Category: Blogging

Posted on in Blogging

AncestryDNA costs 45 dollars a month

First of all, you will need to find your relatives in American that cost $20 dollars per month, but naturally you probably have relatives in other parts of the world, so now you pay 34 dollars a month. Once you agree to pay that much you may as well add 10 more dollars to get the full deluxe package at 44.99, and it may go up, so let us say it costs 45 dollars a month to find your relatives or to look find out if your friends have died using the social security death index, that was free, but they stole it, and sold it back to us. The price is hidden so deeply in the AncestryDNA website, that it took me half an hour to find it. So, I am posting it here for everyone to read, as of Sunday, August 26, 2018, the price of finding your relatives on AncestryDNA is $45 per month, which adds up to $540 dollars per year, and let us say you have to wait 10 years for your relatives to sign up to AncestryDNA. The cost of find your relative is now $5400 dollars for ten years, but what if it takes longer? (Don’t lose your relatives.) What if you never find your relatives? There is no guarantee you will find them, if they never sign up. Maybe with a money back guarantee, it would be more reasonable. If you don’t find your relatives in 10 years you get your money back? I could see maybe five dollars a month or a flat fee to have your name in a database in case your relatives turn up, but this is just too expensive.

So, thank you AncestryDNA for all the people you kept apart from each other with that pricing.  As Burroughs would probably say, relatives will only cause you grief in the end.

Posted on in Blogging

Parkview Mobile Estates in Palm Springs

This is my review of Parkview Mobile Estates in Palm Springs, California. I am not 55 years old yet, but I have been there to look at it at least three times. The view of the mountain is incredible, and each house in unique looking.  I think the floor plans are all difference. I tried to reach out to a real estate agent who claimed on You Tube he was selling the houses, but he refused to let me tour one. So, I have never been inside one of the houses. There are not trailers or boxy looking homes. They look like small houses.  Parkview Mobile Estates has a clubhouse and a pool. The property is build on a slope with the higher part closer to the mountain. This could be an issue for people with limited mobility, who want to live at Park View Mobile Estates. I also read online that the lease is up in 2027. I don’t know what that means. Will be park be removed to make way for something else like condos? Still, this is the prettiest of all the Palm Spring Parks. There are a few others, such as Safari Park, one can consider looking at, before making such a big decision, to buy or not buy. There is a space rent, charged monthly even if you buy, and I believe it varies based on the individual house one buys in the park. The park management has to approve of all buyers. Buyers can not rent out their homes. There is hiking nearby, but it is very vertical hiking, and probably not obtainable if one has arthritis. Still the views are nice, even if one can’t hike. One will need a car to drive to Downtown Palm Springs for shopping. There is parking and garages at each of  the homes, plus a visitor parking lot. The houses in the neighborhood with is called Tahquitz Canyon, Homes nearby are so expensive that Movie Stars have lived there. If you wish, google search and find the names of the Star Homes and their addresses. Most of the Stars don’t live in Palm Springs anymore. It’s fun to think you can live, for a reasonable price, near where the Stars of a bygone era once lived. Most of these famous Palm Springs inhabitants, such as Marilyn Monroe and Debbie Reynolds, are no longer with us.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
I took this photo of the pool in 2013, to show the view of the Mountain. You can see the spa over on the side, which is huge in size.
Posted on in Blogging, Literature, poems, TV Shows and Movies

Woody Allen Movies and Existential Despair

I read a quote from Edward Lear

” I see life as basically tragic and futile and the only thing that matter is making little jokes.”

The quote is found in an out of print book Inventing Wonderland by Jackie Wullschlager.

I was able to draw a connection between that quote and two early movies by Woody Allen Annie Hall 1977 (we need the eggs), Manhattan 1979, and Hannah and Her Sisters 1986. In the movie Hannah and Her Sisters, the character played by Woody Allen, whom I will refer as Woody Allen, wants to kill himself, because he does not know what happens in the afterlife. He reasons life is not worth living because we don’t know what the point of life is without knowing if there is an afterlife and if so what happens in the afterlife? He tries several religions, but they all fail him. He is ready to kill himself, but then he is cheered up by watching a Marx Brother’s Movie. In Manhattan 1979 he realizes what matters to him is not the sophisticated woman played by Diane Keaton, but the younger girl played by Mariel Hemingway. This was clearly the foreshadowing of worse thing to come. But, it was an Existential Crisis that caused Woody Allen to change his mind about which woman he wanted.

I recalled reading that Woody Allen studied things on his own beyond college, so he could impress women whom he was picking up. I thought this was rather crass, so I filed it away in my memory until later. Woody Allen complained in the movie Stardust Memories that everyone wanted him to just make more funny movies, but he could not due to his Existential Despair. There are a whole series of his funny movies that he made such as Take The Money And Run, Bananas, Sleeper, and Love and Death. But, his more profound movies will be more remembered Annie Hall, Manhattan, Hannah and Her Sisters.

The Existential Despair concept is hardly original, but at the time when I watched these movies it made accessible to me someone who had not studied much classical literature in spite of a liberal arts education.  In college, each professor picks the works he wants his students to read and study. Clearly there are some huge gaps in my education. Why did none of them ever touch on Edward Lear? How could have lived more than 50 years knowing only the poem The Owl and the Pussycat which I assumed was a Mother Goose? The Owl and the Pussycat was written to cheer up a sick child, but after The Owl and the Pussycat Edward Lear poems take a sliding into some very depressing topics. “They went to sea in a Sieve” in the poem The Jumblies is about a huge family or group of people suffering from over population, but they don’t mind or notice or take any actions to correct this misfortune. Lear was said to come from a very large family of 21 children.

I do appreciate Woody Allen placing Existential Despair into his movies, even he copied them. For those people who did not go to college or somehow missed it, Woody Allen introduces the topic of Existential Despair. There are more reasons to consider Existential Despair than topic itself. Existential Despair is the best argument against materialism and endlessly striving to have more possessions while completely ignoring realities like aging, death and the death of our loved ones. No amount of material wealth or personal success can overcome the question of the afterlife. In the current state with of affairs with over population and climate change, we can’t just go on ignoring the diminishing environment we live in. But, one person can’t do anything about fossil fuels or the over use of plastics. This contributes to the dread of Existential Despair, because we know that future generations may have worse life than ourselves. In Victorian times people did not know these future truths. The invention of antibiotics in the 1920s changed the world for the better. People thought that each generation of children would become happier and better off with all the new medical sciences and technologies.

The point of education not to memorize facts, which you can look up online, but to have an overall structure of how to organize and process the information in such a way to make it useful. There should be a survey class in college for literature similar to the way art history is taught. An introductory art history course mentions all the big names, and then if one finds particular artists appearing they can go research them later on. The worst part about college is the pressure for time and the expense of college. Most people work part-time, and there is no time for the pursuit of further knowledge. You learn enough to pass each test, and then move on the next exam.  Just keeping up with the classes is all one has time for. Things really need to change.

