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'.

Re-connected...

After two weeks, my phone works again.  It was a lousy day, I couldn't find a place to call from. 

In the erroneous assumption that 'everyone has a handy' (cell phone), I've become the exception to the rule, and there aren't any telephone booths any more out on the streets, which is probably saving the telecom loads of money.  But cells are prohibitavely expensive.    And am old fashioned and like my land-line.

So I wanted to use a turkish call center, but they weren't open, and landed at the ho-tel.  The telephone cell we used to have got turned into a trash closet for tools and stuff.  But a former colleague was there and so I could use his...  it was a toll-free number, after all.

Nothing much has changed on the surface, but I happen to know that there is a lot going on beneath the surface.  I was just glad for the connection and right things.

Am disgruntled that my provider can turn a connection OFF if payment is late, but aren't courteous enough to automatically turn it ON once the payment certification reaches them. 

Tja, well, that won't happen again....
 

I have a horrid fascination with KLG and Hoda on the Today Show...

They sort of remind me of the iconic duo on the series 'Absolutely Fabulous'.  They are up in the morning drinking wine, dishing, being 'naughty', have fixed 'dazzling' personalities that are so fake you think they have pin walls at home to paste on their smiles once they get out of work and get maybe grim, are social climbing sorts of beasts who like to brag about who they are going out with in the evenings, who are mostly high B list, and can generally either bemuse or irritate me. 

The UK had sort of a duo like that in the above mentioned series.

They were cult.  The one an over the hill pill popping, drug taking former hippie and 'alternative culture' person, the other a dessicated alcoholic ex model, best friends, and utterly destructive.  But funny.

Kathie Lee Griffin and Hoda Kotb are sort of mirror personalities to those two, and whether it's a gag or not, they often become parody despite themselves.

 

 

Whatever.  I couldn't find a clip from two days ago, but you get the idea. 

 

 

Now the eternally baked in youthful looking KLG spent twelve years writing a musical.  About Aimee Semple McPherson.  She was an evangelical faith healer who was so famous, she is in the lyrics of the song 'Hooray for Hollywood'.   Just after 'Shirley Temple'. 

 

 

She was a huckster and base founder of the evangelical movement, but had her ups and downs, so, yes interesting subject. 

 

So after many years of sweating blood over it...  It opened on Broadway on Thursday.  Which news I saw Friday, which meant the dread NY Times had already reviewed. 

 

 

Now I and the viewers had been (mal)treated to some of the songs from the show and clips here and there and it was interesting to see what you have to do to get a show there accepted and then try to get it off the ground...   I found the idea interesting, but the music was...   forgettable.  Not good, not bad, sometimes nice...  and I thought I was being unfair.

 

So I called up the Times on my internets, and yup, there was the review.  It was unkind to Ms. Griffin, but basically said what I'd been thinking of her all along...  and described it as too long, not 'deep' enough into the subject matter, and the music was 'generic'. 

 

Autsch!  Au weh!...   The reviewer did say it wasn't the Thanksgiving turkey that had been hoped for....   And that Broadway had seen too many 'religious and evangelical productions of late of the gospel variety'.  Such as 'Leap of Faith' and revivals of 'Godspell' and 'Jesus Christ Superstar'. 

 

The reader reviews so far weren't so good either.  I think this was something where you have a good idea, but it comes in just a hair's breadth too late, something I learned when sending out manuscripts and getting told 'oh, it was so good, but we just published something just like it.'

 

So on the one hand?  Yeah, I have a bit of schadenfreude.  On the other?  If they're smart, they'll bus in scads of evangelicals from Kansas or 'gawwd' knows where and get their investment back, maybe make a bit of profit.

 

Such things are always big gambles.

 

 

 

 

 

Generals Redux

It always takes Rachel Maddow to put things in perspective.  Common sense reigns here. 

Elsewhere, the Petraeus story has become a sophmoric joke for the entire world.  As in a DJ on a rock station here in the middle of the night picturing the General getting down and dirty with Rihanna.  Snicker, snicker, snark, snark. 

