franksolich gets infested with primitives

[franksolich]

“I always wondered where you got the pictures,” the neighbor’s wife said when she was here this morning, making a shopping list.  I despise, really loathe, shopping, while she rather enjoys it, and so she shops for me too.  She has fun and I pay the bill, so it works out.

“But I never thought they’d be so cheap.”

“Remember,” I said, “a lot of them, I got when I was in my late teens, early twenties, mostly from the National Portrait Gallery in London, either in person or via mail.  They were posters that were sold.  I got them, and someone mounted them on Styrofoam sheets, and then they were custom-framed as I could afford it.

“In those days, museums considered such posters as ‘educational materials,’ and priced them accordingly, dirt cheap, a few cents.  If I ordered by mail, the postage was usually more than the poster.

“Nowadays, due to the Clinton-era greed of the 1990s, they’re considered ‘profit centers.’  It blows my mind, posters exactly the same as what I used to pay thirty, forty, cents for, are now ten, fifteen, bucks.

“But anyway, fortunately I was in early enough—the late 1970s, the early 1980s—that I managed to amass quite a collection of Holbeins and kings and queens and other personages, before the museums forgot their functions as educational institutions, and became profit-centers instead.”

“But you didn’t get all of those from museums,” she said.

“No, of course not.  The photographs, most of them, I got from the individuals.  Or in the case of de Gaulle over there, from the French embassy, or that particularly pleasing one of H.M. the Queen at fifty years old, before she got grey hair, from the Canadian embassy.

“The Holbein portrait of John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, its source was a surprise.  I was struck by the aestheticity of it, and as it was an illustration on a pamphlet by the Catholic Truth Society in London, I wrote them asking if it’d be possible for me to purchase a copy.

“A long time passed, nothing happened, and so I thought no more of the matter.

“Then one day I came home—I was a senior in college—and there was this large package in front of the door, left by the mailman.  The return-address was the Catholic Truth Society in London, but inside was this picture with a business-card from Windsor Castle, ‘courtesy H.M. the Queen.’

“It was as you see it, mounted, glass-fronted, and framed.  And that’s no cheap frame job.

“Now, for a lot of the photographs, there’s always been the Associated Press, such as the photograph of the she-cow in the bathroom.  I probably could’ve written Senator Barbara Mikulski and gotten one for free, but as I intended to put it to ignoble means, that wouldn’t be decent of me.  So I instead paid the Associated Press eleven bucks for it, leaving me with a clean conscience to do with it what I wished.

“And there’s all sorts of organizations that own old photographs, and are willing to sell copies of them.”

She’s always seen them, but never paid much attention to them until now, a whole series of old black-and-white photographs in free-standing frames sitting on the table surrounding this computer.

“A lot of people think it’s really odd,” I said, “covering just about every usable surface of this place with pictures of people; they ask how come no landscapes, still lives, inanimate objects, somesuch, as if having pictures of people is, well, strange.

“It’s a matter of taste; to me at least, people are much more fascinating than things, so screw still lives and landscapes and rocks and flowers and stuff.”

to be continued

[franksolich]

“’Taste’ is like ‘class,’” I said to my visitor.

“If one thinks one has it, one doesn’t.

“And if one deliberately tries to ‘get it,’ one won’t.

“It has to be natural, one has to be born with it, to have it.

 â€œI’ve always been really tired of pretentious people who insist Norman Rockwell isn’t ‘art’ or Eddie Guest isn’t ‘poetry’ or a Hollywood epic isn’t ‘cinema.’

“Who the Hell made these pretentious assholes judge and jury of ‘taste’?”

“My criteria about whether or not a person has ‘taste,’” I went on, “is by asking myself, on which basis is that person deciding that?

“If it’s an opinion wholly arrived at by one’s own self, then the person’s probably a qualified judge of ‘taste.’

“But then there’s the other, more common type, best exemplified by a couple of primitives on Skins’s island, the husband-hating—even though he’s been dead a long time now—‘elleng’ primitive and the Hetty Green of DUmmieland, the ‘CTyankee’ primitive.

“In case you don’t know, Hetty Green was a 19th-century millionairess who thought, and lived as if, she was a penniless, landless Hindu peasant, just as the trust-funded CTyankee primitive always claims stark poverty.

“They both allege themselves to be of refined tastes, aesthetes.

“On what are they basing their high-falutin’ sense of ‘taste’?

“It’s easy to figure out, reading what they write.  They think something’s good taste because someone trained them to be that way.  Neither of them made up her own mind about ‘taste;’ she let someone else tell her what ‘taste’ is.”

to be continued

[franksolich]

"You know," I remembered later, "there's one primitive in particular that I sort of admire, due to his lack of pretension when it comes to having 'class' and 'taste'--and this despite that he can be pretty tiresome in his name-dropping, that he lives right in the heart of kultur.

"Marc, the DFW primitive; he's never made any pretensions about being interested in the finer things of life, the uplifting spiritual things.  He's a philistine through-and-through, and makes even Attila the Hun look like an aesthete.

"He wouldn't recognize any of the fine arts if one of them got right in his face.

"And it's cool that he doesn't care; doesn't care that he's only a money-grubbing barbarian.

"It's quite refreshing--and encouraging, in a way--seeing a primitive who looks at himself for what he really is."

to be continued

[franksolich]

"Well, that book I picked up in Lincoln on Monday might as well have been a Sears, Roebuck catalogue for ordering photographs," I said to a guest, a relative of the neighbor, this morning.

"There's only like about sixty illustrations in all its 552 pages, but I'm finding about twelve, or a dozen, photographs of what I'd like to get copies and then frame them; they're really evocative, that stirs up something within me."

"So as soon as I get done reading the book, because of the probable expense, I'll narrow it down to about three or four of the photographs, and contact the owners of them."

"Wouldn't it be cheaper and quicker if you just scanned them?" he asked.

"Yeah, but that'd serve no purpose," I replied.  "These have to be 8x10 glossies, or whatever size they are.  One can't show off one's good taste, one's aestheticism, with cheap shoddy things.

"Kitsch is what Attila Marc the Hun, the DFW primitive on Skins's island, has decorating his house; there's no place for kitsch in this one."

to be continued

[franksolich]

“Okay,” I loudly announced to the company gathered here, in the manner of the late Clare Boothe Luce, getting their attention by banging on the side of a glass with a spoon, “as promised, it arrived at the post office in town this morning, and I need everybody to disappear for, according to the slipcase, 153 minutes’ playing time."

There’s visitors here, relatives of the neighbor, from Minnesota and Wisconsin.

“The best piece of music ever recorded in the history of mankind, and performed by the best possible vocal and instrumental groups; recorded in 1981, it’s an exact match of what I’d been watching on youtube.”

“I need everybody to go away and do something else, because as you’ve already been aware for a very long time, ‘hearing’ or ‘listening’ for me demands total 100% comprehension; I can’t ‘get it’ if I’m distracted.

“And that’s not only people; to me, color, light, and movement are ‘noise’ too, and interfere.

“So best to sit in the dark corner unaware of anything excepting the sound.  Don’t disturb unless something’s bothering one of the cats, or the house is on fire.”

