St. Paddy's Day Wishes

I hope your day was filled with cheer,
but please steer clear of all green beer.

Common Sense Censorship

When framing a certain amendment, namely the very first,

Why didn't they make an exception - for statements that make my brain burst?

I'll be the Supreme Justice, and only ban the worst. 

Really, you can trust me, few will be coerced. 

Where's Vladimir?

Putin is sort of missing -
he's off the public stage.
I'm thinking "another facelift" -
to hide advancing age.

Color Me Forgetful

Two weeks ago I lost this set of keys on the lawn in front of the vet. Distracted by my puppy, I apparently dropped them without even realizing I had done so.

I didn't find them until today, even though I had gone back several times to look for them. Why was I successful today? Because the snow was finally gone!

But what I want to mention is that I couldn't recall the color of that red and black carabiner thing. I kept thinking that it was either red or blue, but I wasn't sure which. What I've decided, over the years, is that I have a bad memory for colors, particularly if I haven't thought consciously about the color of something.

I don't really have trouble distinguishing colors. I pass color blindness tests.

But for some reason I don't understand at all,
I have trouble with color recall.

PS: Before I was seven, I saw a peeping tom out one of our apartment windows. A guy with a ladder in our back yard. I started talking to him, out the window, and he left in a hurry. The police questioned me about the color of his clothes, and I had no idea. I remember thinking what a poor witness I made.

Pi Day

The celebration may be international
But the object clearly is irrational.
I cannot understand this overreaction
Regarding the failure to compute a fraction.
I fear these mathematicians have gone mental,
Thinking mere reason can grasp what's transcendental.

The Emperor of the Moon

I saw an interesting English Restoration farce tonight, The Emperor of the Moon, by Aphra Behn, who seems to be regarded as the first important female playwright, in English anyway. Back when I was in college, no one paid her any attention, or at least I don't recall hearing of her, but in the intervening years she has risen to some prominence.

I wasn't crazy about the production, but perhaps they did the best with what they had, and it did give me a chance to see the play "up on its feet". The central character is a gullible astronomer, led astray by his belief that there are inhabitants on the moon. He is taught a lesson by suitors of his daughter and niece, who pretend to be royalty from the moon in order to win the young women's hands. It certainly had its laugh-out-loud moments, which, after 300 years, is pretty good.

The moon has much magic to give,
but lacks a good place to live.

Rarely to Return

A local political gossip columnist has the scoop - the Obamas aren't coming back to Chicago. Her story is based on inside sources.

“I don’t think the emotional tie to Chicago is what it once was. Perhaps not sophisticated enough.”

I'm not sure the emotional tie to Chicago was ever all that strong. The moment he got in the White House, they were gone. They didn't come back here to vacation. They went to Hawaii for that. I've been predicting for a while that they wouldn't move back here. They seem to like the world of glamor and A-list celebrities, and that's not our specialty.

He's not really "from" here anyway. I know a lot of conservatives have labored to label him as a Chicago-way Machine Politician, but that's never really what he was. He dealt with those people, but he wasn't exactly one of them.

When you're enamored
of world-class glamor
Chicago must seem like a smack with a hammer.

Rehearsal Two

Coming soon: The Devilish Children, by Jeremy Menekseoglu, presented at Dream Theatre.

I have a part to play.

"Set in a children's school for manners in a dark corner of a German fable, THE DEVILISH CHILDREN (AND THE CIVILIZING PROCESS) teaches Little Karl (age 3) all the lessons a young boy needs to know to grow up to be a fine gentleman. Perhaps Little Karl is truly learning instead, to become a teuflische kind."

Devilish Children, confab number two,
Occurs tonight. The goal: a shared construction
Of what this world is. Both cast and crew
Will ponder visions conjured by deduction,
From studying our roles within the script.
Having a part lends focus to the mind;
You notice things that might indeed have slipped
Right by you, unless you're the one assigned
To speak the words or take an action, then
You stand in those imaginary shoes,
And mull what it might mean exactly when
Time rolls around and you must choose or lose.
By steps we prep an overarching frame.
Children at play have always done the same.

DST

I'm glad we're saving daylight. Where's the bank?
I'd like to see the vault with all the rays
That we've collected, and I'd like to thank
The guards for making sure the sunlight stays
Exactly where we put it, stored with love,
In jars of gold that hide an inner glow.
Light falls upon us from the sun above,
We lock it tight in safety vaults below.
Or is this all a sham? How do we save
By fiddling with the hours on our clocks?
Did April Fools come early? And who gave
Orders to "spring" BEFORE the equinox?
The radio alarm is sounding early,
And I go stumbling forth all hurly-burly.

Groggy

Heading into work,

lost a library book on the way. 

Inventor of daylight savings is the jerk,

who made me dumber today.

Bad Call

"MARCH 6--An Ohio man called 911 to report that his wife had stolen his cocaine, according to cops who subsequently arrested him on drug and other charges."

Be an intelligent bloke,
and don't buzz the fuzz
when your wife steals your coke!

Five Finger Discount-Taker

When shoplifting is your habit,

You don't just buy stuff, you grab it. 

Safari Park

A drive in a Safari Park is sure to give a view
Of lions just outside your car, that look right back at you.
Cats have a gift for opening all sorts of things, I hear,
So maybe lock your auto doors before you get too near,
Or you may find that when the felines send out for dessert,
That you are on the menu for a world full of hurt.

When 117 Years Seems Short

On her birthday: "World's oldest person says 117 years seems short"

The world's oldest living human being
Declared that life had gone by rather quickly.
When she looks back, is it a blur she's seeing?
Would it seem slower if she had been sickly?

Compared to other animals, our span
Of days runs fairly long. It's not the shortest,
Although it's true our days are briefer than
The days belonging to the giant tortoise.

I reason that if we could banish aging,
Sooner or later we'd die of other causes,
Meteors, earthquakes, wildfires raging,
At last would blast us to our final pauses.

Find what's worthwhile for you, and do not worry
Too much that it will go by in a hurry.

Rules About Email

Rules about email are a deadly bore,

They tell you that you need to keep a trail

Of everything you send, but, hey, what for?

Sometimes you'd rather that the backups fail!

Sometimes you slip and put something in writing 

That some outsider might misunderstand,

Reporters claim they've got dirt that's exciting,

They say the smoking gun is in your hand!

Privacy is a normal human need. 

Who wants to feel strange eyes over your shoulder?

No wonder politicians often plead

That off-the-record statements can be bolder. 

But citizens are nosy and insist

On checking your entire mailing list!

