Dear Anonymous II

A few months ago I received a comment from an anonymous reader and it was very complimentary. I seemed to have hit a nerve with at least the discriminating and ethereal crowd. Today, I received another comment from an anonymous reader, but a different one. That's it! We're changing the name of the book to "Anonymous"!


"What began as an interesting Blog with value-judgements I sometimes found appealing, sometimes irksome but always interesting, is fast developing into a visceral (and eviscerating) observational post on reality as we feel it rather than see it. David, keep these coming. I hate to admit it but Wild Wild East has become addictive."

Over the length of this blog I've received any number of comments and mails from people I don't know at all. Rhona in New York was the one to let me know of the Vanity Fair story on Our Man in Saigon, and these other anonymous comments that trickle in from time to time, keep me grounded and motivated at the times when maybe I need it most. Thank you all. Long live your lovely anonymity!

To the lost:

Hello lost. You became lost when you went away. Not by some disaster or force majur, but by sheer inability to be there when it mattered most. One of you left for money and the SEC, another left for god, and yet another left because she was just terribly unhappy with herself and her business. Another left because he doesn't know how to balance business and marriage. My wife left when my company transfered me to Korea. Shit happens. People don't get lost because of you. People loose themselves because they don't know what to do. People get lost because they weren't looking for where they were going in the first place. Care for your friends and lovers but don't be surprised when they leave. A dollar has become a precious thing. Follow the money. That's how people get lost. Then in the end, finally, you can see what you've found.

Google "Vietnam Advertising Association" & watch what happens!

Nothing. For sure, what you don't get is any website for the Vietnam Advertising Association. You get a few mentions in business publications and a four year old story on the formation of the entity. And that's it. Zip, zero, nada. A failure for whatever it was they thought they were doing. Because in these days, if you're not on the web, you don't exist - as opposed to the old brick and mortar days when you needed a building and a brass address plaque to be real, which they don't really have either. The screen shot to the left is what came in my mail, a day after the post, in response to my standing Google news search for the term "Vietnam Advertising".

Conversely, Google Wild Wild East and you get this blog in the number four spot behind a cookbook from Amazon and some press mentions using the term. Google Wild Wild East Dailies and you get this blog in the first 7 positions on page one. Voi la!

So what do I know that the biggest agencies in country don't?

And the answer is, not much, but apparently a lot more than they do. When I started this blog just nine months ago I knew absolutely nothing and so I dedicated myself to study the best, become educated, participate in communities and continually rethink the content, presentation and promotion of the thing. And it has worked, probably to the chagrin of a lot of the SEO carpetbaggers currently plying the trade. And I did it mostly on my own with no direct help from anyone. Now the Wild Wild East Dailies is in the top 1/2% of all blogs tracked by Technorati and represented on Blogged, Expat Blogs, Yahoo's MyBlogLog and Instablogs just to name a few. We get tons of Facebook hits, are active on Twitter and have a good share of Digg and Mixx hits. Even Mark Earls, author of "Welcome to the Creative Age" and "Herd" has become a follower on Twitter. Our largest block of readers stay for over an hour and we've a respectable return audience with a good lot on feeds and email. The Wild Wild East Dailies is now a living breathing brand!

David Armano, from AdAge, nailed the difference between the way a big company approaches brand promotion and the way we bloggers do. Take a look at the following chart and story from David:


From AdAge Magazine:

Unconventional Times Call for Unconventional Marketing

And That Requires New Processes, Lessons From a Blog

Posted by David Armano on 10.13.08 @ 05:19 PM

As an individual, my blog is one of the most effective manifestations of "marketing" I could have produced for myself. I have a respectable audience that comes back as opposed to visiting it once, never to return again. People participate through comments and the content is distributable. But imagine if I started it the same way many large organizations launch conventional marketing initiatives. What would that have looked like?

If I were a corporate campaign

First I would have had to do several hundred pages of strategy documentation, including target audiences, marketing segments, competitive analysis -- you name it. Then I would put some concepts together and test them in focus groups to see if representatives in a lab like A, B or C better. Next, I would take that feedback, make a few adjustments and plan a multichannel campaign, launching the blog with all sorts of advertising pointing to it. And since I painstakingly outlined the ROI in the in-depth strategy, I'd go about measuring the effectiveness against the ROI that was outlined prior to launch.

