ONLY A FEW REGRETS by Peter Nolan Smith

"Regrets I have a few, but not too few to mention." Frank Sinatra sang in MY WAY. I myself only have regrets about the things I have not done for I can live with those I have done; the good, the bad, and the in-between, however other people are not so self-forgiving.

The other day I ran into female friend from the 80s at a restaurant in the Meat Packing District. Cece had once graced the covers of fashion magazine. Men fought over her with fists and money. Cece was skilled at fending off her admirers. Few were chosen for love. I wasn't one of them and resigned our relationship to mere friendship.

It had been very frustrating.

She gave me a kiss on the cheek.

I remembered her perfume.

Chanel # 5.

We hadn't seen each other in years. I had been living in Thailand, while Cece traveled between France and Africa for business. She was still beautiful in the way that beautiful women are when they refuse to surrender beauty.

We had a few wines and then a drink. I was feeling a little more of the wine than the drink. Her hand touched my arm.

"You want a night cap at my hotel?"

"I have to go to work tomorrow." It was almost midnight and the trains to Brooklyn were shit after the witching hour.

"You could always sleep over." Her touch became a caress.

I had wanted this woman so badly twenty years ago, that I would have set myself on fire to get her attention.

Now I could only say, "Not really."

"Not really." Her face adopted hard lines. No one had told her no in a long time. "You know I was talking about you and several of my friends. We all asked why none of us slept with you."

"And what the answer?" I could see Cece at a table in Paris with her model friends reviewing their love affairs. I had been with none of them.

"We always thought you were with one of us."

"One of you."

"Yes, a great beauty."

"Hah." Looks had never been a problem, but no one ever called me beautiful.

"You think that's funny?" Cece lowered her voice. "Your beauty was in that none of us slept with you. We called you the virgin and I guess we can call you that still."

"Oh." It was too late to relive the past and I pulled away my arm.

"Guess it is getting late."

"I guess so." I escorted her to the hotel.

Cece was gracious enough to not repeat her request and I kissed her on the cheek, smelling the same perfume I had breathed 20 years before. There will always be regrets, but only for the past and not the present and I'll avoid those to prevent getting run down by those fantasies, becasue they are too many to count on any man's fingers.

Rainy New York Dry LA

The forecast for the evening from the Fort Greene Observatory calls for more rain.

This prediction for precipitation stands for tomorrow.

No flooding has been reported at the General Fowler Square, but the rivers, creeks, tidal marshes, and streams of the Northeast must be bursting their banks.

Anyone in the Far West has to be jealous of such a downpour.

There the snowcover of the high mountains are melting into the great western rivers. The rivers are running low. The lakes and reservoirs are parched and this summer looks like the Great Drought will hit the Central Valley of California, where over sixty years of suburban expansion have sucked the land dry and it will over get worse.

Bugis Street Selama-Lamanya

The Bugis people were great voyagers from Sulawesi. They sailed small crafts from Padang Padang to many ports of the Far East ranging from Burma to Northern Australia. Many practiced piracy and as Thomas Forrest wrote in A Voyage from Calcutta to the Mergui Archipelago, "The Buginese are a high-spirited people: they will not bear ill-usage...They are fond of adventures, emigration, and capable of undertaking the most dangerous enterprises."

Most westerners are unfamiliar with the Bugis and especially their complex five gender society.

Men and women are joined by 'bissu' which combined all five genders, 'calabai' a false woman, and 'calalai' a masculine female.

Thriving Bugis communities existed throughout the Orient, although few as famous as Singapore's Bugis Street on which calabai transgenderettes gathered in the 1950s to sexually entertain randy sailors and curious travelers. According to legend the easy way to discern which working girls were female and which were trannies was that the calabai were beautiful and the female hookers were ugly.

Singapore banned wanton behavior in the 1980s to transformed the tawdry area into another worthless shopping mall.

I got there in 1990 and stayed at a cheap Chinese hotel on Bugis Street.

The trannies were few.

The sidewalks were clean.

The Long Bar at Raffles was undergoing renovations.

I left the next day for Penang.

Each time I returned I stayed for the time to catch the train.

Singapore has nothing to offer anyone looking for a walk on the wild side.

It's the most boring big city in the Orient, but not in the 60s.

It swung with the best of them.

Bugis Street selama-lamanya. Forever.

When We Were Young

I didn't work that often in the late-80s.

In fact I can't remember what I did for money from 1987 to 1989.

I was in my mid-30s.

I hung out at nightclubs, but I didn't sell drugs.

I drank for free and hung out with beautiful women.

Was that a crime?

Because I seem to be paying for it now.

Out Of Work

I haven't had a job since the New Year.

I have looked for work without success.

Men my age are viewed as refuges from the retirement roles.

I have retired many times in my life.

I have unretired as many times as well.

Yesterday I sought employment on 47th Street. I know diamonds. Everyone was crying the blues. Passover was a tough of year for selling jewelry mostly because April 15th is Tax Day.

I called the metal shop. Mr. Tem wasn't hiring until May.

I phoned several galleries.

Goose eggs.

It's a tough time, but not for the rich.

They never sing the blues.

MAYBE TOMORROW a punk novel by Peter Nolan Smith on KINDLE

CHAPTER 1

The November sun flashed off a West Village window. The wavering reflection stalked the Christopher Street pier to a lone youth tuning a battered guitar. The twenty year-old in a battered leather jacket broke into a sly smile, as the sapphire shimmer transformed the blonde leather boy into a fallen angel regaining his halo.

This heavenly mirage disappeared with a windmill slash against the steel strings of his Les Paul and Johnny Darling shut his eyes to envision a small stage. The overhead lighting enveloped a drummer, bassist, and keyboard player. A teenage Lolita rasped words of love and no tomorrows in imitation of the Velvet Underground’s Nico. The imagined feedback of Marshall Amps buzzed in his ears and the audience almost materialized within his eyelids.

“Hey, man.”

A young boy’s voice shattered Johnny’s trance.

This time of night only gay bashers and leather freaks frequented the derelict docks. The guitarist waited for the last chords to fade beneath the subsonic range before turning to address the intruder.

It was Frankie.

The Puerto Rican teenager in a distressed leather jacket was two inches shorter than Johnny and his slanted eyes hinted the taint of Chinese blood.

Some Times Square johns found Frankie Domingo pretty, despite the scars crisscrossing his seventeen year-old body.

“Thanks for letting me finish?”

“I been waiting thirty minutes.”

A gust of wind blew a shank of greased hair across Frankie’s face.

“That a new song?”

“Just three chords strung together.” Johnny thumbed his calloused fingertips.

“Doesn’t get more basic than that.” Frankie rattled off a drum roll with frayed sticks. “Got these from Jerry Nolan at Max’s Kansas City last night.”

“How were the Heartbreakers?” Johnny had skipped the last night’s show to entertain a customer.

