KISS: Do You Love Me (1976)

Great song, then and now.




You really like my limousine
You like the way the wheels roll
You like my seven-inch leather heels
And going to all of the shows, but

Do you love me?
Do you love me?
Do you love me?
Really love me?

You like the credit cards and private planes
Money can really take you far
You like the hotels and fancy clothes
And the sound of electric guitars, but

Do you love me?
Do you love me?
Do you love me?
I mean now do you really love me?

You really like rock and roll
All of the fame and the masquerade
You like the concerts and studios
And all the money, honey, that I make, but

Do you love me?
Do you love me?
Do you love me?
Really love me?

Your backstage pass and black sunglasses
Make you look just like a queen
Even the fans, they know your face
From all of the magazines, but

Do you love me? (Do you love me?)
I wanna know

Trump via Gutfeld: "Life is what you do while you're waiting to die..."

"...so you might as well do a good job."
Starting at 8:26 of the below vid.
Trump is/has always been a breath of fresh air in the vast miasma of phony public discourse.
And he's usually right about whatever he says!

Another sad thing from "Red Comet" Sylvia bio

A visitor to the house at Court Green after Ted had left said:
I've just been looking in "Red Comet," and I can't find the exact quote, though I just read it yesterday. The gist of it is: Sylvia was not crying quietly. She bawled like a child. She frightened her own child, Frieda, with her wailing.

Her overt heartbreak breaks my heart. Over 60 years later, I can still hear her. The poems were an attempt to build up her own personal mythology. But her lover/husband didn't want her.

Heaven (for Anne Sexton) 1985

In the light beyond
the dim dashboard
some small god awaits
wreathed in blue, clouded
like the sky you seek,
the very heaven in his blinking eye.

(The mouth of the heathen
lurks mortal past grace, enmeshed
and static in the garden's dumb bush.

Its tongue has no thorns; it cannot prick
such angel spun to fly
born to lie in no god's belly.)

In shadow, you rise
a winged refrain
for the passing, that
godawful rowing.

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

You can cut out the parenthetical stuff. But the first and last stanzas? Those words are absolutely immortal. Not known right now, but immortal. And I wrote them. And I was a 20-year-old kid when I wrote them!

To Kiss This Discontent (1992)

I was intentionally doing an experiment here: How to write about absolutely NO LOVE. Not a peaceful "no love," but an active/aggressive reaction re no love, no energy, no nothing. Obviously there are feelings here desperately attempting to fill an outside void---to absolutely no avail! This is the verbal husk of nothing-ness. Don't need an elm to tell me, Sylvia! :)

I still think the title---"To Kiss This Discontent"---is great!

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

the verdict is in.
i turn to you and seek a real pain
to let me know the value of love, of loss. relief is sweetest
after the rack. for so long I grip the unrung phone and pretend
it's for me and predict the lack of ringing before it starts.

who will want me with this need. who will see past this slack
as I sink into self like i won't come back. who will love
the hovering absence like their own.

don't say loving nothing isn't real love. don't say this
shadow, this shape cannot fulfill the archetypal shivering
of a self in wane. pain is as real as the real love that feels
like nothing. so calm and so cool and so full of you
that the other need not even be. you know this.

if loving makes you the most there and least aware of
what you are and love's absence brings the empty heart
home to its bloody beating self, to be is not to be. this
is the answer. the shadow something i cling to. your
presence something to turn from in distaste as if it
were not there. you tell me how to crave
what I see every day. how to miss it. how to
love.

is lack to be filled, to be taken back
and replaced with something uncracked. is something new
the only nuance this noon world can do, your new soul so
wise in some ways, yet so young and puppy-full
with the strangeness of a wet tongue and paws
padding me so cutely. i love you and you turn to
what you have already, not what was not me in all my
nothing, what you could have and won't. 

i am not
even real if my only world is mine. if other thoughts don't
touch the small of my back with self-conscious quiver and crack
my spine with fingers so in tune with what i lack that
they mold me into place without my own knowing.

what are you. and why does your hole grow with every dawn with
every space or death or dancing i witness. to kiss this
discontent is all i ask.
for somehow pain
is what i grasp now
why.

A Death poem (1988)

Something I witnessed first-hand in 1988: The death of my friends' mother from cancer, only months after I'd moved in with them (upon their invitation).

Their mother's death was not "peaceful." It was awful and frightening to witness.

I had no mercy, just saw the pure awfulness of it.


Day breaks down in dirt
defined as coffins closing, clods of dun
in fingers clenched to interwine
each windowful of sun into some
heat-sustaining seed of distance
shrivelled from a bloom, outlasting
blazing tubes endured through
rippled pain-illumined rooms, but
still no clue to what is now a baying bitch
by moon-sucked beach---
each ebb-spawned cure beyond her
bed of water's
streamlined reach.

I'd always felt that Ted Hughes was treated unfairly by the press post-Sylvia...

(After all, he DID send me a card in 1996, after my letter to him, saying he liked my poems!! What a nice Poet Laureate!)

Until I just read a couple of sentences in the "Red Comet" (2020) Plath bio:
In April 1962, Ted had been in London recording for the BBC. AND HE BROUGHT HOME A YOUNG WOMAN WITH HIM TO STAY AT THEIR COURT GREEN HOUSE for the night.
A couple that was friends with Plath/Hughes reported this. The young woman was a BBC employee and a fan of Hughes's. He was so entranced by her, that he invited her to his home and travelled with her over a 4-hour train ride from London to Devon and had her spend the night IN HIS HOME THAT HE SHARED WITH PLATH AND HIS TWO CHILDREN.

Who in the fuck DOES that?

Now, in the past, I'd read accounts by his various latter-day (post-2nd-wife-Carol) girlfriends that he'd invite one girlfriend to a party at another girlfriend's house, etc. Which seemed very cheesy. But, hey, I thought at the time: "They're all just girlfriends, what does it matter. I'm not a Carol fan, and it wasn't in front of her..."

But there was something about the inviting of a random young woman to travel 4 hours with him to his home AND spend the night that was UTTERLY disrespectful and AWFUL. The couple visiting at the time said that Plath did not react. There are many accounts of her reacting to other similar things, so maybe this was a sick test for her of some sort?? God knows.

The next month, in May, Assia and David Wevill were invited to spend the weekend, and Ted began his affair with Assia.

A similar thing happened to me, though my relationship at the time was only about 10 months old (not of 6 years like that of Plath and Hughes), and I'd only been living with this woman (my first lover) for a couple of months: We'd invited a couple over to watch movies with us: One dyke and her cute girlfriend. "Lair of the White Worm" was the movie. It had a few sexual scenes, and if the "cute girl" happened to be out of the room at the time (going to the bathroom or fixing herself a drink), then my girlfriend would insist on pausing the movie until she returned. It got very suspicious.
It got late, and the two guests were too drunk to drive home, so we set them up in our spare bedroom.
The next morning, my girlfriend literally JUMPED out of our bed and went into the spare bedroom to "hang out" and smoke pot with the guests---leaving me lying there by myself.

We broke up only a couple of months later (partially because of shit like the above), though we still kept seeing each other. One time when I went over to her apartment unannounced...there was the girl from the "Lair of the White Worm" weekend, making out with her on her couch!

So, no, Plath wasn't crazy! :)  Long before we see things with our own eyes, we get VIBES about what is going on. At least my first girlfriend could have waited a couple of years to start all of the shit---but much better, I guess, that she revealed her low-rent roots after only a few months. (Though it did take me literally 10 years to get over her. She was very stupid, but also charismatic and sexy, which was her selling point. We never had an intelligent conversation---and the sex wasn't even that great---but her VISUALS were quite good!)

So my first cheesy girlfriend was stupid but sexy, and we dated for 11 months and lived together for 3 months (then slept together off and on for another 2 years or so, then again 8 years later). Now imagine Plath meeting an actually intelligent, brilliant, talented man and having kids with him and living with him for 6 years... My hurt was bad, but HER hurt must have been 100 times worse.

