I had posted this before, late last night, but I wanted to post it again, so more people could see it:
EVERYBODY PANIC! 😀
“The Potato Head Toy” is being [accidentally?] sold with a GENDER, as: MR. POTATO HEAD, on amazon.com!
But…the company that makes, “Mr. Potato Head”, recently took the gender-name from the toy.
What went wrong? How is it, “mister”, again?
The toy company made mr. + mrs. potato head(s) gender-neutral, so that [more kids could identify with mr. potato head? Did you ever meet anyone who WANTED to be mr. potato head?]
“The first settlement in the U.S. has been reached in a class action lawsuit filed by health care workers over a university system’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate.
Chicago-based NorthShore University HealthSystem has agreed to pay more than 500 current and former health-care workers a total of $10,337,500 as part of the terms of the settlement. It’s also changing its policy to accommodate religious exemption requests and rehiring former employees who were fired or forced to resign whose exemption requests were denied.”
When you doubt that it’s actually August, step outside for a half an hour in the early afternoon…
Just look for the sequence, just after the “/dp/” — usually that is all that is needed.
Not a big deal, just “good to know” info. Do with it as you wish.
There ARE some exceptions, but mostly for unusual links like book collections, etc., not basic item links such as the above.
Once you get some feel for what is actually required, you can usually reduce a lot of the information collection available to them all. Whether this matters to you is your option.
Here’s three things I loathe:
Ben Crump
Nancy Pelosi
August humidity
Tales from DMV: So we gave an old boat trailer to our in-laws. They were suppose to register it in PA, but didn’t, so the registration for CT is still active. Somehow, CT has our Florida address so we get a property tax bill from our former CT town for the damn trailer in the mail. I talked to the town tax person and was told I have to cancel the registration to remove from the tax roll. Go to CT DMV web site to do an online cancellation. I can’t cancel as I have to have a valid CT drivers license as part of the cancellation process. OK, call them on the phone….auto system says 3-4 hour hold time to speak to anyone; as if I’m doing that! The CT DMV thinks it’s still 2020 and “Due to COVID!!” only in person service by appointment. Well, I’m in Florida so that’s not happening. Wife said, just pay the GD $14 bill and we’ll deal with it later. Sigh….. CT still getting money from me.
I once bought a carpet in Turkey. It was shipped and my wife paid $400 import duty on it to pick it up. Then three years later, I get a tax bill from California. It’s for “use tax” as California tries to collect a substitute for sales tax. I write a letter to the Tax Board that I paid import duty and states are barred from charging a second import duty. I finally talked to the Commissioner on the phone and he agreed it was crazy but the law. I finally paid.
Mike K, I can remember calculating whether I would likely still be alive in that far-off, distant, mythical year 2000.
I remember July like it was yesterday.
I cannot believe it’s already August. And yet I must believe. Because it is.
Well, you can blame Augustus Caesar, who gave his name to the month in 8 B.C. August started out as the sixth month (mensis Sextilis) in the Roman calendar, March originally being the first month. After the Roman calendar was reorganized under Julius Caesar to have twelve months instead of its original ten, Sextilis became the eighth month but retained its name until Quintilis— our present July– was renamed to honor Julius C. because it was his birth month.
The decree of the Roman Senate renaming Sextilis reads in translation as follows:
Whereas the emperor Augustus Caesar, in the month of Sextilis, was first admitted to the consulate, and thrice entered the city in triumph, and in the same month the legions from the Janiculum placed themselves under his auspices, and in the same month Egypt was brought under the authority of the Roman people, and in the same month an end was put to the civil wars; and whereas for these reasons the said month is and has been most fortunate to this empire, it is hereby decreed by the senate that the said month shall be called Augustus.
(Yes, I had a very thorough and demanding Canadian-American Latin teacher in high school– why do you ask?)
My second association with the month is Judith Rossner’s 1983 novel August, about the separation anxiety that erupts in an analysand’s life when her psychoanalyst takes her annual August vacation in the Hamptons. It is an interesting novel, but it told me more about 1) Manhattan and 2) psychoanalysis than I really wanted to know.
