10 for 10 (4th Entry): Love Those Van Cats

Greetings to our blog readers in Cuba, Colombia, and Egypt.....

Today, we feature an image of a Turkish Van cat, which retail for circa $50 on the streets of Istanbul. Here in the United States, we gather they cost considerably more.

If you are looking for a cat in an animal shelter, you will probably not find a Van cat, but tuxedo cats, orange tabby cats, and calico cats need homes, here are two animal shelter links we are listing:

http://www.spartanburghumane.org/ (Humane Society of Spartanburg, South Carolina)

http://hswcmd.org/ (Humane Society of Hagerstown, Maryland)

10 for 10 (2nd Entry): Our Six Most Popular Entries..........a quote from the athlete formerly known as Bruce Jenner

Greetings to our blog readers in Albania, Egypt, and Canada.....

Over our ten years of blogging, we have not been too consumed with which entries get mega-hits and which ones are ignored like the opening act at a Rolling Stones concert, but Bruce Jenner (now known as Caitlyn Jenner or Jessica Lange) and Bristol Palin both got us attention in ways we never imagined!

A quote from Jenner (top) and Palin (bottom), the daughter of Sarah Palin, a governor of Alaska who ran with John McCain as the veep nominee for the Republican Party made for entries which both rank in our top image. The Bristol Palin quote is the number one entry, while the Bruce Jenner quote was our third most popular entry, helped in all probability by his stunning gender-change.

Other popular entries include one about how we ate a whole entire anchovy pizza in Washington, DC, during a 2010 trip (anchovies are pict. center), a silly image to fill space for an angora cat, and a quote from Che Guevara, which probably helped us become popular in Cuba and El Salvador.

Here are the six most popular entries.........with entries to the ones which have photos....

1. Things We Learned on Twitter (the Bristol Palin entry). April 7, 2010. 14,416 hits.
http://politicscultureandotherwastesoft.blogspot.com/2010/04/things-we-learned-on-twitter-this.html

2. DC Diary_ I Ate a Whole Anchovy Pizza. Dec. 28, 2010. 5,036 hits.
http://politicscultureandotherwastesoft.blogspot.com/2010/12/dc-diary-i-ate-whole-anchovy-pizza.html

3. Quote of the Day_ Bruce Jenner. March 6, 2012. 4,765 hits. http://politicscultureandotherwastesoft.blogspot.com/2012/03/quote-of-dayweek-bruce-jenner.html

4. Silly Photo to Fill Space_Angora Cat. Jan. 27, 2010. 3, 917 hits.

5. Special Quote of the Week from Che Guevara. May 2, 2009. 3,390

6. Special Screening_ Harold and Maude. June 24, 2009. 2,562 hits. http://politicscultureandotherwastesoft.blogspot.com/2009/06/special-screening-harold-and-maude.html

Top 10 from Sunday Roanoke Times: Speed Bump Wins for a Fourth Week in a Row

Greetings to our blog readers in Austria, Egypt, and South Korea........

Today, we look at yesterday's comic strips in the "Roanoke Times," a daily newspaper serving Roanoke, Va., and the southwest Virginia region. This week, "For Better or For Worse," a strip that rarely cracks our top ten comes in seventh with a strip about dog food. But, "Get Fuzzy" which features a strip about cat food ranks five places higher. However, "Speed Bump" with a great take on a woman blaming her husband for passing gas as his dog is eating all beans and drinking beer.

"Pearls Before Swine" has another Stephan Pastis pun which features Mountain Dew; it does appear to be an overt product endorsement and neither is our use of their logo!

Here is the top 10:

1) Speed Bump

2) Get Fuzzy

3) Pearls Before Swine

4) Zits

5) Doonesbury

6) Jump Start

7) For Better or For Worse

 8) Garfield

9) Dilbert

10) Non Sequitur

http://www.roanoke.com

http://www.gocomics.com

Last Ten Songs We've Listened To on Steve-FM in Roanoke, Va: Everything Except Kenny G

Greetings to our fans in Sweden, Croatia, Ukraine, Egypt and Greece (kudos on your new prime minister.........). Now that we have perhaps officially entered the world of The Jetsons (but, where are the flying cars?), it is actually possible for people in Anchorage, Alaska, and Bucharest, Romania, to listen to an eclectic pop-rock fusion radio station in Roanoke, Va.

So, with that in mind, here are the last ten songs we heard on 106.1 (SteveFM-Raonoke, Va) from the 1:00 p.m.-2:00 p.m. hour on Friday afternoon. These songs are in reverse order:

1) Dark Horse. Katy Perry. 2013.

