=jrnl0501 Catch-all JOURNAL, Jan '05 ================================================================== Input 25 Jan '05: To IHT, not yet sent. "BUT 'TWAS A FAMOUS VICTORS" The IHT (25 Jan '05, 'Charlie Savage') reports that assumed information obtained by US 'interrogators' at Guatanamo led to raids in Germany in which "police arrested 22 people suspected of being militants". Well, that's still 4 steps away from thwarting an attempted act of terrorism -- those arrested are 'suspected' of being 'militants' who may be 'terrorists' who may attempt a terrorist act. And there are methodologic questions about the reliability of 'information' obtained under duress from persons seized up to 3 years ago. --------------------------------------------------------------- The 25 Jan '05 NY Times / IHT Editorial on the Evolution/Creationism controversy is intellectually ridiculous. It treats what it terms 'Charles Darwin's theory of evolution' as a sort of secular dogma, or politically correct credo. The 'theory of evolution' is not a scientific theory (much less a fact), but is a methodologic perspective, generating a field in which much has changed since Darwin's insight. 'Intelligent design' is not a competing theory but an alternative ('philosophic') perspective. It is not necessarily dependent upon an anthropomorphic metaphor -- although anthropomorphic metaphor, if recognized as metaphor, is no more unreasonable than scientistic metaphor (as distinct from scientific theory). And in any case, a free intellectual environment must be open to critical consideration of all ideas. And public schools, especially compulsory public schools for persons who cannot afford alternative schooling, have no right to treat adolescents as mentally incompetent daytime wards of the state. ----------------------------------------------------------------- The USA exemplifies, not the ideal of Jeffersonian democracy, but the sort of degenerate democracy imagined and opposed by Plato. Presidential elections, especially as run by reactionary Republicans, are not competitions of ideas or even ideology, but merely comic_book__style battles of imagery. ----------------------------------------------------------------- Input 24 Jan '05 ---------------------------------------------------------------- Poem with extra words in it; George has done it -- he's watered the cappucino now in littler cups perhaps with lots more froth hidden beneath the chocolate dust. Soon everyone will walk around half-asleep and he can rule the world. ------------------------------------------------------------- "Format failed due to general failure -- OK": A long way from the airport the plane starts its descent. (Campra, 22 Jan '05) ---------------------------------------------------------------- The Lesser Swiss use gentility as a 'device' [Cf. PVK for this application of the computer notion of 'device': the etymology supports it -- devise, device] for passive__aggressive__one_upsmanship, the which culuminates in political_correctness (socio_political__fashion, to put it more precisely), in the context of which Israel, representing 'The Jews', is always as fault. --------------------------------------------------------------- INSTANT REVIEW OF A BOOK FILED ON THE FLOOR UNDERNEATH THE slowly- THAWING (but still a bit icy) SAUERKRAUT after reading at least a dozen pages: Donald E. Westlake, "Tomorrow's Crimes", Anarchaos and other Stories of Fantastic Suspense., The Mysterious Press, 129 W. 56 St. , NYC, 1990. Grey tales with shifting scenery by a grey Nowhere Man. Blame the British Drizzle, not the Welfare State, Bryan Forbves, author of The Endless Game, The Distant Laughter, Willam Collins Sons Ltd. A self-pitying misanthropic alcoholic; the type of natural-born anti-Semite who never met a Jew (except maybe vaguely in the mirror) and has no intention of doing so. The English refined class_ism to a sort of Japanese artifact, and the English Jews (in contrast to USA Jews, who evolved as a very strong liberal intellectual community), too few to constitute a spiritually self_sustaining community but too numerous to hide as mere eccentrics, got the worst of it, unable to fall back on an image of loutishness. ----------------------------------------------------------------- Drafted for JP, Not yet sent: Cf. IHT 24 Jan '05 (Bumiller): Israel must not let itself be used as a proxy by the Cheney/Bush administration. Israel can manage its own detente with Iran. and it is despicable that US torturers wrapped their victims in Israeli flags. ---------------------------------------------------------------- Can one fulfill the mitzva of washing one's