After scratching my head for ideas… I found a nothing but a damn mosquito bite so here goes:
Really Canada First?
1886 – Sir John A. MacDonald (the first PM of Canada) pounded the ceremonial last spike signifying the completion of the Esquimalt and Nanaimo Railway in British Columbia which was built on the backs and lives of Chinese and other immigrant laborers… conveniently ignored by the MSM at the time.
1889 – Dropping a dime was invented. Actually the pay phone.
1898 – A naval squadron and marines commanded by then Commodore George Dewey on the USS Olympia captured Manila. Pax America was born. Leading to over a century of American leaders making piss poor decisions affecting millions of people that would never ever ever come back to haunt them.
1906 – Due to inflamed racial tensions between White Texans and Black US Army Soldiers, the Brownsville Raid happened. White Texans claimed (lied actually) black soldiers did a 2nd Amendment solution against them which ended up killing 2 civilians. Teddy Roosevelt, forgetting that the 10th Cavalry (The Buffalo Soldiers) and 24 Infantry Regiment (both segregated African American units) saved his ass on San Juan Hill 8 years earlier, decided to dishonorably discharge 167 black soldiers blamed for the incident despite the fact that they were in their barracks. Justice was almost entirely denied till 1972 when the last surviving soldier received his pension.
1918 – Bavarian Motor Works founded. Future yuppie douches who think they own the road, rejoice.
1923 – US Steel implements the 8 hour work day. Rich white males rail against owning only 1/3 of their workers time (till the invention of email and project management as a career.)
1940 – Awesome air force leader and noted druggie, Herman Goering, launches Aldertag (Eagle Day) the Luftwaffe’s attack on the Royal Air Force itself. Like most of Herman’s ideas, this ends up not going well for the Luftwaffe.
1942 – Manhattan Project started. No word if these documents were found at Mar-A-Lego or taken by Donald Judas Trump’s dad.
1944 – A Bridge Too Far started. Monty’s not brilliant as he thought to send 30000 paratroopers to capture vital bridges on the Rhine while sending an armored thrust deep into Germany’s industrial heartland. If Monty waited some 78 years for Global Warming, he could have crossed the Rhine no problem.
1950 – In a move that would not haunt the United States for many many years, Harry Truman offers aid to Vietnam.
1956 – Song Don’t Be Cruel released. Sadly, love still can be.
1961 – Wall in Berlin raised. Tensions start to heat up. British Spy novelists rejoice at invention of Checkpoint Charlie.
1967 – Bonnie And Clyde Released. A story of two American kids doing the best they can with Thompson Submachine Guns. 2020 Sequel Dummie and Clod starring Mark Mclosky and his wife does not go so well.
1977 – Not takin’ care of business. BTO disbands.
1981 – Goodnight John Boy
1991 – Dan Quayle attacks lawyers while speaking at the American Bar Association. Meanwhile Donald Trump continues to refuse to pay lawyers. Does not think that will come back to haunt him.
1993 – Ricky don’t forget to pay for that number. Ricky Henderson pays for his number 24 from Blue Jays Teammate. Tells John Olerud that he’ll never forget him as the guy who fields while wearing his helmet.
1993 – Appellate Court says ALL CONGRESSIONAL EMAILS MUST BE SAVED. Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump both laugh about how that will never affect them.
2019 – Measles cases triple in one year. Anti-Vaxers blame vax. It’s not like that would come back to haunt humanity in 2020-onwards.
Open THREAT!
The book A Bridge Too Far is brilliant. The movie is not bad, but the book does a fantastic job of capturing the issues pro and con around the campaign from micro to macro levels.
It makes it clear why nitpicking specific issues might not be right, but also how overall it was going to be a swamp even if they had crawled over the finish line, er, bridge which just eluded them.
Perhaps not assuming the Germans would just give up after Operation Cobra and the Falaise Gap might have helped.
Also not ignoring the Dutch resistance reports of two beat up Panzer Divisions nearby would have helped too.
I think the basic screwup was because they were so hung up on Market Garden they took their eye off the ball at Antwerp, which was much more important than the bridge at Arnhem.
The basic lesson is you will never get RESPECT until you TCB.
I’ve mentioned it before, but I used to work with Cornelius Ryan’s son, Geoff in Wilmington, NC. He was a locations manager. Passed away a few years ago. He was a nice guy.
One of the interesting things in England during WW2 is British pub owners let Black US soldiers drink with the usual collection of dour old pub guys, 15 year old British kids, etc. In at least a couple of cases US officers got mad about the breakdown in segregation and sent in the MPs, but the British townspeople banded together behind the Black soldiers and told the racists to go piss off, wankers.
