this week i

published violence against children and youth surveys.  we watched little shop of horrors in ghost of lincoln theatre, read watterson's the mysteries

 

hope this life flashing before me takes roughly eighty years to do so.  to not be of the individually-wrapped baby carrot generation.  for these i pray

 

read of the 38 operational routes across the train tracks of the nation because i stubbornly believe that a railroad adventure isn't just a viable alternative to the great american road trip, but remains the very best way to explore this very large country  great american rail-trail cool too

 

biked alongside a pterodactyl of a pileated woodpecker in rock creek park, past doctor walking duncan (donuts or macbeth?) to capital crescent

 

 

drew silverbacks in the trenches. since caravaggio, does tarantino best capture the confusion accompanying sudden death? not those bleeding out on camera, but the bystanders to the dying - curious observers who've just witnessed final moments of another and will need a couple seconds to decide their next move.  he is there..as a witness or an everyman who, in his failure to act, is complicit in the drama / caught between life and death

 

call these bathroom mirror mirror selfies. mom up there, this week was her birthday. mom with an o cuz british mum too toilet paper crypt monster-y

read america (the book): a citizen's guide to democracy inaction by the daily show with jon stewart

learn about the founding mothers and figure out which ones were fmilfs

find out where you fall in the line of succession

discovered in the caves of lascaux, france.  "enough already with the hunting and the gathering" (c. 13,000 b.c.) is man's first known representation of ennui

enter a young hot-shot tobacco executive from virginia

due to an early typo, america very nearly became a "democrazy"

"[expletive deleted]" -richard nixon

if the president were the longest recorded flight by a chicken, he would be thirteen seconds

william howard taft came closest, having what most observers agreed were boobs

the only other criterion was height.  the debate over this proposal consisted mostly of thomas jefferson holding a stick over james madison's head and shouting, "you must be this tall to be president"

whenever he wants, the president can go to the white house kitchen and eat all the chocolate out of the neapolitan ice cream, leaving only vanilla and strawberry 

while anarchy can often turn a humdrum weekend into something unforgettable, eventually the mob must be kept from stealing the conch and killing piggy

quorum: the minimum number of lawmakers needed to enact legislation.  similar in concept to the hebrew minyan (10), the argentinian tango (2), or the number of people needed for it to officially count as an orgy (6)

the senate appropriations committee or the house ways and means committee also review most bills.  these committees are concerned with the financial implications of each bill and generally compete in a game to see which chamber has the balls do drive the national debt higher.  it's called "deficit chicken," and it's even more fun when you're drunk

cloture is something all senators seek when a piece of beloved legislation dies

 "jesus, talk about a sausage-fest" -sandra day o'connor, 1981

william rehnquist..a republican, was lucky enough to vote for george w. bush twice.  the second time counted more

 employee of the month..dodecennially

the bichromatic rainbow that is american political thought

when introduced into a marriage, a third party can add a dash of spice and unpredictability to a relationship long loveless and dead

exactly where television originated is a mystery, though most scholars believe prometheus stole it from the gods and gave it to the rca victor company

 tv viewers found richard nixon's appearance disturbing and untrustworthy.  history would prove their superficial judgment 100% correct

all pundits have severe damage in area of brain controlling balance

it's easy to cry on the show because larry king smells like onions

once the rapture has occurred and the saved are off the planet, the democrats will regain both the house and the senate

 name three things about contemporary politics that seem like they're as bad as they could possibly be, but which we'll look back at in 10 years with nostalgia for how simple a time it was

new zealand: australia's canada

spain is the world's largest exporter of naps

 

3/28

this week i

published on those eligible for but not enrolled in medicaid and budgets of medicare households.  at jpsm small area estimation session, david newhouse presented population predictions from satellites worse than mexico's 2020 census but better than lebanon's from 1932.  kelly surprised me

saw 27 club basquiat in radiant child.  you've got to realize that influence is not influence.  it's simply someone's idea going through my new mind

noted injured cardinal immobile between two-way traffic, inside thick yellow road lines like switzerland.  kristina speaks in simile the most fluently

have two guns, ruffles has four.  is appalachian trail east coast appian way?   matthew painted siding, mr. biggs cheered you look like michelangelo

 

do you think we can fit the whole family with the canoe?

i mean it's going to be a clown car

you're in it so that was implied

 

this is the most ridgy ridge i've walked on

 you know who looks like [culkin as] richie rich?  your nephew

for posterity can you add that i think you're an idiot

 

ruffles is looking at me and thinking, 'why are you having trouble with that rocky patch?  your center of gravity is closer to mine than it is to his'

