"Bee Nott On My Syde"  As Wednesday is the Bard’s 450th Birthday, it is perhaps appropriate that one of the lesser-known plays from what the French refer to as Le Folio Questionable of 1616 be at last put before the public. Here then, for the first time in print is, in two acts:

BEE NOTT ON MY SYDE 

Ye True and Tragicall Tayle of how a King, striving to doo Goode and bee Liberal, can indeed Lose a Kingdom over a Horse 

Scene: 
A Great City by the Sea 

Dramatis Personae: 
Dinken – A former King 
Giulianus – Another former King 
Bloomenborg – A Buyer and Seller of Kingdoms 
Diblasius – The current King 
Letamon – A witty but churlish fellow 
Lenos – Another witty but churlish fellow 
Finche – A motley foole 

ACT I 
Enter Lenos and Letamon, bras-en-bras 

Lenos – Why, how now master Letamon. Why stare’st thou so at thy i-pod?

Letamon - Pish for thee, thou cow-eared dog! I have just now deposited my residuals and severance checques and find me well over 100 million florins in wealth!  ...ifaith Lenos, why now twerkst thou so?  

Lenos – Easily have I outstripped thee, thou braggart vile and damned furious wight!

Letamon – Oh ho! Then shalt thou purchase yet another aged and sagg’ed waggon at king’s ransom cost?

Lenos – Not in a pigg’s eye. Now I shall purchase ALL the dregs and rinds of Chysler and rename it The Lenos! – Laughter 

Letamon – Verily, we are well away with our loot. But list! We be but mites beneath the foote of the Mighty Bloomenborg. Hee could but, if hee wished, now buy Portugal and use it only for the fishe. Betimes, how came hee by his great wealth and power?

Lenos – Ah, I heard it in this wise… In the last days of King Dinken, when all prated on how hee had squandered the City’s gold on undeserving louts, there rose up Giulianus who promised to bee a Liberal, improve ye Qualitie of Lyfe - and yet reduce taxes.

Letamon – Was his mind aright?

Lenos – I know not, but this rested not easy in his bosom and quickly made he friends with police and billionaires, and sought upon himself greater power and glory

Letamon – Lenos, thou hast spoke true; His heart is fracted and corroborate.

Lenos – Remember thou how he danced and orated upon the rubble of WTC and called for War, knowing this would both increase his glory, his power, and his appearances on CNN? Among his allies was Bloomenborg.  Already fat with gold, hee too lusted for power and knew hee had only to wait.  

Letamon – Aye, and Giulianus, lock’ed with death-grip to his lust for greater glory through more police and more Orange Alerts drew heavy laws upon the people, forsook the Law of the Land for himself and when his time was done threated the City Council to give him yet more.  But then arose Bloomenborg who quoth: “Ha, art thou bedlam? Thy time is done, base oppressor. I shall now offer the people both security and MY style of Qualitie of Lyfe.”

Lenos – And the people, seeing only “Security” bethought: “… z’blood, hee is rich so must be hee smart alike!” and readily made him king. Verily then, confusing himself with Godd, sought he to take tobacco and Large Cokes also away and made yet more cudgel-swinging police until the people groaned and cried out “enough”.

Letamon – Aye and so arose the most gracious Diblasius; calling himself again Good-Hearted and Liberal…but hold, enough of this! Let us away to the golf links at Monaco, for I fear my gold is but little used!

 Exeunt both 



ACT II 
Enter Diblasius and Finche, pushing a heavy electric car 

Diblasius – Why, beatest’s thou a dead horse Finche? My mind is firm on this matter.

Finche - Pray your Grace but clap an eye on the headlights!   In faith e’en the Blind would see them as Hong Kong Garish! Overall the waggon looketh both cheape and fake. Thinkst thou a swain and’s mistress would covet a midnight dalliance through ye park on such a thing?

Diblasius – But my heart bleeds for the poor horse who might be whipped and forced to plod this heavy trade…

Finche – Then e’n in please your grace, out of love for you, I bid thee bind up those wounds and shed not another drop of heart’s juice for these nags who, I’m told, delight in this service. Woulds’t thou have them better at the glue factory?  Their sires and grandsires did the same service and liked it well. Vouchsafe it that many now would think thee a bedlam natural, save those that curse thee a slave to the moneybagged fooles at PETA who did help make thee King.

Diblasius – But the people have had enough of Bloomenborg!  I must be a Liberal who loveth all. Have I not taken a comely Moor to wife? Dine I not with those loathe to report their dalliance in this countrie to the State?   Like I not the Spring flowers?

Finche – Ah your Grace, e’en it all be widely known, This city hath so many more heavy-pressing issues that thy love for flowers, illegals and horses, makes thee look the foole and tyrants the like of Giulianus, who would in a moment roast and eat ye horse, seem sane.  -  Hark! while police yet beat white-maned ancients while you prate about horses another Rational Progressive leaves your army and wants not to be hailed as your ally.

Dilblasius – Watche thy tongue foole or I will have it out!

Finche – Then I leave thee thus…there is much of great Matter to be done in this evil city. Thou’rt now king. Lose not thy kingdom for a horse!

Finis

MH-370 Diary 
Day 45

I think it is Day 45.  I know it is at least 43 days that we have been here on Suluk.   All of us who are still here anyway.  If they took the old lady yesterday we are down to 63 in these three houses.  So I'm drunk, but it hasn't killed me yet.   I didn't know you could make some kind of wine out of fermented coconut milk but Agi did it.  So all right.  

I'm not embarrassed.  I don't think anyone will find these messages anyway.  There are no airplanes crossing overhead, and no helicopters.  I wonder if anyone cares.  It's OK to get drunk and makes it a little more bearable.  I'm sick of fish and these oily greens but that's all we have.  

I don't know why they won't let us go.  We don't know anything and nobody cares anyway.  Last week I heard Alahadi joking about somebody searching for us down near Australia.  So somebody cares?  But that's where that stupid decoy drone went isn't it?  Who am I talking to anyway?

Hey if anyone gets this, we're on Suluk, probably in the Andaman Islands and I'm sick of fish.  I think its April 22nd today, Earth Day.  We're still here on earth, it shouldn't be so hard.    Pleasae come and get us.

- Loosely translated from a rolled note found in a plastic bottle on an Alaskan beach July 22nd, 2021

TWENTY-OH WHAT?
Musings on Time and its Measurement

15 April 2014 AD

It’s far too late to do anything about it now, but during the past decade I found myself in a etymological back-water, excluded from the common parlance; an outcast, tragically misunderstood. 

My mistake was to suppose that when the year 2001 dawned, it would be appropriate to use the same convention in place for the past Five Centuries if not longer, and call the year Twenty-O-One.  It just seemed to make sense. When did TR assume the Presidency? Nineteen-Oh-One. When was the dwarf planet Ceres discovered by Giuseppe Piazzi? Eighteen-Oh-One. When was Captain Kidd hanged as a pirate? Seventeen-Oh-One. And so it goes on down the corridors of recorded time and honored tradition. “Twenty-Oh-Something” should have been a natural when its time finally came. Waiting in the wings, eager to flex millennial muscles, it would not only be timely, it would be ubercool.  When I was in school, anyone who said: “One Thousand Nine-Hundred and Eighty Nine” was either on heavy drugs or recently arrived from Kalashnipur, Lower Baluchistan. 

But it never happened. The stranglehold the talking heads had on our collective psyche proved Herculean. In SONY and Fox and NBC boardrooms it was decided and so decreed: The awesomeness of pronouncing: “THE YEAR TWO THOUSAND AND SOMETHING SOMETHING” in Magnificent Ten-Syllable Tones was undeniable.  It would be Policy.  Deviation therefrom would be the exclusive province of hoary pundits like Dan Rather in an oppositional/defiant mood.  It was, after all, The Third Millenium.  Any reference to twenny-oh anything would be met by confused looks and then the slow, slow dawning of understanding.  It was a battle not worth fighting.

Still, from my perspective, since the first 14 years of the long-awaited Third Millenium have proven among the bloodiest and cruelest in human history we might as well skip the histrionics. Personally, when referencing a given mass-murder, species extinction or genocide which took place in say, 2007, I still recommend avoiding the bloated pomposity of using 6 ponderous syllables when “twenny-o-sevn” does the job admirably with just 3.

