Monthly Archives: January 2022

The question continues to ring true, at least in my ears.

But for all the hype, there’s scant evidence that digital currencies stand on the threshold of some kind of mainstream breakthrough. While a recent Pew Research Center survey found that 16 percent of Americans have used cryptocurrency in some way, most buy it as a speculative investment, not for its originally intended purpose — as a way to pay for goods and services.

“It’s not happening,” Dan Dolev, a financial technology analyst for Mizuho Securities, said of the notion that crypto is replacing cold hard cash. “I wouldn’t even try to quantify it because it’s so insignificant. People are buying crypto because they think it can only go up. Or because they’ve heard it’s the future. Or because they don’t know why they’re buying it.” [WaPo]

For all the hype, yes, I think it’s true: hype. This continues to exhibit the signs of, well, to be quite frank after 30 years of investing or more, a pump and dump scheme. One red flag is the appearance of a lack of utility, as in either no real product or a very questionable product, and as I’ve noted before, I fail to see the unique and indispensable utility cryptocurrency brings to the financial landscape. The other big red flag? The big talkers talking it up:

Billionaire tech executive Michael Saylor has called bitcoin “the seminal invention of the human race.” His website describes it as “a bank in cyberspace” offering a “simple, & secure savings account to billions of people.” He recently claimed ownership of 17,732 bitcoin worth about $740 million.

Simple & secure, yet it depends on the continued existence and availability of the Internet. The latter is a big question mark, isn’t it, and there are times when I wonder if the Internet is really worth its trouble. He glosses more than one crack in the cement. And it appears he doesn’t do it well:

But one thing Saylor cannot do with bitcoin is pay for the $18 shrimp cocktail at Tony and Joe’s Seafood Place several floors below his penthouse apartment on Washington’s Georgetown waterfront. Though Tony and Joe’s has an ATM that can convert cash into bitcoin, the restaurant won’t accept it.

“I would take Monopoly money before I took cryptocurrency,” said a manager, who declined to give his name.

Whoever this manager is, he may not have Saylor’s billions, but he’s the one who has to make his business run. I find it telling that he, along with millions of other people, aren’t interested in cryptocurrency as a basic currency, but only, if even that, as a wildly speculative investment.

Crapulence:

1. adjective
   sick from gross excess in drinking or eating. [Dictionary.com]

Noted in Max Miller’s YouTube video “Rome’s Wonder Medicine: Cabbage“:

While I was aware of the fake electors who showed up at Michigan’s Capitol back in November, or was it December, of 2020, I was not aware of this:

As Trump’s team pushed its discredited voter fraud narrative, the National Archives received forged certificates of ascertainment declaring him and then-Vice President Mike Pence the winners of both Michigan and Arizona and their electors after the 2020 election. Public records requests show the secretaries of state for those states sent those certificates to the Jan. 6 panel, along with correspondence between the National Archives and state officials about the documents. [Politico]

The web of lies? The web of the law? Either way, it’ll be putting the squeeze on something.

That seems like interference in official matters, as well as fraud and forgery. For the good of the nation, these jokers should have their butts chucked in prison for a couple of years to emphasize that we’re not playing games and that a bunch of fourth-raters like them don’t get to make arbitrary official actions.

We do things as we have in the past in order to avoid riots and even civil wars. These guys, operating without a shred of evidence that there’s any systemic fraud going on, just don’t have a clue. And if you tell that, they’ll yell and scream about it.

Because they’ve been trained to believe that they can do things just as well as the people with years of training.

Oddly compelling, yet unintelligible. From the Deep Baltic link.

A couple of days ago, Erick Erickson tried to look angry at Vice President Kamala Harris (D-CA):

Also, shame on the current Vice President.

Unless Kamala Harris can show us videos of people jumping to their deaths from the Capitol Dome to escape the mob, she needs to shut the hell up instead of comparing January 6th to September 11th. What a ridiculous and shameful thing to say. But I’m sure she doesn’t care, which makes it even worse.

