Vick, his dogs, his broken career, his looming 40 years in jail, etc.

Isn't this Vick dog fighting thing a bit overboard?! Before this case made indignation so popular, among pet owners especially, I would have guessed that if one staged a dog fight the neighbors could get seriously PO'd, and even bring about a 'Disturbing the peace' conviction, but 40 years in jail, and the ruination of a promising NFL career and universal shame?! Before this is over Vick is gonna get dragged by a pickup till his eyeballs drop out, and then given a public flogging.

In short it's over-kill, false piety, and racist.

What say you America!

Barry

 http://journals.aol.com/bbartle3/Vengeance/

After Thought #1

I've since writing this entry received an email giving details of the killing of dogs.  Butchering (my word) dogs cannot be tolerated, that's for sure. So I must back off from my former position. Added to that the high stakes gambling element and you have a sticky wicket. What climate allows that to happen?

BB3
 

AFTER THOUGHT #2

I dunno, #1 was posted out of respect for the love of dogs expressed indirectly by the email sender. Dogs are grand, and I've always loved them, even a Bull Terrier named Tyson (ha ha ha) I still own, now in the care of my friend in Puerto Escondido, Oaxaca.

But dogs are not people. Killing a dog must have a lesser penalty than killing a human being. It is insane, in an age when second degree murder of a human being can bring only 15 years in jail, while Vick is having dangled before him endless penalties. It's racism RACISM clear and simple-minded.

Barry

http://journals.aol.com/bbartle3/Vengeance/

 

Wars One & Two

To get a handle on WW2 I think some knowledge of WW1 is necessary.  I know almost nothing about WW1. Ken Burns, are you listening? In my rah rah enthusiasm for accounts of WW2, some of which I actually remember; for example I remember my father telling me what Russia "sitting on the fence" [1939] meant; he told me his version of Hitler flirting with Russia in an attempt to prevent them from interferring with Germany's expansion plans, I forget that young people today would just as soon forget all about the embarrassing mess the whole thing turned out to be; embarrassing because of all the death and destruction. 

After WW1 Germany almost starved to death. It was that starvation and humiliation, brought on by Allied reparation demands, which brought on, or helped bring on, the incomprehensible enthroning, exhaltation, of the cunning little rat, Hitler. What fun the dopey corporal had stamping his feet. It isn't just a joke, he practiced his act in front of a mirror.

My prejudice and contempt is so conditioned by having been alive all through WW2 I could never in a million years agree to drive a BMW.  Ha ha ha ha ha. Toyota is the most popular automobile in California, but not with me!  Mazda I've forgiven, ha!

It's stunning and sobering to realize what a dwindling minority one joins in old age.  One has to steel oneself because young people know EVERYTHING!  Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha......

[TWELVE O'CLOCK HIGH is the name of the Daryl Zanuch movie, released in 1949, which deals with training American bomber crews to be totally reckless with their lives: To the point of brain washing IMO.]

                          ...to be continued.....

Barry

 http://journals.aol.com/bbartle3/Vengeance/

 

More WW2 Chat

The first installment of Ken burns WAR (ww2) has come and gone. Now I know where Guadalcanal (sp?) is located. Not so far from Australia, just North of the equator. The Japs (allowable expression in talk about WW2; you know, Pearl Harbor n' stuff. Now, it's our honorable friend and ally Japan. You still haven't seen Sayonara? Japan helped us a great deal handle the war in Korea. I went on R&R to Japan from South Korea; that was background to a terrific, cross cultural love story with Marlon Brando making some fans and some money.)  Ken Burns lays it on the line about the WW2 sub-human, or, oh so human, Jap ferocity in the Pacific, and in China, and in the Philippines. I didn't know about the baking and eating babies, but I did know, from my Mother-In-Law, about the catching of Philippine babies with a bayonet. When a child she spied from cover terrified for her life. Thanks to America, The Japanese didn't set foot in Australia. They did enter Sydney Harbor in a mini-submarine; they sank a ferry in mothballs that had no engine.

The air war over Europe is a subject I look forward to hearing and seeing on the continuations of Ken Burns' documentary. I'm anxious to see if he takes a position on the brainwashing of American flyers to get them to enthusiastically fly into devastating attack over Germany. "Here's a new wrinkle," says the RAF dispacher to American bomber crews en route to Germany: "Their pilots are ordered to ram your aircraft if necessary." From: The Daryl Zanuch movie about "Daylight precision bombing."  

               to be continued..............

More moving pictures

Two strong dramas open this weekend. One has opened already, IN THE VALLEY OF ELAH from screenwriter/director Paul Haggis. The reviews have all been raves. Three Oscar winners are in the cast. The title refers to the place where David Slew Goliath. The subject of the movie is the Iraq War; but with some very odd exceptions none of the action takes place in Iraq; the power of the drama comes from "Indirection" (says The New Yorker.)

