"No, I never loved you, Walter. Not you, or anybody else. I'm rotten to the heart." [linked]

Phyllis: "I used you, just as you said. That's all you ever meant to me -- until a minute ago. I didn't think anything like that could ever happen to me.

Neff: "I'm sorry, baby. I'm not buying.

Phyllis: "I'm not asking you to buy. Just hold me close.

Neff: "Goodbye, baby."

[The gun explodes once, twice.]
Double Indemnity (1944)

Femmes fatales have been on my mind for some time now. I could not really tell you why. In search of femmes fatales after this idée fixe arrived, I downloaded and watched several classics of the genre, including the venomous Phyllis Dietrichson in Double Indemnity. After some little while, it occurred to me that perhaps one of the reasons, or even THE reason, that the femme fatale imagery is occupying my thoughts is that I am keeping myself well-informed on the American election which simply abounds with knockoffs of the genre. To be sure, none of the women present in the electoral process can even begin to hold a candle to Phyllis, or Gilda, or any of the brilliantly bad girls from film noir in the 1940s and 1950s, yet they do manage to sow destruction all the same. The classic definition of a femme fatale is: "an irresistibly attractive woman... especially one who leads men into danger or disaster" (unknown). If there is a woman in the campaign who has managed to accomplish that, it is surely Sarah Palin. Not that I find Gov. Palin "irresistibly attractive," mind you, but I am told that many do. Certainly Sen. McCain did, to his everlasting regret. She cannot interview, she cannot hold her own without intensive coaching, she cannot be trusted to take two steps without a phalanx of minders and aides, she can abuse power, she can be petty and vindictive in state politics, she can sling racial mud and fearmongering, in short, she is an ambulant catastrophe. If he was going to pick a woman who would bring down his campaign in a fearsome blaze, I would have much more respect and admiration for him if he had searched for, and picked, a real femme fatale, someone in the corridors of power or influence who could carry the same weight as a Phyllis Dietrichson or a Gilda. Someone who radiated evil and glamor in equal measure, someone whose stiletto heels you could imagine buried in the heart of anyone standing in her way. The pitbull-with-lipstick soccer mom just does not have the gravitas to fill that role. And to top it all off, she is disturbingly stupid to the point of being an auto-caricature.
Auto-caricatures are very much the name of the game these days. As anyone not living on the Antarctic ice cap knows (and perhaps even there), there is an HBO program titled "Sex and the City." After viewing an episode of this travesty, I have steadfastly refused to watch it ever again. I found the women vulgar, cruel, shallow and without any redeeming value at all. They did not even have the depth to be evil, no femme fatales there, just amoral wanna-be vampires stalking the streets of Manhattan in search of expensive shoes and stupid men, all in abundant supply. So imagine my own surprise when I decided to watch their movie. There was, of course, no surprise, it was no better than their television show, just longer. Forty and fifty year old women still practicing valueless lifestyles with the false insouciance of younger people, still buying the shoes, still finding and abandoning the men when their criteria of "What have you done for me TODAY?" is not immediately met and fulfilled. Even the movie itself, or rather the production company, seemed to sense that the trope had been played out. The film premiered everywhere else in the world first before it even appeared in Manhattan, its natural home and showcase. They called it clever marketing, I call it dodging the bullet until the last minute. Here is an interesting aside - a typical American movie will release in a pattern something like this: USA, Canada, Singapore, Thailand, Hong Kong, Australia, Philippines, New Zealand, Indonesia, Malaysia, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Netherlands, Taiwan, UK, Mexico, Italy, Brazil, South Korea, Bolivia, Peru, Chile, Israel, Finland, Iceland, Panama, South Africa, Sweden, Belgium, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Czech Republic, Denmark, Greece, and France. You will notice the placement of France; this is due to the everlasting jealousy that France suffers due to the American film industry. Priding themselves on being the inventors of cinema and home to the "real" auteurs, France simply cannot bear that American cinema is so successful on French home soil. They feel the same way about the wheel, electricity and insufferable arrogance (every civilization in antiquity thought they had that market cornered), so it is nothing new. There are many things for which I admire France and the French, but it amuses me that their greatest criticism of the USA, hubris, is exactly their own greatest fault as well.
Hubris is a grand failing and one that carries some of the heaviest prices in history. I recently took a quiz somewhere on the Internet, I do not remember where, that through a series of questions placed you as one of the Chinese emperors according to personality. I came out as Xuanzong of the Tang dynasty (a.d.712 to a.d.756). The summary was thus: "Personality Traits: Hardworking and diligent, reformist, employed capable ministers, internationalist, patron of the arts, obsessed with pleasure-seeking, delegated too much power to underlings History: The early half of his reign (A.D. 712-730s) saw Tang China reach the height of its powers. At the beginning, Xuanzong was a hardworking and diligent emperor. He made sweeping reforms to the bureaucracy, employed capable ministers, made contacts with foreign ambassadors as far west as the Middle East and greatly expanded China's borders. Xuanzong also greatly improved the empire's taxation system and transportation network. Arts and literature flourished as a result of his patronage. His administration began to deteriorate after his infamous love affair with Yang Guifei [apparently a classic femme fatale!]— the young wife of his son, Prince Shou. As Xuanzong became obsessed with pleasure-seeking with Yang, he paid less attention to the running of his empire, and much of his power fell into the hands of corrupt court officials and eunuchs. Compounding his problems, warlords from outlying provinces (many of which had been recently reconquered) took more regional power into their own hands. One of these — a Turkish/Sogdian named An Lushan — started the An Lushan Rebellion in Fanyang in 755. The rebels captured the city of Luoyang and the capital Chang'an six months later. Xuanzong fled to Sichuan during the war, and Yang Guifei was killed by the imperial army for her perceived role in the emperor's weakness and loss of control. Xuanzong then abdicated his position to Suzong, the heir apparent, in 756 and died in 762 shortly before the rebellion was finally quashed. His rule would be the longest of the Tang dynasty, lasting nearly 44 years. The strength that Xuanzong had allowed the warlords in the border provinces led to a period of increasing conflict and instability, which set the stage for the end of the Tang dynasty and the ensuing Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period." I enjoyed "my" summary until it reached the point of "my" affair with my daughter-in-law and the ensuing problems with those pesky warlords.
That oriental typecasting brings to mind another femme fatale of long-ago Hollywood, Anna May Wong. Her story is incredible, one of those strange but true tales that really only come out of America. Her mini-biography, by Jon C. Hopwood, is at the same time instructive, sad and fascinating. It is a somewhat lengthy read in a blog entry, but well worth the effort; a story not only of an incredible woman, but of the USA during a time of continuing prejudice as well as a short historical tract on how the oriental prejudice arrived in America. I include here an edited version (to read it in full, please visit - http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0938923/bio). "Anna May Wong, the first Chinese-American movie star, was born Wong Liu Tsong on January 3, 1905, in Los Angeles, California, to laundryman Wong Sam Sing and his wife, Lee Gon Toy. A third-generation American, she managed to have a substantial acting career during a deeply racist time when the taboo against miscegenation meant that Caucasian actresses were cast as "Oriental" women in lead parts opposite Caucasian leading men. Even when the role called for playing opposite a Caucasian in Asian drag, as with Paul Muni's appearance as the Chinese peasant Wang Lung in "The Good Earth," Wong was rejected as she did not fit a Caucasian's imagined ideal look for an Asian woman. The discrimination she faced in the domestic industry caused her to go to Europe for work in English and German films. Her name, which she also spelled Wong Lew Song, translates literally as "Second-Daughter Yellow Butterfly" but has been interpreted as "Frosted Yellow Willows." Her family gave her the English-language name Anna May. She was born in Flower Street in Los Angeles in an integrated neighborhood dominated by Irish and Germans, one block from Chinatown, where her father ran the Sam Kee Laundry.Located near a noxious gas plant and the L.A. River, Chinatown had been built on private property, so there were no sewers or running water. In 1900, the population of 2,111 was 