Donna Lee

How fast can you think?

Please Do Not Feed the Senators

Please Do Not Feed the Senators

There was the needle that stuck in the camel's eye.

While the swine were cast the cultured pearls.

Now goats and guppies visit the same veterinarian.

And the tit-willow gave birth to a dragon litter.

Some zoo: these buffalos in the bird-bath!

One thing and another being comparatively unequal,

the measurements of poison get a bit off balance.

Penitentiaries remain unimpressed by penitence.

The case of the unhealing wound will be continually reopened.

Which eye at the keyhole for which eye in the mote,

and whose tooth for whose toothache?

But things are looking up (without much hope).

Though more things are still left hanging.

Not high and dry, no, nor quite damp enough for a deluge:

so said the weather expert at closing tim e.

On the whole we regret the absence of thunderbolt.

- James Broughton, "Please Don't Feed the Senators," Evergreen 1:2 (New York: Grove Press, 1957) 108.

Death sucks

Day of Rage -

While the flame of Hope blued, flickered, and then was gone, we lost Zinn - and now Salinger.
Death sucks - whose great business plan was that?
The Dies Irae part (http://tinysong.com/7HRu) of Verdi's Requiem seems to me to shout every human's resentment of god for letting us taste love & hope - and then playing this Bad Practical Joke on us.

Howard - thanks for mixing a bit of hope with our rage.

Jerome - thanks for sharing those siblings - revered older Seymour and Holden; and chummy cohorts Buddy, Franny, and Zooey.

The Invisible Iron Heel

"The invisible hand has let go of the common good and our values. [Adam] Smith without a moral framework the market really can't function properly, and Schumpeter, Joseph Schumpeter, the Austrian economist, said, 'When there's no ethical sensibility, the market ends up devouring every other sector and finally ends up devouring itself.'"

- Jim Wallace on Tavis Smiley.

Nuclear Energy

Pick up your revolver. Put one shell in a chamber. Give the cylinder a spin. Place the business end of the barrel firmly against either temple (your own). Pull the trigger.

Maybe the Ultimate Solution.