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February 13 , 2012
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This day has begun badly.
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Posted at 09:00 EST
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For starters, Henry knocked over my first cup of coffee, and it spilled all over my computer desk... I really didn't need that at 6.30 in the morning. Now the numbers at the top of my keyboard are not working correctly, and I have to resort to my number keypad, which is inconvenient and slows my typing down.
Then, we have more snow in the forecast, which is no surprise (after all, it is February in the Rockies) but will require some changes in my schedule, since I dislike driving in the snow. I've had hazardous and high-speed driving, and I am at ease in bad weather: it's the other drivers who give me pause. Particularly annoying are the ones who think they can shift to four wheel drive in the snow and still speed over icy roads while talking and texting on their cell phones. It's some consolation to realize how shocked such drivers will be when they find out how much a new transfer casing costs, and how quickly one can trash one's machine by abusing it. Black ice is routine here in winter, but there are an awful lot of drivers who don't seem to realize how prevalent it is here. |
February 12 , 2012
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It's Sunday morning, still cold and snowy
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Posted at 12:00 EST
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outside, football is over until next September, and spring training hasn't started yet. *sigh* It's the time of February doldrums, and the doing of tasks I have been postponing: like finishing cleaning out my files, getting taxes done, starting spring cleaning, and planning the gardening for spring. Yucko-tooey! They all have to be done, and I'll do them, I'll do them! But, except for the planning of the garden, I reserve the right to complain, whine and moan excessively and at length while I'm doing them...
Fortunately, a few things mitigate the dismal prospects of February. For one thing, in two days, all the stuff relating to Valentine's Day will be over. There are few things more boring than having to sit through endless panagyrics to what is essentially an artificial holiday created for the purpose of conning money out of the gullible public, and getting perfectly innocent gentlemen in trouble with their female relations when they fail to live up to expectations. It's bad enough when men forget important dates, like birthdays and anniversaries: for those omissions, they deserve the dog house. But Valentine's Day? Please.
And Aphrodite help any poor male who proposes or gets married on such a day. He'll never, ever be able to come up with a good reason for forgetting that anniversary. And sooner or later, he will forget it: it's coded in the male genetic structure, along with things like keeping smelly gym socks in his closet or under the bed, and leaving empty pizza boxes and beer cans in the living room. I like men, but they do have their little quirks and foibles...
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February 11 , 2012
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Today being Saturday, the Met is on,
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Posted at 17:00 EST
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and since it is cold -- 12 degrees -- and snowing, I am snugged down with the last of the Ring Cycle: Gotterdamerung. Wagner's music is superb, and it makes up for the feebleness of his hero and heroine. Siegfried and Brunnhilde have to be the most insipid pair of lovers in all literature. He has all the brains of a woodlouse, and she has even fewer... talk about hormone-driven adolescents: not even the leads in the Twilight saga can equal them.
Still: the music is magnificent, the piece lends itself to some fantastic staging, and the voices make up for a lot of the leading pair's stupidities. Only the gods in the piece are dumber: with their fate on the line, not even Loki thinks of shape-shifting and conning the ring from Brunnhilde... go figure. The evil, wicked, mean and nasty villains at least lend some spice, and come up with a few ideas. It's too bad Wagner couldn't have found a better couple around whom to weave his music. I don't wonder that Tchaikovsky found the piece a bit boring at its opening. (Did he say so? No; but he did confine himself to grousing about the services available to the opera goers, and I submit he would not have done so had he not been bored out of his skull...) |
February 3 , 2012
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The NFL has done it again. Last night, their
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Posted at 09:00 EST
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flagship network broadcast an hour-long program dedicated exclusively to commercials. Come to think of it, that might not be a bad idea. The different channels could have dedicated commercial hours, and take the commercial ads off regularly scheduled shows. It would save a lot of channel surfing, minimize the use of the mute key on the remote, and possibly restore some artistic integrity to a medium which has slowly but surely degenerated ever since the ad agencies discovered it... Just imagine having an entire episode of one's favorite show totally free of seemingly endless attempts to foist stuff -- usually inferior stuff, at that -- onto one...
Btw: my personal choice for the number one ads incorporating the most tasteless, sexist, and vulgar scripts going has to be the Axe commercials. The closest competitor they have for the title are the GoDaddy ads, but like the Victoria's Secret ads, the GoDaddy ads actually become humorous and entertaining at times, which the Axe ads never do. I don't know how the kids feel about it, but I really resent the portrayal of young people as mindless, sex-driven zombies... Biologically speaking, youngsters are bound to be heavily occupied with sex, because they are in their prime breeding years, and Mother Nature knows what she's doing when it comes to propagating the species. However, there is more to them than that.
Two days ago, when the air temperature was hovering in the mid fifties, and the sun was brightly shining in a cloudless sky, I took the dog out and smelled snow... I then decided to run all my errands that day. Sure enough, the snow arrived yesterday afternoon, and is still coming down, and the temperature is now hovering around the mid twenties... and I can stay home and bake. It definitely pays to pay attention to one's environment... |
January 30 , 2012
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There are two new candidates for my personal list
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Posted at 11:00 EST
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of commercials I can tolerate: the new Direct TV ads. One enjoins customers to get rid of cable, lest they wind up in a roadside ditch, and the other assures them that keeping cable will get one a grandson who wears a dog collar. Quite amusing and even entertaining. Cable commercials, on the other hand, are candidates for my personal list of absolutely appalling outright prevarications: especially the ones that are faked newscasts and business ads slamming the phone company. As a former user of cable ISP, I can verify that cable has the absolutely worst inflated bills going. The phone company is a rank amateur next to them, and hopefully will remain so. DSL is quite fast enough for most purposes, and the bill stays constant, instead of creeping up each month, once the initial period is over.
