Rigamarole

Huh   I just wanted to call my relatives shortly to find out if they were ok, and....  whaddaya know...  my connection was 'temporarily' cut off.  This is 'interesting', in that I had gone to the bank this morning, had paid up the money I had owed the company, which was actually a nominal sum, had faxed the receipts to the office, and called them to verify....

Only to learn that sending the receipts with a bank stamp on them hadn't been enough, and I should have gone back to get a special confirmation to have the bank send them.  (shaking head here).

As today was world bank day, and I had an asthma attack getting there and back, there was no way I was gonna go back and do it all over again.

Na ja, it will be rectified within a day or so.  And I can only wonder whether all is well out on the coast.  So much for good intentions.

They drive me crazy.





 

Hard Times....

While my provider access was off, I found that my notebook has little in the way of amusing myself, almost no programs, or things that I like to do with a pc.

But I did find a bunch of audio files and a cribbage game.  I had downloaded some audio e-books, as my increasing and developing cataract makes reading troublesome of late.  And since my old files of all of  Dickens' works had been locked in my old pc without a chance of recovery, had been downloading audio versions on slow news days. 

So I went back to one in the hiatus, the only one that I had hated when I first read it, and had never gone back to.  His novel Hard Times.    I had a professor who used to hammer one fact into us.  There are some things that should be read later in life, in order to be really appreciated, and that novel seems to be the proof of his theory. 

So I turned it on in the background and honed my cribbage skills on the surface while listening.  And soon became engrossed in that short but brittle novel. It is divided into two parts---  'Sowing' and 'Reaping'. 

I only remembered it being dark and almost suffocating, and very depressing.  Imagine my surprise at having to laugh out loud over some of it.  And being amazed at some of the themes in the first part which would be considered daring even today. 

I'm only a bit more than half-way through listening, but can say it is a masterful depiction of corporation towns and how they tick.  And in actuality, it's lost nothing in the way of being timely. 

It takes place in a fictitious town called 'Coketown'.  Which makes me grin every time I hear it.  Change it to 'Kochtown', and it's what some global vultures would love to have the world look like.

The story is going to end in tragedy, that much I can see already.  But it is the descriptions of Coketown that blew me away.  I grew up there. 

I found the books at this site you can browse through it here.  Type in Hard Times in the search window, and download the first chapter of book two, and take a listen.  The descriptions are every factory town anyone ever experienced.  Disconcerting, how many things never change.

The site has hundreds of classics for free.  Seemingly, there is a site where volunteers record their readings of chapters and register them, and so they get all the book parts together, and you can download and listen to them.

It's sort of a place for the reading impaired, and you can catch up on things you always thought you should have read, but never got around to.

The only drawback is that some of the books get read by alternate people, and some are better than others.  I especially enjoy it when someone from England is doing the reading, because it 'fits'.  Some of them make the prose sing. It sort of grates when you go from one such chapter, and the next is from someone in Carolina.  Or Minnesota.  Although some of those are exceptions to the rule.  I suppose it is a matter of taste, but the Brits have more talent when it comes to Dickens, and that is hardly surprising.  They are the ones who make me laugh outright.  Or give me a spine tingle.

Hard Times was always near the bottom of my list of Dickens' novels, but after hearing it...  well it has gone up several notches in my estimation.  Just for the descriptions of Coketown.

And apropos nothing, and referring to the post below...  I spoke with Peter Sunday night, and well, he doesn't remember what happened last week, let alone what probably happened that morning, but can still carry a conversation, somewhat.  And he can still laugh, and how I miss that.  I was telling him about John Sununu, and he lost it.  Just the name.  Of course, I was being satirical in describing that racist lout. but the name alone set him off.  Will wonders never cease, hey.

Journamalism Trick or Treat!

I have never, ever liked the newspaper of the town I grew up in, which happens to be the only daily statewide newspaper in the state I grew up in.  Partisan to a fault.  Emphasis on fault.

After a two day hiatus of not having access to my provider...  again...  I was anxious to see what damage the hurricane did to the part of the country I grew up in, and got a comprehensive overview via msnbc, which went a bit beyond your 'intrepid journamilists standing outside in dangerous weather segments' which would lead one to believe it might be actually sensible to have people outdoors during catastrophic weather looking like they were in eminent danger of losing life and limb for the edification of the viewers. 

Mercifully, there weren't as many of them this time around as I remembered, as being an election year, it was all about how the candidates were showing their true colors in a time of crisis. 

Obama was being truly presidential, and Romney was packing up canned goods which weren't wanted by the Red Cross, as they were asking for money donations. 

Now if anyone were up to raising huuuuge sums of money, one would think it would be the latter, but he seemed to be more interested in shipping baked beans to Massachusetts...  or something of the sort.

