Tim Torkildson's Clown Alley

Thursday, March 15, 2018

From the Wall Street Journal. Thursday March 15 2018.

WASHINGTON—The Trump administration on Thursday issued for the first
time sanctions against Russia for meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential
elections and for cyberattacks, targeting the Kremlin’s intelligence
agencies and individuals indicted by special counsel Robert Mueller
for their role in election interference.

The Kremlin has found its long nose

No longer smells of the sweet rose.

Its meddling way

Now makes Moscow pay,

And puts the snot back on their clothes.

The eye-roller, Liang Xiangyi, a television reporter for Shanghai-based
Yicai Media Group, emerged as a kind of folk hero for those tired of the
turgid pageantry.

If you want the Pulitzer Prize

Just grimace and roll your blue eyes;

It’ll go viral,

You’ll ski in the Tyrol,

And soon have your own big franchise.

The country needs to spend $655 billion over the next 20 years to upgrade
water and sewer systems, the EPA estimates. Around 240,000 water mains
break a year, contributing to $2.6 billion in lost drinking water, according
to the agency.

When I turn on the kitchen tap

I get some brown and soupy crap.

Yet ev’ry month my water bill

Is ever going way uphill.

I’m living in a Third World state,

But paying at a First World rate!

Japan’s strawberry exports totaled just under

$17 million last year, while South Korean

exports reached $44 million, according to

government figures in each country. South

Korea more than tripled exports between

2000 and 2014, mainly to other Asian nations

where Japan was once the dominant supplier.

Japan ain’t a strawberry place.

But they won’t admit they’ve lost face.

It will not make sake;

It comes out too chalky.

In sushi it’s just a disgrace.

Shares of the Snapchat parent dropped 3.6%

to close at $17.20 after the singer slammed

the app for approving an advertisement that

appeared to joke about domestic violence.

When celebs have got a grudge

They are jury, law, and judge.

There is no appeal at all

When for boycott they do call.

So if I were Snapchat’s heir,

I would find work cutting hair.

A Letter from Tim Holst

In the summer of 1980 I got a brief note in the mail from my good old pal Tim Holst.
We had started out together as clowns on the Ringling Blue Unit back in 1971, and
he had been instrumental in interesting me in the LDS Church, and then baptizing
me into the same. In those simpler days before the advent of email and cell phones,
a letter from a friend was a tangible and much appreciated item -- to be read and reread,
and then put in a shoe box or a cigar box and stuck up in the attic to be forgotten about
until nearly forty years later -- in my case, the note was taped into my journal, and when
the journal was full, it was placed in a foot locker and put out in the garage for the next
30 odd years.

He wrote it on the back of one of the official Ringling Route Cards,
which detailed when and where the Greatest Show on Earth would
be appearing that season. When I received this note I and my wife Amy
were honeymooning in Provo, Utah, where I was going to Brigham Young
University. For the benefit of circus buffs and those interested in the Torkildson
Family Narrative, here is the text of Tim Holst’s letter, verbatim:

Dear Tork,

Jeff (Loseff) & I are rattling around this ‘ole’ show,
disturbed & frustrated ‘cause there have been few lines penned
from Provo. It concerns us . . . . Have you taken marriage too seriously???
Are you dead??? Have you changed friends??? Do we have bad breath??
Are we mere mongrels by comparison to those in the academic world???
Or, does your wife have you tied to household chores or gardening????
Have you been forced to do something against your will??? Like, like, Like . . . .
now let me see. Aw nuts, we just plain miss hearing from you . . . .
Have you heard of more than one baby Holst?

All the Polish folks have been drunk for three days since the strike ended.

Clown college starts Sept. 15th.

Contracts are coming, and so are the Saturday Blues.

Till you hear from me again,

Your friend,

Tim

(It should be noted that at the time of this letter Tim Holst was the Performance Director
for the Ringling Red Unit, and Jeff Loseff was the Assistant Performance Director for the Red Unit.)

Not a Bestseller?

Wherefore, the things which are pleasing unto the world
I do not write, but the things which are pleasing unto God
and unto those who are not of the world.

First Nephi. Chapter Six. Verse 5.

No bestseller ever was wrote

That didn’t on sin kinda dote --

Though many will read

About Nephi’s seed --

And of their misfortunes take note.

Wednesday, March 14, 2018

From the Washington Post

Toy store chain Toys R Us is planning to sell or close
all 800 of its U.S. stores, affecting as many as 33,000
jobs as the company winds down its operations after six
decades, according to a source familiar with the matter.

There isn’t a doubt in my mind

Of who’s the one mainly behind

This story so weird --

The man with the beard.

Twas Santa their death warrant signed!

The Senate on Wednesday passed the most significant
loosening of financial regulations since the economic crisis
a decade ago, delivering wide bipartisan support for
weakening banking rules despite bitter divisions
among Democrats.

