This and that from re Thai r ment, by 3Th. May 30, 2023.

 

“Life isn’t a loan; it is a payment fraud. It is a project, lasting on average seventy-five years, whose sole aim is to maximise our own stupidity.”

                Tuomainen, Antti. The Rabbit Factor (Rabbit Factor Trilogy) (p. 255). Orenda Books. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

TODAY FROM AMERICA:

 

 

 

 

 

A. POOKIE’S ADVENTURES: The Promises of May.

 

 

“THE PECULIARITY OF entering one’s eighth decade is that questions regarding theology do not sharpen but instead become less significant. Better said, need for proof of the supernatural becomes less imperative.“

                Burke, James Lee. The Glass Rainbow: A Dave Robicheaux Novel (p. 215). Simon & Schuster.

 

I agree with Burke that after passing 80 theological questions seem less pressing. They are, in fact, replaced by concerns about the existential significance of the various and unusual alterations to our bodily functions and mental acuity. Being old may be better than being dead, but is nowhere as good as a younger body with its short term memory intact.

 

Since I started swimming again, I feel much better physically and mentally although I am sure the euphoria is temporary. Before this issue of T&T is finished Pookie the morose hypochondriac will arise again.

 

For the past few days, the weather has been sunny and warm with temperatures in the 90F. Surprising, the heat has not yet become uncomfortable. I notice on my calendar that tonight May 18 at 7PM Jazz by the Pool is scheduled. It is an opportunity for we alters to gather by the Nepenthe Pool, listen to a local band play the songs that were oldies even when we were young, and drink wine until it was time to wobble off home again on our walkers and canes.

 

Oh no! I had the wrong date for Jazz at the Pool. It is on June 18, not May 18. Alas, I am left with reading another book this evening or watching a movie — or God forbid playing with the dog. Well, I decided to walk the dog first, It was a surprisingly pleasant walk. The dog behaved himself, only a couple of growling and barking competitions with some Chihuahua’s interfered with our walk.

 

Friday was a nothing day for most of it. Some shopping for compost for the bak yard. Then in the evening it got interesting. It was dinnertime and Naida decided to cook. Naida’s cooking is often an adventure since she insists on creating her own recipes as she goes along. This evening she did something special. She almost burned the house down. I had been reading my most resent Billie Boyd novel* so I had not known what happened until after she called me to dinner. I noticed all the doors and windows were open. When I commented on that she explained that she had placed a plastic tray on the stove then turned on the burner that she thought was under the pan with the food. It was not. The tray burned before she realized it. Nevertheless, everything worked out and the dinner when it was prepared was quite goof.

 

(*The novel includes Billy’s interactions with Yogi Berra and Agatha Christie, both of whom were in the Dartmouth England area when the tragic events described in the novel occurred)

 

Later after dinner, Naida sat at the piano and played several pieces by Beethoven from a 19th century music book that she had been given by her grandmother. She was in good form and played the music beautifully. It was a pretty great way to end the day.

 

Saturday brought the Saturday Morning Coffee along with it. A significant amount of time was spent in a discussion about mosquitos. I do not know why. As usual, I missed the punch lines of the jokes. The weather was sunny and warm and the pollen in the air made spending time outdoors unbearable for me unless I risked overdosing on antihistamines. After we returned home, Naida puttered in the garden as she likes to do, the dog laid quietly in the sun, and I wrote this before going upstairs to take a nap.

 

After my nap, I had another episode of allergic reaction to my environment so I spent the next few hours semi-comatose while wandering through pieces of historical detritus about Tuckahoe, the town I grew up in, and wondering about the reason for my obsession with someplace in which I spent so little of my life. I can recall bits and pieces of only about ten years that I spent is that little village on the outskirts of NYC that I still refer to as home although I have spent over 70 years living somewhere else— in NYC itself, Yonkers, Yorktown Heights, Cape Cod Washington DC,, Virginia, London, Rome, Sicily, Bangkok, Jomtien Beach, San Francisco, Sacramento and the Golden Hills, and probably a few more places I cannot immediately recall. Yet, I recall with more clarity my time in that little village that I did not even like very much than anywhere else. 

 

I began reading Christopher Paolini’s newest series Fractalverse. Paolini at 15 years of age wrote and published the magnificent fantasy series World of Eragon  which garnered him the Guinness Book of Records title as the youngest author to pen a best selling series. Fractalverse is a more traditional Science Fiction opus which fails, as does most modern SF, simply because during the past twenty years science itself has passed beyond the realm of fiction.

 

Later, I went swimming. I barely made it to 15 minutes of swimming laps before I was too exhausted to continue. Last year I could do 45 minutes and a few years before an hour to an hour and a half. Age is an annoying bastard.

 

Speaking of annoying bastards, when I arrived home I checked my Facebook page. I often share things that I come across that I fine amusing, interesting, appealing or which I may generally agree with. I recently passed on a post by Rachel Maddow in which, among other things she stated ”Here’s the thing about rights — they’re not actually to be voted on. That’s why they’re called rights.” I received a comment from someone who over the past few years I have had am ongoing conflict with. I consider him a nitpicking curmudgeon and he considers me a lightweight dilettante. We both are correct. This time he objected to Rachel’s statement because there is no objective morality only situational ethics. “Societies” he maintains, “decide what rights an individual has.” I accused him in my response of  “situational ethics”: and sharing along with Rachel a tendency to over generalize. He responded among other things “We do not have an inborn set of morals.” I answered “Yes, I agree. You and Rachel share the same tendency to over generalize.”  Now the reason I include this here is because it demonstrates how one cannot conceive of a more wasteful expenditure of a person’s time than to engage in a conflict of wills on social media. I should have my fingers cut off if I ever do it again.

 

I read a book called “Beware of Chicken” by someone with the pen name of Casualfarmer.  It is the author’s first novel. (Casualfarmer. Beware of Chicken: A Xianxia Cultivation Novel. Podium Publishing.) It is one of those light comic fantasy novels that I like so much. I won’t attempt to describe the plot, which could be longer than the book itself, except to note that the chicken is a rooster and the main character is someone from Canada just north of NY who for some reason never explained transported into the body of someone in another universe who had been killed. The universe he had been transported into appears to be a Chinese society that for some reason appears to have been moved into Canada. And, if that is not confusing and irrational enough, it gets more odd from there. Nevertheless, I found that for a first novel the author wrote surprisingly well and the novel became more and more endearing as it went along, almost like Alice in Wonderland.

 

On Wednesday I traveled into the Golden Hills for lunch with HRM at a Japanese restaurant we enjoy. He graduates from high school on Friday and leaves for about six weeks in Thailand and Japan with his friends Big Jake and Little Jake (Little Jake is actually bigger than Big Jake). Hayden was given the Chief Chef award in his culinary class.

 

I started on the next Billy Boyle novel. This one revolved around Jack Kennedy and PT 109 in the South Pacific during WWII. The author Benn was not very complimentary of Jack Kennedy. Nevertheless, It reminded me of the time when I was attending The E.A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University in Washington DC. I and several of my classmates volunteered to park cars at an event for then Senator Kennedy and Jackie Bouvier Kennedy. After the ceremony, Bobby Kennedy came over to us to thank us. He impressed me for both his humility and his humanity more than anyone I had ever met before and very few that I have met since. 

 

Thursday May 25th was my daughter Jessica’s 47th birthday. I called her in DC to wish her well. She works for AID and heads the policy group for world-wide microbiological defense and aid. I miss her. It has been too long since I have seen her. Later that evening we listened to Nat King Cole for a few hours before going to bed. 

 

On Friday a miracle occurred — or at least evidence of gross incompetence. Six months ago on our last day in Rome Naida bought me a birthday present. It was a very expensive and beautiful belt from one of the upscale designer shops located along Via Condotti. I loved it and carefully packed it in my luggage for out trip home. When, after first spending a night at a hotel in San Jose, we arrived back in the Enchanted Forest and unpacked our luggage the belt was gone. Panic ensued. We checked with the hotel in San Jose. It had not turned up there.We contacted the Hotel in Rome same result. We searched our bedroom, the closets, under the bed and every other place we could think of, No belt. Since then the cleaners have cleaned and we have also. Still no belt. Today, after my afternoon nap, as I reached down to pick up my socks, I noticed a small black tin canister partially sticking out from under the bed. It was the canister containing that belt. I opened it and there it was, the belt. I ran downstairs to show Naida and for the next hour or two we laughed and giggled. We were convinced it was either a miracle of we once again were playing the Return of the Grossly Stupids. 

 

That evening I set off to Hayden’s graduation ceremony from high school. Graduation for high school is more than a step in educational progression for the students but an end to childhood, The ceremony took place on the HS football football field. The stands were full so I walked to the top from where I planned to watch the ceremony standing up. As I took my place, a man came up to me and said they had an extra seat and asked if I would like to sit down. I assume he had seen this decrepit old man being forces to stand during the ceremony and decided to help him out. I was happy, being that old and decrepit person, to accept his offer. I watched the ceremonies and later joined Hayden and his friends as they celebrated.

 

On my drive home I thought about life and other things most of which I had forgotten by the time I hade gotten home. But I do recall that most of them were sad. And I guess I will stop here. Tomorrow I will attend Naida’s grandson Charlie’s wedding and my sister and George arrive from Mendocino for a few days and then I will join them in Mendocino for the Film Festival nest week.

B. MOPEY JOE’S MEMORIES: POOKIE’S ADVENTURES IN BANGKOK TEN YEARS AGO ( May 2013)

I. POOKIE’S ADVENTURES IN THAILAND:

 

The past few days have seen the rains return to BKK. I do not know if we have tipped over into the rainy season yet or if this is just a temporary respite from the heat and the pollution. In any event, the pollution and the blazing heat have diminished somewhat, replaced with stifling humidity. As a result, except for my daily trip to the pool, I still spend most of my days huddled by the AC in my apartment reading. I have completed reading all 14 novels in the Dresden Files series that have been written so far. The author promises to write at least seven more.

 

We now know that Mab the Fairy Queen of the Winter Court of the Sidhe is not insane even though she had her daughter Maeve murdered. We also know the name of the being behind all the trouble that occurred in the previous 13 books. His name is Nemesis, although to call him that pisses him off so everyone prefers to call him the Adversary. Why that does not piss him off as much, I have no idea. We still do not know what is under the Cowl. Harry Dresden, the Wizard, did get laid again. Although he was willing, he was effectively raped by Mab since there was nothing he could do about it. The coupling itself, through what in the magic of fairyland passes for social media, was witnessed by all the residents of both the Summer and Winter Queendoms of the Sidhe.

 

I really do not know what has been going on with me for the past few weeks. Whatever physical or emotional problems I had experienced since my hospitalization have been gone ever since my jet lag lifted a few weeks ago. Yet, since then I have done little but swim in the mornings and read straight through the day until I turn out the light at about 11pm to sleep. One day, I decided to break from reading and so I went to see a movie. That’s it. I feel like I should be doing something — almost anything. I even put off my trip to the beach for a week. I do not feel depressed. If fact just the opposite. Nevertheless I exhibit all the symptoms of depression except depression itself.

 

Since I finished the Dresden Tales I have returned to Bruen, Nesbro, Declan Burke and the Foreworld Tales. Every day I try to write a few sentences in This and that… but little else. Maybe I will do something next week. Time is getting short.

 

There has been a change at the health club where I spend most of my mornings. No, not a change in ownership or rules or even personnel. And certainly there has not been a change in the general run down nature of the place. It is as different from the chrome palaces of modern health clubs as it always has been. What’s changed has been its culture. Yes I know, unless it is some sweaty broken gym for boxers or more modern dojo’s for martial arts, most health club’s cater to a rather vanilla cross-section of young up and comers. But even there, if you look close enough and long enough at your own health club, you will soon see underneath the acres of spandex vague indications of a culture that separates your club from the one in the high-rise on the next corner.

 

The membership of the health club at the Ambassador Hotel in BKK of which I am a member and for which LM is employed as a masseuse, has always been made up of, in addition to guests in the hotel, mostly older men and women who preferred to pay a membership fee about one-half less than the membership fee at any of the other hotel health clubs in the area and did not mind the steady but slow deterioration in the facilities. Membership, like the facilities, has been declining for the entire three years I have been a member.

 

However, upon my return from the United States a few weeks ago I noticed that the membership decline has stopped and seemed to have reversed itself. The lockers in the locker rooms are now all taken and new banks of lockers have been installed. On the surface, these new members seem to be much like the existing members, older western males, local professional women and Indian and Arab men and women who are guests at the hotel.

 

Recently, LM has complained that the massage services that used to be supplied by 6 to 8 full-time women masseuses and a picture book of others on call has been reduced to two providers. Since the beginning of the month, there has been only one massage appointment made for either of those two. On the other hand, the number of male masseuses has increased from two to 8 or 12.

 

I suspect that usual massage business performed by female therapists has been undercut by the lower cost massage parlors that line the nearby streets in the neighborhood. On the other hand, no such outlets for connection and release exist for women in general, business women in particular as well as for men preferring a man’s touch but hesitant about frequenting the gay clubs nearby.

 

This week I set off for a few days at Jomtien Beach. For those new to T&T or those that may not recall, I lived for almost a year in an apartment near the beach in this town. The building was called, Jomtien Beach Paradise Condominiums so I took to calling the area Paradise by the Sea. Since it is also about two miles from that emporium of erotic excess Pattaya, I added, Two Miles from the Outskirts of Hell to its description.

 

Paradise by the Sea used to be the native Thai beach resort area while Pattaya, the Outskirts of Hell, was reserved for western, mostly male tourists. Eventually the bright lights and noise of the Vietnam War enlisted men’s R&R resort was overwhelmed by high rises, at first to house the ex-military who retired here hoping to maintain the dreams of that which nature is destined to erode. This was followed by ongoing attempts to convert the town to a traditional beach tourist attraction with its sin city reputation as an un-mentioned attraction. (As a beach resort minus the sex, Pattaya deserves a “meh” ranking at best.)

 

The high-rise condo and resort mania of Pattaya has overlapped into the adjacent city of Jomtien Beach driving the native Thais beyond its borders and replacing them first with a mixed bag of Western European and American males and more recently Russians primarily from Siberia.

 

I stay in a decidedly down scale guest house managed by a sad-faced woman whose teen-aged daughter immobilized by birth defects lies semi comatose on a cot in the lobby.

 

Two or three times a day I walk about a mile or two along the beach. I have stayed in some of the finest beach resorts in the world, but for some reason I find that I am more comfortable and at peace sitting on the balcony of my tiny room than I had been in any of those elegant establishments.

 

 

2. NEWS STRAIGHT OR SLIGHTLY BENT:

 

a. In the Autumn of 2011, when the new Thai government came into power, it implemented a campaign promise to create a national health program that provides all Thais with health services for about one dollar US per visit. The program was conceived by the administrator of a hospital that had managed to develop and carry out the medical delivery systems in his hospital to such a high degree of efficiency that it allowed the hospital to charge the patient only a little more than that. The program passed in the first few hours of the new administration. A quasi-independent board was set up to administer it.

 

The hospital administrator that developed the program was appointed to head the new entity. I has proven wildly successful, much to the chagrin of the pharmaceutical industry (mostly foreign corporations) because unlike Obamacare in the US which in a compromise with the industry did not allow Medicare to freely choose the lowest cost supplier by forcing them to compete on price, the Thai program did. It was very successful in bringing down costs.

 

The Administrator of the Thai program has recently proposed to manufacture generic drugs in general use not patent protected in order to further reduce costs. That apparently was the last straw. Under pressure from the foreign pharmaceutical companies, the government sacked the administrator and turned the entire program over to administration by local political leaders.

 

b, Princess LuckyGirl the prime minister of Thailand and sister of the deposed and fugitive prior Prime Minister of the country, Thaksin the Terrible, recently has travelled to other countries and has given speeches extolling the values of democracy. For some reason the opposition party led by the ex-Prime Minister whose party was never elected, Abhsit the Unready, believed it was awful for her to have done so. It seems that they believe that, by speaking about the general benefits of democracy, she is criticizing their time in power. — I think it is a cultural thing.

 

 

 

C. POOKIE AND NAIDA’S TRIP TO ITALY — Part VI Return to Rome.

 

We arrived back in Rome in the late afternoon. After checking into our respective lodgings, we then then went for a quick walk through Piazza Venezia, then on to the Pantheon after which we wandered around Piazza Navona. The streets and plaza’s were annoyingly thick with tourists. We had a mediocre dinner at a restaurant in the web of streets near Piazza Navona after which we returned to our hotels 

From upper left then clockwise: Pookie, Aaron and Anthony in the Piazza della Rotonda in front of the Pantheon; Anthony and Aaron in the Chiesa di Sant’Ignazio di Loyola; A view of the trompe l’œil ceiling in the cathedral: The cathedral crèche; Anthony and Aaron in front of the Commedia Del Arte buildings; An unknown visitor who joined us on our trip.

The Next day Naida and I strolled through the city. We had breakfast at a little cafe among the columns that encircle Piazza Esedra. Then we walked down the Via Veneto and down to the Spanish steps. Along the way we stopped in a few of the shops. I contemplated buying a Borselino but changed my mind for no particular reason that I can recall. Eventually we ended up at Cafe Grecco for a light lunch. After which we strolled along Via Condotti and stoped at a shop where Naida bought me a shirt and a bitchin belt for my birthday and then we returned to the Hotel. 

 

     The next morning we went to airport and bought our plane to San Jose. Upon arrival we spent a terrible few hours searching for our car in the long term parking lot. After finding the car we drove to a hotel to spend the night. The next morning we drove back to the Enchanted Forest where while unpacking our luggage we thought we had lost the bitchin belt birthday present.

From upper left then clockwise: Need’s last view of Piazza Esedra: Naida and I in Cafe Greco: Naida enjoying coffee and pastry in Cafe Grteco; Pookie at the store having purchased bis birthday shirt and magnificent belt; The unknown stranger ready to travel; Naida on the next day flying back home.

 

 

DAILY FACTOID: Leonardo Da Vinci’s To Do List.

 

 

 

“As the symbol of the Renaissance Man, Da Vinci was known for bringing a notebook everywhere he went in order to put down his ideas. Da Vinci’s notebooks are an incredible window into the mind of a genius. As a painter, inventor, engineer, and scientist, he created 13,000 pages of notes to capture his creativity.

 

So what would a to-do list look like for Da Vinci? Robert Krulwich of NPR translated one of Leonardo Da Vinci’s lists from the early 1490s, and there was much more on his mind than walking the dog or tending to the garden. Here’s the translation, with Krulwich’s amendments in brackets:

 

    [Calculate] the measurement of Milan and Suburbs

    [Find] a book that treats of Milan and its churches, which is to be had at the stationer’s on the way to Cordusio

    [Discover] the measurement of Corte Vecchio (the courtyard in the duke’s palace).

    [Discover] the measurement of the castello (the duke’s palace itself)

    Get the master of arithmetic to show you how to square a triangle.

    Get Messer Fazio (a professor of medicine and law in Pavia) to show you about proportion.

   Get the Brera Friar (at the Benedictine Monastery to Milan) to show you De Ponderibus (a medieval text on mechanics)

    [Talk to] Giannino, the Bombardier, re. the means by which the tower of Ferrara is walled without loopholes (no one really knows what Da Vinci meant by this)

    Ask Benedetto Potinari (A Florentine Merchant) by what means they go on ice in Flanders

    Draw Milan

    Ask Maestro Antonio how mortars are positioned on bastions by day or night.

    [Examine] the Crossbow of Mastro Giannetto

    Find a master of hydraulics and get him to tell you how to repair a lock, canal and mill in the Lombard manner

    [Ask about] the measurement of the sun promised me by Maestro Giovanni Francese

    Try to get Vitolone (the medieval author of a text on optics), which is in the Library at Pavia, which deals with the mathematic.

https://mymodernmet.com/leonardo-da-vinci-to-do-list/?fbclid=IwAR1FJIEgcYvui_fK_2ZPdTJBPllqrCFJF6AZ2u_jIXJ7MOHAZLBnhWvmuPI

 

 

 

 

 

 

PEPE’S POTPOURRI:

 

 

 

 

A. Trenz Pruca’s Observations:

 

One of life’s tragedies is that you really do not know how interesting your life has been until someone writes your obituary.

 

 

B.  Tuckahoe Joe’s Blog of the Week:

 

Brad DeLong 

 

“Jonathan Kirshner: Rigged Capitalism and the Rise of Pluto-populism: On Martin Wolf’s The Crisis of Democratic Capitalism: ‘The middle third of this book, “What Went Wrong,” should be required reading…. When it comes to solutions, unfortunately, The Crisis of Democratic Capitalism comes up short. Wolf, ever measured, is convincing in making the case for reform over revolution…. Yet it is disheartening that the sensible, reformist agenda of reasonable, practical measures that Wolf outlines already seems beyond the capacity of our politics…. Massive concentrations of wealth for a sliver of largely-above-the-law plutocrats, combined with stagnation and declining opportunities for the majority—leads to a basic political problem: “How, after all, does a political party dedicated to the material interests of the top 0.1 percent of the income distribution win and hold power in a universal suffrage democracy? The answer is pluto-populism”… [which] unleash[es] forces… [that] render liberal democracy unsustainable…. corruption, arbitrariness of justice, and fear for future prospects are poisonous to the body politic…. Its final sentence, “If we fail, the light of political and personal freedom might once again disappear from the world,” reads less like a call to action and more like an epitaph…

 

Martin Wolf’s The Crisis of Democratic Capitalism and Barry Eichengreen’s The Populist Temptation are, I think, the best books on theDover-Circle-Plus societies current Time of Troubles. And there is no clear way through.

 

It was James Madison who wrote, in 1787:

 

Democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths…

 

And the death of real democracy does not have to be accompanied by the end of the form. The classic example here is the Jim Crow U.S. South from 1876-1965. It was less than half as rich as the rest of the United States for almost a complete century. It was ruled by an oligarchy uninterested in economic development and very interested in corruption. The oligarchy its power by focusing the electorate on the necessity of keeping the Black Man Down, and tarring anyone who wanted a government that was less corrupt or more pro-development with being a negro-lover. That it held rocksolid from 1876 to 1965 shows that the future of anything we could call prosperous democratic capitalism is not assured.

(reply+20nlf9&bzx0n&&34b950e177a121b1deb3a60956371732fc6dd9572f05c742bd846055db90f787@mg1.substack.com)

 

 

 

C. Tito Tazio’s Tales: From JOEY’S  MYSTERY NOVEL — “ENTER THE DRAGON.” (Chapter 3) 

 

 

Dragon’s breath:

“A good detective should be afraid…always.”

 

 

Chapter 3.

 

I turned the doorknob and pushed the door open slowly. I only had opened it a few inches before it was wrenched from my hand. A big guy stood there holding the door and filling all the space between the door and the door jamb. He was not too much taller than I am, but he was big, with a body poised somewhere between muscle and fat.

 

“What do you want?” he growled.

 

I stepped back. Said, “I’m looking for Mark Holland.”

 

“Why?”

 

Thought this might be a good time for a clever story. Could not think of one. Went with the truth. “I have been asked to find him.”

 

“Why?” again,

 

Still lacking clever responses, repeated, “I’ve been hired to find him.” Took a business card from my pocket handed it to him. He looked at it for a long time. Said, “A detective eh. Why don’t you come in and we’ll talk.”

 

I said, “If it is all the same to you, I feel better standing out here in the hall.”

 

The door opened a little wider. Another fat guy appeared. He had a phone pressed against his ear with one hand. In his other hand he had a gun that was pointed at me. “Get in here,” fat guy number one ordered.

 

In that moment I noted a strange phenomena. My clothing went instantly from dry to wet. At the same time I felt like I shit my pants. Said, “I think my chances of being shot are greater in there than standing out here in the hall.”

 

I flashed on how stupid that sounded. The embarrassment of shitting in my pants began to leak into my consciousness. Did not get far with either thought as they were interrupted by an explosion to the side of my face. As I toppled toward the floor, my first thought was to protect my computer. The second was that I might be dead.

 

Thought I was shot. Actually Fat Guy One suddenly had reached out with his ham sized hand and slapped me aside my head as they say. His heavy ring raked across my jaw.

 

Before landing on the floor, I was grabbed and dragged into the room. I looked down the hall in the vain hope that Ann had seen what happened and would call the cops. No such chance.

 

I was thrown onto a bean bag chair on the floor. Thought “Who the fuck still has a bean bag chair?” Said “Who the fuck has a bean bag chair any more?” But did not get it all out as the pain had finally hit and I realized that I had bitten my tongue and was dribbling blood down my chin. Got out “Woo fla bee or?” before giving up and grabbing my jaw. I was bleeding there too from the ring. Said, “Shiss!” Added “Blon.” My tongue was swelling up.

 

Fat guy one threw me a dirty dish rag. Thought I would probably die of sepsis if it touched my open wound. Spit the blood from my mouth into the rag folded it, and pressed it against the side of my face anyway.

 

Fats Two was talking on the phone. Whispered to Fats One. Fats One said, “Who sent you?”

 

Replied something that sounded like, “that’s confidential.”

 

Fats one raised his fist.

 

I quickly responded, “Gul fren.”

 

“Fucking Mavis,” said SF fats.

 

“No, na yeh” I commented. I thought I was being clever. They ignored me

 

Fats Two whispered to Porky One again.

 

Porky asked,“Find anything yet?”

 

“Hired hour ago. This first stop.”

 

More talking on the phone and whispering. Fats Prime asked, “What did Mavis tell you?”

 

What I answered sounded a lot like, “Not much. He’s missing. She’s worried.”

 

More talking on the phone and whispering.

 

I said more or less, “We could save a lot of time if I just talked directly to whomever is on the phone.” Although it did not come out quite like that, I actually was getting used to speaking through my swollen tongue and frozen jaw.

 

They ignored me. Fats One said, “What’s she paying you — tattoos or blow jobs?” Thrilled with his cleverness he let out a surprisingly high pitched giggle.

 

I did not answer as I struggled with a clever comeback and failed mostly out of fear of retaliation.

 

He said more forcefully, “What do you charge?”

 

“Two hundred dollars a day. One week minimum. One half paid in advance.”

 

Some more whisperings into the phone. There seemed to be some disagreement.

 

Fats Prime finally turned to me and said, “We’d like to hire you to help us find him.”

 

I was gobsmacked. Wanted to say, “fuck you” or “What the fuck,” even. Said instead, “Can’t, conflict of interest.”

