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Revolution 9: I have a dream today

Dreams vaporize like snow sublimating on a sidewalk. More and more I remember mine, and see a thread in them. Maybe it has always been there. I always seem to be a hopeless outsider or have no idea what is going on, though I am supposed to be playing a crucial role in the scenario (i. e. the Wildwood Flower bride, and the Alice in Wonderland actress). Last night my dreams were bleak, and I hope did not predict anything except my own melancholy and chronic sense of doom.

It was as if I was watching one of those dystopia films, in which everything slowly but surely comes unstuck. "All is changed, changed utterly," to paraphrase Yeats (I'm too lazy to look up the exact quote). "Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold."

This had several parts. Which came first? My husband was with me during a big part of this, which is unusual because I am usually alone. We were watching a stage play which almost seemed like a Gilbert and Sullivan comedy without the music. This was in an ornate old theatre like the Orpheum in Vancouver. One of the actors seemed particularly good and I intended to yell "Bravo!" when he took his bows. 

At this point I was sitting in the front row and Bill wasn't with me. Then I was about 1/3 or 1/2-way back in the audience, and there was a sense almost of an earthquake about to happen, though nothing was shaking. Without any words we received the knowledge that the ceiling was about to cave in and we had to get out of the theatre immediately or be crushed. 

I looked up and wondered if the ceiling was bulging and it played into my lifelong fear that heavy chandeliers in restaurants and theatres would fall on me. People began to leave, but in a fairly orderly, methodical way. I could not find my shoes and was upset. Bill said something along the lines of, you'll need them, which seemed ominous. I realized we had to leave only a few minutes before the end of the play and I would not be able to yell "Bravo!".

Then we were wandering aimlessly through a sort of wasteland, completely lost. Bill doesn't get lost easily, or panic about it, but I had a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach that everything was about to end. At one point we were climbing up a tall tower like something in a power station, then we had to climb down again and Bill's legs hurt. I was sort of holding on to him through this. 

There were these vasts fields of dead grass and nothingness. A woman on a horse went by (and now I think of that futuristic TV show Revolution, where the power goes off all over the world and there are no cars). Then at some point I said something like, "Wait, my high school graduation is tomorrow, how will I get there?" "It will be called off. You'll have to phone the school about it." "But everyone will be calling in at once. The lines will be jammed." As we had this conversation, we were walking by the high school and it looked deserted. It resembled my school from Grade 5 (Queen Elizabeth II) where I had to be bussed all the way across town to attend the (quote-unquote) "smart kids' class".

In another part of this strange scene, I was watching TV and suddenly the program changed. It became totally nonsensical and obnoxious,almost like scrambled-up children's programming, and it was obvious that this wasn't part of the show. I realized (how?) that a woman had hacked into TV signals all over the entire world and disabled them all. I don't even know how I knew this. I just now think of the Emergency Broadcasting System and "this is only a test" announcements of my childhood, when I was totally freaked out and felt like it was the end of the world (which, with the Cuban Missile Crisis, it nearly was). 

I think I have already lost chunks of this and would have forgotten it all by now had I not scribbled down a few details. The last part I can remember now is that I was listening to a radio broadcast, and it was about my friend Glen Allen, a journalist who committed suicide in 2005. He worked in radio and it was a sort of reminiscence about his life. I began to get very interested in it and thought, "Now they'll talk about his association with Peter Gzowski." But then it cut off. No explanation, it just ended. The radio had no signal at all - it simply went dead.

Easter terror: bunnies from hell

It wouldn't be Easter without a few of these. I've found some that look suspiciously doctored, so I won't use them. What stands out is the terror and dismay on the faces of the children. Why? Why would anyone be afraid of an old man in long pink underwear and erectile ears putting his arm around you, when you KNOW you're not supposed to talk to strangers? Why would you take candy from them, when Mom and Dad have jackhammered it into your little head that you are NOT supposed to do that, ever? I am sure this is why small children scream and cry at the Easter Bunny and Santa and all those other creepy characters, until custom and convention slowly wear down their natural instinct to survive.

Why must Easter bunnies look like Fascist dictators? Why must their heads be larger than their bodies? Would this scare YOU?

The Space Alien bunny is a genre unto itself. They're really here to harvest our children.

I'd like to know who would sit down and design a costume like this. There are apparently no holes for oxygen, so let's hope the guy suffocated.

This is my personal favorite. Don't be fooled by the frightened smile on the little girl's face. She's just trying to get it over with as soon as possible.

Whatever happened to the Rich Egg?

Easter morning, and I'm wondering whatever happened to the Magic Treat of my childhood.

We had the usual stuff in our messy Easter baskets, stuffed in with that shredded cellophane that gets into everything, and I seem to remember a lot of jellybeans and a large, waxen egg with a white centre. Nobody liked these, but who were we to argue with the Easter bunny?

