WhimsyLand

Well, they got it back.  Everyone calls the work by Edvar Munch "The Scream", but of course it's real name is Norwegian (Skrike).  As a translated word is seldom exactly the same word as the original (same cultural context, same emotive value, ...) , I wonder if "Scream" is the best or only alternative.  TriTrans says skrike can be translated as clamour, cry, shout, squall or yell, for example.  Anyway, they caught the gunmen who waltzed into the museum and ripped it off the wall, but had not yet recovered the actual painting until yesterday.  The convicted men were ordered to pay $122 million in damages.  That's going to be a little hard to raise while in prison.

I was getting to like the new batch of Hurricane/Himmicane names:  Yolanda, Sergio, Zeke, Fabio.  Then along came John.  John?  What's next?  Bruce? Bob? Reginald?  Jim?

The world-class clusterf*ck that is the JonBenet affair continues.  In case you've been off the planet for the past 10 years, this is the most sensationalized murder case since the Black Dahlia, and once again, they have no suspects now that John Karr has been let off the hook.  In a cheap shot that we expect in this election year, Colorado Republican Governor Bill Owens has stated that Boulder District Attorney Mary Lacy "should be held accountable for the most extravagant and expensive DNA test in Colorado history" and Lacy has been getting criticized for causing Karr to be arrested and transported to the US for DNA testing (which he passed).  Here you have a guy who apparently knew details about the murder scene that only the medical examiner and an inner circle of law enforcement knew, faces charges of child pornography in California, expressed sexual interest in young girls at a Thai school, and oh, by the way, confessed to being with JonBenet when she died.  What was Lacy going to do, leave him in Thailand until all the I's were dotted and T's crossed? 

Here's the ever-irascible John Bolton, whom Bush slid under the U.N.'s door as our Ambassador when Congress was out of session, in his best imitation of Mark Twain's intelligence and wit.  Bolton's in the news today for venturing that "Unanimity is not necessary on Iran".  Sounds a lot like the run-up to the Iraq War, when 72 days after 9/11, Bush was quoted as asking Rumsfeld "What have you got in terms of plans for Iraq? What is the status of the war plan?"  As if I weren't worried enough, I had to listen to Michael Ledeen's spooky babble about how we Have To Do Something About Iran yesterday on Fresh Air.  Naturally, Ledeen works at the American Enterprise Institute and I could almost hear his eyes rolling wildly in his head like some kind of conservative Mad-Eye Moody.  He's not actually advocating invasion (yet), just spending a lot of money to convince those poor misguided Iranians to overthrow their despicable regime.  Maybe they would even put another Shah in place, like we did when we ousted an elected leader in 1953, helped (with the Mossad) to train the brutally effective Savak secret police, and generally reaped the benefits of a Middle East ally.  That's got to be a better plan than actually letting those Ay-Rabs elect their own leaders, which didn't work out so well in Lebanon and Palestine.  BTW, my favorite Iran quote this week is from Newt ("!'m Baaaack!") Gingrich, who said

"When the intelligence community says Iran is 5 to 10 years away from a nuclear weapon, I ask: 'If North Korea were to ship them a nuke tomorrow, how close would they be then?"

Why is he worried about Iran?  What if NK shipped a nuke to Belgium?  Can you imagine how uppity they would get all of a sudden after two centuries of having one neighbor or another run over them?  Or how about Iceland?  Or St. Kitts & Nevis?  God, what if OPRAH had the bomb?

The news about Lucia Perillo's Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award got me thinking about Ms. Perillo again.  I once clicked on her web page's button that says: Buy my book and diminish the supply in my storage locker.   She returned The Oldest Map with the Name America to me with a lovely note in a spidery hand.  Ms. Perillo was diagnosed in the 80's with multiple sclerosis, a condition about which she has written in The Body Mutinies.  I am often bewildered (and a little envious) when the MacArthur folks label somebody a genius and give them a half-million bucks.  In Ms. Perillo's case, it seems that somebody got it right.  Here's A Simple Campsong from Verse Daily.

It looks like a new APR just got thrown over the transom.  More on that tomorrow.