Starting My First Novel

It was a dark and stormy night.

[No.]

The night was dark, so very dark, and quite stormy. ... It -- by which is meant the night -- was stormy and dark. ... The darkness of the night was so dark, and the storminess made the darkness seem that much darker and more nightlike.

[Yikes. It just gets worse.]

Dark and stormy, the night screamed like a ravished virgin. ... The dark, stormy night ranted madly in a barometric tantrum.

[Ugh.]

It was an ebonic nocturnal tempest. ... The stygian typhoon of eventide...

[No, no, no.] 

Prosopopeic fuliginous Nyx, enceinte as it were with lachrymal lamia farouche as Hecate, disbosomed upon her terrene demiorb an empyreal borasque.

[Huh?]

Dark storm roiled through the night, stirring up ghosts untroubled since pagan times

[Pagans?! At least it isn't pirates.]

Dark the night was, and stormy -- aye.

[Dang.]

O Thou, Night of Dark Storm, whither goest? -- whence cometh thine exudations of witching Strife?

[Unbe-freakin-lievable.]

It all started on a dark night that was stormy.

[Um ... no.]

I never would, or could, have dreamed, or believed, that anything like it could ever have had happened, to somebody, anybody at all, really, such as myself, but, man, oh, man, believe you me, it really, truly, did happen, and not too very long ago, either, and, not only that, but, also, what’s more, it happened to me, too, one dark, and stormy, night!

[Ack!!]

"Take me! Take me now, you big man!" moaned Stormie Knight darkly as she threw herself panting and naked onto the hot wet sand.

[Hmm. I'll deal with this later.]

The night swayed into my office on dark clouds like your mother never wanted you to see. A lacy froth of storm just barely held back the thrusting silky light of the soft, full moon. Brother, could I feel the wind rising, and how.

[How ... noir.]

Dark, stormy night rolled madding over the wuthering moor, heedless of the heather blooms.

[Yeah, great -- and here’s Heathcliff wending soulfully through the tuffets.]

Darkness muffled the stormy night, damping dreams as well as earth.

[...and breeding lilacs out of the dead land.]

It was the best of dark and stormy nights, it was the worst of dark and stormy nights.

Once upon a dark and stormy night dreary, while I pondered weak...

To be a dark and stormy night, or not to be a dark...

Let us go then, you and I, when the dark and stormy night is spread out against the sky... 

Call me a dark and stormy night.

Mother died today, or maybe last dark and stormy night -- I can't be sure. 

These are the dark and stormy nights that try men’s souls. 

