Why Slovenia indeed!

Today we took all the money we could find and tried to get our lawyer to transfer it to the victor in a court case he very thoroughly lost for us. No go. We had to do it ourselves, leaving us in doubt of the viability of making a part-payment in the first place, but we wanted to show good faith despite having none of our complaints heard or even listened to. How would we know? We don't talk Slovene well enough to translate the proceedings of a court of law, and neither do our slovenian friends, and there is no obligation to assist with non native speakers. So we are totally in the dark dealing with a near-criminal element of import/customs agents, who regard foreigners, we're sure, as solely a source of income, devoid of rights or a voice in their affairs of new life in this tiny, diminishing population.
The country is really beautiful, but how do you stay chirpy when every person regards you as devoid of rights? Our lawyer's receptionist concurred with this view, and I challenged her.. 'Why didn't you tell us this 30 months ago when we had a chance of escaping?' Now we are bereft of solutions. The court system does not recognize us as anything greater than an alien; our appeal was a non event, a cross between Catch 22 and Kafka, and now we're trying to catch the attention of the EU authorities against corruption, racism, discrimination and inequality, while their reports are carefully fended off by Slovenian government.
Our consultation with public sector lawyers got 'pay up!' responses only.
I've lived all over this world since 1955, and this rates with Laos and Vietnam for friendliness. Where to from here? Who knows? All I'd like is to know I've been heard. Some chance.
Nuff said.
JR

Congratulations!

Congratulations! There are dark forces at work in the world, who are wedged securely between the wealthy cheeks of Willie Gates, for reasons way beyond my comprehension; Global we may be, now… I certainly am, but have you actually tried to enjoy what is rightfully yours in, say the Czech republic? or France? Do you know that compact disks in their many fragile manifestations often won't play in another country? That you may buy this form of entertainment is your prerogative; I have chosen not to. When the compact disk arrived, I quit the HiFi business. This medium has no right to be ranked as hifi (high fidelity to the original) and I have only once in my life bought a CD; (Laurie Anderson; 'Big Science') for a particularly beautiful body to dance to. But I have been given a few; the last one, and I will refuse any others, was a DVD from Warner Bros. 'The Last Samurai', which WILL NOT PLAY ON A MACINTOSH COMPUTER. Since then I have given up, after over thirty emails to Warner Bros, to consider this house of thieves anything other than worthless dross.

The American Film Industry  is a crock anyway; one just has to look at the credits for a supposedly decent film to see how this machine wastes our time and money, in a now digital regurgitation of the twenty or so plots that universally categorize what they serve up to the blobby public....and I look on with interest at the future path of that funky, Macintosh using Peter Jackson, who put the Lord of the Rings up on the Linux platform, and who could not have achieved even a shadow of this film had he relied on the aforementioned Willie Gates. Is Willie a bad loser? I suspect so; I have known a few nerdy types in my time; broad minded comprehension of universal values is not their strong point. But if you'd like to put together a 'big picture' these days, you need a few of them around, and choosing them well can net some great results; however, having taken a brand new Zip Disk to my last (some time ago, now) digital creativity session, three hours of radical fringe studio, and a lot of bucks lighter, I discovered, three months later, when about to undertake stage two, that the work of the first session had disappeared from said Zip Disk. Gone forever. Unrepeatable. Give me a master tape, or Vinyl anyday. I love where technology is going, in the research labs; I abhor what manufacturing expedience and the beady eyed focus of those dorks in black suits does to it to get it in the shops. Have you read 'Snow Crash' or 'Diamond Life'? And how about the emergence of the ‘avatar’ as representative of computer users globally? In your dreams fatty.

Slovenia: The Erased People

http://www.insightnewstv.com/d77/
watch the video

... no comment...

Borders of existence

Don't know how you choose real estate, but we spotted this place while browsing the internet, and virtually all the positives have become negatives and everything we've come to expect of the Slovenian lifestyle has, for various reasons, been eroded to the point where every day is a challenge of just getting motivated to tackle the next hurdle.