I still admire Ted Hughes as a poet, and I still am grateful/honored for his bothering to respond to my letter to him. And his friends say that he was a kind man. But his various women say that he was awful. I didn't quite believe that until I read of the random BBC girl that he brought home on the train and insisted his wife put up for the night.

VP Harris is all of a sudden "Black" and "Worker": How'd THAT happen?

Let's see:
Harris was born in Oakland, California, to an Indian biologist academic mother
and a Jamaican economist academic father.
She grew up in Oakland/Berkeley and only very briefly lived in the Midwest and in Quebec.
(p.s. Contrary to her claims, there's no proof at all that she ever had to "work at McDonald's.")
 

Where did this "lowdown Southern accent" suddenly come from?
Like Hillary carrying hot-sauce in her purse.

There is nothing phonier than this product of left-wing California

 and left-wing academics pretending to be "of the people."

A few things I figured out before anyone told me...

(1) Not to be political, but just common-sense: The Bible---the Old Testament at least---is centuries-old text written by desert Jews. Completely of their times. Incest, multiple wives, etc. Completely nonsensical. I figured this out for myself when I was 15.

(2) When driving across the US Western desert in my 20s, I thought to myself, "This looks like the bottom of a dried-up sea." Ha---as it turned out, it all used to be the bottom of a sea many thousands of years ago. (Western Inland Sea---look it up!)

(3) For the past year or so, I've been thinking that humans on Earth were once exiles from another planet/civilization. That sounds crazy, right? But not if PBS says it, right? (Ha!) Tonight on PBS, there was (as usual) a program about indigenous peoples---but this time there was an interesting take: Some of the indiginees had names like "One Who Comes from a Distant Star" and "One Who Has Travelled from a Distant Star." Where did these very basic populations get such names?

(4) This is much more shallow: After reading today's propaganda about "What will happen to polar pears with climate change?"----Years ago, I did a little research on polar bears. As I'd thought, they were once basic brown bears who migrated north. (And once the climate warms, they will turn brown again---so no need to worry about them and make them the focus of your left-wing fund-raising efforts!)

Oh, and an addendum just because I've been re-reading all of the Sylvia Plath bios for the past few weeks:
Back in the late '80s/early '90s, when the bios first started appearing, it was just kinda "whoops, she had a history of depression and she was mad at Ted for his infidelity and she killed herself." At the time, I thought: "Assia Wevill [the other woman] was probably pregnant. That's probably what pushed Plath over the edge." Yeah, as we all found out in later bios, Wevill did indeed have an abortion in March 1963 (Plath killed herself in February 1963). Plath had hopes for a reconciliation with her beloved Ted Hughes up until the very end---but the knowledge that another woman was going to bear his child was too much. Plath was old-fashioned: She'd thought their love was somehow "sacred."

Weezer: Buddy Holly (1994)

I'd never heard this song before until TWICE in the past few weeks: 

I don't remember the first time, and then today
while I was shopping in my local grocery store.
I like most of this catchy song (mainly because of the "Mary Tyler Moore" mention---

though the "I don't care about that" is stupidly tacked on at the end of everything).
But I still HATE Weezer and almost every other "grunge" band!

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

What's with these homies dissin' my girl?
Why do they gotta front?
What did we ever do to these guys
That made them so violent?

Woo-hoo, but you know I'm yours
Woo-hoo, and I know you're mine
Woo-hoo, that's for all the time

I look just like Buddy Holly
And you're Mary Tyler Moore
I don't care what they say about us anyway
I don't care 'bout that

Don't you ever fear, I'm always near
I know that you need help
Your tongue is twisted, your eyes are slit
You need a guardian

Woo-hoo, and you know I'm yours
Woo-hoo, and I know you're mine
Woo-hoo, that's for all the time

I look just like Buddy Holly
And you're Mary Tyler Moore
I don't care what they say about us anyway
I don't care 'bout that
I don't care 'bout that

Bang! Bang! Knock on the door
Another big bang, get down on the floor
Oh no! What do we do?
Don't look now but I lost my shoe
I can't run and I can't kick
What's a matter, babe, are you feelin' sick?
What's a matter, what's a matter, what's a matter you?
What's a matter, babe, are you feelin' blue? Oh-oh!

That's for all the time
That's for all the time

I look just like Buddy Holly
And you're Mary Tyler Moore
I don't care what they say about us anyway
I don't care 'bout that

Fleetwood Mac: Can't Go Back (from Mirage, 1982)

Standing in the shadows
The man I used to be
I want to go back
(Can't go back, can't go back)
Melodies awaken
Sorrows from their sleep
I want to go back
(Can't go back, can't go back)

She was just a dream maker
Dreamer of sighs
Shadow on the one who used to cry
A face as soft as a tear in a clown's eye
I want to go back
(Can't go back, can't go back)

Sylvia and Mommie

I think I posted something similar to this earlier, but while in the midst of re-reading the "Red Comet" bio," it's become even more clear:

As a kid, Sylvia's father was sick and dying during her ages 4 thru 8 (he finally died when she was 8). From the age of 4 on, she was shuffled off to stay at her grandparents' house. (Mother Aurelia at home had a sick husband to take care of, plus her newborn son Warren, who was also sickly. Sylvia was apparently considered an adjunct, expelled from the house...)

Here's where the interminable "Letters Home" started: Aurelia obviously felt guilty for getting rid of her daughter... Thus began all of the "what I ate" "what I felt" letters from kid Plath to her mother---that continued until her adult years.

After Otto Plath died when Sylvia was 8, Aurelia's parents moved into their home. And from then until Sylvia went to Smith College, Aurelia and Sylvia shared a bedroom.

I'm absolutely NOT of the standard 1950s' opinion that "the Mother" is to blame for a child's neurosis. IN THIS SPECIFIC CASE, HOWEVER: Sylvia Plath was abandoned to her grandparents and then asked to "write home" (when "home" was only about 2 miles away) about how she was doing... And as a teen, she shared a bedroom with her mother----WHO DOES THAT?

So, yeah, I think that Plath's childhood was uber-messed-up.

John Lennon: Working Class Hero (1970)

As soon as you're born they make you feel small
By giving you no time instead of it all
'Til the pain is so big you feel nothing at all

A working class hero is something to be
A working class hero is something to be

They hurt you at home and they hit you at school
They hate you if you're clever and they despise a fool
'Til you're so fucking crazy you can't follow their rules

A working class hero is something to be
A working class hero is something to be

When they've tortured and scared you for 20 odd years
Then they expect you to pick a career
When you can't really function, you're so full of fear

A working class hero is something to be
A working class hero is something to be

Keep you doped with religion, and sex, and T.V.
And you think you're so clever and classless and free
But you're still fucking peasants as far as I can see

A working class hero is something to be
A working class hero is something to be

There's room at the top they are telling you still
But first you must learn how to smile as you kill
If you want to be like the folks on the hill

A working class hero is something to be
A working class hero is something to be

If you want to be a hero well just follow me
If you want to be a hero well just follow me

My Idols (Then and Now)

I think I have only had 4:

John Lennon (discovered just pre-death in the summer of 1980--a radio station was playing Beatles songs all summer, and I got hooked on Beatles, then John, thru early college '83). As a teen in the Summer of 1980, I typed out his "Working Class Hero" lyrics and posted them on my bedroom wall.
Sylvia Plath (discovered in a high-school English class---Sophomore year? Junior year? I can't remember; somewhere between '81 and '83, ages 16-17.) I kept her "Collected Poems" by my bed until the early '90s. I could open that book at any spot and read something mind-blowing and profound.
Joan Crawford (discovered in 1988, age 23, while I was in the mental process of "coming out.") I first saw Joan Crawford in 1932's "Grand Hotel" with Garbo when I was a Garbo fan---Garbo was stilted and awful, and Crawford was GREAT! In her 50-year career, Crawford has literally hundreds of great moments onscreen, from the goose-bump-profound to the campy-appreciative.
George Jones (discovered in 1994, when I was in grad school in San Francisco; back then there were "CD clubs" where you could order 12 for a penny or something.) I'd ordered half rap and half country---trying to discover something new because I was bored to death with mid-'90s rock. I ended up also being bored with all the rap, but I liked some of the country---and I LOVED the George Jones duets that I heard from the Tammy Wynette Hits album that I'd bought! I like Tammy to this day, but George Jones is GREAT! I was also very homesick at the time, and his voice helped me out a lot, mentally.

