Category: Uncategorised

What a world we live in!

UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thomson was gunned down, in the early hours of Sept’ 4th, 2024, in New York. A suspect, 26 year old Luigi Mangione, was arrested, on Dec’ 9th, in Altoona, Pennsylvania.

It’s way too early to say very much about all of this, esp’ as someone looking on from afar, with very little info’ at my disposal (and growing increasingly sceptical about truth in a world – and coming from a Society – that allows folk like Trump into high office).

But it obviously touches on all kinds of issues that one can think and talk about.

Personally I feel that if we’re going to have to live in complex modern societies, then basic healthcare, along the lines of how the NHS was supposed to be when it was founded, ought to be part of what ‘The State’ provides.

The American system is clearly terrible on many levels. And it’s surprising this sort of thing – super-rich CEOs being hunted down and assassinated – isn’t happening far more often. Such people are, after all, getting incredibly rich off money people are, or so they are lead to believe, ‘investing’ in their own healthcare.

I’ve read online that Luigi Mangione was ‘fingered’, so to speak, by a McDonalds employee (and poss’ also a friend, or associate?). It’s also been alleged that he had a 3-D printed gun and suppressor, and was using the same fake ID he (or the suspect/killer) had used in NY.*

One of the things that occurs to me, however, is just how murky all this shit can be. A guy was arrested in connection with an attempted shooting of Trump, at one of his golf resorts. I read that someone else, someone merely connected to the alleged shooter, in that incident was subsequently ‘found’ to have loads of kiddie-porn on various devices.

I’m not one who likes or wants to fall prey to conspiracy theories. But one has to wonder whether the powers that be aren’t free to manufacture patsies, as they please.

Whether Mangione is the perpetrator is yet to proven. But it’s long been a known fact that many people die, who might’ve lived, under the current ultra-capitalist model pursued in the US.

Are all those lost and blighted lives worth nothing? Are the many just supposed to suffer in silence, grist to the mill for the pleasures and indulgences of the Fat Cats?

When Society not only fails to curtail blatant profiteering and greed, but rewards and encourages it, is it any surprise that those bearing the most onerous costs might think how they could seek some kind of redress? Somehow call the Pimp/Overseer/Exploiter class to account?

It turns out Mangione is from a very wealthy privileged background. It’s also alleged that he has back pain. If even one of the wealthy is so disgusted at how US ‘healthcare’ is run, as to take to hunting CEOs, imagine how vast are the untapped reservoirs of rage lower down the food chain?

I don’t know if Mangione is the killer. But I have read that he’s alleged to agree with some of what Ted Kaczyinski says, in his so called ‘Unabomber Manifesto’, AKA Industrial Society & It’s Future.

Anyway, it’s an interesting if awful story, about an awful but interesting situation.

*This all seems incredibly dumb! He’s supposedly a wealthy well educated guy. Wouldn’t he have ditched all that incriminating shit!?

The above image captures how I feel, when in bed/asleep. And, in all honesty, how I want to be this entire Winter. I have zero motivation/energy. I suspect I’m undergoing some form of depression. I don’t appear to have the will to do anything beyond eat, sleep and work. Can’t even summon the energy to read at present!

Whilst Storm Darragh passed, Teresa very kindly and insistently decreed that I shouldn’t work! And so I didn’t, neither yesterday nor today.

That in itself is nice. But, even better, we’ve enjoyed some home time, just the two of us. Playing cards, Scrabble, watching Columbo, and just generally being quietly and cosily domestic.

‘Tis pity I did’nae get a pic of the fab’ roast Teresa cooked for Sunday dinner. But I did get a snap of the tomato and chickpea noodle soup I made for lunch.

Anthony Andrews, pictured above, was in one of the episodes of Columbo we watched. From seeing him it wasn’t far to leap to remembering Aloysius, Sebastian Flyte’s Teddy. Which in turn was based on Betjeman’s Teddy, Archibald Ormsby-Gore.