The first red flag was the context of his anger, which is a post reprimanding Republicans and right wing extremists who might be angry at former Vice President Dick Cheney (R-WY), who served in the Bush II Administration, and happens to be the father of Rep Liz Cheney (R-WY). This slam of the Vice President was tacked on to the end.

Why is this important? Because Erickson is trying to stay relevant to the conservative base, and by criticizing a base angry at the former vice president, he’s running a risk. This is risk-mitigation, where he invokes conservative base anger and derision and throws it at Vice President Harris.

And don’t forget the ridicule. That’s the second red flag for me. Ridicule of someone for stupidity, who just happens to have a reputation for being really smart, is a good, but not infallible, red flag.

Erickson didn’t provide a link, but, if she did say anything applicable, I think there’s not much question of what it would be, given Erickson’s description. So does it make sense to compare the 9/11 Tragedy and the January 6th insurrection?

There’s potentially more to an incident than just counting bodies or dollars; that is, metrics, as always, matter. So what’s the proper metric here?

Incidents in the past function as indications of what may happen in the future. To pick out an astronomical example, the telescopic and radar watch for Near Earth Orbit (NEO) objects is motivated, in large part, by the Tunguska event of 1908. This immense air blast over a fortunately sparsely populated area of Siberia has been a topic of speculation for decades, and one of the better theories is that a huge meteor entered the Earth’s atmosphere and blew up in mid-air over Siberia. If we want to prevent having this event replicated over, say, New York City, the first step is to detect an incoming object, and then do something about it, two projects that remain under development.

What you are motivates metric selection. Insurance companies count the dollars in sometimes-stomach turning detail^[1], first responders count bodies. What do leaders such as VP Harris and Cheney do?

They worry about tomorrow. What’s the risk of this happening again? is what they should be asking. Measuring existential risk, and mitigating it, is their job.

And here’s the thing: for all of the nightmarish horror of 9/11, future risk is not that big a deal for 9/11. Only a few extremists were involved, who took advantage of a very lax security system. We have since tightened security, closed loop holes, and hunted down the criminals responsible. There have been no more incidents.

The insurrection: How do we assess the risk? We can compare personnel: a collection of foreign nationals for 9/11, compared to several hundred Americans, people who should know better than to believe the “Big Lie” of widespread electoral fraud, who invaded the Capitol building, chanted intimidating slogans, set up an executioner’s stand, and vandalized parts of the Capitol building.

Motivation is important, too, as most foreign nationals with access to the America have no interest in inflicting violence on us. Meanwhile, members of one of the two major American political parties continue to believe, to an unsettling extent, that electoral fraud occurred in the 2020 election, despite a complete and utter lack of evidence.

Leaders? The 9/11 leader is dead. The insurrection leaders are not, and some are still free, although the Department of Justice is working on that problem.

And was 9/11 an existential threat? Not in the least. It was clever, but not backed by sufficient resources to endanger the entire country, and there hasn’t been another attack like it in 20 years, and those who are thought to be in sympathy with it find themselves dead or pinned down, thanks to the combined efforts of Republican and Democratic Administrations, otherwise known as American Administrations.

Meanwhile, simply getting Republican leaders to admit that Biden won in 2020, fair and square, is like pulling teeth out of a five year old: kicking, screaming, denying, head-shaking, and NO NO NO NO! is all de rigeur. Each one of these “leaders” is a potential leader, although the former President doesn’t tolerate dissent, nor wannabes jockeying for position. And 20%, maybe, of the conservative base thinks it’s been cheated.

Perhaps most frighteningly, without evidence. This lack of rationality is perhaps the most frightening: they have no idea how to assess reality or predict the future.

In essence, once the metric changes from counting dollars or nightmares to existential risk, all of a sudden VP Harris suddenly appears a lot more credible than Erickson is willing to give credit.

