Calling this blog "Born Again Redneck" is meant as a joke in reaction to the sanctimonious Leftists but I'm neither "Born Again" nor a "Redneck."
I'm really just a middle-aged, middle-class, middle-brow, middle-of-the-road, moderately libertarian Republican, "don't tread on me", "don't fence me in" farmer.
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
Definition of conservatism
All this hand-wringing about what a true conservative is (for instance: to the right wing purists McCain is a commie) has got me thinking. To me the definition of conservatism is pretty simple.
It means that you're quite contented with our traditions. They're not perfect but you're suspicious of radical change. Socalled "progressives" will always be pulling and pushing for "change." This means that society will always inevitably be pulled leftward. The conservative's job is to slow things down; to caution: "Don't rock the boat; don't cut off the branch on which you are sitting; been there, done that, got the tee shirt; why re-invent the wheel?"
It also means that you're patriotic. To non-Americans, patriotism equals nationalism. To an American, patriotism means that you're grateful to be a citizen of a nation built on individual sovereignty not mere ethnicity or tribalism. It means that you're willing to fight for that freedom and defend the civilization which is the basis of it. That means that Joe Lieberman is as much of a patriot as John Bolton - and both are conservatives where it counts.
That's why I can tolerate the Old Left (people like Truman, Scoop Jackson, Joe Lieberman and Sam Nunn) but detest the New Left (the hippy peacenik eco-wackos and radical anarchist professors like Ward Churchill and Bill Ayers.) The Old Leftists may have different domestic agendas from conservatives but they are still true patriots and we can agree to disagree amicably on such things as taxes and culture etc.
By this definition of conservatism, the war hero, McCain, scores 97.5% (nobody is perfect) while the affirmative action airhead academic, Obama, scores a big fat zero.
A video of our new babies (which were secretly hatched by certain stealthy hens who shall remain nameless) from Chas' Compilation:
Here is my first video for the Farm Report. It's the two chicks I photographed in earlier reports. They're juveniles now, not as cute as little baby chicks.
So just call me a fag but I just love Charlene's "I've never been to me." Like Puccini's operas, it moves me to tears and makes me aware of death and grateful for what time I have left on earth.
Tonight we had roasted oysters and corn on the cob for dinner served with a bottle of the Marchesi family's Montenore 2006 Willamette Valley, Oregon, Pinot Noir. At $15, it's as good as most of the French Burgundy wines that I have had costing ten times that.
We always switch off the TV during dinner and listen to music instead. Tonight we listened to one of the Motown albums with mostly Diana Ross and Smokey Robinson but also the one-hit- wonder, Charlene Duncan, who was not really black but a colored - part Negro/part Italian from California - where mixed marriages have created the most wonderful offspring (about which more later.)
"I've Never Been to Me" and Gloria Gaynor's "I will Survive" about which much more later) have been branded fag songs (as Myrhaf insinuates.) So, call me a fag but both songs speak volumes to me. Charlene's song is about regret (which we all have) and Gloria's song is about defiant bravery (which we all need at certain times.)
For fags like me, it's also about the joy that we survived the AIDS epidemic while we watched hundreds of our less cautious and circumspect fags die. (Chas and I saw 14 friends die in the first year of the "gay plague" in San Francisco.)
"I've Never Been to Me" is a hit single performed by American singer Charlene.
In 1977 the song reached number 97 on the Hot 100 singles chart. In 1982, Tampa, Floridadisc jockeyScott Shannon, then at WRBQ, started playing it. Audience reaction was impressive, and spread quickly, resulting in the song being reissued by Charlene's label. The single reached Number 3 in the USA, and Number 1, by June 1982, in the UK.
Charlene was signed to Motown Records, but this has been her only hit save for a late 1982 duet with Stevie Wonder, "Used to Be," which charted but failed to make the top 40.
Charlene did two versions of the song. The version which was initially released was actually the second version which Charlene recorded. Her original version (which became more popular) has an expanded bridge, over which the singer makes an impassioned comparison between the non-committal "fantasy about people and places as we'd like them to be," versus the committed real love of a family.
[...]
In 1982, Tampa, Florida disc jockey Scott Shannon, then at WRBQ, started playing it, by which time Charlene had moved to England and was working in an Ilford, Essex sweet shop. Audience reaction was impressive, and spread quickly, resulting in the song's re-issuance by Charlene's label, the version WITH the original spoken bridge. The re-release became a huge hit in Britain as well.
The use of the line "I've been to crying for unborn children that would have made me complete" hints strongly at abortion. The line refers to a woman who is at a point in her life that she wished she had taken the time to have children. However, this was deemed too close to feminist issues and when Charlene's song was first released in 1976, the version used was the one without the spoken bridge. When the song became an unexpected hit in 1982 it was the version with the spoken bridge intact that was released. It has also been widely reported that the 1982 single was a re-recording, it is not.
