To the Victor Go the Spoils

America, here's the [art of] the deal [with the devil]--

"I offer power. If you want harlotry in fancy dress, power will get it for you. Admiration?--a whole world aches to kiss its backside with slobbering lips. A crown? Power and a little knife will put it on your head. Change? With power you can try on cities like hats, or smash them if you tire of them. Power attracts loyalty and requires none. The will to power keeps a baby suckling grimly long after he is fed, counsels a brother to take his brother's toy, reaps a gaggling harvest of concupiscent girls. What drives a knight through tortures to his prize or death? The power of fame. Why does a man heap up property he cannot use? Why does a conqueror take countries he will never see? What makes a hermit grovel in the black filth of a cell but the promise of power? What crime is there that does not become a virtue in the hands of power?

"It is the one possession that does not flag or become tedious, for there is never enough of it and an old man in whom the juices of all other desires are dried up will crawl on his tortured knees toward his grave still grabbing with frantic hands for power."

--The right legendary, Morgan le Fey 

Don't Stay Under the Coven Tree

Now here in the shade of the Coven Tree--

Just Bilbo, and Thorin, and Gandalf and me.

Bound for trouble--sic transit gloria--

Our quest simple--a taste of euphoria.

We welcome all bravehearts to journey along--

Just bring an old dirk, your pack, and a song.

These crooked paths--so lonely, dark, and deep--

Trolls, goblins, and dragons, shall make you weep.

We shall seize the day and worthier rise--

Bilbo, Thorin, Gandalf, and I, surmise.

Another Bronx Tale

You see, yesterday I was skimming through my current issue of The New Yorker, (Sept. 2, 2024) magazine for something interesting to read when I saw an article by Al Pacino . . .

It turned out to be an excerpt from a forthcoming memoir into which I was drawn. I learned that Pacino and I went to the same Junior High School, Hermann Ridder*, in the South Bronx, and we even had the same English teacher, Blanche Rothstein. She had the same lifelong influence on him that she had on me. We both became avid readers and lovers of English literature. We studied, Scott, Shakespeare, Wordsworth, Coleridge, and others in depth. She even required us to memorize the entire "Rime of the Ancient Mariner," and would call on us to recite it to the class by rote memory. Do not try this at home: It's more than 600 lines long!

Although Pacino and I were a couple of years apart we went to the same neighborhood movie theater and playhouse, The Dover on Boston Road, and The Elsmere on Crotona Parkway. We both took trains into Manhattan to attend special High Schools, he went to the School for Performing Arts and a few blocks away I attended the New York School of Printing. We each followed those trades throughout our lifetime.

We both swam, well I swam, and he fell through the ice while skating and into the Bronx River. Both activities were risky in that truly turdy waterway.

We both had childhood friends that came to early senseless deaths, his buddies by drug use, mine had died in a stolen car crash during a police chase. Our pals were Italian, Irish, Jewish, and Puerto Rican. Juvenile Delinquency was rampant in those early days after WWII.

There are even more ties that bind Al and me, but those will have to wait for my memoir. My wife tells me that I've got plenty of time left.

Meanwhile, we have Blanche Rothstein to thank for setting us both onto paths where the possibilities were, and are, endless.

*Hermann Ridder was a newpaper publisher.

For Where There's Life There's

Today's the 5th anniversary of my son's death from a stroke.

He was 49 years old.

His mother had just turned 50 when she died of heart failure.

I'm a survivor--

haunted by multiple lifetimes of dissolving memories.

As long as my heart beats,

Conscious or unconscious--

In dreams awake or in dreams asleep--

Aware of all that they have lost and I--

For where there's life there's

Welcome Back

It's been two scorched, flooded, twisted, bat-shit crazy months since I last web-logged, and I'm not talking about the weather--I'm talking about our chaotic political landscape. The Republicans had their 10 minutes of euphoria when they sensed an easy victory looming against a doddering incumbent who seemed bent on humiliating himself by staying, foolishly, in a tight race--which he hadn't a snowball's chance in Hell of winning--against a demented, albeit non-decrepit opponent. Then something quite unbelievable happened in the world of modern political action--the people spoke truth to power--and they were heard and obeyed! 

