March 18, 2020

Life goes on...

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148 comments:

hstad said...

Thank you AA for this calming picture. I just wish our leaders and the MSM would just stop this B.S. about coronavirus and take a deep breath. This silliness is now out of control. To wit: "Due to the coronavirus Philadelphia Police" will no longer be making arrests...." Running the gamut from narcotics, theft, burglary, vandalism, stolen autos, etc. Real life you can't make this sh*t up!

Char Char Binks, Esq. said...

That's easy for you to say. Check your privilege.

traditionalguy said...

Reminds me of Bus Stop starring MM. It’s about midwestern folks.And that was Marilyn’s first role she tried to learn acting in after Acting School. What a waste for a really great sex symbol.

FullMoon said...

Credit to the people who rode those bicycles.

n.n said...

Life is an exercise in risk management, which rewards prudence and boldness.

Bushman of the Kohlrabi said...

I feel better now.

Evers now says buses are OK as long as they carry fewer than 2 passengers (counting the driver).

tim in vermont said...

The World Health Organization (WHO) tried to cam fears of a pandemic on Jan. 14 by repeating China’s claim that coronavirus was not contagious among humans.

Something was happening then... what was it? Oh yeah, the Democrats were trying to impeach Trump.

tim in vermont said...

If we can get enough immigration, possibly we can drive wages to zero given what is going on. Chamber of Commerce wet dream!

rhhardin said...

Noticing ordinary things is what Thoreau was writing about.

rcocean said...

But don't get on the bus to nowhere.

rhhardin said...

The bond market is making sense for a change, short term rates down long term rates up, as if anticipating inflation kicking in from the stimulus blast without factories opening to cover it.

Spiros said...

Life does not go on. This is unbelievably terrible. If some hack politicians (de Blasio for Christ's sake!!!) can shut society done, from restaurants to schools, due to a possible health disaster, what happens when the powers that be declare global warming an even greater threat to humanity? The incoming Democratic president and Congress can declare an emergency and assert authoritarian rule. And it will be Biden this time (get real about Trump, he's loathsome and there's no way he's winning again).

tim in vermont said...

Kelly Ann don’t take no shit https://twitter.com/alx/status/1240366830193082370

“Who waas it? Who said it?”

Same thing POTUS asked. It’s almost like they made it up.... Naah!

Jersey Fled said...

My young neighbor stopped over to check on my wife and I this morning. Nice of her to do that for a couple of old farts like us.

tim in vermont said...

"inflation kicking in from the stimulus blast without factories opening to cover it.”

That’s what I am thinking. A lot of the reason this doesn’t make sense is that peope are. seling everything to get cash, then not buying anything, not stocks, not bonds.

tcrosse said...

Does this bus go to the loop?
No, it goes beep-beep.

Gregg said...

Life goes off.

rhhardin said...

Imagine if Thoreau had had a decent internet connection.

Jersey Fled said...

I've lived most of my life within about 20 miles of Philadelphia. I went to college there, and worked there for about four years.

I don't go into Philadelphia now on a dare.

BarrySanders20 said...

I think in my prudence and boldness that, for the first time in my life, I will buy and learn how to use a firearm. Not out of panic, but out of caution given the recent exercise of police powers by the state.

tim in vermont said...

Trump has to put a tariff on Saudi and Russian oil.

stevew said...

Spring has beat a retreat, with hope a temporary one.

We're all bozos on this bus.

Ann Althouse said...

Life itself does go on. Something survives, in some form.

Anne in Rockwall, TX said...

I thought, "Well, the good thing about this whole staying in thing is Althouse will be a blast."

Wrong bovine-breath!

This one's touchy, that one is preachy, another is butt-hurt, and the holier-than-thou has reached epic proportions. It's as if people left their sense of humor somewhere out there.

Sheesh.

bagoh20 said...

Our idiot Governor here in Nevada made an incoherent, incomplete, and confusing announcement last night closing all inessential business in the state for 30 days. He panicked a whole bunch of people who are now congregating in stores to get what they expect to be hard to find. He convinced them to all run to high concentration locations and touch a bunch of stuff, then go home and unload it with your family.

Our company is not affected by the order as part of the supply chain, and we are not open to the public, but he also scared most of my employees into leaving work after I told them they could without getting in trouble since they were scared and/or desperate to get to the store for supplies. They will also be spending that time in much closer contact with far more people than they would have at work. He also reduced hours that stores can be open, which will concentrate even more people there. This need to do something, regardless of outcome is criminal. When this passes, he and others like him will claim they stopped the spread, while they likely increased it, or did nothing but reduce a lot of people's income, many who could not afford it. Nevada has had just one death, and it was a man already very sick. Nobody was panicked as they shut down casinos and hotels, but a politician had to make a big show of himself, and he managed to scare half the state, and some of them might be literally scared to death.

rhhardin said...

Something survives, in some form.

Derrida did an essay somewhere on the sur-. It would be enough to vive, you'd think.

Anne in Rockwall, TX said...

See what you've done?

https://www.lenconnect.com/news/20200317/deerfield-testicle-festival-on-hold

h said...

I'm not universalizing on this ("it's how I feel, so everyone must agree with me"), but I have seriously stopped (or reduced) watching/reading/listening to media. I think everyone has some kind of hidden (and mostly Trump related) agenda that I just don't have the energy to figure out and adjust for the specific biases that exist. Do media outlets (say Washington Post, which was my number one print media thing) keep track of their web hits? and have they (would they) notice people tuning out? And would that cause them to adjust their coverage? One thing I always return to in WaPo is crossword puzzles, and I've enjoyed some recipe columns (if you are at home here's a no-knead bread recipeyou ight want to try.) Will their internal diagnostics show that I'm not reading (and millions of people just like me are not reading Hah) the OMB articles?

tcrosse said...

What bagoh20 said. it was not made crystal clear whether the closure applied to liquor stores or pot dispensaries, which led to some panic buying at both. Meanwhile, it's difficult if not impossible to obtain staples.

Big Mike said...