In the beginning, it was a dark and stormy night.

~~~~~

It hadn’t rained for months, and the hard bright sunlight streaming all day through the window was harsh enough finally to kill the fat angry fly that clattered around in the dry air like a broken shopping cart. But now the sun had fallen, and night with it. Somewhere out of the Pacific, storm clouds crept through the darkness and laid hold of the sky. 

Rain was falling. 

It was almost comical, slopping down in a deliberate drench. I could picture the dark fairies hidden just above the backdrop of the clouds, giggling and snorting to each other, gleeful with malice, scooping out great wooden bucketfulls from the waters of the firmament. You just don’t expect government workers to try so hard. A light mist, a drizzle, maybe even a few scattered showers. The minimum, just to meet the quota. Certainly nothing as exuberant as this. 

I smiled. Odd, how we smile outloud. Even when a man's so sick of himself he can barely breathe, he still acts out his little pantomimes. No one’s there, no one watching, no audience. Yet he talks to himself, smiles when he's alone. His inner life spills out, overflows, too much to be contained. Witness me, O Creation! I’m so interesting! 

No one’s watching. No flies, no peeping toms, no fairies or angels or demons or ghosts. I didn’t see any. Well, maybe ghosts. 

And still the rain falls. 

I was in my office. I’d just wrapped up the Svenson case, and for the past few days I found myself with nothing to do. I was out of whiskey. I lit another cigarette. It was a dark and stormy night. 

A knock sounded at the door. Goodness, who can it be at this late hour? ...



J

The T Word

So today there was yet another terror attack in London.  I only caught the end of the news report, but no mystery about filling in the blanks.  Mere details.  Only four dead -- not sure if the mystery person is counted among them.  Yes, it is a mystery.  Who, who, who could it be?  A middle-aged female dental hygienist?  A rogue Eagle Scout from Texas?  Only time will tell.

The official-sounding statement from the government referenced rule of law and tolerance and never succumbing and never being totally wiped out.  All very fine.  But it set a train of thought rolling.

An easy point, but I have a good example.  There is no place  for a mention of tolerance in a situation like this.  Tolerance can only refer to something that is obnoxious.  Nothing neutral can be tolerated.  So where exactly, here, would tolerance fit?  Nowhere.  Regardless of how merely annoying we find something, terrorism is of a different order.  The good example is this:  we do not tolerate the fact that one cloud, this one, has a different shape than another, that one. There may be a preference, somehow -- but how could there be any aversion? We tolerate that someone is kicking the back of our chair, or speaking in a loud rude voice.

We tolerate the fact that abortionists kill human fetuses legally.  Ah, the wacky irony -- destroy a bald eagle egg and you go to the penitentiary.  Truth is funnier than fiction.

So far, as with eagle eggs, we do not tolerate the actual exploits of terrorists.  We do tolerate their presence, in obvious potential.   We tolerate the individuals on our watch lists.

We somehow didn't die from our staple diet of poison.  I wonder if we will recover?


J

* A Reminder:

YT

[And because I seem to be in a mood to reminisce, remember Beslan?  Which earned its place of honor in the Annals of the Heroes of Islamism by virtue of its convenient and easy accessibility?]

=====

Beslan. As a tourist spot it makes a great train station.

But people of a certain description looked upon it as a marvelous land of opportunity. Here's what they did with the school's gym:
That's an explosive charge hanging between the hoops. Hope nothing happens.



Oops. Hope it wasn't on purpose.



Well, maybe she's crying about her job?



Oh.







How we cling to each other.



And to God.



Does it do any good?


*****


Beslan

Such passion is normal, and stirs the
blood like wine – think of it as exercise.
And yes that is blood, but after all, death is just
a part of the great circle anyway.
And it’s an interesting anatomy
lesson – look at the ears, look at the spine.
And look at the foolishness in the fingers of his right hand.

Well, no matter: because there is no evil,

this

never happened.


[9/7/04]

______



Sometimes I do go a little mad.

Forgive me for that, will you?


J

aMERICA fIRST

Even when he's wrong, Charles Krauthammer is worth reading.  As with Trump.  I disengaged for several presidential cycles, not wishing to witness the ongoing sodomistic gangbanging of America.  Now this leftist ritual occurs only in the inner city and on uni campuses and on CNN and MSNBC and the NYT and the Post and, and, you know, those sorts of places.  It's not coming from the Executive Mansion, is my point.  Krauthammer should be doing backflips.  Oh.  Well, in an ideal world he should be.  But that is also the point.  It's not an ideal world, and we must must must be grovel-grateful for those blessing that harm us but do not kill us.

These  sausage-skinned commissars who have hacked their way to legislative preeminence  are to be excused.  They are evil and stupid, and irredeemably given over to their hatreds. It's understandable, and to be overlooked.  They must have been abused as children.  Obama could not help it.  He came from a broken home, abandoned by his father and brainwashed in a madras -- you'd be crazy too.  And after all, pernicious parasites and toxic bacilli do have their place in the scheme of things.  We have to die of something.  Overpopulation is as great a hazard as Climatechange, and never truer words were spoken than these, that humanity is a carbon-generating virus.  So fire fights fire.  Hantavirus to counter Humavirus.  Obviously.

Therefore it's not completely crazy to hate America and humanity, and love welfare queens and drug dealers and abortionists.  There is a non-Aristotelian logic to it, dispensing with observation and evidence and organization, and trusting in the heart and the innate goodness of all people who are minorities or liberals.  (I realize that I'm being self-contradictory, but only a denier would have a problem with that.)

Krauthammer, on the other hand, doesn't have the excuse of being irrational.  So he must have other reasons for being, to my eye, resolvedly against Trump.  He does not couch his criticism in emotional terms.  From what I've read and seen, he objects to Trump's character.  Well, so do I.  

Trump's character is a caricature -- equivalent to a stump-fingered cigar-chomping plutocrat in a top hat.  Not that, but equivalent.  He's a vulgarian who actually paid his own money for a gold-plated toilet seat in his jet.  To which I reply, so what.  Not my concern.  I can see better uses for the money, but he earned it.  Is he an adulterer?  I don't know.  The question is moot, thanks to bill clinton.  Does he lie, or hyperbolize, or whatever the word may be?  That's how he is, and it will not change.  The response to that objection is well-known by now: Trump-deniers take him literally but not seriously, realists take him seriously but not literally.

Where is Krauthammer, here?  He makes a point of objecting to Trump's 'America First' trope -- the objection being, primarily I suppose, the historical implications of that term.  Lindbergh and the American isolationists of the Hitler era.  What is that, nearly 80 years ago?  Too soon?  Someone pointed out that a Hillary slogan was 'Stronger Together' -- which was Mussolini's fascist motto.  (Literally: the bundled sticks of the fasces gave fascism its very name -- they are, you see, forti insieme.)  The rePress didn't condescend to endlessly echo that coincidence -- too diligently  emphasizing how deplorable were and remain a  largest minority of the American voting population.

What ever shall the World think of us, with our yellow-comb-overed commantweeter-in-chief, with his long red ties and his flapping lapels?   I imagine, Dr. Krauthammer, that they will think what they always have: America is gauche and callow and careless and wasteful, and to be resented for our history and our wealth and our arrogance -- and to be relied on when there is need.  Trump is implying, sometimes, that such a need may not be answered, next time.  Gratitude and actual tokens of friendship may be required, first or concomitantly.  You know, as if there were negotiations and treaties and mechanisms of enforcement and accountability for deceit.

I don't have a problem with this.  I don't care if Trump brags about the size of his hands (and by implication of his penis).  I don't care if it is a comb-over or just an incredible simulation.  I don't care if Mexico pays for a wall or not.  I do care that just laws be enforced, and that the Constitution be the supreme law of the land, and that those whom we have privileged with elective office jealously guard the letter and meaning of that document.

It is my belief, based not on campaign hyperbole -- best understood as opening negotiation bids -- but upon the spate of lawful exercises of power via executive order, undoing the extremities of the preceding antinomian regime, that Trump has the makings of a truly great president.

Odd.  Odd.  I never would have thought so.  We are only a week in.  Far too soon for anything but careful observation and assessment.  Not trust, yet.  Not hope.  But, yes, most definitely, change.

