"Hello Ladies and Germs Welcome to a brand new show on the Hell Broadcasting System: Hanging Around With Anthony Bourdain."
"I'm your announcer Ed McMahon and here is the host of the show Celebrity Chef and Raconteur Anthony Bourdain."
Anthony bounds onto the set. He is wearing his usual attire. A food stained expensive suit with his new accessory. A noose.
"Thanks Ed. And I would like to thank the owner of HBC our host and Lord Satan." Loud and raucous applause from the demented suffering tormented residents of Hell in the audience.
"Please welcome our first guest. He is a famous actor from a famous family. He pandered to Kung Fu...he killed Bill..he is your favorite Grasshopper....David Carradine."
"Thanks Tony glad to be hanging around with you."
"That's great Davy. I will get back to you in a minute. Now we have a new arrival here in Hell the one and only trend setter and Designer Kate Spade." Cheers and hisses from the audience.
"Thanks Tony. Glad to be here."
"I bet. Anything to get away from the half a fag husband of yours. I always thought his faggy muppet Brother was a sword swallower but I guess your husband was one too. He is such a homo he could have been named a bishop by the Pope. I bet you are glad to get away from him just like I am happy to get away from that baby raping Italian slut."
"You got that right Tony."
"Finally a brand new illegal immigrant in the Underworld POW, Senator and all around loser John McCain."
"Why am I here? I didn't hang myself. I don't understand."
"It's simple Maverick. You just fucking hung around too long. When you got the news that you caught the big C you should of retired. Instead you hung on with your fingernails like a bitch. So sit back and get ready for the show. But first a song from our Musical quest Mick Hutchence and our All Star Band!"
Trump tweets, the world pays attention. I read earlier in the week that South Africa's parliament voted to seize and redistribute land from white land owners. Seemed like the change in law, or constitution, was concluded. The whole world was shaken. Then Trump tweeted that didn't seem good, he'd have to look into that. South Africa responded Trump should mind his own business then reversed their decision.
Justin Trudeau disses Trump when he was elected, saying, "As a feminist, I cannot tolerate that kind of behavior toward women." Such moral posing coming from a guy accused of doing what Trump bragged about what gold diggers allow. Later Trudeau dissed Trump again after Trump departed from the G7 meeting. But that was before European Union avoided a clash and before Merkel changed her attitude. Trudeau's foreign minister, Chrystia Freeland, who signs memos with smiley faces, and told the news services "It's good to have friends in high places" (to hem in Trump) gives the most vapid press conferences imaginable; we're working very hard, there's a lot of work, progressing very well, everyone has good attitudes and good feelings, it's very complex, we worked all day, it's very intense. We sure are working hard. We're concerned for Canadian worker. Except with pauses between each careful word sounding very shook up.
Trudeau and Freeland are caving. All of their politics with respect to trade with US right out the window.
They're come face to face with the reality of Trump and his team. The team is not messing around. Freeland pulled the powerplay of being late for their meeting but all that did was increase the intensity. This is all about realignment with China, and Canada is just one step to that end. Canada, suddenly odd man out, can stop politicizing trade with America or they can accept crippling tariffs that achieve the same goal for America with respect to China. Canada is middle man in that NAFTA loophole. And Canada has already ceded its steel industry to China on the play of them slipping Chinese steel into the US through the NAFTA loophole. All of Canada can thrive though unimpeded trade with the United States, their own steel industries can thrive, their milk be less expensive, their finance services less expensive, for just a few examples, or they can wither through their own stubborn liberal messy politicizing. And just like South Africa, Mexico, European Union, although much slower on the uptake, China is paying very close attention, in fact, studying Trump's ways.
We observe Trump getting his pieces in place before taking on China directly. He's circling China. Trump can still make mutually beneficial bilateral deals with Canada, with England, with separate nations currently in the European union, with Japan. And then take on China. And behind all of that is separate deal with North Korea. That comes after China is defeated in its aspiration of global control.
What we're experiencing really is one for the books. Not just history books, these activities directed by Trump through his team will be studied in economic courses for the next several decades. Only to mention political science courses.
Here is Chrystia Freeland, journalism major, so far, so deeply out of her element that it isn't even funny.
But this is. (seen at Smalldeadanimals and at Lucianne)
He went on to another round where he does the same moves but America's Got Talent jazzed up his act with increased production. Actually, his moves are somewhat lost in the overproduction. Live Video Game.
The YouTube title says "the most complete dog in the world."
Turn down sound.
It's a Belgian Sheepdog, Chien de Berger Belge. Genetically they're all the same confirmation and temperament but the coats are different between types. In Europe they're interbred to keep their traits blended, and their coloration strong, but the American Kennel Club insists they be treated as separate breeds.
The types are Groenendale, all black, Tervuren, multi colored long coat, Malinois like a short haired Tervuren, and Laekenois, a blonder wire coat. Shave them, and they're the same middle-size dog.
My third Belgian received the least training of all my dogs. But I did want to have a formal routine amounting to level 1 obedience seen at trials. One we could run through together on days when something goes wrong, say, if she did something that put our moods off, we could return to the routine, a thing that she knows she excels where she can do no wrong, and that would erase the bad vibes for the day and put our little minds back on track.
I meant to say her little mind.
And it worked.
One day a couple of friends were visiting. I go, "Wanna see our little routine?" The guys go, "sure."
Heel, sit, down, stay, come, heel, sit, heel, sit, boom done.
Except she does it like a fierce little Nazi.
And I meant it. It's frightening. All of them were. I had to make sure to do this outside on the grass because on down command she'd throw out her little doggie arms out forward like a Nazi salute and I could hear her elbows crack on a hard surface. She could not go down any faster. She is very VERY VERY fast.