Originally written from a male point of view, the song was rewritten by Ron Miller for Charlene. The male version is sung from the perspective of an old man begging for a dime for a cup of coffee, addressing a younger man who is "raising hell" the way the old man used to do. The female version is sung to a housewife who wishes that she could trade her everyday life for the exciting, fantastic life led by the singer. The singer tells of some of the highlights of her life, but the tone is bittersweet and she wishes that someone had told her what she is telling the listener. She has learned what is important, but now it is too late. She finds her life hollow and without purpose, having lost her real self years before — the "me" she has never been to, is the life that she would have led if she hadn't been lured away by false ideas.
When this song was first released in the USA, in 1976, Charlene's full name was Charlene Duncan through her marriage to record producer Larry Duncan, but when the song was released for a second time in 1982, the name she had taken was Charlene Oliver because of her marriage to Englishman Jeff Oliver.
It soon rose to the top of the Pop charts and Adult Contemporary charts that year. Her LP album I've Never Been to Me, released in 1982 proved to also be successful for Charlene. Her song was one of the biggest hits of the year and became a standard in pop music.
Charlene has not yet been able to follow-up the success of her one big hit "I've Never Been to Me", but has continued to record and release songs to the public. She released another album in 1983, but was not so successful.
"I've Never Been to Me" was featured as the opening song to the movie The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (1994). The song is mimed onstage by two Sydney female impersonators at the Imperial Hotel in Erskineville, Sydney, Australia.
Because of her one big hit, Charlene became a one-hit-wonder in music. Charlene and her big hit "I've Never Been to Me" were featured on VH1's 100 Greatest One-hit Wonders show, hosted by William Shatner in 2002. Her position on that list was at #75. The song was described on the VH1 show as "the post-disco hangover," referring to the song's probable appeal to listeners who, in the early years of the AIDS epidemic, regretted leading hedonistic lives during the disco era.
In 2006, "I've Never Been to Me" was released as one of the songs on Singstar Anthems, one of the popular Singstars.
One urban legend says the song was inspired by the character Quint from the movie Jaws.
The song was described on the VH1 show as "the post-disco hangover," referring to the song's probable appeal to listeners who, in the early years of the AIDS epidemic, regretted leading hedonistic lives during the disco era.
The controversial line "I've been to crying for unborn children" did not refer to abortion, but to a woman who regrets not having children.
Charlene is presently married and runs a sweet shop in Ilford, Essex, England. She is still hoping to make it in the modern pop era, but it seems clear that she won't be getting any more number 1's considering her last one was 26 years ago. Charlene has a pet dog called Sam.
Charlene truly was a one-hit-wonder. Her life is as poignant as her famous song. I hope she found happiness in a "sweet shop" (which we know as a candy store) in Ilford, Essex which I know well. It's plain and boring and comfortable and cozy - England's version of New Jersey. I have a hunch that she did find contentment. What a truly beautiful woman and an incredible singer.
Here are the lyrics to the song:
Hey lady, you lady, cursing at your life You're a discontented mother and a regimented wife I've no doubt you dream about the things you'll never do But, I wish someone had talked to me Like I wanna talk to you.....
Oh, I've been to Georgia and California and anywhere I could run I took the hand of a preacher man and we made love in the sun But I ran out of places and friendly faces because I had to be free I've been to paradise but I've never been to me
Please lady, please lady, don't just walk away 'Cause I have this need to tell you why I'm all alone today I can see so much of me still living in your eyes Won't you share a part of a weary heart that has lived million lies....
Oh, I've been to Nice and the Isles of Greece while I've sipped champagne on a yacht I've moved like Harlow in Monte Carlo and showed 'em what I've got I've been undressed by kings and I've seen some things that a woman ain't supposed to see I've been to paradise, but I've never been to me
[spoken] Hey, you know what paradise is? It's a lie, a fantasy we create about people and places as we'd like them to be But you know what truth is? It's that little baby you're holding, it's that man you fought with this morning The same one you're going to make love with tonight That's truth, that's love......
Sometimes I've been to crying for unborn children that might have made me complete But I took the sweet life, I never knew I'd be bitter from the sweet I've spent my life exploring the subtle whoring that costs too much to be free Hey lady...... I've been to paradise, (I've been to paradise) But I've never been to me
[sung] (I've been to Georgia and California, and anywhere I could run) I've been to paradise, never been to me (I've been to Nice and the isles of Greece while I've sipped champagne on a yacht) I've been to paradise, never been to me (I've been to cryin' for unborn children that might have made me complete) I've been to paradise, never been to me (I've been to Georgia and California, and anywhere I could run) I've been to paradise, never been to me
Here is the original video which was filmed in England (and which prompted Charlene to marry an Englishman and move there.) I can't embed it because:
This video has been matched by YouTube's copyright identification software. While it will continue to be available for viewing on this site, it unfortunately can no longer be embedded externally.