 

Prime Cut One turned red-faced and advanced on me. I quickly said, “On second thought I can probably figure a way around it.”

 

He stopped, smiled reached into his pocket and pulled out a wallet. From it he extracted 10 one hundred dollar bills and placed them in my hand not holding the towel. “You will get another thousand if you find him.”

 

Pocketed the money. Said,“Whose my client?”

 

Again with the whispering. “Me,” said First Lard Brother.

 

Asked, “What’s your name?”

 

“No name.” He scribbled on a piece of paper. Handed it to me. “My phone number. Call every evening at about five o’clock.”

 

“What can you tell me about Holland to help me along?”

 

Again the phone. The Fats One then said, “Ask Mavis. She knows more than she is telling you.”

 

They then both picked me up out of the bean bag and guided me toward the door.

 

“How do you know I won’t go to the police?”

 

“If you do we will have to kill you.” They both giggled in falsetto.

 

I knew that was bullshit but I was still scared shitless, literally and figuratively and I knew involvement of the cops was futile.

 

Once back in the hall, I ran to Ann’s door pounded on it and rang the awful buzzer. I do not know what I expected if she answered; to cry in her arms. No response anyway. Pictured her standing in the middle of the room staring blank eyed at the door.

 

Turned, grabbing the computer in one hand and the bloody rag in another, ran out of the building and back down the hill to Pino’s place.

 

When Pino saw me he said, “what the fuck happened?”

 

I ran by him and into the restaurant. Said as I passed. “Bathroom. Ice in a napkin quick.”

 

In the toilet I threw the rag into the waste basket. The bleeding had mostly stopped. Dropped my pants and drawers and sat. Saw that I really had shit my pants, a little not much but enough to make me groan. My hands were shaking as was the rest of me.

 

When I left the toilet Pino was there with the ice in a napkin. Repeated, “What the fuck happened?”

 

Took the napkin with the ice, pressed it to my face, said, “Later, I need a taxi right now.” Pino went into the street flagged down a cab. I got in. Gave the driver the address of my condo on Fourth Street, waved to Pino and slunk into my seat as far down as I could go.

 

 

 

 

 

 

TODAY’S QUOTE:

 

 

 

“I know my time is limited, so I cherish things more?” She tapped her cheek thoughtfully with an index finger. “Or, hmm… I’m not sure. But when a special moment arises, I try to hold it in my heart. You can’t ever hold onto a moment for long, because life always moves on. But if I’m careful, if I’m paying attention, I can be here entirely. All of me, in this single place in time and space. And when that happens, I don’t have a curse. I don’t have a past or a future. I just have this moment, and it’s everything.”

               AUGUST. Tipsy Pelican Tavern Vol. 3: Rare Swords Are Only Good Until You Lose Them (p. 434). 

 

 

 

 

 

TODAY’S PHOTOGRAPH:

Turritopsis nutricula is an immortal jellyfish. Some people believe it may hold the secret of immortality for humans.

`After reaching sexual maturity, this jellyfish is able to reverse its aging process and become a polyp again. The ability to reverse the life cycle is probably unique in the animal kingdom, and allows the jellyfish to bypass death, rendering the Turritopsis nutricula biologically immortal. Lab tests showed that 100% of specimens reverted to the polyp stage.

I fucking love science.

But, do I want to be a polyp – even an immortal one?

 

This and that from re Thai r ment, by 3Th. 26 Joseph 0011. (January 15, 2022)

 

 

“Life is a combination of love and pasta.”

Frederico Fellini

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

TODAY FROM AMERICA:

 

 

 

 

 

 

POOKIE’S ADVENTURES AS HE PLUNGES INTO THE VAGARIES OF THE NEW YEAR. (JANUARY, 2022)

 

 

 

“Shame, for want of a better word, is good. Shame is right, shame works. Shame is the gateway emotion to increased self-criticism, which leads to realization, an apology, outrage and eventually meaningful action.”

Fforde, Jasper. The Constant Rabbit (p. 238). Penguin Publishing Group.

 

 

Shame is an interesting word. It describes an innate or acquired social construct necessary for human society to function. Its parameters dictate social limits. Each society has its own stew of shameful behaviors that express its boundaries. It varies from society to society, and from family to family, neighborhood to neighborhood, country to country, each with its rules often conflicting with itself and with all the others. Those lacking shame are often outcast. Those seeking to change a social group often must focus on eliminating or overcoming a particular shame felt by members of that group. Shame is why it is often easier for one to express ones shameful behaviors and thoughts in fiction than even within the sanctity of their own diaries — or consciousness.

 

For the last month and especially the past week, I have focused a lot of my time and thoughts on addressing my various major and minor maladies, itching, skin eruptions, throat pain and swallowing problems, fatigue and so on. Mostly problems that singularly would either be ignored or unremarkable, but given the number of these minor maladies all occurring at the same time and so soon after much more scary illnesses had appeared to have been resolved, I have found myself spending a lot of time dealing with and worrying about them. It seems we (me, my doctors, and those acquaintances who feel obliged to comment) are coming to a consensus that the removal of immunization therapy after an apparently successful treatment has allowed these various maladies and discomforts to flourish — hopefully only until my immune system resets itself.

 

Meanwhile back in life, winter continues here in the Enchanted Forest nestled in the center of the Great Valley below the Golden Hills. It is a mild winter relative to places at higher latitudes and in other parts of the country.  Still there is a clammy heaviness in the air, and a subtle chill when the sun is gone that slips through my skin and muscle like a fish knife. I am not particularly cold, exactly: only uncomfortable. Nevertheless, the days are often dark and dreary and at times the land is covered in the wet and opaque tule fog. Nikki has returned to Italy. Hayden’s phone is working again. Naida continues to work on her memoir. The dog still barks and smells, and I wrestle with the mini demons of my psyche and type this for lack of better things to do. Until the side effects of the termination of my immunization treatments pass and the current up-tic in COVID hospitalizations subsides, I suspect I will not be doing any long distance traveling. A pity that. I still have the remnants of my bucket list left and time is getting shorter.

 

On Thursday, some of these concerns seem to be resolving themselves. My dermatologist confirmed that, in her opinion, the rashes, skin eruptions and at least a part of my throat problems are artifacts of the termination of my immunotherapy treatments. She then prescribed some additional medications to my already extensive list and four different creams or salves with which to slather my body several times a day. She also took a biopsy – just because. If she is correct, this would leave me little to complain about for awhile, at least on the medical front. I can still bitch and moan about boredom, the weather, the dog, or whatever. Speaking of the dog, he shit on the carpet again yesterday. We are quite cross with him and have sentenced him to the dog house for an undetermined time or until we determine the terms for parole.

 

About 10 years ago in T&T I wrote:

 

“Business Insider reports that an online survey of 895 Web users and experts found more than three-quarters believe the Internet will make people smarter in the next 10 years, according to results released on Friday. !! But 21 percent said the Internet would have the opposite effect and could even lower the IQs of some who use it a lot. !! Time will tell, but most experts believe the internet benefits intelligence.”

 

Time did tell. The experts were wrong.

 

Saturday arrived bright and cheerful, a pleasant change from the recent dreariness. We did not attend the Saturday Morning Coffee. Instead we sat in our pjs eating breakfast and watched an old movie about Mark Twain starring Fredrick March. The movie was released in 1944, that was about 78 years ago. To put this in The Long Generation perspective, if in 1944, I had, at four years old, gone to the theater to see the movie, Mark Twain would have been at the height of his popularity 78 years before, movies would not have been invented and the world would have been just entering our modern age. Only two lives in being necessary to experience perhaps the most momentous changes in human history — perhaps the last except for its ending itself. I, like most aged people viewing the world from perspective of a world of which they no longer are a dynamic part of and no longer fully understand, tend to view the future with a jaundiced pessimism. In the past, we grieved for the expectation of our society and cultures possible end. This may be the first era in which we grieve for the possible end of History.

 

As I reread the above paragraph, I am fascinated to see how I managed to begin it with a sentence including the words “bright and cheerful” and a few dozen words later close it with the end of the world. I suspect it is due to a defect in my character, the belief that behind all joy lurks great sadness. Sometimes you are more than happy to flee from someplace, at other times you are sad to leave — and then there are those of us who remain indecisive.

 

On the other hand, it is all probably just another story. History, Her-story, and even Itstory are simply a collection of stories we tell ourselves to bring light into the gloaming. After all:

 

“Stories are not without consequence. The human race will march into the darkness singing songs and telling stories because that is who we are and what we do.”

Bancroft, Josiah. The Fall of Babel (The Books of Babel) (p. 467). Orbit.

 

That evening we had pho soup at a little place that we like. That brought some light into the gloaming.

 

In life, the things we mean to do rarely match the things we actually accomplish. When I look back on my life, I am astonished about how few of the things I had set out to do I actually accomplished and how much I accomplished that I never set out to do.

 

On Sunday, while sitting in a darkened room watching the 49ers get manhandled by the hateful Rams, I glanced out the window and noticed the sun was shining. California winter, those few dark and dreary days that in most of the rest of the country would be considered early spring, is now over. We may get one or two more brief stretches of winter weather before returning to … well … the same kind of weather we experience the rest of the year. Anyway, tired of watching the carnage, I went for a walk with the dog. It was a pleasant walk and for the most part Boo-boo behaved himself. On my return, I discovered the Niners made a stunning comeback in the second half and won the game in overtime. They are now in the playoffs. Yea team. 

 

Monday morning, outside the sun still shines brightly with a clear cool light, the dog sleeps on the sofa next to me, Naida, at the computer, revises her memoir for the 100th time, and I sit here reading Carl Hiaasen’s most recent comic mystery novel Squeeze Me. Hiaasen was a one time journalist for the Miami Herald and is now a prolific full time writer and novelist.  I love his novels and try to read as many of them as I can. I find his latest, Squeeze Me a joy to read in part because our recently defeated president, his wife Melania and the winter White House play such a significant part in the shenanigans along with pythons, raccoons, confused squirrels and the ever aging but still irrepressible Skink. Try it, I think you’ll like it. 

 

On Tuesday, the weather remained relatively warm (60 degrees or so) and sunny and it appears it will continue so for the rest of the week. The reason I mention it is that weather-wise it seems it is going to be a boring but not unpleasant week. I expect my life this week to be the same. As I sit (actually more like slouch) here, I ponder the question of whether I should do something about it and accomplish something, anything or simply go with the flow. Going with the flow seems to be winning. I have come to the conclusion that the secret to happiness when one is retired and old consists of avoiding anything resembling work — hobbies are ok, naps too, puttering around in the garden or the kitchen is excusable as long as you don’t work up a sweat.

 

On Wednesday, I drove into the Golden Hills intending to have lunch with Hayden, pick up some medicines, and have the car serviced. After I  arrived, I received a text message from Hayden that Kaleb and a few other friends of his had tested positive for COVID and sent home. He wrote that since he had been near them in the morning, in an abundance of caution, he suggested we cancel lunch. I agreed. The garage then informed me that I was about 3000 miles too soon for the oil change and maintenance, leaving me with only the pharmacy to justify my trip, The pharmacist told me that they were out of the medicine prescribed but that it might be obtained over-the-counter at another pharmacy. I decided to work off my frustration by talking a walk around the lake at Town Center as I used to do almost every morning when I lived here.

 

As I walked, I contemplated the new 300+ unit residential apartment building that had recently been built and occupied. Town Center, an upscale shopping center had never really achieved the success the developers had envisioned for it. However with the opening of the residential project seems to have given it a new life — the stores were busy and the restaurants full. I had always advocated, that shopping centers losing their function, (at least for big box stores), replace the anchor department stores with high density residential leaving the smaller shops to operate as a downtown for the residential units and for the low-density subdivisions that usually surround them.

 

 

Following my walk, I stopped in the bookstore to browse hoping to find something new and interesting. Although  I do most of my reading through Kindle, I try to make it a habit to buy at least one book whenever I enter a bookstore. This time, I bought a signed first edition of Neal Stevenson’s new book, Termination Shock. I have enjoyed most of Stevenson’s novels, especially those in the Baroque Cycle. Recently, some of his novels have gotten a little too obscure for my taste.

 

The great Satchel Page once opined, “Age is a question of mind over matter. If you don’t mind, it don’t matter.” Who is Satchel Page you may ask. If you have to ask, you are too young for it to matter. My very favorite saying of his has to be “How old would you be if you didn’t know how old you was?” I know how old I am. I would prefer to be younger. Speaking of the younger me, as I was writing this bit of folderol, I recalled a time about 12 years ago, Hayden and I were watching television. Rather he was watching and I was playing with my computer. Someone on the show he was watching was crying. Hayden turned to me and said, “He is crying because his grandpa died. Pookie, I don’t want you to die. When are you going to start getting younger?” 

 

I hope it starts soon, this getting younger.  So far all I have gotten is a little bit older and deeper in debt, shorter, hemorrhoids, declining hearing and eyesight, and more feeble. 

It is 3AM on Friday and I have been driven downstairs by a spate of uncontrolled coughing tearing at my throat and keeping Naida and the dog awake. Between coughs, I tried reading Charlie Stross’ new book Invisible Sun 3. A few hours ago, I was sitting in bed reading the Stevenson book. I sometimes like to read two books at the same time. Well, not at the same time but an hour or so of one and then an hour or so of another. The two stories often get mixed up in my mind and it becomes like I am reading a third book. It only works for Fantasy and Science Fiction novels. In Fantasy it works because there is only one plot and the addition of other strange creatures or characters always seem to fold seamlessly into it. In Science Fiction, well, …in outer space dark matter is really made up of MacGuffins.

 

Woke up the next morning at about noon. My throat felt like Dresden during the fire bombing, the rest of me like old WWII allusions. The sun was shining. I was not. Toyed with remaining in bed for the rest of my life. Decided against it for no other reason than a “Fuck you” to my better judgement. Staggered downstairs. Made my usual breakfast of bagels with lox and cream cheese and coffee. Sat on the sofa with my computer on my lap, my throat feeling every swallow like ripping adhesive tape off sunburned skin. To take my mind off my discomfort, I resumed reading Stross’s novel. It was about five different earths and the people who travelled between them. I had no idea what was happening in the novel or why except that everyone seemed angry at everyone else. Finished my breakfast and reached a new chapter in the novel entitled “Epicycles – Berlin, time line two, August 2020.” I couldn’t even recall the chapter I had just read and was dubious about the merits of beginning a new one. Turning from the computer, I looked out the window at the sunny day outside. For some reason, it made me feel good. Certainly better than I would feel trying to comprehend what was going on in the novel or even understand the meaning of the last 12 hours of my existence. I decided I would return upstairs, wash, dress and prepare myself for the rest of my life.

 

 

 

 

MOPEY JOE’S MEMORIES: Ten Years Ago.

 

 

   January 4, 2012. Since my New Year’s Eve adventure, I have been lying low, swimming, napping and enjoying my massages.

 

The Little Masseuse seems to be losing her hair. I had an image of her as an aging Sinead OʼConnor as my masseuse. Recently she hinted about getting a wig, a red one. For some reason that did not surprise me. I began to fancy one for myself. Not that I am losing my hair. Far from it. Although I now keep it short, we Petrillos are genetically incapable of losing our hair. Nevertheless, I could not understand my obsession. It was not because I was going completely grey, there are still some strands of black yet. No, I dreamt of sporting a bright red wig beneath my yellow Panama hat. If I were then to dye my neck wattle red then with my red coxcomb I would resemble a rooster wearing a straw hat. 

 

Life is strange, weird really. I think someone once said, “Dying is easy Life is hard,” or was it that boozy clown W. C. Fields who said, “Dying is easy, comedy is hard.” Whatever. Actually, if you think about it, life is interesting, death is a bore since there would be nothing to do anymore.

 

January 10, 2012. Not much to report. I have begun preparation for my return to the US on January 24. Other than that I have continued to swim every day and have gone to see,”The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo,” and “Tinker, Tailor…” at the movies. I enjoyed both very much although how one could comprehend “Tinker, Tailor…” without having first read the book or having seen the Alec Guinness version, I will never understand

 

I thought “Dragon Tattoo,” was worth seeing just for Rooney Mara’s retaliatory rape scene alone. When she looked down at her now cowering tormentor with the black rings around her eyes and explained to him that he should fear her because her social service investigators opinion was true, she was insane, it brought tears to my eyes.

 

January 8, 2021, Occasionally, during my morning walks along Soi Nana and then on to the health club, I am accosted by a number of smiling (it is Thailand after all) individuals importuning me to buy something. When I am in one of my bad moods, I generally respond by ignoring them and walking on in silence, or by either growling or uttering, sotto voce, go screw yourself or its functional equivalent.

 

When I am in one of my manic moods, however, I sometimes stop and respond with a polite “no thank you.” One time, to a taxi hustler selling rides from BKK to Pattaya, I responded:

 

“Yes, I agree that that is a handsome taxi and its color is stunning, but no thank you, I am not in the mood for a trip to Pattaya today.”

 

Another time, when one of the delightful, smiling ladies, who I am certain all work for a single mega corporation called “Massages Are Us,” invited “Papa” to enjoy a special massage, I replied:

 

“Ah, you are quite beautiful and undoubtedly your fingers can work magic. I am sure the multitude of ways you have to drive me to ecstasy, are more varied and less expensive than anywhere else in Thailand, but I think that today I will spend the next few hours drinking coffee and reading the newspaper.”

 

I found, in both cases, my little attempts at humor were received with silence and a cold stare, but since this is Thailand happily the smiles with which they approached me remained frozen in place.

 

I have received a slightly better response from the male touts hustling me for tuktuk rides or trips to the massage parlor of my dreams, who approach with their hand extended, inviting a good old American handshake. I, holding back my hand, say, “30 baht.” They stop perplexed and ask, “What mean 30 baht.” I answer, “30 baht to shake my hand.” Most of them do not think that is funny either, but now and then one laughs and indulges me with a snide comment in Thai that I am sure means something like “asshole.”

 

Note: In 2012, Fortune Tellers in Thailand Predict Record-Breaking Stupidity, Profits in that Year.

 

BANGKOK – As the year draws to a close, Thailand’s professional soothsayers and astrologers have issued their annual predictions. Their unanimous verdict is that 2012 will be a great year for their industry, concurrent with it being a poor year for human intelligence, rational thought, and deductive reasoning.

 

 

 

 

 

 

PETRILLO’S COMMENTARY:

 

 

   “Understanding nothing, or very little of the world, and having no desire to understand more than you already do, well, that invites entitlement. What was a privilege becomes a right. And that, I think, is dangerous.”

Bancroft, Josiah. The Fall of Babel (The Books of Babel) (p. 798). Orbit. 

 

 

Today is January 6. A year ago was another day, a dark day in the nation’s history. Yet, although the media for the past year has plastered the airways with images of that shameful attempt to overthrow the American form of democracy, about 25 percent of Americans still, in some form, deny it for what it was. I have no interest in rehashing the debates surrounding the events of that bay but those events do make me wonder about the impact the so called Dunninger-Kruger Effect has on our society. Are we here in the US more susceptible to it than in other countries? What can be done about it if we are? 

 

For those who may not know, the Dunninger-Kruger Effect is:

 

I suspect we all to a greater of lesser extent are subject to bouts of this cognitive bias, even the brightest of us. How does one deal with this in a democratic society when it affects us all and, frankly, is damned useful to those seeking advantage over others? After all, what does the huckster rely upon when he prey’s upon the gullible? Its existence in all of us is the foundation upon which advertising is based; its manipulation the goal political debate; and perhaps it even taints the administration justice itself.

 

When I litigated in court, a long time ago, it was neither logic or eloquence that won the case but  exploitation of the fact that each of the jurors will believe they have the knowledge and experience to piece together the reality. The parties may. The attorney’s certainly. But the jurors, no. It other words, lies work. All the lier needs is a bit  more knowledge, a rough estimate or the mark’s (juror’s) susceptibility and a ready willingness to misrepresent reality. 

 

Everyone believes that they know the truth when they see it. It is the both the cement that holds the society together and its Achilles heel. It holds a society together because it forces a unity of belief that the abstractions and assumptions of that society are agreed to and accepted. On the other hand, It produces a society well made for the benefit of lawyers, politicians, businessmen, hucksters, Donald Trump, and people who frequent pick-up bars. 

 

 

 

 

DAILY FRACTURED FACTOIDS:

 

 

 

   1789: The American Constitution was Drafted. What do you think our Founding Fathers were smoking while they wrote it?

 

“Some of my finest hours have been spent sitting on my back veranda, smoking hemp and observing as far as my eye can see.”

~Thomas Jefferson

 

“Make the most of the Indian hemp seed, and sow it everywhere !”

~George Washington

 

“Hemp is of first necessity to the wealth & protection of the country.”

~Thomas Jefferson

 

“We shall, by and by, want a world of hemp more for our own consumption.”

~John Adams

 

    Was it possible that the patriotic boys of the Continental Army, marched off to battle the British Red Coats while stoned on weed? No wonder they won.

 

    I can picture General Georgie the Washman, just before stepping on that boat prior the surprise attack on the British troops in Trenton, knowing he was going to freeze his ass off during the crossing, taking a toke or two to help him weather the voyage. How do you think the Continental Army was able to survive that bone-chilling winter at Valley Forge?

 

    And what about TJ living large and enjoying it on that back veranda at Monticello watching his sweating slaves work his fields through the haze of smoke curling up from the joint he is holding in one hand while his other hand snakes under Sally Hemming’s skirt to stroke her rump. Now that’s what patriotism is all about.

 

    The Real Birth of a Nation.

 

 

Your Brain:

 

    “A lesion in one spot leaves you unable to tell a Jack Russell from a badger (not that there is much difference), and with damage in another spot, the toaster is unrecognizable. There are even people with certain brain lesions who specifically cannot recognize fruit. Harvard researchers Alfonso Caramazza and Jennifer Shelton claim that the brain has specific knowledge systems (modules) for animate and inanimate categories that have distinct neural mechanisms. These domain-specific knowledge systems arenʼt actually the knowledge itself, but systems that make you pay attention to particular aspects of situations, and by doing so, increase your survival chances. For example, there may be quite specific detectors for certain classes of predatory animals such as snakes and big cats…”

—Michael S. Gazzaniga: “Who’s in Charge?: Free Will and the Science of the Brain*

 

 

 

 

 

 

PEPE’S POTPOURRI:

 

 

 

 

 

A. Brad DeLong on Top: Musing on Pessimism Amid Progress.

 

 

In a recent substack post, DeLong ponders why do things appear to be going so wrong in the materially rich world that we have today.

 

Within the space of just a few generations, humanity has created the material conditions for establishing the kind of society that our ancestors could hardly imagine. But everything now depends on whether we can figure out the politics of wealth distribution.

 

Humanity as a whole is wealthier today then at any time in its history. And yet, from the short-term challenge of the pandemic to the existential threat of global warming, there is a widespread sense that things are going badly wrong…

 

For the first ten thousand years after the invention of agriculture, humanity had no chance of achieving any approximation of “utopia,” regardless of how one defined that term. Then, within our parents’ and grandparents’ lifetimes, something approaching that ideal came into view. Yet we have repeatedly failed to grasp it…

 

Until just a few generations ago, humanity marched to a Malthusian drum. With technological progress ploddingly slow and mortality extremely high, population size was everything. In a world where almost one-third of elderly women had no surviving sons or grandsons, and hence no social power, there was immense pressure to have more children in one’s childbearing years. The resulting population growth (without commensurate growth in the size of farms) offset any gains in productivity and incomes from better technology and kept typical living standards low and stagnant.

 

…society’s best shot at relative happiness was to foster a custom of delaying marriage, thereby pushing down the birth rate. Faced with the problem of unsustainable population growth, this practice represented a social rather than a biological solution (which took the form of malnutrition). At the same time, the elite’s best shot at happiness was to establish a smooth process of extracting wealth from the farmers and craftsmen.

 

…Malthusian population pressure no longer keeps us poor. Our productivity vastly exceeds that of all previous generations, and it continues to grow. In the next two generations, we will achieve as much proportional growth in our technological powers as our forebears in 1870 had since the great migration out of Africa 50,000 years earlier.

 

In many parts of the world, there already is enough wealth to ensure that nobody is hungry, unsheltered, or vulnerable to many of the health threats that used to shorten most lives. There is enough information and entertainment that nobody need be bored. There are enough resources to allow everyone to create or pursue whatever his or her calling may be. True, there will never be enough prestige to satisfy everyone; but if we are willing to settle for universal basic dignity, there is no longer any material reason why we should have a society where people feel disrespected.

 

Why, then, do things seem to be going badly wrong? First, the world has failed to build governance institutions that can manage global problems like climate change. That challenge could have been handled at very low cost a generation ago. Now, averting a disaster and adapting to the change that is already here will entail much, much larger upfront costs. And to what end? Merely to preserve for a few years longer the wealth of fossil-fuel robber barons?

 

Second, the world’s unprecedented wealth is absurdly, appallingly, criminally maldistributed. The bottom billion people may have smartphones and some access to health care, but in many ways, they are not much better off than our pre-industrial Malthusian ancestors. It has been 75 years since US President Harry Truman wisely added global economic development to the Global North’s agenda. Though he would be happy to see that the Global South is much, much richer now than it was in 1945, he would be tremendously disappointed to find that the proportional gap between rich and developing countries is as large as ever.

 

Even developed countries like the United States are apparently incapable of properly distributing the enormous wealth that has been created by modern post-industrial economies. The past four decades have given the lie to the neoliberal claim that a more unequal society would release immense entrepreneurial energies, lifting all boats. Yet policies to accord well-being, utility, and dignity to all people have consistently been blocked.

 

One major hurdle is the idea that some of society’s non-rich deserve not more but even less. This view has long been applied to Hispanics and African-Americans in the US, Muslims in India, Turks in Britain, and all those who have ever run afoul of blood-and-soil nationalism. Many now seem to believe that the Enlightenment vision of human equality was wrong and should be replaced with the Aristotelian principle that it is unjust to treat non-equals equally

<https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/human-progress-with-fatal-weaknesses-by-j-bradford-delong-2022-01> 2022-01-07 Fr

 

 

 

 

B. Trenz Pruca’s Observations:

 

 

 

The purpose of the performing arts is neither to to entertain nor edify but to attract collective hysteria and magnify emotions. In these modern times, it appears to have become the function of the news and social media as well. The modern world seems to have become a sad operetta in which at the end everyone ends up either bewildered, remorseful, or dead.

