I don't know how I would have survived the long, dark, dry portage of the pandemic without my birds. Of course they're not "my" birds - not anyone's - which is one of the things I love about them. Though it's different each time, with a different mix even in the same locations, birds are not random. They move where the food is, drawn by low water levels which don't require as much work to get at the really good gunk that they eat. The Big Fat Brown Duck, now known as Bruno, almost replaces my beloved Bosley and Belinda - though not quite. And he may indeed end up in the same place, killed by a predator, because he lacks the wild instincts that drive the birds away from danger and towards FOOD and shelter. I've been spotting him in the mallard flock for a couple of years now, and it's as if he has his own YouTube fans now, with WAY more views than I used to get. I am virtually certain he or she is a specimen of the domestic meat-raised duck called the Khaki Campbell. Seeing Bruno on such a consistent basis is gratifying, but I know I'd follow my birds anyway, because they have kept me more-or-less sane during an insane time. Thank you, Bruno.
I have wanted to do a comparison of these two for a long time now. Was there a link? Probably not, unless Fritz Lang liked to copy things from Harold Lloyd movies. And yet - there IS something surreal about his man on the clock, a tiny figure struggling to hold on to the huge hands, the hat falling off, the face of the clock alarmingly falling forward - the crowd gasping below. I have never sat through all of Metropolis, as it's just too bloody long and even boring, but I've seen excerpts which really do seem to be prophetic. But prophetic of what? Do I spend my life, my one and only life which grows shorter with every passing day, contemplating Armageddon, the apocalypse, Dystopia? No thanks. I'd rather make YouTube videos and watch birds and collect trolls and fuss with my plants. It's what I do. Crying doom, if doom comes, and so far it hasn't, is a waste of time anyway, as it won't change anything. If it's too late, I might as well make the best of the time I have.
Does it ever end? No, it does not. The troll collection frightens me a little bit, when I see how it has grown organically from just a few trolls I had lying around. But I LOVE coming up with new and innovative ways to display them. It's one of the great joys of my life to be able to share this hobby with others.
MAUREEN CALLAHAN: Wait — this is a joke, right? DUI defendant Kerry Kennedy
gets scandal-engulfed Alec Baldwin to give hypocritical beta-royal Meghan
Markle... a human rights award? Please make it stop!
The award – named for RFK's iconic 'Ripple of Hope'
speech delivered in Cape Town, South
Africa at the height of apartheid –
recognizes 'moral courage'. The bravery to speak truth to power.
'They went to the oldest institution in UK history
and told them what they were doing wrong,' said RFK Human Rights President
Kerry Kennedy, removing all doubt that she has despoiled her late father's
legacy and stripped this honor of any real meaning. 'That they couldn't have
structural racism within the institution . . . I think they have been heroic in
taking this step.'
To Kennedy's (dubious) point: The Mandela
comparison never gets old.
Here was Meghan in New York Magazine's The Cut last
August, telling us that she had gone backstage after a performance of 'The Lion
King' when a South African cast member 'looked at me and . . . he said, 'I just
need you to know: When you married into this family, we rejoiced in the streets
the same we did when Mandela was freed from prison.'
As this very outlet reported, that lone South
African cast member said he had never met Meghan Markle.
Hosting this year's event, with tickets starting at
$2,500 and going all the way up to $250,000 — basically, the equivalent of a
down payment on a nice 6-bedroom house— is none other than Alec Baldwin.
(Above, left to right) Kerry Kennedy, Meghan Markle and Alec Baldwin.
No one dismissed this whopper better than the great
man's grandson, Zwelivelile Mandela, who told DailyMail.com that 'Nelson
Mandela's release from jail was the culmination of nearly 350 years of struggle
in which generations of our people paid with their lives. It can never be
compared to the celebrations of someone's wedding.'
A wedding paid for with $42.8 million of taxpayer
money, Britons lining the streets and cheering, a surfeit of goodwill that
Harry and Meghan promptly and grossly tossed aside.
Reportedly Meghan Markle said on her first royal
tour, just months later: 'I can't believe I'm not getting paid for this.' So
they sauntered out the palace door, hats and grievances in hand, seeking and
getting monster paydays from Netflix and Spotify.
To paraphrase Kerry's late uncle John F. Kennedy: What
profiles in courage.
As to that claim of racism: Queen Elizabeth II was
no racist. In fact, she was such a close friend and admirer of Nelson Mandela
that he was among the very few to call her 'Elizabeth' — not 'Her Majesty' or
'ma'am' — and gave her an affectionate nickname: 'Motlalepula,' which
translates to 'come with the rain,' her first visit having taken place during a
torrential rainstorm.
