The Old Geezers Mis-remember Miss July and Tear off Another Sheet. It’s All About Time, I Said. And Joe Said, There Ain’t Much Left.

Morning thunder storm delays the onset of dawn. The earlier rose cast in the east has been replaced by a dull gray. It’s getting darker. Morning is refusing to arrive. There is a rumbling to the southwest. There is just the slightest dark blue hint of a sky. The trees gently rustle. It’s almost seven. Dawn should have arrived two hours ago. The rumbling is getting nearer. The wind is picking up. Each succeeding rumble lasts a little longer. There are flashes of light. A booming rumble from overhead. Now it comes from the right and moves across to the left. Now it begins to really rain – large drops – plunk plunk plunk. A peel of booming is heard out of the east. The front is moving past fast. It’s a steady tropical downpour without any wind. It is 7:15. To the south clear patches begin to appear with gray splotches whipping across. It is getting lighter. Puddles reflect the little available sky. Its 7:25 and the only falling water is what drains off the roofs. There is a distant train whistle. It is now daylight. The time is 7:33. There is a gentle plip plip plip from a nearby roof eave. Birds begin to sing and squirrels scurry about. Time to get a move on.

The cocktail is really a corollary of the hard-work culture: extreme toil needs an extreme drink to counteract the misery – Tom Hodkinson – How to be Idle, 2004

The middle classes are the masters of non-material production, the aim of which is to absorb disruptive ideas and events and turn them into commodities

“She’s probably a half-wit, as far as I can make out.” “That’s merely the camouflage of the poor,” I explain. “They take refuge behind a mask of stupidity.” – Agatha Christie – Murder at the Vicarage

Entrained entertained

Detained and detrained
A reign of rain

Train terrain

I think that if there ever is another war in this country it will be one of ignorance and superstition combined against education and intelligence – Ulysses S Grant

The end of the world

Will be a power point

Summarized and clarified

            Illustrated

Everything will go on

            Just the same

Or so shall we proclaim

Getting better and better        

            Progress

The ties of bourgeois existence were being loosened by frequent bombardment – Ernest Junger – Storm of Steel

There are 60,000 Avon ladies working the Amazon River Basin in Brazil. Two dozen eggs buys a Bart Simpson roll-on deodorant

A fine fettle of fish

Nettles in the kettle

Raking in the hake

The unerring instinct of lemmings – Hans Magnus Enzenberger – Critical Essays, 1982 p236

“Phyllis you have great nipples,” or at least that’s what I thought Joe had said. She was standing on my right gathering up glassware from the table at which we sat. She was facing me and I looked at her chest. I couldn’t see any nipples, maybe Joe knew something that I didn’t. She told Joe, thanks and turned to me and said, “yes, and I have two of them”. And I had no doubt that she did. And she touched the side of her mouth with her right index finger. Oh, I said to myself, dimples. I had done the same yesterday at the vet. Along with the dog food there was a display a of pill pockets hanging on the wall. I had seen the name as ‘dill pickles’. Umph, dill pickle flavored treats. I didn’t know that dogs liked the flavor of dill pickles that much. Oh well, learn something new everyday. But why only the one flavor, why not bone marrow or even liver and onions? Later while paying my bill I noticed them again but this time I read the label correctly. How stupid. And I said to Joe, I thought you had said ‘nipples’. ‘I thought you had told Phyllis she had great nipples’. I was wondering why she hadn’t slapped you. I looked but I couldn’t see her nipples. She was wearing a bra. And when she told me that she had two of them, well I said to Joe, you must know something that I don’t. You’re getting old, Joe said. No, I think it’s because I write too much poetry. The next time Phyllis came by, Joe said, “Can I ask what might seem a personal question but is not? I don’t mean anything personally.’ She blushed (she’s very young) but was curious (aren’t we all, but we all don’t pursue it so vigorously as Joe). ‘Sure!’ she replied. “Is it in the dresscode that you are required to wear a bra.” This time she turned crimson but was polite about it, “ ’ll look it up” she said. “But why do you ask?” How was Joe going to explain this. He mumbled something that he tried to pass off as an explanation but wasn’t. We’re always interested in how Joe is going to get himself out of hot water. We didn’t think we did it very well this time. On a score of one to ten he got a three.And I explained to Brian the story of why Joe was suddenly interested in bras. Phyllis came back by later and reported to Joe, ‘yes it does. It is in the dresscode.’

The pregnant waitress / asks / “Would you like / some more coffee?” / Surprised out of the question / I wait seconds “Yes,  / I think I would!” I hand her / my empty cup, & / “thank you!” she says. My pleasure  – Ted Berrigan

70% of the world’s water market is controlled by three companies: Suez-ONDEO, Vivendi-Veolia, and RWE-Thames Water

Empathize with stupidity and your halfway to thinking like an idiot – Iain Banks – Consider Phlebes, 1987

One in every 13 (8% of all) non-suicide gun deaths in the US is the result of a police shooting. Half (50%) of the armed victims are white, while three quarters (75%) of the unarmed victims are black.

