My latest painting:

Bellieving six impossible things before breakfast

I am puzzled by the events in Orlando.  Grieved, of course, but puzzled.

Three hundred people were peacefully assembled when 1 (one) lone gunman murdered 49 of them and wounded 50 more. while at the same time chatting in Arabic on his cell phone and no-one did anything?  It's hard to believe.  Nevertheless. res ipsa loquitor.  Or is it ipso?  I got a C in Latin, but you get the idea.

I'm not blaming the victims.  I just cannot believe that 300 disabled Social Security recipients  along with 100 Brownie Girl Scouts couldn't have done something.  Got behind him and kicked him in the ass, for instance.  Jumped him.  Tackled him.  But it happened, so res ipsa whatever. 

Oh yes, and where were the police for three hours?

I'm confused

Please enlighten me.  Homosexuality is a no-no, how come some muslims rape little boys?  Is there a little boy exception to that law?

Just and juster

Once a year the Athenians would meet and vote on exiling someone. If a simple majority voted yes, then they dispersed and reassembled two months later. They brought with them their ostracon (a fragment of pottery), on which they had scratched the name of the person they thought represented a threat. The man with the most votes lost. He was exiled for 10 years, They not only voted people into office, but they had a regular procedure for voting one person per year out of office. It was an option which could be exercised but did not have to be. The exile did not involve confiscation or any other punitive measures.

Aristides was known for his probity, and often called Aristides the Just.  On one occasion, a voter, who did not know him, came up to him, and giving him his shard, asked him to write upon it the name of Aristides. The latter asked if Aristides had wronged him. “No,” was the reply, “and I do not even know him, but it irritates me to hear him everywhere called the just.”

There's a moral to this story, but I don't know what it is.

Second rate movies

I love to watch old movies.  But once in a while you find yourself watching a real stinker.  How you can tell:

1.  The sets are crummy, look like they are made of cardboard, but the picture is really dark so you can't tell.

2.  All the police are old, way too old to serve on a police force.  Imagine one of these senior citizens chasing a criminal!  He would drop dead of a heart attack after the first 60 seconds.

3.Much staged business around smoking.  Like this:  "Mind if I smoke?"  "No, have one of mine."  "No thanks, I have my own.."  "Nice cigarette case."   "Got a light?"  "Thanks,"  Cigarette is lighted, and both characters inhale pensively, followed by silent contemplation as they stare at one another.  This interaction takes a minute or two, advancing the action not at all.  Unless the book of matches comes from a suspicious source, in which case the mystery is solved.  This action can be varied by offers of cigars, fussing around fiddling with pipes, or scrutiny of cigarette butts in an ashtray with lipstick on them.

4.  Similarly, but not as frequently, pouring and consumption of drinks, which are always on a handy table, complete with seltzer bottle, glassware, and a bucket of ice.  Drinks don't take as much time as smoking, so are less frequently deployed.

5.  Final scene, when the murderer is about to murder the heroine, so the police chief orders "Calling all cars," and all the elderly cops get in their cars and drive madly around, sirens screaming.

Now you know.

Hillary's wardrobe

People are saying mean things about Hillary's wardrobe, particularly the $12,000 coat she appeared in recently.  I  think that's a cheap shot.  The coat is not becoming,--she can't carry it off.   She looks like she picked it up at some store that features garments for older women.  I can just see some upper middle class woman wearing it to church or to a do at the Women's Club, and looking better in it than Hillary.

No kidding, I think I would look better in that coat than she does; she is not interested in looking attractive, and I am.  Surely the pantsuits she wore in office were dreadful, but so was everything she wore, including her ugly hairstyle, which made her look like someone who does not visit her stylist  often enough, or maybe doesn't even have a hairstylist.  She does not place a high value on her appearance, having more worthwhile things to concern herself with, like how many bombs to drop on ISIS this week or what to do about hunger.  I'm not saying she shouldn't spend a lot of money on her clothes; no-one expects a millionaire in public life to shop at JCPenney. (Sorry, JC, not criticizing you!)