A banker who lived in Des Moines

Was careful to count ev’ry coin

That went in his vault

Because of default

By senators needing pork loin.

When the Arctic is warm, the study finds,
cold weather and heavy snowfalls in the eastern United States
are two to four times more likely than when it is cold.

Blizzards on the East Coast are caused by arctic warming,

Making all New Yorkers sick of storms a-swarming.

Washington is also much afflicted by this floe mob --

But they are more familiar with the many types of snow job.

From the New York Times. Wednesday March 14 2018

“They have treated the use of a military-grade nerve agent
in Europe with sarcasm, contempt and defiance,” Mrs. May
said of Russia. “Their response has demonstrated complete
disdain for the gravity of these events. They have provided no
credible explanation.”

The Russians like using nerve gas

To keep down the rogue spying class.

They really don’t care

How much or just where --

As long as they get ‘em en masse.

Senior Myanmar officials denied on Wednesday that the country’s
military had committed any crimes against Rohingya Muslims,
one day after a United Nations expert suggested that the government
was implicated in “the crime of genocide” against the persecuted
Muslim minority.

In Myanmar they take great pride

In stamping out all genocide.

Each minority

Is really quite free --

To shut up or flee or to hide.

Those are the main conclusions of the World Happiness Report 2018,
released Wednesday. Finland is the happiest country in the world,
it found, followed by Norway, Denmark, Iceland, Switzerland, the
Netherlands, Canada, New Zealand, Sweden and Australia. Though
in a different order, this is the same top 10 as last year, when Norway
was No. 1 and Finland was fifth.

There was an old man from Helsinki

Who gazed at the world through his pinky.

“It keeps in perspective

Whatever’s defective”

He said while he played with a Slinky.

From the Wall Street Journal. Wednesday March 14 2018

Ms. Stein, 31, is a devotee of Beer Fit Club, a group that hosts
monthly yoga classes in New York City-area breweries.
Students hold and sip a pint throughout each session.

There was a young woman whose lotus

Position acquired much notice

When she sipped a brew,

And then made it two,

While chanting away like a poetess.

The one-time army sergeant and former Socialist Party loyalist
says he will win the May 20 election by offering what no one in
government or the opposition has proposed: adopting the U.S. dollar
to halt hyperinflation. He says the proposal could prove popular with
Venezuela’s poor, who have been buffeted by the collapsing currency.

Countries now living in squalor

Will find the American dollar

A much better wad

For all the unshod --

So they can afford a blue collar.

The settlement follows a more than two-year investigation
by the SEC prompted by revelations in The Wall Street Journal.
In October 2015, the Journal published an article revealing
that Theranos used its proprietary blood-testing technology for
only a fraction of the blood tests it offered in Walgreens stores.
The article also reported that former employees were leery of the
technology’s accuracy.

You cannot mix blood and deceit,

No matter what bromides you bleat.

And though you get rich,

Somebody will snitch --

And you’ll be shot down like clay skeet.

Children coming home again

“And when we had returned to the tent of my father,
behold their joy was full, and my mother was comforted.”

First Nephi. Chapter Five. Verse 7.

Children coming home again,

No matter how, no matter when,

Give to parents comfort sweet

And a joy that can’t be beat.

Little ones who fly away

Looking for a place to stay,

Then come for a visit mean

Life is full and rich and green.

Someday each of us returns

To that Parent that so yearns

For our joy to be complete

At our Elder Brother’s feet.

Tuesday, March 13, 2018

From the New York Times. Tuesday March 13 2018

Dovetale, a four-person software company Mr. Schmidt
co-founded in 2016, has devised a range of tactics to
identify large numbers of fake accounts that follow
popular Instagram personalities. It then packages
that information for marketers, who are increasingly
skeptical of the audience numbers that often determine
how much money social media stars can command from
advertisers.

An idol on instagram boasts

that ev'ryone follows his posts.

But research has shown

It’s all done by drone --

His numbers are nothing but ghosts

The Metropolitan Opera’s new production of Mozart’s
“Così Fan Tutte,” set in 1950s Coney Island, uses sideshow
and burlesque performers.

A singer who worked at the Met

Started to get quite upset

When during her solo

The pinheads played polo

And the wild man was caught in a net.

With a fellow reporter’s fawning question to a
Chinese official pushing past the 30-second mark,
Liang Xiangyi, of the financial news site Yicai, began
scoffing to herself. Then she turned to scrutinize the
questioner in disbelief.

Looking her up and down, Ms. Liang rolled her
eyes with such concentrated disgust, it seemed
only natural that her entire head followed her eyes
backward as she looked away in revulsion.

Captured by China’s national news broadcaster,
CCTV, the moment spread quickly across Chinese
social media.

Reporters who wear on their sleeve

What they do think or believe

Will find their careers

Thrown out on its ears

Because they won’t learn to deceive.