EUROVISION BRIEFLY EXPLAINED

Every year around this time I baffle my acquaintances with my repeated references to the Eurovision Song Contest.  I will attempt to clarify my interest in this, to Americans, otherwise entirely nonexistent event.  I watched a documentary on it last year, but I am not looking anything up and am just doing this off the cuff.  The cuff on the top of my head so to speak.

The Eurovision Song Contest Grand Final is the single most-watched television broadcast throughout Europe and has been for umpteen years, since the earliest years of television.  It was so popular that East Germany had to create its own Soviet version to keep the comrades from mentally defecting.  It is a confluence of many disparate streams of sociopolitical, cultural and diplomatic influence.  It has had a genuine permanent impact on international relations between European nations on more than one occasion. The nation which wins is the host of the next year's event and that adds complications. Here are some of the things going on with this thing:

1. Grand Spectacle of Schlock  Eurovision is a multinational Lawrence Welk show and the intent is to create music which appeals to the greatest number of people.  Occasionally, as with Germany's winning song Satellite, by Lena Meyer-Landrut, it results in a conjunction of appealing song and singer which can be captivating.  Most often the result is a mopey pop ballad, a jingoistic anthem, or some kind of ethno-folk disco atrocity.  When we try to appeal to the greatest number of people we may end up appealing to none.
2. National Advertisement A relatively obscure country like this year's host Azerbaijan can find in Eurovision a mini-olympics, a nearly affordable platform to show itself a capable nation.  The fact that it can put across a big expensive event like this demonstrates that it may be a functional business partner in an unusual corner of the world and provide valuable goods and services to multinational corporations.  If the host is a deranged autocracy like Azerbaijan it is an opportunity to show that it is not a deranged autocracy, and the way to do that is to become even more of a deranged autocracy, bulldozing homes to build a venue for the event, and suppressing even more harshly than usual the inevitable public rebellion which results.  This shines a light upon the actions of the regime in the international press.  Even non-winners can gain some publicity from losing, like the autocrat of Belarus who last year revealed the paranoid mindset of the dictator by blaming collusion for the failure of the the Belarussian entry, titled I Love Belarus, to take the laurels.
3. Melting Pot Hundreds of people from dozens of countries, not diplomats or politicians but for the most part fairly normal people, meet in one place to rub elbows, sing songs, and try to create some happiness in the world.  Millions of people in all those countries are watching the same show at the same time, seeing that people in other lands are just people like them who enjoy having fun or shedding a maudlin tear over a song.  That can never ever hurt anyone.
4. In It To Lose It One of the most fascinating aspects of it is the winner's obligation to host the next year's event.  All the participating nations want to be seen as competitors but not all of them want to win.  Countries like Spain and Greece which are in bad financial straits, or little countries like Andorra and Montenegro, can't afford a 200 million dollar throw-away like Eurovision.  When Ireland won it three years in a row it was a bit of a disaster.  We end up with performers who want to be good, but not too good, songs that were written to lose but not to lose badly.  It's great to make it to the finals but for god's sake please don't win.

That, extemporaneously, is what Eurovision means to me.  I'm going to try streaming it live to see the opening, and then will download it when it pops up in the torrent trackers later on, because I have never been able to enjoy, or endure, the thing in its entirety.

Now you know what I know about the Eurovision Song Contest.

KRISPY KREME 2012

CRAIGSLIST CRANK

I seen them zap a little girl before - $666 (I swear to God)

These fucking swine pig sociopath cowards need to be found and killed. They are murderers. They claimed many times that they were the army, but who knows who these swine pig sociopath cowards really are. 

PeterMooring.nl describes the symptoms perfectly. He has a book out as well but i never read it. How he knows so much about the wireless murder device(s) I do not know. 

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  Location: I swear to God
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FRANKENSTEIN THE CART PAYS FOR ITSELF

I recently noticed that some folks about 7 blocks from here had taken down a section of fence so last evening I offered to take it away.  This morning I took the end board off of Frankenstein the Cart and trundled it over there.  IMPORTANT DESIGN NOTE: Handles - the longer the better.  These are too short.  You need to be able to push the empty cart with your arms hanging straight down, with enough room for your legs to swing.  This is about 45 6-foot cedar fence boards, a bit rotted at one end, six 8-foot treated 2x4 stringers, and two  4x4 posts which rotted off at about 6 feet.  It was actually easier to handle while loaded as it balanced on the wheels and all I had to do was shove and keep it balanced, but I had to rest at the end of every block.  I hope this is the heaviest load I will ever have to haul with this cart.

 This is where they will go - in the back corner of the yard.  There is a chain link fence with inserted lath and a hedge, but it is always pretty shady in that corner and I don't think the hedge will ever really fill in back there.  When you sit at the breakfast table looking out the sliding glass doors you can see cars go by on the next street.  I want to be able to eat my meal and not be distracted by a kid in a red shirt riding a bike a block away, and just see the birds hopping and pecking, and squirrels chasing each other around.