Third association? I was an August baby, born on what I am told was the hottest Sunday in the history of my home county. If my parents and the obstetrician weren’t exaggerating, that’s got to be proof that post-1960 global warming is a scam.
I remember when there might be an ice age by the year 2000. I fearfully envisioned this mountain sized glacier approaching the family house to crush it. My physcist dad told me not to worry .
@ JimNorCal – I certainly hope there are more. Lots more. And some winning cases for the people who took the vaccinations against their will because they didn’t want to lose their jobs, and got sick as a result.
A moment of unintended levity from the article:
“NorthShore’s director of PR, Colette Urban, told The Center Square, “We continue to support system-wide, evidence-based vaccination requirements for everyone who works at NorthShore – Edward-Elmhurst Health and thank our team members for helping to keep our communities safe.”
@ Barry > ““Schumer advises Biden to declare ‘climate emergency’ to circumvent Congress on certain agenda items”—”
I have no doubt he would do that for the current bills he is pushing, but that particular post is from January 2021.
However, the news writers could save some time by cutting and pasting a lot of Schumer’s remarks when he gets around to doing it again.
JustTheNews has some good reports in its sidebar today.
Didn’t Milton Friedman just have a birthday? IYKWIM
So did horses…to be fair to some other species.
PA Cat, my younger daughter took four years of Latin in high school, including two years of AP Latin. We went to Italy for her high school graduation trip. After checking into our hotel, already dazzled by the sight of a Roman aqueduct seen from the train, she was completely amazed when we went out for a stroll and walked right up to the tomb of Caesar Augustus.
Congress’s nonpartisan scorekeeper confirms half of the $313 billion book minimum tax increase would be borne by manufacturers.
Who needs those pesky low profit margin businesses anyway? Oh wait. If those businesses or jobs move overseas, how much in tax revenue does the government receive then?
Life in Blue-ruled cities ….
(C’mon, America. We can do better).
Kate– Did your daughter get to see the Augustus of Prima Porta in the Vatican Museums? I’ve never been to Rome other than online, but if I ever have the opportunity for a real visit, I’ll look for that statue– it was the cover illustration of my high school Latin textbooks. My high school Latin classes had to settle for an annual trip to the Roman gallery of the University of Pennsylvania Museum– it’s been redesigned since then, of course (https://www.penn.museum/on-view/galleries-exhibitions/rome-gallery), but if you’re ever in the Philly area, the entire museum is worth a visit.
We went to the Vatican, but I don’t remember if she saw that statue. She did take us all over Roman Italy translating the inscriptions on the monuments.
Zawahiri finally dead?
CIA drone strike kills Al-Qaeda chief al-Zawahiri in Kabul after FBI put $25m bounty on his head: Taliban calls hit ‘a violation of international principles’ – as Biden prepares for 7:30 p.m. address
Hooray, August! PA+Cat, that’s very interesting about how the month’s name came about. I’m not clear on why it should matter so much that the legions from the Janiculum joined Octavian’s cause, though.
JimNorCal. I lived on the South side of Chicago from 1969 to 1976. It was a very dangerous place then and nothing has changed in the last 50 years as far as I can tell. If you want the latest on crime look up https://heyjackass.com/ for its statistics and especially the ironically named “Chicago Shot Clock”. It’s at one shooting every 2 hours and 30 minutes and a murder every 12 hours and 45 minutes, of which at least 80% are black on black. The month of July had 69 murders, slightly more than 17 murders a week, a mass shooting every week. If it were white school children done in by a mentally unstable teenage boy, there would be around the clock shrieking by the MSM, but it’s just black on black gang bangers one or two at a time, so who cares.
Half of all the murders in the US are black on black, 15 % of the population, almost all in the Democrat big city slums. It’s not mentioned because it’s politically incorrect and it’s in Democrat controlled cities. The real racists in the US are the Democrats and the MSM. And, how would the Democrat party survive without all those votes and the rake off and party workers of the welfare-education industrial complex?
