If I disagree with you, it's because you are wrong.

I found these two images at about the same time, and I think it's significant, or at least appropriate. In place of "proverbs", you may insert: health advice, political opinions, convictions about race, sexual orientation and gender, denial of various global phenomena, and so on, and so on. 

What galls me is that practically no one prefaces their comments with "I believe that. . . " or "I think. . . " or "It has been my experience that. . . ", followed by a declaration of personal belief. Instead we get opinions hurled like explosive projectiles, and reactions like, "You fxxing moron, get back on your meds!". 

I was thinking today. . . just my opinion, but I was thinking what a disappointment the internet has become. When it was new, there was a sense of excitement, the unprecedented possibility to instantly access information and news, and global communications at light speed that SURELY would bring humanity together at last.

It has hardly come true, and sometimes feels like the opposite. Bland and cliched memes, almost always misspelled, represent practically the only form of benevolently-expressed opinion/sentiment. Read the comments section on just about any web page, and at some point, deeper down, it will devolve into snarling, mudslinging and thuggish name-calling. A lot of pages have started posting warnings to try to screen this shit out.

Let's not get into that left-out feeling, which I am sure only I experience (wink-wink, irony-irony), making me feel like an awkward thirteen-year-old girl. I tried to express some of that in a Facebook post: "friends" (meaning people they've never met who are potentially valuable business contacts) speaking to each other in a kind of impenetrable code that is designed to make others feel left out. 

What I got was two responses (as opposed to the few hundred sympathetic replies an "important" person would get), both from people who occasionally comment on my posts. One sent me a link which purported to tell me how to be more popular on Facebook so that my posts would reach more people. 

This wasn't what I was talking about. At all. I was talking about sensitivity to others, at least an attempt at inclusiveness in a very public medium, and not getting so much obvious pleasure from exclusivity. What she gave me was help for somebody who (she felt) obviously needed it, in order to step into line with the in-crowd. To change myself in order to join the popularity mill, instead of trying to change the system.

The other comment in essence said, "Well, I don't have that problem. I have lots of friends and I don't think anybody ever speaks in code. It never occurred to me to feel left out."

In other words, it's just you. Fine. Her opinion! But that doesn't answer the question: why do you think it's just me?

I'm an uneasy fit with all this social media stuff and would bail, if I didn't want to at least try to stay connected with the literary world. But high school dynamics continue unto death, I guess. My three novels failed, not because they were shitty quality but because they failed to be "popular", which means moving copies. No one talks about this, and if I try to get a discussion going about it, everyone looks away. They're embarrassed for me, somehow, and don't want to get caught up in it. It is the most entrenched, unspoken taboo in the writing field. 

But it's true! To be an author (as opposed to a writer), you have to be read. How else can it be defined? Why is that so unreasonable, so crass? To be read, you have to sell copies, but if you even say this out loud, you're seen as mercenary and an attention whore. But a concert pianist is not expected to play in an empty hall.

I guess this will be seen as a "rant", but at the same time, a blog is supposed to be a place you can express your feelings. Instead, I will go and do something else, entertain myself, have some fun - which I do, and which is the main purpose of keeping this blog going. After all, no one can steal my creativity, which I believe is intact in spite of everything.  I very seldom look at views, because if I get too much into numbers, it will be over. But my days of writing serious novels or even short stories are over. I have retired from the impossible horse race in which I always seem to bring up the rear.

The day everything changed

(From Snopes) In the immediate aftermath of the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks on the Pentagon and New York’s World Trade Center, all sorts of visual media (e.g., films, television programs, print advertisements) were hurriedly scrubbed of depictions of the now-obliterated World Trade Center towers, or of any other images that included (or even suggested) airplanes in close proximity to skyscraper-like buildings. (A prime example of this phenomenon was a 2002 Starbucks advertisement which the company withdrew due to controversy that its imagery of a dragonfly’s buzzing about two large Tazo Citrus drinks, under the slogan “Collapse Into Cool,” was too reminiscent of the 9/11 attacks.) 

As well, visual media were scoured for images antedating the 9/11 attacks which depicted airplanes, explosions, or fires in conjunction with the World Trade Center towers, with the results being described as everything from frighteningly accurate prophecies to merely interesting coincidences (as exemplified in the pre-9/11 designs of a couple of album covers).