So that was that.
A few years later that same friend and others were talking about hunting dogs and training them. He said back then that the best trained that dog he'd ever seen was that little demonstration we did. And believe me, that was no training at all, just our little routine. Nothing the slightest advanced. No jumps, no herding, no tracking. Her real training was all the talking I did with her every day. Not formal. *sweet voice* "Get out of the kitchen" She'd pull her one paw back to the carpeted floor from the kitchen tile. That sort of thing. A definite line between tile and carpet. She sat right at the line and watched my every move. She would test the kitchen line rule with one paw. To this day I get surprised when I see cooking videos with a dog in the kitchen. Don't the dogs have a rule?
As I have written, I am reading Cryptonomicon, by Neal Stephenson. I have no idea whether or not the author understands the concepts he is writing about, but that doesn't matter - he is good at conveying concepts like the "Knapsack problem" and other math/algorithm problems. Reading these stories got me to thinking about simple problems I face, such as making non-round bowls on my CNC. I have been using a so-called bowl and tray bit that leaves a rounded fillet between the two planes of the sidewalls and the bottom of the vessel. The depth of these items has been limited by the length of the bit shank. A customer asked for a deep box for her wedding anniversary and I thought I might not be able to make the box as deep as she wanted. While I was selecting a bit in my tool path software I noticed that the diameter of the bowl and tray bit was 1-1/4". That struck me as an odd number. Why not an inch or a inch and a half? Then the lightbulb went off - that is the smallest size bit that will allow the collet nut on the router to clear the sides of a cut out shape without interfering. I broke out my dial caliper and checked - sure enough the nut that holds the bit in the router is just under 1-1/4" when measured at its greatest width. Jackpot! So now I can mill right up to the point where the router body itself hits the work. Hurray for math!
That discovery led me to figure out a way to engrave an inscription in the bottom of the box - make the text small enough to fit in a rectangle that left clearance for the nose of the router and buda bing etc.
That was a test - I have not done any v-carving in years so I wanted to make sure I hadn't lost my mojo. That quote required 13,500 lines of code - glad there is an algorithm for that.
Speaking of "slice of life" I was looking for a chunk of wood in one of my many sheds and found a nondescript lump - it was covered with the dust of ages and as soon as I made the first cut on the bandsaw I realized it was black walnut. I sliced and diced and ran the pieces through the planer - ta da:
But as always, I am really here to talk about the weather. We haven't had rain for a while but there were some distant thunder storms tonight.
There was some cloud-to-cloud lightning off to the north and I managed to get a picture of it.
Which reminded me of my favorite classical themed cartoon, Fantasia, specifically the segment that features the forth movement of Beethoven's 6th symphony, the Pastoral.
I can't. Guy was telling me about a resignation letter he was writing. Told him to be like Hemingway and eschew verbosity. Four words should do, the last two being "I quit".
He thought I was talking about Steinbeck. No, Hemingway. Guy says "Steinway?" Kids these days. When I mentioned the Tom Selleck movie "Quigley Down Under" guy says "Burt Reynolds?" No, they are different people despite both of them having mustaches.
Aretha died and guy says "Big wheel stopped turning". No, that was Tina Turner who is fine, and now a Swiss citizen.
Same guy is walking down the street wearing a Bob Ross t-shirt, shirt even has the words "Bob Ross" on it yet a woman comes up to him and says "Jeff Lynn - I love ELO". Close, baby, close.
Anyway, here is some Glenn Gould, and by the poor quality of the piano you can tell it is not his usual Steinway CD 318. He is playing from memory and, apparently, could sight memorize music. If true, that is an unusual skill right there.
There is a version of Tina Turner singing Proud Mary that I used to like, but I can't find it amongst the million other versions posted on YouTube. The worst ones are those captured on a cell phone by someone in the audience. Very bad. But not as bad as confusing Patti Labelle with Aretha. That's bad.
They all know it's important but they cannot name them. They're interested in following the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh.
The most recognized was Ginsburg. The next most recognized were Thomas and Roberts.
C-SPAN is interested in what percentage of people would like to have televised arguments (64%).
I bet they'd do better with a little prompting. The thing is people do not live in that space, nor should they. In their own mental space they're suddenly presented with a pop-quiz about something they really shouldn't need to know. And if they do know it's because the issues are politicized, the justices are politicized, and that's not a good thing. I'm satisfied that people cannot name them. It's how it should be. That you can name all of them means they get more attention than they should. Plus you're so doggone smart. You should be on Jeopardy!.
Worse, nobody on CNN panel could bring themselves to correct him. None of them even laughed. They actually put this out over the air. These people are desperate from Trump's surprising success as president and with each passing day they make themselves more ridiculous.
These are about first leadership, very short, and about addressing petitioners, also short.
These are getting easier as I go. Things are repeating. However, the second one has one of the most obnoxious sentences I've ever seen in any language. The translation bears zero resemblance to the actual words. And the translation itself is nearly senseless.
Here. I'll show you. It starts with a phrase, and has the same phrase again a few words later. The phrase means something airy-fairy. So you're thinking, okay, two near meaningless airy-fairys that can be left out of translation. But they mean separate things. In the first instance it is an emphatic that means, "the following is true in the situation that is uttered" as we do in English, start a sentence "now" or "right" contrasted with starting a sentence "as always."
Fine. But the dictionaries says it means "welcome, is, are, whereas, as while, when or humpback."
