Monday, January 31, 2011

hollywood conchidential



I doesn't take a genius to recognize the real from the relative. Promenade may not be the best word to describe this gem of an oceanfront scene, so Popeye Beach will do. It is certainly a great destination for those just wanting to stroll along a South Florida beach and feel comfortable among regular folk. If SOBE is for the uber-fashionable, Hollywood Beach is at the other end of the peninsular party pendulum.

Let's view this post in film-strip format starting in Sunny(Shady)Isles driving north on Collins Avenue across the county line onto this classic seaside town on spit of sand bar surrounded by gorgeous sun, sand and water.






Siesta Perfecta

This tourist should be congratulated for being the inadvertent poster-fella for our easy going seaside resort towns and the perfect weather. We should have checked his vitals but he looked really content snoring in public.

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Saturday, January 29, 2011

swampy reflections


Lowest Common Denominator

For South Florida drivers, suggestions of radicalization are bumper-sticker commonplace and billboard subliminal. Nationwide, the lone-wolves mis-adventures are likely to occur at increasing frequency and of course make headlines for a mind-numbed populace.


Where the Rudder Meets the Road.

Grappling with a landscape dominated by cars, trucks and asphalt, our culture seems resigned to avoid any reconciliation with mobility or sustainability. Looking around notice we not only built the best roads available but we also have luxury buildings for cars as we assign so such reverence to our automobiles that we are now powering them with bio-fuels made from our dwindling food supplies. Corn that could feed a starving child in Africa.


Music Now Available! Huh?

Meanwhile the cementization of the swamp continues without relent.
Here are a few panoramic photos of our latin-manhattan captured from this drivers seat.


Midtown Mediocracy

In fairness, the middtown theory does include developers undertaking a very green project titled World Gardens. It is a landscaped trial for our very own central park featuring all manner of tropical flower and fauna for strollers and dog-walkers.
But the bulk of the midtown dream is being rendered impervious with concrete and steel.



HipHop Scotch

The elevated train that will connect MIA airport to the metro trains is an engineering marvel of Epcot proportions for this horsetown. Built with mondo-rail technology to dominate the landscape, its elegance is sure to please travelers familiar with our daft taxi drivers. The final leg of this grand plan will be to connect miami beach to the system thereby enabling jet-set tourists levitate to and from without setting a wet or dry foot on the mainland.


Tunnel out of a Mole Hills

Perhaps the mother of all big projects is not the stadium or the museum but the Big Dig, a tunnel to hide all those ugly trucks that must trek consumer goods n stuff in and out of the Port of Miami. It will not seem like much when completed as most the engineering splendor will be buried under Biscayne Bay. In the meanwhile do expect periodic delays for the several years duration of the construction.


Tourist Traps

Friends of Waldo will have a time finding the Childrens Museum or the Parrot Jungle II but they are open for business.


Frigging Digging

Removing tons of muck material along the subterranean charted path will require unsurpassed imported Italian tunnel making technology and tons of cuban concrete to hold back the swamp, all of which make jobs for dump-truckers and pencil pushers.


Downtown Doldrums

Here is a view of the ultra new museum complex site where MAM will move to when construction is completed several years from today. The ground has been broken but the remediations are pending. The wikiword on Basel is 50/50 fight or flight.



Signs of the Times

Why does one eye focus on the blight of the swamp while another is busy capturing the aura of swampiness? Because we are built with stereoscopic vision.


Muralsedation

Without lament, artists are taking back the landscape with the outward expressions that celebrate the vitality of our spirit and the resiliency of a creative force that can not be plowed over.

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Friday, January 28, 2011

Jack Frost Bites



Choose One: Jersey Shore or Cairo Egypt.

One still has internet.



Wednesday, January 26, 2011

another sputnik moment


Whining The Future

The 2011 SOTU speech last night began at 9:11 pm promptly. Our president GObama had plenty of intriguing words for those listening in this world. To interpret this historic oratory one must keep in mind that it was crafted by an army of speech writers simply pulling buzz-words out of their ashtrays for news junkies drinking games and for all those wolf blitzers on teevee and washington insiders to digest for hours ad-nauseum. Making sense of the circus is more a quick game of bingo on sleeping pills.


"Who would have imagined using airplanes to fly into buildings."


I have a dream... and a rocket.

Ancient history tells us that back in the 1950's while americans were watching Buck Rogers Comics, those crafty communist russians were busy sending space-junk into orbit. The first know creature to exit our atmosphere was a russian dog named Laika.



Rough Road Ahead

Laika didn't lika getting blasted off into space but the bitches and scooby-snacks he was promised were worth the risk.



2011 Freakathon USA

Soon the USA got all ballistic over the race to the stratosphere and our beloved president challenged us to the task of winning the future and inventing the Moon Walk.



ProtoTSA

First things first. We had to blast our creature into orbit and chose a clever spider monkey. No his name was not Curious George it was Abel. Needless to say it did not end well for Abel or Laika. But we did get allot of really interesting data.


Cutting n Spending

Space programs are not unlike other expenditures that promise untold riches then soon balloon into money pits. When the price tag far exceeds the spending power of the consumer who pays the piper? History is not kind to nations that put all their bombs in one basket.


Back in the USASR

The russians may have invented the first satellite but it does not take a rocket scientist to know that it is the USA that has the market cornered on space cadets. Perhaps Michele Bachman will volunteer to be the first to go on the Uranus Probe.



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Wednesday, January 19, 2011

been there, done that

Here is a delightfully human video by Matt Harding submitted by U-tube trawler Sir Tim . Don't know much about Matt except that he has managed to capture the meaning of HOPE for many folks around the world... and racked up allot of frequent-flier miles along the way.

