How Lucky Are You?

Luckiest car owner.

There is lucky, and then there is lucky. I think you will agree that the owner of this car is about as lucky as it is humanly possible to be. He is the luckiest car owner.

2019

Well, who wins?

Ah, some major league flirting going on! If you were my husband...

Just collecting some of the all-time classics here for our amusement.

2019

We're All Beautiful

This is a good reminder that if you live your life according to what other people say and do, you're a loser. You need to live your life for you and nobody else. If somebody else thinks that your doing something is wrong, they're entitled to that opinion, but don't let it guide you onto a path you wouldn't take otherwise.

Learn how other people control you, and resist their attempts to make you into something you're not. It's your life, and you're beautiful.

2019

So, you decide to leave your car in an illegal spot for a little bit. Hey, it might get you a ticket, big deal, you have a drawer full of them, whatever. Worst comes to worst, the car gets booted or perhaps even towed down to the local impound yard. Man, it would be terrible to pay the hundreds of dollars they would probably demand, but, well, your car is worth it. And it is only money that's at risk, right? You've got important things to do and money to burn, you are an Important Person and they will not Mess With You.

Well, not necessarily. Not if you park in the wrong parking space in Russia.

The Russian spirit is a lot different than that in some decadent Democracy or some third-world country. In some liberal place, they would tow you and then gouge you on the retrieval costs to make their point - their point being that they can gouge you. In an impoverished country, they might boot you or tow you your maybe just let it slide. Whatever. That's how things work. They probably won't have the equipment handy or, frankly, the desire or the need to do anything more.

Well, in Russia, they do things in a big way. You mess with them, they mess with you. They are prepared for this and know how to handle people who do not show sufficient Respect. The above video shows how.

There's also another, even more, horrifying possibility: perhaps the car wasn't parked illegally at all. Perhaps someone just wanted a car, had a big old truck, and decided yours looked appetizing. Hey, they always had a thing for a '96 Chevy! And around these parts, well, people take what they want.

Just remember: things are different in Russia.

2019

Arnold.

Arnold knows about discipline!


Der Arnold is going wild on his youtube account, which is just his name Arnold Schwarzenegger. If you are at all an Arnold fan, it is just priceless to suddenly see a new 30-second clip from him where he obviously is playing a role for fun.

In this clip, Arnold gives his interpretation of a coach explaining what is wrong with your approach to life. He sure is getting mileage out of that tank!

Arnold Schwarzenegger may not be the coolest and the baddest dude on earth, but he's right up there. Give his account a look.

"There is no bathroom!!!"

2019

Visual test.

Take a look at the above picture. There is no trick, you should see a face.

Do you see a youngish woman or an obviously old woman?

I'll be honest, I saw the old woman at first. Then I looked away, looked back, and saw the young woman. I can now switch back and forth at will, but it took a smidgen of practice.

This supposedly says something about your right brain vs. your left brain having control, but I am not trying to psychoanalyze people or freak them out over some nonsense like this. So, I won't say what the different interpretations might mean in a Rorschach Test way.

But with one, you're a wacko! LOL. Just kidding. Maybe.

2019

Right on!

/rant on

How the other half lives. Some of us have been around people and experienced things that make this seem not quite as wacky as it should in a perfect world. Being around the ultra-wealthy is not as pleasurable an experience as you might imagine, especially in retrospect.

The older you get, the more you realize that success and influence in many, many fields accrue from family influence. It's way more important than anything else in determining what happens to you as you go along.

Oh, and no slights intended toward oil barons, everyone with too much till in the bank acts the same way.

/rant off

Wish I had a dad like that!!

2019

Either you have it, or you don't.

Strategy! Some things you just can't fake. Either you've got it, or you don't. There's no in-between. Well, maybe there is some in-between.

This lady has it. Strategy. You've always got to have it.

2019

If You're Going To Be Dumb

If you're gonna be dumb...

This is probably shopped all to blazes, but it's kind of amusing anyway.

You have to watch out for the real mama grizzlies!

2019

First World Struggles!

First World Struggles. We've all been there - the remote is all the way across the room so we just keep the same channel on until someone comes in and can hand it to us. Or that light that we left on before going to bed, well, the switch to flip it off will still be there in the morning, right? So just leave it on. Or that dustball on the floor, why, if we just kick it under the table, then we won't have to go find the vacuum cleaner until next week!

