Signo de Exclamación

Is it an exclamation point,
Or an exclamation mark?
An explanation of this point
Would lift me from the dark!

Sotu

Please - no spoilers on the speech!
Don’t talk about it in public, I beseech!
I assume we’re going to make America greater,
But as for the speech, I plan to not watch it later.

Career Objective

I want to get the FBI to hire me,
So I can get the pension when they fire me!

Pet Language Peeve: Referring to the Living as Bodies

This quote comes from an NY Times op-ed, by way of Reason magazine:

"Death is the ultimate vulnerability. It is the moment when all of us must confront exactly what so many women have known all too well: You are a body, only a body, and nothing more."

No. You are not a body. Not if you are reading this. You have a body. You have a mind. You have a personality. Sure, they're connected. But they mean different things. And when we speak of something being "only a body"... we are typically talking about a corpse.

I'm not at all sure why women are supposed to have known that people are only bodies. My impression is the opposite.

I find most women distinctly think
That they are more than flesh alone
And are inclined to tightly link
Bodily love with a spiritual tone.

Tracinski on Kaur

A friend sent me a link to an article by Robert Tracinski, The Age of Didacticism. It starts off with something that was news to me, that there's a contemporary poet whose first book sold over a million copies. Her name is Rupi Kaur.

I also looked up an article by an NY Times critic, who sort of tiptoes around the topic of her talents, perhaps because she has millions of readers, perhaps because she is a young woman from India and he is an old white man. But I get the impression he doesn't care for her work at all. He pointedly includes this item:

"There's a parody meme on Twitter to break any banal statement or quote into short lower case lines and sign it '- rupi kaur.'"

Tracinski quotes her most famous poem:

if you are not enough for yourself
you will never be enough
for someone else

Tracinski comes right out and says of her works: "They're not really poetry."

I'm of two minds on this. Maybe most of her verse is just banal prose with line breaks. I haven't really read much of any of it. But I have a technical note on the lines above. Bear with me. It's my obsession. But please note that this "most famous" poem almost rhymes and has a lot of aural repetition. Let me move the line breaks just for fun:

if you are not enough
for yourself
you will never be enough
for someone else

I point this out only because it's my belief that when a piece of free verse turns out to be popular, it often, also, turns out to be hiding half rhymes and other "sound effects". Anyway, moving on to one of Trancinski's big thoughts:

"In the early 20th Century, highbrow Modern art was born in a frenzy of negation. The big new advances in poetry were the elimination of meter and rhyme. In music, it was the elimination of melody, harmony, and structure. In the visual arts, it was the elimination of realism and technical skill. In literature, you had novels without plots and exciting experiments like Beatniks writing long essays without using any punctuation. The things the Modernists negated were not unnecessary restrictions or dispensable conventions. They were the language through which works of art spoke to their audience. Without that language, art became incomprehensible and quickly disappeared from the public consciousness."

I like his phrase, "a frenzy of negation".
They swept across the arts in highbrow fury,
With urgency that felt apocalyptic.

Suspicious of all clear communication
While posturing as careful judge and jury
Their standards somehow stayed forever cryptic.

Dial M

Dial M for Murder, in which I am briefly onstage as a cop, er, a bobby, opened tonight. It's a well-written thriller, which has stood the test of time surprisingly well. The director changed the chief inspector from a man to a woman, but otherwise we're playing it pretty much as written. The audience is quiet, even during the talkier parts, which is always a good sign, since it means they are interested and paying attention.

Our British accents are barely there,
But the audience doesn't seem to care,
Since their basic motivation
Doesn't include pronunciation.

Hush

I tried to achieve inner peace
By asking the secret police
If all of my thoughts were okay.
But they refused to say.

Ongoing Employment for Translators

Why did Homer choose to speak
An out-of-date language like Ancient Greek?
The people who knew it have mostly vanished.
I think he would have done better with Spanish!

Wishful Thinking

Now that the shutdown
Is in the past,
Do you think that a shut-up
Is too much to ask?

We Open Friday

We're working away
At Dial M for Murder,
A much better play
Than Dial F for Frankfurter.

Exit Blues

There is no 22nd Street in Chicago. We had such a street, but it was renamed to Cermak Road, many decades ago.

Even though there's no 22nd Street, there's a big exit on interstate 94 which is labeled... 22nd Street.

'“They’re misleading the public onto a street that’s not there,” said Bahnsen of the Dan Ryan signs. He said out-of-towners can get confused if they take the 22nd Street exit and find that they are on Cermak.
...
In response, IDOT spokeswoman Gianna Urgo said there are two exits from the northbound Dan Ryan to Cermak, and so two names are used.'

We have no 22nd street.
Just an exit with that name.
They have two exits for Cermak,
But don't want to call them the same.

If you're driving on I-94
It helps you know your history.
Otherwise this exit
Will lead you into mystery.