Does Erickson realize all this? Is he a hypocrite simply simply trying to keep his audience happy, to reassure them that disbelieving the 2020 results is really acceptable, by slamming a Vice President who has to sit the hot-seat, moreso than many others have because of the age of the President? Or does Erickson really believe that measuring a tragedy stops with the body count?

Beats me. But I don’t think it does. This is all about “Fool me one, shame on you. Fool me twice … we’re all dead.”

¹ I once worked for a word-processing company, and in order to report bugs our customers would submit documents to show how our print subsystem didn’t work. Some of these documents came from personal injury attorney firms, and reading those documents could be a hair-raising experience.

The Devil To Pay! (1930) is a light-hearted romp that explores the contretemps that can happen when the newly engaged make impossible demands on one another, even when the demanded is quite the miracle worker. It’s not worth recapping the plot, except to say even the crabby old rich British father has a certain cachet to him, so watch out!

Or you’ll be mildly charmed.

A caption in WaPo:

The crater fire named “Gates of hell” is seen near Darvaza, Turkmenistan, on July 11, 2020. The president of Turkmenistan is calling for an end to one of the country’s most notable but infernal sights.

What, does this crater move around like a coyote?

Carceration:

noun Incarceration; imprisonment. [Wordnik]

Noted in “Why Isn’t BLM Celebrating?,” Andrew Sullivan, The Weekly Dish (paywall):

It seems to me there’s an explanation. The goal of BLM was not to reduce the number of cop killings so much as it was to abolish and defund the police, and stop punishing crime with carceration. Proof that the police can be reformed, or that a lot of progress has actually been made, might defuse those efforts. In fact, it might suggest we need to adjust a little to keep murder from spiraling out of control in our cities, as progressive DAs do all they can to keep violent criminals on the streets. And that’s the kind of data none of these groups or anyone in the MSM wants to cover.

My guess is that organizations that achieve their goal often go out of existence themselves, so they resort to not advertising their successes in order to keep the money coming in.

I don’t know that’s happening here, but it is a known, and logical, phenomenon.

Remember this speech that I highlighted back in 2016, as reported by Steve Benen?

House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) delivered a speech last week at the Ethics and Public Policy Center’s anniversary gala, and the Wisconsin Republican highlighted an interesting excerpt from the remarks on social media over the weekend:

“That is the key difference between ourselves and the progressives: We do not believe we should be governed by elites. We do not believe that there are experts or elites who should steer us in their preferred direction. We see that sense of organization as condescending, paternalistic, and downright arrogant. We know it’s wrong. […]

“Because we believe that all of us are equal, we believe there is no problem that all of us – working together – cannot solve. We believe every person has a piece of this puzzle, and only when we work together do we get the whole picture.”

I have come to the conclusion that the proper plain English translation is …

I hate and loathe the opinions of some experts, so I’m anointing all of you experts so you can tell me what I want to hear.

I just thought my readers should know.

Look, there is certainly a tension between experts and non-experts when it comes to topics that impact everyone, such as public health. Finding a way to live with and conform to those opinions, with the alternative being potential disaster, is important.

But former Speaker Ryan’s approach is rank and callow extremism, and I’m afraid that’s what has invaded the Republican Party organism. It screams dreadfully at the thought of being told what to do, and its members die and die and die.

Have you heard that 5G, or the fifth-generation of cellular networks – how your phone talks to the data network – will cause vaccinated people’s heads to explode? Yes, yes, quite silly – and Mashable’s Matt Binder is on the case:

The videos are real and quite disturbing. However, no one is spontaneously combusting. These videos are from 2019 and depict protesters in Iraq being shot at close range with “non-lethal” tear gas rounds. Unsurprisingly, when police shoot these at close range, they do become quite lethal and can actually become embedded into someone’s head, creating that disturbing image caught on camera.

But there’s a more subtle point here. If you had heard about this, and took it seriously enough to do your own research on this, then there’s a key point to consider:

Did you discover the same resolution, that some depraved monster – I exaggerate only slightly, I think – has appropriated videos of a tragic and terrible incident, and relabeled them for, at the very least, their own disgusting amusement, and more likely so they can materially benefit from their lie?

