Pelage and Prose

So The House passed that shard of excrement they call health care reform.  Enjoy the taste of seeming triumph all you who rooted for it.  There is yet The Senate, and another go in The House.  Plenty of time for wisdom, cooler heads, or cold feet to prevail.  Just out of curiosity,  has anyone read it in its entirety?  But "health care is a right" (point out the relative passage in The Constitution, please, then explain why it was never noticed in over two hundred years) so it must follow that it's all good.  Not sane or constitutional, but all good. *sigh*  Goodness knows no bounds.

X is a right. Y is a right.  What of the rights so dearly bought and so clearly stated which are enshrined in The Constitution; do they mean nothing so long as you're cossetted?   And how do you pay for all this?  Well, rationing to start with; do the old really need heroic efforts to prolong their lives?  And how much effort should tragic birth defects be accorded?  Or the differently abled?  Is that the current term?   Ah, but bureaucrats have compassion; why, just look at the IRS if you need an example. 

Tax increases when folks don't die quickly enough. That republican plan that would have cost a fraction and helped reduce the deficit a tad?  Shouted down, why risk an actual vote? 

Some schmuck long ago excused the most egregious atrocities of Stalin by saying, "if you want to make an omelet, you have to break some eggs."   Today, the lefties are seated at the vanguard's table in celebration.   Tomorrow (2010),  they'll be dining on ashes and bitterly denouncing  "hate".  

Nope.  I do not hate the dems for who and what they are.  I hate what they are doing and what they plan to do.  I do not hate the murderer when I read of his execution.  Nor do I forgive, not my job.  I just nod my head and acknowledge justice done. 

No hiding place!
No hiding place!
No hiding place!
Down here!

2010.  Take Back America!

Election results are in.  People are dissatisfied with, and are rejecting,  Obama and all his works.  And dems who follow him in his folly.  NY23 shoved the message up the RNC's ass and gave it a full twist, even if Hoffman didn't win.  There are battles and there are skirmishes. 2010; HUAH! That will be a battle.  Pass ObamaCare when the country is against it and you can kiss your sweet majority goodbye.  Ditto Cap'n'destroy.

You think there's a lesson for the courts and legislatures in that gay unions keep getting rejected (31 times now) when they go to the polls?  Not one that they'll heed, of course; they know best, we know nothing.  We, we ignorant many, we benighted masses.  Some folks were calling the Maine results a validation of Obama's views....   Ah, snark.  It sings so beautifully at times.  But I doubt gay unions' advocates will give up any time soon.  When you wrap yourself in the cloth of abolitionists and the civil rights movement;  you're pretty much immune from seeing a trend, so certain of your own sense of both history and marxism  social justice.   To everyone else you look tragically pathetic; the guy who insists the girl who rejected him/ isn't even aware of his existence is really, truly in love with him.

Now, if BHO can drop to 30% approval, or less, that would be a good thing.  Maybe we could elect people who respect The Constitution and the enumeration of powers; who will reign in government metastasis, balance the budget or better yet pay down the deficit, and stop trying to sell out our birthright of liberty.  Stranger things have happened.  A year ago, the country elected an incompetent to the highest office in the land.  Yesterday they decided to do something about that.

Obama. Barack Hussein Obama.  The current sitting President of The United States.  Has won the Nobel Peace Prize?  No one else was found worthy by the time nominations closed  on February 1? Really? No one?    No one else anywhere else in the whole fuckin' world?

Well, congratulations BHO, you've earned this like everything else in your life, by someone else thinking you deserve it.  Welcome to the ranks of Yasser Arafat, Al Gore, and Jimmy (the dhimmi) Carter.  Such company speaks more eloquently of the worth of this award than anything I could ever say.  Except for the following...

Hell, even Adolf Hitler was nominated in 1939. Withdrawn, true; but like they say, "It's an honor just to be nominated." 

I'm pulling in to Stop & Shop Sunday night and NPR is on the radio.  Granted I joined the broadcast in media res, but the woman speaking sounds like a damn fool.  Here's the gist, best as I recall, "used to believe they  had to use more radiation with people of color(1)" ,"and I just didn't want to say yes doctor" , "and as a woman, a lesbian it was even worse", "these white men", "the wisdom of my ancestry", "ayurvedic medicine and acupuncture". Well, you get the idea.  I sure did. 

