It's the talking animals again

For the first Friday of the first official federal government shutdown (as opposed to what our Congressmorons do by way of work avoidance the rest of the time), I thought we all could use a laugh or two.

And since some of us—federal employees deemed non-essential, and people whose work hours are being cut back in anticipation of slack time from lack of business from said furloughed governmental employees—have more time on our hands, what would hit the spot better than yet another site with animal memes.

So here’s ANIMALS TALKING IN ALL CAPS. Of course.

I’m not exactly sure what the significance is of all caps—yes, some of them are clearly yelling; but some not so much.

Still—in these trying times, anything that amuses without involving a politician is at least worth a look.

Red October down

Tom Clancy has died at age 66, which means that the shelves of “military thrillers” that he pretty well pioneered is going to be left to lesser writers, of the testosterone-infused cookie-cutter variety. Clancy had a style and a verisimilitude to his writing that I expect will not be easy to replace.

I read his debut novel, The Hunt for Red October, when it was in galley proofs and being shopped around Hollywood. Pretty heady stuff for a first effort, and for something coming out of the Naval Institute Press. It’s not really my cup of tequila, but Clancy completely grabbed me with the pace. Seriously—it was indeed a page turner.

I have to say that the film eventually made (not by my employer) was a disappointment; for one thing, it never really was a hunt at all, the way it was in the book. The suspense factor was considerably lower. Plus—well, I like Connery fine, but his Scottish accent as Captain Ramius was just distracting. (Well—maybe that was just their way of showing that he was a Lithuanian amongst Russians? No, probably not.)

Clancy kind of disappeared up his own stealth propulsion system as his career progressed, but—fair dues—he was a storyteller of style and verve.

Shutdown blues: park it somewhere else

I thought it rather cherce that yesterday was the 123^rd anniversary of the establishment of Yosemite National Park, an occasion that Google honored with a Google Doodle:

Because of course Yosemite, and all national parks, is closed until Congress gets its collective head out of its own butt.

So it’s going to be a while.

A modest proposal...

You know, as much as I miss living in the DC area, I have to say I’m kind of glad that I’m not there at the moment because just hearing a few snippets of the posturing going on in Congress about using the budget as a weapon against the Affordable Care Act, via NPR, is enough to make me want to reach for the RPG. If I were there I’d be starting a crowdfunding campaign to put out a contract to terminate all 535 of them with extreme prejudice.

Honestly—we’d be doing the world a favor. The pity is that many of them have already spawned, and we’ve got a couple more generations of posturing, venal jellyfish coming down the pike.

Being a Liberal Arts major, naturally I turn to liberal arts methods of dealing with my disgust and fury at these self-serving twits who every year let what should be a normal, routine discussion on how we’re going to fund the country’s operations become a bloody crisis. Every year. Like it’s some enormous surprise. Every year. And while they’re grabbing at news cameras and bloggers, trying to ’splain why their position is anointed by almighty God and everyone else’s comes straight from [insert infernal, anti-American source here], I’m picturing…relief.

Or, at least not having to listen to their crap. I haven’t got as far as actual, you know, good government yet.

Here are my refuges.

I know that if there’s any sort of Higher Power at all, even as these sleazoids flap about in their $2500 suits, $350 haircuts, salon tans and lobbyist-subsidized surgical tune-ups, somewhere there are portraits of each and every one of them, reflecting the ever-increasing repulsiveness of souls so shriveled up as to pawn the lives of millions of Americans (not to mention screw the global economy) to score a few points with their most extreme constituents/paymasters.

Yes—I’m talking a “Picture of Dorian Gray”, times 535. A macabre museum full of paintings that make the most nightmarish expressionism look like a Kodak springtime moment.

In the absence of the Almighty, where are the Photoshoppers out there? They could be putting these together even as I write. They could compete with one another to show the corruption, greed and inhumanity that flow through these politicians’ veins where blood should be. I don’t get why no one’s done this—starting with Ted Cruz and John Boehner.

My second image is of Heracles’ fifth labor: cleaning the stables of King Augeas. The deal was: Heracles had to clean out the filth left by thousands of head of cattle, horses, goats and sheep in the Augean stables…in a single day. It was a dirty job; but back in those days, heroes didn’t stick at a little manure.

Well, okay—they didn’t have to deal with photo ops. But still…

Anyhow, to clean the stables, Heracles tore a hole in the wall at one side of the structure, and another opposite it. Then he dug trenches to divert the rivers Alpheus and Peneus through the stables.

