This song belongs to Aaron Lebedeff at least as much as the songs in My Fair Lady belong to Rex Harrison.   (I believe it is a felony to sing Rex’s song without trying to imitate him.)   [Look for Aaron's singing in the post below this one.]

Aaron made his mark in the 1920s and since then, hundreds, maybe thousands, have tried to imitate him.   Knowing it is futile, the super great Barry Sisters tried their own interpretation.

The song’s conclusion is cut off.    Still, magnificent.    The Barry Sisters flourished in the 40s and 50s and were the Jewish response to The Andrew Sisters.  The Barrys were jazzier and had far more swing.   I first heard Lebedeff imitators when Danny Kaye sang Rumania in a 1940s movie.  Can’t locate it any longer.   Mickey Katz’s son, Joel Grey, sings it.   So does Johnny Cash!!!  Astonishingly well, too.)   Youtube probably can give you a dozen other would-be’s.

If you really are crazy enough to want to try your own luck alongside these pros, start with an easy English version.  I cannot vouch for the translation but it looks right to a patzer like me.     Try singing it alongside the Barrys or, better yet, Aaron L.   Once again, you’ll find the link to Aaron in the post immediately below this one.

Oh Rumania, Rumania, Rumania, Rumania, Rumania, Rumania, Rumania.

Was such a lovely place, I just can’t explain ye.

Oh Rumania, Rumania, Rumania, Rumania, Rumania, Rumania, Rumania.

It was once a land so fine with milk and honey .

If you lived there it was such a pleasure.

What you wanted you got in full measure.

A mameligele, a pastrami, a sausage with bread,  pastrami, karnatzele (a kind of smoked meat similar to jerky)

And a glass of good wine, aha!

In Rumania all is well,

If there’s trouble you can’t tell [They don’t know any worries].

They drink everywhere,

They chase their drinks with Kashkaval (a sheep’s milk yellow cheese).

Now comes the impossible part if you want to sing in tempo.

Hay di-gi di-gi dam, di-gi di-gi di-gi dam.

Hay di-gi di-gi di-gi di-gi di-gi dam.

Hay di-gi di-gi dam, di-gi di-gi di-gi dam.

Hay di-gi di-gi di-gi di-gi di-gi dam.

There are lots more hay di-gi-di-gi-di-gi dams but that’s enough.     If any of you are dirty, hook-nosed, kinky-haired Kikes, here’s a link to a Yiddish version.   Yeah, when I was 13, I probably could have read this stuff.

http://www-personal.umich.edu/~verele/studentprojects/0506/rumenye.htm

Hey, did you hear the one about the Yid greenhorn who wins a $10 million lottery within one week of coming to America?  Before an assembled crowd of a dozen newspaper men  (i.e. newspaper people) he says, “Vot a countrree. Vot a vunderful countrree.  Only in America.  I vant thanks God, and all you, and my beloved vife and…and… [he looks down at his wrist and sees the lottery numbers] and Herr Hitler for giving me the vinning combination!”

What sick perversion turns people AWAY FROM anti-Semitism?

I am having bad sweats, indicative of true panic.   It just occurred to me that in my preceding post, my reference to Mickey Katz eludes most of you.   Mickey happens to be one of the giants of Western Civilization. He is the Crown Prince of all that is worthwhile in life.   In short, he stands second on the list of great Yiddish entertainers behind only Emperor Aaron Lebedeff.

Here’s Mickey.   Nothing special about this number.   Just pure Mickey.   CLICK HERE.

Now, the Emperor himself.  Let all get down and lick the soles of his shoes.   CLICK HERE.

Don’t try this one at home.

I have not the slightest reluctance about going to a restaurant with 14 friends and picking up the check for all of us if the meal is good and the cost is $12 per person.  I am delighted with the chance to do that.  $180.  A good bargain, and I am happy.  But I will not go into a restaurant and pay half that for a lunch for two.  I prefer surgery on my hand and wallet, if I can get it done at a cost-effective $4000.

