Musicians, ply your euterpean arts to perform panegyrics... let your ukuleles and kazoos ring out!
There is time tomorrow to return to mundane modes of communication, but today, we dazzle with declamations, baffle with blatherskite, and confound with corruscating conversation!
Hungary's fascist head-of-stat Viktor Orbán is riding high these days. He just won a fifth term in office and he hosted CPAC, the fascist freakshow of American movement conservatism. It's no wonder that he's feeling a bit spicy, but I feel that he's about to experience a major setback:
Hungary’s Viktor Orban, using new wartime emergency powers and ruling by decree, will make banks and multinational companies cede their excess profits to the state “to protect families. In addition, the army must be strengthened.”https://t.co/hoNI3ATomB
— drew hinshaw (@drewhinshaw) May 25, 2022
Orbán assumed wartime powers due to the Russia-Ukraine war and is planning to use national security as a pretense for making multinational corporations pay a percentage of their 'excess profits' into Hungary's coffers to fight inflation and build up the military. While I am somewhat sympathetic to the idea of clawing back 'excess profits' from multinational corporations to fund government, I don't believe Orbán is operating out of good faith. At any rate, I don't see this turning out well for him or his regime.
Put succinctly, Orbán has meddled with the primal forces of nature. I can easily see multinational corporations simply pulling out of Hungary. I can even see him getting fragged by mercenaries on the payroll of Coca-Cola or Disney.
It's happened again, a week and a half after the last headline-grabbing massacre (one of many that occurred that week)... another mass shooting, this one killing fourteen elementary school students and a teacher. The shooter was an 18 year old high school student from the same town, Uvalde, Texas. It's monstrous that someone that age, indeed any age, would kill little kids.
As sad as I am, I have to note that I am fortunate to know many kindhearted and responsible teenagers. My upstairs neighbor's children are very good at helping their mom watch over the gaggle of kids that descend upon their place every afternoon while their parents are still at work. They help watch over a coterie of younger children, and ensure that everybody is well looked-out-for.
I also have to pay my respects to the teenage counselors who work at the athletic program in which I am a volunteer coach. These youths, many of whom came up through the program, and who I have known for years, are responsible for looking after the kids in the program, making sure they move from class to class in orderly fashion, and chaperoning them on water and bathroom breaks. I really can't say enough for these caring, responsible young women and men.
It breaks my heart to read of teenage mass murderers. I'm not a naive person, but it boggles my mind that boys (yeah, it always seems to be boys) could be so cruel, and could obtain the instruments of death so easily. How did their parents, and our society as a whole, fail so that these killers are produced?
It's a conundrum, and one which our society seems particularly blasé about trying to solve. I'm not in the mood to watch the coverage, with the same empty calls for thoughts and prayers. I wouldn't even describe my feeling as déjà vu, because that would imply that this is a discrete prior feeling I've experienced before, whereas this is a continual occurrence, without even time for recovery.
The stated motive for the Buffalo shooter was his fear of 'white genocide', a conspiracy theory which states that Jews are trying, through immigration policies, to reduce the percentage of white people in the United States, resulting in a browner, 'more docile' population that they can control. It's all a lot of bullshit, but there IS a genocide going on in certain regions of the US (hint: most of them).
Of course, this genocide is not being waged against white people:
“About a third of our population is African American; African Americans have a higher incidence of maternal mortality. So, if you correct our population for race, we’re not as much of an outlier as it’d otherwise appear,” Sen. Bill Cassidy said in an interview with POLITICO for the Harvard Chan School of Public Health series Public Health on the Brink. “Now, I say that not to minimize the issue but to focus the issue as to where it would be. For whatever reason, people of color have a higher incidence of maternal mortality.”
Cassidy is basically saying that African-Americans aren't 'real' members of Louisiana's population. He has no intention of addressing maternal mortality among people of color. This dehumanization and callousness toward death among the out group are classic features of a genocidal campaign. The real sick thing about this is that Cassidy belongs to a party which has been pushing the white genocide nonsense.
At my principle work site, we have had the presence of red foxes (Vulpes vulpes) for as long as I can remember, but sightings aren't all that common because the animals are clever and shy. Every so often, though, I'll see a flash of tapeta lucida at night or hear their unheimlich screams at night. It is a rare, lucky occurrence when one catches a glimpse of one of these elegant critters in the light of early evening:
Now, THAT is an elegant little beast, dressed in its colorful finery.
Seeing this glam animal, I immediately thought of glam rock:
The classics are classic for a reason, and the red fox, that 'dog hardware running cat software' is a true classic.
Thursday night, after bar trivia, I decided that I wanted dessert, so I walked across the street to the pizzeria to get a slice. Katonah Avenue in the Bronx is part of the tavern district in my neighborhood, which straddles the Bronx/Yonkers border, so there were quite a few revelers out and about. Standing in front of the pizzeria was a slender-rangy red-haired Irish guy, who I'm going to say was exactly 21. He was a friendly fellow, who gave me a greeting as I passed by.
I entered the pizzeria and approached the counter. As I did so, a drunk, but not impaired, woman sidled up to me and slipped her arm under mine. She gave me a sidelong glance and told me that the neighborhood was terrible. I noticed the pizzaiolo rolling his eyes.
She continued, "Everybody in this neighborhood hates me. I'm the dumb c___ of the neighborhood."
I admonished her, "Don't be down on yourself. If you're not in your own corner, nobody else will be."
At this point, the young Irishman entered the pizzeria. I asked him, :"How long have you been in New York?"
He answered, "Three days! I've from Cavan, THE STICKS!"
I replied, "Welcome to New York, welcome to the Bronx."
Then I turned to the woman and said, "The whole neighborhood doesn't hate you. There's a lot of turnover in this neighborhood. He's been here only three days, wait a couple of weeks and it'll be a completely different neighborhood!"
This is particularly true of the summer, when young Irish folks, on school break, come to New York to work in construction, or the restaurant/bar industry. I'm sure my Cavan chum will find work helping one of the local immigrant carpenters or floor installers, or he'll find work as a barback.
This observation of neighborhood turnover seemed to mollify the self-deprecating lady, or at least to confuse her. It was a weird sort of pep talk, a Bronx sort of pep talk, and I hope it worked.
In the interest of full disclosure, it was also a pep talk for the neighborhood, which I love. Everybody in the neighborhood likes me.
Longtime readers will know that one of my all-time favorite novels is The Face in the Frost by John Bellairs, who went on to become a bestselling author of creepy, 'gothic' young adult fiction. The Face in the Frost, written for an adult audience, presages Bellairs' later works by combining whimsical humor with genuinely unsettling set pieces- he puts his good-hearted, good-humored protagonists into increasingly unnerving situations, achieving a creeping sense of dread, wisely leavened with comic relief. If you are the sort who likes a bit of spooky fun, give the book a read.
I do have to disagree with the late Mr Bellairs about one thing:
I'm the guy who'd die first in a horror film: "What's that bloodcurdling sound? I've got to find out!"
A few nights back, while on a Zoom conversation with friends during a graveyard shift, I heard a sound which, to me, is familiar, thought not exactly pleasant:
Those high pitched background noises are raccoons squabbling over something, probably a juicy frog or maybe a crayfish. It's not a sound for the faint of heart.
Right now, my boss is going over applications for a couple of positions in my understaffed department. I told him that one crucial question to ask candidates is: "Are you afraid of the dark?" Weird noises, shifting shadowy conditions, the gleam of eyes just outside a flashlight beam... all part of the job. I love them all, but then again, I'm not necessarily normal. Thank goodness it's just a job, not a horror movie.
