USS Indianapolis

The INDY

It is SHARK WEEK on the Discovery Channel and the first show was a documentary of the worst encounter between humans and sharks in history, the sinking of the USS INDIANAPOLIS.

I first heard of the INDY when I read JAWS and All The Drowned Sailors.

If you remember Jaws you know that Captain Quint, played by Robert Shaw in the movie, was on that US Cruiser and his chilling rendition of the four days and five nights that 896 sailors spent in the Phillipine Sea after being torpedoed was one of the most dramatic parts of both the novel and the film.

Do you remember when Quint said,

" I'll never put another lifejacket on agin'."

He was talking about surviving the INDY.

The INDY had just delivered key components for the Atomic Bomb that was to be dropped on Hiroshima a few days later when she was torpedoed by a Japanese Submarine just after Midnight on July 30, 1945.

1196 Men on board

300 went down with the ship

896 went into the sea

There are so many interesting things about this vessel and her crew:

FDR used it as his Presidential ship,

the INDY along with others was myseriously whisked out of Pearl Harbor 2 days before the surprise attack,

the captain was court marshalled for her sinking and the US Navy, in one of it's most shameful moments in history, brought in the Japanese Sub Commander to testify against him!

Captain McVeigh was later exonerrated but he committed suicide in 1968.

Back in '45 when this happened the US NAVY knew nothing about sharks and this dreadful incident actually started the serious study of sharks. Sailors were informed that blowing bubbles would scare them off.

For years this story was told like a classic Horror story where the villains were frenzied maneating creatures from hell who mercilessly attacked and devoured nearly three quarters of the 896 men who were floating helplessly for 4 days and 5 nights.

Now in 2007 we learn from the survivor accounts that dehydration, exposure and drowning claimed the majority of the poor bastards who didn't live long enough to be rescued.

Many of the survivors spoke of men who made the mistake of drinking the salty sea water and going berserk before succumbing to the shutdown of their kidneys and internal organs within a four hours.

The kidneys try to flush out the salts in the urine and wastes precious water doing so.

(Seawater is 35 parts per thousand Salt and Freshwater is .5)

The mere thought of dying of thirst in an Ocean surrounded by water and being fried by the sun during the 100 degree days led many to simply slip off their kapok lifejackets and drown themselves.

Many delerious men believed that freshwater could be had just below the surface and that Japanese soldiers had infiltrated their group.

Now over 50 years later we know that most of the men were more afraid of the delerious, violent, men floating beside them than the sharks bumping their legs beneath the surface. That is scary.

Of course there are also remarkable acts of courage and compassion. This is THE most incredible tale that every shark-nut in the world has read.

The sharks certainly consumed all of the most injured and dead sailors and a few that were still alive but exposure killed far more of them.

Statistically sharks behaved as they would be expected to and not like bloodthirsty creatures from hell according the director of the International Shark Attack File.

(About 5 people a year are killed by sharks far fewer than those who die from falling coconuts and about 50 million sharks are killed annually by Asian men to make soup.)

So in the end 896 men went into the sea

321 on the brink of death were rescued

4 succumbed to their ordeal

leaving 317 out of a crew of 1196

The thing that really stuck with me is that the 4 sailors who died after being rescued from this nightmare, were apparently buried at sea!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Indianapolis_(CA-35

IT'S A SMALL WORLD AFTERALL

Whilst out doing my chores the other day I met a charming, young, man who was proud to be an Iraqi despite the fact that he had never set foot in Iraq.
Actually he was born in Kuwait. His father was an Iraqi citizen working in Kuwait as a pilot.

I assumed that the Iraqi Invasion of Kuwait in ’90 caused some problems for his family and he confessed that they were summarily booted out of the country despite the fact that his father was not involved.

His father still has a home on the outskirts of Baghdad which may or may not still exist. The family hopes to return but his father estimates that it may take ten years before Iraq is stable enough and it may very well be trisected by then.

