Choriamb and Monsour

choriamb today quotes a lovely poem by Leslie Monsour:

The Education of a Poet

Her pencil poised, she's ready to create,
Then listens to her mind's perverse debate
On whether what she does serves any use;
And that is all she needs for an excuse
To spend all afternoon and half the night
Enjoying poems other people write.

In case you don't know, choriamb is a splendid livejournal blog about poetry in all its forms. And the good news of the week is that Tanya, who writes the blog, and who was thinking about stopping, has decided to keep writing it!

Her blog is always inviting.
Thank you, Tanya, for writing.

Huck Finn and the Nuremberg Rally

The latest New Individualist has an article entitled "Huck Finn and the Nuremberg Rally", by Bruce S. Thornton.

He praises Huck Finn as a symbol of American individualism. Against contemporary communitarians, he argues that community solidarity of the European sort is actually a dangerous thing.

"After all, you'd never get 200,000 Huck Finns to goose-step and 'Seig Heil' with the mindless, robotic fervor of those Germans in Triumph of the Will."

Try to imagine
Huck Finn
Fitting in
With all those marching Germans.

Which is truly
The triumph of the will?

A troop of hollow
Followers?

Or that unruly,
Laughing boy
Rafting down the river...

Da Vinci You Know What

I thought the book was a good thriller. It made nice use of puzzles. It made good use of religion, including wild religious conspiracy theories.

I think it's the addition of the religion angle that has made the book a monster hit. The book paints an alternate history of Christianity that is obviously attractive to a contemporary audience. Jesus becomes more of a man, and a non-virginal "sacred feminine" gets rewritten into Christian history.

We saw the movie with a friend who had not read the book. She really liked the move and found it thought provoking. Marsha and I found the movie a bit less thrilling, but that was partly because we already knew all the secrets and twists.

Do I have to believe this story
When it tells me that the Templars
Really were exemplars
Of dedicated glory?

Or were they simply gory
Guys who trampled
Lives to build their ample
Inventory?

Memorial Day

We have a neighborhood 10k that happens every Memorial Day, followed by a small scale Memorial Day parade. I've been running the race a long time. For years it was the only race I ran.

It was hot today. But the crowd support was great. A lot of people ran their garden hoses out to the street to spray us down or give us a drink.

The parade included veterans, and a few folks in military uniform. They got applause.

For something new this year, the parade included war protesters. They looked to be about my age. I actually think they were the same guys I saw protesting the Vietnam effort back in the 60's.

It was like an acid flashback, except they had grey hair.
And I never even took any acid - really - I swear!

Protesters, go away.
Come again another day.

Today's for remembering people who got shot.
Not people who marched and waved signs a lot.

Democrats Getting Tough?

Here's an interesting article (thanks to gregoryrpratt) about defense policy hard-liners trying to make a resurgence in the Democratic Party.

I remember this from when I was a child,
With JFK
And LBJ
But wouldn't it be wild?

The Republicans, instead of embracing investors,
Could all become war protesters.

Summer Is Icumen In

It's funny the way the weather changes everything. Cold to hot, dry to wet, white to green. Well, maybe that's not funny at all, just absolutely normal, particularly around Chicago.

"If you don't like the weather here, wait an hour."

The carpenter bees are back with the heat, drilling holes into the old wooden swing set. They nest inside wood, a clever trick. But you can't have bees living in a swing set. Some visiting kiddie might get stung. So the bees must go.

Creeping Charlie is back. He's a minty-smelling weed that likes to take over the back yard. I don't mind him, and the dogs don't mind him, but Marsha likes grass and flowers in the back yard, rather than a Creeping Charlie Farm.

Creeping Charlie means no harm.
He's just trying to start a farm.
Creeping Charlie, weed from hell,
With that pleasant minty smell.

Cluck Cluck Hatch

Rand emphasized self-sustaining as the key attribute of living things. This was in a long tradition of biological thought.

Lately there has been more emphasis on self-reproducing as the key attribute. This makes it easier to count viruses and genes as alive.

So who is supposed to be selfish here, the Person or the Gene?

It's the problem of the chicken and the egg.
It keeps on going - boy it has great legs.

I've self-sustained and also reproduced.
I guess that gives both sides a little boost.

Perhaps it's two sides of a single coin.
At least it's clear how often they are joined.

Assassins

The tiger cannot change her stripes
With fur of orange and black and white.

Furiously he sits and types
A nasterpiece with lots of bite.

The tiger roams the jungle ground
With deep green eyes that search for prey.

Creepily he looks around
For someone new with whom to play.

