Who would have thought...

That Susan Boyle could turn a Rolling Stones number into a torch song?

This is nice. Listen. If you listen to the lyrics closely, you might understand why I am still with Peter....

Just when you think you had a bad weekend, health wise...

And get up on a hated UGLY Monday morning... everything still goes wrong.

I spent more time wrapped around my toilet bowl yesterday retching, because I couldn't get any air, it was pitiful. And made me angry, and really ornery. And I stayed home, in bed between attacks.

Today the weather was a bit better, so I went to Peter's.

Got through that ok in the a.m., and was heading back home... And stopped to exchange a few words with Millie, who had just closed up her stand at the market. For only one sniggarette... And told her about my new letter from Social Sneakurity that I got in the mail this morning.

And as usual, we laughed. I told her they want to know what I do from the time I get up till I go to bed every day. She was stunned, I tell you, STUNNED. And I joked, Well I could start by saying I get up, go to the WC, and nearly explode the toilet with 'hot air'. And we had some fun with that. And she said, 'go for it', and was full of hilarity.

So I went to the tobacconists, and this woman behind me says, 'I think you are on fire...' And then I smelt it. Looked down, and my jacket pocket was smouldering away.

And I thought, 'OH!'. So I stepped outside, and began to empty it. I had some tissues in there, and seemingly a hot ash got in and set them on fire. There were two Bics, and my emergency inhaler in it, all ok, and my camera, also ok. And the letter from the Embassy was beginning to burn very nicely, but I put it out.

I thanked the lady, of course, and wanted to disappear into the ground, and my jacket is ruined, but have had it twelve years, so am not so upset about it. It got fairly beat up in the interim seasons over the years.

So I got some noodles, and went home chagrined, I tell you, chagrined!

And my cell phone rang. Some German asshole who wanted me to re-up for a lottery, and I said no. The conversation got weird. He wanted me to restate my birth-date, and I thought, 'Whoa!' He thought it was 1979. And then he wanted to know what my bank Leitzahl is. That is a number that every bank has. And thought I was with the Postal bank, not the one I have, and my alarms went off. And then he wanted my account number, and I said, 'if you are who you say you are, you already HAVE it.' 'Yes, but it is all coded with asterisks.'

Uh-huh, BINGO!!!

And he wanted me to go out and get my card, and give him the account number. (!!!)

Now all the time of the conversation, I was having my daily bowel movement, and talking on the WC. Which was good... because I had to think, and couldn't just get up and go zombie-like and do what he asked.

And I said, 'I am sorry, but I will NOT do that, and I do not think you are who you say you are, so good-BYE!'

And cut the connection.

It's thundering in the distance, and will have to contact the US Embassy in Vienna.

With my half-burned letter, but the e-mail address is still there....

I HATE Mondays... nothing ever good comes out of them, I swear.

A Single Man won the Queer Lion award in Venice

I didn't know they had one....

But Colin Firth won best actor for the main festival.






Yes, this will be one of the ones I do not want to miss... The color schemes in the trailer are sorta odd, but trailers are teasers...

And this is why I left...

Ignorance and blatent racism is really abhorrent to me...

A cogent look at who is behind the Tea-baggers

Rachel knows what is what.... Take a look.

oh... I didn't know

That Austria is number nine on the list of good health care systems! That is nice...

I KNEW Glenn Beck is bat-shit crazy, but

This tops it all. Putting a cap on the nation's IQ... and he gets applauded by those who probably range in the low 60's to 70's. Story here. The stoopid, it hurts, Preciousses.

oops... it was satire, but just goes to show that Beck is so stupid, I would believe anything like the above as being the way he thinks.... Sorry...

I finally have a movie I can put in the 'must see' category

Tom Ford, the ad, fashion designer guy, decided to direct a film.

But not just any film. He took an incredibly difficult small novel from 1964. 'A Single Man', by Christopher Isherwood. It is very condensed, and about one day in the life of a gay man who is a professor at a university in California, who has recently lost his partner and is in mourning.

It is in the running to get the Golden Lion at the Venice film festival.

The NY Times had a very good review. Click here.

Isherwood isn't well known, but was an artist. Two of his Berlin books later became 'Caberet', and he was considered one of the foremost authors of the last century for his style, and content. He led an astounding life, and his autobiographies can leave you open-mouthed. The very best of them was 'Christopher And His Kind'. In an age when there weren't any people to look up to and want to emulate, there he was in all his glory. And better still, he talked about writing as art, and explained what he was doing, trying to acheive in his novels.

He was an exceptional man, someone I looked up to, felt as if I were a friend, could make me feel exasperated, but he was there. And was an important influence on me, as a person, how he lived, and how we look at the world.

I don't believe I have read that novel since the AIDS crisis began, but I should now, in light of that. It is about loss, and regaining the strength to join humanity again after isolating yourself. Very terse but beautiful prose, in other words.

So I am very much looking forward to seeing what that project became on film.

I hope it wins in Venice.

Oh, fan-fucking-tastic....

The British government decided to say they were sorry about Alan Turing, and what they did to him.

That is not going to ring a bell with anyone I don't think.

He was a mathematician, and broke the so-called Enigma Code the Germans had in WWII, enabling the West to win the war.

But they had a problem with him. He was gay. So what did they do? They stripped him of all security clearances, and damned him to be 'chemically castrated'. He committed suicide two years later when he was forty-one.

Now he is considered one of the most important people of the 20th century, and the government there officially apologised.

Swell.

Just imagine if they had done that to Harvey Milk.....

Please watch here.

You know...... everyone thinks we are living in the 21st century, and the hate still goes on as if it were the 12th, in some cases. And act as if we are spoiled brats, demanding 'rights', when 'Oh, there is so much important stuff to do first.' So we do not matter.

I'm not going to get into the heinous behaviour we all get subjected to over the years, and ok, nice that they finally saw what that what they did was wrong. But 20-2o hindsight never brought back anyone from the dead, and I think we should stand up and honour the people who went out there and did their part, knowing that if their real nature came out, they would be punished to the max.

Some of them paid the ultimate price.

And that is sad.

But it isn't as if 'oh, that was a long time ago, and NOW we know better...'

No. There are enough people out there who would do worse, and you only have to look at the right places on the internets. And everyone else would say 'pshaw, whaddaya getting your boxer shorts in a twist for?'

Because they won't understand the hate. Or what GLBT people have to TAKE every day...

You either toughen up.... or get out of the game altogether, and tried the latter variant three times.

Doesn't always work.

Ok, this is great! Autotuning, they are getting more biting

Ok, dukes up! I have Never interfered in ANYONE'S marriage... as far as I know....

The Maine debate heated up, and the pedophiles aka Catholic Church are deeply into the act of being obnoxious, and hateful.

I figured as much... every child left behind... and Faux News sucks.

Some days I get paranoid, and think that Rupert Murdoch wants to overthrow the US government and take over the world. He is succeeding. These people broke their brains.



And it is raining so hard at the moment.... (shakes head).

Night Fevers.... Obama's speech for the joint houses.

Was up late.... had one of my ashtma days... and then slept a few hours. And had a nightmare. It was totally odd, and I still have no idea where some of THAT came from...

So I woke up in a cold sweat, and turned on the interwebs, as it was 3 a.m., and thought, 'Ok, how did the speech go?'

It was already out there. So I watched. And wasn't so impressed. His speech two days before had more fire and conviction, and seemingly was a test run for last night's fun-fest.

