H2Omeloncholy

Monday, February 17, 2020

South Carolina or Bust! (Busta Melon)

VOGUE copyright Conde Nast

Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from KM Fikes is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to KM Fikes & h2omeloncholy@blogspot.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. No excerpt or link may be used for monetary compensation.

The Three Billy Donkeys Daft: a NORWEGIAN Fairytale
Once Upon a South Carolina Road Trip

Once upon a time, there were three billy donkey siblings. They all shared the same name: Daft. The Dafts came in three sizes: plucky long-shot, centrist-standard, and populist juggernaut-alternative.

Grazing at their leisure, the billy donkeys lived in ambiguous harmony. Until one day, a buzzard named Monsanto buzzed and buzzed about until the grass, upon which their founding fathers pillaged and plundered and their twentieth-cent ancestors gentrified, had become too toxic for even them to consume.

The three siblings had heard of terms such as 'displacement' and 'climate refugee' - likely from pizzly bears, that rare ursid hybrid when polar bears and grizzlies do indeed breed. The three billy donkeys were also about to embark upon the perils of forced migration.

O'er yon was another meadow of promising prospects. Lush as inviting. An emerald carpet like green velvet lining a South Carolinian church pew.

The buzzards, apparently, had yet to rally.

And so? Into that horizon of hope, the first billy donkey, being ever plucky, set out – to merely survive. And lo! His flee from cooperate-environmental decimation was interrupted. A babbling brook began to roar. The road to the meadow of delegate abundance found the smallest billy donkey upon a rickety bridge. Clip, clop...clip, clop. His hooves announced him, echoing each weary step far into the field of representatively-diverse asylum.

The bridge had been occupied by a troll. During his reign of terror, the troll had fantasized about retrofitting the stolen bridge with a wall upon either ledge. His wall was the antithesis of a romantic covered bridge in nostalgic barnyard red. In the void that served as the mind of this troll, his imaginary wall was, “The most beautifulest wall you've ever seen. Never before...such a wall's been great as this...no where in the world. The biggest. The best of the best. Like none. The very, very winningest...of all...walls."

Unlike the bridge, the wall remained a troll's delusion.

The troll could fright upon sight. His skin was that of emergency-alert-code orange, his necktie was as long as the lies upon his tongue and his hands were as tiny as his conscience. Many instinctively looked away. Grand Ol' P. elephants, however, who starred - bargaining Faustianly - into the abyss, were turned into a sort of stone where their tusks were mummified. Alas, zombies incapable of speech against him.

Daft, the plucky long-shot, tried to hide his trembling before the troll.

“You there. I need a map to the polka dots. Present me with it or you're fired,” the troll snarled.

“Fired?” Still stiffening his shivering, “But I don't work for you.”

“You won't see a blade of grass, loser. You could...” The troll paused, looking over both shoulders, “...go thru some things. Unless...you do me this favor...with the polka dots.”

“I don't know much about them. When I was mayor, I fired their first polka dot police chief and fire chief. Under my tenure, marijuana arrests, amongst polka dots, soared. But that was my strategy to target their gangs. A few of their leaders agreed to read my Douglas Plan yet stipulated that a nod towards my policy proposals equated no endorsement. I ignored that request and publicly framed their Douglas approval as candidate endorsement anyway. I know so few that my campaign used a stock photo from not America, but the Polka Dot Diaspora, to suggest I'm more inclusive. But there's another billy donkey behind me. She's my sister and has damned the polka dots - maybe even more than me.”

“He better have..."

"She."

"She...um, bad news. 'She' better have. Cross then,” the troll burped.

The first Billy Donkey Daft was free.

Sure enough, in good time, along came the centrist-standard donkey. And as promised, more seasoned. Clonk, clunk...clonk, clunk. The troll raised his voice to try and mask his fart. “You think you can just keep going? Across my bridge? What do you know of the polka dots?”

