Saturday Morning

One thing about that rainy night. It brought the temperatures down. Even this morning I think I may give in and put on the sweatpants. It is funny, to be this cool in April, even if it is only the first week of April and we are talking about the morning to boot. One can almost call it a taste of winter. It's great, of course, a strong stand against the summer. But it is odd, too.

Oh, Texas, My Texas

I guess Rick Perry is never going to change and lighten up, but, then, he does still have his eyes on the presidency. I guess he still needs to act out. In today’s news, Perry’s latest stand against Obama and Washington is to refuse to comply with the Prison Rape Elimination Act of 2003. What a Christian, what a man!

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Mr. Perry’s complaints about the rules are without merit, but the governor wants to show that he’s opposed to federal oversight of any sort. Unfortunately, his cynical stance could prompt state corrections officials to ignore policies that protect inmates from sexual predation. The consequences could be terrible since the Texas system is replete with the sexual violence that prompted Congress to pass this law.

Mr. Perry announced his intention to flout the law in a March 28 letter to Attorney General Eric Holder Jr. He implied that Texas had its own rape-prevention measures and did not need federal oversight. Federal data consistently tell a different story. A 2013 study by the Bureau of Justice Statistics found that Texas had more prison facilities with high rates of inmate-on-inmate sexual violence than any other state.

-- New York Timed Editorial Board

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Richard Wilbur

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The air was soft, the ground still cold.
In the dull pasture where I strolled
Was something I could not believe.
Dead grass appeared to slide and heave,
Though still too frozen-flat to stir,
And rocks to twitch, and all to blur.
What was this rippling of the land?
Was matter getting out of hand
And making free with natural law?
I stopped and blinked, and then I saw
A fact as eerie as a dream.
There was a subtle flood of steam
Moving upon the face of things.
It came from standing pools and springs
And what of snow was still around;
It came of winter’s giving ground
So that the freeze was coming out,
As when a set mind, blessed by doubt,
Relaxes into mother-wit.
Flowers, I said, will come of it.

-- “April 5, 1974″ by Richard Wilbur

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Pop

Pop seems to be feeling some of his old vim and vigor. He is wearing his cowboy hat today. It doesn’t bother me as much now. I now count it a victory this he is just up and about so that life can go on.

American Psycho

Bateman and the boys are still goofing off over drinks at Harry’s.

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After a deliberate pause, I say, “Do you know what Ed Gein said about women?”

“Ed Gein?” one of them asks. Maitre d’ at Canal Bar?”

“No,” I say. “Serial killer, Wisconsin in the fifties. He was an interesting guy.”

“You’ve always been interested in stuff like that, Bateman,” Reeves says, and then to Hamlin, “Bateman reads these biographies all the time: Ted Bundy and Son of Sam and Fatal Vision and Charlie Manson. All of them.”

“So what did Ed say?” Hamlin asks, interested.

“He said,” I begin, “ ‘When I see a pretty girl walking down the street I think two things. One part of me wants to take her out and talk to her and be real nice and sweet and treat her right.’” I stop, finish my J&B in one swallow.

“What does the other part of him think?” Hamlin asks tentatively.

“What her head would look like on a stick,” I say.

Hamlin and Reeves look at each other and then back at me before I start laughing, and then the two of them uneasily join in.

-- “American Psycho” by Bret Easton Ellis

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This is the noteworthy scene in which Ellis mistakes Ed Gein for another serial killer. It was Ed Kemper who dropped that infamous line about women’s heads and sticks.