Well, well... another odd 24 hours, and I got my first black eye ever

I look like a friggin' racoon or a rowdy. And no, no one hit me. I am your absolute, total klutz. If there is anything that goes one centimeter above the pavement, you can be sure I'm going to find it and trip over it. It's famous among those who know me well, and have often joked, if I had been born a girl, they should have named me 'Grace'. Not. So I was hurrying to get supper before the supermarket closed, tripped on the curbstone because I was hurrying, and fell full out on the sidewalk, splat. My glasses flew, and that was the worst thing about it, because without them I am blind. Scraped my elbow, and three people were all concerned, asking if I were ok, and I said, 'Yes, thank you. Thank you.' And thought to myself, 'you bloody idiot, want to break a hip and die?'

So I thought I got off with just a scrape on the elbow, you see...

This morning, I had a lot of bureaucratic things to do. Among them, the unemployment office. I felt crappy, and just put on my NY City OPERA tee-shirt. Black with white logo. I didn't notice anything when I shaved. Yesterday I found out that the union will provide me with financial help while I am unemployed. So I had to get some bank statements as to what they are paying me, and an official statement from the unemployment office as to since when I have been unemployed. I've paid my dues for over thirty years, so now they do something for me for a change.

Then I checked in with Elke for a couple of minutes, and she was looking at me oddly.

I couldn't figure out why.

Then I went to the pension place, and the guy in the reception ALSO looked at me oddly, but he couldn't reach the guy who would know if the Americans had finally responded.

So then I had my 'date' with my new advisor. She turned out to be very, very cool. I think she likes my sense of humour, and that is really not for everyone. 'So you're waiting.' 'Yes, they told me that the Amis really take their time about it, and I am PURPOSELY leaving out some very negative adjectives.'

Click.

I gave her the reader's digest abridged version of what went down last year, including all the stuff with Peter. She was really disgusted.

With my company, I mean, not with me.

The ice broke, and I have never laughed so much or so hard during a bureaucratic meeting. Out loud, even. At one point I said, well working in my job, you learn things that you didn't even know EXISTED. Or wanted to know, for that matter.... She fell apart.

'So you stayed in Austria because you fell in love, and then he dumped you.' 'It was a lot more than that, but you know men.... basically pigs...'

We laughed so hard....

I have to go back in October, as she is going for a three week rehab wellness thing, and then three weeks up on an Alm, in Carynthia. An Alm is a meadow on a mountanside, way the fuck up there, and there are cow and sheep-herders, and they make milk and cheese. Sounds very nice.

Ladies really try to get in the last word, and normally they do. She said, 'And when it rains we stay inside and I'm gonna tie my guy to the bed, and take my pleasure.'

Spitless.

But I got the exit word, hey. 'You SEE? That is exactly what I never wanted to know!'

We just busted out laughing.

Hey, thirty years ago, if you had anything whatsoever to do with these government people, they were so hostile you kept your bloody Mouf shut. Amazing.

And I walked, and bought some groceries for lunch. And Peter goes all patriarchal on me and wants to know who hit me. Because I have a black eye. So that is why they were all looking at me oddly. It seems to have developed over the morning, instead of last night.

Late last night, I learned of a death in my family that hurt me. But that is for another post. Life goes on, etc.

oooo.... Somebody's got one hell of a crush and it isn't me

Was just out to get cigarettes. At four-thirty in the a.m. It was already light, which must mean we are in June. On our latitude/longitude, it starts to dawn at three a.m. standard time, in other words, which has always been a source of wonderment to me. Birds chirping away.... Odd.

Somebody put up new posters out on the square. A new cocktail-music bar to open downtown, on June 18th, startling graphically. Orange on black background. The Obama Bar! Talk about 'overnight fame'. The link is in the title, haven't clicked through it yet. But the rubric 'Rent Obama' sort of jars on the nerves, if you ask me. (Yeah, I know, you didn't ask me...). I'd have gone with 'Rent an Event'. Oh well... Maybe I'll send them an e-mail. 'Rent' has some un-good connotations....

The link is in the title.

Oh.my. gawd....

It is Monday, so it was bank day. Which means I have to get Peter OUT of the house, and his bloody neighbors weren't home, so I had to do it myself. He 'used' to be six-foot two and weighs about one hundred six Kilos even without his missing leg. I am five foot nine, and about 150 pounds. Or close to 80 Kilos.

Did you ever see 'the dying swan' at he ballet? Pretty much sums it up.

But I DID it. Hooray for me.

And I still feel like shit.

So I wheeled him into town, as usual. This place keeps saying, that the town is hadicapped friendly. Uh-huh. The only curbs that are good for wheelchairs are meant for bicyclers, and you have to know where they are.

So we went to the bloody bank.

There is a very personable 'greeter' there. He sets everything in motion. And he has a killer sense of humour. Today he was totally stressed. And he mislaid Peter's ATM card, and didn't give it back to him.

And they couldn't find it.

He was so fucked up over that, he looked like a Dachshund who inadvertantly pissed on your best carpet.

But no. I can understand it....

This afternoon, Sabine, his bank lady, called me on my cell phone, and asked for him. So we talked. She couldn't get him on his normal phone, so she called me.

It was oh-ful.

Tja, there are days you feel you shouldn't get out of bed, but there are otherdays when you can DO domething when you least expect it......

Maybe I did something good today, but am not certain.

Oh je, here we go again....

The world cup soccer games began yesterday. Austria and Switzerland are hosting them. The Germans are horrible, as per usual. In the sense that they think they are sooooo wonderful. They get on everyone's nerves.

So time to turn off the tee-vee, and go underground. People here go nuts over these games, and Somebody or other shot a couple of goals this evening, and all of a sudden there was a hell of a hullabaloo out on the streets.

The Germans won over Poland tonight. So here we go again.... Back to dvd's. I hate the whole nationalistic thing, and the drunken mobs who growl out their battle songs and can't carry a tune, and then and go wild in the streets after a game.

And they all run around waving their flags.

Gimme a break.

Well, just FUCK me raw witrh a flavour straw,,,,,

As we potty-mouthed kids used to say in the Sixties.

We had no idea what it MEANT, but it was just a saying when you got fully knocked down inside by something.

And it came back to me tonight after reading that Hillary is only suspending her canderature.

I have a mess of adjectives I will NOT use this evening, but 'vindictive' is uppermost in my mind.

I've spent all afternoon trying to help a neighbor find his son. A little five year old boy who disappeard with his Mom in Ethiopia. It was nerve-wrenching for me. 'We have a trace, but it is not certain that it will be good.' The guy needs my English to write what he needs. I did what I could...

It was emotionally draining, believe me.

The guy loves his son. He was a mercenary.

Which brings us round again to 'that woman'. No. Just..... no...

Oh my, I just had a 'moment' out on the square....

slept this afternoon, very much rain, and hurried over to the tobacconist and the supermarket before they closed.

Out on the square, there were bunches of kids. Maybe eight or nine years old. Unusual. They cheered me up, they looked so funny. (No, not what you think, I find children little wonderworks of non-predjudicial tiny persons who can come up with the most awesome explanations that explain things they do not understand. No one taught them to hate, in other words.)

So there was this little group on the corner going to the tobacconist, and several kids went nuts over a husky, gorgeous young dog, the owner was a guy my age had and was waiting to cross the street. It was one of the most perfect dogs I have ever seen, young, and he let the kids pet him, and the old guy just smiled hey... And I thought, 'Am I in the right city, or did I get transported to somewhere else?'

Oldies usually aren't so nice.

Came back across the intersection, and then it happened, going to the supermarket. Three other little kids were in a very agitated conversation, you see.

Now what all these children have in common is the same haircut. They look like little roosters. Good gracious, if I had come home from the barber's looking like that, my folks would have sued him. The sides are all cut short, and the top is stiffed up with gel, and some of them have longer hair in the back of the head, or get blonde streaks in it.

When I just think about how my 'rents reacted if you tried to look like a Beatle.. Oh my...

Or a Jesuit telling you were sick because your hair was too long, whomI threw out of the hospital room.

But that isn't 'the moment'. There was a lady who crossed the intersection with me. In a Tschador, as we say, completely covered. From the Middle East, and I really don't care where from. But she found the little roosters funny, and we were on the same wave-length. And we LOOKED at one another, and laughed quietly. Twice. Her eyes were so pretty and vivacious....

We are all a part of humanity, connected.

I get so tired of people and their predjudices.

It was only a 'moment'.

But it was very nice. To connect with humanity---

Maybe I should go out more....

Am clueless.....

So O' Bambi gets the delegates he needs, and the sHill says she's staying in, and doesn't concede. If she had, she could have quit with dignity and grace and united the party.

The press and tee-vee here seem to be fixated on her and think she still has a chance. Propaganda.

Disgusting.

Good luck with McSame....

Chuzpe...

was once defined as murdering your parents, and then throwing yourself on the mercy of the court because you are an orphan.

It is three thirty in the am, and I have a brain fart, can't remember who said that originally.....

But it came to mind yesterday morning watching Hillary's speech in Puerto Rico. (And why should their votes count if they aren't an official state, but a 'protectorate'. Or Tahiti, for that matter? That is confusing.... Just sayin'.... Can we say 'desperation' here?)

But as it turns out.... Little Scotty Mclellan has become a three-day wonder on the news circuits. He was the most ineffectual person I have ever seen, bar Dana Perino, the ditz.... I often wonder how far lower they can put the bars, and insult people's intelligence.

