Monochrome Monday ~ England
Any mature and educated Englishman will recognise these images.
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jack collier
jackcollier7@talktalk.net
Dixon of Dock Green
‘evnin all
Atchison Topeka and the Santa Fe
Desire is the history that drives the engine…..
In Albuquerque I went to see an old railway locomotive being restored by a bunch of unpaid enthusiasts ~ older and interesting guys.
It turned out that the massive 450 ton engine ran on the AT & SF, and how cool is that?
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jack collier
jackcollier7@talktalk.net
go to New Mexico and see this
Tunes on Tuesday ~ Casablanca
Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman ~ As Time Goes By
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In Casablanca, Rick never said; ‘Play it again Sam’, but he should have
Women can drive a man to remember, and to think
all that may make a guy so take just one more drink
and booze does no good, but his love is treacherous
he can do better, and he will always have memories
I never truly told a friend how much I loved her, and I should have.
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jack collier jackcollier7@talktalk.net
Songs on Saturday ~ Billy Ocean
I get knocked down, but I get up again
you are never gonna keep me down
Some say that when the going gets tough, the tough get going. And, it’s not how many times you get knocked down that matters, but how many times you get up again. All I know is that when you’re walking through Hell, you’d better keep going.
From the movie The Jewel of the Nile.
Please listen responsibly.
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jack collier
jackcollier7@talktalk.net
get off your damn ass and get out of your comfort zone
Songs on Saturday ~ Billy Joel
There are no moralities nor rules to be found in arson.
This is a live version of the song ~ not the single release. I like the raw energy, and the pictures. (The lyrics are cool too.)
You know what? If you can’t handle me at my very worst, then you sure as hell don’t deserve me at my very best. You have lit the spark in my bonfire heart, and I don’t want to get burned again.
Please listen responsibly. And, never, ever play with fire.
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jack collier
jackcollier7@talktalk.net
“I don’t know who invented high heels, but all women owe him a lot…..”
“give a girl the right shoes, and she can conquer the world…..”
Tunes on Tuesday ~ Shania Twain
Never try to impress a woman ~ she’s seen and heard it all before.
What’s likely to impress a woman, and what isn’t?
Outside of a new love’s first bliss, I don’t know any really cool woman who isn’t going to think this line is totally sick making; The darkest hour of my day is the hour in which I don’t get to see you. ~ Amit Kalantri. It’s a cute line, but to me it’s not cool, and not impressive.
Actually, that may not be quite true, it’s all about the mood, the moment, the time, the place, and the delivery. But, in my experience, a line like that is just trying too hard.
In general terms, the harder a guy tries to impress a cool, mature, together woman, the less impressed she is likely to be. The thing is, boys have been trying to impress her ever since they first noticed that she was a girl ~ so you’ve got twenty years of her cynicism to overcome.
Unless you’re Steve McQueen forget about impressing her, and just be true to yourself. If that’s not enough then politely say goodbye ~ some say there’s always a nicer, prettier, sexier girl just around the corner. Me I’m not always so certain.
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jack collier
jackcollier7@talktalk.net
Next to Snoopy, who was ever cooler?
The Fastest Car In The World
Some days you don’t want to be just a number anymore.
The Lotus / Caterham 7 is the fastest A to B car in the world. Nine times out of ten a well-sorted 7 will get you to a destination a couple of hundred miles away even faster than a powerful motorcycle. The only car that can come close to a 7 is a Porsche 911, but take one of those on an LA freeway and the gaps in traffic just aren’t big enough to make real progress ~ without you getting killed or caught.
A Lotus / Caterham Seven is SMALL. You don’t turn the steering wheel, press the gas pedal, or reach down to change gear ~ you think the little car into gaps in traffic. By the time you have had a conscious thought you are already a few hundred yards down the road. A Seven is an extension of your mind, not an extension of your body ~ and for a guy a 7 is not an extension of your penis like a Porsche.
Both a Porsche and a well-sorted 7 will get you from rest to 60 miles and hour in a little under 4 seconds, but in any car other than a Seven you will need an open road, free of traffic, to make the most of that car’s savage acceleration. In a Lotus / Caterham 7 you can just about ignore traffic ~ if you are brave enough, and if you are good enough. And, you have no business sitting in the driver’s seat of a seven if you are not brave.
