I knew a girl named Murella Lankhorst whose father spent 5 years of his childhood there, in a world owned by the Nazis. I once watched "A Bridge Too Far" with him. This was a movie about a disastrous Allied attack near the end of World War II (it was disastrous at the box office, too; we don't like to be reminded that the good guys (from our viewpoint) don't always win. I wonder if a similar fate awaits the upcoming film "Pearl Harbor"). The plan was to drop paratroopers behind Nazi lines to capture several bridges in Arnhem, cutting off the Germans in 2 directions. Nice plan, except for the fact that there were 2 crack SS panzer divisions right near the drop zone.
(Sidebar: It was planned by British General Montgomery, & was his only stray from his usual strategy, ie, build up your forces to the point where you so outnumbered the enemy that there was no way you could lose. This was how Schwartzkopf did Iraq, dropping more bombs on them in 6 weeks than we dropped on Hitler in 6 YEARS [Sidebar to the sidebar: What war started exactly 10 years ago today? Say, it's been a decade, have we beaten that Saddam guy yet? Well, it's been 42 years since we decided to destroy Castro, so I guess it's still early yet])
It was strange watching the movie with him. It was filmed on the actual locations, & he lived there. Of the Allied HQ: "I walked past that on my way to school."
He spent the actual Battle of Arnhem exactly where I'd spend it: hiding in the basement until the explosions quieted to normal. Normal explosions. What an alien concept to us pampered Yanks.
He told me about his village & it's garrison of an 8-man German squad. They had a barracks & a watchtower in which they took shifts, like a police force that didn't do anything. He & another little kid would take pieces of broken mirror & shine sunlight into the eyes of the dark-clad soldiers every day. One day they did it 1 too many times. One of the 2 soldiers suddenly swore angrily, then cocked & pointed his rifle right at my friend's 6-year-old head. In 1 of those moments that takes a second but lasts forever, he realized that he was about to die. But the other German shouted something & grabbed the rifle barrel away. He ran.
Yeah, they were like a police force that didn't do anything. Except that they could kill you at whim.
That was the last time he played the mirror game. But it was the 1st time for the rest of his life that he wondered what happened to the "enemy" soldier that saved his life.

A lighter note (though also involving Nazis): Stomp Tokyo has a new site. "Shockwaves," I vaguely remember that. Water-breathing SS zombie gillmen goose-stepping on the bottom on a Florida lake. As I remember, they claimed that is was "based on fact."

1/17

In the mail today I got my free issue of "Your Cat, A Friend For Life" from the IAMS people. On the cover: "The Litter Box Problem You Don't Like To Talk About." That's funny, as I'd already decided to talk about a litter box problem here.

I've mentioned Bagland, the Kitty Theme Park before. It's between the hamper & the bathroom, & as you can see, the bags sometimes end up in the bathroom as Kill Kill plays with them. Yesterday she got new litter, a flushable kind made from recycled paper. After a while, she went into the bathroom where the litter box resides. She was in there a long time. Then I heard scratching on paper, & little sad meows. KK was scratching around a bit of Bagland paper, & the cries & scratching became very agitated went I went in to investigate. She'd made half a poop on a bag. Sometimes she does that, so I did what I always do, pick up the poop & put it in the box, then pet her & say "Good girl!" so she remembers where poop belongs. I didn't get much chance to pet her, as she jumped in the box & let out a big pee. I think that she knew that the new litter was paper, & that she wasn't supposed to go on the paper, but the LITTER was PAPER, so she went on the bag paper & called me in for clarification. Yes, KK, it's OK to go on some paper. The Ex GFriend had a cat that she called the "Burger Flipper," as he was so dumb that'd be his only job hope if he were human. I think KK would be a programmer, & making 3 times more than I do.

Hey, I almost forgot! What is "The Litter Box Problem You Don't Like To Talk About"? Your cat marking its territory. By whizzing on your friend's feet. I'll stick with the occasional paper-poop.

