Friday, March 22, 2019

"'The Fly' Shall Rise Again"

Well, he sounds upbeat.
Or delusional.
Sometimes it's hard to tell.

From The Fly at iBankCoin:
My new occupation is also my destiny — to become a gentleman southerner of extreme qualities. This summer, amidst the stifling heat and the hazy pollen produced by the magnolia trees of the Deep South, Le Fly shall step into these once occupied territories and call them his own. Like the great General Tecumseh Sherman, I shall conquer the south and teach my neighbors to behave nicely, otherwise feel the backend of my sword — and I will also burn down their homes and businesses.
Ever since young, I was destined to be a Southern Man — white suite, handlebar mustache, an easy demeanor, and a sweet accent — both thick and delicious like a jar of black strapped molasses tipped over into a plate filled with corned bread....MORE
Okay, he's drunk.
It's blackstrap—not strapped, and while you can have corned beef, rock salt in your cornbread sounds less than yummy. Additionally the word for a sweet accent is mellifluous and...huh...
Attention, attention, please hold all tickets on the "will he say 'Markets don't bottom on Fridays'" prop bet.
We have both a jockey's complaint and a stewards inquiry regarding The Fly's apparent inebriation.
While they sort that out, The Fly did link to the soothing tones of Ashokan Farewell:


Or for a bit of Zen.return to the Central Park duck, Mandarin Patinkin.
And whatever you do don't tell Le Fly that whenever I hear Ashokan Farewell I think of Pickett's charge:
Gettysburg was the price the South paid for having Lee. The first day's fighting was so encouraging, and on the second day's fighting he came within an inch of doing it. And by that time Longstreet said Lee's blood was up, and Longstreet said when Lee's blood was up there was no stopping him... And that was that mistake he made, the mistake of all mistakes. Pickett's charge was an incredible mistake, and there was scarcely a trained soldier who didn't know it was a mistake at the time, except possibly Pickett himself, who was very happy he had a chance for glory.
...William Faulkner, in "Intruder in the Dust", said that for every southern boy, it's always within his reach to imagine it being one o'clock on an early July day in 1863, the guns are laid, the troops are lined up, the flags are out of their cases and ready to be unfurled, but it hasn't happened yet. And he can go back in his mind to the time before the war was going to be lost and he can always have that moment for himself.
—Shelby Foote in Ken Burns' "The Civil War"
Probably not the connotation the Fly trying to evoke.