this sceptr’d isle

Of course timeless words never ought to be denigrated for a moment’s gain but their lessons obviously resound and need no champions or intermediaries:

This royal throne of kings, this sceptr’d isle,
This Earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,
This other Eden, demi-paradise,
This fortress built by Nature for herself
Against infection and the hand of war,
This happy breed of men, this little world,
This precious stone set in the silver sea,
Which serves in it the office of a wall
Or as a moat defensive to a house
Against the envy of less happier lands—
This blessed plot, the Earth, this realm, this England!

Through the bleary-eyed and hysterical metrics of today Hobbits too for their love of the Shire—and perhaps for their near universal dismissal by other races, are seen as Little Englanders. Any great and enduring work can withstand these ephemeral sights, however, and lasts because, despite they’re often invoked and abused.

6x6

nadir and newel: a gallery of the spiralling stairwells of Bauhaus Budapest

herbarium: wondrous twelfth century guide to medical plants

honeycomb hide-out: hexagonal architecture of avid apiarist who thought right-angles would be the downfall of man

south america: Bowie and Jagger cover of Dancing in the Streets redeemed in Lego format

children of the corn: large scale monoculture and monotonous diets are turning European hamsters into deranged cannibals

tiger parents, dragon uncle: for the emendation of the uninitiated Shanghai Rainbow Choir presents a parody of judgmental dinner table conversations for Lunar New Year family reunions

#iamwithtacostand

The sound-bite has been replaced by the hashtag, but far from limiting discourse or dissent this platform allows those words to be fed back to the speaker almost instantly.
Re-tweeting is not the same as rehashing, disinterring old arguments, as momentum can nuance the message and make it carry something more than the fading echoes down the corridors of the internet. That’s the recoil of fake-news, but these headlines write themselves and far more outrageous and incredulous than an army of trolls might muster up. The American people and the citizens of this planet want to see Dear Leader’s tax return supposedly in those manila folders, want to feel confident that his decisions aren’t driven by business entanglements, is not deranged, is capable of compassion to those different than him, and none of want that wall as a monument to his ego and insecurities that’ll be an eternity breaking up rocks in a prison yard. It’s the only been the first full week—I’m still with taco stand.

don’t let it rest on the president’s desk

Dear Leader has disabled the comment line of the White House’s switchboard due to overwhelming call volumes. Do not fret, however, as this patch, Boing Boing informs, re-routes your calls at random to the switchboard of one of his hotels or resorts, so you can still leave customer feedback and urge him divest himself of his business interests, and remind him that until or unless he does so, there’s no distinction between public and private enterprise.