My idea was "what a bigoted asshole".  Hope the cancer hasn't spread to her bones and caused an agonizing death. But maybe she's after a moral victory,  perhaps they could inscribe, "Hah! I sure showed them! Six months to a year they said.  I did it in nine weeks! "  on her headstone.

I switched her off, shaking my head, and calling her an idiot.  Yeah, doctors--pfagh! What do they know!  I mean, really;  four years of pre-med,  four more in medical school, and an internship as well as ongoing education to keep up with all the developments--what the hell do they know?  Bunch of patriarchal, sexist, racist, homophobic haters; right?  Yeah.  That must be it.  Couldn't be that you're scared and this is something beyond your control.  Fight back with ideology.  You'll feel better.

Then again, if Obama gets his way, mush brain approaches to health care may be all we've got.  



(1) it's called the Genetic Fallacy.  Things change.  A valid argument addresses facts and merit, not the glory or shame of a past condition.  

Saw it on Friday.  Bruce Willis never looked so good!  Well, his made up doppelganger at any rate.  The movie? Eh, not bad if you're just in the mood for action,mystery, and a bit of redemption.  Vaguely reminiscent of  old SF stories called Mindswap which was made into a TV movie a few years back and A Plague Of Pythons, which wasn't.  Similar but just different enough to sell it.  You could view it as a world without (real) people.  It's all so clean and tidy; no kids on the streets, no pets being walked.  Every person you interact with(except in the human only reservations)  is most likely engaging in life through a virtual presence. Progress?

One of the exposition scenes states that with the rise of surrogacy,  the incidence of crime and bigotry fell sharply.  I doubt that would happen.   People will always pervert new technology.  Always.  Make it a felony to have an unregistered shell and so what?  Do you honestly think a criminal out to rob a bank would not use a technology that allowed him to do it from a distance?  Or wouldn't use a purpose built model with stealth capability?  Or able to see lasers and infrared?  Or  with built in burglar tools? 

And wouldn't  a disposable body be the perfect tool for assassins?  Or soldiers.  They show an army in combat situations, undergoing losses in materiel if not actual manpower.  Much neater.  Much easier to sell a war to the public if none of our guys are dying, no?

One confusing scene, or bad use of stock footage: in the newscast / exposition there's a rainbow flag clearly visible in the background.  Are they equating the old fashioned "live in the flesh" dreads with gays?(1)   If so it doesn't work.  The old school types are also portrayed as hate-filled, reactionary surrogate bashers; one of whom is trying to kill a couple billion people to save the human race.  

 A bit muddled.  Willis' character ultimately finds a way to save humanity from itself while saving himself and his marriage, how very Hollywood.  And by Hollywood I  don't mean a movie happy ending, though it is at that.  I mean the real life Hollywood that makes tiresome anti-war movies which bomb; yet they keep making them because  that's speaking truth to power.  It's speaking truth to power while being insulated from the consequences of your own folly  but what else is an empty soapbox good for?  Ya gotta enlighten the benighted masses! Hmm,  a subtext with a bit of irony---tasty!  Sleepers of the world, awake!  Wipe the complacency from your eyes!


(1) Goes against the narrative of  "the other  is always the victim of a brutal, patriarchial, sexist, racist, imperialist, bourgeois...fill in the blank with more marxist  tripe" societ y and that same other is always good, angelic even.

ETA  Homage to Futurama in calling regular folks meatbags and to Red Dwarf for a refrigerator named SMEG.

Last week I had a chance to go to a wedding with a girl at work.  I didn't quite understand that her hints were her way of asking. Duh.  So.  Next day, I get a call from my eldest sister telling me my youngest sister's mother-in-law's funeral is/was Saturday (9/5). And so;  all for the best?

Talk about the universe playing cruel jokes on you.  

Other than grade school,  rat fink childhood friends who stone your cat to death, puberty, male pattern baldness,  a voice that sometimes jumps an octave for no good reason, rat fink bastards I've worked with,  running a gauntlet of bullies on the way home from school,   rejection,   aches and pains from work,  rat fink bastards who are running the country,  deer noshing on my garden and my ornamentals all summer,  dead skunks popping up on the roadsides like toadstools after a rain, and oh  that furry little ingrate (love ya kitty but sometimes..); of course.

