Old So What

  And it’s a warm spring-like day…in December.   Which only means that the warmth will not last and the miserable weather of winter will be returning. But, for now we can pretend that we have arrived where we belong, at the start of pleasant weather once again. The Internet describes rain as: “moisture condensed from the atmosphere that falls visibly in separate drops.” That’s an almost poetic description, don’t you think? Anyway, I like it. A quiet, warm rain any time of the year can soothe your troubled brow and give you a feeling of peace. All is right as the rain lulls you off to a restful sleep on a silent Sunday afternoon. Enjoy! That’s all you have to do.

  Bashar al-Assad was a very bad boy. Well, he was very bad…period. He and his wife, “The Rose in the Desert, (now known as “the first lady of hell”), lived a life of luxury and plenty. How many Hermes scarves can you wear at one time (?), while his people lived lives of hunger, despair and desperation. How do you do that?   How do you live with yourself and do that? How do you go to a family pot roast on a Sunday when you’ve tortured, exploited and starved your fellow Syrians on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday through Saturday. I won’t even talk about the torture prisons and the graves where hundreds of thousands were flung in an effort to dispose of their bodies.   Apparently, these were mostly average citizens grabbed off the streets and checkpoints never to be heard from again. Disposing of human beings. After a while you must become inured to it. All of it. Then, as if that wasn’t enough, Bashar decided to sell his people and the world, the Captagon (a highly ad...

  I just read that the former President of Syria, Bashar al-Assad, has left his country to seek refuge in Moscow under the protection of the President of Russia, Vladimir Putin. Probably one of his last friends. I don’t know how to comment on this. I wouldn’t want to spend the rest of my life in Moscow…but. (Isn’t it really cold there with toilet paper shortages?) The one time I remember reading about Assad is when his wife purchased furniture from Paris. The amount was reported to be $150,000.   Which seems like a small amount considering who it’s for. It just sort of got stuck in my mind that someone would buy furniture from Paris.   Jewels, clothes, croissants maybe, but furniture? And now, he and his wife and three children are some of the newest residents of Moscow.   That can’t be good. And what happened to all the furniture?

  As of this posting there has been a shooting and killing of the United Healthcare’s CEO, Brian Thompson. The person of interest is, and I will say his name, Luigi Mangione. The suspect is 26 years-old.   A graduate of the University of Pennsylvania with both a Bachelor’s and Master’s degree in computer science. I know this school personally, both my brothers graduated from there, and my husband did design and photographic work for several of their departments for many years. I helped with some supplemental writing for two of their publications myself. So, I can say without hesitation that murder is not the norm. Since we do not know all the facts at this point, I can only wonder what happened? And why? Why did this young man take a life and throw his own away…completely. There must have been a reason. The whole event was so tragic. It could be the plot of a movie. And, of course, eventually it will be.

  Unbelievably noisy.   It didn’t used to be, and it’s not just all the dogs barking, who suddenly showed up in direct response to the growth of crime in the township. No, it’s the trucks. We are Truck Central. Garbage, recyclable, lawn care, mowing services, pesticide, fuel, flower and gift delivery, elder transportation, huge construction trucks, paving trucks, cement mixing trucks, tree cutting trucks and a school bus (not technically a truck it’s true) which I reported and was illegally parked in front of my house for a month. You can see that we are inundated. It’s impossible to concentrate sometimes the decibel level is so high! My cat appeared bleary-eyed the other day from a nap in my blankets, which she was unsuccessfully attempting. What’s the problem, her black and furious eyes seemed to ask. I counted and there were at least seven incidents involving trucks just on that day alone. It’s probably certain that most of the same trucks were involved bu...

  Having actually attended a French school for a few years, I can say with authority that this word:  “Voila,” is pronounced with a V in the beginning of the word.  That’s a V.  Voila, not a W.   Why everyone seems to go for the W is beyond me! Just one of those quirky, contagious mistakes, I guess.   So, it’s Voila! It means: “There it is” or “There you are.” As when you do a magic trick and it’s successful: you could say, Voila! (I did it, it’s done! Here it is!)   (For pronunciation of Voila, you know where to go:   your phone, of course.)