I'm a 'go and do it' sort of person, and create from whatever I have, a decent environment to be at peace with the world in. We had to wait over three months to get electricity. It's all around us, closest we've ever been to a nuclear power plant, but we've been overcharged and overburdened with power cuts to a degree that deserves investigation. Our water is a sorrier story; the connection at the edge of our property remains untouched. Recently taken over by our supposedly service orientated corporate suppliers, what was once a funky rural development of a decent spring has become an expensive adjunct to yet another leaf of the corporate's portfolio. Talking with these guys is an encounter devoid of any compromise; I left it rather than take it, but of our five water pumps, all new, only one seems to function well, and getting our recently completed reservoir correctly sealed required three attempts, the first two products failing totally, only one refunded, when out of the blue our nearest wholesaler gave us the right stuff from his sample stock; no charge, throwing into stark contrast the services and retailers we have to deal with. Every cloud has a silver lining?

Which side are we on?

It is our proximity to the Croatian border which has benefitted us most of all; the same shops across the border have better ranges, more up-to-date, and we get a decent tax rebate when we pass through customs, but spending half a day searching big, homogenous shopping centres for little bits of plumbing's niceties/soldering flux that doesn't spoil your water supply/adhesives that are taken for granted elsewhere, yet cost double what we are used to in France, for example, (where our dream place is totally unaffordable) makes me wonder why Slovenia fails to learn by peering at its neighbours, and why, when their workers earn nothing, and supplement with cash deals on the side, the price of a roof of insulation costs more and offers last century's technology, when a six week search yields finally a newtech supply of custom moulded foam, which we are just getting to install, now I've come to terms with the abysmal supply of rafters I was forced to accept, and have worked into the structure with only the usual trauma, and a lot of help from my partner's new colleagues, who, fourteen months into our search for suitable employment for her, have achieved the 'What Colour is my Parachute' optimum, of allowing her to work in just the right environment with just the right people.

We love this country; it has been the battles with supposedly friendly people that has rattled us so. How has this thing evolved? Try www.insightnewstv.com/d77/ for maybe a side of this place none of us could anticipate.

About this Blogger

I'm not big on buying magazines, but I subscribe to Technology Review, which is my source for a lot of facts on all manner of global issues. It tests my patience at times though, as I've always been a keen observer with vivid memories from before I was two years old, and have always exercised my brain in as many multitasking ways as possible. I've also dealt with a lot of people in my time, having logged over four million kilometres in company cars representing divers fabricants and suppliers of fashion clothing, timber, footwear, hi fi, photographics, electronics, TV, home renovation, auto electrical, computer graphics, and IT, and I've been using computers since 1967, starting with IBM mainframes, and have been using internet since 1989. So there's not a lot of opportunity to pull the wool over my eyes.

Blog T2

Well I´ve seen it all now. Planned to bring a guitar back from my next trip to the UK. The airline insisted I book a seat especially for the guitar; It did not allow me an extra ten kilos of hand baggage, just the seat for the guitar..... but now plans have changed, I figured `well, if I´m not bringing back a guitar, there´s a couple of nice bathroom fittings I could get instead´...  No, the ticket is solely for a guitar; no guitar, the seat goes empty; no extra 10 kilos of something else?; I booked in advance like setting my life in concrete. Know any Irish jokes? I know one; RyanAir; my recommendation? If you can find another carrier, DO, as these guys have barely gotten beyond neanderthal in their abilities to accomodate a slight change of plans; I once heard `autistic´ described as `like a train, not easy to change tracks quickly´, and that is how I´d describe RyanAir; Autistic Air; cheap but stupid. Welcome to the 21st Century. If I can choose an airline again, I´ll make sure the Irish are at the bottom of my list. I fly EasyJet usually; WizzAir is another option. I´ve just been stymied by a crap website, a crap level of interactivity, and, damn my prejudice, by a set of Irish rules as thick as two short planks.
I´d like to cc a copy of this to RyanAir, but they don´t offer such a relationship.
Nuff said.