My young neighbor stopped over to check on my wife and I this morning. Nice of her to do that for a couple of old farts like us.

Had much the experience with my neighbor, except he texted me instead of knocking on my door. Wonderful guy, and his kids couldn’t be nicer. Funny thing, he was trying to apologize for the noise his kids were making (three young girls + trampoline + add’l friends = loud) and I told him that his kids were the sound of life being lived.

tim in vermont said...

Somebody made a decision at the Bloomberg Channel, and it’s gone from hard news to Democrat Party shill. Right about the time Biden sewed it up. Oh well, it was nicewhile it lasted. Obviously the DNC war room has gotten back on it’s feet.

CharlieL said...

I appreciate the time you take in snapping and posting your pictures. Look forward to the sunrise pictures in particular. Thank you

Dave Begley said...

Bagoh2

Excellent analysis. The media and some in the government have caused a complete panic.

Althouse blog and Power Line are two of the only places of sanity.

China and the Fake News is going to pay a steep, steep price when this thing is over in 30 days.

And buy BRK.B. It is on sale. IMO.

Clyde said...

Ann Althouse said...
Life itself does go on. Something survives, in some form.


And we are the descendants of survivors, going all the way back to those scurrying little mammals watching the meteor take out the dinosaurs. Our forebears have survived worse than this.

BarrySanders20 said...

My grocery tally yesterday:
1 onion
1 orange
6 limes
1 bottle tequila
1 8 pack Guinness
1 6 pack Harp Lager
1 whole chicken
1 block cheese (this is Wisconsin)

Hunkering down!

rhhardin said...

Derrida, Living on / Borderlines, in Deconstruction and Criticism, ch 3.

mockturtle said...

At least we know now how our nation's citizens will respond to a crisis [whether there really is one or not] and the answer is: BADLY! So if nothing else we should learn from this experience.

Rockeye said...

I know that fence! I used to go running there all the time, before I became as broken down as I am now. It's still a nice walk, Picnic Point. If fact, I believe I saw Althouse/Meadhouse strolling there once.

rhhardin said...

The sur in survive, says yes to vive, to living. Reads it, affirms it and signs it.

Char Char Binks, Esq. said...

Bill Maher will probably get the recession he was hoping for, and very soon. Actually, most of the left has been hoping for it, and is using the Kung flu as a excuse to get it. This is no original thought on my part, but it bears constant repetition.

I predict it will backfire on them. People out of work, those impoverished by it, will put the blame where it belongs, I hope.

Dust Bunny Queen said...

We also are not watching the news. The internet is full of information and even that is depressing the Hell out of me. TV talking heads are stupid and annoying. TV news sucks. We check about twice a day to see if the world is still spinning. Morning about 6am after coffee and about 4pm for a few minutes. It is all virus news. I can't take it. Overload!!!!! Thank God for Netflix, Amazon Prime, DVDs and lots of books.

Other than being snowed in for several days...9 inches this morning..... we are doing fine. Hubby used the tractor this am to clear the drive and around the parking area... as we are expecting a delivery of work related supplies, and because he is bored to tears. He also cleared a space across the road in case the truck didn't want to chance the driveway/road and needed to turn around. Then he shoveled pathways to the workshop, to the pump house and to the bird feeders so I wouldn't have to slog through the snow to feed the birds. He is a PRINCE!!!

We had our corned beef dinner on the 16th. Yesterday, leftovers, from three days ago, pork cutlets picatta and asparagus. Corned beef sandwiches for lunch today. Probably will make corned beef hash in a few more days. I'm making fried rice tonight. One of our favorites. Rice, crispy thick bacon pieces, eggs, green onions, chopped carrots, red bell pepper, green peas, soy sauce, shichimi togarashi. One dish meal and good for breakfast. The ricotta pie is almost gone so tomorrow I'm making a carrot cake in a sheet cake pan and freezing half of it. Still more leftovers. Eat the fresh items, fruits and vegetables first.

Can't wait for the weather to turn so we can go outside and work and take some walks and get into the sunshine. There is so much to do.

Like BarrySanders20.....be prepared and be armed. I doubt we will have "uninvited guests" but you never know. Besides it is time to start culling the damned ground squirrels. They are emerging their nasty little heads from their burrows. We SEE you!!!

bagoh20 said...

"Life itself does go on. Something survives, in some form."

That's almost verbatim what the dictator of the Corona nation said last night on their tiny TV network before vowing to destroy the human race "before they get their stupid shorts on for summer". He also blamed the tiny fake news media for recent lost ground in China. The guy has charisma.

Lewis said...

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=wMykYSQaG_c,

Poor, naked wretches, where so e’er you are,

That bide the pelting of this pitiless storm,

How shall your houseless heads, and unfed sides,

Your loop'd and window’d raggedness, defend you

From seasons such as these?

King Lear Act III, Scene IV, Lines 28-32.

bagoh20 said...

Speaking of life going on, just how many American lives do you think will now only go on because of Trump's incredibly timely China travel ban during the highest Chinese travel season? Can anybody say "Orange Man Good", or maybe just "thanks"?

Fernandinande said...

Life itself does go on. Something survives, in some form.

Now with an extra serving of melodrama!

stevew said...

@BarrySanders20: Black and Tans? Among my favorites.

bagoh20 said...

We'll never know how many lives were saved, and those saved will never know they were saved. They will never know how close they came, and many will vote against the guy who saved them.

Lewis said...

0povženíhodný.

I remember your bedroom window
Staring at the snow and I wondering,
With pen in hand, at this new distance,
A foreign land and you too perversely so.
When you appeared it was always only
That tumbling extension of a clumsiness
I had rediscovered, the broken door,
A two foot jump, you collapsed upon me.
Pregnant with a new thing I was merely
‘Opovrženíhodný’, motiveless
And subterranean, like, you might have said,
Some crushed crab barely crawling for escape.
I was just brooding, I saw no reason
To move, perhaps, I was slightly shocked.

Lewis said...