Which gave me hot sweats... because... I have never seen members of Congress and an opposition act so childishly, rudely, and insultingly than the Republicans did last night to a president of the US, can't remember anything like it.

I would like to give an Oscar to Johann Boehner for being really sucky. (His family name is German, and the oe in it is prononced Ö which sounds almost like the word boner in English, so I call him the sun-tanned dick.) Runner-up for hypocrisy was Mitch McConnel, 'turtle man'. Fawning all over him when he entered the chamber, and then sitting on his hands. Orrin Hatch wins runner-up for playing 'conscience-stricken',but at least he looked like his conscience was bothering him. And special kudos to Rep. Joe Wilson of South Carolina for thinking he was in a town hall meeting and called Obama a liar, yelling.

(After Mark Sanford going Argentinian, and his lt. gov. Andre Bauer being outed... what the hell is going on in that state, I ask you? If the Rethugs there keep it up, they will be outta there... of their own doings... Meanwhile, That is one place I never want to visit....)

Wilson apologised for his outburst three hours later. (I can imagine he got some heat for that.) But it was a non-apology. He knew what he was doing, everyone got copies of the speech before they attended, as Keith Olberman on Coundown pointed out.

As to the content... have been going on long enough comparing what single-payer is, and so on and so forth for quite a while now. The way things look to me at the moment, that speech just wasn't enough, and gross misuse will be continued to be the burden on the back of the American taxpayer in order for health insurance companies and pharmaceutical combines to accrue tremendous profits at their expense, and break them.

I was angered at this pathetic attempt on Obama's part to want to reach out to hands that are biting him while holding big knives behind their backs, figuratively speaking. How MUCH is it going to take for him to realise that he can't go on like that? When is he going to face the fact that 20 per cent of the population will never accept anything he does because of who he is, and will stoop to any lie to defame him?

The disrespect shown was appalling. And at base, racist. At base...

And the media? To barf over.

All that I could think of was a 1972 song... Back Stabbers. The refrain fits. Sorry I couldn't find a better quality one.... Some people would stoop to anything to retain power....

This is TASTELESS. I bet it was a Tory, or someone Rethug.

Who thinks this stuff up?

Disgusting. This leaves me spitless. Is EVERYONE just gonna be horrible and make terrible assertions that are so far out there, no one has a chance? I am too upset. This shouldn't be, and is a denigration of the many friends I have lost in this world to this disease.

Using Hitler in that way is .... everything about it is so wrong, I can't begin to even criticise, because it was the most offensive ad I have seen in years.

That is so wrong. I 'understand' what they are trying to say, but everything else is so fucked up, I can't go there, and it is offensive in the extreme.

This organisation is gonna get a call. And I am going to be extremely angry. Yeah, I DO stuff like that.

Semantics....

For a few weeks now, have been really irritated by some buzz phrases....

'At the end of the day...' for instance. And I swear I can't tell you why it bothers me so much, I really can not. But it grates on my nerves.

The first time I heard it was Governor Mark Sanford's mea culpa speech after disappearing to Argentina. 'At the end of the day'... blah blah blah...

And it set off a viral rash of every idjit politician parroting, 'at the end of the day...'

WHA???? A week later, I hear on local television, 'Am Ende des Tages...' And I thought, what the hell IS this?

It was German for 'at the end of the day....'

I have been giving points to politicians who say, 'the bottom line is...' or 'the end result is..' Don't ask me why.

It sounds idiotic... at the end of the day, meaning you do something fully fucked up, correct it, and then it's all right.

I know some people will get their boxer shorts in a twist, ask, 'what is his problem?' But words have meaning.

And I am being picky, I know. It just bothers me.

There are a few other things that I will get to maybe, later. Women for example. For me they are ladies, but am approaching old age. A lady can smoke, cuss, do what she wants, but she will always be a lady. But that is a generational thing, and was always meant as a respectful term on my part.

Yup, words are sorta weird, sometimes....

More tempest in a teapot....

Found this at Joe.My.God I thought it very funny.

This sounds like the beginning of heading into Logan's Run

Real Death Panels, and everyone gets to make a profit.

Except the ones who die, of course. Read here.

The most perverse idea I have ever heard.

Looks like he's back... but I'm not holding my breath...

Happy Labour Day.... which is like our May first, except you forgot what it was about...

One of my grandmothers would have known what it is about. She was a factory worker. She went on strike in the Twenties to get better working conditions and salary. She marched out on the street with my father and his sister to protest. In Massachusetts. And the 'fine' horse-ridden police tried to ride the women and children down, but she fought them. And her eyes would blaze with hate when it came to their tactics. And she told me that story several times, and it would never waver.

THAT is what labour day is really about. Except now, it is barbecues, going to the sea or a lake, family things, and relaxing. The real meaning got lost.

And thanks to all the corporate stuff, and horrible media who do not do their work, people got surpressed, distracted, looking away, and the less there is to share, the more selfish they get. I read today that one in fifty children in the US are homeless. Is that something to celebrate? I find it shameful.

This was on Crooks and Liars, and from last year. Happy Labour Day....

It being the weekend, and being annoyed by talking heads...

I found this on Crooks and Liars, and it took me back. Remember those old Dean Martin 'roasts' in Las Vegas that got televised. This is a classic. Lean back and enjoy.

I finally found the cartoon I was looking for...

This cracked us up way back when.... although it is so sexist, it isn't so funny any more.

Angry much? I do not know where to begin...

I received a mail from a former neighbor. She was on vac for four days, noticed that the shutters to our old place were turned down, the windows were tilted open, and asked if I had been in there.

So I called her, and said, no, hadn't been there in months.

So I rang up Peter, and told him someone had broken in, obviously. And that I was going to call the police.

He gave me the go-ahead....

For a change.

And the police broke in, and I.... got fucking egg on my face.

Becaaaaussse... Peter had given over his rights to the apartment in August, and never told me! So I was the breaker-in, because I still had the keys.

The owner came down with all the appropriate papers, Peter had signed it, and I was the idjit.

And everything that is left inside that apt. belongs to her, not me. Although he maintained otherwise.

Well, of course, Werner had to hold me back, with my little fists. I had brought him along, you see, for moral support.

He hates that woman more than I do, even, and wanted to keep me out of serious trouble.

The police weren't sure who was right in this case, and I didn't help matters any calling 'that woman' everything in the book. When my Irish is up, I am invincible, believe me. I think the worst thing I said was, 'you fucking tramp!'

Yup. I was actually fresh to a woman. I wanted to slap her into the middle of next week, but Werner held me back. He is very strong.

We had to give up the keys to the Mühlgasse 40 to the police.

I called Peter, of course on my underused cell phone, and he had to admit he had done that and hadn't told me.

So we were in the wrong... and hadn't known it. Fun. Not.

What the holy fuck is WRONG with people?

I am so tired of being lied to.

I just heard I am going to be sued in court.

I don't know what FOR....

I didn't attack anyone, except verbally....

I was upset and didn't know the facts.

And now you know why I don't like the idea of gay marriage. If you get a dud, you get into debt, and have to put up with their shenanigans, and NO.

Not for me, thank you... I have enough to do with all the lies, the subterfuge, and oh yes... he is so ill.

Well so am I at the moment, and it makes me want to puke.

This comes from Daily Kos.... The man has a point...

errm... ok....

WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH EVERYONE, HUH?

Biting people's finger off at a town meeting... Denigrating poor women with cripppling diseases who is in a wheelchair, and making fun of her because she isn't on the right side...

What the fuck is it going to take to get people to discuss their issues RATIONALLY? WHAT?

Looking across from across the big pond that separates Europe and the US...

I begin to wonder... because nothing good ever came to us from the US to Europe....

We are happy with our health care. It isn't perfect, but it is good.

But more and more we see ads for private health insurance on our tee-vees.

Well, good luck with that.

Peter had a private insurance coverage... Oh, it was 'fun'. Not. Just so he would have a private room, mind you.

And I always said, 'fuck that! Either you are so sick you don't CARE where they put you, and the day it bothers you, you know you are getting better, and going home, for Chrissakes!'

The CARE wasn't any different on any level, so I did not understand why he would do that.

So what kind of country has the US become, when people bite off fingers, or denigrate women in wheelchairs? It makes me ashamed to have had anything to do with growing up there.

http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/cspanjunkie/interview-man-who-had-finger-bitten-to


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/09/02/wheelchair-bound-woman-sh_n_275472.html

And try to tell me why this is so controversial... because I no longer recognise anyone in my former country, and the issue should be a no-brainer.

I was talking to someone... and got a flash to cartoons in the late 60's

Foghorn Leghorn... the vid is a mash-up and one of the craziest figures Warner's ever dreamed up.

Did I say I like Rachel Maddow? This is how you conduct a civil conversation...

Since it is September 1st, when WWII began...

I found this in The Nation. It is by poet laureate W. H. Auden whom I have always admired. The last third of it strikes me as being awfully descriptive of attitudes still abroad today.

September 1, 1939

I sit in one of the dives
On Fifty-second Street
Uncertain and afraid
As the clever hopes expire
Of a low dishonest decade:
Waves of anger and fear
Circulate over the bright
And darkened lands of the earth,
Obsessing our private lives;
The unmentionable odour of death
Offends the September night.

Accurate scholarship can
Unearth the whole offence
From Luther until now
That has driven a culture mad,
Find what occurred at Linz,
What huge imago made
A psychopathic god:
I and the public know
What all schoolchildren learn,
Those to whom evil is done
Do evil in return.

Exiled Thucydides knew
All that a speech can say
About Democracy,
And what dictators do,
The elderly rubbish they talk
To an apathetic grave;
Analysed all in his book,
The enlightenment driven away,
The habit-forming pain,
Mismanagement and grief:
We must suffer them all again.

Into this neutral air
Where blind skyscrapers use
Their full height to proclaim
The strength of Collective Man,
Each language pours its vain
Competitive excuse:
But who can live for long
In an euphoric dream;
Out of the mirror they stare,
Imperialism's face
And the international wrong.

Faces along the bar
Cling to their average day:
The lights must never go out,
The music must always play,
All the conventions conspire
To make this fort assume
The furniture of home;
Lest we should see where we are,
Lost in a haunted wood,
Children afraid of the night
Who have never been happy or good.

The windiest militant trash
Important Persons shout
Is not so crude as our wish:
What mad Nijinsky wrote
About Diaghilev
Is true of the normal heart;
For the error bred in the bone
Of each woman and each man
Craves what it cannot have,
Not universal love
But to be loved alone.

From the conservative dark
Into the ethical life
The dense commuters come,
Repeating their morning vow;
'I will be true to the wife,
I'll concentrate more on my work,'
And helpless governors wake
To resume their compulsory game:
Who can release them now,
Who can reach the dead,
Who can speak for the dumb?

All I have is a voice
To undo the folded lie,
The romantic lie in the brain
Of the sensual man-in-the-street
And the lie of Authority
Whose buildings grope the sky:
There is no such thing as the State
And no one exists alone;
Hunger allows no choice
To the citizen or the police;
We must love one another or die.

Defenseless under the night
Our world in stupor lies;
Yet, dotted everywhere,
Ironic points of light
Flash out wherever the Just
Exchange their messages:
May I, composed like them
Of Eros and of dust,
Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame.

Another day in health care....

I have asthma, 'beginning stadium' (so where's the soccer field, huh?') I was afraid of a lot of other diagnoses, believe me....

I went to my appointment like a good little boy.... Yech!

Everything very professional. I whipped out my card, gave the secretary my Überweisungsschein.... That is a document where your GP passes you on to a specialist.... and got sent to the waiting room. About half an hour later, an attractive young lady called me in to the )))))Belastungsraum((((. To see how much your lungs can take. If I were a tea-bagger, I would have been certain that I would get waterboarded, or something even more crass.

But it was worse, I tell, you worse! There was a great big glass cabinet in there, With a pipe coming into it, and she put a plastic mouthpiece on it, and told me to breathe. And shut the door. Which caused anxiety. And if I had been a Deather, I would have been certain that poison gas was going to come through that tube and put out my lights forever. Death Panels!

And she kept yelling through the door: Breathe in deep! Now exhale all the way! Breathe in! Now breathe normally! I was really and truly skeered---if I had been a birther, Deather, Becker, or loon, except whaddaya know, I wasn't. It was just oxygen....

So that ordeal was over... and I was still alive, and the Socialist death squadrons hadn't killed me yet, But more was in store. 'I am going to have to put a needle in your ear', she said. And I was shocked. 'INSIDE?' She was shocked, 'no in your earlobe, it is sort of like getting pierced.' I was relieved. She explained it was so they could take some blood and measure the amount of oxygen in it.

And I said, 'Ok, always wanted an earring and be 'cool'...' So she made me go into the waiting room with a horrible bandaid on my ear to anaesthesise it. So I went back in when she called me, and had a prick in my ear. Just a pinch mind you...

And I said, 'well, that wasn't like my last piercing, and I am not gonna tell you where...'

The Socialist Death Squads have a sense of humour. She laughed.

So then I got to wait in the waiting room, reading a book, and got called into the inner sanctum. THE SPECIALIST. She is about forty, no-nonsense. We went through my records, she was no-nonsense, but she listened. I explained. She told be to go into another room, and take off my shirt, she wanted to look at my insides more closely. I had to go up two steps, and my multifocal glasses make me uncertain. She kept saying, 'Why are you so dizzy?' And thought, 'Oh-oh, here it comes, the death squad.' I explained, and she ran that machine around me like I was the three dimensional visible man.

And THAT is when she told me I have the beginnings of asthma, prescribed two meds for the next four weeks, and told me to cut way down on smoking.

And then I was FREE, I tell you FREE!

I am not going to get billed for anything about this, by the way....

Seemingly, my time hasn't come yet.

But you know what? No one is going to pull a plug on me ever unless I wish that to happen.

We do not have 'death panels'.

But I have decided what to do if I leave this world. I will do something useful.

Next week, I will go to the university. The anatomy institute. And I will see to it that my remains are used for the students to study. What little remains after that will be buried in a very quiet little cemetery not far from here.

I know what that all entails The first time I came here, my friend Günther was just beginning a very prestigious career in medicne, and he wanted to frighten me. So he took me to the anatomy room in a cellar.... with bodies being dissected.

And it didn't frighten me at all. It was fascinating.

And I asked, 'People DO this volunarily?' And he said, 'Yes.' And was disappointed that I wasn't shocked.

So if I leave this irritating world, I want to do something constructive. It isn't as if anyone would come over and weep over my grave, so I should make that constructive, and maybe be of help to someone else.

I have gotten off topic here, but 'Death Panels' and all the idiots, and especially the death of Edward Kennedy got me to thinking over the weekend, and since am not feeling so wonderful myself, time to make some plans. I hate messy endings.

And most people wouldn't make that option. They have family who can come and mourn or talk to you.

I wouldn't have that.

So why not....

I know that is maudlin and morose, but am at a point where, if you are feeling ill for months, and can't do what you did before, wouldn't mind leaving the planet.

So it should be dignified.

Another special edition... Riding the Busses....

This morning, I got off to a half-way late start, and in the summer, the public transportaton isn't usually over-filled.

And there was a late mom and her daughter, and the litle girl went to look at the poster above, and said, 'Mommy, LOOK!' Well it just was a poster of a commermorative issue of a magazine that gets published Sundays in a newspaper here, and that was the title cover. I believe it was a photo by Herb Ritts 20 years ago. It's above. And her mother said, 'It's ok, and if you don't like it, you don't have to look. Some people LIKE doing that.' End of discussion. And the kid, she was maybe five, studied it and turned her attention to other things.

And I thought, OMG, if this were 'Murka, there would be screaming jeebie Baptists and puritans out screaming in protest. I hadn't really paid much attention to the poster heretofore, it was up for several days. It was a healthy thing to do, that lady, and her kid won't think much of it in the future....

So I had to smile. That must have been the most HEALTHY reaction I have ever heard live. And sensible.

So I thought the day was starting out nicely, it was sensible.

Then the bus came. One had broken down somewhere so mine was overfilled, and the pushing and shoving and stepping on your feet and agression were something to behold. Rudeness, no one excusing themselves for stepping on your feet, it was the other side of the coin, and by the time I got off there I was one very pissed off person.

But.... I got a hiatus waiting for my transfer....

Which turned out to be a sad sign of a coin. A boy of about eight or nine or so with his mother, and he was very frightened, with his mother, whose eyes looked so devoid of life and joy and full of hurt. And all the way down, it was, 'Mommy, is the needle going to hurt?' She was very attentive to him, and said no, but the look in her eyes was... just dead. At first I thought he was being taken to a vaccination, or something. He had very thick glasses for a child his age, and was very clinging to her. Again and again, she calmed him, told him the needle wouldn't hurt, and he asked where they would put it in.

And then she put her finger on his inner thigh to show him, and promised him it wouldn't hurt. I died inside for those poor people. Because I knew it meant insulin, and that child had diabetes 1, the worst form. And his mother was hanging on to every shred of dignity she possessed, and it was formidable. I could hardly look away, and it was rude to observe, and made her uncomfortable. A very dear friend of mine had that form from childhood on and died at thirty. I wanted to go over and say a few words, but that would have hardly been appropriate. Or taken wrongly.

So I shut up, and kept on looking out the window. But hearing, and sometimes observing.

I was so happy to get off at my stop. It was heart-rending.

Obviously, I got off to Peter's in a very bad mood.

But calmed down.

And did what I do....

Coming back, there were two teenagers just behind me arguing about what goes best on their Wurst when they go to hot-dog stands, and the one was for mustard, the other was for ketchup, and they went on and on, as kids will do. I found it funny. And we got to Jacki, the end station and were getting off, and I said, 'Kids? Next time try it with mayonnaise and horseradish.'

They didn't get the connection at first, till I was about twenty feet away, and heard them falling apart laughing, because they found it so funny, yelling 'Mayonnaise! Mayonnaise!' and laughing to beat the band.

So what can we gain from this? Riding the busses is like riding a roller coaster of emotions. And I often can't keep my mouf shut.

So it is time to keep my appointment with my lung expert. Werner called me this morning at six thirty a.m. No sense of propriety. And he came up with one of his horrendous fart jokes.

'You have to blow into a machine as hard as you can, so take a deep breath. And then, THEN, you let it all out the back door.'

And I said, 'If I do THAT, she'll throw me out the third story winder onto the Hauptplatz!'

And he said, 'But there won't be any more air, and you'll land on the ground like a new-born sparrow and light as a feather.'

So he finally beat me at my own game. Sorry Dad... but that was funny. But then again, you know my humour....

So I finally got a diagnosis. I have the first stages of asthma. In Harvey Fierstein's 'Torch Song Trilogy', the main character alsways says, 'Now isn't THAT a kick in the pants?!?!'

But that is a post for later.

This is about riding the roller-coaster of emotions that can be riding the busses. You see a cross-section of everyone, and some things are very funny, some things are very sad, and some days are just normal----little grey people riding to wherever they are going.

So it became a favorite topic of mine lately. My 'special editions' are when extraordinary things happen on them, and fun for me to share. The ones that make me thoughtful, or smile, or make me sad. You get on, and you never know what you are going to get.

Eloquence... if only he had the nads to back it up. or maybe I am missing something....

And this is one fucking class act....NOT

Am not going to qualify it with a comment, just watch. What the FUCK did that country become while I wasn't looking?

I was watching the internets this morning....

And saw a great deal of the memorial speaking at the Kennedy Library in Boston. A good Irish wake, I would say....

And I was... amazed.

I never really followed Teddy Kennedy's life in news or anything else. Which was probably, or after listening today, he kept himself out of the limelight, but helped very many people.

It was beautiful to see so many people from all sides of the spectrum get up and speak about what a wonderful man he was. And it wouldn't have been an Irish wake if some people had you laughing out loud with very funny anecdotes. But the bottom line was the caring for other people, helping them if they were in need.

So I learned a mess of stuff I hadn't known about his life and career.

To say I'm impressed would be absurd. But his issues were and are my issues. And it seems he was a giant among the rest of us. I like the fact that he did so much for others when they were in a time of need. And never hung it out on the 'news'. He did it because he cared. And kept quiet.

My father would probably call him a 'caretaker'. And it seems he was. I couldn't think of a better term for him, truly.

When I pass on, I will wish I could have lived up to that and have lots of people telling horrible stories about 'Flipper' (me) when I would go off the charts for what I perceived as injustice, and tried to do something about it.

And that is the Kennedy legacy.

It was my region, my life, and they affected me immensely, and taught me what empathy and good works were.

The whole thing moved me more than I can describe.

Madonna has been in Rumania....

And got roundly booed for advocating understanding for gypsies and gays. It's only the first part of the clip, I didn't like the number she followed it up with. And will have to follow up with full disclosure here. I dislike Serbs, Rumanians, and am not fond of gypsies. Based on experiences with all three groups that were less than pleasant. I just make a wide circle around them if I happen to run into them, they aren't my thing. I do not hate or ever would harm one of them, they just are so out of my experience, I can't deal with them on any level whatsoever.

Her statement may have been politically correct, as they say, but it wasn't appreciated.

Rachel is my heroine... listen

Tomorrow...

is the fourth anniversary of what I call 'the day of infamy' which happened in my lifetime.

Hurricane Katrina hit Louisiana and Missouri, and up to 1600 people drowned in New Orleans, in an unprecedented act of negligence on the part of the US government. Whose officials had the unmitigated gall to suggest it was their own fault, because they were poor, Black, and didn't get out of town. Those people just can't get enough of blaming the poor for mishaps... oopsie...

Cold-hearted bastards and bitches who seem to come out of some parallel universe and torture us all.

Those of us who have some sort of conscience, I mean...

I remember this day so well because I was corresponding with a woman there, half-way between NOLA and Baton Rouge. And got a US weather report on-line and it was all in caps, which is screaming, on-line.... So I cut it, pasted, and pleaded that she get OUT of there, and go to Atlanta for a corfee or something. She thought I was being a drama queen, with the caps, and all, but that is how it was published, not my doing.

As it turned out, she turned heroic, got a mess of donations, and spent thirty some odd hours bringing supplies to the refugee places people had fled to, and injured herself.

So I have a very intense emotional and personal connection to that event.

I do NOT want to get into the egregrious, horrible things that were said on the right about the people who died there. I'm not sure I could stomach repeating what they said at the time, I would throw up. But that was the day I knew, the America I had grown up in had died for good.

And it was the worst feeling I have ever had.

Early this morning I saw that Greg Palast has a new film up, four years after, and how the City of New Orleans doesn't want their people back, because they are poor.

You can start HERE.

Everything about this entire story SUCKS.

Not the documentary, but how it was reacted to at the time.

And I still feel ashamed on a personal level, that my former country let that happen. Yes, ASHAMED. And I think that should be shared by anyone who considers themselves American.

So tomorrow... stop for a moment of silence, and think of someone there, whomever, up in their attics, with the water rising higher and higher... till they drowned.

Without the government doing anything constructive to help them.

Because THAT was the day America died...

Happy anniversary... NOT.

Mr. LImpballs just went over the top for hyperbole and fear mongering....

I have never been so disgusted....

Link Here.

I can not find a better example of Ted Kennedy...

fighting for what is right.

At the risk of sounding like Johnny-one-note....

NO ONE should have to deal with this sort of discrimination, or be punished for it. Link HERE.

I've seen Mr. Fehrenbach on a few tee-vee shows since his ordeal started, and this is not what you do to honourable veterans, and it disgusts me.

Earlier today I played the film 'MILK' for Peter, who hadn't seen it before. We have a rule that it gets shown in English, with German subtitles, to keep his mind alert. I haven't seen him so alert in a long while. Nor so sad, while watching it. He knew the story, everyone of my persuasion does. But it made him cry just the same.

Oddly, I did not. All I felt was anger. Harvey Milk just recently received the highest award the US has to give, posthumusly.

And forty years later, Victor Fehrenbach is being punished for being who he is. That is like putting a band-aid on a cut artery instead of a tourniquet.

It is time to stop this nonsense. WAY past time to stop punishing people for being an aspect of who they are.

And YES, it set me off the charts for indignance. It is fine to want to honour the dead, and give them 'a day of remembrance', like Ahnuld fucking Schwarzenegger is considering, but it would be far more constructive to honour the living, who have been utterly brave, and served their country with dignity than to throw them out ignonimously after so many years.

I think if Milk hadn't been assassinated, he would have been out their with his voice, even in his dotage, and spoken out about the injustice of DADT, and Fehrenbach, and Dan Choi, and all the other brave people who served their country and then got thrown under the bus.

This is a DEMOCRAT???

I am NOT going to say what I think. As far as I know, Grassley is a whore. A whore is someone who takes money for services rendered. And have read he's taken in millions from the insurance and pharma industries. To vote in their interests. Greed is a terrible thing, and makes them taker smaller than a bug. As it is, people should be judged on what they say, and ignored when they turn out to be ... as small as a bug bothering you. So what the FUCK is he doing on that panel, hey.... So how much did this guy get?

This speaks for itself, and have been thinking the same for quite a while now.

with thanks to Pam Spaulding for putting it up... so much gets lost in the noise otherwise...

These facts have been circulating for a long while now, and it turns out they are true.

In the America I grew up in, we got taught differently. I really do not understand the level of hate there....

Sometimes — very seldom actually, but sometimes — a blog post by a fellow blogger is so good — so salient and timely — that it needs to be lifted in its entirety and posted here for all to see.

This post by Glenn Greenwald is one such post and it concerns the prosecution of CIA torturers and the Right’s depraved belief that torture is good.

Thomas Paine v. the Right’s torture defenders

GOP Congressman Peter King — the ranking member of the House Homeland Security Committee — had this rancid outburst today in Politico regarding Eric Holder’s decision to investigate whether laws were broken by the Bush administration’s torture:

“It’s bullshit. It’s disgraceful. You wonder which side they’re on. [It's' a] declaration of war against the CIA, and against common sense. . . . When Holder was talking about being ’shocked’ [before the report's release], I thought they were going to have cutting guys’ fingers off or something — or that they actually used the power drill. . . “

Pressed on whether interrogators had actually broken the law, King said he didn’t think the Geneva Convention “applies to terrorists.”

Never mind that the Supreme Court in Hamdan ruled exactly the opposite: that Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions applies to all detainees, including accused Terrorists. Never mind that the War Crimes Act makes it a felony to inflict “prolonged mental harm caused by or resulting from . . . the threat of imminent death; or the threat that another person will imminently be subjected to death, severe physical pain or suffering. . . .” and that these acts are therefore criminal whether or not King likes them.

Never mind that scores of people have died — not merely been threatened with death — in American custody as a result of “interrogation tactics.” Never mind that Ronald Reagan signed the Convention Against Torture which compels the U.S. to prosecute anyone authorizing torture; that the Treaty proclaims that “no exceptional circumstances whatsoever . . . may be invoked as a justification of torture”; and that Reagan himself said the Treaty “will clearly express United States opposition to torture, an abhorrent practice unfortunately still prevalent in the world today.” And most of all, never mind that King has no idea whether these people are actually “terrorists” because the people we tortured were never given trials, never proven to have done anything wrong, and in many cases were — as federal courts have repeatedly found and as the CIA IG Report itself recognized — completely innocent.

My email inbox and comment section are filled with King-like accusatory sentiments that to oppose Torture is to defend Terrorists, because Terrorists deserve to be tortured, and that to oppose their abuse is to be treasonous because it’s terrible to care if Terrorists are abused, etc. etc. In his 1795 essay, which he entitled Dissertations on First Principles of Government, Thomas Paine wrote this as his last paragraph:

An avidity to punish is always dangerous to liberty. It leads men to stretch, to misinterpret, and to misapply even the best of laws. He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.

Can that be any clearer? Of course, Paine also wrote in Common Sense that “so far as we approve of monarchy, that in America the law is king” and “in free countries the law ought to be king; and there ought to be no other.” And in his Dissertations, he also wrote:

The executive is not invested with the power of deliberating whether it shall act or not; it has no discretionary authority in the case; for it can act no other thing than what the laws decree, and it is obliged to act conformably thereto. . . .

For anyone who believes in the basic principles of the founding, the fact that these acts of torture are illegal — felonies — ought to end the discussion about whether they were justified.

Few things are more repellent than watching the contemporary Right in America invoke the principles of the Founders — in general — to justify their warped and lawless authoritarianism. But nothing is more repulsive than watching them pretend that Thomas Paine — of all people — has anything to do with them (Glenn Beck actually wrote his most recent book based on the explicit pretense that he is the modern day Paine). Any casual reading of Paine makes clear that, today, he would be so far on what is deemed the “left” side of the spectrum that you’d be unable to find him. Paine is nothing but what Joe Klein refers to as a “crazy civil liberties absolutist” and what Rush Limbaugh similarly calls “far, fringe, lunatic kooks, far left radical lunatic fringe.”

The Right today argues that condemning torture is wrong because the people who were tortured were just Terrorists — barely human — and they deserve no defense, not even the force of law. Thomas Paine argued as a first principle that those devoted to liberty “must guard even his enemy from oppression.” Could the contrast be any more stark?

Nice country you have there.... really admirable....

This one from CNN. I fairly am certain that this Senator's ass is grass when he is up for his next election. His lack of feeling is so indicative of what the Republican party has become.

Hoorah! Yuck Hay! Suuuper! Extrafuckin' ordinary!

I got my results from my x-ray back. After forty-six years of smoking to beat the band, and like a chimbley... my lungs look very pretty and normal, thank you very much.... My trick was from quitting the last time and gaining 40 pounds, don't inhale it into your lungs. Just take it in and blow it out, to curb appetite.

I could do a snoopy dance... if I didn't feel so well....

But I was afraid of what the results would be when I picked it up today. Some bad news... a slight curvature of the spine that comes from bending over non-ergonomic desks and studying for two decades.... As if I didn't know.

And oh yes, my nipple piercing looks really cool in the full back position....

So I happily hopped over to my GP and presented him with the result, and said, 'This isn't solving my problem.'

He was blasé as ever, and told me the x-rays are MINE. To keep them... in other words. And is sending me to a lung specialist. Hokay... And if that doesn't bring results, I get to do another EEG. With the internist I most hate in the world.

(I am so upset that my biological mother isn't alive. She was always harping on me to send a recent picture. So the last time I got an x-ray, I sent her my latest 'picture'. She stopped harping, and yes, I really did that. She wasn't usually very nice. Now I have no one to send them to.)

The second 'hooray!' is that W., my couch critter, didn't get put in jail today. He showed up at 6:30 this morning and was shaking in his shoes. He misread his summons and thought it was a preliminary hearing, but it was the TRIAL.

Set for ten a.m.

Oh, he was upset... you get a free defense attorney if you get accused of something, and he just let it go... thinking it was a preliminary hearing. Except it wasn't.

And he gave me a lot of stuff for safe-keeping, and so on. He was so wrecked mentally, I thought, 'oh, you are going to do something SO STUPID...'

So I calmed him down as best I could, and then I did something I never did before.

I gave him a very close hug, and said, 'keep your head up, and don't let anyone get you down.' And added, 'That wasn't a come-on, just concern.'

So ten o'clock rolled around, and I was biting my fingernails. He didn't want me there.

And from all my babbling, I think I gave him his out this morning.

Because I was thinking for a change... The accusation is that he beat up his girlfriend. He crashed at my house, totally paranoid. And landed on my floor for another three weeks. But if it was if they describe in the legal brief, that he beat up on a woman. He reveres women. He would never hurt one.

If that had happened, she would have scratchted, bit, hit him everywhere it hurts, and he would have turned up with the bruises to prove it.

He never did.

She is after something, and it is usually money.

Whatever, it looks like I am going to court (again...) as a witness (again...) but what the hey...

Meanwhile, he is still free.

Stones dropped from my heart.

I don't know what this has to do with anything...

But Dark Black always makes me want to reach for the eye bleach.. IS that Gadaffi as Hammer? He drives me nuts, but I usually laugh...

Faux news is bringing it ON....

Thanks to Google, they have pulled every fucking video I have posted with their crazy fucking liars from my blog, obviously thanks to Google, thanks to a provision that they aren't licensed here and I 'broke some rule'. while posting that what was all over the internets.

Righhht.... it was all over the fucking place.

So where is MY freedom of speech and the right to give out information?

Rupert Murdoch is Mr. Burns. I wish I were young enough to be Bart Simpson.....

But the stuff is still out there.... showing them off for whom they are....

I hope their soup got cold, trying to eat it up.

New attack on disseminating info that is already out there....

I just saw that two vids I put up have been pulled 'due to copyright evaluations'. Guess which ones.

The Glen Beck one saying Obama is a reverse racist.... And another of the same ilk, 'birther' Orly Taitz, the Russian woman who has dual Israeli and US citizenship, and both crazy as squirrels who would be funny if they weren't unbelievable....

This has been popping up the past few weeks.... 'There is no copyright, and you can't watch it out of the United States. Ok....

Why shouldn't we see what you do?

It is seemingly nefarious enough....

Beck lost thirty advertisers on his show last week. Orly Taitz is a joke.

We will not get shut down.

And I smell corporate fear.....

Will go on the hunt, and reinstate them, believe me.

Looks like hardball politics, and am up for it.

Outlyers of Hurricane Bill, and people go out to watch...

I have seen this behaviour before. When Yugoslavia began to fall apart, the local people made outings to the border, to 'watch the war' as the Serbs ran over Slovenia. And that with Serb planes flying up over our airport and we had nothing to counter with.... Said 'border' being a river that wasn't much wider than the one in town here, and it isn't all that wide. So you had the Serbs raising havoc on the other side of the river, and the locals watching what was happening. They were generations of people who hadn't been touched by WWII, and had no sense of the danger, or that someone could be killed by stray bullets across the way. Luckily, no one suffered any damage.... but at the time I thought, 'how crazy can you BE, hey?'

In Maine, some people seem to have lobster brains.... Check this out from Pam's House Blend... I wouldn't take my children out in that weather if you paid me for it.

But another aspect of it is understandable to me. With the exception of a class two hurricane that wreaked havoc in NH in the Thirties, people there aren't USED to that weather, so it is sort of a 'wonder' they want to watch without knowing how life-threatening it is to them, because it never happened before....

It it had been a 'Noreaster in winter, they would have taken precautions and stayed indoors, and kept their kids safe... I hope....

Perceptions. Always perceptions.... and a repsitory of knowledge, I guess, that some people put into the very back of the file cabinets they call their brains.

And to top this off, some poor 70 year old lady up north of here got nervous in that last bad thunderstorm we had that half-knocked off the chimbly of our last house. She was concerned about her freezer in the cellar, and went down there to do something about it? The house must have been near a brook, or something, there isn't a river there. But a brook is something tricky. You get a storm like it was there? Water broke in with such violence, she didn't have a chance, and seemingly being frail, she drowned. All because of the little she had in there.


(Have since learned it knocked off every electrical appliance in the building where I last lived, they still don't have electricity, one family has a private company and it killed their computers as well, so that was gawd retribution if you wish to look at it that way...)

Oh... Dimitri! How not to approach a woman!

In Toronto, an obnoxious man approached a woman eating with her friends in a restaurant, and to get rid of him she gave him her card. So he leaves two very aggressive mails on her answering machine, the second of which left me speechless. So she turned it in to a radio station there, they played it, and much hilarity ensued. h/T to Crooks and Liars for this entertaining audio. Dimitri's ego must be as vast as the universe....

You can hear this vastness here.

I hope their broadcasting of it demolished a glaxy or two of his ego away.....

gawwwd.,,

Oh, OH! OH! Yesterday's thunderstorm....

Hit the chimbley in my former residence.

I know for a fact we had a Blitzableiter, a grounding, that would run lightening into the earth and spare the people inside.

In a bizarre variation, it went down a chimney, knocked half of it onto the fucking sidewalk in front of the house, and killed E VERYTHING in my nemesis' house. The Tee-vee, radio, stove, EVERYTTHING electric, including the ceiling lamp he gave her.

I had my winders opened yesterday, and went to sleep. Got wakened my Ball lightening. They are always the worst, so closed the windows.

Karma spared me.

But just to hear that she gave her disapproval to the people who were so horribly disapproving.... is balm for my nerves.

I hope they have fun with it.

Now THAT is what I call a bite in the fucking ass.

Good so.

Ok.... Jon Stewart went off on vacation with a big bang.

His guest yesterday was.... the bitch who thought up the 'death panels', and he was waaaay too polite.

Fortunately, someone at Daily Kos pulled it apart in all its' ungloriousness.....

Link here, and well worth the read. Update: she was so awful, she 'resigned' from her job at the medical company she was representing.... although mean people say she got voted off the team for exposing the stupidity of their arguments. Kudos to Jon Stewart!!! Bravo. I don't know how he could stand sixteen minutes of that idiot...

David Sedaris on health care in France

David Sedaris - Bend Over and Say "Ah"

Now this is just my perception...

But I think President 'Cumbaya' needs a reality check very quickly, and find some nads.

Sort of like Madeleine Albright's brass ovaraies....

He needs the platinum ones.

Nads, I mean.

For all the nicety of 'wanting to get along and play nice with everyone', it is waaay past time to put his foot down and get up to the bully pulpit, especially in his own ranks. And push his vision on health care through his own ranks, and make them heel like the little dog bitches they are....

I know that he is up against incredible foes. Rachel Maddow has been exposing them daily for weeks now. Grass roots my ass.

If one doesn't believe the hype, FAUX News, that the US health care system is 'the best in the world' according to Glen Beck, (after he trashed it 18 months ago....) and in reality, it is off the charts for bad and at the end of the list for industrialised nations... just ahead of Slovenia, and hadn't been aware they were that badly off...

It seems to me that the majority of Murkins are getting the rawest of raw deals, as per usual, because they aren't paying attention.

Sometimes I think they have Attention Deficiency Disorder, and just go along because after all, Britney Spears just lost 2000 pounds, or something like that.... And that is far more interesting, of course.... And oh yes, it is so important to show your real guns and AK 47's at the edge of crowds attending a health-care meeting. Because the law says you can...

Someone put the country on Ritalin, please, because there is an attention deficit, but I do not think that will help either....

Why the hell don't people get excited and embrace a change that will better their lives? I just do not get it.

Instead, people are going around, poisoning the wells. Obama is gonna murder your folks. (Scream). And on and on...

It's insane. If you want death panels... well, the insurance companies are doing a FINE job already, and no one complains. I was especially shocked yesterday to learn that the 'average' cost of a hospital stay and operation was twenty to thirty thousand dollars, and there is a move in the Senate to make the insured people pay up to thirty-five percent of that cost incurred.... in addition to the premiums paid monthly. Who the fuck can afford that, pray tell?

THEY are the death panels.

The outright greed is so stunning it leaves me spitless.

I know, I know... have been going ON about this for quite a while now. But I just cannot fathom how dense people can be or how they can distort truth, and fire dummies up to disrupt a sensible discussion.

Bottom line? You'll get what you never paid for.

Maine seems to be up for a fight....

Nice ad.

From the clip below, I found these blowhards, from FAUX news and an unfortunate member of congress....

So that is what everyone is up against.... ARE YOU ALL OUT OF YOUR MINDS, OR OUT SHOPPING, OR BRAINWHASHED FOR ALL TIME?

Jeez...

Oh...

I am not so a fan of Barney Frank... But I do like his zingers.....



There are DAYS... when gay guys got the sarcasm gene along with the gay gene.

Or maybe you just learn to fight.

OMFG!

I don't even know where to file this....

Was 'busy' sleeping. And the doorbell rang, over and over and over, and I thought who the Hell is driving me nuts, so I went to see....

So I went to see who was so crazy as to want to see me.

And opened to find the most beautiful woman I have ever seen, with a tall young beautiful man behind her whom I had never seen before. And she was going ON, how ARE you, and he as well, although I now know I had never seen him before. She was tall, and had dark hair, wearing a beautiful summer dress in blue. And I thought, Whaa?' And this Oliver guy is going 'HI René, nice to see you!' and I knew I had never seen him before in my life. Tall, long haired, very well dressed, and I thought 'WHAAA?'

I was so upset.... It freaked me out.

Now, ok, but she was immediately so concerned, she came in and hugged me and hugged me... and asked what was wrong.

And then I saw the tattoo on her shoulder. Holy shit, hey! It was Olga. And the voice, hey, I should have known, but I hadn't seen her in YEARS. And I didn't have my glasses on. She must be near thirty now, but she is gorgeous. Long dark hair, looks like a model, and has that voice that makes me melt. I didn't have my glasses on. But can see enough to know she is beautiful.

We go back a long way.... She grew up with a former neighbor of mine, and was so radical, I couldn't place it at first. Said neighbor was... well long story. I don't know what the hell to say about that. He was bi-curious. But I never went there, and he died very young and tragically. And I have regretted many things about that since he died so senselessly. Olga was his first girlfriend, and was on heroin at the time. With rasta locks, and very funny, and you never noticed. His other friend Philipp was also around at the time. He married Olga, they got divorced, and only heard that it was because of a certain 'Oliver', who seduced her into a further life on drugs.

Except it seems it wasn't so. They wanted to take my old carcass out of this dump, and go out on the town.

You wake me up out of a deep sleep, and I am just... 'Huhhh?'

So I excused myself, not possible for today. Need my sleep, and tomorrow is another day, ok?

Olga looks radiantly beautiful. People come into and out of your life... it is disconcerting when they come back in sometimes....

I hope that what is good for her inside is how she looks outside. That was awesome, that they would even think to look me up. But it opened up memories I do not want to re-visit, at the moment. And all I could think was, 'WOW'.

She was very soft and cuddly... yup.

Another day in health care....

Have been feeling under the weather for weeks now, so I decided to get off my arse and do something about it, because it wasn't going away with a lot of sleeping.

Besides which, Hedwig the Angry had scheduled me for my quarterly inspection, regarding my inner high pressure which was so bad she scared me into taking my eye drops, which are anathema to me, with the promise I would go blind if I do not. So I got there with much tredipidation, because she drops my eyes to dilate my pupils, and then there's this machine with an ultra-blue light and she drives it right up to my eye-balls, measures the inner pressure and looks around to see what is going on in there.

I don't feel it, but I have a horror of anything in or on my eyes.

She was satisfied, because I was a good little patient, and did my hated eye drops.

Just an aside, but I believe she is part of the LGBT community. So am proud to be her patient. She is no-nonsense, but obviously good.

An excellent doctor, in any case. 'Do I have to continue with the drops?' OF COURSE...'

(sigh...)

She is no-nonsense.

Next stop. My GP. I have been putting this off for weeks. I esplained what was wrong. or thought was wrong. And he asked me to take off my shirt. He's heard my lungs from the back before, but I didn't have to take my shirt off. So when he saw the pierced nipple in front, his expression was priceless. And no, he didn't say anything.

So it was 'Scepethope Time', yay! Not. Breathe in, breathe out... blah blah.

I got an immediate appointment for a lung x-ray tomorrow morning.

And have to bring the X-Ray and the findings to my GP right after. Upon which he wants me to go in for an EEG, which is heart monitoring, and I think it is EKG there, not sure...

So again, single payer insurance.

And again.... you go in, whip out your insurance card, there is no fee, you might have to wait a bit, but not more than forty minutes, so bring a good book or read the magazines in the waiting room, and then you get called in to the inner sanctum, so to speak.

I refuse to understand why people there are so afraid of this. Or why they think it is somehow evil. We all get treated the same way, we can change doctors if we don't like them, we paid into the system all our working lives, and still pay out of what we get in pension money, so where is the hurt to anyone?

The hysteria doesn't make any sense to me.

Well, so much for Salieri

New studies out on why Mozart died at 35 years of age. Complications from strep throat, or maybe even scarlet fever, which led to kidney infection.

Link here.

I liked the Salieri killing him theory better... (smile).

In France, they kiss on Main Street....

That was a Joni Mitchell number from the Seventies. Well, seemingly, two guys got arrested a few weeks ago in front of a Mormon Church in Salt Lake City for kissing. Nothing like in the video, btw.

So seemingly, yesterday, they staged a nation-wide 'kiss-in'. People kissing on the street, omg...

The clip was from San Francisco. AND... I love the song. The composer and singer is Sean Chapin, according to Joe.My.God I go there so you don't have to. Beautiful lyrics, nice voice. Enjoy. You can always look away if it isn't your thing. But I liked the fact that heteros seemingly also participated, and kissed on Main Street. I will bet that Harvey Milk was somewhere looking down on this pitiful planet, smiling.

This post is going to be fun. Social Sneakurity

Looking in the mail-box going out every day is a must, but never top priority on my list of things to do. I seldom get snail mail... like twice a year or so, lots of ads I throw away, and an occasional bill. Unless I ordered something at Amazon and am looking for a delivery notice, then it gets exciting... (ha)....

So imagine my astonishment when I opened it this morning and found a HUGE orange DIN-A4 envelope sent from The United States of America, official business on the upper left hand corner of it!

Sent by the embassy in Vienna.

Three questions shot through my brain at that point:

What the FUCK do they want with me after twenty-five years, why is this so heavy, and OMG, they discovered my blog???????

Well, I got on the bus, going to Peter's, ripped it open, and pulled the whole mess out. There was a cover letter. It seems, my pension people contacted them, to point out I am on an invalidity pension, and not sixty-five yet. And since I worked in the US for nine years plus, I might be eligible for benefits, which eligibility they will determine in the coming three to five months or so, so I should apply, and please fill out the forms.

Now, since I got retired 'early', I only get 70% of what I would receive if I were sixty-five, so that was sort-of welcome news....

And then I looked through the forms to be filled out. My GAWWD! There is such a wealth of questions for hilarity and satire in there that I bust out laughing. Now, Lawrence O'Donnell

trashed a Texan congressman yesterday on the tee-vee. (Click on the name for the vid).

Social Security and Medicare are 'socialist', you see.... and wanted him to admit it.

Now, 'here's the different', as Peter used to say....

We moan and groan about the forms we have to fill out here when applying for things. And the forms are only four pages long, usually, and half of the stuff requires 'only the facts, Mister...' and a lot is irrelevant and so you can leave them blank. No stupid questions. Awful, isn't it? Oh, how we complain... 'they're turning us into glass people who know our every instinct, urge, thought... POLICE STATE!' And I would usually just smile.

I would LURVV to show some of them what I just got in the mail! One of the questions that caused me the most hilarity was: 'Is there a warrant out for your arrest?' Followed by 'Have you been convicted of a crime?' Right, am gonna lie of course, and say no if that were the case, but they have a Catch-22... If they catch you lying, you get taken up on federal criminal charges, so you better tell the truth, hey...

Another: 'Tell us what you do from the time you wake up till the time you go to sleep.'

And on another questionare: 'Do you speak english?' 'Can you READ english?' 'Can you write your name IN ENGLISH?' (To the latter: um, excuse me? How the fuck do you think I am filling out this form, hey? Sign language from an interpreter??? And since when do people sign their names in hyrogliphics? Just askin'...)

Ok, could go on and on and ON about this form. Really. I ended up laughing my ass off.

But there is a darker side. They want to talk to your doctors, and see into their records on you. They want to see your diagnoses, in the original, 'and will send them back to you per registered mail.'

I really, really do not see why I should do that.

So, Mr. O'Donell.... that isn't socialism. That is pure fascism.

Will think twice about filling it out.

Gawwd....

This gave me the laugh of the day

Nice use of 'Night on Bald Mountain'.....

Listen carefully, there is some great subtext here....

This was the last MGM cartoon to run in theaters. And yes, you can see it as anti-coportate, but can also see it as a message about gender identity, or race identity, or a number of other things.

It is from 1967. Created by the brilliant Chuck Jones and Frank Tashlin. Gawd, 1967.... Was soooo young, and harboured a secret wish to be a cartoonist. But was told I wasn't good enough by my art teacher, who hated 'me and my kind' on sight, only I didn't GET it
(the reason for it, I mean.) My second-last assistant mgr. in our theater even offered to get me an in to the Boston school of Fine Arts, or something like that... after seeing me work on my free time to make displays for upcoming movies we were going to show. And my boss one day very proudly showed me a letter of praise for the 'wonderful' fake volcano I set up in our vast lobby. A volcano, for Island At The Top Of the World, a terrific bomb... but the kids loved it.

So I took one of the low long wooden boxes we had lying about, can't remember what they were for. Took chicken wire, and papier machér, and covered it with it. (Try to imagine Richard Dreyfuss in 'Encounters of the Third Kind', ok? Then painted it. And cut out all the letters in rubber foam to put the title of the movie on it, but it wasn't enough. It had to flicker and smoke, as it was a volcano, you see.... So I didn't know shit about electrical stuff and so on, and spoke to our oldest projectionist, and asked him how I could do it.

And he smiled. (He was the old guy who caddied for Katherine Hepburn on a hot summer's day in the 1920's, where she suddenly reached under her dress, and threw her underpants in his face with the remark 'It's too damned hawt.' Excuse the deviaton from the theme here.... I wouldn't want to know what he could have sold those for on E-Bay, if they had been existant, boggles the mind, hey....)

And he said, go over to Moreau's (a dept. hardware store across the street), get a lamp base cheap with two sockets in it, and an orange light bulb, and a yellow one. And a blinker to put in the socket I put a yellow bulb in, so it flickers. And, of course line the insides with crumpled tin foil, run the electrical cord into the nearest socked hiding it under the rug, and voilà, you have a volcano flickering.

It worked. But I still wasn't satisfied. So I went to a head shop on the corner, got a metal incense holder, and before every show, when people were gathering, I would light the incense, and the volcano smoked as well.

And that was my vision, as stupid and simple as it turned out to be. I doubted my talent, I doubted everything about myself, but I did have the urge to create.

I will never know who turned over pictures to Disney at the time, or why... but will never forget the look of pride on my boss' face when he received that unbelieveble letter of praise. He kept it as a trophy, I guess. But was always like a second father to me. Saw my inner conflict and would be 'tacit', telling me about 'third sexers', as he called them, and saying they were 'ok', nothing to worry about. And would clench. Boy, would I clench inwardly.

Such denial. And Bill wanted to be supportive, but didn't know how without freaking me totally out. He was a wonderful, caring man.

So when I saw this on Fire Dog Lake today, I GOT the context, and the criticism of corporations, grew up in one which controlled the entire city. But watching it... a bear who needs a shave and wears a fur coat? There is another context there too.

And the studio got totally scared of the Lefties.

Yeah, have gone ON. Probably a result of having seen Milk. Don't know.

And now you know how to build a display volcano.... (bangs head on keyboard)