Yukio Mishima - or Getting From Point A to Point B

I'm very often surprised whenever I examine the path I've taken to reach point B from point A. One case in point is how I've come to read the novel I have currently on my Kindle.

A few days ago, I was watching a collection of films starring (or featuring) James Cagney. One such film was the 1931 comedy, The Millionaire in which Cagney had a brief appearance. I was unfamiliar with most of the actors in the film, and curiosity lead me to search the Internet for information about them. One of the stars of the film was Canadian-American actor, David Manners who played John Harker in the 1931 horror classic Dracula, which starred Bela Lugosi in the title role.

Learning that Manners was in Dracula led me to hunt for that film on the Internet. It had been ages since I've watched this classic movie, and luckily I was able to locate it at vimeo.com.

In 1999, Lugosi's Dracula was released for home video, with an updated soundtrack composed by Philip Glass and performed by the Kronos Quartet. I was so impressed by Glass' composition that I had to search for more work by the composer.

One of the works composed by Glass that I found on Spotify, was the film score for Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters - a film based on the life and work of Japanese writer Yukio Mishima. Of course, now I had to learn more about Yukio Mishima.

According to Wikipedia, Mishima is considered one of the most important Japanese authors of the 20th century. His tetralogy of novels, The Sea of Fertility is considered his masterpiece.

Twelve works written by Mishima are available as mobi files at archive.org. My first choice was to download all four novels from the tetralogy. After beginning the first novel, Spring Snow, I returned to archive.org to download the entire Mishima collection.

A Change in My Exercise Routine

For four months prior to our moving into our new house, I worked out at a gym in Dumaguete after dropping off my son at school.

After moving into the house, I decided to drop the gym in favor of doing my workout at home. One reason for the change was the additional room for working out at the house compared to the apartment. The second reason for the change was a desire to save the money spent on gym membership.

With the change in location came a change in the exercise routine. I wanted to change the number of workout days to four instead of six. This was to entail expanding the time spent working out each morning.

Since moving into the house, my routine has consisted of chest, shoulder and triceps two days a week (usually Monday and Friday) and upper and lower back, biceps and forearms on two days (Usually Tuesday and Saturday. I've found, however that this routine was too much. The work load was so heavy that I was often tempted to skip days.

Rather than lose days working out and becoming disorganized in my routine, I've decided to make another change in the routine. Starting today,the days will be broken down as follows:

Day one - chest and triceps
Day two - upper/lower back
Day three -shoulders
Day four - biceps and forearms.

I believe this will be a good maintenance plan for me, balancing resistance training and adequate rest.

A Few Thoughts on Bernie's Green New Deal

U.S. Presidential candidate, Bernie Sanders recently released his plan for fighting climate change, which he - like A.O.C.,  is calling The Green New Deal. The plan can be found on the candidate's website.

I'm not going to argue whether anthropogenic global warming is real or a hoax. For the sake of this post, I'm going to assume that the climate of our planet is changing for the worse, and mankind is the chief culprit. I want simply to look at Sanders plan and see if it is at all feasible and if he is capable of achieving the goals he has put forth.

The plan is quite long. At over 13,000 words, the plan prints out to 20 pages. Addressing every point in the document for this blog post would be almost as difficult as Bernie Sanders getting his plan accomplished. I will only address a few points.

Reaching 100 percent renewable energy for electricity and transportation by no later than 2030 and complete decarbonization by 2050 at latest :

Wikipedia defines renewable energy as energy that is collected from renewable resources, which are naturally replenished on a human timescale, such as sunlight, wind, rain, tides, waves, and geothermal heat. I'm not quite sure how electricity can be produced using rain, tides and waves.

As one article from spectrum.ieee.org explains -To Get Wind Power You Need Oil 

"Wind turbines are the most visible symbols of the quest for renewable electricity generation. And yet, although they exploit the wind, which is as free and as green as energy can be, the machines themselves are pure embodiments of fossil fuels."

Solar powered electricity looks inviting to many, but along with the advantages, there are disadvantages: 

"Transportation and installation of solar systems have been associated with the emission of greenhouse gases. There are also some toxic materials and hazardous products used during the manufacturing process of solar photovoltaic systems, which can indirectly affect the environment."

There are several upsides to using geo-thermal compared to fossil fuels, but geo-thermal sources aren't available everywhere where electricity is needed. As someone who lives on an island where geo-thermal is the primary source of electricity, I can say the price of electricity isn't cheap.

Ending unemployment by creating 20 million jobs needed to solve the climate crisis:

Not quite sure how this number was attained. Does it factor in the number of jobs that will be eliminated by killing the fossil fuel industry?

