A Gourmand's Complaint

"Let's eat if you don't mind. This is the sauce of all order."

----"Trimalchio's Feast", Petronius Arbiter, The Satyricon.



Dreary and glamorless the table fare of America stands. What, with
careerism and familial care, can a person do to refine the pleasures of
dining? Where can one, like Diogenes with the lamp, find a well made
meal without pawning the Silver Plate?
A travail it is to travel from table to table savoring only butter fat and
corn syrupy sugar. One bloats like a blowfish and cries, like the rich
Parisian suffering from indigestion to the starving beggar, "I would
happily trade places with you!" Indeed, the American palate has fallen
on hard times.
The answer is not an American one. One cannot buy refinement with
the Almighty Dollar. Distinction has to be exercised. Experimentation
must be mingled with delicacy. Then the American Palate will rise from
the depths of the Alpha and Omega of Salt and Sugar.
Where is the Muse of the Refined Table? Where have the Banquets
of yesteryear gone? Ecca Femina! Behold the Woman who takes this
heavy crown. A Queen no Lesser than the Queen of Sheba! Alone, she
wishes to introduce a weekly Symposium. Her Majesty's throne is a seat
at the refined table. The only Law is to serve your palate's pleasure.


Your Faithful Servant,


Alcibiades Arbiter
Sous-Chef
Reina Christina

Dark Eagles Dive Around the Head(Apropos of Trakl)

"A sudden and thoughtless fright."

-------------Paston Letters, On Henry VI, King of England ca. August 1453.





Iraq is an admitted mess. Shiite Iraqis have protested in anger the US's open
arming and support of Israel's punitive airstrikes of Lebanese civilian centers.
Hezbollah is now seen as an Heroic Resistance group fighting Israel and the US.
Things could not get worse for the United States and the United Kingdom, i.e. the
"Friends of Israel". Is it any surprise we now have a spectacular discovery of an
"incredibly, breathtaking" conspiracy by Al-Qaeda to bomb over 10 US Airliners
over the Atlantic in the "next two weeks"? (Nota bene the vagueness.) Our heroes
have stymied the "terrorists" again! When everything was going to pot--VOILA ICI!
Cheney told the Democrats! Dubya warned us this is a worldwide war and we must
always be vigilant! Keep the masses fearful and thankful! To believe these magnificent
coups of intelligence begs the question--What happened on 9-11? Where were our
Superheroes then? The News stations are salivating!!!!! The people, credulous, and
frightened, thank their lucky stars as bombs rain on Lebanon.
Shall we, like HenryVI, vouchsafe our own sovereignty to fear? Shall we fall for it?
No tower can be built high enough to dam the tidal, media backed, waves of horseshit.