As of 2024:
I still like Lennon, still love the Beatles (my favorite band). But Lennon really became a left-wing shill once he met Yoko. And his music suffered tremendously. He's still my favorite Beatle---DURING the Beatles. But he really lost his mojo post 1971 ("Plastic Ono" and "Imagine" are great; after that, nothing). Post-Beatles, Paul is definitely my favorite; he never particularly "touched my soul," but I like him an awful lot for how utterly talented he is---and for his great songs and good vibes.
Plath's poetry remains great. The more biographical info I read about her, the more annoying I think she was as a person. (Especially her left-wing politics!) But, my god---her writing continues to astound me (and challenge me) even 40 years after I first read it.
Crawford: Discovered in 1988 (first getting goosebumps after seeing 1932's "Rain"), still fascinated by her, and her many roles, to this day. I have hardly ever been bored with anything about her since I began working on her website in 2004.
George Jones: Learning about, and listening to, this great singer has been an absolute treat: '50s thru '90s---just about everything he did was/is interesting and darn good.

Sylvia Plath: Ariel (October 27, 1962)

While being in the midst of reading Plath bios: She is often annoying as a person. 

My former idol John Lennon was also crude and annoying upon learning more about him. (I already knew ahead of time that idols Joan Crawford and George Jones were both crude and annoying---but at least these two were hard-core workhorses who were too centered and smart to go Marxist like Lennon did.)

What each has in common: Their work transcends their crappy selves.

The below poem by Sylvia Plath is great.

ARIEL

Stasis in darkness.

Then the substanceless blue   

Pour of tor and distances.

God’s lioness,   

How one we grow,

Pivot of heels and knees!—The furrow

Splits and passes, sister to   

The brown arc

Of the neck I cannot catch,

Nigger-eye   

Berries cast dark   

Hooks—

Black sweet blood mouthfuls,   

Shadows.

Something else

Hauls me through air—

Thighs, hair;

Flakes from my heels.

White

Godiva, I unpeel—

Dead hands, dead stringencies.

And now I

Foam to wheat, a glitter of seas.   

The child’s cry

Melts in the wall.   

And I

Am the arrow,

The dew that flies

Suicidal, at one with the drive   

Into the red

Eye, the cauldron of morning.

Sylvia Plath: Mary's Song (11/19/62)

The Sunday lamb cracks in its fat.
The fat
Sacrifices its opacity. . . .

A window, holy gold.
The fire makes it precious,
The same fire

Melting the tallow heretics,
Ousting the Jews.
Their thick palls float

Over the cicatrix of Poland, burnt-out
Germany.
They do not die.

Grey birds obsess my heart,
Mouth-ash, ash of eye.
They settle. On the high

Precipice
That emptied one man into space
The ovens glowed like heavens, incandescent.

It is a heart,
This holocaust I walk in,
O golden child the world will kill and eat.

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

In the years after her death, Ted Hughes called her a "metaphysical" poet. She's not "confessional" at all. She is, indeed, "metaphysical," "mystic," "apocalyptic," "mythological."

Note to Self: Stop Wasting Time!

Here's one pattern that's become very clear to me over the past couple of months (years!):
If I have something to do online---like work on my Joan Crawford website or my Etsy website---that takes maybe 3-5 hours in the evening. That's fine. If I stopped right there, I'd get to bed on time and wake up without a hangover, etc. The problem comes when I've finished my actual work but am still hyped up---and I then start wandering around on the Internet looking for arguments to get into! 

This Friday night, for example, I ended up arguing politics on a news site for over 7 HOURS! I guess I briefly got some release from spewing my beliefs---but then I felt the need to respond to every single person who disagreed with me in the Comments section! It went on and on! Starting late Friday night, I think I was up until 6 or 7 am on Saturday morning arguing with random people! Which led to a very weird sleep schedule and nothing at all done on Saturday. It took me until Sunday to fully recuperate from all the drinking and posting from the night before.

I gotta stop. Which includes other things like watching "90-Day Fiance" or visiting "The Bloggess"---dear god, the utter mindlessness! Which is possibly cute and entertaining in your 20s or 30s. But after that, you need to become more aware of your finite time on this earth and spend it more wisely.

Don't Let the Music Die (1977 from "It's a Game")

A tribute video posted upon lead singer Leslie McKeown's death in 2021 (age 65).
It's a great song (written by band members Faulkner/Wood) from the 1977 Bay City Rollers "It's a Game" album. And a reminder that Les's voice WAS the sound of the band.

As a kid, I remember liking his eyebrows and bright eyes, and his confident look, and REALLY hating his teeth! (Eric was my favorite then, but I liked Les second-best. Today, re-watching vids, I like Les best; Eric seems kind of cheesy on stage.)

As an adult, I was surprised to learn that a teen/20s McKeown had slept with guys in the music business, including his manager Tam Paton. That degradation (and it WAS a degradation, according to McKeown's auto-bio) marred his life.

McKeown later went on to proclaim, on a 2009 US reality TV show, his bisexuality and sex addiction (with both men and women), despite his marriage of over 20 years.

A very good, natural singer. A confused mess of a person (aka: a Scorpio---so interesting and yet so creepy; at some point, you get mighty sick of the creepy---unless, that is, you're a Japanese groupie).

Red Comet (Heather Clark, 2020)

I have this book (which came out in 2020), but I don't remember anything about it!
I'm currently re-reading all of my Plath bios, in chronological order, and just now got to this one.
I remember seeing the pictures in it (including previously unseen art by Plath), but none of the text.
Very odd that it's not striking any sort of memory. I guess that's a good thing, in that I feel like I'm reading a new Plath book for the first time...
Supposedly "new" things I'm learning (after only the first 150 pages of a 1000+ page book):
Constant mentions of "cocaine sprays" and "cocaine packs" whenever she went to Smith school infirmaries for sinus problems! (Not so freely available in the UK once she got to Cambridge, but still available. Which indicates a partial addiction to coke and the downturns post-coke.)
In her college years: Aside from the coke, there's a common pattern of her working to exhaustion, then seeking refuge either in the college infirmary or at home for a week or so in the middle of a semester.
And she didn't get her FIRST period until age 16, according to her mother. (For trannies trying to fool people with their made-up "life stories," and for curious males: That is a very late age to start.) And once she first got to Smith, her period stopped for over 5 months. (Also unusual, except under extraordinary stress.)

I'm exhausted myself after reading only the beginning of this book---and so far it's been only about her college life! Albeit a "college life" not quite like others'. She's also, while struggling with trying to finance college, also constantly sending out stories/poems to national magazines. And trying to justify every action in letters home to her mother (with whom she shared a bedroom until she left for college---which is insane!). And constantly worried about appearing attractive to men and maneuvering whom she does NOT at all want to marry/sleep with despite his ostensible "appropriateness"---that means YOU, Buddy Willard (Dick Norton)!

4 months of crappy medical tests... over!!

I hadn't been to a doctor or dentist in over 15 years, so I suppose it's only fair that---once I decided to finally take advantage of my health-care plan---this past summer has been spent seeing either a doctor or dentist at least once every single week! It's been a miserable summer! And today was the last day of all appointments! Hooray!

