Wallace Stevens and Ron White - Stays Against a Tide of Stupid: Jane Fonda, Dildos and Dick Durbin

Then Judah said to Onan, “Sleep with your brother’s wife and fulfill your duty to her as a brother-in-law to raise up offspring for your brother.” But Onan knew that the child would not be his; so whenever he slept with his brother’s wife, he spilled his semen on the ground to keep from providing offspring for his brother. What he did was wicked in the Lord’s sight; so the Lord put him to death also. Genesis 38 8-10

There should be no shame in the vibrator game. Heidi Stevens- Chicago Tribune 

          The next time you have a thought... let it go. Ron White

Guess I'm just a crusty old so-and-so.  I read in order to soak up the goings-on, the go-getters and the Grace giving goodness of people on this earth, but often find myself stewing in the bile coughed up by the truly stupid.

Were the world in the capable hands of Ron White things might be just a little more whole some, giggle-giving and affirming that God loves us. T'aint so.

God has given us free-will and too many columnists like Chicago Tribune's Heidi Stevens, Mary Schmich, Eric Zorn and Rex Huppke to wade through to get to John Kass.

Then, from the Merchandise Mart, the Chicago Sun Times thickens the fairway with weeds like Michael Sneed, Lynn Sweet, Mark Brown and Neil Steinberg, in order to play through to reports by Tim Novak.

This morning, instead of averting my eyes like my soul thunders for me to do, I went and read Heidi Stevens' chirpy ad for dildos.  Jane Fonda's frank sex toy talk opens the door for a generation -  Mother of God! Really, this is a regular column written by a nitwit who acts as the culture guardian of suburban women and metrosexuals.

Get this!  "Seventy-nine-year-old Jane Fonda is doing for vibrators what 44-year-old Jane Fonda did for aerobics videos: mainstreaming them.

And not a moment too soon. . . .The new season of her critically acclaimed Netflix series, "Grace and Frankie," co-starring Lily Tomlin, sees the two women launch a business selling sex toys for women. If you happen to drive down Vine Street in Hollywood, you might see a giant billboard of Fonda and Tomlin holding ribbed, purple objects under the words "Good vibes" — in case there was any confusion about what they're holding.  And if you watch "The Ellen DeGeneres Show," you may have happened upon Fonda unveiling a vibrator on daytime TV. (Take that, "The View"!) . . .

Cleansing breath - If you watch the View, you are way past worrying about.

Back to vagina vibrating with Heidi Stevens.

"I applaud her," said Lauren Streicher, medical director of Northwestern Memorial Hospital's Center for Sexual Medicine and Menopause. "I've been trying to talk about this on daytime TV for years, and no one will have any part of it."
Fifty-two percent of American women use a vibrator, Streicher said, according to a 2009 study published in the Journal of Sexual Medicine. And women over 60, in particular, need to know about their benefits.
"Sometimes nerve endings aren't as sensitive as they used to be, so what did it for you before isn't going to necessarily do it anymore," said Streicher, who wrote "Sex Rx: Hormones, Health, and Your Best Sex Ever" (Dey St.). "In addition, you have a lot of medical conditions — diabetes, cardiovascular disease, multiple sclerosis — that can cause a desensitization of nerve endings, so there is a need for increased stimulation."

So,  data!   As useful to onanists as the Paul Simon Institute's pre-caste polling.

The social engineers Steicher, Stevens, De Generis and Fonda argue that most women practise onanism - you know - wank, jerk off, jack off, toss off, bring oneself off,  and pleasure oneself - to use the Gone With the Wind trope -fiddle-dee-dee!

Isolated, solitary, all by their lonesome vaginas are liberating!  No masters; No God!  No Problems!

How about guys?  They love to Date Miss Michigan!  I must admit, that the image of Barbarella doing the business trumps that guy, Torrence Ivy, from the Red Line.  Celebrity and all.

A Celebrity endorsement in this Age of Resistance is often just not enough - even for a woman with the woke vagina to sit her business end on the business end of a Viet Cong flak pumper in 1967, is not enough - for a Medill-do columnist.  The Chicago Tribune's go-to academics largely come from Northwestern University - home of Medill-do School of Journalism (unaccredited - n'cest pas), where the Sun Times turns to the Blue Demon Social Justice Warriors of City Hall Connected De Paul University. 

The Sun Times wastes a bunch of space tell us that Senator Dick Durbin had an outpatient heart procedure, whatever that means.  Now, if he had an outpatient brain surgery that would be something!  And fun to watch.

As it is, my bile is up.  When that happens I turn to Wallace Stevens.

I chose The Plot Against The Giant - this delightful poem presents women at their best.  Three clever credits to their gender apply the sense smell, sight and sound to bedevil an ogre that is no doubt like meself.

First Girl
When this yokel comes maundering,
Whetting his hacker,
I shall run before him,
Diffusing the civilest odors
Out of geraniums and unsmelled flowers.
It will check him.
Second Girl
I shall run before him,
Arching cloths besprinkled with colors
As small as fish-eggs.
The threads
Will abash him.
Third Girl
Oh, la...le pauvre!
I shall run before him,
With a curious puffing.
He will bend his ear then.
I shall whisper
Heavenly labials in a world of gutturals.
It will undo him.
Wallace Stevens :

Labials are consonant sounds that require both upper and lower lips in mutual application - POP!

That sure undoes me.

After Fonda, Heidi Stevens and Lauren Streicher, set my bile a bubble, a penis dragging poet put me in fine perspective with touching anything but my soul.

