Dear Diary, the Astute Reader still isn't reading this, or if they're reading it, they're reading it from Google's crawler cache, like all good intelligentsia who don't want the whole community to know who they are and where on the web they've been. Well, at least they might hide from people who don't have access to Google's cache logs, or who are camped on the InterNet somewhere real close to blogger.com's servers analyzing and capturing traffic with a transparent proxy. But I can't expect the Astute Reader to be afraid that there might be spies all over Blogger like bugs on your windshield the day after a car-wash. The Astute Reader knows no fear! Then again, Fools rush in where Angels fear to tread, and I'm no Angel.
Speaking of Angels -- not that I believe that I believe in them, but who knows? -- I saw a rather good if off film on cable last night, Don't Tempt Me (2001, also known as "Bendito infierno" (released as Sin noticias de Dios" in Spain), a trilingual film starring, among others, the lovely and talented Penélope Cruz.
The plot is really quite baffling, as more or less it's one of those "battle of Good and Evil" movies with a twist: Heaven and Hell are basically versions of this world, and perhaps to some degree they overlap in some places, and in other places there is clear distinction between our world and the various parts of Eternity. Two Angels are sent to earth to battle for the soul of a punchy boxer. In Hell, the judges are "perverse", to quote Cruz's character. In her former life, she was a male gangster, and after death she is sentenced to be returned to earth to be a waitress for a hundred years; released as an agent to tempt the boxer to the dark side, or at least away from the light, she strikes up a friendship and later a sort of a romance with the Angel sent to help the boxer save his soul before he dies from one too many visit to the ring.
I studied some French many years ago, and have found it impossible to not pick up some Spanish as I do live in an official barrio now, thank you very much. This film is utterly fascinating for the way that it switches languages, Spanish the majority of the time in the full-color place that could be Hell or Earth or both, with French for those conversations taking place in the black-and-white world of Heaven, which resembles nothing so much as the backdrops of 1940s romantic musical comedies, with English being the language of high-level negotiations. For the serious student, this sort of film is must-see, as the French is Parisian and the Spanish is from all over Spain, including a lovely airline counter clerk speaking with the most preciously royal of Castilian lisps.
Noted in passing, and with both good cheer for me and relief for my neighbors, the Montgomery County Council voted to reprieve Sligo Golf Course for another nine months.
Yay for bowing to widespread public opinion, those who voted for this 9-month extension!
Total change of subject here: I remember from an "Introduction to Political Science" course I once took at Montgomery College.
The instructor was fine and upstanding gentleman given to drawing fairly good editorial-style cartoons to help explain various things, including the differences between various political ideologies.
To be fair all around, I feel it incumbent upon me to mention that he talked for about 15 minutes in one class period, about how the GI Bill -- which sent returning veterans to college -- was the best thing since sliced bread and possibly even better, since after all it had taken him into coursework immediately after he got back from fighting in Korea.
He told us once, with evident relish, of how one of those central-european countries got taken over by Communists. I forget which country exactly, possibly Romania but I seem to recall it as being Hungary.
People voted, and in European style, elected officials from about 20 different parties. However, they didn't see fit to elect someone other than a card-carrying and open member of the Communist party to the position of commissioner of police. This cabinet-level commie promptly required registration of all firearms, and further spent the next year or three retiring all officers who were not fellow Communists, and then beefed up the "sadly understaffed" force with fellow Communists. And then one morning, people who owned firearms woke up with policemen at their door, demanding to see their weapons, all of which were confiscated; anyone who objected was jailed or shot, often both, and in very brief time-frames. Even the few remaining non-Communist police were rounded up and shot. Within the week, Russian tanks rolled into a disarmed and helpless nation, and aside from easily-crushed and smallish uprisings that didn't have a chance, for the next 50 years, the people were propertyless slaves to the ideologically insane.
Now, as they say, "past is prologue". And it looks as if former Chairman of the Board of CASA of Maryland, Tom Perez, may be confirmed as director of the U.S. Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division.
I expect the tanks to start rolling in from Mexico within a week of that happening. Or maybe from El Salvador. Metaphorically speaking, of course. I hope.
Moving right along: It's getting to be time for sentencing for Reuben F Lopez, said to be the Greater Washington Metropolitan Region's "biggest dope-dealer ever.
[ ... ]
The Drug Enforcement Administration says it has dismanlted the vast network operated by Reuben F. Lopez who packed tractor-trailers with hundreds of pounds of cocaine and thousands of pounds of marijuana and then sent them to Washington, Cleveland, Detroit, Atlanta and Maine. At the height of the 12-year operation, Lopez was responsible for delivering about 110 pounds of high-quality cocaine and 2,000 pounds of marijuana each month to Washington.
While in prison, the DEA says Lopez planned to murder two government witnesses. Federal agents stomped out the murder plot and in the process discovered the letters Lopez smuggled out of a Charles County jail with the help of a clergyman.
"He is the biggest dealer we've ever arrested in the Washington area," said one of two DEA case agents who spoke to The Examiner on the condition of anonymity. Lopez's failing heart has kept him in the hospital and his sentencing date undetermined.
[ ... ] ("Area's top drug kingpin busted after betrayal", Klopott, Freeman, Washington Examiner, September 30, 2009)
And now it's time for Dear Diary to get an earful.
First, the less-beer project is moving right along. Last night, over a 5 hour period, I drank 6 beers. This also marks one week that I've had less than 9 beers a night, and last night's roughly one-an-hour barely constitutes a buzz, much less being drunk. So, "coming soon", I guess I'll draw it down to 4 beers a night, or two, or whatever. Keeping in mind that "it's good to be humble", I probably won't bother telling anyone when I finally quit, or if I relapse.
Interested parties should be able to tell on their own. For one thing, if I'm not drinking and have spare money in my pockets (from not spending it on beer), there's no reason at all for me to not be out and about in my car at night.
There's also no reason at all that I might not be up before dawn.
This morning was something that once I would have classified as "yet another horrid wakening before dawn". When my eyes popped open at 5:36, I just sort of sat there for five minutes and pondered the fact that I had no pressing business, nor any reason to sleep in. I could flip a coin, but I suppose I might as well get up and drink coffee, fetch in the paper and read it, get my act in order, and drive off to get another paper and then go take a walk.
One good thing about being out the door and on the road at 6:30AM, you don't have all that much company unless you get onto one of the arterials headed downtown. Plus, it's dark.
Lots of people have spread lots of rumors about me because I like being out when it's dark. They are cordially invited to, in the immortal words of former Vice-President Dick Cheney, "go fuck yourself".
The truth is, most people go inside when it's dark, and I am not gregarious. This means that when the sun goes down, the "madding crowd" disperses, and I can stop to admire when at other times I would be crushed aside by the crowds rushing hither and yon.
I am, of course, not the only one who has ever felt this way.
I like daylight just fine, too, I should add. Anyone who has driven past the house while I've been cutting the family lawn at high noon in the middle of the August heat waves can tell you, not only do I tan just fine, but I can sweat just fine, too.
Yet I still recall how once, when I was barely 18, I and two friends I'd just met were hanging out in a vacant apartment. One of the gals said something like "damn, I wish I had a candle, I can't see a damned thing!" and the other gal and I just looked at her, and looked at each other, and looked around the room, and then the one gal asked the other gal if maybe she wasn't eating right because some Vitamin A ought to fix her right up with that lack-of-night-vision problem.
Every now and then -- it's rare, thank goodness -- I wind up talking to someone in some dimly lit bar and they mention how they "can't see a thing in here".
The last time someone said it to me, all I could say was "I'm so sorry". And I was. I don't know if they understood that I was actually sorry for them: to me, and to almost everyone else in the bar, it might as well have been outside on a cloudy day.
Of course, I can't see in total darkness and if I get far enough out in the boondocks so that there's not a lot of light-pollution from nearby cities and towns, I need a flashlight like anyone. For me, the main difference between the well-lit suburban night and any old daytime is that at night, the only color I see is the hideous orange of certain streetlights, and the occasionally bizarre spectra emitted by some of the new "high performance" vehicle headlights... or when it's dark and clear enough, the red of planet Mars or star Antares, or the blue of Sirius (which reminds me of the spectra of some of the car headlights. Hmmm...).
But that in the modern day and age, when they have not just vitamins, but fresh carrots and spinach in every grocery store, and there are still people who can't see the sidewalk under a sodium street lamp? Like I said to the man: I'm so sorry. But don't go telling crazy stories because I'm not undernourished, or genetically defective, like you.