2) Keep on Loving You. REO Speedwagon. 1980 (pict. bottom)

3) Bohemian Rhapsody. Queen. 1975.

4) Never. Heart. 1985.

5) Clocks. Coldplay. 2002 (pict. center)

6) Janie's Got a Gun. Aerosmith. 1989. (pict, top)

7) Your Smiling Face. James Taylor. 1977.

8) Tainted Love. Soft Cell. 1981.

9) Moves Like Jagger. Maroon 5. 2011.

10) Hold on Loosely. 38 Special. 1981.

http://www.1061stevefm.com

http://www.visitroanoke.com

http://www.roanokedoesntsuck.com

http://www.aerosmith.com

http://www.speedwagon.com

Last Ten Films I Saw Before the Last Ten Films I've Seen: Reexaming Freddy Krueger

Greetings to our blog readers from New Zealand, Poland and Egypt.

The images above are of: 1) Freddy Krueger from 'The Nightmare on Elm Street' film series, he is now a Republican congressman from Alabama, 2) Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks, who will soon be starring in a reality tv show about narcissists. The film "The Fifth Estate" is about him and 3) well, it's just a human skeleton (we are using it for the movie "The Skeleton Twins," which stars Bill Hader and Kristen Wiig).

1) "Mean Streets." 1973. dir: Martin Scorsese

2) "Nightmare on Elm Street." 1984. dir: Wes Craven

3) "Yeelen." Mali. 1987. dir: Souelymane Cisse

4) "Rush." 2013. dir: Ron Howard.

5) "The Fifth Estate." 2013. dir: Bill Condon.

6) "Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One" (documentary/experimental film). 1968. dir: William Greaves (alas the director died this year)

7) "Don's Party." Australia (in English). 1976. dir: Bruce Beresford.

8) "Labor Day" 2013. dir: Jason Reitman (with Kate Winslet)

9) "The Skeleton Twins."2014  dir: Craig Johnson.

10) "Frank." Ireland (in English) 2014. dir: Lenny Abrahamson

Quotes from Off the Beat and Path (6 of 6): Courtney Love

Greetings to our blog readers in Dubai, Egypt, France, Malaysia, Mexico and Greece .


Today, we quote Courtney, a pioneering female punk and heavy singer, who is now 50 years old! She was the wife of the late Kurt Cobain of Nirvana at the time of his suicide some 20 years ago.

Here is Love's quote:

"Being a rock star is like being a cult leader_you have to be in your own religion."

Our Favorite Comic Strips from the Sunday Washington Post: The Scream

Greetings to our blog readers in Egypt, Poland and Australia.

Today, the Danish comic strip "WUMO" wins our survey for the best comic strips in "The Washington" with a brilliant satire of Norwegian artist Edvard Munch's legendary painting "The Scream."

We also enjoyed today's "Lio," by Mark Tatulli, in which the title character plays a nifty gag on his father, and "The Argyle Sweater," which features a cool satire of "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre."

Here is our top ten:

1. WUMO

2. Lio

3. The Argyle Sweater

4. Speed Bump

5. Dustin

6. Pearls Before Swine

7. Knight Life

8. Reply All

9. Judge Parker

10. Prickly City

http://stephanpastis.wordpress.com/

To see our top ten from "The Roanoke Times," go to: http://www.nocturnalguy38.blogspot.com

Quotes from American Presidents (1 of 16): William McKinley

Greetings to our blog-readers in Malaysia, Colombia and Egypt.

Today, we begin our series quoting American presidents from yesterday. On this blog, we are quoting presidents 25-40, and thus we begin with William McKinley. Most young people probably recognize the name William McKinley from the cult tv show "Freaks and Geeks," which took place at William McKinley High School in suburban Michigan.

There actually is a real William McKinley High School quite far away from Michigan in Honolulu, Hawaii.

McKinley was one of several presidents from Ohio, but many of them did not have much luck as two of the four assassinated presidents (James Garfield being the other besides McKinley was the second). McKinley was gunned down by a left-wing extremist in Buffalo, NY, in 1801, who was later executed. McKinley is actually considered by many historians to be the most right-wing president in American history, even ahead of Ronald Reagan.

McKinley has seen a bit of hoopla lately as right-wing scholars have written many articles and even books about him, and we imagine he is loved at the Libertarian think-tank the Cato Institute in Washington, DC, whose views we pretty much strongly differ with. But, we'll give their link any way.

