Weblog 77
July 29, 2007~ 2:15am
Tonight we rented and watched the movie, "Zodiac". It was creepy in a realistic way, not the Hollywood slasher film way that tends to accentuate gore in high technicolor while showing lots of skin: no, the tension in this film comes from the 'not knowing'- the relentlessness of the obsession of the main characters in trying to find the killer. Years go by....a decade....two decades- yet they remain haunted.
However, the killings that were shown, were tense and frightening to watch. The scenes are slowed down to 'real time' where every ticking second may be the last- with nothing of 'Hollywood' at all- bald-- very, very tense, very easy for the viewer to slip into the shoes of the soon-to-be victims, and no musical score to the film- except when we hear the occasional tunes of those times faintly from a radio or jukebox playing eerily in the background. I can tell you now, that forevermore for me, "The Hurdy Gurdy Man" is Zodiac.
What IS it about hoods that makes murderers so much more menacing?
Again, it's the unknown- and I'm thinking here of Ku Klux Klan or terrorists in films with their captives, and of course, the Zodiac Killer with his frightening 'unknown comic' squared-off black hood. It spells 'executioner'-- and it's the deep down symbolism we flee from because it signifies death.
Unlike so many serial murderers, the Zodiac killer strikes fear into men as well as women, because he didn't target only women and was terrifyingly random like Son of Sam, taunting newspapers in the same way- with a relish that says he's really enjoying himself-- and the killings will continue.
Human nature likes to see things 'wrapped up'-- so Jack the Ripper intrigues us for the same reason the Zodiac killer does-- and that's his lack of absolute identity despite many probable suspects. Watch the film, and you will be convinced that Arthur Leigh Allen was the killer. I'm not so sure. Doing a search tonight, hell, I even came across a site where a stepson is convinced his stepfather was the Zodiac killer- and I'm sure there are others who strongly suspect that someone they knew at one time, HAD to be him.
Randomness and The Unknown- a good pair of shiver-givers, and aren't they always the same two things in life give us the creeps, whether it's disease out there- waiting to pay us a call, or a car accident, an audit by the IRS-- or war-- or terrorist attack-- we worry.
Add a hood to that....and man......we worry a lot.
June 29, 2007~ 2:45pm
There they are, my grandmother and grandfather- Al and Mamie- in 1911-- nearly a hundred years ago, in the year they married. Gram went on to live to her ninties, and grandad died of throat cancer in the 1956. Seven children, two miscarriages-- their lives spanning all the wars and changes in the 20th century-- and here they are at their most hopeful. Such pictures make me want to cry out- make me happy and deeply melancholy at the same time. They hold everything inside them- every vulnerability, every chance- and its conclusion.
The sepia world- the hidden- the one we build upon, is never far away. I'm so glad my relatives found this piece of the past.
My cousin started up a family website a few years back and I recently joined. Oh, the wonders there....I have to say that I get too sad to stay there very long, looking and looking, but I carried this one out- like Cinderella's slipper- to remind me of the ball- and how we all danced, each one of us, in our own time.
July 30, 2007~ 10:45pm
Yesterday marked the passing of what my fella referred to as 'the death of your old drinking buddy'- and it's true. Tom Snyder and I were thick as thieves back in the mid-70's, though only through the magic of television. I know of no one who could perk up my nights the way Tom could with his sparkling eyes, and equally sparkling repartee, with all comers on his show. That wonderful LAUGH, my God- always delighted me.
Back when I was a secret, stay-at-home late night drunk, there was Tom with his ever-present cigarette and goofy 70's get up, filling up the room with me. I had no idea he was battling leukemia, and certainly it seems impossible that he had turned into a 71 year old man- but there you have it: life. The great page-turner.
For all the times we raised a glass together, for all the times you made me laugh, you entertained me, I loved you. Loved you truly. I enjoyed your life almost as much as you seemed to- and I'll lift a glass of a ghostly colortini to ya'. Rest well now, old man. Bye, Tom. Sleep tight.
August 1, 2007~ 9:45pm
Tonight, I did nothing but stare at a computer screen that was doing a thorough disc scan, and then a defrag. Since Firefox updated yesterday to version 2.0.0.6, my browser must have crashed 50 times. I mean constantly. It was always an illegal page in firefox.exe........I began to snatch away old fragments of extensions because I've read those are so often incompatible once you update. (So tell me.....what GOOD are the f*cking things, when Firefox is plugging 'security holes' every couple of weeks and creating new versions???) I swear to God, I had bits and pieces of old Firefox junk in Compuserve, in Compaq, in Windows, in Windows Explorer..........christ! No WONDER the damn thing is crashing! I must have more 'chromes' and 'profiles' at this point than Bin Laden, hopping from cave to cave....