They all knew this stuff, and had prepared for it, planning to be out of my hair, away for about three hours.  I sounded short and pre-emptory not out of rudeness, but only because I was in a hurry to put the DVD into the computer and get busy ‘hearing’ it, to see how it compared with the qualities found on youtube.

“The only thing that bothers me,” I said as they all got ready to leave, “is that when I ordered this, amazon.com said there was ‘just one copy left for sale,’ and I got all worried, wondering if I was going to order it in time.

“And then a day after they told me it was on its way, I saw it now says ‘just two copies left for sale.’

“Yeah, right.  That’s the last time I’m going to let a seller tell me, the buyer, when to buy
something, rather than buying it in my own time at my own convenience.”

to be continued

[franksolich]

Well, the DVD was as I’d hoped; an exact duplicate of what’s already on youtube.  The pictures on the DVD are sharper than they are on the internet.  As for sound quality, I assume there’s a difference, but of course I have no way of knowing how.

And as was demonstrated this afternoon, when one’s listening (“listening”) on one’s own computer than on the internet, one’s own computer isn’t subject to internet interruptions and outages.

The DVD is about two hours and a half long, and I “listened” to it two times.

Leaving the body a wretched mess.  I neglected to think about wearing the cervical collar (something left over from a neck injury some time ago), but during the course of “listening,” I didn’t bother getting up and getting it…..and so am now paying the penalty.

And as mentioned other times, other places, the human body is not made to remain at rigid, unmoving, attention for several hours, but alas for franksolich, that’s part of the “cost” of being able to “hear” something.  Even the hands get “frozen” stiff into near claw-like positions.

There’s no help for it.  If one wishes to “listen,” that’s what one has to do.

So I’m pretty stiff and sore now.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

The guests came back; they’d spent the afternoon over at the neighbor’s place.  They’re his relatives, but they’re staying here because he’s already got a full house.

One of them inquired how it’s possible for a person with no ears to hear.  Or rather, to “hear.”

I’ve had to explain this before, no big deal.  There’s four levels of hearing absence—mild hearing loss, moderate hearing loss, severe hearing loss, and profound deafness.  There’s really no thing such as “totally” (or 100%) deaf, though.

There’s something called “residual hearing,” which I think is a silly term.  “Residual” suggests it’s left over from something that was once there…..but in some cases (such as this one), there was never anything there.

Science and medicine’s pretty sloppy in applying words to things; another good example is “Buerger’s disease,” which is not a disease at all but rather, a condition.  These people are supposed to be smart; I dunno why they mislabel things.

Residual hearing is actually traces of hearing; faint, weak, indistinct, inchoate means of sensing sounds.

The way nearly all of the civilized world hears is via the travel of sounds through the air, but that’s not the only way one can pick up sounds.  It’s also known that one can sense sounds through vibrations of the skeletal structure, “bone conduction,” although that has nowhere the efficiency of hearing through the air.  I dunno; maybe 1% or 2% as good, some but not much.

That is probably the way franksolich “hears,” but it’s not known for sure.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Much as people seem to be eyewitness to “baby’s first word,” there was a substantial audience the very first time I “heard” sound, sometime in infancy, when I grabbed a crumhorn that was being played (I was on the person’s lap).

It was memorable for everybody (excepting myself) because the instant I grasped the sound, I let loose with a number one or a number two (depending upon who was telling the story).  Until that time, I’d never given the slightest indication I was “hearing” a thing.

The older brothers and sisters teased me unmercifully about it to the end of their days, but the ridicule never bothered me because an infant just discovering the world is not responsible for his reactions to it; whoop-de-doo.

That was the first sound I ever “heard” in my life, some notes on a medieval flute-like instrument.
But as already described, “hearing” via conduction of sounds through the bones is woefully inefficient, and…..weak.

An instance where this would be easy and effective is that method as used by Helen Keller, putting the finger-tips on the throat of the person speaking, picking up vibrations of sound that way.  But Helen Keller was an old woman obviously incapable of doing any harm to anyone, while franksolich is a fully-grown adult male who looks strong enough to do some damage if I went around putting my hand on other people’s throats.

The closest I ever came to “hearing” that way was when I was still a small child, say less than six years old, and sometimes my father used to hold me as he either practiced, or actually sang on stage, various solo arias from Handel’s Messiah, and I pressed the top of my head against the bottom of his chin.

But usually one just lip-reads, while desperately seeking any other clues in body language that might give one an idea of what somebody’s talking about.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

After I had a heart-attack in May 2015, some friends in the band and music business, wishing to cheer me up, tried various devices that could, or couldn’t, help me “hear” music.  They’d been trying such things for years, but the heart-attack motivated them to redouble their efforts.

For about a year, I’ve been “hearing” music from youtube via a super-duper amplifier attached to the tower of the computer, along with hardcare heavy-duty headsets that would blast holes through hearing people’s heads, but have the effect of cotton-balls falling on this skull.

How well I “hear” depends upon the music; if it’s simply instrumental music, things seem to work pretty well, and easily.  If it’s instrumental and vocal combined, the former comes through pretty much okay, but the latter makes things rather muddy.  If it’s only vocal, I need a script to follow along; otherwise it makes no sense to me.

DVDs are better than mere CDs, because one can get a better “grasp” on the music by following the body-language of the conductor.  I probably watch the conductor more than I try to “hear” something.  That’s why I’d wanted a copy of this latest DVD so badly; the conductor’s so expressive that the sound doesn’t matter that much.

to be continued

[franksolich]

I was flipping through some already-mounted but not-yet-framed portraits when the three guests came back; we all had been invited over to the neighbor’s for supper, but suffering a vicious headache, I had passed with thanks; the other three decided they’d go and dine at the bar in town, to spare the neighbor’s wife the trouble, as she was already fixing supper for sixteen as it was.

One of them inquired where I was going to find any more room for more pictures; I said I was reasonably confident I could make room if there wasn’t enough.

My mentor in interior decorating had been the late Eva Bowring, a rancher’s widow whom I knew and revered when I was a little lad.  She’d once been a United States Senator from Nebraska, during the early 1950s, at the same time another woman had been the other senator.

I believe “backward” “reactionary” red-state Nebraska had been the first state ever to have women as both U.S. Senators…..and they were both evil Repugs.  So much for the “progressive” women’s “liberating” Democrats, liberals, and primitives…..

She was dutch508’s next-door neighbor over on the other side of the Sandhills from here, but while I’m sure dutch508’s heard of her, I dunno if he ever knew her. 

Fascinating woman, Eva Bowring.  She was ancient when I knew her, decades past when she’d been in Washington, D.C.  She and dutch508 lived on the western slope of the Sandhills; I was growing up in the heart of the Sandhills, but spent three summers near where dutch508 lived, but he was a puny little ‘un back then.

She had a big house; on the inside, the wall in every single room was nothing but framed photographs.

Nearly all of them were framed in what were then 79-cent 8x10 metal-and-glass frames one got at the local drugstore, but the people whose pictures those cheap frames framed were pretty exceptional, presidents and prime ministers and military leaders and senators and congressmen and governors and members of presidential cabinets and Hollywood celebrities and famous writers, all but the royal ones signed to her (royalty doesn’t do autographs).

