A Date, and the Obligatory Movie Review
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Posted:Oct 26, 2006 1:54 am
Last Updated:Nov 4, 2006 2:26 am
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Back in the spring, I spent a ridiculous amount of money on a matchmaking service. Tonight, I finally met one of my "recommendations". They'd sent out the contact sheets late last weekend, I think I got mine on Saturday, but there's hardly ever any point on trying to call someone on a Sunday, and by the time I pick up the mail on Saturday, the one thing that I can do is get to work....
She called Monday, while I was asleep, and I returned the call today, since I have, in the last couple of days, discovered the existence of a new movie that I just had to see as soon as possible, and I didn't want to go alone. We met, we had a light dinner, and went to the show. Both enjoyed it, talked a bit more and I drove home. Got in around 12:30 Thursday morning. Pleasant enough. No chemistry to speak of, but then I'm not necessarily in a rush. Let's just get used to dealing with people, I think.....
and once again I get to be reminded that there are people worse off than I am.....
I saw the news on Monday that The Prestige had been the #1 movie in the country last weekend. I suppose it just shows how out of it I am that they could sneak a Christopher Nolan film out, starring Hugh Jackman and Christian Bale, and I wouldn't know about it until after the first weekend. So I dug out the review and read it, and knew that I had to go see it first chance I got.
This is Christopher Nolan's fifth film. I haven't seen his first one yet, Following. I'm not sure that it ever got any real promotion when it was first released, but I drew more attention after Memento was released and became a reasonable success for such an odd film. Then came Insomnia, with Al Pacino and Robin Williams, and Batman Returns.
This one is absolutely his best work yet. The movie is about magicians. No strike that word, the movie is about Illusionists. The difference is that magicians do tricks, while Illusionists do spectacular shows. David Copperfield is probably the quintessential example of the current Illusionist, and of course the greatest illusionist of the 20th century was Houdini.
This film is set in 1899, with a lot of back history. One of the strengths of the writing is that the fact that the movie hopscotches around in time doesn't work against it, at all. The story is always moved along by the flashbacks, and the time period when the flashbacks take place is always clear without additional exposition needed.
It is a story about stage illusions, and the men who perform them, and it is paced like a stage illusion, building to its inevitable but still shocking climax. The casting is brilliant and compliments the complex but satisfying story. Hugh Jackman is the better showman of the two, but Christian Bale is the more creative. David Bowie has a featured role as Tesla, and his presence also fulfills a key part of the film.
It's one of those films I'll have to see again just to see how much of the information was already in front of our eyes, but we didn't know what we were looking at....
If you like mysteries, duels between complex and interesting individuals, or fascinating writing and performances, I think you'll like it. It deserves to stay at #1 a few more weeks.
I also saw trailers for Deja Vu, which has a fascinating premise, and The Fountain, which has gone on my "must see" list.
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A History of Comic Book Super Heroes
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Posted:Oct 22, 2006 10:26 pm
Last Updated:Oct 29, 2006 1:26 am
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This one is silkditty's fault. In her post [post 557538], she asked what we'd do if we could take our show on the road. One of the options that I responded with was "lecturing on the history of super-heroes in comic books". She responded with, "I'd be curious to see a post by you outlining the history - just the basic strokes to start - up for that?"
This is all off the top of my head... and it's going to be very sketchy... it is just an outline, after all.
The first comic books, reprints of newspaper strips.
Introduction of comic books with new material--1938--Superman. Other heroes at the time were magicians, adventurers, or cops. Also, there were a lot of other kinds of new comics--funny animals, horror, crime, etc.
Within two years, a new type of story exploded all over the newsstands, with a wide variety of types of heroes--science fictional, magical, or in some instances, just highly motivated. (See Jules Feiffer's The Great Comic Book Heroes .)
World War II. Three effects: 1) we had a new, common enemy, 2) paper shortages and drives, and 3) a lot of the new talent got drafted, but eventually came home with a lot more stories to tell. Patriotic themed heroes became a staple of the field.
Post war. Stories and artwork became more refined, but the market was slowly drying up.
Early fifties. Dr. Wertham's crusade attempted to convince lawmakers that comics were corrupting the youth of our country. (See Frederic Wertham's Seduction of the Innocent.) The creation of the Comics Code Authority. Many marginally profitable titles folded.
Mid-fifties. The "in-between" period. Certain titles and characters survived, but the field turned away from super-heroes. Emergence of non-super teams (i.e. Challengers of the Unknown, Blackhawk, etc.).
The late fifties. The return of super-heroes--DC revives The Flash, followed by revivals of a number of other favorite heroes from the 40's, with new identities, origins, and purposes. (Origins tended to be more science fictional and less mystical, fantasy based.) DC finally started publishing Justice League of America, itself a revival, combining all of their headliners into one series.
The early sixties. Marvel comics emerges, with a new breed of super heroes. Exemplified by Spider-Man and the Fantastic Four, these heroes were flawed human beings who had to learn to cope with their own problems, as well as learning how to cope with new abilities. Both DC and Marvel thrived, and became "cool" for the college crowd to read.