Here's the video from when Charlene was in Australia a few years ago to promote the launch of the stage version of Priscilla Queen Of The Desert - The Musical.
And this is how the song was used to introduce the movie, Priscilla - Queen of the Desert:
"Necklacing" is the method of execution carried out by forcing a rubber tire, filled with gasoline, around a victim's chest and arms, and setting it on fire. The tire serves two purposes: to constrain the victim's arms and hold the fuel.
It first surfaced in South Africa in the late 1980s as the most popular method for the "comrades" in black townships like Soweto to lynch supposed collaborators with the apartheid government. Necklacing sentences were handed down by the comrades' "people's courts" in black townships. The most most common victims of necklacing were black policemen.
The African National Congress (ANC) condemned necklacing but Winnie Mandela (then wife of Nelson Mandela) exhorted the comrades: "With our boxes of matches and our necklaces we shall liberate this country!"
(Winnie Mandela was elected to the ANC National Executive Committee on December 21st, 2007.)
After apartheid came to an end, necklacing all but disappeared but has resurfaced recently as the way to kill immigrants.
South African police and military units raided three hostels Thursday in a clampdown on xenophobic attacks that have left more than 40 dead, authorities said.
[...]
Some 28,000 people have been displaced by the violence, Hangwani Malaudzi, a spokesman for the Ministry of Safety and Security said.
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The country has also seen a disturbing throwback to the 1980s apartheid-era lynching tactic of "necklacing," which was widely used in the townships at the time.
[...]
The victims are mainly immigrants and refugees from other parts of Africa, including Zimbabwe, where a devastated economy has sent at least two million people across the border in search of a better life.
Some say the attacks stem from a long-standing feeling among locals that the number of immigrants in South Africa results in shortages of jobs and essential needs.
[...]
According to South Africa's latest census, the country has about 45 million people. The South African Department of Human Affairs estimates that more than 4 million people reside in South Africa illegally, but that figure is based on a 10-year-old study and some feel the number of immigrants in South Africa is much higher.
Some say that millions have recently fled to South Africa from Zimbabwe because of violence there since the county's stalled election.
These pictures are from the 1980s.
The tire burns right into the flesh and melds with it. All that is left of the tire is the metal hoops.
If necklacing reminds you of the brutal stonings and decapitations by Muslims, that's because we are talking about the same sort of people: uncivilized vicious barbarians.
Probably because I grew up living among barbarians, I am not surprised by savagery as much as most Westerners and I'm very aware that a huge chunk of the world's population is still uncivilized.
But our real enemies are not these savages. Our real enemies are the lunatics in our own society who believe that the barbarians are our equals culturally and morally.
Here is a video (*Warning: Graphic*) of the first recorded victim of necklacing, a young girl, Maki Skosana, in July 1985.
“Her body had been scorched by fire and some broken pieces of glass had been inserted into her vagina.”
I always assumed that I was a tropical fruit and could handle hot climates since I was born and raised in sunny South Africa. However I soon found that it was hotter in Europe and the USA than I expected.
I was born and lived around 30 to 35 degrees latitude south of the equator and found it fairly comfortable but I found that the same latitude north of the equator was much hotter. For instance I found the summers in southern Spain at 35 degrees latitude unbearable but I loved the climate of western Europe between 45 and 50 degrees latitude.
I also found the climate at 30 degrees latitude in the USA (northern Florida, the Gulf Coast and most of Texas) very uncomfortable. The sun seemed so much hotter and fiercer than anything that I had experienced in the southern hemisphere. And, when I moved to California, even though I preferred LA to SF, I had to live in SF because the summers in LA were too hot for me.
Even here in southern Oregon at 40 degrees latitude, I sometimes find the sun a bit too fierce and prefer cool grey foggy or rainy days like today. It's raining and 50F. That's T shirt weather for me.
Anyway I just read in "Ask Marilyn" that the northern hemisphere (annual average temp of 59F) is in fact hotter than the southern hemisphere (average annual temp of 56F) and there is less variation between winter and summers temps - southern hemisphere summers are cooler and the winters are warmer. The sun also seems fiercer in the northern hemisphere because there is less water vapor in the air.
The reason is so obvious that I'm smacking my head wondering why I never thought of it before.
The oceans have a moderating effect on climate (which is why I prefer to live along the coast) and the southern hemisphere has 80% of earth's oceans whereas the northern hemisphere has two-thirds of the earth's land. Ta da!
For some reason Blogger would not let me upload these earlier.
