Drum roll, please..........believe me, I know you've been biting your nails on this one, but.........
More drum roll.........no, I did not wind up beginning "Our Mutual Friend" this evening. End drum roll.
Actually, you don't have to end the drum roll on my behalf. If you are enjoying the drum roll, feel free to keep it going, even all through the blog if you like. In fact, you can download the drum roll and play it throughout your day tomorrow and any day thereafter. You can even.....(oh stop already, Ad).
Sorry. I was just trying to be polite about the drum roll. I didn't wanna take it away on my own whim, just because I was done with it. All I was trying to do in the first place was create suspense about "Our Mutual Friend", and, through the use of the drum roll, keep you hanging for a few moments longer about whether or not I had watched it. I didn't know it was gonna turn out to be this big of a deal.
Well okay. If we are all good on the subject I will continue. I actually did put "Mutual Friend" in the dvd player at 7:45 this evening. It felt like a forced move on my part, mainly because of my connection of Charles Dickens with the Holiday Season. I started to watch, and as always, right from the start this BBC production felt like it was gonna be another top-notch Mahs-Tah-Piece.
But I only made it to the ten minute mark. Two things stopped me. The first was that I was not in "Dickens Mode". These BBC dvds do not have subtitles, and, I'm sorry but I just cannot understand some of the coarser English accents which are common in Dickens' stories. I mean, I can get the gist of what they are saying, perhaps 75% of the words, but it helps if I am in the Mode, which comes at Christmastime. Had there been subtitles on this dvd, I probably would've continued, wrong time of year be damned. But it was hard to understand, and this is April not December, and that was the second thing that stopped me. It just ain't time for Dickens. I hope I can find this dvd in eight months.
I did watch an episode of "Rawhide" that guest starred an actor named Victor McLaglen. In "Rawhide", he played an old man who had been a bare-knuckle boxer ( in the mid-1800s before boxers wore gloves). His character is having bouts of madness, which is prescient now in the age of the recognition of brain injuries resulting from violent sports. McLaglen looked really beat up onscreen, not because of makeup, but beat up in real life. I thought, "I know I've seen that actor somewhere before", and when I IMDB'ed him, sure enough it was Victor McLaglen, who co-starred in John Ford's Oscar winning "The Quiet Man". He was 72 when he made the "Rawhide" episode, and according to IMDB it was the last role of his life. He died in November 1959, probably not long after the episode was filmed. Every episode of "Rawhide" is like a mini-movie, which is why I think they were able to attract so many famous movie actors to guest star on the show.
I wish I had more to tell ya. I am kind of on Automatic Pilot these days, with my job and my routine, which revolves around the hours of my job. I am with Pearl 17 hours a day, so on my breaks I just keep to my routine, which is books and shows (TV and movies), and also a hike here and there. And rest.
I want to be telling you about really intriguing stuff, like answers from the CIA about my appeal, but I haven't yet gotten an answer from them. The response to my original letter, which was an FOIA inquiry into any CIA records pertaining to myself, came within about three weeks. But as for my appeal, they sent me a second letter acknowledging receipt, and letting me know that the appeal is being processed, but that was on November 29th, which will soon be coming up on five months ago.
It was a big deal for me to write to them - took a bit of courage because they are the CIA after all - and I poured my heart out in my appeal. I told them that I had no legal basis for my appeal, which is usually a prerequisite, but instead that I was appealing as a victim of something I have not been able to understand, and I asked that they consider my appeal from a humanitarian point of view.
The fact that I have not yet received a determination on my appeal, after nearly five months, suggests one of two things. Either my appeal got put on the back burner, or got stuck in the bottom of a pile of appeals, or it is actually receiving some consideration. Given the gravity of What Happened In Northridge in 1989, I am 100% sure that someone at the Agency knows about it. More likely it is one of their biggest secrets, of the highest security classification.
Why haven't they simply written back to tell me that they have no records of anything I am talking about, and that my appeal is denied?
Perhaps because they already acknowledged, in so many words, that they do indeed have records with my name on them pertaining to 1989. That is what they insinuated in their first response to me, which is why I sent an appeal in the first place, to have anything possible released.
It's just me all by myself, sending two letters to the CIA, so far. I have no lawyer, no friends who were fellow participants who will help me. It has not been easy, to say the least.
Every day I go to the mailbox, hoping for a response to my appeal. If I don't hear anything by the end of April I suppose I will write again, to enquire about the status of my appeal.
I wish somebody would talk to me about it, but none of my friends seem willing to. What Happened in 1989 blew them off the map and they have never recovered.
One of these days a Miracle is gonna come, and I will get an answer, because no secret stays buried forever.
Then I will really have something to tell you.
See you in church in the morn. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
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