Directly invest an historic $16.3 trillion public investment toward these efforts:

Not sure where this $16,300,000,000,000 will come from.

A just transition for workers:

"This plan will prioritize the fossil fuel workers who have powered our economy for more than a century and who have too often been neglected by corporations and politicians. We will guarantee five years of a worker’s current salary, housing assistance, job training, health care, pension support, and priority job placement for any displaced worker, as well as early retirement support for those who choose it or can no longer work."

I suspect this will work as well as Joseph Stalin's Five Year Plans.

As president, Bernie will: Fully electrify and decarbonize our transportation sector.

  Does he really believe he can replace every diesel and internal combustion powered vehicle with ones powered by electricity? Even allowing for his plan to provide grants and trade-in programs for people to obtain electrical vehicles, nothing short of outlawing gas powered automobiles, as well as gasoline itself, will prevent people who want conventional cars from buying one.

Progressives, such as the writer of an article at belatina.com support the idea that - ".......if elected as President, Sanders would immediately forgo Congressional approval and declare a national emergency using his executive powers from the White House, a move that would allow his administration to act quickly in implementing sweeping changes to our energy system."

Those on the Left are completely aware that Sanders must employ dictatorial powers and probably martial law to fully implement his Green New Deal. Without such powers, Sanders will find his plan even more difficult to pass than Trump's plan to build a wall.

Poor Man's Mocha Java

After publishing my last post [This Blog at Nearly Thirteen Years ] I make a slight change with one of the gadgets on this page; basically, an update on my most popular posts.

With this arrangement, a post from August, 2014 [My New Beverage of Choice.] pops up near the top. In that post, I wrote of my having developed a taste for hot green tea with sugar and calamansi. Over the years, I've not been drinking quite as much green tea as I was when that post was written, but coincidentally, I've been drinking more green tea w/calamansi the past few days, after a neighbor gave us quite a lot of calamansi from their tree.

I went back and read what I had written five years ago. My method of making the beverage today is slightly different from 2014. I put in the juice of several of the fruits - with sugar - prior to my adding the hot water and tea bag.

The five years in Sibulan has brought about another change in my beverage(s) of choice. Before moving here, I would not touch instant coffee, nor would I add anything to the brewed coffee other than sugar occasionally. Now, it's instant coffee, brown sugar and loads of Coffee-Mate. For a breakfast treat, my first coffee of the day also has Bear Brand Choco Milk Powder as a major ingredient.

Still, even with my switching back to coffee from green tea, I haven't noticed any ghosts. nor have I been hearing strange voices as described by the BBC in 2009.

This Blog at Nearly Thirteen Years

In about 3 months time, this humble blog will have been around for 13 years.

As one can see from the Blog Archive, I haven't been posting very often in the past few years but there have certainly been some years when I wrote quite a lot. Those were usually U.S. Presidential election years.

There was also a time when I frequently went to Google Analytics to check on the traffic. It's been a long time since I did that either. However, I did go to the Analytics site today and looked at the blog's analytics from the very beginning. The photo above is a screenshot of the countries from where I have received visitors these past 13 years. The map shows hits from nearly every country in the world - with the exception of Cuba, North Korea and a few in central Africa. According to Google, the total number of countries from where I've received visitors is 198.

I checked online and discovered that the generally accepted number of countries in this world is 196.

I haven't checked them all, but there are a few places recognized as countries by Google Analytics which aren't accepted by everyone else. Taiwan and Greenland are two examples.

According to the stats, slightly more than 91,000 visitors have come here. That really isn't very many - especially when compared to the more than eight million views my photos uploaded to Google Maps have received. Spread out over 13 years, the numbers look even less impressive.

A friend of mine, whose blog posts I greatly miss, said upon his discontinuing his blog, that blogging was dead. Maybe, but still I feel a need to slog on with this blog. Sometimes, I feel as if I am fighting the good fight. There are other times when I feel like the Vicar of Blackstable in W. Somerset Maugham's masterpiece, Of Human Bondage:

"He had a great idea that one should stick to whatever one had begun. Like all weak men he laid an exaggerated stress on not changing one's mind."

Roadside Resto in Sibulan

Yesterday, I went with a group of fellow Americans to have lunch at the Roadside Resto in Sibulan. Today, I feel it is appropriate to review the restaurant.

I had been at Roadside Resto many times, and I thought I had reviewed their mango shakes for this blog, but I was mistaken in that. This post will serve as a review of both the mango shakes and the food.

