Spinning heart troll animation

 

 

OSTRICH MANIA!

The Amazing Disappearing/Reappearing Christopher Walken Dance Video

This is a version of what I call the Amazing Disappearing/Reappearing Christopher Walken Dance Video. It has popped up in various guises, including a shorter, more tightly-edited version set to the neo-disco classic Dance Now. I preferred the music on that one to the various other versions, but it was taken down not once but twice on copyright grounds (for the music or the video, I don't know, because other versions of it still exist on YouTube). 

The music here doesn't have that funky hip-hoppish madness to it, is more laid-back and even somewhat sexy, which Walken both is and isn't. I can't even figure out what I think about him, how I feel, if I feel anything. It's more of a fascination. I can't stop reading about Meghan and Harry, either, and I definitely cannot stand them.

Some of his roles have been jaw-droppingly sociopathic, though he has gone on record to say he won't play anyone who doesn't live up to his moral standards (or something). Either he can't stop working, or can't stop needing the paycheque (he lives not in a house but a mansion, on an estate somewhere in Connecticut, with staff). 

He lives like a movie star, in other words, and as we all know, character actors have much longer careers because it doesn't matter if they get old and ugly. He has not aged well, AT ALL, has let his hair get frizzed and wears dumb old man glasses and ratty sweaters and has this annoying whistle when he talks.

In short, he now seems bent on making himself look as hideous as possible, like some Galapagos turtle on an island somewhere far away, WAY far, the last turtle of his kind. Anyway, as a dancer he is eccentric but capable of some nice moves, though his work in Communion was execrable and consisted mainly of spinning his arms around. 

The low point of this whatever-it-is I keep returning to, the one I am really embarrassed about, is the Walken 101 podcast, which is without a doubt the worst scummy excuse for a podcast I have ever listened to, yet I keep listening to it. It's just these two guys who claim to be filmmakers and actors (unemployed!) sitting around in a rec room complaining that they hate Christopher Walken. Meanwhile the whole purpose of the podcast is to watch every single movie, TV show or anything else Walken has ever done, in chronological order, and comment on them all. So far, they hate everything. I got started listening to this thing after they made four really funny initial YouTube videos about Walken, then stopped and did this thing instead.

At any rate, if you just want to see him dance and don't care about the music, this one is OK. I can find a nice visual version AND a separate audio of the music I like, but my God, why go to all this (or ANY) trouble about someone I don't particularly like, or at least can't make my mind up about?

"Don't spill the tea!" (glorious tea-pouring gifs)

Cat steals the show during classical music concert

Cute cat video of the year, if not the century (and it's only February)!

Big Hair Claire!

Just ordered this beautiful lady today from Etsy (Lucretia's Lair, my favorite custom/OOAK troll store). This is courtesy of the Canada Council, who once in a while remembers that I published three novels and sends me a cheque in compensation for my total poverty.

EXCLUSIVE: 3-D Movies from the Civil War!

These stereoscopic images from the Civil War represent perhaps the first 3-D "movies", if a movie can consist of two alternating frames. Which it can! These folks look as if they drank a fearful amount of coffee.

Tiny dancer (Victorian ballerina gif)

"Bad kitty!" Cat vs. toilet paper

L'isle joyeuse

This is still the best version of one of my favorite piano pieces - wild, fey, mystical, an island of ponies from my girlhood, ponies of pink and green and silver. And joy, pure joy, joy from another time, brought wildly and prancingly into the present.

RATS-Os and JOE BUCKwheats

 

Very small horse animation

Horse animation in three speeds

Dead man Walken

In theTrain Compartment (Paul Gustav Fischer)

David, I miss you so!

This is a montage of photos that my best friend David West sent me on receiving his copy of The Glass Character, my failed novel about Harold Lloyd. (Compare and contrast to my former friend, Matt Paust, who wrote a piece about it under the title Friday's Forgotten Books, then scratched his head over why I was so upset.) I made it into a gif, then, because I have finally figured out how to do it, posted it on YouTube with music. I guess this is the only goodbye I will ever be able to say to him, because his death was not marked by any memorial. The situation was so fraught that I couldn't enter into it at all. So I had to do something to celebrate him, and to help me (at last) say goodbye.

David West: my friend deserved better than this

(For the second year in a row, some of David's Facebook "friends" wished him a happy birthday, no doubt because the algorithm told them to. A notification popped up, so a feigned note of celebration automatically popped up along with it. No energy, investment or emotion was required: it practically sent itself, which most people on social media seem to feel is the ideal way of sending a note of celebration/caring and concern to their "friends".

There is only one problem with this. But it's a big one (I think). He has been dead for two years, so one can only guess at the depth of their connection with him while he was alive. I had something to say about this on Facebook, knowing I would make myself very unpopular, but sick and tired of the barter that stands in for Facebook "friendship". With authors, the most self-involved and narcissistic segment of the population, it is all a matter of "you review my book, I'll review your book" - no one actually READING any of these books, of course - just to score that coveted five-star rating.

It means nothing, nothing, nothing at all.

So here is what I posted, and I am "off" Facebook now, except perhaps to peruse my "saved"  pages, history, vintage ads, favorite shows like Dateline, old cars, birds, all the things that truly interest and uplift me. The feed and my so-called friends can fuck off right now, with probably more energy than they deserve, and certainly more than it took to hit that birthday button for a dead man.)

"Once more, as with last year, David West received birthday greetings from some of his Facebook 'friends'. He has been dead for two years. I think David would have gotten a kick out of this bizarre scenario, but I don’t. 

And I know the justification will be “but I didn’t know”. This does not take away this feeling of hollowness and utter isolation that I have had to live with for two years as people’s meaningless birthday notifications just keep on automatically popping up. 

“Happy birthday” no longer means even a greeting card, but just something you do because it’s on the notification list, which is a great system because it frees us from the NEED to remember that person’s birthday or find out anything else about their circumstances. It’s one of the great things about social media (and I’ve heard this over and over again from people). 

David was my best friend, a superb poet and gifted teacher who spent the last years of his life battling every illness under the sun. The understanding between us was unique, and I will never experience that again or see him again, or hear his voice. He died alone, with no emotional support except what his few friends could give him. 

The next objection will be, “But his page is still active”. No one knows his password, so no one can take it down. And as with his Facebook page, no one looked in on him. These jolly two-word greetings prove it. This gives me a weird, hollow feeling of the more macabre and even dehumanizing aspects of social media.

This is how we do things now, and as always, I don’t belong on the playground. I know this will be a very unpopular thing to say, and I may be savaged, as I have been before just for expressing an opinion. But maybe this is the best way to say goodbye.

Why the Boy Scouts went bankrupt

Boy Scouts of America files for bankruptcy

CNN February 18/20

12,000 Boy Scouts were abused over decades

The Boy Scouts of America has filed for bankruptcy, according to a court document filed in Delaware bankruptcy court early Tuesday.

The youth organization, which celebrated its 110th anniversary February 8, listed liabilities of between $100 million and $500 million and estimated assets of $1 billion to $10 billion.

The bankruptcy filing comes at a time when the organization faces hundreds of sexual abuse lawsuits, thousands of alleged abuse victims and dwindling membership numbers. As a result of the filing, all civil litigation against the organization is suspended.

Paul Mones, a Los Angeles-based attorney representing "hundreds of sexual abuse victims in individual lawsuits," called the organization's bankruptcy filing a "tragedy."

"These young boys took an oath. They pledged to be obedient, pledged to support the Scouts and pledged to be honorable. Many of them are extremely angry that that's not what happened to them and the Boy Scouts of America did not step up in the way they should have," Mones said.

The Boy Scouts of America was fielding several hundred sexual abuse lawsuits

The Boy Scouts of America faced hundreds of lawsuits from alleged sexual abuse victims across the country -- all of which are now suspended because of the bankruptcy filing.

