This is to bring you all luck in the coming year...

These are your luck bringers for the coming year, so pick one....

A Very Telling Little Sentence....

CNN showed a puff piece yesterday.. about Obama in Hawaii at a take out restaurant, and in it he goes on about nutrition, and how you eat something nutricious first, but save a little room, because there's this terrific ice cream place across the street. And then he frowned slightly, and told a member of the fawning press with him

'You don't have to write that down.'

Like a schoolteacher, you know? (as in, 'Hey, it isn't gonna be on the test!' you know???)

The rest mentioned how the island was without electricity for eleven hours, and the Obamas were the first to be back on-line after. Now that is sort of bitchy. I hate to imagine what horror scenarios were going through the collective heads of the Sneakret Service during the black-out, I really do...

But that little sentence has stuck in my head the last day or so. The esteemed Duncan Black who has the blog Eschaton, has often gone ON about the phenomenon he calls 'journamalism'. Decrying the folks who are stenographers, and call themselves journalists, and swallow the cool-aid. Because they only survive if they are in with whoever is in power. Slavering Scribes of the Village, I call them.... Stenographers are not journalists, but the journamalists never figured that out.

So, that little sentence was a toss-off, to be sure, but am getting the feeling that Obama can be mighty sarcastic in a very oblique way, and doesn't suffer fools gladly. His reaction to the puppy questions already have shown that. Snark with style.

Maybe, just maybe, real journalists might get pushed to the fore in the coming years. That would be nice.... Frank Rich got something nearly right last week, but then he blew it totally in his final paragraphs. But for the most part it was illuminating... link here

(The last part had me hot under the collar and steam coming out of my ears...)

So now I am confused, Preciousses... What role are his advisors really playing here? Am not trying to make a mountain out of a mole-hill, no. But if you get to see the President elect unscripted, it is very interesting....

And that was a telling little sentence, for sure. Saw it twice on the tee-vee, and it reverbrated. Will the REAL Barack Obama now please stand up, as the old show used to say?

Update: Annti was kind enough to send me the following information about the power shortage I had not seen, so am adding it to this post.

"Actually, the electric company SENT A COMMERCIAL GENERATOR out to their rented vacation home AS SOON AS THEY LOST POWER, and Barry SENT IT BACK. He didn't want the special treatment, and knew that one night without power would never hurt them. He thanked the power company, said no thank you, and said that they were going to bed early. Look it up in the London Daily Mail, that's where I saw it, after the paparazzi invaded his very-private memorial service for his grandmother, since he'd missed the funeral. His sister and he were sprinkling her ashes into the ocean and the zoom lenses intruded, nonetheless. The power outage is covered much better, with more accurate detail about the time-line and his refusal of special treatment when his neighbors went without. The Secret Service did go and purchase two residential generators, but they never even cranked 'em up, because he didn't want to waste the gasoline and create the pollution. I'm no Barry-worshipper, but he showed a lot of gumption to not freak out over a little black-out, when he still remembers Gustav, Rita and Katrina. Please add this and the London Daily Mail to the post."

Well, horridays part one over....

So, two horridays gone by... Made a roast to get through them. One of my good ones I hadn't done in a long while....

You braise a piece of beef on all sides. Fill the bottom of a big casserole with thick slices of onion and two crushed garlic cloves. Set the roast on the onions. Add lots of carrot pieces and quartered potatoes sall around it. Add two small bay leaves, 12 peppercorns, 12 whole allspice, 2 cloves, and two to three tablespoons of grated garlic. Add 1/4 l white rum or red wine. Rum is better. Cover and place in a slow oven, about 180 degrees C for two hours, then about 50 minutes at 150 degrees C. The carrots should be soft with a bit of bite to them by then, and the roast nice and tender. Let the roast rest for about 10 minutes to relax, slice, and sprinkle the meat with freshly chopped dill and serve with the carrots and potatoes. Salt to taste. It is an excellent recipe, and very old.

