liberal lapdogs

I don't much care to backstop opinion pieces, but...

So now we know what it takes for an unhinged, bigoted demagogue to win liberal applause: just bypass a constitution to fire some missiles. It had seemed as though there was consensus among those in the anti-Trump camp. This man was a threat to US democracy and world peace. The echoes of 1930s fascist leaders were frightening. “This republic is in serious danger,” declared conservative writer Andrew Sullivan on the eve of Trump’s triumph. That this megalomaniac “pussy-grabbing” ban-the-Muslims ex-reality TV star would soon control the world’s most lethal military arsenal was chilling.

Liberal lapdogs ... so loving ... so snuggling for attention, licking the master's face ... oh, it's a positive ASPCA circle jerk. My heart swoons. My reflection in the mirror is so much more kind-of compassionate and yet firm.

"Make Trump Furious"

Jon Ossoff: "Make Trump Furious"

He looks like he's about 12 [he's 30], but Georgia Democrat candidate Jon Ossoff is rattling a few cages by running for a seat in the House of Representatives.

With Democrats desperate for signs of hope after Hillary Clinton's loss to Trump, Ossoff's underdog "Make Trump Furious" campaign [in Georgia] has endeared him to national anti-Trump activists and pushed him well ahead of 17 rivals in polls. The documentary filmmaker and former congressional aide raised a jaw-dropping $8.3 million in the first quarter, his campaign said.

good eats

The good thing abount living in New York City, when I lived there, was the restaurants. The population was large enough to support chefs whose recipes might be shunned by many -- and not all of them were artsy-fartsy two-bite art works -- and yet the chef might make a living on the few who remained.

In the small city I now inhabit, Northampton, Mass., there is much talk of the good restaurants but no talk at all about the doomed chefs who fall away because their specialties cannot appeal (money, flavor) to the masses (the income-producing Wonder Bread crowd).

When I think of going out to dinner, as I am today, I long for a doomed chef who makes what s/he makes and the devil take the hindmost. S/he may not be in business long, but I keep hoping I will find something weird and wonderful (or awful -- same difference) placed before me before s/he becomes an auto mechanic or just caves in to American 'hand-crafted' bullshit.

True, there are things I prefer not to eat -- anchovies, for example ... and I'm not a great fan of fish -- but there must be something that I like that can be made strangely, newly, and wonderfully off the charts. Public relations do not persuade my taste buds.

Where can I get something good to eat?

I think I may have to move back to New York ... which I have no desire or intention to. I know there are doomed chefs in my bomb zone, but I have no idea as to how I might find them, pay them something pretty outrageous (relative to my checkbook) and be filled with ... with ... what?... phantasmagoria, perhaps.

It all seems pretty greedy in this time that is so widely felt in terms of desperation.

buy your springtime ambrosia here!

Beware the Canucks!!!!!!

This is not a joke.

Maple syrup isn't just for pancakes anymore, thanks to a group of maple syrup producers in Quebec who are trying to turn a cottage industry into a global empire. Montreal chef Martin Picard says maple syrup runs through the veins of Quebecers like the sap that flows from the trees each spring in sugar bushes across the countryside.

 "He says people who have never tasted the golden syrup might be surprised by its unique flavour, which can have hints of toffee and spice, herbs and flowers." Tell me that doesn't sound like some languishing, limp-pinkied flower of the wine-cellar world ... waxing luscious over the riches stored on the musty shelving below!

The idea that maple syrup could indeed be seen as the world's best sugar is the driving ambition of the Federation of Quebec Maple Syrup Producers.

BBC too cute to keep up with?

The synchronised steps of Irish dancing are a mesmerising sight but not recommended for travelling in lifts, a Belfast hotel has advised.

A tongue-in-cheek sign posted by management of a Premier Inn warned Riverdancing residents against rehearsing reels while between floors.
The World Irish Dance Championships are being held at the city'sWaterfront Hall.

 A "tongue in cheek" sign??? Oh, those cute BBC reporters ... so full of whimsey they're just bursting to share ... and if that whimsey manages to sidestep a little journalistic lifting ... oh well, we're just jitterbug kids!