 

 

 

 

C. Today’s Poem: THE FARTHEST SHORE 48–70 by Christopher Paolini.

 

 

Christopher Paolini, who wrote a best seller at 15 (Eragon) and is listed in Guinness as the “youngest author of a bestselling book series,” recently published a new book To Sleep in a Sea of Stars in which he includes the following wonderful poem. It is a tribute to the great Ursula Le Guin’s Earthsea Trilogy.

 

 

I’ve seen a greater share of wonders, 

vast And small, 

than most have done. 

My peace is made; 

My breathing slows. 

I could not ask for more. 

To reach beyond the stuff of day-to-day

Is worth this life of mine. 

Our kind is meant 

To search and seek 

among the outer bounds, 

And when we land 

upon a distant shore, 

To seek another yet farther still. 

Enough. 

The silence grows. 

My strength has fled, 

and Sol Become a faded gleam, 

and now I wait,

       A Viking laid to rest atop his ship.

       Though fire won’t send me off, 

but cold and ice, 

And forever shall I drift alone. 

No king of old had such a stately bier, 

Adorned with metals dark and grey, 

nor such A hoard of gems 

to grace his somber tomb. 

I check my straps; 

I cross my arms, 

prepare Myself 

to once again venture into the Unknown, 

content to face my end 

and pass Beyond this mortal realm, 

content to hold 

And wait and here to sleep— 

To sleep in a sea of stars. 

 

—THE FARTHEST SHORE 48–70 

HARROW GLANTZER

 

Paolini, Christopher. To Sleep in a Sea of Stars (p. 783). Tom Doherty Associates. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

D.  Tuckahoe Joe’s Blog of the Week:

 

 

   It is early in the year, and to check into one of my favorite blogs, “Logarithmic History,” that puts the history of the universe on a logarithmic scale and mapping that scale onto the course of one year.  Each day of the year covers a shorter period in the history of the universe than the preceding day (5.46% shorter). January 1 begins with the Big Bang and covers a full 754 million years. January 2 covers the next 712 million years, and so on. Succeeding days cover shorter and shorter succeeding intervals in the history of the universe. At this rate, a given calendar date covers only a tenth as much time as a date 41 days earlier.

 

It is now the end of the first week in January — about 10.4 to 9.9 billion years ago in logarithmic time:

 

We are stardust

 

    The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies were made in the interiors of collapsing stars. We are made of starstuff.

Carl Sagan (h/t to commenter remanandhra)

 

There’s a long gap between the origin of the universe, the first stars, and early galaxies, and the origin of our Solar System and our planet Earth. If we were using a linear scale for our calendar, the Solar System would get started in September. Even on our logarithmic scale, Sun and Earth wait until late January. A spiral galaxy like the Milky Way is an efficient machine for turning dust into stars over many billions of years. But the earliest stars it produces are poor in “metals” (to an astronomer, anything heavier than helium is a metal). It takes generations of exploding stars producing heavier elements and ejecting them into space before a star like the Sun — 2% metal – can form.

 

And just a few years back, a spectacular discovery provided support for another mechanism of heavy element formation. Astronomers for the first time detected gravitational waves from the collision of two neutron stars, 300 million light-years away. Such collisions may be responsible for the formation of some of the heaviest atoms around, gold and silver in particular. So your gold ring may be not just garden-variety supernova stardust, but the relic of colliding neutron stars. Here’s a chart showing where the elements in our solar system come from:

stardust

 

Alchemists thought they could change one element into another – lead into gold, say. But it takes more extreme conditions than in any chemistry lab to transmute elements. The heart of a star makes heavy elements out of hydrogen and helium; it takes a supernova to make elements heavier than iron. So it’s literally true, not just hippy poetry, that “we are stardust” (at least the part of us that isn’t hydrogen).

 

 

 

E. Giants of History: Spies and More Spies.

 

 

   Recently, in my inbox, there appeared a fascinating interview of Shaunak Agarkhedkar, (on+stories@substack.com) who writes Espionage&, a publication that shines a light on lesser-known stories of international spies and spy-craft. I guess Agarkhedkar is like a sport reporter who only writes about minor league baseball. Anyway, I took a look into Agarkhedkar’s blog (https://espionage.substack.com/) and found it intriguing, as one would expect to find stories of intrigue to be. 

 

The substack interview provided a number of interesting tidbits on spies and spies craft two of which I decided to include here. The first describes some little known spies Agarkhedkar believes we all should know. Sort of like great minor league  pitchers who never quite made it to the majors.

 

There’s Adolf Tolkachev, variously known as the Billion Dollar Spy and the man who ruined the Soviet warplane industry in less than a decade. He was prolific; the Pentagon and the CIA valued his “product” as being worth more than a billion dollars in the 1980s.

 

Then there’s the Mossad team—Danny Limor, Gad Shimron, et al. Over half a decade, this team of courageous officers helped rescue thousands of Ethiopian Jews from a hostile government in Sudan.

 

And finally, there’s Juan Pujol García (Codename: GARBO). The Nazis paid him the equivalent of £1 million to operate a network of 27 spies inside Great Britain during the Second World War. His reports convinced the German High Command that the actual invasion would happen at Calais, not Normandy. At the end of the war, the British government made him Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire.

 

The second describes two amazing spy gadgets and technology that modern spies have used.

 

I am absolutely fascinated by the Type I camera systems used on the A-12 Oxcart aircraft. They could photograph the entire country of Vietnam to a resolution of one foot from an altitude of 16 miles in less than 13 minutes. And they built this in the 1950s and ’60s.

 

Then there was the device used by the CIA to detect communication signals passed between the Soviet Ministry of Defense in Moscow and the Institute for Nuclear Research at Troitsk. As chronicled in Mission Impossible in 1970s Moscow, a CIA officer crawled to the bottom of a duct, attached a sensor to the cable externally in a manner that left no marks, and then retrieved it after a few weeks. The sensor had recorded all transmissions passing through the cable onto the tapes contained inside it. Fascinating stuff.

 

 

 

  

F. Tito Tazio’s Tales: A Thai Soap Opera Ends.

 

 

When I lived it Thailand, I was addicted to Thai Soap Operas on television.  One of my favorites featured a character, a woman I named The Master Slapper. In every episode she would haul off and slap someone across the face. It was a very un-Thai thing to do. Eventually, as these things often do, the series came to an end. Here is my recollection of the final episodes — enjoy.  

 

 

     Speaking of Thai soaps, the one starring the scenery chewing Master Slapper Stepmother alas, has come to an end. Finally, all the young women slapped around by her; the men and older women she beat over the head with logs; ex-husbands (one rich and one poor) she betrayed and those others she had kidnapped or beaten (including one of her own daughters) got together and told each other what they already knew. They still refused to do anything except agree to tell her that they talked to each other and that her rich husband was very angry.

 

When she learned this, the Master Slapper went off the deep end, became hysterical, ripped the iv out of her arm and fled the hospital she was in for some reason; but not before slapping her two daughters silly. She was not upset so much because she feared everyone else would somehow punish her but because she was embarrassed that they all talked to each other about her.

 

She ran off into the darkness and was promptly hit by a truck and died. When everyone heard about this the two beaten daughters cried a little but cheered up as they paired off with the men of their choice; the insipid daughter with the poor but nice boy and the daughter from the poor husband with the rich but stupid soldier. The multi-beaten ingenue step-daughter who the father (the rich husband) following DNA testing finally acknowledged as his daughter, making her rich also, finally was united with the other rich but clueless hero. Ingenue and clueless planned to marry immediately. I do not know the reason for the rush but suspect in had something to do with the show ending.

 

Unbeknownst to them all, the Evil Stepmother did not die. Instead, some completely random woman for no reason had run into the street in front of the Great Slapper and was killed by the truck. The Evil Stepmother then changed clothes with the dead woman and ran off again into the night swearing to kill everyone who shamed her. She promptly was set upon by a thug who tried to rape her. She eventually beat him off by smashing his head in with a log, but not before he had managed to disfigure her with a piece of broken glass.

 

She then set off on her revenge by killing a few of the poor people and minor characters. She showed up at the wedding between ingenue and clueless and strangled the poor young maid who had done nothing but serve the Slapper during her various rampages. When the wedding guests found the dead girl, everyone ran out into the yard and confronted Mom. Understandably, no one seemed to want to get too close to her. So, they all shouted at her from a distance. It seemed that everyone in the neighborhood began showing up and standing around also.

 

`Finally the “poor” ex-husband rushed forward and grabbed her arm thereby allowing her to reach into his pants and grab the gun he had hidden there. Everyone started shouting again and the poor husband retreated. She shot him in the shoulder. The daughter of the poor ex-husband and the Slapper jumped in front of her father offering up her life instead. After a lengthy (from one advertising break to the next) discussion she was persuaded to step aside and Mom promptly pumped the poor bastards body with five more bullets and ran off into the street while the by now 100s of onlookers stood by.

 

Mom ran into someone, I no longer remember who, who tried to stop her, and she shot him or her also and was out of bullets at which point the police arrived and took Mom into custody.

 

Everyone then went back to the wedding and the series ended much like “The Lord of the Rings” with each main character’s interminable separate farewell. In this case each of the lovers telling each other how lucky they were things ended up like this and each of the parents telling their maids how relieved they were that their kids were finally growing up.

 

`After this, having enough of Thai murder and mayhem, I turned to a comedy soap.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

TODAY’S QUOTE:

 

 

 

“It was long assumed that technology, capital, and labor would always ultimately function as complements, because every machine and information-processing task would still need to be supervised by a human. But our information-processing technologies have been outpacing our educational system, and the hope for harmonious complementarity has become a pipe dream.” 

  Brad DeLong, <https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/human-progress-with-fatal-weaknesses-by-j-bradford-delong-2022-01?barrier=accesspaylog>

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

TODAY’S CHART:

 

 

Although women and girls account for a far smaller share of total homicides than men, they bear by far the greatest burden of intimate partner/family‐related homicide, and intimate partner homicide.

 

These findings show that even though men are the principal victims of homicide globally, women continue to bear the heaviest burden of lethal victimization as a result of gender stereotypes and inequality. Many of the victims of “femicide” are killed by their current and former partners, but they are also killed by fathers, brothers, mothers, sisters and other family members because of their role and status as women. The death of those killed by intimate partners does not usually result from random or spontaneous acts, but rather from the culmination of prior gender-related violence. Jealousy and fear of abandonment are among the motives.

UNODC, Global Study on Homicide 2019 (Vienna, 2019)

 

 

 

 

 

 

TODAY’S PHOTOGRAPH:

 

Photograph of an unusually dramatic sky. Taken on January 5, 2022 as I drove on Route 50 from The Golden Hills back to The Enchanted Forest.

This and that from re Thai r ment, by 3Th. 32 Pookie 0009. (December 17, 2020)

 

 

 

 

“There are those at both ends of the social scale who would have us change direction!”

Abercrombie, Joe. The Trouble with Peace: 2 (The Age of Madness) (p. 244). Orbit.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

TODAY FROM AMERICA:

 

 

 

 

 

POOKIE’S ADVENTURES: MID-INTERREGNUM.

 

This morning Naida, I and Boo-boo the Barking Dog went on a walk through the Enchanted Forest. It is getting on into mid-December and the temperature is in the mid-seventies. The leaf fall has tapered off. Here and there, leaves still flicker in the sunlight as they tumble from the trees. The leaf-blowers have passed through the grounds leaving piles of leaves in the gutters. We happily crunch through those that remain on the sidewalks while reminding each other how much we enjoyed doing the same when we were children.

 

 

Autumn in the Enchanted Forest

On Tuesday Naida left early for her tennis game with her daughters. It was another unseasonably warm day. I had woken up after Naida had left. Last night was the third of four nights in a row watching “Designated Survivor” and marveling at how well it caught many of the fundamental political issues of  our time and how preposterous were the solutions shown. There is no bumbling savior to pull victory out of chaos, although, Biden appears to bear an uncanny resemblance to Kirkham. My hair has gotten so long and unruly that in the mornings when I first look into the mirror I scare myself. 

 

Trump, having lost just about every legal and political option to upset the election results, seems to have embarked on a scorched earth policy in an attempted to frustrate Biden’s ability to govern and restore the nation’s institutions that he had laid waste to. Today December 8 marks Safe Harbor Day, the day written into law as the deadline for states to resolve disputes about the winner of their electoral votes. That makes it another key date on Donald Trump’s road to accepting he lost. I think I will celebrate it with a cup of cannabis tea.

 

Today, I began reading Charlie Stross’ newest novel in his Laundry Files series, Death Lies Dreaming. It begins with the following sentence:

 

“Imp froze as he rounded the corner onto Regent Street, and saw four elven warriors shackling a Santa to a stainless-steel cross outside Hamleys Toy Shop.”

               Stross, Charles. Dead Lies Dreaming (Laundry Files) . Tom Doherty Associates.  

 

It is now early Wednesday afternoon. I slept in quite late today. Naida appears more energetic today than yesterday when she seemed exhausted for most of the day and retired early. The temperature outside is slightly cooler than the past few days and the sky’s crystalline blue with a hint of wispy clouds fluttering about. 

 

The FTC and the AG’s of 48 states have brought an antitrust action in Federal courts to break up Facebook. I suspect if they win, the results will resemble the similar breakups of Standard Oil and AT&T. Several competing companies will be formed, they will compete for a while, begin buying or merging with each other until one of another predominates in the market with a few competitors left too small to effectively compete with them but who will be enough to forestall future antitrust actions. On balance, not a too bad result, but far from ideal.

 

Today, I drove into the Golden Hills to do some shopping and have lunch with HRM. As usual when I drive along routes I have driven many times before my mind departs to somewhere else. In inevitably it winds through the aether and produces what I continue at the time to be a solution for everything or at least like something. It is not like a dream which have me doing something or running from something. It is more like a master’s thesis with footnotes. This trip produced two. I was convinced they would change the world and promised myself I would write them down, but here I am prepared to write and I recall nothing. I am not disappointed, only amused.

 

Anyway, HRM was in good spirits. We had lunch at Bella Bru (Pizza). He proposed a scheme by which we could eliminate our concern about what to do about the Mitsubishi while he could get the car he really wants. I agreed to discuss it with Naida. We then went shopping for groceries at Raley’s. He seemed to know where everything was. When I expressed my admiration he said, “SWAC used to bring me here shopping with her when I first came here from Thailand, and in order to escape boredom, I memorized where things were.” On the way out he struck up a conversation with the cashier. When I commented, as we were leaving, that he seemed to know here. “Oh yes,” he said, “she was the cashier we always used.”

 

Pookie and HRM at Bella Bru

On Monday the Electoral College will meet to vote Joe Biden in as the next President of the United States. This evening Trump’s last major legal initiative was rejected by an unanimous Supreme Court.

 

Saturday brought cool weather, cloudy skies, and a now and then drizzle. The leaf-fall no longer crackles and crinkles beneath my feet as I walk along. The skies are gray but not gloomy. They seem instead to bring silence, no crackle or crinkle as I trod through the leaf fall, no bird songs or the purr of automobile tires as they flow along the roadways. Only a deep pleasant silence.

 

I drove into the Golden Hills to visit with Hayden and pick up some medicines. Instead of me passing on the wisdom of my experience to him, he passed his on to me. I asked him how things were going with him. “Great,” he said. “Well,” I responded. “What do your attribute that to?” I asked. “I have a saying,” he said, “Life is like a fart. If you put too much pressure onto it, it turns to shit.” 

 

“Do you remember” he continued “when I was taking basketball training with that Japanese coach who cost $80 an hour? Well, while I was shooting free throws  with the machine that returned the balls after you shot them, he asked me, ‘Do you think you can sink them all?’ I said, ‘probably not.’ ’Then why try’ he responded. ‘If you begin thinking you will not succeed it is silly to even try.’ Ever since then, I have kept that in my mind. Everything I do I assume will succeed and if not, I do not feel bad  because I know I tried. Every morning, when I get up I am excited about the new day and excited about what new experiences I will have and new things I will learn.” 

 

“You know my friend Kaleb” he continued. “He used to be a loner, negative about everything, he acted like a punk. He thought he had a terrible life. I took him aside and said, ‘What are you doing. You think you have a terrible life. Well, we all have terrible lives. Look around you. We all have something to complain about, but if you just act all prickly and punky you end up just looking ridiculous.” “The problem with our generation is we all want to be different. We all already are different, why would we want to be miserable and all different. After one experience, I do not date any of the girls in my school, not because I am gay but because it seems all they can talk about is how awful their life is and how much they want to be ‘different.’ Now almost all of these girls live in Serrano in multi-million dollar houses, their own room, their own high-priced car, parents that love them and give them almost anything they want, and yet it seems all they want to talk about is how awful their life is and how they want to be ‘different.’” He paused for a moment, stared out the window and went on, “I used to have friends in the past for a year or two. Now, I have some who I think will be my friends through life.” 

 

“Yes,” I interjected, “you do have this friends, but mostly because of you. I have seen you always encouraging them, moderating their disagreements and providing an example of optimism at a time when most adolescents begin to become irritated of the restraints they believe are being imposed on them.” “Perhaps,” he responded. 

 

I then dropped him off at the home of one of his friends and drove back to the Enchanted Forest. As I drove, I realized that I had no more garrulous nostrums of the aged to impart to him. He is teaching me now. Tomorrow, I promised myself when I wake up, I will tell myself not only will it be a new day and full of wonders even if it includes seeing another rerun of a 1950s black and white comedy that I have seen many times before, or another shot of Trump complaining about the election results. I will also believe from the top of my eight-month long untrimmed hair to the bottom my fallen arches, that I will make every shot I take.

 

A lake in the Golden Hills as winter sets in.

It is Sunday again. This morning, while lounging in bed, Naida told me a long fascinating story about her family. I had heard much of it before — some new facts, surprise connections, a few novel interpretations and one or two completely new chapters. I always, enjoy listening to her stories they are invariably fascinating and well told. After about an hour or so the tales were abruptly ended by Boo-boo the Barking Dog hysterically barking at something. I went downstairs prepared my breakfast and sat in my reclining chair, opened up my computer and began reading. The next thing I remember was lifting my head from the screen and realizing it was six-thirty in the evening and time for dinner. After my dinner of the remains of the Subway meatball sandwich leftover from my lunch with HRM yesterday, Naida and I recited poetry from T&T at each other, I listened to her picking out bits and pieces of tunes on the piano, and we sang parts of songs whose lyrics we remembered. I guess I can say this day was a new day of wonder and even though I took very few shots, I made them all.

 

Monday, after making sure the Electoral College voted to elect Biden and Harris by swearing at the television whenever it was reported that the election had not yet been called. Finally California, the last or next to last State to vote put him over the top. Then after watching a Laurel and Hardy movie we turned of the set and spent most of the rest of the evening singing and dancing to the big band and do-wop music of our youth. We then went to bed. 

 

On Wednesday, I learned that one of Hayden’s friend’s mom was diagnosed with COVID. I could not arrange a COVID test for myself before next Tuesday.

 

To all, have happy holidays including a Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukah, Stupendous Saturnalia, Delightful Dong Zhi (China), Scintillating Shab-e Yalda (Iran), Interesting Inti Raymi (Quechua), Sublime Shalako (Zuni), Secure Soyal (Hopi), Terrific Toji (Japan), Sizzling St. Lucia’s Day, Serene Saṅghamittā (Buddhist), a Carefree Kwanza  and a Zowie of a Ziemassvētki. 

   

 

 

 

 

PETRILLO’S COMMENTARY: 

 

 

 

Everybody needs someone to look down on. There’s a comfort in it.

 

Being very poor and destitute is not a mental illness. It’s about money. Getting money because they are very poor — anyway they can, because they are destitute. The destitute poor are a nuisance. That is how the public who are not very poor and destitute see it. They hate the destitute poor, and, if truth be known, the destitute poor hates them.

 

Oh, yes, there are those of us not among the destitute poor who help out and who wonder why the mass of the rest of us do not do so also. Well, to most of the rest of us they, the destitute poor, those we see living in tents along the sides of the road, abandoned buildings, rooms without heat, or adequate plumbing, run down trailer parks, the poverty stricken sick, lame, and mentally disturbed, those who have to sell their bodies to stay alive, or destroy their bodies and minds to shield themselves from the pain and degradation or their lives, are not really alive to begin with. They are, to most of us, subhuman. They do not matter.

 

Do not say you do not think them less than human, these destitute poor, because of the nature of their lives or what they must do to stay alive, when you click your tongue as you walk by them and say to yourself, I wish someone would do something about them. Are you willing to take them in to you home, give them half your income? Why not? You would probably do it for a relative or dear friend who has fallen on hard times. Why is assisting the destitute poor a collective necessity and not an individual mandate?

 

 

 

 

MOPEY JOE’S MEMORIES:  “POOKIE’S ADVENTURES IN THAILAND IN DECEMBER 10 YEARS AGO: 

 

 

 

December 3, 2010

 

My masseuse likes to watch the Thai soap operas on television while she administers the various pains and pleasures of her therapy during my weekly massage.

 

Now, as I am sure we all know, soaps are a window into the dark, twisted soul of a society, and so it is with Thai soap operas.

 

To me, they all tell the same stories with the same characters. There is the beautiful innocent heroine and the equally beautiful though not so innocent young woman. You can usually tell them apart by their eyebrows. The innocent heroine’s eyebrows are somewhat rounded, while her evil counterpart’s are straighter. They are accompanied by two equally attractive young men, one good and the other not so good. These four then are supported by a cast of actors and actresses of varying ages often playing family members of the protagonists. There are also one or two comic characters, usually played by ladyboys.

 

Although the plots are generally all the same, their location varies. I have seen Thai soaps set in the homes of the rich, and others in the homes of the poor living beside a klong somewhere. I have also seen them set in grocery stores, health clubs and farms. Some are set in modern times others in old Siam and still others are set in times of magic or in some guerrilla campaign somewhere.

 

Anyway, this particular day the masseuse was watching a soap in which the straight browed beauty dressed all in black, carried a sword and had just done unspeakable things to a group of poor people locked in cages.

 

Viewing this through my western acclimated eyes that sees everything as a conflict between good and evil, no matter the atrocities performed by either side, I commented, “She must be the bad girl.”

 

To which my masseuse responded, “Good or bad, it makes no difference. She is beautiful and everyone cares about her and what she does. If she were not so beautiful no one would give a damn at all about her or anything she does.”

 

 

December 8, 2010

 

Earlier this week I took my morning walk along the strand. It was a bright sunny morning and I felt very good, much better than my 71 years usually allows me to feel. As I left the sand to return home, I noticed an old man sitting on a bench with his walker nearby. His face was deeply lined and spotted with stubble and he was overweight, quite decrepit and wheezing. Nevertheless, he happily would call out to passers-by and engage them in conversation. He did so with me.

 

He told me he originally was from Texas on the outskirts of Houston and was staying here at Paradise by the Sea with his son. We exchanged a few stories, he about his time in SF after returning from serving in Viet Nam and I about visiting my daughter while she attended Rice University in Houston. I then asked, “How old are you, old-timer?”

 

“Sixty-eight,” he replied.

 

My emotions suddenly closed down. I could not access my thoughts or feelings; embarrassment, pity for him or me, foreboding or something else? Every time I tried to examine my reaction it was as though a door was suddenly closed and all I was left with was a vague sense of fear of finding what was behind it.

 

A day or so later, when leaving my apartment for another beach walk, at the end of the driveway leading to the condo complex, I saw him again. He had fallen and was lying on the ground, his walker tipped over beside him. I rushed over to him and with the aid of two security guards we were able to pick him up and restore his to his walker.

 

“Out racing again this morning?” I commented jokingly.

 

He laughed.

 

I noticed that he had scraped his right elbow and it was bleeding, so I asked it he needed additional help.

 

“No,” he said, “I can make it back home by myself. I have suffered worse falls than this in my life.”

 

 

 

December 11, 2010

 

As the days go by, I become more and more pleased with my life here. Either that or I have begun to go senile. I walk along the beach, swim, exercise in the weight room, write eat and sleep. Once a week, I have my massage and dinner with friends. Bill has left and returned to the US already and Gary and David have also departed. As a result, my evenings are free so that for the last few days I have had time to prepare for my trip back to the US for the holidays, Christmas shopping and packing.

 

This morning I walked to the place where I usually have my double café latte before going on to breakfast. I like the place because it has a radio tuned into some station that plays golden oldies from Do-Whop to Disco. I think it is a Thai station although they mostly speak American English. I sit there every morning listening to Frankie Lyman or whomever… Actually I lie, I have not heard anything from Frankie Lyman in over 40 years. Who is Frankie Lyman you may ask?… In the late 50’s he was one of the first black cross-over teenage singers (“Why do Fools Fall in Love”), that is a black musician liked by a majority of whites of which Michael Jackson a few years later became the prime example. He was not a “Black” musician like Little Richard or Chuck Berry who needed white singers such as Elvis and Jerry Lee Lewis to introduce their sound to white America. And anyway, at the time, almost all the early Rock bands and singers, white and Black alike were considered somewhat outlaw and not respectable. (Who can forget Pat Boone’s attempt to hijack this new music of behalf of racist America.) Jackson eventually bridged that gap and made black music mainstream.

 

At that time in the late 50’s and early 60’s my friend Bob Cavallo and I began producing concerts for college kids featuring a mix of Jazz and the new Rock music. Bob ultimately went into the business (I went on to law school — bad choice) eventually specializing in this crossover music (black music bought by whites) with his management of Earth, Wind and Fire and Prince.

 

Anyway, I sat there drinking my café latte and listening to the music and let my mind wander off to wherever it chooses to go. I will never understand why the meditation hucksters insisted on purging one’s mind in order to achieve an altered state when simply giving it free rein achieves the same thing and is a lot more enjoyable. (This seems like something for a Baba Giufa tale.)

 

As my mind rummaged through its detritus, for some reason it stopped and played around with my memories of my theatre programs during my early years at University. Perhaps it was because last night I watched a movie starring Denzel Washington who attended the same program I did. (he also coached, Lucille Ball, Burt Lahr, Frank Fay, and Bela Lugosi.) 

 

The director of the program was an old queen with the improbable name of Vaughn Dearing. He always looked like he slept in his clothes and was slightly drunk. He also never remembered to zipper up his fly.