Shit happens when you put up heroes to the world, and they turn out to have feet of clay. 

I'm not sure the US realises how damaging the affair has been as far as how the outside world perceives it.  It leads to a loss of respect.

It's enough to give anyone 'the sadz'.

 

I wish to share something I found funny and true

Joe Jervis of  'Joe.My.God' fame, and he's won many awards, found a hilarious term for the Rethugs who lost.  Their heads don't explode any more.  They have 'The Sadz'. 

That's what happens when a party bullies a country for over 20 years and lose.  They get disoriented.  adn then they get 'the sadz'. 

Enough to make you laugh and cry at the same time...  sniff........

Speculationalism... which is what journamalism is ALL about...

General Petraeus of the US stepped down two days ago.  The FBI had investigated him and it turned out he was having an affair.  Which, in the military is prohibited.  Which is all we know and what he said.

What BURNS me is the non-stop speculation.  Or speculationalism in journamalistic terms.  Oooooooo...  something to BITE on.

Well, the 24 hour news cycle got on it, and whoa!  Now there's shirtless photos of FBI agents running about, and some sort of triangle, and gaaaawwwwd knows what else.

Well, aren't we all now tittilated and DISTRACTED.

Especially since even the cadaverous asshole Eric Cantor supposedly knew about it before the elections but didn't use it, because, well, ya know, it wasn't verified at that point...  and Petraeus is a right leaning person, after all.

So if we are to believe the press, two socialites, very rich ones, got in a tangle over one guy, and some harassing e-mails flew, and one of them upped the game, got an amorous non-shirted fed on the trail, and things took off from there.  ooooo... how scintillating.

Except, the lady who helped launched it was sex-texting another four star general.  Maybe...

Heady stuff, for sure.

I fuckin' hate the press in the US and the cycle.  I had journalism in high school as a subject and aced it.  You write only when you get the confirmation of at least three parties, and only after you have ALL the facts.  If you are reporting as supposed facts come in, you are blurring the issue.

It's just another damned spectacle, if you ask me.  And people there don't know how damaging this spectacle is to how they are perceived in the rest of the world, which angers me even more. 

Today's news reported on it...   with the comment that it was something out of a SOAP OPERA.  Sort of schadenfreude in tone.

Whelp, I can concur. 

This rant was brought to you by 'Morning Joe' Scarborough  on the tee-vee.  Which is one of the most misogynistic shows on MSNBC.  Lots of white male conservatives who are so disrespectful to women it defies description, and the co-anchor is the daughter of a former Nixon diplomat who can only shine when 'Daddy' is on.  Supposedly liberal, but hey, lives in New York and otherwise in the south of France.   Tja...  no influence.  Is there to cluck and shake her head, is constantly interrupted by male bloviators. 

WHY this is on a supposedly liberal network is beyond my comprehension.

Certainly, there are questions about this whole thing.  But I ended up LAUGHING when Joe Scarbourogh had his head exploding and demanding intervention from the ACLU.  That is so rich and ironic... 

For many many reasons...   if it had been a democratic leaning person, for instance.  He'd have demanded him to be put in stocks at the very least.  And he's concerned with protection of rights?  I seem to remember when he was screaming for them to be taken away after 9/11.  Oh yeah, put 'em in stocks.  It's a trauma 'Murka never recovered from.  Because they were told they were superheros and invincible. 

In all such stories, there were chinks in the armour, I guess, and 
things go very wrong.

What Scarborough does is bloviate.  He can bray, and his laugh sounds like a jackass and in my opinion he is.  But today, he outdid himself on breaking every journalistic rule, and spinning, and speculating, and being rude, which is just who he is and what he does.  Try to torture yourself and watch it through, and maybe you'll see what I mean..  It's here.

 

Am looking for crazy eyes, but no news yet

Wanna know how La Bachman fared in her run for the House. 

She's such a piece of work. 

And why, WHY....  did she and her husband get 23, count em, twenty three foster children, what with their being on the go and involved in politics?  Where did they find the time to nurture them?  Or even raise them? 

