Achtung Dr. Freud Calling

Oh, those 2nd rate assassin wannabees!! Those amateurs got nothing on the mustacheod Turkish infiltrator who'd slip into ze enemy camp late at night, and right into your foxhole of three to slit ze throat of the guy lying in the middle before creeping out again. These should have been standard issue for all soldiers!

Take a taxi, steal a horse-drawn cart, rent a motorbike, whatever....just go to the Ming Tombs located 30 miles outside the city. ...and stay away from Ho Lee Fuk restaurant.

I Googled 'weizen beer' and wound up here.

Oh Comrade!!! Such a pity that you chose to pursue me into Finland with zat older model T-34 with a 4-speed rather than the 5-speed gearbox!

Eeeeeewwww! Ein Radler Mann!!! Zat's vhat I buy for mein frau!!!

Vhat's ein "yadda"???? A UN General Assembly meeting?

Alexis Obolensky has died! ......such a glorious renaissance man!! ....a hundred of your frightful Bolshevik relatives combined couldn't match his intellect, style...and panache!! Resplendent Russian Scion Alexis Obolensky By Adam Bernstein Washington Post Staff Writer Friday, March 3, 2006; Page B06 Alexis N. Obolensky, 86, a descendant of White Russian exiles who became a recognizable figure on the Washington gala circuit with his graying walrus mustache, elaborate falconer's outfit and carved ivory cigarette holder, died Feb. 26 at his ancestral property in the Kaluga province of Russia. He had congestive heart failure. Because of the prominence of his family in czarist Russia, he often used the honorific title of prince during his long career in U.S. government. For nearly 25 years, he was chief of the State Department's Russian translation section and helped draft arms-reduction treaties at a tense time in U.S.-Soviet relations. Of the communists who prompted his family's exile, he once said: "They have without exception, even at the worst times of the Cold War, always treated me with a certain respect and a certain deference, not due to my person but due to the family's standing. . . . If you want a flippant answer, I think that's the way it ought to be." With his Leo Tolstoy-era tailoring, he was a diminutive but distinguished figure at balls and parties that celebrated Russian life and culture. He hosted the annual Russian New Year's Eve Ball at the Mayflower Hotel, which saluted Czar Nicholas II along with Russian music and cuisine. Sometimes he came gowned as a falconer, with a gold brocade tunic, red sash and leather boots. Other times, he was in similar aristocratic mode, wielding a brass cane. It was his ritual to joke of being like a "Byzantine mummy, exhumed once every year." However, he found deep satisfaction in reviving the sumptuous lifestyle from the time before his parents fled the 1917 Russian Revolution. "This is recognized as the closest thing to a genuine Imperial Court ball," he said of the New Year's festivity, a cash-bar event attended by tuxedoed and bejeweled diplomats, fellow princes, exiled kings and the occasional U.S. Supreme Court justice. Mr. Obolensky traced his family to the Rurik dynasty that preceded the rule of Ivan the Terrible. His paternal grandfather helped draft the 1905 October Manifesto, which brought Russia its first constitution. His father, Nicholas Obolensky, was a member of Nicholas II's regimental guard and helped organize a group to rescue the imperial family from Bolsheviks who kidnapped and eventually killed some of its members. A marked man, the elder Obolensky fled to Germany, where his wife awaited him. Alexis, their only son, was born Oct. 28, 1919, in Heidelberg, Germany. The family settled in Florence after inheriting a villa there. Alexis Obolensky received a doctorate in international law at the University of Rome. He said he also helped find safe houses in the country for persecuted Jews during the Fascist regime. For this, he once said, he was nearly sent to the Auschwitz concentration camp, but friends worked successfully for his release. In the late 1940s, he began a long career as head of the Russian broadcasting section of Italian state radio. "I read the news, reminded my listeners about historical dates and religious holidays," he told an interviewer in 2002. "We certainly didn't call for a violent overthrow of the existing regime, but we were frank enough in our estimates of the current developments." An early marriage to Marta Fernstrom ended in divorce, and in 1956 he married Selene Rountree-Smith, an Alabamian studying opera in Rome. He became a U.S. citizen and settled in the Washington area in the mid-1960s, becoming the Commerce Department's top expert on Soviet fisheries. In 1970, he helped in asylum negotiations for a Lithuanian sailor who had leapt from a Soviet fishing trawler moored alongside a U.S. Coast Guard cutter about a mile off Martha's Vineyard, Mass. Mr. Obolensky reportedly failed to persuade the Coast Guard officials to take the sailor ashore and resolve the situation through diplomatic channels. In consultations with his superiors, the Coast Guard ship's commander allowed the Soviets to board his boat and fetch the kicking and screaming seaman. The sailor, Simas Kudirka, began to serve a 10-year sentence in a Soviet prison but was released in 1974 when it was found that he was entitled to U.S. citizenship because his mother was born in Brooklyn, N.Y. According to his family, Mr. Obolensky felt powerless to help Kudirka doing fisheries work, and this had a role in his decision to join the State Department. Through his social connections, he also aided in raising money to help Soviet scholars and writers in exile. After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, he returned to his immense ancestral estate, Berezichi, about 200 miles south of Moscow. It was then a government-run school for orphans and children with disabilities. The once-lavish building lacked running water, heat and other basic living conditions. Mr. Obolensky gave up hope of reclaiming this estate and other family properties but worked to raise funds to pay the school's teachers and encourage the children to learn basic trades. A Boyds resident, he was visiting the estate when he died. A master of nine languages, including Dutch and classical Greek, Mr. Obolensky also developed a keen taste for American jazz piano, preferring the work of Jelly Roll Morton. Survivors include his second wife, of Boyds; their three children, Sophia Obolensky Day of Columbia, Dimitri Obolensky of Boyds and Selene Obolensky Leatham of London; and three grandsons.