I've already thanked God for not-Hillary.  Now, tentatively, thank God for change.


J

Hogmanay

Who'da thunk it.  Jews thinking Alsace-Lorraine was their homeland.

Obama cannot stand idly by while Israel commits the human rights genocidal atrocity of building/maintaining settlements on 'occupied' land.  Well, honestly, if it weren't occupied, if no one were using it, it wouldn't matter.   But no.  It must matter, as everything matters.  Feelings matter.  Trivia matters.  Barren rocky wastes matter.  Like, this empty occupied territory (occupied doing what, you may wonder?  You are a hater ) was  empty, prior to its Israeli usage.  But no it wasn't.  After all, fellah wasteland has its usage.  Um, someplace to walk across.  Um, someplace to lose your goats into.  Um, something to separate your tent villages.  See?  Useless land has many usages.  It could be a worldheritagesite.

Obama finally got off the pot and pissed in the pool.  His spokesperson ernestly asseverates  that no american administration in the history of the 5500 years of the world has ever done as much for Israel as Barack Haman Obama.  And if the First Amendment teaches us anything, it's that we must respect islam. So the UN issued its unvetoed protocol against the elders of zion, while Obama looked on  approvingly like a roman at a crucifixion.  It's the least a good friend, the best, could do.  Also the most.  As the past ate years ... no, eaten, as by locusts ... have demonstrated, if there's one thing Obama knew how to do, it was being proactive in standing by.  Ukraine and Libya and Syria and Egypt and on and on -- examples of the masterful inaction that has made this a golden age of racial harmony and cooling seas.  

Thus it is with ejaculatory relief that we bid 2016 a fraught farewell.

We know not what the new year will bring.  Trump is a bit of a worry to me, in that I am not convinced he apprehends the nature of the former USSR and its current hetman supreme.  I have no specific insight into Putin, because I don't follow the details.  I know his grandfather was the head cook in the early Soviet Kremlin.  And I have an awakened interest in Stalin, and now Lenin.  Hitler is easy to understand.  So is Obama.  And I assume Putin is what he appears to be.  Thus I doubt that any mere american business man, or politician, can competently deal with the latest tsar.  Reagan seems to have understood.  Roosevelt appears utterly to have not.  Neither Truman.

Same with the caliphate.  We are such a simple people.  My expectation is that almost nobody in the 5500 years of the world dies in peace of old age in their beds.  Statistically speaking.  So if Trump, in the end, turns out to be just another guy who wants to be liked -- we are doomed.  In a different way than the surefire doom of Obillary.

But right now we are not doomed.  For once it's a new year that truly is a new start.  Good or bad, it's good.  We'll see if it's bad.  At least there will be an america.  Perhaps no longer the real america, exceptional, naive and idealistic, secular savior and unworthy but earnest child of blessing.

Eight years, then, of being the battered spouse.  We'll see how much we can recover -- indeed, we'll find whether or not we have escaped from Sodom, or fled far enough.  Question is, why were we ever there.


J

* Whiteface

YT

Blackface is of course utterly outré.  And there's just no need for it.  Plenty of talented africans to fill appropriate roles.  And what is an appropriate role?  Any non-specific role -- you know, for a human being.  Also a specifically african role, like Harriet Tubman or MLK jr.  But what about Brownface, or Yellowface, or Whiteface?  I just don't see the need for a hispanic to play a hispanic role.

Is that insensitive and racist of me?  Well, I have a right to be racist and insensitive. That's what freedom is -- the right -- not the necessity -- to be offensive.  Civility and good-breeding should daub up the cracks, and tolerance -- actual tolerance, for what is obnoxious -- will cover the rest.  It is pathetic that we need to remind them of this -- the opposite of freedom is coercion.

But to return to the matter.  I think it's racist to require that actors play only their own race. Pace the Huntington Post, with its blindside racism. Thus, the Globe Theatre's casting of a black youngster as  Romeo.  He's just too earnest and breathy and smiling to be pleasing, and the ahistoricity of it is jarring to me -- call me a bigot -- but to our modern sensibilities there's nothing necessary in Romeo's being white.  Same sort of casting in the most recent film of As You Like It.  And there's a Midsummer Night's Dream  with an african female.  We just have to redefine the meaning, when she is called "fair".  Fair enough.  Off hand  I don't recall any BBC attempt to cast an asian in a comparable speaking part.  Odd.

Point is, any nose-shape, any length of hair, any mere detail of physicality need have no impact on the role.  So, a dwarf as One of the  Gentlemen of Verona?  Nowadays there are some excellent little person actors.  No need to cast them as weird dream visions, or as comedy props.  Once you're not an adolescent any more, the old funnyman references to midgets just isn't funny, man.  They're depending on the condition itself to be the joke.  Lazy hack stuff.  

Like old-time radio with its dialect humor.  Italian and Irish and Jewish -- it was a SCREAM.  Deadly unfunny, to us.  Tastes change.  The essence of humor is surprise -- witness the hilarity to an infant of peekaboo -- and the surprise of such differences as dialect has worn off.  Thank heaven.

And hispanic is such a mixed bag, that just about anyone could play it.  I'm about the only exception -- tall lanky blue-eyed blond.  Africans can play hispanic.  Asians can play hispanic.  Europeans can play hispanics.

And given the wide phenotype of american blacks, do we really truly need only ethnically african american actors to play such roles?  Well, as an affirmative action thing, sure, maybe.  It's not like there have been that many non-musician/criminal roles open to blacks.  Fortunately the audacity of hope has changed that forever.

---  

But I do have two issues.  First, asians.  In olden days, honestly, when an asian actor was cast in a movie or early tv, it was more because they were asian, than because they were good actors.  You do know what I mean, hurt though your sensitivities may be.  Same with giants -- Richard Kiel was okay, but no great shakes as an actor.  Same  with little people -- they got the role because they fit the part physically.  Michael Dunn, as an obvious exception.  Sociological reasons for all of this -- lack of encouragement to even find out if you were a good actor, if a minority. Toshio Mori's "Japanese Hamlet" touches on this theme.

I suppose that's mostly in the past, now, although these Hollywood lefties are as racist as any clansman.  Good roles, you know, go to our people.  Crossburning, or speech codes ... means of control.  (I know, I'm evil for saying it.  I should be stopped.  Opinioncrime (henceforth, opincrim) is not to be tolerated.)

Of course, no one could have been less talented than Micky Rooney as Mr. Whoever in Breakfast at Tiffany's. Any asian off the street who could find his mark and remember lines would have been as good, or as bad. You'd have thought someone in the studio might have seen that. But they still had blackface in the 50s, so, uh, there. 

Peter Lorre could, uh, pass, as Mr. Moto.  But Boris Karloff and Christopher Lee ... and Glen Gordon -- as Fu Manchu?  Ah, so.  It's a great character.  Unnecessary casting, though.  Warner Oland?  He was a freakin swede.  John Wayne as Genghis Khan -- famously awesome.  Nuff said.

But my real question is really an answer to the PC lefty racists.  How have europeans been portrayed, in asian productions?  Well, originally, at first contact, we have this:

Slightly demonic.

It was hard to get the eyes right:

And the nose was a problem:

But it started to come together:

Hey, foxy lady -- come here often?

And by the time Commodore Perry hove to, we get the idea pretty well:

Recognizable.

But that was then and this is now.  I went searching to see if there were any scholarly or journalistic studies of how europeans have fared in the past hundred years or so.  Crickets.  Something must exist, but not in the first few pages of google -- and how could anybody be expected to look further than that?  Be sensible.  Get a grip.

My deep expectation is that we -- and by we I mean normal people ... you know, tall lanky blue-eyed blonds -- have been portrayed by ethic asians, in asia.  Mostly.  I have only one bit of evidence for my intractably-firm opinion.  Something I saw a few years ago, to my delight.

Look familiar?

I will never be convinced but that this is meant to represent my people.  A few more inches in the nose, please.  Just think about pulling taffy, and you'll get it right.  Haw haw haw.

So the next time some lefty hack racemonger complains about, well, what else, it will be easy and useless to suggest that, yes, true, america sucks, but so does everywhere else.


J

5500

Somebody found me years ago via a newly upped Facebook account, and that networked into a number of high school contacts.  So that's just about all FB is to me -- people whose names I remember from 40 years ago.  Haven't seen any of them since. But I get email notifications of status or comments or whatever.  I'm not interested enough to master the details -- not even to inform myself of them.  But the little email snippet, about the "5500 year history of the planet" for xxx -- and I presumed it was Trump -- seemed like my cuppa.  Several days later there appeared a comment button in the email, so I found the, uh, post?  Whatthehellever.