This has been a mystery to me for a long time.  Was it the money?  Every time I heard about it, Charles Dickens scenarios popped into my feeble mind.

And after having seen a video clip of her dancing with 'hubby', who is so 'fey' looking that you could choke on a cookie if the milk weren't there, have always had horror visions of what that fambly must be like, and understand that some of them didn't come out to be the fine upstanding ranting raving kooks who raised them. 

I do hope she lost her job.  From her pandering to the most awesome conspiracy theories to her idiocy in trying to raise up witch hunts and compromising national sneakurity in so doing... 

I so wish she lost her job.

So Bronco's team pulled it off....

Was up from two a.m. watching live feed on the internets, and at 7 a.m. our time, the live stream on the front page of the NY Times had Mittens' concession speech.  So no rancorous recounts.  Good. 

The once and future President just spoke on the live feed from NY Times.  Uplifting, accomplished, moving.

But I predict:  there will be days of the media playing the blame game, there will be jockeying for position and attempts to block anything good that will be proposed, and the bloviators will be either elated or have their heads explode live and in color in the national media. 

From a vantage point far removed from the continental US, am relieved, in that there will be no neo-con cabal surrounding a lame president champing at the bit to send people to die in Iran.  And anticipate a leadership which might restore some of the respect for America that had been lost over a decades' worth of those same people being bullies.

What I hope?  That the once and future president grows a pair and doesn't let himself be railroaded into buckling to the throwback neanderthalers who would restrict progress at the cost of hurting the people they purport to serve, but in actuality are serving global enterprises. 

Am not so certain that will happen as thoroughly as I wish, but am certain that there will at least be an effort to hinder it.

I'm not an optimist.  But one thing is certain.  The health care system that was achieved in the first term will become a fixed reality for a majority of the people there, and that is a very good thing indeed. 

The president's re-election will later be considered historic, I believe.  And that is a very good thing indeed.

And for the oligarchy who threw six billion dollars into ads...  well how many jobs could they have created with that amount of money, I ask you.  Just goes to show that spending so profigately on negative ads didn't get them the bang for the buck that they thought it would.  I will wipe away a crocodile tear for them, and suspect they will be able to write it off anyway.

The other point I would make is that a campaign lasting two years is intolerable, and stupid, and wastes time.  Someone ought to grapple with that problem as well.

If you don't vote...

Chris Mathhews will never talk to you again, and boy does he need his insulin....  wow.  To be seen here.  Tweety has his spleen out.

When a country becomes a banana republic...it

preaches that they and only they have the recipe for true democracy in the world and want to cram their version of it down everyone's throat.....

has a governorship in swing states to repress the opportunity for minorities and the poor, and the afflicted to cast a ballot by creating less polling places and eight hour waiting lines...

When a country has the audacity to preach democracy and call up a non-existent problem about voter fraud and make an identitiy card so difficult to get, especially among the poor, the afflicted and minorities.....

When a part of the country closes voting place doors before hundreds wanting to cast their ballots so that they have to supplicate and shout 'Let us vote' as happened in Miami Dade county Fla. yesterday ....

And those people are mostly minority, and in a more liberal county and aren't getting to what should be a 'walk in, cross your circles and drop it in the box'  sort of thing...  without all the electronic rigamarole, and funnily labeled levers to pull on a machine made for monkeys...   but people who have made decisions in making up their minds for how they want their country to advance for the next legislative period.....

And when the ruling class puts up billboards to scare the poor, the minorities and the afflicted from voting, as seen in the central states of the US...  always in the poorest... speak minority centers of cities.

One can only come to the conclusion that that country is a plutocracy, and if it were in the southern hemisphere....  it would be known as a banana republic. 

An agressive one, which wants to say to the rest of the world...  'our way is the only way'. 

Well their way is instructive...  but I don't think I would want to follow it.  Money isn't everything.

Having followed presidential campaigns for over forty years...  this was the most corrupt and disgusting, and was due to a pour-in of corporate money. 

Obama didn't dirty his hands.  Romey lied from morning to night, and the media, they astonish me.