 

I liked Vaughn’s approach. My previously experience with auditions was that one auditioned and if successful was assigned a part. The director then spent most of the rest of the time in rehearsals making sure you learned your lines, remembered your cues and hit your mark on time.

 

Vaughn on the other hand, after selecting his cast through auditions, would not assign roles. Instead every day each actor and actress would assume a different role from the day before and work through the entire play (men played women’s roles and vice versa), You did not know which role you would play in the production until the last week of rehearsal. I eventually performed Bassanio in The Merchant of Venice and Lepidus in Julius Caesar.

 

 

 

 

December 13, 2010

 

This morning I learned that the english language “Golden Oldies” radio station that I enjoy listening to while I drink my morning café latte is indeed broadcast from Thailand, in fact just down the road from here in the Outskirts of Hell.

 

As the date for my departure to the US becomes closer, I become more anxious. Why is that? I become older too. Are they related?

 

Last night I went out to buy presents for people I plan to see during my trip. Haggling made me tired so I gave up, ate a pizza and went home to bed.

 

Recently, while I was walking to the beach for my morning stroll, I met the old man from Texas with the walker. After exchanging pleasantries, he mentioned that he felt that things are going bad in the US with unemployment and Wikileaks and the like, but as a result of the election he hoped it would get better and there would be lower taxes and more jobs. “I do not like that socialism,” he opined. “It’s a lot like Communism.” He is on Social Security, medicare and disability and receives a veteran’s pension.

 

For those who wonder about these things, Petey the Wonder Dog still mans his post guarding the sand against the tide.

 

 

 

The rest of December and a little of January.

 

I guess leaving Paradise by the Sea and traveling to the Big Endive by the Bay can be looked at as an adventure that at least began in Thailand and ended back there as well.

 

Some of my Impressions of America after a one year absence:

 

Following the adjustment of my system to the shock of the relatively cool and dismal weather, my initial impression was distress at the dark, drab, shapelessness of the clothing that everyone seems to prefer wearing. It was interesting to me that when I commented to others about my perception they readily agreed that the fashion was indeed dark and perhaps drab, but they denied it was shapeless. One person even went so far as to hold up a dark grey T-shirt as evidence that some people (himself in particular) did not wear shapeless clothing. And indeed I could discern that it had the classic shape of a T-shirt.

 

Although the Bay Area looked mostly the same as I remembered. The latinization of the Mission district in San Francisco continues unabated, extending at least another 5 to 10 blocks in either direction along that thoroughfare and the neighborhoods surrounding it. On the other hand the Sinoization of North Beach appears to have slowed in favor of the Sunset.

 

The Holidays were as usual a mixed bag and the serious illnesses and suffering several of my friends made almost everything appear listless. Nevertheless, my traditional Christmas Eve dinner with my daughter and seeing my son and his family as well as my grandchildren and my sisters family and cheered me up.

 

During my stay, I connected with many friends, Maurice Trad and his daughter Molly, Bill Gates, his daughter and his friend Tiffany, Peter and Barry Grenell, Sheldon Siegel, Terry Goggin et.al. and Bob and Charlotte Uram. Unfortunately I was only able to contact others by phone.

 

In Sacramento, I spent three lovely days with Bill Geyer and Naida West on their ranch and a day with Stevie and Norbert Dall. Surprisingly, I was asked to take Hayden with me during this time so that his mother could go off to the coast (Pismo Beach) with “friends”. He had just returned the prior evening from spending 5 weeks with a family he hardly knew in Seattle while his mother travelled to Thailand to have what appeared to me to be a face lift. Nevertheless, I enjoyed his company and was quite sad when I had to leave him and return to San Francisco.

 

Since I have returned to Thailand, I have spent of my time shaking off the effects of jet lag with massages and sleep.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

DAILY FRACTURED FACTOIDS:

 

 

1. A new Disney Princess?

 

On March 20, 2019, the Walt Disney Company acquired 20th Century Fox, thereby granting Disney ownership rights to the Alien intellectual property.

 

Does this mean the Alien Queen is now a Disney Princess?

 

 

 

2. Alexandre Dumas responds to race-baiting.

 

Reports indicate that in one incident Alexandre Dumas replied to a white peer who had insulted his mixed-raced background, “My father was a mulatto, my grandfather was a Negro, and my great-grandfather a monkey. You see, Sir, my family starts where yours ends.”

 

 

 

3. Napoleon leaves Russia.

 

 

    Napoleon’s army was not destroyed by the Russians but by typhoid bearing lice. 

 

    It was a lousy way to go.

 

 

4. Moses of Crete.

 

       In about 440-470 AD Moses of Crete convinced the Jews of Crete to attempt to walk into the sea in order to return to Israel. 

 

           He disappeared shortly thereafter.

 

 

5. Moral leadership through the ages (or do as I say not as I do):

Pope John XII (955-964). Born from an incestuous relationship between Pope Sergio III and his 13-year-old daughter Marozie, John, in turn, took his mother as his own mistress. Pope at 18, he turned the Lateran into a brothel. He was accused by a synod of “sacrilege, simony, perjury, murder, adultery and incest” and was temporarily deposed. He took his revenge on opponents by hacking off their limbs. Fittingly, he was murdered by an enraged husband who caught him having sex with his wife.

 

 

 

 

PEPE’S POTPOURRI:

 

 

 

 

A. Stevie on Top:

 

 

Stevie responded to my previous T&T post.

 

Dammit, Petrillo – you’ve done it again,  yet another distraction to those who are not in re Thai r ment.

 

In an effort to avoid researching the pH tolerance range of the 20 purportedly North Coast Scrub community component species on a decidedly ill-considered Consent/Restoration Order plant palette, allow me to respond to your thought-provoking email with the following incoherent mixture of metaphors and song lyrics having no discernible relation to the topics at hand:

 

     The Searcher is not my favorite French (and — though you may be right – I can’t even remember for sure now whether Cal’s advice came before or after he wised up about the kid), but as for codes, Joni Mitchell got it right: you don’t really know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone.

 

   As for reality — especially in the context of scientific method — external observation is limited to what is proximate (whether actually nearby or via instruments); and Jackson Browne’s “What I was seeing wasn’t really happening at all” captures the way that sad reality seems to play out with remarkable frequency.

 

   The fact is that science predictably rejects the existence of phenomena not readily reproduced, even though what can be replicated may have more to do with statistical recurrence of a minor side dish than with the main entrée, which leaves us with  “illusions whose illusory nature has been forgotten” as my hero Eco and his platypus (or was it Kant?) would have it.

 

   (Anyone know the pH tolerance of Calystegia purpurata ssp. saxicola?)

 

 

 

 

 

B. Trenz Pruca’s Observations:

 

 

Liberals have principles Conservatives ideology.

 

 

 

C. Today’s Poem: Cascando by Samuel Beckett.

 

 

Cascando

 

1

 

why not merely the despaired of

occasion of

wordshed

 

is it not better abort than be barren

 

 

the hours after you are gone are so leaden

they will always start dragging too soon

the grapples clawing blindly the bed of want

bringing up the bones the old loves

sockets filled once with eyes like yours

all always is it better too soon than never

the black want splashing their faces

saying again nine days never floated the loved

nor nine months

nor nine lives

 

2

 

saying again

if you do not teach me I shall not learn

saying again there is a last

even of last times

last times of begging

last times of loving

of knowing not knowing pretending

a last even of last times of saying

if you do not love me I shall not be loved

if I do not love you I shall not love

 

the churn of stale words in the heart again

love love love thud of the old plunger

pestling the unalterable

whey of words

 

terrified again

of not loving

of loving and not you

of being loved and not by you

of knowing not knowing pretending

pretending

 

I and all the others that will love you

if they love you

 

3

 

unless they love you

 

 

Samuel Beckett is one of my favorite playwrights and novelists. I am not as sure about his poetry.

 

Samuel Beckett was friends with Andre the Giant. He would at times drive Andre to and from school. All they would talk about was cricket.

 

Samuel Beckett did not bed the woman about whom he wrote the poem Cascando. She was an American and did not like him at all.

 

Samuel Beckett did not think he had a great life. I agree with Samuel Beckett except I think driving Andre the Giant to school and talking cricket was cool. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

D.  Sicilian Mores and Tales from Giordano: The Mafia.

 

 

    “The historic Mafia is a romantic fiction,” he said. “It doesn’t become really interesting until 1860, after Garibaldi’s unification of Italy. The capital was far away, and the Sicilians could never assimilate. The clocks here have always told a different time. The Mafia found it all too easy to fill the vacuum with terms like honour, pride and betrayal. When the building boom started in the sixties, it went over to speculative construction, combining this in the seventies with the drug trade. It was also into protection rackets, but they aren’t as lucrative these days. And the Mafia families have always been at each other’s throats. Mind you, “family” no longer implies blood relationship but only describes a group with the same organizational structure. Things got very bad in the eighties, when the murders became more and more atrocious. There were shootings and bombings every day, and the Mafia took to attacking representatives of the state. Policemen, state attorneys, judges. It was a killing spree. Then some courageous prosecuting magistrates like Falcone and Borsellino had had enough and began to investigate. And, ecco là, there was a sudden emergence of renegades willing to spill the beans, because they’d become genuinely sick of murders and deaths and having their families wiped out. Since then, we’ve known that the Mafia is structured like a regular commercial firm and has a regular name.”

 

  “It’s headed by the supreme boss and his advisers. Today we’d call him the CEO. Then come the underbosses, or vice presidents, then the operational captains and soldiers, and finally, at the bottom, the ordinary members—​the shareholders, so to speak. Falcone and Borsellino found that out and paid with their lives. After that, Sicilians had also had enough. People took to the streets en masse and demonstrated against the Mafia. The wall of silence crumbled, and that was how they caught Totò Riina, Bernardo Provenzano, Leoluca Bagarella and many others. Major Mafia trials were held. They even tried to nail ex-premier Giulio Andreotti, but he was one size too big, though there’s a photo of him kissing a capo dei capi on both cheeks.”

 

“Today? The Cosa Nostra still exists, of course—​what do you expect?—​but it has changed, modernized, altered its fields of business activity. They rob banks via computer, and the bosses are revered again like heroes. The current boss of bosses is Messina Denaro, who’s supposed to have killed fifty people with his own hands. He’s been living undercover for years, but he used to throw wild parties on the beach at Selinunte. These days he represents himself in letters to the press as an opponent of the system.

                Giordano, Mario. Auntie Poldi and the Handsome Antonio (An Auntie Poldi Adventure) (p. 151). HMH Books.

 

 

 

E. The Rights of Nature in Ecuador – Sumak Kawsay: 

 

Articles of the Rights of Nature

The following articles are found under Title II: Rights in the Constitution of the Republic of Ecuador published in the Official Register on October 20, 2008.

 

Chapter One: Principles for the Enforcement of Rights

Article 10. Persons, communities, peoples, nations and communities are bearers of rights and shall enjoy the rights guaranteed to them in the Constitution and in international instruments. Nature shall be the subject of those rights that the Constitution recognizes for it.

 

Chapter Seven: Rights of Nature

Article 71. Nature, or Pacha Mama, where life is reproduced and occurs, has the right to integral respect for its existence and for the maintenance and regeneration of its life cycles, structure, functions and evolutionary processes. All persons, communities, peoples and nations can call upon public authorities to enforce the rights of nature. To enforce and interpret these rights, the principles set forth in the Constitution shall be observed, as appropriate. The State shall give incentives to natural persons and legal entities and to communities to protect nature and to promote respect for all the elements comprising an ecosystem.

 

Article 72. Nature has the right to be restored. This restoration shall be apart from the obligation of the State and natural persons or legal entities to compensate individuals and communities that depend on affected natural systems. In those cases of severe or permanent environmental impact, including those caused by the exploitation of nonrenewable natural resources, the State shall establish the most effective mechanisms to achieve the restoration and shall adopt adequate measures to eliminate or mitigate harmful environmental consequences.

 

Article 73. The State shall apply preventive and restrictive measures on activities that might lead to the extinction of species, the destruction of ecosystems and the permanent alteration of natural cycles. The introduction of organisms and organic and inorganic material that might definitively alter the nation’s genetic assets is forbidden.

 

Article 74. Persons, communities, peoples, and nations shall have the right to benefit from the environment and the natural wealth enabling them to enjoy the good way of living. Environmental services shall not be subject to appropriation; their production, delivery, use and development shall be regulated by the State.

 2008 Constitution of the Republic of Ecuador. Political Database of the Americas (PDBA)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

TODAY’S QUOTE:

 

“He was looking about as agitated as a Zen monk on a research trip to nowhere.”

               Giordano, Mario. Auntie Poldi and the Handsome Antonio (An Auntie Poldi Adventure) (p. 162). HMH Books.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

TODAY’S CHART:

 

 

I do not know who developed this chart nor how accurate it is. Nevertheless, I am trying, with limited success, to extend the categories to the other Abrahamic religions — the Jesus church, Pauline religions (Catholicism, Protestantism), and Islam.

This and that from re Thai r ment, by 3Th. 25 Papa Joe 0009. (October 5, 2020)

“Most sane, rational human beings learn quite early on that you feel just as certain even when you’re wrong: the strength of your belief is not a valid measure of its relation to reality.”

               Pratchett, Terry. Judgment Day (Science of Discworld Series) (p. 251). Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. 

 

 

 

 

Happy Birthdays to my grandchildren Athena, Aaron and Anthony.

 

 

 

 

 

 

TODAY FROM AMERICA:

 

 

 

 

 

POOKIE’S ADVENTURES: The Pandemic continues; some air quality relief arrives; and the destruction of American democracy looms ever closer.

 

 

  Today, we did something that I am sure many others have done during this time of self-distancing. Naida wrote a note to our new neighbors (they moved in over a year ago, but at our age that passes as new) inviting them to a socially distant meet and greet on the lawn in front of our homes. They accepted and we all took out our folding chairs placed them in the shade of a tree and had a pleasant conversation for about an hour or so. They are both retired Sacramento State professors — he in chemistry and she in literature and poetry. It was a pleasant diversion.

 

That evening we had a Zoom wake for Tom Hargadon. I had received an email message from Don Neuwirth earlier in the day informing me that Tom had died and that he and his daughter Becca would be hosting the wake. I was both saddened and surprised at his passing. Hargadon was one of those rare people you meet that you cannot conceive of ever getting ill or dying. Like the leprechaun that he resembled, he seemed destined to go on forever seeking that pot of gold.

 

 I first met Tom way back in the early seventies when Don Neuwirth introduced him to me as someone recently arrived from Boston where he owned a pub and was looking to do the same here in San Francisco. Tom looked every bit the archetype of the Boston Irish — round face, braces(suspenders) and an ability to talk and tell stories endlessly. He spoke so fast at times that it often was difficult to understand him. I shall miss him. I, unfortunately, am at that sad period of my life where “goodbyes” are much more common than “I’ll see you arounds”

 

We continue to watch the news surrounding the election. It Bostonis as entertaining as a nightmare — you do not want to be there but you have no way to get out. You hope you will wake up some day and it will all go away and then you read something like the comments by Virginia Attorney General Mark R. Herring (D):

 

“If there’s one thing that I’ve learned in suing Trump and his administration dozens of times, it’s that when he threatens to cross democratic boundaries and constitutional norms, he usually does — and when he denies it, it often turns out he was actually doing it all along,” 

 

And you then realize it is not a dream.

 

The weather in and around the Enchanted Forest has gotten better though. The air is clearer and cleaner, and the temperature a bit cooler. We are in those few brief weeks between the debilitating heat of the summer when one can still wear summer clothes and before having to put on long sleeved shirts and sweaters and preparing for winter.

 

 I am running out of my old poems to post in the poetry blog I have been posting in recently. Well, they are really not poetry, more doggerel then poems. Anyway, I have begun writing new ones to post. Here is one:

 

 

Homage to Stephen Crane

 

I announced to the universe one day:

“I am.”

To which the universe replied:

“That means no more to me

then thou art not.”

 

“Homage” means I stole it.

 

Some people do crossword puzzles to pass away the time. I post things on the internet. I then get annoyed when people comment that what I wrote was crap. 

 

It’s a living — or a life. It, at least, allows me to avoid being left with only watching television while waiting to be released from self-quarantine. I’ve taken to scratching the days of my confinement on the wall by my chair. We are beginning the eighth month. Some of my marriages were shorter.

 

Yesterday, Naida was depressed enough by the continuing erosion of the political situation here in America that she was almost comatose. Today, she is better. The political situation is not. 

 

Today, it is I who am depressed enough to spend almost the entire day in bed. I have no doubt we are sliding into a crisis of which the progressive and rational forces demonstrate every day that they are ill equipped to prevent. The leaders of the Democratic Party and the anti-Trump Republicans are placing all their bets on a clear victory in the November election and the coming together of the instruments of society to support it. It is becoming obvious that on election night the results will not be clear and the Anti-Trumpites and the Biden campaign promise little more than a few squads of attorneys to contest the resulting confusion in courts stacked with judges unsympathetic to them. There will be no rising of the military to right things. There will only be police and armed thugs running amok in the streets putting down those few who place their bodies on the line in protest.  Oh well, maybe tomorrow I will feel better about things.

 

(If you are not paralyzed by depression like me and want to do something about the election please look up this site: https://www.balloon-juice.com/list-of-things-we-can-do/.) 

 

On Sunday, for some unknown reason, I felt very good so I drove up to EDH to spend a few hours with Hayden. While there, Natalie mentioned that she was planning to return to Thailand for an operation on her broken nose. Because of the restrictions imposed on travel as a result of the coronavirus epidemic, this will require her to spend two weeks in isolation in Thailand before she can begin treatment. I promised to spend more time looking after HRM. H and I then drove to Town center in order to put the Mitsubishi in for servicing. We enjoyed a pizza for lunch while we waited for the servicing of the car to finish. He is doing well but seems a bit unhappy that the unending quarantine limits his recreational options. In other words, life is less fun than he would like. 

 

Along with a lot of the nation, Naida and I caught the presidential debate last night. I suspect most of those who saw it were as appalled as we were. It was an embarrassment and painful to watch. That was not a president on that stage. It was not an adult. It was an unruly child. I do not think I will watch the future debates unless they make some changes. I did like some of Biden’s comments, especially:

 

“I’m not here to call him a liar. Everyone already knows he’s a liar.” 

 

Drove into the Golden Hills to visit HRM. He seems to be doing as well as can be hoped. Due to the epidemic and social-distancing, he is losing his fifteenth year. I guess that is ok. If I remember correctly, my own fifteenth year was eminently forgettable.

 

I used to measure my life in years, now I measure it in months. It does not much change what I do, only its meaning. Tomorrow is just another dream and yesterday  a smokey wraith. Today, however, is mine alone. Our lives are made up of short stories.  They are not novels. When one story ends another begins — until we reach the night that never ends.

 

Well, today Trump was diagnosed with COVID and was transferred to Walter Reed for treatment. It is difficult for me to show any sympathy for him. That makes me feel a little guilty. But, unfortunately, it is what it is.

 

For several years now, Barrie has been sending me postcards with fascinating pictures on the front and interesting tidbits about her life and times on the back. I have kept them all and now have a wonderful collection of several hundred. The photograph below contains a few of them:

My sister Maryann and her husband George arrived from Mendocino to spend a night with us before proceeding into the Sierras for few day in order to celebrate their anniversary at the old Sorenson resort. I gave her and George their combination birthday, anniversary, and Christmas present — an original painting by our Australian cousin Alexandra Leti of the garages in our ancestral home, Roccantica in Sabina Italy. 

The following morning, before Maryann and George set off for the Sierras we had a pleasant breakfast of raisin bagels with lox and cream cheese along with Starbuck’s cafe latte.

 

 

It is October now. Perhaps autumn will begin soon. It is warm still and the air gauzed with smoke from the fires. It difficult to tell but lately when I go out or late at night, I feel a clammy heaviness in the air, a subtle chill when the sun is gone that slips through my skin and muscle like a fish knife. I am never cold, that comes later in the year. I am only uncomfortable as though an unwelcome premonition is scratching at my skin. My bag of tomorrows used to be full and although heavy on my back, I was young enough to bear them easily. Now that bag is almost empty but it feels heavier than it ever has been.

 

 

 

MOPEY JOE’S MEMORIES:

 

Christmas Night 2018.

On Christmas night at the early hour of 6PM, I slipped into bed, sipped from my well-steeped cup of cannabis tea and opened my computer. My thought was to make some sort of plan for the remaining six days of the year. Not so much a to-do list as a muddle-about file into which I could, now and then, dip without too much difficulty in order to pass the time while waiting for this arbitrary portion of my life to dribble on into the next.

The first thing to pass through my mind was Joyce’s opening line to Ulysses: “Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed.”

I haven’t the slightest idea why it did. Except perhaps, to encourage me to contemplate why I would consider ending the year pondering the opening line of Ulysses. Perhaps, having not yet consumed enough tea made such reflection worthwhile. Maybe, my subconscious was attempting to jump-start the evening’s descent into irrelevancy.

The second item to suggest itself as a subject worth ruminating on was the first thing I read on my computer after opening it. Under a heading entitled notable events on history on this day, I read: “1194 Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor, King of the Romans [Germany], Sicily and Jerusalem, born in Lesi, Italy.”

That was something I felt was of little more consequence. Or, at least, I generally considered that someone who in his time was referred to as “Stupor Mundi” (Wonder of the World) was someone of greater consequence than “stately plump Buck Mulligan” and his shaving utensils — Then again perhaps not. Frederick later in life was also referred to as “The Anti-Christ.” Nevertheless, I still felt, someone who held suzerainty over most of Medieval Europe, was of more consequence than a fictional med-student with flamboyant grooming habits — Then again, perhaps not.

“Stupor Mundi” was clearly not fictional, although his adventures and the stories about him rival that of any character inhabiting the world of fiction. As to why I would consider intentionally including the contemplation of one or the other or both into my remaining six days of 2018, I have no idea. Perhaps, it is because it is a mystery requiring a solution and that always pleases one’s consciousness. Perhaps it does not. Maybe, it just has something to do with the cannabis. Take chess, for example, it has always appealed to me as a worthwhile way to cut two or three hours from one’s life. On the other hand, cocaine, cannabis and a host of other things, I think, would do so as well without requiring your consciousness to leap from the chair in which it had been dozing and actually exert itself entertaining you.

A Strange Dream.

Since upping my medications in order to mitigate the side effects of my treatments, my dreams at night have become even stranger than usual. Last night, I found myself, a much younger man, well-dressed wandering about my dream New York. My dream NY is not at all like the NY I remember. It is a real estate development made up of large buildings in vibrant colors and streets dark, bleak, and dank. In this dream, a young man I knew, for some reason lost to the vagaries of dream memories, had been killed by the authorities. People were organizing to protest the death. The mayor and his advisers swore to put down the disturbance with maximum force.

I put myself front and center swearing to risk body and health in protest. As the police and soldiers could be heard approaching, everyone ran away leaving me alone to confront them. Alas, the police never arrived.

I then noticed another group of protestors forming. This one, well equipped with PR people. Again I put my body at the forefront willing to risk it in the name of the right and good. Again as the military closed in, the protestor’s disappeared, leaving me alone once more. After about four more events like this, I decided, I was not going to give up body and soul in the name of the right and good or anything resembling it, so I went home to take a nap and ponder the imponderables of life.

 

 

DAILY FACTOID:

 

Jews in Sicily Through 1500:

During the reign of Pope Gregory I, born in 540 in Rome who protected the Jews, there was an active settlement of Jews in Sicily in the 6th century. ” Gregory wrote of limiting the Jews from exceeding the rights granted to them under imperial law – particularly in relation to the ownership of Christian slaves.” Pope Gregory was going against many of the positions towards Jews taken at the 1st Constantine Conference.

“In Epistle 1.14, Pope Gregory expressly disapproved of the compulsory baptism of Jews.
June 591 : “Censure of Virgil, bishop of Arles, and Theodore, bishop of Marseille, for having baptized Jews by force. They are to desist.
“For it is necessary to gather those who are at odds with the Christian religion the unity of faith by meekness, by kindness, by admonishing, by persuading, lest these…should be repelled by threats and terrors. They ought, therefore, to come together to hear from you the Word of God in a kindly frame of mind, rather than stricken with dread, result of a harshness that goes beyond due limits.”

Mohammad had died in 632 and his proselytizers quickly moved across land to spread Islam. In the 9th century they conquered Sicily. The jewish settlement continued during the Arab occupation period from the 9th to the 11th centuries. The Arabs left a profound impression on the language and culture of Sicilian Jewry.

The Jews’ high point of their prosperity occurred under the Norman rulers. In the later Middle Ages, Jews were thickly settled throughout Sicily, and numbered about 40,000. In the 13th century, the head of the Jews was the Dienchelele, appointed by the king.

From 1282, the island was ruled by the House of Aragon and closely influenced by Spanish ideas and events. By 1391, there was a devastating wave of massacres, and another in 1474. The Spanish Inquisition was introduced in Sicily in 1479. As part of the Aragonese territories, Sicily was included in the edict of expulsion from the Spanish dominions in 1492. (In 1492 Columbus sailed the ocean blue). “When the decree of banishment, dated March 31, 1492, reached Sicily, there were over 100,000 Jews living in the island in 52 different places.” Most of the Jews exiled found their way to the Italian mainland and the Levant area of the Middle East that includes Palestine.
(http://jewishbubba.blogspot.com/2017/03/jews-of-sicily.html)

 

 

PEPE’S POTPOURRI:

 

 

A. Terry on Top:

More commentary from Terry about the current political situation in the US.

So the media commentariat is all ablaze with pants on Fire statements : “ There is no umpire, if the electoral ballots are disputed ,” the “ Trump stacked SCOTUS will vote on who the next President is.”

This is all very nutty and a complete misunderstanding of what the Constitution says (THERE IS NO ROLE FOR SCOTUS, ONLY THE CONGRESS IN JOINT SESSION) and who the ultimate enforcer is: The Military Establishment, as you know derided by a Trump. Because the President is The Commander in Chief of the US Armed Forces under the Constitution, then who they recognize as the Commander in Chief is dispositive of the issue, as it has been since 1775. And they are sworn to defend the Constitution, and they read the newspapers. As a practical, and perhaps primitive matter, they are a very serious bunch and I can attest they take their sacred oath very seriously. Whoever receives the most legitimate electoral votes as they determine it, in December, they will salute a request orders from their Commander in Chief. Game over. That’s why this entire discussion is as silly and unfortunate as Trumps last four years. For details see below. I wrote this earlier to a friend of mine.