The fence boards don't have to hold themselves up, because they will be between the existing fence and the hedge, so my plan at this point is to rig the 2x4 stringers up on the chain link fence with heavy duty zip ties just to hold them in place, and attach the fence boards with screws.  As long as it provides a visual barrier its job is done.

NEW GARDEN CART

Here is the new garden cart, given a name which is a common term of affection in our household.  I used a couple of pieces of new wood left over from the porch re-build last year, but the rest is salvaged scrap.  The box is 4 feet long, two feet high, and 18 inches wide.  I will watch for a couple more boards to bring the inner walls up level with the top of the box but for now it is okay. I oiled the wheels and they spun very smoothly for a long time.  Those are good wheels.  It tips up pretty easy and won't take up too much space in a corner.  Time will tell how useful it will be but at least the old parts are being put to some use, and not being taken to the neighborhood cleanup this Saturday.

THE STORY OF THE COOKIE STORY

A few years ago my mom started telling the cookie story. It is a story of a slightly humorous minor misunderstanding.  After the fourth or fifth time I asked her to stop telling it, because for one thing she remembered it differently from the way I did and every time I heard it I had to decide whether I ought to tell my side of it or just let it go, and for another thing a funny thing I did when I was a kid is kind of embarrassing for a greybearded old coot to have to keep having stuck in his face forty years later.  I record here for digital posterity the story of the cookie story as I remember it, which is probably considerably different from the way it really happened.  What we really need to do is have my mom and sister write up their versions and do a whole Rashomon thing on it.  So here goes:


My mom found a cookie recipe she wanted to try out and they turned out pretty well.  We liked them quite a bit.  The recipe makes a huge batch, about eight dozen cookies, and that can last a family of three a pretty long time.  We liked them enough that when we finished them, Mom made them again right away.  They are good cookies, really good, but weeks and weeks of the same cookie gets kind of wearing on a kid.  I thought once this batch was finished I could get her to make something different.  The problem was getting those cookies eaten up, so when my friend Robert would come over I would give him a whole lot of them, as many as he could carry in both hands, and soon they were gone.  Problem solved.  Except I came home that fine summer afternoon to find Mom had just finished baking another gigantic batch of those same cookies.  "They disappeared so quickly that I knew you really like them so I made you some more," is what I imagine her saying.  That is really all there is to that story except for my shocking confession.  


I made a version of those cookies today and they are really good.  I made minor substitutions, but here is the recipe as I got it from my mom:



Pioneer Home Cookies 
1 cup white sugar

1 cup brown sugar

1 cup margarine (cubes not tub) (1/2 pound)

1 cup salad oil

1 egg

pinch of salt

1/2 teaspoon almond extract

1/2 teaspoon vanilla

1 teaspoon soda dissolved in 1 tablespoon sour milk or cream

1 teaspoon cream of tarter

3-1/2 cups flour

1 cup oatmeal

1 cup cornflakes

1 cup coconut

1/2 cup chopped nuts

Drop by teaspoon on greased cookie sheet then press flat with glass dipped in sugar.
Bake 350 degrees for 10 minutes until light brown.

I made a half recipe, using butter instead of margarine, and baking powder instead of the soda/tartar - it's the same thing. I added another tablespoon of flour to make up for the wetness of a whole egg in a half recipe.  I keep rolled whole barley, rye and oats in the house rather than oatmeal and used more of that instead of the coconut.  I crunched up some Rice Chex in place of the corn flakes, but you could use more oatmeal for that too if you like.  Using both oil and butter makes them very light and crisp, but it also stays in your mouth a bit, which may be why I got tired of them.  It says drop by teaspoon, and that is not a measuring teaspoon but a regular spoon. They are very soft when first out of the oven but they harden up after about a minute and they don't clamp onto the pan, so you can let them sit for a minute before taking them off.  When you try a new recipe for the first time always do one test cookie first just so you can see what they are going to do.  I use a little metal pie pan for that. Here is what four dozen Pioneer Home Cookies look like:

There is the story and there are the cookies.  Now my story is ended.

MAID IN HOLLYWOOD - Daisy Bufford

Meet Daisy Bufford.  She was in 28 movies from 1927 to 1944, including Gone With the Wind and Cabin in the Sky, and played eleven maids.  Here she is in Naughty But Nice (1939), with Ann Sheridan. 

 

 Her main function in the story is to bring heavily spiked drinks to Dick Powell, and express astonishment when he sucks them down like lemonade, which is what he thinks they are.

Extreme astonishment.  To be fair, she is not the only person in the film who displays, through facial expression, extreme astonishment at that character's drinking habits.

Here she is in a non-maid role in Nobody's Baby (1937) a B comedy starring Patsy Kelly.  She is informing Robert Armstrong that she is not the woman in a taxicab that he is looking for.  The fact that she is black was meant to add comic effect to the mistaken identity.