Blog I2

Listening to some tunes I´ve downloaded, I constantly marvel at how far off people´s notions of identity run. Would you think many people regard Eric Clapton as interchangeable with Dire Straits? Some of the mixups are hilarious, some plain sad, and you may be, yourself, unaware that the rare Dylan track you´ve got is actually a Donovan, and could probably invest some time checking what other mis-identified gems are lurking in your collection. I´ve never been in a library with such erroneous content as the WWW offers, but the positive side is I´ve discovered some Ry Cooder tracks (Roy Coder?) where Taj Mahal has been sitting in, and Van Morrison doing a duet with Bob Dylan, but I feel sorry for these amazingly good musicians who somehow have slipped through the cranial cracks into identity oblivion. Can we get your list of beauties? But can we also consider giving a grading to the sources, so I can avoid the `Solid Rock between the ears´ collectors? I´ve more than paid my dues to the recorded music business over the years; I´ve seen their quality and service evaporate; now I download; Can´t we just get some onto it librarians? or has that gone to the dogs as well? Nuff said.

E4

So last night, real late, I got the call I´d been waiting for; my lady had finally found a hotel. She´d driven from Slovenia up past Maribor into Austria taking the December high road across Europe aiming for Mulhouse, (I bet you don´t know how to pronounce it; Moolooze) France, but somewhere before Salzburg the red light for the alternator came up, and she spent about five hours driving all over the frozen backroads of Austria trying to find a replacement alternator. having started at 5 am, and now on her way again at 5pm, she drove on passing into Germany, where she couldn´t find a hotel room for less than 80 Euros, and crossed again into Austria, (which you have to do, as this landscape is all mouintains) and finally, with 800kms under her wheels, she found a dreadful, smoke-stinking hotel, where she got the last room at $61 Euros, top floor, no lift, DISABLED room, and was able to get to bed by 1am. European regs insist hotels have a disabled facility, yeah right; top floor, no lift.... but next stop is France, where there are ´Formula´ hotels at reasonable prices all over the place, well signposted. (Well, after she´s crossed Switzerland, 200 kms of highways for a compulsory 30+ Euros, with the filthiest toilets.... no toilets, really, which is why they´re such a strage lot; they´re all bustin´....) So if you´d like our opinion of Europe as a destination for a bit of a look around, forget it. If you handle bus touring, we have no experience, I´m sorry, but go and live there? If you plan to be more than three months in any one country you´ll need another car, registered in that country, with a separate insurance cover. Call it what you like, I call it BLACKMAIL, and is the grossest anomaly, and is the underlying reason my lady is driving across Europe to deposit her car back on French soil, and find a bus back, WHICH WILL NOT STOP IN SLOVENIA, AND WILL PASS THROUGH TO CROATIA, NOT EU, WHERE I CAN PICK HER UP. Fucking blackmail. I know, you´ll be saying `Just pay the insurance´ but they have a special package, that costs 1200 Euros a year, bubble car or Rolls Royce. Blackmail. Europe is one unified money making machine. Too much red tape. too much shite for travellers; you know, the ordinary people in cars who have to get something done; I´ve been stuck in some really remote places of this globe; Europe is crowded, and you´d think they´d have learned to get along a bit together, but I want to remind you that this is the home of fascism, and of foreigner´s intervention in their affairs to keep it all from degenerating into chaos, (like Russia). Nuff said.

