Frank Bruni . . .

https://imbibemagazine.com/q-a-with-frank-bruni/

. . . verbatim from the New York Times . . .



(from https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/17/opinion/impeachment-trump.html)
’Twas the eve of impeachment, when all through the House
No Republicans wavered, each last one a louse.

The articles were drafted by Democrats with care
In hopes that a conscience would soon bloom there.

We pundits were tossing all steamed in our beds,
While Trump’s certain acquittal danced in our heads.

And I in frustration, feeling all solemn,
Wished I could capture my woe in a column,

When out on the web there arose such a clatter,
I signed in to Twitter to see what was the matter.

And there I beheld him, the master of lies,
Weaving fresh falsehoods, to no one’s surprise.

He savaged the Bidens, he smeared Adam Schiff,
And cycled through villains in a furious jiff,

Not to mention distractions, like the teeth of the Speaker.
Could a “leader” be cruder, could his morals be weaker?

So now he’s a dentist, in his all-knowing ways?
I prayed for deliverance one of these days.

When what to my cynical eyes did appear
But a raft of excuses pulled by mangy reindeer,

With a weasel-eyed driver, so meek and so zany,
I knew in a moment he must be Mulvaney.

More shameless than con men, the sycophants came,
And Trump gloated, so bloated, and called them by name:

“Now, Rudy! Now, Jared! Now, Lindsey and Mitch!
Please fly this democracy into a ditch!

It is how you will save me. It is how I prevail.
Or else I will join poor Paul in the jail.

That’s the toll of a presidency ended too soon,
So you must sing along to my favorite tune:

‘It’s a witch hunt! A hoax!’ Those are lyrics for me.
That’s the verse, that’s the chorus, for eternity.”

He was dressed in a necktie, from his jowls to his soles.
He had tanned beyond tanning. Imagine the moles.

His hair, how it swirled! His legs, how they splayed!
On such fishy foundations was his confidence laid.

And we couldn’t stop looking — not his fans, not his foes.
That was what he was after: the show of all shows.

Its plot strained belief. Its appeal tested reason.
Still it was soaring toward a second season.

The economy roared. The Democrats whimpered.
Vladimir chortled. Emmanuel simpered.

In the bag that Trump carried, he had goodies galore:
Lower taxes, the Dow, right-wing judges and more.

They weren’t for the many, they favored the few,
But that was obscured by the smoke that he blew.

All was fog, all was mist, all was boast, all was fiction,
As he hid his true airs with bad diet and diction.

He could do as he wanted and never know fear,
For an elf — and a savior! — named Barr hovered near.

And then there was Tucker and of course Hannity
To put an  extra-fine gloss on insanity.

What great luck to discover a country so riven
You could smash it and rule it if suitably driven.

You could summon the Russians, you could bully Ukraine,
Just as long as you made “It’s fake news!” your refrain.

I cringed as I watched him and cried for us all,
Our values, our futures hijacked by his gall.

A last bid to preserve them was cause to impeach
But his party’s corruption put him beyond reach.

So then why all his thrashing? His howls of dejection?
It was just a performance for the next election.

It brought more donations. It rallied the base.
You could see, if you looked, a clear smirk on his face.

If you listened, you heard it: a lilt in his voice.
In drama like this, he would always rejoice.

So as history scarred him, he could nonetheless yell,
“Merry TrumpMas to all! I’m the king of this hell.”

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Maybe . . .

. . . when hell looks like this . . .



(from https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/roger-stone-back-court-after-instagram-post-n973986)
". . . "I am hurtfully sorry for my own stupidity. I am kicking myself not as much as my wife is kicking me," Stone told the court. He called the Instagram post "a momentary lapse of judgement" and said he was was struggling from the stress of the prosecution. . . I heard political commentators talking about the likelihood that I'll be raped in prison. It's been a stressful situation. I’m having a hard time putting food on the table and making rent," he said. . .The photo, posted to (Roger) Stone’s Instagram account earlier this week, was accompanied by a caption in which he suggested Jackson was politically biased, slammed Robert Mueller's Russia probe and sought donations for his legal defense. . ."

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Concepts. . .

. . . worth . . .

. . . considering. . .



