But Don't Quote Me

"...a cloud of dust and a hearty "Hi-ho, Silver..."

According to the "What Do You Think?" poll on MSN.com, when asked the question, "What was your favorite part of the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia?", readers of the website responded thusly:

            ~Amazing athletes...........................................29%

            ~Mishaps/memes............................................3%

            ~Team USA gold-medal performances............9%

            ~Bob Costas' eye............................................10%

            ~DIDN'T WATCH........................................49%

These numbers were taken from 323,986 responses, as of 4:00pm CST on 2/25/14.

Your Pope Guy didn't watch either.

FYI, the Pope Guy is yours truly, John The Tall of the All John All The Time World Church and All-Night Diner; if you're interested, there's an almost viable explanation as to how this travesty occurred above (see above).

Recently, your Popeamundo has immersed himself in Presidential and Founding Fathers history, for reasons undetermined at this time; mostly, it just kinda' happened that way.

It probably started about a year ago when I read, back to back, two outstanding biographies: that of Abraham Lincoln, entitled cleverly, "Lincoln", by David Herbert Donald and of Harry S. Truman, also cleverly entitled, "Truman", by the Pulitzer Prize-winning author, David McCullough.

Both were outstanding.

Before long, caught up in a desire to learn more about the background and thinking processes of the various men who have risen to become the most powerful leader in the world, I went on a feeding frenzy of reading, which is my normal routine anyway (being forced to choose between reading and eating, I would have to give the proposition serious consideration), and devoured the following tomes over the last several months:

            ~"John Adams" again by the above-mentioned David McCullough

~"Team Of Rivals" by Doris Kearnes Goodwin, which was the book the movie "Lincoln", with Oscar-winner Daniel Day Lewis, was based on

~"Theodore Rex" by Edmund Morris, which described the Presidential years of Teddy Roosevelt's life

~"Eisenhower" by Stephen E. Ambrose

~"Washington, A Life" by Ron Chernow, an excellent work

~"Thomas Jefferson, The Art Of Power" by Jon Meachum, a wonderful book

And sitting on my shelf waiting patiently are:

~"The First American, The Life And Times of Benjamin Franklin" by H.W. Brands

~"John Quincy Adams" by Harlan Giles Ungar, a distant cousin of Felix, I presume

(Yes, I know Franklin wasn't a President, but he was one of the most influential of the signers of the Declaration Of Independence, so I figured, why not?)

The thing that has struck me about all of the above is number of "quotes", or if I were to use the current vernacular, "sound bites", that appear in the pages of these books.

So I thought to myself, Pope, you should share some of these treasures, with your loyal followers, all three of you, along with some of my own pithy and occasionally deeply profound gems of wisdom, as well as a number of comments, wry and ridiculous, from other famous commentators, Presidential and otherwise.

In no particular order then, here they are:

~"Is the present state of the national republic enough? Is virtue the principle of our government? Is honor? Or is ambition and avarice, adulation, baseness, covetousness, the thirst for riches, indifference concerning the means of rising and enriching, the contempt of principle, the spirit of party and of faction the motive and principle that governs?"

            John Adams

~"Blessed are the tall, for they can reach the top shelf."

            PJTT

~"What would Jesus Christ have preached if he'd taken a poll in Israel?...It isn't polls or public opinion of the moment that counts. It's right and wrong."

            Harry Truman

~"Personally, I liked the university. They gave us money and facilities, we didn't have to produce anything. You've never been out of college, you don't know what it's like out there! I've worked in the private sector. They expect results."

            Dr. Raymond Stantz (Dan Akroyd in "Ghostbusters")

~"Free speech is a restraint on government, not an incitement to the citizen."

            Dean Acheson (Secretary of State under Harry Truman)

~"...and blessed are the bewildered, not because they're cool or anything, but because they can use all the help they can get..."

            PJTT

~"Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear."

            Thomas Jefferson

~"A blind horse upon a treadmill, is a perfect illustration of what a laborer should be-all the better for being blind, that he could not tread out of place, or kick understandingly."

