Restaurant Review: Beto's Mexican Food, of Provo.

At 8:35 a.m. this morning the power went out all over Provo. At the time I was at the Provo Rec Center, taking a deep water aquatic aerobics class. The life guards immediately started tweedling on their shrill whistles to get us out of the pool and huddled by the exit doors. 

It was such an apocalyptic hub-bub that I immediately thought to myself: If this is my last day on earth, what would I like to eat for brunch? Since I'd skipped breakfast.

And, of course, the answer was: Huevos Rancheros. What else? 

So I had my old pal Bruce Young drop me off at Beto's across the street from Deseret Industries on State Street in Provo. 

Their computerized menu sign was still down from the power outage, so I didn't see the price for Huevos Rancheros when I ordered them. I soon found out. $9.59, plus $2.09 for a medium fountain drink. And tax was 92-cents. I should have gotten a breakfast burrito instead; most of 'em are only $5.99. Oh well, cuandos vives aprendes. 

Their salsa bar, though, is chock-a-block with a huge variety of salsa:

Here's just a partial list:  

• Arbol
• Habenero
• Macha
• Serrano
• Nortena
• Tropico
• Ranchera
• Pina
• Mango
• Chimole
• Tomitillo Guacamole
• Jalapeno Cilantro
• Taquerda verde
• Taquerda rojo

And there were half a dozen others with no labels on them. I sampled them all. My favorite, hands down, is the macha -- with a very deep smokey tang and an afterburn that won't quit.

There was nothing wrong with my Huevos Rancheros -- but there was nothing spectacular about them either. The carne asada was a bit rubbery, but never gristly. For 9.59 I was hoping for some brillar. 

(Cue the Walter Brennan voice) And they had one of them new-fangled fountain drink dispensers. Took me a month of Sundays to figure out how to make the dad-blasted do-dad work!

I'm giving Beto's 2.5 burps on a scale of one to four. I may raise that rating after going back to sample a breakfast burrito in the near future. 

Postcards to President Trump

Brazilian President vows to make it easier for civilians to defend themselves in world’s most murderous nation

SÃO PAULO—Brazil’s new president, Jair Bolsonaro, signed a decree Tuesday to loosen the country’s strict gun laws, vowing to make it easier for civilians to defend themselves in what has become the world’s most murderous nation.

In the first major policy move by the two-week-old government, Mr. Bolsonaro said Brazilians living in rural areas or regions with high homicide rates, as well as business owners, will automatically qualify to buy a gun to keep on their property.

WSJ

Said Mr. Bolsonaro to the people of Recife,

"Get yourself a pistol to shoot crooks when they are thiefy!"

He gladly told the citizens of scrappy Macapa

that they could shoot most anyone, because of martial law.

Brazil's new presidente has decreed that guns are swell;

that citizens should carry one, aggression to repel.

He wants to arm the biznessman, the teacher, and the schmo

who drives a garbage truck and does his thinking mighty slow.

Tabernas will have rifles that their patrons can employ

when too much cold cerveja makes them feel like a cowboy.

Shooting bottles, mirrors, and occasional barback,

makes a Brasileiro happy as a crackerjack. 

And if a wife in Campo Grande finds her spouse a bore,

she can use a Luger that will make his spirits soar.

Or when the alunas wish to take a holiday,

they fire off an Uzi so professores run away.

It's nice to have a country with the citizens so armed

that though they're shot up full of holes nobody's getting harmed.

On Sugarloaf they target practice as the birds wing by;

such slaughter is delightful, though it makes the toucans cry.

So come on down to Rio for the Carnaval this year.

No crime or foul extortion will you ever need to fear.

For if a bad hat happens to get in your tourist face,

they'll shoot him up until he's nothing but some shredded lace.

Of course there is a slight chance that you might be wounded, too --

but tourists in the ER get a free pet cockatoo.

The fact is that I hereby want to give my final notice

that my arsenal and I are moving to Pelotas!

