Quotes from Famous Authors (5 of 5): Dorothy Parker

Greetings to our blog readers in Denmark, Montenegro and Yemen.......well, perhaps it's a boring Sunday afternoon in Aden!

Here is our quote from Dorothy Parker:

"This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force."

Now to get back to watching Sarah Silverman host "Saturday Night Live."

Free Form Blogging: Famous Female Athletes

Greetings to our blog visitors in Dubai, Slovenia and Peru.

It has been a good while since we posted a free form blog where we just use words, topics, things which are trending on Twitter, yada, yada, yada, and tonight, we are going to come with a short piece involving female athletes, many of which we saw on ESPN's "Nine for IX" documentary on female athletes.

The six athletes we are using former American gold-medal winning gymnast Mary Lou Retton (pictured top), soccer star Mia Hamm who lead the USA to a World Cup title in 1999 (pictured center), Gabrielle Reece, a beach volleyball superstar (we expect she help us get hits from Dubai, Oman and Yemen), Indy race car driver Danica Patrick, East German gold-medal winning figure skater Katarina Witt and tennis Wonder Woman Martina Navratilova.

Witt and Reece both posed for "Playboy," Hamm posed for the cover of "Washingtonian Magazine" and Retton for those Wheaties boxes.

Here we go:

"Mary Lou Retton, a country girl from Fairmont, W.Va, won gold at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics, and assuredly if Twitter had been around back then, she would have trending for a full six weeks. Mia Hamm went on to play for the Turkish soccer team Fenerbahce, an Istanbul powerhouse, and she broke a huge gender barrier for women (this is a joke, but there is now a women's soccer league in Turkey and ironically not one in America). Gabrielle Reece is probably driving a Prius with a bumper sticker that says: "Real athletes don't wear shoes." Amazingly enough, she is now 43 years old. But, Katarina Witt and Martina Navratilova are older than that. Witt was manipulated by the East German regime. Navratilova is now a gay rights activist and a novelist/writer; we assume she doesn't live in Topeka, Kansas. Danica Patrick is the only one of these athletes who has competed directly with men
in a men's sport. Of course, lots of guys hate her for this, but we think they are really just jealous because she is sooo out of their league."

Hmm....yeah, I don't think we need to file a copyright for this.

And, kudos to our beloved Salem Red Sox who defeated the Myrtle Beach Pelicans 1-0 in Salem, Va., in the first game of a best of three playoff series. The winner plays for the Carolina League championship.

http://www.gabriellereece.com/

http://www.miafoundation.org/

http://www.danicaracing.com/

http://en.katarina-witt.de/

http://www.martinanavratilova.com/

http://marylouretton.com/

Return of Friday Night Tweets: All Things Washington D.C.

Greetings to our blog readers in Mexico, South Africa and India. Tonight, if you only learn one thing from blog hopping, we hope that you take away this fact: Elin Suleymanov, we hope we spelled his name right, is the Azerbaijani ambassador to the United States.

Embassies were the focus of one tweet tonight, while others dealt with political issues du jour. It should also be pointed that unlike the web site for the Roanoke Tea Party (sorry, we aren't giving ou their link), which actually attacked Republican Congressman Bob Goodlatte of Virginia (?!), we are being nice to Cong. Morgan Griffith (R-Va), even though all of us here have voted for Barack Obama four times each.

Here are eight tweets which have been posted in the last 24 hours:

1. WNYC @ WNYC (NPR station in New York): Does NYC's density help protect elderly who live alone from dying in heat waves?

2. The Hill @TheHill, which is a DC-based newspaper covering Capitol Hill: "U.S. to reopen 18 of 19 embassies that were closed to terror threats. (Yemen is the lone American embassy which is not re-opening).

3. Politico @politico: "One take away from Obama's press conference. He doesn't like Vladamir Putin, not one bit."

4. The Vancouver Sun @VancouverSun: "Gay Russians seeking refuge in Canada to escape homophobic news laws."

5. Mormon Democrats @MormonDems: "#LiberalsGetUpsetWhen Republicans side with the 3 % of climate scientists who don't think #globalwarming is a problem."

6. Carson Daly @CarsonDaly: "And the Emmy goes to...........Jon Voight for Ray Donovan #wordscomingsoon"

7. Katrina vanden Heuvel @KatrinaNation: "A party that defies demographic reality, grounded in white resentment, may well doom itself to permanent minority-dom or political suicide. (Katrina is the managing editor of the liberal magazine "The Nation," pictured center. The publication has made national news for its spat with Wal-Mart over workers' wages).

8. Morgan Griffith @RepMGriffith: "Ok, Mr. President, show me the "dishes!" Show me the FISA court opinions, etc., so we can have the discussion you invited in your press conference." (Cong. Griffith is pictured bottom, he was previously the Republican leader in Virginia's House of Delegates).

For more tweets from the night go to our sister blog "Politics, Culture and Other Wastes of Time" http://www.politicscultureandotherwastesoft.blogspot.com


Other Links:

http://www.azembassy.us/3/33.html

http://thehill.com/

http://www.politico.com/

http://www.utahdemocrats.org/

http://morgangriffith.house.gov/

http://www.thenation.com/

Status Update_ Je Suis Tres Burned Out

If folks are wondering why a seemingly compulsive blogger like myself has not blogged in a full 48 hours, the reason is very simple. I am toast!

Recently, my friend Chris Knight made a highly confessional series about his a serious health condition that he was dealing with, and I thought to myself: "Hmmmm.....I'm not sure I could do that!" And, as a general rule, I've tried to avoid personal matters, except my political beliefs (memo to Newt Gingrich: Bring It On!).