Otherwise, the tee-vee runs old films through all the horridays. So I cherry-picked a few to watch. Yesterday it was all three Airport fims en suite. Airport 75, the one with Karen Black was fun to watch after thirty some odd years. Looking back, it was very subtly camp. Was working in the cinema when it came out, and we had so much fun with it. Karen Black had what one calls a 'Silberblick' here, slightly cross-eyed, and the cinematographer must have really hated her. She plays a chief stewardess, you see, and a small plane collides and destroys a part of the cockpit, the co-pilot gets sucked out into oblivion, the navigator is dead, and the pilot totally injured so badly, he can't see. So Karen Black has to fly the plane. And in the tensest scenes where she is supposed to be terrified, she goes fully cross-eyed. One of the high points for terrible acting is when she is on a transponder, and screams 'There's no one left to fly the PLANE!' You can't see it on the tee-vee, thank goodness, but on the big screen, her eyes crossed TWICE.

It is a kitsch-orgy, Helen Reddy plays a nun who tends to Linda Blair, who is waiting for a kidney transplant, and sings the sappiest song ever written. Gloria Swanson plays herself, and gets to do the most hilarious 30's style acting and bombs the one-liner, 'The mountains.... they are so close!' (They are flying around in the mountains surrounding Salt Lake City, you see...) Charlton Heston rescues the plane after descending like a Deus ex machina from a helicopter, and lands them all safely. Sid Ceasar plays a wanna-be star. Myrna Loy does boilermakers all through it but remains oddly sober. They spared absolutely nothing to get everyone who was everyone on the B list in Hollywood, and it is a wonderful disaster, although entertaining.

Oh well, it brought back some very funny memories, and Peter was fully pisssed off with me for laughing about it, because he had never seen it, and got right INTO the story. How the hell can you LAUGH, he kept asking, and when something good was coming up, I'd say, 'Ok, here it comes,' and some terribly delivered line would come out. And all through it, he was on the edge of his wheelchair, with, 'What's gonna happen next?' Practically nail-biting. 'They all land safely, so just SIT BACK and relax, won't you?'

The second film was 'Victor/Victoria'. the Blake Edwards version. It was a joy to see again after a long time, and timeless. The original was filmed in 1933 in black and white, by the German UFA studios, and starred a remarkable Renate Müller, and was a very odd film.... There were blocks of narration-----and they were all in rhyme. But it was funny, and charming, and not so in your face because that wouldn't have been possible then, although everything was very clear.... I was sceptical, when the Edwards version came out, and then astounded. He turned a diamond in the rough into one of the best in the world. And bless Robert Preston, wherever he is...

Today I am having fun with Gremlins I and II. Two is definitely better. And I just LOOOVE Spike. And they destroy the Trump Tower. So camp, you can't get a 'horror' film any better. Although the scene in the first part in the movie theater where the Gremölins are grooving out on 'Snow White' in a movie theater is so perverse, I cackle.

Tja, when can we get back to normal, here? And tomorrow Sunday.... sigh.... At least I got food, and made chili...

Happy Horridays....

This is the post modern deconstructed version.

Ok, NO I am totally in Scrooge mode so don't fuck with me

Update... photos from yesterday. Baby Jeebus arrived early yesterday morning. Must have had a tight schedule. Astonishing things inside. (sniffle...)

There ARE angels, and she finally proved it yesterday.

Whereas the store workers looked just plain silly as always...

And I looked like this before I finally went nuclear.

As of twenty minutes ago, it is 'silent night'. Yup. But the hours before? Pandemonium.

Because, you see, the entire country shuts down, and if you forget to buy something, you might as well be dead, or very creative in the kitchen. Or kill yourself.

This year is really crass. And was up in the morning, running to the supermarket at six-thirty in the a.m. Where I get subsiduary stuff. Herbs, staples, the usual shit. And then on to the market.

