Author Archives: michaelulinedwards

HENCE

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Yahoo has an article today entitled, Professor Leaves Racist Note on Student’s Paper. Part of the text of the student’s paper reads,
…..in every four children attending
…..population will more than double
….. on U.S. schools! Hence, the question
…..growth in the United States of
…..those who professionally work in

The professor or Teaching Assistant circled “Hence,” and complained “This is not your word.”
Who owns the word, hence? Hence is like other conclusionary words, to indicate the next sentence is plenty important. One does not need the exclamation point at the end of the prior sentence. “Hence” along with other words and terms like “thus,” “Are you ready?,” “Dummy up. Here it comes!” are inserted into text because professors and teaching assistants will not otherwise understand the text.
[It is like taking the Bar Exam in any state. Underline all legal points in red. Otherwise they’ll be missed.]
The fact that hence appears in a student’s sociology paper should not surprise anyone. Sociology is one of the social sciences where speculation is prized and errant conclusions are accepted. The larger area may be referred to as Social Superstitions – anthropology, parts of economics, sociology, law, some history, folklore, paranormal studies, and on and on. To sink a foundation for any paper, it is necessary to toss in sundry and various conclusions, all marked by words like hence. Any reader who has studied in the social sciences and has never run across the word, hence, stand up immediately – try to tilt the earth from its orbit so it moves and cracks into the moon.
This student at Suffolk University in Boston complains of the comment on her paper: It is racist! Racism is the least of her worries. This sort of sentence sounds like it came from one of the professor’s lecturers. The insert from the paper above suggests the point of a growing population seeking fewer positions in the professions. Americans have seen fewer job-openings in investment banking. California law schools have cut enrollment because there are fewer jobs.
Tiffany Martinez in Boston should not complain about a clueless, flimsy comment. She should be outraged by a University, a Professor and Teaching Assistants who cannot teach her to write.

WRITING DEAD

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Another participant on WordPress, Dan Altorre, has wondered and ask why Walking Dead has any audience at all. His blog was posted. I read it, and wrote. Rather than comment on his short blog and the shorter comments, I’ve decided to post my comments.

I can’t believe there is any attraction of zombies who are bipedal and sometimes kill people (kill because that’s what zombies do). Amongst those people zombie hunters want to live a norm life of a 1950s sit-com, perfect if the zombies weren’t around. It is pure dualism, us versus them, the most elementary of messages.

Perhaps, but unlikely normal viewers, can rid the world of all the dead and bad people, like Wyatt Earp did. Do everything that can’t be done. Shoot them; knife them; toss them off cliffs. Essentially Walking Dead scripts are easy to understand, written to soap opera standards. Toss in cliches to bring emotion for the fore. If you got caught up watching the Soaps as a kid, you’re ready to join the Walking Dead audience. This is real formula: On page 30 of the script is a “turning point.” On page 38 there is a crisis of character.” Sadly the whole world knows what is going on, except ME.

Other than the soap opera aspects, death in Walking Dead is carved into our brains just like it’s part of the TV news. Killing Zombies relieves us of shock value as statistics of real killings of human beings mount. Zombie may take the place of the boogie-man like Don Trump. The whole world is watching. Human traits of empathy and grief become less meaningful and in the end are a waste of time.

These mind sets are detrimental to the rainbow society everyone likes to advertise. In history, countries, societies and cultures have lived through eras of death. In the last century pre-World War Two Japan was such a place. Life and human existence became cheap; Japanese generals sacrificed soldiers and sailors and civilians. That trait of the Japanese is no longer part of that vibrant country and its people.

I do not understand the lure of Walking Dead. It is not supported by any of the world’s major religions. It is neither penetrating and deep, psychologically or philosophically. Its substance can be mastered in an afternoon’s reading to learn all the nuances of zombies, the undead, vampires and other violent imaginary characters. It is probably this last point which makes Walking Dead a primary attraction.

P.S. This explains why audience members have learned Klingon but don’t know a speck of Spanish. Why people use Friends to support lifestyle choices, but are always running out of money. Why living on a desert island is a drag because there is no professor and no Internet.