“Thought I’d something more to say” Time by Pink Floyd

 

 

Posted on in Blogging, David Foster Wallace

Woody Allen vs Mia Farrow

 

Woody Allen vs Mia Farrow parallels the book Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace

warning contains Spoilers for the book, Infinite Jest and the movie Wonder Wheel

Moses Farrow posted a blog on Blogger about his point of view. I am a supporter of Woody Allen. I never believed that he molested his daughter, Dylan. It is very hard to wrap ones head around how Mia Farrow did this to her daughter. I think she created false memories in her daughter’s mind. But, maybe Mia Farrow does believe the molestation happened? I don’t think it happened, because as the blog explains, and as Woody Allen has said many times, he was not allowed to be in the house and did not go to visit. If he had he would not have been allowed to be alone with Dylan. The house was filled with people. Mia had many adopted children and biological children, and all of them had been told Woody Allen was bad person. I can’t defend him about the Soon-Yi incident, but she was 21 at the time. Certainly he should have broken it off with Mia, because having a relationship with Soon-Yi. But, the incident mushroomed a Shakespearean style tragedy.
I was reminded about the David Foster Wallace Book Infinite Jest in which,

Spoilers for Infinite Jest follow

the young female romantic character, Joelle, is disfigured when her mother throws acid in her face by accident. This is how it happened. The family was having dinner and the mother felt the father was spending too much time with his daughter Joelle and giving her too much attention. Maybe the mother was jealous? The father confesses that he is sexually attracted to his daughter, but he would never touch her and he tried to fight the feelings, by treating her as if she was younger than her real age. By treating the daughter like a little girl he hoped he could drive the feelings away. But, when the mother hears the confession, she flies into a blind rage, because he own father had molested her. In this rage she picks up a vile of acid and throws aiming to hit the father, but instead hits her daughter in the face causing the acid to burn her face. The character Joelle always wears a veil for this reason.

There is some speculation that Joelle has not really been hit with the acid, because the woman who relays the story is an unreliable narrator named Molly Notkin. I believe the name Molly is a nod to the book Ulysses by James Joyce in which there is a character named Molly Bloom. In an interview, David Foster Wallace spoke of reading the book Ulysses with his mother chapter by chapter as a child. David Foster Wallace’s mother, Sally, wrote a book on grammar called Practically Painless English.

The parallel with the Woody Allen Mia Farrow conflict was that the mother hurt and destroyed her own daughters just to get back at her husband. I also noticed this conflict in Woody Allen’s movie Wonder Wheel.

Spoilers for the movie Wonder Wheel.

In the movie, the older woman is jealous of her husband’s wayward daughter. The older woman has an ongoing affair with a younger man. Then she discovers that the younger man is interested in her husband’s daughter. She feels so upset, that she tips off the mob to the location of the daughter, and the daughter just disappears. The phone call she makes is done off camera, but the audience wonders if she made the phone call. At any rate, the daughter does disappear, but it not clear if she just left on her own due to the conflict in the family, but it can be assumed the she is killed by the mob.

If you have any comments please leave them below. I can’t say, I know anything for sure, as I have no contact with any of the people involved. But, this blog is not posted to debate Woody Allen’s guilt or innocence. The reason for this blog is to point out the parallel situation in the book Infinite Jest. One more reason to consider why the molestation did not happen is that since Mia Farrow had already decided in her mind that Woody Allen was child molester, there would be no way she would then allow Woody Allen to be alone with Dylan. And if it did happen the way she said, she would bear some responsibility for allowing that situation to occur. Dylan was Woody Allen’s not biological daughter and he never had visitation rights. What kind of mother would allow her daughter to be alone with a known child molester?

 

 

 

 

Posted on in Blogging

Chinook Campers

The Chinook Camper was a lesser known alternative to the VW Camper. The Chinook was named for a Native American tribe, that is often now confused with the Chinook Helicopter on Google. The Chinook Camper was billed as a modern mid-century space age vehicle. The company has under gone changes of ownership, and the Chinook has greatly change in appearance over the years. The Toyota Chinook is most distinctive looking model. The camper was built on top of chassis of either Toyota, Ford or Chevy. The ones created after 2000 are much larger and more expensive, looking like modern RVs. The bigger models lack the cuteness of the vintage Chinooks, and don’t seem like the same vehicle. The price of new Chinooks was expensive, but they lacked reliability, and broke down a lot. The fiberglass body was light weight, and therefore better for fuel economy, but over time fiberglass tends to collect mold that grows from the outside in. Algae, lichens, and mosses may begin to grow on the body. If you have one, you really need to keep it in the garage and away from all types of moisture. This is why the Chinook is the cutest camper, that you can’t own due to the impractically. You will need to be able to fix the Chinook yourself or have unlimited funds to own a vintage Chinook. My favorite models are from the 70s.

1977 Toyota Chinook
The Classic Toyota Chinook from 1977
chinook
The model feature orange and white a popular color for RVs in the 70s.
GMC Chinook
Here is a brand new looking GMC Chinook
Vista Chinook 1976
Chinook Vista 1976 in Avocado Green popular color in the 70s.
Toyota Chinook
This is a Toyota Scat. It looks more boxy than the Chinook.

From The Tin Can Tourist

“The first Toyota-Chinook Mini-Motorhome models sold in 1973-74 were built on a Toyota long-wheelbase half-ton truck chassis, powered by Toyota’s 18R motor with a standard rear axle. Since 1971, the company had manufactured one-piece molded fiberglass shells consisting of gel coat, ceramic shield and a single polyester skin laminate with plywood-stiffening panels.”

 

 

Posted on in Blogging, Gardening

Look out Wikipedia here comes Plantopedia

I was researching the cold tolerance of Columbine plants, when I found this strange new website called Plantopedia at http://www.plantopedia.com.

I started to read, and I noticed the strange wording of the sentences. I think it was written first in German and then translated into English. I can still make out what it is trying to convey, but the phrasing is very awkward. Instead of saying Columbine can be invasive, it warns of a “plague” of Columbines.

The site is ad-supported and uses your cookies to target ads that you want to buy from. The ads that showed up on my page were for dolls. The first time, I clicked there were no ads, but when I revisited the page, I could see ads. I think its good to have ads rather than to be nagged to give money all the time, such as with Wikipedia.