Everyone was always sniping at Jacqueline Kennedy for dressing elegantly, but she was a delight to the eye, very pretty, very stylish.  She brought grace to the White House.  Michelle Obama always looks beautifully dressed, although every time she opens her mouth she utters claptrap, and aggrieved claptrap at that.  Silence would do her a world of good.

Hillary is not a good campaigner, unlike her husband, who clearly loves, loves, loves speaking to a group who adulates him.  His wife is more like Nixon; she understands that you can't get elected unless you campaign for office, so she does, but you can see it is not her metier.  Bill liked to show off, and he craved attention and admiration.  He had a raffish sort of charm.  People liked him.  If you were seated next to him at a dinner party, you would like him.  If you were seated next to Hillary, she would talk about day care or getting out the vote.  Trump is more like Bill, he glories in being the center of attention.  He takes great joy in shooting off his mouth and more, in shocking people like a kid showing off in class.

Her voice is not passionate or persuasive.  It's not even pleasant.  That midwestern croak!  Crows could take her seminar and benefit by it.  She does not love her audience and they don't love her back.  As for her ideas!  She, like Muhammed Ali, keeps talking about fighting, but unlike him, she does not put on the gloves.  Her ideas are shopworn and have no substance.  Sincerity also is not her metier, unlike Bernie Sanders, who clearly believes every crackpot idea he so passionately advocates.

What Hillary clearly believes is that it is her turn to be President.  She earned it!  She's a woman,   She was gracious about losing to Obama, so she is now entitled to the presidency for being a good sport, and  it is her turn.

How to be Republican

I changed my party registration when I lived in New Jersey and someone I knew was running in the primary for some office.  Later I tried to change it back to Democrat but for some reason that option was not open to me on this particular day.  So I stayed a Republlican--it was easier. There were so few republicans in the district that I was asked to be a district leader, not because I had any value to anyone but simply because I was living and breathing.

This happened around the time Jimmy Carter was president.  I actually started disliking Jimmy when he decided to carry his own suitcase into the White House. What a tiresome person he was, chock full of false humility!   Him and his sweaters!  He was such a loser that I voted Republican in the next election and Ronald Reagan won.  Ron wore a suit and tie, not a cardigan like a Man of the People.  Good enough for me.

I became a staunch Republican.  At every subsequent election I voted for the republican candidate. Some of them were not so hot, I admit.  But probably no worse than their opponents.

This brings me to Donald Trump.  I plan to vote for him because he won the nomination fair and square.  I would rather vote for Abraham Lincoln, but he is not on the ballot.. I have two choices, and all the finely reasoned objections to him by highly educated intellectuals are so much hot air.  There is not going to be a Third Party candidate.  When I get in the voting booth there will be two names on the ballot and I am a Republican.

Vox populi vox dei, I always say.

Handling charges

I've noticed for a long time that when you order tickets for a concert or play over the Internet you don't pay just the ticket price.  Something else is added:  a "handling charge," presumably for the insult of ordering tickets or the inconvenience of the organization having to maintain a website for dolts like you, or possibly to cover the cost of the oxygen you are likely to consume at the venue.

So I ordered two $20 tickets for Tanglewood, and received a $17 handling charge.  Why not just charge $57 in the first place?  There are no good tickets for sitting in the shed, since there is no way you could actually watch the orchestra play because of the configuration of the shed.  You actually watch the live performance on enormous television monitors, which is much better.  The camera or cameras zoom in on the performers, shifting the focus from time to time: first the violinists sawing away, then the horns perhaps, then the soloist.  It's a wonderful experience:  the coolness of a breeze,  the clarity of the music heard in the night air, and of course the excellence of the performers and the beauty of the music.  I've never heard a bad performance, although the weather is not always clement. Sometimes umbrellas, raincoats, or even blankets come in handy.