With Apologies to Joan Osborne

I’m kind of amused by a line I heard today, “Trump is not who we are.” It sounded so defensive, as if the real fear was that the speaker is more like Trump than they care to admit.

What if Trump was one of us
Like Jung’s shadow trailing us
Just a loud guy on the bus
With a tower for a home
Up in his bedroom all alone
Trolling on Twitter from his phone.

Gentlemen and Ladies in Hollywood

I was reading the Wall St. Journal this morning, and there's a set of mini-book reviews on child prodigies, the first being Child Star by Shirley Temple Black. So, here's real life Hollywood, circa 1940:

"When the MGM producer Arthur Freed exposed himself at their first meeting, Shirley, not yet 12, burst out laughing. 'Go on, get out!' he bellowed, and she promptly shared the story with Gertrude. Her mother's idea of comfort was to tell her preteen about her own experience parrying the gropes of MGM head Louis B. Mayer."

Peggy Noonan also had a column in today's WSJ, "America Needs More Gentlemen", which closes like this:

"For inspiration we end with Hollywood, with Jimmy Stewart in 'The Philadelphia Story.' The character played by Katharine Hepburn makes a pass at him, and he notes he could have taken advantage of the moment but she'd been drinking and 'there are rules about that.'"



When a lady has been drinking
And her self-control is sinking
And she makes a shocking pass,
It is worth your while to ask
Whether in cold morning's light
Such behavior will feel right
Or the source of much regret,
Which is why such rules get set.

Folk Etymology

Workaholics call it Sadder-day.
Because there’s no work and they have to play.

Whatever Shall I Use?

Drowssap would make a bad password, I fear.
It’s sleepy and stumbles along from the rear.

Descended from Mutants

I thank an ancient ancestor
For the genetic mutation
That graciously has blessed me
With lactose toleration.

Insecurity

Post-its were invented
As an insidious means
So passwords could be presented
On all computer screens.

Panic Time

"Hawaii 'missile alert' sparks anger, demands for answers"

"This is not a drill,"
Makes folks feel pessimistic.
And when it's fake, they will
Likely go ballistic.

Someone Else's House

On weekdays, morning and evening, walking to and from the train, I pass by my father's huge Victorian house. Except it's not his house anymore. It was his house for fifty years, but he has moved to a senior living facility. He was 90, and it was time.

Anyhow, when I see the garbage cans empty at the curb, after their contents have been hauled away, I have a deep desire to pull those garbage cans up my father's driveway. I've been doing that for years. Except it's not his driveway anymore. I'd be trespassing!

I have to concede,
The feeling of ownership lingers
Long after the deed
Has passed to other fingers.

Cold Outside

Central heat,
You’re sweet.

Common Sense

According to John Reis,
One issue in philosophy of mind
Is how separate strands of experience
End up being combined.

Snoozing to the News

I don’t want to be impeached.
I don’t want to be impeared .
I wouldn’t mind being immangoed,
If some of those can be spared.

Unfitted

In that parallel-universe we call England:

'Rigby & Peller, a luxury underwear firm founded in London, had held the royal warrant since 1960. It was withdrawn after June Kenton, who fitted bras for the Queen, released a book called 'Storm in a D-Cup'... She said she was told by the Palace six months ago that they "didn't like the book" and she shouldn't have the royal warrant any more.'


Earn your customers’ loyalty.
Never fit and tell.
With commoners, as with royalty
It doesn’t play so well.

Orlando Might Have Been A Better Choice

I went to Minneapolis
In search of Minnie Mouse.
My efforts were quite hapless
And I failed to find her house.

She’s the Quiet Type

When you’re barking at the Moon,
Expect no answer soon.

Not That Marathon

I've been idly pondering what my main autumn marathon should be this year, and I was thinking about the Des Plaines River Trail marathon, which gets abbreviated as DPR Trail Marathon, and I googled DPR marathon, and I was wondering why the heck I was seeing ads for a marathon in PYONGYANG, wherever THAT was...

Oh, it's the capital of North Korea. And the search engine saw DPR and thought maybe I had in mind the DPRK - Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

Yipes. They have a marathon in April.

Well, I've never been to that country.

I shall continue that trend.
I plan to not attend.

Weekend in the Twin Cities

I'm guessing I doubled or tripled my lifetime "driving over the Mississippi" tally.

Saw the art museum, which is worth a visit, particularly for all the Asian art they have out, including some rooms that give you a sense of what the architecture ends up feeling like on the inside.

Yes, it was colder than Chicago. It's about 400 miles northwest of here, so that figures.

I didn't see any really bad parts of town. I like the alliteration of "mean streets of Minneapolis," but I kept finding nice streets. Which I think goes along with the typical Chicagoan impression that Minneapolis is a more wholesome.

The Mississipi starts as a trickle
Flowing out of Lake Itasca.
But it's already at St. Paul.
So how is that, I ask ya?

NYD

I'm just hanging out at home for he first. The main flu symptom I have left is lethargy.

On the first, I'm usually wired,
But as for today, I'm tired.