October 2025

October 17-20, 2025:(It began to rain. It has been a while since it last rained with authority. ‘Permission to come aboard,’ I said. “Go on in,’ the officer on deck or rather the proprietor of my local said in reply. He was having a smoke by the door under a canopy, and he was satisfied. He then had words for his hanging baskets of flowers. Perhaps he mistook the loyalist blooms for cabinet members in want of a dressing down. But no, he was assuring them that he would not allow them to freeze when the cold nighttime temps come, executive orders a possibility. Inside, I was served my Americano and left to my own devices, which are sometimes considerable, and all too often an occasion for a hard slog and getting nowhere fast.) Otherwise, something of a detour here,

or, when did Latin become Italian, as it were? Well, that hand-over never took place, no way, or that what was one thing was suddenly another. What happened was a slow drift over the centuries from colloquial Latin to a 14th century Tuscan dialect as Dante wrote in, and this “patois of a kind” got to be the go-to language of a disunited Italy, and then, unification, and it was official, mid-1800s. Someday there may well be an official Americanese, a Dante mucking about in it, and “dude” will signify as “monsignor” does now, for all the right or wrong reasons. As for mobile phones, what would Proust have made of them, he who was enthusiastic about aeroplanes and speaking telegraphs and the teleportation of ashtrays and flies?

Now is there a one-word epithet for the destruction of a people and its wherewithal and the consequent rebuilding in one’s own image? The word “creation” (ktisis – Greek, or creatio – Latin, or the Hebrew bara for “created” out of thin air) in Genesis comes to mind, though perhaps, it is too sanguine in tone for an act of God. The first use of the word Armageddon in the bible? Checking. Right. There is one appearance and one appearance only of the word in said bible. I cite The Book of Revelations, Greek New Testament. And it is not so much that it has to do with Gaza-like ruin as with a “final battle” between all the kings of the earth etc., on a mountain name of Armageddon. Good golly, Miss Molly, Trump, Putin, Xi having themselves at darts in the Red Dog, Thunder Mountain nearby – in Alaska, where else, and then Budapest for the further shivving of Ukraine…) And it looks like, once again, the Palestinian lot is to be flushed down the toilet, and Netanyouwho get to own his wrath of Jehovah schtick and wear it around his neck.

Postscript I: And it is St Luke’s Holy Day, Carpenter unconcerned, anticlerical sod that he is. His road to Damascus would include a Burger King (Wi-fi) hotspot, if not a drive-in theatre featuring 50s cheesy sci-fi, even as he is reading not The Grapes of Roth but Goodbye Columbus. Would he see in Trump’s new ballroom the construction of Nero’s Golden House, this after the Great Fire, the blame for it put on the early Christians, whereupon they were tortured, served as is to dogs, or slathered in pitch, set alight as human torches, providing, then, lighting for Formula One nighttime chariot racing? I do not know. Would have to ask him. “Sir, sir, do you hold with Rome-America analogies, or do you see all that as the effusions of suspect intellects? Sir?”

Postscript II: Lunar. And that the man is in a “let’s rattle off the crimes” frame of mind: … …. ‘Bolton may be a shit, but he is a shit of a different order. What we have here is Trump’s very own Night of the Long Knives. Who’s next? Mickey Mouse? And now his blueprint for an Arc de Trump? And close to the White House. Yup, it’s Howdy Doody Time [at the OK Corral]. Sobriety sets in as people begin to look more closely into the “peace deal” which is no peace deal at all but a paper bag of hot wind. [Can you smell the popcorn?] The most hypocritical, as usual, are the rich Arab states that have no feeling whatsoever for the Palestinians [.] I met up with PE for coffee yesterday and he told me that those who are recruited for ICE automatically receive $50,000 which is why it has become in a matter of months the third biggest such force in the world. Again, it is worse than McCarthyism and the smiling leaders of the free world say nothing of the human rights abuse taking place there. Maybe it will require an Oscar-winning movie before people wake up.‘… …. Starring some live free or die So-and-So, but no, So-and-So’s brains are fried. Besides, whose hands are tiny enough to double as the hands of the Abominable Troll? As for Savanarola, we mean Miller, who has got an ample enough cringe-factor in their skill set? DiCaprio? Cage?