The Janiculum is a hill outside the boundaries of the ancient city of Rome in present-day Trastevere. It was the center of the cult of the god Janus in the ancient Roman religion; because it overlooked the city, the Janiculum was the place where the augurs– priests who observed the flight of birds in order to interpret the will of the gods– delivered their findings. This practice was called “taking the auspices.” For the legions stationed on or around the Janiculum to place themselves under Octavian’s auspices, then, would mean that they saw him as their “auspicious” leader, and thus fit to be the ruler of Rome.
U.S. — The government that shut down beaches, parks, churches, schools, birthday parties, restaurants, retail shops, bars, cafes, skate parks, funerals, and hundreds of other locations, gatherings, and events across the country to slow the spread of COVID-19 announced Friday that there is “absolutely nothing we can think of” that would help slow the spread of monkeypox, a disease that is spread almost exclusively through gay sex.
CDC Director Rochelle Walensky held a press conference today where she made the somber announcement that they’ve tried everything and can’t think of a single thing that would stop the spread of this disease which spreads via homosexual encounters.
=============
If actual fact, it’s been noted as an STD, though they avoid like “the plague” (pun utterly intended) noting it’s mainly about gay sex.
And there are several confirmed cases involving children…
Notice how the most probable reason why some children have contracted it would be, clearly, having sex with men. Of course, we can’t say that. Because. Derpa Derpa Derpa.
ObloodyHell–
FWIW, about two hours ago, I got one of the local mayor’s blast phone calls (I think the guy is addicted to this method of contacting the citizenry; the previous mayor used it only to notify people about snow emergencies and parking bans)– this time about monkeypox. It was by far the longest phone message he’s ever delivered– about 3 minutes. It was downright creepy listening to him describe the symptoms of the disease in detail as well as the groups most likely to be affected and the handful of places where limited amounts of vaccine are available.
Why didn’t I just hang up? For the same reason people can’t avoid watching a train wreck– a kind of incredulity that this type of city-sponsored PSA is actually coming over the local phone system.
Incidentally, San Francisco refused to cancel or postpone its annual leather fest (or whatever it’s called) lest the usual suspects be deprived of their kinky orgies. Its slogan: “Leather Binds Us.” You may or may not want to click on the link: https://leatherpridefest.com/
PA+Cat, thanks for that. It got the ball rolling, I guess.
I was a little lazy about getting today’s flags put up. Today was Herman Melville’s birthday, for example, so I was supposed to have the flag of the city of Albany out. That one is one of my personal favorites on account of the aesthetics.
Philip Sells–
You’re more than welcome– I’m just glad Neo tolerates us bookish types.
And now you also know where the term “inauguration” entered politics.
Re: Bookish types…
PA+Cat, Philip Sells: Reporting for duty!
Here’s my sorta book report on T.S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land” from my cultural adventure this past weekend:
If you can believe it, “The Waste Land” appeared complete with line numbers and full-on notes by Eliot himself when it was first published almost exactly a century ago. No poems are initially published that way.
“The Waste Land” was immediately understood as a breakthrough blockbuster poem. As poet and scholar, Kenneth Rexroth put it:
_________________________
You have to been there to know the impact of “The Waste Land”. It wasn’t something in an English course. It was something in that very month’s issue of “The Dial”: unprepared for, unexpected, overwhelming…
–Kenneth Rexroth, “American Poetry in the Twentieth Century”
_________________________
For an audio reading I first turned to Eliot. The best (with modern tech clean-up, I believe) is here:
However, the definitive reading IMO, and judging by web re-usage, is that of dear Alec Guinness. Absolutely gorgeous and with this poem, you need all the encouragement you can get.
But huxley, I hear you asking, “Why should I care about some weirdo, super-hard, academic poem a hundred years old?”
We are twenty years into the 21st century and if one believes the Test of Time, I’d say the results are in: “The Waste Land” is the greatest English poem of the 20th C. I’d love to give that laurel to William Carlos Williams, Wallace Stevens or Allen Ginsberg, but it just ain’t so.
“The Waste Land” was new — it contained allusions to sixty or so authors and books including Shakespeare, the Greeks, the Bible, the Hindu “Upanishads” and the Buddhist “Fire Sermon” sutra. “The Waste Land” was a global, historical poem in several dozen voices. It was a cry of the heart following the horrors of World War I — a period of great disillusionment and dislocation not unlike our current time.
