The Mack Attack

And  just where did they derive from, these elusive clapping game ditties that have been passed down one hand at a time through the past umpteen generations? Now there have been many thematic variations and disparate cultures from east and west of the Mason-Dixon line and all the way to Zanzibar, that have participated in this pass-time phenom, it was no surprise that recently my ears were privy to some demonstrative 9-year-olds clapping and chirping away (yes can you believe it - children were out on the streets in February of 2015?) {Honest injun they were.}And these two that were clapping up a veritable storm were playing my song,well the earliest one I can remember - the first song that found it's way into my head, repeatedly with  gusto , perhaps an early indicator of musical ear syndrome or an auditory hallucination, I will let thee be the judge, you see it's difficult to refute that Miss Mary Mack had one seriously coveted hook and once again how pleasing  to discover that its novelty didn't take a one way trip to 86ville. 

There have been many a theory as to the origins of Miss Mary Mack and other such songsakes, My instinct assures me that it was inspired by the USS Merrimack; that lovely little ironclad warship that shimmied itself in the Civil War waters. Now there is no small coinkedenk that the Merrimack's sponsor was named Miss Mary E. Simmons and this crafty craft just happened to be clad in black with a flash of silver. And this was no minor vessel, it presented itself in the most significant naval battle that America's Civil War ever endured - the Battle of Hampton Roads.

The USS Merrimack,Merrimack,Merrimack

Unless I could be completely off the mark and that Mack woman was just another clueless filly in dire need of some fashion advice

Now sing along :

Miss Mary Mack, Mack, Mack

All dressed in black, black, black

With silver buttons, buttons, buttons [butt'ns]

All down her back, back, back.

She asked her mother, mother, mother

for fifty cents, cents, cents

To see the elephants, elephants, elephants (or hippos)

Jump the fence, fence, fence.

They jumped so high, high, high

they reached the sky, sky, sky

And didn't come back, back, back

Till the Fourth of July, ly ly

(July can't walk, walk, walk

July can't talk, talk, talk

July can't eat, eat, eat

With a knife and fork, fork, fork).

She asked her mother, mother, mother

For 5 cents more, more, more

To see the elephants, elephants, elephants

Jump over the door, door, door.

They jumped so low, low, low

They stubbed their toe, toe, toe

And that was the end, end, end,

Of the elephant show, show, show!

Right Said Thread

A work of Barcelonian artist Carlo Vazquez Ubeda (1869-1944)



Boy George Michael Jackson Mississippi Queen Elizabeth Taylor Swift Code Cracker Jack Black And Blue Moon River Phoenix Rising Sun King David Bowie Knife In The Water Fall Of The |Roman Empire State Of Affairs Of The Heart And Soul Train Kept A Rollin' All Night Long And Winding Road Apple Peaches Pumpkin Pie In The Sky Riders On The Storm Center Field Of Dreams In The Mirror, Mirror On The Wall Of Sound Of Music Hall Of Fame Is A Bee Line Dance Of The Sugar Plum Fairy Tales Of Brave Ulysses S. Grant A Wish Upon A Stars In Their Eyes Of Laura Mars Bar None But The Brave Heart Of The Matter Of Life And Death March Hare Hear Here And Now Voyager One Is The Loneliest Number Nine Number Nine To Five Easy Pieces Of Eight Is Enough Said The Spider To The Fly Me To The Moon Age Day Dream A Little Dream Of Me And My Shadow Dancing In The Dark Was The Night And Day You Are The One Day At A Time Of The Season Of The Witch Finder General Macarthur Park Is Melting Man Of A Thousand Faces Of The Fallen Angel, Angel Down We Go West Young Man Ray Sharkey's Machine Gun Kelly Blue Book Of Changes, Turn And Face The Strange Days Of Our Lives Lost In Space Is The Place For Everything Is Beautiful In Its Own Way Of The World War Z Axis Of Evil Eye Of The Tiger Burning Bright Lights Big City Nights In White Satin Doll House Rules Of Nature Boy.

