Recently in Signs of the Times Category

Today I saw a bumper sticker that read:

"Proud user of fossil fuel."

So, what does that mean? Drill baby, drill? Someone in my family works for the oil industry? I'm a weirdo?

I just don't know what to make of it.

Strange, indeed.

This trip, unlike any of my other travels around the world, was not without some rather anxious moments. I'm glad to be home. I think.

I read in CNN this morning that Thailand has declared a state of emergency after the protesters stormed parliament yesterday. While I was in Bangkok, the protests were peaceful. I really have no idea what their internal politics are all about and wasn't even aware of the current political unrest when I went to Thailand.

I left Bangkok on March 31st to spend about a week in Vietnam. (I still haven't had time to post pictures from my time in Bangkok. I was busy working. But I found the people in Bangkok to be so incredibly gracious and friendly.)

While in Vietnam, the mood of the people there was also hospitable. However, I felt the people were a little bit more rigid—not at all in the way they treated me, but just in their general approach to life. Life in Vietnam seemed more difficult for common people.

Their food is amazing. They smile easily. They have very, very different customs and culture. Their driving is frightening. Maybe I was infusing some of my own guilt for what the United States did in Vietnam into my perceptions of my time there. Maybe it was just the constant horn honking...

When I began to leave Da Nang to return home via Ho Chi Minh City and Bangkok and Narita, I was stopped by a woman working for the airport. She said my carry on bag was too large if it didn't fit in this little "size thing." When it did fit, as I knew it would, she then said it was too heavy. It was. It contains my expensive camera equipment. She insisted I check it. I refused.*

Vietnam Airlines is in the process of becoming a member of the SkyTeam Alliance. With my being a charter member of the Diamond Club with SkyTeam, which means I travel way too much, Delta allows free oversized and overweight bags. Not Vietnam Airlines--yet, anyway. After some ridiculous wrangling I got my stuff on board without having to check it.

So the return already was getting off to a bad start. Upon arriving in Bangkok, I was staying at Novatel, the very nice hotel at the airport. A shuttle picks everyone up and takes you to the hotel as it is not easily accessed by walking, and Bangkok is hotter than hell anyway.

We had to go through a security check point to enter the hotel property. The Mercedes in front of us was thoroughly inspected for explosives. I could immediately tell things were much more serious. In my room in this modern, gorgeous hotel, the air conditioning wasn't working well! I didn't sleep well.

When we were all boarding the airplane in Narita, the gate agent told us that everyone had to be weighed by order of the United States Federal Aviation Administration. They brought out 5 scales or so and everyone had to be weighed and our weights recorded. What I weigh is none of the US governments damned business!

I don't sleep well on planes either. After spending virtually two days on airplanes, I was dead dog tired and very irritable. I was glad to land at LAX. So I thought. US Immigration asked me an unusual number of questions. What was that all about?! I was soon to find out.

Apparently I am now, like millions of other law abiding Americans I've read about in the news, being confused with some idiot from another state who must be in some kind of trouble with the government. I had to go through additional screening. I was so irritated. To make matters worse, their is no due process. They will not tell you anything about why this is being done. This is the American way?!

I must say that the customs agent was very professional, even cordial. Thank God! My shoulder was hurting terribly; I hadn't slept for two days; I was in a really bad mood. I won't go into any details about the extra screening so I won't be arrested, as was the journalist (or photographer, I don't recall now) who blogged about a similar experience with Immigration through Seattle a few months ago.

I was given a web site to use to redress this issue, but, according to the news, this rarely even works. I have to travel out of the country again next week. Will I be able to get out? Will I be able to get back in? This is so absurd.

Our world is getting uglier and uglier. Freedom in the US died with the Patriot Act. We sold our national birthright for fear. Soon, our children will never have know the US I was born in as it will never have existed in their lifetime. Weird how things change.

I worry that, as the divide between the super wealthy and the poor widens and the number of poor continue to grow, we will see very bad times ahead. I guess this is nothing new. What will be new is how technology will be wielded in this conflict of interests.

At any rate, I hate traveling now. It's just so terribly unpleasant: badly behaving children, cramming too many people into too little space, and now airlines want to start charging to use the overhead storage and to use the bathrooms?! One airline will be reducing the number of toilets on board so they can cram even more seats on the plane. What the hell?!!!

* I've had international "security" go through and steal things from my checked luggage in the past and, since we can't lock our checked bags, will not allow my expensive items to be checked ever again.

