Mary had made a Christmas cake with marzipan but no white icing.Stan was diabetic so she had opted for a middle way.Like some Zen Buddhists.You don’t either cut it completely nor have a 6-inch layer of icing.No, you find a middle way.Like 5 inches of icing!
Mary like almonds so she went for marzipan with her home ground almonds and some sugar.The raw egg part was worrying but so far nobody had died after eating her cakeStil,l if you are dying , enjoy the cake while you can!
Annie arrived for a cup of coffee.
Wow, that cake is large.You will get fat if you eat it
I am not planning to eat it all myself, Mary said merrily.
In fact, if I could find a way of cutting an infinitesimally small piece I could have on every day forever.
Would the cake not shrink ?asked Annie with a puzzled smile
No, because a real number times an infinitesimal is itself infinitesimal Mary answered.
So it must be zero, Annie decided.
No , said Mary.All of the  calculus is based on the idea that they are not zero.Then, at the end, we pretend they are zero and cross them out.It’s like magic or sleight of hand
I thought maths was logic, Annie said in an angry voice, tossing her purple hair over her shoulder.Alas it was a wig so it fell off and Emile bit it!
Gosh, Annie why are you wearing a wig? Mary asked.
I am involved with a Jewish man so he won’t make love unless I wear a wig.
Surely if he is  Orthodox he should not sleep with you unless you get married.
We can’t get married, Annie said boldly.
Why not?
He is already married….Annie muttered
Well, that seems wrong.
What, being married?
No having an affair.I know Stan is old.Can’t  you find a  single man?
Women can’t go running after men.Men enjoy the chase.They despise  women who run after them.
Well, can’t you ask them if they are married?
No, it seems too cheeky, Annie smiledAnyway in fuzzy logic you are not either married or single.You are  married to the extent  of some decimal number in between 0  and 1
Some folk are 0.999 married and some are 0.34 married.
But who measures it? God? It’s not much use.
You have to guess , said Annie.I like Jewish men
How many do you know, Mary asked.
Three said Annie triumphantly.
You can’t generalize from three, Mary said.
If I test a larger sample I shall never get to find one till I am 99, Annie wept.
Think of the fun, though, Mary said teasingly.And you’d have to travel a  lot as many live in the USA, France and other places including Israel.How do you fancy Bibi Netanyahu?
Annie was silent, then burst out: life is not science nor technology.It’s an art like watercolor painting.Why do you call him Bibi? Do you know him?
Not biblically, Mary said humorously.I’ve never even met him.He’s just   been in the News because of Trumpelstiltschein
Does Bibi know Donald is half German?
No, but the Queen is too.More than half,maybe.
Where does that take us logically?
Off to Boots to buy some expensive makeup and then to have a manicure and tea in a cafe
If only politicians did this life would be much easier and kinder/
And so say all of us!

A man is at his tallest when he stoops to help a child
A Man of Words and Not of Deeds is Like a Garden Full of Weeds
A man that breaks his word bids other be false to him
A new broom sweeps clean, but the old brush knows all the corners
A nod is as good as a wink to a blind man
A person who can smile when things go wrong has found someone to blame it on

I found your diary for 2015
In my heart, I wish you were  at home
When sinners thrive, why are you not alive?
I saved your photographs on Google Drive
I may print  one,; your smile should long survive,
Though in the clouds, you valiantly will roam.
You never answer when I  call your phone.
Come back, my lover, criticize my poems

