Bill Gates to Devote Life To Charity; Make Money And You Can, Too

Bill Gates announced that he will transition out of his day-to-day role at Microsoft by July 2008 in order to spend more time working on the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which focuses on global health and education.

His announcement reminded us of the plethora of graduation speeches that eager students imbibed across the land this spring. As we listened to the meritorious goals heaped on the recent graduates, so they might achieve goals the speaker’s generation has found impossible, we could not help but think, why doesn’t somebody come out and tell the youthful aspirants what the real challenge is?

Like it or not, today’s world, as well as many another age, is conducted by two primary forces: wealth and power, and, other than resort to firearms, power springs from wealth.

So if you want to influence the ways of this outrageously necessitous world, consider the stark truth that all power springs from the opening in a fat wallet. It's called the economic basis of society but, in its current incarnation, in debilitating excess.

When we were recent graduates, we were not aware of such an uncompromising reality and passed up at least two opportunities to make megabucks because we wanted to preserve our mental energy to expend it toward the achievement of our ideals.

Had we been wiser, we would have set aside a few years to stuff our pockets with power and then, like Mr. Gates, have spent the rest of our days placidly pursuing those still-inspiriting ideals.

So we find ourselves, from our own experience, in the unlikely role of advising the most idealistic to enable their altruism by involving themselves, initially, in the activity they undoubtedly are convinced is not the most inviting.

Then, should you be fortunate enough to enable your financial independence, you may, like Mr. Gates, head off into full-time devotion to your undoubtedly meritorious idealisms.

Well, the speech probably would not have been one that would have inspired the administration to invite us back or that the students would have received with endorsement, but the sharp glass on the road through economic necessity is a fact not lightly to be dismissed. Ignore it and you may step on it with painful frequency.

Bill Clinton In Secret Talks With Hillary; Agrees To Run For Vice President

Former President Bill Clinton has been holding secret talks with his wife and wannabe President Hillary and has, the rumor mill informs us, agreed to be her Vice Presidential candidate.

In an exclusive interview, he confided, “Even though I want to help Hillary in every way I can, it wasn't an easy decision. After all, if you remember, I was the President. But, since I’ll be back in the White House, I decided I would rather have more to keep myself busy than just being America’s First Man."

So, as 2008 draws nigh and the inevitable blizzard of questions to her on who she hopes to name as her running mate go discreetly unanswered, just remember you heard it here first that the resourceful husband and wife team plan to make another run for the White House.

Given the current state of America’s feelings about the comeuppances of the Republican tenure, there is actually a very high likelihood that the dedicated duo could once again be frolicking in the realms of Presidential empowerment. Only this time we would, of course, have President Hillary Clinton and Vice President Bill Clinton.

While Democrats cheer, Republicans may double over with wails of dread, while they reach out with hopeful hands for the now-flirtatious Rudy or the ever-coy Jeb.

Avant Garde Composer Creates New Piece, Called Making Popcorn

An American avant garde composer, who takes his inspiration from the most upstart composers of recent times, had a piece performed last night at Carnegie Hall, titled “Making Popcorn.”

The Boston Pops Orchestra, which commissioned the piece, left the stage to make way for the performance.

Stagehands then wheeled out a popcorn-making machine and prepared it for the performance by filling it with dry corn, butter, and salt.

When the machine was “tuned,” the composer entered to conduct his own work. Taking the podium, he raised his baton and the machine was switched on. When the first kernel popped, he gave a firm downbeat and then continued to conduct as the kernels popped away. The piece concluded when all the popcorn had contributed its sound.

In an interview prior to the concert, the composer told us, “It’s a new piece for percussion. As you know, there have been more additions to the percussion of the orchestra than to any other one. Take, for instance, the brake drum and the ratchet, which is really just a noisemaker. My hope is that the success of my new piece will make the popcorn machine a standard ingredient of the symphony orchestra.”

“Would you consider it to be a tuned or an untuned percussion instrument,” we asked, indulging the wayward simpleton.

