just when you think everything is in order... a new set of circumstances sets you on your ear

In November, my provider cut off my service for ten days and I saw to it that an outstanding bill got paid, and had it turned on as early as was possible.  

So you think, 'well, that's ok, then.'  Wrong, äääääää....

I 'thought' it was ok, because I could call out, so my connection was functioning, right?  It would stand to reason...

The thing is, I rarely make phone calls, and then in December, because I know a lot of people with December birfdays.  The first was on the 4th, dear Elke.  She was busy, I assumed partying, so I left a happy happy on her voice mail.  And was surprised when she didn't call me back when she got a minute.  

Odd, I thought...  And then on the fifteenth, I received a card from her thanking me for the call and saying she hadn't been able to reach me.  So I thought she had tried when I was temporarily cut off...  

And I'd talked to Peter and told him K wanted to drive me down to the home so I could visit...  except he never called either once he was back from the Czech republic, but figured he had a lot to do, it being advent after all....

Same thing happened with AM on the 21st...  Voice mail, left a message, no reply.  

On the 23rd, I was somewhat piqued.  So I called AM, and she gave me hell...  said I was unreachable.  And reached Dorle and Elke, and they gave me various degrees of hell  Turns out it became the 24th...  and as we all know, the whole fucking country shuts down for three days, and I finally realised that when they turned the service back on, I could call out----but no one could call in.  A glitsch.  

And this wouldn't have bothered me, I had reached who I wanted to speak to, after all, and said I'd clear it up.

Then came the horridays.  I wasn't able to reach the nursing home for three days....  they were probably understaffed and had their hands full.    It rang a while, and then the connection broke off.  So I wasn't able to reach Peter.

And then came the horror...  I got through yesterday early, and they said he wasn't awake yet.  He'd asked to sleep till ten, as he'd just come back from hospital and was exhausted.  The home had tried to reach me via email and telephone, but I hadn't been reachable.  Seemingly it was another heart episode, and hed been in the hospital in Graz for days and I'd had no idea.  I would have been there day and night for him, and he probably thought I just don't give a shit any more.  I was clueless.  

For all the times for everything to go horribly wrong, I wouldn't have even been able to conceive of a worse one.

I was off the charts for concerned and dismayed.  And the best thing?  I'd forgotten to inform the home of the email change, but thought, well, they'll call if something is wrong.  The ironic thing?  I sent the admin there a mail to what they are listed on in the phone book, explaining,,,,   and it bounced.  

Peter sounded weak, and didn't want to say what had been wrong, but assume it was his heart again.  Said there were 'listeners at the wall', meaning that the cleaning people were in his room.  I explained what had happened and apologised and assured him I'd have been there had I known.  

The problem is supposedly being corrected...  the company has to run a software programme that takes 24 hours to complete.  So they said.  

And with that...  well, I'm sort of FUCK Christmas and everything to do with it.  

for those with time on their hands over the horridays... YouTube

You can find a lot of fascinating things to while away time and avert the end of year tedium there.  I have a couple of recommendations.

I finished watching a delightful BBC mini-series this week called 'Last Tango in Halifax'.  Six parts at an hour each.  The grandchildren of two mid-seventy year olds put them onto facebook, they'd lost touch sixty years before.  And with tredipidation, they decide to meet, fall in love all over again and decide they want to marry.  As with all such things, the bbc had wonderful actors and actresses I'd never seen before, but brilliant.  And oh yeah, their children and grandchildren are emotional messes.  It was very enjoyable.

If you type in 'Shakespeare re-told' in the search box at youtube, you will find three BBC films that put classics into a modern setting.  I liked 'Much Ado About Nothing' most.  'The Taming of the Shrew' was funny, albeit rather heavy-handed, and Crash, my notebook, hasn't let me see all of 'Macbeth' yet, living up to his name.   The latter involves a chain restaurant war.  Oddly, it works.

For those of us who are oldies, and want to dip into nostalgia, the original version of  'The Fly' can be found.  In 1956 I was only seven, and not able to go to matinees alone yet, but very bitten by the movie bug.  I do remember one of the neighbors girls having seen it at a drive-in movie with her parents, and telling the tale with relish, and I was green with envy.  Sounded reeeeally creepy.  

So...  it being Advent and all, I thought it would be fun to see what I had missed.  My word.  It's all talk talk talk, and the main message is not to trust science, with Vincent Price covetinMg his brother's wife.  And boy, was he camp.  There were three special effects scenes (that I counted), and they were so lame...  children today would find them hilarious, am sure.  I bust out laughing every time. Oh my...    I was glad I never wasted thirty-five cents on seeing that, but suppose that at the time, it would have been creepy enough...  we were all naive back then.  I enjoyed that little trip back in time.  If they had the special effects capacity they do today back then, I probably would have messed myself.

Last but not least, I found something for Sondheim fans...  a rarity that I've looked for for over fifteen years.  It's called 'Passion', and has been hotly discussed any time there is a revival of it.  I hadn't even been able to find a cd of the score.  But there is a high quality version with the original cast on YouTube...  the entire production.

It's 'stayed' with me for weeks now.  Musically, it's so far from a musical in the usual sense, it sort of defies description.  I think of it as a symphony that is sung, and the movements have themes, but nothing one would call a song.  and I found the content disturbing.

In fact...   I wouldn't recommend anyone seeing it unless they were accompanied by an adult 55 years or older. Because I don't think people younger than that will understand it, and they will want to discuss.  It's about love, but a very dark aspect of love.  And left me mulling it over for days.