(It worked, but then Augeas reneged on the deal, and eventually Heracles had to effect a do-over, in the form of getting rid of the Stymphalian birds—man-eating creatures that took over the countryside, destroying local crops, eating the citizens and producing highly-toxic, really disgusting guano. So—not too different from Congress, then.)

I wish some modern-day demi-god would run the Potomac through the Capitol—just gunge out all that bullshit accumulated over the past several decades. If some of the Congressional sheep and goats get washed away in the process, so much the better. I’m so sick of all of them—the nation couldn’t help but be improved if most of them were just swept out to the Chesapeake Bay.

No—looking at the magnitude of the problem, I realize that even in my scorn-fueled fantasies that wouldn’t work.

We’re gonna need a bigger river.

Women's voices: May your song always be sung

Well, we’re at the end of September; I’ve got two more wishes for my Voices to share. Then I’ll go into remission.

I’ve always loved Dylan’s “Forever Young”, and I’ve never heard anyone sing it better than Joan Baez.

I first heard it at that concert at Illini Hall, with my friend Gretchen, so it’ll always be associated with my first experience of mid-western summer humidity and cicadas. But it’s a good thing to wish my readers—that ever-youthful approach to life.

And I couldn’t leave you with a better finish than Eva Cassidy’s “How Can I Keep from Singing”.

On some of my worst days in the past ten years, every time I turned to this, I felt like I had it within me to turn things around. Cassidy has that quality in her, and I do hope I pick some of it up whenever I listen to her.

Peace out.

Gratitude Monday: Listening to the voices

After a month of focusing on the Voices that have inspired and comforted me, given me joy and allowed me the occasional escape, I’m grateful to have had them all throughout my life.

Frederica von Stade, Eva Cassidy, Nina Simone, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Bonnie Raitt, Cyndi Lauper, Martina McBride, Cecilia Bartoli, Nana Mouskouri, Linda Ronstadt, Donna Summer, Aretha Franklin—all of these extraordinary women (and many others I couldn’t fit into a mere month), with their amazing voices.

How lucky I’ve been to have come to know them, to sing along with them, to cry beside them.

Thanks, my sisters. Thanks.

Women's voices: Filled to the brim with girlish glee

We’ve had opera; we’ve had blues; we’ve had rock, folk, disco, pop, country and what-not. Time for Gilbert and Sullivan.

My favorite collaboration by them is The Mikado; strictly for the songs. Yeah, “Pour Wand’ring One” from The Pirates of Penzance is lots of fun, but from “If you want to know where we are” to “For he’s gone and married Yum-Yum”, I love every single piece.

And I am known for muttering “I’ve got a little list” as the occasion requires. It’s a great resource, Mikado.

It has a couple of trios; I’m giving you “Three little maids from school”. In this case, the three little maids are Lesley Garrett, Patricia Hodge and Lily Savage. (Video quality isn’t great, but you get my drift.)

Okay—I suppose if you want to get technical, Lily Savage—being Paul O’Grady—might not count as a woman’s voice; but 1) I wouldn’t be the one arguing the point with a Scouser; 2) I like the way Savage blends with Hodge and Garrett (and not much liking Garrett, I really appreciate the counterpoint); and 3) They’re my Voices—why can’t at least one of them be a drag queen?

They do pretty well with the fan work, too.

If you’re some sort of tight-butted purist, you can watch the bit from Mike Leigh’s brilliant Topsy-Turvy. I love that movie, too, not least for the joy of realizing that all the actors are actually singing their parts. Plus, Jim Broadbent is stupendously good.

Women's voices: I see my light come shining

Today I’m sharing another Voice on that whole love-at-a-certain-age thing. I can’t stress this enough: men just don’t even want to think about this kind of thing, much less talk about it.

Patty Loveless is another of the artists my sister’s mix tapes introduced me to while I was in the UK. I came across “Ships” on my own, and I was struck immediately by its charm. You know I hate Vegas—it’s my idea of Hell gone bad. The last time I was there, to go to CES in 2009, the best thing I could say about it was that I was so glad to get out of the place, even Seattle looked good by comparison.

But I’m not sure “Ships” would work in any other setting. The concept of two people who are worn down and worn out going to that conflation of fakery and greed with the vague idea of striking lucky…and then doing just that is the very definition of romance. Anyone can fall in love with someone if you’re young, good looking and energetic (viz: every movie shown on Hallmark Channel). But to find love like Eddie and Lily—well, just the thought of that brightens my day.

