The Grimace of Machiavelli

Machiavelli's most famous work, Il Principe, brought him a reputation of an immoral cynic [sic]

The Italians. If my life in Philadelphia amounts to an abject deconstruction of perennial, thwarted aspiration, I am under little illusion about what it would amount to on the peninsula if I managed to land and assemble for transport in Tuscany. Cramped store outlets barely large enough for a 5 foot 7 inch male of perhaps 175 lbs to stand behind a small counter, equally compact flats in which to wedge persecuted Arabic foreigners, juxtaposed around the scenic beauty of Lake Como, a plethora of earthquake collapses in Naples. One thing native Italians share with my enthusiastic to fade away contingent of Turks is an overweening penchant for flowery allusions embedded in death threats which are basically meaningless, an emaciated breath of history from the tombs of the Medici. Is Beppe Grillo a little Mussolini with saccharine smiles for Rai’s studio lightning? I yowled at a copywriter who dropped me because I enjoy Matteo Salvini’s pugnacity, and it is into this subterfuge of less precise detail that lurking in on Tassoni’s prep school immaturity triggers an irascible desire to hoist myself on my own petard, but lurk I do, nonetheless. Then I emailed him once again, approximately the third time since I tracked his career accolades. I mentioned Brandon’s name, the Negro assailant who nearly took my life. “It would have been better had he killed me,” I wrote, nearly petulant with despair, still accusing.

Why weren’t you there to protect me? This was the embedded outcry to my interpersonal Rocky who rejected me when I was 19. Now who’s being prep school, the dowager asks wryly, so easy to believe you still love the one who got away? John Tassoni was, indeed, my Rocky Balboa, and my mild bout of digital hysteria elicited his solicitude, the little monkey on his back, the nascent savant who can’t get over a punk from Chester who was kind to her, bear hugged her, made her realize that masculinity needn’t be toxic. Imprinted for life, no matter whose husband I slept with, but sitting here, with the mock up board of our lives on social media, you take stock in the realization of unhappiness with a player. Had I been successful in seducing him, chaffing or not, the interpersonal would have wound up where I left the serial novel of Alicia and Peter Florrick, keeping up appearances as a matter of showboat necessity on the hollow knell of the attraction which brought them together.

This episode, the one where the flawed values of a moderate political couple defeat the NSA, would have been courageous on the part of everyone, including Ridley Scott, to leave it conclude right there after the departure of Charles. Alicia was far too ruthless with Peter. You may adjudicate that assessment for yourself.

I’m dropping The Passage, as edgy as it purports to be, and scrolled through Tucci in Fortitude as a British DCI, to my delighted surprise. Somehow, even with the edginess of an Arctic locale, British thrillers are grounded in domestic tensions which are anti-climatic. On the American scene, they are instances of grand theater. Another citizen from my homeland with its tertiary angles has joined my ranks, and like John, a doctorate. I’m mollified. For the time being.

The Velociraptor of Yucca Flats

"I'm concerned about the risk of the risk."-- Donna Brazile, pretense of a force to be reckoned with

The only episode of The Good Wife which came to the dowager's attention when it had currency on the free CBS network was "A New Day," and even that was only a partial view 10 minutes into the story, which I can only say, now that I realize what was going on in the stratosphere Rahm Emanuel's dismal leadership, is one of the more improbable plots out of the third season, a gay Palestinian killing a one time Jewish hook up who didn't want him, with all of forty stereotypical stab wounds illustrating gay hysteria for the sole purpose of placing Chris Noth and Julianna Marguiles in diametrical opposition to each other as Alicia begins to assert her litigious independence. Rather than striving to regain a modicum of my independence, or burning my bridges with my godfather and his troubled designated vendor, Mainline Medical, such as they've never been burned before, I've retreated inward, lost in this neo-realist series developed by the King's in an effort to pave the way for Hillary's coronation never to be? I'm waiting on tinderhooks for Will's death, which reverberated the reviewer's pens and carried over to me, reading the reverberating reviews which I in turn should be doing, getting access to those contingent previews prior to air date. At this rate, conditions of digital media brands being what they are, that's a rueful notion, that I can still stand toe to toe in entertainment media, re-assemble my building blocks, still fortunate that I do not have the shriveled post-menopausal neckline Mary Collins of Virginia.