And there remains nothing fucking wrong with me (physically, that is). Although I do now have slightly cleaner teeth.

Bonnie Tyler: Total Eclipse of the Heart [Top Of The Pops 1984]

Bonnie Tyler: It's A Heartache (1978)

Yes Sir, I Can Boogie: Baccara (1977)

Boney M.: Rivers of Babylon (Sopot Festival 1979)

Thank god the cameras focused on the wonderful woman lead singer
instead of the clown guy! He's fine for "Rasputin"...

Boney M.: Rasputin (Official Video) (1978)

Oh, those Russians...

Boney M: Ma Baker (BBC Top Of The Pops 26.12.1977)

Smokie: Lay Back In the Arms Of Someone (25.06.1977)

When I was in Germany in the Summer of 1977, I was allowed to buy one album (the newly released Bay City Rollers' "It's a Game") and then three singles:
I chose this one, and Boney M's "Ma Baker," and Baccara's "Yes Sir I Can Boogie."
At the time, I was especially impressed by seeing, at least twice, throngs of local drunken young guys bellowing "Lay back in the arms of someone..." on city sidewalks. The sign of a REAL hit song!
(And I still love this song to this day simply because it's so great!)

Political and Classic-Movie Junkie Dilemma

I'm a political junkie, but I really think today's Dems are awful and, yes, blatantly/ignorantly Communist. In years past, I've always enjoyed watching both parties' conventions, just for the spectacle, regardless of who I agreed with more (just as I used to enjoy watching CNN and MSNBC). But today, the Dems have gone too far.

And I'm a classic-movie junkie, but I really think John Gilbert, despite his lore, is not-that-interesting---but that's who is today's "Star" on TCM. I haven't watched many of his movies in the past, but have had him on all day in the background, trying to soak up some "classic movie" knowledge.

At the moment, I've chosen Gilbert as the lesser of two evils.

My Familiar

According to online research, a cat's not a "familiar" in witch lore until after 7 years.
Mini is now only 5 years old.
Mini, Solomon Grundy, Mini-apolis ("City of Mini"), Moonshine
She and the other kittens were born in April 2019.
In early August of that year, Mini suddenly started letting out horrible, ear-curdling YOWLS
and vomiting across the kitchen, the living room, in the fireplace.
She finally dragged herself into the bathroom, where she huddled by the plumbing fixtures.
(In my past experience with cats, my own and others', they go into the bathrooms to die---
the plumbing and fixtures are cool in temperature and make them feel better.)

(A side note: In a bio about Kerouac, I read that his mother once called him to tell him that one of their young cats had just died after a similar incident of tortured yowls and vomiting. The description was exactly what I heard with Mini. To this day, I don't know what causes this.)

All I could do was crouch there on the tiles and stroke her.
And for days after, I kept watching and watching, to see if she would eat anything...
(This was the longest I'd ever gone without drinking anything at all---over a week---in the decades since I was in college. I felt/knew Mini was going to die, and I didn't want to be hung over when I woke up and found her dead. Unlike in 2009, when my cat Gracie was dying in NYC, and I was too busy arguing with Sandra over the phone and drinking for hours to pay attention to my beautiful, dying cat. I woke up to her dead the next day and have felt guilty ever since.)

On August 11, 2019, I was asleep on the couch and heard a crunching noise and woke up---it was Mini EATING something! :)  My Mini, my Familiar, lives!

The Harris/Walz ticket: 'White Guy Tacos'

I despise phoniness, and this is the ultimate in Phony.

First: Kamala Harris is the daughter of two left-wing academics (Jamaican father and Indian mother). She's in no way a "working-class girl." She claims both parents were "active in the Civil Rights movement"---They were not. Dad was a Communist academic; he only WROTE ABOUT the economy of Jamaica---apparently, nothing he ever wrote back in the day has ever helped that country.

And then there's "Tampon Tim"----trying to claim so-called "working-man" Springsteen fandom while simultaneously apologizing for being white and for how he likes his tacos. (I highly doubt that Springsteen ever apologized for being white.) Oh yeah, and Tim supported the Minneapolis rioters (not the police who tried to stop them) in 2020 and thinks tampons should be in every school boys' bathroom. (While also falsely claiming to have served in war and falsely claiming to have been a "head coach.")
 

The shucking-and-jiving of these two makes me nauseous. Say what you will about Trump: He's utterly himself and says exactly what he thinks. (Oh, yeah, and being COMPETENT is also a plus.)

Look what I found lying around my apartment!

WHAT IS IT?! A small rodent? A massive tarantula??  Eeeeeeek!

 

As it turns out...it's just a big chunk o' hair off of my boy-cat Pete's butt! 

Apparently, he doesn't shed (or groom) correctly, or according to season, like his sisters.

For the past couple of weeks, he's been walking around with these huge tufts sprouting out of his backside. At first I thought, "OMG, it's cancer!" But then when I felt around, it was just all hair. I couldn't tug it loose (apparently, it was still somewhat attached to him!), and I couldn't brush it loose (after my initial tugging, he was very suspicious of me when I approached him with a hair-brush). So I had no choice but to just let him walk around like that, looking weird. (With the other cats sniffing at "the tuft"---they knew it was weird, too!)

At some point, the bundle above just fell off of him. What a "treat" to discover! Mama Cat Hennessy started batting it around, at one point sending it flying 2 feet in the air, which was kind of weird/creepy/interesting. I left it lying around for a couple of days (since the other cats seemed to get some fun out of it...).

Below is my boy Pete, shot tonight, sans the Big Chunk. (Once the big weird bunch of shedding hair fell off---the lower right side---he had all of his same hair patterns below it, just shorter, no bald patches or anything.) He looks so sweet and kittenish here. In real-life, he looks, and acts, much older and bigger and tougher---at least with sister Sasha; she's scared of him, but HE is scared of both Mama and black-cat-runt-My-Familiar Mini. (I keep trying to tell/will Sasha to pretend not to be scared of him---if she stands her ground, he'll back down...)

Bay City Rollers: It's a Game (1977)

I actually saw this very same German TV show featuring the BCR
in the summer of 1977 while in Germany.
At the time, at my German aunt's house, as an excited 12-year-old,
I took some Polaroids of the TV screen.
We---mom, me, 6-year-old brother---had all flown over for 6 weeks 

that summer to escape my shitty father---soon to be divorced in the fall 

after he pulled a gun on my mother.
Hey Dad---You've been known to read this blog on occasion... Remember this summer?
Apparently you didn't use the "6 weeks apart" to reflect on anything, didja?

[Side note added later on 8/16: Funny how I just got through re-reading Plath, including "Daddy," and now I'm ragging on my elderly father again! Truth is, I haven't had much contact with him since age 15 (1980) during my miserable trip to visit him where he was stationed in South Dakota. Since then, I've seen him in person maybe 5 or 6 times---at my brother's wedding and graduation, a few other random times---when everyone behaved perfectly well. And I've talked to him on the phone maybe 6 or 8 times more than that. He's 84 now, and he stopped drinking decades ago, and he's had a new family for decades. Let it go, Self. I mean, I'm sure we've all acted a lot worse in our 20s and 30s than we eventually do. I'm different, my father's different. Oh---and I'm sure Sylvia Plath would have been different!]

Bay City Rollers: Saturday Night (1976)

The show source, I don't know. Lead singer Les is on drums and drummer Derek is not there.
Reached #1 on US Billboard chart in January 1976.

Bay City Rollers: Bye Bye Baby (1975)

From Wikipedia:
A cover of the [1965 Four Seasons] song by the Scottish band Bay City Rollers was released in the UK on February 28, 1975 as the only single from the group's second studio album Once Upon a Star. It reached number one in the UK, Ireland and Australia, and was also a hit in several other music markets across the world. It was number one on the UK Singles Chart for six weeks from March 1975 and ended the year as the UK's top-selling single of 1975.