Much was made of the governor of New Jersey who praised the president, just a week after maintaining he was so blind he was groping along without knowing where he was...  only to find that the president was actually on top of things and the governor was stupified and grateful that said president actually was of immense help.  Whaddaya know.

There were helpful maps on the tee-vee showing where power was out throughout the northeast, and to my consternation, one of the yellow dots was for the city I grew up in, and huge yellow areas for the one where my dearest relatives live. 

Disconcerting.  As my father, the Venerable, had moved to a riverfront apartment last year  to a house that had an elevator to celebrate his 97th birthday, his only acknowledgement to the fact that his knees weren't taking kindly to stairs, I was irked that the tee-vee hadn't provided blue dots to show where all the flooding was, and was somewhat worried as to whether the Merrimack hadn't decided to do a once-in-a-century rebellion and overflow it's banks and make a dash uphill to conquer Elm Street, which is the main street in that venerable city. 

Have had glimpses of its' mills over the past months every time John Sununu decides to spout racist theories in statements to the national press and seems to love standing where he has the defunct factories in the background.  And a more desolate picture I can't imagine.... having grown up in the middle of all that brick and mortar.  But to each his own.

So, as comprehensive as the reporting was, I had questions, and knew that the only recourse to finding out more about conditions locally was to call up the local rag on the internet to find out more about what was going on.

I used to sell that crap out on the street as a mere child of ten.  For all the bunk about having been a paper boy and risen to great heights later in life some kazillionaires love to relate as having been formative in their youth, can only say it was a miserable way to get a few cents and hardly educational, more 'edumacational', as you learned fast about people and their spleen.

It had undue influence nationwide for a time in the 70's, having covered up and more or less helped out in the 'dirty tricks' dept. of the Nixon campaign, and was a bastion of Rethug thinking.  And branded all the students at the state university as commie pinko fags.  In my case, they only got the last one right.

I almost never go to see what garbage they are spouting, unless there is something very specific I wish to learn.

Much to my surprise, today's header was 'Trick or Treating is On'.

From which I can assume that Da Ven is sitting high and toasty dry in his riverfront appartment, and all is well in 'da kingdom'. 

I gleaned very little news about what was happening in the rest of the state, esp. the coastal area, and one would believe that that five mile stretch of beachfront was thriving.  Or something, which the msnbc maps belied. 

To say it was less than informative would be understating the obvious.

Happy Hallo-veeen! 

Humbug.  Journamalism can be very irksome.
 

Sandy and Rachel Maddow's modest proposal

Which is what I've been whining about for years now.  But oh yeah...  she lived in England on a scholarship to Oxford, I think it was. 

Our power lines are underground.  We haven't had massive power outages since I can't remember when.  And then they were local, or because lightning hit a power plant locally, and I 'think' the last time it happened...  we were down for almost an hour. 

I have asked this question repeatedly, and one of the more interesting answers I received was:  'well, our town discussed it, but a lot of people didn't want the lines running underneath their property.' 

This was one of the most amazing rationales for not doing what is obviously sensible and so goes back to some sort of selfishness and greed, it left me spitless. 

So...  you get increasingly frequent freak storms, and people lose their electricity for over a week at a time, and what happens?  They put up the lines above ground again thinking that some tree won't fall on them in a storm. 

 The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. 

I was relieved to find that I'm not the crazy one.  Rachel seems to agree with me.  You can find it here beginning at about the five minute mark. 

But then again...  some people think she's crazy.  Time will tell, but the practice here has shown she is right.

Just a short pause...

Update:  it seems my telephone call to the provider was more successful than I thought.  Am back on-line, and can take care of all the crap on Nov. 2.  Gawwd.

My internet connection got capped yesterday.  Long story, it had to do with my bank account not having the funds to cover the automatic withdrawal which came at the end of the month.  Since I couldn't cover the outstanding amount within the date they set...  well, the provider capped my connection.

It should be taken care of and reopened after November 1st, which is a 'horriday'. 

Am really trying to have service back by election night.

In the meanwhile, found an interesting series of feature-length films based on the Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot novels.  They seemgly are in their 11th season in England, but as far as I know, have never run on the tee-vee here.    You can find them on the YouTube by typing Poirot in the search mask.

They are fairly true to the novels, and quite enjoyable. 

At any rate I hope to be on-line by election nite. 

My former colleague was nice enough to let me do this on-line. 

