Flu

Flu, flu, flu,
What have I ever done to you?
Are you mad ‘cuz I got the vax
To try to avoid your attacks?
Sad to say, I wasn’t immune,
But I hope you vanish soon!

Thanks Southwest

My son got a text that his family’s flight was canceled tomorrow. But then they put him on a slightly later flight that he actually thinks is better.

Once in a while
On a vacation
A flight cancellation
Ends in a smile.

Brr

The capital city of Chile
Is Santiago.
But if you like windy and chilly
Come to Chicago.

Qui Custodiet

Does the elf on the shelf
Spy on himself?

In Case I Get Distracted, Merry Christmas!

As for me, my goal
Is avoiding a lump of coal.

Hush Hush Help

A headline said that Apple slowed
My iPhone’s speed to help me out.
The story took too long to load,
So I don’t know what that’s about.

Characteristic Conditions

Athletes get athletes’ foot, and so...
What do astronauts have to show?
The answer, of course, is mistletoe.

AT

Who came up with avocado toast?
Suddenly I find it’s coast to coast.
I’m guessing it’s a temporary fad.
But as they go, I’d say it isn’t bad.

Catelli on Elided

Yesterday I was talking about how the word "elide" is used and how I had been puzzling over a sentence in the Wall St. Journal, where I thought it had been used in a sense of transitioning from one step to another.

It has a sense of joining things together, but by means of snipping out in-between steps.

Mary Catelli correctly commented:

"Which means it's not just transition."

So I went back to the original column just now:

"During 2016, the counterintelligence activities of the Obama administration elided, informally and erratically (and clumsily), into an attempt to protect Hillary Clinton and keep Mr. Trump out of the White House, then to delegitimize his election when these efforts all went absurdly and embarrassingly awry." ("Mueller Should Ask for Help", by Holman W. Jenkins Jr., Behind the WSJ paywall here.)

Well, I still find the usage a bit jarring, upon reflection. One sort of activities (counterintelligence) "elided" into another sort of activity (partisan politics). If we want to justify the extended use of "elided", something should be "dropped out" along the way. Well, in the author's version, what got dropped out to make this transition possible?

Maybe he thinks they accomplished this transition
By dropping what had been their original mission.

Elide

I saw the word "elide" in a WSJ column today, used in a sense of transitioning from one stage to another, and I puzzled over it, feeling the word was right, but also wrong.

I tend to think of the word in its more linguistic context, where it means to drop a sound out. So I looked it up just now:

omit (a sound or syllable) when speaking.
"the indication of elided consonants or vowels"
join together; merge.
"whole periods of time are elided into a few seconds of screen time"

So it can mean "omit" or "join", which might seem opposite, but really not, at least in a linguistic context, because when you omit something in the middle of an expression, you join the two ends.

"Do not" becomes "Don't". The second O gets omitted, and the newly adjacent consonants run together.

One that O has been purloined,
Then the N and T are joined,
Although it's true you still can see
In writing, at least, the apostrophe.

Better Late

Some say that I procrastinate
Because I put my lights up late.
I keep them lit till February.
Am I lazy? Very, very.

Etymology I Did Not Know

yule (n.)
...from Old Norse jol (plural), a heathen feast, later taken over by Christianity, of unknown origin.

That's the trouble with the study of word origins - as a rule they only go back so far. Sometimes they will go so far as to a suggest a root in proto-Indo-European or something for which we have no written record. But, even if that's right, what came before that? Something surely did.

Etymology ends in mist
For every word that ever was,
Except for the murmuring list
Of words like "buzz".

Motivation Mottos

I suspect this is mistitled:

The Western Elite from a Chinese Perspective

I like the guy's perspective, but it seems a bit overgeneralized. I think his perspective may be more individual than he realized. Still, it's an interesting article.

