epistle to a social worker

Kay-kay,

The days of late have had a surreal quality, almost as if a fog were burning off, but taking a measure of colour and saturation along with it.

Then I wake to find that things are still maraudingly vivid here in the Most Serene Republic of Atlantis-upon-Mississippi.

http://louisianavoice.com/2013/03/24/greenstein-pay-no-attention-to-the-man-behind-the-curtain-richard-cms-says-dhh-unresponsive-medicaid-questions-which-if-unanswered-could-cost-la-another-800-million/

Meanwhile: a communiqué from our Esteemed Directress.

Good morning all

I  made these cupcakes http://www.yourcupofcake.com/2013/03/lemon-mascarpone-cupcakes.html and will be selling them  today for  $1 each [a bargain because the cake lady by my house sells cupcakes for $2!) for our March of Dimes fundraising .   I also have a few  devils food with vanilla buttercream (and Cadbury eggs too). (24 total)

I am going to put the  all names of the Walk for Babies Team volunteers  in a basket  and draw one  name  to apply the $$ to.

If you would like to “reserve”  one of these cupcakes, shoot me an e-mail—first come, first served!

It is almost enough to make my heart weep, the sheer absurd poesy of it all.  Nero only raped burning Rome with his own theatrical compositions.  Eat your heart out!  Here we sit, a Bastille in the making (though not a shred so populist), and the Directress, instead of answering a few nice questions from the feds, bakes cake!

O, let them eat cake, sweet lemon mascarpone cupcake for babies, as little Brucie goes into the crucible!

Sometimes I wonder if the Latin American republics couldn’t take a lesson or two from us.

*identifying markers redacted from the letter.

it's all terribly interesting!

my translation of an abstract by the inestimable Katherine Parys:

Common salvinia, Salvinia minima Baker, is an aquatic invasive fern that obstructs waterways and impacts water quality throughout the southeastern United States. In an effort to establish populations for classical biological control, the weevil, Cyrtobagous salviniae Calder and Sands, was released at multiple sites across Louisiana. Many of the release sites were lost due to a variety of ecological and anthropological disturbances. In 2008, C. salviniae was found to have successfully overwintered on S. minima in Gramercy, Louisiana. Attack by Cyrtobagous salviniae significantly increased the number of damaged terminal buds and decreased the fresh weight biomass of S. minima.

La salvinia común, Salvinia mínima Baker, es un helecho acuático invasor que obstruye vías fluviales y afecta la calidad de agua por el sureste de los Estados Unidos. Para fundar poblaciones de control biológico clásico el gorgojo Cyrtobagous salviniae Calder y Sands fue introducido en múltiples sitios por toda Louisiana. Fueron perdidos muchos sitios de introducción debido a varias alteraciones ecológicas y antropológicas. En 2008 fue notado que C. salviniae invernó exitosamente en S. mínima en Gramercy, Louisiana. El ataque de Cyrtobagous salviniae aumentó apreciablemente la cantidad de brotes terminales dañados y disminuyó la biomasa fresca de S. minima.

given that common salvinia is one of several invasive species found in Louisiana waterways, I can't help but feel like I'm in an awesome biological fantasy, (albeit a bit more understated). Ms. Parys has also done research on the impact of red imported fire ants on the weevil mentioned above(PDF link), the abstract for which I had the fortune to translate as well.

ain't science grand?

he's gonna babble about trolleys

the six sentence structure makes for nice, quick prose when you've the attention span of a goldfish.

your incipient megalomania is arresting, I confess. but I can't remember your name. is it that you haven't told me?
no matter, do be still. I am trying to draw the back of your head in pen, and I haven't margin for error. not with the streetcar rocking so.

don't eat the flowers

In my chest, there are a thousand blossoms of venom holding springtime court, and outside is the hateful blue that locks out the sun, drugs line and form into dripping wrecks, turns asphalt into the skin on mephitic rivers of pudding. I had cooked, and how I had turned the fire up and attended the slaughter with lemon and salt, seared its skin like I longed to sear the skin of the boy in my kitchen, so tempting and warm that I opened the door to go smoke. even with the oven on, the aroma so thick and toothsome, I only cooked and ate, and I fed but never tasted him, and I struggled and burned, smoked and guttered right out. in the choked ember tint of such an evening the poison garden begs for wind so I slept with the window open; the kitchen went stony, the skin left lonely in the fridge. the lullalby is nasturtium and nightshade cackling at the sad excuse for day that follows, weak as dishwater and the grease of yesterday's attempts atop it. ponder, indeed, if there's any call to ever clean a kitchen again, if particular flowers could grow in a bombed-out stove, make for decent seasoning when properly dried...

>> fabula amoris sex in sententiis
>> scripta 6 dec MMXII
>> pro puero quo apud me cenandum vinit at basia mihi non tulit.

it had me in tears.

something a favourite professor of mine (Jeremy King, otherwise known as El Rey by his Spanish Linguistics students) once posted que me tuvo cagándome de risa:

The highlight of the LASSO conference (from a talk on linguistic strategies in literature):

"Y las salesgirls porteñas una bola de snobs and I know I'll have to take a size 3 (can you imagine a country donde the largest size is a THREE????) por 'y...el tema del busto', as they delicately put it here and F***, ni que fueran tan y tan BIG, sólo que estas washed-out faux blonde social X-ray lollipops no tienen, directamente, tetas."

