Went into the center at 8:30 p.m The streets were just packed with crowds out to get some air and hear music.
The view from the footbridge on the way in.
Actually, I just wanted to make sure it would be worth pushing Peter into town to see this, after being disappointed with the last show. And my damned batteries were giving out, so I didn't get the quality I wanted and was too far on the edge of the crowd. It was a clockwork with a carillon, and all these weird figures come out. Funny, and cute.
And part of it had two 'men' pistol duelling over a damsel, who wasn't so distressed. But all with the jerky movement of clockwork figures.
So will push Peter into town tomorrow for the six p.m. performance on the main square. The light will be better, and I can re-charge the damned batteries overnight. My camera zaps them to empty in the wink of an eye....
Back to La Strada
The weather feels toxic to me....
So have mostly stayed home, other than to wheel Peter to the supermarket, which is so badly air-conditioned that I get a wretching fit if I stay in there too long....
Have had to face facts today, and go see my doctor tomorrow. Which I have been putting off, and putting off... Because I have the sneakret suspicion that if I go, am gonna land in the hospital, and then what the hell is Peter gonna do? It won't be good, whatever it is...
On the other hand, getting sudden throw-up attacks in unlikely places isn't exactly fun.
Overheard on the bus yesterday: two elderly ladies talking about what ails them, and the one said, 'My daughter told me to see a doctor.' And the other, horrified, 'Oh, NO! You have to put that off to the last possible moment because they will FIND something!'
Now that is as austrian as apple pie is in Murka. I must have learned it through osmosis, I swear...
Which brings me to my blathering of the day. We have national health-care. And what I have been seeing on the net the past few days regarding the subject is just disgusting. Some people will do anything, anything at all for money. To have an organised disruption of Town Hall meetings paid for by big pharmacy and insurance companies there is absolutely disgusting.
Democracy is about the exchange of ideas, civil discourses, and mutual respect, and finding a middle ground to promote the general good for everyone. What I have been seeing, however, is beyond the bounds of what civilised nations do. Those with the most to lose have been rabble-rousing.
I can't express that in any other way, and there are so many crazy people, they just go with it. It would be as if I were to encourage W. in his paranoia, and then he would go out and kill someone.
And that is what the Faux News idiots are currently doing. There are others, but Faux is the worst going. And CNN right behind them.
I KNEW something horrible was gonna come up, but this ploy is really disgusting. And I hope that the majority of the public will understand where it is coming from, and find a way to shut the crazies up. Without violence.
I never thought Obama and co would have it easy. But the other side is really despicable at the moment, and their ploys are insidious.
People need to be heard, not shouted down.
Since it is still raining cats and dogs, puppies and kittens
Today doesn't look too good for being out and about, and I think a lot of events will literally 'fall into the water' as we say about cancellations...
So I went looking at news. And found the wonderful Orly Taitz meltdown over at Joe.My.God. Last week Jon Stewart called her 'the lost Gabor sister'. That was too much of a compliment, because none of them were ever that crazy.... just saying... enjoy this train wreck.
Ok, I got my pictures, but not the way I thought I would...
Of course I went out in the hope that the rain would stop... No one on the street, hey... Only I am crazy enough to hope... your in resident pessimistic optimist, you know?
So I went to Pierre's out on the square. You can smoke there. This is very important to me. And there were screens with things from last year, and a little white sign that means 'smoke at your own risk'. I like that... Really....
So there were these guys smoking at the end of the bar, and seemingly they had to do with the live music coming up. Sometimes I am outrageous. I admit it, I am. I thought they were late hippies, or something.... So I walked up and explained to the guy why I wanted his picture, as he was smoking, and he was really cool with it. 
And then he went over and tuned up his mandolin, and I felt foolish.
And then they played Tunesian music, but really the good stuff. Have heard enough in the hood to discern good from bad....
And they just rocked, but I got tired...
And then I went home, but it wasn't a waste of time....
