Silly Me

I assumed I would never have to think about John Bolton again. Then Newt promised to threatened to named him Secretary of State.
Here's Juan Cole, the rational blogoshere's go-to guy on such matters:

 ... wants to bomb Iran so badly he sometimes just sits in an F-18 and imagines himself over Isfahan

O Death

I was all set to make fun of Hillary's wardrobe, but I can't get the photos to work.

In the meantime, here's something completely different.
I'm not a big Hitchins fan,  but he's so rigorously honest and truthful in this piece and I'm really grateful for it.

So far, I have decided to take whatever my disease can throw at me, and to stay combative even while taking the measure of my inevitable decline. I repeat, this is no more than what a healthy person has to do in slower motion. It is our common fate. In either case, though, one can dispense with facile maxims that don’t live up to their apparent billing.

And then there's always this which, when I told her about it, frightened my therapist into a quick and facile rejection of the tone, that last line. She's my age, and sicker, at least judging from the last time I saw her shopping and looking like death, not even a smile of recognition, but a complaint. Maybe she was in pain.

User's Guide to Physical Debilitation

 by Paul Guest

        Should the painful condition of irreversible paralysis

last longer than forever or at least until

your death by bowling ball or illegal lawn dart

or the culture of death, which really has it out

for whoever has seen better days

but still enjoys bruising marathons of bird watching,

you, or your beleaguered caregiver

stirring dark witch's brews of resentment

inside what had been her happy life,

should turn to page seven where you can learn,

assuming higher cognitive functions

were not pureed by your selfish misfortune,

how to leave the house for the first time in two years.

An important first step,

with apologies for the thoughtlessly thoughtless metaphor.

When not an outright impossibility

or form of neurological science fiction,

sexual congress will either be with

tourists in the kingdom of your tragedy,

performing an act of sadistic charity;

with the curious, for whom you will be beguilingly blank canvas;

or with someone blindly feeling their way

through an extended power outage

caused by summer storms you once thought romantic.

Page twelve instructs you how best

to be inspiring to Magnus next door

as he throws old Volkswagens into orbit

above Alberta. And to Betty

in her dark charm confiding a misery,

whatever it is, that to her seems equivalent to yours.

The curl of her hair that her finger knows

better and beyond what you will,

even in the hypothesis of heaven

when you sleep. This guide is intended

to prepare you for falling down

and declaring détente with gravity,

else you reach the inevitable end

of scaring small children by your presence alone.

Someone once said of crushing

helplessness: it is a good idea to avoid that.

We agree with that wisdom

but gleaming motorcycles are hard

to turn down or safely stop

at speeds which melt aluminum. Of special note

are sections regarding faith

healing, self-loathing, abstract hobbies

like theoretical spelunking and extreme atrophy,

and what to say to loved ones

who won't stop shrieking

at Christmas dinner. New to this edition

is an index of important terms

such as catheter, pain, blackout,

pathological deltoid obsession, escort service,

magnetic resonance imaging,

loss of friends due to superstitious fear,

and, of course, amputation

above the knee due to pernicious gangrene.

It is our hope that this guide

will be a valuable resource

during this long stretch of boredom and dread

and that it may be of some help,

however small, to cope with your new life

and the gradual, bittersweet loss

of every God damned thing you ever loved.

The following may be a little over the top for you, but I love the death masks and had never seen them before.