Where I nearly had a fucking stroke. I had stuff for today, but need something to stretch for two days, and get all the stuff Peter needs.... And the crowds, and the waiting, and my back hurt. But that is the 24th, hey, it 's what they do... elbow in front of you, are agressive, as if there is never gonna be food on this earth ever again.

I had thought, ok, pot roast, and I can make Gatsch on the second day. Gatsch is what I used to call leftovers that my Mom used to make, a mish-mash of it, and it was even better than what was the day before. Right. So I finally get my turn, and whaddaya know, that piece of beef cost 27 Euros! I was so pissed of I could have spit. But swallowed my pride and bought the fucking thing...

So that was two trips back and forth between the square and Peter's already, and he was breakfasting. Back again for the vegetables, and the prices were ok. Saw a goose for four people going over the counter for 48 Euros, I was fucking speechless. I only did that once, goose. It was fun. And I set off the fire alarm in the hotel, but it was worth it. And the firemen were sad... It smelled so good, they said. But I saved 90 per cent of it, and did the rest at home, and we ate on it for a WEEK...

Five years ago they cost half that, and that was damned expensive.

Then it was time to go and get a Xmas tree. We used to have knock-out, beautiful ones. It was mostly a Peter thing, that, having an xmas tree. But I enjoyed decorating them and doing something different, it was creative. We used to have Styrian ones, American ones for decoration, and collected an immense amount of ornaments, and things for it. We hadn't had one for over five years...

So I relented, and said ok. Not a big one. And I had seen a beautiful one yesterday for 27 Euros, and he gave me 30 for it. Today it cost 37 for the same tree. And I told him to stick it where the sun don't shine.

They are OUT there gouging the fucking WHITES out of your eyes, because 'it's Christmas.' By this time, I was getting REALLY pissed off.

I found a nice one elsewhere for 25. Perfect. So I dragged it home. Cussing, and turning the air blue.

So... I thought I had everything DONE, you know? And took the key to the cellar to get out all the ornaments and shit. And whaddaya know? That key doesn't FIT there any more. The fucking Serbs in the house changed all the locks where his and my stuff is stored. I bought so much stuff from Venice, and elsewhere, and I couldn't get in.

It didn't surprise me. Not in the least....

So I had to leave Wimpy crying, and get something to PUT on the goddamned tree. And by that time, I was near the boiling point.

Twice more to the market, just to get something to make it look like a Christmas tree. Photos tomorrow. I never did a poverty tree before....

But then it got to be too much. For today, you eat fish here. And I made a mussel soup, and then a light salad with fresh herring and a sauce tartar dressing. I fucking THOUGHT. Peter had used up all the sauce tartare, and I got stuck in the kitchen with NADA.

And THAT is when I started yelling. LOUD. He ATE it, on bread. Well, glory fucking hallelujah, and just betray me again, you git. I had to make ham and eggs... And am going to go to hell. Am already there, as I am allergic to eggs...

Oh, yes, Xmas.... My dear friend and former colleague thinks I am going to have a wonderful one this year. Because I was ALWAYS the one to say, hey, I'll take those shifts, you have family, and mine are far away... And I got St. Stephan's off, and invited people to dinner.

Well Mr. Scrooge here says, 'Just FUCK it. Christmas my arse... Just another excuse to gouge the whites out of your eyes. Fuck Christmas.'

Oh, NH made the news again... Normally it is just the primaries...

ALL the foreign news stations carried the story. Ice storms in New Hampshire.

Power outages. Creepy video clips....

Then I got a mail from my favorite people. 2+1/2 days without electricity.

The images were powerful, as only the MSM can do. But I got worried.... No elecricity, no heat, etc....

My Dad hadn't mailed me for several days, so I thought... oh. Ice storms. uh-huh.....

So I called him, and it worked. He wasn't hit by it.... At ninety two he is just glad that he doesn't have to drive, and seemingly, his other neighbors look after him.