And have to thank whomever it was for smoking so blatantly into the camera after I explained what I wanted. I didn't know he was Tunesian. I thought he was a hippie who never got out of the 60's, hey. I can sypmpathise with the Colbert constructed character. He says' 'I don't see race', which is foolish. But on another plane... He was just a guy who looked cool, I told him what I wanted to do to piss off the Amis, and he was delighted to do it.
Turned out he was an artist.
We interrupt our regular programming for La Strada because....
The weather Gods, are saying 'NO WAY'.
Heavy thunderstorms forecast for this evening, and evening it is. Lots of thunder on my left.
Sultry.....
Stifling....
And Thor, God of Thunder, is thundering outside of my winder... in the distance....
And the so-called weather experts have been forecasting really bad thunderstorms all day, after a horrendous hot spell, and high winds.... oh wow, it's beginning.... Thor is mad... and up to one hundred litres of rain per square meter of land during this spectacle, as opposed to 78 litres last week, and flooding.
Now, HOW, I ask you, is someone supposed to get his piano lifted 18 feet in the air, with him sitting on the chair somehow, get a film projected onto the surface of it, and play something nice and sometimes funny on it in the verticle? With a thunderstorm going on?
Oh dear, it's begun to really piss down torrents.
This is not, repeat NOT to happen during La Strada week.
Flooding is predicted in many parts of the city. I live not far from the river. Am so glad I live one flight up, but dejected because I do not have a boat tied up beneath my living room winder.
Ok, letting up for a moment, but it seems to be an outlyer.
There is still grumbling in the distace, and no one in their right mind is gonna let their pianer get hoisted 18 feet in the air and play in this weather.... And the people across the way are going sorta kinda crazy.... the people on the ground floor sound drunk, and the 'preacher' up on the second floor is doing his evening 'songs' (7 a.m and 7 p.m.) is singing away, and praising Jeebus. I really wouldn't mind, except... He can't sing. He sounds as if you got Joe Cocker fully drunk on an Obama beer summit, and set him off with something Baptist, and .... oh well, the result is at least an alarum clock.... You always KNOW it is seven, whether a.m or p.m....
Come to think of it, I get La Strada every damned day lately.... except they aren't artists.
Planes are rummaging around above the house, loud.
You would think Bush was back and planning an invasion, and they start playing 'The Sound of Music' above our houses....
Just to remind us, for pity's sake...
And yup, we got wind, and it is raining heavily, and thunder in the distance.
I should have gone up there yesterday, and gotten my photos. Because this is never gonna happen this evening.
At least I won't be out there fighting off hail with an umbrella, because NO ONE would be so stupid as to do 'the show must go on' in this weather...
But... there is a second performance scheduled for 11:30 this evening. So will set the alarum, and see how things look by then.
If still bad, well, I missed it. Damn. I should have gone over there yesterday....
Heaven on Earth
Saw an Italian duo this afternoon. They erected a plastic 'home'. And then a few dance numbers to very odd music. Some confrontational, others a bit humorous, but I wasn't all too taken with it....
One guy had a turkish bread in his mouth, and made it look like a duck bill. Then he started eating it, and the other was catching the crumbs to eat as they fell, and this little kid, maybe five, piped up next to me, with 'Well that isn't sanitary...
You can make elephant masks out of bag paper. Who knew? And then they did 'magic' tricks with small hankies.... Uh-huh...
La Strada is back,,,, and HOW
Went to look at a wreck downtown... (smile)
Well, I had a very nice evening, must say, and that doesn't come up too often, does it....
I got to the 'iron gate' square and you see that red thing? It was where it was all gonna happen....
Families were gathering, and there were kids, and balloons. Sorry I caught this one at a bad second....
but as above, there were balloons...
And then the red thing that had been making lots of noise got uncovered, and it was a locomotive. A really, really, decrepit one that the engineers were trying to repair. There were short circuits, explosions, fog, and so on, but they kept playing brass music. It was delightful, loud, and very much fun.
The group is Zic Zazou, from France, and they did jazz that rocked the audience till they nearly freaked out, and there had to be about one thousand people there. Many people might not know that Graz is a bastion of jazz music in central Europe, btw... They know and appreciate what is really really good, and oh, were these people ever! I mean, I don't dance, sorry, but they had me bouncing on my feet, and grooving with the groove. That good.
