Author: photog

Christmas Movie Time

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Here it is two days before Christmas and I’ve already eaten so many cookies that I feel like a drunk in the middle of a four-day bender.  Well, there’s no avoiding the excesses.  Camera Girl is fiendish in her strategies to kill me with food.  She should hide these evil foods somewhere far away.  Instead, she lays them out all over the kitchen where even a man with a will of iron must succumb.  I’ve kept up my exercise regimen as best I can but exercise deals in hundreds of calories while pastries are measured in the thousands.  The pain, the pain.

Yesterday I watched, “It’s a Wonderful Life” in its entirety.  That’s something I haven’t done in at least fifteen years.  Many years ago, I overdosed on it.  I watched it too many times and it became played out.  But yesterday I found it fresh and enjoyable.  Of course, every scene in the movie was extremely familiar down to the slightest word and even gesture of the actors.  But I was able to appreciate just how fine the acting and directing was.  And as highly emotional as the ending of the movie obviously is I wasn’t put off at all by it.  Maybe this American Christmas Carol is fitting for the time and place we live in.  Maybe people are ready to hope for miracles again.  It’s certainly true that we need a few of them.  I’m not going to claim that heaven interceded and put Donald Trump in the White House instead of Kamala Harris.  At best maybe a divine force kept him from intersecting with that bullet that grazed his ear.  I’m afraid that heaven is not going to let us off the hook for the situation we find ourselves in.  But maybe we are being given a chance to straighten things out on our own.  The headaches that will entail are already beginning to emerge.  Well, we’ll leave the future to next year for now.

Today it was time to begin my annual “Christmas Carol” viewing experience.  I chose the George C Scott version.  And it did not disappoint.  Marley’s ghost, the Cratchit Christmas dinner and the final scene in Scrooge’s office provide all the correct notes to ensure my approval.  And as always Tiny Tim is pathetically frail and impossibly uncomplaining.  I noted to Camera Girl at the appropriate moment that Mrs. Cratchit’s railing against Scrooge during the toast moment was pitch perfect.  I could imagine and probably have heard equivalent protest from Camera Girl when some acquaintance of ours overstepped the bounds of propriety according to Camera Girl’s standards.  She does have a highly developed sense of outrage, especially when she decides that I will have to be the one to enforce it.  Women have that propensity.  Bless them.

Well, time is running out.  I’ll have to fit in the Alistair Sim and Reginald Owen versions in tomorrow.  That should be doable but I don’t think I’ll be able to get through “The Holly and Ivy” tomorrow.  Well, that can wait till Christmas Eve morning.  Christmas Eve and Christmas will be full days and I am not sure what my posting will be like.  The quotes and the photos are all pre-scheduled but my patented rants are a daily chore so I’ll have to do the best I can to put together something fitting.  We’ll have to see how that goes.  But Christmas week is here and away we go.

Joy Reid Gets a Haircut

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Alright the above title is a figure of speech.  Obviously, physically, Joy Reid’s hair could not possibly be any shorter.  So, what I’m saying is the management at MSNBC, her employer, is telling Joy that if she wants to continue working there, she’s going to have to agree to a lower salary (see first video clip below for details).  Now this isn’t just Joy being targeted due to her awfulness.  Rachel Maddow, the reigning star of MSNBC had to take a $5 million dollar cut from her present $30 million-dollar annual salary too.  Apparently, Comcast is trying to make the soon to be cast off cable station slightly less doomed.  So, let’s assume everyone will get the Maddow treatment.  Doing the math, Comcast is asking for one sixth of the salary they pay to be relinquished by their “stars.”  I’ve seen estimates that say Joy Reid currently makes three million dollars a year.

Wow.  I think they’re being ripped off.  But anyway, assuming she is currently receiving that amount under the Maddow reduction model, Joy would be left earning $2.5 million a year.

Wow.  That’s still way too much money to pay a talentless, unlikeable hatemonger like Reid.

And for that reason, I am advising Comcast to search around in their hearts for a different number.  I think the correct number is $660 a week.  That’s based on a forty-hour week, so it can be adjusted if she’s taking long lunches.  But that represents the minimum wage that will be in effect as of January 1, 2025 in New York City.  And that’s a very fair rate for someone providing the level of craftsmanship that can be expected from her.  And assuming that she will base her salary on a fifty-two-week year, that $34,320.