But if you boil the essential message that that pudgy little guy has to say, all that gets left is, 'I lied to you, and you SWALLOWED it' (as the guy who told you you were hot and let you fellate him said), pushing the blame on the journalists. But it isn't that simple. The so-called 'journalists' are just Yuppie tools. And they fellate to get the 'gravy'.

From what I have seen so far, some are rushing to protect their not-so-pristine reputations. Bill O's head is exploding, and the sooner the better.... It is fun to watch. Now where did I hide the potato chips?????

But no. Better leave them. If there was ever a non-story, this one would get some prize of the year, and it isn't even half over yet.

Chuzpe.

There are other things going on in the world....

But no, the internets are panting about the so-called 'revelations' of 'little' pudgy Scotty McLellan.

Whoo, boy howdy.

What he had to say is what intelligent people have known for years.

He was WORSE than that airhead, Dana Perrino.

I'll give him credit for trying to bust the Dumbya bubble, but to be treated as if he had a set of balls after deluding the nation for over five years isn't a track record.

It's a diversion.

And little Scotty is your typical case of closet queen who got kicked out of the club, and is just playing the victim card. (It is just my gaydar... don't mind me.)

'I didn't know'. quasi, 'the scales fell from my eyes by the TONS.'

Uh-uh. He was close to Dumbya when he was governor of Texas. He knew how vindictive and sadistic he was....

And the press is just spinning a new meme that in the end effect, doesn't mean a thing.

Little Scotty is a slime-ball, and will remain so.

And meanwhile, there is a hell of a lot going on in the world that needs attention.

The Wicked Witch of the North...

Have been busy all week with visitors, quasi-familial stuff. So I didn't have much time to look around and see what was going on. It was all very nice, and they are interesting folks... and politically interested in what goes on in the world, and how US politics affects us all. And a few days ago, I remarked that I hadn't seen such a dirty primary since 1968. And expressed my fear that if this one keeps going on as it has, the convention in August is going to make the one in Chicago look like a block party with dancing and grill parties.

Now that they have gone back to Germany, I checked my usual blogs. So the Shill referenced the RFK assassination, and in the back of her head, it is the justification for staying in the race, because CA is the last primary in June. Turns out she is very ill, in my estimation. Because she has used this 'excuse' three times before, months ago. Wishful thinking on her part? Bad advice from her team? I found it devastating.

It is stomach-turning, as is so much of her campaign.

It is as if she is thinking, 'well, if they take him out, you will need ME. And I get what I am entitled to.'

Gawwd...

We have all seen 'The Wizard of OZ'. I always wondered. There was the Wicked witch of the West, and the Good witch of the East.... And I wondered, ... what about the North and South?
Well, now we know... The sHill is the wicked witch of the North. Now we need a good one from the South.

Just sayin'

There are days....

When everything good you try to do goes wrong.

This was one of them.

For weeks now, Peter has been against having his aunt visit. So HOW was I supposed to tell a ninety year old lady that her favorite nephew doesn't want to see her? I even invited her and her daughters to go out to eat this week. He doesn't want to go.

He cried all morning. Swell.

I was supposed to go over to their hotel this evening, and he got me so worked up, I threw up all afternoon. I was so sick that I had to call it off.

But if Peter is stubborn, his aunt is a virtual steam-roller. I said I have to take him downtown tomorrow, and got the order to do a command performance at the Café Sacher at ten-thirty.

Scheiße.

So I had to go over and tell Peter because his phone is capped. And then I laid down the BIG DADDY number. So the plan for tomorrow is MADE, and if he gives me one ounce of trouble, I am going to go nuclear.

I really and truly hope that if I get a stroke, it will be a big one and I drop dead, because I NEVER want to get to where he is right now....

Just when you think you did your research.....

Turns out it wasn't enough.

Many years ago, I began to write a murder mystery for the best friend I ever had. He was dying.

It was based on a scandal that happened here. It involved the upper crust of the city's 'HIGH' society. I had met many of the protagonists personally. I was the trophy person at many a party... 'look at this AMI I picked up!' Oh yes it was fairly oh-ful. But I often paid them back for their vulgarity with tinly veiled sarcasm. And the scandal involved some fairly kinky things I had never even HEARD of. And never really understood.

So some months ago, I was trying to re-construct it and finish it, for Mark's sake. (Good, grief, I was sending ten pages a day per airmail to California, and hoping to finish it in time. 'Write me a murder mystery,' he said. He was the brother I had wished I had had. And I loved him very much.)

Well, it involved a lot of characters, and Larry Kramer's 'Faggots' had just come out and I admired the structure. So I went with it. Short takes that you pull together into one whole cloth. Far more difficult than I had imagined.

Mark died after I had finished the fifth chapter, and I was so devastated, I stopped writing for nearly twenty years. I was just speechless. He was only thirty years old. He believed I had talent and potential.

Whatever, as above, I started re-reading the ms. It isn't so bad. But I realised that I did not understand some basic things and so I went 'researching' one day at home and made a couple of contacts with people who gave me some background on what I wanted to know. It involved an SM site. They were both nice and gave me what I needed to know. And in case you are wondering, one of the first rules in creative writing courses is: write about what you KNOW. One day, one of them messaged me, and I called it up at work and forgot to delete the address in Firefox. So my colleague saw the site, and fucking freaked out. He was shocked, I tell you, SHOCKED.

He said, 'PLEASE don't tell me you run around in leather stuff on your days off...' (Which he obviously thought absurd....)

And my inner gremlin rubbed his hands in pure glee. That he would think that after knowing me nearly twenty years was hilarious for me. So I played 'evasive', and laughed my ass off, inside.
And just to be clear---never have, never will. NOT interested.

Otherwise, I do not care what consenting adults do.

But the other day, I got a mail. It was so off the charts for anything I have EVER seen, I blanched. Seems I only scratched the surface. It involved an unspeakable Yahoo group, and now I understand less than I ever did before.

But am NOT going to go there.

Some people seemingly get so fucked up and lack so much self-esteem... words fail.

But I don't need that for my project.

I lost it at the Supermarket....

This will have to be a day and night post. The former being the one below.

I was so drag-assed tired, I slept most of the afternoon, and as below, if I get up, I'm the Grinch in capital letters. So I got my evening ration of snigarrettes, and went to get something to eat at the supermarket, and I HATE supermarkets.

There was this absolutely clueless mother with two kids, the youngest being in the cart. And clamouring for attention, and his mother just ignored him. This kid looked like a Raffael painting, but hat the most devastating loud voice I have EVER heard. 'Mamma! Mamma!' It fucking went on and on and she didn't do anything. It wasn't the kid's fault, but he really got on my nerves. They were two people ahead of me in line, and I was clenching by that time.

And she was still around the register when my stuff came up and haggling with the little hobbit of a cashier when I was supposed to pay, and my nerves were so frazzled, I did an Annti. Looked right and yelled, 'SHADDUP! You have GOT to be the WORST child in this CITY right now. (And to his mother) And wipe his nose, it is disgusting.' All in English, of course, I need time to get into my German if I just got up.

The bloody WORLD stood still, hey. The hobbit asked, 'Cash or bank card?' Frightened. I said, 'Card, thenk you....' And I marched.

I was already sorry for my outburst, but that had to be the most obnoxious child I have ever encountered, and it wasn't his fault. His mother is a ditz. These freakin peeps who think their kid is SO wonderful, and let them run wild without setting a border they should not cross. And think everyone around them should find them super-parents. It never works.

So I lost it at the supermarket.

Go figure.

WHERE in the world have we gotten to?

This is just a fresh impression, but it made me wonder greatly.

I got up, as per usual, and was grinch-like, as per usual, and running on empty at home. So I went and got cigarettes, and then crossed the big intersection to go to the supermarket and get some breakfast that would turn me into some semblance of a human being, you know? Beautiful morning, by the way.....

So am at the next one waiting to get over to the supermarket, and this little girl, maybe five years old, just looked at me.... and the grinch went away, she was that charming. So I melted and smiled and said, 'Hey, hallo...'

Whereupon she punched her father's arm and made him look at me. And I said, 'All I said was 'hallo'...' And he said, 'Thank you'. Gorgeous man, btw.

And that 'Thank you' really threw me for a loop. I was so taken aback that I didn't have the time to ask 'WHY?'. Because the light changed and we went our separate ways.

To clarify, both father and daughter are from Africa.

And of course I know why... but at the moment it startled me into waking up. He is used to being invisible, as well as that lovely child. And just because I acknowleged her being in our world made him thank me. I never thought that I would get so into race issues on this blog, but all it takes is a multi-culti neighborhood, and you get along with your neighbors, hey. And I look at people, and some of them are just beautiful. Their souls shine through their eyes.

So where are we going with all this, huh?

That poor man, thanking me for being myself. And I hate the people who made his experience so horrible that he would think to do that.

So sick, hey....

Just when you think things are finally going to quiet down in the foreign press

After all the hullabaloo about the guy who kept his daughter imprisoned for 24 years and sired seven children with her.... we get us an axe murderer over Mother's Day weekend. I thought that was a US specialty, and had never heard of it happening here before. (They mostly shoot each other, or throw someone off of six floor balconies. Or knife someone. But AXES? WTF?)

Scuttlebutt has it that the guy is Austrian, but of foreign descent, and the local news went way out of their way to emphasize that he has 'an academic degree'. Uh-Huh...

So, just the facts, as they used to say on Dragnet. The perp kills his wife and young daughter in their sleep, fairly viciously. And then he takes his nifty axe, and drives all the way to Linz, where he does in his parents. Then he goes to some hole in the wall just outside that city, and axes his father-in-law. THEN, Preciousess, he calmly drives back to Vienna and turns himself into the police.

