Addendum...

So. I like playing solitaire. I've played the windows version a lot over the years. For Windows 7, a few changes have been made. Now, when you win, the cards fall quickly and, as they hit the bottom of that window, break into small flying bits, the sound of the glass tinkles like a charming version of a wind chime. Your score is based not only on your winning, but there is a time element as well. I used to play it so fast, always remembered what cards were where, etc. I'm much slower now. Today, I passed a couple of minutes playing , expecting a good score but not sure how quickly I did it. Before the game added in my time score, my main score was 666.

The ABC Evening News featured a story about bats. The northeast population is dealing with an outbreak of white nose powder or whatever its called. The population is being decimated. But other bats are replacing them. Vampire bats from Mexico are moving north. They're the type that needs blood to survive. They bite. Humans. How many signs are there? How many do we need?

I'm just saying is all.

               

Does no one have any sense of shame anymore?

Well, I'm pissed off again. Doesn't seem to take much these days. This morning's online edition of the Brattleboro Reformer noted that as of Monday, its' online edition will only be available by subscription. Well, sorta. They will let you read 5 free articles a month. At #6, you get blocked and get the subscription form. $5.99 a month, or $59.95 per year. It's not that the Reformer isn't worth it, and it isn't, what is pissing me off is charging  monies to access everyday information. Public information is becoming a sellable commodity. The NY Times recently deiced to go down that route. And that's the high price spread. I'm sure the local library will continue to purchase the papers and make them available.  If you can get to the library when it's open.  But after the next round of local budget cuts, I won't be surprised to note that funding for the library has been curtailed so they will start charging a fee to read the paper there. And then just to get in the door. This will take us back to the days when libraries were only available by private subscription. It was the free library system, and free equal access schooling, that helped make this country great. That access is what got us out of being an agrarian country dotted with mind numbing mills of the industrial age.  Of course, the thing is that the greedy bastards out there aren't all trying to meld us into worker slaves, which I'm sure they wouldn't mind, it's mostly that they just want to make still more money off of us. And by doing that, what if people aren't so well educated anymore? Let them go and increase and multiply.  Just don't make me pay for it. And when it gets to too many people draining the public coffers well....Coming soon: Life in the resettlement camps. Don't 'cha just love the sound of marching feet?  And the smell of jack boots in the morning....

The problem here is that people won't riot

So. There's something bothering me. Last night, a heck of a lot of people showed up for a vigil for that unfortunate man  who was shot and killed at the Co-op. Okay. That's cool. The Press was there. The  TV station up in Burlington was there. The Governor was there. See, the thing is this. A little over a week ago, there was another murder here. She was a young woman with problems. She knew many people here. The local (daily) paper takes great pains, every time she is mentioned, to note that she lived in Bellows Falls. As though that would explain it, as though they could wash their hands of it. As though it might absolve them. This woman was forced from an apartment in town (that's as explicit as it gets) at gunpoint. She was taken a little bit up the road and killed by her boyfriend, a drug dealer.  They'll bring her up to front page again when the co-op story dies down. They'll use it to incite conversations and endless discussions with the same forty or so people who usually turn up for these things. Oh, the situation in town. What do we do? Why (sob!)? Hugs are distraction, as the co-op or the town figures a way to make money off this. And in all this time, in all this time, where was her vigil? Where were the tv cameras? Where was the paper? The Governor didn't bother to show up, for her? Why is it that we aren't hearing much about abducting someone in daylight? At gunpoint? Two victims. Both shot dead. One is well off. The other wasn't. One held a prestigious position at the co-op, the right people, you know. The other includes the involvement of drugs. And bad people. The Town manager didn't write a eulogy-press release for her. And she didn't get the spotlights and all out production values. All she got was dead.

Another sign of the you know what times...

So, according to some article I surfed through this morning, on the first work day after downgrading US Bonds, Standard and Poor's 500 Index lost 6.66% of its value. (And they said not to mind that lake that's turning blood red.) I've tried confirming this figure, but I stopped as trying to wade through financial speak gives me the willies. At any rate, it's too good not to mention.

Speaking of the early 1960's, I do have to say that the music was great. Today would have been Bobby Hatfield's birthday. He was half of the Righteous Brothers. And, yes, I still have my 45's of "You Lost That Lovin' Feeling", and the following:




Oh, man does that take me back to a world of bumper cars and skee ball or what?  You could be Nehi to a grasshopper... Imagine,  a world where you could watch performers doing their stuff live. Ohhhhhhhh, Myyyyyyyeee looooovvvve, myyyyyyee darlllllling..... Please don't tell me to keep my day job. So, hats off to Hatfield and a Hi-de-ho to the leader of one of the great, classic, girl groups: wish  birthday happies to the original badgirl herself, Ronnie Spector. And remember. she deserves extra props for having married Phil.




Now about that Chevy Impala....

Why I'm not completely surprised

One thing I mentioned in a comment over on Austanspace that I have not duly recorded here yet...

The other day - yes, in daytime - I had another bat in my room. This one was black. At one point, it flew right to the back door (actually the entrance to the place) which I had opened so it could fly out. It started to fly out into the daylight, but it was like an invisible wall stopped it. It turned around and flew straight down the galley kitchen and into my room. It circled for a few laps before vanishing.