Gardens.
‘In unsern Jugengarten führt strasse mehr.’
H. Hesse

What amused in the gardens we treasured
But never had was the pretence that somehow
We could abandon with our clothes our fear,
On certain rare, indeed impossible nights,
Those saturnalias, vague, as imprecise
As antediluvian grass, caress
The warm, illusory dream of our being
Ourselves alone. Among asphalt,
Embedded stone, between the slabs of urban business
Our toy soldiers fought, finally lost,
Slain on the battlefield of the interstice.

We still live in those cracks the best of council
Maintenance cannot fill, disillusioned
As to security, the uniqueness
Of its fauna, even that ossified
And precious ego we watered and wept over,
Kept secret, was proud of, itself
But one common blade of grass: picked, plucked, gathered
In our cities, pressed to that green and bitter dew
Of being human somewhere in the subsoil
We pretend to maintain a true home:
Place of temporary, shabby rooms,
Of ‘secret gardens of ‘childish fantasy’.

tim in vermont said...

"TV talking heads are stupid and annoying. TV news sucks.”

Yes. Not. just that, ESPN, which had been restraining themselves reasonably well, is breathlessly back into it. They have a s"ports hook" and they are running with it.

Back to NFL network.

Lewis said...

.



Park.

Parks the grace
Of a jaded place,
Rough wood seats
And winter mud
The kind of good
London understood.



Lewis said...

Sometimes.

Sometimes
In a pub’s borrowed chair
You sit there and smile:
Amused ghost of memory,
A lover’s tempting fantasy
Bidding that madness come.

It is pain that keeps me sane.

Tomcc said...

I do like the photo! Thanks for sharing them. Sometimes, I miss fresh snow. Portland has been quite nice the past few days; sunny and 60 degrees. On Friday I shall wash my car. On balance, I prefer March sun to March snow.

Mark said...

My half-used jar of salsa has fermented.

Bill, Republic of Texas said...

And buy BRK.B. It is on sale. IMO.

The way things are going, we'll all be able to buy BRK.A!

Lewis said...

it not you, 'you', you are just a 'feeling' - I'm sorry I cant stop laufing (that how they spell it!)

Laugh.

Like the wanderer and his shadow,
As tall as failure, you sit
In this mythical age of functional living,
Equality and race, god and his double,
Exhaling words a match may allow
Between cigarette and pen,
Writing ‘arse’ for a cheap bit of realism.

Lend me, you say, a message to hand over:
So much is about yet you cannot see it –
The heavy statues worked for others glory
Will always fall, noticed only
When the crowd is permitted a sacrifice,
Exhibited, appendages missing.

If all the flowers, herbs, trees of alien nature
Had that smile as their misjudgement
Could you still laugh at the folly of it all?
The rabbits, the foxes, the salivating wolves
Slapped as one slaps stone with the metal brightness
Of a crowds disillusionment, spat upon,
Could you be then still quite so curt
With your honesty and as if the failure
Was merely ordinary like a broken home?

bagoh20 said...

"My half-used jar of salsa has fermented."

I think that turns into tequila, or mescaline. Only one way to find out.

gilbar said...

China-owned social media site TikTok instructed its moderators to suppress posts by “ugly” and “poor” people in order to attract new users to the platform.

hmmm, Tiktok is one of our Beloved Professor Althouse's most favorite sites.
Is that BECAUSE it represents Fascist Totalitarianism? Or in spite of it?

gspencer said...

Brady becomes a pirate,

"Ah me new laddies we'll be having 'em walk the plank"

Lewis said...

.



Dialectic.


.I.

You deal only with the hard present,
Something I envy: your record’s written
By another, no one cares at the time
To stop you, drink doesn’t kill you or,
If it does, it’s at the end, a full stop
To who you are. We die, some of us,
Still incomplete and some whose life is nothing
But the presence of failure. I write this
Like a man who sits in the comfort
Of possibilities, the cobalt
Of a gun eyeing his talk of sophistries,
Entertained passion, solitude,
A neat cushion to back me up, stinking fear.
I don’t register what’s there.

Unlike you: you have the gun, I think.
As an aspect of that script I haven’t grasped
You turn this B movie into something more:
Like Marriott in ‘Farewell, My Lovely’
I’m the patsy, the limbo of certain guilts
Whose weaknesses ditch me in the end;
A clobbered beauty, corrupted by such
Expectation my body is forced beyond
What feeble reach I had into those other lives,
A sub plot that’s their harder climb.



.II.

Offended by the wrong words and never
Catching your welcome I retell mostly
A monologue of what could be done
Given conditions, appropriate sun,
Five mile wind, compliant interlocutors,
The usual list, verbatim anaesthesia
Of the irrepressible ego. Can’t be done.

Everyone expects, seconds before
The end, some kind of recognition:
Just the usual mechanics of the gun.
Except: I knew you before, before
The days of ‘hard drinking’ and searching out
Other people’s lives: a time when you were
Merely possible, not always there,
Treated as a friend of what was future.




walter said...

Buck Sexton
@BuckSexton
·
5h
There is a strong correlation right now between journalists who falsely claimed for 3 years that Trump was “doing Putin’s bidding” And those who are now doing Xi Jinping’s bidding by spreading covid-19 propaganda on behalf of Beijing

Inga said...

One nice development, my three daughters and myself are group texting each other multiple times a day everyday for the last week or so. We’d talk maybe every few days before the Covid, now it’s as if because we can’t see each other we have to stay connected by texts multiple times a day. A video of my two little grandsons dancing to a Michael Jackson video today because it was cold and wet and they didn’t go outside made us laugh. I wonder what kids will remember from this time of self isolation.

We’ve been talking about Grandma and Grandpa and the stories they told about the war years. When my daughters did their grocery shopping I told them to make sure to get extra cooking oil. My mother told us about how sad they were after the war when Europe was practically starving, that they had no fat or oil to fry their potatoes in because many times that’s all they could find to eat, or to just have some salt to put on them. My mother told us how they hiked into the countryside to go to the famers to try to barter or even beg for food from the farm because there was nothing to be had in the city.

We are so much more fortunate than those people after WW2 ravaged Europe, so much to still be thankful for.

