Potluck Quote of the Day (1/10): Noam Chomsky Meets Marvin the Martian

Greetings to our blog readers in Turkey, Israel and Costa Rica......

Why are we featuring an image of Mars with a quote from left-wing philosopher/linguist/historian Noam Chomsky, one of America's leading critics of the Vietnam War, who happens to still be alive at age 87?

Well, just read this quote. And, thanks to the kids from Duke University for helping us with this research......(we are actually UNC fans here, but we wanted to be nice....and since all the college students are on break for the summer, perhaps, they will be reading this instead of playing video games)....

We gather that Speak of the House Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.) is a closet admirer of Chomsky's work (yeah, we just said that to get your attention)....

This will be our first of ten quotes from people who have achieved fame and/or notoriety in a variety of fields.

Here is the quote:

"If there were an observer on Mars, they would probably be amazed that we have survived this long."

https://chomsky.info/

http://mars.nasa.gov/

http://www.wxdu.org/ (Duke's student-run college radio station; they were playing Frankie Cosmos at last report, actually that was another college radio station).........

Top Ten Comics from The Roanoke Times (Sunday Edition): Trudeau Jabs Trump, Read All About It

Greetings to our blog readers in Costa Rica, Hungary, Kenya, as well as those of you who may be checking in from Sacramento, Calif., where the Monday 9:00 a.m. work day is just getting started.

Today, we look at our favorite comic strips from yesterday's "Roanoke Times," the daily newspaper for Roanoke, Va. Our chart-topper this week is Garry Trudeau's "Doonesbury," where the cartoonist lampoons Donald Trump (pict. top) and his bad hair. This is followed by a clever edition of "Zits," which features a hand grenade gag (of all things), and "Jump Start" in which two kids ask each other what they think of aliens (pict. bottom, "Alf").

For those of you who might be herding sheep in Mongolia, Trump is one of 15 (or is it 16 or 17) Republicans running for president. We just learned that the conservative magazine "The National Review" has Carly Fiorina on its cover. Like Trump, she has zero political experience as well. (Her name is not spelled right on our tags, but we've learned from the Donald to not apologize).

Here is our top ten:

1. Doonesbury

2. Zits

3. Jump Start

4. Garfield

5. Pearls Before Swine

6. Speed Bump

7. Get Fuzzy

8. Dilbert

9. Family Circus

10. Pickles

http://www.roanoke.com

http://www.denverpost.com/comics

http://www.washingtonpost.com/comics

http://www.doonesbury.com

New and Improved Top Ten American Cities We'd Like to Visit: From Miami to Vancouver

Since we returned back from Costa Rica on Black Friday, we've been thinking about where else would like to travel during our time here on earth, and if we die a premature death like Austrian pop star Falco, we hope we can come back to life as the Buddhistst suggest, so we can visit Detroit (actually a city which just missed making this life).

For this list, we are focusing on North American cities, and our sister blog "Politics, Culture and Other Wastes of Time" http://www.politicscultureandotherwastesoft.blogspot.com we look at cities we would like to visit in Europe.

It should be pointed that cities we adore, like Denver, New York and Baltimore are not on this list because we wanted to focus on cities we've never visited.

And, without any further interruptions, here is the list:

1) Miami, Florida ("Miami Vice" is pictured top)

2) Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada (The logo for the Vancouver Canucks is pictured center)

2) Seattle, Washington (pictured bottom)

4) San Francisco, California

5) Portland, Oregon (but, we have been to Portland, Maine, this Portland is the one where "Portlandia" takes place)

6) Guadalajara, Mexico

7) Los Angeles, California

8) Minneapolis, Minnesota

9) Dallas, Texas

10, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada

http://www.miamiandbeaches.com/

http://www.tourismvancouver.com/

http://www.visitseattle.org/Home.aspx

Our New and Improved Countries We Want to Vist Bucket List

Greetings to our blog readers in Cambodia, Spain and Portugal, which are three countries which missed our cut.

Since we have recently arrived back from Costa Rica, a country that always made it onto my top 10 countries to visit list, we thought we'd provide an update, which once again has Iceland (see top image) at the top.

