they ended because she would laugh really loud at herself. And then she start up again.
When it came time to hunt the boars, we all got in the swamp buggies, and it took us quite a while before we found one. And it had tusks, and screamed furiously, it was about 500 pounds, and it put up a big fight. Time and again it attacked the buggy, and was just about the ugliest thing I had ever seen. Was I scared? Okay, a little. But the guys had guns, so…I was more amazed.
The NEXT day…that was the scary day. The men went back out to hunt some more “boar” (They had let the first one go because he was too big for the fridge) and the little comedian decided to take us all out for a nice walk in the midday swampy sun, all seventeen of us. I was near the front, and after about an hour…the girl in the lead, screamed as loud as she could, and ran right past me. The NEXT girl in front of her…again…screamed—“‘SNAKE!!!” and ran passed me.
So, there I was. In front telling them to knock it off. Cowards. Then…I saw…palmettos…being flattened against the ground. Dozens of them. (picture a big bush being flattened…same thing.) and as I looked down, about twelve feet in front of me was the biggest snake I had ever seen, and I had seen many for my age. The body…sleuthing slowly…slowly…about the size of a Oak tree trunk.
I froze— fascinated at first, and then, held my breathe. It’s head was a good deal already pass me…and I got tired of waiting for the other end to pass by. It was sort of like sitting in a car and waiting for a train to pass by. I wanted to see it, really I did…the tail I mean. But…it was moving too slow, and the rest of the girls were making much too much noise.
I calmly walked back to the other girls who were crying hysterically, and told them it was just a big python.
Chill.
Yes, I was brave that day, and then…puberty hit. Today, I would probably scream…although, quietly.
And now, to my point. Those big pylons are all other the Everglades now, they are NOT natives. They can eat small children. And wild boars…another alien species, can devastate a big portion of your land.
But wolves? Who do they hurt?
And more importantly, why are they letting hogs, wild boars, and pythons multiply while they are keeping wolves (who ARE natives) in some kind of perpetual endangered spices limbo?
I don’t know. But in a metaphor…the wolves of America are being overrun by alien species.
I suggest we take make our Congressmen and women go on a wild boar hunt before they enter office. Let them scream for once and take the government out of species control.
It’s typical of Congress. isn’t it? Control the natives,–but let the aliens run lose. They think of people just the same as they think of animals.
Nobody suggest that we put the worst of them on the political endangered speices list in 2012. Personally, I take a Wolf over a politican any day of the week. Few of them are as noble.
Making the List of Acceptable Risks: What do these People Have in Common?
Nobody Remembers one of the reasons for Charles Lindbergh’s great success, was that he was, according to his youngest child, Reeve Lindbergh, “an inveterate list maker. We used to make fun of him.” He would follow his kids around with lists for them to do.
To Charles, they were a point of self-preservation, and he insisted that lists were part of the important mental task of being prepared for calculated, acceptable risk.
Gee…I guess Bernanke didn’t keep lists, nothing about TARP was acceptable or calculated. (Or was it?)
Lindbergh used to make great lists before a flight, and even the fishing hooks (in case of a crash over the Arctic) were counted and weighed several times. Every ounce over meant less fuel.
Another famous list maker, according to those who know her, is Madonna. It seems she gets in her limo and marks off all she has to do that day. People who have worked for her say she is almost obsessed with list making. Nobody wonders if she gives HER kids lists of things to do?
Once, Gene Simmons went practically crazy when he lost his little black appointment book on his show.
Seventy percent of the people in the world, it is said, make lists. Some of them even use sticky notes on their computer. I make lists, but then, I almost never finish my daily tasks. Out of a list of fifteen, if I am lucky, I might make it to four. Show me a man or women who finishes their list every single day, and I’ll bet you they are 1. famous and 2. probably rich. That kind of drive takes superhuman effort. Not to mention—no kids, no pets, no demanding spouse, no house, no dishes, no laundry, no email, no Supernatural reruns, and no earthquakes, tornadoes, or hurricanes. It also helps if you don’t have to cook.
The only good piece of advice that I ever got from Bill Clinton, came from his book called, “My Life,” which, I must say, is one of the most boring books you can ever pick up…but it did have one redeeming factor which was…Bill told us all to make lists each and every day, and do the most important thing first, then go down the list and finish things off in the matter of their importance.
