4.27.2009

Pay No Attention To That Airliner Out Your Window

Just in time for morning coffee break, there outside your window, a few hundred yards above the nearest tall building, there goes a huge commercial jet heading west, followed by a fighter jet.

Maybe we're hallucinating?

No, there it goes again. A commercial jet flying low over Jersey City skyscrapers, followed by a fighter jet.

Wow, this is unreal. Maybe I should pack my bags and plan a way to get home.

Three is the magic number. The jets pass over head. I should get out my camera in case it happens again.

But no, we're given the word to evacuate the building.
You don't have to tell us twice. We're calmly heading down the fire stairs, out into a surprisingly clear day.

Feels like we've been through this before.


http://blogs.wsj.com/middleseat/2009/04/27/readers-did-you-see-the-low-flying-jet-over-lower-manhattan/





- Anthony




Picture a HUGE size jet filling all the sky in this photo - that's how big and how low it was!

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Copyright © 2009 by Anthony Buccino, all rights reserved. Photos and content may not be used for commercial purposes without written permission.

4.25.2009

Remembering Pat on her 62nd birthday

Remembering Pat on her 62nd birthday ...

Other summer nights we'd run after
the "Mosquito Man" chasing him through the sweet-smelling blue cloud of smoke emitting from his county-owned jeep. It could kill mosquitos but we never gave a thought as to what it could do to us.
Next door to the south lived Benny and Rosie. Benny let me watch The Three Stooges on his TV when my father had enough and scooted me outdoors.
Whenever their niece Gloria got a second game for Christmas or her birthday, she left the extra at Uncle Ben and Rosie's. Then on rainy days, Gloria and I would play Mouse Trap or whatever.
Rosie's sister Helen used to make the summer for Lulu and me. Helen drove her husband Mitch to work and took the family Chevy for the day. She drove us to Sun Tan Lake far off in the woods of northern New Jersey.
Along with her daughters, Patricia, Mary Ellen and Gloria, she brought my mom, her bingo partner, Lulu and me. Patricia always tried to convince Lulu and me to tell anyone we met that we were cousins.
We were practically related: Our fathers had grown up next door to each other and our mothers had gone to bingo since the game was invented. My dad was Mary Ellen's godfather and Mitch was my godfather.
We saw more of them than many of our real relatives. They were always visiting next door. And at every Pigeon Club banquet, I had to dance one obligatory dance with Gloria who was one year older and a few inches taller. ...

Adapted From Sister Dressed Me Funny

4.22.2009

Elementary student strip search

Seems like this kind of story surfaces every few years or so. Some school decides to strip search a kid and eventually the news gets out and there's a flurry of invective and then it all seems to fade away.

Perhaps now that the Supreme Court of the United States is looking into the strip search of an elementary student in Arizona, the news will play a tad longer on the front page.

But unless you've ever been an elementary student strip-searched by persons of authority, you'll never comprehend the shame and terror. It stays with you forever.


"...Irked at the boys’ failure to come forward with what they had done in their Fruit of the Loom briefs in their charcoal gray slacks, the Sisters herded the four boys down the hallway without allowing the boys a quick prayer to any of the sacred statues in the hall.
They were led as sheep by a shepherd towards the boys’ lavatory. Sister JoAnn stayed behind, just outside the two classrooms to ensure their peaceful, if curious study, while Sister Lenore (or was it Eleanor?) directed the trembling boys into the boys’ lavatory.
She ordered them to stand facing the urinals, one for each of the four boys who had been standing in the hallway next to MaryAnn who had soiled her delicate unmentionables.

The boys trembled, first at a woman in the boys’ lavatory, then at a nun in the boys’ lavatory, and then when Sister Lenore (or was it Eleanor?) ordered, “Drop your trousers.”

“God, help the boy who fouled up the hallway,” she inveighed.

Shyly, each boy, not understanding the trouble each boy was in because of what one of the other three must have done, looked aside at the other boys.