Fun with Bushbaby! What, Me--! And what does a Britney Spears chat room think of Bushbaby? Not much, but they prly don't think much about anything to begin with.

1/18

Some amusing comments on the Britney chat room in Luna's LiveJournal.

Another appearance by an InExLink as a Cruel Site. Some InEx readers, prly ones that joined up when it was a Cruel Site, must submit the weirder ones.

Shades of an old InEx: Wacky Warning Labels.

Me & my Amazing Powers of Prophecy: For reasons I don't recall, the buried memory of Pink Lady & Jeff popped into my head at work a few days ago. Someone said something that almost me made use them as a wisecrack (oh, yeah! Someone asked what went in a drink called a "Pink Lady"), but I instantly realized that I was prly the only living human who remembered them. I was wrong. Not as wrong as the webmaster that decided to tell their story entirely in Java pop-up windows, however. (You are forgiven if you don't know of them--They were Japanese pop singers that got their own American TV series, despite the fact that they couldn't speak English very well. As in, Not One Word. I actually saw an episode of this show before it vanished).

1/20

Ohhh dear. Wrath has actually started. He sent those of us involved an email that literally begged us:

I STILL NEED PEOPLE. No one's responding to me; you've gotta help me. Recruit.
Cash in favors. Make threats. Suck dicks. I don't care. JUST GET ME PEOPLE!!!

Cool! The gwbush.com guy is from CT! Interesting article from CT's only major paper (which endorsed Bushbaby, & from whom I recently cancelled my subscription. The rates went up, & I can read almost everything on it on their site).

Free yourself from the tyranny of Microsplat & build your own computer! It's called SpeccyBOB. With 4Mg of RAM!

1/22

Gourd knows when this'll go up, as Geocities isn't letting me in. But I guess if you're reading it, it's up.

Uneventful weekend. A big storm left 10 inches of snow, but it was considerate enough to not start until 9PM Sat. I was safely home by then, & liquor stores are closed on Sun. For liquor workers, it was the perfect storm. Didn't affect us in the slightest.

It says something about New England attitudes towards winter that I went to a store today, & they had the doors propped open. It was 34 degrees out. Well...It seems warm. The store was I Party, where I go during that most wonderful time of the year, Kitty's birthday, to buy odd little trinkets. And gum. For myself, I bought a little hula girl push-puppet (the kind with the button on the bottom that you push to make them go all spastic). I tried to pet Kill Kill with it, but it looked more like a slap fight, so I stopped.
It prly doesn't surprise anyone that I really dislike those "Protected by Angels" stickers. They make me want to whack the person with a tire iron & say, "Boy, Gabriel's really slacking off on his duties, huh?" It's like going to a fast food place & seeing some teenager using 4 parking spaces for his Camaro or IROC--I never get the desire to key a car until then. (70s joke: "IROC" stands for "Italian Retard Out Cruising") I bought a lovely jasmine-scented item called "Angel Snot." "The gift of precious fluids from heaven's messengers" it says, in that Angelic font the real religious junkola uses. "Although no one knows what the soul looks like, we can offer the life-giving breath of angels, Angel Snot. In our busy world, it's easy to forget that miracles really do happen. With its lovely scent and comforting texture, Angel Snot is a heavenly reminder of the magic at work in our everyday lives. You will never be alone as long as you keep a little bit of Angel Snot with you."
I would've prefered to simply send you an url, but the website only shows some of their products. Worth looking through, though. Sadly, they're wholesale only, so I may not get the catalog I ordered. For the "reason for wholesale purpose" I simply put "Inexplicable Objects."

This is funny--and sad, too. "OUT: Workaholic President, IN: Best naps since the Reagan era"

Spotted on the way home: I guess that Dee Dee's Aquarium Supplies is going out of business, as there was a For Sale sign in front of it. The realtor's name was Fish.