Clintonemail.com

I am stunned:

"The New York Times reports that Hillary Clinton used only her personal email address while serving as Secretary of State."

This seems to be against the rules, but quite premeditated.

However this comment at Gizmodo seems right:

"Even more interesting will be hearing the explanation. Surely there is one."

I'm not saying we will hear the true and complete explanation. But surely her team has one ready!

Perhaps the rules don't apply
when you are sufficiently high.

Some Sonnets Do Not Use The Letter X

Some sonnets do not use the letter X.  

No maps are mentioned where "X marks the spot."

No films are featured with "X-rated sex."

An "ex who lives in Texas"? I think not!

X flashes the allure of the unknown,

The algebraic problem to be solved. 

Poor Y may get an axis of its own,

But not the fame, though equally involved. 

X penetrates mere visual appearance,

Its rays reveal the bone beneath the skin,

To verify your skeletal coherence,

Or check your teeth for cavities within. 

One final fact which made my mind perplex:

Its shape is all concave and no convex. 

He Said "Live Long and Prosper"

He said "Live long and prosper," and he did.
Somebody wrote those lines for him, but he
Delivered them so perfectly that we
Accepted him as Spock. But was he hid?
Held down beneath a pressure cooker lid?
He wrote "I am not Spock," but came to see
The role affected how he chose to be:
More logical, less driven by his id.
An actor can get tangled in his role.
He searches for an inner motivation,
He strives to grasp an overarching goal,
That gives his character an explanation.
He ends by finding something in his soul
That springs unbidden, beyond expectation.

Net Neutrality

I'm not sure what to say re: net neutrality.
Does it imply the net is getting neutered?
I hear it's coming to my net locality,
And fear that soon I will get over-tutored
In detailed rulings from the FCC
On what is fair and square and - what is not.
The lawyers should be filled with ecstasy
To think of all the suits that will be brought.
I know that DARPA helped start up this party.
I stand in awe at just how well it works.
But will the net remain this hale and hearty,
Or will it be chained down by bossy jerks?
I do not mean to overrate the scariness,
But common sense suggests some watchful wariness.

Snowy States Cause Longer Slumbers

"People in snowier states appear to sleep for a little longer during winter months than those in sunnier states, according to a recent analysis of data from a popular sleep tracking app."

The news is: snowy states cause longer slumbers.
It's scientific, measured with an app,
With lots of quite impressive sounding numbers,
And best of all, a multicolored map!

I cannot say that this result is shocking.
If you have ever burrowed in your bed,
Because the Brrr is something you are blocking,
You know you faced the dawning day with dread.

Who wants to wake up just to see the dark?
Who jumps up eager just to feel a chill?
Who wants to go out jogging in the park?
Around this time of year I've had my fill!

In my next life, I plan to be a bear
And snore for three whole months inside my lair.

Some Sonnets Do Not Use The Letter Z

Some sonnets do not use the letter Z. 

It's E Z to avoid, that much is true. 

Unless you're writing sympathetically 

About the plight of zebras in a zoo. 

The sound of Z is quite another matter. 

When S getz added to the end of wordz,

It often sounds like Z in standard chatter. 

Our spelling system's strictly for the birds!

And if your accent leans toward the French,

Why, zen zee problem will be even worse.

So put the letter Z upon the bench,

But let its sound play freely through your verse.

Though forced to always trail behind the rest,

Z tries to catch up with a burst of zest. 

Watching The Western Sky

I watch as Venus hovers in the sky.
I know she orbits slowly round the sun.
I know her surface temperature would fry
My body like a steak that's too well done.

The Evening Star has always made a show -
Heavenly beauty, simple and sublime.
But don't you think it's rather strange to know,
What no one ever knew, for all Earth's time?

I'm grateful for the gift of living now,
In this bold age of far flung sensory probes,
Which let us see in vivid detail how
Things really are on all our neighbor globes.

The Roman goddess may be dead and gone.
But science, and its sense of awe, live on.

Weirdness

Ice balls hanging on utility lines

Alien invaders creeping up electric spines. 

The Chore That Works Your Core

A gym is just fine, as far as it goes,

But the very best workout arrives when it snows. 

And no it's not skiing that meets my approval. 

I'm speaking instead of the white stuff's removal. 

It may in fact kill you by wrecking your heart,

And if you are worried, please don't even start. 

But what doesn't kill you, could make you much stronger,

So I go on shoveling a little bit longer,

Helping my neighbors get rid of their snow.  

But this year in Boston - hey - where can it go?

It's piled all over with no end in sight,

In street corner mountains of dizzying height. 

I know we must play with the cards we are dealt,

But dear weather gods, won't you make this junk melt?

The Naked Ape

Lacking a mammal's normal coat of fur,

The species was nicknamed the naked ape,

But paradoxically they do prefer

To keep their bare-skinned bodies mostly draped. 

Some nudists walk among them, it is true,

And in the summer, on the beach you'll find

They get quite close to naked - yes they do -

But get too naked and you might be fined. 

In northern climes, when winter's in the air,

A snowstorm on your bare form is the worst. 

There are some Finns who will take up the dare,

But they warm up inside a sauna first. 

The nickname's catchy, but, who would have guessed?

The naked ape is almost always dressed!

Praying

I came across a funny quote, from the National Review, that rang true:

"In Washington, they are practically praying for a Christian terrorist."

In the old lists of logical fallacies, there was one called "Tu Quoque," aka the "you too" fallacy. In other words, "Your religion has terrorists too! Get off your high horse!" Recent examples are better, of course. The I.R.A. was so last century, and perhaps more nationalist than primarily Roman Catholic.

It's hard to find examples with equivalent ferocity
To the ISIS bastards with their taste for grim atrocity.

Some Sonnets Do Not Use The Letter Q

Some sonnets do not use the letter Q.
They take a pass on posing weighty questions,
And seek for somewhat simpler things to do,
Like bundling forth a bunch of bland suggestions.

So when you see a sonnet that is Q-less,
Withhold your judgment. Don't assume too much.
Perhaps the poet isn't fully clueless,
But merely getting old and out of touch.

I'd say that Q is way too co-dependent,
Refusing to go walking without U.
If Q commits a crime the co-defendant
Is bound to be... well, surely U know who.

Besides all this, there is no need for Q.
We could get by with K and W.

Some Sonnets Do Not Use The Letter J

Some sonnets do not use the letter J.
They do not speak of jealousy or justice.
And if they specify a summer's day,
They mean the month that's named after Augustus.