As far back as at least World War I ... and probably further ... road-marching soldiers were ordered to switch from synchronized "marching" to "rout-step" when they came to a bridge. Any bridge.

"Routstep" (probably called different things in different countries) is the personalized, no-synchronicity, individualized way of walking. Soldiers marching in unison (as perhaps dancers dancing in a large elevator?) are inviting calamity when the forces of gravity join with marchers/dancers U-N-I-S-O-N to create an extra serious weight factor.

 You might think a reporter would get it quicker than most: there is always something funny in the serious; and there is always something serious in the funny. 

alarm-alarm-alarm ... not

Now, together with an American president disseminating false or undocumented information, we have hackers in Dallas cutting into citywide alarm systems.

Hackers struck the sirens Dallas uses to alert residents to take shelter from inclement weather, triggering intermittent false alarms for about an hour and a half until officials deactivated the system early Saturday morning....The sirens began sounding at 11:42 p.m. Friday. Officials deactivated the entire system by 1:17 a.m. Saturday. Vaz said the sirens went through about 15 cycles of a 90-second siren activation.

What were once warnings are now threats.

What ever happened to the days when law enforcement didn't pretend to solve a crime before it was committed? It used to be crime-investigation-solution. Now, its intrusive investigation-seeking-a-solution-to-a-problem-in-a-future-no-one-can-tell and a lack of reliability in the liars who soak up assets chasing allegations without proof that can be publicly adduced.

"Trust me" ... a phrase that once accounted for something. But the points of trust seem to dwindle like a sundown. And more, the phrase too often seems to be a matter of who can make money by using a phrase.

WWI: America slaughters its own?

Dead if you do. Dead if you don't

One hundred years later, there are some who remember -- somewhat condescendingly -- World War I, "the great war," "the war to end all wars." We've come so far since that primitive effort in barbarity and glory. On April 6, 1917, America came in with England, France and others who had previously suffered alone "over there." The United States was not enthusiastic. Many were capable of remembering the horrors of a bloody Civil War. But German U-Boot depredations (how ungentlemanly!) helped to move things along.

The war was a reality check. Honor and glory and manliness dwindled. The machine gun, the submarine -- oh hell, the waxing ego -- shifted the wonder of decency in warfare. It was a Donald Trump sort of thing -- You want nice? Tell it to your Aunt Fanny!

Well, I am treating WWI with a thinly-tinted brush. Despite America's war losses which were overshadowed by those of other nations, what continues to interest me about WWI is the advent of the Influenza Epidemic of 1918-1919.

Despite the virulence of the disease and the knowledge that close quarters helped to spread the 'drownings', America joined the war effort and sent its troops off to war in enclosed troop ships. I believe I read or heard somewhere that this salient fact was hushed up as America's young men were sent overseas.

[D]isease, including the 1918 flu pandemic and deaths while held as prisoners of war, still caused about one third of total military deaths for all belligerents.

Is there another way to read this: It was worth subjecting youth to death so that they might enter circumstances that carried a high risk of death? Slaughter them so that they may be gloriously slaughtered?

The flu epidemic claimed between 20 and 40 million worldwide. "An estimated 675,000 Americans died of influenza during the pandemic, ten times as many as in the world war." 

PS.  Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe must be doing a little victory dance at his ability to lend a 'helping hand' with the was on "Islamic State." The boys with the katanas must be  salivating in the wings, just like exceptionalist everywhere.

Is there anyone left to parse this emperor-idea that is wearing a gown marked "terrorist?"

bogged down in D.C.? Kill someone

I once asked my mother if she was ever smitten with "writer's block" and if so, how she dealt with it. Writer's block is a wall that writers can be flummoxed by. My mother said that yes, there were times when she would sink into a slough of sluggish despond or an inability to make a story go forward. Everything you write looks like shit. And what did she do?

"There's no single thing that restarts the engine. But one pretty good technique is, I kill someone."

Of course she was speaking in a time when death of a person or a character was considered a social blow ... a sense of sorrow and loss ensued by social convention. Nowadays, it's not quite the same -- people die and it's more or less OK as long as it's not me.

Donald Trump 59-missile attack against Syria reminded me of my mother's writer's block.