The take away was the my Columbine can survive to 20 below zero, so it should be alright. I planted one I bought at a nursery, and since not dormant, I worry. The nights have been very cold in Ukiah. If I wait too long to set plants in the ground in the spring the hot summers will kill them off. There is nothing online I can find anywhere else to say what is the cold tolerance of Columbine. Updated: I made a mistake. The 20 below zero is on the Celsius scale, but I think it will still be ok in zone 9. If not, I learned something. It says that the plant can live for about five years. Normally, I would remove mine in the winter. When I was gardening in San Francisco, I had a lack of space, so I wanted to put in a newer plant.  I am going to test this Columbine to see if can live the winter. I bought one called Aquilegia x caerulea ‘Origami White’ in 2012, and it did not live the winter. The ones I would take out were the no name Columbines because they would make too many seeds.

white columbine
Aquilegia x caerulea ‘Origami White’
Posted on in Blogging, David Foster Wallace, music

Lindsey Buckingham Fired

I have some comments about Lindsey Buckingham being fired from Fleetwood Mac. We don’t really know what is going on. I am upset about it, because I had heard an interview with Lindsey Buckingham for the first time with Dan Rather which made me feel like I got to know the good side of Lindsey Buckingham. I assume there is a bad side, and a violent temper that I don’t know about. I also read in an article, Lindsey Buckingham: Rock’s biggest jerk or misunderstood genius  in the Washington Post, which said, he was having tantrums on stage, and being cruel to Stevie Nicks.

I can’t make an judgments on whose fault it was, but I don’t like reading about the replacement members making statements about how wonderful everything is and how great the tour is going to be without Lindsey Buckingham. I just can’t become enthusiastic about a tour without Lindsey Buckingham. My favorite members of the band were never Mick Fleetwood, John McVie, and Christine McVie. I felt drawn to the Peter Green, Bob Welch, Lindsey Buckingham because I felt their music was more creative than Mick and McVie sound. Stevie Nicks is in a class by herself, I liked her work with Fleetwood Mac. I liked her solo work, but I never bought her records. Stevie Nicks was played so often on the radio, that I felt no need to ever seek out her music. The entire Rumors album was ruined by being over played on the radio. Choices were limited, by technology and budget, so just took whatever music I could get in 70s. Rumors was a special case, it was played over and over for about 20 years on the radio. Occasionally I would rebel and turn the channel or turn the radio off.

Many people don’t know, and I was shocked to find out that Ace Frehley and Peter Criss had been replaced from the Band Kiss by men who wore the same makeup. Can a band just take members and discard them and replacement them with other people? No they can’t, it won’t be the same band.

Before the internet I did even know who the line up was for Fleetwood Mac. One could find out things if they were to read music magazines, but I did not have the time to read them or even the interest. In 1984, Go Insane by Lindsey Buckingham was played on MTV, and I didn’t even know he was connected to Fleetwood Mac. I even had the double album Tusk, but I did not read the liner notes. I just thought of Lindsey Buckingham as a New Wave Artist. But, once I learned his name, I later learned that Tusk was mostly Lindsey Buckingham’s idea. Then I realized he had been in Fleetwood Mac. I did not have to buy Lindsey Buckingham’s record because was able to heard it on MTV and the radio. I still really like Go Insane very much. I did buy the song in the age of playing music on iTunes.  In the interview with Dan Rather, I learned Go Insane was about Stevie Nicks and the lyric “She’s A lot Like You” was about Carol Ann Harris whom Lindsey was married to at the time. At the very moment when I was getting interested in Lindsey Buckingham and even thinking of buying some of the Tell All Books about Fleetwood Mac, Lindsey Buckingham is fired. I was even thinking a could use some of the material in the books as an inspiration to write fiction. I was seeing a tragic love story between Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks who waited too long to love and commit to each other, and now they have run out of time.

My favorite Fleetwood Mac song had always been the song Hypnotized by Bob Welch, and although I did not know who he was either. I loved the song Oh Well by Peter Green. I don’t thing everything did Lindsey Buckingham fantastic. I did not really like the songs Second Hand News and Go Your Own Way. My favorite track on Rumors was You Make Loving Fun. I feel that it’s a mistake for Fleetwood Mac to throw someone away in the band, and then not even tell us why.

Updated  4/28/18

Lindsey Buckingham is still fired, and the tour is going to happen with these other people who don’t mean anything to me. It feels like the time Adam Ant said, he was going on tour with someone who was a guitarist for the Smiths. I do know the The Smiths, clearly, I do like Morrissey, but I don’t know anyone in his band. How many people am I expected to know who are in groups, when I am not a super fan. Only super fan know all the members in the band people. Of course Adam Ant did what rapper do. He placed the names of the members of his band inside his song lyrics. The most memorable of these was Marc Pirroni in the song a Man called Marco.  My understanding is the Marco is the genius songwriter and Ant is the singer and without Marco Adam Ant can’t create new material. And from reading lyrics Marco won’t work with Adam anymore, citing that Adam is too crazy to work with. This stems from the incident in which Adam Ant pulled out a fake gun which was a starting pistol at a bar in England, where guns are illegal.

I checked all the books on Fleetwood Mac, I could get for free at the Library and I found out Peter Green went to a party at Commune in Munich called The High Fish Commune and he was given bad acid. He had a nervous breakdown and refused to leave the Commune, and he did leave at some point and now he is burned out, and he can’t do reunion tours.

“The High-Fish Commune was a commune in Munich formed at the end of the 1960s. The name is a play on words, as Hai-fisch is the German for shark. Rainer Langhans mentions in his autobiography that he and Uschi Obermaier met Peter Green and others of Fleetwood Mac in 1970 in Munich, where they invited them to their “High-Fish-Commune”. Here the drinks were laced with LSD, which particularly affected Green. The communards were not really interested in Peter Green. They just wanted to get in contact with the Rolling Stones’ guitarist, Mick Taylor: Langhans and Obermaier wished to organize a “Bavarian Woodstock”. They wanted Jimi Hendrix and “The Rolling Stones” to be the leading acts of their Bavarian open air festival. They needed the “Green God” just to get in contact with “The Rolling Stones” via Mick Taylor.\

They gave him the LSD as sort of gag, and not really because they wanted him to stay with them forever. He ended up insane. At first he wanted to give away all of his money and he did, and then he wanted money again. He was in prison for a weapons charge.  I could not really make up anything like this. It seems like fiction. I read an interview with Peter Green from 1994. He had lost track of time, and he could not do music anymore. This could have been due to the electroshock therapy which destroys parts of the brain. Clearly, the more prudent course of action would be to wait and see if he could improve with rest. I thought electroshock therapy was only given to people with depression. I learned about electroshock therapy even more by reading David Foster Wallace who had electroshock therapy, and it did not work he killed himself. I can’t think of any reason that anyone should have electroshock therapy even for very bad depression because Ketamine will work without destroying the brain. The problem with Ketamine is it’s too expensive for average people to be able to afford and one has to keep taking it forever, apparently. I read a lot about Ketamine and it will work, but it will wear off and it’s not a cure. I think the course of treatment costs $8,000, and not due to the cost of the drug, but the cost of having the personnel on hand to administer it. Furthermore, electroshock therapy does not work for depression either long-term. Just like Ketamine, it only works for time period of maybe 6 to 9 months.  Peter Green is just another casualty of a broken mental health system that can’t really fix anyone.