Meade said...

"The sur in survive, says yes to vive, to living. Reads it, affirms it and signs it."

I'll heart that. And give a big AHA HA to the Thoreau line.

William said...

I was over the park earlier today. Life does indeed go on. There were gladiolus in flower, girls in yoga pants jogging, the first red flush of apple blossoms. But all was not idyllic. I heard two kids laughing. Who lets their kids out in the park to laugh and play? Scientific evidence reveals that an out loud laugh releases just as many droplets into the air as a sneeze. I urge all parents to supervise and discipline their kids regarding this vile and unsanitary habit....Also, I saw a guy whistling. While this is not perhaps so crude as laughing out loud, it is definitely an unhygienic habit that should be curtailed. But, all in all, except for these disturbing incidents, it was a pleasant day in the park.

Meade said...

"My half-used jar of salsa has fermented."

Hard salsa. Might need a designated driver. Not the time to risk an ER visit.

Lewis said...

.”



Child At The Window.

Raining again among the ash pots
And hardened flies of a garden.

And the expected face at the window
Seemingly wet, staring at the one broken tree
Toppled on the late roots of a burning.

Eyes amongst clogged weeds
Tossed through the sly greys of morn
The reception he demanded:

Blank and called at dawn
To witness the first vision
Of a broken, scattered soul
Ever to stay hidden
In destined torment
Of childish pains.



Laslo Spatula said...

This is a great trial run for how the government will need to function to feed recalcitrant people to the eventual Nude Green Eel.

Do we think the wrong people aren't taking notes?

The Patriot Act went from good intentions post-9/11 to being used for a fucking attempted Presidential coup.

The ramifications of these 'good intention' decisions today are going to be tomorrow's weapons of choice by the Deep State.

The road to Hell is paved with little hard candies that taste like cinnamon and paranoia. Keep licking.

I am Laslo.



Lewis said...

She.


.I.

It is not for this that I waited alone,
Listless afore a feeble fire,
The sun impatient to have done.
All the lighting bad no matter its source,
The coarse street shoppers shouting excitement
In fears oblivion: I was patient,
Reading horrid Milton, sipping cheap tea,
Smoking a haze of desire in troubled Pandamonia.
And those ‘after thoughts’ circling a vortex
In the blackened hole of incurable want.


.II.

To long and a chair to comfortable
Excusing the silence of passive desistance:
I claimed ignorance, then corruption,
Then the impossible greatness of the task
And so destiny: fated thus
To the eternal Ovidian whine,
Claiming sanctuary in exile.
The dark obliged, the nocturnal vigil,
The lack of vitamin D:
Cold, an empty gullet, the night.



.III.

One Sunday I ventured out:
The street was the same shabby bin
Of flowering tin and copulent flies.
I discovered the polluted sea
As I had discovered her before:
From the strand and at a distance,
Reflecting a sapien backside,
Resigned, as passive as a slave,
To complexions blare. And so,
Seeing the mutual indifference
Of man and water, I did not protest,
I certainly was not shocked,
I retreated back to my door:
Another forty days vigil
In the barrel of my bed,
Expecting Alexander
With a preprepared, laconic tongue
So to list instructions
Confused but tolerable.


.IV.

Next the eye saw around
The hostility of the times,
The self sacrifice requisite to repair
Deep holes in the fabric
Torn in an uncaring glance.
This was She who held the power to maim,
Taking what accident had gathered
In a forceful hands fine brutality.
Pain of a posterior enervation
Left the relics of charred anatomy
Scattered as an after burn
Whether the death, the caput mortuum
Of an alchemical change
Or the autograph of a miracle –
Who knows?

.v.

Who dances in the Elysian fields
Or laughs in the alley of posterity?
No songs past memories rest: all, all a ball
Of billowing winds wrapping chaos
In the cries of vulgar sentience;
Or the mechanics of bombardment
And the assorted atom contending
For upper air in feverish necessities,
Scratched epitaphs of void.
Death is a place past illusion
Where permanents and eternity
Are finally confounded
As dust across a plain
When a plain has gone.

tim in vermont said...

"One nice development, my three daughters and myself are group texting each other multiple times a day everyday for the last week or so.”

We have connected up with people in Holland who fell out of our lives decades ago.

Jersey Fled said...

When was the last time we had a pandemic where half the people infected don't even know they had it?

gilbar said...

He panicked a whole bunch of people who are now congregating in stores to get what they expect to be hard to find. He convinced them to all run to high concentration locations and touch a bunch of stuff, then go home and unload it with your family.

it's ALMOST Like,
the WHOLE POINT of the overreaction, is INCREASE the number of sick; to Justify the overreaction

Rory said...

Metropolitan Opera has announced next week's free streaming: seven straight nights of Wagner. Ring Cycle, Trannhauser, Tristan & Isolde, and Der Meistersinger. 29 to 30 hours.

Lewis said...

.



The street II.

Now and then a curtain flits and a stare
At second or third floor windows opposite,
Half inquisitive of hotel happenings,
Half irritated by mock grandeur,
Brute noise this particular Victorian,
Part empty site displays. It’s the habit
Of some drawn up to face, across the nightly peace
Of no mans land, the street, dull combatants
On each side: Perhaps poverty separates you
From the pub downstairs, a certain angst
About the pull of popular haunts,
Getting more than your fair share of inarticulate friends.
A chance modern law decides
Dividing speech and the neighbourhood,
Forming false battles, situating
Between you and it a televisual screen,
Your thought on some Heaven
Where face to face we met,
Your eyes on some dark glass of a window.
You’re seen, the curtains drawn.

It’s something to be remarked upon,
Odd how every night it is done
Not only by you but repeated
Down the street, each side a sentinel,
If not throwing sticks in a fire, then
Looking out to see who’s watching who,
Catching the nightly skirmishes that,
With not uncommon frequency, continue
To punctuate a phoney war. Now and then
That irregular exchange of cigarettes
Or your side strikes the light, mine offers the fag.
Usually, though, askers are causalities
Rejected by us both, mostly ignored,
Often sleeping somewhere out of sight,
Under a bridge or whatever bomb shelter
Accident has devised, they roll in slumber
Tight into a plastic bag or the damp,
Soggy cardboard once used to wrap our guns,
Tanks, communications, surveillance units.