Eliot was quite a brainy fellow. He studied philosophy and Sanskrit at Harvard before chucking it all for literature. As much as it pains my egalitarian heart, he wasn’t writing for everyone. There’s no getting around the intellectual challenge of “The Waste Land.”
Nonetheless, there is plenty of supplementary materials for understanding TWL. One can sink into that poem and those materials and come to one’s own understanding — which will evolve over time. And the language is often gorgeous.
A great clue I encountered was Eliot’s original title, which was underwhelming:
_________________________
He Do the Police in Different Voices
_________________________
Which is a reference to a Dickens story in which one character is recommended for reading the newspaper because “He Do the Police in Different Voices.”
Never forget when reading TWL: it is a multiplicity speaking, not one voice.
Happy “The Waste Land” Centennial!
AF,
Thanks…
I keep forgetting to check the date on these things.
OTOH, it was one of the leads on the “Just the News” site….
(Hmmm, wonder if Schumer said it again…)
Mark Judge isn’t ready to admit that after Peggy Lee, it’s all kind of an anticlimax.
@ Barry > “I keep forgetting to check the date on these things.
OTOH, it was one of the leads on the “Just the News” site”
Trust but verify 😉
I’ve noticed that side-bars and “related stories” boxes often throw in old posts.
Sometimes they are new to me, and sometimes they give background insight into the current article, but sometimes they are just click-bait.
It was interesting for me to take a deep dive into T.S. Eliot. It was like that scene in “Patton” where he insists on a detour with Omar Bradley to visit an old battlefield where Patton fought in a previous life.
I make no claims to reincarnation, but I fought in the Great Poetry War Against T.S. Eliot (and his kind). I remember the smoke and gunfire, the cries of the wounded, the changing battle lines.
In the end we won. We carried the banner from Walt Whitman, William Carlos Williams, the Black Mountain Poets, the Beats, the New York School and Deep Imagists to victory.
It was decisive.
Now it appears Poetry lost. And I miss T.S. Eliot.
Poetry is eternal the scribes who pretend to graft procrustean interpretations are dated
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In memorium:
“Samuel Sandoval, among last Navajo Code Talkers, dead at 98”—
https://nypost.com/2022/08/01/samuel-sandoval-among-last-navajo-code-talkers-dies-at-98/
Time flies as you get older. I can remember when I thought 1960 would never come.
The politically correct deny reality and live in fantasyland, so if you were PC you could claim it is not really august.
It may be August, but it identifies as June.
And heeere we go…
“Schumer advises Biden to declare ‘climate emergency’ to circumvent Congress on certain agenda items”—
https://justthenews.com/government/congress/schumer-says-biden-should-declare-climate-emergency-circumvent-congress-certain
(Actually, the only real crisis is the Democrats wielding power….)
To review;
“HORROR NOVEL PRESIDENCY”—
https://instapundit.com/534586/
Barry, I’d bet my life … in fact, I’d bet my kids’ lives that global warming is a scam.
The post office is gearing up for all mail in ballots in 2022. Now the only question is what pretext the Democrats will use to declare a national emergency requiring them. Will it be the Covid or the monkeypox or …
https://www.theepochtimes.com/us-postal-service-makes-announcement-on-mail-in-ballots-ahead-of-midterm-elections_4633936.html
I had posted this before, late last night, but I wanted to post it again, so more people could see it:
EVERYBODY PANIC! 😀
“The Potato Head Toy” is being [accidentally?] sold with a GENDER, as: MR. POTATO HEAD, on amazon.com!
But…the company that makes, “Mr. Potato Head”, recently took the gender-name from the toy.
What went wrong? How is it, “mister”, again?
The toy company made mr. + mrs. potato head(s) gender-neutral, so that [more kids could identify with mr. potato head? Did you ever meet anyone who WANTED to be mr. potato head?]
Oh no. 🙂
How much can this poor nation stand?