The early/mid seventies. The original writers/artists in the field began to be replaced by a new generation of creators, who were less "classically educated" and more intimately familiar with just the comics. Much of Marvel's heroes were reduced to formulas--if you followed the books long enough, you'd see the same stories over and over again, each time with some minor updating, but still highly repetitious. There are by now, maybe a dozen smaller companies, each trying for a piece of the market. Most of these smaller companies last about a year.
Late seventies/early eighties. The market had changed. When I was growing up in the fifties, every supermarket or drug store (just about) featured a comic book rack with the most recent issues of all the titles. By the late seventies, these racks had disappeared from most of the supermarkets and many of the drug stores. Faithful readers are frustrated by the randomness of the distribution process, which made it difficult to obtain every issue of every title that one wanted to collect.
Plus, the times are changing. The sixties were a time of idealism ("If you can't trust the president of the United States, who can you trust?") The mood of the nation was different, and a new method of marketing comics emerged: the comic book store. It became easier to find all of the issues you wanted, but in the transition, something was lost--there was no longer an entry level for comic books (in earlier times, small could start on the funny animal books, and would eventually gravitate to more adult fare. With the loss of comic book racks, the smaller weren't getting into comics as much.) Plus, the prices kept going up. In the early sixties, the price of a comic book went up from ten cents to twelve cents. By the late sixties, the price went up again, this time to fifteen cents. Every couple of years, the price would go up again. (Today's comics run about $2.50.)
Mid-eighties. A new kind of comic book super hero, and buyer, hit the scene--the heroes were more bombastic, colorful, but not as well written in many ways. Certain artists became "hot" and start new titles, which were bought up by speculators attempting to cash in on the collectors market--buy it at face value today, then attempt to resell it at several times face value six months or a year down the road. In some ways, this almost killed the field, because the books were no longer being bought to read, but to be put in plastic bags and saved for resale. When the speculators gave up and left the field, sales dropped precipitously. In many ways, this situation is still in place, with Marvel and DC still owning the majority of the market, with a lot of "independent" publishers holding small portions of the market. But the range of stories has changed radically. Super heroes still exist, and are still the most marketable product being published, but the range of specialty comics covers the map--there's something out there for just about every kind of taste.... (See Kevin Smith's movie Chasing Amy for an accurate and amusing look at the different kinds of creators active in the field.)
Comic book creators have also encountered certain problems because many of the same characters have existed for almost fifty years. Every couple of years the companies send their entire line of comics through a reconstruction process.
Late eighties. Grim and gritty. With the publication of Frank Miller's Return of the Dark Knight, a new storytelling approach was introduced--the world of the super hero became a darker, nastier place to live in. Stories were published based on themes of abuse of power. The catch phrase behind Spider-Man had always been "With great power comes great responsibility" but the new theme became "Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely".
The current market place is kindof an amalgam of all of the above--there are still grim and gritty stories out there, but the concept of comic books that are fun to read have made a distinct comeback. The development of computer animation techniques has made even the most outrageous super heroes now adaptable to film, and almost all of the "trademark" heroes have gotten the Hollywood treatment. In fact, the current contradiction is that the comic books themselves are less profitable than the characters. Many years ago now (somewhere between the late eighties and mid nineties would be my guess) Marvel comics went through a corporate split. One part of the company publishes comics, but they must "purchase" the rights to the characters from the other branch of the company, who only owns and merchandises the characters. For many years, the San Diego Comic-Con (the largest of its kind in the world, with an estimated 100,000 attendees) featured a variety of products on sale, but the primary product was still paper-bound (either comics themselves, either back issues or new, or related books) with an assortment of other interests featured. For the last several years, paper no longer dominates the sales room, as toys, or action figures now predominate (part of the reason for this, of course is that the action figures are considerably bulkier than the comics themselves are, and more space is required to display the product.)
Which brings us to today, more or less. There is still a wide array of publishers out there, printing all kinds of different stories, all of them operating on a very slim profit margin. The super hero field is still reinventing itself every couple of years. There are still some brilliant writers and artists in the field, some of whom go on to do more renumerative work (i.e. movies). But there are still some wonderfully written socially and environmentally conscious books out there for those who look (particularly recommended is Paul Chadwick's Concrete, which is about a man trapped in an alien constructed body, with tremendous abilities, but his humanity exists only in his brain. The series has handled a number of politically sensitive issues in an intelligent an amusing manner.)
Some outline, huh?
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The Great Blogville Gossip Mystery
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Posted:Oct 19, 2006 10:27 pm
Last Updated:Oct 24, 2006 10:48 am
1587 Views
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Just because I'm a nosy bastard, I can't help but wonder what set that off.
It seemed so sudden and so extreme.....