hands, with snow? By rubbing one's hands with it, or dipping one's finger-tips in it. If one is at home. Or if one is not at home, but on a trail several hours from shelter, and wants or needs to eat a sandwich. For some reason neither the Palestinian much less the Babylonian Talmud addresses this problem, which, although it may not often have arisen in those lands, is of somewhat greater importance in the Alps. ---------------------------------------------------------------- Input 21 Jan '04 : --------------------------------------------------------------- A gentil knight or well-mannered space-cadet accepts graciously the assistantance, however ineptly proffered, of her or his ground support. ---------------------------------------------------------------- With a storm starting in Olivone an hour before sunset no time to walk up on ice I ride down to Biasca to get a good night's sleep away from the chicken-coop by the railroad tracks and find myself missing Chicago winter days. It must be time to go. ------------------------------------------------------------- On a stone in his shoe -- Georgio disguised as a waiter: I guess he hates his job (circus bear in a pinafore) and maybe too is scared to see so for fear of longing to quit and having to face fear to do it. He serves customers with just enough phony bonhomie to constitute a constant sneer. The dining room is a battleground on 'Mute'. I only wanted a bowl of soup. (Campra-Olivone trail, 19 Jan '05) --------------------------------------------------------------- The Poet Reflects Upon the Limitations of his "sullen craft": After all my writ about that turkey it's amazing he can still walk. ---------------------------------------------------------------- Up before dawn Over one mountain and under another shuttling 7 packs & 17 books I take the schoolbus up from Biasca in an incessant barrage of adolescent chatter set against heavy metal radio within sealed windows. I flit continually in and out of sleep for an eternity like a shade in some circle of Dante's hell. (Jan 13 '05) --------------------------------------------------------------- Sent IHT and TIME (After a topical quip by Voltaire:) Like a gang of rapists, the Bushies take Christianity for real. They were there at the Crucifixtion -- as Roman soldiers. --------------------------------------------------------------- Apparently the decision to torture prisoners of guerilla war, in a frantic scramble for imaginary intelligence was instigated by Rumsfeld, who exemplifies it, disregarding the fact that a man under torture will say anything. Bush Jr., a lifelong coward with the furtive craft of a cornered rate, must have balked for fear of being charged with a war crime. So Cheney, a Machiavellian Manichean, sent Gonzales, a Brown-Nosed Horatio Alger, to force his staff to craft a rationale that Bush, who thinks as little as possible for fear of discovering himself, would accept. ---------------------------------------------------------------- Sent IHT via SwissCom on Innaguration Day: Bush Cheney Rumsfeld and Gonzales should be charged with the war crime of torture, regardless of how they attempted to redefine the term. ---------------------------------------------------------------- Bellinzona has created at great expense a grand piazza with no place to sit. In one corner the sun shines for several hours on winter days. An ambitious cafe has placed its chair there to sell the sun for a cup of tea. ---------------------------------------------------------------- The fragility of gentility: I, having stayed in an adequate hotel & leisurely there taken breakfast aw well then ride along in a first-class carriage to acquire technological accessories with my last heavy coins. Then, seeing no sign to a W.C. I in a corner place runaway pee hoping that the cops don't pass before I've had my piss. ----------------------------------------------------------------- In unadmitted lonliness, taking cheer from hotel TV I see women and in the day see many more and say 'But these are not women.' --------------------------------------------------------------- After Hemmingway's wax_paper__wrapped sandwiches: In the winter mid-day sun on a grande piazza where once castle-to-castle walls blocked lakes and fertile land from mountain men the Bar_Codeborgo-_Cafe__Snackbar has placed its tables on the portico of the Banca_dello_State_del_Cantone_Ticiono. The Swiss hae found a way I see to sell or save the sun today for aristocracy. (Belllinzona, 19 Jan '05) ---------------------------------------------------------------- Shopping is the revenge of the downtrodden. --------------------------------------------------------------- Suicide does not atone for one's sins, it adds to them. ----------------------------------------------------------------- STEVE'S PLASTIC BAGS CONTEST #2: Number of Plastic Bags Exported from Graubunden by Steve after a 3-week visit: OFFICIAL COUNT: 19, more or less. Steve's Entry: 17, with a 7-bag handicap. ----------------------------------------------------------------- Re: IHT 21 Jan '04 (Lewis): "(Washington D.C. District Judge) Leon made a distinction between the right to file for a habeas corpus petition (acknowleged by the U.S. Supreme Court, June '04) and the right to obtain one. But this is hair_splitting nonsense. To analyze it takes one into Through_the_Looking_Glass surrealism. The right to file a petition is the right to have one's plea considered on its merits; it cannot be redefined as merely the right to give a clerk a few signed forms. And by the same token, the right to habeas corpus is not a right to be released if one files a plea of habeas corpus; it is the right to have that plea considered on its merits. A categorial refusal to consider all such pleas is a denial of that right. The journalist also notes, without comment, that "Leon also ruled that the Geneva conventions did not apply to the detainees at Guantanamo"(whom he termed "'non-resident aliens, outside of the United States, during a time of armed conflict'") Well: First of all, the applicability of an International Convention to a particular case cannot be adjudicated by a sole member of the Judiciary of one of the nations contesting that case, and party to the Convention. Second, a nation may lawfully seize persons outside its borders without the assent of the government nation in which they are seized, only in time of war; and in that case they are subject to the protection of International conventions governing the limits to mistreatment of prisoners of war. The Bushies seem to be trying to invent some sort of grey area in law called "armed conflict" in which neither national law or international law obtains. Third, it is not clear in what sense the USA can be said to be presently engaged in "armed conflict" with any entity of which the detainees can prsently be said to be members. The USA is not at war with, nor in any other sense in armed conflict with, their nations of citizenship. And as for their membership in some extra_national organiuation -- first of all, that is the point to be adjudicated, so it cannot legally be presupposed. And secondly, it is not clear that such membership would supercede their rights as citizens of their respective nations. ----------------------------------------------------------------- Letters to the Editor, except offical responses from VIPs, are usually chosen for publication to intimate to the newspaper's readership, 'You may think we're stupid, but look, here's someone even stupider.' --------------------------------------------------------------- The Bushies are no more representative of Christianity than the jihadists are of Islam. ------------------------------------------------------------- I intend to maybe write on computer this Shabat. I'm not comfortable with that decision, but it maybe beats getting cabin fever, drinking wine, and reading old copies of the IHT and TIME. So ok: I can watch the World Series on TV on Shabat, if the TV is not turned on and off (except by a Shabos goy) during Shabat. So surely typing on a computer that was turned on before Shabat is not "kindling a fire" (unless, of course, one uses one of the DaVinci series, which run on steam). Or is it kindling a fire each time a touch a key, and extinguishing a fire each time I release my finger from the key. Surely it is writing, although I could argue that it is not (it is just pushing a few electrons around, and I do that whenever I walk through the snowdrifts to the outhouse) -- but that would be a sophistic argument. It is not "servile work", I'm doing my own freely chosen work, not working for Manpower Inc. typing somebody's spreadsheets for 10 dollars an hour. ------------------------------------------------------------------- Swiss Hoteliers combine capitalist obsequiessness with the communist/Israeli proprietary notion of one's job. So hotels close for one day a week, which seems to be selected almost at random, provided that it is not the Shabat of any known religion. (And Incidentally, speaking of Avoda Zora -- even the Metsudah Siddur speaks of Sun_day , Mo(o)n_day, Wednesday (whoever Woden was, though I gather he was not especially nice -- PVK often spoke of him as his personal antagonist -- he would call up a storm whenever PVK wanted