Trumpets of doom

What is a good name to call people who support — nay — worship Donald Trump? I like the term Trumpets…people who blow the horn for Trump, and for whom they are willing to become slavishly worshipful Trump pets.

Ho, ho! Clever, but the term will never find wide favor. Trumpets, despite their adoration for Trump, do not think of themselves as pets. They don’t think of themselves as being subservient to any politician, although they act ready to flop on the floor so Trump can rub their bellies.

Another thing Trumpets will never do is listen to anything negative about their master. I am guessing they would never open a copy of the July 25, 2016 issue of The New Yorker (a “failing magazine that no one reads” according to Trump) for “Trump’s Boswell Speaks,” an article by Jane Mayer. She tells the story of author Tony Schwartz and his experiences writing The Art of the Deal for Trump. Trump claims to have written that book, but Schwartz’s story contradicts that lie. Trump would never have had the patience, the time, or the skill to write his own book. Trump barely sat down for interviews with Schwartz. Trump has no attention span, said Schwartz. Schwartz came up with the idea of listening in on Trump’s business calls. Trump loved that idea, because he believes he is a genius, and he wants anyone within earshot to hear him.

If asked to write the book now, Schwartz says he would title it The Sociopath. Sociopath is a harsh word, but it fits in well with Trump’s various other personality disorders.

Trump is also a liar of huge (yuge in Trumpspeak) proportions. Schwartz confronted him about his lies. Trump just smirked and said, “You like that, don’t you?” In order to soften the image of a liar, Schwartz came up with the phrase “truthful hyperbole,” which is a contradiction in terms and which Schwartz now deplores. Trump loved it.

There is an awful lot to digest in the New Yorker article, because there are so many disagreeable things about Trump, personal and professional. There is even this shiver-inducing statement by Schwartz quoted in the article: “I put lipstick on a pig. I contributed to presenting Trump in a way that brought him wider attention and made him more appealing than he is. I genuinely believe that if Trump wins and gets the nuclear codes there is an excellent possibility it will lead to the end of civilization.”

Wow.

When Gabriel blows his horn, it will be the final trumpeting call to doom.
I’ve been reading about Trump for years, ever since he started making his mark publicly well over 30 years ago. There is nothing about him I ever liked, from his smirking face, prissy-pouty lips to his staccato speaking style, his constant braggadocio, repellent personality, his comments about women or his all-around sense of royal privilege. But boy howdy, do some other folks love him! And as I have found out and said earlier, it does no good at all to publish negative information about him and try to get his fans’ attention.

When the Trumpets hear bad things they just link it to Trump’s assertion that the system is rigged. He speaks for those individuals who believe it’s the world against them, and them personally! For them Donald Trump, hallelujah…he understands them!

It there are Trumpets who may be listening, though, Tony Schwartz has a parting shot. The article ends with Schwartz’s personal experience with Trump. Trump called him when he found out he was talking to The New Yorker and chewed him out for disloyalty. “I don’t take it personally,” said Schwartz, “because the truth is he didn’t mean it personally. People are dispensable and disposable in Trump’s world.” If Trump is elected President, he warned, “the millions of people who voted for him and believe that he represents their interests will learn what anyone who deals closely with him already knows — that he couldn’t care less about them.”

Trumpets, take heed.

More examples of telling a personal story successfully

Writers are always told, “Write what you know,” and that is excellent advice. It is natural for us. Some writers do it better than others, and for those who are looking for examples of how to tell a personal story, I am presenting two that I think do it very well.

Eddie Hunter is a Georgia native, and has a gift for taking everyday incidents and turning them into something interesting. Funny, too.  Eddie is great at building this type of story, featuring his everyday life walking his dog, Willow, and the story of the neighbor with a Great Pyrenees dog is a fine example. It appeared in Eddie’s blog, Chicken Fat. (I just read in Eddie’s blog that he has reached 7,000 posts! Congratulations, Eddie!) I have made a couple of grammar edits to Eddie’s original.

A Great Pyrenees, but not the one in Eddie’s story.

Saturday, July 9, 2016

Great Pyrenees Dog by Eddie Hunter

Months ago a new young man took up residence across the street. He drove a big Chevy truck and brought another old antique-looking truck that he put in the driveway. He took the bed off the old truck and painted everything a stark shiny white. Then he apparently lost his enthusiasm and just left a truck bed and other parts here and there on the driveway and in the yard. He also brought a big white Great Pyrenees dog.

As we passed each other in our trucks I would give him a nod or a wave (manly wave of course) and he always looked right through me.

I don't think he had a job and was not in the market for one. He would come and go every day in no certain time frame.

POOF! One day about two weeks ago he was no longer there. He and his newer truck vamoosed. The old antique truck and all its scattered parts are still there and so is the big Great Pyrenees dog.

When Willow and I go for a morning walk before daylight many mornings the big white beautiful dog, behind a chain-link fence, growls and barks like it would like to eat us alive. Before the young man left, the dog sometimes sat out front with the man and the women that normally live in the house. Every time they saw us they would hold the dog so he would not go galloping at us, chomping.

