[Vung Tau, 5/21/24] I had a headache yesterday, so slept through most of it. May 20th, 2024, then, is in the book with next to nothing to show for it. My fretting over lost productivity betrays my Protestant work ethic, of course. Picked up that guilt trip during my decades out West. I once roamed the streets of Philly, Camden, New York, DC, Atlanta, Chicago, New Orleans, Denver, San Francisco and LA. I’m a Westerner.
The nose straightener is analogous to the penis enlarger I bought from an ad I saw in the back of "Buxom Beauties" magazine. (And believe me, I never look at the pictures; I only read the articles purely for "intellectual stimulation" you see.) My south German, Bavarian nose is already big enough. And straight. So I don't need that product. My nose is like the "your mama" jokes: "Yo mama so fat, when she walk to LA (Los Angeles) her stomach get 'der a day before she do..." Same with my nose.
On the other hand (don't ask which, I'm left handed) there are other parts of my anatomy that are not so impressive. Let's just say I wasted $79.99 on a very big rubber band that I nailed to the wall and, following instructions on the shipping box, had to remain in a contorted position for several hours a day. For a number of weeks. With no discernible results. (The shipping box had a printed disclaimer: "Results are guaranteed; although they may or may not be discernible.)
My landlady caught me in the act one day and I blurted out: "Just doing yoga! Nothing to worry about!"
Still, she has looked at me with a wary eye ever since.
Couldn't find anything on Buxom Beauties magazine. Must have been a rival to the more audacious Juggs, which I was sure peering into would be a mortal sin.
What I did discover was the interesting, shifting etymology for buxom. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/buxom The phrase that still resonates w/ me is "buxom wench." Pirates were reputedly very fond of them in all my adventure books. But as a kid I didn't really know what that meant. The original meaning I now find to be along the lines of obedient/agreeable/flexible. Makes sense pirates would like women like that. I mean who wouldn't?
Since you got me on the topic of pirates here's something:
Pirates were originally English privateers. (That is sanctioned under the color of law of a legitimate state.) They were commissioned by Queen Elizebeth c.1565 to about 1605 to harass Spanish flotillas sailing from Panama to Spain and when possible capture South American gold supplies being transported from Peru to Spain by Spanish fleets of ships.
Perhaps the most famous privateer was Sir Francis Drake who gave his name to Drake's Bay north of San Francisco.
This is why the pirates (Sir Drake notwithstanding) usually patrolled the Caribbean. The Spanish gold-bearing fleets invariably had to pass through that region. They (the pirates) eventually established their own state on the Caribbean island of Jamaica. It was said that, unlike the kingdoms and despots of Europe at the time, they had a remarkably egalitarian society with everyone being taken care of by the collective. (An early sort of Marxism?)
This was a time (the early 1600s) when capitalism and its concomitant creation of wealth through manufacturing had not yet taken off to any significant extent and Spanish mercantilism (the accumulation of wealth rather than the creation of it) made Spain the preeminent power in Europe and the West.
Within a few decades Spain had squandered its accumulated gold reserves and both wealth and power shifted to the Low Countries (Holland and the Netherlands) to the north where a new, rising merchant class were creating wealth through their enterprise and capital accumulation thus bequeathing to the world the economic system of Capitalism. (For better or worse.)
Well said and summarized. EM Jones makes much of the birth of English capitalism being based on the looting of the monasteries. God-fearing Tudor Protestantism got its start in land-based thievery.
On a lighter note, pirates weren't always in port and able to carouse w/ buxom wenches. Often at sea for long stretches, like Drake and Raleigh, the privateers took to frigging in the rigging as memorialized in this punk shanty. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xPGLNYAgL-8
Speaking of the birth of English Capitalism there is a classic book from around 1945 that everyone with an interest in the development of Western civilization and economics should read. It is called, "The Great Transformation" by Karl Polyani. He basically summarizes how the English peasant class was dispossessed from their land by powerful landlords (at the end of the Middle Ages c.1500-1600) who found it more profitable to graze sheep on the land for wool rather than allow peasants to farm their small plots. The dispossessed peasants were pushed into the newly developing early industrial cities like Sheffield and Birmingham where they resided in slums and worked in the "satanic mills" (William Blake) of the new class of capitalist industrialists. Thus, an entire class of people who had formally been independent (albeit poor) peasants had been "transformed" into what Karl Marx in 1848 would call the "proletariat" or the working class often consigned to work 10,12 or even more hours a day for their new capitalist masters. The most insidious aspect of the whole "transformation" was the fact that the landlords never had legitimate title to the peasants' land in the first place; many of whom had farmed their modest plots of lands for generations. The landlords just used their power (might makes right) to essentially steal the peasants' land and evict them.
