PRODUCING ORFFSPRING

Robert (of Robert of the Rosary) mentioned several times in his previous posts, that are now sadly deleted, that sex outside the sacred sacrament* of marriage is a sin **. I think, by the snippy way that he and the rest of his bunch refer to this, that 'sin' is a bad thing and that, ergo,  sex outside of marriage is a bad thing.
Furthermore, according to Catholics, sex is only to be undertaken for the purposes of procreation.

I was reminded of his ravings wittering pronouncements when viewing a Harry Enfield clip on YouTube this evening:

THE CONJUGAL RIGHTS GUIDE

* One of the many weird inventions of the Catholic Church


** A very weird creation of Christians that the Catholic Church has taken over

WATCHING .... AND WAITING

THE MOODY BLUES

I just bought an ARLO Ultra 4K HDR Wifi Security System - 2 Camera Pack on-line from Noel Leeming in their Black Friday Sale deal.
I researched on-line checking prices and this is 2 to 3 hundred dollars off the 'normal' price so that's OK. I also checked reviews and this unit gets some very good ones both here and overseas so I'm happy.

It doesn't automatically mean that I'll be able to install the sucker though as I am a bit of a luddite (sorry The Curmudgeonly Luddite - I should have let you post this). I couldn't get the Chromecast I bought a couple of months ago to work and always have trouble setting up new TVs and video machines. I changed some things around in the lounge today, moving the TV to in front of the fireplace as we won't use that until next winter. The Chromecast was still plugged into the back of the TV so I disconnected it and put it back into the original packaging for storage.

Storage of such items goes like this:

Put item in its packaging ↴
Put package in the cupboard in the study↴
Leave for at least 18 months.↴
After a couple of years move package from the study to the shed.↴
After a few more years move package from the shed to join other unused items under the house.↴
After another couple of years the package and other items are taken to the rubbish dump.

I'm running out of time for this procedure so I should shorten things and give it away or dump it now.

**********************

I bought the security cameras because next year I'll be spending some time in Wellington if all goes well with The Old Girl's work plans and want a bit of extra surveillance around the house. Neighbour Rod will be keeping an eye on the house but it doesn't hurt to have that bit extra.

TUESDAY*

I've been active today with tennis at 8.30 until 11.30 and the gym for an hour.
I was buggered afterwards as it's so hot up here.

I filled the trailer (again) with garden waste after a late afternoon stint yesterday but couldn't be bothered taking it away for dumping today. Maybe tomorrow.

The Old Girl is up here this week. She was called for jury duty but not selected yesterday which is just as well given that it was to be a three week trial. She's heading back to Auckland on Thursday. I'm going down on Saturday as we're going to see Deacon Blue with her cousins on Saturday night.

I don't know a lot about them except that Billy Connolly and Jerry Rafferty rate them and Ian Rankin mentioned them in one of his 'Rebus' novels. I listened to some of their music on YouTube today and they remind me of Texas and some of their music has obvious influences from Van Morrison so it should be OK.











* No Blue Man in sight today.

A NEW BLOGGER - THE BLUE MAN.

THE BLUE MAN

Now I don't want to sound desperate but this blogging community has got a bit thin on the ground recently so welcome to THE BLUE MAN and I hope that he sticks around.
We don't know what sort of blog he's going to run yet but, by way of introduction here's a run-down (apt words indeed) of who's who in the community.

There's THE CURMUDGEON obviously which is the linchpin holding things together. I have some other blogs that are spin-offs and use these depending on my mood or the theme of the post I'm writing. These are NOT alter-egos nor do they demonstrate any clinical forms of madness. They are merely different 'shades' of which the differentiation is helpful to the reader.

Another contributor is RICHARD'S BASS BAG. This used to operate a 'hub' that connected all of the blogs in the community but, as I said, these have largely disappeared and the usefulness of this 'hub' is in question. RICHARD'S BASS BAG  also has spin-off blogs but these are dodgy and are definitely alter-egos. They have been strangely (or normally) quiet of recent but Richard has just reactivated some of them as a result of some gentle chiding from me. Beware of these.

A third blogger is the one we refer to as the Catholic guy although 'Boomerang' would be more appropriate since he continually deletes his blog and then republishes it. He often changes the name of it but the content is relentlessly Catholic and Christian bullshit. Watch out! This blog currently goes under the name ROBERT OF THE ROSARY.


I hope that you like our little blogging community and will stick around. Feel free to browse through previous posts from the blogs. Mine go back over 10 years and cover interesting aspects of recent history. Richard completely scrapped his blog a couple of years ago and lost about 10 years of interesting history. The poor old guy did this again more recently and lost another year or so of more recent posts. I remember my grandmother doing this when she went a bit doolally with age - she threw away family history and photographs. It's what very old people do. Don't be afraid.

