White (trash) Christmas

Well, hello there! Yes, I am still around, although lurking in the shadows instead of posting.. This Christmas morning, however, I got shocked just enough to post.

The first thing I saw upon walking outside with my dog at 9 a.m. today was an open plastic bread bag, loosely packed with huge fish bones, lying right next to the pile of snow at my front gate. There were more huge fish bones scattered about the middle of the street several yards away. I cannot fathom what made someone eat their traditional Christmas Eve fish dish yesterday night, then carefully pack all the bones in an empty bread bag and - instead of placing that bag in their garbage container - take the trouble to actually carry it outside and dump in the street by next morning, and on the single most important holiday in the year. It's not that it wouldn't fit in their garbage because the volume of the bones was quite small. The mess they became when scattered on the road is much bigger. Danger to animals  - there are homeless dogs and cats in the neighborhood - you bet.

I will never know if the cause was someone's stupidity or spite - perhaps they wanted to harm my cats, perhaps they wanted me to clean up after them, perhaps they didn't want their own cat to be able tofish them out of their garbage All I know is that many in this neighborhood are pure bred white trash.

Those are people who drink at night, wake up past 4 a.m., climb their old bicycles and ride around the neighborhood, going through city trash cans - filling them with their home garbage and retrieving cans which they can sell to the recycling company. The woman two houses down the street who yelled at me at three different times for walking my 12lb dog next to her fence, while she walks her 80lb German shepherd next to my fence every single morning at 5:25, even though she could walk it along the lawn on the other side of the street where it would not be peeing agaist anybody's fence. My neighbor who sweeps leaves from her front lawn onto my lawn and cuts back the ranches reachig from my into her property several feet into my property even though legally she is only allowed to cut flush with the property line. My other neighbors who for years had been dumping garbage agaist the fence at the back of my property - the spot invisible from my house because of the trees. The passers by who climb over my 7 foot fence to steal flowers from my garden, and the passers by who belch loudly and throw empty beer cas and bottles into my garden. The "gardeners" from the fenced apartmet complex across the street who dump refuse from their tiny plots simply over the fence into the surrouding residential area. And the best of them all, a leather-clad, platium dyed diva of that apartment complex who takes her golden retriever outside the complex to comb his fur and, no less, carefully spread the fur from the comb on the pulic lawn, one bunch next to another, covering about a square yard, and heads home, leaving the fur to fly around in the wind.

I sincerely wish all those unfortunate transplants from remote rural areas towards the Eastern border of the country - because that's who they are - returned where they came from, never to be seen again. Of course, that's not going to happen. Let's then hope Karma takes care of them. Please.

I have a doggie

I found a small terrier mix running down the street leading to my house on a particularly cold October night last year - the 9th, to be precise. He let me approach and pick him up... I took him home and we've lived together ever since, for almost four months now. He's very sweet and loving but a little troublemaker as well. Until this day I have to keep him separate from the cats because he keeps chasing them ferociously. His name is Little Bob and he's wire-haired black and tan. The vet estimates his age to be around four years.

Tonight he defended me from Exploding Eggs. I left four eggs boiling in the kitchen and forgot all about them. Oblivious to the strange noises coming from behind the closed door I was browsing the internets while Lil' Bob was becoming visibly upset and kept barking at the door. Shortly, upon hearing something fell quite loudly I realized the noise was not coming from the cats' room and got up. In the kitchen I discovered three eggs had already exploded and jumped out of the pot (I've only found one of them so far) while the fourth one split into halves within the pot and ejected the cooked yolk from its insides... Were it not for my Little Bob, my kitchen might have caught fire. Well, almost ;-) I praised and presented him with a beef Schmacko and he's been sleeping quietly next to me for the past hours.

Mother drunk while 3 year old throws potted plants off balcony or a bit of ghetto news

In a nutshell. Happened tonight. Upon hearing and then seeing the three-year-old's antics on the balcony, terrified neighbors called the police, who found everybody present in the apartment drunk, including the 37 year old mother of the girl. The mother was arrested while the little Alexandra was taken to a protective care unit. Now comes the surprise, the mother has already lost custody of how many of her children? Seven. No less. I opened the full text of the article because I thought I was misreading the number. The kind of life some people live, perpetuating misery - unbelievable. As well as that nothing much seems to be done about it.

What my internet looks like

A puzzling question posed before the browsing public has recently startled me when I displayed the usual search page in my browser. What does your internet look like? Indeed, what? Seduced into responding the twenty questions of a Webify Me quiz, I hereby enclose its result - a picture of what my internet looks like. Allegedly showing how and what I use the internets for. Doesn't seem too graphic... just the everyday stuff, really. I don't understand how a bottle found its way there, though.

P.S. I'm noticing my style tonight seems strangely influenced by the baroque (click at your own risk - I've just had a warning page displayed about malicious infectious content within it, first time ever in years of visting) newyorkshitty blog (a.k.a. thatgreenpointblog, coming "to you from the garden spot of the universe") No clue as to why, either.

Perhaps not a good day for linking to that particular blog... I really had nothing to do with infecting it with anything, folks. I sincerely hope Miss Heather has her blog cleaned up and lets us savour her writing (and photography) again soon!

No more rehab

picture from the New York Times obituary

Sad news about Amy Winehouse's death last night. Too soon and uncalled for - her voice would ensure her a career decades long. I just wish it didn't happen.

Raúl Di Blasio - Santa Fe

Santa Fe from the album Barroco. I've been trying to determine if he or Ottmar Liebert wrote this track and it seems Ottmar Liebert did and published it on the Nouveau Flamenco album of 1990. This is the more sweeping, Barry White-like version.

Diamonds are forever...

Dammit. I posted this to the wrong blog but am too lazy to remove it from there. So here I go again. Another night when I'd highly appreciate some glamour around instead of the daily chores..