I don’t mean stupidly brave like motorcycle owners who are always just one tiny mistake from serious injury, or death. Transplant surgeons love it when it rains, because they know there will be a motorcycle accident and they they will have some spare parts soon.
Brave in a Lotus / Caterham 7 means being who you truly are, embracing freedom, throwing away your ‘stand-in-line’ mentality, and becoming one with the moment.
Many women will not sit in the passenger seat of a Seven more than once. They find the entire experience too visceral, too powerfully emotive, too fucking damn frightening. Finding a girl to ride shotgun on a long road trip in a Seven isn’t an easy thing to do ~ but then what real man wants the first women they meet at a bar? If you drive a Seven it’s going to take patience and time to find The Girl Riding Shotgun.
Anyway, if you are a real man you will have built your Seven yourself, and that takes time and patience too. And if you drive hard, with the top down, (which is the only true way to drive a 7), then she can’t talk with you anyway~ it’s just too damn noisy. The harsh bark of the side exhaust is overpowered by the flat roar from the Weber carburettors. There is wind noise around the side-screens, tyre roar, and probably transmission whine.
There are some other things about a 7 most ordinary women don’t like. It’s tiny, she’s sitting with her ass less than a foot from the road underneath, her hair is going to get blown about, every time you reach down to change gears you’re going to touch her leg, there’s limited luggage space, and when she gets out she’s got to be fucking damn careful not to burn her leg on the side exhaust, (if you’re driving a European spec car).
But real women, women who are not afraid of their own feelings will love a Caterham / Lotus 7.
Some say that they’re not a number, that they are a free man. And, that they will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, numbered, and made to stand in line. All I know is that of you drive a Seven you can do anything, as long as it’s what you want.
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jack collier
jackcollier7@talktalk.net
Me and my Seven.
On Being Presidential
A Leader is one who shows the way.
Listening to the wireless yesterday, I happened to hear part of a speech / response to a question by President Trump on the use of chemical weapons in Syria. Allegedly some 100 men, women, and children were killed by Sarin Gas / and or Chlorine Gas, on Tuesday of this week. This ‘massacre’ took place in Khan Sheikhoun, in the rebel-held Syrian province of Idlib, allegedly the ‘massacre’ was carried out by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s forces.
Russia says this atrocity was caused by gas leaking from a terrorist / Syrian rebel chemical weapons depot.
Sarin Gas is particularly nasty stuff, invented by Hitler’s boffins, odourless and deadly in 10 seconds, it’s a perfect terrorist weapon. The use of Sarin was banned in 1997 under the UN chemical weapons convention. Chlorine Gas will also kill you pretty quickly, and obviously chlorine isn’t banned, but chlorine stinks. The 1925 Geneva Protocol specifically prohibits the use of Gas in Warfare, but apparently allows the use of chemical weapons within a state’s own borders in a civil conflict. So it wouldn’t actually be completely illegal for Syrian forces to use Chlorine Gas on rebels in Idlib Province.
However, the rights, wrongs, culprits, retaliations, and possible solutions for this terrible incident wasn’t what struck me about President Trump’s words during his Rose Garden Press Conference. My first thought was that Mr. Trump didn’t sound ‘Presidential’. His presentation skills were, quite frankly, terrible.
Strictly speaking, this wasn’t a ‘presentation’ by President Trump, but anytime a President of The United States of America speaks, shouldn’t he radiate authority, clarity, confidence, gravitas, and complete command of his brief? For me, Mr Trump just sounded like an amateur speaker at a golf club tournament.
The President committed the cardinal sins of deviation, hesitation, and repetition. I have a strong feeling that Mr. Trump speaks totally ‘off the cuff’, and ‘shoots from the hip’. At the same time I believe that Mr. Trump has spent far too long using facile social media such as Twitter, and not long enough reading modern history written by statesmen such as Winston Churchill.
Listen to one of Mr Churchill’s great speeches, such as the ‘Finest Hour’, and then listen to Mr Trump on Syria, and note the differences. If you like, you can also listen to someone like the actor Morgan Freeman, who sounds far more ‘Presidential’ than President Donald Trump.
