Yeah, this got posted a day ahead of schedule. Posting a stupid cat pic and a stupid bird pic on the same day disrupts blog karma big time. Lo siento un poco.
[Found here.]
Month: August 2016
How Cats See The World
[Found here.]
James Dean’s Last Stop
James Dean’s Last Stop in Lost Hills, California, was where he and his mechanic stopped to gas up his Porsche 550 Spyder and get something to eat before heading off to Salinas for a road race. Most of you know the rest of the story.
Why did I post this? The Missus and Bunkarina went on a roadtrip to see Bunkessa, stopped in Lost Hills, so I axed Mr. Google for a map. The James Dean mural came up and it led me to photographer Ofer Wolberger‘s quirky collection entitled “Life With Maggie.” [More about Wolberger here.]
Hot Links with Extra Sour Cream
The US Naval Institute released the results of their informal poll “Who Was The Greatest Woman In Military History?”
The results are both surprising and unsurprising. I voted for Boadicea. She gave the military a spine to fight the Romans.
We posted a photo of Stanley The Great in April 2014 without really knowing who he was. Check out the update.
Bravo Land is now on my bucket list, if only to re-install erased history removed by evil people on The Slab o’ Time:
Inside the chain of stores, we immediately spotted the Bravo Land Slab o’ Time, an impressively massive tree cross-section propped against a wall. It’s from a Giant Sequoia blasted down in the 1950s, over 2,000 years old. It features a scattering of little metal labels nailed to it. A plaque explained: “The tags on the log denote growth rings that grew in the same year as various significant world events.”
“214 BC – Great Wall of China”…”197 BC – Roman Empire Begins.” There’s a 1,284 year gap, though, and the sign noted the “conspicuous absence of tagged growth rings from the 5th to the 15th centuries…. That period of time produced few significant events in world history.”
We’re not totally buying that. Closer inspection revealed missing tags radiating out from the slab center, two small holes indicating where each notable achievement used to be. We asked about it, and were told that “some political people” had come in and pointed out which milestone labels should be removed (you know, to fix world history).
We’ve seen timelines ravaged by tourism slab deniers before — but always on public land, at national and state parks. Complainers raise a stink, form a committee, and voila, adjusted! Bravo Land is a private enterprise. But once a slab is called out for being on the wrong side of history, there’s little choice but to get out the pliers and pry off the “Magna Carta,” and Columbus and Ponce de Leon “discovers” tags (we’re just guessing about the discards, since they’re gone).
Petey was a seal, but his real name was Shag. TRUE.
Stupid joke from a long time ago:
Okay, so a penguin is driving through the Mojave to Las Vegas when his A/C breaks down. He pulls into a repair garage in Pahrump and tells the mechanic that he needs air conditioning to survive the heat. Mechanic says, “There’s an ice cream shop a block away, cool down and be back in an hour.”
The penguin hits the ice cream shop, hangs out in the freezer eating ice cream, but since he only has flippers to hold the cones he makes a mess. An hour later he pays for the ice cream, cleans up the mess and returns to the mechanic and asks, “So what did you find?”
Mechanic says, “Looks like you blew a seal.”
Penguin wipes his beak and says, “Nah. It’s just ice cream.”
Trouble at Taminmin Humpty Doo.
Yeah, I said Humpty Doo.
[Top image is a tourist attraction at Humpty Doo and it cost $137,000 in 1983 bucks.]
No r Egrets
Two big birds showed up on our neighbor’s roof yesterday morning.
Saturday Matinee – Heavy Slabs in Tasmania, Puddles Painting Party, Manualist Extraordinaire & Fishbone
August 2016 – “Tasmania’s most famous wave comes to life to launch the Australian winter with a roar. When the southern hemisphere starts to rumble and shake under the weight of wild winter weather, The Stern, out there on the south-eastern tip of Tasmania, bears the full brunt of the conditions.”
[Found here.]
Found here. Yeah, it’s cool for the first minute or so, but hey. I’d rather watch this guy’s stuff.
Dude is awesome.
One of my all time ska favorites. Fishbone kicks it in 2013.
Have a great weekend, folks, and we’ll see what happens tomorrow.
The .Gif Friday Post No. 449 – Valentin’s Wink, Walking on Sunshine & Erdal’s Kite
Is this a Great Country or what?
Daniil Sihastrul’s Contribution To The World
From Wiki:
Daniil Sihastrul (Romanian for “Daniel the Hesychast“) was a renowned Romanian Orthodox spiritual guide, advisor of Stephen the Great, and hegumen of Voroneț Monastery. Canonized by the Romanian Orthodox Church in 1992.
[…]
Daniil Sihastrul ignited a hermit movement in northern Moldova, having many novices in the woods surrounding Voroneț, as well as at the hermitages and monasteries in its surroundings. He encouraged Stephen the Great to fight for the defense of Christendom and to build holy places.
He has been considered a saint ever since his life time, being credited with healing the sick, exorcising demons, and removing suffering.
On first glance, it appears that St. Daniil was an eccentric loner who spent his life exorcising his mind from all thought in pursuit of purity of spirit for personal enlightenment, as that was apparently the aim of the Hesychasts. On the other hand, he was not a hermit full time, and used his stone temple as a place of refuge and contemplation. Given that he advised military strategist Stephen The Great, Daniil was well respected at the time (late 1400s AD).
Now what did Stephen The Great do? He stopped the Ottoman Empire warlords from overrunning Moldova, killing Christians and others indiscriminately, and from instituting islam and shari’ia law.
St. Stephen defeated Mehmet at a famous and decisive battle in a place called Vaslui (not far south of Iaṣi in the province of Moldova). Had he not done so, little would have stood between Mehmet and the Ukraine—and the obliteration of the rest of the Orthodox world. Mehmet met his match shortly after having sacked Constantinople. With the rest of the Balkan peninsula falling to Islam’s sword, Mehmet must have seemed unstoppable to Christians everywhere, yet none of the Western powers nor the Western Church would lift a finger against the Ottomans. Thus, Stephen stood more or less alone in defense of Christianity and his homeland [via].
Interesting times, indeed.
Oh, and here’s a photo of Deniis hawking his CDs. I’m not an historian, but it amazes me what one may find just by searching for the origin of an image.
Tacky Raccoons 