Well...

It was a matter of time.  How long before the over the top eulogies?  Tonight's news, I'd expect.  Going to be as bad as Michael Jackson, innit?
Granted it's a time to reflect, but I'm thinking that death will grant immunity from criticism and Kennedy's passage will be as glossed over by enablers as much as Jackson's.  You know, in the Catholic Church,  becoming a saint takes more than dying.  It's a trial of sorts; complete with the devil's advocate.  Someone who makes the case against the candidate.  The media seems to have lost that ability of late. 

Oh, there will be biographies, to be sure; the Kennedy curse, a lifetime of service, the burden of  the survivor, all tragically true, and yet-- what about the man?  Such a great guy, they'll say.  Perhaps.  Except for that one lethal lapse of judgment,  no?  And, sorry, leaving a young woman to drown when you could have done...anything!...? Still a shit thing to do, no matter what you've done since or how often you've been re-elected or your politics or  your last name.

Or will the pundits immediately focus in on the power balance in the Senate?  Biden is doubly useless with even less chance of a tie vote.  So how does the appointment of a vacancy law read in Massachusetts?  I know Ted wanted it changed so a dem would get it regardless. 

Do you think Obama will be cynically manipulative and try to use this death to ram through ObamaCare?  I'm sure it's crossed his mind.  And perceptions be damned.  Of course under ObamaCare, assuming Congress was fool enough to take its own medicine, Ted would have died so much sooner.  Collapsed, you say?  Well, there is a three month wait for MRI's.  We could do an x-ray.  Here, take these aspirin, senator.

I don't think I've ever used it.  And that's not to jump up on a high horse like some flaming lefty and claim moral superiority; I just don't use it..  I've never--will never--use the phrase "can you borrow me..." when I mean to say "lend me".  "That's so gay", political correctness aside, is just a lazy phrase to my ear.  If something's a bad idea I'll flat out say it, much like tea party and Obama Care patriot-protesters do.  Gratuitous insults, as opposed to friendly jibes, are always a bad idea.  A jackass could use them as a pretext.  So when I mean to give offense, to hurt, to wound;  I will,  but I won't throw the first punch. 

Now, there were these two gay guys I knew in my Wisconsin days:  both named Terry, go figure.  T1 refused to say straight, giving as an example "You go forward".  He never shared how he referred to "a straight line".  T2 refused to say right, "You hang a ralph".   Gay.  Flamboyantly so.  And really stupid to think their petty  tweaks to language would really force a change.  Looking at that now, I should have asked "why?" Why do you have such a mental block about those words?  Do they oppress you by their very existence?  Huh.  What about me, then? 

You know, I do miss a certain time.  When I was a child it was a common question to be asked, "What are you?"  What's your ethnic mix?  Anathema now, I guess.  It sounds crude in the first formulation,  borderline in the second.  Also when I was a child there was a PSA with a grandfather-grandson dialog.  GS:Gran'pa, x says I'm prejudiced.  GP: Who's x? GS: Oh, he's one of my Jewish friends.  GP: Then you really are prejudiced, because you...  Long ago, don't recall who x was.  I also miss the feeling of curiosity  at looking up at a sign in our field trip bus and wondering what do they mean by race, creed, color or national origin? 

Yeah. I really miss that certain sandcastle innocence, before it was pissed on by peers then  washed away by the waves of time . 


ETA  Oh, yeah! Those commercials?  Preachy and teachy.  They get old fast.  A bit like a bigoted housemate who prefaces her every utterance with "The men in this house".  Tedious, pretentious, bitchy.  But hey, they're paying for the airtime, right? They are paying? Right?

It was early Saturday morning and I was coming home from dropping a friend off.  Just a casual road trip until I got to my neighborhood; there on the crest of a hill, on the shoulder of the road....Satan?  It was red, barrel-chested, and it seemed to have curved horns on a wide head.  As I drew nearer it resolved itself into a doe; its tail folded down, grazing on something succulent, tasty and green,  the dappled morning sunlight shining on her through the forest  on the left,  turning her head and eying me with an indifferent  "eh, no threat unless I dash in front of him" look on her face.  

