Question for the room: Is there an actress as fantastic in every sense as Tilda Swinton? I don’t think so, so let’s close the discussion on that one right here, and instead speak of the glory available to all Netflix subscribers, which is to say “Okja,” streaming now.
I heard an interview with the co-screenwriter, Jon Ronson, on the way back from Columbus. The role of Netflix in producing films isn’t without controversy; hardcore film fans want films to be films, projected in theaters and watched by audiences. Netflix makes films to be streamed on televisions, which is where most Americans watch movies, these days.
I guess, when a Netflix-produced film debuted at the Cannes film festival, the audience booed. I’ll leave that debate for those who care about such things. But I was struck by something Ronson said in the interview, about how often film studios say no, but Netflix says yes. And in this case, the “yes” was to an action comedy that isn’t for children, with plenty of social commentary, and half its dialogue in Korean, with subtitles.
But it’s so! Fabulous! And funny, and warm, and touching, and a satire of modern life, spectacle and…TED talks, I guess. Tilda plays the CEO of a rapacious, relentlessly greenwashed Monsanto-like company that is breeding a super-pig to feed the world. It’s a 10-year project, with specimens distributed all over the world. The Korean pig is the Okja of the title, and boy, is she cute. What’s more, she’s spent the last 10 years becoming best friends with an even cuter girl, who is now a young teen. With the decade up, the company is coming for its property, trailed by a film crew making propaganda to flatter it.
Things get complicated from there. But it’s a wonderful journey, with what you’d expect — chases, jeopardy, complications — but produced with wit and verve and all very fun to watch. Even the soundtrack is surprising. When was the last time you heard “Annie’s Song,” really?
The following night we watched something very different, also on Netflix — “American Anarchist,” the story of how a 19-year-old working out his anger at the government wrote “The Anarchist Cookbook” and opened Pandora’s box in the process. Since 1970, the book has been found in the possession of school shooters, terrorists and ne’er-do-wells of all stripes.
The author, William Powell, went on to do real good with his life, as a teacher of special-needs children all over the world. But the book trailed after him like a demon, coming up time and again. The most powerful scene in the film is when director Charlie Siskel, who comes off as a bit of a scold here, lays out all the cases, many of which Powell appears to not even know about. He cops to Columbine, but there were more, many more, and you can see Powell deflating as it goes on. Powell was (he died last year) clearly highly intelligent, and as he points out in the story, all the information was freely available in the New York City public library, on open shelves. (He mainly used military manuals.) But his story is the 1.0 version of today’s social-media nightmares, where nothing ever goes away, no matter how much your repudiate and walk back and deny.
Should a man be held accountable throughout his life for something he wrote when he was 19? That’s the question.
And that concludes today’s movie reviews. What happened in the world today?
Eh, who cares? The president is in Europe, and doom will surely follow.
Have a swell weekend!
CathyC said on July 7, 2017 at 12:28 am
Ahhh, Babe. Thank you for that.
31 chars
Dexter said on July 7, 2017 at 2:10 am
After I watched the last episode of S5 “Orange is the New Black” (I suppose lesbian porn-watchers didn’t bat an eye at all the very-graphic lesbian sex this season, but to someone like me who never goes to porn sites…wow, this season took the sex up a few notches, and showed it all), I then began watching “Witnesses”, perhaps the most dismal, weird fucking miniseries ever, and all in French at that. Some asshole is digging up fresh corpses and posing them in model homes, and tracking targeted folks down and shooting at them. I am not sure I wanna finish this crap…or does it miraculously get better? Comedy lovers must be going wild as Netflix went deep-pockets and released many new comedy specials…Sarah Silverman made me lol…alone!
We had to buy a new clothes dryer…Lowe’s had one somebody bought in a set, was not happy with the controls, returned it and we bought it at a whopping discount…it took ten goddam days to be delivered, making my desire and longing for my very own truck zoom nearly out of control…I actually test-drove one but reality set back in…I don’t need a pickup truck…I need a big cargo van. Why? I just like to haul stuff when I feel like it. Carla Lee was really getting tired of life-without-dryer. And I have a shit-ton of soiled Jockey stuff.