If you did not, if your research left you thinking that you’ll be covered by blood and gore on January 5th – or January 19th, the revised rollout date – then you should be questioning your research methods. Are you trusting sites that, just maybe, have been setup to mislead you? Did they ask for money?

Did you even ask yourself how such a terrible scenario benefits companies such as Verizon? Have any of these supposed conspiracies to inflict blatant disaster and suffering on mankind, in the guise of a new product, come true, especially in the face of experts denying the possibility?

No, you cannot cite the notorious Jimmy Bakker. Yes, his promotion of colloidal silver is a disaster for anyone who takes him seriously, but his ‘expert’ was a naturopath, which is basically just a fake doctor.

My point is: if your ‘research’ didn’t find Binder’s end point, if you’re not covered in the blood and gore of your vaccinated friends and family now or on January 19th, perhaps you’d be better served by not doing your own research, and instead do surveys of real experts. Always remember, there can be fakes even in the ranks of the trained experts, so that’s why you do surveys and keep an eye on politics.

Pope Francis, leader of the Catholic Church for those living under rocks, in caves, or in schismatic Catholic cults, recently expressed, in our over-populated world, his horror at the idea of not having children, of care for, instead, house pets:

That’s one hell of a ‘tell’ when you’ve been dealt a royal flush.

Man with the Screaming Brain (2005) is an attempted send up of the B-class monster movies of old, but having seen a few of those – finally! – over the last several years, I must say I’ve been impressed by the quality of the acting and scripts in many of them – and that’s where Man with the Screaming Brain falls down. It has a lack of timing for much of the humor; gags are executed for the sake of the gag, rather than advancing the story, and this is the fault of the script. Two or three more drafts of the script were really necessary before filming should have begun.

That said, if you’re a Bruce Campbell fan, it won’t hurt you much to see this. However, his memorable Bubba Ho-Tep (2002) was a far, far better effort, and is actually worth your time. This one, despite the efforts of the actors, just doesn’t come off as much more than an amateur effort in the story.

A fun little map of the lands of the Baltic Sea:

Stories about supernatural beings seem to be something that is common to all cultures, handed down from generation to generation, perhaps most often as a way of explaining mysterious natural phenomena. Even in an age when belief in these kinds of traditional stories have declined, they are regular features of the fairy tales told to children, and are still rich sources of inspiration for creators of literature and film. First published in 2012 by Vilnius University Press, the map “Mythical Creatures in Europe” includes 213 creatures from the length and breadth of the continent. Categorising the creatures into a number of general groups by their form, nature and attitude towards humans, the map reveals both enormous variety across Europe and broad areas of similarity even between very distant cultures. In addition to universally recognisable figures such as giants and vampires, there are others that will be unknown to most outside the region where they are found, such as the sleipnir, saratan and barbegazi.

More on the mythical creatures of the Baltic Sea area at Deep Baltic.

Near the end of last year, Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) suggested that he all but had the 2024 Presidential wrapped up, assuming former President Trump did not run:

My Arts Editor thought this was too long, but enjoyed its sophistication.

It’s clear that Senator Johnson (R-WI) is experiencing cognitive decline, or is trying a little too hard to manipulate his base:

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) drew some stunned reactions with his latest bafflingly flawed anti-vaccine take.

During a familiar rant Monday on a conservative radio show about the merits of relying on the body’s “natural immunity” to COVID-19 after being infected with the virus, the senator asked, “Why do we assume that the body’s natural immune system isn’t the marvel that it is?”

“Why do we think that we can create something better than God in terms of combating disease?” he added.

“There are certain things we have to do, but we have just made so many assumptions, and it’s all pointed toward everybody getting a vaccine.” [HuffPost]

The discrediting comebacks are easily thought up, and have spewed from many of those who listened or read about it already; my immediate reaction is 800,000+ dead leaves his argument looking like roadkill.