On this day back in 2004, I was unceremoniously let go from the job at the corporate call center where I’d been working, as a guy you got on the line when you pressed dos para español, for the previous 500 days or so (not like I was counting). I say unceremoniously because, out of the corner of my eye while I was on a call, I saw one of my bosses leave for the weekend without acknowledging me, and it wasn’t until I got back home to my parents’ house that my dad asked me if everything was OK at work: They’d received a call saying that I shouldn’t come in on Monday and to call the temp agency through which I was actually employed instead. (I’d recently retaken and passed a battery of bullshit tests to become an official employee of the corporation itself, and the paperwork was still pending at the time, so the timing seemed more than a little fishy.) I did call the temp agency that Monday and was told that my “assignment [had] ended,” but in my naïveté I happened to have driven to my now former place of work and make the call from the parking lot, as I’d planned to enter the building in an attempt to get a straight answer about what was really going on. (Ha!) One of my other bosses, who often employed an outwardly friendly, down-home demeanor I’d long since seen through, saw me out there as he was walking in but said nothing — in words at least, although he did put back on a pair of a sunglasses like some mustachioed, dad-bodied, sweater-vest-clad David Caruso — as he turned away. I was told not to enter the building and did not, taking off instead for the temp agency office in order to drop off my more-than-likely-deactivated work badge. (I went back a couple of days later, by which time Caruso the Lesser had apparently brought up the sighting of me as well, to pick up the plastic shopping bag containing the personal belongings that were in my cubicle at the time of my dismissal, although I fished out the pair of Beanie Babies emblazoned with the corporation’s logo and made sure to toss them in a nearby dumpster before I got back in my car.)
Before the month ended, the temp agency tided me over with another call center assignment, slated to last three days and pay a bit more than half of the hourly pittance I’d heretofore been earning. It involved making outbound calls to established customers and asking about their satisfaction with their purchase, through survey questions that were scripted right down to the fucking banter. (“How are you doing today? . . . . Great!”) There had been no indication made to me that this was a bilingual customer service gig, although I did happen to notice that a certain plurality of the phone numbers on my list were based in Puerto Rico — and it became obvious that I’d be needing to employ my extra skill set once I dialed the first such number and soon realized that the person on the other end of the line couldn’t understand me in English. I did a bit of what I later learned was called “sight translation” to get through that call and then devised a somewhat more developed version in Spanish once it had ended. Then I decided to go out of the listed order and get all the calls to Puerto Rico out of the way all at once. Of course, as I made them, someone from what I guessed was the officially sanctioned Spanish desk heard and noticed me from another corner of the open-plan workroom, then started motioning at me to try to get my attention. Once I was off the call, she asked me, in Spanish, when I’d arrived. I told her that it was my first day and that I’d just gotten in at 9:00. But it turned out that she wasn’t asking about the job; she was asking when I’d arrived in the country.
By then, I’d already had an inkling that maybe I really was cut out to do a bit more in Spanish than just customer service, and the point was driven home even further once the gig was truncated from three days to two. (The news was delivered on the third day — natch — with the realization that my temporary entrance badge had been deactivated, along with a confirmation call to the temp agency from a different parking lot. Thankfully, no would-be procedural drama ringers saw or reported me this time.) So, when I found a listing for a medical employment agency that was advertising positions for Spanish interpreters, I set aside the misgivings I’d had on the one or two occasions when opportunities in that particular line of work had come up, and I decided at least to use them as one of the three work-based contacts that I needed to make in order to collect my unemployment for that week. (No, they never hired me. In fact, I don’t think they ever really hired anyone, and they apparently turned out to be something of a fly-by-night operation — which was just as well because I milked them as a contact for most of the rest of the time I was unemployed, until I happened to be hired as an interpreter at the big hospital here, for hours and pay that occasionally were so low that I’d have been better off still on the dole. But that’s another story.)
Anyway, after this whole saga was over, I swore to myself that I’d never don a headset for work ever again. And you know what? I kept my word, too — for 16 years and a handful of days.
I’m trying to think through how much more confusing this could have gotten if the two of you hadn’t figured out the misunderstanding.
Dammit now I’m out of Sandman to watch.
I guess I could reread the graphic novels.
Five years ago today, my wife and I finished packing for our grand move from Houston to the beautiful California Central Coast. She had gotten a teaching position at Cal-Poly and we were escaping the unbearable heat and humidity of South Texas for something much nicer. With packing done, all we had to do was kick back and make plans for our new life.
We did not know that within the next 4 days, Hurricane Harvey would descend on us and lock us down for another week, or that her appendix would suddenly burst and she would need emergency surgery while the massive Houston Medical Center was being evacuated and power was going out. I sat at her hospital bedside while rain and wind were crashing on the windows and I did not know what was going to happen to us.
That was also the day of the total solar eclipse, that gave us the famous picture of Trump standing on the White House balcony looking up at the eclipse and pointing like a complete stronzo. It was 3am and waiting for her to come out of surgery when I saw that picture online and it made me laugh out loud. The only other person in the waiting room outside of surgery was some attending physician standing at the coffee machine. The surgeon had already come out and told me my wife would be just fine and we’d still be able to leave for Cali when the storm cleared, although she’d have to wear an abdominal drain for the drive West. The attending turned to look at me laughing in what is usually a pretty somber environment and I had to get up and show him the picture I was laughing at. He got a good chuckle and left to go help some other unfortunate soul.
We went on to have a really nice few years on the Coast and that led to our wonderful circumstances today.
its 75f inside and compared to last night that feels fairly cool
its 8 am and outside hasnt warmed up yet
never thought i’d see clear blue skies and be filled with dread
but here we are
im in hell…send help….and ice cream