1305 chars
Heather said on July 7, 2017 at 4:46 am
Dexter, yeah, “Witnesses” was pretty intense. I was watching a bunch of foreign crime shows for a while. “Spiral” is sort of the French “Law and Order,” and takes a pretty cynical view of the French system. I watched a few seasons because I liked the actors but damn, it got depressing. I enjoyed “The Tunnel” too, although it had too many red herrings, I thought, in the end.
Nancy, I went to grade school with Charlie Siskel–haven’t seen too much of his work though. He was a little bit of a bully back then.
514 chars
ROGirl said on July 7, 2017 at 5:50 am
Shout out for Tatiana Maslaney of “Orphan Black.” New season just started, I like to save up a few episodes before I start watching again. She has been amazing, I’m partial to Alison, the suburban housewife clone.
213 chars
Dorothy said on July 7, 2017 at 5:55 am
Not gonna lie. “Annie’s Song” is on my iPod and when I sing along with it in my car, sometimes I get teary eyed because “Let me drown in your laughter, let me die in your arms” just slays me – and always reminds me my husband had colon cancer and we might have faced that prospect – him dying. Maybe not in my arms, but nonetheless… just makes me cry. And we laugh together A LOT.
385 chars
David C. said on July 7, 2017 at 6:45 am
My older brother had a copy of “The Anarchist Cookbook” and I read it a couple of times. Steve never was especially violent, except with me and my younger brother, but that’s what older brothers do, right? I’m sure he picked it up out of curiosity at the head shop where he bought his hash pipes and underground comix. Anyway, we probably tossed it along with most everything else in his collection after he died. In some ways, I wish I still had it. Not that I want to blow anything up or garotte anyone, just as a sort of cultural artifact of the 70s. I really wish I kept his comix collection (Freak Brothers, Herold Hedd, and a bunch of other stuff). I thought they were rather funny back then, and I wonder if I would still think they’re funny or if I would think I was an idiot for thinking they were funny.
813 chars
basset said on July 7, 2017 at 7:21 am
Wonder Wart Hog. Fat Freddy’s Cat.
35 chars
coozledad said on July 7, 2017 at 8:31 am
Sixties and early seventies drug culture was blunt trauma stupid. Draft dodging white hipsterdom took the lowest paths to pussy and public intoxication they could bellycrawl. Having partied some with its burned out stragglers all I remember is how close a fit your average marijuana sucking athlete was with a Bircher or Klansman.
When cocaine arrived in significant enough quantities to fully liberate their inner assholes, we were well on the road to the white nationalist state. Charlie got his Helter Skelter, but his extended family was suffering from erectile dysfunction and drug related PTSD by the time they cued up behind Trump.
642 chars
coozledad said on July 7, 2017 at 9:23 am
America you have done FUUUCKED up.
https://twitter.com/GaryLegum/status/883157854282240002
Trump’s just vomiting up the hate speech that’s the prelude of every pogrom. This is a golf clap for Russia’s native savagery. The Republicans are priming themselves to wallow in blood.
280 chars
Joe Kobiela said on July 7, 2017 at 9:25 am
Shameless is my go to on Netflix, currently starting the 4th season, William C Macey is great.
Pilot Joe
105 chars
Randy said on July 7, 2017 at 9:29 am
I would love to see Okja in a theatre. Times change.
52 chars
Suzanne said on July 7, 2017 at 9:29 am
We don’t have Netflix. Our internet connection is not great.
Can’t wait to hear about Trump’s meeting with Vladimir. Going nuts listening to talking heads on the radio about what he should say & do & how he should act. I want to scream. They act like he’s a normal, intelligent man who was well briefed on the current state of affairs. Uh, no. He’ll do & say whatever pops in his head and then tweet about it. Flummoxed as to why so many seem not to grasp that there is a near lunatic at the head of the government.
530 chars
Sherri said on July 7, 2017 at 9:42 am
Cognitive dissonance, Suzanne. It’s the only way I can explain it. It’s too scary for many people to admit that there’s an unstable child in charge of the nuclear arsenal, so they just pretend it’s not that bad. And the Republicans seem to believe that the greater good of handing over the country to the .1% justifies everything.
