I've changed the title back to "I Don't Understand", now that it's available again. It's more appropriate (although "I Don't Approve!" might be even better).
(Note: The number in the post title is a sequence number, having nothing to do with contents.)
You can tell you've made God into your own image when He hates the same people you do.
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I'm going slightly crazy. Somebody somewhere on the street behind is playing music (I think that's what it's supposed to be) and my kitchen has been filled with boompah boompah boom boom thump boompah boom pause boompah thump thump, repeat, for over three hours now. I can hear nothing but bass. It's maddening. I'm ready to kill someone.
Turning on my own noise doesn't help. The boompah thump boom reverberates in my chest no matter what else I'm hearing, like when the bass drum passes you on the street during a parade.
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Daughter and Hercules got their driveway sealed the other day. (I got mine done, too.) One hour until it dried enough to walk on, three hours until the cars could sit on it. Not hot tar - it went on cold. I frankly don't know what it was.
Nobody told the Nugget about not walking on it. She came running across the lawn, and got five barefoot steps onto the fresh driveway before her Mommy caught her.
Her feet were solid black. I suggested they just let it dry, they could save on shoes....
It washed off with soap and water and a little sugar for scrubbing.
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Paul Klusman, of the "Engineer's Guide to Cats" YouTube videos, built a Steampunk laptop as a prop in one of his videos. It was a hit. (Not necessarily the video - the laptop.) So he made a video on how he made the steampunk laptop.
[http://youtu.be/8GvfxLBozXA]
In case you missed the original guide to cats back when it went viral, here it is:
[http://youtu.be/mHXBL6bzAR4]
T.J. is a friend and coworker. (No, they are not gay, and they don't live together.) They both are strong advocates for adopting adult shelter cats. I may have to make Paul a HOTW one of these days.
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A Day in the Life of Joe Republican
by John Gray of Cincinnati, Ohio
Joe gets up at 6 a.m. and fills his coffeepot with water to prepare his morning coffee. The water is clean and good because some tree-hugging liberal fought for minimum water-quality standards.
With his first swallow of water, he takes his daily medication. His medications are safe to take because some stupid commie liberal fought to ensure their safety and that they work as advertised. All but $10 of his medications are paid for by his employer's medical plan because some liberal union workers fought their employers for paid medical insurance - now Joe gets it too.
He prepares his morning breakfast, bacon and eggs. Joe's bacon is safe to eat because some girly-man liberal fought for laws to regulate the meat packing industry.
In the morning shower, Joe reaches for his shampoo. His bottle is properly labeled with each ingredient and its amount in the total contents because some crybaby liberal fought for his right to know what he was putting on his body and how much it contained.
Joe dresses, walks outside and takes a deep breath. The air he breathes is clean because some environmentalist wacko liberal fought for the laws to stop industries from polluting our air.
He walks on the government-provided sidewalk to subway station for his government-subsidized ride to work. It saves him considerable money in parking and transportation fees because some fancy-pants liberal fought for affordable public transportation, which gives everyone the opportunity to be a contributor.
Joe begins his work day. He has a good job with excellent pay, medical benefits, retirement, paid holidays and vacation because some lazy liberal union members fought and died for these working standards. Joe's employer pays these standards because Joe's employer doesn't want his employees to call the union. If Joe is hurt on the job or becomes unemployed, he'll get a worker compensation or unemployment check because some stupid liberal didn't think he should lose his home because of his temporary misfortune.
It is noontime and Joe needs to make a bank deposit so he can pay some bills. Joe's deposit is federally insured by the FSLIC because some godless liberal wanted to protect Joe's money from unscrupulous bankers who ruined the banking system before the Great Depression. Joe has to pay his Fannie Mae-underwritten mortgage and his below-market federal student loan because some elitist liberal decided that Joe and the government would be better off if he was educated and earned more money over his lifetime. Joe also forgets that in addition to his federally subsidized student loans, he attended a state funded university.
Joe is home from work. He plans to visit his father this evening at his farm home in the country. He gets in his car for the drive. His car is among the safest in the world because some America-hating liberal fought for car safety standards to go along with the tax-payer funded roads.
He arrives at his boyhood home. His was the third generation to live in the house financed by Farmers' Home Administration because bankers didn't want to make rural loans. The house didn't have electricity until some big-government liberal stuck his nose where it didn't belong and demanded rural electrification.
He is happy to see his father, who is now retired. His father lives on Social Security and a union pension because some wine-drinking, cheese-eating liberal made sure he could take care of himself so Joe wouldn't have to.