Cute

Debates and the quote of last week

This about sums up yesterday's debate:

 

Best quote of last week:

“When I hear you talking about taking a swing and taking punches, why do I get the feeling that you’ve never actually taken a punch? Or thrown a punch? I didn’t have that luxury in the part of Boston that I grew up in. But in your rich, suburban Bost  on life, with your father filling a $100 million trust fund for you, I don’t know, I just get the feeling that things were kind of different for you.
Now, I know you’ve got a lot — a lot to be pissed off at these days, starting with the name Taggart, which you got every right to be wicked pissed off at for every day for the 42 years of your life. So, let me try to help you deal with all this aggression you’re feeling right now.
You’re mad at President Obama for calling your father a liar? Well, let’s get something straight, he didn’t call your father a liar, I did. The president just said that what your father said isn’t true. I’ve been saying all year that your father is a liar, I’ve repeatedly said that your father lies and is trying to lie his way into the White House.
You want to take a swing at someone for calling your old man a liar? Take a swing at me. Come on, come on. And don’t worry, there won’t be any Secret Service involved. Just us. And I’ll make it easy for you, I’ll come to you. Anytime, anywhere.”
Lawrence O’Donnell on MSNBC challenging Tagg Romney to take a swing at him after the little Mittster said he wanted to punch the President of the United States during the debate.

You can watch his meltdown here..  The fun begins at about the 8:10 mark.  The rant preceding it is how none of the Romneymen ever served in the service and why.  Also interesting.

 

The Presidential Debate, Mitt's Condesenion and Attitoode And The UTTER Disrespect For An Office

One thing YouTube isn't good at is fast uploading of debates, so I only got to see the MSNBC take on the one last night.  Their outtakes...

In those, Romney is a bully.  And one of the most condescending assholes I have ever had the misfortune to see in a presidential debate.

I'm still waiting for him to use the word 'BOY...'  as in, 'You don't know whatcha taklin' about..... BOY...'

Yes, am talkin' racism here, because there is NOTHING the other side has done these past four years but play to the bigots and the assholes who can't stand the fact that a partly-afro-american is a president, and boy howdy, they got the tee shirts to prove it.  'Put the White Back in the White House.'  Class act.

Frankly, I don't know how the man stands the heat.  It only increases my admiration for him.  And yeah, he showed his disdain for Romney and is ilk...  But the main thing is...  Romney forgets who he is SPEAKING to.  Not an opponent.  The man is the President.

Which MEANS, he embodies an office, and deserves respect.  And you can address things you think are wrong with policies, but you respect the man and the office.

Well, I haven't seen any of that.  On the contrary.  I hate quoting 'Tweety' Chris Matthews, but he's been harping on this for months, as has Al Sharpton, and both are right.  They are so racist it leaves you spitless. 

'Oh he wasn't BORN here, so he's not one of 'us'.'   Whoever 'we' are.  Oh, he's not 'american'.  Uh-huh.  And every day since the man took office, there are the daggers and needles aimed at the man to make him somehow 'illegitimate'...    because they don't LIKE him, because he's partially Black.

The one out-take that really hit me yesterday was how Barack fixed Romney in the eye after his attempt to make a conspiracy theory on Libya and fucked him over.   And finally, finally said the words, 'You are disrespectful'.  And 'I am the President, and the Commander in Chief, and I don't lie.'

Or something like that, I didn't write it down.   

Romney lies out of habit, but his agenda is really toxic. 

He's your horrible racist boss who makes jokes about minorities, and you get forced to laugh and go along with it because you are dependent on him for you job. 

That fucker is evil. 

You know what absolutely flummoxes me in this whole thing?  The condescension, the unbelievable 'superiority' that some people think they have. 

Vote Romney.  if you would like a re-play of the French Revolution in about 20 years.  And oh yeah, Mittens has stakes in Bain, and whaddaya know, they are closing a plant in Iowa to ship it to China, because they only get paid 85 cents an hour, and he'll make another cool million he can put in the Cayman Islands or his Swiss Bank Account. 

How humiliating is it to work for a company for 20 years or so and then be told the plant is being sold, although it is successful, and YOU have to train a Chinese person how you do your job? 

That is so out of the norm, it's amazing.  How crass is that?  Happening in Iowa..

Romney will turn you around all right. 

Go to the library and read up on serfs, because that is what will happen.  And ladies?  Back to barefoot, pregnant and serving your MAN. 

These people make my head hurt.

 

This is must-listening, and so rude, and so wrong.

Talk about twisting FACTS...  about BengazhiF....  and how the fuckin' rethugs CUT the budget to protect embassy and consulate employees.    And that FUCKER uses his service and his family's to justify an unjustifiable position.  Gawwd I hate Rethugs.  Andrea Mitchell went there.  And you can see it here.

Over the course of a few years I had to deal with people in the US consulate in Vienna.  Which was at first easily accessible, but got moved and they made a bunker a ways away from there.

Going to the first one was sort of a 'trip'.  As in, you thought you were entering a land of the unreal.  Marines?  Allll over the place.  I'd always read that Vienna was sort of a center of agitation in the cold war and involved spies, and counter-spies, and at the time, I found that sexy.....  cool.