And translators say it means in the second instance "to what end"
And neither of those, "emphatic opening" nor "to what end" match dictionary resources. It's like they pulled it out of their butt to force it to work. Or else their collective experience is so vast we can just add this great insight to our own internal dictionaries. While for now my own insight tells me, there's that jackass phrase again. And again. Ew I hate this sentence.
Another phrase in the same sentence is described at ridiculous length as meaning "wandering off the path, or misled or misleading, or trespassing, being in the wrong place," a hundred things similar to that. While translators who've published globally force it to mean "contravene."
This one. Right to left. Backward.
I-w. The sedge frond and the chick. Again after the second chick. I dread seeing that combination because it can mean anything and my dictionaries don't help.
Know what else is bogus?
There I am re-reading Ancient Evenings and to my surprise the book has decorative hieroglyphics.
Classy.
You got me right there.
That's really cool. Are they real? Delightfully, yes! The title page and the very nice cover actually do say "Ancient Evenings" in hieroglyphs.
Except the second glyph is a poor drawing of Y1, a rolled scroll. Have you ever seen a scroll like that? You cannot just chop the tip off a papyrus scroll and expect it to stand for Y1.
And the last glyph is a very poor drawing of "night." It has the "sky" right but there is no glyph with an ankh draped over it. Here are the expanded choices involving "sky"
The closest one is N3B a second variation of N3, the actual glyph, and hardly anything at all like the one carefully drawn for Ancient Evenings.
Then the second book we expect glyphs that read "book of one man dead" but instead the glyphs read "name."
Okay. Fine. They're not going to match so well as the title does. I can live with that. It'll be a game then, figure out what the glyphs say that's different from section title. I like that. This will be fun. Trying to figure out why he chose to use "name" instead of "book of one man dead." It's mentioned in the book. The portion of the soul named "name" flies off first in a blink of an eye once a person is dead. The other soul portions behave differently.
The second glyph is not a real glyph. Although there are several down arrow glyphs. They're rather important too standing for the sound "sn" and used in words involving "sister."
But nothing that matches the arrow in Ancient Evenings. And there is no combination of snxm or ssnxm that means anything. x standing for a harsh "h" sound such as in the German word "ach." sn-xm, sn-x-m, nor s-sn-x-m nor s-sn-xm, no combination works to mean anything.
And that's a BUMMER!
Now I've lost hope that the rest of the hieroglyphs will make sense.
The next chapter has the jabiru bird symbol for "ba"
The next chapter has this other symbol for "ba," a small bird with the head of the deceased. A portion of the soul that has a decent part in the section.
All the rest are simple ordinary glyphs. Ka, and the like.
I cannot understand why they did this. Why did they go only part way with the hieroglyphs? It's a fantastic idea from the publishers, but why didn't they do a complete job of it? It would have been so easy to contact a linguist and give them $100 bucks, or whatever, to show them the glyphs for their titles. Double check them with another linguist. Then their decorations would be complete.
Linguists are a dime a dozen. The whole place is lousy with linguists. Why didn't they just ask one?
You're thinking, "there he goes again."
Yes. I'm going again. I just cannot get it through my thick head why they chose to be 95% excellent instead of 100% excellent, when that small gap is so easily closed.
Think about this. Mailer is writing a seminal work. One that defines the genre for decades. All solid readers will pick up this book. ALL Egyptophiles will certainly pick up this book. Of those obsessives there will be many who read hieroglyphs, and the publishers led them along and then dropped them, as I've shown. Everyone who reads hieroglyphs will know these are bogus. It's not just me disappointed, it's everyone who bothers with this crap.
This is about Japanese manners. The man made this video because his viewers have asked him a lot of questions about living there.
I thought everyone knew these things.
(Best viewed muted with captions. The poor guy's speech impediment is disqualifying)
My dad told us to nevermind the men slurping in the soba shop. He told us it's a bit rude to not slurp.
"How come?"
"It communicates to the chef it's delicious. If you don't slurp then it's not delicious."
What joy!
What a wrong thing to tell five children. The next forty-five minutes was nothing but slurp, slurp, slurp, SLURP, slurp, slurp, slurp, slurpslurpslurpslurp, slurp slurp s-l-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-r-p for one little noodle, slurp, slurp, slurp SLURP slurpslurslurp, slurp, slurp, slurpy-slurp-slurp, s-l-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-r-p, slurp slurp slurp.
Ha ha ha, slurp, slurp, slurp, slurp, s-l-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-r-p, slurp, slurpslurpslurpslurp.
Then my sister misbehaved.
No little trip together is complete without my sister misbehaving.
It was a thing with her.
It's mental.
My dad did not know this, and it's not in this video, the correction of children is the duty of the mother and not of the father. When a boy grows to early teens then the father takes up. But not until then. It's like a bar mitzvah. My dad got out of his chair and walked over to Beverly and pinched her chin as you do inserting a credit card and held her entire head to his attention and whispered threateningly his correction.
That's all she wanted. Dad's attention. Singularly apart from the rest of us.
But all of the slurping in the shop suddenly stopped. The sound stopping caused the chef to poke his head through his service window. All eyes were on my dad. The men in the shop simply couldn't believe what they were seeing. An American man actually corrected his daughter. Right there in public. How very odd. They undoubtedly went home and told their wives, "You'll never guess what I saw today."
My dad sat down. Slurping in the shop resumed. But our slurping fun was ruined.
Nobody said anything. Like the video says, they're very gracious about foreigners being odd. Except for the shoes thing.
Comments over there on YouTube indicate the American news consumers have had it with this type of reporting and this type of ridiculous interview. Their interests are not the public's interest. Camerota and the producer in her ear do not realize their walls are closing in. Her producer is interrupting with instructions to keep dogging Sununu about Trump and making Camerota lose attention and repeat her rejected question obnoxiously making her and CNN look and sound like dopes.