Last night at bedtime I carried Willow out the front door for a last nature call for the night and I saw the women sitting around talking and to her left was the big white Great Pyrenees dog looking straight at us. I studied the space between them and the dog and decided if he quickly decided to leap and go after us the women would not be able to grab him before he grabbed us.

Quietly, we crept back into our front door and through the house out the back door for Willow's last call.

Today, while backing out of the driveway and looking in my rear-view mirror I saw the big white dog sitting in the same place as last night, studying me.

Then I backed into the street and got a closer look: It was not the dog at all. it was a big white garbage bag full, that they were just too lazy to put in their garbage can. The same white garbage bag, I bet, scared us into retreating last night.

******

Bhob Stewart was a writer and reporter, and also worked on many projects including “Wacky Packs” for Topps Chewing Gum. He was working on ideas for those right up until he died at age 76. His story, “Trigger Finger,” of a trick shooting exhibition at his Texas high school in the early fifties is carefully detailed, and then at the very end, self-revelatory. It appeared in his now dormant, but still accessible blog, Potrzebie.

Bhob Stewart, 1937-2014

 Saturday, August 11, 2007

 Trigger Finger by Bhob Stewart

Three years ago I had a magazine assignment to do an interview with Rodney Dangerfield. It was one of his last interviews, only a few months before his death.

I asked him about the unusual and offbeat nightclub acts he appeared with during the 1940s and 1950s, before television drove hundreds of those clubs out of business. Dangerfield described a family vaudeville act known as The Shooting Mansfields: “The act consisted of the mother, the father and their two kids shooting things from the stage. Before the show, they'd be in the basement rehearsing--shooting their guns.”

Instantly, I recalled the sharpshooter and his wife who drove into the small East Texas town where I lived from 1952 to 1955. The day this couple arrived to give a performance at the school auditorium in 1954, the high school classrooms emptied as everyone packed into the auditorium to see what promised to be an exciting event. Actually, so little happened around there that any show would have been exciting.

The rifleman's wife arranged various objects and targets on the stage, and then he shot at them while standing in the aisle in the middle of the audience. For one segment of the show, he used a metal disc containing a circle of white ping-pong balls. The disc was mounted vertically on a stand about four-feet high. The wife held her hand flat against the disc with two of her fingers spread apart and a ping-pong ball in the space between. As he aimed his rifle and successfully smashed a ping-pong ball to smithereens, she rotated the disc to the next position, and he fired again. When only one ping-pong ball was left in the disc, he grinned and said, “So... is there anyone here who would like to take her place?” This brought a few chuckles, followed by gasps and guffaws when other students saw that I had volunteered.

I could see he was fascinated by the audience's reaction to my raised hand. He walked over and talked to me in a low voice, asking me a few questions. People in front began twisting around and looking back, trying to hear this conversation. Then he said, “Okay. Go on up there.” I stood up amid much laughing and hooting at the very notion anyone would be foolish enough to do this.

When I stepped onto the stage, the wife immediately began talking to me in a quiet voice, giving me instructions about what to do, where to stand, how to hold my hand flat, and so forth. While she was doing this, the rifleman was entertaining the audience with jokes at my expense.

I stood with my fingers stretched as far apart as possible. He got ready, took aim –- but then lowered his rifle and told another joke, getting bigger laughs each time he did this. My finger muscles tightened as the seconds ticked away. “Wider, wider,” whispered the wife.

The tension in my hand increased. I wondered if a sudden muscle spasm might cause my fingers to snap shut at the very moment he pulled the trigger. Finally, he aimed, and the room fell silent. He fired. The ping-pong ball shattered. I held up my hand, showing all fingers intact. The audience burst into wild applause with screaming and cheering. The wife smiled. The sharpshooter grinned. He shook my hand as I went back to my chair.

Later that week, I wrote about the experience for my weekly column in the mimeographed high school newspaper. To illustrate the column installment I drew a cartoon showing a large drill press-type hole through my hand -- just like the big cookie-cutter bullet holes in Al Capp's Fearless Fosdick.

Years passed. The incident faded into the back alleys of my brain as the decades flashed by. But about ten years ago I started thinking about that day in terms of the present. Between 1995 and 1999, there were a startling number of incidents where students brought guns into schools and began killing their classmates. Every few months, another news story. This prompted some schools to adopt what they called a “zero tolerance policy” – which meant they began to closely examine items they interpreted as weapons or drugs. One six-year-old was suspended because he gave a friend some lemon candy, and another kid was kicked out of school because his mother had placed a bread knife in his lunchbox. A little girl's Looney Tunes keychain was confiscated.

Recalling the sharpshooter, I wondered what schools in the 1990s would allow a stranger to ride into town and aim his rifle at students. But wait! Why would a school allow such even in the 1950s? Why didn't a teacher speak out and say, “Sir! Don't shoot at our students, please! Just shoot your wife, okay?” But no teacher stepped forward. Why?

As I thought about this, the answer suddenly became clear. Certain people must have been told in advance that no real bullets were in the rifle. With that realization, I immediately understood how the trick was accomplished.

