Yup. And Johnson Smith sadly went out of business many years ago.

Some company was liquidating their inventory online.

That's the pizzeria, but I don't recall the double doors.

And decades later my friend buried his mother at the free Jewish cemetery a few miles south of there.

None of us could have possibly thought that.

At the old Queensboro Plaza subway station (westbound, 7, N, and R lines), walking up the stairs and through a "building" before the walkway and toll-stile, there was a tailor in a kiosk who sold belts, shoes, ties, scarves, gloves, cufflinks, stylus pens, umbrellas, and he sharpened knives (not switchblades) and he mended clothing and altered suits. He was able to make enough money to survive NYC rents for years.

And next to him was a pizzeria. Two slices of pizza and a cup of Joe was the gumshoe lunch.

Hi Corky:

Be careful and keep your left up.

As Landru warned in Star Trek: "You are not of the Body and must be absorbed."

#10

To my Fellow Traveler with a sharp eye for the comely lasses, your wish is my command.

One book is sold.

I may still have a copy in storage.

The proprietor spent time with customers relating to us the myths (or debunking the myths) of the Old Southwest.

For example, we learned that sheriffs posted signs warning people to leave their six-shooters outside town limits or surrender them (and get a receipt).

"Calamity Jane" was thusly named because she was a fireship.

And last century, the SI ferry was a refuge for the homeless or poor people with nowhere to go. Passengers weren't all shooed off when the ferry pulled in on either side. For one token (I think it was), my friends and I would spend a day going back and forth a few times, getting the wind into our urban faces.

We would eat at a pizzeria right next to the SI ferry dock. Two bucks = two slices of pizza and a small orange or grape drink.

Willowby is late.

"FUNNY"

The rampant things in America:

AIPAC pod-people in America and Israeli trolls are like the cult followers of Landru in the Star Trek episode "The Return of the Archons" (Season One, Episode 21, original air date 9 February 1967, right before the magical "Summer of Love").

"You must be absorbed into the body."

NYC had wonderful bookstores and magazine specialists, all gone now thanks to Amazon.com and the rise of electronic entertainment.

Work schedules began compressing people's lesiure time, so TV and movies replaced reading the originals.

And our public library system was superbly funded.

We would spend hours at the main branch on 42nd Street, reading, playing chess, then munch on hot dogs and pretzels from the street vendors.

Good mustard.

One of the characters in a short story I wrote is a janitor employed at that colossal bibliotheque.

In Bisbee, AZ, I came across the "One Book Bookstore":

Hey, mega-oligarch insider trading hypocrite Scott Bessent who able to marry his male spouse and adopt children thanks to progressive congressmen and senators in the Democratic Party.

Uh-oh. The Israeli trolls are stirring on drudge.com.

Watch them stalk and menace people online.

You'll see.

#72

Many, many pacifists are combat veterans.

The late crooner Tony Bennett was at D-Day.

The global economy has fallen apart, the US is in the hock for over a trillion dollars, Americans are selling their own blood to make ends meet, US sailors have jumped overboard in despair, NATO forces have surrounded Kalinigrad, Trumpf Diarrhea Syndrome (TDS) and measles are spreading across Amerikkka, the USIC was unaware of a Russian missile test in the Antarctic, the SPR is being drained, strategic ammunition stores have been depleted, Iran is going to turn the heat up on US forces in the Middle East, and the Senile Satan boasts "he's very good at flagpoles."

The voter who put this destructive, draft-dodging pedophilic Russian asset into the White House on Tuesday 5 Nov 2024.

7

About whom dost thou refer to about "raison d'etre" or "metier"? Danforth the CPA or Coriolanus, the poor kitty struggling with a MS XP PC?

General Electric (GE): Once provided extensive pensions and secure middle-class career stability, but later closed and froze its traditional plans to cut legacy costs.

#142 | Posted by donnerboy at 2026-08-19 06:24 PM | Reply | Flag: The Turks say "Iyi hamdi nasil!"

Pronounced "Ee hahm-dee nas ill" meaning "and how!"

A relative of mine swore by General Electric his whole life. A EEE engineer with patents to his name, my relation was assigned to China in the late 1970s or early 1980s because he was a fluent Mandarin speaker.

GE made him re-invest portions of his salary back into GE -- no diversification -- and he adored GE CEO "Neutron" Jack Welch.

Turns out Jack Welch was in the same league as arch-goniffs Charles Ponzi, Bernie Madoff, and Armand Hammer when it came to "cooking the books."

After the GE fallout, my relation's pension became a mere pittance and he bitterly used the word "disaster."

And one of my friends -- a topshelf attorney -- was one of the folks dissecting GE and he related horror stories to me without detail to avoid attorney-client privilege,

My once successful, Rolex-wearing, First and Business Class flights only relative, died unhappy and bitter.