 

 

read florilegium: the book of plants by basilius besler (and other plate illuminators)

the work is divided into four seasons

often shows the same species of plant in various stages of development

well known in the bible as a symbol of infinity (7 x 7)

a purple crocus.."permanence through change"

even 100 fumbling bookbinders could not collate this book

the coloured edition cost..roughly the same as a small house in nuremberg or munich

a dedication to empress josephine

"herbs" and "plants of the earth" are solely for human use, "initially admittedly partly and particularly for food, partly for pleasure, but subsequently, after the fall of man, also for clothing and medicine"

a leap year, the biblical year of grace

 

cranesbill preparations were a good remedy for melancholy

 planted to deter voles

the fire lily can sometimes be found in pictures of the last judgment as a symbol of cleansing fire

having no chlorophyll itself, the brown broomrape..lives as a parasite on the roots of other plants.  the plant was not important in human medicine, but was used empirically in veterinary medicine as an aphrodisiac for cattle

stink-hundskamille (stinking dog chamomile)

the saffron symbol of quality assurance

the globe daisy..a small member of the compositae family with a distinctive spherical flowerhead, also prefers stony soil

good for treating wounds and also umbilical hernias

the exceptionally large flower of the sunflower..came to germany from central and south america in the second half of the 16th century

still a popular ornamental plant today because of its whorled flowers

creams to make witches fly

jageteufel (chase the devil)

goethe regularly drank arnica tea as a cardiac tonic

seen as a warning against conspicuous consumption, which inevitably led to the soul being burnt in hell

the leaves were processed to make asthma cigarettes

 

3/21

this week i

read arms control advocacy by curtis.  the film's story, however, is far from over  he sent me astronomers reveal first image o.t.b.h.a.t.h.o.o. galaxy

four million times more massive than our sun

because the black hole is about 27,000 light-years away from earth, it appears to us to have about the same size in the sky as a donut on the moon

like trying to take a clear picture of a puppy quickly chasing its tail 

read from hong kong that unofficial statisticians must present findings to appropriate authorities before dissemination.  tommy gnocchi also alarmed

illustrated what precipitated send more chuck berry.  do lunar wolves howl at each full earth?  some planet earth unicorns.  and u and me, shall we?

 

 

 

ask through this string & two tin cans of a blog how many days in a row could you eat pizza? more than it took god to forge heaven and earth and chill

 

 

name that exclamation: 😇💩  i'm a millennial // you're a late boomer  franciene visited terraneve, artificial snow in the deepest bowels of brazil

watched brüno

because i think that..you are amazing

am i going to wake up to find you masturbating over me?

i promise not to wake you

 

it's actually mine.  more champagne?  the last bit was lloyd's idea

 

i apologize for the state of the room but can i assure you the toilet is absolutely spotless

 

read needle at the bottom of the sea: bengali tales from the land of eighteen tides by tony k. stewart, including bengal bay as haystack, the auspicious tale of the lord of the southern regions, tiger-mounted gods lift mortals by the scruff of the neck, tigers disguise selves in sheep's clothing

tigers, serpents, and crocodiles

viraha, "love in separation," ...this recurring theme is easily the most prominent in the literary and religious world of bengal

apocope or not, a flexible feature of vowel epenthesis in compound words on which poets frequently rely for metrical purposes

scribal inconsistency was the norm

winsomeness as lotus-faced or moon-faced

hanuman - the great monkey god, general of lord ram's army, and construction genius

gaji..of the persian ghazi, warrior-saint

baoyali, in this early modern text, the traditional class of timber-cutters, haulers of wood, and sometimes collectors of honey unique to the sundarbans.  the term can also signify the individual who accompanies a work gang to help ward off tigers

 do not mangle or rip their bodies to shreds, for

i will later restore the lives of those six men

a traditional bengali saying that sons can be replaced, but not brothers

he grabbed his son by the hair.  "i fathom nothing at all," he cried out, "while you alone lord understand the reason for everything."  with one swift slashing cut, he severed his son's torso in two

the lord of the tidelands dispensed his boons

babies are attracted to the moon, reach up to grab it, and are consequently frustrated because what they desire remains out of their reach

i had just eaten one nobody of a salt worker, when in a rage three streaks of twenty tigers each came roaring after me

kavi krsnaram observes that there was great method in his madness

the summons for his own tigers he roared,

as he twirled the ends of his mustache

"showing them the banana" (dekhaiya kala), which evokes the image of the backside of a tiger fleeing with tail upraised, expresses disdain.  figuratively, the idiom has the sense of "quickly giving them the slip," but conveys defiance, like "giving someone the finger"

are you really such an ignoramus that you can only spew deprecations from your pumpkin chariot?