I watched 1 of those videos I bought from the place that closed, "The Thief & The Cobbler." It was both 1 of the best, & 1 of the worst, animated movies I've ever seen.
It was started by a Disney animator as his personal project in 1968. It wasn't finished until 1995. Sadly, it was torn from his loving hands by financiers & turned into a Disneyesque load of crap. The new animation isn't bad, but it's truly bland in comparison to what he'd done. There's crazy MC Escher type stuff, amazing backgrounds, & scenes that look like computer animation but were drawn by hand. The One-Eye's War Machine looks like it was done by computers today, but it was hand-drawn in 1978.
There was only 15 minutes left to complete in the film, when the investors took it & put in some REALLY awful songs that grind the plot to a halt instead of advancing it. The worst decision was to make no less than 3 unspeaking characters into Non-Stop Internal Monologuists. Jonathan Winters is employed to be like Robin Williams' Genie in Aladdin, but he's awful. There's also the unsettling fact that the Princess looks like a lap dancer. I'm not kidding; the only mainstream cartoon character I've seen with knockers like those are Jessica Rabbit. Except that Mrs Rabbit dressed more conservatively.
I've just started reading these background stories to the film.
I bought it for the price of a rental, & it's worth a rent. But the next time I watch my copy, I'm turning the sound off.

Search engine requests for the week:

velvet jesus painting
temp agency cheat sheets
family circus not-me pic
cats eating string
abba fake pictures
phillips blackberry brandy label
boogie oogie ooogie lyrics
+antonym +lonely [there isn't one]
the english flag picturs [picturEs!  what's wrong with you people?!]
amoco alien picture [THANK you!]
thigh+high+boots+60s+page [Boots, Boots!  Ah-Kinky Boots!]
famous musicians birthdays
+stealing +underwear [what, was this guy looking for how-to tips?]
+crosseyed +pretty -painless [ummm...]
fake rusting metal looking paint [is the look or the paint fake?]
orko magic trick
stinking garbage bag

... 1 with NO NOSE! or LICK BALLS?--NO TONGUE!!" if yoo want 2 ... in the same timeframe as
     witch trials. ... job is ripping the Muppetlike eyeballs off the cute lil foodie ... 

1/23

My father has had cancer for a few years now. At Xmas, he was tired & either in a wheelchair or using a walker, but he was himself, just weaker. A week ago, the family thought that he had a year or so left.
Yesterday evening I got a phone call from my sister Pat. The cancer suddenly started spreading. He had maybe a month. He wanted to see me soon (he lives 120 miles from here). I said, I'll be up on Sunday, my next day off. I briefly spoke to him; his voice so weak I could barely understand him.
After hanging up, at 1st I had no real reaction. It's not like it was a big surprise; we knew it was coming eventually. But he seemed okay so recently...
I slept like shit last night. I woke up cold & sweaty & tense. The tension wouldn't go away. I finally pinned it down to the same feeling I had as a schoolkid, in the period when my life consisted of getting the shit beaten out me almost daily. It was the dread that comes when you that something bad is going to happen, you just don't know when.
Then Pat called me at work. It wasn't going to be a month. It was going to be days. Or hours. He kept asking for me; he wanted to tell me something.
I was able to get out of work a couple of hours early & did 80 to Vermont, getting there 4 hours after Pat had called. He's been getting worse by the hour, Mom said. My other sisters Sue & Judy had left as soon as Pat had called & got there 2 hours earlier, but even then he was either unconscious, or awake but unable to react. There was a morphine drip in his arm. I tried to talk to him; I told him I loved him. Maybe he heard me. Maybe he didn't. I'll never know, & what he wanted to tell me will stay unsaid.
When I got off the phone after calling to say that I was getting out of work early, the oldies station was playing "Rainy Night In Georgia."
"It's a lonely night, and I feel like it's rainin' all over the World..."

I'm not in a real humorous mood. There prly won't be much here for a while, & almost certainly no InEx this week.