“I’m not sure yet,” he told us. “While the individual pops do have different pitches, they’re impossible to control.”

After savoring the performance, this observer began to long for the once-scandalous composition by John Cage, called 4'33", in which, as you probably know, a pianist enters, sits down at the piano for four minutes and thirty-three seconds,, and does absolutely nothing. Then he gets up and exits.

Who would have though a concert would come when one reconsidered Cage's work an instance of generous reticence?

Audit Report on Katrina Debit Cards; Some Recipients Swam In Champagne

A federal audit on the spending proclivities of people who were issued debit cards by FEMA during the Katrina disaster indicates that some of them were swimming in champagne – and good stuff, too.

Among the survival rations that were purchased, we find a $200 bottle of champagne, used as a life-saving device at the hurricane shelter known as Hooters. The establishment, upon hearing of the purchase, has nobly agreed to refund the amount to FEMA.

Other items that emergency cards were used to purchase are the following:

A flotation device of questionable effect, called diamond jewelry.

An escape route from the rising waters to a vacation in the Dominican Republic.

Salvation from a divorce lawyer by paying off a $1,000 legal bill.

Drying out at a strip club, where the recuperative process required $600.

Recuperation with $400 of “adult erotica products.”

The auditors concluded that such purchases were "not necessary to satisfy legitimate disaster needs."

Greg Kutz, a GAO forensic auditor, said one "fraudster" way up in West Virginia received a rental assistance check by using the address of a cemetery in New Orleans.

Another application, employing a vacant lot as an address, found favor in FEMA for a payment of $2,358 in rental assistance.

The relief organization also paid $8,000 and then $5,000 more, in a double-dip into rental assistance, to help a long-suffering recipient survive at a resort hotel in Honolulu.

The GAO also found that FEMA lost track of 750 debit cards, worth a total of $1.5 million.

As a result of the debit-card debacle, FEMA itself has been scheduled to receive federal disaster relief.

Ancient Mayan Mummy Proves A Tattoo Is Forever

Evidence of the extraordinary longevity of tattoos has finally been discovered, in a mummified Mayan female whose panoramic tattoos have lasted almost two thousand years.

Tattoo artists were ecstatic at the discovery, immediately citing the mummy as proof that once you’re lucky enough to have a tattoo, you can forget about upkeep.

On the other hand, those who have decorated themselves with tattoos but in later years regretted the colorful self-mutilation, were widely distressed by the discovery. As one man with a prominent tattoo on the pierced tip of his nose told us, “I suspect when I’m finally old enough to feel really stupid about this tattoo it’ll still be here., Now, I know if I want to get rid of it, I’ll have to fork over the bucks for plastic surgery.”

Curiously enough, the mummy’s bones revealed what at first appeared to be dichotomous lifestyles. She was apparently motherly, because bone evidence revealed that she had given birth to a child, but a variety hardly motherly clubs were also found buried with her.

An archaeologist explained the seeming duality of tender sentiment and weaponry by stating, “My theory is that she went to the grave, regretting the tattoos and asked to be buried with clubs so she could ward off any evil spirits who might arrive to apply even more tattoos.”

America To Sue Rest Of World For Ungrateful Behavior

America, which has sacrificed the lives of its citizens and its material plentitude more selflessly than any other nation in history to come to the assistance of other countries, noted the astonishingly heated negative commentary about it emanating from virtually every corner of the globe and has decided to sue the rest of the world on the grounds of ungrateful behavior.

The President said, “You can’t just go out there and sacrifice your sons and daughters lives and expend so much of the national treasury and not get a little something back. We’ve got sorrowful families all across the land, with whose losses I deeply sympathize, and we can’t even afford to fix the potholes on federal highways. So what choice do we have? We’re taking the ungrateful foreigners to court. Justice will be served. We merit and demand some praise here.”