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

Tiffany Scrobble Reported the News

“When America’s most aggressive newspaper cost-cutter makes a run at the nation’s largest newspaper chain (Gannett), it is hardly a cause for cheer,” said Jim Friedlich, chief executive of the Lenfest Institute for Journalism, a nonprofit organization dedicated to finding sustainable business models for local journalism. “This is the lumber company trying to buy the national park.”
WSJ

Tiffany Scrobble reported the news

and didn't care whose reputation might bruise.

Like most of the other newspapering folk,

Tiffany Scrobble was terribly broke.

But though pinching pennies was her stock in trade,

she wouldn't change jobs for a mountain of jade.

She wrote with a will and she wrote with a way

that kept all her stories from being passe.

She worked for the Bulldog Diurnal Gazette,

a blazing good paper quite deeply in debt.

Founded by pioneer printers when Grant

marched into Vicksburg to make them recant.

The newsroom was frowzy from years going by,

leaving it fragrant with smoke and cheap rye.

Tiffany worked at a desk in that room

(and wished the accountants would spring for a broom.)

Reporters were given free rein to narrate

anything making the bigwigs deflate.

The place was a bedlam, a stew of wordplay;

where writers complained (but would not go away.)

It happened one day that the publisher caved

and sold the newspaper to bankers depraved.

They moved in and started to squeeze things real tight;

no light bulbs replaced -- writers worked in twilight.

Seniority was not a popular term;

pensions caused all of those bankers to squirm.

And so they ejected the old rank and file,

but that did not cause young Ms. Scrobble to smile.

Though she was promoted, twas not long before

summoned was she through new management's door.

They told her to sit, they examined her dress;

they hemmed and they hawed as they chewed watercress.

Told that her salary now was reduced

and that her byline away had been sluiced,

the management waited to see if she'd crack --

but she simply smiled like she'd taken Prozac.

Expense account gone; no fact checkers employed.

Free coffee and donuts were tossed in the void.

Allowance for gas was a nickel per mile.

Forget the smartphones -- back to rotary dial!

Tiffany Scrobble persevered like a champ;

nothing they did could her spirits long damp.

But then came the day when reporters were told

that current events had been way oversold.

The Bulldog Diurnal Gazette would retreat

from news to refocus on memories sweet --

using the morgue, all reporters would write

about Eisenhower or flying a kite.

This would increase circulation among

readers who hated the new and the young.

Tiffany Scrobble was given the beat

of Gentlemen's Sports -- mainly how to shoot skeet.

She worked and she slaved, but she couldn't produce

anything that wasn't very obtuse.

Her nerves became fractured, she bit off her nails.

I will not distress you with further details.

Suffice it to say that her health and her soul

suffered until she descended to sheol.

Jobless and homeless, she now walks the streets --

one of the many hedge fund obsoletes.

Postcards to President Trump

Millie the Monarch Butterfly

They arrive in California each winter, an undulating ribbon of orange and black. There, migrating western monarch butterflies nestle among the state’s coastal forests, traveling from as far away as Idaho and Utah only to return home in the spring.

This year, though, the monarchs’ flight seems more perilous than ever. The Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation, a nonprofit group that conducts a yearly census of the western monarch, said the population reached historic lows in 2018, an estimated 86 percent decline from the previous year.

NYT

Millie was a butterfly, a Monarch of the sky.

Majestically she flew each day, on wings of double dye.

Her delicate antennae waved in happy cadency;

her patterns in the sultry air were wonderful to see.

She dined upon the milkweed and the downy thistle, too.

In shady nooks by hissing brooks she rested with her crew.

How often would the children smile to watch her actions coy;

her kind make life seem ample to each little girl and boy.

"Come, fellows" she would whisper to companions in the trees,

"let's shimmer and then glimmer just as much as we do please!"

Folding in and out their wings, the Monarchs beauty made

that put Venus de Milo in the ever-lovin' shade.

From vivid green chrysalis Millie came forth in the Spring,

with thousands of her kindred to be sunshine on the wing.

And when the wind was shifting and the air grew pallid cold

she fled with her companions to find sunsets warm and gold.

She floated back this summer to a backyard garden where

lilac and red clover and cone flowers were her care.

But she was all alone; there were no others of her kind.

The Monarchs had been poisoned and left homeless, and declined

until poor lonely Millie was the last one left to skim

the summer haze in silence like a discontinued hymn.