Or if the season that we may behold
Is one associated with Kris Kringle,
You may hear sleigh bells ringing through the cold,
But never will the poet say they jingle.

It really isn't right to ban a letter.
It's bad enough that G steals half J's work.
For instance, jentle really would look better.
G, when you think about it, is a gerk.

If G would spend less time in mocking J,
English phonics would face a brighter day.

Offensive to Left and Right

Haven't seen it, haven't read it, and I'm evidently not the target audience. But I am amused by the way that Fifty Shades Of Grey is hated by pundits of all political stripes.

The left hates it because it fetishizes traditional gender roles. The right hates it because it assaults traditional gender roles.

And altogether too many women love it because it gets them hot and bothered.

I've heard the book is poorly written, but that is obviously beside the point.

People don't mostly read novels
to savor the artful prose.
It's more about the characters
and where their story goes.

Reminding Her Of Someone

I don't usually read the Harvard Law Review, but Ann Althouse had this great quotation:

"I recently assisted a young man who was subjected by administrators at his small liberal arts university in Oregon to a month-long investigation into all his campus relationships, seeking information about his possible sexual misconduct in them (an immense invasion of his and his friends’ privacy), and who was ordered to stay away from a fellow student (cutting him off from his housing, his campus job, and educational opportunity) — all because he reminded her of the man who had raped her months before and thousands of miles away. He was found to be completely innocent of any sexual misconduct and was informed of the basis of the complaint against him only by accident and off-hand. But the stay-away order remained in place, and was so broadly drawn up that he was at constant risk of violating it and coming under discipline for that."

The article is written by a woman law prof, and is written from a feminist point of view, but the author takes the issue of fairness to the accused very seriously.

She walks through the sort of hard cases,
that a sexual assault investigator actually faces.

V Day

Wore a red shirt to yoga. Spotted Venus in the sky. These weren't conscious Valentine decisions. But was subliminal awareness the reason why?

Cold Conflict

Greg Pratt digs up another great story from his south suburban news beat:

'A 64-year old Tinley Park man threatened to "spit on" and "fight" a village public works snowplow driver while making "a karate-style motion" during a dispute, according to a police report.'

Karate versus man driving snow plow?
Do not try it - no way no how!

Sideways Facing Dog

Lacking a pillow, she rests her head
on a food bowl, instead.

Windows Craziness

Excuse me while I rant about computers.

A Windows 7 pc had some kind of overnight update, maybe this one?, and wouldn't reboot in the morning.

The pc didn't present Safe Mode as an option, but did offer the services of Windows Startup Repair, which looked pretty fancy, but which did not work. Even when Startup Repair tried to do a restore from the last good install, it would not work. And it couldn't diagnose what was wrong either.

So I looked up how to force it to go into Safe Mode - hold down the F8 key - and it booted right up into Safe Mode, and then when it was rebooted it was fine. It's running fine now. Somehow booting in Safe Mode just fixed it.

Now, booting into Safe Mode often does "just fix boot problems somehow". It always has. It's a standard behavior for the operating system. Indeed, that's why I tried it.

But I was really stunned that Safe Mode, on its own, did a better job than "Startup Repair". Why didn't they just build a "Safe Mode Reboot" into "Startup Repair"?

I'm sure there's a logical explanation
but it runs counter to expectation.

Degrees

Having a job and rehearsing a play and dealing with a puppy have made me, I notice, a bit remiss in truly meeting the "rhyme of the day" standard.

But I do see that the press and the Democrats have begun nipping at the heels of Scott Walker, governor of Wisconsin and Republican presidential wanna-be. And one main line of attack is: he didn't finish college.

He got married and got a job in his senior year.

Howard Dean called him unknowledgeable, linking his lack of a degree with some hedging statement he made about the theory of evolution.

Dean: "Because evolution is a widely accepted scientific construct, and people who don’t believe in evolution either do it for hard right religious reasons or because they don’t know anything."

Actually, that's pretty mealy-mouthed too. Construct? Pretty widely accepted? I'm not sure that Dean is sufficiently committed to "evolution as a hard fact"!

As a person who barely got his degree,
which focused on plays and poetry,
and not a class of biology,
I resent the idea that college
is necessary for knowledge.

The Crucible Heats Up

Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, at 7:30 pm, you can see me acting as the second-banana judge in Arthur Miller's classic play about the Salem Witch Trials: The Crucible.

Come hang out and watch our play.
You can enjoy it any witch way.

Boston Snow

I see where the Bean Town T is closing for a snow day. 

I don't think we have EVER done that here in the Windy City. Not the whole mass transit system. Not for a whole day. 

Rails that keep running,

It's one of the perks

Of regarding this place

As the city that works. 

Anachronistic Selfie

Puritanical and more than a tad tyrannical. 

Unhoppy Event

The service animal scam, er, oppression, continues:

"A Wisconsin woman was kicked out of McDonald’s last week after another customer complained about her therapy pet – a kangaroo."

If have a pet kangaroo,
and it's therapeutic for you,
but McDonald's demands that you shoo,
what's left to do but sue?

How dare they!
Make them pay!
Make them rue the day!

Zero F

Where do the squirrels hide, when it's this cold outside? Even with those with furry faces, scurry and skulk to warmer places.

Ginkgo Stinko

What if lots of herbal remedies, didn't even contain the herbs on the label?

"A warning to herbal supplement users: Those store-brand ginkgo biloba tablets you bought may contain mustard, wheat, radish and other substances decidedly non-herbal in nature, but they’re not likely to contain any actual ginkgo biloba."

The accusation comes from the NY state attorney general's office. They say they did DNA testing to see what was actually in the pills.

Did the lawmen make a mistake,
or are the pills just fake?

He's Tired Of It

A groundhog on a round log said he doesn't scare when his shadow's there, it's a dumb myth that he's done with.

Storm Crawls, Snow Falls

We had, are still having, a semi-blizzard. I say semi because I've seen plenty worse around here. So I shoveled a lot of snow today. Shoveled out my house, and my dad's house, both of which are corner houses with big yards, meaning lots of extra sidewalk to clear.

A friend from across the street cautioned against overdoing it today. "It's heart-attack snow," he said, with somber earnestness. He's right, it was heavy snow, the stressful kind, the kind that brings on heart attacks. But my heart seems to be okay. I got quite the workout.

Clearing the snow away from your hovel,
is just like a marathon, but with a shovel.

The Power of Price

You get what you pay for:

"The results showed that both versions of the placebo improved motor function compared with a base line test, but the subjects who took the $1,500 dose had an improvement that was 9 percent greater than the $100-per-dose placebo."

