Dispatches from Vilnius

It's been a fun ride - more than 2000 posts and 10,000 comments over a 12-year period - but there doesn't seem to be much recent activity other than periodically being hit by lurkers in Russia and the occasional comments offering escort services in India.  I've long been curious who these Russian lurkers are.  They leave no comments, but they pop up fairly regularly, suggesting that my blog is on someone's radar screen.  I delete the Indian escort services. I never intended for this to become my blog.  It was initially imagined as a forum for American history readers after the old New York Times Reading forums were shut down in the mid 2000s, so I created a haven for the handful of history buffs who enjoyed doing a group read from time to time.  That group thinned out over the years, with the readers reduced to two -- Trippler and me.  I began posting more and more personal observations, eventually becoming obsessed with the Trump administration, which app...

With coronavirus ravaging the world once again, some places worse than others, my wife noted that I was coughing more than usual this morning.  My throat felt a little dry.  The coffee wasn't helping, so I drank a glass of kiselis, a thick cranberry concoction.  I also think I have a bit of an allergic reaction to the cat.  Not used to having a feline around the house. The latest wave seems to be abating a bit.  The quarantine imposed over the holidays appears to have helped.  My wife's brother had to go through a road block to deliver gifts on Christmas Eve.  You are only allowed to have contact with one family member outside the house and no travel between cities except for essential services.  Cases in Lithuania are still too high.  Much higher than in neighboring Latvia and Estonia, and one of the highest per capita rates in the world. We were discussing this over Christmas Eve dinner.  Even with 3000 new cases being reported per day...

The Jets had the inside track on the Trevor Lawrence sweepstakes , yet they not only showed up on Sunday but gave the Los Angeles Rams a whipping they won't soon forget.  This proves again the old adage that on any given Sunday any NFL team can win.  Not to be outdone, the lowly Bengals took down Pittsburgh on Monday Night, handing the once vaunted Steelers their third straight loss.  Neither game was particularly close.  Both the Jets and Bengals led by as many as 17 points, holding off late charges by the Rams and Steelers.  The Rams suffered more than the Steelers, as it knocked them out of first place in the NFC West.  The Steelers are struggling but still have a one-game lead over the Browns. Somehow the NFL has made it through 15 of its 17 weeks without any serious scheduling problems due to COVID-19.  The players have shown themselves remarkably disciplined given they are not being forced to play in a "bubble" as was the case with the NBA when...

I thought it might be fun to watch Christmas Vacation again, but some movies are best left back in the 80s where they belong.  Netflix is bringing back a number of so-called classics from the era and it can be quite embarrassing sharing these movies with a younger generation, as I found out the hard way.  You really thought this was funny, my daughter asked me afterward?  I made up for it by introducing her to The Blues Brothers . John Hughes was to comedy in the 1980s what Judd Apatow is today.  He's capable of a funny movie here and there but for the most part they are dull-witted scripts with actors struggling to make something funny out of them.  Sometimes, there appears to be no script at all.  Just some sketches strung together by the thinnest of storylines, as we have seen in Apatow's collaborations with Seth Rogen and Will Farrell.   It's not easy writing comedy, as proved the case with Douglas Kenney, who had the idea of bringing Nationa...

I finally got around to watching The Undoing .  For what was ostensibly a psychological drama, you would think at least Grace, a clinical psychologist, would recognize her husband's illness properly but she too didn't seem to know the distinction between a sociopath and a psychopath.  These are the all too common personality disorders associated with villains in these types of movies and serials.  I suppose she may have been suffering from "confirmation bias," as was pointed out to her by the prosecuting attorney in the final episode, but more likely she wasn't a very good psychologist, as she completely misread her husband and you wonder how many patients as well.  We were only given a glimpse of a gay couple she was providing marriage counseling for.  The story line was threadbare to say the least, which is surprising given David Kelly and Susanne Bier had six hours to tell their story.  What little information we were able to gather from the main charact...