1/24

William Fletcher Young, born 1929, died around dawn.

1/26

I haven't been to work all week, so it's been like a vacation!
A vacation with any possible shred of joy sucked from every second.

I'm writing this to kill time before the wake tonight. I've been doing a lot of time-killing this week, & sometimes it feels as if the time is killing me. I may abruptly end this before finishing.

The phone call early Weds AM. My sister left my parents' number & hung up before I could grab the phone; the stupid answering machine clipped off part of the number. I couldn't find the piece of paper with the number that's been at the phone for 12 years. I had it in an email, & the night before I'd thought "How typically Bill. Why don't you write it down, instead of requiring yourself to go online to get it?" Thanks to some Redmond Retard, Hotmail & most of the rest of Microsoft was down for almost 24 hours. I dialed 411, got the news, called work, cried, went back to bed. Kill Kill had been rampaging throughout the place just before this. She stopped & watched me make the calls, & when I went back to bed, she came over & laid down on my hand, right near my face. She didn't sleep, she didn't try to play, she just quietly watched over me. I don't care what The Onion says about cats. She knew something was wrong.

Slept a long time. That's been the pattern this week; sleep a lot or toss & turn at 4AM. Too much stress & my brain goes into cold shutdown.

When I finally woke up, I tried to see how bad I felt by going shopping at Job Lot (it's like Big Lots, but thankfully Van Dyke-free). On the way, I was almost hit by an old lady pulling out of a car wash. In the store, I wandered like a zombie, my mind elsewhere. There's a KMart in the same plaza; I went to go get some new work shirts & was almost hit by another old lady, this 1 doing 50 in the parking lot. There were no parking spaces, & since I was going grocery shopping at a plaza with another KMart, I left.

That KMart had no parking, either! Looking at all the grey hair, I thought Crap, it's Weds, Senior Discount Day! I blew that off, & was sure that Stop & Shop would be full of old people, too. I was right. I quickly grabbed my 12 items or less. The really old man in line ahead of me annoyed me. He had a loaf of bread in 1 hand, a dollar in the other, & refused to put his loaf on the counter or advance a step so that I could unload my basket. The cashier was an Arab named Mohammed who clearly was not having a good day (customer related, no doubt, as it usuall is in retail). He was told t go on break & put the Register Closed sign as far up as he could reach, & past the old guy behind me's items. "I WAS ALREADY IN LINE--!" shrieked this twisted ancient gnome. There was this pause in his screaming, a hole in the air where he was leaving unsaid "--you goddamn sand nigger!!"
I clenched my teeth as my blood pressure shot up. You hateful old bastard! My father was Democratic Town Chairman in my home town in the 60s! A Johnson Democrat, the Civil Rights Democrats!! He fought for minority rights, & I'll bet you're still resentful that the coloreds can use "your" water fountains! C'mon, you fuck, say something else! C'mon, I have some unfocused anger I could let loose on you! I don't know if my body language gave off some vibe, but he said nothing more, & the 20ish woman behind him had a really worried "I don't want to be here" look on her face.
Leaving the parking lot, I was almost hit by ANOTHER old lady. I fucking hate old people!! I thought. then I realized that, no, I hate everybody who is older than my father.

I finally called Jessica about my dad in the afternoon. I'd been putting it off; I can be the Brave Soldier around everyone else, but not her. I went online to finally read my mail (thanks, again, to those of you who sent me condolences. You didn't have to do that, & it helped). Dinner was almost cooked when I looked at the timer & said, "I can't stay awake another 8 minutes!" As soon as it was done, I covered it with foil & went back to bed. I forgot to log off, so Jess couldn't get through, & I woke up too late to call her.