I am not a classic cheapskate.  When I was in my early teens, I would sometimes walk miles to find a candy store operator who would charge me 5 cents for a 5 cents candy bar.  I always wished death on the person who was charging 6 cents.  I would trudge through wind and rain to find the man with the right price.   Given the wear and tear on my shoes and socks, I wasn’t saving money.  I refuse to be cheated, however slightly.   It has nothing to do with being a cheapskate.

I hate financial dishonesty above all other forms of dishonesty.  I know there are worse things - but not for me.  I hate Bernie Madoff, not because he drove people to ruin but because he raised financial wrongdoing to a new high.   He sometimes took $millions from people who were left with $millions, but what does that matter?   He drove some people into poverty but that was no worse in my eyes than leaving some of his victims with $millions.   It was not the victims for whom I felt sorry but Bernie at whom I felt blind fury.

I am heading to Florida at the end of the month to examine some properties.   Prices are running about $14,000 for 2-bedroom homes in gated communities.  I can’t understand how they can sell for so little.  I am trying to keep in mind that if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.  I have been told that before the housing industry collapse these homes sold for $140,000 but if I find out this is a lie and that the initial prices of these houses was $50,000, I will lose all interest.  I am not so much interested in a bargain as I am in genuine value, and I don’t want the value of the homes misrepresented.     Why should I buy a $50,000 home for $14,000 anyway?   Aren’t all homes sold, even in the best of times, at a price more than triple their true value?    I don’t determine value by considering standard prices.   Why would I buy a brand new Ferrari that usually sells for $300,000 but is being discounted to $95,000?   I wouldn’t want to buy it just to sell it for double my cost because I don’t want to cheat the next guy.    I know the true value of a brand new Ferrari can’t be more than twice that of a brand new Avalon.   I know the value of a brand new Avalon can’t be twice that of $15,000 American car.   I know that the value of a brand new $15,000 American car can’t be ten times greater than a $150 ticket at the Metropolitan Opera.   I know that that ticket hasn’t five times the value of an excellent meal in an excellent restaurant.   Go all the way down.   Go down to the guy who sells nickel candy for 6 cents.  He is a vicious crook, a dedicated enemy of fair play.  I haven’t half the pity for victims of earthquakes that I have hatred for this crook.  (Don’t get me wrong - I just plunged many $thousands into Haiti relief funds, thanks to all the money I have from refusing to pay 6 cents for nickel candy.)  When I go to bed at night, the refrain “Diminishing marginal utility of money” lulls me to sleep.

I am sick of it all.   Every day I call up the rocket ship repair company and ask how it is coming along with my craft.   When will I be able to go home to Planet XPlccch3M?   It keeps stalling me and says it is has sent for parts that can only come from my planet.  That’s 2.023 light years away.  It dispatched a request in a pneumatic tube but the speed is a rotten 400,000 miles per hour.   Don’t do the math.  I’m doomed.      The fools can’t even pronounce my planet’s name which, any nincompoop can see is a simple monosyllabic word.

Value is very hard to calculate so there was nothing funny whatsoever when Jack Benny took a long time to respond to a robber’s demand, “Your money or your life”  with “I’m thinking, I’m thinking.”

Here is a song from Mickey Katz’s very, very famous son.

Among the millions of persons who are devoted to watching the ostentatious Oscar-awarding ceremonies are tens of thousands of discriminating movie fans who know perfectly well all the defects of the show.   They know that there are better judges of the worth of movies than the Academy members, that the acceptance speeches are dull-witted and too long, that most of the categories are merely gap-fillers to extend the proceedings from 1/2 hour to three hours (for revenue producing purposes), that the entire show is little else than a self-congratulatory exhibition of a trivial form of art, if movies can even be considered that, and finally, unlike the grammies, no effort is made to provide entertainment between the pompous marches-onto-the-stage for the Academy firmly believes, against all reason, that the show is already the pinnacle of entertainment.    The worst of it is that the marchers-onto-the-stage take themsevles very seriously.  They also take their opposition seriously and offer up the most ridiculous patter of praise for them, concentrating on their nobility, humanitarian qualities and acting or directing genius.   We don’t mind.   Are we stupid?