"Trump has quickly discovered the magic principle of US politics: when things go wrong at home, start a military venture in the Middle East," London-based blogger Karl Sharro, who is half-Lebanese and half-Iraqi, commented.

living with monkeys?

Police in northern India are searching lists of missing children to try to identify a girl believed to have been living with monkeys.

The little girl, aged between eight and 10, was found a few weeks ago in a forest in Uttar Pradesh.
Doctors said she could not communicate and displayed "monkey-like" traits.
A senior police official told BBC Hindi she had been playing with a pack of monkeys and imitating their behaviour when police went to rescue her....
A senior police official told BBC Hindi she had been playing with a pack of monkeys and imitating their behaviour when police went to rescue her.
... The police official, Suresh Yadav, said the monkeys attacked his squad when they arrived to take her away.

PS. April 8, 2017

[T]he rapid improvement she had made since being hospitalised now led doctors to believe she had in fact been raised by people. “Initially she was crawling but now she is walking normally – so she hasn’t been in the jungle since birth,” Lal said.
“The truth of the matter is her family didn’t want to look after her,” said Ranjana Kumari a leading activist in the movement to promote the welfare of young girls in a society where female foeticide persists, and has severely distorted birth rates, especially in rural areas.

Israel's "incremental tyranny"

Two former heads of Israel’s powerful domestic intelligence service, the Shin Bet, have made an impassioned and powerful intervention ahead of events to mark the 50th anniversary of the country’s occupation of the Palestinian territories in June.
One of the pair warned that the country’s political system was sunk in the process of “incremental tyranny”.
Ami Ayalon and Carmi Gillon were speaking ahead of a public meeting at a Jerusalem gallery which is threatened with closure for hosting a meeting organised by the military whistleblowing group Breaking the Silence, one of the main targets of the rightwing government of Benjamin Netanyahu.

May the U.S. pay heed.

Nazi pin-up struts her stuff

Kristina Söderbaum -- virulent anti-semite and movie star in Nazi Germany -- died in 2001 at the age of  88. She had

[S]tarred in 10 box-office hits in Nazi Germany directed by her husband Veit Harlan. She was the pin-up of the Wehrmacht, admired by Franco and parodied as the Lorelei. She also achieved a certain distinction as one of the few film actresses of the Third Reich who did not at some time enjoy a liaison with Josef Goebbels - a circumstance dictated as much by Veit Harlan's extreme possessiveness as by the propaganda minister's private predilection for dark-eyed brunettes. She was later tried by the Allies for war crimes.

As seen below, she was a good bareback rider and something of an archer.

i can't keep up

I can't keep up.

Or is it that I don't want to keep up?

To me, the lusciousness of a tale is found in its simplicities and slowness and caressing. Hard news or hard fiction. Slow and simple and plainly interesting. The zip and sass of later creations, of today's creations, increasingly put my mind in stall mode: Why is this story so interesting that I have to listen to you?

Early Thornton Wilder seems to fit in here ... and the mysteries of the very simple facts that weave themselves inescapably into ... what is it? ... love, perhaps, but not Fuller-Brush-salesman love. Stepping across my lines and explanations and beliefs -- there is something and it is important that I almost-but-not-quite know what it is. With the mystery, there is some confusion, perhaps, but without mystery things turn false and another TED talk is born.

I read the news and ... with rare exceptions ... stall out.

I am left behind.

Or is it that I refuse to move 'forward?'

I am no longer destined to be graceful.

shipping lanes swarmed by icebergs

More than 400 icebergs have drifted into the North Atlantic shipping lanes over the past week in an unusually large swarm for this early in the season, forcing vessels to slow to a crawl or take detours of hundreds of kilometres.
Experts are attributing it to uncommonly strong counter-clockwise winds that are drawing the icebergs south, and perhaps also global warming, which is accelerating the process by which chunks of the Greenland ice sheet break off and float away.
As of Monday, there were about 450 icebergs near the Grand Banks of Newfoundland, up from 37 a week earlier, according to the US Coast Guard’s international ice patrol in New London, Connecticut. Those kinds of numbers are usually not seen until late May or early June. The average for this time of year is about 80.

the money and muscle in Afghnistan

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) -- The Afghan government is trying to grab the attention of President Donald Trump and gain greater U.S. support by dangling its massive and untouched wealth of minerals, including lithium, the silvery metal used in mobile phone and computer batteries that is considered essential to modern life.