It is to be remarked upon how little
I see of you, how quickly you disappear,
How suspicious of you and I this neutral,
Unneutral status makes us: Together
Manufactured means of war – now we test them out.

But I’m bored of killing, it’s become such a
Common exercise – I wish you’d sign a truce.

Michael K said...

My mother told us how they hiked into the countryside to go to the famers to try to barter or even beg for food from the farm because there was nothing to be had in the city.

A friend of mine was a child in Germany during the war. It was interesting to watch him eat an apple. None of this apple core stuff. He ate the whole thing, seeds and all.

William said...

I saw the first hald of Ryan's Daughter on TCM last night. I understand how people get upset over cultural appropriation. There must have been a flu outbreak among the Abbey Players. For some reason, David Lean cast all the leading players from among the ranks of American and English actors. They were all wildly miscast: Trevor Howard as a Roman Catholic priest. Robert Mitchum as a repressed Irish elementary school teacher who cannot sexually satisfy his wife. Sarah Miles as some kind of Irish Madame Bovary. There is no Irish Madame Bovary. They even had John Mills go where actors should not go. His character was supposed to be severely retarded and was fitted with gargoyle dentures to increase his ugliness. The villagers picked on him but not as much as the director and make up artist......God awful movie. Not a single genuine Irish gesture or accent in the entire movie. I wonder if David Lean was this wrong about Russia (Dr. Zhivago) and Arabia (Lawrence), and he got away with it.

wildswan said...

One thing to consider is that the young people "on the left" (which is all of them) have lots of small business people as friends. Their friends are running coffee shops, chocolate factories, small restaurants, artisanal beer-based pubs, farmers' market stalls and similar artisanal enterprises or they have made friends with the people running these places which millennials and snowflakes really like to visit. The regulations closing restaurants and other gathering places have devastated all such enterprises. These enterprises can't last more than three weeks without income without going under and these lefty young people are very upset about the economic ruin facing their friends.

It's also true that California's gig rules have devastated a similar group with a similar very large group of lefty young people as friends.

And, finally, the closing of restaurants is destroying small restaurants in which immigrant (often illegal) families from every country invested savings accumulated over five or six years with everyone contributing. This affects enormous groups of immigrants who are also saving with similar goals and all their friends and relations.

I don't know the answer but whatever relief is offered should be sure to carefully include these kinds of small businesses and give them the kind of help they need. Being leftys and illegals they aren't organized or accustomed to think out capitalistic policy solutions but that is what they need. Whatever happens, their thinking will be changed forever by these events and best that it changes in a good way.

Lewis said...

.

The Apology.


.I.

The heat folded in an airless layer.
So you see my seeming arctic heart
How foolish this tearful child and babbling eye
Which is drunk and staggers,
Broken below your stairs.

We never could lift up our waxen wings
Or lifted did not the hateful, burning accident
Dissolve then drown its flesh? You and I
Adrift among the pillared trees,
Charred in our two dreams wary sleep.
We float on the lazy but then unstoppable streams.

So, to be left in the arctic land,
Here, where the bell broods hollow.
Among the clattering ice
Of your eyes dream
Never where we so formed
Nor oned like our lips seal.

Then darling (you permit me thus?)
I have fought the darker things
That instant light extinguished,
That here with fortune rise.
And age but the second tide.
Oh, perhaps sensed beneath the skin
Youths wild but aesthetic bone.

Then how we might laugh, how dream
As the tedium formed stalagmites
Count our mortality.
Blushes for the flesh
And a pointed limestone world.


Yes. But love? Words that patter on the floor:
It will not utter, it will not speak, disclose.
Our memory will blow like dust in the common wind,
Absorbed in a million pores it will forget itself.

.II.

I have fought this long hard day to contain you
But you where ever braver than I:
Will I always, thus, fall under your hammer
Auctioned at the obscurest price?

And how, then, do the ages tell
You from your dalliance,
Those ages that could never tell
Old bones from new dust.

And how then, pray, will you find
A companionable skeleton
There for me to commune
Through it’s blown skin ribs?



.III.

Our talk has a fungal form
Or metaphysic and directed down
From some ill hell it wiry swells
Like creeping ivy through the gloom.
Sad and distempered a fiery rage
Infects its veins and illuminates
A wistful steam that pales the face.

And, how, across this space,
That when I look stretches dizzy,
As if with ambition coils the Earth,
Can we again drown the cold
In ignorant passion?
Our desires recoil and wrap
In frigid, spiritful fire
Till love is all but a little,
Indistinguishable, sanctuary flame
For how long burning?

If the branches here do touch
Can the steal there then melt?
And, if inflamed, would you despise
The uncontrolled, fast beating heart
Or, then, mourn ices wavering
Or unwished loss of our loved
Stone, statuesque, seeming godhead?



.IV.

Caught in the webbed distraction of a gaze
Buzzed impossibilities, Utopic dreams.
Your breath dragged at a thousand coattails
Saying seeming unity. I was aware of slurs
Genetic tales drowned in its inaction.

And you said: ”Then this sole point I put there?”
“Our land marks, thus devised in the conscience,
Display an open world, inessential.
Such mortality and such the way its tunes
Out echo as the corpse the body.” So thus I.



Dust Bunny Queen said...

Laslo The ramifications of these 'good intention' decisions today are going to be tomorrow's weapons of choice by the Deep State.

It is already happening in Californicateyou. Newsome waves his dictator wand and is taking property from people, commandeering hotels and motels. Ready to claim peoples rvs and trailers to house the homeless. Telling you that you can't go out if you are over a certain age. No arrests yet, but it will be coming. Closing businesses. Bankrupting and destroying. Taking your weapons. Search and seizure will be next. But...it is ok....because CORONOA VIRUS... and we are all gonna die....on a big heaping pile of toilet paper.