I have to say that is one of the best retorts I've heard in years.  Maggi Hambling was having  none of the criticism to her nude depiction of Mary Wollstonecraft, especially since it came mostly from stuffy old men whose schlongs have probably shriveled up.  "Criticism has got to be like water off a duck's back," she said her art teacher once told her.  However it is just not men who hate the sculpture.    Rhiannon Lucy Cosslet finds it needlessly distracting.  Still, you wonder why Hambling would choose to portray the feminist icon in this way.   Hambling is renown for her art and sculptures over the years, often finding unusual ways to present her subjects, such as a giant scallop shell honoring Benjamin Britten on the beach at Aldeburgh in Suffolk.  The piece was also met with criticism, but since has become a popular tourist stop.  So, controversy isn't necessarily a bad thing. No doubt more Britons are becoming familiar with ...

Our ersatz president would like us to believe that he isn't fighting for himself but for the 74 million persons who voted for him.  A record number, he points out, for a sitting president.  No surprise he was appalled that the Supreme Court rejected the suit  that was filed by Texas AG Paxton to nullify the results in four states that Trump had won in 2016 but lost in 2020. Only conservative old farts Alito and Thomas were willing to hear the absurd suit, which claimed these unbelievable results in Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Georgia represented an existential threat to the security of the Lone Star State.  "No Wisdom, No Courage," Trump shouted on Twitter! Trumplicans still aren't done.  Alabama Rep. Mo Brooks threatens to challenge the Electoral College results in January, now that there is nothing to impede the college from convening on Monday and formally certifying the election for President-Elect Biden.  Mo will no doubt have the suppo...

Seems like Matthew McConaughey is auditioning for the role of the next Mike Rowe.  He pitched his "centric" vision on the Russell Brand Show the other night, equating the conservative reaction to Trump's 2020 defeat to the liberal reaction to his victory in 2016.  Try as I might, I don't recall Team Hillary challenging the results or Obama refusing to meet Trump at the White House or putting up roadblocks to his transition team.  Nor, were there any attempts to overturn close results in state legislatures and federal courts, as we have seen with Trump's dubious legal team .  Yes, liberals weren't happy Trump won but they didn't go into denial, as Matty is suggesting, threatening to take up arms in protest as many in Magaland are now doing. To this point, All Right Matty has tread a thin line in giving motivational speeches across the country and peddling his books, most recently Greenlights , in which he offers his Texan wit and wisdom.  The proud Austin ...

With the temperature dropping below freezing, I let the cat in on the window sill.  That's as far as my wife will let her enter the house.  The small gray tabby has been coming around our yard for several years now.  She has survived at least three winters as far as I can tell, maybe more.  Hard to put an age on a cat but I would say no more than five, as it was a juvenile when we first saw her pitch up along with what looked like her darker sibling.  They both had the same mottled brown mixed into their coats and were the same size.  The darker sibling still appears on rare occasions.  I assume she found sympathetic hosts somewhere else in Žverynas. We thought it might have been our neighbors' cat as we saw her sitting on their window sill from time to time, but they expressed no interest in the ashen feline.  She seemed so thin a few weeks back, so I started feeding her.  Little nibbles at first but then I started buying small packets of mo...

Trump apparently has no intention of meeting with Biden during the transition or attending his inauguration in January.  Instead, he continues to shout fraud on twitter, demanding that Biden " prove " how he got 80 million votes before he leaves the White House.  Of course, one can argue that the 74 million votes that Trump received is even more suspicious, given how many Republicans publicly stated they were voting against him in the general election.    It was an odd election.  Despite a raging pandemic, over 65% of Americans voted this year.  By far the largest turnout in over 100 years.  It seems Trumpers and Never-Trumpers were both equally energized this time around, turning out in record numbers.  Democrats also flocked to the polls but not in the big numbers many expected, as they were unable to flip the Senate (even with two run-off elections pending in Georgia) and lost seats in the House.  This election was all about Trump. The var...