Motive? He had a PR agency, and ran up a debt of EUR 300,000, and he didn't want them to experience him being shamed. (WHAAA?)

And that alone, if it is true, seems to cooberate the scuttlebutt. An Austrian wouldn't have done that. The perp would have shot himself, or jumped, to hell with the family being shamed....

Just sayin'

So I guess it will be another week of German TV pointing their smudged and bloody fingers at us, and insinuating how 'bad' we are, and get into feeding frenzy mode. I am SO glad I get my news on the intertubes....

I only see the tee-vee stuff at lunch time when I am feeding Peter.

And then I lose my appetite....

Whelp, just when you think you thought you 'knew' someone...

it turns out you did not.

One should be very careful with what they 'think' another person is like.

This concerns the guy who many years ago joined the French Foreign Legion.

It has been an odd day.

He had asked me a few days ago to help him find his soon to be six year old son, because the letters and the money he was sending was 'inconnu' (not known, moved...) He is escaping again in August to another place in Africa, and asked me to help him find him per pc. So today, we got down to it.

Thanks to his advisories, I found a place, and sent them a mail with all the perinent infos. It was sort of heart-breaking.

When I first got there, R. was out of it, and didn't keep a promise----yet again.

W. was showing me his dating site, and R. was off the charts for what was I looking at women for? Whaa? Women can be pretty. Gawd, is he dense. Doesn't he know about bi now, gay later? Idjit.

So I pulled up one of the ones on my site, clicked on the profile, and said, 'Oh, LOOK, R.! A six pack to DIE for! And check out that basket!' eeeewww.

That shut him up.

(Ja, I can be acid when it calls for it....)

R. left. Good so. I spent three hours trying to tune W's computer. I think he has a long-term case of PTSD. After all the places he has been, it wouldn't surprise me.

The night I met him, I thought he would rip me apart, just for being a former American.

But he didn't.

He is very very cool. But always inward looking. And nice and never lets out what is really bothering him.

If I can have just a pinch of success in helping him find his son, that will be wonderful.

We talked for a long time.

He broke my heart.

Just when you think you have it all in your brain,

You get a brain fart.

And it takes you two whole days to 'remember' that Pfingsten is Pentacost. And when a friend helps you out with it, it is almost already over and you remembered.

It is one of the big double holidays here. Sunday AND Monday are holidays, which means I had to buy groceries for three days before the stores shut down on Saturday.

Which is stress that I do not need.

And why the hell do they keep this? People with money book short trips to exotic places, the ones who decide to drive somewhere get stuck in traffic, miles long. Like lemmings.

And the gas prices go up. And if you all think the prices there are criminal, you have never driven in Europe. The price per gallon is two and one half times more expensive than there, so just stop whining, and do NOT tell me it is about supply and demand.....

It is eye-gouging.

We have ALWAYS been screwed on that.

Peter is so depressive, I don't know what to do. I have never seen anyone cry during comedies.

Case in point: I got 'I know pronounce you 'Chuck and Larry' for Sunday. With Adam Sandler and Kevin James. Peter loves 'King of Queens', and I don't particularly care for either of them. It got so-so reviews. So I wasn't expecting anything. It was so-so, and at least they left the adolescent humour out of it. Mostly.... But there were moments in it that were good, and very funny. And of COURSE they aren't gay, but get a civil marriage for health insurance.

But looking at the sub-text, it was about male bonding and friendship, and that is SO fucked up.

And so hypocritical.

But at least both of the male protagonists held themselves back, and there were smiles.

Peter loves adolescent humour.

Ageing gets creepy.

Well, since it is Mother's Day....

And Pfingsten all at the same time.... Time to ruminate....

Pfingsten is the Catholic day you have to go to church on, a 'holy day of obligation', as one of my grandmothers used to say. It was sort of odd. Had something to do with firey tongues hovering over the apostle's heads, and they could understand strange languages.... Well, try as I might, I never understood the Turks across the street. It sounded like it had no consonants.

But Mother's Day, yeah, I can get into that. I had two. My biological mother, and my step-mother. And of the two, I loved the latter dearly. She prepared me for life, and she never made judgemental decisions. And I am so glad that I expressed my appreciation and gratitude before she slipped away from us and died. She was just awesome.

I never did that for my biological mother. She was divisive, judgemental, and a steam-roller of a person who left everyone flattened on the sidewalk. Sometimes I hate what she did. With a passion.

So I guess I was lucky. I got to pick and choose, you know?

It wasn't easy, no.

I regret not having connected with 'that woman' before she passed away. But I could never have thanked her for anything.

So if anyone has a Mom who does everything for you and loves you, you don't need flowers, or anything special. Just TELL her how thankful you are for all she did, and make it come from the bottom of your heart.

And if anyone knows how those tongues of fire really work, would love to know....

Just sayin'

Okay, beaurocacy SUCKS...

I got this letter today, I didn't present my passport and birth certificate to the pension people, and they were gonna terminate my application for a pension by May 22nd.

Well, the fact IS, Preciousesss... I did that weeks ago. I took the originals to the pension office, with photocopies, the guy checked them and passed them on to my file.

So I got on the horn, and whaddaya know, the 'lady' didn't understand what 'birth registration' means.

Right.

Well, we got that cleared up, at any rate..... This is all so draining.

Just when you think you got your mouf under control..

You slip.

Damage control... äääh. äääh, ääääh, äääh! Gawd....

Had a very nice talk yesterday with my almost 'in-law' in Frankfurt. She is ninety, and very beautiful. And about to visit in about two weeks with her two daughters. And likes me.

And it only took two words to drive her into complete shock: 'my appartment'.

And she said, 'WHAAAA?'

I'd thought she knew that I live alone since 2001. She was speechless, I tell you, speechless.

'I'm going to need some time to digest this', she kept saying.

Whereupon I had to come clean about his financial situation, and explain, explain, explain.... It was horrible.

I've been there every day since I moved out, and it caused me a mess of grief. But I was there.

Have sent two mails since, but no response. How could I have been so idiotic?

And all because of two innocent words... 'my appartment'.

And it wouldn't be my almost in-law when one of the first things she asked was, did he give me at least something for my place. He did. More than enough.

So today am kicking myself in the ass.

What fun.....

Oh well, a new day.... always the same, hey...

Did my rounds after getting up... Election results, and more of the same-old same-old...

Americablog maintains that Wesley Clark called the sHill and asked her to drop out of the race before she destroys the party completely. Not verified. The Kos people are trying to win over the Hillary supporters by 'making nice'. Good luck with that one, it was too venomous over there lately.

And then I went over to make Peter lunch. And he was FULL of the latest news he got from local tee-vee. Yup. Hillary is gonna win, and why do I like Obama so much, (I don't, am being pragmatic,) and pushed my buttons to the MAX. He loves getting me to the boiling point. One of these days, he is going to push it too far, I swear....

So.... in two weeks, I get a German invasion. Peter's Aunt Charlotte is flying in from Frankfurt----with or without her daughters. She is as stubborn as he is. She is ninety years old and resolute. I love her muchly. But a visit alone? God help us.

We got a call-back from social services after eight months. They found a tiny apt for Peter that he can handle, 42 spuare meters, and is handicapped equipped. It is available beginning in July, and the current people or person is on vacation, so we get to see it when? When Charlotte is in town. I'm going to have nightmares tonight. Guaranteed.

Just when you think you lost the overview on what is happening...

Some cool guy comes along and gives you the overview, and expresses what you were thinking anyway. With well-chosen words... (link in the title).

For anyone wondering, took a break, as I had some very personal issues to deal with.

Oh, I checked into the blogosphere every evening, but it was so discouraging, had no desire to comment on what I read. I would have just been repeating myself to no avail.

Instead, I went into escapism-land. Got the first half of the first season of 'Brothers and Sisters'. (Touchstone fucks over the consumer yet again. ) Only because Peter went ON about it when he was in assisted living. Have been having to deal with his depressive state for months now, and thought, what the hell....

Turns out, it isn't so escapist. Have only seen four episodes so far. The first two really did not knock my socks off. But then it got interesting. Will withhold further comment till I have seen it all. It may seem odd, but for years have often told Peter about outrageous things I see on the net that come from the far right, and he thought I was exaggerating. One of the daughters in this, Calista Flockhart, plays a right-wing mouthpiece on a television show. Laura Ingraham without the yelling. And for Peter, that was when the penny dropped, and he realised I hadn't been pulling his leg all this time....

Pretty sad, when it takes a Hollywood production to prove you right. What kind of trust is that? I might have a small kinky vein in me, but I could never make up something like what comes out of their collective polluted mouths.

Will be back....

SOMEONE with a lot of money....

should hire a 'Gawd squad' or something of the sort to detain him and de-programme Chris Matthews vulgo 'Tweety ' on the 'intertubes'. Whenever I have the misfortune to see or hear his latest in verbal diorrhea, I get dry heaves. And he is racist, misogynist, and has this THING for guys whom he perceives as macho. And his cheerleading after Dumbya showed off his basket after the 'Mission Accomplished' debacle was embarrassing enough. I find him genuinely disturbing.

And that MOUTH! I don't know what he did with his Frat brothers, but I bet they were more than happy.

But I bet there was more.

CLASSIC closet case. And your PERFECT lower intestinal acrobat---passive.

Some people don't get called 'ass-wipes' for nothing.

Ok, now I am being 'mean'. I just get upset when people have all this set before them as if it were the truth..

So can we de-prgramme him now, or get him off the air??

Just stay away from the cheerleaders..
just sayin'

Well, that didn't take long...

