Damn you, Kissinger

       And here I was thinking that the White House held the freaks and monsters these days! Believe it or not, Henry Kissinger is still alive. 97 years old according to Wikipedia. He's been the subject of hundreds - if not thousands - of historical accounts. Well, here comes Greg Grandin (history professor, writer, and looks decent in a cap) with 'Kissinger's shadow: the long reach of America's most controversial statesman' with skeletons to free and indignation to awaken. Before I took up this book, all I knew about Kissinger came from the lads of the Flying Circus (Nicer legs than Hitler and more endowed than Cher). Of course I was overdue to read summat about this guy.

        Kissinger was one of Nixon's main dudes and one of the few to escape the ravages of Watergate. I thought the current prez was desperate to make up his own reality. He's got nada on Kissinger and Nixon - not nearly as clever or as audacious as Kissinger, either. Then again, I have to wonder how Nixon and his crew of liars and con-men would have handled a pandemic. Hopefully, they would have stopped waging imaginary wars on Cambodia and Laos for a moment to do something good for a change. Imaginary war but with plenty of very real napalm - Kissinger has been called to account for this ever since he left the White House. He's never really, according to this book, acknowledged his mistake.

       Reading this book angered me. And this was the time before the Republican party worsened. Thanks to the madness that's going on down south, I've familiarized myself with 'American exceptionalism' and other such euphemisms. Oh, and Joe Biden gets a mention in this book too - well before Obama said 'You're with me' - back when he was a senator. Anyway, I'm enjoying this book despite the fact that it makes me angry. This book was published in 2015, by the way. I wonder what Kissinger thinks of the current situation - assuming politics is still important to a 97 year old devil like him.

       No sims pics today. Just a quick blurb about what I'm reading. It's wet outside and I can hear thunder in the distance. Mom is at the lake with the xtended relatives this weekend. I hope the weather's been all right out there.

BYE.

Bouchard!

     When I was growing up, Québec was a massive province in the atlas. I knew what it looked like and I knew it was the original Canadian home of the Français language but that was about it. Then 1995 - the year of the infamous Second Referendum - came around and I was introduced by Air Farce to the likes of Jacques Parizeau, the PQ, the BQ, and to Lucien Bouchard. Being 15 at the time, my first introduction was through Air Farce skits - the Lucien Bouchard Board Game, the Luba Goy parody of a well-known McDonald's advert, and the Story of Lucien Bouchard's search for Princess Sovereignty. It wasn't until later that I realized how close we, as a nation, had come to losing QC in 1995. Since then, as far as I know, the demand for sovereignty in La Belle Province has died down considerably.

     In high school, I learned about the FLQ and about the Quiet Revolution, but about the players of this Great Game I knew little to nothing. My most recent trip to the WPL (yes, it's open for business once again! 😄) netted me a biography by Lawrence Martin called 'The Antagonist'. A life of Lucien Bouchard, in other words. Around the time of the Second Referendum, it was discovered that Bouchard had gotten a visit from the even more infamous flesh-eating disease. This took away his leg - to Air Farce's dark merriment - and gave him another layer of mystery in my head. Before I happened upon this book, I considered Bouchard to be something of a boogeyman in Canada's collective consciousness. On the other hand, I am gladdened to know that he (as of this post) is still very much alive.

      I was thrilled by the synopsis and deeply hoped that Martin was not going to let me down. So far, he has not. Currently in the book, Mulroney (jerk! twat! bastard Tory!) has made Bouchard Canada's ambassador to France. Good move or bad? I'll keep reading and hopefully, I remember to let you know. If you're feeling impatient and can check it out for yourself, I definitely recommend it. Meanwhile, not to count one's active cases before they grow in number, but we in Manitoba were down to 4 as of yesterday and there have been no new cases here for over a week. Yeah, I've probably just jinxed myself. Please keep the border closed, Trudeau et. al!