  Ok, the house gets dirty, dusty, whatever. It needs care, I get it. BUT frankly some people get completely lost in their housework! It’s alright to come up for air and do something creative once in a while.   You know something fulfilling, such as, writing a book, writing a poem, writing a letter! The housework will survive us all.   But wouldn’t you like to be survived by a song, a thought, a memory that you wrote down that only you can create. And not a spotless house, which will be dirty, dusty, whatever again, before you finish reading this. I rest my case.

  This word sounds like just what it is:   sad, full of regret. Poignant! It stands for words from the heart, such as:   moving, pathetic, and touching. The word “poignant” itself touches us, it gets through our crusty exteriors and binds to our souls, if we let it. A politician, of whom I did not approve, just recently retired, and the look on his face (his sadness so evident, no matter what he did while in office), was poignant!

  that the latest thing that is presently acknowledged to be better than sliced bread, is really not all that original or great after all? In fact, given the money and opportunity, you probably could have done it much better yourself. So don’t be discouraged; the world needs that positive idea, artwork, book, blog that is presently swimming around in your head. You got this!

  Seasons come and go all on their own.   No one cues them; gives them the “all clear.” They just get on with it, and show up at our doors, on our roofs, in our gardens. Summer leaves us with no kicking and screaming, though some of us would do so if it would help. With winter shoved into our lives whether we want it or not.   Which we do not…most decidedly want:   The cold mornings, the expensive heating fuel, the scratchy sweaters, the cold coffee, the gray, bleak days, which seem to last forever.   Just d-r-a-g-g-i-n-g on. Until one morning while taking out the trash, we feel the soft caress, and sweet kiss of spring. Oh, thank goodness, sanity and beauty return!

  You don’t have to burn down the library…to turn the page.

 In the mood for something spooky this fall? Look no further than Repo! The Genetic Opera. This hard rock Opera movie, has songs with great lyrics, blood, and a great premise. A bleak future where people seek perfection through constant surgeries; sound familiar? Only if you miss a payment, they repo back what they operated on. Paul Sorvino is a powerhouse as the head of the company that performs these surgeries. Alexa PenaVaga belts out ballads that will have you rebelling against your own inherited genetics. Anthony Head is tortured Repoman forced to do all the dirty work to protect his family. But my favorite character is the mysterious Graverobber, who wrote the movie. You won't be disappointed with this movie.

  OMG my cat is bleeding to death!! But it was just some blackberry jam from breakfast…

 Is an epic Chinese fantasy drama that is larger that the three realms it inhabits. Friendship, betrayal, family, love; this drama has it all. The female lead is dealt a seemingly insurmountable fate, while the dreamy male lead tries to protect her from all dangers, even from herself. There is humor along the way and even quests. Paired with beautiful backgrounds and fantasy animals, demons and deities, it is like a video game come to life.  Highly recommend for anyone who loves fantasy. Just be prepared for a long emotional journey. I watched this on Amazon prime.

  A perfume with bacon in it: Eau de Ba-CON! It would be a runaway bestseller!

  In 1869, a French chemist named Hippolyte Mège-Mouries created a new “butter,” made from beef fat.   It was supposed to have a longer shelf life than real butter, and be an overall hardier product. So, in 1895, the butter industry, or whatever it was called, banned yellow margarine. This meant that you could only buy white margarine. Segue to the early 1950s… Now, I’ve seen white margarine. It’s not appetizing, but that’s the point. So, you had to mix the yellow coloring with the white margarine glop. They came in a plastic bag, but in two different compartments in the bag that you had to squish together.   I loved to do this.   It was a fun job when you’re five! (I, myself, prefer the taste of butter.)

  Neatness has its place for giving us peace and a sense of order. But you cannot create anything out of neatness. Creativity requires a certain amount of chaos, so the situation can be reordered, rearranged, or reinvented producing/generating something new.

Many, that’s the word for this program:   This is many episodes of many shows, which occur in many languages, and many countries at this point. And, yes, this series has been on for many years. The plot is couples getting to know each other sight unseen, through conversations only, which occur in small isolated rooms known as “pods.” Don’t get your hopes up because the success rate for these couples is very low.   Usually just one couple (out of 5 to 7) makes it to the altar and then beyond, staying together. The reasons are easy to spot:   The couples are often made up of emotionally wounded people, waiting for something else bad to happen to them.   Plus, these are people who don’t know each other well. They are really almost complete strangers, so each stone in the road of their relationship becomes an insurmountable boulder. With little knowledge, with little trust, with no firm foundation to build on, and just the beginning feelings of love and commitmen...

