Last night... the phone rang at 11 pm when I was sound asleep. Peter was 'bright-eyed and bushy-tailed', so to speak. I thought he had fallen out of bed again. He wanted to tell me who all he'd been on the telly-phone with. 'Tell me tomorrow, I was asleep.'
I have often said... get me out of a deep sleep for nothing, and I am the Grinch.
Rang again... 'Good morning, it's ten a.m.' It was five a.m.
And rang again... he wanted to know what day it was.
Uh-huh..
Sigh.....
And to make things just perfect....
On censorship....
One thing to add on all this rigamarole, and disgusting thing of controlling what you read.... I was looking for a specific article I read years ago by the late Kurt Vonnegut. It concerned his book
'Slaughterhouse 5' being burned and banned in upstate New York. And how he felt about it. He was sad about it, to say the least...
.
For those of you who don't know... He was a POW held in Dresden in WWII. In a slaughterhouse. He survived the fire-bombing of that city, which was only full of refugees, and was a pure act of revenge for the bombing of London. It was horrendous. From what I have heard, that was unimaginable, and I guess it was the best he could do. It felt downplayed in comparison to what I have heard since.
(Odd that Dresden was one of the first cities that corporations poured tons of money into after the fall of the Wall.... And Prague... Hamburg was second to that for pure horror back then.... the asphalt burned away, not to mention houses and people.)
Slaughterhouse Five is not my favorite book by Vonnegut. I loved 'Breakfast of Champions'.
I never felt he was able to put Dresden into words, and I sort of know that feeling....
But no one should have the gall to burn or ban that book.
I found one link that was illuminating on Google. It is here.
And one more thing... I was more or less accused of plagiarising a friends' words yesterday. I don't know what the hell is going on with her. I did explain that I was unable to put her words into the comments section, explained that it was from her, and that they weren't my words.
I don't see what the difference would have been if I had been able to get them into the comments, or on my front page, really. I do not lie, and I do NOT steal....
To close... we have a saying here... 'burning books is the first step toward burning people'.
We interrupt this transmission....
To add Annti's comment to the post just below this....
She said my comments page wouldn't take it, but it seems Google changed the rules, and you can't comment with more than 4096 characters.... (hokay, better than Twitter with 140... I don't think either of us could do that....
Too chatty...
So here she is....
The important thing is, they'll still BE TEACHING THAT BOOK, even if it's the bowdlerized/Daddy-wanna-look-perfect edition that WE read.
Didn't we learn how horrible the Holocaust was from the edited version?
Yes, it IS censorship and warping the minds of the young through slapping OTHER PEOPLE'S CULT "BELIEFS" DOWN OTHER PEOPLE'S THRAOTS --- DUH. Hardly new, Sad that it happens just as J.D. Salinger dies, considering how often "Catcher" has been banned/censored/bowdlerized/utterly absent from kids' educations. But then, where *I* grew up, in KLAN CENTRAL, we never got to READ anything like "Catcher In The Rye" or "Slaughterhouse Five," we NEVER KNEW THAT THEY EXISTED!!! --- we couldn't even read the REAL Shakespeare, we hadda read bowdlerized EXCERPTS in fucking Houghton-Miflin TEXTBOOKS that destroy the narrative/language/subtext/humor/MEANING of the whole damned play.
I am STILL, and probably always WILL BE, making-up for everything that my "superlative" (Can YOU say, BULLSHIT MARKETING THROUGH LYING TEST SCORES & RANKINGS?!?!? They always EXPEL the "borderline" kids before the standardized tests, to whack the bell-curve IN HALF, the thieving bastards, robbing those kids of the educations to which they are LEGALLY ENTITLED!!!) so-called "EDUCATION" at the hands of those censorship-maddened bibul-banging illiterate FUCKTARDS who called themselves a "school board" or "teachers" or "administrators."
Even my bachelor's degree isn't taken seriously, as hard as I busted my ass to get it, even when I hadda drop out to work (after the car wreck, I couldn't do both, and I mean that FIRST brain-killing wreck, with the cut brakes, not the wreck that would destroy the REST of my fucking life in '98) because it's from a non-LSU-system UNIVERSITY that the LSU-cult-freaks treat like we're some kind of fucking JUNIOR COLLEGE or COMMUNITY COLLEGE. 90% of Louisiana doesn't even know that the University of New Orleans even EXISTS!!! And yup, tons of reasons why, but not at this time of night.
I been robbed, son, I been ROBBED!!!!!! And yes, so are these kids, especially since we've ALL been robbed and lied-to about this book since before it was originally published. I bet that the WHOLE version of the book explains WHY only "the father" LIVED, too. He sure as hell wouldn't want us to see THAT, now would he. After all, we still don't know who dropped the dime on Anne & family, do we?
WE ALL BEEN ROBBED! Hardly to the degree of those slaughtered in the Holocaust, obviously, but it's still a huge cultural time-bomb to drop on people who learned SO MUCH from this book. MY so-called public schools NEVER LET US ***READ*** "The Diary Of Anne Frank"!!! See why I call that hellhole "KLAN CENTRAL"?!?!?!
Because they're jealous that they've never gotten to pull the same shit on all of the people that they ignorantly hate IN THIS COUNTRY. Oh, they have (and continue to) gotten damned close at times, in isolated incidents and Jim Crow continent-wide ways, but they haven't been able to shovel naked corpses of starved & gassed HUMAN BEINGS into the same cattle cars that brought them into the torture chambers. YET. We still don't know who holds the keys to those "secret" Blackwater/Halliburton/Bechtel-built PRISONS, those "black box" institutions, out in the boonies alllll over this country, either, do we?
Who ARE they gonna put into those billions-wasted-by-Unca-Biggus-Dickus-motherfucking-CHENEY prisons, anyway???
Our times are very different from Anne's, but in all the worst ways, they are very much the same and getting worse. Fates forfend that the kids GET THE PROPER WARNING WHEN IT STILL MEANS SOMETHING, eh? They took "1984" out of the reading list back in '82, we never HEARD of "The Handmaid's Tale" until I got to my SECOND college, even though it came out in '87 or '88. "Brave New World" USED to be on the senior-year reading list, but RONNIE RAY-GUN and "JUST-SAY-NO" NANCY made DAMNED SURE to make the bibul-banging-fucktards happy, didn't they? Imagine how many of the classics that I *still* haven't read, and don't even know exist?
Yes, I am currently still tit-deep in my Terry Pratchett/Discworld addiction, but I *am* gonna keep reading until I get the education that I paid for and DESERVED. Withheld from me by CULT-MEMBER ILLITERATES WITH THE CULTURAL, INTELLECTUAL, AND SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT OF YOUR AVERAGE CUNT-FART.
So yes, I see why you are horrified that these kids are being robbed, now that they have the chance to learn even MORE from Anne's diary than we did, but the only silver lining is that the original EDIT is still available. There's plenty enough nazis in there to skeer the bejeebus out of anybody with an IQ higher than dirt. I'd wager that the fucktards who are banning the uncensored version HAVE NEVER EVEN READ THE BOWDLERIZED VERSION IN THE *FIRST* FUCKING PLACE, ANYWAY!!!!!!
People who ban & burn books generally DON'T UNDERSTAND THE WORDS INSIDE. And what they cannot grasp/understand, they FEAR. And what they fear, THEY DESTROY. Like Hillary Clinton and birth control.
End transmission....
Sorry, Annti, but Peter's lap-top doesn't have a mouse, and I tried, but had to re-load three times trying to do it. Those in the know will understand the tags....
One fun anecdote: My boss' younger daughter had English here, and I would help her where I could.... What was on the menu? 'The Catcher In The Rye', among other things, and she was fourteen or so, and a sort of Pippi Longstocking gangly red-head with a devilish humour.
She loved, just LOVED embarrassing me with questions about that novel. She would always pick out sentences that had to do with masturbation, and ask me, 'What does this mean, exactly?' And go into hilarity watching my face turn red with embarrassment. She knew, all right, it was a game for her, and I wasn't about to explain it to her even if I was a slut back then....
As far as I know, no one EVER got.... oh, yes... they DID... once. They wanted to ban a novel by Thomas Bernhard, brilliant man. It exposed a clique of 'intellectuals' in Salzburg in the 60's, and was scathing. But that is the only case I know of in all these years. The hoi-polloi got miffed.
.
Fascists at work...