“There’ll always be room for more,” I assured my guest.

“But nice frames, no discount metal-and-glass ones,” I said.

“I have no intention of being like my good friend Atman over there in eastern Connecticut; not only does he try to skip out on paying highway tolls, but he’s an Ebenezer Scrooge, a grasping tightwad, an irascible miser, with his son.

“You see, Atman’s a professional artist. 

“I myself happen to think he’s a very good one, a caricaturist.  If I had any need for his artwork, I’d buy it.

“However, it needs pointed out mine’s a minority-of-one opinion.

“But anyway, when Atman’s daughter-in-law had an infant, of course people took lots and lots of pictures. 

“When it came time to display the pictures, the son and daughter-in-law had to go out and buy those Dollar General frames—you know the type, where there’s a bunch of cut-out squares and rectangles and circles inside of which one puts in little pictures, six or eight or ten of them to a frame.

“Chintzy.  Kitschy.  Trailer court.  Vomitous.

“Atman’s a professional artist, remember.  He knows ‘good presentation’ when he sees it, and he usually does it with his own artwork, really nice sharp-looking professional custom frames.  And unlike many decent and civilized people who really can’t afford better, he’s got dough.

“But he’s too tight to give his son money to buy other than Dollar General junk.”

to be continued

[franksolich]

“You know, I can be just as adolescently juvenile as the next guy,” I told the neighbor’s wife when she was here this morning.  “But at least I don’t spend any money on it.”

The relatives of the neighbor had all left earlier, going back to Minnesota and Wisconsin, having been here a few days for a funeral.  There’d been lots and lots of them, and three of them had stayed here.  The neighbor’s wife had usually fed all of them, and was tired.

I was referring to a recent revelation by the big guy in Bellevue, “Omaha Steve” on Skins’s island and on Manny’s jackass message board, that he owns, or owned, some sort of computer toy that probably isn’t cheap, given that he’s getting a $9.00 “bonus” for having it.

“What in the world is a nearly-60-years-old grossly obese guy doing, playing with something that most dump when they’re about 14 years old, and first starting to date?

“And given its name—I have no idea what it is, as obviously I haven’t been into toys for the last, oh, about forty years—apparently it’s specially-made for fat people to play.

“Geezuz gawd.  And to think he almost got elected city councilman in Bellevue.”

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

“You know,” I said, as I brought our cold lunches to the dining room table, “I can understand the fascination with computer games, but I’ve never any obsession for them…..nor the need to spend money on any of them.

“It’s something one usually outgrows, and obviously I—like the big guy in Bellevue—am old enough to have outgrown them before computers became ubiquitous, all over the place in everyday use.

“But as nobody’s perfect, I came perilously close to becoming an Omaha Steve.

“During most of the 1980s, when I was just out of college and not doing anything in particular, for extra money I used to ‘housesit’ for affluent people in Lincoln.  If one had pets, having me live in their home while they were away for a long time, was cheaper than boarding the pets, not to mention it discombobulated the pets less.

“There was one place where I practically lived for about three months a year—an ancient dog and an ancient cat were the reason—which was my favorite place, despite that it was one of those “modern” avant-garde arte-nouveau Frank-Lloyd-Wrightesque houses in a traditional country club neighborhood.

“I had some great parties out there—which the owners’ rules allowed me the freedom to do—but one time when I was looking for something in the basement and came across a videocassette recording of the full-length 1962 Lawrence of Arabia, I entertained less and less.

“Instead, I sat on the floor in front of the large television in the basement, watching that over and over and over again.  The television had no accompanying headsets, and even though I sat only inches away from the screen and speakers, I had to crank the volume up as high as it’d go, one time burning out one of the two speakers.

“God, I loved that movie.

“That was bad enough, my becoming almost a recluse while there, neglecting to invite friends over, but it became even worse after I discovered a 3.5” computer disc with the game ‘Strategic Conquest’ on it.

“This was a late 1980s version of it, in black-and-white, and it could be played only on a Macintosh.

“God, I loved that game.

“Upon going there to housesit, I stocked up on packages of cigarettes and empty ashtrays, because once I got started, I wouldn’t stop.  The only thing allowed to interrupt me was if the dog or the cat needed something.  I played that game many times through the night into the following day; I played it sometimes going two or three days without eating; of course it was easier to go a whole entire week playing it without shaving.

“I was hooked, obsessed.

“However,” I said, wrapping it up, “number one, I was much younger than Omaha Steve, number two, I really had nothing else—such a wife or trash that needed taken out or dishes that needed washed—demanding my attention, number three, I never spent a dime on the past-time, and number four, once the house-sitting stint was over, I found it easy to slip back into regular life, not missing the game at all.”

to be continued

[franksolich]

“Well, do you suppose there’s any primitives with, what you might call, class, culture, or taste?

“I think most of them have too much hate inside of them to have any refined taste in anything,” she added.  (“She” is someone who dropped in to leave a package.)

Yeah, I said; “probably nearly all of them don’t.

“There was one, a long time ago, one of the ‘Nikki’ primitives, ‘NikkiStone’ or something like that, from California, who probably had class, but she was tossed off Skins’s island—and then later off Old Elm Tree—a long time ago.

“I can’t pass judgement on three primitives—my fellow alum Skins, the buzzy one, and the brooklynite primitive—because I’m biased towards them, but I suspect I’m reasonable in assuming that yeah, they have class.

“For Skins and the buzzy one, I’m not sure in what directions.  The brooklynite primitive is a wizened little scrawny guy, but looks like the sort of aesthete who’s into arte nouveau avant-garde cutting-edge ‘modern’ stuff.

“But outside of those three, and the long-ago Nikki primitive—not the same ‘Nikki’ who loves abortion more than she loves her own mother—I can’t think of another primitive who might have class.

“There’s one primitive with no class for whom I feel sorry, though; he’s on the verge of departing Skins’s island. 

“Attila Marc the Hun, the ‘DFW’ primitive, the American expatriate living among the Teutons. 

“He’s boring, he’s tedious, he’s tiresome, in his relentless name-dropping and long-standing idolatry of some now-dead woman reporter, Molly Ivins…..or something.

“And he’s got a wee touch of snobbery about him.

“But I feel sorry for him.  Because he has money and a few times generously shared with it with some primitives, every 'needy' primitive—which is to say damned near every one of them—has hit him up.

“It’s a real nuisance, and so he doesn’t hang around like he used to.

“The second of two reasons I feel sorry for him is that there he is, right in the middle of, the heart of, the center of, kultur, and he can’t appreciate it because he was born only with the coarse unrefined senses of a philistine capable only of thinking about money-grubbing, an uncouth barbarian with no intellectual or emotional ability to understand the finer and higher things in life.

“It’s kind of the same situation as a blind man living amidst the scenic beauty of the Sandhills of Nebraska, or a deaf person living in a symphony concert hall.”

to be continued

 

[Carl]

 

[franksolich]

One of the music “experts” (quotation marks his, not mine) was here this evening, from that big city over in Iowa.  He plays in a band, works in a music store, and knows audiological equipment.  He was one of those who, about a year ago, set up this thing here for me.