My brother wasn't so lucky.

Sometimes there is justice in the world.

I related it to a friend, and she said, 'That sounds like Schadenfreude in your voice.' And indeed, it was. What goes around, comes around....

We spoke for a long time about his parents, my paternal grandparents, and that was very intetresting... in relation to the Great Depression, which he lived through, and I knew things about them that they never told him.

My grandfather was very passionate about politics. My grandmother was quiet, but she didn't take any shit.

Seemingly, she just went out and Did things. She took my father and his sister out on a strike march in Massachusetts with her son and daughter, and the fucking horse-ridden police tried to trample them down.

Like Dickens, I learned to be very upset about injustice, and I never heard that story till I was seventeen years old. And learned to see them in a wholly different light.

A friend of mine was doing research of people who worked in the mills, and my Grandma said, ok, and I so wish he had kept that tape. My friend was doing it for a high-flown professor, and
she used nothing of it in her book. But he told me it was one of the very best interviews he did for that one, and regrets not to have a copy for me to remember....

It was a Mill town I grew up in. Bricks, and dirt, and coal dust from the trains across the street.

A dying town since the Deprssion. And a despairing town....

And I believed I could lift myself up from that. The American Dream, that someone thought up as a fairy tale.

But it was racist. And homophobic. And politicians were just rolling the dice to see who gets what....

So I left.

And you know what? I am so glad that I did. Things here are horrible, but we can thank you all for making it so...

Fucking greed.

Is like spitting in the face of my grandparents, and what they tried to acheive...

Inclusive?

Who the fuck HELL are you jerking around here?????

I no longer believe a single word....

Well, am back home....

And got Lazarus McWheezy up and on-line...

You do NOT wish to know.

He sounds so fucking horrible, I expect him to explode and the house will fall in and kill me like the wicked witch of the West.

But am afraid to turn him off over the coming days. Lest he fully go away....

It is gonna be intresting, that is for sure...

For one thing, LM loads slow. You want to take a look at a graphics-intensive site? Well enter the address, and take a long walk. And it is a dsl connection. Wif my infant in the infirmary, one click, everything immediately there. It is going to be Christmas for the deprived, am afraid.

And I can*t even console myself with the tee-vee. The horriday program is terrible, as usual...

I guess I got coal in my stocking, early. And as per usual...

Never rains but it pours, hey....

I wanted to turn on my new notebook this afternoon, and NOTHING. Although the electrical plug was showing green, as it should. Turns out the socket is broken, and I have not the slightest idea how it happened.

Whatever, looks like I won't have a functioning pc till the New Year and can pay two hundred Euros for the repair, because that isn't covered in the guarantee.

For that reason, am going to post my reserved post-modern deconstructive holiday greetings now. Glad I took the photos in time, someone made the people who put it up take it away... So they put up a tree.... without ornaments. And to top it off, Blogger doesn't want to upload my photo. It is of a robot with a neon sign over its' head reading 'Merry Xmas'.

Fun.

SHAME! I have seldom been so disgusted.

http://crooksandliars.com/david-neiwert/katrinas-wake-white-neighborhood-mil

You go look at this link and TELL me ONE THING that can explain this behaviour.

Shame on you all!

Oh, yeah, I was the 'drama queen' when all this was happening, but I didn't know about those fucktards, and how horrible they could be.

WHY hasn't anyone done anything about this? WHY aren't those fuckers in jail? Why aren't they already getting the death penalty?

There is so much that went wrong there, but this? It was bad enough that almost everyone in the country turned their backs on reality, but this?

I am off the charts for outraged, and have been for a long time.

So go LOOK at these throwbacks to some delusional behaviour.

What sort of country just lets things like this go? Because they are White, and think they own their turf?

Just go look at that video, and read the article linked to the title, and then TELL ME... What the fuck sort of country ARE you nowadays? Something diabolical? We KNOW what you do abroad, and we KNOW you are corrupt to the point of being absolutely disgusting....

So you tell me.... what the Fuck do you stand for? I would love to know.....

I have been carrying this around inside me for some days now...

It has to do with a neighbor. Yes the foreign legion guy.

He called me up and asked me to help him with a problem on his pc.

So I went over.....

But it wasn't about anything he ever wanted....

It was about a stick, and external drive. And he wanted me to look through it because the thirteen year old daughter of his new girlfriend got abused by her father.

Her child showed her stuff on the stick what she and her dad did, and the mother was a total wreck.

And I said, hey, this is NOT my expertise.

Whatever, I called it up. It looked harmless. Someone playing a computer game and saving levels. But if you clicked on the saved game files, there were sub-files. And more. It was disgusting.

No, am not going on with the gory details.

I like to think of people as being basically 'goood'. What I saw was so evil, I puked.

Am not so naive or stupid, I know that that happens, but when it is happening to someone you know... it is frightening.
'
Whatever, I said, 'take this to the State Attorney' and let them look. I can't deal with this.

And then I threw up.

I use the Internets for info. Others use it for nefarious things that I had never imagined.

It was so disgusting I can't digest it....

Ok, what were they THINKIING? Just SLAP us in the face once again, hey, like we really NEED it.

If the Obama people REALLY wanted to get everybody in the GLBT commutiy to alienate us to him, they did the trick with asking a fucking homophobic asshole to give the invocation at his inauguragtion.

Rick Warren... a flaming idjit, homophobe, total asshole, and he is gonna do the invocation.

And what does that idiot say, 'I thought it would bring people together.'

Right.

Is the man totally clueless, or stupid, or WHAT?

Rick Warren, the guy who spearheaded Propstion 8. Is gonna bring us together.

Uh-HUH.

Well, at least we know where we stand in their estimation, and I would even prefer BUSH to that! Not even to mention Clinton's fucking 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell.'

Is stupidity a new sort of fence to get over to get a job over there?

I would so VERY much like to know...

Digby can upset my stomach, although I usually love her...

Penguins indeed....

Watch out Nh-erites!

You'll probably have read this, but watch out anyway. The fucking UL may still be the only daily paper you have in the state....

I always KNEW IT!

I NEVER, in fifteen years of being on the net, I NEVER trusted Microsoft Explorer.

And always used other browsers.

And what does the AP come up with on the Yahoo entry page? THIS. Thank you Bill Gates, you are a wonder for us all...

ohhh... the things you find on the internets...

Someone has an acid tongue, or fingers that spew while writing....

And I thought I was sarcastic.....

Click on the title and find the person you love to hate. It being Advent, and all. You will laugh, promise....

Now where did I put those eye drops?????

Adventures in Vista-Vision IV finding words...

There was a funny diary today about shoes on Kos, and it is gone now. I should have marked it for use, the entries disappear so quickly there... In it, one of the misuses of shoes was in France during a strike, and the French would place their sabots, (wooden shoes) behind train wheels to hinder them. From whence comes the word sabotage... So, you can still really learn something new every day...

The word of the day out on the 'nets was 'Ponzi scheme'. That term popped up all over the place, till I said, 'Whaaa??? Why don't I know this term?' Wikipedia is our friend, so that is how I learned about Charles Ponzi. Judging from the daguerrotype, I have no idea why anyone would have trusted him, but so it goes....

So, you see, the Internets aren't purely evil....

You do not throw shoes at a presidink......

How hilarious.

I happened to be on-line, when this 'momentuous' moment occurred.

Considering that what he said is the worst thing you can say about anyone in that part of the world, good on him.

He should be presented as hero, and not imprisoned. But what the fuck to I know....


But I thought it was wonderful....

AND WHY weren't the Sneakret Service protecting the Presidink.....? Just break and not go to his 'rescue'? Questions, questiions...

Not that I care.