"Where have my companions gone?" the zephyrs heard her cry.

No answer was vouchsafed her, so she fell to earth to die.

Postcards to President Trump

Idle time and solitude are to be sought, not feared.

Idle time and solitude are to be sought, not feared. 

Jim Michaels 

I sit as morning sun streams through

my window, with a mountain view.

When glowering behind a peak

the sun appears too wan and weak

to be of any use to me --

I like to bask in full glory.

But then, now that my time is done

with working late and having 'fun,'

perhaps the obscure sun reveals

a modesty that my soul heals.

That hidden orb is telling me

that now I should contented be.

And so I scribble my thoughts down,

a pensioned warehoused bookish clown.

I didn't wish arthritic knees

or diverse minor surgeries.

Methought I'd save enough for jaunts

to Bali and still meet my wants;

but those dreams had to be cut short

(because, you see, of child support.)

The Lord has had his laugh with me:

Ambition breeds Obscurity --

is what my tombstone ought to read

when at long last I go to seed.

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

But on reflection, given time,

this new old age is not a crime.

Let others now race out the door

to tilt with windmills evermore.

Me, I'll sit in silence jolly

(though I never got to Bali)

and so write odes and quatrains which

will not gain me a dime or stitch.

And when I tire of the news,

I simply lay down for a snooze.

My thoughts are still not very deep;

my hair I do not think I'll keep.

Without a car, I take the bus,

or walk a bit without a fuss.

And with a Kindle by my side

old Father Time I can deride.

And who'd a thunk that grand kids could

grant me something like sainthood.

And though the hike is downhill now,

I find I will not have a cow.

Rabbi Ben Ezra perhaps I'm not --

but my old age is Camelot . . . 

The Ballad of Thomas Otis Bigelow

Authenticity means there can be no moral imperative to deceive for selfish gains.
Deseret News

A file clerk, once in state employ,

a steady income did enjoy.

In Salt Lake City he did toil

(though never burning midnight oil.)

His name, if you must have it so,

was Thomas Otis Bigelow.

He shuffled papers into drawers,

along with other mundane chores.

Receipts and memos, bills and lists,

made up his normal workday trysts.

A lonely job, no other folk

to visit with or crack a joke.

So Thomas, in his reverie,

dreamt much of bigger things than he

could e'er accomplish at his job

(which sometimes made him give a sob.)

One day, just like a fairy tale,

he filed away a piece of mail --

but noticing its contents dire,

his soul began to catch on fire.

The letter was a stern rebuke

to someone by the name of Luke

who had exceeded budget curbs

in buying candy, nuts, and herbs.

"If I release this to the Press"

he thought "I'll be a big success!"

To make it even more intense

he added to the mild expense.

Then Thomas took his phony scoop

down to a wild newspaper group;

he waved the letter all about

and gave a mighty righteous shout:

"Corruption at the highest levels!

Taxpayer money spent on revels!"

Reporters ate it up with glee,

and Bigelow made history.

A whistle blower now supreme,

he carried on his faulty dream;

deceiving one and all with files

as phony as free flyer miles.

He reasoned that the good he did

outweighed the awful lies he hid.

Ruining lives, creating scandal --

he was now a media vandal.

But finally a journalist

began his stories to untwist

and found them all to be untrue

and thus exposed his ballyhoo.

Now Thomas Otis Bigelow

has naught for all his fame to show.

He lost his clerking job, of course,

and really has no income source.

But do not fear for his daft sake;

there's always someone loves a fake.

It won't be long before discussion

begins of his Talk Show -- in Russian.

Little Tommy Titter

Take heed of little Tommy Titter;

he spent his life involved with Twitter.

Before the morning sun was out

his smartphone got a real workout

with texting and such Instagramming

that all his brain cells started jamming.

He failed his tests and went to jail

for hacking other folk's email.

The moral of this story, friend,

is not one with a real bad end.

For once wee Tommy Titter learned

that hacking folk was to be spurned

he was pardoned and did sally

out to wealth in Silicon Valley.

Now his startups sell for more

than the annual budget of Ecuador.