Verses from Today's New York Times. ** Juul Says Its Focus Was Smokers, but It Targeted Young Nonsmokers. ** Picassos in the Garage? Artist’s Handyman Is Convicted of Hiding Stolen Works. ** Afghan Vote Crawls Toward Crisis, With No Results After 2 Months.

@julie_creswell  @BySheilaKaplan

Vice is always guaranteed

profit margins large to breed.

And it doesn't hurt that Juul

knows each youngster is a fool,

willing to try anything

just to see what it will bring.

Juul may say they're innocent

as they charge a huge rack rent,

but someday a judge will flag

all their crimes with fines that gag.

*******************************

@ElianPeltier

Sticky fingers had Pierre;

he nabbed Picassos without care.

But when he tried to sell 'em cheap,

the judge called him a darn black sheep.

Too old to go to jail, Pierre

wished there was more laissez faire. 

***************************

@MujMash

Stealing votes or gutting same

is an old Afghani game.

Rigged elections don't upset

those who yet more power get.

In Kabul democracy

can't defeat hypocrisy.

Not like in the USA --

where our votes we throw away

on buffoons, completely free

of restraint (and sanity.)

Verses from Today's Washington Post. ** Ivanka Trump cited de Tocqueville to condemn impeachment. The quote wasn’t his. ** Fred Cox, former Vikings kicker and Nerf football co-inventor, dies at 80. ** Don’t eat romaine lettuce from California’s Salinas Valley, CDC warns.

@KaylaEpstein

Anyone can quote things wrong,

from a book or from a song.

Even White House daughters err,

though they might be doctrinaire.

Tocqueville, being French, I bet

forgives her cuz she is brunette . . . 

********************

@DesBieler

All the world's a Nerf, they say,

and we upon its foam do play.

Whether football or a dart,

eventually it falls apart.

And when a man has lost his Nerf,

they bury him beneath the turf . . . 

************************

@bylenasun

My mother said that I should eat

raw veggies to stay strong and fleet.

But now I turn around to find

raw vegetables have been maligned.

They get infected with rough germs

or harbor parasitic worms.

On beer and pretzels I survive;

I'm drunk and fat -- but still alive!

The Lord bless thee, and keep thee.

The Lord bless thee, and keep thee:

 The Lord make his face shine upon thee, and be gracious unto thee:

 The Lord lift up his countenance upon thee, and give thee peace.

Numbers 6: 24 - 26.

Blessings from the Lord of Hosts

far surpass the idle boasts

of the arm of flesh, therefore

let us praise forevermore

the countenance of God alone

who gives us peace in heart and bone.

His face shall shine o'er all mankind

to heal our hurts and mend the blind.

O Lord, please keep us safe within

they tender gaze, and free from sin! 

Postcards to My President.

Why would you invite a journalist into your life?

Why did I invite a journalist into my life as a human, when I knew that she could expose me as a household pet, a dog?

I did it for several reasons. One -- I craved publicity like a narcotic. The thought of my name and my photograph carried to tens of thousands of homes and offices in the form of a newspaper article created a sensational pleasure in my heart and stomach that I could almost taste like a filet mignon dinner. And then hundreds of thousands of online viewers would read my words, heed my story, come to appreciate my quirks and contrarian ways. But best of all was the fact that perhaps I could fool a journalist into thinking I really was a human being, not a dog sitting up in a chair with his front paws waving frantically and barking something that sounded like 'yup-yup.' Perhaps this journalist had no moral compass or a diseased imagination, like mine, that would lead her to put words in my muzzle and create an elaborate, untraceable, plausible, backstory for me. I could only hope.

Another reason I did it was from loneliness. I needed someone to love me and take care of me, not on a 'good boy' level, but on a human empathetic level -- the level where my problems become my companion's problems and there are hugs and shoulder rubs and sometimes tears flow and sometimes shared laughter makes you feel like a god. I saw humans treat each other like that, and I wanted in.

And then there was a thorn. Or a cockle burr. Anyway, something sharp and unforgiving was digging into my stubby tail and I needed someone to pull it out for me. I couldn't reach it. I had nightmares it was a giant black bug actually devouring my tail a few bites each day. 

PETA arranged the interview for me. They are mostly animals masquerading as people -- some of them are very good at it; they become very articulate and learn to manipulate shoelaces and such things. But one thing they never do is actually help out a fellow creature like me -- they wouldn't touch my tail with a barge pole. And Boris Johnson, over in Great Britain, is actually a hedgehog that had been left for roadkill a few years back. But I really can't go into details about that kind of thing -- it's not a healthy pursuit, if you know what I mean.

She was gorgeous, my journalist. Her blend of scents reminded me of nipples and snapdragons. She was young and fresh -- and gullible. She actually began interviewing me for real, nodding her head enthusiastically whenever I barked 'yup-yup.' But about ten minutes in she began to look troubled, and her pheromones switched from eager and sexy to doubtful and angry. She was going to expose me as a dog -- or even worse, terminate the interview and not write anything at all about me. I had to try something else to win her confidence and interest back.

So I told her I was actually a transgender cat stuck in a male dog's body who was being forced by white slavers to masquerade as a young man. I don't know how I was able to tell her that exactly, but there was some kind of seconds-only bridge between us, born of deep desperation, that allowed her to pick up on my ridiculous fib. She scribbled furiously, and then texted her editor on her smartphone to ask for column space in the Sunday edition for what she called a 'bombshell.' He texted back okay, and my journalist started taking photos. 