Robert as I said frequently 'refreshes' his blog. Nothing to see there!

THROWAWAY SOCIETY

I helped neighbour Rod yesterday. We moved a trailer load of 'rubbish' from his son's garage to the tip. His son, wife and three kids are moving from rented accommodation to live with her mother and two sisters in a three bedroom house. They have converted a garage into a fourth bedroom and bought a caravan which will be parked next to the garage and used as extra sleeping accomodation. Needless to say it will be crowded but there will be huge savings on rent and outgoings.

When I said before that we moved 'rubbish' I was quite surprised to see that what was packed into many, many black plastic bags and boxes wasn't in fact what I would call rubbish but was toys, food items (unopened bags of potato chips, full bottles of soft drinks etc), bits of furniture, unused fireworks (which I said the tip would not take), CD holders - all sorts of useful items that could have been given to charity or recycled properly. I bit my tongue and didn't comment, instead just helped toss it all into my caged trailer that I lent for the job.

In the garage also was a big stack of boxes of all shapes and sizes. The son and his wife hadn't thought to flatten these and put out for roadside collection so my friend gave him a lecture about recycling. It's unbelievable that there are people who don't have a clue about this. I guess we take it for granted that everyone knows what to do. The thing that I noticed though was the type of boxes there were. There were X-Box, Play station, Mobile phone, Apple items, expensive toys - all sorts of top shelf items that these people had recently bought.

My neighbours son and his wife are not wealthy. They are in fact on the breadline. He works at minimal wage at a local supermarket. She works part-time, also on minimal wage as a nurse-helper.
They have three children under seven and are expecting another one. They have no idea of saving and their spending is out of control. There is no way that they will ever be able to take out a mortgage and 'get on the property ladder'. They are stuck in a rut but .... they still seem to want to live like kings by buying for their kids and themselves all of the shiny gadgets that are offered. How they manage to do this I don't know - maybe on credit or loans from instant finance companies.


OK, it's their life and what they do with their money is their concern but, and this is what this post is about, my concern is about the cavalier attitude that they have to their possessions. Because they needed to downsize and move into her mother's house they had to get rid of stuff. No thought was given to selling items on Trade Me, Facebook or other sites or to have a garage sale. All unwanted items were just packed up for the tip. They didn't even consider giving it away to Women's Refuge, The Salvation army, the local marae  or any other charity organisations. No. It was unwanted or unneeded so out it goes.

I guess that I come from a different generation that places higher value on things. We didn't get fancy toys, electronics and communication devices when we were young. Whatever we got we had to save for first and buy with cash. I also used to go to the tip - to get things to bring home.

I despair of this throwaway society we have today.

A VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS

Why do we post on blogs?

Is it because we have something useful to say and we think that someone wants to read that?

Or, is it some sort of cathartic thing where you just want to get something off your chest and it becomes like a kind of diary?

Maybe it's a bit of both in my case. Sometimes I write something worthwhile although I admit that I'm lazy and can't be arsed to write anything in depth. Occasionally I get a good idea and jot it down but more often than not I'm just filling in some time - piddling about as the blog(s) have got to be a bit of a habit. They're better than Facebook though so there is that.

Do I want comments on my posts? Not as much as Richard seems to. He measures the success of his posts and of his blog by the number of comments he gets. Poor fellow, but he is a musician so I guess attention seeking and craving for acceptance is in his make-up.

In this blog community there were once quite a few contributors with blogs of their own and also readers who would comment on posts. That's long gone with those bloggers blown away. We've been whittled down to three recently but yesterday Robert the catholic guy cancelled his blog so there are now just two - The Curmudgeon and Richard's Bass Bag.

Richard announced on his blog yesterday that he was going to cut down on commenting and writing posts so I guess that will just leave me to continue. I'll be writing posts to myself I guess which is sort of like talking to myself. I could use The Curmudgeon spin-offs including The Wine Guy ones a lot more I suppose.

I could even put comments on my own posts - sort of like answering myself ....... but that way lies madness.

BEING NICE

A while ago Richard told me that Robert's wife Sue was unwell and would likely be in and out of hospital for treatment. I can relate to this having had relatives and other friends go through this and last year I was hospitalised for a spell.

Richard suggested that I tone down my criticism of Robert's religion and to, effectively, "Be nice".
Richard is like this. He's a caring brother to both his older and younger brothers, their families and to extended families and friends. It was Richard who defended sister-in-law Sue (older brother's wife) who was being bullied at university by storming into the Hunter Building law library and calling out the chief bully, a guy with the ludicrous name Sandy King. It was Richard who organised parties and family events for his elderly aunt. It was Richard who stood under the school steps and looked up the ..... oops, that's another story.

