Mumbling in the corner

      To be honest, I'm not really. It's just getting close to feeding time and the cat's getting on my nerves. A hydro pole caught fire in the neighbourhood and turned off the lights for over 3000 people. Good thing I wasn't yelling at my sims when it happened. Corruption worse than what's going on in the White House. Okay, stuff the politics. Manitoba is down to 38 active cases in the great corona game and Nunavut finally joined the party with their 1 case. The weather's been gloomy today but we needed a bit of rain. Maybe we'll get a decent light and sound show out of it later tonight. If the power goes out overnight it won't bother me all that much.

    Friday night! Pop open the cans of pop and let's have the beigeiest of beige nights! Let the okay times roll! Can you feel the unbridled intensity going on in this house? Nothing turns me on like an evening with John Milton and a dude chanting OM SHANTI OM. I am seriously craving a visit to the library but until Dr. Roussin says otherwise, the libraries stay closed. Any wonder why I'm in the corner mumbling? Okay, my family would say I wasn't well before the great corona game but there you go.

     Anyway, that is all for now. Oh, and I would be remiss if I didn't post some sims stuff, right?

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.

Rushdie in Central America

I'm feeling my years (strange thing to say for a 28 year old). I took out Salman Rushdie's 'The jaguar smile' the other day, and am nearly finished reading it. The book is an account of a trip Rushdie made to Nicaragua during the Contra-Sandinista battles of the mid-80s and of the people he met and the things he learned. He paints a vibrant picture of the turmoil and conflict of this tormented yet unabashedly proud country. I was only six or seven when the whole mess came to light, so I've had to rely on the history books for more information about it (hence my feeling my years so keenly). I had heard about the Iran-Contra scandal, with Oliver North, the CIA, and the late prez. Reagan from MAD magazine and other reliable media sources, so I had a clear enough picture of what had gone on, but Rushdie was actually there during the worst of it, so his picture is a little clearer than mine.
The locals were usually more on the Sandinista side, as the tons of anti-Contra graffiti proclaimed. Reagan and the CIA were reviled from every side and by every voice. There was (and probably still is) an insiduous thread of Americanism slithering in through the radio and on some signs (Coca-Cola's presence was everywhere). Whatever corruption there was, it was all blamed on the Contras and on America. Such is the way things are. Hypocrisy knows no borders, neither does corruption. All countries have them, and they reside in every soul, so I'm not singling anyone out here. Politics is not my bag (and I'm glad for it), and now I'm going to blast politics and its vicious circles and games. I could apply this to any country, but Nicaragua provided Rushdie the spark, so I'll use it as the example.
I recently discussed multinationals in one of my posts, and it looks like I'm back to the topic again. For starters, multinationals, no matter how they're reviled at home, are loved by other countries. They give people good, well-paying jobs. For the regular dude walking down a street in Nicaragua, the local multinational is a godsend. Perhaps the only way this dude can feed his family. He does the job well, likes what he's doing, and gets paid better for it than anywhere else in the country. Then someone back home starts screaming that the government out there is corrupt, the US imposes heavy sanctions, and the multinational has no choice but to close up shop and move on, thus depriving that dude of his livelihood. Poverty is on the rise, and the screamers back home howl that these countries need food, but the US won't send it because of the sanctions.
All governments have some level of corruption. How long would it take the US to howl if someone successfully imposed sanctions on it? It's just as corrupt as the next country, but its hands seemingly stay clean. If folks in the US are complaining about the economy now, imagine how much people would complain if what happens everyday to Nicaragua happened in the US? Frightening thing to consider, but it could happen someday. Okay, I'm done with my soapbox. BYE.