Goodbye, white borders. . . (random png transparents)

 

Blogger recently updated its "interface", a word which scared the hell out of me at first. Suddenly ALL my images, all through my entire blog history, had glaring white borders, and png transparents appeared in a white box. After MUCH dithering around and finally finding a helpful support page with a real human being in charge, I figured it out. All is restored to harmony, though with the new interface, some of my older posts probably don't look quite right. Facebook and YouTube recently changed format, and no doubt I will soon lose Internet Explorer and my photo-editing program, which is old as the hills but which works beautifully and is simple to use. Sometimes things are just updated, and I can do all the same stuff. Why am I writing all this, when it probably doesn't interest you? It interests ME, and is pretty crucial to my continuing as a blogger, YouTuber, Facebooker, etc. I am slow to change, but how gratifying is it when I finally figure something out??? WOWEE.

Lenny, we always loved you!

I want to write a much more detailed post about Bernstein, as I'm on one of my "kicks" with him (I saw him conduct in 1967 to open a new Centennial Hall in London, Ontario and remember every detail of it, unlike all the other dull concerts my parents schlepped me to.) I've been digging into his life with biographies, and have found one absolute dud, one absolute gem, and a few in between. Reviews to come.

At this moment, to be honest, I'm experimenting a lot with the "new Blogger" format which, so far, has been. . . Let's just say I'm having to try a lot of new things. 

I hate change, and this is that, but I can also see where Blogger was becoming a dinosaur and would soon no longer function at all. I LOVE my new home page, the setup isn't too radically different, but why the damn white boxes around everything? 

I've had to get used to the New YouTube, the New Facebook, a new email system, etc. etc., and so far the changes have either been beneficial or not noteworthy. 

So if I end up posting some pretty strange stuff over the next days or weeks or months, that will be why. 

Duck playing the drums

This got over FOUR MILLION views on YouTube. I'm lucky if I break ten.

It IS, however, pretty cool. 

REALLY dumb article about Prince Harry.

Click below for:

REALLY dumb article about Prince Harry! 

(REALLY dumb.)😕

Grumpy Grandpa: get me out of here!

 

SMILE! You're on hidden camera

 

(Why surveillance and "secret" photography is NOT a new thing!)

Secret Street Photos in the 1890s Taken by a Student with a Hidden Camera

Dec 23, 2018 Steve Palace

Norwegian Carl Størmer became a force to be reckoned with in the fields of math and astrophysics. But he also had other interests.

Every great mind starts somewhere and it was the business of photography that caught his eye… quite literally.

While studying mathematics at the University of Oslo (formerly the Royal Frederick University, Kristiania) he found himself dabbling in the fine art of taking snaps.

Carl Størmer. Photo by Nasjonalbiblioteket CC BY 2.0

Yet these were no ordinary pictures. Burgeoning talent that he was, 19-year-old Størmer used the historical equivalent of the spy cam to capture city life at its most naturalistic.

QUESTION: OK, so was he a brilliant innovator or just a sneaky little bastard? And what ELSE did he photograph without the subject's knowledge or approval? I must have a suspicious mind. 

The Troll Doll Channel: Strangely beautiful! One-of-a-kind trolls

"It might be food" (part 486)

 

Indeed it might, but probably not. 

Why food needed to be encased in brownish jelly made from boiled-down hoofs and hides, we will never know. Nor will we know if people actually ate such things. Perhaps it was a way to hide rancid leftovers in a festive casing that disguised the fact these were actually WAR RATIONS merely designed to keep you alive.

Anyway! As Blogger changes over into something I cannot even recognize, and as I struggle to master a system which is in no way an improvement over the old one which I've happily used for ten years, I hereby present the actual recipes that match up to. . . well, none of these pictures actually. But they're so lyrically awful that they form a kind of bizarre poetry. Or I think they do. I don't know, tonight I feel as if maybe I DO have COVID after all and will soon die. If so, so long, it's been good to know you. And so long, Blogger, the way I knew you in those precious times of the ancient technological past.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bentley is my joy!

 

Lovely to look at: Victorian ladies in colour

WHEN???

ULTIMATE Creepy Clown Compilation!

With music.

Bentley in the jungle!

Are we all narcissists? I don't think so

This post resulted from comments I made on YouTube videos about the subject, which somehow evolved into longer chains of thought that I felt might have some value on this blog. It's easy to come up with examples - hundreds of them - of how the narcissist in the family manipulated, damaged and vampirized both friends and enemies, ate their young, and attempted the kind of dominance usually only equalled by totalitarian political leaders.

My sister the narcissist (13 years older than me) did something so inexplicably awful that I still have trouble wrapping my brain around it. She wrote my mother's obituary, imposing her own agenda on it, for my mother was on her deathbed. 

I was not in my mother's obituary. I had been stricken off the record and, according to that document, had never been born at all. 