“Great and the crowd loved them.” Frankie hunched his shoulders with a shiver.

“They got paid a $100 each. When we gonna have a band?”
“Now I have my guitar back, we can audition for the other members.”

“Great.” Frankie stepped from side to side. A cold damp seeped through his sneakers’ paper-thin soles and he stammered, “Johnny, you got ten dollars?”

“The pawnshop took my last fifty.” Johnny slapped his guitar.

“Damn, I wish we could get out of here.” Frankie moaned like a runaway in need of a dime to phone home.

“To go where?”

“What about Florida?” Frankie glanced south, as if the Sunshine State lay beyond the New Jersey docks. “How far away is it? Five hours?”

“More like twenty–four by car.”

“What about by plane?” The young Puerto Rican’s teeth chattered at a 10/10 beat.

“Where we getting the money for two plane tickets?”

“We could hijack a plane. Tell them to give us a million dollars like in DOG DAY AFTERNOON?”

Frankie had seen that movie five times on 42nd Street and pumped his fist in the air.

“Attica, Attica.”

“Aren’t you forgetting how the cops shot Pacino’s friend in the head?”

“Movies aren’t real.” Frankie had seen enough of films on 42nd Street.

“DOG DAY AFTERNOON was based on a real bank robbery.”


“It was?”

“Yeah, it didn’t have a happy ending either.” The guitarist grabbed the young boy’s thin arm.

“Your parents live in Florida. That sounds like a ‘happy ever’ after to me. If you called them, they might wire you money to come home?”

“Yes, and tomorrow night we’d be eating my Mom’s homemade apple pie.”

“I love apple pie.” Frankie licked his lips.


“Only one problem.” Johnny gestured toward Manhattan.


“Don’t say what I think you’re going to say.”

“I’m not leaving this behind.”

“Fuck this city?” Frankie spun on his heels and chucked the battered drumsticks into the river. “All I got here are hustles, an empty stomach and the smell of old man’s hands on my skin, and you don’t have it much better.”

Johnny placed the guitar into its case and walked toward the elevated highway.

“I ran away from Florida for the same reason you want to run away from New York.” Johnny stopped on the curb of West Street and turned to Frankie. “Me and you are going to make it here as rock stars.”

“But not tonight.” Frankie kicked an empty beer can into the gutter.

“No, not tonight.” Johnny couldn’t lie to Frankie. “Tomorrow Max’s will put on a turkey feast for us orphans.”

“What about tonight?” Frankie could handle anything as long as he was with Johnny.

“Tonight we go to work.” The uptown light on West Street was changing to green and suburb-bound cars accelerated to catch up with the synchronized signals.

“53rd and 3rd?” Frankie had had his fill of the sissies at those piano bars.

“We’re not competing with the Midnight Cowboys.”

Across the street men prowled the sidewalks in search of nameless sex. A few lurked between the trucks parked underneath the elevated highway. How they were celebrating the night before Thanksgiving was no mystery.

“Times Square then?” Frankie sighed with resignation.

“It’s all about luck.”

“Luck being heads I win, tails you lose and never give a sucker a break.”

“You’re learning fast.”

“I try.”

“How I look?” Johnny slung the case’s strap over his shoulder and pulled up the collar of his leather jacket.

“Like a prince.” Frankie blew on his numb hands.

“Where anyone from Jerome Avenue meet a prince?”

“My grandmother read me fairy tales. They really have princes and princesses?”

“Real as you and me, except they were born in a palace.” The chilled air scrapped over Johnny’s right lung like a boat striking a reef.

“You meet one?” Frankie was oblivious to his friend’s discomfort.

“Not this side of the silver screen.” Johnny fought off the shakes, figuring his ‘jones’ was knocking on the door. “Princes and princesses are like any other suckers. We meet one and what we do?”

“We take them for everything.” Frankie snapped his fingers.

“And leave them begging for more.” The ache faded from Johnny’s chest and he draped his arm over the younger boy. “Just one more thing.”

“I know what you’re going to say.”

“You’re going to tell me not to trust anyone.”

“Trust no one is survival rule # 1 in New York.” Times Square killed people who broke that rule and he turned to Frankie. “That means me too.”

“I’m a big boy.” Frankie accepted the warning, for his childhood had revealed the worst of what the New York had to offer the young.

“Then let’s head uptown.” Johnny dashed onto West Street. “Watch out, Johnny.”

Two taxis swerved to avoid hitting the guitarist.

“For what? I’m going to live forever,” Johnny shouted from the other side of the street, for believing in anything other than his immortality would have been a sacrilege, at least until he reached twenty-one and that birthday was more than a year away and a year was an eternity when you were only twenty.

TO READ MORE OF MAYBE TOMORROW ON KINDLE PLEASE GO TO THE FOLLOWING URL

http://www.amazon.com/MAYBE-TOMORROW-Peter-Nolan-Smith-ebook/dp/B00HYEMNM8

MAYBE TOMORROW is my novel set in 1976 about a gay hustler, a teenage runaway, and a car thief, who form a punk band to rip off a rich kid, only to fail because they succeed musically for one night.

Several years ago I went to a Nan Goldin show at the Whitney Museum with a Park Avenue divorcee. Claudia came from a good famiily in Philadelphia and the black and white photos were a shock to her sensibilities.

"These people look so tragic."

Her assessment of Nan Goldin's subjects was true, but I knew many of them and said, "It wasn't like that. Back then."

And like that I wrote MAYBE TOMORROW to show how we lived in that era of errors.

There are few novels about punk and MAYBE TOMORROW is based on true stories from my life and those of my friends from CBGBs, Max's, and the Lower East Side.

They live on in MAYBE TOMORROW.

WHY MEN HAVE BETTER FRIENDS

This joke comes from the Old Roue in Bangkok

WHY MEN HAVE BETTER FRIENDS

Friendship Between Women: A woman didn’t come home one night. The next day she told her husband that she had slept over at a friend’s house.The man called his wife’s 10 best friends. None of them knew about anything about it.

Friendship Between Men: A man didn’t come home one night. The next day he told his wife that he had slept over at a friend’s house. The woman called her husband’s 10 best friends. Eight of them confirmed that he had slept over and two claimed that he was still there.

How true

Squares

At one time I thought that the world would consist of long-hairs driving GTOs with skinny blondes at their side. The music on the radio was Grand Funk Railroad. Once I graduated from college my delusion of grandeur narrowed to an aspiration of driving a motorcycle around the Lower East Side high on heroin with a raven-haired temptress. Paris with a movie starlet. Blonde thin and a good cook. Our car was a Fiat. Thailand. A go-go girl. Yamaha 400 cc. Beach sun beer. Forever cool.

Sadly my friends along the way have become square.

They worry about their position. They think they are important. Some of them really are VIP. Some of them could call a number. The next hour I would be dead.

If I was someone other than who I am that might be true.