That so? You'd better fortify yourself vith plenty Fuzzy Russians and bring along the family physician because this here Doktor will mop ze floor vith ze two of you!!!! And a peach schnaaps for ze birthday boy as well. 'Silk Panties' looks tasty! ...but stay away from ze 'Fat Hooker'!

Have him wear this for 8-10 days and he'll be cured. Now I must pay a visit to mein Vater's grave and leave fresh flowers so please don't bother me again today !!!

Ja, a pity. One sack of quicklime and he was gone in a flash. Have a healthy slice of poppyseed strudel and live long my boy! Doktor's orders!!

Like me? 46

Rabbid Rabbit STYLE Belgian Saison “Farmhouse Ale” ABV% 7.4 IBUS 45 COLOR Light tawny DESCRIPTION : Belgian Style Farmhouse Ale brewed with Corriander, lavender, Chamomille & Rose Hips-3Different Belgian ale strains of Yeast are used in the brewing process

Enough of these dreamy panoramic shots already!!! Show us some snaps of your cupboards, Riedel stemware & shower curtain!

My, my....how these search engines continue to grow in sophistication!!! Google now pulls up an old Letter-to-the-Editor of mine from an '86 issue of Commentary mag. That sure wasn't the case last time I checked. Who here reads Commentary? Still one of the best out there. B-)

My sentiments exactly re: Katzenberg after seeing the 'golden retriever' comment, not to mention the bit about the 'I you' correspondence in a Motley Fool interview w/Stewart.