Several of the usual suspects were astounded at how ignorant this adviser was, and thus implicitly Trump, and therefore everyone who did not vote for Hillary.  You know the logic.  All logic after all has its rules, and just as there is Euclidean and non-Euclidean geometry, so there must be Rational and non-Rational logic.  Ergo, we shall call it logic.

I put my toe into that tepid pool, suggesting that a more reasonable understanding of Scaramucci's meaning was not that the planet is 5500 years old, but that history is that old -- you know, like, actual history, with writing?  I made that point, after my fashion. I made the point that honest communication makes a good faith effort at understanding meaning, even in the face of tongue-slips, brain-freezes, and simple mis-speaking.    I got a reply, and there followed a bit of a conversation.

People made their various points, No scientists ever believed the world was flat.  Something about Washington Irving.  Something about Pythagoras.  Therefore Scaramucci was an ignoramus to use that analogy.  I did not pursue it.  Maybe I will.  Point out that the word "scientist" did not even exist until the 1800s.  Prior to that the most apt descriptive term was natural philosopher.  No matter.  No matter that the vast majority of actual people, with their cultures, have believed in a flat earth, China until the last few hundred years.  But it's not about what people used to believe.  It's about what people believe people used to believe -- and it's common knowledge (and in fact correct) that flat earth used to be the norm -- educated people being a vanishingly small minority.  No matter.  Their point was that those who disagree are morons.

 But I don't really want to pursue it.

Oh, wait.  Yes I do.

Hey, stupids!!!!  Yer so dum!!  Cuz yer saying that like history is more than 5500 years old!!! And that means you think people have been on the Planet for 4.5 billion years!!  cuz like that's what history is, about people!!! git it??? cuz otherwise it would be geology or paleontology or stuff like that!!!!

But being me, I did have to look at the context of the statement, and, amidst the usual scathing takedown of how stupid TrumpCo is, we do find, buried at the end, Scaramucci's self-correction -- "5500 years of human history".

Being as I am, however, a man of my flesh, and sodden in the despite of my flawed character, I deign to descend into the realm of feckless quibbling, thus:  You know how they jump on the flat earth idea?  No educated person ever thought the Planet was flat!  They knew it was round!  Ahem.  No, callow youngster, they did not know it was round, since it is not round.  No, they did not know it was a sphere or ball, since it is not a sphere or ball.  It is an oblate spheroid.  How could you be so ignorant?  Oh, you were speaking casually?  HA!!!  EXACTLY!!!  So which are you, an idiot or a hypocrite?

I find I'm too sensitive and obsessive to wish to be exposed to needless wranglings.  But we have to live in the world.  Vicariously, then, I'm exploring hell.  Almost literally.  Reading The Gulag Archipelago.  I remember when its volumes were coming out, all three of them very very long. Madness.  Utterly.  Not beyond imagination, though, since people's thoughts are nothing but imaginings, as their volitional actions arise from such imagination.

And I look at the lefties on facebook, sniping about Trump, and so far he has no power whatsoever, so they are motivated entirely by fear.  Fear of things that do not exist is a neurosis.  It's not a subtle idea.  Islamist terrorism exists,  Trump fascism does not exist.  Prudence is wise.

 Is it Henny Penny or Chicken Little, re a falling sky, or, well, rising sea?  I'll just say it was Chicken Little, and if I'm wrong Facebook can call me a climate-denier.


J

Almost Everyone

Name the four people, living or not, whose bodies (or their ((even future)) substance) are known not to be within the frame of this photo.

Extra credit for a possible/likely fifth.


J

Openly-Straight White Males

In a long boring rote exercise in lefty double-think,  New Yorker contributor David Remnick hacks out a hagiographic apologia for the abysmal Obamination.  Long and boring, yet, paradoxically, a most amazing acrobatic display of submental ratiocination.  Propend:

As recently as early 2015, the Obama Administration had been in a funk. He had underestimated ISIS; Putin had annexed Crimea; Syria was a catastrophe. His relations with the Repuicans [sic] in Congress, especially since the crushing 2014 midterms, were at an impasse. Then, in a single week in June, 2015: the Supreme Court ended years of legal assaults on Obamacare; the Court ruled in favor of marriage equality; and, at a funeral following the murder of nine congregants at a black church in Charleston, Obama gave a speech that captivated much of the country. Rather than focus on the race war that the killer had hoped to incite, he spoke of the “reservoir of goodness” in the living and the dead and ended by singing 'Amazing Grace.'

There it is.  That's it.  Primarily, a record of utterly catastrophic failures in substantive  issues under his purview, but, contrariwise, two Lefty Court rulings (whereby the assaults and the anti-equality were ended), plus a speechification that culminated in Obama singing "Amazing Grace".  Ah!  Redeemed and vindicated!  The years the locusts have eaten were restored.  Putin, captivated, withdrew from ... where ever, ISIS converted to Judaism, and Syria has applied to become a territory of the United States.  Isn't it grand, what a speech and song can accomplish.  Can Trump carry a tune?  I sure does hope so.

All right, I'll admit it -- I didn't read the whole thing.  Did you?  You do it, and tell me if I missed anything.  Well, of course I missed some things.   Any time at all that you avoid an experience, you miss it.  Lessons may be found in any situation at all. I'm surprised you didn't know that already.  You should read more, or go for a walk or something.  Experience life -- live it, don't just twitter your life away.  Honestly.

But all this is but an example of a lesson already learned.  Lies lies lies lies lies.  I've taken again to reading the news -- primarily via RealClearPolitics.  A fair and balanced survey of reputable or influential writings, left and right.  Just the headlines say enough.  'Democrats Need to Focus on the Gut, Not the Head' (Fareed Zakaria, Washington Post);  'The 2016 Election Is a Disaster Without a Moral' (Jonathan Chait, New York Magazine);  'Seduced and Betrayed by Donald Trump'  (Paul Krugman, New York Times); 'Trumped-Up, Trickle-Down Outrage' (Roger Kimball, The New Criterion).  Take a look for yourself.  They've learned nothing at all.  Clichéd attacks and unthoughtful justifications.  The usual suspects.

But I empathize, after my way.  It's difficult to lose what you value.  The Lefties seem to have, perhaps, lost the next four years.  Tell me about it.  What comes after Gay Marriage? -- what's next on the list?  Something mandatory, no doubt.  A chip implant in wrist or forehead?  I haven't heard of any plans, but these things happen fast.  I can't think how, but it would in some way increase equality andor social justice?  We could track polluters and carbon criminals.  (So I could think of how!)  And hate criminals would be exterminated -- we could eradicate the offense offenders.  And it would be good to know where all those openly-straight white males are.  The term, 'Reeducation Camp', has such a possitive ring to it.


J

Gen James Mattis

It is astounding and inexplicable that a nation as unworthy as America should find its secular savior in Donald Trump.  It is not yet proven to be so.  But it could be, might, may be.  Yes, it may be -- it is allowed.

The evidence is not in graceful displays of media savvy, such as a ballyhooed  deal with some AC manufacturer.  A mere 1000 jobs?  Come now.  Picayune.  Why, there are billions of humans on the Planet.  He'd need more than 800 such meager and statistically meaningless coups to match Obama's record, of 17 trillion jobs created in these 59 (fifty-nine) north american states.  True, granted, admitted, it's the beginning of a start of sorts.  But Bush lied.

 Better and truer evidence is in the stellar selection of Mad Dog Mattis to be Secretary of War.  The Heavenly Chorus rejoices!  What.  A.  Man.  He is a rainbow in the sky.  My heart leaps up.  A tingle runs up my soul.  Have your spellchecker learn that name.

Says Stanton Coerr of his first meeting with then-Colonel Mattis, as a newly-minted Marine captain:

He stood to greet me, and offered to get coffee for me. He put a hand on my shoulder; gave me, over my protestations, his own seat behind his desk; and pulled up a chair to the side. He actually took his phone off the hook—something I had thought was just a figure of speech—closed his office door, and spent more than an hour knee-to-knee with me.