A lender nor borrower be
A leopard cannot change its spots
A little of what you fancy does you good
A long way to go
A man comes from the dust and in the dust he will end – and in the meantime it is good to drink a sip of vodka
A man in love is a fool, and an old man in love is the greatest fool of all
A man is at his tallest when he stoops to help a child
A man is judged by his deeds, not by his words
A man is known by the company he keeps
A Man of Words and Not of Deeds is Like a Garden Full of Weeds
A man that breaks his word bids other be false to him
A man walks, God places the feet
A miss is as good as a mile
A miss is as good as a mr
A new broom sweeps clean
A new broom sweeps clean, but the old brush knows all the corners
A nod is as good as a wink to a blind man
A penny always turns up
A person who can smile when things go wrong has found someone to blame it on
A picture paints a thousand words
A place for everything and everything in its place
A positive pessimist is better than a negative optimist
A problem is a chance for you to do your best
A problem shared is a problem halved
A proverb is a true word
A proverb never lies, it is only its meaning which deceives
A quarrelsome wife is like a constant dripping on a rainy day
A reed before the wind lives on, while might oaks do fall
A rolling stone gathe

http://www.openculture.com/2014/01/read-ezra-pounds-list-of-23-donts-for-writing-poetry-1913.html

1. to acknowledge the debt outright, or to try to conceal it. Don’t allow ‘influence’ to mean merely that you mop up the particular decorative vocabulary of some one or two poets whom you happen to admire. A Turkish war correspondent was recently caught red-handed babbling in his dispatches of ‘dove-grey’ hills, or else it was ‘pearl-pale’, I can not remember.
2. Use either no ornament or good ornament.
3. Let the candidate fill his mind with the finest cadences he can discover, preferably in a foreign language, so that the meaning of the words may be less likely to divert his attention from the movement; e.g. Saxon charms, Hebridean Folk Songs, the verse of Dante, and the lyrics of Shakespeare – if he can dissociate the vocabulary from the cadence. Let him dissect the lyrics of Goethe coldly into their component sound values, syllables long and short, stressed and unstressed, into vowels and consonants.
4. It is not necessary that a poem should rely on its music, but if it does rely on its music that music must be such as will delight the expert.
5. Let the neophyte know assonance and alliteration, rhyme immediate and delayed, simple and polyphonic, as a musician would expect to know harmony and counterpoint and all the minutiae of his craft. No time is too great to give to these matters or to any one of them, even if the artist seldom have need of them.
6. Don’t imagine that a thing will ‘go’ in verse just because it’s too dull to go in prose.
7. Don’t be ‘viewy’ – leave that to the writers of pretty little philosophic essays. Don’t be descriptive; remember that the painter can describe a landscape much better than you can, and that he has to know a deal more about it.
8. When Shakespeare talks of the ‘Dawn in russet mantle clad’ he presents something which the painter does not present. There is in this line of his nothing that one can call description; he presents.
9. Consider the way of the scientists rather than the way of an advertising agent for a new soap. The scientist does not expect to be acclaimed as a great scientist until he has discovered something. He begins by learning what has been discovered already. He goes from that point onward. He does not bank on being a charming fellow personally. He does not expect his friends to applaud the results of his freshman class work. Freshmen in poetry are unfortunately not confined to a definite and recognizable class room. They are ‘all over the shop’. Is it any wonder ‘the public is indifferent to poetry?’
10. Don’t chop your stuff into separate iambs. Don’t make each line stop dead at the end and then begin every next line with a heave. Let the beginning of the next line catch the rise of the rhythm wave, unless you want a definite longish pause. In short, behave as a musician, a good musician, when dealing with that phase of your art which has exact parallels in music. The same laws govern, and you are bound by no others.
11. Naturally, your rhythmic structure should not destroy the shape of your words, or their natural sound, or their meaning. It is improbable that, at the start, you will he able to get a rhythm-structure strong enough to affect them very much, though you may fall a victim to all sorts of false stopping due to line ends, and caesurae.
12. The Musician can rely on pitch and the volume of the orchestra. You can not. The term harmony is misapplied in poetry; it refers to simultaneous sounds of different pitch. There is, however, in the best verse a sort of residue of sound which remains in the ear of the hearer and acts more or less as an organ-base.
13. A rhyme must have in it some slight element of surprise if it is to give pleasure, it need not be bizarre or curious, but it must be well used if used at all.
14. That part of your poetry which strikes upon the imaginative eye of the reader will lose nothing by translation into a foreign tongue; that which appeals to the ear can reach only those who take it in the original.
15. Consider the definiteness of Dante’s presentation, as compared with Milton’s rhetoric. Read as much of Wordsworth as does not seem too unutterably dull. If you want the gist of the matter go to Sappho, Catullus, Villon, Heine when he is in the vein, Gautier when he is not too frigid; or, if you have not the tongues, seek out the leisurely Chaucer. Good prose will do you no harm, and there is good discipline to be had by trying to write it.
16. Translation is likewise good training, if you find that your original matter ‘wobbles’ when you try to rewrite it. The meaning of the poem to be translated can not ‘wobble’……………

http://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2014/05/23/oppenheimer-gita/

I will try to write some good poetry this year and will not be deterred by political happenings.We must live as well as we can whatever the situation.We have homes ad computers so we are the richest  people of this

world

And a special thank you to Mike Flemming for letting me use his fine photographs for several years including the ones of New Zealand wild creatures here.

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Imitation meals are lined up   here
Chicken pie, half roast potatoes, peas.
Beside the bottles of dark, Irish beer.

In the long lit cabinets, it’s clear;
The top layers know that eating’s  a disease.
Divination,seers, are laid back here

Once men hunted flowers and chased false tears
While women washed,  reaped  wool and smiled to tease,
Frowning people maimed black bitter here.

Grinning apes hang from   our  unshed tears
As asthmatics  lust  to have their wheeze
Imitation  meals are lined up, are they fare?

 
Spiders, tadpoles, newts  are christened here
They will ignore the nobles  who  must seize
And drown inside the bottles of black beer.

Women  labor and  downplay their creed;
Even as their uteruses bleed
Irritating meals are labeled  weird

Trumpelstiltskin, who shall us now lead?
Who will halt the damage and secede?
Imitation, real, is lined up near.
We hear the chortles of dark, Irish beer.

I am going shopping today,  Mary informed Stan.I have decided to buy a corset.I am too fat.
I hope it’s not a whalebone corset, Stan teased her. gently
Are they still allowed to use the bones of whales? she asked.One whale must have massive bones.Why not use dog’s bones?
Well, Stan said, you may be plump but don’t torture yourself for beauty.I love you as you are, sweetheart.
Mary got onto her bicycle and rode into town , passing some lovely magnolias and forsythia.She locked her bike to the church gate as sinners cannot be trusted especially just after Confession.

Hello, I’m looking for a whalebone corset, she informed the lady in the lingerie department.
What!We don’t have them anymore.They ran out of baleen which is horny material in a whale’s mouth.
Was it their teeth , asked Mary tremulously.
Eeh, I don’t know said the  assistant.Anyway, now we have shapewear.It looks like underwear but it’s elasticated.So it keeps your curves in like those minimiser bras
Mary burst out laughing as she imagined wearing an elasticated vest which would push all her fat up round her neck or down onto her bum .Or an elasticated pair of knickers which push the fat upwards. onto her abdomen.And furthermore, how easy would it be to get them down in the bathroom? Worse still, if Stan took her to a restaurant and she could not pull them down for a wee…should she take some scissors?
Mary stopped laughing when she saw all the staff staring at her,
Are you alright, madam? one asked rather ferociously.
Yes, it’s my dwindling hormones.They make me laugh hysterically from time to time.It’s better than getting those hot flushes ,in my view.
Why not have HRT? the lady replied.
Excuse me, said Mary, but I do not wish to discuss my health matters in public but thank you for your concern.She was rather pleased with that having just read
“A woman’s guide to compassionate self assertion.”
Although she did wonder why it was addressed only to women.Emile agreed when she discussed over milk and cat niblets which Mary had to eat when she ran out of food.
As Mary stood in the Shapewear department she remembered the time she tried on some denim jeggings as they seemed to be in fashion.They looked very nice but she had such a hard time getting them off she thought she would have to buy them and cut them off at home.
So all of a sudden she picked up her Mondrian PVC shopping bag and her green handbag and ran out of the door into the button and wool department.
My, you look hot, her friend Gail said.I am buying some merino wool for neckwarmers.Do you ever knit nowadays, Mary?
Only with whales bones, she murmured.And it’s  so hard to find them now.
Well, whales must still have bones, dear, otherwise they would collapse.
Surely you don’t expect me to catch my own whale.Mary cried in fear having seen a  film on this topic.
And how about Jonah?Suppose I find a prophet inside the whale?
That could be just who we need, Gail said.Someone who can tell us what God wants us to do.
Would people listen, Mary asked Gail tremulously
Only if he went on Twitter I suppose.
Could Donald Crump be a prophet? Mary muttered
No, he’s too big for a whale to swallow even if the common people swallow his nonsense.He sounds as if he’d like to treat women the way they do in some countries like Saudi Arabia.40 lashes for taking the morning after pill.
It could be hard to have,”the night before” in a place like that.
The two women gazed blankly in front of them trying to remember their youth and their mad love affairs.
Let’s go into the Cricketer’s  Arms and have a drink Gail said.
I’d  rather have coffee,Mary replied.So off they went arm in arm humming
“I believe in angels “very loudly to frighten off any evil spirits from the lingerie department.We know the Devil loves bras and suspender belts with lace trimmings as he is, in fact, the god Pan who was a goatherd with a horn on which he played his music to tempt the weak; some  even say he was half goat half human but we never did that in the maths department.
We only studied shapes and forms and symmetry.Well, I know it sounds suggestive but we only dealt with it in an abstracted manner.That’s why you see mathematicians with all sorts of undies hanging off them as it’s the geometry they need to learn and how better than on a field trip to a department store. Anthropologists go to Samoa and mathematicians go to Sex and Undie shops.They have no choice.They need to see those conical bras.Conic sections!Ellipses.You get my drift?

She said she was writing free verse
Trying to be pointed but terse.
But the rhymes kept on appearing
So  she gave then a hearing
And she copied them all, which is worse!

As for meter, she thought it was gas
Which sooner or later would pass
So I said to her, Rita
Why not look up meter?
She said, I would  rather sound crass

It’s all in the music of mind
To sing  too is  extremely unkind
So we sat on the sofa
And  I admitted I loved her.
So we went to lie down , to unwind.

I  heard her call, would you like tea?
I wanted her to sit on my knee.
We both kissed and made eyes
Then ate apple pies.
It seems like a daydream,we’ll see.

I don’t know how to write about irony
It’s not simply sarcasm, you know.
It’s not meant to cut
But simply to put
A comment with a  questioning glow.

Oh gas fire, keep me  warmer  and relaxed
For  frost has bitten and my lips are chapped
I must wear more lip salve but perplexed-
I wonder if wild apes protect their lips?

We were not made to sit by a gas fire
From Africa, our ancestors roamed far,
But did not note the chill of Lancashire.
Nor plan to use a train or drive a car.

Instead of  adaptation   to the cold
We made use of beeswax and sheep’s oil
While men hunted for  pigs,both wild and bold
We women used  rich substance to beguile.

Charles Darwin’s theories may be as far as this-
Yet why would lips be tender but to kiss?

Oh.bedside lamp, how much  you   have  deceived?
You glow with light unnatural late at night.
You see with  jolting  start  what I  received
And never show  your torment,  or mis-sight

On  my Nook ,  here’s Sylvia Plath again.
I feel a sorrow deep and wild and strange.
Without your light,  she’d  never know a man
But in the day time, Plath is out of range.

You saw me thin and supple as stem,
With painted lips , and eyes, and  dew of skin.
Then later when I stumbled , rose again-
You lit me up , when man could not begin.

