October 2026

October 5-7, 2026: There is a movie (its name escapes me), but that, in it, the world awaits the imminent impingement of the moon or asteroid or solar storm or aliens upon this earth. People try to get by normally all the while, everything (including their loves and hates) seen as if through gauze, a smidgen of unreality in every act done or contemplated. This is what gives as we speak, what with the brazen corruption everywhere and at all levels (not to mention the culling, or if you prefer, the killing fields in a certain region of the Middle East). In more than one nation-state, the minds and souls of a social construct generally regarded as a cut above average when it comes to “enlightened and spiritual populaces” make for a trash heap of yesterday’s bestsellers and other pulp fiction. The ghastly body count continues – in nickel and dime sums day after day after day after freaking day. It is said: do not hate the people who commit the slaughter, hate the slaughter, critics of said slaughter regarded as squeamish at best, moral cowards at worst. The hatred is a sacred business, don’t you know? It is the unease with these “mowing the lawn” operations that is unholy, not worthy of beings who may have read a few books, who may have doctorates appended to their monickers. I guess I am condemned to having to say, “I stand corrected” at all times and places. There is a movie, and its name escapes me too, in which everything is upside down. (By the way, I am no doctorate, but have post-graduate honours from the University of Yellow Cab.)

Otherwise, at the beginning of “I, Claudius” (BBC production, 1976), Claudius is setting about to write his meemwar (memoir to you.) He will write it and then squirrel it away. In 1900 years, it will be dug up and read, and the true truth of those early imperial years will be known, all the scuttlebutt as apply to the intrigues that swirled about Augustus C and Livia, Tiberius, Marcus Agrippa, Julia, a host of others, and Claudius himself. Apply this state of affairs to Trump and his regime. (Is Melania sentient enough to pass for Livia, Trump Jr to Caligula on a duck shoot?) Consider what regime change Trump has brought about in light of what Augustus brought about: the removing of the state as a state from one set of tracks, caboose and all, and the laying it down on another set of tracks, the republic a ghost, Congress a sidecar to the engine of autocracy. Is there a gimp-legged historian all stammer and spleen out there who might write the tell-all over and above what a very bald homunculus (I call him Baldy) has already written with his 4-volume compendium on presidential shabbiness? Despite 24/7 journalism, such as it is, despite the myriad podcasts on every conceivable subject, will the truth ever truly get told, one way or the other, about these “extraordinary” times? Meanwhile, in the background, there is high tech achieving what all the mystery religions always wished to achieve: the rendering of the human body as incidental to life, if life not of the spirit but of a virtual void. That we are peons who have signed over our souls, in the service not of philosopher kings but of top-of-the-line predators, the apex kind with headsets.

As for ritualized death at the heart of Aztec culture, and as for pain among the tribes in general all over the two New World continents, imperviousness to pain was highly prized, was in and of itself virtue. The Greeks decided against human sacrifice in the Greek “Archaic Period”. Why? Gotten soft? (There was the odd instance of human sacrifice in Hellenistic times that accompanied crisis and panic.) Is there virtue in NFL football amidst shoulder-padded head-hunters? It is said that a republic cannot survive any loss of virtue in the sense that it cannot survive the loss of the rule of law, that no one is “above it”. We are dedicated to the proposition that the absence of pain on any of life’s fronts is a good thing, and I am not going to argue with that. Even as there are plenty of people who will wear virtue like a new suit of clothes and not blink an eye, there are still too many opportunists who think they are going to get away with “it”, with all their cash grabs and power-mongering, and it would seem they are right. No pain, and bucko gain. Or else there is a comfortable standing-pat, whatever the law gets up to. Since when has a kazillionaire ever been held to any accounting that he or she could not joke their way clear of, and failing that, spend their way out of a perjury trap? Justice does not come out ahead, not even in the long run. Most of the time, it fails to make the play-offs.

Postscript I: It is National-Do-Something-Nice Day. (Sometimes I think I make these things up.) But I am sure Carpenter has suggestions as would be ”nice” for some, as in cast an early ballot and vote the f—ker out. He has, besides, in recent days, either coined or begged, borrowed or filched for his own use the rather telling pair of words “collaborative insanity”. Now I could have put such words to good use in one of the preceding paragraphs….

Postscript II: Lunar infusions, and we do not mean product exits: … …. ‘I am besieged with computer trouble, spinal trouble, having left my hat on the plane trouble, and, hell's bells, one of the speakers on my sound system has stopped working trouble. It is becoming impossible to fix anything, and it is all down to geeks having made things impossible, the notion that each man is his own technician. I just can't face any of this rubbish. Yesterday, to escape it all, I went into central [London] to sign books and meet H for coffee and sfogiattele. Did you ever try that Neapolitan delicacy? It is fiendishly hard to get right and this café in the middle of Russell Square gets it just so. We cursed the fact this country fails to appreciate its composers, [that] there is hardly ever any modern music on the main classical radio station BBC3 because, uh, the ratings will go down and bloody ratings is what is it all about, the biggest possible audience. There can't be another country in Europe that treats it own composers so badly. North America is, of course, a basket case.’ … …. But before he gets into his next wind-up, let us give Lunar a breather. Alright, he has had his breather. … …. ‘The bungled execution has reached a new height of obscenity, which mirrors the bigger insanity in America. The execution rate has soared at Trump's behest.’ … …. From the day previous then, and this explains it: … …. ‘A woman in Tennessee on death row for thirty (30!) years is about to be executed. This is not to excuse her crime, but it does seem that certain forms of mental punishment are, in terms of what constitutes civilisation, the greater crime. America stinks.’ … …. I was just going to say as much, but it has been stated so, and without the slightest whiff of literary grace which, given the nature of the mouthpiece, is a form of grace.

