Little Eddy: Blog #148: A Whale of a Skimmer

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"A Whale," the world's largest oil skimmer, collects oily water through special vents on its side. Anchored on the Mississippi River in Boothville, La., the ship is designed to collect up to 500,000 barrels of oily water a day through 12 vents on either side of its bow. Photo: Patrick Semansky-AP

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X-Ray of a Famous Chest

Marilyn Monroe’s beauty must have actually been deeper than skin deep. The above chest X-Ray, along with two others, last week sold in auction for $45,000. The images of the mid twentieth century’s legendary pinup were taken in a hospital in 1954. Julien's Auctions sold the X-rays and even it underestimated the length to which fans would go for Monroe related stuff. It had guessed the films would only fetch about $3,000.

Little Eddy’s note: those mammaries are there, or rather their outline is there, but you really have to use your imagination to see them. One wonders how the lucky buyer is going to exhibit the X-Rays in his home? Perhaps he will put them on light boxes and mount them on his dining room walls. Wouldn’t that be a turn on, to eat your meals with images of Marilyn Monroe’s skeleton overlooking your every bite.

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Croons of a Loon

John Boehner, who is the Republican minority leader in the House and one of two official spokespersons for the Republican Party (the other being Mitch McConnell minority leader in the Senate.) is virtually unmitigated in his arrogant public musings. His latest garish piece of fantasy, in describing the Democrats bill to protect us from predatory banks Boehner likened it to "fighting an ant with a nuclear weapon."

That was a little much for President Obama to overlook, and in a campaign style town meeting in Wisconsin the next day he ridiculed Boehner for comparing the financial meltdown which cost the economy many jobs, to an ant. The next day Boehner came back accusing President Obama of whining, in his criticisms of the President’s criticisms of his enduring wit. Enduring wit nor not, Boehner and his Republican nay sayers, never saw a bank or corporation they wouldn't support over the likes of you and me.

Although it has yet to come out just what kind of tea they are smoking, or the leaves of which they are reading, but Republicans seemed to have convinced themselves that by bringing down the Obama administration, by preventing it from accomplishing anything to fix the economy, that the American people are going to be so grateful to them they are going to throw Democrats out of office in this fall’s elections. They seem to have forgotten that this land is not just Obama's land, but to quote Woody Guthrie, "this land belongs to you and me." Fellas, this is our country, our economy you are working full time to make fail. If this should actually happen, the American people will have forgotten the 8 years of wild, unaccounted for spending by our Republican friends at Bush Lite. And if that happens we will get exactly what we deserve.

However, is this true? In spite of the fantasy speculations of Messrs Boehner and McConnell, certainly voting up to now has not indicated any gigantic backlash against the Obama administration and the Democratic Party. So far elections have been pretty evenly balanced between the new and the incumbent, the Republican and the Democrat.

Maybe Mitch McConnell and John Boehner are onto something? Or maybe they are playing out the hand they have talked themselves into believing is the best of their ability. What is impressive is the lock they seem to have on the entire party. Hardly a defection here or there. Considering the mess they made of the economy during the last 8 years of their rule, their sudden concern for money spent without it being balanced with cuts somewhere else is, to our ears, hollow as the hell.

If the country swallows the Republican line and votes the Democrats out next fall, then perhaps P.T.Barnum was right, “there really is one born every minute.” My nightly prayer:

Lord won’t you buy me a Mercedes Binz,

My friends all drive Porches, I must make amends,

Boehner belts a wild one, while Mitch nods and grins,

Lord help our nation, vote Obama and friends.

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We follow Boehner’s puffed up bravado with an image of a real lion doing what most anyone would do following Boehner’s wild assertions, yawn. It happened at a nature reserve on the outskirts of Pretoria, South Africa. Photo: Enrique Marcarian-Reuters

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Bathing the Transportation

While Republican politicians prattle on a young boy makes himself useful by washing buffaloes in a river in Larkana, Pakistan.

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A Hijackers Endgame

As a followup to the story several weeks ago about my G-mail account having been hijacked, and as a result I not only could not access my g-mail, but also couldn’t access my blog account, as it is also Google, and opened with the password which no longer worked. It took me three days to regain my gmail account, Google sent me a notice to the edbad84@excite.com account I had especially set up to get communications from Google (and others) giving me a link which would allow me to set a new password, and I went to the link and reset it, and I was back in business. I could once again access both my g-mail and blogger accounts, and was able to post my blog the following week.

However, several weeks went by, I was feeling the effects of my inner battle with my over loaded white corpuscles, and didn’t notice that my g-mail account was dead. Nothing had come in later than June 7. Weird, that hacker that hijacked my account must have redirected my mail to himself.

Well, I spent a couple of hours going over the settings, but even in good health I doubt that I am computer savy enough to solve my problem. But son Joel solved it in a matter of minutes Monday night. I sent my new password so he could get in the account, and he found that my dear hacker gentleman had directed my incoming mail to an account he had set up, using eddyybad (double y's) as the code link. No wonder I was getting no mail. I used to get about eight to twelve emails a day to things I had subscribed to, like the Borowitz Report, thedailybeast, the Washington Post, and the like.

Well, Joel got rid of that, redirecting my mail back to me, and sent a test message to see if his fix had indeed worked. The test came through, and I went to bed happy that night. Checking the next morning only one message other than Joel’s test has come in, a note from Imprimis (a right wing publication my father used to subscribe to, which I never cancelled as I figured my getting a file 13 edition would keep someone else from getting it.) Anyway, so far none of my regulars have checked in, which makes me wonder if they have jettisoned my account when it was hijacked. I guess time will most assuredly tell, as it always does. A check on Thursday indicated there was no Daily Beast or Washington Post, but most of my other regulars are back.

Theme park workers walk in front of a life-size model of a Tyrannosaurus at a dinosaur theme park in Beijing, China, which gave us the idea of changing the G.O.P.’s symbol from the elephant to Tyrannosaurus Rex. It would be symbolic as to how up to date Republican takes are on the state of the economy and other pressing issues. Photo: Bobby Yip-Reuters

The State of my Health

In the ongoing soap opera which is the story of my life these day, I had to cancel the bone marrow procedure I had scheduled for Friday, due to an abscessed tooth in my lower right jaw. I've had these things before and they usually were gone in a day or two, but this one dragged on for a week, getting a little worse every day. Consulting with son Joel (the doctor) I speculated that the infection might make the bone marrow thing inaccurate, and he agreed and told me to cancel the bone marrow and get the hell to a dentist. I did. Score.

I'm now taking some sort of super pain killer medication every four hours, plus three antibiotics a day. I'm not exactly pain free (I can barely sense pain lurking in a corner just out of the range of feeling) but I am one to three thousand percent better, at least I will be if I ever quit flogging myself for waiting all week before going to the dentist.

Giraffe calf "Manya," bottom, inspects its enclosure with its family at a zoo in Cologne, Germany. Photo: Hermann J. Knippertz-AP

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And so we wind our way to the end of yet another Little Eddy post. Not much happened this week, but if constant and intensifying pain truly builds character, I got myself a face full of it this week. I suspect it doesn't do much, but what the hell? That's the way it went down.

We do this (write a new blog, upload it to Google) every week, so if you want more do surf our way again anytime next week. Meantime, hang in there, check in with other sites which democratically tell it like it truly is, and if you see mischief coming your way, hop on board. Bye now.

The Real Little Eddy § eddybad@gmail.com