an iraqi horse is no match for a tiger

with mind fixed on the lotus feet of ray

krsnaram kavi has composed this in the pacali meter

chewing her betel quid with great gusto

and so the merchant sat at the side of the king and offered appropriate encomia to his feet

smolder in viraha, the exquisite agony of love in separation that has occupied poets and mystics in bengal for centuries

bestow upon me a float of crocodiles

niranjan - god, the "stainless"

iuchuph - the biblical joseph

rahu - the cause of the moon's eclipse; an asura who sips the nectar of immortality only to have his neck severed by visno before it can trickle into his body, so his head remains immortal, periodically swallowing the moon, which momentarily obscures it, until it emerges from his throat

padmavati, or manasa, goddess of serpents

the chief physician checked her pulse and then gave his diagnosis: "i have determined beyond doubt, it is the madness of love"

in sonapur, the city of gold.  listen attentively, all of you discriminating connoisseurs of love, to a vivid description

the items necessary for performing puja worship.  lamps, parched rice, aromatic incense, ripe bananas, sugar, sandalwood paste, vermillion, flowers

kalu saha is imprisoned and gaji summons all the tigers

you dye your staff yellow with turmeric and call it gold

this rogue wants to kill me by stopping me from pissing

my wife has told me that she is pregnant and is especially craving ram's testicles

let's just give those two best of twice-born a real taste of our balls

refrain 

with ear-splitting roars the tigers bounded about,

leaping as if they were monkey hordes laying siege

to lanka

 if you do not equip me with the crocodiles, mother, then i have little choice but to commit suicide right now, right before your eyes, making you responsible

to commit suicide in front of someone or on the stoop of their house confers responsibility on that individual, which generates an inescapable blame and social opprobrium that is impossible to counter

they quite lost their minds, ensorcelled by his irresistible glamour

what kind of phakir keeps a woman for company?

the rhizome of the turmeric is ground for the spice

connotations of wanton behavior..used despectively

raised by the deer and the other animals of the jungle

the prophet, being of exemplary nature, listened from his tomb

who is able to fathom alla's drama?

throngs of demons and spirits to harvest the honey and beeswax

the place where he jettisoned the honey into the ganga from that moment on became known as the madhukhali - the "honey channel"

the oath to "eat someone's head," invariably that of someone who is dear to the speaker, is perhaps the strongest promise one can make because of the perceived danger to the person named; it is the most serious of guarantees or promises

he kissed her feet

we shall feed him to those selfsame serpents

hungry ghosts..floated the logs, miraculously driving the cut boles upstream against the strong currents of the low-lying regions

polemical literature, where women are blamed for everything from storms and earthquakes, pestilence and crop-failure, to corrupting men through their physical charms

a translator's delight

singing the name of ram in sweet song from all five of his mouths

i will pour one hundred pots of ghee and one hundred pots of honey over your head

i shall collect the blood of buffaloes and rams and offer it in a skull, if you would but ensure the king's virgin daughter places the garland on me

the groom and virgin bride then blissfully repaired to the flower-room, where the two engaged in games of dice with spirited intimacy

minanath, the adi or original guru of the naths, hid in the womb of a fish that hovered underneath the boat in the middle of the ocean of milk where siv had taken his wife, gauri, to be absolutely alone in order to explain the secret of immortality, a conversation spurred by gauri's discovery that siv's garland of skulls were all her own skulls from previous lives.  because she was not immortal, she had repeatedly been reborn

this lapwing will feign a broken wing, dragging it around, in order to distract predators from its nest

the qur'anic story of al-khidr..a master of esoteric knowledge enlisted by alla to prick the prophet musa's ego and curb his impatience and hubris

those men, without exception, are destined to die and enter the grave.

why do those people build such towering mansions

and live in such grandeur, oblivious of looming death?

never let anger crease your face

 

3/14

 

this week i

typed (5MB) into office e-mail, saw last two keystrokes flip to sunglasses face emoji.  i biked rock creek, killed one saved other monday march fourth

 

how much could you like this city?  you keep leaving // i spend more time here than anywhere else

sacrifice for the convenience but it's unnatural not to coexist with at least one other species: a hermit crab or a not mexican cuisinefish at easiest

 

 

 

drew the mount rushmore of gangsters.  these men unworthy of, uninterested in redemption