I love this sort of old-fashioned sentimentality. Which reminds me… we must watch Brideshead Revisited. It’s very highly regarded, I believe. We shall have to see what we make of it.

Damn… after a blessed long period of sleeping every night like a baby, my first attack of old fashioned insomnia. I slept roughly 9-12pm. But then awoke. And since then, not a chance of sleep! Bummer.

In many ways I’d say this is a Great Film, probably deserving of the full five stars. Certainly in terms of the charisma of the actors, and the splendour of the production, it’s terrific.

Story and ideas wise it depicts Thomas More as a conscientious hero; unwilling to compromise on matters of principle, at a time and in a place where to take such a stance was tantamount to suicide.

This all put me in mind of that scene in Blackadder III (‘Ink & Incapability’), in which Edmund says ‘Sir Thomas More, for instance, burned alive for refusing to recant his Catholicism, must have been kicking himself, as the flames licked higher, that it never occurred to him to say, “I recant my Catholicism.”’

Well, firstly More was beheaded, not burnt at the stake. Apparently his beheading was a merciful act on Henry VIII’s part, as the original sentence called for More to be hung, drawn and quartered!

But secondly, and most fundamentally, the entire story of More, as it’s shown here, is about a man of conscience taking a moral stand.

Blackadder’s moral relativism, born of the very worldly and practical desire to survive, was of course just as strong a feature of normal human behaviour in More’s Tudor era as in any other. Witness the behaviour of his friends and contemporaries.

Let’s go back to the great acting we witness here. Orson Welles has a brief cameo as a vermillion Jabba The Hutt, or rather Cardinal Wolsey. Indeed, we have this film on DVD as part of an Orson Welles set.

A young Richard Hurt is terrific as the initially earnest but soon all too corrupt Richard Rich. And Leo ‘Rumpole’ McKern is a much more malevolent (and frankly believable, as in less idealised) Cromwell than the version played more recently by Mark Rylance.

Martin Shaw is great as the unhinged and very shouty despot, Henry VIII, with his flock of sycophants. Charismatic, but volatile. Not fat enough, admittedly, but nonetheless good in the role.

And of course there’s Paul Schofield, in the lead role. And what a performance. His declamatory style in the several eloquent soliloquies bespeaks his Shakespearean pedigree. And he can shout with the best of them, when needed.*

*Another reminder of Bl’Adder, and those two actors, in ‘Sense & Senility’.

Both Susannah York as More’s daughter Meg, and Wendy Hiller, as his wife Alice, are very good as well. One of the most moving scenes is the familial farewell, in The Tower, as they attempt to get Thomas to tow the required line, and thereby ensure his survival.

The court room scene is also very, very good. Indeed, so too is the execution. In fact the whole damn thing is excellent. Watching this makes me want to read More’s Utopia. Despite recently finding his Dialogue, etc. (written whilst confined in The Tower) rather disappointing.

An excellent, powerful, moving film. Whose subjects, perennially fascinating – as the Wolfe Hall books and TV shows attest – remain compelling.

Very funny!

I’m as volatile as potassium with water, and more up and down than the most dedicated hillwalker. Because of this, managing my emotional state can be tricky.

I’ve had a rough time recently. And coming out of it is taking longer than one would wish for. Two very big and related issues at present are extreme exhaustion and near total lack of motivation.

So, it’s nice to think back to times not too long ago, when I was happy. Every now and then, I’m getting moments of contentment, again. And sometimes even outright happiness.

Anxiety is another factor that inhibits either equilibrium or happiness. And I’ve recently had plenty of it, for various reasons. One of which was the result of my car breaking down whilst working.

It turns out that the reason this fell out the way it did was that I didn’t call through the breakdown to the Amazon Flex support line during my shift. I reported it immediately – or so I thought – via the app. And phoned it in the following day.

Amazon Flex no like-ee! And it went down on record as a ‘terms of service violation’. Which is bizarre, as it wasn’t that at all.