I agreed with Richard and complied, toning down my criticism of Robert's religion and endeavouring to not get 'het up' about the ridiculous things that his Filipino priest says in the sermons and which Robert takes as 'gospel' and repeats in his posts.
The problem with this is that it isn't me and isn't in keeping with the posts I've written and the comments I've made on the blogs for more than a decade.

Robert has said in his posts (all sadly deleted) that Sue reads my posts and actually enjoys them. It could be of course that she's gathering evidence to present to the cartel of priests at confession or at some secret society of Catholics that she's a member of. She could also be reading them while sticking pins in the voodoo doll image of me that she's made which might explain the aches and pains I get. Going on the assumption that Sue reads my posts (and Richard's) because she enjoys them, including the anti-Catholic, anti-religion and anti-God ones then I think I shouldn't cease making scathing remarks which I like to think as witticisms and little bits of information that Robert (and Sue) can use to better their daily lives - I say smugly.

In Robert's second to latest post (I would put a link in but no doubt he will have deleted all the posts and maybe the entire blog again by the time you get to it) I made a few observations which I think pertinent but that might be construed as irreligious, blasphemous or downright offensive. Sorry about that 😈.

Anyway - all the best to you Sue.

".... NEED GRACE TO KEEP GOD'S FOES AT BAY..."

I see that Richard is upset again that Israel Folau is banging on about god, religion and the consequences of sin.

He wrote a couple of posts about this, the latest trying to set some sort of record for the longest post title*

WHITE BACKGROUNDS ETC ETC ETC.


Maybe he should just chill out a bit. Drink some chardonnay. Play some double bass drink some chardonnay. If he must dwell on that religion he abandoned I have the ideal drinking glass for him to use where he can drown his sorrows while indulging in a little bit of nostalgia.

* We at The Curmudgeons In.ⓒ suspect that he's trying to curry favour with the judges in the upcoming  2019 Blogging Awardsⓒ although how he found out about this we don't know as it hasn't been announced yet and, quite frankly has only just been dreamed up about 15 seconds ago.

STARTING FIGHTS AND INFLUENCING PEOPLE.

I've got to stop commenting on NEIGHBOURLY the community  news network where people post local items of interest along with national and even international ones.
Sometimes, after a particularly stupid, racist or otherwise insensitive post I make a funny comment.
The problem is that there are a lot of dicks out there who don't have a sense of humour and they come back with vitriol.

I'm used to the blogs where Richard and Robert respond with humour and at most, mild peevishness.
To access NEIGHBOURLY I use a Facebook account which lists my name. I don't trust Facebook and after the Christchurch Mosque attacks and Facebook's lousy response to this I cancelled two of our Facebook accounts. The third I retained because I need it to access community websites and services like Civil defence and the fire brigade.

I tried to change the listed name away from my Christian and Surname to a pseudonym or a username but haven't had any success at this so far. I'll keep trying though. Meanwhile I'll stop commenting on NEIGHBOURLY  as it's not worth the hassle.

NEW POST - THE MUSIC CURMUDGEON

It's nearly tea-time and I've got the makings of a Niçoise salad that I'm about to put together.

I had a song in my head though so got The Music Curmudgeon to research it and write a post.

WHO THE FUCK WAS PEARLY SPENCER?

I'M SO SORRY

If CREAM had written 'sorry' instead of 'glad' in this song it could have been the feature of this post.

I'M SO SORRY, SORRY, GLAD

Anyway, I'm sorry that yesterday I was so concerned about Venice (spelled Venice) and its flooding issues that I forgot to tell you what I cooked for dinner. You learned about my breakfast - Weetbix mush and lunch was prosaic - baked beans on toast but dinner was a masterpiece. Venison pie.

I had some venison mince in the freezer so used this as base for a pie filling. I sautéed garlic, onion and capsicum with the mince and added some lamb jus that The Old Girl had made and froze. I par-boiled some diced carrot and potato and put this in after the meat mixture cooked. Oregano, rosemary, soy sauce and a dash of Worcester seasoned it nicely.

Two sheets of pastry from the freezer was enough to make four 'Cornish-type' pasties. I cooked these and ate one for tea with leek and spinach sautéed with garlic. Yummy. I'll have another today for lunch and have frozen the remaining two.

That's it! Sorry about the delay.

VENICE *

No doubt you've read of the problems that Venice is having with tidal surges and flooding.
Venice obviously has always had problems with water but this year it's worse than ever. For a city that depends so much on income from tourism this is a major worry for them in the longer term although I guess in the immediate tourists who have pre-booked and prepaid just have to suck it up.