There are more dangers to take street Ketamine as it can cause addiction and a mental retreat in an imaginary fantasy world or kidney pain which will require a kidney transplant or a bladder transplant.  I saw a story about a boy who was so addicted he continued to still use Ketamine even after getting such a transplant. He wanted to stay forever in his imaginary dream world. I can see the appeal of such a thing, but it’s not really and it bound to catch up with one sooner or later.

Updated again on April 29, 2018

I have been reading up on the Fleetwood Mac situation, and it does not make sense. They can still tour without Lindsey Buckingham, if they insist with the new members that they want, without actually firing him from the band.

Updated again on October 12, 2018

The story has been explained. I used Google Feed to bring me all the latest Lindsey Buckingham news. This article was from Rollingstone. Stevie Nicks wanted him out of the band. I knew it had to be more than just he did not want to tour. Lindsey Buckingham had some solo dates that he wanted to do. I don’t go see Fleetwood Mac in concert, but I use AXS TV to view concerts and I can see Stevie’s point.  Lindsey Buckingham won’t do any of his songs like they should be done. When I saw Tusk, he made it into a different song. Lindsey Buckingham is being creative, but if I had paid money for the concert, I want the songs to sound like the studio original version. Lindsey Buckingham was being very weird on stage with Stevie Nicks as well, and she looked very uncomfortable with his weirdness. I am sure the audience was stunned speechless.  I understand why Fleetwood Mac had to let Lindsey Buckingham go.  I hope Lindsey Buckingham has learned something from this, and I hope Stevie Nicks can forgive him.

updated again

I just read that Lindsey Buckingham is suing Fleetwood Mac. This is a huge mess. I have to side Stevie Nicks in this case. Sometimes people just can’t stand to be around their exes, even if they have perfect behavior.

 

 

Posted on in Blogging, Days of Our Lives

Xfinity refuses to Service Ukiah

Xfinity refuses to Service Ukiah
If you want a Xfinity DVR in Ukiah, you will get this outdated box from the 90s.

This is a Comcast Box, and not the new X1 box that other people are allowed to have.

Grandfather's DVR
This shameful piece of ancient equipment was given to me by Xfinity Comcast

Xfinity is either too lazy, or too cheap or does not care enough to construct a line to Ukiah. As soon as they do I am dumping Dish and getting an X1 Box.
I moved from San Francisco to Ukiah, and when I was living in San Francisco, I had an X1 Xfinity Box, and it was the best and most advanced DVR I ever had used. I was an early adapter of TiVo. I got TiVo, because I used to listen to Howard Stern (before he changed to Sirius radio) on FM radio. Stern talked about TiVo, so I decided to try it. I was happy with TiVo for many years. But, things began to change. Xfinity is the same company as Comcast. Xfinity did not want TiVo to make any money so they began to sabotage TiVo. They fixed things so TiVo would not work with Comcast, and began to offer much lower prices on their own DVR.

I tired the Comcast DVR(shown above) and it was terrible, so I dumped Comcast in favor or Direct TV. I had Direct TV and TiVo for two years, but it did not work out, so I went back to Comcast. Comcast became Xfinity. I was happy with my X1 Box, but when I moved to Ukiah, I could not get an X1 box here.

Instead they gave me the same old terrible DVR from the 90s. I call it Grandfather’s DVR. I thought about getting Dish, but Dish was way over priced. I decided to wait for an X1. However, Xfinity refuses to begin to construct a line to service Ukiah. Xfinity is a very rich company, but they won’t give back to the us, by doing a little construction. As far as I know they have not even started to build a line. They refuse to acknowlegde there is even an issue with the line. I asked them many times for a date in which they would start or complete the line, but I have never gotten a straight answer, other then at some vauge time in the future.

Grandfather’s DVR only tapes two shows at once. The Olympics was ruined. After two years of waiting for an X1 box, I gave up and got Dish. I still have Comcast for my internet.

The Hopper 2000 fails to work. I am not able to tape shows, and I am not able to find shows. It is hard to explain what is going on, but it often fails to tape a show for NO reason. Sometimes later the show will show up. I spend hours struggling to program and reprogram the Hopper to tape my shows properly, only to have it fail to work.

Today I got up at 7am, but instead of turning on Good Morning America, I made coffee and did a few things around the house. At 7:30 I went to turn on GMA , and it was not taping. It gave me the option to start taping, so I clicked ok. It began to tape, but I had missed the first half hour. Now I have to be a slave to the times of my shows and constantly check them to make sure they are taping. I can watch it GMA tomorrow on Hulu, one day late, but the point is I pay $80 per month, and there is no excuse for this failure. Furthermore no other programs were taping at the time. There was no excuse for the Hopper 2000 which claims to have four tuners to not tape a single show on even one tuner. I called tech support for Dish and the representative refused to replace the Hooper 2000. He came up with excuse after excuse for why GMA failed to tape, such as it was a low priority, but I had fixed the schedule to make GMA and Days of Our lives numbers 1 and 2 priority. For some reason all the new shows I taped moved GMA, but not Days down to a low priority.  Now only this but Days of Our Live has failed to tape on Bravo for the last two weeks. I was not that into the old episodes of Days of Our Lives that are rerun on Bravo, so in my despair, I have not even tried to fix this issue.

I looked at my timer options and it clearly states that new shows are to be added as the lowest priority. I checked the options over and over. Instead of fixing the issue the representative gave me a chance to replace the Hopper 2000 with the Hooper 3. I said, why was I not given this chance to have a Hooper 3 to begin with? I have only had Dish for about a month. I don’t feel confident that the Hooper 3 will work either.
What I really want is an X1 Box. The X1 box works better then even the best TiVo. I tired to use the TiVo Bolt for a while in Ukiah, but it failed to work after about 9 months it stopped working at all. I also lost an entire years membership to TiVo, because they charged me $149 dollars for a full years service on my credit card without asking me or notifying me that they had done so. TiVo stopped working about two months after I had paid the full $149, and TiVo did not refund my money. Needless to say, I am not happy with TiVo, but I would still take it here in Ukiah if it worked, but right now that is not an option. The only Tivo that I really liked was the early Tivo that used a landline to get the programming information. Ever since the HD revolution Tivo has been sadly lacking.
The Dish Hopper is the slowest DVR I have ever used. Each time I press a button there is a very long lag time to move to the next step. There is no Live TV button. They claim there is a Live TV button, but that does not work. To watch Live TV, I have to either go to the Guide which is very slow and pick the show even if I am already on the correct channel. The show plays as a picture with in the menu, or I have to go to the recording of the show and click Live TV. Most of the time I want to watch the show from the beginning and that option is three options down on the very slow remote. I can not just press record unless I am in the big picture and there is no short cut to get there.
I don’t want to upgrade to the Hopper 3, due to the fact, the Hopper 2000, should be good enough, but it is NOT good enough. If it would do what is should to do, which is tape four shows at once, and not fail to tape a simple program.  There are many issues with loading. If I want to select a certain episode of show frist I have to go to icon which contains all the show of any program for example “Star Trek”. Then I have to pick out the episode I would like to watch, example “Mirror Mirror”, then I have to select Mirror Mirror.  At this point the Hooper 2000 which has been very slow all along gets even slower The wheels go round and round. The Hopper is thinking about bringing up this show. I wait for a while, then I get bored and go off to do something else. I return to the set, and its back on Live TV. I have to start all over again to watch a show. Tivo would never behave like this.  Each time I selected a Show on Tivo it would quickly get me that show. I never noticed any lag time. I don’t understand why Dish is going backwards in technology. Even the oldest and most primative Tivo was faster the the Dish Hooper. The will update this blog to review the Hopper 3 in the future.