No doubt it’s one of the reasons why some little fat boy from Arkansas grew up to be one of the most powerful men in the world: He made lists. And don’t you wonder what happened to those “lists?” I bet if we could find some of Bill Clinton old lists, we would not only find thousands of telephone numbers, (and bank accounts) but lists of White House enemies, and who he had audited. Because Bill took a calculated risk even making them, you can bet they have all been shredded.
You would think by the horrible failure of the current administration, that nobody is keeping any lists at the White House…but that’s not quite true. Obama has a Blackberry. So, in the fine Nixononian tradition of keeping lists…I can only speculate what a daily list on Obama’s Blackberry might look like…
‘President’ Obama’s List of THINGS TO DO TODAY
Things with calculated acceptable risk:
1. Make sure they put your Presidential Obama logo on the cardboard Easter eggs for the Easter Egg Hunt. Make sure the Easter Party inside has the real chocolate ordered from France.
2. Call Louis Farrakhan. Explain that this war will get you reelected, and remind him that that’s important for the Muslim Nation. Mention that Kaddafi is okay.
3. Send Michelle to the Bahamas for another vacation.
4. Golf: tee time 10.am tomorrow, and Sunday. Bring the clubs Tiger gave you. Send Air Force One to pick up Jeffery.
5. Photo-op with NBA players at 1pm. Let them all stay overnight for a big party.
6. Lunch with Beyonce. (Keep the NBA players away for at least an hour)
7. Meet with Jeb Bush to go over immigration reform at 3pm.
8. Invite Donald Trump to White House, but then cancel.
9. Fly to Chicago to meet Rahm for dinner. Make sure Daley knows he can fly on Air Force One. Go over strategy for re-election.
10. Get invites out to all the highest campaign contributors to get a ride on Air Force One to Dublin. COST: $700,000 a seat. Make sure Stevie gets to come.
11. Invade Libya, but make sure it doesn’t get out.
12. Call George Soros before you retire, you know how he hates it when you don’t.
So,..as you can see that there are LISTS…and there are lists. They are not all the same. which means, after reading Obama’s list mine is starting to make me look a lot more like Lindbergh. I’m going to start weighing my essays from now on, because, I’m sure even Charles would agree….I am taking a calculated but acceptable risk just writing this.
Nobody’s Opinion: There are few things in life prettier than a yellow rose. I was thinking about this tonight, while I was outside today…picking the dead leaves out of my Japanese garden—clearing away debris, and marveling at the tiny green shoots who had pushed themselves up from the wet ground, somehow..bursting through, tiny little buds of something on the end, heads bowed as if waiting for the sun to kiss them hello. Yes, it’s a miracle how fast everything grows in spring, and it’s no wonder that we measure our lives by the seasons. I was tip-toeing around so as not to squash them.
***
But, I missed getting my yellow rose at the funeral.
***
Everyone was standing outside the chapel after the last words were said, families leaving, the body waiting for the dirt and final flowers, and the sister of the departed gave all the ladies a bright yellow rose. I was clear across the parking lot explaining to someone I had just met WHY I could not drive over 50 miles just to go to some strangers house for a WAKE (after two days of this stuff, I was ready to get back to my life) when I spotted them being given away. By the time I got there, they were gone. But, I grabbed a few being held by the sister and smelled…
***
Nothing.
***
Have you noticed? Roses have no smell anymore. Most of they have been cross-designed and breed, and whatever, and the beautiful ‘fill your lungs with this miracle of life’, is no longer there. Oh sure, they are bigger, and brighter— but those geneticists have lost the smell in the process and what a pity. Because what’s a rose without it’s beautiful smell? It’s like a beautiful woman without a kind soul.
***
Even at the famous Botanical Gardens here in St. Louis, where the rose garden has thousands of blooms every single year, you can stand in the middle of the rose garden, and go, “Where’s the perfume?” You can put your poor neglected nose up to every single blossem…and…
***
Nothing.
***
You know, I hate to admit it, but this upsets me, which brings me to another point.
***
At this funeral, there wasn’t ONE single woman there who was not horribly sick somehow. All of them were at least 100 pounds overweight, and suffered from cancers, strokes, lung diseases, you name it. Two of them were in wheel chairs. One of the reasons we did not go to the gravesite was because two of the sisters could not even walk. And I found out that almost every single woman there (and all the women in my own family) had had her gall balder removed. I talked to at least seven.