Blog M2

Very early this morning I sent my partner off on a drive to France, in our venerable R11 Renault, but not before discovering that the recently filled fuel tank, brand new, was leaking from a connector hose between the filler and the tank; when I´d replaced the tank, I´d felt it was wise to replace the tubes and other rubber components, but I kept all the old bits, so I had the original, dated, 1986 connector hose, but the official spare part, not dated, failed in a depressingly short time. I don´t know what your opinion of the motor trade is, but years ago I worked in that business, and I never had a good impression from then on, of the calibre of people thusly employed.... I have just had a call from my lady, out on the motorway system of Austria, five hours into her journey, reporting the alternator light showing bright red in her view. She is close to an Audi garage, and I have just instructed her on the likely time her car has before it fails electrically, and coached her on a suitable approach to the garage for assistance, or preferably, a direction to a nearish friendly auto wrecker who´ll have a suitable alternator to keep her on the road at not too much expense...... I´ll complete this when I get her next call. Which just came in; the Audi garage
couldn´t/wouldn´t help, so she´s nursed the car to Liezen, but the garages are at lunch.... it´s here or nothing, as she can´t move without a whole lot of help.....mind you; a proactive bloke with an auto breakers yard could have her on her way in 20 minutes....  No, the big garage, full of sixteen year olds in training only has a `new bits´ solution, so she´s attempting to get another 5kms to the next garage. Driving across Europe has certain budget limitations.... We do it more than most people, even in a convoy with all our belongings overloading us; a real adventure, and we´ve made it each time. I find the expressway trips in the latest Volvo to be exceedingly boring, with dangerous distractions from the multi level aircon control adjustments, the balance on the 12 speaker soundsystem, and the autopilot saying ´turn left immediately´...... you know the technological crap we are somehow being swamped with.... so, while some of you will be saying `serves her right, in an old car´, we´ll plump for an oldie anyday. And stand the hassles of sourcing older parts, but in zero degrees on an Austrian stretch, I´m fretting for my lady finding that friendly garage man.... Now her third call, totally in tears; all the pricks on earth gravitate to a young woman in distress; they´ve sent her on a wild goose chase for nothing; they don´t know of a wrecker/breaker, or any person helpful; the cost estimates mount, and these shit-for-brains are the same people who fix your new car; the motor trade is a mounting tragedy; buy new; the pathetic bleat of a pathetic industry; I wish the pox on them all. If you drive France-Slovenia, as we do, you´ll see ten times more shiny new cars broken down than older models. There´s a reality check for you; throw money at that one if you fancy, but I won´t line their pockets. I´ve just heard she´s found the wrecker who is now persuading a suitable alternator into place as darkness descends; poor soul, she´s got 600 more kms before France, and its a long lonely road.... Maman phoned just now to say she´d got a text from our valiant voyager; Munich was on the horizon, and she was only €40 lighter for the service by the wrecking yard, and an invitation to come by again, so that is all good, and the Kms are zipping by again. The exception proves the rule, and yeah, we found the nice guy once again, after some effort; Nuff said.

