The Empire Comes Alive
Venezuela, Russian tankers, Hilton hotels, Greenland, ex-Capt Senator Kelly ...
Hold on to your hats people, the 2026 ride is just beginning.
Continue reading →DT
Textures
Seems one of my common photo subjects is "textures" - a photo of nothing in particular but of surface variations.
There is rarely a "tale"; rarely any deep meaning. Nothing more than a surface pattern that catches my attention.
Make of the image what you will - there will be others.
In this case, the side of a barn; east of and not far from Lake Huron, still standing, exposed to the west, never painted ... the barn was built in 1902, the photo taken in 2013.
Continue reading →Tunesday – You Want It Darker
A sample of some obscure - and maybe not obscure - tunes from my strange and off-the-wall collection.
Today's double selection: Leonard Cohen/Iggy Pop "You Want It Darker" - 2016/2022
Leonard Cohen's last album, released on his 82nd birthday and 17 days before he died - this being the title track. Iggy Pop recorded a cover of this song for "A Tribute To Leonard Cohen" in 2022.
Leonard Cohen was born in Quebec in 1934. He was a poet and novelist but began a music career in the mid-60s. His most famous song was "Hallelujah" released in 1984. He stopped recording in 1991. In 2005, he discovered that his money and publishing rights had been stolen by his manager so he returned to music and released three more albums. "You Want It Darker" was released three weeks before he died in 2016.
Jim Osterberg Jr was born in Muskegon, MI and began later moved to Ann Arbor. Although he began as a drummer, he found his calling as a front-man. His rise to fame as Iggy Pop began when he was the song-writer and vocalist of the local Detroit band, "Iggy & The Stooges". Considered a proto-punk band, they produced two albums before breaking up due to Iggy's heroin addiction. The name "Iggy" came from an earlier band called "The Iguanas". The rest of the band began calling Iggy "Pop" in reference to another local character who had a similar look after shaving his eyebrows. Iggy Pop wrote David Bowie's hit "China Girl" and other songs covered by Bowie.
Continue reading →Store At The Corner Of Main & Oblivion
Somewhere in a forgotten part of back-country Utah, this structure was once the general store of a long since faded away mining camp. Nothing else remains except scattered worthless rubble. I could make a wild guess that the rest of the settlement was of wood and was either stripped of material when the mines played out, or burned down, or just faded back into the earth from which it came.
I drive on.
Continue reading →PolyTicks
It's not so much that I support whatever Trump does as it is: "If the left is against it, it must be good."
Of course, the trouble with that is that if Trump does something the left once did, it's now bad because "Trump" - especially if Trump succeeds where the left failed.
Venezuela being a recent example.
Only 305 shopping days until Election day. Buy your politician now before the rush.
Continue reading →Now Showing
Raton, New Mexico
Isn't it strange that the only item left of this old drive-in theatre is the sign ...
The lot is now a trailer park, the speakers are all gone, there is no hint of the screen.
Just this little bit of land around the sign.
Even the highway, US85, is gone. In New Mexico anyway.
Continue reading →That’s Nice …
Trump Says US Will Now RUN VENEZUELA Until it Can be “Put Back on Track” – “We’re Not Afraid of Boots on the Ground… We’re Going to Make Sure That that Country is Run Properly”
Now do it here.
Continue reading →Muslim Heritage – phooie
Like tranzies, one of my soapbox issues I'd best stay off of. But here I go anyway.
Headline:
"Gov. Kathy Hochul Orders World Trade Center Replacement Building and Other New York Landmarks Lit in Green to ‘Celebrate’ Muslim American Heritage Month"
(Apparently we lost the battle of 9/11. That **** *** can *** herself and *** ****. )
May God damn her soul.
What Muslim heritage do we celebrate? Why, the one celebrated in the Marine Hymn:
From the Halls of Montezuma,
To the shores of Tripoli;
We fight our country's battles
In the air, on land, and sea;
First to fight for right and freedom
And to keep our honor clean;
We are proud to claim the title
Of United States Marine.
"To the shores of Tripoli" refers to the First Barbary War (1801-1805), and specifically the Battle of Derna in 1805. (This war was a somewhat inconclusive American victory as the piracy resumed during the War of 1812 and the Napoleonic Wars in Europe. A Second Barbary War in 1815 was far more conclusive.)
"Tripolitania had declared war against the United States over disputes regarding tributary payments in exchange for a cessation of Tripolitanian commerce raiding at sea. United States President Thomas Jefferson refused to pay this tribute. The First Barbary War was the first major American war fought outside the New World"
"In March 1786, Jefferson and John Adams went to London to negotiate with Tripoli's envoy, ambassador Sidi Haji Abdrahaman (or Sidi Haji Abdul Rahman Adja). When they enquired "concerning the ground of the pretensions to make war upon nations who had done them no injury", the ambassador replied:"
It was written in their Koran, that all nations which had not acknowledged the Prophet were sinners, whom it was the right and duty of the faithful to plunder and enslave; and that every mussulman who was slain in this warfare was sure to go to paradise. He said, also, that the man who was the first to board a vessel had one slave over and above his share, and that when they sprang to the deck of an enemy's ship, every sailor held a dagger in each hand and a third in his mouth; which usually struck such terror into the foe that they cried out for quarter at once
The koran has not changed - now perhaps the Marines will go in and rescue New York (and Dearborn and Minneapolis and Portland and Seattle ... etc).
We are at war with the muslims - our government just won't acknowledge it so the citizenry had better. Better to be friends with the Russians than the Arabs.
Matt 10:34-36
Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword.
For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in law.
And a man's foes shall be they of his own household.
Luke 22:36/38
But now, he that hath a purse, let him take it, and likewise his scrip: and he that hath no sword, let him sell his garment, and buy one.
And they said, Lord, behold, here are two swords. And he said unto them, It is enough.
Way too old for what's coming ...
Continue reading →Abundance of Things
The abundance of Things, and our great facility in making them available, obscures a fundamental truth which we need to see very clearly if we are to have any hope of meeting the main problem confronting Western civilization today. That basic truth is that the Things which are so abundant, even the gold and silver itself, rest upon the land and are derived from it.
Regardless of any techniques which may be developed to extract more from the land, there is a limit beyond which we can not go; and if our techniques speed up the process of utilization and destruction, as they are now doing, they hasten the day when the substance on which they feed and on which a swollen population temporarily subsists will approach scarcity or exhaustion. Then the scholars will look back on the age when the Golden Door opened, and men marched out to the Great Frontier to create the greatest boom that the world has known; they will make myths and legends about it, and in poetry and literature express their poignant yearning for New Frontiers. They will see the frontier as the great factor in the age called modern, see it clearly as the lost factor which they would so love to find.
Walter Prescott Webb
"The Great Frontier"
1951
Update:
I should add that the Great Frontier of which he speaks is that beginning with the Age of Exploration; from the 1400s or so through today and who knows how much longer.
Recalling “Black Hawk Down”
Apparently, Big Country Expat doesn't care for Somalis:
"A True Somalia Story and Time to Clean The Infestation"