Faces In Death: Exploring Cemeteries

Cemeteries can be fascinating places to visit, even when the entombed are just ordinary people, not famous or well known.  The granite and marble tombstones, crypts and statuary are grief frozen in time by those left behind.  

Even for ordinary lives each grave represents a human being with a unique story.  Often their stories can be gleaned from the internet, from Find-A-Grave or from Ancestry.com or Newspaper.com.  

Some video bloggers have learned to put the two together to make YouTube videos that show selected graves and tell the stories of the departed.  Some of the best vids talk about crimes or disasters like fires that killed the entombed.  

My two favorite V-Loggers who do this include “Lamont At Large” (see pic above) and “Faces of the Forgotten.”  The latter enhances his videos with some great drone footage, a feat I hope to duplicate soon.

Check out these vloggers when you have a chance.

Tax Season Has Begun

The tax season for 2021 tax year has begun.  Oh the joy, the exuberance of contributing to the advance of civilization, the perfecting of society!

Yes I’m being sarcastic.  However I did complete two tax returns today.  Be still my beating heart.

Remembering Dwayne Hickman or “Dobie Gillis”

On Sunday, January 9, 2022, Dwayne Hickman, actor of “Dobie Gillis” fame, died.  He was 87 years of age.  

His TV series, “The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis” was based on the book of the same name, by author Max Schulman.  It featured a high school boy, Dobie, trying to deal with life and survive adolescence.  Since I was 17, the show meant a lot to me, even though it was a comedy.

Dobie was pursued by a nerdy girl named Zelda Gilroy, played by Sheila James, while he pursued a blonde babe, Thalia Meninger, played by Tuesday Weld.  His best buddy was a beatnik named Maynard G. Krebbs, played by Bob Denver, who later starred in another sitcom, Gilligsn’s Island.

I met Dwayne Hickman in a San Jose bookstore over 20 years ago, when he was marketing his autobiography called “Always Dobie.”  I told him how much his show meant to me as a teenager and he was grinning from ear to ear.  He signed my copy of his book and we chatted for a few moments.  He was a nice guy.

God bless Dwayne Hickman and Rest In Peace, “Dobie.”  That’s “Dobie” with a “B.”

Joe Biden’s False Dichotomies

A false dichotomy is a logical fallacy that posits that you have only two choices when there may be many more choices available.

In his terrible rant this week, Joe Biden kept laying out the two false choices:  you can either be for Bull Connors or Martin Luther King, Civil Rights heroes e.g., Rosa Parks or George Wallace, Abraham Lincoln or Jefferson Davis, etc. His point was that you either support his radical left policies or you support the bad guy, the Bull Connors instead of the Martin Luther Kings.  This is nonsense. 

Although I do in fact prefer the good guys in his first examples, I prefer Jefferson Davis over Abraham Lincoln any day of the week.  Davis was a fine and honorable man who loved and cared for his slaves.  Lincoln detested blacks, whether slave or free and desired deporting all of them out of the country.  Lincoln wanted a bloody war to force states back into a union they no longer wanted.  Jefferson Davis wanted peace, and stated “all we ask is to be let alone.”

Planned Topics for Blog Posts

Here are some of my planned topics for blog posts:

1.  The UFO phenomenon

      Alien abductions, best books on the subject, best evidence, common characteristics of reported cases

2.   Vlogging, making YouTube videos, video editing, best vloggers to check out

3.  Common misconceptions and false stories about the War for Southern Independance.

4.  Flying drones.  Laws, rules, best practices.

5.  The Near Death Experience

Ben Shapiro’s Take on Nov 2020 Election Fraud

I generally like to watch Ben Shapiro on YouTube.  He’s funny and a great analyst of current political events.  Right now, though, I’m annoyed with him because of his unsupported stance on the 2020 election fraud:  he claims it never happened.

Indeed, he claims Trump “lied” about probable election fraud and that’s what motivated the Capitol rioters of January 6, 2021 to assault the Capitol.  He does a great job of making the Democrats’ argument for them.   Maybe Pelosi’s Kangaroo Court should subpoena him to testify. 

Anyway, for the time being I’m too pissed off to watch his show.

