10 for 10 (8th Entry): The First Line of the Novel 'Choke'

Greetings to our blog readers in Macedonia, Belgium, and Jordan.......in order to substantially increase our global audience we will name drop Serbian soccer player Branislav Ivanovic of Chelsea and German striker Mesut Ozil , who is of Turkish heritage, for Arsenal.

Tonight actually marks the 10th anniversary of our first blog entry here on this blog, to our knowledge only four or five people read that one. Hopefully, at least 98 will read this entry (nudge, nudge, wink, wink....)

On a personal note, we want to send our kudos to Chris Hurst, the 11:00 news anchor for WDBJ-7 in Roanoke, Va. If you watched CNN a few weeks ago, you saw him speak with Anderson Cooper, he has been through a lot. Tonight marks his second week of returning to the broadcast booth. Since Roanoke is our hometown, we wish Hurst the best.

We were hoping a joke about Scott Walker, the Wisconsin governor who dropped out of the Republican presidential candidate race, but we are running late, and you can see the tweets of his former employee Liz Mair, which are indeed quite amusing.

Tonight, we are going retro with the first line of Chuck Palahniuk's great 2001 cult classic novel "Choke." A few years ago, we had lots of fun with posts about the first lines of novels, such as Leo Tolstoy's "War and Peace," which we must profess to have never read!

Here is the first line from "Choke:"

"If you're going to read this, don't bother. After a couple pages, you won't want to be here. So forget it. Go away. Get out while you're still in one piece. Save yourself."

http://chuckpalahniuk.net/

10 for 10: The Nine Countries Outside of America Where This Blog Is Most Popular..........

On Sept. 21st, this blog will be celebrating its tenth anniversary, and while we are not completely sure how to celebrate, we have chosen to start by acknowledging our blog readers around the world. Though this following list consists of large countries, we want to also thank blog readers from smaller nations like Malta, Slovenia, and Jordan, who have the time to check us out.

The images above are in conjunction with three of the countries on this list, the Russian dolls are for (of course) Russia, the Hindu love god Shiva is for India, and the women at the bottom associated with a bossa nova song about a beach we can't spell represent Brazil (yeah, that was a bit awkward).....

Here is the list, that we dedicate to Bill Griffith, the artist who draws up "Zippy the Pinhead,"our folk singer friend Bruce Piephoff from Greensboro, NC, and the late, great Japanese actor Toshiro Mifune:

1) Russia 34, 974

2) Germany 11,421

3) United Kingdom 10,612

4) Canada 10, 085

5) France 6,320

6) Ukraine 4,407

7) India 3,256

8) Australia 2,467

9) Brazil 1,971

Our sister blog is The Daily Vampire: http://www.nocturnalguy38.blogspot.com

Halloween Tweets: Mach Ado About Silly String

Greetings to our lovely blog-readers in Wales, Slovakia and Jordan.

Tonight, we focus on tweets from Halloween night.

1) David Corn (liberal reporter): "Since when did most kids come to feel entitled to two pieces of candy, not one, when they trick and treat?"

2) Brent Watts (Channel 7 Roanoke, Va., weather reporter): "Reports of thundersnow in North Carolina as this system vamps up"

3) Bill Amend (cartoonist of "Foxtrot"): "For Halloween, I've dressed up as a bored middle-aged guy surfing the web while imagining everyone he knows having fun."

4) Mother Jones (liberal magazine): "Silly string is illegal here_but only on Halloween."

5) CNN: "A game company wants to help creator of 'Operator' with his operation costs."

6) Scott Simon (NPR reporter): "Man on streets dressed as what daughters call 'wee wee' for Halloween. Does he think women will this debonair"?

7) Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ): "A year ago today, I was sworn in Vice President Biden as a Senator from the great state of New Jersey."

http://www.wdbj7.com/

http://www.foxtrot.com

http://www.motherjones.com

http://scottsimonbooks.com/

Last Ten Films We've Seen (as of Sept. 22nd): Some Pretty Violent Films

Greetings to our blog readers in Ireland, Jordan and Japan.

With two gangster films ("Killing List" and "The Drop") plus one horror film (the "Carrie" remake/reboot) in addition to a Turkish film dealing with domestic violence ("The Confession"), there are some quite violent films on the list.

But, there are light films as well, and since Ben Stiller's film "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty," a remake of the 1947 Danny Kaye classic, is about daydreaming, we thought we'd post a photo of a Turkish babe in a hot black bikini, I suppose in Yemen, this entry will be censored.....oh well!

Boris Spassky, the great Russian chess player (top image) is being used in conjunction with "The Master," one of the great films in the acting career of the late Philip Seymour Hoffman, and conversely the yellow crayon is for "I Am Curious Yellow," a steamy left-wing experimental Swedish film from 1967 which includes footage of Martin Luther King, Jr.

Here are the last ten films we've seen (as of Sept. 22nd):

1. The Master. 2012. Director: Paul Thomas Anderson

2. The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. 2013. Dir: Ben Stiller

3. The Lego Movie. 2014. Dirs: Phil Lord; Christopher Miller

4. The Drop. 2014. Dir: Michael R. Roskam (last film of James Gandolfini)

5. Killing List. 2011. Dir: Ben Wheatley

6. The Confession. Turkey. 2002. Dir: Zeki Demirkubuz

7. I Am Curious Yellow. Sweden. 1967. Dir: Vilgot Sjoman

8. The Great Beauty. Italy. 2013. Dir: Paolo Sorrentino

9. Nathalie. France. 2003. Dir: Anne Fontaire

10. Carrie. 2013. Dir: Kimberly Peirce.

Today is Our 9th Birthday....

Greetings to our blog readers in Malaysia, Jordan and Argentina.