Of course, my blog, like millions of other forms of "social media," followed a path that looked nothing like that. In fact, it looked less linear and more cyclical. Sure, I put some initial thought into it before ever touching a pixel, but once I launched the blog it became a never-ending cycle of content development, template design tweaks and learning curves based off of what was going on each time I did something. (To read the entire story, click here)

And that, in a nutshell, is the difference between old-school branding and Branding 2.0. So many of the branding pundits are running around talking about consumer involvement and experiential parameters but few marketers have the fortitude to actually involve themselves in the brand, daily, and be able to act and capitalize on trends and flutters in a moment's notice. Today a brand must be more than 360 degrees - it must have the 3rd and 4th dimensions of depth and breadth, starting deep inside the organization itself.

Here in Vietnam, I'm sorry to say that the universities and even newly founded Advertising Institutes are still embroiled and enraptured by communist Ph.Ds with only a photocopied and translated textbook understanding of some fairly outdated concepts and the agencies still operate in a largely Flinstonian environment, more concerned with why the multinational companies have 80% of the market share instead of trying to turn that around by understanding and interacting with the consumer more on a personal/cultural level. Studying blogs and personal branding would certainly be a good start.

If anyone finds the Vietnam Advertising Association's website, possibly you could let them know.

Bentleys ain't squat in Vietnam nomore!

Move over boyz. Da Rolls Phantoms iz here in Vietnam and they're taking over from the Bentleys .

No longer a centrally planned government with it's feet in Stalinism, Vietnam has now embraced the worst of western society - making its countrymen look like total peons while the chosen drive around in the economic equivalent of the Space Shuttle. I'm absolutely sure that Ho Chi Minh, the President and holistic leader of his people, who refused to live in the Presidential mansion and had a far more simple home built on the grounds, would approve. Bollocks. Just take a look at the photos of Rolls Royce Phantoms, all shot right here in Vietnam, and notice particularly, the spare environs that surround them. Bollocks is right. I saw this same phenomena in Mongolia years ago when I went there to produce a TV show about the 2004 Olympics. In Mongolia, one of the poorest and most sparsely populated countries on the planet, there was no shortage of jet-black Hummers trolling the Gur infested countryside (pictured on the right), courtesy of the local gold and silver mining companies -- the only people in Mongolia who were making any money at all. And here in Vietnam, things seem to be catching up with America, Europe, Japan and Korea. I started counting Bentleys just this year. Looks like in no time the Commies will be pitching themselves off high-rise buildings and getting their government to bailout their bad business deals once the Rolls needs an oil change. And who pays? The people always pay. And hasn't it always been that way? The current fact that 10% of the world's population holds 80% of the wealth doesn't seem at all shocking once you remember that Louis XIV had the entire, largely unpaid, French court living in the Palace of Versailles, in what amounted to impeccably decorated dormitories, while the common people starved. (Cue: Beatles, "Revolution") Vietnam can certainly thank France for that legacy. But as George Washington never lived in the White House and Ho Chi Minh never owned more than a Pugeot 440, (pictured on the left) maybe it's time for our leaders to set an example for their people again. George W. Bush has certainly assured that as history advances, his photo will hold no match for that of Che Guavera adorning t-shirts of yet another generation to grow and challenge the status quo. In Vietnam we can also rest assured that no Bentley or Rolls owner will ever have to compete with Ho Chi Minh for those same t-shirt honours.

My thanks to DJGJ for the Rolls info and make sure to give them some grief about having a blog with nothing in it!

How tiny is my pee-pee? And how far will I go to fix it?

Dear friends:

Recently the subject of penis size has come into question regarding yours truly. I wouldn't have noticed the pitiful size of my diddley-digit had the Internet not ever so helpfully pointed it out and, yes, age factors figure in here as well as probably early childhood memories of extremely well-hung men in public swimming pool locker rooms and sex shops boasting devices that could make an elephant blush. But what do women expect from me at this stage in life here in banana-land? Am I the laughing stock of every well-hung tropical fruit tree? Hell around here, the coconut trees alone make you consider your own hanging spherical embellishments. But, thankfully, help arrived last week in the form of the following email offering me a free penile enhancement product for, well... absolutely, no cash. I found this positively amazing. And you know what? You might too. And so I am printing the offer for all of my friends as a sort of gift, exactly as it appeared to me.