                              

- somewhat meaningful meanderings a la moi

'Lil Funnys

There Must Be 45 Ways To Leave Your Ego

THE PYTHAGOREAN SENTENCES OF DEMOPHILUS

1. Request not of Divinity such things as, when obtained, you cannot preserve; for no gift of Divinity can ever be taken away; and on this account he does not confer that which you are unable to retain.

2. Be vigilant in your intellectual part; for sleep about this has an affinity with real death.

3. Divinity sends evil to men, not as being influenced by anger, but for the sake of purification; for anger is foreign from Divinity, since it arises from circumstances taking place contrary to the will; but nothing contrary to the will can happen to a god.


4. When you deliberate whether or not you shall injure another, you will previously suffer the evil yourself which you intend to commit. But neither must you expect any good from the evil; for the manners of everyone are correspondent to his life and actions. Every soul too is a repository, that which is good, of things good, that which is evil, of things depraved.


5. After long consultation, engage either in speaking or acting; for you have not the ability to recall either your words or deeds.


6. Divinity does not principally esteem the tongue, but the deeds of the wise; for a wise man, even when he is silent, honours Divinity.


7. A loquacious and ignorant man both in prayer and sacrifice contaminates a divine nature. The wise man therefore is
alone a priest, is alone a friend of Divinity and only knows how to pray.


8. The wise man being sent hither naked, should naked invoke him by whom he was sent; for he alone is heard by Divinity, who is not burdened with foreign concerns.



9. It is impossible to receive from Divinity any gift greater than virtue.


10. Gifts and victims confer no honor on Divinity, nor is he adorned with offerings suspended in temples; but a soul divinely inspired solidly conjoins us with Divinity; for it is necessary that like should approach to like.


11. It is more painful to be subservient to passions than to tyrants.


12. It is better to converse more with yourself than others.

13. If you are always careful to remember that in whatever place either your soul or body accomplishes any deed, Divinity is present as an inspector of your conduct; in all your words and actions you will venerate the presence of an inspector from whom nothing can be concealed, and will, at the
same time, possess Divinity as an intimate associate.


14. Believe that you are furious and insane in proportion as you are ignorant of yourself.


15. It is necessary to search for those wives and children which will remain after a liberation from the present life.


16. The self-sufficient and needy philosopher lives a life truly similar to Divinity, and considers the non-possession of external and unnecessary goods as the greatest wealth. For the acquisition of riches sometimes inflames desire; but not to act in any respect unjustly is sufficient to the enjoyment of a blessed life.


17. True goods are never produced by indolent habits.


18. Esteem that to be eminently good, which, communicated to another, will be increased to yourself. 


19. Esteem those to be eminently your friends, who assist your soul rather than your body.


20. Consider both the praise and reproach of every foolish person as ridiculous,
and the whole life of an ignorant man as a disgrace.


21. Endeavor that your familiars may reverence rather than fear you; for love attends upon reverence, but hatred upon fear.


22. The sacrifices of fools are the aliment of the fire; but the offerings which they suspend in temples are the supplies of the sacrilegious.


23. Understand that no dissimulation can be long concealed.


24. The unjust man suffers greater evil while his soul is tormented with a consciousness of guilt, than when his body is scourged with whips.


25. It is by no means safe to discourse concerning Divinity with men of false opinions; for the danger is equally great in speaking to such as these, things either fallacious or true.


26. By everywhere using reason as your guide, you will avoid the commission of crimes.


27. By being troublesome to others, you will not easily escape molestation yourself.


28. Consider that as great erudition, through which you are able to bear the want of erudition, in the ignorant.

29. He who is depraved does not listen to the divine law, and on this account lives without law.


30. A just man who is a stranger, is not only superior to a citizen, but is even more excellent than a relation.


31. As many passions of the soul, so many fierce and savage despots.


32. No one is free who has not obtained the empire of himself.


33. Labor, together with continence, precedes the acquisition of every good.
34. Be persuaded that those things are not your riches which you do not possess in the penetralia of the reasoning powers.


35. Do that which you judge to be beautiful and honest, though you should acquire no glory from the performance; for the vulgar is a depraved judge of beautiful deeds.


36. Make trial of a man rather from his deeds than his discourses; for many live badly and speak well.

37. Perform great things, at the same time promising nothing great.


38. Since the roots of our nature are established in Divinity, from which also we
are produced, we should tenaciously adhere to our root; for streams also of water, and other offspring of the earth, when their roots are cut off, become rotten and dry.


