BRN Conclusion
With chronic sprinkles and cool, bleak weather, this BRN was more like DRN: Drab Republik Neustadt.
And what with all of my tentative BRN gigs dissolving at the last minute, I found myself playing more the part of spectator than participant. This was OK, because there was lots to see and hear and buy. Lots of bands playing… up on stage… instead of my band… dammit.
The good news is that, according to the shopkeepers whom I surveyed, there were no riots or mass arrests like two years ago, or even last year. I would attribute this to three factors. First, would be that it was Mother Nature’s time of the month (pardon the off-color expression). Secondly, and for the second year, the ban on glass beer bottles. Thirdly, the fuzz made itself even less noticable than before. Oh yeah, they were there; we won’t know exactly how many there were until they say so in tomorrow’s SZ.
Celebrity sighting: Remember that young guy, Schreiber from the CDU? You know, the one with the gangsta grip thumbs up? I saw him and tried to get a picture of him doing that gesture, but he was busy.
Panama was, as always, an oasis to escape the rush of the mob. I went there yesterday, and greeted those rectangular-eyed goats with my “mne-e-e-e-e”, which I had once learned by observing them at great length. The goats suddenly fell deadly silent and looked at me. I tried to walk away unnoticed, but they followed me with their gazes. Then all Hell broke loose as they proceded to butt the crap out of each other. The sheep have been conspicuously abscent for some time, but just next by you can visit the rabbit hutch where Little Wee was born. You can still visit her mom and dad; some siblings and nephews and nieces are also to be seen.
Forty Whacks
If you think you can smile
Before the verdict at your trial
You might make enemies.
Enemies waiting in line
For the payment of your fine
Against their tragedies.
On this day in 1893 Lizzie Borden was aquitted for the dual muder of her father and step-mother. This was the first murder stateside that ever attained national press coverage, as callous as that sounds. While circumstantial evidence stood overwhelmingly in favor of conviction, prosecution was unable to provide a shred of hard, irrefutable evidence of her guilt. Aside from that, she wasn’t black.
While most believe that Lizzie got away with the Perfect Crime, I disagree. Even though she beat the rap and moved into a multi-storey mansion, she lived out the rest of her life a reclusive Pariah–prison, occupation: one. And what red-blooded American kid doesn’t know the following rhyme (except me, apparently):
Lizzie Borden took an ax
Gave her mother forty whacks;
When she saw what she had done
She gave her father forty-one!