Updated April 11, 2018

It turned out, they had given me something called the Hopper 2000 and not even the Hopper 2. I told them on the phone when I ordered Dish I was a very big DVR person, and I was still given a primative peice of equipement that is little better then Grandfather’s DVR. The Hooper 3 is working perfectly with no problems so far. I have no idea why when I told them, I was doing it all for a better DVR that I would get the lowest one and be given no choice. Stand up for your rights. Don’t accept a broken peice of junk. They have better ones, if you demand them.

 

Posted on in Blogging

Facebook is a Bully

Oct. 1 2018

Facebook wanted me to update my cover photo, and I can’t make the little red dot go away, so I updated from a photo of myself to a photo without myself. Each time, they try to make me do something, I will now update with something less and less personal. Next time I will use an abstract design.

9/24/2018
Facebook wants to tag people in the group, when you make post so you start to type a word and it turns into a name. I have to stop, delete and do it again, each time the name appears, so I have to reword the post and be unclear in my comment in the doll group. This has been going on for years. Just another rotten and stupid idea that Facebook wants to foster some sort fake group connection. You think after like five years they would fix this issue.

9/11/2018 Updated

The latest trick Facebook is pulling is they find one of your friends who shared a video of something like cute pets or Trump speaking or whatever. It is not a personal video, but something for a dumb time wasting page. You are trying to chat with someone using the messenger system. The video begins to play while you are trying to think. As you type you will find Trump’s face speaking, but you have the speakers turned off. You will be distracted enough to try to stop the video from playing. You click “close” on the video, it gives you options to block the page, you block the page, but they have so many pages you will never be free from them. As soon as Facebook knows you clicked and interacted in some way, they then replace the video you stopped with an Ad. This happens at least once a day. I now stop and unfollow that person, which takes extra steps and wastes even more time. You just logged into to give a quick reply and now you are clicking looking around wasting time. The last thing showed me was animals about to killed for food,  and upset me and ruin my whole day. If you post a lot of videos you will get unfollowed, and you unwittingly play into Facebook’s plan to create insecurity. If people are happy, they don’t need a bunch of worthless products to fill their sad and empty lives. Happy feeling do not sell products.

Facebook has been proven to a malevolent company that posts things at people, to see if they can upset people. If they can’t sell you worthless goods and services, they want to unnerve you, until they come up a way to make you pay for premium facebook without distractions. Other companies do this as well. Yahoo Mail makes you pay about 3 dollars a month for premium mail to avoid distracting ads. I do pay for Yahoo premium mail. The reason I would not pay Facebook, as we have a long history of animosity towards each other. I want to see them go down, so the way to do this is not support them financially.

What comes around goes around Facebook Stock Drops

On July 26, 2018 lost about $120 billion in market capitalization, after its earnings report after the market close on Wednesday missed expectations on revenue and showed slowing user growth.

A direct result of being so horrible to the users.

This posted is updated with every bad thing about Facebook from the newest outrage to the oldest outrage.

Another update: I forgot to mention they deleted a friend of mine’s profile because she wanted to use her stage name for her show. They won’t let you use a stage name even if that is what you want to use. I believe in the right to use a stage name if you want to use one.

Updated July 12, 2018
Today I tried to change my email address from Proton Mail back to Yahoo email, but each time I still get this message, my email is disabled forever. I got my new yahoo mail email, and tried to change to Facebook at once, but it would not change. I thought after a while of having a yahoo email, I could prove I was not a spammer. But, each time I get the same message and there is no way to appeal. I click on appeal, and it says you are logged in so you can’t appeal. I clicked on every way to contact Facebook in settings until I found there was no way to appeal. Now I think someone else had my email, got banned and I picked this email, that they recycled. I have no idea, I am only guessing. I am thinking I will appeal and point out that I have no done or said anything weird, crazy or violent on Facebook ever. Or contacted anyone who does not want to hear from me,  what I mean is contacted people, I don’t know to annoy them about something. I only contact people I know, but I can’t appeal because there is no form to fill out for my issue. In spite of stella standard on Facebook, I still can’t get my email changed away from Proton Mail. Proton Mail is not bad, but it’s just not good, I can’t  it check on my phone because it’s too secure. Therefore, if I was not able to get in, I have to keep this Proton Mail forever, just for Facebook. Now, I wonder what the former Macy Grant did to get banned from Facebook?

Updated July 3 2018

Facebook Groups: join in haste, repent in leisure.

Another reason to hate Facebook is Facebook groups. It is so easy to join a Facebook group, and so hard to leave them. I have clicked on so many groups and jointed them. I noticed a huge mess, and I wanted to leave most of the groups. You can’t just have a list and check off the groups you want to leave. You must find the group, then click leave. A pop up opens and then you have to click confirm you are leaving and then another check mark to see that you don’t get added back. It takes so long to leave these groups, I wished I never joined them. Most of them I did not get anything out of anyway, and I had turned them off. It’s just another way Facebook makes you waste even more of your time. You look at your news feed stuff pops up from groups, you comment, but then get pulled into a long discussion that sucks up all of your time with strangers. You are not even building love and relationships with people you know, or your family. You are mostly discussing trivial thing with total strangers. There are a few groups that have good discussions, but it’s very hard to find them, in a sea of animated gifs, shaking their heads and going “I don’t think so.”

Today is June 4, 2018

I have been wanting to stop all Facebook Memories. Memories are very annoying posts that are auto generated. I don’t want to see them, ever. So I read that if you set a date range dates you don’t want to see it will stop. So, I tried it and when I clicked save, it simply set the dates back to zero again. It won’t save any of the dates. I hate Facebook so very very much. My memories have nothing and will never have any meaning on Facebook. There is no way to stop Facebook Memories. If there is one, leave me a comment about it. When the plague known as Facebook goes out of business, I will celebrate it yearly, as a memory. I will call it Facebook Liberation Day.

Updated with new outrages: May 14, 2018

Today Facebook demands (in a red dot) that I have to update my new information. I clicked on it to make it go away, and it wants me to post where I work publicly so stalkers can come to my work cause trouble.  I noticed the update was set to post publicly, so I changed to friends only, but then I tried to not update it, and says invalid. The red dot does not go away. So, I have to lie about where I work to stop Facebook from nagging me. I am seriously hoping the volcano on Hawaii will destroy Mark Zuckerberg’s house. Facebook wants to make a profit by having information that people will want to search for to make money so Mark Zuckerberg can buy more “islands”. He will make them exclusive to himself and his friends to keep us off of them after he used us to make his profits. And by the way, I never told Facebook where I work at all, so it is not an update, it is an omission. I don’t even want to go to Hawaii ever again, because sun screen kills the coral reefs. All I want to do is live in a way to minimize my carbon footprint. I would not go to his house even if he invited me.

