clocks

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Over on Usenet, they were looking for new lyrics for a tune Lenny Bailes wrote to fit some verses in The Thirteen Clocks, by James Thurber. New verses were wanted to avoid a copyright situation. So I looked at the book, which has four verses sung by the minstrel, and wrote new verses that fit the meter:

Hark! List! the Duke stands nigh;
He stares down from his tow'r.
And glad am I he's but one eye
With which to glare and glow'r.

Friend, whisper: he froze Time alive
Atop his lonely hill
It's never Now, just ten of five
Where thirteen clocks stand still.

Cold, cold, the world grows old
While in the tower waits
A man who'd send you to your end
To suit his twisted hates.

Wait, Saralinda, wait
And wish, with weary wince
For one who will defy cold fate
And wed you as your prince!

Somehow or other, though, they don't fit Lenny's tune. The meter is exactly the same, but won't fit the melody (which I've never heard). Go figure.

( cut here to spare the reader from the results of an online quiz that was some consolation )

filibastards

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I remember listening to news on the car radio, to and from work, and quite clearly hearing the voices of Republican Senators as they fulminated against the anti-American, anti-democratic filibuster. Why, it gave the minority the power to thwart the clearly expressed will of the people! It was so bad, the GOP leadership reached down deep and found something called the "Nuclear Option."

Oh, sorry, they decided that didn't sound too good and changed it to the "Constitutional Option," which fits it just as well, considering there's nothing about it in nuclear science either. This rule, which has been used on limited occasions in the past, became the preferred threat for pulling out any time the spineless Dems managed to raise their heads high enough to slow down the swift rubber-stamping of whatever Bush wanted to do on a given day.

Ah, but 11/7 changed everything! That commonsense bipartisanship is now crazy talk, and has gone the way of "up or down votes." Because, of course, the gops are no longer in power, so any kind of rules they can discover will be used on any occasion, even to prevent discussion of a toothless, feel-good, ass-covering, non-binding vote of timid disagreement with the Iraq mess.

How do you spell "hypocrites"? G-O-P. Could they pull this kind of stunt without something like assistance from the useless Democratic party -- who haven't apparently seen fit to even mention this outstanding example of two-faced historical revision? Doubtful.
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