like him

All alone. His causes forgotten by all, long ago, still carries on his fights talking to empty walls. Never changed his extremist opinions. Half paralyzed since 1991, carries on. Saw him several weeks ago, my far away cousin, and realized I have same readiness to fight to the end.

Mother tongue

Afternoon from the opera. In the break Angela Gheorghiu gives an interview. The interviewer asks her if she wants to say something in Romanian. Why? It is New Year time...your Romanian audience...So Angela says in Romanian "I have a cold today." How else would one use one's mother tongue but to complain about the life's little miseries...

me too warm

Like the Cheney guy. I'm lovable too and have no friends on Facebook. Unexplainable. I haven't shot any.

tired wit at high noon

if you look around the blogosphere, everything has been said. HATE it. There was a time i could be original..... To friends and family. Seemed original. Now, not really a plagiarist, but late with the bon mot. A reuser, a slow with the repartee. A copycat. Someone else's retort.

camelot, scamelot

Reading some older issues of nyrb. Children of famous writers exposing their parents.... describing their sex life...artistocracy. Reinforces my automatic mental association aristocracy ; decay. Ya, ya. The famous families defending the republic.

giving

True? People in red states giving more? Maybe there is more poverty? or maybe they give more to churches? Or there is too little government assistance.
Took my daughter to a wonderful show - Garden of Earthly Delights (uplifting or melancholic) and then to an italian resturant. The waiters were talking to us in italian, always a sign of bad food to come. The food was bad. Paid the 15% tip. As I was leaving, by the door, the old waiter came to tell me he had forgotten to add the tax. I shrugged and did not change the total. Hate these scenes that let us customers think I did not pay the bill.
On our way back, I started to regret. Cheap, did not give this old man his full tip. Working man on holiday season. On my daughter's birthday. Would it be a bad omen?
By 6th and Bleeker found a store with extra cheap xmas money holders. Tell; my wife will pay. The chinese teller asks: "Is he your dad?"
"Yes"
"Cheap dad"

Path not taken

Horizon not seen

So true

No more she said, he said. No more polls. Nothing. left to do but follow the economic disaster.

fyi

for Obama. Not tested, but with tested ideas, also hoping he will reform the democrats.

NOthing

Julian Barnes brings back Jules Renard. I knew by heart his Journal. Maybe that's why nobody likes me. Too unforgivng....

cherchez la femme

McCain had to spend a lot of time looking around...pregnant before marriage, arrested for drunk driving, a hunter and member of a secessionist right wing party, etc....your usual american woman. Beautiful. A republican woman. ... that is not a blonde.

no place to hide

Done with Mirrors was my (only) favorite blog. I don't even remember why. And now this...Sad. I wonder what the mirror was revealing or hiding. Afraid to be anonymous...

america in jeopardy

Today, Teen Jeopardy Final. The top contestant did not know how much 20% of 80 was. Didn't even try ..

Athanor, Belfegor

Avigdor was an old man who liked to sing at family reunions.

Genial George, Georgia and Geopo...

Between inflation or unemployment. Over 200 at the Olympics? How many countries are there? When will they stop …parading? Between boom and boom boom.

the cent of humour

Another brouhaha about cartoons. Or is it about humor? Or the too sensitive jew with money and power. Offended by Charlie Hebdo????

courage

I don't remember in detail the subject of The Cancer Ward, but remember the excitment of discovering what we all knew somewhat. Reading all night, scared, relieved that someone finally had written and published. The power of truth being said.

Horizont Horizon

site sight
horizon, horizont, oversite oversight overcite
homonyms homophones homographs heteronyms
Trying to give an intelectual turn to mispelling my previous tag? Was it really? Had checked before writting -10,100,000 hits for horizont on google.
schlemiel schlemazel

On the boat, at thirty.

After reading my paper the architect said: You write the same way you talk. He obviously meant Terrible and With an accent. Well, my English is almost self taught. I took only about one year of formal English classes. Bad English is not a badge of honor, but this is a country of immigrants...And should my speech be different from my writting?

Constantinople, yes. Surrealism, no

My aunt is hundred today. She visited Istambul on a cruise. it was during the time of the pasha. She remembers the black mosque. Or was it blue? But for whatever reason she can not recollect anything about Dali.