When I was in Germany in the Summer of 1977, I was 12 and ga-ga over the BCR. My 20-something cousin Susie (now dead) explained to me about this early hit, which had first made their name in Germany.

ベイ・シティ・ローラーズ Bay City Rollers／恋のシャンハイ Shanghai'd in Love（1975年）

Another of my favorite BCR songs. Also written by BCR's Faulkner/Wood (1975).
Also not sure that lyrics have been translated correctly!
(I think that "child yeah" is instead a Japanese word...)



Sail across horizons as the ocean sails towards the Eastern Sun
On into a world where sunken dreams are lost in time, and never won
In search of love down Wanchai way I did run
Into a sanpan world the night seems so young
Then a voice called out for love and I was gone

And I was Shanghai'd in love
Yes I was, Shanghai'd in love
Like a child yeah I was hooked on love
Shanghai'd in love

Through the night she gave me love, and love it was a game
She played so well
And though I never knew her name, the memories of her love
That I can tell

Down Wanchai way I lost my heart, don't know why
Those Eastern eyes were made to torment a guy
She gave me love, but in the morning she was gone

And I was Shanghai'd in love
Yes I was, Shanghai'd in love
Like a child yeah I was hooked on love
Shanghai'd in love

Bay City Rollers: La Belle Jeane (1975)

This 1977 video is the most awkward thing ever!
(Cheesy television trying to unsuccessfully incorporate a minor ballet dancer
with some working-class blokes from Edinburgh.)

But I've always loved this song (written in 1975 by Faulkner/Wood of the BCR).
Today, I can't find the correct lyrics for it on online lyrics sites.
For instance, I know that it's "Montmartre" and not "Monmatre" as every site has it.

And I think that other of the below lyrics are sung in French, not as they appear.

But here are the best of the lyrics I could find online:

Feel the air this night is for romance
Taste the wine La Belle Jeane let's dance
On and on, the magic lingers on
Through the night a memory when you're gone

You are a lady, you dance like a dream at Monmatre
In the night when the lights are low
Paris by moonlight, you shine out like starbright
Jeane, Jeane, Jeane, Jeane

Oh la na na La Belle Jeane
Silently spinning you dance the night away
Oh la na na La Belle Jeane
My love for you burning I need you more each day

Sylvia Plath Documentary

This YouTube doc doesn't give info about when this doc appeared or who produced it.

Sylvia Plath Bios

For the past week or so, I've been re-reading, in chronological order, the Plath bios on my bookshelf: Butscher, Wagner-Martin, Stevenson (and adjunct by Malcolm), Hayman. (Have yet to re-get to Alexander and Clark.)

(So far, Wagner-Martin is utterly inane and Hayman is an utter hack.)

One thing that I noticed, that I never had picked up on before in my younger years, was that Plath was shuttled off to her grandparents' house on many occasions as a kid. She was born in 1932, and her father died in 1940. The various bios all say that her younger brother Warren (born in 1935) was sickly, and that her mother---while dealing with a sickly baby and a sickly husband (from 1935 until his death in 1940)---sent Sylvia to live with her grandparents for long stretches of time. Sylvia's communications with her mother during that time were primarily via letter. When Sylvia was periodically allowed back in the home, she was required to "amuse" her sickly father with poems and dances, etc., at specific times of the day.

After Otto Plath died in 1940, Aurelia moved to a nicer (more homogeneous) town inland, and her parents moved in with her. While Aurelia's father eventually found work as a head waiter and lived at his restaurant during the week, Sylvia and her mother continued to share a room up until her college years.

I didn't realize any of this. I'd thought all these years that Sylvia Plath simply had a biological/chemical disorder. (And she did, partially: Otto Plath's mother ended her years in an insane asylum. So there's an argument for biology. Or is there? Was Otto's mom really insane, or "declared" insane because she hated her life with her husband in a very barren area of the United States?)

In Sylvia Plath's case: She was shuttled from house to house as a kid. And even post-death of her father at age 8 and move to a new house, she then had to share a bedroom with her mother through her college years. There's no way that is normal.

And given Mommie and psychiatrist Beutscher (again and again), et al, I'm also starting to doubt that it was men (Daddy and husband Ted Hughes) who were the real problem. Sure, if your husband fools around on you, that's traumatic. But women also understand a biological urge. And there are also sometimes psychological reasons for any mate's wanting to escape (Plath's destroying his work and his Shakespeare volume in this specific case), and Sylvia knew that, too, and felt guilt about it. 

She just could not wait all of it out. And, psychology aside, she was actually physically sick at the end and had no one to take care of her. (In the past, she could always rely on Mommie and on doctors and on her husband to take care of her. Always a sheltered kid. This time, she could not even manage a single 12-hour-period on her own.)

The Beatles: Revolution (1968)

The Beatles: Ticket To Ride (1965)

The Beatles: Please Mister Postman (1963)

The Beatles: All My Loving (1963)

The Dukes of MAGA 🇺🇸

B'Bye! Squad Member #2 goes down.

Cori Bush of Missouri (elected in 2020) was ousted in the Dem primary yesterday.
Jamaal Bowman of NY (also elected in 2020) lost his own Dem primary challenge in June.
There's a big difference between being "liberal" and being Marxist radical and OTT emotionally unbalanced. This woman is an idiot.
Good riddance to two members of "The Squad."
Further "Squad" info from Wikipedia.
RE a third Squad member: I tried to find the 2016 footage that I've seen many times
of Rashida Tlaib being dragged, shrieking, from a Trump event---alas, YouTube, oddly, doesn't now seem to have this footage available.
Hmmm...Why not? Where did that footage go?

Clueless Academic Allowed in Our Govt

https://www.c-span.org/video/?537489-1/acting-assistant-defense-secretary-discusses-nuclear-threats

Was browsing around C-SPAN today and came across this guy---Vipin Narang, the "Acting Assistant Defense Secretary for Space Policy." Here he is, discussing the nuclear policy of our nation. 

He says nothing, he knows nothing. "Self-indicatively significant"---He spouts academe-speak while a member of our nation's Defense Department.

Kind of makes you yearn for 60-year-old hard-asses, doesn't it? Those that know about actual threats and are actually equipped to deal with them. Who hired this non-entity as a member of the Defense Department?

Olympics 2024: Tranny Male Allowed to Box Women

Fucking disgusting. A 6-ft man with larger fists, larger arms, larger shoulders allowed by the Olympic Committee to compete in Women's boxing.

Imane Khelif of Algeria---a hulking male who has XY chromosomes but claims to be a woman, and who was DISQUALIFIED from world competition last year for being a male in a women's sport, was allowed to participate in this year's Olympics.

At this point, I don't expect the wimpy liberals in charge to do anything. But: When are women going to stand up against this? Obviously, the people in charge of the competitions are too cowardly to do anything. But every single woman in boxing or swimming or any other sport where trannies are infiltrating (usually after formerly being male athletes who failed against other male athletes) should refuse to play this ridiculous, nonsensical political game. Stand up for yourselves, and for women's sports!

The Times Are Tidy (Plath, 1958) + The Road Less Traveled (Frost, 1915)

Unlucky the hero born
In this province of the stuck record
Where the most watchful cooks go jobless
And the mayor's rôtisserie turns
Round of its own accord.

There's no career in the venture
Of riding against the lizard,
Himself withered these latter-days
To leaf-size from lack of action:
History's beaten the hazard.

The last crone got burnt up
More than eight decades back
With the love-hot herb, the talking cat,
But the children are better for it,
The cow milks cream an inch thick.

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

I was born post the years when schoolchildren were required to memorize poetry (or history or civics, for that matter). The only poem I was ever asked to memorize was in my sophomore year of high school; we got to choose our own, and I chose Robert Frost's "The Road Not Taken" (first published in 1915). This is the only poem that I can recite from heart to this day:

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

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

Part of the second stanza has always puzzled me:

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same...

