El Libertador

Rubio is best known on Twitter (sic) for posting inoffensive out of context Bible passages -- Cody Fenwick

I was in poor form last evening. but Kenney's account handlers didn't block me for my emotive outburst when Philadelphia's mayor by auto-renewal began pontificating to Trump about personal liberty and diversity. What liberty? I forget, honestly, for it was some time ago, whether this was a direct rebuttal to my plaint, or a general admonishment, but a Tweeter once said that we all have the right to refuse medical services. This is true. I can end Medicaid today and then take the time to figure out what to do with my significantly weakened lower extremities in thirty mile an hour winds (winds which have eased a dangerous battle with acid reflux; I was in serious jeopardy last week on that Medicare single size foam mattress) and then try to run. And this has been the predominant need underlying my inability to get the legal system to correct for the abuses I have suffered under Presbyterian Homes since they inducted me as tenant to abuse for life. Get out. This is exactly what Huston solicits out of Calhern as Emmerich in Asphalt Jungle, still a taut film which opened up a multitudinous complexity when dealing with the American underbelly, even drawing in the cripple as facilitator via James Whitmore as Gus. The character's scoliosis is not pronounced, but is nonetheless referenced by the safecracker's wife as her husband lies dying due to accidental gunshot, and this was the sewage of 1950, the tail end of a rather elongated liberal reign, twilight presided over by Truman. Today Venezuelans flock to Columbia, which is cause for concern given the recent truce with the cartels. Rubio's tweet of Qadaffi isn't "revolting" as it pertains to the actual fact of the Obama's facilitation of rebels who turned Libya into ungovernable territory. It actually gives Maduro supporters legs to stand on, pivoting against the power the US can apply. The American Scholar who has a contributing column about Chavez and his fortunes tied to oil never envisioned this. She was a sophisticated contributor, but style is not a policy application against an economics of smash and grab in conjunction with poor health outcomes for indigenous strongmen. I myself remain somewhat hawkish for the greater good. We shouldn't want South America falling apart at the seams, igniting something worse in the continuing spread of symptoms toward lower living standards. It is also noted that Bolivar became dictator of Peru, liberating the natives into the Shining Path, and those preoccupied leftist writers for a very long time. Bon Voyage.

Spaghetti Spin Offs

This thing needs to be destroyed.-- John Huston's Cronkrite as bastard

I unloaded some of my ever bridled fury at Niume's official twitter account Friday evening, for those of you paying attention to the needy outlets embedded in developmental damage, and of course it wasn't fair of me, for those of us old enough to remember what life was like writing penny articles before the bloated carcass otherwise known as the Department of Defense bequeathed us with the Internet, barely relevant as the noun is at present. Indulging my neurotic tendencies in the blogosphere may still be a writing exercise, but most of us no longer get paid, unless we're predicting stock market crashes, unraveling diverse financial instruments. Andrew Sullivan, late of the Daily Dish, whose sole dialogue with me, before I became a nasty Richard Spencer empath, was to send me a screen shot of my Amtrak building, was a master of the web log format, briefly became the go to institutional voice, similar to how Cato darlings emerge out of policy analysis onto the documentary video, spend their currency but maintain their admirers (Niall Ferguson?), and he still failed. I never succeeded, merely lit a precursor spark of nihilist rage, keeping illegal details against real persons mainly to myself, sometimes with heavy insinuation, survived Google's threat of suspension, which reminds me, the collective voice of the playful Silicon Ewe, on whom the fate of the world depends, sent me an email about resetting AdSense, which may be interpreted as permission to use despite my mafiaoso tendencies to derive satisfaction out of being a hate crime, but I haven't yet expended three or four gigabytes trying to unravel and regain access to my 3 dollars and change. Add in Niume's suspended revenue, that makes four, and I am, pretty much, into my last cognitive quality years, while James Bennet gets to play a tort pissant against everyone's favorite Alaskan female. Not that I haven't made errors, like misspelling a lawyers name, having for pay topics fall apart,  but poor, sympathetic James, who tweeted to me not to feel "guilty," made a game changing falsity. Who am I kidding? Whatever their political differences, Tim Gilmer and Charles Krauthammer are men with their respective province who broke their backs, able to emulate the memory of the ambulatory world they lost. Savants, spastics, such as I, merely conceptualize what we never were. Some of us actually can walk. Gimpy, pigeon toed, but none of us are important, and I've long blown my Inquirer capital. Twitter, thus far, allows my outages to glide, even if Niume's model illustrates what we cannot resolve: everyone can blog, but follower economics? Tenuous at best. My intellectual ally, Mark Antro, has an uphill battle, if Niume's failure to actually improve revenue generation is any indicator. Less collaboration, more accreditation, might work better, in collective venues. I am not sure, or uncertain, and I did not ventilate on Virily because they will be lucky if I post once in an eclipse. I should stop doing this altogether if I need revenue, in other words. 
Struggling with my memory, I may have read portions of The Man in the High Castle. I certainly read plenty of poor Dick, spared my wrath, much like Ben Gleib, whom I may have reduced unintentionally. I was attempting to be funny, and may change my mind and bring him back, despite my lack of context for his on camera role. I can say a few things about the series: the title theme song is ingenious. Only recently recognized Ridley Scott. Some actors are known qualities, and the stark brutality comforts me. Take that anyway you like. I will move the plunger along, but not this morning. I had a grave attack, one that tells me if I have to flee the Presbyterians, I had better ratchet up. My only relatively droll news is I got the battery to behave.