Postscript III: Cornelius W Drake of Champaign-Urbana, honk if you see some hombre huffing himself so as to look larger, like animals do when threatened, and you may have just caught a glimpse of the latest presidential campaign ad which the “pepple” will be shelling out for, no matter what the man says to the contrary. Honk too if you come across a gaggle of tech bros regarding themselves as a league of “extraordinary gentlemen”, and you may have come across a pack of freaks. As for “un-babied” couples, what is there to say? Either they are guilty of having some foresight or their sense of civic duty is suspect: … …. ‘I guess I saw less of the ending than I thought [with respect to Polanski’s “Ninth Gate”]; I don't remember a [ridiculous] sex scene, every one of which either puts me to sleep or causes me to reach for the remote. They've ruined so many [ ] movies.’ … …. Sex? What follows here on Drake’s part is nostalgia for a civilized cigarette: … …. ‘I recall that awful day when the last vestige of Western civilization collapsed: 10 January 2005, the day Italy—Italy!—banned smoking in such venues. Goodbye, Columbus, hello Dolly. [Moreover], I'm not sure I can handle two more years of Trump. I may snap. Every morning, a dozen news pieces about his latest absurdities that I choke down. Then more as the day proceeds. Then evening wrap-ups, more madness. It's like living in an insane asylum. Pretty soon, one might well become as loony as the others.’ … …. Yes, but it is like living in an insane asylum. How are you at rock-the-cradle while the yo-yo sleeps?

Postscript IV: Talking Avocado: … …. ‘For some reason, well, for many reasons, I've been reading the bible. Suffice to say I have a lot of questions. Otherwise, the less said about the progress of my novel the better. Someone wrote me to say that there is silence greeting his recent publication. There is a lot of noise, to be sure, but it’s the silence that deafens. Percival says hi in goat-ese. Maa. But with asperity. The weather on the island is damp, the kind of damp that licks at despair and gloats.’ … …. Gloats? You have got me there….

Postscript V: Rutilius: … …. ‘What happens when you open the bible at random and you read: But unto Hannah he gave a worthy portion. Nothing much. You can either push on with the story. You can believe you have just dipped your toe in something poetic and sacred and so, should mull the notion of “worthy portion” before proceeding further. A worthy portion of what? Goat, ram, cow, canine? A bag of crisps? Or that on which a patriarch doubled down as he loved Hannah doubly over and above his other main squeeze? It seems a poem [of mine] that appeared in Moss Puppy Magazine has been nominated for a Genre Punk award. I shall practise my sneer and cultivate some zits if I win this one.’

Postscript VI: Sissy Gadzilla: … …. “A favourite scene of mine comes right at the end of the movie “Michael Clayton”. The evil corporation’s head honcho lawyer is tricked into incriminating herself. Sickening, simpering look on her face as she stutters her way into buying her way out of a bind – it’s quite satisfying to someone on the side of justice, her interlocutor having a hidden recorder in his pocket. A modern fairy tale, eh? Now, Alberto Sordi. The great Italian actor-comedian. Could I have liked him who regarded sex as a sin but had a thing about beautiful women, and seemed to collect them as if collecting stamps? My Polish cousins have no opinion on this matter, but they’re split between those who think Putin will invade and those who think he’ll just continue to annoy. Cupcakes in the oven. The French horn in a Sgt Pepper’s sort of mood.’

Postscript VII: Trail Mix: … …. ‘I suppose human life could’ve originated on Mars and drifted our way, only to hit glaciation. I suppose Livia (Drusilla) could’ve poisoned the equivalent of a small town in her quest to install her son on the curule chair so as to wield imperium and she keep pulling strings. (As might Trump when he scampers off to Mar-a-Lago at term’s end but keeps his hand in.) I’ve started in on a biography of Jack London. Wasn’t it better to royster and frolic over the world than break his fine young body on the wheel of other people’s greed? (Don’t give me the gears, I like the sentence and can live with the sentiment.) There’s something amiss with Saturday night hockey, the way it’s being televised. A tidal shift in the Canadian psyche? On a par with how the ancient world saw the Incarnation? There is the secular use of the word “Lord” and then there is the sacral aspect of the word. Voted yesterday in the provincial. Experienced a very brief but tangible sense of virtue in the way the word is meant to signify. That is, I forgot my immortal soul; I concentrated on centering the “x” on the ballot where it was supposed to do its business lest my vote be dismissed as the act of a nutter. And you? Did you vote?’ … …. I did, bantering at the start with the election officers – two women so on top of their game they could afford a laugh or three. In other words, I was primed.

ADVISORY: “Blue Neptune”, a collection of poems by Norm Sibum is listed on Amazon.