Given that the show seems to be an outrage to commonsense, why does it apppeal to people who not only should know better but do know better?   Every major film critic of the last 50 years has taken at least one potshot at the whole business of Oscarizing but they are magnetized like everyone else.   Oddly, they draw up their own lists and vote, too.  The NY Times Film Critics and the L.A. Film Critics who, no doubt because they have more discernment, cannot resist going head-to-head with the celebrity-drenched Academy.    They realize few people care about their choices unless they confirm the Oscar-winning choices.   Preposterously, we have, too, Golden Globe awards in which the Hollywood foreign press put on their own extravaganza.  The Hollywood crowd patronizingly attends and accepts their prizes as if they care.  It is the polite thing to do.

Committed to playing the same game, the professional critics are, ipso facto, obliged to review the Academy choices with great solemnity.   Indeed, one gets the impression that they care more about the Academy choices than they do about their own.     The addicition is not limited to “the professionals.”   Just yesterday, Sidney Gendin, a man indisputably more judicious and artistically sensitive than any member of the Academy, (and I don’t mean that jestingly, ironically, or in any way other than downright sincerely), played the game in his blog and assigned points to previous Oscar winners with all the joy that loyal readers of movie magazines buy these things.    Are we stupid?

What explains the madness?   Clearly, there is some sort of mass hysteria, but saying that is not to explain but only describe.  What explains the mass hysteria?   It is dissimilar to the most extravagant and best known case of mass hysteria - the Hans Christian Andersen story of The Emperor’s New Clothes.  In this case, the impetus for hysterical blindness was the desire not to seem stupid.  I suppose that if somebody thought the latest Jean van Damme movie was the best film of the year he would seem (and be) stupid.    But what is at issue is the whole business of caring deeply.

The mass hysteria is not the classic medical mass hysteria in which people can, for example, be blind or paralyzed without any neurological disorder.    Caring deeply about something is not an emotional perversion best left to psychiatrists to explain.  It is not for psychiatrists to pronounce that the world is mentally sick.   (Especially when so many of them are themselves caught up in the “madness.”)    Perhaps the mass hysteria is akin to getting caught in “the red scare of anticommunism” that flourished 1918-1920, “the Salem witch trials” or “the Joe McCarthy” incident of the 1950s.   These were not play-acting for the sake of an evening’s enjoyment; on the other hand, perhaps our interest in Oscars is just innocent play.  When we go the theater and watch the villain get ready to kill the heroine, we pretend to be frightened but if we really were, we would rush onto the stage to stop him.   Or we would place a call to the police.   We permit ourselves to get caught up in the action and we seem to be very deeply involved but we are not.   It is the just way to enjoy the evening.  This puts our engrossed attention in a better light.   It is all pretense.  Imagine that you had to choose between watching the Oscars and allowing your neighbor’s cousin, whom you have never met, to die agonizingly in an accident.   Somehow, you could waive a magic wand and either save that person’s life or you could have a splendid night of Oscar-watching and have all your favorites win.  But you cannot have both.  To make the choice even more stark, suppose that by saving the person’s life, the Oscar shows get canceled for the next ten years.    The choice is obvious and I won’t ask you to submit yours.

The other night, I watched a professional basketball game and one of the superstars suddenly collapsed for no apparent reason and was rushed off to the Cleveland Clinic.  I still do not know the upshot of it.   The game continued but, immediately upon its conclusion, the players of both teams spontaneously gathered in a circle in the center of the court, linked hands and prayed.   When asked about this, one of the players (Lebron James) said they are just playing a game.  Nothing about it is serious despite the intensity with which they go about it.  Life is infinitely more important.   Clearly, for James and all the other players, it would be better to lose every game than have one their “own brothers” (his term for all players on all teams) die horribly and prematurely.  That may explain it.   We go about our Oscar-watching with intensity - as if it mattered, but it doesn’t, and we know it.