Modern struggles.

2019

"Come to LA and Crush Things In My Tank!"

Arnold with his tank.

Der Arnold has a tank. His very own tank.

)
"After hard work, laboring and slaving away, I finally have achieved my lifelong dream." - Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Some things are just there, and you have to watch.

Arnold Schwarzenegger and his tank, crushing random things, is one such thing.

Watch der Governator crush all the things!

"I finally possess my own f'ing tank!" - Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Arnold shared some stories about his Austrian Army days in his autobiography "Total Recall," and he mentions one story in the video below. You can only imagine how much fun it would be, going hiking or something with him or driving around on his tank, as he tells you stories that are probably 80% true and 20% pure Arnold the Storyteller.


Arnold has become a quite unlikely Youtube star. But never bet against this guy - he's accomplished more in his life than pretty much anyone.

You will probably find this amusing even if you aren't a fan. It's all for charity, of course. Der Arnold has been releasing these things regularly, he's good to subscribe to. He'll be back!

The theme is simple: to the strains of the Eurythmics' “Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This),” Arnold gets in his tank, drives it himself (you can see him driving it, and fast), and crushes things. Anything he wants to crush, in fact.

The video was made for Schwarzenegger's charity that raises funds for after-school programs for kids, a cause he championed in his first run for governor of California. As part of a contest for the charity, Schwarzenegger is going to play host to a randomly selected winner who will get to drive around in his tank and, well, get to crush things.

Yes, it is his tank, which he keeps on a ranch in California. It is the same one he trained in during the 1960s when just a lad in the Austrian Army, an M47 Patton tank, 50 tons of working goodness.


I'll be back! Hasta la vista, baybee!

Arnold Schwarzenegger at the wheel of his tank.

Help Arnold crush things! And help out his charity.

2019

A Perfect Demonstration of What Not to Do

How not to water ski. I don't think he meant to do that...

Some things are perfect for all the wrong reasons.

This, for example, is a perfect demonstration of how not to water-ski.

Oh, and, I don't know, maybe consider tieing your drawstring a little tighter next time?

Just a thought.

K?

2019

Love, love, love.

Can you have too much togetherness?

So, you're totally in love, or you have been totally in love, or you want to be totally in love. That's so special. Don't worry - it happens to everybody sooner or later.

Love, love, love.

You wouldn't be normal unless at some point in your life the birds always seemed to be chirping and your mind always turned to thoughts of love. But while you dance amongst the roses, we have a serious question to propose:

Is there such a thing as too much togetherness? 

And, we think we have the answer. The definitive answer.

Love, love, love.

The answer:

The answer.

And here we present the answer to that age-old question: "Is there such a thing as too much togetherness?"

How you view the above picture should answer that question definitively for you, once and for all. That is, if what makes you squeamish, then the answer is a profound "Yes, togetherness is all well and good ... but enough is enough!"

If, on the other hand, it looks perfectly OK and, in fact, looks like an astonishingly efficient solution to dwindling spatial resources and, overall, a terrific advance in sanitary engineering, then I think we can mark you down in the "Hell No! There are no limits to togetherness!" camp.

Go ahead and draw your own conclusions. Oh, and notice which side has the lid up.

2019

All night!

Where the white man went wrong.

Now, this old boy knew what he was talking about!

But we're working on the medicine man, clean water and women working part of the equation.

2019

I got this!

Use what you have!

Now this man or woman has what we would call the true American spirit.

2019

Now, you had to figure this would happen at some point...

The Amazing Flying Feline! The most exciting day in the entire life of one adventurous cat creature. And no life preserver. Oh my!

2019

This is where you want to be during the Zombie Apocalypse.

So, no man is an island?

Think again!

This is where you want to be during the Zombie Apocalypse.

This would be even better than the zombie-proof house!

2019

Albert Einstein's Best Advice.

This is probably the most brilliant thing that Albert Einstein ever said.

When I was a kid, I spent countless hours in the library. I would stop there after school - I usually walked home until I got to my senior year when mom finally let me drive the car. The library was on the way (I drove there as well). I also went there on weekends and such. It's just a fact, that's what I did, I must not have had anything better to do. But I was reading Greek mythology at home way before that because we had a beautifully illustrated compendium of them lying around, and I loved reading that even though I didn't really understand it. So, my reading was probably more about me than about any opportunities around me. I developed the reputation of a bookworm, which was a Bad Thing To Be.

