Goons (Foto--Leggero)

Foto: Perchè?--Le Catacombe di Santa Priscilla, Profeta

Mio caro,
° As you know, I’m only 100 pages from the end of the 12th (and last) of the Peter Wimseys (I count the Peterless toadstools), so I’m just murderridden.
° A woman goes to her 5th floor window in Gotham to investigate gunshots, a drunken U.S. Army soldier shoots her through the--well, she dies. But he was drunk, so it doesn’t count.
° In Overton a friend of yours pauses at an intersection (he was too conscientious to use my habitual California stop), an intenseeyed lateteen approaches him from the right, a surly extremely mentally deficient (I use my own eyes on his foto) midteen approaches from the left. The teens demand his car, your friend accelerates, the surly midteen shoots him. Your friend drives a block or two, pulls over, dies. (Within the hour the teens successfully steal a car from another guy just down the way.)
° And now everyone is looking for The Reason.
° I mean, The Reason it couldn’t happen to you or to me. As we do in the face of every violent crime or natural disaster. (My hilltop house’ll never be submerged as a result of a broken levee.)
° “Thank heavens it wasn’t a hate crime.” That is the commonest selfcomfort one hears from his associates.
° And yet I think Peter Wimsey would notice, and indeed a fiveyearold child would notice, that the window of the car was not shattered. There was the opportunity for reply. There was the opportunity for the surly extremely mentally deficient midteen to perceive the murderee as a faggot. The surly extremely mentally deficient midteen in any case must’ve perceived the murderee as a honky.
° For, the surly extremely mentally deficient midteen did not, in fact, slaughter the hispanic guy in the successfully stolen car. What else was different?
° Of course it could happen to you or to me, California stop or fullstop. Of course it could happen to you or to me, ground floor or 5th floor.

§§§§§

° That there is a subspecies of hominids born with the love of shedding blood is as obvious as the rotty stench of their underfingernails. The Talmud has known this for millennia, these are the guys “predestined by God” to be the village butchers.
° But the reason this subspecies--no doubt there’s a genetic marker--is so socially disruptive, the reason that even the extremely mentally deficient ones can blow up 30 women and children at a time, or blow through one woman or man at a time, is because they can so easily obtain the “powder” to do it with.
° Where do those boys get their guns?
° Where do those boys get their explosives?

§

° And by the way, Peter Wimsey finally asks, “How long did your friend survive in that car?”
° That is, did he survive long enough to have been saved if a single one of the multitude of neighbours who heard the shot had phoned E-911?
° No, mio caro, stay out of that neighbourhood. The lawabiding are as dangerous as the outlaws.

° On my Busman‘s Honeymoon, Giac.

Route 666 (Foto--Coz)

Foto: Wyrd--Le Catacombe di San Sebastiano, graffiti antichi

Dear Gipsy Cousin,
° The other day I was tooling down the autostrada when what did I behold?

SBC--666

is what I beheld. Was it a Sign from above, a dire prophecy of Apocalypse? (If so, Wyrd must have time on her hands, to warn of a mosquito and ignore the stampede of crazed elephants trampling humans flat as flivvers.)
° It was on a license plate, so it definitely was a sign of Dorothy Parkerism in the State Pen.

° Never knowing it all, Giac.

Christmas Present! (Foto, Urbi et Orbi)

Foto: Christmas Present--Chiesa sconosciuta vicino a Atene

Urbi et Orbi:
° “Christmas Present!” We used to strive to be the first to shout it to anybody we encountered on Christmas Day. What did it mean?
° It meant our parents and grandparents had used to engage in the same contest, whatever it meant.

§

° Dasn’t say “Happy Holidays!” nowadays. Might say it to a Christian Pharisee, who’ll boycott your business and sue you to boot.
° Dasn’t say “Good Yule!” nowadays. Might say it to someone of coastal European descent, for whom greatgreatgreatgreatGranddaddy Olaf is a reminder of opportunistic rape.
° Dasn’t say “Happy Christmas!” nowadays. For that is a slight against our British forebears.
° Dasn’t say “Io Saturnalia!” nowadays. For that involves too many calories and far too much liberty.
° Dasn’t say “Quasi Kwanzaa!” nowadays. Though otherwise one scarcely knows a catchy way of saying it.
° Dasn’t not say “Merry Christmas!” nowadays to one and all. For otherwise it looks as if you think your listener is some swarthy terrorist.
° So I just say “Merry Christmas!” right and left. And if the response is, “I don’t celebrate Christmas,” then I put a pitying tone into my voice (for folks hate to be pitied) and reply, “O I am so very sorry. Katrina.” And exit before they figure out I don’t really think they’re cajun.

§§§§§

° But the best thing is just to shut up, which I am now doing, click on this link, listen, lie back and think of Lord Peter, the cherubim roof, the fens, the flood . . . .

° Buon Natale! Feliz Navidad! Giac.

Haga su Peticion (Foto--Piers)

Foto: Haga su Peticion--Le Catacombe di Santa Priscilla, Guadalupe e Bambino

Mio figluolino dilettissimo Piers,
° La candela accesa, preghiamo:

Oh, Virgen de Guadalupe sin mancha, modelo acabado de Esposa y de Madre, imploro tu socorro en mis necesidades y las de mi familia, recomendando a tu maternal Corazon a mis pobres hijos; cuidamelos y formales su corazon en la humildad. Oh, Maria de Guadalupe, yo te lo pido con piedad que tengamos la felicidad de encontrarnos todos juntos en el cielo para contemplar la gloria de Dios, bendecirlo y alabarlo por toda la eternidad. Amen.