90% male, since U.S. immigration law of the late 19th and early 20th centuries would not allow a Chinese woman to immigrate unless she was already married to a U.S. citizen. Nineteen Chinese had been lynched in a Los Angeles race riot instigated by Caucasians in 1871, and there were later, lesser riots in 1886 and 1887. Until the Chinese emigrated to the U.S. in the mid-19th century, they had never encountered a people who considered them racially and culturally inferior, nor been forced to deal with overt hostility by a people who considered themselves their racial superiors. Discriminated against in a way exceeded only by the racism directed towards African-Americans, their assimilation was impossible, so the Chinese in America bought property to create their own communities. Boxed out of the American culture, their ties to China remained important and, forbidden by law to intermarry with whites, there was little chance of assimilation in the world Wong Liu Tsong was born into. She was destined to be one of the people who helped change that, at a terrible psychological cost exacted upon her by both the oppressors and their victims. The Wong family moved back to Chinatown two years after Liu Tsong's birth, but in 1910 they uprooted themselves, moving to a nearby Figueroa Street neighborhood where they had Mexican and East European neighbors. There were two steep hills between the Wong's new home and Chinatown, but as her biographer, Colgate University history professor Graham Russell Gao Hodges points out, those hills put a psychological as well as physical distance between Liu Tsong and Chinatown. Los Angeles's Chinatown already was teeming with movie shoots when she was a girl. Liu Tsong would haunt the neighborhood nickelodeons, having become enraptured with the early "flickers." Though her traditional father strongly disapproved of his daughter's cinephilia, as it deflected her from scholastic pursuits, there was little he could do about it, as Liu Tsong was determined to be an actress. The film industry was in the midst of relocating from the East Coast to the West, and Hollywood was booming. Liu Tsong would haunt movie shoots as she had earlier haunted the nickelodeons. . . . Educated at a Chinese-language school in Chinatown, she would skip school to watch movie shoots in her neighborhood. She made tip money from delivering laundry for her father, which she spent on going to the movies. Her father, if he discovered she had gone to the movies during school hours, would spank her with a bamboo stick. Around the time she was nine years old, she began begging filmmakers for parts, behavior that got her dubbed "C.C.C." for "curious Chinese child." Liu Tsong's first film role was as an uncredited extra in Metro Pictures' "The Red Lantern" (1919) starring Alla Nazimova as a Eurasian woman who falls in love with an American missionary. The film included scenes shot in Chinatown. . . . Liu Tsong Americanized herself as "Anna May Wong" for the movie industry, though she would not receive an on-screen credit for another two years. . . . Due to her father's demands, she had an adult guardian at the studio, and she would be locked in her dressing room between scenes if she was the only Asian in the cast. . . . Wong played Toy Ling, the abused wife of Lon Chaney's character Chin Gow, which the Man of a Thousand Faces played in Chinese drag. . . . being cast in her first major role at the age of 17, the lead in "The Toll of the Sea" (1922). She played Lotus Flower in this adaptation of the opera "Madame Butterfly," which moved the action from Japan to China. . . . Most portrayals of Asian women were done by Caucasian actresses in "yellow-face," such as the 1915 movie version of "Madame Butterfly" starring "America's Sweetheart," Toronto, Canada-born Mary Pickford in the title role. In "The Toll of the Sea," Anna May Wong's character perpetuates the stereotype of the Asian "lotus blossom," a self-sacrificial woman who surrenders her life for the love of a Caucasian man. The film was a hit, and it showcased Wong in a preternaturally mature and restrained performance. This breakthrough should have launched Anna May Wong as a star, but for one thing: She was an ethnic Chinese in a country that excluded Chinese by law from immigrating to the U.S., that excluded Chinese from inter-marrying with Caucasians, and that generally excluded Chinese from the culture at large, except for bit roles as heavies in the national consciousness. . . . The 170-cm-tall (5'7", although other sources cite her height as 5'4½") beauty was known as the world's best-dressed woman and widely considered to have the loveliest hands in the cinema. Her big breakthrough after her auspicious start with "The Toll of the Sea" finally came when Douglas Fairbanks cast her in a supporting role as a treacherous Mongol slave in his Middle Eastern/Arabian Nights extravaganza "The Thief of Bagdad" (1924). The $2 million blockbuster production made her known to critics and the moviegoing public. For better or worse, a star, albeit of the stereotypical "Dragon Lady" type, was born. Despite her waxing fame, she was limited to supporting roles, as Caucasian actresses, including most improbably Myrna Loy, continued to be cast as Asian women in lead roles in the 1920s through the 1940s, despite the ready availability of Anna May Wong. She was unable to attract lead parts despite her beauty and proven acting talent, even in films featuring Asian women, but she did carve out a career as a supporting player in everything from A-list movies to two-reel comedies and serials. The characters she played typically were duplicitous or murderous vamps who often reaped the wages of their sin by being raped. . . . she told journalist Doris Mackie, "I was so tired of the parts I had to play. Why is it that the screen Chinese is aways the villain? And so crude a villain--murderous, treacherous, a snake in the grass." The extent of anti-Chinese sentiment in the U.S. was so deep that Hollywood usually typecast Wong, typically wearing form-fitting Chinese gowns, not specifically as an Asian but as an "exotic" foreigner. "American" hostility to the Chinese in America had existed almost from the start of their entry into the continental United States, with California targeting the Chinese in 1850 with a Foreign Miners' License Act that put a $20 tax on each "foreign" miner. (The Act was repealed a year later, as it had a deleterious effect on the mining industry by creating labor shortages.) As when the gold mines started sputtering out in California in the mid-1850s, when there was a general economic recession, opportunistic, racist politicians managed to divert the blame towards the Chinese. Chinese were blamed for taking away jobs from "Americans," immigrants from Europe who were as "foreign" as the Chinese they derided, but who had been enfranchised with the vote by political machines. Targeted by crowds of the working poor who were buffeted by the boom-and-bust business cycle of capitalist America, the Chinese were the victims of riots in California and in other western states and territories. The 1871 Los Angeles riot had left 19 Chinese dead, lynched in their own neighborhood, while crowds of Caucasians looted Chinatown of tens of thousands of dollars worth of their belongings and business assets. Most of the Chinese in America were located in San Francisco, and local and state authorities passed ordinances to harass them, many of which were subsequently declared unconstitutional by the courts. However, the California Supreme Court extended a statute that prohibited "negroes and Indians" from testifying against Caucasians in court to the Chinese, for the "logical" reason that in Christopher Columbus's time, Oriental countries were called "Indian." The U.S. and China signed a treaty in Burlingame, California, in 1868 that mandated that every Chinese citizen in the United States should enjoy the privileges enjoyed by American citizens in China, naturalization exempted. The Burlingame Treaty was met with a storm of protest in the western states and territories, with agitators denouncing it as a sellout of the American laborer. The U.S. subsequently entered into a treaty with China in 1880 that allowed it to exclude Chinese laborers, a treaty backed up by Congress when it passed the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882. In this period, Mark Twain and Bret Harte created the genre known as "Chinatown fiction," full of a sing-song patois they created to approximate the pidgin English spoken by the Chinese in America. . . .Anna May Wong died of a massive heart attack on February 3, 1961, in Santa Monica, California, after a long struggle against Laennec's cirrhosis, a disease of the liver. She was 56 years old. (IMDb Mini Biography By: Jon C. Hopwood) The full biography is much longer and fascinating as well. I urge you to visit the site and read it in full.
I recently watched a 1932 Charlie Chan movie, Charlie Chan at the Opera and it is as full of the racial stereotype as one could fear or wish. Yet the interesting thing in the movie is a 1932 early version of a fax-scanner, which is absolutely fascinating. If you can see this film, do not miss this "invention of the future."
Well, perhaps that is enough for now. I can think of many more observations on femmes fatales and the modern world, but I have already taxed my limit for one blog entry. I hope to return again in a special blog entry for Halloween. Please visit the poll at the bottom of the page. Until the next,
Leducdor