We the People should try this more often. Want liberties sustained? Want tighter gun laws? Want justice served? Want fairness in hiring, housing, healthcare? Want the right to choose what's right?

Vote Democratic. That's the ticket!

Clowning Around in C-World

It's been more than six years since I resurrected 10 B-Words that I had once looked up.

They reminded me of how many words are out there.

Unlike someplace else, in the dictionaries you can find a there there--

and further--there you can lose yourself.

Now--C's The Day!

coprolalia-involuntary obscene talking as a symptom of mental illness or brain-damage

contumely-insolent or reproachful language or treatment; disgrace

confabulate-to converse formally

coffle-a line of tethered animals or slaves

chirography-handwriting; calligraphy

cayuse-a feral horse or pony

cathartidae-vultures; birds of prey

cacogen-white trash

currier-a groomer of horses; a tanner of leather hides

crustie-an anti-work, dumpster-diving, anti-authority, anti-civilization, anti-religion type of person

Ouled Nail: A Danse Macabre

They undulate themselves as

the Corinthians remain unfazed

by all that commotion,

all that intense bantering

upon the dusty proscenium.

Behold your future--

Doctors of Bellys and Heads!?

Aren't they Ionic, though?!

Here's the Deal

Fascism Versus Democracy

The current experience of the United States will show, I suspect, that Fascism is not the inevitable form which a non-Bolshevist society must take, but rather that it is abnormal and pathological. Philosophically, Fascism is a movement whose leaders are civilians in riding boots. Politically, it is an entirely new type of tyranny, both personal and demagogic--a tyranny which for the first time in history exploits the mob spirit in an era of universal suffrage and gives to the supreme leaders irresponsible power as limitless as that of the modern state. In contrast to this picture, we now see in America a leader who has never played for the role of hero or savior and whose greatest ambition appears to be to look like a common human being, a member of the middle class by voluntary affiliation. Without frowning or putting on a mask of ferocity, he has taken on his shoulders the heaviest burden that any President ever assumed; he does not shirk the responsibility, and he stands ready to give an account of his stewardship when the time comes . . . perhaps the most appropriate term for this new American way of grappling with social and economic unrest is still the good old word "democracy."

--"Fascism in the Making" by Max Ascoli, November 1933

. . . and if chosen I will . . .

I too, am an elderly man with a poor memory. I too, am 81 years old. There, though, the things I have in common with Joe Biden end.

For one thing, I know that actions have consequences, whether those consequences are or aren’t intended. I didn’t need Ruth Bader Ginsberg to show the truth of that—I’ve known it since I was a young man with a good memory.

Another thing that clearly separates me from Joe Biden is that, like Dirty Harry, I believe “that a man has to know his limitations.” Joe, apparently, doesn’t. His running for a second term proves his adamantine asininity. I have never even sought a first term, frankly because I didn’t give a damn.

Until now.

I’m tossing my hat in the ring, because America deserves better than what it’s going to get come November.

That’d be me: (The poor man’s Joe Biden)!

Hey Jude

To state the obvious, I have put off writing a blog for January 2024 until the penultimate day. There are a myriad of reasons for this delay, all invalid, ranging from intellectual lethargy to physical disgust. I have a strong suspicion that many people will understand my self-diagnosed state of being, given the circumstances in which we all have been plummeting downward to our current weird-worldly situation.

Throughout all of my Bidenesque 81 years abiding in this particular portion of the planet I have never felt less comfortable with the odds against maintaining the necessary conditions for the continued "success" of the so-called "Democratic Experiment."

"So-called," because its "success" was always a grand delusion if you'd dare or care to examine its roots. The land-grabbiness of the gold-greedy conquistadors and the colonizing, genocidal, God-fearing folks whose battle cries of "Live Free or Die!" had many applications, the least of them being the application of "Freedom" for "Others."

Well, this year, perhaps the penultimate, or worse.

If we keep heading down this narrow path straight to hell there will be nothing else to say.

Just "air-quotes" hanging in a purple sky.