the convoy is over

a reading from the book of SARS-CoV-2 4:12

summary of manafort's DC sentencing memo

gist:

his crimes aren't so bad.
and he hardly did 'em.
and other people do 'em unpunished too.
and you'd never have noticed but for that other thing.
and you didn't charge any crimes for that other thing (proving his innocence of crimes involving that other thing)
so it's hardly even fair to punish him for crimes he did do.
and they're hardly crimes.
and he has pleaded guilty and it was accidental. and he has taken full responsibility.
but for the crimes he's a good guy: 13 pages of hagiography and he's old.
prison's tough on the elderly.
and gout.
and his reputation has been damaged.
and his money-laundering business has suffered.
and anyway he hardly did those technical crimes which aren't so bad anyway.
and he cooperated but for a couple lies and has taken full responsibility for these hardly-crimes.
and the lies only represent fleeting moments of 12 otherwise unabated hours of truthfulness.
there are some guidelines.
they don't help us unless you appreciate how these gossamer crimes evaporate when you look hard at 'em.
the other guys say he hasn't taken responsibility but that isn't fair.
and he shouldn't have to take responsibility.
and he has anyway, all the responsibility for those inadvertent technical hardly-crimes.
so you should go easy on him.
and he'll be punished for those other related crimes in that other jurisdiction, so.
hasn't he been punished enough already?
here follow 30 pages of testimonials from people who think poor ol p.j. is a good guy who likes beer.

memo.

ebenee-zing!-er scrooged

the good you do comes back to you

rollin' with it

i am acquainted with a four-year-old who, after five months immobilized in spica casts under a tentative diagnosis of osteogenesis imperfecta, over the past fortnight, has been diagnosed with hepatoblastoma, biopsied, has endured the installation of a central line, a day or two of intravenous morphine, and several infusions of his first course of chemotherapy.

tonight he wants to eat sushi.

hey, i said "shhhhhushhhh!"

After a pleasant day at the Fort Frederick 18th Century Market Fair, up Indian Springs, Big Pool way, gawking at sutlers' wares and costumed French and Indian War reenactors, my father took me to closing night of the Silver Spring Stage production of Peter Morgan's play Frost/Nixon, directed by Kevin O'Connell. It was an excellent production marred only by the audience. I don't really want to belabor the faults of the many people around me and recount my several related bon mots, which, while clever, would not show me in any better light than all those bourgeois cretins.

But it bears noting that, in a setting where all already are agreed that making voluntary noises is disruptive and disrespectful of the performers and audience if not downright antisocially rude, and one party in that audience seems to have forgotten this or to have other priorities for a moment, those among the erstwhile silently attentive righteous who would make noises in order to correct the offender's behavior are no help at all. This, though, is standard: Someone will whisper or mutter to the person next to them, and two or three people will shush at that person.

a mordant mordent

"Why make things more tense than they already are?"

she said and then
she threw back her head
and laughed like everybody
was doing it

and suddenly, uncomfortably
everybody was

the word for the savages

every People call themselves “the People”
we are the People they say and can’t believe they
call themselves “the People” too, instead of something
more descriptively true, like the primitives or the savages.

the Language of the People lacked the word for
people-who-are-not-people-as-much-as-we-are-people
until a foreign word meaning in its foreign tongue
“the People” was adopted for that purpose.

advancement potential

brought to you by your friendly neighborhood reader (and photographer) of signs:


ain't that the truth.

what, a whole pair?


which makes me, dear reader, reflect whimsically about being a retailer with malicious signage: i'd like a big black and white sign reading "Buy one, get one," in a clear, no nonsense typeface, to hang behind the financial transaction authorization terminal, and a smaller one, in red script, reading "Thank you for reading attentively," to hang nearby and point at when customers try to argue.

duali-tease

dharma books read, 10;
time spent in sitting practice,
none: bodhi svaha!

fun fun fun til daddy takes the gun away

Remember that time when someone went on a shooting rampage and a whole bunch of unarmed nonbelligerents were injured and killed before the shooter turned the gun on himself or was gunned down by the professionals?

Remember when all those people who equate increased private gun ownership with increased safety and freedom from crime for all suggested that this sort of thing would not happen if only everybody were carrying?

Presumably, the logic runs thus: In that classroom or workplace or movie theater where all of those present are carrying a firearm and maintaining perfect situational awareness while studying or working or taking in the blockbuster with their kids, immediately upon the lone gunman's first shot everybody else (except, perhaps, the victim of that first shot) will throw down on that whacko and, in righteous unison, execute him in a torrent of retributive lead from all directions.

That scenario sure does sound safer for everybody. What could go wrong?

battle lines or the first cry of an aspirational coalition?

circumspectly (vorsichtig?)

in light of recent sensational reports of a decision by a german regional court,
i thought it timely to link a couple earlier works pertaining to the subject matter:

Recipe for Imprinting the Neonate and matthew 5.29

wanting also to post a link to adam wagner's sober assessment of the issues and their implications, admittedly in europe and the united kingdom, over at uk human rights blog, i was a-foraging for the link in yet another animated discussion of circumcision over at metafilter, when this google-ad/headline juxtaposition shook my cognitive equilibrium:



now, if you'll excuse me, i'm'a go see about some mail-order brides. . .

with phalanges like these . . .

3?

a dear friend was supposed to turn "thirty-fine" today,
but she reports that she feels "thirty-too-much-wine,"
which is also acceptable.

10.

out, shooting. But the hole a spider relatively dejected.
Mána the American spider hole grab prey animals out
on Navajo women have her shove scarce
enough to hold a crouch
You'll be bummin', for cigarettes must leave in the hole

No trap door was screaming in a hole somewhere to represent the spider hole,
if you do that, hide out shooting and hole in charge, him

She takes mirror down
into the spider side of small cornstalk. shivering
'Cause you'll be.

two TEDs, terrifically terrible; terribly terrific

Which is not to say each is not also stunning, excellent and thought-provoking.

First, take off your sunglasses, remove the accelerometer-containing device from beside your keyboard,  switch off your implantable cardioverter defibrillator's wireless antenna, and check out what Avi Rubin has to say about all of your devices:

also this:

association business goes swimmingly, with
continued full buy-in from the constituents:

distinguishing variation

there is of course always
first and foremost
Beauty,

appreciable to most any of those

strange head-scratching primates

with all of their wild gesticu- and articu-lations,

all their maladapted incarnations

be they

not an improvement