For some reason, Peter was with me, he'd met me there, so I guess it was a time he never left me out of his sight.  I had to get my  passport renewed.

Man, the beurocratic things that you had to do back then....

And this Marine let me go by to some beuraucrat's office, and he didn't have ID.  And got an ulitmatum:  you either leave, or you wait down here over THERE.  

We're talking about a peaceful country here, before people regularly blew things up in our part of the world.

And that Marine...  was very Big......

My second encounter was when I gave up my citizenship in order to get my Austrian one, which was a reaquirement.  Because I wasn't AHNULD, or some soccer guy they bought off, so I had to choose...  one way or the other.

And I did.

It was interesting....  Iranians and Iraquis wanting to get in, and I wanted out. 

By that time it was in the new place, and it was a bunker and many years before 9/11.  And I thought it really, REALLY over the top. 

Tja, it's what comes from trying to see the good in people.


So they cut their budget by over 318 million dollars...  all those scary Marines not in the consulates, but at the embassies.


Errm....  who to blame?  Oh yeah, the BLACK GUY....  because, y'know, you can get tee shirts now, the hiding is over.  'Put the WHITE Back in the White House.' 

All the dog whistle stuff?  Is over.  All the 'he wasn't born here stuff?  Ditto. 

I can't wrap my mind around all the blatant things that went down these last four years.  For me... when I hear Obama speak, I hear one of my grandfathers' voices, folksy, smooth, and comforting.

I hear fuckin' Romney, and I hear dispassionate coldness that can fuck you into the middle of the next decade and rip your heart out.

So is that all they got?   Hell, they'd rape you blind and make you want to thank you for it. 

Disgusting.



 

Seemingly it's only ok to vote if you are white

Voter supression is alive and well.  And living here.

Disgusting.

That's the Different... as Peter always says....

Got an e-mail from Da Ven, aka my father.  Basically said, 'Hey, just saw that some guy from your country parachuted from nearly outer space.  I wonder how that must have felt.'  Read:  kinda cool.

He hadn't seen the entry below.  Seems to have trouble accessing this, so there ya go....

Was that so difficult?  My Dad is an internationally minded guy.  And Romney gives him heartburn.  So to speak.

Just another beginning of the week, hey....

Parachuting from the stratosphere

Salzburg's Felix Baumgartner finally took a helium balloon to the edge of the stratosphere in a capsule, where the outside temp was -65 degrees, and parachuted down, breaking records for the highest balloon flight ever, and breaking the speed of sound on his way back down. 

This project in idiocy was sponsored by the local firm Red Bull, which dabbles in running formula 1 car races world-wide, produces drinks to further have children overdose world-wide on sugar, and purportedly this project in narcissism cost 50 million euros.  Some opined that the money would have been better spent on those who are starving in the world.  Those were in the comments of the news report on yahoo this morning, where you can see a small video of the 'event'.  And you just KNOW that the sponsor is going to double the out-lay in broadcast rights alone.

You can find that here.  I was watching a bit of it on live stream last evening, but the connection was 'scheisse', as we would say, and frankly, it creeped me out, and when they reported that the heating element in his visor wasn't working correctly, I thought, 'I don't wanna watch you freeze your face off...  as in literally.  So just jump, I'm going to bed.'

What did interest me this morning, after reading that the attempt was successful was seeing what the US news had to say about it.  I was surprised, but then again..  I wasn't.  In the end, yeah, Americans were a lot better because...  they rode the space station to explore science.  So did local scientist Franz Viehboeck.  And many of the measuring instruments on board all those missions were developed and manucactured by the Technical University of...  Graz.  But hey, the Murkins are always the biggest, the best, and ---never give anyone any credit for anything. 

Don't misunderstand, I thought ist was a useless and dumb stunt.  The tone of the reporting just irked me.  Because you know...  if it had been an American, well boy howdy, wouldn't there have been a huge chest-thumping cheer of jingoism about 'we're number one'.  Uh-huh...  Yeah, it's much ado about nothing.  And like that terrible energy drink, it leaves a bad aftertaste. The Nightly News report is here.

 

New in Soapland....

Days of Our Lives decided to be 'daring'. 

Nah, it's not the Will and Sonny gay thing.  They've been handling that story line a if it were pure poison.

No.  It's having an 85 year old actress and center of a huge raucous family seemingly have the first symptoms of Alzheimers disease.

Soaps really DO address issues that aren't brought up and usually can't be handled on the tee-vee machine unless they can develop it over months, so am curious as to how they are going to handle the topic.

I don't recall this topic being addressed before on a Soap.

I 'think' it was a week ago when she mixed up the names of her sons the first time and I thought...  'uh-oh, they're gonna send Gramma Brady to La-la land.'

Contrary to the usual mode, they accelerated the story line, and have the poor woman losing what is left of her mind.

