We are reporting on an internationally incident that, thankfully, WLBOTT was not involved in. We fired up the WLBOTT time machine to share with you: An incident happened in 2012 during an international shooting championship in Kuwait. The organizers mistakenly played a parody version of Kazakhstan’s national anthem from the movie Borat: Cultural Learnings of […]
Category: Destinations
On August 6th, 2024, Ukraine made a well-planned incursion into Kursk. The Kursk Oblast (or state) is an 11,582 sq. mile area that borders eastern Ukraine. It has a population of just over a million, and has been populated since the last ice age. Eduard Mykhailovych Moskaliov (Ukrainian: Едуард Михайлович Москальов; born 22 December 1973) […]
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Corn / Maize
When I was a Younger Elder, I thought I noticed an anachronism in the Bible. Jesus and his disciples were gleaning corn on a Sunday, and the local proto-MAGA trolls were criticizing Him for working on the Sabbath. Corn was a new world crop, and wouldn’t appear in Jerusalem for 1,500 years. So what gives? […]
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Texas Heat / Texas Corn
The same year that the Elders gathered in Snook, Texas to consume chicken fried bacon, a terrible wildfire scorched Bastrop State Park (September and October 2011). The Drought Jeff Goodell, in his book The Heat Will Kill You First: Life and Death on a Scorched Planet, talks with a south Texas farmer about a drought-ravaged […]
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Ice, Austin Style
Jeff Goodell’s book The Heat Will Kill You First is proving to be fascinating. As an Austin resident, he is able to describe global climate change and give recent examples from south and central Texas [ed. note: WLBOTT corporate headquarters is located in Central Texas]. Droughts, floods, hurricanes, crop loss, but perhaps most bizarrely, the […]
Once upon a time, long ago but not too long ago, Elder UC#3, UC#4-SU, Sally T. Intern, UC#2 and I met up at Sodolak’s Original Country Inn in Snook, Texas. The quest: a pilgrimage to the origin of Chicken Fried Bacon. Our get-together was in August of 2011, during a serious Texas drought. We both […]
I recently began reading the excellent book The Heat Will Kill You First, by Jeff Goodell. Executive summary: We’re doomed. Goodell dedicates some of the book to discussing air conditioning and how this technology has allowed people to live in hotter climates but also has become a major contributor to global warming. Goodell explains how […]
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Paper Wasp People
Ms. Paper Wasp shortly after stinging Elder UC#4. The Devil’s Sting A poignant story by Drew Bratcher about nine year old’s encounter with a paper wasp. (Paris Review). I am nine years old, soon to be ten. When people ask me what I want to be when I grow up, I say “country singer,” I […]
Our initial intent was to describe, in great detail, the 105 Lighthouses of Iceland. But our attention was soon redirected when we learned of Þrídrangaviti. Without a doubt, Þrídrangaviti is one of the most dramatic, unique and visually stunning lighthouses in Icelandic territory. The lighthouse is built atop an enormous, 120-foot basalt stack in the […]
WLBOTT is excited about our first official diplomatic visit to Iceland! Passports First order of business: getting passports for our ambassador UC#1 and his wife, UC#1SU. Elder G has agreed to be our Chief of Protocol for our embassy in Iceland. He, too, requires a passport. I’d be honored to serve as the “Chief of […]