Saturday, February 7, 2015

Saturday commute cii: Once more into the breach





   
              Is there any
              way to avoid
              delight in a
              new romance?




































Marionette diplomacy





The Speaker of the United States
is an office, like Chief Justice
of the United States, which is
depicted by our Constitution as
embedded in more than the insti-
tution over which it presides. 

In the case of the Speaker, the
office is third in line of suc-
cession to the Presidency of the
United States.

We discovered recently, how much
the present Speaker is willing
to transform that office into
one dancing on the strings of a
foreign nation. He has done no
favour to that nation, while the
Speaker is revealed as unworthy
of this one, and a grave risk to
the foundation of our relations
with any nation that would com-
ply with this happening to us.

If the foundation of Never again
is the right of national self-
determination, it's a pity that
the Speaker doesn't care for it.

Meanwhile, the sordid excuses
of his Party for this treason
embrace that odd entanglement.
We don't go too far to identify
their brownshirt politics with
irony.


















Friday, February 6, 2015

Suppose it were Friday ci: Paean to the pampas





 The Dutch in old Amsterdam
 do it,
 Not to mention the Finns,
 Folks in Siam do it,
 Think of Siamese twins.






  





  Some Argentines, without means,
  do it

  People say, in Boston, even beans
  do it ..


 It's Friday, the moon 
 is still very large, 
 and the skies truly
 brighten in the cold 
 of the evening. It is 
 impossible to ignore 
 a ribald, irreverent, 
 rabelaisian charge we
 blame on the air. One
 likes about this, not
 the science for it -
 which is there - or
 the endearing euphem-
 ism about it - which
 is rampant - but the
 celebration of affec-
 tion for a flux, much
 under stress. Let us,
 by all means, fall in 
 love. It is on the air.




               But when the thermometer goes way up
               And the weather is sizzling hot,
               Mister Gob
               For his squab,
               A marine
               For his queen,
               A G.I.
               For his cutie-pie
               Is not,
               'Cause it's too, too,
               Too darn hot ..




















Paul Barge

Cole Porter
Let's Do It,
  Let's Fall in Love
Warner Brothers, 1928©
Kiss Me, Kate
  Too Darn Hot
Cole Porter, 1949©

Robert Kimball
  editor
Cole Porter: Selected Lyrics
American Poets Project
op. cit.







Thursday, February 5, 2015

Gérard and the conservation of sport





      The sibilant grip of Keds
      on planks, their echo upon
      the humid tiles of scholas-
      tic gyms, and a well-tuned
      bounce of the precisely in-
      flated toy were nothing to
      Gérard, next to the fric-
      ative gasp of the net's de-
      light to disgorge a swish-
      ing dunk. But they were at-
      tuned completely to his
      pleasure. What drove Gé-
      rard to relocate basket-
      ball practice to the lobby
      was certainly not the cold
      comforts of its travertine.


It was, that with its lower baskets and shal-lower court distances, the lobby remedied the absurd eugenic descent of the game into a curiosity shop for hyped extrem-ities, now normalised in favor of everyone's dis-play of its underlying skills: playing fair. 


                  As in his all-nighter in the 
                  loading dock, Gérard's public-
                  spirited gesture was met with 
                  patronising bafflement, at his 
                  chronic maladjustment to decay.





  

















Wednesday, February 4, 2015

Origins of Wednesday xii: L'amour, the insanity defense






  I'd be prepared to be a
  good deal merrier, giv-
  en the nature of my pri-
  vate day. But who knew?
  The week was not 2 days
  old when the Republican
  leadership disseminated
  its telltale vapours of
  superstition - against
  this time - and steeped
  themselves in their 56th
  vote in the lower house
  against a right of ac-
  cess to health insur-
  ance, against 12 million
  new subscribers. Fumings
  of tropical tie-bred um-
  brage, our ick factor in
  excelsis: the ooze was on.





  Fumes we could chew, to 
  make even a Dixie carbon
  fetishist blush, signal-
  ling that the Party's
  infamous insanity test
  for leadership had come
  full circle as an insan-
  ity defense, for wanking
  on C-SPAN -- to reward,
  they were reported say-
  ing, their base. But we
  hear our priests, a fair
  amount, denouncing their
  flock as a temptress. Can 
  no one advise them, that
  with a foreplay this ad-
  vanced already, by St Val-
  entine's Day, there'll be
  too few left to deceive?



























Taylor Cowan

United States capitol
The Washington Post©
30 January 2015







Tuesday, February 3, 2015

Monday, February 2, 2015

Too bad we have Gail Collins





  I just wanted to say,
  before it becomes im-
  polite ever to extract
  humor again, from for-
  getting what one had
  been going to say, I
  still enjoy the mind-
  sweeping calamity of



  comic writing. Period.
  Zip excuses. Gail Col-
  lins, a publishing
  phenomenon using the
  suspiciously allit-
  erative name of a
  possibly real person,
  can sometimes make
  one weep in gales of
  laughter's misadven-
  ture, forgetfulness.

  I do sense, we're ap-
  proaching the end of
  permission for such
  interferences, so for
  now I hope collisions 
  of drone pizzas con-
  tinue to splat us o-
  verhead, as quoting
  Republicans verbatim
  sprinkles tears of
  levity, our way






















Gail Collins
The Days of Wine
  and Droning
The New York Times©
29 January 2015







Sunday, February 1, 2015

Super is the bowl






 The game hadn't 
 lurched so deep
 as into its first
 broadcast breast, 
 as Gérard withdrew 
 for residue's dis-
 patch, of sole pâté 
 of dubious and an-
 tiquated catch.

 Oh, my. But this 
 is Arizona. One
 can doze things
 off beneath the
 stars. 






























Stair machine








I'm not sure one really does want 
a domestic architecture to exhibit 
torsion and strain of articulation, 
in its celebration of materials. 

Sometimes one likes a stair to lend
a rhythm of some calm, and less an 
air of compulsion.

































Michelangelo Antonioni
Marcello Mastroianni
Jeanne Moreau
1961