Now, I think people watch these things for some sort of comfort, because the lives they show are more miserable than theirs.  But I am curious as to how they will deal with the issue and make it valuable to people watching who have similar cares and sorrow, and make concrete suggestions as to how to handle it all. 

That would be the good thing.  Soaps can be sociologically beneficial. 

As far as I can tell, The Bold and the Beautiful  is back to Stefanie having a cancer relapse, but that piece of garbage is wash rinse repeat ad nauseum. 

But in they end, they serve a purpose.

Class act

I'm not surprised.  Empty suit.  And disgusting. 

Let's remember, Mitt was all for viet nam and the war... as long as everyone else went to fight it.

In the end, I have some reservations about Obama as regards his foreign policy.  But he is consistent and doesn't lie. 

Mitt, on the otherhand....  well as Liz Winstead said, he must be nearly paralysed by trying to talk out of both sides of his mouf.

But  Romney using the military for points?  Wow.  How low can you sink.

How embarrassing is it if you are running for president, and relate over and over how you met someone who was killed in Libya, and that person's family asks you to cease and desist, because...   you ...    oh, this story really sucks. 

Listen to the end.  Here.

 

If this doesen't make tears come... consult a cardiologist because something might be missing....

I heard this yesterday on the radio, a good half hour of reportage.

I haven't seen wide reports in the US, but Lawrence O'Donnell got it right.  Report is here.

The Day I Bought a Bra

Was just mind-surfing.  About things we did as children to earn that ticket to a movie we just HAD to see, because it would be the non-plus ultra experience of our young lives...

And remembered something funny indeed.  I ran errands for an eccentric old lady on the block.  (Shades of Jane, see the former site for infos on her.)

Mostly it involved going to a diner and getting her lunch, or silly stuff, but it was a movie ticket in return as far a money went.  I lurrved me the Arrow Diner, and the slang talk, and the REAL slice of life while I was waiting for my order. 

They later moved to the north part of the main drag, and I remember one drunken night with a person who wanted to suddenly wax the linoleum walls in there.  It was difficult to dissuade her....

Well...  One day, this lady had a special shopping list.  I was supposed to go buy her a bra.  I was about 12 or 13.  Embarrassing?  Yes.  Impossible?  No.  It was at a clothing store where my cousin bought me my first jock strap a year or so later.

Which embarrassed her.  After all, anyone showing a tiny dick in a bathing suit had to hide it if they weren't European...  People had some crazy thinking back then. 

But I had to buy the bra, or I wouldn't get the money to see Ben Hur, which had prices raised from 50 to 75 cents!  Outrageous.  Because the studio was about to go bankrupt...

So I got in, and circled the counter like a vulture, and was looking to see if I could just grab it, pay, and get the fuck out of there, because I was very,. VERY  uncomfortable.

Unfortunately, I got confronted by a saleslady with very big hair, which meant...  no mercy.  I was the shyest kid you could imagine.  Said, 'um----errrrr----  I'm supposed to buy a bra.'  The woman had given me a note with the size.  Does Playtex say anything?  They still exist.

Well...  the expression on her face was what you would describe as flummoxed, and astounded.  Oh yeah, it was a playtex lift-up, if I remember correctly... 

And I was the color of a beet, and trying to act as if that was a normal thing to do.... just walk in and buy a bra.

Well, other salespeople were called in, and they decided I didn't want it for ME....  so I got the damned thing and was cursing myself for ever having taken that on.

I delivered, and got my 75 cents,and the Ben Hur viewing was secured.  What interested me was Charlton Heston's man pecs...  without the bra.  Steve Reeves was way cheaper and nicer looking and I loved the beard..

By the way, the incredibly talented Gore Vidal, who wrote the script for Ben Hur said that there was no motivation for the enmity between them, so he told Stephen Boyd that his character was in love with him...  and he would be rejected, and for pity's sake, not tell Charleston about it.  Very uptight.  Reeves was what I would have liked to become when I was twelve.  We all hav our dreams.

Some years later, I would be told I had had a terrible mother, and no child of HERS would have their upper ribs showing because they were so undernourished and thin...  I was never undernourished.  I didn't excercise.  I didn't have pecs...  just underlying muscle screaming to be developed.  And yeah, my rips showed below my neck like something out of a prison camp.  And I ate like a stem shovel, go figure.  Had good legs.  Was it a wonder I wanted to be..  wonderful and exceptional?  In a manly way...  Life is full of illusions.

I had the problem that everyone reads my face and knows when something is wrong...  especially my mother.  And she got it out of me in a jiffy, and whoa...  I was therefore banned from doing errands for the most lucrative customer I had from doing errands.

So I got a paper route.  That wasn't without its' dangers either.

But it explains that to this day....  i have this shyness about buying undergarments.