330 chars
coozledad said on July 7, 2017 at 9:45 am
Coordinated campaign to suppress newsgathering and work the dumbasses up into a lather:
https://twitter.com/Amy_Siskind/status/883137256499945473
148 chars
Icarus said on July 7, 2017 at 9:52 am
if you checked out “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” and “The Anarchist Cookbook” they started a special file on you….okay maybe not.
“Should a man be held accountable throughout his life for something he wrote when he was 19? That’s the question. ”
Good question, it seems to come up all the time when a politician is running for some office, or some otherwise model citizen is about to receive some reward or honor….we are fascinated with people’s past dirty laundry even though most of us know the person we were at 19 is not the same person at 29, 39, etc.
I guess it’s not a one-size fits all answer.
638 chars
coozledad said on July 7, 2017 at 10:05 am
Sure they’re fucking thieves and traitors, but let’s keep kissing that Republican ass.
https://twitter.com/DeathAndTaxes/status/883114607442886656
They’re going to purge the voter rolls. Middlebrow punditry will lap this up.
230 chars
Deborah said on July 7, 2017 at 10:22 am
I’m waiting for Longmire to start its new season on Netflix. I’m glad you have given me some other ideas for shows to watch too.
We had a weird storm in Abiquiu yesterday, it got dark and extremely windy, then it rained but the drops never hit the ground, they evaporated in the air. There’s a NM name for that kind of storm but I’ve forgotten what it is.
I finished reading a book that the guy who runs the woodworking shop that made our doors and windows loaned us, “Querencia” by Stephen Bodio. It was pretty good, about how he and his girlfriend who was 20 years older moved to a town called Magdalena, about 2 hours south of Albuquerque sort of near the Very Large Array, in the 80s. Bodio does a good job of describing NM, very much a sportsman, he also writes for magazines and has written a few other books. Some of you here might enjoy it.
856 chars
Sherri said on July 7, 2017 at 10:28 am
Do I want to be held responsible for what I did at 19? Of course not! Should I be? Still today?
I think it depends. What did I do? What have I done to accept responsibility for that action, and make amends to the people harmed?
When Bill Clinton said he didn’t inhale, that was a refusal to accept responsibility for his action, and he was rightly criticized, even though his action harmed no one. Ted Kennedy always had a shadow on him no matter how much good he did in the world, because that didn’t make amends for his actions around the death of Mary Jo Kopechne.
574 chars
Julie Robinson said on July 7, 2017 at 10:35 am
Our son keeps raving about Orphan Black, think I’ll give it a try. On our latest plane trips we took advantage of the Netflix download feature to catch up on a couple of Poirot’s we never watched. Somehow we missed the last six or seven episodes and they were the perfect length for the flights.
We got lucky and were seated together on both flights; also got TSA Pre-Check and only brought our personal items aboard since we now have everything we need in a closet at the Orlando house. Packing is a breeze, and I love not having to wait for checking a bag and then picking it up once we’ve arrived. Our daughter told me that by the time I move there, I will have already moved. Haha. She doesn’t appreciate losing a closet.
Meanwhile VP MyPants is inspiring us all with his soaring rhetoric on the space program, recalling that of John Kennedy: “We will put American boots on the face of Mars”. Isn’t that a lovely, militaristic image?
945 chars
Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on July 7, 2017 at 10:39 am
I watched two “Shameless,” couldn’t do it anymore. Too much like work.
70 chars
Dorothy said on July 7, 2017 at 10:47 am
My husband loves Shameless; I can’t get out of the room fast enough when he’s watching it.
90 chars
coozledad said on July 7, 2017 at 10:51 am
We will put American boots on the face of Mars.
I, for one, can get behind the idea of Trump and Pence stamping on the face of Mars, forever.
149 chars
Sherri said on July 7, 2017 at 10:52 am
I love Orphan Black, and Tatiana Maslany does such an amazing job playing multiple characters that you forget it’s the same actress at times. Alison is great, and I love Helena, too. The scenes where Sarah pretends to be Alison are amazing.