The curse of electronics

When e-mail started to be accepted by everyone, I was thrilled.  I could keep up with my friends without writing letters or even calling them on the phone.  When someone died, I just had to post regrets on the funeral home's website instead of struggling to write a letter which is really hard to write and takes you half a morning to compose and then you have to look for a stamp and an envelope and put it in the mailbox, not forgetting to write your return address in the upper left hand corner.

So I was happy to have e-mail.  Until I started to get hundreds of e-mail messages every day from every retailer I had ever bought anything from and many I had never bought anything from, not to mention begging letters from Nigeria.

When I got stuck in California for 8 weeks I came home to find 7,000 e-mail messages on my server.  It took me quite a while just to erase them and I've been grumpy about it ever since.

But e-mail is not nearly as intrusive as the ads on my iPhone that keep popping up with gross pictures of women with black stuff on their upper lip or big fat stomachs or ads for first, second, and third mortgages.  I'm getting to hate my phone as it takes me half an hour to read a paragraph or two.

Facebook was a nice alternative for a while, until cute cat videos started popping up.  I don't want anyone to send me pictures of their cats, dogs, or even horses.  I'm also tired of elephants.  If you are a Facebook friend of mine, please no Fauna of any description.  Flora yes, fauna no.

Correction, and explanation

In a previous post, I stated that I had been doing this for 11 years.  Wrong!  It's more like 12 years.  I started in 2004, when I purchased my first computer with my first royalty check.  Of course I had been using computers at work, but this one was mine, and I wanted to take it around the block and see how it worked.  So I started blogging.

I was a lot more cheerful then, and so were the few readers I accumulated.  I have become more moribund, and the readers more reticent.  Hardly anyone comments any more.

I have an excuse.  I was very sick in 2015, of an unspecified disease.  So dire was my condition, that I actually believed that the angel of death had come for me.  This was an unusual event, since I am dubious about things spiritual.  I must have inherited a superstitious gene from Bubbe, my maternal grandmother.

When you are sick, you get very weak.  I could barely get out of bed and really thought I would die in California.  So I got out of CA, and have been spending time with doctors and physical therapists.  I decided to go back to the gym and see if I could recover my strength.  I'm still not up to standard, but getting better.

I've had a bit of good luck.  I won a place in a juried art show, and was just informed by Amazon that I had recieved royalties on my book for the first time in five years.  So I plan to resume my more than occasional posts here and be a little more regular about it.

Good God!

I have been doing this for over 11 years.  Is that depressing, or what?  You be the judge.

Slacking

My impulse toward self-improvement, never very strong, has been waning at present.  I got myself a copy of the Federalist Papers and sat down to read it, but I realized that what I really wanted was not to read it, but to have read it.  In short, I wished to have ti transferred to my brain without having spent any time with it.

Instead, I did what I always do when I don't want to edify myself:  I re-read Anna Karenina, one of my favorite books.  Every time I read it, I find more in it.  I see it differently.  In my youth, Anna seemed like a tragic heroine, but now  I am more inclined to side with the cuckolded husband.  I direct your attention to the part where Anna has just given birth to a baby girl fathered by Vronsky.  Everyone is weeping and lamenting at the top of their voices.--Are all Russians opera fans?--at the tragedy of it all, but everyone behaves in a surprisingly modern manner.  She is allowed to choose her own fate, and both Vronsky and Karenin are  supportive.

Imagine what Dickens would do with a scene like that!  Anna and the child would have been thrown out in the snow in a New York minute, and there is plenty of snow in Tsarist Russia.  Or at the very least, exiled to Australia.

Instead, Anna and Vronsky set up housekeeping together.  Everyone in their world snubs her, but not him.  He even offers to marry her, but she refuses to get a divorce--oh these Russian women!  More tragic weeping and wailing from all hands, eventually resulting in her suicide, under the wheels of the same train she arrived on.