Postscript III: Cornelius W Drake of Champaign-Urbana, honk if you spot stray army commanders in high dudgeon, perhaps brown-bagging it, certainly chuffed, having no appetite for yet another legally dicey land war such as their masters wish to concoct and derive for themselves honours and triumphs. Perhaps one of those commanders walks a pair of Schnauzers named Cause and Effect, the one yipping at the other for the doggy heck of it, though dogs do not generally do things without a reason. And even they cannot sniff out an imaginary yellow line which the pilgrims in Gaza must respect, and would, if they could but see it. On one side is a kill zone. On the other side one walks at at one’s risk. And now an oldie but a goodie or that, according to Drake (and many, many, many news junkies):… …. ‘Cable news is an incredible waste of time.’ … …. So speaketh Drake, and he is bending over backwards to be nice.

Postscript IV: Talking Avocado: … …. ‘In lieu of Solzhenitsyn here’s what I heard Ingtid Bergman say: “Nothing like a love song to give one a good laugh.” This remark graced the Hitchcock film Notorious. I was, in another life, in an English language bookshop somewhere in Italy – Verona, I think. I picked something off a shelf at random, and it was a screed, as it turned out, feminist bent, as cold-cocked Cary Grant’s chops, that he was icy and brutal in his government agent character for the movie mentioned above, so that, between the villains (Nazis) and the good guys (Yanks), what was there to choose? What has been the point ever since? Percival says hello. If he could spikka da English he’d say there hasn’t been (in English) a half decent verse drama in at least two hundred years, but who cares, and watch out for masked agent provocateurs as have infested Yankee streets like bugs scurrying out from the sleeves of Edgar the bug alien in his human form. Is that droll enough for you? The weather? The weather has been the weather, a there but for the grace of God kind of thing. Maa-maa.’

Postscript V: Rutilius:… …. ‘I was going to mail this in, some Polybius, as follows: “At the sight of the city utterly perishing amidst the flames Scipio burst into tears, and stood long reflecting on the inevitable change which awaits cities, nations, and dynasties, one and all, as it does every one of us men. This, he thought, had befallen Ilium, once a powerful city, and the once mighty empires of the Assyrians, Medes, Persians, and that of Macedonia lately so splendid. And unintentionally or purposely he quoted---the words perhaps escaping him unconsciously--- The day shall be when holy Troy shall fall and Priam, lord of spears, and Priam's folk. And on my asking him boldly (for I had been his tutor) what he meant by these words, he did not name Rome distinctly, but was evidently fearing for her, from this sight of the mutability of human affairs. . . . Another still more remarkable saying of his I may record. . . [When he had given the order for firing the town] he immediately turned round and grasped me by the hand and said: O Polybius, it is a grand thing, but, I know not how, I feel a terror and dread, lest some one should one day give the same order about my own native city. Now, did Attila (see the last post) drink from the skull[s] of his enemies? I got the attached poem from an anecdote in Hodgkin's Barbarian Invasions. It seems it happened a century later with the Longobards who invented the appallingly oafish hairstyle of a shaved front and the rest long and lank with the topknot favoured by not very good professional footballers. (Soccer, in case of confusion.) It's blowing cold here although the yellow rose tree is blooming yet again. Six months of glory from late May until now. Off on Monday to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the regional (county) library. We have to come in the fashionable outfits of one hundred years ago. In Presov that probably meant frock coats and stiff collars or the rough sheepskin outfits that just itch to be worn. I shall go in linen trousers and jacket, brown brogues, green shirt and adjacently-coloured bow-tie and straw hat (I don't have a boater.)’

Attached poem: THE BARBARIAN INVASIONS

However much the last consuls longed
They never belonged
To the Longobards
Or their king, who made his wife retell
Her vows by drinking for a spell
From her father’s skull.
Oh Commundo!
Oh Rosamunda!

