Strange to note, talking to Phil t'other day...

Not often that, in my judgement, his relative youth and Europeanized point de vue are impeding or misleading him--but, in his (relatively high pitched) pother about how the whore-media are not making a fuss about Biden's sometime sexual peccadilloes, he sounds, somewhat defiantly (to my avuncular ear), like a young modern believer. Believers believe that there is something, about mature or late adolescent male erect penises, which if they are thrust unwantedly into the hands, or against the body of an unsuspecting, virginal girl, will damage that girl, and cause her to seek therapy, to undo or alleviate the damage it's done her, and the intense psychological pain it's caused her--to have felt them, in her innocence, thrust upon her--for the rest of her goddamned life. 

Space Crimes, Elections, Climate, & More Non-Coronavirus News - SOME MOR...

The Truth. Plain and painful.

'Twas Pity she was a Whore,

and a pathetic, out-of-her-depth, neurotic Imbecile: Princess (much loved) Diana. But her tragic existence is validated, if not exactly justified, by the video which exists somewhere of Elizabeth II's viciously turning her back to her every time she opens her (that is to say, Diana's) mouth to say something to her (E. II), which visibly, and on videotape, reduces our much loved Princess to tears--one of those videos, like Collateral Murder, and Hillary Clinton's girlish exultation over the sadistic murder of Moamar Ghadaffi, that one simply must see to appreciate the pitiless enormity of.

Italian Grandma Makes Chicken Francese

Why is it Francese? Because it's just the tenderized breasts of chickens, breaded and delicately, expertly fried, then stewed for a few minutes in an amazing lemon-garlic sauce--which is the funny, endearing, ravishingly delicious, Gallo-Italian notion of Frenchness.

How who/what we are conditions what we are able to bear to read

Imagine that Dolores, the pre-adolescent girl beloved of Humbert Humbert, in Lolita were a Labrador Retriever bitch--a dog, not a girl. That is the extreme degree of nauseated abhorrence that I, as a gay man--as God made me--naturally feel at the suggestion of heterosexual, man/girl (or, for the matter of that, woman/boy) paedophilia. Frankly, I can't get past the first paragraph, and don't want to. I am unmoved by the beauty of Mr. Nabokov's language; I just want to go somewhere and be sick.

"Adore" is something you'd think no male of Anglo-Saxon descent should ever do,

but, apart from false idols, there are many things, and personnages, that no other word will serve to convey our great liking for, or allegiance to. One doesn't "like" (or even "love") Boccherini quintets, or the Swedish "Gustavian" style of furniture and interior decoration, or the essays of Ralph Waldo Emerson--one adores them.

The Worst Things about France

Priceless.

The Worst Things about Slovakia

Hilarious. Brilliant.

Cascadia Explained

What if it were? It already is. But ¿what maybe if we got serious about diversion of a third of the outflow of the Colombia River to California, and high-speed lev-grav train service from San Diego to Juneau, and Internet plebiscites....

Secession is perhaps too harsh a term for the gradual, but complete, dissociation through individuation and autonomification which, I for one, would propose as the natural and easy route to sovereignty for the western states. Have I said that enigmatically enough? I mean, of course, for the states, each and severally, to assume all the functions of the federal government quietly, and, as it were, surreptitiously, before the waning powers-that-be realize that they've been usurped.

The Silliness of euphemizing Death--daring to euphemize Death; braving the Stone Guest--can have grave Consequences (pun intended, of course)

Saying "passing" instead of plain "dying," you impose on my right not to believe that "by soft transitions we repair, from earthly vehicles to those of air." Those soft transitions are, in fact, mortal agonies.

Marine Veteran Hydroponically Grows 46% THCA Cannabis Strain “Sweet Meli...

"Alyssa" is nowadays a fairly common name for twenty-something females,

none of whom--nor their mothers, apparently--is aware that, as written, it is a name with a peculiar meaning, in Greek, and not merely a vaguely Alice-like sounding succession of syllables ending with what seems to be a feminine singular nominative (though it might be, in Greek, a neuter plural nominative): signifying "cure for rabies." An odd thing, you might think, to call a baby girl.

