I wish I had seen this movie, yet another based upon a story by…

posted by Bill Arnett @ 1:14 PM Permalink

…Philip K Dick, on the giant screen of a theatre. The movie is titled "The Adjustment Bureau" and stars Matt Damon, Emily Blunt, Terence Stamp, and a cast of thousands (being shot in New York perforce means a cast of thousands, if not millions) and it surprised me as no other movie has in a long, long time.

Both the trailers and previews seem designed to lead you to the belief that this movie is naught but another Matt Damon action-filled, special effects laden tour de force and I guess by some measures it is. But if that should be all that you draw from this well-told and beautifully shot film I confess that it would somehow sadden me that you missed what I believe to be the point.

This is the most riveting love story of the triumph of love over the circumstances of Man, even if those circumstances be guided by an unseen hand, that it has been my pleasure to watch in many a year. I sincerely hope that those powers that decide which films come to be or not will look upon this film as what movies can bring to its viewers and how our lives can be enriched in the short time during which we experience such a treat.

Call me a hopeless romantic, I've been called much worse, but it brought to mind my true story of the trials and tribulations and suffering and longing and heartfelt agony through which I lived while my Warrior Woman and I were apart for the two years it took for me to obtain the Fiance's Visa by which she was able to rejoin me and we were able to continue the Great Journey Through Life we had begun on the Philippine Island of Luzon. Oh, how we suffered as the world it seemed kept us apart.

During those two years I learned it is indeed possible to survive on Instant Breakfasts, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and the rare treat of a McDonald's hamburger or, my god!, a minuscule sirloin steak; leading a life of complete solitude outside of my work setting as I harbored no desire to surround myself with people whom I recognized would leave my life as leaves from the trees of fall.

I also experienced the heartache meted out to me by the government I had served with honor and a country I loved and truly believed welcomed citizens from another land to this great Melting Pot until I spent those two years banging my head up against one obstacle after another as I wrote my congressman, my senators, the members of the Armed Forces Committees in both houses of congress, the State Department and, naively, the President of the United States to get the help I needed to be with my sweetheart. The only real help I received was from the military liaison in the offices of former congressman John Moss, who has a Federal Building bearing his name on the Capitol Mall in Sacramento, California.

Like Matt Damon's character in the movie each contact I made, every door I opened, only sank me deeper into the labyrinths of the government that controlled this part of my fate until one day some jackass in the State Department fucked up and actually told me the truth.

I had called this insipid bureaucrat to relate that a captain with whom I had worked had applied for and received a Fiance's Visa and was happily wed to his German bride in under ninety days. I demanded to know what the difference was between his case and mine and why I had been forced to wait for almost two years.

"Well," the jerkoff said, "Germany is a much more sophisticated, wealthy country with more highly educated citizens on average than the Philippines so the captain's fiance is less likely to become a burden to our welfare systems."

My heart broke, and as it began to sink to the floor and through it to places unknown I got mad. Madder than ever before in my life. Rabid mad, killing mad. So mad I was blind with anger, ready to explode, ready to go to Washington, D.C., find that asshole using every iota of the innate skills I possess to find people and beat him to bloody death with my bare hands and a passion to kill I'd never felt before nor since. I feverishly dialed the number to the congressman's military liaison and still suffused with rage I told him what the ass at the State Department had said and screamed in his ear that my fiance and I were being discriminated against not because of who we actually were but for fact that my fiancee was from a poor country! I screamed, I ranted, I hurled more impersonal invective, raged to the skies, and cried my grief at the inequity of it all to that poor man than I ever had before.

Bless that man whose name I am chagrined to admit I have forgotten; not a single word of reproach passed his lips, never did he raise his voice nor try to stem the flood of the words of pain I howled. No, he listened. He listened and then told me in a voice so gentle and low and reassuring that finally, yes finally, I had gotten the break I had sought so long. That jackass at the State Department who spilled the truth had provided all the ammunition that the liaison needed to carry the matter directly to the congressman and to get results.

And get results he did. Within three weeks my Warrior Woman had the much prayed for visa; two months later (there is a separate story as to why it took that long) my honey and I were reunited, and within the month, wed.