Read through it. It's really quit genuine and honest and I'm sure a lot of other men out there could be helped by it. I was touched.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hello, I'm the webmaster of www.peloop.com I wanted to know if by any chance you would be interested in doing an unbiased review of our site www.peloop.com on your blog http://wildwildeastdailies.blogspot.com/ If you agree you can choose between receiving a product sample or receiving a payment.

If you choose the product sample instead of the payment the sample is yours to keep and you don’t need to send it back.

The product sample that you can get is Peloop - a penis enhancer and you can see it at the address above. If you are interested please click here to receive your sample or your money:

www.seoblogreviews.com/acceptreview.py?e453c26cfc5d13217b

If you don't want to ever receive mails from us, just click the following link:

http://www.seoblogreviews.com/unsubscribe.py?param=e453c26cfc5d13217b4d05ba83490843

If you have any questions just send a reply to this email. Thank you

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I hope this proposal can prove beneficial to some of my more manly-challenged readers but I myself have opted not to participate in the program. It was a heart wrenching decision. With all the time I've put into my book and this blog should I sell my soul to the sultan of schlongs just for a few more hits on my site? Didn't really add up to me. I figure I hit far more women with this blog than I do with my winkie these days and my bets are better placed here. (Cue: drooping noodle sound)

MENSA endorses McCain/Palin

In a unilateral announcement, American MENSA members have released the following video/press release endorsing the McCain/Palin ticket. And this is fairly amazing considering that MENSA members rarely speak, as opposed to AA members, who can't seem to shut the f up. Sarah Palin was really sort of pissed she couldn't be in the video. She really loves to be on TV.

Now don't think that this is some Aljazeera video, released from a cave in Northern Pakistan, with no video markings or clear understanding of the time of making. And it's not a "Borat" out-take either. This is a documented Mensa meeting with at least two of the three participants actively participating, save the man, who keeps trying to wave his hand over the camera - which, he doesn't realize, has a lense longer than his arm. And these are MENSA Americans, mind you - the backbone of the McCain/Palin camp - real patriots with a story to tell. And boy what a story! Glad somebody's got their head screwed on straight this year - and a few Buds under their belt!

Yet, just when you thought things were twisting into another yet unknown surreality, we get Major League Baseball throwing a game back so that Obama can own a "roadblock" on American media for 30 minutes, the night of October 29th. Yep, right here. Hit the link and read all about it. Go figure. America's national pastime being postponed so that we can listen to a 30 minute infomercial by a presidential candidate? Our country must be truly in the shits. Budweiser sold to foreigners - baseball postponed - and that pesky financial bailout business. Jeezuzz. What's next?

Who said you need to be in America to know what's going on? I've got it all covered, right here in the Wild Wild East , from Saigon - site of the last great American victory overseas!

But please don't let my political affiliations or location sway you...if you're a MENSA member, please, vote your conscience - as opposed to your press handlers IQs.

For more on Obama, click below:

Presidential Puppy In Rehab After Just One Week!
Rick Wagoner Makes History - First CEO To Be Fired By A Sitting President
"I Vote For Black Guy!" - Obamanation II
Lunch With Obama: Perspective XVI - The Little Things IX
A sex Redesign obama For scandal The oprah Wild oral Wild butt East iPhone Dailies
"Yes We Can": Obamanation
MENSA Endorces McCain/Palin
Obama Splits Ticket, Boots Biden!
Belgian Prime Minister Quits Over Budweiser Purchase!
Obama Brandishes a Bud For The Bubbas!

For more in Political Satire and Satire see:

White House Party Crashers Board Plane Loaded!

Pope Prays For Embattled Putter's Promiscuous Pecker: Tiger Woods Pardoned

Obama Sends 30,000 Troops to Tiger Woods' House!

Obama's Puppy in Rehab After Just a Week

Recession Profit Stategies II

Recession Profit Strategies I

Bush Surveys Presidential Disaster Area

MENSA Endorses McCain/Palin

Putin Hot As Hell Over Palin

SNL Palin/Hillary Open

Cheney Delivers 1 Billion in Aid to Georgia

Obama Splits Ticket - Boots Biden

Belgian Prime Minister Quits Over Budweiser Purchase

Obama Brandishes a Bud for the Bubbas

American Foreign Policy Since WWII

America Overseas - Citizen Mekong to the Rescue

"Rage is the only quality that has kept me, or anybody I have ever studied, writing newspapers" - WWE Quote of the week 10.14.08

- And that's Jimmy Breslin for ya - keeping it real and true to the heart. This was found recently on The Information Paradox and I thought the whole site was worth a read. It's a group of writers who are kicking up quite a storm on Digg and getting read all over the word on the subject of "things American" with just the right amount of humour thrown in to their political stew. Give them a look and see what you think. Also in the "Mad but Positive" column this week is Todd Rundgren with his release of Arena, a politically charged call to action album that charted on Amazon's top 20 last week. If you need a little shot in the rock and roll head, pick up a copy. I'll try to get a few cuts up here this week. And vote - but please not for the hockey mom and her dad.

