bondwooley
bondwooley's JournalSex, drugs, teenage pregnancy, vampires, fire eaters, lawsuits, a dive bar and victory.
Yes, I know these guys, but I didn't know all of this.
Check out the article about them in VICE:
The Life, Death, and Rebirth of New York City's Most Resilient Dive Bar
5 More Reasons to Hate the Phone Company
Alternate title: How to tear apart a poor village in Mexico just to sell a phone.
[...]
None of it was true. So Vodafone paid off a town to pretend it was.
Full article at Medium
Happy Genocide Day!
Of course it’s true that Columbus was an illegal immigrant. Science has an airtight record of people migrating to this hemisphere. Migrating is crucial to the distinction – it means they came to a land that had no government to apply for citizenship. So, tribes formed their own nations. Anyone who enters someone else’s nation is either a visitor or, if they won’t leave and won’t join the nation that they are a guest of, they become an illegal immigrant. An invader. For Columbus, the latter might best describe him. He came, he stole, he brought home shiny stuff and invaders were sent to get the rest.
Trump’s worst nightmare would be Columbus arriving today, with his caravan, declaring that he just discovered us and goes on to undermine our country.
So, the day he landed should logically be a day of remembrance: Remembrance of the destruction of thriving nations and the victims in left in his wake. But a celebration of the 1492 occasion seems somewhat bizarre. Especially since he discovered nothing new, he was headed somewhere else, and he was a foreigner. Hey, we don’t have a day in honor of Hitler or Hirohito just because they put our scientists into high gear to create an atomic bomb.
Let’s take Columbus Day off our list of half-price-day-worthy federal holidays. There are many things that Americans of Italian descent can be prouder of: a day honoring Anthony Adduce, who brought us the cardiac pacemaker that most likely saved the life of someone you love. Antonio Meucci, who Congress recognized as the inventor of the telephone. Geraldine Ferraro, the first nominated vice president in U.S. history. Nancy Pelosi, who hasn’t died yet, but for a while, there, made us wonder. And, most of all, a celebration of the rich culture and hard-working commitment that millions of Italian Americans brought to this country.
None deserve a parade or provide an excuse for the banks to close. But Columbus does?
Via Lester and Charlie
But He Looked So Wholesome!
Paul Petersen, the Republican assessor of Arizona’s most populous county, was charged in Utah, Arizona, and Arkansas with counts including human smuggling, sale of a child, fraud, forgery, and conspiracy to commit money laundering.
The charges span about three years and involve some 75 adoptions. Investigators also found eight pregnant women from the Marshall Islands in raids of his properties outside Phoenix, and several more are waiting to give birth in Utah, authorities said.
Continued at Lester & Charlie
Can We Get Her Back?
Barbara Jordan opens Nixon impeachment investigation.
Edited by Lester & Charlie
Pigeon Poops on Lawmaker's Head While He Addressed Pigeon Poop Problem
AP: A pigeon apparently didn’t think much of a lawmaker’s ideas to address a messy situation at a Chicago Transit Authority stop known by some as “pigeon poop station.” WBBM-TV reports that one of the birds did its business on the head of Democratic state Rep. Jaime Andrade as he was discussing the problem with a reporter outside of the Irving Park Blue Line station.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=2&v=U2-7eERVm04
A 9/11 Letter From New York City
A 9/11 Letter From New York City
Many who were in the city on 9/11 haven't recovered, but some adapted to or disassociated from the day.
Images, sounds, smells, emotions, loss, fear, and confusion never stop haunting, yet they became part of the background hum. No matter how much a New Yorker who lived through it might say it's behind them — well, it's not. The memories come back in all forms.
Oddly, things that weren't funny at the time come to mind. A local television station called "11 Alive" lost its transmitter and the TV signal was stuck on their standard "technical difficulties" still frame. Which was a picture of the trade centers (that looked like an 11) with the perky "11 Alive" logo flying over them. Okay, in hindsight, that's pretty damn funny.
Other images are horrific. There were people covered with gray ash, walking up the street like zombies to get home, since there was no other form of transportation or any place to clean off the ashes. Most of them had a long road ahead. And, it seems, within hours, homemade fliers of missing loved ones went up everywhere. Just everywhere. Those flyers conveyed three kinds of sorrow. We all knew the people behind those faces were lost forever. We knew the survivors were in denial. We knew that we were all in denial.