Bwa ha ha! 😀
https://www.amazon.com/Mr-Potato-Head-Classic-Pieces/dp/B08X1RYZ1R/ref=sr_1_97?keywords=action+figures+soldier+military&qid=1659329488&refinements=p_36%3A100-1200&rnid=386491011&s=toys-and-games&sr=1-97
Expect more ….
http://www.capoliticalreview.com/capoliticalnewsandviews/first-settlement-reached-for-health-care-workers-in-lawsuit-filed-over-covid-19-vaccine-mandate/
“The first settlement in the U.S. has been reached in a class action lawsuit filed by health care workers over a university system’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate.
Chicago-based NorthShore University HealthSystem has agreed to pay more than 500 current and former health-care workers a total of $10,337,500 as part of the terms of the settlement. It’s also changing its policy to accommodate religious exemption requests and rehiring former employees who were fired or forced to resign whose exemption requests were denied.”
When you doubt that it’s actually August, step outside for a half an hour in the early afternoon…
You’ll say, “Damn, it’s August, for sure!!”
😛
}}} https://www.amazon.com/Mr-Potato-Head-Classic-Pieces/dp/B08X1RYZ1R/ref=sr_1_97?keywords=action+figures+soldier+military&qid=1659329488&refinements=p_36%3A100-1200&rnid=386491011&s=toys-and-games&sr=1-97
FWIW, more than half the above link is unneeded.
https://www.amazon.com/Mr-Potato-Head-Classic-Pieces/dp/B08X1RYZ1R/
should be sufficient. No need to provide to FB or Amazon all the information it gives them. Most links can be radically reduced this way.
Just look for the sequence, just after the “/dp/” — usually that is all that is needed.
Not a big deal, just “good to know” info. Do with it as you wish.
There ARE some exceptions, but mostly for unusual links like book collections, etc., not basic item links such as the above.
Once you get some feel for what is actually required, you can usually reduce a lot of the information collection available to them all. Whether this matters to you is your option.
Here’s three things I loathe:
Ben Crump
Nancy Pelosi
August humidity
Tales from DMV: So we gave an old boat trailer to our in-laws. They were suppose to register it in PA, but didn’t, so the registration for CT is still active. Somehow, CT has our Florida address so we get a property tax bill from our former CT town for the damn trailer in the mail. I talked to the town tax person and was told I have to cancel the registration to remove from the tax roll. Go to CT DMV web site to do an online cancellation. I can’t cancel as I have to have a valid CT drivers license as part of the cancellation process. OK, call them on the phone….auto system says 3-4 hour hold time to speak to anyone; as if I’m doing that! The CT DMV thinks it’s still 2020 and “Due to COVID!!” only in person service by appointment. Well, I’m in Florida so that’s not happening. Wife said, just pay the GD $14 bill and we’ll deal with it later. Sigh….. CT still getting money from me.
I once bought a carpet in Turkey. It was shipped and my wife paid $400 import duty on it to pick it up. Then three years later, I get a tax bill from California. It’s for “use tax” as California tries to collect a substitute for sales tax. I write a letter to the Tax Board that I paid import duty and states are barred from charging a second import duty. I finally talked to the Commissioner on the phone and he agreed it was crazy but the law. I finally paid.
Mike K, I can remember calculating whether I would likely still be alive in that far-off, distant, mythical year 2000.
I remember July like it was yesterday.
I cannot believe it’s already August. And yet I must believe. Because it is.
Well, you can blame Augustus Caesar, who gave his name to the month in 8 B.C. August started out as the sixth month (mensis Sextilis) in the Roman calendar, March originally being the first month. After the Roman calendar was reorganized under Julius Caesar to have twelve months instead of its original ten, Sextilis became the eighth month but retained its name until Quintilis— our present July– was renamed to honor Julius C. because it was his birth month.
The decree of the Roman Senate renaming Sextilis reads in translation as follows:
Whereas the emperor Augustus Caesar, in the month of Sextilis, was first admitted to the consulate, and thrice entered the city in triumph, and in the same month the legions from the Janiculum placed themselves under his auspices, and in the same month Egypt was brought under the authority of the Roman people, and in the same month an end was put to the civil wars; and whereas for these reasons the said month is and has been most fortunate to this empire, it is hereby decreed by the senate that the said month shall be called Augustus.
