February 12, 2019

At the Ratsby Café...


... She must have broken her rule against drinking that night, for when she arrived she was stupid with liquor and unable to understand that the ambulance had already gone to Flushing.

50 comments:

Ann Althouse said...

Quote courtesy of F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby (p. 168). Scribner. Kindle Edition.

Sydney said...

I thought the rat looked drunk, too.

chuck said...

Captured it perfectly.

Big Mike said...

At least this time we can see the right rear leg.

FIDO said...

Of course it has to be a light green.

FullMoon said...

When Al Gore was born, there were 7,000 polar bears in the wild. Today, after severe climate change, only 30,000 remain.

Big Mike said...

More cute rat tricks!

tim in vermont said...

Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti has thrown caution to the winds, by announcing plans to cancel a vital multi-billion dollar dollar plan to rebuild three large gas plants.

When, inevitably, they are forced to buy power on the spot market to make up for the shortfalls that are coming, other states will be blamed. I am kind of amazed that Google lets them do this.

chickelit said...

I studied "The Great Gatsby" in high school lit. It was't my favorite. Other works were "Wuthering Heights," "Sons And Lovers," " A Farewell To Arms," "Ethan Fromme," "A Floating Opera," supplemented with short stories and poetry. Lawrence was my favorite.

traditionalguy said...

LOL! This Blog is pure Entertainment.

YoungHegelian said...

More evidence, if any is needed, that the FBI & DoJ are essentially batshit crazy.

From that (sarc) notorious Right-wing rag (/sarc) The New Republic.

Humperdink said...
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mockturtle said...

Fitzgerald seemed to have a thing for alcoholic women. His wife, Zelda, for one.

YoungHegelian said...

So, who leaked Bezos' & his babe's naughty pictures?**

Yoo-hoo! You know what this leak has in common with the leak of the actresses' naughty pics from a couple of years back? The photos ended up in the cloud.

What the word "cloud" means is "someone else's computers". Those computers don't run themselves. And if you don't think the sys admins mine those systems for juicy tidbits to sell or whack off to, I have an incredible suspension bridge to sell you!

**"The firm, American Media Inc., owned by President Trump's friend David Pecker.." I swear, you can't even make this stuff up!

FullMoon said...

19th Century Ad for Cocaine Laced Cigarettes

Ralph L said...

Chickenlittle, we read Lady Chatterley--at an Episcopal school.

Is there a HS in the country that didn't teach Gatsby, Macbeth, and Catcher in the last 50 years?

FullMoon said...
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FullMoon said...
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FullMoon said...

Ralph L said...

Chickenlittle, we read Lady Chatterley--at an Episcopal school.



Tropic of Cancer at my school

Churchy LaFemme: said...

For something completely different from an American author in the same time period: Ship Of Ishtar. Here is a verve and sensuality that modern fantasy would not again embrace until the 1970s.

Of course you have the Time-speak "backwards ran the sentences until reeled the mind", and a.. lushness of prose that soon became unpopular, but stick with it!

Here are some illustrations by the great Virgil Finlay that are absolutely accurate to the text:

https://www.blackgate.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Virgil-Finlay-The-Ship-of-Ishtar.jpg

https://i1.wp.com/yellowedandcreased.files.wordpress.com/2014/07/fnm-3-48-the-ship-of-ishtar3-finlay.gif

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-QrBhgrWJT1k/Uwa1iaR11TI/AAAAAAACSy4/qbz2-yNmk4E/s1600/06_ishtar_finlay_bw.jpg

Ingachuck'stoothlessARM said...

Negative space re;
ear/tail usually has the George Jetson/Elvis hairstyle outline

Maillard Reactionary said...

I reread The Great Gatsby a couple of years ago after reading it a long time ago in undergraduate school.

I had forgotten how sad it is.

It is better appreciated later in life, I think.

William said...

It's hard to cast a beloved novel. There are some exceptions to the rule: Clark Gable in GWTW, James Dunn in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Gregory Peck in To Kill A Mockingbird, and Laurence Olivier in Wuthering Heights. In these movies you get the sense that the actor inhabits not just the role but the author's ideal of what that role should be......Vivien Leigh, a British actress, plays the part of our two most iconic southern women: Scarlet O'Hara and Blanche Dubois. She does a fine job, but I don think she really inhabits the role the way Elizabeth Taylor does as Maggie.

Birkel said...

Copied from the Robert O'Rourke thread, as posted by me:

The interesting thing not yet mentioned:

If Beto really outdrew Trump, then that means Beto is more significant than anybody had imagined. That would mean Beto is a legitimate challenger to Kamala Harris. Does anybody believe those possibilities likely?

The press is in an interesting bind. How do they attack Trump without elevating those they defend, like Beto?

And does Trump understand that he is elevating second and third tier candidates to increase the chaos? All by himself, Trump is pushing Operation Chaos on the Dems, if so.

Ponder that.

FullMoon said...

Tax cuts for the rich results:( Don't worry Leftzis, something bad will happen, someday)


"Today brought more news of a historically tight job market, as businesses have continued to respond to President Trump’s tax and regulatory reforms by going on a hiring binge. The problem is that they can’t find enough workers. "

JackWayne said...

