The Bishop and the Butterfly: Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age
    Richard Day's picture

    THE BUZZING IN MY EARS!

        Musca domestica housefly.jpg

    THE BUZZING

    The buzzing would not stop.

    I sat at my desk, attempting to read some links whilst attempting to
    follow the plot of an episode of Justified.

    Buzz, buzz, buzz.

    What the hell is that?

    It went away.

    A few seconds later the buzzing was back.

    After what seemed like half an hour of this intermittent buzzing, my ire rose.
    JESUS H. CHRIST!

    Okay, I thought; it was finally time to act! 

    Of course I was not in any kind of danger or physical harm or fear.

    But the damn buzz would not stop.

    The time has come for immediate action.

    I decided to act surreptitiously, so as not to alert the tiny monster of my
    true intentions.

    So I slowly reached for my finished cross-word lying on the floor and I slowly
    rolled it up.

    The buzzing returned just as I had anticipated and I stood up and actually caught
    a glimpse of my nemesis flying within a few inches of me.

    AHA, I thought, THIS IS IT!

    That was the moment when I began flailing my cross-word through the air; knocking over
    my coffee cup and ALMOST tripping over a dish located on the floor that had once
    held my afternoon snack...

    But, I knew I had caught the bastard!

    I sat down much relieved after I toweled off the desk, took the dish back into the
    kitchen and refilled my coffee cup.

    Now I could return to my nothingness, free of all interruptions.

    Five or ten minutes later (but how might a human being gage events like this in
    real time?) the buzzing returned.

    Now I began to feel a twinge of the hero Ahab.

    I immediately rose again and searched inside of my secret cache. AHA, I found the
    weapon that might actually work!

    I grabbed the can of insecticide and began spraying the entire area, ranting and
    raving like a repub stuck in a room full of female liberationists with no idea of where
    the fricking exit was.....

    xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

    There are ten million people in this country who visit our jails every year? That figure is from
    the NYT. I keep finding this figure of 2.2 million but that figure evidently refers to
    those already convicted of some crime. 

    http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/16/magazine/the-bail-trap.html?_r=0

    Finally, these cases make the news. In June, Sandra Bland was found dead in her cell in Texas 
    after failing to come up with $500 for her release. But often, they go unnoticed. The federal 
    government doesn’t track the number of people locked up because they can’t make bail. 
    What we do know is that at any given time, close to 450,000 people are in pretrial detention in the United States — 
    a figure that includes both those denied bail and those unable to pay the bail that has been set. 
    Even that figure fails to capture the churn of local incarceration: In a given year, city and county jails 
    across the country admit between 11 million and 13 million people. In New York City, where courts use bail far less than in many jurisdictions, roughly 45,000 people are jailed each year simply because they can’t pay their court-assigned bail. And while the city’s courts set bail much lower than the national average, only one in 10 defendants is able to pay it at arraignment. To put a finer point on it: Even when bail is set comparatively low — 
    at $500 or less, as it is in one-third of nonfelony cases — only 15 percent of defendants(make bail)

    You really should read this article. 

    Here is another great article on this subject:

    http://www.cbsnews.com/news/is-the-us-bail-system-unfair/

    BUT AS I READ THESE ARTICLES as well as countless other accounts concerning the issues of bail, I kept hearing this buzzing...

    Bob McDonnell, the former Governor of Virginia, was caught with his pants down.

    VA Gov. Bob McDonnell at CPAC 2012 (cropped).jpg

    And, evidently, his wife was caught with her dress down.

    Here was another example of the great white hope with his pants down and his hand caught in the cookie jar.

    Hell, this guy was caught living in the cookie jar.

    But sometimes things APPEAR to work out.

    This sombitch, a man who seemed to be headed toward greater things, a man who once seemed to be headed for the White House some day, a man who certainly could have been chosen as a candidate for VP someday, a man who certainly could have been cast as a Chief Executive in some movie and a man whom corporations would love was convicted by a jury of his peers.

    Governor McDonnell was convicted of receiving bribes and of procuring special legislation in order to
    'pay back' some billionaire patron. And I do not believe that campaign contributions were even
    considered in this verdict.

    Except this buzzer was convicted two years ago and has been flitting around, free from all kinds of
    shackles as his appeal process continued.

    http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/supreme-court-hear-corruption-appeal-former-virginia-governor-n495886

    Now I am not going to get into the legalities of all this. I mean there are issues concerning the definition
    of Quid Pro Quo and issues concerning the fact that the briber is not in prison, and issues concerning
    the origins of the bail posted and.....

    But there is this buzzing in my ear.

    Compared to real issues facing this country, compared to hundreds of thousands of Blacks and Hispanics and yes, even poor Whites who rot in jail for months and even years prior to trial, some rich white ex-politician who receives a pass following a conviction on charges of High Crimes & Misdemeanors should not interfere with  the real issues concerning bail. But for comparison purposes?

