I suspect it was intended as a compliment.....

“The best fiction is far more true than any journalism.” 

-attributed to William Faulkner

Truth...............................

"Truth would quickly cease to become stranger than fiction, once we got as used to it."
- H.L.Mencken

via

A pleasant mixing of facts and fiction.............

The Wikipedia page on the HMS Leopard

Fifty years ago.................................

The Gulf of Tonkin incident.  A significant misjudgment?  Provoking a provocation?  Any old excuse will do? Careful what you wish for? Truth?  Fiction?  Regardless, a tangled web started being weaved.  If history allowed "do overs,"  lots of folk might sign up for this one.

When the man is right...................................

.................................(which is, like, all the time) all you can do is agree with him.

Put salt on her tail.....................

Jeff continues to amaze with his knowledge of old science fiction movies:

Okay - I may have done a mashup of The Three Stooges in Orbit, Three Stooges in Have Rocket Will Travel, and Abbott & Costello Go to Mars. But that last one most likely not. All I remember was a square headed martian at which point I grabbed my stomach and told by budz I wasn't feellng well. Heck - I was only eight years old! 

And let's no forget The Incredible Shrinking Man and it's gender alter ego, Attack of the 50 Foot Woman. That one really got the hormones going...heh...

- J.

Feel free to watch this clip (or others available at YouTube Central), but friend to friend, don't invest a lot of time in it.