King Charles is a vocal admirer of Islam and
studied Arabic to better understand the Quran. He's a critic of Western
materialism and outspoken champion of climate action.
Queen Elizabeth
and then-Prince Charles fast-tracked the biracial Meghan into the royal family,
and Charles himself walked Meghan halfway up the aisle at her wedding.
These are the 'structural racists' Meghan and Harry
so bravely confronted?
Incredibly, Harry and Meghan will be honored at the
RFK gala alongside Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky. Two of these
honorees are not like the other, am I right?
And it gets better: Hosting this year's event, with
tickets starting at $2,500 and going all the way up to $250,000 — basically,
the equivalent of a down payment on a nice 6-bedroom house— is none other than
Alec Baldwin.
Yes, the man who accidentally shot and killed his
coworker and has since expressed zero guilt — 'Someone is responsible,' he told
ABC's George Stephanopoulos last December, 'and I can't say who that is, but I
know it's not me' — has been tapped to emcee a human rights event.
As to that claim of racism: Queen Elizabeth II was no
racist. In fact, she was such a close friend and admirer of Nelson Mandela that
he was among the very few to call her 'Elizabeth.'
(Above) Mandela and Queen Elizabeth in July 1996
This is a value system only the ultra-left could
abide. It's an episode of 'SouthPark,'
an Onion headline, a Bizarro-world event.
Zelensky aside, it's more the Olympics of
Victimhood than the vanguard of human rights activism.
Yet it's to be expected from Kerry Kennedy, a woman
for whom self-awareness is a foreign concept. She has spent her tenure grinding
Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights (terrible name, by the way) into meaningless
virtue-signaling. She spends her time chasing after celebrities and high-level
donors hardly synonymous with human rights.
To wit: other honorees this December are Frank
Baker, head of private equity firm Siris and recent purchaser of a $32 million
Palm Beach mansion; Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan and billionaire Michael
Polsky, CEO of renewable energy company Invenergy, which last year sued Worth
County, Iowa, in an attempt to force the company's wind projects on the area.
What any of these titans of industry have done for
human rights is beyond me, but we're supposed to trust Kerry Kennedy here — a
leader who, as former employees told me back in 2016, treated her human rights
staffers like dirt.
'For someone who's a human rights lawyer,' one told
me, 'I don't think I've ever met someone who cares so little for the people who
work for her.'
'In general,' said another, 'she treats everyone as
the person who would go get her coffee.'
Well, that's one thing she and Meghan seem to have
in common.
Meghan Markle, who as a newly-crowned duchess on a
tour of Africa, bemoaned on camera that 'not many people have asked me if I'm
OK'; whose reported bullying of royal staffers led to resignations — to say
nothing of reportedly reducing Kate Middleton to tears, as Tom Bower reported
in his book 'Revenge.'
Meghan also leveled vile, unfounded, unspecific
accusations against the royal family as patriarch Prince Philip was on his
deathbed and, with her husband, has since claimed endless victimhood from a
$14.5 million Montecito mansion while clinging to the very royal titles they
say represent the British royal family's racism, colonialism and elitism — I
mean, really, who better?
Incredibly, Harry and Meghan will be honored at the RFK
gala alongside Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky. Two of these honorees
are not like the other, am I right? (Above) Zelensky is seen on screen
during NATO session held in Madrid
on November 21, 2022
But let's throw a huge event with an astronomical
cost-of-entry-fee to celebrate hypocrites of all stripes, and highlight Harry
and Meghan — two people who laud themselves for charitable qualities they don't
seem to possess, who lecture us all on how to live from their multimillion
dollar palatial estate, eco-warriors who fly private at every opportunity, who
complain publicly about how hard they have it, how misunderstood they are and
who insert their frankly picayune grievances into our daily lives.
This is satire, right? An ultra-liberal host, one
most rational people believe guilty of manslaughter, awarding two spoiled
middle-aged beta royals a human rights award.
Volodymyr Zelensky deserves so much better.
Elevating Alec Baldwin and Harry and Meghan to his level — insulting and vulgar
doesn't begin to cover it.
If those three are humanitarians, then truly, I
ask: What are the criteria?