I've linked to Teacherken over at Kos before. We seem to be the same age.

It is a good read. So scat, and click the title, ok?

Eloquent man.... just sayin'.

Push-me Pull-me

Blogger and Lazarus decided to join forces again, and run me into the ground.

We hates them forever, Preciousses.... tricksy, snide, theives!

But it was typical for my day, today, push-me pull me.

I 'think' that was a double headed siamese twin Llama in Dr. Doolittle. Never saw it.

I had to drop everything and do stuff for Peter. Get his house cleaned, for instance. From the social services, and then call three companies who can turn his home into a place for the handicapped, and the cost is 20% that you have to pay for yourself. It sounds kinda skeery as a friend of mine would say.

That is the pull me part.

The Push me part is horrible. Just horrible, and I have to make a decision.

That he gets a small one-room place that he can handle.

I get SO at the end of my rope, lately...

And everything, EVERYTHING inside me is screaming, 'he can't DO it anymore.' And in the end, I feel guilty. After thirty one years, and it is NOTHING. I HAVE to find a solution and move on...

NO one should love that much. Maybe one day, it won't be so difficult.

ARE we living in the twenty-first century? Sometimes I wonder...

Oh my....

The link is in the title.

Sir Karl Popper maintained that everything is developing faster than our brains can handle.

Some days, I think he might have been right.

I saw the news today... Oh Boy!

Such a fucking fuss, hey. The sHIll won PA. Wow, awsome. Except it wasn't. The expected margin of winning was 20 per cent. So she lost half her gain.

This isn't mysoginistic, but the more I see of her, the less I like her. She would do ANYTHING to ruin her own party, she lies constantly, she has resorted to divisive, aggressive arguments to advance her cause, and been a lower intestinal acrobat to lobbyists who want a piece of the cake.

And that was the NICE part of what I think....

I watched her 'acceptance' speech on a channel today, one that usually brings just the news, but they had a German expert on for comment after they show the entirety with a perfect translation. And then they brought Barack in Indiana. Night and Day, hey....

I'm not crazy about Barack. But I AM tired about the race issue. And I liked what he said.

He won't be able to keep half of the promises he is making, but he has a clue as to how to get 'Murika' back on track. So I would go for that.

The 'expert' told us something 'telling'. As long as a camera is running, the sHill is 'on'. Then she gets intropsective. And when the break is over... she's on, scripted, 'perfect'. Stepford wife. Obama seems off the cuff, but is just as scripted. But he does it better. It comes across as spontaneous.

I wouldn't even CARE if the outcome weren't crucial to the rest of the world. AND it IS.

Bush and his cohorts ruined the rest of the world as we used to know it. It became more dangerous, divisive, and everybody lost except the rich. How wonderful.

So i hope the sHill enjoyed her day in the sun.

And if she inteds to take it to Denver in August......

'The Whole World is Watching', dear.

Just when you think you digested disturbing things...

It turns out you did NOT.

I lend my dvds to a very nice lady, and if it is good, she shows her daughters, age 13 and 16. And the oldest is at the age where she can see a horror film if her Mom says it is all right... And she has been PUSHING her to lend me her films. So I got to see Final Destination Three today.

It was a hell of a lot of fun, and I got a kick out of it.

But she also wanted me to see 'Munich', by Steven Spielberg. Because her Mom knew that I was there in '72.

I couldn't get past the first fifteen minutes. And then I started crying and had to turn it off.

I never usually talk about this, but those weeks before the attack? Those poor people were the HIT of the village. They intermingled, were open to the world, and they got attacked and killed.

I had to stand on a balcony in the dark six floors up and passively watch them herded like cattle into helicopters who took off in front of my face without being able to do ANYTHING about it.

The rest of the night I washed grapes and listened to a lousy transistor radio bringing us the gun-fire- and explosions in Fürstenfeldbrück at the airport.

Oh yeah. And innocent people DIED.

So no, I have never EVER gotten over that. Seemingly. Because I knew them and spoke with them and they were decent.

So what did REVENGE have to do with it? I know Spielberg meant well, but, the first fifteen minutes were so hurtful for me personally, I just could not watch any more...

Some one of these days I am going to have to confront that trauma. But it is not now. And that is when I found out that the media are clueless pigs.

Update: 22nd April. I returned the videos today with a little gift for Tanya, who lent them to me. And finished watching 'Munich' at Peter's yesterday, because I just could not watch it alone. I spent the first fifteen minutes in the kitchen, because I just couldn't take it. It still upsets me to the max. The rest was surprising, to say the least. I'd never heard that the CIA worked with the PLO to enable the revenge assasinations, and that so many other groups were involved in that. It was more than frightening

There were some flashbacks to what happened in those thirty hours in that house, and I had to leave the room. I wasn't even thirty meters away, when that guy in the ski mask came out on the balcony with a machine gun. There was so much commotion going on, it was only after that I got a case of the creeps. The so-called journalists were getting on this theory that the radical left students had let them in. If there had been anything like a stake or something, I would have caused serious damage to someone, they were such assholes. Crass, as we say...

Turned out that some drunk American athletes helped the guys over the fence. Swell.

It was supposed to be open Games.. To get away from the debacle of the 1936 image of the Games in Berlin. You could get in and out without a real pass check on your id card. And the MSM USA wasn't helpful. Every article in Time magazine began with, 'Munich, which is only 18 miles away from Dachau...' My friend Günther, virtually FORCED me to to see Dachau. I'd read enough, I didn't want to go. The museum is well concepted, but back then, the explanations were only in German. And the tourists only spoke English. I fled at the middle of it. And toured the grounds. Günther came after me. That was before the attacks, and it upset me terribly.

A thunderstorm came up, and we had to take shelter in the crematorium. It was so small for the volume of people who were cremated there.... If you are young and imprssionable, those aren't the things you want to carry with you as emotional baggage.

The storm passed, the tourists came out, and they posed before the horrible sculpture of skeletal figures, and said, 'smiiiile!' Stupid, stupid people.

I wanted to THROW UP!

(It always hits me in the stomach...) I will NEVER forget that. Never. You weren'there if you hadn't visited Dachau. Well, Thank you TIME Magazine..,.. Assholes...

One thing Spielberg got definitely WRONG. The hostages weren't just tied at the wrist and given their seats in the helicopters... I was THERE. They came up in two busses, and their hands were tied... BUT... they were also tied up in groups, jsut like cattle. Circular, you know? In a group of four or five.

It rocked my world, and it hasn't stopped.

There must have been SOMETHING I coud have done. And it haunts me to this day.

Am just speecless....

Ok, am waiting... but nada. Just when you think you heard the Pope apoligising for child abuse

---and German television maintained that the Pope apologised for the child molestation scandals when he landed in Washington, he added a qualifier.

NO ONE has picked up on it.

No one. I jumped out of the chair and threw things at Peter's television, I was so angry.

Because he added it wouldn't have happened if American moral values hadn't sunken so low.

WHA?

Ok. Let's go at this one step at a time. Did anyone out there tell their little Jane to raise her skirt in confession and show a little thigh in the confessional? Or little Johnny to rub his crotch in the same stiuation? And maybe he gets a scholarship later on?

No, I didn't think so.

I had a very odd situation in my youth in a confessional. That priest scared me, and I never went back again.

And when I read a year or so ago that over 100 priests in my diocese were molesting children, and got quietly shunted off to 'elsewhere ' thanks to the bishop of Massachussets, I was dis-fucking-gusted.

So what was that for an apology? WE are to blame?

NO. If you are a child, and your parents teach you what to watch OUT for regarding dangers in the world, you have the antennae, and KNOW, 'get outta here NOW!'

So where the FUCK does he get off, blaming the vicitims and their parents?

Apology? It was an attack.

He used the pivot and turned it right back around to the victims.

And he should just fuck off.

And NOW I am gonna take a second blood pressure pill and go to bed.

Update, finally a reaction found via Mikes's blog round-up on Crooks and Liars nearly 72 hours later, and that via the BBC. Link is here.

Just when you think, hey...

I am going to KILL Lazarus, and Blogger...

Gawd....

Ok, where was I? Oh yes. I jaunted through the blogosphere this afternoon.

What a revelation. I LOVED Ratzi's apology, I really did. He is so ashamed that his priests molested thousands of children, world-wide. How humble. But then he brought in the pivot, it wouldn't have happened if moral values hadn't fallen in the US.

So we taught Annie and John to lift up their clothes in confession, and expose their secrets underneath and ask to touch Mr. Wiggle. Right.

2.) Rachel Maddow needs her own show. Like six months ago. I love her, and her intellect, and she doesn't dish out bullshit.

There is more, but am tired.

Nite...

Ren

Just when you think you know what country you live in...

You end up starting to wonder....

For weeks now, Austrian national radio has brought reports on the elections. With 'experts' from Murika, probably brain-washed from the MSM.

And the message is very clear. The sHill is 'da bomb', ok? OBambi? Well, there is this problem, you see. He isn't electable. Because he is sort of brown in skin tone. Which I can understand, growing up where I did.... But it always comes with the qualifier that his main support comes from the rabble rousing mob, the uneducated, and.... people who are various shades of brown. It is so insulting, I could puke. If it were up to the sHill, only people with a college education would be allowed to vote.

Well, just as a matter of speculation, what if the criteria for a Presidink was that you have to be Protestant, English, uncircumsised, and of some sort of royal descent? How would that go down? And the dirty tricks would be finding someone in the family tree who was IRISH, or god forbid, FRENCH.

Absurd? Probably...


I am just trying to put it into perspective here...

We are all xenophobic in some way... But it doesn't mean we have to STAY that way....