 

wrote a poem for ya.  we attended aizuri quartet in the belly of charles lang freer's collection of faience anubis, nile crocodile tile

i've never seen in the same room

peter thiel and senator thune

watched moonstruck. cher deserved, won academy award. tears in my eyes for rambo: first blood. like nicholson, cage and stallone zero versatility

la luna brings the woman to the man, capiche? [accordian music]

why are you here?

i don't want to talk about it

just like your father

 

you love him, loretta?

ma, i love him something awful

 

hiked snickersville

 

the blaze is over here, motherfucker

looks like a nuclear winter out here // there's probably some prepper who will want your cargo pants.  they'll see your shirt is already trashed, so they won't mind shooting you through the chest. good thing they want your pants not your shirt, cuz that would be a much more painful way to die

anthony has 31 teeth because he played too much hockey

read the plague by albert camus.  dr. bernard rieux concludes revealing himself narrator, this woven tale holds more beauty told omnisciently

but really, doctor, it's the porter's headache, isn't it?

the tobacconist's gossip..a young commercial employee had killed an algerian on a beach

nevertheless, that night, the official communique was still optimistic

'yes,' the prefect replied.  'i've seen the statistics and, as you say, they're most perturbing'

alone under the vast indifference of the sky

it is forbidden to spit on cats in plague-time

 god did not exist, since otherwise there would be no need for priests

saintliness is an aggregate of habits

the buboes refused to burst

only, i've never managed to get used to seeing people die

dying and being doomed to unending separation

the stridence of 'st james' infirmary' coming from a loud-speaker just above their heads

the plague launched its most virulent attacks on those who lived, by choice or by necessity, in groups; soldiers, prisoners, monks, and nuns..the warders died of plague in the same proportion as the prisoners

oran seemed a huge necropolis

lightning funerals

nothing is less sensational then pestilence, and by reason of their very duration great misfortunes are monotonous

and luck is not to be coerced

whenever any of them spoke through the mask the muslin bulged and grew moist over the lips.  this gave a sort of unreality to the conversation; it was like a colloquy of statues

weariness is a kind of madness

no, father, i've a very different idea of love.  and until my dying day i shall refuse to love a scheme of things in which children are put to torture

salvation's much too big a word for me.  i don't aim so high

'what does it matter?  what i hate is death and disease - as you well know.  and whether you wish it or not, we're allies, facing them and fighting them together.'  rieux was still holding paneloux's hand.  'so you see' - but he refrained from meeting the priest's eyes - 'god himself can't part us now'

the monks at cairo who, when plague was raging in the town, distributed the host with pincers at the mass, so as to avoid contact with wet, warm mouths in which infection might be latent

on his return home tarrou wrote out an account of this peculiar incident, following it up with a 'feeling very tired tonight' - which is confirmed by his handwriting in this entry.  he added that he had still much to do, but that was no reason for not 'holding himself in readiness', and he questioned if he were ready.  as a sort of postscript - and, in fact, it is here that tarrou's diary ends - he noted that there is always a certain hour of the day and of the night when a man's courage is at its lowest ebb, and it was that hour only which he feared

so all a man could win in the conflict between plague and life was knowledge and memories

 

3/7

this week i

updated our all states expand medicaid estimates.  the cdc's national center for health statistics partnered with ipsos and norc, hope this helps

self-reported health data using two online panels, combining and weighting the resulting data

although nchs's gold standard sampling, interviewing, and post-processing strategies are pivotal for examining national annual trends in disease and behavioral risk factors and differences across demographic and geographic groups, they are less useful for responding to more immediate "real-time" public health issues that may arise with little warning or notice

unlike many other quick-turnaround surveys and polls, rss will also provide decision makers with information on the quality of the estimates using methodological evaluations

the rss was launched to develop a mechanism that facilitates collection of time-sensitive survey data using online panels with thorough and ongoing data quality evaluation

beliefs about sunscreen

 

post hey franceintheus, last night's gala - magnifique!  savory food, inspiring music, bottomless wine, complimentary baguette at coat check a touch of class.  [to a whisper: your lounge entrance area foosball table could use a professional cleaning]  merci pour les bons sentiments et tout le reste

 

