Tag Archives: philosophy

He was captured once before. Was Foley a dual-citizenship American/Israeli?

Posted on August 20, 2014 by | 2 comments

Hi readers.  Today with tens, maybe hundreds of thousands of ‘Americans’ holding dual Israeli citizenship it isn’t enough to report an ‘American’ journalist was beheaded.  Heck, more than a dozen US Senators hold dual Israeli citizenship.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=zTKAI3P_Ipw

The fact is, evidently James Foley was held previously with other journalists in Libya and one of them was killed.  But Foley returned to the war zone.

Which doesn’t necessarily mean he worked for the CIA or Mossad and richly deserved what he got.  It only means the question is worth considering.  His story of the Libya capture is in the video above, along with the story below:

http://www.jrn.com/tmj4/news/135208003.html

Journalist James Foley reflects on being captured in Libya

By Lacey Crisp. CREATED Dec 7, 2011 – UPDATED: Dec 7, 2011
 
MILWAUKEE- As a journalist, James Foley says it’s weird being interviewed and says he’d rather be reporting. He says he’s glad that so many people are interested in learning about his days in captivity Libya.
 
“I’ve thought about it a lot, I’ve had hours and hours to think about it. Of course in retrospect you had the signs that we should have pulled back,” Foley explained.
 
Early in April, Marquette grad James Foley and three other journalists went past a check point they knew was pushing the limits.
 
“At one point we said, this is dangerous, but we don’t want to go back yet,” Foley said.
 
The group of journalists was shot at and three were taken into custody.  Photographer Anton Hammerl was shot and killed.
 
“We were thrown in the back of the truck and zip tied for hours,” Foley said.
 
Foley explains he was treated well during his captivity, but admits the first day was brutal.
 
“We were knocked around.”

Then, nearly three weeks after his capture, Foley was able to call home.
 
“I was just praying, let my mom be home, because I didn’t know her cell phone number!”
 
His last night in Tripoli he spent at the Hungarian Embassy and was able to see for himself on the Internet the outpouring of love and prayers from his friends back in Milwaukee.
 
“I saw a vigil on YouTube somehow, and I clicked on a few links. I said, this is unbelievable.”
 
Foley says it was that love and support from his Marquette friends that kept him strong.
 
“I can’t babysit, rake enough leaves, paint enough interiors to every repay them,” Foley said.
 
Three months after Foley’s release he went back to Libya and was there when leader Moammar Ghaddafy was killed.
 
He says he will continue reporting in war-torn areas.

 If he held a dual citizenship of US and Israeli he was traveling on dangerous ground.  Similar to being a resident of Gaza over the past few weeks.  And he was innocent of any wrongdoing and still got beheaded, well, so did a lot of innocent people in Gaza.  Thousands.

Being an ‘American’ doesn’t mean a person isn’t a foaming at the mouth kill’em all and let God sort them out Zionist hiding behind US citizenship papers.

Old Jules

 

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Posted in 2014, jews

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Drones, drone pilots and other heroes protecting our freedoms

Posted on August 20, 2014 by | Leave a comment

Hi readers.  Thanks for coming by for a read.

I’d been putting off giving Drones, the movie a try on Netflix because of the cover art.  Gave the appearance of one of those animated space war games I’ve found I don’t want to devote any minutes of my remaining life to see.  But it was on my ‘list’ anyway.  I kept scrolling past it and eventually decided to bring it up long enough to apply the ruthless scourge treatment.

Frankly, it wasn’t a good movie in most of the ways I’d normally measure movies.  But it did show that somewhere some other human beings are wondering about the moral and ethical issues related to killing off targets thousands of miles away using drones and drone technology.  I’d wondered a lot about the minds of the people making the decision to kill a host of obviously innocent bystanders and whether they were experiencing any karmic loading afterward.

Drones does explore the matter and a viewer is left with the impression someone among the directors, screenplay writers, producers, had personal experience with drone piloting and all it implies.  I find it encouraging that someone, though maybe not any of the parties actually involved in making choices to blow away babies, children, mothers, and people such as myself who happen to be in the wrong place at the right time, someone is thinking about what it means.

