The Ruffians Are Coming

At their lively debates GOP candidates
Try attacking each other while grinning.
“Choker,” “Il Douche,” “False-staff” … they’d be making us laugh
Were it not for the chance of one winning.

Acting presidential’s not inconsequential.
You don’t just come out and start swinging.
In a discussion forum you need some decorum
To be worthy at all of West Wing-ing.

Mea Culpa (again)

A few months ago, I predicted that Donald Trump's popularity would be fleeting. I now must admit my own failure of prognostication. I should have remembered the immortal words of H. L. Mencken:

No one in this world, so far as I know — and I have searched the records for years, and employed agents to help me — has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people. Nor has anyone ever lost public office thereby.

Things I Learned From TV

10. When you come home from a long day at work, and you walk into your suburban New Rochelle home, watch out for the ottoman.
9. The most state-of-the-art computer animation techniques are used to depict roadkill, walking intestines and boogers.
8. Use as directed.
7. The best crime solvers are novelists, psychotics, drug addicts and people on the autism spectrum.
6. Anything on HBO has to include the word @#&* every 17 minutes.
5. There’s always next year.
4. Every family has a sarcastic, wise-cracking member who seems to be the “smart one,” and thus is always the outcast.
3. Public television doesn’t show commercials; just long, self-promotional messages from sponsors.
2. We are farmers. Dum-de-dum-dum Dum-dum-dum.
1. Political candidates are all frustrated fiction writers.

A Life

The List of the Things

Three packs of frozen snacks, just wing and thigh,
Seven microwave pizzas, four with pepperon’,
Nine 2-liter bottles of Canada Dry,
One pack of bathroom rolls for the lord on his throne
In the upstairs bathroom. (Must be 3-ply.)
One list of everything, one list to remind,
One list I need to bring but which I cannot find
As I stand in the store door … what the hell to buy.

La viande rose

Fans of the TV show How I Met Your Mother will remember that Ted’s first experience of Tracy (better known as “The Mother”) was hearing her sing a charming little ditty, accompanying herself on a ukelele. What you may not know is that this was a well known French song by the great chanteuse, Edith Piaf. I don’t remember the actual French lyrics, but they’re something like this.¹

Grande croissant, l’enfant d’hiver,
De Maupassant, éclair,
Je pense de quelque chose.

Mais le jour de gloire passée.
J'adore la crème glacée.
Coupez la viande rose.

Aujourd’hui, nous disons ‘oui!’
Demain je vous en prie.
Trop tôt je vous propose.

Honi soit qui mal y pense.
Moi, je préférai la danse.

Je volé un cor Francais
Et il est bleu, c’est vrai.
Je t’aime, ma viande rose!

¹All words guaranteed genuine French or something close to it.