(Yes, I had a very thorough and demanding Canadian-American Latin teacher in high school– why do you ask?)
My second association with the month is Judith Rossner’s 1983 novel August, about the separation anxiety that erupts in an analysand’s life when her psychoanalyst takes her annual August vacation in the Hamptons. It is an interesting novel, but it told me more about 1) Manhattan and 2) psychoanalysis than I really wanted to know.
Third association? I was an August baby, born on what I am told was the hottest Sunday in the history of my home county. If my parents and the obstetrician weren’t exaggerating, that’s got to be proof that post-1960 global warming is a scam.
I remember when there might be an ice age by the year 2000. I fearfully envisioned this mountain sized glacier approaching the family house to crush it. My physcist dad told me not to worry .
@ JimNorCal – I certainly hope there are more. Lots more. And some winning cases for the people who took the vaccinations against their will because they didn’t want to lose their jobs, and got sick as a result.
A moment of unintended levity from the article:
“NorthShore’s director of PR, Colette Urban, told The Center Square, “We continue to support system-wide, evidence-based vaccination requirements for everyone who works at NorthShore – Edward-Elmhurst Health and thank our team members for helping to keep our communities safe.”
@ Barry > ““Schumer advises Biden to declare ‘climate emergency’ to circumvent Congress on certain agenda items”—”
I have no doubt he would do that for the current bills he is pushing, but that particular post is from January 2021.
However, the news writers could save some time by cutting and pasting a lot of Schumer’s remarks when he gets around to doing it again.
JustTheNews has some good reports in its sidebar today.
Didn’t Milton Friedman just have a birthday? IYKWIM
So did horses…to be fair to some other species.
PA Cat, my younger daughter took four years of Latin in high school, including two years of AP Latin. We went to Italy for her high school graduation trip. After checking into our hotel, already dazzled by the sight of a Roman aqueduct seen from the train, she was completely amazed when we went out for a stroll and walked right up to the tomb of Caesar Augustus.
JCT Confirms: U.S. Manufacturers Would be Hardest Hit by Democrats’ Book Minimum Tax
Congress’s nonpartisan scorekeeper confirms half of the $313 billion book minimum tax increase would be borne by manufacturers.
Who needs those pesky low profit margin businesses anyway? Oh wait. If those businesses or jobs move overseas, how much in tax revenue does the government receive then?
7 killed, 38 wounded in the Windy City last weekend.
https://chicago.suntimes.com/2022/8/1/23284765/chicago-shootings-homicide-friday-july-weekend
Life in Blue-ruled cities ….
(C’mon, America. We can do better).
Kate– Did your daughter get to see the Augustus of Prima Porta in the Vatican Museums? I’ve never been to Rome other than online, but if I ever have the opportunity for a real visit, I’ll look for that statue– it was the cover illustration of my high school Latin textbooks. My high school Latin classes had to settle for an annual trip to the Roman gallery of the University of Pennsylvania Museum– it’s been redesigned since then, of course (https://www.penn.museum/on-view/galleries-exhibitions/rome-gallery), but if you’re ever in the Philly area, the entire museum is worth a visit.
We went to the Vatican, but I don’t remember if she saw that statue. She did take us all over Roman Italy translating the inscriptions on the monuments.
Zawahiri finally dead?
CIA drone strike kills Al-Qaeda chief al-Zawahiri in Kabul after FBI put $25m bounty on his head: Taliban calls hit ‘a violation of international principles’ – as Biden prepares for 7:30 p.m. address
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11070757/Biden-address-nation-7-30-tonight-successful-counterterrorism-raid.html
Hooray, August! PA+Cat, that’s very interesting about how the month’s name came about. I’m not clear on why it should matter so much that the legions from the Janiculum joined Octavian’s cause, though.
JimNorCal. I lived on the South side of Chicago from 1969 to 1976. It was a very dangerous place then and nothing has changed in the last 50 years as far as I can tell. If you want the latest on crime look up https://heyjackass.com/ for its statistics and especially the ironically named “Chicago Shot Clock”. It’s at one shooting every 2 hours and 30 minutes and a murder every 12 hours and 45 minutes, of which at least 80% are black on black. The month of July had 69 murders, slightly more than 17 murders a week, a mass shooting every week. If it were white school children done in by a mentally unstable teenage boy, there would be around the clock shrieking by the MSM, but it’s just black on black gang bangers one or two at a time, so who cares.
