Wiki Wednesday!

I do as I'm told, so here is my random article from Wikipedia:

Plato was a Greco-Bactrian king who reigned for a short time in Bactria or the Paropamisadae during the mid 2nd century BCE. The style of Plato's coins suggests that he was a relative - most likely a brother - of Eucratides the Great, whose rise to power is dated to around 170 BCE.

Plato probably acted as a co-regent for his brother. Some of his coins have inscriptions which may be interpreted as dates, using the Seleucid era. In that case, Plato reigned 167-165 BCE and was very likely the elder brother of Eucratides, since his coins depict a middle-aged man. Plato's reign also coincided with Persian campaign of the Seleucid king Antiochus IV Epiphanes, and the two kings share the same epithet: (God) manifest. These are vague indications that the dynasty of Eucratides may have been associated with the Seleucids.

The dating is however far from certain. The numismatician Bopearachchi dates Plato between 145-140 BCE, after the death of Eucratides, and with the scarcity of evidence, any period between 170-140 is possible.

Dear Congressman Feingold

Dear Congressman Feingold,

Your statements both on your website and on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart regarding accountability hit spot on with a major issue we all face today.

If the President of the United States cannot accept responsibility for actions so blaringly his own, then how do we expect young people to grow into responsible, accountable adults with any kind of integrity to themselves, others, or our country.

I've heard speeches about having "character." I've seen many presentations about self-esteem.  But what a lot of our challenges in the US relate to is our accepting responsibility for our own actions, and also respect for others as much as respect for ourselves.

We have become a nation of self-serving, self-interested, selfish, un-compassionate, inconsiderate people.  I truly believe if we could raise our children with some respect for others we'd be a better nation of people.  If we as adults took responsibility for our actions, we'd have better tools to inspire our children to do the same. If our President took responsibility as an obligation rather than a choice, it might inspire our adults to do the same.

Thank you for the extra time it took to read this post.  Thank you for your voice and speaking about accountability to the nation.  Perhaps the "powers that be" didn't listen, but many of us listened and agreed.  

We'd probably even vote for you in 2008!

With Respect,
Charmaine Mankey

top 100 films

ok, ok, so I'm cheating again, but I haven't written in so long, took as a challenge my friend's list of the number of Top 100 Films she's seen. So, just like she did, I've bolded the titles I have seen. It appears that I've seen 92-1/5 of these. I guess I know now what I've been doing all my life!

1. Citizen Kane
2. Casablanca
3. The Godfather
4. Gone with the Wind
5. Lawrence of Arabia
6. The Wizard of Oz
7. The Graduate
8. On the Waterfront
9. Schindler's List
10. Singin' in the Rain
11. It's a Wonderful Life
12. Sunset Boulevard
13. The Bridge on the River Kwai
14. Some Like It Hot
15. Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope
16. All About Eve
17. The African Queen
18. Psycho
19. Chinatown
20. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
21. The Grapes Of Wrath
22. 2001: A Space Odyssey
23. The Maltese Falcon
24. Raging Bull
25. E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial
26. Dr. Strangelove or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb
27. Bonnie and Clyde
28. Apocalypse Now
29. Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
30. The Treasure of the Sierra Madre
31. Annie Hall
32. The Godfather, Part II
33. High Noon
34. To Kill a Mockingbird
35. It Happened One Night
36. Midnight Cowboy
37. The Best Years of Our Lives
38. Double Indemnity
39. Doctor Zhivago
40. North by Northwest
41. West Side Story
42. Rear Window
43. King Kong
44. The Birth of a Nation
45. A Streetcar Named Desire
46. A Clockwork Orange I tried--I really tried to watch this but had to walk out after 5 minutes.
47. Taxi Driver
48. Jaws
49. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
50. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
51. The Philadelphia Story
52. From Here to Eternity
53. Amadeus
54. All Quiet on the Western Front
55. The Sound of Music
56. M*A*S*H
57. The Third Man
58. Fantasia
59. Rebel Without a Cause
60. Raiders of the Lost Ark
61. Vertigo
62. Tootsie
63. Stagecoach
64. Close Encounters of the Third Kind
65. The Silence of the Lambs
66. Network
67. The Manchurian Candidate
68. An American in Paris
69. Shane
70. The French Connection
71. Forrest Gump
72. Ben-Hur
73. Wuthering Heights
74. The Gold Rush
75. Dances with Wolves
76. City Lights
77. American Graffiti
78. Rocky
79. The Deer Hunter
80. The Wild Bunch
81. Modern Times
82. Giant
83. Platoon
84. Fargo
85. Duck Soup
86. Mutiny on the Bounty
87. Frankenstein
88. Easy Rider
89. Patton
90. The Jazz Singer
91. My Fair Lady
92. A Place in the Sun
93. The Apartment
94. GoodFellas
95. Pulp Fiction
96. The Searchers
97. Bringing Up Baby
98. Unforgiven
99. Guess Who's Coming to Dinner
100. Yankee Doodle Dandy