Anyways, the local library had these competitions during the summer where whichever child read the most books got a prize. It was summer, I was going to read anyway. I never won those contests (invariably, some girl supposedly read 300+ books, well, good for her), but I always participated and must have read hundreds of books during them. But those were mostly smaller, kids books which I didn't take too seriously. I actually did read all of them and didn't just speed through them for the contest (they would ask you questions about them when you checked the books back in to make sure you had actually read them!). My own version of ethics.

Even then, I spent much more time in the grown-up section (I'm not going to say adult LOL) and read books practically nobody ever has heard of, autobiographies and biographies of and by people who weren't particularly famous then or now. Do you know who Hugh Trenchard was without looking? I still do, only because of his biography that sat on those shelves and that I read around the age of twelve or so.

Strangely, though, the long-forgotten books are the ones I remember the most, though I also read about Daleks and tripod aliens and all sorts of things the memories of which are lost in the mists of time. I didn't read too much famous stuff, probably because I didn't know what was famous anyway, and the hot-selling stuff wasn't in the library or at least wasn't on the general circulation shelves that I frequented - or perhaps wasn't for tender eyes such as mine.

I read the entire Horatio Hornblower series by C.S. Forester. Yes, there were a LOT of those novels. I would get excited when I saw one on the shelves I hadn't seen before (such as the one where Hornblower is an older admiral and thwarts the rescue of Napoleon from St. Helena but winds up feeling guilty about it - you'd have to read it to understand why). Those who've read those Hornblower novels know how many recent works ("Star Trek," "Master and Commander" etc.) bear uncanny similarities to the Hornblower novels. They were the comic books of my childhood. I never possessed nor read actual comic books, which makes all the recent superhero movies being made in Hollywood a bit unnerving to me.

My family also got Readers Digest condensed novels for a year at one point (practically nobody else will remember those) which had like four books in the form of one big hard-bound book. Spend a few hours and you could zip through four current novels that nobody has ever heard of before or since. What a deal! But you learn a lot about writing doing that, by sheer absorption. Even unknown writers can teach you about a pleasing flow of words.

Of course, now libraries have changed into "information centers" and nobody has the patience to actually read novels, much less grind through long series of novels that gradually develop a character into someone that you know better than your best friend. Hornblower gets old and reflects upon his past, and you feel it with him because you lived through those experiences with him in the earlier novels. I could never sit through the Gregory Peck "Hornblower" movie because, well, it was from many years earlier and I already had my image of Hornblower in my head. Quite simply, Peck wasn't the Hornblower in my mind.

Horatio Hornblower!

It's a shame how libraries how peoples' views of libraries have changed in a way because no matter how computer literate you become, you will never inhale and embody the feel for language and prose that you will through endless hours spent reading classic and not-so-classic literature at a young, impressionable age. I'm reminded of that moment in "The Time Machine" when Rod Taylor is excited to find a library of old books after his voyage to the future but chagrined when they crumble in his hands. I suppose present-day kids will feel that way about their Apple Computers someday in their distant futures. ;)

Ioan Gruffudd, A more recent Horatio Hornblower.

How this turned into a rant on Horatio Hornblower I have yet to figure out! But, yes, I was a bookworm. I suppose I still am. Oh, well, everyone has to be something, right? Libraries are good. Just ask Albert.
2019

This is how you make millions.

Kristen Stewart. The true mark of talent is when you can become the highest-paid woman in Hollywood and do the same exact thing in every movie you appear in!

Kristen Stewart is my hero.

Trust me - I'm taking notes.

2019

Cool!

Bring Your Own Cup Day. How would I handle "bring your own cup day" at 7-11? These women have it down cold!!

Women after my own heart. Ya gotta love it. Gotta learn from the pros.

2019

Ah, wisdom

I don't always talk politics with my friends. But when I do, I need to find some new friends.

Well, there you go. These are gooooddd words of wisdom for just about everyone. The bad thing, though, is that the people who really need to learn this lesson are the ones who never will.

So no politics! Except in the most general sense, like "America is beautiful" or "all politicians are evil" - both of which almost everyone will agree on!

2019

Good thing he looked over there.

Pointing is rude. Now, let that be a lesson to you. Pointing is rude! Sometimes folks will get upset and snap back at you!

Politeness. The mark of a gentleman.

2019