Morocco is second (middle image, strawberry vendor in Tangier) and Norway is third (bottom image of Bergen), and with some research as to suggestions by both Lonely Planet and the Rough Guide, countries like Georgia and Macedonia made it on to the list, as did one of the world's tiniest nations.

We were delighted to see Turkey, my late father's country, ranked high in the Rough Guide, but since we have been there 15 times, we thought we'd focus on countries we've never visited.

Here is the bucket list:

1) Iceland

2) Morocco

3) Norway

4) Georgia

5) Chile

6) Panama

7) Scotland

8) Malaysia

9) Macedonia

10) San Marino (the tiny country we were referring to)

http://www.lonelyplanet.com

http://www.roughguides.com

http://www.visiticeland.com

http://www.visitmorocco.com

http://www.visitnorway.com

World Cup Soccer Lists (4 of 4): The Names We Will Remember

Wow! We didn't realize that Arjen Robben of The Netherlands and Tim Howard of the United States look like twin brothers! For more info on world soccer, we recommend a true expert Ahmet Bob Turgut:

http://turkeyfootball.blogspot.com/

And, kudos to Turkish referee Cuneyt Cakir for calling an excellent game yesterday in Argentina's penalty shoot-out win over The Netherlands, but I suspect we will see much more of Robben, who plays for Bayern Munich.

Here is our list:

1) Joel Campbell. 22. Costa Rica. Olympiacos (Greece; pictured top)

2) Arjen Robben. 30. Netherlands. Bayern Munich (pictured center)

3) Tim Howard. 35. USA. Everton (England, pictured bottom,)

4) Marouane Fellaini. 26. Belgium. Manchester U.

5) Thomas Muller. 24. Germany, Bayern Munich

6) Rais Mbolhi. 28. Algeria. CSKA Sofia (Bulgaria, where he plays goal-keeper)

7) Luis Suarze. 27. Uruguay. Liverpool (I guess we can objectively say he is the most scandalous futboler on the planet)

8) Faryd Mondgram. 43. Colombia. (no club team, he is the oldest player ever to play in a World Cup)

9) Xherdan Shaqiri. 22. Switzerland. Bayern Munich.

10) Mathieu Valbuena. 29. France. Marseilles.

11) Angel di Mira. 26. Argentina. Real Madrid.

The Weekly Grocery List

In the early days of our blogging ventures, we used to simply post grocery lists as we couldn't conjure up anything else back in that stone age era of 2005.

Today, there are simply too many things going on at once and we have more competition thanks to Facebook, Twitter and my friend Chris Knight, who reportedly has the most popular blog in the world (that is a joke, but he gets more hits than we get).

Hence, we are returning to the grocery list. And, these are items that we either need to get at the grocery store or we added to fill space; here we go:

1. Tomatoes (Our friend Bruce Piephoff from Greensboro, NC, has a great song called "Home Grown Tomatoes")

2. Oatmeal

3. Milk

4. Nutella (we went with an image of the Turkish equivalent Cokokrem to be original)

5. ice cream

6. bananas (America's favorite Costa Rican import, after coffee)

7. Sunday Washington Post (Love 'Date Lab' and Keith Knight's Comic Strip "Knight Life")

8. shaving cream

9. apples

10. cat toys

..........There you go!

http://www.theknightshit.blogspot.com

http://www.ulker.com.tr

http://www.facebook.com/brucepiephoff

Greetings from Mister Frog

Even though none of us are biology majors here at "The Daily Vampire," we were startled to learn that frogs are not reptiles, but rather amphibians; we were thus unsure if we should include them as part of Reptile Week or not.

But, the frog lobby in Washington, D.C., lead by Cong. Clarence G. Burton (D-Va)*, made us decide that frogs deserved a blog entry of their own, so here it is.

The image here is of a poison dart frog, commonly found in Costa Rica as well as other Central American countries as well as South American countries, like Peru and Bolivia.

The poison dart frog is known for its bright-colored body. According to Wikipedia, most of these creatures are endangered species, and they live in tropical rain forests.