Swampthing faithfully dedicates this post to the memory of MLK.




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Monday, January 17, 2011

Ed the Blogger



I went to the nursing home to visit my friend's father who turns out to be quite the blogger.
Edward Weiland was born in the midwest, met his sweetheart in Coney Island, served in the US Navy as a mine sweepers and had three lovely children.
He also wrote and wrote and continues writing about thing that matter to us all.

Ed recently hurt his knee and is recovering.
Get well soon Mr. Ed and keep on blogging.


Ain’t it great! I’m returning to the Sunshine State, away from the cold and snow I hate in time to celebrate 88.

If it’s not too late and fate is kind I might find a date with a sexy chick of 66 and if we click and make it we may wed and do what’s said can’t be done. But whether we do or whether we don’t, won’t trying be a lot of fun?

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At 87, I will continue to blog as long as the future permits, am thankful that I have my son and daughter to comfort and care for me, my writing to challenge me and good health to bless me in my years ahead.

I want to thank bloggers everywhere who give me reason to continue my writings in the years ahead.



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Sunday, January 16, 2011

TSA kindergarten

Why not start indoctrinating kids early so they think the madness is normal behavior.

Thursday, January 13, 2011

Read n Weep



Here is a quote from Obama's speech at the eulogy in Arizona.

"I believe we can be better. Those who died here, those who saved lives here – they help me believe. We may not be able to stop all evil in the world, but I know that how we treat one another is entirely up to us. I believe that for all our imperfections, we are full of decency and goodness, and that the forces that divide us are not as strong as those that unite us."




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Sunday, January 9, 2011

Targets at Target


"It is when we notice the dirt that God is most present in us; it is the very sign of His presence."


Good Times ?

The new guys in Tallahassee have reason to celebrate in public because privately they know the odds of getting whacked at the mall are next to non. They know that what liberals are known for hurling are mostly rotten tomatoes and banana cream pies.


Crazies Gun Shop USA

"Do not let us mistake necessary evils for good."
C.S. Lewis

Guess what i got in the mail last week, a complimentary membership card from the NRA.
Now, I am all for a well organized militia so I support our national guard 110%. But when the NRA strong-arms it's insane policy of "a gun under every pillow" and exports truckloads of US made weapons to Mexico and around the world, I say their god ain't my god.


When children play with guns, we all loose.

"Now the trouble about trying to make yourself stupider than you really are is that you very often succeed."
C.S. Lewis



KingWrong

When eliminationists are given a mega-platform by the "maim"stream media, we all loose.

"I didn’t go to religion to make me happy. I always knew a bottle of Port would do that. If you want a religion to make you feel really comfortable, I certainly don’t recommend Christianity."
C.S. Lewis



Witches Brew

"My only regret with Timothy McVeigh is he did not go to the New York Times Building." Coulter

"She's the sort of woman who lives for others - you can tell the others by their hunted expression."


BatShitBoy

"A man can no more diminish God's glory by refusing to worship Him than a lunatic can put out the sun by scribbling the word 'darkness' on the walls of his cell."
C.S. Lewis



Pain in the Palin

"Pain insists upon being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our consciences, but shouts in our pains. It is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world."
C.S. Lewis


Palinology 101

"All that we call human history--money, poverty, ambition, war, prostitution, classes, empires, slavery--[is] the long terrible story of man trying to find something other than God which will make him happy." -"
C.S. Lewis
TeaManCometh

When all the Tea Party People have are their guns and gawd, all we others starts looking like targets.

"Wouldn't it be dreadful if some day in our own world, at home, men start going wild inside, like the animals here, and still look like men, so that you'd never know which were which."
C.S. Lewis


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Friday, January 7, 2011

governors come and go


I once was comfortable being a regular guy, basically happy to partake in the American Dream and give a little something back for my good fortune. Feeling good to have faith in an imagined system was not an issue.



Living was not always synchronized but there were plenty of green lights of encouragement. When the light turned red, like a good neighbor, I slammed on the brakes. But today our cities have turned into a neurotic minefield of legalized extortionists and tweeting lunatics.

The sky may not be falling, but plenty of dead birds with liquified organs are.



Back when South Florida was built of oolitic stone on a respectable foundation of oolitic bedrock, one could bank on some semblance of fairness and the notion of a better tomorrow.
Problem is lately, the warranty on promise seems to have expired.


Today we have to deal with a culture of impotence and fanaticism.


Somewhere along the golden-brick road of progress we have veered off,
careening towards the concrete wall of urban singularity.
No one wants to admit the obvious fact that we are propelled by the status quo in the direction of dystopia.


I contend that Florida is more of an appendix.
While some regale in the resurgence of a conservative grip on the capital, I say it's not the size of the candidate it is the size of the war-chest.

When corporations such as BlueCrossBlueShield give hundreds of thousands for the new governor to have his private celebrations and at the same time raise the health insurance rates by 57% to residents of california, I know what Floridians residents can expect soon.



Elephants and donkeys are known for their members, one is mammoth the other is even bigger.
The last great naturalist alive, Peter Bread once described the End of the Game with the apt axiom "the bigger they come come, the harder they fall".


Afghanistan is known to be the "The Graveyard of Empires"
No amount of shock and awe is likely to change that moniker.


The daily tasering of my brethren is a metaphor of things already here.


We should start with Hollywood. As "funny" as these scenes are in films and TV shows, they are normalizing torture and we shouldn't stand for it. Next time you see one think about how funny it would be if it happened to you --- or a child or a sick person or any frightened citizen being shot through with 50,000 volts on the whim of a police officer, all of which happens all the time. Then picture how funny the scene would be if it was a billy club --- and ask yourself if there's really any difference.

While our newly alligned congress and idiots celebrate, the civilized world laments.

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