If not Wallace Stevens, I turn to Ron White.



                     

Palm Sunday and Wallace Stevens Welcomes the Catholic Faith

I remember a graduate school class in modern American poetry that I took at Loyola. We studied Pound,Masters,Cummings, Dickens, Eliot, Moore, Cullen, Frost, Hughes, Jarrell, Ferlinghetti, The Lowells ( Bob and Amy), Macleish, Ginsberg and I especially liked Wallace Stevens - our Hartford Insurance Man!

Get this - obituary:

Poet and insurance lawyer. New York Tribune, New York City, reporter, 1900-01; law clerk for W. G. Peckham in New York City, 1903-04; admitted to the Bar in New York State, 1904; law partner with Lyman Ward, c. 1904; worked in various law firms in New York City, 1904-08; American Bonding Co. (became Fidelity and Deposit Co.), New York City, lawyer, 1908-13; Equitable Surety Co. (became New England Equitable Insurance Co.), New York City, resident vice-president, 1914-16; Hartford Accident and Indemnity Co., Hartford, CT, 1916-55, became vice-president, 1934. Lecturer.

The grey man had an ear. Stevens was also a most traditionally innovative craftsman of internal rhyme. Though most celebrated for his lyrical feast The Idea of Order at Key West, or the clever Peter Quince at the Clavier and The Emperor of Ice Cream, Wallace Stevens had a deep theology that was the foundation of his poetic sensibility. Wallace Stevens, to eye and mind of most folks, was the very model of Sinclair Lewis 'Square' - A Genuine Babbit - member of the Lodge, Country Club Republican Insurance salesman. In his personal and professional and civic life Wallace Stevens was all those things and more -

In The High Toned Christian Woman we get a glimpse of the Thomas Aquinas Catholic theologian talking like a carnival barker - Wallace Stevens quietly and secretly was baptized into the Catholic Faith.

Poetry is the supreme fiction, madame.
Take the moral law and make a nave of it
And from the nave build haunted heaven.Thus,
The conscience is converted into palms,
Like windy citherns hankering for hymns.

Yes, indeedy! Puns and Fun! Nave for Knave. Kidding on the square!


I always liked this one:

The Sense Of The Sleight-Of-Hand Man

One's grand flights, one's Sunday baths,
One's tootings at the weddings of the soul
Occur as they occur. So bluish clouds
Occurred above the empty house and the leaves
Of the rhododendrons rattled their gold,
As if someone lived there. Such floods of white
Came bursting from the clouds. So the wind
Threw its contorted strength around the sky.

Could you have said the bluejay suddenly
Would swoop to earth? It is a wheel, the rays
Around the sun. The wheel survives the myths.
The fire eye in the clouds survives the gods.
To think of a dove with an eye of grenadine
And pines that are cornets, so it occurs,
And a little island full of geese and stars:
It may be the ignorant man, alone,
Has any chance to mate his life with life
That is the sensual, pearly spuse, the life
That is fluent in even the wintriest bronze.

The man is a master of imagery -fluent in even the wintriest bronze. Yet, the Wallace Stevens Foundation website ignores Stevens' embrace of the Catholic Faith. The Catholic Faith stands anathema to Progressive intellectual sensibilities. It stands opposed to the Dewey/Hegelian three-card-monte theory that begs any and all questions to suit its purpose, Phi Betta Kappa was not allowed in Catholics universities until individual colleges bowed at its altar - cloaked as academic freedom - go along to get along.

The poet Wallace Stevens found solace and certitude in Catholicism. That moral and ethical foundation found expression in his bold imagery and rolling rhyme. Here is a letter from Wallace Stevens' confessor Father Hanley concerning the poets conversion.

Dear Janet:

I-The First time he came to the hospital, he expressed
a certain emptiness in his life.
His stay then was two weeks.

Two weeks later, he was in, and he asked the sister to send for me.
We sat and talked a long time.
During his visit this time, I saw him 9 or 10 times.
He was fascinated by the life of Pope Pius X,.
He spoke about a poem for this pope whose family name
was Sartori--- ( Meaning tailor)
At least 3 times, he talked about getting into the fold--
meaning the Catholic Church.
The doctrine of hell was an objection which we later
got thru that alright.

He often remarked about the peace and tranquility that
he experienced in going into a Catholic Church and
spending some time. He spoke about St. Patrick's Cathedral
in N.Y..
I can't give you the date of his baptism.
I think it might be recorded at the hospital.
He said he had never been baptized.
He was baptized absolutely.

Wallace and his wife had not been on speaking terms for
several years.
So we thought it better not to tell her.
She might cause a scene in the hospital.

Archbishop at the time told me not to make his (Wallace's)
conversion public, but the sister and the nurses on the
floor were all aware of it and were praying for him.

At the time--I did get a copy of his poems and also
a record that he did of some of his poems.
We talked about some of the poems.
I quoted some of the lines of one of them and he was
pleased.
He said if he got well, we would talk a lot more and
if not--he would see me in heaven.

That's about all I can give you now.

[Signed] God's Blessing
Father Hanley

That is plenty Padre. Today, at Sacred Heart Church in Morgan Park of Chicago, the devout and tough piety that graces the people in pews will stand long as the crucible of Christ's love for Man will be dramaticall read by Father Gallagher and the two lectors. The palms and hosannas that we hypocrites lay at the Savior on the Donkey remind us that they will be burnt offerings after this year's cycle. We will burn the palms of last year and begin again to understand what Wallace Stevens understood - the palms are prelude to the Passion.