Nutritional videos say turmeric is not easily absorbed. Most is processed out. To overcome this shortcoming combine it with freshly ground black pepper. Black pepper increases absorption 2000%, bypassing the liver and taken directly into the bloodstream. It's oil-soluable and it is heat-activated. For maximum absorption it is best cooked in oil with black pepper.
Cabbage and potato recipe.
I am totally grooving on Napa cabbage. Best of all the cabbages. I'm going to do this but microwave a potato and stage Napa cabbage last. I have a turmeric-less Asian version that is top of my favorite list. I just cannot get enough of the stuff. But with shrimp.
Our cool spell has been replaced with temperatures in the 90s. Summer has returned. This morning we had high haze which lent a summer-like cast to the light. The grass is growing, the trees are fully leafed out, it is summer from the firmament to the turf, for sure.
When I arise before the sun I go out in the backyard and scuffle my feet in the gravel and stomp around the yard to chase off any small nocturnal animals that might be lurking. I learned the hard way that I have to do that - several years ago I loosed my hounds and they promptly killed a skunk and rolled around on it. Being somewhat anosmic it took me a while to realize what had occurred - then I had to wash the dogs, call animal control and have them haul away the carcass and check it for rabies, then I had to open up the windows and turn on the fans. But given the fact that I have four pets I am not sure that au de skunk really had a negative impact on the general miasma that exists in my dwelling. In any case, I hardly notice it at all these days.
So I have good reasons to walk out in the backyard, check the phase of the moon, see where Orion is, check on the Seven Sisters and scare off skunks. Such things keep me grounded, in touch with the passing seasons and aware of the life that is teeming in my 'hood.
Speaking of crystals, and I think we were, one time I rode my bicycle up a trail in the Northern Cascades, to a ghost town known as Mineral City. The trail was precarious - the side of a mountain had blown out and slid down into the river hundreds of feet below and we had to carry our bikes across a narrow footpath where one misstep would lead to a long fall and a very sudden and sodden stop. We made it. Along the way we passed Douglas fir trees 8' in diameter, the logging companies could not get the logs out so they left the trees alone. Also there were mines dug into the hillsides - we went in one and I dug out my own crystals - sure, city slickers can go to the store and get their crystal fix by exchanging filthy lucre for nature's bounty, but we country boys prefer to dig our own crystals out of the earth. But then my fascination with Crystalography, Buddhism, Santeria, New Age and other fads passed and I have no idea where my crystals are now. So it goes.
I did get to see some leeches during our lunch break in beautiful downtown Mineral City. Talk about a swimmin' hole one should avoid - hoo-wee - they are some nasty little things.
As for Egyptology, never let it be said that I am not a student thereof:
A question was asked about the Pope and his exposure as a tool of Satan by the continuing sex scandals in the Catholic Church. I have been posting about this for a long time and it is no surprise to me that this Pope knew about it and covered it up for his own advantage.
On Sunday I went to Mass. I went to the Beach Mass. About 150 people came to celebrate the Mass on the Beach as the Sun set on one of the last days of Summer. It was just a simple service with the deporables who didn't need a big church or a fancy vestment or gold and rubies. Just your faith.
Beach Catholics and proud of it.
I was too ill to walk on the sand and get communion
I was able to follow the Mass from the Boardwalk with a bunch of other old farts just like me. The youngsters were all down on the sand worshiping and displaying their faith for all to see.
There is a pretty simple answer as too why the Church is in Crisis. It is discussed very cogently in this article called "Catholic Cold War Turns Hot."
The problem boils down to one thing. The liberal elements of the Church embracing and tolerating homosexuality.
(I had to steal the code from view source to cue this because none of the online instructions work. Thank you, whoever you are.)
This is big. Shall we say y-u-u-u-u-g-e.
Trump antognists are tying themselves in knots trying to spin this as problematic, inconsequential etc.
Know what I despise about Fox? They try too hard to be fair and balanced. They just had to put out the contrary view no matter how ridiculous, "but not everyone is convinced."
Of course not!
That would be admitting their own incompetence. Marcy Kaptur imagines herself expert on the devil in the details while clawing to rescue NAFTA that damaged American interests in predictable ways in the details that allowed for a loophole so huge all of China drove right through it. She actually believes failure enhances her gravitas. Trump is repairing her damage and yet she resists.
It's fashionable. But there's nothing else for her, no other avenue allowed her. She cannot be supportive. That would run counter to her political DNA. She must attempt to sound like a heavy. Like she knows more than Trump and his excellent expert team and with each word she displays she's a dope.
There's more.
Adam Austen, spokesman for Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland has difficulty accepting that there is no NAFTA anymore. It's gone. History. Dead. Pining for the fjords, as it were. Is no more, ceased to be, bereft of life, rests in peace, an ex-treaty, and all the rest of the skit. And there will be no new NAFTA. Thus sprach Zarathustrump. Austen would know had he and Freeland actually listened.
What is so difficult to accept? What is so threatening about free trade? Free trade that benefits both nations. All nations, actually. China is even worse, much slower on the uptake. They just flatly cannot accept untampered trade. Justin Trudeau's base isn't having it. So they'll be having higher tariffs instead. Trump will increase tariffs on Canadian automobiles to compensate for Canada inviting protectionist China on their side of our North American agreement. Trump will increase tariffs until Canada accepts their own protectionism brings more misery than protection. Until their voters put out the barriers to genuine free trade.