But I have remained faithful to my code of ethics.

"No commercial value. No sellout."

Those are the words of James Steele and he knows the truth.

He ain't no square.

Ashes To Ashes

"It does not take a majority to prevail... but rather an irate, tireless minority, keen on setting brushfires of freedom in the minds of men."

Samuel Adams

www.infowars.com reported that the Oklahoma Militia was willing to fight in support of Nevada rancher's grazing rights on federal land. Members of the right-wing militia says it has 50,000 volunteers ready to go, if the Bureau of Land Management once more attempted to confiscate Cliven Bundy's cattle. Their leader Scott Shaw said to the website, “Evidently in America we don’t actually own the property anymore if you ever did. A showdown is up to the feds. The ball’s in their court! You can do this legally or if you want to try to do a land grab violently, you can do that. We’re going to resist you! Just look around the country, they are doing it everywhere. If they can do it in Nevada, they can do it in Colorado, Texas. I mean, what’s to stop them from coming to Oklahoma? The only thing to stop them is ‘We the People’.”

Senator James Inhofe was quick to criticize the militia.

"You’ve got a bunch of people there trying to take the law into their own hands and they shouldn’t be doing that. And the Bureau of Land Management is not government-owned, it’s publicly owned. There’s a big difference there. I blame both sides.”

Me, I blame everyone involved, but armed insurrection against the USA is never a good idea.

Just ask the South.

Kansas Shakes

Last year Oklahoma was hit by eighty-three tornadoes. Twenty-three citizens were killed on May 14 in Cleveland OK and on May 20 thirteen cyclones struck the state. No one in the state government mentioned global warming as a cause of the upswing, despite temperatures breaking records throughout the summer.

Oklahoma is not only the Buckle in the Bible Belt, but authorities are fiercely anti-science on evolution and climate change.

Kansas has no shortage of flat-earthers judging from the response from oil and gas industry about the increased number of earthquakes due to tracking across the state.

"In Kansas, there's no evidence that the earthquakes are being caused by fracking," said Rex Buchanan, interim director of the Kansas Geological Survey.

Seismologists argue the opposite, since the fracking process requires the injection of 7.5 barrels of salt water to extract on barrel of oil.

Like putting ten pounds of cow paddy in a one pound bag.

Something is bound to break and Kansas is that egg.

Hot As Bangkok

I've been going to Thaialnd since the early 90s.

I quickly learned that April was the hottest time of the year.

2014 will be no exception and according to the National Astronomical Research Institute of Thailand this coming Sunday the sun will be directly over the City of Cmiles.

It should be a hot one.

Stay cool.

IN THE ABSENCE OF AMNESIA by Peter Nolan Smith on KINDLE

New York in the summer of 1981 was everything it hadn’t been in the winter. The 90+ temperature boiled the asphalt. New Wave had replaced punk and somehow the city had escaped bankruptcy. Money flowed on the streets and even the East Village exhibited signs of regeneration, since abandoned tenements can only be burned so many times before their ashes won’t catch fire.

People had work. Mine was menial construction on an after-hours club along the Hudson River. After paying rent I had enough money for Chinese take-out and beers at CBGBs. I lost weight and thought about robbing a bank. Whenever I entered one, guards placed their hands on the guns like they were armed with ESP.

I was no Jesse James.

Daytime employment was the logical solution to my desperate situation. I had a college degree. My permanent record was clean. I had worked nine-to-fives before and real jobs didn’t kill you, however Arthur, the nightclub owner, had promised the construction crew various jobs once the International opened its doors.

At our previous gig I had coined $500-700 a night. We hoped to open before Labor Day. On August 13th the club was $20,000 short of our goal and construction lurched to a halt, however the International was saved by a cash infusion from a criminal refugee from Odessa. His money was rumored to come from smuggling Tsarist icons. The source was unimportant. The club was a dead issue without his help.

Arthur said that Vadim had a beautiful blonde girlfriend.

“Almost cover girl pretty, but too short to succeed on the runways.”

“Sounds like your old girlfriend.” Danny Gordon, the DJ, had heard that the gangster’s girl came from Buffalo.

“No, that would be too much of a coincidence.”

Last November Lily had left for a modeling job in Milan. I hadn’t heard from her since.

No calls.

No letters.

When I spotted her in a French lingerie magazine, I almost flew to Paris, except she could have been in London, Milan, or Munich, so I remained in New York to be haunted by her imagined footsteps on cobble-stoned European streets.

“Coincidence is destiny crossing paths.”

“No chance of that. Lily’s gone for good.”

“No one leaves the City forever.” Native New Yorkers like Danny considered anywhere other than Manhattan to be purgatory. “She’ll be back.”

“I’ve been dreaming of that day,” I said, but in truth I had been forgetting her piece by piece. The smell of her skin after sex.

Her mocking laugh after I told a bad joke.

Buying leather jackets together. Hers white, mine black, yet some memories had lives of their own.

No matter how many drinks.

No matter how many days.

“Still it would be funny if it was her.” Danny wasn’t letting go either. He had a thing for her. Any man would if she looked his way.

“Funny, but not ha-ha funny.”

“Not for you, but me. I can’t wait to see your face when she walks through the doors.”

I chucked a hammer at his head. It missed by a foot and put a dent in an op-art sculpture from the 60s.

Arthur noticed the damage a week later.

We denied any knowledge of how it got there.

The Russian’s money accelerated the final stages of the construction. The walls were painted lilac purple and the sound system was wired through the club. A Labor Day opening appeared realistic and on the hottest day of summer Danny and I were tearing down a last section of the ceiling. It was a dirty job and rat dust caked my sweating flesh.

The door opened for three shadows.

We lowered our tools.

“Guys, I want you to meet Vadim.” Arthur shouted from the entrance.

A muscular man in his late-20s entered the club wearing a pastel linen suit. We muttered hellos. Mine was silenced by the sight of a slender blonde in snug Versace. Lily’s b-grade beauty was as haughty as a dethroned princess checking into a Holiday Inn.

“So much for the lack of coincidences.” Danny nudged my ribs.

“It’s a small world.” My throat tightened to a knot. “And a long life.”

“Think she recognizes you?” Danny wiped a layer of grime from his face.

“Not unless she looks my way.” My body was black with soot

Her head turned to our perch.

She recognized me and the dice roll of jade green eyes indicated my lack of social progress had not disappointed her low expectations for a punk poet.

“No, she hasn’t forgotten.” Danny laughed at my pained expression, as Vadim, Lily and Arthur disappeared into the office.

Right before our lunch break, Lily and Vadim exited from the office.

She covered her mouth with a scarf.

Vadim shielded his a thick hand and they left the site without a glance in our direction.

By 4pm the ceiling had been replaced and Arthur called it a day.

As the rest of the crew filed from the club, Arthur pulled me aside.

“This isn’t going to be a problem?”