 

Bible Thumping

Yesterday, Lawrence O'Donnell did one of his better 'rewrites'.  About how one member of congress says you only need follow the Bible for everything.....  you'd think.  It was edifying. 

So he reads Deuteronomy, and asks why adulterers aren't put to death.  You can see it here.  

So, my grandfather was a very wild democrat, because we had this very old family bible, and it had a lock on it.  When he retired, he read it front to back, declared the Old Testament a 'book of horrors', and kept it locked maingtaining it being unsuitable for children.  Which only made me curious as to what was IN there and sent me rifling through it when he forgot to re-lock it. 

It's telling that what worked for me was the story of David and Jonathan and The Book of Ruth.  I liked those stories.  Genesis was a yawn.  No, I was eight, and didn't really understand much of it, but those two sort of appealed.  Go figure.

On the other hand...  my grandfather was right.
 

News

over the weekend was bland, as usual... 

One thing that was interesting was the excitement over some guy from Salzburg is currently in New Mexico and wants to parachute out of a baloon from the stratosphere 36 km above ground and thus break the sound barrier in the free-fall part.  Which seemingly has never been done before.

I assume there is a REASON for that.  Why anyone would want to is beyond me.  This is up there for the guy who did the deepest dive of all time without gear this year and nearly landed in a coma, but he did it.  Also from Austria.  Seemingly, this country produces people who really push boundaries. 

The only coherent bipartisan argument on gay marriage I ever heard was on Friday and posted on the Rachel Maddow show blog.  It's lengthy, but very coherent, and even entertaining at times.  If you wish to take a look at the latter, you can watch it here.  I especially liked the discussion from the 23 to 40 minute mark on.

HOW in the wurrld?????

The German and Austrian news are reporting that Romney 'won' the first debate. 

I can't figure how Obama could underestimate Mr. Animatronics so badly.  That is NOT good news. 

I have yet to see it, was occupied with other things.  Now I can grind my remaining teeth watching it on YouTube. 

Sheesh...

The US media is going hysterical, as usual...

Watching yesterday's coverage on the eve of the first debate was interesting.  The anchors unravel with 'an-ti-ci-PAY-shun'.

But diabetic Chris Matthews, motor mouth extraordinaire, gave us some insight on the voter suppression law in his home state of Pennsylvania.  There are some statements at the beginning which left me spitless. 

We show ID when we vote.  But we all need ID.  You have a national identity card, or not.  And it used to be, a passport, because most countries are sorta small...  when compared to big states in the US, but to go further, you needed a passport.

You can see this amazing piece of shit here. 

Pay close attention to the first minutes and you can click out on the rest, it's bloviating.  But wow....  Lazy.  The poor are too lazy to get a 'free' voter ID.  Well, Preciousses, they put the place where you GET the ID way outside where they live, and, well, being poor...  they don't have welfare cadillacs.  And seemingly, you just don' t show up and say 'Hey, I need my ID', oh no.  'No no no no no...  you need to prove you are an American and who you say you are.  So we need documents.'

And the documents... if you can get them if you live far away from the state you were born... cost money.  I had to buy a copy of my birth certificate, for instance.  But it didn't cost me anything...  In reality, the Penn laws and the fees for getting an ID go from 50 dollars upward.  Now if you're poor...  is that going to replace getting food on your table?  They'll choose groceries and curse the fuckers who messed up the economy in the first place.  And not vote.  There are a LOT of people there who never voted in their lives and were proud of it, because...  it was a free country.  And I am so not joking.  I did some canvassing work for a dark horse candidate back in the Seventies.  Skeery.

Disgrazia, Disgrace, Disgusting.

A lack of empathy?  I see the most awesomely horrible form of pandering in all my long years. 
 

Department of Corrections

The other night I said crooks and liars never get called to justice?

I was wrong. Tuesday's newspaper had four perps in front of a judge on the front page, with balloon captions of jail sentences they got.  Mostly 2 and 3 years.

It was a result of a parliamentary investigation into party based corruption, with the usual kick-backs, and bribes, and so on, much as one sees in the US, but not on so grand a scale.

In this case, some 'dudes' convinced someone in the state legislature in Carynthia to pay them six million euros in consulting fees on a project, and the monies mostly went elsewhere into the conservative party for propaganda.  (why am I not surprised???) 

I'm sketchy on the details, but the state wanted the money back, and whaddya know...  it was gone. 

We're talkin' about OUR taxes they went and blew six million on...  what exactly?  Well, the money isn't gonna be recovered, and hell, the perps have it 'somewhere'...  or good protection...except this time the latter didn't work.  So they get to go to prison.

When I think about the US...  well, we don't have much in the way of 'satisfaction', but it is soooo  edifying to know they finally caught the curve and want to clean up an act that has been part of the culture for way too long.  And if it were up to me, the person who was so gullible or culpable as to give them that six million should go to jail as well.  For sheer stupidity.