***
What is going on?
***
These were not lazy women. None of them. Anyone can glance around our society and see just how everyone is feeling. And most experts agree…it’s our food. It’s been processed, chemically altered–the soil has been depleted and our thyroids themselves have been decimated. In order to “feed the masses” and make sure the food stays on a shelf-life of forever so as to make a profit, there is stuff in our food that shouldn’t even be there.
Sure, we get less exercise than before, but it goes beyond that. Something in our water, our food, and who knows what else, is poisoning our chances for a decent life, free of pain.
***
Not that disease has not always been with us…it’s just that food, doesn’t taste like it use to, does it?
***
If you look around at the poor, they are fatter than everybody else. At my local neighborhood grocery stores, a simple pepper can cost over a dollar. You walk in the door, and get hit with pastry, donuts, and bread. The fruit is almost always spoiled, and you have to check every bag of apples.
***
Eating healthy is almost impossible, for people on a fixed income, and it shouldn’t be. I look at the spinach now, and wonder…safe? In the last ten years I have mistakenly eaten many a contaminated something, and I bet I’m not the only one.
***
And like everything else…instead of solving the problem, they blame us. The simple man. You’re fat because you do not exercise. You’re sick because you don’t take care of yourself. Trust us. Fluoride in the water? Trust us…it’s your fault. There is no fallout in the air.
***
Trust us.
***
As I get older, and I taste the genetically altered apple, or simple orange, I remember how they use to taste when I was a kid. Like the roses, even the food has lost its luster.
***
But, all is not lost. They have NOT taken the smell out of the gardenia. Every year, I buy a gardenia tree, and every morning in summer, I go out and take the biggest whiff, and if you have not ever smelled a gardenia, you might as well know that this nobody thinks you’re glass is half full.
***
Somebody should put the smell back in the roses before it too late. We need a Johnny Roseseed guy to spread it all over the planet.
***
Funerals…they have their moments I suppose. But they are also hotbeds for Hatfield and McCoy fights that have been just waiting to burst forth. Who gets what…and who was the favorite, and who didn’t send flowers, and who didn’t show up, etc..
***
So, I have come to a conclusion. When I die, this nobody would like to skip the funeral and send everyone I liked or loved in my life a gardenia tree…with a card that says..
***
“Smell this flower once a day, and remember..I still love you.”
***
And that’s my final, “funeral moment” for quite some time, I hope.
***
(And yes, I thought you’d enjoy that potato, you’re welcome!)
Nobody Cares that there are things on my bucket list that, unless by some great fortune of luck, I win the Mega millions on some stormy future night…there are two things that I will never do:
1. Be able to tell you what abalone taste like.
2. Be able to buy my best friend a dog just like this one. She took one look, and it was love. And she has expensive taste because he is the most expensive dog in the world at $1.6 million dollars. (Her taste in shoes is much more reasonable.)
And let’s just say, that winning the lottery would not be enough. Even if I COULD afford a mutt this adorable, you would have to become a billionaire just to feed him, because he eats…abalone, which is $70 a pound. Big Splash here weighs 180 pounds…over a lifetime, he could eat his cost in abalone easily. And let’s not forget the security system on your house, and the body guard you would need to walk him…it could add up.
These dogs like to watch TV..so you would have to get big screens, probably their own room…okay…you get the picture.
My friend Pattie is the one who got me into this mess. You see, I found out what a good cook she was, and so I started looking up things she had never cooked before, and came across Abalone in a book. I was trying to impress her…”So, I bet you’ve never cooked Abalone!”
“NO..what’s that?”
So, we went searching for it, and when we couldn’t find it at the local stores, we said, “Well, we’ll go to where the RICH people shop!” And they didn’t even know what it was. Let’s just say, abalone is not something you will find in the middle of the United States, without knowing someone who knows Donald Trump.
But, somewhere in China, Big Splash, the most famous dog in world, is dining on abalone tonight. I’m going to have to say…I bet it takes just like dog food.
There— now I feel better. There are some things in life that really don’t need to be experienced, like taking heroin, climbing Mt. Everest, insulting Stephen King when one of your favorite authors is his good buddy Dave Barry, or getting arrested in China for stealing the most expensive dog in the world…even if it is for your best friend.