“What?” I played dumb.

“You and Vadim’s girlfriend.” He was serious.

“Lily?”

Over the past year her name had floated in my mind a million times.

This was the first time I had said it.

“Is it a problem?” Émigré Russians from Odessa were notoriously violent.

“No, she’s nothing to me.”

“Good, then stay away from her.” He lifted a finger. “Vadim is a piece of work.”

Obeying his advice wasn’t hard.

On every visit Lily ignored me and I couldn’t blame her. To contunue reading IN THE ABSENCE OF AMNESIA please purchase this novella for $3.99 on Kindle, please going to the following URL http://www.amazon.com/ABSENCE-AMNESIA-Peter-Nolan-Smith-ebook/dp/B00JQSIZZ4

Portland Pee-Pee

Last week a teenager jumped the fence encircling a city reservoir in Portland, Oregon. CCTV caught the young man in the act of urination and the police arrested the perpetrator and his two friends for trespassing. The city water administrator decided that the city residents didn't want their water tainted with urine and emptied the reservoir's 38 million gallons, despite admitting that the health risk was small.

USA Today's headline ran the banner 'Man urinates in reservoir, ruins 38M gallons of water'.

People quickly calculated that the urine amounted to about 1/8 gallon in a reservoir of 38 million gallons amounts to a concentration of 3 parts per billion according to www.slate.com

Drink was most definitely part of this story and beer was probably the cause of his having to take a whizz.

As for the hysterical response by the water administrator and accusations of waste by the public we don't know if the young man had been eating asparagus, which as Babe Ruth once said, "I don't eat asparagus. It make my pee smell."

Actually that's the only Babe Ruth quote I know and it is very true.

Gabriel Garcí­a Márquez RIP

“My heart has more rooms in it than a whore house.” ― Gabriel Garcí­a Márquez

I know the feeling.

I loved reading A HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE.

Gabriel Garcí­a Márquez first opened my eyes to South American literature with his novel from 1967 about his liberal grandfather's house in Columbia. The tale of one family careens through several generations living in "Macondo", a city of mirrors that reflected the world in and about it."

Success is trumped by failure and failure is trumped by resignation to destiny.

Gabriel Garcí­a Márquez triumphed with this novel and like the family in A HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE he never achieved a greater success.

One is enough for most men and there are few better than A HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE.

Gabriel Garcí­a Márquez died at the age of 87 in Mexico City.

In the words of former Columbian president Álvaro Uribe Vélez "Master García Márquez, thanks forever, millions of people in the planet fell in love with our nation fascinated with your lines."

Esta la Veritad.

A Bastion OF Non-Democracy

The Dispatch from U.S. Bogotá Embassy to the US Secretary of State, dated January 16, 1929, stated:

"I have the honor to report that the Bogotá representative of the United Fruit Company told me yesterday that the total number of striking banana workers killed by the Colombian military exceeded 1000."

And the rich got richer.

Lorenzo Dow Baker of United Fruit.

Taking A Friend Home

On the evening of April 15, 1912 the RMS Titanic struck an iceberg on her maiden voyage across the North Atlantic.

The unsinkable White Star ocean liner sank three hours later with a loss of over a thousand passengers and crew.

Mostly men following the old rule 'women and children first'.

Only 20% of the men survived the disaster.

According to the Bowdoin online magazine one of casualty was Richard White and his classmate and fraternity brother, Frank Arthur Smith, spent his thirtieth birthday in Halifax, Nova Scotia. His was not a pleasure trip.The families of the Titanic passengers had been informed that the bodies of hundreds of the victims had been recovered and trasnported by a steamer to Halifax for identifification.

Frank A. Smith traveled to Nova Scotia on behalf of the White family, who hoped to recover the bodies of both Richard and his father, Percival. Frank waited anxiously at the Halifax Hotel for several days before receiving a telegram from his friend's wife.

“Richard’s body reportedly found[.] better return with it at once... look sharp for my brothers body[.] wire me fully as soon as you can.”

What was thought to be Richard’s body was found clad in a brown suit, wearing white shoes. The man had fair hair and seemed to be carrying Richard’s effects, but the estimated age was listed as thirty-seven. Richard was only twenty-one. Bowdoin sent measurements taken during Richard’s last physical to assist officials in identifying the body.

Finally, after several delays, the steamer arrived in Halifax where the bodies were taken to a make- shift morgue in the city’s curling rink. Frank A. Smith waited as the remains of those in second-class and steerage were unloaded. The corpses were sewn into canvas bags. Unlikely ever to be identified, the men, women, and children were buried in the “the Survivors cannot forget the cry of tortured humanity, facing its death in cold and darkness, despairing, a shrill chorus that carried despair across the quiet starlit waters.”

Frank A. Smith was taken to view body number 169. It was indeed Richard White. The remains were so battered, so ravaged that it was understandable that the body had been thought to be sixteen years older. Richard’s possessions fared better. He had a gold watch, keys, a bloodstone ring, and his Delta Kappa epsilon fraternity pin.

After positively identifying the body, Frank A. Smith inquired about Percival White with officials and checked among the other passengers yet to be identified. There were no bodies matching his description and it was assumed that Richard’s father was lost at sea.

Frank saw that the coffin was sealed and prepared for travel. In Portland he met members of the White family. Richard’s remains were then transported to Winchendon, Massachusetts, and were interred in a private ceremony on May 2.

Frank A. Smith was my grandfather.

He served in WWI as a dcotor.

He married my grandmother Edith.

Sadly he died several months before my birth.

This story was told me by my father.

No one in my family believed it until now.

Then again all stories are true, if interesting.

Winter's Hold

This winter New York's first snow was a light dusting on November 12, 2013.

Two days ago I woke to a white blanket on the backyard below the Fort Greene Observatory.

There wasn't much of an accumulation, however this evening I walked out onto South Oxford Street and muttered, "Damn winter."

The hard season won't release its grip and only last week I enjoyed the warmth of Spring along the River Arno in Firenze.

And that warmth was heaven.

The End Of New York

Last week I walked past the Rizzoli bookstore in Milan, which is located in the Grand Galerie next to Duomo Cathedral. Customers have been walking in and out of that address since 1927 and all they sell are books. The same went for the Rizzoli in New York, until the owners of the building on 57th Street announced that the Manhattan landmark was closing for good and will probably end up as condos for the rich, despite Vornado Realty Trust telling the media that they had no intentions of tearing down the building.

New York is also losing Shakespeare & Company, a bookstore on Lower Broadway.

Its monthly rent was going up to $50,000.

Pearl Paint’s building on Canal Street is joining the ranks of the closed.

This city and especially Manhattan is coming to a point where it's only for the rich.

And they don't deserve it.

Good-bye the piers.

Good-bye Pussycat Lounge.

Good-bye Victory Theater.