There is one thing bothering me. I had the first bat in my room, a white bat at that, just after the June solstice. And this one visited at the end of the usual lammas days (sounds like a sale event).

White and black.
Beginning and End.
Alpha and Omega.

I also remember commenting that something evil had passed by.

I haven't figured out what all this means, if anything.

I am, however, beginning to hear of other indoor bat visits. One showed up at my landlord's real estate offices in a daylight visit. Somebody on ibrattleboro took note of a brown bat...

As the rumors go round and 'round, oh o oh ho, ohoh... 

Remember that "flying bird" that caused an airplane flight to turn around - it was just an "odd" item in the news. Well, it turns out that it wasn't a bird, after all.  It was a bat. Good God, is this all promo for the new Batman movie?

What if....

This past Saturday my humble little blog was given an award by my very excellent good friend over at Austanspace. I was delighted, of course, and the only reason I'm not quoting her directly is that it might come off as too egotistical. Oh, what the hell, I need an ego boost. (And this honor came along at just the right time.)

Quote, "sdt goes all over the place, from the political to the metaphysical to the musicals. He's also an old friend of mine."

I haven't had time to respond to her or even thank her, or tell her how it brightened an otherwise horrible day. So this is an apology for not getting here sooner. And now comes the penance part.
The awarding includes the responsibility to praise three other bloggers with less than 300 followers.

---------------------- Breaking News-----------------

 

Murder at the Coop

someone has murdered someone else (possibly shot in the head) at the Brattleboro Food Coop. Both the Main and Flat Street entrances to the parking lot have been closed by the police.

This just in from the Brattleboro Reformer (selected quote)

The Coop will be closed for the rest of the day. However, construction on the new building will continue as scheduled.

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I need a break... cheerio and be back soon...

Wake Up! (You're next)

Neither Dow Jones nor London is having a good day.

Much was set in motion at the end of last Friday, after the stocks & bond markets had closed for the weekend, when Standard & Poor's downgraded the United States' rating from AAA to AA+. Which is still higher than the best rating of the two other stock & bond services..

Somewhere along the who gives a shit trail, a few little problems do show up. Why, for instance, would anyone take the word of an information seller whose product is based on guesswork? And who managed to base its findings on figures with a two trillion dollar mistake? Why, could this be the same company that gave AAA ratings on "Collateralized Debt Obligations" (mortgages)? One of the three agencies to approve of the filthy lucre standard of money collecting (what was that part about placing bets on who and how many would fail) which got them and us into this mess in the first place?  And who then gave A ratings to Lehman Brothers right up to its buried in toxic ass-ets that started the falling dominoes?

Their official findings noted several key points. We have big debt. We're Americans, we like things big, dammit. We got that debt by trying to fix the mess those fuckers created. Anyway, we all knew there was some trouble ahead. But three of their findings aren't even being discussed, and those deal with the political situation of the country. A country in which a small faction of the unapproved merger of religion and politics, extreme right fundamentalists, were willing to destroy the country in order to save it. And let us get real for a moment - if the US goes down the tubes, most every other nation will be pulled along. These people were willing to create global havoc to get their way.

Even the conspiracy theorists have been left with mouths open, gurgling their fears. Since these kinds of actions have set  old banker procedures and mores in place, many people knew in advance that this downgrade was going to happen. The question is who gets to profit from creating such instability? Every buddy buy gold now. Who's selling? That this event would produce a world wide psychosis is predictable. Who profits from the disarray? Or is it a smokescreen so we can't focus on something else?

Standard & Poor, by the by, is owned by McGraw Hill. My days in large bookstore management go back to the 1970's.  At the time, McGraw Hill was a textbook publisher which also operated retail student needs stores on college campuses.. They suddenly saw the light - and were reborn as a discount book chain. As this conversion started to happen, there were any number of rumors that McGraw Hill had benefited from a huge influx of money - from mob sources. And Lyle Stuart (who had a fondness for publishing books other's wouldn't touch) circulated a newsletter with this information, and noted odd shipments for other companies that had suddenly turned up or was last seen on the McGraw Hill loading docks. Fell off a truck, honest! Mr. Stuart soon stopped his "for bookstores only" notes. (The one I remember was two pages, folded, and stapled together.)

Stuart, a well respected gambler, published a book which, on its flypaper book covers, claimed to have a police memo which linked Los Vegas casino and hotel operator Steve Wynn to the Genovese Crime Family. The book's text went on to disprove and refute much of the memo's claims. But Wynn sued anyway. He won. Stuart was ordered to pay $3 million defamation dollars. The verdict was later overturned by the Nevada Supreme Court. Stuart, however, had been forced into bankruptcy, and his publishing business taken over in one big gulp by another communications company.

So who's trying to throw their feces at what little is left of the United States' good name? Stuff like this doesn't just happen, it is planned. So are the London riots of the have-naughts. And the freedom riots of the Middle East. And S&P's downgrade which was built on a house of cards already blown away.
Who profits from fear? And... who is it that is really doing the fighting? I mean, Rupert Murdoch was kind of pushed out at the first chance...  or was he?

fin