Saturday, March 31, 2012

'SAD SONGS BLOGFEST' ADDENDUM

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OK, this has really begun to bug me.
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When I selected the seven songs (and one instrumental) for Spunk On A Stick’s ‘Sad Songs Blogfest’, I went with tunes that are sad for me in very personal ways; I have numerous associations to go with those lyrics and melodies that give real meaning to them.

But there are some songs so overtly sad that everyone everywhere will immediately pick up on the sentiment. And that’s why it was so shocking to me to find that some of those no-brainers went unmentioned in the ‘Sad Songs Blogfest’.

Kudos to DiscConnected and Jennie Bailey for putting one of those obvious choices, ‘Cats In The Cradle’, on their lists. An additional half-kudo goes to DiscConnected for listing as an ‘Honorable Mention’ the equally obvious no-brainer ‘Alone Again (Naturally)’ by Gilbert O’Sullivan, which went to #1 on the Billboard pop music chart in 1972. I nearly played my vinyl copy of that song grooveless in my high school years, and I came within a gnat’s-eyelash-width of including it on my original ‘Sad Songs Blogfest’ list here.

It seems to me that it’s almost criminal when over 50 participants make lists of sad songs and nobody includes ‘Alone Again (Naturally)’ nor the song ‘Shannon’ by Henry Gross, which went to #6 on the Billboard chart in 1976.

I found three very good YouTube videos for three songs I now regret having left off my list and I intend to correct that oversight by posting them below.

The images included in this video are perfect for the moodiness of the song. This is for everyone who has ever felt very alone and/or suicidal:

'Alone Again (Naturally)' by Gilbert O'Sullivan



Back in '76, when we were all hearing ‘Shannon’ played on Top 40 radio once every few hours, we all knew that the song was about the death of a family’s dog. 
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What I never learned until just an hour ago while searching for a good YouTube video for the song, is that Henry Gross was inspired to write the hit as a kind of tribute to his Irish Setter named Shannon, and to Beach Boy Carl Wilson’s Irish Setter, also named Shannon, which had recently been hit by a car and killed.

No coincidence, I suppose, that ‘Shannon’ by Henry Gross has a very Beach Boys-like tone to it.

This one is for everybody who has ever loved and lost a dog:

'Shannon' by Henry Gross



This final song is one I had fully intended to include on my original ‘Sad Songs Blogfest’ list. It came to my mind while I was on the road in my truck and contemplating which songs to post on my blog. But when I got home (as sleep-deprived as I’ve been for the last month), I completely forgot to jot it down. Uhp! I’m an idiot!

This is ‘My Friends, My Friends’ by Eddie Money, and it’s dedicated to my old buddies “The League Of Soul Crusaders” (you ol’ bastards know who you "Beee!") and it’s also dedicated to the “Long Island Girls” who ROCK! :

'My Friends, My Friends' by Eddie Money 



OK, I feel better now. (Maybe I can finally get some sleep!)

~ Stephen T. McCarthy

YE OLDE COMMENT POLICY: All comments, pro and con, are welcome. However, ad hominem attacks and disrespectful epithets will not be tolerated (read: "posted"). After all, this isn’t Amazon.com, so I don’t have to put up with that kind of bovine excrement.
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Friday, March 30, 2012

SAD SONGS BLOGFEST

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My wife left me for a lesbian, my dog got shot in a hunting accident, gasoline is four dollars per gallon, I’m out of bourbon, my new job's a hassle and the kids have the flu, but it's sure nice talking to you, Dad. It's been sure nice talking to you.
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Howdy, y’all! Mister Melancholy here, participating in Spunk On A Stick’s ‘SAD SONGS BLOGFEST’.
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You don’t need to tell me that the ‘Sad Songs Blogfest’ is thematically out-of-place here on ‘Ferret-Faced Fascist Friends’ where the menu has traditionally listed politics and product reviews exclusively.
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When my friend Arlee Bird of the famous ‘Tossing It Out’ blog made me aware of Spunk On A Stick’s ‘Sad Songs Blogfest’ idea, I was kicking myself for having closed down my other blog, ‘Stuffs’, recently, ‘cause this Blogfest would have fit perfectly there.

So, I was going to pass on this blog party, but then I thought three things:

1) Uhp! You’re an idiot, Stephen! . . . 

2) You KNOW you would have some unique contributions for a ‘Sad Songs’ Blogfest, and . . .

3) so what if it is thematically out-of-place on ‘Ferret-Faced Fascist Friends’? It’s YOUR blog and you can... 
DO WHAT YOU WANT!

So, below are my selections.

I could go on all day with this one because I am, after all, “Mister Melancholy”, and I love my sad songs! Hell Heck, I have two very old cassette tapes full of ‘em. One tape is titled ‘Innocence Lost’ (100 minutes of sad songs) and the other is titled - oddly enough - ‘My Sad Songs’ (45 minutes of sad songs). But I decided to limit myself here to just SEVEN SAD SONGS.

Below are some of the saddest songs I’ve ever heard. Five of these aren’t even recorded on the aforementioned cassette tapes, but every one of them has probably brought tears to my eyes at one time or another. (And, damn it, ‘Pagan Streams’ just did it AGAIN!)

This one’s for “Emily” :

‘Caroline No’ by The Beach Boys



This one’s for my Ma, may she rest in peace :

‘Jody Girl’ by Bob Seger



This one’s for Goldenshadow :

‘Magic Journeys’ by The Sherman Brothers & “Team Disney”



This one’s for “The Countess” :

‘Pagan Streams’ by Van Morrison



This one’s for every woman I ever loved and lost :

‘Photographs And Memories’ by Jim Croce



This next one is a strange video that doesn’t quite work for the song instrumental. If I had my way, the video would be displaying images photographed from a car that’s traveling north on the Santa Ana Freeway at night.

The music includes a violin (sad enough 4 U?) This is one of my all-time favorite recordings :

‘Sarah’s Crime’ by Toshi Hinata



I don’t explain if you don’t understand :

‘Sing’ by The Carpenters



This one’s for Nappy and me and our Orange County childhood ‘hood :

‘Times Of Your Life’ by Paul Anka



Hear other bloggers’ Sad Songs by clicking HERE.

 ~ Stephen T. McCarthy

YE OLDE COMMENT POLICY: All comments, pro and con, are welcome. However, ad hominem attacks and disrespectful epithets will not be tolerated (read: "posted"). After all, this isn’t Amazon.com, so I don’t have to put up with that kind of bovine excrement.
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Sunday, March 25, 2012

CELEBRITY BOXING: SHERIFF JOE ARPAIO KNOCKS OUT BARACK “USAP” OBAMA IN THE SECOND ROUND!

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For those who are new to this blog, or for those who are just too lazy or too disinterested to click on the links at ‘Ferret-Faced Fascist Friends’, be informed that “USAP” stands for “Undocumented Socialist Acting as President”.


What do you call a person who is half Marxist and half Muslim?

“Marxslim”.

Perhaps I should re-nickname that ass in the White House. Instead of “USAP”, maybe I’ll switch to “Marxslim”. After all, he is slim and doubly-stupid.

Obama’s fake Birth Certificate.
Obama’s fake Selective Service registration form.
Obama’s fake Social Security number from Connecticut.

As far as I know, only one media outlet has honestly attempted to investigate the above issues and make them known to the public: World Net Daily (WND).

That’s not to say that I totally trust WND, but when it comes to these major issues, I trust WND 100-times more than I trust the pseudo-conservative, so-called “watchdog” media outlets and talking heads like Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly, Glenn Beck, Ann Coulter, and Michael Medved.

Speaking of “Celebrity Boxing”, I wish I were a celebrity for one reason and one reason ONLY: I would like to challenge the aforementioned pseudo-conservatives to “Celebrity Boxing” matches. We would fight for a charitable cause. How about ‘Truthful Americans For Constitutional Honesty’?

Here’s how I see my ‘Celebrity Boxing’ matches with these so-called “Conservatives” ending:

Rush “Lard-Ass” Limboob: Suffers heart palpitations and is unable to answer the bell for the Third Round.

Sean Hannity: “Saved by the bell” in the First Round. Conveniently gets a call from his great-grandmother, telling him that his great-grandfather is crying-in-his-Jameson, and he flies to Ireland before the start of the Second Round.

Bill O’Reilly: Never even shows up for his scheduled bout with me, and later claims he “overslept”.

Glenn Beck: Seriously? Glenn “Marshmallow Head” Beck? 
I wouldn’t fight Beck or Ann Coulter because I don’t hit girls. I would let my sister, “Bonehead”, fight in my place.

I will tell the ‘Smart Money’ this: “Bonehead” was the first female I ever even HEARD OF playing on an all-male Little League BASEBALL team. And although she was not the best player on her team, she was amongst the top four. Uhp! You’d be an idiot to put money on Glenn Beck in that match because I’m sure that Beck wouldn’t even be one of the top four players on any GIRL’S softball team!

Michael Medved: No. I want to fight Medved in an alley, without gloves, and not for a charity but just for pleasure.

Alright, enough of the preliminary bouts and on to the main event of this blog bit . . .

Rush Limbaugh, Bill “O’Really?” O’Reilly, and Sean Hannity have basically ignored the Barack Obama birth certificate issue, while Glenn “Marshmallow Head” Beck and Ann Coulter have mocked the so-called “Birthers” who have insisted over the years that there’s something awfully “funky” about Obama’s (B.S.) Birth Certificate!

The fact is that any objective person with even two brain cells to rub together will conclude that Obama’s Birth Certificate is a (bad!) forgery after even just a cursory examination of the many obvious flaws in it. But, of course, it’s not just a question of his Birth Certificate; just about everything regarding Barack “Marxslim” Obama is shrouded in mystery and deception.

Following are excerpted paragraphs from two recent World Net Daily (WND) postings concerning the falsehood that is Barack Obama. The blue titles of these articles are LINKS to the original postings at WND and each link is followed by four selected paragraphs from the two articles in question. Just click the titles if you’d like to read the articles in their entirety:

Asks Feds: What Steps Will Be Taken To Investigate Possible Forgery?
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Following up on his investigative team’s finding of probable cause that Barack Obama’s Selective Service registration form is a forgery, Maricopa County, Arizona, Sheriff Joe Arpaio has asked Selective Service Director Lawrence Romo in a letter to produce original documentation.

A copy of Obama’s registration form indicates the registration took place at the Makiki Station Post Office in Honolulu on July 29, 1980. Arpaio wants court-approved, forensic experts selected by his office to examine the original for its authenticity, as well as any microfilm or computer copies that may exist.

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Exhibit G: Obama Selective Service registration on left, authentic Selective Service registration on right – same month, same Post Office. The numbers “80″ are out of line to the right in Obama’s card because when the numbers “08″ were cut away from the “2008″ date plug, they were not cut squarely.

Arpaio’s investigators concluded that Obama’s Selective Service registration card fit into what was becoming a common narrative for his life: The document was not only forged, it was poorly forged.


Records That Could Document Status Mysteriously Missing

Among the records missing for Barack Obama that would be available for an ordinary president are passport records, school records such as those from Punahou, Occidental, Columbia and Harvard, Harvard Law Review writings, scholarly articles for the University of Chicago, state bar association records from Illinois, Illinois state senate records, the marriage and divorce documents for his mother, his adoption records and others.

Now it has been revealed that the Cold Case Posse assembled by Sheriff Joe Arpaio in Maricopa County, Arizona, cannot confirm yet that Obama was not born in Kenya and brought to the United States as a days-old infant for his birth to be registered in Hawaii. The reason? Missing records.

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“The National Archives confirmed in a letter written on National Archives stationary that the [Immigration and Naturalization Service] INS records for foreign flights arriving in Hawaii during the week of Obama’s birth were missing, not only on the microfilm reels examined, but also in the primary database itself,” the report said.

That leaves open the door that Obama’s mother, Stanley Ann Dunham, was, as others have reported, visiting her husband’s family in Kenya shortly before the birth. Airlines at that time likely would not have allowed a woman expecting to give birth any day to board an extended international flight, thus creating the circumstances for Obama’s birth in Kenya.

COMING  ATTRACTIONS

Blog bits coming soon to ‘Ferret-Faced Fascist Friends’ :

“CAPITALIZING” ON 9/11:  FOREKNOWLEDGE OF THE TERRORIST ATTACKS LED TO INSIDER STOCK SELL-OFFS

“WOMANOLATRY & THE BEAST”:  E.W. BULLINGER EXAMINES THE APOCALYPSE

~ Stephen T. McCarthy

YE OLDE COMMENT POLICY: All comments, pro and con, are welcome. However, ad hominem attacks and disrespectful epithets will not be tolerated (read: "posted"). After all, this isn’t Amazon.com, so I don’t have to put up with that kind of bovine excrement.
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THE MONOTONY THAT IS BARACK OBAMA

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McDoggs & McDoggettes . . . 

As if it weren’t bad enough that we have a lying-ass fraud in the White House, the Black & White Red is now making us the laughingstock of the rest of the world!

Do you remember when Barack “USAP” Obama had a reputation for being a good speaker? Never mind that two out of every three words he spoke were lies, and never mind that he seemed to be reduced to a dummy without its ventriloquist every time he tried to wing it without his Teleprompter, at least we could all agree that he sounded fairly good while lying.

Well, now he doesn’t even sound good lying anymore.

“Hope And Change”. 
Yeah, I “Hope” the Black & White Red will “Change” it up a little and – sheesh! – find some new phrases for his lying lips, because these monotonous retreads have gotten so old that even the rest of the world has grown weary of hearing ‘em.

I’m concerned that if the Kenyan half-brother gets reelected for another term, all the other countries in the world will become allied against ‘US’ :

OBAMA: All countries are close allies!!



[Good idea. ZIP IT!]

~ Stephen T. McCarthy
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YE OLDE COMMENT POLICY: All comments, pro and con, are welcome. However, ad hominem attacks and disrespectful epithets will not be tolerated (read: "posted"). After all, this isn’t Amazon.com, so I don’t have to put up with that kind of bovine excrement.
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Sunday, March 18, 2012

NOAH’S ARK AND ATHEIST’S ARSE

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Eve ate the apple and then urged Adam to do likewise, right?

Not exactly. The Bible doesn’t say anything about the forbidden fruit being an apple; that’s simply mankind’s tradition.

Every animal on Earth, two by two, male and female, Noah loaded on to the ark: aardvarks, bears, cats, dogs, elk, ferrets, all the way to and including xeruses, yaks, and zebras, right?

Not exactly. The Bible has more (and less?) to say about that.

When I was young and dumber, the story of Noah’s Ark was one of the reasons I dismissed out-of-hand The Holy Bible. I mean, seriously, how could Noah’s Ark be anything but a fable? And therefore, how could The Holy Bible possibly be the inspired Word of God?

Well, I learned a lot over the years, and I came to God through Christ, and thus came to believe that The Bible was inspired by God long before I came to realize that there are a lot of varied reasons to believe that the “myth” of Noah’s Ark was no myth at all, but a fact.

In The Holy Bible – which is a collection of writings produced over several centuries from many Divinely-inspired prophets, kings, scribes, and apostles – God tells us that all things are to be established by two or more witnesses.

The first of the remarkable “Dead Sea Scrolls” discoveries was made in 1947.

In 1948, an earthquake caused the reappearance of Noah’s Ark in Turkey.

In that same year, Israel was reestablished and "officially" recognized as a sovereign nation.

Hmmm… in two years’ time, that was three unexpected witnesses emerging in support of ‘The Word Of God’.

Coincidence? I don’t think so.

The following 1993 video from G. Edward Griffin (author of the outstanding books ‘World Without Cancer: The Story Of Vitamin B-17’’ and ‘The Creature From Jekyll Island: A Second Look At The Federal Reserve’) is of somewhat fuzzy audio-visual quality, but it is very much worth watching nonetheless.

Has Noah’s Ark been found? Watch, listen, and decide for yourself:

The Discovery of Noah's Ark



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On April 4, 2009, at Biola University, Christopher Hitchens, the famous atheist descended from a monkey’s uncle, who is responsible for such books as ‘God Is Not Great’ and ‘The Portable Atheist: Essential Readings For The Non-Believer’, debated Doctor William Lane Craig.

“But I think it’s indisputable that there has never been a time in history when the hard evidence of science was more confirmatory of belief in God than today.”
Doctor William Lane Craig
‘The Case For A Creator’; page 123

Having previously read Doctor Craig’s chapter in Lee Strobel’s 2004 book ‘The Case For A Creator’, I was already convinced prior to watching this video that the famous atheist was gonna get his arse handed to him. I was not disappointed.

I’ll give Hitchens credit for one thing though: at least he found the courage to go toe-to-toe with Doctor Craig in a public debate. That’s a lot more than I can say for the equally famous atheist Richard Dawkins who has been dodging a debate with Doctor Stephen C. Meyer for years. That’s a debate Dawkins would lose even worse than Hitchens lost to Craig.

Anyway, this video is worth watching just to see how the pseudo-atheistic world’s fat-assed hero, Christopher Hitchens, starts sweating, stuttering, and fidgeting (watch his hands!) while undergoing cross-examination by Doctor Craig, beginning at about the one hour & nineteen minute mark.

Sorry, Hitch, but “nothing” can’t trump “God”.

Are you r-r-r-r-ready to r-r-r-r-rumble?! . . .

Christopher Hitchens vs William Lane Craig - Does God Exist Debate



~ Stephen T. McCarthy

YE OLDE COMMENT POLICY: All comments, pro and con, are welcome. However, ad hominem attacks and disrespectful epithets will not be tolerated (read: "posted"). After all, this isn’t Amazon.com, so I don’t have to put up with that kind of bovine excrement.
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