It takes place in Italy before the unification.  A very handsome young soldier is in-love with a very beautiful woman who is married and they are having an affair.  They feel that they can transcend anything and everything.  The soldier is assigned to an outpost, not defined.  His regiment is staying in the castle of a nobleman, whose cousin is very ill.  A mental nervous condition, and she is very plain of feature.  Her doctor advises him to speak with her and he does, becoming interested, .as they are similar in mind and temprament, and she falls passionately in love with him to the point of obsession.  

You would think that could only lead to tragedy, and it does...  but not in the way the viewer expects.  And in the end, he falls in love with her in a way that is desperate and complete.  There is a duel, he goes mad, she dies, but he'd found complete and perfect love.

Some of it is cruel.  Some of it goes right to the edge of what is bearable.  Donna Mills in the main role was incredibly good, with an alto voice as dangerous and seductive as a siren.  (the mythical one, not the alarm)  

I see it as a meditation of an ageing man whose previous work had been often tongue in cheek, cynical, and suddenly considering what some forms of love might be.  And I think most of his work regards considering different forms of love...  from Company to A Little Night Music, Sunday in the Park with George...  certainly Follies, and even Sweeney Todd in several senses.  Passion is sort of a culmination of his work, and is dark.

And it is disturbing.  It stays with you, makes you think.  And pose a lot of questions to oneself.  The production was beautiful, very sexy, and the lighting was wonderful...   especially when they consumate their relationship in a blinding white-hot light.  I think that it will one day be regarded more positively than it has been to date.  But it certainly isn't for everyone.  Who wants to see something that will make you think?   I found it entertaining all the same, if on another level.

And there is a lovely Lincoln Center production of  'A Little Night Music' to bee seen on YouTube from the 90's in good quality.  I didn't care for the staging, but it was a joy to see and listen to.  I'd never realised that the duchess dies...  happy ends all round, and she drops dead in her wheelchair at the very end.  Chilling.  But the music is wonderful, the humour is sarcastic, and it was very funny. And about love.

So...  those are my picks for the horriday season.  You might want to take a look at the one or the other.

Happy Horridays to anyone checking in...

The past weeks weren't exactly happy ones in the RenB household...  just same-old, same-old.  Some people don't find the season especially enjoyable.  On the contrary.

Especially the christmas card from your landlord wishing you all the joy of the season and include the new rate of your rent for the coming year, because, y'know, 'tis the season.  I always find that tasteless.

Have followed the US news, and that was depressing.  Although I did find that Susan Rice withdrawing her name from being nominated Sec/State was a good thing.  The politics behind it were reprehensible, but the truth is that woman frazzles my last nerve.  For someone who has had a career in 'diplomacy', she wasn't a good scholar.  Because any time I heard her in her real capacity as ambassador to the UN, I cringed.  Strident, agressive to the point of belligerency, and anything BUT diplomatic.  A mean sort of cowgirl, if you will.

I do not think her style would have been much appreciated in the rest of the world, in other words.  So you would have thunk that the Rethugs would have embraced her with open arms.  But they remain a conundrum.  Learning that she had a vast sum of money invested in the keystone pipeline was only confirmation for me that she wouldn't have been a good choice.

And all the blather about the fiscal cliff...  good grief, let them just jump off, it'll be better all round.  If the House has effectively blocked any legislation that would have helped improve the job market like investing in infrastructure, comprimising to fix it, how can anyone expect them to do anything now?  They are evil and so in denial it leaves one spitless.

As to the NRA wanting to ban video games and violence in Hollywood films...  well...  european kids play the same games and watch the same movies, but they don't go on rampages with AK47's....  because they can't get any.  They don't get guns that easily either.  I liked Ron Reagan Jr.'s idea best.  It should be like getting a driver's license...  you have to prove you know the laws, how it works and pass a test.  That's about as sensible a thing as I've heard in a long while.

I really don't see the joy in this season...  especially when the austerity programmes keep you limited to sticking to the necessities of life...  like having 'something' to eat in the house.

Yesterday was the big day in my part of the world.  The country that gave the world 'silent night' lives up to its' tradition.  By two pm it was virtually silent all around.  I listened to the classical radio station which brought an interesting two hours of Christmas music from the Middle East, some of it in Aramaic.  And assyrian.  Not weird if you think about it...  he did come from there, after all.  

And there was some Bach.  Which is always very nice.  Then I turned in.  Yesterday was for the immediate family.  Today is for the etended family.  Tomorrow is for friends, and maybe taking in a movie, or doing something fun together.  

And me?  Well, I tend to sleep through it.  We*re halfway through, and then we get to go back to hibernation for the end of year drunk spree...  because the year ends and a new one begins.  Will sit that one out as well, and say good riddance on Jan 2nd.

But for those of you surrounded by family and loved ones, I do hope that these days are enjoyable and without all the fucking stress of trying to be 'perfect'.  Most people seem to lose perspective.  

For Peter and I...  well, he loved doing the traditional things, and being pensive, and having all the beautiful decorations, and so on.  Sitting afternoons reading by the tree at twilight. And me attending to the cooking.  We always had freinds over for a formal dinner on the 26th.  And his mother's oldest friend over after the New Year to see the tree, which she loved.  We only exchanged small gifts, and normally gave big presents at other times during the year.  The reason being 'just because'.  I really liked that arrangement.

However you spend it, I wish you inner peace and quiet and enjoyment, in the way that is most meaningful to you.

The Village Sign most often stolen in Austria is...

Or so I've been told by someone who nicked one....  this has the added hilarity of adding 'Please slow down'.    I had forgotten it till I ran across it on-line this morning.

May it give you a horriday smile. And you can look it up on google if you don't believe there is such a place.

How DARE they?

It is beyond my comprehension that people like the one in the clip above can receive national attention spouting such hatred, or that anyone would even think to take them seriously.  This asshole is from the American Family Association...  whatever that is...    