In order for Canada to join the U.S./Mexico deal they must:
1) eliminate soft-wood subsidies in the lumber sector
2) eliminate protectionist tariffs in AG, specifically dairy
3) accept the 75% rules of origin that eliminates the NAFTA loophole.
4) agree to enforcement mechanisms
5) open their financial sector by allowing U.S. banks to operate in Canada
Does that sound good to you?
Does that sound fair all around?
These five issues are locked into the agreement between U.S. and Mexico. They are not negotiable. Given the politicization of all this Trudeau cannot agree to these terms and keep his fragmented political support intact. So the blame for failure then goes to voters of Canada who prefer their government protections more than they prefer free trade with the U.S., they're saying through their voting patterns they require imbalanced trade, or no trade. Free trade is too scary. Too competitive. Too insecure. They'd rather have less through imbalance tariff-ridden protectionist trade, and higher prices for key commodities from milk to lumber and automobiles and financial services. They're saying they need government protection from big scary U.S. It's a very narrow and fearful approach and it won't be shaken until their voters shake off the political entities interfering with their freedom and limiting their ability to thrive.
Try thinking about this from Canadian point of view.
Pretend you're Canadian dairy farmer.
The United States overproduces. We've actually poured milk away. Our own government makes cheese from the surplus. And cheese-wise it's nothing to brag about. To keep prices for milk reasonably high to assure continued production. And the cheese is good for what? Macaroni and cheese, and that's about it. The cheese melts very well, I suppose, and it's good on hamburgers. That's about it. Our government has warehouses of the stuff. To Canadian dairy farmers, American dairy is like Chinese steel to the U.S. From Canadian p.o.v., we'd be dumping our surplus that is over our cost of production like we complain about China dumping cheap low-quality steel on the world. They see us like we see China. It's either protect their dairy farmers or go out of business. That's where they're coming from.
Milton Friedman would say, "Good. Suspend business and buy cheap milk from America. Make fantastic cheese with it. Take advantage of America's surplus for so long as America is willing. He would say, he has said, that same thing about Chinese steel. While China is planned economy and Western nations much less so and steel is a critical commodity for national security.
They'll have to break through all of that to reach an agreement. And Trudeau cannot do it as things stand presently. It's not that Trudeau is stupid, it's that he represents a constituency that feels it requires protection from competition. From us.
We spent the weekend at the Show. No not the major leagues. The Gem Show.
The Gem Show is where we get the crystals and gems that are a big part of our inventory these days. It comes around twice or three times a year and we go to put in orders and make contacts and what not. It is a lot like the clothing shows we used to go to but with a lot less pressure. Less hard salesmanship. A much more enjoyable expedience all around.
You see you have to learn the properties and the worth of the various things you buy. As always you want to buy low and sell high. Business is pretty much all the same. Of course the people you deal with a little different. Instead of hard bitten hebes from the garment center you are dealing with guys like this:
Very New-agey hipster if you know what I mean. If the Crack Emcee were still alive and reading this he would lose his shit about New Age and what not. It's all a game like everything else. So you have to roll with the punches and go with the flow. I have a lot more patience these days with nonsense so I let them do their spiel and not sweat the details.
The gems and crystals themselves are very beautiful. One in particular was my all time favorite:
Now the price put it out of reach. Thats the retail price. The wholesale price is half that. None the less we are getting stuff in the $20 range that we can easily resell. Still and all I really love this crystal. You get surprisingly into it the more you learn about it.
We had a good time and the wife really enjoyed herself. I had fun too and it was time well spent. The best of all was when I found Sixty's birthstone:
There I was studying away. A dining room chair pulled into the room with two deplorable brown pillows that came with the sofa but are too ugly to actually use. To elevate my legs and reduce ridiculous swelling. Then I puzzled as I was forced to notice the dark brown pillows are contrasting white powder. What is that stuff?
Oh my god!
It's me.
I'm disintegrating.
A while back I read that millennials don't like using bar soap. They think soap is dirty. And that made me think they have a point. The imprint of the dove on the soap bar does get darker. And I'm tired of replacing those stupid little bars all the time. I don't like getting down to the sliver of soap. So I switched out for pump action. And now this. Flaking all over the place.
So I smeared up thickly with Vitamin E cream and I didn't know which was worse, dissolving to flakes or being a greased pig. I was slippery and slimy all over and smelled of lotion.
I smelled like a lady.
Untold hours later the lotion finally absorbed the odor less strong and I was no longer feeling reptilian. And my skin feels mah-vah-lous. Soft as a baby's bum. All over. [disclaimer: I have no idea how soft a baby's bum is. Babie's bums could be like 60-grit sandpaper for all I know. All red and pimply from diaper rash.]
I also switched out the pump soap to Ivory high moisturizer. The stuff comes in half gallon size so there'll be no more opening little soap boxes, no slivers of remnant soap bars.
It's a little bit of a shame in a way. I have the loveliest soap dishes in both bathrooms. Wanna see 'em? They belong in a soap dish museum. They're green. But even these get messy with soap.
Although I recall quite clearly thinking as I was reading, man oh man, if I ever run out of ideas for Egyptian style paintings of daily life, not rituals, then I can return to this book for endless ideas.
My library was dispersed when my health was its lowest. So my copy of Ancient Evenings is now elsewhere. That's okay. It was paperback anyway. And I tore it in half. It was too thick to hold comfortably to read. Abebooks sold me another copy. Now I have it again in hardback this time. For a pittance of $5.00.