My Earlier Essay:

Re the Trumpian plan to overthrow the Republic. That is what it is by the way, with legislatures controlled by Republicans in four swing states: PA, MICH. WISCONSIN And AZ, sending in Trump electoral votes, irrespective of their state vote for Biden, is nothing short of treasonous.

If both Houses of Congress are Democratic, then a united Congress rejects the bogus Trump electors votes, counts Biden’s electors votes, and declares Biden elected, game over. If the Houses of Congress are split, that’s an impasse politically. That happened only once, in 1876, and was NOT RESOLVED BY SCOTUS (because the politicians paid no attention to the Court). In fact the Court has no power in this situation if either of the political parties in Congress simply ignore its ruling, which is easy to do since it has been stacked by Trump with his appointees. Why: because the Constitution gives SCOTUS no role. And, importantly, no power to enforce its ruling, one way or the other.

If, in 2000, Gore had refused to concede and demanded the count continue in Florida and if that was rejected, then the battle would have been in Congress and the outcome may well have been different. But Gore conceded to preserve the Republic. So 2000 is no precedent for anything, least of all as a precedent for 2020.

So we are left with this hypothetical: Biden wins in closely contested states sufficient to have 270 + electoral votes, but double electoral votes are submitted by four states, one set for each candidate. The Houses split, which even Mitch McConnell says won’t happen if his “friend Biden” actually wins those states’ popular votes. What happens: it goes to ancestral political power: the US Military establishment, sworn to defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign AND DOMESTIC. Knowing the Military Establishment well, they will, probably behind the scenes be the umpire of last resort. They will simply tell the squabbling politicians the obvious fact, that Trump’s actions are treasonous and they will report to the President who won the votes in the contested states. If the behind the scenes negotiating fails, which is highly unlikely in this factual situation, they will simple arrest Trump after January 20, pursuant to President Biden’s order. That’s how it will inevitably end. Mc Connell knows it and will concede way before that happens. He’s not stupid. And if McConnell concedes the election to Biden, Trump can rant, rave and his militias will be suppressed and eliminated by the most powerful Army in the world. And he could be tried for Treason.

But Biden would eventually pardon him and send him into exile in Moscow, penniless. I’m just kidding.

Believe me, this I know, because I trained and educated Cadets. They are all retired now. But those on active duty have been trained the same way. And that’s what will happen when push comes to shove. Biden just has to actually win, as the AP certifies , in enough states to have an electoral majority. If so, he will be saluted by the military leadership and defended, because that is their sworn duty.

The principle of West Point, and the other academies is DUTY, HONOR, COUNTRY. And Trump, if he loses fair and square, as recognized by AP and other media, is not staying around. If he does, he will be escorted by armed soldiers to his exile wherever he chooses. His fantasy is as much a lie as the other 20,000 lies he’s told.

Bart Gellman writing in the Atlantic magazine, however, does not see things so cut and dried as Terry does. He warns:

“Our Constitution does not secure the peaceful transition of power, but rather presupposes it,” the legal scholar Lawrence Douglas wrote in a recent book titled simply Will He Go? The Interregnum we are about to enter will be accompanied by what Douglas, who teaches at Amherst, calls a “perfect storm” of adverse conditions. We cannot turn away from that storm. On November 3 we sail toward its center mass. If we emerge without trauma, it will not be an unbreakable ship that has saved us.

Let us not hedge about one thing. Donald Trump may win or lose, but he will never concede. Not under any circumstance. Not during the Interregnum and not afterward. If compelled in the end to vacate his office, Trump will insist from exile, as long as he draws breath, that the contest was rigged.

Trump’s invincible commitment to this stance will be the most important fact about the coming Interregnum. It will deform the proceedings from beginning to end. We have not experienced anything like it before.

 

B. Trenz Pruca’s Observations:

Hey man, I’m damned old now. I want time to move as slow as I walk, Slower even. I’d like to see time bedridden.

 

C. Today’s Poem:

Moses was a strange man

Moses was a strange man
He lost his way
in the desert
for forty years.
He told his people
they were better off
in the desert
for forty years
than in Egypt
where they had running water
and food.

There was no food
in the desert.
Moses did not know
how to farm so,
God had to feed
his people.

Moses told his people,
he would,
lead them out
of the desert
to a land
where people
had milk and honey.
He said
they should kill
those people,
take their land,
drink their milk
eat their honey.

When some of his people thought
another God
might get them out of the desert sooner,
he killed them.

Moses brought God’s law
to his people.
One law said
“Thou shalt not kill”
.TP

D. Neal the Fish Man Recommends:

1. Family Affair and Comments.

Neal, troubled about the effect on the election of the rioting and vandalism accompanying BLM and similar protests, posted his concerns on Facebook as follows:

“Revenge is a dish best served cold” the saying goes. Cold revenge on Trump for his lies and cruelty, and his intent to not honor the election results should come in the form of darkly quiet streets leading to election day. There should be no demonstrations, no outdoor or mass events that could lead to clashes between Trumps’ goons and young demonstrators. No looting, no confrontations asking people to say someones’ name, no rallies where people waiting in line might be harassed leading to violence. Trump needs to disrupt the country so that he can claim we did it and try to frighten suburban voters. His goons will be out looking for trouble, looking to start trouble. We all know it. He knows we know it. Doesn’t matter. He will be dropping bait all over the land to get someone to jump at it and then he can bring down the hammer and blame us for his own brutality. What kind of bait? Cops will be more aggressive coming into the election, seeking confrontation. Courts and prosecutors will side with the cops. The supreme court selection and process will be bait. Federal marshals showing up in cities for no reason will be bait.”
Neal Fishman

 

He then continues exhorting his readers to pause in their protests until after the election.

His daughter, of all people, disagreed in a well reasoned comment to his post. She states in part:

“While I agree with some of this I don’t think it will work. Trump will just take credit for bringing peace and order to the nation. People who were on the fence will believe him. At least right now we can say THIS is Trump’s America. This division is what happens when you have a president that doesn’t speak for all American’s. This is what happens when you have a white supremacist/authoritarian in power.”
“You want to give a message to young people, tell them to vote, tell them to volunteer, tell them to get involved, not to be silent.”
“Love you dad, but I respectfully disagree.”
Jessica Fishman

Neal, ever the proud father, gently explains his position.

“Jess, you know that I don’t want the BLM movement to end. I want it to have results. I’m only talking tactics here. Will a five week hiatus which is publicized as such kill the movement? Won’t it actually work toward a tight relationship with the new Biden administration, leading to results in law and policy during his term? This doesn’t kill the movement, it positions it for success. Love you too.”

In fairness to Neal, recent polling appears to show that concern over the looting and violence surrounding the peaceful protests may be the major reason why those undecided about who to vote for in the coming election hesitate to back Biden.

I then posted their disagreement in Daily Kos and asked the readers where they come down on this family dispute. Here are a few of their comments:

VClib —“Many have suggested to end the protests at sunset and have all the “peaceful protesters” leave at that time. That would make it easier to identify and arrest those who are there to riot, cause mayhem, property destruction and arson, not to protest. I think that’s a good middle ground. Be active, protest, but leave at sunset. ‘

penultimate galactic master— “I believe that electoral victories (at all levels) are the way to effect real change. If a person can find a candidate or ballot measure, at any level, that they believe in and want to support, that’s probably the best way to spend the next five weeks compared to a few more weeks of street protests. In fact, I would say that five weeks of street protests is five weeks you missed out on working on electoral campaigns that could have real immediate effects. Especially in 2020, even in Portland OR / Multnomah County.”

“As far as how the national media portrays the Portland protests — Fishman senior is probably closer to the truth. While polling on Trump’s law-and-order messaging is mixed, which means it’s probably a better issue for him than covid-19 and the courts, and anything that takes the emphasis away from those helps Trump.

“I would recommend that your direct action minded friend volunteer to be a poll worker or election observer — best way to prevent a coup that I know of — but Oregon votes by mail. But Pennsylvania could use some! And Miami-Dade County!”

“there’s tons of stuff like this out there if you look…

Balloon Juice’s Things we Can do list” (https://www.balloon-juice.com/list-of-things-we-can-do/)

I have looked up the Balloon Juice site as he suggests. It is great. Everyone should take a look at it.

Pirran—“Support for protests has declined from a high of 54% in June to 39% now [abcnews.go.com/…]. This was always the way it was going to go, the way it went in 2016 and, hell, the way it went in 1968. The time to get out was when the going was still good, but no, no one had the guts or sense to call it. Instead we will sit here talking about how it’s not our fault and the media is stupid blah blah blah. But if we knew it was coming, who is stupid? The damage is almost certainly done, we deal with it.”

 

2. The Starhawk Letter.

“Neal Fishman
·
This is a great letter that is being sent around. It is worth the read.·

I’ve been supporting Joe Biden, but last night, watching the debate—if you can call it that—I came to deeply admire him. Here’s why:
I don’t know if you’ve ever been in an abusive relationship with someone who argues like Trump. I have. If you haven’t—lucky you!—you can’t imagine how excruciatingly difficult it is to hold your own when someone is coming at you with a barrage of lies and accusations, interrupting constantly, refusing to allow you space to respond. If you have been, you know how your brain tends to go to mush, every thought process shuts down, and it becomes hard to formulate a coherent sentence.
(And should you currently be in such a relationship, I urge you—Get out! If someone in your life has a personal style that reminds you of Trump, get them out of your life!
Whether it’s a partner, a boss, a family member—nothing is worth it And if you can’t get out—get help!)
On top of this, Biden has a life-long stutter he has struggled with. Imagine the pressure—he can’t just walk off stage and say ‘this farce is over,’ or it will look like Trump has driven him off the field. He can’t afford to fumble his words or stumble or look old and feeble. And he can’t respond to every outrageous lie and attack.
But Joe held his own. Time after time, he pulled back from the temptation to just attack back, or froth at the mouth and scream, and landed his punches. He made it clear—when Trump didn’t do so himself—that the current occupant of the White House is a desperate, out-of-control failure, that he has no plan and no capacity to govern.
He did, just once, tell him flatly to shut up.
Some of us would have been happy to see him land a solid punch in the face—but that probably wouldn’t have helped him, as satisfying as it might have been to watch. And it would have broken Covid-19 protocol.
At times, you could see Biden was struggling with strong emotion, as when Trump attacked his sons, sneered at Beau’s service in Iraq. If Trump is trying to dispel the stories of how he has called soldiers ‘losers’, he didn’t help himself in that moment.
Biden had to almost physically pull himself back from the temptation to retaliate and go after Trump’s corrupt brood of offspring, but he did it, and went back to talking about all of our families and the policies that could make life better. The strain showed—and I like that! I like that he has human feelings, and that he doesn’t hide them, but nonetheless exerts self-control. What a change that would be, to have someone like that in the White House!
Biden isn’t the great showman. He’s not superstar handsome. He’s not Mr. Charisma. Good! We’ve had four years of a psychopathic showman—can we please have an ordinary, decent human being who will get the job done?
Biden didn’t get much chance to talk about his policies, but he is running on the most progressive platform of any major party candidate, ever. He will listen to the science on Covid, and get us on track to weather the pandemic and re-open safely. He will expand health care and get us closer to the universal coverage many of us advocate. He will get us back in the Paris accords, and his plan to address climate change is a good one that Bernie Sanders helped to form.
He isn’t the Great Progressive Champion many of us would have liked—but we don’t need him to be that. We need to be that! And a big win for Biden/Harris, coupled with wins in the Senate, will boost every issue we care about.
Trump’s despicable performance won’t convince anyone undecided to vote for him. But that’s not his aim. His goal is to make us all so disgusted with the whole process that we throw up our hands and say, “I’m not going to bother to vote, I’m just going to stay home and vomit.”
In that, he could succeed. So don’t let him! Get us all out of this abusive relationship!
Registration deadlines are approaching—early voting has already begun. Too many times, of late, the election has come down to a few votes here, a few votes there. This is the time to make sure you are counted on the right side of history.
Register. Vote.
People’s lives depend on it. Maybe even yours.
(Starhawk)

 

E. Giants of History: Baruch Spinoza.

Recently in Facebook, I came across a post by someone named Derrick Vocelka that impressed me. I have read some things by Spinoza, usually a difficult read, but never this. I thought I would repost it here.

Vocelka began his post with a little story about Albert Einstein.

When Einstein gave lectures at U.S. universities, the recurring question that students asked him most was:
“Do you believe in God?”
And he always answered:
“I believe in the God of Spinoza.”

Baruch de Spinoza was a Dutch philosopher considered one of the great rationalists of 17th century philosophy, along with Descartes.

Vocelka then quotes something Spinoza wrote about that God of his.

Spinoza :

God would say:
Stop praying.
What I want you to do is go out into the world and enjoy your life. I want you to sing, have fun and enjoy everything I’ve made for you.
Stop going into those dark, cold temples that you built yourself and saying they are my house. My house is in the mountains, in the woods, rivers, lakes, beaches. That’s where I live and there I express my love for you.
Stop blaming me for your miserable life; I never told you there was anything wrong with you or that you were a sinner, or that your sexuality was a bad thing. Sex is a gift I have given you and with which you can express your love, your ecstasy, your joy. So don’t blame me for everything they made you believe.
Stop reading alleged sacred scriptures that have nothing to do with me. If you can’t read me in a sunrise, in a landscape, in the look of your friends, in your son’s eyes… you will find me in no book!
Stop asking me “will you tell me how to do my job?” Stop being so scared of me. I do not judge you or criticize you, nor get angry, or bothered. I am pure love.
Stop asking for forgiveness, there’s nothing to forgive. If I made you… I filled you with passions, limitations, pleasures, feelings, needs, inconsistencies… free will. How can I blame you if you respond to something I put in you? How can I punish you for being the way you are, if I’m the one who made you? Do you think I could create a place to burn all my children who behave badly for the rest of eternity? What kind of god would do that?
Respect your peers and don’t do what you don’t want for yourself. All I ask is that you pay attention in your life, that alertness is your guide.
My beloved, this life is not a test, not a step on the way, not a rehearsal, nor a prelude to paradise. This life is the only thing here and now and it is all you need.
I have set you absolutely free, no prizes or punishments, no sins or virtues, no one carries a marker, no one keeps a record.
You are absolutely free to create in your life. Heaven or hell.
I can’t tell you if there’s anything after this life but I can give you a tip. Live as if there is not. As if this is your only chance to enjoy, to love, to exist.
So, if there’s nothing after, then you will have enjoyed the opportunity I gave you. And if there is, rest assured that I won’t ask if you behaved right or wrong, I’ll ask. Did you like it? Did you have fun? What did you enjoy the most? What did you learn?…
Stop believing in me; believing is assuming, guessing, imagining. I don’t want you to believe in me, I want you to believe in you. I want you to feel me in you when you kiss your beloved, when you tuck in your little girl, when you caress your dog, when you bathe in the sea.
Stop praising me, what kind of egomaniac God do you think I am?
I’m bored being praised. I’m tired of being thanked. Feeling grateful? Prove it by taking care of yourself, your health, your relationships, the world. Express your joy! That’s the way to praise me.
Stop complicating things and repeating as a parakeet what you’ve been taught about me.
What do you need more miracles for? So many explanations?
The only thing for sure is that you are here, that you are alive, that this world is full of wonders.

 

F. Tales From The Little Masseuse:

Often, while I was living in Thailand, the Little Masseuse would tell me stories and tales about her life. One was about a poor old man she knew while she was growing in her small village in Issan in the northeast portion of the country.

Every day the old man spent the daylight hours rummaging through garbage cans for food and other necessities. He especially searched for bits of electrical wire. In the evenings, through well past midnight, he melted down the bits of the wire he found that day, burning off any coating. Every month, he produced about a one-kilogram lump of copper that he sold for about $20. He used this money to augment whatever else he found his dumpster diving. In this way, he worked hard every day and survived. In this way, he was reasonably content with this meager lifestyle. When asked about this he said:

“I have no worries. People always throw away more than even I can ever use, so I get to choose only the best.”

 

 

 

TODAY’S QUOTES:

 

The Bible Speaks On Environmental Protection.

“The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it.” (Genesis 2:15)

“Is it not enough for you to feed on the good pasture? Must you also trample the rest of your pasture with your feet? Is it not enough for you to drink clear water? Must you also muddy the rest with your feet?” (Ezekiel 34:17-18)

“The land shall not be sold in perpetuity, for the land is mine; with me you are but aliens and tenants. Throughout the land that you hold, you shall provide for the redemption of the land.” (Leviticus 25:23-24)

“You must keep my decrees and my laws…. And if you defile the land, it will vomit you out as it vomited out the nations that were before you.” (Leviticus 18:26, 28)

“You shall not pollute the land in which you live…. You shall not defile the land in which you live, in which I also dwell; for I the LORD dwell among the Israelites.” (Numbers 35:33-34)

“If you besiege a town for a long time, making war against it in order to take it, you must not destroy its trees by wielding an ax against them. Although you may take food from them, you must not cut them down. Are trees in the field human beings that they should come under siege from you?” (Deuteronomy 20:19)

“I brought you into a plentiful land to eat its fruits and its good things. But when you entered you defiled my land, and made my heritage an abomination.” (Jeremiah 2:7)

 

It is interesting how easy it is to use or misuse the bible to justify or condemn just about anything. Perhaps that was one of the reasons why our founding fathers were so adamant about separating church from state.

 

 

 

TODAY’S PHOTOGRAPH:

 

Burma Richard (Richard Diran), and his wife with Aung San Suu Kyi, State Counsellor of Myanmar, at the reception several years ago for the release of his great ethnographic work, The Vanishing Tribes of Burma.

This and that from re Thai r ment, by 3Th. 5 Papa Joe 0009. (September 22, 2020)

“A good funeral was one where the main player was very old.” 

               Pratchett, Terry. I Shall Wear Midnight (Discworld Book 38) (p. 293). HarperCollins. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

TODAY FROM AMERICA:

 

 

 

 

 

 

POOKIE’S ADVENTURES DURING THE PANDEMIC.

 

 

 

Days and Daze. As the time of our self-quarantine lengthens (it is now in its seventh month with no end in sight) my attitude and behavior are changing. In the past month or so I have been industriously posting in Daily Kos and in a poetry blog entitled, “My Poetic Side.” The former, Daily Kos, is a fairly well known progressive blog in which I post my ruminations on politics and poetry. I have been posting there on and off for ten years but recently have begin posting almost every day. Alas, my posts generally receive, at best, a lukewarm reception. 

 

The poetry blog is one where amateur poets of little talent but with sufficient desire for any shred of recognition can submit their poems and receive encouragement from other posters on the site. One time I received a comment which said, “I liked your poem very much. Please don’t forget to comment on mine.” Most of the poetry is of the personal anguish type. You know, “I really suffer about something.” In one poem a women thanked her parents for making her the mess she is now. Most of the stuff I post are things that I wrote fifty years ago or so. They remind me that I have no idea who that person was who wrote them. 

 

Anyway, now that I am doing this, I treat it as a job and spend most of my waking hours at it. Sort of like a junior Herman Melville. Melville was considered by his friends and relatives to be mentally unhinged for spending his whole day producing reams of novels, letters, poetry, and more, most of which was trash. Upon his death his relatives, out of embarrassment, burned everything. Of course, out of this avalanche of words came two or three great works of literature. Sort of like those monkeys that spent enough time at a typewriter they produced Shakespeare’s plays. Of course, if you read some of Melville’s published works not considered great works of English literature, you would be convinced the monkeys were still at it.

 

I have become so obsessed with my newest pseudo-career, that I am afraid it has begun to affect Naida. I sit, stare, silent but for grunts and curses hour after hour. I want to stop and apologize but there are always a few more words to be written or some research left undone. I even shout at the dog when his barking breaks my concentration.  Of course, when it is a day like today with the sun not too hot and air not too filled with smoke, I think I will take the dog and go for a walk through the Enchanted Forest. And later take Naida out for dinner and forget it all.  

 

The next morning, or perhaps a few mornings thereafter, we watched, Greta Garbo day on TCM (Camille, Conquest, Grand Hotel, and Ninotchka.)

 

More days and daze pass — more movies, more books, more wondering what comes next, more sadness about the future of the world, the country, my loved ones, me. A simple silly poem, I wrote perhaps 50 years ago:

 

Ennui

 

Watching blue mold on bread grow,

Spring rains, Summer’s glow,

Autumn leaves go floating by,

How many days before I die?

 

Some reap and others sow,

Some the whole world’s knowledge know,

I instead just sit and sigh.

How many days before I die?

 

No,I am not depressed, nor was I depressed when I wrote this poem (well, maybe back then). I am a committed cynic. A cynic knows that on sunny days storms will eventually come. That all life ends in death. He is more amused than sad, more annoyed than despondent, more angry than desperate. Or as Jim LeBrecht has written:

 

“Time is a stupid concept that gives us a false sense of control. It’s like a handful of worms. It’s there, but not for long and it doesn’t smell so good and there’s no rhyme or reason to all of it.”

 

I visited with Hayden. He was a bit sad that the mechanic advised that the Mitsubishi would be too expensive to put back into good running order and pass a California smog test. 

 

PETRILLO’S COMMENTARY:

 

 

 

 

  Boredom is not the same as depression. True, they both produce brain-freeze — a state in which people so inflicted usually ignore those things that could relieve their predicament. In both states, one can stare aimlessly at nothing for a long time, but the bored are not particularly unhappy — annoyed probably, but not unhappy. Alas, we have pills for depression, but not for boredom.

 

I am not depressed during these weeks of self-quarantine and creeping asphyxiation. I am just bored. That’s what I tell myself. It’s probably what half the world tells itself. What the other half thinks is a mystery to me.

 

So, Naida and I watch more television, read more books, write more things and stare at the yellow sky. Do others do this? Probably, but some have to run from the fires. Others have jobs to do. To be honest, I have no idea what anyone else does during these troubling times. As for the future, my time is relatively short. I will probably not be here when the tipping point on climate change comes. I will most likely be here when Trump becomes the supreme autocrat of our nation or not. If he succeeds,  I might not be around to experience the full effect of that dolorous eventuality. Even if he fails, it is problematical that I will be here to know for sure that we have really exterminated from a nation that appears all to ready to submit to tyranny those forces driving it.

 

And what about those who will be left here, what about them? What I, and people my age do about it, if we are able to do anything, will not be for our own benefit but only for those who follow us. Alas, even if there is a will, due to the infirmities of age, there is often not a way.

 

 

 

 

 

MOPEY JOE’S MEMORIES:

 

 

 

 

Paradise by the Sea (June 30, 2012):

 

 

A few days ago, I decided to spend some time back at Jomtien Beach (Paradise by the Sea.) The Little Masseuse and I set off by bus intending to spend two days there. Upon our arrival, I decided to buy a new pair of prescription glasses. I did so, purchasing a pair with thick black plastic frames. It seems, this grossly ugly fashion in eyeglasses has returned. The glasses cost $100 US.

 

We then checked into a guest house about 50 yards from the beach on a pleasant little alley called Soi 3. After lunch went for a walk along the beach that during previous stays here I named “Siberia by the Sea.” It being summer in Siberia, there were few of those huge white bodies lolling about on the sand. I assumed they were all back in sunny Siberia swatting mosquitoes or whatever it is they do there, when not huddling around a fire attempting to protect themselves from violence of the Arctic ice storms of the Siberian winter.

 

I walked barefoot in the sand about two miles until I came to the area where I used to live. Walking on the sand is good exercise for an old person like me. It strengthens the small muscles in the ankle and the foot that aid in balance and usually do not get exercised in the gym. Generally the large muscle groups get exercised and strengthened with normal gym equipment. This is especially true for exercise machines that, from my perspective, are only good for lifting as much weight as you can as often as you are able until you are panting and gasping for breath and then moving on to the next machine. At least it makes one strong, healthy or dead. While exercising, I rarely see the difference among the three.

 

After a brief nap, we set off by songtheuw, the small open sided busses common in Thailand, and travelled to “The Outskirts of Hell” as I refer to Pattaya and walked along the walking street and out on to the Long Pier. We ate a dinner of truly horrible fish and chips while I watched the bar-girls and go-go dancers (and their ladyboy counterparts) pass by on their way to work perched on the back of motor bikes and motor scooters their already short skirts hiked up almost to their waist or mincing along on 6 inch spiked heels.

 

That night, I woke up and found myself is a state or total despair. It was as if a succubus crawled in through the window and sucked all life out of me. By this time in my life, I accepted that, no matter the event triggering the episode’ it is chemical and not philosophic or psychological in nature. Nevertheless, my life during the next few hours ceased to have meaning and I writhed in terror until I fell off to sleep, having consumed a handful of Tylenol in the interim.

 

The next morning after coffee, we set off for another multi mile walk along the beach. I walked on ahead in some semblance of a power walk while LM hung back exploring the morning’s detritus that littered the beach deposited by the night’s waves.

 

I walked to the jetty and sat on the rocks contemplating my evening’s despair. Peter’s observation, “The Seventh Seal artfully balances a beach ball on his nose,” rattling around in my brain screaming above the noise of the surf.

 

After all, what is our job in life but to kill and eat as much as we can and leave progeny who then kill, eat and metastasize in their turn? Everything else that does not contribute to those goals, as much as we deny it, is vanity, just there to pass the time in between the killing, eating and fornication.

 

It is men’s ego (I am sure women would not had thought of it this way) that insists on referring to ourselves as “predators” — the “greatest” of the predators no less. We are not. We are “parasites.” Parasites live off the living until they and their hosts die. As a species, it survives by seeking new hosts until none are left. Only most plants, that make their food from the sun water and the dead bodies of their predecessors and carrion eaters like vultures and hyenas avoid the trap of horror and uselessness.

 

Having worked myself back into a state of despair and wondering if I threw myself off the jetty would I sink or swim, I noticed LM far down the beach and decided that finding out what she had been up to seemed more rewarding and interesting than anything I was doing where I was. So, I got up and walked to her.

 

I discovered her and a male gleaner arguing over  possession of the carcass of a two foot long squid they found floating in the surf. In between competing claims of ownership, they were also sharing recipes on how best to prepare the cadaver for eating. I decided it better if I just walked on by.

 

I returned to that portion of the beach adjacent to the soi on which the guest house was located. LM arrived a few minutes later. Apparently she had lost the argument. She then demonstrated for me how well she had learned the many different uses of that handy and flexible english word, “Shit.”

