Big box stores collecting for charitable organizations

I don't like these big box stores that ask me if I want to contribute a $1 to some fund. You know they don't turn that money over instantly to wherever it's going, but they keep it in their vaults and make money off it until it's time to send the charitable donations in. And what annoys me even more is that I'd like to offer an explanation to the clueless checkout person giving me looks that seem on the judgmental side. "You know I give directly to X Y &Z charities every year, so this stinking dollar doesn't mean a thing to anyone other than your stinking overseers because it's more money for them in the long run."  But I never say that. I just say "No."

Kubrick vs. Burgess

Stanley Kubrick has been my all time favorite film director.  I've seen his complete but rather small output many times over.  I've lauded these films.  A Clockwork Orange of course is part of this oeuvre and I can't even count the number of times I've seen it and how often I have extolled its virtues as the complete film experience, my droogies.  And then I had to read the book. After the book I felt let down. . . by Stanley Kubrick.  Anthony Burgess, who wrote it, possessed a rare & remarkable genius for language which to the credit of Kubrick and to the gifted snarling Malcolm McDowell did a pretty good job with the language in the film. But the boy from the Bronx  missed the boat in terms of the entire novel. Most unfortunately the initial American version of the book had the last chapter excised. It was this version that Kubrick used for his script.  When he found out about the last chapter he claimed that it did not seem realistic. In the movie the rebellious and seemingly psychopathic, Alex De Large, after first being "cured" of violence via Skinnerian like methods, is eventually restored to health and violence and has a government minister literally spoon feeding him at the end as he goes back to his violent ways and the movie ends.  But the book does something different. It is opposed to excessive governmental abuse of criminal behavior and it's also opposed to "well-meaning" liberals who would use Alex's condition to cudgel the government while sacrificing him for the good of all.  The last chapter eventually has Alex growing up and internally feeling his life had to change in order to be a productive human being. In other words he came to this much the same way as many rebellious teens seem to do.  They grow up! . . . For Burgess's part he didn't think much of the book itself and dismissed it as a minor work.  It was just something he banged out in a few weeks. Yes it was this book that made him famous via Kubrick's version. But his masterworks are nothing like this book. The London Times a few years ago ranked Burgess as 17 out of a list of 50 of great writers since 1945.  I shall be reading more Burgess henceforth.