"Really? Is that what you are going to do?" [linked]

Akasha, Queen of the Damned (2002)

One is reminded that the Internecine Vampire Wars are in full swing out there in real life, not just in the movies, especially in the political and financial arenas. That all the participants are vampires is a given, that they are all hell-bent on destroying each other while maintaining a facade of cooperation for the cowlike masses is a tad less obvious. An example in point is the McCain/Palin team-up; I am betting that Sen. McCain is kicking himself in his quasi-republican ass just about now for listening to his advisers and picking Gov. Palin as his running mate. The lady is revealing herself, every day in every way, as a political land mine full of dangerous, even deadly, contradictions and extremist, zany zig-zags across the political landscape. It is pointless to repeat any of the many items cited about her, but it is revelatory to actually inform oneself about exactly who she is (NOT whom she presents herself to be) and what her stances are on various issues. Here are two sites that are quite informative, especially the second for an unbiased look at her POV: 1) Sarah Palin - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarah_Palin , and 2) Issues - http://www.ontheissues.org/Sarah_Palin.htm . There is also a very thoughtful article by Jay Rosen in the Huffington Post on the "Culture Wars", the GOPs strategy in backing the candidacy of Gov. Palin: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jay-rosen/the-culture-war-option-fo_b_123483.html . Take a look at all three, connect the information to what you may know about John McCain and decide if you really like the idea of this duo ruling the U.S.A. for the next four years. I certainly do not, but then that is already common knowledge if you have read this blog before now. The latest Palin manoeuvre, that of she, her husband and her staff simply deciding to ignore and not cooperate with subpoenas issued in conjunction with the Alaskan political snowstorm of her firing a state trooper (her ex-brother-in-law, by the way) is simply jaw-droppingly incredible. A state governor (governess is not quite right, implying care for children) and candidate for the Vice-Presidency simply ignoring the rule of law - what a concept! Elect this woman to the 2nd highest office in the country? I think not. She is not only staking her party, her running-mate and the rule of law through their hearts, but the voting electorate as well.
On the financial vampire front, there is the now-infamous $700 billion dollar bailout that the government wants the people to pay to the largest, most corrupt group of institutions and individuals in the entire world. I heard a wonderful quote from Gov. Brian Schweitzer, D-Montana : " This is the powerful giving money to the rich." I am perfectly aware that the idea of letting all of these corporate vampires go down in flames (see the video linked to the title bar) is an horrendous idea to the public at large, not because the public has any sympathy for them but because the spectre of worldwide financial chaos and depression looms behind it like an horrible repetition of 1929. On top of which, if letting things crash and sort themselves out, for which I believe the big boys should take responsibility, were to be the outcome, the rich and the super-rich would not really be that affected, they would continue to live in a shimmering sphere of privilege and decadence just as the remaining rich did post-1929. Think of the 1930 nightclub image and you have the picture exactly - Apple Annie outside the door of the Stork Club, huddled in rags, as the tuxedoed and begowned vampires pass to and fro. Jesus wept, but I sincerely hope that the people will do more than weep, that they will protest and howl to such a degree of fervor that the politicians will have to think twice. I decided to try and reduce that $700 billion figure to a concept that is more understandable - if you spent $1000 dollars an hour, 24 hrs a day, it would take you 79,908.67 years to spend $700B. Eighty thousand years to spend that amount of money - again, what a concept. And they blithely toss out figures in the TRILLIONS for the American national debt. From where do these ideas come, that such sums and figures make sense, that they can be grasped, that they can be PAID? Living on the very last millimeter of the brink of the abyss, people, the very last millimeter.
In a small update to the Zimbabwean financial situation, I see that Zimbabwe (where the vampire Robert Mugabe reigns in becoffined splendor) has replaced the $10 Trillion dollar note (the picture is of a much smaller note, only $10 million) with a $10 note, simply knocking off the zeros. With a rate of inflation of 11.5 Million %, I suppose they do not have much choice - you can only put so many zeros on a banknote before you have no more room. In that same spirit, why doesn't G.W. Bush simply announce that from now on, the USA is going to knock off zeros as well, and the national debt will grow from $7.50 to $14.00 in the immediate future due to his bailout plan? Oh yes, indeed, the insane are waltzing in the marbled halls of Washington, D.C. to the strains of "Night on Bald Mountain." In the same diabolical vein, I read this: "KINSHASA, Congo (AP) -- Accusations that a soccer player was using witchcraft during a match in eastern Congo sparked a riot that killed 13 people, a U.N.-funded radio station reported Monday." Now, cultural differences aside, does anyone really wonder why the terms "backward" and "ignorant" are used in reference to some African situations? Not that religious snake-handling, polygamist cults and the superstitious awe of money on Rodeo Drive are any better, mind you, it is simply that it seems bizarre to read of witch riots in the Congo and witch burnings in Kenya (yes, still happening), all of which makes one think that there has actually been no progress at all since the Humanist days of the Renaissance. Which, of course, was tossed out the window when the Reformation, the Counter-Reformation, the Inquisition and all the rest sprang into malodorous bloom, extinguishing the brief flare of Light in the eternal human darkness.
Spending money is something of a concern for me lately as I am finally having my teeth extracted in preparation for dentures. I am lisping these days like a FOX news anchorperson and, speaking French, it does not help a great deal. I find speaking English to be less lisp-prone than French but that option is very limited here in the DHOSF. To be truthful, our dentist is a highly capable and gentle man and I have experienced no pain during the extractions - but afterwards, when the anaesthetic wears off, well, let me say I am very glad for the pharmacy next door to our apartment building. Once again I shall beat the drum for the French healthcare system (#1 in the world) where, even though I am not a French citizen, I am fully covered because my wife is French, therefore my prescriptions are free and all of this dental care will cost me a mere fraction of what it would cost in the USA. Yes, yes, there are many problems with a socialized state medical system, but when you are paying the bills, you are indeed very glad that it is there. On the subject of personal health, I recently recovered from something very odd - fat feet. For whatever reason, my feet had swollen with oedema until they resembled Alsatian sausages. As I stated in a previous blog, Fang Wong, our upstairs neighbor, concocted a homeopathic remedy, hamamelis composé, an extract of witch hazel, to help with the problem which it did, to a certain degree, but not entirely. I suspected it was an onset of that peculiar Tudoresque condition of gout, but there was no pain. Then, when the extractions began, the condition entirely disappeared overnight, leaving me to bemused meditation on the connection between decaying and genetically insufficient teeth and podiatric health. I suppose that the connection is in the same vein (horrible pun) as the connection between earlobes and other bodily parts and in general the art of acupuncture. I tried a course of acupuncture once at a Chinese clinic in the USA and was quite dubious about its efficacy when the diagnosis of my general state of health was conducted entirely by looking at my tongue. Those of my readers who actually know me may imagine my mental comments on that form of diagnostics. There followed several sessions of laying on a table, stuck full of long, gaily decorated needles looking like some exotic form of porcupine for twenty to thirty minutes at a time. After several rather pricey sessions of this "guess what I'm going to stick next?" treatment, apparently my tongue was looking much better but, sad to say, I felt no appreciable difference, so I stopped treatment and took up again with the invasive, cruel and barbaric practices of Western medical techniques, for which I am endlessly thankful.
