Listening to ‘Enigma‘ this mellow early evening here along California’s northern coast — foggy, and warmer than the last few days.
And surfing the InterWebs for news about anything pertinent or impertinent.

This black irony from CNN on yesterday’s display of ugly-creepy at US stores — more people came to shop, but still spent less money, as ‘…store visits climbed 3.5 percent from last year to more than 307.67 million. But Black Friday retail sales fell 1.8 percent to $11.2 billion…’

(Illustration found here).

People are crazy, and getting more — just now listening to “I Love You…I’ll Kill You,” from Enigma‘s most-wondrous ‘Cross of Changes‘ CD, a not-so-subtle refrain of sensual shenanigans in humanoid-humongous-packed Best Buys across the US, splashing scenes of pushing and shoving Americans showing their exceptionalism.
Oh, wow.

Ugly shit again in Egypt last week as new President Mohamed Mursi decided he and only he can hold the fort, which has led to a big backlash in Cairo: Prominent opposition leader Mohamed ElBaradei said on Saturday there could be no dialogue with Egypt’s president until he scrapped a “dictatorial” decree that he said gave the Islamist leader Mohamed Mursi the powers of a pharaoh.
So back to Tahrir Square and more demonstrations — police fired tear gas, a few people injured, and so forth.
Life is hard right now all over the Middle East.
This wrap-up from CBS this evening, taking in the Gaza horror (truce still holds) and all the rest, and President Obama’s position of either being ‘…highly-active, or to stand back for a while and let the Middle East simmer.
The problem is that the Mideast, left practically unwatched to simmer, tends to boil over.’
Might be a rock-and-a-hard place kind of thing.

And this heart-breaking kind of sadness — from China’s NDT TV: The man who first alerted authorities to what would become the melamine-tainted milk scandal has been murdered. Jiang Weisuo, 44, was attacked by unidentified men in Xi’an city two weeks ago. On Friday, he passed away from his wounds.

Another sad story this past week — the death of Deborah Raffin, a favorite from the 1970s in both TV and movies, and later off-screen, helped created the audio-book company Dove Books-on-Tape.
She passed after a battle with leukemia. Raffin was only 59.

Although she did a lot of TV-movie work, Raffin made some interesting theatrical films, like shown in the poster at left from the sweaty ‘Once Is Not Enough‘ (1975),  based on the sweaty Jacqueline Susann novel.
She played Kirk Douglas’ daughter, and poses the intellectual hotness I appreciated as a much-younger man in the mid-70s. She also made a really-really-good horror movie, ‘The Sentinel‘ (1977), that was never really appreciated enough.

(Illustration found here).

Raffin’s passing has been overshadowed by the death yesterday of Larry Hagman.

And in passing, more Enigma and ‘Age Of Loneliness,’ also titled ‘Carly’s Song,’ from the soundtrack of the movie ‘Slither,’ which I’ve never seen nor want to see, and also off ‘Cross of Changes.’
Enigma is heavy into chants, and in this track, it’s Mongolian with a touch of Gregorian.

And turkey day was a record in an insta: Over 10 million photos that mentioned Thanksgiving-themed words in their captions were shared yesterday. For several hours throughout the day, more than 200 photos about Thanksgiving were posted every second. Overall, the day broke all Instagram records as we saw the number of shared photos more than double from the day before, making it our busiest day so far.
Pictures of overeating peoples?

And this old news made somehow new — from Village Voice yesterday:

The idea that weed somehow turns people into violent criminals, of course, is a load of crap — as proven by a study released today.
Human Rights Watch released the findings of its study on whether those who are arrested for marijuana possession go on to commit violent crimes — which, believe it or not, they don’t.
Shocking, we know.
The study, titled “A Red Herring: Marijuana Arrestees Do Not Become Violent Felons,” found there is no evidence to support the idea that locking up low-level marijuana offenders does anything to reduce violent crime.

Dude, we’re all cool.

And we’re excited about this: “Twilight has obviously been wonderful for my career, and I’m thankful for its success, but I’m looking forward to extending my range and playing more sophisticated, multifaceted vampire characters,” said Pattison, adding that while he enjoyed portraying Edward Cullen in the five Twilight movies, he’s interested in future projects that deal with “darker, grittier” themes, such as vampire mental illness, vampire poverty, and vampire drug addiction.
Broaden the career base, good move.

Enigma is played out and the time has come.