Another view from my window:
The fog creeping up from the ocean:
Another view of the Table Cloth in Cape Town:
The fog in San Francisco around the Sutro Tower on top of Mount Sutro. This photo was taken from the eastern edge of SF looking west. The fog comes off the ocean and is blocked by the ridge of mountains down the center of the city so that the western half of the city is nearly always cool and foggy in summer.
The fog came back last night after three days of 90F days. Thank goodness our heat-waves seldom last longer than 3 days. Finally I can wear something besides a watch and flip-flops. Actually it was too hot to even wear a watch and I lolled around in the pool all day yesterday.
The best birthday present I've ever had is the huge mosquito net tent which we erected on Friday. It's big enough to cover the pool and a picnic table and chairs and now I can once again enjoy the garden in summer without being eaten alive by skeeters.
Right now it is a delicious 50F and this is the view from my window. No lolling in the pool today. It's the perfect day for gardening.
The top of the "marine layer" hovers at about 300 feet above sea-level. The farm is 170 feet above sea-level and is completely enveloped by the fog. It's like living in a cloud-forest most of the summer.
Here you can see what the coastal fog looks like from the central valley east of us. The mountain in the distance is part of the Coastal Range. What looks like a cloud is the top of the marine layer.
This marine layer aka coastal fog is something that occurs on nearly all western coasts all over the world. The same thing also happens in Cape Town where Table Mountain blocks the marine layer. When it rolls over the top of the mountain it is called the Table Cloth. The view from the back porch of the house we lived in when I was a kid.
There's no such thing as air-conditioning in this neck of the woods because the average summer temperature is a comfortable 65F.
Yesterday the forecast was for 85F but it hit 91F which ties with the record. Today it hit 98F which has never been recorded in the past 70 years since accurate records have been kept. It was so unbearable that I closed my office at 1pm and told everyone to go home.
When I got home we pumped water from the creek into the above-ground pool (which has to be kept drained because of skeeters) and erected the big skeeter-proof mesh tent over it while we waited for it to fill up. Then I lolled around in the cold creek water sipping gins and tonics till dinner-time.
But I won't complain too much because Chas and Andy surprised me by picking up fresh live Maine lobster from Albertsons on the way home and we had surf and turf with fresh corn on the cob for my birthday dinner all washed down with a delicious Oregon Menage a Trois wine - so called because it is a meritage blend of three varietals.
But, thank goodness, the fog is supposed to blow in tomorrow and keep the temp down to a livable 63F.
That's how hot it got today. Thank goodness it only happens for two or three days twice a year. I had to drive to work and back with the AC on and right now it's still 68F and it's nearly midnight. It was so hot today that I had to kick off my flip-flops and go barefoot. And everybody complained because I was wearing shorts: "Your legs are so white they almost blinded me." I'm glad I'm too old to be vain. I can't wait for the cold fog to blow in from the ocean and we can get back to our usual 55F.
I saw this video on the local TV news last night. This dog had been returned to the shelter because it was so vicious. Then this couple adopted it.
It reminds me of my Corrie who was about to be killed in the shelter because she was so vicious and was regarded as unadoptable. She was found on the street as a 6 months old puppy with a broken nose and a broken tail. A friend who worked at the shelter called me to tell me about the pup and I adopted her without even seeing her.
A photo of Corrie at the ripe old age of nearly 12. She has mellowed out and no longer swallows whole gophers - she let's the younger dogs do the dirty work nowadays.
A few months ago I discovered City Daily Photo (which you can always find in my sidebar under "Favorites") when I noticed on my Sitemeter that one of their bloggers had linked to me. Since then it has become one of my favorite Internet pleasures. It's a portal that links to thousands of bloggers who feature photos of their cities all over the world and I love to look at the photos of the cities that I have lived in: Durban, Johannesberg, Cape Town, Bloemfontein and Pietermartizburg in South Africa; Dumfries, Edinburgh and Glasgow in Scotland; London, Cheltenham and Kendall in England; Miami Beach and Coral Gables in Florida; Hollywood, Malibu, Berkeley, Oakland and San Francisco in California.
I can say "around the world in 80 seconds" jokingly but I just spent at least 80 minutes looking at the places I've lived in - or visited like Windhoek in Namibia, Elizabethville (or Lubumbashi as it is now known) in the Congo (where I was held in detention by armed guards because I had a South African passport) and Praia in the Cape Verde Islands off the west coast of Africa. Or Zurich and Geneva in Switzerland; Lyon, Nantes, Caen, Dunkirk and Paris in France; Dusseldorf and Essen in Germany; Brussels and Ostend in Belgium; Copenhagen in Denmark; Madrid and Malaga in Spain and Rome many a time.
