Vienna's Opera Ball?....

Let me see if I get this right.
A young woman slept with Berlusconi. He paid her.
She was at that time "under age". In Italy, if you're eighteen, it's legal to sleep with someone for money,...
(Well, is that the right way to put it? What is legal/permitted here? Paying someone ? or receiving money? .....)

Now that woman went to the Vienna opera ball, and she, err, Google translate says "eclipsed"....
the ball... (I am looking at a Czech headline, and I don't say I know Czech well.)
She cast a shadow?

Well, let's be clear. If anyone's done wrong here, it was Berlusconi.

As for the woman in question, better that we ask why she sought that way of earning money.

As for such holy events as Opera Balls, what are they really? An excuse for the privileged to
flaunt their wealth? That is their essence---excess and privilege..

So, when I think of it that way.... well it just shows what Berlusconi is all about.... Such balls are throw-backs, anachronisms belonging to the glories of empires and the thievery which is aristocracy..... It amazes me that Europeans have not outgrown them....I don't think the lady was out of place....

after-thought:
on a slightly more reflective level, I'm inclined to say that sex per se is neither good nor bad,
but it depends upon all of the details.....and all of this gossip is, well, just that, talk on the surface of things....

en passant: all news programs, including Al Jazeera (and most especially CNN and the BBC) effect a certain FLATTENING of events, those rhythmic voices, made-up faces, and even pretty women. None of it serves us in attempting to understand the course of events. It is a medium a manner of presentation which fights against our understanding of reality. Yet, I know of no solution.

RETURNING TO THE ABOVE ENTRY:

I leave the after-thought though it is inadequate. I flee from the philosopher's measurement of right and wrong with careful argument--though, there too, one can learn much. But, I can think of no better recourse than an allusion to the character of Professor Avenarius, created by Milan Kundera--he who complained that the true friend of the erotic, the true hedonist, would not care if he were seen in public with a beautiful woman.....(So, by that test, both the Italian and the Austrian businessmen fail to measure up.....)

footnote to Libya

message for Britain, the USA, France, and anyone else who has supplied Gaddafi

with arms:

his crimes are your crimes

bad reporting in Wisconsin?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/02/28/AR2011022803518.html

seems to fit what I saw the last time I took a look at a Wisconsin paper....

what kind of country is this?

via Brian Leiter's blog ("The Leiter Reports") I came across the following

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/02/28/AR2011022803518.html

("My life as a communist", by Bill McKibben, Tuesday, March 1, 2011, Washington Post)

I draw the conclusion that Glenn Beck has absolutely no respect for the truth.

As I'd already come to believe that GB is willing to incite people to violent acts directed at individuals who, it seems, have in some way offended the sensibilities of GB, and

that those sensibilities have little to do with reality...

I found myself wondering:

What kind of country is this?

What kind of country is it that becomes apoplectic at the sight of a naked breast

or any other piece of human anatomy connected to reproduction or waste excretion....

And considers the mention or sight of such things as "obscene" and --to judge by

the reaction---dreadful, shocking, titillating!

What sort of country is this?

My answer: a very, very sick one.....

USA's very much LESS THAN BEST Health (don't) Care system

My father had to go for some tests at the hospital.

My mother had the duty of filling out numerous forms.

And, then, prior to the test, the nurse needed my father's history.

Hello? Are there no computers in this country? How many times have I been asked these questions? How many times? Almost every time my father needs some health care.....

Is it technologically impossible to share information? There are so many god damn ass holes who are happy to sell personal information about me and you! But there is no info. when it comes to health care.

What the f. is wrong?

Well, note in passing:

At the very same hospital, there was a LARGE SCREEN TV (that's a real necessity)

and there was a POLICEMAN

Oh, yes, let's get technical: He was a member of the BORDER PATROL.

Now that does make me feel safe.

What a country! sigh. Yawn. Excuse me while I throw up.

Signs of Spring?

There's a pounding noise in my head.

My neighbor (too friendly a word that!) is playing his music.

BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM

It's one thirty in the afternoon, and I really don't want to hear this, having not gotten enough sleep last night....

What is it about Americans? The weather changes and they think: time to play "my" music LOUD!

What disease is it?

Get me out of here!

hating El Paso Texas

Gentle Reader,
At the risk of boring you and repeating myself,
It may yet be a good time for me to review a few of the more unpleasant truths
about my life in this benighted outpost on the edge of a mighty empire....

The weather is not healthy.
The living conditions are not healthy.
Sun alone does not make health.
Needed too are such ingredients as social solidarity and fresh fruits and vegetables.

But for daily unpleasantness, it is hard to beat the misery of dry skin,
cuts on your fingertips springing up overnight at the edges,
oh so painful,

And then there is the allergy which I seem to have acquired,
and have endured for three or six months,
getting worse every day,
making my head spin,
filling my throat and nasal passages with a stubborn white fluid...

an allergy to what?

Perhaps the idiotic forced air heating system,
perhaps the omnipresent air conditioning systems favored by all of the local merchants
and medical authorities...
(called by some beloved fictional characters "quacks"---hence, that fictional calling
can't be taken seriously by you)

all in all,
an ugliness only equalled by the more magnificent ugliness of the
local version of USA-style wealth inequality,
manifested by a certain tone of voice used in identifying the
region of the city from whence one comes...

manifesting itself in such recent appearances as the explanation
by a member of the local water mafia, who explained that they
could not shut off the water in regions dense with hospitals and
medical facilities, who failed to note that precisely those regions
happened as well to be "high rent" districts.

The places where the richer people lived were better
served by a so-called public service... i.e., a so-called public service which,
miracle of miracles, served the broad public in a discriminating fashion,
favoring the more monied among the public.

No, gentle reader, it was not Karl Marx who said that we are all created equal,
it was one of those holy men deemed a "founding father"......
But, you see how wrong he was....