You don't have time to scream or shout.
The outcome leaves no room for doubt.
She rips you up and spits you out.

You're splattered with an inky blot.
Your reputation's fully shot.
You think he's sorry? No. He's not.

Color Me Skeptical

Scientists are closing in on building an invisibility device... sort of.

In this case, NOT perceiving
Is believing.

Case Reopened

The dream is fled.
That spirited lecture,
What the ghost said,
Was pure conjecture.

And no one knows
If she'd lend her voice
To open or closed
Or some other choice.

Open and Shut Case

I dreamed I saw the ghost of Rand
Wandering angry across the land.
I asked her what was wrong, and she
Said "A.R.I. and T.O.C.!
Frankly, I critique them both.
Open?  Closed?  I roundly loathe
All such false dichotomies.
Search my works and you will see
Just how clearly I declined
To say I had an open mind;
Nor did I say my mind was closed;
I said the choice was badly posed,
And that the true alternative
Was keep an ACTIVE mind, and live!"

Good News for Dopers

"Shocked Scientists Find No Marijuana / Lung Cancer Link"

I bet they're shocked. Just about everything causes lung cancer.

How could pot...
Not?

Oh, cripes, what if it's a miracle drug
That's been swept under the rug?

If that turned out to be true
There'd be some 'splaining to do.

Cat Habits Blogging

Kitties are picky.
They think most food is icky.

But the good news is that Baby (a.k.a. Betty) is now actually eating a little bit on her own. I guess she has survived "feline distemper" - which is actually a virus.

Whew.

On Finishing War & Peace

Tolstoy's a great writer, of course.
If you want to imagine what it's like to have a horse
Shot out from under you, he's your man.
Still, I'm not a fan.

He's anti-plan.
In other words, say a character has a notion
To get something done, and tries to put in motion
A plan to make it so...
Well, once you've read War & Peace, you know
That plans never work.
Historical conditions
Jerk them into a state
Beyond all recognition.
Better just to wait
And flexibly adapt.
That way you don't get slapped
Around by fate.

But none of this is true.
After all, plans do
Often succeed.
And when I sit down to read
A story,
I glory
In characters who can get things done.
Which nobody does in this whole damn book. So for me it wasn't fun.

Gotta Make A Living

The FBI searched the home of a Louisiana Congressman last year. As part of a bribery investigation.

They found $90,000 in cash. In his freezer.

Now that's what I call a stash
Of cold cash.

When you withdraw,
Be sure to thaw.

ESL

ESL is usually English as a Second Language. But now our legislators are pushing English as a Standard Language.

My fear is that once it's a Standard Language, government bureaus will try to Standardize the Language.

The French do this sort of thing, and I find it scary.

Also I'm worried that maybe
To say "Hasta la vista, baby,"
Will be so far beyond the pale
That I might end up in jail.

No Bones About It

Columbus is buried in Seville. Just ask the Spaniards.

He is also buried in the Dominican Republic. Just ask the Dominicans.

This just in: the Spanish set of bones has been verified as the real McCoy by DNA testing.

The remains
In Spain
Were plainly
Well-obtained.

I think they've got it.

Speaking of mystery burials, based on tips from a new informant, the Feds are digging for Jimmy Hoffa in some horse pastures, just west of Detroit, at the exquisitely named Hidden Dreams Farm.

Does he reside in Michigan -
Or is it a faulty snitch again?

Sick Cat Blogging

Baby, a.k.a. Betty, a person of the feline persuasion, continues to worry her owner with symptoms of sickness, not eating, not drinking, not moving around much, and not taking her medicine.

So Baby has had 3 vet trips in 5 days, getting fluid injections and antibiotic shots.

Apparently Baby has distemper. It can be fatal, and there's a nasty variety roaming the south end of Chicagoland, but Baby, who was up to date on her distemper shots, is expected to pull through.

The real cost of a pet
Includes the bills from the vet,
And the way you get upset
When she's not all better yet.

Wall

If we want a wall
That's ten feet tall
Between us and Mexico
Here's one way to go:
Let them turn communist,
Very soon they'll insist
On building their own to keep people in
Like they did at Berlin.


(Idea stolen from Glenn Reynolds.)

Novel Causality

War&Peace breaks out into philosophy:

"When an apple has ripened and falls, why does it fall? Because of its attraction to the earth, because its stalk withers, because it is dried by the sun, because it grows heavier, because the wind shakes it, or because the boy standing below wants to eat it? Nothing is the cause. All this is only the coincidence of conditions in which all vital organic and elemental events occur."

You can see where this line of thought
Might suggest that, really, one ought
To structure one's novel quite loosely
Or even a bit obtusely.