I don't know what it was.....but it 'seemed' to be the way code is read, something with the percent sign in place of a space. I noticed every site I visited that had a link with the % sign, I'd crash. Finally, in desperation, I got rid of things one by one......when Firefox wouldn't come up, I'd take it back out of the recycle bin and stick it back. LOL!!! As usual, I had no f*cking idea what I was doing. So I tried the defrag in safe mode- which wouldn't 'progress' because I had too many errors on my drive. (Gee.......I wonder why, with all the chicken-plucking I'd been doing and crashing more than Evel Knievel..)- so I broke down and sat here while the damn bar kept creeping up during the disc scan- then starting over as it repaired every little thing-a-ma-jig. THEN, the defrag, and man..........(don't jinx me)......so far, so good!
Tired as hell now (92 in Pgh today, too, cripes)...so I'm going up to bed. Hope this stable streak lasts. I am plumb worn out. FIREFOX, for god's sake, stop COMPETING with IE7 and Vista! They had garbage long before you came along with your nice little uncomplicated, user-friendly system. Leave the JUNK out of the damn programming! I really dont WANT 20 blasted 'tabs' open at once. I don't USE tabs, I like windows opening on the next link. And I sure as hell don't want 'search helpers' and (oh god) 'TOOLBARS'...........I want f*cking CONTROL of my machine, and little by little Firefox is getting as crappy and junked-up as the rest of the net.
Whatever happened to your slogan...."Rediscover The Web"???? I'd like to-- but you keep throwing Google-shit at me, and session.stores and cookie-hoarding- EVEN WHEN I TELL YOU TO STOP....well.........STOP. Goodnight now, bad machine.
P.S.~ nope. Still crashes constantly. I had to do a complete uninstall, then go into my registry and STILL pluck out old mozilla entries, and will reinstall Thursday evening. These updates suck...(and anyway, after 2008 Firefox will no longer support Windows 98 (which is what I have)-- antiquated, but STABLE. Guess I'll uninstall again then, and install an earlier version.
The plus side is that 'earlier versions' of anything are not targets for viruses anyway....lol.
***
(Return To Weekly Archives)
Tonight we rented and watched the movie, "Zodiac". It was creepy in a realistic way, not the Hollywood slasher film way that tends to accentuate gore in high technicolor while showing lots of skin: no, the tension in this film comes from the 'not knowing'- the relentlessness of the obsession of the main characters in trying to find the killer. Years go by....a decade....two decades- yet they remain haunted.
However, the killings that were shown, were tense and frightening to watch. The scenes are slowed down to 'real time' where every ticking second may be the last- with nothing of 'Hollywood' at all- bald-- very, very tense, very easy for the viewer to slip into the shoes of the soon-to-be victims, and no musical score to the film- except when we hear the occasional tunes of those times faintly from a radio or jukebox playing eerily in the background. I can tell you now, that forevermore for me, "The Hurdy Gurdy Man" is Zodiac.
What IS it about hoods that makes murderers so much more menacing?
Again, it's the unknown- and I'm thinking here of Ku Klux Klan or terrorists in films with their captives, and of course, the Zodiac Killer with his frightening 'unknown comic' squared-off black hood. It spells 'executioner'-- and it's the deep down symbolism we flee from because it signifies death.
Unlike so many serial murderers, the Zodiac killer strikes fear into men as well as women, because he didn't target only women and was terrifyingly random like Son of Sam, taunting newspapers in the same way- with a relish that says he's really enjoying himself-- and the killings will continue.
Human nature likes to see things 'wrapped up'-- so Jack the Ripper intrigues us for the same reason the Zodiac killer does-- and that's his lack of absolute identity despite many probable suspects. Watch the film, and you will be convinced that Arthur Leigh Allen was the killer. I'm not so sure. Doing a search tonight, hell, I even came across a site where a stepson is convinced his stepfather was the Zodiac killer- and I'm sure there are others who strongly suspect that someone they knew at one time, HAD to be him.
Randomness and The Unknown- a good pair of shiver-givers, and aren't they always the same two things in life give us the creeps, whether it's disease out there- waiting to pay us a call, or a car accident, an audit by the IRS-- or war-- or terrorist attack-- we worry.
Add a hood to that....and man......we worry a lot.
