Strange, but True Things We Learned This Week...

All of these things have been verified through various sources, but if you don't believe me, you can spend hours and hours on Google, and leave a post on here saying: "Ahhh, but you are wrong." Let's get started, and we will get to the African pygmy goat when we can:

1. Osama bin Laden (1957-2011) actually liked many American western tv shows as a kid, including his favorite "Bonanza!" I first read about this in "The Week" magazine some eight years ago. But, this week, I also learned that the sinister terrorist leader also like Bruce Lee kung-fu films. But, none of these things are as disturbing as a report I heard from the TRT (Turkish Radio Television) right after September 11th, when I happened to be in Istanbul. A Turkish man who was a classmate of bin Laden's at a school in Switzerland when they were both children said that this future kingpin of terror was 'a quiet unasuming kid who usually sat in the back.'

2. And speaking of Turkey, as "Mental Floss" reported in a recent issue, one never wants to confuse a Greek with a Turk or vice versa. Since the hip magazine didn't mention the man's name, I had to check the BBC's web site for additional details. As it turns out, Athanasios Varzanakos, 77, who would have definitely qualified for our long, difficult names list, a Greek villager, had been mistaken for a Turk. The Swedish yogurt company Lindahl had put the image of Varzanakos on its Turkish yogurt products. So, the Greek man sued the Swedish company for $7 million; he 'only' got $270,000 in return. This leads us to the goat because if one wants to find Greek yogurt or goat milk yogurt, they can go to the Harvest Moon in Floyd, Va. Alas, they don't sell Turkish yogurt which is very hard to find in America except in New Jersey (where there are a lot of Turks and Turkish-Americans).

3. The BBC reported last night that there is a hip hop craze spreading through Yemen, of all places. There have been similar stories in the international media about this curious pop cultural trend. In 2010, Laura Kasinoff of "The Christian Science Monitor" reported that she had seen 'turbaned men dancing with daggers and rappers donning New York Yankees caps' taking the stage in the capital city of Sana for a hip hop fest. Hagage Masead, an American of Yemeni heritage who should not/never be confused with a radical terrorist in Yemen who grew up in New York state, has been at the heart of this movement.

4. "This American Life," a popular weekly NPR show, featured a story about a "Tuscaloosa News" reporter in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, who was fooled into publishing a local story that proved to be false in the wake of last week's deadly tornado rampage in the area. Apparently, the story was that a local man from Tuscaloosa, which is also home to the University of Alabama, was killed at a local tobacco store and people walked all over him to get cigarettes. But, one can hardly fault the reporter as this story was verified by local government officials in Tuscaloosa! As a former newspaper reporter myself, I can see how this can happen all too easily for reasons which are far too complicated to explain here. Besides, the militant librarian here in Mount Airy, NC, (not really where I am) has warned that the Internet goes down in 22 minutes and 35 seconds!

Quote of the Week- Che Guevara

Today, we start our month-long series of quotes from fringe, far left-wing radicals, both past and present. Since we quipped Malcolm X (1925-1965) on our other blog "The Daily Vampire," we thought we'd go with another man who was shot to death at age 39, the Marxist Argentinian revoluntist Che Guevara (1928-1967). Che was killed in Bolivia, and his remains were only discovered in recent years.

Many right-wingers in America hate the fact that there are supposedly vast numbers of very liberal people wearing Che t-shirts, though I've only seen two people wear them in the last two years. One was at a coffeeshop in Boulder, Colo, and the other was at a nightclub in Chapel Hill, NC. However, last week, I did see a twenty-something guy at a Waffle House somewhere in North Carolina wearing a t-shirt with the slogan "We Shall Overcome." It was actually a white kid and his shirt showed the rebel-flag hovering over the Capitol Building. I guess he will never appreciate the sacrifices that Martin Luther King, Jr., made for our country. But, of course, extremists on our side of the fence are much worse for America than racist bigots (sarcasm intended!).

I do sympathize with the point expressed by the ultra-conservative magazine News Max and the right-wing blog ihatethemedia.com (I suppose they love Fox News though, which is part of the media, right?!) that Che did needlessly kill lots of innocent people, a point which has been well-documented.

But, the man himself is quite a fascinating figure, and no matter what one thinks of the Cuban Revolution, it remains astonishing that Che met with Fidel Castro in a hotel in Mexico City, and they successfully organized a rebellion and took over the central government of Cuba. Actually, this ironically sounds like what the Tea Partiers would like to do to President Barack Obama as I'm sure the political good-will for killing Osama bin Laden expired at 11:45 p.m., Sunday night, a mere 15 minutes after our president announced the success of the mission in Pakistan. Am I right, Bill O'Reilly?

So, here is this quote from Che; for the record I am not a Marxist though I would classified as one in rural Idaho:

"Let me say, at the risk of seeming ridicilous, that the true revolutionary is guided by great feelings of love."

As for the answer to last week's road quiz, Lynchburg, Va., and Wilmington, Del., are five hours and 30 minutes apart though we suspect traffic between Washington, DC, and Baltimore would substantially add to that commute.

What We Are Working On.....

Since a lot has happened in the world since I last blogged on Thursday and I am now done looking at emails from L.L. Bean (apologies to the Maine-based company, but nice white shorts are not my priority right now!), I will give you the reader a glance of what to expect on this blog this week.

1. Since May 1st is a day associated with radical socialists, we will start quoting famous people from the far-left starting on Tuesdays this month. Though I'm not one myself, I love agitating Republicans, well except my good friends attorney Johann Hallbjorn in Bethesda, Maryland (the Icelandic name is a fake name, and Johann doesn't live in the DC Metro area), and journalist Aarne Eerikainen in Knoxville, Tenn.,(the Finnish name is also a fake name as well and Aarne doesn't have anything to do with the Volunteer State---that we are aware of).

2. On Wednesday, we will have a quote from a famous novelist. Perhaps, you've already read his book on Kindle?! Other quips from other authors will follow on Wednesdays in May.

3. On Thursday, we are planning to actually write a serious entry (?!) on how I came close to being at the scene of a terrorist bombing, not involving the now deceased eshol eshek (Turkish word for son of a donkey; it is a high insult there) Osama bin Laden, on strangely enough Sept. 10, 2001, in Istanbul, Turkey. The blast, which was a suicide bombing, killed two Istanbul police officers whom I had physically seen some 20 minutes prior to their untimely deaths. The bombing also killed an Australian tourist named Amanda Rigg, who was only 22.

Rigg's story was the feature of a 2007 "Sydney Morning Herald" I found on the web. Her death unfortunately became a bureaucratic nightmare for her family in Australia as the government would not let them recieve monetary compensation for her death as they had with terrorism victims in more universally recognized incidents, such as the bombing at a resort on the island of Bali in Indonesia. My interest in writing about my own experience again is due to the death of bin Laden, and the impact that terrorism leaves on all of us, irregardless of how large or small such incidents are in scale.

4) On a lighter note, this Friday, we hope to officially start a new series called "Things We Learned on Google Today." It will begin with a look at a country that was a republic in the former Soviet Union. We may not start with Kyrgystan since it was the only country from the old USSR that I could not name on a mentalfloss.com quiz! I did manage to get the other 12 right though.

Incidentally, we've included The Smurfs and their villain Gargamel here because they have been invading my dreams lately. We learned about them in research for this entry, but alas due to time constraints, we will share those unique little things some other time!