Shocked? (Foto, Julja)

Dear Julja,
° Have you ever heard of Milgram?
° Well, like Courtney Love and the $10,000 masseur, I never had.
° Till Enron, the Smartest Guys in the Room.

° A famous (to those who’ve heard of it) scientific study of the ‘60’s tested how large a volt of electricity one subject would consent to deliver to a second subject behind a partition.
° Turned out that 50% of folks would, when reassured by the Master of the experiment that he would take full responsibility for the outcome, electrocute the assistant.
° 50%.
° Fortunately the Master was merciful, the second subject a shrieking stooge, and the highvoltage wires severed.

° Well I know what you’re thinking.
° We 50% that wouldn’t kill on command, we 50% that can’t believe we’re not responsible for our own actions, we 50% are screwed.

° From Time imMemorial, Giac.

Ecco l'Uomo (Foto, Lad)

Dear Lad,
° Leggero has something.
° (For starters, being made of peptidal carbon rather than of calcium carbonate, he has arms that reach clear down to the fingertips.)
° He has the allAmerican face and personality of the boy next door. You’d entrust your little sister or brother to him on prom night.
° A millimetre below his neckline, however, all hell breaks loose. You wouldn’t even entrust your parish priest--o well . . . .

§§§§§

° Some wit once said of Jean Harlow--the real one, not the diCaprio rerun, not even the MM mimick--that

No one possessing what she possesses ever starved.

° I don’t think Leggero will miss a meal either.

° Affectionately, Giac.

P.S. Not that you or Coz or Piers or Panama is in any danger of starvation . . . .

Bastet Basta (Foto, Piers)

Dear Piers,
° Time was, the people of Alexandria used to riot and burnbabyburn whenever a Cat, sacred to Bastet, was so much as accidentally murdered by a cart wheel.
° Time is, the people of Afghanistan are rioting and burningbabyburning because a printed copy of a religious text was flushed into the waters off the coast of Cuba.
° Time shall be always, that our Rulers will suspend all serious legislation in favour of the AntiFlagBurning Amendment, at the least mention of a thread of tricoloured cotton going up in smoke.

§§§§§

° And yet, only the little Cat bled.

° Timelessly timetravelling, Giac.

Male Genital Mutilation (Foto, Lad)

Dear Lad,
° Did you know that, according to Voltaire,

The Jews adopted circumcision from the Egyptians, with part of their ceremonies. They have always retained it, as well as the Arabians and the Ethiopians; the Turks have submitted to it, though it is not ordered in the Alcoran. It is only an ancient usage, which was introduced by superstition, and which has been preserved by custom. ?

° Well I sure didn’t. Know. About, I mean, the Egyptians. I knew they drank beer, worshipped cats, and depilated their bodies--it was before Springtime Fresh deodorant soaps--from A to Izzard.
° But I didn’t know they did anything queer, like genital mutilation.

° Unheathenly timetravelling, Giac.

Copperhead Guillotine (Sandy)

Dear Sandy,
° I’m haunted, through and through.
° My coffee scum this morning displayed a Wolf, a Fish, a Serpent. So far so good. A clear lookback to the Etruscan Medusa foto.

° But after dinner, just after I’d fed the fish in the Day Garden Pool, something leapt into the water from just in front of my feet.
° Was it a frog, was it--?
° It was a threefoot copperhead, with one of the New White Goldfish onethird down its gorge.
° Well you know what my reaction was.
° Yes, that Murky Turt hadn’t eaten a single one of the New Whites, they’d just been taking turns hiding under the lilypads.

° And then what?
° What I didn’t do was run to the Storehouse for rake and cotton hoe, fish Venomous Serpent out of the bubbling murk of the sediments in Pool bottom, hold him steady with the rake, and commit French Revolution 101 upon his head with the sharp little guillotine.
° And why?
° Because our Rulers in Overton have decreed it a crime and misdemeanour to murder a Venomous Reptile. Why, I purely do not know.
° ((The decree is supposed to keep down rats; yet between the cats, the hawks, the foxes and coyotes, and the roundpupilled Nonvenomous Serpents, mouseprogeny can scarcely reach breeding age hereabouts without suffering some fatal exception.))
° The why I mean I purely do not know is, I dunno who paid our Legislators to pass such a law, for without a wideopen lobbyists’ auction, our Rulers in Overton wouldn’t pass a kidney stone.