Here is the quote from McKinley:

"In the time of darkest defeat, victory may be the nearest."

PS: We thought we'd throw in our favorite line from Sunday's "Roanoke Times" comics page. This quip is from "Dilbert": "Go sit at your desk or you're fired." (no exclamation point!)......


http://www.whitehouse.gov/about/presidents/williammckinley

http://www.cato.org/

http://www.dilbert.com

7 Words in Norwegian (7 of 7): Shrimp

Today, we conclude our 7 Words in Norwegian series with the word for shrimp.

Greetings to our blog visitors from Denmark, Egypt and Greece. Since I'm half-Turkish, I should point that Turkish shrimp is much better than Greek shrimp (forgive the ethnic humor).

We gather that Key West, Florida, which is a city that Ernest Hemingway and Jimmy Buffett made famous, is a good place in America to dine on shrimp.

So, here is the answer.........

shrimp=reker

(I don't actually speak Norwegian, but Google and Bing have been a great help to us).

For the Turkish word for shrimp, check out our sister blog "The Daily Vampire" and the 7 Words in Turkish series: http://www.nocturnalguy38.blogspot.com

http://www.margaritaville.com (Jimmy Buffett's web site).

Presidential Quotes: George HW Bush

Greetings to our blog-readers in Lithuania, Libya and Lebanon and a last minute Fourth of July to everyone here in les etats unis.

We will be quoting former President George H.W. Bush soon, but before we do, we thought we'd write a quick paragraph with some items which are trending on the web page for "The Washington Post" (we Aquaman to make it more interesting):

"The nation's capital celebrated the 4th of July as Egypt is in a major political crisis with a performance by Barry Manilow at the National Mall; Cong. Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) was among those in attendance. Meanwhile in New York, competitive eater Joey Chestnut won his seventh world hot dog eating championship. He ate 69 hot dogs, yeah, don't try that at home. And, a 10-year-old boy in Seattle wore his new Aquaman pajamas at a local Burger King to merely impress his friends."

On a more somber note, we are saddened to hear that John E. Grogan, 78, the mayor of Eden, North Carolina, a small near Greensboro, which borders Virginia, passed away today.

Here is our quote from Bush 41:

"You have to understand that people that are hurting are going to criticize you."

http://www.washingtonpost.com

http://www.bushlibrary.tamu.edu

http://www.ci.eden.nc.us

Free From Blog Entry: All That Jazz

This is new idea we have come up with, if it doesn't work, we'll blame Javier the Intern. We take six phrases and try to make a flash fiction piece with it.

The phrases are pregnant women, jazz (Dizzy Gillespie, picture top), cuckoo clocks, cold pizza, Angry Birds, Air Canada

Here we go:

"Little Marvin was playing Angry Birds on his hand-held device while waiting for the Air Canada flight from Toronto to Montreal when his father told him that he should eat the rest of his personal pan pizza from an airport Pizzaa Hut kiosk as it would surely go cold. Marvin ignored his father, which was in his DNA.

Marvin's father decided not to argue with him and listen to jazz on his I-Pod. He had tried to educate this son about jazz: Miles Davis, Herbie Hancock, Kenny G, ok, the later was a mistake. Marvin's father then noticed a pregnant young woman without a boyfriend, fiance or husband. She was actually reading a book. Even though it was a fluffy romance novel, Marvin's father was impressed.

Suddenly, the cuckoo clock in Marvin's father's head went off. There were now only 20 minutes until the flight was scheduled to depart. But, there appeared to be a long delay. Marvin's father then noticed a dark-skinned woman, perhaps from Syria or Egypt, wearing a hijab, now sitting beside the pregnant woman. Marvin's father's mind then drifted towards impure thoughts, and then he heard it was time to board the flight. He gently tapped Marvin's shoulders, but, of course, his son was going to play Angry Birds until the proverbial last minute possible."

http://www.aircanada.com

http://www.kennyg.com

Yes, Prime Minster_ Turkish PM Says Protestors are 'Terrorists'

We were looking for an image of a woman in a red dress, but all we could find were famous celebrities, such as Cindy Crawford. But, the 'woman in red' we are referring to is an unknown Turkish woman wearing a red dress who was sprayed by a water cannon. The image of what was done to her has been the one which has most damned Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his grave mishandling of a protest to not develop at the historic Gezi Park in the Taksim part of Istanbul.

We asked Google who the woman was, and all we could find was an article in "The Daily Mail" (UK) explaining how many students in the same vicinity as the woman in red were also targeted by the police.

