A.H. - the disease

unrecognised
and most prevalent
in the USA :
Aggressive Hedonism.
Now let us pray.

If only more commercial premises

advertised themselves so subtly!

 

Bathroom furniture.

A famous person is doubly so
for having a urinal in his house
because of the inconvenient height
of water-closets which are too tall 
for the health of our bowels
(bidets – good also for feet – are just about right),
and  too low for standing-up men
& 'the handicapped'.

Perhaps it is utilitarian like this:

or verging on the obscene like al-Fayed's:

But what's wrong with a washbasin, which
(too low for washing the face)
is just the right height for most men
to piss, and easy to rinse
with hot or with cold
before (in an act of extreme hygiene)
washing the willy and hands afterwards ?

Emotional ambiguity.

Petty pleasurable guilt I had,
and guilty pleasure on learning

that the domineering neighbour
I had come to dislike
had had a massive stroke. It will be fine
to see no more the weekly row
of six black underpants upon his washing-line.

Peculiarly,
instead of resentment that he had
succeeded in expiring before me
and (painlessly, swiftly as I hope
to exit) had 'pipped me at the post' –  I felt
a horrible triumph at outliving him.

I am as muddledly
mean-minded as anybody else.

One of his contemptuous autumn paintings.

Barbara Kingsolver

succinctly on Trump:

He's not even interested in the Presidency.
He's only interested in Winning.

Word of the Day:

Degrowth

 ? ? ? 

Another (unrelated) word:

(to) present (as in a film or other spectacle) 
seems to be much the same in all European languages
and comes from mediæval Latin præsentare, presumably from the presentation of the Host at Mass.  The modern French for a knick-knack or objets-d'art shelf or cabinet is présentoir. 

As for the noun: it came into English around 1200, from  Latin, 

The difference between present and gift is felt in the fact that one may be willing to accept as a present that which he would not be willing to accept as a gift : a gift is to help the one receiving it; a present does him honour, or expresses friendly feeling toward him. A present is therefore ordinarily to an individual; but in law gift is used, to the exclusion of present, as including all transfers of property without consideration and for the benefit of the receiver. [Century Dictionary]

Let us consider a new word and what it might mean: Depresent.
(After all, we have Degenerate.)

* * *

I recently bought a Stainless steel casserole with lid.

This description appeared on the packing in every official E.U.  language (plus Russian and Turkish) except Icelandic, Irish, Albanian, Catalan, Luxembourgeois, Nynorsk, Swedish and Danish.  

The following puzzled me: Dengta keptuvė su Dangčiu
(which I identified as Lithuanian because of the ė),  
Kastrolis ar Vāku (Latvian because of the ā) ... 
but Skirts Troškinimui and Karstumizturigs....might one of them be Maltese ?

It could be...as I read somewhere...

"The Bigger the Brains
The Tighter the Chains."

So much stuff, just stuff.

The over-washed people

in the museum :

are they there to gaze,

to worship or fill in time ?

The Individual (left)

and 'Social Media' (right)

Hymn of the American Republic

(to a familiar tune)

Amazing,
Gross

(indecency)

The breaking down

of gender barriers & stereotypes
would be a lovely and beneficial thing
if men became more womanly
and women stopped becoming
more and more like scary men.

Save the Soup : Just Stop Monocultures

of Sunflowers

and Rapeseed and Wheat and Maize...

The pipsqueak who sentenced the soup-throwers to many months in prison would not have acknowledged Van Gogh as a human being, much less bought one of his paintings. 
The sunflower series is the most popular and least interesting of his amazing output.  This action should make us think again about these paintings.

A writer in the Guardian points out that the great Vincent would not have wanted his paintings (other people thought of them as 'daubs') to be venerated, much less entombed in the terrifying concrete mausoleum of the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam.

'During his lifetime, Van Gogh was a pariah. No one would buy his paintings, and he suffered from numerous untreated mental illnesses. He also lived in desperate poverty.'  

He wanted his pictures to hang on domestic walls, he wanted to share his uplifting and inspiring vision of landscape and people.
I think that he would have been appalled to learn where they have ended up.

Sad to relate,

where I live
in sterile Europe
there are no street-dogs.

Just passing...

Last here 5,000 years ago.

The comet C-023 A3
above a bank of cloud just before dawn.

 

Survivors.

Jews,
who have been persecuted only throughout
recorded history,
should spare a thought for wolves,
persecuted for at least ten thousand years.

Unfortunately, they spare few thoughts
for their nearest fellow-humans
who live their whole lives beset by howling fears.

Today's photo.

 Kathmandu, Nepal.

The Myth of Cerberus

Whereas we (mostly) can't 
tune into each other, dogs
can tune into shepherds,
sheep and other dogs
almost simultaneously.

Destruction before Discovery.

More than 100,000 plant species are thought to be undiscovered,
the majority of which are believed to be at risk of extinction...