All the usual suspects have opinions about the flick and have said so on Netflix:

Once again the poster and disc art has nothing to do with the actual movie. The entire production is shot inside a “trailer” with a few external shots to show it was in the Nevada desert. This mess concerns the elimination of a suspected terrorist and a shave tail lieutenant that doesn’t want to fire a Hellfire missile from the drone she and her pilot are operating. It is left wing mush focusing on collateral damage with a side trip to how EVIL the military command is. Save yourself the loss of 82 minutes and avoid this male bovine excrement.

——————————————————————-

Wow. 1st, yes the audio sucks in parts, but there’s subtitles. 2nd, surely any high ranking officer would not disregard such flagrant refusal of orders. Oh, & then we have both military people (girl & guy—YES, women can be violent!) committing assault; One could argue this is an example of why women should not be in combat (drone pilots are more like ground soldiers than regular pilots).At least 1 other review was wrong, this is somewhat realistic, nothing corporate, all 100% military. I’m not in the military, but as I understand it, deliberate refusal of orders, (esp in a combat situation!) would result in being relieved of duty, & disciplinary action.As another says, Poster is BS, nothing to do with movie. Does bring up many moral questions, but so does war & killing in general; If they’re part of your own nation, killing even 1 civilian can make someone a terrorist, & a murderer. (and US military—-yes, I’m in US—has killed *THOUSANDS* of Iraqis, who were unarmed; How does that make Us (ie, USA) any better than them?3.5 stars for moral issues; 1 for technical; Much more realistic than most military movies, but if this is 100% realistic, it’s a sad commentary on our (US) military.I agree, needs better research.

 http://www.netflix.com/WiMovie/70296444?sod=search-autocomplete

Just following orders is an excuse that ceased to carry water on the losing side back shortly after WWII.  Evidently the makers of this movie believe, probably correctly, that military careersmen in an all-volunteer military damned well better just follow orders.  And, of course, the orders are coming from people who’ve weighed all the ethical and moral issues, made sound value judgements without regard to anything in their personal lives.  All the way up the ladder to the guy in the White House.

Reminded me that I saw on Yahoo News the other day a story about Bill Clinton remarking somewhere that, “I could have killed Osama Bin Laden.”  Seemed strange to me, brought up visions of him and some Arab duking it out with swords or dueling pistols.

I’m more inclined, however, to think he meant he could have killed him the way he murdered the Mount Pleasant men, women and children outside Waco, Texas, using puppets who were just following orders.  Heroes who were, at least, close enough to smell them burning and hear their screams.  Different sort of hero from the drone pilots.

Old Jules

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Blacks in Ferguson, MO, emulate Israel rampage of destruction

Posted on August 18, 2014 by | Leave a comment

Hi readers.  Thanks for coming by for a read this morning.

We human beings would be a lot more believable if we weren’t such lying, greedy, opportunistic sneaky creatures.  Some cop in Ferguson, MO, shot himself a young black man the other day, as cops have a way of doing when the wife has a headache or the dog bites them, or the car needs new tires.  And when they do it tends to piss off the black Native Americans who live in the communities where it happens.

Black Native Americans aren’t that different from White Native Americans or Hispanic Native Americans in that regard.  They don’t like people killing their kids just for the amusement it gives them.  If it were the kids of middle-to-upper-middle to upper-class White Native Americans the cop-bosses would be on the shooters like stink on crap if they couldn’t arrange for a throw-down weapon or construe some other excuse for the officer having a bad day.

But Hispanic Native Americans and Black Native Americans only enjoy the privilege of having cops beating their kids to death on pain of having the copshops shaking his hand and congratulating him, mostly.  The copshop attitude toward those matters is generally that if the kid wasn’t doing something at that moment they probably owed him one from sometime they didn’t know about.

Which tends to raise the ire down in the hoods among the family and potential targets for police officer tension management moments.  Down in the hood it’s not difficult to understand some mild frustrations exist as a result of the fact the problem’s lingered so badly, overall.  They’d like to see something done about it.  This time, every time.  They’d legitimately like to see the officer beaten to death, or otherwise treated with reciprocal formality.  Legitimate grievance.