Joe gets back in his car for the ride home, and turns on a radio talk show. The radio host keeps saying that liberals are bad and conservatives are good. He doesn't mention that the beloved Republicans have fought against every protection and benefit Joe enjoys throughout his day. Joe agrees: "We don't need those big-government liberals ruining our lives! After all, I'm a self-made man who believes everyone should take care of themselves, just like I have."
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Sure, Mr. Beck. Liberals are a cancer on the nation. Look at all that damage they've done.
Actually, a small correction. Some of those laws protecting Joe were passed during Republican majorities, but that was in the first decades of the twentieth century, when Republicans were actually very liberal. Mr. Gray should have railed against "conservatives", not "Republicans".
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The country house. Why am I not out of there yet? It will be two years in October.
Reasons include:
The first winter, 2010-2011, was very bad. Neighbors told me that we'd got more snow here at the city house than they'd seen in decades. The country house also got a lot of snow, trees down, power outages. Fred, the van, is no good in snow, and with a long uphill driveway there, I just didn't hazard trips.
In the spring my kidney attacked me. Through the entire 2011 summer I had that stupid useless stent (they'd put it in the wrong place) that tore up my bladder if I so much as lifted more than a coffee cup, or walked, or drove, and I lost a lot of blood. I had a lot of pain and no energy.
The loss of time during the winter, spring, and summer of the first year hurt me badly financially. I had sold a lot of stock to buy the new house which reduced my income significantly. The idea was to sell the old house to the Hairless Hunk's in-laws and then reinvest the proceeds, regaining income. Instead, that house is now costing me almost $1,500 per month in taxes and utilities, on a reduced income, so that now it becomes difficult to hire pros for moving the big stuff and for repairs without dipping into investments, reducing my income even more.
I made some headway last fall. Then there came a cloud. I'm here because Daughter and Hercules live here. The company Hercules works for made some demands on him in the fall that, with a new baby, he didn't want to fulfill. But that company was looking iffy anyway. They had been bought out, and the new owners were consolidating offices. It started looking like one way or another they might have to move. There's no way I would stay here if they moved. I'd go back to the old house and sell this one. So ... I stopped moving things down here. Just in case.
In the late spring of this year, Hercules quit the old company and took another much more secure and satisfying job. But I still haven't been motivated to get my tail in gear. Money is still tight, but that isn't going to get better by waiting. So, why not?
Suspicions, what I think might be going on in my head:
I really like the old house. (I merely tolerate this house.) Here's a wonderful description of the three village(s) I lived near: http://www.chronogram.com/issue/2012/8/Community+Pages/Rhinebeck-Red-Hook-and-Tivol. Why would anyone want to leave that? I had 1.35 acres surrounded by woods, on the top of a ridge. From the back deck I could see miles of farmland and mountains. It's beautiful countryside, and I'm so afraid if I sell it I'll never go back. I don't want to lose it.
Hordes of people are convinced that the end of the world (by whatever means, from monster meteor to terrorism, to ... you name it) is due this December, or the religious folks are expecting the Rapture and/or the Second Coming, also December, anyway, whatever, I am also worried. Not about the same thing as the end-of-life-as-we-know-it people, though. I worry that some nutty group will decide, if the world doesn't end on schedule, that they have been anointed to make it happen. And here I sit in hailing distance of NYC. If the shit hits the fan (or the uranium hits the breeze) this is not a good place to be. The wrong people have guns here.
If any of the above means we can't stay here, the country house is ideal. It has plenty of room for a real garden. There's a well that can be tapped with a hand pump. The woods are full of rabbits and turkeys. The right people have guns. There's a fireplace with plenty of firewood available. It's up a steep dead-end road so it's less attractive to marauders. Plenty of room for Daughter, Hercules, and the Nugget.
I think the above is a large part of why I'm dragging my feet. I just don't want to give up that house.
I never ever ever wanted to be a landlord. I cringe at the thought of someone messing up something that is mine. But it may be that keeping the country house and renting it out, perhaps even to the Hunk's in-laws, is the only way to go. It gives me back the income I need, keeps the house in case I ever want or need it, and gives me a good excuse to revisit the area. Short of burning it down, or turning it into a meth lab, there's little that renters can do that can't be repaired.
Maybe I can be convinced to do that. Or forced to. I've got to get going, some direction. THIS isn't working.
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I just read an article on research in Hoarding Disorder. I had watched a few episodes of the cable show, and I felt so bad for most of the hoarders. I'd seen that they were very upset about things being thrown out, and I was myself a little upset because the people working at throwing things out didn't seem to understand the depth of the problem. It's not just laziness, but I had no other explanation or suggestion except that logic had nothing to do with it, so using logic was not an answer.
