daily life

For the past week or so, U.S. President Donald Trump has been hanging around with the wealthy nations of the world in Davos, Switzerland. The trip has put the president outside the impeachment- hearings bomb zone being aired ... and aired and aired and aired ... in the U.S. Senate.

Trump did manage to squeeze in a visit to Benjamin Netanyahu, erstwhile prime minister of Israel, who is being chased by those who want him nailed for various forms of corruption at home. Israel cannot indict a sitting prime minister, so there are those seeking to unhorse him and then nail his ass to the floor. Another dictator resting on the laurels of a staunch, right wing. The right wing flourishes. "Anti-Semitism" is once more twisted into a box that makes no reference to anyone less than a pure-bred ("the chosen" -- kinda like the "aryans" as it seems) Jew.

In the midst of all this, American basketball great Kobe Bryant died with his daughter in a helicopter crash yesterday. Even I, who doesn't care much about basketball, have heard of Kobe Bryant.

Is all this confusing? Trump will escape Senate censure ... too many well-off donors have been blessed by his tax cut on the wealthy and it is they who emplace 'democratic' representatives. The U.S. is for sale and the salesman of the month is ... Donald Trump -- the man who could find a price tag for damn near anything.

The moral sociopaths foregather.

shards of a sea chanty

Woke this morning with...


.... just the first stanza ... enough to make me look it up.

getting my age straight ... I think

Today, thanks to a kindly money guy who has what change I have to jingle under his advisement, I learned that I was almost 80. "I know you hate labels, but ..." he prefaced his observation about my age ... "almost 80."

This is more serious than it sounds to any serious-minded person. I had lately been unsure if I were "69" or "70" ... and "80" was in the mix as well. Bill ironed those wrinkles out in our phone chat this morning. Bill has an adding machine and seems to know how to use it. I don't trust my math  skills AND there's no longer much I can do about the facts anyway.

So....

What...?

I don't much like trusting outside sources, but Bill has always been a pretty straight shooter who's in a business that insists on the accurate use of an adding/subtracting machine. When I heard Bill's words, I felt a bit like George Carlin's disappointment comedified in his riff on a time when he stopped believing in God. What was he to do? As a former believer, what was he to believe in? He felt bereft. Finally, he said, he decided to believe in Joe Pesche. And I -- I decided to believe in Bill. Believing in others is a poor bet, but Bill is better than many....

So be it. What the hell -- time won't mind.

pussy aroma

Ranking number 9 on the 10 "most viewed" news list provided by The Guardian's website this morning:

Why is Gwyneth Paltrow selling a candle that smells like her vagina?

Gwyneth [an actress I think] has made a candle called This Smells Like My Vagina for her website, Goop. And, of course, it has sold out.

The Guardian, like the BBC before it, has relied increasingly on rewrites of other news sites lately. It saves time and leg work to borrow other people's stuff. But... but... but.... pussy perfumes? Will every woman henceforth smell like Peppermint Patty? Will the women line up for comparative sniffs? Why is this somehow less gross than Donald Trump grabbing women's genitals?

I liked the commentary.

biggest flower, stinky and ignored

The largest single flower ever recorded was found recently in Sumatra, Indonesia, measuring a reported 111cm (3.64ft) across....
... this giant flower is critically endangered as its forests disappear, and it remains impossible to cultivate. If Rafflesia was a giant animal, like an elephant or blue whale, there would be international efforts to conserve it, but instead it remains largely ignored.

authors offer prize to presidential press secretary

Bestselling novelists Stephen King and Don Winslow have offered to donate $200,000 (£153,000) to a children’s hospital if the White House press secretary, Stephanie Grisham, will hold a press conference.
White House press briefings used to be a regular affair, but the last one was held more than 300 days ago, according to CNN, by Grisham’s predecessor in the role, Sarah Huckabee Sanders. Instead, Donald Trump prefers informal huddles with reporters, with his spokespeople appearing on sympathetic television channels to put their points across.
Grisham told Fox and Friends in September that “a lot of reporters were doing [press briefings] to get famous”, and there were no plans to bring the briefing back in the near future.

LAST PRESIDENTIAL NEWS CONFERENCE OVER 300 DAYS AGO.

AND THIS BENEFITS THE AMERICAN VOTER HOW?

paradox or simultaneity

Is it "paradox" or is it simple "simultaneity?"  Paradox suggests a problem to be fixed. Simultaneity suggests oh-well-that's-just-the-way-it-is.

At issue, so to speak:

On the one hand: "democracy is the worst form of government except for all the rest." Never mind who said it or when or how. The meat on the bone remains and the probable truth remains with it, I think. Governments are a risky business at best. But for all that, the word "democracy" is flung about like some much-loved Teddy bear. One man, one vote. Yum.

On the other hand Baron Rochefoucault's maxim, "the intelligence of the mass is inversely proportionate to its number." Or, the greater the number, the dumber things get.

So ... which is it? I think the answer is both. Both are true and it's just tough-titty who may try to unravel what some call a paradox.

Everyone should have a say. That's democracy. And yet when everyone has a say, everyone ends up saying much the same thing: It's cozier that way. Cozier and yet dumber. Democracy is smarter in some ways and yet its stupidity hangs out like some untucked T-shirt.

Oh well, I'm working on this.....