Risotto au safran, oeufs en cassolette, salade de fruits citronnée

As frequently happens when I watch cooking shows, I've fallen in like. This lady (She's a Prioress) is everything that a nun preparing a Lenten repast should be: Chaste, cheerful, informative, pleasant, instructive. She does her Christian duty, expertly, and tells you about it. So this is Lent; it needn't be a bummer. In fact, it might be better for us if our whole life were one long Lent. I got the message. There's something desperately funny, to me, about Mme. la Prieure's personal reflection, that, making risotto, with the care and attentiveness that making risotto (especially saffron risotto) requires, is an activity particularly suited to the meditative, deliberate restraint of Lent: Keep your fire low, and keep stirring...I sense that this is a truism commonly held to by prioresses who are also first-rate cooks.

Personality, which I willingly attribute to everything else in existence,

is exactly what, for dear honor's and modesty's sake, I shrink from acknowledging that I might have my own portion of--and, therefore, I suppose, can't deny.  Personality, after all, is one's visible character; it's only prudent to have some clear perception of it, fleeting shadow though it be.

So anyway, regarding what is apparently the System shutting down--Death, if you will--

Peculiarly, being a Buddhist long since persuaded that I have no self or permanent existence--much less a soul--the process (and we are a process) of dying seems to be something that I'm not very good at. While I go on seeing my doctor and taking my meds, something tells me that contracting a series of pneumonias, as I have done the last couple of months, coincidentally with the advent of the Plague (though I have not personally been infested with it)--this late in my seventy-seventh year--seems to indicate an inclination towards dying. Maladvertly (if I may be permitted a word-coinage), with no grace or composure, or sense of order or procedure, whatever. Madly. But directly and to the point, not unlike my hypothetical (for the purposes of argument) self, if I had a self. So say, like my admitted character--which I have overheard it said (so it must be true) to be blunt to a fault.

Say what you will about the Sadistic Stupidity of Flesh-eating Lizards from Outer Space, the Bernie Feint was masterful.

It got my five dollars a month, because Bernie was our only hope. And in a world where the "Saudi Coalition" openly dine on Houthi children0, hope is ridiculous. We knew--But a Socialist America with Bernie Sanders for President was our only, albeit absurd, hope.

Well, so be it. But are you seriously telling me that the only possible Democrat presidential candidate is Biden? ¿Joe vaingloriously stupid Biden? If you aren't kidding me, I will slap you.

Talking to both Rose and Kristen this Holy wholly dead Saturday,

and actually I also called Walter, and Richard called me--So we're this sort of Internet Decameron-esque consciousness in time of Plague. Rose, bless her, told me not to spill dirt on Walter in the guise of Human Comedy revelations, answering quite properly "mou" when I slitheringly proposed that that's why I made them. So, in our senescence, we go on learning.

This is, remarkably, that official day of the Xian calendar that Jesus is Dead. Fun concept. I like talking to Rose about my deist, or should I say theist, proclivities, the which she, as a believing (I think--she tries) Roman Catholic, is well capable of keeping the ball in motion during our little chats. When we chortled together about the ironic significance of Pope Francis's saying his Holy Saturday Mass in a plague-emptied basilica, we were as two civilized Internet cousins, each catching the gleam in the other's eye.

Autism: An evolutionary perspective, Professor Simon Baron-Cohen, 1st Sy...

That this is known, to the Flesh-eating Lizards from Outer Space who own the War/Prison Deep State which consumes us, troubles me, I confess. But I am withal hopeful that they are too crassly stupid to understand quite what it means.

Why do people lie to me? | Patrons Choice

On the road to Truth. Invaluable.

Let's just admit that the "Native American Legends," such as are cited in the current Wikipedian attribution of pre-history to West Coast volcanoes, are poo (poop):

Not very clever, absurd and anachronistic "epic" heteronormativity and heteromantic histrionics, such as no Native American in Geologic Time ever thought of--nay, could not have had the least idea of. Sexing volcanoes is not only bad geology, it mischaracterizes them.

Recette : Le canard en blanquette | Archive INA

I don't like duck, but I think I'd like this.

Recette : Homard à la mayonnaise d'avocat par Maïté | Archive INA

The sublime indifference with which the larger lady stuffs living lobsters as the final ingredient, into a saucepan full of boiling lobster stew, makes the prior vivisection of lobsters by Italian cooks (such as I have witnessed, who gleefully chop lobsters--still squirming--apart, with large knives and cleavers) seem almost humane.