Think the answer is yes

— Mary Collins (@MCollinsVAGirl) January 22, 2019

This is what she wrote in my lack of response to a rebuttal aimed at me in relation to Mueller's grand political theater, which has oscillated outward on the flimsiest of specters. I lost my temper to these apparently habitual terse retorts of hers, not that she could have been aware that I am not always capable of responding when I am now forced to fight a staph infection, an infection which will kill me necessarily unless I find another power chair through which I can restore some function. I don't want a piece of the story in relation to the ramifications of Mueller's over reach and abuses, unless I pick up a side lede on Flynn, who mystifies me. Mary pissed me off, believing that I cannot possibly comprehend the criminality involved in a mere logo leasing deal in Moscow, but it isn't only that. We're losing that altruism we used to have before smartphones transposed our interactions into hyper-partisan scorecards. Ms. Collins apparently doesn't realize, herself, with those tart snippets, what quadriplegic means, and how I am a thousand times stronger than she for what I've survived, even with the vortex sucking me in these last 17 months, and that vortex is a permanent condition of Ray's, the tweeter who reached out to Woods in his threats to publicly advertise his desire for self-harm. Sunday evening I kicked Ray in the balls. He claims, this Sunday evening, that his suicide attempt failed, and I retorted I am sitting in diaper shit, broke, and he needs to get over himself. His Christian sympathizers stroke his anguish, but not I, in this insulating pain of his to illicit pity. If he truly wanted to be dead that would have occurred after the actor's efforts got Ray placed on 50/51. The nurturing TwitterVerse offers about his "value" is only encouraging him to continue illuminating his pain, and that devotion to Jesus he wears on his sleeve is no doubt representative of a martyrdom complex. Whatever his mental illness is, if he desires its mitigation, it is contingent upon him to relocate a healthier egotistical comportment, and swallow the therapeutic paradigm available. A nursing home, by contrast, will not do the same for me, and if I take drastic action, I have to be able to mobilize quickly.

Wolf's Subversive Sniffer

Dick Wolf's modality undercuts the no pity exaltation by acknowledgment of cruelty within the matrix of disabity itself, as well as exposing the realism of our vulnerabilty to systems designed to help us. I know of actual cases of Paratransit users raped by minority drivers, and Wolf's SVU writers expose this by flipping the caste, but still exposing the fact that transit authorities hire criminals who hurt us. Saving money is more acceptable than our safety. CI nuances this more finely with both leads, D'Onofrio and Noth, and I give them credit for the honesty about the darkness in the bell jar of chronic conditions. "Conscience" is a great example of this. Heart disease feeds the original motive of the husband, who wants control of a trust fund and cannot, therefore, kill the wife, and, merely as a matter of technicality, puts her in a persistent vegetative state, which then triggers the opening murder of the doctor hoping to relocate the person within the damaged mind, which cannot be done, but fear of viability triggers the husband's admission of guilt that was meant to satisfy those convinced of something more sinister in the motives behind the battle between Schiavo's spouse and family. If Terri's husband had truly wanted her dead, the case would not have dragged on for fifteen years in which the woman's brain did not rewire itself. Josie Byzek sniveled to me over this meal I could not afford that "we [the activists] should have never gotten involved."

I'd like to ask what human being wants to languish like that? With rapid and sustained intervention, some PVS can be reversed, but disability activists need to grow the fuck up. Every dollar wasted on Terri's brain stem after the obvious became apparent could have been spent on helping those of us with living minds, and this is in part why Josie pisses me off, aside from burning me on a potential date. The woman refuses to apply herself beyond issues of empowerment. I am still consciously aware and dare to assert that I deserve better than living like this; if my brain implodes, then yes, let me decease under humane palliative care. I'd rather those dollars go to wheelchair users who might dare to dream of romantic adventures in Paris, Tuscany.