But it’s worth noting that he’s speaking to a conservative audience, and is clearly hoping that, by appealing to a vague religious dimension, that he can raise the audience’s hackles against the pro-vaccine supporters^[1], thus strengthening the conservative movement.

But I have to wonder how many Wisconsinites, even within the target demographic, looked around, not surrounded by their now-dead family and friends, all victims of Covid-19 and its variants, and decided the Senator is nothing more than a cold-blooded manipulator – or a demented candidate for a rest home.

And have decided to walk away from him.

It’s one thing to infuriate your opponents. It’s quite another to baldly manipulate and insult your own base. I wonder many of that base have figured that out, and now have to decide if their dislike of the Democrats is enough to force them to the dishonorable choice of voting for Johnson next time around, or whoever wins the Republican nomination, should he choose to retire.

¹ To any sane mind, the pro-vaccine movement is the conservative position, while anti-vaxx goes against the accumulated wisdom of decades, even more than a century.

I’m a few days behind in my xkcd reading, which explains why I haven’t mentioned this before.

It’s the tool tip that caught my attention, though:

A solid red area with two white lines means that you have been infected with the anti-coronavirus, COVID+19. which will cure anyone you have close contact with.

Conspiracy theorists love those hidden messages, don’t they? After all, only those folks smart enough to find the messages will then learn “the truth.” It’s confirmation bias in action, isn’t it? And what’s better than a tool tip that requires the cursor to be hovering over a cartoon and goes away when you move your cursor? Add in the context of COVID, which has a rich environment of conspiracy theories, all quite ridiculous – a redundant remark, I’m sure – and this tool tip just seems to scream MISINTERPRET ME! QUICK!

Maybe it’s already happened. I refuse to go look. I haven’t seen it mentioned, yet, in The Morning Heresy, which is a good source for pointers to conspiracy theory madness.

The dangers of an improperly selected metric! What are you looking at?!

Scandal Sheet (1952) is a tightly plotted and wound crime drama that depends intimately on the inferior position of women in the time period in which it is set. Mark Chapman has been climbing the ladder at the local big newspaper, and is now the editor who has been saving the paper’s financial bacon by pushing it into trash journalism and sensationalism.

The latest story is about a Lonely Hearts Club jonesing to marry at least one new couple, formed that night, by bribing them with various consumer items. Chapman’s the host, so he brings along a photographer, out to photograph everyone, and a reporter, Steve McCleary, to write up the new, happy couple. They look more desperate and befuddled than anything, but what they hey. Right?

And then chaos springs forth. Mark Chapman, hard-driving bachelor, isn’t actually Mark Chapman, he’s actually George Grant, who abandoned his wife, Charlotte, twenty years earlier, after she refused to grant him a divorce. He changed his name, left her penniless, and exited the state. And here she is at the event!

Oh, and she’s bitter. Oh so bitter.

Later, at Charlotte’s hotel room, following mutual threats, she loses the scuffle and ends up dead. Chapman makes it look like an accidental drowning, but it’s reporter McCleary and sidekick photographer who get to the crime scene before it’s cleared. McCleary has help in the form of Julie Allison, feature writer, who is frustrated with the drift of the paper into sensationalism, with the way she’s treated by everyone male, and how her insights into just about everything are considered worthless. Even about the boss.

But then Charlotte’s suitcase, full of marriage memorabilia, shows up at a hock shop, leading to the murder of a drunken old ex-journalist, and the trot turns into the gallop, and Chapman, who sees riches in his future, keeps dodging the metaphorical bullets, while firing off a few tangible bullets of his own.

Will the noir triumph? Or will the good guys get away with being utterly blind? Something of an ode to the infallibility of the boss, this tight, well plotted and acted drama would have been better without the near-inevitable putdowns of the ladies.

But, in the end, the storytellers acknowledge, ever so grudgingly, that injustice, and how that injustice translates to Oh, shit! moments.

It’s not quite deep enough to be recommended, but there’s not a lot to criticize here. Enjoy!