Regarding the other Time issue...now filtering in from the province of Archeology...about the appropriateness of the term "B.C."  I don't have problems with the retention of antique terminology whether appropriate or not.  Antique terminology gives our culture charm and tradition. There is no need for computer programs to suddenly be called "apps" just to sound cool. Jews don't have to call a Christmas Tree a Hanukkah Bush to avoid apostasy. It's OK to refer to a freezer as an icebox. I wouldn't even balk at someone calling a CD-player a victrola. It gives us some continuity rooted in the past. 

B.C. however was always a little weird since it was English whilst AD was Latin, but never mind that.  When thoughtful archaeologists, striving to do good, changed it to B.C.E. (before Christian Era) they unwittingly implied that the Christian Era was the only one worth establishing as a boat-anchor for Time.  The next iteration kept B.C.E. but changed its meaning to "Before Common Era" which in a way was even worse because it directly implied that all other Eras were either Uncommon or by inference, Abnormal.  Thus, Buddhists are left with the suggestion that the saintly Siddharta Gautama attained parinibbana not in the Blessed Year 1, but in the year Negative 545 of the Abnormal Era. 

My suggestion is that we return to B.C. but change AD to A.C. (and add the periods for uniformity). However, since this gives an air of presumptive and arrogant English Chauvinism, how about we keep AD and start referring to the Year Zero on back as AnDi (ANte DominI)?  Things are consistent, the language is the same used during the epoch we are fretting about and everybody is happy.

Lunchtime in America 

1 April 2014

Despite the date, I kid you not about the content below. This is a real story reported by actual talking-head reporters on multiple websites (e.g. http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/man-sues-mcdonald-napkin-article-1.1708068)

The problem is that in its telling and retelling, the rapidly narcotized, minibyte attention span, e-reading public in the U.S. and internationally is led to accept nonsense like this as just another story, rather than proof that civilization is just about done for.  I think it's time to correct this wearying trend by re-writing stories like this accurately.   What follows is the original version (from a deliberately unidentified website which nevertheless shares verbiage with the identified website because coherent prose is so f-ing rare nowadays) which got published in...of all places...Japan!

What follows that is the Emails From Earth version, lightly edited for enhanced versimilitude to actual events.
 

The Original Version That Got Published in Japan:
How many napkins are you offered with your order at McDonald's? Do you think it's enough? One man is suing the Golden Arches for a lack of napkins after only receiving one at his local McDonald's. According to TMZ, Webster Lucas was unhappy with his local McDonald's in Pacoima, CA after he received just one napkin. When he asked for more, Lucas claims he was denied. That did not sit well with Lucas, who told the manager on duty, "I should have went to eat at the Jack-in-the-Box because I didn't come here to argue over napkins. I came here to eat." According to Lucas, who is African American, the manager then made a racially-motivated remark, allegedly saying something about "you people." (The manager is reportedly Latino.) After the verbal disagreement, Lucas emailed the general manager of the McDonald's to say that Napkingate caused him "mental anguish," which has prevented him from working. The general manger offered Lucas free burgers, but Lucas instead decided to sue McDonald's for $1.5 million. Based on this account, do you think Lucas deserves compensation?

The Revised Version:
How well do you understand life in America? Do you think it's enough? One man saw an opportunity to make some BIG Money in the typical American Way. Webster Lucas saw his chance at a local McDonald's in Pacoima, CA. After he allegedly received (according to him) just one napkin, Lucas cried out publicly that he needed more and could not get them - even though they are dispensed free and without limit at every McDonalds on the planet. Since the typically Spanish speaking, probably-minimum-wage, quasi-legal, Hispanic menial he was dealing with could probably not understand what he was ranting and raving about, Lucas, who has some partial African ancestry, then cried out that a McDonalds Manager had muttered something about "you people". Seizing this opportunity, the eager Lucas ran to a delighted California lawyer who also saw a chance to make REALLY BIG Money by creating an otherwise non-existent "incident". The lawyer instantly labelled what Lucas thought he heard as a "racially-motivated remark" knowing this would attract intense news coverage. At the lawyer's urging, Lucas emailed the general manager of McDonald's to say that the manufactured "incident" caused him "mental anguish," which prevented him from going to work. Regardless of how idiotic this was, the general manger, awed by the great edifice of Justice in America, offered Lucas free hamburgers. Having no interest whatsoever in food, the excited Lucas and his equally breathless lawyer are suing McDonald's for $1.5 million. Based on this account, do you think Lucas and the lawyer should be tried and executed for diverting important attention away from the serious problems which truly plague our people and our planet?