Welcome Poles!

But why would 120 of you Polacks (if you don't mind an affectionate racist epithet) suddenly start reading these obscure and humble presents since yesterday or the day before?  Are you slumming? Or should I be flattered? I don't mind either way. I'm just curious.

Au Sujet de mon Serviteur personnel--Chose Étrange et assez Touchante:

Ce bon gars de trente ans je crois (qui ne lit pas français) s'est voué fidèlement au service de mon corps et de ma maison, de la part d'une institution charitable qui s'appelle "les Aideurs du Ciel" et qui lui en fournit ses gages.   Il ne suffit pas de dire qu'il est d'un caractère parfaitement honnête--il aime son travail.  Plus j'ai des besoins, plus il est charmé de les exhaucer.  C'est un ange.  Et depuis que je me suis cassé la cheville (il y a trois mois passés), ses soins me sont devenus absolument nécessaires.

I don't know what I had expected from Trump (a man I have long despised) as President,

But the frou-haha (term of my own invention. It means a tumult about something trivial)  over Immigration, which shows at once how much he thinks he knows, and how pitifully little he actually does know about this interesting but not, after all, very important topic, is strangely pathetic: The vulgar little man could not have chosen a more revealing issue to show off his bad judgement, ill-nature, irrelevance and utter nincompoopery.  And we see that something (perhaps all of that) makes him angry, and that, in his anger he is perfectly ridiculous.

And still, we're damned lucky that he, not Hillary, won the election.

Enough Pussy-Footing, Let's get the LBT out of GLBT...

Clever of Lesbians to have invented "gay marriage," where, for once, the word "gay" seems plausibly (to weak-minded male homosexuals and vaginalized heterosexuals) to refer both to Lesbians and to gay men.  It doesn't really of course:  Married, in the sense of Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, no two men will ever be.  It simply is not in our nature.  And neither, for that matter, can any two women, though they were Valkyries and shield maidens, however stentorious, achieve the nobly heroic more-than-friendship of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn.  But "marriage" so be it.

One appreciates that Donald Trump is an Ignorant, Thin-Skinned Megalomaniac, without Philosophy, Morals, Ethics or Ideas--

But where-ever did he acquire the notion that Torture is a good thing?

My oldest and best friend (a year older than I) in all the world--whom I have called Marcus in these pages--died four days ago.

He'd had a pace-maker for half a year or so, and complained when I talked to him in Spokane on the phone, a couple of times during the last month, of shortness of breath and virtual prostration after but little exercize.  Merely walking to the store, he said, left him exhausted.  On Wednesday the fourth day of this month Richard called me to tell me that Marcus had had a heart attack early in the morning of the day before, Tuesday the third, and would be having triple by-pass surgery Friday morning.  

I immediately called Marcus in the hospital (Wednesday evening)--and was appalled, stricken, by how weak he sounded and how deathly solemn.  A week later, the operation having been pronounced a success, I called again, and was pleased to note that he sounded stronger--but the frightening, ghastly solemnity remained (as of a man in mortal fear for his life).  And then, as I started to say good-bye, baldly and à propos des bottes, Marcus blurted, "I love you."  I did not say "Fuck you" (for I was raised a gentleman) and, though horrified at what he seemed to be saying, I politely responded, "I love you too.  Bye."

Then Richard called me three days ago to tell me that Marcus had "passed away" the day before.

Anecdote:  When Marcus and I first met--the first week of April, 1965--he being 23, and I just 22, I was of course attracted to his Arrow Shirt ad good looks, and determined to have sex with him.  But when I got to his apartment (over "the Av," University Way, in Seattle) he gave me a cup of tea and put a recording of Rameau's Six Concerts en Sextuor on the stereo, which so ravished me that I threw myself to the floor in front of the speakers, and forgot all about jumping his bones.  And so it went, pretty much for the rest of our lives.  We sometimes peripherally orgied together, but we never had sex, and such was our taste in music and philosophy that that suited us just fine.

Tinnitus

I am not dismayed, at my age (75 years) and with the number (about a dozen) of drugs I take to regulate my moods and hypertension--both of which (old age and anti-hypertension drugs) are known  to be associative factors, if not causes (for ¿Who can say?) with Tinnitus.  But I may, I think, justly complain of the kind of Tinnitus I subjectively hear, or seem to hear:  40's Big Band Sound, with doo-wop scat and, full percussion, and with the ictus (every single goddamned first beat of every measure) laid in with a cymbal stroke.  Would God it were Corelli, or Lobo or Byrd or Lassus or Josquin--but what it is it is:  I smirk condescendingly at the god-awful gimcrack aural substratum  of the stupid-sounding universe which knows no better, and wonder what Pythagoras would have made, could he have heard it, of such "Music of the Spheres."