Steve Benen has a freakout about potential ballot-counting snafus in the near future:

An NPR analysis of 2022 secretary of state races across the country found at least 15 Republican candidates running who question the legitimacy of President Biden’s 2020 win, even though no evidence of widespread fraud has been uncovered about the race over the last 14 months. In fact, claims of any sort of fraud that swung the election have been explicitly refuted in state after state, including those run by Republicans.

As we’ve discussed, it’s likely that for many American voters, secretary of state — at the state level, not the cabinet secretary who leads the U.S. State Department — is a fairly obscure government office. These officials tend to work behind the scenes on unglamorous tasks such as election administration, and few reach the household-name level.

But in the wake of the Republican Party’s Big Lie, and Donald Trump’s ongoing fixation on installing allies in key positions, secretaries of state — and this year’s campaigns to elect secretaries of state — have taken on extraordinary importance.

Franita Tolson, an election law expert at the University of Southern California, told NPR, “The reasons why Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election failed is because there were state officials who refused to substantiate his claims of fraud. These folks really are gatekeepers.”

It any are elected, it wouldn’t hurt to send them a note, citing the relevant statute, noting that a failure to carry out the duties of the office to which they’ve been elected will result in a fine and/or jail time.

It’s one thing to run around in circles when there’s no real cost, and quite another when the road of reality is about to come up and smack you in the face.

It’s a typo, and yet it all seems so right.

Folks who believed in false clams (such as the idea that spraying chlorine on yourself could protect you from getting sick if you’ve already been infected) were more likely to actually get COVID–19. [“The Boiling Pot: secret codes of “Jeopardy!”; B.S. about Betty White; the Post touts alt-med; Canadians and their astrology,” Paul Fidalgo, The Morning Heresy]

Maybe they’re just octopuses in camouflage? Given all the other shit fishes spray about, chlorine just seems quite likely.

Chicanery:

clever, dishonest talk or behaviour that is used to deceive people:
The investigation revealed political chicanery and corruption at the highest levels. [Cambridge Dictionary]

Noted in “Too many Republicans condone violence, and even more exonerate Trump,” Jennifer Rubin, WaPo:

For those readers wondering if we’re going to see more public, conditional endorsements from the former President, the answer, I think, is yes, in view of this capitulation:

Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy [(R-AK)] has accepted former President Donald Trump’s conditional endorsement of his 2022 reelection campaign, according to a message sent from Trump’s political action committee.

Trump offered Dunleavy his “Complete and Total Endorsement” earlier this week, but only if Dunleavy refused to endorse fellow Republican U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski for reelection.

“Please tell the President thank you for the endorsement,” Dunleavy’s response stated, according to a message from Trump’s Save America PAC on Thursday evening. “With regard to the other issue, please tell the President he has nothing to worry about. I appreciate all 45 has done for Alaska and this country.” [Anchorage Daily News]

While Dunleavy probably calculates that he’s more likely to win with Trump on his side, rather than on someone else’s side, on a national level this is significant because if Murkowski is significantly weakened from both a split in the local GOP and an independent set of voters who are repulsed by the naked power politics, it’s not impossible that the Democrats could win this seat.

And other seats where Trump wants to run his selfish power play.

An ancillary result is the probability that another fourth or fifth rater will advance to the Senate. While I’ll decline to rate Murkowski, who, like most of the old line Republicans, never seem to comprehend what’s happened to their party, and has failed to exit the party, I will say she seems at least somewhat better than the average run of Republican. Replacement by some incompetent boob who can’t think further than which dance will get him/her the nomination and seat is a discouraging thought for folks who think government should be competent servants to the people, and not to some failed President.

And this may apply to a few other seats in both the House and the Senate. More phone calls for Senator McConnell (R-KY) may be in his future, begging Members of Congress not to switch parties.

When the monsters come in multiples.

The Lady From Shanghai (1947) examines how the drives of mankind become curiously perverted once we’re disconnected from our most basic needs. We meet Michael O’Hara, may be a master seaman, but is mastered by his impulses himself, whether they be liquid or hormonal. He knows it, yet he often cannot stop himself.

