2017, Year Of The Cock

Chinese New Year is January 28.

The year of the rooster! But even those who don’t pay attention to the Chinese zodiac knew it already; the cock ascendant!

“In English the meaning of the name Donald is: From the Gaelic Domhnall, meaning world mighty. Famous bearer: Walt Disney’s cartoon character Donald Duck.”

Is Donald Trump a monumental cock or a prosaic prick?

“A monumental tube of lipstick sprouting from a military vehicle appeared, uninvited, on the campus of Yale University amidst the 1969 student protests against the Vietnam War. While the sculpture may have seemed like a playful, if elaborate artistic joke, Claes Oldenburg’s Lipstick (Ascending) on Caterpillar Tracks was also deeply critical. Oldenburg made the 24-foot-high sculpture in collaboration with architecture students at his alma mater and then surreptitiously delivered it to Yale’s Beinecke Plaza. In Beinecke Plaza, the sculpture overlooked both the office of Yale’s president and a prominent World War I memorial. Lipstick (Ascending) on Caterpillar Tracks claimed a visible space for the anti-war movement while also poking fun at the solemnity of the plaza. The sculpture served as a stage and backdrop for several subsequent student protests.

In the Yale sculpture, the artist combined the highly “feminine” product with the “masculine” machinery of war. In doing so, he playfully critiqued both the hawkish, hyper-masculine rhetoric of the military and the blatant consumerism of the United States.

In addition to its feminine associations, the large lipstick tube is phallic and bullet-like, making the benign beauty product seem masculine or even violent. The juxtaposition implied that the U.S. obsession with beauty and consumption both fueled and distracted from the ongoing violence in Vietnam.”

https://www.khanacademy.org/…/oldenburg-lipstick-ascending-on-caterpillar-tracks

On a personal level, people I have known, the ones who are belligerent, hostile, easily insulted, bragging, bullying… paradoxically they have insecurities and overcompensate. They are dangerous! Safer to stay out of their way and avoid them.

“Better stay away from him

He’ll rip your lungs out, Jim

I’d like to meet his tailor…

I saw a werewolf drinking a pina colada at Trader Vic’s

And his hair was perfect”

Celia Cruz: Yerberito Moderno

“Also basil for scrawny people…”

Se oye el rumor de un pregonar
Que dice asi:
El yerberito llego llego
Traigo yerba santa pa’ la garganta
Traigo jeilimon pa’ la inchazon
Traigo arrecaminos pa’ su destino
Traigo la ruda pa’ el que estornuda
Tambien traigo albacar pa’ la gente flaca
El apasote para los brotes
El metiten para el que no ve
Y con esta yerba se casa usted

(Cuban idiomatic Castellano? Many words and herb names are ambiguous.)

Yerba Santa could be hoja santa/acuyo or yerba santa another plant more commonly known by that name growing in SW USA and Mexico.

Jeilimon or caisimon or the’ limon?

Abre-caminos

Metiten or betabel

Could be interesting to compare names with older documents such Mexican pharmacopoeia on line some dating back to 1846.