The rest you know about, if you're ever on social media. I've been officially adopted by the last reigning Nawab of Oudh. I'm scheduled to fly out to Lucknow this evening, and Oprah has given me a pair of matching Samsonite chew toys. Before I leave I'm appearing on Ellen DeGeneres to talk, or bark, or meow, about 'being a transgender cat trapped in a dog's body.' Ellen will take the paperclip (for that's what it turned out to be) out of my tail on air at the end of the show. Ratings should go through the roof. 

@EllenBarryNYT

Dialing.

I got up too early, wrote a postcard to an old friend I don't remember anymore, took four different kinds of pills that have to be taken on an empty stomach, made a pitcher of lemonade, and then spent an hour ticking off a fantasy grocery list. It contained things like frog eye salad, lutefisk, khanom chin, dilly beans, scrapple, anchovy pizza, lingonberry jelly, leeks, elephant garlic, marinated artichoke hearts, chicle, frozen Cornish pasties, salted duck eggs, and 2 gallons of whole chocolate milk.

Then I got sleepy sick, with a subtle headache that wouldn't admit to being painful, and nano-term memory loss -- I couldn't remember why I was typing on my keyboard or what my fingernails were. My head was a bowling ball. So I wrapped myself in several large kitchen towels that smelled of bacon grease and lay back in my recliner with a thin pillow under my chin to hold my head up. And slept for three whole hours. It was wonderful; when I woke up I felt pardoned from some shabby, disreputable crime. 

But my mind had skipped ahead to Saturday. I always wrote postcards and made lemonade on Friday, so now I was waking up and it must be Saturday. My body knew it was Saturday on a sub-atomic level. But when I  messaged my daughter on Facebook to ask if she and the kids were gonna go up to Park City to go skiing she replied it was Friday, the kids had school, so they weren't going until tomorrow. I wrote back that I knew that, ha ha, and I must be getting senile, LOL. 

But I didn't know it was still Friday. It didn't feel like a Friday; it felt like a lackluster and laid back Saturday when you make pancakes and roll sausages around in an iron skillet like you were torturing Lincoln Logs. And they always burned, but who cares on a Saturday? Just put them in a bowl of syrup for a coupla minutes.

I bitterly regretted failing to purchase a wall calendar this year, but they kept falling off the fridge door and besides a calendar wouldn't tell me what day it really was, not unless I was marking off each day like a prisoner in a stone cell. Who's got the energy to do that every day, anyway? I can barely manage to bush-hog my nose hairs on a daily basis. My Tracfone doesn't tell me the day of the week. I wondered if the cable TV would list the day of the week if I turned it on. But I have a hard and fast rule to never turn it on before 5 in the afternoon. Then I remembered my mother dialing the rotary phone on the kitchen wall to find out the date and time, and the current temperature. She did that at least once a week. 

So I called 911. But they were very rude and said I could be arrested before they hung up. The girl who answered had a nasty foreign accent. I bet the city outsources all their 911 calls to India or Timbuktu. I was so upset by this that I ate the last piece of brie in the fridge that had not been wrapped properly and was now as hard as a bar of soap. I took warped pleasure in gnawing on it and savoring the iron flavor. 

What finally settled the issue was the sound of vacuuming from the hallway. They only ever vacuum the halls on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Never on Saturday. When I opened my apartment door to make sure, there they were -- vacuuming in a businesslike and very Friday manner. And on my door handle someone had hung a plastic bag full of individually cellophane wrapped oatmeal cookies and six tiny fruit punch juice boxes. I threw it all away in disgust, but then dug out the juice boxes for the grand kids. They'd never know I'd put 'em in the garbage first . . . 

At a complete loss as to what to do with a day I had already written off as done, I went out to buy bird seed and got a pedicure. Then I wrote out all the above and emailed it to Hannah Knowles, a General Assignment reporter at the Washington Post.  At least it would take her mind off of all this impeachment nonsense. 

Verses from Today's New York Times. ** Fiona Hill Testifies ‘Fictions’ on Ukraine Pushed by Trump Help Russia. ** Arab Thinkers Call to Abandon Boycotts and Engage With Israel. ** China’s Vaping Boom Alarms the Government.

@npfandos  @shearm

Politically driven falsehoods

are President Trump's stock-in-trade;

He sells 'em to every sucker

like watered down warm lemonade.

He's gonna cry 'Wolf' once too often,

and even his cronies will cringe,

when Americans finally kick him

right in his stupendous white fringe!

**********************

@halbfinger

Love thy neighbor, if you can --

otherwise, a true wise man

will put up with what can't be

changed in modern history.

Jews and Arabs need to learn

there's no shame in a u-turn.

*****************************

@suilee  @elsiechenyi

In China vaping was the way

to have a generous payday.

They made the e-cigs for the world,

as flavored smoke around them curled.

But now in Beijing there's a hint

that they don't like inhaling mint.

And so another treasure trove

from the market place is drove.

Ain't a bizness well worth saving

if it panders to our craving?

Beijing isn't thinking straight;

an e-cig sales tax would be great!

All that money raked in high

(so what if some folks have to die . . . )

Time for lobbyists to drive

falsehoods so e-cigs can thrive.

Economies are spurred, you know,

not by health but by more dough!

More Postcards to My President.

For my bones are vexed.

Have mercy upon me, O Lord; for I am weak: O Lord, heal me; for my bones are vexed.
Psalm 6:2. 

Getting up is hard to do;

not like in days of youth.

Back then each day would start with strength

and buoyancy, in truth.

But now my bones are vexed each morn,

and only pills prevent

me staying in my bed all day

like tons of dried cement.

I'm weak and ask for healing

in my daily prayers amain;

but accept that life, sometimes,

is best viewed thru some pain.

Oh Lord, there's healing in thy wings --

but whether ill or well,

I thank thee for the time I've spent

with this frail mortal shell!

Photo Essay: . 山の色は神の色です