“I know two names well. Tyesha Edwards, an 11-year-old murder victim whose tragedy I donned as a saddle upon which my 'tough-on-crime' bona fides might ride. And then there's teen, Myon Burrell, whom I allowed to take the fall for Edwards in a woefully inept prosecution. When his mother died in a car accident, I repeatedly denied the under-age Burrell permission to attend her services. The polka dots are handing me no key. But one who may have it? He's right behind me.”

“If he can't do more for me? I'll...”

Daft's eyes roll, “You'll what? Lemme guess, I could, uh, 'go thru some things'?”

“You're a nasty piece of work. Be gone.”

The second Billy Donkey Daft was free.

As promised, the third billy donkey approached. As described, he appeared more substantial with the bonus of volunteering incredulous credentials before his hooves could be detected: “I don't just know 'em. I'm practically an honorary polka dot. I’m their Daft and they're my firewall.”

“D’ya say ‘wall’? Get 'em to pay for it?”

“Polka dot loyalty is my reward for…”

“For what?" wheezed the troll. "Take that low-IQ...Anita Hill?” His nasal inflection becoming more prominent, “That '94 crime bill? Making Delaware a credit card company’s wet dream? Weren't those some of the gingerbready crumbs leading to the foreclosed doors of 2008 subprimes? The segregationist footsie before that?”

“Barack Obama would not have chosen...”

“Yeah, yeah," snorted the troll, "Well, I do the opposite of anything he did. C'mon, that's my shtick. You, Daft, and that kid can pass. That Hunter of yours? Tell him not to hem n' haw. Get it? Hem? Haw? 'Hee Haw', right? 'Hee Haw'...cause...you're..."

"Uh...donkeys...yeah."

"Cause in my pasture, you're no 'hunter' unless you shoot on sight. Don't even think about it; don't think at all."

“Look, the fact of the matter is: you hijacked this bridge. But that’s it. Beyond that, the whole pasture…”

“Will be mine. It’s green; it’s land."

"Not a dung-hole territory."

"Get outta here, Sleepy…scoot. Go take a nap.”

The third Billy Donkey Daft? Yep, free.

The troll slumped under his wall-less bridge, slouched over his phone, and his puny, code-orange fingers began to incoherently tweet. Briefly, he confused his punchy typing with the soft hooves of another billy donkey. TIP$, tap...TIP$, tap. Smaller in physical stature than the last three billy donkeys yet with what appeared to be a gargantuan pouch - seen more commonly on kangaroos or wine-cave dwellers.

“Humph,” the troll sniveled, "Only supposed to be three of you Dafts."

"We're quasi-estranged. They act like I don’t do my fair share."

"Sounds divisive. Rifts are my 'raft'...copycat. Haven't seen you, kitty, since New York. So...what about the polka dots?”

“My Stop-and-Frisk policy is in the past. Yet certain civil rights violations can still follow a loose logic: Smoke? Maybe fire. 'Broken window'? Eh... And redlining? It actually held a hidden wisdom too.”

The latest billy donkey and petulant troll were startled by a mighty clomp, jarring stomp, and ear-splitting neighing that shook the bridge with such a force that the populist juggernaut-alternative slipped into the stream. He recovered enough to barely float himself upon the primary shore. The pouch, apparently, could inflate.

Before the troll was a creature of ~~your~~ ~~yore~~...your, a hybrid akin to the prizzly bear. Parentage? Billy Donkey + Internet Troll = Satyr/Pan/your garden-variety faun (with all Greek n' Roman mythic implications).

“You're...you're..." The pure-bred troll soiled his bespoke Brioni trousers. "Heard of you, yeah. But no one's actually seen you. Not before me. You're...one of those...oh...Bernie Bros.”

The neighing of the creature reached a pitch – somewhere betwixt feverish and chilling, “Look away, MAGA bib, lest you dare to MAGsplain us."

“I've seen your work on the dark web; you really should be on my team. But all I wanna know now is what you know about the polka dots.”