Well, Frost initially seems to be saying that taking the less-trodden path is rarer and somehow more admirable---that he's an original and to be congratulated for choosing this path. But then... Whoops! Both the main path and the ostensibly less-trodden path have been worn "really about the same"! In other words: Just as many folks have gone on either path. And it really makes no difference at all---except to the person choosing.

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

As for the 1958 Plath poem:
Most at-least semi-educated women can probably recite certain incantory lines from "Daddy" or "Lady Lazarus" (both written in 1962, a few months before her suicide):
"You do not do/You do not do/Any more black shoe/In which I have lived like a foot/For 30 years, poor and white/Barely daring to breathe or Achoo..."
"Out of the ash/I rise with my red hair/And I eat men like air."

The above are easy to remember, but does anyone remember Plath's more-academic poems from her 1960 first book, "The Colossus"? That's where "The Times Are Tidy" comes from. And, as it turns out, this is the only other poem that I know by heart, after Frost's. Not intentionally, not based on a school assignment, but because... I've often thought the same thing, but she condenses it for me!

Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff condemns toxic masculinity

If you like this, then by all means, vote for it.
Just wanted to put out there that this is what's being touted by Democrats as your ideal male.
Emhoff was an "entertainment lawyer," so I'm sure he had to be cut-throat on many an occasion. Yet here he is, pretending to be meek and mild, decrying "toxic masculinity"---i.e., when men actually act like men instead of attempting to hide their aggression despite their white-collar jobs. (Here, Emhoff attempts to completely deny his entire career.)

This guy's phoniness and smarminess make me sick.

'White Dudes for Harris' Zoom Call Excerpts

AKA "Beta Males for Harris." (Where's Prince Harry?)

One white guy here says that when he thinks of white men getting together, 

he automatically thinks of "tiki torches and the Klan."
(Funny, I always think of football games and rock concerts.)

Another says that white men need to "recognize their privilege." 

(Kamala Harris's Jamaican dad and Indian mother were both academics; 

she had quite the privileged childhood. As an adult, she had quite the 

Willie Brown boyfriend to get her elected to San Francisco office.)

Another says he cried when he learned that Hillary lost the election in 2016. 

(Did he cry when she lost the Dem nomination to Obama in 2008?)

DONALD TRUMP : The Muppet Show Mashup

I'm sorry---this is one of those "so stupid it's funny" things that I'd never seen before!
Like the earlier "Sanford and Son" mashups!

I'm Losing You (John Lennon: Double Fantasy, 1980)

Cleanup Time (John Lennon: Double Fantasy, 1980)

The Rolling Stones: Neighbours (1981, "Tattoo You")

More actually punk than that year's punks.

The Rolling Stones: Little T & A (1981, "Tattoo You")

The Rolling Stones: Hang Fire (1981, "Tattoo You")

This 1981 video came out when I was 16---how weird and interesting! MTV had officially debuted that year, but my rural family didn't have cable, so I'm not quite sure where I first saw it, probably in a group video room after I got to college in 1983.

At the time, I'd been hearing about "punk" but lived out in rural Texas and had no actual access to any sort of "scene." When I first saw this video in college, I was utterly wow'd by its, to me, weird vibes---was it sexual? Was it Punk? What was it? What the hell was Jagger?

A side-note: Decades later, I was at my mom's house. I was in my 40s, she was in her 60s. We were watching something on PBS about music in the '60s, and a Stones performance was featured. We were both mesmerized by Mick Jagger, but saying nothing. My sedate, very-middle-class mother finally broke the ice (re her generation, not mine): "He's sexy, isn't he!"

Ha! Yes, he is! :)  Both in the '60s and here in 1981. There's a certain mystery here not promotable by the media (which promotes ANYTHING for a narrative, however false). Jagger is a subversive, slinky, sexy freak----his own self, as most have failed to report.

The best the Dems have to offer

FULL SPEECH: President Joe Biden dropping out of race 2024

"And shsoikjfjiojllj democracy lhihigohshioho nothing lljdifjooooueushhh pash the torsh... climate changeshshshslkjdfij...right to votshlkljdlkjflkjdllkj...schpeaking out...."

A nonsensical stand-for-nothing imbecile for his past 50 years in public service; going out the same way.

According to Joe and Kamala in Bizarro-World, the major challenges facing our country today:
Right to vote (Dear Black People: I would be insulted if someone insinuated that I could not figure out how to vote. The Dem party apparently thinks you're dumber than the rest of the American population.)
Right to choose (Trump Republican policy: No late-term abortions; rest of abortion rights up to states.)
Climate change (There's been "climate change" approx every 15,000 years, long before humans ever populated the planet. Texas used to be underwater; New York used to be under ice.)
Supreme Court reform (Last time court-packing was tried was under FDR, when the 9-member court would not pass his legislation---so he proposed adding more liberal justices. Failed.)

They're living in a communist fantasy-land.

For most of us, the actual major challenges are:
High inflation (rent/groceries/gas)
US jobs being shipped overseas, especially to China
High crime
8 million unvetted illegals allowed to cross our border

Cleanup Time

Years ago, I used to have a, to me, beautiful red SHAG rug in my living room.

 

By happenstance, I got 5 cats in 2019, and they soon made a hair-ridden mess of that once-attractive rug, the shag of which was VERY hard to vacuum! I soon gave up on the vacuuming, let the hairy mess sit there for a while, then finally bought a much-more-sensible very-low-pile rug.

Only problem: The old shag rug, though I was able to roll it up, was way too heavy for me to drag out to my apartment dumpster. I have a small dolly, which was too small to move this thing.

 

At one point, some homeless person had left a supermarket shopping cart in the apartment parking lot, and I actually wheeled that to my apartment door and tried to somehow balance the carpet in/on it---without success. 

I then asked the apartment management if they had a big dolly I could borrow to move this thing. (I'm pretty sure they do, but just didn't want to lend it to me.) 

I then got permission to put up signs in the apartment mail and laundry rooms: "Can you help me carry my carpet to the dumpster? $20!" Apparently, $20 doesn't go as far as it used to in the olden days. None of my young or money-desperate neighbors responded.

So the friggin' thing SAT there for over a year in my hallway! Not really physically in my way, but it sure as hell was psychologically in my way!

 
I FINALLY got on Craigslist today and e-mailed every junk hauler I could find. And while they were at it, take that equally nasty cat tower in my kitchen that the cats barely use now that they're grown, AND that cat-scratched/soiled chair in my library that I'd bought used 14 years ago (and never sat in then or now) back when I lived in my one-room apartment...

 

I mailed about 9 companies, with exact photos. Most local, a few national (like "College Hunks Hauling Junk"). The nationals all required an intrusive filling out of info and made you book an appointment for them to come over----without first giving you an actual price quote! Luckily, one local company responded right away, and their quoted price was the cheapest of all ($120), and the shit was out of my apartment within 4 hours of my first contacting them!

PHEW!!!!! It was a bunch of niggling "work" to try to figure out something! But once I got over the idea that it would take more than $20, and once I got utterly sick of my slobby surroundings and decided to buckle down and DO something about it... There were actual professional "junk hauler" answers to my simple problem!

I won't know how "lightened" I feel until I wake up tomorrow to the cleaner space. But I'm pretty sure I'm going to feel "much lightened." The chair in the spare room was the least bothersome (the cushions were still good, and I'd already bought a large Zodiac-patterned blanket to cover it); the cat tower was annoying because it took up kitchen space and the cats only used it maybe a couple of minutes every other day; but that rug constantly lying in the hallway---my psychological nemesis!

George Jones & Merle Haggard: No Show Jones (1982)

George Jones & Merle Haggard: C.C. Waterback (1982)

Merle Haggard: "What Am I Gonna Do With The Rest Of My Life" [Live from ATX, 1985]

Merle Haggard: "Mama Tried" [Live from ATX, 1985]

Merle Haggard & Willie Nelson: "Okie from Muskogee"

Merle Haggard: Okie From Muskogee (1969)

Thanks, Guys!