I would go along with anything when I was a kid, including the idea of a Harvey-esque full-sized rabbit hopping all over the universe to distribute candy and toys. But mostly candy. The piece de resistance (never mind if I spelled that right, it's Easter) was the Laura Secord egg, usually called by us kids the "rich egg" because if you had more than a small bite of it at a time, you'd gag on the sweetness. It had a fairly thick milk chocolate shell, a fondant-y centre and a yolky-looking middle, which we assumed was made of entirely dfferent material. Yolk candy.

Though I remember it as being about the size of my fist, it was a child's fist. But still pretty big.

Lots of people have fond, even mooshy memories of the Laura Secord Easter Egg, which apparently is still available in Canada's Far East. They remember Mammy or Aunt Dora or somebody-or-other giving them the rich egg on Easter morning, the ritual opening of the box and removal of the paper grass, the malty sweet smell of the chocolate. Memories like these are powerful stuff. But though the egg is still manufactured, like so many things, it has changed. On the internet I found a taste test of the egg as it stands today, and it fell rather short, getting something like a 6 out of 10.

But has the egg changed, or have we? Perhaps both. Today, I am sure people would not cut small slices off the egg and eat maybe one slice per day until the thing was gone (carefully keeping the leftovers in the refrigerator). They'd have at it and eat the whole thing in one go, if the 400-pound young woman we saw in the lineup at at McDonalds yesterday is any indication.

People wouldn't know what to do with a rich egg if it bit them.

I found several recipes for a replica of the Secord egg which are no doubt improvements on the goopy new version (which probably resembles the blandly sweet Cadbury cream egg). I like this one because it purports to be "healthy". Well, there are 22 servings here, so unless you eat them all at once (which probably most people would, in this age of dangerous gluttony and overconsumption - and hey, whatever happened to the concept of gluttony as a "deadly sin"? Nobody even uses the word any more. Call Marlon Brando.) I'll just let that thought dangle. It's Easter.

(Before this "healthy recipe" I will display an example of a homemade egg that is probably excruciatingly good, way better than our "rich egg" ever was. This probably takes approximately one million  hours to make.)

Easter Eggs (Like Laura Secord) Recipe

Looking for an easy Easter Eggs (like laura secord) recipe? Learn how to make Easter Eggs (like laura secord) using healthy ingredients.

(Homemade easter eggs like laura secord) chocolate covered sugar eggs with a yellow yolk and white sugar dough surrounding the yolk. Makes 22 servings.)

Recipe Ingredients for Easter Eggs (like laura secord)

3	lbs icing sugar
300	ml Sweetened Condensed Milk
1	tbsp corn syrup
1/4	lb butter
2	tsp salt
16	oz baking chocolate

Recipe Directions for Easter Eggs (like laura secord)

1. mix all ingredients, except chocolate in a food processer or mixing bowl, adding the icing sugar a little at a time.
2. take 1/4 of the sugar dough and mix yellow food colouring into it, which makes the yolk part of the egg. then form the yellow dough into 20 -22 balls, cool in fridge. Then take the remaining dough and cut it into 22 same size pieces which you will wrap around the yellow yolk balls, to form your egg. Chill these again, and then dip them in the chocolate which is melted in a double boiler.(pour the chocolate over the egg as opposed to dipping the egg directly into the melted chocolate

Categories

Easter

Nutrition Facts

Serving Size 106.6g

Amount Per Serving

Calories 447 Calories from Fat 107

% Daily Value*

Total Fat 11.9g 18%

Saturated Fat 7.9g 39%

Trans Fat 0.0g

Cholesterol 22mg 7%

Sodium 282mg 12%

Total Carbohydrates 84.1g 28%

Dietary Fiber 0.7g 3%

Sugars 81.0g

Protein 3.0g

Vitamin A 4% • Vitamin C 1% Calcium 9% • Iron 3%

* Based on a 2000 calorie diet Nutritional details are an estimate and should only be used as a guide for approximation.

Legend

Fat
Protein
Carbs
Alcohol
Other

Calorie Breakdown

Daily Values

Health Information

Nutrition Grade 96% confidence

Good points Low in cholesterol

Bad points Very high in sugar

HAPPY EASTER!

Dark non-victory: why we still watch this shit

I wasn’t going to watch Now, Voyager last night:  geez, no. I’d just seen it about three weeks ago on Turner Classics, my fallback system when reality TV turns unbearably sour.  But it’s one of those films, like Taxi Driver, that’s a virtual La Brea Tar Pit of absorption. Once the thing starts, you can’t get away even if you want to.

As with Gone With the Wind, you can dip in anywhere and enter the flow, but it’s better to plunge in right at the beginning, when the lush Max Steiner score swells with erotic longing. Gather ‘round, children, and I’ll tell you a tale, of a poor little rich girl named Charlotte Vale.