240 chars
FDChief said on July 7, 2017 at 11:12 am
I never thought I’d live to see a U.S. president call for “Blut und Ehre” and I lived through Nixon.
101 chars
coozledad said on July 7, 2017 at 11:32 am
His Ehre, our Blut.
19 chars
Dave said on July 7, 2017 at 11:54 am
I tried to watch “Shameless” and quickly realized that they are not people I wanted to know.
Deborah, I got mired down in the last season of Longmire, I’d read all the books and it was getting far away from the books. Honestly, the books aren’t really all that exciting and I understand that they needed a plot with continuity, but I lost interest. I think I got up to episode 3, I think I’ll watch them when the last season is about to be released, rumored to be September.
Suzanne at #12, you said it better than I.
525 chars
FDChief said on July 7, 2017 at 12:21 pm
Silly me…I always figured that the baseline for elected office in the United States was “At least don’t be a fucking Nazi.” Yeah, yeah, I know; low bar. But, hey, look at the American Public. “Here Comes Honey Boo-boo”? Seriously? So. Low bar.
And yet, one that the Tangerine Toddler seems unable to clear.
WASF
325 chars
coozledad said on July 7, 2017 at 1:00 pm
This will play well with Republicans and the people who view them as daddies. Genuflect, genuflect!
https://twitter.com/richardhine/status/883333378799521793
158 chars
Bitter Scribe said on July 7, 2017 at 1:08 pm
This “movies should be on a big screen” crap doesn’t cut it for me. It reminds me of the scene in “Saint Joan” where the guy complains that, instead of admiring books for their beautiful illustrations and gilt edges and so on, people are actually READING them.
260 chars
Jeff Borden said on July 7, 2017 at 1:20 pm
Apparently, the matched set of neo-Nazis –Steve Bannon and Stephen Miller– wrote the garbage the Orange King delivered in Poland. It’s clear these fuckers won’t be satisfied until we’re in some kind of war, whether it’s more madness in the Middle East or a dustup with North Korea. It’s fits with their worldview that Presidents Obama and Bush were pussies because they didn’t want to rumble.
Meanwhile, Page One of the NYT has the dispiriting story about China stepping in wherever we choose to leave while the E.U. is shrugging us off and working on new trade alliances with Japan.
It’s hard to keep my hopes up these days. The assaults on so many things I believe in –voting rights, human rights, environmental protections, science and research– are constant and unending. And dog knows what will happen to the American economy if the GOP successfully muscles that awful health care replace through the legislative process, but it’s likely to be awful. And then there is the highly successful effort to delegitimize journalism, which has convinced at least one-quarter of our fellow citizens that they cannot believe anything they read or hear. Funny, isn’t it? All those “freedom” loving gobs who flocked to the Orange King’s rallies are perfectly fine with having their information spoon fed to them by the government. I thought they were anti-government?
We’re really fucked.
1394 chars
coozledad said on July 7, 2017 at 1:21 pm
The source of Trump’s white nationalist speech.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rising_Tide_of_Color_Against_White_World-Supremac
Dietrich Eckart and Hitler ate this shit with a spoon, too. Just sayin’.
210 chars
Bitter Scribe said on July 7, 2017 at 1:35 pm
Dave @26: I watched “Shameless” for a while, mostly because I adore Emmy Rossum (and they weren’t shy about having her perform nude). But the show succumbed IMO to “just because we can” syndrome. The dealbreaker for me was when one of the kids got himself circumcised at age 16 to ingratiate himself with his girlfriend, and they went into excruciating detail about every aspect of the procedure and its complications.
418 chars
Scout said on July 7, 2017 at 1:51 pm
Forgive me if this was covered already, but I was absolutely charmed by Anne with an E on Netflix. Just finished season 1 and looking forward to season 2. I’m needing sweet escapism these days to forget about current events for a few hours, nothing too heavy. Grace and Frankie, Archer and VEEP have been fun too.