The transformation happened in seconds, but I wonder if  two or three hundred years ago, I wouldn't be seeking refuge in a tavern and relating a narrow escape from evil.  Those horns? Big floppy ears hanging just right.  Her legs? Not quite visible from my perspective and hidden by the overgrowth. 

Thank God it was an intersection and not a crossroad, hmm?

Last night I dreamed I was exploring a big house, going from room to room, couldn't wait to see the attic for some reason.  Called dibs on the pantry.  Then I'm in a room with a water damaged ceiling.  Strange how the ceiling was so vivid.  Towards the attic were "salons' my dream sense told me.  Similar layout in each.  The first was filled with books but no one home.  The second was occupied by a massage therapist who said she specialized in head reflexology, whatever that is.  So why did she slough off the robe and stand nude, facing away from me?  Lean, athletic, cute dimples in butt and base of back.  I woke up right after she said "Don't touch me!"

Kirsten? Whatchuh doin' in my dream?   Okay. Never saw her face.  Cheap shot.  Unless you knew Kirsten.  For the record, all my dream self did was admire her body. 

The salons were kind of like enclosed porches, uninsulated, screened in, not for winter occupancy places. 

I love coffee.  But since I left Madison, WI, some years ago I haven't been able to find MJB anywhere in CT.  Maybe they went under. Or only sold in the Midwest.  I was doing Eight O'Clock, but the high cost of a buzz these days....

Chock Full O' Nuts is a bit harsh.  Martinson about right, but I can only find it at Big Y.  Super Stop and Shop had some fair trade brand I'd never tried before.  And which I'm now adding to Yuban until both are used up; between the two of 'em a barely palatable brew.  Then back to 8:00.  Fair trade, probably not the best beans.  Nice idea. Takes more than a nice idea to survive in the marketplace. though.  You need to make a product people want.  Not out of guilt, nor bitter necessity, but want--want, as in desire, as in prefer.  If there are more palatable alternatives, people are going to choose them. 

Unless, like most fluffy liberal ideas that just don't work well in the real world, you prop it up with the force of law.  Like the foolish bad road of socialism our glorious leader thinks we need; thinks we need despite the resistance to it, thinks we need because he knows best, and thinks we need because that mountain of corpses (100 million people dead) piled high in the name of socialism (true communism will come when the revolution is complete and the state withers away, until then we need the party and we have socialism. clear?), that pile helps him see the bright shining future and the air smells like a glorious new day for all mankind.

Anyway, the coffee? Not so great. 

Craps Friday night.  Tedious as all hell,  odd for a weekend; but lots of amateurs.  When I was on stick one guy, standing on my left as he shoots, would take a sip from his drink, turn and chat, announce he was warming up, rub his hand up and down his right arm peel up his jacket sleeve and on the epiphany of pelage my boxman had me send the dice. 

But later it got interesting.  I'd just tapped in on base and the guy nearest said he didn't get paid.  That's what's known as a "taking a shot".  He didn't get paid because he'd turned his bets off.  "Oh, yeah. I forgot."  Asshole. 

Shortly after that the prick came to our table.  You know the sequel to Roots;  Roots:The Next Generations?  There's a (white, racist) character in the cast who has a visceral hate that's devoured his soul.  This guy reminded me of him.  Hate; not so much.  But the same sneering contempt. The same twisted up arrogance.  He justified himself by saying that "working in corrections has done that to me".  Given him a shitty attitude toward his fellow man, I guess.  Sad. 

If only he'd post at DailyKos, DU, or HuffPo; he could vent.  He'd feel better. 

Movies today.  Bruno.  Well; props to Sacha Baron Cohen .  He offends just about everybody he's with: gays, arabs, jews, parents, christians, blacks, and especially straights!  Kind of like a Tasmanian Devil of shock comedy.  The WB cartoon character, not the Australian beastie. 

So Bruno visits an ex-gay counselor and I'm appalled.  At the guy's sales pitch.  I'll paraphrase:  "Women are worth the trouble, irritating as they are."  Yeah, make it live buddy, make it live.  Can you change?  Maybe; difficult, but maybe. All depends on your need to change and your will.   Remember when gays used to call it an alternative lifestyle?  Remember the poster  with two guys embracing and the legend "Try it. You'll like it!"?  I remember a lesbian asking me some years back, "Have you tried it?" No. Why? Guess gays would say the same.  Don't feel the need.  Doesn't preclude the possibility, though; does it?