They aren't ever coming back

Bullshitters Unite

Last week Francois Nel reported on his blog that more people work in Public Relations than as journalists.

He added that the same goes for the USA and that PRs earn 40% more a year on average than journalists.

Public Relations agents or flaks tell people what to think and journalist tells people their version of the truth.

After the Iraq War I don't see much difference between the two.

It's all bullshit to me.

The Mormon Right Of Way

The Paiutes traditional hunting grounds in Southern Nevada were usurped by Mormom colonists in the 1870s. The well-watered land along the Colorado was especially appealing to the polygamous sects and Edward Bunker, who is no relation to Archie Bunker, founded Bunkerville in 1877 to establish a commune based on shared labor. It lasted four years and the remote town settled into a ranching community with a present population of over one thousand inhabitants. I have driven past Bunkerville several times coming from Las Vegas or returning from Utah. It is far enough off Interstate 15 to not notice the small town in the desolate Virgin Valley.

Water comprises on 1% of the Clark County's territory and few travelers bother to detour off the highway to drive along 170, since like all polygamous Mormon enclaves Bunkerville has no restaurants or gas stations or any appeal to passing motorists, since the clannish polygamists prefer that 'non-members; to keep on trucking to Las Vegas or Zion Canyon. They like their towns tight, however this weekend Bunkerville hit the national headlines.

The Bureau of Land Management had been confiscating a rancher's cattle free-grazing on federal lands. Cliven Bundy refused to recognize the government's ownership and claimed his family were the rightful owners with deeds dating back to their seizure from the Paiutes in the 1870s. Courts had levied the 67 year-old rancher with over $1 million in fines for trespassing without Bundy ever paying a dime for grazing rights on the expansive desertlands.

Bundy's plight gained sympathy from like-thinkers and soon hundreds of armed protestors confronted federal officials near the Bundy's compound.

The White House decided to defuse the situation and the confiscated cattle was restored to the Bundys in order to avoid a repeat of federal violence at Ruby Ridge, Idaho or Waco, Texas. CNN was busy covering the missing Malaysian flight, leaving Fox News to tell its side of the story.

"Our mission here is to protect the protestors and the American citizens from the violence that the federal government is dishing out,” Jim Landy, a member of the West Mountain Rangers, who made the journey from Montana to Nevada, told Fox News Channel. “People here are scared."

And the Feds can be scary, but the long dispute with the Bundy family is another example of White America protecting the rights of agricultural moochers. These lands were allocated for 150 head. The Bundys let hundreds more onto the reserve. They grazed the grass to the dirt. He lost a court case in 2012, but decided the law didn't apply to him or any free-rangers.

Bundy argued that the rules were changed in 1993 to protect the desert tortoise.

Free-rangers hated anything other than stupid bovine herds, since that's the only living animal to which they can relate, until they kill it for a Mickie D hamburger.

Rightwingers claimed a victory for the West and I am glad that the tense situation ended without bloodshed, although one of Bundy's grandsons had been tasered by a federal officer, but it's all part of the welfare state of the right.

Gun, cows, and SUVs.

Fuck them all.

I prefer GTOs, blondes, and sushi.

This afternoon a friend asked how I knew that Bunkerville was Mormon.

"My great-greast-great-great-granduncle once removed was Joseph Smith. I know a polygamists when I see one."

And that's the truth.

To read about the Bundy Standoff on Wikipedia, please go to the following URL

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bundy_standoff

A view of Bunkerville.

A nice place to be.

No Dairy Queens or Taco stands.

A road and big houses off the road.

Big houses mean one thing.

Big families.

'Choose the right'.

It's the Mormon way to be.

You Bet I Would / Redhead and Boots

Jesse Winchester RIP

Back in 1970 I found an LP by a folksinger named Jesse Winchester. I loved this LP, especially the songs YANKEE LADY, SNOW, and THE BRAND NEW TENNESSEE WALTZ. Jesse Winchester never played in Boston or Cambridge or anyplace in the USA, since he had fled the USA to avoid the Draft in 1967 after graduating from Williams College. Upon his pardon in 1976 by Jimmy Carter the singer returned to this country and was called by Rolling Stone "the Greatest Voice of the Decade".

I never saw him live and was saddened this weekend to read in the newspaper that Jesse Winchester had passed away in Charlottesville, Virginia.

He shall be missed, but his music lives on.

To hear YANKEE LADY, please go to this URL

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8CrF18QSVEk

To hear THE BRAND NEW TENNESSEE WALTZ, please go to this URL

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=APirVxOpZFk

To hear SNOW, please go to this URL

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5EEnfFe9qn0

STUTTERING SIAM by Peter Nolan Smith

In the 1950s stuttering was considered a possible sign of mental retardation.

At age 2 I spoke like a stuck record. My parents thought this disability would pass and I fooled them by mot speaking other than in single syllables. My family became accustomed to my aberrant speech habits, however upon entering Underwood Primary School in Falmouth Foresides, Maine my kindergarten teacher suggested that my parents take me to Maine Medical Hospital in Portland to see a specialist.

"Your son has a stutter."

"He does?"

"Do you have a stutter?" asked my mother.

"N-not-ttt all the t-t-time." This was the most I had spoken in years.

My father shook his head and my mother thanked the teacher.

As we got into the family station wagon, she said, "No one in my family ever stuttered."

"It's not a sin." My father had converted to Catholicism to marry the Boston beauty.

"The nuns taught that stutters are naturally left-handed and left-handed people belong to the Devil."

"You don't believe that, do you?"

My mother didn't answer the question and the next day we drove across the two bridges spanning the Presumpscot River and the Back Cove into Portland. My grandmother Edith was taking care of my brothers and sisters. My father parked on Bramhall Street and entered the hospital. I didn't like the smell.

The hospital subjected me to a series of tests; mostly to divine whether I was mentally impaired. My test scores indicating an intelligence higher than average was a relief to my parents. The head doctor then explained that stuttering resulted from a series of blocks, which prolong syllables.

"Stuttering in itself isn't a problem. Demosthenes, the Greek orator, spoke with pebbles in his mouth to cure his stuttering."

"Pebbles." I wanted out of this office. No one was putting pebbles in my mouth.

"Not proven to be effective, but what we have to be concerned about in your son's case is the appearance of secondary stuttering behaviors such as tics and twitches could develop as escapes to stop stuttering."

"Twitches?" My mother was alarmed by this prognosis.

"Tics as well."

"What can we do?" my father asked with a worried look in my directions. I had been no trouble to them up to this point and now I was becoming a monster simply because words wouldn't exit from my mouth.

"Well, ancients suggested drinking water from a snail's shell or hitting the stutterer on a cloudy day. We're a little more advanced nowadays. Let's have our oral specialists take a look."

I was brought into another room. The young doctor wore thick glasses. He examined the structure of my mouth and whispered his opinion to the head doctor, who announced to my parents, "The reason your son stutters is that he thinks too fast for his tongue, which is too big for his head."