We finally decided to bite the bullet and get a hot tub spa for the backyard. We convinced ourselves it’s a health and therapy purchase. We won’t even bother to heat it until November; we’ll just sit in the water and enjoy the jets, the fountain and the LED lights and some cool beers or sangrias. The concrete pad is poured and the electric is run so we’re ready for delivery which should happen early next week.
Whatever it takes to survive the daily damage of the tRump reign of terror, amirite?
818 chars
Charlotte said on July 7, 2017 at 2:36 pm
Dexter — you live in the country, right? No clothesline? Certainly cheaper than a truck …
92 chars
coozledad said on July 7, 2017 at 3:25 pm
A former Republican candidate for Vice President, A white separatist and a methmouthed grifter walk into a bar; the bartender says “What’ll you have, Sarah Palin.”
https://twitter.com/nycsouthpaw/status/883395198004240387
Nazi trash.
239 chars
St Bitch said on July 7, 2017 at 3:40 pm
I’ve been lurking so long now that my out-of-date would-be comments have piled up almost insurmountably. And I’m still paralyzed by grief over Mom…not her death, which was gentle and timely and at home, in her own bed with me at her side…but by the overwhelming intensity of missing her in all of her demented glory.
In the mix has also been the near death of my older sister, who is a Professor at U of Arizona. She contracted the worst case of meningitis they’ve ever seen at Tucson Medical Center…caused by staph infection from a pain injection that got into her central nervous system. Upon flying home from Mom’s Memorial service here in Iowa, she went straight into the ER. After months of pure hell in intensive care, the disease that had attacked both her spine and brain began to recede, rendering her quadriplegic. Now, though, I’m happy to report that she’s recovered movement in her ‘extremities’, and has embarked on a long, laborious road of recovery. Above all, miracle of miracles, her “big beautiful overly active brain” (as a former student describes it) has survived in tact, and she’s summoned her considerable inner resources to invest a positive, uncomplaining, knowledge-seeking approach to this latest manifestation of life’s curve balls…while those of us who’ve had the privilege of tending to her; giving her frequent sips of water, feeding her, brushing her teeth, massaging her feet and (still useless) lotus flower hands, reading to her (“The Pearl” while I was there…revisiting our junior high school introduction to Steinbeck was a revelation for both of us), have been able to find joy in the smallest of triumphs…like my sister being able to sit upright, unsupported, on the side of her hospital bed for a whopping 10 minutes, though she needs to grit her teeth and power through to do so. I’ve now returned to Mom’s condo to allow my bittersweet haunting/grieving to play out, and to begin to pick up pieces of my paradoxically wide-open and circumscribed future.
So, with my heart raw and ready to bleed, I’m deeply touched by MichaelG’s passing. Maybe it was thoughts of him that prompted you to revisit Prospero and Moe, Deborah. What insights did that retrospective evoke?
I stumbled across the Tilda Swinton interview on PBS after watching the latest episode of “The Great British Baking Show” (a fav and primary source of soothing escape, the latest season of which I wouldn’t have know had started if I hadn’t been lurking here); and immediately cruised over to Netflix to take in “Okja”. Once again, Nancy, you have expressed eloquent delight in something that has particularly captivated me!
I’ve been suffering from cognitive dissonance every time I hear ‘President’ and ‘Trump’ in the same sentence.
Sherri, congrats on your Andrews award…and for representing a bit of estrogen among all that testosterone. As a (retired) IT professional, I’m interested in a more granular description of your particular contribution to that system…the tools you used…your slice of expertise. It might be boring in this context, but I do like this added dimension to your strong Southern-rooted political voice.
Coozledad, I’m so glad I confronted my (apparently) deep-seated Midwestern middle-class WASP prudery in order to overcome my initial aversion to your shocking, deliberately offensive posts. It was Brian Stouder’s coaxing on Laura Lippman’s site (“Come on in, the water is fine”), and Nancy’s implicit high regard, that prompted me to cultivate an appreciation for your prodigious droppings. I’ve been amply rewarded, both directly and indirectly, by doing so. Your return to this community makes me think of the movie “Sully” when they’re coming in for the emergency landing and the loudspeaker is blaring “Brace! Brace! Brace!”. It’s not only that we have to brace for you…brace for your onslaughts and word-weaponized attacks, especially if we happen to be on the wrong end of any of them…but more importantly, that we need to brace for a probable (collective and individual) crash landing, and you’re the one wielding the loudspeaker with ear-splitting warnings. Brace! Brace! Brace! I prefer to be provoked and woked.
