Your daily mob boss affirmation #3

 "I think you did a good job on her" 

Via Twitter by CNN reporter Jim Acosta, 28 January 2020. The alleged president was commenting on U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo's abuse of National Public Radio reporter Mary Louise Kelly.

Your daily mob boss affirmation #2

“Get rid of her .... Get her out tomorrow. I don’t care. Get her out tomorrow. Take her out. O.K.? Do it.”

Marie Yovanovitch taking the oath before testifying in the impeachment inquiry against Donald J. Trump,
15 November 2019, by Terry Sewell. Public Domain. Via Wikimedia Commons.

As originally reported in The New York Times, 24 January 2020

Your daily mob boss affirmation #1

"Vote against the president, and your head will be on a pike"

President Donald J. Trump participates in a bilateral meeting with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zalensky,
Wednesday, Sept. 25, 2019, at the InterContinental New York Barclay in New York City.
(Official White House Photo by Shealah Craighead). Public Domain. Via Wikimedia Commons.

As originally reported via the CBS News Twitter feed, 23 January 2020 

Ruby Manila

Author's note: I've written about this song before, a little more than five years ago. Nice to see that this song has become ever so slightly less obscure--even if it still only has 5 YouTube views at the  moment (at least one of which belongs to me).

This is probably more moi than I care to admit. Actually, fuck that, I'm happy to admit that I think this Filipina-German chanteuse Ruby Manila singing "Fly Butterfly" is one of the most exquisite gems of late 1970s pop, and in 2020 I remain flummoxed as to why others don't view this song in the same way.

• Thumping base line? ✓
• Orgasmic moaning that turns into a very lovely, surprisingly strong vocal? ✓
• Clicketty-clacketty synthesizers? ✓
• Deep male vocal counterpoint? ✓
• Catchy Euro chorus that doesn't require you to know more than three words of English? ✓

It's all here. You just have to open your third eye (or whatever) and embrace it.

The roof, the roof, the roof is on fire

Swifts Creek bushfire, 14-12-2006, by Fir0002.
Via Wikimedia Commons. CC BY-NC.

On New Year's Eve, I received an email from an Australian colleague today. She is home for the holidays in Melbourne and on her family's sheep farm in western Victoria.

She said there had been smaller bushfires near where her parents live, but they had been brought under control quickly. However, some friends of hers had had to take cover on the beach in eastern Victoria in order to escape the fires.

My colleague also said the she and her husband had driven to Adelaide, South Australia, recently. Temps had risen to 48C/118F while en route. Mind you, that part of Australia isn't desert--although it's somewhat dry. Think California or South Central Texas.

I loathe offering just "thoughts and prayers" when so many people and so much nature is under threat. But other than recycling better and reducing my carbon footprint, what can I do? Not to go all drama queen on you, but it feels as though the world is catching fire, climatically, politically, and socially, and there seems to be little that an individual can do to remedy it.

Perhaps, then, collectively we can do more--but that assumes that our political and business leaders are listening and understand the need to make swift, significant, unpopular changes. And that we the people will accept such changes readily. And that such changes are proposed from a place of the common good, rather than just to maintain the hegemony of government and business.

You're no good, you're no good, you're no good, baby, you're no good

"Linda Ronstadt performing at a WPLR Show
in New Haven, Connecticut in the New Haven
Veterans Memorial Coliseum" (1978) by Carl Lender.
Via Wikimedia Commons. CC BY-SA 3.0 Unported.

My brother telephoned me on New Year's night. I was glad to hear from him, but I was surprised he called me 10 minutes into the airing of the Linda Ronstadt documentary on CNN. He was always a HUGE Ronstadt fan back in the day.

I didn't think he'd miss that show for anything, and I can only assume he forgot that it was on. And I admit I didn't mention it to him for a couple of reasons--I didn't want to interrupt the conversation, and I didn't want to upset him that he'd already missed part of the program.

This takes me back to a minor, yet still significant (at least for me), event during our shared childhood.

One early evening I came home from playing outside and sat down to watch TV. This was around 1971 or so. I was probably no more than 10 at the time; my brother, 15.) My brother quickly engaged me in conversation and kept talking to me, asking me questions about my day and my interests while we watched a show he liked. I don't remember which show it was, other than to note it probably wasn't one that I enjoyed. I have the vague sense it was Gunsmoke, a show with an appeal I never fathomed, but if I did the math and went back to TV schedules in 1971, that might just not work out.

I didn't think much of this until after a half hour or so, and the next TV program began. All of a sudden, my brother stopped talking, smiled coyly and said, "Well, I guess you missed your show."

I don't remember which show it was, The Brady Bunch, UFO, The Partridge Family (yes, I've consistently had questionable taste in entertainment), but at that moment, I realized my brother had purposefully kept me talking, knowing that I'd forgotten about my show--a show he disliked immensely, as I recall--distracting me so that I wouldn't remember it was on.

Keep in mind, this occurred in the early 1970s: We had one large console TV and no VCR because, well, they likely hadn't been invented yet. There weren't regularly scheduled repeats of shows. You couldn't watch it on demand or stream it online because those things didn't exist either.

Which brings me back to my conversation with my brother and these burning questions:

How long do I wait before I call him up and say, "Well, I guess you missed your show"?

And should I FaceTime him so he can see me smile when I say it?

Online streaming notwithstanding, revenge nearly 50 years in the making is still sweet.

I definitely want to

I seek out and share new music from Argentina so you don't have to. "Quisiera" translates as "I would like," using the subjunctive "mood" of the verb "querer." Except for me there's no subjunctive about it--I definitely adore this song and the performance by Argentine performers Natalie Pérez and Coti. ¡Viva la Argentina!