"Is there anything we can do?" My mother was scared that I would be ridiculed by bullies for stuttering, even though no one in Underwood had ever made fun of me.

"As parents, no, however we can scrap the boy's palate with a needle to induce his tongue to work fast."

"I don't mind stuttering," I told the doctors, but no one listens to a 6 year-old boy in 1958.

I was strapped to a chair in a small operating room. The needle was about two-inches long. The young doctor asked me to open my mouth. I shook my head. Doctors didn't waste time on young boys' objections to perfectly good operational procedures and he nodded to the two nurses. Their hands pulled my mouth open like correction officers force-feeding a prisoner on a hunger strike.

"This won't hurt," the doctor told me with the needle aimed at the top of my open mouth.

He was a liar.

Worse I had to go to Maine Medical once a week for a month, until my father forbade any further treatment.

"Quacks. That's all those doctors are. Quacks." His father had been a GP in Westbrook, Maine, so my father recognized a fake doctor when he saw one.

My stutter survived grammar school and high school. High school wasn't so bad, since my Latin teacher also had a stutter.

"A-mo-mo-mo-, Amas-mas-mas, Amat-mat-mat."

Brother Bede also taught Algebra.

The other students thought my good grades came from his favoring another stutterer. I was just good with numbers, plus my stuttering wasn't so pronounced as before as I honed my stalled sentences to sound like thoughtful pauses. After a while I forgot I had a stutter. After all I really never listened to how I spoke and none of my friends ever mentioned it, but upon graduation from college I went on job interviews and the personnel director of a bank asked, "How long have you had that stutter?"

"O-o-only when I'm n-n-nervous."

"Thanks for coming."

The bank never called for a follow-up interview or the hotel chain or insurance company. Corporations had no use for stutterers and I taught English at South Boston High School. The kids noticed my stutter and the principal said, "I can't have an English teacher who stutters."

I was transferred to gym and lasted another year before moving to New York.

People of that city were more concerned with my Boston accent than my disorder, although any time the police would stop me for bad driving, the stutter would emerge with a vengeance. Most of the cops would get so annoyed by my repeating a single syllable that they would wave me away without writing the ticket and I exaggerated the stammering in foreign countries to avoid traffic violations, proving all cops hate stutterers.

None of them could tell me why.

It even worked in Thailand with two cops wanting a bribe. They heard my stuttering Thai and waved me on my way.

When we were up in Ban Nok visiting family, my wife told everyone about the stuttering or dit-arnh episode with the highway police. They laughed, although her mother said, "You can cure dit-arnh easy."

"Cure how." I was willing to listen to what she had to say, since she was an expert with herbs and country healing.

"You have to eat the hee-moo."

"Hee-moo?" Basically slang for pig vagina.

"Yes, hee-moo." The entire gathering repeated with heavy nods.

"From a virgin pig," my brother-in-law solemnly added.

"I'm fine with dit-arnh, really."

I started for the door, but everyone was worked up about curing my stuttering and 30 minutes later my wife's mother entered the house with a steaming plate of what appeared to be fried gristle. Obviously pig pussy was sturdier than that of a human female.

"Chim." The mother speared a morsel with a fork and held the quivering innards to my mouth.

Everyone else chanted 'chim'.

My wife said, "Taste it. You not have to eat much, then you not dit arnh ek."

Never stutter again?

I had my stutter for over 46 years.

It was like an old friend and they were suggesting I get rid of it in a second. This was magic and I couldn't figure out white or black. Maybe if I didn't stutter, I could get a real job. Maybe things would be different. Maybe I would be rich.

I opened my mouth and chomped on the hee-moo, only to have everyone laugh in unison.

"Not hee-moo. Hoo-moo."

"Pig ear?"

"Chai, hoo-moo."

My brother-in-law's face was boiling over with amusement. The rest of the family joined him. I was slower to see the humor, but finally smiled and said, "H-h-hee m-m-moo not stop d-d-dit arnh."

The Thais like a good sense of humor and my brother-in-law broke out a special bottle of lao khao dang or red rice moonshine. Within two hours all the males in the house were only capable of slurring their speech and the only cure for that was sleep.

As for stuttering I still have my old friend and will until I die, because some things are just too much you to not be you.

The Eternal Struggle

“Women are always right and they are never more right then when they are wrong and you try to convince of this.” - Pascha Ray

After Sandy I visited my friend Richard Sweet in Brighton Beach. They hadn't suffered from the huricane floods. I showed up on time, for his Ukrainian wife and he were celebrating their baby girl's 2nd birthday. My bringing Lakee a gift transformed an old drinking friend to an honored guest. Lunch was Russian food with vodka. Richard was an attentive host and my glass was never empty. His friends and I spoke about Russia, the KGB, Taras Bulba, and drinking.

"Never mix vodka and water. Sacrifice." Alex had drunk two glasses more than me.

"You mean 'sacrilege'." A single cube was floating in my shot glass.

"Yes, sviatotatstvo." Alex wasn't drinking vodka. He had started with sangria. "I never mix drinks."

"I'm half-Irish. We drink anything." Our cultures were at a clash until we told jokes. Laughs are a universal language and soon all the women were inside the two-story house with the children. The men spoke in hush voices.

"A woman is always right." Alex had been living in this country twenty years. "And there's only one person more right than your wife."

"Her mother," I answered to a chorus of muffled chortles, because every married man fears his wife's extraordinary sense of hearing, although our oppressed state was a willing sacrifice in exchange for the surrender of their bodies.

"To men sex is lust."

"For a woman it's love." Richard had learned this lesson with the birth of his daughter.

"Women are a completely different species," I said and them explained about an email from Brian LeBouef featuring a short story exercise written by a male and female student at the U of Phoenix.

I popped up the story on my iPad, which I handed to Richard.

It read as follows;

The professor told his class: “Today we will experiment with a new form called the tandem story. The process is simple. Each person will pair off with the person sitting to his or her immediate right. As homework tonight, one of you will write the first paragraph of a short story. You will e-mail your partner that paragraph and copy me on the email. The partner will read the first paragraph and then add another paragraph to the story and send it back, also copying me. The first person will then add a third paragraph, and so on back-and-forth. Remember to re-read what has been written each time in order to keep the story coherent. There is be absolutely NO talking outside of the e-mails, and anything you wish to say must be written in the e-mail. The story is over when both agree a conclusion has been reached.”

The following was actually turned in by two of his English students:Rebecca and Gary.

THE STORY
(first paragraph by Rebecca)

At first, Laurie couldn’t decide which kind of tea she wanted. The chamomile, which used to be her favorite for lazy evenings at home, now reminded her too much of Carl, who once said, in happier times, that he liked chamomile. But she felt she must now, at all costs, keep her mind off Carl. His possessiveness was suffocating, and if she thought about him too much her asthma started acting up again. So chamomile was out of the question.