June 29, 2007~ 2:45pm
There they are, my grandmother and grandfather- Al and Mamie- in 1911-- nearly a hundred years ago, in the year they married. Gram went on to live to her ninties, and grandad died of throat cancer in the 1956. Seven children, two miscarriages-- their lives spanning all the wars and changes in the 20th century-- and here they are at their most hopeful. Such pictures make me want to cry out- make me happy and deeply melancholy at the same time. They hold everything inside them- every vulnerability, every chance- and its conclusion.
The sepia world- the hidden- the one we build upon, is never far away. I'm so glad my relatives found this piece of the past.
My cousin started up a family website a few years back and I recently joined. Oh, the wonders there....I have to say that I get too sad to stay there very long, looking and looking, but I carried this one out- like Cinderella's slipper- to remind me of the ball- and how we all danced, each one of us, in our own time.
July 30, 2007~ 10:45pm
Yesterday marked the passing of what my fella referred to as 'the death of your old drinking buddy'- and it's true. Tom Snyder and I were thick as thieves back in the mid-70's, though only through the magic of television. I know of no one who could perk up my nights the way Tom could with his sparkling eyes, and equally sparkling repartee, with all comers on his show. That wonderful LAUGH, my God- always delighted me.
Back when I was a secret, stay-at-home late night drunk, there was Tom with his ever-present cigarette and goofy 70's get up, filling up the room with me. I had no idea he was battling leukemia, and certainly it seems impossible that he had turned into a 71 year old man- but there you have it: life. The great page-turner.
For all the times we raised a glass together, for all the times you made me laugh, you entertained me, I loved you. Loved you truly. I enjoyed your life almost as much as you seemed to- and I'll lift a glass of a ghostly colortini to ya'. Rest well now, old man. Bye, Tom. Sleep tight.
August 1, 2007~ 9:45pm
Tonight, I did nothing but stare at a computer screen that was doing a thorough disc scan, and then a defrag. Since Firefox updated yesterday to version 2.0.0.6, my browser must have crashed 50 times. I mean constantly. It was always an illegal page in firefox.exe........I began to snatch away old fragments of extensions because I've read those are so often incompatible once you update. (So tell me.....what GOOD are the f*cking things, when Firefox is plugging 'security holes' every couple of weeks and creating new versions???) I swear to God, I had bits and pieces of old Firefox junk in Compuserve, in Compaq, in Windows, in Windows Explorer..........christ! No WONDER the damn thing is crashing! I must have more 'chromes' and 'profiles' at this point than Bin Laden, hopping from cave to cave....
I don't know what it was.....but it 'seemed' to be the way code is read, something with the percent sign in place of a space. I noticed every site I visited that had a link with the % sign, I'd crash. Finally, in desperation, I got rid of things one by one......when Firefox wouldn't come up, I'd take it back out of the recycle bin and stick it back. LOL!!! As usual, I had no f*cking idea what I was doing. So I tried the defrag in safe mode- which wouldn't 'progress' because I had too many errors on my drive. (Gee.......I wonder why, with all the chicken-plucking I'd been doing and crashing more than Evel Knievel..)- so I broke down and sat here while the damn bar kept creeping up during the disc scan- then starting over as it repaired every little thing-a-ma-jig. THEN, the defrag, and man..........(don't jinx me)......so far, so good!
Tired as hell now (92 in Pgh today, too, cripes)...so I'm going up to bed. Hope this stable streak lasts. I am plumb worn out. FIREFOX, for god's sake, stop COMPETING with IE7 and Vista! They had garbage long before you came along with your nice little uncomplicated, user-friendly system. Leave the JUNK out of the damn programming! I really dont WANT 20 blasted 'tabs' open at once. I don't USE tabs, I like windows opening on the next link. And I sure as hell don't want 'search helpers' and (oh god) 'TOOLBARS'...........I want f*cking CONTROL of my machine, and little by little Firefox is getting as crappy and junked-up as the rest of the net.
Whatever happened to your slogan...."Rediscover The Web"???? I'd like to-- but you keep throwing Google-shit at me, and session.stores and cookie-hoarding- EVEN WHEN I TELL YOU TO STOP....well.........STOP. Goodnight now, bad machine.
P.S.~ nope. Still crashes constantly. I had to do a complete uninstall, then go into my registry and STILL pluck out old mozilla entries, and will reinstall Thursday evening. These updates suck...(and anyway, after 2008 Firefox will no longer support Windows 98 (which is what I have)-- antiquated, but STABLE. Guess I'll uninstall again then, and install an earlier version.
The plus side is that 'earlier versions' of anything are not targets for viruses anyway....lol.
(Return To Weekly Archives)
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