It was merely a social call, but he did bring along five ancient headsets he’d found.  Headsets I use have to be old and heavy, so as to better thrust sound into my head.  Also because I use them at a volume that ultimately causes them to “burn out,” they need to be something cheap.  No point in buying more-expensive brand-new ones that last only as long, if that long at all.

There’s a cold, sweaty fear in me that someday this winter, when it’s -40 outside, with 40 mph winds and 40 inches of snow on the ground, the last headset will burn out (I have the same fear about bags of dry cat food, and used to have it about packages of cigarettes, being isolated here without).

As it's been a while, he asked me if I’d learned anything new.

“Yes,” I said; “there’s no point in me merely trying to hear sound; I have to see it too.

“Compact discs that are music only are really difficult for me to grasp, if I grasp them at all, while compact discs with visuals make sounds more ‘hearable.’

“It’s kind of like art imitating life.  In real life, radio and telephone and other ways in which I don’t ‘see’ sounds being made, remain ‘unheard’ by me.  It’s the same difference between someone saying something behind my back, and in front of my face.

“I find that when looking over selections on youtube, I’m looking for the conductor.

“If there’s enough camera shots of the conductor directing an orchestra and singer, it’s almost—almost, not quite—as easy as strawberries-and-cream to grasp the flow of the music without seeing or ‘hearing’ the instruments and voices.

“And then after ExGeeEye on conservativecave described the physical outlay of bands and singers, once I get the angle from which a camera’s coming, and since a camera inevitably gravitates towards the source of a sound, it gives me an even better idea what’s going on with the music.

“But without catching at least an occasional glimpse of the conductor, I’m at sea.”

^^^the very best, the most “readable,” one

Of course, realistically, I’m not hearing shit, as confirmed by professional audiologists.

I’m picking up enough feeble signals to extrapolate, and because of my age and exposure and knowledge [sic] of music, I extrapolate much further beyond those extrapolations. 

Just as with social conversations, it’s all in my head, in my imagination.  So I’m really only guessing.

The last professional audiological examination using this particular amplifier and one of my (now burnt-out) pair of headsets, showed that physically, realistically, I’m actually hearing (in the same sense hearing people hear) only about 5-7% of the sound sent my way.

All the rest is from inside my head, my imagination, my memory, and guesses.

(Of course, those who know me best in real life know this is exactly the case; I'm only imagining, not actually hearing.  But, as nothing can be done about it.....)

However, it’s all mountains better than it used to be, and so I’m eminently content.

to be continued

[franksolich]

“You look like you feel a hundred years old, man” Joe said this morning when he and his partner Jose came over to pick up a vehicle before driving their families to church in the big city.

Joe Gomez and Jose O’Brien, both of Texan derivation and reasonably brown and short, do some of the maintenance work around here so that the property caretaker has more time to take care of other properties.

Joe knows English; Jose doesn’t, although he’s the more inquisitive one.

“Oh, I probably do, because that’s exactly what I feel like, all sore and stiff as if I’m a hundred years old,” I replied.

“You got to quit doing that,” Joe said, “sitting there like that all day long and into half the night, not moving.

“Someone could come in and chop off your arm while you’re ‘listening’ on the computer, and you wouldn’t even know it.

“It’s scary, the way you’re here, but you’re not here.”

Yeah, yeah, I came back; “as soon as I get tired of this, I’ll probably stop doing it.

“It’s all strange to you because people like me usually don’t spend so much time and trouble, if any at all, to hear.”

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

“And there’s some concern,” I admitted, “it’s affecting my posture, and one of the side-effects of my kind of deafness is that if one lives long enough, he declines into hunchbackery.  Scientists and medical professionals know why, but I don’t know myself, only that it happens.

“But really, I don’t need criticized for risking my health to get something everybody else gets doing no damage to themselves at all; it’s a very human thing to want to hear.”

“But there’s other people like you, and they don’t want to hear,” Joe insisted.

Yes, yes, I said, “people who are afraid of the world and all in it; people who live their lives wrapped up in a cocoon, people stunting their intellectual and emotional growth by avoiding new people and experiences, people degenerating themselves into lesser beings by refusing to do things for themselves, people who lose the contents of their bowels when seeing a shadow, people who lock their doors and pull shut their curtains so as to keep out the sunlight and fresh air.

“Surely the deaf are among the most wretched people in the world, and it’s their own fault—they don’t need to be primitives.”

“But you’re the same way, man,” Joe persisted.  “You live way out here all alone, but that’s not enough; even out here, you want to be alone more than you are.”

“Oh now, it’s not that big of a problem,” I replied; “name me one time where I’ve ever not welcomed someone coming here, with enthusiasm.  Anyone who comes by, feels wanted.”

“It’s all an act, though,” Joe argued.  “You really want to be left alone.”

“Okay, but that’s not due to the deafness,” I said, as if it made some sort of difference.  “That’s due to something else.

“Sometimes I like to fool myself, claiming I long ago outgrew those same things that still afflict the lazy fat slob the Odin2005 primitive on Skins’s island, who thinks he’s smart enough to run the world, but at the same time he’s ‘too handicapped’ to work.

“I probably did in fact outgrow most of it, but there’s lingering traces, including a near-obsessive mania to be left alone.

“However, at the same time, I’m no threat to others or to myself—geezuz gawd, I’m the most mellow, laid back, relaxed person I know—and unlike the squalid lazy fat terrorist-loving Odin2005 primitive, I’ve always worked so as to pay my own way through life.”

to be continued

[franksolich]

“Well, I saw four peacocks here this afternoon,” I announced.  “It surprised me, because I supposed—without knowing anything about it—that they’d go away after the first couple nights of frost.”

“Did you get any pictures?”

“No,” I replied, “because I’ve adopted everybody else’s attitude about it; that they’re just a figment of my imagination, that they don’t really exist.”

The neighbor’s wife was here, along with the two youngest of their five children, a 6-year-old boy and a 4-year-old girl.  The latter two were outside, where I’d sent them to look for peacocks, or at least their eggs.

She was rubbing arthritis ointment on my shoulders and back.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

“You know,” I told her, “shopping on the internet’s not all it’s cracked up to be.

“Of course, I don’t like to shop anyway.  I just decide what I need to get, go get it, and that’s that.”

She’s used to it; for years, she’s put up with my “fast in, fast out” technique.

“Since I now have a DVD of the best piece of music ever recorded, I decided I’d order a DVD of the greatest movie ever made, La Revolution francaise, from 1989.  The place on youtube where I’d watched it said there’s one, and linked to it.

“So I go there, but before ordering a copy, I checked the specifications. 

“And immediately hit a speed-bump.

“It advised the DVD wouldn’t work on an American computer.

“And explained why—which went over my head—and so I looked around for one that would.

“Believe it or not, unless I missed it, there doesn’t appear to be a DVD of that movie made to work on American computers.

“Surely there has to be, and I’ll look around later.