The protests in Turkey have made headlines around the world: "The Hurriyet Daily News" in Turkey quotes President Abdullah Gul as saying the protests were more like Occupy Wall Street than the even more massive Tahrir Square protests in Egypt (yeah, we aren't buying that either). "The Jerusalem Post," an English-language newspaper in Israel, looked at the nuanced differences between the Turkish and Egyptian protests, one of which is that Erdogan is a democratically-elected leader. And, "Dutch News" reported that people of Turkish heritage in the Netherlands held demonstrations in both Amsterdam and The Hague.

With that, we turn our attention to Erdogan, whom we feel is more or less as coniferous as this great white shark from South Africa pictured, who made the following dubious quote about the protests: "This is a protest organized by extremist elements," he said. "We will not give away anything those who live arm-in-arm with terrorism."

SIDEBAR: Those who might be traveling to Baltimore, Maryland, here in the United States, can partake in glimpses of sandbar sharks and giant Pacific octopuses/octopi; we are not sure if any of the octopi are predicting the outcomes of weekend Major League Soccer games this weekend.

http://www.dutchnews.nl

http://www.dailymail.co.uk

http://www.jpost.com

http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com

http://www.aqua.org

Tweets Regarding the Revolutionary Stand Against Right-Wing Government in Turkey

Protestors have taken to the streets not only in Istanbul, but in Ankara, Izmir, Bursa and even the eastern Black Sea city of Samsun following police crackdowns against citizens bonding to protest plans to build on Gezi Park, the last remaining open space in Istanbul. The protests are also largely aimed at Turkey's right-wing government lead by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Here are some tweets regarding these events:

1) Hurriyet Daily News: #US and #EU concerned by violent raid against #Taksim Gezi Park protestors.

2) Gigi Ibrahim (a leader of the Tahrir Square movement in Egypt): Latest from a comrade in #Taksim Square: The movement is raising the slogan: "Turn Taksim into Tahrir!".........we support you.

3) Goksen Asia: "Watch Turkish people crossing the bridge for #occupygezi"

4) Zeynep Tufekci: "NYT has Turkey protests on cover. Turkish paper Sabah, not. Why social media matters."

5) Global Revolution: "Everyone has to watch this. All of #Istanbul flashes their lights in solidarity with #occupygezi protestors."

6) Heather Marsh: "More than 40,000 people are now crossing Bosporus Bridge in #Istanbul to join protests."

7) Simge Yarayici: "NYC! Tomorrow! Zuccoti Park! 12 pm! We will be in solidarity with #occupygezi occupiers."

Let's Check Out the Times Around the World Again

Since we listed various times from around the world like two weeks ago when the time last changed (forgiven the Americancentric sense of humor, well really it's just our own actually).

The images above are a map of Rotterdam, The Netherlands (Holland), the Dubai Mall and an antique grandfather clock that one may find at the Wheatland Antique Mall in Topeka, Kansas, where it's 9:00 p.m. now (Monday).

But, rather than Topeka, we will use New York as the city of comparison; it is now 11:00 p.m. in the Big Apple right now.....all times sprang an hour forward in the United States yesterday.


Here we go:

Athens, Greece: 5:00 a.m.

Barcelona, Spain: 4:00 a.m.

Auckland, New Zealand: 4:00 p.m.

Beijing, China: 11 a.m.

Bucharest, Romania: 5:00 a.m.

Cairo, Egypt: 5:00 a.m.

Dubai 7:00 a.m.

London 3:00 a.m.

Moscow 7:00 a.m.

Paris 4:00 a.m.

Rotterdam, Netherlands 4:00 a.m.

Tel Aviv, Israel 5:00 a.m.


http://www.visittopeka.us

http://www.shopbrookwood.org

http://www.antiquesoftopeka.org


http://www.mw.nl

12 of the 24 Countries Mentioned Last Night: Let's Go to Poland

According to the BBC, Poland along with (surprisingly) Pakistan are two of the very few countries where citizens prefer that Mitt Romney take the throne (we are making fun of a highway billboard near Burlington, NC, which says: 'We must dethrone Obama') over President Barack Obama.

Poland was one of the 24 countries mentioned in the 'last debate' from Boca Raton, Fla., last night.

In case you are wondering, the flags above are of: 1) Poland (Donald Tusk, prime minister), 2) Egypt (Heshan Qandil, prime minister), and 3) Russia (Dmitry Medvedev, prime minister).