Which brings us by a long stretch of pillage
To a more indefinite age
Of rip-roaring arbitrage,
Nifty little consultants laying about
Before selling up and out.
Call me a ticket tout!
Call me a commerce commando!
Lovely knockers Rosamunda!

Yet they still come in from the wilderness
To find a yellowing marchioness
On her knees in a state of undress
Reviving a wrinkled retainer.
Was it for this they drove herds of reindeer
In search of wonder?
Oh dejected shamans
Unconsoled by Mammon!

However much the barbarians long
To rewind their spool of travel they’ll always belong
Now to those of us strong
In the easy arts of creating appetite,
Of confusing right with shite,
Of convincing them that their might
Lacks style. That shell suit!
That taste for beetroot!

So let us embrace these magenta-handed gentry,
Despite their dearth of pleasantry,
Their rough-shod entry,
And croon or con them into a rare side of life
Serener and keener than, say, the grief
Of a much-wronged wife.
Oh Commundo!
Oh Rosamunda!

Postscript VI: Sissy Gadzilla: … …. ‘More eeriness, if you will: another staggeringly fine fall day as fascists go about bravely smug here and there, and sometimes it seems most everywhere. Add to the mix who-would’ve-thunk-it-baseball, and Torontonians are going to be insufferable. But I’ve a complaint, seeing as I’m ill-used. Now you’ve got me on about romcoms as if, on account of my sex, or that I’m a woman last time I checked, my opinion carries more weight than a mere man’s in this matter. I have no opinion on the subject, never have had. I wasn’t born to have such an opinion, whatever it is I was born for. Nor do I see a way to toss a bit of shade at the Trumpian Weltanschauung through a discussion of these romcoms, pass the Dairy Queen product. They are excuses for the usual hit parade of tunes as jack up the feel-good quota of a flick from the opening to the closing screen credits and distracts from the obvious fact that these flicks lack for substance and can’t bring over the finish line anything like true wit and charm. Not that they’re all unwatchable, and some are poignant. Still, you know, wit and charm, two earmarks, among others, of intelligent entities, or some of my Polish cousins, at least. I happened to catch an hour or so of such a one that, based on a stage play, had actual thought velcro’d to its storyline, placed as it was at a bourgeoise crossroads encompassing contemporary life, life not entirely impervious to decay and death, the two nuts to crack love and mortality. If the one doesn’t get you, the other will. Does this suggest that the lower orders still aren’t suitable subjects for romcom treatment save as comic foils, their rueful, even embittered overlords drinking regrets under the table? Has that equation changed since the heyday of Sumerian farces? The thing is, there was a scene in one of the more classic romcoms of recent times in which, just as Nat King Cole was crooning it out, what was it, “when our love was new”, I had in mind an image of early peoples America hunkered in caves scratching animals on the walls and trying to connect to spirits, and would the phrase “when our love was new” have had any frisson with them, as if some ritual incantation? Because, at that moment, the voice of Nat King Cole seemed to have travelled interstellar distances and had gathered import in its travels for the deepest part of any soul bipedal or not. Was something folding back on itself in my thoughts? Cupcakes in the oven, French horn in quick get-away mode lest young Republicans suss me out as a dampener, a mood-killer with respect to the daily orders as are, in essence, rapine. I’m beginning to think that you’ve been right all along. All man, woman, brat and cockatoo want is license to behave badly. It’s their delight that they’ve got their hunting tags, and lock and load, brother. And so, they exhaust the resources of one planet and move on to the next. Hive mind, indeed.’

Postscript VII: Trail Mix:… …. ‘Well, I’m in a place. Some high, squeaky girl voices put me in a funk, but they’ve left. The fine weather continues. The best glass of wine I ever knocked back was in a taverna outside Verona. (Verona seems to figure in this go-round of posting. Verse dramas and merry gentlemen?) Anyway, Beaujolais. The grapes had just been harvested. Every cell in my body tingled and there was joy in a Calvinist mindset. Unmistakable. Damndest thing. A third term is in the offing for the You-Know-Whomster. It seems, these days, a thought recollecting a joy (that was more profound than any hallucinogenic experience) can’t outpace gloom for very long. Moreover, the hostile aliens won’t be susceptible to the common cold or allergic to catsup. As fascism applies its odorous boot to everything, I’ll always see the face of Bob Hope in it, the concave nose that minced without his having to make a sound. He wasn’t a fascist, no, but he would’ve howdy-doodied it all, soft-shoeing his way through a spate of one-liners, ba-ba-boom Bing his navigator.