    NOW WHERE THE FUCK IS MY INSECTICIDE?

    Comments

    Very funny, Richard. That's certainly no buzz kill.

    My problem is with fiddlebacks, red wasps and ladybugs.

    Buddy brought in my mail, slugged it down on my desk and said, "damn, that's the biggest fiddleback I ever seen", and smashed it with the end of his pen knife. I think fiddleback is another word for brown recluse. Later, I thought, there's never just one, so went sifting through the mail, one came crawling out and hid under my computer. Lost track of it, damn.

    If ladybugs, or whatevers, are on the window, don't use insecticide because you'll have to clean the windows. Aha, Windex works to drown em and you get the windows washed at the same time.

    I admire them but just can't live with red wasps, especially when they dive bomb from the loft and buzz my ears. So I have an electrified small tennis racket---no kidding, great product---and burn their asses. Will that make me a serial killer? Don't know. Now where did I put those AA batteries.

    That's all the buzz I got.   


    Well I cannot let this go....

    I hereby render unto Oxy the Award for Best Idea of the week--the electrified tennis racket--given to all of Oxy from all of me.

    hahahahahah


     

     


    It's a common problem ...


    Mr. Smith, I am so damned old I actually remember these cartoons!

    Sometimes, even spinach does not work!


    You put it in the wrong end, Dick. And careful with those sharp can tops - they sure can hurt.


    We must eschew the minor irritations of life.

    We must re-examine that which might really matter.

    A white repub politician who alleged that all government is is evil....well he proved that his governance was evil! 

    But we must not concentrate on flies or business as usual with regard to hypocrisy.

    The bigger picture is really more important.

    The Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke about the fact that America had welshed on its promises over the last couple of centuries. Promises made in the Declaration of Independence, promises made in the Emancipation Proclamation(s), promises made through the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments to our Constitution....Amendments that have made our Constitution respected throughout history and throughout our world. 

    His message was more transformational in tone and substance.

    We must have hope and we might find hope through a dream.

    This does not mean that we should be quiet.

    MLK's life goal was built on the likes of Gandhi or Jesus or The Buddha.

     

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3vDWWy4CMhE

    But this great man would not have us concentrate our attention toward the minutiae of life.

    But today we should honor MLK and also eschew meanness and madness and mania.

    So let us relax today and not be so goddamn angry. ha

    Swatting at  flies should be beneath our humanity.

    A little Zen might be in order.

     

     

    My real reason for writing this drivel was an attempt to get to this message.

    I think my fly skit went too comical/satirical to include this message in the original blog.

    HAPPY MLK DAY, DAGBLOGGERS!

    MAY WE STAY ON TRACK.

     

     


    Sure, DIck - stay on track. No more of these flies in the ointment.

     

     


    Peracles, thank you for this.

    I just discovered following my nap that I had exposed the wrong Virginian!

    I actually found this song and lost it.

    You woke me up or at least I awoke on my own and discovered my error.

    Anyway I like this song! I had found this song and was going to use it...


    Well, My ears ring and buzz all the time and have ever since I can remember. Nothing the doctors can do about it.  I haven't asked in the last 20 years so who knows now.  And I am too old to care anymore.  Besides it keeps the voices in my head company. It makes it easy for misquotes to sneak up on me at night. 


    Here ya go; I hereby render unto you the Dayly Line of the Day Award for this here Dagblog Site, given to all of you from all of me for this here gem:

    AND I AM TOO OLD TO CARE ANYMORE!

    There ya go....hahahahhaah

     


    Oh, Dick, it seems that your apartment has been infiltrated by the dreaded psychofly. It's devilishly pervasive and persistent, finding ways never before utilized by the average winged pest to invade the human mind ... and it finds you while you're pursuing liberal activities. Its purpose is to, at first, distract you from your Communist endeavours; then to create absolute madness leading to massive amounts of pesticides via aerosol being released into previously psycho-free air.

    The good news, Dick? When they apparently tried to invade your space, the maniacal flies were stymied - despite your innocent acquiescence to fouling the environment - due to the already apparent madness. ;-)


    Invade space? I'll send you to the moon, Alice. Here's the original psychofly guy.

    well, pretty fly for a white guy


    Peracles, are you making fun of me?

    Hell, I can do this all by myself for chrissakes. ha

    Good music by the way!


    Oh Dick, you make me feel like a useless appendage, kinda like a fly on a windshield....

     

    Let me turn it up a notch for you - Alice orchestrates Ba'alzebub - 

     

     

    And the grimmest reaper of all (Ass Saw the Angel?)

     

     


    Alice Cooper; HAHAHAH

    Here, I had completely forgotten about the Breaking Bad episode. As I reviewed that episode today it must look like I got the idea from this 'sitcom':

     


    Missy, I shall always attempt to achieve the proper commie aims.

    hahhahahahaha

    I shall eschew the flies of capitalism.

    There ya go!