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A "Brief" History of My Cats
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Posted:Oct 19, 2006 12:12 am
Last Updated:Oct 21, 2006 3:24 pm
1632 Views
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I’ve “owned” cats ever since my ex-wife and I moved in together in 1976. We inherited two of them from a couple of girls who lived in the apartment across the way when they were moving out and the place they were going wouldn't take pets. Ex-wife had already picked up a runty little brown tiger cat at the science fiction club the night before (Beef), so the addition of Gertie and Fonzie made it three. Gertie and Fonzie immediately had their names permanently changes to Plush and Smudge. Plush spent her entire life adoring me. (of course this is also the cat who could get on anybody’s lap and sincerely tell them that she loved them more that anybody else in the whole world, then go on to the next lap and tell that person the same thing) Plush wasn’t very smart, but she was very adorable. She’s sleep on my hip when I was laying on my side. If I rolled over, she’d rotate with me, then settle back down on top again. When she lived to the age of 20, it was a house joke that she was too stupid to know that she was old. She was fine, right up to her twentieth birthday. Then she had a series of strokes, or something going haywire in her nervous system, and a month later she was gone. She was the last of the three to go, and I woke up the day afterwards with the feeling that I’d awakened from a 20 year long dream. The whole world felt strange and out of synch.
By the time she died, we’d gathered in a couple more. We’d added Spook in ’82. That was the cat who’d hear me at the toilet from anywhere in the house and come running, because he could jump onto the sink and then to my shoulders, because he loved to lay across my shoulders. XW brought home Squeaky in ’88, rescued from the warehouse district in Los Angeles, where she been assisting on a movie shoot.
Five cats is not an unreasonable number if you live in a house.
We added Scutter in ’93, the year Smudge died, and then gained T. Hewitt Edward, a sweet black male cat she found up the street in August of '94. XW had always wanted a black male cat with that name. Beef died the following April. Then came the great expansion. She’d started feeding cats who would come into the back yard. One of them was Max, a big sweet friendly black and white tom with that oversized tomcat head. One night, Max brought his girlfriend, a big fluffy long haired white female that XW dubbed Snow White. Some time later, XW thought she saw a shadow behind Snow White one night, and upon inspection, it turned out to be a miniature version of Max. By the end of the year, she had contained the kitten and moved him indoors--that was Mr. Drake (black coat with white piping–he was number 6).
The following year, Snow White turned up pregnant again, at which point she was brought indoors, and proceeded to have four kittens in the service porch in early March. Maybe it’s just coincidence that Plush’s decline started about then, and she was gone by the end of April. By the fall, another mother cat and her two kittens had been brought in, and things had gotten out of hand…..(one of the kittens of the litter of four had been given away, and one of the two kittens who were brought in during the fall, but that still brought the population up to eleven. The porch got enclosed, and Max lived out there (he couldn’t be allowed to live with the other cats because he had feline aids). He was joined shortly thereafter by a cat who had skin cancer and another with a fungus problem.
(incidental list of names: Snow White’s kittens were designated as Alpha, Beta, and Gamma, on the theory that if we gave them designations instead of names, we wouldn’t get so attached to them. Only Delta was given away. Alpha eventually got renamed as Napolean Solo.
The next momcat was Orca, and her kittens were Spot and Data. Data was given away. Spot remains one of XW’s sweetest and most constant companions.
The next momcat who got captured, along with her offspring, was Piglet, and her kittens were Floyd (he was a pretty boy) and the Beast. Beast looked to me just like the title character in the ‘40s version of Beauty and the Beast (a re-creation costume we did in Brighton, England in 1987, so I was quite familiar with the film). She and Floyd were both tiny cats, who never got much bigger. I always thought that she looked Burmese.)
She’d brought Tuffy home from the Post Office one day in 1997, just before Spook died (of cryptocaucus fungus).
The numbers kept on building, and including the cats in the enclosed porch, it was over 20 by the time I moved out in November, 2000. Many of them are now deceased, and she’s added others, and I have no idea how many she now has.
After I moved out, I became lonely for some of the old cats. I wanted Beast, but I understood that it was inadvisable to separate her from her mother and brother (to this day, all three remain somewhat feral, even though they’ve lived indoors about ten years now–I’d been making real progress with taming the Beast before I left). I brought Squeaky and Tuffy with me instead. Squeaky had made it quite clear that she wanted to come with me, because every time I’d gone to the house to get a box of stuff, she’d get in the box, and had to be forcibly removed before I could leave.
xgf’s cat (Skunk) tormented Tuffy so badly that he had to be returned to Arleta two months later. So, it was Squeaky and Skunk alone with the two of us for the better part of a year. In late 2001, xgf’s estranged husband lost his job and his house, and had to move in with his parents. We inherited an albino rabbit that had been kept in their yard. He went through a barrage of names, but eventually we settled on “Skippy, the red-eyed thunder bunny”. (xgf’s naming criteria and mine are radically different.)
In January of ’02, after her estranged husband suicided, we got Rat, the second of the two cats from her marriage. Rat has decided that she adores me, and about 75% of the time I’m on the computer, I have a lap full of Rat cat–fifteen pounds of black pussycat love, either napping, washing, or insisting on being petted. That’s cool. I’ve always wanted a lap cat, and she certainly is that.