I can only imagine that talk as playful. sparkly, even.

but it must be said, in due seriousness, that porteña salesgirls are actually incredibly snotty, most especially the ones at the little "cueva musical" shops along the peatonal downtown, suffering all day as they do the ceaseless playing of Gotan Project's "La Revancha del Tango", a delightful little electronica petit mal of several tango standards.

I should think that listening to the words "el capitalismo foráneo" repeated ad nauseam over some gauzy beats found in a shoebox portishead left out by the kerb would probably make anyone surrounded in their work by tourists feel less than pleasant towards ignorant foreigners whose deepest knowledge of inventive tango interpretations is astor piazolla. but given the average age of the porteña shopgirls I saw, they'd have been far more likely in the club after hours popping it to kelis (it was 2006, let's be clear) or playing pool to cumbia villera (that, on the other hand, may approach eternal), and may conceivably have never heard yo-yo ma's celloriffic take on their national cultural heritage. lucky situation, that; a good number of porteños in general were convinced that chinese people were taking over, as evidenced by their ownership of virtually every small supermarket and buffet restaurant, and might've violently resented such a flagrant incursion.

now, never having had to buy feminine attire in Buenos Aires, I cannot speak to the disposition of dress-shop attendants. I can and do favourably speak of the nice ladies in the feria in parque centenario who will gladly sell you a nice woolen overcoat for a very reasonable price, even before the customary price negotiations. they also do not fit the description given above in even the slightest, at least, not that of faux blonde lollipops. yo-yo ma, tampoco.

in prior times this would have been called a salon

an exchange
for 2 interlocutors

> : I confess that it's so bro I can't even finish it
just like most him 'novels'
- : same here
I tried to read it in high school and got so bored
i didn't yet realize it was EWWWW FOR DUDES
> : and I picture most of the characters as crusties
a la them what stand at esplanade and claiborne and spange
- : hahahahahahahahaha yeah
TOTALLY
> : and deep in my head a crabby man in a rocking chair says 'get a damn job ya sorry bum'
but I think some of kerouac's personae crustamatae were following jobs anyhow
- : hahahahahahahahhahaha
that man sounds muddy mudskipper in my mind
i just found it unbearably boring. i didn't get the characters at all.
"and then we got drunk and fucked some bitches in a new town. something america. the end." - my brief summarization of On the Road.
> : I tried reading satori in paris or whatever
and it was like
tu passes tout le jour dans le maudite beauty parlor
which was slightly better than
'git drunk fuk bitchez'
- : hahahahahaha
> : but even so I couldn't tolerate it, and stomped it on the floor at aunt tiki's
to no one's horror.
- : HAHAHAHAHAHAH! TO NO ONE'S HORROR!
i just don't understand american masculinity. i think the less i understand it, the better.
sometimes it seems like the more i understand, the less interested i am in actually having sex with men, so you know, i'm okay with just letting it be this thing i don't want to know the particulars of
> : strangely, it's got a line of 'naked ancient greeks at the gymnasium being sods' to it
which is strange to think about
but this is why no one should read ancient greek plays
it's like 'hmmm damn 3000 years ain't shit changed'
- : i think kerouac was a totally closeted homo with a homophobic streak
> : uh, ya think?
didn't he schtup ginsberg?
or did I eat some bad acid
anyway he hung round with a buncha drugged up buttpirates so whatever
his cred is nil
- : HAHAHAHAHAHAHA
> : on that account, anyway
- : DRUGGED UP BUTT PIRATES
I AM DYING

remember when they started paying us to show up at assemblies?

so I wrote this letter to Vitter asking him to vote something down. then the form letter response came:

Dear Mr. hmmlaaah,

You may be pleased to know that I am a cosponsor of this bill that would permit a health plan or provider to decline coverage for services that are contrary to the institutions' religious beliefs. This bill would repeal a new ObamaCare mandate that requires faith-based institutions to offer employees insurance coverage for contraceptives. It would also prohibit discrimination against the entities due to their unwillingness to provide these services.

Like you, I believe that health care plans and providers should not be required by the government to administer services that they religiously oppose. As the author of the Abortion Non-Discrimination Act, I have long fought to provide conscience protections for health care entities. My bill would further prevent the Department of Health and Human Services from forcing religious organizations to abandon their beliefs. Rest assured that I will continue to protect religious liberty and support this bill's passage in the U.S. Senate.

Thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts on this important issue. Please do not hesitate to contact me again about any other issue important to you and your family.

ahem.

see, the problem is, I had sort of expressed distaste with the exemption of religious organizations from providing services otherwise available across the board due to a conscience objection, and suggested the indignation at hand was so much bluster, since the insurance companies themselves would be providing the coverage and the actual agency of the (let's have it out, now) sin would not be theirs.

(cue opening choral of Chumbawamba's "One by One")

which, in the end, is somewhat how it played out.
but damn, man. I took the time out from playing dress-up to send you an email that had intelligible thoughts in it-- can't one of your staffers at least cut and paste two form letters together or something?

just make me feel like it was worth my time, hawny.