So, Austria isn't Wall Street....  yet.  but it isn't for lack of trying, this wasn't an isolated incident.  The only difference is, here you go to jail.

We have pundits here in the media as well as anywhere else.  And one guy...  sorta the local version of George Will ....well he said, 'oh, this will deter others from doing anything like that.'

Well, I want his rose colored glasses, hey.  As far as I can see, it was a blip on the radar.

So I was right...  this shit goes on everywhere.  And I was wrong.  Some people here actually got punished.  I wanna see the Wall St. guys do lonnnnng sentences.

They are the real parasites.

 

Oh my....

 

The new version of blogger doesn't let me post videos from msnbc, even though they have a function that allows for embedding.  That sucks.  Used to be you could just insert the hmtl and voilà...  so much for 'freedom'...

I ran across a wonderful clip where Lawrence O'Donnell ripped into the press for sucking up to  Ahnuld all these years.  And called him a number of unflattering things, the main one being a clown.

I think you can find this tour de force here. 

The sycophants in his hometown will be rabid if they ever get to see it. 

Needless to say, I loved it.

 

Just an Afterthought...

As you can surmise, I really love Dickens' novels.  And how I came to find him was sorta funny and odd.  My grandmother had a 'giftschrank'.  (poison cupboard, I don't know of an english equivalent for that...).  Actually, it was a curtained-off shelf where the books were in her living room.  And I was warned, the books behind the curtain were off limits.  Adult stuff

Well tell a kid verboten, and you know he's gonna go looking.  And I did.  My first find was Oliver Twist.  I assume it was the opening scene that got him assigned to the giftschrank.  Born out of wedlock, and it was clear what that was.  'Ah, no wedding ring, I see.'  That was enough in the 50's to merit giftschrank status, I guess.  So I read it on the sly.  Wow.  Fagin and the Artful dodger, and multiple kidnappings, and oh yeah Nancy...  I didn't catch the fact she was a prostitute.  I was only eight.  I thought she just stole stuff.

When Peyton Place came out, it too was relegated to the giftschrank.  And my father, 'the Venerable' had worked with Grace Metallious in a factory before she got published and became a success, so there was a lot of whispering, and shocked sotto voce discussions, because everyone knew who the characters in the book really were, and it was....  ahem...  a scandal.  Of course I got my hands on that one too, rifling through it trying to find 'the good stuff', but it seemed rather boring.  And promptly got caught and the hand of wrath met my backside in three strikes.  Which didn't bother me.  I just couldn't figure what the fuss was about.  Boring.
I didn't even see the film until the late 70's in an art movie house in Austria, and was disappointed to find it wasn't that big a deal after all.

Sorry for the digression, but it sort of made me smile.  Middle of the night reminiscences don'tcha know...

Back to Dickens.  My father remarried, we had our own place, and it had an attic room, and I loved spending hours up there on rainy days.  There were books from his childhood, and back then, they weren't very warm and fuzzy, they were more like unexpurgated Grimm.  Scary, sort of.  One of them creeped me out so much I read it several times. Kids like scary stuff.  It was called Red Feather and had something to do with changelings.  Then there was the Webster's Dictionary from the early 40's I think, and I would pore over it for hours.  Words, meanings, adjectives, it was fascinating.  And in that, I discovered the fact that Dickens had written a lot of other novels, and the characters had gone into the language of the time as late as the 1940's.  Pecksniff, pecksniffian, for instance.  Denoting hypocrisy.  Fascinated me.

So I began collecting his novels wherever I could find them.  Many were out of print, but I persevered.  (Nowadays you can download them in a flash from the internet, but hey, we didn't have that back then.  So there was the thrill of the hunt.)

All of the ones available had one thing in common.  Scholarly introductions.  And the snobs who wrote them were supposed to explain and praise what was to come, but it was the school of thought that he certainly wasn't of a caliber as Dostoyevski, say, but there were certain benefits to reading that particular novel. 

And to a professorial man, they always carped about the same things:  the caricature, they maintained the  coincidences that moved the plot were heavy-handed and improbable, and of course, disparaged his messed up view of his female characters.  On the latter point they were mostly right.  The women are either impossibly good and angelic, or the rest are very true to life, so that grates, I'll concede  that.  It's the unhappy ones who ring true, and are entertaining.  And Victorian conventions were also mostly ignored by the scholarly egg-heads who wrote their oh-so-scholarly intros. 

What they failed to achieve was putting it in the context of the historic times he was writing them.  Most people were illiterate.  And instead of tee-vee, when the books came out in serial form, usually four chapters at once, those who could would read them in a pub or inn to those who couldn't.  And there were so many characters in them, using a catch-phrase made them immediately recognisable to the listeners.  As to coincidences...  well have had some of the weirdest happen in my life where one would say, 'impossible'.  Such as getting off a subway one evening in Munich and directly in front of me was a person I worked with in the cinema who had decided to come visit.  I'd had no idea.  'Oh, I was looking for you.'  Coincidence?  Impossible?  Happened...