When xgf moved out last November, she eventually took Skunk with her. Skunk is her cat, and the bonding is quite obvious. So it was just Rat and I for about six months. Then xgf decided that she needed to go to a book expo in Washington DC with her new boyfriend, and I agreed to take Skunk back for temporary boarding for a few weeks. Apparently Skunk had become quite weird in the new apartment–she hid constantly, and when she wasn’t hiding, she was crying pitifully. It has seemed to me that having the two cats has been good for each other, even if Skunk is quite anti-social. Most of the time, Rat just ignores her, at others, Rat decided to be a pest. They don’t fight, but Skunk will get really uptight and hiss and growl when Rat gets too close. Rat then gets really deaf and refuses to move, but won’t provoke her any further either. Eventually Skunk gives up and moves elsewhere. Sometimes Rat follows to pester her further, sometimes she just accepts victory in the departure. (Oh, and as I look over at the cat beds now, Rat has occupied Skunk's. Skunk is laying on the floor, pouting. Skunk still lives here, as xgf’s new boyfriend’s apt won’t accept pets.
In one way or another, I’ve banded with every cat I’ve ever owned, or who has owned me. Until now. Skunk isn’t unfriendly to me, she just doesn’t seem to have any use for me most of the time. Sometimes she actually seems to want attention, and sometimes she’s actually interested in getting a small can of wet food, but most of the time she keeps to herself. She and Rat have adjoining beds in the living room, and as long as they stay in their beds, everything is peaceful. If I go to bed, chances are that Rat will join me before long. If I get on the computer, chances are good that I’ll get a lapful of love before too long.
But Skunk is just there. I think she’s pissed at me for driving here mother off, but she clearly wasn’t happy living alone with xgf either, so I don’t know what to think. She’s definitely been a little weirder yet for about the last month. I think she knows that she’s been permanently abandoned.
It’s been hard for me to live with someone I’m not bonded to at all.
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I'm a self righteous asshole, sometimes
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Posted:Oct 18, 2006 11:34 am
Last Updated:Oct 19, 2006 11:38 am
1544 Views
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This one is being prewritten and then pasted for a couple of reasons:
1) I’ve had several posts disappear in the last week or so, and I’m tired of either having to rewrite or lose them.
2) This is going to be a long one. There’s been lots of stuff going on.
I’ve been off work since 2 PM yesterday afternoon, and I’m off until 4 PM on Friday….74 hours off at one sitting…. (heaven).
The last week was weird because my schedule was pretty much the opposite of what it usually was–I was off at times I usually work, and then working on shifts I’m usually off.
I had a run in with one of the other supervisors on Sunday night/Monday morning. This guy is an ass anyway. He’s a short fat guy whose primary psychological impetus is trying to overcompensate for his lack of stature. I’ve encountered guys like this all my life, and this one isn’t bright enough to be subtle about anything. He always puts on a big show to convince everyone how professional he is.
Ordinarily, I work day shift on Sundays. The janitors come in at 6 AM, and work until 2 PM. After they leave, I sweep through both buildings, check to make sure that all of the doors that are supposed to be locked are, and turning off all of the lights (a money saving project–when I’m working from midnight until 8 AM, I do the same thing, but the lights are only out for about three hours–they get a lot more down time over the weekends). We don’t have many people in to work on Sunday, so second shift (4 PM to midnight) generally inherits two empty buildings that have already been buttoned up for the night. This last Sunday, I worked third shift both Sunday and Monday. This meant that I let the janitors in to get started, but then left at 8 AM, with the shift in the hands of a guy who really isn’t familiar with what he’s doing (and not too bright to begin with…..). So I get back in Sunday night at midnight, and I get to be annoyed as soon as I walk in, because the short fat guy is in the middle of writing an email to management as I arrive. This happens about half the time, despite the fact that there’s never enough going on during the shift that any such emails could not have been written an hour earlier or so–this is just another way he has of demonstrating how professional and hard working he is, that he’s furiously typing on some important memo at the last second. So rather than interrupt his typing, I grabbed my cup and went to the back building, to get ice out of the one freezer that has ice trays, so that I can have my drink cold for the night….. It immediately becomes obvious that no one has checked the back building, because most of the lights are on ten hours after they could have been shut off. I go ahead and get my ice, shut down some of the lights, and return to the security office in the front building.
“Why are all the lights in the back building still on?” I ask. “The new guy was back there. He doesn’t know to turn them off”, he replies. “and you didn’t cross check him?” I inquire. “I’ve been very busy all day,” he replies in this exasperated tone. “You’ve had two empty buildings for eight hours! What have you been so busy with that you couldn’t make it to the back building?” “I’ve been very busy with a lot of paperwork all day. I don’t like your tone, how dare you question me? What’s your problem?”