“No talking. Eyes straight ahead,” Sister Lenore barked, her scream echoing against the tile like a doo-wop group’s tune.

With her nose, Sister Lenore’s tried to head off the incident by discovering which of the boys had soiled his trousers before the boys would have to do what she had ordered.

Bashfully, the boys in front of other boys for the first time in their lives began to unbuckle their belts, one boy after the other, then all at the same time. One pair of trousers fell, then another, and another and another.

“No! Enough!” Sister Lenore called curtly called when one boy began to drop his lily white Fruit Of The Loom briefs.

Using her strong Roman nose to sniff out evil-doings in little third grade boys, Sister Lenore inspected the back of the boys’ white underwear from several feet away. In their white cotton briefs, the boys stood facing cold white urinals.

Perhaps it was the smell of this place, or the white disks near the urinal drains, or the smell of cold, hard fear like the cold hard urinal enamel that set the little boys trembling, trying so hard not to cry in front of each other.

Terror flushed inside their racing hearts. They waited to hear the clicking wisp of black rosaries when Sister whisked a solid oak paddle from beneath her long black habit. Sacred fear as the martyrs themselves must have known roiled within the boys as they awaited the “Thwack!” and someone else’s sobbing scream and tears...
...Sister JoAnn, in her most authoritative voice ordered the full class of more than sixty third graders to never again mention what had happened in the hallway or “God, help you,” there would certainly be Hell to pay.

And to this day, no one ever said a word ..."

From: SISTER DRESSED ME FUNNY


The naked truth about strip searches in school

LI educators monitor Arizona student strip-search case

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Copyright © 2009 by Anthony Buccino, all rights reserved. Photos and content may not be used for commercial purposes without written permission.

Sister Dressed Me Funny excerpt copyright © 1996 by Anthony Buccino, all rights reserved.


4.20.2009

Hand painted Ukranian eggs

I tried emailing these photos but got this message:

BANNED FILENAME ALERT

Your message to: xoxo was blocked by our Spam Firewall. The email you sent with the following subject has NOT BEEN DELIVERED:

Subject: egg pics

An attachment in that mail was of a file type that the Spam Firewall is set to block


Copyright © 2009 by Anthony Buccino

Copyright © 2009 by Anthony Buccino



Copyright © 2009 by Anthony Buccino

These eggs have been in the family for decades.

Don't forget, you can click on the photo and see a larger view of the detail.
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Copyright © 2009 by Anthony Buccino, all rights reserved. Photos and content may not be used for commercial purposes without written permission.
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4.19.2009

Subliminal messages for writers and poets

We heard of subliminal messages (buy my books) being slipped into movie previews in theatres, but what about subliminal messages (buy my books) being posted for poets and writers at a writing conference.

Anyone who was close enough to read the writing on the wall (sounds like the makings of a good Bible story) at writers workshop on Saturday must have been wondering due to the subliminal messages (buy my books) how low writers might go when facing the terrible brick wall of writer's block.

Copyright © 2009 by Anthony Buccino, all rights reserved.

Copyright © 2009 by Anthony Buccino, all rights reserved.psychomotor agitagion - two words that we never thought would appear in this blog

Well, as Freud once said (buy my books), sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. Or was that Fidel Castro?

Writers, you know how we are. Anything we see and hear is grist for our script-eating mill.

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Copyright © 2009 by Anthony Buccino, all rights reserved. Photos and content may not be used for commercial purposes without written permission.
Support this web site, shop at Amazon through this link, thanks

4.14.2009

An easy date to remember

Letter of introduction


... She was taller than me then. Her presence in my French class always made my day. Her hair was dark and very long, and sometimes it tangled in front of her face and she had to brush it away. She dressed conservatively with long skirts and baggy pants. Never glamorous, pretty much the way you’d want your sister to dress. She was bright, being a friend of mine for a time notwithstanding. Yes, and she wore braces when I knew her.