 

 

 

 

 

THE LIFE AND DEATH OF A JAPANESE GENERAL

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John Deane Potter

This misleading profile tells of the successful Japanese general who took Singapore in World War Two. As the author tells of that campaign, he is incredulous.
General Tomoyuki Yamashite had an ignominious post at the end of the War. He was in charge of the Philippines. His Japanese predecessor had taken a relaxed view of occupation with the Phillipines, but Yamashite had made his regime much more Japanese. It is this section of the book which needs more detail(extra chapters) and less speculation by the author who resorts to trial transcripts and to newspaper articles. Yamashite was tried as a war criminal for “declaring” Manila “an open city” and letting a much smaller Japanese naval force fight and destroy the city. The Americans and Filipinos had to fight their way in to clean out the city and to liberate it. Manila was the most destroyed city of World War Two except for Warsaw.
The author fails to understand an oral order of a commanding general need not be obeyed. The naval forces had an independent command structure. I wonder who saluted who in the Japanese military. After giving the “Manila open city” order, Yamashite went to a remote mountain resort where he began his last nine-month stand. During that time did he reissue his order? Did he bring the Navy’s insubordination to anyone’s attention in Japan? Did he inform the allies of his order? An “open city order” allows one military force to move out and another moves in. The Allies had to fight their way in.
While in the mountains Yamashite claimed he knew nothing about the massacre of 60,000 Filipinos. Yamashite claims he orally told his troops to be nice to native populations. Were there any written orders? Certainly, nothing that could be taken to Japan and shown to the Emperor. It seems, as the author skirts along, that Yamashite knew the sadistic attitudes of his junior officers and draftees. They killed – he let them go apeshit.
No orders – I was following Orders – I did not know what was happening. In 1945 war did not permit wholesale ethnic cleansing which arose from Yamashite’s orders, from his inaction or from his inattention. And the author: It is a pathetic writing to defend action weighing on the wrong scale of justice, someone who oversaw atrocities against civilians and the destruction of their capital city.

FAT HEALTH

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I’m an expert. I’ve observed fat and the decline of the human body as it muddles with extra pounds toward the ultimate rest.

I saw Hillary crumbled on nine-eleven. She went to the doctor. She could afford to lose 70 pounds. The argument that FAT IS A FEMINIST ISSUE should now read, FAT IS A HEALTH ISSUE for every female American. Hillary has now released medical records, her own, not a double’s records.

Don Trump has gone on a Talk Show with a doctor he would never hire. Doctor Oz is a Muslim. He should have been deported before his TV show started. Or, he should have been deported when Don Trump entered the race for president. Or, he should have been deported after Don Trump accepted the Republican nomination for President. Or, perhaps, Oz will be deported after Don Trump wins the election.

Doctor Oz has put off deportation. Based upon one page written by a Doctor, Oz does not know and opines about a body Oz has not seen. Oz says Don Trump is fit to be POTUS. Sounds like medical malpractice to me – grounds for deportation. This one page set of medical conclusions is suspect. Any old fat man in New York could get a similar one page document. Don Trump likely had two score men saying they would be his double for this medical examination. I don’t know whose body the one page text refers to – Don Trump, some errant white grunt or Doctor Oz.

The first noticeable health defect afflicting Don Trump is weight. He started this campaign weighing 285, and now looks like he’s pushing 325 pounds. That’s fatter than Hermann Goering, and Buddha happily sitting on a pedestal in a city square greeting people, and Mike Huckabee, or any Muslim – terrorist or otherwise.

Before the Mighty Oz, on paper Don lost 100 pounds, pounding the scales at 236. That’s a typo for 326. He admitted to Oz he had to lose 20 pounds, but if he’s at 236, he ought to be losing 40 pounds. Fat is fat.

Old, obese, adipose men are subject to heart disease and strokes. The cheering in the background is Mike Pense running for Vice President. If he wins he cannot be fired. His campaign slogan is: Trump 2016. Pense 2017.

It seems likely that Don Trump will release no further medical records, other than the one page opinion reviewed by an unqualified doctor. There is a slogan about that MD: That guy is a Muslim. He is a LOSER! Deport!

It seems likely that Don Trump is using a double to take his medical appointments and to campaign. First, all doubles use copious amounts of makeup – who knows if the fat man speaking before a group is Don Trump#1? #2? #3? #4? On the day that this one page report was produced, the double took off the makeup and he weighed 236. The real Don is much heavier.