Born in the age of Google

My bright summer intern, student from a top college, did not know how to find a book in a library. Did not know what a library card or fiche was.

by chance

I wanted to call Free Xchange the previous post. I was trying to bring together the free (ideas) and Xchange (Xmerchant). Careless I typed Fair Xcahnge. Discovered later that there was a song with this title. By 2pac
A fair exchange, you know the game
We can do the damn thang, thang, thang

Buy low, sell high

To the judge installed by the party to represent the will of the people, he declared. “ I am a merchant of ideas”. The judge condemned him to twenty-five years hard labor. Seemd an unfortunate choice of words. Merchants exploit the working class. Speculators. Profiteers. The essence of capitalism.

Or did the judge have a problem with the selling of ideas. Selling for money? Making a profit on ideas? on ideas people would die for?

Later, for this stand he became a hero to many. But an altar does not certify the god and martyrdom does not verify a philosophy. And "merchant of ideas" I discovered, is a pretty common expression ...

the heat, the humidity or...

what is it when the guy with the fruit stand adds faster than the mit guy?

not fun, not fair

I was such a strong supporter last week. It didn't help, they did not select my "told you to buy a top of the line GPS" caption.

As a revenge here is a link to a serious critique.

bei mir ...

After six months of punching Hillary, Dowd cannot use satire or merely be funny at the expense of her favorite democrat. All she does is quote ...as her comrades are under attack. She looks like an union memeber who would not cross another local's strike line, but does not really feels for the strikers...

who laughs last

Didn't get it, at first. Then was amused. Then disheartened by the attacks on my favorite reading...New Yorker Cartoon Caption Contest.

Lost New Jersey

Noticed only today. The new building blocks my riverview. The building is by now half rented.

not even the idiots...

No market for poetry. My internet search could find only one idiot's guide for poetry. There is also one for slam poetry ...whatever this is.

Flaw (not tragic)

There are days now when my mother doesn't know my name or who I am am. Yesterday she was in good form. She remembered some. Do you have friends? Do you have friends to talk to? she asked me. No. Was not going to assuage.

Timely, this funny Dowd column today quoting a marriage counselor priest....“Never marry a man who has no friends,” he starts. “This usually means that he will be incapable of the intimacy that marriage demands...

Old age

Patephone. Gramophone. Phonograph. So many words to forget. Babyboomer antiquities. After fifteen minutes, the music stops. If you want to hear more you need to change the side. I like this. You actually listen to the music, not just have it as background. I just bought myself a turntable with special software to transfer the music to digital files. So I would't have to get up every fifteen minutes.

Madonna and ARod

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

discovery

All the time and effort I put in educating myself shows only in one area - crossword puzzles. Yesterday, while solving a crossword puzzle, discovered in Wikipedia that I have a Byronic soul. Oops, just admited to using the Internet for solving crossword puzzles.

Rem actam agis

You do something already done. The beauty of Latin texts is the economy of words. Rome on HBO. Talkative and with British accent. Latin du jour - vulgar....Rome actam agis.

Masterbuilder?

Watched Caro on C-span talking at MCNY about Robert Moses. Caro was asking how could an unelected person yield so much power. Undemocratic. But the title of his book is the Power Broker , correctly implying that Moses was only a conduit of power. Not power itself. Moses, no doubt had his own weight, but mostly was only allowing projects be done for those actually elected. He knew how to control or squeeze the sources of money. To spend the money you need big projects. Public works to improve the economy was the mantra of the New Deal. Moses was just finding what projects were worthwhile. He was projecting honesty and was trusted to understand the “public good”.

Of course power corrupts and forty years is too much. You start to believe to your own legend and infallibility. This happened to Caro also. His arguments went unchallenged for too long a time. Half a million displaced persons is a nonsense. Caro argues that the plight of those who suffered because of these projects needs to be heard. But is it democratic to have projects advancing the common good stopped by the few who are affected? Was eminent domain invented by Moses? Could Moses have demolished so much without strong political support? Of course not. Caro’s argument becomes thin. In fact it represents the recent history where any public work is blocked by special interests posing as victims.

The “Fall of New York” is placed on Moses lap by a very thin argument – when Moses left power, the city was in free fall. Did the burning of the Bronx result from Moses’ projects? Not so fast… What about now when New York is doing fine? Is this due to Moses? Not so fast also….

perpetum

An old Vietnamese saying goes like this - If you dispute a bright man you will lose fast, with a stupid you will fight forever. Sounds deep, but let's examine. If I am a bright man I will dispute forever the idiots, if I am a very stupid man I will also fight without end.Doomed to dispute...Of course, even a wise Vietnamese saying.