The section that impressed me so hard back then was easy to find. The scene is the narrator as child. His parents are visiting his great-grandfather, the Pharaoh at the Pharaoh's palace. I recall them having a party outside, couples pairing off, wife-swapping, then the boy being put in room to sleep. The room is painted as tombs are, except a lot better and brighter. I recall a seeming endless series of descriptions of animals in nature interacting. Page after page up to five pages or so. As I read it back then, went wow, this Mailer guy really gets it. I recalled the animals fading to sleep. But now I'm not seeing that in the book.
I didn't recall anything about the Pharaoh calling for his dog, then the dog doing a mind trick of being directed to go to the individual thinking their own name. The Pharaoh told the guests to each think their own name. "Go to Hathfertiri" and the dog goes right up to Hathfertiri because Hathfertiri was thinking her own name. Then the Pharaoh japed about not being able to teach the dog to talk. Then he told the dog to go to the boy.
The boy senses thoughts of others. I did not recall that essential bit. The dog scene did not impress on my memory. When the dog walked up to the boy, the boy saw the dog's thoughts and he saw gloomy desperate existence, he saw lives that he did not want to live, he saw himself debauched in the future at twenty-four years of age, and he felt intense shame. The dog made the boy cry.
In front of the Pharaoh. Bad scene.
Re-reading, the scene of the painted walls is not so impressive as recalled. I'm disappointed. The book is divided into sections as if separate books; the Book of the Gods, the book of the Charioteer, the Book of Queens, and so on. I went straight to the Book of the Child and bang there it is.
Yahoo ran an AP story written by Laurie Kellman with all the ridiculous anti-Trump stuff loaded up front and the sensible bits tucked neatly at bottom. Example.
"On the behalf of The American Legion's two million wartime veterans, I strongly urge you to make an appropriate presidential proclamation noting Senator McCain's death and legacy of service to our nation, and that our nation's flag be half-staffed through his internment," said a statement to Trump from Denise Rohan, the organization's national commander.
And.
Aides to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Democratic Leader Charles Schumer requested that the Department of Defense keep flags at government buildings lowered until the sunset after McCain is buried in Annapolis, Maryland, next Sunday.
Then at conclusion.
U.S. Flag Code states that flags be lowered "on the day of death and the following day for a Member of Congress."
I sense a disturbance in The Force™.
Comments to political articles are revealing. Up until recently the comment sections were dominated by worked up liberal voices no matter the issue real or contrived. The same nonsense recycled. Only rarely anything unique, and with very little conservative contrarianism, nearly zero conservative support. But that's changing in a very big way. As of writing, this article has 375 comments, 99.9% conservative. Restating the flag code as if they missed it in the article, citing Obama's violation of the flag code to suit him; lowering it for Witney Houston, for example. Commenters refute McCain being a hero. A few suggest buying a taller flag pole. I read only one comment changing the subject to Trump's taxes, a valiant but flagging effort to boost one's own morale that got no traction at all, zero reaction.
The same is true for the Cuomo / Dershowitz video posted earlier. All of the comments are vehemently anti-CNN. From what I can see viewers and readers have had it with media spoon-feeding them damaging nonsense, and they're making their disgust known in those places that accept comments.
I'm seeing this more and more.
On articles that are linked by Drudge you can expect a certain percentage of this, but you'll also see at least one liberal noting the Drudge link or suspecting it, not having read Drudge themselves, and deriding Drudge to dismiss the lopsided number of comments. The Cuomo / Dershowitz video was not linked by Drudge. And this surprising phenomenon is increasing dramatically.
When polls tell you Trump is at 50% approval, 51%, 52%, whatever, we have living proof of their remarkable unreliability. If polls is all that we've got, then all we've got is suggestion, and from that suggestion we can safely extrapolate actual numbers much greater. We're lied to constantly, consistently, reliably. I suspect very strongly the midterms will be much more satisfactory than suggested. I'm basing this on the pure disgust that I read throughout comments combined with flagging resistance.
I couldn't watch this douchebag. I didn't make it 1/4 the way through so I cannot expect anyone else to either. I wanted to see the part where where Dershowitz asks Cuomo if all liberals are dense as he is, the title of the video at YouTube, but now I'm not sure he asks.
Video put here for contrast.
While this dope bangs on Democrat efforts at resistance are at critical turning point. In summary:
* Following Michael Cohen guilty plea, his lawyer Lanny Davis said that Cohen had information Trump knew of Russian hacking Democratic emails. Media gobbled it up and spewed it worldwide.
* In a Washington Post interview Davis denied the claim. (backing away, retreating) "I am not sure, I was giving an instinct that he might have something to say of interest to special counsel about hacking"
* Previously Davis walked back his claim that candidate Trump knew of the Trump Tower meeting, telling Anderson Cooper, per Cohen, that Trump had no knowledge of the meeting between Don Jr. and Natalia Veselnitskaya.
* Davis stated all the claims within the Clinton-Steele dossier about Cohen are 100% false. (13 references to Cohen in the dossier are false)
1) The dossier is false
2) Trump never knew of Trump Tower meeting whe Russian lobbyists
3) Cohen has no knowledge of anything to do with Donald Trump and Russians
Why is Lanny Davis, extreme partisan and Clinton acolyte, single-handedly dismantling two years of narratives promoted by left-wing media?
Impeachment was the end-objective of the insurance policy. Lanny Davis is now the pivot man to take the impeachment ball from Robert Mueller (Muh Russia) and pass-it-off to the Southern District of New York under the auspices of ‘campaign finance violations‘.
DOJ Inspector General FISA and Spygate investigation is ongoing, likely nearing completion and the possibility of bringing sunlight on the scheme, the impeachment crowd needs a way to refocus attention from risky IG sunlight and still maintain morale with the resistance.