All the while 'trying to fix the machine'. But they were using machine parts as instruments as well. It was mind-boggling.
And for the last quarter of the show, they got it going, and everyone followed them to the main square down the street.
It was one of the best shows I have ever seen in this series, and cheered me the hell up.
They ended with some pyrotechnics, and the crowd went into frenzied applause. (Sigh) I love La Strada. You never know what you are gonna get. I was just sorry that my friend Clemens wasn't in town, because he takes wonderful pictures, and it would have been fun to go to Pierre's afterward, and check out the live music.
But then, nothing is perfect, ya know?
I hope you have some eye bleach handy....
Because Peter is always complaining that the people where he lives hang out fresh wash.. Every day. At three-thirty in the morning, even. Being brought up Catherlick, I opined that it was probably a mass psycho Pontious Pilate complex. You just don't wash your hands, you wash EVERYTHING you possess, and it certainly looks that way.
And some of the people in the hood are so vast in their beings, you would think they get their clothes from 'Omar the tent maker.' (Thanks to Gore Vidal, I think, for that concept... I've never forgotten it.)
So imagine my surprise today, looking out of 'REAR WINDOW', without the cast and binoculars, and saw THIS:
CAT WOMAN and ACQUAMARINE MERMAID LADY BLEW THEIR COVERS. Totally.
They have been hiding out where you least expected them to BE.
I was in such merriment, Peter got skeered. He did. When the hilarity died down... and it took some time... I said, 'I just do never want to know what scenarios those are used for.... EVER.'
So lady heroines... please hang those things up on the inside of your balconies, so that a.) you don't reveal your sneakret identity, and b.) make people want to run to the bathroom. Thank you.
As to 'Rear Window', a friend of Peter's said my view was nonsense. The people were vulgar in the hood, and crass about saying what they feel.
I was INSULTED, my friends. I KNOW that something is going to happen over there, I do. Now, across the way, there is a young lady whose only role in life seems to be washing chlothes, and hanging them out. At three-thirty in the morning, for instance. With search-lights in the yard, and everythng. I mean, this goes waaaaayyyyy beyond the Pontius Pilate syndrome. Way beyond...
Well, there is trouble where this Stepford wife is. Because she and her person are fighting loudly. And at six a.m. Peter wakes up to 'Ich werde Dich kalt machen.' Literally? 'I'm gonna make you cold.' Which is slang for dead.
And I said, 'See? I was right, and Hans was not. Rear Window. You are going to have to stay up all night every night, and catch him in the act.
Wheelchair or not, and wear your fucking glasses.'
So yes, it is the dog days, and nefarious things going on behind the scenes.
And that was my Steven Colbert number, but the facts are true...
This is not safe for ANYTHING
Just stumbled on a comedy central video clip and fell apart laughing. Do not play this in front of children.
| Jokes.com | ||||
| Mitch Fatel - Vibrator Crane | ||||
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Hokay, I have heard of freaky Fridays, but this one beats everything....
I got woken at quarter to six by someone who was out on the balcony in the building across from me telephoning on his handy. (Cell phone.) LOUDLY.
Hokay, happens...
Rode the bus across town, and pushed Peter over to the apothecary, to get his medicines, and had a harpy who drove me fucking crazy over something he needed, because it wasn't on the receipt, and it isn't anything good, but they gave him so much antibitotics, he shits himself if he doesn't take it and I am the one who gets to clean up the mess.
Am having a health problem of my own, and every exertion leaves me panting like a fucking dog in August, and haven't been to my own doctor because, a.) I have a lung infection at best, and b.) I don't want to know....
So I refused to go this week, you know?
I stay home a lot and sleep in the hope it will go away, but it isn't.
WHEN I can sleep. First Peter woke me up with news about a new time to go to hospital. Ok....
I hardly fell asleep, and there are two harpies in the building across the court from me who went off the charts for raging hormones, and screamed me awake. I have no idea what it was about.... but being wakened up rudely on a hot summer's day, screamed out the window that they should STFU.