Which brings me back to why I wish I had first seen this movie in a theatre. Because there, in the dark lit only by the passing images on that huge screen, there would I be sitting holding hands with my beloved wife of thirty-seven years, my Warrior Woman, she who speeds my heart and quickens my breath and shares with me my dream of growing old by each others side, together forever till death do us part, knowing beyond certainty that elsewhere in the cosmos we shall again be reunited for all eternity.

But I digress. If you haven't seen this wonderful film, see it. If you saw it alone see it again with someone you love, someone who swells your heart, makes your pulse race and your heart skip a beat and know that it is not only in the movies that love triumphs over all.

It's a great film.

Ciao, bella ámi.

Labels: life, love, mickey rourke, Warrior Woman

2 comments

I ask special dispensation (while the Vidiots are on vacation)…

posted by Bill Arnett @ 12:41 PM Permalink

…For our readers here to consider, perhaps, my greatest fear. As usual when I am frightened or seek to enlighten I somehow seek solace in the rhymed couplets that still come to me without effort as yet, but which I am perfectly aware will someday desert me and my mind will grow bare. In the meantime I'll just rhyme.

Mother Earth Suffers

I weep for Mother Earth as I watch the pain she suffers.
I weep for Mankind as we refuse to provide the buffers
From climate change brought about by we fools
From pollution and using poisonous fossil fuels.

Mother Earth shudders, She cries out in pain,
She sends tornadoes to kill hidden in the rain.
Elsewhere she gives her mantle a mighty shake
And huge cities can do naught but die in the quake.

She rends her surface beneath the seas
Sending tidal waves to bring death and disease
Destroying coastal cities as Her reminder to Man
That He is merely mortal and destroy Him She can.

And precious She alive for billions of years
Sees Her Death at the hands of Man's fears
That could spark the nuclear holocaust
Bringing Her the deathly illness She fears most.

So now Mother Earth reaches out to Man
To warn Him of the destruction She plans
Sign after sign She sends to signal us
That She can and will end all things if She must.

For She knows that She shall always remain
And can rebuild Herself again and again
As She remakes Herself, strengthens Herself,
And renews Herself to prepare for life's health.

Labels: introspection, mickey rourke, nuclear weapons, Oil, Poetry, Premature Eruptions

1 comments

I believe the 2012 elections will be hailed as the greatest tragi-comedy in American history…

posted by Bill Arnett @ 1:54 PM Permalink

…And writing of the political scene over the seemingly interminable period of time up to the elections will be even easier than time travel. I mean there are what, about two-thousand and three republican candidates for the teabagger-gop-ers to lay waste to before they even get around to lashing out against Obama with the renewed vigor of a rabid squirrel trying to crack his nuts or the nuts of someone else. It is laughable and thoroughly entertaining to see so many clowns taking themselves so seriously as they try to hold two inapposite positions on almost every issue.

I am slightly disappointed, as I'm certain Tina Fey is as well, that Sawah Pawin has not entered the race for the conservative, über righteous religious rightwingers who believe her entirely and without question when she recounts the heroic tale of Paul Revere and his stern, shouted, and megaphoned warnings to the British that they had better not even attempt to take away our arms. Let this edify those insipid liberals who actually believed the contrived claptrap of that flaming liberal Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882) when he wrote in part:

Listen my children and you shall hear
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,
On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-five;
Hardly a man is now alive
Who remembers that famous day and year.

He said to his friend, "If the British march
By land or sea from the town to-night,
Hang a lantern aloft in the belfry arch
Of the North Church tower as a signal light,–
One if by land, and two if by sea;
And I on the opposite shore will be,
Ready to ride and spread the alarm
Through every Middlesex village and farm,
For the country folk to be up and to arm."
…

You know the rest. In the books you have read
How the British Regulars fired and fled,—
How the farmers gave them ball for ball,
From behind each fence and farmyard wall,
Chasing the redcoats down the lane,
Then crossing the fields to emerge again
Under the trees at the turn of the road,
And only pausing to fire and load.

