It is so dark outside when I jump on the bus. Pair that with waking up at 3am. Normally, I would go back to sleep for a few hours. My Apple Watch cheerfully alerts me to my poor sleep quality. Thank you, Siri! Now I’m kinda pissed off that I have to get my sh*t together in an hour and out the door and by the time I get home, I’m too tired to do anything. I dragged myself to the gym after work and it was packed with people who will put in a great deal of effort at few beginning of the year and just when it starts to pay off, they’ll quit. But that leaves me with no treadmill for a run and I have to fight the urge to nap on the weight machines.
What we need is more light. It’s 7:15am and it’s still pitch black outside made even worse by an energy zapping low pressure system with clouds and a slow cold drizzle.
Morning (?) on the night bus.
I know why they’re doing this. It’s a test of fortitude and some proof of loyalty that has absolutely nothing to do with productivity. If they really cared about that, the food in the Cafe would be better, there would be an onsite gym with showers to use at lunch and they would have eased us into it over the next couple of months. And maybe assigned seats. The people who come in the most get to sit by the windows. And no one would be able to touch my display set up. I spent 20 minutes remapping the suckers yesterday. 🤨
In search of something new, I stumbled on a YouTube preview of the English National Ballet’s new version of Giselle. This preview featuring the Willis will absolutely blow your mind. This is the kind of ballet I loved as a 12 year old in Saratoga, NY. It isn’t pretty. It’s not like a typical a fairy tale story, The music isn’t melodic and sweet. And the choreography by Akram Khan will send chills down your spine. It’s visceral. You can feel the pain, misery and uncompromising thirst for vengeance. Kudos to ENB’s artistic director Tamara Roja for taking a risk and messing around with a classic.
Brief summary of this scene: the Willis are the vengeful spirits of young women who were betrayed by their lovers. Jilted at the altar, raped, abandoned at childbirth, think Fantine in Les Miz who gets even. Or Virginia Giuffre. Did I mention that the Willis tear apart any man who stumbles into their midnight gatherings? Yeah, the Epstein girls are definitely going to come back as Willis. Be afraid, Donald.
Here, Giselle is a newly minted Willi. Her lover lies to her about who he is. When she finds out he can’t marry her, she goes mad and dies from a heart condition. This scene is her awakening as a Willi under the command of Myrtha, queen of the Willis. This looks simple but those corps members are bouree-ing for a really long time. That takes ankles of steel. Those pointe shoes can’t last longer than a single Act II. The music, if you can call it that, doesn’t start right away but stick with it. {{shivers}}
Enjoy. Or whatever. This might keep you up at night. Ahhh, to have fabulous wealth so I could see this in person in England. Must check lottery tickets. I’ll post the Petipa version after this one so you can see the difference in interpretation:
And now the traditional entrance of the sweet virginal women who die of broken hearts before their wedding day and become Willis:
Stephen goes to a restaurant serving fine American Regional cuisine. It goes something like this:
Stephen: Waiter, come here. There’s a problem with my dish.
Waiter: I’m sorry that your dish doesn’t meet your expectations, sir. What seems to be wrong with it?
Stephen: Just look at it. LOOK! Can’t you see the problem?? It’s staring right at you.
Waiter: It’s a salad, sir.
Stephen: YES, it’s a salad. But it’s the wrong kind of salad.
Waiter: It’s the only salad we have on the menu.
Stephen: {{bald head reddening}}. LOOK AT IT! The pieces of salad all look DIFFERENT!!
Waiter: I know. Those are tomatoes, a variety of tender lettuces, a splash of lime, some tortilla strips…
Stephen: BUT THEY’RE TOUCHING EACH OTHER. I DON’T LIKE IT WHEN SOME THINGS ON MY PLATE TOUCH OTHER THINGS. THEY’RE TOUCHING!! TOUCHING!! {{spittle flying}} THEY WILL NOW HAVE “NOT THE SAME” FOOD THINGS ON THE OTHER THINGS!!
{{Stephen shakes his tiny fists and wails}}
Waiter: {{trying not to roll his eyes}}. I see. Yes, that does sound like something you don’t want.
Waiter looks around. Other customers are re-estimating the tips they were going to leave.
Woman at table 2 taps waiter on the shoulder: is he okay? -{{ she watches in disgust as Stephen throws his salad in the air, falls on the floor, writhes, screams, spins his head around and pees himself.}} Maybe he’s not ready for a nice restaurant. Anyway, I think we’ll take the rest of our meal to go.
Waiter: Of course, I understand completely and sincerely apologize for the inconvenience. {{motions to the hostess to help the woman at table 2}}
Waiter squats at eye level with Stephen who had rolled under the table, knocking into the table legs and howling.