I’ve worked that shift. I’m well aware of what his responsibilities are, and that he doesn’t have any paperwork to deal with that will take him more than an hour to do at the outside. He’s telling me a lie, and I know it. We argue a bit over whether I’m being insulting and condescending, (which I am). I tell him that if he has any problems with my tone or content that he should take them up with management. He finally leaves, after another small confrontation (he goes to the bathroom, I shut the door to the office and go back to the rear building to shut off more lights. When I return, he’s still there and pissed because I locked him out of the office, and the fanny pack with his keys in it.)
I sat down and wrote him up. As far as I’m concerned there is no excuse for his inattention to his responsibilities–this is a “low stress” job, and it just isn’t that hard to put out a minimal amount of energy to see that things are taken care of, and he clearly hadn’t even bothered to walk to the back building over an eight hour span to check things out. I’m offended at his lack of professionalism, not to mention his pretentiousness and his hypocrisy. When the day shift guy comes in, I turn the write-up over to him. He scans the videos for the night, and determines that yeah, the guy spent the first five hours sitting in the lobby talking with the new lobby guard, and that he never bothered to check the back building. Last I heard, this is being escalated to management at the level. I’ll find out what the results are when I go back on Friday…..
The cafeteria at the place I work has had a new manager for the last month. Apparently, the guy who’d been there previously hadn’t done his paperwork for several months running, and the new manager has been working twelve hour plus days trying to get things caught up. I admit that I’ve been smitten. She’s an extremely outgoing, friendly, and upbeat person, who seems to have an extreme enjoyment of life, even while she’s busy being a workaholic.
I have very strict beliefs about not trying to have a relationship with co-workers (this includes anyone working at the same site, whether you’re working for the same company or not). Trying to have a relationship with a co-worker is always (ALWAYS!) bad news for both the job and the relationship. On Saturday, I’d been given warning that she’ll be leaving this account soon… she has another account in addition to this one that she’s responsible for, and that one is closer to home. Once she gets this one caught up, she’s gone (along with my conflict). So when she shows up at 4 AM to start work for the day, and I’m at the front lobby giving my lobby guard her lunch break, I inform the cafeteria manager that I’m aware of her plans, and request permission to call her once she’s no longer working on site. She agrees with me about the decision to not try to have relationships with coworkers, and gives me a card with her phone number on it. Not going to be able to do anything with it for a while, but at least there’s a possibility…….
Hmmmm, I had more I wanted to talk about, but I can see I’ve already gone on way too long for one post. I’ll try to get this one up, then start another…. (later…)
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Light!
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Posted:Oct 16, 2006 10:31 am
Last Updated:Oct 21, 2006 12:06 pm
1522 Views
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I see a glimmer of light.
Let's go check it out.....
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Jim Steinman--a brief commentary
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Posted:Oct 8, 2006 1:39 am
Last Updated:Oct 16, 2006 3:30 pm
1616 Views
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This is take 2 of part of a post that I did Monday night, but when I told it to add, it disappeared into cyber limbo when my connection went down. I may or may not get around to rewriting my review of Constantine.
American Baroness (formerly BaronessK) posted [post 530868]. It was a collection of parodies of several songs made popular by Meat Loaf, followed by a couple of other songs, and finishing with a parody of "Casey at the Bat" which I memorized for an English class back in the early 60s, and can still recite to this day....
She credited the songs to Meat Loaf, which activated one of those obsessive-compulsive things I do where I notify the perosn who wrote the song, and try to spread the gospel of using the phrase "as performed by" to credit the singer. True, the writer of a song is often not known, but occasionally the writer is someone who's well known in his own right (Neil Diamond is a random example who comes to mind).
Jim Steinman wrote and produced "Bat Out of Hell", Meat Loaf's major hit.
He came to my attention when I became obsessed with the song "Total Eclipse of the Heart" as performed by Bonnie Tyler. This was around '82 or '83. Steinman is the only writer/producer I know of who had both the numbers 1 and 2 songs in the country (back when people kept track of such stuff) when "Total Eclipse" was number 1 and the number 2 song was "Making Love Out of Nothing at All" by Air Supply.
Other familiar things he's done include:
"Left in the Dark" -- Barbra Striesand
"It's All Coming Back to Me" -- Celine Dion
the soundtrack of Streets of Fire
"Holding Out for a Hero" by Bonnie Tyler
Certainly Meat Loaf's best work was his collaborations with Steinman. Steinman liked lots of drama in his songs/music and lots of production. Driving pianos, beating drums, background choruses...... I'm not sure that Bonnie Tyler had anymore big albums in the states after those two that Steinman did.... (if you detect a strange accent in her voice, it's because she's Welsh.)
He's responsible for one of my favorite song openings:
"You can't run away forever, but there's nothin' wrong with getting a good head start."
and while I'm recommending things, if you've bothered to get this far in the post, you'll probably enjoy Streets of Fire, if you haven't seen it.
It's a Walter Hill movie, in somes ways a retelling of his classic film "The Warriors". It stars Michael Pare', Diane Lane, Willem Dafoe, and Rick Moranis.
