2.28.2026 – tired of stupid

tired of stupid
testing should be required
stupid, can’t fix it

I am reminded of the Twilight Zone episode, “To Serve Man.”

The story line is that Kanamits, aliens from another planet come to earth and with their advanced technology, according to wikipedia, that can easily and inexpensively solve all energy and food shortages and prevent international warfare.

The Kanamits prove their goodwill, turn the world into a paradise and further promise that their home planet is even nicer.

The Kanamits urge everyone on earth to enjoy the new abundance of food and when ready, sign up for a trip to the home planet.

The people here on earth embrace the plan and they eat and eat and then line up for the trip to the new world.

The twist is that the whole time, code breakers have been working on a book left by the Kanamits to see if they can understand the Kanamits language.

They finally crack code, realize the book, To Serve Man, is a cookbook and that the Kanamits are using earth as farm and to fatten up and harvest the people to eat back on the home planet.

My point is, the people lining up for the trip to home planet, DON’T KNOW THEY ARE GOING TO BE SERVED UP FOR LUNCH.

They line up, freely, expecting a trip to a better world.

It seems to me that a lot of people today are lining up, expecting a trip to a better world, KNOWING FULL WELL that THEY ARE GOING TO BE SERVED UP FOR A FREE LUNCH.

We can see into the kitchen.

We can pursue the menu.

And a lot of people STILL GET IN THAT LINE.

I think of an exchange in the Ron Reiner movie, The American President.

The Press Secretary tells the President, “They want leadership, Mr. President. They’re so thirsty for it, they’ll crawl through the desert toward a mirage, and when they discover there’s no water, they’ll drink the sand.”

The President responds, “We’ve had Presidents who were beloved, who couldn’t find a coherent sentence with two hands and a flashlight. People don’t drink the sand, ’cause they’re thirsty … they drink it ’cause they don’t know the difference.”

I guess the President is in on the joke and the joke is on us.

We know what’s at the end of the trip.

And we are getting on the spacecraft.

We know what sand is.

And we are drinking it anyway.

Is there a solution?

An answer to the question that we in America, have a good thing.

Something to embrace.

To protect.

Something that does not have to be made great …. again.

To think otherwise is stupid.

What can be done?

I came across the short story, Chef’s Night Out, by Anthony Bourdain, published in the book Rovers Return in 1998.

Mr. Bourdain, with his unique grasp of the English language, tells the story of a chef in a restaurant trying to deal with the fact that a chef in a restaurant has to serve folks who do not deserve to be in his restaurant.

The chef in the story loses it in a rant labelled Truth and be prepared for bad words.

I think people should be licensed to eat in a good restaurant.

Yeah.

That’s right …

A long, and unnecessarily irritating process of testing and certification should be required of every would-be diner.

To thin out the herd. All the well-done eating, low-sodium, egg-white omelette nibbling, crystal worshipping, holistic vegan cocksuckers, the sauce-on-siders, the low-cholesterol, no butter, no cream, can you take that off the bone split for two geeks, the slack-jawed, bedwetting, mouth-breathing, fanny-pack wearing scumpigs and rubes, with their Hard Rock T-shirts and their wall-eyed, no-necked, overfed monster offspring in tow . . . they can get the fuck out of my dining room.

Now.

The Space X rocket ship for the Kanamits’ home planet is boarding now.

Geeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee whiz, but you can’t fix stupid.

2.27.2026 – wilderness of waves

wilderness of waves
dip dive rise roll hide hidden
on the sea, day, night

The Sea is a wilderness of waves,
A desert of water.
We dip and dive,
Rise and roll,
Hide and are hidden
On the sea.
Day, night,
Night, day,
The sea is a desert of waves,
A wilderness of water.

Long Trip by Langston Hughes as published in Sail Away: Sea Poems by Langston Hughes, illustrated by Ashley Bryan (Atheneum: New York, 2015)

2.26.2026 – stately libraries and

stately libraries
justice halls became useless
no longer revered

… the stately libraries and halls of justice became useless to an indolent generation, whose repose was seldom disturbed, either by study, or business.

The monuments of consular, or Imperial, greatness were no longer revered, as the immortal glory of the capital;

they were only esteemed as an inexhaustible mine of materials, cheaper, and more convenient, than the distant quarry. Specious petitions were continually addressed to the easy magistrates of Rome, which stated the want of stones or bricks for some necessary service:

the fairest forms of architecture were rudely defaced for the sake of some paltry, or pretended, repairs;

and the degenerate Romans, who convened the spoil to their own emolument, demolished, with sacrilegious hands the labors of their ancestors.

Edward Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, vol. 7 (Leipsick: Printed for Fleischer).

Edward Gibbon

For anyone happening to be keeping score or totaling up the reasons … thought this excerpt interesting.

2.25.2026 – only call yellow

only call yellow
sulphur golden citron, how …
lovely yellow is

Just now we are having a glorious strong heat, with no wind, just what I want.

There is a sun, a light that for want of a better word I can only call yellow, pale sulphur yellow, pale golden citron.

How lovely yellow is!

And how much better I shall see the North!

Oh! I keep wishing for the day when you will see and feel the sun of the South!

Vincent Van Gogh in a letter to his brother dated Arles, 13 August 1888.

Live oaks and salt marsh looking towards Mackay Creek from Pinckney Island, 2/23/2026

2.24.2026 – important that one

important that one
not say any foolish things
if he can help it

I appear before you, fellow-citizens merely to thank you for this compliment. The inference is a very fair one that you would hear me for a little while, at least, were I to commence a speech.

I do not appear before you for the purpose [of speechifying] and for several substantial reasons.

The most substantial of these is that I have no speech to make.

It is somewhat important in my position that one should not say any foolish things if he can help it and to help it is to say nothing at all.

Believing that that is my precise position this evening, I must beg you from saying “one word.”

Abraham Lincoln in response to a ‘serenade’ from the crowd on the night of November 18, 1863 as reported in the Gettysburg Star & Banner.

The next day, after spending the night in Gettysburg, Mr. Lincoln would deliver his short remarks in dedicating a cemetery on the site of the battle.

Gabor Boritt, in his book, The Gettysburg gospel : the Lincoln speech that nobody knows (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2006), writes:

In 118 or so words, Lincoln acquitted himself: his first Gettysburg address. The following day, he would speak in a different vein and would not need many more than twice the number of words to say his piece. This night the crowds got the bantering, vintage Westerner, funny and humble. They applauded long when he finished. Thursday, the 19th, would be another day.

Young Hay wrote in his diary: “The President appeared at the door said his half dozen words meaning nothing & went in.” Lincoln knew better. He had shown the people that he was one of them. That was not unimportant. That his opponents would fault him, “the great American humorist,” he also knew. And if he had even more serious purpose in coming to Gettysburg, he understood that the throngs came in no small measure to enjoy themselves. Nor would all of them make sharp distinctions. Local butcher Harvey Sweeney heard Lincoln that evening and on the next day, too, and in a letter to his brother ten days later would lump it all together as “noble speeches”: “the greatest of the great men,” whose words “endeared him to the hearts of the people and added thousands of friends to him….

When Lincoln went back indoors after his speech, he could hear people whooping, singing, carrying on, and going next door to serenade the next dignitary. In the Harpers’ house, the Secretary of State was the most honored guest. Seward had been the president’s stand-in until a few days ago. On the train, had the two men talked about what they would say? They were heading into a festive town and Seward knew that he would be asked to speak, too. He had his backup speech ready.

Brevity.

Not sure why that thought is on my mind today.