We are not so stupid, after all.

We bring you, now in its 700th consecutive season, the very worthy successor of Joey Addison and Dick Steele’s The Spectator, which ran out of steam in 1712.   I mean, of course, that Idiot’s Delight, Consumer Reports. I, of course, have been reading it nonstop for over half a century.  But what does that prove that you didn’t know already?

Have you ever noticed that CR has a fetish with interior paints and latex?   Hot diggity. I am swelling - and I don’t mean with pride……..Oh, let’s not get vulgar.  Here’s what is happening in the March issue.

1. Letters to “Ask Our Experts” - “How do I know whether I should start annual mammography at 40?”   Just in case you have been on an extended journey to Mars for the last 40 years, I am going to tell you the CR answer:  ”Talk with your doctor about your needs and concerns.”  Okay!  Now, we’re getting somewhere.

2. Next letter: “The batteries for my cordless drill are dying.  What do I do?”   Oh, no.  Let’s move on to another section.

3. “What’s the best bread?”  CR will tell you.   Me?   I won’t.

4. “Okay.  Will you tell me whether I should buy Glad bags or Hefty?”   No, screw you.  Go buy your own subscription.   My advice?   Talk with your doctor about your needs and concerns.

5. “I think I saw a headline on a news stand on a corner of McLean Avenue in the Bronx or Yonkers or Mumbai.   It went like this -  ”The lowdown on high-fructose corn syrup.”   I am begging you, Gendin, tell me about this one.  Oh my oh my, the Lowdown.”    Okay. You’re out of luck if you are trying to decide from among Heinz Tomato Ketchup, Wishbone Deluxe French Dressing, and Dannon “Fruit at the Bottom” Yogurt.     All will kill you.

6.  Now for something a little different AND important.  Your local bank is probably paying you 3/4 of 1% interest on deposits, but Colorado Federal is offering 1.5%.   I checked with Fibonacci of pi fame and he assures me that is double.    So, if you keep $5,000 in your account then, after 30 years, you should have at least an extra $1200 via Colorado.   Not much, you say?   Just watch Harry Connick and hot Kelli O’Hara show how wrong you are when they sing “7 and 1/2 cents isn’t a helluva lot” from Pajama Game.

7. What’s it going to be?  Vicks 44 or Robitussin Maximum Strength?    More lowdown.  Save your money.  Just drink warm liquids.   This magazine IS GREAT!

8.  For how long have you been pondering the Hamlet-like question, “Bagged salad or not bagged salad?”    Well, forget Consumer Reports on this one (although, naturally, it has its own answer).  No sane person eats lettuce, whether from a bag or not.  That’s strictly for Hazel of Watership Down fame.  And where did it get him?   A trip to rabbit heaven in the final two pages.   Sans 72 virgins.

9.  Any coffee fans out there?   Believe me, if you worked in Yonkers, NY along with the rest of the CR staff, you would drown yourself in the stuff.   Chills go up and down my spine every time I drive past McLean Avenue on the Major Deegan Highway.   In order to fortify themselves, the staffers sampled 100 brands.  Sure enough, they liked some more than others.  You don’t care, I don’t care and even they didn’t care, so why should I report the results?

10.  Interior paints in this issue?    Of course.  Read all about them pp 41-42.

11. Yes, Virginia, there is a difference among carpet cleaners.  So long as CR continues to exist and so long as it is devoted to the highest beauty and joy, you know to whom you can turn for true knowledge.  Your little friends are wrong to be skeptical.  We should have no enjoyments without a clean carpet.  The eternal light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished.   Not believe in clean carpets! You might as well not believe in fairies!   Please turn to page 44 all the way through 49 and discover the joy of freshness.

12. TVs and cars?  Yes, they are all there.    Cars speak for themselves, especially Toyotas, but you need to know your pixels and resolutions when buying a TV set.  Do you want 120 hz or will only 240 Hz do?    And how about 1080p vs. 720p?   Do you really need a high-priced HDMI cable?   Do you even know what that is?    After CR gets finished with you, you will know.    Will it be plasma or ….?  [Sorry, I forgot the other type.]

