This is a person that gets paid to talk about politics and has no idea that the Supreme Court can reverse itself.
Amazing!
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Return to Normalcy?
“The past few years have been brutal and full of chaos,” begins an article I recently read. The article was about making a grilled cheese sandwich.
Ennui rules us. What laden and barren times we live in. I recognize the tribulations of the pandemic fear and the mongering that followed but that has consequences for the complex things in life. The simple remains the simple. This was about pressing a button to heat a buttered and cheese filled sandwich.
The author didn’t even use a pan. She used the modern convenience popular among the denizens of our brutal and chaotic times called an air fryer. To be fair there is the added culinary instruction to flip it at the half-cooked mark which makes no sense in an oven designed to circulate heat.
Continue readingSing It From the Mildly Dulled and Weathered Appalachian Mountain Tops!
Shakespeare as was meant:
My Old Hands
I’m trying to see this from a different point of view. I’ve had my hands for forty-eight years. My father saw them before I did.
Infants don’t know about their hands. They discover them at some point. They discover their feet and ears and given ten to twelve years they discover other things as well.
I rediscovered my hands.
They are old. I don’t feel old. I’m the same asshat I was at eighteen but my hands have changed.
Continue readingThe Things You Stumble Upon
I like Gary Oldman. I think he’s among the better actors in part because he is often unrecognizable. He’s one of those rarities that is the role instead of the actor playing the role. I love him for that.
Whether he’s Rosencrantz or Guildenstern or Commissioner Gordon or that guy yelling to send all of them after Leon he’s refreshed and new and I respect that.
So when I say a twitter promoted post about a new Apple TV (television) post starring Oldman I took note.
Sunday Afternoon Pasta: Bucatini Pomodoro Crossed with Marcella Hazan’s Tomato and Butter Sauce with Onion
I was torn between Marcella Hazan’s (her name be praised) bizarre because you can’t believe it will work and a basic pomodoro so I mashed the two together with some bucatini my wife picked up the other day. Bucatini has been a fixture in our house for years but lately she’s been coming back from Aldi with a selection of varied pastas. She’s sent me diving into my copy of the Geometry of Pasta and scanning suggested recipes from any of a dozen books and web sites.
It’s been fun. I’d never had casarecce, but thanks to her adventurous shopping I’ve learned that with arugula and cherry tomatoes it sings. Chittara needs bottarga and while I love rigatoni with pancetta, peas, and cream the best choice for that sauce is garganelli. But today is back to basics, or at least experimenting with basics.
Continue readingGasbags
Biden’s handlers are trying to tank the economy.
I can see no other explanation. And, by the way, they are doing a hell of a job at it.
Why, unless you wanted to damage the U.S., would you limit domestic energy production in favor of imports while importing enough so that we use the same quantities as before? There were mumblings about satisfying the green energy constituency but that only works if the green energy folks are satisfied by theater and empty gestures, a possibility I’m not dismissing offhand.
We are using the same amount of energy as before, it’s just more expensive because of the costs associated with imports. It may be that the green energy lobby is so stupid as to believe that fossil fuels from Russia or one of the OPEC nations is less harmful to the environment because they can’t see the sausage being made nearby. There’s precedence for that. They think that electric powered cars are cleaner when the likelihood is that that electricity is created using natural gas or coal. If you can’t see it, it doesn’t happen.
Continue readingI’m a Bad Web Person
I’ve been a terrible host, neglecting my duties here as I galivant about the web trash spouting out about poetry, the Beatles, and Maus.
I’ve linked to what I’ve been up to since my last post below.
I’m having a great time with a Friday feature over at ordinary-times.com called POETS Day. That’s an anacronym for Piss Off Early, Tomorrow’s Saturday.
I start with a scheme to fool your boss and get you out of work early so you can jump start your afternoon and hit the happy hour specials asap and the throw in a story of what at least I think of interest followed by a poem with some commentary on the work.
Honestly, it’s fun. I’ve written a few other non-poetry related stuff over the last few months. If you want to dive in, the links are below.
POETS DAY: Robert Herrick and the Virgins That He Thinks Need To Hurry Up And, Well…
POETS Day: James Matthew Wilson’s XIII from The Hanging God
POETS Day: Chaucer’s Prologue and High School
POETS Day: Truman Capote’s A Christmas Memory
POETS Day: Rudyard Kipling and a Very Unlucky Jack
POETS Day: The Shakespearean Sonnet Edition, #XIX
POETS Day: The Clive James Fury Edition
We Should Unfix the College Football Postseason: A Rebuttal
POETS Day: Let’s Talk About Emily Dickenson
You Think You Know a Band: observations On The Beatles and Peter Jackson’s Get Back
POETS Day: Poe, Poe, Pitiful Me
Maus and The “Ban”
POETS Day: Gerard Manley Hopkins and Near Perfection
POETS Day: The Second Oxford Expedition by W.H. Auden
WordPress is messed up and not just because their editing software underlines wordpress as a misspelling. Up above you’ll see that sometimes a sentence is blue for the link and sometimes a letter. I highlighted the whole sentence every time and set the link and sometimes it worked and sometimes it just took a word or two. I quit trying to make it work. Sorry.
I’m going to try to be more punctual (read attentive) in the future about populating this site, even if it’s with stuff from other sites I write for.
Cecil Hurt of The Tuscaloosa News
Today, in a moment of pique during the game, I may say something bad about Auburn, but I won’t mean it. The flowers and picture of Cecil Hurt in the press box was a nice gesture. Alabama fans appreciate it.
I never met Hurt, but I was behind him in line to give condolences to the mother of a friend who died far too early. The deceased suffered from a cancer that came and went over the course of ten years giving cruel hope now and then though we all knew the end was assured. I didn’t know what to say to his mom. Hurt did.
He was brief, kind, and assuring. I hope there is someone of his caliber at his funeral to give proper condolences.
I thought about that moment often when I read his work. On the page he was droll and cutting. The man I saw was gracious. He’ll be missed.
Godspeed.
What if We Ignored Biden’s Vaccine Mandate?
On the surface the thing makes no sense. All employees working for a company that employs one hundred pr more people must be vaccinated or endure twice weekly testing for Wuhan. No explanation is given for why the magic number is one hundred. Apparently if you work with ninety-eight others you are fine but the addition of a parking attendant puts the whole operation at risk.
The argument for vaccination is odd on it’s face: “You have to get the vaccine that keeps me from getting sick so you don’t get me sick.” And keep wearing masks and distancing. It’s not terribly convincing, especially when we are looking at an unfolding litany of corrective boosters with no end in sight. But that’s besides the point.
Biden is just the President. He has no power to decide what we do. He is not the legislature. He is not the Supreme Court. He is charged with executing the will of the people as expressed through Congress. If he told us we all had to paint our front doors blue, would we? This mandate carries as much legal power.
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The Columbo Game 