October 11-14, 2025:Honeybees, it seems, are no strangers to fun. An experiment (one I viewed on YouTube) showed them doing exactly that – having a lark. A contraption was set up. In it a food source was rendered approachable by way of three corridors. Two of them (one of which led directly to the food) were obstacle-free. A third corridor was busy with wooden balls the size of marbles. The bees opted for this route almost every time. The camera revealed them having a high old time piggybacking on the balls, bronco-busting them as it were, missing only chaps and cowboy hats to complete the image of a rodeo in progress. The moral of the story? The bees “wanted” their encounters with the spheres rather than go for the easier avenues to the food source. Or else they regarded the balls as containers of a kind to breach for the goodies packed therein. Something, at any rate. The moral of the moral? Bees may well have a certain level of consciousness.

But what has this to do with ICE agents who appear to enjoy inflicting pain while meeting their quotas, while having their lark, whistle while you work? With government shutdowns and retributive prosecutions and the advancement of white supremacy at the expense of sanity? Allow me to answer. Nothing. There has been in the press of late a discussion of sorts on faux masculinity, as if this explains fascism and the opposite of whatever our better angels are.

There is a strident “masculinity” that concerns itself with masking insecurities with respect to sex and shows of strength and who the boss is. There are alpha types who would counter threats to collective well-being and yet would endeavour to treat everyone with kindness and respect as per old school heroes, all the while we argue whether this is fantasy or not. Then there are the rest of us, women included. Which is to say that, though we will have our moments, for the most part, we avoid confrontations and trials of strength. But if we are cornered, look out, we are capable of surprising ourselves and perhaps a few nasty players as well. And yet so much of the baby has been chucked out with the bathwater that we have lost a few moves in our dealings with loudmouths, with mean-spirited scum, to put it arcanely. It seems there is no victory anymore that does not smell sulfurous, as in the complete humiliation, if not annihilation, of one’s adversaries. One might loosely call it “The Way of Trump” and so, spell out a legacy as might pass into folklore (although Attila the Hun was probably even more proactive, pulled off his atrocities with more panache and then drank his bubbly from the skulls of his enemies.) At any rate, another question lurks out there like a hidden planet at the edges of the solar system: are sadists capable of negotiating an enduring peace? The world awaits a triumph. Shall Caesar smear his face red?

PostscriptI: National No Bra Day,Carpenter unconcerned.

Postscript II: Lunar: … …. ‘My old friend in Toronto, "Professor Bill" died just two days shy of his 104th birthday. A good soul, a scholar of the old school, I only just got a letter from him full of yearning for people and places. The cheering thing is that he lived until he died, which is a gift allotted to only the very few. And even then he died in his sleep. He had a wonderful David Jones collection including a large water-colour by him, inscriptions, correspondence, etc, which is going to the University of Toronto although that same institution failed to publish any of his books. Too "old school"; the man's love of literature by far outweighed the theories surrounding it. Venezulea! Could there ever have been a bigger slap to the face? And the fact too that [ ] Atwood missed out again. Stefansson is surely next in line, totally brilliant writer.’ Lunar resorts to current argot! Mark it on the calendar. Speaking of which, Lunar manages to update himself: … …. ‘This morning I listened to two highly intelligent commentators on the radio who said the “agreement” boils down to absolutely nothing at all. It makes virtually no reference to Israel’s accountability for the numbers killed, not a hint of anything to do with a Palestinian state, etc, etc. The whole thing would seem to be a stitch-up. Property development? Kushner is very visible, [Wizard of Oz curtain or not].’