The wife used her left hand to hold the disc steady. With her right hand hidden from view behind the disc, she was able to shatter a ping-pong ball at the precise moment the rifle fired a blank. I remembered she had positioned me so that I never got a glimpse at the rear of the disc. With the sound of the rifle echoing through the years, the final pieces of the memory puzzle fell into place.

UFOs in Utah

A few years ago a young friend and I were talking. John is a true believer in the paranormal, and despite my own skepticism I am interested in believers and their beliefs. He is open with me in his own strongly held belief that UFOs are spacecraft from other worlds. He also claims the U.S. government covers up what they know, and that aliens and spacecraft are kept in locations within the continental United States. Even in Utah.

The story he told me during that conversation was a second-hand account of a UFO sighting: “My cousin and I were supposed to get together, so I called him. When I talked to him he told me last week he and his dad had been fishing. When they got home it was dark, after 9 o’clock. He said they got out of their truck and noticed a huge black triangular shape in the sky, blocking out the stars. It was just sitting overhead, not moving. He said they looked at it and commented on it, and watched for a few minutes to see if it did anything, and then they went in the house.

“I told him, ‘You saw a goddamn UFO and you didn’t think to call me!?’” John’s voice went up a few decibels. “Well, yeah,” his cousin told him. “We’ve seen stuff like that before.”

I spoke up. “You know we are the home to Dugway Proving Grounds, ‘Area 52’…there’s a claim the government moved all of the flying saucers they’ve collected from Area 51 to Dugway.” I had just watched an episode of UFO Hunters where they were nosing around the west desert looking to see any evidence of alien spacecraft in Utah. I said it in a joking tone. John just nodded. “We don’t know the half of it,” he said.

In 2015 this issue of Utah Stories was in local stores. It is a monthly giveaway magazine with stories of interest about the state. I picked it up because of the cover, and because of an article, “Hidden Utah” by Richard Markosian, who is listed on the masthead as the publisher of Utah Stories.

After describing an “X Files experience” Markosian describes a visit to the gates of Dugway. According to him, “I was denied access four years ago. On June 21, 2015 I was denied again. Although about 500 Utah residents live in Dugway, I ask one man who was entering the gates from which I was barred, ‘Excuse me, I have to ask: What are they doing in there?’

“’Bio and chem defence [sic] testing,’ is his simple answer.

“’But of course there is much more to it than that.’ I then point out that I know about the massive Michaels’ airfield large enough to land the space shuttle. ‘So what goes on there?’

“’I really can’t tell you anything more than what I’ve told you.”

Markosian then meets Bonnie, the communications manager for Dugway, who tells him he can probably get an escorted tour if he leaves his driver’s license number and date of birth. “I can see if we can get you cleared.”

He concludes with, “I decide to ask Bonnie a few questions to see if she flinches. She doesn’t.

“Bonnie says she used to joke with people that at 5 PM each night the mountain opens up and all the alien space ships fly out. According to those who have watched Dugway from afar, Bonnie’s description is not far from the truth.”

On the next page Carolyn Kingsley’s article, “UFO watching in Utah’s west desert,” tells us how to spot flying saucers. I didn’t see any mention of giant triangular black spaceships, but the article does include some tiny pictures of other supposed sightings. I have blown them up for both clarity and for the sake of my weak eyes. I also note that a credit slug says they are from aliendave.com.

 UFO over Utah Lake, 2005.

Following the link to the website I see some eyewitness accounts of triangular objects in the sky. The anonymous 17-year-old who reported one sighting in July, 2007, had this to say: “Me and my friend were laying on my lawn talking when I was [sic] a shadow in the sky.  I stood up to see it more clearly but it was not visible when I stood up.  I could only see it by looking from a certain angle almost as if it was invisible.  My friend had briefly seen it too.  It was completely silent and had no lighting.” That story is from my hometown of Sandy, Utah. (Hmm, maybe I should spend more time outdoors after sundown with my camera.) However, another story of a “metallic triangle,” seen in Hatch, Utah, is of a clearly seen object with multicolored blinking strobe lights. According to the witness, that one appeared in August 2007, and returned the following November.

There could be more stories, but aliendave.com has not been updated since 2009.

So what does any of this do to my natural skepticism? I can’t say because neither of the triangle stories had photos, and even with pictures I would still be skeptical. We live in the age of Photoshop, after all.

But if I let my imagination loose and think like conspiracy theorists do, I wonder if the NSA setting up a huge datafarm a few miles south of Sandy has anything to do with stuff going on within the Dugway Proving Grounds? Is any of the action of Utah legislators, suing the federal government over public lands (70% of Utah is owned by the Feds), because of secret stuff going on within our state borders? It’s a conspiracy theory within a conspiracy theory, and I’m almost ashamed of myself for bringing it up, but then many of my fellow Utahns are sure the federal government is conspiring against them.

70 more pictures of pin-up girls with their legs in the air

A month ago I showed 100 pictures of pin-up girls showing their hot legs and shoes. This is the follow-up: 70 more poses of girls with long legs and high heels!

See the link below the last picture for the first 100.

As promised, here are the first 100!