Turtle Thursday: THIS STILL GOES ON?!?!

Yes, that's EXACTLY what it looks like. A red ear slider hatchling encased in a sealed plastic envelope of colored water. They are sold LIVE, supposedly for good luck. I know those poor little guys have no luck.

I've seen similar stories before, but here's a recent one from facebook:

On a commercial street in China, little tortoises are found packaged as souvenir!!! These little tortoises are still alive and swimming inside a herbal solution. The store owner says it can live for 1-3 months. 5 RMB a piece.

This is too cruel and unacceptable!!! God knows how many little lives were slowly suffocated to silent death; their fate sealed in a bag!!!

Has the commercial world no more other ideas to make money!!!

Please help "Share" this. Hopefully some media or government will pick up this news and step in to stop this animal cruelty! Perhaps find the real victim and put an end to such uncivilized act.

Please help this little lives. Small as they may be, they are still lives!!!!!!!!!!

Thursday, April 18, 2024

reconnoiter \ree-kuh-NOI-ter\, verb:

1. To make an inspection or observation.
2. To inspect, observe, or survey (the enemy, the enemy's strength or position, a region, etc.) in order to gain information for military purposes.
3. To examine or survey a region or area for engineering, geological, or other purposes.

Reconnoiter comes from the French word reconnoître meaning "to explore."

 

First world injury

• An injury mostly likely to occur in an advanced first world country due to the high standard of living.

Karma suffered a first world injury walking into a dumpster while tweeting on her smart phone.

 

Trivia

What 1980–82 sitcom used Billy Joel’s 1979 hit “My Life” as its theme song during the opening credits?

• Bosom Buddies, starring Tom Hanks and Peter Scolari.

 

History

• San Francisco earthquake: ignited an inferno, killing hundreds and reducing the city to shambles (1906)
• washateria: the first laundromat opened, in Fort Worth, Texas (1934)
• Éire: formally withdrew from the British Commonwealth and became the Republic of Ireland (1949)
• London Bridge: the Thames crossing was sold to American Robert T. McCulloch, who later had it rebuilt in Arizona (1968)
• Wayne Gretzky: NHL legend played his last pro hockey game at NYC's Madison Square Garden (1999)

Birthdays

• George Henry Lewes 1817
• Clarence Darrow 1857 - Attorney, famous for his part in the Scopes 'monkey trial'
• Sam (Samuel Earl) Crawford 1880 - Baseball player
• Leopold Stokowski 1882 - Conductor
• Sylvia Fisher 1910
• Tony Mottola 1918 - Guitarist, arranger for Perry Como's TV variety show
• Hal Galper 1938
• Barbara Hale 1922 - Actress ("Perry Mason", "Airport")
• Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown 1924
• Clive Revill 1930 - Actor ("The Sea Wolf", "The Empire Strikes Back")
• James Drury 1934
• Don Ohl 1936 - Basketball player
• Robert Hooks 1937 - Actor ("Star Trek III: The Search for Spock", "Passenger 57")
• Hal Galper 1938 - Jazz pianist (Hal Galper Quintet), author ("The Touring Musician")
• Richie Pettibone 1938 - Football player
• Mike Vickers 1941 - Musician (Manfred Mann)
• Walt Sweeney 1941 - Football player
• Steve Blass 1942 - Baseball player
• Pete Gogolak 1942 - Football player
• Jochen Rindt 1942 - Auto racer
• Hayley Mills 1946 - Actress ("The Parent Trap"), singer
• Alexander "Skip" Spence 1946 - Musician (Moby Grape, Jefferson Airplane)
• James Woods 1947 - Actor ("The Onion Field", "Casino")
• Dorothy Lyman 1947 - Actress ("All My Children")
• Cindy Pickett 1947
• Walt Richmond 1947 - Musician (Tractors)
• Nate Archibald 1948 - Basketball player
• Catherine Malfilano 1948
• Geoff Bodine 1949 - Auto racer
• Rick Moranis 1954 - Actor ("Parenthood", "Ghostbusters" series, "Spaceballs")
• John James 1956 - Actor ("Search for Tomorrow", "As the World Turns")
• Eric Roberts 1956 - Actor ("Doctor Who", "The Coca-Cola Kid"), brother of actress Julia Roberts
• Melody Thomas Scott 1956
• Les Pattinson 1958 - Musician (Echo and the Bunnymen)
• Wilbur Marshall 1962 - Football player
• Jane Leeves 1963 - Actress (TV: "The Benny Hill Show" "Frazier")
• Conan O'Brien 1963 - Television personality ("Late Night with Conan O'Brien")
• Mike Mangini 1963 - Drummer (Dream Theater)
• Eric McCormack 1963
• Maria Bello 1967
• Greg Eklund 1970 - Musician (Everclear)
• Trina 1974 - Singer (Trina and Tamara)
• Mark Thomas Tremonti 1974 - Guitarist (Creed)
• Sean Maguire 1976
• Melissa Joan Hart 1976 - Actress ("Sabrina the Teenage Witch")
• Kourtney Mary Kardashian 1979
• Alia Shawkat 1989 

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Hasselhoff Wednesday: TAXES

Tax Day came and went.