It's all in the mind,
but researchers find
the placebo that's best
costs you more than the rest.

Another Pupdate

After a long night's sleep,
time for a morning leap.

Aftermath

Chicago wasn't affected, but I watched with fascination while New York was spared and Boston got just another big snow.

Snowpocalypse has gone by.
What's left is not that high.
What blasted in as scary dread,
Was ordinary snow instead.

Line Houses

I vaguely recalled there were buildings that straddled the US/Canadian border, but today a friend tipped me off to the American Prohibition phenomenon of purposely building bars that straddled the border, bars known as "line houses".

'While Border Patrol agents were on the hunt for smugglers, everyone turned a blind eye to the "Line Houses," buildings that sat on the border which were converted to bars on the Canadian side and "information stops" on the American side. Run by mob families, these were popular destinations, Wheeler said.'

The US/Canadian border
tolerates a fair share of disorder.

American Sniper

I liked the movie. It was very engaging. It was pleasantly unironic. Chris Kyle was the kind of guy I would want covering my back if I were trying to check buildings door-to-door in Fallujah.

I didn't serve in the military, but I've heard that ex-military types think this film gives the most accurate view of what it's like to fight in these modern Middle Eastern wars we've been getting into. As Hollywood movies go, it's got a very matter-of-fact feel to it. But the combat scenes are intense.

I'm told Chris Kyle wasn't a saint.
I'm also told that heroes often ain't.

I Fall For NY Times Clickbait

The NY Times has a story up about an apparently minor mystery surrounding a woman who died in 1961. The headline pitches the story as being connected to Ayn Rand's following, which she evidently was, but the story is sort of rambling and speculative. I imagine it was a good idea to put Ayn Rand's name in the headline, to get viewership. It worked in my case!

The woman, Vivian Grant, died of a botched abortion, at a time when abortion was illegal. And, what's really odd, is that she wasn't pregnant.

The big question from the story, I guess, is who was the man who didn't get her pregnant. Her death was a big news story at the time... so why was the non-father never identified?

The doctor, a gynecologist, doesn't strike me as being a model of competence. Why didn't he test to see if the woman was really pregnant first, before attempting an abortion? Pregnancy testing technology did exist in those days, even if you couldn't buy a kit at the supermarket. And then there's this:

"One year after Ms. Grant’s death, Dr. Friedman, while out on bail, would perform another fatal abortion, on a woman named Barbara Covington."

Seems like he needed another line of work.
Perhaps a department store clerk.

Flight Tracker

My 10 week old puppy is doing something I haven't noticed a dog do before: watching the airplanes on the Midway landing path.

It can't be unique, but the dog looks right at the plane, which after all is visible and noisy, and watches it for a few seconds.

Well, she is a retriever.

Perhaps she thinks that noise she heard,
is just a great big silver bird
and when she finds out where it lands,
she'll bring it to my waiting hands.

One Thousand Of Them

My trillion dollars in cash, which gives me constant thrills, is stored in a tidy stash, of Billion Dollar Bills.

Her Specialty

So if there's an NFL deflation threat,
have we got Janet Yellen working on it yet?

DNA Labeling

I saw a weird poll result today, where they got 80 percent of respondents to say that they wanted mandatory labeling for all food that contains DNA. I guess water and diet soda might be the only exempted nutritional items. And maybe salt.

I think some people were unclear on the distinction between GMO food with purposely manipulated DNA vs non-GMO food with DNA that came about the old fashioned way.

My daughter-in-law the food scientist suggested that maybe we could go further and require that complete genetic sequences be printed on the labels. Which would require extremely fine print or extremely big labels.

I like to stay away
from food containing DNA.
But sad to say
I ate some just today.

Imaginary Etymology

I used to think that provolone meant a professional volone. Not only was I wrong, but it seems I was alone. Everyone else knew it was some kind of Italian cheese. It's sad that words can't mean whatever I please!

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Great Galloping Gonads

Yesterday I related that horrible story about a demonic wife who took a scissors to her husband's private parts. Twice.

Today I see that Elizabeth Scalia published a rant called "Twilight of the Vaginas". I felt a little embarrassed to read it, because it seems somehow like a just-among-us-women fight, but I enjoyed it anyway.

"Let’s stop obsessing over a gift women did nothing to earn and over which they therefore can claim no bragging right."

The occasion of Scalia's rant is that Eve Ensler's theater piece, The Vagina Monologues, is now being trashed as transphobic, because, as their theory has it, some women are born with exclusively male private parts.

Anyway, I have my doubts about Scalia's theory of bragging rights. I think people routinely brag about what they are and what they have, whether they have earned those things or not. And I'm not going to be the spoilsport who tells the genetically gifted that they can't brag about their good looks, their brains, or their athletic ability, as the case may be.

I would agree with her if she said "and for which they therefore can claim no moral credit."

Bragging is normally not in good taste,
but must it always be morally based?

Double Bobbitt

I hope this story isn't true. It's from China:

"A jealous wife in China chopped off her cheating husband’s penis as he slept, then snuck into his hospital room after he had it sewn back on — and hacked it off again and tossed it out the window."

Once is understandable,
but twice is just not nice.

It did not get sewn on a second time. Because it couldn't be found.

They say a stray
maybe took it away.

Old Lab, Young Lab

He thinks that she can be a pest, but likes her fine when she's at rest. 

Pupdate

Puppies alternate between insanely wired and plain dog tired. 

Narcissus

When you grow too obsessed with the beautiful face in the pool,

You fall in at last and discover in depth... you're a fool. 

Pets in America

Perhaps because I just got a new dog, this story attracted me: dogs may not have come to the Americas until 10,000 years ago, leading to the speculation that:

"The new finding suggests that dogs came to the Americas with a second wave of human migration, thousands of years after people first traveled to the Americas from Asia."

It's based on DNA studies of ancient American remains of dogs. Sounds like an early result to me. Come back in ten years to see if it holds up!

By the way, the pre-Columbian people did not have cats.

The path to getting a bobcat to follow commands,
frequently involves getting scratched-up hands.

There Was A Failing, Of Course

This struck me as a profoundly French reaction:

"There was a failing, of course," French Prime Minister Manuel Valls said on BFM television. "That's why we have to analyze what happened."

What struck me as French, in the prime minister's statement, was the unvarnished acknowledgement of the obvious, combined with the call for analysis.

Apparently their intelligence services knew about these bad guys, but didn't make them a high priority.

Well, the intelligence role is hard. There's a lot of bad guys. It's hard to know who's about to really go berserk.