The question is; does sounding and acting like a great president, make you a great president? Well, partly it does. Some say that John F. Kennedy was a great president, and that his greatest speech was his 100 days speech. All I know is that Kennedy ‘sounds’ like a great President, and sadly Trump doesn’t, not quite, not yet. Although Mr Trump does have a pretty cool sense of humour, and maybe that’s why a woman like Hillary Clinton couldn’t get herself elected.
Some say that a man should ‘fake it to make it’, and that looking and sounding like a leader is nine-tenths of the battle. All I know is that presentation skills are part of urban survival skills and something every man should learn.
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jack collier
jackcollier7@talktalk.net
prisoner of insanity writes
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captive in a locked mind
camera behind locked doors
the empty vodka bottle is unkind
imagination’s running distant shores
inhabited in gloom and blackness defined
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jack collier
jackcollier7@talktalk.net
travel broadens the mind
To travel is to take a journey into yourself.
Doing a little research on something else, I was bored enough to read a narrow-minded American’s opinion of visit to England, which pissed me off somewhat. Here are some real facts about Americans;
64% of Americans do not own a passport.
In states such as; Alabama, Arkansas, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma, and South Carolina only about 25% of US citizens own a valid passport.
When most Americans visit another country it’s to either Mexico or Canada.
Annually, less than 5% of Americans travel overseas.
More than half of all Americans have never been outside of America.
Most Americans have not been to more than 5 US states.
Many Americans have never been more than 100 miles from where they were born.
The commonest complaints of Americans visiting England are;
- ‘the bacon is terrible…’
- ‘few ethnicities are represented in London cuisine…’
- ‘there is no Mexican or Latin American food in Britain…’
- ‘British people are cold and hard to befriend…’
- ‘the London subway is unreliable…’
- ‘the British are obsessed with the Queen and Royal Family…’
- ‘it always rains in England…’
- ‘the English drive on the wrong side of the road…’
- ‘British cars are undrivable…’
- ‘free healthcare is such a stupid idea…’
- ‘British TV sucks…’
- ‘refrigerators and washing machines are very small…’
- ‘there’s no dress code…’
- ‘black people are just people…’
- ‘they eat with their forks upside down…’
I’ve travelled all over the world, I’ve worked, lived, and had many vacations in the United States, I have some close friends in America, and none of the above surprises me one little bit. American culture is so in-your-face and all-pervasive, (you only had to watch the recent Oscars ceremony to realise that), that all Americans think the rest of the world is just like America ~ trust me, it isn’t.
In addition, working Americans are allowed and take so few vacation days, (average 10 days a year), that the idea of visiting some of the great cultural sites in Europe just never crosses their minds.
The whole world is a book, and those who do not travel read only a single page. ~ Saint Augustine
Which is why it does not surprise me that;
- Middle America elected Donald Trump as their President.
- Americans are obsessed with social media like Twitter, Tumblr, and Facebook.
- More than 80% of Americans believe in conspiracy theories, and that the Government has kept secrets about UFOs.
- More than 85% of Americans believe in one or more of; aliens, flying saucers, angels, astrology, extra-sensory-perception, Big Foot, ghosts, reincarnation, the healing power of crystals, witchcraft, that they can win money in Las Vegas casinos, and that winning the lottery is a viable financial plan.
- Over 75% of Californians believe that more than 25% of Americans are Gay or Lesbian, (the true figure is 3.5% of Americans are LGBT).
- 25% of Americans believe in creation theory and that the Earth is the centre of the universe.
- 25% of Americans believe they won their Independence from a country other than Great Britain.
- All Americans feel they need a planned and fixed itinerary before setting off on their travels.
A good traveller has no fixed plans, and is not intent on arriving. ~ Lao Tzu
To a well-travelled, well-read, and well-educated Englishman like me, it’s very sad that most Americans are like a Monday morning quarterback ~ they think they can talk a good game, but mostly they talk bullshit. Actually, it’s worse than that, most Americans think their opinions matter to others. They need to get out into the world a bit more.
And in England, ‘Trump’ is still another word for ‘Fart’.
Have a nice day.
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jack collier
jackcollier7@talktalk.net