This was not a photo op, not about optics or 'sending a message'.  Not a "red-line", not an "I don't bluff".  When I grow up I want to be a man who met a man like this.  What this is, is an example of a very busy man who understands that by investing honest courtesy, extraordinary graciousness, in an initial meeting with a subordinate, he buys and earns the potential for undying and selfless loyalty.  By taking this time, he gives himself the ability to deligate.  His officers will work immeasurably harder, with diligence.   He inspires a yearning in a young man's heart to be worthy of the esteem of his superior.  He ensures that it is not the uniform, but its wearer who is saluted.

Day after day, for years and decades, James Mattis has honed and polished his character so that every honorable man whom he has met will repay such courtesy with the loyalty that is the highest virtue of righteous fighting men.  When Lincoln spoke of consecration by the full measure of devotion -- this is the conduct and character that merits such devotion.

The story is told that after his retirement in 2013, Gen Mattis took a road trip.  He visited all the Gold Star families of the fallen Marines who had served under his command.  He did so alone.  He took pains to avoid all publicity.  That is everything that truly needs to be said, of the character of this man.

There are always such men.  So very rarely are they raised to the truest heights of their ability and worth.  If this be a sign of our future, then, indeed, God has blessed America, and we are mantled in grace.

I had not thought I could any longer weep for the beauty of this nation.

Thank you, Donald Trump.


J

Not My President

Not my country.  Not my concern.

Not my responsibility.

My planet, my environment, my diversity, my emotions, my hysteria, my student debt.

Not my bigotry, my cowardice, my fear, my hypocrisy.  Not my intolerance for intolerance.

Duty?  What's that?  Doody.  That's a funny word.  Poopie.  Hee hee.

Never fracking.  Never plastic bags.  Never Trump.

Not my gender.  Not my masculinity.  Not my penis, large, medium or small -- not whatever standard of preference applies to vaginas.  Not my chest, my breasts. Not my womb.  Not my fetus.  My anus.  My nipples.

Not up or down, yes or no, right or wrong.

No no no no no.

Me.  Only me. Mine.  Me.  Me.


J

Two Problems

By a margin of less than 1% we faced a world without an America.  I'm not sure -- did we dodge a neutrino, or an asteroid.  "Bullet" just doesn't say it.  Now, that fraction of a percent was in the wrong direction -- toward annihilation.  Not the majority of Americans, or of eligible voters, or illegal voters -- but of registered voters who voted ... plus illegal votes, fraud etc.  'Democracy' almost committed suicide.  So, once again, we can thank the Founding Fathers.

Lefties won't see it that way, but that's because the blind cannot see.  See?  The cry, the whine peeps out, direct election.  Win the plurality of the national vote and the office goes to that person.  Someone pointed out that, by such logic, since 3 million more Congressional  votes were cast nationally for Republicans, then all the seats should go to Republicans.  Direct popular national election.  It's a fair comparison.  Of course, it is local districts only that select their representative, and it is states only that cast deciding votes for the presidency.  Individuals vote for Congress, States vote for the President.  Electoral College.  Which just saved America.

I did not expect it.  I had two major problems with Trump.  First, I did not think he was electable.  I am deeply grateful that I was so very wrong (thanks to the Electoral College).  I did not see the complete corruption of the media -- how thoroughly biased and dishonest it was.  Yeah, sure, I knew.  But I didn't.  Lesson learned?  Never never never never ever never ever ever believe them.  They lie lie lie.  There is no news coverage.  It is all a means to an end.

Propaganda only.  It's just hard to comprehend the breadth and depth of it.  Most of it isn't conspiracy.  It's just that they have taken control of those particular controls. It's not that I believed.  But I was prepared to despair.  It was very difficult to contemplate, the death of America.  Like the extinction of the last, great, gigantic sauropod -- or, to avoid the implication of obsolescence, the last, uh, blue whale.  Something huge and grand and noble.  Senselessly shot down dead by the Bluestate Bwanas of the Pink Instrumentality.  America?  Fuck it.  It was difficult.

They did a good job.  Superb.  Created the ideal hothouse to nurse this fainting-couch generation -- coddled and curdled, programmed to succumb either to the vapors or to conniption fits.  Retrograde, then, we go, back to a protoscientific age, Steam-hipsters,  the New Victorians, deeply bigoted idealists, bearing not the White Man's burden, but the Brown/Black/Rainbow Gay ... not so much Yellow ... Man's and Woman's and Transgender's Burden.  No, sorry, I got the order wrong -- start with Transgender, and leave out Man.  I had not thought we could have a cohort more loathsome, more morally derelict  than my own, the Boomers.

I kid, because I love.

My other problem with Trump was the hucksterism -- lowest common denominator, snake-oil salesman just as enthusiastic but less polished than Obama with his announcement of the very moment the rise of the seas began to slow.  Oh, by the way, that moment was in the balmy Denver evening of June 4, 2008.  Obama was chanting to the young, inexperienced, callow of judgment -- idealistic and unpracticed as to the ways of the real world and any actual disappointment re hard work and experience.  So they get a pass, those emoting kids -- a pass for Term One.  Term Two however is without excuse, and they will bear the personal guilt of it as I will never have to deal with the consequences of my own long-ago vote for Dukakis.  We are allowed one and only one aberration into emotional voting (I just did not like the broken 'read my lips no new taxes' promise ... or maybe it was the switch on "Voodoo economics" -- anyways, I'm more pragmatic now).

Trump got it right though.  Americans want stupid.  Stupid Obama promises about the end of racism, and stupid Trump promises about a wall ... etc.  But I can fall back on my old observation, that Americans are stupid because human beings are stupid.   Indeed, there was a point, in my mourning, when I understood as never before the Left's eagerness to denounce America.  Now I too could denounce it.  To elect Hillary?  Dumbfounding.

But we dodged our destiny.  Somehow, God has not allowed us to hand ourselves over to perdition.  Yet.  Yet.

And now I think Trump is done with the disgrace of campaigning.  He is still the apparently thin-skinned tweeter, but this is not substantive.  I am deeply pleased with the talk re his Cabinet.  I would love to see Giuliani and Gingrich and Bolton, etc in power.  Manifestly competent, and I'm past the need for purity. Perhaps Larry Arnn is considered as Sec of Education.  Amazing.

I feel no homoerotic tingle up my leg, as did the Left for Obama.  The post-election Trump so far as I have seen is dignified, serious, and thereby admirable.  Let it be so.

There's quite a bit more I have to say, and if I don't say it now I never may, but we'll just have to see.  I consider myself free of all ethical claims by the world upon myself.  I will do as I please, and you will celebrate my diversity.

Stupid.


J

*Lessons from Etymology

YT

Character is reflected in the words we use.  This is obvious.  More can be made of it than need be there, but this too is obvious.  Indeed, what is not obvious?  If we shunned speaking the obvious, we'd say hardly anything at all.  Obviously.  "Obvious", from the Latin ob, 'against,' and viam, accusative of via, 'road'.  Something that's right in front of you, almost an obstacle -- or a guide post ... let's not be negative.

So, if we, 'we,' are "deplorable," what are they?  Their, her, but their, choice of invective is a mirror not a camera -- disregarding the selfieism of our, your current culture, where cameras are so often about the beholder.  What then do they say about themselves when they call us 'deplorable'?  Latin: de, and plorare, 'to weep, bewail, lament, cry'.  I do not think that they will mourn for us.  So the weeping must be of the more infantile sort.  Cry baby.

How very, very apt.

And I was thinking, what then are they?  What single word describes them? -- character, conduct ... understanding what that word-choice will say about me.  'Contempt' is so emotional.  'Disrespect' is on the nose.  I feel deep disrespect for them -- not the absence of respect, but the active presence of the opposite of respect.  So disrespect isn't quiet the word after all, being somewhat tautological. And the opposite of respect is, yes, 'contempt'.  Latin: com (intensifier), and temnere,  'to despise, scorn.'  'Scorn', proto-Germanic: skarnjan, 'to mock, ridicule'.  'Despise', Latin: de, 'down,' and specere, 'to look at' -- so, to look down upon, as in judgment -- as an adult observing an ill-mannered child, or an utterly undignified adult.

Yes, I think that says it well.  It reveals me as I wish to be seen, a charming selfie, in this specific instance, of observing and categorizing a subspecies of organism and its concomitant behaviors.  No, not Millennials -- not only ... that was just a little joke of mine.  I haven't seen a breakdown of the stats, but it would be impossible for me to believe that the loathsome Baby Boomers all of a sudden grew a brain. Etc.

Liberals have a different brain-structure.  That overstates the case, but there are identifiable differences, useful as statistical predictors.  We need not be slaves to our genetics or circumstances, so here is found no true explanation.   More likely is the obvious fact that maturity takes time.  Wisdom ripens, as decadence rots.