Slept a lot, then the next day had the stupid idea to go to Ingleside Mall. "I haven't been there in 5 years," I thought, without following the thought with "cuz I HATE MALLS!" I dunno; I want to get a video capture device for my page, & I thought that there might be 1 at either of 2 stores that are new enough to the area that I'd never been in them. Best Buy: same as Circuit City; Target: KMart. They didn't have any, & there I was, in a place that's a shrine to American Normality. Why does standard Normal seem so freakishly alien to me? I wandered the place frowning, went in maybe 1 of 10 stores. Brookstone had an electronic coffee spoon. It told you exactly how much coffee to pick out of the jar. This 1 of the 2 stupidest applications of spoon technology ever.

Finally talked to Jess, which always cheers me up.

Prly as a response to all the darkness this week, out of the blue I did this. I wrote without any idea what would come out. Maybe I'll continue it; obviously, anyone who wants to play with it can.

Let us see a funny link! you cry! It's a handy phrasebook for obnoxious American tourists.

I don't feel like proofreading. Bye for now.

1/28

Wakes aren't a lot of fun.
They're boring & depressing at the same time. I suppose it's not so bad when you shake hands, say "My condolences," & can either stay a while or leave right away. But being 1 of the people having their hands shaken for 3 hours isn't a tremendous way to spend an evening.
It was what I expected: a LOT of people. My dad was big in local politics in the 60s & 70s, & after that, was still a town bigwig in many ways. You can tell how major a funeral will be by the flowers. There were bouquets the size of bushes there. The 1st 1 you saw was from Jessica; that was good, as it was normal-sized & would've been enveloped by the others. She didn't go herself; her excuse seemed kinda weak, but I wasn't there cuz I wanted to be, either. Wakes aren't fun; I'd actually refused to go to my grandfather's cuz grandma insisted on a open casket. Fortunately, dad was cremated & the urn was not in the room. Instead, there were photos & photo albums everywhere, reminding everyone of a live lived, rather than a life ended.
There's not much to say about the whole thing. Lots of standing & shaking hands, & most of the people saying how surprised they were: "I didn't even know he was sick!" "That's not how he wanted to be defined," Mom said. There were surprises for us, too; lots of people we hadn't seen in years or decades came to pay their respects. Near the end, I looked up & was shocked to see Rich, my best friend for 10 years who I hadn't seen in at least that many more. We hope to get together soon. There were tiny moments of comedy, as when 1 of my sisters' friends shook my hand & said "Good luck!" She immediately realized that that made no sense, unlike the man who said to my sister Judy, "You look just like your mother. My deepest sympathies."

The wake ended at 8PM; I had to be at the funeral home at 830AM. I was actually wired after the wake, having had all those people offering their sorrow helped me deal with my own pain. I slept 4 ragged hours, & not in a row.

It was snowing when I got up. They'd predicted snow for "late in the morning;" evidentally, sometime during the night Webster's had been replaced with the Bizarro Dictionary, when "late" meant "at dawn." It was a small, private funeral, the family & a handfull of others. The priest presiding was a good friend of my father's. He pulled all the grandkids up front at 1 point to explain to them what was happening. "Do you know why we're here?" he asked. The older kids said nothing; little Cassie said "Because Poppy died." "Do you know why he died?" Again, the older kids looked uncomfortable, not wanting to use the C word. The youngest, Patrick, said "So he can go to Heaven!!" I may be an atheist, but I only object to religion being used to bludgeon other people into being exact duplicates of yourself. As a source of personal comfort, it's fine.

Cold wind blew the falling snow over us at the graveyard. Even the old atheist remembered the Hail Mary. The kids let loose balloons at the end, to symbolize the Heaven to which they thought he went. I almost lost it. I may not believe in Heaven, but that doesn't mean that I don't wish that there is one.

On to lighter stuff.