A grandmother for the plaintiff stated, “My family has lost loved ones in three different wars and all in countries that I haven’t heard a good thing said in about America for years. When I take the stand, watch out. I’m patriotic pissed.”

The international court at The Hague has declined to take the case, primarily because it is in The Hague. Upon learning of that court’s disinclination, the U. S. has appealed to the U. N. to find a venue that will hear the case.”

A prominent attorney for America commented, “We’d rather not have the trial here. Holding it in our own country will detract from the credibility of the outcome, but having it in an unfriendly location is bound to create the kind of inflammatory demonstrations that will lead to a lot of free press.”

Not surprisingly, France, Germany, and Spain have also nixed the idea of hosting the trial, maintaining that since they’re all being sued, supporting the action seems inadvisable.

Britain and Italy are understood to be considering the matter. Tony Blair is the most disposed to hosting it, saying, “We hardly ever badmouth America, so we hope to come through the trial with flying colors.”

The Italian government has expressed some willingness to host it but has indicated it may charge for rental of the courthouse. “I’m confident of victory,” another attorney for America maintained. “All you have to do is look at the newspapers. All the incriminating evidence you need is on the lips of leaders and the public in general in just about every country of the world. The only thing that stands in the way of a big win for the U. S. is finding a country where we can conduct the trial.”

Should the verdict go as the plaintiff hopes, the expectation is that the guilty will henceforth base their comments on a true understanding of just who this country is.

One of the most persuasive arguments the nation’s attorneys hope to present is based on the usual philosophical tactic of imagining the opposite argument.

As the lead attorney for the country put it, “Will you please tell us what other country in the world, besides your own, you would prefer to possess the amount of power America has? We are, in fact, the first nation in the history of the world that could conquer it but, in addition to being freedom-loving people that the whole idea offends, we’re savvy business people who know we just can’t afford the worldwide upkeep.”

America: Still So Young No Americans Allowed

If sometimes, weighed down with the complexities of uneasy empire, we perchance wonder if America could be freedom’s fading star, it’s somewhat reassuring to realize that the nation is so young it still does not recognize the existence of Americans. Even the Indians don’t completely get the nod, because they’re still camped out on reservations.

We might see the persistent refusal to accept “I’m an American” as a recognized nationality, at least on the home front, as a consonant reflection of our mixed and matched heritage. But it does present us with inconveniences.

Tell a fellow American who asks your nationality, “I’m an American,” and what does he say? “Oh, come on, tell me, really, what are you?”

“I just told you,” you repeat, in your resourceful attempt to nationalize yourself, “I was born and rear-beaten in America.”

“No, no,” your interrogator presses on, “I mean, where did your parents come from?”

“Well,” you let out, “my mother was born in West Virginia.”

“Then where did your father come from?”

Now, you’ve been cornered, so you finally confess that he came from here, there, or wherever. Let’s say Ireland. And what does your pouncing interrogator reply?

“Oh, so you’re Irish.”

Actually, the only time you get to be an American is when you’re likely to suffer the slings of outrageous interactions in distant lands.

“Oh, so you’re an American,” you're told, usually in a tone that intimates at least a slight reprimand, as soon as the securely French, Italian, or whatever person you chance to chat with determines you’re from the USA.

And, no matter how much effort your make to elude detection by speaking in the tongue of your assailant, the nonchalant accusation pops to the fore as soon as your first Yankee twang intrudes.

Will Durant, the popular (dare we say American?) historian, estimated that it takes about eight-hundred years for a country to develop a civilization. I wonder how long it takes short of that to develop the nationality that might achieve it.

A Life Of Lorenzo Da Ponte: Talent Flies; Practical Reason Walks

Among the world’s favorite operas, we find three of them with a libretto penned by Lorenzo Da Ponte and music by none other than the astonishingly delightful Viennese ear-confectioner Mozart. The list is a delight in itself: The Marriage of Figaro, Don Giovann, and Così Fan Tutte.

