revolutionary road

Last night I finished reading the 1961 novel Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates. I thought it was incredibly well written and want to read more Yates, who I've never read before this.

Set in 1955, the book would be cliched if written now with its Madison Avenue and suburban observations. But as an historical artifact, it's incredibly prescient, recognizing where mid-century society was beginning to rot.

Yates was never hugely commercial in his lifetime, so he never reached the recognition of someone like his contemporary John Updike. But in many ways they're mining the same vein, so if you like Updike, you'd probably like Yates, too.

Now I'm going to try to read more of Yates' work. Given he only came back into print in very recent years and primarily in America, whereas I'm in Australia, that may not be easy.

I've done a complete 180

Six years ago I wrote on this blog about how I would never apply for Australian citizenship. Since then, and mostly recently, I completely changed my mind and now plan to become an Australian citizen without renouncing my American citizenship.

Given I've lived here almost ten years and have been married to an Australian for nearly that long, plus the fact that I already have permanent residency status, I easily meet the qualifications. All I need to is apply, pay the fee, go in for an interview, and then take a citizenship test.

I took some of the practice tests cold online with no preparation and scored above the necessary pass rate on every one. When time comes to take the actual test, however, I will study thoroughly.

I changed my mind about this issue because I realized a second citizenship and second passport could be a valuable asset. There are times, like now, where being an American abroad with an American passport can be a liability, whereas holders of an Australian passport rarely face the same kind of feedback.

The process is not complex, but it's not fast, either. Start to finish, it could take up to a year. I'm going to start very soon.

abandoned baby

Thanks to genetic testing, an Arizona man has been reunited with the mother who abandoned him in an Ohio phone booth in 1954 one January morning.

This part of the story is surprising and alarming: "His mother was 18 and coerced to give him up by his father, saying he’d marry her if they left the baby. The couple was traveling through Ohio from Kentucky, where he was born in a hospital. They were on their way back to Maryland when the father took the baby and left him in a phone booth. After that, the father disappeared."

I'm hoping the mother was totally unaware when the father dumped the baby. But she apparently didn't contact authorities, who would know about the baby from police bulletins that were circulated heavily.

What kind of man abandons his own child so cruelly like this? And why they hell did he then take off? Then what was the point of dumping the baby?

These questions, of course, will never be answered. I'm left wondering what other horrible things the man may have perpetrated on any other of his children, if he had more.

madame eyebrows

I thought this image was photoshopped, but it's not. The dog actually has eyebrows like that, hence her name Madame Eyebrows.

Pup looks sad in her photos, but her human reports she's happy and goofy like any youngster. The fact that her canine face looks like a sad human's is entirely coincidental.

Hound needs an agent. She has a face made for commercial modeling. The fact that she's a girl makes her all the more adorable. So ugly she's cute.

the happy warrior

I was sorry to see that John McCain died over the weekend. I certainly did not agree with much of his politics, but I agree that he was a great American.

His life story was the stuff of epic. The most incredible chapters arguably were his time as a prisoner of war for five and a half years in North Vietman. He survived horrendous treatment, including repeated torture, but refused an early release.

And then in later life as a senator he showed true character, strongly advocating for normalizing diplomatic relations with the very government that had treated him so horrifically.

McCain put nation before party, a standard that too few embrace these days. He is gone, but he will not be forgotten.

brain numbing

I was reading in a newspaper offline this week about people who are ultra fans for a particular film and have seen it hundreds of times in their life. Not surprisingly, they know all the lines by heart.

One man was interviewed who watches Ghostbusters twice a week on agerage. Yeesh.

There are some movies that I really like and have seen probably half a dozen times each. But never more than once every other year.

I think some movies lost their luster with too many viewings. I know that happened with both Citizen Kane and Gone With the Wind for me. I still recognize they're very good but no longer consider them great.

leadership spill

Australia has a new prime minister. The country had several "leadership spills" this past week, a peaceful party putsch to challenge the existing PM for his or her job.