Half of all the murders in the US are black on black, 15 % of the population, almost all in the Democrat big city slums. It’s not mentioned because it’s politically incorrect and it’s in Democrat controlled cities. The real racists in the US are the Democrats and the MSM. And, how would the Democrat party survive without all those votes and the rake off and party workers of the welfare-education industrial complex?
}}} I once bought a carpet in Turkey…
It’s what you deserve for living in Cali…
;-D
The Bee:
Words Redefined by the Biden Admin:
https://babylonbee.com/news/infographic-words-redefined-by-the-biden-administration
Philip Sells–
The Janiculum is a hill outside the boundaries of the ancient city of Rome in present-day Trastevere. It was the center of the cult of the god Janus in the ancient Roman religion; because it overlooked the city, the Janiculum was the place where the augurs– priests who observed the flight of birds in order to interpret the will of the gods– delivered their findings. This practice was called “taking the auspices.” For the legions stationed on or around the Janiculum to place themselves under Octavian’s auspices, then, would mean that they saw him as their “auspicious” leader, and thus fit to be the ruler of Rome.
The Bee:
Are we in a recession? A handy flowchart:
https://babylonbee.com/news/are-we-in-a-recession-a-handy-flowchart
The Bee:
https://babylonbee.com/news/government-that-shut-down-businesses-parks-schools-beaches-and-churches-for-2-years-says-theres-nothing-it-can-do-to-stop-a-disease-spread-by-gay-sex
U.S. — The government that shut down beaches, parks, churches, schools, birthday parties, restaurants, retail shops, bars, cafes, skate parks, funerals, and hundreds of other locations, gatherings, and events across the country to slow the spread of COVID-19 announced Friday that there is “absolutely nothing we can think of” that would help slow the spread of monkeypox, a disease that is spread almost exclusively through gay sex.
CDC Director Rochelle Walensky held a press conference today where she made the somber announcement that they’ve tried everything and can’t think of a single thing that would stop the spread of this disease which spreads via homosexual encounters.
=============
If actual fact, it’s been noted as an STD, though they avoid like “the plague” (pun utterly intended) noting it’s mainly about gay sex.
And there are several confirmed cases involving children…
Notice how the most probable reason why some children have contracted it would be, clearly, having sex with men. Of course, we can’t say that. Because. Derpa Derpa Derpa.
ObloodyHell–
FWIW, about two hours ago, I got one of the local mayor’s blast phone calls (I think the guy is addicted to this method of contacting the citizenry; the previous mayor used it only to notify people about snow emergencies and parking bans)– this time about monkeypox. It was by far the longest phone message he’s ever delivered– about 3 minutes. It was downright creepy listening to him describe the symptoms of the disease in detail as well as the groups most likely to be affected and the handful of places where limited amounts of vaccine are available.
Why didn’t I just hang up? For the same reason people can’t avoid watching a train wreck– a kind of incredulity that this type of city-sponsored PSA is actually coming over the local phone system.
Incidentally, San Francisco refused to cancel or postpone its annual leather fest (or whatever it’s called) lest the usual suspects be deprived of their kinky orgies. Its slogan: “Leather Binds Us.” You may or may not want to click on the link: https://leatherpridefest.com/
PA+Cat, thanks for that. It got the ball rolling, I guess.
I was a little lazy about getting today’s flags put up. Today was Herman Melville’s birthday, for example, so I was supposed to have the flag of the city of Albany out. That one is one of my personal favorites on account of the aesthetics.
Philip Sells–
You’re more than welcome– I’m just glad Neo tolerates us bookish types.
And now you also know where the term “inauguration” entered politics.
Re: Bookish types…
PA+Cat, Philip Sells: Reporting for duty!
Here’s my sorta book report on T.S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land” from my cultural adventure this past weekend:
Poem with Eliot’s original annotations in html.
https://wasteland.windingway.org/
If you can believe it, “The Waste Land” appeared complete with line numbers and full-on notes by Eliot himself when it was first published almost exactly a century ago. No poems are initially published that way.
