The Once-in-a-While

Daily News

1  Wow.

2  Last night I had just put this nonsense to bed when news came in of the passing of Alan Thicke.

3  Amazingly, the piece I had finished centered on Hallmark Christmas movies. 

4  My first impression was that it was a hoax. As the news came over the social media, I realized that it was not a hoax, that we had lost a familiar friend.

5  I began enjoying a second or maybe third round of the multi-talented Thicke while watching him in Fuller House, a show that many out there are just discovering.

6  Bold statement, but I loved that he was in the thick of it, if you'll excuse the pun. 

7  I could get worse, but I'll hold back. 

8  A quick look at his wiki bio shows us nothing about his current work, which was to play to the 2016 crowd, and play wonderfully.

9  I didn't want to say too many cliche' things, but I certainly had to pay tribute. Late-breaking news. He did so many different things it is pointless to list them here. 

10  He even made a small blurb about making Christmas movies, which has probably already been posted by others.

11  Had a good link to share, but when I livened it up, it ran away. So I'll have to leave it with this:

12  Rest in Peace, kind sir. You won't be missed that much because you have left a grand legacy.

13  Peace be with you, and thanks.

I will make today's Once-in-a While Daily news two-in-one.

Here is my original, the one I finished last night late. I didn't include Alan Thicke, but it is interesting that he worked his way in anyway. Fun coincidence!

So here ya go:

The Once-in-a-While

Daily News:

The

H-H-Hallmark Christmas
S-chool

Uh-Uhv

Ah-ahcting...

1  Okay.

2  All kidding aside.

3  Last night I watched my four-thousandth Hallmark Christmas movie. As always, I pay little attention to the plots.

4  After a while, it becomes easy to see what they look for in actors and in acting.

5  I thought about it for a bit, and came up with an idea.

6  I wondered if there exists somewhere a Hallmark Christmas School of Acting.

7  They would have to have some sort of focus, and some sort of formulaic ideas for what the curriculum might be.

8  Ready to jump in? Keep in mind that these are MY impressions of movies I pay little-to-no attention to. 

9  Here go:

• Actors must have slightly elfin features.

• Actors (the term includes actresses, of course!) m-m-must s-s-stutter at least three times per sentence. They shall be judged on their TPSSR (times-per-sentence-stutter rate) score.

•  Setting shall be some small, one-caribou town east of the Mississippi. 

•  Town name must include at least one of the following words: "Lake," "Falls," "Wood,"or "Village."

• Town must have an ice skating rink. Rink must be a natural lake frozen over. 

• When two people ice skate, one must have butter for ankles. 

• Every woman must be in love with the wrong guy at the beginning of the story. She must accidentally sign over property to him so he could raze the town and put in a business office. 

• She'll meet a much nicer guy at a Christmas farm. See below. Just before the town gets razed, we'll find that he has a rich uncle, who manages to undo the property signing, saving the town.

• Every story must have a round-faced guy with white hair, a white beard and suspenders. If needed, he could be married to white-haired rotund woman whose job seems to be baking. Absolutely nobody suspects they might be the Clauses. 

• Every Christmas dinner must have an uncarved turkey that a woman could carry over everybody's head and then set gracefully down on the table, using only one hand. 

• The town Christmas tree lot must be a "Cut-Down-Your-Own Tree" farm with free hot chocolate.

• Somehow someone owns a reindeer and a rusty sleigh that will look beautiful by the end of the movie.

• At some point, "Hark! The Herald Angels Sing" will be sung by a Dickensian group of Carolers.

• Everybody in the town must have gone to the same high school AND to the same college.

• Given ten Hallmark Christmas movies, three will have Dean Cain in them, two will have Ed Asner, and one will have an actress whose last name is "O'Toole.

• At the end of the movie, the guy with the beard will turn into Santa Claus and fly past the moon with real reindeer, which look nothing like the classic Christmas reindeer that used to be on Hallmark cards. 