As Abby Hoffman advised, STEAL THIS MAGAZINE.

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This post is cross-listed under “This and That” and “War.”

No, I am not reciting the value of pi as far as Fibonacci bothered to calculate it.  I am doing what Lenny himself wisely did - just stopping.  Lenny Fibonacci (circa 1200) was a great fan of Harry Stotle, the Master of Thought, He Who Knows, the Genius of Geniuses and owner of the finest delicatessen in downtown Athens  about 350 years before the Great Crucifixion.  The Great Crucifixion ended Harry’s reign as the Most Admired Man in the World.  Harry would not have minded.   But I digress.

The important thing is that Harry once said we should not seek for more precision than the nature of the subject allows. That’s Harry, for you.  However, we have just suffered through another winter Olympics and witnessed people being assigned scores carried out with eye-popping precision for their triple axels and other mind-boggling feats.   What would Harry and Lenny make of the fact that pi has now been calculated to beyond half a million decimal places?   Well, I ‘ll tell you.  They would have asked, “Why?”  What  would they have made of the scoring for triple axels?   They’d have shrugged and said, “Whatever.”

In any case, I’m in the mood for math - simply because it is near me.  In other words, it is OSCAR TIME! Tonight, tonight, I’ll calculate tonight.  In fact, so long as Harry is not standing over me in that morose way of his, with a ruler ready to rap my knuckles, I am going to sing to you The Way it Was.  In other words, I refuse to be more laconic than I need to be.  (Did Harry warn against being more loquacious than the subject demands?)

I know as well as the next person that the fact that a movie has been awarded the Oscar for being Best Picture of the Year is NOT proof that it is awful, although it does provide us with a fairly strong presumption in that regard.  So let us, in trembling anticipation of tonight’s celebration of itself by the Motion Picture Academy of Arts and Sciences review the Academy’s selections for the Award of Awards since 1990.  I could simply give ratings like Awful, Terrible, Bad and Dull-Witted but, ignoring the well-established wisdom of Harry and Lenny, I’ll grade past movies as though they were triple-axel performers at Showtime.    Heeeeere we go.

1990 - Closing out the decade (unless you are mathematically challenged) we find Dances with Wolves. Verily, I say unto thee, it is no use trying to make a career out of hating Kevin Costner because you would have to get at the end of a very long line.  Will you be upset if I give it a modest ranking of 5.530515?

1991 - The Silence of the Lambs. Like Brooke Shields, Jody Foster turned down several Nobel Prizes in chemistry, and physics as well as the Fields medal in mathematics to pursue an acting career.   On the basis of this “chew ‘em up or swallow them whole - exactly as you like”, movie she made a big mistake.  Anthony Hopkins, per usual, squints throughout.  A fleshy, medium rare  5.09623.  You couldn’t get JoEllen Vinyard to watch this one on the promise of $10,000.   It would have made a vegetarian out of her.    Right, she was.

1992 - Unforgiven. You either like the music of Kyle Eastwood or you don’t.  I do.  Beats High Noon.    What?  You say that Kyle did not write the music for this one?  There you go - ignoring Harry.   And that guy with the leathery skin.  Who outside an asylum unter Anleitung des Herrn de Sade doesn’t love him?    9.121234.

1993 - Schindler’s List.   Oscar Schindler was no Raoul Wallenberg but he gave it his best shot.  Can’t say the same for this tedious movie and its notorious, fraudulent “Zing, zing, zing went my heartstrings”director, trillionaire Steven S.    A bighearted 6.4331.

1994 - Forrest Gump. Beyond the Pale.  Where is Stalin when you need him?   3.911.

1995 -  Braveheart. Sorry, I couldn’t bear to drag myself even as far as my own couch to watch this one.   However, I am sure, even without viewing it, it deserves at least 0.995.