Given the cost of accommodation and services in Venice though I doubt if these tourists will return.

We've been to Venice a couple of times and thoroughly enjoyed our times there albeit a bit drier than the current offering. For anyone who has a knowledge of Italy and the way things work over there it will come as no surprise that all this, to a fair extent, could have been avoided. The flood barrier plans have been in existence for years and billions have been spent on their execution but they remain unfinished. Major corruption has syphoned off money and held up the building projects.

BLOOMBERG REPORT

Given that they are now years behind schedule and with global warming and its effects on sea levels I think that poor old Venice could go the way of Atlantis and a new sort of tourism will need to be promoted.

* A filler providing an update on events around the world. If popular an INTERNATIONAL CURMUDGEON blog could be created.

YET ANOTHER NEW POST - THE CURMUDGEON'S AGONY AUNT

The Curmudgeon's Agony Aunt has been busy this afternoon and has published another post:

LA-DI-DA

NEW POST - THE CURMUDGEON'S AGONY AUNT

The Curmudgeon's Agony Aunt has published a new post for your edification erudition efficaciousness  education:

CHASING PUSSY (CATS)

SO RUDE!

An old retired schoolteacher from Lower Hutt had the temerity to suggest that my previous post was a filler. Bloody cheek! This from a joker who can only manage one post a week nowadays which is probably because he's concentrating on his multi-tasking.

Today is Saturday and it's a lovely day up here. The Old Girl is stuck in Auckland as she has a work assignment so after breakfast (see earlier post) I got stuck into work around the house. Two loads of washing were done and I washed the end of the house. Yes, you heard right, I washed the end of the house or at least the window and door frames. I do this once a year although I should do it more often. Being coastal we get a bit of salt spray and, at this time of year and earlier quite a bit of pollen on the wind. The window and door frames get a build up that requires scrubbing with a brush and washing down with warm soapy water. It's a pain but things look better after it's done. This took a couple of hours and I'm shagged out.

I saw that the HRV control panel is showing that the filters in the ventilation system in the roof need changing. I've cleared the cupboard that gives access to the ceiling and installed a ladder ready for the technician when I make a booking.

I did a big tidy up of the back porch, clearing out the 'boot cabinet' of everything except boots and boat shoes and swept up all the leaves that accumulate there.

Yesterday when I was putting the trailer away after my trip to the tip I managed to munt the locking pin on the trailer coupling. It's 'bent to buggery' as my dad used to say. Following in his tradition I got out a hammer and a lever and bashed shit out of it. Surprisingly this didn't work and only made it worse so I'll have to go to Repco or some place on Monday to get a new one. I need to do this as I promised Rod that he could borrow the trailer on Wednesday for a couple of days while I go to Auckland. We're going to the ... ' Gala Concert In the Presence of Dame Kiri Te Kanawa featuring the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra.' It should be good but I suspect that the mention of Kiri Te Kanawa is merely to get the admission prices up seeing as the old Dame won't actually be singing. Maybe she'll give us a wave.




Filler!

How rude.

'BABY FOOD'

I've just had my breakfast which was Weetbix with my All Bran mix.
The Old Girl calls this 'baby food' or mush. She's a bit scathing about some of my culinary preferences but, when it comes to breakfast cereals she eats coarse porridge oats seasoned with salt. SALT! no sugar - just a little bit of low fat milk. What's that about? I guess the asceticism stems from the fact that she was born in Aberdeen.




I make my 'mush' by covering 4 biscuits of Weetbix with boiling water to soften it and then drown in full fat milk. Yummy. It has a delightful mushy consistency. If not using my All Bran mix I sweeten with some raw sugar.

My All Bran mixture has to be prepared in advance and sometimes I haven't done this. What I do is mix All Bran, apple sauce and prune juice together and keep in the fridge for use during the week. A couple of tablespoons of this mixture on top of the Weetbix 'mush' is "very tasty, very sweet" as said by Corporal Jones.

SOME MORE FREE STUFF

I took a trailer load of garden rubbish to the tip today. Unlike lots of other people I was honest when asked about the rubbish contents and said that while most was fresh garden green waste there was some flax at the bottom of the trailer. The gate attendant asked if it was separable and I said yes, that I could put the flax in the general rubbish area and the bulk in the green waste area. She weighed the car and trailer and said to pay on the way out.

I went to the green waste area and unloaded, putting the odd bit of flax to one side and added these to the small amount of flax I had at the bottom of the trailer. I drove around to the general rubbish area and unloaded this. On exit the car and trailer were weighed again and the nett weight of rubbish calculated as 260kgs. The cost for this was $29.40. I thought this was OK as I noticed the charges for a trailer load of normal rubbish up to 200kgs was $45.

