of boobs, real and imagined

-- If I judge by what I see on TV, the advent of  Covid-19 has been accompanied by a rise in the decolletage among women. Where once boobs were all but exposed, suddenly necklines are more or less at neckline level. Without really going the distance, here is one bit of evidence that others have become aware of some changes.

Strange to think that the word "sexy" in the male vocabulary relates almost entirely to what is covered (and might be uncovered). The drunken Saturday night crowd crowing, "Take it all off!"  to the twinkling strippers would hardly be satisfied if in fact she did take it all off ... hell, that would just be a naked woman. While sexy, that would be somehow less sexy, I imagine, than the roaring male, desire to ...to... to do what? See a naked woman??? To rip to shreds the distance implied by sexy attire??? Is that sort of intimacy really as intimate as implied ... or is it a greater distance?

-- Yesterday, I thought to get a haircut. But barbers are on the epidemic's shit (transmission potential grows in the barber's chair) list so now I need an appointment. Today, I asked my wife, who likes shopping, to check around for a store-bought set of clippers. "Fuck it!" sez I, "let me just take it all off. Ain't nobody looking and it saves the bureaucratic hassle."

My attitude does not help my former barber to return to cash-flow city -- an economic infusion, however small, into what amounts to a languid and languishing economy. I would like to help my barber, but bureaucracy is a luxury item I am unwilling to invest in. So ....

When I was 11, my mother took me on a trip to Italy. It was 1951 and summer and close enough to the end of World War II (there were bullet shells still littering the bottom of the sandy sands where I swam in the Mediterranean) so that when she dropped me off at an Italian barbershop for a crew cut, my mother's passable-but-imperfect Italian could not convey what a crew-cut might be like. She returned after whatever errand she was running to find me in the barber's chair with a reverse Mohawk ... one buzz-cut strip from forehead peak to rear neck nape in accordance with military custom (short-shorter-shortest) ... there was nothing to do but cut off the lot. The cut hair was a quarter of an inch long. And now, so many years later, I'm looking to do the same again -- cut the lot off and skip the extras.

-- Got out my curmudgeon's regalia yesterday and wrote to the Public Broadcast System's news outlet asking if anyone had heard anyone, anywhere suggesting that U.S. President Donald Trump was a "clear and present danger" to the United States. It's a little late, I realize, but still ... Trump continues to go from here to there without wearing the mask that many people are wearing as a small attempt to curb the spread of the disease. He plays on racial divisions. He encourages ignorance. He is a divider of people. In Trump, you can see why Romans, among others, waxed wary of the herd and crowd.

Wasn't it Lincoln who said approximately, "You can fool all of the people some of the time and some of the people all of the time, but you can't fool all of the people all of the time." It surely does get tiring putting fools in the catbird seat, allowing Republicans to renege on their promise for a healthcare plan, etc. etc.

Is there anything Trump can do other than die? As he pretends towards a second term as president?  The Republicans got the tax cut they wanted from him. Put that together with the tax cut they got from George W. Bush ("the shrub") and ....

The rest is old orange rinds and volume.