Monthly Archives: August 2011

Mighty Croesus

It has been said that money is the root of all evil, but it is not. The lust for power over others is the root of all evil. Croesus, the King of Lydia, was the richest man in the world, yet he lost it all in a quest for power, when he found that all his gold availed him not.

 

 

What is that which I should turn to

Mighty Croesus asked the sage

Have I gold that men should dream of

Have not books on every page

Blazed my name in crimson letters

Boldly drawn and edged in rime

With such wealth from yon Pactolus

River’d gold bequeathed by time

Gold is gold, the sage did answer

But for greatness more must come

Cross the river, fell a Kingdom

Count thee not the mounting sum

Then upon the gentle Halys

Croesus walked with shoes of gold

Into Persia with his army

Herodotus the story told

Captured by the mighty Cyrus

Croesus begged that he might live

For his life then he would give him

All the gold he had to give

And there the story ends as often

Golden stories end not well

Gold is but a shining metal

Worthless if your soul you sell

 

 

See my science fiction novel ALMOST PARADISE at Amazon, paperback and Kindle.

 

 

Sparta Nichts

The Greek debt crisis never ends. The Germans and the French are now meeting to discuss plans for easing the crisis that will lead to the death of the Euro and the Eurozone if left unresolved. Germany is trying to get the Greeks to give up some of their pensions and vacations so they, the German banks and the European Union, can give Greece a little more money, thus forestalling the inevitable Greek default by few more months. But the Greeks will have none of the German mandated austerity. And besides, they say, isn’t Greece the cradle of Western civilization? Doesn’t that entitle us to free money?

 

 

The Greeks reject the spartan life

They stone the polis cars

Fail anxiety is rife

As pols consult the stars

First the Romans, common plebes

Then Ottomans, now this

Our money stole by German thebes

How cursed the EU kiss

Give us back our vineyards spare

Our stony plots of land

The demos of the village square

Our panoplied brave band

We cradled you, we gave you birth

The West, you are our son

When Xerxes came we scorched our earth

And in the end we won

Oh yes our present is our past

A present and a gift

Ten thousand years our Greece will last

Right now we are adrift

And heading for a rocky shore

The future dark and drear

The German banks can do much more

For Dammerung ist near

 

 See my mystery THE ICE COLD BRIDE at Amazon, paperback and 99 cent Kindle. A beautiful woman murdered and a cop who falls in love with her portrait.

 

 

Who’s Got My Stash?

The United States is some 14 trillion dollars in debt and has lost its AAA bond rating, meaning we will all pay higher interest rates on everything. Our debt is so large as to be unpayable, and if our creditors ever demanded instant payment we would have to declare bankruptcy. And all because we have drifted down the path to socialism for the last seventy years, and now we have reached the point all socialist countries reach when the socialist politicians run out of other peoples’ money. I found Uncle Sam sitting on a curb a few days ago, and asked him why he looked so glum. He said it looked like he would soon be broke unless the politicians stopped spending money he didn’t have. I asked what happened to all the money he used to have, and he said somebody stole his stash.

 

 

I am not poor, I’m not, he cried, that’s all a dirty lie

It’s just that right now all my money’s gone

He sobbed a bit and wiped his eyes and gave a weary sigh

And said he now had nothing left to pawn

I gave so much to others when they needed it the most

For many years I kept the world from harm

When famine came or earthquakes struck, I do not like to boast

I picked them up and offered my right arm

At home I tried to help the poor and help them make the climb

But somehow things just went from bad to worse

And now I’m sitting on a curb flat broke without a dime

And sobbing uncontrollably in verse

 

 See my mystery SUSAN DARLING at Amazon, paperback and 99 cent Kindle. A beautiful young woman is murdered and the investigating officer falls in love with her portrait.

 

 

Aloha ‘Oe

Aloha ‘Oe: Greetings; farewell. Hawaiians have always known that the two are inseparable. The rise of Western Civilization, like the rise of any civilization, is the beginning of an arc, not the beginning of a straight and ever rising line. The Left has changed Western society to the point where it is no longer sustainable, from white women no longer having babies to an entitlement society so pervasive that the third world people they have invited into their homes riot, burn and loot when an entitlement they have come to think is theirs by right is taken away. So it is Aloha ‘Oe, for we are on the downward arc, and if the end comes not today then surely tomorrow. We have had Africans riot and burn our cities before, but this time it is different. This time the money is gone, and the Left will not be able to buy them off. The writing on the wall is now entirely legible, and readable for those who choose to see. But it sure was fun while it lasted.

