Scripts, Lies, and the Need for Scripted Lies
I haven't seen much of the Republican National Convention, despite being home ill for a couple of days.  I'm lucky.  Australia doesn't take all that much interest in the nonsense, except to puzzle about it, scratch their heads, and ask: what, really? That's it?  And we listen to them about anything? 

But I have heard some things that even at this remove strike me as (a) lies, (b) scripted pablum for the crowds, and now (c) Clint Eastwood proving that actors working without a script can't even manage to lie well but GOP conventioneers and all their good ol' hometown buddies will eat it up with a spoon, probably because they are equally suffering the onslaught of imminent dementia and really should be in a nursing home before they end up on a bus to Topeka (or Ames, if they're already stating from Topeka) and we have to call up the National Guard to round them all up and return them to their loved ones.

Because the National Guard are mostly in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Which is because of PRESIDENT BUSH, Clint, not Obama, which if you could remember longer ago than last week you might know.

Oh, and Joe Biden, well, compared to "F... yourself" Cheney, whom I think you got confused with the current VP, he actually is a pretty smart guy, if a loose cannon.  At least he's not "big time" at cursing people for calling him on his lies and other egregious behavior.

Sorry, Clint, no more late nights for you.  Time they strapped you into your bed.

Seriously, are they all really that stupid, even the ones we thought were smart?  Or are we that stupid to believe that any of them are smart?

What a disaster.  Not that any Republicans will care.  They're voting for their guy anyway, because he'll cut their taxes.  Well, he'll cut the taxes of the 1% they work for, and that's almost as good.  Almost worked for Reagan, didn't it?  Except it didn't.

Drugs are Bad, mkay?
Lance Armstrong won those titles
, and I don't care what anyone says at this point.  He was tested and passed, so shut up.  It's wrong what they've done, and I can only say further: Live Strong, Lance.

Restorations
After one of trips abroad, I came home to discover that my stereo amp was getting no power.  I tried a few things, different power points, checking for a blown fuse, but . . . nothing.  So I checked the website for the shop where I'd bought it to see if they did servicing, which they did, or so the website said, and carried it in for a look-see.  They wouldn't touch it.  It's a Yamaha, the guy says, we don't work on Yamaha in-house.  Take it to South Side Electronics, that's where we send stuff.

Well, it was far, I was busy, so, no, I didn't, figuring maybe the next weekend would do.  On the way home, however, we happened to pass a street market, and here was an old Akai amp waiting to be sold.  $10, the guy says, but I don't know if it works or not.

It did.  Well, half of it.  It had ports for A-B speakers, and the right channel on each was working, so I went mono for a while.

South Side fixed me up for less than $150, which, given that it's a $600+ amp and a new one would be at least that, was a bargain.

What I will say for the guys that wouldn't do the repair is that the components they sold me work well together, which wasn't true when the Akai was plugged in.  The sound is back, and it's very good to have.  South Side will get a recommendation from me anytime they want.

Positioning
1:31:40 in this year's City2Surf.  That made me 33,533 overall, 21,853 among the men, and 1,739 in my age group.  Clearly there's an advantage to birthdays, but next year I swear I will not get injured. Something in my right calf went pop at about the 5k mark, something I thought I'd rested enough for two weeks prior, but not enough training and not enough recovery - and probably especially not enough return to conditioning thereafter - means the Run4Fun is more doubtful than not (although it is just a 10k), but there's probably time to prepare for next year's City2South, in Brisbane.  Since I've done the City2Sea in Melbourne, I really ought to do the Brisbane race, and the Canberra race, for that matter.  After all . . . - right? 

Tickets


There’s an Australian expression, used when someone seems to think he or she is special or privileged: they have “tickets on themselves.” Well, while we’re on the subject, for a ham-handed segue, Romney-Ryan is a great example of a pair with “tickets.” Like most Republican presidential candidates, Romney thinks he deserves to be (a) the GOP nominee and (b) the President. And Paul Ryan thinks he is the GOP ideas man.

