Plus ça sonne,...: white smoke
If anybody has further comment I don't need or wish to know.
You've suffered a week free of my outrageous nonsense.
My ears only recently stopped ringing with the racket of bells, both church and Factory ones. It's hard to imagine any more reactions -- wicked or worshipful, self-serving or scared, helpful or hilarious -- to the "main news" than I've already heard.
My part in recounting the election of the man variously described as "a worthy successor" and "God's Enforcer" was to flee as fast as I could once Africa was mainly quiet on Tuesday, while much of the Factory was in uproar. I avoided finding out who'd got the job until I remembered to ask my ex-wife on the phone from the noisy but indispensable café where the fully wakeful part of a new day begins.
This seemed preferable to arriving at work as ignorant as I can be stupid.
For everyone else, even Benedictus XVI, the Wikipedia has been habitually quick, while knowing why some French kids are called Benoît has been added to my huge store of useless info.
The news for people in my personal life, Catherine included, is that the smoke Factory hands had the misfortune, I fear, to be first in seeing as "white" -- it was very noisy, hard to tell & I wasn't even there -- means that I shall soon resume being socially anti-social.
Others may wish to know that in Sierra Leone, with one people and three main faiths, the reaction "on the street" was that of those who've waited too long for the outcome of a football match. An astonishing number of Africans seem suddenly to have learned what the "Dictatorship of Relativism" means. To me, it was explained by desk chief David, who -- sort of, to be fair -- told me I was wrong in just thinking the man believes Africans shouldn't have different values from Americans, but also believes there are absolute values for all. When I wanted to know if there was a choice between all or somee, I'm pretty sure David said "no".
Well, you know my views on *diktats & anti-*diktats, let alone *orders, holy or otherwise.
Things I like about trouble
*"Trouble (in)" got recently added to this log's glossary (*). More of it started when Frog hacks wanted a reliable source for the colour of Vatican smoke and I suggested perhaps the "le Saint-Esprit", having been told that "'holy ghost" is no longer politically correct, especially in the United States, where some have it drummed out of them at a very early age.
 All this has been so confusing I woke up to realise only when ready for a Wednesday morning bath that the power had blown overnight.
I may have deserved a cold shower, but the water was kinder. It stayed hot like my fantasies.
Once I got home, as shown, even the Mac it no longer knew what day it was, only that the new pontiff's policies may mean turning lots of clocks back, which may be why it blew the fusebox.
 Britain's despicable but readable 'The Sun' did its worst for a headline -- the most helpful nastiness a friend came up with is risky even via me -- and warns us that in 'the 1980s he described homosexuality as an 'intrinsic moral evil' and said rock music could be a 'vehicle of anti-religion'" (Sun). Well, tell me what music can't, but that's mild among the banalities and platitudes that have assaulted our eyes and ears for weeks.
When the same friend, Dave in Lagos, ended up the poor sod responsible for the almost impossible task of summing up African "reax", he soon pleaded, probably on his knees, to be sent only those that said anything different or striking.
So let's half own up and say, yes, Dave had got his head round the "dictatorship of relativism" and wondered ... how do I put it? how it's applied to the careers of priests who fuck women contrasted with those who do really foul things to kids? Hypocrisy and double-standards have scarcely been out of the news either, not at least in the filthy minds of journalists.
Perhaps this is why we're among the most hated professions in France. I don't know who's bottom of the list, but suspect it must be bankers. I'm delighted to announce that once I've gone through the last deliberately tortuous hoop for them before another bout in the Factory and am off the Banque de France blacklist again, you'll get lots more VoWs, the screenplay's back on course, and all this is even within my budget.
Banks and sharing -- or volunteering and promoting fantastic stuff because one enjoys it without thought of profit -- are contradictions in terms. In the unlikely event top-ranking or administrative Factory hands read this, Nadia and the others get my thanks for having such clear heads on their shoulders even I could understand, with their help and in language about hateful numbers that made sense, a long-term way out of years of one kind of trouble.