The Saint Louis Zoo is one American zoo which has an abundance of frogs, though we're not sure which types of frogs they have. We'll have to ask Javier the Intern** when he clocks in tomorrow morning.

And, greetings to those of you in Karachi, Pakistan, where we gather it is between 9:30 a.m.-10:00 a.m., according to "Mental Floss," this is the time of the highest Internet traffic during the day, at least during the week. Of course, we should ask "Wired," a monthly technology magazine if their indirect competitors are accurate, but Javier is overwhelmed right now, especially since we're not paying him.

SIDEBAR: We were hoping to cover more women's college volleyball this year than we have, but we did get a chance to watch the women's volleyball game between the University of North Carolina and Virginia Tech live from Chapel Hill, NC, over the Internet at a Denny's (thanks for the good wi fi, Denny's).

Though it was a fairly competitive game, the home team Tarheels (we have also seen them referred to as the Tar Heels, but we have enough headaches right now) won in straight sets 3-0 (25-20, 25-22, 25-21). UNC's standout player Emily McGee, a senior from Naperville, Illinois, guided the 'Heels with 15 digs and 11 kills.

For the visiting Hokies, Samantha Gostling, a junior from Charlotte, NC, had 11 kills.

UNC hosts the University of Virginia for Senior Night on Saturday, while the Hokies head down the road from Chapel Hill to Raleigh to face North Carolina State.

Here are the other ACC women's vollyeball scores from Friday night; the home team is marked with a # sign.

#Georgia Tech 3 Wake Forest 0

#Miami (Fla.) 3 Boston College 0

#Clemson 3 Duke 2 (more on this game on our other blog: http://www.politicscultureandotherwastesoft.blogspot.com

#Florida State 3 Maryland 0

http://www.goheels.com

http://www.stlzoo.com

http://www.costaricanfrogs.com

http://www.thisiscostarica.com

*-Cong. Clarence G. Burton was an actual Democratic congressman from Virginia, but he died at age 91 or 92 back in 1982. We figured using a dead member of The Hill would cause us fewer problems.

**-Javier the Intern is a fictional character, though he has been a running gag on this blog for quite a while now.

Silly Picture to Fill Space- A Costa Rican Frog

Yes, since Costa Rica is one of my top countries to seek political asylum in should Mitt Romney become president of the United States, and today is Leap Day, I thought a photo of a Costa Rican frog was in order.

When I went on a cruise to The Bahamas last month, our version of "The Love Boat" captain told us when the sun would set each day.

So, with that it mind and given that the sun has already set in places like Eskisehir, Turkey, as of this posting (it is 1:00 p.m. on the U.S East coast, so I presume it is either 19:00 or 20:00 in Turkey), I will include sunset times for various American cities, some are suburbs while others are college towns, and we have included both Fairfax, Va., and Fairbanks, Alaska, to be cheeky.

Sorry to our Canadian followers, we are snubbing you today, but we hope to post the sunset for Calgary, Alberta, one day real soon.

Here are the sunset times for the following eight American towns, cities and 'burbs (all times are local times); the earliest sunset is for the Chicago suburb of Skokie, Ill., and the latest, as one might expect, is for Honolulu, Hawaii:

Fairfax, Va. 6:01 p.m.

Akron, Ohio 6:16 p.m.

Skokie, Ill. 5:40 p.m.

Boulder, Colo. 5:52 p.m.

Tempe, Ariz. 6:24 p.m.

Palo Alto, Calif. 6:02 p.m.

Fairbanks, Alaska 6:06 p.m.

Honolulu, Hawaii 6:35 p.m.

Top 10 Countries to Run To If GOP Whacko Becomes Prez

Yes, we did essentially the same sort of list when it looked like Sarah Palin might somehow become an American president, which would probably assure the impending apocalypse that many fervent evangelists who would support her are calling for.

Since there are essentially three players left in the Republican nomination race: Mitt Romney (pictured), Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich, we thought we'd mention that IFC is running two hours worth of Three Stooges shorts on Saturday starting at 10:45 a.m. The first of these films will be "The Mummy's Dummies" (1948), which was made when Gingrich was five and Romney (born 1947) was still in diapers.