I can't even remember all the towns and cities that I've visited in the UK. In fact I don't even remember the name of the first town that I lived in in England in 1968. All I know is that it was in Middlesex about an hour by the Tube west of central London. But the UK is small (about the size of California) and there are very few places that I did not visit. There are also very few places in California that I have not seen. And, having travelled across the USA six times by car, there are very few towns and cities in the USA that I have not seen.
I can't show you all the photos that I have just looked at. Here are just a few of the photos that I saw tonight. Most of them are huge - so, if you are an inquisitive person, just click to enlarge them. And don't forget to check and see if someone is posting photos of your neck of the woods.
This photo was posted by Durban Daily Photo. It's of the apartment building, Las Vegas, near the docks in Durban where I lived while I was working as a forklift driver on the docks.
This photo was posted by one of the many bloggers calling themselves London Daily Photo. He/she writes:
Coffee and a croissant it is not. It's not a healthy breakfast. It's certainly not a vegetarian's breakfast. A cup of tea and a bacon butty may not even be something you often indulge in, but the fact that it exists makes the world a happier place. You can tell from the Formica table, the tomato sauce bottle and the paper that this is a genuine caff.
A "butty" is English slang for sandwich. I ate many of these for breakfast in "caffs" during the 8 years I lived in London. Yum.
I lived in Cheltenham, Gloucetershire, in the late 1970s when I was a single father. It is a charming town, the largest city in the Cotswolds which I have heard described by an American as "cuter than Disneyland." The "cuteness" is a lot older than Disneyland - by a thousand years or so. I remember this house because I lived near it for years. The Cheltenham Daily Photo blogger writes:
Welcome to Cheltenham's musical gem - the Regency terrace house where Gustav Holst, composer of The Planets was born in 1874.
As a blanket of fog lay on the Bay, wisps of fog waft up only yards from our balcony to combine with a golden sunset to say "bon nuit".
Yep, he's a Frog but he has got a beautiful view from his apartment in SF. The two things that I miss most about SF are the foghorns and the opera.
I discovered this Johannesburg Daily Photo blogger (one of many) for the first time today. I was amazed at how much Jo'Burg has changed since the last time that I was there. The economy is booming and new buildings are being constructed constantly. This is the tallest building in Africa - 50 stories.
The old Soweto bus terminal is now known as Gandhi Square (yep, the shit-stirring Mahatma lived in South Africa for 21 years ) and is surrounded by fancy coffee shops and boutiques on the ground-floor levels of the buildings.
One of the new buildings. Jo'burg always had a fondness for "futuristic" architecture.
The new Johannesburg Stock Exchange (tenth largest SE in the world) in Sandton. It was moved from downtown Jo'burg to the up and coming (mostly white) city of Sandton just north of Jo'burg because the stockbrokers got tired of being mugged.
A new mall known as Melrose Arch.
The third largest mosque in Africa. The second largest mosque is in Cairo. The largest mosque in Africa is in Durban where I was born.
This area outside of Jo'burg was empty the last time I was there. It was famous for the "space house" on the hill, a futuristic mansion built in the 1960s. Now there is a Pick 'n Pay supermarket at the foot of the hill.
The Johannesburg skyline. It's an ugly industrial city but it has it's own charms. It's a mile high and has nearly 300 days of sunshine every year. The nights can be pretty cold in winter but the average daily high (winter and summer) is 75F.
It's the first of our biennial heat-waves. Here on the West Coast, we usually have one heat-wave in Spring (April/May) and another in Fall (August/September.) They are caused by high-pressure systems which revolve clockwise and therefore blow hot inland air out towards the coast.
Today it was 78F. Tomorrow it will be 85F and Friday is expected to be 95F. Fortunately our heat-waves only last for three days along the coast because, as the air heats up inland, it rises and delicious cool air (and fog) is sucked in from the ocean to replace it - our natural air-conditioning.
I'll be going to the office in Hawaiian shirts, shorts and flip-flops for the next couple of days but hopefully I can go back to wearing my usual jeans and flannel shirts on Monday or Tuesday when it is forecast to be our normal 55F along the coast.
This weekend the beaches will be packed with folks from the Valley escaping the heat there.
Needless to say we are under attack from mosquitoes out of the forest the same size as Michael Moore - and they're just as vicious and misanthropic as he is.
There's been a lot of stuff on TV lately so we didn't watched that many movies last month.
We watched all of season one of Jericho on DVD in March and then watched the second season (which we had saved to DVR) in April. I just wanted it get it out of the way. It's so lame but I had gotten hooked on the characters and simply wanted to see what happened to them.
The same goes for Torchwood, the BBC show, a spin-off from Dr Who. It was mostly tiresome nonsense but odd enough to never be totally boring but, like Jericho, I just wanted to find out what happened to the characters and then get it out of the way.