You get what you PAY for, Rod Blajogevic....

Now there is a nice piece of goods....

Not.

Oh, he is a barstard, all right.

But the THING is, he is going to be the scapegoat for the other one's CRIMES.

Big time.

What a wonderful solution to a dilemma.

just when you think you have no more old friends...

they turn up...

That is so nice....

Per Christmas card, with a long, long message.

Heartfelt, and honest.

What more could you ask for----

That is my Christmas present.....

It is more that I would have hoped for.

Life is so 'odd'.

And no, he is totally, TOTALLY hetero. Which made it even more valuable to me.

Thank you, B.

It meant much.....

I like this diary on Kos. Crippled squirrel, and implications...

Go read....

now why doesn't this surprise me....

Newspapers going bankrupt....

I haven't bought a newspaper in decades. Old, stale, they all look like Faux news on the titles if you even NOTICE them while waiting in line at the supermarket....

Journamalism died. Period. If I want to go to a movie? I can get the starting times on the internet. Something crass happening? I can see it on the tee-vee. Newspapers so missed the boat, mis-recognised what was coming, it is pathetic.

When the bloody NY Times takes out a mortgage on its' building... well, sign of the times, and it isn't gonna work....

Oh my... this reminds me of something. Was she out Clam digging? LOL

Barbara Bush Runs Aground Off Coast Of Maine

You would think, that if you all spoke the same language, there wouldn't be a problem...

WRONG.... äääääh!

I was over at Peter's this morning, and there was a repeat of the second half of the brilliant Michael Mittermeier's program, Safari. He covers God and the world in it, and is scathingly funny. He is a Kabarettist, or better said, in English, a stand-up comedian. Imagine a twelve year old mind caught in a forty year old body on a chocolate overdose. You got it. Hyper.

One tiny bit of it was aimed at us Austrians. He maintains we speak 'Porno'. Seems the first time he was in Austria, he went to a café, and this voluptuous waitress comes up and asks, 'Möchten Sie einen Verlängerten?' I know, I know, that doesn't translate. It means, do you want -not an espresso--but a stretched version, a bit weakened. But he gets all revved up, and takes 'stretched' for totally something else. He had me nearly fall off the chair laughing.

So yeah, we talk Porno even if we don't know it. But it gets worse. We can't communicate from one region to another, that is how fucked up our language is. Really.

When Peter first left Graz, he went to Hamburg. And was in a bakery, wanted some breakfast. Ok, in English, bread roll is a bread roll, right? In Austria, the name is Semmel. So he asked for two. And she said, 'WHAA? What the hell do you want?' So he pointed. 'Oh, you want Brötchen.' Uh-huh.

But it gets worse. It is inter-regional. I was in a bakery in Vienna, and I have a brain fart about what I asked for, but the lady was completely off the charts. 'What? What do you want?' (It was a Styrian word, as I remember....) So I had to point and say, 'THAT thing, right there!' Oh.

Languages can lead to much unwanted hilarity in your life, I guess. Even if you are supposedly speaking the same language, or believe you are.

It is sort of like Torpedoes, or submarine sandwiches, or heros, and such. Depending on where you are.

Language... can be a bitch. But am glad we talk Porno....

Update: I just got feedback from my father. He gleefully told me about a fellow serviceman in WWII and they were in Australia. And the guy asked for a 'napkin'. Harmless, right? The waitress was insulted. For her, he had asked for a tampon. And he nudged him and said, 'What you want is a 'serviette'. See what I mean? Language.... It isn't always what it seems....

I thought that fucking BITCH had her jaw wired shut!

The Stupid.... You can't run away, you can't resist. It will GET you....

Governor Blagojevich.....

Of Ill in noise made big time news here in Europe.

SOMEONE is steering the news. What is it to us?

And they go and compare it to Al Capone?

Tools, bastards, and other people of their ilk.

Some days you could just BARF....