“We don't see pattern. You’re Harlequin patch-checkerboard? Hell, herringbone! Whatever. We’re pattern-blind, see. Like your wall, we just keep telling ourselves that. We’re post-pattern and besides, anything repeated enough? Well, at least on the net, it’s bound to circle the drain of truth. And as far as the 'misogyny' charge? Who's she anyway? We searched Reddit and doubt Miss AhJenny is even real. What we do know? Us half-billy donkeys dig bitches. As far as you?”

“What about [sniff] me?”

“You're an insult to trolls. Have ya any idea how hard that is to be? You’re some con of a gate keeper, let alone a bridge.”

And upon hearing those words spoken directly into the face of the troll, he dropped to the green earth, curling into an unnervingly tight fetal position.

Yawning, the Bernie Bro unfurls the troll's vainglorious n ecktie, wrapping it around n' round n’ round his orange arse like a ball of yarn. He pauses long. Inexplicably, a wind of empathy sweeps up both in a mystical intimacy of shared toxic masculine privilege. The new lines of the 'yarn' ball mimic the age-old creases of Bro's palm. Satyr Bern sighs, cradling the Brioni 'yarn' ball before hurling it(him) downstream, directly over a Monsanto-contaminated waterfall, into the River Styx. There, a Sphynx pussyfeline rescues it(him).

The Sphynx bounces the ball back n' forth in her paws. For all eternity.

Henceforth, the Billy Donkeys Daft - plucky long-shot, centrist-standard, and populist juggernaut-alternative - all got over. How they crissed and how they 'crossed' the troll's bridge, exploiting and appropriating the fraught as dire narrative of passage. With nary a polka-dotted clue - peaceful as piteous - they graze.

And they grazed obliviously ever after.

The Three Billy Goats Gruff is a NORWEGIAN fairytale, first collected by Peter Christen Asbjørnsen and Jørgen Moe in their Norske Folkeeventyr - initially published mid-1840's.

a clever as compassionate critique

on the implausibility

of POSTness

Sunday, July 14, 2019

bespoke suited Woke

VOGUE copyright Conde Nast

Bespoke. A tactile craft honed on London's Seville Row for ostensibly the finest in Western custom tailoring. An exclusivity synonymous with luxury. A meticulously structured blazer - made to exacting measure. Bespoke, in a fit no less flawless, rhymes with 'woke'.

Vernacular is a form of fashion. And like most expressions, once wretchedly appropriated and thereby distorted past recognition for relevance, might 'woke' - anon enuf - find its defunct definition, like the loosest thread it be, beginning to unravel? If so, shall we light a candle to burn until it may fray the stray strand, bowing our heads, humming in unison, Chopin's Funeral March: "Dun, dun, da-dun..."?

Altho'? One personally need not bid 'woke' farewell so ceremoniously since one has avoided its utterance. Pondering, howe'er, as of late, why? Indeed, one has intentionally dodged said usage. So much so, that one has found oneself choking on the most benign phrase when this night owl explains a rare morning correspondence: "I...woke...[cringe/shudder]...up early." Even then, sum'in 'bout 'woke' registers as tainted.

Upon further deliberation, one may glean what one deems so adverse about the alleged adverb - or whateva part of speech or tense to which it qualifies. Does 'woke' mark the act of 'awakening' to a relevant present or defunct past? 'Woke' vies to rise yet its continuum is too much a labyrinth. Might it be granted safe passage - anywhere - in a culture so rife in 'spoke' contradiction? Perchance, 'woke', like most dissOrientalized dissOrder(s), ceases to be a clear demarcation due to the breadth/depth of its spectrum. Given there are degrees - in masterful stitches - one submits a mo' comprehensive 'woke' framework:

WOKE SPECTRUM

Ghost > Zombie > Comatose > Yawner > Power Napper

The Ghost

The ghost is not in denial. Ghost types are in resistance - but far from the exalted brand of 'resistance' associated with Da Wailing 'Woke'. Ghosts know that they are dead; they just refuse to accept it. The ghost clings to a misguided notion of bidness preempted which prevents it from crossing over. Anti-transition. The ghost is not at the mercy of a plush purgatory where the waiting room's sky-blue sectional nestles cumulus throw pillows. The ghost - dogged plus - wanders a decrepit house that decreases the property value of an otherwise gentrified neighborhood. Its purgatory is a chosen state when passage into the Cosmic Netherworld of Wonder pales in comparison to exerting a kind of secular squatter's right. Right here.