 

LM has great difficulty learning english. I believe part of the reason is that like most people learning english (and probably other languages as well) she thinks that the more words she memorizes the better she can speak the language. Others, often those who teach english for a living seem to emphasize grammar. Now grammar may be great for learning Latin or ancient Greek, languages that are no longer spoken, but I frankly fail to see what it has to do with modern english much less to teaching it to a non-native speaker.

 

English seems founded upon basic sentence structure. Words have little meaning in english apart from where they appear in a sentence and grammar is often secondary to position in english comprehension. Some have suggested that one need only to learn 500 or so basic words to have a working knowledge of the language. I think one needs only to learn even fewer basic english sentence structures to do so. I would guess that there are only three or four basic sentences that need to be mastered: identity (Tautological, “I am a man” or positional, “That is a tree”), objective (“John walks to the loo”) or non-objective (John walks). Most english is built out of these sentence types, unlike fully inflected and many other languages, get the words out of order and you have gibberish.

 

After LM vented for a while we checked out of the room, ate lunch and returned to Bangkok. I remained depressed having learned that Hayden will be leaving next week and prefers to spend his remaining weekend playing with children his own age rather that with a morose old man.

 

That night I dreamt I was a dead squid.

 

 

 

 

 

 

DAILY FACTOIDS:

 

 

 

1. January 29, 1943:

 

Nazis order all Gypsies arrested and sent to extermination.

 

 

 

    2. December 10, 1902:

 

Vito Marcantonio (US congressman from New York City elected on the Republican – CP – ALP fusion ticket) was born on this day in New York City.

 

“You only live once and it is best to live one’s life with one’s conscience rather than to temporize or accept with silence those things one believes to be against the interests of one’s people and one’s nation.”

Vito Marcantonio in Congress June 27, 1950, was the only Congressional voice opposed to US intervention in the Korean War.

 

Vito Marcantonio was the most consequential radical politician in the United States in the twentieth century. Elected to Congress from New York’s ethnically Italian and Puerto Rican East Harlem slums, Marcantonio, in his time, held office longer than any other third-party radical, serving seven terms from 1934 to 1950. Colorful and controversial, Marcantonio captured national prominence as a powerful orator and brilliant parliamentarian. Often allied with the US Communist Party (CP), he was an advocate of civil rights, civil liberties, labor unions, and Puerto Rican independence. He supported social security and unemployment legislation for what later was called a “living wage” standard. And he annually introduced anti-lynching and anti–poll tax bills a decade before it became respectable. He also opposed the House Un-American Activities Committee, red-baiting, and antisemitism, and fought for the rights of the foreign-born. He was a bold outspoken opponent of US imperialism.

 

“If it be radicalism to believe that our natural resources should be used for the benefit of all of the American people and not for the purpose of enriching just a few…then, Ladies and Gentlemen of this House I accept the charge. I plead guilty to the charge; I am a radical and I am willing to fight it out…until hell freezes over.”
Vito Marcantonio

 

“I have stood by the fundamental principles which I have always advocated. I have not trimmed. I have not retreated. I do not apologize, and I am not compromising.”
Vito Marcantonio, in his last speech to Congress

 

On the morning of August 9, 1954, Vito Marcantonio, only fifty-one-years-old, dropped dead of a heart attack in the rain on lower Broadway near City Hall.

 

 

 

   3. Baseball Bat vs Firearm homicide deaths:

 

 

According to Snopes.com:

 

Claim: More homicides in the US are committed with baseball bats than with firearms.
* FALSE.
… Information gathered by the FBI does not support this claim [about Bats being the more deadly]. The Uniform Crime Reports made available on the “Crime in the US” section of the FBI’s web site includes homicide data that breaks down killings by the types of weapons used. In 2011, the percentages for weapon types used in homicides throughout the US were as follows:

Firearms: 67.8%
Knives or other cutting instruments: 13.4%
Personal weapons (hands, fists, feet, etc.): 5.7%
Blunt objects (clubs, hammers, etc.): 3.9%
Other dangerous weapons: 9.2%

 

This lie about the unregulated lethality of baseball bats has been making the rounds on the internet. If you receive something like this please remember, “Liberals exaggerate, conservatives lie”…always.

 

 

 

 

 

PEPE’S POTPOURRI:

 

 

 

 

 

A. Mark Twain on Top:

 

A bit more Twain*:

 

“When I look around me, I am often troubled to see how many people are mad. To mention only a few: The Atheist, The Theosophists, The Infidel, The Swedenborgians, The Agnostic, The Shakers, The Baptist, The Millerites, The Methodist, The Mormons, The Christian Scientist, The Laurence Oliphant Harrisites, The Catholic, and the 115 Christian sects ( the Presbyterian excepted), The Grand Lama’s people, The Monarchists, The Imperialists, The 72 Mohammedan sects, The Democrats, The Republicans (but not the Mugwumps!), The Buddhist, The Blavatsky-Buddhist, The Mind-Curists, The Faith-Curists, The Nationalist, The Mental Scientists, The Confucian, The Spiritualist, The Allopaths, The 2000 East Indian sects, The Homeopaths, The Electropaths, The Peculiar People, The–

 

“But there’s no end to the list; there are millions of them! And all insane; each in his own way; insane as to his pet fad or opinion, but otherwise sane and rational. This should move us to be charitable towards one another’s lunacies.”

Mark Twain, Christian Science.

 

 

* We need more Twains and fewer singularities.

 

 

 

 

 

 

B. Trenz Pruca’s Observations:

 

 

Ennui and indolence go together like macaroni and cheese.

 

 

(Trenz, I think you are growing a bit batty.)

 

 

 

 

 

     C. Today’s Poem: The Battle of Argoed Llwyfain, by Taliesin.

 

 

 

    The story goes that he was born around the year 534 AD, possibly in the mid-Welsh region of Powys, and it seems that he was found as a baby, Moses-like, floating in a river in a basket. He was found by a man named Elphin while on a fishing expedition for salmon. Elphin noted the “whiteness of the boy’s forehead”. A “radiant forehead” translates in Welsh as taliesin, hence the child’s adopted name.

 

 As he grew up his fame and renown meant that he was popular at the royal courts and some have called him Taliesin Ben Beirdd, which means “Chief of Bards”. Even into the Middle Ages his reputation was still shining brightly and many romantic legends were attributed to him. The Book of Taliesin is difficult to date as some have said that it first appeared in the 13th century while others have it as late as the 15th century. It contains some 56 poems, the contents being primarily celebrations of Celtic kings such as King Urien of Rheged and King Brochfael Ysgithrog of Powys. Naturally great victories won in battle were eulogized by the Bards of the day and Taliesin included many of these.

(https://mypoeticside.com/poets/taliesin-poems)

 

The following is an example of Taliesin’s stirring, heroic poetry:

 

 

The Battle of Argoed Llwyfain,    

 D.  Tuckahoe Joe’s Blog of the Week:

 

 

Forty Daze of R. Crumb: The Complete Collection and Then Some. (https://www.villagevoice.com/2018/08/29/forty-daze-of-robert-crumb-day-1/)

 

Well, it is not exactly a blog nor a weekly but, while I was hot on the trail of Mr. Natural through the internet, I came across an article in the Village Voice, that mouthpiece of a village in a city, that caught my attention. The article reminds the reader that at one time the newspaper published the cartoons of that odd cartoonist and idol of hippiedom, R. Crumb, and the cartoon character of his declining years, my personal favorite, Mr. Natural. 

 

“It was the Bicentennial year. What could be more appropriate than to give an avatar of the counterculture free rein across the pages of the Village Voice? The country was still floundering after Watergate and almost two years of bumbling from the appointed caretaker in the Oval Office, Jerry Ford. Many years later, speaking to an interviewer about a collected edition of the Voice’s Mr. Natural strips, Crumb said, ‘Well, by the mid-Seventies I was feeling kind of lost. The hippie thing was falling apart. The whole optimism of the Sixties was getting ground down.”’Then he added, matter-of-factly, ‘I was looking for some kind of secure gig at the time, I needed to make a living, and then the Village Voice offered me this regular, weekly strip. So I thought, ‘Wow, $200 bucks a week,’ which was OK money at the time. Back then, I was living on a fucking shoestring. It was around that time that the whole IRS tax nightmare came up, and I was feeling disillusioned and disgusted with America. They were just forging ahead with the same old shit. They just bulldozed over the whole hippie idealist optimism, the idea of a leftist revolution just evaporated. And the corporations and the banks and the conservative politicians and the developers, they were all back on track and back in force.’”

 

“Crumb can never be accused of viewing the world through rose-colored glasses, and the backgrounds behind Mr. Natural’s ruminations are chockablock with junked cars, smokestacks, discarded tires, and other blots on the American Arcadia. We get classic Mr. Natural: Sage or crackpot or charlatan? Along with overzealous fanboys, pontificating atheists, gibbering demons, “Bruce Sharpsteen,” and Mr. Natural’s old pal Flakey Foont, there’s a trip to the nuthouse, which engenders an investigation from none other than that crusading weekly tabloid the Village Voice. Or are the Voice reporters nothing more than yellow journalists seeking sensationalist gossip? Come week 39 — the strip has disappeared! Outraged letters to the editor question both the paper’s and the cartoonist’s motives. Will Crumb return?”

 

So for those fans of Crumb enjoy. What do you have to lose?

 

E. Giants of History: 

 

Terry takes them on again.

 

Terry, ever the optimist, in response to He Who Is Not My President’s boast at a rally in South Carolina that with the appointment of a new Associate Supreme Court Justice to replace Ruth Ginsberg, “Now we’re counting on the federal court system to make it so that we can actually have an evening where we know who wins. Not where the votes are going to be counted a week later or two weeks later,” writes:

 

“Trump, as usual , has not read the constitution . SCOTUS has absolutely no power to declare an election winner. That role is exclusively reserved to the STATES, the electors appointed by the states pursuant to their state laws and THE ELECTORS casting their votes and delivering them TO THE NEWLY ELECTED CONGRESS.”

 

“Who then counts them and, in joint session announces the winner? Should the Court try to stop such a process, the Congress could just ignore SCOTUS and declare the winner.  It didn’t happen in 2000 because Gore conceded. 2020 will be different . And this could provoke a different kind of crisis, that we have never seen before. Two Presidents, one supported and elected by the Electoral College as announced by the US Congress and One declared to be President by SCOTUS.” 

 

“Should the Court be do foolish as to get into the middle of that tumult, it will lose. Why: because the military will recognize the US Congress designated President and that will be that. As Andrew Jackson once said of the SCOTUS, Chief Justice John Marshall “has said it, let him enforce it. I have the bayonets”.

 

Since then, no SCOTUS has ever challenged the President when he has the public behind him. And CJ Roberts is no fool. Neither, I would guess, are the rest of the justices . 

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-wants-courts-to-declare-election-day-winner_n_5f67731cc5b6de79b676be27

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

TODAY’S QUOTES:

 

 

1. “By nature all men are equal in liberty, but not in other endowments.”
Thomas Aquinas

 

    2. “How is it they live in such harmony the billions of stars — when most men can barely go a minute without declaring war in their minds about someone they know.”
Thomas Aquinas

 

 

 

 

 

 

TODAY’S CARTOON:

This and that from re Thai r ment, by 3Th. 15 Pops 0009. (August 23, 2020)

“One way to predict the future is to cheat. This method has many advantages. It works. You can test it, so that makes it scientific. Lots of people will believe the evidence of their own eyes, unaware that eyes tell lies and you’ll never catch a competent charlatan in the act of cheating.”
Pratchett, Terry. The Globe: The Science of Discworld II: A Novel . Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.

 

 

 

TODAY FROM AMERICA:

 

 

POOKIE’S ADVENTURES WHILE SLOGGING THROUGH THE GREAT PANDEMIC OF 2020.

It was a balmy night in the Enchanted Forest. Naida and I sat in our respective recliners facing the TV. I was naked but for the swim trunks I had worn all day and Naida was dressed in shorts and a T-shirt. We were attempting to find something to watch until it was time to sleep. In other words, to sleep with our eyes open before having to close them. We decided on something called Night Club Scandal a 1937 movie starring John Barrymore. Its opening scene showed Barrymore standing over the body of his wife whom he had just killed. Naida soon fell asleep in her chair and I went back to reading my latest novel leaving the movie flickering in the background and the 1930s patter rumbling in my ears. John Barrymore was caught in the end, I think.

That night, I suffered the second of the horrid dreams that kept me awake and moaning most of the night, the first of which I wrote about here a few weeks ago. Throughout my life I always fought back, sometimes effectively and sometimes not, against the threats posed in the nightmares but not during these last two. Two weeks ago it was stark terror and fear that immobilized me. Last night it was absolute helplessness first at the destruction of my home and happiness and then to fight off the creeping hands searching my body as I began to try to restore my life.

In the morning, I tried to figure out what was happening with these dreams. It seemed appropriate to set my mind to it, after all I had little enough to do otherwise. My first thought, as one might imagine, was that these dreams were harbingers of the inevitable arrival of death. In the past, when confronted with these night time stories, I could fight against them because tomorrow was another day and my fears could be confronted. But, at my age, Mister Death no longer seems satisfied to leave too many more tomorrows for me to wrestle with my fears. At first this bit of infantile self psychoanalysis seemed to fit the bill. Then, I remembered that I had taken a swig of NyQuil before going to bed on each of the evenings.

Dextromethorphan (DMX), one of NyQuil’s three active ingredients, has mind-altering effects. Lot’s of kids use it to get high and drug-stores often prohibit people from purchasing too much of it at a time. So, perhaps, that may be the cause and not that silly existential pseudo-psychiatric stuff. But, I seem to recall taking NyQuil on other nights without similar effects. Then again, my previous nightmare occurred on the first day of the last Central Valley heatwave and yesterday the most recent one began. Could my overheated imagination merely have been a response to my overheated body? As I have written often whenever I have rambled off into some adolescent level philosophical speculation, who cares? Anyway, although the cause of the dreams may remain a mystery, trying to solve that mystery at least allowed me to spend my time writing this and avoid watching The Great Escape for the umpteenth time.

Speaking of heat waves, it was in the mid-90s at 10 AM this morning when I left the house to swim in the pool. The swim was enjoyable and after which, I went for a long walk through the Enchanted Forest. In New York where I grew up, temperatures in the 90s were often accompanied also by humidity in the 90s. To anyone walking along the City’s sidewalk death appeared imminent before one could walk from one telephone pole to the next. Here in the Great Valley the air is bone dry. Walking in the Enchanted Forest shaded by the giant trees felt like I was covered in a warm blanket on a cool evening. It was delightful. There was a slight breeze. I decided to sit for a while on one of the benches along the path in order to enjoy the comforting warmth of the air and the beauty of the forest.

 

My view from the bench in the enchanted Forest

Pookie at Rest

(Naida wanted me to make sure I point out that my hair is not white. It is actually quite dark. Its blond hue is only an effect of the sunlight. As one can tell I wear my hair in a popular Age of Quarantine style called the Albert Einstein Do.)

That evening, we watched a Nina Foch festival on TCM — yes, Nina Foch. At about 10:30 the temperature outside had dropped to 95 degrees. Cool enough to take the dog for his evening walk.

The next day, it was over 100 degrees outside when I woke up at about 10:30 in the morning. I had missed my slotted pool time so I spent another hour or so lying in my bed playing with my iPhone until the dog came upstairs started barking at me to let me know that I should stop lazing around and begin my day — a day that promised even less interest than usual.

Apparently, the SF Bay area had an East-Coast type of lightning storm that drove its citizens out into the night with their smart-phones to photograph, post on social media and record for all time the singular event of the lightning displays. We East-Coasters were somewhat blasé about night time spectacles of lightning and thunder having experienced them on almost a weekly basis every summer. I loved them — the crashes of thunder so loud it would shake the house and the tingling on your skin as the flash of lightning tears through the sky. All the sounds and lights of a war among the gods without the slaughter. The next morning in the silence, as you read the morning newspaper, there was the inevitable story about some guy trying to get a last round of golf in before the storm broke getting fried on the fairway by a bolt of lightning. Ah, those were the days.

 

One of the images posted on Facebook

(It looks to me a bit like a skeleton with a sword confronting a dragon)

The lightning storm passed over the Enchanted Forest last night, the dog crept under the bed and shook in fear, and Naida, unable to sleep with the noise and flashes of lightning laid in bed and stared at the ceiling. I slept through it all. Too bad, I would have liked to have experienced it. A welcome break to six months of social distancing — even the end of the world would be a welcome break.

The next day was even warmer with a lightly overcast sky. Naida accompanied me to swim. Then I left to visit with HRM in the Golden Hills. He cooked me a lunch of pasta and meat sauce. That night, we watched the opening night of the Democratic Convention and cheered Michelle Obama. Let us hope this pandemic inspired unconventional convention marks the beginning of a new way to hold political conventions.

Two days have gone by. The temperature remains in the 100s. Today, the air quality was worsened by the annual burning of California. We have watched two more days of the Democratic Convention. The fear that our democratic republic is at risk was palpable. After the convention ended and the commentators and pundits signed off, we turned to TCH with was featuring the movies of Delores Del Rio. I skipped it and went to bed.

The next day air quality was worse (AQI 253. Hazardous). Now and then I would look up from my computer screen and stare out through the sliding glass doors of the studio at the sickly yellow aspect of scene outside. I skipped swimming again due to effect on my throat and lungs of the air now polluted with the smoke and ash particles from the nearby fires.

A few well forgotten days later, the Air Quality Index appeared low enough for Naida and I to go outside and chance an early morning swim in the pool. It was delightful. Along with my session in the massage chair, shower, lounging around in bed and a brief nap, it was 3:30 before I returned downstairs for lunch. That, I consider, is an ideal way to spend a morning.

Well, that about does it for this post. Not too much excitement to mark these days of our quarantine. That’s most likely the reason why I spent most of my time these past few weeks writing and obsessively adding those lengthy portions of this post below. We, all of us I imagine, are destined to sit here in our homes watching with horror and disgust on electronic media the passing of perhaps the most consequential, challenging and dangerous time in the history of our species. And, for most of us, we feel helpless to do anything about it except to vote for people we do not really know in the hope that they somehow may be able to draw us back from the precipice.

Nevertheless, no matter how grim or not our future may appear remember always to enjoy your days. We have few other options.

Ciao

 

 

 

 

 

PETRILLO’S COMMENTARY:

 

We are seeing something new, the final victory of the streaming society over American politics, the end of political conventions as we knew them. Good. That method of demonstrating the will of the party served its purpose. That purpose was to reward the party faithful and to promote the fiction that the candidate was chosen by the will of the rank and file of the party. In fact, the candidate was chosen during the primaries. The convention is not an election but coronation of that candidate who has raised the most money and has the cleverest media experts. In the future, instead of a trip to some far off city somewhere, the reward to the party faithful will be an appearance in a political music video.

That aside on June 26, 2020, I posted the following in Daily Kos:

“I am not so sanguine about the military or Trump’s quiescence should he lose in November. So far, we have received many public comments from retired members of the military General Staff objecting to one or another action of He Who Believes He is the American Dear Leader as well as one or two current members of the General Staff and perhaps from a few lower officers on loan to the administration that have publicly protested specific actions of the administration. I seem to recall, however, that someone once pointed out that it is not the Generals that lead the coups, but the colonels leading elite fighting units. Be that as it may, I would expect Trump would rely more on his irregular troops, the KKK, Boogaloo Boys, and the like. But, of course, I am exaggerating. But, again, if in November 2016 someone said that by 2020 we would have become the laughing stock of the world, seen tens of thousands of our citizens die from administrative incompetence, and millions of Americans out of work, they would have been criticized for exaggerating also. Didn’t Maya Angelou or was it Disraeli say something like, ‘Prepare for the worst and hope for the best.’”

On July 9 while commenting on the Supreme Court’s decisions reaffirming the right of both States and Congress to investigate potential malfeasance of a sitting President, I wrote in Daily Kos:

“I suspect that since the decisions seem to clearly indicate that in the long term Trump is facing the destruction of his business empire and possible jail time for himself and members of his family, he will eventually recognize that he has no other option than to attempt to cling to his power by any means possible leading to a looming constitutional crisis should the coming election not go his way.”

Still later on July 26, I stated in the same venue:

“History is rife with countries and their militaries’ commitment and loyalty to a specific organizing principle only to have that commitment and more importantly their understanding of the organizing principle to be confused as a result of disagreement over its meanings. Today, the politics in America is only too often a disagreement over the meaning of provisions in the document.”

On the very next day, in commenting on the shocking report from the Transition Integrity Project I opined:

“There are those who have recommended taking to the streets to attempt to forestall the looming catastrophe others believe the opposite. This may be the greatest public crisis any of us my experience in our lives. Is sitting back and seeing how it all turns out an option? What do you think the individual should or can do now? What will you do?”

A significant number of comments and responses to all these posts seemed to run the gamut from “It could not happen here” to confidence that he would leave or the military would evict him. Since then, Trump claimed that he reserves to himself the right to decide if the election results are valid, has sent unidentified military troops into cities to put down constitutionally protected protests, has built a wall around the White House, and suborned the US Post Office to take steps to limit the effectiveness of mail in votes in Democratic and people of color voting areas. Each of those actions were met with surprise by the media and the leaders of the Democratic Party. Given the numbers of people opposed to the ambitions this dictator wannabe and who love this country isn’t there someone with enough insight to not be taken by surprise by his all too predicable initiatives to retain power and who is able to propose actions for the rest of us to take beyond just get out and vote?

 

 

MOPEY JOE’S MEMORIES:

 

From Chiang Mai Thailand — March 2010

 

“This and that from re Thai r ment. March 17, 2010

For the past three or four days the burning of the rice stubble and out of control grass fires in the area have left me with a sore throat and burning eyes. The sky is a hazy grey and the sun baleful…Of course it is not baleful at all. The particulate matter in the air just interferes with the blue portion of the light spectrum leaving the sun to appear a hazy red. I guess baleful is more poetic.

It seems Poets and those who make money off them (does anyone make money off of poetry? Did they ever? Is Rap poetry?) often claim poetry is some form of truth-telling. Baloney (or bologna or even salami) poets, like the adjectives they use, are accomplished liars. Think about it, poetry began as some sycophants telling lies to flatter the proto-biker gangs that ruled the cave with terror and rape. Did you ever notice most legends about heroes or even about the Volk are glorification of rape, slaughter robbery, lying and corruption by the worthless and unproductive of the peaceful and productive. I have never heard of a poem or legend glorifying a guy who grows a great zucchini or who invented the vibrator. The only positive legend I can think of is the one about the guy bringing fire to the people. But he was really only a sneak thief and liar and probably deserved to be chained to a rock and have birds tear out his liver for all eternity.

Hmmm..you are probably wondering if I got up on the wrong side of the bed this morning or if there is trouble in paradise. Well, neither really, a slight cold and a rampant allergic reaction to the air pollution has diminished my normal sunny disposition and after all think about what one could say about paradise if one did not exaggerate the annoying minutiae of existence. “Today I sat on a cloud, played my harp and was happy,” “Today I sat on a cloud, played my harp and was happy” and so on. Not only would that be intolerably boring but insufferably smug. On the other hand, “Today, I sat on a cloud, played my harp and was happy until a god-dammed fly started buzzing around my head and landed on my nose”. Now I can sit back and say to myself, “It serves you right you smug bastard” (I like the word “smug”).

Now where am I going with this? I intended to write that my illness and allergies have restricted me to spending most of my time in my bedroom which has air-conditioning.

Mac’s (I have settled on Mac as his name) father has taken over the day-to-day chore of entertaining both children. As a result little of interest to me and I assume you has occurred since I last wrote. I don’t even have a new photograph of insufferably cute children to annoy you with. But I did locate the attached advertisement that may amuse you.

And here I thought crack was just a cheap high.

Ciao

FROM MY JOURNAL LEADING UP TO POST:

MONDAY, MARCH 15, 2010 9AM

Took Hayden and Mac/Max to school, gassed up car, had coffee with Mac/Max father. Yesterday went to Night Safari, Hayden running around from exhibit to exhibit not remaining before any for more than a second or two, Mac/Max cried throughout the visit, I believe because he was frightened by a peacock on the path, father quiet and withdrawn as usual and me truly dying from the heat.

Did some research on Braudel yesterday. His view on capitalism is similar but far better developed than mine. What surprised me, although it shouldn’t be so, was the resistance by traditional economists to his conclusions. Basically, he separates “Capitalism” and “Capitalists” from “Free Markets” and “Competition.” His claim is that, “Capitalism” is a social phenomena that predates the rise of the “Free Market” in 14-15 century Italy.
“Capitalism” as he defines it is the search for the highest rates of returns and is not connected to or based upon a particular means of production. And usually the highest returns are produced by monopoly (or price-fixing). Capitalists will resist competition to the last penny.

My aphorisms written to Gates and Schatzman in recent emails:

“You can lead a horse to honey but you must account for the bees” and;

“It is easier to get Mc Donald‘s to sell more Chicken McNuggets then to get a power company to close down a single coal-fired power plant”

In part, attempt to address a practical response to this phenomena. (although more accurately is addresses the problem of vested interests).

_____________________________________________
COMMENTS ON POST:

From Irwin:

roses are red
violets are blue
what a remarkable guy
for the zucchini he grew.

he sautéed it in butter
gave some to the poor
remarkable fellow
but really a fool.

Joe’s response:

Ok, try one about the vibrator.

Irwin’s response:

she stuck it inside
then licked it with glee,
i only wish that
it could have been me.

 

DAILY FACTOID:

 

WHAT DONALD TRUMP’S SISTER, MARYANNE TRUMP BARRY, SAYS ABOUT HIM IN PRIVATE:

1. “He’s a clown,” Maryanne is quoted saying, according to a copy of the book reviewed by VICE News. Maryanne dismisses his then-burgeoning presidential campaign in 2015 as preposterous, saying: “This will never happen.” (Vice)

2.“He’s using your father’s memory for political purposes,” Maryanne is quoted as telling her niece Mary Trump. “And that’s a sin.” (Vice)

3.“We talked about how his reputation as a faded reality star and failed businessman would doom his run,” Mary writes about one private conversation with her aunt. “‘Does anybody even believe the bullshit that he’s a self-made man? What has he even accomplished on his own?’ I asked.”
“‘Well,’ Maryanne said, as dry as the Sahara, ‘he has five bankruptcies.’” (Vice)

4.“White evangelicals started endorsing him,” Mary Trump writes. “Maryanne, a devout Catholic ever since her conversion five decades earlier, was incensed. ‘What the fuck is wrong with them?’ she said. ‘The only time Donald went to church was when the cameras were there. He has no principles. None!” (Vice)

5.Maryanne Trump Barry was serving as a federal judge when she heard her brother, President Trump, suggest on Fox News, “Maybe I’ll have to put her at the border” amid a wave of refugees entering the United States. At the time, children were being separated from their parents and put in cramped quarters while court hearings dragged on.