Constructing a link between Western medicine and Western science, I notice that the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN, (Geneva, Switzerland) raised itself up in much publicity and ballyhoo for its trial run a short time ago, and like one of the Acme gadgets in a Wiley E. Coyote & Roadrunner cartoon, promptly fizzled out. This was explained as being due to a "broken part." What leading light of the particle physics community came up with that brilliant, succinct explanation? This was later clarified to state that the broken part had resulted in a hydrogen leak. Again - ??? Apparently they are looking for the Higgs-Boson particle, sometimes called the God particle, a mysterious subatomic entity that gives mass to every other particle in the universe. At any rate, it seemed God did not want His particle to be revealed before a gaping crowd of the scientifically vampiric prurient, thus the "broken part." You have to love His sense of humor - disabling the scientific paparazzi by pulling out a few wires on their giant Vespa scooter. The latest update is that the LHC will not be ready to try again until the late spring of 2009. Um hmm, we shall see.
Remaining in the realm of the metaphysical, divine, what-have-you, I have received several visits from the SpiderWoman spirit in the last month or so, much to my surprise. If you are unfamiliar with the SpiderWoman spirit, look her up on the Web (ahaha - my unintended puns are worse than usual this time around). She is a figure from Southwestern American Indian mythology, a mother goddess, a creatrix of all that is and her emissaries are, naturally, spiders. I noticed this one day when in the course of normal web-browsing, I was startled, but not fearfully so, by the sudden image of a small troupe of small black spiders scurrying over my desktop, the keyboard and my hand. I was not frightened as I knew they were not there yet the image was quite distinct and in general I am not used to visits from female deities, other than Devi. Why SpiderWoman chose to visit is still a mystery, and as she has visited twice since that original apparition, I presume she has something to tell me that I have as yet to grasp. She is, of course, welcome in our home, and I shall continue to pay particular attention to her visitations (that sounds a bit like the Virgin's image on a tortilla, but I cannot help that).
Writing of female deities, Devi and I are enjoying a particular period of harmony and calm in our marriage. We normally do, of course, both of us being averse to drama, upset and contention in our marriage, but recently it has been more harmonious even than usual. For an unfathomable reason, Devi enjoys it when I sing to her - I say unfathomable because I am not noted for my singing skills, although my voice has improved with age and I myself am a bit pleased that I can carry a tune and follow a lyric. We continue in our normal, habitual way together and I do not share the opinion of many who declare that habit is the death of a relationship, I find it to be quite the opposite. That, of course, has a great deal to do with the fact that we are satisfied with what we have with each other and are not restless, dismayed or unfulfilled, writhing in the grip of dissatisfaction and disaffection. After 50-odd years of bachelorhood, having a woman who enjoys cooking on a daily basis and thoughtfully considering my needs and desires as well as her own continues to be a delight (as I do for her, I devoutly hope). She calls her cooking "simple French country cuisine," which it is, but for me it is a gesture of love as well as a healthy regime. Perhaps once a month she may order a pizza but that is simply to gratify my Americanism, as she does not enjoy it very much. If I want the exotic, I generally do that myself, such as Camelhump Roast, a Moroccan speciality that is quite tasty. Take one camel hump (Arabian racing camel is preferred, although one can use mid-Asian Bactrian two-hump if necessary, which can be handy if you are feeding a larger party) and secure with cooking twine as if securing a pork roast. Set hump on a large piece of aluminum foil, and proceed to shove as many deseeded dates as possible under the twine, next to the depelted flesh of the hump. Bring the foil up to cup the hump, and cover any remaining open areas with more dates. Cup the foil even closer and pour in a generous amount of honey, being sure to coat the entire hump. Sprinkle 1 tsp of ground cardamom over the honey, then 1 tsp of Ras-el-Hanout, a pinch of salt, then close the foil envelope being sure to seal quite tightly. Place in a roasting pan and cook for one hr at setting 7 (220C° - 425F°), no longer. Remove from oven, vent foil VERY slightly, let sit 15 minutes. Transfer to platter, sprinkle with blanched, crushed almonds, surround with the roasted dates and serve, preferably with French green beans and Moroccan bread. If camel hump is unavailable where you reside (which is a shame, speak to your butcher), then substitute a large-ish pork roast, but it is just not the same. I have it on good authority that the Czech ambassador who died in the recent bombing of the Islamabad Marriott was eating Camelhump Roast just before the tragedy. As in all such bombings, this was another exercise in cruelty, barbarism and hate that serves no good purpose other than to fan the flames of racial and religious bigotry and extremism. I simply cannot enter the mindset of someone who straps on a 40 kg vest of explosives, or sits in a car carrying hundreds of pounds of it, and proceeds to suicide/murder in the hope that this act will somehow further eventual peace and tranquility after the "foreign devils" are driven away, on top of which they generally end up killing their own population rather than said foreign devils. On a side note, if I were the Marriott people, I would certainly consider simply writing off Islamabad and not rebuilding - whatever for, after all, when it will just be a target once more?
My Tarot card for today's meditation is the High Priestess. Here is the rundown as given on a typical Tarot site or in a book: "Dont do anything impulsive. Drawing the High Priestess encourages you to put reflection ahead of action, to look within yourself to identify your deep-seated motives. There's no better time to see things clearly and take good decisions, for your mental health as well as in practical terms. What fuel does your engine need to run most efficiently, dear friend? What emotional input do you need to get the best from your love life? Take the time to ask yourself such vital questions this Thursday, even if you can't answer them at once. Its important to stop for a while to take stock of whats going on inside." So thus shall I do for the remainder of the day, as it is a good time to reflect and consider exactly the things I am counseled to consider. I counsel you to do the same. Please visit the poll at the bottom of the page, and until the next,
Leducdor

" . . . I summon thee. Speak! Let me see thy face." [linked]

Magic Mirror: "What wouldst thou know, my Queen?

Queen: "Magic mirror on the wall, who is the fairest one of all?

Magic Mirror: "Famed is thy beauty, Majesty. But hold, a lovely maid I see. Rags cannot hide her gentle grace. Alas, she is more fair than thee.

Queen: "Alas for her! Reveal her name.

Magic Mirror: "Lips red as the rose. Hair black as ebony. Skin white as snow.

Queen: "Snow White!"