Sadly, that latter statement appears to be true; he really is the ideas man, and maybe the only one, other than Grandpa “Get Off My Lawn” Ron Paul, everyone else being fixated on playing Doctor No to the Democrats’ progressivism.

Which means we have a clueless, flat-footed frat boy (Bush III, to all intents and purposes, but at least a “better” businessman) with a smart guy for his powerless Number Two. Ryan is there, effectively, to give his boss credentials he doesn’t deserve, and on the basis of his own lack of credentials. After all, Ryan’s credit for being the ideas man is that he’s effectively recycled the discredited ideas of a fascist and all-around crappy novelist: Ayn Rand. The man is a walking book report.

But what are Ryan’s ideas all about? How the Federal budget can be reduced so that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. The first is accomplished by taxing the wealthy less. The former is done by eliminating entitlement programs for the poor and elderly. Both are the result of taxing the hell out of the poor and middle class. I’m not sure, but it’s possible his social engineering goal is actually to eliminate illegal immigration by creating a permanent American underclass, so that there aren’t any jobs undocumented workers can use to send money back home. That may seem to be in conflict with Romney’s reputation as an astute businessman, which relies on sending jobs permanently overseas, but if Ryan’s plan works, it probably wouldn’t be necessary to offshore employment anymore. At last, the GOP has found a way to create jobs!

This November, remember to rent The Fountainhead, just so you can have a little taste of what makes Paul Ryan suitable to be Vice President.

Pewter
Watching the London Olympics on Australian television has to be one of the finest examples of how bad sports television can be. If the Nine network can't do any better than this, how did they manage to get the contract for the broadcast in the first place? God only knows there must be some people who think field hockey, horse jumping, and rhythmic gymnastics are popular, but not in prime time, especially when you're playing, effectively, replays all day long, and even more so when you have analog and digital channels, so that you could play more than one event at a time - and, God help us all - more than just the same four advertisements.  But if there isn't an Australian in the event, it doesn't go to air, and if there is, and he or she doesn't do well, God help them in the interview, which will inevitably be abusive, derogatory, or skipped altogether in favor of using BBC coverage to gloss over it.  But, Bolt, Pistorious, and even the bronze, silver, and fifth-place finishing Australians, well, it has been special and worth watching (everything but the drag queen wannabes with their ribbons etc.). Sport - even outside the Hemingway definition (motor racing, bull fighting [which is immoral], and mountain climbing only; all else being recreation) - is remarkably compelling.

Just Say 'Roobie-Roobie-Doo'
Yeah, the villain in the new Batman movie? When he speaks clearly enough to be understood, he sounds like Sean Connery.  The rest of the time I think his voice was modeled on Scoobie Doo.

He's big, he's strong, he comes out of nowhere, beats up Batman bad, but mostly the movie is dull (including the dull, throbbing bass music).  Not even Anne Hathaway in a catsuit helps.

I'm with the New Yorker on this one.

Petulance


For my sins, primarily that of going away periodically for work or leisure, especially leisure, and having some stranger come in to take care of the cats, I seem to be called to atonement by having to take one to the vet. This time, after waiting hours for Felix to return, he finally appeared at the front door, plucking feebly at the cat flap, as if he didn’t know how to operate it normally, which, for him, is to dive through head-first. Upon opening the door, remonstrating with him, we saw that he had a pronounced limp.

Nothing appeared broken, from a cursory and basic examination, but he didn’t like the prodding, and he didn’t like it any more the following morning, so I bundled him into his carrier and off to Parramatta Road for a cab ride to the vet with the earliest opening hours.

The vet poked around and removed a scab, releasing a volume of nasty-looking fluid I haven’t seen outside of an Aliens movie. Seems that, although Felix thinks he’s tough, he’s not as tough as the other guy, and a cat-fight cat-bite turned septic, as it would.

So he’s home now, his front leg wrapped up to the shoulder, with a drain in place and antibiotics on board. I think the pain relief wore off not long after I got him home, but it could be he just doesn’t like the sock, which, while keeping him from draining all over the apartment, also keeps his paw from straightening normally, so he’s en pointe, as it were, but just with one foot.