So through the night rode Paul Revere;
And so through the night went his cry of alarm
To every Middlesex village and farm,—
A cry of defiance, and not of fear,
A voice in the darkness, a knock at the door,
And a word that shall echo for evermore!
For, borne on the night-wind of the Past,
Through all our history, to the last,
In the hour of darkness and peril and need,
The people will waken and listen to hear
The hurrying hoof-beats of that steed,
And the midnight message of Paul Revere.

Now I ask you, who the hell would lend any credence to a twisted tale of a legendary event until it has been subjected to review and correction by a historian of Sawah's standing and obvious all-encompassing knowledge and ability to correctly interpret American History? Just because she might have a different understanding of the words "wadsworth" and "longfellow" doesn't mean that she can't shoot wolves, foxes, and small harmless creatures from the comfort of a low and slow flying aircraft using the high powered rifles that Paul Revere warned the British we would not relinquish until the very last liberal was dead.

It is regrettable that old Huckabee and his revisionist comedic rewriting of history to reveal Ronnie Raygun as the true pioneer that discovered America, settled it, expanded it, and wiped out most of the trespassing indigenous populations of Native Americans unable to provide birth certificates and thus prove themselves citizens and landowners won't be running for the nomination. The sheer heroism of Reagan is certain to be revered in comic books everywhere since that medium, also referred to as graphic novels, is the chosen means by which Huckabee has chosen to educate our children, the handicapped, the ill, the infirm, the elderly, and the homeless who perpetuate those lifestyles out of laziness and the desire for America to be a welfare state. Yes sir, he will soon disabuse all the unfortunate and persons in need of the notion that Jesus would do anything whatever to alleviate their plight and aid them in rising out of poverty and into the now perilously-hanging-on-by-the-skin-of-their-teeth "middle class" while simultaneously espousing the destructive policies that are and will continue to ravage that very same middle class.

See what I mean when I say republican teabagger-gop-ers are fully able to hold two inapposite positions at the same time?

And speaking of time, I'm going time traveling for a while now so I'll undoubtedly see you before you see me again.

Ciao, bella ámi.

QUERY: What kind of statement or comment does it make regarding Dylan Ratigan in view of the fact that the theme music for his show is a short track of Uriah Heep's 1972 song Easy Living? He may be living easy but the reality that the majority of his viewers probably aren't just strikes me as ironic. Really, moog synthesizers playing the intro to a serious news program?

Labels: birthers, citizenship, class warfare, fear mongering, flip-flops, hypocrisy, mickey rourke, military tales, revisionist history, snark, teabagger-gop-er

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I am very much enjoying my newfound ability to travel through time…

posted by Bill Arnett @ 7:23 PM Permalink

…I find it to be a rather interesting phenomenon. I really had not considered the consequences and not unpleasant side effects of time travel until just the last few days; or where they really the last few days or the first few days or the middle few days? My inquiring mind does not know!

I ask myself this piercing, penetrating, pertinent, probing and possibly perfectly pure philosophic quiry as a result of scrolling down the page after having posted a couple of new musings where, to my surprise, I found that the last postings I made were actually in May of this year. Once on the 3rd [my birthday] and again on the 6th [3 millennia after my birthday] leading to the inescapable conclusion that I am, indeed, a time traveler. Some more skeptical people might allege that it is merely the function of huge amounts of various medications combined with the fact that being 100% disabled does make it impossible for me to work and therefore I have no reason to be cognizant of dates, months, years, or time and my place within it as all that is irrelevant to me. Balderdash!

I think it's great being lost in time and space. Parking is plentiful, crowds are minimal, shopping a thousand years at a time allows me to take advantage of all those sales others may miss, and this expanded timeframe means I will survive to the ripe old age of five or six hundred thousand years. What could possible be better than that? [Only my Warrior Woman, only my Warrior Woman.] [I am using these different brackets for sotto voce notations as I finally learned to speak (parenthetically) only to find that no one could hear me. No wonder it's a dead language; it wasn't even used on the tablets of the Ten Commandments, not even the Charlton Heston version!]