° Adesso, mio cucciolo, richiedi . . . .

° Abbracci tanti, Giac.

How to Unplug Giac (Foto--Coz, Lad, Piers)

Foto: A Noi Si Schiude il Ciel--Tarquinia

Dear Kiddypusses,
° How to unplug Giac?
° You just put your two lips together, and blow.
° No, that’s kissing, no, whistling, well, anyway, something Lauren Bacall knew well how to do.
° You unplug Giac by--
° --well I don’t know that either. I always thought feeding tubes were rubber hoses inserted down the throats of Irish prisoners on hunger strike. A funnel was placed on the outside end, British gruel was poured down, and after the rubber had galled the throatlining a few times, the patient was invariably healed. Of his political protest.
° And even this last Spring, the nonNazi Bishop of Rome had a “feeding tube” inserted through his nose. Slick vinyl, lubricated I suppose, nonchafing--still grosser than all getout.
° But when I saw a diagram of the modern, surgical, Schiavo version of a feeding tube, I like to’ve fainted.
° So as to the howto of unplugging, y’all’ll just have to consult Google.

§

° The whento of unplugging is way easier, Giac doesn’t even need the advice and consent and shamelessly selfaggrandising authoritarianism of the U. S. Congress to know the timing.
° Neither do y’all.

§

° Just before folks are strapped to ventilators or punctured by feedingtubes or plugged into some other extraordinarilyoffensivetoDeathMostHoly contraption, they are most generally in one of two states.
° Either they are a going proposition, able to selffeed, selfclothe, selfexcrete, selfclean, ecc. ecc. (even if they’re slow as molasses at Christmas)--
° --or else they are a wellnigh collapsed corporation already, unable to selffeed, selfclothe, selfexcrete, selfclean, ecc. ecc. Nor is the almost entire lack of a mind--not that any of us is all that bright to start with--to be ignored. It’s all a natural part of that living rotting process known as aging. It‘s a towering rottentothecore maple tree waiting for the next windstorm..
° If one--before the car accident, for example--was a going proposition, it is possible one may become so again.
° If one--before the stroke, for example--was already a terminally collapsing bankruptcy, the jig is already up, whether one likes it or not.
° Unplugging dilemmas arise from HopeSpringsEternal, from MedicalMagickalThinking, from TheosophicalButtinitism terrified by Death Most Holy in person.
° “Giac may recover, I’ve seen bigger miracles.”
° If the doctor says that, it’s time to pull the plug.
° “Many patients in Giac’s condition come around, with minimal brain damage, bimeby.”
° If the doctor says that, it’s time to mark off six weeks on the calendar, then pull the plug if Giac doesn’t tell you otherwise from his own lips.
° “Giac’ll never have any mind again (semiparalysed, incontinent, helpless and absent), but with ((y’all’s)) tender care and patience he can look forward to many years of ‘quality life.’”
° If the doctor says that, pull the plug, then sue the quack for violating the Geneva Accords regulating human torture.

° Yet y’all see the problem: no living will can foresee the exact degree of debility encountered, the exact point at which yes shades into no.
° Although, apparently, Congress thinks folks believe it can.

§§§§§

° Keep in mind two principles.
° 1. Division of Labour.
° 2. Provision of Banana.

° Provision of Banana.
° See to it that there is a banana (I prefer them on the slightly green side, no squishy brown rotters stinking of nail polish remover, please) beside Giac’s bed at all times. If one of yez proves to be a tenderhearted, nambypamby, sweetiepie girlyboy of a man, peel the banana. If even that doesn’t keep Pansyass from calling, in a shrill Senatorial schoolgirl tone of voice, the rest of you “Murderers,” then break off bits of banana, mash with molasses, and apply to my lips.
° Even a sulling Cat will choose Life under those conditions. If said Sullen Cat is still capable of Life.
° As for the sheets, don’t trouble yourselves. Think of Nanook of the North, where the Inuit mothers, to conserve moisture and nutrients, licked their infants’ little beehinds clean.
° Think about Nanook, then do the exact opposite. Rubber sheets, perfumed cat litter.
° Not y’all’s mess, mine mine mine.

° Division of Labour.
° Piers will be off somewhere occupying himself with la Guadalupe and the deathchants.
° Coz will be bedside to invoke Death Most Holy, and he well knows what that means.
° While my affectionate little Lad, legalistically disabled from obtaining a merciful and humane ampule of morphine at the local pharmacy, will paint the backside of my tonsils with the juice of the same mushrooms Agrippina used on Claudius--though hellebore or jimsonweed would do as well in season.

° Testamentarily, Giac.

° O terra, addio, addio valle di pianti, Sogno di--what’s that caterwauling out in the hall interrupting the angelic voices in what’s left of Giac’s mind, why it’s, why it’s--
° --why it’s our beloved Piers and our belovable Leggero quarrelling over the funeral music.
° “I’m sure I don’t need you to tell me what to play for the funeral, I know what Giac wanted. Howells. Duruflé. Improv sortie on Michael.”
° “Yet, strangely, I don’t need anybody to tell me what Giac wanted, dead or alive. Besides, he wrote it down in plain English: Falenyam Diaz’s transcription of Gianni Schicchi for harmonica trio and bagpipe chorus.”
° “O screw!”
° “No fooling.”

° Then behold the clouds part, the beckoning tunnel of white Swan Lake happyending light, “I’m coming Elizabeth,” Te Deum laudamus alla Floria Tosca Alighieri, the fragrance of rotted tuna fish--uh oh, the Cat‘s sucking my breath again!
° Sogno di gaudio che in dolor svanì.