When Don-of-a-Month-Ago gave a speech, he would gesticulate. He moved given fingers singularity and ensemble, of one hand or another, in geometric shapes – squares, straight lines, perhaps a diagonal and certainly many verticals (up and down like Hitler did).

Don-of-Today no longer makes geometric shapes. Perhaps he’s had a secret medical condition that limits his hand gestures. Instead his right thumb and right index finger are stuck together like they are glued. The significance of the circle may mean zero, or it may mean Don is trying to perfect his aim, or Don is bringing to the attention of the American people The Big O, or Don is indicating that he is a moving target. His left hand grips the rostrum, again stuck so he can’t move.

These differences in gesticulations are high suspect. Don’t be fooled. It’s 110 percent certain that Don has suffered a medical condition, or there are at least two Dons on the Republican campaign trail. Each uses different hand gestures.

There is no transparency with Trump close by. He is so gross, large, huge, yuge, humungous that Don blocks the sun. There is no light; no one can see anything.

LOCKE

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Tom Hardy 2014

Since MAD MAX: The Fury Road, I’ve liked Tom Hardy. So I eagerly looked forward to LOCKE, a pre-Mad Max flick.

I got ten minutes into the movie. Through those minutes Hardy drives a car on city streets and on the Motorway, and he talks on the phone. Perhaps in Britain those activities are sophisticated and advance civilization. In California the CHP will give you a ticket.

One set of phone calls is to delay or change meetings and deliveries at a construction site. The accents were so pronounced in this film (“Not genteel,” as Eliza Doolittle might say), it is impossible to determine the reasonable of Tom Hardy’s complaints. I did not know Hardy was talking to a message machine until he left a message.

The second set of telephone calls are to home. Hardy will not arrive in time to see or watch something. If it is a fool football game, Hardy will be better off missing it. Statistics show that viewers who watch football games, with or without helmets, lose IQ points.

The final set of telephone calls return to the cement delivery problems at the construction site (the subject of the messages of the first set of calls). I don’t believe there was a problem because it is not that sort of movie. When cement is poured, the real question is how many bodies are tossed in, let alone the few workers who take a dive for a swim in the mix. Despite the accents I could tell no one was murdered. What sort of cement/construction movie was this?

I next wondered why I was watching a movie about a guy driving a car on the Motorway. I see that morning, noon and night on every freeway in California. I mentioned this “movie action” to a friend, who asked, “What’s there new about that?” And there is a final point: The dialogue was no good – mundane at best.

 

ADVERTISING

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A bad summer for the slogan-and-product boys.
GR LOANS: They have a middle-aged white guy who’s doing a little boy, cartoon stucke. Yeah, I always wanted to get a mortgage from someone who sounds like Elmer Fudd.
TD AMERITRADE: I’ll never be as dumb as the guy with the Sixties wardrobe. He had a big mustache, unkempt curly hair and a work shirt. I don’t know what role he’s supposed to play except walk into a white collar office. In one ad he is the guy carrying what appears to be a large black and white TV from the Fifties. He’s helped by a person opposite him. This blue color spokesman is an idiot, a moron and an imbecile. He does not have the marbles to put the TV on a trolley and singlehandedly wheel it into the room.
T-MOBILE: This company now offers unlimited service for four lines at $40 per month per line; the total bill is $160. I guess the owner is someone sort of cool guy on the Internet and in the cyber world. I have three lines, unlimited service, for $70.00 a month. Do I have to pay $90 for coolness and for the spokesman’s snide smile?
AUDI or MERCEDES: The German have eight or ten cars rolling through a neighborhood like they are Leopard tanks, interrupting children’s play, distracting fathers who are gardening and alarming pedestrians. The ad and the car produced an unwanted flashback: When I was five years old I was hit by a car in my neighborhood and was stuck in a hospital for six weeks.

EXPOSED

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I recommend seeing this well-written movie with Keanu Reeves.

I was disturbed by the characters, the settings and their stories. This is a hard cord view of New York City where residents try to live on top of one another in a very nitty-gritty world.

