Facebook has repeatedly trended fake news since firing its human editors

Though gifted at playing fine chess,
machines cannot process bs.
To them ev'ry tale
is on the same scale;
they haven't the guts to finesse. 

Ronald McDonald lying low until clown scare blows over

In a statement Tuesday, the fast-food chain announced that Ronald McDonald and his signature red and gold garb won’t be seen in public for awhile, at least until America stops being so collectively terrified of his kind.

from the Washington Post

Americans love the neurosis,

sort of a mental cirrhosis,

that all clowns are vile --

and yet folks meanwhile 

will probably vote by hypnosis. 

My first can of sardines

Long immured by my mother's staid Norwegian cookery as a child, when I at last burst the shackles of home and joined up with the circus I craved the finest and most exotic of cuisines. On a First of May's salary this was hard to conjure up; ninety dollars a week, even back in 1971, did not allow me to order bowls brimming with vichyssoise or platters of filet mignon very often. Mostly I subsisted on a grilled cheese and bowl of tomato soup at Woolworth's for seventy-five cents.

Still, I managed my first taste of oyster stew in Boston; fried scrapple in Philadelphia; and thin slices of country ham swimming in red-eyed gravy with cow peas on the side in Little Rock.
I loved all of it. There wasn't anything you could serve me that would turn my stomach. Bring on the pickled pigs feet! Slice me a wedge of halvah! Pour me an egg cream and don't be stingy baby! And don't forget the chopped liver, oy!

In New York City it happened that I stopped by a deli close to Madison Square Garden for a bottle of Dr. Brown's Celery Tonic, and spotted my first can of sardines. My parents abhorred tinned fish of any kind, so I had never become acquainted with this homely staple. These were King Oscar brisling sardines, in olive oil. I purchased a can, then wended my way back to clown alley at the Garden.

Settled at my steamer trunk, I began the arduous operation of opening my virgin can of sardines. Back then there was no such thing as a pull tab. The can was opened by winding a key around the edges -- a procedure that proved nearly beyond my meager skills. But finally I got the tin open, after having spilled most of the pungent olive oil onto my clown pants and the cement floor. I had not thought to take a plastic fork, or a paper napkin, from the deli, and so I dug in with my fingers. It was lip-smacking good -- in fact, I was smacking my lips so loudly that I failed to hear the first bellows of outrage from my compatriots as the unmistakable scent of sardines wafted over the alley.

"What in the Sam Hill are you eating?" cried Swede Johnson, one of the veteran clowns. "Get it out of here -- this ain't the city dump!"
His request was followed by several others of like import, all implying without much subtlety that I was a heedless simpleton to be bringing such a stinking mess into the alley during working hours.

"What smell?" I finally hollered back, as I took my tin of sardines outside the confines of clown alley. For it was true then, as it is true today, that I cannot smell anything offensive about sardines. To me they are like a breath of fresh and salty air.

As luck would have it Rhubarb Bob, the assistant Performance Director, chose this moment to stride into clown alley to make some kind of pronunciamento -- the slick soles of his black dress shoes encountered the olive oil from my sardine can, and over he went bass ackwards. When he had recovered his dignity and equilibrium he demanded to know who was poisoning the building with the foul stench of sardines. His tuxedo pants were ruined! Everyone remained silent, innocently looking up at the ceiling. With rare wisdom, I had ditched the sardine can in a nearby dumpster. Rhubarb Bob threatened a thorough investigation into the outrage, but we all knew he was blowing so many bubbles. After he stalked out I shyly reentered the alley and tried to stammer my thanks to the fellows for not squealing on me.

They pooh-poohed the whole episode. Clowns didn't snitch on one another; that was part of The Code of Clown Alley. But for god's sake don't ever bring another can of sardines into the alley!

And I never did bring in another tin of sardines. Although there was some difficulty with a bit of Country Castle Limburger I tried to smuggle in later that season . . .

Donald Trump Declares Himself Freed From Republican Party ‘Shackles’

Freed from his GOP shackles
the Donald is now raising hackles
as never before
to even the score,
running now only with jackals.

Theranos

The trouble with having grapes sour

is how they turn backers so dour.

The lawyers line up

to fill up their cup;

while judges do nothing but glower. 

The End of the GOP

The GOP's come to an end;

they haven't a single good friend.

Their candidate winks

as probity sinks;

to Democrats it's a godsend. 

A doyen in Beverly Hills

Studies show nearly 40% of patients in their 60s take more than five medications.

More health-care providers are adopting an approach known as de-prescribing to help adults in the U.S. and elsewhere reduce excessive use of prescription drugs and over-the-counter medications and supplements.

from the Wall Street Journal

A doyen in Beverly Hills

daily took dozens of pills.

She said "I may prattle

and sound like a rattle;

at my age there's no other thrills!"  