This is about a class at Stanford business school:

'Many of the students had worked for nonprofits or health care or tech companies, all of which had mottos about changing the world, saving lives, saving the planet, etc. The professor seemed to like these mottos. I told him that at Goldman our motto was “be long-term greedy.” The professor couldn’t understand this motto or why it was inspiring. I explained to him that everyone else in the market was short-term greedy and, as a result, we took all their money. Since traders like money, this was inspiring. He asked if perhaps there was another motto or logo that my other classmates might connect with. I told him about the black swan I kept on my desk as a reminder that low probability events happen with high frequency. He didn’t like that motto either and decided to call on another student, who had worked at Pfizer. Their motto was “all people deserve to live healthy lives.” The professor thought this was much better.'

Apparently corporate mottos need
Not to mention the motive of greed.

Time to Worry

By the way,
Did you hear the Russians hacked into Santa's sleigh?
My source is at the NSA,
And here is what he said:
They've got a mole
At the North Pole
Known as Rudolph the Red.

Two Books On China

For book club, we read CEO, China, about the current big boss, and Destined for War, about the ongoing geopolitical tension between us and them.

Neither book really dealt adequately with the current North Korean problem, since that has "evolved" rather quickly. I note that now that North Korea seems to be in a position to drop a missile on Washington D.C., our leaders seem to be paying extra attention.

They seem to have kicked the can
Pretty far down multiple roads.
I hope they come up with a plan
In which nothing near me explodes.

Viking Dash

Medal for half, which was hilly
And chilly.



The race was in Crystal Lake, IL, in a park called Veteran Acres. I think I was the only guy in the 65-69 age group running the half-marathon, but I don't show up in the age results online. Well, I've emailed the organizers and the timing people. Hopefully it's just a glitch. I mean, I ran 13 miles in the cold - I want to see my name in electrons!

I ran in some new shoes. I bought some Hoka trail shoes, and I went up one full size - to 14, to try to avoid the toe-bruising issue that I have bored you with before. Well, my toes were fine. But in 2 trail runs, I have now tripped twice in these shoes - once yesterday, once week ago in Massachusetts. I tripped on roots, the bane of trail runners, but I usually don't do this. Belatedly it occurred to me that running in 14s may be something my brain isn't accustomed to. I may be letting the extra size trip me up!

Whether you run in shoes or boots,
Do watch out for routes with roots!

Lizard People

"An armed Washington state man stopped in the middle of an intersection last month to fight “lizard people” because President Trump told him to, police said."

More proof that Trump is insane! Or maybe just that this guy is.

Lizard people deserve to be,
Like all people, safe and free.

Snedronningen

The year's first flakes
As they fall through the air
Make
Me stare.

Your eye can track
Each individual
Crystal's
Attack.

Slow motion invasion,
Spontaneous, unplanned,
Inundating
The land.

And as her brave troops
Tumble down,
Queen Winter swoops
Into town.

Miscalculation

In case you don't know, Waze is software you put on your smartphone that tells you how to drive from point A to point B. It's good at noticing which routes are currently fast or slow, and has a habit of sending you on shortcuts down side streets.

Anyway, from USA Today:

"Waze sent commuters toward California wildfires, drivers say"

Don't let Waze
Send you into a blaze.

Hygiene

They say you should only floss
The teeth you want to keep.
The rest... write them off as a loss.
Implants are getting cheap!

Do I Have To Believe This?

"A Florida bar owner opening up shop following the Thanksgiving holiday was met by a drunken opossum polishing off a bottle of bourbon. The sneaky critter made its way into Cash’s Liquor Store and had a festive celebration all her own, the Northwest Florida Daily News reported."

I have a wonderful sister-in-law who does possum rehab. But not this kind. More the "possum got a broken leg" kind of rehab. She loves possums. Thinks they are sweet as can be, and praises their insectivore ways.

But then a bad possum like this comes along. Insects? It doesn't need no stinking insects! It wants bourbon.

Marsupial advocates cringe
As opossum is busted on binge.

Better Yet, Wait For The Next Car

If you share an elevator
With a hungry alligator,
I suggest you exit early
Before his mood turns surly.

Prevaricators by Custom

Do we need to be more forgiving
With folks who lie for a living?
How strange it must seem to them
When a fibbing stratagem
Lands them in legal hot water.
I guess they know that they oughter
Stick to the truth on occasion...
But their habits lean hard toward evasion.