Among the latter category of images, perhaps no commercial image was more eerie than the one displayed above, purportedly a French-language print advertisement for Pakistan International Airlines promoting flights between Paris and New York. The ad’s stark black-and-white imagery depicting the large shadow of an approaching airliner spread across the two World Trade Center towers is so suggestive of the terrible events of 11 September that many viewers have assumed it to be a post-9/11 fabrication (especially given the connection that Pakistan was identified as the suspected hiding place of Osama bin Laden).

In fact, PIA had been promoting its New York/Paris and New York/London routes in print media at least as far back as 1972 (as shown in a New York magazine advertisement from that year), and the graphic displayed above is indeed a PIA advertisement which has been verified as appearing in (among other publications) the French periodicals L’Expansion and the 19 March 1979 issue of the Le Point.

BLOGSERVATIONS. Ahhh! Ahk. Oh. This made me feel a bit faint. It was eerie in the extreme, especially when I found out it was real. Just a coincidence, of course - an image that wouldn't mean anything in 1979 except jetsetting and the glamour of international travel. Or - ? That shadowy figure still scares the hell out of me. 

Everyone has their own 9-11 nightmare, and mine is a recurrent vision of what it would be like on one of those planes just before it hit. How much would people know? How much would they see? Berry Berenson, wife of Anthony Perkins, was on one of them. Her last moments must have been terror and confusion. Audio exists of the plane that was wrested away from the terrorists, the one that was supposed to crash into the White House. One can hear them praising Allah in the background as doom approaches. How doomed is the human race, how self-hating, how idiotic! And now a whole culture has grown up to deny the whole thing. Yes, and the walrus was Paul. Or something.

Screech! Screech! Steller's jay in the cedars

Burn your bridges!

Married Love: a consumer's guide

I've written about this amazing little book before, but this time I want to can the smart remarks and just provide a word-for-word transcript. It's a surprise in many ways. These kinds of books don't exist any more, as far as I know, for it's assumed couples will already have adequate sexual experience before marriage not to need one. It's one of the great deceptions of our time. As with most of the crucial skills of life (parenthood, anyone?), we receive no instruction whatsoever about sexual congress and how to make it enjoyable for our partner. The assumption is that when the time comes, we'll know.

Funnily enough, no such thing was assumed "back when". Men were expected to be considerate about their wives and their feelings. They were urged to be patient. I wonder where that one went. My girl friends have long whispered to me that most men are plain lousy at this. They honestly believe the goal of sex is to get themselves off as quickly as possible, no doubt conditioned by porn and a lot of fast and mechanical whacking off. I'm not against whacking off, but it seems to me ironic that way back then, when there were so many inhibitions about the whole thing, people were far more concerned about such matters as pleasure and satisfaction on both sides.

Now there's no such guide. I'm not saying every man thinks only about his own pleasure, but it has to be a great majority. And the belief that women don't need sex and shouldn't even think about it still hangs around. It's something you do for guys, to keep them around.

I read a lot more open and honest magazine articles about female sexuality back in the '80s and '90s. Now, mysteriously, women's sexual needs have disappeared again, while "sex" has devolved into a monstrous tits-and-ass show that bears no relation to reality.

Will Their Dream Come True, or will Sex Ignorance Mar their Happiness

Thousands of marriages end in misery and divorce because so many married people are ignorant of the Art of Love. Is your marriage on the brink of ruin? Do you search for the joy of a perfect union? Now YOU can change despair into heavenly happiness - if you know the secrets of the intimate physical contacts of marriage.

Dr. Marie Stopes, in the preface to her world-famous book, said, "In my own marriage I paid such a terrible price for sex ignorance that I felt that knowledge gained at such a price should be placed at the service of humanity." This volume, "Married Love", courageously fulfills this noble purpose.

Partial Contents

The practice of restraint to please the wife.
Surest way to prepare wife for union.
The marital rights of the husband.
What the wife must do to bring her husband's physical desires
in harmony with her own.
Regulation of physical marital relations.
Sleeplessness from unsatisfied desires.
Nervousness due to unsatisfied desires.
Charts showing periodicity of natural desire in women.
The essential factors for the act of union.
Greatest physical delights in marital union.
How some women drive their husbands to prostitutes.
Natural desire for physical union.
Joys of the honeymoon.
Ignorance of the bride and unwise actions of the groom.
The man who has relations with prostitutes before marriage.
Causes for unhappiness in marriage.
Frequency of marital relations.
Stimulation of physical desires.
The problem of the strong-sexed husband and the
weak-sexed wife.
Positions.
Physical relations during pregnancy.
Problems of childless unions.

