Sapienta Prima Est Stultitia Caruisee *

THE UNABATED TRIPLE NUCLEAR MELTDOWN AT FUKUSHIMA DAIICHI WAS SOMEWHAT OVERSHADOWED IN THE NEWS AGAIN BY ANOTHER CELEBRITY SIDEBOOB SIGHTING.
THREE MOLTEN CORES WHICH BURNED THROUGH CONTAINMENT TWO YEARS AGO ARE RELENTLESSLY BURROWING INTO THE EARTH AND OCEAN .
IN TSUNAMIVILLE, SPENT FUEL POOL NO. 4, WHICH HAS BEEN CHARACTERIZED AS HAVING EXTINCTION LEVEL EVENT POTENTIAL , IS STILL 100 FEET ABOVE SHAKING GROUND IN A BROKEN BUILDING WHOSE SEISMIC RATING CAN'T BE MUCH HIGHER THAN ZERO.
MEANWHILE IN WASHINGTON, D.C.,
THE PRESIDENT, FRESH FROM AN AFTERNOON ROUND OF GOLF, WILL BE EXCHANGING LIGHT-HEARTED BANTER WITH JOURNALISTS AT A GALA THIS EVENING.



On Fukushima Beach 2


In Egypt's sandy silence, all alone,
Stands a gigantic Leg, which far off throws
The only shadow that the Desert knows:
I am great Ozymandias, saith the stone,
The King of Kings; this mighty City shows
The wonders of my hand. — The City's gone,
Naught but the Leg remaining to disclose
The site of this forgotten Babylon.
We wonder, and some hunter may express
Wonder like ours, when through the wilderness
Where London stood, holding the wolf in chase,
He meets some fragment huge, and stops to guess
What powerful but unrecorded race,
Once dwelt in that annihilated place.
--Horace Smith
Ozymandias



I met a traveler from an antique land
Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
`My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away".
--Percy Bysshe Shelley
Ozymandias


The Battle of Chernobyl



I first heard Personville called Poisonville by a red-haired mucker named Hickey Dewey in the Big Ship in Butte. He also called his shirt a shoit. I didn't think anything of what he had done to the city's name. Later I heard men who could manage their r's give it the same pronunciation. I still didn't see anything in it but the meaningless sort of humor that used to make richardsnary the thieves' word for dictionary. A few years later
I went to Personville and learned better.
--Dashiell Hammett
Red Harvest



* To have shed stupidity is the beginning of wisdom.
--Horace