A glass box full of deep fried chicken heads - Perspective XIII: The Little Things VI

O A glass box of deep fried chicken heads starts my day, courtesy of one of the street-sellers in my small alley as the street-side barbers get their clippers going early. I don't get my hair cut on the street but many people do as referenced by the huge clumps of black hair on the sidewalk next to the barber chairs. These days I'm working primarily at night and so my day begins with a cafe su nam (thick drip coffe with sweetened condensed milked, served hot) and work on the edit for Wild Wild East. Aside from that I've been doing a lot of geek work to this site and trying to optimize it for search engines (SEO). This consists of going through every single post, from the beginning, opening the html code and adding "alt" tags for all the imagery - this is essentially adding keywords that relate to the postso that search engines can find the subject matter of the post through image search. Have I bored you shitless yet? Let's move along. O Kenny is a Vietnam vet who runs diving tours throughout southeast Asia and he has just returned from America with a sobering review of the country's ills. "I came to the conclusion that the problem in the US is not one of the government but of the eroded moral fibre of the people as a whole", he told me. Nobody gives a shit about anybody anymore - they only care about themselves - it's all about some form of self-actualization and entitlement" he continues. "I'm convinced that if the society as a whole isn't redirected that we'll be steering into a second holocaust with the Arabs replacing the Jews as the persecuted and America replacing Germany as the perpetrators". "No shit", I respond. O And then I found the following post while searching for imagery for this story. "Sadly, I look at the old America and new America and though technological improvements have developed, I don't see how morally it has. America has become that which they ran away from. It has been fed the same propaganda the Nazis were fooled with and it has ignored that which the founding fathers wrote in the Amendments." Back on my own front I hear these similar sentiments echoed by very different people from very different backgrounds. Marines, real estate guys, software developers, writers and others from California, Georgia, Michigan and Oregon. Interesting. Probably I need to get back to the US next summer and do some visiting. Is it only by being far away that we can see things so differently? O "But I also believe we're witnessing the birth of a great leader", Kenny, the Marine, continues, in reference to Barack Obama. Here's a product of American hegemony in Vietnam who fought for his country but still didn't drink the kool-ade. Interesting, indeed. O I often caution people to not put the weight of the world on the shoulders of the next President. I weigh in as one who encourages all of us to look pretty deeply inside of ourselves and make sure our own moral fibres are correctly spun before expecting anyone to play saviour or blaming anyone for our national fall from grace. If anything, we did it to ourselves by just looking the other way. O I end this entry today with a link to the best post of the week by Simić in quoting Benjamin Franklin's 13 virtues - "If you would not be forgotten, as soon as you are dead and rotten, either write things worth reading, or do things worth the writing." O Time for that crispy chicken head.

For more on the "Perspective" or "Little Things" series, click below:

My Morning Wake-Up Call - Perspective XX: The Little Things XII
We'll Have A Gay Old Time - Perspective XIX: The Little Things XII
"Rolled Foggy Disposed Ricepaper" - Perspective XVIII: The Little Things XI
Joyeux Noel - Perspective XVII: The Little Things X
Lunch With Obama - Perspective XVI: The Little Things IX
One Motley Crue On The Bus Today - Perspective XV: The Little Things VIII
Attraction vs. Conversion: How To Power Your Blog - Perspective XIV: The Little Things VII
A glass box full of deep fried chicken heads - Perspective XIII: The Little Things VI
Seoul Searching - Perspective XII
He Would Have Shot Me 40 Years Ago - Perspective XI: The Little Things V
Chomsky on Colour & Sleep - Perspective X: The Little Things IV.2
Running With Scizzors - Perspective IX: The Little Things IV
Henry Miler II - Perspective VIII : The Little Things III.1
Henry Miller - Perspective VII: The Little Things III
Big Brother - Perspective VI: The Little Things II
This Carnival of Life! - Perspective V
The Art Walk - Perspective IV: The Little Things
Bentley #5 - Perspective III.2
Bentley vs. Vespa - Perspective III.1
Bentleys Invade Vietnam - Perspective III
Death Of A Colleague - Perspective II
Perspective

