The Bishop and the Butterfly: Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age

Personal Information

Superpowers
Defies gravity Can spit really far Almost touch my toes Can cut a fly's legs off with a beer cap from 20 paces Know how to say useless stuff and prattle on in a dozen languages Don't know when to shut up
Favorite Quotes
To be for or against the Plague, it's much the same thing. Fiddledee, how a body shure do get around - just 2 weeks ago I was in Mississippi and now I'm all the way to Tennessee... Eat or Be Eaten Better to be pissed off than pissed on.
Biography
Born in swaddling clothes (designer, of course) at the confluence of big waters, my first recorded words were "Dad, can I have the keys to the car?" Raised a Southern Pedestrian, my musical talents were recognized at an early age, leading to my being exiled to the shed out back with a stack of books that became my eddykayshun - advanced readin', writin' & ritmytick, creating a major quandary of "what will I do, oh what will I do?" (Gunslinger) As an old black man advised in song, "You Gotta Move", so move I did, traveling the byways sideways even a lot of driveways, picking up sticks and psychological tics, even movin' to Beverlee through a quaint misunderstanding of the seriousness of TV series, until finally I blew up so big the carry nation incarnation tarnation couldn't hold me no more, so I fixed my sights on yonder sitar, and like Queequeg and Paul Bowles and one of those abducted kids by the Pied Piper of Hamelin, I ventured forth to the larger world, pickin' and grinnin', doin' me some reckonin' and naughts from naughts, occasionally rightin', building me some buildings and wiring and just trying to understand the babble comin' out of people's mouths and heads, I finally ended up in what Rummy quaintly calls "New Europe", which ain't so new from what I sees, but that pit in my stomach from lack-of-moving-sickness finally disappeared, and instead I sit behind a whopping big desk stacked with missives from all the chiefs with big whampum around the world telling me "what's going on". Which seems like a load of boolshit to me, but I guess that's what keeps me busy and entertained now, separatin' the weeds from the chapstick. So my name is Perry Keys, or Peracles to you, and since my mammy always said, "say please and thank you", I added the please, but I'm holdin' back on that thankee until I feel you've earned it. But do welcome, and I hope we's a gonna have a real good time. It all starts with, "I wuz born a poor young white chile livin' in the South..." and we cycle through again, like Nietzsche and his infernal regurgence. So enjoy, and let's spin a spell...

Likeability

Okay, as this keeps coming up, I thought I'd put together a list to help us track the seemingly all-important metric of "likeability" as it concerns our public servants and cultural heroes.

More likeable than Hillary: Michelle Obama, Oprah Winfrey, Pope Francis, Al Franken?, Elizabeth Warren, Eric Snowden, Christiane Amanpour, Stephen Colbert-Jon Stewart-Samantha Bee, Joe Biden (or so they say), Elon Musk, Angelina Jolie, the Dalai Lama, Aung San Suu Kyi, Richard Holbrooke?, Tom Tomorrow, Barbara Jordan?, Kofe Annan

Moderation vs. Violent Mood Swings

It's been the perceived wisdom this season that Americans are outraged, and that solutions need to be drastic. But perceived wisdom, especially among self-interested media types, isn't always accurate, and doesn't always reflect what the populace expects. And change often comes when a dam bursts, not with steady trends - watching the water rise often does little to predict the outcome. (Plus my experience with earthquakes tells me that an aftershock can be worse than the original quake - effects do ripple).

Hack Attacks - Quo Vadis?

My biggest objection during the time we helped remove Qaddafi was not a condemnation of regime change, but "what's the precedent?" Unless you're the Supreme Court in 2000 writing a "one-time-use-only" clause into your work, or even if, there's the constant concern in both foreign and domestic policy that a new clever "remedy" will be copied and extended in ways we find unreasonable but ways the bastardizers think wholly fair. Thus part of the history of how Republicans have mimicked and abused Democratic strategy in the Senate or amazingly refused to take any action on a Supreme Court nominee based on a fairly meaningless comment by Biden lots of years ago.

What's Going On...

Since Bernie grief, email/tarmac worries and Donald phobias have been rocking our free world way too much, thought it'd be useful to take a breather and discuss something else. And what an else...

1) recent spate of cop-on-black killings re-ignites the Ferguson riot scenes from last summer. Will we actually do something about it, will it be left to Hillary, or will it be just part of America's pastoral gun-laden backdrop?

2) Speaking of guns, still no new legislation despite Congressional sitdown. Nice symbolism, but...

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