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

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?

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

    with illuminated fantasies,

    upstairs, will line its lib-

    rary below with Morocco-bound

    birthrights that blow them

    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

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.

      

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

   the panic state, and

   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©

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

Terrarium

     Rooftops, sidewalks,

     catwalks, scaffolds.

     You find, they will

     climb anything.