§§§§§

° I recollect D------’s attitude toward the ban on murdering redtailed hawks. To him all hawks were chicken hawks. And the moment a weasel, a chickensnake, or fox relieved his flock of so much as an eggshell, D------ was cleaning and loading his rifle.
° His argument against Governmental micromeddling?
° “Got into mah pullets.” Click, bang.

° Unimbedded, unbought, undone, Giac.

P. S. Of course, if I hadn‘t meddled with Murky Turt in the first place, that snapper‘d‘ve given Mons. Copperhead a close French bob. Naturally.

Mealymouthing (Foto, Coz)

Dear Coz,
° Just gol durn it all to halifax!
° I see your point, we’re both from the country and why should it be only you that call a spade la vanga?

§

If we are allowed to examine the historical part of the Jewish books, by the same rules as are followed in the examination of other histories, it must be agreed with all commentators, that the recital of the adventures of Abraham, as it is found in the Pentateuch, would be liable to many difficulties, if it were found in another history.

((List of “difficulties”))

This is all above our comprehension. Everything is miraculous in the history of the Hebrews; we have already said it, and we again repeat it, that we believe these prodigies, and all the others, without examining them.

° This by no means equivocal circumlocution, excerpted from Voltaire’s Philosophy of History, dedicated with wholehearted (?) fawning to Catherine the Second, Empress of All the Russias, is how he managed to live to be 84. Usually in exile, but always in style.

§§§§§

° Nowadays, of course, Government has entirely changed its nature, and is only ever benevolent and nurturing.
° And so one continues to believe all prodigies, without examining them.

° Credulously timetravelling, Giac.

Θανατος και Ζωη (Foto, Coz and Cozzess)

Dear Coz,
° Today just before tea, east of the Ellipse, a twentyfoothigh swarm of honeybees. Spectacular, but it was the rowr that drew my attention.
° What can it signify?
° Well, of course, a dead ox. For, as Vergil so straightfacedly tells us, honeybees are spontaneously generated in the rotting flesh of bovine corpses. No doubt by Intelligent Design.
° Or, it could mean la Luna di Miele. Is someone we know enjoying a honeymoon?
° ((I can’t omit Voltaire’s dismissal of augury, Etruscan and Romanyan:

Prophecy arose when the first Rogue encountered the first Fool.

Well you’re no Rogue, and I’m no F---uh oh. At least I never foretell the Future; I only point out signs of the Present and Past; for most folks, that’s still news.))

§§§§§

° Best wishes to you and Zoe in this time of your marriage.
° Live long and prosper.

° Ricethrowingly, Giac.

Papa Scienziato (Foto, Julja)

Dear Julja,
° A new scientific study asserts that what percentage of Americans is leading a healthful lifestyle, defined as

1. Not smoking;
2. Maintaining an appropriate weight;
3. Consuming 5 or more servings of vegetables and fruits daily;
4. Exercising regularly?

° The percentage is . . . .
° . . . . 3. Yes, 3% of us are living a healthful lifestyle.

§§§§§

° This means one of two things.
° Either 9,000,000 of us will have to bury the other 291,000,000. That could get old fast.
° Or else it means that this Scientific Study, like so many others nowadays, was funded by, and the conclusions therefore foreordained by, The Crystal Mething Asleep at the Wheeling Bareback Bottoming Venomous Serpent Handling Society of America.
° For, as Tom Ripley says in reverse, we all think our own poisons wholesome.

° Voltaireanly sceptical, Giac.

Frau Medea (Foto, Piers)

° The quintessential moment in Downfall comes when Frau G--I think it was Goebbels, but if not, Goering--falls down to her knees, grasps der Führer´s (knees), presses her face against his--well anyway, she begs him not to desert the Glorious Cause.
° “I do not want my children to grow up in a world from which the ideals of National Socialism have disappeared.”
° Then she sedates kindly and murders gently her six little bairns, and retires to her room to unwind.
° By dealing herself a hand of solitaire!

§§§§§

° And what else has Doonesbury been saying these last couple of months, as Alix torments her peacenik parents with an Army recruiter at the kitchen table?
° “I want to fight Evil. I wouldn’t want my children to grow up in a world in which . . . .”
° Spoiled little pansyassed simp!

° Timetravelling, Giac.

Hitlerville (Foto, Lad)

° While Adolf and Albert (Speer) were committing architectural mutual masturbation year after year after long year, Benito was actually building das Neues Rom.

§§§§§

° You know how unkind critics are.
° You know how kind I am.
° I think E.U.R. is kinda kinky, like FrankLloydWrightism perpetrated by Gummint mandate.