Let me tell you a story, and this is not funny. Not at all.
I was at work in an office downtown, and it was getting on to 6PM and most people had gone home. I was on the late-leaving shift segment, the guy who "closes up shop".
One of the higher-ups was walking around in the hall, and lo and behold, he meets someone from college, who he clearly hasn't seen in years and as clearly they were best buds back in the day.
You know how guys are when they're doing a decade or two of catch-up, and these two are both happy as clams, so to speak. They're standing right where the hallway makes a right-angle turn.
And behind the one man comes the steady tap-tap-tap of someone feeling their way down the hallway with a white cane.
So the two former college buddies are finishing up their discussion of how it's been going for the last decade or so, and they exchange card, promise to meet at a bar or somesuch, and both of them turn to go their different ways down different halls.
And the one man, clearly lost in reminiscence, turns around and strides off purposefully for exactly one step and bangs headfirst into the guy with the cane.
Both fall on their ass.
And the one guy yells at the other guy, "why the hell don't you watch where you're going?!"
And the other guy says, "I'm blind."
I said it isn't funny. Stop laughing, dammit.
I had to help the one guy up; the other guy, blushing really quite well for a black man, just sort of jumped up and ran off like the lawyer that he was.
The one guy wasn't really totally blind, but he had some sort of degenerative eye condition and he wore specs with what looked like a telescope sticking out of one lens. He could read with that, if he got the end of it right on the page. Even though he was late, I helped him find the file he needed and even made a copy for him. Once pointed in the right direction, he found his way out on his own quite well. People adapt.
Well, some people adapt... and some people tell ridiculous stories about people who can see pretty well in the dark, and like to come out at night when the crowds aren't cluttering up the street, and watch the really grand glories of Creation. Because, you see, in the daytime, I can see no farther than the six miles to the horizon, and maybe 7 miles to the top of a thunderhead or to a jet, but when darkness falls and the stars come out, I am looking across a large part of the Universe, and a true and immense vastness of Creation.
And it is beautiful, indeed.
Drinking less, I think I'll be seeing the stars and planets more, and television less. Look, one of the main reasons I was drinking so much was to try to get through the insipid banality and thoughtlessness of "reality shows".
Waking early, I might see Venus or Mercury; there's less pollution in the AM so Mercury would be more visible. Not much blots out Venus, the brightest nighttime object next to Luna.
Also, waking early, I may get to see a blonde.
Hey, I told you there would be blondes!
Once there were lots of blondes, and blonds, and redheads as well, here in Aspen Hill.
Of course, this was 40 and more years ago, long before the Invasion, and even before Senator Ted Kennedy decided to make it really easy for Irish-Americans to import their remaining relatives from Northern Ireland and for escapees from the Iron Curtain countries to legally immigrate with "no questions asked" so long as they had relatives here.
As for redheads, we had Irish, Scots, German, and even yummy Napolitan redheads with cat-green eyes made to melt hearts. We had blond Poles, Irish, Scots, German, Slovak, Russian, you name it. Blonds everywhere. We didn't know about UV dangers and the Ozone Layer wasn't yet destroyed so everyone went out all day every day and limitless in number were the freckles. There were brunets here and there but they tended to have sandy brown hair and green eyes, except for the occasional Italian or other Mediterranean origin people. The (arguably) prettiest girl in my junior-high school had a last name very well known in Spain, and eyes the color of Liz Taylor's.
Now, everywhere you look, it's brunets with dark eyes. Outside of places like Denmark or Iceland, Blondes are an Endangered Species.
There used to be a joke about parts of New England and the total lack of defenses or controls at the Canadian border. The roads were the same on either side of the border, as were the forests, and the border wasn't much marked. So the only way you could tell in which country you were was to drive into the nearest town "and if there aren't any blondes in sight, you're in Quebec".
Well, it's not just me that notices that at least in this part of Aspen Hill -- and definitely to judge by who's riding the "48" bus -- "it's like being in a foreign country".
Can it actually be true that in all of this side of Aspen Hill, there are only two blondes?
Officer in the Yard. It's okay, I invited them onto the Grounds. You must click to see the full width of the image and the nice policeman.