It was indeed nine years when we posted our very first entry on here.

We must profess that we had no idea what to blog about when we first started. In fact, one thing we posted was our very own grocery list!

Image to Fill Space: A Dalmation

Greetings to our blog readers in Senegal, South Africa, Honduras, Jamaica, Chile, Turkey, Kazakhstan, Jordan, Australia, Japan, France, Iceland, Bulgaria and Slovenia.

Tomorrow, we shall have something more substantive.

Coming Soon to This Very Blog Near You (No Promises): Ten Most Embarrasing Ways to Die

Greetings to our blog readers in El Salvador, Latvia and Jordan or wherever you may be today.

Oh...........In case you are wondering, yes, the image of the late French mime Marcel Marceau (1923-2007) is being used just to grab your attention.


Here are some blog entries we are contemplating/considering:

1) More Casualties  of Modern Technology: It's been a good two years since we ran this series, but it seems that pay phones, clothes lines and mixed tape cassettes are not the only things which have been mushroom clouded due to the advent of the new age (my apologies to the Grammar Girl for using mushroom cloud as a verb).

2) A List of Ten Embarrassing Ways to Die: Getting hit by a Valley Metro Bus in Roanoke, Va., does come to mind, but of course, there are two issues with possibly posting this entry: 1) There might well be someone who is a relative of a person who was eaten by Gustave the man-eating crocodile in the central African nation of Burundi; 2) I may get hit by a Valley Metro Bus myself!

3) How to Say Certain Words in Norwegian or Turkish: Did you know they call sharks 'the dog fishes' in Turkish (the actual word is kopekbaligi), and of course, we are arbitrarily mentioning that because we suspect that with the Discovering Channel's upcoming Shark Week that anything relating to sharks shall be trending.

Au revoir for now mon amis...........


http://www.valleymetro.com/

http://www.quickanddirtytips.com/grammar-girl

http://dsc.discovery.com/tv-shows/shark-week

Monday Night Pre-Debate Tweets- Alex Trebek the 'High Rollers' Days

We are apparently popular in Jordan! And, even more so than in Turkey, which is my late father's home country and a nation I have visited 15 times?! Perhaps, I now know how Al Gore felt when he was not able to win his home state of Tennessee in the 2000 election, which would have made him president instead of George W. Bush.

So, we are posting an image of King Abdullah II, who is the leader of Jordan as one of our three images. The two figures above him are "Jeopardy" host Alex Trebek when he was hosting "High Rollers" in the late 1970s and Big Bird, who has become very popular since Mitt Romney alluded to the fact that might try to fire this famous fowl  by cutting funds for public television during the first debate in Denver, Colo.

Tonight, in Boca Raton, Fla., the candidates will have won one last night debate on foreign policy, if this doesn't settle they may to fight in a boxing in Las Vegas, which would be appropriate since Nevada is also a swing state.

Here are our tweets:

1) @michaelianblack (Michael Ian Black, a comic actor): "They should get Alex Trebek to host the foregin policy debate because he always sounds so authentic when he says foreign stuff."

2) @interviewnews (Interview Magazine): "Even Clark Kent knows there's no future in print journalism."

3) @denverpolitics (Denver Politics News): "Ad blaming Romney for Colorado wind-industry job losses in gray area."

4) @SunDC (The Sun in DC): "Sunset 6:20 p.m., Sunset Tommorow 6:18 p.m."

5) @thehilltweets ("The Hill" is a daily journal which covers Congress): "Obama, Romney promote voting apps on Facebook."

6) @marketplaceatm ("Marketplace" is a daily radio show airing on most NPR stations): "For those of you talking politics at work: yes, it can get you fired." (Wow!)

7) @ForecasterEnten  (Harry Enten covers American politics for "The Guardian UK"): "Put another way even if Obama still has ads on the air in North Carolina any neutral observer knows he may have a high floor, but a low ceiling" (This is reference to the Tarheel State, our state of residency, which speculators now see going to Romney, but then again no one thought Duke would beat UNC in football over the weekend).

8) @NRO ("National Review," a conservative magazine, yes, we don't quote their tweets very often): "Exchange of the day: Soledad flips on Rudy "I'm a journalist!" Isn't that proof that you're a bad one?" (Soledad O'Brien is a reporter for CNN. Ironically, it seems that the NRO has one thing in common with us: Neither of us will be watching the debate on CNN. Presumably, they will watch it on Fox News, whereas we will watch it on PBS!).

http://www.pbs.org

http://www.nationalreview.com

http://www.thehill.com

http://www.visitjordan.com

Silly Picture to Fill Space- Beer-Serving Girl

Since today is Friday, a holy day to Muslims, I don't expect there are women serving Petra Beers at bars in Amman, Jordan, today (Petra is a Jordanian brew). And, if they do, they probably would be a bit less revealing. But, of course, this is purely a presumption on my part!

In fact, having been to Istanbul, Turkey, many times, I know there are lots of guys who can chug an Efes Pilsen (the national beer of Turkey) quicker than a visiting college kid from Madison, Wisc.!

I also expect flamboyant American snowboarder Shaun White, aka "The Animal," is having some Canadian Molsons to celebrate his gold medal win at the Vancouver Olympics.

For more Olympic coverage, go to our sister blog http://www.nocturnalguy38.blogspot.com

UPDATE: The Toledo Walleye won the midnight hockey game against the Charlotte Checkers in Charlotte, NC, that we reported on earlier by a 7-o margin.

Beers of the Islamic World (4 of 6) Petra Beer from Jordan

There is an image of Barada Beer from Syria on our sister blog "The Daily Vampire."

So far, I've been able to locate images of beers from Turkey and Egypt as well.

I have a feeling it's going to be hard to find an Afghan beer though!