I noticed that lots of other people aren't honest when taking stuff to the tip. In the fresh garden rubbish area there was garden waste that clearly had flax among it. As it's cheaper to dump green waste many people lie at the gate and proceed to dump their flax where they shouldn't. This ultimately will spoil it for everyone and charges will go up.

********************

After the tip I went to Cobham ground to watch the cricket. The English team with many of the big names playing are here in Whangarei playing warm-up games at our excellent cricket ground. They played a two-day game earlier in the week against New Zealand A and today was the first day of a 3-day game. Entry is free. FREE! First class cricket with some of the biggest names in the game. FREE!

You'd think that it would be crowded. I wondered about getting a park given that I had the trailer attached to the car but I was able to get a free carpark, on the roadside right outside the entrance-way to the grounds. Inside there may have been 50 people on the grassy spectator area, sitting on directors chairs or on picnic blankets. The stand next to the pavilion seemed to be half full but even so I was flabbergasted that there were so few people enjoying the experience in the sun.

WE ALL HAVE BAD DAYS

Richard has had a bad day. See: HERE

I can understand this. He's wittered on complained mentioned this before although since he's deleted all his posts twice I can't provide you with a link.
I have mentioned something similar in my posts and here's a link*.  FREE STUFF

Poor Richard. He is a musician though and they are prone to tantrums and hissy fits. They're higher strung than most of us (did you see what I did there?). I hope that he takes my advice and gets one of those tradesmen's vans. It will also be handy for transporting his double bass if he hasn't trashed it.











* The Curmudgeons Incⓒ keep a comprehensive library of previous posts in order to double your reading pleasure.

*BREAKING NEWS - STATISTICS UPDATE OF UPDATE*

Robert, as expected, has deleted all of his posts so he has now been disqualified in the blog posting statistics survey.

Earlier reports of (adjusted) figures from Robert's blog showed that he had passed Ricard in terms of blog frequency. In this survey comprehensibility, relevance, readability, interest, erudition, grammar, political correctness and overall quality weren't measured basically because the previous survey results were so disappointing. In fairness to Richard (of RBB) the failings in the previous survey were not from his blog(s).

The new result in graph form is here:

Thank you.

WHERE WERE YOU?

There was a segment on afternoon radio on National Radio a couple of days ago where the panel and listeners were asked if they remembered where they were on the days of significant events in their lifetime.

Surprisingly many couldn't remember or, the events that they did remember were pretty insignificant like bimbo Lady Diana's death or Elvis Presley's demise. For the record even though I didn't rate either of these people I do remember where I was at the time:

Elvis Presley - August 16 1977 (August 17 for New Zealand) I was in my room at my flat at 2 Hay Street Oriental Bay. It was a Wednesday so I must have been skiving off university. I heard it on the radio.

Diana Spencer - August 31 1997  I was in the sunporch of our house at 38 Steadman Road Christchurch. It was a Sunday afternoon and I was reading a book and listening to the radio.

Some other significant events I can remember where I was and what I was doing:

JFK assassination - 22 November 1963 (23 November in New Zealand). I was in the playground at Marist Brothers Newtown. I was in Standard Four. One of the Brothers came down to the lower playground and told us. We watched endless broadcasts on TV at home at night.

The Moon Landing - 20 July 1969 (21 July in New Zealand). I was in the sixth form at Saint Patrick's College. It was a Monday and we listened to it on the radio at school and watched on TV at night at home.

The Berlin Wall falling - 22 December 1989. The Brandenburg gate was opened on this day and the wall was demolished over the following year.  I was at work at Quill and Company (part of Allied Liquor Merchants) and heard it on my car radio. I watched the events on TV at home that night.

911 - 11 September 2001. I was in bed at home at 4 Harbourview Road Point Chevalier. It was a Wednesday in New Zealand  and, on awakening heard about it on the radio. At work we watched events unfold on a TV in the staff room.

Aramoana Shootings - 13 November 1990. I was at home at Kapuka Road Mangere Bridge and watched the events on TV.

Wahine Sinking- 10 April 1968. I was at home. It was a school day but the weather was so bad in Wellington that schools were closed. Flying roofing debris had killed and injured some people. We listened to the events unfold on the radio and watched on TV. I was in the fifth form. It was a Wednesday and I was living at 39 Liardet Street Vogeltown.

***************

There are lots more that I can remember both personal events and major and minor public events. My memory isn't as good as Richard's but it is reasonable. I can't understand those people who said that they couldn't remember where they were or what they were doing on the days of some of the major events.