Postscript III: Cornelius W Drake of Champaign-Urbana, honk away as there is much to honk at, and you may as well lean on your horn. I do believe Drake is peeved with me. I had related to him a few observations by the Trump biographer and journalist Michael Wolff, that, for instance, one might well ask: “Peace or business deal? Peace or peace prize?” That Kushner, behind the wizard’s glass beads, has been pulling levers and pushing buttons and lining his pockets as he gets everyone to tilt in this or that direction at the windmill with a “ceasefire” logo. Says Drake: … … ‘[Never mind the exotica of profiling Trump]. Trump is about power and avarice. Policy is for little people. [But if you see orgiastic rites in the works, in a side lane, maybe, honk, then handle with care. Which brings us to an opinion: there's a goldilocks path betwixt piety and debauchery that healthy societies take, don't you think? But of the first two, I'd take a debauched society; the pious ones merely repress their urges, which is unhealthier than just going with it. At least the openly debauched are honest about it. Today's news? Same as yesterday's. Same as tomorrow's. We could skip a month, six months or a year of news, dial up the NYT and the episode would be as though we had missed nothing. Just more secret police publicly hurling American citizens into black vans, followed by black holes.’ … …. Well yes, there is that. And the triumphator’s face may not have been smeared red as would symbolically connect him to the gods, especially Jupiter and Mars, but his braggadocio tone was surely just this side of divinity by the sounds of it on CNN about an hour ago.

Postscript IV: Talking Avocado: … …. ‘The reycling depot turned up a book (an old one translated from the French) on Roman piety. Right up up your alley, I think. But the coincidence is, unless we file this postscript under a “synchronicity heading”, is that I’d had on an old DVD, was watching it: the “Rome” series, that is and was presented with commentary on the Roman notion of pollution and how to cleanse one’s body, mind, soul, whatever, of it. To wrong a human being was to dishonour the gods. At one stage in their history, it seems the Romans were pious to the point of going about dour and humourless. The upper crust Romans, because educated, were freer of superstition although, if I remember rightly, Augustus C wanted a return to the old ways and beliefs, just that, by his time, the debauching had set in deep and every other Roman was a sophisticate. Speaking of which, Percival says hello. Goats had their place in the Roman pantheon of gods and their particular energies. Sweater weather here. We breathe the sea air and so, believe ourselves impervious to the horrors out there. But the fascism truly is astounding – to quote a friend who just wrote me. I hear balalaikas. Shall I go and do a polka on the beach? What are you saying about your weather? That it’s been so fine, the headlines notwithstanding, that it’s eerie? I’ll admit to working on something, but I’ll not provide details lest I hex myself and it.’

Postscript V: Rutilius:… …. ‘There was a first Slovak novel, just as there had to have been a first Canadian novel or a first novel written by one of your Sissy Gadzilla’s Polish cousins, the novel here in question a shot across the bow of feudalism, of capitalism and the Catholic church, too. So what else is new? I’m feeling the weight of superstition on me, as when I take my first step out my front door and genuflect in a certain direction, the world so out of whack that the shadow my chin casts might be just enough to unhinge things completely. Apropos of none of this, Martial said: "You admire, Vacerra, the ancients alone, and praise no poets except dead ones. I crave your pardon, Vacerra: your good opinion is not worth dying for." Well, that takes care of a few poetry societies I know. But as for cabinet meetings, no, no help there.’

Postscript VI: Sissy Gadzilla: … …. ‘Why are you asking me about alien seeding and universal DNA? Unless you’re trying to have one on me. In case you’ve forgotten, we’re neighbours, remember, and in the building, we’re surrounded by 20-somethings who’ve got their moral ascendancy procedurals mapped out. We need to look, you and I, to each other, as we might be considered insufficiently amenable to right behaviour. Meanwhile, we shouldn’t be too hard on the young’uns. The world they’re about to inherit, though they duck, bob and weave, is about to tap them on the shoulder and say, “You’re it.” What, now it’s on me to ask why Africa? Why not Australia or South America or Asia as might’ve been evolution-friendly when it came to our species, early days, and we’d broken away from the ape line? Well, I don’t know. When did the female of the species start going around with accessories? I must have a Polish cousin who knows. Those ochre-tinted animals painted on cave walls – they do haunt, however. It almost seems that we were at our unassuming best then, both feet still solidly within nature, not on its throat. I have not a religious bone in my body and am indifferent to God or No-God and flower baskets, but I have felt the wake of a soul as it departed a room. I must have a Polish cousin who wears a priestly vest as can explain these sorts of things to me. Cupcakes in the oven, French horn laying against a pillow on the new divan that I got yesterday, the old couch long past it. There were episodes on that old thing, some recalled fondly. Well, I thought I was a writer then and needed to know stuff.’