One curiously curious curiosity is that the physical anomalies that led me to this state of ethereal being have resulted in a conditioned response to stress and pain that partly eludes the negative feedback loop, that mean futhermucking Mobias Strip of ever escalating agony and despair. Seemingly my "other" mate for life I needed a brief respite, one I found as I allowed my mind to enjoy the time traveling and learned to enjoy this absence of time from my life. It is actually kind of cool.

I most enjoy the return "trips" through the Sixties, Seventies, and Eighties and then skipping over the Nineties and the 00 [double oughts], the years when never-ending pain consumed every bit of sanity I thought I had.

So, as Sawah Pawin would say, "You betcha!…" it's better to be a time traveler any and every day of the week.

I guess I have always possessed this hidden talent as many of my predictions made as off-the-cuff remarks came to be as inexorably as the travel through time itself, especially those made after the election of gwb. The housing market crash, huge corporations claiming poverty and a need for help despite record profits and growth, that the real damage done this country by gwb wouldn't be known until he had been out of office for two years and the bodies had finally floated to the top! It's true! What a hoot! Any other writer here at VidiotSpeak has read some of my statements and predictions that came to fruition, so time travel is really a gas.

I encourage all our readers to become time traveling writers writing about their predilections…predictions when some of them prove to be true.

Lately I've taken to much chuckling and large grins as we watch what I believe is the beginning of the end of the republican party. Grover Norquist out of fashion! No longer a power player in the new amalgam of the GOP and the teabagger party. I laugh and laugh now at the shocking number of rethuglicans violating Reagan's 11th commandment: Thou shalt not speak ill of other Republicans, a mantra no longer sung in four part harmony accompanied by John Williams and the London Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra as the teabaggers drag the GOP so far to the right that even the Elders of the party recognize that they are "going too goddamned far" trying to yet again practice Reaganomics, the failed financial model that holds, "If you give the rich tax breaks they will create more jobs…" without qualifying it as, "…but the jobs will be overseas as the rich take their money, factories, and jobs overseas so they can find labor for a dollar-tewnty-two-ninety-five a day, not have to give them healthcare, where there is no OSHA to prevent a corporation from demanding twenty hour-long workdays in deplorable and unsafe conditions and create a permanent lower class here in America as we turn it into a 'service' nation instead of the monster manufacturing country it used to be." Now we're a third rate banana republic without the bananas.

It is only through the wonder of time travel that I was able to type the above paragraph. Now I'm gonna go back a few hours today and catch Judge Judy. Time travel! Love it!

Robin Williams once said, "Remember…butterflies have wings because they take themselves lightly." I had begun to take the world too seriously, our political system was making me want to puke, so I decided to take myself lightly and really learn to enjoy living outside time as I formerly was prisoner to an artificial reality imposed upon me from without. I like the reality of time-travel as I see and experience it; selfish though it certainly be I'm havin' too much fun to go back and this construct suits me just fine.

Ciao, bella ámi!

Labels: CPAC, GOP, introspection, mickey rourke, Norquist, republican hypocrisy, schadenfreude

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I don't know how many readers might remember…

posted by Bill Arnett @ 12:13 PM Permalink

…the Vidiot and Dr Vidiot's last amazing but bizarre assignment…uh…vacation!…and their daring exploits crossing the then congealed-and-solidified-oil spill spilt in the Gulf of Mexico, which was recounted in some detail by this agent. (Any readers that missed this fascinating tale of their exploits may still enjoy it by searching the archives in, if memory serves, July 2010.) [Actually my memory did not serve, it never even took the order. I had to search feverishly for the search box so I could further search for the material for which I was searching. Got kinda hairy there for a few minutes, or hours, or days. I don't really know as I seem to have lost my ability to be aware of where I am in time and space, but as I do not recall having seen the sunset or sunrise I presume it is still the same day on which I began this post. Bill]

Anyway, this year the Vidiot and Dr Vidiot have really outdone themselves in exciting new adventures, surviving a perilous journey from the civilization of New York to the hinterlands of Midwest America where they have quietly carried on their duties as all good super spies and extraordinary citizens do. It seems that the NY subway tunnel system lacked sufficient space for the installing and concealing of the huge banks of Cray supercomputers and the Apple iPads necessary to fulfill their duties or provide sufficient amusement to keep them entertained in between missions…damn!…VACATIONS!