Are your parents here?
Stephen: Growls, cries, kicks legs, screams.
Waiter: {{waits patiently. Meanwhile, two more tables ask for the check}}
Sir, would you like to order a different item from the menu.
Stephen: {{sobbing more regularly}} What else is there?
Waiter: well, we have a family recipe made with the finest ingredients. It’s delicious, nutritious and has that certain je ne sais quoi! It’s been a favorite for 80 years!
Stephen: {{Hiccuping}} ok. I’ll have that. What’s it called? {{he wipes the snot from his large forehead with the sleeve of his school uniform jacket}}
Waiter: {{smiles and says proudly}} It’s called The Melting Pot!!
Stephen: {{throws himself dramatically to the floor}} MELTING POTS ARE THE WORST!! EVERYTHING IS ALL TOGETHER TOUCHING EACH OTHER AND THEY DON’T EVEN KNOW HOW GROSS IT IS!! {{he pulls the tablecloth off the table}}
Waiter motions to Hostess with secret sign. She brings over the yellow caution cones and places them in a circle around Stephen. Waiter reaches into his apron and brings out his pepper spray and taser…
Trying a new bus to work. This one is about 2 minutes from my house and will leave me off about 50 ft from my workplace. The schedule is reasonable. This bus used to feed into the bus station but someone got the bright idea to take it all the way downtown. So it’s stupid for me not to take it. I’ll be using even less oil than before. Bwahahahahahhhh!
I’m a morning person so this bus reminds me of the Night Bus from Harry Potter without the beds and the crazy driver.
Did you know that when it comes to Return to Office policies:
Hypocrisy and Double Standards: A significant source of tension is the perceived hypocrisy of leaders. While demanding full-time RTO for staff, 93% of CEOs do not go into the office full-time themselves, having adopted their own flexible working patterns.
I don’t have to provide any citations for that. It’s sort of the same principle behind justifying RTO as a boosting productivity without providing evidence.
We’re not going to govern Venezuela. We’re going to use coercion.
That makes it better.
So, let me get this straight. We invade the country on behalf of the American oil companies, get rid of the old dictator, keep his vice president and his repressive apparatus, and then…
(This is the real genius)
… we blockade and confiscate any oil they try to sell to other countries until they give up and let us rape them.
Definitely sounds like Donald’s kink to me!
Thanks for the heads up, Marco, Viceroy of Venezuela.
*****************
Update: Meet the new boss, same as the old boss:
“If she doesn’t do what’s right, she’s going to pay a very big price”
Trump’s cabinet is made up of extremely zealous ideologues who are extraordinarily incompetent.
Everything they do in Venezuela from this point on should be run through that filter.
Bonus stupidity: we’ve run this model before in Iraq where the invasion was supposed to pay for itself with oil revenue. It ended up costing us $3 TRILLION. This at a time when student loan borrowers who can’t get a job and who are now in default will have whatever non-existent wages they have garnished and will probably have a bad credit score making a future job even harder to get. What’s next debtor’s prisons? Have we no workhouses??
Sinister:
We are asking the American people at a time of involuntary, cruel and disruptive austerity to pay for the US Military to be a security force for US oil companies. We will never be compensated for this outlay of money and probably US soldiers’ blood. The oil companies will probably protest that they have invested billions of dollars in oil extraction infrastructure and it’s just not fair to expect them to shoulder more of the burden of raping Venezuela.
What’s that I hear? The world’s tiniest violin? Are we supposed to feel sorry for US oil companies who had to leave all their equipment behind when Venezuela nationalized their oil reserves, which, by the way, seems like a perfectly logical thing to do. Please. {{rolling eyes}}
Norway nationalized its oil reserves. Why are we telling Venezuela it can’t nationalize its oil reserves?? Hugo Chavez and Maduro might not have been great for Venezuela but there’s no reason why that should be an excuse to drink its milkshake.
We will not benefit from the oil extracted from Venezuela. The oil companies will have to hoard it in order to keep oil prices high and not damage the production of oil in the US. So expect a lot of market manipulation.
Or they might just say screw it to the Americans they have to pay decent wages to in order to get oil out of the ground and abandon them to their own demise. It’s so 19th century. Anyway, they’ll have a new colony in Venezuela and as we all know, South America is used to being exploited by outsiders.
I don’t even want their dumb oil. I want cheap clean solar, wind and nuclear energy so I’ll be riding the bus even more than before. (Pittsburgh buses are going electric. Boogie woogie woogie)
The only purpose I can see for taking Venezuelans’ oil is to put a stop to the development of any other renewable energy and that reduces our choices as Americans, consumers and human beings. I didn’t sign on to that. Maybe you Trumpers did but I want no part of it. There needs to be a law preventing corporations from restricting our choices and prevents monopolies. I think it’s got something to do with anti-trust laws. Let’s get Elizabeth Warren to look into that.
