No Kapcha!

Or is it spelled Captcha? Whatever, I really can't decipher it most of the time. Maybe I am a robot!

I've been trying for two weeks to purchase tickets for Tanglewood. There's a special promotion--30% off tickets. Maybe because I plan to attend Friday the thirteenth, I have had nothing but trouble navigating their website. First they want me to sign in. Why? I prefer that the BSO and I maintain a formal relationship. I don't want access to their website. Just sell me the tickets, dammit! But they insist. So I admit that I forgot my password (I use it once a year) and they e-mail me a new password. Back to their site. The new password does not work. Okay, Plan B. Call them on the phone. When I call, they inform me that they are closed for Patriot's Day. The State that sent Teddy Kennedy to the Senate is more patriotic than the rest of us, I guess. I e-mail the BSO and inform them of their extreme suckiness. I never get a reply, so I call again. At last, success--but the discount which was offered in the special online promotion is gone, never to be heard of again. I look at their website, seeking to recapture the magic moment, and am informed that from now on I have to change my password every time I log on. Why can't I log on as a stranger?

Apology

I've been reviewing some of my older posts, and I must admit I was a better writer then. It gets harder and harder. When I was young the words just flowed, but as I got older, I appear to have dropped a few IQ points here and there. I used to search for the mot juste, and frequently got it right. But now, instead of the mot juste, I sometimes settle for the mot second best or, worse yet, the mot good enough for government work.

A wasted morning

On the phone with Verizon. You have to grit your teeth and prepare to waste time, eons of it, to get anything done. I've never had decent phone service from them and long ago gave up expecting it. But the latest wrinkle is that callers to my home phone are informed that my mailbox is full. It isn't, because I listen to my calls every day, and remove them. So I called Verizon and after the usual interaction with the bland and irritating robot, I got somebody called John, who said he would call my phone and see what message he got, and get back to me. He didn't, unless "getting back to me" is a new phrase for hanging up. Just to make sure I had ground enough enamel off my teeth, I then called Comcast and informed them they could stop sending me letters threatening to suspend service, because I had canceled them at the beginning of the year. To make the day complete, I called the Boston Symphony to order tickets for a concert in July and found they were closed for something called Patriots Day. Whatever that is.

Food for thought?

This would explain so much.

Lynch mob politics

I wonder whether anyone else had the same reaction as I did to Angela Corey's announcement of the charges against George Zimmerman, the "white Hispanic." I thought he was being railroaded. According to Corey,

”We don’t prosecute by public pressure or petition. We prosecute cases on the relevant facts of each case and on the laws of the state of Florida.”

Sure, and I'm the tooth fairy. When I see those two old frauds, Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, circling Zimmerman like a couple of sharks smelling blood, it makes me sick. I am inclined to give anyone accused by them the benefit of the doubt. Remember the Tawana Brawley case? Or Freddy's Fashion Mart?

Needed: a men's empowerment coordinator

Honestly. Is this like a community organizer? I thought men were already empowered.

Passover fun

Another poem for poetry week

Provide, Provide

The witch that came (the withered hag)
To wash the steps with pail and rag
Was once the beauty Abishag,

The picture pride of Hollywood.
Too many fall from great and good
For you to doubt the likelihood.

Die early and avoid the fate.
Or if predestined to die late,
Make up your mind to die in state.

Make the whole stock exchange your own!
If need be occupy a throne,
Where nobody can call you crone.

Some have relied on what they knew,
Others on being simply true.
What worked for them might work for you.

No memory of having starred
Atones for later disregard
Or keeps the end from being hard.

Better to go down dignified
With boughten friendship at your side
Than none at all. Provide, provide!

Robert Frost

Spring green

 

Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leafs a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.
Robert Frost

Creepy

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/27/maquech-broach-beetle-jewelry_n_1383319.htmlUgh.

Confusion

I used to have a junk drawer--everybody has one in the kitchen or in their desk.  However, my junk drawer was expanding  into every drawer in the kitchen.  At that point I had what could be called a junk kitchen.  Every drawer in the kitchen contained some unclassifiable items I needed from time to time.  The junk accumulation then leapfrogged into my study.  First one drawer, then another, and finally all of them filled up with stuff.  The overflow found its way into the closets and from one room to another. 

About three weeks ago, I decided to clean out the junk I had in my study.I loaded three cartons with this stuff.  I threw out hundreds of paid bills and Medicare stuff.  Old Christmas cards.  Personal letters.  There seemed to be more stuff left than ever.  Ads for concerts and special events, art exhibits, bank statements..  All gone.

Here's what I took out of these drawers and don't know what to do with: shoe inserts, bandages of every size, lint rollers, telephone cords, USB cables, picture frames, swimming goggles (2), hair curlers, old photographs, bathing caps,(2) swimsuits (also 2),more USB cables, an iPod, a Flip, scotch tape, picture frames, telephone wire, picture wire, picture hangers, needles, a screwdriver with interchangeable blades, a hammer, screws, nails, nail files, shoelaces, old address books (4), CDs, DVDs, special offers from Comcast.  And plenty more.

I'm just going to dump most of it and start out fresh.

Fruit trees in flower at African American vets memorial

 

In answer to Kitten, a faithful reader, as you may have guessed, everything is not hunky-dory around Charm Manor (Dad died in April, plus misfortunes too many to count, some trivial).  But I am Hanging in There, to coin a phrase.

Birthday Tuesday.  Head bloody but unbowed, and all that rot.  I just haven't been feeling too light-hearted and humorous these days.  Keep coming back.

Newborns aren't people?

So say some ethicists.

 “The moral status of an infant is equivalent to that of a fetus in the sense that both lack those properties that justify the attribution of a right to life to an individual.”

Rather than being “actual persons”, newborns were “potential persons”. They explained: “Both a fetus and a newborn certainly are human beings and potential persons, but neither is a ‘person’ in the sense of ‘subject of a moral right to life’.

Can we agree in advance that ethicists aren't really "actual" persons? If they were "actual" persons, they wouldn't be so morally obtuse.

Blogger Appreciation Day

Just got the news from insty that today is Blogger Appreciation Day.  So come on, you guys.  It's time to appreciate me.  You only have an hour and 15 minutes left to express your appreciation.

Meanwhile, many the bloggers I cherish have moved to Facebook, Twitter, and even Flickr.  Do they still count as bloggers?

More extortion

Here's someone else complaining about red light cameras.  Read it and weep.

Tragic haircut

When I was ten years old I transferred from commie private school to public junior high. All the other kids were bigger and older than me, which put me at a disadvantage, but what really riled me was the way mother dressed me. Like a little girl, which I was. But I wanted to be dressed like the popular junior high girls.

Worst of all was my hair. I had long, beautiful golden hair, which mother thought would turn to brown if I cut it. But all the other girls wore either a flip or a pageboy. And every day I had the indignity of sitting at the kitchen table while bubbe braided my hair. I hated those braids with a passion. I tormented mother until she gave in and allowed me to go to a beautician and get a decent haircut.

I guess she didn't think I would really do it. When I came home with my new do, she was aghast and went into her room and slammed the door. She didn't speak to me for hours. She was right--when my hair grew out it was a dull brown. And hairwise, it was all downhill from that day forward.

My latest painting

A display in a thrift shop.

I'm still here!

I designed this as a Christmas/Chanukah/holiday card, but didn't send any cards out because the printer was on the blink. I'd like to send copies to my friends to let them know I'm still alive and that 2011 didn't do me in. What do you think?