to teach meditation), Thursday (Thor), Friday (Friga, whom I assume was not precisely snias) -- tho not Saturday, which is Shabat, not a day dedicated, as the Romans came along and did, to Saturn -- as in Saturnalia, a heavy-metal orgy - - I mean, the Romans could give even seex a bad name, as if they had invented it.) And too, hotels take a week or a few weeks off, regardless of season, once a year. The notion that employees might take staggered days off, with fill-ins, is apparently too complex. Years ago, 1998 maybe, I arrived in Olivone and paused for a few days -- not really to decompress, more to work up energy for that year's assault on Zenith. As Zelazny illustrates in one of his stories, and Kafka said it too, in his usual repulsive way, locations of exceptional spiritual energy seem to put up great barriers to those, except the innocents, who seek to come to them. (Hasidic tradition says, whenever you wish to go to see the Rebbe, obstacles appear in your path. And HIK too says, if you wish to do something, keep it secret. for fear that obstacles with manifest.) So anyhow, I stayed at Georgio's Hotel, booked in for 2 days, and next day was told, sorry, but next day was their day off. Well, many hotels remain open for already-booked guests, even though they close the meal service for all but breakfast. When he appeared to take over Campra -- as I suppose he intends -- in November '04, he came up with that big handshake and said he recognized me. Well, some dogs, once they cast you as an enemy, never forget and never change their attitude. --------------------------------------------------------- Switzerland is wasted on the Swiss -- ptit bourgeoisi mice making thier burrows in the valleys, and cowering from the mountain spirits. Israel should conquer it. And maybe hire the Swiss to manage Israel. --------------------------------------------------------------- Riposotes for an imaginary argument: (1) To give tzdaka is a mitzva. 'The poor man must make himself available to the rich man.' (Larry Kushner, Book of Letters, with my tie-in. Do take the ducats duck: Tomorrow a meteor may hit my head. At the Pearly Gates they say 'Hi, Steve, but did you tithe. We find only receipts for only an average of 3.60 a week. So I go to hell where the Restaurante serves only fried porkchops, 3 times a day. So after a millenium or two I look up and shout, Hey, Heaenly Court, could I maybe have a hit or orange juice with this, to cut the grease. And they say, for 3.60 a week you want orange juice? ----------------- (2) Bandy me Madam no words now. For while you stand in your wooden kitchen making meals too subtle to see (for me) Irefine my wit by half while walking down the street eating raw hamburger with my fingers and, of course, salt. (Quote and note: "'Peel a banana with your toes' he says, and we get by." (Avram Davidson, in a tale of a team of gods reduced by their opponents to less handsome Forms, so Taki the Speer-thrower now appears as a monkey, tho his soul is no less noble, and the goddess of the night appears as a middle-aged housewife becoming plump, though her compassion and magnanimity is undiminished.) --------------------------------------------------------------- Input ca. 17 Jan '05: --------------------------------------------------------------- They stole my home but carefully untouched even my open olive-oil. (Campra, 17 Jan '05 -- 8 Shvat) ---------------------------------------------------------------- Stinkycheese Fondue The Uglybus ---------------------------------------------------------------- "Rejoice, Israel -- Your Messiah has come." "Set another plate for supper." ------------------------------------------------------------------ Swiss Hoteliers are drawn from the ranks of those of were expelled from the Guild of Swiss Resteraunteurs for Unethical Behavior. I mean, all a Poor Travler needs is a quiet warm safe place to sleep in, a potty at a decent but convenient distance, and some hot drinking water upon awakening -- #l2 only the English seem to provide guests with a kettle in the room -- #l3 Israelis used to carry portable heaters, but those are no longer sold, for fear some idiot might forget to unplug it -- #l1 but in Switzerland, you're lucky to get such for under SF 60, and under SF 50 is a rarity -- The Hotelier takes an old house, shlocks it up with unneeded and usually unwanted ostentation -- #l2 I mean, one really doesn't need 44 Satellite TV Channels just to remind one of the good news that women still copulate -- nor a maid to boil one's bedding and polish the floor every monring -- #l3 Jesus did rather nicely with a bed of straw and fresh air -- #l1 Now it's not news that most nations romanticize and shlock up their past and then whore it out to tourists as a sort of unacknowleged Theme Park -- #l2 (someone at Zenith said that , remarking that New Buffalo has now become a Bed-And-Breakfast -- #l3 though Rick Klein was running it last I could find their Website, and he was for real, for all his laid-back pose #l4 -- I remember him up on the roof when tthe house was burning down, trying to put out the burning tarpaper-and-wood roof with buckets of water, until Susie, his woman, a good person, called him down -- #l5 and then Rick left and went up onto Lama Mountain, which he could afford to do, because he couldn't really get into the heavy work- trip that had become the norm -- #l6 workaholic, almost, or work-and-guilt -- #l7 I took advantage of that to drive people away, which I regret -- #l5 and of course Rick could have stayed at New Buffalo -- #l6 George used to say, Rick is a Prince, and that meant his manner, not his money -- #l5 but Rick didn't want to take advantage of his position. George said he once said, I wish people wouldn't think of me as the money-man - - #l1 I mean, Greece does it, #l2 tho what they're really shilling is the opportunity for well- hoteled visitors to take of their clothes in public to entice a throwaway bonk -- #l1 And there's some of that in Israel, but in Israel it's for real, though most of it you have to feel, not see -- #l2 and like I say, R. Shlomo used to say, in effect, the goyim come to us hoping for something real, and we still have this hidden galutz timidity and fear for our survival, so we put them off with a bit of shlock and false bonhomie,Fiddler_on_the_Roof style -- #l3 life imitates successful shlock, the Mafiosi started kissing hands when The Godfather became a hit -- #l1 So anyhow, speaking of Swiss Resteranteurs whoring their country's ambience -- #l2 Switzerland really does have a beautiful orderliness, and with it a charming gentility, but some take advantage of that #l3 -- like, they never put water on the taable, they nudge you to buy mineral water, which is usually just local water with a bit of gas up the ass -- or if you're cold, they give you a little bit of hot water, and then nudge you to buy another cup when that's gone -- the implicit subtext being, really, it won't do to be so ungenteel as to request ordinary water, or to demand a refill of hot water -- because after all you are in Switzerland, and we are much too genteel to do that, and affluent too, so since you have come her to be one of us until your money runs out, fork over Rover -- #l4 Where's Henry Miller now that we really need him -- #l1 I take the Gondolas up to about 2500 m. in Flims-Lax, in Graubunden -- that is the world of the high peaks, very refined -- for at about 2000 m. you are in the world of the peaks -- but all that technologic development wasted on the most vulgar of the rich -- large bars with very hi-fi, but veryy vulgar and very loud so_called music -- for people, mostly teenagers, who do nothing more than ride up and then go back down as fast as possible -- or sit around drinking and eating junkfood -- Well, it's getting on to daybreak -- ----------------------------------------------------------------- A Christmas Carol for Epiphany (U.S.A. Traditional , 1940s or 1950s based on English traditional) We three kings of Orient are trying to smoke a rubber cigar It was loaded and exploded shot from yonder star. We two kings of Orient are trying to smoke a rubber cigar It was loaded and exploded shot from yonder star. Me the King of Orient are trying to smoke a rubber cigar ot was loadeed and (As heard by the Poet in Shady Hill School at the age of less than 10, or possibly in Belmont Junior High Schoo, and augmented by Himself upon Epiphany in the year of your Lord 2005 more or less, upon which day the Poet did Learn what Epiphany is, sort of.) ---------------------------------------------------------------- Notes -- Trav Ins Policy: SRI Electronic ID: 6VNO4-28792 Group No. HTP 01158-04 Collect Call: 0-317-575-2656 --------------------------------------------------------------- The day before it was time to leave I lost my watch. (Rhazuns, 12 Jan '05) ---------------------------------------------------------------- Wandering Jew Take 2: Forever pilgrims or exiles Packing up all my sentiments to go to another place -- She has things to do in Poland. (Rhazuns, 13 Jan '05 -- 4 Shvat) ---------------------------------------------------------------- An Evidently Unjust Accusation -- The Poet, although of course Reluctant even to think much less speak or even write ill of another, Cannot