They now not only have newly dug digs within which to live but to also hide all the vital equipment they need in the miles and miles of freshly excavated tunnels beneath St Louis, with the added advantage of the broadband antennas they surreptitiously installed within and outside of the St Louis Arch of Fame and Renown using a top secret method allowing them to "paint" the antennas upon the arch to keep them invisible and undetectable by any method known or unknown or known to be unknown to Man.

It is through this massive antenna that I am able to monitor and report on their highly confidential communications with the nations top leaders regarding Dr Vidiot's discovery of a technique to force dormant volcanoes to violently erupt after centuries of inactivity which can only be described with a mix of Mandarin Chinese, ancient Mayan, and those little comic cartoons that used to come in all pieces of Bazooka Bubble gum.

The first test of this technique last year at the Eyjafjallajökull Volcano [Note: this is the decoded name of the volcano. I can't even begin to spell the encoded name as I lack the 372-character/pictographic/hieroglyphic coding/decoding keyboard required to do so. Bill] was such an explosive success that a second test using the Grimsvötn Volcano under the Vatnajokull Glacier [also decoded names, as difficult as that may be to believe. Bill] was triggered last May. The Russian judge of the results rated this successful test a 9.5 while the judge's English, French, and American counterparts all gave the eruption a perfect 10, and the Spanish judge gave it a 10.5 for the extra difficulty of causing an eruption below a glacier.

No one to whom I have spoken has yet given me a satisfactory reason for causing the eruption of long dormant volcanoes. All "they" [Black Ops Agents, CIA Snoops, and their secretaries from whom I get most of my information. Bill] will state for the record is that Dr Vidiot's invention is both vital to national security and certain to be a real crowd pleaser at a World Fair to be hosted at an as yet undisclosed location sometime in the near future. I could not get any kind of firm timeline as apparently the government is having great difficulty evicting former president of vice Dick Cheney from the "undisclosed location" he still considers his home despite finally being out of office and relegated to the Trash Bin of History for his disservice to America and into the Guinness Book of World Records as the Man Most Resembling a Rabid Bulldog.

It just positively gives me shivers down me spine, tingling sensations in my outer extremities, a funny little itch right at the exact spot on the scapula where it is impossible to scratch, and a warm, fuzzy feeling of pride to again be associated with this amazing couple: scions of scientific scientists, super-intelligent giants among mental midgets, diminutive denizens, cognitively challenged citizens, disinterested dopers, and other persons of America laboring to survive while true leaders such as the Vidiots continually expand Man's knowledge base, lend newly coined terms to the lexicon of the languages of Man, and giving of their lives and intellect and pioneer spirit to unselfishly share knowledge only they could discover using their proprietary, patented, protected, and perfected techniques to explain the hitherto unexplainable

Once again, dear reader, the task of keeping you apprised of the trials, tribulations, and just plain fun had when the Vidiots go on…vacation…has devolved to me. It is a sacred duty calling for little extra effort, negligible sacrifices, and only a meager understanding of the scientific principles or moral implications involved so it is the least I can do and as always you can count on me to do the least I can.

To the unordained neophytes, new readers, old readers, young readers, old readers again, and those who have dropped by regularly or irregularly through the years, rest assured that when thoroughly rested I will tirelessly endeavor to keep up with and recount here the true nature of the…vacations…taken by the Vidiots as I, too, envy the high-flying lifestyle to which they have become accustomed. And, frankly, that guy in that beer commercial who's supposedly "the most interesting person alive" is bull do-do, the Vidiots are clearly more interesting, informative, and not encumbered by a scraggly, scruffy grey beard.

So, as always, you'll only hear the truth of their exploits here where I, your intrepid reporter, will write of their adventures with an eye toward the truth [This is the same as an "eye" toward a fast approaching city bus or a derailed train. Bill]

And if you really believe the Vidiots are in parts unknown, south of several borders and struggling to learn Spanish, well, now you know the truth as reported from their temporary headquarters carved in the ice of the Vatnajokull Glacier a safe distance from the volcanic eruption and hot ashes, directly to me through the St Louis Arch Antenna Base, the supercomputers and Ipads below the city there, and left as a message on my telephone.

