Today's post was promulgated by a late night of listening to NPR.

I tuned into listen to BBC, one of the lady moderators spoke so beautifully musical upper posh accents I didn't realize for the longest time that she was relating a horrific report from Afghanistan. Oh dear.  I would love to have just the faintest hint of Upper Class English Posh henceforth known of UCEP ('scuze me). I don't want to sound like Queen Elizabeth just a nudge lower, slower and I would kill for the diction of Hermione Gingold. But as I am retired and meet the definition of poverty and have not traveled much  I am lucky to speak comparatively accent neutral 'merican.  

 There is another posh accent that I find fascinating.  A few years ago PBS sponsored a program called "Sister Wendy"  She was a religious of undetermined bent who was expert in art and she had a spectacular set of teeth that Beatrix Potter would have very much admired.  Sister Wendy would expound in the usual Posh accent but there was an extra little learned word usage such as "weally" instead of "really". She was very impwessive much like the vewy impwessive Bishop who recited the marriage vows for Princess Buttercup in The Princess Bride.  I under stand that the impwessive accent is acquired at a school in England.  Don't know the name, maybe they have elocution courses, yeh?

But I divert, just a bit.  Sister Wendy lectured one time ona  largish page from the Koran.  It was large gold on black Arabic script of part of a prayer.  She explained that the page was sacred and should be treated as such.  It was absolutely beautiful. I would watch re-runs.

DUCK, HIDE YER EYES, IT'S.....A BOOK REPORT...or two.

It is not very often that I report on a young adult novels, well having said that I read two by the same author, L Dehner.  They are entitled The Girl Who Could Not Be Seen and The Boy Who Could Not Miss.

These are two young people who live with their parents in a city somewhere on the east coast. Their folks own a convenience store.  The local Mob comes by on a monthly basis to shake down the 'hood.  

The girl first became invisible when she was frightened and hid in a closet.  She didn't notice for a long time that she could do this and then she could not remember how she did it.

The boy has always been extraordinarily clumsy but he has been quick witted to generally keep from being bullied at school due to him knocking into other kids occasionally.  His mom told him that it was a sign that he would inherit her talent which is that of proprioception or perfect aim.  It is a talent that has allowed those who had it to become excellent gymnasts, dancers, baseball players etc.  They can also become deadly accurate with shooting.  His mom was a champion shooter.

The local Mob family has a couple kids in school who make trouble.  Eventually the girl witnesses a murder during the time she is trying to control her invisibility so she can follow these people to see what exactly they are doing and it ain't good.  They are living without because the insurance payments to the mob and learned how to improve going invisible to avoid the oldest boy who was the son of the local mob boss, good looking, cruel and generally many unpleasant things.

The boy is featured in the second book and he is a bit of a nerd. His father adores baseball and wants him to try it but he reluctantly enrolls in martial arts and to the teacher's astonishment become quite good.  He signed up for basket ball did well.  His coach has him try throwing a ball and with no experience what so ever throws perfect pitches.  And the mob comes back in this book so things get very ugly.

These books were excellent reads and once they cool off, I may go back to re-read just to pick up the bits I missed 'cuz I read too damn fast and miss stuff.  Yeah it's a thing.

I NEVER KNEW IT WAS A THING

You chat with people at work, get to know them, eventually share stuff.  A woman I worked with told me that she had had cancer of the breast.  She underwent a bilateral mastectomy.  She underwent reconstruction.  She also confided that one of the unexpected side effects were that her breasts became escape artists.  She could not keep them contained within a brassiere, they were evidently just too light weight to stay within ah... bounds.  So she gave up wearing a bra.  I asked about the bounce jiggle problem.  Nope not heavy enough to jiggle or bounce.  After that I would catch myself eyeballing her chest and had to smack myself up along side my head with a mental STOP THAT or she will think you are some sort of PERV!! The escaping breasts were a thing.

Speaking of giving things up, I remembered way way back to one Christmas.  I was about 14 of so.  One of my gifts was a wig hat. Yup that was a thing. I loved that hat, it was white, synthetic hair that could be styled, back combed and hair sprayed to within an inch of its life. And I did.  I wore it to school for several weeks after Christmas and well into Spring until one day I was sitting in Study Hall.  One of the beautiful Gratton boys stopped at my desk, patted me on my hat and smirked, "That is a LOT of hat".  So I wore the hat home and it never resurfaced.  I still really liked that hat.

The next thing to go astray was my hair.  In my youth, I decided to go blond.  It was more white than blond and the process to get it to that particular straw like texture and blinding white color was smelly and  prolonged  I proudly wore that hair with my girl friend, Judy Xxxxx when we traveled to West Virginia to visit her family. While back there the house did not have a shower so we washed our hair outside using the rain barrel for rinsing.  I discovered that dyed hair develops unattractive black roots within a week and I sure as Hell was not getting weekly touchup like Judy's sister Betty did.  Yeouch!  And it became glaringly obvious that my complexion blazed blush at the least and fire engine red at worst and was not complimented by screaming white hair.  So I went to a much more subdued normal with red highlights.  Yeah THAT was a thing.

There have been other stupidities along the way.  As I aged I opted for comfort in all things, shoes, pants, sweaters, clothing without zippers or buttons nice and stretchy.  Oh the comfort of soft sockies!! Most recently I have purchased sports bras.  Sizing was a problem, with my injured right arm, it was difficult to get into and I didn't want to mess with front closure either, bring on the pull ons.  I eventually settled on XX size and wore them proudly.  But something had happened.  As you age your breast tissue becomes less dense, lighter, bouncy. I discovered recently that my left breast has become an escape artist sneaking out whilst I innocently nap.  Dammit!  I will struggle with it because I will be GO TO HELL if I will go dairy style cuz little old ladies with large flat breasts that hang down and sway if nothing else should not be seen in public wearing only a thin T shirt.  Cover those puppies up for GAWDS sake!! Yeah that is a thing.