Here is a list of 12 of those countries:

China, Egypt, Libya, Mali, Poland, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, South Africa, Syria, Tunisia, United Kingdom, Venezuela (the only South American country mentioned, which was disappointing to those who watched the debate in Colombia according to the BBC).

Well, actually, that's 13 countries.........oh well!

For a list of the other countries, visit our sister blog "The Daily Vampire" http://www.nocturnalguy38.blogspot.com

Weekend Tweets Log- Is Mitt Romney Out of Touch?

Today, we our posting some actual tweets we saw earlier this afternoon, about three hours ago. Let's explain the images: 1) Well, we always love making fun of Mitt Romney and we think the image is self-explanatory; 2) Lots of college football games today, hence this image; 3) We have flight attendants from Singapore Airlines to accompany a tweet from the faux news magazine "The Onion." Let's get started:

1) @HuffingtonPost (Huffington Post): TELL US: Is Mitt Romney out of touch?"

2) @slate (Slate): "Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn are going to shoot a movie on the Google campus. It's about 40-year-old interns."

3) @DoughtyOnAir (Douglas Doughty, a sports writer for "The Roanoke Times" in Roanoke, Va.): "Wondering if UVA will score @TCU, where it's 14-0 @ halftime. Cavs can't run the ball and receivers aren't  making big plays." (The University of Virginia ended up losing the game 27-7).

4) @VT-Football (Virginia Tech football): "Virginia Tech honoring Officer Deriek Crouse right now. Standing Ovation." (The Virginia Tech police officer was killed last year by an armed off-campus person who committed suicide after the shooting).

5) @NastiaLiukin (Nastia Liukin): "Hi Portland. It's National Gymnastics Day! Who's coming to celebrate with tonight at the #KelloggsTour?" (The 2008 gold-medal winning American gymnast of Russian heritage is among the all-stars performing tonight in Portland, Oregon).

6) @DailyNewsEgypt (The Daily News Egypt): "Iraq aims to reunite with a new national anthem and flag."

7) @TheOnion (The Onion): "Dad suggests arriving at airport 14 hours early."

http://www.nocturnalguy38.blogspot.com

http://www.theonion.com

http://www.singaporeair.com

http://www.thedailynewsegypt.com

http://www.notmittromney.com

http://www.nastialiukin.com

Saturday Night Tweets_ Syria, Egypt and Saturday Night Live

There were many eye-catching tweets tonight about all the chaos in the world. To explain these images, they are of: 1) Cong. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.), a blue bird in Oklahoma, which are using for Twitter since their logo is a blue bird and an Amish family in Pennsylvania.

Let's get started:

1) @KeithEllison (Cong. Keith Ellison): "Keith will be on @meethepress tomorrow discussing the events in the Middle East and what it means for U.S. foreign policy, tune in!_staff."

2) @SamuelCookill (Sam Cook III): "@moveon_ I am voting Obama because, even though I'm a Republican, he puts small business first."

3) @HuffingtonPost ("Huffington Post"): "Netanyahu calls Iran containment policy ' a new standard of stupidity' " (this is in reference to Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu).

4) @dailykos ("Daily Kos"): "Daily Kos Elections Polling Wrap: New poll confirms Pennsylvania a near certain blue state for 2012."

5) @Hanyghoraba (Hany Farouk Ghorab, Egyptian activist): "Salafi Preachers are the kind of people who are willing to kill you to convince you that they are peaceful and not killers."

6) @KenRoth (Kenneth Roth is the director of Human Rights Watch): "#Syria killing in August topped the bloodiest month in Iraq or Afghanistan, not to mention any Arab Spring state."

7) @LukeRussert (Luke Russert is the son of the late "Meet the Press" host Tim Russert): "Remember to DVR @SNL tonight. Going to take a wild guess and say #Obama or #Romney or both will get roasted."

http://www.hrw.org

http://www.moveon.org

http://www.keithellison.org

http://www.huffingtonpost.com

http://www.dailykos.com

Monday Morning Tweets_ The Agony of Swedish Defeat

The images are of 1) Spiro Agnew- Richard Nixon's first vice president who resigned over scandal 2) The Swedish handball team and 3) A debate between Bill Clinton, George H.W. Bush and Ross Perot in 1992.

Here is a rundown of some eye-catching tweets we saw one hour ago:

1) @PamGrier (actress Pam Grier): "Missy Elliott Had 'No Clue' About Aaliyah album" (This is in reference to swimmer Missy Elliott of the United States who several gold medals at the Olympics).

