Living with War

The more we sweat in peace the less we bleed in war.
Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit (1900-1990), diplomat and politician

Dear Veterans: I truly wish there was no need for your efforts. Sadly, too frequently, that is not the case, so thank you with much admiration.

The Corner of Salvation and Damnation

At least two thirds of our miseries spring from human stupidity, human malice and those great motivators and justifiers of malice and stupidity, idealism, dogmatism and proselytizing zeal on behalf of religious or political idols.
Aldous Huxley (1894 –1963), writer

I was invited to attend a Christian Fellowship church that occupied a prime one-block piece of real estate on Centinela Avenue and Venice Boulevard. It also doubles as a coffee shop. I wonder if those profits are taxed? I normally would have politely declined, but there was some policeman from Fort Apache in the Bronx speaking and wife being from the Bronx knows the area well, so what the heck. Besides, attending a church for something other than a funeral mass would be nice. Afterward we’d go to Santa Monica and walk around.

I am a cynic, what can I say. I looked around the church and saw what I would describe as pious hypocrites and lonely people looking to belong. Good for them, I wish them all well.

Eventually the Christian band finished their set, the preacher starting talking and shoehorning every topic into something about or from God. He mentioned that Friday night was a special couples marriage discussion, I wonder if that includes married gay couples?

The cop was introduced and started his sermon with a story about his little lost soul as a kid and how he was rescued from his tough neighborhood and how eventually he saved someone. Most every sentence was punctuated with an amen at the end. It was all well and good, until the end when the converted cop said something about Jesus coming and saving people unlike Muslims or Hindus. Huh? Hold everything, did I just hear this ambassador of fellowship and Christ show his prejudice? Yes, I did.

I mentioned this to my friend; he had picked up on it too. But, it’s his church and he’ll just forgive the speaker.

Wife and I eventually headed toward Santa Monica, but I kept thinking that rather than add more of a financial burden on the backs of working stiffs (California just instituted a mandatory 10.23 percent state income tax), this country needs to start taxing the churches for income and property taxes, if they are going to preach their politics and prejudices. I have no doubt that the additional tax income will close some of the budget gaps around the country. Amen!

Worst Christmas Card Ever:Three Wise Camels

It features camels, singing a rewritten version of the Black Eyed Peas song, "My Humps" -- in tribute to Jesus. Please go see it here.

And consider this my early wishes to our Christian friends for a Merry Christmas.

Ready for My Close Up

Nature will bear the closest inspection. She invites us to lay our eye level with her smallest leaf, and take an insect view of its plain.
Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862), writer, poet

(click on the pictures for an even closer look)


This predatory, cannibalistic insect is known by his religious name Praying Mantis. He loves aphids, which is why he was allowed to remain. However, once I got a good look at him (I am assuming he is a him, but he could be a her), it would be very difficult for me to do anything other than pick him up and move him/her to another destination.


If his cousins, termites and cockroaches, come around they will be dealt with harshly.

Obi-Wan Kenobi tells Luke how he really feels about Mos Eisley

[Thanks, GeekTyrant!]

A Sunday of Sad Sinatra Songs

One and the same thing can at the same time be good, bad, and indifferent, e.g., music is good to the melancholy, bad to those who mourn, and neither good nor bad to the deaf.
Baruch Spinoza (1632 – 1677), philosopher

It’s Sunday morning for another 30 minutes and I have finished the Los Angeles Times and most of the New York Times. Prior to that listened to CBS "Sunday Morning" show, which featured Andy Williams and further confirmed why I never appreciated his milquetoast interpretations of popular standards. After that was the last 40 minutes of “Meet the Press,” with the politicians doing their version of he said, she said. It’s no wonder that this country has lost its way.

And, it’s no wonder that I am feeling melancholy. I drove just short of 300 miles yesterday taking my great aunt to see a retirement home that is comparable to a four-star hotel when matched up to her nursing facility with its hallways littered with patients asleep in their wheelchairs, and the new place is a $1,000 a month less. The day ended yesterday with auntie relying on a friend’s comment about “I read recently that when you move close to relatives they don’t visit you any more.” I have news for her, she will see me far less if she stays put because I am tired of that 120-mile round trip just to play Rummy 500. So, on top of everything else today I am fatigued. As I type this, I am listening to a Frank Sinatra mix that I call Frank Sinatra (sad). I also have Frank Sinatra (swinging) and Frank Sinatra (live).

My "sad" mix starts with “As Time Goes By” followed by classics from before I was born to his version in the ‘60s and finally in the mid-‘80s. On The Mark told me how he had complied a few of those versions and compared it to a listening version of comparing newly bottled to aged wine. I followed suit and made my list, which I listen to over and over.