Russia narrative is disintegrating. There is no obstruction. Both failing narratives no longer provide benefit for midterm elections. Democrats need a reason to keep impeachment hopes alive.
I made raisin bread in the Pullman pan. I'm learning.
I learned the pan can be used as handy bread box. It works very well.
I wish I had picked up the fresh goat cheese when I bought the tomatoes today. But I don't care for it that much. I had a hunch it would be good in combination, but I didn't dare it today. Now I wish that I had.
All I want is tomato on bread. The guy at Whole Foods told me the ones I am looking at are Beefsteak tomatoes. Nice to have a name for them. A few years ago buying from that table of weird tomatoes was an experiment. How good can an orange tomato be? How good can a tomato with deep ridges be? Tomatoes with black spots? Come on. Turns out, very good. Very very good. When in season, like right now.
Turns out the tomatoes are actually Cœur de Bœuf, a relative of Beefsteak tomatoes. French relative, apparently.
You must buy these tomatoes. You must.
Or else you're short changing yourself out of something extraordinary for summer.
But the bread I made is not for this. I make bread by tossing things into a bowl. Water first, yeast, sugar, some flour. I noticed the ginger powder near the cinnamon in the cabinet so I used that too. I like both of those things. What the heck.
And I used a lot of brown sugar. This will be sweet bread. Like cinnamon rolls.
I don't bother measuring anything except for the water, and that determines the size of the dough wad. I add salt at late stage so it doesn't interfere with yeast. And that causes me to forget it sometimes. But I'm getting a lot better at remembering to add it after the yeast is well started.
I didn't have raisins so I used craisins instead. Then I saw the jar of jumbo raisins. So my bread has both raisins and craisins. A lot of them. I thought of adding pecans and then thought, you know, you always go overboard.
I made an open-face combination of raisin/craisin/cinnamon/ginger bread, mayonnaise, and Cœur de Bœuf tomato and I'm having a mouth-orgasm right now. It's simply the BEST little snack that I ever made. And now I'm convinced the goat cheese would be great. It's the sweetness of the bread, the tartness of the craisins, the depth of the cinnamon and creamy egg-fat of the mayonnaise in combination with these extraordinary tomatoes that is simply outstanding.
Outstanding and simple.
"Queen Elizabeth, here, have some tomato on cinnamon/ginger bread with craisins and raisins."
"No thank you, Dear. I'm not hungry at all. I have a very delicate disposition, you know."
"HAVE SOME I SAID!"
"Well, since you put it that way, mmm, num, mum munch chew mong myung myung myumg yum slurp, myung mung mung slurp, chew mum, BURP mum myug myng. Yes. This is very nice. Thank you for recommending it, young man."
This is the bread buttered in toast form. Not nearly so good as the tomato version.
A group of Adele imitators are auditioning. Adele is made up with face apparatus to appear slightly different, she altered her voice and her manner and joined the group of imitators.
What I find interesting about the group is their internal support. It's not like they're even competing, just expressing a mutual obsession with Adele. Within seconds of opening her mouth to sing, one of the contestants knows immediately that is the real Adele. And that does seem to show the intense degree of their obsession.
It's an old video. Commenters to this video love it. They love everything about it over on YouTube. Go over and read them and you will be charmed. People say they've watched the video a hundred times. They like everything about it; how Adele makes fun of herself before going in, how the ladies act with concern when Adele says she's not feeling well, how it dawned on them individually she's the real thing. How thrilled they are to be near her. It's fun.
You don't need to like Adeles' music. I'm showing how lovely British people can be.
Given the egregious cruelty inherent in circuses that use animals and the public’s swelling opposition to the exploitation of animals used for entertainment, we urge Nabisco to update its packaging in order to show animals who are free to roam in their natural habitats.
Dear Nabisco,
Love your new animal cracker boxes. Please do something about the bullet holes in your animal crackers. They upset me as I bite off their little heads.
Since you hated enjoyed the "Like it doesn't exist" post, I have another to torture please you.
Looking though the various videos last night caused me to discover other things. The Wish studio has a broad window open to the street a floor or two down. The vehicles passing by are decidedly Philippine. Are all these outrageous singers Philippine? Yes, They are.
That explained why I haven't heard of them. Their range is amazing. Their control impressive. Their gliding within their expanded range is impossible. Just listening puts chills on your skin, like you're hearing something unworldly, something from angels.
One time I heard Bette Midler, I think, say "It wouldn't matter if she won this or that contest, talent like that bursts through the floorboards." That's what I think about Morissette Amon and Darren Espanto. They're recognized in the Philippines but not in the US. I expect with near 100% certainty we'll be hearing a lot more of them.
Last night I couldn't find a wikipedia page on Morissette Amon, today it's top of the search.
I didn't even know this is a thing. There are tons of videos of voice coaches reacting to new talent. I found this one interesting. Most interesting to me is how gracious all of the coaches are. How stunned they appear when confronted with these voices.
That's the line I heard on the television then it changed to dialogue, and I thought, hey, I know that song. What is it?
Chandelier by Sia.
I can see why this is a favorite song for singers. It's got range. And it's got attitude. It allows the singer to mumble and slur if they choose, then cut loose with everything they've got in power and elevation, then slump back to slurring.
Twenty five Chandelier covers later I watched men sing this, women sing this, boys wail this song, girls sing this, from people in various countries, along with some twelve or so ASL covers.
The whole world adores this song. It's a song for singers. And it gets people POW right in the left ventricle.
This is one of the better ones. Jordan Smith is a contestant on Blind Audition. When the chairs swing around and they show Jordan Smith, you go, "W-h-a-a-a-a-a-a-t?"
Puddles Pity Party brought down the house with his own rendition for America's Got Talent. It's very good.