Trump is not going to install the actual government that Venezuelans elected. They voted for Eduardo Gonzales because Maria Corina Machado was barred from running. They both beat Maduro 70:30. That’s a landslide. But Maduro wouldn’t leave office.
You can tell how enthusiastic Trump is towards the prospect of installing a democratically elected government and respecting the Venezuelans’ right to self-determination when he decided unilaterally for 28 million people that he would run Venezuela himself with the “help” of Pete Hegseth and Marco Rubio.
Oh sure, they’re feeling happy that Maduro is gone but I’m betting that the Venezuelans quickly realized that his vice president and the repressive apparatus he created is still going to remain to keep them in their place. I would point them to Ukraine for advice on how to bedevil the occupiers…
… who are the oil companies who already get tax breaks and subsidies from us.
If you’re not outraged by this, you aren’t sober yet. Drink some water, take some stress formula vitamins, go work out for an hour and look at this sh*t clearly right in the face.
Today is JRR Tolkien’s birthday. You all know I am a big fan of Tolkien. If I were elected president, I’d want to be sworn in on The Silmarillion. And I say that because Tolkien was a deeply philosophical writer, well read in classics, a devout Catholic and a veteran of the worst war in history until the next war surpassed it.
He was at the Battle of the Somme and had this to say about WWI:
“The utter stupid waste of war, not only material but moral and spiritual, is so staggering to those who have to endure it”
….
“One has indeed personally to come under the shadow of war to feel fully its oppression; but as the years go by it seems now often forgotten that to be caught in youth by 1914 was no less hideous an experience than to be involved in 1939 and the following years. By 1918 all but one of my close friends were dead.”
This is not to say that war is never necessary. Tolkien knew that some forces of evil need to be stopped and force would have been justified in order to come to the aid of our friends and in self-defense. I call this The Tolkien Test:
“I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend”.
So, while I sympathize with Venezuela, the only reason why we should ever go there is to liberate the citizens from a malevolent dictatorship. It should be done with the notification and cooperation of the UN AND the citizens of Venezuela.
Did we do that?
The other justification is in self-defense. But the US is not being threatened by Venezuela. The excuse that we were interdicting drug trafficking depends on the ignorance of the general public with respect to geography and logistics.
What this invasion sounds like is how we got ourselves into war with Iraq for twenty years and trillions of dollars. There were no weapons of mass destruction. Yes, there was a dictator but after his government fell, we should have secured the country, fixed the infrastructure, conducted free and fair elections and gotten the hell out.
The other way it resembles the Iraq War is that there is a lot of oil in Venezuela. It’s not OUR oil. It’s THEIR oil. But that won’t stop the fossil fuel CEO’s that Trump used to get elected from seizing control of it. And once the oil in the Americas is in their hands, they will exploit the rest of us for every penny because we won’t have any other choices.
So, the invasion of Venezuela doesn’t meet the Tolkien test.
You know what conflict *does* meet the Tolkien test? The defense of Ukraine against Russia. And in that respect, we have utterly failed. Biden should have shut down Russia in 2023.
I think Tolkien would have been disappointed by what happened today. People will die, money will be wasted and evil will get a few wins.
But it won’t last forever. We don’t despair because we don’t know the end of the story beyond all doubt and what looks like catastrophe now may turn around with the breath of the wind.
Filed under: General | Comments Off on The Tolkien Test, War, and Venezuela
My sanctions prediction from last year may only be 4 days late.
Live feed from Meidas Touch:
****************
How can you independently verify what’s going on in Venezeula? Well, there is no substitute for being there in person. Can you trust videos? They might be from the war in Ukraine for all we know or AI generated.
But we might be able to put together proof of US Military activity in the area by indirect means. I’ve already found something but Adam Kinzinger would be better able to comment on it. This image is from FlightRadar24 in the area of the South Caribbean. Note that there is no air traffic in Venezuela. There seems to be a blackout of any potential military presence as well just like Ukraine.
BUT just like evidence of NATO aircraft could be seen in Romania, Poland and the Black Sea in the first couple of years of the war in Ukraine, there are US Military aircraft in the area around Venezuela. There is a Stratotanker southwest of Puerto Rico. Stratotankers are refueling aircraft for fighter jets and surveillance aircraft. They usually do a loop hundreds of miles away from the action, waiting for a pilot who needs a sip.
Here’s a closer look:
I’m guessing that the reason it’s broadcasting its call signs is because it’s in civilian airspace.
The Confluence 