“All he wants to do is appeal to his base,” Barry said in a conversation secretly recorded by her niece, Mary L. Trump. “He has no principles. None. None. And his base, I mean my God, if you were a religious person, you want to help people. Not do this.”

Barry, 83, was aghast at how her 74-year-old brother operated as president. “His goddamned tweet and lying, oh my God,” she said. “I’m talking too freely, but you know. The change of stories. The lack of preparation. The lying. Holy shit.”

Lamenting “what they’re doing with kids at the border,” she guessed her brother “hasn’t read my immigration opinions” in court cases. In one case, she berated a judge for failing to treat an asylum applicant respectfully.

“What has he read?” Mary Trump asked her aunt.

“No. He doesn’t read,” Barry responded. (Washington Post)

 

 

PEPE’S POTPOURRI:

 

A. Peter on Top:

Peter Grenell has just published a book entitled, THE GREAT EXPERIMENT: Freedom, Greed, and Racism in America. It can be obtained from Amazon Books. If you wish to understand what greed and racism have been doing to our nation read this book. It combines history with the insights of some of the worlds greatest minds in a well written easy to read story.

Peter writes in his introduction:

“Racism and economic inequality have been embedded in our, and are intimately linked society from America’s beginnings and are intimately linked. America’s political, economic and social structures have been profoundly influenced by an insatiable urge to obtain wealth, from early settlers to the present. Together with an ultra-individualism and a predilection for beliefs not based on facts that Kurt Anderson has called ‘Fantasyland,’ and enhanced most recently under the regime pathologically narcissistic, authoritarian, psychopathic and racist president, racism and inequality are directly responsible for today’s perilous conditions.”

B. Trenz Pruca’s Observations:

“ If I were a purveyor of conspiracy theories like Limbaugh, Alex Jones, Russia, and the Committees to re-elect Trump, I could say that Trump created and released the virus in order to decimate the minority groups who oppose him and eventually declare a state of emergency so that he could eliminate the 2020 election and rule by martial law. Of course, I would not do that.”

C. Today’s Poem:

Carrizo
     BY CRISOSTO APACHE
     For Edgar

The submarine’s inside was dim.
— Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, tr. by Will Petersen

in my youth, I hitched a ride to San Diego, across
chirping desert and distant night, I gazed upon a slow-moving
dark, encasing a convex cerulean cavity

each night, I stood beneath the sky for hours mesmerized
at the perplex reformatory, twinkling lights of broken
glass fragments spreading against a glistening sunset

a faceless man behind a lost reflection of glass
at a drive-up window informs me,
too bad, you know nothing of your own past

how far will I walk against the night?
conforming to a captivity I had never realized

some years later, under the kitchen table, they all huddle,
as the rampage continues toward the back of the house,
a clash of debris from the other room recoils
and broken sounds escape the barricade of doors

I remember I returned in 1970,
all they remember is me sitting at the edge of my bed,
with the war still in my hands

 

 

Crisosto Apache is originally from Mescalero, New Mexico, on the Mescalero Apache Reservation. He is Mescalero Apache, Chiricahua Apache, and Diné (Navajo) of the ‘Áshįįhí (Salt Clan] born for the Kinyaa’áanii (Towering House Clan). He earned an MFA from the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Apache currently lives in the Denver metro area with his spouse, where he teaches writing at various colleges and continues his advocacy work for the Native American LGBTQ / ‘two spirit’ identity. (https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/crisosto-apache)

 

 

D. Tuckahoe Joe’s Blog of the Week: SENTENTIAE ANTIQUAE.

There are some blog sites I bookmark intending to come back to them now and then especially when I tire of my diet of fantasy and history novel. Alas, although some of them I return to often, others not so much. Sadly, SENTENTIAE ANTIQUAE (https://sententiaeantiquae.com/about/) is one of the latter. Sadly, I say not only because I do not refer to it often, but also because, as a blog posted by lovers of classical literature, there are few who are interested in the subject at all. Perhaps, it is due to the loss of those who can read the tales in the original Latin and Greek. Whatever the reason, I for one, even though I cannot read in the original languages, enjoy now and then dipping into classical as well as ancient Irish and other Celtic literature. In the post below Aeneas describes the sorrowful state of Polyphemus following his run in with Ulysses. The author of the blog describes Virgil’s Aeneid as, “The world’s finest piece of propaganda literature,” because it was written specifically to give the upstart Romans an ancestry linked to the glories of ancient Greek culture described by Homer in the Iliad and the Odyssey.

Humanizing a Monster: The Saddest Scene in Latin Literature

As a high-school Latin teacher, I am tasked with guiding young minds through the world’s finest piece of propaganda literature, Vergil’s Aeneid. We read through substantial portions of the text in preparation for the AP Latin exam, but this reading is largely dictated by a syllabus of readings which do not include the part of the poem which I regard as the most emotionally affecting scene in all of Latin literature. This is the scene in which Aeneas describes his first glimpse of the cyclops Polyphemus:

“Hardly had he spoken, when we saw the pastor Polyphemus moving himself in a great mass among his flocks and seeking the well-known beach — a horrible monster, deformed, huge, whose eye had been taken. A broken pine guided his hand and firmed his step, while his woolly sheep kept him company; that was his one pleasure, the one solace in his suffering.” (Aeneid 3.655-661)

To be sure, Polyphemus is described as an object of horror, but lines 660-1 (ea sola voluptas solamenque mali) turn Polyphemus into an object of pity rather than revulsion. [Indeed, I think that this is intentional; throughout the poem, Ulysses is portrayed as an unequivocal villain, and Polyphemus can be read as one of his many victims here.] I made sure to include this scene on my class syllabus (though not required for the course), because I think that it is an excellent example of subtle psychological complexity on Vergil’s part. Yet, as I was discussing the scene with my students, it occurred to me that this complexity was not Vergil’s invention it all – Homer had already built this into the character of Polyphemus! In Odyssey Book IX, Odysseus is attempting to escape from Polyphemus’ cave by hiding on the underside of a ram, which is moving slowly in response to the burden. Polyphemus then addresses the ram:

“Oh gentle ram, why do you come from the cave behind the rest of the flock? You never before tarried behind the other sheep, but striding far before the others you snatched the mild blossoms, you came first to the banks of the rivers, and you ever desired first to return home in the evening. But now you are last by far. Are you worried about my eye, which that rotten bastard Noone and his awful friends took from me after wrecking my mind with wine – I do not say that he has escaped death. Would that you could be of one mind with me, and could tell me where that man has fled from my wrath. Once slain, his brain would drip through my cave here and there to the ground, and it would ease my heart from those troubles which that worthless bastard Noone gave me.” (Odyssey 9.446-460)

As horrifying as his earlier behavior had been, and as menacing as his threats to repaint his walls with Odysseus’ blood may sound, this speech is nevertheless given in the context of a much more deeply humanizing emotion: Polyphemus’ solicitous concern for his ram. He knows these animals, and evinces a tender regard for their well-being even in the midst of his own suffering. Indeed, this affectionate concern for his ram serves as a stark counterpoint to the actions of Odysseus, who throughout the poem shows no apparent serious regard for his companions. At no point in the poem does Odysseus show any outward emotional attachment to his men, and it is notable that even in his own tale of his sufferings, the loss of his men is primarily framed as something which happened to him. Polyphemus is thus portrayed as being, despite his monstrous qualities, a more compassionate figure than Odysseus.

Yet, putting Odyssean knavery aside, I think that the lines in the Aeneid reflect a very close reading of the Odyssey. Polyphemus tells his ram that murdering Odysseus would alleviate the sufferings in his heart (κὰδ δέ κ᾽ ἐμὸν κῆρ λωφήσειε κακῶν), but once the ram has left the cave, he is deprived of his chance at attaining this relief. Consequently, it is literally true that his flocks are now his only comfort. So, while it may appear that the phrase “that was his one pleasure, his one solace in his suffering” (ea sola voluptas solamenque mali) is included simply to heighten the pathos of the scene and underscore the humanity of even a monster like Polyphemus, it turns out that this brilliant psychological conceit is deeply rooted in a few lines of Homer. (https://sententiaeantiquae.com/2017/03/05/humanizing-a-monster-the-saddest-scene-in-latin-literature/)

Note: The original Greek and Latin versions of quoted sections of the Aeneid and the Odyssey that appear in the original post have been omitted.

 

E. Giants of History: Burma Richard at the Kyaik-Tyo Pagoda:

More adventures of my friend Richard Diran. This time he visits Kyaik-Tyo Pagoda in Myanmar. There are about 2 million Mon in Burma, now renamed Myanmar. Promised by the British who the Mon assisted in their war against the invading Japanese, the Mon were betrayed. The prime minister of new state of Burma U Nu stated that no separate national rights should be contemplated which launched a war between the Mon and the Burmese government continues today.

Thursday, December 30, 2010
Kyaik-Tyo Pagoda

Happy New Year Everyone. We just returned from Kyaik-Tyo Pagoda in the Mon Sate of Burma. Years ago I made the trek over the 33 hills to the base of the rock. At that time there were no foreigners as it was located in an insurgent area. The walk at that time was about 6 hours. One had to have special permission to visit. As you can see it is a huge boulder covered entirely in gold leaf many inches thick. This time my English friend and I had young muscular porters carry us pasha style in canvas slings which were attached to long thick bamboo poles up the mountain. Since it was the cold season there were at least 25 different varieties of moth including Saturnidae, Luna moths and some which were as metalic as silver. Nobody else stayed at our lodge so we had them set up a table for our dinner next to our rooms. At sunset a storm blew in and black clouds tumbled out of the sky above the red of the setting sun.
          Posted by RICHARD K. DIRAN at 8:16 PM

 

F. Tales From 2010 — A Conversation with HRM

Once in 2010 when we lived in Chiang Mai Thailand Hayden told me some very interesting and disturbing things while we were eating dinner. He may have been making it all up as he often does but I will pass it on anyway.

He asked me how many daddies does he have. I responded “Why do you ask?” He said, “I used to have two and now I have three”. I asked “How was that?” He said, “You used to be one of my two daddies and now you are my grandfather. My third daddy has no hair”. I asked Haden if he knew the name of this daddy. He said, “Yes, Hazim”. I asked him if he knew where he lived, “Washington DC” Hayden answered. Then he said, “No South America”. Then he said, “He lives in Phattalung” and put his hand over his mouth like he said something he was not supposed to.

I pried a little more by asking if he visited Hazim in Phattalung. Hayden said he had. He also said that Hazim has a 5 year old girl living there also. He said that he sometimes rides on the motorcycle with Hazim when he is in Phattalung. I asked him if he liked Hazim. He said yes and that when he is six he is going to live with Hazim in Phattalung. “But you can come to visit,” he added.

 

TODAY’S QUOTES:

1. Stross, Charles. The Delirium Brief: A Laundry Files Novel (p. 196). Tom Doherty Associates

“It’s insane, but no more insane than Japan shutting down its entire nuclear reactor fleet in the middle of a heat wave because an extreme tsunami washed over one plant, or the USA invading a noninvolved Middle Eastern nation because a gang of crazies from somewhere else knocked down two skyscrapers. In a sufficiently large crisis, sane and measured responses go out the window.”

2. Kristian Urquiza. Speech at the Democratic National Convention regarding her Trump supporting father who died from coronavirus.

“My fathers preexisting condition was trusting Donald Trump.”

 

3. Letter from Ada Lovelace to mathematician Augustus De Morgan, 27 November 1840

“I am often reminded of certain spirits & fairies one reads of, who are at one’s elbow in one shape now, & the next minute in a form most dissimilar; and uncommonly deceptive, troublesome & tantalizing are the mathematical sprites & fairies sometimes; like the types I have found for them in the world of Fiction.”

 

 

MR. NEUTRAL GETS FED UP WITH SOCIAL DISTANCING :

 

This and that from re Thai r ment, by 3Th. 13 Joe 0004 (July 31, 2015)

 

“You will never be the world. Other people will do as they will do and you will have to determine what you will do about that. That is your business.”
Cherryh, C. J. Tracker: A Foreigner Novel (Foreigner series) (p. 206). DAW.

TODAY FROM THAILAND:

A. A NIGHT IN AMMAN JORDAN:

I decided to fly to Bangkok on Royal Jordanian Airlines with a long stop-over in Amman because of the frisson of excitement in flying near a war zone, the price and the long layover that I thought would allow me to spend a few hours in the city, having dinner and viewing some of the sights. When I arrived the complications of finding my way through the airport, customs and transportation forced me to give up that plan. However, behind transfer desk a man informed told me that the airline allowed me to spend the layover at the local Marriott for free including a meal. “No tips,” he added. I surmised that that was an invitation for baksheesh discussions.

The hotel was about three or four miles from the airport and stood alone in the desert. The sun was still shining and I could see what I thought was the outskirts of Amman on the horizon. Everything else was low sand dunes traversed by a couple of roads. The desert had a slight floral scent that differed from the woody scent of the deserts in the American southwest. I had a first class room, a good meal a shower and a welcome sleep. I even enjoyed the baksheesh negotiations.

I took no photographs, alas. However knowing that some of you prefer the pictures to the writing, I have included a photo of Dubai from the air. Dubai was my alternative layover to Amman. I’m happy with my choice.

Perhaps on my next trip, I will spend an extra day or two in Amman and visit Petra — another bucket list item.

B. POOKIE’S ADVENTURES IN THAILAND:

My last few posts were more or less a travelogue in two to three sentence bites. No matter how I tried to alter the chronology or slip in irrelevant stories, the travel through a place or between places remained foremost.

Bangkok, however, is my home (at least one of them for the time being), and no matter how exotic it may or may not be, the place becomes mere background to my daily experiences. I eat, sleep, exercise and so on. Every now and then as I go about my day something I see or experience interests me, but rarely temples, art or ceremonies.

For example, I took HRM to the Aquarium in the basement of the Paragon Shopping Center.

Another day we went to a snow park.

A few days ago I met at Donut World with the old sailor and his friend an economist for coffee, donuts, and talk. The economist had just had his prostate removed. We, despite the camaraderie, looked at each other through the frightened hollow eyes of those who finally realize the last roundup is near to hand.

The old sailor has been a professional deep sea diver, a sailor, a treasure hunter and perhaps a pirate. He keeps two dead bodies in his locker at the health club (at least their ashes which he, at the deceased’s request, spreads in their favorite bars and houses of ill repute around the world). HRM spent a pleasant morning looking at photographs of the old sailors career.

I have two new shirts now. One primarily white I consider my day and formal summer outfit. The other, a Tommy Bahama design given to me by Nikki who bought it in China, is my night and formal winter attire.

I live by one of Bangkok’s major tourist attractions, Nana Plaza. At lot of things go on there that the government denies

This is a photograph of Soi Nana. I live at the other end of the street. Nana Plaza is on the left.

Looking in the opposite direction across Sukhumvit Road is Arab Town.

It looks a lot like Soi Nana until you get close. A lot of Bangkok is like that.

Sometimes I vary my walk to the Health Club by going down an alley.

The health club has a new manager. He comes from Australia. He promises to make the place one of the premier health clubs in the city. In the meantime for the past three weeks, he cannot make up his mind as to whether members are to be allotted one or two towels per day.

On most days, I have breakfast at my favorite breakfast place, Foodland and then walk through the dark little alley to the health club. The alley now has a bar catering to Africans. It is loud and cramped. Not to be outdone the Burmese bar next door has turned up the volume of the music. Everyone is dancing as I try to squeeze through the gyrating bodies and grasping hands.

When one is living in a place and retired like me, almost anything that breaks the routine I can find interesting. Today we spent five hours at a local university dental school mostly observing the wonderfully bizarre procedures that needed to be completed before I could have my teeth cleaned. After that, we had a foot massage. I then went back to the apartment and took a nap.

At the university pointing at something.

Tomorrow I go to Paradise by the Sea one mile from the Outskirts of Hell for a reunion of the Geriatric Knights of the Oval Table at a place called Heaven or maybe not since Heaven was busted by the Thai cops a few weeks ago.

We stayed where we usually stay at a small hotel called “Bamboo” because of the bamboo plants in front of the place that have overgrown their planter pots. It was started a few years ago by a German Gay couple and seems to be the best-maintained hotel on the block. The Little Masseuse (now retired) managed to negotiate the price down from $30 a night to 20 by pleading that I was not a rich old American, but a poor sick old man. As proof, she argued that I must be poor for hanging out with an unattractive sixty plus year old lady like her instead of a beautiful 30-year-old. She still thought it was too much to pay for a room and urged my to stay at a place $8 cheaper where you had to sleep on the floor. I told her my current penury is not such that I must descend to that level of discomfort. She believes paying more than $1.50 for dinner is irresponsible.

That night the Good/Bad David, Bill G., a young attorney from Bill’s firm who had never visited Thailand before, Dennis and I strolled along the Walking Street in the Outskirts of Hell where we ran into HRM, his mom, her latest financier, and their driver. I took HRM to the Muay Thai fights a little way along the street where one of his favorite fighters was performing.

HRM scores a punch and a kick on the champion.

After seeing off HRM and his entourage, Bill and his crew and I visited one of his GoGo bars on Soi Six. I left early leaving the others enjoying themselves. I felt too depressed at my age and circumstances to get into the swing of things and was embarrassed. I need to up my dosage of happy pills.

During the mornings at daybreak, we walk along the beach for exercise and to observe all the dead things and sodden plastic flotsam that littered the beach before the beach chair concessionaires swept the detritus back into the gulf. Many young Thais frolicked along the shore taking pictures of one another or jumping fully clothed into the waves. Thais prefer the beach before or after the sun makes it only suitable for western tourists to be out.

Later we toured some of the competitors to Dennis and Bill’s clubs — not very exciting. If you are in the Pattaya-Jomtien Beach area, however, I urge you to visit “Heaven” at Soi 11 Kasetsin, Cosy Beach Pratamnak. Tell Tina who will greet you, that I sent you. The other place you may want to visit is Winchester. It is owned by Bill and Dennis.

One evening David, LM (now retired) and I had a pretty good pizza and cannelloni at an Italian restaurant in the Jomtien Complex that is also the gay area of Jomtien Beach. It is called “Da Nicola.” The owners were from the area of Sicily my family comes from. When they learned my family comes from Canicatti, they promptly declared that the best wine in Sicily comes from there.

Upon returning to Bangkok and resuming my life there, I saw that the dark alley containing the bars that I walk through after breakfast on my way to the Health Club has been mostly torn down. It was explained to me that it was done to make it better. I could not help but notice the section removed was the portion containing the bars catering to Africans and Burmese.

One day the Thais celebrated the Prince’s birthday. Over the years, the much married royal seemed to be universally loathed. Rumors of the murder of his many mistresses and overall behavior abounded among the population of the country. But with the impending death of the much beloved King, the Prince’s birthday was a useful moment to rehabilitate him with a televised ceremony fit for a god which he did not attend but instead was represented by a 10 story photograph before which the great and near-great of the country sung his praises and lit an immense number of candles. In my apartment LM (now retired) lit a cantle and stood in front of the television reverently holding it in her hands for the entire hour-long ceremony.

Dick arrived and HRM and I accompanied him to visit the aviary in the hotel that also encompasses the health club.

And so my trip slowly cam to an end. A movie with HRM and LM (now retired), a delightful lunch with Gary, swimming almost every day, lots of naps and finally the struggle to pack and get to the airport.

C. WHAT I THINK ABOUT WHEN I AM BORED:

I am a great supporter of gay marriage or marriage between members of the same sex even if they are not gay. I believe it is superior to so-called traditional marriage. Think about it. A woman and a man get married often because after a few days of passion they believe their affection will last forever and that this qualifies them to have and raise the next generation. What usually happens in short order, however, is they begin arguing over just about everything including how to raise the kids, while the kids usually have no idea why they are squabbling since most kids find their ordinary days just fine. In about 50% of the cases the loving parents divorce (or even worse not) and the kid grows fucked up anyway.

In my case, my parents argued all the time. I never could figure out why most of the time. After they argued, my father would get drunk for a while and my mom would find a reason to hit me with a wooden spoon (I was Italian-American after all). I think that is the cause of my problems with women. I always looked for a woman who could cook like my mother, wash and clean and now and then beat me with a wooden spoon. I could manage to connect with women quite willing to beat me with a symbolic wooden spoon, but they usually balked at the cooking and cleaning.

But I digress. Gay marriages need not run into this problem as much as traditional marriages do. After all, what’s marriage but a contract that sets out the economic rights and duties of the parties. This is important especially for those rich enough to afford a prenup but too stupid to get one.

Some believe marriage is necessary to procreate and raise children. In this age of rent a womb and the purchase of the hot semen of the body type and mental acuity of choice, procreation seems more a question of cost than who one procreates with.

I’ve always been wary of designer progeny. For example, imagine a bright guy with a lot of money but lacking in physical prowess and comely features. In the hopes that his children will be beautiful, athletic and bright, he searches for a zaftig beautiful woman athlete empty headed enough to marry him. But, it is probably just as likely the kids will be a scrawny idiot as anything else. It would be the same with the brilliant woman captain of industry who beds the ripped pool boy only to find that his mind was also ripped with muscle instead of neurons.

But I digress again. You see, men and women living together can never understand each other. They are like a separate species who in the long run irritate each other to the detriment of their children. That’s probably why so many of us are fucked-up.

Assume two guys, they do not even have to be gay but they are best buds, like the Thunder Buddies, Ted and John. They like to hang out together on the sofa watching football drinking beer, farting, and scratching their crotch. One day they decide to get married to each other in order to take advantage of retirement or death benefits and also raise some kids produced through some rent a womb internet site. They probably happily live together farting and scratching, rarely fighting while teaching their kids to joyfully fart, scratch and watch football. Or, on the gay queen end of the spectrum, the couple could raise their kids gleefully painting their toenails and applying perfect mascara or whatever else it is they are into.

As for two women marrying, even Thelma and Louise when they drove off that cliff could have benefited by a marriage license should one of them have survived the fall. Two women who marry could rent a stud and raise their children to paint their toenails and apply perfect mascara or whatever. Or on the bull dike end of the spectrum teach them to fart, scratch their crotch and watch football on television. They all probably will be content and so will the kids.

Of course, then we will be raising two types of people, those who like to paint their toenails and apply perfect mascara and those who like to fart and scratch their crotch. Unfortunately, I fear soon someone will start a new religion, or go on Fox News and argue it is bad for the nation that one group of happy tykes likes mascara and painted toenails and another farting and scratching and that marriage should be limited to one parent who likes one and another who likes the other so that the children can receive the full experience of being human.
D. NEWS STRAIGHT OR SLIGHTLY BENT:

The recent drought in Thailand has wrought havoc with the nations rice crop prompting the country’s Prime Minister to suggest the distressed farmers rely less on water-dependent crops like rice and plant more profitable crops that use less water, like a herb that he heard promotes male virility.

I few weeks later, this same worthy announced farmers were to be cut off from government controlled water supplies in favor of urban uses. He also announced the drought will end next month and the farmers who are not growing male virility herbs can again begin growing food for the nation. He later recommended that those who have water voluntarily share it with those who do not. He almost sounds like he is running for the US Republican Presidential nomination. I should be more careful, statements like the last one could get me arrested here.

Recently Wikileaks reported that Thailand was among the countries who purchased eavesdropping equipment allowing it to spy on its citizens. This same unelected but self-described democratically popular leader denied the report but added, that the nation’s citizens and others have nothing to fear if they are not doing something illegal. Something illegal includes criticism of the nations leaders or their actions.

The proposed new Thai Constitution would make it illegal and unconstitutional for legislators and the public to object to any project included in any five-year development plan established and adopted by a commission of non-elected political appointees.

 

PETRILLO’S COMMENTARY:

Frank Capra, the famous Italian-American movie director, during WWII, directed a number of propaganda films for the United States Military under the general title of “Why we Fight.” Shortly after the war, he directed, on behalf of the US Signal Corps a short movie entitled, “Your Job in Germany,” in which he cautions American Servicemen about fraternization with the German populace in violation of international agreements among the victorious allies.

Now, I am not here to apologize for Capra’s rampant misguided conservatism or the “bitter and angry” anti-German tenor of the film, but given the recent events regarding the German government’s aggressive and implacable attitude on behalf of the German banking establishment against the ordinary people of Greece, even to the point of violating the fundamental doctrine of neo-liberal economics that both sides of a commercial agreement should bear the risks without governmental interference, perhaps another look at the film is warranted.

Capra, in the film, reminds us of Germany’s repeated aggressions — first in 1870 under “Otto von Bismarck,” then in 1914 under “Kaiser Wilhelm II,” and finally in 1939 under “Adolf Hitler.” Each time before the aggression commenced he points out through extensive flashbacks and newsreels the German people were portrayed as industrious, fun-loving, dancing and singing and full of good cheer. Well, once again the German people are happy and perhaps are singing and dancing also.

Capra was clearly wrong in attributing to the people as a whole responsibility for repeatedly following the siren call of their ruling classes, whether Junker, Nazi or modern Banker. Clearly those ruling classes appear to have learned by now that the road to lebensraum may not lie through the barrel of a gun but perhaps more effectively through one-sided agreements, enforced by non-elected international bureaucrats where the non-German, the non-Banker and the poor bear all the risks flowing from the failure of a commercial contract.

Arguments have been made that in the previous cases had the other great powers (or even one other) resisted the slide into a shooting war much pain and suffering could have been avoided. Alas, once again the shortsightedness of big power politics (for example, the US worry about Russia requires it to weigh allowing Germany free rein in Europe against the risk of losing their support for US policies confronting supposed Russia aggression) may only make things worse — until it is too late.