So what the hell do they do?  They smash and loot candy bars and free potatio chips out of the local convenience store.  Owned by people who didn’t have a damned thing to do with killing the kid.  Stand off in the distance and yell, throw rocks.  Stupid.

It’s as though they’re taking lessons from Israel, going on a binge of killing and property theft and destruction directed at people who had nothing to do with firing rockets or kidnapping Israeli kids.  Smash and grab for the property in Palestine they haven’t settled yet with good Israelis.  Stealing candy and potato chips in the form of minerals in the Med off the coast of Gaza.

We human beings are surely sneaky.  But we still have a lot to learn from Israel, and Israel doesn’t learn from anyone, even their own history and the long history of Jews worldwide.  Same as the rest of us they’ve never been guiltless.  But it would be a shame to see Israel screw things up for honest, only  ordinary-level dishonest and greedy Jews elsewhere in the world.  Jews who are behaving the way the rest of us barely believable and secretly greedy non-Jews behave.  Which is about the best anyone could ask for from humans.  But Israel going over the top with it makes everyone look bad in the eyes of people prone to hate Jews anyway.

We’d be a lot more believable, we humans if we weren’t so dishonest.  And greedy.  And mean as snakes.

You’ve got to admit, Israelis and the Black Native Americans down in the worst neighborhoods stealing anything they can get their hands on and mugging anyone weak enough to be mugged, are surprisingly similar.  Both begging for handouts from the US Government, and Israel actually receiving a cumulative $130 billion or so for their efforts, though mostly in weaponry.  Nobody buys guns for anyone in the hood, which is unfair any way you cut it.

Old Jules

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Sylvia Plath and so many other suicides

Posted on August 14, 2014 by | Leave a comment

Hi readers.  Someone female sitting in the lobby late one night tossed The Bell Jar aside and groaned a curse.  Headed for the wagon yard, I reckons.  So I picked up Plath’s tome and read enough to remember everything else I ever knew, ever wanted to know about Sylvia Plath.  Most vividly I remembered a poem, Daddy, by Ms Plath.  Some University of Texas poetry course caused me to write a ten page paper about it once.

I learned to hate the thought Sylvia Plath and her lot shared this planet with regular human beings.  And after reading a while on Bell Jar, chunking it, I wrote this:

Virus of the mind

The drumbeat litany of hatred
And blame;
Of smug mindless naiveté
Numbs the mind.
Alienation is a welcome gift
From the universe
When it involves the inability
To identify with THAT.

The preoccupation with death
As though death is an unnatural state,
Created by a dark maker for the shallow purpose
Of providing a source of terror and sadness
For tiny humans;
Leaves me with a yearning:

Just once I’d like to see a poem
Just once.
A poem full of truths:

“I gave you permission
to hurt me and make me angry;
because of my illusions and expectations
you never agreed to satisfy
and didn’t
now I’m angry.

“I wanted you to behave a certain way.
Because I wanted it, I demanded it
In my expectations of you
without saying so.

“I wanted you to give up your choices.
I didn’t want it
because giving them up would make you
happier
Or more fulfilled.
I just wanted it because I wanted it.

“I’m used to getting my way.
I’ll hate you if I don’t get it.

“I’ll hate you fiercely
and if that doesn’t work
I’ll threaten to kill myself
Just to get you back.”

Or,

“I’m angry.  I’ve always been angry.
Life isn’t fair and it pisses me off.
I haven’t gotten everything I want.
Sometimes my parents weren’t kind to me;
Didn’t give me what I wanted.

“I talk to my friends and they’re angry, too.
The more we talk the more we realize life isn’t fair
And it pisses us off.

“We talk among ourselves
About how cool it would be
To kill some of those flawed bastards
We don’t like.

“We savor our anger; our hatred
We wallow in it
And think of different ways we’d like to kill
The bastards we don’t like;
How much we’d enjoy killing.
We all know
Because took a voice vote.