Somewhere along the line you get to wondering, like you would in a Michael Moore film, "So, how much of this is contrived? How much is real?"  What part did he use actors for?  Are some people so stupid/eager for fame that they'd say or do anything?  Do they know they're being filmed?  What did he say to the swingers to allow him to film them in the act? 

Was that crowd reaction in the cage scene for real?  Maybe. Guess people really don't like being mind fucked, huh? 

On the whole; it's about what you expect. 

The women in the audience, by the way, really liked the pantomimed BJ.

Some time ago, I'm not sure how long; I saw something wondrous in the night sky.  I'm not sure if it was a dream or a freak natural occurence.
I had stepped out into the late night/ wee morning hours.  Before sunrise at any rate, even before the first few faint rays of dawn or the lightening of the sky.  Dark, or so I thought.  I looked up on my way to the mailbox (odd hours I keep, I know) and the sky was unlike any I had seen before, which makes me think it a dream.  But the memory of the rough cement on my feet makes me think it was reality.

The sky.  I hoped I'd blogged about this before,  maybe I have.  Finding it, that's the thing.  I looked up and it seemed like some painting by an old master.  The clouds looked so bright with colors so vivid, as though the moon had burned its way through just to show itself, as if it were at the end of a tunnel.  The stars seemed so much more  alive  than they usually looked.  I felt privileged, blessed, awed; like I was privy to a secret. 

And I wish I could find out if I wrote about it back then.  So many entries to wade through.  Don't know why but it's been in playback mode this last week.

ETA   Well, as of today--7/13--no joy.  I've searched my ljarchive offline and LJ itself online.  Damn.  I was sure I wrote something about it, somewhere.  Um, apart from the above. 

Endless looping on Michael Jackson's death on the news Thursday.  And WTF most of what was programmed on VH1* was pre-empted by endless looping on Michael Jackson's death yester"evening".  A tragic life, a huge talent, yes yes yes.  But, a sense of proportion?  How 'bout it?  His passing isn't the only thing that matters in the world.  What about Iran? Korth Korea's pending missile test?  Cap and Destroy the economy?

*And i kinda like Get Over It.  Fun movie.

When does summer get here.  It's not like I'm jonesing for a sweltering heat wave, mind you.  I'd just like to know all the work I put into that garden is going to pay off.

Or maybe I should build a greenhouse.  Like Icelanders do.

Cracked.com once had a post about movies that benefited from historical inaccuracies. 300 was mentioned.  They said the Spartans were pederasts as well.  Really? I did some web research and stumbled onto a site that explained it all.  The writer presented his information well; clearly, accurately and intelligently.  He lost me on his closer when he mentioned that we could give it a try in our modern age as well.  As long as society didn't attach so much shame to it he said.  Yikes. 

Saturday morning I picked up a paper and read a column.  The writer presented his observations on people's foibles, then closed with a dismissive leftist comment:  "Sonia Sotomayor is a 'reverse racist'" as typical of what the web will tell you.   Well...anyone whom the most leftist president evah would choose for SCOTUS  is probably someone I'd be at least a wee bit wary of,  ya know? 

Pity is, the rest of the column was moderately amusing.  But ideologues just can't keep it in their pants.  Sooner or later, they just gotta swing that dick.  And if it hits you in the eye or splashes around in the punch bowl of common sense or even fucks the cake of reason;  well that's just too bad,  you benighted masses need to be edumucated.  You do!

This past  Wednesday I worked with a newbie craps dealer.  She and I ended up 'emptying the little boxes' in one of the casinos.  There's little boxes for tokes (tips) on each table in a pit, and one big box you empty them into.  In Pit One she grabbed the bag as soon as I'd unlocked the drawer.  Mental shrug, eh, if she wants to bag instead of key I'll respect her choice.  (Though I'd get some argument from  gender feminists about my bona fides I can say I am that much of a feminist.  You can keep your whacked theorizing and misandry. But fair play?  Step on up!)

Well, an older male floor supervisor took offense.  Although his job is to supervise two or more tables in a section of the pit, he also felt it was his job to intervene.  He made sure to 1)abuse his authority, 2) interfere with our task, and 3) act for the greater glory of sexism before we left that section.  I made sure I spoke "Glad to see sexism is alive and well" loud enough to be heard as I was leaving, after the bag was forced into my hands. Pity he didn't try to write me up for insolence.  Damn pity: I'd've liked to tear him a new one at  a hearing.  Next time; less deference, more drama.