Several of the lawsuits allege repeated fondling, exposure to pornography, and forced anal or oral sex. In response, the Boy Scouts of America said at the time that they "care deeply about all victims of child abuse and sincerely apologize to anyone who was harmed during their time in Scouting." They added that they were "outraged that there have been times when individuals took advantage of our program to abuse innocent children."

"We believe victims, we support them, we pay for counseling by a provider of their choice and we encourage them to come forward. It is the Boy Scouts of America (BSA) policy that all incidents of suspected abuse are reported to law enforcement," the organization said.

Last April, exposed court testimony showed the organization believed more than 7,800 of its former leaders were involved in sexually abusing more than 12,000 children over the course of 72 years.

Mones, who was part of a legal team that won a $18.5 million verdict against Boy Scouts of America for former Scout and sexual abuse victim Kerry Lewis in 2010, said Monday that instead of potentially having their day in court, alleged victims who had pending lawsuits will now need to file claims in bankruptcy court.

Michael Pfau, a Seattle-based attorney whose firm represents 300 alleged victims across the country, said the bankruptcy claims process will be decidedly different for those suffering due to the Boy Scouts of America's alleged inaction.

"They won't have to give depositions involving their life history. Their lives won't be scrutinized, but they lose their right to a jury trial. For a lot of abuse survivors, telling their story in a court of law and forcing the organizations to defend their actions can be cathartic. That won't happen with a bankruptcy," Pfau said.

Mones said in the aftermath of the Lewis case, his law office received hundreds of phone calls from adult males claiming to have been Boy Scouts of America sexual abuse victims, but many states had statutes of limitation that narrowed their legal options at the time. It wasn't until years later, when some state legislators enacted new laws that enabled victims to file lawsuits without limits on when the alleged abuse took place, that a barrage of complaints against the youth organization were filed.

Pfau estimates the number of claimants will eclipse those of the Catholic church.

"The Catholic bankruptcies are limited in geographic scope. Here there will be claimants from all 50 states and the American territories," Pfau said. "We can talk about files and numbers, but in reality if you step back and realize the scope of the human carnage, it's stunning."

BLOGGER'S OBSERVATIONS. I used to wonder about entrenched and socially-revered institutions like the Boy Scouts, its unshakeable foundation now completely demolished simply by the emergence of the truth. The dehumanizing phenomenon of systemic abuse is finally, painfully breaking through, often  explosively, and seemingly everywhere. Survivors were isolated, felt they were the only one, dared not speak because they were silenced, and died inside while others went about their way. This is what I call the "oh, surely not/he would never" view, the view of everyday normalcy while hell rages in silence on the other side.  I hate to think how prevalent all this is among people who have been too ashamed, frightened or dead by suicide to come forward. Perhaps the fact that men are now beginning to speak means they will be more readily believed, treated with more respect, and  won't be so barraged with "but why didn't you report it?" silencing tools, which is what women who have been raped almost universally face.

I remember back in the '90s - and everyone seems to have forgotten all about this, though it nearly destroyed my life - the "False Memory Syndrome Foundation", made up of parents and other authority figures who constantly downplayed the prevalence of child sexual abuse. They actually claimed, and the culture desperately wanted to believe it, that incest and sexual abuse was a fairly rare phenomenon, that there was a sort of "abuse bandwagon", and that therapists "implanted" these terrible notions that people claimed they had endured.   

The worst of it was the systematic and ruthless denial that it ever happened, and what we now call "gaslighting" - making the accuser seem "crazy" and delusional. They were usually successful because their victims' lives would be in ruins, and the perpetrators were mostly extremely comfortable, high-status people. They even mentioned it in one of their floods of magazine articles, saying, "We were proud to be such a fine-looking bunch of folks" who "would never" perpetrate such horrors. Survivors were accused of being zombified by abuse propaganda, becoming these harrowing spectres walking around like Stepford wives and bearing poisonous lies, even being coerced into "recanting" and taking it all back. Sometimes, the only way to get your family back was to sacrifice the truth. It was a choice between decapitation and tearing your heart out.