“Some nerd who wears his glasses crooked
And isn’t cool;
Some football jock who gets all the girls
We’d like to get;
We hate the girls and the jocks.

“Some sarcastic adult who isn’t cool
And doesn’t respect our views
About how the world is.

“We’d like to kill them all.
We took a voice vote
And we all agree.”

“We haven’t studied much
Nor read much
Nor lived much
Nor listened much
But that doesn’t keep us
From knowing how life is;
How life should be.”

“We’re angry and we’d like to kill them all!
We took a voice vote.

“And by God you’ll see
You’ll be sorry
When I kill myself!”

And the Ted Hugheses of the world , the Daddys

Sort through selective memories to avoid the truth

About this creature they loved.

From Poems of the New Old West, copyright 2003 Jack Purcell

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Posted in 2014, America, Poetry

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Suicide: Make it count, son. There’s money to be made.

Posted on August 14, 2014 by | Leave a comment

Hi readers.  Shortly after I came back to town after The End of Life As We Know It and the Y2K I gave myself [you can probably find the stories of that by searching the blog for Y2K] I went to work graveyard shift.  Travel Lodge, maybe, or Motor Inn, night clerk.  11pm-7am.  That story’s here somewhere, too.

Those nights in that motel were always long, sometimes interesting, never boring.  At least not to me, but I don’t recall ever having been bored this lifetime.

One night a guy came down from his room and sat in the lobby, just wanted to talk.  He was in town as part of a team cleaning up a particularly messy suicide.  That’s what he did for a living.  Travelled all over the place where suicides happened and left a terrible mess, maybe a hazardous one.

Interesting guy, with a perspective about suicide and life that I mightn’t agree with, but am glad I encountered anyway.  So sometime one of those long nights later I wrote this thing I might have once called a poem:

Industry

Brain soup on steel rails,
Creosote and gravel
Is tasteless and inconsiderate.

What a waste, you say.
It keeps people employed
I say.

Lawsuits, insurance forms
Police reports
Accident reports
For a non accident.

Clerks, cops, lawyers
Funeral directors
Morticians
And the little guy.

Someone has to clean up
Those brain and bloodstains
On the walls and carpets;
Pick the bone fragments
Out of the doorframe
With a pair of needle nosed pliers;
Plug the holes
Re paint. 
Mop up those
Sidewalk body fluids
Untangle the lariat
Or phone cord
From the light fixture
Scrub bathtub
crimson rings.

Someone has to manufacture
Sleeping pills
Bullets
Razorblades
Ropes.

And hospital beds
For the faint of heart.

Some of that’s still
Made in America
(Good quality, too
And I’m damned proud
To say it.)

It’s hard times.
A man has to go where the work is.

What a waste, you say.
It keeps people employed
I say.
It’s commerce.

From Poems of the New Old West, copyright 2003, NineLives Press, Jack Purcell

Old Jules

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Depression

Posted on August 14, 2014 by | 10 comments

Hi readers.  Thanks for coming by for a read this morning.

I noticed on the television down at the Olathe Community Center to be stared at by people on treadmills and other torture machines that some big name celebrity killed himself.  Guy who was in an amusing movie once about a house that an airplane crashed into and he bought it because it had been pre-disastered.

I don’t know.  Maybe the guy was terminally ill, or maybe just depressed.  That crap can surely happen.  Back in my younger days I used to go into a black pit of depression there seemed no way out of.  Where it seemed the Universe was trying to drag me into the hole a person doesn’t come back out of, the way this Williams guy exited.

I was lucky in a lot of ways, though I’m not sure what all of them were.  I had a name for the ‘entity’ that seemed to take possession of my mind and spirit during those times.  I called it the blue demon.  Because it seemed to be a real being.

And the way I eventually got it into my past so’s I have to work to remember about it, was by treating it as a living, thinking creature with a will I could do battle with, wrestle it to the ground.  Banish it from my psyche.

And once I discovered I could do that and did it successfully and thoroughly one time, afterward it was a lot easier.  For decades afterward anytime I sensed that blue demon out of the corner of my perceptions I’d immediately jump in and do battle with it again, drive it out before it got a foothold.