The next pit we did I started out bagging and halfway through she grabbed it out of my hands and handed me the key.  Um, okay.  Wasn't moving fast enough for her? Kindness? Cultural?  Frustrated by the locks being positioned every which way? After which another older male floor made a comment as well.  Less of a dick than the first guy, though.

In an age when a woman can risk death or serious injury as a soldier, marine, cop, or firefighter--having her hold a bag of tokes? Well, that's just not right!  So...I'm viewed as some kind of a jerk for honoring her choice (by my fellow males).  Should I have yanked the bag from her and said, "You can't do that! You're a girl!!"  Would that have been the right  thing to do? 

I guess it is for some.  Isn't choice -liberty, freedom- what this country is all about?  I am really going to miss that.

Saw Star Trek last weekend, Angels and Demons yesterday.  A&D was better made.  I don't mean technically, or special effects; film has reached such a high level of expertise that it's hard to fault a movie for either of those like you could, say, Ed Wood.   A&D had two minor flaws.  Well, one quibble one WTF?.  The quibble, cardinals implying that you need to be one of them to be Pope.  Historically, that's the way it's been; but  fact is you only need be, 1) catholic and 2) male to be eligible.  The WTF? is the chamberlain went to all this trouble because of a Higgs boson?  Was I the only one in the theatre who was thinking,  yeah, so? a hypothetical particle that imparts mass; that's got him all worked up? because they called it a god particle?
That said, eh not bad, respected the book, which really wasn't that great.

Star Trek, now that was more of a disappointment; but I start with praise.  The first ten minutes  kicked ass. Not in an ooo, ahh things-go-boom type of way (didn't hurt, of course, because it wasn't done to substitute for storytelling); but  in a "How honorable it is to die, fighting tremendous odds/ For the ashes of one's family, or the temple of the gods" kind of way; lionizing such old fashioned values like duty, honor, love, sacrifice.    The rest of the movie, though left me thinking, "So the series never happened? It's going to be Star Trek: The Alternative Universe, everything you know is wrong?  Then there's the paradox of Spock; the old Spock in the past for starters,  the new Spock losing his mother (guess Journey To Babel  needs a rewrite, as does ST:The Voyage Home), and the now non-existent planet of Vulcan (buh-bye Amok Time).  It's all a geeky intellectual taffy pull, of course, and you end up with people saying you must have missed the exposition where they say it's an alternative time line. No. I didn't miss it.  It's just a bullshit cop out hoping to cover a plot hole.  If you bill it as an origin story, you have a responsibility to respect your audience' intelligence, and the existing body of work.  Just saying.  Otherwise, you're a cynical hack who's only in it for the money.

There's also the problem of red matter.  Oh, it seeds black holes does it?  Does it also give them stellar mass as well?  A huge spaceship may have a more sizable gravity than a human being, but don't you think a warp capable starship could outrun that comparatively negligible gravity even if  it has collapsed into a singularity?   Negligible compared to actual black holes, that is.  Wouldn't  a starship mass be unstable and start evaporating? How big could its event horizon be?

Speaking of stars; the stellar explosion Spock is trying to stop, that ultimately destroys Romulus:  where is it?  It couldn't be in the Romulan system if Spock is trying to stop it because he was going to stop it by creating a black hole.  Can't do that and save the planet orbiting that star, depending upon it for heat light and life , can you?   Just saying. Wouldn't any stellar explosion affecting any nearby star system be light years away at least and as many  years removed in time as well? So whatever cosmic, gamma, and x-rays generated,  unstoppable and comin' right at ya' would kill you just about the same time you witnessed the explosion if you stayed to watch. 

Finally,  why are you desperately trying to escape the black hole of insufficient mass to threaten you if you could just dive in, like Spock and the Romulans did. escaping into another time?

Okay. I slacked off this weekend.  Except for groceries and some baking I accomplished little.  I had plans to prep the garden and buy seedlings.  But I vedged out, re-read DragonSinger, and spent too much time on line. 

Meaning I'll have to scramble about if I want a garden this year.  But for now, launry needs doin'.