“As long as I’m waiting to figure that out—I’m not in any big hurry, after all—I decided then that I’d order a DVD of the second-greatest movie ever made, Waterloo, from 1970.

“So I looked around, and ooops, too many choices. 

“I’m not in the mood to make choices at the moment, so I put it all aside for later, and went looking for a DVD of the third-greatest movie ever made, Lawrence of Arabia, from 1962.

“Ooops, same problem, and there seems some variations in the versions offered.

“You know, maybe the old sourassed sourpuss running for the Democrat nomination for president was right, that we have too many choices, when we really need only one or two or three.

“I wasn’t in any mood to decide, so I decided I’d decide later.

“That’s why I have so many CDs and DVDs of the choir at King’s College, Cambridge.  On nearly all their youtube offerings, there’s a link to where one can go and buy a CD or DVD of that particular performance.

“No hunting around, no choices to make.

“I’m hoping to eventually acquire a complete collection of every single CD and DVD they’ve ever made, as it is after all the greatest choir that ever existed; the sans peer, the ne plus ultra, the primus inter pares of all organized choral groups.

“They seem to understand one of the principal rules of successful marketing; if you want people to buy something, make it as easy as possible to find and purchase.

“Well, I wanted to order something, while waiting to find out about the French movie (whether or not there’s one that works on American computers), or to decide upon the appropriate Waterloo or Lawrence movie.

“This morning, I was watching and “listening” to

https://youtu.be/T83W3rgQuXQ?list=PLiM7aCrI8qsEnId8aNaWkUzSy0vz_NLVD

“Now, the Mikado as it was presented on television back in 1960 is one of my favorite things; of course I never saw it on television, but I became acquainted with it about fifteen years later, when a record of it was used in my speech therapy.

“I couldn’t get enough of it; I had to imitate speaking the lyrics, my favorite part being ‘I’ve Got A Little List,’ which I think of every time I’m reading the primitives.”

“Well, here was a selection of it…..and because these people understand the tricks of successful marketing, there was the link right there, where one could go and buy it.”

to be continued

[franksolich]

“What’s all in this state?” he asked me; “none of us had ever been here before, and we didn’t look anything up before coming.”

He was part of a party of five that was camping down on the river for a couple of days; a party from Ohio that was headed up to Alaska.  I’m not sure, but I suspected they’re part of an academic group.

Actually, I was probably told exactly who they are, but not paying attention, I neglected to remember the details.

“Well, there’s lots here, but we prefer to keep it a secret, because the past few years our reputation as a nice place to live has gotten us that bluedog primitive from Florida, and that stuck-up bitch primitive who’s a nurse from southwestern Pennsylvania, and we’d rather not have those sorts of people here.

“But anyway, generally, you want to avoid the state capital, Lincoln, which is nothing, really, other than a quarter of million WillyT primitives, sinecured governmental employees, mediocre low-performance people who think they’re entitled to be treated as if they’re exceptional, and paid as if they do a lot of work.

“Omaha’s good, though, if you like the hustle-bustle, the noise and tumult, the vibrant activity, the gregarious friendliness, the hail-fellow-well-met, of urbanity—“

“But what about your part?” he asked; “like, what’s here?”

I already knew their travel plans, and that they’d already seen this part, the northeastern corner, popularly called “Lewis & Clark Country,” but on their way out west, they were planning on hitting some other parts too.

“Okay, well, you’ve already seen this part,” I said.  “And now you're going south to pick up that one person, so the next place you’ll be is where I spent my childhood, along the black-dirt farmland of the Platte River.”

“And then you’ll be going north, through the Sandhills of Nebraska, where I spent my adolescence.”

“And finally, before leaving the state towards the end of the week, you’ll be around near where I was born and spent my infancy.”

“What’s your favorite part?” he asked, pouring himself another cup of coffee.

“The Sandhills,” I said; “God’s country, the most wonderful place in the whole world.”

to be continued

[franksolich]

an open letter to elleng

Greetings, madam.

It hasn’t been without interest that I’ve been watching your attempts to teach taste and class to the primitives on Skins’s island, and while your goal is noble and spirited, surely you must realize what a futile hope it is. 

You’d probably have better luck trying to teach manners and grace to a pig, madam.

It was from observing your endeavors that I began seriously thinking about taste and class some weeks ago.  franksolich comes from a good background and all that, blah, blah, blah, and even as a child I was reading Amy Vanderbilt and Emily Post, but I just never thought about it until recently.

After all, it’s usually people who aren’t aware they have taste and class, who do.

And if they think they do, it's a sure thing they don't.

I give you, madam, the example of your colleague Ms. Vanderbilt-Astor, the NJCher primitive.  By oddest of coincidences, she actually originated in this area of Nebraska, and there’s some around who remember her from when she was young.

What they remember most about her is what a snob she was.  And from watching her appearances on Skins’s island, apparently she hasn’t changed.

And, as you know as well as I do, madam, being a snob disqualifies one from having taste and class.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

comment 2623:
http://conservativecave.com/index.php?topic=81827.2600

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

I must confess, madam, I used to think of you as a wannabe when it comes to taste and class, but upon much reflection, God compelled me to change my mind.  I used to consider you in the same category as the sparkling old dude’s trophy wife, which should give you an idea of how meanly I’d supposed you to be.

It finally occurred to me—long after it should have—that you’re much older than franksolich, had a husband, and bore infants.  You’ve wrestled with problems and worries in life that have thus far not afflicted me.  Compared with you, I’ve enjoyed nothing but the merry carefreest of lives.

Seriously, madam.

So now I put you in the same category as the wives of alumni of Brandeis University—wives of physicians and surgeons, dentists, attorneys, professional investors, &c., &c., &c.—as I fondly remember these women from their annual book sale in Evanston, Illinois, every May.

They tended to be older middle-aged women who took care of themselves, slim and elegant; well-dressed, with jewelry dripping from their wrists and necks—real jewelry, not fake stuff—oozing grace and class from every pore.  And very nice and gracious even to those of us unlike them.

Definitely not snobs.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

But I dunno what to suggest about your brave attempts to teach taste and class to the primitives; there’s three of them who have it—my fellow alum Skins, the buzzy one, and the brooklynite primitive--and so don’t need taught—but all the rest are hopeless; all they’re interested in is greasily and noisily copulating with as many of each other as possible.

With my affectionate good wishes, madam, I remain
franksolich.

[franksolich]

Oh my.

I wonder how she knew I was "listening" to Mozart most of the day, while resting an injured foot.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/1018901055

elleng (71,370 posts)     Mon Oct 24, 2016, 06:57 PM

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Rondo alla Turca

https://youtu.be/geER3iQDO5k


(Posting my favorites today, as they appear on my radio station. [after which the "waving at franksolich" smiley, as used in the cooking & baking forum])

[franksolich]

“How did you possibly do that?  With a sledge hammer?” the property caretaker asked, incredulous.

He was standing in the dining room along with Joe Gomez and Jose O’Brien, inspecting a hole in the wall.

No, I said; “out of frustration, I kicked it.”

“You had to have been wearing steel-toed boots then,” he replied, "because this is a pretty solid wall.”