MOVIE REVIEW!!!

The Dressmaker starring Kate Winslet as Tillie, Judy Davis as her drunk Mom, Liam Hemsworth the love interest and Hugo Weaving as the cross dressing deputy. 

Plot: Tillie allegedly killed a boy as a youngster, the Town sent her away to boarding school.  She came back as an adult as a skilled designer.  The amusing parts were the Rugby game where she wore a devasting gown and left the opposing team see décolletage and the distracting removal of long black gloves.  The home team won the game. 

Tillie could not remember exactly what happened that day when she went away and her mother had to be sobered up. 

Hugo Weaving stole the show as the cross dressing deputy and his final appearance in a suit of lights as a bull fighter was fabulous. 

I laughed through most of the film and sobbed heartily at the tragedy which was stunningly stupid. Ah me, farming is very dangerous.  I watched this on Amazon Prime, woot woot!!

minor book report rant regarding a young adult book...

A friend recommended a book to me called "Missy The Werecat". 

Premise is that Missy at age 13 was at soccer camp on summer and woke in the middle of a moonlit night to go into the woods.  She changed into a panther. She is an intelligent teenager and stumbled around a bit getting used to her new self.  She tried to her best to change back but that didn't happen for two years. 

So she lived as a cougar in the woods hear Mount Washington.  She fed herself on rabbits, the occasional deer.  She went into heat several times and drove off male cougars successfully. 

Eventually she migrated south along the mountains and found herself changed back into her human form.  She was naked and stole some clothes. She is contemplating how to contact her parents and has no idea how to explain her absence.  She gets involved in a rescue when a car goes off a mountain road and she plunges down a cliff to rescue the passengers.  She ends up getting transported to a hospital. 

The rest of the book involves the authorities, her parents, the reunion.  The delicate handling of this possibly sexually abused teenager.  And things stumble along.  A year goes by before she outs herself to her parents.  So that is mostly the first book.  I really enjoyed it.  She does extremely well in high school in getting caught up and in sports.  She has extra strength because she is a werecat. 

By the end of this book she has endeared herself to friends of the people she rescued and is trying for a position at West Point.  The books dealing with this were pretty good, the pleb rituals and all of that was very interesting. 

However the authors writing style began to wear on me.  Missy giggled....a lot.  I was hoping for the occasional smirk, or smile or guffaw but no it was steady giggling.  Her good friend Tracy giggled a lot as well.  The author used italics way too much for emphasis.  Didn't need it...at all.  Somewhere around the third or fourth book and author began using quotation marks around a single word to indicate emphasis.  Ugh. NO that ain't grammatically correct.

There was a sex scandal a group of 7 upper classmen had hired prostitutes for sex and they pimped these women to other cadets. Missy broke that up but it seems like West Point has actually a better system to handle this type of thing compared to other military academies. 

So the books progress to the point where Missy discovered she can teleport about 500 miles at a time so the FBI has her infiltrating enemy computers with virus. Everybody partners up, marry or have relationships and merrily have sex sex sex sex sex.  Uh gets a little repetitive.  I reached a point where I ignored the boring bits and paged ahead about five pages of panting and thrusting. 

Also the author recapped endlessly the subsequent books had to tell 35% of the previous damn story and that AFTER a good three chapter Prologue.  If the author is THAT short on word count, time to develop the characters. 

The only thing we ever hear about Missy's internal dialog is that she compartmentalizes well, pain, anyone killed in battle, etc.  Oh and she has bonded with her soulmate and they chat telepathically with each other constantly.  Isn't that kind of like texting and driving?  Could be a BAD thing.  SHUT UP MISSY!!!!

I enjoyed reading quite a few of the reviews.  About half complained about the sex and at least one did a full analytical review pointing out grammatical errors and made actual suggestions.  Hope the author reads it and took it to heart.  I will check back to see if there any other Missy books.  Hope she actually finishes West Point and goes on to Ranger and Seal school as those were goals of hers.  Mebbe.

BOOK REPORTx

REDBIRD by Fannie Flagg

I want to move to Redbird, Alabama.  I shudder to think of moving to the South due mostly to mosquitoes and humidity.  Since this place is fictional, chances are it shall remain in my imagination. The writer is as lyrical as Marjorie K. Rawlings who wrote "The Yearling".  I want to attend a luncheon given by the Secret Society.  I want to eat some of the special macaroni and cheese.  Fortunately there are recipes in the back of the book. 

The story starts in cold wintery Chicago.  Our hero has just visited his physician who told him that his emphysema was going to kill him soon and his liver was shot.  It was recommended that he go somewhere warm.  He is given a very old tattered hotel brochure for Lost River Hotel, Alabama.  So our hero took a train and was met by one of the town residents.  He had rented a room in a charming bungalow owned by Mrs. Kitchen.  There is actually a redbird involved, an orphaned little girl, several reunions and redemptions.  This book is a Christmas story and although there are many Hallmark Christmas stories, this one could become a classic it is that good.  Made me want to go meet the Cajuns across the river. 

Retro Blog: Stand up schstick

Retro Blog: Stand up schstick: I have been contemplating a stand up comedy routine, not that I would actually get up on stage...unless it was for a bunch of senior citize...