Hence, as in all parliamentary systems, the voting public did not choose the PM. That's always determined by the ruling party's ministers, but Australia has more party leadership challenges than other parliamentary countries, giving the nation the reputation as "the coup capital of the democratic world."

In some ways, I think this system works better than direct voting for the head of state. The party leadership must have deep support among his or her party's ministers and thus you have a stronger head of state. But this an inherently less democratic approach because the citizens do not select the PM; the ministers they elected do it instead.

The United States is an oddity among democracies -- it doesn't have a parliamentary system but voters still don't directly elect the President or Vice-President. That's done by the archaic Electoral College, so the losing candidate can end up as President, as has happened two out of three times this century.

IMHO, this is a cumbersome, undemocratic, and illogical system. The Electoral College was designed to appease the powerful Southern slaveowning class. They're all gone, so it's time to excise their antiquated system, too.

our kind of cruelty

Last night I finished reading Our Kind of Cruelty, a 2018 thriller by Araminta Hall.

For the first time in a good long while, I read a book and yet didn't know what I thought about it. Nonetheless, I enjoyed reading the novel and thought it was well written with a tight pace.

But who to believe? The central character, a guy named Mike, is a stalking fantacist whose hold on reality is very tenous. But at the same time, he's vulnerable and empathetic.

His ex-girlfriend is a major figure in the story, and we're led to suspect she may be manipulating and controlling him to the point he commits crimes for her. And therein lies what may be the major flaw in the book -- ambivolence works for a while but what about past the end?

Nonetheless, Cruelty is a solid book and I recommend.

baby, I'm back!

The new laptop arrived earlier today and I am back online! I didn't realize the old one was going on seven years old. I should not wait that long to upgrade again, given how cheap hardware is if you shop for deals.

The new laptop will take me a while to get used to, but I'm using the same software I'm acclimated to, so that makes things a lot easier. The pre-loaded crap on the new one keeps getting me to buy shit. That is ignored and, when I have some time, I'll deactive all that crap.

from bad to worse

Now the husband's desktop isn't working. I can't wait for my new laptop to arrive tomorrow. I hate being trapped in a pre-digital timewarp.

minor crisis on this end

My laptop keyboard finally went over the brink yesterday afternoon. It will not stop typing the letter "H." So I can still do browsing as long as I don't type anything.

I tried online searching for a solution, but the only remedy seems to be a new keyboard. The laptop is too old to warrant that solution as cost effective.

I can still use my husband's desktop but not for more than about fifteen minutes an hour or the screen overheats. We also have a working older desktop, but that can't connect to the internet because of a phone-line meltdown a few years back.

So that means three geriatric computers that I have to switch between constantly. Needless to say, this is not a long-term solution.

I thus quickly ordered a new laptop online, which should be here later this week. Then when that's up and running, I'm going to order a new monitor for the husband's desktop.

I hate to part with the old laptop but I realize, like an aging pet that's suffering, it's time to let it go.

I said to my husband that I need to also let go of my personal policy of trying to use a computer down to its last possible minute of life. When the new laptop is a few years old, I'll buy a new one, before it's too late -- again.

a possible successor

I've written here before on this blog how I've read a number of spy/espionate novelists who have been called successors to the great JOhn Le Carre. IMHO, not of them lived up to that hype.

Earlier today I finished a novel -- Slow Hores by Mick Herron -- that read like the writer could be a Le Carre successor. But I have to read a few more of his novels to know for sure.

Why do I say this?

First, Herron has a similar darkly cynical eye. None of the other alleged successors have this.

Second, Herron slowly unpeels a story that's built like a complex puzzle, much like Le Carre.

Third, Herron also creates deeply flawed, anguished characters much like Le Carre.

Unlike Le Carre, however, Herron may finish a book with all loose ends nearly tied. He certainly did that with Slow Hores.

So, again, it might be premature to compare the two. I want to read at least two or three more Herron novels to see.

But that aside, Slow Hores is a very good book and I recommend with a big thumbs up.

not open all hours

I was talking to a woman in town the other day after I noticed she had a New York accent. She and her husband are here for a three-year stint, which they've just started.