Of course, since we are a technologically oriented culture, and getting more so each day, we really need universal internet service to be available free of charge to everyone. And since the cable companies as well as the satellite services are making a fortune from their advertisers, I don't see any reason why we can't have it. |
January 29 , 2012
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Last night saw Ms. Wagner win the gold
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Posted at 11:00 EST
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in the national ladies' skating competition, and it's about time. She did a superb job. I'm rather pumped by the fact that two of the finalists came from my city, even though neither one finished in the top ranks. They are quite young, however, and I'm sure we'll see and hear more from them both in the future. My one real question concerns the condition of the ice. There were so many of the competitors who had falls and slips during the freestyle that I can't help wondering if the ice was maybe not in the best condition... Yes, each of the skaters who fell had faults in her performance techniques; but still, for those faults to result in outright falls for so many is a bit suspicious, I think.
I also have reservations about the age of many of the competitors. Competitors who are very young -- and many were well under eighteen -- are more likely to lose their poise and have a melt-down after a fall than more mature and experienced skaters. A women's senior competition should, I think, be for women: not girls. I think an intermediate level between the youth and adult competitions would be a bit more fair and equitable. The pressures and tensions of a national senior competition are a lot for young, immature competitors to handle, no matter how talented and well-trained they are. |
January 28 , 2012
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The scheduled opera for today is 'Tosca':
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Posted at 12:30 EST
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not one of my favorites, but definitely high on the list. My top favorite is a tie between 'Carmen' and 'Madame Butterfly', but I honestly can't think of a single opera I've ever heard that I didn't like... I am especially fond of modern operas in English. 'Nixon in China' was superb. It's quite nice to see modern composers using the operatic form. It's especially nice to be able to go to the Met website and see operas on the 'puter. Not as good as being able to see them live, but when one lives where there is no opera theater, it is handy. To be able to hear singers who can actually sing, with voices that are voices, instead of having one's ears assaulted by voices that are always slightly off-key and faintly out of tune is a great blessing.
As much as I love sports, I have to confess I always try to tune in after the national anthem is sung, simply because almost none of the so-called singers who do it know how to sing it properly. I have yet to hear any modern singer who can do the word 'banner' the way it's written. They always put an extra note in the middle, creating a slide that isn't supposed to be there... and why such singers seem to think they need to impress their own interpretations on it, I just can't imagine. That's a little like seeing Michaelangelo's 'David', and trying to improve it by either adding or subtracting a bit of marble. One shouldn't attempt it. |
January 26 , 2012
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There was a really cool Nova program
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Posted at 13:00 EST
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on PBS last night, about the purported discovery of a here-to-for unknown drawing by Leonardo da Vinci. A corresponding article in the current NatGeo ties in with it. I will be checking my on demand to view it again if possible. The drawing is reproduced in the magazine in proper size, but the binding distorts it slightly, which is too bad. The picture is quite beautiful, and I wouldn't at all mind having a print of it to frame and hang where I can view it on a daily basis. I love Renaissance art, but not being in the 1%, I can't afford to collect originals: only prints...
I sometimes wish some art forger would produce frank copies, clearly labeled as such, for the mass market. They wouldn't score the big bucks from a gullible collector, it's true; but on the other hand, they'd be perfectly legal and I'm sure could make a decent living from it. After all, the reason the originals are so valuable is precisely because of their appeal to the masses over the centuries. The machine-made copies are so dreadfully machine-made. I just can't make myself buy them; but a good copy by a skilled artist would be quite nice to have. |
January 25 , 2012
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A round of appreciative applause is definitely
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Posted at 12:00 EST
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due to the owner of the Detroit Tigers. Despite the heavy cost and the unlikelihood of recovering that cost from the citizens of a much economically depressed city, he nevertheless signed Prince Fielder for his team, following the off season injury of Victor Martinez. He definitely deserves a gold star and a chocolate-chip cookie! If neither the Rockies nor the Dodgers can do it, I have to say it would not hurt my feelings to see Detroit take the pennant this coming season, and with the lineup the Prince helps them gain, they have a very good chance of doing exactly that. Now, it only remains to be seen if the Detroit fan base can show their appreciation of his generosity by attending the games... This move should make for an interesting season in the Central Division.
Yesterday was Mohammed Ali's birthday, and he turned 70. Last week, Placido Domingo celebrated his 71st birthday by directing and performing in the Met's pastiche opera. It gave me quite a turn to realize how old everyone is getting. Except me, of course: I'm much too busy to have time for it... |
January 24 , 2012
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Spring training is just around the corner,
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Posted at 17:00 EST
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and Dan O'Dowd is playing with the roster again. This time, he's scored Scutaro from the Red Sox, so, I think he made a good deal there, anyway. The Rockies will be a whole new team, except for certain reliable stalwarts. If he even breathes trade around Cargo, Tulo, or the Tod father, he may learn a really hard lesson from the fans, similar to the one Bowlin learned at the Broncos when he tried to hang onto McDaniels and Orton... Empty stadiums can really cut into the profit margin: a lesson it would behoove a great many owners to learn by example. Fans pay the bills, and it is a serious error of judgment to think they don't matter...
With the elections coming on, it would also behoove some of our politicians to remember that the 99% vote, even if they don't make large, semi-legal contributions to one's political campaign funds... The problem with a slanted media, particularly on line, is that a lot of people simply no longer trust or believe what they're being told. That's encouraging, because it's proving two things yet again: 1) greed creates poverty, both of cash flow and ideas; and 2) excessive attempts to control public opinion lead first to skepticism, and then to rebellion among the masses. For reference points, check the history of depressions world-wide, and the French and Russian Revolutions... |
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