I learned long ago that where emotional reactions or brain dysfunction is concerned, logic doesn't exist.
The article is "Inside the Hoarder’s Brain: A Unique Problem with Decision-Making", full article here. An excerpt:
...the study found that people with hoarding disorder took much longer to make decisions about discarding their possessions and felt more sadness and anxiety about these choices than did the other participants. “One of the characteristics of hoarding is that people feel this sense of discomfort if they feel like they may be giving away something that they could use in future,” says Hollander, explaining that patients often become greatly distressed or even angry if they are pushed to give up apparently useless or excess possessions.
...
So, it’s not that hoarders are slobs or obsessive collectors. Rather, it’s that they have problems making the kinds of decisions about their stuff that others would consider reasonable.
Jay was absolutely a hoarder. Kitchen garbage, things that would rot or attract bugs, went out, but nothing else that entered the house ever left. I had to toss junk mail and empty cereal boxes when he wasn't looking. If he bought a tube of super glue for some project, and it hardened in the tube after opening (as they all do), he would insist on keeping the tube anyway. "It worked really well, so I want to keep the tube so I can buy the same stuff if I ever need something like that again."
That "something they could use in the future" really hit home. I heard that over and over from Jay. Also, he had been diagnosed as an Aspie just before his final surgery, and Asperger's is related to autism (mentioned in the article). Jay had difficulty with ALL decisions.
Also the "sadness and anxiety" part. Jay actually hyperventilated when I threw out a huge box-load of UNOPENED junk mail he had moved with him from Texas seven years before. He got very upset and restless, and started hiding things in the den.
It all fits so well.
Me, I've got a lot of junk, way too much junk, but it doesn't qualify as hoarding. It's the detritus of pity-me shopping sprees, especially in the four or five years after Jay died, trying to fill my empty life. I've got to get rid of much of it. It's not that I "think" it's valuable - it IS valuable, I know because I paid a small fortune for it. It's not that I can't bear to get rid of it, it's that I want to get out of it close to what I put into it. That's work, a lot of work, and I don't have time for it right now. So, I'm not a hoarder - I am absolutely and frankly a lazy procrastinator.
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(P.S. - the Asperger's link might explain why so many Mensan's homes are so terribly cluttered.)
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So. This morning I was watching "Sunday Morning", and they were doing a piece on a sculptor, and said that one of his very large pieces filled "the enormity of the Grande Palais" in Paris.
Sigh. The reporter obviously does not know what "enormity" means. The Parisians should be very insulted.
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I no longer watch late night or daytime talk shows. It seems like all the guests have something to sell, or need exposure, and that's the only reason they're there, not because they have anything interesting to say.
I have faithfully watched "Sunday Morning" since the early Charles Kuralt days. The show used to be about "down home" kind of stories. Ordinary people who did interesting or marvelous things, odd places and things off the beaten path, stuff like that. There's an old joke, "My home town is so small Charles Kuralt has been here twice."
Now it seems to be all about - surprise! - people who have something to sell or people who need exposure. It has gradually become a 90-minute celebrity ad. It's very subtle, but watch next week and you'll see what I mean.
I may stop watching "Sunday Morning". (I suspect I already have. I used to settle in front of the TV with my tea or coffee. Now I turn the TV on, but I'm not watching. Listening, at most. After the enormity of today's grammar gaffe, I don't even want to listen any more.)
When "People" magazine started, it was also about ordinary people in ordinary lives, who did or were interesting in some way. Then it quickly changed. It's now a celebrity advertising rag.
Why am I thinking about the worship of Mammon, and of bread and circuses?
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What's with the Veronica Lake hair on young women? You know, where they part it far over on the left side, so the right side falls in their faces, and they are constantly brushing it out of their eyes? I'm seeing it everywhere. Man, that's almost as stupid as those stilt-like shoes.
Women who worked so hard in the '70s to earn respect look on with despair.
Why would any woman want to look like she can't even control her own hair (toss, toss, flick, toss - sexy? Only if you don't mind looking like a ditz. I guess it's ok if you're a sexy ditz? Do you really want a man who prefers sexy over brains?)? Ok, the hair thing isn't a big thing itself, but it's indicative of an attitude.
What woman purposely wants to make her feet look and sound like hooves, and hobble herself? Is binding feet next?
Why do young women want to look like they are incapable of making sound sensible decisions?