I don't believe there is much - if any - fresh fruit in the shakes served there, but the taste and texture is very nice and I won't give the shake a bad rating because of this lack of fresh mango.

One of the favorites among my fellow Americans is the Roadside Burger. On this particular burger you get lettuce, cucumber, beef patty and cheese with pulled bbq pork, coleslaw and onion rings stacked on top. This incredible burger comes with a generous portion of fries and iced tea for 159 pesos (about $3.04 USD at current rate of exchange).

Yesterday, I decided to try the Chili-burger. This burger has the same lettuce and cucumber with the beef patty, topped with bacon, cheese-fries and, of course, chili. A word of warning - this chill is not for the faint of heart. The chili is very hot, and I doubt that I could eat a bowl of this chili, but atop the burger it is, for me, a manageable heat. The bun, burger and cheese fries help make the heat of the chili tolerable. This burger also comes with iced tea and a generous side of fries for the same 159 pesos.

All in all, I highly recommend this restaurant.

Right of Way

After we began work on our house, but prior to our moving in, a landowner of a property above us put up a fence around the lot that he has for sale. I suppose the reasoning behind the fence building is to show potential buyers the size of the lot. This certainly is within the property owner's rights but it has caused a problem in our being able to drive our car to the house. There is a curve in the current right of way which makes maneuvering the car pretty much out of the question. Since we moved into the house, we've had to park our car a short distance away from the house.

Recently, my wife's father was able to talk to another nearby land owner who will allow us to move back the fence along his property which will widen the right of way just enough to allow us to negotiate the turn.

Of course, we have to pay for the materials to rebuild the wall and fence, as well as the cost of the labor involved, but this is well worth it.

These photos show the beginning of the project. More photos will follow when the work in completed.

Free Roaming Chickens? Look for Higher Egg Prices

Thanks to a link found on Rush Limbaugh.com, I've learned that the Oregon governor signs law ending cage confinement for egg-laying hens. Now, according to the blog post linked to, "......the entire West Coast region of the United States now has the strongest laws in the world for egg-laying hens." With Oregon's law - which is due to go into effect in 2023 - all eggs sold in California, Washington and Oregon must come from hens which have not been confined to cages.

Many years ago, I worked part time at an egg farm in Georgia, so I have some knowledge of how eggs get from chicken to grocery store. The abundance of eggs found in the typical grocery store in the United States is the result of egg farms using mass production to produce the numbers of eggs needed to give the American egg consumer what he/she wants. Without this system of caged eggs laying eggs, which roll onto a conveyor belt, the space needed to support the millions of laying hens would be more than the average egg producer could maintain. The number of workers needed to collect the free range eggs would also increase the cost of producing eggs.

The only way the consumer could afford the increased cost of eggs would be for the government to subsidize the industry in order to keep the price of eggs artificially low.

Even the Humane Society admits that cage-free facilities are necessarily "cruelty-free." I'm sure that it is only a matter of time before those groups currently praising the west coast states for outlawing cages, will demand that egg producers become 100% cruelty-free.

Thunder Road Bar and Grill

As I may have mentioned in earlier post, I meet with a group of fellow Americans once a week for (usually) breakfast and conversation. This week we changed our meeting time to a little later in the morning in order to accommodate one of the guys who takes his young son to pre-school. We also changed the location to accommodate another guy who wanted to check out a Mexican restaurant located on the south side of the city. We arrived at Los Mariachis at 10:00 AM, only to discover that the restaurant doesn't open until 11:00.

Rather than wait around for Los Mariachis to open, we voted on trying out a bar and grill across the street - Thunder Road Bar and Grill.

My three companions ordered burgers while I ordered the fish and chips. My only regret is that I failed to get a photo of my food. I have no complaints about my order; I'll have the fish and chips again.

Although I neglected to get a photo of my fish and chips, I did manage to get a few photos of the bar and grill. I can certainly recommend the place.

8 Million Views on Google Maps

A little less than a year ago - on September 18, 2018 to be precise - I noted on this blog that I had uploaded a little more than 1500 photos to Google Maps and those photos had been viewed slightly over 5,000,000 times. Today, in the months following that post, the number of photos uploaded is closer to 1700 and the number of views has passed the 8,000,000 mark.

A few years ago, when the total number of views was nearer to 1,000,000, an acquaintance of mine suggested that I use the number of views on Google Maps as a selling point for my photos. Although I'm certainly happy that so many people have viewed my photographs, there is nothing I did - or can do - to drive viewers to any of my photos. It wouldn't have been honest on my part to suggest otherwise.