But tapping into that wealth, which also includes coal, copper, rare earths and far more that estimates say could be worth from $1 trillion to $3 trillion, is likely a long way off.

Opium, which props up better than a third of Afghanistan's budget if I recall, is a bit icky for the U.S., which prefers its heroin on the streets. But a good business "deal," as the bourgeois American president constantly reminds us, is another matter. Afghanistan does, of course, provide a war tableau (undeclared, the longest in U.S. history) that is so much easier for politicians unwilling to stake their political clout on something peaceful and creative.

Buddhist social effort

Arriving in email this morning, a Buddhist social effort.

Thirteen leading Buddhist teachers, joined by more than 100 additional signatories, call on Buddhists and all people of faith to take a stand against policies of the new administration that will create suffering for the most vulnerable in society. As published in the May 2017 Lion’s Roar magazine.

Leonara Carrington

Leonara Carrington's "The Giantess" as shown in a Guardian appreciation of a biography. It's the picture that captures me. Want to be an artist? It pays to drop dead. Sometimes I wonder if a gentle weirdness isn't the salvor of all things.

rhino attacks elephants

Chitwan, Nepal

A rhino charges a forestry and technical team after being released as part of a relocation project in Chitwan National Park

Photograph: Prakash Mathema/AFP/Getty Images

the Mattel women of my era

I'm probably setting myself up for a shellacking but...

Reading the news wires in the afternoon -- my second reading of the day -- I skim more than read, since many of the stories haven't changed much since the morning visit. But this afternoon, skimming here and there on the BBC, one of the medium-consequential sources in my book, I found myself inescapably sensing that all the pictures of pretty women looked as if I had stumbled into a Mattel plastics factory.

Plastic family members.

Look-alikes.

Stamped out by some plastic-extrusion device.

And the tacked-on hair!!!

Marshmallows.

It was a bit like when I was a kid and people would idly remark that you couldn't tell oriental people apart. (My mother had a Japanese friend during WWII who once agreed that even oriental people had some difficulty.)

When I caught myself in this broad-brush generalization about pretty women of my era, I was dutifully hangdog ... what a broad-brush generalization! And yet, there was no NOT thinking of a purple cow once having thought it. Obviously they didn't all look exactly alike and were not, somehow as flavorless as my mind portrayed them, but still....

I suppose I could look up their names and post them under the picture, but the difficulty of putting the right name with the right face kind of wears me out.

I do remember that the teller who waited on me in the bank this morning had a lovely face and smile and delivery. She was, in my eye, a looker with substance: Mrs. Chu. Oh well, I guess I'm a sucker for orientals.

snakes in the mail

A parcel full of live venomous snakes, tarantulas and Asian forest scorpions has been intercepted by customs authorities after they x-rayed a box marked “two pair shoes”.
An international mail room in Melbourne discovered 11 snakes, nine tarantulas and four scorpions in the package, sent from northern Europe, on Monday.

Syria/(U.S.?) gas attacks?

A suspected chemical gas attack in Syria has left an estimated 58 people dead -- 11 of them children.

The U.S. has been quick to criticize such attacks (laid at Syria's door step) in the past. Bombs are bad, but gas is somehow even more inhumane and ungentlemanly.

Of late, the American government which claimed it would displace Syrian President Bashar al-Assad -- who was described in the most demeaning terms as a dictator -- has found itself slowly but surely aligning itself with the dictator it once planned to dislodge.

The Washington Post has reported that the White House was considering a shift in policy toward the nearly two-year-long conflict in Syria and may send the rebels body armor and armed vehicles, and possibly provide military training. According to the report, U.S. officials still oppose providing arms.

Syria ... likely gas attacks ... U.S. allies ... U.S. supports gas attacks it claims to abhor. Of course, "it's not that simple." But in the end, I suspect is is indeed that simple.

cycling around the world

A British adventurer and endurance athlete will test the durability of the human body and mind when he attempts to cycle around the world in 80 days.
His plan is to spend 75 days in the saddle, leaving three days for flights and a couple of contingency days in case something goes wrong.
Beaumont launched his project in London on Sunday, and on Monday is setting off on a practice ride – 3,500 miles around the British coast at “80 days” pace ahead of the circumnavigation attempt in July.

bring in the thugs

-- A regional newspaper in Mexico says the violence against journalists and the lack of punishment for those responsible is forcing it to stop printing.