            Abraham Lincoln (speaking of a slave society)

~"I may be drunk, Miss, but in the morning I will be sober and you will still be ugly."

            Winston Churchill

~"Recession is when a neighbor loses his job. Depression is when you lose yours."

            Ronald Reagan

~"America and Britain are two nations divided by a common language."

            George Bernard Shaw, playwright

~"The truth is that the greatest enemies to the doctrines of Jesus are those calling themselves the expositors of them, who have perverted them for the structure of a system of fancy absolutely incomprehensible, and without any foundation in his genuine words."

            Thomas Jefferson

~"If you come to a fork in the road, take it."

            Yogi Berra, catcher

~"Blessed are the lazy, for although they don't accomplish much, they're well rested."

            PJTT

~"If one morning I walked on top of the water across the Potomac River, the headline that afternoon would read: 'President Can't Swim'."

            Lyndon Johnson

~"They read the same Bible, and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other."

            Abraham Lincoln (speaking of people of the North and South during the Civil War)

~"There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it. My job is not to worry about those people. I'll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives."
            Mitt Romney, wannabe President

~"I have wondered at times what the Ten Commandments would have looked like if Moses had run them through the US Congress."

            Ronald Reagan

~"We don't pay taxes. Only the little people pay taxes."

            Leona Helmsley, wannabe human being and billionaire

~"For the first time in my adult lifetime, I'm really proud of my country."

Michelle Obama

~"It's like deja-vu, all over again."

Yogi Berra

~"I am on my way to Massachusetts, where I have a son at school, who, if report be true, already knows much more than his father."

Abraham Lincoln

 And my all-time favorite...

~"Never tease an armed midget with a high-five."

            PJTT

Love and quotation marks,

PJTT

copyright 2014 Krissongs Inc.

This, That And My Brother

I hope you're listening.

(Actually, I decided to leave out the "my brother" part of this post, since he's fundamentally a self-important know-it-all that I'm sure you guys don't want to hear about anyway.)

So there.

"Is the present state of the national republic enough? Is virtue the principle of our government? Is honor? Or is ambition and avarice, adulation, baseness, covetousness, the thirst for riches, indifference concerning the means of rising and enriching, the contempt of principle, the spirit of party and of faction the motive and principle that governs?"

John Adams, 2nd President of the United States, in a letter to his long-time friend Benjamin Rush, who was not only his physician but the founder of the eponymous rock group, dated 2/6/1805, or 209 years ago today.

(Okay, the part about "the founder of the eponymous rock group" was a vicious lie, but the rest was spot on, for then and, sadly so it seems, for the present day as well. But I promised several of my loyal followers, mainly my daughter, Fred, that I wouldn't comment on politics anymore. Well, maybe occasionally.)

As the leader of an international faith (yes, I am Pope John The Tall, head of the All John All The Time World Church and Currency Exchange; see the explanation at the top of the page for how this travesty came into being), I feel it's my duty to my flock to not only spread the word of the "soothing balm of Johnism", but to keep my finger on the pulse of current events in our world today, and to comment, and hopefully shed light on these sundry mysteries, for the betterment of my dedicated followers.

With that thought in mind, I have gleaned from my readings of the local newspapers and various Internet media outlets a number of items of which I feel the members of the AJATTWC should be aware.

Accordingly, in no apparent order that I can discern:

~Did you know that electricity travels through wires at the rate of 700 MILLION MILES PER HOUR? That's WAY faster than the Speed Of Aroma, a measurement that has been commented upon here in the official AJATTWC blog on quite a few occasions previously. At that rate, electricity would still take 18 minutes to pass through the drive-up at any McDonalds, anywhere. (FYI, I learned this bit of trivia from a Jeffery Deaver novel I'm currently reading, literature being a huge source of scientific data for me.)

~The Denver Broncos were the victims of a botched snap from their starting center, Manny Ramirez, on the first play from scrimmage of Super Bowl XXLVGQPRS (and the game was essentially over at that point), and I have to think that choosing an almost 41-year old ex-baseball player and proven abuser of PEDs for your offensive line has to be asking for trouble; John Fox, what were you thinking?