(from Treatise On The Gods by H.L. Mencken)
". . . As I have said, the history of this great innovation (heaven and hell) is vague, and we know very little about its early stages. Many Jews, it appears, opposed it; the Sadducees, indeed, held out against it to the end. In Ecclesiastes III, 19-20, it is flouted openly: "For what befalleth the sons of men befalleth beasts; . . . as the one dieth, so dieth the other. . . . All go unto one place; all are of the dust, and all turn to dust again." And again in Ecclesiastes IX, 2 and 5: "All things come alike to all: there is one event to the righteous and to the wicked: to the good and to the clean, and to the unclean; to him that sacrificeth, and to him that sacrificeth no: as is the good, so is the sinner. . . . For the living know that they shall die: but the dead know not anything, neither have they any more reward." But the idea of immortal life was too sweet to be extinguished by any such skepticism, and so it persisted among the Jews, and the scheme of post mortem rewards and punishments with it. . ."

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Conscience. . .

(from http://www.truthdig.com/report/print/the_obama_deception_why_cornel_west_went_ballistic_20110516)
“. . . When you look at a society you look at it through the lens of the least of these, the weak and the vulnerable; you are committed to loving them first, not exclusively, but first, and therefore giving them priority,” says West, the Class of 1943 University Professor of African American Studies and Religion at Princeton University. “And even at this moment, when the empire is in deep decline, the culture is in deep decay, the political system is broken, where nearly everyone is up for sale, you say all I have is the subversive memory of those who came before, personal integrity, trying to live a decent life, and a willingness to live and die for the love of folk who are catching hell. This means civil disobedience, going to jail, supporting progressive forums of social unrest if they in fact awaken the conscience, whatever conscience is left, of the nation. And that’s where I find myself now. . ."

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Mortality . . .

Watching movies about old people gets one to thinking . . .


(from http://flavorwire.com/324742/20-famous-writers-on-death-and-mortality)
“Death is certain, replacing both the siren-song of Paradise and the dread of Hell. Life on this earth, with all its mystery and beauty and pain, is then to be lived far more intensely: we stumble and get up, we are sad, confident, insecure, feel loneliness and joy and love. There is nothing more; but I want nothing more.” – Christopher Hitchens, The Portable Atheist

“People living deeply have no fear of death.” – Anaïs Nin, The Diary Of Anaïs Nin, Volume Two

“Life was not a valuable gift, but death was. Life was a fever-dream made up of joys embittered by sorrows, pleasure poisoned by pain; a dream that was a nightmare-confusion of spasmodic and fleeting delights, ecstasies, exultations, happinesses, interspersed with long-drawn miseries, griefs, perils, horrors, disappointments, defeats, humiliations, and despairs — the heaviest curse devisable by divine ingenuity; but death was sweet, death was gentle, death was kind; death healed the bruised spirit and the broken heart, and gave them rest and forgetfulness; death was man’s best friend; when man could endure life no longer, death came and set him free.” – Mark Twain, Letters from the Earth

“I can remember how when I was young I believed death to be a phenomenon of the body; now I know it to be merely a function of the mind — and that of the minds who suffer the bereavement. The nihilists say it is the end; the fundamentalists, the beginning; when in reality it is no more than a single tenant or family moving out of a tenement or a town.” – William Faulkner, As I Lay Dying

“Death is no more than passing from one room into another. But there’s a difference for me, you know. Because in that other room I shall be able to see.” – Helen Keller

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The Gig . . .

. . . from hell . . .

. . . although there have probably been many others worse, or at least as bad, than this. . . it certainly seemed beyond belief at the time.

The bear of it all was that we didn't even play.  The whole thing seemed like some long, drawn-out, absurd awards ceremony-type of thing with lots of gratuitous thank-yous, gushing and fawning. Meantime we were simply anxious.  Anxious about when we would play.  Anxious about setting-up. Anxious about how long we would take to set-up and anxious about how long they expected us to take to set-up.

And then. . . just like that . . . it was over!  They didn't even ask us to set-up, to play, to get ready to set-up or get ready to play.  What a downer!!  And we were in the back-end of the huge venue, not really sure how far we were from where we had parked and where we had left our gear in anticipation of playing.

The other guys seemed to have gotten their gear packed back into their vehicles and I was the last but not quite sure where my stuff actually was.  We did locate it and there was confusion as to where the best exit was located from which I should leave.