It worked so well for me that I’ve sometimes gone years, maybe decades without ever sensing it, doing battle with it.  But it’s still there, lurking, waiting for things to happen in its favor.  When my health began the slide down the slippery slope the old blue demon tried whispering to me out of the wings a few times.

Interestingly, I think I have a lot of the symptoms of clinical depression right now, today, minus the blue demon black pit and the anguish that goes with it.  I’m a happy, lucky man, grateful and congratulating myself for it a thousand times per day.

But I can’t force myself to open my mail.  I don’t answer the telephone unless I’m confident who is calling. Have to force myself to do anything that falls into the  arena of acknowledging one hell of a lot of life that would love to come in and say hello.

I’m probably going to have to do something about that.  Maybe give it a name, shake hands with it, and do battle.  I’m just not there yet.

Old Jules

 

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Posted in 2014, America

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Image

Nation Horrified By Carolina Panthers’ Disturbingly Graphic Logo Redesign

Sports icons are evolving to better accommodate 21st Century residents
The Onion: Photo Finish• Sports• football• Unsponsored• Feb 5, 2012
http://www.theonion.com/articles/nation-horrified-by-carolina-panthers-disturbingly,27266/
When the Confederate battle flags became unacceptable as a source of self-identity for Carolinians something was bound to replace them.

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Posted on August 13, 2014 by in 2014, America

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Middle Easterners don’t respect human life the way we do

Posted on August 10, 2014 by | 2 comments

Hi readers.  Thanks for coming by for a read.

Probably there’s no other conclusion to reach:  Middle Easterners don’t like other people as much as we do.

  • You’ve got all those wossname, Kurds having whatever is happening to them, or doing something to someone else.
  • You’ve got Israel doing a slick ethnic cleansing and land-grabbing against their cousins in neighboring Palestine.
  • You’ve got Sufis killing someone somewhere, Sunnis killing other people somewhere else, and you’ve got Shiites squeezing into the act killing someone else, possibly Sufis or Sunnis.
  • And now you’ve got women in Syria being stoned [with rocks, not marijuana] for adultery.
  • You’ve got the lot of them sneaking around killing, discriminating, not liking Christians when they aren’t killing someone else.

But of course those people don’t believe in the Bible.  They never learned to stay home and peacefully mind their own business, relax about human diversity, and forgive others for being different from themselves.  They never learned not to get too worked up about having a lot of extra possessions, big houses, gewgaws, cars and cosmetic surgery.

And guns.  They have too many guns.  Where the hell do they get all those guns?  Those people in the Middle East have more guns and rockets than we have IPODs and SUVs.  Especially the ones who are trying to be like us.

In countries over there where they’re not all Mexicans the white people try hard to be like us.  Israel is a good example.  But although they’re simple, God fearing folks, they aren’t Christians.  They don’t believe in the Bible.  So they can’t understand they need to quit slaughtering their neighbors and stealing their land.  They’d like to be like real white people, but they can’t get it right.  And that’s just Israel.  A few miles in any direction the places are full of Mexicans who aren’t even trying to be like white people.

Old Jules

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Posted in 2014, Christians, History, Human Behavior

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The Onion Survey: Americans Watching Better Sex Than Ever

Posted on August 10, 2014 by | 2 comments
News• Unsponsored• ISSUE 50•31• Aug 7, 2014

Many Americans say they frequently spend all night watching amazing sex.

LOS ANGELES—Reflecting a significant shift in societal attitudes and behaviors, a survey completed this week by researchers at the University of Southern California revealed that American adults are watching far better sex than ever before.

The initial findings, which sociologists gathered from thousands of telephone and in-person interviews as well as field observations, confirmed that the sex that U.S. citizens now see on screen is considerably more adventurous, passionate, and satisfying than any they have previously experienced.