As Time Goes By from “Point of No Return”
Don't Worry 'bout Me “Where Are You”
Don't Worry 'bout Me “Frank Sinatra Vegas, Live At The Sands January-February 1966”
Angel Eyes “Only the Lonely”
Angel Eyes "80th year Frank at Meadows Land”
One for My Baby (And One More for the Road) “Only the Lonely”
One more for the Road (And One for My Baby) “Sinatra at the Sands”
One more for the Road “Frank at Meadows Land”
I Can't Believe I'm Losing You “Softly, As I Leave You”
Hey Look, No Cryin' “She Shot Me Down”
Yesterday “My Way”
Drinking Again “Nothing But The Best”
Empty Tables “The Reprise Collection”
Thanks for the Memory “She Shot Me Down”
The Gal That Got Away/It Never Entered My Mind “The Reprise Collection”
Send in the Clowns “The Reprise Collection”
Don't Take Your Love from Me “Sinatra and Strings”
If You Go Away “My Way”
Didn't We “My Way”
In the Wee Small Hours of the Morning “In the Wee Small Hours”
My Heart Stood Still “The Concert Sinatra”
My Heart Stood Still "Sinatra 80th"

Toner Mishap Turns 5 Welcome RJW

Life is like playing a violin in public and learning the instrument as one goes on.
Samuel Butler (1835 - 1902), novelist

Toner Mishap is five years old this month, Oct. 19th to be exact. Wow, where did the time go? I have had a lot fun with this blog and over the years. I have seen the pleasure and power of the blog from results of a company afraid of the bad publicity, the spiteful revenge of an alternate juror who tried his darnest to get The Misanthrope in trouble with the courts because he didn’t agree with The Misanthrope's political philosophy, the wrath of a judge who didn’t appreciate The Misanthrope's ruminations on jury duty (not the trial, a fine line the legal system doesn’t recognize), the anger of some loyal employee at a well known electronics store, who can’t recognize that his company suffers from severe lack of customer service, broadcasting daughter’s successes, to comments from a member of The Faces and a once touring member of the Rolling Stones.

Now the page has turned from over-the-top hyperbole to more honest writing and a lot less politics. Politics has turned into a sport of my side versus your side – the country be damned, so politics will be at a minimum going forward unless of course a friend is hurt by the nonsense of such politics like Alice or my daughter who falls into the gap between my policy and being full-time law student.

In any case, this is the rambling way of introducing RJW as the newest member of Toner Mishap and the minimizing of The Misanthrope (truly a softhearted palooka that only a few recognized as such -- softhearted, not so much palooka).

I hope you stick around and come back over the months, the years, and enjoy it all in the process.

Amateur Photography

What is written about a person or an event is frankly an interpretation, as are handmade visual statements, like paintings and drawings. Photographed images do not seem to be statements about the world so much as pieces of it, miniatures of reality that anyone can make or acquire.
Susan Sontag (1933 – 2004) author, literary theorist, and political activist from, "On Photography"

(U.S. High Diving Team '81, photo by RJW)

If I could have a second career it would be as a photographer. Granted, I am coming upon it a bit late, but I thoroughly enjoy it. Oh, I could put on my résumé that I was an official photographer and that I had photos published in newspapers around the country, picked up by Associated Press, The National Enquirer, but I just took it in stride being the official photographer for a major amusement park. I photographed Elton John, Rolling Stones’ keyboardist Ian McLagan, who was on ’81 tour; a runaway bear dragging its trainer on the ground; high divers; Michael Jackson wearing a Groucho Marx mustache and glasses while watching the Temptations; and various other miscellanies around the park. Sadly, I cannot find many of the photos, if I ever had them, but I did get a few good shoots. Still, I never viewed myself as a photographer.

(Mary Travers circa. '81 photo by RJW)

Photographers know what they were doing; know how to develop film, know how to mix chemicals make the photos highlight key aspects of the picture, and know lighting and exposure settings. Me, I would, and still do, take numerous photos hoping that one of the photos on the contact sheet spying it through a photographer’s loop would turn out once I sent it out to be developed.

However, today, I have a greater appreciation of the art of photography and realize how little I know, and today the camera is almost idiot proof and has so many features that you can experiment and even take pictures of something photographed numerous times and still eke out something original. Because I have the Toner Mishap soapbox, I can share my amateur photos with the world and I will as times goes by.

Thank you for your indulgence.

(Smothers Brothers, Tommy and Dick circa. '81, photo by RJW)

by RJW