The Provenance of Meringues

Kipple is useless objects, like junk mail or match folders after you use the last match. [sic]-- Philip K Dick, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, p65

I can cheat, of course, pillage a substantial portion of my content here and move it here. I've adapted somethings already, bending my neck like Vincentio, casting his net over Vienna, hanging rogues, but this morning, we have a slight inverse. I will clarify some of my incendiary sentiments from "The Welfare State". The "balking," referred to about my article is marginally related to failure, more grudgingly belabored toward heavy lifting for a mere contributing byline, something I moved past under contract, but these days, have little choice but to make my way back in, beyond vanity posts, for nothing but a dose of ether in the fog; if I succeed with the publisher, all well and good, but it is still nothing for nothing, wondering why in the fuck I continue to support Writer's Market. My concluding sentences on this unfortunate Niume outcry were also harsh. Indifference toward walking it back notwithstanding, what I actually desire is to strike back, to purchase justice by brute force if necessary, but, and I've written it before, Trudy Richardson is a difficult enemy to characterize, and if I expend all this energy to broil her ass like tofu, there are thousands of minority women exactly like her, not worth more than one of my initial starting salaries. I go up against a sea tide of women such as she, process pushers, otherwise stupid people, running a Chinese drywall building on handbooks. She is no British pasteurized Colin Salmon, who plays a Jesuit librarian in The Statement (03), a film directed by Jewison with laden gravitas, marred by a flimsy narrative, egging its way toward dry heaves of Roman Catholic collusion, but for moi, worth watching, even if the aging Michael Caine is not alluding back to his maverick energies in the equally flawed Marseille Contract.

There is much to read into The Statement, despite the fact that it's an overdrawn game of cat and mouse. It is a European vehicle according to Hollywood vacuum packing, Swinton's feral energies wasted, although here she applies them as an obstinate avenger out maneuvered by ever brimming French scandals.

I overtaxed myself, however, rushing to vote at 7:19 last evening, disappointing my conviction never to touchpad choices again. Duty triumphed because I know I'll be gone soon, and nearly blind as a bat, having left my glasses on the lamp, the voting warder assisted me going straight GOP ticket, having no idea what choices I tossed in Toomey's war chest. That is an extended metaphor. It is also true I want to digest my impressions of the movie a bit further.

When is bloating discomfort a sign of Appendicitis?

"Yeah I like Senator Toomey!" -- Nicholas Marinelli, enthusiastic

Even for the decade in which it was written, The Marseille Contract (74) is little more than a composite pastiche that justifies a decorum to its violence with an almost Victorian reasoning: Anthony Quinn gets in the car with the two Parisian hitmen because he was asked, why else? And yet I chose this flick to dull the monotony of a Memorial holiday weekend with no plans, over a modern, mature, virtuoso performance film like The Aviator. The only thing DiCaprio and Quinn share in common is diffident gestures towards being Everyman to every director's demand. Caine doesn't quite have the range to do this, and yet this film, which we've all seen run half a dozen times over the years, is the only Michael Caine role I actually enjoy, racing automobile toys along Cannes as a stylized foreplay, prefiguring Clooney in The American, as a perfectionist, although this assassin flicker is also more deeply flawed than it has to be. 

I can concede total victories to liberals every so often: AO Scott does his job, and there is something simply off about Clooney here, miscast. Not so Caine in Marseilles. Even Quinn rises to the occasion with practiced cynicism. Should we spill so much blood over underworld kingpins? Not a chance, and yet the film should offer you cues about my argument as to when, and where, violence is acceptable to achieve certain aims, as in my rage with the concept of warehousing wheelchair users in elderly poverty housing as something of an upgrade on a centralized facility: not really, and only in a decorative sense.

Another case in point, which some may read as retributive: I am being subjected to a hostile environment anew here at Riverside. Erik's personal care attendant, Chris, has been behaving like the real belligerent, as opposed to Harambe. The incidences may give me the opportunity to put the squeeze on my old freak ally, because I'm crafty, whether or not I truly *fear* a ghetto boy's denigration. Let's make Google wince: Chris is worthless to me. If my local right wing alliance beats some contusions into his ignorance for me, I've taught the ape who actually needs manners a lesson.

Michael Caine Needs The Money

As hostile as I am to homosexual culture I have observed and experienced, the 1980 Dressed to Kill is nothing more than cheap slasher theatrics for aging leads losing top billing status. The script conveniently confuses, or deliberately combines, disassociative personality disorder with gender identification, and none of the actors do the mental health community any favors. Michael Caine does Cockney tongue in cheek very well in a variety of contexts, but he does not do transvestite, and isn't particularly credible as a man tortured between masculine and lethal feminine sides.

Bad art is worse than sexual identity politics that eclipses the finer aesthetic qualities of culture and civilization, and De Palma really soiled his stronger qualities with a rotten egg.

And yes, I am procrastinating because of the late Nor'easter making everyone and my cat feel ill. We needed the rain in the PA east, and the snow melt near the west, as we are technically in drought condition, but nothing will induce me to venture out, not even the fact that the kids are throwing a tantrum over the fish and shrimp. I ordered their trout, other tastes I know they enjoy more.