Anti-War Cat
Schmistory
You Are Archduke Franz Ferdinand
June 28, 2014
For today and today only, you are Archduke Franz Ferdinand
Karl Ludwig
Joseph.
Franz Ferdinand for short.
You married Sophie for love. You once confused Austria with
Australia
and in the melee killed many kangaroos, thinking they were Serbian
separatists.
Today, you are acting like you are going on a car ride in a
convertible, part of a motorcade touring Sarajevo. Your special
security officers are accidentally left behind.
The first two bombers see you and Sophie smiling and can't
throw their
bombs. You're doing great so far.
The third bomber is Čabrinović. He's sort of behind you when
he throws
his time bomb. The bomb hits the folded roof of your car and bounces
off. Another point for you. The bomb rolls under the car behind your
car and explodes, wounding about 18 people. Čabrinović takes an old
cyanide pill, but it only induces vomitting. Čabrinović then leaps into
the nearby Miljacka River to drown himself, but due to the drought, the
river is only five inches deep. The Sarajevo crowd pulls him out and
beats him.
Three other
bombers fail to act.
You are doing well. But after the Sarajevo city hall, instead
of taking
the new route to the hospital to visit those injured in the bomb blast,
your driver takes the old route. Another car tells your driver to
change his route and he stops the car... in front of one of the
assassins.
Bang. Bang.
And you had been doing so well.
From here it only gets complicated,
starting the first World War one hundred years ago today.
Music Associations:
Cars - Drive & Sheryl Crow -
Every Day Is A Winding Road
Famous Last Words: “Sopherl! Sopherl! Sterbe nicht!
Bleibe am Leben für unsere Kinder!”
(Sophie dear!
Sophie dear! Don't die!
Stay alive for our children!)
Rain Again
June 27, 2014
The weather forecast calls for rain again.
Three weeks into June, it was already the wetest June on
record for
Minnesota.
Now, more rain.
Harriet Island in St. Paul, which is neither an island nor a
Harriet,
looks more like Lake Harriet in Minneapolis. It's flooded. The Taste of
Minnesota was scheduled to be there July 3-6th. Instead of making
everything taste soggy (or fishy), Taste is being moved to
higher
ground, 40 miles away (the Carver County Fairgrounds in Waconia, MN).
Yesterday, the Mississippi River crested at 20.13 feet in St. Paul,
closing Shepard Road. (Other road closures.)
In Stillwater, the water is not still. The St. Croix River is
expected
to crest today at 87.7 feet. The Stillwater lift bridge is closed.
Flooding has shut down three rides at Valleyfair, flooded
farm fields,
caused a mudslide near the University of Minnesota medical center, and
closed bridges and roads. A dam held in Blue Mound State
Park, in
Laverne, Minnesota, but the water carved its way around the dam and
emptied most of Blue Mounds Lake.
Gov. Dayton has declared a state of emergency for 34 counties.
Some roads are also closed for President
Obama's visit to Lake Harriet.
Music Associations: Beatles -
Rain & U2 - Rain
homage
Eli Wallach
1915-2014
The movie
The
Good, the
Bad, & the Ugly was a mistake in translation. That
was not the title. The original Italian title was
Il buono, il cattivo, il brutto
(The Good, the Ugly, the Bad). Lee Van Cleef was Ugly.
So after Eli Wallach played the role of Tuco Benedicto
Pacífico Juan María Ramírez (the Bad,
also known as the Rat)
and saw the movie, he was surprised that (in the English translation)
suddenly he was Ugly.
“
The
condemned is found guilty of the crimes of murder, armed robbery of
citizens, state banks, and post offices, the theft of sacred objects,
arson in a state prison, perjury, bigamy, deserting his wife and
children, inciting prostitution, kidnapping, extortion, receiving
stolen goods, selling stolen goods, passing counterfeit money, and
contrary to the laws of this state...”
He was Bad.
He was also the bad guy in
The
Magnificent Seven. But as a commentator on the DVD release
of
The Magnificent Seven,
he was
a very good guy,
setting the highest standard for any DVD commentator. He explained the
production situation of the movie, commented on the rivalries between
the actors and their hat sizes, and told wonderful stories within the
story... enriching an already outstanding movie.
Eli Wallach died on June 24th (yesterday) at the age of 98 in
New York
City.
Music Associations: Elmer
Bernstein - The Magnificent Seven & Bon Jovi - Wanted Dead Or
Alive
Movie Quotation: “When
you have to shoot, shoot! Don't talk.” - Tuco
movie review
Captain America 2
June 24, 2014
Months ago, I saw Captain
America 2 in a theater. I've been meaning to review it.
It's been on my To Do list.
Captain America 2 do list
Maybe the subtitle “The
Winter Soldier” had something to do with not
reviewing the movie. Last winter made everyone a winter soldier.