And I do not like these people bringing in such damaging things from overseas. We have problems enough without them pouring gasoline on the flames....

Just when you think things go forward... they go back

Well whaddaya know, hey....

Just woke up in the early (somewhat early) evening, and had this 'dream'. Right. Since my kick-out, I have been dreaming some weird stuff. In Technicolor and stereophonic sound. Most of it is so obvious, it doesn't take Freud to figure it out.

But today's is really weird---and turned out to be true.

All I can remember is Peter having called, and I was stuck on a wall, and the only thing I could see was the chandelier on the ceilingat an impossible angle, and nothing made sense. Where WAS I, hey... I guess I really worked myself up to a frenzy this afternoon. Because I just woke up in bed at ten pm. So I guess you shouldn't mix your meds with a half-bottle of light white wine.

Especially if you are having a very bad day...

On getting up, the computer is running, the telephone horn was on the floor, and all signs point to the fact that I fell off my stool and knocked myself out. I was exhausted and despondent. And Peter probably called from his neighbors' house. And I couldn't figure out where I WAS.

SOMETHING is gonna have to change.... and fast.

Am SICK of being a victim.

Just when you think you are pulling your act together.... circumstances tell you you have a very long way to go....

I do not know how I got back into bed. I have a light headache, but no concussion.

Ok. NOW I am off the charts for upset.....

Bad morning. Kafka people badgering me...

But then! whoo, hoo! The German tv news journal gave us a great piece of news. About 'noise'. And what did you think the EU decided?

Orchestras are too loud. Really. (Don't they have anything ELSE to worry about?) I was stunned, I tell you, stunned, So they 'decided' that an orchestra can't exceed 37 decibels, and found that a flute going at full pitch exceeds that of a plane taking off. (WHA?') They 'ordained' that all musicians have to wear ear plugs. I am NOT making this up. And the musicians are frustrated because they can't HEAR.

Herbert von Karajan must be turning over in his GRAVE, hey.

I was fucking speechless.

This really goes beyond the pale.

It has been my privelege to attend many top-notch classical concerts in my life, and I can NOT figure this out. It wasn't acid rock with one hundred decibels MORE.

If it got loud, it was generic. But it was beautiful music.

The people behind this are definitely fascist, or fucked up, and I just go spitless when I see this stuff.

So what is going on? Another attempt to dumb people down?

I know, it is not a part of most people's lives there. I had an uncle who got stoned from mean kids, and slowly went deaf. And till he lost it, he loved classical music. And he taught me about it, and gave me his knowledge, and everything else. He was part of my education.

Decibel levels.... Fuck.

What the FUCK else are they going to 'regulate' before they are through? What a mind-fuck.'

Instead of real issues... Was chatting at the market with my friend Millie. I told her I was going to the demo. She said, 'you Do that. It's about time...'

So, the peeps are scared, But you do what you have to do.,..

I saw the news today...oh boy...

Tja.

I claimed a moratorium on watching the news, because it depressed me. Am depressed enough.

Well, it doesn't get any better....

A friend of mine has been yelling 'Great Depression' like our grandparents had. She is so right. After my moratorium, it only got worse.

We all go about our daily lives, and think we are the middle point of the world. We have our lives, out interests, but that is irrelevant.

So today, I looked outside my coccon. And the fucking world changed. Presto-change-o . Just like that... People are going to CHANGE this.

And whaddaya KNOW, huh?

I think I am gonna DO something about it.

I think I know how...

Wish me luck, because I have never been there before...

But am confidant....

DVD review: Beloved Jane

Just came out here. A biograhical film about two years in Jane Austen's life. I had read two of her six novels a very long time ago. Seems I was too young to appreciate them properly, and hadn't known much about her life. This film certain certainly corrected that omission. Stars Anne Hathaway, Julie Walters, James McAvoy, James Cromwell and Maggie Smith. Everything about the film is perfect. Amusing, romantic, and in the end tragic. And you learn a lot.

Made me go back and take out 'Pride and Predjudice', which she was writing at the time the above film takes place. With Keira Knightly in the main role. And this time it made much more sense to me.

'Beloved Jane' is well worth seeing.

Just when u think it is Spring...

The whole world decides to torpedo it....

Yup...

Gawwwd, I got up this morning, and wanted to do great feats of bureaucratic SHIT. And I filled out my forms, and was ready to rumble. And whaddaya know, hey. I FORGOT to take my ATM card out of the cigarette machíne, AGAIN! (third time...) Between three and four in the morning.

(I was writing something, and ran out. And sleepwalking...)

So... all's well that ends well... but it messed up my day.... Just sayin'.

Just when you think you may have had a twin brother...

It turns out----you DID! But he died in utero, and got absorbed in your spine. It is a fairly weird phenomenon, but also fairly common, it seems. And one day in your early twenties, you wake up and nearly shout because of the pain, and can hardly put your pants on. And the doctor in emergency looks at you and says, 'Why didn't you TELL me your ass is swollen.' And I'm thinking, 'Wha???' And I said, 'I don't normally LOOK at my ass in a mirror, so how would I be ABLE to tell?' (The guy must had issues, asking that question in the first place.) There IS a point to this, keep reading.

Well, I had the best insurance policy at the time, and had co-pay for ten per cent of all costs, for two days in the hospital and the operation. One THOUSAND dollars in 1972. Which is why I had to get a government loan to study in Salzburg. Whatever, he explained that I would have had a twin brother. But I guess I killed him. It was odd and with a sense of loss attached. All I could think of was Cain and Abel. Oddly, three other co-students my age in my clique had to have the same operation at the same time. We used to run to classes at UNH with donuts in pillow cases to sit on for seminars. Unpleasant? You bet. But we laughed muchly. I was lucky. Mine nested himself at the end of the spine above the anus. The others, well, they had to go inside and that was infinitely worse.

Today, I read THIS, and thought, if my twin brother had lived, that would be him, because it reflects exactly what I think.

That is how he would have been....

Just sayin' I am a shadow of that.

The April Fool

Don't wish to go into it, but the weekend was the pits.

I busted my butt to get something done, and got shot down. And the result? Peter was so rude, the person helping because he likes ME, is never gonna set foot in the house again. I had to go over and do damage control, hey....

And the guy remembers Peter from the Seventies. Peter used to ask him to get 'rent-boys', and he won't tell me what else he knows. This is a small town, and everyone knows everything about everyone. The rent-boy stuff doesn't bother me really. I wasn't exactly an angel. But the things hinted at DO, and I have heard them elsewhere. From sources I should have considered to be more reliable.

Sometimes we go through life with blinkers, you know? And you get USED without even knowing it, or recognising it.

So I am the April fool.

For some years now. It sort of hurts, when someone lets the scales fall off your eyes by the TONS....

Just sayin'

So yes, it was a pit weekend.

Kruzifix noch mal! Why would the Communists...

send the bloody Catholic organisation Caritas to Peter's place, unannounced. I can't figure it out.... So he had some cleric in there, and they are WORSE than Mormons. And he loved the Easter Tree, but he wanted to know where the crucifix was in the house. Because the Easter Tree is pagan, you see....

I knew that. That is why I like them.

And we never had a crucifix in the house. Never!

That pissed him off. And he is coming baaaack!

My dad is of the opinion that my life is a fucking soap opera. Sometimes I think he is right.

Ok. Will deal with it as it comes.

At least I did not throw up.....

The Other Side of the Coin

I am really very perplexed with our government officials. So far, everyone I have had to deal with for my stuff is nice. Something is very wrong with this picture.... believe me. I had to deal with them for the first five years I was here, and then again when I took citizenship after ten years. And they were anything BUT 'nice', and have tried to avoid any bureacracy since.

But today, I HAD to 'bite the bullet', as I thought, and apply for an early retirement. It is something the other place requires me to do. I have 'tried' to get this done last week, and as much as I wanted to, it went so against the grain, I would get up, try to get my act together and then come up with the dry heaves, it was criminal. Or the runs, and didn't trust myself to leave the house. It always gets me in the stomach...

So I kicked my ASS off out of the bed, and made myself 'presentable', and marched up there. And again it was take a number, and watch the billboard, but at least they have a bell tone there. Nicer, oh yes. I did not have to wait long, and get called to )))))rooom NINE((((( Hokay..
Fifty-ish man with a full beard, not so well groomed, but what the hey.... I wasn't there for husband-hunting, after all.

Him, (accusing tone) 'You've never been here before.'

Me: (gawd, AGAIN?) 'No, I saw no necessity, this came out of the blue. A friend of mine has been bugging me for years to get my work done, but I put it off.'

Him: (on the computer) 'Mr. B. We do not bite.'

Me: (really????? Since WHEN? and some of the paretheses are what I was thinking and didn't say.)

Him: I see you began working in Austria in 1973.

Me: 'WHA?' I began working on the first of November, 1976. That has to be a mistake. Or did I fill out a form wrong? I KNOW where I was in 1973. I was at the university in Salzburg.

Him: 'Does Gasthof zur Höllbrau ring a bell? You worked there two months.'

Me: 'oh. my. gawd. I had completely forgotten about that.' (It was horrible, I repressed it.)

He smiled and laughed. 'It's all here, and two more months to get you into complete retirement, and not a pittance. ' He was actually concerned that I get my full pension, and wants to see if I worked enough to get it counting my US time, and hinted he might move something to make it work.

The US and Austria have an aggreement. My time there counts on our pension plan. As is the two and one half months I worked for the Kempinski Hotel Betriebs gmbh. in Munich at the olympic village.

We got that quickly taken care of...