Theo takes full advantage of Felix’s reduced mobility, as he’d otherwise be blocked or chased out of the various prime locations for being petted, but Felix does his best to solicit attention, looking like one of those paint-by-numbers exaggerated sad-eyed cats, if slightly less bedraggled.

That’s at least three lives down since I’ve had him, and as a rescue, probably four to five all up. Perhaps it’s time to transform him into an indoor-only cat. If I can stand the complaining.

I’ll get some Blue Mountains pictures, of which there are not many, up in the next few days, so that there’s something that isn’t about pus posted here.

Beastly


33 years ago, Ridley Scott made a fine science fiction horror movie, and for whatever reason, decided recently to go back there and sort of answer some questions left open back then. Prometheus is a good-looking and riveting movie, but it left me in the end laughing out loud. The first question that come to mind at the end is: does Mr. Scott have some kind of problem with sex? This is, of course, an open question from the first movie and its sequels, but in this entry, the monsters’ relationship to a grotesque view of sex is much more obvious. Various other questions may be addressed in this “training video”, such as, why touch the goo? When you see an alien, how close should you get? And should you order the calamari?

The movie was engaging, lots of thrills and suspense, but it didn’t add much value to the franchise or to the history of cinema. Maybe I should have gone 3D?

Unfortunately for me, with the new Batman movie due to open before long, I owe the GF at least one serious realistic movie and probably a date movie on top.

Anti-Social


I deactivated my Facebook account today. I haven’t deleted it yet, but I think I will before long. I just don’t find it interesting or useful. I’ve never learned anything from it, and anything I put up on it will just be there forever, possibly causing trouble for me in one way or another, so seeing an thorough end to it seems more worthwhile than finding out what games or silliness one person or another more or less remotely connected to my life, past more than present, mostly, may be up to.

Twitter, too, I think. It can be entertaining – more so than Facebook ever was – but unless you’re following some users who use it well, it’s only entertaining for about five minutes. And you really need to be following lots and lots of people, none of whom you’re ever likely to meet (or like in real life, probably). And most of them are likely not to use it well. Frankly, two dozen updates in a row are more boring than not, evidence that someone needs a blog. Or a friend. A physical one.

I’m also considering closing down my blog. It’s been fun, but if I want to collect hyperlinks to pages of things I find interesting there are more useful methods than this. I can’t remember the last time I looked back for something I’d blogged about. And if I want to communicate with friends and family, again, email works well, and my Googlepages site (or whatever they’re called now) can be used to post photographs or whatever else just as easily, and probably more so.

My own updates to these so-called social media sites or web 2.0 or whatever are less than worthwhile. I don’t even care about what I think that much, so I can’t expect anyone else to be interested. If you need to get in touch, you’ve got my phone number or my email address, so look for me there.

Mileage Cancer Council NSW has a one-mile race each year as a fund-raiser, the City Mile Dash, over by Darling Harbour. I didn’t manage to get much money together, although the rest of the team at work did a terrific job (we finished as the top third team), but as much as I’m happy to contribute, it was the race I was interested in, reliving glory days of the Fifth Avenue Mile, back in NYC. (At least this one has no association with that crazy birther dude.) I haven’t run a race like this in a long time and was badly undertrained even for the races I usually participate in, so a 7:29 finish was entirely satisfactory, especially for the oldest participant on our team. Next year . . . .

Partnerships The PM, Julia Gillard, opposes same-sex marriage, and disingenuously now says it’s o.k., because, look, she’s in a relationship without being married. Wrong. Australia recognises de facto relationships, i.e., common law marriage, albeit between a man and a woman only. To say that that gives everyone the same basis is just a lie. Opponents to same-sex marriage need to get over themselves. No one’s going to make anyone marry anyone else, and your church can impose whatever rules it wants on its congregation. Just get out of the way, so that committed relationships can be recognised with all the privileges and constraints as any other. It’s not about “more” rights; it’s about the same rights for everyone. Ms. Gillard’s opposition is based on scruples or squeamishness she cannot afford to express politically, obviously, and it’s time for her to grow up.