  In the 1980s, exhibitions of Titanic material started to tour. (I think they are still touring today in some form.) My husband and I were Titanic junkies at the time. It was an emotional experience going to one of these productions. We went to Memphis, Tennessee; Boston, Massachusetts; and Atlantic City, New Jersey to view the sacred artifacts from the Titanic. And they did feel sacred. All the objects owned, valued or used by so many people who died needlessly in such a tragic way. (If you don’t know what I’m talking about you should come up for air from under that rock.) The Boston exhibit was the most exciting because the “Big Piece” had just been raised on August 10, 1998, from the grips of the ocean. My husband memorialized the event of our touching the large piece of the starboard hull on September 26, 1998, with a kind of a plaque for our stairway wall. It wasn’t just a keyhole that you stuck you finger in, as so many Titanic exhibitions give you for just a tou...

  Another excellent movie available on YouTube is:   The Painted Veil based on the story by the well-known writer, Somerset Maugham. The main characters, Kitty and Water Fane (Naomi Watts and Edward Norton) start out as unhappily matched, but end up coming together as a couple in love.   Unfortunately, it’s too late. Described as a “Chinese period romance,” with a backdrop of the real event of the cholera epidemic in early 1900s China.   (It should be said that any movie in which Edward Norton is involved can be counted on as being really good because the man is both creative and a perfectionist!) The supporting cast includes Diana Rigg and Toby Jones.   Highly recommended by this author.

 the high life is very  easy to live.

  Just be really careful of your source!

  to go for! Did you know that YouTube has free movies! And some of them are really good, and well worth watching again or for the first time. One example is Dangerous Liaisons (the Chinese version.) Starring the very attractive actors: Zhang Ziyin, Jang Dong-gun and Cecila Cheung, who form an appealing and most accomplished cast. (A mention must be made for the director as well, Hur Jin-ho.) The plot is the sexual dares of two of the characters which end in disaster for all the characters.   Love triumphs just so far.   You know the chance for a happy ending all around is very slim, but this movie captures your interest (and, yes, your heart) until the very end.   Watch this one. You won’t be disappointed!

  Dark   chocolate that is at least 70% cocoa. Blueberries Pumpkin seeds and Tumeric Curcumin

  To clear up a common mistake… Hieroglyphs refers to the characters themselves used in Egyptian writing, such as an animal or bird.   Hieroglyphic is the adjective to describe this writing system, which is:   A system using pictures to represent words or sounds.

  The temperature was about 102 degrees, really no kidding. As I walked in, melting as I went and actually feeling ill by way of both the heat and the humidity, the clerk asked me how I was. I replied: “How do I look? That’s how I am.” He said nothing at that point.   Smart man. However, when I left, he ran ahead to open the door for me.   Good job!

  The Island of Grenada is pronounced in English as Gruh na duh with a long “a” as in the words: “gate” and “date.” Not Gruh nah da (a city in Spain). (Actually, I think both are OK but the island and cruise ships say the long A version.) With apologies to grammarians, my computer will not comply with the proper symbols for all of this, although I know what they should be...I think!

  OK, it’s an improbable name.   But this person’s reviews on YouTube are really worth watching if you’re interested in any way in fashion mixed with humor. Because if I want to have a few good laughs,  I automatically sign on to Success Carter. I don’t always agree with his opinion, but I love his interesting, almost unintelligible accent. (You’ll get used to it.) As well as his commentary and made-up words such as: “regular-smegular.” Maybe he’s an acquired taste.   I don’t know, except that I enjoy my taste every few days of the award shows featuring clothes and their designers as reviewed by Success.   What a great name!

  Death is not clean and easy. You just don’t continue with your life as before. Death is messy and brutish, unforgettable and inescapable. It’s a nuisance nightmare you don't want. Because of Death, there is no second chance, no do-over. There’s no fixing, no repair, no starting again, no next chapter. As a consequence, there is no longer membership for you in that great brother- and sisterhood of being in love. You are no longer in love. You are now in Death.