……………………………………………………………………………….

In light of the privacy issues, Facebook promises to make sweeping changes. I would like to discuss some other issues that Facebook needs to change.

Facebook is a bully. If you have a friend who does not post very much, Facebook will send you messages telling you to message or post on their wall in an effort to make that person post more. People have many different reason for limiting their posting on Facebook. I would never help Facebook by nagging my friends. It would make me look like an annoying, overly emotional and needy person.

I had a friend who committed suicide. I was really upset. I had two weeks before his death invited him to my house to play with dolls. We were doll collectors and he lived very close to me at the time. He did not come and he killed himself. I thought if only he had come, I could have cheered up and he would have lived. He was not posting because he was DEAD. Facebook would everyday demand I should message him and post on his wall. I was forced to unfriend him, because I could not handle daily nagging with a painful memory.

You can not delete your profile, EVER. If you try to delete your profile Facebook makes you solve an unsolvable caption or listen to words and type them back, that I am not able to hear or understand. The best you can do is to make your profile inactive, which means it lies dormant waiting for you to start posting, which is no better than just ignoring your profile.

Facebook won’t let you change your name. There are all kind of name rules and Facebook is always changing them. I can’t pin down what rules are currently.

Facebook assaults your eyes with constant memories that you don’t want to remember. There is no way to turn off the memory feature. Facebook forces you to “celebrate” years of friendship with people who you rarely see or talk to at all. There is no way to stop that. If you don’t “celebrate” the other people may be upset at you.

Facebook wants you to grow old and ugly and share it with the world. Hollywood Celebrities don’t release old-looking photos of themselves, but Facebook was nagging me when I had not change my profile photo for years. Facebook would nag me with the words “Take a new profile photo to show people what you look like now”

The meaning “you are now old and we don’t want people to be fooled by younger photos of you.”

I changed my profile photo after a while, but then I changed it back to the one I wanted. Each time you change your profile, Facebook spams all your friends about it.

You can not delete the profile spam. The best you can do is go into setting for the photo and make it private.

If you change relationship status, but don’t want to have all your friends spammed, you are not allowed. I would go and delete the relationship spam from my profile, but that would change my relationship back to the way it was. I had to go and quickly make it private, but people saw it anyway, as they were all instantly spammed. I am sure people are just waiting for me to be “single” so they can jump on the old lady train that is me. LOL This is not even funny. I am humiliated by Facebook.

Facebook demands your phone number and shares it with your “friends”who you may not want to speak with on the phone. Facebook “calls” people on your behave on the phone apps. It often does this by “accident” If you don’t give your phone number, they can lock you out of your account forever.

Facebook creates feuds between people, and if it does not like words that you are typing, it will freeze you from being able to post or give you a timeout.

I lost touch with a friend who moved to Europe. It turns out she had been posting a lot about a band she was in.  I was not following the daily posts she made about her band. So, when I wrote to her, she did not even reply. There is no way I can go see her band in Europe. I used to see them when they were in the US. Facebook lost me my friend. I don’t know if some of my friends put my conversations on mute. It’s hard to say goodbye to the lady with the band. I knew her in real life. Maybe she gets so many message from old friends, she stopped even reading them at all?

Some people post many times per day to Facebook. It is too much to keep up with all of that. Some people never post for many years, and then I wonder what is up with them. I try to post a little bit, but not very much, just to keep things running smoothly, but I resend having to do so. I feels like work and not fun anymore. I prefer to post to Twitter. I don’t have friends on Twitter, and I like it much better. Ok, I do have one friend on Twitter now, but we never see each others post.

I love my friends and family. Facebook take your friends and sells them back to you, and then bullies you. I follow my friends, but I often do not see their posts in my newsfeed. The feed favors groups, pages and ads. There is a way to put “see first” on, right now, but I am not sure if that really works. They are always changing and creating more things to do that are a lot of work for us. If you have a friend in which their friends post things to their page, you will end up seeing posts that are from their friends in your feed and not from that person you want to keep in touch with.

I am not going to take it anymore. To show Facebook who is the Boss, I am not going to ever buy any product from a Facebook Ad. If we stopped supporting those companies who create Facebook Ads, the economic losses will force Facebook to stop bullying us.

Update: There are so many thing wrong with Facebook, that I forgot some of them. Facebook won’t accept Yahoo Mail anymore. I changed from my Yahoo Mail to a Proton Mail, but I did not like Proton Mail, so I got a new Yahoo Mail. When I try to change to my new Yahoo, it says this email is disabled. As if I had done something bad. I had just opened the new yahoo a few minutes before, so I am sure I did not have to time to go on Facebook and do something bad and get my account deleted. So, now I am stuck with Proton mail like it for not, just for the Facebook Account. I was able to change everything else to Yahoo, but now I have to keep a whole separate email just for because Facebook. This issue was later revisited, and the problem remains unsolved.

Updated:  4/6/ 18 I knew this would happen, they want to charge money for Facebook to protect us. I don’t agree. Facebook is an out of control monster. If it did not exist we would not need it. If one does not have a Facebook ones life is severely limited. Without a Facebook people think one is a weirdo or a degenerate with something to hide. One’s ability to find jobs can be limited. Linkedin owned by Microsoft is too annoying and the interactions are forced. At one point LinkedIn demanded we endorse each other for skills that we did not know anything about. How can I vouch for strangers whim I don’t know in real life?

I only keep a Facebook to see my friends and families updates. I don’t enjoy it. By the way I could pay for Facebook, but all internet services want us to buy monthly subscriptions. There is a limited to how many services one can afford. On the surface a small monthly fee for Facebook seems reasonable, but not in light of all the other services demanding monthly fees. Apple devices won’t work properly or play music without a monthly fee.  I can’t use Mircosoft Word for my documents with buying a subscription. You Tube  demands a subscription called Red. Netflix and Hulu demand a fee for basic TV watching. Every Company now wants money. I only give to companies that have been, in the past. I do not reward undesirable behavior with cash. It’s too late for Facebook to change its ways, and stop bullying and nagging me to nag my friends.