"Lehman Brothers. CEO - What a dickhead!": WWE's Quote of the Week 10.09.08

This one from Thomas Wanhoff and uttered right here in Vietnam. And I was even hinting at it a few months ago. in this very blog. Maybe the boys in New York and Washington can't see the forest for the trees and we need a level headed German in Vietnam to hit the nail right on the friggin' head. I agree with Thomas entirely on this one. These boys should all get a washing in the swirly bowl and be proscecuted with true American FUBAR vengence. There's a pile of dickheads right now and if our courts don't get em' maybe the American people need to get the government. Make sure to read Thomas' full post right here!

Seoul Searching: Perspective XII

Since beginning, this blog, as a companion to my book, Wild Wild East, I've made reference to different chapters by linking past experiences to present in some hopefully useful and secondly entertaining way. Oddly the "Wild Wild East Dailies" has taken on a life of its own leaving my work on the book to waste for the last six months. This month marks a return to the Book and a major edit I've had on my mind for awhile spurred by an invitation to show the manuscript to his agent by a friend of mine.

Today's entry seeks to return to days of yesteryear when the Wild Wild East was really the Wild Wild Upper East Side of New York City and your author was but a gleam in possibly 100 Catholic nurses eyes:

S E O U L S E A R C H I N G

The Guild of the Infant Saviour on East 86th Street in New York in 1956 was approximately 6885 miles and exactly thirty-nine years away from Seoul, Korea in 1995. Dean Martin & Jerry Lewis would play their last comedy show together at the Copacobana just a few blocks away that year and Elvis, singing Hound Dog, would electrify the Ed Sullivan show in the same city just a few months later. But things were reasonably less grand at the Guild of the Infant Saviour, a home for unwed Catholic mothers just a few blocks south of Gracie Mansion on the East River and adjacent to what was then Misericordia Hospital at 531 East 86th.

“He cried immediately, was cyanotic, resuscitated, then cried repeatedly”, said the medical report. The practice of slapping a baby’s butt after birth, was originally a device to kick-start heart valves and breathing apparatus as the infant made the transition from the fluid to the (Click on image to enlarge) airborne world (translation: resuscitated). Cyanotic babies, or blue babies as they were called, are blue in skin colour because blood is not yet circulating to the lungs which will produce oxygen – so a little slap on the ass not only makes them gasp but gives them an early taste of what life has to offer even before it begins to offer much at all – like finding out there is no Santa Claus before you even know who Santa Claus is.

The relatives in New Jersey had been told that Doris Mae had gone off to New York to secretarial college but probably everyone knew the real story. The preponderance of Catholics keeping up a good face would be mirrored for me by peoples in the far east many years later, but what an interesting precursor to a life of continually wondering where reality met the fantasy this new young man was about to live. Doris Mae Everitt gave birth to Shawn Michael Everitt on June 22nd , 1956 and immediately surrendered him for adoption. She would marry the father, Carl Henry Olson, just six weeks later and bear him another child but would never see her son Shawn again. For Catholics, image was everything. For little Shawn this would be just the beginning of a life of continual reinventions – for he was not about to stay little Shawn for much longer.

The diagnosis stated the child had no trouble eating but did not gain weight in accordance with his caloric intake. Tests were performed and it was decided that an adrenal insufficiency was the culprit. The kid simply needed more juice.

After 7 weeks in New York, he was transferred to St. Francis Hospital in Trenton, New Jersey and put on medication to correct the deficiency. Babies with a better shot at making sizable collection plate drops later in life probably got to stay on the Upper East Side – but this kid’s chances were less than average.

Over the course of the next seven months the same tests and procedures were replicated three times until a suitably fat and happy child could be properly offered up for adoption.

One must wonder how many passing doctors, nuns, nurses and night watchmen, the child came into contact with over his many months at St. Frank’s. What were the procedures for dispensing hugs and kisses? Tablet or capsule form? Did the teddy bears wear little black leather jackets? And what about communication training? Was he being trained to only speak Joisey or were the Queen’s English, and other accents being given appropriate instruction time? Brass knuckles or plastic rattles? This kid was coming into a tough world. Better get him ready.