Wow.  That still seems like too much money to pay a lying sack of crap like Joy.

Come to think of it, forty hours a week seems excessive.  Maybe she could show up on Tuesday for four hours and that way she’ll scare off fewer viewers and the cable channel might have an even chance of surviving a few more months before Comcast or anyone stupid enough to purchase it finally puts it out of its misery.  So where am I?  Okay so let’s see.  $16.50 X 4 X 52 = $3,432 a year.

Wow.  No, I’m sorry.  There’s just no way to justify that large an outlay for something so useless and toxic (see second video clip below for a sample of this dreck).

But you know what she could do instead?  She would make the perfect speech writer for Kamala Harris.  Yes, that makes sense.  I remember Joy said that Kamala ran a flawless campaign.  It’s obvious that Joy would be happiest working hand in glove with the flawlessness that is Kamala.  In fact, they could spend most of the time talking about how racism and misogyny were responsible for why neither of them was rewarded by this racist, misogynistic country with the positions they deserve.  For it is obvious to both of them that in a fair and just world Kamala would have Trump’s upcoming spot in the White House and Joy would have Rachel Maddow’s office.  But, as the poet said, you’re down when you’re riding the train that’s taking the long way.

Oh well.

 

 

Getting in the Spirit

photog Camera Reviews, Current Events, Life in Dunwich, photog's Corner, Photography Reviews, Trump ,
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Some snow falling today surprised me into remembering how close Christmas is.  Of course, I dasn’t say such a thing aloud in Camera Girl’s presence or she would toss an oven mitt or a ladle at me for my oblivious attitude as she soldiers on in her pre-Christmas baking and cooking marathon.  She is calculating cooking and storage times down to the nanosecond as enormous quantities of baked goods, meat, pasta, cheese and vegetables are processed in the run up to the big event.  My party line is that I am available to help in any capacity she sees fit.  This merely elicits rueful head-shaking and eye-rolling.  Well, that’s my story.  And anyway, I serve many useful functions.  I am the snow removal department and I also serve as chauffeur if the roads seem too tricky for her.  And I have a thousand and one other jobs.  For instance, I’m in charge of the yearly Christmas card design and procurement.  Well, of course.  I’m a photographer.  But such things are easily forgotten by someone who can point to a table groaning under the weight of a feast.  Well, we also serve who wait and eat.  But who’s keeping score anyway?

I have all of next week off and I’m looking forward to the get togethers.  But I’ve been keeping an eye on the situation in Washington.  It’s almost unbelievable how feckless and dishonest the Biden administration intends to be right up to the final day of their reign of terror.  Biden’s pardoning of hideously evil people would be shameful if Biden and his cronies had any shame.  I have to assume that there was a price list posted somewhere for the scum of the earth to figure out whether they could afford to be freed by Hunter and Jill and whoever else wrote out the pardons for Joe to scribble his signature on.  And the Republicans don’t disappoint with their nitwitted attempts to pass legislation in the House of Representatives.  Only the dishonesty and corruption of the Democrats allows the GOP to seem better by comparison.  But it really is a sad sideshow to behold.

The clowns and the cretins, the monsters and the madmen; the whole cast of this insane drama that is playing out on the deck of a sailing ship headed straight for an iceberg.  And at this point Donald Trump is the captain and he and his crew are locked in a cutlass fight with the usual pirates and so no one is steering the ship.  Well, it should give us a reason to pop popcorn in 2025.

But this is all beside the point.  We have Christmas to celebrate and the relief from knowing that somehow, we dodged the bullet of a Kamala Harris presidency.  And, sure, so many things will go wrong in 2025.  Trump will waffle, Democrats will lie and cheat, bureaucrats will obfuscate and interfere and Republicans will prove themselves inept and obtuse.  In other words, standard operating procedure.  But things will be better than they’ve been the last four years.  God willing, the wars will start to die down.  Energy prices will come back to Earth and that will tend to drive down the prices of everything else.  And the biggest bonus, we may never see any of the Bidens for the rest of our lives.  That alone is worth a hallelujah.