Fruitful Multiplication

"Do you understand, or is it too tough for you?" -- Faye Dunaway

A veterinarian with Parkinson's disease tracked from diagnosis to demise in a Bill Moyers documentary on degenerative illness was the first video of its kind, a viewing that would lead to almost incidental accretion, dozens of cancer treatments won and lost. Physicians who never talk about dying for the cause and effect of their insurance premiums, say instead "We could talk about hospice." A painter tracked through the unraveling of his sinews due to muscular dystrophy, a pathos Good Housekeeping domestication enforcers sop up with bistro dinner rolls, activists rebel against and the telethon moderates itself attempting to placate empowerment inside of wretched pity. Maupassant can be faulted for this overweening saturation in his later stories as his own disease blew the sprockets in his neural net, but American public television producers never say die when it comes to exposing the free market exploitation of death. Suicide tourists and militants, what we have lost isn't just acceptance, but willingness to see death as routine. The right to control dying, the right of self determination within physical vulnerability are not incompatible. Both are about control, but there is only so much control any one of us can exert without some form of scaffolding. Was Noah Cross as sinister and dangerous as Polanski makes him out to be? We'd have to enlarge the question to examine the American mogul.

I am a right to die advocate, slightly complicated by my belief  that death should be used as a form of political protest, but it is a form of extremism, like the practice of Sati under the Indian caste system. Chinatown is a kind of extremism that makes it one of the greatest movies ever made, and Polanski managed to make it without the hatchet jobs which Orson Welles swallowed into morbid obesity. Some films as pandering trash should have never been made. Orca is what? The burgeoning birth of Eco feminism reviving Melville? There are times when death by stoning for Richard Harris is too kind to ham as an interesting meat.

Key Largo Aside

The thought occurred to me and I thought I'd note it anyway as I am winding down toward my presleep reading, that John Huston is my favorite film director, and that because he is a pessimist, if not downright misanthropic as I am myself. Chinatown is a very dark film not just because the incest leads to inbreeding, but because it signifies a basic truth about those with real power. They win, and this is true whether or not you see a Gandhi or a Cassie James rise to the surface. I know Polanski directed, but Huston had some influence on the price we pay that Polanski exposes, and the film is rare for me in that I like Faye Dunaway and Nicholson both, which is not always the case in other venues, and by the way, for those of you familiar with my anti-CIL stance, I mean what I say about spending the rest of my life to fight to dismantle them, and if necessary, I will use Adapt's tactics, and break the law to get this ball rolling. I am not their only critic, but I am a zealot in my belief that they represent the worst aspects of socialist corruption, and I want this removed as a stain on the American soul. I hope the right will join with me on this.