As a general rule, I have found the people honest on proportion as they are stupid. They are quick witted whenever the spirit of gain is aroused – Bayard Taylor – Northern Travels, 1859 p380

Wherever there is a new

            There is (or was) an old

Jolly ol’ England or Wales or Jersey

A car with no driver

A doll without an arm

A dog without a bone

The leaves fall

And so does snow

            People escape

Winter over

            Summer is

A loving time

The four seasons

            Of four-square

Gospel

Everything has an other

Everything has, sometimes

            More

Three or four, rarely more

Most readers of Braille prefer to use the left hand to identify symbols

First, we’re in this big aerodrome / and the speaker is inspecting a row of dirigibles, /  which makes me think this could be a dream. -  Billy Collins

The American Way – Fater than a Speeding Bullet, More Slotful than a Locomotive

I’m back now for good.  I said a year ago that the time was coming for my roaming to come to an end. Now it has come. Its gets longer and longer for an injury to heal and my knee constantly aches. Get it replaced everyone says. Everyone knows someone that has had it done. They say its like night and day. And recovery doesn’t take that long, they say. So I need to get something set up. With the VA that may be a long while. How do you go about finding a doctor anyway? I know how to find a place to live; I’ve done that (except that I have no furniture). It’s getting ready to rain. It’s Sunday - seventeen minutes past noon. It’s dark outside. I’m sitting on my sun porch with a view over the alley. One flower succeeds another – jonquils, tulips, irises and now the peonies. Roses are blooming in the alley. I picked a few and put them in a vase.  There is rumbling off to the south. The blues and greens are of the pastel shades the foretell that's big storm moving in from the plains. I think I’ve done will as far as housing goes. An older home in a centrally located area. If only my knee allowed me to get around. It’s difficult enough walking the dog. Here comes the rain, time to close the  windows. The dog doesn’t like thunder. He’s sitting in my lap. Poor little baby. The two big items on my to-do list: find a doctor and buy furniture. It’s coming down hard now. It’s difficult with the dog sitting here. Everytime I stop petting him in order to type he tries to lick my fingers. I could type much better without his help

There is an inverse relationship between geographic and temporal ‘otherness’.

Every fallen petal / diminishes spring // So the wind showers down a thousand / just to make me sad – Tu Fu

Early morning rain about 6AM. I’m up doing my journal entry. I have caught up to date. The dog again peed in the bathroom in front of the commode.  I think, I could teach him to hop up on the seat. He already knows the command ‘hop’. Yes, but then if he hopped up there, rather than perch he'd just  slide into the water. He isn’t a bird. It’s probably the smell of my urine, some of it having dribbled on the floor, I'm getting old. He likes to sleep on my discard clothes at night. Dogs see with their noses. The rain has stopped. It is daylight now. The dog is barking at me. He wants to go for a walk and my knees hurt.

Live long enough and you’ll discover remorse

The bride is too beautiful. They want to deceive me – Catherine the Great

Eight out of ten deaths in the 18^th Century were ascribed to ‘fever’

Go out on the green

            Any summer Sunday

They show up in color coordinated

                        T-shirts

With lots of cold beer

            And with wives in tow

Play kickball with the boys

            Like in the third grade

At the end of regulation play

            Line up and slap hands

With the opposing team in

            Their own colored T-shirts

            Just like in real sports

Someone will have to wash

            Out the grass stains

That’s you wife beaming

            With pride

Hurry up pink and yellow

            Are waiting to play

Its all about sportsmanship

            Obey the rules, play

            Fair and restrain from

Gloating when you win

            Life in miniature

And then the bubble 

            Soccer players

Waddle out onto the field

             Don't just watch

Come out and play with us

What a bunch of assholes

It was the left that was left crushed in the fall of socialism for then anti-communism or the lessening of pain to assuage the proletarian was no long seen as necessary or even useful. There is nothing to hope for anymore. The free market is the solution, the only solution and who is it who can say any different? Well, they could say it all they wanted too, but it had no persuasive power. Just abstract ideas – utopianism. Capitalism is real, it is the new Catholicism. Only the free (absolutely untethered) market is the real. No need to make the world safe for democracy anymore. The free market is democracy. All the intellectuals are now participating (buying big houses and even yachts) and proclaiming, “it the best of all possible worlds”, neigh, the only possible world. So fuck you. Get on board or die. And if climate change is real, then get on board and also die.

I had wanted life not to bother me too much, and had succeeded – and how pitiful that was – Julian Barnes – The Sense of An Ending, 2011 p109

Evil can result from goodwill when unnecessarily applied. It’s cause is not merely the bad will of evil people

But it is the nature of things to be seen only once, / As they happen along, bumping into other things, getting along/ Somehow – John Ashbery

Brownie – pixie, pic

            Preset pubescent

            A la Alice B Tokas

Idleness, like kisses, to be sweet must be stolen – Jerome K Jerome

95% of the parents of overweight children believe their kids’ weight is ‘just right’.

How often do we tell our own life story? How often do we adjust, embellish, make sly cuts? And the longer life goes on, the fewer are those around to challenge our account, to remind us that our life is not our life, merely the story we have told about our life. Told to others, but – mainly – to ourselves – Julian Barnes – A Sense of an Ending, 2011 p104

Goddamn

            It, shall we

Buy a little

            Car and salvage

Our surroundings

            Keep off our feet

Put it in

            Small print

Think about

            The earth

First. Maybe not

            A damn big

            One, why not?

Peak production         

            That’s why

And no job

            Will pay enough

To lower the principle

            And save a pineapple

Not able to buy both fuel

            And organic produce

Too. It’s too damn

            Much. Too damn

            Much

Half a million Americans have annual medication cost that exceed $50,000.  The number of such patients has increased 86% since 2013 and account for 16% of the total spending on prescription drugs

It cost a lot of money to decide. And they only pay you enough to get fat and sloppy – Walter Mosley – Futureland, 2001

Every month six elderly people in the US are shot and killed by the police.