The Trouble with Rebels,

like those shown here bombarding Fort Sumter, is that they get ahead of themselves.  If they would take a more prudent and disciplined view of what it means to dissociate themselves from the central federal/fascist authority, they would see it as their primary goal to supply for themselves their own schools, roads, communications, police force, legal, fiscal and political institutions, and when once these are in place, instead of defying the federal government's assertions of authority over them, simply to demur from acceding to it, refusing, out of scruple, to alter or add to a governance that the people have already taken  upon themselves.

On the other hand, frankly, Trump's family impresses the hell out of me...

The daughters, wives, sons and sons-in-law--They're physically stunningly handsome, trilingual (with French or Czech for a second language), well educated, smart, polished Übermenschen.  Unlike any other fascist entourage ever seen in history.

But, in all honesty, I can see no reason for the existence of the state of Israel, as presently constituted.

A much reduced state, with equal rights of citizen ship for all that live within its borders--all right. 

I don't deny the "Holocaust"--I just don't think that the word "Holocaust" adequately describes the horrors, outrages and cruelties perpetrated during World War II

What is implied by the word is an essential unity, on the part of the victims and in the view of perpetrators, which I think was never attained to, either by Jews, or by Croatian Partisans. The horrid, unspeakable fact about the death camps and the Einsatzgruppen is--not that their victims were Jews, or Communists, or Homosexuals, or Roma--but that they were just people, and very often just children.

"Deep State" That's what it is and what, succinctly and precisely, we should call it.

Thanks and a tip of the hat to Glenn Greenwald.

I now understand (it's taken me a while) what a disastrous reversal Trump's victory (and Hillary's loss) has been for the Dark Powers that rule us.

Usually, all the eggs in any given basket are the personal property of the Omnipotent Dark Lords and Lizardesses of our Military Prison-State--And they believed, as we all believed, that Trump was theirs too, and that when the time came--oh, say, a week or two before the election--that he would declare himself defeated and let Hillary win (as nobody anyway could conceive of her not doing); even if (and here's the tricky part) it looked as if he might win the popular vote. And of course it never did look as  if Trump might win the popular vote, and in fact he didn't.  So he kept running, sure that he would lose, certainly not intending to win.  He seemed to believe, as most of us believed, that he would not be allowed to win (as, in fact, in the event, he did win) a majority of the electoral college.

Which partially explains Hillary's hysterically furious, infamous "melt-down" on the night of the election, and the hysterically indecent ab-reaction, against Trump, of all the Security Agencies and executive powers of the federal government ever since.  There is, I notice, an ominously vast difference between the mad furor and fulmination at the top of society and the slow, cautious, incredulous hesitancy among the majority of the electorate.  Quite evidently, those who consider themselves our anointed, appointed governors are working themselves up to mounting a coup.  

Talking to Phil in Germany this morning--perfunctory greetings--

I just figured out how, with the help of international directory assistance, to dial him directly at  his home in NordRhein-Westphalia, and, while I was learning to do this (by consultation, como dicevo, with international long-distance tech support), I discovered that (as part of the "Bundle" for which I have been paying a company (corporate entity) called Time-Warner Oceanic to provide me with telephone and internet connexion service) I have, already, unlimited (talk as long as I want) phone connexion service, with no charge or fee whatsoever, to Germany and several other (yet to be specified) foreign countries.  Which is just a little bit like winning a lottery I didn't even buy the ticket for.  ha!

Well, actually, it seems that my new phone/internet server (since I parted from HawaiianTel.com last year), which was Time-Warner Oceanic, has up and merged with another corporate entity heretofore called Charter Services, and they now and forever more together are Charter Spectrum. And, when I called (tech support) to make sure that my download speed was still 50 mbs., I discovered that it was now, i' fact, 100 mbs--doubled.  I had noticed lately that those Mormonboyz "training films" seem to be downloading in just seconds--and there's why.

Hope in Trump?

Oh please.  The only thing that stands him in good stead--and it turns out to be a very important thing indeed--is his utter unfitness to hold the office to which he's been, marginally but decisively, elected.  

Assassinating Trump, while a popular idea among embittered Democrats, and while it may be, just now, the CIA's whole reason for existence,

is proving more difficult to realize (in the 15th century Italian sense) than anyone had ever thought it could be.  Medici-like, Trump has his own fortified palazzo, that makes it nearly impossible to get at him, and he has got used (as professional plutocrats  do get used) to dodging situations which might facilitate attempts on his life--the crazies (Pazzi) can't depend on his attending mass at Easter-tide.

Nothing looks like controlled demolition

but controlled demolition: