Tuesday 30 April 2019

Tinnitus Rings in the Changes

Tinnitus Rings in the Changes ©

Michael Casey

Well my Tinnitus seems to be getting worse, or rather feels worse, or should I say sounds worse, especially at night. I do get to talk to God more,Oh God let me sleep. My mother used to say, say the Rosary if you cannot sleep. So I’ve tried that too, as well as listening to the BBC World Service on the radio, it is very good actually, so give it a try if you find yourself all alone in the middle of no sleep. Otherwise cuddle your girl or boy, why listen to the BBC?

So is Tinnitus, the ringing in my ears some form of call to Prayer? God really does have wicked sense of humour.It can drive you to your wits end, or it could if I were witty and not just a half wit. You are so cruel you don’t respect your writer, you should be giving me a ringing endorsement. Less of the ringing and more of the dorsement which is some kind of German support used in buildings, or a flying buttress used to keep my underpants up.

Alarm bells would ring should my dorsement fail and my flying buttocks be all exposed, firm but over large. Can somebody turn those alarm bells off, oh they are off, it’s just my Tinnitus. Ah well I’m used to it by now. In the day its a gentle static forever noising in my ear, it would be quite Romantic, like the waves breaking on the beach at Cromane in Ireland. Only you cannot stop the static, maybe there should be a Protest March, stop the static in Michael’s attic. Though I doubt if the Middle Classes would march for me as they leave their litter everywhere, especially outside the Daily Mail. And the chances of me me being somebody’s Daily Male, I can only dream of. But these are just symbols crashing in my head amongst the 1970s jokes.

I used to listen to music all the time, now I listen to symbols all the time, like Buddie Rich with his egg whisk. There is a story about him playing with just one arm due to injury and he was still fantastic. If I could catch him I’d break his other arm, just for a chance of some Peace. He’s in Heaven now doing his Rhythm Method, he’s so good he hangs out with the Catholics, it’s a band of Angels.

You do get used to the hiss, but you really do need to have something making noise as well, to kind of distract yourself. Just as you distract a child before the Doctor puts the needle in. I did actually kick and punch our GP, Dr Hickman, I was 4 and it was the booster needle prior to starting school. Generally though daytime is ok.

Night time is the worst for Tinnitus as the ambient noise level is so low, or even zero if you have a padded cell, Monks have all the fun. In my case I have some music on to takeaway the Tinnitus, which is 4 times louder at least in the night. Sadly as nice as the music is, recently it’s been of no avail, and nuns don’t dress up any more. So I hear 100 tracks through the night before dawn seduces me, and it’s not Dawn either, but daybreak. Dawn seduces me with sleep as I am so exhausted.

And yes every 2 hours my ckd kicks in, so even if I finally get to sleep I awake every two hours. Yes it’s a strange life, or existence. But at least I can Write, so I’m glad of that. You may wish I didn’t bother, but for me it’s all I can do so I rejoice in it. So here’s the moral of the story just as Star Trek used to have morals. We are all different playing many parts in life’s orchestra, sometimes we conduct our own life, other times we are sat on the side. Sometimes the conductor allows us to play all the instruments like a one man band, or some really clever musician like Mike Oldfield doing everything himself. Sometimes all we do is play the triangle and hit just one note. Whatever your talent, make that one note, the best you can make it.

Or be like me, Michael Casey a really irritating noise in your ears.

Tinnitus a ringing endorsement

Tinnitus a ringing endorsement

well no sleep till dawn again, and Dawn is not a beautiful girl either

so later I may write/talk on that topic

I hope you all like the style of writing, which is talking.

you are stuck with it anyway

come back later when the bell rings....

Monday 29 April 2019

Perfect Food

Perfect Food ©

Michael Casey

Well I’ve just mastered WPS2019, ok I clicked in the right place, the menu is slightly different so it threw me. Yes I’m stupid but the non beta version is cleaner so you have to tell it to drop down the options from the Blue Home button. Yes I know a two year old could work it out, but I like things that I’m used to.

Such as food. Yes I am a simpleton, I lived on frozen food such were my working hours and timetable. The MSG on the frozen food could have caked my veins and subsequently led to my unplanned quadruple heart bypass 4 years ago. However I used to go and see bands in a very smoky bar for years, before everybody got trendy and banned smoking everywhere. Not forgetting working with noisy and dirty printers in my early print room days. So it my not have just been bad diet.

Which brings me to today’s theme, perfect food. I have some Iceland frozen chicken kiev ready, some Irish sausages, the Richmond ones, and some sweetcorn with seeded bread all lined up for my dinner. So that’s a perfect dinner for me. We are lucky in our house because my small daughter is turning into a Little Chef, not the food places, but she can really cook. We have some fancy knives which she knows how to use, maybe Delia Smith will adopt her in future. So when I’m not making my DIY dinner my small daughter can and will impress.

There is a pause now while I cook and eat my dinner, I’ll have a gossip with my daughter too once she gets home from school. And yes if you are interested my left shoulder came out to play today, PAIN on a plate served up with plenty on wincing, WINCING, not MINCING, what kind of writer do you think I am? If I had any flesh lettuce left I’d slap the backs of your legs, go google Larry Grayson while I go eat.

Well its 7 hours later, no I’m not a greedy pig eating for that long, though in the old days sometimes the King would not eat for a day or so, hence the Feasts. I had my food and then a pain induced nap, it does tire you out, and yes it may bore you too hearing about it, but this is this writer’s life these past few years.

I am reminded of a Feast or rather a Chinese friend’s Wedding Meal, when each guest brought some food. There was loads of variety, and plenty to eat, a DIY banquet, and afterwards it was cleared away fast as they only had the church hall for so long. I did shed a tear at that wedding because as the man was pronounced Man and Wife a friend or even the Best Man handed him the phone so he could tell his Mother back in China that now he was married. My own mother was long dead when I was married, so maybe that day 10 years ago or so reminded me of my own mother not on any phone.

But back to food, it does not have to be perfect, if it is properly cooked, or even if it is cheap and cheerful food, what matters are who you are eating it with. Obviously you need to stay out of my way if I am eating, and yes I do eat with my mouth open. Barry and Julie were forever telling me off, but I always ignored them. Food is the breaking of bread, and the way people eat can reveal a lot. Poor people, simple people, Farmers if you like, they eat more with their hands and will tear the bread, and share the bread. I hope I’m still like that. Que Aproveche is the Spanish if memory serves, no doubt my Spanish readers will smile when they see that.

A meal should do you well, it should not just be a mechanical thing, we are not just machines as some doctors might like to think. Perfect food should have taste and quality and variety. Try Ukrainian apples from your local store, try a different cheese, try a different bread. Don’t stay in the Ghetto of Taste, we always eat sliced white, we never eat anything else. Yes, if in the end you are Warburton white person, that’s fine, but if you can be grabbed by your baguettes with a different butter or marg on top, then be tempted.

Food is not a Sin, besides we have past Lent and Easter day now, so wipe off the Cadburys from your smile and be tempted by all kinds of everything, and I don’t mean make a pass at Dana. That’s why we all go on holiday, to try different foods and drink. If you are a boring person, you’ll expect egg and chips everywhere you go and Manuel should speak the Queen’s English. Or perhaps if you are American you want Burger King everywhere, and to stay in your island of friends, experiencing just yourselves, and not the location you are it. Little America but in X Y or Z. I’m sure my American readers might be upset by me saying that. I just want you to all THINK.

And finally just to make Peace with the Americans, when my dad discovered Hamburgers in 1968 or thereabouts while we were in Rhyl Wales he thought they were so good he had 6 of them one after another and waited for the street vendor to cook them for him. I can actually remember the place with a low wall where they were being cooked. My own record is 3 hamburgers in a row after a rugby match, where I was playing, maybe 45 years ago.

This is simple food, far from Perfect Food, but at the time and place on a family holiday it was perfect as far as we were concerned. I’ve had Chinese dumplings in Shanghai too, my mother in law had all of them and brought them to the hotel in the city centre where we were staying. The other locals were disgusted that she bought all of them so they had to wait. I ate too many and the result was disgusting too, as I blocked the toilet once they went through my perfect stomach.

Sunday 28 April 2019

Somebody Else's Words from Guardian newspaper

In fighting all oversight, Trump has made his most dictatorial move

Robert Reich

The president is treating Congress with contempt. This cannot stand – and Congress must fight back

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‘Congress has a constitutional duty to respond forcefully, using its own inherent power of contempt.’ Photograph: Leah Millis/Reuters

“We’re fighting all the subpoenas,” says the person who is supposed to be chief executive of the United States government.

In other words, there is to be no congressional oversight of this administration: no questioning officials who played a role in putting a citizenship question on the 2020 census. No questioning a former White House counsel about the Mueller report.
No questioning a Trump adviser about immigration policy. No questioning a former White House security director about issuances of security clearances.
No presidential tax returns to the ways and means committee, even though a 1920s law specifically authorizes the committee to get them.
Such a blanket edict fits a dictator of a banana republic, not the president of a constitutional republic founded on separation of powers.
If Congress cannot question the people who are making policy, or obtain critical documents, Congress cannot function as a coequal branch of government.
If Congress cannot get information about the executive branch, there is no longer any separation of powers, as sanctified in the US constitution.
There is only one power – the power of the president to rule as he wishes.
Which is what Donald Trump has sought all along.
The only relevant question is how stop this dictatorial move. And let’s be clear: this is a dictatorial move.
The man whose aides cooperated, shall we say, with Russia – the man who still refuses to do anything at all about Russia’s continued interference in the American political system – refuses to cooperate with a branch of the United States government that the Constitution requires him to cooperate with in order that the government function.
Presidents before Trump occasionally have argued that complying with a particular subpoena for a particular person or document would infringe upon confidential deliberations within the executive branch. But no president before Trump has used “executive privilege” as a blanket refusal to cooperate.
How should Congress respond to this dictatorial move?
Trump is treating Congress with contempt – just as he has treated other democratic institutions that have sought to block him.
Congress should invoke its inherent power under the constitution to hold any official who refuses a congressional subpoena in contempt. This would include departmental officials who refuse to appear, as well as Trump aides. (Let’s hold off on the question of whether Congress can literally hold Trump in contempt, which could become a true constitutional crisis.)
“Contempt” of Congress is an old idea based on the inherent power of Congress to get the information it needs to carry out its constitutional duties. Congress cannot function without this power.
How to enforce it? Under its inherent power, the House can order its own sergeant-at-arms to arrest the offender, subject him to a trial before the full House, and, if judged to be in contempt, jail that person until he appears before the House and brings whatever documentation the House has subpoenaed.
When President Richard Nixon tried to stop key aides from testifying in the Senate Watergate hearings, in 1973, Senator Sam Ervin, chairman of the Watergate select committee, threatened to jail anyone who refused to appear.
Congress hasn’t actually carried through on the threat since 1935 – but it could.
Would America really be subject to the spectacle of the sergeant-at-arms of the House arresting a Trump official, and possibly placing him in jail?
Probably not. Before that ever occurred, the Trump administration would take the matter to the supreme court on an expedited basis.
Sadly, there seems no other way to get Trump to move. Putting the onus on the Trump administration to get the issue to the court as soon as possible is the only way to force Trump into action, and not simply seek to run out the clock before the next election.
What would the court decide? With two Trump appointees now filling nine of the seats, it’s hardly a certainty.
But in a case that grew out of the Teapot Dome scandal in 1927, the court held that the investigative power of Congress is at its peak when lawmakers look into fraud or maladministration in another government department.
Decades later, when Richard Nixon tried to block the release of incriminating recordings of his discussions with aides, the supreme court decided that a claim of executive privilege did not protect information pertinent to the investigation of potential crimes.
Trump’s contempt for the inherent power of Congress cannot stand. It is the most dictatorial move he has initiated since becoming president.
Congress has a constitutional duty to respond forcefully, using its own inherent power of contempt.

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from over here it appears Congress Republicans are behaving like puppies instead of lions on behalf of all the People, it will end in tears, or Civil War, again