And after walking by an overwhelming number of those missing people fliers, you could take a left on 9th Avenue and see ambulances from all over the country lined up, for at least a mile, waiting for something to do. As one ambulance driver said to his wife in North Carolina, "This is worse than I thought. There's no one to rescue." And then he clarified: "There's nobody left."
Near a sports complex that converted into a temporary morgue (that remained empty), there was an oversized garage door with well-wishes from all over the world taped to it. While looking at it, and smelling that endless plume of smoke coming from half a mile downtown, a very tall West Indian social worker walked up to the wall with a tiny British girl. The girl wanted to add something to the garage wall. The social worker lifted her, and the little girl taped up a drawing she made. It was a big heart, drawn with markers, and inside of the heart, the girl had written: "Mummy. I love you. Wherever you had to go."
Several us watching wandered up to the social worker and young girl, quietly. We were crying like babies, but all might agree we thought we were hiding the tears. There was a silent group hug that lasted a full minute. Then we separated and walked on. Not a single word was spoken.
Those silent hugs broke out everywhere. At stores (that didn't have much stock), on street corners, near playgrounds that were locked shut, in areas so covered with ash it seemed like film noir. There was no reason and every reason for those hugs.
As spiteful and hateful as New Yorkers pretend to be, we know that we're not. We understand that this is our city, and our city is this country's engine. And that no one fucks with our city and sees us cry.
Today, that little girl at the garage door is probably getting close to 30. Let's hope, whoever she is, wherever she is, she's still bravely holding on to love and finding occasional expressions of human compassion that will comfort her in a world that changed the day she taped a drawing on a garage.
1.2 Million Americans Die; 300 Million Americans Celebrate
Via Crooks and LiarsMemorial Day is a solemn day to think about dead people, broken families, orphaned children, blood and ultimate scarifies. So, why do we put “Happy” in front of it? Why do we have family BBQs in the back yard, coolers full of beer in the park and carefree children celebrating a day off from school?
The Vietnam War Memorial in Washington, D.C. is 246 feet long and lists 58,000 names of fallen American soldiers. Were it to include all American soldiers who died in service, it would be 5,888 feet long – that’s more than a mile. (Or, to put that into American measurements, it’s 16 football fields.)
Memorial Day started as a commemoration of Americans – Northern and Southern – who died in the Civil War. That’s a whopping 600,000 people. Which is about half of all the soldiers who died in service. The concept of 1.2 million people dying in trenches and stepping on mines or being gassed, napalmed, or tortured to death is a grizzly thing to ponder. So, again, what’s up with “Happy”? Imagine the looks you’d get if you went up to someone and wished them a “Happy 9/11”.
“Thoughtful,” “reflective” or “peaceful” seems much more appropriate. Wearing black like pallbearers is more logical than wearing swimsuits. Just walking the 246 feet length of the Vietnam War Memorial brings tears, anger, and stirs emotions that most of us would rather not face. walking the whole length, which can be too overwhelming, firing up a BBQ is not the first thing that comes to mind.
The names on that wall and walls not built yet died courageously, some timidly, some angrily and in some cases didn’t know that they did. They fought in good wars, bad wars, and probably some illegal wars. They fought willingly and they fought because of rigged systems that weeded out kids who couldn’t go to college or couldn’t grow an overnight bone spur.
Whatever way you look at it, though, notice that there’s no Nazi flag hanging in your office. That you don’t say “what’s that” when a person says “synagogue.” Take note that New York, Chicago and Los Angeles aren’t mythical lands from before the nukes fell. And consider that we don’t have to study about a time the military chain of command broke, and a coup took over the east coast (excluding Florida – the imaginary coup wouldn’t want that).
People around the world want to live in America because they see it as a symbol of hope that won’t die. And for hope to stay alive, a lot of people, sadly, had to die protecting it. Maybe Memorial Day isn’t about putting flowers at graves with a tear but setting them down with a smile and a subtle nod. Because those are the people who saw the mortar coming and hoped that -- if they couldn't -- their buddies would make it home to have family BBQs in the back yard, coolers full of beer in the park and carefree children celebrating a day off from school.
Right now, there’s a rumble in New York City from military jets circling to make sure those picnics aren’t disturbed. So, Happy Memorial Day, everyone. Pass me down a beer.
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Member since: Thu Mar 18, 2010, 11:12 AMNumber of posts: 1,198