The other begins on TV tomorrow, Sunday. The Ken Burns documentary "WW2." The sum of the episodes is 14 hours.  I'll be interested to learn how it will go over with young people. That war was shorter than the Iraq war, and of course that still drags on and on.  WW2 required total mobilization and intense home front morale boosting. In view of the Iraq war being still in progress, groan, that rah rah spirit during WW2 might be presently off-putting, if in fact Ken Burns reports that war effort. It was amazing. A movie star was pleaded with to cut or hide her hair because American women in Defense plants were immitating her long hair and getting it stuck in machinery. At the end of the war a great movie opened foretelling the down side of the war, and dealt with the plight of returning soldiers out of step with the America they came home to.**** It'll be interesting to see how Burns deals with all the myriad facts about that dreadful war that killed hundreds of millions of people. Two million died in only one city: what is now St Petersberg, then called Stalingrad. Canibalism broke out. Soviet composer Dmitri Shostikovitch refused to leave the city so the Russians had him taken out by force. He was a National treasure. His work, called the Stalingrad Symphony is one hour and twenty minutes long. Incredibly stirring. At the end of one radio broadcast of that music the announcer, after a long pause, said, "Nothing puny about that work."

The Iraq War: how will it seem years from now when Ken Burns, God bless him, undertakes to document THAT fiasco.

**** The Best Years of Our Lives  [1946]

 

Luv,

Barry

 http://journals.aol.com/bbartle3/Vengeance/

 

 

Scalzi wrist slapped

 Comment from bbartle3
9/22/07 9:23 AM | Permalink

The cult of thinness is sick, and,
I believe, the fashion industry has
taken steps to get real.  In the
photo, however, what's really wrong for fashion
is that the poor woman is not ideally
proportioned to be camera-ready;
see how she's trying to squeeze her
hips and legs to be more narrow? If
she were to stand military straight,
she'd look a ton too bottom heavy.
(I know, you're trying to send a
'You're perfect, Honey' to your wife, maybe.)

In the current AIR FRANCE TV commercial
the one with a fake swimming pool into
which the female model dives, then 'swims'
to the other end, the swimmer looks as
if she was just freed from Dachau. She
is hideous!  She can't dive, and can't swim;

The only remedy is DO NOT fly Air France.

Barry
The French, I'll guarrantee did NOT make
that commercial, GD Madison Ave made
that commercial.

PS: I think it is poor form that you (John Scalzi)
never acknowledge receipt of my
Comments on your Entries.

(Scalzi treats me as if I were a leper!

All I do is tell the truth! Shoot...)

Holes In The Wall

Wouldn't mind getting back on the subject of "Interviews" simply because they become almost effortlessly comic, fun, entertaining and convivial. Blogs (in practice does 'blog' mean exactly the same as 'journal' or is there a semi-secret difference?) I've noticed, are relatively unmolested by excessive advertising, which is a huge plus. On AOL's most visited message board, DO YOU BELIEVE? Ford Mercury advertising is so outrageously greedy you'd wait many minutes to be able to move on; I've settled that by not going back there anymore (?)after leaving a complaint.  "Belief" is a wonderful subject to write about, think about, and experience, but it sure does quickly lead to arguments and ill-will. Ha! Snippets of Scripture get flung at each other.  Does no good of course, just leads to ever more acrimony.  I'd like to talk solely about 'Belief' without any compulsion to 'sell' that belief, just give an accurate report of subjective experience. For reasons not very clear to me, that is not going to happen. Ha ha!

Today, as on some other days, I must admit I have no subject. Well, there's no rule you HAVE to leave sage words here is there?

Maybe I'll scribble some notes before coming back so I'll have a rough outline of what I want to say.

More and more I've noticed how much I enjoy taking a very small digital (well the cheap ones are ALL small) camera everywhere with me. I use just the still picture part. Composing ordinary scenes so that a design pops out being the goal. Not easy. One of my favs is a late night shot with my vehicle in the foreground, with the front of my Bank in the middle distance showing the four 'Holes in the wall' where you take out money; I invented the name to amuse my children. At another branch of the same bank the 'Hole-in theWall' is in a separate, protected large room you can enter only with your bank card. Gives me the creeps. There are at least twelve 'Holes in the wall' in that room. It too is open 24 hours. A digital camera, even a cheap one, can handle the exposure demands of the outdoor shot at night with zero trouble: amazing!  The vehicle, close to the camera is exposed by weak flash, and the outdoor holes in the wall lit by the good bank. With film and the very best camera it'dtake hours to get that shot exposed correctly.

The visual arts, for me, lead to tranquility more often than do music and writing. Not that I compose music, no no no, can't even identify one single note, boo hoo. Wouldn't it be great to know how Beethoven put all that noise down on paper?! I think about it all the time. Do you know anyone who composes classical music? (At the movies pop music is composed by one guy at the piano, with another guy standing at his elbow saying, "That's it, that's it!" and B'way history is made.  Ha ha ha ha....!)

Luv ya.

Barry

 

Marriage et al

" I don't follow why one has additional responsibilities if one enters a biracial marriage."   - Sheria

 

 

Thanks loads for your kind, patient, well thought-out observations.

 

When one gets married you first go to the marriage license

place to get virtual 'permission.'  Marriage is a public matter.

That's why, for example, same-sex marriage is such a hot button

social issue (I never use the word "issue" so plse overlook this

lapse, ha!) that is still fermenting in the body politic.

 

I am in a biracial marriage. I've posted photos to prove it.

One has to steel oneself for the inevitable protest. In my case

the biracial factor allows people to pontificate about the

unsuitability of the union, a ton of which BS I've had to endure.

Regardless of the age of my wife there would not have been one single murmur of criticism if my wife were Caucasian. The age difference acts as a cover behind which to be racist.

 

The truth is OJ married White trash.

 

            :  -  ]

 

Barry