Baby It's Cold Outside
posted by The Sailor @ 8:28 PM PermalinkHow can a place be 100 degrees in the summer and 7 in the winter!?
Labels: insomniac music
Monday, January 04, 2010
How can a place be 100 degrees in the summer and 7 in the winter!?
15 Comments:
Hey, I can feel your pain ... over here in Pasadena at mid-day, it almost got below 80 degrees.
DanD
It's the temperature swings that kill me - hot, cold, hot, cold - pick one damn it and stick with it!
Pasadena, huh DanD? I'll half to tell you the story of how I busted a big-time cocaine dealer on the run from Nevada authorities on a half-millin dollar bond and how I nailed him refueling his car with even plate numbers on an odd day at the gas station down the street from his house!! Funny as hell if you remember the odd/even days of gas rationing!
That sounds like a bizzare tale.
Anyway, the temp swings here in SoCal are virtually all at least above 32F.
As it is, I showed up in the Southland After 1980, and as the times you are referring to resulted (I believe) from the debacles Carter faced (and I was mostly at Kadina Okinawa during that time), I pleasantly missed those events.
My house-sitting chores are now over and I'm thinking about taking a trip myself to some 3rd-world location before America's borders are closed down and then we become (more of) a 3rd-world location.
DanD
What a coincidence! I was thinking the same thing; get out of here before it becomes impossible to leave.
Maybe India?
My sister, Teresa, spent three years at Kadena, one work year (2,000) of it underwater. She's a certified diving instructor with credentials from every organization dealing with such things and, like al of us when we were kids, she lived in the water.
As to escaping, I'm not sure what, if any, part of the world is still safe for Americans anymore, we leave so much destruction and ill-will behind us wherever we go.
I'd recommend the Philippines, as to me there is nothing more beautiful than tropical rain forest, although if you lose your orientation to the sun you might never be seen again. The people there are wonderful, love Americans, and about middle of the island chain (There are 7,112 islands in the P.I.) is Davao, where my wife has scads of relatives. It's the vegetable and seafood capitol of the P.I. and the only place in the world you can find, or see, monkey eagles. They look just like American bald eagles, but with a grey coat and three or four times bigger. As their name implies monkeys are their favorite food as they swoop in at about 100 mph and hit them the monkeys are dead instantaneously.
And for you big city folk I don't ever remember being in a big city I liked, being a country boy, but Manila. pop. 14m+, has to be among the most beautiful cities in the world, hands down. Just an evening walk through Luneta Park is an experience that will never be forgotten.
But I would eliminate the Bahamas from consideration - I've been through Cat. 5 (or super-thyphoons in Asia) and I just know I'd just have time to get settled in before losing everything to a storm. (Although there is probably a similar risk in the P.I., it depends on where you are, Davao is in a very protected area.)
What the hell, with 7,112 of 'em maybe we should just buy our own island!
Ah, Manila! Just for the adventure of it all I would regularly (about twice a month) hop on a Rabbit and show up somewhere in the middle of the city.
Sometimes I would visit the relatives of an ex(back then, just separated)-wife and they would treat me good. Other times, I would just walk around and make friends, then stay with them for a weekend, and then back to Angeles and classes at the university.
Luneta Park, isn't that the one where -- over in the corner -- they showcased the execution chairs where they used to garrot the rebels?
One time I took a dizzying ride to Makati to visit someones "rich" relatives.
I enjoyed my time there.
DanD
You and I do have a lot more than I thought in common - you nailed it on Luneta Park and the sheer beauty of the city. I used to teach a group of about forty kids karate in Project Six, Quezon City (it's just the opposite over there, you had to be "well monied" to live in the projects. This guy's house was so big when it was the rainy season (I KNOW you remember them! People here in the U.S. can't even imagine rain like that. I got caught in a flood coming back to Clark and hung onto and transferred from hanging on the side of one boat-to-another-boat all the way through San Fernando and the surrounding valley.) I'm pretty sure you're talking about Luneta, I'll ask my Warrior Woman when she gets home from work. I never forget meeting the most hospitable people in the world there.
Remember the Antenna Farms at Clark and the Negrito Village on the edge of a precipice just outside the gate? That's where I spent my time. My Negrito friends and I would leave at 4AM carrying nothing but some rice, an empty coffee can, and my snake catching gear. Whether we got a snake or not it was amazing how they could put together a feast fit for a king from fresh water shrimp and fish, banana heart, papayas, and dozen of fruits whose names I will never remember. As to the snakes they had strict instructions to only locate snakes and call me in for the capture. I had, on one occasion, gently pulled an eleven foot long reticulated python out of the brush and handled him without using anything but my hands, so they all called me the "Snake Wizard" and swore I could put magical spells on the snakes to prevent being bitten. Truth is I've been catching, handling, and keeping snakes for pets all my life (rotating them, of course so no snake spent to long in captivity), and I just know how to handle them. I had pythons from eight to fourteen feet, every type, kind, and shade of cobra indigenous to the P.I. My prize beauty was a 91/2 ft. Indian King Cobra. So I spent more time in the jungle than in the city. "Cept Angeles where I worked the Tri-Agancy Patrol (Town Patrol) and spent a lot of time breaking up bar brawls, covering burglaries without end, domestics, murders, you name it.
Man, I had a whole lot a fun there!
But DanD, a Rabbit? At leaset the Quezon Buses were air conditioned!
Well, DanD, my Warrior Woman, Mila, confirms that Luneta is where they carried out official executions. She also said they told her that her application for mine was made long after the statute of limitations had expired.
I'm just a lucky guy, I guess.
I thought that was the place. The execution chairs were a lot like "Ole Sparky" in that they sat you down in it and trussed you up with arm, body and ankle belts, but that's where the similarities end.
The final strap that was connected around your body was at the neck. Then the condemned was slowly strangled to death as that neck strap was slowly tightened with a clamp screw.
From the accounts that I have read, being executed to death in the above manner is painful to the extreme, and could well last many hours.
But hey bro, regarding what your Warrior Woman claimed, if she ever did file an application for you, you should accept it with grace and show up on time. Otherwise, if she ever really decided to take you out personally, in that end, you'd be wishing for the warm comfortable embrace of a Luneta strangulation chair.
I've almost had that post-alter experience before. When crossed the "wrong" way, Pilipinas can be quite merciless in their cruelty.
DanD
Thanx, DanD, but after over thirty-five years together I'm quite sure I'm safe, right honey? Honey? Honey why do you have that knife in your hand? Hon…
... and after an extended inquest, it was ultimatly determined that the victim succumbed to a self-inflicted wound.
DanD
Clearly, sir, while attempting to clean his gun it discharged twice in his head. The excruciating pain drove him to his medicine cabinet where he accidentally grabbed the arsenic instead of the aspirin he desired and took several pills. Realizing his error he went to the window to call for help; it was jammed so he used his butcher knife to try to pry it open and stabbed himself in the chest twelve times in the effort. By the time the window finally gave in to his effort to open it he was hopelessly entangled in the curtain opening/closing cord, tripped, and fell out the window hanging himself on the cords. With one last desperate surge of strength he managed to sever those curtain lines, falling fifteen stories to his death.
Clearly a case of accidental death, sirrah, and a tragic one at that.
(h/t Mad Magazine, circa 1964?)
Oh, its obvious ... you got out of it easy --
DanD
(And besides, DanD, I can run faster than my Warrior Woman! I…can…just…never…fall…asleep…again…)
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