Postscript VII: Trail Mix:… …. ‘Father and daughter are having themselves quality time in the booth across the aisle. She’s dressed frumpily (like a farmer John only she’s a she) to the point of it being a statement. Ditto for dad who has a semi-bohemian albeit pleasant air about him. He has a baritone voice that has known its fair share of intoxicants or so I’d wager. Bright, fall day. Their conversation tells me nothing about anything, so why bring them up? Ah, here we go: filmmaking, They are into the business of making films. An over-reliance on the word “narrative”. I still believe there are books being written that better the best films being manufactured. And maybe this is the extent of my remarks this afternoon. Increasingly, memory is getting to be like a fishing line that one casts into a stream only the hook remains untouched. You say that, when it comes to the health of a democracy, Drake prefers debauchery to piety, as sexual repression breeds destructive behaviour? What’s his problem? Caligula forced everyone who was anyone to schlep everyone who was anyone, and it was his way of saying, “See? I’m winning.” With whom would Plutarch have paired Trump in his famous lives series? I hear balalaikas. Tinnitus? Father and dauggter wind things up with a pronouncement on Diane Keaton the film actress who just died. The sighs say: “The passing of an icon.” She was good when she was good, but man, all the schlock.

October 6-8: Look it up. ‘Oogle it, seeing as you will not be traipsing to the library on foot, kicking through leaves all the while, carrying on with God or No-God, Random Criteria at the detonator switch, chance the IED. ‘Foogle it, moogle it, woogle it, and something artificially intelligent will tell you that mass psychosis and mass hysteria are two different items, the latter malaise referencing a putatively healthy population of various citizen groups, the former sickness suggestive of the fact that it is already too late, and there is nowhere to go but to sink further into the abyss. If you were born when this or that video game was all the rage, you will have no idea what I am on about (unless you have a world to save). Even so, you will have as much a grasp of history as a clam has on the face of the Matterhorn. You are probably fed up with being told you are dumb, at least when it comes to history, and we do not mean to chide, but the thing is, you are about as well-read as a fence post in that regard, tumbleweeds going by. Sure, you have heard of them there Nazis, but that is all you know, Nazis being any demographic you have no liking for. What you do not know is what got them there, what made them what they were, as they swagged about with all that fanfare and were barking mad. And it appears there is no single word for “mass hangover’ though the word “crapulence’ has a ring to it. When one is hungover one is cognizant that one has been imbibing to excess, and one vows never to do it again. Idle boast. If you have been sucking the fermented blood of a republic through a far-right engineered proboscis, you most likely favour hissy fits over substance, facts and educated guesses the rigour. You may have your reasons, but your reasons, by now, will have spited the contrarian nose on your face. There are still party gavours to spread around or receive, including all those retributive prosecutions, but the good and bad news is that the festivities will not last forever. ‘Extremism in defence of liberty is no vice’, so said somebody or other, hot on the trail of a civics breakthrough. Could well be. But is it liberty you have been pursuing? Or is it, once again, an excuse to behave badly as has your short hairs in a twist, and should you be loading your shotgun? You have assumed all along that you have lived in good faith. Suddenly, you are walking on quicksand, and you are no chip off the old block that is in God’s name; you are not even a teensy piece of a right-side-of-history cause as once could walk on water. Might have to kill Bessie the cow just to get through the winter. Your nephew has been arrested 56 times for being a public calamity and for being in violation of a restraining order. Has tried to off himself on any number of occasions, 39 and no deep thinker, flotsam and jetsam, some splinter of a dysfunctional unit, and there is no putting Humpty-Dumpty back together again. There are all sorts of things you can blame for this reality whodunit, including the Mr Magoo-in-Chief, sleuth extraordinaire, first among all the players of Cash Cab. He does a weird Watusi with Dems and even illiberal libs. No, it is not absolutely essential that you know some history or know how to read it while balancing on your left leg– with an open mind and critical faculties, but the life unexamined is a fool’s errand.