However Medium continues to be entertaining. Yes, I know that it's a lot like the old short stories in Ladies' Home Journal but there must be some writer on the team who keeps it completely unpredictable which is a treat in TV shows.
PBS was also chock-full of good stuff like the Masterpiece Theater Jane Austen marathon (which I recorded but most of which I haven't even watched yet) and a bunch of new detective stories on Mystery.
Here are the movies that I rented from Netflix:
Let's Go to Prison (2006)
John Lyshitski (Dax Shepard) gets his chance for sweet revenge when Nelson Biederman (Will Arnett) -- the son of the judge who sent Lyshitski to jail -- is wrongfully convicted of a crime and sentenced to prison. The scheming Lyshitski deliberately gets tossed back in the clink, where he does everything in his power to ensure that his new cellmate -- Biederman -- experiences all the wonders of prison life. Chi McBride and Dylan Baker co-star.
I got this because some bleeding heart condemned it in an article in the LA Times. The bleeding heart condemned it because it made fun of the "horrors of prison" however I condemn it because it was painfully stupid. Okay - it wasn't completely boring but it was a lot like one of the lamer skits on SNL. I do not recommend it.
The Mudge Boy (2004)
Duncan (Emile Hirsch) is a 14-year-old boy who's always been labeled the "weird" one. When Duncan's mother unexpectedly dies, he takes a bizarre interest in her clothing and starts to speak in her voice. His father (Richard Jenkins) doesn't understand his son's conduct, and all the kids poke fun at him. When Duncan befriends a group of older boys by buying them beer, he discovers that one of them, Perry (Tom Guiry), has dark secrets of his own.
Emile Hirsch is the latest matinee idol in Speed Racer. He seems to have been able to break free from type-casting as "the sissy boy who gets raped" role that he played in The Mudge Boy. Don't let that stand in your way of seeing a really brilliant movie - although it's not for the squeamish because it has some horrific scenes besides the blood-curdling rape scene. Hirsch is a highly accomplished actor and has the makings of a great career ahead of him.
Washed-up movie star Tony Hunter (Fred Astaire) tries to revive his career on Broadway in this classic musical comedy. Hunter and his talented cohorts encounter all kinds of problems as they try to bring "Faust" to the stage. Musical numbers include "That's Entertainment" and "Dancing in the Dark." Cyd Charisse, Oscar Levant, Nanette Fabray and Jack Buchanan also star. Extras include commentary by Liza Minnelli and Michael Feinstein.
What can I say? I'm a sucker for old Hollywood musicals - especially those with Fred Astaire.
I Am Legend (2007)
A terrible virus has spread across the planet and turned the human race into bloodthirsty monsters. Mankind's only hope for survival is scientist Robert Neville (Will Smith), the one person left unaffected by the epidemic. When he's not fighting for his life against the hordes of the infected, Neville searches for a cure to reverse the virus's effects -- all the while battling his own doubt and despair as he spends every day alone.
A remake of Omega Man, which I haven't seen. I didn't expect much from this movie but was pleasantly surprised. It really captures the feeling of what it must be like to be the only person left alive in Manhattan. Really eerie. Excellent.
The Water Horse: Legend of the Deep (2007)
Angus MacMorrow (Alex Etel) watches in awe as the mysterious egg he found on the shores of a nearby loch begins to hatch into something incredible. But how long can he keep his ever-growing secret from his mother (Emily Watson) -- and an increasingly concerned Scottish government? David Morrissey co-stars in this family-friendly fantasy based on the popular children's novel by Dick King-Smith.
A wonderful tale about the Loch Mess Monster.
Fantastic Four (2005)
During a space voyage, four scientists are altered by cosmic rays: Reed Richards (Ioan Gruffudd) gains the ability to stretch his body; Sue Storm (Jessica Alba) can become invisible and create force fields; Johnny Storm (Chris Evans) controls fire; and Ben Grimm (Michael Chiklis) is turned into a super-strong … thing! Together, these "Fantastic Four" must thwart the evil plans of Dr. Doom (Julian MacMahon). Tim Story directs.
We got this to watch before seeing the newish sequel. Not bad for a movie based on a comic book.
The Mist (2007)
After a brutal thunderstorm pounds a small town, the residents discover a malevolent mist hangs over their homes, killing anyone who remains outside. Trapped in a grocery store, a band of survivors must make a stand against the deadly fog. Based on a story by horror maestro Stephen King and directed by multiple Oscar nominee Frank Darabont, this spine chiller stars Thomas Jane, Marcia Gay Harden and Andre Braugher.
