'Our Year at The Fahm' - After 4.5 *Actual Years* - is Drawing to a Close

As all good things must do, our time here at The Fahm as full time residents is slowly drawing to a close. I am fresh off a month-long employment and housing exploration in my favorite hometown ever, Santa Cruz, CA, where we will be relocating - at least part-time - sooner rather than later.

For Your Consideration, Qualified for Oscar® consideration for the 86th Academy Awards® Best Documentary Film, Valentino's Ghost

Valentino's Ghost: The Politics Behind Images, is the hard-edged film I hope you have already been hearing about.  The film exposes ways in which the U.S. foreign policy agenda in the Middle East drives and shapes the mainstream media's and Hollywood's portrayals of Arabs, Muslims, and Islam.  It is not for the faint of heart. Click here to see the trailer.

Designated a Critics' Pick by The New York Times, called "brilliant" by @MJayRosenberg, and "thrilling" by The Village Voice, Valentino's Ghost received six figures of funding from PBS, which is showing only its truncated version due to controversies raised by the film.

Valentino's Ghost: The Politics Behind Images has qualified for Oscar® consideration for the 86th Academy Awards®, and we are simultaneously trying to go wide with self-distribution, hence this post asking for your financial support toward the cost of spreading the word about this film, which I am proud to say I have had some small involvement in. The IndieGoGo campaign site is here.

Your support, no matter how small, would give this film the higher profile it needs in its dual mission for Oscar® consideration and self-distribution. No American distributor will touch it.  Neither will any major American film festival, even though the Director of the world's oldest and most prestigious Venice Film Festival, Alberto Barbera, said, "Valentino's Ghost is a great and very important film."

I hope you will conclude that the Valentino's Ghost project and predicament merit your support.  You can view the trailer and see more reviews at www.valentinosghost.com. Please help.

Fall Ends in New England

Here We Go...FASTEN YOUR SEAT BELTS, IT COULD BE A BUMPY RIDE

SPECIAL WEATHER STATEMENT

NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE TAUNTON MA

424 PM EST MON NOV 11 2013

...SNOW SHOWERS WILL IMPACT THE TUESDAY MORNING COMMUTE...

A STRONG ARCTIC FRONT WILL QUICKLY MOVE ACROSS SOUTHERN NEW
ENGLAND EARLY TUESDAY MORNING. BEHIND THIS FRONT EXPECT RAIN
SHOWERS TO QUICKLY TRANSITION TO SNOW SHOWERS DUE TO FALLING
TEMPERATURES. THIS TRANSITION WILL OCCUR DURING THE MORNING
COMMUTE...BETWEEN 5AM TO 9AM. THE DEVELOPMENT OF SNOW SQUALLS IS
ALSO A POSSIBILITY WHICH MAY RESULT AN INCH OF SNOW IN A SHORT
TIME. THIS MAY CREATE SOME SLIPPERY TRAVEL ALONG WITH POOR
VISIBILITY DURING THE TUESDAY MORNING COMMUTE. 

                              - From The National Weather Service

This Flow Chart Will Make It Easy for You to Know Once and For All!

Via Huffington Post

MA "RomneyCare" Site is Also Dysfunctional

I spent 42 minutes and 30 seconds on the phone with a very helpful Massachusetts State Health Care Connector customer service representative who was kind enough to walk me through signing up for an account only to get this error:

The very helpful Massachusetts State Health Care Connector customer service representative was able to tell they had been seeing this same error all day, they can see the error on their end, it is a known issue, and their people are working on fixing it.

Really? Well, being the inquisitive former software QA tester that I am, after we concluded our phone conversation, I went back to the website and started poking around. It wasn't long before I found the (additional) following bugs on the site:

• In the Get Help FAQ, the Read more frequently asked questions link goes to an error page which features this lovely family

• Clicking Visit Support Area in Get Help spawns a little pop-up box which reads, The page at MAHealthconnector.org says Target Unreachable, 'SubscriberBean' returned null For more information please see the server's error log...server exception 
• My Account Overview tab: clicking the "Coverage Options" button doesn't do anything
• Profiles and Settings My Profile: Body text needs copy-editing and has a typo: We make it easy to update your information. Hence, you can change your password settings, phone number, email address, contact preferences and support services. Do you need to de-activate your account?Click here to find out how.
• Profiles and Settings My Profile: Account Preferences section is empty

And then I got tired and bored with doing someone else's job and not getting paid for it so I stopped. Obviously MA didn't allow enough time for testing either...tsk, tsk...when will people learn?

What I'm Reviewing Right Now

The AP Stylebook: The journalist's bible, wherever you are

Parker Palooza 2013

Santa Cruz, California 2013

Valentino's Ghost Trailer

PBS TV's 60-min version airs starting June 1, 2013! 

Check your local PBS station

What if All You Need to Have a 'Beach Body' is to GO TO THE BEACH?

That's just crazazy talk! Via xojane

"The phrase ['Beach Body'] has become damn ubiquitous in the late spring/early summer months over the past few years, and while its origins may be innocuous enough, unsurprisingly I have Problems with how it has proliferated.

Problem #1 The whole “beach body” concept assumes that there is only one body that is beach-worthy -- and it probably doesn't look like whatever body you've already got.

Welcome Back to The Fahm!

Since last Winter was so traumatic, Raj and I relocated for this Winter to Easthampton, MA, in a small, snug, spotless apartment within walking distance of three restaurants, two pubs, and an art store. Now that Spring has sprung though, it is time to go back out to The Fahm in the country, which we did yesterday only to discover that pipes all over the kitchen had ruptured, which then began to spew rusty dirty water everywhere as soon as Raj turned the valves back on.  Since the pipes are inside the cupboards where the plates and bowls and glasses and cups are kept, the rusty dirty water tainted each and every item therein, requiring that each and every plate, bowl, glass, and cup be removed and washed and the cupboards cleaned before the kitchen can be used at all, much less returned to anything resembling actual order.


Further complicating our workload, mice or flying squirrels or bats or something wintered very nicely downstairs, and spent their time eating decorative soaps, decorative fruit, and indecorous amounts of dried edamame while shitting on every single counter, both sinks, and in a few drawers. I thought that was as bad as it was going to get until I ventured upstairs to reclaim our bedroom only to discover a pile of feathers on the floor in the middle of the walk-through closet, and what is undeniably bird poop under each of the upstairs windows. We have so far not found a body so it may be that the outcome of whatever Wild Kingdom vignette took place up here wasn't as dire as it appears. Or, the remains could just as easily be hidden away in some dark and not-yet-examined corner, like an avian version of Arsenic and Old Lace. My money is on the latter.


Once again, Spring has arrived with the gleeful spewing of water and beshitting of surfaces that we here at The Fahm have come to know and love so well! In other news, the daffodils are in bloom and the tulips are almost ready...