Postscript I: It is National Mad Hatter Day, and Carpenter concurs. He asks only that you keep your toasts brief, and you may leave your donations in brown paper bags on his stoop.

Postscript II: Lunar being forward-looking and not liking it much: … …. ‘At every level, disarray. Political, healthwise, [spiritual-wise]. Right-wing-nut Americans are speaking of "the Islamization of the UK" - a dirty lie that has been floating for years now. And our own Home Secretary, stupid cow, says that to protest on behalf of Gaza after what happened yesterday in Manchester [is] "unBritish". There will be more arrests of old age pensioners furious about Gaza. This is an interesting development - grey power - in that the old are willing to take the brunt so the young will not have a police record that will smudge [besmirch?] their future. The Reform Party under Nigel Farage is given a boost - but of course - and the Jews in north London are speaking of themselves as a persecuted people. Netanyouknowwho is watching, watching, watching – a great boost to his condemnation of the UK's support for a Palestinian state. … …. I've been staring with bewilderment at my new computer. Did you know that ports are already obsolete? I now have to get an adapter. Now isn't that the most exciting news you are getting today?’ … …. Well, come to think of it. But wait, there is more: … …. ‘I watched in mute fascination some of The Pam Bondi [Revue], the senate committee [co-starring]. I found myself muttering an expletive I am hesitant to use. Still, if ever there was a candidate for such a word, she is it. Senator Schiff was, whatever his crimes and misdemeanors, absolutely brilliant in his attack and it was the only time PB completely lost her cool and was reduced to playground retorts. What really made me gag was when the Republican women gushed and gushed and gushed, tearfully in some cases, thanking her and Trump for saving America. It was time to bail out, reach for the bucket, and…’ … …. Alright, that should do us for a while. Now how is one human? When one has a brain weighing roughly three pounds and has a yen for jujubes all the while? Has a proclivity for sexcapades in the Smithsonian? Applies the c-word when it suits?

Postscript III: Cornelius W Drake of Champaign-Urbana, honk if you see a siege-breaking, aid-bearing flotilla sailed off course. Beware of coins floating around with So-and-So’s mug on it, as close to self-deification as the country will get. Still, could be a collector’s item at some point. Oh and, rhetorical asides on the part of high government officials – they are flying around like angry bats whose sonar capacities have been jammed: … …. ‘Tried watching a few minutes of Boob-Boom B on YouTube, had to click off. Life is good when one owns the Department of "Justice," is it not? Every law on the books is merely an invitation to violate it with impunity. It's like Capone's running of Chicago only with no Treasury Department looking over his shoulder. [As for the rest of them, a la Shakespeare]: "Never hung poison on fouler toad[s]." … …. Choice words, words so choice they are prime rib.

Postscript IV: Talking Avocado: … …. ‘I’ll pass, if you please. Percival says hello. Nondescript cloud over the island. Dementia by fiat? Nothing new in that, I suppose, even on a presidential scale, but where’s the safety net? Down periscope.’

Postscript V: Rutilius:… …. ‘Perhaps this will have some bearing on your opening this time around. Polybius, if you’ll recall, was a Greek who wrote on the rise of Roman power. He was also much involved in political and military affairs. He rode shotgun with the Scipio (a collegial enough fellow) who razed Carthage to the ground. The quote of the moment however? “The best education for the situations of actual life consists of the experience we acquire from the study of serious history.” Does this strike a chord? You don’t think he was being ironic, do you? I didn’t know there was a video game called Polybius, and I don’t want to know. I suppose there’s some educational worth in plundering the ancient world for cheap thrills, if only to make people knowledgeable of the fact that there was a world before Facebook, otherwise… Otherwise, thinking I’ll take up kickboxing and calligraphy at the senior’s centre.’

