Henry Charles Bukowski (born Heinrich Karl Bukowski; August 16, 1920 – March 9, 1994) was a German-American poet, novelist, and short story writer.

His writing was influenced by the social, cultural, and economic ambience of his home city of Los Angeles. His work addresses the ordinary lives of poor Americans, the act of writing, alcohol, relationships with women, and the drudgery of work. Bukowski wrote thousands of poems, hundreds of short stories and six novels, eventually publishing over 60 books. The FBI kept a file on him as a result of his column, Notes of a Dirty Old Man, in the LA underground newspaper Open City.

“That’s the problem with drinking, I thought, as I poured myself a drink. If something bad happens you drink in an attempt to forget; if something good happens you drink in order to celebrate; and if nothing happens you drink to make something happen.”

“Drinking is an emotional thing. It joggles you out of the standardism of everyday life, out of everything being the same. It yanks you out of your body and your mind and throws you against the wall. I have the feeling that drinking is a form of suicide where you’re allowed to return to life and begin all over the next day. It’s like killing yourself, and then you’re reborn. I guess I’ve lived about ten or fifteen thousand lives now.”

“‘I think I need a drink.’ ‘Almost everybody does only they don’t know it.'”

“I like to change liquor stores frequently because the clerks got to know your habits if you went in night and day and bought huge quantities. I could feel them wondering why I wasn’t dead yet and it made me uncomfortable. They probably weren’t thinking any such thing, but then a man gets paranoid when he has 300 hangovers a year.”

“Getting drunk was good. I decided that I would always like getting drunk. It took away the obvious and maybe if you could get away from the obvious often enough, you wouldn’t become obvious yourself.”

“When you drank the world was still out there, but for the moment it didn’t have you by the throat.”

“‘What? You mean you’d dare drink right after getting out of jail for intoxication?’ ‘That’s when you need a drink the most.'”

A young Barbara Bush

A younger Melania Trump

bbc

Lawsuit after Malaysian flag reported as ‘IS symbol’ in US

A US employee association is being sued after restricting a Muslim man’s membership over a row about a flag.

Munir Zanial let a property at a lake owned by the organisation for a Malaysian Independence Day party.

The FBI was alerted when an employee reported Muslim guests were displaying what was described as a US flag defaced with Islamic State group symbols.

The investigation ended when it emerged the flag was Malaysia’s, but Mr Zanial was banned from hosting events.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Kansas has now filed a law suit accusing the Spirit Boeing Employees Association of “racial profiling and blatant religious discrimination”.

‘Blatant discrimination’

Mr Zanial, a Muslim Malaysian aerospace engineer, was a paying member of the employee association when he rented the property to celebrate both Malaysian Independence Day and the end of Ramadan in September 2017.

According to the complaint, the party included guests of Indian-Malaysian ancestry with several women wearing hijabs.

The FBI closed its investigation the following month, but the law suit alleges that the employee association then hired a private investigator to look into the incident, and ended Mr Zanial’s rental privileges without informing him.

The executive director of the ACLU of Kansas said: “To label someone a terrorist due to their appearance and their celebration of their heritage is shameful, but to continue to use that mislabel as grounds for blatant discrimination – even after it had been discredited by the FBI – is downright reprehensible.”

The Spirit Boeing Employees Association has made no comment.

Tall, small, big, short, it makes no difference. Unless of course you are a middle linebacker or a jockey. Despite the trivial nature of this post, there are some surprising revelations here.  Never realized Snooky was 4’8″, and Seth Green was 5’4″.

There is a bit of redundancy here, it was necessary to include as many people as possible.

World leaders

Canada’s current Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is 6’2″.

Helen Maxine Lamond Reddy (born 25 October 1941) is an Australian singer, actress and activist. In the 1970s, she enjoyed international success, especially in the United States, where she placed 15 singles in the Top 40 of the Billboard Hot 100. Six made the Top 10 and three reached No. 1, including her signature hit “I Am Woman”. She is often referred to as the “Queen of ’70s Pop”.

“I Am Woman” is a song written by Australian-American artist Helen Reddy and singer-songwriter Ray Burton and performed by Reddy. The first recording of the song appeared on Reddy’s debut album I Don’t Know How to Love Him, released in May 1971, and was heard during the closing credits for the 1972 film Stand Up and Be Counted. A new recording of the song was released as a single in May 1972 and became a number one hit later that year, eventually selling over one million copies. The song came near the apex of the counterculture era and, by celebrating ‘female empowerment’, became an enduring anthem for the women’s liberation movement.

“I Am Woman”