As with our Boston Marathon bombers, I wonder if the fact that the principals were actual brothers made it harder to catch them. The fact that brothers are associating would not raise red flags. And they might do more of their communication in person, making it harder to catch them by electronic surveillance.

The populace finds this sort of event unnerving. The populace then supports MORE electronic surveillance. But the intelligence services are already up to their necks in data. One of their problems is finding the signal in the noise.

In the midst of all the chatter
how do you find the messages that matter?

Coincidence or Unconscious Choice

On Facebook yesterday it popped up a '3 years ago today' post, which was a picture of my dog, Juliette, which I had posted shortly after she died.

The funny thing was, I already had an appointment to go see a breeder about a new puppy today. I didn't realize it had been 3 years already. We've only had one dog during that interim, namely, Romeo.

Now we're up to 2 dogs again. Here is my daughter with the new addition, on our ride home:


She's a yellow Lab. We have not yet chosen a name for her. The breeder called her Lilly. I'm leaning toward Blondie. My brother said instead of Blondie, maybe Hairy Debbie. I also had a suggestion of Butter, which I considered expanding to Butterball or Butterscotch or even Buttercup.

Buttercup
would rhyme with pup.
But so far it's Blondie
of which I'm more fondy.

Not True Muslims

It's a funny thing, this argument I hear with some regularity that so-and-so was not a true Muslim because no true Muslim would have done such a thing. I gather a true Muslim is virtuous, and since the act wasn't virtuous, the person's self-identification as a member of the community was false. Of course it must be the case that no truly virtuous person commits vicious acts. But surely this is all beside the point, which is that sometimes religious beliefs play a part in some vicious acts. I'd be willing to say that not all religious beliefs are true, and that the false ones can sometimes be hazardous to oneself and others. 

Not all religious beliefs can be true,

Since not all religions agree. 

This may seem controversial to you,

But it seems like sound logic to me. 

Murder Most Foul

From an essay by W.W. in The Economist:

"To describe the cartoons, and not show them, is essentially to do the bidding of the terrorists."

I, for one, welcome our new terrorist censors. Oh, that cartoon? I don't know how it got in this blog post.

It says something offensive? Something about 100 lashes if you don't die laughing? I had no idea. I don't speak French.

Crazed fanatics cannot be allowed
to get a country thoroughly cowed.

Flaky Crystals Of Ice

There's a temptation to think of snow as something measured in inches, on account of it so often is. But I often think, while shoveling it, that I would like to receive its measurements in mass as well, since 2 inches of fluffy snow seems to weigh less than 1 inch of soggy snow.

When it comes to shoveling, it seems like mass must matter more than volume.

This morning's load was powdery fluff,
and that's how I prefer the stuff.

Candy Stick-Up

A classic criminal error, repeated anew:

"A man and a teenager accused of pointing a gun at a Southwest Side gas station clerk before stealing candy Sunday morning were arrested after police followed their footprints in the snow."

Footprints in the snow
let the po-po know
exactly where to go.

Future Bleak for Van Den Bleeken

In Belgium, there hasn't been an official execution since 1950.

But they do have legal euthanasia now, which can be legally provided for the cessation of psychological suffering.

Which leads to this odd situation:

"Frank Van Den Bleeken, who has spent the past 30 years in jail for repeated rape convictions and a rape murder, will be euthanised in prison in the northwestern city of Bruges."

He has actually decline to apply for parole, because he thinks he's a danger to society. But he also feels conditions in prison are inhumane. So he went through the process of requesting euthanasia due to psychological suffering. And the powers-that-be approved his request. Doctors agreed his condition was "incurable".

'The sisters of his last victim were opposed to the decision, preferring that he be left to "rot in his cell".'

In the absence of execution,
he found a new solution.

Guilty of murder and rape,
he seeks the final escape.

Enright Bublitz

The 1910 Census records show a 7 year old boy in Chicago named Enright Bublitz. Both of his parents were listed as having been born in Germany. So how did this kid end up named Enright? It's an Irish last name.

It looks like he had a career as a police officer in Illinois but retired out of state. (You can see his name on a membership list here, but the PDF takes a while to load).

He died in 1995, in his early nineties.

Was his first name some kind of mistake? Or might he have been named after an Irish friend of the parents?

My last name
and his first are the same.

But how that came to be,
remains a riddle for me.

Donna Douglas

Actress Donna Douglas has died. She was known for 2 roles.

1) Elly May on the tv show, The Beverly Hillbillies

2) The female patient, in a famous Twilight Zone episode:



Here is how the LA Times described the episode:

'The episode recounted the recovery of a woman named Janet Tyler after a series of medical procedures attempting to fix a face that has apparently been completely deformed. While she deals with the doctors and nurses in the hospital, we see her head wrapped completely in bandages... But in the episode's final moments, the bandages are removed and Tyler's face is revealed to be Douglas'. "No change. No change at all," the doctor laments. And then we see the face of the medical staff -- snouted and horrific. But in this world, it's Douglas' face that's the monstrosity.'

Ayn Rand described the episode with more dramatic flair and philosophical overtones:

'In some indeterminate world of another dimension, the shadowy, white-clad, authoritarian figures of doctors and social scientists are deeply concerned with the problem of a young girl who looks so different from everyone else that she is shunned as a freak, a disfigured outcast unable to lead a normal life. She has appealed to them for help, but all plastic surgery operations have failed—and now the doctors are grimly preparing to give her a last chance: one more attempt at plastic surgery; if it fails, she will remain a monstrosity for life. In heavily tragic tones, the doctors speak of the girl's need to be like others, to belong, to be loved, etc. We are not shown any of the characters' faces, but we hear the tense, ominous, oddly lifeless voices of their dim figures, as the last operation progresses. The operation fails. The doctors declare, with contemptuous compassion, that they will have to find a young man as deformed as this girl, who might be able to accept her. Then, for the first time, we see the girl's face: lying motionless on the pillow of a hospital bed, it is a face of perfect, radiant beauty. The camera moves to the faces of the doctors: it is an unspeakably horrifying row, not of human faces, but of mangled, distorted, disfigured pigs' heads, recognizable only by their snouts. Fade-out.'

I don't think I ever knew that Elly May and the Not-Really-Ugly Patient were played by the same actress.

The snouted plastic surgeons failed,
and radiant beauty instead prevailed.

TP Puzzle

There's a shot of the weird bathroom tissue they use at my office.

At first I thought it was an antitheft gimmick. Because home dispensers wouldn't accommodate this odd design.