Updated: If you use Messenger app on your phone, Facebook will allow your “friends” to call you if they don’t have your phone number. My phone started to ring over and over, it was a guy I added because we had chatted on a public profile. He would not stop calling so I had to pick up and tell him this is very inappropriate.  I told him he not call me anymore, and he went insane and began to send me messages accusing me of contacting him under different names, and said I was the one to blame, and he was going to report me to Facebook as harassing him, so I blocked him. Facebook should not give my number to “friends” at all. If I want to give someone my number, only I should have that power. Messenger allows them to call you without knowing what your number is, but that is not already with me. If you deny Facebook your phone number, they can lock you out of your account and not to mention they will nag you night and day to add your number so, you can recovery your account. Facebook will never be forgiven and they will never get even one penny from in the future. Even if Facebook read this blog, made all of my changes, I will won’t forgive them for all the problems they have caused for me. My suggestions are not brilliant insights they are common sense. If Facebook is so confused that they need to be taught social manners about nagging by me, there is no help or hope for them. The world would be a better place Without Facebook. I hope Mark Zuckerberg will just retired to his huge Hawaii Estate (which none of us could afford to buy), that he bought with Facebook Money and just go away.

Posted on in Blogging

I signed up for make up samples and I got porn

I found this thing on Twitter called Ipsy and I wanted to try getting make up samples, but when they came, they were nothing at. I got a make up sponge, a black eye liner pen, clear lip gloss, and I am like where is the actually make up? They do not tailor it to your interests. They make you fill out what products you like and your skin tone, but the send the same thing to everyone, so I was like cancel. I want another one so I tried the next best one, which seemed to be Allure, so I am like ok, and Allure wants me to buy sex toys. I am like what, I wanted make up, so I go to their Twitter to complain and lo and behold, it’s filled with porn, like I am some sex crazed weirdo when I am over 50 years old, ready to be a grandmother. I know the magazine Cosmopolitan is filled with sex in every issue, but I had no idea about Allure. It turns out to owned by Conde Nast and the New Yorker. I blame the New Yorker for sending me porn spam. Let me explain, I used to like the New Yorker in the 90s it went to way downhill. My mother, who  is senile, insisted on it anyway, but if she knew how disreputable they are, I could get her to cancel the New Yorker. Actually it is cancelled because I did not renew it. I don’t want the makeup anymore either. I need to cancel the whole thing. It’s not that easy, because they have my credit card and I don’t have pay pal with them.

Updated: Inspite of the cancellation, I got an email saying the make up is on its way. The New Yorker is owned by Condé Nast.

Updated: The makeup was pretty good, it could have been a bit better, but at least there were a few color products included unlike Ipsy’s box, which just had skin care and nothing with color. Ipsy did have an eye shadow, but it was in David Bowie Gold, but not Gold enough to use for Halloween, so it was kind of pointless. No one would wear it day-to-day unless they were under 30. It was not professional quality makeup for work. I also got clear lip oil, another black eye liner pen and a very expensive make up sponge. If I want another of those it costs 10 dollars. It was a pretty good sponge, but who would spend 10 dollars on a make up sponge? Just my luck, I am SURE all the other boxes are better than the box that month, and I only got it for that month. There ought to be a way to opt out or each box needs to have a number of color make up samples to try. You get ipsy get a make up bag, each month. The one I got was one to color in with pens to color with and I am like NOT an artist. I am not going to color in a bag. I wanted like a pink or gold bag or something pretty enough to actually use. The bag is like a smoke screen. At least it should have been a pretty bag for March 2108.  The coloring bags were all ugly, even if the “artist” stayed in the lines because the design was ugly. Why do these things happen to me? Its like buying a lottery ticket and then getting something useless that you take home and keep for a while, then throw it out, when you clean up because you have too much junk already.

Posted on in Blogging

I feel bad about Macy’s

I was very negative about Macy’s in online posts. I just found out the removed the Macy’s at the Stonestown Galleria and now I am upset. The building used to house The Emporium. That is why it means a lot of me. I could still see traces of The Emporium. I did not my character’s name for my novel or rather online collection of chapters based on the name Macy’s. I wanted to use the name, after over 10 years, my character had no name and was called Agent M, but then (at last) the name Macy came to me. But, there it was nothing to do with the store Macy’s.

I can see the reason Macy’s failed. The prices were too high. The quality was not very good. But, all clothes and things seem to have gone down in quality. The clothes were all very high-priced, unless you could find them on a sale rack. I would sometimes buy clothes there, but I liked Nordstrom better. I could not afford Nordstrom either, but it was more because I was being cheap and not really that I could not afford them.  I don’t buy a lot of dress clothes. They have to be dry cleaned and I don’t have the interest in them. I don’t live in San Francisco anymore, but I still go back there to see my rental houses. I had some problem with buying items. I was trying to buy earrings and the clerks would tell me to come back at the sale day and when I did I could not get any clerks attention. I was really upset. I had a charge card, but they placed a block on it. I had an Emporium account, and they had made it turn into Macy’s, but I could not use the charge. Once I bought a blender on that charge, they sent the bill late and charged me double the price of the blender. I had a big fight with them over that, I finally I was able to prevail. But, it was not like the sold items, they sold credit to people, and I was so freaked out by that. I was afraid to have a Macy’s Charge. I mean god knows what they were fixing to charge me. So, there was a lot of bad feelings. I made ranting blogs called “I hate Macy’s,” but I deleted them. At least I hope I did. I am sorry for that. I did not want them to go out of  business. I wanted them to improve not die. Why do people get the wrong idea? I complain because I want change, I don’t want to cause harm without change. So, I am sorry Macy’s.

Today 3/20/18 I went to Macy’s in Santa Rosa and I bought an Ottoman. To try and support Macys. The clothes are not my style, but the Ottoman was something I really liked. I had been looking for one like this for two years. It is leather and its white.

reduced for blog

I looked up a list of closing stores, why mine? There are lots of other stores to close. I don’t know what will happen to the building now. I missed the closing. I did not know about it. I heard on the News vaguely some Macy’s were closing, but I did not put two and two together.

Here is the Macy’s stores closing list for 2018.

  • Laguna Hills Mall, Laguna Hills, CA 
  • Westside Pavilion, Los Angeles, CA
  • Novato (Furniture), Novato, CA
  • Stonestown Galleria, San Francisco, CA 
  • The Oaks, Gainesville, FL
  • Miami (Downtown), Miami, FL
  • Magic Valley Mall, Twin Falls, ID
  • Honey Creek Mall, Terre Haute, IN
  • Birchwood Mall, Fort Gratiot Township, MI
  • Fountain Place, Cincinnati, OH
  • Burlington Town Center, Burlington, VT

I really miss the way department stores were in the 70s and early 80s. I used to go to Department stores as entertainment. I was a kid, I had no money to buy stuff, but I would hang out in the mall at Stonestown. I would go to the book store and read books. I would get an ice cream at Baskin Robins if I had enough money saved up. I would often ride my bike from Park Merced were I lived and go to Stonestown. I would chain the bike to any post I could find. There was a store called Bullocks Department store. The store was located at the opposite side of mall from where Macy’s is now. Macy’s was the Emporium. The Galleria was an outdoor mall, but there was a food court and located at the same end as the Bullocks. They had greasy Chinese food. The food at the food court was terrible, but I would go there sometimes. Bullock’s had a makeup department with natural day light. The makeup was on a bridge to the rest of the mall. All of this has been torn down. There was a clothing store called Judy’s that I really liked in the first part of the Mall near the Bullocks. The Bullocks had a teenaged department with a real jute box, that played popular music for free. I used to play Paul McCartney and Wings. I would select it, and wait for the song. I loved the clothes, but I could not afford them.