If you're Kerry Kennedy, that criteria is
upside-down, bonkers, berserk. This is someone who demonized her lifelong best
friend and sister-in-law after she committed suicide, in a pathetic defense of
her brother. Someone who smashed into a tractor trailer on a New York highway and
left the scene, who then did what privileged people like her do best — gripe
publicly about what a bum rap she got, how life is so unfair for rich and
famous people like herself.
'[It's] a terrible policy,' she told the Today show
after her acquittal, ' . . . pursuing every case of driving under the
influence.' Yes, pity the reckless driver impaired by substances.
If you're Kerry Kennedy, you're using your human
rights foundation as a piggy bank to take out a $2.4 million line of credit,
traveling for 'work' and staying in $500-a-night hotels, using inherited money
and fame as some kind of proof that you're smarter and better than everyone
else.
And if you're Meghan Markle — hey, you're just like
Nelson Mandela.
BLOGGER'S NOTE. Every once in a while I just have to run a story on these two, though I can't bring myself to write it. I can't look at pictures of them, listen to their whining, griping voices, or watch videos in which they smarm up to people they want to grift. I don't know when this will end - or if it will, or if - worst of all - Meghan does fulfill her ultimate goal to be President of the World. Trump had it, for a few years anyway, until his own insanity brought him down. But I'd rather have Trump in for another four than even contemplate this raving bitch in charge of anything at all.
Normally I'd break up the text with images, videos, gifs, etc. - but this time I couldn't bring myself to use any image except the one which sums it all up in ONE picture. Visit Margaret's Amazon Author Page!
The immortal Bing Crosby. Though I never thought much of his voice, he was 70-something years old when I first heard him, and was relying on crooner dynamics to salvage what was left of his voice - but here, oh my! The pitch, the tone, the dynamic strength behind that honeyed voice. He has every trait of the finest singers in the world, including power that he barely uses. The movie scenes are charming and prove his comic chops, as well as his ability to beguile an audience even some 90 years later.
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Blogger's note. It never ceases to amaze me with what reverence people approach the work of Dylan Thomas. You can't even throw one brickbat at the guy! If he were alive he'd be too drunk to notice anyway. But of all his hallowed writings, even more hallowed than Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night, which holds the record for the most misquoted poem in the history of the world ("Don't go gently into the night"; "Let's go gently into the night"; "you should go gently into the night, listen to me, I'm your hospice worker," etc., etc.), this one is the most hallowed, even more hallowed than Halloween.
As I was saying (and in this I am approaching the windbaggedness of my own chosen subject), there is one particular work which is considered his Masterpiece. This is Under Milk Wood, in which the ravelled and burlap-clad townsfolk of Llareggub (which is, surprise-surprise, nudge-nudge, wink-wink, "Buggerall" spelled backwards) declare themselves as if each one of them stood on a soapbox in the Town Square.
These people are "good" because they are RURAL: they live in small towns, which makes them Real. They aren't big city folk with their evil habits. They shine with goodness even if they are total rotters and ratfinks. We love them. We love them because Dylan Thomas loves them, and Dylan Thomas loves them because they are lucrative.
It's pretentious, it's showy, it's writing that calls attention to itself, a thing I loathe beyond description. I've probably reviewed 350 books in my time (and if that sounds like a lot, I wrote three or four a month for years and years, and doesn't that add up, folks? Or can't you do math?). It's verbal fireworks, it's "oooooooh" and "ahhhhhh" and "oh, isn't it marvelous", which (like all showing off and verbal swaggering) it isn't.
In my tireless and demanding research for this thing, I discovered how many different versions of this "play for voices" have been produced over the years. God knows how it was supposed to be presented: each player standing in front of the audience with a paper bag over their head? (for after all, each one has an annoying habit of introducing him/herself so there won't be any confusion: "Fiddle-dee-dee, I am Mr. Prothero the Butcher! Come and see my meat!" And stuff like that.)
The thing was made into a movie, of course, with Richard Burton playing the town drunk. I discovered today that there was a highly-praised dance version, though how you can dance in Welsh is simply beyond me.
What next, I wonder? Under Milk Wood performed in American Sign Language? With semaphores, or maybe in Morse code? How about Dylan Thomas on Ice?
There's no end to it, it seems. In my exhaustive (and exhausting) research, I stumbled upon a far better writer who never got his due because he was too busy fuming bitterly about how his famous rival Dylan Thomas got all the babes, even if his prick was as limp as a pickled eel from the Llanfairwlllpggygygogoch Tavern.
