Saturday, June 6, 2015

No pictures, thanks






                   Spare us this day your trav-
                   eling puerile politicians.

                   Ask what happened. Why do we
                   recoil from the fêted day of
                   so much undoubted virtue?























Jack Rans








Friday, June 5, 2015

Suppose it were Friday cv: Getaways gone by





   Thornhill's summer villa once
   had seemed to him commodious.
   Where had he stored his ample 
   cache, of Archie comic books?






















Thursday, June 4, 2015

What I love about my spiffy "jeu d'adresse"





     .. is that I can get an
     app that will guide the
     little ball to the hole
     for me. Mitch McConnell
     eat your heart out. 

















The seduction of boys ix: Habits and habitat





    The cult for this practice
    persists on the strength of
    substantial disinformation -
    indeed, as a matter of taste-
    ful avoidance. How wittily
    this practice clothes, com-
    ports, and compartmentalises
    itself, to gain the favours
    of the nursery's unquestion-
    ing ornamentation. An envir-
    onment beyond decoration im-
    parts a gaiety unsustainable.

    What darlinger enchantment, 
    than Christian soldiers, on-
    ward?

         Once the fighting was over, civilians in Bourcy
         and Noville emerged from their cellars to the
         sight of destruction all around, and the smell
         of damp smoke, carbonised masonry, burned iron
         and the seared flesh of farm animals killed in
         the bombardments. But even the comparative re-
         lief that the shelling had stopped was short
         lived. They found themselves rounded up by one
         of the SS security service groups from the Sich-
         erheitsdienst. Brutal interrogations began, in
         an attempt to identify members of the Belgian
         Resistance and those who had welcomed the Amer-
         icans in September. The SD officials had news-
         paper photographs with them of the event. One
         man in Bourcy, after a savage beating, was tak-
         en outside and killed with hammers. They had
         found a home-made American flag in his cellar.
         The group moved on to Noville where they mur-
         dered seven men, including the priest, Father
         Delvaux, and the village schoolmaster.


    How has Texas so failed us
    in her censorships, as to
    permit Shakespeare anywhere
    near the schools? How has
    her diligence for carnage
    flopped so shabbily, on the
    mattress of prestige? Is it
    possible, why so probable,
    that any family fortunate e-
    nough to limn its garçonnier
    upstairs, will line its lib-
    rary below with Morocco-bound
    out of the water?





                    .. He's here in double trust;
         First as I am his kinsman and his subject,
         Strong both against the deed; then as his host,
         Who should against his murderer shut the door,
         Not bear the knife myself.




























Antony Beevor
Ardennes 1944
  Hitler's Last Gamble
Penguin Group
Viking, 2015©

William Shakespeare
Macbeth
  I, vii
op. cit.

ii  René Burri©
     Beirut, 1991







Wednesday, June 3, 2015

Mrs Clinton has gone down to Texas


        And may God speed her journey,
        need we beg, for some gushings
        of her sustenance?

        No. The very appropriate reflex
        against this metaphor is rather
        shopworn in the instance of two
        infinitely thirsty craviours of
        big money - sniff it, cash - we
        knew in the previous century,
        back now to assert progressiv-
        ism's rightful claims.

        I think the Democratic Party, 
        of Jefferson and Roosevelt,
        must be able to come up with
        one viable chalice of progress
        less anguished by a personal
        thirst. We don't expect eleg-
        ance of Clintonism's duet, but
        a slight deference to decorum
        is seldom unreasonably amiss.
        The vessel, after all, gives.
        It doesn't imbibe for itself.

        Even then, what progress is
        it, to put the Female Face
        of that fetish, forward? Is
        it congenial, to that end-
        lessly deferred incarnation 
        of liberation's dreams, to
        put forth a co-dependent of
        unregulated slush?

        I beg your pardon, to lack
        a picture to do justice to
        the matter. Who could have
        supposed such professional
        beneficiaries had crept a-
        board the Ark, much less a
        pair from our own species?








        


















Origins of Wednesday xv: metadata






      Set of data that describes
      and gives meaning to other
      data. 

      We were born to a world in
      which the presumptions of
      this neologism would have 
      been deemed untrustworthy,
      on their face. There is no
      algorithm capable of that
      penetration.

      A hypothesis, you say. So
      was the soccer moms' argu-
      ment for barring time.

      Power must always dread,
      one day its claimants
      will, themselves, repudi-
      ate it: mature, reclaim
      risk. Apostasy, peres-
      troika, dreaming aloud,
      the testimony of shells,
      the cry of shore birds,
      always come at low tide.

      But they're there.





      








































Tuesday, June 2, 2015

Algeciras






   Algeciras! A cruel hand
   dealt by the Almighty to
   set a Spanish anchorage
   six miles off Gibraltar.

   Our ball and chain, our
   nemesis, our xenophobes'
   redoubt, our unlamented
   Dixie will restore us 
   to total surveillance,
   for the going price. A
   hyper-investment in the
   warfare state has given
   us hyper-investment in
   what we call smart mon-
   ey will not roll over.

   You know guns? Finance
   is a gun. Politics is 
   knowing when to pull  
   the trigger.






















Pellew to Horatio
Horatio Hornblower
  The Fire Ships
Meridian Broadcasting (UK)
1998©

Don Lucchesi to Vincent
Godfather III
Francis Ford Coppola and
  Mario Puzzo, screenplay
Paramount (USA)
1990©








Monday, June 1, 2015

First June in a long time






    Pretty cool. Woke up this morning
    to the first June when the govern-
    ment of the United States was not
    allowed by its people's represent-
    atives to scoop up every single
    telephone communication they make
    without showing reasonable cause
    to a magistrate of some character.

    Not that they aren't, of course.

    So, I think the way to celebrate
    here is to ignore that medium en-
    tirely for this June 1st, and let
    them exult in their fears, over 
    how we all are spending our time.
    Let their circuits tremble.



















Egor Venned





Sunday, May 31, 2015

Terrarium





     Rooftops, sidewalks,
     catwalks, scaffolds.
     You find, they will
     climb anything.