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The Emperor of Ice-Cream, by Wallace Stevens Call the roller of big cigars, The muscular one, and bid him whip In kitchen cups concupiscent curds. Let the wenches dawdle in such dress As they are used to wear, and let the boys Bring flowers in last month’s newspapers. Let be be finale of seem. The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream. Take from the dresser of deal, Lacking the three glass knobs, that sheet On which she embroidered fantails once And spread it so as to cover her face. If her horny feet protrude, they come To show how...

It appears that Sudanese army and police forces have surrounded at least three refugee camps in the Darfur region of that country, forcing relief agencies to remove workers and cutting off refugees in the camps from the outside world. Apparently, “angry Arabs” are gathering near the camps, supposedly in retaliation for the kidnappings of a number of Arabs by the Darfur rebel groups, who are mostly Black Africans. Chosing the cover of an American election to minimize, or at least delay, responsive action from the rest of the world, just might not be a coincidence. None of this bodes well:...

What are you reading this for? Go vote.

That’s right! The big day! The day after completing the Marine Corps Marathon in and around our nation’s capital in an “asterisked” time of 5 hours 55 minutes and some (painful) seconds. We asterisk it because our running partner and “Gym Set” teammate Jim Henley suffered a mid-race injury, with his knee giving out on him at Mile 12. Jim soldiered (or marined, as the case may be) onward, but by mile 16, he realized that the risk of serious damage to the knee warranted, and wisely adopted the distance runner’s adage: “He who runs and runs away, lives to...

Well, with just four days to go until the election, we were wondering who else might chime in. We got our answer: Al Qaeda kingpin and former world’s most dangerous man Osama bin Laden, with a video shown on Al Jazeera television. Republicans have three days now to twist the rather cryptic message into “a vote for Kerry is a vote for bin Laden”, or more likely, “if you even THINK about voting against the Imperium, terrorists will kill your children”. The video message seems to have pointed out that Bush probably got a lot more people killed by reading...

That’s right: just 75 years ago today (and not very far from where I work…) was “Black Tuesday”– the Wall Street stock market crash of 1929. While no particular market panic is scheduled for today, next week is… a whole other week!!! I’m reopening the “electoral vote/popular vote” guess contest; closest guess gets lunch care of moi at New York’s Bouley restaurant… Take your best shots!

Well, it looks like we have “the facts” as to what happened at the unfortunately named Al Qa Qaa weapons complex in Iraq: as shown in a video taken by a crew that came in with the 101st Airborne, the shit was all there when we got there, and it was US that fucked up the security measures. Game. Set. Match. George W. Bush’s alleged strength for those who believes that gratuitous wars of aggression are a good thing was that “at least” he kept weapons out of the hands of terrorists. Only at Al Qa Qaa, we put bad-ass...

That’s it. 9-11 did change everything. It’s been nearly twelve hours now, and the universe has not been destroyed, despite the Boston Red Sox prevailing in an inconceivable eight game winning streak starting with being down 4-3 going into the 9th inning down three games to none against the New York Yankees to come back and sweep the St. Louis Cardinals to win the 2004 World Series. Many in New England will now lose a sense of their collective identity: the bitter taste of bizarre means of defeat, heart-crushing late inning errors or opponents’ home runs, somehow made the long,...

Palestinian strongman Yasir Arafat is in serious medical condition, described cryptically by different sources as “critical”, “life-threatening”, “serious”, or “stable”, and ranging from “a bad case of the flu” to “stomach cancer”. Both Israeli security forces and Palestinian Authority security apparatuses are on a heightened state of alert (where do you go from already high alert?) in anticipation of violence in the event Arafat’s health deteriorates, or if, in fact, what ails him is terminal. With six days until American elections, this is just part of the complete wild card that the Middle East is; Sharon’s Gaza pullout plans are...

Even your somewhat partisan talking dog was somewhat taken aback during one of the presidential debates when the moderator asked the President and Senator Kerry about the looming shortage of flu vaccine. I didn’t really think an unfortunate contamination was a political issue; until you realize that, as Mark A.R. Kleiman tells us, ONLY the United States will suffer a vaccine shortage, because our government dithered while others arranged alternative supplies (and thanks to the on-fire veep for the heads-up). Surprise, surprise. Another catastrophic cock-up from the Bush Administration that will unquestionably result in thousands of additional American deaths. As...