– WWE –

As we mature into adults our childhood memories remain but become stored in our brains in a way that we are unable to consciously access them. Sometimes a motion, a shape or even a smell can trigger emotions and feelings from very early on. This was the case with the New York Store, located oddly, on 5th Avenue in Moline, Illinois in the early 1960s. Around the ages of 7 and 8 I began to have a series of dreams that focused specifically on architectural and physical environments. Striving to put reality to these fantastic images I came upon the New York Store in downtown, Moline. The New York Store occupied a fading, foreboding black façade that was a microcosm of everything implied by it’s namesake. In one dream I stare, childlike up through the European style windows to spy a chandelier and a grand winding staircase towering over a Steinway, atop a checkerboard, marble floor. In another I am transported behind the store to an alley where I see plainly that the grandeur of the New York Store is more like that of a Hollywood set, with paint-chipped concrete blocks and a rusty fire escape hanging over decidedly New York-like smelling piles of garbage. Ahh, the New York of old. I visited New York last in 2002 and, save for Ground Zero, it was a lot more like Disneyland – all spit-shined and polished to the nth degree – a tourist paradise but a real New Yorker’s nightmare. Damn Bloomberg and Guliani. They’ve screwed up a perfectly good dream.

But the New York Store in my dreams was not the New York Store of 5th Avenue in Moline, Illinois. Primarily the windows were wrong. The windows in my dream were ornate in the sense that they were large and undulating and full of panes amongst the wood framing that refracted light ever so differently depending on their angles. The windows on the actual department store were just flat panes of glass suitable for the mannequin dioramas that lived behind them. No, these windows were special, like the windows on the stern of a Spanish galleon at the captain’s quarters. I had certainly never seen windows like these – not in Moline, Illinois anyway.

My first trip to New York as an adult came in 1984 when I was 28. Working for an advertising agency in Dallas, Texas, I was asked to accompany my immediate supervisor to a recording session on a sort of training mission. As I remember, the supervisor had little use for me on the trip and I was allowed to leave the session early. That meant I had the whole of an afternoon to be a tourist and took to it as voraciously as one far ago displaced New Yorker could have. I saw the Statue of Liberty, from Battery Park only, the Empire State Building, the façade and lobby only, and Central Park, the zoo and Wolman Rink only – and the Guggenheim, the whole damn thing – quickly. At the end of the day, on the way down Broadway the taxi hung a right on West 44th (yes, you could do that in those days) on the way to the Lincoln Tunnel for my flight out of Newark when my jaw dropped and I slammed into near paralysis. I had just seen a ghost. “Stop, stop, stop”, I screamed at the driver. Gathering my bags and pushing $20s through the pay-slot, I tumbled out onto the sidewalk in front of 37 West 44th.

It was the building from my dream – exactly the building from my dream as a child. I hadn't thought about it in many, many years.

There could be no mistaking this one. The ornate design. The nautical galleon windows. The sheer grace and individuality of the thing. Bags over my shoulder I strode towards the building to read the brass plaque next to the entrance.

The “New York Yacht Club” it proclaimed – The New York Yacht Club. Fuck all.

Born on June 22nd and transferred to Trenton, New Jersey just weeks later, did Shawn Michael Everitt, a functional orphan at the time, have a chance to glimpse this building from the window of a passing vehicle on his way to the Lincoln Tunnel? For just a second or for a longer time? How fanciful it might have compared to the institutional/medical surroundings of Catholic child care in the 1950s. It’s doubtful that Shawn had even seen the inside of a church at that point.

It’s common practice for adoptive parents to tell their adopted children that maybe they were the offspring of wealthy or famous families. And it’s a fantasy not without merit, because in those days no one was allowed to know the truth – so why not make the kid a prince instead of a pauper? The fantasy offered more hope than reality.

On April 7th, 1957 a healthy and repaired Shawn Michael Everitt passed under the waters of Baptism in a Catholic ceremony and emerged as David Edward Carlson, the son of Raymond & Doris Carlson (yes, another Doris), who would later move him far away, to the land of the Illini Indians, Moline Illinois.