 

read ft cuz these first four pages transpired on our planet yesterday, and i'll be a poorer man if i don't make time to absorb the story.  otoh: getting out of bed today was your first of eighty seven mistakes and other inspirational phrases to write on your bathroom mirror with glittery toothpaste

listened to (osiris-rex) mission accomplished: unlocking earth's mysteries from asteroid bennu (and other failed planets like apophis) at nmnh

mosaic image of bennu after two years of observation

the direction of rotation about its axis is retrograde with respect to its orbit

 the rotation period of bennu decreases by about one second every 100 years

the interior has a rubble pile structure or even hollows

regiones (broad geographic regions), craters, dorsa (ridges), fossae (grooves or trenches) and saxa (rocks and boulders)

if an impact were to occur, the expected kinetic energy associated with the collision would be 1,200 megatons of tnt equivalent (for comparison, tnt equivalent of tsar bomba, the most powerful nuclear weapon ever tested, was approximately 54 megatons, and that of the tunguska event, the most energetic impact event in recorded history, has been estimated at 3-5 megatons, though another estimate is 20-30 megatons)

bennu may pass through a gravitational keyhole during the 2135 passage which could create an impact scenario at a future encounter.  the keyholes are all less than ~20 km wide with some keyholes being only 5 meters wide

bennu has a 48% chance of falling into the sun.  there is a 10% probability that bennu will be ejected out of the inner solar system, most likely after a close encounter with jupiter.  the highest impact probability for a planet is with venus (26%), followed by earth (10%) and mercury (3%).  the odds of bennu striking mars are only 0.8% and there is a 0.2% chance that bennu will eventually collide with jupiter

 

aspire to health and concomitant home repairs till haley's comet returns july 28th, 2061.  nybooks cover feels more strongly than i do

found pet sounds unreleased backgrounds, composed a poem, but my nepetalactone is just fresh basil

the cat

with whom

i make

my home

i study

just like

st. jerome

 

drew dna's double helix within sand timer.  when did i become unstuck in time?  giraffes wear triangles to nonagons.  do you taste the snozzberry yet?

 

 

 

read taschen's albrecht dürer by norbert wolf

the phalanx of riders charging down all before them as personifications of victory, war, inflation, and death.  the horseman above death may also be interpreted as hunger or alternatively as divine justice, the archer as a symbol of the plague

on his painting of christ among the doctors, durer proudly noted: "opus quinque dierum" - the work of five days

impress none less than rembrandt

jerome - the saint, incidentally, whom durer drew more than any other

albrecht durer died on 6 april 1528 of the consequences of malaria, "as withered as a bundle of straw"...quicquid alberti dureri mortale fuit, sub hoc conditur tumulo (whatever was mortal of albrecht durer lies beneath this mound)

read house of bondage by ernest cole

his south africa - the south africa, after all, of most south africans - is one of the least-known countries in the world

too undernourished to be effective terrorists

security for a black man is the surrender of aspirations.  total anonymity and smiling compliance are the price extracted for safe conduct

"how tall were you," he asked, "when you were eight?"

a colored asked this question does what any westerner would do - that is, stretches out his hand to the appropriate level, palm down.  the examiner assumed that this esoteric piece of information was known only to the classification board.  but ernest had been waiting for just that question

life abroad..not a law to break in sight

gold was discovered a century ago and today the ore still pours from fifty-five operating mines.  most of these are located in the witwatersrand of transvaal..so important is the rand that south africa has applied the name to its basic monetary unit

to qualify to have his wife and children live with him in an urban area, an african who was not born in that area must have lived there for fourteen years and have held one job for all of that time

the parade continues until the policeman runs out of handcuffs

in 1963, according to records meticulously kept, 83,206 lashes were meted out to 17,404 prisoners

dozens of others have crowded onto the couplings between the cars or cling to precarious hand and footholds on the outside.  "washing" they call it.  for when a train goes by at speed these passengers look like clothes hanging on a wash line

it is against the law for a servant to sleep under the same roof with his or her employer, no matter how big the house

a mattress of straw, newspaper for a carpet, and fruit crates for table and chair

girl in striped suit lost two jobs because she was too chic

everywhere in south africa it is unlawful for black and white to drink a cup of tea together unless they have obtained a special permit

the temptation is strong to tear down the signs or deface them.  (one trick guaranteed to cause confusion is to alter a sign that reads "non-white" by scraping off the "non"

baby baby-minders

wards may be swept by smallpox

the ambulance didn't go straight to a hospital.  it went several more miles to pick up the victim of another traffic accident

in the children's ward, patients share a corner of floor with blankets scattered over them.  new cases have their names written on adhesive tape stuck to their foreheads

for the whites, the only refuge is behind the steel bars at their windows, the only security in private watchmen and a revolver by the bedside

a white man arriving early at church one sunday discovered a black man down on his knees in front of the altar.  "what are you doing there?"  the afrikaner demanded.  "just scrubbing the floor, baas," the black man replied.

"all right," said the white man.  "but god help you if i catch you praying"

the river is wide and there is no bridge to cross

 

2/29