Adding to Thomas' point, this also explains the depopulation of the Scottish Highlands. Most of them had no choice but to emigrate to the USA, where they could work for cheap thus bring wages down.
Please call me Tom. I was only ever referred to as "Thomas" when I was a kid and I was being punished or reprimanded. Thus, perhaps paradoxically, my full name has a bad or unpleasant connotation for me. Thank you.
And if one forgets or doesn't like "Tom" that's okay. I'm not "woke" and I don't get "triggered" except by idiots who treat other people poorly. There are few things in life that make my blood boil like a person who expects to be treated better than he or she treats others. But I don't find that to be a problem here.
If I can figure out how to do it I will change my title to "Tom Herzog."
People are acting weird. While my hubby was in surgery to have his cataract removed last week, a man who was waiting for his wife accosted me, accusing me of tracking him with my phone! It was quite scary. He put his hand on me which made me yell for help. The staff whisked me away but he kept screaming that I was tracking him and he wanted to call the police! Bizarro world for sure.
I had a somewhat similar incident a number of years ago in Sacramento, California. I was riding a bus and using a hand held calculator. An apparently half deranged guy (an idiot) swatted the calculator out of my hand. I blurted out something along the lines of, "What the hell are you doing?!" The idiot accussed me of trying to "hack" into his cell phone. I hate to use this phrase but like, "What the f*ck!" I reported the idiot to the bus driver who, predictably, ignored me wanting nothing to do with it.
A welcome antidote to my own malaise in the face of the mindless blob that we call civilization over here. Some say we are distracted with our petty concerns while "Rome burns." What is the alternative?
The nose straightener is analogous to the penis enlarger I bought from an ad I saw in the back of "Buxom Beauties" magazine. (And believe me, I never look at the pictures; I only read the articles purely for "intellectual stimulation" you see.) My south German, Bavarian nose is already big enough. And straight. So I don't need that product. My nose is like the "your mama" jokes: "Yo mama so fat, when she walk to LA (Los Angeles) her stomach get 'der a day before she do..." Same with my nose.
On the other hand (don't ask which, I'm left handed) there are other parts of my anatomy that are not so impressive. Let's just say I wasted $79.99 on a very big rubber band that I nailed to the wall and, following instructions on the shipping box, had to remain in a contorted position for several hours a day. For a number of weeks. With no discernible results. (The shipping box had a printed disclaimer: "Results are guaranteed; although they may or may not be discernible.)
My landlady caught me in the act one day and I blurted out: "Just doing yoga! Nothing to worry about!"
Still, she has looked at me with a wary eye ever since.
Couldn't find anything on Buxom Beauties magazine. Must have been a rival to the more audacious Juggs, which I was sure peering into would be a mortal sin.
What I did discover was the interesting, shifting etymology for buxom. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/buxom The phrase that still resonates w/ me is "buxom wench." Pirates were reputedly very fond of them in all my adventure books. But as a kid I didn't really know what that meant. The original meaning I now find to be along the lines of obedient/agreeable/flexible. Makes sense pirates would like women like that. I mean who wouldn't?
Since you got me on the topic of pirates here's something:
Pirates were originally English privateers. (That is sanctioned under the color of law of a legitimate state.) They were commissioned by Queen Elizebeth c.1565 to about 1605 to harass Spanish flotillas sailing from Panama to Spain and when possible capture South American gold supplies being transported from Peru to Spain by Spanish fleets of ships.
Perhaps the most famous privateer was Sir Francis Drake who gave his name to Drake's Bay north of San Francisco.
This is why the pirates (Sir Drake notwithstanding) usually patrolled the Caribbean. The Spanish gold-bearing fleets invariably had to pass through that region. They (the pirates) eventually established their own state on the Caribbean island of Jamaica. It was said that, unlike the kingdoms and despots of Europe at the time, they had a remarkably egalitarian society with everyone being taken care of by the collective. (An early sort of Marxism?)