It's a huge topic, the backslide. I'm too sad about it to get into it. They don't know what it used to be like, and they seem to be headed right back. On purpose.
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The book has been absorbing. I highly recommend it. It has sent me to the internet many times for history, geography, Persian words, names of plants, pharmacopeia, anatomy, social customs, and more. Man, life was hard in the eleventh century. Author Noah Gordon's research was admirable.
There were a few things that left me wondering. In the first few pages Gordon describes a healthy child who we are told is 18 months old, but seems from his description to be more like 6 months old at most. I think this may have been an error. I suspect that a few pages later he decided that the mother of the child should die in childbirth, so he changed the infant's age from 6 months to 18 to fit the timing, without changing the description.
At another point Gordon seems to realize that there's a sticky problem, so he solves it with a convenient horse bite. I found it very difficult to accept that bite. I couldn't imagine how it could have happened, and when Rob mentioned it to a friend, I couldn't imagine the friend not asking how. Like, the child would have to have been lying naked in a manger or something. (Huh? Perhaps in this case appropriate.) Also, it's impossible that no one had noticed the suspicious "scar" prior to that point in the story, and, having noticed, impossible that they would not have asked about it.
Later in the book there is a footrace in Persia. The race is so long and in such heat that few runners finish, so the winner of the handsome prize is he who is last moving. The Shah has also offered a further huge prize to whomever can continue to run a bit further after finishing the first race to a total of 126 Roman miles, completed within 12 hours. One of the characters accepts the Shah's challenge and wins the prize.
I wondered how far 126 Roman miles was in English miles. I hit the internet again. According to several sources, a Roman mile was equivalent to approximately 1,620 modern yards. Multiply, divide, and 126 Roman miles is 116 modern miles. Wow. But it gets more unbelievable. To run 116 miles in 12 hours (let alone less) requires an average speed of 9.7 mph. That's an average of a hair over 6 minutes per mile, sustained for 12 hours! In intense heat.
Sorry. I don't buy it.
The author's notes at the end, dated May 3, 2012, describe his research and mention that there's a movie in the works.
I don't know whether this is good or bad. A movie? Impossible! A PBS mini-series, maybe. But if the movie is less than 6 hours long (I'd like to say 10), it just won't do the book justice. I am disgusted that people will watch a 90-minute Hollywood synopsis, and then think they know the book.
I have never watched "Real Housewives of New Jersey". I don't want to, either. This morning, three of the women from the show were on "The View".
My new solidly lower middle class NJ neighborhood is full of housewives. I desperately want to say that, like Snooki and the rest of the group on "Jersey Shore", there's nobody like that in my neighborhood. Nobody who looks like, talks like, dresses like, acts like that.
I am distressed to admit that, yeah, there are several of them.
Mart Gross, biologist, on what behaviors get noted or discounted:
"Theory determines what you see."
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If cheerleading is a sport, and romping on a mat waving ribbons on a stick is a sport, how is ballet not a sport? I don't understand.
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I am now reading The Physician, by Noah Gordon, on the Kindle. His novel Shaman, based in the American west, in the 19th century, won the first James Fenimore Cooper Prize for Best Historical Fiction in 1993. The Physician is also full of historical detail. I have copied one of the reader reviews, as a description:
This engrossing book traces the life of 11th century Englishman, Robert Cole. Cole begins as a normal child, is quickly orphaned, and is then apprenticed to a barber-surgeon. As he travels throughout England with his master, the reader is introduced to all aspects of English peasant life. Family life, morality, religion, sexuality, medicine, xenophobia and history are all presented in an interesting, subtle, and easily read writing style. When Cole grows up and decides to be a physician, he comes in contact with Jewish doctors who explain to him that the best universities are in Moslem-ruled Persia, where no Christian may go. Determined to learn, Cole overcomes this obstacle by pretending to be a Jew. As he travels and studies in Persia, the same questions of lifestyle are addressed, only this time within the Jewish and Moslem communities. This is a great read for anyone who likes adventurous stories about growing up, or who is interested in sociology, religion, medicine, or history.
Hard to tell on the Kindle, but it's apparently a big book, judging by the price for tree-based (new price/lowest used price). Um, why is the paperback more expensive than the hardcover?
One of the books I have been reading has a set of topics for discussion at the end, one of which, details aside, asks if all people should be held to the same standards of morality, or should circumstances and a person's life experiences be taken into consideration?
Wow.
That's such a simple question, but not something we tend to think about when we make judgements about people. We just do it. If their standards are not ours, we take circumstances and the other person's life into consideration and understand and excuse them, or we don't and we condemn them.