Thoroughly disgusting.  Children died because the schools didn't '
embrace God'.  Reallah.  

And the crazies of Westboro Baptist Church are gonna picket the religious ceremonies, which is no surprise.

How very 'christian', especially during the horriday season, to want to guilt trip the parents and educators of innocent children. How tolerant, forcing their warped 'religion' on the grief-stricken.

Something is very wrong with US society.  It makes me sick to my stomach. 

Icy...

Haven't written much this past week...  too cold, was mostly staying warm.  When the temperature goes below 0 Celcius, my heating system can't handle it and it gets cold in my appartment.

So I tinkered with Crash, my pc, trying an impossible fix, and getting incensed when only minor improvements resulted from all the searches, and testing scans, and such like.  But two nights ago, there was a new vista update.  So after three weeks of banging my head on the keyboard, the new update seems to have corrected what was wrong...  which happened after the old update was installed.  Seems is the operative word here.

Unfortunately, I had removed my old version of the game I play, and wasn't able to re-install it for some odd reason, got the US version, and only get the entry mask...  and then it tells me it can't connect ot the authorisation server.  Go figure. And I'd had a priest up to level 36.  fuck, fuck, fuck.

I really missed that.  

I don't call 'em Microshit for nothing.

And this morning I read that windows 8 de-installs other programs on your pc at random. and is a mess.  

Typical.

With them, newer isn't necessarily better.

And caught up with the news, which was more or less upsetting and amazing.  Where the Rethugs are in charge, they are continuing busting unions and legislating against women's health, on the state level, while the ones on the national level are wringing their hands trying to figure out what they said that was wrong.  Wellllll...   if you dissed half the country, it might have been a problem, y'know?

While rummaging around I stumbled upon a wonderful cartoon which really sums up what the current republican party is about.  I smiled....  but it made me sad at the same time.  Those people are just heartless.

Sort of says it all, I guess.... Fits the horriday season.

Heinous

I slept through most of last night for a change.  Imagine my surprise when I went to the supermarket to get my food for the weekend, and saw the cover of our local rag.  With a foto of teachers briskly escorting munchkins away from the scene of yet another mass shooting in the US.  

Well, I quickly went home and turned on the internets...  and was fairly well ...  gobsmacked.  Killing kindergartners...  that's a new low even for the US.  

And, let's see, there was the mall shooting in Oregon just a week ago, and a heart-breaking interview with the parents of a young african-american kid who got shot dead because his radio was on too loud while he was at a gas station, and some mouf-breeder didn't like it...  what the hell is wrong with these people?  

Next we'll probably hear they got shot because they weren't coloring within the lines, for cripes sake.

The trouble is that they all have easy acess to guns.  As a kid, I remember seeing cowboy movies, and you always knew the guns had six bullets, so when there was a shoot-out, you'd count,knowing how many were left, you know?  It was part of the history and culture, and that's why they were called six shooters, right?    

Nowadays sociopathic freaks can arm themselves to the teeth with 32 bullet clips, re-load in seconds and create immense heart-break, destruction,  and havoc.  Using weaponry that was designed for war...  not hunting.  And wow, 40 percent don't even have to have back-up checks, they just buy them.  

Some people need to get a grip and start restricting unlimited access to weapons...  of any sort.

America has always been a violent country, but if I were living there and had children, I would seriously consider going elsewhere if only just for their safety.

The sad thing is, for the people who profit, they thinks it's collateral damage.  

I wonder when something will happen to make people stand up and say enough is enough.  And am not holding my breath.

Who the Fuck knew that Howdy Doody was poltiical??? Or the root of media beginnongs being indocrination of small children?

I just had my mind blown in so many ways today, and it only took one clip of old video to do it.

I was watching news this morning, and there was a clip of Howdy Doody in one of the blocks.... which made me all nostalgic and feeling fuzzy, because I only vaguely remember Howdy Doody.  

He was a marionette.  This sort of wimpy red-headed freckled cowboy marionette with too much cheek and a plaid shirt and jeans and of course the boots...  sorta wimpy.  I know I had a Howdy Doody lamp on my night table for a long time, sitting beneath the shade, so I must've liked the show...  

As above...  my memories are sort of warm and fuzzy.  I could only vaguely remember Buffalo Bob, and Howdy, and used to get a kick out of the 'evil' Flubadub, which was supposed to be a conglomeration of seven animals, if I remembered correctly, and having a sound mistrust of Clarabelle the clown, who only honked and was lame.

So I thought I'd go down memory lane, and look into the birth of the tee-vee media, and see what I'd seen as a small child.  I remembered the signation, and the peanut gallery...  a tier of small children, who could be raucous and led to the saying 'no comments from the peanut gallery!'  

The rest was vague...   

The first clip I looked at had some nerd in NY named Daniel who had a ukelele, and Howdy sang about how important it was to look both ways before you cross the street...  teletubbies for the Fifties.  

But that was in 1949, and I'd just been born.

By 1952...  I was a tee-vee consumer of three or so years.    It's one of the first things I remember, if vaguely.  A year later, my parents were getting a divorce, and I was back to listening to radio, my grandfather was a fierce follower of listening to the McCarthy Hearings, and they upset me, because all I knew was....  the fucking senators were mean and putting good people under extreme duress.

Later, it was the Cold War, and our teachers taught us that when... not if... the Russians took over, our parents would be put into re-education camps, some of us would never see some of them again and we would all be indoctrinated.  Needless to say, the lady in question was a radical Rethug.

But we have to go back to 1952...  and the peanut gallery.   Now the structure of the show was simple.  The intro song, something with Howdy, then a lesson, then a silent classic film narrated by Buffalo Bob, and some sort of marionette conflict resolved by the end of the show and a sing-out.