As cruel and indifferent as my mother could be, I do not think it was her idea. It was my sister's ultimate act of malignant jealousy and hatred of me, an attempt to literally "unmake" me. Of course I was devastated at first, but then I had this thought: no matter what my kids did, even if they were murderers, even if they murdered ME, in no way, shape or form would I ever even think of striking them from the record, because they are MINE, my beloveds, I birthed and raised them, so this malignant hatred was NOT transferred to me. 

It did not happen by itself, as you can imagine, but through years, and years, and years of therapy, falling into addiction, mental illness, suicide attempts, etc. - BUT, somehow, always coming out the other side. I showed the obituary to my adult daughter, who snorted and said, "That says everything about HER, and nothing about YOU." She also said, and I liked this, "Don't give it another thought." In other words, don't let this nasty lie rent any more space in your head! Garbage is garbage and should be thrown out. I couldn't have said it better myself. 

As a P. S.: a high school friend phoned me and said, "I am sorry to read about your mother, but why aren't you in her obituary? Was it some sort of oversight?" I said, "no, it was quite deliberate," and my friend was so horrified she couldn't speak for a while. And people squabble and complain when they are left out of the will! But that attempt to erase my very existence turned out to be pretty laughable, after all. I managed to have two wonderful kids who also turned out to be wonderful parents. That doesn't happen to someone who never existed, does it? I don't think so.

Narcissism has lately been exposed in the popular culture as never before, but suddenly it has become too prevalent and is being rendered meaningless. If everyone is a narcissist, then no one is a narcissist. It's like saying "we're all geniuses" and other absurd generalizations. Human beings are far more complicated than that. Nor is it inevitable for narcissism to beget narcissism down the generations. It CAN be stopped and rooted out, but only if it is recognized and no longer tolerated. 

I know a lot of wonderful, even selfless people, and I married one, even while being exposed to hateful narcissism in my childhood. We gravitate towards who we are ourselves, or perhaps (in my case) who we would like to be. I know people who grumble "there are no good marriages," but inevitably their own relationships are chaotic. People I know with stable marriages are puzzled by this and always say most of their close friends have good marriages.

But the problem now is how easy it is for a narcissist to exert influence over others on a mass scale. A narcissist can very quickly attain world prominence on social media and become an "influencer" (incubus/succubus) and thus wield enormous economic and even political power (Kanye West for President??) on a global level. And you do not even have to spend a cent to do it. Twitter is the great equalizer.

Meghan Markle is a chilling example - she is now called "the most talked-about woman on the planet", and I agree, there are mainstream news items about her every day now, in which she is usually shown in a totally benevolent, humanitarian light. She has cultivated "friends" who are so well-placed (Oprah, Gayle, Ellen, Elton, George and Amal, etc.) that she almost cannot fail. If she rises to political prominence as she seems to want to, God help us all, we will have another Trump on our hands.

When I watch true crime shows like Dateline, it shocks me how often the victims of horrendous violence will say "I forgave him". I do not like the current emphasis on what I call the "forgiveness agenda". Supposedly, you "MUST" forgive the people who have wronged you, even if they have murdered your children, or else you will be filled with anger and rage and bitterness for the rest of your life. 

People who say they have done this are treated like living saints, and it creates pressure on others because it becomes a "should". I disagree. To survive and ultimately thrive, you've got to get away from malignant narcissists, escape with your life, and concentrate on reclaiming yourself. My therapist said about forgiveness: "Don't make an issue out of it" - in other words, you do not HAVE TO do anything! No other person has the right to dictate how you heal yourself, because it is an absolutely sacred process known only to yourself and whatever the healing agents are in your life.

What actually happened over many years and even decades of struggle is that I went from total disgust and contempt for my abusers to a kind of measured pity. I DO feel sorry for these people, because they are truly pathetic human beings. I cannot imagine anything worse than being that sort of person, even if they are not the ones who suffer most. Nor are there any of those kinds of people in my current circle, nor will there ever be. 

But this hard-won pity is NOT the same as coerced forgiveness, which is NOT necessary to avoid a lifetime of bitter rage. Don't let anyone pressure you into something that feels wrong to you! The "forgiveness agenda" may well be yet another attempt to silence you, because people are profoundly uncomfortable with your pain and anger and don't want to hear about it. Their motives are entirely selfish. People have largely lost the ability to bear witness without judgement, which is what all wounded people/all people need. "You must forgive" can just be another way of saying "don't talk about that any more." It's cowardly, selfish and not what is called for. I am not impressed by it. But pressure to forgive is sanctified and bulwarked by basic Christian principles, which makes it even more potentially powerful and even deadly. 