'He misspoke.
 
It was a gaffe,

He didn't understand the question,' 

Instead of just saying it outright:  'he LIED'.

Why is the word tabu of a sudden?

Romney lies all the time.  It's probably why I like Lawrence O 'Donnell'  He'll tell the truth or if you call him out on it, invite you to box and duke it out.  But am old, and understand his concept of 'honour'. 

In the end, what the country has is a choice between going on a sorta journey where the destination isn't exactly clear but sort of heads to a rosy sky, or a vision where you are in England and would never think of going out without an umbrella...  or being lucky in having someone to wheel you out to vote if you were infirm, or old, or disabled....

today is the day, duckies.-....  gird yourselves, pack up the folding chair for the wait to ...  oh lurd,... cast your vote, and exercise a right that should have actually taken up ten minutes of your time, not eight hours.  

And take a folding chair, sit in it in line, and reflect on, if you were to be questioned by the ever circling press of journamalists, why you would think that your case represented the best system in the world, and why you would recommend it be force-fed to the rest of it as the  main course. 

Others never subject themselves to the process.  So much the sadder.

But rest assured, you HAVE reached the status of a banana republic, and have no reason to contend you are of another status. 

Unless everyone actually votes.

Have fun today. 

In my country, I only need ten minutes.

That's the different, as Peter would say, would love to speak with him, but my telephone isn't back on, which means... if it doesn't happen tomorrow, I have to run about town.  Which I hate.

We all have our distractions.

But will not retract.  Banana Republic.
 

Gay icons trash talk...

Sadly, they're right.

Oh my, potty- mouthed seniors.....

I saw this on Joe.My.God and choked on my daily rice ration.    It's not safe for work or to be played with children present.

You go, seniors!  and yeah, I thought if was funny.

A nice gay feelgood movie

What with the horriday season coming up, was rummaging around in YouTube this morning and found a film called 'Breakfast With Scot'.  It's well worth looking at, a canadian production about a gay couple who get unwanted custody of one of the men's nephews after his sister in law dies.  And the little boy is a flamer. 

I really enjoyed it, as there was no heavy-handedness in handling the various themes, and it was very funny at times, but also moving.  It's well worth a watch.

And sort of gets you into a horriday mood.  All you need do is type in the movie title in the YouTube search box.

Having seen and heard the onslaught of tee-vee and radio punditry this season

And having grown up in a state where the first presidential primaries were held, I can sympathise with how overwhelming the media can get.  But This year, in swing states, of which my former home is one, it's obviously become unbearable. 

We didn't have robocalls, or 22 minute blocks of ads assaulting our sensibilities every two minutes with trash and mostly lies.

Having followed the campaign, which has lasted two lonnnng years, I can really empathise with little Abigail.  Oh, I liked watching all the twists and turns of it, but really, two years?  Our election shit lasts about six weeks, and even that is more than enough.

I see the US mode as a new sort of art form, and when the Citizens United judgement was handed down...  which freaked me out, the idea that corporations are people was amazing to me.

And was insulted, as I assume many people must be.  Because it assumes that people are sheep, and if you hammer lies at them day in and out, well, they'll believe them.  The average citizen is smarter than that, and in swing states, they develop strategies to avoid being harassed out of their minds.

Like leaving all calls go to the answering machine and screening them.  If they don't recognise the number, they don't pick up.  It doesn't eliminate the 22 minute blocks of ads they get on the tee-vee, but some things can be seen on the internets, and thus avoided.

I feel confident that after this extravaganza of profligate spending, they will find that their efforts won't have made much difference in how people voted, and 2 billion dollars which could have effected much help elsewhere will have gone down the proverbial toilet.

But at this point, just days before the election, I have the sneaking suspicion that the people in the swing states are feeling like little 4 year old Abigail in the video.  'Make it stoooooppppppp.'   

So my heart goes out to those who live in the swing states, with the cheer-leading sentence:  'hang in there, it's only a couple of days now...'

That the little girl thinks the president's name is Bronco Bama is priceless.

Just vote.  It's your civic duty.