help but Notice that he has Apparently been Excluded from his Dormitoire by an Un_Announc'd ExChange of Locking Cylinder, and so Must Needs Endeavour to Find a Workaround, the Which, with as Usual Aid from Ethereal Spirits and A Few Russians he is EnAble'd to Do, and so Enjoys a Restful Several Hours Sleep in his Practically Windowless 'Camera con servizi al piano' rather than Sleep on the Floor and Pee on the Snowpile, in Celebration of Which he Crafts the Following Poem: (His Poem:) George has one saving grace -- stupidity. (Campra, 16-17 Jan '05 -- 7 Shvat) ------------------------------------------------------------------- Waters the coffee now too: Hiked back up to Campra against the wind at the end 10 degrees below zero and found out that Georgi Gnocci ex Andros has learned a new trick -- He still sells hot water to cold hikers but just a little bit less now -- 1.5 deciliters for 3 dollars with the teabag of your choice. 20 dollars a liter for hot water in the winter Alps. Notes: "I'm the man, the very fat man, who waters the workers' beer." (U.S. Union Song, ?1930's?) ----------------------------------------------------------------- The Poet Contemplates the Mitzva of Dwellling in Eretz Israel: In the interests of Better Business I have changed accommodations from exclusive tenancy in a 10-room ski-lodge self-catering with natural iron wood-stove heating and a private skating rink in the living room when I wash the floor to exclusive tenancy in a caravan without water insulated with fiber-class exposed only on the roof and more luxurious that those rented for thousands of dollars a day by off-white persons crossing the exclusively English Channel. Trying to remember Rabelais I pee behind the shack. It won't melt until springtime. Eventually I will leave an ice-sculpture name it The Yellow Peril and go home. (Campra, 16 Jan '05) ---------------------------------------------------------------- The Poet Contemplates his Receipts from a cut-rate Swiss Hotel: Stayed there 17 days and not a free night 50 for a shoebox room and if I skip breakfast they knock off 3. Paying 9 bucks for a plate of garlic bread When I pay the bill I fumble for the last 5.20 and the owner says, Oh, it doesn't matter. Trattoria Seilbahn, Rh„zns, 081--641-1149 ----------------------------------------------------------------- 'Q is a lie' = 'A says Q AND Q is not true AND A knows that Q is not true.' 'A is a liar' 0 'A often tells lies.' --------------------------------------------------------------- STEVE'S PLASTIC BOTTLES CONTEST OFFICIAL COUNT: The Contest Question was: Steve filled a 100 Liter plastic bag, in a Green Mt. Vesuvius Plastic Plastic Bag Holder, to the Tip-Top with plastic bottles. Most were 1.5 liters, but some were 1 liter and some were 0.5 and 0.333333333.... liters. QUESTION: How many plastic bottles were there, and how many liters did they contain: ANSWER: 36 bottles, holding a total of 40.33 liters. -------------------------------------------------------------- STEVE'S PLASTIC BAGS CONTEST #2: QUESTION: Steve wemt to Graubunden for 3 weeks. How many platic bags did he export back to Ticino? POSSIBLE ANSWERS: A: None, because the inhabitants of Graubunden are very ecologic, and carry their purchases only in bags made from the skin of snakes with psoraisis. B: 49% of the monthly output of the Baron of Disagreeable Castle. C: Your answer: --------------------------------------------------------------- Steve's Guess: 17 Steve's Handicap: 7 ----------------------------------------------------------- OFFICIAL COUNT (by Steve, upon unpacking): 3 plus ---------------------------------------------------------------- Miscellaneous Notes (personal): EG, Famous Inventor: POB 31403, Jerusalem 91313 -------------------------------------------------------------- www.sacred-texts.com --------------------------------------------------------------- One who redefines a term gains no exemption from its application, and sets himself outside the society in which that term is used. Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Gonzales and many civilian and military subordinates should be charged with complicity in the war crime of torture. And the lawyers who told them that they could escape guilt be redefining the term 'torture' should be disbarred. ------------------------------------------------------------------ To letters@iht.com , cc: tech@iht.com Re: IHT 15 Jan '05 (Shannon) Verizon's response to SPAM, in contrast to the response by Yahoo, is awesomely stupid. Yahoo simply diverts Bulk mailings into a Bulk Folder, rather than blocking Enduser access to their Server. ---------------------------------------------------------------- To: letters@time.com Re: Time 13 Dec '04 & Letter 17 Jan '05: Sergeant Jenkins deserted, not because he was afraid of combat in Vietnam -- although any sane man should have been -- but because he considered himself unqualified to lead men in combat, and was afraid that he would cause the death of others. That is a criterion of nobility of character not shared by the political and military leadership of that period, nor of this. ---------------------------------------------------------------- She is about to travel a thouand miles on a hundred dollars. I say, Can I help you with anything? She says, Yes: How d I translate "At-One-ment"? ------------------------------------- "'At'One'ment'": (Word-play used by HIK, Unity of Religious Ideals') and by others, eg Reb Zalman) First, it's 'fixing' -- tikun -- (as best you can9 and only then can one ask forgiveness first below, then Above; and maybe that's to make one at-One with our fellows and then maybe with that long-lost plan of Heaven. --------------------------------------------------------------- Dialectic criticism with a Swiss Railway Conductress: "In Andermatt you have 3 minutes change tracks to change trains. Use the underpass's 25 steps." "I know. Once I almosed crossed the tracks. A trainman shouted at me. So I walked back a few seconds ahead of the Express. I would have been entirely my fault, of course but you should change the schedule anyhow." "Have a good trip." ---------------------------------------------------------------- Sent SwissCom to IHT 14 Jan '04 John Snow's defense of the U.S. trade deficit is genetically modified bullshit. Citizens of free-makret nations have no obligation to buy US products, most of which are worth less than nothing. And the dollar is rapidly approaching junk-bond status. -------------------------------------------------------------- Poem with one reused line or Kvetches of the Idle Rich #623 -- The Poet Pauses before Applying Hand-Cream: I, having used the First-Class PanoramaWagon Potty must duly do my doti duty viz. to wash my hands but this is Swiss the water will not run until you first twist into it detergent strong enough for a grease-monkey bridegroom and harsh enough for a born-again battleship. ---------------------------------------------------------------- Heard on errv Shabat at a Meditation Camp: 'In '67 I was in the Paratroops. The Jordanians sent their enlisted men first. We let them go and shot the officers. I have no spoken of this for 25 years.' Notes: "I do not blamde the Arabs for killing our sons. I blame them for making our sons kill their sons." (Golda Meir) ------------------------------------------------------------------ The Swiss are very efficient. Electic eyes turn on electric lights for only 1,75 minutes. So if you poop too slow it may take six clicks. That uses extra electricity but it is very efficient. ----------------------------------------------------------------- Once in Belmont High School we ran against Lexington High. I ran the 1000. So did Spike Paranya who might have made the Olympics but for a college Charley Horse. ---- The lived next door when I was borrn maybe I was named after him and my brother after his father, John who died of penumonia when the ambulance came too slow. It was a 3-lap track Spike too off inconspicuously and passed me on lap 2. Afterwards he shook my hand and said 'All that matters is that you keep beating your own time.' (Olivone-Campra Strada Romana, 13 Jan '05) ---------------------------------------------------------------- Israel must take all necessary steps to ensure that suicide bombers cannot approach Isreali soldiers and civilians. Such steps must be taken, and maintained, regardless of pseudo_liberal protests from those in the EU and USA who try to curry favor from the Arab petro-bloc. The civillian right to freedom of movement is subordinate to the right of of everyone to live, including soldiers. Military service is not like a sporting event in which one voluntarily forfeits the right to freedom for physical assault, in exchange for the right to assault others. A responsible soldier fights only in self-defense an in defense of an attacked people. And the first responsiblity of an army is to protect its soldiers from militarily unnecessary risk. ----------------------------------------------------------------- Apologia pro via sua: In baseball, at Shady Hill I played left_center field -- the 10th man on a 9-man team. If the ball gers past the shortstop and past the left and center fielders I can pick it up. ----------------------------------------------------------------