A-n-n-n-n-n-d that's about it for that nonsense. MY impressions of movies I pay little-to-no attention to. 

10  How'd we do?

11   I realized the other day that MOST of my experiences with Hallmark movies are Hallmark movies made in the past five or so years.

12  What a rookie. Hallmark movies. 

13  They've always worked as a sort of lava lamp when I would grade papers. 

14  And YES, I DID grade papers with noises and interruptions. I did better than Grammarly, which tried to correct my subject/verb agreement in item 11, above. It needed absolutely no correction. It read the word "most" as a singular. Bleh. I caught Grammarly's error and thumbed my nose. But I digress. Let's get back to my own ability to write with noise. Screw Grammarly. 

15  Stephen King insists you can't write nor concentrate with noise.

16  HE can't. 

17  I can. Always could. 

18  I could never do it well, but I could do it. 

19  I am arguably the King of Mediocrity. Proud of it. 

20  Nice way to be. 

21  A Wal-Mart commercial just appeared on the teevee screen. The commercial had a guy walking through Wal-Mart. His cart had a 60-inch teevee in it. I laughed, of course. 

22  I think that little beauty has a place in my home office. 

23  So yup.

24  It is officially on my Christmas list. It's for the house, of course.

25  I already bought myself that giant Teddy. He's still sitting amid Christmas lights and presents, drinking it all in.

26  But a teevee is within my reach, which is within my grasp, or whatever that saying is. 

27  What it says is I should be able to grab me a pretty good teevee from Wal-Mart. 

28  Moving On, Part One: I already moved on a bit. Glad about that. 

29  I'm gonna party like it's 2016. 

30

31

32

33  Who's with me?

34

35  <crickets>

36  

37  Didn't think so.

38  I'll be all right. 

39  Some Hallmark movie, with competitive teachers who grew up in the same town and who attended the same high school, a place where they were competitive as teenagers, is on right now. 

40  What are the odds?

41  I think I should go gentle into this good night. I lied about when I wrote this. I actually wrote almost all of it on Monday afternoon/evening. 

42  The hardest part was finding all those pictures. 

43  It's a livin'.

44  I think I might call it an early day, or night. 

45  I'd love to lure Grammarly into another trap, but I haven't the heart.

46  Hope you had fun learning about Hallmark movies, 2016 style.

47  I...I g-gottago. 

48  H-have a g-GREAT day.

49  Live life.

50  Love life.

51  Peace.

~H~

fin.

The Once-in-a-While

Daily News

Jim Marrs

1   With the hustle and bustle of the season, and of the holidays and all, most of us get pretty busy this time of year. Most of us move fast, fly through malls and stores, and pay little attention to much else. It becomes easy to allow December 7 to pass us by. We often forget that this date is the anniversary of the bombing of Pearl Harbor, which took place on December 7, 1941. 

2  We often forget completely about Pearl Harbor until the morning news throws a few reminders out there, which helps. Many will pause, give a thought or even a prayer. Many will be upset for not remembering. Many will go with whatever is popular on social media. All are basically good. But it also reveals to us something that has changed, and changed in a silent manner. 

3  The past few months demonstrated social media at its worst. Since the election, Facebook, Google, Twitter, and AOL abound with stories of hatred, fear, and finger pointing. The media fill our heads with endless tales of corrupt politicians, scheming senators and lying reporters. Rumors of murder, of cover-ups, of wiki-leaks, and of Armageddon surround us, pummeling our senses. We've become confused, and even angry.  We seem to exist in a world that has become Julian Assanged. 

4   In all of this, Pearl Harbor gets forgotten. We treat Pearl Harbor with a certain reverence, or with a few observances to honor those who died, or who experienced the attacks firsthand. 

5  I always thought there was more to the attack on Pearl Harbor than the mainstream media wishes to share. I am an avid reader and am constantly interested in learning about all sorts of things.

6  The trouble is, I've never had a very good memory. But I wanted to pay homage to Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day, which today is. 