And then for the upteenth time, my cell phone went off, and it is only for emergency calls from Peter, and once again it was from someone in Germany, telling me I could win a GMX auto, had taken part in a lottery, and I never did that in my life. And it eats up my credit on it. I was pissed off.
Meanwhile, I got an e-mail I do not know how to answer, and it was in caps.
Nothing mean, he is just not versed in internet courtesy.
So I thought the reign of terror was over. And then the phone rang again. Fredy.
Fredy contacted me a couple of weeks ago via a dating service I had forgotten about. And really really wants to meet me. I assume his name is really Friedrich. And was in Graz last Friday, and wanted to meet me, but I couldn't have him in my house, as Werner was stilll freaking out on my sofa cushions before I kicked him out....
(Some things get to be really too much, you know?)
So there he was again.... Fredy. At nine p.m. and randy in Carynthia, seemingly... I guess he didn't like getting put off politely, or something. I do not know the slightest fact about this person, but he seemingly is interested in me. He has the thickest carynthian dialect I have ever heard.
That is absurd, and not rational. And went all 'paternal' and asshole on me. I need to see a doctor, and then go to see him, and he will make it all better, because he's hung, or something.
Sigh.
Where was he five years ago?
That is not where I AM right now...
Am concerned about maybe a lung infection, emphysema, maybe cancer, and the clown car pulls up and distracts me to the point where I could jump outta winder, except mine isn't high enough up.
OK, W. is going up before court for supposedly having broken and entered his ex's house and beat her up, which I do not believe for a moment. If that were the case, he would have beat on me for watching Rachel Maddow, because he hates her with a passion.
The crazy ladies with the raging hormones are currently screaming full blast across the way. Sound like cats.
Oh. Ok..... The po-lice are over there now, and some of the sound is diminishing.
Our Po-lice only come if someone calls them, and then it had better be important, because otherwise YOU get bitched at.
That is the difference.
Just found this, and it hit a nerve...
So many people I went to school with were inducted into the armed forces, and landed in Viet Nam as cannon fodder. And the ones who came back weren't recognisable any more. They were damaged almost beyond repair. And am sure that things today are even worse.
It is never about what is good.... people just get sent there.... Take a look...
I do NOT want you to know how disgusted I am...
The birther thing was bad enough.
The Deather mode is really so fucked up that even Hitler wouldn't have thought it up, but seemingly, there are Hitlers in Murka. 'Bama is gonna kill all seniors.' Because they are getting fucking big bucks from the pharmaceutical firms and insurances, and they have this 'AGENDA'. Scare old people to death, and we get tons and tons of money!
I am so fucking speechless.... I don't know what to write, I really don't.
Oh, I knew that they would come up with something so nefarious it would be to throw up for. I suspected it.
Here, God is gonna punish us again with a bad thunderstorm.
It is thundering close to my house, and the rain is pouring down.
Butcha know what? It'a just a storm....
I so wish that would be what you all wanted....
So shortened....
No one over here denies care for people of any age, and the older they are, the sooner they get mended.
No one fucking WAITS for anything. Especially if it is dire...
Jeebus, Fuck, and Christ on a mule and the fucking donkey or TRex he rode in on, hey...
(I try to be nasty to ALL beliefs...)
Ok, he's on message, at least.....
I spent the morning listening to the fucking assholes who are in the pockets of national health insurances, and have spoken about my dealings and awesome disappointments with them in a post below... And was awestruck by the outright lies that are coming out on this debate, especially how the Administration is gonna kill our grandparents, and make those of us who have living ones frightened, oh yeah... And going off on how the system is Nazism. The lobbyists are doing one hell of a bang-up job on that.
I do not know what the fuck parallel universe I am living in at the moment. Some of those birthers think it is like that sci-fi movie, Logan's Run, and when you turn a certain age... you're gonna have to leave the world at thirty to better it for the rest of the community, or something.