This young man told me how proud his father was of his Mesopotamian heritage and mourned the loss of the ancient artifacts and treasures that once stood on display in the National Museum before the American Liberation failed to anticipate or halt the subsequent looting and destruction of these treasures from antiquity. The birthplace of Civilization. Ironic.

When he had finished changing my oil he wiped off the hood of my van and with a huge smile shook my hand. As I turned over the ignition I asked him if he thought that he would stay in the Oil business.

He laughed.

BEACHMASTER TRAINING

As you are all no doubt aware Beachmasters are the huge, dominant, male PINNIPEDS who stake out some primo real estate on the shoreline and spend all of their time feverishly beating up other males to defend their territory in order to gather a harem.

Why?

Because the Beach is all about SEX!

Once a harem is secured it's time for some ooh-la-la!

Now if you have ever witnessed their brutal method of reproduction on the telly you know that it does not resemble in any way, shape, or form, the nostalgic, romantic, romp in the surf that we have all seen in the movie From Here To Eternity!

In fact these gigantic louts trample over terrified pups and hurl their massive, blubbery, bellies upon the back of any one of the slower moving or unsuspecting, inanimate, female bystanders in his harem.

EEK!

After slamming his massive, suffocating, mass on top of her for a few minutes, OK, a few seconds, he starts bellowing and Bob's yer uncle. It is a downright nasty affair and unfortunately an eerily familiar scenario to many!

Nature is not tainted by our notions of political correctness and there are valuable lessons to be learned. The other day at the Beach I decided that it was time for my youngest son to learn how to be a BEACHMASTER!

You start off by learning how to intimidate other males and by adding a little swagger to your entrance when you 'haul out'.

After my goodladywife laughed at our tomfoolery I realised that no self respecting, young, lady in her right mind, would ever voluntarily pick a huge, blubbery, boorish, ill tempered, slobbery, three second hero...

so for the rest of the day we just goofed off.

I pulled him around at an astonishing rate of speed as you can see by the huge wake...

but my bursts of energy were about as long as the time it it takes for a Beachmaster to 'you know'...ahem...anyway..

he then tried to pull me and failed miserably

so he needed a hug from his sister...

and then we all just sat around and relaxed.

I mean School is OUT so enough with the lesson already.

Nature Schmature!

THE DEVIL YOU SAY

"Mass movements can rise and spread without belief in a God, but never without belief in a Devil.

Every difficulty and failure within the movement is the work of the devil, and every success is a triumph over his evil plotting.

The ideal devil is a foreigner. Self contempt is here transmuted into hatred of others. They are an expression of a desperate effort to suppress an awareness of our inadequacy, worthlessness, guilt, and other shortcomings of the self.

The most effective way to silence our guilty conscience is to convince ourselves and and others that those we have sinned against are indeed depraved creatures, deserving every punishment, even extermination. "

Does this scenario sound familiar?

Bush found his perfect Devil in Osama Bin Laden just as Hitler blamed the Jew and the Puritans blamed the Normans. It seems that homo escapeons always resort to some form of xenophobic Devil to distract themselves from their own shortcomings.

One of my favorite books is THE TRUE BELIEVER by Eric Hoffer (1951) Harper & Row, which examines the psychology behind mass movements. Fanatics from many different groups can easily be exchanged with other groups because the dynamics stay constant and sadly people don't seem to change much.

I often wonder how long it will take for the majority of humans to intermingle, share DNA, and produce a more uniform looking species. Of course we will still have the customs, religions, and traditions of foreigners to HATE even once we all look identical. We will never run out of Devils!

That is really pathetic.

I AM SITTING ON MY FACEBOOK

Despite a great deal of Pregret, I have intentionally joined to specifically become a part of a very select group of unique, enthusiastic, individuals known collectively as

If you are a Coppens...you are The Sh*t.

Pictured here are a couple of my first responders requesting to be linked on my Facebook...

