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Pastimes : Don't Ask Rambi -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: JF Quinnelly who wrote (53202)	7/10/2000 3:52:34 AM
From: nihil	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 71178

Well, I think the Blue Angels are a waste of money and of naval officers. The $18 million a year doesn't include the cost of crashed planes or the lives of the 23 flyers since 19460. That's more than the losses in Somalia. I'd like to see some justification for this tragedy. usmilitary.about.com;

To: JF Quinnelly who wrote (53202)	7/10/2000 6:51:19 AM
From: BlueCrab	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 71178

Fred, I didn't know you liked PJ. He's one of my faves. "Holidays in Hell" should be required reading for all international travelers, altho it's dated now.

To: JF Quinnelly who wrote (53202)	7/10/2000 10:04:02 PM
From: Crocodile	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 71178

Just thinking about something that happened around this time of year about...hmmm... maybe 30 years ago... My family was visiting some at a farm owned by an older couple...it was the place that I've mentioned before on DAR... where my Dad brought prototype vehicles to test drive. It's also the place where the man used to collect buckets full of flat rocks which he saved for our visits. Then we were given hammers and cold chisels to split open the rocks to reveal the fish fossils inside. It was a fun place to visit in summer. Lots to do. This guy kept a couple of buckets of golf balls out in his apple orchard so that you could take a club out and smash a few out into the trees... And there were funny things around his house... old gramophones and 78s and the kind of Victrola thing that played wax rolls...and a player piano...and a stereoscope with lots of cards to go with it... And one of those "electrical machines" that people used to use around the turn of the century to "improve" their health. It consisted of a wooden box with a handcrank on one side and two woven copper cables going to two copper tube-shaped handles. One person cranked the box up to create electricity, while the other person held the handles...one in each hand...and received an electric shock. If you cranked the thing like mad, the shock would sometimes get so strong that the person holding the handles would have to drop them. The man had been a flyer in the RAF and had lots of old photos from WWII, and his jacket, leather helmet and goggles, which one of my brothers would wear around the house for hours. The woman had a very old metal chinese checkers gameboard which we would use to play on until it was time to go to bed. Anyhow, the memory I have is of one evening when we were just about to go to sleep. My brothers had decided to sleep on the floor with some kind of fuzzy blanket over them. One of my brothers was wearing a plaid shirt made out of a funny fabric...probably synthetic... wish I knew exactly what. In any case, my brothers were acting bad... laughing and wrestling and acting crazy... It was pitch black in the room that we were in and all you could hear was the two of them acting like a couple of kooks... Then all at once there was a lot of crackling and one of my brothers stood up and started running around and shrieking. All I could see from my place on a cot was a whole lot of fiery static... which was exactly what it was... the most crazy "static electricity" fireworks that I've ever seen. I started laughing at him...(my standard reaction to just about everything). My brother was furious at me once the static crackling stopped.. Well, that's just a little memory from my past...