In 1952...  there was a presidential election.  Eisenhower vs. Adlai Stevenson.  And in the April 1st edition...  the peanut gallery got an immersion in presidential campaign politics that....  well today, if you would put that on the tube, it would send heads exploding left and right, because it was crass indocrination.    

I'm still speechless after viewing this.  Let alone how they used direct pressure to make mommy or daddy buy the sponsor's products.  It was a new media.  And boy, did they make the most of it.

This is how my generation learned if even sublimanily, about presidential politics, swing states, and voting.  Just skip over the silent film part of the clip and listen to the message being the massage.  

Looking back, it is fucking astounding.

The cap is about influence peddling to become vice president.

This really is amazing, and not wing-nuttery.  It's a look at how even at the beginning of media, there was an agenda.  I will  never think about it ever in the same way again.  Manipulating the votes to go to Howdy, and the hokey applause machine.  You can't GET more timely.

And please take the time to actually listen to the main parts of this.. skip the silent film... the rest is indoctrination.

I shudder to think what it is they do today, and the peanut gallery was only five or six, I think...  heavy.  And funny when ou get all the nut jobs nowadays claiming winky tinky and bob spongepants are gay...  what s come down in political discourse.

Snow... and Rear Window

Snow....  belongs in the mountains, not in the city, thenk you...

Snow...  is disgusting....

Snow..   has been the bane of my existence, and I should have been smart enough to move somewhere where it never snows.

I just went out to the WC after still trying to find the error on this idjit ma-chine, and whaddaya know?  Outside the kitchen winder, huge, soggy disgusting flakes of snow were drifting down outside.

Where I grew up, three feet of that white shit falling at one time wasn't unusual.  Nor the deep freeze minus forty below zero afterward, and long underwear was the order of the day. 

Here, we mostly get a few inches, but it sets me off. 

We don't need God's dandruff.  He or She should shake it off elsewher.

What we're gonna HAVE for the next few days is.. mush.  slush, call it what you will.

And I friggin' hate it.  The view from my kitchen window is eerie.  It always reminds me of 'Rear Window', which I saw at too young an age and had to escape to the wc three times because it made me hyperventilate.   I recently saw it again on YouTube.  It's quite the masterpiece of suspense.  And one reason I never look out the window if I can help it.  I never wanna know.

Here is what I mean:

Fuck the snow..... 

Spring will come.. one of these days....
 

Happy Krampus...

Yes, it's two days early, but I found a terrific diary on Daily Kos, and as we all know..  they disappear fast and are hard to find again.

I've never been able to satisfactorily explain the Krampus, and Steveningen at that site has done a thorough job.  So please go here.

And you will find much to delight you, including a video from my town which captures the fun.  It was the best one YouTube has in stock.

 

 

 

 And by the way...  nowadays they are more child-friendly and not so traumatising as when Peter was young.  They scare him to this day, he had a bad visit from one.  The children nowadays get skeered, but they know it isn't real.  But in Peter's day, they had greeting cards like this. (!!!) 

Stan Winston's folk should hire some of the artists who make these masks...  the old ones are of hand-carved wood, and have hinges so the Krampus can open it and take a breather.  They are very costly, and wonderful handiwork.  

So you're on notice: you have two days to become very afraid.

I Forgot to Buy a Piece of Cake... figures,,, and learned to see copper thieves in a new light

Yup..  completed the 63rd orbit on this piece of rock hurtling around the sun.  

Sometimes the cycles can be bumpy, sometimes they go by without anyone noticing they did.  

But the fact is..  I didn't get any wiser.  That's a piss-poor result.

And yeah...  I forgot to buy a piece of cake to celemabrate this inauspicious occasion.  So shoot me.  Never liked desserts anyway.

I would have liked spending the morning listening to Chris Hayes on UP, but as with YouTube, it makes my damned notebook crash, and no, haven't found the solution to the problem yet.  It's a never-ending source of annoyance to me.  

It was the second half of yesterday's broadcast that would have interested me.  Regarding Wikileaks culprit Bradley Manning and how he has been treated in confinement for the past two years.  Other news reports make me think he's being held in Russia or Rumania, but would have liked to hear what the round table had to say about it.  

My notebook, hereafter named 'Crash', did let me hear an interesting clip by Rachel Maddow on the shut-down of the internets in Syria, and as she is thorough in deconstructing news and getting to real issues, she mentioned something that caused me to prick up my ears very early this morning.  About how a woman in Eurasia was looking for scrap metal to sell and enhance her meager existence, found a cable and chopped it through with a shovel to hopefully find copper in it. It happened to be the internet cable that served three countries, and shut it down for 12 hours.  

Her relating this in a somewhat amusing way as introduction to the main part of her lead story on friday really made me sit up and take notice.  Because, for some time now, we have copper thieves in our capitol.  

Seemingly, copper is so scarce in the East, it became lucrative to find cables with copper in them and chop them up for sale.  So it has become not unusual to hear the traffic reports on the radio, only to learn that one subway line or the other in Vienna has been shut down, as copper thieves struck and cut off and stole cables, and that prevented them from running.  It's been expensive, alternate transportation is provided, and the affected line is usually back up and running within the course of the day.  
  
I've found such reports oddly annoying, but thought it was some sort of local trend..   Seemingly not.  Well, you learn something every day, as they say.

Am avidly following a story about an ex minister of the interior who faces up to ten yeas in prison for peddling influence in the EU parliament to some characters who were posing as lobbyists, but in reality were British journalists.  The guy is a master of spin.  His conservative party members have been wingeing on... and on... and on about it.  'Well, he didn't actually sell anything.'   

What part of influence peddling do they not understand, hey?

So has we been learning?  Nope, don't think so.  To me it seems like we're just a bunch of reptilian brains, stuck on a rock which is hurtling around the sun every 365 days.  And just about as dumb.