Apparently these twins are the Facebook version of the ubiquitous TOM from Myspace.

Do any of you remember in the movie when they are trying to decipher Brad Pitt's 'Piker' accent & lingo?

"It's not English and it's not Irish...it's just Piker!"

As far as I can tell about Facebook..

It's not and it's not ..

it's just Facebook!

Unlike Blogging you don't have to write any fancy schmancy posts or rant about anything. Nope. All you do is post pictures and invite your relatives, friends, and other neo-narcissist Hipsters to poke you! Like Goldilocksian Axiom, Facebook is Not too Hot or Cold, Facebook seems to be JUST the RIGHT combination of exhibitionism, e-mail, an ostrich-like sense of cyber security and relative ease of interaction. Sweeet!

Facebook was developed by some young guy at Harvard who is of course getting sued by another company for stealing the 'secret recipe'. What is at stake is a company worth Billions of Dollars. Why? Because this is definitely one of the easiest spots for data mining by Corporations and Governments.

Actually the current privacy agreement reads

"We may use information about you that we collect from other sources, including but not limited to newspapers and Internet sources such as blogs, instant messaging services and other users of Facebook, to supplement your profile."

So while you and your cousins, high school chums, and long distance friends display photos of your kids and dogs, someone evil and sinister is trying to figure out how to extract money from you. So what else is new?

If you think for one minute that your e-wake, a chum line of everything that you have ever typed on your computer or crackberry whether on or offline, is not being processed and stored in your e-profile you need to have your head surgically removed from your butt. Nothing out here is secure so you need to decide if you are up to hunting down a lurker and going full Kaiser Soze (Usual Suspects) on them.

Personally, if I or any member of my posse was harrassed, I would hire the retired Mossad agent down the lane to take whatever measures he deemed necessary to remove any trace of 'them' and their gene pool from the face of the Earth.

He would be given carte blanche to go medieval on their ass!

A word to the wise...don't piss off this Dynamite Monkey!

Anyway the prospect of getting overly involved in Facebook is remote since Blogging is a full time endeavor. Like the Diet Pepsi Ads; Is There Anything That You would Like To Recapture From Your Youth...On Second Thought I think I'll just have a Diet Pepsi...I'll stick with Blogging.

Facebook or Crackbook is for the young at heart and as I near the Mid Century stage I will prolly not be groovy enough to handle it..we'll soon find out.

My kids and their generation seem to have abandoned Myspace to the Goths and Garage Bands that have overtaken it and picked up on Facebook as asort of Bloggin-Lite*. My goodladywife is also getting addicted because she is an avid Scrapbooker and Crackbook is a great online facility for picture-putter-uppers.

As for me..I think that I'll stick with Blogging.

Famous last words eh?

THE WEATHER IS HERE

BACK IN 10

8 things (that I h’8) about me

I apologize for not visiting your Blogs but our 1 month of Summer is happening RFN and I don’t want to miss it.

Breakerslion @ http://confusionofideas.blogspot.com/ and Gautami @ http://firmlyrooted.blogspot.com/ tagged me with this meme but in lieu of Summer Holidays I shall not pass it on...

1) I don’t have a 'normal' nail on either of my baby toes. They grow vertically like a Velociraptor talon!?
Luckily this trait was not passed on to any of my 4 children but I would have gladly traded it for the obsessive nature to question everything that I did forward.
2) Even though I can watch 2 or 3 movies in one day I cannot seem to concentrate long enough to read a couple pages of a novel. Generally I will only read something if it is educational, historical, or informative, and personal blogs seem to be the only exception. I am thrilled (but not surprised) to have found so many fascinating, sensual, sentient beings out here and it gives me a little more hope for the future of our species that there are funny, lovable, intelligent people out here.

3) I put EVERYTHING in alphabetized lists because I need to deconstruct events and look for patterns and rational explanations ‘in order’ to understand why the world is such a disaster and more importantly because my short term memory is for all intents and purposes non existant.

