A Royal Leak - Not Any More 

    Well, it had to happen sooner or later. The Dutch authorities have requested that people not pee on the downtown Amsterdam Royal Palace. And it was high on my bucket list too. The Royal Family does not live there, but they do work there. At night, because of the dark archways, and doorways, it is a perfect place for people to use when they can’t find a toilet.

    Authorities have tried putting a fence around the place, but decided that looked a little tacky. Now they’re toying with the idea of pop-up urinals that, guess what, you got it, pop-up after dark.

    They are also toying with the idea of lighting the whole place, so there are no dark corners.

How about (and this suggestion is free of charge) strategically placed cameras that go directly to public media? Of course there are the weirdoes who would come from miles around just to get noticed. Okay, so it may not be the best idea.

     Anyway, in deference to the Dutch authorities, the Royal Palace in downtown Amsterdam is off my list. They’ll just have to live with it, I know I can.

Pass the Cookie Dough Please

    In Wichita, a lady woke up at 3:30 in the morning and walked into her kitchen. There she found a man eating cookie dough. The man wasn’t related to her in any way. The intruder told police he thought he was in his aunt’s house. The lady was not hurt. It’s a good story, up to this point. Some things that were left out: Why was the man still there when the police arrived? Obviously he had plenty of time to leave. Maybe he wanted to finish the cookie dough. Another fact that wasn’t included: Was there any alcohol involved? That would explain quite a bit.

Old People Beware

    Here they go again, picking on old people. In Florida an 81 year-old man was arrested just because he picked a few tangerines out of some guy’s orchard. The police are charging him with grand theft. Give me a break, or maybe give this old geezer a break.

    However, it just might have something to do with the number of tangerines he picked. By the time police arrived, he had picked over 2,000 tangerines and was loading them onto his truck. His claim was that he was taking them to a nearby market.

    So, we have this guy who found a second career and was trying to pay his own way instead of depending on the kindness of strangers, or the government. (And the government is strange enough for anyone.) Try to do something for yourself and everyone turns into a critic.

Psst – Wanna Hot Calf?

    AP reports that in Riverside, CA, police arrested a man. Why? Because he had a 150-pound calf in the backseat of his car. The identification tag had been torn from the calf’s ear and the man had no proof of ownership. The charge is “suspicion of transporting livestock without proof of ownership or identifying information.” In other words, rustling.

    Now rustling is nothing new and it happens all the time anyplace cattle are present. What you don’t often see is somebody dumb enough to haul a rustled bovine around in the back seat of his car. A 150-pound calf can make quite a mess, beside being hard to handle. Watching this rustler getting a calf into his car would have been entertaining. Watching him clean up his car? Not so much.

Assume the Position

    A lot of things can go wrong when a modern day airliner is trying to get itself off the ground: mechanical things, pilot error things, weather things, and third party (control tower for example) things. A report, written for Reuters by Tommy Wilkes, points out that when trying to leave Surat, India, other things can cause a problem.

    The flight Tommy is reporting on hit a buffalo as it was trying to take off. The plane, not the buffalo. Maybe the buffalo was trying to take off also. The reporter didn’t say. No passengers or crew members were hurt, but the buffalo did not survive the encounter. If he had survived, we could ask him why he was grazing on a runway.                                                                       

    The plane sustained substantial damage. We’re talking about a Boeing 737.

    The lesson to be learned---if you’re flying out of India, make sure somebody has shooed all the buffalo off the runway before your plane departs. When landing you have no control over the situation, so just assume the crash position, and pray.

Things I've Found Interesting

From My Journal  

October, 2014

I Didn't Sign Up For This

      From an AP report written by Didi Tang we learn that China has been having some domestic problems. It seems they've beefed up security measures after a string of attacks, which the authorities are blaming on an ethnic Muslim minority. Whether they are actually responsible or just handy is hard to tell.