(second paragraph by Gary)

Meanwhile, Advance Sergeant Carl Harris, leader of the attack squadron now in orbit over Skylon 4, had more important things to think about than the neuroses of an air-headed asthmatic bimbo named Laurie with whom he had spent one sweaty night over a year ago. “A.S. Harris to Geostation 17,” he said into his trans-galactic communicator. “Polar orbit established. No sign of resistance so far…” But before he could sign off a bluish particle beam flashed out of nowhere and blasted a hole through his ship’s cargo bay. The jolt from the direct hit sent him flying out of his seat and across the cockpit.

(Rebecca)

He bumped his head and died almost immediately, but not before he felt one last pang of regret for psychically brutalizing the one woman who had ever had feelings for him. Soon afterwards, Earth stopped its pointless hostilities towards the peaceful farmers of Skylon 4.

“Congress Passes Law Permanently Abolishing War and Space Travel,”

Laurie read in her newspaper one morning. The news simultaneously excited her and bored her. She stared out the window, dreaming of her youth, when the days had passed unhurriedly and carefree, with no newspaper to read, no television to distract her from her sense of innocent wonder at all the beautiful things around her. “Why must one lose one’s innocence to become a woman?” she pondered wistfully.

(Gary)

Little did she know, but she had less than 10 seconds to live.

Thousands of miles above the city, the Anu’udrian mothership launched the first of its lithium fusion missiles. The dim-witted wimpy peaceniks who pushed the Unilateral Aerospace disarmament Treaty through the congress had left Earth a defenseless target for the hostile alien empires who were determined to destroy the human race. Within two hours after the passage of the treaty the Anu’udrian ships were on course for Earth, carrying enough firepower to pulverize the entire planet. With no one to stop them, they swiftly initiated their diabolical plan. The lithium fusion missile entered the atmosphere unimpeded. The President, in his top-secret mobile submarine headquarters on the ocean floor off the coast of Guam, felt the inconceivably massive explosion, which vaporized poor, stupid, Laurie and 85 million other Americans. The President slammed his fist on the conference table. “We can’t allow this! I’m going to veto that treaty! Let’s blow ‘em out of the sky!”

(Rebecca)

This is absurd. I refuse to continue this mockery of literature. My writing partner is a violent, chauvinistic semi-literate adolescent.

(Gary)

Yeah? Well, you’re a self-centered tedious neurotic whose attempts at writing are the literary equivalent of Valium. “Oh, shall I have chamomile tea? Or shall I have some other sort of F—ING TEA??? Oh no, I’m such an air headed bimbo who reads too many Danielle Steel novels!”

(Rebecca)

Asshole.

(Gary)

Bitch.

(Rebecca)

F__K YOU – YOU NEANDERTHAL!

(Gary)

Go drink some tea – whore.

(TEACHER)

A+ – I really liked this one

Richard got a good laugh as did Alex, because we know that women are not the enemy. They are merely women. An alien race created from our flesh.

And every man knows this to be true.

But never say it in the company of women.

Not if you know what's good for you.

Nyet Gay In Rodina

The Russian criminal code of 1832 made the act of "muzhelozhstvo" or men lying with men a crime punishable by exile to Siberia for up to 5 years according the Wikipedia. The police rarely arrested men for this crime against nature, since the hunger that dare not speak its name was reserved for the upper classes of Tsarist Russia, however homophobia has been deeply engrained into the national psyche and a third of the population think that homosexuals should be executed and another third call for their exclusion from society. That draconian attitude had slightly improved since the collapse of the USSR, but a gay men or boy are regularly persecuted by their countrymen.

According to www.pinknews.co.uk a Moscow teenager recently escaped from a rehab clinic after his traditionalist father locked him up after he came out to him aged 16.

“I’d rather have you disabled or a vegetable than gay,” the father told the son according to local Ekho Moskvy radio.

The more things change the more they stay the same.

The situation has worsened under Boris Putin.

In 2009 I attended a gay protest in Moscow. Thousands of cops encircled the Kremlin to prevent any demonstrations before the Tsarist palace. Two hundred protestors shouted out slogans. The police dragged the more boisterous into vans. The cops' grim faces promised more disorder.

I retreated from the chaos and sought sanctuary in the baroque confines of Sandunovskye Bani.

I disrobed and entered the heated chambers of the famed banya naked. Straight men were beating each other with oak branches for their health. None of them were ashamed by this act of S&M, then again hypocrisy is the more profound blindness and there is nothing more relaxing that a good whipping.

Exile From Moscow

Two days ago I was riding the Q train over the Manhattan Bridge. An older woman was speaking with a young man. His English was halting and he nodded, as she said that the USA wasn't going to save the Crimea.

"Everyone is always looking for us to save them."

"Like Cambodia?" We had heard enough about America's love for regime change during the failed Iraq War.

She was anti-Obama too.

"It's pure socialism."

"And what medical plan do you have."

"Medicare."

"And that isn't socialism?"

"No, I worked for it."

"As what?"

"A housewife."

I surrendered my position in face of her obdurate belief in survivalist capitalism and wishd her well, as she swished off the train at Grand Street.

The doors closed and I turned to the young man. His accent was clearly Russian. I asked him how long he had been in the USA.

"I left Russia in October. I am seeking asylum." He was handsome with clear skin and a friendly smile.

"For?"

"My spouse and I are gay. We lived in Moscow. It became impossible there. I was fired from my job as a reporter after coming out. They don't want anyone gay in Russia. I went to church, but not anymore. The church hates us."

"I know the feeling." I was an atheist and strong supporter of human rights. "Welcome to the USA."

"It is good to be here. My spouse and I can be us."

I didn't mention that freedom doesn't exist everywhere in the Land of the Freaked, but New York City was a sanctuary for all.

"Putin has accused gays of being a threat to Russia." I had been to Russia in 2009. "The birth rate dropped and the life expectancy of men was 49 years. No one wants to blame vodka, because the state gets taxes from the sale of alcohol, so Putin and the Church picks gays."

"It was not safe there." The young man introduced himself as Oleg Dussaev. "Huffington Post published an article about me and my spouse. We hope to stay here."

"I hope so too."

He spoke about how friendly Americans were.

He was happy.

We shook hands at 59th Street.

Oleg was returning home after a English lesson.

I gave him my card.

"If you need any help, give me a call."

"America," sighed Oleg.

Yes, America.

Some of us are still free.

To read the Huffington Post article, please go to the following URL

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/priyanka-gupta/the-heartbreaking-story-o_b_4570146.html

Nyet To Mickie Ds

America is over 5000 miles from the Crimea. Russia basically annexed the peninsula from the Ukraine after the collapse of that national's pro-Kremlin government. The right-wing TV demagogues and the GOP interventionist members of Congress have called for action against the 'invasion' and two days ago the USA retaliated with a non-violent fury, as the fast food chain McDonalds closed its three franchises in the seized territory.

