It Had to Happen

Action Zeroes

Former big stars and now the kings of direct to DVD turds, Nick Cage and Bruce Willis should try a new strategy for choosing scripts because their current method—whatever the hell it is—has been a complete failure. They’d have more luck walking into any café in L.A., picking the first person they see with a laptop, and offer them $50,000 for any movie script they have on their hard drive. If on the off chance the person they choose doesn’t have a screen play on their computer, they should give them 30 minutes or so to write one. I guarantee they will have a better story than what these two have managed in their last ten films.

Summery Winter of 2018

I’m not climate scientist but any child with just a little common sense would say that something has gone wrong.

From Moral High Ground to Lowest Common Denominator

I don’t know if anyone remembers back this far, back when the Republican Party used to sell itself as the up-keepers of all things moral and pure in America. It’s difficult to win elections when your party represents a small fraction of the electorate so they had to make claims that would arouse the passions of the poor slobs they needed to vote in their policies which reflect the interests of the richest few.

Republicans latched on to the issue of abortion and politicized it to serve their own interests. Rich people always have and always will have access to abortion. The same has been true in Spain where abortion was illegal for decades. The wealthy just go to countries where the procedure is accepted. The Supreme Court ruling in Roe vs. Wade in 1973 changed only one thing: now abortion would be available to poor people. Republicans don’t really give a shit about abortion as the rich do whatever they choose to do, but they saw an easy way to swing voters over to their side.

For decades Republicans ranted on and on about American family values (white families, of course) and homos and God and other issues as they pretended to take the moral high ground. It worked. They won a lot of elections and now control most of our government. They have moved away from the thorny task of being morally superior and have changed their tactics in gaining voters. Their new strategy is simply making working class Americans angry, usually directing that anger towards other working class Americans.

Many Americans consider Muslim extremists to be our number one problem even though this is hardly a problem at all. The same goes for illegal Mexican immigration. Make people angry at other groups and you can get them to listen to you. Trump’s “shithole countries” meme is pure fascist rhetoric. Now “fascist” isn’t a word that I use lightly and when I say that something is fascist I don’t fucking mean that it’s sort of, kind of like fascism. Demonizing whole groups of humanity is not like fascist rhetoric, it is pure fascist rhetoric. It is pure filth and needs to be fought by any means necessary.

I never believed the Republican-generated myth that they were somehow more upstanding than Democrats. I don’t give a damn about Trump’s relationship with a porn star, or his proclivity to having Russian prostitutes urinate on him, or the fact that he’s been married three times, or that he is the biggest piece of human garbage I could ever imagine. Republicans spent eight years investigating Bill Clinton over a blow job yet seem unconcerned about Trump’s behavior. I never cared about Clinton’s sex life nor do I concern myself with Trump’s peccadilloes.

What I do care about is how he is quickly dismantling whatever was left of the middle class while he fuels the class warfare at the bottom. The more our nation slides into functional illiteracy, the easier it is to manipulate people on the bottom rungs and pit them against one another while the financial elite confiscates our national wealth.

Musical Obsession du Jour

I walked into a café and a beautifully haunting voice could be heard backed by the bare essentials of a jazz piano, bass, and drums. Although I was distracted with what I was doing, I couldn’t help but be captivated by her voice and the Spartan, elegant arrangement. It was a chain café, the kind I usually never bother to visit, but I really needed a coffee. The song finished and I was left almost in a panic thinking that I’d never hear it again. The young girls working there were total fucking numbskulls so asking them for help in identifying the song was out of the question. And then I finally recognized the song she was covering so I relaxed knowing that I could probably track it down. It was Betty Davis Eyes by Kim Carne, of all the damn songs in the world.

Only a year ago I had been living without music in my life. Since I had stopped playing piano in Seattle a decade earlier I had all but given up on music. I never listened to music at home. The only thing I heard was whatever rock crap was playing in some of the cafés I frequent.

I’m fairly obsessed with music these days. Hardly a week passes without discovering some piece of music that reduces me to a blubbering heap.

On YouTube I was easily able to track down the singer, Karen Souza from Argentina. This song I love even more after learning that she wrote it. If there is a sexier ballad out there someone please tell me.

Paris

by Karen Souza

I woke up in Paris
In some hotel with you
Safe until they find us
Hoping they never do
How'd you get me caught
up in this burning affair
So far away from home
(Pause)
I don't care
(Pause)
You and me in Paris
Free to be who we are
Prisoners of desire
How'd it get this far
(Pause)
People say you're dangerous
But, what do they know
When you are close to me
(Pause)
Can't say no
(Pause)
I can hardly breathe
Lovin you so much
Always on the run
Runnin outta time
And I'm scared that
this could end
What if they should
follow us to Paris
Caution to the wind
Savor every touch
Every night is blessed
Every kiss a rush
(Pause)
All We have is Paris
Here we could disappear
No-one needs to find us
Lost in the shadows here
We could be invisible
Hidden from view
Promise me that's enough
(Pause)
Just me and you
(Pause)
I can hardly breathe
Lovin you so much
Always on the run
Runnin outta time
And I'm scared that
this could end
What if they should
follow us to Paris
Caution to the wind
Savor every touch
Every night is blessed
Every kiss a rush
(Music)
I woke up in Paris
(Pause)
I woke up in Paris
(Pause)
I woke up in Paris..

Pig for Crisps

The jamón-flavored potato chips (only in Spain) I buy have a recommendation on the bag that once you open them you should finish the product in a week. Do I get some sort of prize if I finish them off by myself in less than five minutes?

If I had the will power to open a bag of chips and leave them around for a week, I wouldn’t have to avoid that aisle in the supermarket as if it were the infectious disease ward at the hospital (which I really do avoid because, eww, I have a lot of health problems I wouldn't want to pass on).

La bolsa de las patatas fritas, sabor jamón, dice que una vez abierto el envase hay que consumir el producto preferentemente en el plazo de una semana. ¿Hay un premio si tardo menos de cinco minutos en acabar con la bolsa?

Si tuviera la fuerza de voluntad para abrir una bolsa de papas fritas y dejarlas por una semana, no tendría que evitar ese pasillo en el supermercado como el pabellón de enfermedades infecciosas del hospital.