Blog P3

´ve just been talking with a friend back in New Zealand who told me how the Pacific Ocean is the only ´clean´ocean left on this planet; he may be slightly right, but in the fifty years I had in that part of the world I knew of many horrific anecdotes of accidents, spillages, and deliberate dumpings of things toxic around the shores of those Pacific isles, not to mention the extensive history of shipwrecks that the coastline has accumulated. I have deliberately avoided the active research into the truth of the ´purity of the Pacific´; I suspect it is a myth; there are enough big cynics in this world without my joining them; suffice it to say the industrialists, energy producers and military actors who´ve roved over that part of the globe looking for an out-of-the-way spot to do something irresponsible, are thick on the ground still; maybe the oilcos are using ´green´ attitudes in their new approach to being ´responsible players´ in the world energy market, but as someone who acquired a serious level of lead poisoning while just ´living an active life´ in NZ, and having to discover that
´ínadvertent poisoning´ was a likely outset of life in the Pacific, (which one could not avoid if driving long distances was part of the plan,) I have to say we are all in need of a higher level of consciousness regarding the purity of our environment wherever we are. Until relatively recently NZ had the highest levels of lead in petrol, in the world; the ´unleaded´in that part of the world STILL has lead; it is all a matter of levels of acceptability as to what half-truths we are told; the Australian Lead Association used to host annual gatherings for the motor trade in NZ, and I recall their sole interest was to sell us more lead, anyway they could; I was in the Sales and Distribution office of a large battery manufacturer, and it was there that I learnt the horrors of lead cholic, and the allied problems that careless actions around lead could create. That is one chemical we´ve `brought out in public´, but lead accumulates (sic) in our systems, and does not go away rapidly, and yet is generally not covered in blood analysis other than for exposure in the most recent weeks, whereas analysis of the hair, a medically `uncommon´ procedure except in autopsies, can show amazingly high levels of all sorts of ´unnaturally occurring´ chemicals, the side effects of which can only lead to `unsubstantiated suppositions´concerning the behaviour of the human race. (Just for the record, I had 11.9 ppm of Lead, and did the EDTA detox, and all the other detoxes known to man, and found my anger levels subsided amazingly. I think anger in society could be closely allied to lead, but what would I know?) So why I live here in Slovenia, just a stone´s throw from a nuclear power station, is that it is a truth, and I live with a lot of truths; should I be cruising the Pacific as my Marine Biologist son will do this January and February, I could check Mururoa or those other `ex-nuclear´ bombsites, and maybe assess what `pure and clean´means in terms of scientific fact. Instead I´ll just close my eyes and imagine all those dudes surfing those remore breaks under the endless blue skies. Nuff said.

Blog S3

Saturday morning checklist; Central heating? Off. Electric 'friendly as possible' heaters? On. Temperature? 14.5°C. Shopping? One of us must stay home in case the missing computer materialises. Work? The supplier didn't deliver the materials. Money? Half the slow payers have coughed up. Get more materials? The materials places with the best stocks are in the opposite direction to the shops with the best produce. Summary? We say 'fuck the world' but the world is fucking itself. It doesn't take any efforts either way by us to see that. But I don't know if anyone out there feels as we do. Does having a steady job change everything? We go to hell with a steady job? I dunno. Nuff said.

F3 addenda

After this morning's fiasco, the third day of telephoning the La Poste service numbers and getting shoved from phone to phone, and finding they all know nothing, or, only what WE know, (nothing), and spending this afternoon trying to get on with our project here in Slovenia, and calling the company we ordered aggregate from Monday, and being told tonight, 'ena ura', one hour, I stayed around the site, till well after dark, set up lamps so the delivery would be hassle free, and, no, with about eight degrees of frost, and a three hour wait I gave up, went home to the apartment where, with two heaters going and a power cord melting down when we switched a griller on to finish a fine cheese souffle, and the temperature just creeping over 15°C, I decided I just can't give a fuck anymore, about anything, and glimpsing on the CNN news the major industrialists of the civilised world have just put up a proposal to do something about climate change by 2050 and I think...yeah, who gives a fuck? But they stymied Donald Trump's attempt to build a golf course on a fine piece of bird country in Scotland, so, someone up there does..... I've been rained out on all my attempts to get to Scotland, DT too...... nuff said

F3

We've been awaiting the arrival of a new computer, being sent from France, for a variety of good reasons, and the freighters have a very cute blobby window which pops into our life and allows us to track our parcel; well, that's the idea, however, the tracking blob does not seem to be attached/connected to any sentient lifeforms at the other end, and for a week we've watched a 'no progress' situation develop in our heads, mainly, as phoning Slovenia and Germany, the two likely transits, get us zero, and the French end doesn't know anything at all. Wouldn't you like to be able to sell a well-decorated box of nothing to some freight giant for half a million, and go out and pose on the proceeds? There are too many such events going on for me to be content with the state of affairs. What really troubles me is having shown us an apparently 'instantaneous' update of our progress, the process of being compensated for these idiots losing our computer will take three months... you don't believe it? That's what it took to get recompensed for a digital camera sent France - Italy, when the clerk INSISTED we describe the contents, a detail specifically to avoid at all costs when sending to Italy, and which brings me to the obvious; shouldn't all our purchases be in plain brown wrappers instead of blaring to all what's inside? Well, we don't get to control how something is wrapped, but we'd sure like to change how ALL of the freight systems in Europe operate, but don't hold your breath for positive news.... Nuff said.