His attempt to copy Dylan Thomas almost succeeded until he got partway through the play and broke into one of his inebriated rants. Plus people were just a little puzzled by his name: Dullyn ("Cosmo") Thomas: didn't he look just a little bit like Kramer from Seinfeld? Since Seinfeld wouldn't be invented for another 40 years, it was a strange comparison to make.
So here, without any reservations except for the quality and relevance of the work, I present a heretofore ignored and neglected masterpiece.
Under Skim Milk Wood
by Dullyn Thomas
Hark! Listen ye! Come closer, closer! until ye can breathe in me foul alcoholic breath. For I am about to tell’ee of many things! Of many things, yes! that you are not interested in. Of many quaint people! Of many quaint folk in the buffling, baffling, blustering, blistering darkness, buffooning like circus-tents in the sussurating Swansea spring, of many fair quair folk who aren’t like anybody, see, 'cause I just made ‘em up on the spot.
About the old lady, Mrs. Teacozy, who used to sit on her front porch and wonder when the tide would come in. Which is strange, because Mrs. Teacozy lived 450 miles inland.
About Mr. Prothero, the scientist, who blew off his hair doing an experiment in the bedroom and lost his wife’s favour forever, for he blew off his dick at the same time.
(Which is a shockingly earthy, sexual, explicit thing to say. Oh my goodness, Dullyn Thomas is such a sensualist and was probably great in bed.)
First voice: Lookee here, I’m dead! Can’t you tell?
Second voice: Frankly, this play’s so dead, I can’t distinguish it.
Third voice: Extinguished, are you?
Fourth voice: Oh, the wordplay, the wordplay!
Fifth voice: Yes let us gasp at the wordplay as if we’re seeing the fireworks. Which in fact we are.
Mr. Curmudgeon: And you mean to say, me lad, that you don’t think of all this play-writin’ business as just a lot of literary showin’-off?
Me lad: Yes, me Mr. Curmudgeon. It IS a lot of literary showin’-off, but that’s just the point.
Mr. Curmudgeon: The showin’ off?
Me lad: No, the point.
Plump Young Lady in the Bushes: And then I seduced him, aye. I rolled around in the grass gettin’ me dress dairty, and I opened me legs and I sinned and sinned until me diaphragm exploded.
Fifteenth voice: Oh Mr. Playwright, please, please, isn’t it about time this play got started? I meansay, up to now it just doesn’t seem to have much of a point.
Mr. Cadwalladwrrwrr: Oh but the point is, I drownded at sea fifty years ago and it were wonderful. Now the fishes swim through me eye sockets and eat me brain.
Mrs. Cadwall-whatever: You bastard, get back into bed and sairvace me!
(Oh, the earthiness! The bawdiness! The Chaucerian attempts at naughtiness!)
So. Ye heark. Heark ye, for the citizens of Blowitoutyourarse are about to Speak. They don’t have much to say, but that never slowed down that other Mr. Thomas up until now. Moreover, I am about to reveal his Literary Secret, his method. Dullyn (responsible for the stage name of the famous folk singer, Bob Dullyn) collared some lad in the White Horse pub and had him scrawl down any-such-thing because he had a publisher’s advance, see? So it was time for him to get right poetical-like.
Miscellaneous voice: Yes. Nothing inspires the poet like a few dozen pints of Guinness, a pathetic publisher’s advance that’s already spent and a towering deadline, after which will follow a timely and merciless lawsuit. So it were time Mr. Thomas began to write about his imaginary little village, which to avoid being sued for libel he renamed Lllargybargybrwllltwlltwwlt –
Another Plump Young Lady, but not as seductive: - which keeps on changin’ its spellin’ - just to confuse the tourists – who come to here to Blowarse, as we like to call it, to see the heavin’ bleedin' whales in the place of his boyhood – that other Thomas, I mean, the one who could write –
Parson Lllewwellynn: Silence, woman! Shut thy slutty mouth and speak no more! Thou hast been found out: thou possesseth a vagina and will be cast into everlasting hell because you suddenly realized it!
(Oh, the tight-lipped pastor – such wicked mirth at his expense!)
Not too many people know this, but I'll tell you right now: Dylan Thomas was a really bad writer. He crammed adjectives together in a way that made everyone gasp, "Ohhhhh!" and "Wheeeee," as if they were watching fireworks. But that's not good writing. That is what is referred to in literary terms as a "cheap trick".