The subtitle is "A Rock and Roll Fable". Well put. The film takes place in no particular time or city, just feels like it was somewhere between 1965 and 1980... cars, hairstyles, no coherence, except to the archetypes of the music. It features:
The Blasters
The Fixx
Maria McKee
and several Steinman Songs, using the pseudonym "Fire, Inc."
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Making Fun of Someone Else
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Posted:Oct 7, 2006 1:58 pm
Last Updated:Dec 29, 2006 9:16 am
1592 Views
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I always enjoy the inarticulate letters that you women receive. Today I found their match in one woman's profile. This is her bio:
IM MARIED HAVE 4 3 LIVE HOME MAN IS AWAY ALL WEEK. DONT WANT TO LEAVE HIM, JUST WANT SOME SEX , AND FUN ,KNOW GAMES KNQW TIE DOWNS, KNOW I LOVE YOUS.JUST REMEMBER HERE FOR ONE THING.
and what she's looking for:
SOME ONE THATS WANTS TO FUCK AND DONT CARE WHERE I AM OR GO .JUST WHEN IM WITH YOU IM WITH YOU WHEN IM NOT DONT THINK ABOUT IT.IS THERE ANY ONE OUT THERE THAT CAN HANGLE THAT REMEMBER I AM MARRIED AND HAVE A BOY FRIEND .IF STILL WANT IT LETS PLAY.
She has a husband and boy friend and still isn't getting any? Surely a good match for most of your most obnoxious admirers.....
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Anger release
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Posted:Oct 7, 2006 4:41 am
Last Updated:Oct 14, 2006 5:44 pm
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I'm sitting here dropping comments or (mostly) just reading and not having anything to say, and it occurs to me that I'm so terribly isolated because I've turned into a crazy old man who puts everybody off with his constant raving and self pity.
There are comments I keep wanting to drop when I read certain people's post, but to do so would be rude, and there's no point to being rude.
I did that this week at work. I said something to my lobby guard, and while the content of what I said wasn't any different than what I've said before, but my tone reflected my irritation with the source of the problem we'd just encountered. She took it personally and her feelings were hurt. I explained the following morning that I'm aware that sometimes I get so focused on the content of the message that I fail to pay attention to the tone I use in delivering it. That tone has been described alternately, as "intense" or "harsh". It isn't intended, but it's there anyway displayed all of the anger that I tuck away inside to whoever is unfortunate to get caught in its spotlight.....
Apology was accepted, but the reason I bring it up is that the behavior pattern is worth taking note of. I know that it's part of the reason I'm living alone. I do know what it feels like to be on the other side of that rage. I see too much of my father's mannerisms have leaked through. I'm a little more self aware than he was, I think, but it still doesn't give me any more control over when I get this way.
I find myself wondering if some of this behavior pattern is exhibiting itself here, where tone is much harder to develop.......
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Rovin' Supplemental, and Self-Torture
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Posted:Oct 6, 2006 4:47 am
Last Updated:Dec 21, 2006 9:05 am
1598 Views
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10/5/06--Serrano Park--19:00 to 04:00 8 hours
============================================================
I don't know what's worse... reliving one of the worst days of my life, or being reminded of the best.
I grieve with Breathlessbimbo for the loss of Lucky. I cannot help but be reminded of the day we lost Skippy, which was bad enough in and of itself, but it got compounded many times over. I'd made arrangements with my parents to go up to La Crescenta where they live that Sunday. I needed to collect money from my father, who had agreed to finance my divorce, so eager was he to remove all traces of my ex-wife from our existence. That morning when we got up, it was clear that whatever was bothering Skippy was sufficiently serious that we needed to take him to a vet, but exotic animals vets that were open on Sunday were hard to find. We got a reference, and I drove him over there. The people there were very helpful, but not encouraging... he'd had another maggot infestation. It had happened a couple of years earlier, and he'd barely survived that. I left him there, and told them to call me on my cell phone when they were able to determine how bad the damage was.
I then drove up to La Crescenta. Halfway there, they called. It was bad. There was irreparable organ damage. I gave permission to euthanize, then had to do it all over again for a witness. I cried the rest of the drive up to my folks place. By the time I got there, I was a complete emotional wreck.
That was the day my father chose to take me to task for every slight, every ounce of neglect, every failure in my life up to that point. How much I'd let them down. And here I was again, asking for more money. I couldn't deny any of it, and I was totally vulnerable to the chastisement. Finally, the sent me on my way, and I went home and cried. All I remember was being totally miserable. The death of another beloved rabbit just brings everything back up.
So, to balance that, I got called tonight for an assignment--eight hours of driving a golf cart around a complex of tract houses (very expensive ones in Lake Forest), locking up the swimming pools and then unlocking them again before I left. I'd brought my coat in case in was cold. Good idea, but inadequate. It was frickin' cold out tonight, and driving the golf cart around just made the cold night air go right through me. Finally I wised up, and pulled my blanket and scarf out of the car. I wrapped the blanket around my torso, then buttoned the coat closed. The blanket stayed in place and gave me additional insulation. The scarf was wrapped around my neck to keep my neck warmer.