Now I have to do the rest via the Embassy in Vienna.

My consultant will do it. Thank whomever.

He wants me to get the most out of my pension.

He was nice and respectful.

So Wha' HAPPENED?'

Ge-WALT! (violence)

There are some days.... you should NOT get out of bed, hey. In January, we went over to the social services office in the park. Three MONTHS later, they visited Peter this morning. Three FUCKING months. Knowing he'd been without electricity since De-fucking-cember. Priorities, much?

I have SEEN these 'ladies' when I took him there. They are the local version of the DAR and GOP.

And they rumpled their corrected noses over the chaos.

BUT they went nuts over the Easter tree, and who DID that? And where the hell did I LEARN to do that. (Well... I have only BEEN here thirty one YEARS... And I have a little bit of taste.) Gaaawwd! I didn't throw up, so I guess I'm on the way to scraping myself off the sidewalk...

So they were surprised that the electricity was back on, and he told them that Frau Kahr had done the work, and they got really snitty, like DAR and GOP BITCHES can be. 'Well, it's no WONDER it took so long.' They were Christian Dems. Sure, it took a while to get an appointment with her, but she solved the problem in two days.

They all but ASKED if he was with the Communist Party. (He was always firmly Socialist.)

They gave off some VERY bad vibes.

I cooked dinner with the little we have left there----I sold a lot of stuff while he was in assisted living, never thinking he would want to go back there.... Oh yes, he gave me the green light for that,and he got the money, but now am just devastated.

And the young lady who Frau Kahr assigned to him called, and is going to help him with finding a cleaning troupe to bring some order in the chaos.

Good Gawwd, hey.

This stuff leaves me speechless.

Make no mistake, I HATE ideologies. But sometimes it is better to go to the less empowered who have some sort of influence, than go to the high-nosed snobs who think they have ALLLL the answers, and corrupted by power.

Life is sort of an education.... Not always 'fun'.

Narziss--ism

Via Americablog, we learned yesterday that the sHill has been telling a whopper about landing in Bosnia under sniper fire. Because she was sleep-deprived. So she 'misspoke', which is Orwell speak for lying. Seemingly she hasn't slept since December or is taking hallucinegins, because she told that story several times since then.

T-Rex has a good post up on that, wonderful snark guy that he is. With a photo of a pair of pants on fire. His fear of her pulling a Lieberman and running as an independent is very unsettling, to say the least.

Actually, the first time I heard that 'landing at Tuzla' story, I was perplexed. Because it would have been all over the front pages of our newspapers for days... and was following events in former Yugoslavia fairly closely back then. The border is only about a forty-five minute drive from where I live. And I thought, 'Wow, how did I miss THAT???'

So that isn't very confidence inspiring, now is it? You have to be some sort of narcissist to do something like that, is all I can say....

Update: TRex paid me a visit while I was out doing chores, saw it on SiteMeter. Last time it was while I was asleep. I guess he saw I posted the link to his site. I must say, for a 40 foot therapod with tiny arms and horn-rimmed glasses, he was very careful. Didn't even leave a footprint on my kitchen floor, and munch out on the egg and asparagus salad in the fridge. (You'd have been MORE than welcome to it, TR, it's very nice.)

crocuses

Ok, corny, I know. I planted just a couple in the yard fifteen years ago on the little strip of grass we had.... And every year since, more and more of them just pop up. These were already blooming on February tenth! They never came up so early. As to WHY they got to be more? Net roots, they just spread. And I 'think' that they are sort of symbolic of what is happening now. Net roots. Tja, symbolic.

How To Make an Easter Tree

I can not post this at Annti's... She is too allergic to Xtrian things, you know? But am sort of old fashioned, and like traditions, even if I am a non-believer. Especially if they are 'pretty'. (Now how gay is that, huh?)

So I kicked myself in the ASS this morning, to get out of my post 'Part-em' depression, and did the following. I went to the market, and got a mess of tulips. Orange perfect ones. And a box of hand-colored hard-boiled Easter eggs. Then I went to a bakery, and got really killer coffee to go, the kind that puts hair on your chest. One black, one with milk. And an awesome big marshmallow 'peep' with cute chocolate wings, ( a chick), because someone I know has a big sweet tooth, oh yes.... And marched myself over to the hotel and surprised my favorite colleague with all that stuff at six-thirty-five in the a.m. She went off the charts for overwhelmed, and gave me SUCH a hug, that tiny person..... It made me feel better than I had felt in weeks.

So we had corfee and sniggarettes, and good chat, and it was very very nice. She told me she had let her youngest daughter see Sweeney Todd, because the girl loves Johnny Depp. Her mother had seen the concert version I had lent her on DVD, so she 'prepared ' her for the content and let her go with her friends. She said, 'She is two months short of the age limit for that, but you have to sometimes let your children feel like they are 'grown-ups'. ' Smart lady. Her daughter came back fully shaken. 'It was so bloody, Mama. I got scared. And so tragic. He nearly kills his daughter, and then kills his wife!' She handled the rest VERY well.

No, still haven't seen it. Will wait for the DVD. I don't NEED a blood-bath on a wide-scream screen with my nerves right now....

Then it was back to the market to get provisons for yet ANOTHER three day holiday, and for the Easter tree, which I should have done last week. My Gaaaawwwd, the prices are so up it is ridiculous!

So this is how you make an Easter tree.... You need a big vase. You buy some forsythia branches beginning to bloom, or cut off some long branches if they are in your garden. And a couple of fruit tree branches about to blossom. A couple of green things beginning to throw leaves. Pussy willows. Furry, pretty. LOTS. And THEN, you hang lots of blown-out hand painted eggs on it. I sort of LIKE kitsch if it is underdone, so I have three little birds in the tree. Not too much, not too little. It is a big tree.

At base, it is a pagan ritual. Renewal. And in that week, on Easter Sunday. everything blooms.

And it is lovely.

Peter didn't expect it and cried this morning. (I haven't done a Christmas tree in over three years... ) Yes, I did it for him. He is REALLY bad off. I got scared. And we have the same GP who makes house calls.

Well, I had to get some prescriptions renewed the other day, and said, 'Listen, it is really really not my place to tell you this, but I am going to give you a HINT about something. Peter is not telling you that he has chest pain on the left side, and he is depressive. How YOU deal with it is your thing.'

(you know.... you BE with someone thirty-one YEARS..... and you have no RIGHTS.)

He said, 'Peter is 'difficult' and stuborn.' And I said, 'Tell me about it... Maybe you can direct your questions so he tells you. It is just a HINT, hey....'

He has no problem with it. My GP is nice.

Good God, what an Easter hey.

Mensch. It was a start. Am TIRED of being the person in the feotal position, 'under the bed.'

HOW did we all get into this UGLY situation at the beginning of the twenty-first century, hey....

Was over at Daily Kos, as there was a big uproar over the sHill supporters wanting to boycott the blog and not post any more. Ohhhh... sandbox gameses, uh-huh. But then I ran across a reccomended diary, by Teacherken. He seems to be a very thoughtful person. It really struck a chord within me.

And it really made me think about our upbringing in a white society, and how preconceptions sneak in and make you racist even if you do not intend to be. And Precioussess? NH is whiter than snow.

Unless you learn to think outside the box.

It brought back a VERY unpleasant memory. I was eighteen, and visiting my mother and her brood in NJ. My eldest step-sister just adored me. Her father was African-American. She has sort of 85% chocolate skin, and is beautiful. And I could remember her father from my childhood, and tell her what a gentle and kind man he was. So That was ok....

So we're out in the kitchen, I took off my watch, and said, 'Look, I got a tan!' And she took off hers and said, 'Look, so do I!' And I was so perplexed, I blurted out, 'I didn't KNOW you can get tanned.' (I had thought there was so much melanin in the skin that they were protected and couldn't get sun-burned. )

Our mother went into hysterics for hilarity over that one, the witch. And I was embarrassed to the end of time.

So where the FUCK did that misperception COME from? It comes from ignorance, and stuff you hear, and you end up that way. Even if you do not want to be.

So Teacherken is right. But it is best to try to be the best, most honest person you can BE.

And look outside the box.

Oooo... Happy St. Patrick's Day

Now where the hell did I put my green clothes..... damn!

Yes, am one-fourth Irish. And this day always brings back fond memories of when I was young, and reckless. It was ALWAYS hilarious. I would meet with my friend JR and his clicque, and we would 'initiate' the celebration at about five pm. at this wild pub on Hannover Street. Big buffet downstairs with corned beef and cabbage and everything Irish. Green Beer. (food coloring). Hammy Irish ballads and songs on the juke box. And exceptionally funny friends who kept me laughing till we closed the place down at one am. Terry, (a lady), would get shit-faced and goose men's asses passing by if she fancied them. The shocked look on their faces were priceless. And believe me Preciousess, Terry gave the meanest 'goose' it has ever been my privelige to receive. Did it to me right on the main street of town, and so shocked me, I fell down. And that was before we went drinking. It was a KILLER goose, and she had this technique, her middle finger was right in your asshole. Which is why I fell down. Gawd, how we laughed.

So... if any of youse guys and gals out there have a bit of Irish in ya.... and are young and reckless... go out tonight and have one Hell of a time. It only happens a few times in your life when you are young. Savour it. And you will later have fond memories of good friends, and feel a bit nostalgic when this day rolls around.

Just sayin'

Huh....

I tortured Peter the last two days with the High School Musical films, now that he has the elecricty back on. I didn't TELL him much about them beforehand. He found them charming. But.... His perception of what the underlying message is disturbed him as much as it did me, for the same reasons, without my having said a word. So I guess it wasn't my twisted perception. That was sort of interesting..... Just sayin'.... So maybe I assimilated? Who the fuck knows, hey...