He wrote about Wales as if it were the dark side of the moon, some exotic or even erotic place where the sea sang its siren song: but the truth is he hated Wales. Hated its narrow religion and suffocating parochialism and "the museum that should have been in a museum" (and I've seen a few of those). He must have hated where he came from, or he wouldn't have gone to America to read poetry to melting young girls and get so soused his head exploded. He had to have a shtick of some sort, a shtick that other writers hadn't quite thought about, a Yeats-ian, Joyce-ean thing, except not Irish.
You HAVE to love Dylan Thomas. You HAVE to admire the solid blocks of poetry or the yammering sing-songy short stories. The only one I really liked was about the guy in the bar, soused, who meets the love of his life, goes to the men's room and never finds his way back. Ever. Reminds me a bit of This is Spinal Tap and how they can't find the stage. You can't say you hate Dylan Thomas and hold your head up in literary circles. Oh, but look at this image! Oh, but look how he does this, how he does that. Though there are some interesting images in And Death Shall Have No Dominion, it seems to have been written for Richard Burton (soused) to read on the Ed Sullivan Show, which in fact I think he did.
Reading A Child's Christmas in Wales used to be de rigueur in classrooms and around the fireplace on Christmas Eve. Today it all feels dated somehow, dense Christmas pudding or a fruitcake passed back and forth in the family until it turns into the sort of igneous rock that was used to build the ancient Pyramids.
This is only a small fragment of one of Thomas' more interminable short stories, called Quite Early one Morning. It was written to pad out the selections on a Caedmon recording he did in the '40s - I know because I have a copy of it rattling around somewhere. Dylan Thomas was famous for his "Welsh-singing" voice and his magnificent readings. OK, if you like Richard Burton with a headcold and a hangover. There is a definite wobble. And then there was the mess of his personal life, which I will not get into.
This story (the fragment I have shared here: it's about a zillion pages long and I thought you'd get bored) is precious and atrocious at the same time. Pretrocious? It's cute. Those little Welsh people in the town, goddamn! they were funny to write about. It drips with the sort of entitlement that announces to the world, "I have arrived. And you have not." It may or may not be a forerunner of Under Milk Wood: Under Skim Milk Wood, perhaps.
I used to love A Child's Christmas in Wales until I actually read it and saw all sorts of cheap verbal tricks going on. If you really want a good Christmas story, make like Linus in the Peanuts story, hit the lights and open the gospel of Luke. In the meantime, this ISN'T from A Child's Christmas in Wales, so it can't be all bad.
I walked on to the cliff path again, the town behind and below waking up now so very slowly; I stopped and turned and looked. Smoke from one chimney - the cobbler's, I thought, but from that distance it may have been the chimney of the retired male nurse who had come to live in Wales after many years' successful wrestling with the mad rich of Southern England. (He was not liked. He measured you for a strait-jacket carefully with his eye; he saw you bounce from rubber walls like a sorbo ball. No behaviour surprised him. Many people of the town found it hard to resist leering at him suddenly around the corner, or convulsively dancing, or pointing with laughter and devilish good humour at invisible dog-fights merely to prove to him that they were normal.)
Smoke from another chimney now. They were burning their last night's dreams. Up from a chimney came a long-haired wraith like an old politician. Someone had been dreaming of the Liberal Party. But no, the smoky figure wove, attenuated, into a refined and precise grey comma. Someone had been dreaming of reading Charles Morgan. Oh! the town was waking now and I heard distinctly, insistent over the slow-speaking sea, the voices of the town blown up to me. And some of the voices said:
I am Miss May Hughes 'The Cosy', a lonely lady, Waiting in her house by the nasty sea, Waiting for her husband and pretty baby To come home at last from wherever they may be.
I am Captain Tiny Evans, my ship was the 'Kidwelly' And Mrs Tiny Evans has been dead for many a year. 'Poor Captain Tiny all alone', the neighbours whisper, But I like it all alone, and I hated her.
Clara Tawe Jenkins, 'Madam' they call me, An old contralto with her dressing-gown on, And I sit at the window and I sing to the sea, For the sea does not notice that my voice has gone.
Parchedig Thomas Evans making morning tea, Very weak tea, too, you mustn't waste a leaf, Every morning making tea in my house by the sea I am troubled by one thing only, and that, belief.
Open the curtains, light the fire, what are servants for? I am Mrs Ogmore-Pritchard and I want another snooze. Dust the china, feed the canary, sweep the drawing-room door; And before you let the sun in, mind he wipes his shoes.
I am only Mr Griffiths, very short-sighted, B.A., Aber. As soon as I finish my egg I must shuffle off to school. O patron saint of teachers, teach me to keep order, And forget those words on the blackboard - 'Griffiths Bat is a fool.'