“The Waste Land” was immediately understood as a breakthrough blockbuster poem. As poet and scholar, Kenneth Rexroth put it:
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You have to been there to know the impact of “The Waste Land”. It wasn’t something in an English course. It was something in that very month’s issue of “The Dial”: unprepared for, unexpected, overwhelming…
–Kenneth Rexroth, “American Poetry in the Twentieth Century”
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For an audio reading I first turned to Eliot. The best (with modern tech clean-up, I believe) is here:
–“TS Eliot :: The Waste Land”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1rpFBSO65P4
However, the definitive reading IMO, and judging by web re-usage, is that of dear Alec Guinness. Absolutely gorgeous and with this poem, you need all the encouragement you can get.
–“The Waste Land (TS Eliot) read by Alec Guinness”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hcj4G45F9pw
The actor who took George Smiley from John Le Carre, took “The Waste Land” from T.S. Eliot.
The best, straight-ahead academic lecture IMO on the poem:
–“Nick Mount on T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JO8rEIddgrI
But huxley, I hear you asking, “Why should I care about some weirdo, super-hard, academic poem a hundred years old?”
We are twenty years into the 21st century and if one believes the Test of Time, I’d say the results are in: “The Waste Land” is the greatest English poem of the 20th C. I’d love to give that laurel to William Carlos Williams, Wallace Stevens or Allen Ginsberg, but it just ain’t so.
“The Waste Land” was new — it contained allusions to sixty or so authors and books including Shakespeare, the Greeks, the Bible, the Hindu “Upanishads” and the Buddhist “Fire Sermon” sutra. “The Waste Land” was a global, historical poem in several dozen voices. It was a cry of the heart following the horrors of World War I — a period of great disillusionment and dislocation not unlike our current time.
Eliot was quite a brainy fellow. He studied philosophy and Sanskrit at Harvard before chucking it all for literature. As much as it pains my egalitarian heart, he wasn’t writing for everyone. There’s no getting around the intellectual challenge of “The Waste Land.”
Nonetheless, there is plenty of supplementary materials for understanding TWL. One can sink into that poem and those materials and come to one’s own understanding — which will evolve over time. And the language is often gorgeous.
A great clue I encountered was Eliot’s original title, which was underwhelming:
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He Do the Police in Different Voices
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Which is a reference to a Dickens story in which one character is recommended for reading the newspaper because “He Do the Police in Different Voices.”
Never forget when reading TWL: it is a multiplicity speaking, not one voice.
Happy “The Waste Land” Centennial!
AF,
Thanks…
I keep forgetting to check the date on these things.
OTOH, it was one of the leads on the “Just the News” site….
(Hmmm, wonder if Schumer said it again…)
https://amgreatness.com/2022/08/01/beyonces-awful-new-album-and-the-end-of-pop-music-criticism/
Mark Judge isn’t ready to admit that after Peggy Lee, it’s all kind of an anticlimax.
@ Barry > “I keep forgetting to check the date on these things.
OTOH, it was one of the leads on the “Just the News” site”
Trust but verify 😉
I’ve noticed that side-bars and “related stories” boxes often throw in old posts.
Sometimes they are new to me, and sometimes they give background insight into the current article, but sometimes they are just click-bait.
It was interesting for me to take a deep dive into T.S. Eliot. It was like that scene in “Patton” where he insists on a detour with Omar Bradley to visit an old battlefield where Patton fought in a previous life.
–“Patton (1970): 27:32 – 30:21 (reincarnation scene)”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7ER08F9rGo
I make no claims to reincarnation, but I fought in the Great Poetry War Against T.S. Eliot (and his kind). I remember the smoke and gunfire, the cries of the wounded, the changing battle lines.
In the end we won. We carried the banner from Walt Whitman, William Carlos Williams, the Black Mountain Poets, the Beats, the New York School and Deep Imagists to victory.
It was decisive.
Now it appears Poetry lost. And I miss T.S. Eliot.
Poetry is eternal the scribes who pretend to graft procrustean interpretations are dated