All the Secrets of the Universe and Some Really Important Stuff Too!
Photographing hummingbirds is a truly exasperating practice. The combination of short exposure time (a thousandth of a second or less), difficult autofocus target and flighty behavior means you may be waiting for hours for a shot that will only last for seconds. Anyway I had some success with the Sony 90mm macro. When I buy this lens soon I’ll do some more and try to develop some technique.
[Announcer]: We interrupt this regularly scheduled broadcast of some utterly meaningless reality show to bring you the already in progress televised presentation of President Trump’s campaign rally for Incumbent Republican Senator Rathbone Bamboozle from the Great State of Northeast Meetah. And here is the President.
[President Trump]: Thank you Senator Bamboozle for that rambling incoherent introduction. I couldn’t understand everything you said because you are so falling down drunk but from what I heard I disagree with about every fourth word. Good evening ladies and gentlemen. I’m here tonight to convince you to get out and vote for Senator Bamboozle. Looking back on his long and storied career of graft, corruption, featherbedding and just plain influence peddling it’s hard to believe that I can actually find a single reason to recommend him. I mean look at him. He’s an old, fat, drunken, dishonest SOB and he’s hideously ugly to boot. In a better world, I’d be urging the Senate Majority Leader to proffer charges against him prior to expulsion from the Senate and if it’s still permitted I’d have him bullwhipped out of the Capitol Building. But we don’t live in a better world. In this world your choice is this worthless bag of crap or a Democrat. So, relatively speaking, the bag of crap is the better man. If the Democrats get in, we can expect them to stonewall all further progress on job creation, tax relief, trade improvement and immigration control. We’ll have no further progress on an honest Supreme Court and we’ll end up with socialism and reverse racism tainting every law and government program.
I remember just last year Rathbone Bamboozle declared in the pit of the Senate that he would do everything in his power to see that my presidency failed. He said that my positions on immigration and trade were un-American. He swore that he would oppose any policy that I championed and swore that he would petition the FBI to prosecute me on charges that I colluded with the Russians against Crooked Hillary.
Well, that was then, this is now. Senator Bamboozle is thirty points under water in the polls and his wife has left him for the local termite inspection guy who works his neighborhood. She said he associates with a better class of individuals than her husband. So, after he begged me on his hands and knees and the political spin doctors assured me that we need his seat to move forward with our agenda, I agreed very reluctantly to come here and ask you long suffering people to bring this loser back to the Senate. I can’t claim that he will be a better Senator or a better man but I can promise you that once I have enough votes in the Senate to not need his sorry butt around anymore, I’ll have him investigated by the IRS and sent to prison for at least twenty years. (turning around to the dais) You hear that Rathbone? Better start a weight training program. Prison is a pretty tough gig.
So, in conclusion, vote for this bum. I’ve written a new campaign slogan for him. Tell me what you think. “He’s a worthless, evil, conniving bastard, but he’s not Satan himself.” (the crowd gives him a standing ovation) Trump out.
“I trust in nature for the stable laws of beauty and utility. Spring shall plant and autumn garner to the end of time.”
Robert Browning
This week I’ve gone with a poet. Please excuse any excess or florid exuberance.
Vox Day is always saying nevr talk to the media. Here he highlights the plight of a female DYI techie in China whose lifestyle could put her in legal hazard with the regime if a western publication blabs her social details on-line. And who shows up to turn the knife? Sarah Jeong! Here’s Vox’s link http://voxday.blogspot.com/2018/08/dont-ever-talk-to-media.html
and here’s the link to the article https://medium.com/@therealsexycyborg/shenzhen-tech-girl-naomi-wu-my-experience-with-sarah-jeong-jason-koebler-and-vice-magazine-3f4a32fda9b5
These people are ruthlessly stupid and can’t even help hurting their own friends and allies.
In a recent post, Why is the New Right Successful? I ended by saying, “Donald Trump is our Northern Star and we will follow him as long as he can withstand the onslaught. If he falls then we’ll be waiting for the spark to ignite the powder keg. Because it’s long been primed.” It was interesting to read Z-Man’s latest post entitled “Waiting For The Spark.” I guess it’s getting kind of unanimous that both sides are getting ready for the dust up. And which side is readiest for the consequences? Disrupting a relatively comfortable life is not the easiest thing in the world to do. But either way everyone seems to sense that something’s gotta give. Hope it’s them and not us.
“There is nothing so unpardonable as to consent to a senseless, aimless, purposeless life.”
Robert Browning
Strangers on a Train is a Hitchcock film from the middle of his Hollywood era. It has one of Hitchcock’s craziest villains and one of the weirdest finales. Which with Hitchcock is really saying something. The premise is that two strangers meet on a train and one of them proposes that each commit a murder that benefits the other. The idea is since they’re perfect strangers they won’t be suspected in a murder associated with the stranger but not himself. The one proposing the deal is a very strange man named Bruno Anthony (played by Robert Walker) who hates his father. The other man is a relatively famous amateur tennis player named Guy Haines (played by Farley Granger) who has an unstable and unfaithful wife Miriam, that he’d like to divorce to marry Anne Morton, the daughter of a US Senator. But Miriam refuses to allow it because of the monetary benefits marriage provides. Guy doesn’t even know how to react to this outrageous proposal so he treats it jokingly and gets off the train at his stop. But he accidentally leaves his very expensive and monogrammed cigarette lighter on the train with Bruno. Guy may treat this proposition as a joke but Bruno certainly doesn’t. We get a scene with Bruno and his parents. Bruno and his mother are both lunatics but she seems relatively harmless. We hear his father state that he will have Bruno put away. This activates Bruno and he proceeds to murder Miriam at an amusement park. He stalks her and flirts with her and chokes the life out of her. Then he casually walks away.
Bruno goes immediately to Guy and announces that he has carried out his side of the bargain and expects Guy to kill Bruno’s father. When Guy threatens to call the police Bruno counters by saying both would be held responsible in the conspiracy. Most of the rest of the movie involves Bruno hounding Guy even within his circle of friends. And this is where you realize that Bruno is the most interesting character in the movie. His insanity does not prevent him from entertaining the minor characters at dinner parties and outside restaurants. He tells Anne’s father about his theory of interplanetary clairvoyance and he entertains an old lady socialite with his theories on murder. Unfortunately he gets carried away and almost chokes her to death at a dinner party. All in all he’s a very spirited fellow. But eventually all good things come to an end and when guy doesn’t come through with his “criss-cross” side of the murder bargain, Bruno decides to frame him for the original murder using the monogrammed lighter as evidence.
Several additional scenes advance the story to the climax and we return to the scene of the crime, the amusement park. A very bizarre and cinematically interesting scene with a carousel brings it to a head and Bruno and Guy and the police finally sort things out.
Even though Guy and his friends are the innocent victims, I never felt all that much sympathy for them. They don’t really evoke much interest. They’re all kind of flat. So, despite the fact that he’s a thoroughgoing psychopath, the movie is really the Bruno Anthony show. And as creepy as he is he definitely keeps my interest. I like this Hitchcock pretty well but I could see how it might not appeal to all tastes. Caveat emptor.
“Puritanism. The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.”
H. L. Mencken