On the march

Catching a series of buses and having to wait A great deal of time for three out of four of them is highly annoying. Not least because it takes what one might hope will be a brief errand and makes it...not so brief, not really brief at all.

Still, being on a bus that stops because a gaggle of geese are crossing the street, well, that's just charming. Doesn't matter that they're delaying you even further. Nor does it matter that they tend to be a little on the hostile side. It just speaks to the part of the soul that needs poetry.

Rising steam

Okay this might be too much information, but when I got out of the shower and toweled off I never actually got dry. That's the kind of heat/humidity combination we had today. Walking to breakfast I didn't wear my glasses because I figured sweat would constantly be dropping on the lenses from my hair. 

Later I wore a windbreaker, otherwise unneeded, for a shopping trip on foot because it was raining. Rain didn't last, though. Well that one didn't. Tonight after I'd been in for a while we got a lightning storm. We'll see what effect that has.

See you in the funny pages

When I was a kid, and probably into my young adulthood, Sunday was the sole day that the newspaper comics section was in color. From Monday to Saturday the comics would be in crisp black and white. Printed larger than they are now, but monochrome.

At some point the situation changed and comics ran in color seven days a week. I suspect this was a Hail Mary pass, a last-ditch attempt to hold onto readers. Because while there might be a shinier feature here and there, newspapers as a whole have not been in healthy shape for some time.

And this is a shame. You might think the MSM deserves whatever it gets, and on a national and international level it's pretty hard to defend them. But lack of local media means that local stories frequently don't get covered, and that distorts everyone's view of even the places they live. 

If you have neither on your side, pound the table.

None of it was clever. The circular reasoning. The new restrictions adopted at the drop of the hat, with no indication that they'd ever worked anywhere. The shaming and ridicule of doubters and stragglers. All to the stated purpose of halting a virus that had been in the general population at least since January, probably longer. So not just closing the door after the horse had left, but the door was more destructive than the horse. 

Increasingly the way to win political arguments at the highest level isn't to have the best facts or the most impeccable logic. It's not to show integrity, or for that matter belief in what you're saying. It's simply to own everything. Everything and everyone. 

And increasingly people outside the corridors of power conclude their best move is not to engage. They might be right.

Surf

When Edith Sitwell sat down to write a poem, damn the torpedoes, she was going to make it a POEM. Throughout her career, really, but especially in the early stages. Of course she performed her verse as well, and it has that theatrical aura. This is "I Do Like to Be Beside the Seaside."

When
Don
Pasquito arrived at the seaside
Where the donkey's hide tide brayed, he
Saw the banditto Jo in a black cape
Whose slack shape waved like the sea—
Thetis wrote a treatise noting wheat is silver like the sea; the lovely cheat is sweet as foam; Erotis notices that she
Will
Steal
The
Wheat-king's luggage, like Babel
Before the League of Nations grew—
So Jo put the luggage and the label
In the pocket of Flo the Kangaroo
Through trees like rich hotels that bode
Of dreamless ease fled she,
Carrying the load and goading the road
Through the marine scene to the sea.
'Don Pasquito, the road is eloping
With your luggage, though heavy and large;
You must follow and leave your moping
Bride to my guidance and charge!’

When
Don
Pasquito returned from the road's end,
Where vanilla-colored ladies ride
From Sevilla, his mantilla'd bride and young friend
Were forgetting their mentor and guide.
For the lady and her friend from Le Touquet
In the very shady trees upon the sand
Were plucking a white satin bouquet
Of foam, while the sand's brassy band
Blared in the wind Don Pasquito
Hid where the leaves drip with sweet . . .
But a word stung him like a mosquito . . .
For what they hear, they repeat!

Flo the Kangaroo? Seems like a very kiddie-lit touch to us, and maybe to readers back then as well. But the crucial thing is that it helps to keep the reader just a little bit off-balance.

Customer disservice

Nigel Farage is something of a political entrepreneur in the UK, having led a few fledgling political parties for brief but high-profile periods. He's been identified as the mastermind of Brexit, although it's debatable whether he drove the train or mostly just rode it. He's been called a number of other things, many of which I can't mention up here or they'll close the place. And as of recently had his account closed by Coutts, his bank.

What's notable about this incident is that internal documents show that executives at Coutts were concerned about Farage being a customer because his stated and assumed positions didn't line up with their values. One might think that a bank's highest value was the trust they earned from customers who kept their money there. One might think.

Something that has become apparent in recent years is that institutions and organizations across the board, including many for-profit businesses, have subscribed to the same general set of values. Progressive values. And the whole notion of inherent rights has become unfashionable. The average person is privileged, has privileges which can and should be taken away from time to time. You don't want to overindulge the house pets.

The level of hostility to people who were not too long ago revered as good customers and necessary voters varies. The true vanguard is Antifa, who apparently see Nazis and collaborators on every street corner. But even short of that most individuals don't hold as much value as favored political causes do, which means that once unthinkable acts against them are on the table. That leads to a very low-trust society.

Here comes Peter Cottontail

I live in a big(gish) city, so I don't know if you'd expect to see a lot of wild rabbits here. We have them, though. They come and go rather quickly, being somewhat built for speed.

While rabbits aren't rodents―a fact that's been clarified since I was a kid―their faces look somewhat similar to those of squirrels. Their ancestors might have looked more similar still, before one took to a life in the trees and the other stayed on the ground, or occasionally under it.

