How far would you drive to avoid flying?

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This morning at 5:05, Seth Godin left his home outside of New York City. At 7:25 am, he was at the White House on Pennsylvania Avenue (for a meeting next door).

“No hassles, no affronts, no work stoppages, no FAA inspections, no surly overworked attendants, no lost items or near arrests or runway tie ups or traffic jams.”

I think he’s making a point about flying. I HATE everything about flying and will drive a long distance to avoid it. How far would you drive. I stuck a little poll thingy on the right side of the page.

Coffee Zone tattoo

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I’ve been helping my friend Taisir feed and care for a blog for his coffee shop. It’s a labor of love and I’m there every morning anyway. With help from Phil we got his domain in place.

In time, we hope to build an online community to compliment the one he has built with his customers.

It was in this spirit that I stopped by Our Ink Don’t Stink and got my first body art.

UPDATE: The website where the image above was created no longer exists. But I did find what appears to be the source image.

I’d cheat on my taxes if I knew I wouldn’t get caught

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There. I said it.

TaxesGiven what we all know about the waste, corruption, inefficiency and stupidity of the people that run our government… and what we don’t know… a big chunk of what we all pay in taxes every year goes down the shitter or into some politician-turned-lobbyist’s pocket.

Remember the story about the $8.8 billion dollars (360 tons of cash) shipped on palettes to Baghdad? Pissed away, stolen, unaccounted for. My money was on one of those palettes. Along with yours.

You bet I’d cheat on my taxes if I knew I could get away with it. But I wouldn’t think of it as cheating. Because I would do something good (for others) with the money. Yes, I think I can help more people than the nimrods in DC. All I lack is the larceny and the nerve.

Tarzan the Ape Man (Pygmy scene)

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When I came home for lunch yesterday, Barb was watching the Tarzan the Ape Man (1932). The original Johnny Weissmuller/Maureen O’Sullivan classic. I grew up on Tarzan movies. I came in on the scene where Jane and her father had been captured by pygmies who took them back to the village where they planned to drop them in a pit with a giant ape. This clip runs about 2:50.

If I could rent a time machine for just a few days, I’d go back to the filming of this movie, specifically to those breaks in filming when all the little people were standing  around, waiting for their next scene. Everyone in costume with bones stuck in their pygmy wigs.

“Have you heard about this Wizard of Oz project? Word is they need a bunch of us to play Munchkins.”

“What the fuck is a munchkin?”

Bring back the draft

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Viet Nam wasn’t going well. We needed more “boots on the ground,” so they re-instituted the draft on December 1, 1969 with a lottery. Low number, you’re on your way to Viet Nam. High number, you’re okay. My number was 213 (out of 365). The draft was frozen at 195 in December of 1970. I dropped out of law school the next day.

In 1968, we had 536,100 troops in Viet Nam (compared to our 140,000 in Iraq). If we had the draft today, the war in Iraq would be over by the Fourth of July.