Where the hell do some people have their minds, and never get them out of the gutter?????
This is just sick. Link here. Talk about edumacation....
I received this today....
Now I KNOW I can go ON about 'The Sound of Music' It was a traumatic experience throughout my life... In some ways...
That film was like stepping on super-bubble-gum and nothing would remove it from your shoe-sole, or shoe soul... Especially if you lived in Salzburg for a year... And don't get me wrong, I love Julie Andrews. I do. So a couple of days ago, she was in New Yawk, and did a concert in Radio City Music Hall. (Have been there too... I hope the Rockettes had the day off...)
One of my dearest cousins forwarded this, and I want it on my blog.
It had me on my ass laughing. Nothing is nicer than being able to laugh at yourself.... believe me.
Julie Andrews
Turns 69:
To commemorate her birthday , actress/vocalist, Julie Andrews made a special appearance at Manhattan's Radio City Music Hall for the benefit of the AARP.
One of the musical numbers she performed was 'My Favorite Things' from the legendary movie 'Sound Of Music'. Here are the lyrics she used:
(Sing It!)
- If you sing it, it's especially hysterical!!!
Big Breath and….
Botox and
nose drops and needles for knitting,
Walkers and handrails and
new dental fittings,
Bundles of magazines tied up in
string,
These are a few of my favorite
things.
Cadillacs and
cataracts, hearing aids and glasses,
Polident and Fixodent and
false teeth in glasses,
Pacemakers, golf carts and porches with
swings,
These are a few of my favorite
things.
When the
pipes leak, When the bones creak,
When the knees go bad,
I simply
remember my favorite things,
And then I don't feel
so bad.
Hot tea and
crumpets and corn pads for bunion s,
No spicy hot food or food
cooked with onions,
Bathrobes and heating pads and hot meals
they bring,
These are a few of my
favorite things.
Back pain,
confused brains and no chance of sinnin',
Thin bones and
fractures and hair that is thinnin',
And we won't mention
our short shrunken frames,
When we remember
our favorite things.
When the
joints ache, When the hips
break,
When the eyes grow
dim,
Then I remember the great life I've had,
And then I don't feel so bad.
> >
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > > > > > > >
>> >
(Ms. Andrews
received a standing ovation from the crowd
that lasted over four
minutes and repeated encores.
I lurrvs me some Alan Grayson
This is fun.... He is one amazing man... And funny.... sarcasm mixed with real facts....
Big sigh.....
The phone woke me up.... I thought it was in the middle of the night, say one a.m....
Peter fell out of bed again, of course, and couldn't get back in... And was crying, and couldn't reach the fire department, could I call them... So I called them for him, and sent them down here.... I don't know what else I could have done, I can't lift him any more.
Actually it was 6 a.m. and he was fully in panic mode. gawwd...
When I finally got down here this morning, he said they were very nice, and said he should call social services and get a hospital bed from them with a railing on it.
(Now where is the next wall I can bang my head repeatedly against in pure frustration? They were HERE, she offered him a hospital bed, and he said 'he would think about it'...)
Right.
I didn't come four thousand miles for THIS...
We have a record low in temperature today... -27 degrees below zero Centigrade I 'think' that is below zero Fahrenheit. That is bloody cold.... brrr....
The Media are just whores... for the most part
Rachel Maddow just had an exposé of a certain Mr. O'Keefe who did that weird number on ACORN posing as a pimp. He got arrested in NOLA trying to wire-tap Senator Landrieu's office phones....
Said accused Mr. O'Keefe was the darling of FAUX news...
However, the German rags aren't much better...
Last week, I was leaving my tobacconist and saw a title page, with Richard Chamberlain, the actor on it, saying he was dead, and had left a 'strange' will....
That news blew me away... was a big fan.
BUT .....
I got suspicious, because I saw absolutely nothing on US blogs regarding that, and was surprised. So I spent an hour looking into that on Google.... And found that he had 'committed suicide', at first...
EXCEPT.... it turned out it was another Richard Chamberlain, from Britain, and a royal. So this German rag, just went with it? No fact checking? RC is extremely popular in Germany, they love him there, and these vultures just used this to boost readership....
Whores....
The O'Keefe story might turn very interesting, however....
This is NOT funny, however....
Reminds me of why I left New Hampsha... you have some 'fine' politicians there...
Scott does it again...
DON’T FEED THE POOR. THEY’LL BREED
{Posted in Assholes, The Republican Clown Car on January 25th, 2010 by Scott }Republicans really are not like normal people and southern republicans aren’t even from planet Earth.
“My grandmother was not a highly educated woman, but she told me as a small child to quit feeding stray animals. You know why? Because they breed,” Bauer said, according to the Greenville News. “You’re facilitating the problem if you give an animal or a person ample food supply. They will reproduce, especially ones that don’t think too much further than that. And so what you’ve got to do is you’ve got to curtail that type of behavior. They don’t know any better.”
South Carolina Lt. Governor {and candidate for Governor} Andre Bauer discussing the need to withdraw state food aid and school lunch programs from the poor if they failed drug tests or didn’t attend parent teacher conferences or PTA meetings — as quoted in the Greenville News.
58% of South Carolina’s public school students receive food assistance from the state and a disproportionate number of those who do are African-American.
- Shorter Andre Bauer — “If you let the nigras have food they’ll do nuthin’ but run wild and fuck all day and then you’ll never be able to get them into the cotton fields to work.”
- Even shorter Andre Bauer — “Niggers are animals.”
Oh, and Lt. Governor Bauer considers himself to be a good Christian.
Which leads one to surmise that he missed church the day they discussed chapter 3 verse 11 of the Gospel According to Luke where it says:
And John the Baptist would answer and say to them, “Let the man with two tunics share with him who has none, and let him who has food do likewise.”
I have quoted his post in full here because many of you wouldn't care for the other things he does, nor the ads there...
Just when you think
Everything is running just fine on your pc... it crashes. Firefox did yesterday afternoon, so I wanted to start my pc with a new-start. And Windows XP came on as logo, then the screen just stayed black, and nothing I could do would help. And yes, I tried using the 'use the last successful configuration' order, but nada...
Which means having to take Baby Fu to the clinic. on the 1st. I can't get it repaired beforehand, as I am completely out of money. Oddly, the guarantee just ran out.
Whatever.... Posting here will be light for a while. Am using Peter's laptop meanwhile..
Betty White...
This 88 year old artist has delighted me over decades. How nice. And how funny she is still.. I will NEVER forget her in the last scene of 'Lake Placid', it was outrageous, and had me on the floor laughing. Or dragging a cow into the lake to feed her 20 foot 'baby'. And predict it will be one of the cult films of the next decade... the script was brilliant, but she has done so much more.... Take a good look....
Everyone needs just a moment in a week....
to call a time out.... and divert themselves from all their cares....
I think I am beginning to 'get' this now... Therefore... Saturday afternoons I look at one story line on 'One Life To Live'. On YouTube...
If your life is a it bleak... soap operas can be uplifting.... because no one in the whole world can have a worse life. Trials and tribulations, and two people get together, and BANG! it goes catastrophic.
OLTL... is like a friggin' nuclear bomb.
It 'used' to be.... two people would be 'happy' for six months, and then catastrophe strikes... Not so with this one....
I never know from one week to the next what the hell fuck disaster is going to descend upon them.
I know, I know, it is so trivial, all in all.... I LIKE that the themes are so over the top and edgy... And never really tasteless. That is nice... And never strained, or was proselytising....
Somebody called up the last post I did about the show with a video clip....
From India. Bombay, to be exact....
Now that was a 'trip'....
And yeah... I have 'slept with', or had consensual sex with people from there. And Africa, and Peru, and half the world, including North Korea, (Hillary, just fucking faint)...
It didn't MATTER.
People were people, and they turned you on, or they didn't.
So easy as that.
It 'seems' that there are a mess of people who want to restrict such wanton behaviour...
And when I was young.... I was a slut. Happy to have been one, looking back...
What being a 'slut' taught me.... was that people are just people, some of them can make you very happy, some of them can hurt you... it was a lottery where mostly you win.
So when I check in on One Life To Live....
It reminds me of good things, and Lord knows.... at the moment, I don't have many of those moments....
hokay.... Fascism 1: Democracy O SCOTUS
Or: Orwell's 1984 arrived a bit late...
To understand, read Keith Olberman's special comment here.