STATISTICS UPDATE

It's been some time since we reviewed the blog stats with regard to frequency of posting.
The last time this was done was on 1st August 2019 and at that time the criteria used was frequency, interest, erudition and relevance. A study of the posts from a couple of the contenders showed that interest, erudition and relevance was at a really low level so this time we will simply look at frequency.

From 1 August 2019 to today (mid month 14 November 2019) - three and a half months we have the following to show:

The Curmudgeons Inc.ⓒ - 111 posts

Richard's Bass Bag (and associates) - 43 posts

Robert of the Rosary and its various manifestations - 20 posts actual, 46.666 adjusted*



* It is worth noting that Robert of the Rosary and its various manifestations frequently gets deleted so the only posts that we have to work with are one and a half months worth. To get a proper comparison we have extrapolated the figures to represent three and a half months which gives us a theoretical figure of 46.666 😈 which puts Robert of the Rosary and its various manifestations just ahead of Richard's Bass Bag (and associates).  The devil's number of 666 doesn't go unnoticed! Well done Robert of the Rosary and its various manifestations - keep up the good work.

NEW POST - THE POLEMICAL CURMUDGEON

The Polemical Curmudgeon has surfaced and reminds us that political posts are in his domain. Sorry about that TPC - we posted a couple recently about Christopher Luxon,  local politics and geopolitics under The Curmudgeon banner. Mea Culpa*.

Here is The Polemical Curmudgeon's new post.

ORDER

* For those readers who didn't study Latin at secondary school maybe a bookkeeping reference is more in order like : 'Appropriation of ancillary amortisation.

KEEP UP! - NEW POST FROM THE RELIGIOUS CURMUDGEON

The Religious Curmudgeon reminded me that he's written a new post and is concerned that with the popularity of the Music Curmudgeon's and yours truly's posts at present that his might be overlooked.

See :

"HELL IS REAL" ....

YET ANOTHER NEW POST FROM THE MUSIC CURMUDGEON

The Music Curmudgeon wrote a new post in celebration of the reception the previous one received.

FOUND IT

NEW POST - THE MUSIC CURMUDGEON

The Music Curmudgeon has written another post.

HERE

WESTERN CLICHÉS

I've been busy watching Gunsmoke and The High Chaparral re-runs along with some other western films and TV series. I didn't see any resemblance between Richard and 'Big' John Cannon in The High Chaparral though. Maybe he was thinking of the character Victoria's dad:

"If you weren't my daughter Victoria I'd be dating you"

The best films are still the great John Ford ones made in the 1940s and 1950s.
The best of the TV series from a filming, acting, writing and direction point of view is Rawhide. This is classy stuff and still holds up well.

I noticed many clichés though. In the older films these were original and have been copied relentlessly. In the later films they are kind of set pieces that the audience expects. Here are some:

• The drunk gets thrown out of the saloon. He goes out the left side of the swinging door and, 5 seconds later comes back through the right side swinging door.
• There is some sort of altercation in the saloon bar. At the end there is a dead silence for a few seconds before the piano player looks around and then turns back to his piano to play manically.
• A woman comes between the major protagonists.
• The hero has a prim and proper 'fiancee' who is usually a schoolteacher but also has a saloon girl on the side who has a jealous crush on him.
• The bad guy has a stupid son who kills a friend or family member of the good guy and is killed by the good guy thus triggering a feud.
• One of the good guys is an alcoholic.
• Drinking wine, beer or non-alcoholic drinks is frowned upon. Real men drink whiskey.
• Bullets always make ricocheting noises no matter where they are fired.
• Good guys can hit people and moving objects a long way away using their handguns.
• Respectable townspeople who reluctantly join in the fight never have handguns. They have shotguns which never seem to hit anything. They usually get shot.
• The corral keeper is a crusty old guy who helps the good guys. He rarely wears a shirt preferring to wear an undershirt with braces holding up his pants.
• One of the good guys gets accused of a murder he didn't commit.
• They all ride their horses way too fast through desert landscapes.
• The stage coach goes way too fast through desert landscapes.
• They never seem to carry much water when travelling through desert landscapes.
• Desert landscapes.
• Poker games where someone cheats.
• Eating is very rarely shown (except in John Ford films or where they gather around the chuck wagon in drover films).
• Bad guys wear spurs even when not riding horses.
• Bartenders never seem to give any change.
• Sitting around a campfire always ends badly.
• A scene of a family inside a cabin always means that renegade Indians are going to attack.
• Travelling Shakespearian actors are always ridiculed by the bad guys.
• Actors and any dapper guys are 'made to dance' by shooting at their feet.
• In shootouts the big mirror in the saloon always gets hit.
• In saloon brawls chairs always get broken over heads but no heads get broken.
• In saloon fights someone always gets thrown through the front window.
• In Western towns there is never evidence of a glazier shop or business.
• Churches are always being built of burned down.
• You never see a Catholic priest or Catholic church.
• Mexicans and Native Americans are invariably the bad guys or cannot be trusted.
• The good guy rides away at the end.