1996 - The English Patient. Heavy duty romance.  Nothing to interest me but, objectively speaking, not bad.  8.85 is reasonable.

We could do more, and at another time we will.   But for now I have to get the popcorn. As you watch tonight, take heart because I will be sitting there alongside you.   You won’t be able to see me but you will feel me, holding your hand and giving it loving squeezes.   So brush your teeth and keep that breathless smile.  I know I am going to love you just the way you look tonight.

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Yes, I’ll be sitting alongside you, (with Molly Jenson), and if this song doesn’t bring tears to your eyes, you are probably the kind of moron who thinks Palestrina and Monteverdi had talent for music.  Click on  Here’s Molly.

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Don’t ask me why, you rotten precision readers, but I am not only listing this post under Entertainment but cross-listing it under Art.

As it truly happens to be the case that I know four men who have reached the rank of Colonel in the U.S. Army, you will not be able to track down the source of my information. The colonel in question says that according to David Petraeus, Ph.D. Princeton, Commander, U.S. Central Command, former Commanding General, Multi-National Force - Iraq (MNF-I) from January 26, 2007 to September 16, 2008, General George C. Marshall Award winner as the top graduate of the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College—class of 1983, etc., ad infinitum, and keeper of the mayonnaise jar in which Funk and Wagnall’s dictionary is stored on Johnny Carson’s back porch, 75 percent of Americans aged 17 to 24 are ineligible to enlist, let alone receive an officer’s commission, due to a combination of obesity, poor education, drug use and criminal records.

What to make of that?  Having located an old bottle of Schweppes Bitter Lemon given to me by the gracious Commander Whitehead, I swallowed the news and the brew together and I now pronounce the news curiously refreshing.   Who, in his right mind, would have put the percentage below 85%?   Unless it is a national security secret - which most likely it is- I would like a more fine-grained analysis.  In particular, what percentage of Americans are unfit to serve because they are obese?

I am also curious to know whether the old Annapolis standards circa 1951-1954 still apply.   In those days, one could not be appointed to a position of a navel officer if one was “extremely ugly.”  What percentage of Americans were eliminated on that basis?   You will surely recall that Mr. Roberts and Ensign Pulver had no problems but that Chief Petty Officer Dowdy was an NCO.   The Chief swore up and down he was really the actor Ward Bond and could make himself look human if he wanted to.   That defense was dismissed as increiblé.

Men have come a long way, Baby.  They leave movie theaters with soaked handkerchiefs, they eat quiche, they smoke Virginia Slim cigarettes, they drink Pink Ladies, they wear aprons when washing dishes, and they, too, fake orgasms.    But will they do whatever it takes to satisfy General Petraeus, Ph.D., and prove they are really worthy of driving his jeep?   It’s all very exciting.  Stay tuned  - to WEAF.

I never realized it, I never gave them credit, I completely underestimated them, but I am now fully cognizant of the fact that ants have conscious lives.  (To a higher degree than my own.)   Things go bad or well for them, juat as they do for us.

About two weeks ago, I spotted a tiny black thing, perhaps an 1/8th inch long, quite motionless, on my granite countertop that surrounds my sink, that I took to be a dead ant.  I watched it for a minute or two and finally touched it lightly.   It sprung into action.  It raced off for safety and its reaction was so sudden that it frightened me and I did not rush in to deliver the coup de grace.  Today, I am glad for that lapse.   In the weeks since then I have taken to observing ants in my kitchen.  They are not plentiful - perhaps 6 or 7 - but enough for me to formulate a(n) hypothesis.  [Do you aspirate your "h" sounds? I graciously give you a choice.]

I never see them scurrying about as one might find them doing in a garden.   They are always taking a nap.  A couple of them sleep stretched out and a few of them prefer to curl up.  When they are curled up, it is hard to recognize them as ants but a feathery touch gives them away.   When ants are sleepy, they find hard surfaces on which to lay their weary heads down.   In gardens, ants like crowds but in kitchens they are loners.  Only when they are away from the madding crowd can they find the peace and quiet they love.  They are not really the hard workers we think they are.  At least, kitchen ants aren’t.