“Based on our data, the American people are now regularly viewing the highest quality sex of their lives, which is characterized by stronger connections with those on screen and longer, more fulfilling climaxes,” said lead researcher Patricia Oberlin, adding that the vast majority of those surveyed claimed they have watched “mind-blowing” or “earth-shattering” sex within the past five days. “Every demographic that we queried—individuals and couples, young and old, males and females, gay and straight—they’re all engaging in rich and rewarding sex-watching lives, with many respondents reporting that they never imagined they would ever see such thrilling sex.”

“We found that Americans now routinely take part in watching wild, energetic sexual intercourse, which often lasts for greater lengths of time,” Oberlin continued. “And the frequency of sex viewing in the U.S. has increased as well, with many people saying they watch sex every day of the week and occasionally two times per night. All in all, Americans’ sex-viewing lives are incredibly active.”

Sociologists attributed the improved quality of copulation that Americans are watching to an increased level of attention paid to their particular desires during sex-viewing. This heightened level of comfort and empowerment while watching sex, according to researchers, has allowed the general public to shed their inhibitions and view a wider variety of erotic acts, with many Americans reportedly experimenting with different or unfamiliar positions, toys, age groups, and ethnic and racial backgrounds to keep their viewing lives fresh and interesting.

“Earlier in their lives, people might have only been exposed to an old-fashioned sexual viewing experience where the sex was fairly routine and the emphasis was entirely on pleasuring the male, but our data shows that this isn’t always the case anymore,” Oberlin said. “In fact, we found that a large number of Americans even prefer to watch sex that focuses solely on female pleasure and doesn’t involve men at all.”

Researchers confirmed that since the last time the survey was conducted, in 1989, there has been a large increase in watching forms of sex that were previously considered taboo, citing examples such as oral sex performed to the point of asphyxiation, fisting, and erotic lactation.

While the study determined that vaginal intercourse is still by far the most commonly viewed sexual act in the U.S., more Americans, including a large percentage of women, indicated they are now open to watching fellatio, cunnilingus, anal penetration, and dominance and submission.

“I used to only watch the missionary position, which was kind of boring, but now, I’ve been getting into watching sensual massages and role-playing stuff with cheerleader costumes,” said Patrick Sanders, 38, a Phoenix-area husband and father of two. “The truth is I used to have a lot of hang-ups and I couldn’t even fathom watching a threesome with two men and one woman. In fact, the thought of seeing another guy’s penis during sex-viewing was just gross. But it turns out I was missing out on watching some really hot sex.”

“At this point, I’m completely fine seeing someone ejaculate on pretty much any body part—in fact, that’s something I discovered I actually enjoy viewing,” added Sanders. “I’m even thinking of exploring watching bondage. That’s something I never could have viewed years ago.”

Researchers also found that Americans are spicing up their sex-watching lives by viewing intercourse in different settings such as bedrooms, kitchens, bathrooms, offices, classrooms, parks, college dorms, public spaces, and even moving vehicles.

In addition, many of those surveyed said they are watching sex more spontaneously or viewing it at unusual times of day, which they said increased their arousal.

“Sometimes, I’ll watch sex first thing in the morning before I roll out of bed and get ready for work, and it’s fantastic,” said Mitch Watson, adding that he has never felt more alive. “I thought I was watching pretty good sex in my 20s, but this is a whole new level. I know what I want to watch now, and it’s a little more unrestrained and kinky.”

“Last week, my wife and I booked a hotel for a couple nights and spent the entire time in the room,” continued Watson. “We just ordered room service and watched great sex all weekend.”

http://www.theonion.com/articles/survey-americans-watching-better-sex-than-ever,36640/?recirc=unsponsored&utm_source=The+Onion&utm_campaign=3b3b67c7b3-The_Onion_Newsletter_Daily_Template&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_6a8b5ad20e-3b3b67c7b3-16729065

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Posted in 2014, America

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How can Facebook going down not be a reason to call 911?

Posted on August 5, 2014 by | 1 comment
Sgt. Brink ✔ @LASDBrink

is not a Law Enforcement issue, please don’t call us about it being down, we don’t know when FB will be back up!

11:37 AM – 1 Aug 2014
Some things are capable of being reduced to such a small vessel of reality nothing more needs saying.
Old Jules

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Posted in 2014

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