Blog I

'm indignant. Is this century 21? Are we beset with 'Branding' everywhere? Well, if these brands are so big and important, (to the point of seeing all the minor competitors off the adjacent shelves..) isn't there an obligation for those big names to make sure their place in the shelves is always full/well stocked/at least some stock to choose? It is not high summer where I am, but the Raid brand of 'plug in insect repellant' which I hate for it's market position, is currently out of stock in the four supermarkets I checked this morning. We are in the middle of vinyards, which are in the middle of the harvest/winemaking cycle, and on these progressively cooler evenings we are being increasingly occupied with an insect population keen on a warmer space, and human protrusions to land on make a night's sleep a bit disturbed. I personally will slap my head till my ears ring, but my partner is rendered miserably itchy for days, reacting badly to all insect bites, so in the name of peace we installed a Raid device in the next room, which deals to quietening the whole apartment, and gets us both a night's sleep. Until now, that is. The tiny bottle of liquid, half the size of the one it came with (whose plot is that?) expired too rapidly; the big bottle special is no longer available, the ridiculously expensive small bottle refill is off the shelves, and short of paying for a second plug in unit with the tiny bottle, which is in stock in one supermarket, we stew in our insect bothered sleepless nights, and Raid, bless their black little hearts, cannot be emailed in any shape or form in my corner of Europe, and yet no alternatives exist anymore. There is a malicious monopoly, and I particularly object to big names not caring about their customer(s). A similar event occurred when we needed an accessory or two for a Mac computer, and the french Mac dealership we've dealt with in the past would not send to Slovenia. (Both EU countries). I cannot start to imagine the time and difficulty involved in ordering a non-Slovenian keyboard from a Slovenian distributor, nor the complexity of detailing the connection cables between totally dissimilar language sets for such terminology. This might seem nitpricking to some readers, but let me assure you, Slovenia has no communications networks in place that even recognize Mac OS, and it is only Mac's incredibly proactive processors that allow us to operate such computers here. Yet read Technology Review, the 100+ year publication of Massachusets Institute of Technology, and their contributors hardly can concieve of a person who would continue to use a PC, when iTunes/iPhone/iEverything is rampantly dominating the technology market where it matters...(you do the math).
Am I alone here? Do you plod on with a computer handed on from your cousin, a dot matrix printer and a dial up modem? We have an A3+ HP printer, with a rack of A3 papers, cards, photographic paper, A4 ditto, plus 6x4 photopaper for snapshots, an Epson scanner, an iPod we just drove the car over, and the iPod runs the best of the bunch; we can't get the HP to print dead straight on the page, and we waste close to 50% of our paperstocks, (something I recall when I first employed specialists in desktop publishing in the early 90s), and our scanner has just been redeemed from the scrapheap (15 months new?) by a third party software upgrade, which mollifies me a little, but honestly, HP AND Epson can go whistle when we seek a new printer, and scanner, as big names in the 21st Century are 99% bullshit and 1% the goods. Nuff said.