As it turns out, my birth father, Carl Olson had been an avid sailor and even owned a marina at one time in his life – Doris Mae, my birth mother, went on to marry a US champion water-skier, Bruce Parker, divorcing Carl after four years. My adoptive father, Ray, had just finished a Korean War tour on the US Destroyer Dashiel and at least understood sailing from a military perspective. But at no time, to my knowledge, did any of them ever take me to the New York Yacht Club. That part was only in a dream – “Where’s my sextant? Where’s my compass?” – wasn't it?

– WWE –

In other news from 1956, a Joint Resolution of the U.S. Congress was signed by President Eisenhower, authorizing "In God We Trust" as the U.S. national motto, and the first television airing of the film, The Wizard of Oz, garnered a then staggering 46 million viewers.

Martin & Lewis were dead. Elvis was born and the Man Behind The Curtain and the U.S. Congress were headed for the perfect storm. David now had a new name and a steerage-class ticket for the fantasy/reality voyage of the century.

-----------------------------------------

One thing that's been very noticable about this blog is the amount of time people spend on the site. Over 25% of you choose to spend more than an hour here. That being the case, you might spend an hour with the Book and tour my Wild Wild East from the beginning.

For more on the "Perspective" or "Little Things" series, click below:

My Morning Wake-Up Call - Perspective XX: The Little Things XII
We'll Have A Gay Old Time - Perspective XIX: The Little Things XII
"Rolled Foggy Disposed Ricepaper" - Perspective XVIII: The Little Things XI
Joyeux Noel - Perspective XVII: The Little Things X
Lunch With Obama - Perspective XVI: The Little Things IX
One Motley Crue On The Bus Today - Perspective XV: The Little Things VIII
Attraction vs. Conversion: How To Power Your Blog - Perspective XIV: The Little Things VII
A glass box full of deep fried chicken heads - Perspective XIII: The Little Things VI
Seoul Searching - Perspective XII
He Would Have Shot Me 40 Years Ago - Perspective XI: The Little Things V
Chomsky on Colour & Sleep - Perspective X: The Little Things IV.2
Running With Scizzors - Perspective IX: The Little Things IV
Henry Miler II - Perspective VIII : The Little Things III.1
Henry Miller - Perspective VII: The Little Things III
Big Brother - Perspective VI: The Little Things II
This Carnival of Life! - Perspective V
The Art Walk - Perspective IV: The Little Things
Bentley #5 - Perspective III.2
Bentley vs. Vespa - Perspective III.1
Bentleys Invade Vietnam - Perspective III
Death Of A Colleague - Perspective II
Perspective

Ask questions

Oladagarth and blogney blarneywurth. The only way to sort it out is to, to, to ask questions. Whateverthenewsgoodbadindifferent swarthymoreincatsbathdragnet. Ask questions. Palindrome doth spin the soundbite down barack. Wurthymore point? More questions. Conspiracylyracyinswirlydudelycergency. Did we make 9-11? gurlywirlyknows. A question. DiVincicodalescenceinallhistory'sgrasp. Keep asking. Questions.

Putin: Hot as hell over Palin!

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has expressed outrage at reports that Palin wore a star-spangled bikini and pointed a firearm at his friend, Kim Jong Il, in North Korea

After talks near a place where he can also see America, with his Alaskan counterpart Sarah Palin, he said that if such reports were confirmed, they constituted a "crime".

Ms Palin said she was confident the reports would prove unfounded.

"That was all Photoshop you idiot", she said. "This shit happens all the time in America when Hockey Moms run for office".
While they didn't mention any figures at their meeting, Putin thought privately that Palin had a good one. "It wouldn't take a bottle of Stoli for me to jump her", he mused to an aide.

'A crime'

Pointing to a report published in Russia's Izvestiya newspaper this week, Mr Putin said Alaskan weapons and military experts may have been used in combat against Russian troops during the brief war with Georgia in August.

"If this is confirmed, this will be what I have called a crime - I could swear I saw a bunch of eskimos running around with harpoons on snow machines."

If Russia received proof of Alaska's involvement, Moscow would "build its relations accordingly with those who allowed this to happen", he said.

Ms Palin said she was confident that "such facts [would] not be confirmed - my husband was ice fishing", she defended.

Correspondents say Mr Putin is aware that Ms Palin is not responsible for Alaska's defence policy, and that his criticism amounted to an attack on the Republican men driving the bus.

"She can't see fuck all from Alaska, much less hit anything - but Bush thought he saw WMDs in Iraq and look what he did - I don't take anything lightly anymore - these people are all delusional".

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