Tax Code, Smoking, the Civil War, and Sal Mineo

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Working at the car wash...is this one of those new jobs the government keeps bragging about
to replace all the high paying jobs eliminated in recession? These recent college grads are finding out.

The Tax Code

The tax code has something like 19,879 pages. The questions Americans should demand to know is why this is possible? You work for money and you pay taxes. Why would anyone need over 19,000 pages to tell you how to pay taxes? How did this get so out of hand. No one at the IRS could possibly know all 19000 pages. It's like Obama's health care. It's 2500 or more pages. How is that possible? How was it passed without anyone who voted on it having read the thing? America is in a Twilight Zone story.

Smoking at the VA

When I parked at the VA, right near the door there was a huge older fat woman with an oxygen tank sitting on the curb smoking a cigarette. I tried to stop myself, but I couldn't. As I walked past her I said, "Are you here for the stop smoking class?"
"Well, no," she said, and she started laughing so hard I thought she was going to blow her lunch and fall off the curb.
I was thinking was a great satirical advertisement for the VA or the cigarette companies, having this fat old woman sitting on the curb with an oxygen tank smoking a cigarette.

Civil War Deaths

During the Civil War, the average Union soldier was 5 feet 8 1/4 inches tall and weighed 143 1/2 pounds. Union soldiers were tiny people. New calculations figure 150,000 more troops were killed than the original figures for a total of around 750,000. This figures somewhere around 37,000 more widows and 90,000 more war orphans. What a nightmare that must have been for all involved. This total also doesn't account for civilians, and figures that no white women were killed during the entire war. How they came up with this is beyond me. Probably, by the time you figure in all the civilian deaths, the death toll in the Civil War is well over one million.

Sal Mineo

I always thought the actor Sal Mineo was killed by a gay lover in a hotel room, but Mineo was coming home from rehearsal on February 12, 1976, when he was confronted by an attacker in an alley. He died of a single stab wound to the chest at the age of 37. Eventually, a 19-year-old sometimes pizza delivery man serving time on another violation in Michigan was convicted of a murder prosecutors depicted as a robbery gone bad.

Dennis Latham Books

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Vietnam: The Liberty Bridge

(This entry has had a lot of comments, and I'm glad it can help bring Nam vets together or to help find each other. If you have a comment, please attach your name to the comment or from this point forward it won't be published. I've received many comments that are phony and obviously made up, submitted by anonymous submission. I do screen all comments. Click the photo to enlarge. Semper Fi.) This is the Liberty Bridge (click to make larger) in Quang Nam Province in Vietnam during July of 1968. Of the 14,000 Marines killed in Vietnam, 10,000 were killed in Quang Nam Province. (Figures in comment section show a little under 7000 KIA in Quang Nam.) This was late in my tour on July 2. The bridge had been blown once again by the enemy to isolate the Marine base at An Hoa. I was a 50 caliber machine gunner on a convoy to resupply the An Hoa Firebase. I called this the River Styx because it had a ferry boat. Once you crossed the river you entered a nightmare hell on earth cal...

The Jesus Moth

Photo taken through a window screen. I had just gone over the first print copy of The Bad Season on July 22, 2006. I walked over to the window and saw this moth on my outside air conditioner unit. It was the most bizarre thing I had seen in a long time. I retrieved my digital camera and snapped a picture through the glass and the window screen before going outside in a failed to attempt to capture the moth. I contacted a moth expert. He told me what kind of moth it was, but added that he had never seen one with a cross on its back like this one. I call it the Jesus Moth, the Crusader Moth, or maybe the Infidel Moth. The syndicates wanted me to give it to them for free. They said they don't take pics from non-employees because "we would actually have to pay you for it." Hmm, what a novel concept, getting paid for something. I offered to swap for a syndicated story about my book. They refused. So I copyrighted the entire pic (the one below is a fragment from that p...

The Old Corps: Marine Corps Boot Camp 1966

BLT 1/3 USMC 1967 Vietnam Boot Camp Hell I recently saw a video of what I assume was the current Marine Corps Boot Camp. It mentioned recruits reporting any abuse right away and the DI was trying to be tough (and he did sound tough to an extent), but underneath it all you could tell the old Corps was gone in the civilian desire (political desire by people who never served) to make things easier and less traumatic for the boots. They never mentioned abuse to us in 1966 because we were abused 24/7. I'm an old Corps Hollywood Marine (that's an inside Marine joke about the difference between boot camp in Parris Island or San Diego.) The boots in Parris Island claimed they had it rougher because they had swamps. The Hollywood Marines had mountains. I would rather walk in water than climb mountains so I disagree. I entered the Marine Corps on August 10, 1966. Marines had been in Vietnam for over a year. All of us would probably go to Nam. For some of us it woul...

Dennis Latham: Life, Fiction, and the Pursuit of Madness

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