Nap Fantasies

Today I am prone to nap fantasies.  That’s when I’m somewhere not at home, am cold and bored.

I’m alone at the tax office, going over tax changes for 2021 tax returns.  It’s overcast and rainy and a bit cold.  So it’s a time for nap fantasies.  Where would be a great but secret place for a nap?  Somewhere I can hide and not be visible to others in the office.  

That might be a secret passageway in the library, a secret wall panel or a secret bunk bed hidden underneath my desk.  Ah, the possibilities are endless.  I’m out of here at 2 PM today.  

Is America Over?

The Democrats are telling horrendous lies about the January 6, 2021 Capitol Hill protest.  The worst was by the Pretender in Chief, Joe Biden, who claimed that “The former president” directed the attack as he watched it on television.  The vacuous Kamala Harris likened Jan 6 to Pearl Harbor and 911.  This, in spite of Trump’s Jan 4 request for protective troops around the Capitol, a request that the Democrats repeatedly refused and rejected.

The sham Jan 6 committee is operating without a bipartisan membership for the first time in American history.  The Dems are vastly false, ruthless and seditious, fanatically dedicated to seizing and preserving power by any and all means necessary.  How can we have a country with such people?

We can’t.  If the midterm elections in November do not result in a crushing defeat of the Democrat seditionists, there will be no point in pretending further that we do.  There will be no point in having elections, passing laws, having meetings of Congress, doing the many tasks and duties of running a federal government.  It will all be a sham.

Perhaps it already is.  In my opinion, the United States of America ended with the fraudulent election of November 2020.  The question now is how to pick up the pieces.

Jan 6: Another Democrat Scam

Today’s the one year anniversary of the Capitol Hill “riot,” when enraged Trump supporters barged into the congressional offices.  It seems they were a bit annoyed over the massive vote fraud that exchanged a highly effective and competent president for a complete fool.  

Since that time the Democrats have done everything possible to make this protest into an “insurrection” and blame it on Trump and Republicans. They’ve flooded Washington with troops and barricades to protect Dem politicians from the non-existent threat.  Everything about the Dems is phony baloney, massive efforts to create false impressions on the public in order to slander Republicans.

The Jan 6 Commission is a Democrat fraud led by Nancy Pelosi to demonize Republicans.  Facing a probable shellacking in the 2022 midterms, the Dems must resort to extreme measures to hold onto their slim majorities in the House and Senate.  So they are subpoenaing Republican politicians to testify, as well as bank records, phone records, whatever it takes to create an impression of massive Republican malfeasance in the mythical insurrection.  Kangaroo Courts anyone?  Expect candlelight vigils tonight to mourn and memorialize this terrible episode in U.S. history!   Boo hoo hoo hoo!

Other examples of Democrat Political Theater include Pelosi’s pathetic demonstration for George Floyd, when Pelosi and several other Democrats kneeled on the floor, heads bowed, with African motif scarves around their necks, for eight minutes in silence, the same time length that Floyd was immobilized by police.

And who can forget Alexandria Ocasio Cortez’s phony crying jag for illegal aliens “caged” by Trump?  It was a staged act, as she walked by a chain-length fence that did not enclose any prisoners.

Democrat Theater is the Dems’ last hope as the midterms approach.  Bring back Benny Hill, at least his theater was funny and featured pretty girls.

American Marxism

After hearing Mark Levin talk about his book “American Marxism,” I ordered the book.

Levin says we are in real danger of losing America to a failed foreign ideology.  I believe him.  

New Year in New York

I live in California so do not usually watch the New Year’s Eve celebrations in New York’s Times Square.  They are three hours ahead of us on the West Coast.  This year, however, I was able to watch it in real time, using my iPad and an app called EarthCam.   I saw some singers and dancers, but also crowds of young people in glittery top hats and Covid masks, undulating to peppy music while shaking long yellow balloons.  Then as the clock began the final countdown to midnight, the famous Times Square ball began to drop, changing colors as it did so, and everyone shouting Happy New Year and kissing.  

Looking at the spectacle from the warmth of my sofa, I was glad to not be there.  With thousands of people filling the streets, where do you go to the bathroom? Where do you sit down?  How do you vacate Times Square easily?  No thanks.