Here are some possible escapes we might consider:

1) Costa Rica (pictured)

2) Russia (this blog is popular there, so why not?!)

3) Iceland (the country that was number one on the Palin escape list)

4) Brazil

5) New Zealand

6) Slovenia_ this former Yugoslavia is now a top destination

7) Finland

8) Cuba (yeah, we partly did this for shock value, but many American travel magazines have written about traveling to Cuba lately)

9) Turkey (my late father's country, and I also speak the language)

10) Sweden

SIDEBAR: The BBC is now airing a radio segment about The World Ice Fishing Championship in Kazakhstan, otherwise known as the land of Borat. As one might imagine, it is freezing in the former Soviet Republic!

Things We Learned on Twitter Today: Michele Bachmann Headline-Maker

I've been a fan of Suzy Khimm, a great liberal reporter, since she wrote an excellent profile of Virginia's crazed right-wing maniac attorney Ken Cuccinelli, who looks like a grown-up Pinocchio doll, in the December 2010 issue of "Mother Jones."

This afternoon, Khimm tweeted the following:

"Daily Beast's most popular articles today: 1) Is Michele Bachmann submissive? 2)Queen of the Cougars."

We didn't want to put a photo of Bachmann up, since she does look like a professional female wrestler. And, ironically, her state of Minnesota elected a pro wrestler, Jesse Ventura, for governor.

(These headlines are in reference to Bachmann's 'performance' during the Republican debate in Ames, Iowa, last night. I didn't watch, but I gather her heated exchanges with Tim Pawlenty were very amusing. Pawlenty took over after Ventrua's term expired as governor of Minnesota.)

So, instead, we went with this image of a gorgreous Wyoming chainsaw cougar. We tried to find a cougar from Colorado, but I guess we will have to find one somewhere on the net some other time.

And, we thought that since Bachmann apparently wants to turn back the clock on social progress, we'd include an image of a Tupperware party. Perhaps, if elected president (of course, that will mean many of us on the center-left will get one-way plane tickets from Expedia to Costa Rica), she will also segregate schools again.

SIDEBAR: I saw a bumper sticker in Roanoke, Va., which I'm surprised even an ardent Republican would put on his or her vehicle: it is an image of George W. Bush with the line- "Do You Miss Me Yet?," well let me just give you the short answer, NO!

The Last 10 Films I've Seen- It's a Strange List

We are using the image above as something that could go with "Rango" that the other 112, 316 bloggers who've mentioned the animated western with the voice of Johnny Depp haven't used. We had to insert the words "Big Green Lizard Costa Rica" in Google to come up with this!

I wasn't too keen on seeing "Rango" until a tweet from film director Sofia Coppola said that it was not only a good film, but it was like 'a kiddie version of Chinatown.'

The very last movie I've seen is the 2000 Iranian film "The Circle" by Jafar Panahi, whose later film "Offside" was championed by my good friend Bilge Ebiri. The late Susan Sontag was among those who praised "The Circle," an amazing, highly-political film about the plight of women in Iran.

The Iranian film brought to mind some of the controversial films made by the late Turkish actor/director Yilmaz Guney in the late '70s and early '80s. Although, I have the subjective opinion, which I think even people who aren't of Turkish heritage like myself would agree with, that Turkey is a far better place politically than Iran. Well, we certainly hope that is the case!

The most disappointing of the ten films listed was unquestionably "Bronson," a 2008 English film which is essentially a Stanley Kubrick rip-off orchestrated for the shock porn generation.....hmm....I am starting to sound too much like Jonathan Rosenbaum, forgive the film geek humor!

We must profess that we got this idea from the great magazine "Film Comment," which has an amazing article on the gradual death of film projection in the current issue.