39. The strength of the soul is temperance; for this is the light of a soul destitute of passions; but it is much better to die than to darken the soul through the intemperance of the body.


40. You cannot easily denominate that man happy who depends either on his friends or children, or on any fleeting and fallen nature; for all these are unstable and uncertain; but to depend on oneself and on Divinity is alone stable and firm.


41. He is a wise man, and beloved of Divinity, who studies how to labor for the good of his soul, as much as others labour for the sake of the body.


42. Yield all things to their kindred and ruling nature except liberty.


43. Learn how to produce eternal children, not such as may supply the wants of the body in old age, but such as may nourish the soul with perpetual food.


44, It is impossible that the same person can be a lover of pleasure, a lover of
body, a lover of riches, and a lover of Divinity. For a lover of pleasure is also a lover of body; but a lover of body is entirely a lover of riches; a lover of riches is necessarily unjust; and the unjust is necessarily profane towards Divinity, and lawless with respect to men. Hence, though he should sacrifice hecatombs, he is only by this means the more impious, unholy, atheistical, and sacrilegious, with respect to his intentions: and on this account it is necessary to avoid every lover of pleasure as an atheist and polluted person.


45. The Divinity has not a place in the earth more allied to his nature than a pure and holy soul.

                  

Scroll Down

Ah books, does anybody remember books? Those little bound  tangible treasures of tactility that came in their many shapes and sizes; those parchment pleasantries would provide hours and hours of  unadulterated self entertainment.  Yes I am aware that several others in our now digital age, have bemoaned of  this very same travesty, the literary world as we knew it has officially digressed, Fahrenheit 451 has met its Big Brother. To my fellow bibliomanes and bibliophiles of the world, this is our collective lament. I  do applaud those of you that made the conscious decision not to become one of them Kindle spirits. I recount from my days of yore, the local library had a hook ' Reading is Fundamental.' Those three words they sure did gel for me. And while zeitgeists they come and then they go, who would have ever thunk it in their wildest dreams where those wild things are that the book in its natural form would be mercilessly put out to the pastures. All the seemingly infinite bits and the bytes in the world shall never emulate even infinitesimally  the veritable religious experience of connecting with Dostoevsky and Thurber for the very first time, like the first kiss on the soul. The words seem less than less, as they are evermore trapped inside of  a contraption.  

A Lost Work of T.S. Eliot Ness

Rhapsody on a  Windy Night Sometime in the Middle of the month towards the end of the year. I think they call those particular monthly days the Ides don't they? I mean I could be incorrect, maybe that's only for March, no this was definitely written somewhere between October and December, I remember I was sporting my long johns that certain evening.

                                        (a working title)

                         

                              

         

                           

     Twelve o'clock. Where the hell's Gary Cooper?
     Along the reaches of the street
     Held in a lunar synthesis,
     Whispering lunar incantations

     be vewy qwiet it's wabbit season!
    
     And all its clear relations,
     Its divisions and precisions,
     Every street lamp that I pass
     Beats like a fatalistic drum, or

     Buddy Rich's clam notes
     And through the spaces of the dark

     And the corners of my misty mind
     Midnight shakes the memory, it's 8 GB
     As a madman shakes a dead geranium.

     Why Geranium whyyyy!

     Half-past one and still checking my inbox

     Why didn't Agatha answer me?
     The street lamp sputtered,
     The street lamp muttered,
     The street lamp said,

     
     "Regard that woman
     Who hesitates toward you in the light of the     door
     Which opens on her like a grin.
     You see the border of her dress
     Is torn and stained with sand,

     
     And you see the corner of her eye
     Twists like a crooked pin." 

     That's a euphemism for my ... you know.

     The memory throws up high and dry
     A crowd of twisted things;
     A twisted branch upon the beach
     Eaten smooth, and polished

     Doesn't anybody know about

     my twig allergies?
     As if the world gave up
     The secret of its skeleton,
     Stiff and white but loosy Goosey too
     A broken spring in a factory yard,
     Rust that clings to the form that the

     strength has left the buildng
     Hard and curled and ready to snap.