7   A few days ago I decided to research the bombing of Pearl Harbor. The conspiracy, I figured, would center on advanced knowledge: Did we know it was going to happen prior to the attacks? Or worse, did we instigate it?

8  I've always considered the topic itself a bit daunting, for a number of reasons. First, World War II is arguably the worst war in the history of the world. Second, the complexities of Allies vs. Axis involve interminable avenues and mazes, names and places. 

And third, my memory couldn't support anything I might have to say about it all. I couldn't get into a debate with people because I'm really too new to any of it. 

9  But because I did spend years researching the assassination of John F. Kennedy, I came to lots of conclusions, not the least of which is that when prompted, our government will lie to us, and lie big. 

10  I decided to have a look at Pearl Harbor and found an amazing piece by the venerable Jim Marrs, the guy who wrote one of the most comprehensive books on the Kennedy assassination, a book called Crossfire. Crossfire was one of the two main books used in researching Oliver Stone's epic film JFK, the other being Jim Garrison's On the Trail of the Assassins. There are, of course, many others.

11  I always found Marrs fascinating, humorous, intelligent, and accurate, although his background does have some questionable items in it. His military service, for example, includes his serving in a Fourth Army intelligence unit in Vietnam. He was also a military and aerospace reporter, as well as an investigative reporter. From my perspective, that sounds suspiciously like a guy who might be working for the government. [1]

12  On the other hand, one of the most vociferous critics of the Warren Commission over the years was an investigative journalist named Sylvia Meagher. Meagher, who also served as a liaison officer of the World Health Organization at the United Nations before her death in 1989, wrote several books on the JFK assassination. [2]

13  When Marrs submitted his manuscript for Crossfire to Simon & Schuster, they asked Meagher to evaluate it. Her thoughts:

"The accuracy of the manuscript in dealing with a vast body of complex evidence is nearly impeccable...the manuscript is, in my opinion, a fine and admirable work." [3]

Sylvia Meagher 

14  Despite this glittering endorsement by Meagher, Simon & Schuster turned down Marrs' manuscript, as did 25 other U.S. publishers before it made it to Carroll & Graf Publishers in 1989, who had no qualms about publishing it. [3]

15  In my research on Marrs the past couple of days, I stumbled upon a Q and A session hosted by Marrs. It is from a website called abovetopsecret.com, unfamiliar territory for me. It isn't unusual for Jim Marrs to hit radio stations, odd websites, and anywhere else to get his info out there, especially since he entered the odd world of UFO's, ancient aliens, and other conspiracies that are looked at disapprovingly by more conservative news people. That's one reason I rarely use Marrs as a source. But here is Marrs, answering a question for the ages:

What Conspiracy Theories (if any) Do You NOT Believe in?

There are things that I believe and then there are things I know. I BELIEVE in a God but I KNOW that JFK was killed as a result of a conspiracy. Early in my career in journalism there were many conspiracy theories that I dismissed out of hand, such as the one about we never went to the moon, that JFK was killed to prevent him from revealing the reality of UFO's and that people were being abducted by aliens. 

But as I got older and gained more experience, I came to understand that things are not as black and white as they seem when one is young and unaccustomed to the ways of the world. Most of my colleagues in journalism would never venture past the conventional worldview of the day but I was always inquisitive and curious about life. 

Today, there is an abundance of evidence calling our initial moon landing into question, not the least of which is the question of how our astronauts managed to survive the Van Allen radiation belt without heavy shielding on their space capsule. 

Although I am still not absolutely convinced that we never went to the moon, I recognize that there are many hard questions which have not been satisfactorily answered. Likewise, there is now intriguing evidence that JFK was well aware of the UFO situation and, in fact, had demanded that the CIA turn over to his White House all its UFO files by February, 1964.

 I still doubt that this was the reason for his assassination but I am now ready to accept that it may have played a part in that decision. With the immense amount of data and narratives now available regarding people who claimed to have been abducted by aliens and considering the tremendous work of the late Dr. John Mack of Harvard, it is evident that something outside of normal reality is happening to these folks. 