Inch by inch. Taking away the freedom of property, freedom to move. The people just shrug and try to tell themselves this is temporary. This is for the common good, they tell us. What is temporary will become permanent.

Trading freedom for safety is a fool's trade. It is the trade of those who will be serfs and subjects.

gadfly said...

What does the sign on the bus read?

Lewis said...

Lewis And Martina

L: A broken nose more expresses health
Than your ridiculous screams and cries.
I keep, at least, some human cowardice
At home. Making tea in the grubby room
but acknowledging this Angel. he will not,
For the moment, destroy me . That you wished
To deliver yourself to man was what disappointed.

M: There was no sense, speaking in the wrong language,
In any action. Neither theirs nor mine.
If I felt or smelt destruction don’t think of it
As intended. I have told people as, perhaps,
A piece of vanity, that I saw things.
Nothing was so crude. Only those who wished to love me.
They could not. Hate becomes, sometime, stronger than love.

L: And yet, for me, nothing was more ‘subtle’ than mine.
To you it was merely looks, a means of accommodating
Body to body and the dysfunction I must finally feel
When doubt had to sleep with both of us. I ached
And I ache everyday for what, well, I never wanted.
For I tried for merely a word that would say
You know me.

M: I know you but
You were not enough. Or never could be.
Listen, Lewis, I joy in those few months
When we really were discovering what it was
that always is so strange about each other:
Our mortality, our distant death, our always otherness.
Don’t you see – I have gone there,
I have lost you,
I have lost myself. And your child
Is the only human word I can now discover.
I hate you. You were not an Angel. I hate myself
For saying this. How could I demand this impossible?

L: No, you could not. And yet you, O beautiful you,
had a right to. You had a claim on an Angel.
But he did not come. Only me. I love you.

M: But you, my fool, my once-was-guest, remember:
Love cannot be there merely to please you.
We women are accused of eating hearts –
it is not us but God that burns your soul,
it is not I, it is never I, but these fragments,
These joys and sorrows, this ecstasy you refuse
To forget. Don’t forget. I may be mad
But I do not miss the compliment.
For in a glass I joy greatly at what memory can produce.
The happiness of a boy who cried “I love you!”
Because he had never loved before nor has since.

L: I had never loved before nor have since.

Lewis said...

Miss Anne Althouer, thanks for allowing me to be stupid!

sinz52 said...

Jersey Fled asked: "When was the last time we had a pandemic where half the people infected don't even know they had it?"

HIV.

Medical science didn't even understand HIV until it was too late.

Achilles said...

Laslo Spatula said...
This is a great trial run for how the government will need to function to feed recalcitrant people to the eventual Nude Green Eel.

Do we think the wrong people aren't taking notes?

The Patriot Act went from good intentions post-9/11 to being used for a fucking attempted Presidential coup.

The ramifications of these 'good intention' decisions today are going to be tomorrow's weapons of choice by the Deep State.

The road to Hell is paved with little hard candies that taste like cinnamon and paranoia. Keep licking.

I am Laslo.



I Think everyone is taking notes.

And there are more than two columns.

I think this is all coming to a head sooner rather than later.

China is going to fall and they are going to take the media and many other allies with them.

tim in vermont said...

Everybody is so impressed with what Taiwan did, contact tracing people through cell phones with software likely developed to track dissidents.

tim in vermont said...

Chris Hayes (Blue Check) says that this proves we can afford the Green New Deal.

Meade said...

"Life goes on..."

La la how the life...

mockturtle said...

Achilles predicts: China is going to fall and they are going to take the media and many other allies with them.

Clouds, silver linings...Gordon Chang has been predicting their economic collapse for decades but this might be that last fatal straw.

Guildofcannonballs said...

Life, for some, did go on until Althouse-like simulacrums of people demanded abortion like crack dealers increasing the demand for their product, which resulted in no life (both ways), going nowhere. Where there is any life snuffed out, the snuffers will be sure to argue taxpaying dollars must be spent otherwise we are an immoral people.

I prefer crack dealers to abortionists.

mockturtle said...

The people just shrug and try to tell themselves this is temporary. This is for the common good, they tell us. What is temporary will become permanent.

Yes, officials never relinquish power once acquired.

Meade said...

"What does the sign on the bus read?"

I'll give it a shot. Driver will pull to the curb and kill bus engine if you don't refrain from yelling in his ear or otherwise impeding the safe efficient operation of this vehicle.

Amiright?

Mark said...

One thing the government could do economically is to decree a "timeout." That at the end of this, effectively the last two/three/four weeks did not happen. Kind of like changing the clocks for daylight saving time.

Thus -- no interest accrued on loans, no past due rent or mortgage owing, including on commercial leases. Rather, economic time simply stops for a few weeks and we pick up exactly where we were at the end of February.

FullMoon said...

It is already happening in Californicateyou. Newsome waves his dictator wand and is taking property from people, commandeering hotels and motels. Ready to claim peoples rvs and trailers to house the homeless.

And, residents burned out by 2018 Camp Fire still fighting with bureaucracy to get homes rebuilt..

robother said...

Our mammalian ancestors didn't want to get too big before that meteor. "I think that Dino sawr us!"

Guildofcannonballs said...

I prefer self-law and lawyers starve, versus everyone always gets hit again and again and again and lawyers mint.

80% plus. Use all your methods and magic and unbiblical definitions.

Shakespear, which isn't taught but learned, knew the urge to hate the cunts profiting from society's suffering.

We all know better than Shakespear how we've been taken advantage of by those in a position of trust, starting with ...

reader said...

Mark

My husband and I were joking about a “do-over” a la Tom Clancy.

tim in vermont said...

People who say it’s not conservative to give workers money, well, it’s not conservative to shut down people's livelihood without compensation, certainly.

I really don’t give a fart what’s conservative or not, BTW.

FullMoon said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Guildofcannonballs said...

I meant to say, but didn't, and that is on me, as a bad, that the conditions that have lead to suffering, of society writ large, are caused by attorneys taught by sociopathic nihilists, too dumb to understand when you argue life is yours to argue, such as the lives within womb, that is the only lesson entombed.