And elsewhere...  Johne Bonehead, Miss Lindsay and newly minted NH senator Ayote form a formidable trio of dunderheads going after Susan Rice, whom, by the way, I do NOT like.  For personal reasons.  For a supposed diplomat, she always has a tone that is strident, bullying, and agressive.  To learn that she has six hundred thousand dollars invested in the Keystone Pipeline company only sealed the deal.  

Whatever Obama may think...  her (lack) of style would not be advantageous for the rest of the world.  Hillary Clinton is a master of diplomacy, in my humble opinion.  Am sure she does some strong-arming, but is perceived as a true diplomat.  When Susan Rice opens her mouf...  I cringe.

And lastly, the Russian government had to step in and calm the superstitious folks down, according to the NY Times. Because many people there believe in the Mayan calendar thing and think the world will end near the end of the month.  Wheeeee!

We got through the Y2K scare...  when all the computers would die on Jan 1, 2000...  and we got through all the idjits who have predicted the end of the world since I can remember..  I remember going to a cobbler as a child who was a Jehova witness.  (Remember when people actually had their shoes repaired???)  And he would shake his head and be dispirited and tell me that the world would end soon.  We were living under threat of nuclear war, so I thought it might be possible...   But not for the reasons he thought.  (Cuban misslile crisis, anyone?)  

Well, there've been a lot of idjits of that ilk around for ages....   Peter's neighbor's wife was... is... one of them.  And sometime in the Eighties, they were certain...  the world was gonna end.  She worked in a bank and had tenure.  So she quit her job without notice, dissolved their joint bank account, which makes no sense, because I never heard you needed money to get into heaven, and took the children to the temple to wait for the big event.

Which, as we know, didn't happen.  And her husband had a ball-busting time to get her re-instated in her job, and get things back on track.  

Am sure there are many people in Russa... and elsewhere..  spending their rubles and money and having a last fling before 'the end'.  

Actually, I don't think I'd mind much if it did.  The planet would still revolve around the sun every 365 days or so, and possibly....  maybe...  some new form of life would form that was actually intelligent.

Without the lizard brain and greed, and hate.  I'd be just fine with that.

And yes, I know...  I'm getting old and cynical... but if you take a look about you... it really isn't difficult to draw such conclusions.

So...  take a piece of chocolate virtual cake that I didn't buy.  And many returns of the day to everyone.

Today is World AIDS Day... 31 years... (sigh)

According to Wikipedia, the first cases were reported in 1981.  

It's scandalous that so little was acheived by science in all that time. And it was a frightening time at the beginning, and horrible in every way.  

Not to mention all the losses, some so painful that I am reluctant to even think about how devastating it's all been.  At one point I was engaged to the max, running into the local AIDS Hilfe office with the latest alternative news articles out of the US, passing on info, and the uncertainty and distress was---  indescribable.  And invested my feelings and everything I felt into a young man who was like a brother to me, and had become infected.  What began as a pen pal correspondence became very personal in a platonic way.  I felt he was the brother I should have had.  We even met twice, and he was just awesome, the sort of person you wanted to protect.  I 'accompanied' him all the way to his untimely death over twenty years ago, and came close to a nervous breakdown.  It broke my heart.

The local media pay lip service to the day every year, and lately, it's all been about heterosexuals being at risk.  Which they are, of course.  But they only use that as a tag line to discuss the fact that it's the gay and bisexual people who carry it into the 'normal' population.  

Well, have been around long enough to say that I really don't know what 'normal' is.  Some people, in fact a lot of people, are capable of falling in love or attracted to all sorts of other people, same sex, opposite sex, other races, creeds, it doesn't matter.  It's just a question of chemistry.  

So it bothers me that the 'journamalists' continue to use their little labels, and catergorising people into boxes that make it comfortable for them, but really aren't applicable to reality.  

I can't even count how many times I'd be out on a Saturday night in my salad days, and looking for Mr. Goodbar, and thinking I'd found 'HIM'...   only to go downtown on Sunday morning and seeing Mr. G. out on the main drag with wifie and kiddies in tow, and would get this sinking feeling and become very angry and feel used.  

Barstards never wore a wedding ring, of course..  And the world thought they were 'normal'.  I had another visit from a young man who came as a proxy visitor from my best friend, and was bisexual, and trying to decide who to marry, his gay partner, or his girlfriend, and it was like being on Mars, talking to him.  He was genuinely conflicted, and loved them both.  Shortl after his visit, he married his girlfriend, and a few weeks later, developed AIDS.  He died two weeks after the diagnosis.  It was, as one says, a shock to the system.

And it has never changed.  My last attempt at finding 'happiness' wasn't all that long ago.  And whaddaya know...  after a very nice two hours, I learned he was married, his wife had a drinking problem, he was unhappy in his marriage, he'd enjoyed his afternoon with me.  And wanted to continue seeing me.  

I was outraged.  And gently sent him to the place 'where the pepper grows', as we say.  He was nice and all, but wow, just wow.

I've since given up.  So much of the problem lies in hypocrisy.  But I've never been a player when it came to that.

Boeing Takes the Low Road..

Refusing to give their gay married employees equal pension rights.  

Stephen Colbert called them out on it, as only he can do.  And explains why it will cause a 'gay job explosion'.  He cracks me up sometimes.  You can see his 'twisted' reasoning here.

Well, none of these will win the Bulwer Lytton contest...

Which is, of course a real hoot.   For those who haven't heard of it, the university of Ca in San Jose holds said contest yearly, and is named after the author who supposedly wrote the worst opening sentence of a novel....  evah. 