Government things...

Tja, was back at the Kafka place yesterday. It was as Kafka as ever, meaning: surreal, illogical, and you can't tell what is really going on. I got told I am incapable of working, not the sort of person who can get shunted off to a new position, and should apply for early retirement, as I am too old. Welcome to 'Oldiehood'. This was said in a friendly if pragmatic way, and in the end, rather cold. But that is our entire world nowadays, coldly pragmatic. Maybe I should be relieved, but sort of felt like a tissue someone crumpled up and threw into a gutter.

The other side of the coin? Turns out I did something good. And some young person from the city senate visited Peter on Tuesday, and got his electricity turned back on on Thursday, and the guy was even polite.

I've had to DEAL with those Mo-fo's for over a year now, and they are purely vicious. My very BEST time (NOT) was with a harridan of a woman who blew me off, and I verbally bitch-slapped her and left. There was an older woman behind me, and she was so shocked she left as well. So we were at the intersection, waiting for the light to change, and she was literally shaking with anger. And said, 'How DARE she treat you like that? I'm not going to deal with her, that is for sure.' And I said, 'Lady, almost ALL of them are like that, so you better get on a suit of armour for whatever you have to deal with them for.' She went pale.

My second best encounter was with 'the guard to top all guards', as I call him. Short little guy and self-important to the max. And went into the foyer in the late afternoon to charge up Peter's chip card to keep the electricity on. Well the machine had been altered, and wouldn't take fifty Euro bills anymore. So I charged up the card with the small ones I had and went across the street to make change. Come back in, and Mr. IMPORTANT accosts me.

'You were just IN here.' (Uh-huh... observant little turd....)

'I had to make change for the machine.'

'And the seat of your pants are dirty.'

(How is THAT for a non-sequitur??)

'I had to wait for a bus in Laßnitzhöhe, and had a coffee and sat in a seat where someone had dropped some ice cream.'

'Why go all the way to Laßnitzhöhe for COFFEE?!'

And I thought, 'HerrGOTTnochmalfixsakramenthalleluja'.

And then I went all Austrian sarcastic on his tiny little ass, hey. You do it in a quiet tone of voice, and aim for the middle of the target, and drip a little acid into the tone.

'Ok, I was UP there visiting someone in rehab. I had to wait for the bus to get back. I sat in a café chair where someone had dropped some ice cream. So I got the seat of my pants dirty. And NOW, I am going to go home and WASH them. Provided you are OK with that.'

Shut him up like a clam. That is how you do it.....

So that is two examples of why I was so surprised to find a person from that company who was POLITE.

And the people who enabled all this? Well, Precioussessss.... I was taught from my youth to FEAR Communists. Turned out to be very wrong. I'd hardly been here three months and we had a group in from Russia? Well, that was sort of a tense situation for me. I didn't know WHAT to expect. The boogeyman plus thirty. And then they came. Whaddaya know, hey, they were normal. So similar to us, there WAS no difference. The scales fell from my eyes by the TONS, as one of my favourite authors wrote a couple of centuries ago.

So no, am not, so very NOT sorry I spoke with Frau Kahr. Seemingly, they accomplish things fairly fast. And once they get rolling, it is fast. Our brand seem to be what the Socialialists used to be....

But just to be SURE, am gonna crouch under my desk and kiss my ASS goodbye when they nuke us. As if that would help.... So YOU tell me what is wrong with the picture, hey....

I have finally lost ALL respect for the Clintons....

Not that I had much after Bill came over here and gave this Pompous speech about how he was gonna teach us what 'democracy' really is.

And I thought 'Wha??!!!' When I was in high school I learned that it was initiated in Athens two thousand years ago. It was insulting.

And now they are playing so dirty, using Gerraldine Ferraro as sock puppet, NO.

And now it is all about 'race'. Code words, dirty tricks, incendiary.... disgusting.

The sHill is GOP.

You can catch it on America Blog on my side-bar.

It's a Man's World....

(Good grief, how I am anchored in the Seventies, hey. That song just didn't want to get out of my head today....)

Someone from the local government was due to inspect Peter's living conditions yesterday. And he was waaay overdue for a shave and a haircut, so I carted him over to Mr. Enver. He'd been ill last week, and the shop closed.

Going there is a lesson for me every time. It is a little peek into a culture that is so foreign to me, that I just watch and observe. And occasionally get my hair cut. Today there were a mess of people there, just hanging out, mostly. It was absolutely fascinating. How they interact with one another. Of course I didn't understand what they were saying, turkish sounds like it has no consonants. Must be a difficult language to learn.

But from the gestures and facial expressions, it isn't hard to guess what the subject is. It is sort of like 'charades' for me.... It's this macho thing, but done with respect, and a certain sort of bantering, can be funny.

So they have this kind of bonding thing between them. And no, it is not gay. That isn't in their vocabulary, I don't think.... Enver is the second Turk who greets me heartily on the square if our paths cross.

Today, Enver asked me to explain to his 'friend', (and believe me, they are all 'brothers' in spirit), what the results of a medical exam were. I went absolutely pale when I read it. Bad news. He'd gotten a lung x-ray, and there were shadows in the lower half of the left one and he should see an expert, like yesterday. And I thought, 'How the FUCK am I supposed to tell him this?'

Tja. Unnerving, and mine aren't so good right now. But I gathered all my courage, and told him in the best way I could. Macho, not a flinch.

So I guess I got 'points' in their world for being honest. It is a strange world they live in, but full of heartfelt friendliness, and caring. What I do not like is that they treat women like shit. Breeding mares. But if their Mommies bring them up that way, who is to blame?

I threw up, later. Having a middle-sized nervous breakdown is no fun.

He treats Peter like he would others, and is very careful. And is very kind to him.

The other side of the coin... you know?

And the gubmint person seems to be ok. So something is going forward. All this beaurocacy is really getting me down.

Some things are so damned intriguing...

I had to spend four hours at my internist's office today. And between the different tests you have to subject yourself to, you have to be out in the waiting room. Well... you can catch up on gossip magazines you would never buy. Or observe. I chose the latter....

It can be sort of fascinating. There was this guy about mid-Fifty with a gold tooth, shaved head, and a much MUCH younger girlfriend there. And they were speaking a language I SWEAR I have never heard before. Soon joined by a somewhat younger man, and the MEN gave each other a kiss on the cheek like fucking debutantes, but manlier.... And ignored the woman, who was beautiful. Only on one side, hey... And then... they got into a deep discussion, and it was all sibilant. Lots of 'SH' things in it. I recognise Slavic languages when I hear them. Wasn't. It didn't have the gutterals at all, so couldn't be Turkish. I was completely perplexed. But so stressed out, I didn't politely address them and ASK. (My nerves aren't so hot right now...) but fascinating...

Then a completely covered 'old woman' from the Middle East with her son. Talk about your matriachies. Whoooo. The son had to accompany his mother to the sonar session. And I thought, 'WHY didn't she go to a female internist in the FIRST place????' It was pretty freaky, hey....

But just when I was nearly done.....

I had to go out into the waiting room yet again. And I was 'irritated', to put it mildly...

There was this couple. My immediate thought was, what the HELL are Americans doing in here? Of the GOP variety. NO ONE dresses like that here.

But they both spoke local dialect. EXCEPT.... they kept throwing in things in absolutely perfect American English. Without an accent. They both felt ABSOLUTELY superior, and were making fun of people's shoes.... and the people. I nearly barfed. THAT was OK. Yeah, right.

And as for the idiot husband and his exaggerated facial expressions, the man is bi. And self-hating.

Interesting morning....

Just sayin'

About Anti-Americanism

I am not usually inclined to agree often with the Kos diarist Jerome à Paris. But this time he really hits the nail on the head about what is wrong with the media. The link is in the title. Go read. Have had some digestive problems, so between the bed and the wc, wasn't much to report.....

On DVD Nip/Tuck-- power cycling -- no Spoilers.

I had seen the first season a few years ago. Daring, impressive, basically a triangle relationship with a lot of lies built into it. And two plastic surgeons get entangled with a Columbian drug smuggler and end up feeding an unwanted corpse to alligators in the Everglades. By hanging fresh hams on it. Now THAT is pretty much cutting - edge....

Well, have been ill all week, and decided to do what John Amato of Crooks and Liars calls 'power cycling'. Looking at full seasons of a show on dvd. Only I watched seasons two, three and four in close succession and got rectangular eyes.

Remember the old-style roller-coasters? Those little cars going up a looooonnnnnng incline before the 'fun' begins? (And I am terrified of heights, btw.) Well, that is what the second season was like, suspense building, and ends with one hell of a shocker. One of the surgeons gets his throat slashed.

The surgeries got more and more radical, and I had to go out to the kitchen and get a glass of water and just listen. Yup.

Seasons three and four were the rest of the ride, hey. The twists and turns in the plot were so amazing, I was nearly speechless. And kinda clueless. 'You can't DO that on televsion! can you?' kept running through my mind. And just when you thought you KNEW what was going on, they would throw in a red herring and put you off the track, and the 'reality' was totally something else... I love stuff like that.

After they had the wonderful Vanessa Redgrave in seasons two and three, and Jill Clayburgh doing an absolutely hilarious turn, all cast against type, in the fourth season they had people banging the producers' door down, wanting a role.

