My Hero

May 29: Japanese mountain climber Katsusuke Yanagisawa, 71, speaks to the Associated Press after returning from climbing the summit of Mount Everest to become the oldest person to scale it, in Katmandu, Nepal. Yanagisawa, a retired junior high school teacher from central Japan, was 71 years, 2 months and 2 days old when he reached the 29,035-foot peak on May 22, becoming the oldest Everest climber and beating the record set last year by another Japanese climber, Takao Arayama, who was 70 years, 7 months and 13 days old.

Kool-aid pickles...

The latest taste treat in the Delta region of Arkansas is 'Kool-aid pickles'.
They have gotten so popular here that the New York Times ran the following story:

Nuclear pickles

Thank goodness for the Mississippi Delta. It’s given us Doe’s steaks. It’s given us tamales. Arkansas was quick to replicate these food finds. But what about this new one?

The New York Times reported last week on the huge popularity of dill pickles cured in Kool-Aid. They’re sold in convenience stores at nearly every Mississippi Delta crossroads and they’re wildly popular with school kids, who often sell them at neighborhood stands and school fund-raisers.

Curing a dill pickle in Kool-Aid produces a sweet-sour delight, apparently, and the recipes are jealously guarded. The process also produces a pickle of scary hue, from the radioactive red pickle used to illustrate the New York Times food section article to a blue hue never seen in any part of the natural universe. Our question for readers is this: Has the Kool-Aid pickle negotiated the passage across the wide Mississippi River? Is it being sold in Arkansas? Inquiring minds want to know. (One Arkansas Blog reader has already reported an Arkansas variation of some years back: A gallon jar of dill pickle chips marinated in a bottle of Tabasco and five pounds of sugar.)

We have fried pickles in Tennessee, but I've not seen these yet.

My first airplane flight...

I took my first airplane flight in 1951 at age 11 from the Nashville Airport (pic in rear)on an Eastern flight going to Atlanta. The plane was a Lockheed 1049 'super-constellation' with four engines You walked out the front door there and out to the plane and climbed the roll up steps to get inside. Things were a little different then. People wore suits back then as a flight was a big deal.
The plane has a interesting history if any cares to read about it.

Wall of Weird...

Old-school gentleman or gun-toting sadist? Both, say Spector's women. Acid dazed whack job?
We've all read about nice guy Phil and then the drunk, gun wielding Phil, his evil twin brother.
Heres an interesting story about hanging out with Phil which, as the writer says, ..."was fun except for two occasions".

The Zimmers

My Generation sings My Generation....this is tooo cool.

Antonio Machado

“Wanderer there is no path. You lay a path in walking.”

...Antonio Machado

Naked man superglued to exercise bike during heist

Thu May 3, 2007 12:28PM BST

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - A gang stripped a South African man before supergluing him to an exercise bicycle while they ransacked his house, according to a report on Thursday.

SAPA news agency said the attackers, dressed in suits, hijacked a man in his 50s and forced him at gunpoint to take them to his home in Johannesburg.

"The victim was then forced to strip, after which he was superglued to the seat of an exercise bicycle, his hands were superglued, as were his feet and then his mouth was superglued shut," SAPA quoted Mark Stokoe, a spokesman for emergency services Netcare 911, as saying.

The man was rescued about three hours later when his partner arrived home, SAPA said.

South Africa is battling one of the world's highest crime rates which has prompted concerns that violence might mar the 2010 soccer World Cup, which the country is due to host.

A police spokesman could not immediately comment on the report. No one at Netcare 911 could be reached.