Meanwhile, she takes little interest in baby Anna, nor does Vronsky.  She laments losing her son by Karenin, whom she is not allowed to see.  What is up with Anna? She's a tragic heroine, that's what.

I won't even get into the subsidiary characters, like Pierre and Kitty.  And Darya, Anna's brother's wife, very sympathetic and real.  Stiva, the philandering husband and lazy bureacrat.

Luckily, I don't mind reading long books, and Tolstoy apparently enjoyed writing them.

Anyway, I love this stuff.  All the characters are so real.

A poem I've always liked

Spring and Fall, by Gerard Manley Hopkins



To a young child

Margaret, are you grieving
Over Goldengrove unleaving?
Leaves, like the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
Ah! as the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder
By and by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
And yet you will weep know why.
Now no matter, child, the name:
Sorrow’s springs are the same.
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What heart heard of, ghost guessed:
It is the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.

Rejected by TurboTax

I'm just a mediocre person, incomewise, so I couldn't suppose the government has much interest in my taxes, as opposed to those of Al Sharpton, the presidential advisor, tax-evader and murderer.

But I digress.  My income consists of a pension, Social Security, and not much more.  It's generally pretty cut and dried.  So I've usually done it myself.  But this time I had a royalty check for a book I and some others wrote in 2002.  

When I entered the figure--about 50 dollars--TurboTax got all high and mighty, refusing to do my taxes for the regular sum of about $40.  I had turned out to be a very special taxpayer, one which would strain the algorithm and probably crash the entire system.  So complex was  my income that TurboTax stopped in its tracks.  It shied like a horse who was asked to jump a deep ditch.  I was informed that my royalty check made me an unusual taxpayer and I needed an extra $50 for them to continue my return.

I would now be paying a hundred dollars in fees for earning an extra $50.  For a couple of hundred I could hire a live accountant.

I pondered the problem for a couple of days and then decided to file for a six month  extension, thus evading the problem until the leaves turned color and started to fall from the trees.

I have so many diseases and they are so complex that I have enough doctors to make a basketball team, although some of them are too short.  I figured that the chances were good that one of them would kill me before October, if I was lucky.

 

Another poem

Another poem for poetry month:

Robert Burns. 1759–1796

. John Anderson, my Jo

JOHN ANDERSON, my jo, John,
When we were first acquent,
Your locks were like the raven,
Your bonnie brow was brent;
But now your brow is beld, John,	5
Your locks are like the snow;
But blessings on your frosty pow,
John Anderson, my jo!
John Anderson, my jo, John,
We clamb the hill thegither;	10
And monie a canty day, John,
We've had wi' ane anither:
Now we maun totter down, John,
But hand in hand we'll go,
And sleep thegither at the foot,	15
John Anderson, my jo.

Anyone who has been married for a long time will get this one:

Psychologizing Trump

Since everyone else in the country is psycho-analyzing Donald Trump, I figure now it's my turn.  Fair is fair, no?  I know as little or as much as  anyone who has not been locked up in an abandoned coal mine for the last six months, so I'm going to have at it.

(That rumbling noise you hear is The Donald shaking in his shoes.)

He reminds me of my Uncle Doc, who would say anything that came into his head without pausing for thought.  He yelled at everybody who ever upset him.  You should have heard him opine on my father after he divorced my mother.  Or his son-in-law.  Or the government, Republican or Democrat; he had no use for any of them.  And he could change his mind at the tip of a hat.  Many times, he didn't know what he was opining about, but that didn't stop him for a minute.

It was all a sham.  Deep down inside, he was a generous and loving man, but no-one was allowed to know  this, it would ruin his reputation as a hard man.  But his parents knew, and so did his brother and sister.  He never let any of them down, although his siblings got plenty of verbal abuse.