We learn in the new book, The Librettist of Venice, by Rodney Bolt, that Da Ponte grew so close with the unequalled Mozart – both of whom, we learn, were not only talented but vain, insecure and ambitious – that while writing Don Giovanni, they worked in adjoining lodges and shouted to each other through their windows.

Da Ponte even dared to contend with Mozart, who believed the text should be subservient to the music, while Da Ponte was certain that the words should be primary, in fact, that without his poetry even Mighty Mo’s music would be nothing.

Yet how Da Ponte tumbled from the heights. Hard as it may be to imagine, he wound up in New York, running, at one time, a grocery store on the Bowery.

Brilliant as an artist, he was apparently, in his personal life, a managerial moron. Or, said another way, while talent flies, practical reason just plods along, like a relative moron.

Da Ponte, born Jewish, was, as a result of his father’s having decided the family should become Catholic for the easement of a life of trade, ordained a priest. But his real vocation was married women. His exploits, we learn, rivaled Casanova, who became his pal and, if we believe such a thing is possible in the category at hand, his mentor.

Da Ponte himself admitted a shortcoming in comparison with his rival for insincere relationships: he didn’t have Casanova’s purported talent for fleecing the women he falsely wooed. In fact, Da Ponte claims he actually loved the ones he made out with.

He also considered himself adroit politically, but his moves were disastrous. He upset the successors of Joseph II so much he was exiled from Vienna.

Now,still technically a priest he was married to a younger but more wisely practical woman named Nancy Grahl, but even she was unable to keep the man out of bankruptcy in London and again in America, where they moved in 1805, because her family had settled here.

He attempted to establish Italian opera companies when English-speaking audiences had little interest in them. To add onions to opera, the grocery business failed.

He finally became a teacher, bookseller and wannabe impresario.

On the positive side, New York turned out to be the most agreeable spot for him. It was relatively liberal, and Da Ponte found himself a favorite of the cultural elite.

He became the first professor of Italian at Columbia University. While the position was pretty much ceremonial, Da Ponte has the double distinction of having been the first Jew and first priest on the school’s faculty.

He lived on into his 80’s, revered but regarded as eccentric.

He was charming man who made a profession of being European when such a state was still considered novel.

Yet when one compares his everyday doings with his winged collaboration with Mozart, one can only shake his head with the recognition of how quicksilver brilliant the remarkable syntheses of talent are, way up in mental processes we can only hope will drop answers into our expectant consciousness, compared to the "first we do this and then we do that" plodding of the practical but still invaluable mind.

A Cialis A Day Keeps The Uncertainty Away

The maker of Cialis will apply to the FDA for approval of a once-a-day version of its ED treatment. The company maintains that a daily dose will allow the benefactor to enjoy more spontaneous delight than he can with what the manufacturer refers to as its "on demand" version.

The company maintains that side effects of the new dosage are mild and consist primarily of an inexplicable bulge in the pantaloons.

Dr. Ira D. Sharlip, professor of urology at the Univesity of California, San Francisco, stated, "For patients who are more sexually active, which generally means younger patients, whose sexual activity is more spontaneous, it will be an attractive alternative, provided the cost is not prohibitive."

Until now, men had to take Cialis and other impotence drugs thirty minutes or more before they flung themselves into the arms of their lovers. Now they’ll be ready at the drop of a belt.

Some analysts doubt that millions of men will take the drug every day, since the biggest users of the therapy generally have sex only a couple of times a week.

Insurance companies may also refuse to pay for a daily dose.

Interestingly, a Cialis a day may also have cardiovascular benefits, since the enzyme that Cialis, as well as other impotence drugs, inhibits, flows in all the body’s blood vessels. As a result, the drug may be an effective treatment for high blood pressure.

An expert stated, "There may be a much bigger picture than just for erectile dysfunction."

He certainly chose his adjective well, since “bigger” does seem to be the operative word here, except in regard to the one item Cialis does, at its best, reduce the size of, and that is, of course, the performance anxiety, or uncertainty, of the aspiring lover.