The decision sounds so innocent on the surface, ostensibly about first amendment rights, and freedom of speech, but the latest decision is horrendous in what it has enabled corporations to do.
Ok, am algerisch when it comes to that word, and THAT is a play on words. Algerisch means Algerian. (When Peter's mother was in the hospital dying, her bed-neighbor asked him to close the window because she was 'algerisch' when it came to drafts. It should have been 'allergisch' which means allergic. Somehow it became a joke over three decades, go figure. We both loved us some malapropisms.)
But seriously... the decision was horrible. For me, 'The corporations' meant something far more than the average American would think. I grew up in a city that was the largest conglomerate of factories in the entire world. Run by... 'the corporations'. Uh-huh... They were sort of this nebulous entity that had all power. Grew up in 'corporation housing' fucking everything was run by them.
And they always had people by the short hairs till it hurt, believe me.
'Sixteen Tons' by Tennessee Ernie Ford in the Fifties had more relevance to us than you could ever imagine....
This colossus of manufacturing never recovered after the Depression in 1929. And when I was growing up, the enterprise was dying... or just dropping everything, and moving their business to Taiwan, because labour was so much cheaper there. And the city never recovered, not really, to this day...
And I have a personal story to relate about this, about how corportations can break you. It involves The Venrable.... When I was about fourteen or so, there was a union organiser who was at the factory he was working in, who spoke, seemingly... don't know exactly.
But after this 'event', or whatever it was, The Venerable was 'seen' talking to the organiser in the millyard... (Everyone was paranoid back then, and rats and whores were all over the place....) He just had some questions he wanted answered, and seemingly wasn't planning to join that union.....
He was immediately fired. Rights to free speech? IN YOUR DREAMS, hey...
'The corporation' put him on a black list. And he couldn't find work anywhere for weeks.
It was only the second time I saw my father cry out of sheer despair.
Whatever... now this SCOTUS decision gives corportations everything they ever wanted and dreamed.... Olberman painted the picture of what can happen, hopefully not, but can... They can basically fuck America over, thanks to it.
It is far more eloquent, and check it out on Countdown if you have a fast connection.
I don't just get the shudders about this... I am disgusted. Olberman didn't go far enough. Congresspeople and Senators are already prostitutes. But now they have a pimp, who will beat them up if they don't do the pole dance....
How wunnerful, as what's his name polka boy used to say on tee-vee...
More snow...
And I had to take Peter downtown to his bank person. And it snowed. Fine wet snow.
Can we say I didn't LIKE it, Preciousses?
When it snows here, I go into hibernation under my blankies....
And cuddle in the warmth...
But no...
Had to go out. And bring Peter downtown. On the fucking bus.
We must have a horriday, they let the ramps down.
Wonder of wonders, hey....
The driver didn't 'like' my sarcasm. Uh-uh... Ask me if I care...
So somehow we got the the bank... and for the very first time in over thirty years....
I messed with Peter's finances.
I TOLD the guy... 'You get him to sign this that his telly-com bill gets automatically taken from his account. Because I am not going into a fight with them for a month again when he forgets next time.'
And I WALKED.
I am so glad I do not have that provider.
Ruthless.
So I rolled him home through the snow, we got some groceries, and went home. Ramps out, ooooo.....
He ate a bit, and then fell asleep.
I was looking at things on his internets... he wakes up after half an hour and asked.....
'How long have you been here?'
I remained calm.... and said, 'You just slept half an hour... and we were in town and it was snowing...' (Now the killer) 'Oh, I forgot.'
Right.
Listen, I knew this was coming....
But when it comes.... no one is really ready for it.
He can't concentrate on anything for more than ten minutes.
At the moment...
It breaks my heart.
And you are so ill-equpped to deal with it. Really.
So you take a deep breath, and try to remain calm, and do what you can....
When you WANT TO SCREAM and SHOUT and be VERY NASTY, because it isn't fair.
Except you do not. It is inside.
NOTHING is perfect, ok? Nothing.
But I KNOW... if Peter doesn't do something soon on his own... he will die.
Because I think he WANTS to. I can talk myself blue-in-the face... nada, niente, schon gar nichts.
For those of you who have known him in his 'good years'.... and he was already ill then, he was funny, brilliant, had a history.
Before, he was athletic, interesting, knew so much about the world of theater and arts...
And he chose to love me....
And teach me.... about 'SO-CI-ETY'.... uh-huh...
For all the things in our lives... he made me who I am.
I never gave up anything. I gained.
In his sickness, he did some terrible, hurtful things.
It comes with the territory.
But when I look back....
I miss the man who held me every night like a teddy bear to his chest like a child, and made me feel safe and protected, and go off the next day to want to conquer the world.
And now I just have to look on, and want to cry...,
If you have something or someone good in your life.. use each day to the fullest.
ooo.... ooo... OOO...
Sitemeter just told me...
The Telly-com was on my blog..... Here in friggin' Graz!
Oh my....
ASK me if I fucking care... go on, ask me...
Answer: not a whit.
Update: uh-huh.... Twice already, I hadn't seen the first one...
Geez... I feel like a louse in their friggin' pubic hair!
GOOD on me, hey! Give me a high-five...
HOWEVER.... it might be... the Ombudsfrau at the local paper... That is a lawyer who is in the newspaper, and you can ask them things. I got tuned to a really good one. Per mail.... and she wanted to go after them, except it got resolved before I could fax her what she wanted. But I DID ask her, how is it possible to charge you for a service, after you turn it off, and not bring any service? Is that actually legal? Because... Peter has an outstanding bill for fourty Euros for his tee-vee service that he never had, and was not provided....
WTF is that shit?
And now, all of a sudden, the friggin' Telly-com in Graz is going through my rants? Well, welcome to it, youse guys...
About 66% if the people I talked to were polite, but they couldn't DO anything, even after I did all they needed for paperwork... The others were racist, insulting, demeaning... and I was polite, mostly very polite... Except for the idjidt who was so incompetent, he asked me to fax the payment bill a third time, and I yelled. And called him a Hornochse, and hung up.... (horned toad, I believe, I don't know where that came from...)
I left their corporation long ago, and have another provider.
I'm so glad I have another provider....
And gawwd help the Tellycom person who comes to my door and wants me to change to them. I've had enough of them.
Tja, a month was enough...
I was at the bus stop today....
And along came Heli... sort of out of nowhere....
That is the short form for Helmut. Which means bright courage, I believe... and of all the ones with that name I have ever met... none of them were normal in any way...
That guy has crossed my life path so many times, I can barely count them.
I was living in a very small room at the time, four units and a communal shower and wc. He moved in across the way, was very affable, funny.... came from a wealthy family, but was the 'black sheep'. In German, you would call him a 'Lebenskünstler' 'life artist'.... hardly ever worked, lived hand to mouth, and was basically a parasite. But funny.
I think I was in my mid-Thirties at the time... He was my age, and we would just talk. He had a sneakret passion for young guys. Not minors. However... he always found some older woman to leech on. I was amazed that he could DO that... (Gawwd, even at thirty I was so naive...)
At the time, he had a 'girlfriend' who was much older, and am convinced she didn't have all her cups in her cupboard, as we say.... And now I am going to give you an image where you have to wash your brain with bleach....
Peter would come over in the afternoon, and we would be just falling asleep, when all of a sudden, there would be pounding on the door across the way, and a woman yelling 'Heli, mach auf!' (Open up.) And if it took a long while, and a lot of pounding on the door... we knew... He had one of his young guys there, and his window was over the outside landing going downstairs and out of the court, so the kid had to get out that way. And if I asked Heli afterward, we were right in the assumption.
We used to laugh so hard over that... it was pathetic.
We moved into the house Peter inherited. I had become ill and was in hospital, and who was there for six weeks? Heli. Coincidink, as Maddow would put it....
Three years ago, I'm going down a main street from the train station... who do I see? Heli. Was mostly living in Thailand and Cambodia at the time, and loved him some boys, and had become diabetic, and the food was so good, everything was 'under control'. Uh-huh. He had terrible things to say about the Red Cross, and how they 'lived like kings' after the Tsunami, and I thought he was going back there.
But today, waiting at the bus station to go home....
There was Heli.... He is living in an apt over a grocery store up the street from Peter's....
Gawwd, how time flies....
So overweight, hearing aids, glasses.... tja, a shadow of his former self.