Brooke Shields as a psychopathic psychiatrist. I didn't even recognise her, hey. Kathleen Turner as a sex phone operator. Ditto. Larry Hagman as not so evil magnate. Alanis Morisette as lesbian. Even Catherine Deneuve, whom Peter worships. She was amazing, as always... Rosie O'Donnell as a trailer-trash potty mouthed red-neck who wins Powerball. Fantastic, as usual...

But casting Jacqueline Bisset as the 'heavy'? That was brilliant, and she really gave me the creeps. In the extras she said she was pretty shocked by the initial concept, but it intrigued her because she always plays 'pathetic characters'. The cast never know where their characters are going from one episode to the next, when they get their scripts, so she didn't know how eeeevil she was going to become.

And boy howdy, she was evil.

The fourth season pretty much wraps up all you can say about Miami. If there is going to be a fifth season, it will be in Hell-A with totally new characters.

That was so worth doing. And one hell of a ride. The last episode in season four? Was about a drug queen, organ stealer from Columbia who was tortured, and had her breasts removed, and is one big bleeding open scar.

And I learned in the extras that absolutely nothing shown on that show for surgeries is made-up. All that really happens.

And when I recently posted about meeting an Austrian member of the French Foreign Legion? He TOLD me that the worst thing he had seen in his life was seeing a woman in Chad who got her breasts cut off so that she would not be able to nurse her baby. And I thought, 'what bull, how could she LIVE, hey.' Seemingly, it is possible. And he was right.

It wasn't exactly the right choice for choosing a series the way I feel, but it was one Hell of a roller-coaster ride. And love that series.

Higly reccommended.

Uh.oh.....Emma is arriving.....

Emma is a wind storm. With winds of up to 150 km/hour. (Why the fuck do they call these things after women, hey. Why not Jack Nicholson in 'The Shining' ? 'Daddy's HOME...' ) Well what do I know, and WHOA! Thunder and lightning in MARCH? (Just happened....) Just freak me out some MORE, please, and just thank whomever. This is NOT 'normal'.

Ok, no danger here.... I stocked up on stuff and do not have to go out.

Climate change, Mentis? Un-fucking-believable.

I had a nice encounter with a very personable young lady who works for my preferred tobacconist. She ALWAYS knows what brand you smoke. And the owner is a nice person. Sniggarettes went up in price, and she KNEW I had changed brands to a cheaper one. The brand is called MAIN. So she tells me she gets the 'creeps' when she sells it, because she always has to think of Maine, and Stephen King. Well, I had to tell her that I grew up in a neighbor state, and we used to call them Maniacs because of how they drived.

She found that funny.

I do what I can, hey.

Just spreading 'joy' all around the world, hey.

Ach, Du liebe Sch..... ok, SO not going there

I'm a foul-mouthed dirty hippy in spirit with short hair, which I think Atrios over at Eschaton coined. (Am tired, and just don't pull things out of the AIR, you know...) And am not going to teach you dirty words in foreign languages. But if you learn one, it is a very good thing to know them so you do not inadverdantly insult someone. We had a huge card party thing going once at the Olympic Village in Munich, 1972? And got on that topic. It was a multi-culti language thing. Everyone translated for everyone else, it was hilarious. The Spanish guy just SHOCKED me. And there was this very upright Egyptian? Well I used to know this Air Force Brat at the university, and we got on very well. And she had taught me 'the second-worst' insult you can say in Arabic, and I actually didn't believe her. I asked him about it? Well... he did not speak to me for the rest of the summer. And it wasn't anything as bad as I found the Spanish ones...Thank whomever she never taught me the worst one. (See what I mean? You choose your words, hey, or you are burnt toast.)

Nah, that had nothing to do with the link. Pretty horses. Unreal ones, you would think Disney made them up.

They sort of float....

I got a letter today. I have been chosen, it told me---to go on a free trip to the National Stud Farm where they breed the Lippizan horses. Because, you see, I won some lottery, and can take FIVE people with me, and free breakfast and one drink, and get a gift basket with food and stuff, for me and all my five friends, EACH, and get a gift that is EUR 998.00 in value, (un-named) And if it isn't there, I get it in cash. The lottery had to do with some radio station, and I have NEVER called a radio station EVER. And it was last year, supposedly. Except to call the BBC and tell them just to not air that ABC piece of shit about the path to 9/11. (The guy kind of freaked, seeing where the call was from.... I do what I can, hey... I just don't talk about it much.)

It is just another damned scam. Just welcome to 'Oldiehoood'. They probably have lists according to age groups, and figure you are so STUPID and on the verge of Alzheimers, you just jump right in there, gung-ho.

So NOT.

As to Piber, have been there often. It is a forty-five minute drive away. Beautiful. But I never liked the concept.

Was telling Peter this on the phone this morning, and after warning me not to do it... (and I am the pragmatic guy, never intended to...) he said, 'February? Most of them are in Vienna at the Spanish riding school.' And I said, 'Hey, tell me about it, but it is only the studs. And you only get to see one or two of THEM in summer for show. You get to see the mares and the foals at feeding time, and they keep the mares pregnant all the time with artificial insemination, so they don't even get any FUN.'

Toldja. I HATE the concept. But it is a business, and don't they just fuck you sideways, nowadays.

I took my cousins over there once, last time they visited. Perfect day. We were at a café. She bought a post card, and I saw what she wrote. 'Am at the National Stud Farm. No Studs in sight.' I nearly fell off the chair for laughing. Inside.

But I kept on my Great Stone Face.

Between my Dad, and my cousin.... they gave me the most twisted sense of humour, and I love them for it. HUGELY.

It is what keeps you going.

If you are still tuned in.... The call ended with me telling him it was from a travel agency with a post box address in Vienna. SM and KB travel agency. uh-HUH. I told him, 'If it were S/M and KZ' agency, I MIGHT want to check it out and be a suicide bomber. He was fucking shocked. For those of you who do not know.... a KZ was a conentration camp.

And now will shaddup, as Annti says...

If I have to be fucking CRAZY, better do it right, hey.

Just sayin'

I do not know if I will finish this one....

But sometimes, Preciousses, you have an encounter with a person who can mind-fuck you and leave you off the charts for being just 'all right'.

It was last week, okay? I got 'introduced' to a new neighbor. Only thing that surprised me is that he is in the French Foreign Legion, so he remains here five months, and goes back to Africa. Uh HUH.

I have 'met' a mess of people in my life, but THAT was extraordinary.

He looks as what you would expect him to look like. Shaved head, but a nice dome, incredibly green eyes that are always looking inward, and when he comes out of that and FOCUSES on you, well, a little scary. And his face a bit scarred, road-map of his life.

He is fifty years old. And what I want to know is WHY was Upper Austria so BORING in the Fifties that he would make that decision....

Yes, am an idjit, but... curious.

He told me about his experiences from Viet Nam to Chad and Somalia. He really, REALLY hates the US, and their foreign policy. Till, at the end, I just sat there, and silently cried. He told me stuff.... It is unrepeatable. How do people GO through that shit? 'I was just lucky.'


Uh-huh. It was amazing, and crushing, and I heard things I never realised human beings could DO to one another. Absolutely appallling.

Whelp... I think I got something accomplished today....

And for me right now, well, that isn't exactly my forte at present. You can usually find me 'under the bed' in a more or less foetal position. But that is another story for another time....

Remember during the election campaign here, and how I said I was so impressed by Elke Kahr? Well she remained the city senator for state-approved appartments and living conditions, so today Peter got to see her personally in City Hall. It was an early appointment, and saw her arrive, hey, and she has to be, HAS to be, one of the most vibrant women in all Austria. Charisma, a very unique charisma that charms you right on the spot before you know what hit you. Those eyes, so intense and curious and open to the world. Such beauty, and it comes from within.

(Yes, YEAH already, I KNOW I don't swing that way, but I can appreciate it when I see it. I would wish to be a good friend, all right? And I don't care what party she represents. She is for real, and that is what counts. You do not encounter people so exceptional just everyday on the street, you know?)

Whatever, it was the usual 'wait out in the hall' bureacratic crap till his time came. A half-hour later than scheduled, of course, but she's one busy lady. I went outside to have a smoke, so I didn't see when it happened, but they rolled him in.

And there was this somewhat elderly woman with a bad hip who works at the all-night hot-dog stand out on my square, and what might be her son, didn't wanna ask, as he is a dodgy little guy, and her thirteen year old dog, grey in the muzzle and so friendly, and we made friends, of course. The dog and me, I mean. The lady and I are polite and friendly to one another. Erik always ignores me. I'm not 'bad' enough seemingly, but that's ok. I don't want to GET to his kind of bad, or I would turn into Charles Bukowski.

Peter was in there a half-hour. Then Frau Kahr came out and said I could take him home, she had just given him a glass of water. And I thought 'WTF?'

Well, we had two other chores to do, it is unnaturally warm, so I was overdressed, and pushing his ASS across town, and my new meds are weird, perception-wise, I mean, really....

But I got it done, Preciousses, without whining and going into Gollum mode.

Back home, it finally came out. She had remembered me, who I am. Well, that sort of freaked me... It was the day before the election, she'd seen thousands of people. And I am in no way really remarkable, ya know???? But she told him I 'seemed' so 'Austrian', and meant it as a compliment. He had told her about all the good things I had done for him, and nearly broke down in her office over that. When he mentioned what I called the assisted-living place, she fell apart, and said, 'I know, he has a wicked sense of humour.' (She probably thought I was joking when I told her I did a poll on MOB, and she had won. It wasn't a joke.)

She was incredibly nice to him.

She has two solutions to his problem. So we shall see which is best. And where he was? They are going to do something about it.

About time...

Finally, I have a sense that something is going forward here. It is never easy....