From the WSJ who always wants more immigration, more work visas. I doubt it’s true. Probably has more to do with companies’ policies that demand a college degree for almost any job. Or a mis-alignment of current degrees with job requirements. I trust the WSJ about as far as I could spit them.

JackWayne said...

Plus, a tight employment market heralds rising wages which the WSJ doesn’t like. What better way to repress wages than to bring in foreign labor at a cheaper price?

StephenFearby said...

YoungHegelian said...
"More evidence, if any is needed, that the FBI & DoJ are essentially batshit crazy.

From that (sarc) notorious Right-wing rag (/sarc) The New Republic."

RealClear Investigations links to this terrific article. I was going to mention it myself today, but you beat me to it.

The FBI gumshoes:

"...The special agent eventually assigned to Torshin’s case was named Kevin Helson. Helson worked for the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation’s forensics lab in Knoxville, analyzing blood smears and latent fingerprints, before joining the FBI. He was an odd choice to lead a complex, politically charged counterintelligence investigation of the deputy chief of the Central Bank of Russia. Helson’s partner was Michelle Ball, who had previously worked as a local news reporter and part-time anchor for a Biloxi, Mississippi, television station. She appears to have had no experience in anything related to the law, Russia, or counterintelligence."

"...By the summer of 2017, about two years after the investigation began, the U.S. government had yet to find anything with which to charge Butina. Gregg Maisel and his team of prosecutors didn’t give up, however. One idea was to show that Butina was the conduit for illegal cash going from Putin to the Trump campaign, via Torshin and Butina’s ties to the NRA. The NRA had reported spending $30 million to support Trump, almost triple what it donated to Republican candidate Mitt Romney in 2012.

The investigation was dutifully leaked to the press. “FBI Investigating Whether Russian Money Went to NRA to Help Trump,” read a McClatchy headline last January, with Butina mentioned as possibly involved. But the investigation produced no evidence of illicit cash transfers.

The inquiry by the Senate Intelligence Committee and the FBI’s surprise raid on Butina’s apartment also failed to turn up anything incriminating. Years of physical surveillance, which, according to a knowledgeable source, included secretly following her to interviews with me, at a cost of perhaps $1 million or more, also came up empty.

Lacking evidence of espionage, money laundering, passing cash to the Trump campaign, violating Russian sanctions, or any other crime, prosecutors finally turned to Section 951, acting as an unregistered agent of a foreign power..."

'...The few cases that have been brought under the statute involved targeting “sleepers” and other deep-cover spies sent to the United States without diplomatic immunity, and therefore subject to arrest. But while rarely used, it is also very broad. “We used to joke,” said a former FBI counterintelligence supervisor, “that’s what you use if you didn’t really have any evidence, because it would have been such an easy thing to find evidence whether it was there or not.”'

"...On November 23, 2018, Butina went to sleep on a blue mat atop the gray cement bed in her cell, her 81st day in solitary confinement. Hours later, in the middle of the night, she was awakened and marched to a new cell, 2E05, this one with a solid steel door and no food slot, preventing even the slightest communication. No reason was given, but her case had reached a critical point. Prosecutors were hoping to get her to plead guilty rather than go to trial, and had even agreed to drop the major charge against her: acting as an unregistered foreign agent of Russia. Born and raised in Siberia, she is terrified of solitary confinement. Fifteen days later, still in solitary, she signed the agreement, pleading guilty to the lesser charge, one count of conspiracy."

https://newrepublic.com/article/153036/maria-butina-profile-wasnt-russian-spy

mockturtle said...

and Laurence Olivier in Wuthering Heights

Frankly, I didn't think he captured Heathcliff at all.

narciso said...

As compared with say the sun also rises, which was the rough contemporaneous work from hemingway.

mockturtle said...

It's hard to cast a beloved novel.

The TV series, Shogun was, IMO, very well cast. But I usually don't like to watch a film adaptation of a book I love because I have already pictured the characters in my mind. One exception was Yul Brynner as Dmitri in The Brothers Karamazov. He was pretty much as I pictured the character.

narciso said...

So the company that Mueller has been pursuing through the supreme court is called salix it's not Russian its Israeli so the grishenko hunt has turned dromedary.

mockturtle said...

Our country is irreparably divided in to two distinct sides: Sensible people and the Left. Other than with a civil war, how can it end?

narciso said...

From the other thread:

https://thefederalist.com/2019/02/12/andrew-cuomos-approval-rating-sinks-to-all-time-low/&ved=2ahUKEwitktLO-rfg

narciso said...

Down to 43% which shows even nyers have limits.

narciso said...

I wondered about some of the details of that narrative, like one of the characters who was supposedly orchestrating this scheme romanov was in jail by 2016.

narciso said...

In the late 80s they tried to adapt the Bourne identity very faithfully the problem was Richard Chamberlain was no one's idea of an action hero by that point.

Darrell said...

From the New Republic article referenced at 10:39 PM--

When I asked Frank Figliuzzi, the former head of the FBI’s Counterintelligence Division, about the prosecution’s conduct, he was angry. “I am troubled and hope there is a full inquiry,” he told me. “This is disturbing. The question is whether this is convenient ineptitude or something far deeper.”