Your hate of that within the wombs has said more than you ever could hope to clarify or un/dis/non devil.

iowan2 said...

My mother told us how they hiked into the countryside to go to the famers to try to barter or even beg for food from the farm because there was nothing to be had in the city.

and a reply

A friend of mine was a child in Germany during the war. It was interesting to watch him eat an apple. None of this apple core stuff. He ate the whole thing, seeds and all.


Part of the communication break down, is the current population has never been hungry, never had tires and gas rationed. My parents were kids at the tail end of the depression, and fought in WWII. Actual hunger is just a far away concept. Going without staples, is something to read about in fiction novels, like Hunger Games. The fact is, we are all living better than Kings 400 years ago.

Lewis said...

What is aesthetec said Dujnoan actuaully I was thinkinking- yes of Byron - but more of Mozarts Don Giovvani and, then, Kiergegarrds 'Idea' , who I'm reading, to. When I was a kid I read everything but ,then, I got to 35 and I stopped

The Cracker Emcee Refulgent said...

“Life goes on

Not for some.

Baltimore Mayor Begs Residents To Stop Shooting Each Other So Hospital Beds Can Be Used For Coronavirus Patients”

Absurdity so great it defies hilarity. An unacceptable level of violence? How many murders are you good with?

How could anyone vote Democrat? Another absurdity that defies hilarity.

Mark said...

If we listen to the people who insist on a two percent fatality rate, and that everyone will get it, that means that four or five of the regular readers of this blog and probably at least one regular commenter will be dead of coronavirus in the next few months.

Mark said...

Another way of putting it is -- How to have fun with averages.

Mark said...

Problem is that averages don't always present an accurate picture.

Lewis said...

Stop being a sentimental, self-indundulgent mororon - this will pass - and,maybe, you wont - tough, tough, tough - maybe I wont - tough!

Lewis said...

What I care about, realy care about, is civilisation. Not human beings but Ideas.

pacwest said...

I went to the local market to pick up a few thing about 3pm. Lines and lines. I'm outta there. Went back at 11pm. Three customers in the store and the employees were restocking. A veritable cornucopia. If a governor reduces a stores hours he is a moron of the first order.

Rick said...

Thus -- no interest accrued on loans, no past due rent or mortgage owing, including on commercial leases.

No payroll would suck.

Mark said...

Me? I would advise prudent precautions, etc., including some spiritual purification in addition to bodily sanitation, but also simply let go of anxieties and trust in the providence of God.

Brandy said...

The Dane County and Madison Public Health put up a website to give information on COVID-19.
They were nice enough to include a page for you to report gatherings of 10 or more.
Nothing like reporting neighbors. Or churches.

https://publichealthmdc.com/coronavirus/report-a-mass-gathering-covid-19?fbclid=IwAR30fna1YBJBOzCq4LE9eCqPjmBrLjt7wX6QYbVCbyLcRZYS4gSkX5_QPGA

Guildofcannonballs said...

"Yes, officials never relinquish power once acquired."

Okay, I officially demand you give me all your money (no offense, I don't care about your pussy) and I do it officially. I won't relinquish it neither. Just give it up. You expect it from everyone, so now I am everyone.

althouse.blogspot.com has the link you can contribute to if at any moment you feel capable of being worthy of.

Guildofcannonballs said...

"v
Guildofcannonballs said...
Life, for some, did go on until Althouse-like simulacrums of people demanded abortion like crack dealers increasing the demand for their product, which resulted in no life (both ways), going nowhere. Where there is any life snuffed out, the snuffers will be sure to argue taxpaying dollars must be spent otherwise we are an immoral people.

I prefer crack dealers to abortionists."

Hey when Kings pimp.

Mark said...

Meanwhile, I was able to see a couple episode of series nine of Doc Martin, but that's all. Waiting for when, if ever, they show it on PBS.

Guildofcannonballs said...

To an Althouse, it's really easy and simple.

Everything makes me money unless white men talk.

White men talking ...

...

FullMoon said...


Baltimore Mayor Begs Residents To Stop Shooting Each Other So Hospital Beds Can Be Used For Coronavirus Patients”

Absurdity so great it defies hilarity. An unacceptable level of violence? How many murders are you good with?


If they were proficient, could kill instead of injure. But, noooo, they just gonna spray bullets randomly instead of taking the time to be accurate and do a good job. Public school education, no doubt..no more grades based on performance leads to this kind of sloppiness.

tim in vermont said...

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/coronavirus-us-cases.html

We will have a good idea what we are working with in two weeks, once testing is rolled out, I guess. Maybe we can restart the economy then. Nobody is willing to be responsible for 3 million deaths due to half measures when we don’t really know the numbers. Hopefully the numbers are better. The lying ChiComs have revised their death rate due to the Wuhan Flu down to 1.4%, which is still pretty steep.

Ken B said...

Aunty
Indeed.
They lied about its spread when it started. They lied about its spread when infected people from Wuhan flew to Italy and Iran in large numbers. They lied to the WHO about it being spread by people as late as January 20 this year, when the WHO put out a disastrous “no human to human infection” notice. They destroyed evidence. They probably killed whistleblowers. They expelled reporters. They hid, covered, lied, killed.

tim in vermont said...

Peer reviewed controlled study done in France with 40 patients ill with coronavirus shows chloroquinine effective against it.

https://twitter.com/PrisonPlanet/status/1240451637195558914

Maybe we don’t even need a vaccine.

Maillard Reactionary said...

"We're all bozos on this bus."

Now, that's a sentiment I can agree with. Especially when Lewis has been drinking.

I'd like to have back now the hours I spent waiting for the bus, before I owned a car.

I won't happen, of course. Tough noogies, bozo.

Guildofcannonballs said...

One of the best jokes ...
Shea just did 1000.

Guildofcannonballs said...

30 years of taxpayers alas one must concluede "derp derp you hateful phillostine" okay we will just let it go (per the pictures showing).

Guildofcannonballs said...