Adventures in Vista-vision III

Oh boy....

I FINALLY found out how to deactivate the fingerprint key to let you allow you to boot the computer. Have mostly let it run....

The finger dance. Aggravating? No words to describe it. I tried and tried. To no avail. Last nite, 'It' decided to go rogue, pick up an update, and fucking closed my machine, and re-started. And there I was at six in the morning, doing the finger dance. And only one time in ten, it fucking RECOGNISES my finger, the bastard...

It was like 2001 A Space Oddesy.... Sort of....

And THEN I deactivated HAL.

Oooo, that was nice, hey....

One small step for mankind....

Can someone STOP the stupid?

Oh wow, they just wanna get him.

And no, it is not surprising.

But if you stop for a moment, and think, the president-elect is hardly going to get into that slime that is going on in Illinois.

After winning an election, Obama might have been obliquely involved in selling his Senate seat? You don't play for those high stakes and blow it so stupidly, and he is certainly not stupid.

So ok, the Dem governor of Ill-in-noise gets caught for some really creepy corrupt things he did, and had to spend a night in the hoosegow. Compared to the Republican crimes over the last eight years, they should give him a slap on the wrist and kick his ass out. And the Repugs didn't even get THAT. They got rewarded. AWW, ain't life grand?

So we got a rotten apple, and the pack smells blood. And the Village attack dogs, aka the MSM, go after Obama. Right. I have always said they are jackals. And always for the corporations. So this is a taste of what is coming... in a big way.

I got a huge chuckle out of it, however. The stenographs couldn't even pronounce the man's name correctly. As Atrios at Eshaton calls it: Journamalism. Jan 20 can't come too fast.

Just sayin'.

And new stuff here

Are you out of your MINDS?

Based on the dawn.. am willing to bet

We'll have snow by noontime. This is what the dawn looked like at 7:15. Pretty, but always a harbinger of bad weather. We shall see....

Doesn't anyone really read the Bible any more?

Someone on Kos was amazed to learn. How very nice for them. I still wouldn't want to get married.... Link in the title.

Why the fuck is everyone going ballistic on Caroline Kennedy?

There are more links, but am tired.

Ok, she wants Hillary's Senate seat if the Shill takes SoS. And they SAY she has no 'experience', can't 'work the crowds', was always reticent.... Riiiigghht.

Well, if i had to go through what she experienced in her life, I would be reticent as well.

But from what I hear, she is an accomplished lawyer.

And from the few interviews I have seen, she is very intelligent, astute, has a dry but very firm grasp on what is going on, and, I think, would make a brilliant senator.

What the Fuck do the net-roots WANT, hey?

Jane Hamsher has been really sticking in my craw lately. I want what she wants, but this one smacks of Stutenbissigkeit. (Mares biting one another in the stalls, horse talk in German. It is a good word...)

And John Amato, and Josh Marshall follow the lead, and send out the meme.

We don't KNOW what Caroline Kennedy would want to do. Why the Fuck jump on her before she opens her mouf? Or is that so hard? Sabbering at the mouth, wanting to take her down for 'whatever'? And they all say they don't know anything bad about her. WTF? What is going ON here?

And to hear Dynasty talk from the left after other 'Dynasties' have nearly ruined the world... well that is so shallow....

Nee, wissen'S, nee...

Forget it.

Psycho Santa

Oh yes, it was a lovely Nicolo out on the square. Saint Nick appeared at the market, only he was a BLUFF. He's been around here as long if not longer than I have, comes from the Middle East somewhere, and is bat-shit crazy. Have run into him several times in my life. Spend eight weeks lying in hospital with that guy coming in to sell newspapers and you can go bonkers yourself. Not too many light bulbs in the chandelier... But it was a nice day anyway.

I bought a cake for the tyke next door, and left it and rang the bell and scrammed. My neighbor caught me however, and said Nicolo had already been there. My first thought was to say he has Alzheimer's and forgot. But I settled for, 'That's because she was so good this year.' (Lame, so lame...) Whatever, I think A. liked the cake, so that was the main thing.