Related articles

• Vietnam: Day Six - Rest and Relax in Hoi An (timtyson.us)
• Vietnam: Day One (timtyson.us)
• Vietnam: Day Five - The Ancient City of Hoi An (timtyson.us)
• Vietnam: Day Two - My Life Is Quirky That Way... (timtyson.us)
• Vietnam: Day Four - Driving (timtyson.us)
• Vietnam: Day Two - Hanoi (timtyson.us)
• Vietnam: Day One - Dinner (timtyson.us)

My life is blessed with some very wonderful, bright people of substance.  One of those is GG.  She recently shared one of her own quotations with me.  It is spot on!

"You believe of others what you know of your own heart."

Warning! Most Christians in the United States, and probably all conservative ones, will be deeply offended by this sign. I personally find it shocking. The thought that it was displayed by a Christian church astounds me.

Do not click the image to the right, which will open a picture of the sign that is large enough to see and read, if you are easily offended by those who may have different religious views from your own and express them in ways you may find incredibly offensive.

A church, St. Matthew's Church in Auckland, New Zealand, put this sign up "intended to challenge stereotypes about the conception of Jesus." It has sparked enormous levels of anger and outrage on both sides of the controversy.

"We would see a billboard like that being used by an anti-Christian group to actually poke fun at the divinity of Christ," Freer told National Radio.

Christ's conception was a profound theological question and the billboard would not "give rise to any intelligent discussion on the birth of Jesus," she said.

Many messages on the church Web site attacked the image, while others defended it.

"This billboard and your 'sermon' is a sacrilege," one visitor, identified as Karen, posted.

Another, identified as Andrew M, wrote: "I for one think this is an excellent billboard. Challenging and thought-provoking. Just what it was intended to be."

Via: NPR -- Billboard Depicting Joseph, Mary In Bed Sparks Row

This bumper sticker was seen by Sandi Patty, who then tweeted it.

Today religious mania has infected the political bloodstream and America has become corrosively isolationist, he says. "Ask an American what they know about Sweden and they'd say 'They live well but they're all alcoholics'. In fact a Scandinavian system could have benefited us many times over." Instead, America has "no intellectual class" and is "rotting away at a funereal pace. We'll have a military dictatorship fairly soon, on the basis that nobody else can hold everything together. Obama would have been better off focusing on educating the American people. His problem is being over-educated. He doesn't realise how dim-witted and ignorant his audience is. Benjamin Franklin said that the system would fail because of the corruption of the people and that happened under Bush."

Source: Gore Vidal predicts US Military Dictatorship // Current

As far as I am concerned, the governor of Texas should be tried as a terrorist. His irresponsible statements during the Republican sponsored so-called "Tea Parties" that the state of Texas should secede from the union are more than irresponsible, they are creating a threat to the sovereignty of the nation, an issue that was settle in the 19th century.

Yesterday I saw a pickup truck with Texas plates that had a bumper sticker with the Texas star and a single word on it:

Secede

I also saw a tag on a car with Louisiana plates that said:

Make Levees
Not War

I saw two bumper stickers over the past two days in New Orleans that I found interesting. Well, one of them was disturbing. In fact, I would go so far as to suggest that the governor of the state of Texas should be considered a terrorist.
He is the one who is publicly fanning this terrorist threat to the sovereignty of the United States. This issue was settled in the 19th century. The idiot governor or Texas needs to remember we are now in the 21st century.
The bumper sticker, on a pickup truck with a Texas license plate, that brings this issue forward simply had the Texas lone star and said:
Secede
The other bumper sticker of note was on a car with a Louisiana tag and said:
Make LeveesNot War

When you get emails like this, you know very strange people!

The short fortune-teller who escaped from prison was a small medium at large.

I've often marveled at the juxtaposition or right and wrong. For example: we would put a person (who is poor and has few resources) in prison for stealing a loaf of bread at the super market, yet we seem to let business executives (with wealth, privilege, and political influence) steal vast sums of money from people's retirement plans and the like without giving it much of a thought. Or, try stealing a gallon of grotesquely over-priced gas from the gas pump. In our society we often ignore the question: "Who's stealing from whom?" We replace that question with, "What will the market bear?" Just how far can we go in our quest for greed?

This political cartoon, by Mike Luckovich, posted at AZspot, brilliantly asks another really pointed question.

…the events of the last few months should have etched indelibly on the national psyche the conclusion that laissez faire, robber-baron capitalism—the Great Idea of the conservative movement—has proven a dreadful failure.

... George W. Bush and the Republican Congress did not abandon the legacy of Ronald Reagan. They fulfilled it.

Reagan branded in the popular imagination the notion that “government is the problem, not the solution.”

Bush and his ideological counterparts in Congress took that philosophy to its logical conclusion, dismantling as many of the safeguards and safety nets put in place since the New Deal as they had time to dismantle.

They preached the gospel of unregulated greed, arguing that what’s good for unscrupulous lenders and multinationals en route to Dubai is good for America, and we all paid the price.