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937)

I was remarking the other day that I have placed a mirror, either large or small, in every room of our apartment, including the corridors. Now lest you think that either Devi or me is excessively vain, rest assured that is not the case, even though the mirror in the salon has "gentil miroir" written upon it to inspire reflection (pun entirely intended). The mirror placements are intended to give an exit for any wandering spirit that may happen into any particular room. "Wot?" you say to yourself, "'as the guv'nor lost 'is mind?" Indeed I have not, gentle reader, for it has long been known that mirrors are magical things, not merely giving back a reflection but acting as numinous gateways to other realities, states of being or consciousness, fantasies, dreams, even shifts in time/space or psychology (read your Lacan). For me, however, they function primarily as exits for influences or spirits that may enter a room or space by other means and are then trapped therein with no way out - thus the mirrors. Portals for the non-natural (I do not really like the word 'supernatural' as it implies 'better than natural') elements in our world, our cosmos, to leave easily and freely without feeling constrained or claustrophobic. Imagine a wild animal trapped in a small, enclosed space and you will have an accurate simile; it will do anything, including harming itself, to escape, or more importantly, harming any other living thing within the same space, as it may/will see the 'other' as the cause of its distress. This will, of course, raise the question, "What others, what spirits?" If you have never experienced the feeling that something is in a room with you that you cannot see, or glimpsed something out of the corner of your eye that is not three-dimensionally there in plain sight, then it is nearly impossible to explain, but it does happen regularly and often to a majority of people. Your pets notice this more often than do you. I do not necessarily speak of ghosts but rather 'elements', or perhaps 'elementals', that come and go and shift and glide through our inhabited dimensions with the ease with which we pass from the inside of a building to the exterior, from an air-conditioned space to natural atmospheric conditions. I have noticed these 'comings & goings' all of my life and through long experience have resolved the issue by placing a mirror in every room or space to provide egress. There is one spirit that even seems to have an affinity for me which I have seen frequently since the age of seventeen. It appears as a kind of triangular black sail that will circle round me a second or two and then depart; it is neither slow nor rapid and when I was young it gave me great foreboding, but I have become accustomed to its visitations and while I will not say that it is a friend I have come to accept it as a "companion", for lack of a better term. In my more sombre moments I have even imagined it as my death, calmly and patiently waiting for me to shed this mortal coil so that we may sail away together, but as I say, those are my darker moments; more often I see it as simply my companion. It has even crossed continents with me because, of course, what can geography actually mean in its reality? All of which leads me to contemplate 'La Galerie des Glaces' at the chateau of Versailles. The room is a globally recognized work of art and indeed, it is resplendent, breathtaking in its beauty, elegance and sheer sumptuosity. Yet there it is, an immense hall with one wall composed entirely of mirrors, the facing wall of windows, the ceiling with glorious works of art and yet the floor is curiously plain, simple wood parquetry without pattern or decoration. It has long been known that the gardens at Versailles are actually gigantic encryptions of esoteric significance, according to the philosophic and metaphysical learning of the day, yet no one seems to apply this same acceptance of metaphysical application to the most stunning feature of the chateau itself, la Galerie des Glaces. It would make a fascinating, fabulous doctoral thesis for some enterprising student of philosophy, architecture or history.
Writing of France and the French, I contemplated the other day the deplorable state of my French language skills. When I first moved here permanently in 2003, my French was, of course, less fluid and encompassing but I do feel that it was more elegant, more academic. Now after 5 years of residence and 4 years of marriage to a Frenchwoman, I speak French more fluently but with a great deal less elegance, I speak "street French", if you will. I suppose this was inevitable but I do regret that it had to occur. On the other hand, I well remember being regarded as something of a novelty or freak by the French when I first arrived, akin to a talking winged monkey at a circus sideshow, as I not only spoke French but my vocabulary was extremely "pissy" for the normal everyday Frenchman. Imagine a Shakespearean actor arriving in an average American city with only his 16th century English and you will have an approximate idea. They were amused and a bit offended at the same time. Our friend Oona (not her real name, of course) has no such problem. Oona is a French professor at an university in Texas (her picture at left) and recently departed after a ten-day holiday here in Montpellier with Devi and I, a visit we deeply enjoyed and believe she did, too. Oona speaks clearly and concisely with the autochthones, as if she were teaching a French II class to bright students and everyone here simply adores her communication and has absolutely no problems with her French at all. Now I have known Oona a long time and am aware that she can toss around academic French with the best of them, yet she sails along quite nicely, thank you, here in the south of France without making a ripple. I do admire her for that skill, as well as for her philosophy of "do it all, do it now, you can always regret it later." Poor Oona, however, had one or two run-ins with some of our more 'colorful' friends, whose French is nearly incomprehensible, even for Devi, and I daresay she was a bit dismayed by the sudden intrusion of the openly neurotic into her otherwise peaceful visit. One of our friends, Latifah (let's call her thusly, shall we?), even had what I would term a fit of wild jealousy and caused a public spectacle, deeply distressing to both Devi and Oona, who nevertheless sailed along with that day's itinerary without further dismay. Oona took advantage of her European stay to jet over to Greece for a few days, where she visited Delphi to breath the fumes and then motored down to Sparta to consult the Ephors. She had little to say about the jaunt when she returned, but did look a bit wild-eyed. She also told us that the apocryphal film, "La Fin Absolue du Monde", is quite real. We decided that perhaps she had breathed a bit too much vapor at Delphi. Oona is a gracious, lovely lady and Devi and I are extremely fond of her even though her past is filled with mysterious lacunae about which, if queried, she will respond in a clipped, brittle voice, "Let's move on, shall we?", tapping her long jade cigarette holder nervously against an ashtray. Another lady of mystery - sigh, my life is filled with them.