One of my favorite is a boy singing in a dance studio thinking he's alone and wailing at the top of his lungs. It's very short.
I've watched Asian girls sing it, a Russian boy sing it, a Ukrainian boy sing it, All sorts of fer'ners singing it, imitating the way Sia slurs sounding somewhat drunk, imitating her vocal inflections, some as if they don't actually speak English.
Sia had an ASL interpreter for her SNL performance. Extremely poor interpretation. Dismaying. All feeling and no lyrics. Ignoring the lyrics involving being a call girl, feeling shame and drinking all night like it doesn't exist.
Translators show "swing" such as a child's rope swing on a tree branch. Then their chandelier is poorly formed so the ideas of swinging and a chandelier are not connected if "chandelier" is even understood. None of their light rings appear to be hanging, nor shaped as a chandelier. Nearly all translations fail the fundamental visual element of this song. In her lyrics, Sia means swing from a chandelier like a monkey, she's drunk after all. And only one version I saw does this well. Only one girl puts herself in the chandelier swinging. She's fun to watch because she looks like a cross between the girl dancer in Sia's original video and Sia herself, with her genuine mop of blond cropped hair and impish appearance. She looks like Debbie Harry thirty years ago.
She uses a technique I noticed in other videos, very anti-official-translator conceit of dipping their hands in whitewash for dramatic visual effect. Pink-wash in her case, or pink paint. Trained translators will not do this. They will have no jewelry, plain solid clothing with no embellishments and plain background with no distractions. But what makes good translation setup also makes poor uninteresting video. She's very good translator. A real pleasure to watch. You can actually see the song in her movements. She's quite smart and attractive and intriguing.
Most specify the drink is alcoholic drink. The drinking pantomime as if holding a cup, except made with index finger and pinkie fingers extended, the same hand configuration used for alcohol shot except now in taking a drink form.
Sia sings 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3, drink, 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3, drink, throw 'em back 'till I lose count.
One the best lyrical passages ever. It suggests, but not necessarily eight shots.
You don't have to go "1" move your hand over like a typewriter "2" move hand "3" for numbers in a row. The numbers can be made with the hand held rigidly in the same place. Then the same hand used to toss back a drink. Less movement, clearer signs. No need to specify alcohol because the lyrics don't. Let it be a suggestion.
But most translators choose another route. Exceedingly clear. More clear than the lyrics themselves. The invisible shots are lined up on the opposite arm. So, along the arm, 1 shot, 2nd shot, 3rd shot, 1 shot, 2nd shot, 3rd shot, drink alcohol. It's a brilliant translation that makes clear the singer is drinking all night. Until she "forgets." Not "loses count." If I recall right, the blond pixie actually loses count. I think she signs "forget" + "count"
I looked for that.
"Count" is the non dominant hand with fingers extended for "5" hand configuration, then the dominant hand index finger counting off the fingers of the opposite hand. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.
While "prime" is the same deal except both open hands, with the dominant hand going up from the pinkie to the thumb of the opposite hand and landing on the thumb like a paper on a spindle. It's a really cool sign. Still, the idea of "forget" " count" comes across very clearly. Even though she actually said, "prime."
Of all the ASL videos I watched I think this one is best. Even better than the most popular one that shows so little fidelity to the poetry of lyrics, and with heavy emphasis on how deaf people say similar phrases. And no connection to beat whatsoever. The most popular is the most conceptually correct. My favorite is the most true to English lyrics and musical beat.
"Ringing my doorbell" is not very clear. It looks like a row of doorbells, except "doorbell" wasn't made clear to begin with. There is no thumb on a button. No door. No bell. But we'll cut the guy some slack because everything else is near textbook and fairly clear and on beat and he respects English lyrics. He's thoughtfully got an ersatz chandelier thing with light bulbs going on. That took some setup.
Oh! There is no sign for "exist" so translators have to reimagine it. Dictionaries will show "live" Other's choose "quotation marks" elsewhere. Most use "happen." Some use "here." Others use "continue." This man says, "happen."
His "tears as they dry" is very good improvisation. The pixie girl uses the textbook sign for "dry."
"Shame" is "embarrassment" red cheeks.
He does a great 1, 2, 3 drink but then his "throw 'em back" is less clear than his "drink." I don't know why he fades out on throwing them back. He should show the same drinks thrown back staccato. All that said, I enjoy this video very much and in my opinion it's the best.
A friend wrote an email which said "Good Shabbos, mein freund". I figured out the last two words, looked up the first two. I like that concept - a day of rest. I could sure use on about now - getting a bit burned out from work and the thought of actually taking a day off, a day away from it all, might actually be a good thing, assuming I didn't fret about the work I wasn't doing.
Then I read about a Calvanist dog. Well now, maybe that explains some of what I am going through. Where is my stuffed tiger when I need him.
Turns out there is an actual tiger rescue place nearby that I heard about today. I like cats but having been on the receiving end of what a house cat can do when motivated I think I shall forgo interacting with, say, a 500 pound feline. I found it interesting that such cats live in my neck of the woods.
But back to the subject at hand - it is summer and I am trying to make the most of it. Today my cousin got married down on the Delta but I didn't drive over - too much time on the road. That makes me sad as I haven't been there in 50 years and it really would have been good to see her. Maybe she will come up this way and visit. I still have a few stories to tell her about her late father and what a character he was. Here is a picture of what happens when one's arm interacts suddenly with the relatively sharp edge of a spinning walnut bowl:
The walnut chips and dust stanched the bleeding. The bowl has been shipped and should arrive at the bride's house while she is on her honeymoon.
