Are these the hollow men?
HERE we go with non-stop reality TV. At the Trump inauguration, pugnacious, hectoring, inarticulate, isolationist rhetoric; shallow sloganeering; and an absolute lack of any hint of humour. You could not help but compare with the atmosphere of Barack Obama's lengthy farewell press conference. Nor did you have to necessarily agree with Obama.
Then hundreds of thousands of women marching in protest in Washington, probably millions more world-wide, over issues that are no doubt worthy but - for those who worry more about a continuation of the equilibrium that has kept world peace for an unprecedented 72 years - most definitely peripheral.
America is going to be made great again, they say. Had it collapsed? Some of us hadn't noticed.
A weariness sets in. This reality show looks like becoming very tedious. Yet may it remain tedious. The worry is that all kinds of actual reality could transpire – possibly in the international theatre - making the show exciting in a way nobody could want.
Yet perhaps this is unduly alarmist. One thinks of TS Eliot in The Hollow Men.
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.
Trump honoured
AN EARLY honour for President Donald Trump – a tiny moth has been named after him.
The minuscule creature - Neopalpa donaldtrumpi - was discovered by Canadian scientist Vazrick Nazari who says he was struck by the resemblance of the golden scales on the head of the moth to Trump's signature hairstyle, according to The Maverick.
Nazari says he named the new species, which measures about 9 mm, after the new president to focus attention on ecological issues. (Some hope there – Trump has already begun dismantling his predecessor's regulations to combat global warming).
The moth is native to southern California but its habitat extends to Baja California in Mexico.
President Trump still has some leeway to make up if he is to overtake his predecessor. A caterpillar found in the Peruvian Amazon has been named the "Trumpapillar" because its orange-yellow furry cover resembles Trump's hairdo. But that's an unofficial naming; it still has to be made legit in the scientific annals.
And Obama already has nine species named after him. They include a Hawaiian coral fish and a trapdoor spider.
Moths, caterpillars, trapdoor spiders … Isn't it time these scientists showed some respect?
Eerie symbolism
JUST about the time President Trump was being installed, Mexican druglord Joaquin "El Chapo" (it means "Shorty") Guzman was being flown in to New York, extradited to face charges, according to Agence France Presse.
He had been in prison in Ciudad Juarez, just beneath the Texas border, since he was abruptly transferred there from another penitentiary near Mexico City after a spectacular tunnel jailbreak.
The border with Mexico … drug dealers and rapists … keeping them out … the whole thing seems to have an eerie reverse symbolism.
Not too long ago, satirist Andy Borowitz predicted in the New Yorker that El Chapo will be one of Trump's early appointments – to head up America's federal anti-drugs agency.
And here he's arrived, a day before the inauguration. Watch this space …
A prose writer gets tired of writing prose, and wants to be a poet. So he begins every line with a capital letter, and keeps on writing prose.
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