4223 chars
Scout said on July 7, 2017 at 4:17 pm
St Bitch, please accept my condolences for the loss of your Mother and my sincere hope that your sister continues to improve. That was quite a post. I would love to hear from you more often.
And I don’t say this often enough: I’m so happy you’re back, cooz. You were missed.
277 chars
Deborah said on July 7, 2017 at 4:25 pm
St. B, what an eloquent comment. Sorry to hear about your mother and sister, what an ordeal! As for what I found in my archive search, it was delightful to remember the good times. I had asked about MichaelG a few days prior to Nancy’s sad news, I probably was unconsciously seeking solace when I perused the archives of those no longer with us.
345 chars
coozledad said on July 7, 2017 at 4:31 pm
I’m simply puzzled as to why people find English more offensive than torture; why people would silently overlook the denial of basic healthcare to millions of people; why people would welcome the rhetoric of 19th century race science wedded to American foreign policy goals. These things are the real vulgarity, the persistent blankfaced evil of American mediocrity.
People in every damn age have been hoodwinked by evil masquerading as grace. They like the rococo structures of bowing and scraping, and they’re blissfully and willfully ignorant that their neighbors are likely to pick up the torches one night and visit the angel of death upon them. Once the pogroms begin, the only niceties left to consider are the proper methods of begging for one’s life. Or one’s child’s life.
That’s when civility reveals its function. It’s to mask the existence of that all devouring worm until the worm has devoured all that will stop it. And There. Is. Nothing. More. Vulgar.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Jewish_pogroms_in_the_Russian_Empire#/media/File:Ekaterinoslav1905.jpg
There are people on this blog who have endorsed the use of torture. There are people who believed that Sarah Palin was a breath of fresh air. There are people who have said “The Southern Poverty Law Center has outlived its usefulness.”There are people who have said they voted for Trump “to piss off libs.” And there are people who think that calling those people out is unnecessary or rude. That is bewildering in its fucked uppedness, but ultimately unsurprising in a nation of craven fuckwits.
1584 chars
Sherri said on July 7, 2017 at 5:21 pm
Oh, St. Bitch, my heart goes out to you.
And thank you for the kind words. I worked primarily on file system permissions. In particular, we had access control lists, which were unusual back then. Here’s a description of ACLs in AFS, though it covers more than what I was involved in, because AFS still exists and has been evolving: https://www-01.ibm.com/software/stormgmt/afs/manuals/Library/unix/en_US/HTML/UserGd/auusg007.htm#HDRWQ44
AFS was built on Unix, written in C, on Sun workstations. The tools back then were pretty primitive compared to today. The windowing system on the workstations was one built by another group in the Andrew project, and mostly we used emacs to edit code. I can’t even remember what we used for source control.
When the group of us were together, we we talking about how insane it was that CMU let this small group of us, most of whom had no experience writing production code, build the campus-wide file system that everybody on campus used. Admittedly, people weren’t as dependent on computers then as now, and it’s not like critical things like payroll or stuff like that were on our system. But all the students, professors, and administrators used it. We’d get phone calls from VPs if we broke something.
I had just left grad school. My husband took a break from grad school. A couple of others had just finished grad school. We were used to writing code that was used by maybe tens of people, and now we were writing code used by thousands of people, but the ignorance and arrogance of youth was on our our side, I guess. We had a great design, and that was the key.
I didn’t have any specific expertise, other than being a systems programmer, by which I mean someone comfortable in the world of operating systems and file systems and database systems, the big complicated areas that no one notices unless they break. I’ve found that that comfort and expertise has translated well to a variety of environments.