After thinking about it, I realize that my own morality, my standard for myself, has gotten tighter over the years, but I am less likely to hold others to my standard. I am more likely to be understanding (often), to the point of not even considering the deviations of others to be failings. In fact, when you take conditions, circumstances, and needs into consideration, I can often find a kind of high morality behind even base acts.
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A friend mentioned to me that his son had been convicted of a felony, and asked if that mattered to me. I said no, it didn't matter to me what he may have done, what matters is what he is doing now. And that's really true. I didn't even ask what the felony was.
I like me. That's not a terrible thing. Sometimes I drive people nuts by asking why they do or did something. They say it doesn't matter, but to me it does. I need to understand why. I need to understand where it fits in their life experience.
The greatest frustration is when I don't understand.
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Something I don't understand about the Olympics - I thought all the athletes and teams were supposed to be "amateurs". Yeah, I know there's government support and sponsorships and so on. There has to be because they have to practice so much and that takes time and money. But isn't there a line somewhere? The US basketball team is all professional players. I mean multimillionaire players from professional NBA teams. How can they be considered in any way amateurs? How are they in the Olympics? Why don't they just have a World Series of basketball instead? That's what it is....
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I have two layers of long heavy fringe hanging in the arch between the living room and the kitchen. It had been on spring tension rods, but eventually the rods started sagging, and when the Nugget goes through sometimes she gets a wee bit tangled and pulls one or both down. Jasper occasionally attacks them, too.
So I bought some brackets and two lengths of PVC pipe.
The PVC started sagging, so I bought some wood dowel and fed that into the pipes to strengthen them.
They still sagged. That fringe is heavy!
I decided to buy a small diameter metal pipe, like for plumbing, or gas lines. That won't sag!
Wow! Have you priced pipe lately? It's like $13 or more per FOOT! Holy cow! Why?!
I ended up with big fat wooden doweling, like would be used for regular DIY curtain rods. Not what I wanted, but it seems to be holding up ok so far.
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The township collects garbage twice a week here, Mondays and Thursdays. It's paid from taxes and there doesn't seem to be any limit on how much you can put out. I put out one small kitchen bag half full. They collect recycling twice a month, first and third Wednesdays. I put out 2 tall kitchen trash cans full every recycle collection.
My production is just the opposite of what they seem to expect. I have four times as much recycling as garbage. Two weeks of trash paper and cardboard will bury me alive. I think that may be the norm around here, since I see people putting recycle stuff out on garbage days. When whatever container they're using is full, it goes out. Most people don't have enough room to store that much recyclable stuff.
I wonder if the township is aware of the relative amounts, and that people who would like to recycle are forced to put recyclables out on garbage day? I wonder if they care? The township recycle center is just up the road from me, between me and the grocery store, and they're open every day until 3 pm, so when the paper and cardboard gets overwhelming, I just drop a load off there. People who have jobs can't do that.
(No, I am not going to volunteer to do neighborhood recycle center runs.)
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I once knew a country bar in the Gettysburg, Pa. area with a hunting theme, that labelled the restrooms "Setters" and "Pointers", along with a picture of the dog breed. Do you know that there were people (like my friend Jeannie) who couldn't figure out which door was theirs? Jeannie said she couldn't tell by looking at the picture whether it was a girl dog or a boy dog.
Jasper gets canned food once a week, on Sunday. Last weekend I somehow decided Saturday was Sunday, and gave it to him a day early. Today he is pestering me, underfoot constantly and biting my ankles when I sit down. I guess he knows it's Saturday because of the different noise patterns outside.
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Last Monday evening I watched Antiques Roadshow. After that, something came on named Market Warriors. I didn't watch the first half, but I gather it went something like this: four people were turned loose in one of those antiques dealers' halls, where there are many stalls with dealers selling stuff. The four were given assignments to buy things fitting certain criteria, like advertising prior to 1970, "smalls", toys, and so on, and then the items they chose for each criteria would be put up for auction and the winner would be the one who made the most profit.
When I figured out that's what was going on, I about cracked up. You don't buy things from an antique dealer, then sell it at auction! NO! WAY! Dealers buy things at auction, and then mark them up by like 100%.
There's only one way to have any hope of not losing money.
First you research the auction. Who's attending? Dealers? Homeowners? Collectors? Decorators? And about how many of each? You're not making money selling to dealers or collectors at auction, since they know exactly what an item will sell for in a shop (shoppe!) and won't pay more than that. Homeowners are looking for yard sale prices, things that work, or particular decorator pieces. Your best bet is a room full of decorators. Big city professional decorators will buy almost anything at almost any price, since they usually have a decor or two in mind, so if they see something currently in fashion, they'll just wrap words around the item and can charge their customer whatever it cost. They don't have to worry about it taking up room until they can sell it. And even then, you'll need at least four or more bidding against each other.