“They manipulated the evidence,” was the opinion of a former assistant U.S. attorney familiar with the Washington, D.C., office. It was a place he had spent many years prosecuting cases. “The government is basically calling her a whore in a public filing.... I think it was an attempt to influence media coverage.” He added, “This seems like somebody panicked, they moved too early, now they’re trying to figure out what to do.”


It is also another example of the media marching in formation with the government, as it did in the lead-up to the war in Iraq. “I think journalism skepticism stops at whatever a prosecutor says,” the former assistant U.S. attorney told me. “If you’re supposed to afflict the powerful, the most powerful people to afflict are the people who have the power to put you in jail. But those are the people reporters are so often most credulous about.”


A senior CIA official who held one of the highest jobs in the agency’s Clandestine Service, and who worked closely with the FBI on many spy cases, offered a cynical view of the bureau’s counterintelligence work. “They want to generate headlines. They don’t care if the information is credible or not,” he said, asking to remain anonymous because of his past clandestine work. “I feel sorry for Butina; she got caught up in this whole vortex. They’re just interested in putting another notch in their belt, and they don’t care who gets hurt in the process.”


A senior CIA official who held one of the highest jobs in the agency’s Clandestine Service, and who worked closely with the FBI on many spy cases, offered a cynical view of the bureau’s counterintelligence work. “They want to generate headlines. They don’t care if the information is credible or not,” he said, asking to remain anonymous because of his past clandestine work. “I feel sorry for Butina; she got caught up in this whole vortex. They’re just interested in putting another notch in their belt, and they don’t care who gets hurt in the process.”


narciso said...

Sounds like anthrax investigation that went pearshaped from the outset.

AllenS said...

Yes, the anthrax investigation. The FBI was going to burn someone, and they didn't care who they burned. Another fine production from Mueller and Comey.

StephenFearby said...

In other ridiculous news of the day...from the internet's tabloid of record:

Transgender man who became pregnant after IVF battles government for his child to be declared motherless on its birth certificate in landmark legal case

'...Lawyers say that if [the presiding judge] rules in favour of the man, the baby could be the first person born in England and Wales who will not legally have a mother. The man says being forced to register as a ‘mother’ breaches his human right to respect for private and family life.'

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6698303/Transgender-man-pregnant-IVF-battles-child-declared-motherless.html


Yancey Ward said...

If even half of what is in The New Republic story about Butina is true, Trump should pardon her and immediately fire everyone involved in the investigation.

Darrell said...

The last paragraph above should read--

Driscoll, Butina’s attorney, is a former deputy assistant attorney general with the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division and has handled political and national security-related cases for decades, but never anything like this. “I wake up periodically at night and think this case is taking place in some alternative reality,” he told me. “A ‘spy’ who uses no tradecraft and posts her every move on social media; a ‘handler’ who travels with and communicates openly with his charge; and a ‘mission’ to somehow undermine the United States by having friendship dinners with Russians and Americans seeking peace.”



tim in vermont said...

'...Lawyers say that if [the presiding judge] rules in favour of the man, the baby could be the first person born in England and Wales who will not legally have a mother.

“No man born of woman shall harm MacBeth."

Humperdink said...

Cory Booker, vegan, proclaimed that eating meat cannot sustain the planet.

Translation: I am vegan, you shall be also.

Note how this aligns with other Commie-Pinko lib pronouncements. I bake cakes, you shall also. I am not a gun owner, you too shall also be disarmed. I do not want want prayer in school, all schools shall be without prayer. I prescribe the morning after pill, your Catholic heath plan shall do likewise.

iowan2 said...

On a more serious note, I have discovered Bacon Fest, still has tickets available for this weekend!$27.50 general admission, $53 for expedited entry. This event has sold out within hours in the past. They have finally got a venue big enough to handle the fans of BACON.
I'll have a RAT sticker on my coat, see you Des Moines

tim in vermont said...

Lots of novels improve as you get older, and more of them turn to puerile shit you don’t even understand anymore why you liked it.

I am reading “The Old Man and the Sea” now, which I never cared for probably for the same reason that Grateful Dead fans say they don’t like Truckin’. Too popular and accessible. But I am reading it now in French, a language in which I am not fluent, so I have to read it slowly, looking up a couple three words per paragraph, reading sentences and whole passages twice to make sure I have the meaning, and read this way, at least so far, he is just getting close to hooking the fish I think, the book is incredibly beautiful.

narciso said...

There are some novels like in search of klingsor and secret history of costaguana, that benefit in translation.

Bad Lieutenant said...

narciso said...
There are some novels like in search of klingsor and secret history of costaguana, that benefit in translation.

2/13/19, 7:39 AM

Not to mention the collected works of narciso! :-)

With love, as Meade and my sister would say. And in fact you are improving some.

mockturtle said...

Ah, yes! The cryptic and obscure narciso! I always enjoy his posts even though I seldom know what the hell he's talking about. His links are almost always rewarding. Buwaya is sometimes kind enough to translate.