Lest you be deceived, there are men of mystery as well. One of them is our upstairs neighbor, Fang Wong, who also happens to be a member of our rather extended "family" as he married our houskeeper's daughter, Myongsong (her picture in far left column, his just below). We know little about him, in fact, and that he runs a "smoking establishment" upstairs in his large F5 apartment does nothing to ameliorate or clarify the mystery. Yes, opium dens are alive and well, even here in the south of France and it must be said that he seems to make quite a good living at it, despite "le thon" he must give to the police each week in order to stay in business. What we do know is that he was forced to flee Macao in the early 1990's due to an unfortunate series of incidents centered around his grandmother's smoking establishment. It seems that continued opium use provokes sporadic diarrhea amongst its habitués, unlike other drugs which provoke constipation, and a young Fang Wong thought it a good idea to sell anti-diarrhetic suppositories to the clientele. Unfortunately, what he was selling were gelatin capsules filled with Superglue, which soon caused severe legal problems for his grandmother and arrest warrants to be issued for him. His story becomes vague at that point; there are references to Singapore, Kuala Lumpur and eventually a boat trip to Marseille and thence to Montpellier. Here he met and married and drawing upon family situations moved in approximately one month after us, relocating to a larger apartment on the 4th étage, needing the extra space for his establishment. He has been here more often in our modest apartment recently in order to watch the Beijing Olympics, as a television would not suit the ambiance of his establishment. Devi and I have even remarked an occasional tear in his eye (sadness? regret? homesickness?) as he watched the television, but Fang Wong is extremely close-mouthed. He has, however, a good heart. Many are the times when he has invited me upstairs for a free smoke and although I rarely avail myself, I have been known to visit from time to time, simply out of politesse, as one would say. Also, he is very good to Myongsong, denying her nothing, except a television, which does not inconvenience her greatly as she often visits her mother and can watch it there to her heart's content. He is also punctilious in his business dealings and one does not see "trash" drifting in and out of the building at all hours of the day or night, as he closes his establishment precisely at 12 o'clock each evening, and opens again at 4 o'clock the following afternoon. As well, I understand he charges a hefty fee for the privilege of visiting his business, thus lower-income types are discouraged. If a client finds himself (Fang Wong does not allow women in his establishment, his theory being that women who smoke opium should do it in the privacy of their own homes with the assistance of a trained maid) unable to depart at midnight, the client is obliged to stay in one of the private cubicles until the doors are opened at noon for his departure, closed again and then re-opened at normal business hours. Obviously, his Macao disaster has taught him a great deal about discretion and good business practice. On top of this, he is gifted at homeopathic remedies and has helped me greatly with a recent oedema in my right foot, for which he concocted something called ' compound hamamelis' (witch hazel) which aides me greatly.
In writing of the natural world of herbal remedies and flower-derived drugs, I am reminded of a recent segment I saw on CNN International about the worldwide disappearance of frogs and other amphibians. It seems that scientists have isolated at least one cause of this, a skin fungus which spreads rapidly amongst said frogs and amphibians and causes their deaths by epidermal suffocation, much like the dead gold-plated blonde at the beginning of the James Bond film, "Goldfinger." The fungus is spreading and surviving at an alarming rate due, of course, to global warming. If the amphibian population continues to decline, the insect population will correspondingly rise, especially mosquitoes, thus provoking worldwide epidemics of malaria, yellow fever, etc. Personally, I believe that if frogs, salamanders and other amphibians are going to continue to die at such alarming rates, we should mandate a substitution in high school biology classes. And what better way to substitute for the dissection of frogs than with the one species that continues to multiply at an equally alarming rate - human beings. Shades of Jonathan Swift, I hear you thinking - but consider it - it makes perfect sense, does it not, and from a scientific standpoint as well? Our children would learn so much more, so much quicker, so much more efficaciously.
Segueing into epidemics, I understand that the epidemic of violence in Pakistan shall soon reach new heights. After the ouster of President Pervez Musharraf, the new popular party candidate for president will be Asif Ali Zardari, the widower of slain ex-Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto. Surprise, surprise. He is being opposed, naturally, by his until freshly-recent ally, Nawaz Sharif, an ex-Prime Minister himself. The issue seems to be the reinstallation of the judges dismissed by Musharraf, with Zardari saying that is a secondary issue and Sharif saying it is primary. If you are wondering why I would possibly care one way or the other, let us not forget that Pakistan is a nuclear nation and yes, it matters. Centered as it is between India (nuclear), China (nuclear), Afghanistan (Taliban) and the rest, do you really want to see that region go completely unstable? And as for Musharraf, he received a lot of praise from his Western allies upon his resignation for his co-operation during the "war on terror." I think if they were all that grateful then one of them should have offered him asylum, as I am sure his future in Pakistan is short-lived, to say the least.
More nuclear news. The USA and Poland have agreed to and signed the missile defense shield deal, designed specifically to piss off Russia, extend NATO's reach, and transplanting our Star Wars technology (oh yes, it exists - were you naive enough to think that it did not?) deep into the heart of Eastern Europe. Poland's enmity with Russia is historic and I believe there is still a kind of 14th century voivode vs. boyar mentality reigning in that part of the world. "Hmmm, how can we piss off Russia today?" The Russia/Georgia crisis is not helping at all, either, while the West rattles its largely ineffectual sabres against Russia's policy of "it's our backyard, back off." Condolezza Rice, Robin to G. W. Bush's Batman, may yet go down in history as the most damaging politician of this century. And then there is the news of Iran test-firing two-stage rockets, which the USA pooh-poohs as "a probable failure" - well, perhaps, but I guarantee that Israel will not take such a sanguine stance and if it believes that Iran is even close to succeeding with such tests, will not hesitate to turn large patches of Iranian sand into vast lakes of nuclear glass. Jesus, and Mohammed (pbuh), wept.
Here in the civilized West (ahahaha), I notice that Qantas reports that profits are up by 44% this quarter. Good heavenly God, what is the matter with people? Why does the business ethnic require that profits MUST ALWAYS rise? Does one not eventually reach a plateau where you cannot go higher, adjusting for inflation? To continually go higher and higher requires a bigger and bigger marketing population (6.5 billion and counting), as well as unlimited greed. Is it corporate sin to say, "We are stable, we are making enough, it does not get better than this unless we colonize the solar system"? The oil corporations are out of control, the airlines are crying poverty (but apparently not Qantas), the pharmaceutical giants are profiting from disease and global catastrophe which arms dealers promote for gain, good heavens, it goes on endlessly, people profiting upon the backs of the suffering and dying, but that is not news, is it. We are a sin on the soul of God, I do not know how else to phrase current human conduct.
And what a cheery note upon which to conclude this peroration. If you are out there reading this, and there is even one, small, little thing that you can do to redress the balance, please do it. Heaven knows, our racial karma needs it. Please visit the bottom of the page and participate in the poll. Until the next,
Leducdor