With remarkable frankness, and in simple, understandable language, Dr. Stopes explains the intimate and important details of wedded life. Point by point, and just as plainly as she would tell you in private confidence, Dr. Stopes takes up each of the many troublesome factors in marriage. She makes clear just what is to be done to insure contentment and happiness. She writes directly, forcefully, concretely, explaining step by step every procedure in proper sex relations.

1,000,000 COPIES SOLD

I can't read the rest of it, but it refers to a federal judge lifting the "ban"on this book - assuming there was one. We laugh at those times and wonder how people could be so prudish, but how much better is it now? I mean, I don't go around asking everyone, but I happen to know a number of women who find sex distasteful - not because SEX is distasteful, but because their partners simply don't care enough to make it any good for them. Women's desires may be taboo, but porn is bigger than ever and can be googled up in less than two seconds. I believe a lot of men - even the majority - are beginning to prefer it, because there's none of this messy intimacy and skill and other things that might hamper the ultimate goal of getting themselves off.

Cat loves music

Bugatti bones

Animated Facebook covers!

I finally found a way to copy and embed these two animated Facebook covers! I took a shot at making one of these for my own page, but it was too complex. Like a lot of "new" FB features, it may eventually become easier, but then people will post a lot of VERY obnoxious ones (with sound that you won't be able to get away from). 

After months of putting up with it with no choice, FB has just now given me the "option" of seeing my notifications while I'm doing something else. For months they have been popping up in the corner no matter what I am trying to do, and my attempts to get rid of them resulted in disabling my precious Adblocker, so that my son had to re-activate it. So now they ASK me if I want it?? The only way I could get away from it was to say, "Ask me later", which is hardly a "no", is it?

Like a lot of FB videos, this isn't formatted for my blog (I'm still looking for a way to do that), but even with part of it cut off, it's pretty cool to watch. Does it represent The Future?

Scientology: the wrong way to cry

Note to shameful-secret-watchers-of-A&E: I am just as hooked on "that Scientology show" as you are - maybe even more so, because I have a thing about cults. And I have a thing about cults because I have experienced devastating religious abuse, and dealt with it by walking away from it. I have yet to come to the point where I can write about it in any detail, but in two instances, trusted spiritual leaders were ejected or went to jail for breaking every moral and ethical law that exists, up to and including sexual assault. The fact that the religious trauma of my childhood somehow, unbelievably, happened again in adulthood still makes my head spin.

This means that shows like this can "trigger" me. And they do. Boy do they. Why do I keep coming back for more?

But I have to admit, the above video by a former Scientologist (I used only a snippet, and purposely didn't put a name on it) got to me. He literally stuck his face right into the camera and wailed. This is the opposite of what I see on "that Scientology show", where people seem to have an awfully hard time dealing with tears.

It's understandable that everyone cries on this show. If it were me, I would have committed suicide a long time ago, so to a person I think they are heroic, and have the right to display any and all emotions that are left over from this bizarre quasi-military UFO cult.

But to a person, including (and especially) Leah Remini, they cry in a funny way.

I don't think I have ever seen anyone allow a tear to trickle down their face on this show. It's always very carefully dabbed away with a tissue before it escapes the bottom eyelid.

I've seen people cry like this before, and it makes me wonder if they have trouble with emotion, or are even afraid of it, afraid of letting it overflow. 

Is this the Scientology way? Or are these people so emotionally brutalized that they are afraid to let that particular emotional rain fall?

In the case of Leah, the careful dabs are like a science experiment with blotting paper. I wondered at first if she were trying to preserve her perfect makeup. She IS pretty free with the lip collagen, after all (her lips are a different size and shape every week, which is a distraction), and maybe doesn't want puffy eyes to match.

But then I saw others doing it, and it was even more mysterious. In this one, the lady even seems to be offering up her single tear as a kind of sacrifice.