Nope, I said, “I kicked it barefooted, I was so vexed.”

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Well, at least it couldn’t be any big deal, I pointed out.  “After all, this house is doomed to leveling anyway, so it’s not like repairing the wall demands a professional-looking job.  Just covering it up should do.”

“What got you pissed off enough to do that?” asked Joe Gomez.

Jose O’Brien, who doesn’t know English, indicated it must’ve been something muy grande.

“Well, yeah, I can’t imagine you getting that upset,” the property caretaker said; “you’re so relaxed, laid back, and mellow, sometimes it scares people.  I can’t imagine anything possible, anything so terrible, anything so bad, it’d provoke a violent reaction out of you.”

I explained.

“Some days ago, I began having problems on the computer, with copying-and-pasting primitive threads; it was taking almost forever for the mouse and the screen to respond after I ‘right-clicked’ anything.

“Only when I was trying to bring comedy material from Skins’s island; copying-and-pasting from other message boards, including Manny’s jackass site, presented no problems, caused no delays.

“Just from Skins’s island.  I’d shade and ‘right-click’ a certain primitive comment, and then it’d take anywhere from thirty seconds to a whole ****ing two minutes before the little box popped up, asking me what I wanted to do.

“In this case, I wanted to ‘copy,’ and indicated thusly.  After which I’d go to where I wanted to ‘paste’ it.  I’d ‘right-click’ a certain area there, after which it’d take anywhere from thirty seconds to a whole ****ing two minutes for the little box to pop up, asking me what I wanted to do.

“In this case, I wanted to ‘paste,’ and indicated thusly.  And then it would take anywhere between thirty seconds and a whole ****ing two minutes before it’d ‘paste.’

“What had been a two-minute copying-and-pasting job was now taking damned near half an hour.”

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Obviously, it was a problem with Skins’s island, I said, as it occurred with no other site, friendly or hostile.

“Nobody else in the whole world was having this same problem,” I said; “just me and my computer.

“I figured maybe the elusive enigmatic Elad, who knows my internet provider number, my ISP, had programmed things so I’d be obstructed in using primitive material; that once my ISP showed up over there, a monkey-wrench was thrown in.

“But as far as I know, Elad doesn’t have anything against franksolich.

“So then I speculated, and quite reasonably so, that the problem was that Skins’s island was hostile to my browser, Internet Explorer 11.

“I didn’t like the idea of having to download a second browser, because it’d inevitably mean I’d have to download a third one, and then a fourth one, and so on, as I’d need a different browser for each web-site I visited.  That’s not supposed to happen, but it does.

“One used to be able to go all over the internet using just a single browser.

“So I regretfully resigned myself to that I’d have to download another browser, one that hopefully was compatible with Skins’s island.

“I chose Chrome, and started downloading it, when Chrome asked me if I wanted Firefox instead.

“I’ve had Firefox before, two computers ago, and didn’t have any particular reason to dislike it, so I said ‘yeah, sure, I’ll take Firefox instead,' and hoped it’s compatible with Skins’s island.

“So I downloaded Firefox, not knowing for sure what happened to the half of Chrome I’d already downloaded.”

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Okay, so Firefox set itself up, and it worked as I remember it used to work.

And most happily of it all, Firefox appeared compatible with Skins’s island; I was able to copy-and-paste threads from there again.

“Being a moderator, it’s part of my job to bring over material from Skins’s island; conservativecave believes in working moderators, not moderators who just indolently sit around.

“However, I noticed that every time I shut down the computer to go to town or to go out to eat or to go to bed, when I returned and turned it on again, when I opened Firefox, it always asked me if I wanted to make Firefox my default browser.

“As Firefox worked for Skins’s island, I said ‘yes,’ thinking that settled the matter.  I even checked off ‘don’t ask me this again.’

“But no, every time I opened Firefox, I got that box—‘Firefox is not your default browser; do you want to make it your default browser?’

“Like Hell it wasn’t my default browser; I’d said ‘yes, make it my default browser’ repeatedly.

“To add insult to injury, after I’d answered the question each time I opened Firefox, I got a second box, telling me to set my default programs for, I dunno, half a hundred or fifty different programs. 

Since I don’t know computers and generally trust people who do, I said ‘you pick the ones you think best,’ and checked off ‘okay, finish.’

“None of this shit ever took.  I had to reanswer the questions every ****ing single time I opened up Firefox.

“I got so frustrated I kicked the wall, not realizing I’d kicked it that hard.

“And then I went to CCleaner and had it ‘uninstall’ everything and anything having to do with Firefox, and what I’d put in of Chrome.

“I’m now right back to where I started, which means I can’t copy-and-paste from Skins’s island—I can’t do my job.”

to be continued

[franksolich]

“Oh my, didn’t that hurt?” the neighbor’s wife asked, when she saw me walking around wearing one of those “boots” one usually wears after some sort of podiatric surgery.

There’d been no surgery in my case; this was just something to protect the foot and toes until they got over the pain of colliding with a wall.

“it does at times,” I admitted, “but when it does, I immediately think of a decadent primitive—Attila Marc the Hun, the offshore primitive, the defrocked warped primitive, &c., &c., &c.—who’s alleged to suffer from gout, and imagine how much it’d hurt one of them, after which I start laughing.”

“Everybody seems worried about the election,” she said.

“I know, I know,” I replied.  “Decent and civilized people are starting to despair, and the primitives are all agog and excited.

“It’s what happens when one allows the news media to dictate what one thinks, how one feels.

“That of course is an advantage of being deaf; since I don’t hear what the media and pundidiots say, I have to arrive at how I think or feel on my own, my thoughts and feelings being my own.  I guess I’m a free thinker, an original thinker, of some sort.

“I’m not going to bother anybody, keeping my own counsel, but two things need pointed out—the news media’s misled, lied, before, encouraging the public to think some certain thing’s going to
happen that ends up not happening.

“And second, given the Rube Goldberg jerry-built nature of the current economy, things can’t hold forever; they’re going to fall apart, and probably soon, unless there’s a war before. 

“Given that, it’d be a blessing a Republican isn’t in the White House to take the blame for Obozo’s ****ups, but on the other hand, it’d be a curse with a Democrat in the White House, given that Democrats, liberals, and primitives don’t know shit about economics, and it’d be worse than it’d have to be.

“I’m not going to say what I think is going to happen, but those are two things both the primitives on Skins’s island and decent and civilized people need to pause, and think about.

“I’m relaxed, mellow, laid back.  It’s God’s problem; God’ll take care of it without any help from franksolich.”

to be continued

[franksolich]

“I just can’t believe it,” the neighbor said, “that you’d lose it badly enough to do that damage.

“I mean, you’re about the last person known to get upset over anything.”

There you have it, folks, verification that franksolich is one of the most calm, mellow, laid-back, people around, even when in the face of dire catastrophe—and this, from the person around here who’s known me the longest (not the person who’s known franksolich the longest, but the person from around here who has). 

The neighbor and I first met each other in Lincoln circa 1990, when he was a freshman in college and I was managing a privately-owned student union on campus.  There’s gaps (none of them of a negative nature, though) in all the years that followed, but obviously not important ones.