O, bedside lamp I wonder what you know.
Do you take notes in Hebrew as  you glow?

https://www.globalcitizen.org/en/content/john-oliver-buys-15-million-of-medical-debt-for-60/

 

CITIZENSHIP

John Oliver buys $15 million of medical debt for $60,000 and forgives it all, because he could

By Travis W. Lyon| June 6, 2016

“Debt. It’s the reason Nicolas Cage has made so many great choices in recent years…”

From the second John Oliver started his segment about debt buyers in the United States last night, everyone knew it was going to be a good one, but as regular viewers of Last Week Tonight know, nobody could guess how it would end.

Near the end of the segment, which provided a damning portrait of the debt buying industry, Oliver claimed that “Any idiot can get into it, and I can prove that to you, because I’m an idiot and I started a debt buying company and it was disturbingly easy.”

Read More: How You Can Attend the Global Citizen Festival: Rihanna, Kendrick Lamar, and More

Oliver then proceeded to detail how with $50 and knowledge of the law he was able to successfully apply online to create a debt buying company named “Central Asset Recovery Professionals”, or as Oliver put it, “CARP” named after “a bottom-feeding fish.”

After setting up a rudimentary website for CARP, the satirical, but still real company was offered a $15 million package of medical debt for $60,000.

Oliver explained that the debt was out of statute, which means it is the kind of debt that a collector can only continue to collect, but not sue the debtor for.

Then, instead of chasing down the 9,000 debtors in the debt package as a normal collection agency would, Oliver decided to stage the largest one-time giveaway in television history and work with the nonprofit RIP Medical Debt to forgive the $15 million with no consequences for the debtors.

Oliver’s actions last night continue his penchant for big-moment activism.

When he was taking on the topic of tax-exempt organizations and televangelists, Oliver and his team started a tax-exempt church called “Our Lady of Perpetual Exemption”.

How To Write Whether You Feel Like it Or Not

“3. Take a deep breath. If that doesn’t work, take a walk.

If you’re stuck in the middle of a writing project, you may be just need to reset your brain. Try closing your eyes and taking several deep breaths.

If that doesn’t work, grab a notebook and a pen (or your iPhone with Evernote) and take a walk. This will clear your head and get your subconscious working to solve your creative blocks. Plus, you probably need the exercise!”

Read more at http://thesaurus.yourdictionary.com/reckon#f8I6HffM8fjl35vK.99

There’s no accounting for taste.
There’s no accounting for waste.
How did you figure that out?
How did your figure get out?
Do you reckon I am wrong?
If you but beckon, I am summoned.
No, but you are quite calculating at times.
No, but you are quietly evaporating at times
I can’t account for my behavior at all.
I can’t get a discount for my behavior at all?
I can’t get a discount for my behavior in your hall?
The configuration of the participating was accurate enough.
That is a very weird sentence.
That is not a sentence at all.
Well, you can have your head cut off instead.
Well, you can have  your  shed cut out  in bed
I reckon you are mad.
I reckon I’ve been bad.
I beckoned  that bad lad
Compared to whom or at whom?
Compared to tombs or coombes?
I ‘ve  got you all figured out.
I’ve got you all jiggered about
How about my psyche?
How about me, crikey!
Sorry, this is a  recycling shop.
Worry! This is a retirement coup!
I didn’t even know it was a shop at all.
I didn’t even glow in a shop at all
What did you think it was?
What did you think ink was?
A doctor’s surgery.
A doctor’s  perjury.
Well, stone the crows and count your blessings.
Simultaneously?
Don’t mention algebra!
Don’t mention our zebra!
Don’t sanction our Barbara
How about horology?
How about topology?
Goodbye
Good sigh

Children don’t always sort meta­phors out correctly.
Father: “We are all going to fly to Rome to see your  the Pope.”
Child: “But Dad, I don’t know how to fly!”

Daughter: That chap looks rather hot to me
Mother: Well it is 90 degrees in the shade.