Another sighting! This 1 from Govynda:

you are never gonna believe what happened to me today...(i met britney!!  haha, j/k) 

i hate going to walmart, but after my parents picked me up for the weekend (the way i talk,
you'd think flagler was an asylum or bootcamp of some sort) mom demanded we go to walmart.  so
after spending about two hours in fluorescent lighted hell, we're checking out and i happen to
hear a voice say, "inexplicable object of the week."  i turned around, and there were these big
in-store tvs broadcasting tech tv! 

the page doesn't look so hot on tv.  plus i gathered that they really had no clue as to anything
about the page but saw that it contained a few polysyllabic words and some color pictures, so
that meant you're a genius

Have you joined in the fun at monkeymaniac? If not, you don't need a Live Journal account to play; you can comment using the "Anonymous" key. (NEW RULE: If you use 'Anonymous,' you MUST STILL GIVE A NAME OF SOME KIND! and be FUNNY! or your posts will be IMMEDIATELY DELETED. I'm not gonna screw around with RANDOM MEAN-SPIRITED ASSHOLES like I did with the Dubya thing on the Ob a few weeks ago--AGAIN! If my main job on this becomes deleting posts it's GAME OVER, DUDE!) I say "play" as it's like an RPG based on the Britney Chat Room. I never more than smirk at my writing, but I'm actually laughing at some of the drivel my Inner Moron is releasing. It's like I'm not writing it (like the part at the bottom of the page where our dense hero thinks 'epiphany' means something else). And SOME PEOPLE THINK IT'S REAL! On that same page, someone actually was offended. Since I only want to offend people who DO clog up chat rooms & journals with their misspelled gibberish, I emailed an explanation to her & she wrote back:

Wow, I was convinced that you actually
were some idiot that didn't have a grasp on the english language.  I'm
impressed.

I received some fan mail from Canada, namely Saskatchewan. In my reply I babbled:

I don't know if I ever mentioned this in the News, but CANADA ROCKS!  I went
there once...sorta (Niagara counts, right?).  Maybe it comes from watching all
that SCTV in the 80s.  Know what I know?  Canada has 10 provinces & 2
territories & Saskatchewan is a PROVINCE!  Knowing that makes me a CANADIAN
EXPERT in the USA!!!!
Here's MORE I know!
POUTINE is fries with GRAVY & CHEESE from QUEBEC where they speak GERMAN! 
SUMMER in CANADA is when it stops snowing & there they call it JULY! 
Canadian bacon is called BACK BACON because it's BACON sent BACK from AMERICAN
factories cuz it LOOKS FUNNY!  CANADA is NOT part of AMERICA, it is part of
NORTH AMERICA, which, like SOUTH AMERICA, means WE OWN IT ANYWAY!  GET OUT OF
OUR CONTINENT, CANADIANS!  Little know fact: NAFTA requires all CANADIANS to
emigrate to GREENLAND in 2002 so we can bring in MEXICANS THAT WORK CHEAPER!  So
GET PACKIN', CANADA!!  And buy yourself a FLANNEL SOMBRERO, Pedro!

Mail order news!
I won't go in to the details (so some random reader doesn't take advantage) but a problem with my order from Karen Maneater in Japan was resolved *without me even complaining about it* So she's safe to order from. She was unable to find Badtz Maru condoms, but she found...MONCHICHI RUBBERS!! HAHAHA LOL as monkeymaniac would say. THAT ROX!!

With no trouble at all I rec'vd my Accoutrements catalog. Man, it is great! Of course, they're wholesale, so there's a $100 min purchase & everything is by case lots. Do you really know 12 people who'd appreciate a Donut Bottle Opener? But there's smaller case counts of some items, like the Fortune Cat Clock, which has a tail for a pendulum, Japanese characters, & is ALL WHITE LIKE THE WEB'S MOST FAVORITEST CAT! And 3 pages of NUN PRODUCTS! Plus, wholesale costs are very reasonable ($14.50 for the cat clock, $19.50 for 4.5 foot fully articulated plastic skeleton). If your taste runs to the inexplicable, send for a catalog. Maybe we can work out an order together (ie, have it sent here, & I'll send it out to you for the cost plus postage).