Machiavelli in the Magic Kingdom Reviewed by Bob Woodward Sunday, February 27, 2005; Page BW03 DISNEYWAR By James B. Stewart. Simon & Schuster. 572 pp. $29.95 To understand the universe of DisneyWar, James B. Stewart's exhaustive study of corporate and personal neurosis during Michael D. Eisner's 21-year tenure as head of the Disney empire, consider this: In 1995, Michael Ovitz -- once the most powerful person in Hollywood, then the president of Disney -- was trying to persuade Disney CEO Eisner that they should give a gift to Robert Iger, then the head of ABC television, to acknowledge his hard work. "Why?" Eisner asked. "He's got a contract. He's not going anywhere." "Don't you want him to be comfortable, happy in his job?" Ovitz asked. Eisner seemed to think about that. "Not really," he replied. Thus does Stewart reveal Eisner's management DNA: keep everyone deep in self-doubt, mired in uncertainty, off-balance, their heads swirling with contradictory information. At Eisner's Disney, inducing paranoia was a leadership strategy. As Eisner offhandedly remarks, "I sort of liked stress." Readers of DisneyWar will doubt only the "sort of," and they'll probably laugh out loud. I did. DisneyWar is a compelling and often brilliant tale of how Eisner kept his own -- and everyone else's -- stress levels churning. To give Eisner the benefit of the doubt, his intent seems to have been to maintain an atmosphere of creativity while containing the roaring, toxic egos of the numerous barons of the magic kingdom. But in the end, it was Eisner's own ego that swamped and infected Disney. In the interest of full disclosure, Stewart and I have the same publisher, Simon & Schuster, and editor. That said, I believe by any fair measure, DisneyWar is a monumental achievement of in-depth reporting -- tough and scrupulous. It is so comprehensive that I suspect no one will ever have to -- or even try to -- write this story again. Yet for many readers, the book's clear strength -- its more than 500 pages of detail -- will also be its weakness. Stewart brings a high-resolution microscope to the task -- perhaps too high. He focuses on nearly a hundred characters, and relentlessly examines each major Disney movie, ABC television series and countless Internet and cable deals. But all this may be needed to underscore two of Stewart's key points. First, notwithstanding all of Disney's vaunted "family values" rhetoric, money drives the train: percentages of profits, payouts and simple greed. Box-office revenue and TV ratings become the ultimate measure of success. Second, Stewart shows that the human toll is significant, dissecting the treatment of everyone from the long-suffering animators (who provide a nice Greek chorus, as if Walt Disney himself were chiming in) to the jousting top executives. The Disney empire was rife with pain, confusion, lying and wasted opportunities. Indeed, DisneyWar shows us corporate leadership so dysfunctional that the book might have been entitled "Playpen" instead. Still, Stewart has a cool eye and provides careful balance. Disney, he notes, has long been at the forefront of American entertainment and myth-making, from Mickey Mouse and Snow White to a striking recent run of popular animated movies such as "The Little Mermaid," "Aladdin" and "Beauty and the Beast." Stewart carefully charts the company's creative successes, especially in Eisner's first decade at the helm, from 1984 to 1995, which brought a tenfold return for stockholders. Eisner fell as dramatically as he rose. Much publicity has attended the astonishing spats -- recorded in lawsuits -- Eisner has had with Ovitz (his former best friend, who received a pay-out of $140 million for about a year's work), Jeffrey Katzenberg (the head of Disney's movie studios, who pocketed a settlement of $280 million) and Roy E. Disney, Walt's nephew. These served as a wake-up call. Roy Disney was the board member who helped to recruit Eisner in 1984 then led the revolt against him. Eisner was stripped of the board's chairmanship in 2004, and he has said that he will retire as CEO next year. Stewart treats these sections -- the juiciest parts of the Eisner tragedy -- expansively, and on most pages a reader will wonder why someone at Disney didn't call for straitjackets from a psychiatric version of 911. But the larger thrust of this book -- and the one that makes it such an important work -- is to call into the question the system of corporate governance, and the legal and moral responsibility of a board of directors to provide adult supervision of the firm it supposedly oversees. Disney was hardly alone; as even a casual newspaper reader knows, the financial pages are filled with tales of runaway CEOs and docile boards. One of Stewart's most memorable "characters" is Stanley Gold, a longtime Disney hand and board member who emerges as one of the book's few heroes. A wealthy lawyer and businessman, Gold finally woke up after years of deceit and bullying by Eisner and provided an unusual degree of introspection. After another director publicly defended Eisner in 2002, calling him "the best CEO in the business," Gold fired back. "We, the Directors, are guilty of not discussing the real issues affecting the Company," he wrote Eisner and his fellow directors. "We have not fully and critically addressed the failed plans of our executives or the broken promises that management has made to the Board and the shareholders over the last five years. We are too polite, too concerned with hurting each other's feelings. . . . we, the Disney Directors, have long been too compliant and uncritical of management's failures." As with Machiavelli, the real Eisner story is in his technique -- the way the corporate Prince devises a staggering number of gambits to rattle subordinates and competitors, all in order to dilute their authority and enhance his own. Eisner used several tactics. First was promising promotions (or hinting strongly about them) when he had no intention of following through, something he did to so many people on so many occasions that it seems impossible to count them. Disney's presidency, the number-two position under Eisner, is dangled, promised and withheld, floating throughout the narrative like Cinderella's glass slipper. For example, Eisner told Katzenberg, who had been among his closest colleagues and friends for nearly two decades, "I might consider [promoting you to president] down the road, if you earn it." The