Postscript VI: Sissy Gadzilla: … …. ‘I don’t speculate on such matters. I can appreciate that time is a product of the Big Bang, but space? What was space before it got designated as such, tumbleweeds skittering by? Cupcakes in the oven (which I’m baking for a friend’s 50th, he despondent because maybe he missed a few signals flashed at him by his life coach, his quest for love marooning him on an island (metaphorical island) of Mussolini look-a-likes and there’s no way off). The cupcakes (frothy batter) might put one in mind of serial universes, if not of a solvent for use against fascists. French horn is in an Indian summer mood, that is to say, pleased with the sun and the pleasant warmth, but winter…you know, winter. There is more talk of civil war to the south of here of which I’m sure you’re aware. Loose talk? Drama-queens-in-search-of-a-carefully-vetted-podcast? I found myself thinking the other day about the New World’s first human inhabitants. There’re certainly differences of opinion as to when they punched the clock on their arrival. Indeed, how far back to push the clock for their presences, and how did they get here anyway? One if by land, two if by sea? Did nature hold any surprises for them? Giant sloths, for example? Tornado Alley? Were they capable of astonishment? Did they take it for granted that they could walk forever until they came up against, say, the Andes or the Cape of Good Horn once called the Cape of Storms, massive waves and a frigate’s chance in hell? And just as one doesn’t say “Titanic” onboard a cruise ship, maybe one oughtn’t say “civil war” on cable news. Amongst all my Polish cousins, it’s probable that one of them, at least, has studied up on Lincoln, slavery, secession, and the golden age of the cowboy, not necessarily in that order. I hold out hope that love will grace my life. On the other hand, I’m a big girl and the odds are steep. Everyone alive on this earth should revolt against the Absolute Indifference of the cosmos to a flower in a hanging basket, yellowjacket giving it the once over, as well as a human eye, one evolved for technicolour maybe, but not yet for the detection of the departing souls of the dead.’

Postscript VII: Trail Mix:… …. ‘More unsettling dreams, none remembered… A dream is a dream is a dream even so. Sitting in my local. Couples looking to brunch. Man and woman seemingly comfortable with one another. Man and woman asking, “Is this it, all she wrote, and Kramer has the last laugh?” Meanwhile, life goes on. Even fascists eat muffins and wonder why life can’t, in fact, be perfect and sex never disappoint. Space-time? A publisher once told me to leave off with those words. He was so sure of it, or that they were tedious cliches even for a mummery of muppets herding quarks. I sometimes see the brain in the shape of a pair of raspberries clumped together. And don’t the flowers in their pots just outside the door resemble the shapes of galaxies? Doesn’t mathematics tell us that there are a finite number of possible shapes in the universe? Or else I’ve gotten my two plus twos wrong all this time. I’ll never forget how wonderful and yet terrifying that moment was when I endeavoured to pin a galactic corsage to a girl’s prom dress. How poised she was for either the success or the failure of the enterprise, she cat-like and more powerful than a any other energy source on the face of the earth just then? And yet, no one was more languid in her movements than she. My first lesson in paradox? First taste of something more than just boy and girl and clumsy sex? The first dim suspicions in one’s mind that the much-ballyhooed innocence of a republic would have murky shadows to look forward to, Scyllas above, whirlpools below, the Ship of State defenceless, flimsily hulled and lacking ordnance, the officers twits. But you’re going to score a kiss anyway, and you’re going to see people pay the price for their objections to there’s-no-truth-there’s-only-power-paradigm, that one that’s been coming for you since Reagan hooked up the state to a generator. Perfect weather. Perfect baseball (for the nonce). Stunning plume clusters in a million flowerpots city-wide… The barking mad eyes of an ick-factor in a blue suit with red tie, his minions and acolytes still suckling at the dry dugs of an Ayn Rand, though some say it’s going to lead to great tummy upsets.’