     Half-past two,
     The street-lamp said,
     "Remark the cat which flattens itself in the gutter,
     Slips out its tongue
     And devours a morsel of rancid butter."
     So the hand of the child, automatic,
     Slipped out and pocketed a toy 

     I could see nothing behind that child's eye.
     I have seen eyes in the street

     I was careful not to tread upon them too
     Trying to peer through lighted shutters,
     And a crab one afternoon in a pool,

     Somebody forgot there is no P allowed 

     in the OOL
     An old crab with barnacles on his back,
     Gripped the end of a stick which I held him.

     Half-past three, 
     The lamp sputtered,
     The lamp muttered in the dark.

     The lamp hummed: bzzzz bzzzz
     "Regard the moon, don't leave out the sun

       you!
     La lune ne garde aucune rancune,rocky rancun
     She winks a feeble eye,but the other one is

     far wonkier
     She smiles into corners.
     She smooths the hair of the grass, it needs

     a hot oil treatment
     The moon has lost her memory. My cousin

     Moe recommended a good lobotomist

     A washed-out smallpox cracks her face,

     hey -we told her lay off the chocs but

     does the dame ever listen?
     Her hand twists a paper rose, 

     she had some multiple origamis 
     That smells of dust and old Cologne,and

     by that I mean the Italian commune
     She is alone With all the old nocturnal

     smell - can't go out with that whiff

     in the afternoon, can you now

     Well it's her own fault really 

     That's why Greta was alone too

     P.U.

     That cross and cross across her brain.
     The reminiscence comes
     Of sunless dry geraniums

     those are delectable, yum
     And dust in crevices,
     Smells of chestnuts in the streets
     And female smells in shuttered rooms

     yay vinegar and roses
     And cigarettes in corridors
     And cocktail smells in bars.

     sausages.

     The lamp said,
     "Four o'clock, my cuppa's cold again
     Here is the number on the door. 4561999
     Memory! Oh no I would prefer to forget
     You have the key, no I had the key
     The little lamp spreads a ring on the stair,
     Mount.
     The bed is open; the tooth-brush hangs on        ye olde wall, you realize 

       i used it this morning

      to clean the inside of the vacuum
     Put your shoes at the door, sleep, prepare f     or life."

     The last twist of the knife.

Etch-a-Sketches

An 1808 hand-colored etching by social satirist James Gillray (1757-1815)

Ask Mrs. Rosenberg.

Dear Mrs.Rosenberg.

I simply don't know what to do, my cat, a tabby I will call 'Sabrina' to avoid any awkwardness as 'Sabrina doesn't know I am writing you. I just don't know how to begin here, this is the first opportunity I have had to divulge the fact that my little precious pawed one has been completely avoiding me, when I called from the office, and mind you it was only 11 times that I tried to ring, I could tell when I was leaving my message for her that she had no desire whatsoever to listen, and you may ask how I know this, well I have been rigging my nanny cam (no nanny here by the way) to capture 'Sabrina's whereabouts at various times of the day. I even have to trick her with the promise of a plate of chicken livers and a dollop of fresh tuna on the side, just to get her to give me any eye contact whatsoever and that only happens if I spread some of it on the tip of my nose. She won't hop on the couch where we usually take in our marathon episodes of 'Stargate' What can I do Mrs Rosenberg to revive the spark between the two of us, I can't bear having Sabrina blank me any more I am without a clue.

Signed,
Catless in Catalina


Dear Catless,

OK mamala, don't panic, first of all did you try turning the catflap inside again outside again? Failing that you could try to make a compromise with your four-legged companion, not sure if you ever had a two-legged one, but be very understanding and patient ask 'Sabrina' what she wants out of the relationship, maybe it's just a new scratch post but prepare yourself for the possibility of her wanting to see other owners ----I give my little 'Nancy' a little babka cake and it's all usually a zei gezunt here. Best fishes to you.

Le Inspiration

The Harvest Moon Times, Coming Soon. Space Watchers

Croon, Tune. June. Moon. Loon. Soon. Cocoon. Boon. Maroon

Spoon 

Jejune, Not in February.