second technique was bullying and accusation. In letters to Irwin Russell, Eisner's attorney (who functioned virtually as a psychiatrist), Eisner let loose a stream-of-consciousness barrage about almost everybody else's inadequacies. When another member of the board, Andrea Van de Kamp, joined forces with the rebellious Gold, Eisner summoned her to his office in 2003 and told her she was a dreadful director. "You are so loyal to Stanley [Gold] it's like you've carried his babies," Eisner said. At another point, Eisner called Steve Jobs, the chairman of Pixar, "impossible to negotiate with" and "a Shiite Muslim." It worked, too; Eisner publicly demeaned Katzenberg in the L.A. Times by calling him "the best golden retriever I ever met" because he had become so subservient. Finally, Eisner seems to have deliberately created a world of denial, unimaginable contradiction, suspicion and even surveillance. People were praised, then knifed. Eisner said that Ovitz was great and then decided that Ovitz was a scoundrel so many times that the reader gets dizzy. At another point, Eisner "gestured toward several thick binders on his desk, and said that he had collected every e-mail Roy [Disney] had sent and received." Eisner did not just hold grudges; he nursed them. Stewart's painstakingly amassed detail will make readers wonder how he got it all. The answer is hard work and a willingness to go through thousands of pages of original and publicly available documents, and to interview any available source. Eisner was also interviewed for the book, but Stewart carefully notes that Eisner and Disney itself extended only "a degree of cooperation." But even that gave Stewart a telling glimpse of the full Eisner treatment. Once, while they were riding in Eisner's chauffeured SUV, Eisner told Stewart that Sandy Litvack, Disney's former general counsel, had "told me you can't be trusted." Eisner then added that he had decided to go ahead and grant Stewart interviews anyway. "Everybody has a dark side," the Disney chief said, demonstrating his uncanny knack for finding insecurities in others. "It's just a matter of finding out what it is." The remark sent Stewart into a spasm of unsettling self-examination. "The comment gives me pause," Stewart writes, "and I find myself still thinking about it days later." This was probably Eisner's precise intent. "I've heard others repeat similar comments from Eisner about a 'dark side,' " Stewart continues, "and it was something he mentioned several times during his testimony in the Katzenberg lawsuit. I wonder: Does everyone have a 'dark side'? Do I? Even if I'm not the best judge of my own character, I don't assume that everyone else has a 'dark side.' " Stewart also realizes "that by mentioning Litvack's remark -- assuming Litvack said it -- Eisner has simultaneously positioned Litvack as someone I can't trust, and has ingratiated himself with me. He has cleverly attempted to turn me against Litvack -- exactly what so many current and former Disney executives have told me happened to them." All of this raises a question: Why didn't Eisner's kingdom collapse sooner? How did anyone tolerate the lack of charity, or the unending intrigue, ridicule and badmouthing? The answer, obviously, was the payoff, both creative and financial. It was the high-wire life: the amped-up universe of deals, tie-ins, "packages," "event movies," "talent relations," parties, private-plane flights, gifts and money. As the lord of this environment, Eisner was an untethered ego. While the Disney board slept, he became the highest-paid CEO in America and wound up hijacking the corporation. The story of how he did so is essential reading for anyone who serves on the board of directors of any corporation or organization. It's also a reminder of how Hollywood can corrupt and corrode. More than 22 years ago, I interviewed Eisner twice for Wired, my book on the comedian John Belushi's death from a drug overdose. Eisner, then president and creative head of Paramount, had been trying to work out a new movie deal with Belushi when he was in his final nosedive. For his previous movie for Paramount, the studio had given Belushi $2,500 a week in cash for expenses, no questions asked. Eisner and his wife, Jane, told me a long story about spending an evening with Belushi at a club in Los Angeles called On the Rox. Belushi was watching reruns on a big screen of some of his best "Saturday Night Live" skits, including one in which he died. Returning to their car afterward, Jane Eisner said she found Belushi incredibly sad. "I feel as though I've just seen 'Sunset Boulevard,' " she said, referring to the 1950 classic in which Gloria Swanson plays Norma Desmond, an aging, failing silent-screen star who watches reruns of herself. Eisner disagreed, telling his wife that the film was about someone whose career was over, while Belushi's was still active. He saw no connection. " 'Sunset Boulevard,' " Jane Eisner replied. "I'm telling you. We just saw it." Three days later, Belushi was dead. Some of the drugs that caused his fatal overdose were paid for with Paramount cash. Eisner said he felt no responsibility, calling it standard practice for studios not to nursemaid their stars' spending habits. This summons an uncomfortable echo; after all, Eisner no more took responsibility for Belushi than the Disney board did for Eisner. The Norma Desmond and John Belushi stories are warnings -- vivid, wrenching tales of the failure of success. And now, thanks to Stewart, we have the Michael Eisner story -- his very own "Sunset Boulevard." • Bob Woodward is an assistant managing editor of The Washington Post and the coauthor or author of 12 books, including, most recently, "Plan of Attack."

Good grief, the man quickly pursues the ham-fisted course of action without any rational analysis of the acknowledged complexities of the situation! .....is it any wonder that you people missed the Renaissance and the Religious Reformation?

"It was like an Alfred Hitchcock movie," worker Denise Wilkinson said. "It was spooky. You could hear them where they flew into the glass." '.....said local Columbia, S.C. Mensa chapter chairwoman Denise W. In other Channel 6 news at this hour, three cars were slightly damaged and a mailbox flattened in downtown Bennettsville when slippery road conditions set off a ......'

What about 'Winchester Special' vith Lem & Benny??????

Who's on first???

What's wrong with hunting for a rack?