     And now for something completely ordinary.

BYE.

Hateful Crab!

        Not Sims-related in the least. Just me in the middle of a rage. As the two or three of you who check out this blog regularly know, I lost my Dad last September when the Crab came back for a second assault. It was officially a heart attack that took him but he'd stopped eating and was coughing a lot. The autopsy confirmed the presence of cancer in his liver and lungs. I know that cancer can come back more than once and that one is never truly safe and/or cured until they die of something completely unrelated to it. This was shocking and terrible, but not a total surprise.
       The Crab took away Alan Rickman, David Bowie, and many other wonderful people last year. I'm hoping it's just that it's been reported and announced more these days - otherwise it might seem like the number of cancer-related deaths is rising. There was a time when cancer was a dirty little secret and kept buried away in the family skeleton closet. Now there are more people surviving it because it's caught early enough for treatments to work. I'm still working through my feelings as far as Dad's passing goes. He's not here with us and he should be. It's called saudade from the Portuguese language (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saudade) and I'm neck-deep in it.
       Why am I yammering about this now? My grandma died from cancer as well - pancreatic; what took Bowie and Rickman away so quickly - and hearing about anyone dying from it saddens and angers me just a bit. It was seeing the following news that just caused me to explode a bit.

http://globalnews.ca/news/3252212/stewart-mclean-vinyl-cafe-dead/

       I love the 'Vinyl Cafe' books and admired Stuart McLean to no end. Losing him at the age of 68 hurts. As a result, I am sad and angry once again and just getting my rage on in here. Rest in Peace, honoured man. You shall never be forgotten in the Canadian heartlands and small towns. You shall be treasured and your books praised for many years to come.
      Okay. I am going to close this up before I need to break out the Kleenex.

Not regretting

I'm actually starting to enjoy not having a project to work on. After close to 20 years of writing this or that novel or other story, I took a serious break this summer and have focused my energies on diary and blog writing, along with gaming and reading. Considering I moved out so I could focus on writing, I have to laugh at the way things have turned out. I am working on a project of sorts. I'm transcribing my older diaries to computer file so when I can no longer read my own handwriting, I'll still be able to read what I've written in years past. This could get me in trouble in years to come, but who's going to read these diaries of a complete nobody? Even Emily Dickinson had more fame in her life, and she was a self-named nobody. I guess I'm not really looking for fame... not that I'd find it if I was looking for it. I do feel a little bad that I'm not working with the characters I have bouncing around in my head, but right now, I'm just not into writing a whole lot. And I'm back to work in a week, so there won't be a whole lot of time to write when I get back to the grind.
Meanwhile, I've done quite a bit of reading. I just finished reading Patricia Highsmith's 'Talented Mr. Ripley'. The mark of a good writer depends on how strongly the reader feels about the characters, plot, or setting, and the character of Tom Ripley is a winner. A chameleon, a mirror, a killer, a shadow - Ripley is all this and more. I've placed holds on more books in the Ripley series, and anticipate the dude either getting caught or succeeding. Part of me wants him to get caught. All depends on what Highsmith has decided to do with him. Kudos! I'm getting back into Waugh-writings with 'Brideshead Benighted' by Auberon Waugh. I thought him a real jerk when I read 'Way of the World' a couple of years ago. That just could be his character - to be a real jerk. I used a different word actually - is git the same a jerk? I could be mistaken.
Anyway, that's about all that's going on in my little world. Back to Waugh I go! BYE.