Charlotte is the crème de la crème of repressed spinsterhood, her wealthy Bostonian mother slashing and lashing her personality into meek submission. Charlotte was the “child of her old age”, and therefore stigmatized (and though they don’t come right out and say it, that means you shouldn’t fuck after age forty) and bound to a life of unpaid servitude (even though Ma could probably afford dozens of servants).

This is 1942, so how can thick-browed, tremulous Bette escape such hell? Enter the male rescue figure, in the person of Dr. Jaquith, a psychiatrist played to perfection by one of the great character actors of all time, Claude Rains. If Claude Rains were MY psychiatrist, I might just be able to finally get off the couch. This man who oozes erudite understanding runs a sanatorium that resembles a cross between a holiday resort and a self-help ranch retreat, with smiling staff and cozy rooms with fireplaces (in fact, when Charlotte bolts back to the place after a romantic reversal, the smiling nurse/receptionist/whatever-she-is cheerfully says, “I’ve put you back in your old room,” like it’s a luxury hotel or a college dorm.)

Something happens at this dorm, some sort of transformation, so that when Charlotte is given the chance to assume someone else’s name and wardrobe on a luxury cruise, she takes it. The shot where Dr. Jaquith literally sends her off on the gangplank is pure Hollywood: remember, be interested in everything and everyone! Go, girl, go! Charlotte’s newly-plucked eyebrows and stunning ‘40s wardrobe can’t help but attract the attention of a (MARRIED, MARRIED, MARRIED) elegant and somewhat androgynous hunk named Jerry Durrance (foreign name, God, foreign name - excuse me while I have an orgasm). He’s played by Paul Henreid, the murmuring, slightly bedroomy resistance worker in Casablanca, the one who gets the girl (or re-gets the girl) in the end.

For some reason, the fact that Jerry stays in a miserable marriage because of his disturbed daughter, Tina makes him into some sort of a hero. In truth, he’s a wuss, a cad, an emotional gigolo, and the sort of man who wants a fuck in every port. But his dashing habit of lighting two cigarettes at a time and giving one to Charlotte (implying, in subtle Hollywood code, that they’d slept together) seems to forgive all his little flaws.

Charlotte’s in love with a good-smelling skunk she can never have, but for some reason this just enriches the bubbling, seething stew of this women’s-novel-made-into-women’s-picture. Charlotte identifies with Tina’s screeching pathology, and she begins to claim her through emotional manipulation and ice cream: though in truth she’s just a cheap device to keep Jerry on the hook. Other things happen: Ma dies and Charlotte thinks it’s her fault (which it is), and she gets engaged and then unengaged to a dull, sexless rich guy who doesn’t even smoke. In one of the most turgid scenes in the whole picture, she and her fiance sit next to each other at the symphony, surrounded by the tumescent strains of Tchaikovsky’s Pathetique: but Jerry sits on the other side. God, on the other side. . .on the other side. . . can’t she just reach over and grab his crotch?

Charlotte’s whole existence is Jerry.  Jerry, Jerry, Jerry. God, JERRY. I’ve had a Jerry; I don’t want to tell you how many times I’ve had a Jerry. It both sickens and thrills me. In a way, this is a Beantown Gone with the Wind, with hapless, passive Jerry playing the part of hapless, passive Ashley. They might have had sex, but it’s never spelled out (and in that era, who knows?). My Jerries never have sex with me, because they barely know I exist.

The capper in this splendid weepie is Davis’ classic line, “Oh Jerry, don’t let’s ask for the moon. We have the stars.” Every sploppy, soaky, drippy line in this thing is totally transformed by Bette Davis’ sheer genius: her smoky inflections, toned-down intelligence, the shy and slightly birdlike way she turns her head. Her hair, once straggly and ugly, is smoothed around her head like a shining helmet, and for some reason the Carol-Burnett-playing-Scarlett-O’Hara linebacker shoulders don’t look ridiculous on her.

I keep reading Bette Davis bios, and all of them seem to conclude that she was crazy, that she had some sort of fatal personality disorder that allowed her to tap into the darkness of the human psyche. Right. Then how did she last ‘til age 80, ravaged by cancer but still working right to the end? Granted, she married four unsuitable men, but is that so unusual in Hollywood? (Didn’t Mickey Rooney have seven – wives, I mean?). These biographers also conclude, all of them, that her emotionally fragile sister Bobby was mentally ill because she wasn’t able to have a career like her sister’s. Had she been able to, she would have been stable, joyful, happy in her personal life, and multiply orgasmic.