Want The boys would look swell supporting their candidate, if they were American cats.

Lights The Vivid Festival is on again, and this year’s line-up is more interesting to me than last year, so I’ve booked a couple of shows. Maybe I was being conservative, insofar as I was bringing a date, so the first selection was Temper Trap, a popular act out of Melbourne, I think, who made quite a success of their first release, Conditions, an enjoyable bit of pop music, and who’s second album, Trembling Hands has just come out ahead of the festival. (Haven’t heard the CD yet, which is interesting: remember when a band went out on tour to promote their latest release, and you had the record almost as soon as you had the tickets for the show, and that night you’d put the album on, psyching yourself up for the night? Yeah, didn’t happen.) I’m not sure what I thought of the new material. The sound in the Opera House presents some challenges, as so often with opera houses generally, and rock ‘n’ roll seems to overwhelm the acoustic design, especially if you’re stuck up in the back, as we were. I swear I bought better tickets, but oh, well. The sound issues wouldn’t have been a problem, weren’t a problem, but the lights . . . . Yes, Vivid is a “festival of music, lights, and ideas,” and it’s wonderful what they can do with lasers and such, but the strobes and the big stage back-lighting rigs were right in our eyes. It was hard to watch the stage most of the time. Not their fault, of course, and I’m sure it was spectacular downstairs, but I’m nearly as blind as I am deafened in consequence. A very good show, though, nevertheless. Great crowd energy, a tight band, really rocking out. Nothing bad to say about any of it, in the end. Tomorrow we’ll go see the LCD Soundsystem’s farewell tour concert movie, Shut Up and Play the Hits. I’m looking forward to it. But I do wonder if I shouldn’t have gone ahead and booked My Brightest Diamond; she was a highlight when Lou Reed & Laurie Anderson curated two years ago.

Insert Godzilla Here Anyone else think Japanese Island Aogashima looks like Monster Island? Good casting is good casting. (via Boing Boing, of course)

Central Coast Some photos from the Central Coast weekend. Lots of gazing into sunsets. Other things, too, of course, but maybe it's the time of year, or the smoke from the burn-offs across the lakes, but the colours really were so vivid. And the company. We also did a bit of hiking along the way back. One stretch of banksia was ominous. Seabirds of many varieties were in evidence, from the pelicans of The Entrance to the cormorants of, well, everywhere. Also in evidence, if slightly less so, was the variety of uses and users of the seacoast.

Awesome Just a head's-up: The Avengers is very entertaining. The new Hulk was good; I thought at first that it was too bad that Edward Norton didn't play puny Banner, but Mark Ruffalo did a fine job. The other players/characters were in fine, well-practiced form. But I think I'll skip 3-D from now on. It really didn't matter.

Cynics Marco Rubio as Vice President? Well, when we’re considering the possibility of Mitt Romney as Commander-in-Chief, why not? Sure, as a one-term Senator, he’s not no more qualified for the top job than Obama was, but in this case what we’re dealing with is a cynical ploy to retrieve votes lost by extreme right-wing pandering on immigration issues, if not outright bigotry, and it’s just the VEEP job, anyway. It’s not like past Presidential campaigns didn’t use the Vice Presidential selection to deliver key demographics in the past. It used to be that you’d pick a Southerner if you were Northern or a Northerner if you were a Southerner. Or if you were perceived as weak in a key area, you picked someone to provide the requisite strength. Biden, for example, was a similarly good choice for Obama as Johnson was for Kennedy, in that he was a Senate-business strong-arm (although that doesn’t appear to have worked out quite so well in the current term, so maybe it’s more Clinton-Gore). Instead of going with the top insider, though, Romney is going straight at the votes. Rubio may deliver more Hispanics than Mittens could otherwise expect, but if they do take office, can he work the Senate? Or is he just going to be another Tea Party foamer, but with a nicer office?