Dab, dab, dab. No nose-blowing either, no rivers of snot such as you'd get with a real flood of tears.

In case you think I'm being flip - all right, I am, but as compelling as it is, this is a reality TV show, which (as with all of them) you have to take with a tiny grain of salt. I have no doubt these people suffered horrendous trauma and will spend a lifetime trying to get past it. But I also get the feeling their ordeal is being packaged by the producers in a way which will appeal to the largest possible segment of the public. And this isn't fair to them any more than it's fair to the rest of us.

Scientologists are lunatics, in my book, and their ugly paramilitary organization is an offshoot of Nazi Germany more than anyone yet realizes. Some day, the connections will be found, whether from Hubbard or that insane little pipsqueak who comes up to Tom Cruise's belly button (and never mind the ramifications of THAT). Scientology rallies have a Nuremberg flavor to them, the wide, dizzying camera angles reminiscent of Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will. The histrionic announcer on those pep-rally-style videos is so ludicrous that it's almost funny, sort of a cross between Adolf Hitler and a spokesman for Ron Popeil.

Right. So we've established that this is an evil regime, and brutal for people to exit without consequences. But what about the guy in the first video? I confess I didn't watch the whole thing, because I couldn't, but I know that it's about Scientology and his attempt to escape it. He has a whole series of them, written from the perspective of a persecuted gay man who was lured in by the promise of acting gigs. I've never seen anyone cry "at" a camera before, to the point of nearly jamming it down his throat, and it kind of turned me off. I also noticed there were no tears - I mean, none at all, not even the blotting paper kind, though he wiped away "something" at the end. But he did not have the red or inflamed or even the watery eyes of weeping. HE WASN'T CRYING, folks, which means that he was pretending to cry, trying to make us think he was. And he wasn't.

This video produced a flood of sympathetic comments, the usual Greek chorus of deliberately elicited/stage-managed support. I don't know what's going on here, but my solar plexus gong is ringing, and I feel as if I'm being played. It's powerful stuff, which means it should NOT be played with, at all. Ever.  People have been jerked around enough, haven't they? But here it is, and I know there is a lot more. It just seems offensive to me, like a plea for my sympathy. I also see all sorts of tweets and loyal fan comments and even a "documentary" this guy made, but I have to say to you at this point, I really doubt if this guy was ever a Scientologist. My spidey sense/fake-o-meter is telling me he wasn't. 

Even if he was, I think it was peripheral. He saw an ad in the back of a comic book, walked in and out of his own volition and never spent time licking floors in the Hole. Maybe he even did it to have something to blog about? I don't think he was ever enmeshed or entrenched like the survivors on the Leah Remini show. He walked out, disappointed that he wasn't getting gigs. The YouTube thumbnails are a bit depressing: Sex with Scientology Celebrities and my $5000.00 Tshirt! Mom Interviewing Me about Scientology, Big Blue and Masturbation! Offer to Star in Scientology-Themed XXX Gay Film! etc. etc. etc. He even boasts of meeting Tom Cruise. 

Scientology is a way for this guy to get the kind of attention he thinks he needs, and it's working. Behind it is that peculiar stew or fever that means he is working his way relentlessly towards a reality series of his own. 

For after all - isn't that the ultimate goal of every one of us?

Post-blogservations. I noticed today - not that I notice these things - that the above YouTuber announced the reason he went so over the top the other night. He says his grandma died. He never said anything about this last night when he was swallowing the camera lens. At least he could have made it his dog! His Nana must be really pissed, because now he can't write about her any more.

Chase the wind: girl on a flying pony

I made these not-entirely-satisfying gifs from a Facebook video I loved, mainly because the video won't fit my antiquated blog space (and I can't find it on YouTube, except for the short excerpt I posted above).

This little girl is hell-for-leather, and if her riding style sometimes lacks finesse (she loses a stirrup near the end and begins to bounce around alarmingly), girl and pony somehow come through with great bravura. Together, they are fearless. At first I thought this video was on the wrong speed, the pony seemed so fast, but I think it has to do with the photography - the cinematography, I'd call it, which has some sort of understanding of show jumping and the way horse and rider move around the course. None of this wretched miles-from-nowhere stuff shot on a phone.

Cat rescue: whiskers in the night!