This was a time (the early 1600s) when capitalism and its concomitant creation of wealth through manufacturing had not yet taken off to any significant extent and Spanish mercantilism (the accumulation of wealth rather than the creation of it) made Spain the preeminent power in Europe and the West.
Within a few decades Spain had squandered its accumulated gold reserves and both wealth and power shifted to the Low Countries (Holland and the Netherlands) to the north where a new, rising merchant class were creating wealth through their enterprise and capital accumulation thus bequeathing to the world the economic system of Capitalism. (For better or worse.)
Well said and summarized. EM Jones makes much of the birth of English capitalism being based on the looting of the monasteries. God-fearing Tudor Protestantism got its start in land-based thievery.
On a lighter note, pirates weren't always in port and able to carouse w/ buxom wenches. Often at sea for long stretches, like Drake and Raleigh, the privateers took to frigging in the rigging as memorialized in this punk shanty. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xPGLNYAgL-8
Speaking of the birth of English Capitalism there is a classic book from around 1945 that everyone with an interest in the development of Western civilization and economics should read. It is called, "The Great Transformation" by Karl Polyani. He basically summarizes how the English peasant class was dispossessed from their land by powerful landlords (at the end of the Middle Ages c.1500-1600) who found it more profitable to graze sheep on the land for wool rather than allow peasants to farm their small plots. The dispossessed peasants were pushed into the newly developing early industrial cities like Sheffield and Birmingham where they resided in slums and worked in the "satanic mills" (William Blake) of the new class of capitalist industrialists. Thus, an entire class of people who had formally been independent (albeit poor) peasants had been "transformed" into what Karl Marx in 1848 would call the "proletariat" or the working class often consigned to work 10,12 or even more hours a day for their new capitalist masters. The most insidious aspect of the whole "transformation" was the fact that the landlords never had legitimate title to the peasants' land in the first place; many of whom had farmed their modest plots of lands for generations. The landlords just used their power (might makes right) to essentially steal the peasants' land and evict them.
Hi everyone,
Adding to Thomas' point, this also explains the depopulation of the Scottish Highlands. Most of them had no choice but to emigrate to the USA, where they could work for cheap thus bring wages down.
Linh
Please call me Tom. I was only ever referred to as "Thomas" when I was a kid and I was being punished or reprimanded. Thus, perhaps paradoxically, my full name has a bad or unpleasant connotation for me. Thank you.
And if one forgets or doesn't like "Tom" that's okay. I'm not "woke" and I don't get "triggered" except by idiots who treat other people poorly. There are few things in life that make my blood boil like a person who expects to be treated better than he or she treats others. But I don't find that to be a problem here.
If I can figure out how to do it I will change my title to "Tom Herzog."
People are acting weird. While my hubby was in surgery to have his cataract removed last week, a man who was waiting for his wife accosted me, accusing me of tracking him with my phone! It was quite scary. He put his hand on me which made me yell for help. The staff whisked me away but he kept screaming that I was tracking him and he wanted to call the police! Bizarro world for sure.
I had a somewhat similar incident a number of years ago in Sacramento, California. I was riding a bus and using a hand held calculator. An apparently half deranged guy (an idiot) swatted the calculator out of my hand. I blurted out something along the lines of, "What the hell are you doing?!" The idiot accussed me of trying to "hack" into his cell phone. I hate to use this phrase but like, "What the f*ck!" I reported the idiot to the bus driver who, predictably, ignored me wanting nothing to do with it.
Yet another reason to not live in California.
While your calculator was harmless, the Pegasus software, courtesy of Israel was not.
Dude probably had an infected phone, and you were on the receiving end of that frustration. I stand corrected: California.
Obviously we like to think life operates in more logical means, like 2+2=4.
Unfortunately, that just not how it goes.
This reads like Bukowski if he were obsessed with globalist elite schemes rather than booze and women.
Or some kind of beat writing that's genuinely anti authority, man.
A welcome antidote to my own malaise in the face of the mindless blob that we call civilization over here. Some say we are distracted with our petty concerns while "Rome burns." What is the alternative?
What she said. There is no alternative, so why not enjoy the day with Linh?