Blog H4

What do you know about hygiene? A fair few years ago I ran a small and entertaining pub in a ski region, and had a funky little restaurant that specialised in cool jazz on the soundsystem, backgammon evenings with fondue, and some pretty crazy nights prompted by beer tanker driver strikes, plumbing explosions and other hazards of the funky pub trade. I also had a crazy local Swiss guy who brought me his backdoor special sausage which graced my pizzas, and I'm sure contained at least 50% donkey meat which, as anyone knows, makes the BEST sausage, along with a load of other secret ingredients. No one ever got sick from the food at my place; and anyone drinking up to and over a reasonable limit got supplied a free meal to keep things in perspective. So when the health inspectors came and impounded my collection of knives, all nice handmade stuff I'd gathered over a few years of kitchening, all with rosewood handles, as WOOD  was capable of harbouring GERMS, and took my superb fine grained beech chopping boards, as they were the same health hazard, and insisted I replace them all with plastic/Polyshitelene products, I got out of the trade; they even closed up the Swiss guy; Horror! Donkey meat?  I have never cooked in a commercial kitchen since. I've been a maitre d', waiter and bartender, and I did a lot of restaurant and bar fitouts, BUT ONLY AFTER THEY ANNOUNCED THAT PLASTIC WAS A HEALTH HAZARD IN COMMERCIAL RESTAURANTS. I've been a wood person all my life; sure I like a bit of hitech here and there, but if I can resurrect an old piece of wood, or age a new piece, or reuse some plank or other, I'll go for it, as I see all of that melamine/PVC/plastic imitation stuff costing way more than the real stuff every time. My partner has just complained of the stench emanating from her plastic chopping boards, but will not use the wood ones I made for her as they're too beautiful. I'll go out tomorrow and find the oldest hunk of cast aside spruce or beech I can, and trim it down to a board she will use. Expensive? Hygiene? You do the math. Nuff said.

Blog H3

Reality check; here in Europe, where there is no sense of environmental awareness AT ALL, we've had our thermostat not control the central heating for the last four weeks. The result; we've been forced to open windows to keep the temperature down to bearable, while warming the poor old universe again; now, do we pay for the two hundred litres of fuel we've used in one month? Figure another four months of winter.... we've asked, as the technician said on his second visit, 'it's all fixed', for the system to be shut down. That happened tonight. The building is cold in a matter of minutes. This apartment is owned by an electrician; there is one power plug in any room max; one in the kitchen, behind the fridge, one in the bedroom, behind the wardrobe, and our floors are criss-crossed by power boxes and leads trying to get electricity to where we need it. We also have a thousand bucks worth of perishable building materials which need storage at 19.5 - 20°C, and there is, so help me, no insulation anywhere in the structure. Welcome to YOUR reality; ours too. Forget the idea of care/education/values for the environment; you can be camped out where you like; we're on the same planet. Do you think it is worth going to the local council and asking who sets the standards for heating? Duh? Nuff said.

Blog N2

Ever had the notion to live in New Zealand? Do you have some nice pictures in your mind of those isles? I lived there for more than fifty years of my life, but fell in love with a foreigner, the process of which, naturally enough requiring to discover this new heart-course, meant I went and lived in her world for a while. Great; I'm totally happy with that; returned to briefly settle up my affairs, and now I live away from NZ; the upshot of which is a set of rules preclude me from ever getting a pension from those microcephalic prisoners of the bureaucratic gaggle of idiots known as the New Zealand Government. Which begs the question 'what happened to the IQ of the population there, and how did they let whatever intelligence they had left fall under the spell of the worthless dross who've finagled their way into control of what should have been a fine little country?'
I first had suspicions about this when I was asked to run for a political party there when I was just twenty years old, in the mid sixties. (Apparently the country needed 'people like me'...) About that time too, I read William A Robinson's book about his cruise around the world as a young man in a small yacht, where he disparaged the administration of small Pacific islands by the low grade of bureaucrat New Zealand had chosen to inflict on them. I'd also witnessed my sole encounter with assisting the NZ law, concerning some criminal activity I had happened to have a possible lead about, and saw the entire effort of the police turned upon my family. There is only so much one can take of this sort of bullshit. I took it for far too long. But I had to be living there to meet this love of my life.. Yes, NZ is a great little place, but it is totally fucked by the pricks who run it; it always was, it always will be. Visit it if you will, but don't stay there. Life's little twists and turns are not assisted by fifty years of paying them some enormous taxes. They're thieves there. Watch out. Nuff said.