Reeves is the partner of a cop killed while on duty; he investigates the death. If the investigation exposes all the “dirt” belonging to the dead cop, his family will not get his pension. Reeves proceeds against orders to stop. He finally interviews the final witnesses and learns how dirty his partner was – how justice was served and how keeping silent about the facts of death is the best result for everyone.

STAR WARS VII

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I saw this movie on DVD. I liked Daisy Ridley, but she cannot carry this movie of 145 minutes.

Being familiar with the previous productions, I observed excessive borrowing of story from previous STAR WAR movies. I saved 25 minutes of film time by hitting the fast forward button to the recognized ending of each scene.

The relationships among the characters do not go much beyond the Soap Oper revelations in earlier movies (also found in most action movies). The viewer should not support much interaction from character development in an action movie. What is surprising is how much time the film makers devoted to character introspection.

In the end I devoted as much time to this film as it deserves.

CURRICULA AT TRUMP UNIVERSITY

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Professors, con men and Trump’s uneducated supporters all want to know what was to be taught at Trump University. The big orange man has followed advice from one of his favorite mentors. “..the curriculum…. [of most schools] is a mongrel; in many cases the material to be learned in the various subjects is so swollen that only a fraction remains in the head of the individual pupil, and only a fraction of this abundance can find application…” Fragments of course descriptions from this newly created university have now been found and are published here for the first time.

I. HOW TO CLEAN TOILETS
Cleaning and shinning.
Anyone who has barfed into a toilet bowl knows the difference.
Cleaning: Establish that the surface is 100 percent, finger licking, palate cleansing tasty.
Shinning: Learn how to use the waste and excrement to enhance brightness so the
bowl is suitable for toilet licking crawlers.
Products that clean.
Products that shine.

II. EARTHQUAKES
Best products to survive in this natural disaster are wood and brush. Anyone ever hear of an Indian getting killed in an earthquake?

Indians get killed during earthquakes when they fall into cracks of the earth which open
up. Indians in Indonesia fall into cracks. Don Trump has seen it in the movies.

As many Indians have fallen into cracks in the Earth during earthquakes as there were
Muslims dancing in the streets of New Jersey on September 11, 2001. From that New
Jersey TV show, all Americans know that no one, Muslims or otherwise in that state, can dance.

III. LUNCH ROOM
Employees must eat. Look at Don Trump. He’s never missed a meal, a snack or a free donut. Have a room of vending machines, but only one microwave. Have plenty of chips and fructose sodas with caffeine – no use being politically correct about diet. Call fat, fat, not adipose. It’s done a lot for Don Trump. He’s sculpted with blubber. Charge for all the vending machine foods because no one wants to hire and provide health care for people who weight more than an manatee.

IV. SIGNAGE
Spend the most money on appearance, especially the outside of the building. A big sign with polished, blinding lights is alluring. Students will enter and explore hoping and believing glamour is big at the school, whereas the buildings are left-over quonset huts from World War Two. [It is easy to date those structures. The linoleum floors always warp at the same rate after 40 years.] But students, with an eye for glitz, kitsch, and bling never look down(and if they do they don’t believe their eyes).
V. ELEVATORS
Don Trump could not work without elevators. Spare no expense on them. When a firm has a loud-mouth, tub of lard, ball of fat, obese razorback, it needs a big box to lift that heft. Offset that girth by hiring pretty young things who weigh nothing because they are airheads. Don’t buy and use old equipment. It always breaks down, and it is impossible to leave by the escape holes. You’re stuck. Don Trump once was in an elevator, and he missed lunch and his warm milk and cookie afternoon snack brainfood. He fired his butler that day when he ate it.

VI. CLOTHES
Always wear clothes when closing a real estate deal, and never offer anyone the shirt off your back. Don Trump did that once because he owed money to the creep – it was that or hitchhike home. He now goes to Goodwill and buys cheap clothes and give those as shirts off his back. Women laughed at Don Tump that entire afternoon until a new shirt, made overseas someplace, came. He did not think he was funny. It was sexist! A girl he knew lost her pants and panties at the Woodstock Festival; she hitchhiked home without them and wearing nothing. No one laughed at her.

VII. WOMEN
Don Trump has to be hands on to teach women everything they know. How to be polite, pleasant and participatory in all situations. What to do to stop bleeding from orifices. Women have to learn to become hostesses, how to serve refreshments, how to wear make up [a subject Don Trump is expert about]. There are women who show up with all the proper attributes. Don Trump calls them squeeze bunnies.