" . . . until at last I threw down my enemy and smote his ruin upon the mountainside." [linked]

Gandalf, The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002)

I have not updated in a little while but you must excuse me as I have been suffering from Entropic Cascade Failure. For those of you not familiar with Entropic Cascade Failure, it results when you, yourself, arrive from a neighboring membrane universe (I hope you are up on your String Theory physics) into this membrane universe. The two of you may co-exist for a short time in the same universe without problem but shortly thereafter ECF begins to take effect. You find yourselves wavering in and out of reality like a faulty radio wave and it is extremely painful. I noticed the effect most disastrously last week when I ended up in the hospital after a night spent celebrating a friend's fortieth birthday. On the way home, I began to have difficulty breathing, then sharp pains in the chest, then no breathing at all followed with cold sweats, inability to stand, etc. I collapsed in a doorway on one of the grand streets here in Montpellier with Devi, my wife, observing in a controlled concern and my first instinct was, "Oh, this will pass. I just need to get home." However, several young people stopped and said something on the order of, "Hey, Mister, you don't look so good. We'd better call an ambulance for you." I did not want that but could not breathe enough to voice my objections, while hearing Devi telling them yes, please, call the ambulance. So, soon I was being whisked away to a hospital, Devi at my side, and I knew I was not completely in reality because rather than being concerned about my state, I could only marvel at how very young and goodlooking the ambulance staff was. In the back of my mind I knew this was not correct thinking on my part, but just could not stop marveling at how young and beautiful they all were. A night spent in the hospital finally resulted in the assurance that no, I had not suffered a heart attack but rather an acute and serious asthma crisis coupled with too much partying at the birthday fête. This sounded strange to me, as I have never suffered from asthma in my life but they assured me that that was exactly the case, having taken ecgs and x-rays and etc. I finally reached home the next afternoon, weak as the proverbial kitten, and thought, "You really do need to send your other you back to his own membrane universe." That me loves to party, drink and smoke and even though he is the same as me in all logical respects, he simply does not behave as considerately towards himself as I normally do. No, this is not schizophrenia, it is just two versions of me existing in the same reality. The original me, the one writing this blog, has not yet suffered the most drastic effects of ECF, but that will eventually occur as well if I do not manage to send the other me back. On a side note, I would like to remark that the two times when Devi and I have needed outside help due to crisis, on both occasions it was young people who stepped up to the bat and lent support, concern and help at the critical moment, once for her and once for me. Kudos to the young people of Montpellier. At any rate, to finish the tale, I contacted my primary care physician the day I arrived home and asked him to come by (yes, doctors in France still make house calls). He looked at the materials the hospital had provided, examined me again and told me that perhaps it was not asthma after all but rather acute bronchitis aggravated by the events of the evening, saying, "I can, of course, treat the consequences, but not the cause. That is up to you." Drole fellow. Thus, the necessity of sending the other me back to his own universe, but that is harder than you may think; access to a giant thorium proton accelerator is easier said than done and nothing is as slow as European bureaucracy.
Speaking of "slow" reminds me of my niece's first trip to Paris, oh, fourteen years ago (good heavens! Has it been that long?) and her first experience with escargots. She had watched in fascinated horror when during several meals I had ordered escargots and consumed them with evident relish. She quivered in disgust when I offered to order her a plate of her own but could not resist staring at me while I ate them. Then, one night at a very nice restaurant on the Champs Elysées, she mustered all her courage and asked me if she could try one, just one. Keeping an appropriately serious face, I replied, "Why yes, of course, and if it helps just think of it as a rather strangely flavored gummy candy." She raised an eyebrow, being too clever to buy that, but nevertheless gamely ate one. After several seconds of thoughful, studious chewing and then several more of reflection, she pronounced them "not bad, not bad at all." I was secretly delighted, but refrained from showing my pleasure as that would have spoiled the moment, instead just nodding and continuing with my plate. Later that same week we went to a restaurant that specializes in escargots and frog's legs, among other delicacies, and she gamely ordered a plate of each, telling me that they were of priceless worth for "gross-out value" when she arrived home and told her friends what she had eaten - but she did enjoy them nevertheless. To this day she complains that you just cannot find a decent croissant in the United States, and this from a woman who has traveled very extensively at home and abroad.
Has anyone ever noticed how often upstate New York occurs in the news, stories, novels, film etc.? It seems to be the stomping grounds for every escaped lunatic, cannibal, sex criminal, on-the-run thug and serial killer on the entire eastern seaboard. Not that it has any bearing on anything, I just happened to notice it the other day during a newscast and catalogued it amongst the plethora of odd facts residing in my brain. On another part of the globe, the citizens of the island of Lesbos, Greece, have lost their case in the Greek High Court to have the word "lesbian" strictly copyrighted and restricted from universal usage except when referring to a citizen of said island. That made me roar with laughter. I can think of many correlatives for this idiocy, but suffice it to say that this one took home top prize, as far as I am concerned. At any rate, Hail, Lesbians! And you can take that any way you want. One of my friends of the lesbian persuasion (no, not a Greek citizen) once told me of a curious phenomenon known as "lesbian bed death", apparently widely recognized in the lesbian community. It seems that sexual interest dies phenomenally fast in a lesbian relationship and that the remaining values are companionship, friendship and shared interests, all of which I find perfectly reasonable. She, however, was jealous of her gay male friends for whom sexual interest remained high on the list of necessary values in a relationship. I advised her to think twice about that, as high sexual interest may, I say may, indicate an absence of interest in any of the other attributes, although not necessarily, of course. On top of which, men led primarily by their genitals prove remarkably boring at an equally phenomenal rate. What about simply aiming for an equitable balance between all of the qualities in a relationship? If sexual interest dies in the long run, it is hardly a disaster nor the worst thing that can happen to any couple - one might even say it can take the pressure off and leave the couple free to deepen their friendship.For a different trope on lesbians, find and watch the Masters of Horror episode "Sick Girl" - after watching that, lesbian bed death will be your very last concern.
The Masters of Horror series was quite amusing, interesting, horrifying and fascinating all at the same time. I believe it ran during the 2005 & 2006 seasons, two seasons only, each season containing thirteen episodes, each episode written and directed by acknowledged masters of their crafts and genres. My favorite episode occured during the first season, John Carpenter's "Cigarette Burns", an eloquent and hauntingly beautiful yet terrifying meditation on our fascination with film, violence, secrets and destruction. An absolute coup de génie in the film is the film-within-the-film, "La Fin Absolue du Monde", of which we catch only glimpses but which lead to some very dark imaginings on our part. The images of the tortured and mutilated angel are especially disturbing, signifying whatever you may wish to imagine. For my part it was very particular as, until recently, I had a pair of Halloween angel's wings hung upon a wall with a specially printed plaque that read, "Ylaliel - - - 0 - 2006 A.D. - - - my real name", implying that the wings were a hunting trophy. They no longer hang upon the wall and I keep the plaque in a drawer in my desk. For some obscure reason, all of that reminds me of a classic little tale about the frog and the scorpion: One day, a frog was hopping along when he came upon a large pond. Preparing, without concern, to swim across the pond, he was suddenly halted by a scorpion waiting at the pond's edge. The scorpion asked the frog, "I cannot swim. Would you be willing to carry me across the pond upon your back?" To which the frog replied, "Certainly not! For all that I know, once upon my back, you might sting me and I would die." The scorpion answered, "No, I would not do that. If I were to do so, you would die and I would drown. That would defeat the purpose of my getting to the other side. You have my word." The frog thought about this and then said, "Well, I suppose you are right. Alright then, climb up on my back and we shall cross the pond together." So the scorpion climbed upon the frog's back and they began the swim across the pond. Suddenly, in the middle of the pond, the scorpion stung the frog, causing its agonizing death throes. The frog gasped, "Why? Why do that? Now we both die." The scorpion responded, "Because, that is my nature."
Just as it is the nature of the Internet to be full of hackers, identity thieves, rogue virus creators, etc., I would advise everyone who owns a computer to be fully protected. It need not cost a fortune, either; as a matter of fact, you can do it quite effectively without any cost at all. I would recommend AT LEAST the following: Avast! anti-virus protection (free); SuperAntiSpyware (free); ZoneAlarm firewall (free); and Bootvis.exe, a kind of check-me-out and improve my performance utility (free). I also use several other performance improving and registry cleaning utilities, but you can find those yourselves, again, free of charge.
On a final and more serious note, two very dear friends in the US have very recently lost a dear and loved mother/mother-in-law to a relentless cancer. To these friends, anonymous though they must remain (J & C), I hope we can all send a thought of condolence.
Until the next,
Leducdor

"Yet, across the gulf of space on the planet Mars, intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic regarded our Earth with envious eyes . . . .