Well, lost several chances... but Redeye, eww

Came out of the Krampus run unscathed, so I guess I was good. It was pouring rain, and trying to juggle an umbrella and shoot photos was the pits. So most of them weren't good.

I only saw two kids get hit, and they were older teens and fresh, so that was ok. The young ones had fun. Breaking the barriers and trying to sneak up on them, and then running away screaming bloody murder, but it was of the fun kind.































And my neighbor's daughter just came in when I was going out, and saw her first Christmas Market. She just began talking this year. And waiting for Nicolo tomorrow. She said.... They did not take her to the Krampus thing, and rightly so. How could people do stuff like that?

This is for my favorite people in NH

Atrios at Eschaton thinks this is the best video EVER made, you guys. It brought back some memories of sitting with you in the Raimund Theater, in Vienna, watching the Polanski version of the 'Fearless Vampire Killers' as musical, and the song was a centerpiece of it. It IS a good video, and all. But seeing it in that setting was over the top. And seeing Steve Barton from Long Island had me in paroxysms of envy, in the main role of the head vampire. His diction was so perfect I cringed about my own. The Vienna production was perfect. New York was a disaster of enormous proportions. Because Steve Barton was supposed to re-create the role on Broadway, and died of a heart attack in a recording studio in Germany shortly before rehearsals were to begin. And then Michael Crawford ruined it, and it went belly-up in one week. Or so.

So, D and L... the video was interesting for its' time... but we all three know it got better.

And this is my early St. Nick's present for you. It made me remember. Hope you like it.

I would have ended this differently....

And yes, it is amazing what you can do with computers nowadays. But to use Bolero.... I would have cut it so that amazing crescendo in the music ends with Dumbya. And yes, I know, we all need some hope.... I just would have done it differently.... Still, worth the four minutes, and beautifully done.

Uh-oh, he's a day early. Foreboding, oh yes...

And made me unsteady. But tomorrow, will take some Baldrian and try to get some good photos. It's Krampus, after all....

This was just a mime getting people in the mood...

Oh, now this is a NICE link....

We always knew they wanted to kill us. Or rape us. Or both. But now we know for sure. Now I KNOW why Michalangelo Signorile jumped up on a column in a NY Cathedral, pointed at Ratzi and screamed, 'YOU are the Anntichrist!'

Someone should have listened....

Just when you think you are ushering the Last year of a bad decade...

It gets worse. Have had headaches for days, can't eat much, feel dizzy often. And depressed.

Woke up early this morning, and was so blah I went right back to bed. Made myself a bit of lunch, came back home, and am going back to bed. Wheeeee....





Wasn't planning on doing much Advent things this year and will not, actually. Not in the mood. But the tree in the photo is decorated in local fashion, and all the ornaments are made of straw. Thought it might interest someone.

I MUST do a lot of things tomorrow....

Just to make sure it doesn't FEEL like my birfday. 59 and shot out on the street like garbage. That was this past year. And to tell the truth... I don't feel so well, physically.

Or even mentally, sometimes. It comes out in odd ways. If I am watching what passes for 'news' these days. On the tee-vee, I mean... I would like to throw a brick at it and yell 'Shut the FUCK UP! (you silly cow or asshole, whoever is bloviating....)

I got tired somewhere along the line, and cynical.

That is not always a good thing to be.

Whatever.... was just over at my neighbor's for HIS stuff. The chinese ladies, who can charm you like at the market in Marrakesh with those guys doing cobras. And he wanted me to burn some tracks for him on a dvd. Uh-HUH.... I've been telling him that Vista is iffy at the very least, and couldn't find the right programme, so he was miffed.

I'm still learning how to TAME this fucking beast...

He didn't get it.... of course.

And this is how the fucking DAY looked: