Tomorrow... as everyone in the US knows...

IS Superbowl. Let's clear up some facts regarding this, ok????

I would NEVER even mention shit if the Packers weren't in the finals this year. I wouldn't.

I HATE American football. My brother got hurt playing it on the street, and I hate it. Period.

However... my progenitor LURVS him some Packers, to the point of having gone to Wisconsin (where's dat?) to see them play.

I am sort of Churchill 'no sports', although I did like watching baseball and even went to Boston to see the Red Sox... Once... I loved playing basketball in grade school... as a sawed-off little shot-gun, and scared people by being ferocious. I wasn't big, but I knew how to score points.

I 'think' I know how cricket works, after closely listening to my cousins grill a young English airman in Munich's Hofbräuhaus. Gawwwd, was he cute. He 'might' have spent a bit more time with me... if one of his comrades wasn't totally wrecked and he had to see him home... understandable, oh, how regrettable... and the funny thing was, he wasn't lying. And was all 'Yup, Ok, understand' thinking, oh cripes, why me?' You don't get 'cute' that often. What a near miss, and he was in regret mode as well, said so, quietly. And had interesting tatoos.

Soooo... yeah, I play and played the game. Jock fan, right? Except most sports turned me off? Well, I did skate with fervour, but that won't get me any points.... I loved skating, and worked hard at it. It was using your entire body, and being expressive, and oh wow, you could knock yourself out playing that one as well. Literally. Knock yourself out. That's why I'm wonky today.

(Shakes self awake again....)

Ok, Ven.. Your Sunday is gonna be about five times what I see what Oscar nite means to me, ok? I Know dat... Yup... And I KNOW you are gonna be snuggled up to your tee-vee and have some brewskis, and may have my brother drop in, or a neighbor, and just go off the charts for guys goin' wild over testosterone-built up GUYS knocking the crap out of one another just to get a ball down the field.

Yes, that is cynical, and yes, probably not fair.... but I hope you have one hell of a time watching, and that your team wins that friggin' thing.

My only preparation was going shopping for the weekend. I got toilet paper. If you need any, give me a call, am well stocked. (smile)

And above all... have fun.

FAUX crazy and science...

And people LISTEN to that ass-hat who pretends he grew up poor, but was well off, and denies science and is crazy and played hookey for all his science classes. How'd it get there inDEED. Ok, enough morning exercise.... am off to barf. Literally. Who LETS such stupidity onto the airwaves disguised as 'knowledge', huh? Sigh. I have had my overdose of 'Murka assininity for one morning. Eeeewwww.

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And oh yes... that station couldn't even present the American populace with a map of where Egypt actually IS, which didn't surprise me. I remember only too well what they did after the invasion of Iraq with maps, and vaguely referred to 'da Stans'.... Afghanistan, Usbekistan, and on and on... Hey, it was 'da Stans'... As in, 'Well, they're all alike and pinheads, y'know...' That was in 2001. I threw sponges at the tee-vee, because I didn't wanna break it, and was SO relieved when my cable removed Faux after six months. My tee-vee was SAVED, hey.... Well.... if you wanna be dumbed down, I can't imagine a better place to acheive thought obliviousness than Faux. And Bill O' drives me crazy with his cant. I still don't know why the woman he stalked never took him fully down. Money, I suppose, the man is disgusting.

Facts I NEVER knew about the Green Bay Packers

This is for 'da Ven.... It is superbowl weekend, after all.... And Rachel knows an awful lot.

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What the worst of 'Murka does....

No further comment needed

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Can't they stop the stupid?????

Faux NEWS.... not. Can we all thro up now? Chris Hayes is smart and fun... Rachel once slipped and called him Lambchop.

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Protests

Interesting. Richard Engel's smile is enough to make me happy. That guy has so much courage, it's amazing.

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Superbowl Sunday.... If you want fun for coaches...

You need Sue Sylvester. That woman can deliver a line so dry, a martini would shrivel an olive.

This film is really upsetting me, because I hate every entitled son of a bitch depicted in it.

I'm only a half-hour into it, and I want to crush every one of the people in that film.

It should not get one award.

Harvard. I used to love running over to Ha'vad, and getting German magazines at the tiny store, after getting off the red line, and strolling around the campus, imagining how it might be to be a student there.

Which was unnatainable. Thank gawwd I NEVER had anything to do with the scum who attend that institution. Thank gawwd. Soulless bastards and bitches.

Oh, this film is making me so angry, I can't even express it at the moment. It's so precise. And it doesn't pretend to show a 'good' side of 'Murka, it shows the opposite, the greed, the destructiveness, but oh hey, if you're a rube with a good idea... you're gonna get TAKEN DOWN.

But what the hey, if you're on the losing side... you get fucked, but you aren't going to starve.

I had to stop watching. Mr. Zuckerberg and his story disgusted me to the point where I wanted to throw up.

The film is good. It is. But toxic for myself. I can't take watching that, I despise the people depicted, I'd like to be in their face for what they do, and I am disgusted by the people who raised such amoral monsters. I don't need to see the rest of the movie. It's well done.

The film is good. But I hated it. And I couldn't stay with it to the end, because it goes against EVERYTHING I believe and think and would never support.

I don't want this nor do I even LIKE Facebook. I think it is just as superficial, vindictive, and sometimes as assinine as people masturbating in an open park.

The King's Speech....

Woke up at three a.m. just sort of weirded out, and whaddaya know.... the film was available on the channel I subscribed to.

It's seemingly a favourite for the Oscars next month. It's about King George VI, father of Queen Elisabeth, who stammered terribly, and an Australian commoner who helped him.

Now, I know.... period film, Brits at their best, some people would say 'bo-ring'.

But it wasn't at all. To see Colin Firth and Geoffrey Rush being brilliant to the point of inspiring awe for how good, was suspenseful. It helped that it is a true story...

I would recommend seeing this film. All the values are so perfect, it's amazing just for that alone. But the pivitol thing is the focussing of the script to two very diverse men, and the forming of a friendship. Colin F'irth was sometimes nearly painful to watch, the figure so tormented by his handicap. Geoffrey Rush hasn't been praised enough, for his portrayal of the man who helped him. It's very subtle, and he should have gotten a nomination for a very solid performance.

Again, I would recommend it. It's history. Beautifully done.

But I could relate, actually. When I worked as assistant in the cinema, we had ushers. Yeah, those were the good old days.... and girls on the candy stand.... and later usherettes... It was always the guys. Always. Some shy to the point of going beet red, really struggling to get one word out. And stammering.

I'm just glad I did the right thing. No self-praise here, but I sort of figured it out. I took the rest of the staff to a quiet moment, and laid down a law. 'I don't want to hear ANYONE making fun of ---whomever--- I do not want to hear ANYONE finishing his sentences, pretend everything is just normal. And be kind.'

Oddly, it always seemed to work. Within about three weeks, they suddenly started chattering up a storm, and some of them were usually the funniest people on the staff. There was no pressure.

The worst was HJ. The guy from Berlin who stuttered when he met new people. He spent six months, and worked in the drive-in and hung around the theater, and had this 'clicking' thing... it wasn't good. I did the same thing, and the result was the same. He had never relaxed among people before.

There are hints that it all goes back to childhood, and the film made that very clear.

What I never understood was a visit to Berlin, and hearing that man berate HIS son for stammering. I was shocked. As in 'this is beyond belief, how can he DO that?' And I got his wife out to the kitchen and asked her what the fuck hell was he DOING to his son, and didn't she know he had the same problem decades before?

My friend looked at me as if I'd delivered the biggest bitch slap she'd ever gotten. 'He never stammered.'

'You are so mistaken, when I met him he could hardly get a word out, and now he's doing this to your SON?'

The rest of that conversation is hereby censored, but you can imagine....

And of course, I had my own problems in communicating. I got bad grades in high school. I could be a motor-mouth in private, with people I trusted. But to have to speak in front of a hostile classroom, I just tried that twice. And I couldn't get a word out, and wanted to sink into the floor-boards.

I didn't even think I would survive the first two weeks I worked in the cinema. Because I would have to do 'the rounds', traverse the aisles, and ask people not to put their feet on the chairs in front of them.

Around week two, something happened, and I learned to be confident.

So yeah, the film resonated, and I wasn't thinking about all that directly while watching, but I so recognised and empathised with the people I was seeing. I should have made some popcorn, but at three in the morning... too much trouble.




I see the channel has put up 'The Social Network', so might go there the next time I have insomnia.... Facebook sort of makes me wary, so don't know.

Ok... why.... WHY? is anyone so stupid as to formulate

the phrase.... 'Forcible rape'??? Wanna tell me about this? RAPE.. is forcing yourself sexually on someone who is violently unwilling to engage in a sexual act, against their will. (Dusts off hands, mission aolved). And there are some very twisted minds in 'Murka, who want to actually change the defininition of what anyone and everyone should agree is a heinous crime....

I'm not good on this one, just warning you....

HOW in the friggin' World... can anyone stand by, and know that someone in their family is being sexually abused... often from a young age.

What sort of people without conscience, can bring up a law that would protect Perpertrators, so that children fall out of the definition, or be raped once again by jackals who ride paragraphs and distort the meanings of words in law?

What sort of people think, well it's ok to get raped by your father or brother, and hey, the Mom doesn't really register because she doesn't WANT to.. and destroys a family....

That is what some legislators want. Because.... if a pregnancy ensues.... they would have to carry that child to term.

A young woman whose father RAPED her... I thought we got that out in the book Peyton Place, which took place in my state and was true.

What bugs me is the word forcible.

How much more 'stupid' can we see here?

And now I will quietly throw up.

This report is so unacceptable, I can't even begin..... Not the report, the people behind this fuck-up. Just seeing what a couple of 'suits' decide to starve some people, and interesting that they do it to people in Louisiana as well.

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Demagogues....

Gawwd save me from Glen Beck... I'm glad I only see tiny clips of this crap on the internets, and someone should put him in a rubber room. And New Zealand should really watch their backs.

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I'd love to be in Cairo right now....

because history is being made, and it looks wonderful.

these two make news exciting...

and interesting. And don't leave you feeling dumb.

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Daytime Emmy Material....

General Horspital went over the top on Monday. Everyone knew that the kid got raped in jail, but he admitting it was the capper on Friday. Here you can see twelve minutes of good acting, and don't need to know any background. Laura Wright as Carly normally drives me up the walls, she's so good at being selfish, vindictive, and outright disgusting. And why don't I ever see anyone who looks like Steve Burton out in my neighborhood.... just wondering.

Right click for full screen on YouTube.

Oh, six days without a snigarette... so why does my mouf feel dirty???

I have a trick, in the meanwhile... I hold a Bic lighter, and turn it round and round in my hand, while I watch the news. It seems to help. I don't eat all the time, can't afford junk food.

But the BRAIN.... is tricky. Last night I kept dreaming about spending ten Euros a day and thinking I had ten E'uros, and if I subtracted the price of one pack of cigarettes, what I could get on the rest of the money, and got agitated, because it would not cover what I wanted. And WHOA, I wanted the sniggies. But was equally hungry.

Which was weird enough. I wanted a baked potatoe.... covered with crème fraiche, and herbs, and with baked mussels.

The latter really gave me pause when I woke up. I never heard of anything so weird.

So I went OUT today, my account being replenished... and I did what I dreamed. It tasted ok, but I still can't figure out why.

Hassan and how you can never make anything right ever again...

Hassan was from Egypt.

He was tiny. He was like a doll, in that he was perfect in every way, very delicate, tiny brows, lovely deer-in-the-headlight eyes, he always looked a bit startled. I could estimate he stood about five feet two or three. Delicate. He hardly came up to my shoulder and I am five-nine.

His older brother helped him get here. His older brother drove his little brother into a marriage that had been more or less arranged by the family.

Hassan was ok with it. He seemed to love her. And soon produced three children whom he loved ultimately.

And because he wanted to provide for those children.... he soon had three jobs, and I don't know how or when that young man ever slept.

And one night... late in the middle of the morning.... in a country which never sleeps, really, you see lit windows everywhere all hours of the night... and that is a true statement... that night, Hassan delivered newspapers, just to top off his weekly income.

He was just a couple of blocks up from my house delivering papers.... and some incredibly drunk racist local asshole KNIFED him in a building... because he was different.

Hassan didn't die, thank whomever.

And he didn't lose that equanimity that made him exceptional. But he did lose his main job. The Austrian bastard cut a major nerve in his shoulder, and he couldn't work in the restaurant any more.

I tried to stay in touch... but I wasn't 'kin' or 'family'.

And our government is beginning to do to us what they did to him. Death by ignoring. and cutting your paid in money to the bone, whereupon comes the saying 'too little to live on, too much to die on...'

I'm really fed up.

I wish to add....

Those young people from Cairo I lived next to once, and integrated with...

Were amazingly kind, and open. They all had some sort of degree from their own universities, in engineering, whatever....

However..... they weren't enough for them to get a job here, because their schools weren't 'good' enough, and what did OUR idjits do? Restrict what they could do, because oh, wow, they wouldn't be able to LEARN or anything, oh, no, they had to go out selling newspapers, and doing the most menial jobs no one here wanted.

Europe hasn't treated them well either, although individuals did.

I learned some important lessons from Egyptians over the years. They were incredibly kind and tolerant. They were Christian in the real sense of the word. And are, they are wonderful, and it has been seldom that I can see a 'revolution' and say, 'oh... you go for it, you've deserved it.'

The US gov't? I don't want to even get into it. But they don't look good, never have, and propping up dictators to the point of letting their people starve?

They are very good at it if it serves their purposes.

This week will be interesting.

Huh... went out to get my living abroad food on ten Euros a day...

And I opened the letter box...

I was surprised at what was there, and what was not! Gawwd I want to smoke... but nope, will not. It's part of my posting, dumb thing, put a lit one in the in the big ash-tray, and some how comforting, but no... not today...

OK.... I got my first 'Inkasso' letter. That is where someone is gonna attach something you own for what you 'owe' them. The hospital initiated it. I didn't pay my co-pay for the costs of my unwanted, unnecessary stay in lock-down in the hospital, you see... because I was put there against my will and there was no need for it.

So let's clap our hands, hey. Brilliant. Now up to 90 Euros... because... it was 6o... which means some poor secretary had to work so friggin hard to type up a 'pay-up' letter, and lick a stamp and take it to the post office. So now I owe 90. Cripes, I'd be rich by now.

My pension fund let me know I'm still just above the poverty level.

As if I DIDN'T know... (spent four days on old noodles and rice, just to get through the friggin month of January, hey, how wouldn't I notice?)

I did NOT find my yearly Christmas Greetings from my realtor with a financial report, and what I should pay for the new year. And that is very strange. That woman LOVES to torment me. Who else would wish you Merry Christmas and up your rent? She's the sexual opposite of Scrooge, hey. With the voice to go with it. She's toxic.

And the bank gave me a rep0ort on my life insurance policy, on which I have some very pointed questions, and I HATE banks, and I HATE bank officers, and I would wish they all existed in a parallel universe, because, whatever they do, they just come across evil.

I promised I would go to Gamlitz tomorrow, so I will. Now my monthly visit, and if I stay off the snigarettes... will eat.

Isn't life fun.

Five days without a snigarette.

And was asked why I was quiet.

So I slept.

As much as possible.

Besides which my account got overdrawn to the max and was happy to have some rice and noodles in the house to cover for four days. Not that I usually get hungry....

I didn't miss much.

The 'elites' of the Washington journalists drove me so crazy, I wanted to chain smoke and yell at the pc screen. They EXUDE this 'know-it-all' attitude that makes me so angry, I want to bitch slap them.

They were all about what 'Murka wants, and what oh gawwd, could happen if 'da PEOPLE' decide what government they have, after they put BIllIONS, sixty per-cent military aid, 40 for the poor, but you count in corruption, propped up by the gov't.... not much gets left, does it?

And all these 'mouthpieces'.... and am talking Tweety who loves hearing himself talk more than listen.... And the VEDDY 'elite' Mika Brzezinski and the incredible Arsehole Joe Scarborough...

Those people provide news 'infotainment'. They aren't journalists, to my mind. But they help form public opinion. Hell, Oprah does even that.... With bribes....

I was in a hotel in the beautiful city of Trieste.... once. for a week. And there seems to be a super-duper, absolute friggin' INSTITUTE somewhere there up on a hill, and I had the dubious distinction of being in the ho-tel restaurant for breakfast, Peter had gone for a WC run, and I had to LISTEN to their uninformed, disgusgting drivel.

And all these people were running on, trying to out-do one another for 'what they knew' about history and culture in Trieste, and Italy in general. These people had graduated.... but they knew nothing. Nothing whatsoever.

I was incensed with them. Mediocrity can be not so good if the mediocre have power....

The 'Elitist' crap came back with a vengeance once Bush II was in.

There are so many ex-pat Amis-..... probably many who dabble in some sort of intrigue around the world but I don't want to know about it. I can think of a few examples, however.

Like the arsehole who dropped his suitcase on my head... and looked at me as if I were to blame.

If you want some arrogance... try to get in touch with that breed.

And that breed is driving the current crisis.

They don't CARE about people. They care about power and I will BET you that they won't get what they want, and I hope the Egyptians get what THEY want.

Just sayin'