Thanks, GE!

No one should dispute Danforth in terms of mathematics, actuarial statistics, tax codes, and basic number crunching.

That is his metier.

AIPAC pod-people are like the alien invasive species in The Invasion of the Body Snatchers (book by Jack Finney 1955; films 1956, 1978, and 1993).

"Jew hater!"

Under a different pseudonym I submitted several manuscripts to Alfred Hitchcock Murder Mysteries, Ellery Queen Mysteries, and others.

My friends and colleagues proofread them for me and thought they were excellent. One is a retired professor and Chess Master (not a Grandmaster, but one level below). The others were book afficionados or bridge players -- no TV heads.

The editors threatened that if AI was used to write the material, those authors would be permanently banned.

I, a reader of Shakespeare, Agatha Christie, Damon Runyan, P.G. Wodehouse, G.K. Chesterton, John Steinbeck etc, obviously wouldn't need AI to write anything, as someone on drudge.com once idiotically accused me of.

"Ba-bye!" to that guy. That's another story.

Anyway, none of my manuscripts were published -- and some of them were stories with my cloned version of Columbo, only changing his name to avoid copyright problems, but with all of his idiosyncracies, sloppy appearance, awkward mannerisms, and genius crime-solving techniques.

No AI whatsoever.

I even informed the editors that I would donate the humble proceeds to animal shelters in Connecticut or elsewhere as I am retired and don't need the geld.

Zilch.

So, I self-published and my friends, family, and bridge circle got to enjoy my non-AI creative juices.

"Saudi financial resources, Turkey's defense industry, and Pakistan's nuclear capability" -- something many of us pointed out a few weeks ago as the anchor behind this alliance.

The unreliability of the US as an ally or friend is now a permanent fixture in the geo-sphere, thanks to its unwavering economic and military support to Pariah nation Israel, a Rogue state which has callously liquidated 75,000 human beings in the Gaza Strip (per The Lancet UK), allows Israeli terrorists to kill Palestinians and seize their property in the West Bank, and displaced one million people in Lebanon (per the UN).

Of this culpability there is no doubt to anyone on the planet.

"But, hey! In 2024 we got the gosh-darned 140 Israeli hostages released! To heck with ten million progressives, pacifists, antiwar veterans, pro-Palestine volunteers, and Samaritans trying to feed the starving Gazans and stop the Israeli Death Forces (IDF) from slaughtering them with American taxpayer money!"

Sen John McCain (R-AZ) flew from his death-bed to Washington DC to save Obamacare and help the American people.

Sen Mitch McConnell (R-KY) at his endlife is doing the exact opposite and not helping the American people with his subterfuge.

The Terrible Turtle will never spend his glorious Senatorial pension and ill-gotten pelf with his Chinese Communist Party (CCP) spy wife, "Madame Wu-Mao."

Silver Age comic books had the best advertisements from various companies for X-ray glasses, hand-buzzers, "Sea Monkeys," trick playing cards, Daisy Air BB Rifles etc.

And this.

Columbia House (or another record company) sent me albums for free if I promised to review them and send back my feedback in a SASE.

And underdog Angie Nixon (D) is facing yet another invasive species pod-person on Tuesday 3 Nov 2026.

Lots of luck to her against one of The Body Snatchers:

Any field grade US Army officer -- like LTC Alex Vindman (Ret) was -- who strutted around with a "sense of entitlement" would have been most unpopular with commanders, colleagues, and Soldiers.

Some USMA graduates of West Point wouldn't wear their knuckle-knockers out of anxiety of being seen as "elite" by the rest of us average GIs. I knew at least two USMA alum who confessed that to me separately when I asked them why I didn't see their Josten jewels bedecking their fingers.

One wonders how Alex Vindman -- albeit a well-decorated officer -- was assigned to the National Security Council (NSC), because there are hundreds of well-decorated officers in the DOD who speak other languages and have tons of combat experience.

~snip~

The Senile Satan posted this today on his failing agit-prop platform (Truth Social):

"The most gratifying loss last night was that of a real treasonous creep, Alexander Vindman, to a Radical Left Lunatic, who can't speak or think properly, and who will go down to certain defeat at the hands of Ashley Moody, a truly Fantastic Senator, from the Great State Florida.

"Vindman, if you remember, was the one who lied about my Perfect Call' with President Zelenskyy of Ukraine, only to find out that the conversation was routinely recorded and proved that I was 100% in the right (Completely Innocent!).

"It was, indeed, a Perfect Call, and the Dumocrats Fake Impeachment effort massively failed. Vindman should be prosecuted for what he did!"

I guess Natalie Harpy is the new Hopeless Hicks.

Merely thinking of anyone sleeping with the Senile Satan automatically activates my gag reflex.