I have always thought that King's writing was mediocre at best and idiotic at worst but there's no getting away from the fact that some of his stories make good movies (such as Misery or Shawshank Redemption) but this one sucks. I kept hoping it would get better but had to stop watching about halfway through before I had a conniption fit. What total idiocy. And I'm not saying that just because King recently did a "John Kerry" - basically saying that you end up being a soldier in Iraq because you are stupid and uneducated. Now I'm sorry he wasn't killed in that accident before he said that and before he wrote The Mist. Absolute rubbish.
Playing by Heart (1998)
Love and lust swirl around contemporary Los Angeles, kicking up dust in the lives of Paul (Sean Connery), Joan (Angelina Jolie), Keenan (Ryan Phillippe), Mark (Jay Mohr) and Hannah (Gena Rowlands). The ensemble cast ably encapsulates many of the possibilities of romance in the bars, clubs, living rooms and motel rooms that make up the slippery battleground of the war between the sexes.
This was another movie that I ordered not realizing that we'd seen it before. Still it was worth watching again. Just wonderful.
I know that I got caught up in the drug subculture in the Sixties because I was unhappy. At first the emergence of the "peace and love" generation offered me hope. That soon soured as I found that drugs didn't offer real happiness and that the Flower Children were just as selfish as the parents whom they were judging. So, like a lot of burned out hippies, I turned to Hindu mysticism in my search for happiness. I found a guru who offered - yes, hope.
That was 35 years ago. Since then I have understood all about the seduction of hope. It is an exciting emotion but it can never be confused with true happiness which is in oneself and does not depend on external circumstances or stimuli. Happiness isn't necessarily exciting. It's usually simply about being contented with one's lot in life and grateful for it. And happiness has a way of eluding those who constantly chase after it and coming to those who don't expect it.
I left the guru but I have friends from that era who are still devoted to him because he gives them hope. These friends (I should say "former friends") all have one thing in common: they are generally unhappy with their lots in life, neurotic and often severely depressed. They live to see the guru and are only happy when they see him. The other thing that all these former friends have in common is that they are all wishful thinking leftists.
I still knew some of them back in the 80s when I was living in San Francisco. I remember how excited they were about Jesse Jackson's Rainbow Coalition. In fact it was at that time that I realized that I no longer had anything in common with them. I had a great job, a steady income and a happy and secure relationship while most of these moonbats had dropped out and failed to finish their educations and were stuck in dead-end jobs. They had messy relationships usually based on short-lived sexual attraction. They lived only for the next meeting with the guru or rock concerts to make them feel happy again - at least for a while. I'm sure these same people are now over the moon about Obama.
I guess I probably adapt more easily than most because I was born and raised in a small nation which had a world-class opera, ballet and symphony, a surgeon who performed the first heart transplant, three Nobel Peace Prize Laureates, three Nobel Literature Prize laureates and many other internationally famed authors, scientists, artists and actors. Like the Israeli settlers, the South African settlers produced an inordinate number of extraordinary people.
The South Africa that I was born into only had a population of 3 million (white) people who were outnumbered 5 to 1 by (black) people whom they regarded as un-Christian heathens and barbarians. Whether you like it or not, the fact is that those other 15 million black people were not yet regarded as fully human because they were still in thrall to some pretty dark and dreary superstitions and regularly killed each other for voodoo magic and ate each others' hearts, livers and penises for some rather silly and unscientific reasons.
But I met enough civilized individuals among them to make me realize that apartheid prevented too many good people from attaining their full potential. So I opposed it, went to jail for that and finally had to leave the country. By the time that the 15 million "others" eventually attained full citizenship 30 years later, they numbered 30 million and I regretted my youthful idealism but.....I adapted as did the 3 million white South Africans who are now outnumbered 10 to 1.
We can sit here in the comfort of our cozy little homes in the USA and fret about the fact that McCain isn't a "perfect conservative" and bemoan all sorts of things like the leftist MSM, our socialist school-teachers and the "invasion" of illegal aliens but that's all small potatoes in the big scheme of things, and, whether we like it or not, the world is passing us idealistic dreamers by. We were asleep at the wheel while 20 million Mexicans snuck across the border. We snoozed while fanatical Muslims attacked us in Iran, Lebanon, Somalia and right here in the World Trade center. It took the deaths of 3,000 Americans to wake some of us from our dream of niceness and comfort.
Even worse: we were asleep at the wheel while commies like William Ayers and Ward Churchill indoctrinated our children into a disdain for America and shame and guilt for being discriminating, cultivated and civilized white human beings. And then we wonder why a man with nothing but a good speaking voice and a nice schpiel about "hope and change" may be the next president of the USA.
Many years ago I realized that South Africa was a microcosm of the world where Europeans and their civilization were outnumbered ten to 1 by hordes of people to whom Shakespeare, Mozart and Newton meant nothing. I also saw that, if South Africa could survive and thrive, so could the rest of West. But, in order to survive, white South Africans have had to adapt or die - and, believe it or not, they are surviving and thriving. We will also have to do that.