Then an employee emphatically told me that I had to have everything removed within a short time period to make way for the following event, which seemed unreasonably short.  And without explanation I found myself outside, with my vehicle, ready for loading but somehow the vehicle slipping from within my control.  It actually drifted downhill, into traffic on the road and a semi merged mysteriously between my car and me. I watched helplessly as the car sped, driver-less, ahead, downhill quickly beyond my reach (as if I could physically have stopped it alone anyway) until it crashed into a wall at the end of the road where only left and right were the only options had there been an actual driver.

Soon I found myself with Pam, pouring out my heart in explanation and saying, "If it had not been a dream I may have been able to DO SOMETHING!"  But I said this to her in my dream. . .

. . . and then I awoke.

What do you think?

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OHO's "Ocean City Ditty," the CD single is now available at http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/oho4
(and, if you're in town, at Trax On Wax on Frederick Rd. in Catonsville, MD) OHO is Jay Graboski, David Reeve & Ray Jozwiak.  Please Visit http://www.ohomusic.com 


My latest solo offering, Just More Music by Ray Jozwiak, featuring original, instrumental piano music is now available at - Just More Music by Ray Jozwiak

(To Access all Ray Jozwiak - Gonzo Piano music you can copy-and-paste this URL directly to
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Entertaining. . .

No one could make discussion of religion as entertaining as Christopher Hitchens. . .


(from JON WIENER, TRUTHDIG, CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS at http://old.richarddawkins.net/articles/1249)
". . . Wiener: Let's talk about the U.S. Polls show that 94 per cent of Americans believe in God, and 89 per cent believe in heaven; of those, three-fourths think they will go to heaven, but only 2 per cent think they will go to hell. This seems laughable, but what's the harm in people believing they will go to heaven after they die—and see their mothers there?

Hitchens: All you have to do is promise them 72 virgins, and they'll kill to get there. That's what's wrong with it, along with the fact that it's a solipsistic delusion. And the spreading of delusion in the end isn't a good thing, because credulous and deluded people are easy to exploit. People arise who are aware of that fact.

If belief in heaven was private, like the tooth fairy, I'd say fine. But tooth fairy supporters don't come around to your house and try to convert you. They don't try to teach your children stultifying pseudo-science in school. They don't try to prevent access to contraception. The religious won't leave us alone. These are not just private delusions, they're ones they want to inflict on other people.

If religion were true, there would be no need for politics; you'd only need to have faith.

Wiener: The final killer argument of your critics is that Hitler and Stalin were not religious. The worst crimes of the 20th century did not have a religious basis. They came from political ideology.

Hitchens: That's easy. Hitler never abandoned Christianity and recommends Catholicism quite highly in "Mein Kampf." Fascism, as distinct from National Socialism, was in effect a Catholic movement.

Wiener: What about Stalin? He wasn't religious.

Hitchens: Stalin—easier still. For hundreds of years, millions of Russians had been told the head of state should be a man close to God, the czar, who was head of the Russian Orthodox Church as well as absolute despot. If you're Stalin, you shouldn't be in the dictatorship business if you can't exploit the pool of servility and docility that's ready-made for you. The task of atheists is to raise people above that level of servility and credulity. No society has gone the way of gulags or concentration camps by following the path of Spinoza and Einstein and Jefferson and Thomas Paine. . . "

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Songs. . .

. . . are for everyone. . .

(from Christopher Hitchens, God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything)
". . .One must state it plainly. Religion comes from the period of human prehistory where nobody—not even the mighty Democritus who concluded that all matter was made from atoms—had the smallest idea what was going on. It comes from the bawling and fearful infancy of our species, and is a babyish attempt to meet our inescapable demand for knowledge (as well as for comfort, reassurance and other infantile needs). Today the least educated of my children knows much more about the natural order than any of the founders of religion, and one would like to think—though the connection is not a fully demonstrable one—that this is why they seem so uninterested in sending fellow humans to hell. . .”

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This ole world. . .

keeps on turnin' . . .

. . . that's an old song, isn't it??

Pondering our humanity, interactions, inadequacies, imperfections . . . while communicating in REAL TIME on the internet.

Hell of a thing!!!

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