Sticky situation

If you buy a nonstick pan, you may get spared from having food stick for a while. That's because it's coated with Teflon of some other friction-reducing substance. After a while, if you keep using it, the surface substance will crack and corrode. 

By a regular pan and you're still likely to have a few dishes cling to the pan, either because you overcooked them or the nature of the food. If it happens,, you just do a little scrubbing. 

I'd stop short of saying that nonstick cookware is the biggest scam around, when all this is around. Still, beware of false promises.

Corrective

That time of year has come when it's often still hot and humid through the night. Which can do a number on your attention span.

What were we talking about? Oh yes, the heat, the humidity. Well I don't really feel the need for air conditioning at home, which strikes me as too much of a too much thing. But I'm glad I have a nice strong fan in my room. I used to try to make do with a little desk fan, which didn't really cut it.

Time trippin'

I'm now reading a curious little book, a novel called The House on the Strand, by Daphne du Maurier. You may recognize the name because her work was twice filmed by Alfred Hitchcock, with Rebecca and The Birds. Strand depicts a businessman* who goes back in time and gets involved in political intrigue in Cornwall. 

One thing worth mentioning is that the protagonist doesn't step foot inside a time machine. He takes a drug which an old school chum of his has developed. This book was written in the late sixties, and the idea of a time travel drug seems kind of native to the time. Philip K. Dick used it at least once, in Now Wait for Last Year. 

The book isn't crazy psychedelic fantasy or Phildickian paranoia, though. du Maurier incorporates the premise into her own style, which is more staid.

* In a previous edit I stated that the protagonist was a scientist. In the course of the novel it becomes apparent that he isn't, although his friend is.

Fair game

One thing you could say about Sarah Jane Baker is that her choice of post-transition name isn't doing Doctor Who fandom any favors. And that she's a psycho. There's that, too.

Then there's the response of the authorities in London, which is troubling. Even if we were going by ideal American standards of free speech, a released felon and obvious basket case openly advocating violence would be pushing it. And Britain doesn't have those standards, but at best a notion of less repression being better. 

So Baker is being protected and the terven are, for the most part, not. So who's making this call, and on whose behalf? Who benefits? Questions that are going to keep arising.

No sour grapes

Sitting here, mentally preparing for bedtime, I found myself thinking about Aesop. As one does, of course. Specifically I was wondering who he actually was. The short answer is that no one knows. He is said to have been born in Mesembria, which might mean that he was of Thracian descent, or not. Some have described him as a Black African, but this might just be a misunderstanding based on his name.

The stretch of time is funny. Aesop's lifetime at the tail end of the Iron Age was just a minute ago in geographical time. And indeed the tales, the fables, have survived, although they were probably heavily revised when Latin and Ancient Greek were still being spoken. But it was long enough ago that the doings of individual people have become quite mysterious.

I love you, you big dummy

I just watched the 1978 film Magic tonight. First time seeing it. You've likely seen it or at least heard the basic outline, so I won't go into plot synopsis. I will say that Fats is one nightmarish puppet. They didn't fall short there. Anthony Hopkins apparently wanted to get rid of the prop, but obviously they couldn't until the movie was complete. Suffering for your art and all that.

Burgess Meredith is quite good as the concerned agent. Who smokes some long-ass cigars. Meredith seems to have gotten typecast as characters with Freudian smoking habits.

Woman of at least two names

I recently read The Mystery of a Butcher's Shop, by Gladys Mitchell. It's the second book featuring her series detective, Dame Beatrice Adele Lestrange Bradley, who generally goes by the simpler name of Mrs. Bradley.

This book has been described as a parody of Agatha Christie's plots. The central crime is so gruesome and gory that someday everyone is going to think it's a parody of Tobe Hooper and/or Wes Craven. But it's presented in that Good Olde English Mystery way. The crime takes place in a village that has more than its share of cads and nitwits.

One thing that's very entertaining about Mrs. Bradley as a character is how spooky and off-putting she appears to be within the world of the story. She laughs at inappropriate places and her air of knowing much more than she lets on leaves others unsure of where she stands on the moral spectrum. She's good, but on her own stranger terms. While her psychiatric practice and mention of a grown son mean she's not a complete outcast, she is somewhat alien. The narration often compares her to a bird of prey or a saurian.

In the late 90s the BBC aired a television series starring Mrs. Bradley, played by Diana Rigg. The character would have been much better served by never having her adventures adapted into any other medium. For some reason they thought that she'd dress like a flapper and spout progressive banalities from three decades or so in the future. All it proved to me is that the Beeb is fully capable of the Hollywood practice of adapting books which no one involved has read.

Lawfare

Ideally rights shouldn't be a zero sum game. When one becomes freer, so do the rest of us. But rights can be defined, legislated, litigated so that they become a zero sum game. This falls under the heading of ways that leaders can depict their enemies as beyond the pale.

Why do I bring this up? Oh, no reason. No reason at all.

Unrelatedly I wonder who else is in on the bet Gavin Newsom and Gretchen Whitmer seem to have between them as to who can dumbass their way into the Oval Office the fastest.

Pyrotechnics eh

Fireworks have been going off this evening. I've heard them but haven't seen them, which means they're probably just in someone's backyard. Independence Day isn't for a couple of days yet. It is, however, Canada Day. So maybe a few people are just jumping the gun. Or maybe there's an underground of expatriate Canucks around hear planning to liberate the homeland. 

You know, hope springs eternal in the human breast.