TYPECASTING

I watched that old John Ford classic MY DARLING CLEMENTINE today. It's still a masterpiece like all of Ford's Westerns were.

It got me thinking that the plot of this film is well suited to our blog community and the occasional skirmishes that take place.
The location of the final shootout is The OK Corral. This is on the outskirts of town (Tombstone) as I guess corrals are noisy and smelly places. Since in the 1880s horses were the principal form of transport the corral was a big place where townsfolk kept their horses, livestock, buggies etc and the stagecoach kept spare horses, coaches and supplies.
In our community the OK Corral was like the hub or 'bus station' that Richard's Bass Bag operates as whereby visitors can find other more worthwhile blogs to scoot to.

I've drafted up a blogs scenario using the film plot as a template. This is just a draft as of course I'm far too busy to waste time creating the entire scenario. Here it is:

MY DARLING CLEMENTINE synopsis.

In 1882 the Earp bothers (Wyatt, Morgan, Virgil and James) are driving cattle to California when they meet up with the Clanton clan (father and four sons). They offer to buy the Earp's herd, but they  refuse to sell. The Earp's make camp and the three older brothers head into Tombstone for 'a shave and a beer' leaving the youngest brother James as watchman over the herd. When the brothers return to their camp, they find their cattle rustled and James murdered.
Wyatt returns to Tombstone. Seeking to avenge James' murder, he takes the open position of town marshal and encounters Doc Holliday. Wyatt hires his brothers as deputies and they have a couple of run-ins with the Clancys not knowing at this stage that they were the ones who murdered James.  During this time, Clementine Carter, Doc's former love interest  arrives after a long search for her beau. She is given a room at the same hotel where both Wyatt and Doc Holliday reside.
Chihuahua, Doc's girlfriend l sings in the local saloon. Doc, who is suffering  from tuberculosis is unhappy with Clementine's  arrival and he tells her to return to Boston or he will leave Tombstone. Clementine stays, so Doc leaves for Tucson. Wyatt, who has been taken by Clementine since her arrival, begins to court her. Angry over Doc's leaving Chihuahua screws one of the Clancy sons who gives her a medallion that he had taken off James Earp's body. Wyatt discovers this and she tells him that Doc Holliday had given it to her. Wyatt then hunts down the Doc.
Wyatt catches Doc and shoots his gun out of his hand and drags him back to Tombstone. Chihuahua confesses that the medallion was actually given to her by Billy Clanton but just after she said this Billy shoots Chihuahua through a window and takes off on horseback. He's wounded by Wyatt and Virgil chases him to the Clanton homestead where Billy dies but Virgil is killed by old man Clanton.
In town Doc is persuaded to operate on Chihuahua. It looks OK (no pun) at first but she dies. The Clantons  arrive, and toss Virgil's body on the announcing they will be waiting for the rest of the Earps at the O.K. Corral. Wyatt and Morgan Earp take off to the corral and Doc joins them. The old man Clancy and his remaining thee sons are killed along with Doc Holliday.
Wyatt and Morgan resign their positions. and head off further West. Wyatt bids Clementine farewell  promising that if he ever returns he will look her up. Mounting his horse he say's "Ma'am, I sure like that name...Clementine," and rides off to join his brother.

OK so far?

Good.

I guess you can see where this is going. The Earps and Doc Holliday obviously can be played by THE CURMUDGEONS INC.ⓒ who are ideally suited to the role being basically the good guys.

Enough said - a perfect match.

The Clancys are ideally suited to be replicated by Richard's Bass Bag cronies.

Rude and uncouth the Clancys are ideally played by the Bass Bag lot

As the principal roles have been covered by THE CURMUDGEONS INC.ⓒ and Richard's Bass Bagging lot and the only other lead roles were women I struggled to find where Robert could fit in but then it hit me - Robert and his manifestations can be the stand-in preacher and the band at the commissioning of the new church. Hell, he can be the entire congregation:

ROBERT AS PREACHER AND BAND

NEW POST - THE CURMUDGEON'S AGONY AUNT

TURNING ITALIAN

NEW POST - THE MUSIC CURMUDGEON

I apologise to the readers for not alerting you all earlier to THE MUSIC CURMUDGEON's latest blog:

STEELY RHTYHMS AND RATTLETY BANG

A SLOW DAY UP NORTH

G-STRINGS

Things weren't going well for the old man. He might still have his wash-hose* but people including his brother had made fun of his limited knowledge of world politics and that same brother had even usurped him in the role of grammar Nazi. To make matters worse he still hadn't managed to remove that damned 'Salvador Dali' moustache although he had been clipping away at it.