And Elsa Bannister is an impulse, a living, breathing creature of the upper crust, curvy in all the right places, in subtle distress of one sort or another. And, cooling Michael’s ardor, she’s married. She offers him a working position on her yacht, which is to sail from New York City to San Francisco via the Panama Canal, with other offers perhaps a little more veiled, but O’Hara, despite his impulse problems, turns her down. But when her husband, polio stricken (or perhaps some other malignant problem) defense lawyer Arthur Bannister, best and richest defense lawyer in the business, reinforces the offer, he finds himself setting sail with them.

Along for the ride is George Grisby, Arthur’s partner in their law firm, and despised by Arthur as well. Arthur might as well be the Old Man of the Sea, whom mythical Sinbad carried on his shoulders until he could persuade him to drink too much and, once freed of the now insensible old man/god, killed him. Grisby endures the abuse, a smile creasing his face, while slowly wooing O’Hara through obtuse remarks during the passage.

And Elsa? She slowly lets it be known that she once worked in Shanghai as a dancer, poor and desperate, and now that she’s not poor, she’s still desperate to keep the wealth, if not the provider.

That being the inscrutable Arthur Bannister.

The story really revs up when Grisby finally brings his plan to O’Hara, who shall play the key role: pretending to kill Grisby. While Grisby disappears to an island, evading wife and taxes, O’Hara will be unimpeachable because of the lack of a body. It will have been lost in the California surf.

But there’s a joker in the deck, a private eye, by the name of Broome, in the crew, hired by Arthur to keep an eye on his wife and O’Hara. When Grisby is surprised by Broome as he prepares for the faux-crime, he shoots Broome and leaves him for dead. But Broome manages to warn Elsa, who, in a discussion with O’Hara, reveals a key lie.

Grisby has no wife.

Soon, we do have a body and a body, as it were, and then a trial, and soon Bannister, the lawyer, in defending O’Hara finds this trial is spiraling out of even his legendary control. Indeed, memorably Arthur Bannister gets to cross-examine a surprise witness  – Arthur Bannister. And then … O’Hara disappears.

This tense thriller operates on a number of levels, but perhaps the most interesting is the perverted ways of the ultra-rich, especially in their desires. Elsa may be driven to never be poor again, but Arthur is really a spider at the middle of its web, Grisby in one bundle of silk, Elsa in another, and now O’Hara being wrapped up. Did his polio – presumed – embitter him? Or did it simply move his arena of competition from where it would normally operate to another arena, where people are just chess pieces?

All the characters have interesting backstories, but the most interesting are, wisely, merely hinted at. This brings what could have been an improbable story to life and makes it plausible, as the narcissism of virtually everyone in the upper-crust reveals that their ultra-wealth has transformed them from human beings into …. something else.

And that something else is hideously unstable.

Recommended.

“Animals enrich the lives of people,” and it’s not just the breasts and thighs.

Chicken People (2016) is your introduction to the world of competitive chicken showing, and it’s a good introduction indeed. These are serious people, on a serious task, as we are introduced to, and follow, a race car engine engineer and utter perfectionist; a former alcoholic, mother, farmer; and a Branson, MO entertainer, who is looking constantly for a way to integrate his entertainment career with his love of chickens. Others flit through, but these are the mainstays. If you suspect a shared character trait here, you might not be wrong.

And the stars, of course, are the chickens, from the familiar Leghorn to the Wyandottes, so many varieties. We learn of the standards by which they’re judged, and how they’re taken care of from hatching to passing.

It’s fun. We’ve seen the chickens at the Minnesota State Fair a few times, and, yeah, they really come in beautiful varieties.

So if you want a couple of stories and the chance to stare at some odd looking poultry, go no further than Chicken People. Now, excuse me, I have to go feed my cats … some Chicken Feast. Oh, and do these competitive showers eat their chickens?

What do you think?