Well, it was pretty frustrating, I said; “in fact, I’ve rarely been so frustrated in my life.

“I’m supposed to bring over material from the primitives on Skins’s island, for the illumination and amusement of decent and civilized people, and if I can’t copy-and-paste anything from there, well, I can’t do my job.

“I can do other things, such as bringing material from other primitive places, and writing my own stuff, but it’s never as good as the stuff the primitives on Skins’s island write for us.

“It’s a bitch, man.”

The thing about it, I said, “is that I get a kick out of imagining the primitives losing it---I’m sure they do, and it doesn’t take a whole lot of imagination to conjure it—and never thought I’d react like one of those idiots.

“I mean, it’s easy—and heart-warmingly funny--to see hypertensive Bob or the late bird-smacking stoned red-faced primitive Redstone or my good friend Atman or the Bostonian Drunkard in an alcoholic rage or the sparkling old dude, kick a hole into the wall.”

Right, agreed the neighbor; “you’re the type who gets a great deal of innocent merriment out of upsetting other people, not getting upset yourself.

“And you’re so slick, so cool, doing it. 

“Just like when you lived in Lincoln, and someone you didn’t like came to your place too early in the morning, and you’d never get dressed—“

“But that was like tickling the tail of a dragon,” I said, “because I was never sure exactly what sort of reaction I’d get.  The intention was to shock, to offend, to drive away, a nuisance, but that was never guaranteed to be the reaction, so it was always kind of dicey.  Generally I got the reaction I wanted, but not always.

“When I want to get a Democrat, liberal, or primitive all angry, upset and bent out of shape, I use the ‘deaf idiot’ act, taking advantage of their vomitous pity for, and condescension to, we ‘handicapped.’

“No matter how much they want to, they don’t dare say anything to offend, such as ‘oh, you stupid dummy,’ even if one deserves it.  I can be as aggravating as I wish to be, pushing their buttons, stretching their patience, eroding their goodwill, but because I’m ‘handicapped,’ they put up with it, on the inside jumping up-and-down, getting red-white-and-blue in the face.

“It’s a great deal of fun, doing this ‘deaf idiot’ act with Democrats, liberals, and primitives, and they’ve got only themselves to blame for the frustration and anger it causes them.”

to be continued

[franksolich]

“Okay, that’s it,” I announced this evening. “I’ve either got to do something, or resign as moderator of the DUmpster, one or the other.  I can’t do my job any more.”

I showed what happens with Skins’s island now when accessed via Explorer 11, opening up the front page.

“See?” I asked.  “See how one tries to scroll down.

“It goes down a quarter of inch, stops, and then after thirty seconds, goes down another quarter of an inch, stops, and then after thirty seconds goes down another quarter of an inch, stops, and then after thirty seconds, goes down another quarter of an inch, stops…..

“It not only takes nearly forever to copy-and-paste from Skins’s island—and from no other place on the internet—it can take a whole afternoon to get from the top to the bottom of a single thread.

“I can’t say how tired I am, of this stupid game Elad appears to be playing, making it so my computer can't handle Skins's island.”

to be continued

[franksolich]

“Well, thanks to Duke Nukum on conservativecave, I finally got inspired enough to check user comments and complaints on various things I use,” I said this morning.

“He was looking into my problem with Firefox—which is no longer a problem, because I’ve since pitched Firefox—and conveyed to me what he’d found out.  My problem of having to run an obstacle course every time I opened Firefox was apparently a common one.

“And Firefox doesn’t seem to care about resolving it.”

Jose O’Brien, half the property maintenance team along with Joe Gomez, had come out here early, and was eating breakfast.  Both are short brown little Texans, but Jose doesn’t know English.

However, he acted as if he was taking it all in, competently absorbing all that I was saying.  He would’ve fooled a primitive or other sort of unobservant person, but I’ve done that myself, and so he wasn’t fooling me.

“This isn’t the same Firefox I knew and used a few years ago.  But if Firefox doesn’t care, well then, I don’t care either.

“It’s all too bad, because the one day I had it, it worked on Skins’s island, allowing me to copy-and-paste.”

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

I’d never before bothered checking user comments and complaints about products and services because there’d never been a need to.  Whatever I had or used, worked okay for me.

Until now, when the Internet Explorer 11 browser appears unable to interact with Skins’s island, making it glacially slow to open—and that merely to read it—and damned near impossible to copy-and-paste for the amusement and illumination of decent and civilized people reading the DUmpster.

Internet Explorer 11 works fine on everywhere else on the internet, no matter where one goes with it; Skins’s island is the only web-site where it doesn’t.

So I checked out user comments and complaints regarding Internet Explorer 11…..only to find nothing but the glowingest of praises for it.  Some users were so rapturous in its virtues they sounded as if teenaged boys describing a model in a girlie magazine (“sexy,” “sleek,” &c., &c., &c.).

There might have been some criticism of it, but I didn’t run into any, even after reading five different sites concerning it.

The problem’s obviously not (a) my computer or (b) Internet Explorer 11; there seems to be some dark sinister malicious force on Skins’s island that blocks franksolich specifically.

Some might insist, “oh, that’s nonsense; Elad’s smart, but he’s not that smart.”

With which I disagree; he’s not as smart as Skins, but he’s pretty smart.

And smart enough to wire my ISP number, which he knows, so that whenever it shows up on Skins’s island, it triggers all sorts of monkey wrenches to interfere.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

“While I was at it,” I explained to Jose, “I decided to check user comments and complaints about a couple of other things. 

“I’d recently—and regretfully—dumped juno.com, which I’d used for twenty-one years, because the last few years, it’s gotten clunkier and clunkier, much more cumbersome and slower as one waits to have it load.

“And juno.com doesn’t seem to care.

“And then I checked out photobucket.com, which I’d been using ever since it started more than ten years ago.  Like juno.com, they’ve gotten clumsier and slower, and more of a nuisance to use, than a utility.  It’s a real bitch, sharing images from there any more.

“Obviously thousands of photobucket users have noticed, and complained, about the same thing.

“And photobucket.com doesn’t seem to care.

“Well, if they don’t care, I’ll be damned if I care.

“Now, of course both juno and photobucket are free services, and one gets what one pays for; I’d always accepted that one has to put up with some inconvenience and advertisements that must load on a page, but that didn’t used to be a problem.  A trifling bother, but nothing more.

“Beginning about a year ago, I wondered if by offering to pay for either service, I’d get better service.

“It’s a good thing I took so long wondering, because user comments and complaints allege that the ‘premium’ services are no better than the free ones.”

to be continued

[franksolich]

“You know, I’m really tired of this,” I said.  “There’s no point in wasting any more time and hopes on photobucket.  I’m not sure what I’m going to do, but I’ll think of something…..sooner or later.

“Remember, that’s one of those where user comments and complaints have pointed out that, like juno, their ‘premium’ paid-for services are no better than the free services.  One pays, but all one gets is exactly the same slow clunky sort of page that needs ‘refreshed’ several times before it works.....when it works.”