Yes, we do very important research and development here at VidiotSpeak as well as reporting on political happenings, chicanery, corruption, and the humor that normally accompanies politics, even though it is mostly ironic in nature. Maybe especially when it is ironic. You'll have to be the judge.

There will be further updates as I receive them and I am certain that all our readers are cheering for the Vidiots to once again establish new scientifically and painstakingly accurate measurements of man-made events with no apparent purpose other than blowing shit up. Important and fun work indeed!

Ciao, bella ámi.

Labels: ash holes, dick cheney, mickey rourke, Premature Eruptions, secrecy, spying, st. louis, vacation, volcanoes

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I've been away for a while, but I'm back now…

posted by Bill Arnett @ 2:16 PM Permalink

…After a successful mission requiring every bit of my military training, surreptitious black ops, international intrigue, spy craft, and the application of the full power of my mutant brain to accomplish my sacred task: buying the house next door.

It's a long and frightening story; not for the faint of heart nor those with nervous disorders, hives, scabies, rabies, winkin' blinkin' or nod. I knew that it would be a difficult task given the given propensities of banks that finance mortgages to not finance mortgages, complicated further by the fact that it was a short sale purchase wherein the former owner walked away from a one zillion dollar mortgage, which I picked up for a song and a dance and only a mere one-third of a zillion dollars. I am sworn to secrecy and shall never reveal what song I sang nor the dance I danced.

We were forced to make this move for my enemies, who are legion, had discovered my carefully hidden lair, forcing me to establish a new secret headquarters lair where it would be extremely or impossibly difficult for my enemies to ascertain my whereabouts. It's a clever ploy and although I have never really tried this in the past, my main guard dog, Xanatos (pictured in my responses to comments) assures me that the very fact that it took the neighborhood squirrels almost two days to find the dogs after an exploratory leap to our new fence line bodes well for our future security. The squirrels have been unable to penetrate our comprehensive new alarm system, although I do not know if that is because they are just stupid rats with tails, or that they lack digital dexterity, or that squirrels are genetically inclined to non-curiosity regarding alarm systems.

I am happy to be coming in from the cold, which I can do as the regulatory authorities here at VidiotSpeak never sent me a burn notice meaning that they would completely disavow any knowledge of me and/or my activities, which is for the best as I have strange proclivities better not revealed.

Another factor in my return is receipt through diplomatic channels an "eyes only" missive that the Vidiot, now on foreign assignment, is having difficulty learning the native language in her country of temporary assignment. I wanted to relay to her the sage advice given me once by a language expert at Langley (that's Langley, Minnesota, not Virginia) that you know you are truly grasping a language when you have a dream and everyone in the dream is speaking the subject language.

I remember one of my classmates bursting into class one day excitedly proclaiming that he dreamed the night before and everyone in his dream was speaking French, his assigned language.

The instructor, very excited, asked, "That's great! What were they talking about?"

The enthusiastic young agent replied, "I don't know! I couldn't understand a fucking word they were saying!"

I realize that this may not be the most helpful of information I can relay to the Vidiot and Dr. Vidiot in pursuit of their "vacation," but it has always struck me as amusing at the least and truthful at the most.

I will earnestly attempt to continue regular postings as now that my sacred mission, as described above, is no longer sucking all the oxygen from my brain, the political situation, dire as always but not as sheerly overwhelming to my now healthier mind, and the fact that I will face less boredom prompts me to take this action in the hopes of providing edification, pontification, exacerbation, and, as my son says, masturbation, available to the public at large or alternatively the large population.

I must sign off now, but I do harbor some small hope that any of the deranged readers I may have had will return to visiting this site often. Newly deranged readers are always welcome and will be accorded respect and subjected to my bizarre sense of wit and writing.

Ciao, bella ámi.

Labels: humor, I'm only just one man., ikea, Jellyfish, mickey rourke, Osama bin Dead, satire, snark, spying, stealth submarines

5 comments