I'm not an expert on Captain America or Marvel comics (Wikipedia
link).
My understanding is that he always needed someone as a
sidekick.
He started with kid sidekick Bucky, then Falcon, then it was either
Hawkeye or Black Widow or they switched back and forth.
Tony Stark had the drinking problem, but everyone knew not to
leave
Captain America alone. He always needed a buddy.
What's odd about Captain America is that I'm not completely
certain if
he's a superhero or not.
Supposedly a shot of some miracle serum turned weakling Steve
Rogers
into Captain America without any side effects. Everyone in that world
has been trying to duplicate the serum ever since. I'm
thinking it
was a placebo.
Captain America is a comic book character whose only real
flaw is that
he was frozen for decades since World War II.
Cap has a To Do list and is fuzzy
on modern
devices and
events, but otherwise he's not really flawed. He doesn't have a problem
with being too hot or too cold. (That could be interesting.) He doesn't
visit antique shops. (That might
be interesting.) He doesn't look for exercise shortcuts. (That would
make sense.) He doesn't have a problem with being out of step with a
faster-paced world than the world of the 1940s.
Basically Cap is superman. If he were
Superman, the solution would be to take the hero out of him. DC Comics
writers regularly don't know what to do with Superman, so they make him
evil or a monster or send him away somewhere.
The plot of Captain
America 2
is ultimately Cap (Chris Evans), Falcon (Anthony Mackie), Black Widow
(Scarlett Johansson), and Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) against a HYDRA
infested S.H.I.E.L.D. and U.S. government out of control. The basis of
the government amuck was targeted
killing
but it works as a post-Edward Snowden NSA-overreach movie as well.
HYDRA's plan is to trade freedom for the illusion of security.
What's odd is that Captain America is up to speed on
government amuck.
He shouldn't be. Cap woke up in 2011 (movie version) not 1964 (comics
version). He doesn't know Vietnam or Watergate
or Iran-Contra or Iraq WMDs. He should be
caught in the middle, just like the rest of America.
The movie was good, just not good enough. Three shields out
of five.
Music Association: Hall and
Oates - Out of Touch (Out of Time)
History Isn't
Alien
D-Day Invasion of Normandy - 70 Years
Ago
June 6, 2014
Normandy was a killing field 70 years ago today. The pre-dawn
paratroopers were scattered. The aerial and naval
bombardments missed the German pillboxes. The
infantry were weighed down with heavy packs.
Despite the
high Allied losses in the Normandy
assault (Operation Neptune), the beachhead was secured and an
artificial port (Port
Winston) was created.
The much more successful Operation
Fortitude
had the Allies attacking Trondheim, Norway (Fortitude North) and Pas de
Calais, France (Fortitude South) by July 1944. Fortitude was a
deception which threw off the Germans from the Normandy assault
(despite having problems of its own).
Music Association: La
Marseillaise
German joke of
the day:
“If the plane in the sky is silver, it's American, if it's
blue,
it's British, if it's invisible, it's ours!”
History
Isn't Alien
Tank Man - 25 Years Ago
June 5, 2014
On this day in 1989, the day after the government crackdown
on protests
in Tiananmen Square, an ordinary man carrying groceries
stopped a
procession of more than a dozen type-59 tanks.
Tank Man, one of the greatest humans of
all time, in Tiananmen Square, June 5, 1989 (photo by Stuart Franklin)
Music Associations: Daughtry -
Waiting For Superman & Staind - So Far Away
Clear The Air
Driving all
Over LA in Search of Pollution
May 31, 2014
Science is a little bit of observation and a whole lot of
dirty work.
Like many people, I noticed the rich blue skies when all the
planes
were grounded after 9-11. During those three days, the U.S. airspace
was without contrails
and plane exhaust. Scientists discovered a 1°
C increase in global temperatures and a decrease in global
dimming. [BBC-Horizon,
PBS-Nova]
Recently, some west coast scientists drove a serpentine path
across Los
Angeles, measuring particles of air pollution.
Serpentine,
Sheldon, serpentine!
They crossed the paths of LA freeways, Inglewood, Hawthorne,
Westmont,
and Florence neighborhoods. And they crossed under the flight paths of
LAX
planes.
The
results were four times the particulate concentration at
10
kilometers east of the Los Angeles International airport (LAX) than
elsewhere in Los Angeles.
The very promising study was published this week in Environmental
Science & Technology (May 29,
2014) on newstands now. My
copy is tucked under the recent issue of PLoS One, a copy of the
Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, the Applied Physics Letters, Mad
Magazine, and a dogeared copy of Health Nut journal.
TL;DR
- Planes pollute more than LA traffic.
Music Association: Kansas - Dust
in the Wind