While we were chatting, she asked "so what's with stores here closed half the time?"

That was one of the observations I made after being in Australia for a few months -- stores down here are not open the extensive hours they are back in the States so it always requires planning ahead.

Most stores I know are open only two nights a week, usually Thursday and Friday. Many do not open at all on Monday and Tuesday. And on holidays, most all stores are closed, including supermarkets.

Stores in America would never voluntarily close at night for fear of losing business. But then if everyone obsered the same hours, no one would lose any shoppers.

1812

In his down time, the husband semi-restores semi-vintage cars that he buys in original condition but turns into beauties. He ends up doing about two or three a year, and the profit is a nice addition to the family budget.

If I like the car, while restoration is underway, I sometimes drive them as an everyday vehicle. Recently, I've been driving a 1970s BMW whose engine he's finished but both the interior and paint need work.

The last owner nevertheless installed a killer aftermarket stereo with incredible sound. It does a great job both on the lower notes and the really high ones, too.

When I moved from the US to Australia, I gave away most of my CDs before I left. But I did keep some favorites that would not make good MP3 files because of the particular works.

One of those is my recording of Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture. I dug that out yesterday before I ran some errands in the BMW with the boys.

Needless to say, the music sounded fantastic on the terrific stereo. The kids absolutely loved it, but then again they like anything loud.

I told the husband he should remove that stereo from the car and put it in our permanent vehicle. I convinced him it wouldn't really add to the BMW's sale price.

I think he's sold.

amazing aretha

The great Aretha Franklin died yesterday at the age of 76. She had an amazing talent and an extraordinary life. Her extraordinary music will live forever.

Her biggest selling album in her half-century career was Amazing Grace. The LA Times is running a nice piece about its history.

Linked below are two of Aretha's performances of the signature piece from that album. The first was recorded in 192 and the second was 2014, her final public performance of the piece.

bad 1980s tv lighting

I was visiting the elderly owner of our house at her care home yesterday and couldn't help but notice a TV loudly playing in the common room. One glance at the screen and I could tell it was a 1980s American TV hour-long drama.

The unrealistic lighting was the big clue. For whatever reason, many TV productions from that decade overlit the actors with scrims so few natural shadows can be seen in the finished picture. The result is unnatural and fake.

People are standing out in the direct sunlight in the TV drama, yet skin under their chins is nearly fully lit. Unless the dirt and grass and sidewalks glowed in real life, you wouldn't have people lit like that (see enlargement of publicity still seen below).

I suspect some of the reason was because it made the actors look younger than they really were. Natural lighting would reveal their wrinkles and uneven skin. But blasting 1980s TV lighting erased all that.

By the 1990s, TV lighting was becoming more natural, with actual shadows and more realistic lighting. That process continued to evolve until the lighting today is far more natural lighting, although desaturation is used far too much in some productions.

If 1980s TV signals are just now reaching a far-off planet where they're being picked up by an advanced race, they must be wondering what happened to humans or their world between the 1950s and the newest transmissions they're receiving.

women brawling in public

I found this short clip of two women brawling with two pacifist men at a McDonald curiously mesmerizing. I tried to see if I could find a longer clip for context at YouTube, but all I learned was that women -- and men -- fighting at a McDonald's is quite common.

When I had to go to public school after getting kicked out of two private schools, I recall seeing a few fights with boys in a hallway. I've never seen adults doing it in the real world, although I have seen bouncers get hit dragging drunks out of clubs where I danced.

What drives women to resort to hitting so easily in public like this? My fear of being arrested and/or sued would prevent me from even thinking about doing this.

The other curious aspect of this short clip is the fact that the first man attacked is clearly very fit and muscular. He could probably beat the crap out of her but he totally retreats. He wants no part of her.

I wish I knew the story and context here but the Imgur page has nothing.

freedom fighter moms

I'm reading yet another book about the French Resistance, this time a non-fiction account that focuses on the 230 female fighters and rebels who were the only ones sent to Auschwitz. Most of them were not Jewish and only 49 survived the war.