What a strange brew is old Hollywood. We couldn’t have a Now, Voyager now: it just wouldn’t play. It’s a pretty strange transformation, for one thing: from dowdy spinster with bad hair to elegant spinster with a better wardrobe and a million emotional frustrations. She still doesn’t get to marry or have children, as she longs to. She gets the old lady’s house, but that’s just because the old bird died at the right time. But ah! She has the stars. And thus she sails forth, to seek and find. Find what? A life forever on the emotional hook, with happiness just beyond the tips of her fingers.

NOW I get it, why I'm always watching this shit.

Just a total douche!

I'm sorry, it's late, but I had to show you this. I hope you can read the text. I had to look at it twice, or more likely about 600 times to believe what I was seeing.

Women were conned into believing they were so stinky and drippy, the only solution was to douche every day with LYSOL. What did they have, bugs up their vagina? Were their twats so desperately in need of disinfection?

The add doesn't say this, in fact nobody ever says it, but MEN are the main reason women get stinky in the first place. You try getting ejaculated into, and not smell like an elderly salmon.

This ad is more horrific than the one about "more doctors recommend Camels". But if it doesn't work as a douche, I guess you could always drink it.

(Discovery! This ad wasn't a fluke: now I find a slew of them. A whole sociological treatise! If a woman smells, her marriage is over. If she smells like Lysol, however. . . va-va-VOOM!)

http://margaretgunnng.blogspot.ca/2013/04/the-glass-character-synopsis.html

http://members.shaw.ca/margaret_gunning/betterthanlife.htm

An Easter Parade of Jesus gifs

Jesus is pretty big business at this time of year. As in: let's go to church on Easter Sunday, because aside from Christmas Eve we never go, and if we go twice a year at least we can say we're "churchgoers".

I myself, a recovering churchgoer, have found much that's interesting about the Jesus Industry. In fact, it's hard to find a Jesus without a sense of industry, in these days of universal commerce.

Hey, I wouldn't even DO this, I wouldn't "make fun of" the Holy of Holies (and I'm not, just displaying some of the more interesting representations of him in a new medium) were it not for the fact that my former church went a certain way with things. They decided to try to dispense with their stuffy, outdated image, not to mention the sinking-ship feeling that accompanied all their efforts, and came up with a hip new web site. I will not and cannot quote it here, except to say that it was the first place I encountered Bobblehead Jesus.

Why did I feel this awful sinking in my gut, this anger, this fuming feeling, this desecration, this - hey, what's the matter with you? What ARE you, an old lady (and obviously not welcome)? Everyone else either accepted this atrocity without question, or laughed at it. Aren't we generous, don't we take it on the chin for Jesus, proving we really ARE relevant, hip and leading the way in modern attitudes?

Spare me.

Having dispensed with that odious topic, let's get on with something more sincere (and I mean this! These gifs, tacky and strange as some of them are, were made with sincerity. None of them reflect the jeering satire of the "sendup" ones. Hey, we're on holy ground here.)

This group of gifs represents what I call the "walk with Jesus" collection. Though he walks, he doesn't walk very smoothly. In the walking-on-water ones which I decided not to include (hey, I can't do everything, can I? And it's Good Friday, a day off work, for God's sake), he seems to slide on ice, saving him energy to pull Peter out of the soup.

Minimal walking in this Blingee, but you can see his foot moving. (Didn't know he smoked. He should've given it up for Lent.)

Love this one. If it doesn't work, just click on the image and he'll come a-slidin' down.,

I don't know if these are supposed to be stairs or not, or an old rope bridge. I wonder why they can't just have him sit on a sled?

Now we're getting into the black-lit Disco Jesus images. There's something a wee bit Satanic about the spiky background, which I suppose is meant to represent the crown of thorns. But don't look for this one for too long, or you'll be seeing a spiky-looking skull (meant to represent Golgotha, perhaps?) all day long.

You gotta wonder about this one. Jesus seems to be flashing back and forth (and let me ask you: what WERE those little images that flashed back and forth between two religious scenes called? Why hasn't anyone else ever heard of them?) The background is the color of Kraft Dinner, pulsating wildly around a nasty-looking Christ who suddenly turns into a negative, a la the Shroud of Turin. Colorful.

This is Migraine Christ. Meaning, you'll get one if you look at him too long.

These are just icky, except for the hair blowing in the second one and the fact that he looks sort of like Richard Gere.

There's only one way he could've gotten out to that rock, if his clothes are this dry. But the graphics are gentler in this one, and the reflection rather effective. The probably-unintentional seagull is a nice touch.

This is Ghost Jesus: the best of all the gifs, and for some reason, after one cycle (if you're lucky), he often disappears. (Hint: try clicking on the image and see if you can bring him back from the dead. It worked before, didn't it?)  This could represent a number of things:

The attendance in this church has hit a new low.

They don't pay their electric bill.

They wouldn't know Jesus if he showed up in their own sanctuary.

God left this place a long, long time ago.