It's possible that, in my lifetime, I will see the end of the USA as we know it when it becomes part of the North American Union; and Israel as it becomes Palestine and Europe as it becomes Eurabia. I may have to sit and patiently watch as our children welcome socialism and the UN becomes the One World Government.
We can't turn the clock back because we were asleep at the wheel while Marxists brainwashed our kids. And, if I look back on it, there was very little I could do to prevent my own offspring from being indoctrinated even if I wanted to. It happened while I was busy trying to survive and provide food and shelter for my family. It's only now that I no longer have to struggle to keep the wolf from the door, that I have the time to examine the big picture.
Of course I will adapt and make compromises and patiently explain to our kids that it's not worth re-inventing the wheel; that our wise Founders had already seen into the dark heart of human vice and created a Constitution which sought to prevent the ascendancy of the darkness. And I will be patient because I know that good always overcomes evil. Always. Look at history. Haven't things always gotten better? Sure, it's one step forward and two steps backward a lot of the time but there's no denying that I no longer have to work in a coal mine like my ancestors and die of black lung disease.
So - bottom line: I'll be voting for the "imperfect conservative" McCain and hoping that he will be good for the USA but I'm prepared for a President Obama (if that's what the majority want) and all the silly nonsense that will come with that because I know that, in the end, "alles sal reg kom." That was the motto of my ancestors the Afrikaners while they were being slaughtered and imprisoned in concentration camps by the British during the Boer War. It means "everything will come right." They were Christians who had faith and real hope in the Perfect Goodness which creates and sustains us - not the fake "hope" in government or politicians.
Scientifically speaking there is no such thing as "stomach flu." Influenza is a viral respiratory tract infection. Most of the time when people say they have "stomach flu," they actually have "food poisoning" caused by food or water contaminated with bacteria such as Salmonella, Shigella, Staphylococcus, Campylobacter jejuni, Clostridium, Escherichia coli and Yersinia.
But there are infections of the stomach caused by viruses such as the norovirus which accounts for half of all "stomach flus" and is transmitted from person to person. It's a disease that is easily avoided by simple hygiene aka washing the hands with soap and water. Well, some dirty person who didn't wash his/her hands gave me a norovirus infection last week.
By Saturday I was feeling pretty under the weather and was nauseous and couldn't eat lunch. Then I got a nasty stomach ache and abdominal cramps. Since then I've been feeling weak and droopy and today I felt so depressed and gloomy that I wondered if I was finally succumbing to "mid-life crisis" in my sixties since I skipped it in my forties when it's supposed to hit. But just as I was about to have my afternoon cup of tea at 4pm, I realized that my depression was physical not mental. I was feverish and my brain felt weird like I had flu.
Since then I've been putting two and two together I'm trying to think how I got it. I'm pretty picky about whose hands I shake so it must have been on the money that one of my tenants gave me when she paid her rent last Friday. She was still sick and had gotten out of bed to come and pay her rent. The one good thing that came out of it is that it made her quit smoking.
And I need to remember to wash my hands after touching money in future.
In South Africa we had a windmill to pump water from the well. If there was no wind you had to pump the water by hand. We had no electricity but some farms had windmills to run alternators for electricity.
On my farm in Oregon we have an electric pump to draw the water from the well and we use an electric motor to draw water from the creek for irrigation. We have a wood-stove for heat and plenty of wood in the forest. We have a generator for emergencies but we can only use it to power the fridges and freezers but how would we get water if we lost power for a long time?
I started researching windmills because I want to build one on my farm to draw water from the creek in emergencies and to keep a pond aerated and pump an ornamental fountain. I did look at the possibility of using the windmill to generate electricity but decided against that because it is a bit more complicated than using a windmill to operate a simple cylinder pump.
But this young man in Malawi didn't think so. He built a windmill to supply electricity for his village.
I found his story and this video on the Corner yesterday:
"This blog interested me first because of the title. But the quality of Patrick Joubert Conlon's writing has kept me coming back. His style is not presumptuous or pompous or condescending; it's plain and simple. Good old American English. Which is funny because Mr. Conlon was born and lived in South Africa for his first twenty one years and after that spent eight years in England before finding his home here in the U. S. His blog provides a rare outsider/insider perspective on the U. S. of A. He's been linked to by CNN on a couple of occasions and one of his posts was cited by the official Fred08 website. He does a lot of politics but also some lighter fare as well. He frequently posts spectacular photos taken on his Oregon farm."
"If I had to chose between having Born Again Redneck as a neighbor or a vegetarian hippie peacenik, I'd pick the gun-totin' Redneck anyday even if he is a bit queer."
The Alliance