Today's Verse: 27 November 2007

I can't keep death away
From your little door
All I can do
Is stay by you
Face the silent roar
While you sleep

I found a bottle of Pikesville rye at a local liquor store. Slogan: "The Aristocrat of Straight Whiskeys". I was initially baffled to learn that it is not made in Pikesville MD but in Kentucky, but of course you can find anything on the web, so here's the story that not only tells what happened to Pikesville rye, but includes Old Setter whiskey and Natty Boh.

Antique British Dessert of the Day: Syllabub

Try that with your treacle, Dick.

The Two Roberts W

Quite a while ago, so long I don’t remember it, Jimmy sent me a book of short pieces by the early twentieth century Swiss writer, Robert Walser. I found a recent translation of Walser’s novel “The Assistant”, about a clerk who goes to work for an inventor who is going broke. For a while I didn’t think I liked it, since the only plot is the inventor’s slow inevitable descent into ruin, and I thought it was one of those books in which the reader is supposed to laugh at the character’s increasing misfortune, you know, things are so bad now at least they can’t get worse, but are really about the author feeling superior to his own characters, so why bother. But then I started really loving the straight-ahead, affectless assistant, who regardless of circumstances, pretty much likes everything: his coffee, the sunshine, the Swiss woods, his boss’s wife’s neck. It’s actually a strange and really wonderful book and now I’ve started Walser’s weirder and wonderfuller “Jakob von Gutten”. Bircher muesli, Vita-merfen and Robert Walser: these are why the Swiss will never be defeated.


I dreamed that I met the other Robert W., who had invited me to a little gathering of some sort. I asked him who did the original of “Yesterday Man” (“a bit of a music nerd question, I know”) and he teased me gently when I refused some food he offered because it had meat in it. “Everything eats something else,” he said in his adorable working-class accent. Do we think that Robert Wyatt might himself be a vegetarian? Men: he is a British hippie. De: he did once write a song from the point of view of bacon. (“I’m delicious when I’m crunchy, even when I’m almost black”.)

Expression of the day: treacle dick. A British dessert, custard in molasses sauce.

Election Day

My close friends may recall that Election Day is Johny's Birthday (celebrated). A few years ago I wrote The Elcetion Day Polka, since it's a holiday with no song; "Hip hip hooray/for the USA/Everybody jump for joy 'cause it's election day/ Yippee yahoo/ For me and for you/ Oh boy it's election day, we'll have a big to-do." And yet here it is election day and for the first time I can remember since I came back to the States, there's no election today, at least not in Berkeley. No ballot issues, no city council election, no recall, nothing. I'm familiar with the "don't vote, it only encourages them" arguement, but man, I really love going to the fire station or church or somebody's garage, going behind the curtain and punching little holes in the cards. (Nowadays, post-hanging shads in California, we draw a nice dark line on the card, which isn't as much fun.) It might be a pointless exercise to opiate the masses with the illusion of choice, or it might not I suppose, but I miss it all the same today. Happy Election to all.

Happy Birthday Dear Johny

Happy Birthday Mr Blood

Dear Johny,
I know it's a day early but am on my way to an island in the Arabian Sea to celebrate Diwali far away from the smoke and noise of Bombay and so will be out of reach of telephone, GSM, GPRS, etc. Indi, Mira, Jai and I wish you a very happy birthday. The kitties are all well, though Juhu's become a bit of a refugee since Patch gave birth. We see him every once in a while but he's terrified of the little mama, which confuses her more than she is already. Her teenage pregnancy has messed her mind up, in the immortal words of Jeff Simmons.
Jai, in addition to baritone for the school band, has now taken up the bass. First riff: White Stripes. Thought you should know.
Love