As all mothers who are REAL mothers, always say: “It the thought that counts.”
I’m thinking about cha’ Pattie. How about a Big Splash calendar?
Nobody’s Opinion: Last week, I saw this baby and her parents on our local news program. A nicer couple you could not even imagine, and so it’s no wonder that baby is so full of laughter.
What was more important than the baby is…the father couldn’t find a job. He was a professor of American History, and that paper that the baby is tearing up in this video, is the father’s rejection letters. It a sad comment on the way America is being forced to change, and how our universities are dominated by the liberal plans to globalize the world, and downsize America, and American History is being dumped for international studies.
I don’t know about you, but I’m not doing well with these changes. Tonight for instance, the family had planned to meet at Red Lobster for the Lobster Fest. I had been staring at the commercial all week. Okay, I had been walking around saying, “I can’t WAIT…lobster!” I was dreaming of melted butter, and how I was envisioning myself savoring the butter for at least a minute…in culinary heaven. Michael Moore could not have beaten me to the plate, thats how excited I was. The reason I get so giddy is because, like many Americans, if I get Lobster once year, I feel lucky.
So, we pull up to the biggest Red Lobster around, and it’s Sunday, and it’s closed. Out of business. You’ve got to be kidding.
What? Did BP not come through with the check? Picture it: it’s the side of a major highway, fifteen other restaurants are around it, and..it’s closed.
On a Sunday.
Like all good sensible and hungry Americans, we went next door to a Pasta House…where they were ….out of all steaks, and a lot of other stuff. Out of steak. A restaurant, in a high-earning area, off a major highway..on a Sunday…out of meat. That was a first for me.
We all got pasta, what else?
The conversation was of course, Charlie Sheen. Everyone was laughing at “Adonis” and “Winner” and how bad you must be when even your porn star leaves you..and then my brother said something I could not believe. “Face it, Americans are all too spoiled.”
Excuse me? I maybe get lobster once a year…and I’m spoiled? Maybe I took it wrong, but he said it like we need to downsize. Hey, you don’t start family arguments in a restaurants with a brother who you only see once in a blue moon.
The subject went back to Charlie Sheen, which is my point. The changes coming to America, have been slow…and easy to ignore. I was concerned when the major malls fell into the weeds. But to have the local restaurants running out of food…?
And that’s why I’m posting this lovable babies laugh. We still have our families. Right?
I know in my heart that this man is going to find a job. God gave him the most lovable baby, who because a star on YOUTUBE, and therefore, in a roundabout way…this man will get his gift. It’s corney but true. When times are bad, family is your shelter. And I plan to spoil myself with them as long as possible.
I am a nobody. If the different classes of America were color-coded, I would be in the yucky brown, one rung up from the bottom. I grew up in Naples, Florida and live near the Mississippi River now with my husband and two dogs. I am part of the slowly disappearing middle-class. I was a musician most of my life: drummer/singer/keyboards—but I retired before the plastic surgery flu hit. I have no degrees, which could be a good thing…depending on how you view our educational system. I do have three patents…but that really doesn’t make me a somebody. The one thing that is constant in my life is my OPINIONS, which i have more than perhaps even Carl Sagan could have imagined…mostly political. (yes…my ancestors were crabby buggers)
Hopefully other nobody’s will put their opinions on my site. But, if you happen to be a somebody, you’re more than welcomed to help out.
It’s my Nobody Opinion that Nobody’s Perfect, and Nobody Cares, that Nobody Knows why Nobody Wins, and when that happens, Nobody Wonders, why Nobody Flashes, why Nobody’s Fooled, but then Nobody remembers that Nobody ALWAYS Reports the truth.
Nobody Cares 
I am a nobody. If the different classes of America were color-coded, I would be in the yucky brown, one rung up from the bottom. I grew up in Naples, Florida and live near the Mississippi River now with my husband and two dogs. I am part of the slowly disappearing middle-class. I was a musician most of my life: drummer/singer/keyboards—but I retired before the plastic surgery flu hit. I have no degrees, which could be a good thing…depending on how you view our educational system. I do have three patents…but that really doesn’t make me a somebody. The one thing that is constant in my life is my OPINIONS, which i have more than perhaps even Carl Sagan could have imagined…mostly political. (yes…my ancestors were crabby buggers)
Joyanna Adams 