Chelsea Walsh will soon be a media sensation after her unabashed interview with Hari Sreenivasan on Amanpour & Co. last night.  She has been helping to fill voids left in nursing staffs around the country ever since coronavirus broke out in March.  She can tell you what this virus is really like, how it ravages both young and old, and is most definitely not something to play with.  As she says in the end, "you either have had to be there or you can trust me or you can wait till you have your own experience." Several things stand out from the interview.  Perhaps the foremost is that she is uninsured, as she serves as a contract employee and can't afford her own health insurance.  She said she has felt COVID symptoms at least three times over the past 8 months and figures her time will come at some point, as it has for many other nurses she has worked with.  Nurses are the frontline workers.  She said doctors often keep their distance, relying on th...

It has been like a bad reality show where the loser refuses to leave the set after being voted out by the viewing audience.  Trump was determined to remain in the White House past January 20 even if the numbers told him otherwise.  His last ditch effort to stop the certification of the ballots in Michigan failed yesterday, when one of the two Republicans on the statewide canvassing board accepted the results.  The other abstained.   The canvassing board officials had no authority to determine whether the votes in Detroit should be audited.  Yet, the fate of Michigan's 16 electoral votes hung in the balance until the very end because Trump and his Michigan operatives had exerted an inordinate amount of pressure on the Republican officials to deadlock the certification and send the matter to the state supreme court, where I assume Republicans felt they had the advantage.  Aaron Van Langevelde was finally convinced he had no other option and did the right...

I was looking for a championship chess set after watching the The Queen's Gambit .  Not that I was ever a great chess player, but I wanted to play again.  Of course, you can buy cheaper sets but it is something about the look and feel of the pieces that draws you to the quality sets. My first chess set was a plastic set I got through my mother's S&H green stamps, inspired by Bobby Fischer winning the World Championship in 1972.  I was 11 at the time, and learned the game with this chess set .  My mother bought me a beginner's book , and we sat down together and went through the moves until I eventually figured most everything out.  I would play against classmates and usually get the upper hand, but it never went beyond that.  In time, I bought a Strato chess set but it was too difficult to remember that a piece occupied all three levels at once and I lost interest.  Other sports began to dominate my life and chess faded into the background. I sup...

I have to say Trump puts on a really good show.  He manages to capture everyone's attention even in the agony of defeat.  Who else can generate media buzz over a 12,000-man march on Washington or the loony attempts to stop the certification of vote counts in states with the help of his intrepid lawyer Rudolph Giuliani?  He's managed to pull most of the Republican leadership in Washington behind him as he tries to stave off the inevitable conclusion to this election that he will have step down on January 20, 2021, whether he likes it or not. Some have tried to argue that this is all part of some strategy to energize Georgia conservative voters in the Senate run-off elections in January, but Trump never thinks about anyone other than himself.  More likely he imagines there is still some way he can hold onto the reins of power, desperately trying to avoid his return to civilian life where he faces a mountain of lawsuits and criminal charges being filed against him....

It seems that the Donald gives off a musky odor that is extremely attractive to some women.  How else to explain his astonishing poll numbers among white women, where once again he garnered 55 percent of their vote?  It makes me think of the attempt to create odorama movies back in the 60s.  Yes, it was a real thing .  John Waters even used it in his film Polyester in 1981, briefly reviving this odorous technique.  Scents were put into the seats of the theater and triggered by scenes in the movie so that you get a good whiff of what is going on.  Trump may have the scents piped into his rallies, making peroxide blonde women swoon at his every word.  Of course, this doesn't explain how he manages to attract women outside his rallies, but maybe he finds some way to trigger olfactory sensations through the cadence of his speech that is irresistible to white women but repellent to women of color. Whatever the case, pollsters are scratching their heads as ...