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It isn’t right! One expects certain courtesies. It is but a poor manse, but that is no reason to lower our standards. However, one can’t drill this message into the head of the valet. Il ne comprend rien. One really understand the phrase tete de bois in the face of this character. For instance: one wants either to be in the playpen with the Ipad or one wants to be out of the playpen with the Ipad in easy reach. It is almost tiresomely simple. Yet once again one’s valet mixes it up. Thus, one finds oneself standing helplessly outside of the playpen staring at the Ipad inside the playpen. One has simply to raise one’s voice. It is all so dreadfully theatrical, but the valet sometimes seems to understand no other language. Well… and then one is literally carried up the stairs. Is one consulted? No. At least, a consoling gesture, one’s Mickey Mouse is carried with one. Lately, in the afternoon, one so adores chats with M.M. A font of jollity! And what adventures that mouse has had.

I’ve been reading the novel that “suggested” Tarkovsky’s Stalker, Roadside Picnic, by the Strugatsky Bros. It came out a couple of years ago in a new translation, which caught up with the Russian editions that now include things that didn’t pass the Soviet censor. Excellent novel, although of course it is nothing like Tarkovsky’s movie. Imagine a Russian Blade Runner and you would be closer to the feel of the book. The book is hardly mentioned in Geoff Dyer’s account of Tarkovsky’s movie, Zona. Nor, I think, does Dyer mention a phonetic coincidence that I think would have highly interested Tarkovsky – namely, that Zona, in the language of the Fore people of New Guinea, meant ghost wind. That wind from the north was blamed for the fact that women and children with “kuru” would tremble uncontrollably. In reality, kuru was caused by a novel form of ritual honoring the dead that spread among New Guinea people in the twentieth century, and that involved eating the brains of the corpese.

I love this sentence: " Just one more note of caution before we descend down the rapids of morality and ethics. " It was written by a man who went up those rapids, Mr. "brutal questioner" Philip Mudd, to caution us all about getting sniffy about the torture tactics of his agency, the CIA. After all, we were so so scared. So torture was fine. If you are so so scared and you have a naked man in front of you to whom you can attach electrodes, it is all right, cause you are so so s cared! Would he do it now? No, cause he isn't so so scared. Well isn't that a relief! It is waht makes America a wonderful country. Actually, it is the same argument that worked in post-Pinochet Chile to keep the fingerpointin' at bay. Anyway, I'm so happy that we are treating the time when we were so so scared with the proper respect. On to criticizing Putin (or x, y, or z - Israel, Pakistan, Iran, etc._ for his human rights violations. They are nasty and not like our human r

Gee - here's a mystery for ya. In the American elections in 2010, Obama made an early turn to the right and kept pressing the issue of cuts and the deficit. And the Dems were wiped out. How strange, eh? Then Hollande, who governs like he leads his love life, fell in love with neo-liberalism and proclaimed it to all the world and the socialists were wiped out yesterday in the municipals. Do I sense  a pattern? Is it perhaps not true that people want their leftist parties to govern and talk like they are rightist parties? That is so weird of the people! They need to grow up and realize that what is good for the plutocracy is good for them, in a manner of speaking. Every unemployed person should look on him or herself as a necessary sacrifice, so that France can impress Germany with its willingness to impose austerity! They should be so proud. Hollande is going to speak tonight, and inevitably he will say that the PS has not be rightist enough. Obviously, the people want more austerit

The first thing in the morning, after getting out of the bed-prison yourself, is to demand that they liberate Mickey Mouse. Affection is whimsical. It lands on this or that. But Mickey is the first. Always. The perpetual open mouthed grin under the upturned black ball of a nose; the round ears; the red shorts; the gentlemanly white gloves. And the eyes. You have to crush Mickey to yourself, and th en bury yourself in his relatively puny chest, smooshing his face with your face. Then you throw him away. Finis! It is the rodent that attracts you next. Dun colored. A beaky muzzle, small glassy eyes – so unlike Mickey’s! – and small forelegs. A cord of a tail as thick as a shoestring. This is true love, and you smoosh your face to the rodents face, squeezing his forearms in your embrace - or is it just a fullbody sinking into the thing to the extent that the stuffing can bear without resisting you? Then you throw him away and show no interest in him. It is as if you never met. It is the ti