 

The living saints at Canopy Cat Rescue have done it again, beguiling a scared little tuxedo (with white whiskers to die for) out of a high and scary place. I made these gifs out of a video that didn't quite fit my screen, and it's too bad they don't have sound, because the miaaaawwwws are plaintive and beseeching: translated, they'd say, "Get me the fxxx DOWN from here!"

Pastry hacks at the speed of light

This is more of a watching video than a doing video. Fun and fancy, but I'll probably never try them. I'm more of a butter tart person myself, or a cheese straw person (mmmmm . . cheese straws. . . ). I haven't made a pie in a very long time. Eons ago, I would turn out a raisin pie with a lattice crust (I mean a true lattice, weaving the pastry strips in and out like a basket, not a faux lattice such as you see here). The kids didn't like it, but I think it kept my marriage together through many a storm.

Pastry is a hereditary condition, like certain diseases. I inherited the knack from my mother, who got it from HER mother, etc. etc., all the way back to Old Ireland and the most primitive, poverty-stricken kitchen, where women nonetheless turned out warm, juicy, delectable fruit pies, the cherries and apples picked the same day from their own trees. The pastry would be like a bit of heaven in the mouth. It must have helped to make a scraping, strivingly hard life more bearable.

We had a sour cherry tree in the back yard in Chatham, a gnarled thing with a big branch at the bottom that kept almost falling off, so that we had to tie it back on with rope. It didn't help that I kept climbing it to get over the picket fence to my neighbor's house and their fascinating pigeon coop. Once I saw the Dad flick the head off a live chicken and watched it flap around, while the head sat on the step, its beak opening and closing.

The sour cherries, when combined with just the right amount of sugar, were the kind of Proustian memory you take to your grave. I can see them now, and feel them in my mouth, the tart pink slipskins. Too bad the best stuff in my life had to happen so long ago.

My daughter picked up pastry-making from me, her light hand making her a natural. Caitlin then got it almost right away, perfecting it on second try. She just got it, understood that you must handle the pastry gently but firmly, not working the gluten. 

Many people never learn the knack. I don't put much into it, don't fuss, don't use a marble slab or ice water or anything (but I DO wipe the plant dirt off the counter first), sticking the bowl under the tap, when it's supposed to be some sort of distilled Alpine water or whatever. The pastry tells you when it is right.

(If you want to hear the sound track to this, click play, click on the Facebook symbol on the bottom right corner, and you'll get a sound version. Not much to write home about, but there it is.)

Julia Child's Classic French Madeleines




Prep time
1 hour

Cook time
20 mins

Total time
1 hour 20 mins

Ingredients
2 eggs
⅔ cup sugar
1 cup plus 1 tablespoon All purpose flour (Maida)
140 grams unsalted butter
¼ teaspoon pure vanilla extract
¼ teaspoon lemon juice
¼ teaspoon lemon zest
pinch of salt
Powdered sugar (optional)


Instructions

Slightly beat the eggs in a bowl. Measure ¼ cup of eggs into a bowl. 

Then beat in the sugar and the cup of flour. Add little more egg ( a tablespoon at a time), if the batter is too dry. When thoroughly blended, set aside and let it rest for 10 minutes. 

Meanwhile, melt the butter in a sauce pan, bring it to the boil, and let it brown lightly. Set aside.

 
Place the 1 tablespoon of flour in a small bowl and blend in 1½ tablespoons of the browned butter. Paint the Madeleine cups with the butter-flour mixture. Set aside. 

Stir the rest of the butter over ice until cool but liquid. Mix the butter with the last of the eggs along with salt, lemon rind and juice and vanilla. 

Add this mixture to the resting batter and stir well. Allow the batter to rest for 10 more minutes. If you want a big hump in the middle which is so characteristic about Madeleines, allow the batter to rest for one hour at room temperature or couple of hours in the refrigerator. 

Preheat the oven to 375 F, and set the racks in upper and lower middle levels. Divide the batter into 24 lumps of a generous tablespoon each, and drop them into the Madeleine cups. Bake in the preheated oven until the cakes are slightly browned around the edges, humped in the middle, and slightly shrunk from the cups. 

Un-mold onto a rack. When cool, turn shell side up and dust with confectioners sugar for serving. (dusting is optional). They will keep in the refrigerator for a day or two in an airtight container.