Did you have to pay up?

HAPPY WEDNESDAY!?!?!

Wednesday, April 17, 2024

xenophilia \zen-uh-FIL-ee-uh\, noun:

• An attraction to foreign peoples, cultures, or customs.

The opposite of xenophobia, xenophilia has the same Greek roots. It literally means "attracted to strangers." It first appeared in English in the 1920s and was used heavily after the Second World War.

 

taxable

• if someone meets your personal criteria for having sex with, he or she is 'taxable.'

I think he is so sexy, definitely taxable!

History

• Daffy Duck: was introduced on Porky's Duck Hunt (1937)
• Mickey Mantle: MLB hall-of-famer made major league debut with the Yankees (1951)
• Bay of Pigs: unsuccessful invasion of Cuba was launched by US-supported exiles after JFK double crossed them and didn't send the back-up he promised. (1961)
  

  Ford Mustang: made its debut in US showrooms; by the end of the year, it had already starred in Goldfinger (1964)
• Shea Stadium: Queens, New York, baseball park opened (1964); it served the Mets for 44 years before being demolished to make room for parking for the new Citi Field
• Apollo 13: splashed down safely, ending the near-disastrous flight (1970)
• Cambodia: fell to the Khmer Rouge with the capture of Phnom Penh, resulting in genocidal killing fields (1975)

Birthdays

• • Henry Vaughan 1622
  • J.P. (John Pierpoint) Morgan 1837 - Financier
  • Nikita Khrushchev 1894 - U.S.S.R. premier
  • Thornton Wilder 1897 - Novelist, playwright
  • Gregor Piatigorsky 1903 - Cellist
  • Arthur Lake 1905 - Actor ("Blondie" series)
  • Sirimavo Bandaranaike 1916 - Ceylon Prime Minister, the world's first woman prime minister
  • William Holden (Beedle Jr.) 1918 - Actor ("Stalag 17 [1953]", "The Bridge on the River Kwai", "The Towering Inferno")
  • Harry Reasoner 1923 - Newsman ("Sixty Minutes")
  • Lon McCallister 1923
  • Solly (Solomon Joseph) Hemus 1923 - Baseball player
  • Lindsay Anderson 1923 - Director
  • Roy Gallant 1924 - Author
  • Chris Barber 1930 - Musician, bandleader
  • Don Kirshner 1934 - Music publisher, created The Monkees
  • Warren Chiasson 1934 - Jazz musician (Warren Chiasson Duo)
  • Lamar Lundy 1935 - Football player
  • Dennis Hextall 1943 - Hockey player
  • Bobby Curtola 1944 - Singer
  • Jan Hammer 1948 - Composer, musician
  • Pedro (Modesto Delfi) Garcia 1950 - Baseball player
  • Olivia Hussey 1951 - Actress ("Ice Cream Man", "Psycho 4: The Beginning")
  • Pete Shelley (McNeish) 1955 - Musician (The Buzzcocks)
  • Sean Bean 1958 - Actor ("Goldeneye", "The Lord of the Rings" series)
  • Teri Austin 1959
  • Stephen Singleton 1959 - Musician (ABC)
  • Boomer (Norman) Esiason 1961 - Football player, TV commentator
  • Lela Rochon 1964
  • William Mapother 1965 - Actor ("Lost)
  • Henry Cusick 1967 - Actor ("Lost")
  • Marquis Grissom 1967 - Baseball player
  • Liz Phair 1967 - Singer, songwriter
  • Redman 1970 - Rapper, actor
  • Jennifer Anne Garner 1972 - Actress ("Daredevil", "Electra", "Alias")
  • Victoria Beckham (Victoria Caroline Adams) 1974 - Singer (Posh Spice of the Spice Girls) 
    Rebekah Parmar-Teasdale 1979 DJ, t3h pron
• 
  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Rev iew Tuesday: MANDY (2018)

 

 

MANDY

2018

A husband seeks revenge after his wife is murdered by cultists.

I have seen memes from this movie and have heard about it for years. I just was never motivated enough to actually watch it. I mean, come on, it stars Nicolas Cage. His movies run hot and cold. So when my friend, yes her again, wanted to watch it, I seized the opportunity.    

 

A happy couple enjoying their lives in seclusion in the woods are set upon by a drugged out sex cult and their demon heavies. When the wife, Mandy, declines sex with the leader she's hanged and set on fire in front of her husband (Nicolas Cage). The rest of the film is his drugged out journey of revenge. 