That should be the Great Lesson of the first Great Depression of the 21st Century.

--Drew Westen

[Source: AZspot]

I'm just now slogging through email and discovered this holiday YouTube sent to from my cousin. Somehow it ended it getting caught by my spam filter. I watched it. Even though Christmas has passed, this is way too good to pass up!!! Thanks, Cuz!

This quotation from a man still in his 40's:

"You know you're getting old when you get Christmas cards from your friends telling about their recent hip replacement. "

At breakfast, the lady at the table next to me wore a sweatshirt with this message embroidered on it:

War is not pro-life.

... Tim-style!

Manhattan Beach must have more children per capita than any other city in the USA! I'm completely serious! I've never seen a place with more children--really young children. Thursday and Friday nights I ate dinner at California Pizza Kitchen and Chili's respectively. Both evenings the number of loud and generally badly behaved children was unbelievably high.

As incredulous as it may sound, on the half of the restaurant I was in, on Thursday I counted 37 children under the age of about 5! What if they all spontaneously decided to take over the restaurant? I swear there were not enough adults to have prevented it! Screaming, crying, doing what less-than-1-year-olds do, the place was out of control. The dining experience was completely unpleasant. I couldn't wait to get out of there. Chili's the next night was little better.

By California standards, these are inexpensive places to eat. So I guess the moms and dads take the family out to eat here. I actually asked the waiter at California Pizza Kitchen if Thursday nights was kids night. (I was going to avoid it in the future.) He rolled his eyes and said with a bit of disgust in his voice, as some toddler let out a particularly shrill screech: No, believe it or not, it's like this every night.

So when the girl that cuts my hair told me about the ArcLight Theater at the Cinema Dome in Hollywood, describing it as kids-free and very well done, I immediately wanted to go there. The tickets are pricy: $15--hence no children: indeed, a small price to pay. A large, very nice theater (with reserved seating) on Sunset Blvd., I had a fantastic time enjoying a dinner and movie: Mamma Mia!

The movie's setting in the Greek Isles was spectacular. The music is, well... you know. I bought the soundtrack. Meryl Streep was a sensation. She can sing, too!! Is there anything she can't do on stage?! Pierce Brosnan?? Was the casting director snorting cocaine, or what?! The man can not sing. At least the audio mixer amped up everything else to drown him out.

This was a great feel good movie, and the only thing loud and out of control was the awesome music. I highly recommend it.

Somehow I've ended up on an email distribution list from a group in the UK that apparently collaborates on independent global television projects around the world. So I get copied in on all of their email exchanges. (How my email address, under another person's name, got associated with the group, I'll probably never understand––a virus perhaps?) It's really rather entertaining to see what these guys are up to––some utterly fascinating projects. Several of them are associated directly with the BBC.

At any rate, an email from one of them, copied to the group, was just sent that contained this text. All you need to do is add the soundtrack.

President Bush is rehearsing his speech for the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games.

He begins his remarks with "Ooo! Ooo! Ooo! Ooo! Ooo!"

Immediately his speech writer rushes over and whispers in the President's ear: "Mr. President, those are the Olympic rings. Your speech is on the teleprompter underneath.

The UK seems to think of him as an idiot, too!

"People who want to share their religious views with you almost never want you to share yours with them."

- Dave Barry, author and humorist

[Source: Neatorama » Blog Archive » Quote: Dave Barry on Religion]

I saw this t-shirt on the Manhattan Beach pier this morning while walking:

Hmm... I guess this means do away with Microsoft?

“If you think half of America votes badly because they are stupid or religious, you are trapped in a matrix ... Take the red pill, learn some moral psychology and step outside the moral matrix.” - Jonathan Haidt, author of The Happiness Hypothesis

“If you want the truth to stand clear before you, never be for or against. The struggle between ‘for’ and ‘against’ is the mind’s worst disease.” - Jonathan Haidt, quoting Sent-ts’an, from 700CE China

“It's important to eave the security of who we are, and go to the place of who we are becoming. I encourage you to let yourself out of any prison you might find yourself in. Because we have to do something now. We have to change now.” - Environmental advocate John Francis, who went 17 years without speaking

"The job of the C is to make the B sad." - Boston Philharmonic Conductor Ben Zander, deconstructing a piece by Chopin

“How do we give credible hope to the billion poorest people in the world? It requires compassion to get ourselves started, and enlightened self-interest to get serious... If economic divergence continues, combined with global integration, it will build a nightmare for our children.” - Paul Collier, author of The Bottom Billion

“How dare we be pessimistic? Maybe the future is better than it used to be.” - Peter Schwartz, co-founder of the Global Business Network

[From TED2008: Days 3 and 4 in Quotes]