Most of my hostility toward Macy was based on how they took away the Emporium from me. The Emporium was my mother’s favorite store. She took me there every weekend, from ages five to ten. Macy’s and the stores that replace the Emporium and Bullocks were not fun places to go. They focused on just selling items, not being a fun experience.

I also loved the makeup at the Emporium. I saved up to buy just one container of Ralph Lauren Lip Gloss.  The shade was so perfect, but when I went to buy more Ralph Lauren Make up had gone of business. I could never find such a perfect color ever again.

At Christmas they had rides for children, and a train that would go around the mall.

Woolworth was also there and that was a fun store. I could look there for hours. They had toys and dime store dolls. Woolworth closed and we got Walgreens. Walgreens is strictly for buying items and then leaving at once. No one is encouraged to linger anymore.

All the fun was sucked out of the Stonestown Mall and replaced with commercialism. By 1990, the fun was all gone. I think a new business model for retail stores should focus on making shopping fun again. We can buy things on Amazon, but where do we go for fun?  Kids are too young for bars. Drinking is harmful to your health. What if we want a fun place to take the family that is wholesome? There is nothing right now. I hope that changes.

Posted on in Blogging

Wood Yi

I am a huge Woody Allen fan. I do not think he is child molester. That being said, I really loved the Howard Stern Woody Allen Parody character Wood Yi. He was played by Steve Freid. It all started when the Woody Allen/Soon-Yi   Event occurred. Wood Yi combines their two names together. Once forgotten the Wood Yi character parodies the affair. Nothing could be found about Wood Yi online in the past, but now Wikipedia has an entry and there are even a few YouTube Videos. I downloaded two songs sung and rapped by Wood Yi from the internet, back in the day. I can hear Jackie’s whooping laughter in the background. Back in the days when the Stern Show was fun and entertaining, and not all about porn, I really got happiness from the old Stern Show. To be fair, I still hear Stern on Sirius and sometimes he does not talk about porn, but there is no guarantee he won’t start to talk about porn at any time. If you tell Stern to stop, he will only go on all the more.

Jackie Martling is not giving credit for just how good he was on the show. Howard tried to erase Jackie the Jokeman from all the history of the show, and say he was never good. Jackie had these songs he would sing in the “voice of Robin” which sounded more like Lady Di, then Robin, about the news, that were really funny. After Howard fired Jackie and went on Sirius, he hired some guy to write a porn songs about Robin that he would play each time she did the news. The porn songs were gross and unfunny. You can find these songs all over the internet on porn based sites. Howard does have his funny moments when he pretending to be his own mother, but he is not as funny as Jackie. I think that why he hates Jackie so much.

On the subject of Wood Yi, I invited everyone to check out the videos. I have respect for Woody Allen that he did marry Soon Yi, but like many other people have stated it does not excuse what he did. It does make a difference to me, that he did not discard Soon Yi and move on to a younger woman. I know he is not a child molester. I know someone else would accused him (to get money) if he had molested any children. Soon Yi was of age, but what he did was still wrong. He needed to break up with Mia before pursuing Soon Yi. Or at least he should have moved out. In the parody on you tube, Mia kicked Woody out of the house for molesting Soon Yi. This video is called the first appearance of Wood Yi. Please watch and listen to them all in order. I do believe Woody Allen when he says, why would he come back to Mia’s house and molest her daughter who was like eight at the time? Mia had already kicked him out. The alleged incident occurred after she had kicked him out. Why would Mia allow Allen back into the house, and allow him access to her daughter unsupervised? She had already began to divorce him and was in the middle of the divorce legal battle? Did she not change her locks? Did she leave her daughter home alone? None of it makes sense. She had like 13 children at the house. How did Allen sneak in with his key? Did he break a window? Why was this not in the police report? Please comment if you have more information, but this is the timeline I am working with.

woody Allen

Posted on in Blogging

Successful Cult Leaders

Updated: There is a cult called Nxivm in the current news, and I would not count this as a successful cult or commune as the details are horrifying. Clearly this is not a harmless or friendly cult. I read about how the cult worked in the Hollywood Reporter and it was more like Scientology then like a commune. I am not going to consider these larger organizations, as part of scope of my blog. This post is about people who come together to share living arrangements and expenses voluntarily as part of a hedge against poverty and homelessness ie a hippy type commune.

I wonder how many cult leaders never tell their followers to murder people and therefore slip below the radar? Has anyone done a study of this? I think they are out there, and don’t want to be found.  Father Yod, for example, had a successful cult more or less. (I am defending successful as avoiding murder or suicide.) The problem he had, I read, was how to support the members of the cult. Maybe the stress of it caused him to sort of commit suicide by hang gliding. The more difficult the economic times are the more people would like to join a cult and be taken care of, but unless the cult has an outside source of income or can entire wealthy backers or members to join or get involved that cult will fail. Even most churches can be seen as a cult. The members of the church support the leaders, while the leaders only provide emotional and spiritual support to the member. The members go out and work jobs to support the leaders.

Suzanne Somers can even be seen as cult leader now, and not an actor anymore. She sells diet and beauty products. She began with the Thigh Master. People send her money for products to help them be attractive, and that money supports her. The joke is none of this works. The products sold don’t really help, but the comfort she provides to them in someway makes up for the lack of effectiveness of her products. I was dazzled by her as young teenager watching her on Three’s Company.

David Foster Wallace mentions in Infinite Jest that addicts who want to quit drugs sometimes try to find a cult to brainwash them out drug addiction. I don’t think this ever works very well. It’s hard enough to support stable working members of the cult, much less drug addicts or burn out who can’t or won’t work.

Another consideration is the lifestyle of the leader. If he is willing to not live very extravagantly, he or she, has a much better chance of making a success. Cult leaders seem to be mostly male and their taste for the high life tends to increase as time goes on.

The more money the leader spends on things like luxury cars, the less money to support the members. A good cult leader will live on a budget to set a good example for his followers about not wasting money. And he can’t just take everyone, he has to pick viable members for the cult, if it is to survive.

 

 

 

Posted on in Blogging

Son of Sam

Son of Sam
The Killer Speaks (TV Show) Lauren’s notes:

See it on You Tube

David Berkowitz Being interviewed from prison
David Berkowitz shot the dog because it barked too much, then he decided the dog had told him to kill people. He seems very sincere, that he is sorry. But, he had a long time in prison to think about what he was going to say. He said, that his adopted mother lied to him, and told him his real mother was dead, when she was not dead and the betrayal he felt caused him to go over to the dark side? I am not actually sure, why he would kill people because of this. My analysis is not actually crazy but pretending to be crazy, and hoping to act sane enough to get out some day.