Do you hear that whistling?- It's me, I am Phoebe, The maid at the King's Head, and I am whistling like a bird. Someone spilt a tin of pepper in the tea. There's twenty for breakfast and I'm not going to say a word.
I can see the Atlantic from my bed where I always lie, Night and day, night and day, eating my bread and slops. The quiet cripple staring at the sea and the sky. I shall lie here till the sky goes out and the sea stops.
Thus some of the voices of a cliff-perched town at the far end of Wales moved out of sleep and darkness into the new-born, ancient and ageless morning, moved and were lost.
This is one of the rare videos where I appear in person. These little trolls are adorable, but as usual I have no place to put them. I love the housing units, but where - ?? At any rate, Bentley makes an appearance as usual.
In case you think things haven't changed. . . they have. Back in the day, women wore a lot of armour under their clothing. Even the slenderest of women were required to wear girdles so they would not appear "loose". Girdles, garters, silk stockings. . . Now, of course, we have the opposite extreme, with hugely obese women hanging out of their short-shorts and spaghett-strap tank tops. Not only no girdles, but no bras either. I saw a woman in the mall wearing only a two-piece bathing suit. She probably weighed about 300 pounds, and as she walked her huge bare belly bounced up and down and up and down. No more fat-shaming, I guess. But the obsessive dieting of yesteryear hasn't really stopped. It's just that people have admitted they've given up
"Methigel is extremely palatable," the directions on the tube of
medication said. "To stimulate taste interest place a small amount of Methigel on animal's nose or directly in mouth. Cats: 1/2 to 1 teaspoonful twice daily. Dogs: 1 teaspoonful twice daily."
To me, it looked like old beef gravy which had been allowed to harden into a quivering semi-solid. To my cat ... well, when I unscrewed the top of the tube, he took one sniff and ran the other way.
I don't blame kitty for his critical response. Cats loathe medicine, especially the really noxious stuff. Murphy hates it, just as he hates to admit that with the onset of middle age he has developed certain urinary problems familiar to 50-year-old males everywhere.
There is a treatment: Methigel. But why are the manufacturers so insensitive as to suggest that this stuff is equally "palatable" to cats and dogs? That's like saying a medicine is suitable for guppies and giraffes. Frogs and finches. Amoebae and antelope.
Everyone knows there is a world of psychic difference between a cat and a dog. Just take a look at their owners.
Dog people wear thick Cowichan sweaters, smoke three-dot Brigham pipes (even women), drink Dewar's White Label, read Hemingway, and sit by the fire with their faithful pal at their feet. They like to be in control - of their dogs.
Cat people wear claw-marked cashmere, gave up smoking years ago (Tabby doesn't like it), drink whatever will get them there fastest, read Dorothy Parker, and know enough to sit very still so Precious will deign to jump up and snuggle. They love to be in control - but not of their cats, who can bite and hiss and scratch and still be named "Cuddlebug".
Murphy eyed me with mistrust. "I suppose you think I'm going to take this greasy gunk without a fight," he stated as I prepared an oral syringe full of the dreaded Methigel.
"No, but I do expect you to take it," I countered, grasping 16 pounds of cat between my knees for the twice daily struggle.
"Good for cats and dogs? Bah -," Murphy spat, decorating the wall with most of the dose. "A dog will eat coffee grounds."
He's right, you know. I've seen it. Dogs aren't fussy. In fact, they'll lick up any old swill with the greatest of enthusiasm, then sit up and beg for more.
Dogs are prose; cats are poetry. Dogs embody the spirit of rugged manhood. Cats are the spooky eccentricity of woman. Dogs doggedly follow. Cats disappear.
I'm writing to the manufacturer of this medicine to suggest a change. "Methigel for Cats?" No, let's call it Tuna Delight, a tasteful puree of assorted fish-heads.
There will be a twist to the instructions. Before the owner is allowed to administer the first dose, he or she must swallow a full tablespoonful.
Good for cats. Humbling for humans.
NOTE: This is an ANCIENT piece, even pre-dating my blog which I started in 2012, and likely taken from one of my newspaper columns in the mid- '90s. DECADES ago! I found it, miraculously, quoted on someone else's blog (or somewhere), maybe ten years later, which still makes it pretty old. Someone must have seen it somewhere, God knows where, and thought it was good enough to quote. I have pictures of Murphy, but they make me so sad and nostalgic for those good times (and bad, let's not forget) that I decided to use Bentley's hokey gifs as illustrations. Bentley has never been sick, touch wood, but Murphy in his latter years had all sorts of old-cat problems. He was the cat-riarch of the family for a magnificent 17 years. Bentley is, of course, a more than worthy successor, but a completely different sort of cat, more reserved, neater and tidier, quieter, better with his litter habits, and absolutely devoted to both of us, and zealously protective, like many dogs are protective of their owners. And as we get older, his devotion only increases.