OK, look, I'm in my 50s, and I don't get approached by strangers in the street any more. I used to, though! :)  I think maybe 2011 or 2012 was the last time that I can remember a guy on the street coming on to me: I was waiting for a bus in downtown Austin on the way home from work, and a very heavy-set black man in tattered clothes struck up a conversation and complimented me on my eyes. 

Speaking of my eyes: Back in Joisey, somewhere around 2008, I still remember a teenaged Italian kid strutting along the sidewalk, seeing me in my Dallas Cowboys sweatshirt----the Cowboys were playing the Jets that Sunday, and, being from Texas, I had to represent----and then turning around and walking backward in front of me, saying: "Your eyes are so green, I know you're really for the Jets." How cute was that! :)  Such a flattering, charming little player---even to a then-40-something lady! :)

(I wear glasses now, so no one can ever see my eyes.)

Anyhow: I haven't had any sort of such random attention in years. Today, though, I was in the post office, and, as I was about to exit the building, a 50-something Austin-casual, middle-class white guy just entering caught me: "Is that your little red car out there?" I was kind of freaked out, as in, God, what, is it on fire or something?! And how did he know that was MY car?

As it turned out, he had a helpful hint for me: That dent in the back bumper of my car? If I heated up a kettle full of water and poured it over that part of the bumper, I could then take an ordinary toilet plunger and apply it to the dent and thus get rid of it!

Oh, really, could I now, Sir?  :)   (I'm actually going to try this---I HATE that dent in my car!)

Thus began a minutes-long conversation with me offering how I got the dent (rough tow), why I hadn't had it fixed (car very old, no more money going into it), and how actually grateful I was for the helpful hint (how did he ever learn about doing this?) because I'd always thought it looked ugly but didn't want to pay $900 to have it fixed at this stage in the car's life.

It was all very cute. (He'd only re-entered the PO to catch me---after we spoke outside, he went back to his own car in the lot.) We didn't exchange numbers or anything; like the kid in Joisey, I think he was maybe just practicing his conversational skills with a woman.

I only want to know so much.

I always thought that I was the type of person who wanted to know EVERYTHING. However, I just found out that I DON'T. I've been up all night, reading over various things, and I just came upon a 3-page screenplay treatment of Sandra's. Too much. Too much "Jim."  

Jim was a guy that Sandra's mother had met in AA in the '70s and slept with. During the same time period, Jim also slept with Sandra when she was a teen. Decades later, after Sandra had had her two daughters, they slept together again, for about 3 months. Until his death of old age in 2010, she continued to obsess over him. In years prior to his death, she'd often made the trek to his home, usually having the door slammed in her face.

I'd been through something of the sort myself, to a much lesser extent, and finally gotten over it. (Isn't everyone, at some point, somewhat obsessed with someone?) I tried to talk her down from this constant thing, to no avail.

Reading the screenplay tonight, and re-thinking about this part of Sandra's life (which I was constantly privy to for over 10 years), made me feel sick to my stomach yet again.

I loved her, but her inner thoughts were such an ugly mess. And for so many years, I was sitting there listening to all of them, and trying to bring some sanity to them----and I could not. They were her thoughts, and hers alone. She didn't want any sort of clarity, or a way out.

For my own sake, it's kind of a good thing that she's dead so I don't have to live with trying to figure her out and help her any more. (Oh, but wait---she's dead, and here I am still trying to figure her out!) 

Sylvia Plath (year unknown)

 

George Jones: Loving You Could Never Be Better (1972)

George Jones: We Can Make It (1972)

Extra Room

I live in a 2-bedroom apartment, where I've been since 2017. The extra room is my library, with all of my bookshelves and books.

Back in 2018, Sandra called me. She had nowhere to stay, could she stay with me? Of course! I immediately started cleaning, arranging. 

After a few days of hearing nothing from her, I e-mailed her. No response.

We'd been through quite a lot in the past 10 years. (Including numerous accounts of her saying she had nowhere else to stay.) After this proved to be yet another "cry wolf," this was pretty much the end of our relationship.

In 2020, she contacted me again, for the first time in 2 years, with the news that she'd had a stroke. I'd heard so much bullshit from her since 2008 that I didn't know how serious this was. She spoke haltingly; I tried to follow along. I was still mad at her for past emotional things, but she was incapable of understanding what I was still mad about. And I didn't understand that her stroke had turned her into someone that I should no longer be mad at...

Today, in 2024, I still go into the "extra room" and think of where exactly Sandra might have slept amid all of the books. (Although I'd offered her the main bedroom, with the private bathroom, because I usually slept on the living-room couch anyway.)

And whenever I take a shower, I almost always remember what she said to me back when I spent the night with her in 2015 at her relative's home: She'd for years, after losing the financial support of her former husband and former rich lover, not had a shower-head that reached the top of her back. (I was not suave enough to offer to wash her back for her.)

1992

I recently ordered the newly released book "The Occult Sylvia Plath." It was a bust. Nothing "occult" that everyone didn't already know (her and Ted's playing around with the Ouija board). Most of the book was rehashed bio stuff, along with info about "the times" and history of Plath's place: The Unitarian history in Boston, the current political happenings that informed her work. 

After reading the "Occult" book, though, I was in the mood for more Plath. Got out my 1989 "Bitter Fame" by Anne Stevenson to re-read. I was bemused to see my pink-signed name/date in the front: August 22, 1992.

Why "bemused": Back when I was young, I used to sign and date all of my books, with the thought that I would one day be an older person, sitting among my books in my library IN AN ACTUAL HOME, fondly remembering when and/or where I bought a particular book. 

As I opened "Bitter Fame" in 2024 and saw the 1992 inscription, I am still in a rented place, as I was back in 1992. In 1992, when I was 27 years old, and had the whole world before me: Where would I end up? Surely, in a house, a home of my own!

Nah! Not so. For the past 10 years or so, I haven't even bothered signing or dating any of the new books that I've bought. Because there's, honestly, no "home" to be had in the future! It's all been a series of apartments and temp places.

Other than the book stuff:
In 1992:
My first lover had broken up with me in 1991, and I was mentally miserable, but... I still moved forward with own goals.
In 1992, after having dropped out of college a couple of years before, I finally sat down and figured out how many credits I needed to get my BA degree. It would take 1 solid year---Fall/Spring/Summer semesters. I planned it out, and I did it, despite my ongoing emotional turmoil. After 10 years of goofing around in Austin, I finally graduated from UT in 1993.
Also during this time in 1992:
I had a very-psychologically-important-to-me writers' group that met bi-weekly, and that ultimately published 2 issues of a magazine ("Trash Soup"---named after a dish served at the cafe where we met regularly) that was distributed around Austin and touted in the local alternative press. I was miserable personally, but attending this group and putting out this mag were extremely satisfying. The group came together because of Brian Johnson---who shares my exact birthday! :)  (I've always liked, and gotten along very well with, all fellow Leos----all males.)

On this high, I eventually went to grad school at San Francisco State University in 1994. Got my MA degree in 1995, then came back to Austin and went through utter soul-killing nothingness for the next 5 years... (I survived that---the very darkest time in my life. Currently going through my second-darkest time.)

Oh, yeah, re "Bitter Fame" and Sylvia Plath: My god, what a highly condensed/harried life she led from a 7-year period from Cambridge thru age 30: BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM. How many moves? How many sending-out of poems and publications of books (both her own and Ted's)? How many births and/or operations?

Just to mark the occasion:

Sandra died on 2/21/24. I found out about her death at the end of May 2024.

Immediately after I knew about her death, I tried only once to contact her spirit via the occult, specifically via a pendulum board. No results.

Last night, though, in a dream, I finally had my very first contact with her: I asked her if she wanted to take a walk with me, and she said yes.