 

 

ALOHA ‘OE

 

Farewell to thee, farewell to thee

The charming one who dwells in the shaded bowers

One fond embrace

“Ere I depart

Until we meet again

 

We are at the beginning of a great worldwide financial crisis, and there are far too many uneducated and unable to be educated people living on government checks for generations who will loot and burn when the checks stop . I fear for my grandchildren, but am confident they will survive, though I am not so confident the world as we have known it will. The days of savagery are returned. We have created an entitlement society that rewards the non-worker at the expense of the worker, the criminal at the expense of the law-abiding. And when the music stops, the piper must be paid.

 

See my science fiction novel SOLILOQUY at Amazon, paperback and 99 cent Kindle. Ancient DNA turns a mining colony into monsters. Will they capture the ship and get to Earth?

 

 

Pollyannas And Cassandras

Yes, things look bad right now. We are on an eight lane highway to hell, though in the same old handbasket. But things have always looked bad, and stayed bad until they got better. That’s the way of it. The proper response to the question “Will this rain ever stop?” is “It always has so far.” But some people always see the worst. Take the London riots and the Philly flash mobs, burning and looting. Things look bad, yes, but they’d look a lot better if you had a gun.

 

 

Yes things are always looking bad

To those whose times are come

But then the times they always are

Not quite so bad for some

Cassandras always see the worst

They never see the sun

But Pollyannas smile because

They’re carrying a gun

 

 See my science fiction novel SOLILOQUY at Amazon, paperback and 99 cent Kindle. Ancient DNA turns a mining colony into monsters. Will they capture the ship and return to Earth?

 

 

London Riots

The London riots are about race, though we are not permitted to say it, or even think it. But the rioters know it’s about race. They trumpet it. No, the Establishment Left would have you believe the riots are about cutting services and unemployment among the deserving poor. In Britain, the nanny state has seen its policies come home to roost, and not for the first time. Blacks riot, loot and rampage through the streets of British cities knowing the unarmed police pose no threat to their activities. They loot and burn down stores and homes knowing the disarmed citizens have no way of stopping them, and knowing also, from past experience, that if a citizen uses force on someone intent on killing him that the citizen will be prosecuted by the law. But there is no law, the Left has seen to that. But if it gets bad enough, then there will be law, the law of the jungle. Napoleon understood what was necessary to quiet a mob: a whiff of grapeshot. Perhaps not in England, but the same is coming to our third world cities when the money stops.

 

 

The sins of the socialists come home to roost

The goddess of chaos lives still

In their long held belief in the power of guilt

To hold those in thrall to its will

Creating beholders to state run largesse

Gives birth to resentment and rage

A triggering spark is but all that it takes

To loosen the bars on the cage

So now there is nothing the state may command

The mob runs amok mouth agape

Unknowing, uncaring that soon they will face

The scent of the first whiff of grape

Perhaps not in England, they’re far down the path

But trouble is coming our way

As profligate spending is bringing us down

And welfare gets its cut in pay

Our cities are third world, dependent on those

Who work but keep little they earn

So when Santa Claus has to tighten his belt

Our cities will then start to burn

The very same people once burned them before

See Detroit for what lies in store

In Philly the flash mobs run wild in the streets

And pretty soon it will be war

Between those who think they can burn us all down

And loot and just take what they will

But sooner or later white people with guns

Will say stop or we’re shooting to kill

 

 See my science fiction novel RADIANCE at Amazon, paperback and 99 cent Kindle. A boy and his Irish setter find themselves on a strange planet and they don’t know why. They soon find out.

 

 

Darkness At Noon

President Obama addressed the nation Monday, assuring us the debt crisis was not his fault and that things would only get better were it not for those damned Republicans. Grim faced in denial, Obama comforted us by laying the blame for the downgraded bond rating and the coming economic catastrophe on the Tea Party, entirely unaware of the headlong rush of the icy waters of calamity and the descending darkness at the unlikely hour of noon.