But then I wondered if it was a more-paper gimmick. So the cleaning people woudn't have to replace them so often.

What is the goal
of a roll without holes?

7 F at 7 AM

Frost
embossed
soon gone
with dawn.

Hit and Run and Return

Today's church scandal features an Episcopalian bishop who ran down a cyclist.

'“Several news agencies have reported this as a ‘hit and run.’ Bishop Cook did leave the scene initially, but returned after about 20 minutes to take responsibility for her actions,” Sutton wrote, according to the text of the email obtained by The Brew.'

Was it a hit and run?
She did come back twenty minutes after the damage was done.

Someone of the same name in the same general area has a history: "The Brew asked Tillman if Bishop Cook is the same Heather Elizabeth Cook, 4325 Cabin Creek Road, arrested on September 10, 2010 on drinking, driving and drug charges in Caroline County, according to this local media coverage and online court records."

It's always a shame
to take the blame
for somebody else who has the same name.

But it sounds like the address matches too,
which increases the likelihood that the identification is true.

Vote the Name You Know

The pundits predict we'll get Clinton or Bush. 

I'll stand on a ledge if you'll give me a push. 

Killing in Question

"Failure to frisk puts killing in question. Mother says pat-down would have prevented cops shooting son in ER."

That's the heading and subheading on a front-page story on today's paper edition of the Chicago Tribune.

Basically, a mom wishes the state troopers had frisked her son before an ambulance took him to the ER. Because after he got to the ER, her son pulled out a gun, and wouldn't put it down upon request, at which point the local suburban police shot him and killed him.

According to the legal experts quoted in the story, there's no duty to frisk, as such. Police have fairly broad powers to frisk if they feel threatened, apparently. But they don't have to frisk every time someone yells at them.

Actually, in a lot of place, residents complain about over-aggressive frisking from the police. It's one of the complaints you hear a lot. You particularly hear that young black men get frisked disproportionately. And, yes, this guy who got shot was a young black man.

The online headline is a bit more subdued: "Family asks why man shot by police in hospital wasn't frisked after crash"

That's fair. You might well ask. But I don't think it quite "puts the killing in question" as the paper headline put it.

If I were going to question the original killing, I guess I would ask rather why it's necessary to shoot someone who is refusing to put a gun down. The answer that I will hear, I think, is that the police feared for their own lives or those of others. And I can see being afraid when an angry guy is holding a gun. I guess I would be afraid too, particularly if he pointed it at me. It's very clear that everyone is afraid of this guy, since they scramble in fear away from him.

There's some video from a news station here, showing some surveillance footage that doesn't show you all that much. There's some other footage here.

A couple of the news stories mention that 9 shots were fired in less than 2 seconds. Yes, that's how the police shoot you nowadays, a lot of the time. They practically empty a semi-automatic pistol into you, and they can do it pretty fast. They don't shoot you once and wait to see if you drop. That's regarded, I believe, as an unreliable approach.

The police report said: "The officers fired until the immediate threat was over."

In the unfortunate circumstance that you get hit with 9 rounds,
you're probably "over" before you hit the ground.

The Interview

We downloaded The Interview... a movie I wouldn't normally be in a hurry to see. It made me laugh, off and on. I thought the guy playing the dictator was good - he had some charisma, probably more than the real dictator of the same name.

It's not exactly that I highly recommend it,
but I didn't want some government to end it.

Last Place You Look

I was playing Santa in a quiet house,
wrapping gifts for a certain spouse...

When I realized one present was missing. I really only stash Christmas gifts in one of 2 places, so I reexamined those places.

Nope.

Had I had stashed the gift in some new, previously unused location?

But I couldn't think of where that would be.

Finally, I began to wonder if it was possible, just possible, that I had never removed that particular gift from the trunk of my car.

And sure enough, that was the place,
the big solution to my case.

The Interview

Retreat! No... Charge!

"Sony Pictures has approved limited Christmas Day screenings of "The Interview," reversing course after taking heat for canceling its planned release after threats from hackers."

I suspect it's idiotic,
and not a thing of beauty,
but has it become my patriotic duty?

The Case of the Funnybone Faint

Once it happened to me,
I got knocked out through my knee...

It was in elementary school, maybe 4th grade. The teacher gave us a problem, I think a math problem, to solve. Anyway, it was some kind of speed contest, and the teacher instructed us to stand up as soon as we solved the problem.

I was good at this sort of thing, and I'm competitive, so I finished the problem and jumped up very quickly... and banged my knee into the underside of my desk. I got an immediate radiating sensation, like I'd hit my funnybone, except in my knee.

And then... I was waking up. I thought it was morning. I thought I was home. And then I heard my teacher saying: "John Enright, get up off of the floor this instant!"

Yes, she thought I was faking it. However, as Angela Gentile explains it:

"A vasovagal or vasodepressor response is a reflex the body goes through when a certain trigger is present. When the funny bone, or ulnar nerve is struck hard by a pointy object, a vasovagal response can occur. This can also happen when the peroneal nerve (just below the knee) is struck. The body responds by having a large amount of blood pool into the legs, which in effect pulls blood away from the major organs, like the brain and heart. The brain goes unconscious for a short time, until the blood gets pumped back into the brain and heart."

Why did my teacher think I goofing around?
Did she mistake me somehow for a class clown?

The Merry Widow

Last night we enjoyed the local Light Opera Works production of Franz Lehar's The Merry Widow. It's a new translation/adaptation. Act III doesn't quite match either of the versions described in the linked Wikipedia article. But I liked it.

There's a joke in this version that got a lot of laughs. I'm guessing it wasn't in the original. So, spoiler alert on the joke.

*** recurring gag spoiler ***

The joke depends on the fact that the characters are all multi-lingual in European languages, but they all consistently regard English as "the language of love".

English, you see, is the modern language of science, of business, and so forth. But we tend to think the "Romance" languages have the edge on expressions of romance.

I think it's the tendency, in English speaking cultures, to emphasize speaking plainly, as opposed to high-flown hyperbole. English is seen as lacking in ornament, like Charlie Brown's Christmas tree, kind of bare.

But, in fairness
to English's alleged bareness,
take a good look at a Shakespeare sonnet,
and whether or not you find ornament on it,
I hope you'll agree that it's lovely beyond compareness.

Cop Killer

So, after all the tormented examination of some killings by police officers, we get an unarguable revenge killing of 2 police officers.