The art of being a public danger
Merely as helpful information: I'm no longer a risk just to close-cropped women, notably straw-headed blondes, and will consent to almost anything conceivable, adore variety and spontaneity, so long as you're as very good-looking or simply as much so as me and have a great sense of fun, little excess baggage and few hang-ups.
The woman I might still be especially in trouble with is convinced I live on a different planet; true only to the extent that my plan's to help make one a lot more people like living on in sometimes odd ways. Why wait for heaven when it can't be that hard to get rid of hell on earth if enough people put their hearts into it?
The truth is more likely she and me temporarily live in different time zones, if not millennia, and also in the briefing offered in the "Sorry, love. You've found the wrong address" section of my April 5 entry written after I found some good explanations of why men and women can have a hard time talking to each other, then routinely accuse one another of not listening.
Coming out with it costs! So I'll cough up
As if that wasn't bad enough, it was truly appalling to confess to my ESP.
All this earned me the most cherished rebuff of the year so far. It's uncharitable to quote, but far too good to leave out:
Bravo. You are the only person I have ever known who can write 4,000 words about nothing. (...)
And that's damn impressive, Nick, so do keep up your screenplay because
I'm sure you're going to succeed. You have a way with being able to talk about nothing.
How's it possible to dislike anybody who sends something so wonderful? I'm not a masochist, but I certainly can't and hope that was just practice. Also the charge that I'd inflicted 4,000 words is not -- the horror of it -- all that divorced from reality. I merely lose count when trying to talk sense!
So I'll tell everyone the truth.
I do have a sixth sense, don't know where it comes from; the less I take myself seriously and inspect my own navel, the more and better it works. That's one reason you'll find weird stuff in the orchard.
The wise shrink who undid me last year told me that since I'm stuck with this faculty, I might as well confess to knowing things about people they don't me want to when it's true and runs deeper than intuition, brains or experience.
I can't help it, especially when it yells at me.
The other day a woman at the Factory made a suggestion after I said something too odd and out of the blue, since I just knew, which I felt might be of some use to her, because I then had to explain "why" as best I could.
It wasn't very well.
You see, what happens is that if I smell trouble in somebody's air and I like them, then I want to help if I truly can without making a fuss about it, but it's hard to know sometimes if this counts as interference.
For someone who tries to avoid that, I'm outstandingly good at it, since I get a kick out of forgetting myself, especially when it comes to being serious.
One thing people radiate if I'm paying the slightest attention is when they're in trouble and when they're in none at all but experiencing big changes in their lives. As happens, hence the 'I Ching', etc.
I've been able to do this since forever and no longer distort or "invent" it, as I used to when my ego got in the way, or worse, I wanted something somebody didn't want to share.
The Factory friend, J., said, "Look, if it bothers you, why don't you talk about it to somebody who knows you inside out?"
"Like whom?" I asked, truly curious.
"Maybe, for instance, your ex-wife!"
That was so sensible I will. Catherine's great as you know. It's only living with each other we don't like.
I planned to in the afternoon, but was in danger of yet more trouble. I'd been yacking a lot on the phone already sorting out the bank and African stuff which badly needs dealing with once and for all when a few overworked people have found their way through the thick fog left by the white smoke.
So I got home in a weary mood, disinclined to lay all that on Catherine, having done quite enough of the wrong kind of laying women already.
The most genuinely useful aspect, to me, of this "extra-sensory" perception that's probably pretty normal for some is that if my phone rings insistently when I don't feel like it, I know when it matters to pick it up and when it doesn't. This uncanny if not quite infallible ability works so well it keeps lots of people, especially me, out of trouble.
It's true too of the flashing light that says "You've got messages". I can rely on it as much as the wretched pigeons do on me not to beat them up when I give them their breakfast.
