The Long Road Out

There’s a snow removal company in Truckee, California that has a monopoly. Elements it’s called. We’ve had 5+ feet of snow here in three days and it’s still snowing.    For two 26 hour periods in there, we've been snowed in--it's very comfortable in our house, and we have lots of food, and Netflix, and all the rest.  And, we're trying to quarantine in the belief that somehow we're helping hold back the worst of Coronavirus. Who needs self-regulation when you're actually help prisoner in your house (not entirely true--we've climbed out on snowshoes and cross country skis).  Having snow up to the top of your garage door actually has a calming effect--your choices are eliminated.  So, you get the picture: a service provider with terribly low standards of customer care, failing again during this current storm. Elements sent out a message yesterday that should be a reminder to all of us about how to care for your neighbors in times of anxiety, troubl...

You'll probably generally agree with my list, if you also agree that American Sniper  doesn't have a single original thought or line, and is a mediocre hackneyed love story...and a mediocre hackneyed war movie. My rankings (in descending order) of David Foster's Best Films of 2014 are: Force Majeure --fun acting around an important and critical topic that allowed for hours and hours of thoughtful conversations Mommy --Canadian entry to the Oscars, the best three-lead acting of any film of the year, taking Maggie Gyllenhaal one step further--or one kilometer further Ida --now THIS is a war film--two women jointly rediscover their past, and make morally defensible decisions once they understand  Boyhood-- talk about getting lucky on a long term project...could you select a better group to watch grow up together? Calvary --Dostoyevsky and Camus dealt with inescapable guilt when you're on the fringes of society.   This film, and Brendan Gleeson, looks straight i...

I've now got about 10 flights on United since their new 2020 Mileage Plus program. Eight of those have been purchased business class tickets. Here's the shock--under the new scoring system, I'm less than a tenth of the way toward 1K status (I've been 1K or Platinum for the last eight years. I'm might not make gold this year). There are about a million posts complaining about the new system which rewards nothing except dollars spent. Google to experience the anger. You'll also see a lot of "winners vs losers" analyses which try to game whether you should add a connection to a Singapore flight on a partner airline. United has now added an hour to your flight booking time...for each leg. For a 1K traveler, that's 54 hours of your life, every year, sucked away from you. Please be careful.  Mileage Plus may cost you a spouse or a friend or the ability to have conversations with other humans while you click away on your calculator. Here's the o...

As Super Bowl games go, the Chief's victory over the 49ers was fun to watch...Kelce when it mattered, and precise defensive play on both sides. So, when the dust from the artificial turf settled in the depths of our lungs, the result was exactly the same. We still have Fox promoting a vision of the United States as a glistening beacon. This vision is only possible if you put a deep screen on the lens of all the cameras, and the resulting soft light effect worked its magic for every second other than the 8 minutes of Mr Small Penis.  No screens can make Trump appear any different than he is. That must be what the advertisers mean when they talk about American integrity, since we left the remains of our integrity on the roadside miles ago, along with the used condoms. And, we still have all the women who count out of their clothes offering full crotch shots, while the men are fat, careless, wildly unattractive, and unable to finish sentences.  Sports which require 8 minute...

We now have the Kurds reaching out to the last allies standing--Russia.  Remember Finland aligning with Hitler since neither the UK nor the US would help them keep the Russians out?  That's the situation on the ground in Syria. Still, for the most part, we'll be in the situation of asking Erdogan/Turkey to stop firing US-manufactured weapons at Kurds carrying (fewer and smaller) US-manufactured weapons. Even the New York Times is now agreeing that the key element of US foreign policy recently has been arming/abondoning/attacking.   The NYT's Interpreter newsletter, by Amanda Taub and Max Fisher, who comment on "the sad, cyclical nature of American interventions abroad."     Thank you, Amanda and Max, for pointing out George W Bush's hypocrisy in condemning our abandonment of the Kurds to death camps.   GWB has no standing on this issue--he did the same thing to the allies we'd armed and supported in Iraq 2.   Similarly, so did his Dad. I'd...

Once you begin to use your new Orange Holiday SIM card, the French telecom company requires that you register it prior to topping up.   In addition, you can't retain your new French phone number past the first 14 days without registering.   I suppose the international police need to know who you are. You'll need an ID photo, your new phone number--and the actual SIM card number.   There are only two places to find this number: It's the first thirteen digit number on the SIM card packaging. If, like me, you threw the packaging out after activating your phone, then there's only one other place it appears:   on the SIM card itself.   Turn off your phone, remove it, and copy it down (NOTE:   some websites say the ICCID number in Settings/General/About is the SIM card number.   It's not---and it has too many digits anyway.) Certify that your other info is correct, complete the "I'm not a Robot" CAPTCHA, and send in the form.   You should hear ...

I suppose all these single "oh my god" moments do some sort of further damage, but we're already so debauched I find it hard to get very much more than amusement from the continued daily confirmations.  The USA is a totally corrupt state apparatus lead by an idiot. The CIA is denying that they have any spies in Russia in response to the fact that Trump inadvertently outed their number one asset who then had to be whisked away under cloak of pollution or darkness or whatever—who cares, we don’t have a clue what Russia is doing anyway.  Hey--you guys in the CIA--you kinda missed the Ukraine.   And how about glasnost?   All that money and what were you doing?  Masturbating?  Or writing further denials?   I certainly don't get an ounce of value from your work, and I wish you'd stop.  I feel less safe knowing you're out there in your weird black shoes...  Even better, after Trump tweeted last week that Hurricane Dorian was going to hit Al...