malachite

wednesday newstrip

Advisers tell DoNuts T®ump he doesn't display enough gall, so he consents to a gall bladder operation. As a result, approval rating in Alabama falls less that it has in other states · International Space Station's orbit carries it over the Wheat House. T®ump orders his newly formed Starship Troopers to shoot it down so it can't spy on his weiner. Approval rating drops 31 points in New Mexico when satellite shots of his weiner surface anyway · mother-of-five needed correction eye surgical procedure after being it told it was safe to look at satellite images of a Weimaraner's T®umpette without wearing sunglasses. DoNuts sales collapse in Oklahoma · was Pythagorean theory used to build WeinerGate in Florida? US Press Secretary Colonelle Sanders says so before she was kicked out of eatery for wearing flipflops. dePressed Secretary flips, approval rating flops.

the beast walks in snow

Lady Guinevere's hay(na)ku of love

The
beat of
my knight's heart
is the pulse
of my
daze.
 

emblematic

wednesday newstrip

Investigations reveal Australian soldiers allegedly killed a man, took his prosthetic leg, & used it as a drinking vessel · Iyanka T®ump & Jarred Cushioner made over $82m outside White House roles last year · some of Africa's oldest & biggest baobab trees — a few dating all the way back to the ancient Greeks & some as wide as a bus is long — have died or are dying & may have fallen victim to climate change, researchers have speculated · DoNuts T®ump adviser apologizes for saying there's a 'special place in hell' for Justin Trudeau · remote California ghost town on sale · the Singapore summit was, without question, a triumph for Kim Jong Un & his North Korean regime.

songlines

the muses

wednesday newstrip

New Zealand scientists are breeding sheep to fart & burp less · Kim Jong-un ‘begged for summit with T®ump on his knees’ according to Ruby Jewel-leilani who, at the time, was also down on his knees giving the precedent a blowjob · broccoli coffee: scientists hope powdered veg can improve diets, cut down crop waste · Facebook confirms data sharing with Chinese companies including Huawei · Sydney Harbor Bridge disappears: mystery dinosaur skeleton sells for $3 million at Paris auction.

I remarked on this

in the days of Bush. Even more appropriate when I re-remarked on it last year. As the days go by, that last paragraph becomes more & more appropriate for our times.

“The larger the mob, the harder the test. In small areas, before small electorates, a first rate man occasionally fights his way through, carrying even a mob with him by the force of his personality. But when the field is nationwide, and the fight must be waged chiefly at second or third hand, and the force of personality cannot so readily make itself felt, then all the odds are on the man who is, intrinsically the most devious and mediocre — the man who can most adeptly disperse the notion that his mind is a virtual vacuum.

“The Presidency tends, year by year, to go to such men. As democracy is perfected, the office represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. We move toward a lofty ideal. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their hearts desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”

—H.L. Mencken, The Baltimore Evening Sun, July 26, 1920

wednesday newstrip

What’s new in the latest Apple iphone update? — 'don't roast marshmallows over a volcano', warns US geological survey · frozen Pluto has wind-blown dunes made of methane sand · most of your vitamin supplements really are useless, says huge new study · ancient reptile fossil Megachirella pushes origin of lizards back 75 million years · ‘I am not a racist’: Roseanne Barr goes on the attack again, with Michelle Obama in her sights · DoNuts T®ump says North Korea meetings 'very positive,' but don't waste your money · poo has been mysteriously raining from the sky in Canada, leaving cars “inundated” with excrement, repulsed drivers say.

La Sagrada Familia II

Norman Mailer was never politically correct, but he was correct, politically

"Lyndon Johnson was first preceptor of the key that politics-is-property so you never give something away for nothing. Convention politics is therefore not the art of the possible so much as the art of what is possible when you are dealing with property holders. A delegate's vote is his holding — he will give it up without return no more than a man will sign over his house entire to a worthy cause.

"Such property relations are to be witnessed for every political sinecure in the land - judgeships, jobs, contracts, promises — it comes down to chairs in offices, and words negotiable like bonds.

"Politics at national level can still be comprehended by politics-as-property provided one remembers that moral integrity (or the public impression of such) in a high politician is also property, since it brings power and / or emoluments to him. Indeed a high politician — which is to say a statesman or a leader — has no political substance unless he is the servant of ideological institutions or interests and the available moral passions of the electorate. A politician picks and chooses among moral properties. If he is quick-witted, unscrupulous, and does not mind a life of constant anxiety, he will hasten — there is a great competition for things valuable in politics — to pick up properties wherever he can, even if they are rival holdings. To the extent a politician is his own man, attached to his own search for his own spiritual truth — which is to say willing to end in any unpalatable position to which the character of his truth could lead him — then he is ill-equipped for the game of politics. Politics is property. You pick up as much as you can, pay the minimum for the holding, extract the maximum, and combine where you may."

Norman Mailer; Miami and the Siege of Chicago (1968)