I choose to view the next four years as an opportunity for children of all ages to grow up, to become wise to the level of their years, if not beyond.  The past eight years have not taught me optimism.  But I am hopeful, again.

'Hope', Old English: a word of unknown origin.


J

*How to Spell Obama-ism, and Today's Vocabulary Word, and Why I Am Deplorable

YT

 

The rule is, when the noun ends in a vowel, that vowel is dropped and replaced with 'ism'.  Thus, Nazi-ism becomes Nazism.  Hence,  Obamism.

I am deplorable because that's what I was called.  Well, no, not ME, in that I was not a Trump supporter.  But what is forevermore to be understood by the term is its reference to non-Hillary supporters -- and by extension, to all non-progressives.  Thus, we are deplorable, and I, too.

All this amazing non-catastrophe is encouraging.  The, no, not protesters -- the tantrummers  blocking freeways and rioting and looting -- it would be so nice if we had law enforcement.  They don't need to be killed, or beaten, or gassed.  They need to be arrested and fined or, in some cases, imprisoned. Is that not reasonable?  I live in the wild wilding  New West, where outlaws roam free and there are no boarders, only frontiers,  so I speak as a mere theoretician, in this analogy, a scolding schoolmarm.  Sad fool that I am, to think a marm could trump the nanny state.  Nanny can call names, and it's not hate speech.  In this era, nannies hate free speech.

So, children, today's vocabulary word is:

Tantrump (v): 1. to violently deplore representational democracy; 2. to impose one's emotional upset upon society as a whole; 3. to selflessly protest against the hatred and bigottry of racist Amerikkka.  "That fool be tantrumping all over yo ass!"  "Hey, Ashton, me and Breah are  gonna get 'HRC' tats on our areolas, and you can get your Prince Albert disinfected ... then we'll tantrump against the fascists!" "Meet in 20 at Walmart --  flash tantrump!"

Sometimes it's necessary to start the education process all over again.


J

Where's a Haymarket Massacre When You Need One?

Well, for the first time in, oh, ever, I did more than just a snipe on facebook.  But nothing to speak of.  A little meaningless sarcasm re weeping and rioting lefties.  It's like hell hath reduced its borders.  It's like we've passed through the Valley of the Shadow of Death.  No, not into the Promised Land.  Into the Wilderness.  But we had clear choices, between placing ourselves under the power of the looting hysterics, a known known, or taking a chance on a gamble.  Russian roulette with six chambers full, or some lesser number.  The choice is not good, but it's clear.

Trump is not a conservative, or a Republican.  So what precisely are the lefties panicking about?  Well, he's white, so that's bad.  And a non-female, so that's also bad.  Reasons enough for hatred and despair.  A non-minority president is politically incorrect.  Cuz I'm sure only half-white is a minority, and I'm sure that female is a minority, although not numerically.  But what after all do words mean, really.  They mean whatever we want them to mean.  Humpty Dumpty for President!  Hillary Dumpty?  Donald Dumpty?  Make it work.

Trump throughout his life seems to have been a pragmatic centrist Democrat.  A rare bird.  Because of the trauma of the past few centuries of the interminable Obama terms, all our idealism and expectations have been honed down to the sharp point of practicalities.  We are willing to compromise.   No more need for messiahs.  The One quickly revealed himself to be the Zero.  I will now be grateful for an Oval Office caretaker who is not actively against America.  What a relief.

Trump did a cynical evaluation, and saw his path clear on the right rather than the left, and  that's what he opted for.  Okay.  Now we're done with the populism and nativism and other useless isms, and reality as it is must be faced.  Actual polices, put in place via lawful processes.  My, that would be such a bracing change.  We'll see.

Trumped talked himself into a corner, re the moronic WALL that Mexico will PAY for.  Hopefully there will be a graceful way to slip the bonds of that surly pledge.  Because, you see, we never did need a wall before, so why now?  Enforce just laws, and everything is awesome.  We'll be livin' the Dream.  Wouldn't it be nice if it were, like, Americans who could be government-sponsored Dreamers?  Imagine all the people, living in the harmony of a rule-of-law culture, like the way we used to think was good.  Ah, youth.

Had the unspeakable, if not the unthinkable occurred, and Hillary had ascended to her ambition, what would we of the stricken Right have done?  Rioted and looted?  The past two horrors I mean elections have answered that question.  We, adults, abide by the social contract, whereby previously agreed-upon rules are respected.  Was there ongoing  public grief?  I don't remember.  Certainly, in my case, decorous private grief.  We need not speak of that.  But there simply is no such thing as conservative rioting.

This is what happens when the opinion of children is thought to matter.  We have to pretend that unicorns are real.  And gay marriage.  And gender changes.  And anthropogenic global warming.  Pick a trope. Pick a Trump. Pikachu.  Picayune.  No, we don't need police with military-grade armaments.  But teargas would be nice.  These children need a bedtime, and they need to be silent or at least respectful in the presence of their elders.   Because their judgment is worthless, and their influence has been toxic.

I pointed out to someone today that the reason the non-plurality candidate won is that the blue states are so very very blue.  What does that tell us?  That liberals cluster together much more densely than conservatives.  Because, you see, they cannot abide a diversity of political opinions.  The locust effect.  Bad money drives out good, and liberals drive out conservatives?  --  or flee from them?  Indeed, the right thinks the left is stupid, and the left thinks the right is evil.  Neither opinion is truly true, but one is toxic.  In fact, Republicans are stupid, and Democrats engage in no sort of thought process whatsoever.  Statistically, that is.

As for the current rediscovery of the Electoral College, by this latest crop of lefty voters, allow me to possite a hypothetical.  Do you suppose that if Trump had DOUBLED his own advertising budget, to MATCH that of Hillary, he might have purchased, peeled away from her, the 0.15 percent of voters he needed to win the popular vote?  If the BILLIONS spent by the Mainstream Media-sponsored Left (with the by-definition MEGA-BILLIONS of FREE advertising slash propaganda thereby donated, gratis and no charge and non-stop) were not sufficient to sway the Electoral College -- then, by what large popular margin would Trump have WON, on an equal playing field?

So much for hypotheticals.

I don't think I'm back.  But the oppression is lifting.  Sauron has lost his grip even upon Mordor, DC.  A green thing might grow.    This is what the world looks like, after the Flood.


J

Glass Ceilings and Walls of Entitlement

It might even be safe to go back into the water.  All this ecologism is paying off?  Little by little, they're raking out the floating turds. A few more months, and it may be fit for human consumption.

Our long national nightmare is over.  Eight years of Saul Alinsky at the helm, Kamikaze, iceberg-seeking missile.  Indeed, the chickens had come home to roost.  "God daaaammmnnn America!!!"  We'd never had, you see, an actually anti-American president before.

In these pages, now desultory, I have allowed myself to speak intemperately, as a private citizen.  It would not be prudent to speak so, as a public figure.  So here I could vent my utter disgust at the state of affairs.  It wasn't productive, and it wasn't the catharsis I needed.  Not all poison can be purged by muscular action -- emetics, colonics, lancing, bleeding....   clinton -- the first clinton -- had been merely a disgrace.  Obama was destructive.

To rule by Executive Order.  To rule, that is, unconstitutionally.  And Americans opted him in, AGAIN.  What, the woman who asks to be raped?  The addict who sells his children, for drugs?  What unspeakable shamefulness could possibly describe such a state of affairs.  Then again, whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad.  That precisely half of Americans are moral idiots seems a tad too high a percentage, but one must accommodate the imperical validity of the statistic.

Well, thank heaven for the Electoral College.  It was instituted, most likely, not so much to decide between two tied presidential candidates, but to simply invalidate a single successful but toxic winner, and select and appoint a better, fitting one.  In the case at hand, it simply did its job, of representing the will, not of the rank population, but of the states themselves.  The EC, you see, does not represent the entire enrolled body of registered citizens, but rather fifty states, only -- plus, somehow (and perhaps unconstitutionally?) Washington, DC.  We vote through the agency of our individual states.  Thus my own vote has only symbolic value, in this bluest, most cyanotic of states -- formerly the Golden State.