The birds are now so good at this some of them appear round unexpected corners to get it and the cheeky bastards don't even bother to fly away when I open the bathroom window to say: "Good morning. Stop squabbling, cos when you do the crumbs go down into Serge's back yard instead of inside you. This may annoy him nearly as much as before we moved windows and you shat on my landlord's head."
Why do I tell you this instead of watching the X-Files, giving you another naked woman or man (but you can go elsewhere for males, I'm quite enough here) to admire or going back to bed regrettably with only a book?
Because if you can do it as well, we should talk about it -- lightly, since it's no big deal -- instead of leaving it to scientists and all the charlatans. I know it only gets in the way if your ego does, that's a fact and it's not a "goddam shame".
What remains a damned shame is how little known tonight's VoW remains.
Jolie fine stuff: yes, a VoW
 Jolie Holland is very good. Hers is another voice I really got into during the second part of her first studio album -- 'Escondida,' nearly a year "old" -- and had to start all over again.
For sure, this Texan-born, sometimes folksy, sometimes blue and New Orleans jazzy lady is serious about some of what she sings.
But people can get that wrong -- like a woman who bit me since she's just a bit behind, which is unusual and a 'Damn Shame', like one of Jolie's loveliest and best "stories" with a sting in the tail. All I need to say of the voice, if you must have a comparison, is imagine Jodie Foster being southern in superb song. Enough people say Billie Holliday to have a point.
Someone at America's Amazon thinks "'Old Fashioned Morphine' is perhaps the darkest moment on the album and speaks to the murkier facets of our souls, highlighting the things that race across our minds when despair is factored in."
This would be fine if Jolie hadn't explained:
"that song is a joke. I wrote it during a waitressing shift. It was 7 o'clock in the morning and I was tired, my bones were creeky. There is this American song, it's like a gospel song that goes: 'gimme that old time religion, it's good enough for me'. It was just funny to me" (at Belgium's 'Cucamonga' (Eng. & Flemish, where I stole the pic.)
You don't need to know that too get Jolie's jokes -- there are many of them. You have to pay close attention. The same goes for the subtle ways her music works, sinuous, not half as simple as it sounds. She's worth the effort: the outcome can be sad sometimes, but always beautiful.
I went to Amazon US for a look because Jolie's very American and also a reminder, as in her lovely version of a Civil War lost-love song, how different the bits of a vast country whose mad regime's outrages can sometimes make it seem monolithic to a European really are.
She's out of time, can do old stuff in her new way, gets around and she'll last.
She's currently on tour (Jolie Holland's home-site calendar).
If she comes anywhere near you and you miss a chance to catch her live, must I say what that would be?
Even then, you get a chance, of sorts, thanks to NPR, where I found her last month.
She's a public service, just private about it.
zzz
Any oblique reference to other gorgeous, fun-loving people is fully intended: there's a lot of beauty about, along with the nicest of little "nothings". It's unfair that being mean to me works wonders, I know.
I just bare my fangs. You're lucky that's all I bare.
So women be warned and beware. White smoke will very soon mean all the ones I fancy are in trouble. Why leave out ones who've decided to be mean? If I could, I would. Indeed, for now, I do and have.
But one of the very few certainties in this extraordinary world is that nothing lasts. Not even "nothing".
D'you know, I really almost wish Ratzinger luck, being useless at praying for conservative people. I'm not sure he fully realises what he's up against.
It's best to take women as I intend to go on taking them. The ones who've got equality certainly don't need charity.
They have none if they come down hard and nasty at once. If Rat Benedict XVI believes they rock badly, he might taste some 'Peaches'.
Best taken raw and extremely explicit.
I haven't got to "brat grrrls" yet.
It's silly to take them too seriously, let alone pray for the redemption of their sinful souls, if like me, you feel more like praying they get better still when they're "grown up".
They're scarcely aspiring priests.
They swallow men whole, may well spit you out and if you're in the mood, gosh, you love it!
5:30:46 AM link 
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