I had a week or so without work whilst my car was fixed. And have been back at work now about a week. Every day I’ve been checking my Dashboard/Standing. Hoping for and expecting to see an upturn.

Finally, today, it’s happened. Phew! What a relief.

FOOTNOTE:

An intriguing footnote to this anxiety inducing episode is that Amazon appear to have expunged it altogether! How odd. It’s as if it never happened. I find that bizarre. But I’m glad.

Got me a funky little wood effect CD player, off Amazon. It arrived today, whilst I was out working in a Biblical Deluge.

And to try it out? Some stuff from my growing collection of JMA stuff. Aka the Joni Mitchell Archives.

I’ve been sitting on these sets for ages. Finally played some stuff from the third volume (second disc) tonight.

‘Barangrill’ is one of my all time favourite Joni tunes. Indeed, it’s one of my all time top tunes, period.

After that, it has to be reverent silence.

I recently set up my website using a book that I borrowed for a friend called teach yourself HTML. I use that book to code my illustration website 20 or so years ago.

The website has largely fallen into desuetude. Or in simple English, disuse it shouldn’t have. But it has.

The blog component of my website has always been what I regard as an adjunct. Secondary to the main shop window that my website is intended to be, for my Art music and illustration.

But this isn’t quite how it’s worked out.

I recently had a conversation with a guy from Fasthosts, and I thought I’d resolved the issue. But in fact, I hadn’t understood things correctly. Migrating to the new hosting package he suggested would reduce my website to nothing more than the blog. I would lose the HTML aspect.

I have absolutely no loyalty to any particular code. But I do want my website to act both as a wind shop window for my creative endeavours, while simultaneously featuring a blog that runs alongside.

It looks like I’ll have to do a bit more work, learning how that can be achieved. And at what cost…

My use of the phrase ‘clutching at straws’, in my last post, lead me to read about the origins of that phrase.

If Google/Wiki are to be trusted, it derives from certain writings of Sir Thomas More, penned whilst jailed in The Tower, by mad serial-killer King, Henry VIII.

What struck me about actually reading bits of A Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation, is the irony that More – famed as a Humanist, and the author of Utopia (which I haven’t read, but would like to) – seems, here at least, far more a prisoner of mind than of body.

The Dialogue is between the young Vincent and the older Anthony. If we take Anthony to stand for More, he is far more a mental prisoner of Christian Theology than merely the literal corporeal body that was locked in The Tower at Henry’s whim.

Rather than finding solace in the guff that’s played out here, it’s a stark reminder of the parochialism of particular moments in time within an evolving faith.

The picture of the bearded warrior on horseback bespeaks the era, in bloody political truth, far more than any dreams of piety, such as are depicted in the Gethsemane scene, above.

Rather than finding deep truths, it’s disappointing to find pretty low-level ‘reasoning’, being employed in trying to square real life suffering with a book stuffed full of absurdities (thanks, Frederick The Great). That’d be The Bible, in case that isn’t clear.

There was only one instance I can recall when More struck a nerve (two, if you also count his superbly pithy ‘clutching at straws’ image), and that’s when he speaks (or Anthony does) about “the busyness walking about in the darknesses”, which the wiki’ article says is More interpreting a particular Psalm as being about ‘the frantic pursuit of riches or worldly possessions.’

They also discuss suicide, which, having tried to do myself in a couple of times, I was intrigued by. But, once again, it’s mired in the archaic theology of the time (with nonsense about purgatory, the ‘purchase’ of merit, etc.), and isn’t really interesting at all, alas.

Still, there is some interest in all the odd and arcane history that these threads are woven into. Henry merrily butchering wives and dissenters, and smashing up a massively longstanding religious tradition, with vast and far reaching consequences (still ringing down the years), in pursuit of various expansionist wars and an heir. Meanwhile, ‘The Turk’ is knocking at the gates of ‘Christendom’.

Historically it’s a dynamite era. But don’t go looking for deep wisdom in A Dialogue of Comfort against Tribulation, you just might be sorely disappointed.