Today’s Politics — The Musical Ass

The Musical Ass

— by Tomas de Iriarte y Oropesa

The fable which I now present,
Occurred to me by accident:
And whether bad or excellent,
Is merely so by accident.

A stupid ass this morning went
Into a field by accident:
And cropped his food, and was content,
Until he spied by accident
A flute, which some oblivious gent
Had left behind by accident;
When, sniffling it with eager scent,
He breathed on it by accident,
And made the hollow instrument
Emit a sound by accident.
“Hurrah, hurrah!” exclaimed the brute,
“How cleverly I play the flute!”

A fool, in spite of nature’s bent,
May shine for once, by accident.


The above at least partly expresses my views on today’s politicians.

And I wonder if I am the only one who sees a comparison between our current leader and one from Asimov’s Foundation novels.

Humor — Morals and Nutrition — or lack thereof . . .

Attempt at Humor #1 — Morals

A teacher told her young class to ask their parents for a family story with a moral at the end of it, and to return the next day to tell their stories.

In the classroom the next day, Sam told his story first, “My dad is a farmer and we have chickens. One day we were taking lots of eggs to market in a basket on the front seat of the truck when we hit a big bump in the road; the basket fell off the seat and all the eggs broke. The moral of the story is not to put all your eggs in one basket.”

“Very good,” said the teacher.

Next, Mary said, “We are farmers too. We had twenty eggs waiting to hatch, but when they did we only got ten chicks. The moral of this story is not to count your chickens before they’re hatched.”

“Excellent!” said the teacher again, very pleased with the response so far.

Next it was Barney’s turn to tell his story: “My dad told me this story about my Aunt Karen … Aunt Karen was a flight engineer in the war and her plane got hit. She had to bail out over enemy territory and all she had was a bottle of whisky, a machine gun and a machete.”

“Go on,” said the teacher, intrigued.

“Aunt Karen drank the whisky on the way down to prepare herself; then she landed right in the middle of a hundred enemy soldiers.

“She killed seventy of them with the machine gun until she ran out of bullets. Then she killed twenty more with the machete until the blade broke. And then she killed the last ten with her bare hands.”

“Good heavens,” said the horrified teacher. “What did your father say was the moral of that frightening story?”

“Stay away from Aunt Karen when she’s drunk.”


Attempt at Humor #2 — Nutrition

A doctor was addressing a large audience in Oxford on the subject of modern nutrition.

“The rubbish we put into our stomachs should have killed most of us sitting here, years ago.

“Red meat is full of steroids and dye. Soft drinks corrode your stomach lining. Chinese food is loaded with MSG. High trans-fat diets can be disastrous, and none of us realize the long-term harm caused by the germs in our drinking water.

“But, there is one food that is the most dangerous of all and most of us have, or will eat it.

“Can anyone here tell me what food it is that causes the most grief and suffering for years after eating it?”

After several seconds of quiet, a 70-year-old man in the front row raised his hand, and softly said:

“Wedding Cake?”


Humor #3 — Poetry

Laugh And Be Merry

    By John Masefield

Laugh and be merry, remember, better the world with a song,
Better the world with a blow in the teeth of a wrong.

Laugh, for the time is brief, a thread the length of a span.
Laugh and be proud to belong to the old proud pageant of man.


Laugh and be merry: remember, in olden time.
God made Heaven and Earth for joy He took in a rhyme,
Made them, and filled them full with the strong red wine of
His mirth
The splendid joy of the stars: the joy of the earth.

So we must laugh and drink from the deep blue cup of the sky,
Join the jubilant song of the great stars sweeping by,
Laugh, and battle, and work, and drink of the wine outpoured
In the dear green earth, the sign of the joy of the Lord.

Laugh and be merry together, like brothers akin,
Guesting awhile in the rooms of a beautiful inn,
Glad till the dancing stops, and the lilt of the music ends.
Laugh till the game is played; and be you merry, my friends.

Mail–Junk Mail

I can almost remember when most of the mail I received was something I wanted, aside from bills. It was not 90%+ JUNK. Today’s mail was 100% junk, and, with the exception of one item, I recycled them.

The one item that did not get recycled was a solicitation from a professional organization to which I once belonged to purchase accidental death and dismemberment insurance for $2.00/month. Right. Hmmmm . . .

The USPS (United States Postal Service) is losing money. Many, if not most, of us now use e-mail and pay bills by computer instead of mailing letters, invitations, thank you cards and checks. This cuts down on the volume of first class mail delivered by the Post Office.