More Actual Over Symbolism

In the iconic Huston would have been B film that defied expectations, Lionel Barrymore's character, James Temple, embodies all the contradictions of disability that are far older than the somewhat monochromatic identity games that ADAPT and Cassie and the rest of the old guard that I have written about play. This old man, Mr. Temple, as he is addressed by Bogart in close formality, perhaps Bogart's attempt to ward off the threat of caring for him and widowed daughter in law, he is a benevolent tyrant toward the indigenous natives that Huston is clearly exploiting, though in 48 this was no doubt a progressive move, of which Temple's paternalism was meant to be seen as inclusive, but Temple is also just as trapped, between Robinson's hard cruelty and the Bogart/Bacall compassion. The latter may be better than the former, but this is not a social relation between equals, and the same holds true today, despite the partisan, and false reverence for the ADA, as espoused by New Mobility and the rest of IL culture. My feature for them in 2004 was one of the few times they went under the radar, so to speak, to look at a real and troubling issue within the equally monochromatic *attendant care* paradigm, and yes, it saddens me that I sacrifice them as a market I have already penetrated, but Tim Gilmer has ignored me even before I highlighted my antagonism toward Josie, which is real and will not be undone, and though it hurts my career, and I am an aging wheelchair user who very briefly felt part of their family and then wasn't, I sacrifice them for the sake of integrity over a conflated lie. The ADA, independent living is just that, a lie, just as is the elevation of Cassie over the expense of so much suffering. For every Cassie James, for every John Hockenberry, and even Vassar Miller, for whom I have no castigation, only praise, and that is because Vassar is authentic, a real literary artist who transcends, for all those, very few of us have real control, real power to adapt to our limitations and call our own shots. Who actually has this power? The Medicare and insurance actuary, those that control transit authority budgets, and the wonderful asses that run federal and state housing. I will expand in another post after some rest.

Requiem, Third Movement

Emphysema at least offers the distraction of providing interesting observations while it kills you, like a long and slow poisoning by carbon monoxide. The attack I had yesterday, successfully contained, was particularly bad, and I am gradually being drowned in my own pus. I find this starkly amusing, and no counselor would lift me out of this otherwise, the attacks being fierce after Tim cleans; perhaps it is bleach fumes. I temporarily removed the air freshener, and believe I will get through the weekend without needing script for steroids or oxygen therapy. I should have stopped smoking at 19 when I puked in padre's bathroom from tonsillitis. Padre did not modify the bathroom very well.

Are there any decent families left in this country? A brief member of my Jerry-clique, a nursing student named Nancy Hoffel, was right. She argued with me about tobacco, and while I don't much care about life shortening effects in and of themselves, emphysema (or COPD, more likely, since I have always had episodes of bronchitis) has coruscating aspects, in unexpected ways. My mother's butch buddy has similar issues with COPD, and both Tim the assistant and custodial Mike have stage 1. I may be at stage 3 out of 5, if we play the medical lottery, but know my time is short, and my family just doesn't care in the sense of helping me make a move toward more tranquil resettlement.

I am looking for my damaged hard copy of Moby Dick. I want the foot notes of this great literary rip off. I have a digital copy, signifying how much I love this American epic, but want to plug my notes in the kindle, and will search again when the flush of my fever subsides. The novel needs to be read, and students need to take the effort, including the passages Melville lifts straight from the Essex tragedy, because Melville transforms this into the tragedy of the American destiny. It is our epic, and I brook no dissent from anyone on the matter. It speaks to us even in our contemporary matrix.

Huston's film with Peck, in my estimation, is the most faithful adaptation to Melville's intent, but there is no film that matches the breadth of Melville's narrative. I cannot work anymore right now; hopefully this will pass, but the episodes are progressive, and worsening, despite my willpower and fish oil and my luck with diet in lessening the worst impact of control issues.