When ants sleep, they dream.  I am sure of that but I have not figured out what they dream about.  Perhaps to each his own.  Perhaps there is no such thing as the stereotypical ant dream.   Some have nightmares, I suppose.  They imagine red ants coming to devour them.  You can almost hear them wimpering the way dogs do when they dream.   Some probably have sexual fantasies in which the queen ant belongs to them and them alone.  Some wonder about the division of labor for which ants are famous.    My ants seem to be solitary fellows, banished, I think, from the community of ants.  Some live in dread of the spray that has carried off wandering chaps who, by means of too much commotion, have annoyed the giants who claim to be owners of the granite tops.

Apart from a good place to lie down and, once in awhile enjoy a small crumb, ants don’t expect or want much out of life.  They are apolitical creatures, and that is more than a bit annoying.   I may be wrong, of course.   Possibly, they run the broad spectrum of opinions just as we do.  The more I think about it, the more likely it seems to me that ants who hang out in large colonies in gardens are of a different political bent than those who spend their days and nights sleeping on granite.  This is exactly what I should have always known but for some reason I was too dense to figure it out.

Of course, from Franz Kafka we all learned that cockroaches are really people, so why did we not expect as much from ants?  Has it something to do with size?   Probably not, because giraffes are very big and they are not people.   Naturally, giraffes are plenty smart but that doesn’t mean they are people.   Jelly fish can be very large but everyone knows they are not people.  Aphids have sworn enemies - little parasites that suck the life out of them and no doubt these vile brutes  are geniuses but you don’t have to be human to be a genius.  Consider Torquemada.

Now that I know ants have genuine lives - that is, they lead lives and are not merely alive like a cherry tree - I want to know how I should modify my own behavior so as to accommodate them.  Should I prepare breakfasts for them?  If so, what would they most like?  Can I knit tiny pillows for them?  I better not take on that task because an ant pillow would have to be so small it would defy mortal craftsmanship.   I have so much to learn, so much to discover, that my head is throbbing as if I am having a cluster headache.  And, good grief, what about about that cherry tree?   Is it possible that….?   Oh, no!  I must not let myself think about that.   For it was William Shakespeare, the great Notre Dame halfback whose stunning game-winning touchdown pass in the 1935 game against Ohio State  gave him immortality, who warned us that there are more things in heaven and earth than we can beer, bare, or bear.    Today, Bill is throwing rhymed couplets and touchdown passes in the sky but I owe to him my never-ending curiosity about the nature of things.

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P.S. Bill died January 17, 1974 and in 1983 was posthumously named to the College Football Hall of Fame.  Later, he was inducted into the Hall of Entomology for, although he was never a practitioner, he inspired tens of thousands like me to Deep Thought.   In 1996, a statue of him was erected at Stratford-at-Avon.   Believe me when I say there is a striking lack of similarity between the Shakespeare of Notre Dame lore and the ridiculous statue.   The Shakespeare I adored knew something of entomolgy and the freak being honored at Stratford must be an imposter.

I am burying my soon never-to-be-published autobiography that mean-spirited agents refer to as a “memoir.”   As a certain fellow-traveler said back in the 60s,  ”You won’t have Nixon to kick around any more because, gentlemen, this is my last press conference.”

It would be delusional to think my confessions are 1/3 as good as Augustine’s or more than half as good as Cellini’s but they are only a little inferior to Rousseau’s or Bennie Franklin’s.  They beat Frankie McCourt’s Angela’s Ashes by miles.  (According to Wikipedia, unable to find work during the depression, Frank returned to his ancestral home in Ireland in 1934.  Yes, it must have been tough for a 4-year old kid to find work in those days.)   He returned to New York to go drinking with such sots as Jimmy Breslin and, when he could take time off from screwing weirdo Shirley MacClaine, Pete Hamill.  Drunken Irishmen are the right allies when you are shopping around for agents and Frank soon enjoyed much success.   I don’t have the good fortune to know any drunk Irish people because the Irish woman I share a bed with can drink any of those sissies under the table and still go home sober enough to write another book - better than any of theirs.