Example: Vice-President Joseph Biden asserts Senator Cory Booker owed him an apology - for Biden’s fond as fumbled reminiscing (as only a ‘woke’ ghost can reminisce) of segregationist-snuggling in the interest of aisle-crossing. Crossing can become thematic for the ghost. Cross after political life? No. Cross ova unsavory ideology? When expedient. To Booker, Biden is credulous: "There is not a racist bone in my body. Period."

Classic Casper.

The ghost is bereft of bone or breath which prevents investigation except by a renowned team of hyper 'woke' archaeologists. If a charitably-funded 'dig' lead to the discovery of this ism-immune clavicle, their find may merit the first dual Nobel for both Anatomy n' Peace.*

Bone-dense, Biden double-downed when confronted by Senator Kamala Harris for whom his bi-partisan footsie would have screeched the brakes on her bused-in education. The ghost is ill-equipped to center itself in the present — given its discombobulation wherein the past, miraculously, seems not to further inform. As if relieved of any ramification, weightless, uninhibited by gravitational reciprocity of basic physics in the natural law of cause n' effect. For what is hubris if not the toxic inhalation of ‘voice’-squeaked helium? Less earned elevation than entitled levitation, Biden followed (bespoke) suit: caught off-guard, predictably agitated, that Harris - on a sardined stage of a presidential primary debate - would reference reality. As if Lady Liberty was Biden's eccentric aunt, and in her CS Lewisian wardrobe, she hangs more than patina-green togas. The date is October 31. Your "friendly ghost" happens to note a glowing white cloak, removes it, cuts out two holes for eyes, and parades down (really, ‘above’) the campaign trail, floating door-to-door for caramel-coated votes.

The Zombie

The zombie is not a ghost.

Again, the ghost knows. But disagrees.

The ghost defies the idea that their past incarnation is complete.  To a ghoul, death proves a galling imposition. A zombie, contrarily, fails to realize that it is gone, done, hence the term, 'undead'. Zombies may momentarily terrorize but they do not proactively haunt. Zombieian wrath ain't deliberate; taking it personally wastes one's valuable resources. Mummified in cluelessness, the zombie is not privy to the ghost's freedom from bodily constraints which render the ghost, otherwise inept, a paranormative tactician. And yet? The zombie holds a bett' rekanize advantage, saving it from the ass-end of the 'woke' spectrum: where the ghost is sure, the zombie is unsettled (i.e., 'undead'). Too cumulus cloudy, insight is distant.

Therefo', the zombie does not know.  But senses.

Sum’ins off. Edging out the ghost, this very ambivalence harbors an excruciatingly proximal potential to incubate awareness.

Meanwhile, pre-lightbulbian momentum, if one dares to tell the zombie, it is, in fact, a zombie, their rebuttal will range from shock to offense to profound pouting. It cannot grasp its current existential sentence. Torn. Soiled. Such is the condition of the zombie's bespoke suit. Zombies have another telling feature: a combination of that gaze from Steve Carell on the movie poster of 40-Year-Old-Virgin, admirably-impossibly fused with the sunken, hollow black holes of the obliviously 'undead'. A comprehensive visual might be the backup dancers in the October 31 perennial favorite and music video opus, Thriller. Zombies also move to a brooding rhythm - characterized by that specific 'undead' limp. Misquoting Garnett or Dunnigan mistranslating Tolstoy before misquoting Kundera mansplaining Nietzsche misinterpreting Parmenides: while the ghost is "unbearably light", the zombie finds "being" heavier than 'balance', i.e., equity. Granted, this contentious offering may now prove untenable for those who no longer engage the MJ canon, or other lit-wits misread - as not to damage their 'woke' credentials.

Hallow-weaned eye on the (prized) sparrow.

