Wan's World

Month: July 2013

  • Doormats with a difference

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  • Holidaying on the cheap.

     

    Pensioners & Camping

     

     Our economy is so bad that pensioners can’t afford

     

    to stay in expensive hotels any more…

     

    We are now forced to go camping!

     

    20130706_holidaying on the cheap

  • Just had my sink fixed

    20130705_Just had my sink fixed

  • KILROY WAS HERE…The rest of the story

    KILROY WAS HERE
    KILROY WAS HERE The rest of the story_001
    He is engraved in stone in the National War Memorial in Washington , DC- back in a small alcove where very few people have seen it. For the WWII generation, this will bring back memories. For you younger folks, it’s a bit of trivia that is a part of our American history.

    Anyone born in 1913 to about 1950, is familiar with Kilroy. No one knew why he was so well known- but everybody got into it, I even remember seeing him around public places in the late 60s…

    KILROY WAS HERE The rest of the story_005
    So who the heck was Kilroy?
    In 1946 the American Transit Association, through its radio program, “Speak to America ,” sponsored a nationwide contest to find the real Kilroy, offering a prize of a real trolley car to the person who could prove himself to be the genuine article. Almost 40 men stepped forward to make that claim, but only James Kilroy from Halifax , Massachusetts , had evidence of his identity.

    ‘Kilroy’ was a 46-year old shipyard worker during the war who worked as a checker at the Fore River Shipyard in Quincy . His job was to go around and check on the number of rivets completed. Riveters were on piecework and got paid by the rivet. He would count a block of rivets and put a check mark in semi-waxed lumber chalk, so the rivets wouldn’t be counted twice. When Kilroy went off duty, the riveters would erase the mark.

    KILROY WAS HERE The rest of the story_002
    Later on, an off-shift inspector would come through and count the rivets a second time, resulting in double pay for the riveters.

    One day Kilroy’s boss called him into his office. The foreman was upset about all the wages being paid to riveters, and asked him to investigate. It was then he realized what had been going on. The tight spaces he had to crawl in to check the rivets didn’t lend themselves to lugging around a paint can and brush, so Kilroy decided to stick with the waxy chalk. He continued to put his check mark on each job he inspected, but added ‘KILROY WAS HERE’ in king-sized letters next to the check, and eventually added the sketch of the chap with the long nose peering over the fence and that became part of the Kilroy message.

    Once he did that, the riveters stopped trying to wipe away his marks. Ordinarily the rivets and chalk marks would have been covered up with paint. With the war on, however, ships were leaving the Quincy Yard so fast that there wasn’t time to paint them. As a result, Kilroy’s inspection “trademark” was seen by thousands of servicemen who boarded the troopships the yard produced.

    His message apparently rang a bell with the servicemen, because they picked it up and spread it all over Europe and the South Pacific.

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    Before war’s end, “Kilroy” had been here, there, and everywhere on the long hauls to Berlin and Tokyo . To the troops outbound in those ships, however, he was a complete mystery; all they knew for sure was that someone named Kilroy had “been there first.” As a joke, U.S. servicemen began placing the graffiti wherever they landed, claiming it was already there when they arrived.

    Kilroy became the U.S. super-GI who had always “already been” wherever GIs went. It became a challenge to place the logo in the most unlikely places imaginable (it is said to be atop Mt. Everest , the Statue of Liberty , the underside of the Arc de Triomphe, and even scrawled in the dust on the moon.

    As the war went on, the legend grew. Underwater demolition teams routinely sneaked ashore on Japanese-held islands in the Pacific to map the terrain for coming invasions by U.S. troops (and thus, presumably, were the first GI’s there). On one occasion, however, they reported seeing enemy troops painting over the Kilroy logo!

    In 1945, an outhouse was built for the exclusive use of Roosevelt, Stalin, and Churchill at the Potsdam conference. Its’ first occupant was Stalin, who emerged and asked his aide
    (in Russian), “Who is Kilroy?”

    To help prove his authenticity in 1946, James Kilroy brought along officials from the shipyard and some of the riveters. He won the trolley car, which he gave to his nine children as a Christmas gift and set it up as a playhouse in the Kilroy yard in Halifax , Massachusetts .

    And the tradition continues…

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  • Watch out for this one…

     

     Dear all,

    20130703_Watch out for this one

    Life just gets better as you get older doesn’t it.

    I was in a Starbucks Coffee recently when my stomach started rumbling and I realized that I desperately needed to fart. The place was packed but the music was really loud so to get relief and reduce embarrassment I timed my farts to the beat of the music. After a couple of songs I started to feel much better. I finished my coffee and noticed that everyone was staring at me….

    I suddenly remembered that I was listening to my IPod…….. and how was your day?

    This is what happens when old people start using technology!

  • All these apply to all of our friends in Canberra…

    Some of these are very insightful…

    We hang petty thieves and appoint the great thieves to public office.
    ~Aesop, Greek slave & fable author 

    Those who are too smart to engage in politics are punished by being governed
    by those who are dumber.
    ~Plato, ancient Greek Philosopher


    Politicians are the same all over. They promise to build a bridge even where
    there is no river.
    ~Nikita Khrushchev, Russian Soviet politician


    When I was a boy I was told that anybody could become President; I’m
    beginning to believe it.
    ~Quoted in ‘Clarence Darrow for the Defense’ by Irving Stone.


    Politicians are people who, when they see light at the end of the tunnel, go
    out and buy some more tunnel.
    ~John Quinton, American actor/writer


    Politics is the gentle art of getting votes from the poor and campaign funds
    from the rich, by promising to protect each from the other.
    ~Oscar Ameringer, “the Mark Twain of American Socialism.”
    I offered my opponents a deal: “if they stop telling lies about me, I will
    stop telling the truth about them”.
    ~Adlai Stevenson, campaign speech, 1952..
    A politician is a fellow who will lay down your life for his country.
    ~Texas Guinan. 19th century American businessman

    I have come to the conclusion that politics is too serious a matter to be
    left to the politicians.
    ~Charles de Gaulle, French general & politician

    Instead of giving a politician the keys to the city, it might be better to
    change the locks.
    ~Doug Larson (English middle-distance runner who won gold medals at the 1924
    Olympic Games in Paris, 1902-1981)

    I am reminded of a joke: What happens if a politician drowns in a river? That is pollution.
    What happens if all of them drown? That is solution!!!

    WAN