Blog J2

Since I wrote Blog J, the golden girl has retired from athletics and returned her Olympic Gold Medals. New event? The Retro Olympic Ceremony? The Silvers get a Gold, and some really good athlete, unable to get a podium ever, gets pulled off the delivery truck he now drives, to get a Bronze which would have changed the course of his/her career had this all happened four years ago.... the golden girl has, of course spent all her money, soaked the contracts and endorsements, shed a tear for her honesty, and returns to her mansion in the sun. All the big time drug people I ever encountered were above the law, by being smarter lawyers, or crushed by the law, being pulled off their luxurious perches by loose lipped friends and the police special branch, or OF the law, being police in need of an extra buck and distributing their drug recoveries further downstream for a wee profit. So how much are we achieving here? The joy of watching an athlete surpass a pinnacle is a big deal; ALL the drug companies have experts formulating ALL the drugs, and ALL the regulators have ALL the athletes being tested for SOME  of the effluents of these substances. Lets forget it? Let those who want to take drugs do so; those who don't, just refrain, and those too young, just continue to do what they like, and perhaps we can have those non-drugged athletes just doing their thing because they like doing it, and those who want to be on the podium no matter what just go ahead and do it, and we can admire WHO WE CHOOSE, as long as the TV coverage just doesn't cover the first three, as, I fear, it is the media's idolatry of the front three that has caused this nonsense in the first place. Athletics needs to be mixed with money? Money needs winners? Winners need drugs? Drugs need proponents? Proponents need money? Just do the math. I want to watch athletics. Nuff said.

Blog P2

Years ago I was always fascinated by the cartooning ability of Giles, always a dry and cockney accented wit of observation, and THE image of his, that is indelibly printed in my grey matter, is of an arab sheik in a Cadillac convertible, followed by a fleet of totally veiled wives on motor scooters, and his shouting 'once more around the block oh loved ones, we've got to use this stuff up somehow'...... and of all the mixed up images I hold in my head, the promotion of Dubai as a sports venue, with western women, especially, in their regular clothing, going about their professional golf and tennis for staggering amounts of prize money, while the wives of any spectators of a local variety will be invisible by their absence, and if you are so lucky as to see one, she'll be head to foot in black; a prospect of 'interest' I place at the absolute bottom of my scale of things I must see in my life. I've been to Egypt, Aden, and a fair whack of muslim countries elsewhere too, and nowhere do I see the woman so morbidly represented as in the oil rich countries. I love watching WTA Tennis; there are few 'steroidal' sights there, and I love track and field, and have watched it with interest for fifty years; I've seen Abebe Bikila, Kip Keino, and Heike Drexler, and where and when are these arab nations going to show us that their women measure up to ours? Every time you fill up your tank you are supporting repressive regimes; largely Muslim in nature, though I haven't assessed Brazil yet and THEY'RE getting bigger in oil; how about repression? I think they can't control the beaches, if you watch the volleyball, but the rest of the nations in oil are absolutely no fun; and I mean NO FUN. I used to hang out with anyone; numbered South Afrikaaners, arabs, knuckle hard South Carolinians, Kiwi motorcycle riders, Australian cons and car salesmen, black soul singers, Singaporean electronics aces, ethical drug salesmen, AND a Mr Big, (who ended headless and handless in a Yorkshire quarry) and all had that element of fun in their lives, but nowhere did I see an arab woman in any social context, and while the odd Balkan lady raised an eyebrow to me, in an only slightly Muslim atmosphere, the majority of my life has been denied the prospect of a dialogue with an arab woman. Power. It's another form of fascism. It's alive and well, despite heavily subsidised acts of world war to eliminate it, and everytime I think of Giles' picture, or Dubai Golf Classics, I realise very little is changing, and it needs to, I'm afraid. Nuff said.