The Comatose

The comatose share a cadre of phrases - faulty as familiar: "I don't see race." They also refuse to acknowledge their privilege: "My family came thru Ellis Island so what do I have to do with slavery?" The comatose are oft disappointed in others, like the neighbor whom they would generally characterize as high-functioning until the chump next door recommends Bryan Stevenson's TED Talk. The comatose have long surmised that those involved in or concerned with 'public' policy, whom allow themselves to be duped by the distraction of mining the implications of race? They are the racist ones.

Whilst Halloween has twice crept into this 'woke' missive, it is the Thanksgiving holiday that is the most fraught for the comatose. Halloween may be widely associated with the month of October although this eve of All Saint’s Day, November 1, is followed by Día de los Muertos, on November 2. Mexico has traditionally practiced a sacred reverence for their departed. The goal is to assure that late loved ones rest, remembered, in peace, rather than relying on any deceased to implement change. Whether beckoning November - from beyond the grave - or stuffing its last Thursday with Indigenous indifference, all calendar events, including November’s neon-civic first Tuesday, epitomize the fall.

The comatose has family all along the spectrum. Except one. The uncle they all try to ignore. His suit is off-the-(rusted)rack - with Velcro elbow patches. Some pre-teen, recently promoted from the kid's table, is apt to borrow it, uploading themselves in a polished photo shoot on the latest hip platform. Inadvertently, the cusped adolescent launches the next fashion trend - that a year later will be muse in haute couture houses before demotion to the seasonal runway. Trickle-Down Theory of 'Woke'. But back to the rest of the family of the comatose. They gather, annually, for a feast as diverse as its organic vegan loaf alongside non-hormone, range-free turkey. Because the comatose signed not a medical directive, the family argues about its fate. Alas, there is no resolution by the last fork-full of sweet potata pie. Planets yet...yet aligned, the comatose will then likely remain comatose for at least another season.

How, then, can the comatose trump the zombie? Because of the wish that no family member will utter. Aloud nor to themselves. They resent the work of such dire deliberation and wish that Mama Nature, the scorched-earth-estranged godmother to Lady Liberty, will spare them and take her course. Her way. Not theirs. As they cannot bear the claim. This abdication of less ancestral culpability and more so inherited complicity, howeva, leaves to chance that in which only the tween believes: that the comatose, of their own mystical accord, might rouse - the wisest of 'woke' - to share their implausible as inspired tale of seeing Da Light.

The Yawner

Ultrasounds have captured babies yawning in utero. What comes more naturally to human physiology than tiring? Or boredom? Physical exhaustion and intellectual boredom are not interchangeable. Nevadaless, for this stroll down the 'Woke' Spectrum, shall we allow them, if not to merge, to run cozily parallel?  For the unexamined privileged, when wokenessity proves inconvenient, social justice dialogue might make their minds - and thus tongues - feel like the eyeballs of Malcom McDowell's 'Alex' when subjected to the Ludovico technique. Pray thy pardon, patient reader, as again, like the Thriller reference, Kubrick's Clockwork Orange may no longer be apropos to mention. Point? Staying 'woke' is hard and the yawner bothers not to hide how much.

A sector of yawners attempt to remain commendably inquisitive. They can be spotted on the streets with a copy of Michelle Alexander or Ta-Nehisi Coates - or whomeva is the de rigueur NYTimes best-seller - tucked proudly under the same bespoke sleeve that panics, on cue, clinging to its handbag when certain citizenry (conceivably first cousins of Alexander or Coates) pass. When democracy of the streets proves as o'er-stimulating as espresso, the yawner waits to read Alexander or Coates in an airport lounge. Woefully paraphrasing nigh-'cancelled' comedian, Aziz Ansari, isms cannot be "solved" by Dominant Cult "at brunch". The yawner - inexplicably - prefers a hospitable approach to deeply entrenched constructs. Akin to dusting off bespoke lapels. Dipping toes in water, murky due to being unmediated, they tend to withdraw upon an unintelligible excuse - shrouded in a full-bodied yawn. Ignorant of the experience yet ironically o'erwhelmed by the articulation, the yawner seeks the very respite that their privilege affords.