I've written about The Outer Limits before - I always thought it was far scarier and even more thought-provoking than the more-celebrated Twilight Zone, which could often be preachy and pretentious. TOL had that creepy announcer saying "WE will control the horizontal. . . WE will control the vertical. . .", which to my child mind meant we were losing control of everything. This was the height or depth of the Cold War, and there was a vague, never-spelled-out terror in the background of life that made me wake up screaming. I found it fascination (to quote Spock) to see that both Shatner and Nimoy had Outer Limits episodes, different ones - though Shatner starred in Cold Hands, Warm Heart, and Nimoy had only a supporting role in the other one, can't remember the title, but it wasn't about an alien invasion at all, but a nasty quirk of physics that could have (OF COURSE) destroyed the whole world! This one was a bit disappointing because there were no monsters in it, but as with TZ, mankind itself was the enemy, stupid and selfish and maybe even worthy of instinction.
I'm back in a Hitchcock cycle again, kind of like the way my orbit takes me around to Dylan, Gershwin and Poe (and a more mixed bunch you never saw!). I'm once again watching all the old Alfred Hitchcock Presents episodes from the 1950s, in glorious black and white, and the even-better Alfred Hitchcock Hour, in which there is a whole hour to develop story lines and characters.
The half-hour ones are kind of like The Twilight Zone, a short fiction format where you have to get in there fast, do your damage, and then get out (my own formula for writing short stories). I am also re-watching The Outer Limits series which I'm able to stream and binge-watch in its entirety. Some are absurdly hokey, but there are others with a definite film noir feeling to them, not to mention hints of German expressionism, a Metropolis atmosphere of paranoia and lurking danger. We never quite understand what is going on, something is always held back - kind of like life.
One of the most macabre episodes, The Architects of Fear, had Robert Culp slowly morph into a hideous alien creature, and what I noticed most of all was how much David Cronenberg's Brundlefly was modelled on the monster. The basic body structure, the head, the way it clomped around on two legs but still retained a ghastly humanness. . . yes. These geniuses are all affected by each other, notice each other. It may not even have been a conscious choice, but I think he absorbed it.
And in all these old TV shows, we see character actors or even big stars that would go on to be very familiar indeed. Nearly every episode of the Hitchcock series has "oh, THAT guy!" in it - or that woman - the one who has been in so many episodes of so many shows, but whose names we can't recall. And then people like Sir Cedric Hardwicke show up, along with Shatner and Nimoy and those who would go on to be massive stars. In fact, I did a video on this and should post it.
It's interesting to see the difference between Hitchcock's 1950s series (and by the way, he DIDN'T direct these, just introduced them) and the later hour-long format. For one thing, I have vague memories of it, and did a whole long riff on the eerie episode Consider her Ways, based on a John Wyndham story. This led me to read a whole lot of John Wyndham, leaving me with an aftertaste. The man did not feel good about the future. I watched The Outer Limits - some of it - the ones I could stand - through my splayed fingers, terrified even by that unforgettable opening: "There is nothing wrong with your television set." It was enough to give me night terrors. So when I watch them now, there are little jolts here and there that represent the stirring of deep memories.
This lovely domestic white dove has joined the flock of wild pigeons on Burnaby Lake. Originally we saw TWO white doves, and I swear I saw two black ones, though I didn't think that kind of domestic dove came in black. Now there is but one, but she is VERY popular among the male pigeons, who do their absurd strutting courtship rituals around her: puffing out their neck so that it looks huge, circling around and around their quarry and even spinning in circles to get her attention. Because all those ploys didn't work and Paloma just blew them off, one of the males gave her an aggressive peck. Pigeons! She just not that into you.