2) @Todayszaman ("Today's Zaman" is an English-language newspaper): "Number of Syrian refugees in Turkey nears 60,000."

3) @DailyNewsEgypt: "Iranian President in significant visit to Saudi Arabia" (Iran and Saudi Arabia have ironically been political rivals).

4) @RadioSweden: "Sweden's not so shabby Olympic performance" (The link indicated there were some pleasant surprises for Sweden at the games, but that the men's handball team 22-21 loss to France in the gold medal game was a profound disappointment; handball is very popular in Scandinavian countries).

5) @Electionate (Nate Cohn): "Instead the Ryan plan produced movement among the 'rising American electorate and independents."  (Cohn is a writer for the center-left American magazine "The New Republic," in case you were in the Andes Mountains of Bolivia over the weekend, Mitt Romney chose Paul Ryan as his running mate).

6) @DavidFrum (David Frum): "Shouldn't congressional Republicans propose some pilot programs to test whether premium support will control costs effectively?" (Frum is a former speech-writer for George W. Bush who coined the term 'axis of evil.' He has been critical of the fringe Tea Partiers within the Republican Party. Ironically, he was given a seemingly friendly profile in the very liberal magazine "The Nation").

7) @KatrinaNation (Katrina vanden Heuvel): "Great that first time a woman will moderate presidental debates, but will we tough questions? That's what debates should be about." (She is the managing editor of "The Nation").

8) @LOLGOP: "Ryan is the most extreme GOP nominee in a century. The most extreme GOP VP nominee in 4 years is scary enough." (This tweet is why we chose Spiro Agnew; there were too many for Paul Ryan and most were unusable).

http://www.tnr.com

http://www.frumforum.com

http://www.thenation.com

http://www.svrigesradio.se

http://www.todayszaman.com

http://www.thedailynewsegypt.com

Teaser- Here Come the Olympics

The Olympics get underway in just a few days with opening ceremonies getting under way on Friday night from London. The home team the United Kingdom will actually have the largest delegation with 542, which is just slightly more than the United States, which has the second highest delegation, with 530 athletes.Russia will have the third highest number of athletes with 436 Olympic participants.

Ana Sofia Gomez, 16, (pictured above) will be the first gymnast to represent Guatemala at the summer games. Gomez has finished in the top five at various international competitions.

Yasser Hefny, 23, (pictured middle) an Egyptian pentathlete, was among the Muslim athletes interviewed by the Associated Press regarding Ramadan, a Muslim holiday which requires the faithful to fast until sundown, and preparation for the Olympics. Many Muslim athletes, many of whom are actually competing for western countries, will make compromise by fasting after the completion of the games. 

These summer games will also mark the debut of women's boxing, which will include Lucy O'Connor, 31, the top-ranked British boxer who is also a naval officer, who will represent the home country. This means that the only three sports with only one gender, are Greece-roman wrestling (men's), synchronized swimming (women's) and rhythmic gymnastics (women's).

Quote of the Day/Week- Che Guevara

We continue our series of quotes from figures who have been made into plush doll toys by the American novelty company The Unemployed Philosophers Guild with a quote from the highly controversial Argentinian revolutionist Che Guevara (1929-1967), whose image can be seen on Cuban currency, since he helped Fidel Castro come to power.

Che tried a similar revolution in Bolivia, but the results were much different. In fact, he was assassinated there at age 39 by the Bolivian army, with help from the CIA. The village where he was executed La Higurea or "The Fig Tree" is now a surprising international tourist destination. Tourists can walk the trail and literally follow in Che's footsteps, but hopefully, they will not be greeted by a firing squad.

On film, Che has been portrayed at least three times, the most curious of which has to be Omar Sharif, an Egyptian actor in the film "Che!" (1969), where the late Jack Palance played Castro. It has a mere 4.5 on the Internet Movie Database.

Since Che was a man with far, far-left views which were fervently capitalism, many find the merchandising of his image, particularly on t-shirts, to be quiet ironic.

Here is the quote from Che:

"Many will call me an adventurer_ and that I am, only one of a different sort: one of those who risks his skin to prove his platitudes."

READ The FINE PRINT: As much as we love quoting Che Guevara, who has always been surprisingly popular, we recognize he is a controversial figure and we do not advocate Marxism as a political philosophy. But, of course, Marxists are welcome on our blogs as our Republicans!

http://www.lonelyplanet.com/bolivia

http://www.philosophersguild.com

http://www.marxists.org

http://www.che-lives.com

http://www.cheguevara.com