° Timetravelling, Giac.

Hitler's Last Stand (Foto, Coz)

° During the last days of the Third Reich’s Downfall several of Hitler’s cabinet members, and Eva Braun herself, begged him to spare the German people the slaughter of a futile battle. All felt that when a thing is over, it’s over.
° But not der Führer.
° “I have no sympathy for the German people. They chose their course, now let them follow it into the abyss.”
° For Hitler had, in fact, won a simple majority in a popular vote. And that, thought he, had given him what the French term “carte blanche.”
° And what Englishspeaking politicos term, “an overwhelming mandate.”

° Timetravelling, Giac.

Murky Turt (Foto, Sandy)

Dear Sandy,
° “Riposo” my hind foot!
° Yesterday, as I stood in the Day Garden and pretended to gaze upon the blooming grasses fluffing the Downs, but in fact was taking census of the comets in the pool--about given up on that new white--I saw Something rising to the surface.
° It was an anaconda.
° No, its snout was too blunt.
° It was a shrunken head some prankster--no.
° It was a baby’s shoe, a big baby‘s shoe, its white leather discoloured by long submergence in the oakleaftanninned stagnant depths. The sole was two inches across, the tip had a tiny button thereon, the laces--well, there were two things that looked an awful lot like eyes.
° Anaconda!
° No, snapping turtle, no wonder the little bastard carp fingerlings hadn’t been swarming for food this last week, no wonder New White--steps must be taken!
° So, I took the step of naming the Something “Murky Turt” and forgot all about it.

§

° But this morning, as I was trailing out my Pliny walk, I recounted the comets: 2 whites, 4 reds, perciò, 1 red missing!
° As I’d already dealt with the situation by naming Murky Turt, my mind was at ease.
° Until there he was, ghastly white in the early morning light and Chinese green water, rising like a--it was Jaws redux! He was stealthily rising toward the congregation of surviving Pisces!
° So I grabbed him behind the neck and--no, for I remembered childhood country lore, how that snappers can take off a finger.
° So I raced to the Storehouse, retrieved a rockrake, scooped Murky Turt out of the pool, teased him into clamping his jaws onto the handle, then carried him hobostyle down--no, although I remembered childhood country lore, how that snappers will chomp down and not let go for hours.
° So I raked him into the overturned wheelbarrow, measured (shell over 12inches, still a tyke), inspected (scarsigns of having been bushhogged last fall), and chatted with him (telling him what a fascinating monster he was, mio fratello Murky Turt), then wheeled him across the Downs and slid him out into Polky Pond.
° Whereupon I repented, for Polky Pond was sterilised by a major drought some years back, and here I had condemned little Murky Turt to starvation.
° Then I saw that birds had restocked Polky Pond, which was swarming with minnows and selfrestocked frogs and tadpoles.
° Whereupon I repented, for now I had condemned to Death all those little minnows and tadpoles and froglets.

§§§§§

° Spent a most pleasant hourandahalf on the phone with Sanjay at HPSupport/India. In between his longdistancedirecting the reamingout of one of Megalomane’s USBungholes, so that teeninesy electronic images might pass through, we chatted of music, movies (Bride and Prejudice, Monsoon Wedding, Bend It Like Beckham, not Born into Brothels), sex, dating, marriage, snapping turtles, farming, and such like.
° “So, Giac, what crops do you plant on your farm?”
° “O, no crops at all nowadays, just cattle.”
° “You produce milk?”
° “No, we were declared insanitary back in the ’50’s; so it’s just cattle.”
° Silent response.
° I could’ve kicked myself. I thought about mentioning that I myself am vegetarian, but didn’t think that made things a bit better.

° Jeffersonianly hypocritical, Giac.

P. S. Seven years ago, the last few times I accessed HPSupport/(USA), there was nothing but lip lip lip. Wonder why those jobs moved offshore?

Rightthinking Oestre (Foto, Piers)

° And out of the nave into the blazing Easter Sun streams the assembly to the stirring Finale from the worldrenowned Suite Dreque by Φαν Γελισ--er . . . .

§

° Meanwhile, heretical Lutherans are striding out to the strains of the b-minor Et Resurrexit.
° And (a)deistic Freemasons are still tripping about the Oestral Maypole to the chirping of eine Zauberflöte . . . .

§§§§§

° When the tail wags the dog, it can hardly be the tail’s fault.

° Timetravelling, Giac.