Upshot - I am out of the publishing game. Three books and hundreds of articles have netted me $75 bucks over the last 40 years.   I can take a hint.  If I can’t, I can take a blow to the head and then it sinks in.   So I am done.  Finis.  Kaput.  Rifinito.  Acabado.   ??.     Which letter of these words don’t you understand?

Now, I will content myself with being a blogger.   If anybody wants to collect my pieces from this journal and watchingpolitics, be my guest.   Keep 90% and give me 10% of the profits.  By my calculations (and don’t mess with me unless you are the reincarnation of Fermat), we both will net zero dollars.

As for my blogs, they beat David Hume’s Treatise on Human Nature hands down.  As Davey said, his book fell stillborn from the press.  Mine gurgled to the top three times before they sank.   But they have only been waterboarded, so I will persevere.   Like Timothy, [Timothy,6.12], I will fight the good fight.  When that is over, I will fight the bad fight, with cement in my gloves because, like Tony Margarito, I know that winning is fun even if you have to cheat, plagiarize or kill.

So, either I will be back like Arnie Schwarzenegger or I shall return like Doug McA.  I prefer Doug’s way of putting it because with such style, grace and pinache, he was able to slog through 10″ of water at a dozen beachheads while the Universal Newsreels rolled and recorded his every step for posterity.   In 30 years, only Linda Hamilton will remember Arnie.

En passant, (something I remember from my vainglorious Bobby Fischer days), I am moving in opposite directions, subscriber-wise in my two blogs.   WatchingPolitics has now climbed to about 1200 loonies.  I have no use for any of them.  GendinsJournal has dropped to a paltry 80.  I took it on myself to let go 20 freeloaders yesterday.  I suspect that more of you would like release.  This journal does not permit self-unsubscribe.  Blame it on my distinguished lawyer/website manager who, out of embarrassment that he knows me, prefers anonymity.    If you can get up the moxie to ask for freedom (do it via private e-mail if you must), I will set you free.  Thank God, Almighty, at long last, I can set you free.

You have to be an idiot to think there is something wrong with plagiarizing. Sidney Gendin, for one, always appreciated students who plagiarized.  What’s the alternative?  He would have had to read student papers, if students did not know he hated original papers presenting their own “thoughts.”  [sic] Let’s not go into what is wrong with that.

In Budapest, where both Julie Andrews and Audrey Hepburn learned the King’s English, (although unmasked as frauds by Theodore Bikel), 5197 individuals and 528 organizations agreed that if you are not planning to use the information to kill anybody, you are free to reprint anything you read without bothering to give credit.  This is too obvious to defend, and I won’t.

The U.S. government, although not signing on, gives every man, woman, child, and descendent of Rancho Dobe’s Storm, free access to reproduce anything and everything that rolls off the press at the Government Printing Office unless the document is explicitly marked “not for reproduction”.   That applies to under 1% of the grab bag.   Of course, try to find someone who wants to reprint the garbage.

If you look at the names of the organizations that have clambered aboard, you will understand why plagiarism not only is not frowned upon but positively welcomed.

In my own case, I can’t imagine how I would have gotten through high school and all the post-high school institutions I encountered along the way to high eminence without  good helpings to the words, phrases, sentences, paragraphs, pages and chapters of my betters.     Are you a dirty fink rat capitalist OR WHAT?  Who are you protecting by not stealing and cheating?   Swine, that’s who.   People who don’t steal, cheat, and lie tend to disgust me but I put up with those defects in my friends.  However, I won’t ut up with people giving me dull-witted lectures on the wrongfulness of these practices.   I believe Plato nailed it on the head when he said nobody intentionally does what he thinks is wrong.  Certainly not me.

But I love Budapessssht.   Don’t get me wrong.  I don’t need excuses.   Maybe you do.   Take a peek at the Agreement.