So yes, one might see some things in the novels as 'drawbacks'...  but actually the themes are universal and as true today as they were during his time.

Sometimes a trip back in time is instructive.

And btw...  the BBC films do very nicely in toning down the quirks that were so abrasive to a modern reader.  Although they did have a field day letting Smallweed in Bleak House do all the tag-lines.  'Oh my bones!  You brimstone beasts!  I'm all crunched!  Shake me up, Judy!'  That. was delightful.  Peter fell apart laughing over him, and Smallweed is a villain in the piece. 

Yeah, you had to be there, you know???

Nothing Really Ever Changes... How Discouraging

In the last several weeks, in between pounding my head on the keyboard trying to access my old account, I had the dvd fired up because my sat connection to the tv needs revamping and I can't afford the dew-hickey that needs to be installed to get the high def signal needed.

Luckily, I collected loads of dvds, so I can go for a year without any repeats.  And decided to have a Dickens film festival, which covers many hours, as there are lots.  Most of them are very close to the novels, all of which I've read more than once, but it is fun to watch them come alive, and I usually find something new in the material every time I do my yearly viewing. 

What really jumped out at me this time around were things that had bored me originally when I read them as a young man, but could be part of any news broadcast today.  In many of those novels, so-called pyramid schemes are the catalyst that serve to bankrupt many of the characters and propel the plot.  Scams involving life insurance policies, and then there is a bubble, and it bursts, driving unwitting investors bankrupt and into ruin.  Speculation in goods, where a major investor pulls out once the gain has been at its' peak is a key factor in the novel Nicholas Nickleby, for instance, his third novel, back in the 1830's if I remember the date correctly.  And people are ruined, as is the father of the main character before he is born. 

Those themes run through many of them, in other words, and even in David Copperfield, you find embezzlement on a grand scale. 

Land speculation scams are a large part of Martin Chuzzlewit, for instance.  All of these things cause a lot of misery and ruin for the unsuspecting and gullible, and the greedy.

And now, nearly 200 years later?  You find the very same things still going on, no one has learned anything, no one has fixed anything, no one has created effective protective regulatory laws, and some really bad characters prey on society and mostly get away with it.  In fact, nowadays, no one even gets your proverbial slap on the wrist.

Seemingly, it goes in cycles, but nothing ever changes.  I think that is what makes the work timeless.  In his later years, according to his biography, Dickens was very disillusioned.  His novels had caused laws to be changed, but the conditions he abhorred were still never really corrected.  Some new way of getting around them always came up.

So watching this time around, all in one stretch over several days, I reflected on how little mankind has actually changed or even gotten better in any way. 

And THAT...  is discouraging.  Hope and Change?  Ya think???


 

We have animals on the roads...

One of the recurring themes in the news this summer were traffic reports, especially on the weekends.  I had a field day reporting to my on-line group about them.  A section of highway closed because there were deer on it who were possibly trying to hitch a ride to Italy due to inclement weather; three escaped cheetahs from the Salzburg zoo some kids had broken out and were too dumb to get very far, just sat sitting in a sunny clearing nearby enjoying their 'freedom'; a brooding duck on a ferry on Wörthersee in Carynthia which was not to be disturbed as the excursion boat went round and round; a wild razor-back boar in a sauna in Upper Austria which scared people, and bears on the road in Tirol....  it just never seemed to end, and got loads of sarcastic comments on the radio. 

On the serious side, there were a large number of severe storms and mudslides that came barreling down, and buried people in their cars in two instances.... 

Seemingly, driving in Austria is more hazardous than one might think.

For Those Who Enjoy Games Online

I can recommend Aion, Gameforge's free-to-play extravaganza.  Have only been playing it for a couple of months now.  The concept is cool.  You can choose to play on the ´dark side, or the 'good' side.  It is rich in its' complexity, and there are quests galore. Once you reach a certain level, you can join in battling the other side..  real players instead of computer-generated ones.  Or do crafts, buy a house, there is no lack of things to do or any monotony, which was the main drawback to Last Chaos.  The graphics are good, but the chat features are sort of weak.  I had so much trouble with the latter that I neglected my small group of fellow players, the group leader got offended, and threw me out of her friend list.  The mechanics of groups on-line tend to be over-rated, it seems.  The music and clash-boom of the sound are distracting, but you can turn it off.  It's a good pastime.  And often sort of funny.  I have a gladiator on the bad side, and a priest on the good side.  So that offers even more variation and less time to get bored.  It's worth trying, the entertainment factor is high, and it never gets monotonous.