No more Big Macs in Simferopol, Sevastopol and Yalta with the threat of further closings in the future.

McDonalds released a press statement, saying that the closures were "strictly a business decision which has nothing to do with politics."

Nationalist Russian politicians have called for a boycott of the more than 400 restaurants in Russia, including the restaurant in Moscow's Pushkin Square, which had the highest sales and served the most customers of any McDonald's outlet in 2012.

Those Crimeans addicted to the fast food chain's menu join their brethren in Iceland. That North Atlantic country closed all its Micky Ds after refusing to declare bankruptcy in 2009. Bolivian shut all its franchises in 2002 and Bolivian President Evo Morales attacked Western fast food chains during a February speech:

"The major multinational food companies seek to control the production of food and to dominate global markets by imposing their customs and foods. The only goal of such producers is to generate profits. So they standardize food and drinks, turning them into global foods produced on a massive scale with the same formula. They are not interested in the health of human beings, only in their earnings and corporate profits."

I agree with Preident Morales.

I haven't eaten a pink goo beefburger in over a year.

One economist commented that countries without McDonalds are poor.

"If you want a definition of what the rich world and the poor world are, well, if you can get a McDonald's, you are in the rich world. If you look at where these restaurants are located, it doesn't map on to culture; it maps on to money."

Money to waste on junk.

Another recent change in the Crimea affected thousands of heroin addicts attempting to kick their habit.

Russian authorities have banned methadone, claiming most of it ended up on the black market.

No Micky Ds. No methadone.

It's a brave new world in the Crimea.

Luk Thung Garage Funk

Modern Thai music is dominated by Pop bands churning out hits, however a purer form of music is Pleng Luk Thong or 'music from the children of the fields'. The folk songs telling the stories of the poor became popular in the first half of the 20th Century and blossomed in the 1960s with the unabashed adoption of a multitude of influences.

Going up-country to Ban Nok or 'village of the birds' usually means drinking lao khao or rice moonshine and listening to Luk Thong classics.

Few compliations are better than Luk Thung! (The Roots Of Thai Funk) Vol. 3.

These bands know how to rock old school.

To listen to Luk Thung! (The Roots Of Thai Funk) Vol. 3, please go to the following URL

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kT4-FtSD104&list=PL3B831157432689B0

Zoo Cleansing

The Copenhagen Zoo has come under attack for first killing Marius, a giraffe, on the grounds that its genes were too close to the female giraffe. This culling of a healthy giraffe was according to the BBC, which reported that since 1828 only five giraffes have been euthanised for conservation reasons. The zoo further explained that this ethnic cleansing of Marius' gene was a benefit to the entire menagerie and disssected Marius before a large group of children.

Peter Sandoe, professor of bioethics at the University of Copenhagen, explained, "When small children can go and see this giraffe and see it being turned into lion food, it's a very good picture of what nature is like."

The giraffe carcass was fed to a pride of lions only to have four lions suffer the same slaughter to prevent a new male lion from murdering the two females and two cubs as is the practice of a dominant male in the wild.

Copenhagen Zoo was deaf to any pleas to spare Marius or the lions, earning hate mail and death threats from animal lovers. Danes support the measure, but Denmark also condones the hunting of whales for food. One visitor told the BBC, "If you talk about what's cruel, it's wanting to go to the zoo and look at all the animals, and then getting hysterical when the zoo takes responsibility to ensure that there is no inbreeding."

The same could be said about walking the streets of Copenhagen and seeing all those blondes.

The zoo supervisor might be available to work those death camps, judging from this statement, "The young antelopes have a good life.It's not a very long one, but it's good, and in the wild they probably wouldn't live even that long. They have nice surroundings. I think they're happy. And they do not hear the gun go off."

One website satirized the killing

ZOO KILLS AGAIN

Copenhagen Zoo Kills Four Healthy Staff Members To Make Space for New Employees

"The Copenhagen Zoo has killed several of its staff members early this morning in order to create four new job openings, the Zoo public relations sector reported. Officials of the Zoo say that the four members of the staff were humanely executed after being put to sleep with a lethal injection." A

s a neo-senior I might be a candidate for culling.

Oh, those crazy Danes.

Finding Nothing In The Right Places

The search for missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 in the Southern Ocean was called off, because of a cyclone crossing the Roaring 40s. Five ships and 11 aircraft scheduled to cruise the remote seas some 2500km southwest of Perth were warned of the impending storm and headed to safety of Perth.

A naval officer announced, "Anybody who's out there is coming home and all additional sorties from here are cancelled."

After a month no wreckage from the Boeing 777 has been found on shore or at sea. Objects spotted from satellites have turned out to be either containers washed overboard or large accumulation of plastic trash.

The only two other planes have vanished for this long.

In 2009 Air France Flight 447 from Rio de Janeiro to Paris on May 31, 2009 disappeared into the Atlantic. The two-year search recovered most of the wreckage, the majority of bodies, and the voice and data recorders, but nothing of the Boeing 727 turned up from a missing flight from Angola's capital of Luanda in 2003. Gone forever and no one knows where or at least those that do know aren't saying where.

The same is true for Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, then again no one can find anything, if they are looking in the wrogn place.

First the Gulf of Siam and now the Southern Ocean with nary a mention of Diego Garcia.

Cut Schurkes Loose

According to Wikipedia the etymology of the word "shark" might have been derived from the Yucatec Maya word xok, pronounced 'shok'. Evidence for this etymology comes from the Oxford English Dictionary, which notes shark first came into use after Sir John Hawkins' sailors exhibited one in London in 1569 and posted "sharke" to refer to the large sharks of the Caribbean Sea. However, the Middle English Dictionary records an isolated occurrence of the word shark in a letter written by Thomas Beckington in 1442, which rules out a New World etymology.

An alternate etymology states that the original sense of the word was that of "predator, one who preys on others" from the German Schorck, a variant of Schurke "villain, scoundrel" (cf. card shark, loan shark, etc.), which was later applied to the fish due to its predatory behaviour.

There are 470 species of shark in the ocean and their existence dates back to the Ordovician period 400 million years ago, however the expansion of the Chinese economy has led to a massive shark slaughter to satisfy the newly rich Chinese appetite for shark fin soup.

Last year over a 100 million sharks were harvested from the sea, which is estimated to be 6-8% of the global shark population meaning that there are 20 billion sharks roaming the ocean shallows and depths, although experts reckon that only 3500 Great Whites remainat large.

Ever hungry for prey, but not Man.

The only the reason we can venture into the surf without being gobbled by sharks is because we smell bad and taste worse.

This photo comes from my friend Alison in Palm Beach. The fisherman cut the shark loose and the Schurke fled to the safety of the deep, but the following photo shows how many sharks there are in the sea.

Countless, but not infinite.