Fucking American Patriots - It all Depends On Who You Stick and Where

It is warm enough to sit outside. The jonquils (both yellow and pale, pale yellow – almost white) bloom. The trees buzz in a greenish haze. Rain has been forecast. It may continue for the rest of the week. The wind is out of the south-east. The cast iron table at which I sit wobbles. The glass sliding doors onto the patio are open. I take an ibuprophen gel tablet for my sore wrist. It is getting better, but very slowly. I am still wrapping it in a self-adhesive ace bandage. I stopped for a tank of gas for my truck. I paid $3.33 per gallon. Pastels are the colors of spring.

WINTER FEAR: Is it just winter / or is it worse / Is this the year / when outer damp / obscures a deeper curse / that spring can’t fix, / when gears that / turn the earth / won’t shift the view, / when clouds won’t lift / through all the skies / go blue – Kay Ryan – The Best of it, 2010  p165

At the depths of mid 19^th Century, literacy rates in rural English counties was on average 52% and ranged from 45% to 80%. This has been determined by assessing the number of individuals able to sign their name rather than making their mark in the parish marriage registers. It is estimated that those who could actually read was about one in six and those who could write was  as few as one in ten. Statistics is all in the counting. One can read without being able to write, but one cannot write without being able to read.

No that is wrong. Yes, it is possible to write but not to read. A case was reported by French neurologist Joseph Jules Dejerine in 1892 – that of Monsieur C. “Now he writes from memory whatever he wants, but whether it be his own spontaneous writing or from dictation, he can never reread what he has written.”

Can an animal think? – There is no doubt an animal can think, and that it can remember //  Why do we growl like animals when we are hungry? – A hungry man is an angry man // Why does oil make a wheel go round more easily? // It all depends on where the oil is put – Cynthia Zarin – The American Scholar, Winter 2010

Most everyone who asks “What would the founders do?” already knows the answer. They already know what the founders would do. It is a rhetorical question. And who is it that would have answered these inquires if they had not been merely rhetorical regardless of how many quotes have been memorized and regurgitated. 

No man has a claim to credit upon his own word when better evidence, if he had it, may be easily produced – Samuel Johnson

The writer of the Pledge of Allegiance, Francis Bellamy, was a socialists and wrote it for children to recite. It was published in the Boston children’s magazine, Youths’ Companion in 1892

All roads go Roman. / The path not taken / is not kept open – Kay Ryan – The Book ot It, 2010 p52

When the right-wing talks about an ‘elite’ they don’t mean the wealthy – they mean a click of bureaucratic ‘czars’

The house dick’s / our secretes, / logbook / of the restless hotel – Robert Kelly – Kali Yugen 1970

Facticity – verification that the facts really are facts

Green grass writ Sanskrit / to worm below as well hawk a speck beyond cerulean. / All stone to flue aspire – Roland Johnson – ARK, 1996 ARK 63

Heavy drinkers exercise more on average than do non-drinkers (Harpers Index), but not by much.

Life is boredom, then fear / whether or not we use it, it goes – Philip Larkin – Dockery and Son

17% of young Americans (ages 18 - 29) think that violence against the US government is justified (Harpers Index)

The great undertaking of each generation is to settle the debt handed down by the proceeding one…[and] in doing so, each generation calls into existence, the obstacles that are to confront its descendents – Vincent Descombes – Modern French Philosophy, 1980 p3

Fucking someone who has fucked

Someone famous is a Kevin Bacon

            Experience – only one degree

            Of separation – a space shot.
No, a time shot - or rather a time capsule

Thought not quit as awsome as the

            Challenger disaster. A concerted
            Effort to find the crew capsule

Squeeky Froum tried to assassinate

            President Ford. That alone

            Should have made Charlie

Manson famous
It's never quite clear 

Without a scorecard
            As to who screwed and
            Who got screwed

Welcome symbol needs of early morning after too much nada all the night – Robert Kelly – Kali Yugen 1970