It's a fine Indian Summer day out here in the Sandhills of Nebraska, but obviously I can't show it off because photobucket doesn't deliver.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

"You're the most relaxed person I've seen about the election," I was told.

Yeah, I admitted; "I'm gravely concerned, but I just don't see any point in getting all worked up over it.  I don't even see any point in wondering who's going to win.

"I have my own ideas about it, but I'm not going to waste my time expressing it, because nobody pays attention to franksolich anyway.

"Somebody's going to win, and we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.

"I can fully understand why others are so concerned about it--decent and civilized people because they're concerned for the future of their children, and Democrats, liberals, and primitives because they're concerned for their cushy governmental jobs or social services freebies.

"Remember that which separates me from most other people.

"I have no dependents, no financial responsibilities of any import, no great job, not a whole lot of personal possessions to fret over and worry about.

"No matter what happens, I have more freedom of action than most people do; I can take hair-raising risks few other people can.  I've got little, if anything at all, to lose.

"So there's that; living the spartan austere ascetic life has its gifts.

"But really, while I doubt I have any significant talents to offer any cause, anyone a friend of God and religion, a friend of freedom, a friend of the Constitution, a friend of the Republic, a friend of America, an enemy of the primitives, who needs whatever I can give after the elections, it's his, all of it."

to be continued

[franksolich]

“Remind me,” I told the property caretaker this morning, “that when I move to a different place, while it may have just one bedroom, to be sure it has two, preferably, three bathrooms.”

I was standing in front of the kitchen sink, shaving.  The door to the bathroom was shut, an overnight visitor, someone I didn’t know but was a friend of a friend, and reputably the fussy demanding sort, using the room. 

“I live here alone in this one-bedroom one-bathroom place, and I can’t ever seem to get to use the bathroom.”

Because there’s still lots and lots of construction, and improvements that need made, on this property, any move is still in the moderately-distant future, but it’s always good to think ahead. 

“I wish I could remember how it went,” I said, rinsing off the razor, “growing up in a big family, in two different houses that each had two-and-a-half bathrooms.  Despite three sisters, there never seemed to be a line, or any waiting.

“And the socialists had one thing right, a bathroom actually being two different rooms side-by-side, one room with a bathtub and lilliputian sink, and the other with the commode, so that two people could use the facilities at the same time.

“A great idea, but it appears that out in the civilized world, only upper-class French ever adopted it.”

The guest came out of the bathroom, and ignoring his startled stare, having shown who is boss around here, I reminded him the coffee was ready, if he wanted any.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

The property caretaker, who's had to deal with the consequences of something, repairing a hole in the wall of the dining room, inquired if everything was okay yet, between my browser and Skins's island.

No, I told him, although I'm hoping it might be resolved Monday evening, when an expert and franksolich are both on conservativecave at the same time, and I get done installing a new browser that we both hope will work.

"But in the meantime, I check a couple of times a day, going over to Skins's island using Internet Explorer 11, hoping to see the problem worked itself out by itself, as problems on computers sometimes do.

"Nope.  When scrolling down on a page, it still goes a quarter of inch, stops for thirty seconds, then descends another quarter of an inch, stops for thirty seconds, slides down another quarter of an inch, stops for thirty seconds, and so on.

"And forget about copying-and-pasting from there, but I've already bored overlong with that particular problem, so won't bother describing it yet another time.  It's the same problem.

"These are problems I have with no other site on the internet, just with Skins's island.

"So.....I'm still resorting to swiping material from Manny's jackass primitives, and writing my own stuff.

"But the audience of the DUmpster prefers material from Skins's island--especially since right now, the primitives there are going through some rather comedic convulsions--because Manny's jackass primitives aren't nearly as amusing, as neither are the everyday happenings in the daily life of franksolich.

"I hope to God this problem gets resolved; I dunno how much longer I can bear it."

to be continued

[franksolich]

“That’s a really nice picture of de Gaulle you have there, “ I was told.

“Thank you,” I replied; “I think it shows him off as his best."

"You know," she said, "I never paid much attention, but I have seen photographs of de Gaulle in old history books and a few television documentaries, but as far as I remember, this picture shows him in a different light than those other ones."

"A man who'd suffered much, but who bore it stoically," I replied. 

“I know he has a popular reputation as being some sort of old curmudgeon, acerbic and anti-American and all that, but the truth was something else.  He, along with Golda Meir and Alexandr Solzhenitsyn, was one of the three most remarkable people of the entire twentieth century.

"He was great because he did so much with so few resources.

"If one were Franklin Roosevelt, it was easy to be great, because one had the vast resources of America to back one up.  It's somewhat more difficult accomplishing great things when one doesn't have a whole lot to work with, which had been his case, especially in June 1940 and during the 1960s when the gloire d'francais was fast eroding.

"There's the usual nonsense that he was anti-American because he disagreed with some of the most arrogant presidents we've ever had, Kennedy and Johnson, but that was nonsense.  When the chips were down, he was always on our side.

"He's a good example of what Tanker on conservativecave is always trying to remind readers; nations don't have friends.  They have interests and allies, but not friends.

"And there was the personal, private part of him. 

"How one acts when one doesn't think other people are watching says a great deal about character--a lesson the primitives are most certainly learning right this minute.  In the case of de Gaulle, he was more honorable and principled in private, than in public.

"A deeply religious man, he had an exceptional sense of family values, devoted to his wife and three children.  His son became a military authority and one of his two daughters married well, flourishing and prospering. 

"The second daughter, born in 1929 when Mme. de Gaulle was up there in years, was a mongoloid, at whose peak she attained the knowledge and skills of a two-year-old.

"She was the most precious thing in his life.  When, in June 1940 and the Germans and primitive Frenchmen had put a price on his head, while of course he was concerned about all of his family, he was most concerned about this handicapped daughter, and very happy when learning the retreating British had picked up all of them, and were bringing them along.

"They were inseparable, father and daughter; those who were fortunate enough to catch glimpses of the two of them together said it was awesome, to see the love and concern that passed between them.

"She died or pneumonia or something like that in 1949, when about twenty years old, and it devastated him enormously; it was the worst tragedy of his life.

"He was grievously bothered that she'd been denied the life of an ordinary child, but in the end finally decided God had set matters right; she was now 'just like all the others.'

"It's a great story, rarely told.  I always wondered why people concerned about the right to life never throw it into the face of the haters and the killers."

to be continued

[franksolich]

Well, now that I can hang around on Skins’s island with no problems, life has returned to normal here.

The guest noticed a DVD and asked about its contents.

“The greatest symphony conductor ever,” I said, “Nicholas Harnoncourt, who unfortunately died earlier this year.  The greatest ever; no one else came even close.”

Oh, he said.

I was disappointed, but then remembered that if the philistine Attila Marc the Hun, the "DFW" primitive on Skins's island, given his ethnic, cultural, and academic background, his affluence, and his smarts, doesn’t have class and taste, it’s too much to expect of someone for whom life hasn’t been so easy.

The guest is the brother of a woman in town; even though a legal adult, he’s “restricted” in his activities for reasons one might, or might not, guess.  She can’t stand him, and he needed a place to be for a couple of weeks, and myself being a nice guy…..

to be continued