I'm not saying Trump is a good man; but his statements about everything strike me as so much bluster. I'm sure he never gave abortion a moment's thought, for instance.  But on the basics he's got a few things right, and isn't afraid to say so.  That's what makes him attractive to voters, who are tired of the mealymouthed politicians of both parties, and their thinly veiled contempt for average Americans.

A poem for poetry month

“It was a lover and his lass”

By William Shakespeare

(from As You Like It)

It was a lover and his lass,

   With a hey, and a ho, and a hey nonino,

That o’er the green cornfield did pass,

   In springtime, the only pretty ring time,

When birds do sing, hey ding a ding, ding;

Sweet lovers love the spring.

Between the acres of the rye,

   With a hey, and a ho, and a hey nonino,

Those pretty country folks would lie,

   In springtime, the only pretty ring time,

When birds do sing, hey ding a ding, ding;

Sweet lovers love the spring.

This carol they began that hour,

   With a hey, and a ho, and a hey nonino,

How that a life was but a flower

   In springtime, the only pretty ring time,

When birds do sing, hey ding a ding, ding;

Sweet lovers love the spring.

And therefore take the present time,

   With a hey, and a ho, and a hey nonino,

For love is crownèd with the prime

   In springtime, the only pretty ring time,

When birds do sing, hey ding a ding, ding;

Sweet lovers love the spring.

I do like a good hey nonino from time to time.And hey ding a ding ding is very cheery too.

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Credit card fraud

I got a call from my  credit card provider.  They were questioning certain transactions  made in California last month: to wit,  a charge for gas at a Shell station, and a purchase from In n Out Burger.  The two together were less than $50, but the bank was right.  I was not in California at the time.
Neither was my credit card.  It was secure in my wallet.

So  somebody  committed a felony to get some gas and a burger. I'm struck by the modesty of their desires.  Why not buy an expensive camera or  a set of tires?  (These are the items a thief bought on my credit card last time I was robbed.)  Why would anyone risk getting a criminal record for a hamburger?  If I were going to steal something, or defraud someone, it would have to be for a much larger sum than that.

Update:  I am reliably informed that the modest first purchases are just a trial to see if anyone notices their card is missing.  If these go through, they know you or your bank are not paying attention and then they can really let themselves go.

My vote

If the Republican Party chooses Donald Trump as their candidate for President, I will vote for him.  Unless he is convicted of a major felony between now and November.  And no, he would not be my first choice.

I'm so sick of people on the right, and on the left, maligning him.  You cannot pick up a conservative magazine without encountering some learned dissertation predicting the end of at least the nation, if not the world, if he should be elected.   In my opinion, the Republic will survive. 

Mine is purely a protest vote.  I don't want Trump, but I want Hillary less.   The Democrats have had eight years to screw the country.  I want them out.  It's the Republicans' turn.  If this means Trump will be president, bring it on.

When do college students study?

I'm confused.  I was admittedly a slacker when I attended college.   I was fond of hanging out, drinking beer, and playing bridge with my friends.  Dating guys.  But I still had to study, pass exams, and write term papers.  Students at the time had sex, just like they do today--well maybe not that much--but we did in before 10 o'clock and never complained.  Or we stayed out past curfew and were helped to sneak into the building by confederates.

From what I read on the Internet, the average college student is having sex at all hours of the day and night, sober, or more likely, drunk.  Complaining, protesting, picketing, raping or being raped, making rude remarks to faculty and guest speakers, or being insulted.  Sending obscene texts to other students whom they fancy on their expensive cell phones.  Protesting when the recipients of the texts take them up on their texted suggestions.

How do they ever study?  What happens when their French professor schedules a pop quiz?  When do they have time to prepare term papers?  Why do they get all As when they are drunk, stoned, protesting social injustice, or preventing invited guests from speaking all day long?  Or painting obscene remarks on college property?  Or being so hurt and aggrieved when they encounter someone who thinks differently that they need a safe space?