Excursions The longest period of travel I've ever had started with a final trip to Auckland for work. So some final photographs are in order. Next time I go to New Zealand, I hope for the south island, but if back north, at least the bay of islands or thereabouts. Auckland's nice, but I've seen enough of it for a while. Albatross populate the harbour extensively. They're quite loud, too, some mornings, but are something to see, soaring along. Not so much just standing there, though. I do like their tower very much. Their harbour is almost more open ocean than anything else, but watching the fog roll in and lift by early morning is lovely. On the final weekend, there was a special exhibition on of Japanese art, for which a demonstration of Japanese drumming was performed. The hotel we stayed in had a distinctly Overlook-ish aspect. I kept expecting to see creepy twins at the end every morning. After a brief stopover back home for Easter weekend, I flew to Paris to meet the girlfriend, who was traveling there for work, but had also built in some tourism, as you do. Paris is a very distinctive city, in large part due to Napoleon III, who tore down vast sections of it, rebuilding according to a particular style, and also with an aim to have large boulevards, not easily barricaded, so as to prevent having another, successful revolution. These buildings along the Rue de Rivoli, as seen from the Tuillieres Gardens, are a good example of the style. Not that Paris doesn't have its colourful aspects, such as a bit of graffiti here and there. Or their museum of modern art, the Pompidou Centre. Something newer in that regard is the pedestrian bridge, the Pont des Arts, which the citizens and others have determined should also serve as a monument to relationships. Couples attach a padlock where they can. No word on whether they keep the keys, just in case, or not. Besides gilding everything they can, a common motif in Paris are their stone lions. They're pretty good. This one's actually Greek, in the Louvre, but I liked the expression on his face. This one's in Versailles. He looks appalled at something, but there's no indication what it may be. This last one is on a fountain, but he's a good example of snarl. The view from the top of the Arc de Triomph is hard to beat. That other arch at the far end, the squared one, was built for the 200th anniversary of the Revolution, and is actually outside Paris itself, where the buildings are limited in height. Outside the city limits, they can go as high as they want. Didn't get to Montmatre; maybe next time. One thing we did get to was the Louvre, of course, along with thousands of others. My favourite painting was the Wedding Feast at Cana. We also took in Notre Dame. The gargoyles are a lot of fun. For a day trip, we took a minibus to Versailles and Claude Monet's gardens in Giverney. Versailles was the proof that there is just no getting away from crowds when touring Paris. But the grounds are extensive and extensively sculpted. Pruning must be a university degree course. The gardens at Monet's house were wonderful. The set-up made you easily see what the Impressionists were on about. Every bend and aspect showed you different things the light was doing, and you could imagine what the day would do to change each view as the light changed, day to day, season to season. It may have been one of the best parts of the trip. Once B.'s work week kicked in, I traveled up to York, where Mom & Dad had the intention of seeing the minster. It's a fair bit more time in York than I think is entirely called for, and the weather generally was bad for walking around ye olde England, although maybe giving a feel for the way the city would have often felt back when it was still new. I'm amazed that the city wall was retained for all these centuries, but someone had some serious foresight. One element of the trip that was particularly welcome is that Mom & Dad know someone there, someone who is engaged in studying and restoring the stained glass. So we got quite a lot of information about the process. And, of course, York's minster was spared much of the ravages of Cromwell's iconoclasts, so there's quite a lot of stained glass to look at and learn about. My favourite, however, was a small panel, playfully inserted along the bottom of some other work, involving saints and such, but depicting a monkey, and telling a little story, from right to left, of the monkey being ill, being attended by a monkey doctor, and then having a monkey funeral procession, when that didn't work out so well. It was good to see Paris again, after 24 years, and York, after 30, but it's nicer to be home. No more travel beyond the Blue Mountains or Central Coast, I think, for a good long while.

Paris!
Just until Sunday, and the first three hours waiting for B.to arrive, but it's her party, so to speak: I wouldn't be here if she wasn't coming in for a conference, and with some holiday time to kill. But I didn't expect to be here ever again, really, and not since 1988, so very excited.z