The killings by police officers, were an odd mix of cases (Brown, Garner, Rice, Crawford), but all involved black men shot by cops in cases where the initial situation involved either very minor crime, or no crime at all. The Rice and Crawford cases involved toy guns that the police didn't know were toys. The Brown and Garner cases involved confrontations that escalated terribly.

But now we get this, a black man, Ismaaiyl Brinsley, killing 2 cops in revenge, "putting wings on pigs" as he reportedly put it on Instagram.

NYC has a melting pot police force, and the 2 cops he killed were not "white" exactly, but not "black" either. Going by surnames and appearances, one looks to have been Hispanic, and the other East Asian. In other situations, if they were victims being lionized by the left, they would already be referred to as "people of color".

The perpetrator, though, is a black-looking man with a Muslim-looking first name, who may have considered himself as a Muslim, who shot 2 cops on anti-terrorism training duty.

Needless to say, the perpetrator, who also shot his own girlfriend, was probably all kinds of crazy. And I think he did us all a favor by offing himself.

Did I mention that NYC protesters were filmed calling for "dead cops"?

This reminds me of the 60s, when the revolutionaries would chant "Off the pigs!". The way it plays out, is renewed respect for the police.

People feel a need for organized protection. They would like that protection to be conducted in a reasonable, non-discriminatory manner. But they really don't like murderous jerks who set out to kill cops. The optics on this are terrible for the left. This is a big splashy case which will command a lot of national attention.

When you demonize the police,
you do not help the cause of peace.

Correction: They weren't on anti-terrorism duty. "In a related story, both were reassigned from an anti-terror beat to enhancing security at a public housing development in Brooklyn’s Bed-Stuy neighborhood — the exact population the NYPD is accused of victimizing."

Bedford-Stuyvesant is a notoriously tough black neighborhood. You may have heard the old Billy Joel song:

I've been stranded in the combat zone
I walked through Bedford Stuy alone
Even rode my motorcycle in the rain
And you told me not to drive
But I made it home alive
So you said that only proves that I'm insane.

Welcome Mat

Sean Penn has concerns:

"This week, the distributors who wouldn't show The Interview and Sony have sent ISIS a commanding invitation. I believe ISIS will accept the invitation. Pandora's box is officially open."

You may believe that you're saving,
yourself from grief when you're caving.
But that sort of grief has a way,
of returning to stay the next day.

Instagram Ka-Blam

It's not easy being a celebrity. You need to keep your star shining. You're famous partly just for being famous.

And one way to prove your famousness is by having many followers... social media followers... let's say Instagram followers in particular... some of whom were recently eliminated as being fake accounts:

"On Thursday, we noticed about 1.3 million of Kim Kardashian’s vanished. Rihanna’s decreased by about 1.2 million. Katy Perry’s went down 300,000. Even Oprah lost 100,000."

You may think it's funny,
but I bet they paid good money,
to make their numbers surge.

Gone now, in a purge.

A Kind of Luck

Usually captains of police are not on the front lines of shoot-outs, but earlier this year a Chicago police captain took 2 bullets. He lived, and has now returned to work.

'Next time, he joked, he'll know to duck a little better, "so I wouldn't get this big head shot again."'

That's rather cool and self-deprecatory, but the story makes clear that getting shot was a big emotional experience. I remember talking to a police officer once, shortly after he had been shot at. He was in no mood to make light of it at the time. He was still quite shaken by the experience. Well, I don't blame him. I've never been shot at, but I bet I wouldn't like it.

Struck in the head,
lucky not to be dead,
ducking next time instead.

Censored Rhyme

I came across a discussion of "censored rhyme", a.k.a. "mind rhyme", a technique I'm familiar with, although I don't think I had a name for it. Anyway, here's my news-of-the-day contribution.

I put all my money in rubles,
because I thought Putin was smart.
But now my big bubbly investment,
is starting to smell like a... foully aromatic raspberry tart.

Accusations

Key event in American history:

"The infamous Salem witch trials began during the spring of 1692, after a group of young girls in Salem Village, Massachusetts, claimed to be possessed by the devil and accused several local women of witchcraft."

Whether they were insane,
or whether they merely lied,
panic ran amain
and innocents died.

Firebringer

Some say it was a titan,
who long ago enlightened,
our cold and shivering kind.

But surely Prometheus,
was merely one of us,
with bold and questioning mind.

The Theory of Everything

Spoiler alert.

Seriously, spoiler alert.

Okay, that's out of the way.

We saw this movie, characterized as a romantic drama, it's very much about the relationship between Stephen Hawking and his first wife.

I knew that they were both married to other people now, and I wondered how they were going to handle that. In particular I wondered it they would end the story before the marriage broke up.

But, no. And the culmination of the movie is really that they're still friends after the marriage ends. Curiously, it mentions that she remarried, but doesn't mention that he did, although we do see the budding of his relationship with his current wife, who perhaps comes across as a bit of a hussy. Well, the story is based on the first wife's memoir.

The acting, particularly the guy playing Hawking, and his physical deterioration, seemed spectacular.

I really expected the story to be terribly sad,
but somehow it wasn't. For that I am glad.

The Accused

"An Alabama educator is picking up the pieces of her life after a student wrongly accused her of sexual abuse."



She's got guilty eyes,
but to my surprise,
it seems like she's innocent.

She gave up her job,
moved back with her mom,
but avoided imprisonment.

Illinois Constitutional Conundrum

Our state comptroller just had a stroke, and died, after being reelected. She was just finishing one term, and about to start another.

And we just elected a Republican governor, to replace our Democratic governor. But the new guy hasn't taken office yet.

In Illinois, the guv gets to appoint a replacement comptroller. But which guv gets to do that? Old or new?

Our new guy's position is that they should split the difference. The old guv can appoint someone to fill out the current term, and the new guv can appoint someone to fill out the next term.

What I want to know is: why on earth is our constitution vague on this point? Who wrote this thing?

When your constitution is murky on questions of this sort,
it just makes more work for your state supreme court.

Underlying

Morning frost reveals

Structure roof conceals. 

Doing the Dew

There was an amusing article in the WSJ today about "The Athletes Who Train With Soda". It proceeded to document:

"...a surprising truth: Many high-level athletes not only drink the occasional soda, they use it strategically to fuel their performance. This persists amid the vilification of sugary soft drinks as a contributor to the nation’s high rate of obesity."

This is surprising? Really? Who do they think these people are? These are not people struggling with obesity. These are people struggling to shovel enough calories into their bodies.

Also, these are not people who are obsessed with their health, not exactly. Rather they are obsessed with their performance level.