Anyone can enter.  All you need do is write one sentence, preferably long, as the first one for a novel.  I found the idea so much fun, I entered it.  Once.  And got a lovely runner-up certificate which confirmed that my pen 'was less mighty than (my) sword.'  It's something I cherish, because I worked very hard indeed to formulate a ghastly one.  I hadn't thought about it in years, but the contest is still going strong, and you can see the 2012 winners here.  http://www.bulwer-lytton.com/2012win.html

This morning, I ran across the photo below, and it reminded me all over again about Bulwer Lytton.  Except, as hilarious as the quotes are, they'd never make the cut.  Hat tip to Erik at Roids n Rants.

 

Wow... Christmas cards as guilt trips. I always thought that was solely my mother's specialty

Today was one of 'those' days...  

It wasn't the weather, the sun broke through the ubiquitous fog fields by ten a.m... untypical for November....

It was when I checked the mailbox.  Peter has been in a home and this will be his third Christmas there.  I have never received a card from them, so imagine my surprise that the first and probably only one I will get was from them.

The text was all about thanking the relatives of the 'inmates' for their 'support', and how they spend all year doing their utmost to make everyone's loved ones comfortable.

With my name misspelled as greeting, and a scrawl at the end of it from 'the team'.  In pencil...   who does that, I ask you?  In-Fucking-credible.  

Because, you see, I was only able to make a visit this year once in March.  So much support.  Oh, I do call, and he never has much to say, because he doesn't remember from one moment to the next, but still...  

I just never have the money to make the round trip these days, yet felt incredibly guilty.  I also suppose it's a way to solicit donations to the place and staff during the 'giving' time of year.

Still...  I found it offensive.  Where was that card when I dragged myself down there weekly for over a year and a half, huh?

And yeah, it doesn't take much to ruin my day.  

Am still trying to fix my pc, and got another shocker.  Found a program which might...  just might... fix it at a price I could afford... and when I tried to buy it, the machine told me my credit card number 'wasn't real'.  Reallah.  

So am stuck with microshit that makes my notebook crash if I play a youtube clip more than ten minutes long, and doesn't let my game run much more than that either.  And this since the last Vista update, and have the sneaking suspicion it was in their so-called service pack, but I can't find the damned thing to eliminate it.  And run every thinkable programme to look for defects and viruses and malware you can think of, but nah, they say my notebook is 'healthy'.  Uh-huh.

Sometimes I wish I'd majored in computer programming.  And that people were a little more subtle about guilt-tripping people when they don't know what the background really is.  

Tis the season, so depressing, fa-la-la-la-la....

The only thing that was upbeat was Da ven's soap.  It got interesting and has two story lines going simultaneously that are half-way suspenseful.  And that's pitiful, if it is all that is good...   

Oh yes...  the Communist party missed beating the Christian Conservatives by 14 votes.  That is astounding, for sure.

(They finished counting the absentee ballots..  big difference, am gob-smacked.)

  

Elections have consequences....

Ohly 53 percent of the city voted yesterday.  This is shameful, and those who didn't have no reason to be the ones who complain the loudest when policies are introduced that the populace won't like  

As a result of the past year's corruption hearings, the public is really fed up with the social democrats, and the christian conservatives, who normally get the lion's share of the vote.  

So my hunch yesterday was correct...  a city government will only be possible via a coalition.  The local rag had the hand wringing boxer short twisting headline 'the city has become ungovernable.'  

Hogwash.  They'll come to terms and someone will be willing to coalesce but it's sure gonna be a weird bunch. The Christian Dems  still hold the lion's share, but it's way below having the majority to govern alone.  as their nefarious dealings got lots of coverage during the corruption hearings. 

Not surprisingly the Communist party came in second.  I assume that the socialists left their candidates to vote red.  This is not so bad as it might seem, they are hardly radical and do a lot of good, as I know well.  Of the two radical right wing parties, one got seven mandates, and the most obnoxious of the two did not get a mandate.

Below a breakdown of which party has how many people in the city government.  From the  'Kleine Zeitung'. Oh yes, and the pirate party got one.   

  

15.32% (-4,3)

 SPÖ

7

  

33.48% (-4.9)

 ÖVP

17

  

13.93% (+3,1)

 FPÖ

7

  

11.99% (-2,6)

 GRÜNE

6

  

20.08% (+8,9)

 KPÖ

10

  

1.35% (-2,9)

 BZÖ

0

  

Voting Day

Whelp...  trundled off to the polls this morning to do my civic duty. By this time, there were some placards fairly thoroughly vandalised, and the ones that weren't were behind class at the bus stop shelters.

My polling station is in a pre-school part of the local grammar school not far from my house.  Although it was after nine a.m., as you can see...  the coast was clear.  They have 4 stations at that school for the surrounding neighborhood.  

  

I was surprised to find a record eight parties on the list...  including the pirate party.  I'd read and heard about them being in Germany, but was surprised to find they'd reached us.  It originated in Sweden, and is seemingly spreading.  It is an offshoot of the Occupy Movement, and they are serious enough...  despite the absurd name.  Whatever, it was done in minutes, and will hear around six p.m. what the results are.  Since no one will most likely get a clear majority, the jockeying for forming coalitions will begin. Should be interesting.  

It's now noon, and the sun finally burned off the blasted fog.

Farce

Peter used to be very involved in theatrical circles. Indeed, his first experiences led to his first crush on an actor, whom he more or less stalked, when he was a young man, and the actor was a young man, and Peter saw to it that push came to shove one evening after a performance and stalking him at the stage door.  The rest was history of a very important level.  They were 'in-love'.  It was extraordinary.

The actor's name was Luis, and he was unbelievably handsome.  So was Peter.  (I've seen the pictchas...)  

