Your Sunday Morning Big Prop Noise

A Vickers Vimy, the RFC's heavy bomber from the Great War:

The Silence of the Guns

The guns fell silent one hundred yeas ago today at this moment, one minute after John Gunther was killed, ending the First World War. It was, at the time, the bloodiest war in history.

Armistice Day was first commemorated a year later.

Field Marshal Foch turned out to be correct when he said that the resultant peace was just a twenty-year armistice.

One hundred years. Everyone who was in the war, everyone who had any first-hand recollection of the war is gone. My grandfather had two infant sons in 1917 that he called his "weather-stripping," because they kept him out of the draft. They're gone, too.

There's a tangible difference between learning history from those who were there and from books. When my English class read 1984, the elderly teacher had been a teenaged girl during the First World War. She told us that before a movie rolled, somebody would stand up before the audience and tell why it was so necessary to send their young men to fight the Kaiser-- the "two minute hate" had been a real thing.

The sad thing is that there is a sense that the lessons of that war are fading. That we're heading back towards a time when the only ways that disputes between nations were resolved was by trade wars and shooting wars. Leaders are starting to take up smoking in powder magazines.

Anyway, as I'm sure that I've ranted before, anyone who is running a "Veterans Day Sale" should have one testicle crushed with a mallet.

Opening Day

Everyone be safe and follow the Four Rules.

Caturday

Bella shows some of the fun of shooting a solid-black cat in a well-lit room using natural light:

I probably should have enabled the flash in order to fill in the background. But I like how it came out.

Because It's Friday

Steam in Cuba, a couple of decades ago:

80 years

Kristallnacht was 80 years ago.

Germany had been an the trajectory to the Shoah since the German far-right began blaming Jews for the outcome of the Kaiser’s War (WW1). If there was any doubt as to what was going to happen, it should have ended on November 9, 1938.

Shorter Trump: "Nice Government You Have Here. Too Bad if Something Were to Happen it It."

[Oval Office Occupant] Donald Trump, emboldened by Republican election wins in the Senate and scornful of GOP candidates he felt didn’t sufficiently embrace his support, delivered a stark warning to the new Democratic House majority on Wednesday: Investigate me, and I’ll investigate you — and the government will grind to a halt.

Noting that his Republican Party retained control of the Senate on Tuesday, he said that if Democrats in the House come after him, “we’ve got” a thing called the U.S. Senate.

I respectfully suggest that the response should be a reasonably polite variant of "game on, motherfucker".

Meanwhile, Commandante Bone Spurs lost no time throwing out Jeff Sessions and replacing him with a Grade-B Lacky, who apparently is more in tune with "whatever Trump wants and fuck the rule of law."

Talkie Report: Bohemian Rhapsody

It does not suck.

Go to see Rami Malek's performance as Freddie Mercury. If he's not nominated for a "best actor" Oscar, then the theater where they host the awards ceremony should be razed.

But don't go if you're expecting a biopic. At best, it should be labeled "based on a true story," for considerable liberties were taken.

But still, it's one of the best pictures that I've seen in a good while.

And hell, it's a cheap concert. You'll probably stay through the credits for the music.

For your viewing/listening pleasure, here is Queen's set at Live Aid in 1985:

I Did My Part, You Do Yours

VOTE!

Ayup