Friday Ephemera (808)
The magic is forever. || Hear her roar. || Unforeseen obstruction. || Scenes of a runaway sled. || Keeper of secrets lets slip. || Some tilting occurred. || I bring cleavage. || Eight thousand voids (and counting). || Frankly, I question his motives. || A great symbolic moment of the twenty-first century. || “Take your meds,” says she. || Significant irritation detected. || Artefacts of enrichment, a possible series. || Simulated tripping, from quite mild to rather intense. (h/t, Elephants Gerald) || $200. || That’s exactly how I would’ve done it. || Competitive window cleaning. || Attuned to higher powers. (h/t, Neatorama) || How to eat spaghetti, a beginner’s guide. || Protest training, where mighty warriors are forged. || Hours of fun, for some values of fun. || Foodstuff, loosely. || Cliffhanger.
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[ Pours rhubarb and ginger gin, fires up Murder at the Vicarage. ]
You wish you had my glamorous life.
Finally, the question has been settled.
Heartwarming.
Point.
Counterpoint.
Bluto is never around when you need him.
Short lived.
Try this one…
The self-involved bint with the headphones, the one being expressive.
She’d have to be landfilled first.
I’m sure the gentlemen were just borrowing them.
The Geraldine McEwan ones are really good.
They may take liberties with the novels – not always a bad thing – but they are more fun than the rather flat and stern Joan Hickson versions. It’s comfort TV. But with poisonings, tea and scandal, and schemes involving typewriters, gas ovens, and adhesive paste.
As I’m sure I’ve said before, the Hickson iteration of Marple, which is widely praised among Agatha Christie purists, is, to my eye, rather flat and slow and colourless. It’s not bad as such, and doubtless it’s closer to the novels than later interpretations, but it is much less entertaining. With a protagonist who’s distant, largely unreadable, and not entirely charming.
While the more recent ITV series, with Geraldine McEwan and later Julia McKenzie, take liberties with the source material – say, by inserting Marple into stories in which she didn’t originally feature – they are generally diverting and often rather good. With some amusing casting choices and a touch of slightly camp knowingness.
Which, I think, actually suits the material.
Manager: Okay. Nice job. Now I need you to swap the runs for A2 and B24.
[ Checks library’s website. Adds disks to list. ]
Both the McEwan and McKenzie runs are worth a squint. Three seasons of each, I think. Again, it’s comfort TV, but there’s mileage in the little-old-lady-with-a-hint-of-mischief thing.
[ Considers moving to a sleepy village and solving elaborate and grisly murders. ]
David, dont. In “Midsomer Murders”, Joyce once asked Barnaby why they didn’t just MOVE to Midsomer, and he replies, “Oh, no! Everyone there is a pervert, arsonist, or killer!”. Lampshading the entire series in one line.
Speaking of Chicago, damned carpet baggers need to keep their BS out of red states. If only Illinois had put this person in prison where she belonged…
That reminds me I have to sort out various cable monsters living behind computers and TVs…
Ugh
[ Takes notes. ]
A consequence of the proliferation of technologies. When I was very young, a TV had only one antenna input and maybe (rarely) a speaker output. A HiFi was a receiver plus a phonograph and maybe a cassette deck and one pair of speakers. And older systems were mono, meaning even fewer connections.
I would, of course, have to be friends with, or distantly related to, someone with a very grand house in or near the village, thereby enabling lots of stylish wafting about while sorting out who did what.
[ Drifts into reverie. ]
The foolishness behind DEI etc is the belief that anyone can do any job and it is just discrimination that prevents brown people from advancing. Here are some frustrating things recently showing that people are not able to do their jobs (and not just minorities):
10 phone calls to transfer dental records to a new dentist. Needed because they said they don’t take our new insurance, but after records transferred said oh, yes, we take it.
3 visits to bank (and 90 minutes first visit) to get my name added to a small non-profit account
car dealer told wife that a) car needed tires much sooner than in reality and b) car needed service much sooner than reality.
Auto repair shop said muffler sound was hole in tailpipe and would cost $1000. Took it to hispanic shop. They put it on lift and showed me it was not a hole but the space between sections. $250 to fix.
Called for warranty on tub refinishing job (paint was chipping). They said the damage was too extensive and must be our fault but the description on the phone sounded off. Turns out she was looking at photos from the original job. They did the repair free.
This kind of stuff is sand in the wheels of life. It makes everything take longer and cost more. The relentless pursuit of competence is more necessary than ever.
[ Surveys clientele. Bites tongue. ]
“I think you’re some kinda deviated prevert. I think General Ripper found out about your preversion, and that you were organizin’ some kinda mutiny of preverts!” — Doctor Strangelove
But I have confidence in the wisdom of David’s clientele.
But these things are great for the midwit middle manager/laptop class types, who will just say that more training is required while they write their email memos and go to their meetings to justify their cushy jobs.
people are not able to do their jobs
In government its been that way forever.
I know a senior NASA pilot, expert in technical investigation of “incidents”. In about 1976 he requested some records from FAA about crew training. They arrived very late, several hundred printed pages that had clearly been dropped and then stuffed randomly into a shipping pouch.
Not able, or not willing…
I can hear the agent’s eyes rolling from here.
Do as little as possible. Take long lunches.
They’re also available on Amazon Prime Video.
I call it That 70’s Feeling. Those frustrations with getting the simplest things done, of drastically reducing your expectations, was how I remember the 1970’s being. Now throw AI “assistance” tech on top of that and we begin to retrogress.
The dems in Illinois are campaigning hard on medicare for all. But medicare underpays docs and hospitals so badly that if everyone was on medicare hospitals would fold and docs would have crisis. For example, a $2000 ambulance ride gets only $200 from Medicare. Wasn’t the ACA supposed to be the cure for lack of insurance coverage? So they are going full socialist.
Also they are campaigning hard on anti-ICE. Because the dems love those murderers and rapists.
Even if they didn’t think it would affect them they did vote for it. Sympathy should be measured.
If those Fairfax county victims had been REAL girls, i.e. MtF, that perp would already be on Death Row.
Such a mystery, too. Everyone (including managers) belongs to a union, so you can’t fire anyone for incompetence. Or nearly anything else.
There are no performance metrics to hit that affect budget allocation or employment numbers.
IOW, zero incentive to be efficient, high quality, or innovative. There are a few people with half a brain there, but they have to keep their heads down lest they make the others look bad, which results in being crushed by internal politics.
These days, I wonder if they actually did. What if they didn’t? What if the elections are crooked?
Also, the behavior of that kid is something that men do in his home country to random women on the street. Every feminist needs to spend some time in Central America and then come back and tell us how Patriarchal we are.
A union employee once told me to not work too hard, lest I make the others look bad. That was in a temporary summer job, but it left a permanent impression.
We had a similar experience with a property management company: We requested a copy of the user manual for some equipment. They scanned it, but with the pages out of order and from two versions of the manual.
None of the government employees I’ve known would admit that there was a problem. Any criticism was just crazy talk.
I vacillate between “They refuse to understand” and “They understand but don’t care” and “They want the system to collapse”.
Yes. More likely that they didn’t vote for it. But “didn’t vote for it” less because the elections are crooked (which they likely are) but more because the kinds of people who don’t like it are precisely the kinds of people who don’t show up to vote. Especially in elections for sheriffs, judges, and school boards. They get what they deserve, whether they voted for it or not.