But, the strains of teaching summer school are quite challenging, and it never seem to end. However, we are hoping to have some new entries up again as soon as tomorrow. Of course, grading mountains of papers will have to be the priority.

Interestingly enough, an image of burnt toast was used for the web site of Valley Bible Fellowship, a seemingly quite evangelical outfit in Boonville, Calif. (hey, I thought California was a blue state?). I read the post on the assumption that they were implying if one did not come to their church, they might find themselves in Hot Stuff's lair. But, upon reading the passage that went along with the entry, I could not quite figure out what they were saying at all.

That does remind me, all the "World is Coming to an End" billboards put up Harold Camping to promote May 21, 2011, as doomsday, have come down. There were about four on Route 220 between Roanoke, Va., and Greensboro, NC. I suppose we'll see them again with a new date some time next year!

SIDEBAR: The "If you gotta go, you gotta go" sentiment apparently does not apply to residents of Zimbabwe. While dictators in Syria, Yemen and Libya are making headlines due to their violent reactions towards political protests against their Orwellian leadership, Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe has gone under the radar.

But, on May 7th, Alois Mabhunu, a police sergeant in (we presume) the capital city of Harare, made the mistake of using Mugabe's own personal throne. So for using the designated toilet, Mabhunu got a ten-day jail sentence for invading the dictator's privacy.

I actually heard this on the BBC_ of all places!

Tweet of the Day- Gigi Ibrahim (Egyptian Activist)

Perhaps the hit theme song "Don't You Forget About Me" by Simple Minds from the 1985 film "The Breakfast Club" might be the new anthem for Gigi Ibrahim, a young Egyptian activist who became the human face behind the revolution.

Today, Syria, Libya and Yemen are getting more attention, but one expects that democracy will still take a while to fully evolve in Egypt.

Ibrahim is a graudate from the American University in Cairo, where she majored in political science, and she has also appeared on "The Daily Show" with Jon Stewart.

Here was her tweet today:

"Thank you for your great replies and support....Long live Egypt and our continous revolution."

SIDEBAR: I noticed that a gas station in the Roanoke, Va., area was now serving up Krispy Kreme burgers, but there is another form of gluttony making headlines today as Don Gorske, 59, a retired prison guard from Fondu du La, Wisc., who was featured in Morgan Spurlock's documentary "Super Size Me!" ate his 25,000th Big Mac today at his local McDee's. We wonder if Ronald McDonald was present for the occasion.

Beers from Around the World- Stella from Egypt (#43 of 50)

With the air of revolution in the air, today we are going to revive our Beers Around the World Series (the last entry was on Dec. 24, 2010, featuring Gold Star, which is ironically an Isreali beer), with Stella, the most popular home-made brew in Egypt.

Along with Turkey, Syria, Jordan and Tunisia, among others, Egypt is a Muslim country where men, especially those who might not regularly go to the mosque, drink beer.

In our Beers of the Muslim World series last year, we featured Sakara Gold, but as it turns out that Egyptian beer is not quite as popular as Stella, which can be found throughout the bars of Cairo and Alexandria. Stella Beer comes in three varieties, and the brand is known as 'the taste of Egypt.' It can also be purchased in cans or bottles, and the beer has a 4.5% alcoholic content.

As far as the political situation in Egypt, which at least one family friend was surprisingly unaware of (yes, we asked if they were in a cave for three weeks), it appears to be at least somewhat stabilized. Now the health of the recently deposed leader/dictator Hosni Mubarak has become a question.

And, riots and protests are continuing throughout the Arab World from Algeria to Yemen with Libya and Bahrain (a tiny country) seeing people take to the streets within the last 48 hours. The turmoil has also spilled into Iran (not an Arab country), where crackdowns by the government are fully expected.

SIDEBAR_ Just a few minutes ago, we had a chance to take an online quiz on mentalfloss.com where we correctly guessed that Arbitrager is the name of a London pub as opposed to a Charles Dickens story. I hope my good friend Tom Angleberger, a children's book author who happens to love Dickens, is proud of me!

Quote of the Day- Mel Gibson

We continue our series of quotes from people associated with the 32 countries in the 2010 World Cup with a quip from controversial, out-spoken actor/director/right-winger Mel Gibson who was born in New York, but grew up in Australia where he made it big as "Mad Max" (the 1982 sequel "Road Warrior" is pictured here) in 1977 when he was just in his early twenties.

This quote is in reference to "The Passion of the Christ," a film Gibson directed which I saw as an interesting mess:

"Obviously, nobody wants to touch something filmed in two dead languages. They think I'm crazy, and maybe I am. But maybe I'm a genius."


Hmmmmm.......


SIDEBAR: Apparently World Cup fever is even spreading in countries which are not in the competition as the Tokyo, Japan-based Twitter site Weird News is reporting that government authorities in Bangladesh have asked factories, stores and shopping malls in the capital city of Dhaka to close down to prevent the city's limited power supply from getting jammed. Mohammad Afrazur Rahman, the minister of energy for Bangladesh, actually made a formal request of compliance to the people of Dhaka!

SIDEBAR TWO: Chile beat Honduras to win the country's first game in the World Cup since 1962. In today's match in South Africa, Chilean striker Jean Beausejour scored what became the game-winning goal in the 34th minute of the game.

NOTE: We had a technical glitch with our last entry on the Somali-American Yahya Wehelie, 26, who is trapped in Egypt as the FBI put him on a no-fly list as he was trying to board a plane to the United States from the Cairo Airport six weeks ago. The Washington, DC-area resident has spent 18 months in Yemen, where many jihadists have been working in terrorist camps. But, Wehelie's parents insist he is not involved in radical ideology. We were hoping to post labels for the post when the glitch occured so we will post those labels here instead.