Obama is doing everything to try to remedy that. And I swear, if the assholes defeat his plan... I never wanna hear anyone complain again. Call your Congress Critters and Senators, and let them know all that isn't an option, and you want a public option, or better still, a single payer option. It IS about your health, dammit...
I have been thinking about the Gates case... for a change.... it's class war
The entire uproar over the Prof. Dr. Gates incident, and Obama becoming involved has gotten under my fucking skin.
Gates did no wrong, he was in his own house. Whatever happened there was heated to heated words, and the man was wrongly arrested. Tapes show that the policeman over-exaggerated his reasons for going beyond the bounds of what the law is.
But the issue goes far deeper. And I do not think it is even about race any more. But yes that is a factor....
But is about police, and how they have their perceptions changed so that everyone, virtually everyone, is a potential perp.
That was a big one in one of my sociology courses at UNH.
Now, seemingly, the arresting officer is supposed to be one of the good guys. But something went terribly wrong.
I do not believe it was racially motivated for one second. It was also a class struggle.
I grew up in a 'poor' neighborhood. I got some modicum of success, but only worked three blocks away from my home. And closed shop late, dropped the money for the day into the bank in a locked zip bag, and went home. Five minute's walk away. Except....
Every time there was a rookie on the beat.... I got stopped, with yelling, 'Up against the WALL!! NOW!.' And then I got frisked for weapons. And then a gatling gun of questions...
'Where are you coming from?' 'Where are you going to?' 'WHO are your parents?' (they didn't wanna get into trouble after all....) And an ID. And then 'Don't you KNOW that if something happens here you will be the first to be suspected?'
Now, am talking about a town of about 100,ooo people at the time. And there was only one family of color in the entire place. And it didn't happen just once. It happened often.
But I must have come across as indigent, because I was working my ASS off to get some education, and didn't have 'da upper-class clothes' at the time. And I couldn't afford a car, so anyone out walking on the street at that time of night was suspect, regardless of color. It is their somewhat distorted view of the world.
And I soon learned---you don't lip those people off, and you say, 'Yes, Sir, No, Sir' or you are going to be in a world of trouble
That was what it was like, is all, so sometimes I think I can understand about how you are perceived can get you nearly into hot water. Nowadays, I suppose I would be tazed or something...
What I am trying to say is that the whole incident went much deeper. I read that Professor Gates had 'nice paintings' in his house. Whatever that means. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but I guess they were good, and valuable...
And the arresting officer probably went off the charts, because 'the perp' was living in a standard he is never going to afford. The released tapes show that he did not tell the truth about what the arrest.
It is always about class stuff in the end...
So my take is, he got in there, beautiful house, and the cop flipped out, and it ended up about class.
I have the sneaking suspicion that THAT was what that was about.
Flash mobs... I love the concept....
This got taken off from below, for some reason, so trying another....
And then there was this weird one in Antwerp, Belgium at their train station....
I mean, really, 'The Sound of Music'??? Hokay...
But it took the inimitable John Aravosis to show us how things like this happen. He is currently in Paris, cat-sitting, and had a very interesting video, following it. The link is here. I kept wondering how these things happen... And I love the concept. A mess of people turning up and amazing an unsuspecting public, and then just disappearing after a few minutes.
If you look for flash mob on YouTube, it takes on all sorts of fun variations. At the moment, it is more musical, and seemingly, those people work hard just to delight people. Just fully cool, if you ask me...
Since someone commented on The Naked Cowboy...
This is how my father first saw him, but on the streets of Vienna.
And he whispered, 'Who IS that????!!!' It was our version of naked cowboy....
If I had been quck witted at the time and fully out, I would have answered, 'Oh, he thinks he is in a pageant, and wants to be Miss Congeniality...' Except I wasn't.
He was out to get world peace. Yup. Miss Congeniality, all right.
To hand him credit, he was received in Russia and China, I think....
The name meant water, air, light, sun.
Some people are just creative, you know, and not afraid to hang it all out?
Well, it brought back memories of people who were creative and ballsy.
I love a conspiracy theory... Jon Stewart had a good one for the Birthers
About the birf certificate. This is funny...
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| The Born Identity | ||||
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