So much for the protesters.   To call them ignoramuses  misses the point, because it sounds emotional.  I see the tragic grief-sodden faces of the Hillary supporters, and feel no pity or compassion whatsoever.  There is a bit of satisfaction in it, the way you see those videos on youtube of idiots doing stupid things and getting instant justice.  As long as no real harm comes to them -- good ... "that's what you get!"  My grief has gone unphotographed.  That their judgment has been so crippled is only to be expected, in a morally calloused culture.  Hopefully their lessons toward wisdom will not be unbearable.

Hillary summed it up, perfectly.  She assigned her loss to the "highest and hardest glass ceiling."  

*ahem*

My dear Ms. clinton:  You won, somehow, the very slightest plurality of the vote.  Your failure had nothing whatsoever to do with institutional bias against women.  You failed because you thought this was France, with a centralized government presiding over provinces, as American states administer policy through counties.  The United States, however,  is a federated constitutional republic, with an Electoral College -- a fact you have no excuse for not knowing. You didn't bump your bleach-blonde head against a glass ceiling.  You crashed into the wall of your own arrogance and sense of entitlement.  The fact that you avoid admitting this, or are oblivious to it, is disqualification in itself of the office you have coveted.

As for Trump, let's think of him as Truman.  He may grow into the dignity of the office.  His victory speech was an excellent start.  Dignity.  That has been my problem with him all along.  Demagogic populism and cynical hucksterism were designed as by some Cosmic Intelligence to revolt and revulse me.  If he puts that aside, and honors the dignity of his office, well, hopefully the entrenched beltway republicans will give guidance and probity to his administrative policies.

And, let us fervently hope, the incipiant clinton dynasty is quashed, and the Obama legacy is stillborn ... no, let's say it was -- in honor of its patron -- aborted.


J

Amerexit

Perhaps it's a trend?  The formerly-sane fallen empires reclaiming a bit, a small sad tiny bit of common sense?  Great Britain disenmeshing itself from the leech-lipped tentacles of the Hague?   And now, in a frankly astounding rebuke against the nattering nabobs, a very slim majority of the American electorate -- or rather the Electoral College --  have opted for the clearly-lesser of clear evils.

The good news is that America did not commit suicide.  For the past weeks or months I have been convinced that there would be a third Obama term.  After all, the media was in the bag, and Millennials would be voting --  the Participation-Trophy Generation ... the Cry-Bully Generation.  They, and their idiot Gen-X baby-sitters, and their loathsome babyboomer parents and grandparents.  How odd, that the Greatest Generation should have been such worthless parents -- engendering hippies as frogs produce slime.

Be that as it may, with the destruction of marriage, by the Almighty Court, I realized that American Exceptionalism was dead.  I have been mourning the death of this country.  Wondering what the world would be like, without an America to care for it.  Just another big rich hegemonic social state smearing pie across its face and licking blubbery lips with a thick surgically-bifurcated tongue ... cuz chicks did it.

But I was wrong.  Americans have not acquiesced entirely to sodomites and syndicalists.  I had thought that only the detonation of a dirty bomb in some urban center would sufficiently focus attention upon the actual state of the world.  I had pictured the celebration in Pandemonium, the Mardi Gras, the Fat Tuesday of Hillary's triumphal  march across the constitution -- no longer to be capitalized.  Hell rejoicing.  But I was wrong.

I do not know what to think of it.  Blue state republicans forced this nominee upon us, and, somehow, somehow, the country has not puked him back, but overcame disgust -- something about the difference between an emetic, and evisceration.  We managed to have neither -- swallowing Trump and puking out Hillary.  Progress, indeed.

My joke has been, vote for the one who will destroy America by accident, or the one who will destroy it on purpose.  I'd rather have incompetence, than malevolence.  I'd rather have the narcissist, than the narcissist who hates America.

A mistake I have made for, well, decades is that I have looked to America as if it were an agent of God.  Regardless of the seeming-mercy we have just received --  the reprieve from the worthless values of the progressiveforprogresstowardoneworldgovernment -- the fact that we have had eight years of deliberate decline must be answered, with punishment.  God does not hold iniquity against his children, but he absolutely does hold it against nations.  And that is all America is -- a tool, generally blessed, and unworthy of its blessings.

The fact that we are servants rather than masters, answerable in our values and our institutions to the opinions, opinions  mind you, of five judges -- well, that says everything.  Our national myth has it that we are free.  That myth was very slightly supported on Election Day.  But we are not free.  Never, as long as bureaucrats rule us.


J

We Wait

We sit, she leans against me like a lover,
I cradle her like a baby, her head.

 I sit, slouched on the bed,
 holding his hand, mine on his.

 We wait in silence.

 It is only right, that parents grow old,
 and die before their sons.


 J

*Suck It Up, Buttercup

YT

The great political question of the day found its most eloquent formulation as a rhetorical metaphor first made public in these very pages. “Which would you rather, eat your own poop or someone else’s puke?” Given our increasingly and mandatorily inclusive culture, there could never be anything other than gay … exuberant celebration of those courageous extroverts who opt for or are born into that subgroup of peoplekind in which it is a genetic necessity to eat one’s own poop or the puke of another. Heaven forfend that we should be judgmental about lifestyles or states of birth. That’s a crime against peoplekind.

 Alack, were the metaphor only slightly different, the solution should be obvious. It really is no unendurable thing, to swallow back a bit of your own rising gorge. I myself am not immune or inured to the occasional bout of dry-heaves, as when I have had to clean up after animals, or accidentally visualize sundry very normal and not at all perverted paraphiliae. Whereas coprophagy, be it auto- or alio-, might or ought to be found in all but the newest, politically-corrected DSM editions.

 Thus have I written, however, and thus it shall be. One’s own poop, another’s vomit. Trump then, for us, in this metaphor, is the poop. Hillary is the vomit. Sadly, I will never knowingly eat poop. And I shall never vote for Hillary. My own righteousness and inviolable integrity have therefore stymied me. One cannot remain American, and not vote. Thus have I proven that there are no more Americans, because there is no more America.

 So I will throw out all this forgoing resolution and unassailable logic, and rearrange the premises of the implicit syllogism. “Would you rather eat your own vomit or someone else’s poop.” Ah. Now the paradox is resolved. Distasteful and disgusting though it be, puke-eating as it were has its necessities.

 The origin of the trope is buried in obscurity. No one knows. Only theories remain to shed light in the darkness. “Suck it up, buttercup.” Used to encourage someone to persevere through hardship. The best theory -- and there is no real need of a theory -- is that it originated among fighter pilots, who might at high altitude disgorge into and foul their breathing apparatus, thereby losing consciousness. Life and death. Best advice then would be to suck it up. The gratuitous “buttercup” explains itself.

 For reasons later to be examined, a third Obama term is undesirable. Hillary is a known quantity: soulless lefty hack. Trump is a complete disgrace, but somehow, somehow the lesser of evils.

 America: God shed his grace on thee, then removed it.

So. Dig in. The vomit’s fine.


 J

Lo-Ammi

We take for our text Hosea chapter one, verse two: “And the LORD said to Hosea, Go, take unto thee a wife of whoredoms and children of whoredoms: for the land hath committed great whoredom, departing from the LORD.”

And Hosea went and married Gomer, a harlot.

An allegory. Hosea stands for the Lord, godliness, obedience, righteousness. Gomer stands for the people of the land, Israel. Or perhaps Hosea is Israel, and Gomer is the lying polytheism of the Canaanites, and it's a case of bigamy, polygamy, since Israel is already married to the Lord. Whatever. And an allegory of an allegory: Hosea stands for America -- honor, loyalty, valor, hard work, sacrifice. Nobility.  Common sense. Who chased after, well, many many whores, no need for marriage, which America has ... forgotten, abandoned, perverted ... redefined.

 Gomer does not stand for Trump. Trump is not a harlot: a hustle rather – selling, say anything, hurry hurry hurry. Harlots sell themselves. Hucksters sell trash. The beliefs of harlots have no relevance. Hucksters have a necessary contempt for truth and for their, well, voters. Trump, Hillary, Obama – say anything. Walls, and Benghazi, and evolving positions on “gay” “marriage”. Lie, be brazen, double down, be shameless.