Some of the women were divorced with grown children or never married. Others had young children and, in at last one instance, the woman had a baby she placed with relatives before going underground to work with the Resistance.

This creates an interesting but horrible moral quandary for the young mothers. Do you put the interests of your children before the interests of the nation or the other way around?

While some of the 230 women were involved in activities like sabotage and knew they would face serious consequences if caught, some of them were arrested and shipped to Auschwitz for by even Nazi standards were trivial, like the high school girl who was picked up when she was caught scrawing a V for victory on the walls. People like her surely didn't imagine they'd end up with such horrible fate.

If I was living in Nazi-occupied France in the 1940s, I might be silently cheering the Resistance but I know I wouldn't be joining the cause. I couldn't do anything that might put my children at risk.

I certainly wouldn't be helping the collaborators, either. I would just keep my nose down and carry on. That might sound cowardly, but I couldn't endanger my children with dangerous activism.

I'm glad I live in a time and a place where I don't have to make difficult decisions like this.

clown town

Seen below are four photos featuring Gucci's "look" for Fall/Winter 2018/2019 (enlargements). The fashion industry's fascination with bag lady chic continues.

Those glasses look like something from a really bad low-budget 1970s scifi movie. The photos are also styled really poorly, too. She's wearing a coat with something underneath with very lacy sleeves, but you could never tell that from what's seen here, mainly because she's sitting on an unmade bed and holding a huge carryall bag in front of her.

The model in the clown pajamas might be turned away from the camera because he's so embarrassed. Do you know any man, straight or gay, who would wear something like that? I could not find the item on Gucci's website, but other men suits they were selling started at $3,600 American and some approached five figures.

The face mask in the last shot seems to be a unisex look that Gucci is hoping everyone will want to wear -- they're offering that both for men and women. Something tells me this won't catch on.

Sometimes it seems as if certain designers go out of their way to come up with the most ridiculous outfits and then see if people actually buy them. That aside, I think Gucci's latest line is a great example of how the fashion industry needs to come out of its ivory bubble.

And I blame Anna Wintour in part for this. She encouraged this shit at Vogue and the industry jumped on board. The fact that the great majority of people don't wear clothes like this shows the disconnect that resulted.

yet another gmail upgrade

Oh joy. Very soon, Gmail will release a new version. That means if you have Gmail, you can look forward to some kind of new format suddenly appearing on your screen.

If you don't like the upgrade, you can opt out -- but who knows long that opt-out will be available. At some point, the upgrade will be mandatory, whether you love it or hate it.

I hate change for change sake. This certainly looks like another case of that. Why "fix" what ain't broken?

bird uber

I thought at first glance the photo seen below (enlargement) was Photoshopped. But closer examination made me doubt that, so I took to the internet.

It turns out, the photo is genuine and shows a weasel riding on the back of a flying woodpecker. It's actually a portion of a larger image showing much of the background.

The bird is not giving a free ride to the critter. The latter probably jumped the bird while it was feeding on the ground, causing it to take flight immediately. The weasel wants to kill it and eat it.

This picture reminds us of how nature can often be ruthlessly savage. Every living creature on this planet exists to be food for a more dominant species.

That includes us.

iceberg lettuce fanatic

The New Yorker magazine's food writer cannot stop talking about iceberg lettuce. She recently wrote a column gushing about the stuff. This is not the first time she has waxed fanatic about a staple of 1950s cooking and the world's most boring vegetable.

If iceberg is the only decent-looking variety in the store, I just don't buy lettuce that week. I don't dislike iceberg to the degree I hate celery or okra, but I don't like it either. I've just banished it from my life.

The stuff doesn't have much taste and what taste it has is a little sour. With the exception of the rather limp outer leaves, the stiffer inner leaves are often quite pale.

I cannot understand why that woman is so obsessed with iceberg. The stuff is so boring it's often used as a bed for other foods on buffets but then never eaten.

There are so many nicer varieties of lettuce: romaine, green leaf, red leaf, bib, butter, Boston, escarole, and many more. If buying lettuce was like a beauty contest, picking iceberg would be like passing over the gorgeous, curvy, talented models and choosing the bland-faced one with zits, no shape, and lifeless hair who can only barely play the kazoo.

the clueless cuckold

Consider the following scenario:

Manny's fiancee and the love of his life is killed suddenly. He's devastated with grief.