So as bad as I feel about all this, at least this horror is now out of the closet for good - or I hope so. But I believed that it had already happened in the early '90s, though it was all ruthlessly reburied and forgotten about. "False Memory Syndrome" (which doesn't exist, though I believe it forced its way through relentless lobbying into the DSM) was on the cover of EVERY magazine, including Time, Life and Newsweek, but if I bring it up now I get a baffled, "what are you talking about?" look. It's as if it didn't happen at all. Amazing what we do with trauma (i. e. completely forget it ever existed) when we don't want to face it. It doesn't even matter if we have experienced it first-hand or not. It's a cultural numbness which is blessed indeed for those wanting an "out". And amazing, too, how the profound isolation and being treated as crazy and delusional, which so often leads to demolished lives and suicide, seems to last forever.

I found a creepy video which I can't even post here, meant to be an illustration of one of the main tenets of scouting: OBEDIENCE. Now I see that concept as totally poisonous, not just coercive but monstrous. Taking little boys out into the woods and sexually violating them requires automatic submission to authority, a form of grooming and conditioning which paramiltary groups like scouting excel at. Good boys submit, and they don't tell tales, because Scoutmaster John WOULD NEVER do such a thing - and how can you even think of it? Why would such a possibility even come into your mind? What is wrong with you?  

Think how shockingly long it took for the truth to come out - and will it recede back into the shadows again, as it has done so many times before?

TRIGGERED: why I hate ignorance about my country

This commentary was originally posted in the comments section of a YouTube video about Prince Harry, Meghan Markle and the whole "Megxit" scandal which I have been doggedly following like a bloodhound on the scent (though I am not sure why). Some ignorant pundit (and if I hear news people say "pundent" ONE more time, I will scream!) stood up and said the Duke and Duchess of Sussex (or whatever they call themselves now) need more security in their hideaway on Vancouver Island because Canadians own MORE guns per capita than the U. S. 

This caused my jaw to hit the floor. But tabloid media (and ALL media) are the province of stories that come unsubstantiated, just out of nowhere:  "a source claims" and "Palace officials have stated. . . ", with no proof of ANY of it. 

I seldom post long commentaries any more, not because I have nothing to say but because I don't know where to start. To avoid being overwhelmed, I must sidestep a lot of it. But this one was too outrageous to let pass. I like to break up big  blocks of text, which I did, with what I hope are appropriate images. 

"I'd like to know where he got his stats on Canadians owning guns! We are NOT a gun-oriented culture, and VERY few citizens arm themselves or own an arsenal, as many civilians do in the U. S. 

Yes, we DO have guns: the criminal element, such as gangs, can always get them illegally. Hunters use them, including indigenous peoples who need them for their food source, but in every case their use is tightly regulated. 

To own a gun, you have to jump through so many hoops (including mental health checks) that it bears NO relation to the U. S., where firearms can be bought at the local hardware store along with duct tape and plumbing supplies. 

We have no "second amendment", no Confederate flag, had no civil war, have an extremely boring history with far less bloodshed, never had a glorious Revolution, are seen as passive and somehow a "lesser" nation, just because we are forced to live cheek-by-jowl with what increasingly looks like a lawless Wild West, where people think the solution to school shootings is arming all the teachers (not to mention some of the students). 

Meanwhile, Trump says "it isn't guns that cause mass shootings, it's mental illness." That's just great, Donald, heaping more BS onto the steaming pile of crap about mental health which by now should be obsolete. So mass shootings are caused by "whack jobs" and "nut bars", and people who are "cray-cray" and "forgot their meds". Maybe it's the fact that I have bipolar disorder and have never even SEEN a gun, or known anyone who owns one, which causes me to wince and even despair when I hear made-up statistics like this. 

But please, no more unsubstantiated assumptions about Canadians and guns. We have been casually compared to the U. S. (inevitably, to our detriment) for as long as I can remember. Either we're that charming little backwater where draft dodgers and ex-royals can hide out, safe from the evil papparazzi, or that nutty place with a hipster fruitcake for a Prime Minister. ENOUGH!"