They try. When they can.

The comatose evoke fingers crossed until tips pinch pale or allude to patina coins tossed in fountains. The yawner, at least, awaits no stubbed toe upon the jinn's lamp. Stilled comatose and straddling yawner share but one practice in da mystical realms: both require a séance to access nuance. Hence, the yawner is an inconsistent advocate. Be there a mo' impeccably-suited dichotomy than the unreliably ready yawner? If those irksome could register as idyllic, how nimbly they adjust/stretch/distract thru disastrous preparedness exercise. Bottom button opened, the yawner is the 'goodwill' ambassador to the besieged territory of Perhaps. As they have been exposed to preliminary concepts with corresponding introductory vocabulary, each yawn is a pause..."burdened" with the propensity to consider availing itself of ‘woke’ spoke.

The Power Napper

Heather Heyer (1985 - 2017)

Gotta dig our power nappers. Lest they stand - or coil - to be confused with a hair strand in all its majesty. The power napper, in this context, spirals - Sufi-styled from its 'root' - committed to ism demolition. Cognizant eva that such an endeavor triggers Status Quo. They risk their reputations with colleagues by avoiding idle, futile posturing of productivity. They shut their laptop with the on-line-advocacy petition still blinking on the screen. After scooting this worldwideweb to the side in order to clear their desk, the power napper hangs their bespoke jacket - behind them. The color is neither 'pitch' black, 'midnight' blue, nor Halloween chocolate. The power napper sports a distinct shade of grey. Laying a fertile forehead on the oddest-shaped pillow, boldly, eyes close. They refresh, they revive, retreating from social-mediated chatter. Quick doses of non-REM allow for introspection necessary for innovation. The power napper can sustain their momentum for the long journey or as MLK stated, "arc of the moral universe". This napper knows the power of excavating, less concerned with the cultural temperature than their insular 'state'. They sleep. To wake. Their own macro/micro-aggressions become more lucid, once rested - to then correct. The power napper possesses a knack for time management because they know that time, like people and beliefs or ideologies, cannot be managed at all. The power napper is humbly prepared to respond more than react, in a form of conversational aikido with Other. All praise to Indigenous Action Media for laying down the gauntlet, distinguishing 'ally' from 'accomplice'. Allies are yawners, daresay, quasi sleepwalkers; accomplices power nap.

The power napper is One. In multiple manifestations. She is a world champion, lesbian soccer player, with close-cropped tresses of lavender fields, who, with commercial endorsements and league censure at stake, takes a Rapinoeian knee in solidarity with 'mattered lives' when no other of her hue has done so. Power nappers raise daughters named Heather Heyer. When Heyer is murdered by the reach of Executive Branch-es and tentacles of tire-treaded vitriol, that mother - eerily named, Bro - grieves in twenty-minute spurts, to rise repeatedly, and speak her child into the national consciousness.

Power nappers are the most promising members of the 'woke' community. Most liberals and some progressives mistake themselves for power nappers. Albeit well-meaning, the majority are not. No. How the world would be served if this mass delusion might cease. Thankfully, bright bursts after a power nap can and do occur. Primarily tho'? 'Woke' folk subject the spectrum to pinpricked alterations, squaring off imperfect samples for a harlequin lining of ghost, zombie, comatose, and yawner.

Therein lies what endangers 'woke' as a valid descriptor signaling enlightenment. With its impressive cut, the lauded bespoke suit - too - is a dapper phantom, imp-peck-ably crafted in a bygone era. 'Woke' - mere coverage - occasionally walks Earth in apparent elegant strides, assuredly forward. 'Woke', eva gentleman, implied horseman, more commonly rides. High. Upon another creature's effort. 'Woke' is one headless dandy. Curiously, whether 'pitch' black, 'midnight' blue, or Halloween chocolate? The fabric choice is inclined to remain in the dark.

basted fitting