When rich persons offer to let

Saudi Arabia’s officials are meeting investors this week to gauge appetite for the country’s first international bond, a potential multibillion-dollar issue aimed at strengthening the kingdom’s finances strained by low oil prices.

from the Wall Street Journal 

When rich persons offer to let

you in on a thing that's 'sure bet',

a large grain of salt

will certainly halt

investments you'll come to regret. 

The Peter Pitofsky Gag

Long years ago, when I still had a passport to Cloud Cuckoo Land, I was hired to clown at Disneyland. The one in Anaheim.

The pay was good, and so for once I was able to send a plenteous amount back to the wife & kiddies; a source of pride for me and some satisfaction to the little woman, who usually had to make do with the sad leavings of a mud show clown's salary.

My roommate while there was the one and only Peter Pitofsky. A comic nonpareil who is a combination of Harpo Marx, Buster Keaton, Rasputin, and Scheherazade.

There were thirty clowns that season at Disneyland, and the cry echoed far and wide in clown alley that "No one can work with Peter Pitofsky -- he's too crazy!" And true it was, this master merrymaker improvised almost every performance he gave. One never knew if he would spend twenty minutes silently and heroically tangled up in a microphone cord or  do a dead-on riff on Sylvester Stallone. His genius was untrammeled by any consideration of the Fourth Wall or gravity or the dimensions of space and time. And so no one wanted to work with him -- it was, all claimed, like trying to perform with a tornado.

Ever ready to challenge the status quo, I took up the gauntlet and told Peter we could work up a peachy keen carpenter gag. He was touched by my desire to embrace his wild and wanton ways, and we scheduled a run-through at the Disney rehearsal hall for 7 p.m. that night, after the day's funny business was done.

He never showed up. But that was part and parcel of his genius; time has no meaning for him. Since we roomed together, he could not escape my repeated attempts to chain him down to an appointment. Finally, after numerous futile attempts to get him to commit to something diurnal, I simply got the props together one evening and we rehearsed in our living room. The clatter and thumps caused consternation throughout the building; the landlord was about to call in the SWAT team, when we at last finished and went to bed -- having birthed the Mother of all Carpenter Gags in just under 35 minutes.

To attempt a description of this two-by-four and hammers epic is futile. I mapped out the basic premise; we would bring in some boards and some tools, fumble with a pair of saw horses, and end by losing our pants and pelting each other with white goo. The rest was up to Peter.

We premiered at the Main Street Pavilion on a Sunday, when several of the regular clown acts were off at church or nursing hangovers.

We were a succes d'estime. All the clowns working that day ditched their regular assignments to view our maiden voyage into madness. They laughed immoderately throughout. But the regular customers, a cosmopolitan mob of tourists gathered from Tokyo, Oslo, Burbank, and Soweto, sat on their hands.

I can't really blame them, either. After the first smack of a board Peter was holding sent me tumbling, things, to say the least, got out of hand. For reasons that no one can explain, least of all Peter himself, my partner pulled out an iron and attempted to iron not only the boards, but the tools, the saw horses, and my workman's blouse. It was not plugged in, thank goodness, but the audience didn't know that, and my indignant howls of pain when Peter slid the iron over me were met by puzzled and concerned silence from the civilians. The professionals, as I say, were rolling around like tumbleweeds.

And so it went. Peter did a break dance routine, scattering mallets and chisels about (luckily all made of foam rubber). He spotted a likely looking blonde in the audience and abandoned me to my fate to play footsie with her.
 In a word, he was being Peter.
 I managed to pull him back onstage for the blow off, but that, too, was nothing like we had planned it. Or I had planned it, I should say. By now Peter had forgotten I existed, being egged on by the roars of the other professional clowns to new heights of anarchy. Instead of dropping his pants, he began eating the white goo -- which was made of glycerin and shaving soap. Bowing to the inevitable, I started eating it with him. I managed two mouthfuls before rushing from the stage to gag up bubbles, but Peter manfully stuck it out for another quart or two, then did a back flip, and went back to the blonde in the audience before I managed to totter out and drag him away -- to the raucous accolades of our peers, but only dumbfounded silence from the regular crowd.

We were not allowed to do the gag again. Which was fine with me. There are times even today when I still detect a soupcon of Old Spice shaving soap after enjoying a good meal.

Since those halcyon days Peter has gone on to travel the world with his solo menagerie of insanity. The last I heard from him, he was on the beach at Waikiki in something called CabaRAE. Reading some of his reviews from that venue, it is easy to see that the critics are as thoroughly intrigued and baffled by him as was that crowd at Disneyland; plaudits rain down on him, but in rather ambiguous terms. But then, all genius is an enigma to us mere mortals.

My Savings Account

I'm saving for a rainy day/but precip sure has come to stay/the kids need braces, taxes mount/the heating bill I now must count/my credit cards demand attention/and I am nearly at demention/Instead of saving in a bank/I think I'll go and climb Mont Blanc.