     Anyway, three members of this same group slammed a vehicle through the crowds in front of Tiananmen Gate and then blew themselves up along with three bystanders. Police helicopters are monitoring highway checkpoints, ring roads, areas of heavy traffic, and major tourist spots such as the Great Wall and the Summer Palace.

     Authorities have also mobilized 850,000 volunteers to spy on the other twenty million people in the city. This same information also appeared in the Beijing News, and a tweet by the People’s Daily.

     All this is to set the stage for what happened in preparation for the October 1 holiday to celebrate the 65^th Anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China.

     As part of the celebration, the organizers were going to release 10,000 doves at sunrise. In this report, these birds are sometimes referred to as pigeons. Doves, pigeons, who cares.

Now the heightened security and the doves come into focus. The authorities had all 10,000 of these birds body searched to make sure they were not subversive and carrying suspicious objects. What these suspicious objects might be was not specified.

     The search took the form of checking the wings, legs, and anus of each bird. That’s 20,000 wings, 20,000 legs, and 10,000 ani.

     I’m not sure anyone asked the doves if they agreed to this invasion of their privacy.

     I can just hear several of these doves as they’re waiting in line for the physical inspection.

     “Mabel, did you volunteer for this gig?”

     “Are you kidding Janice?” asked Mabel. “I’ve volunteered just like the people in this country get volunteered for whatever the country needs them to do.”

     “Did you see where that inspector stuck his little finger? For pity sakes, what do they think we might be hiding up there?”

     “What he’s doing to Dotty is exactly what the government’s doing to the people.”

     The reporter went on to say that the Chinese people viewed the whole thing with sarcasm because they consider the dove body searches indicative or their own situation in what they “consider an oppressive society.”

           

More Not Air From Albuquerque 

Every year Albuquerque has a mega hot-air balloon festival. It is the largest festival of its kind in the world, and it’s the most photographed event in the world. At least it is according to the people at the Albuquerque Tourist Board, or whoever puts out these facts. 

     The AP reports the following:  A lady and her daughter had their balloon stolen just before the festivities were about to begin. They had parked their SUV outside the Albuquerque hotel where they were staying. Attached to the Suburban was a trailer loaded with their balloon.

     Someone came along and drove the Suburban away, along with the attached trailer and balloon.

     What the article does not include, and it’s probably too early to know, is what the thief was after. Did the thief want the Suburban, the trailer, or the balloon? If he wanted just the Suburban, why not unhook the trailer and leave. The whole rig is quite distinctive. And if he just wanted the trailer, why? The resale value of a trailer can’t be that great. If he wanted the balloon, what’s he going to do with the thing? Fly it? The balloon is very distinctive and could be recognized anyplace in the world. It’s not like you can change a license plate. I hope that there will be a follow-up to answer these questions.

However, if, in the meantime, somebody steps on a cat’s tail, it will probably take precedent and our balloon story will disappear into the black hole of public indifference. 

Maybe It’s a New Approach?

     In Oklahoma City a lady had been in the habit of giving money to a woman who was begging in and around a parking lot. Then one day this generous lady saw this same beggar driving a late model car in the same parking lot where the woman usually did her begging. The lady was shocked and furious which led to an altercation.  

     The reason I found this halfway interesting was that the other day I saw a guy at an intersection where there is always one or more persons, holding signs asking for money. These people have long since moved on from the request for work and gone straight to requesting cash. Now the guy I’m talking about was standing there, dressed in grubby clothes, with a pack by his feet, and what seems to be the obligatory dog beside him. He was holding his hands out as though he was holding a sign, but there was no sign. I’ve now seen him doing that three times.

I’m trying to figure out his strategy, but so far have not come up with anything definitive. Is he telling us that he is so hard up he can’t afford a sign, therefore in greater need than the person on the opposite corner with a real sign? Is he thinking that his originality of presentation will get him extra donations? Is he just nuts? I may have to stop and ask him what he thinks he’s doing.