Friday's Feast

I haven't updated in awhile, have been sort of worn out. I'll use the following meme to be my update today, and maybe next week a full story will be here.

Here goes:

Feast Eighty-Four

Appetizer
On a scale of 1-10 with 10 being highest, how intuitive do you think you are?

maybe a 6.5

Soup
What is your favorite kind of gum?

I don't chew gum.

Salad
Name a CD you own that you would never get rid of.

Steely Dan Aja and Gaucho

Main Course
When was the last time you said something you didn't mean?

Two weeks ago. I felt so crummy about it, too. There was no way to repair the statement, and it sure didn't come out like I intended!

Dessert
What is the sum of the numbers in your birthdate? (Example: 3 + 2 + 1 + 9 + 7 + 9 = 31)

4+1+3+1+9+5+8=31

Feast Eighty-Three

Appetizer How many pillows and blankets do you sleep with? One pillow, one sheet with one down comfortor and a bed coverlet. Soup What are you currently "addicted" to? besides oil? um, probably sugar. Boring, but it's about the only thing I crave often (well, besides....) Salad If you could make a small change to your current routine or schedule that would make you just a little bit happier, what would it be? I long for time alone in my house for 2 hours every day, after it's clean, to read or nap or write--whatever I want to do. Main Course Which adjective do you find yourself using often? "wonderful" Dessert Have you ever picked up a hitchhiker? Yes. Want details? comment on my blog.

Thursday Threesome

Thursday Threesome

::"The Shakiest Gun in the West"::

Onesome: The Shakiest-- comedian is gone! ...but not forgotten: what scene or what movie/TV show was your favorite Don Knotts piece?

The Andy Griffith show. I liked him in Mr. Limpett, but his perfection was in the AG show.

Twosome: Gun-- Who handles the law enforcement powers in your neck of the woods? Is it a police department or a sheriff's office? ...or are you under military jurisdiction?

Local Police department--an officer lives right across the street!

Threesome: In the West-- Okay, quickly now: your favorite scene in any western! Nope, not the movie, just the one scene you like best or is most memorable to you...

Only one?~?~? First one that came to mind was Paul Newman saying "there aren't any rules in a knife fight," and right after that thought was Robert Redford screaming, "I CAN'T SWIMMMMM"

Not Enough for Everyone

A dear, dear, very kind, friend wrote (some parts snipped):
My dearest, dearest friend - I am so familiar with the downhill spiral of an elderly parent and I wish I could be there to do whatever I could to help…  There isn't a day that goes by that I don't think of you and wish you peace, joy and love... You do what you need to do for your Dad.  I look back at Mom's last months and weeks and even days and have no regrets about what I did to help her.  There were days that a certain member of the family tried to guilt me into not doing what I KNEW was right and I found the strength to ignore that stupidity and I know how much my Mom appreciated it, even if she didn't remember me coming by...  it is one of the hardest things in the world to go through [and] you are doing what you can and it will give you peace one day just in knowing that you did what you could.My response was so much like my blog entries lately that I figured it fit here:

Thank you so much for your wise and helpful note.   The only thing is, between the girls, Scott and my dad, I don't feel as if I'm doing enough for any of them, or even myself.  I wish I could just have a week here by myself and then let everyone come home when I would be organized and rested.  But I have a feeling it wouldn't happen anyway.  I had all afternoon today where I could do so much, and what did my mind and body do?  They went into escape mode.  I kind of had a narcoleptic hour, and while Emily watched TV (again), I slept; hard deep sleep in my un-made bed.  I didn't even try. I went in to make the bed, and just kind of collapsed into it.So, I do hope I am doing what I can for Dad, but everything I do seems so very short of adequate.  It feels as if I'm the one in a downward spiral, into a vortex of clutter, both mental and literal.Boy, that was good--I think I'll put it into my blog! Speaking of blogs, where has yours been?  Let me (ok, us) know what's going on with you!