This was one of those rare sights that makes birdwatchers turn cartwheels of joy. It's what a fellow birdwatcher called "a gathering of the clan" - HUNDREDS of very vocal Canada Geese in one small body of water, a man-made lagoon we love to walk around. A week or so before, the lagoon was almost completely deserted, with only the odd dabbling duck. But as we approached the water, unable to see through the bushes, we heard this incredible racket and had no idea what it was. When I first saw the massive flock, they were so far away I could barely take in the sheer sweep of them, and I was only able to photograph a small portion of a colony that extended far into the other side of the lagoon. With the sun in my eyes, I barely knew what I was photographing, so I was pleasantly surprised to see my zoom had picked up closer shots of them, all sailing along in the same direction and making a bloody racket! The next time we went to the lagoon, about a week later, I did not see any geese at all, but the ducks had returned, no longer crowded out. In fact, I saw mallards, coots, a heron, wigeons, and mergansers all returning from wherever they had been all summer. Such is the endless joy and superb variety of birdwatching. It's literally never the same twice.
This is just damn funny! I haven't laughed out loud at a YouTube video in a long time. It has all become oh-so-earnest, everybody wanting to get into the act and each upload more pretentious than the one before. Clicks and monetizing and special clubs and merch and all sorts of junk. But this is really funny, because these products (wherever they got them) are such obvious ripoffs, but with badly-translated English titles and descriptions to add to the delight.
This is an example of advertisement as a high art form. Everything about this ad is beautiful, as if it was conceived and directed by a master. Don Draper, maybe. From the dreamy orchestral beginning to the spectacular 360-degree view of the magnificent Buick, this is an ad that was designed with every bit as much care as the car itself.
SARAH VINE: Being a doctor is supposed to be about
helping sick people get better, not guilt-tripping them for taking up
your time... So why are doctors STILL using Covid as an excuse not to
see patients?
A
couple of weeks ago, I came down with a nasty chest infection. At first
I just ignored it. But it got worse: my lungs were on fire.
The bug then took up residence in my ears, rendering me deaf and in considerable discomfort.
I’ll
be fine, I said to myself. ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ insisted my daughter,
home from university. ‘Quite apart from the fact you sound . . . well,
gross, you’re insufferable when you’re ill. Go to the doctor.’
Ah, foolish youth. Go to the doctor? If only it were that simple.
There
was a time when seeing the doctor was a straightforward affair. You
rang, you made an appointment, you went. These days, you might as well
be seeking an audience with the Pope.
My
first mistake was to call on a Monday morning. Whichever bacterium was
rampaging in my bronchioles had clearly not got the memo about Monday
mornings.
After 47 attempts to get past the ‘engaged’ tone (my phone logged them), I finally got through to a recorded message about how busy they were, and I was placed in a queue. I actually felt grateful.
I waited a further 40 minutes before the receptionist finally answered, only to be told — you guessed it — that no appointments were available.
On Tuesday, the infection was much worse. I tried again. This time it took 45 minutes to get through. Again, no appointments were available. The receptionist suggested emailing.
Ah, emailing. That involved going through a hideously clunky NHS website called ‘SystmOnline’. As portals go, it might as well have been the gateway to Hell for all the ease of access it afforded: although not even the Devil himself could have devised such a frustrating piece of technology.
I’m quite computer-literate. It’s beyond me how anyone is expected to cope who isn’t proficient with tech, who can’t remember their password or who simply doesn’t have online access.
Eventually, I managed to navigate my way through it, and logged my request. The next morning my phone rang. ‘Are you the person who emailed?’ I was. ‘The doctor will call you.’
I then spent the rest of the day watching my phone like a hawk, only to miss the call when I popped to the loo. When I rang back, the line was engaged. Obviously.
Now I know I’m not
the only person who’s been ill these past few weeks, but I’m also not
the only person struggling to see their GP.
My daughter, for example, needed a non-urgent appointment for an ongoing issue.
The earliest they could fit her in? Christmas Eve.
A friend came down with a kidney infection. It took her three days of passing blood before her GP would agree to see her.
The truth is, GPs seem to have unilaterally decided they don’t want to see patients any more.
Being a doctor is supposed to be
about helping sick people get better, not making them sit for ages on
hold, or guilt-tripping them for taking up your time
Their
excuse? Covid, of course. But why? Everywhere else has opened up. If
the rest of us are expected to go back to work as normal, why can’t
they?
To my mind, the answer is simple:
it suits them not to have to see patients. Thanks to Covid — that great
catch-all excuse for incompetence in public service — they’ve realised
it’s easier to keep us at arm’s length, and hide behind ‘precautionary
measures’.
But that’s not what being a
doctor is about, is it? It’s supposed to be about helping sick people
get better, not making them sit for ages on hold; or guilt-tripping them
for taking up your time; or making them wait in agony for three days
before you prescribe them the antibiotics they need. Or at least . . .
it used to be.
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