The drawback? The scarf was a present from xgf six years ago, just when the relationship was getting started. It served as a symbol of everything that had been right in my life and never will be again.
Everything serves to remind me that everything is fucked up and nothing is fixable.
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A "Canned" Diatribe
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Posted:Oct 5, 2006 9:02 am
Last Updated:Oct 6, 2006 11:51 am
1635 Views
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Ordinarily, I hate "canned" post commentary. This however, showed up in my email this morning, and it reflects something I feel strongly about anyway, so I dump it on you as something else I get to be funked about:
We know Dick Lamm as the former Governor of Colorado. In that context his thoughts are particularly poignant. Last week there was an immigration overpopulation conference in Washington, DC, filled to capacity by many of American's finest minds and leaders. A brilliant
college professor by the name of Victor Hansen Davis talked about his latest book, Mexifornia, explaining how immigration - both legal and illegal was destroying the entire state of California. He said it would march across the country until it destroyed all vestiges of The
American Dream.
Moments later, former Colorado Governor Richard D. Lamm stood up and gave a stunning speech on how to destroy America. The audience sat spellbound as he described eight methods for the destruction of the United States. He said, "If you believe that America is too smug, too
self-satisfied, too rich, then let's destroy America. It is not that hard to do. No nation in history has survived the ravages of time.
Arnold Toynbee observed that all great civilizations rise and fall and that 'An autopsy of history would show that all great nations commit suicide.'"
Here is how they do it," Lamm said:
"First, to destroy America,: turn America into a bilingual or multi-lingual and bicultural country." History shows that no nation can
survive the tension, conflict, and antagonism of two or more competing languages and cultures. It is a blessing for an individual to be bilingual; however, it is a curse for a society to be bilingual. The historical scholar, Seymour Lipset, put it this way: "The histories of
bilingual and bi-cultural societies that do not assimilate are histories of turmoil, tension, and tragedy."
Canada, Belgium, Malaysia, and Lebanon all face crises of national existence in which minorities press for autonomy, if not independence.
Pakistan and Cyprus have divided. Nigeria suppressed an ethnic rebellion. France faces difficulties with Basques, Bretons, and Corsicans."
Lamm went on:
Second, to destroy America, "Invent 'multiculturalism' and encourage
immigrants to maintain their culture. I would make it an article of belief that all cultures are equal. That there are no cultural differences. I would make it an article of faith that the Black and Hispanic dropout rates are due solely to prejudice and discrimination by the majority. Every other explanation is out of bounds.
Third, "We could make the United States a 'Hispanic Quebec' without much effort. The key is to celebrate diversity rather than unity. As
Benjamin Schwarz said in the Atlantic Monthly recently: "The apparent success of our own multiethnic and multicultural experiment might have been achieved not by tolerance but by hegemony. Without the dominance that once dictated ethnocentricity and what it meant to be an American, we are left with only tolerance and pluralism to hold us together."
Lamm said, "I would encourage all immigrants to keep their own language and culture. I would replace the melting pot metaphor with the salad
bowl metaphor. It is important to ensure that we have various cultural subgroups living in America enforcing their differences rather than as
Americans, emphasizing their similarities."
"Fourth, I would make our fastest growing demographic group the least educated.
I would add a second underclass, unassimilated, undereducated, and antagonistic to our population. I would have this second underclass
have a 50% dropout rate from high school."
"My fifth point for destroying America would be to get big foundations and business to give these efforts lots of money. I would invest in ethnic identity, and I would establish the cult of 'Victimology'. I would get all minorities to think that their lack of success was the fault of the majority. I would start a grievance industry blaming all minority failure on the majority population."
"My sixth plan for America's downfall would include dual citizenship, and promote divided loyalties. I would celebrate diversity over unity. I would stress differences rather than similarities. Diverse people worldwide are mostly engaged in hating each other - that is, when they
are not killing each other. A diverse, peaceful, or stable society is against most historical precedent. People undervalue the unity it takes
to keep a nation together. Look at the ancient Greeks. The Greeks believed that they belonged to the same race; they possessed a common
language and literature; and they worshipped the same gods. All Greece took part in the Olympic games. A common enemy, Persia, threatened their liberty. Yet all these bonds were not strong enough to overcome two factors: local patriotism and geographical conditions that nurtured
political divisions. Greece fell. "E. Pluribus Unum" --From many, one.
In that historical reality, if we put the emphasis on the 'pluribus' instead of the 'Unum,' we will balkanize America as surely as Kosovo."
"Next to last, I would place all subjects off limits; make it taboo to talk about anything against the cult of 'diversity.' I would find a
word similar to 'heretic' in the 16th century - that stopped discussion and paralyzed thinking. Words like 'racist' or 'xenophobe' halt discussion and debate. Having made America a bilingual/bicultural country, serving established multi-culturism, having the large
foundations fund the doctrine of 'Victimology,' I would next make it impossible to enforce our immigration laws. I would develop a mantra:
That because immigration has been good for America, it must always be good. I would make every individual immigrant symmetric and ignore the cumulative impact of millions of them."