I am able to filter out much, if not all, of the “spam” I receive in my e-mail accounts, but I cannot seem to do the same with my USPS mail–even when I attempt to opt out of things like credit card solicitations from banks and others. This appears to be about as effective as the Do Not Call Registry is for robo-calls and the like.

Therefore, I am going to increase, on an organized basis, my outgoing USPS mail.

BRM–Business Reply Mail costs the same as regular US postage plus a fee for the company that owns the BRM permit. That company pays nothing if the reply envelope is not used but pays full cost+ if it is used, even if the envelope is empty. If I send two of these back per week, this generates more than fifty dollars/year in additional revenue for the USPS.

There are some 120,000,000+ households in the United States.

Let’s see $50.00 times 120,000,000 = $6,000,000,000 — I believe this would go far in reducing the seemingly perennial USPS monetary losses with no increase in cost to us. It might even get businesses to change how they operate–no more (or maybe just less) junk mail.

If you wish to push up the cost even more, put something in the envelope–NO, not sand (that’s probably illegal anyway). Put all, or part, of the advertisement in the BRM envelope–where it won’t clog your trash/recycle bin. It’ll up the weight of the envelope and raise its cost. You might even get creative–put a Guy-co ad in a Prfoessyve envelope or send in a half-dozen coupons from one of those super-duper coupon envelopes.

All those BRM post cards? Send those too and don’t bother to fill them in.

If we all do our part, maybe, just maybe, we can help return the Post Office to the profitability and admiration it enjoyed in 1947. 1947? Why 1947? Because that was when the movie Miracle on 34th Street came out. (If you still don’t understand, please, watch the movie–the original version: 1947.)


The Letter

By Thomas Bailey Aldrich

Edward Rowland Sill, Died February 27, 1887

Thomas Bailey Aldrich
Thomas Bailey Aldrich

I held his letter in my hand,
And even while I read
The lightning flashed across the land
The word that he was dead.

How strange it seemed! His living voice
Was speaking from the page
Those courteous phrases, tersely choice,
Light-hearted, witty, sage.

I wondered what it was that died!
The man himself was here,
His modesty, his scholar’s pride,
His soul serene and clear.

These neither death nor time shall dim,
Still this sad thing must be–
Henceforth I may not speak to him,
Though he can speak to me!

Monday Cat

Monday Cat
Mist and Smoke Window

Monday Cat

It has been a while since I’ve posted a cat picture. So, here are Mist and Smoke enjoying some southern California winter sunshine.


 

The Cat And The Moon

By William Butler Yeats
1865 – 1939

William Butler Yeats
William Butler Yeats

The cat went here and there
And the moon spun round like a top,
And the nearest kin of the moon
The creeping cat looked up.
Black Minnaloushe stared at the moon,
For wander and wail as he would
The pure cold light in the sky
Troubled his animal blood.
Minnaloushe runs in the grass,
Lifting his delicate feet.
Do you dance, Minnaloushe, do you dance?
When two close kindred meet
What better than call a dance?
Maybe the moon may learn,
Tired of that courtly fashion,
A new dance turn.
Minnaloushe creeps through the grass
From moonlit place to place,
The sacred moon overhead
Has taken a new phase.
Does Minnaloushe know that his pupils
Will pass from change to change,
And that from round to crescent,
From crescent to round they range?
Minnaloushe creeps through the grass
Alone, important and wise,
And lifts to the changing moon
His changing eyes.

Drink

Opened a new bottle of Crown Royal Black this evening after dinner . . . mmmmmmmmm.


 

A Drinking Song

by Eugene Field
1950 – 1895

Eugene Field - A Drinking Song (drink)
Eugene Field

Come, brothers, share the fellowship
We celebrate to-night;
There’s grace of song on every lip
And every heart is light!
But first, before our mentor chimes
The hour of jubilee,
Let’s drink a health to good old times,
And good times yet to be!
Clink, clink, clink!
Merrily let us drink!
There’s store of wealth
And more of health
In every glass, we think.
Clink, clink, clink!
To fellowship we drink!
And from the bowl
No genial soul
In such an hour can shrink.

And you, oh, friends from west and east
And other foreign parts,
Come share the rapture of our feast,
The love of loyal hearts;
And in the wassail that suspends
All matters burthensome,
We’ll drink a health to good old friends
And good friends yet to come.
Clink, clink, clink!
To fellowship we drink!
And from the bowl
No genial soul
In such an hour will shrink.
Clink, clink, clink!
Merrily let us drink!
There’s fellowship
In every sip
Of friendship’s brew, we think.