So while waiting, we did a quick catch-up. His sugar is hovering at over 300, his blood pressure is so high even his glasses won't help him see well, and on and on. Like two old fishwives at the market gosspiing and I had to speak loudly so he could hear....
And there were two oldies waiting for the bus, and they STARED?
I didn't care...
Actually, I found it funny...
So we rode into town, and he immediately chatted up an older woman, asking her about her dog, and muzzles for them being on the bus, and what the laws are... And she melted.... He said he got himself a 2 month old Pintscher, and feels better because he has to walk him all the time....
Nope, he hasn't changed a whit... But it made me laugh inwardly... muchly....
Such a 'Lebenskünstler'...
One thing struck me, however...
He had seen me going into the social services building last week... 'You don't live here, do you? ' 'Errm, no, it was about Peter, he lives down the street.'
Sometimes I walk around and think I am invisible, or something....
I never pay attention to what anyone else is doing. Kinda creepy...
I was going home one night in my home town, and there was this paranoid man? And he kept yelling at someone behind him, and went, 'Listen, I don't know YOU, and you don't know ME... Let's keep it that way!'
There was no one there.
Let's hope I never get like that...
This seems to be....
Just tear your hair out week...
First that terrible Brown guy, and I don't mean skin color... And then this morning.... the social service woman finally came by, and wasn't really keen on puttng Peter in a home. He can rent a hospital bed, and not fall out of it any more.
Ah ja...
And, of course, Peter being Peter, he was 'cogent', said he would think about his 'other choices'...
HerrGOTTnochmal, he doesn't HAVE any....
He has increasing moments... he doesn't know what DAY it is, he loses things, can't find where he put his dentures, for instance... but get someone 'outside', he can still pull it together, and seem ok.
Which made me look like an indiot.
Yet another reason I would never consider marriage of any kind. I was pissed off, and was snubbed royally.
I think our social services have a sort of skewed concept. They are reluctant to take anyone out of a surrounding where they feel 'at home'. And consider that 'doing more harm than good'. Which is fine and praiseworthy in most cases.
What it boils down to, however... is that they don't recognise that sometimes you have to do an intervention. And they don't KNOW what gangrene SMELLS like. And think he probably pissed himself, and pretend to ignore it.... (Sometimes 'politeness' gets you nowhere.) It does smell like that a bit, but actually worse.... I've lived with it off and on for seventeen years, I should fucking KNOW...
He hasn't had his remaining foot looked at in MONTHS. And from the smell, well, he'll lose it....
And somewhere along the line... I gave up... that's all, I just friggin' gave up wheedling, cajoling, pleading, because the more I did, the more stubborn he became. Won't go to the hospital, no way, he'd rather die, which he probably will if he keeps it up.
But since my b'day last month, his short term memory is going.... frighteningly fast. Yesterday, after a month of silence, since his Tellycom connection was cut off, and got turned on again yesterday? He had forgotten how to turn it on. He knew the channel numbers he wanted to watch, which was a small comfort....
That sort of thing cuts me right in the gut... To be clear, am not complaining here...
And I knew what was coming since his stroke two years ago....
But am having trouble DEALING with it. Because I often do not know what to do.
And when I try.... I get shot down.
Which brings me to the 'you got no rights' theme, but am not gonna go there...
Big sigh... you try to do what you can, I guess... never get involved with an Aries.
So I came home after an odd encounter with someone from my past... turned on the pc... only to see that there's been an aftershock on Haiti that registered 6.1 on the Richter scale...
And I thought, 'and you think you have problems?' Was horrified.
Perspective.... it is all about perspective....
Massholes......
is a term used by New Hamshirites to refer for people from Massachusets....
Sometimes it is affectionate, in a teasing sense, other times it is meant meanly, like the day we opened a new cinema, and got a drippingly acid, 'Oh look, they finally discovered escalators.' For them, we were the hillbillies of the 'nawth'. And you would think, 'Masshole!'
At 4:27 in the a.m. ..... have been looking at the election reporting from Massachusetts, and the Democrats have seemingly botched the election to replace Ted Kennedy's senate seat so badly, health care reform might become absolutely impossible.
The reporting over the past few days has been scathing. Jon Stewart feigned a heart attack Monday over the issue.
Martha Coakley's opponent... unspeakable. Interesting that it is always the Republicans who get down and kinky, the guy had a spread in Cosmo... in the nude. Back in the day... But he is a nut job.
http://www.thedailyshow.com/full-episodes/mon-january-18-2010-david-walker
It is in the first segment.
I KNOW how he feels....
Update: OH FUCK! Brown won. Can I throw up now?
Update 2: Listening on Rachel Maddow... and having her interview 'Tweety' aka Chris Matthews, I did....
Have been busy .... with the Telly-com
Well hallelujah!
From the fucking Saturday before Christmas till NOW... I have been fucking Don Quixote on a donkey with a lance fighting damned windmills....
I got so desperate, I wrote to an Ombudsman in a local paper, per Internet... An Ombudsman is a lawyer, and they supposedly help people with problems like I was having.
I have never written to a newspaper before. Where I grew up, you fight and help yourselves. I got an immediate answer per mail, like ten minutes later. (Isn't the internets wonderful???) And she said, 'Fax us the receipt that the bill is paid, and we will go AFTER them.'
Well that was the day I was at the end of my art, as we say, and so I called the telly-com again (Just one last time... uh-huh), and heard, they had reactivated his connection. ON JAN 14th! A month later from the initial intervention..... Way to go, Tellys...
And it was cold, and snowing, if I recall correctly, so I didn't go out because I don't see so well in the twilight any more, and thought, ok, tomorrow....
Called and did not get a message, 'This number is unknown to us' message. And it rang and it rang....
Got to Peter's, sleeping like the dead. Phone? No tone... tee-vee? Forget it. Internet... ditto.
If you want to see cold fury... well, let's leave that, ok?
So I called, and I called and I called, and got insulting people, nice people, it's like playing russian roulette.... Except the nice ones couldn't DO anything.
This afternoon, the Ombudsfrau from the paper mailed me about faxing the paid bill.
So I was explaining what had happened meanwhile, thanking her.... and EXPLAINING, Peter has fallen out of bed so often meanwhile, knocking things over, he got the thing you plug in all the components into probably destroyed.
NORMALLY, they are supposed to be affixed to the wall, you plug them in and forget about it, your telly-phone, fax, modem, whatever.
Well this thing was on the floor near his bed, and half buried under a very heavy brass stand lamp after a fall, so I was 'hopeful' and thought, 'Ok, let's just plug them out, plug them back in, and maybe it will work.' Nada. And that is when I knew.... 'Oh, we got troubles....'
And I am a technical idjit.
Certified.
(Peter is worse... His toaster kept blowing fuses he can't reach on his own, so he unplugged the stove and the refrigerator two days ago. And wondered why the fuses were still blowin. Trying to use the defective toaster... That was FUN...)
Whatever, I was too busy to write the Ombudsfrau... because nothing was all right any more.
Today I get a mail from her... I should fax the receipt so she can go AFTER them....
I thought that was more than cool....
So I explained what was going on, and in the middle of writing.... the )))Telly-com((( called, and said they would send a technician down and fix it tomorrow morning.
But in all this hecticness... I DID have a pertinent question.
HOW... and with WHAT RIGHT, can you send out a bill demanding €40.00 for your television service, which you cut off and they never provided? I think it is illegal. I was so enraged, and the person I was talking to was so inept, I ended up yelling at him.
So snotty... 'If you keep talking to me like that, I will have to end this conversation.' I hope he has fucking nightmares for weeks. Incompetent git....
So I asked her....
I wonder what she will say.....
With luck he will have his connections back tomorrow again.
And I am STILL waiting to hear from social services again tomorrow, because the person I talked to is only in office Tuesdays and Thursdays, and otherwise 'on the road'. I got up this morning feeling so optimistic....
Ya' think...
You know, two birds with one stone, and all that junk...
And I 'think'.... I'm getting just too old for all this stuff. I could just pass it off like water off a duck... Now? There are days I feel like 'Grumpy Old Men'. Eeewwwww...
But still do what I can.
I have heard some fucking fucked up things in my life...
One of my favorites was being at a Jehovah Witness gathering in Boston... in the Red Sox stadium, no less...
I don't even want to GET into it, because I went up to the top tier and lit a cigarette, and was looked at as the devil in person. It was sorta fun, to tell the truth... I thought they were out and out crazy.... I LIKED being da devil...
Tja, it was my bio-mom's JW phase, 'oh, we're in the last times, and the fucking world is going to end.' How cheering.... ( And I would think, 'Well, how about NOW? NOW?... um, someone doesn't know math for shit if you ask ME....)
I've been hearing that since the Fifties at a cobbler's shop. 'You'll see...'
Uh-huh.... Well, am still waiting....
But some things aren't funny.... not at all. A few weeks ago, Rachel Maddow called attention to a law that is up for resolution in Uganda. Draconian, to say the least, but the 'interesting' thing is that it is the US evangelicals and US Congresspeople, and Senators who are behind it, and spreading hate throughout the world. And putting basically innocent people in grave danger.
With an interest in getting a foothold economically in Africa.
I just ran across a video on Daily Kos.... if you have a fast connection, take a look as long as you can stand it. It runs about sixteen minutes, and it sickened me.
Your taxpayer's dollars at work, hey...
How 'proud-making'...
And what is all those fucking 'white-bread' folks even DOING there, häh? Who is paying for that?
Ok, here comes the link... you will not be happy with it...
Transforming Uganda / low resolution from Bruce Wilson on Vimeo.
uh-huh.... Telly-com
I was told the connection was restored this morning...
Called, and the 'no connection under this number' signal was gone and it rang... and rang... and rang....
Now, this paragon of a person told me, it had been reactivated, but, if it didn't work, I would have to call someone to go to his house personally to fix it.
So I got IN there this morning, yelling, 'Peter! Peter? Where the fuck ARE you?'
He was snoring away, I had to shake him to wake up. Scared me half to death...
'Your telephone is back on.' Except it wasn't.... No dial tone. Nor the tee-vee, nor the internets, nothing.
I DID get the radio working...
He hasn't had news since before Christmas...
And finally found out how to do that....
(I am so clumsy with this stuff, I could cry...)
And he says, 'You're a wizard...' And I said, 'Don't fucking come at me with Harry Potter, that is ridiculous.'
Frustration, much?
I practically had to force-feed him, but he wants his tee-vee back.
Someone 'up there' just fuckin' help me.
Some days... I feel like a BD victim....
You got your hands tied, are immoveable, and have to watch terrible things happen without being able to do anything about it....
This is an update and correction on the original title.
You watch in horror as terrible events unfold, and can't do anything about it.
The last time was watching the events and aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. That HAD to be the most horrific thing I have ever witnessed, even though I was thousands of miles away, and I wanted to help in whatever way I could... and the response was so coldly cynical, it left me spitless. And I was out BEGGING people to send what they could, if it were only five or ten dollars. Nada.
Haiti is worse. I haven't a nickle to my name at the moment... but have donated ten measly dollars to UNICEF which will be reckoned up next month, and will have a bit in the bank...
But just imagine... If everyone donated five or ten dollars to help those people, it would make a significant difference....
Just as it would have in New Orleans, but people didn't CARE. Esp. the then-presidink.
I have some huge issues with President Obama, and they are on this blog. But his reaction to this catastrophe is spot on, and correct.....
But I also get a Pepto-Bismol reaction, when I compare the reactions then, and now, in a land 700 miles away from the so-called-fucking-homeland. (Which so reeks of Nazi, it makes me physically ill... btw.)
And then to have the worst of the worst arseholes come out, and spew their racist hate in the face of what is being shown.... defies anything I would ever think of being 'Christian'. But we saw that during and after Katrina as well. Anything to advance their cause.
I could throw up.
If anyone has anything to donate.... the Rachel Maddow show has links where you can easily do that. I would choose UNICEF. Children are always the worst hurt by catastrophes like this.
But go look....
Update: I have been trying to change the title here, after a friend of mine pointed out that BD is CONSENSUAL. I broke a big rule of writing.... 'write what you KNOW about'. The analogy was totally inapt for that reason. As above, no experience there....
Whatever, Blogger doesn't want to let me change the title for some odd reason.... I was only trying to express how helpless one can feel having to see things like that happen. I suppose 'kidnap victim' would have been better, but then, I was never kidnapped either... except nearly... once when I was five, and a man in a big black car offered me candy if I would get into it.... it's a fuzzy memory.... we were in a very rural outskirt of my town, and I know I was waiting to be picked up by my aunt and see 'Davy Crockett'.
One of the only good things my bio-mom taught me was 'don't take candy from strangers'. I don't know to this day what would have happened otherwise. So that comparison comes closer.
In future... will stick to what I know, ok?
We had a chancellor
Who got so insulted by a journalist not knowing his facts.....
He said, 'Learn your own history, young man...' (said journalist being about 40...) It became immediately legendary. And after zombie-like Pat Robertson 'explained' that the earthquake in Haiti was a result of the slave uprisings in the late 1700's 'because they made a pact with the devil'... The current ambassador from Haiti to the US had his Bruno Kreisky moment, and it was brilliant. What I don't understand is how some people get a public platform to push hate while professing to be oh-so-Christian. Listen to the ambassador, and learn a bit of your own history, as our former chancellor would have said.
If you think...
That the earthquake in Haiti was something else you have never seen....
Me go off the charts for incensed.
And I know... that is a very poor comparison.
I mailed the ombudsman for the local rag, and I was very very angry, and biting, believe me.
I was 'awesome' in my anger. Even tho I am 'used' to being insulted in one way or another..
So let us get on to something else right now.... Haiti.....
Deep breath writing here. ... On the one hand, I am so pleased that the world is responding, and what we see from there is catastrophic.
And the creepy-crawlies, like Pat Robertson are out on the tee-vee, saying they made a pact with the devil.
Why the fuck do networks put them on to spout their Alzi messages? Incredible. In every sense of the word.
And Limpballs is out there saying 'oh yeah, Obama is responding so fast because it is 'political', and they are all a lot darker down there, skin-wise so it will make him look better if he is lighter?.' Uh-huh...
Umm... 'Say WHAT?' Hello?
Listen...
We are looking at something so catastrophic, it is near to unimaginable. To have arseholes use it politically is so despicable, it goes beyond believable.
It is about the poorest of the poor being knocked down yet again, and half-way destroyed, Some people come up with the most impious of things to say.... 'oh, it's all ok....' Arseholes. Give where you can.
When you fully see
red... it's time to just stop, because you are just going to make it worse....
I am very near a fucking stroke. Corporations, and the incompetence I have expeerienced, is extraordinary.... just extraordinary.
Yeah, I just got off the fucking phone from the fucking telly-com, and I am so enraged, I could just explode....
You wouldn't know it from the blog, but I am REALLY a very patient person. I am...
And I just got a very incompetent person on the line who obviously can't use his computer correctly, and just set me off for angry. I got confrontational, true. And I yelled at him, because he was an idiot who couldn't manage his data.
Whereupon he threatened to stop the conversation, if I would TALK to him like that.
(But they can talk to YOU like that... uh-huh.)
And this 'person' Martin somethin or other... said he couldn't find that I had paid in his telephone outstanding bill weeks ago... And I should fax it in again. HUH? WHAA? And said he has 40 Euros outstanding, whereupon I said, 'I know, and he will pay it, but for you to ask for money without delivering a service seems to be illegal as far as I am concerned, and is despicable.'
It seemingly got his feathers up.
I have only one recourse right now. Am ombudsman. Of our local newspapers.
And believe me, I am going to DO it.
I am sick of fucking around with a corportation without a soul.
Alan Grayson does it again...
You have to go to the source at Crooks and Liars, but he just keeps getting better and better. Way to go...
link Here.
Here we go again....
I ended up crying on the bus home today.... Silently. Just tears running down my face.
How very weak, n'est-ce pas?
No, non, nein... I was furious.
With the so-called 'Christian Democrats'. The ones who have held up gay rights reform here for over 35 years, when the Germans and Spaniards had no trouble with it, and now even Portugal.... but us? Uh-uh.... They won't lift a finger until the central government of the EU FORCES them to, or they won't be in the club. Jeebus, even the English have civil unions, and a few decades ago they were put in jail if they got caught being intimate with what they thought was an inappropriate partner.
How often.... I think 'marriage' and even civil unions are hoke, in my eyes.... And I still think that.
HOWEVER, if you spend 35 years with someone, you should also have some rights and some say in what is decided if things go wrong health-wise.