In an editorial, Norte de Ciudad Juarez said Sunday's print edition would be its last. Its editor said the digital version would also be closed "soon".

-- A Jewish community association in northern Sweden has decided to close following a series of far-right threats, seven years since it opened. Their centre in the town of Umea was targeted with swastikas and daubed with messages like "we know where you live", and a car was vandalised, TV said. Miroslava Breach, a journalist who worked for the paper in Chihuahua city, was shot dead last month.

Just a couple of stories on the fringes of what passes for news these days ... the impact, whether overt or covert, of white collar and other thugs. In the first story, there is poor reporting: What is the circulation of the paper ... its impact and import? There is no nut graf with the however-fleeting background of the paper: Is it a real paper, or just some piss-'em-off mimeograph looking to get some attention? No matter, in one sense: Thuggery is scary and socially ruinous at whatever level.

And the same is true for the Swedish Jews who, it might be hoped, would look into their own mirror and reflect on the thuggish treatment of Palestinians ... who can be equally adamant and cruel but aren't well enough armed to proffer much kindness.

The thugs make their mark. The newly-constituted U.S. State Department has yet to hold a press conference in the wake of Donald Trump's ascendancy. While it can only be a precursor to the war the U.S. slips into, still the State Department offers some cushioning when the aging white men pretend to reshape the government. Now, after some prodding, the vehicle for trial balloons and potential policy and saber rattling appears to be back on track.

Washington (CNN) -- The State Department on Friday announced a date for resuming press briefings, after an unusual six-week hiatus.

The thugs wash up on the earth's low-tide shores like Evian water bottles in the bay. Piracy is apparently being refreshed in Somalia. The thugs are getting their way, but will they like what they get. If they win, will they actually win?

Piracy off the Somali coast - usually for ransom - has reduced significantly in recent years, in part because of extensive international military patrols as well as support for local fishing communities. At the height of the crisis in 2011, there were 237 attacks and the annual cost of piracy was estimated to be up to $8bn (£7bn) .... Somalia is currently in the grip of a famine.

In Japan, whose shit, if you ask the ruling class, does not stink (like that of the U.S.), the resurgence of a military capacity is on the rise once more.

Perhaps a starting point would be to differentiate the thugs from the thugs during the mounting, far-flung accretions. Good luck with that. I've got better things to do, some of them more worrisome than a Jesuitical parsing of 'thugs' Mine is precisely the kind of agenda the thugs count on as they steal ships and amass territory and threaten others under the color of decency and safety.
 

time for a little timelessness

John Harrison's Marine Timekeeper No 1 solved the longitude problem

In fact, there is no such thing as "the correct time".
Like the value of money, it's a convention that derives its usefulness from widespread acceptance by others.

A nice article from the BBC dances around the maypole of "time." On the one hand, it takes time to read. On the other hand, since time is a believer's construct, it takes no time at all.

social hour in the barn

Google photo

Being a sunny day, my wife drove and we stopped off at the vocational school's barn where the doors are open and I could visit with the animals. A caretaker was mucking out the space where five of six Angus cows were penned and patient, replacing floor covering with sparkling fresh wood shavings. He had already done the same for the nearby goats. Judging by the slow movement and slow munching, everyone had recently been fed and their jaws moved rhythmically, with scant interest left over for my smoothing, patting hands. Only the sheep, and those the littlest ones, brayed like liberals at my approach. The horses paid me the courtesy of taking a the handsful of fresh hay I yanked from nearby bales and offered.

I talked idly with the caretaker about the benevolence of vocational schools, of kids coming face to face with something gut-level real and of how annoyed I can get when the gown aspect of my community can look down on the townies who learn about land and responsibility. He had brought up four kids, all of them townies, and they were all college grads and that with honors. He told me that the cattle would dress out at about 60% of their current weight ... big heads and asses accounted for the loss in slaughtering.