Today, I remain open to any conspiracy theory but I generally place them into one of three niches---the "bogus" file which is for stories with only one source and which seem to be questionable or obviously some marketing ploy; my "Huh?" file which is for fascinating but unprovable stories; and my "real" files which are filled with unbelievable, yet well documented, accounts from separate sources on a wide variety of subjects. 

One conspiracy theory to which I do not subscribe is the idea that JFK was shot by his driver. I have looked into this closely and I know the genesis of this story. A careful examination of the Zapruder film will show that the driver, William Greer, never takes his hands off the steering wheel of the Lincoln limousine. What appears to be a gun and a shot are illusions created by sun highlights reflecting off the greased hair of SS Agent Kellerman riding shotgun and a flash of sunlight off the metal frame of the car's privacy window separating the driver from the rear of the car. 

In my time as a journalist, I have covered several strange stories which turned out to have a mundane explanation. I have never been hesitant to report fakery or mistaken conclusions when the evidence proves such. 

Always keep an open mind but not so open that some BS can fall into it. Don't believe everything you hear and certainly not everything you see in the corporate controlled mass media. Just absorb the information, file it away and wait to see if further developments confirm or deny the story. It's called critical thinking and I think most Americans could do 
with a healthy dose of it. 

Jim Marrs [4]


16 So remain open minded. I intended to show a video that argues this: not only did the Roosevelt administration know that Japan fully intended a raid, but that they did nothing to prevent the invasion, and in fact, prompted the attack so that they could enter the war with full intent to rally America into accepting Great Britain as a powerful ally, almost assuring victory. Jim Marrs believes this to be the case, and he insists that war is profitable, particularly to the victorious. I decided not to include any video in this piece. I'm cognizant that it would turn the entire conversation into a crazy argument. That isn't the purpose here. The purpose is to allow readers to explore, examine the facts, and make their own decisions. In the meantime, we all should give a moment to this sad day. 

17 Could our leaders make money on war?

18  I can't remember. 

19  I honestly can't remember

20  Moving On, Part One: A Memory, and a Story:

I've shared this story several times over the years, but I consider it a perfect illustration of my memory lapses:

When I was but a wee lad, perhaps age five (I can't remember!), the ice cream man came jangling down Fir Avenue in South San Francisco, my childhood home town. 

I heard it coming, ran into the house, and begged my mom to let me run out and buy a Fudgsicle. She hesitated, but I knew if I bugged her enough, she would cave. 

I begged, and begged, and begged, and finally got a dollar out of her. 

I ran outside, got the Fudgsicle when a friend of mine approached and asked if I wanted to run off and play. I said, "Yeah!" I put the Fudgsicle in my rear pocket, and off we went. 

We got into the usual neighborhood mischief: jumping into people's backyards, running through bushes, and scampering through dirt lots. After what seemed like hours, we headed home. 

Right about then I felt something in my back pocket and pulled out a melted popsicle stick. Four fingers got gooey, and I had a feeling Mom was not going to be pleased when I got home. 

She wasn't. "Don't even think of asking me for ice cream next time the ice cream man comes! How did you manage to DO this?"

"I forgot I put it there," I said. 

She gave me a look that was a combination of feigned anger and a parental guffaw. That would be Mom, and that would 
be my memory, in a nutshell.

21  I gottago. That's the way my mind works. That's my memory. As I said, in a nutshell. 

22  Remember Pearl Harbor.

23  Live life.

24  Love life.

25  Peace.

Resources:

[1] http://jimmarrs.com/biography/ Retrieved 12/5/2016

[2] http://www.nytimes.com/1989/01/16/obituaries/sylvia-meagher-67-former-health-official.html Retrieved 12/5/2016

[3] Kelin, John, Praise From a Future Generation: The Assassination of John F. Kennedy and the First Generation
Critics of the Warren Report, Wings Press, September 1, 2007

[4] http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread301546/pg1 

~H~

fin.