Here is the the list, my rating (out of four stars) comes after each film:

1. "The Circle" (Iran, 2000) ****

2. "Rango" (2011) ***1/2

3. "The Lucky Ones" (2008) ***

4. "The Tall T" (1957) ***1/2

5. "The Devil-Doll" (1936) **1/2

6. "24 City" (China, 2008) ****

7. "Treeless Mountain" (So. Korea, 2008) ***1/2

8. "Bronson" (2008) **

9. "The Adjustment Bureau" (2011) **

10. "Youth in Revolt" (2009) **

Sunday Leftovers

Yes, it is a lazy Sunday afternoon here in Stuart, Va., in rural Patrick County where one has nothing to do except stare at the bambis and thumpers in the backwoods and shot them (ok, not really where I'm at, and I don't hunt!).

But, we have made some mistakes with this blog, and our sister 'Politics, Culture and Other Wastes of Time" in recent weeks and we wanted to set the record straight even though no one is whining to us personally.

For starters, I am not a fan of arch right-wing Republican nuts, teenage heartthrob singers or radical North African dictators. But, we have at times incorrectly spelled the names of Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, our Worst Person of the Year for 2010, singing sensation Justin Bieber and trickiest of all Libyan el presidente Muammar Gaddafi.

In addition, I noticed that a label for Cong. Bob Goodlatte (R-Va) was posted as Bon Goodlatte, so even though I would gives millions of dollars to his Democratic opponent if I were as rich as George Soros, I do regret that error as well.

Cuccinelli was the subject of a great article in the Dec. 2010 issue of "Mother Jones" where Suzy Khimm 'rightfully' illustrated him as a lunatic who cares more about satisfying political wonks, affluent conservative lobbyists (ie. the NRA) and media wackos like Glenn Beck than the folks back in Patrick County (as well as the rest of Virginia).

James Parker of "The Atlantic" (March 2011) wrote an excellent piece about how Justin Bieber, 16, used the Internet and social media to woo his (we presume mostly female) fans in ways that "The Partridge Family" could have never dreamed of.

And, lastly Dirk Vandewelle, an expert on Libya, wrote a disturbing article in the March 7, 2011, issue of "Newsweek" about how the country will have a hard with or without Gaddafi for reasons that are way too complicated to explain here.

That same issue of "Newsweek" also features a great cover story by Sharon Begley on how the Twitter-age is essentially making us all idiots or zombies incapable of making good decisions (idiots and zombies are my words, not Ms. Begley's-- we can't afford to be sued by "Newsweek!").

All of this reminds me of how I was going to try to spend my Spring Break, which is this very week, going to either Honduras or Costa Rica, but instead I am doing this.

Well, it does beat shooting poor, defenseless animals with an uzi!

Top 10 Countries to Visit in Next 10 Years...

I have a feeling some folks are going to scratch their heads over this list, which I initially made on New Year's Eve.

Egypt was actually on the original list at number ten, but do to riots, looting and political unrest, we have replaced Egypt with Burundi, even though that is where one can find the man-eating crocodile Gustave, who has had some 300 people for breakfast!

The images above are from Costa Rica, Honduras and Bolivia respectively. And, as it will seem quite obvious to most folks, I really, really want to go to a Scandanavian country.

Here is the list:

1. Bolivia

2. Honduras (yes, we know they had a coup in 2009)

3. Costa Rica

4. Finland

5. Sweden

6. Norway

7. Iceland

8. Denmark

9. Uzbekistan

10. Burundi

Top 10 Countries to Defect To...if Sarah Becomes Prez

Yes, much like Dubai oil, free time is becoming a rare commodity these days, but we had to blog about where we would go if the nightmare scenario of Sarah Palin becoming president were to happen. Much like actor Matt Damon, I have to agree that it would be 'like a bad Disney movie.'

I was actually planning to post this BEFORE the travel alert to Europe, but I would love to travel to these countries, six of which I've never been too (four of the countries are not actually in Europe, and one can dispute if Turkey is in Europe or not!):


1. Iceland (pictured...24 hours of daylight six months of the year!)
2. Norway
3. Costa Rica
4. Finland
5. Canada
6. France
7. Argentina
8. Turkey (well, I speak the language)
9. Greece (the recession there should make living there much cheaper!)*
10. Cuba (yes- we just put this up here to irk the right-wingers!)

*- Besides, I've always wanted to go to the island of Chios!