 

PEPE’S POTPOURRI:

A. Quigley on Top:

“I define democracy as majority rule and minority rights. Of these the second is more important than the first. There are many despotisms which have majority rule. Hitler held plebiscites in which he obtained over 92 percent of the vote, and most of the people who were qualified to vote did vote. I think that in China today a majority of the people support the government, but China is certainly not a democracy.”
THE MYTHOLOGY OF AMERICAN DEMOCRACY
Carroll Quigley presentation to the Industrial College of the Armed Forces on August 17, 1972.

B. Xander’s Perceptions:

“It sickens and infuriates me to see the cynical hypocrisy of conservatives. And yesterday I heard that Social Security Disability payments could be cut 19% by the GOP-controlled Congress. The funding will run out next year, and there is an impasse between Democrats and the GOP. Obama has been all too willing to cave in on such negotiations, but if the 10.9 million people who will lose on average $190 a month — this, for people like me who HAVE no other income, no means of other support, and no ability to do so — if this happens right before the 2016 elections, the GOP could end up like the Whig Party . . . in the political graveyard with other assholes, like the Know Nothings (which the GOP should be called!).”

C. Trenz Pruca’s Observations:

1. Government protection of investors.

“Government shielding of investors wealth from full liability for the actions of a corporation violates a fundamental tenet of neo-liberal economic theory and makes almost everything it rationalizes invalid. Until investors in commercial enterprises are forced to protect their wealth through the purchase of insurance as they did before the government created the state enterprises we call corporations, neo-liberal economic analysis is substantially flawed.”

2. Political Correctness.

“I think political correctness has gone too far. After all. what could be offensive about calling Jesus Christ a gay fish monger?”

D. Today’s Poem:

Endless daze, sweaty nights

Long night until morning,
Dream breasted, shadow stalked.
Arid lips salt sweated.
Laughter dreams and horror
Dawn faded long ago.
Dreamless sleep’s dark nightmare
Now haunts our withered days.

 

TODAY’S PHOTOGRAPH:

 

This and that from re Thai r ment, by 3Th. 3 Shadow 0003 (June 22, 2014)

 

“When we were young with our peers about us, we dreamed and hoped for that which we had not yet experienced. Now in our old age we dream and hope for one last chance at that which we will soon no longer have.

Symmetry is a beautiful thing.”
Giufa

HAPPY BIRTHDAY JOAN JACKSON

 

 

TODAY FROM THAILAND:

A. POOKIE’S ADVENTURES IN BANGKOK:

1. Last days at Paradise by the Sea:

On the border between “Paradise by the Sea” and “The Outskirts of Hell” there stood an isolated building among some empty lots. On the side of the building there was a sign affixed that read, “Heaven.” It was the day before I was to leave Paradise by the Sea and return to Bangkok. The Good/Bad David had brought me there. The entrance to Heaven wound through a dark passageway containing large vases with slightly wilting flowers. Gold drapes hung on the wall. It looked like the entrance to a mortuary. I guess that could be considered fitting.

Once inside the place was much more plush. It appeared a lot like a 1960’s piano bar in Las Vegas. I liked it. It was a vast improvement over my image of what Heaven would be like.

We were led by the hostess to a small dark room at back of the building in the center of which stood a solid black oval table.

Now some of you may recall that a few years ago I published, for your enjoyment, a few stories supposedly written by Giufa that sad-faced reprobate and chronicler of the “Forlorn Order of the Geriatric Knights of the Oval Table” (FOGNOT). The stories focused on the adventures of five Geriatric Knights who assembled in a place called The Kennel (where old dogs go to die) around another oval table, that one made of faux marble and gilt . I will not describe here what occurred that afternoon in Heaven around the coal-black oval table. I leave that job instead to the cynical, licentious and wholly untrustworthy Giufa, should he ever get around to it.

Baba Giufa as a child.

I shall only add that about six hours later the Good/Bad David, Peter a man who I had been told dealt in precious metals and I left Heaven. The three of us climbed into a tricked-out, four door, short bed, pick-up truck. They drove me back to my hotel where I immediately fell asleep. The next day after a pleasant lunch with David and his friends, I boarded a bus and returned to Bangkok.

2. Back in Bangkok:

a. Monsoons:

The monsoon season in South Asia officially began on June 1. Since then angry clouds have filled the Bangkok skies. Very little rain has fallen in the city, generally only enough to make the already dangerous sidewalks slimy and slippery. With the blooming of el Nino in the Pacific this summer, chances are South Asia and Southeast Asia will experience a relatively dry year. On the other hand, Southern California should be wetter than it has been these last few years. Oh, the price of anchovies and sardines probably will rise also.

b. Pookie has a night out:

Having had it spending my afternoons and evenings in my apartment because of the curfew and the skies threatening rain that rarely comes, I decided to treat myself to a night out on the town. For me a night of the town has become simply finding a place to nurse a beer and watch the goings on. So one night I put on a clean shirt and stepped out from my building into the steaming hot air of BKK.

I ate dinner at one of my favorite local restaurants, an open front place that takes up the bottom floor of a cheap rooming house on Soi Nana. There I ordered my usual sweet and sour chicken with steamed rice and a coke from the six-foot tall ladyboy who looked like an NFL linebacker with boobs and a cute pink bow in his hair. I watched an American movie on the overhead TV while I ate.

After dinner I walked up Soi Nana searching for a bar in which I could enjoy my beer. Now for those who have not been there, bars along Soi Nana are for the most part open front affairs with young women outside calling out to you to join them just like the sirens called out to Ulysses. But this old sea dog ignored them because he had his sights set on the bright lights of Nana Plaza.

Nana Plaza bills itself as the World’s Largest Adult Playground. It is situated only a few blocks from my apartment. Although for reasons of age, fear of STD and a general aversion to the hard sell I do not avail myself of the services offered at many of the establishments, nevertheless now and then I like to sit at one of the bars with my beer and watch.

Nana Plaza itself is a three-story or so U-shaped building with a large open space in the center. The building houses a number of Go-Go bars, Lady Boy bars and Beauty Salons to service the performers. In the center open area are a number of regular bars open to the sky.

I sat in one of them bought a beer and paid the hostess to not sit with me and try to cage drinks. The sounds of the music coming from the venues and the exuberance of the neon lights makes everyone feel a bit jittery, like they just snorted some cocaine. I sat there nursed my beer and observed.

The women and barkers standing outside the venues desperately attempted to entice each passersby to enter their place. The Ladyboys being men despite the makeup and potential genetic quirks, were more physically aggressive, sometimes surrounding the tourist like a pack of wolves. In one case even demonstrating specifically what she had to offer.

After I finished my beer, I walked home feeling had accomplished something.

Nana Plaza at night
C. Massage:

A few days ago the Little Masseuse invited me to join her in getting a foot massage at a place she liked.

Contrary to what some may believe not every massage parlor in Thailand is a front for prostitution. Massage is a national pastime in Thailand. I have been in small villages in the country where it seemed like everyone was massaging everyone else, sort of like a band of simians removing lice from one another’s fur.

Thai massage itself is based on pressure points and a little rapid stretching of certain muscles and tendons. For the most part it was developed in the county’s temples, especially Wat Po adjacent to the Royal Palace. Students still go there for instruction.

Most legitimate massage establishments offer Thai massage, a deep tissue rubbing massage, foot massages (reflexology) and a few specialties like facial massages and the like. Often the place will offer only Thai massage or only foot massages.

Most of the illegal (prostitution is illegal in Thailand in order to augment police salaries) sexual oriented massage parlors are located around the various tourist areas of larger cities or at resort areas.

One can figure out if it is a legitimate if:

1. it is located outside of a tourist area,
2. It looks down scale
3. the posted prices are cheaper
4. the women and men offering the massages are older and do not look like fashion models between gigs.

If you are still uncertain, ask a Thai woman you can trust (one that is not receiving a kickback from the massage parlor). For most of the women I know, the massage is the thing. Anything else is purely incidental. If you ask a man however, it’s all in the incidentals.

One of the best massages I ever experienced was in Hat Yai. The King of Thailand had set up a program for blind people to learn massage. At the place in Hat Yai, both men had been blinded in acid attacks. A sighted women in the shop acted as cashier and assisted the masseur in locating the supplies they needed. It was obvious that the masseur had studied more that simple Thai massage, perhaps even formal anatomy. He played the muscles in my body like Ray Charles played the piano.

The massage parlor the Little Masseuse and I were going to was located just off Soi 19 behind Terminal 21. It was situated above a place called Mama’s Pizza just across the street from Mama’s Taqueria. (I do not know if there is a Mama’s Pad Thai, or Schnitzel or Borscht in Bangkok, but I have not been everywhere yet. Come to think of it, a fast food place called Mama’s Pad Thai, Schnitzel and Borscht would probably cause quite a stir in the culinary world).

Anyway we climbed up three flights on a rickety outdoor stairway to the small shop. It provided only foot massages at $4 an hour, a price considerably cheaper than most other places in the area. There were about 15 or so young men and a few women masseuses and 10 overstuffed chairs and ottomans. The massages were very good.

B. NEWS STRAIGHT OR SLIGHTLY BENT:

Human trafficking:

The english language newspapers in Bangkok were all aflutter over the report that the US had ranked Thailand among the worst countries for human trafficking. The responses from Thai government spokesmen ranged from outright denial that the problem exists to shock that the US would criticize an ally.

Human trafficking may actually be the worlds oldest profession. A recent study maintained that humans (usually children) were used as one of the systems of account for debt before the invention of coinage. Failure to timely repay the loan would force the pledged child into bondage.

Two personal stories:

How it was in Issan

When she was about 13 years old a woman doctor showed up at the home of the Little Masseuse in rural Thailand. The doctor purchased her from her parents to work in the Doctor’s infirmary in BKK cleaning the instruments and the office. She was given a bed in a tiny room to sleep in. After about two years the inevitable happened. LM was asleep in her room when she was awakened by someone rubbing her body. The Doctor’s husband had crawled into the bed with her. She screamed and cried and woke up everyone in the house. The next morning the Doctor told her that the would have to leave that day and return to her family in Issan.

How it was in Sicily

When she was 7 years old my mother’s father died leaving her and her three older siblings orphans and a significant estate. The oldest child was only 16 and a woman so it was felt that it was not appropriate for her to manage the estate. Her bachelor uncle stepped forward and agreed to marry her promising to take care of the three younger children. On almost the day after the wedding the uncle placed the three children on a boat to America having sold them to three families in the US to work as domestic help. My mother spent the next few years chained to her bed at night so she could not run away until her older brother reached eighteen left his keeper and took my mom and her sister to live with him.

 

 

 

DAILY FACTOID:

Around 600 BC: The scribes assembling the Hebrew Bible included the Law of Jubilee in Leviticus. The law stipulated that all debts would be automatically cancelled “in the Sabbath year” (that is, after seven years had passed), and that all who languished in bondage owing to such debts would be released.

“And thou shalt number seven sabbaths of years unto thee, seven times seven years; and the space of the seven sabbaths of years shall be unto thee forty and nine years. Then shalt thou cause the trumpet of the jubile to sound on the tenth day of the seventh month, in the day of atonement shall ye make the trumpet sound throughout all your land. And ye shall hallow the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof: it shall be a jubile unto you; and ye shall return every man unto his possession, and ye shall return every man unto his family. A jubile shall that fiftieth year be unto you: ye shall not sow, neither reap that which groweth of itself in it, nor gather the grapes in it of thy vine undressed. For it is the jubile; it shall be holy unto you: ye shall eat the increase thereof out of the field. In the year of this jubile ye shall return every man unto his possession.”
Leviticus 25:8-13

I think forgiving all debts every seven years is a great idea. It is strange that there are those who claim the Leviticus’ supposed prohibition of homosexuality is the unchanging word of God, yet the forgiveness of all debts every seven years somehow is no longer applicable. Who is it that decides what God really meant and when he was only kidding?

 

 

PEPE’S POTPOURRI:

What “Occupy” is all about and what it really wants:

They want a capitalism with the simple balance that, The Father of Laissez Faire Capitalism, Adam Smith indicated was required for it to work. For example:

“Masters are always and everywhere in a sort of tacit, but constant and uniform combination, not to raise the wages of labor above their actual rate… It is not, however, difficult to foresee which of the two parties must, upon all ordinary occasions, have the advantage in the dispute, and force the other into a compliance with their terms….

by raising their profits above what they naturally would be, to levy, for their own benefit, an absurd tax upon the rest of their fellow-citizens.”

And:

“In regards to the price of commodities, the rise of wages operates as simple interest does, the rise of profit operates like compound interest.

Our merchants and masters complain much of the bad effects of high wages in raising the price and lessening the sale of goods. They say nothing concerning the bad effects of high profits. They are silent with regard to the pernicious effects of their own gains. They complain only of those of other people.”

On regulations:

”When the regulation, therefore, is in support of the workman, it is always just and equitable; but it is sometimes otherwise when in favour of the masters.”

On fairness:

“The rich should contribute to the public expense, not only in proportion to their revenue, but something more than that proportion.”

Finally denouncing vast differences in wealth and income, Smith praised a fellow economist’s tax proposal:

“To remedy inequality of riches as much as possible, by relieving the poor and burdening the rich.”

It has always been a wonder to me why those who praise Capitalism so highly, hate it so much.

 

TODAY’S QUOTE:

“So long as there shall exist, by reason of law and custom, a social condemnation, which, in the face of civilization, artificially creates hells on earth, and complicates a destiny that is divine with human fatality; so long as the three problems of the age—the degradation of man by poverty, the ruin of women by starvation, and the dwarfing of childhood by physical and spiritual night—are not solved; so long as, in certain regions, social asphyxia shall be possible; in other words, and from a yet more extended point of view, so long as ignorance and misery remain on earth, books like this cannot be useless.”
Victor Hugo: Les Miserables.

 

 

 

TODAY’S CHART:

My initial feeling is that somehow the colors are reversed.

 
GOODNIGHT AGENT 355 WHOEVER YOU WERE——

 

This and that from re Thai r ment, by 3Th. 22 Capt. Coast 0001 (May 10, 2012)

TODAY FROM THAILAND:

A. POOKIE’S ADVENTURES IN THAILAND:

Since it rained in Bangkok last week, the skies have been somewhat overcast and the temperature cooler (but see B.1 below).

I continue to spend my mornings at the health club and my afternoons in my apartment playing with my computer. My exercise effort and reduced my food intake has a resulted in my weight dropping to a level I have not experienced for over a decade. Good for me!

Alas, LM mentioned that the hotel management may close down the health club and consolidate its massage services into the Hotel Spa. The exercise facilities and lockers will be available then only for hotel guests. The reason they are considering this is that health club membership has fallen off greatly as members leave for the newer health club facilities in other hotels. The only part of the business that seems to be growing is the club’s increasing popularity with middle age and older women seeking massages with happy endings from the male masseurs working there. Surprisingly, and annoyingly for LM, many of the remaining elderly male members (not a joke) as well as the increasing number of Muslim hotel guests seek out their happy endings with the masseurs as well.

Recently I learned that Hayden would not be going to spend the summer in San Diego with the man he does not like. This man, by the way, is in effect a federal government policeman. At one time he served in the US embassy in BKK and along with his coworkers was known to be a frequent customer of similar services to those the notorious Secret Service officers were alleged to have bought in Cartagena.

During a trial in the US regarding an American citizen residing in SE Asia who may have violated US law, the principle evidence was supplied by a translator with whom it is alleged the arresting officer, our man from San Diego and previously BKK, was having an affair at the time. The conviction has been appealed because of this gross indiscretion.

It seems, our man from San Diego, had refused to agree to return Hayden to his mother after the summer was over so she decided not to send him there. Whether this is a good thing or a bad thing I do not know. But in any case, Hayden may spend most of his vacation in the south of Thailand or in Italy or in the US while his mother spends it in the north of Thailand or somewhere he is not.

In any event, I may be returning to the US in early June, or I may be going to Italy or I may stay here.

B. NEWS STRAIGHT OR SLIGHTLY BENT:

1. Heat wave and stuff:

The Bangkok Post reported that the average daily temperature in Bangkok during April was over 104 degrees Fahrenheit. Bangkok also has one of the lowest ratios of green space per resident in the world; Three square meters per person versus thirty-nine square meters per person average in the rest of the world’s major cities.

Thus it is in Bangkok that not only are you uncomfortable because it is hot, but you cannot breathe as well; nor does one have shade trees to walk under.

2. Indonesia; leading the way?

By 2014, Indonesia plans to ban exports of raw minerals in order to encourage local processing to add value and thereby redistribute the benefits of the country’s natural resources from foreigners to Indonesians.

I actually like this approach. Why shouldn’t countries (the US included) prohibit export of certain raw materials? It simply means that those with the money have to build factories in those countries producing the raw materials, thereby creating more higher paying jobs for its citizens.

3. China comes back down to earth:

In December, in one of my “This and that…” posts, I predicted that China’s economy would stumble during the early part of 2012. A recent HSBC survey shows manufacturing in China has contracted in April for the sixth straight month.

Hooray for me!

4. Lese Majesté:

Recently a 60-year-old man, affectionately referred to as “Uncle SMS” who a year ago had been jailed for 20 years for violating Thailand’s Lese Majesté law that prohibits anyone from insulting the Royal Family died of liver cancer. According to news reports he had been convicted for sending four SMS messages from his mobile phone to a government official that were deemed in violation of Lese Majesté laws. I have never seen copies of the messages but from reports it appears they were neither threatening nor directly critical of the monarchical institution. Uncle SMS claimed he had never sent the messages and that someone else had sent them after stealing his phone number. Uncle SMS requested bail 8 times and was rebuffed. Despite the fact that his tumor was obvious, the judge in denying bail opined that the accusations were serious and his illness not life threatening.

It should be noted that the King himself has said that Lese Majeste laws are unnecessary and that only through criticism from citizens could he know if he were doing a good job or not. Those who claim they most love the King and respect the Monarchy, however, refused to pay any attention to his request, as they also refuse to pay any attention to any of his requests if they clash with their political or financial goals. But they nevertheless, love and respect him with all their might. God help those who do not love and respect him as well as they do.

PETRILLO’S COMMENTARY:

Who hid the Capitalist?

Capitalism arose when some people (eventually called Capitalists) joined together to pool their money to invest in a usually short-term enterprise like backing a trading venture to send lower cost goods somewhere where someone was willing to pay a lot more for them. Later they invested in things like brick factories and coal mines. Capitalists risked their invested money (and more if they had to pay off the debts of the venture should it fail) unless they were able to buy insurance.

This then was what originally we called Capitalism.

Government had little or nothing to do with the system except to keep general order. For example, you did not want people breaking into the coffee houses where these transactions were taking place shooting the capitalists and taking their money. This governmental activity, since government had to do it anyway to protect the king and his ascendency, did not cost much and taxes were relatively low.

Then an interesting thing happened. Governments of the time (usually Kings) saw a good way to raise money for things they wanted to do (like own the world) without increasing taxes. (Governments do this all the time and usually in the long run they get in trouble for it.) They told those people with money to invest, that if they invested it into a company called a “public corporation” set up by the government to carry out a specific task (e.g. Take someone else’s land establish colonies and import slaves to do the work) they will not be liable for any more money than the money they invest.

Corporations were not people. They were creations of the State. This was a prime example of government intruding into operation of the market by capping risk so that investors into corporations had a government created advantage over other capitalists. Investors into corporations were therefore not capitalists per se but could be called something like “corporatists.” (Why don’t Libertarians call for abolishment of the most fundamental intrusion of government into the so-called free market, limitation of financial risk represented by the corporate form?)

Corporatism is not Capitalism.

Another thing; people with money often did not wish to risk it in an investment where there was a chance that it could be lost. Instead, they found other people who needed the money and were willing to give the person with money something they owned of equal value that he then held until the money was returned. The person with money charged for the transaction. The transaction fee eventually was called interest, the man with the money the lender or the creditor and the man who needed the money, the debtor.

For a number of reasons, most of them bad, the lenders got the governments of the time to agree to use their swords and later guns to force the debtor to pay his debts and thereby freeing the lender from the difficulty of transferring and storing the debtors goods as well as the risk inherent in selling it should the debtor not repay the loan on time. But, the lender still charged interest for the less costly and risky transaction. What it ment was that the lender was able to transfer a significant amount of the cost of the transaction on to the general government and still keep the profits, arguing that the taxes (paid by everyone, but which the lenders usually strenuously objected to) charged by government made up for it. The enforcement of debt obligations, courts and the like added to the expense of general government.

The bond or the debt market is not capitalism and its denizens on Wall Street and elsewhere are not capitalists. If they were then they should not be asking government to shield them from risk (or at least they should be willing to pay their taxes).

MOPEY JOE’S MEMORIES,THE NAKED MOLE RAT CHRONICLES and JOEY’S MYSTERY NOVEL:

Removed for revision and reflection.

PAPA JOES TALES AND FABLES:

See: http://papajoesfables.wordpress.com/

TODAY’S FACTOIDS:

The Federal Reserve was a Republican idea.
Social Security is solvent through 2038.
God is a particle.
George W. Bush held hands with the King of Saudi Arabia.
Evolution is real.
Since 1980 Republican administrations increased the national debt more than Democrats have.
The Earth is 4.54 billion years old.
Fox News is owned by an Australian and has a Saudi prince as a major investor.
Jesus was a Jew.
The current corporate tax rate is the lowest in 60 years
In 2011, the US became a net exporter of oil products — for the first time since 1949 — earning record profits for oil companies yet Americans pay almost $4 or more for a gallon of gas.
In Venezuela people pay less for fuel than for bottled water.
In Turkmenistan drivers are entitled to 120 gallons of free gasoline per month.
In Bahrain, which has almost no oil, the price of gasoline is $.78 per gallon.
Venezuela, Turkmenistan and Bahrain, as well as most other countries with low gasoline prices own their oil companies.

Therefore private oil companies are good for the environment. They keep gasoline prices high and thereby discourage driving, producing less CO2 resulting in lowering the greenhouse gasses and reducing the effects of climate change. Did you ever wonder why ownership of oil production by the Saudi government is not considered socialism by most conservatives but in Venezuela’s case it is?

PEPE’S POTPOURRI:

A. What “Occupy” is all about and what it really wants:

1. It is time to return to the good old days when the US led the world in high wage work.

2. Perhaps it also is time our executives should get paid salaries similar to those paid to executives in countries whose corporate executives are eating our lunch?

What is even more amazing is that these same executives whose companies are steadily losing market share to more frugal executive paying foreign corporations often blame their relatively poor performance on US government interference while at the same time warning the rest of us to be wary of adopting the “socialist” policies existing in the countries whose corporate executives manage to compete for market share better than they do.

B. E.L. Doctorow: “Primer on Unexceptionalism.”

TO achieve unexceptionalism, the political ideal that would render the United States indistinguishable from the impoverished, traditionally undemocratic, brutal or catatonic countries of the world, do the following:

PHASE ONE

If you’re a justice of the Supreme Court, ignore the first sacrament of a democracy and suspend the counting of ballots in a presidential election. Appoint the candidate of your choice as president.

If you’re the newly anointed president, react to a terrorist attack by invading a nonterrorist country. Despite the loss or disablement of untold numbers of lives, manage your war so that its results will be indeterminate.

Using the state of war as justification, order secret surveillance of American citizens, data mine their phone calls and e-mail, make business, medical and public library records available to government agencies, perform illegal warrantless searches of homes and offices.

Take to torturing terrorism suspects, here or abroad, in violation of the Eighth Amendment of the Constitution, which prohibits the infliction of cruel and unusual punishment. Unilaterally abrogate the Convention Against Torture as well as the Geneva Conventions regarding the treatment of prisoners of war. Commit to indeterminate detention without trial those you decide are enemies. For good measure, trust that legislative supporters will eventually apply this policy as well to American citizens.

Suspend progressive taxation so that the wealthiest pay less proportionately than the middle class. See to it that the wealth of the country accumulates to a small fraction of the population so that the gap between rich and poor widens exponentially.

By cutting taxes and raising wartime expenditures, deplete the national treasury so that Congress and state and municipal legislatures cut back on domestic services, ensuring that there will be less money for the education of the young, for government health programs, for the care of veterans, for the maintenance of roads and bridges, for free public libraries, and so forth.

Deregulate the banking industry so as to create a severe recession in which enormous numbers of people lose their homes and jobs.

Before you leave office add to the Supreme Court justices like the ones who awarded you the presidency.

C. Department of abasement, apology and correction:

Although I do not feel like apologizing for anything today, I feel I must say something about why I believe, “This and that…” has recently become so boring to me and I assume to you. Perhaps it is due to the enervating effect of the heat wave since I returned. On the other hand my sadness for leaving behind Hayden and my friends and family who have been so kind and understanding to me may have affected me more that I realized. Or, it may be with the effective end of the Republican presidential nomination, I have become disappointed with the disappearance of God’s (that practical joker in the sky) chosen candidate for lunatic of the month. (Now, I certainly have my problems with Mitt, but give him credit for defeating all of God’s own candidates.) It may also be the ennui settling in as the realization that, “This and that…” is coming to its end. But, for whatever the reason, I apologize.

POOKIE FOR PRESIDENT:

Please see the blog: http://papajoestales.wordpress.com/

(Graphics unavailable at this time)
The map on the left shows the counties that voted strongly Republican in 2008 the purple mixed Republican and Democratic and the blue Democratic. The map on the right shows the same information but adjusted for population size. I guess it is safe to assume from these maps that Democrats prefer to be near water and where there are a lot of other people while Republicans seem not to like water and prefer to be left alone.

Pookie should appeal to all Americans, he likes cities but not people too much. He likes to swim but prefers to drink things other than plain water.
TODAY’S QUOTES:

1. “The school is the last expenditure upon which America should be willing to economize.”
~Franklin D. Roosevelt

2. “I believe that, as long as there is plenty, poverty is evil.”
~Robert Kennedy

3. “A nation that destroys its soils destroys itself. Forests are the lungs of our land, purifying the air and giving fresh strength to our people.”
~Franklin D. Roosevelt

4. “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.”
~Dwight D. Eisenhower

5. “A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual doom.”
~Martin Luther King, Jr.

6. “Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration.”
~Abraham Lincoln

TODAY’S CHART:

 

If you do not think it can happen again, look at the results in the Greek election. The Greek unemployment rate has approached 25 percent and the Nazi Party in the recent election has garnered almost 10 percent of the vote to for the first time in 65 years win seats in a european national legislature.

TODAY’S CARTOON:

TODAY’S PHOTOGRAPH:

Gary’s photograph of Pattaya Bay