The Dogged Pursuit of Wealth

I adopted a golden retriever...
In the hopes that he'd bring me some gold.
Alas, he's an under-achiever,
Or else I was over-sold.

Young Fortinbras

We don’t need one million monkeys. 

We have computers as flunkies

To randomly generate text. 

Could “Hamlet, The Sequel” be next?

Getting a Shock from a Cuban Croc

This is CNN: "A man has been hospitalized after being bitten by a crocodile that once belonged to the late Cuban leader Fidel Castro. The injured man was attending a crayfish party -- a traditional Swedish celebration at which crayfish is eaten -- in Stockholm's Skansen Aquarium, when he was bitten on the arm by a crocodile. The man was giving a speech while standing on a rock in a restricted area of the facility."

They say you shouldn’t trust the smile
Of the average crocodile.
He may be in a jolly mood,
Mostly because you look like food.

Native Slavery

I was looking at a book today at the library, Stealing Indian Women: Native Slavery in the Illinois Country, by Carl J. Ekberg. The title sounds sensational, but the prose seemed careful and dry, with lots of quotations and evaluations of original materials, which are actually somewhat thin.

This is about the Mississippi Valley when it was controlled by the Spanish and French. It turns out, as you may know, that the native people were already engaged in the practice of slavery, before the Europeans showed up. It was the prisoner-of-war variety of slavery, apparently. You know, "I spared your life when I raided your village, so I own you." That kind of thing.

As I say, the records are thin, because the native people did not keep written records. Also, there weren't all that many literate white people around either. But the second half of the book, which I just glanced at, is about a big murder trial that occurred, about which proceedings were kept.

Just to be perfectly clear,
In some ways it was not the same,
But before the white men came,
Slavery was here.

Motivation

Cats believe that fetching a stick
Is a “beneath them” sort of trick.

Sore the Next Day

Why does the runners’ high
Often pass me by?
Why does the runners’ low
Mostly decide to show?
And why is the stoppers’ relief
Pleasant beyond belief?

Artistic

Artistic types can have trouble in school, so consumed are they with the desire to express. They will patiently master the tools to express, they will patiently acquire what they need to know to express, but they feel the urgency to create now, and do not want to spend time on things that might or might not prove useful for some reason later.

It’s not an absolute rule
That artistic types have trouble in school,
But it happens enough
And it’s frequently rough.

Enterprising

Just bought a lemonade
At a little neighbor’s stand.
Unregulated business
Is getting out of hand.
I mean, it’s the worst-
They exploited my thirst!

Nocturnal Neighbors

Someone wearing a furry mask
Ambled across my path tonight,
Then turned and stared, as if to ask
Why I continued to trouble his sight,

Classifications

A giant panda is a bear.
A red panda’s more like a raccoon.
How that happened, I'm unaware,
But hope to find out soon.

Icebox in the Summer

Seward
Got skewered
For buying northern land,
But the views up here are grand.

Alaskan Inner Passage

Whale
Tail.