4) There are about one dozen specific incidents in my life that I deeply regret experiencing which I mercilessly relive nearly every week and even though I was a only child when half of them occurred I still cannot forgive myself for the fact that I failed to identify and avoid them. I cannot seem to be able to put down that load of bricks.

5) Actually I really hate the way that this world operates but I enjoy figuring out why it is so fercoct. I completely understand that the Universe is insanely inhospitable and that Life On Earth should realistically mirror that fact. I accept the notion that it is a so-called ‘miracle’ that Life exists here on the third rock from the sun.

6) I believe that IF there actually was a Creator like the version invented by the various Monotheists or atleast one that actually liked people, that Life on Earth would have been a lot kinder and palatable for 99% of all the creatures who have ever existed, instead of the insane, bloodthirsty, gorefest that it was, is, and will be tomorrow.

7) Therefore; If I could be the Creator of the Universe for one day I would separate all of the ‘nice’ people in your neighbourhood, country, and throughout the rest of the world, and rearrange the molecular composition of all the other violent ‘awful’ people in exchange for more puppies, kittens, great apes, or anything other than one of those seriously tedious waste of amino acids.

8) I will reluctantly touch handrails in public places unless I have hand sanitizer, and have come to the conclusion that we humanimals still lug around a primitive set of socialization skills that prevent us from advancing…like this article;
PSYCHOLOGYTODAY

Never do a meme on a Monday f*$@#n Morning. How depressing to discover that I am little more than a tedious, naive, idealistic, snob. I hate, rather I do not prefer, memes about me I find it depressing..

a bit like being Eeyore..

"Thanks for noticing me"

SEE YA LATER,

prolly after I have a great summer.

Yo

I was totally surprised that there were so many Yogis listed on the Interweb because in my world there are only three.

Yogi Berra, Yogi Bear, and Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.

In 1957, the year that I was incarnated, Maharishi_Mahesh_Yogi ‘invented’ Transcendental Meditation in Madras, India. The Beatles made him famous in ‘67 and 50 years later everybody knows what a mantra is. Maharishi Mahesh is still trying to create Heaven on Earth via his weekly satellite broadcasts and webcasts.

Born in 1958, Yogi_Bear was smarter than the average bear and much to the chagrin of Ranger Smith, Yogi dedicated his life to the art of snatching pic-a-nic baskets in Jellystone Park.

My Yogi, Lawrence Yogi_Berra (b.1925) was an 8th grade drop out who became more famous for his genius at malapropism, which he raised to an Art Form, than he was for being an AllStar player, manager, and coach, in the National Baseball League.
Here are some of his finest creations, many of which are now deeply embedded in our language:

"Nobody goes there anymore, it's too crowded!"

"It ain't over till it's over."

"If the world were perfect, it wouldn't be."

"If people don't want to come to the ballpark, how are you going to stop them?"

"It's deja vu all over again."

"Baseball is 90% mental. The other half is physical."

"You can observe a lot by watching."

"If you don't go to other people funerals, they won't go to yours."
and my personal favorite,

"When you come to a fork in the road, take it."

You may not know it, but one of Yogi Berra’s greatest disciples is President George Dubya Bush. I for one am thoroughly impressed with his growing list of Bushisms. Enjoy.

“Rarely is the question asked, is our children learning?"

"Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we."

"Make no mistake about it, I understand how tough it is, sir. I talk to families who die."

"Too many good docs are getting out of the business. Too manyOB/GYNs aren't able to practice their love with women all across the country."

"They misunderestimated ..."

"There's an old saying in Tennessee—I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee—that says: fool me once, shame on ...

(long pause) shame on you?

(long pause) Fool me - you can't get fooled again."

"You teach a child to read, and he or her will be able to pass a literacy test."

"We cannot let terrorists and rogue nations hold this nation hostile or hold our allies hostile"