Poverty vs. Conscience

Daniel Defoe's 'Roxana' surprised me, and that's saying something. It's the first Defoe book I've ever read. I know the story of 'Robinson Crusoe' but have never read it. I plan to read 'Moll Flanders' very soon, but these are moot points. This story of a woman going from grinding poverty to high society caught me and drew me in nicely. Before I address the story itself, there are a couple of structural points I wish to make. The edition (1964) I read was pulled from the original first edition (1724), and I cannot help but wonder if changes were made in future editions. First off, there are no quotations marks and paragraph breaks to denote dialogue. I've found these in Austen, the Bronte's, Dickens... so I was pretty thrown. It's a lot of I said, he/she said stuff. Reminds me of the writing I used to do when I was 8. I know that Defoe's a better writer than I am, so I guess that's how they used to do things back in the 1700's. I guess quotation marks had either not been invented or they weren't important then.
Second structural point: No chapters! The whole thing flows without breaks of any kind. It wasn't until I was at least halfway through the book that I realized there were no chapters, so it's not the end of the world. Just could be a little annoying for folk who say 'Okay, I'm going to stop after chapter...' Apart from these two points, the rest of the structure is just fine. A few spelling differences, but normal for the 1700's. Now to get into the story proper. 'What goes through the mind of a mistress?' Defoe answers the question, more or less, with 'Roxana'. I'm sure there are mistresses nowadays who would share the protagonist's concerns and feelings, although most mistresses aren't connecting with lords, princes and high worthies in general. A successful enough businessman can keep a wife and mistress (or doxy - I love that word!) pretty well.
Roxana's conscience impresses me. I'm a cynic, so when a person (real or fictional) has morals enough to feel guilt so keenly, I'm impressed. I also find myself duelling with my conscience quite a bit, and I don't expect to be anyone's mistress anytime soon. As far as mistresses go, Roxana is quite the lucky one. Trailed by wealth and wealthy patrons from Paris to Rotterdam, to England, to a Quaker enclave, and then left in the lap of reasonable luxury with her second hubby and dealing with a ton of guilt. And what did she do, apart from sleep her way to the top? Her cunning and doting lady-in-waiting did much worse, but I'm focusing on Roxana and not her dear Amy. When faced with poverty and the fear of losing it all, what would you do?
Thought-provoking stuff. That's all. BYE.

Leery of series?

I started reading the last leg of Stephen King's 'Dark Tower' series and was reminded of how much I've forgotten from the previous six books. I don't think I've actually read the series from beginning to end yet, and this got me thinking. As wonderful as a series of books can be (familiarity with characters and plot), there are some series out there that can really get on my nerves. 'Dark Tower' is King's only long-running series out there, as far as I know, and he has gone years between books before putting fingers to keyboard again, which probably frustrates more than a few of his fans. This doesn't get me all that much - just the knowledge that I need to start out, from the beginning, to get things in order is a mild inconvenience.
Another author I could have a bone to pick with (but don't) is Robert Jordan. His 'Wheel of Time' series caused me no end of frustration because it's so damn long and each book is chock-full of details (some I thought unnecessary, but that's me). Unfortunately, Death robbed Jordan's fans of a complete and total resolution for this series about a year ago, and although I cursed Jordan every chance I had while he lived, I can do this no longer. One author's works I encountered and enjoyed is Terry Goodkind. His 'Sword of Truth' series, while bleak at times, had a mostly satisfying and honest resolution. I admire his resolve and plan to revisit this series after a while.
Then there are the authors who have written several series (Piers Anthony, Anthony Trollope, Isaac Asimov, I can go on). Good books for the most part, but it's easy to lose track of which book is from which series. I'm of the school that feels that if I am to enjoy one book in a series, I need to revisit all the books in the series. That is what I'm planning to do with a series by Anthony Trollope very soon. I am trying to keep track of about a half dozen series right now. That's the real thing about series. A person could start with 'Spongebob Squarepants' or 'Captain Underpants' as a child and read nothing but series after series for the better part of forty years. You get comfortable with a certain set of characters and want nothing more but the same. I'd rather not live like that. I like to keep my horizons as broad as possible.
A final note before I close this post down. My real pet peeve is with those authors who insist that people read their series from beginning to end, although each book works as a stand-alone. Hear that, Anne McCaffrey?! BYE.