In the last minute of his speech, Governor Lamm wiped his brow.
Profound silence followed.
Finally he said, "Lastly, I would censor Victor Hanson Davis's book Mexifornia. His book is dangerous. It exposes the plan to destroy
America. If you feel America deserves to be destroyed, don't read that book."
There was no applause. A chilling fear quietly rose like an ominous cloud above every attendee at the conference. Every American in that room knew that everything Lamm enumerated was proceeding methodically, quietly, darkly, yet pervasively across the United States today.
Discussion is being suppressed. Over 100 languages are ripping the foundation of our educational system and national cohesiveness. Even barbaric cultures that practice female genital mutilation are growing as we celebrate 'diversity.' American jobs are vanishing into the Third World as corporations create a Third World in America - take note of California and other states - to date, ten million illegal aliens and growing fast.
It is reminiscent of George Orwell's book "1984." In that story, three slogans are engraved in the Ministry of Truth building:
"War is peace," "Freedom is slavery," and "Ignorance is strength.".
Governor Lamm walked back to his seat. It dawned on everyone at the conference that our nation and the future of this great democracy is deeply in trouble and worsening fast. If we don't get this immigration monster stopped within three years, it will rage like a California wildfire and destroy everything in its path, especially The American dream.
I cannot, unfortunately, quote what the source of this writeup is.
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The Deafening Silence of Emptiness
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Posted:Oct 5, 2006 12:42 am
Last Updated:Dec 29, 2006 9:18 am
1470 Views
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I get off at 8 AM on Wednesday, and don't have to be back to work until 4 PM on Friday, so this is like, the middle of my weekend....
I tried to post a movie review and a commentary on a favorite song writer/producer Monday night.. the post disappeared into the ether, and I didn't have the time to try to rewrite it until today.
But today there just hasn't been the energy to try. The sound of the silence of the emptiness is deafening, and I can't get away from it. It drowns out everything else I try to do.
I can't do anything but sit and play games... I caught up on everybody's posts and there really isn't anything I want to say to anybody.
I just want out.. I'm so tired and there isn't any thing anywhere.
I finished my project at work last night, except for the map, but that was because somebody was supposed to send a file I could use to draw it up on the computer, complete with color. The file didn't get sent......
Cat in my lap. How could anybody want to leave such adoration?
How can I go on with no future exept for more debt and more emptiness?
Why bother?
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Feeling sorry for myself..... (Again.....)
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Posted:Oct 2, 2006 7:58 am
Last Updated:Dec 29, 2006 9:19 am
1521 Views
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I'll admit at having been a little suprised at the reaction to my previous post, most of which could be summarized by saying "Poor baby!"
Well, ok, but most of that shit was just ugly background stuff from the dead past. I even thought that the high school story had a happy ending, sortof.
Of course, I'm still contending with the fallout from last November/December. My job doesn't pay enough to keep up with the bills, and there are little annoyances creeping up all the time:
I got a phone call Saturday morning from someone (with a blocked ID) who claimed to be from AT&T who told me that I didn't pay my last phone bill, and that if I didn't pay up immediately, that my service would be cut off. I checked, and I sent a check to them on September 14. He wasn't having any of it, and without giving me any option he just kept threatening to cut off my service. I hung up on him. I'll call customer service at AT&T today to see if there's really a problem and determine how we can work this out. If we can't, you'll know why I'll have disappeared.
I picked up my new prescriptions from the pharmacy on Friday. I now have medical insurance, and I thought that would make the cost of my prescriptions more managable... Wrong! The loped for my cholesterol was ok--$18.95. My wellbutrin came to $220. This is unacceptable. I'm on the verge of calling my company and telling them that if they can't give us a medical plan that's good for something that they'll have to replace me. (Like they care... the front office of the guard company seems to be this incredible combination of incompetence and indifference... after all, most of the employees of the company are barely making minimum wage, and those people can easily be replaced with other people desperate to stand around and be paid nothing....) Grrrrrr....
More and more, I keep coming to the conclusion that I really need to find a way out of life. The only real function I have is to keep feeding the cats. (Ok, the people where I'm posted value me, but they're pretty much helpless as far as getting the front office of the company we all work for to get their act together, and I can't continue to live like this, getting further in debt every month because I can't make enough to pay off my bills.)
I'm really not doing anybody any good, and there isn't much of anything I can do in real life any more (except here, and a) this isn't real life, and b) if I disappeared from here, I doubt that the ripple would be noticed for more than a day or so, then you'd (all four of you.....) go back to your previous existences quite easily.....)
And there is absolutely no indication that there's any way any of this can be altered in any way.
Go thou and be cheerful. Things could be worse.
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To link to this blog (rm_smosmof2) use [blog rm_smosmof2] in your messages.
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