The War of The Worlds, (1953)


Well, well, well, back again. It has been ages since my last entry and I offer my apologies to any who read my blog, but the last four months have been eventful in our lives, there was a great deal to do, not the least of which was psychologically settling into our new apartment here in Montpellier. Being forced out of the old one (owner selling at an exorbitant price which we could not afford), we were forced to find a new base of operations for the headquarters of our vast network of industrial espionage, illicit Mexican hallucinogenic chocolate trade and the selling of stolen gems from the eyes of long-lost Hindu idols deep in the steaming jungles of southern India. I dare not speak, of course, of our most profitable sideline, but be aware that those of you who have enquired about the availability of mummy powder and 'free market' Egyptian antiquities shall soon have all your questions answered. Lest you think it hypocritical to speak of profitable affairs but not being able to afford an apartment in the heart of Montpellier's Tourist Central, you should know better; one cannot flaunt one's liquidity in such an obvious fashion. Interpol would be on us in a flash.
I shall not take my semi-usual overview of the news, as four months is a long time for myriad disasters to have come and gone - noting only the biggest: Myanmar; China's earthquake; American floods; California wildfires; Sudan/Darfur, etc. That Hillary Clinton was forced to concede was a personal sadness, as I still do not believe in the magical rhetoric of Barack Obama, but oh well, given the choice of evils I will choose the lesser and endorse and vote for Senator Obama. The more I see of Senator McCain, the more I feel creeped out by his amazing similarity to a Mme Tussaud wax figurine or a Disney animatronic construction, the man just doesn't appear human or lifelike at all. The eternally smiling beer heiress Cindy doesn't help either, she seems far too Pat Nixon-like for me.
The new apartment is liveable, if somewhat small. We had a v-e-r-y favorable rent situation in the other, but moving forced us to adjust to the current rental market and doubled our rental expenditure as well as paying the movers and all the rest of the associated costs of relocating your nest from one tree to another. One would think that Devi and I would make the necessary adjustments to budget for these variations, I know, but it does not really work like that - life goes on and even in the midst of unforeseen economic bumps jewels must be bought and caprices indulged. However, there have been several upsides: we have a marvelous neighbor, 85 years old and an indefatigueable chatterbox who is fast becoming a close friend for Devi; and our new neighborhood is far more "terre-à-terre" (everyday real life) than our old one, it having been in the center of Tourist Central and a very expensive area to have to do one's daily shopping, etc. We had mainly monstrous neighbors, as well. Even three months later we are still winnowing our belongings so that this apartment does not resemble a storage depot. However, the French movers helped us greatly with that, stealing an astonishing variety of objects and goods ( they even stole a memory chip out of my computer ! ) - I later learned that French movers universally have the reputation of 17th century gypsy thieves, a situation with which I never had a problem in the United States, and Devi hadn't moved in 40 years, so we were both sitting ducks. Live and learn, I suppose, and of course we had moving insurance, but in the end it comes down to your word against theirs and both Devi and I are of the philosophy of "let their karma deal with them." After all, things are only things, no matter how cherished, and can be replaced. Nevertheless, I Inscribed their names on a Tarot card, 'The Tower of Destruction', and killing a black cock and secreting the card inside its disembowelled carcass, flung the sacrifice into a smoking brazier before a statue of Kali, Goddess of Destruction - karma is all fine and good, but why not be sure?
Another upside is that when we moved, I decided to buy a new television. If I was going to be forced to move, to a smaller apartment at that, then 'bygod' I was going to have a decent television. When I moved into Devi's apartment several years ago, she was living like an ascetic - few decorations, no carpets and certainly not a television. So as to accustom her to the drug, at the time I bought a small, normal 17"-screen CRT tv, which it must be said, she did not enjoy all that much - amusing, yes, but hardly fabulous. This time, I bought a flat screen, LCD, high definition sleek black beauty of a beast; by law all French television will be high-definition fairly soon anyway. Suddenly, Devi finds television very interesting after all (surprise, surprise) and will remain glued to the screen for the full length of an emission or a film, an occurence unheard of with the prehistoric model owned before. I am very proud of Devi, she has finally taken to the electronic syringe very well after all, although it must be admitted that the computer will probably remain forever beyond her ken - after all, she reasons, why should she learn it when I can fulfill any request she may have? Win some, lose some.
Our cats made a surprisingly peaceful move and adjustment. Rabelais, Gaston and Wendy were all freaked of course, for all of an hour, perhaps. Then it was business as usual, no doubt greatly helped by the fact that we now have 3X as many windows, all larger and all with deep exterior sills upon which they may promenade, sun themselves, plot massive death upon the birds, spy upon the neighbors, etc. These are observation posts only, of course, as we are on the 3ème étage (4th floor in English), but feline fascination and joy have no limit. After a full reconnaissance of their observation posts, they set to work and excavated a lovely split-level triplex inside one of the flying buttresses of our apartment (yes, flying buttress - this is France, where ALL buildings are Gothic, and all have flying buttresses - what did you think, you naive thing, you?) We have added another kitten, Diderot, to the lot, a fabulous little beast, but one who learned a dreadful lesson last week - do NOT jump from the window in hopes of catching your prey. He fell, 4 floors to a hard concrete pad below. Devi and I were watching a film but were immediately alerted by the cacaphonous, united frenzy of the three adults, and I immediately knew the cause. I looked out of one of the kitchen windows and yes, there below, lay the still form of Diderot. I rushed down and recovered him, still as death but breathing, and brought him back up to the apartment. I am not ashamed to admit there were tears, prayers and bargaining with Fate. I am capable of quickly ending a pet's life if it is necessary, but I did not want to do it, and he was at least still breathing and not screaming. Seventy two agonizing hours followed, little movement, feeble, pitiful meows, a few drops of water but no food, etc. Finally, he moved, not much, but he moved. Twenty four hours later, he tried to stand and walk - no such luck, it was as if he was a spintop winding down very badly indeed, he could not stay upright, could not coordinate his feet, his legs were rubber and I was sure he was desperately broken somewhere in the interior. I again contemplated euthanasia, but decided to wait. The next day, he was walking, albeit like a drunken sailor on shore leave in Macao. I am happy to report that as of now, he has regained "himself", is playing, although gently, and is even running a bit, still a bit cautiously, but running and his appetite has returned with a vengeance. I believe that Fate took me at my word, and took a little bit of my life and gave it to him, or else he is simply f**king lucky and has one less life of his own
Our neighbor, Odile (not her name, but then of course we practice selective anonymity here on this blog, don't we?), is a big fan of the Tarot and as she visits often, does not spare an opportunity to ask me to read for her. As she is 85/86 years of age, I practice a policy of slanting her cards towards the hopeful, not giving her dire news of which she has absolutely no need. Well, hell, who does, for that matter? But there are times when the older amongst us simply do not need reminders of the dire, the dreadful and death. The other day, however, she asked me for a full reading, a complicated task indeed, and asked me to tell her the truth. Be very careful when a woman asks you for the truth, it is a minefield already stacked against you, as I knew, but I thought, "okay, for one time and one time only, I will tell you exactly what the cards say." Her cards revealed a past filled with duplicity, cruelty and deceit, her present nebulous but hopeful, and a serene, happy future. Naturally, she was indignant with the reading of her past, okay with her present, and glad of her future. As I reminded her, the cards NEVER foretell the future, they only guide, all the choices are still yours to make, but they rarely lie about the past, and if she was egotistical, self-absorbed and demanding in her youth, that is what the cards reflected. She looked me in the eye and said, "Age changes your memories." Ah, yes, that is the rub, isn't it?
Well, for a re-entry, I believe that is enough for today. The only other amusing thing I would like to pass along is a marvelous little bit about the 'Aztec Whistles of Death', a CNN bit that is very informative and at the same time a bit bizarre. I shall not say more but let you discover it for yourself (be sure and listen to the audio):
http://edition.cnn.com/2008/TECH/science/06/30/pre-columbiansounds.ap/index.html
I must rush to Castorama, the local equivalent of HomeBuilders, as the cats have requested mortar, colorful tiles, small prayer rugs and faux jewels to finish decorating their triplex inside the flying buttress. As I am disposed to be kind to them after the drama of Diderot, I have decided to accede to their requests - perhaps I shall even purchase for them several miniature Turkish divans and a box of hexagonal mirror tiles to decorate their dome, as well as a do-it-yourself stained glass kit for that authentic gothic look. Until the next,
Leducdor