And as we all KNOW.... things aren't what they should be, chez Ren.
Today was especially bad. Peter can't even get himself up out of bed and onto his wheelchair. His breathing was so bad.... I really think he wants to die, and was just shattered.... shattered.
And I kept pleading with him, 'Let me call an ambulance, you can't go ON like this...'
And he goes off on tirades, I tell you, absolute tirades, and refuses.
The main point here is.... short of a life-threatening crisis like a heart attack or stroke... I have no right to do ANYTHING if he doesn't wish it. Even with the stroke, it was 'touch and go'. Just don't ask, ok?
With the heart attack, it was clear what was happening.
Now... these past weeks have been horrific.
And I get so frustrated, and so bloody angry at him... AND at the government, who can discern who gets which rights.
So yeah, I cried. I'm only human, after all...
Wow.... oh just wow....
Y'know... people often ask me why I never go to 'Murka. It's a valid question...
And I look at them askew, and think, 'You HAVE to be kidding me, right? ME... in 'Murka'. Uh-huh....
Yesterday... I mailed 'The Venerable', and explained that it was Annti who found out where he was. And why, without going into much detail. No one knew where he was, whom I knew... And I was not about to cross verbal swords with the one person who did and seemingly despises me, not just from the past weeks, but over decades.
And what did I fucking get for an answer? 'GET OVER IT' (fa chrissakes... not said, but I know he was thinking it...)
And that no one hates me... (uh-HUH...) And I should stop trash-talking about my family.
(Oooo... he saw 'the post'. I got some grief about that one, my only slip-up. The writer would have preferred it not to be gender-specific.)
Listen... when someone really, really goes after you in a time of extreme stress, and is insulting, denigrating, and hateful... you fight back, and all I have is words.
Except for that one slip-up, I have never had one negative thing to say on this piece of insignificance about family, or friends. You'd have to stab me for that to happen.... But I did feel stabbed that day. In the heart.
And a mess of people do not 'get' it.... really not.
In my youth, I have seen hateful, very hateful things happen. Like a first cousin of mine being thrown out on the streets when he was only sixteen, because his parents caught him in flagranti with a 'friend'. He was a good kid. Really.
I hope he is still alive today...
Everyone seems to go on and pretend they are sooo liberal, or sooo understanding, but they don't understand SHIT.
And I am too bloody old to face that sort of denial, and hatefulness....
It is why I can go off the charts for anger about many things.....
This week's theme is seemingly gonna be about racist remarks on MSNBC. Well, not surprising....
EVERYBODY 'profiles' everyone they see on any given street. No matter where.
And part of that 'profiling' is discerning if you are gay or straight.
I have never gotten anything hateful about the latter.... where I live....
And whether The Venerable likes it or not.... I have NEVER been so insulted, humiliated, denigrated anywhere as in the town I grew up in, and if he doesn't recognise hate when he sees it... then I am very very sorry.
So when I get asked why I never go there any more... I ask 'Whaaa? You're joking, right? Right?'
I KNOW I should google this....
But how can you be sure you are having a heart attack?
I went to bed two hours ago...
And got wakened with specific pain in my heart. No pain down the arm just the heart.. beating wildly.
I could hardly catch my breath, but that is normal, being asthmatic.
It was very disconcerting.
So all I could think of was.... 'get out in the air'.
So I did.
There is a fine rain, and is getting all the snow we had the last few days 'crunchy'.
Since back indoors.... the pain came back.... not so strong, but there.
There is nothing I hate more than horsepitals..... so am gonna treat this as an anomaly, and hope tomorrow is bettah....
After all, I got more than upset today, as you can see in the post below....
And do take things 'to heart', literally.
But it skeers me when the old pump decides to act up and cause pain....
Jeez.....
HUGE sigh here of I don't know what.. despair?
How to start a week, hey....
Sunday, Peter didn't call. He missed it altogether! Well so did I... mostly... I was so exhausted I slept till quarter to two in the afternoon, and had gone to bed at ten p.m.
And he finally called me this morning. It sounded pretty awful, he had just fallen out of bed again.
He didn't know what day it was. How encouraging.... He wants his tee-vee back, and the telly-com.... well, they are really the pits. Sometime this week, hey.... have been fighting....
As if it were 'important'. He should have been in the hospital at the beginning of last month, but no....
And I get to SIT there and watch him degenerate.
Such fun. NOT.
He hardly eats anything I make for him... and I can cook well....
And I can't FORCE him to get his arse to hospital.
We all know the mantra.... no rights.
But this morning he called and said, 'I just can't DO this any more. I want to go to a Pflegeheim.' That's a nursing home. Here, that is everyone's greatest fear, believe me. There are Dickensian horrible ones, and good ones.
On the pretext of going out and getting some groceries... I went to a social services external office just up the street from where he lives. I hadn't even noticed it for months.
Now, that is a touchy situation. I am not related, etc. etc. So I had to couch it as 'concern for a friend.' Uh-huh...
A young thing, about thirty if that... and she searched the data base... and I had to give her all my data, of course... drives me nuts.
She wants to go there at the end of the week or the beginning of next week, because... her supervisor is on vacation. Uh-huh. And the supervisor has to be there.
I really, REALLY did not want to go into hysterics and off the charts for anger in her office, so I restrained myself.
And I said, 'Listen, he has belonged in a hospital since way before Christmas, and won't go, and I can't force him to. And this morning he said he wants to be in a Pflegeheim, because he can't DO it any more. Please, please TALK to him.'
It was humiliating.
And she said, 'If that is what he wants, I know we will find a little place for him.' Uh-huh'
I got back to his place.... and he seemingly be-shat his wheelchair, even the armrests, and his bedding....
Now THAT is a sight to behold.... Just don't ask, ok?
The sooner they get there, the better.....
It got worse.... he told me... his neighbor takes his money to have him call me on his handy. And a good deal of it. The other one from the Middle East fought with him, and didn't want his money just to make a short call. So he gave him twenty Euros to put into a bank account 'for his beautiful son'.. Whereupon the guy said, 'How many times do I have to tell you we have a daughter?' The guy from the Middle East and his wife look by every day. They seem very nice.
Oh... La-la Land.
This break in reality has come so suddenly.... I just cannot find words... and it breaks my heart.
I am so relieved....
'The Venerable' (aka my father) came home today, and immediately mailed.
I 'think' he is still 'in transit'. Before getting a new place, where everything is on one floor, and good for anyone handicapped. I won't really be at ease till I know that happens, and have nightmares about those friggin' stairs he has to use to get to the WC.
I keep imagining it will be like something Peter has. I would hope so... light and airy, and easy to get around in.
And to think I was so angry this afternoon... Oh yes, I certainly was. Had a very trying morning, was finally home and it was snowing up a storm. We all know how much I 'love' that....
And I put my key into the lock in the door to the square, turned it.... and it broke, leaving the shaft in the lock.
Which meant going three blocks to enter my house 'the back way'. And I had thought, 'oh yeah, THIS is NOT gonna be a good year...'
Well, Preciousses, it usually comes down to perspective in the end, I guess...
About two hours later... I had MAIL. Just a couple of lines. But it was good to know that 'The Venerable' is back in his own space, and ok.
What could be better than that?
A matter of perspective, see?
Sometimes I think we get blinded by little irritating things in our lives, and can miss what is most valuable.
Oh, that sounds so trite and superficial.... but I do think it is true...
Well, Ohio....
Speak up. I KNOW a few things, but I'm not clairvoyant.... Come on.... speak out... I don't care if you are with Blue Cross and Blue Shield.
I find it 'interesting' that you seem to be digging way deep... whoever you fucking are... into things I wrote on another blog a while ago.
Yeah, that is interesting.
So... come on, come on!
Spit it OUT, hey... I want to hear it.
I Do NOT bite.
IF... whoever you work for... you have an issue with what I have said and depicted, tell me where I am wrong.
Give me a reason, and fucking convince me....
I'm mostly a rational person...
So tell me... what is so terrific about Blue Cross and Blue Shield, huh?
Tell me....
Inquiring minds want to know..
Or did what I report on other things that can be giving you doubts? Then mail me.
But I do NOT like people looking into this subject and not having the balls or ovaries to comment or disagree, or ask questions....
I hate that.
As above, I do not bite. And actually... I don't much care... unless you can bring something that can tell me or convince me that I am wrong.... Can you????
