Vocabulary note

One finally gives up and looks up "bling."

It is an unnecessary word and gentlemen should not use it.

The Roadworthy Travis McGee

Janine: "Oh how I hate that goddam car. That goddam stinking car. How I hate it!"

Travis: "Janine had nailed it. People hate their cars. Daddy doesn't come proudly home with a new one any more. ... We hate our cars, Detroit. Those of us who can possibly get along without them do so very happily. ... they are expensive, murderous machines, and they manage to look glassily contemptuous of of the people who own them. A (broken) car is something that (made Janine) whomp (her) youngest kid too hard and then feel ashamed...".

This McGeeism is available in its insightful entirety in Pale Gray for Guilt, p. 15 of the Fawcett printings.

Honduras

By all odds, the Honduran fracas is just another falling out among banana thieves. Nothing much is going to happen beyond the range of the Tegucigalpa teevee cameras if you don't count leftist politicians straining and grunting to present the most populist image.*

So it's okay to play this one strictly for entertainment value, and to that end, TMR offers a Honduran resource.

Or if you happen to be female, maybe you can get the glands in action by summoning up a vision of a bare-chested Obama arm-linked to Hugo Chavez and Danny Ortega, marching on the Palacio as the chorus of thousands brings Guantanamera to crescendo.

If I had a serious bitch about this comic opera it would be against -- you guessed it -- wire services which kept leading their stories with soldiers ousting "the democratically elected president."

As a general matter I do not disapprove of democracy, but as an icon of righteousness it has its limits. I can't recall, for instance, any news items emphasizing that his political foes ousted a democratically elected Richard M. Nixon. Or that the Grand Alliance of 1941-1945 ousted the democratically elected leader of of the Third Reich.

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*Our President in Washington is not excepted, having missed another fine opportunity for silence.

Well I swan, y'all

Thanks to Roberta we have the very latest on QE2's swan upping. It's a Reuters report, natch, and the Queen's Own editors at one point feel obliged to tell us of "young cygnets."

I report all this mainly because I'm always looking for an excuse to use my favorite label.