But I apologize. It is an inept allegory of an allegory. America has not been instructed by the Lord to go a-whoring. If not the Lord, by what god then? Which is the god of appetite? Ashtoreth? Belial? I forget. My comparative religion studies have been neglected of late. Islamism, Atheism, Satanism -- all these celebrations of diversity, myriad paths to god, blend together in my distracted mind. My dull brain is wrought with things forgotten.

A spirit more lewd fell not from Heaven, or more gross, to love vice for itself, attended by priests turned atheist,  who fill with lust and violence the house of God.  In courts and palaces he reigns, and in luxurious cities where the noise of riot ascends above their loftiest towers, and injury, and outrage. When night darkens the streets, then wander forth the sons of Belial, flown with insolence and wine. Witness our own streets of Sodom, here, now.

So then. There have always been Trumps, aggressive self-promoters who will sell you a can of air or a pet rock, or gilt-edge stock certs to molybdenum mines on the fabulous island paradise of Vanuatu, or a sure-fire faith-healing cancer cure, twenty thousand dollars please, pay the “nurse” on the way out. Not to mention the off-the-rack poli-hacks of the past few and current election cycles. Shall we be dismayed by this inevitability? Were we asleep, to be rudely awakened? Something about every minute, suckers born ... I forget. Ah. Now I remember. Can you believe P. T. Barnum’s middle name was Trump? Freaky, dude. And, yes, you can believe that.

Let us reassign or assert our gender for a moment, and create a consanguine unity of instant convenience, and agree that we are Fates or Norns or Pythonesses or Weird Sisters of this Fluid New Age, and let us prophesy, a drum, a drum: Something wicked this way comes. By the pricking of my, heh, “thumb”. (Git it?)

Were kin ah git mahy sum uv theym mayjik bayeenz?!?

Can you believe I used to think America was "noble"?


 J

Trumpery

I stopped writing so prolifically here when the Occupant assumed the presidency. When that person was reappointed by you stupid, stupid Americans, the heart went out of me. I think many things now, which would be worth recording, but dismay has dumbfounded me. But, to persevere.

That the Republicans should be so feckless as to bring Trump to the fore … have we learned nothing? We’ve heard an imperious mountebank say anything at all, as long as it promoted his cause, whatever it might have been (anti-American exceptionalism). We know now without any ambiguity what was meant by “Hope and Change”. Hope that our enemies are our friends. Change the definition of marriage. So obvious, now. But since we are stupid, stupid, stupid Americans, who never learn and become more and more decadent, only, then we must follow after the next loudmouth demagogue who says just anything that we idiots wish to hear.

No record, no achievements, other than adultery, bankruptcy and self-promotion. Wealth from, what? Casinos? It is an obvious if cheap question, who did the building in Trump’s developments? Illegal aliens? The facile, knee-jerk populist tropes he spews and spouts – he’ll make Mexico build a wall … he’ll end Islamism in a couple of weeks … just believe you him, it’ll be great – how very cheap, such talk. And now, since there is no Republican party, only American morons, this charlatan is the likely candidate. Against Hillary? What a nightmare.

 Someone texted me, who would I vote for if it’s Trump-Hillary. I replied, would you rather eat your own shit or someone else’s puke. Something like that.

 I’ve not been following it. I don’t like pornography because I do not like slutishness. But Cruz seems like a solid candidate. I’m not sure what the complaint against him is. He’s, um, an insider? Is that it? Can that be right? If so, boy, are you dumb. But of course you are dumb. America, land of the free lunch and home of the brave front. Idiots. You have pissed away the legacy, traded your heritage for a mess of pottage, or pot.

 I had thought that the convention might produce some common sense, but some poll said that eighty precent of Republicans thought the delegates should be bound by the first choice. A new thing under the sun. When I saw the map of how it breaks down (that is the correct phrase) by state, lo! The red states go for Cruz and the blue states, which REPUBLICANS WILL NOT WIN IN THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION, go to Trump. The states that will lose the election for us are the states that are selecting our candidate. Therefore, might we suppose that NOT being bound by the first ballot at the convention would be a more prudent tactic?

 In this most recent Tuesday’s primaries, Trump won all five. All is not lost, but the Romney debacle taught me to face likelihoods more realistically. We shall not hope against hope. We, whoever we are, should work as we are willing, because otherwise the terrorists and liberals will have won.

And that’s probably why I’ve bothered to write this. Remember that phrase, the terrorists will have won? They did. Somehow Bush led to Obama, who has led us here. That so called war against so called terror somehow so unmanned us that we became as thoroughly decadent as the islamists said we were. Our institutions are destroyed, so how have the terrorists not destroyed us? The fall of two important buildings in NYC was all it took. Like Samson and the pillars of the temple of Dagon. Fifteen years down the line, and we find we have lost our country.

 I have an old cat who pukes on my bed. I buy old-cat food, but guess I’ll try sensitive-stomach. It’s a hassle, and I curse, but I can’t be angry with her. She’s 14 or so, and she likes me. We have to be patient, and gentle.

 Do I seem inconsistent?


 J

Reup

Here I am.  Fallen silent in a way I had not foreseen.  Submerged.  I have much less physical pain nowadays.  Something philosophical in that, the way we accommodated ourselves to circumstances.  Gratitude must be a cardinal virtue.  That's probably why God has allowed this horrible universe into existence -- that we may learn gratitude. Indeed, it's the core of Christianity.  As a function of intellect "belief" and "faith" don't mean anything.  When the soul encompasses that particular faith, it emerges as gratitude.  Suffering, then, is the meaning of life.  The Buddhists were right.

I feel like experimenting with small talk.  Not a natural gift.  I'm reading Dostoyevsky's The Idiot.  Man.  He's so good.  I read The Brothers Karamazov, oh, 35 years ago.  Always knew I'd read it again.  It's next.  I thought I'd dive back in with something shorter.  Relatively speaking. It's a pleasure almost physical, how good he is.

You will have noticed my comprehensive scouring of the internet for Shakespeare productions.  I expose myself to him every day.  It's not that some play can mean just anything.  It's that there's so much there, anything can be drawn from it -- as with the Bible, it says what it says, but you can prove anything with it.  Stray thoughts: Tennant's Richard II --  by far the best production I've seen of that one; it's like they're doing  it with understanding.  I cannot stand Juliet, as always performed -- so much that I simply can't  watch.  I don't like hysteria.  Actresses, please just say the lines and let the words do the work. You got the part -- you don't need to emote.  Orson Welles was the most talented man of the 20th century.  As expected, he was a charming jerk -- but he was always right in his artistic choices.  He did the finest bit of voice acting I ever heard -- the moment of inarticulate realization. [Mercury Theater # 20 - 46-07-12 - The Search for Henry Le Ferre]

I found out last night that my mother has not been paying her mortgage.  Again.  There's a point where irresponsibility becomes wickedness.  I said that I had thought this would never again happen.  She has replied that she is a responsible person.  What am I going to do?  Imagine that this 81 year old woman is able to change?  But it is ruinous to me, the dishonesty.  That's why parents are so toxic.  They plant the seeds.  Both of mine were amazingly dishonest, and I have this huge trust-issue.  Hmm.  My father, also 81, is so consumed with fear and rage and depression that I don't suppose he can last much longer. When I was a young child he gathered his sons, his "offspring", and for hours would give soul-crushing lectures.  I remember when I was twelve he'd talk about having been so depressed that he'd put a shotgun barrel in his mouth.  Somehow I don't think his sons existed for any other reason than for him to use in such ways. Now he is likely near his end, and I care, but he's caused enough suffering. The wages of sin, and suchlike.

How am I different.  Every vice is customized.  Their dishonesty, my distrust -- equally poisonous.

I have several major projects in mind, but simply lack motivation.  Two of them, I think, are actually important, like, to the world, or some part of it.  People who read.  But I am deeply discouraged, etymologically.  My courage is crippled.  My heart is constricted.  No longer young, diminished by pain in a way that has made me old, much of my energy is spent or misspent philosophizing myself into being as non-crazy as I can manage.  Not the same as health.

I started this blog years ago as a means of venting.  I made a few contacts that were nice to have, to suppose the wide world had some like-minded folks in it.  Here I am, again, then, at least this once, venting.  No need to respond.  The expression itself can help things fall into perspective.


J