1970 chars
coozledad said on July 7, 2017 at 5:27 pm
Sherri: My wife used to joke about being a “prog anal.” They ought to just shorten the job title to “Peggy.”
108 chars
Charlotte said on July 7, 2017 at 6:34 pm
Oh St. B! What a saga. If you get Amazon Prime — you might go find Tilda Swinton’s documentary “Four Seasons in Quincy” — with John Berger — they were friends for decades, and it’s just lovely. I actually bought the DVD for blue days …
241 chars
Sherri said on July 7, 2017 at 6:44 pm
Cooz, I think your wife and I would get along really well.
58 chars
Sherri said on July 7, 2017 at 7:07 pm
Good news from Washington, as the wannabe bathroom police fail again to garner enough signatures for an initiative: http://www.thestranger.com/slog/2017/07/07/25274180/for-the-second-year-in-a-row-anti-trans-activists-fail-to-gather-enough-signatures-for-their-ballot-measure
275 chars
LAMary said on July 7, 2017 at 8:28 pm
Deborah, is the rain that never hits the ground called virga there? That’s what the weather people here call it.
112 chars
Suzanne said on July 7, 2017 at 10:26 pm
I’ve been thinking about breaking down & subscribing to the WaPo. I just might do it.
My sympathy on all the trauma your family has suffered, St B. Hopefully your sister will continue to improve.
202 chars
alex said on July 7, 2017 at 11:04 pm
Hubby’s away for ten days and hates spicy food. I lurves it. So here I am at 11 PM with a 15-quart pot of chili on the stove with a can of pureed chipotle/adobo sauce mixed in, and I’ll probably be up into the wee hours for it to cool off enough to refrigerate. No poblanos in the store tonight, just Anaheims, so I sliced up eight of them, along with four big yellow sweet onions and two and three-quarter pounds of ground sirloin. About to have my first bowl of the guilty pleasure and wash it down with a Jack on the rocks. And that’s my reward for this abbreviated work week.
All kinds of turnover in the workplace that goes unexplained and it’s always unsettling. Lot of it lately. Demoralizing.
704 chars
Deborah said on July 7, 2017 at 11:47 pm
Oh my god, that sounds delicious, Alex. I’ve been craving chili for days and had decided to make some tomorrow when I’m back in Santa Fe. In Abiquiu it’s too hot to cook on the wood burning stove inside the cabin and way too windy and dry (so dangerous) to cook on the fire pit out on the point, so we’ve been eating a lot of what I’ve started to call rabbit food. That’s lots of cut up raw vegetables basically and it’s getting old. I’ve decided to buy a two burner Coleman stove to cook stuff out on the stair landing that we call our summer kitchen because it’s where I wash dishes.
585 chars
Dexter said on July 8, 2017 at 1:55 am
I live in a little city, 2 miles from a public field where I dog-walk, but I don’t live in the country…I own and reside in a house in the low-rent quadrant and we deal with assholes burning trash in a no-burn town, vehicles of all types with nary a muffler among the lot, and dozens of LOUD ! children playing in Walmart kiddie pools.
We have a clothesline and was I ever glad I did not de-commission it this spring. It came in handy these past days. The multi-vehicle thing is just a character defect…once I had seven registered, insured, and running cars, trucks, and vans, and a couple motorcycles…none of these had any resale value and when I got tired of one, it went to auto salvage and the cash I got went for lotto tickets, which never amounted to , as they say…a tinker’s damn, or dam. Either one is OK, I was told.
The movie “Loving” , about the 1967 Supreme Court case of the interracial Loving family, and the events leading up to the conclusion, was a really good film.
996 chars
Dexter said on July 8, 2017 at 2:14 am
Condolences out to St. Bitch. Leaving a loved one and moving on sans them is tough. Your sister’s ordeal sounds like it’s time to call Jacoby and Meyers, or The Sam Bernstein Law Firm, or Elk & Elk, personal injury lawyers….
Midsummer reading: I am ready to begin Kerouac’s “The Town and The City”. It’s small print and seventy-‘leven pages. Gon’ take me a’while. It is his first novel.
401 chars