I dunno, just a mix of pics today, am exhausted...
Ok, have been holding this for a while. It is a long-haired Dachsund, and you don't see them so often any more. His name is Max. Yup... I know this from his owneress. Doggies like Max were the mascot of the Munich Olympics in '72. Called 'Waldi' . Presumably for 'Valdemar'. They had a problem, cute as they look.... they tend to bite.
Now here is your 'classic' 'Rear Window' view from Peter's bed-living room. This morning. As you can see, all of gawwds angels are washing their hair, and the dandruff is mounting up till it gets scary. I love the cedar, the birch tree looks nice... but getting out in that 'stuff' is sort of the pits...
The view wasn't any better from the kitchen... Looking to the riverside, which is about 300 meters away. Can we say 'frosted'?
Tja....
Graffiti is running wild in the city at the moment. 
Riot girl seems to be prolific. Annti, are you here and not telling me? Apropos.... NOW is the time for the wood-chippers. They are still at all the Xmas tree collection centers and in full service.... All we gotta do, is kidnap whom we don't like... schlepp them down there in the night, and turn 'em ON.. Yeah, right.... ok. But ya gotta admit it is a fun thought. Sort of... And oh yeah, lots of rose beds nearby. Oh, the joy...
The last of the Xmas decos on the main street. This goes waaay beyond the saying, 'in Graz, the clocks run differently.' Because the hour and the minute hand on the clock tower are reversed. Why hang Xmas trees upside down, and light them up? And who thought of this insane idea?
Last but not least... I haven't seen one of these in AGES. And I can't even tally up all the time I spent in one, commuting from Manchester to Durham daily, back in the day, and wanting to drive, and HAVE one. (I guess I was modest in my wishes, but I wanted mine in 'forest green'. oooo, I would have climaxed just to have that.. ) They had two problems. Wind-shear, which if it came from the side, you could get blown into another lane. And the windshield wipers. If it rained, they wouldn't work... of course... Ahhhh...
How many days after I took the cord out of the bottom of my anorak, cut it in half, and we would tie it to them and keep pulling back and forth through the vent windows in front so we could SEE something... But I don't care. I loved those bugs completely.
So... enough for today.
ARRRGH!!! The Horridays, the fucking Horridays...
I just got off the ' horn' with the friggin' Telly-com.....
I want to smash something, I want to KILL... I wanna be Voldemort's fucking snake in Harry Potter, go through the pipes of the local one, and throttle them....
Well, you get the idea....
Ok, that sort of took the pressure off.....
Good thing we don't have 'thought criminals'.... yet....
So.... in a nutshell.... Yeah, everything is paid up. And because his connection got fully capped, you see.... because I was ill, and he was ill, and he didn't pay his bill in time.... they cancelled his contract.
Fully.
So they have to create a fully new one.
Now WHAT the FUCK does this remind me of????
'Murka comes to Austria.... just a hint.
Since the Saturday before Christmas... I have been so ON this. And got the most horrible replies and 'service promises' I have ever heard in my LIFE.
I have gotten answers that were so cold-blooded, I was speechless.
I had some nice people, but they weren't capable of DOING anything.
And on Dec. 30th... I heard that the new approval for a connection had been forwarded on December 29th.
There is still nothing, NOTHING. Well, we had the last of the horridays yesterday, so I checked in....
And this 'Young Thing' said, it will take another week. Because, you see, it was the horridays, and no one is around. Or something. I'm glad I'm on meds.... Or I would have gone off the charts for verbal abuse. 34 years, and I STILL am not acclimatised to some things.... They drive me crazy.
A couple of days ago, a neighbour of Peter's from upstairs rang the bell, could we call her a taxi...
I was so embarrassed. My cell phone is kaputt, his phone doesn't work... it was loverly... NOT. I fell all over myself apologising, and she put a finger up to her mouth, and said, 'shhhhh'. She seems to be nice. I've only spoken with her twice... but she is nice.
However.... Peter is networking. He manages to call and terrorise me at odd hours of the day. Going across the hall, and getting Rocco's father to call me on his cell. Rocco is a pit-bull. Mixed race. Rocco's 'father' is a grouchy old man with a prosthetic leg.
I've never said more that 'hello, how are you?' to him, and I sorta wanted didn't know.
At Christmas, I knocked on his door and thanked him for helping him call me, and wished Rocco a good Merry Merry....
But no, Peter went further. The other day, I found the um-brella in the kitchen instead of in its' stand. So I asked him wtf it was doing there.... He can't use one and use the wheelchair....
He got sheepish. And said he bangs on the ceiling, and the upstairs neighbors come down, and do what he wishes.
(I've been sick in bed for most of this week, so he got 'desperate'?')
So I asked, 'Who's upstairs?'
'Oh, a lovely couple, and they have the most beautiful son. '
'Austrians?'
'No, I think they are from the Near East.'
REALLY. THIS from the most racist person lately, who has NEVER liked children, and nasty to the family we had living above us in the Mühlgasse, or THEIR children, oh shit, I do not wish do get into that. Not that I LIKE children. They are interesting... how they think.
It would have been 'fun' to have a house full of families, and spoil kids with my cooking, and just been a role model. Nothing else.
Thinking about a substitute-family.
Nothing more.
So I don't 'GET' this now....
Seemingly, he'll 'use' anyone just to get what he wants, but that was unsettling.
The neighbours name....
Na ja I was sarcastic.
I don't want to get into it.
It took months.....
And a lot of mess. Soap operas can be fun. I keep following one story line on YouTube from ABC's 'One Life To Live'...
Over seventy parts so far, and Kyle and Oliver finally land in bed. What is it with the candles on those shows, they drive me nuts. Otherwise, very tasteful.... nice music. Pretty.
I guess I'm a romantic at heart... What really 'got' me was the very last camera shot. I remember being held like that and feeling 'safe', and protected. I guess I was very lucky...
New Yorkers are crazy...
I just learned... that this coming Sunday is Improv is holding an annual
No pants subway ride.
Everyone participating takes off their pants and ride the subway in their dessous'. Hilarious.
h/t to Joe.My.God
And funny....
I am so sick and tired....
of all this 'terrorist talk', and the underwear bomber, and so on and so forth, and making people into scared little rabbits.
The 'chances' that you meet one, or become a vicitim of one.... are few and far between, believe me. You have a better chance of being in a fatal accident than getting blown up.
I am not being cynical, or making fun.... how could I?... have had my close shaves with danger...
But it does not mean, you end up hiding under the bed forever....
Ok, just to reminisce, here. I was three hundred yards away from where the Israeli wrestling team got killed in 1972. They were very nice, studied them over the summer.
How THAT ended killed something in me.
I could have got blown up at a train station in Italy, if I hadn't decided to come home a day earlier than I had planned. Serendipity.
One terrifying moment was riding the so-called 'murder train' to Athens. I was so dumb, and so fucking naive, I should have been shot, just for that.
I didn't get a visa, beforehand, and got some immense grief at the border.
Somehow I managed, when I yelled at a conductor in Russian, thanks to my Berlitz phrase book....
It was a 4o hour jouney. No food car, you just went on.
And this 'person' got on in Sarajevo. Said he was a 'student' at the university there, studying metallurgy. I'm gullible, lots of people study into their thirties here....
I mentioned I had been in Munich, and he got really really interested. And said, 'I was in Munich ALL SUMMER, last summer.' This guy was so intense, he frightened me to the depth of my heart.
So I went immediately to defualt... 'dumb 'Murkin'. 'Oh yeah, Munich is a nice city....' Dweeb, Idjit.... you do what you can to protect yourself, and most of the fucking train was empty at that point...
And it was known as the 'murder train', not for nothing.
NO person has ever frightented me like that.
We came to the Greek border, and he was watching me so closely... If I had made one false move, I would have been dead.... and oh yes, he was travelling 'home' to Lebanon, where the people from Black September came from, and didn't know fuck for anything about 'metallurgy' and I hope the Israelis fucking KILLED him.
It is so denigrating to play 'dumb 'Murkin', believe me.
When you sense real danger, the adrenalin goes up, and you do what you have to do, and believe me, that guy was dangerous.
So some Greek guys got on and filled the compartment, and I felt like I was 'saved'. Upon which I got seduced for the first time in my life, but that is a whole different story....
I was just so happy to get away from 'that man'.
You can't know....
I wanted to be saved, and I know I was in grave danger.