If you find an auction that decorators attend, next you check out some decorating magazines. What's hot? Cast iron lawn furniture is always good, beat up chests and cabinets with multiple layers of chipped and worn paint, that sort of thing. What's big this year?
If you have to make do with an auction hall full of collectors, dealers, or ordinary civilians, you have little hope of turning a profit on anything you bought from a dealer. Kitschy is your best bet - stuff with little real value, but it's cute and appealing.
AFTER you find out who will be at the auction, then you select things to sell. You are still doomed to failure if you buy from a dealer who knows what they've got. Instead, shop yard sales, and little "junk" shops off on the side roads.
Our four shoppers had no idea what the bidders were likely to be looking for. I was shocked that there were so very few people attending the auction, although there were some phone-in bids, too. It went about as I figured it would. Only a few people bid on each item. The "contestants" had in many cases bargained the shop owner down from his or her original asking price, which they took pride in, but at auction they got much less.
Duh. No kidding.
The only thing that sold for more than the guy had paid for it was a wooden rocking horse that wasn't even the antique he'd thought it was, but it was pretty. Pouf decor item.
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I had an interesting experience this week. I bought a necklace on Etsy. The seller seemed to think it was a "vintage" "Bedouin" necklace with "coral, turquoise, and silver". Well, I knew by looking at the photo that it was not old, or real Bedouin, or silver, and that although there were some coral and turquoise nuggets strung among the beads, most of it was glass - it's a tourist trap piece. But it would look very nice with one of my caftans, and it was cheap, like $20, with free shipping. The seller was in the Netherlands. The necklace arrived packed in bubble wrap in a flattish metal box inside a padded envelope.
I could have thrown the box away. Daughter certainly would have immediately, without a second thought. But I got curious as to what it was. I looked it up on the internet. It's a Belgian cigar box from the 1950s without a dent, scratch, stain, or spot of rust on it. Ones like it in much worse condition are listed on collectors' sites at $60-$100.
(Hmmmm. Obviously the seller of the necklace knows nothing about what she has, good or bad. Quick! Buy something else from her!)
I have this guilty feeling, like that I should alert her. Then again, I want to buy more from her to see what it might arrive in.
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The following is a 10-minute video about a guy with Tourette's, Luke, who just wants a girlfriend. Unfortunately, he's one of the 10% who has the problem with uncontrollable swearing.
The brain is a mysterious thing. The Tourette's part of Luke's brain knows exactly which words are forbidden and will get the worst reaction and that's what it generates. So I can't help wondering - if Luke had been raised in a society of anorexic, diabetic, truck drivers, would he be shouting "Cheesecake!", and "Sugar!" instead of "F--k you!" and "Bitch!"?
It reminds me a bit of Jay, when his brain decided to throw away the left side of the world, to the point where he was blind to the first half of double words.
I knew a guy with Tourette's once. He didn't have the swearing thing, though. He just twitched a lot and yipped and barked. He and his wife were in Mensa. We all liked him. He was sweet. We all strongly disliked his wife. They'd got married just before they moved to the Poughkeepsie area and became active in the local group. She was more than a bit of a slut, wandering off all the time with guys, and she'd yell at him, "You're barking again! Stop it!" like she had no understanding of the syndrome or didn't care about how difficult it was for him to control it. She eventually wandered off, within the first year, I think. After she left, since he couldn't drive because of the twitching, one of us would pick him up for the dinners and games nights.
One evening I gave him a ride home after a dinner, and he started talking. I'd never heard anything like it. Words poured out of him. What he was saying made sense in and of itself, but it just poured out so fast and had nothing to do with anything and segued into different topics at warp speed. In spates between the deluge, he said that when he starts talking uncontrollably it means a seizure is coming on and if it did while he was in the car I shouldn't panic but just let it go, wait it out, and he's sorry if it scares me. I responded that my late husband had seizures, and they don't bother me a bit. When we arrived outside his apartment, I offered to sit with him until whatever happened had passed, but he said no, he was used to it and would be ok.
I never saw him again. I often wondered what happened to him.
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In the past few months I have read (not listed in order):
The Five People You Meet in Heaven - Mitch Alborn
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and Other Tales of the Jazz Age - F. Scott Fitzgerald
What Your Childhood Memories Say About You ... and What You Can Do About It - Kevin Leman
How To Raise Emotionally Healthy Children: Meeting the Five Critical Needs of Children - Gerald Newmark
Madame Bovary - Gustav Flaubert
Monday Mornings: A Novel - Sanjay Gupta
Sisters - Kathleen Thompson Norris
Fairy Tales Every Child Should Know - ?
A few other books I started and not only didn't finish, they were so bad I deleted them from the Kindle.
I am now reading God is an Englishman, R. Delderfield.
All were either free or $.99 to $1.99 for the Kindle.
I have accepted that as a warning for the future. Sometimes a deal too good to pass up should be passed up.
An advantage of paper books is that you can leaf through and scan here and there to get some idea as to whether it's worth reading. Can't really do that with an electronic book. Well, you can, but it's a pain and you have to commit to acquiring it first.
#1 was good as a story of a man and his life. I don't understand what all the fuss was about when it first came out, though. I see no real lesson to be learned, as some people had described it. I can't believe some people, after reading it, went about trying to identify the five they'd be likely to encounter. I mean, if there was any lesson at all, it was exactly that you CAN'T anticipate that.
#2 leaves me wondering why Fitzgerald was so celebrated. What a pile of dross.
#3 and #4 are typical of those books that could have said everything they had to say in 20 paragraphs, but proceed to take 200 pages to say it. I didn't get more than halfway through either before I tired of the repetition.
#5 was not at all what I expected, but would have been a fairly good read *IF* I had not started out with much higher expectations. Frankly, it looks to me like it was written as a romance novel for the women of the time specifically to teach a lesson - that women must avoid romantic fantasies and accept their lot in life, or suffer the consequences. Hmmm.
#6 was more like an outline. The author may have had some good tales to tell, but character development and situations were skimpy. It seems like it was actually just an idea for a television series, which might have been a pretty good show, and this was a demo piece.
#7 was depressing. I wanted to wade into the novel and slap them all upside the head.
#8 a waste. Not the stories I knew...
Again, I had high hopes for God Is an Englishman. It starts out rip-snorting, but about 1/4 of the way through it's starting to bog down. I find myself frowning a lot.
Yeah, gentlewomen of the time were sheltered, and not all that well educated, but not so much that they didn't see animals "doing it", and weren't so stupid that they couldn't figure it out. Being taught that sex is unladylike and to be "endured" is not the same as being totally ignorant of what is involved.
And after his trip through the countryside, Adam knows he wants to run his carting business in those spaces not served by the railroads, I think it was the unsullied northeastern part of the isles (don't remember, didn't pay attention, and with the Kindle it's not all that easy to leaf through and find that part - one more way that paper is better than bytes) where he would cart materials from the producers to the nearest railroad - so why on earth has he set his headquarters in London, environs already fully served by rails? Waggons (yeah, two "g"s), horses, and drivers all stabled in London, when their territory would be many many miles away? Seems like he should have his stables in the centers of the territories he wants to serve, in multiple locations. But, maybe I'm getting ahead of him.
This book is making me look up a lot of stuff on the internet, like mentions of Chat Moss. It turns out Chat Moss is a huge peat bog that presented a challenge to the railroad, ingeniously solved by "floating" the rail bed across it. I also had to look up the movers and shakers of the time, Cleveland bay horses, skewbald, the well at Cawnpore, the Crimean war, various bits of military attire and accoutrements and a bunch of other things. Leaves me wondering how much I used to miss or gloss over when reading books before the internet.
I'll probably finish "God Is...", but I doubt that I'll want to read the following two parts of the trilogy.
I have high hopes for several other books on the Kindle, and recently I have purchased on paper the latest Stephen King, and a non-fiction book by journalist Michael J. Totten, and a novel by Leonard Pitts that I'm sure will be good, and a few others.
iQuad performing at the Southern Oregon Kite Festival at Port of Brookings Harbor 7-21-12.
In the comments, JPurvis explains:
"For those who are scratching their heads, the kites that they are flying in the video are quad line kites known as Revolution Kites aka(Rev's). They are flown with 4 lines that are connected to 2 handles. The flyer can control the speed and direction of the kite by using the handles to change the pitch of the kite itself. The lines don't get tangled because they are braided really smooth and slide against each other without causing too much friction."
...and the operators are careful to unwrap after maneuvers that wrap them.
And then of course there are those commenters, the future saviors of the planet, who are yelling "Fake! You can see the strings!" Several of them. Sigh. Very depressing. Never never never read YouTube comments. Lose all hope ye who tread there.