Are You Lost In The World Like Me

Just stumbled on this when looking for something else - specifically, the animated Facebook cover for Meowingtons (which I MIGHT be able to post a link to). This just started playing on Facebook, as videos are wont to do, and I was snipped. I mean, snapped - I mean, soaked into it, because it is so very real. It humbles me to think that a real cartoonist (someone named Steve Cutts) animated this, when I aspire to make jerky little figures move with a rinkydink gif program. It's based on the animation style of my beloved TerryToons from the early '30s, with a macabre side of Max Fleischer expressionism, but its message is as "right now" as it gets. It expresses everything I feel about Phone Culture, which I still refuse to join (though I do have one, and you'll never guess what I do with it!. . . That's right.)

Watch this more than once. More than twice. I'm going to watch it again later. And again.

LOOK - a real live PONY!

This is one of those sinister comic book ads from the 1950s that promised naive, trusting children all sorts of extravagant "free gifts". They claimed to be just GIVING away dolls, wristwatches, jewelry, guitars, strange dark rectangular things (?), and - most seductively - "a real live PONY". (Note that they don't say "we're giving away a pony" - no, we're just supposed to look at it.)

Coyly displayed below the splendid image of a "free" rifle is the announcement "OUR 60th YEAR" - our? Who or what is this "our"? Look closely - no, don't, because you can't, the type is too small. But back then, when we all had better eyesight, we would eventually realize that to attain any of these "free" ponies and radios and cameras and other things, we had to do something.

To sell something.

To sell something door-to-door. Cloverine Salve, to be exact. As a kid, I had no idea what salve was, and even now I wonder what could have been in it. Goose grease, perhaps?  I guess it was something like Vick's Vap-o-rub, stuff that you smeared on yourself or others. At any rate, you had to sell a tremendous amount of this stuff to earn any of these premiums, and I really doubt if anyone ever had a live horse slipped through their mail slot.

Just the tone of this ad and its feverish captions (GIVEN - GIVEN - GIVEN, ACT NOW, ONCE IN A LIFETIME, BE FIRST, WE ARE RELIABLE, and, strangest of all, WE TRUST YOU) - all these exhortations have an evangelical quality to them, a sort of religious fervor which reminds me of Elmer Gantry at the pulpit. This is old-timey salesmanship at its cheesiest, and I can only imagine those poor children trudging up and down the neighborhood having doors slammed in their faces. Child exploitation at its most heartless. 

But soft! Cloverine had not yet  finished its cruel deception. In subsequent ads, likely in the early '60s, children were lured by exciting comic-book adventures, only to be seduced by the promise of "getting stuff". One wonders if some sort of legal boundary had been crossed with that early ad, with its dastardly "look - a real live PONY" scam. The premiums look similar, but they are actually squashed down at the bottom of the comic-book adventure. This time you actually see a can of Cloverine salve (which I couldn't even find in the older ad). Truth in advertising?

I found a lot of these, so I made a collage. You can't read the typeface anyway, but they're pretty much the same. Two of the four still mention the Live Pony, so I wonder if you actually DID get one if you sold a million dollars worth of salve (and owned a farm).

I don't want to think about all those unsold cans of Cloverine salve. As with those waxy chocolate-covered almonds my kids had to sell for Brownies and Cubs, parents no doubt took up the slack. But at least you could eat the almonds.

And I found this. I don't know what to make of it. An old-fashioned meat grinder, and a. . . 

Black Arabian stallion

NOTE. Some of the Facebook videos I've been posting have no sound. I'm working on it. Maybe a silent movie is better than the lame music behind some of them! This has only a wind sound, so try whistling while you watch it.

Abomination: the Spaghetti-o gelatine ring

I have no words for this, so will say naught. My never-ending quest to find the most abominable retro recipe might just have come to a dead stop. 

Put a smile in your smoking!

Wings Tracking Shot

Explosion in the sky!

A meteorite exploded dramatically in the night sky over Western Canada tonight. And I didn't see it! But everyone was talking about it on Facebook, and someone posted this from their security camera. Some felt their house shaking, heard loud bangs, others thought of North Korea and that fat little man that everyone hates. Fortunately, nothing happened. This is just about the coolest video ever.