I took her to see the double feature at the Royal, or maybe it was the Center, in Bloomfield Center. Then, afterwards, we went to IHOP for a bite. We met another kid I knew (not too well, actually); he asked me if she was my sister. Fortunately, I don’t remember if I said anything witty, I doubt it.



I decided to make a habit about reading movie reviews before I took dates to them. One movie we saw that night had Marlo Thomas as an unwed mother. She talked about taking the pill, and never making love because no one might ever ask her, or not taking the pill and getting pregnant. At the end of the movie, she breast-fed the baby. It was some first date. I squirmed in my seat, and even now, I can remember how sweaty my palms were when that movie ended.

The other movie was about a cowboy named Zachariah, and it was biblically significant. All that went right over my Catholic head.

At IHOP, my date had a strawberry shake and told me there were real strawberries in it. I didn’t have anything witty to say. I called my mom to come pick us up. We brought her home. Every time I called to talk to her, her mom said she was out with Jeff.

I stopped bothering her April 14, that year. It was an easy date to remember. That was when Lincoln was shot and when the Titanic sank.

Talk about irony, didn’t know anything about her, really. I learned later her father was a minister, so she probably understood all that Bible stuff in the movie. And later, I learned that Jeff was her brother.

In my yearbook, the next year, she wrote, “It was nice.” I saw her once since then, at a funeral, but I couldn’t say to her what was racing around in my mind. But like I say, she wasn’t there, at the reunion. Her brother was. He was bald, and he sang a solo. She still adds music to my words but it’s a soft tune...

A Father's Place, an eclectic collection
by Anthony Buccino
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Copyright © 2009 by Anthony Buccino, all rights reserved. Photos and content may not be used for commercial purposes without written permission.

4.11.2009

A Hare-Raising Story

That old tale of Murphy the Easter bunny ...


I bought Murphy the Rabbit for my wife last year just before Easter.

That Murphy made it a full year with us is a great achievement in a house where the average pet fish lasts about three months. To tell the truth, I never really expected my wife to take care of the rabbit even if, theoretically, it was hers.

Every Easter for the six years we’ve been married, Dawn has talked about getting a pet rabbit like the little white bunny she had as a child. Another dependent was just what I needed. Of course, my wife, clever English teacher that she is, had her arguments all ready. This rabbit would save us money.

The bunny did not make the cover!

“If we got a bunny, we could keep it in fat Libby’s (our dog’s) old crate,” she reasoned. “Anyway, the crate’s just rusting away in the garage, so we wouldn’t have to buy anything new - except the rabbit and some food.”

That is the usual selling point of everything w: buy: Once bought we are done paying. It never works out that way, though.

In the pet store my wife told me, “I tested all the bunnies like we did the dog. You know, make a little noise and see which one sneaks up to investigate. This brown one here looks like Murphy.”




This Murphy had milk chocolate fluff for fur and looked as if it had been somewhere it shouldn’t have, because the tips of its fur were a smoky, dirty gray.

“Why not get a traditional white bunny? They’re the kind that deliver the eggs -and the chocolates,” I suggested. The look in her eyes told me it was not a discussion. This was Murphy.

from A Father's Place, An Eclectic Collection
by Anthony Buccino
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Copyright © 2009 by Anthony Buccino, all rights reserved. Photos and content may not be used for commercial purposes without written permission.

4.05.2009

Atlanta Bread and gift cards

What's up with Atlanta Bread?


The restaurant chain location in Clfiton, N.J., won't accept their own gift cards.

As I recall, companies that don't accept their own gift cards often end up taking cash only.

What's the point of buying someone you love dearly a gift card to use at their favorite restaurant and when they go there, for WEEKS now, Atlanta Bread can't accept their own gift card.




Somebody better check what's in the oven.


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Copyright © 2009 by Anthony Buccino, all rights reserved. Photos and content may not be used for commercial purposes without written permission.
S

4.03.2009

Via Con Me

I really like this song. Paolo Conte and Via Con Me ... some day I shall speak like him ... I'm saving up for the Rosetta Stone.



Don't panic, Flashback Friday will return soon.