I tested my feeling about voke schools on him -- that those whose hands are more compelling than their need for sonnets, can find something they love and then, because loving something drags any (wo)man deeper and deeper into the object of that love and like as not sets them on a path that includes a college education. Up the street from me, for example, a once-boy who positively hated books and book-learning found himself deeply in love with glass-blowing ... the sheer-ass artistry and beauty and creativeness of it all. Loved it.

But -- heads-up to the college-devoted -- there came a point where he wanted to commit his life to what he loved and in order to blow glass, in order to love fully and well, he was forced by the nature of the beast to go to college and learn the chemistry and physics that are part of glass-blowing. He went, he learned what love demanded he learn, and today he blows glass. Smarmy love is a step or two distant from knock-you-on-you-ass love.

I suppose those who go to college must in some proportion follow the same part in the opposite direction -- put up or shut up -- but their arrogance in the meantime can arouse the desire to punch someone in the nose.

Anyone can shovel shavings, it's true, but the notion that shaving-shoveling is somehow less (or more) that the wisdom and beauty of John Milton ... that's a speed bump worth getting over.

I suppose my out-loud theorizing was something the caretaker knew all about, but he also knew the patience of the Angus or the horse and he let this talking mule talk on. He said his piece when it was his turn and after a while I stopped nagging him with obvious shit.

internet selling of customers' data

Comcast Corp, Verizon Communications Inc and AT&T Inc said Friday they would not sell customers’ individual internet browsing information, days after the U.S. Congress approved legislation reversing Obama administration era internet privacy rules.

Internet kerfuffles leave me out of breath and confused, but if I get this correctly, consumers are now forced to rely on the integrity of internet service providers as distinct from relying on the rule of law. The big companies are free to find loopholes that will provide more money in future. This opening can be laid at the Republican doorstep, as usual: It repeals regulations without considering the impact even on individuals who voted for a right-wing menu.

I do wonder if the Trump administration will EVER lay out a policy it hopes to pursue in place of picking its aging teeth on Obama's substantive efforts.

GoFundMe request for Angus

My son, Angus, far left, has set his sights on coaching track at an advanced level. He has gathered kudos up to this point in his career, but needs to get his ticket punched still further. This entails, among other things, a must-show-up, advanced-certification trip to California that is explained in the GoFundMe request for $1,500.

I don't say I want to get rid of my son, but I do say I want to support him. Thanks for whatever you might contribute.

Laughing on April 1

Sea Horse Racing is included in a compendium of April Fools' contributions in Great Britain.

None of it is quite so funny since Donald Trump turned the White House into Clusterfuck International.

no April Fools in Serbia

"Have you tasted the sauerkraut?"

What does it say about a country, specifically its politicians, when one of the three leading election contenders is a satirical candidate?

Going into the final days of campaigning, Ljubisa Preletacevic is vying with well-established political players in the race to become Serbia's next president....
The ever-present white suit and his nickname, "Beli" (white), also cock a snook at politicians who promise probity on the campaign trail, but head straight for the trough once elected.
In contrast, Preletacevic and his cohorts brazenly commit to making false promises. One particularly eyebrow-raising proposal was a plan to open a euthanasia department for pensioners in a local hospital, to cut down on the cost of care for the elderly....
The parody struck such a chord that Preletacevic's SPN party, which stands roughly for "Have You tasted the sauerkraut?" has become the biggest opposition grouping on Mladenovac council, with 12 seats.

I don't know if Serbia celebrates April Fools' Day, but they sure put up a good front. Strange to think it, but the satirical takes on the news -- notably John Oliver from where I sit -- are increasingly more credible than the analyses of 'thoughtful' pundits. Might as well laugh at least if you want to stanch the tears.

publishing politicians' browsing history

The presentation may be a bit sketchy, but the substance is worth the wading ...

U.S. president's fraud adjudicated

SAN DIEGO (AP) -- A judge on Friday approved an agreement for President Donald Trump to pay $25 million to settle lawsuits over his now-defunct Trump University, ending nearly seven years of legal battles with customers who claimed they were misled by failed promises to teach success in real estate....

The Democratic New York attorney general said the ruling "will provide relief - and hopefully much-needed closure - to the victims of Donald Trump's fraudulent university."