A Peaceful New Year's Eve Visit to the Sacramento Zoo

That Time of Year Again

“A Complete Unknown”

I saw the film, “A Complete Unknown.” I liked the movie. The supporting actors are all wonderful. Monica Barbaro is eerily spot on for Joan Baez - she sounds just like her! Edward Norton is wonderful as Pete Seeger (It could be trouble casting a man in his mid-50s for a character in his mid-40s, but given the changing-of-the-guard storyline it works perfectly). Boyd Holbrook as Johnny Cash and Elle Fanning as Sylvie Russo are excellent too. 

Timothee Chalamet is a conundrum, though. He’s like a complete void. He’s great at playing people with no discernible personalities. I’ve seen him in 4 movies now (if you count Dune twice). All his characters are interchangeable - like minions, or tic-tacs, or black holes. 

Fortunately, Bob Dylan seems to not have had that much personality. TC is therefore a good fit for Bob Dylan. (I’ve never liked Dylan’s songs all that much, excepting a few in the mid-70s - maybe overrated.) 

One day, TC will be cast to play someone with a distinct personality, and then he’ll be in real trouble. But until then, smooth sailing.

Oil Can, Please

More H1B Nonsense

It is interesting watching the squabble between MAGA, Elon, and Vivek about H1B visa holding engineers from India. MAGA suspects something is up, and in this case MAGA is right. From the article, about the H1B visa holders:

They are not smarter, they are not more capable, and they certainly are not more experienced. What they are is cheap and pliant and that is ALL that the DOGE crowd and their fellow tech bros care about. And it is all they ever will.

Two Loose Dogs on an Adventure

One a.m., December 26th, and time for the last walk before bed. Jasper and I had just emerged onto empty 2nd Avenue when we were suddenly beset by Two Loose Dogs on an Adventure. The two dogs menaced and barked loudly at the two of us: a Very Handsome but Not Intimidating Fluffball Canine and a Ponderous Human Waving a Pooper Scooper Around Like a Club. Jasper’s first instinct was to flee, or at least retreat, but the two dogs craftily moved around us and cut off the escape. So we continued walking forward despite being followed and harassed. 

Eventually the dogs broke away and continued on their lark. Jasper spent the rest of the walk in a paranoid frenzy, looking over his shoulder, growling with anxiety, and peeing on every inanimate object. I worried we’d see the dogs again on the return trip, and I’m sure Jasper shared my worry, but we didn’t see the Loose Adventurers again.

South Pole Partiers

Courtesy of John, New Year's Celebration at McMurdo Station, Antarctica.

 

Manu Chao - Clandestino

This article describes why Trump is good for the human smugglers who work the southern border. The article also points to the significance of the song Clandestino. 

On a visit to the U.S., Manu Chao sang the song outside of one of Maricopa County's Tent Cities:

   

English translation of the original lyrics (aimed at human smuggling into Spain and Europe): 

I come alone with my punishment
There comes only my conviction
Running is my fate
In order to deceive the law
Lost in the heart
Of the great Babylon
They call me the Clandestine
Because I don't carry any (legal) papers

To a northern city
I went for work
I left my life behind
Between Ceuta and Gibraltar
I'm a just a streak in the sea
A ghost in the city
My life is prohibited
Says the authority

I come alone with my punishment
Thеre comes only my conviction
Running is my fate
Bеcause I don't carry any (legal) papers
Lost in the heart
Of the great Babylon
They call me the Clandestine

I'm the sellout of law
Clandestine Black Hand
Peruvian- Clandestine
African- Clandestine
Marijuana- illegal

I come alone with my punishment
There comes only my conviction
Running is my fate
In order to deceive the law
Lost in the heart
Of the great Babylon
They call me the clandestine
Because I don't carry any (legal) papers

Algerian- Clandestine
Nigerian- Clandestine
Bolivian- Clandestine
Black Hand- illegal

30th Anniversary of a Difficult New Year's Eve

New Year’s Eve, 2025.  That means it’s the 30^th anniversary of a horrible event that illustrates just how temporary this passage called life really is.

 

New Year's Eve, 1995. I had traveled from Sacramento, California, and was visiting my father in Albuquerque, New Mexico.  He lived in the Green Acres mobile-home park, located north of Osuna Road, off of Second Street NW, a street that runs parallel to the Second Street Drain, an irrigation ditch during the growing season but empty of water in the winter.  I went out early in the evening (to a short-lived Albuquerque institution called the Ice House) but returned to my dad’s trailer before eleven p.m.  My dad wanted to retire early, so I took out the leash and prepared to walk my dog Sparky for the midnight hour. 

 

Sparky and I walked south, beside the dark and empty ditch.  About 11:45 p.m., an engine suddenly began thundering in the distance. A pickup truck inexplicably careened off the street, rolled out-of-control across an empty no-man's-land, and then plunged into the empty ditch, at a place almost across from the Newstand (a decades-old Albuquerque institution; an archive of sorts, but which doesn’t carry anything that might be called news). Sparky and I ran to see if we could help.

 

Arriving first at the scene, I scrambled into the dark ditch.  The truck was pointed downward at about 60 degrees, and canted over to the right.  With difficulty, I climbed onto the vehicle and opened the driver's-side door, looked inside, and saw - nothing at all. No one appeared to be in the vehicle. Where did the driver go? What was going on?

 

I could hear a distinct mechanical gurgling sound, however, that I attributed to coolant escaping from the broken truck's radiator onto the hot engine block. I decided to climb out and check the passenger side of the vehicle.  Before I could fully-explore that side, however, emergency personnel began arriving, so I climbed out of the ditch and let them go to work.

 

Later I learned that the driver, who had fallen asleep at the wheel, had passed halfway through the windshield, fallen backwards, caught his throat on the broken glass and been slashed from ear to ear. He had then fallen under the passenger-side glove compartment, which is why I hadn't seen him when I looked into the dark ruck. The gurgling sound I heard was his last bloody breath. And from what I understood from the emergency personnel there was blood EVERYWHERE!

 

I told the cops what I knew.  Later, I received a call from the cops asking me to talk with the driver’s family.  They were recent immigrants from Mexico, weren’t cooperative, and didn’t trust what the cops were telling them about the accident.  Surely accidents like this just don’t happen.  Was the driver chased off the road by gangsters, or maybe by cops?  What happened?

 

I called the family and asked to talk with them.  I went to another trailer park (a larger, more-anonymous park in the North Valley).  I learned the driver was eighteen years’ old, and had been married just a week. He had had just one beer, given to him by a male relative at work, and apparently the first and only beer he had ever had IN HIS ENTIRE LIFE.  After a hard day at work, one beer was enough to make him groggy, and a danger to himself and others.  His 18-year-old bride/widow got upset during the conversation and left to cry in the bedroom; I kept talking with her sister, and the fellow’s father (who looked just like the driver in photographs).  I told them I didn’t see any other vehicles; no cops or gangsters were involved.  Apparently it was just a sad, sad accident.  They asked me if there were any last words from the driver.  Unfortunately, there were none.

 

The victim was labeled by the local news media as the first Albuquerque fatality of 1995, but I knew he was the last Albuquerque fatality of 1994. Not that it mattered.  Poor guy; just tragic.

 

Tonight, don’t be this guy.