A song—and Voice—of an entirely different nature. Chrissie Hynde and the Pretenders were big when I was in college, and I’ve always had a soft spot for her—living the dream of leaving Akron, Ohio, for London…

And “I Shall Be Released”—well, like “The Times They Are A-Changin’”, one of the anthems of my youth.

Crank the volume up on this one, and sing it with Chrissie and me.

Apparently not mental health awareness month

Okay, here’s a story that comes out of the UK—one of those corporate head scratchers that every once in a while just leaves me completely gobsmacked.

It seems Asda, the supermarket chain that’s a wholly-owned subsidiary of Walmart, had listed this Halloween costume on its online catalog:

Do you notice what’s wrong with it? Because if you do, you’re presumably way ahead of everyone in Asda’s corporate merchandising and marketing departments. Not to mention whoever in legal and PR signed off on it.

I mean, really—was there no one in the chain of approvals who held up a hand, cleared their throat and said, “Um, hello…”?

Before the Twitterverse did, I mean.

Because pretty much most of the denizens of the platform dropped Asda in it in short order. On Wednesday the company was forced to apologize, remove the costume from its catalog and offer up a donation of £25,000 to the mental health charity Mind. (Asda competitor Tesco, which had a similar costume on offer, recalled its version and announced it would contribute some unspecified sum to Mind as well.)

I find it interesting that these companies are so out of it that it apparently didn’t occur to them that 1)Mental illness isn’t a particularly joking matter in general, much less after recent events in the Washington Navy Yard; or that 2) Social media is going to pick up on anything and ram it down your corporate throat.

Look,  I’m not the most politically correct human being on the face of the planet, and I acknowledge that this is Halloween we’re talking about, which is not the most tasteful holiday in the calendar. If Asda and Tesco had wanted to sell this particular costume, all they had to do was label it “ax murderer”, and they’d have been home free. You can’t really declare ax murderers a sensitive category; if it weren’t for them, Jamie Lee Curtis wouldn’t have had the career that allows her out there hawking Activia these days. (A horror of a different stripe.)

But—seriously, people? “Mental patient”? I’d ask, what were they thinking; but clearly they weren’t.

Women's voices: Beautiful like a rainbow

Since the Voices are how I characterize intuition—that gut feeling you get about a situation or a person, which you ignore or contravene at your own peril—let’s return to Cyndi Lauper, and one of her signature pieces.

Of course I’m talking about “True Colors”—the ability to see and appreciate people as they truly are, irrespective of how they try to dress themselves up or down.

The song is a natural as anthem for the LGBT movement, and Lauper has made use of it to support the equality cause. I’ve always seen it as a friendly kind of song—as in all about friendship.

My association with my second offering today is kind of the antithesis of friendship and the kind of relationship that supports. Not because “Caro mio ben” is an 18^th Century punk song but because…well.

Back in the vast primordial beginning of this century, O Best Belovèd, I got to know someone who, ah, comment dit-on? Who only ever listens to another person as a staging ground for producing what he thinks are either bons mots or Timeless Truths. For some reason, “Caro mio ben” came up as a topic, and I mentioned that I’ve sung it. (Come on—everyone’s sung it.) He proclaimed that it’s a great song by…Mozart. I replied to the effect that—according to my Schirmer’s sheet music—it’s by Giordani.

Without hesitation he responded, “…with music by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.”

Well, there you go.

(The really interesting thing about him and others like him is that they believe everything that comes out of their mouths. So fully that I’m willing to bet that they’d all pass polygraph tests, regardless of the porkies they produce.)

I don’t hold it against the song though.

As an aside—I would have given you another piece, actually by Mozart, from Bartoli, which is on my personal Bucket List. (It’s kind of interesting that the worse my voice gets, the more ambitious my aspirations become.) But “Exsultate Jubilate” runs to 14-15 minutes. A little long to keep you here. But I just love that sucker; as with “O mio babbino caro”, I’ve got multiple recordings of it. I first heard Frederica von Stade sing it way back in the 80s, but had a devil of a time finding a recording of her. (Which appears to be the case on YouTube, too.) Sumi Jo’s is quite interesting, and of course Kathleen Battle’s can’t be matched for purity of tone. But I always keep coming back to Bartoli; her voice has a quality of warmth that keeps me enthralled.