Had to delete and repost this ....Perpetum ...an unlucky title...

Who shall throw the stone?

Treading on Grass. When history happens all hands get dirty. Only parent with a pure life can teach their children to be good?

in gunther grass

End of the world statistics

Calling from school my daughter asked about rumors that it will happen next week. The end of the world. Not sure why she cares about this. It is a possibility but with a low probability. How many times did it happen before?
in current events

Wishbone

Wishbone is dead. My little white friend suffered, but never missed to show his happiness when I was getting close to him. And me? I thought his suffering was a pain. Was disappointed he was tired and old.

millionaire (in American dollars)

An immigrant's dream. I have two ways to get there. Design earphone wires that would not get tangled. Invent a new knot for shoe laces that would not get undone.

immigration

in the rain for a buck

I rarely take an umbrella along. When it rains I count on the power of capitalism to produce an umbrela salesman at every street corner of the city. And it does. It is always an immigrant.


immigration

down the drain

forgetting names is bad, but not remembering the name of your favorite beer .....

magic of Easter?

Today in Technorati Poesie is a tag more popular than Sex. Or is this just censorship?

in poesie

Saint Simon in previous post

see Godless Europe and "religion of humanity"

Henri de Saint-Simon
From everyone according to his capacity, to every capacity according to its work. The epigraph that appeared on the title page of Le Globe when the Saint-Simonians owned it. The latter part became ‘to each according to his needs’ in the Marxist version. See Georg G. Iggers, The Cult of Authority (The Hague, 1958), p. 151, note 3
It was said that he got his valet to wake him every morning with the words: ‘Rise, M. le Comte – you have great things to achieve.’ (Levez-vous, monsieur le comte, vous avez de grandes choses à faire.) For this anecdote see Louis Reybaud, Études sur les Réformateurs ou socialistes modernes (1840), chapter 2, ‘Saint-Simon et les Saint-Simoniens’: vol. 1, p. 67 in the 7th ed. (Paris, 1864). It also appears in M. G. Hubbard, Saint-Simon: sa vie et ses travaux (Paris, 1857), p. 9

humanity- a phantom? an idol? myself?

Brooks wrote yesterday the me-me-me selfishness, the occasional presumption that humanity exists to serve Team Clinton.
Everyday my father used to wake me up saying "Levez- vous Monsieur le Vicomte car vous avez de grands services a rendre a l'humanite" probably from Saint-Simon. And I have been trying. But now a middle aged man I wonder - is there such a thing - humanity?
wherever and whatever you are....

democracy in the eye of the beholder

A couple of weeks ago I posted my wish to win a cartoon competition. Obviously I was not alone. But one could give me credit for reconizing the international potential of cartoons.

Freedom for cartoons, but censoring the Stones.

cartoons in pataphysics

[rotten] Kingdom for a joke

Are you directly threatened by the cartoons? Do they attack people who threaten you? Is any type of attack fair game?
Tolerance? Are the cartoons on the side of tolerance? No. Does it matter if the demonstrators are as intolerant? No.
Are the cartoons necessary? No.
Does tolerance make you or your cause weaker? No. Tolerance is what you need when you are on the weak side or in a minority.
Do you need tolerance? Yes. Freedom of speech is tolerance par excellence.
Can a cartoon kill? Yes, if you have the sense of humor. How do you fight a cartoon? By telling the truth.
Is a cartoon propaganda? Many times. Do they dehumanize? Many times.
Are they funny???
My father was not a courageous guy. At all, but risked going to prison many times for a good joke. A good joke needs to reflect the truth. It is many times the only weapon allowed to the weak.
are they funny?

Isn't the sense of humour a proof of elevated humanity?
cartoons
in pataphysics

Encounters

On Broadway. Met an old friend. Talked only politics. To avoid talking about ourselves. [and the truth]
On Fifth Avenue. Where else? was Repin and the Barge Haulers of the Volga - accompanied by paintings of the socialist realist school.

wrong address

Wrong David Brooks. What is this guy's merit? Salesmanship? Government connections?

The story is probably planted by NYT to catch count those that do not subscribe to their timeselect but would like to read David Brooks.

in David Brooks

tribunal

Honest evaluation of the case for going to war. Impossible imperial conclusion. What remains valid from the original case is flimsy. It could apply to too many other countries.
of saddam
in trial