In my own former so-called-liberal Christian church, we struggled and wrestled with the concept of forgiveness as a "must" in Christian faith. If you can't forgive, the myth went, then you are not a true Christian. You must at least "try", struggle and strain, and reproach yourself continually if you can't do it. It was very important not to feel "comfortable" in our faith. It was work, and I now see it as thankless work and a waste of energy and time. We were even told "God will only forgive you if you forgive everyone else," which is an abomination and the most coercive idea I have ever encountered. It's one of the more insidious forms of religious abuse, and I somehow tolerated it for fifteen years for the sake of "belonging".

If God does not play dice with the Universe, as Einstein claimed, then God doesn't force people into uncomfortable and unhealthy patterns through coercion or "guilt trips". The Christian God no longer makes sense to me, and I feel if there is any benevolence at all in the Universe, it must come from us and travel from heart to heart. God's grace, if you want to call it that, is lived out through those difficult acts of compassion which force us to stretch beyond our own little universe of closed thoughts and wrongheaded ideas.

We cannot wait around for Big Daddy to fix things, or even fix us. Jesus at least tried to get this across, but no one seems to have heard him. The hardest thing in the world is to bear witness to another's pain silently and non-judgementally. Don't say anything, for once! Don't even think anything. Don`t try to fix it. Just sit. It is what 12-step groups attempt to do, usually imperfectly, but they at least try. To bear witness often means to just not bolt out of the room, or make all sorts of frantic attempts to get the person to shut up and follow THEIR hidden agenda. How rare it is, and I believe it is the only key for human beings to truly help each other in a world full of anxiety, stress and daily predictions of doom.

Is it real, or is it. . . ?

And then. . .

Are we being shamed for needing medical help?

I am about to express a very unpopular view which I believe everyone is afraid to talk about.

No one needs reminders of the COVID pandemic and how it has utterly swallowed the energy and attention of the medical industry worldwide. I believe people are being shamed into keeping their medical concerns to themselves and not taking up their doctors' valuable time. I have not spoken to my doctor in four months and am told to "just go to Emergency" if I have a serious problem. My last trip to Emergency yielded me a wildly off-target diagnosis (made on the fly by whoever was on call), prompting my doctor to become very angry with me and accuse me of "trying to diagnose myself" when it turned out to be wrong. 

I am seeking another family doctor, but I realize this very likely won't happen. I am not trying to whine about this, but over the long term, people are going to die from medical neglect and the absence of the kind of preventative care which can intercept relapses and prevent bouts of very serious illness. Elderly people who are already isolated and chronicaly ill are being cut off completely if they have no computer access. 

We all seem to feel very guilty about asking for help, but this is a situation created by dismissive doctors who do NOT make their regular patients a priority. I even feel bad about posting this, because I will be seen as disloyal to the cause and not praising doctors enough for being so heroic. But I'd have more respect for them if they would so much as attempt to do their jobs.

I know a woman who is afraid she is having cancer symptoms. When she finally got through to the intern filling in for the intern who is filling in for her doctor, she was told, "No, that doesn't sound like cancer to me, but if you're having anxiety about it, just go to Emergency." She did not, because Emergency triggers overwhelming anxiety and panic about past abusive treatment, and (once again) she has been conditioned to feel guilty for taking up the doctors' valuable time. 

The fact that she has a "history" of anxiety and depression seems to negate her credibility entirely. But to even mention this scenario as a possibility only results in more anger and dismissal. It comes across as a completely unfair and even cruel and selfish accusation. "Of course" they "would never" do such an unprofessional thing to the public, their dedication has never wavered, and you are wrong to even think it, let alone express it to anyone.

In any case, the "care" in Emergency is based on diagnoses made in a few minutes, with no medical history. There is a strange silence and a hole in media reporting on this issue that makes me very uneasy. The ONLY article I have ever seen on this taboo subject was about young people in Latin America, the shortage of support for mood disorders, and how young people have newfound medical and emotional/social support through Zoom calls. This is the party line. After fifty years of brick walls, I am getting tired of defending behaviour which is not only arrogant and uncaring, but completely unacceptable in a "first world" country. 

"Man Walking Around a Corner"

Sixteen frames of pure genius: "Man Walking Around a Corner" - which is exactly what it is. This cinematic fragment may be even older and worse quality than the immortal Roundhay Garden Scene, which is often called the "first movie ever made". But this is definitely the first movie ever made of a man walking around a corner. It even has its own Wikipedia entry:

"Man Walking Around a Corner was an early film shot in Paris by Louis Le Prince. According to David Wilkinson's 2015 documentary The First Film it is not film, but a series of photographs, 16 in all, each taken from one of the lens from Le Prince's camera. Le Prince went on to develop the one lens camera and on the 14th October 1888 he finally made the world's first moving image."

A pink car blinks (my animation)

A pink car blinks. An animation I made from three frames.

Harold and the mothball

Some wag or other has planted mothballs in the chocolate box, with hilarious results! This is one of the best examples of a Lloyd reaction scene, which he can carry on for full minutes with great effect. This  reflects the innate acting genius which drove a lot of his comedy. Only Chaplin is comparable.