PBS: Kid Rock performs at 2024 RNC

Kid's kind of passe, but this song is still great! (Love the "No Show Jones" mention!)
Cool that Trump invited him to perform.
And it's hilarious that the self-righteous PBS has this on their website
(and that the 60-something RNC delegates are attempting to jam!).

Oh, Trump... Sigh.

I watched Trump's RNC speech tonight, gearing up for it ahead of time by putting on my "Revenge" T-shirt that I was too scared to wear out in public today. (Sad---I live in Austin, Texas, where you're not allowed to express any other than far-left-wing ideas in public. Back in 2016, when I was first excited by Trump, I had a "The Donald 2016" sticker on my newly bought car---the sticker was almost immediately defaced with a black-markered "FUCK" written across it.)

His speech tonight was rambling and terrible. Not inspirational. When I think many in the nation were looking for a "changed Trump" after the assassination attempt on Saturday.

I agree with most of his policies:
Bring American jobs home (primarily why I voted for him in the first place), stop illegal immigration, make NATO countries pay their fair share of their own defense (pre-Trump and Ukraine invasion: Germany, for instance, was getting most of its natural gas from Russia), US energy self-reliance. 

And then, as the decrepit Biden administration wore on, I was shocked first by things like my rent/utilities/groceries/EVERYTHING going up by 20-25% percent in the past 4 years. And then by social-issue things like student-debt forgiveness (when I'd been paying off my own student loans for years, and then my mother paying the rest of it off), and being forced to get a Covid shot to keep my job, and the re-namings of US bases, and the rising crime rate as a result of liberal DAs letting recidivist criminals out of jail.

Also: I'm decidedly middle-class, making under $70K per year. Under Trump, I got hundreds of dollars back in my tax refund every year; under Biden, I first got a $2 check, then nothing, and this year had to pay over $200.

I've been watching Trump for nearly 10 years (including multiple C-SPAN full speeches). I kinda know how he is. He IS WHAT HE IS. He's not gonna "rise above" anything, y'all! :)  I'd hoped that he would tonight, but he did not. He was his usually rambling self when speaking. At Trump rallies, 80% of it is more like "An Evening with Donald Trump" than a rousing call to arms about all of the wrongs in current American society. He DOES ultimately hit the political points---but it's so dissipated by his other "rambling" stuff.

He surely MUST have a speech-writer at this point! Especially for this very important night!

At any rate: I wanted to be moved tonight; I was not. But I'm a hard-core Trump fan. I agree with his positions on issues, and then I also enjoy how funny and irreverent he is. But that's just me. I wanted him to be profound tonight (about his near-death experience), and I wanted him to be utterly focused on the issues facing the country---but he was neither profound nor focused. He had the chance to absolutely lock up the election tonight (especially given Biden's utter weakness), but I don't think he did that.

I still think Trump will win the election; despite his lack of communication skills, he believes in something (that I also believe in). And his potential opponents are extremely pitiful (assuming that the Dem Rats are abandoning their Biden ship):
Biden is a senile, decrepit ghost (and he was ALWAYS a non-entity, a career politician standing for absolutely nothing, ever);
Kamala Harris is a light-weight idiot, also standing for nothing but the current socialist trend;
Gavin Newsom is a self-serving, blowing-in-the-wind socialist clown who ruined California. 

Who else do the Dems have? Buttigieg and Klobuchar once looked smart and promising to me, but after I saw them posting their "pronouns" on social media, I realized they also were weak and far from serious---I will NEVER vote for any adult who ever "posted their pronouns."

Trump arrives at RNC

Sounds nuts to say: "His eyes look subdued."
But I've been watching political Trump for 9 years now on TV, and his eyes look subdued.
Yeah, a bullet grazing your skull might do that to you.
 

The last time I caught a glimpse of Trump's "soul":
In his speech to the nation in 2016 after the "Hollywood Access" tape was released.
At one point, he cocked his head and shrugged, and his eyes, just for a second, 

were liquid and real: "I'm sorry; I don't know what else to say."

"Daisy" Ad (1964): LBJ anti-Goldwater ad

AKA: If you vote for Goldwater, you'll die in a nuclear war.

What ended up happening:
LBJ won the 1964 election, and subsequently passed more socialist legislation
than any other President (aside from FDR) in US history.
(From which we're all still suffering today.)
LBJ also embedded the country much further in Vietnam.
LBJ stood down from the 1968 election, due to his unpopularity in his own party re Vietnam.

Barry Goldwater: 1964 RNC

"Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice."

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis: RNC speech

Assassination Attempt

Joe Biden: "Trump is a threat to the nation."
Jake Tapper (CNN anchor) and dozens of other hosts/guests on both CNN and MSNBC: "Trump is an existential threat to democracy."
Numerous Dem congresspeople and numerous left-wing publications (like the Washington Post, New Republic, et al) have compared Trump to Hitler: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/how-democrats-relentlessly-dialed-up-violent-rhetoric-against-trump-before-assassination-attempt-comparing-him-to-hitler/ar-BB1pYb9T

Given all of the above rhetoric, why WOULDN'T someone on the left attempt to shoot him---since, according to their primary (allegedly mainstream) spokespeople, he's "Hitler" and such a "threat to the nation"?

They've been playing a rhetorical game for many years now, and it just had serious consequences.

It's one thing to call Joe Biden "corrupt" and "mediocre" and "senile." He is all of those unflattering things. It's quite another, though, to call Trump "evil" and "Hitler" and "a threat to democracy"---none of which he actually is. 

I think politics is interesting, and I like arguing about policies and ideas. But the mainstream media/politician rhetoric about Trump since 2016 has been radically disgusting.

The "disgusting rhetoric" went much further, though, to the point of the banning of Trump from Twitter and Facebook in 2020 (with the collusion of those CEOs). Followed by the multiple US judicial system charges brought by Dem operatives like Alvin Bragg post-2020, which are much more sinister. (Really? Stormy Daniels again? Are we really such a Third-World country, bringing federal legal charges against a political opponent? Trump may have chanted "Lock her up!" re Hillary Clinton back in 2016, but most of us knew he was being funny---and, of course, he did NOT, while President, have his DOJ bring any charges against her! Unlike what Biden's DOJ has been doing to Trump.)

That wasn't a regular bullet that just nicked Trump's ear. It was from a high-powered rifle. And if the bullet had been just 1/2 inch to the right, it would have blown off his skull.

I was lazing around on the couch Saturday afternoon, randomly channel-surfing. Found out that Trump was going to speak around 5pm Central, but didn't manage to stay awake that long. Woke up around 8pm Central to see the footage... An eerie, creepy feeling. Goosebumps. At what had just actually happened, and at what might have happened.

And then admiration and more goosebumps at the sight of this man with blood on his face, fist pumping, shouting "FIGHT!"

The Beatles - We Can Work It Out (1965)

Johnny Paycheck: Take This Job and Shove It (1977)

1965: George Jones (with Johnny Paycheck): Love Bug / Things Have Gone to Pieces

George Jones: "The Race Is On" (1964)

George Jones, et al, 1979

Weird and Spooky. Jones looks to be on his starved, cocaine, love-lost death-bed
(not even able to stand up---I don't think that Johnny Cash himself

was much more drug-free in 1979).
And then on the second take on the stage: 

Almost everyone suddenly has a woman with him!
Where did they come from? Are they trying to rub it in that there's no Tammy?!

Just Asking

Abraham Lincoln is often cited as one of the BEST American presidents (top 2, usually). But under his presidency, during the Civil War, between 752,000 and 857,000 Americans died (numbers from Encyclopedia Britannica).

(In the foreign war in Viet Nam, approx. 58,000 US soldiers died.)

Under what circumstances is 752K to 857K dead from YOUR OWN COUNTRY considered a POSITIVE aspect of your leadership of your country? Could/should this extreme number of your own people's deaths be indicative of very POOR leadership?