VIII. MILITARY AND MAKE UP
Don Trump went to a militaristic, teutonic high school; he sympathizes with our veterans. His first policy initiative: Hand out lollipops. Sucking on hard candy in high school was so soothing, just like Mommy’s thumb. There was no PDST. He also felts like a transvestite or sometimes transgender. He wore and now wears more make up than those people do. He sometimes mix sexes. But he wants people to choose and identify themselves. He can’t make up his own mind. People have to tell who they are like Laverne of Laverne & Shirley. Laverne always wore an L on her top which could also represent lesbian.

IX. ROADS
Sell parcels and acreage of land that are not close to streets and roads. Showing it off by helicopter is best, especially if there’s a little two-laner in the distance that can be overused to develop an isolated tract. Don Trump believed this theory, and he did not know how much he was correct. Don Trump sold land for a far away getaway in nowhere to a stupid Mexican who did not know what he was doing. Don Trump made a profit. It was the second of two islands, stars in the sea. Since oil had taken a downturn, the Mexican hired drillship to bring in construction equipment and supplies. In six months he built 40 homes and created 20 other lots, homes in paradise, solar powered with enough water. He built a sea wall to stop global warming. Mexicans really know how to build walls and other things. The Mexican tripled his money in a year, but he had no imagination. There’s no golf course so the place is not first class.

X. RESET BUTTON
They are needed to stop something stupid you’re doing, and begin being refouled. I’ve tried to begin refreshed but it always smelt, and I don’t like to admit I’m wrong. I’m left dragging a sagging heritage of mush and trying to avoid the pitfalls that stinks up the campaign. Don Trump knows how to speak Mexican – burrito, taco, enchilada. That should satisfy everyone who’s going to build the wall. Don Trump can speak Canadian – Canuck and Potassic fertilizer. Every Canadian sings about such words. Although Don Trump will be refouled with his Reset, the Canadians will send a new supply of rapeseeds so he can mouth-off more.

XI. TALK


Talk is cheap. This is true but never admit it. Talk can be expensive. Suppose a house is appraised during a divorce (Don Trump had had two divorces so he knows what he is talking about. There will be a third if Heidi Klum or Megyn Kelly show up.) During the appraisal Don Trump greeted the idiot appraiser, and talked down the property making it worthless. Only devalue the property if you’re going to receive it.
Talking is the most effective way to persuade. Don’s most favorite political adviser notes:
Particularly the broad masses of the people can be moved only by the power of speech. And all great movements are popular movements, stirred either by the cruel Goddess of Distress or by the firebrand of the word hurled among the masses; they are not the lemonade-like outpourings of literary aesthetes and drawing room heroes.
Only a storm of hot passion can turn the destinies of peoples, and he along can arouse passion who bears it within himself.
It alone gives its chosen one the words which like hammer blows can open the gates to the heart of the people.

NO CHAPPEDASS

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Message to all the “Republican” elites throwing in for Hillary, boasting they’ll stay home instead of vote because their particular weakened good ol’ boy is not the GOP nominee (the R.A.T.s suffering chappedass because their power and purse are threatened by the grassroots movement to destroy their failed politics-as-usual). These lines of foolishness come from Sarah Palin yesterday or today.

Chappedass is a word new to me. Anyone with a chapped butt is pathetic. This word in these times comes from Sarah Palin who apparently is suffering from chappedass from her family – it’s has been a long haul being cooped up with the family and relatives over the Alaskan Winter. Rats in the septic tank haven’t helped. The local police reports sometimes makes the national news. Fox News has not rehired her. This year Sarah Palin has made a break, dodged everyone and abandoned the losers. She’s sprouting a tan.

There is no reason why other Americans should suffer from chapped ass, more than usual, by voting for the wrong guy as President. Admittedly this man has money, yet he speaks like he’s a drug user: grass speed, acid was the refrain he heard when young, and he speaks like grass, speed and aside are now affecting him. I hope that tennis serving machine on his court is served by a unsecured server than an insecure server.

Americans don’t need to get chappedass in any greater intensities. Americans are already getting it from their children. Just as Sarah.