It was extraordinary because it was against a whole number of laws on the books which weren't erased until the early 1980's.  So it was ))))dangerous(((.  Of course that made it all the more exciting, and feeling 'noble' in thwarting all conventions and rules and 'suffering' for a cause...  which it was, but only in some cases.

Luis had a grandma from Bohemia (which is a part of the czech republic, not the one of artists in one's mind), who loved seeing the two of them together, cooked for them in Vienna, and was a mother hen to them.

It seems that Luis was going places in the theater world, and I assume there were jealous fits, and things of that sort, but it ended tragically.  Luis became ill and died of a lung embolism in the height of the bloom of his youth.  

That was always hard to live with.  The dead are always perfect, and can't make mistakes.  To paraphrase Harvey Weinstein....   

Peter had made many connections in the theater world, and went on to be 'ahem' amanuensis, whatever THAT is... to many people who were famous in theatrical circles in our part of the world.  

Most of them are dead now, but were household names in days of television and when the theater was really alive and abuzz with extraordinary talent...  some of them, like Oscar Werner, even did the cross-over to Hollywood.  

For actors there are four steps to the holy grail of reaching the apex of fame.  Or there were, back then.  You could start with the prestigious Schauspielhaus in Zurich, go on to either the Thalia in Hamburg, or to Berlin, but the crowning achievement was the Burgtheater in Vienna.  And if you were on the ensemble there...  well, you were famous forever.  

Peter worked for one of the directors of the Thalia theater in Hamburg, a man who is synonymous with hilarity in german-speaking theater and films.  He was extraordinary.  

And had gathered a generation of the most exemplary people of the trade around him at that time, and was a most accomplished director, producing astonishingly good theater for more than a decade.

So Peter was a part of that, and used to be able to tell the most ribald, hilarious stories about that insular world you would ever wish for.  I used to laugh till my sides ached. Back stage pranks, rivaliries, all the things that still fill movies about movies or theater to this day.  And Peter could relate them till you would hold your sides laughing.  

He taught me a lot about theater.  And rules of what works and what doesn't and so on.  Turns out he didn't want me to have any success...  He only wanted me for himself.  And sabotaged me in one of the most cruel ways I could have imagined.  Volunteering to send my ms to what was to my mind the most promising producer in the country, but hiding the reply and destroying the answer letter which I only discovered when clearing out the appartment a decade and a half later.  I'd wanted to go to Vienna and try my luck, not be saddled with a grave of a house.  

So I can always wonder:  what did the letter SAY?  He'd never tell me....

Not that it matters much any more.  The play is on-line on the former site I have under the heading Thanksgiving, and no one has given as much as a twinge regarding it.  But at least I know I tried.

Whatever...  Peter taught me a lot about the mechanics of plays and so on and the most difficult form is farce.  It has to be 'real' to the characters engaging in it, there has to be lots of doors on set, and chaos, and general insanity onstage, and it has to look and feel genuine.  

Peter dragged me out to Vienna one evening to the Burg Theater, the epitome of greatness.  I'd been working, grumpy, and zooming off 250 km wasn't really what I'd been wanting.  But off we did go, and we saw a farce.  Feydeau's 'A Flea In Her Ear'.  Too complicated to describe.  But the main actor had to do a twin role, one of them drunk, the other sober, and by the end of it, he had me in tears...  of laughter.  

(The actor in question, Robert Meyer, played Frosch (Frog) in 'Die Fledermaus' later in the Volksoper in Vienna.  My cousins were in stitches, even tho they don't speak German.  He just received a national award from the government for being THAT good....)

The only other farce I've seen which riveted me was 'What The Butler Saw'.  Had nothing to do with butlers or mansions, it took place in an insane asylum.  I saw it in another theater in Vienna with a stellar cast and a british director, and it was brilliant.

The author, Joe Orton was more than irreverent for his time, the late sixties.  I saw it in the Eighties, and boy....  the seat bumpers were out in full force.  That is when people who are outraged decide to leave and you hear the seats bump up.  

Orton only left three plays, but the humour was vicious, anti-establishment, anti-authority, and excruciatingly funny.  And he questioned every pompous authority with a daringness that was courageous for its' time.  Nothing was sacred.

To demonstrate how face can be, have chosen a segment where everything goes off the rails in 'What the Butler Saw', and all the doors get used, and it's a madhouse.  Because it takes place in a madhouse.  I saw it the second time my Dad arrived to visit and he was jet-lagged, so saw him off to get some sleep in our suite...  yeah, a suite..  and went to the The-ay-ter, something I'd never have done otherwise, but had so wanted to see a good production of it.

When it opens, you can watch the entire thing...  if it takes your fancy. Or call it up on YouTube.  But I still think it's the best farce ever.  'Murkins would probably prefer Boing Boing...

If you listen closely...  for the late Sixties, there is so much anger in the subtext, and disrespect for the system, and how I wish there were voices like that today.  

Even the night I went...   'polite society' were walking out in the first ten minutes, and you heard the 'seats bumping up'.  So much for the Establishment.

This stuff is REALLY difficult to do, believe me.  And oh yes, Orton was murdered by his lover, who hammered his head in and then killed himself.  Sad world.

PC blues

I would love to know what my pc is doing these days...  it crashes every time I go to my favourite pastime, my game.  Which drives me to distraction.  

I 'suppose' it has something to do with 'runtime', and have looked into fixes, but the ones which 'promise' me results cost sixty Euros, and there is no guarantee that what they are proposing is actually going to fix what is wrong.  

Besides which, I don't HAVE that extra for the firlefanz of playing a game.  

Tja, sad.

Hope everyone had a super turkey and all the trimmings and weren't annoyed by relatives whose political views were opposite theirs.    

I had a cut-rate turky cut-let, called it Thanksgiving, and let the rest just go.

