To my great relief, nobody from the city has been by to perform a pop inspection of my sidewalks which, as I told you last week, remained unshoveled as my way of protesting the city’s refusal to scrape the snow off the neighborhood streets. It wasn’t much of a rebellion, though, knowing that temperatures into the forties last weekend would likely take care of the snow and the problem. It did too..except at our house where the walks first turned into concrete rivers and now, thanks to this latest arctic blast, have become slippery glaciers that don’t appear as if they’ll yield until sometime in May. So it’s back to ACE for another bag of ice melt.
Besides the ice, this photo from our front deck reveals another truth about my astounding ability to procrastinate. Can you see what it is?
Part of my daily routine is to check a few favorite web sites which is where I came across photos of a couple characters who some of you under the age of forty may not recognize. Heck, I’m a long ways past forty and I didn’t know who they were right off.
Well..here see for yourself.
Looks a little like that controversial former head of Egyptian antiquities and darling of the History Channel..Zahi Hawass only without the Indiana Jones hat.
But it’s actually the Palestinian who, 44 years ago, took exception to the Middle East policies of presidential candidate, Robert Kennedy and emptied a revolver into him as he walked through the kitchen of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles shortly after declaring victory in the California primary.
He’s Sir Han Sir Han the scum bag with two same names who was first sentenced to die in the gas chamber for his crime but, three years after the murder, got life instead when California decided the death penalty was cruel and unusual punishment. So, Sir Han, who’s approaching 70, has been keeping busy with Donald Moeller-like appeal after appeal, now claiming he’d been hypnotized and doesn’t remember anything about putting a bullet in Kennedy’s head and injuring five others.
The parole board still isn’t buying any of it so Sir Han remains in solitary at..get this..Pleasant Valley State Prison in Coalinga, California. He says he’d like to go back to Jordan if he’s ever released which isn’t likely.
Okay, how about this guy..recognize him?
He’s a former drug addict who became “born again” and lived a Christian life until jilted by his girlfriend..then resorted back to his crazy ways which included a plot to assassinate music legend, John Lennon. A plan he carried out in December of 1980 outside Lennon’s New York City apartment building.
Mark David Chapman is a strange ranger. So strange that his lawyers were confident they could get him off the hook on a not guilty by reason of insanity plea. But then Chapman..who got born again..again.. behind bars..surprised his attorneys saying he was going to plead guilty and take his medicine without anymore legal appeals. Chapman, who remarried before the assassination, remains isolated from the prison population at his new digs, Wende Correctional Facility in Alden, New York, but he is allowed one conjugal visit a year from his wife. He’d like to go free somedayand start a new church with her but his requests for parole every two years have, so far, been denied; in part because of so many people on the outside have sworn they’ll shoot him on site if he’s ever turned loose.
I don’t know why, but for some reason I don’t ever recall seeing this photo of Lennon signing an autograph for Chapman himself..just hours before Chapman returned to shoot him dead.
Chapman’s next shot at parole comes in 2014. Unlike Sir Han, though, there is a possibility he might actually someday be set free; perhaps when Lennon fans are too old to present a threat.
Maybe he and his wife will open that church.
Who could possibly want to be a member?
I can’t “Imagine.”