What can I say, it was an eventful trip....
Later, when I began working here.... there was the Baader-Meinhof gang, terrorists, and they killed a lot of politicians. And the federal police would come in every night and give us photos so we could call if one of them showed up here, because they were afraid they would escape to then-Yugoslavia. Not to mention the Red Brigade in Italy. Oooo, it was skeery... They never saw the guy on the train to know what skeery is, believe me....
This idea I found totally fucked up. But they were certain....
So now comes the other side of the coin. I think I have told this before, but not in this context.... I hadn't been here all too long, and our secretary was a bit hysterical in her nature.
And I didn't know where to place people, or classify them... It was sorta fun.
The Ho-tel was a mess at the time. Most of the rooms didn't have private baths.. they were down the hall, hey. It wasn't unusual...
So these three 'guys' come in and take a triple without a bath, decades apart.
And our secretary goes fucking off the charts. ' Terrarists! Ooooo. And I said, 'Whaa???'
'Have to be, don't fit together... Are you so stoopid?' And I thought 'Whaa????'
So this paragon of civil rights, and protection person, goes and phones in all the info to the po-Lice from the forms they filled out to register, totally aflutter, and certain, CERTAIN, she has some big fish on a hook.
Well... she got them so excited, they checked it all, and said, disappointingly, 'no.... EXCEPT.... They might be sympathisers and helpers.' Uh-huh...
And they were gonna come and take a look at them... discreetly. Uh-huh.
Discreet was having six police cars pulling up in front of the Ho-tel, with sirens blaring, and they stormed upstairs, broke the door open, smashed those poor people up against the wall, frisked them only to find...
They were evangelical pastors. Whereupon my boss went to lunch, and the fucking wrath of Gawwd descended upon me.
Can we talk about egg on our faces, Preciousses?
I am only repeating this here, because of the current climate of 'fear'....
And I don't think I have ever written about the man who made me want to piss my pants for pure fear. I don't like talking or thinking about him, but he haunts my mind to this day, decades later.
What I am trying to express here is differentiating between pure evil, and nut-job hysteria, and I HATE the latter....
So... to get back to the present day... for me... it is about nut-jobs making everyone hysterical. For the most part.
You do not KNOW what it is like, to look into the eyes of pure evil. Dead eyes, like a basilisk.
You do not KNOW how helpless you can feel to be trapped in a nearly empty train, racing through Bosnia to Macedonia, and feel so threatened you fear for your life....
The rest? Pfft. I'd have loved to be a hero. But I would have been dead. Long ago.
That disturbs me, but I THINK he got his just deserts...
I think we have to put this all into some sort of perspective....
There are good and evil people in this world. And the latter do horrible things.... And we can Fight that.... if we stay together.
But I see NO sense in being scared little rabbits who try to hide in their hidey-holes... And I do not see the sense in why the government wants to put band-aids on what they think is wrong and make wounds fester.
We have a world here that hates so much, and the bigger the chasm between income and quality of life is going to be, the worse it will get.
Just my opinion.... but the whole thing makes me sick.
Ok, what is Windows XP DOING?????
I never mess with my systems settings.. I crashed my first computer so many times, I went fucking nuts....
I NEVER go into the task bar, or look at system things. It just works, and I am content with it...
But TODAY... it decided to Act UP. First I dind't have sound, and then it was so fucking screwed up I had to re-start five times.
And I usually decide to just put it in rest postition if I am out of the house, because it boots faster. (Yeah, I'm an instant gratification person, shoot me...)
Today was way out of the ordinary... Oh yes.
Peter rang me out of bed way before the time I wish to be called. 'Oh so bushy-eyed and furry-tailed, and he had everything ready and wanted to GO. It was ten minutes before seven in the fucking morning!
Uh-huh...
So I got down there, after trying to pull myself into some semblance of 'presentable'
And he fell asleep....
I'd washed and dried his clothes yesterday so he would be some sort of 'presentable'. And since yesterday... oooo.... it was SO important, and SO unimaginably high priority...
So I re-woke him and said, 'Do you want to go downtown or not?' I was pissed off.
And then went into one of his 'helpless' phases. 'Help me put on my pants, you bought them, and they are shit' Wiich made me angry... 'I didn't have the money for better and neither did you, remain still, and pull them up over your sorry arse'.
Yup, am just a bundle of joy....
So I took him downtown on the bus, and the fuckers never opened the ramps and I had to heave him in. It was one of those days where all the heat stink comes down, and you want to choke even if you are healthy.
Try to DO that with a 1o6 Kilo guy in a wheelchair when the fat asshole sitting at the wheel down't park correctly at the curbstone.
YOU HAVEN'T LIVED, believe me. Till you tried THAT one...
So what happened downdown, and why we were there in the first place? I thought we were going to the bank, and he would pay bills, but No...
He wanted to go into a department store, the most expensive in the city..... and buy an electric shaver, so he can do it himself.... He still looks like Rasputin...
I wanted to throttle him right then and there... but contained myself... somehow...
Everything was so expensive, I wanted to take him to shitty.... um City Park, where they have an outlet where things are much less expensive. But no...
So he decided on a Phillips. Good brand... Seventy Euros he doesn't have actually, but did in caswe.h...
S0 Then. he decided he wante hot cocoa at the Sacher Café, in the city hall... uh-huh...
The Cafe Sacher is something 'ELEGANT', and we looked like fucking aliens from another planet.
There were two men at the bar, one of whom looked at me as if 'who let this trash in here?'
It was so uncomfortable. And then some woman who loudly criticised that I had ordered a salmon tramazzini, and ate it with a tiny cup of corfee.... Gawd, how 'Murkin. 'Talking to 'no one'. Uh-huh. Well, I do not tend to do that with a glass of champagne at ten o'clock in the morning. I USED to... but it really isn't advisable... Not for me at any rate...
I have never felt so uncomfortable in such a setting in my life, I hadn't want to go in there, you dress for it, and I wasn't.
He was oblivious, got his cocoa, and his strudel.... dropped his fork, it was absolutely horrible, and I picked up and truned red as a turkey, and I wanted out of there.
He was happy....
It was embarrassing in every sense of the word.
So we escaped somehow from that horrible scenario... and that from the guy who polished my manners, and taught me what IS and isn't done in this society.... And then went and broke all the fucking rules.
So we finally got OUT of there, I hate that place. And I ask... 'errm, now we go to the bank? '
' I never said that'.... uh-huh. Calls me Sunday evening, and thinks it is morning, drives me nuts with what he all ELSE wants to do, and I fall right into the trap. He'd wanted to buy something else, and then he couldn't remember what it was. Three hours later, he knew... A bottle to urinate in.
It got so fucking worse... Hardly home, I made some soup and what he can eat, and the doorbell rang.
It was a neigbor. She wanted us to call a taxi for her... put Peter's phone is still turned off. And my handy is still kaputt.
If you want to be fucking embarrassed, that is already the high point of the so-called 'New Year'....
However... Peter is already busy manipulating his neighbors.
Terrorises me per telephones that don't belong to him, and I keep it short, because those things are fucking expensive...
And I walk in and there was a wooden box on the table.
Hotel Sacher.
No cake in it.... fucking gone.
And I asked, 'Where did this come from?
''My neighbor.'
So I asked, what neighbor????
He is being very circumspect about that.
All I could gather was that this 'person' was in his house. Seemingly with wife and child.
Disturbingly, I found an um-brella in the kitchen today. I had to fucking brow-beat him into telling my why the fuck hell he would take it out of it's stand, and put t in the kitchen??
Just curious, hey... Well, since the fucking telly-com doesn't service him I guess his neighbour does.
He punches it into the ceiling, and the guy comes down.
Whoever the fuck it is....
He 'says' the guy 'espied' a huge volume of a book I gave Peter yers ago and is sitting on his writing pult. It is called, 'Tom of Finland, The Art of Pleasure' and don't you ever go looking for it.
It is pornographic, and I thought, sometimes very funny. While he was alive, his stuff was in art ehibitions.... Just like Robert Maplethorpe, a photographer who was so much mor subtle.
And this 'GUY' says... 'Oh, Tom of Funnlad' He was very interesting
Really?
Peter said he wouldn't let him look at it. I do not believe that for one second.
So... why does he want to shave so suddelnly?
I have my doubts, Preciousses....
As per usual, I do not have trust, and it angers me all the more.
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