Monthly Archives: April 2011

Where have all the flowers gone?

Posted on April 30, 2011 | Comments Off on Where have all the flowers gone?

Texas wildflowers are scarce this spring, done in by the drought, the heat of the past few weeks, and, last but hardly least, the wildfires that have scorched the landscape.

It’s made for a sad season, as Austin’s KXAN shows in this video report.

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Posted in Scribbles, Texana, Weather/Climate

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Nhu Quynh: Rule 5

Posted on April 29, 2011 | Comments Off on Nhu Quynh: Rule 5

 

The beautiful Nhu Quynh, whose singing is as sweet as her looks.  Song’s translation here. She grew up in Quang Tri province, now lives in Philadelphia. Photo from a 1998 calendar. (As you can see at the singing link, the photo didn’t require much retouching.)

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Posted in Library, Music, Rule 5, Viet Nam

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Paris By Night

Posted on April 28, 2011 | Comments Off on Paris By Night

Found another good, melodic duet by a Vietnamese man, Manh Dinh and a woman, Y Phung. I decided to look for a possible YouTube video of them performing. Found it (their love ballad begins at 2:10 here, at the Houston Grand Opera, no less) and I noticed, hey, that guy’s wearing an ARVN uniform with jump (or pilot?) wings.

All these thirty-six years after the ARVN (the Army of the Republic of (South) Viet Nam) fled their Northern cousins, the communists?

Turns out to be a performance of Paris By Night, a video series of variety shows featuring 1960s-era Vietnamese ballads from Saigon nightclubs, and some new material.  Like a Broadway or Las Vegas show. The tapes have been produced and sold throughout the world’s Vietnamese refugee community, particularly the Viet Kieu, the Vietnamese Americans, since 1983.

The communist government of Viet Nam considers them a “reactionary cultural product” and tries to block them from sale in the People’s Republic, but they reportedly still get through to the interested via the black market.

The theme of many of the songs is the lost war, hence Manh Dinh (much too young to have been in the war) wearing full ARVN, including U.S. Army jungle boots. It makes sense. Many of the refugees, at least the initial waves, were middle- and upper-middle class urban South Vietnamese. The intelligentsia. With enough discretionary income to buy videos. And to be sentimental about what was, and was not to be.

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Posted in Library, Music, The War, Viet Nam

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Katie Couric resigns. Yawn.

Posted on April 27, 2011 | Comments Off on Katie Couric resigns. Yawn.

You remember Couric, the so-called journalist who did the hatchet-job on Sarah Palin during the 2008 presidential campaign? Well, Sarah’s still viable. Couric is leaving cBS. She’s become even more irrelevant than the network she used to work for.

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Posted in Library, Obituaries, Scribbles

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IDF’s 7th Armored Brigade

Posted on April 26, 2011 | Comments Off on IDF’s 7th Armored Brigade

Used to be, in the American army, it was “smoke ’em if ya got ’em,” and almost everyone did. And almost everyone had a Zippo lighter, too.

Nowadays, when the American army is so PC that it can’t stop murderous Muslims from joining its ranks and shooting up its bases, smoking is discouraged and the Zippo has gone the way of running in boots. Well, that part never made a whole lot of  sense. Except, in combat, you might not have time to stop and put on your running shoes.

So what’s the point? And why the picture? That’s a Zippo, right there. And it’s emblazoned with the insignia of the 7th Armored Brigade, which commands the tank formations in the Israel Defense Forces. And they do smoke in the IDF, like just about everyone else in Israel. Well, a lot of them do. Besides, I like to annoy the anti-smokers on the intertubes.

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Posted in Israel, The War, Troops

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Graffiti in the jungle

Posted on April 25, 2011 | Comments Off on Graffiti in the jungle

I can’t say I like Israeli writer Etgar Keret’s short-short stories much. At least not the ones in The Girl On The Fridge collection. Most of them end too abruptly, just about the time I’m getting interested in the tale. Suppose to be the latest thing, these quickies, but most of them read like the writer ran out of imagination.

One of the few I do like is one that echoes something my Israeli pal Snoopy-the-Goon told me about young people coming off of their obligatory IDF active duty. Many of them leave Israel and light out for the Himalayas or somewhere else tough and adventurous, preferably somewhere no one else has been.

So, in The Journey, the hero does just that, winding up in the jungles of South America, satisfied that he’s finally found a place no other human has trod. Until he sees some secondary growth at the base of a large tree. It barely conceals something carved there. Something old. This: “Nir Dekel, August 5, Paratroopers Kick Ass.”

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Posted in Israel, South of the Border, The War, Troops

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Islam makes you stupid

Posted on April 24, 2011 | Comments Off on Islam makes you stupid

Some things are just really, really hard to argue with. You accept them on, uh, faith.

And this, Muslim jokes. For example:

Q. Did you hear the one about the violent 53 year-old pedophile?
A. Yes. He is revered by one fifth of the world’s population as the one who started the world’s most intolerant, repressive, misogynistic and violent religion.

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Posted in Blogosphere, Science/Engineering

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