The Long Pincers Umbra

"That statue is not about football," Gleason, straining to speak because of the effects of ALS, said moments before the formal unveiling on a rain-soaked Friday afternoon.-- a hero in continuing pan shots of emaciation

What I see in the above image is the less than illustrious rise of an ancestral peasant class, with its nearly denuding and uniformless dressing of the crone age female body, mass manufactured couture, making the best of it on a parochial teacher's salary, representative of the culture wars surrounding gender today, more den mother than feminine, all in slacks. They would not use the terminology of Gloria Steinem, but there is no doubt they've benefited from the feminist generation, emasculating males who simply do not have the fortune to be a Monsignor in charge of secondary education. They submit as the obedient second sex to Catholic priests, but dare I say this is primarily pro forma. The large woman in the back right is a retired principal, and doesn't live in the same building with a priest who let her go, many years ago, relieving her of her responsibilities, unlike myself, forced to delightfully reside with dying clients and one heinous transsexual who protected and covered up my toxic humiliation at the turn of the century. More on the limpid retraction of disability independent living due to the centralized triumph of Maximus later. However bad things were before under the decentralized Medicaid Waiver before, things under Maximus are like lining up humans over fifty for slaughterhouses, and this merciless safety net for indigence is traded on the NYSE. I can only snicker, starkly, not even compliant with near dying well, with brave smiles. Oh, my aunt, she only wants what's best for me. Not offering the same appearance of frailty as Justice Ginsburg and bubble wrap, she nevertheless encloses herself in a dome, with her own fears, near to 70, with allegories of rebirth in heaven. She is upset with yours truly for throwing a spear at the sacred pantheon of her mother, my grandmother, who sits at a table with a geriatric aplomb, zoological spectrum of vacancy. And exactly what, you ask, does this have to do with Robert Mueller's Russia probe rumbling along in avalanche? Aside from the need to demystify Putin, who has the same financial inability to restore the former Soviet empire as any other colonial power, Mueller's applied brute force is destroying lives, as opposed to protecting domestic election integrity. Manafort is no more or less unethical than the flash boys of Wall Street, and my eyes glaze over with the new, if recycled, Slavic paranoia. that's right, but I got sucked into a Twitter brawl with blat, and Mary. It cost me, but doesn't it always, at that? If Pelosi decides to impeach the ignoramus in chief, and starts to chip away at Senate solidarity, it doesn't change the continuing erosion of our former unifying ties as a country. Regular readers can scroll through 1600 posts, to discover my integrity in disposable linens. From this perspective, Justin Cronin manages to convince me of world's end. We're overwhelmed with pathogens, meaningless, aimlessly frail identities. His trilogy is so similar to Carey's film I thought the series was a clever spin off. Another error. Worried? Alas, don't be. I have decided to suspend medical services, soon. That will be the start of my journey as well, as if I am the first of the last. I am determined to leave Philadelphia.

Constrained in Sequins

"I don't know why I want to write you
now."-- Robert Thomas, translating heritage.

Anyone who remembers the golden age of Eisenhower matinee as an adult is dead, thus this is a qualification to the inexplicable mystery of why men found Lana Turner a worthwhile trophy hard on. It is baffling. Marilyn Monroe is self-explanatory, like her latter day counterpart, Goldie Hawn, who may have upgraded the motif, but followed in its tradition with sterling lack of deviation. Grace Kelly was upper echelon. Doris Day was barefoot and pregnant, the girl scout type. But Lana Turner? Golden heart ho? 

Loretta Young wasn't marketed to men. On the contrary, her capital as a Hollywood diva was her appeal to my mother. The nuclear family tensions beneath the surface, the cover up of the crime worse than the crime itself. Despite obstacles, if you do not violate the theatrical laws of time and scene your sacrifice shall be duly noted, rewarded in the end. The model has been deconstructed a thousand times over in feminist literary theory. I am not interested in defending it so much as interested in the anxiety which threatens Young's constraint through the course of her career, caught in a high wire act between obedience, independence within her own movement, sacrifice to the pressures of the patriarchy with the implicit acknowledgment that she will be granted a degree of autonomy if she behaves, a more talented and palatable Joan Crawford. Crawford was often histrionic because she scared the living shit out of you, and probably saved a few men the trouble of a vasectomy. Loretta was a more honeyed variation, not immune to the sensibility of threat.