I must say I have no idea what all the hype was about. Most of the scenes seemed to drag on way too long. Maybe that was supposed to be the drugged out aspect of it, but for me this felt like an insufferably long attempt at horror by a film student. How this thing got such high marks is beyond me.

 

Trash. 

 

AMAZON

Tuesday, April 16, 2024

aperçu \a-per-SY\, noun:

1. A hasty glance; a glimpse.

2. An immediate estimate or judgment; understanding; insight.

3. An outline or summary.

Aperçu literally means "perceived" in French. It entered English in the 1820s.

 

longversation

• The quality of a conversation that is both long and rambling, without a fixed purpose and lacking in concision. Generally used in a negative sense.

The other day, Julia and I had such a longversation. I thought I could never leave!

 

Trivia

What famous composer wrote the song “I Paid My Income Tax Today”?

• Irving Berlin. The patriotic song, written during World War II at the behest of Treasury Secretary Henry Morganthau, included the lines, “See those bombers in the sky?/Rockefeller helped to build ’em, so did I.”

History

• Harriet Quimby: became the first female pilot to fly the English Channel (1912)
• Vladimir Ilyich Lenin: returned to Russia, ending an exile of some 20 years (1917)
• LSD: Swiss chemist Albert Hoffman accidentally discovered the hallucinogenic effects of the drug (1943)
• Texas City Disaster: at least 580 were killed in the explosion of a ship loaded with ammonium nitrate, in America's worst industrial disaster (1947)
• cold war: term was coined by financier Bernard Baruch in a speech in South Carolina (1947)
• Walter Cronkite: the "most trusted man in America" began his 19-year run as anchor of CBS Evening News (1962)
• panda diplomacy: China sent the US two giant pandas as a gift after President Richard Nixon's historic visit to China (1972)
• Virginia Tech: Cho Seung-Hui opened fire, eventually killing 32 students and himself in the US's most deadly shooting rampage (2007)

Birthdays

• Hans Sloane 1660 - Doctor, naturalist, instrumental in founding of the British Museum
• Sir John Franklin 1786
• Flora Batson 1864
• Jose de Diego 1866 - Patriot and political leader of Puerto Rico, April 16 is a legal holiday in Puerto Rico in his honor
• Wilbur Wright 1867 - Aviator, one of the Wright Brothers
• John Millington Synge 1871 - Poet, playwright
• Charlie Chaplin (Sir Charles (Spencer) ‘Charlie’ Chaplin) 1889 - Actor, comedian, communist
• Les Tremayne (Henning) 1913 - Actor ("The War of the Worlds", "The Slime People")
• John Hodiak 1914 - Actor
• Spike Milligan 1918
• Merce Cunningham 1919 - Dancer, choreographer
• Sir Peter Ustinov 1921 - Actor
• Kingsly Amis 1922 - Novelist
• Bennie Green 1923 - Musician, lyricist
• Barry Nelson 1920 - Actor ("Airport", "The Shining"), first actor to portray Ian Flemming's James Bond.
• Henri Mancini (Enrico Nicola Mancini) 1924 - Composer (themes for "The Pink Panther", "Peter Gunn")
• Joseph Alois Ratzinger 1927 - Pope Benedict XVI
• Peter Mark Richman 1927
• Edie Adams 1929 - Actress
• Ed Townshend 1929
• Roy Hamilton 1929 - Singer
• Herbie Mann (Soloman) 1930 - Jazz musician,
• Ike Pappas 1933 - Singer
• Bobby Vinton 1935 - Singer
• Dusty Springfield (Mary Isabel Catherine Bernadette O’Brien) 1939 - Singer
• Queen Margrethe II 1940 - Queen of Denmark
• Jim (James Reynold) Lonborg 1942 - Baseball player
• Dave Peverett (Lonesome Dave) 1943 - Musician (Foghat)
• Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (Lew Alcindor)1947 - Basketball player
• Gerry Rafferty 1947 - Singer, songwriter
• Bill Spooner 1949 - Musician (The Tubes)
• Peter Garrett 1953 - Singer (Midnight Oil)
• Jay O. Sanders 1953 - Actor
• Ellen Barkin 1954 - Actress ("Eddie and the Cruisers")
• 
  Jimmy Osmond 1963 - Singer (The Osmonds), the youngest Osmond
• David Pirner 1964 - Musician (Soul Asylum)
• John Cryer 1965 - Actor ("Superman 4: The Quest for Peace", "Pretty in Pink", "Two and a Half Men")
• Martin Lawrence 1965 - Actor, comedian
• Dan Rieser 1966 - Musician (Marcy Playground)
• Selena Quintanilla 1971 - Singer
• Peter Billingsley 1972 - Actor ("A Christmas Story")
• Lukas Haas 1976 - Actor
  Gina Carano 1982 - Actress
• Samantha Char 1995