As for me, although decidedly non-elite, I do sometimes drink the stuff. I often put a mix of half-soda, half-water in my bottles for long bike rides. Mostly because I really don't think that's much different that "sports drinks".

And towards the end of a marathon training run, I will sometimes stop in a 7-11 along the way, and buy a bottle of Mountain Dew sometimes. I know, the research tells us that it's too sugary to be absorbed efficiently by the average body. But my body tolerates it well. And sometimes I am very glad of that caffeine kick.

Was it supposed to be hush-hush
that athletes crave the sugar-rush
and sometimes chug down cans of Crush?

Hostile Witness

I can't quite follow what the point of this was.

'Federal prosecutors said Tuesday they will not call one of President Barack Obama’s closest friends, Dr. Eric E. Whitaker, before a jury hearing a multimillion-dollar grand-fraud case because of “baseless accusations” they say Whitaker leveled the day before.'

We have a stinky fraud trial here, a federal trial concerning money siphoned from our state treasury. Dr. Whitaker was apparently close to one of the accused perpetrators.

Federal prosecutors complained he wasn't cooperative enough, and asked the judge to declare Whitaker a "hostile witness" so they could question him more freely. The judge agreed to designate him as hostile, but now the prosecutors have declared they don't want him to testify after all!

They are nonetheless entering some stuff about him into the trial record.

I don't get it. I don't think the reporters get it, either. I suspect it's some tricky technical legal thing.

But, but, but...
I'm baffled as to what.

Credulity Rationalized

From a writer in The Guardian:

"I choose to believe Jackie. I lose nothing by doing so, even if I’m later proven wrong – but at least I will still be able to sleep at night for having stood by a young woman who may have been through an awful trauma."

Again, belief is here justified not on the basis of evidence, not as a matter of plausibility, but as an evaluation of cost. Not utilitarian social cost this time, just self cost: "I lose nothing by doing so."

Whether you know it or not, you pay a terrible cost.
Your tether to reality is lost.

Police Involved Shootings

I was slow to notice, but lately, at least here in Chicago, whenever a cop shoots someone it's called a "police involved shooting".

In the old days, I think we just would have called it a "police shooting".

What do we gain by adding that "involved"?
That mystery, I fear, will not be solved.

A Matter Of Default

A utilitarian theory of belief, as put forth in the Washington Post:

"We should believe, as a matter of default, what an accuser says. Ultimately, the costs of wrongly disbelieving a survivor far outweigh the costs of calling someone a rapist."

So you shouldn't believe based on likelihood of truth. You should believe based on likelihood of relative costs to the accuser and the accused?

That form of deduction
suffers from suction.

UPDATE:

To be fair to the Washington Post, their media critic wrote:

"Under the scenario cited by Erdely, the Phi Kappa Psi members are not just criminal sexual-assault offenders, they’re criminal sexual-assault conspiracists, planners, long-range schemers. If this allegation alone hadn’t triggered an all-out scramble at Rolling Stone for more corroboration, nothing would have. Anyone who touched this story — save newsstand personnel — should lose their job."

Untruths

I worked as a reporter one summer for the City News Bureau, here in Chicago, way back in 1972. I would not call it glamorous, but it had its educational moments. On one of my very first days on the job, there was a story about 2 young women who claimed to have been raped and held overnight.

I thought it was a story to take seriously, but a lot of the older reporters were scornful, assuring me that this was a made-up story, an excuse concocted by the young women as a story to tell their parents about where they had been. As I recall, they turned out to be correct. The young women recanted.

I don't know how the older reporters knew better. Maybe friends on the police force had tipped them. Maybe there were unlikely details in the young women's stories. I don't recall. But I remember being shocked.

Tonight I went to call-backs for Arthur Miller's The Crucible, which is a play about a true event: young women accused other people of witchcraft, leading to the Salem witch trials. There were many unlikely details in the stories that the young women told. But they were believed. For a while. But a lot of people died before the town came to its senses.

It can be a harsh fruit to chew,
but it's something you have to do.
You're crazy if you deny
that people sometimes lie.

Also, today was the day that the Rolling Stone / UVA fraternity-rape story fell apart.

'“In the face of new information, there now appear to be discrepancies in Jackie’s account, and we have come to the conclusion that our trust in her was misplaced,” wrote managing editor Will Dana in “A Note to Our Readers” posted on the magazine’s Web site. (The magazine did not return calls for further comment.)'

Their reporter had failed to check out both sides of the story.

There's an old joke among journalists about the need for verification: "If your mother says she loves, you check it out." Sometimes the joke includes an admonition to come back with at least two other sources establishing the claim of maternal affection.

It may be hoary advice,
but check your story twice.

Loosies

You might wonder why the sale of loose cigarettes is a crime. The FDA specifically bans the practice:

"Do NOT sell single cigarettes, also called 'loosies'."

Apparently it's to protect the children! African American children in particular:

'In many urban areas, the widespread availability of single cigarettes known as "loosies" poses a significant threat to anti-smoking initiatives—and may be contributing to the high percentage of young adult African Americans who smoke, according to a Bloomberg School study published in August's American Journal of Public Health.'

This can lead to people accidentally dying while being forcibly arrested.

It may seem like a gentle nudge
but if one refuses to budge
in comes a swarm
of men in uniform.

Auditioning: The Crucible

Tonight I auditioned for a production of Arthur Miller's The Crucible. It's my favorite of his, although I haven't seen or read them all.

Back when I was a kid, everyone thought Death Of A Salesman was his masterwork, but I have the impression that Crucible gets more attention nowadays.

In the scene I read, I played Danforth, a deputy governor of Massachusetts, one of the officials running the Salem witch trials.

He's a scary dude in the scene I played.

He's making a witness sweat
while controlling his own inner panic
trying to deal with the threat
of secrets dark and Satanic.

Time is Money

The NY Times picks up a press release about a deteriorating situation:

"The vast majority of students at American public colleges do not graduate on time, according to a new report from Complete College America, a nonprofit group based in Indianapolis."

Some bachelors of arts
take more years to come to fruition.

The only bad part
is you have to keep paying tuition.

Also She Missed Her Plane

A scary headline at the Sun-Times:

"Security line at Midway Airport Sunday morning was reportedly a mile long"

Connoisseurs of the editorial arts will have noticed that "reportedly" disclaimer, which is kind of amusing, because I don't think they'd use that if one of their own reporters was vouching for the measurement. But in this case, it seems to have originated with an out-of-town TV reporter who tweeted she had measured the line at 1.2 miles.

It's hard to keep your Thanksgiving smile
when security stretches over a mile.