I have a very long to-do list. Yesterday I "wasted" a few hours watching a South Korean movie on YouTube, and I'm not at all sorry I did. It all started with a chance mention of the Korean island of Silmido and some kind of secret mission there.
Silmido became historically significant when it was used as the training ground (January 21, 1968 to August 23, 1971) for Unit 684, a South Korean group meant to assassinate North Korean leader Kim Il-sung in revenge for The Blue House Raid assassination attempt against Park Chung-hee. Traces of the training facilities can still be seen. Under circumstances that have still not been fully brought to light, the members of the group mutinied and went to Seoul in 1971, where they were killed or committed suicide.
Unit 648, composed of "expendable" men drawn from prisons and the streets endured horrific and often sadistic training to become just about the best and tightest fighting force in Korea.. South Korea has still not admitted much of anything, but a few trainers and guards survived to tell the tale. The movie starts and ends with the basic facts, but the details of the men's relationships and motives and what happened on the island had to be invented.
The movie says the men mutinied because they found out they were to be killed because they were dangerous and knew too much - a political and social liability. The official story is that they figured they would be kept on the island indefinitely and it was more like a prison break. My opinion is that if they mutinied because of despair, they would have dispersed and gone into hiding when they reached the mainland. Instead, they attacked the government.
The movie is ... I don't know what to say. It's awful and wonderful. Technically it's a masterpiece. A word of advice, though - when you see the fire with the irons in it, and the trainer is speaking of torture, skip ahead about a minute. I don't know if that scene was that bad, but I didn't stick around to find out.
I don't know why I'd never heard of this before.
Here it is. It's 2 hours, but you don't have to watch it all at once. I watched it in 20-minute pieces over the day. Larger screen is better. If you don't have time now, bookmark it on YouTube.
This little French film is amazing. Don't worry about the length. The last third is credits. I found it on Roba's blog, "And Far Away" (link over there on the right). To quote Roba, "This French short film, Le Miroir (The Mirror) manages to tug at the heart strings. Directed by Ramon and Pedro, it takes you through the entire life of a boy in that bathroom mirror."
The shoes at the link were featured on Regretsy.com. You supply a pair of shoes, and for a mere $2850.00 she'll cover them (badly, sloppily, look at the photos) with duct tape for you. (If the link to the shoes is dead, her shop is at http://www.etsy.com/shop/LindsayRickman?ref=pr_shop_more.)
I wandered around her shop, and she has some very, um, interesting, um, stuff for pipe dream prices. On the other hand, may as well try. You can always drop the price if nothing sells.
I wonder if she ever actually sells anything? On the other hand, there are people who will find her work truly interesting, and will pay for a unique piece of art. It's probably a small niche, but then again, there are people who will happily plant 30 pink flamingos in their yard.
But really, I figure she should at least learn to sew....
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Speaking of sewing, I had mentioned a simple little dress that Nugget wore one day. I figured I could easily copy it. The (blurry) photos below are of my learning piece. I found out that the armholes needed to be a little deeper than my tracing showed (I had to deepen them by hand), and it could be a bit shorter. Also, I need a sewing machine that does buttonholes. (Until I get a one-o'-them I'm going back to bound buttonholes. They're easier and they always look good.)
It's reversible to pink seersucker. The next version will not be reversible (makes it unnecessarily complicated), and will have embroidery or appliques.
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12 dead from shooting in movie theater in Colorado. Remaining 59 injured likely to survive. 24-hour news coverage. Flags all over US go to half-mast.
13 dead in truck accident in Texas. Remaining 10 injured not likely to live. Brief stories on news. Everyone shrugs and makes comments about clown cars. No mention of flags.
I don't understand.
By the way, there are places in the world where things like the theater shootings happen every day. Many more places where they happen weekly. We have no concept.
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There something odd going on with the fireflies (lightning bugs) tonight.
Normally, they flash and then the light quickly dies down, usually within three seconds Tonight they are flashing, and then the flash dies down very slowly, like someone is turning down a dimmer switch. It's taking like six seconds or more to go dark. (Count it off - it's actually a long time.) Sometimes they flash again before the previous flash is even half gone. I've never seen that before.
It's about 77 degrees F out there, so I doubt that it's due to heat.
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When your hand is in the tiger's mouth, you have to pet the head.
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Becs asked for a photo of the flamingos. There are only a few standing here at the new house, and those few were arranged by a 15-month old toddler, so no photos yet. But here is the flock from 2008, at the old house, in an unmowed section of the side yard. There are 30 of them.