Moe and Jack are talking privately a few days later about Manny. Moe reveals he happens to know the late fiancee was stepping out on Manny and planning on ending their engagement.

Jack thinks Moe should tell Manny because he deserves to know the truth. Moe disagrees and asks Jack not to say anything.

So who's right here, Jack or Moe?

IMHO, Moe is 100 percent in the right. Why compound Manny's grief with anger? How would this knowledge possibly benefit Manny at this point in time?

Yes, someday, somehow Manny may learn about this from somone else. Shit happens. But there's no point compounding his pain right now.

I came across this scenario in a novel I just finished. The protagonist is like Moe and refuses to tell the cuckolded man.

I asked my husband what he thought, and he agreed with me. His point: only a sadist would do what Jack suggested.

the male species

The video seen below both amused me and made my skin crawl. It was taken about a week ago on a rock outcropping known as Pedra da Gavea that overlooks Rio De Janeiro.

Fit people -- predominately male -- are known to dangle themselves over the edge and then pull themselves to safety. Although the elevation is about 10,000 feet, if one were to fall while trying this stunt, it's about 2,800 feet straight down to a certain death. What's a few thousand feet difference when you're hurtling to your demise?

This made my skin crawl because I imagined what it would be like out on that window outcrop looking down into the abyss. No matter how much you paid me, I would not do this. The men who ultimately rescue their friend -- or were they just passersby? -- are incredibly brave.

This amuses me because it shows the divide between the male species and the female species. The people who try this are reportedly overwhelmingly male.

A man presumably would feel the need to do this to impress the female species, specifically a girlfriend. The female species would simply respond, "are you out of your mind?" She doesn't need to impress anybody.

hairy ladies

My uncle scanned a whole bunch of old family photos that had been bequeathed to him by my grandfather and sent the results to various relatives, including me. When known, the identity of sitters was supplied.

The lady seen below (enlargement) was identified as my great-great grandmother's older sister, so that would make her my great-great-great aunt. Later pictures show her with long hair but always tightly braided and wound on top of her head.

While hair like that today might be pretty unusual, apparently it was rather common in the nineteenth century. This interesting website explains why.

Aunt Hairy received a masters degree in education from Boston University and taught other young women how to be teachers in what was then called a "normal school" -- what today might be called a "teachers college." My great-great grandmother became one of her pupils as did my great-grandmother.

Aunt Hairy lived into her nineties but never married. I have to imagine she died a virgin, as was commonplace for elderly spinsters of her day.

No one knows why she opted to have herself photographed with her hair down. Perhaps that was for a young beau who long ago vanished, whoever he might be.

If she died a virgin, I'd like to think at least she found love once in her life. Then again, maybe she wasn't a virgin and, instead, a sex-crazed nympho like me.

job stoppers

Yesterday's New York Times prominently ran an article about how face tattoos are now becoming mainstream, albeit on a small scale.

I had to laugh at one tattoo artist who was quoted as saying that employees at his shop had a name for face tattoos: "job stoppers." He elaborates: "Your possibilities are cut down. You’re going to be working at the Trader Joe’s putting groceries away or working that bar job."

I have yet to see a picture of a face tattoo that looked impressive and with a distinctive design. Most of them are either cliched, like stars, or sloppy and disorganized doodles that look like something drawn on a high school notebook.

Only tattoo teardrops at the corner of an eye really stand out, but that's because they suggest -- correctly nor not -- that the wearer committed a crime for his gang. These are seen primarily in the United States and the population with them is alleged to be considerably larger than the population of those who committed homicide before obtaining them.

If a tattoo is a lifetime mistake, like I and many others believe, then a face tattoo is infinitely more of a mistake. Many body tattoos can be covered with clothing, but certainly not all. A face tattoo, however, is always visible, unless you wear a balaclava, which makes you look like a terrorist or a bank robber.