He hid in the garden meanwhile thinking of how Robert used to do this when he was a kid. "Dirty little devil" he muttered.
Robert confused him sometimes. He'd tried to take him under his wing when they were younger but recently his advice and guidance was going astray.

"Keep your weight on your left leg Rob. You can always trust the left."

Robert was moving more and more to the right. If that in itself wasn't proof that he was crazy he was now banging on again about a flat earth and trying to pretend that Jesus and the Catholic Church were supporters of Aristotle. "Give me a break" he thought as his mind drifted off to the young Robert's breathless description of Mrs O'Connor back in 1965.

"Damn Mrs O'Connor, get thee behind me" he said and tried to force thoughts of Bb7#9 chords into his mind instead. Or G diminished whole tone scales. G. G-strings.

"Aaaarghhh!"

*"I'VE GOT MY WASH HOSE"

GEOPOLITICS

The old man sat in the dark in his office. His face had a greenish tint to it. His face was also lit up by the green glow from his computer screen. Something worried him.

"Pronto," he said with a comma to silence the ringtone that had been worrying him.
"Gesundheit" said the caller and hung up.

The old man's best mate Tony had said something in an email that disconcerted him. Being disconcerted is a very worrying thing for a musician kind of like a teacher being declassified or a cleaner being unwashed. Tony had asked Richard if Erdogan would rename Istanbul to Constantinople - this being some sort of long running joke between the two. For once (we're being kind here) Richard was flummoxed. He didn't know who Erdogan was. "Who is Erdogan?" he emailed back to Tony while racking his brain to find the answer himself. Was he a musician? An educationalist? A commercial cleaner? Or, was he a made up name like Uara Kundt, Sucurone Kok, Upur Arse, Wayne Kerr, Phillip Edward Nis and others that he had made up.

The computer screen came back to life with an incoming email, this time from Mike.
"Erdogan is Turkey's Leader/Duce/Dictator" wrote Mike.
"OK" thought the old man, "politics then. Turkish politics and not delightful ones either. Where's Turkey again? I should know as I was in geography class at school. For all the good it did me I should have studied latin. Geography? And politics. Geopolitics!

He was worried.

SO MUCH FOR CHOICE*

I see Christopher Luxon is being given a free ride to pass GO and to become a future Prime Minister as we expected with his being gifted the Botany seat.

I wrote about this: HERE

I acknowledge that Luxon is a smart bugger and has been successful in business. Like Donald Trump though he has very little or no political experience and has very entrenched right-wing values. Why should he be given a free ride, bypassing the usual checks and balances that our politicians normally go through - an apprenticeship in fact. Helen Clark, Jacinda Ardern, David Lange, Rob Muldoon, Keith Holyoake etc to name a successful few came to the position after doing the hard yards.

Luxon didn't waste time after his nomination in  attacking  the underprivileged and needy in this country with a brutal assault on beneficiaries which is an omen of things to come. He revealed his Christian beliefs and associated entrenched attitudes to gay rights, abortion, euthanasia although he threw a veil over these by saying, in a mealy-mouthed way that he would 'listen' to his constituency.

We have been warned and so has that other mealy-mouthed National idiot Simon Bridges. I hope he's ready for when he'll be rolled.

* We are starting a new thread here and abandoning the Richard (of RBB) posting updates as, well, it's no good flogging a dead horse. But then again ......

BLOODY MELBOURNE CUP!

The man sat in his study watching the computer screen. The study light was off and the only light illuminating him was from the screen which progressed from the colours of his blog to the screen saver of exploding stars to just blackness. He preferred the blackness.

He thought about the comment he'd made on The Curmudgeon's latest post. This too had disappeared into darkness. He sat there immobile. He had almost created a new post in his head but had been distracted by a silly email from Mike. Bloody Mike! Now he had to make a trip to the T.A.B. Bloody Melbourne Cup!

SITUATION NORMAL

The man once again sat at his computer in the dark. He could see his reflection in the green borders at the edge of his blog and smiled ruefully at it and the fact that The Curmudgeon had likened him to Salvador Dali. "Yes" he thought, "there is a resemblance there. I wish I could get this damn false moustache off though. That's the last time I'll use super-glue".

"Bloody curmudgeon" he muttered and then smiled as he recollected his withering response to The Curmudgeon's post about him. He had made the comment "If that were me, I would have used a comma after 'pronto'."
Ha! That'd show him.
The screen saver with the exploding stars that disappeared into nothingness after 30 seconds took over the screen and soon he was in darkness again.