 

 

Down the mountain

Raged like thunder

Icy mountain streams

Sweeping cities

And the townsfolk

Of their hopes and dreams

While at high noon

In the White House

All was quite serene

No one noticed

That the darkness

Drifted in unseen

Smiling broadly

O assured us

Things were better soon

Telepromptered

White teeth flashing

Wrapped in his cocoon

Down the mountain

Icy water

Singing that old tune

Come depression

Water rising

Darkness at high noon

 

 See my mystery PHILLY STREETS at Amazon, paperback and 99 cent Kindle. Murders a-plenty, but Detective Sergeant Alexander’s principal concern is how is he going to keep from falling in love with his beautiful new partner.

 

 

Can’t Believe He’s Still Here

Obama is still here, still driving the country hard for the cliff. To Jimmy Buffett’s When The Wild Life Betrays Me.

 

 

Can’t believe he’s still here

With the cliff edge so near

And the answer so clear

Can’t believe my own eyes

Can’t believe the man’s lies

And it’s not a surprise

Yes the lefty’s betrayed us

He has done us great wrong

Yes the lefty has played us

Will we let him, or will we be strong

We have heard his lies for much too long

Can’t believe he’s still here

But election draws near

And the answer is clear

Clean the rats one and all

Hear the sharp freedom’s call

In the 2012 Fall

When our campaign’s succeeded

And the country’s secure

And the lefty’s defeated

We will take back our country once more

And steer a course safely for shore

Yes, the lefty’s betrayed us

 

 See my science fiction novel HITTITE at Amazon, paperback and 99 cent Kindle. A 21st century Hittite scholar travels to 1273 BC Hatti and meets and falls in love with a beautiful young Hittite woman named Teshan. Returning home, he finds he has not been to his own past, but the present of someone else’s universe, meaning Teshan is alive somewhere. He sets out to find her, and does, though not in any way he had envisioned.

 

 

The Rumor Of Rain

Britain is pulling back from it Nato commitments in Afghanistan, the Euro is balancing on edge and soon may topple, the European Union is fracturing as weak countries are kept afloat only by German and French banks, and post world war two Europe is returning to its former nationalist configuration. And all of it the result of overspending by socialist governments, to the degree that national debts in Europe and the United States have reached unsustainable levels. The signs are there for a severe global depression, and with it a complete realignment of the world order. And none know what that order may be. The chickens of socialism are coming home to roost, and soon will come the deluge. Or, as Richard Fernandez at the Belmont Club put it so elegantly, “Like storm petrels heralding bad weather, they bring with them the rumor of rain.” Financial collapse is now but a hanging mist on the horizon, but will anyone notice, or pay any heed?

 

 

Horizon low, a hanging mist

No larger than a grown man’s fist

No need to worry or to fret

It won’t be here for ages yet

But why the petrels skimming low

Across the water in the glow

Of winking stars and setting suns

Heading home before the guns

Now dimly heard but growing near

Resolve the problems that all fear

Will overtake them in the end

As governments their birthright spend

The petrel comes to say goodbye

But none will heed the warning cry

 

 See my science fiction novel CHRYSALIS at Amazon, paperback or 99 cent Kindle. A city on the bottom of Lake Champlain, a love sick medusa and a captive hero avenger. What could go wrong?

 

 

School Days, School Days

It has recently been discovered that the Atlanta school district has been gaming the system by cheating on the federal No Child Left Behind grade requirements by falsifying the test results and pocketing huge sums of money from us taxpayers. The district superintendent, who collected huge bonuses for the fake test results, was vacationing in the most expensive resort in Hawaii when the story broke, and she claims any reports of chicanery on their part are lies made up by opponents of the teachers union. The truth is, big city public schools are failing the kids, or maybe the kids are failing the schools. Either way, nobody can spell or do simple arithmetic anymore. But they sure have a boatload of self esteem, and that’s the only thing that’s important.

 

 

School days, school days

Good old union rule days

‘Readin’ and writin’ and ‘rithmatic

Once taught to the tune of the hickory stick

No longer they grace the curriculum

It’s now self esteem ad ridiculum

I wrote on my slate “harverd hear I cum“

When we were a couple of kids

 

 See my sci fi novel HITTITE at Amazon, paperback and 99 cent Kindle. A time traveler falls in love with a young Hittite woman and tries to find her again. He does, though not in any way he had imagined.