It was heartening to read in the article how experienced ink artists will refuse to give face tattoos to first-timers. Ideally, more than a few will refuse to do them entirely.

some men are pigs

Yes, I know many men are wonderful. I'm married to one of them. But some men -- a small minority -- are absolute shits, like this guy.

Yes, there's a good chance he's mentally ill, given he's homeless, but most mentally ill people are not violent. And I'd argue that this kind of behavior doesn't result from mental illness but a sense of male entitlement.

The best way to get a date with a woman is to not act like an asshole. Because few women are impressed by and attracted to men who are jerks.

Yet jerks of all sorts still think they're God's gift to women. Yet men who know how to attract women act completely different. Why is there such a gap between the two?

king dong

The cartoon below is part of this short strip. You have to look at the whole thing for it to make sense.

I laughed like a fool when I saw this. But I was mystified as to why King Kong would be circumcized.

I seem to remember a King Kong film spoof in an old Mad Magazine of my uncle's that I looked at while visiting my grandparents that had something to do with the Ghostbusters having to clean up King Kong's droppings when he ravaged New York. Why is it that Hollywood doesn't show us the more ordinary aspects of monster life?

australian drought

The BBC published some starkly beautiful aerial photos on its website showing the effects of Australia's decade-long drought. Although the drought began about the time I moved here down under, I swear I did not cause it.

Australia is like California, another place regularly hammered by long-term droughts. Both are places with a fairly high population growth due do internal migration and relocation, so an area already suffering from too little water will get even more demand on its water.

People like heat and sun and expect their water to always come out of the tap and in nice little bottles you can buy in the store. But that water has to come from somewhere.

With all the heat and sun, you'd think Australia and California would invest more in water desalination like Saudi Arabia has done. The water has to come from somewhere and long-term solutions are needed.

circling the drain?

The fashion media is now all abuzz in response to an article on Monday about Beyoncé that also included the bombshell that Vogue's longtime and legendary editor Anna Wintour would depart the magazine within a year. She has headed the publication for thirty years.

Vogue's parent company Condé Nast has since denied the report by saying she would be with the magazine "indefinitely." But how long is that?

Whatever the answer, IMHO it's long past time for Wintour to leave the magazine. I think journalists should act as impartial observers and chroniclers. But she has done far more than that.

She makes or breaks designers and models. If she loves someone, that person is lavished with favorable press and bountiful coverage. If she doesn't like someone, he or she is exiled to publishing Siberia, never to be mentioned in the magazine, let alone photographed. I think that's wrong -- an editor should not be shaping the industry she's covering.

Her taste has become limited and stale. She likes a certain "look" for a fashion shoot with models who look like robots and mannequins. That's not a surprise -- she looks like an emotionless cyborg with a stiff, wig-like pageboy hairstyle and always sporting sunglasses like she's the Terminator's older sister.

Wintour is widely reported to be frosty and highly demanding toward anyone who works for her, earning her the industry nickname "Nuclear Wintour." She was the inspiration for novelist Lauren Weisberger's stinging roman à clef bestseller The Devil Wears Prada, written after the writer had worked directly for Wintour.

Seen below is a recent shoot for the magazine. Enough said.

blowback is a bitch

Two men had a verbal dustup a few days ago in Columbus, Ohio, when each thought the other had been wronged. Not wishing to debate the point endlessly, one driver continued on his way, which was to his home.

The other would have none of that, however. He followed the man to his house and then began bellowing racist comments at him, repeatedly using "the N word."

The latter remained calm but recorded the entire exchange on his phone. He then posted that video online. And then all hell broke loose.

The public rallied against the bigot. His business immediately suffered and badly.

"I’m out of business, I’m completely out, I’m done, I’ll never work in Columbus again," the bigot lamented to a reporter. "This has completely and thoroughly ruined my life."

You own this, pal. You followed the other guy back to his house and decided to go down Racist Road. Do shitty things; expect shitty consequences. And don't expect a lot of pity from the public, either.

My grandfather used to say "engage brain before operating mouth." That's advice the bigot could take to heart.