Today is blood sausage and sauerkraut.  You don't wanna know, but it IS good....

I think I saw a glimmer of greatness today....

Clips of President Obama going back to Staten Island. 

It amazes me that so little press coverage has been devoted to what that storm really did to people.  Maybe not enough people drowned, is my cynical thought.  But the damage!

New York and New Jersey got drowned in the sea of media masturbation over the elections, and the people in the affected areas got shafted.  That's my opinion.  They got a week's worth attention.

I keep wondering how the family of a long-ago co-student and friend of mine from Oyster Bay on Long Island might be faring, in that very beautiful home they had.   I lost contact decades ago, but remember...  and worry. 

They were warm, loud, Italian, New YAWK, and so funny I ended up getting hiccups for a record 72 hours.  I miss that sort of laughter.  

Whatever...  I ton't think he wen't back for a photo op.  I think he went back to find out how best to help.  It wasn't so high profile in the media. 

Time will tell, but with all the man has on his plate...  I thought it admirable.

an addendum on voting, and ammendments and national service

Changes in rules or constitutional addenda are always voted on separately here.  There are two sorts, and one of them is coming up soon...  whether mandatory national service should be abolished or not.  Either in the army or civil service.

They really are going hammer and tongs over the issue, but I know how I will go on that one.  Privatizing the military in making it voluntary hasn't worked in the US.

You end up with one percent sacrificing, the rest not feeling any obligation to the country, and a total disconnect.  I don't think that would be good.  People should feel and serve in some capacity.  I would have gladly done so, but was already too old when I finally got my papers.

And would have been proud to do so.

Automatically not doing so would only be a disconnect.

Local elections

A week from tomorrow, we have elections.  Wow.   It's the municipal one, where we vote for who rules our fair city, and it is a bastion of christian conservative enclaves.   oooooo......  with pockets of opposition, there are five parties involved.

A municipal campaign lasts about six weeks, and is 'fought' out in newspapers, and via placards and posters.   Mostly.  You don't really hear much, and the slogans on the posters are 'empty promises'.  No one gets too excited about them. 

And after all the spectacle of the past two years of watching the US ones...   I feel cheated.  No robo calls.  No polling calls.  No one ever calls me, and if I get an IFES questionnaire call once every six months asking about my buying preferences, or whether I feel safe in my neighbourhood, it's actually a welcome diversion in a rather dull day.

So here is how we do it:  you don't have to register.  You ARE registered as soon as you are of voting age, or become a citizen.  I have never seen the inside of a voter registration office, but they know me.  I can move, I can move to another state, but they always know where I am.  And that is because, if you move, you have to go to the neighboorhood office of the part of the city you live in and register your residence.  Which gets passed on to the election board, which updates you on the voting rolls.  Easy.

If you want to, you CAN register with a party affiliation of your choice, but I've never done so.  For that, you have to get directly involved and do party work, and then you are a known affiliate of that party.  I've always preferred to remain independent, and take my voting right seriously, weigh all the sides, and vote as I think is right.

Some people would think it is creepy to register your residence, but on the other hand, some criminals get caught that way.  Or used to be...

Fourteen days ago I received my notice in the mail.  It was just a slip of paper telling me when the election was, where to go to vote, and what the opening times were.  This you present when you go to the polling place assignated.

In the city, such as mine, they are in public schools, and where I go, there are four stations, so you go to the one on the slip of paper.  It's simple.

Once there, you might have to wait for a couple of minutes if there is much interest in the vote.  There might be five people ahead of you.

But mostly not.  There is a table with stern looking poll officials from all the parties presiding over the procedure with lists of the people who will be coming in. 

You present your slip of paper and your passport or national identity card as proof you are who you say you are.  And I know that will throw some people off balance when I say that.  But it was never unreasonable to ask for one, having one was always a fact of life and a necessity, because, you see, most of the EU countries are small, geographically and until the EU became the EU, those documents were necessary to go from one place to another. 

For instance, you wanted to go to that super fish restaurant of an evening in Maribor, Slovenia, then Yugoslavia, only an hour's drive away?  Well, you had to have ID to cross the border, for instance.

Therefore, having the one or the other used to be a necessity, and had absolutely nothing to do with the voting process, but was just a check on proving you were the person on the list.  We've never had a problem with it, because the documents were always a necessary evil.

Whatever, you show them the document, you get your ballot, and they are fairly clear cut and easy, because it used to be, you voted for a party and they delegated your votes and assigned who got positions.  Meanwhile, you directly vote for whoever you want on the city council, for instance, can split your ticket however you want, and can write in candidates if you so please.

So it's not rocket science, and done in a minute or so.

And you seal it in an envelope, dump it in a box, and the commission is responsible for the counting.  Also simple.

The national turnout used to be really high...   up to 80%.  It hasn't been that in a long while.  People got cynical.

I used to go ballistic when US ambassadors would inject themselves into the discussions and said they would 'teach us about democracy'.  Reallah...  really?

The polls close around four pm.  By six, seven at the latest, results are known, but the country is small.

There was one nugget on the news last week during the long discussion on msnbc about voter supression regarding someone having been in Vienna, and got laughed at for propagating the US system of voting.  And it was a conference where they decided that if the US sends people to oversee fair voting in third world countries, they would send delegations to oversee elections in the US, because things weren't kosher.  The commission members got kicked out of five states.  Says a lot.  And they had no reason to be insulted...  they insult us all the time...  That was in a former election, but should have been done in this one.

The US has national data bases for every damned thing you can think of.  You would THINK that they would register all eligible citizens in that, and there wouldn't be the individual state nightmares that are the result of bigotry and resentment, that the impediments are incredible in the eyes of the world, but they do muddle on, don't they.  Broken system.

And as Peter always says...  'that's the different'.