Hang on, the Popephone is ringing...

"PJTT"..."hey, Mike, what's up?"..."oh, that's not the same Manny Ramirez?"..."oh"..."yeah, okay, I better change that"..."yeah, thanks, almost slobbered a bibful there, didn't I?"..."yeah, you too, see you later."

That was my consigliore, the Right Reverend Monsignor Michael Jordan (no, not the one that went to North Carolina); he tells me that the Manny Ramirez who plays for the Broncos isn't the same misguided cretin who screwed up his chances to get into the baseball Hall Of Fame and totally embarrassed himself at the end of his career Manny Ramirez.

Sorry; okay, moving on...

~I called a doctor's office last week for an initial appointment, needing to establish a new physician for myself, having returned recently to the frigid climes of Northern Illinois from the warm and sunny San Fernando Valley area of L.A. The young lady who answered the phone was very nice and very professional, but after I explained that I was a new patient, the first question she asked me was whether or not I have health insurance. Not how did you learn about Dr. X, or how did you come to call our office, just, can you pay? And I thought to myself, Pope, whatever happened to the Hippopotamus Oath that doctors must swear to uphold when they complete medical school? Where does it talk about, get the money info before giving treatment, huh? Geez.

~40 kids at a Utah elementary school had their lunches taken away earlier this week and were given a piece of fruit and a carton of milk as a replacement after lunchroom employees of the school district determined that the 40 children didn't have sufficient money in their "lunch accounts" to pay for the meal. Nice work, Utah school staffers; I personally appreciate how you're guarding our tax dollars (even though I don't, and wouldn't, live in Utah, the home of a lake named after a condiment and a religion whose guardian angel is named "Moroni", which is Italian for "we need to increase contributions"), by ensuring that no innocent, hungry child gets away with cheating the system for a free meal.

~A poll in the "What Do You Think?" portion of the website MSN.com posed the question recently, "Should Justin Bieber Be Deported To Canada?" The results were as follows:

-86% (EIGHTY-SIX PERCENT) responded with a resounding "Yes"

-5% thought he was "valued here" (drug-sellers, apparently)

-3% said they were "not sure" and

-6% asked "who is Justin Beiber?"

One can only hope. (By the way, all of the above is true; I didn't make up any of it, and I'm not above occasionally "inventing" facts, if it serves my purpose.)

~A lawsuit was brought in federal court last month by a resident of Cincinnati OH, Amy Herbst, and her husband, former Army Staff Sgt. James Herbst, alleging that a botched episiotomy performed on Ms. Herbst during the birth of their son at a military hospital caused her to suffer "incontinence" and "excessive gas", and that the uncontrolled flatulence has rendered her unable to continue as a mezzo-soprano for the Nashville Opera Company, where she has been a member of the ensemble since 2012. The couple is seeking $2.5 million in damages and costs. What was most striking to me about this article was the fact that Nashville has an opera company other than The Grand Ol'. I'm also thinking this gives new meaning to the phrase "singing from your diaphragm".

~I cannot help but think that there are a goodly number of you, oh dedicated followers of your Pope, that have thirsted your entire lives to obtain the knowledge of how to make a paper airplane fly continuously. Since I see it as one of my duties as your spiritual leader to help satisfy desires such as these, please see the link below (below) for an explanation of how to achieve this pinochle of aeronautical success.

You may thank me later. 

http://msnvideo.msn.com/?channelindex=2&from=en-us_msnhpvidmod#/video/2280b720-879b-41f2-b88b-43ca7f723195 (paper airplane)

~And lastly, and not a moment too soon I'm sure, speaking of Justin Bieber, and I'd really rather not, here is "Stone Cold" Steve Austin's remarks on how he would handle the current Bieber controversies. 

https://vine.co/v/MzOmgv3TYtT

Love and miscellany,

PJTT

copyright 2014 Krissongs Inc.