As a non-intecluel, as a non Irish.

I, Irish, certainly know Satan.

donald said...

My girlfriend has not left the house since Sunday and is now wearing gloves. I just flew to three cities in two days. We ain’t gonna make it.

FullMoon said...

When the panic is over and many businesses are gone, those people previously employed by said business will all be looking for jobs elsewhere. Jobs that no longer exist. When all clear is given, not gonna be like turning the switch back on and everything good as before.



One thing to consider is that the young people "on the left" (which is all of them) have lots of small business people as friends. Their friends are running coffee shops, chocolate factories, small restaurants, artisanal beer-based pubs, farmers' market stalls and similar artisanal enterprises or they have made friends with the people running these places which millennials and snowflakes really like to visit. The regulations closing restaurants and other gathering places have devastated all such enterprises. These enterprises can't last more than three weeks without income without going under and these lefty young people are very upset about the economic ruin facing their friends.

It's also true that California's gig rules have devastated a similar group with a similar very large group of lefty young people as friends.

And, finally, the closing of restaurants is destroying small restaurants in which immigrant (often illegal) families from every country invested savings accumulated over five or six years with everyone contributing. This affects enormous groups of immigrants who are also saving with similar goals and all their friends and relations.

Mark said...

Chloroquine plus azithromycin.

Guildofcannonballs said...

God loves all.

Guildofcannonballs said...

"It's like th3 oldl= lerses I jut n=t seet, lik a loney fall, it's A lONGLEY .

ANT THE don't matter.

Guildofcannonballs said...

How close to abortion's reality are/is the host.

Mark said...

One of the human replicators is in love with Sam.

Guildofcannonballs said...

Logic'd demands are humerous but only with Satan.

walter said...

Blogger Aunty Trump said...
Peer reviewed controlled study done in France with 40 patients ill with coronavirus shows chloroquinine effective against it.
--
A certain commenter from Michigan is working on becoming a POI via G&Ts.

Guildofcannonballs said...

It used to be standard to assume competence in certain hard-to-get-into fields.

The reveralledly mostful Althouse voted Hillary!.

How could any logical entity take for real the Hillary! voting Althouse?

Shame isn't in her, but if it were a capable emotion, then Althouse as it were would adjust the cathartic Hillary voting recognition.

FullMoon said...

99% of Those Who Died From Virus Had Other Illness, Italy Says

Guildofcannonballs said...

The 99.9 per cent that have never heard of Althouse, I agree, have it much better than me.

Guildofcannonballs said...

Once the fierce Democratic warrior just keeps thinking and writing "derp derp things confuse me derp derp" after 3 decades of hating Reagan and Buckley we know we win.

Unlike Althouse, we want (the) American to succeed.

Althouse can't find another locale, she can only grift from American love of decency.

Guildofcannonballs said...

I've done much more than support Abortion supporters.

Will I again?

If stupid and likelyfully toward Hell yes.

Don't think so.

walter said...

Fullmoon,
High blood pressure apparently the worst precondition.
Unfortunately that's 1 out of 3 US adults.

Narayanan said...

If certain diseases are to be treated with cocktail of drugs how does it make sense to analyze single drug studies?

Medicine is art.

Total Misunderstanding of scientific method by "credentialed elite."

Original Mike said...

"They lied about its spread when it started. They lied about its spread when infected people from Wuhan flew to Italy and Iran in large numbers. They lied to the WHO about it being spread by people as late as January 20 this year, when the WHO put out a disastrous “no human to human infection” notice. They destroyed evidence. They probably killed whistleblowers. They expelled reporters. They hid, covered, lied, killed."

Silver lining is if this leads to the great decoupling.

Mark said...

My power here in Arlington flicked off three or four times just now. A friend who lives about three miles away closer to Alexandria says that hers did too. At the same time.

Narayanan said...

Atlas Shrugged : Chapter 1:
Eddie Willers achingly wondering who will protect expert steering bus driver sets up mood for the novel.

mockturtle said...

Narayanan: Willers is one of the heroes.

mockturtle said...

Hydroxychloroquine, yes, the optimal form of quinine apparently. Sounds very promising! Hope we don't have to get it from China!

Guildofcannonballs said...


If Begley pays me $50,000 so I can give $18,034.09 to the greateast of the great, Mr. BetaMax3000, we can get this thing rolling.

We are all Beta since Beta showed us a decade ago, nothing we say or write here matters, save the host.

Beta has given me more pleasure via humor than any paid for it, to the extent it is disgusting,

Progs are probably right about the negativity of the folks here prone to commenting about "bedpan" sterilization.

How dumb,,, Dumb enough such that old and retired you denigrate working men and women, as if you didn't work. Or, if you deign classify your passion as work, your work was somehow decent, compared to the sterilizors.

I love sterilizors working late night long shifts even if old Dr.'s seemingly think it wise to brag about how they can take for granted their service through "witty" denigration of the environment, work culture, and ergonomic lackings.

Guildofcannonballs said...

In American, lots of folks work. Distinct from all other cultures, Americans are great.

Perhaps the American ability to adapt places us as supperior.

Oops, my Americanness says I goy to ada;t too p's wong

Guildofcannonballs said...

Althouse isn't able to separate 1.4 Billion Chinese and how she got rich.

The most honorable thing an American politician can do is Althouse.

Stay bought, Hillary loves you.

AllenS said...

I've been shopping for things that I need for my current project, so, I've been spending time in Fleet Farm, Menards, the local hardware store, and the steel distributor. All of them have the same amount of customers as usual. Striking up conversations, every single person that I talk to is pissed that this mild form of the flu is causing all of these disruptions. Most people have also expressed their opinion that the media is causing this because they want to hurt Trump.

bbear said...

Poet Lewis...

You have a very poetical diction but I can't make head nor tail of your stuff. Reminds me a bit of John Ashbery. Five or six years ago I took one of his poems and used all and only its words to make a new 'poem' of the same length. Printed both on the same sheet of paper. Fished it out this morning and find I now can't tell which is the original and which the transposition. A cautionary tale!...