Friday, October 27, 2017

100


DUE TO THE CURRENT FIRESTORM TRAGEDY HERE IN SANTA ROSA, WE INTERUPT THIS RANT  IN ORDER TO REFLECT UPON IT’S MAGNETUDE.  

I really didn’t mean to make a big deal of this initially way back in 2006., but My wife , Joy was complaining about my endlessly repeated stories as well as my complaining about virtually everything that I started this  blog. Now . eleven  years and 100 rants later, I’m still at it. Seems I never ran out of people and  things to rant about.  I know you find that hard to believe, but just remember the One  Thing that really drove me crazy, which was this:.  When ever I went to a bar, the first thing the bartender did was spin a napkin or coaster at me , then sat my beer/wine/or cocktail on it. Observing others at the bar, I realized it was de-riguer to keep your drink on the napkin at all times. Why? I am accustomed to the sound of my glass on a substantial bartop. There is something satisfying in the feel and sound that is therapeutic to me, and the Bar Tender is depriving me of this.  Oh, I do know that this may be  a code they use to let everyone know you have been serviced and are only waiting longingly for your libation to arrive to soothe your shattered nervous system.

WHATS A CURMUDGEON?
 It’s time to define what my license plate says;  Dictionaries define curmudgeon as a churlish, irascible fellow; a cantankerous old codger. The origin of the word is unknown, but it might come from an old Scottish word that meant “murmur” or “mumble”. The archaic definition made it a synonym for miser, and the word has had recent currency in a somewhat milder connotation, to describe a more entirely unlikable grouch. A curmudgeon’s reputation for malevolence is undeserved. We’re neither warped nor evil at heart. We don’t hate mankind, just mankind’s excesses. We snarl at pretense and bite at hypocrisy out of a healthy sense of outrage. We hurl thunderbolts  at middle class values, sometimes even trying to do so with a dry wit. 

It is a fine thing to face machine guns for immortality and a medal, but isn’t it a fine thing, too, to face calumny and loneliness for the truth which makes men free?  H.L. MENCKEN

AN ULTIMATE CURMUDGEON
(When questioned by Jack Paar) “What do you do for exercise?” Oscar Levant answered “I stumble and then fall into a coma”.
  
MAO’S RED BOOK
    He died in 1976, You can visit his supine cadaver, well preserved , Like Lenin.
China seems to be coming out of a Communist era so I thought it about time to see what that was all about and read the biography of Mao Tse Tung, the guy responsible for most of it.   
  For all his brilliance in shaping the destiny of China, Mao remained essentially provincial, ill-equipped to understand the realities of the outside world except through the books he read, mostly nineteenth1century authors. Cut off from the world by America’s boycott as well as by his own isolation of China, He was not unlike the ancient Chinese emperors who, convinced that China was the center of civilization, he replaced the old regime with a newer, if not more benign, one. 
    During this time of strife and ‘The Long March’  I had gotten the impression from our media that his nemesis, Chiang Kai- Shek  was our choice, and not the brutal dictator he may have been.
  Most will agree that Mao was a historically important figure who set in motion forces that not only changed Chinese society but also affected the balance of world power.  One unanswered question is : who was responsible for killing more people? Mao or Stalin? Both chalked up more that 40 million deaths.  Those communists really do leave a bloody trail.
  Mao was furious at Krushchev’s charges had thrown into doubt the whole decades the credibility of the communist line Mao felt contempt for Stalin’s henchmen.
  The rise of Krushchev to power in place of Stalin had a profound influence on the course of word events.  Russia could devote its treasure and energy t to economic growth instead of sterile conflict.
  An early gesture of  compatability would reappear 22 years later as “Ping-Pong diplomacy”.
   “Every man has food to eat and clothes to wear” Mao said “Every man understands the rights & duties of citizenship and has a fair chance of education and amusement. Marriage customs are to be reformed, roads built, industry developed, a six hour day established. No foreign aggression, there is only equality and love. No one ‘ll get anywhere here if he ‘s after promotion, or out to make a fortune.  His ideals , except for the last three above sentences, sound like our Capitalism.
 
SMART FIRELINE
We Americans spend billions a year to invent, produce and deliver Death to thousands of people every year.  I’m addressing only the portion of our Military who hire our Industrial giants that is so successful in pinpointing a particular corner in Iraq  or any unfortunate country that has lots of people who hate the other half.  I’ve heard that most of this death from the sky is controlled in Australia. Is that possible?
 If that is possible, then how about trying this out? Let’s have a program, funded by the Federal Government ( Let’s take 10 Billion a year from the Military budget)  that will design  and develop a system of delivering some kind of water/fire retardant/ stopper directly to the fire line?  Come to think of it, better not use any government entity but hire a  private company like Tesla, who can hire real innovative thinkers, or maybe even some Dutch designers.
  Just imagine the scenario!  A Wild fire reported just outside your city limits!  Call the FEMA folks who are standing by for a disaster  to strike, They fly out their drones, from a giant storage building in central United States to the nearest airport to the fire.  They set the drones up,  activate their infra-red, heat source identification systems,  load them with the magic material (Look, it cost billions of dollars to invent this, right?)  The controleers whip out their Joy Sticks (does this sound dirty?) and go to work.  I suppose some of these drones would be destroyed  as designed when used but larger ones could drop and  re-fill just like manned choppers nowadays, except you might have a better retardant to use,  and not just water or retardant.  We got really good at dropping a linear inferno of Hell upon the countryside in Vietnam, maybe we could utilize some of those scenarios to stop a fire instead of starting them?