Suffrage the Children

I heard that people were all in a rage
To change the minimum voting age.
I thought they were saying sixty at first.
A little bit high, but perhaps not the worst.
And then I thought they were saying six.
That was my ears, just playing old tricks.
It’s really sixteen that is being proposed,
But six makes more sense, so my case is now closed.
What’s more, I think that the office of president
Should be open to every six year old resident.
Once you’re smart enough to read
Aren’t you ready to vote and lead?

Poet Nonlaureate

As poets go, in point of fact,
I’m anything but famous.
If you don’t know who I am,
You’re not an ignoramus.

Merely Rare

They say perfection’s impossible.
They say the world is glitched.
But baseball’s a counter example.
Perfect games have been pitched.

Month Two

February, you go so soon,
Leaving without leaping.
Sometimes you stay an extra day
For calendar housekeeping.
I dreamed we’d have more time but now
Your exit caught me sleeping.

To Bits

David Mamet has written a new play, about Harvey Weinstein. He has been talking to reporters in recent days, I think as part of a book tour for his new novel. Anyway, I found this paragraph from the Chicago Tribune interesting:

'He long ago and powerfully explored the matter of sexual exploitation in his 1992 two-character play (later a movie) “Oleanna.” “I think about this a lot now. I have a bunch of daughters, a young son,” he says. “Every society has to confront the ungovernable genie of sexuality and tries various ways to deal with it and none of them work very well. There is great difficulty when you are switching modes, which we seem to be doing now. People go crazy. They start tearing each other to bits.”'

"Ungovernable genie" is a nice phrase, and it does seem like people are tearing each other to bits lately. And the joining of the 2 ideas in a sentence makes me wonder if he was thinking of The Bacchae, the ancient Greek play in which the god of wine inspires a mob of women to literally tear a man to bits.

It's just a jest to declare
That a genie is involved,
But there may be puzzles here
That really haven't been solved.

It's Hard To Stop A Spree Killer In Advance, But...

I'm just gobsmacked by the repeated failures of law enforcement to stop this guy in Florida. The FBI received 2 tips, one extremely detailed and credible. The local cops had had a lot of prior dealings with this young man. And finally, to top it off, the sheriff's people had multiple officers stationed outside the school, guns in hand, positioned behind their cars, while the shooting was going on inside the school.

Yes, I realize it's early in the reporting cycle, and facts could still change, but...

When things just drop out of joint,
Suddenly, tragically wrong,
You often find there were multiple points
Of failure all along.

Blarney

The world's smartest pig
Is Irish, that's no sham.
His brain is extra big,
And he is a Cunningham.

Aftereffect

Melting snow
And rain galore
Have made my yard
A pond once more.

No Place Like

After I’ve journeyed
Around for a while
It’s good to return
To my own domicile.

In the San Jacinto Range

I do indeed worry I’ll fail
To keep to the right mountain trail,
But with GPS as my buddy,
Along with a bit of map study,
I somehow got out and back
While staying mostly on track.

In Palm Springs

Hummingbird hovering over the green,
Dipping for nectar while I sit serene,
What are the words that your song does not say?
Something perhaps that I might take away?

Petrified Forest National Park

Freakishly fossilized logs
From fallen Triassic trees,
Cells replaced by silica
And streaks of manganese.

Keeping My Mouth Shut

If your tongue
Got stung
By a bee
Would you be
Unable to speak
For most of the week?

News from Saugatuck

I've spent a lot of time in Saugatuck, Michigan. But this was news to me:

Saugatuck dog mistakenly approved for unemployment benefits

Will work for food
And improve your mood.

After Nine Days of Snow

From the Chicago Tribune:

"Southwest Airlines runs out of de-icer, cancels all flights from Midway"

In retrospect, having more de-icer
Would have been nicer.

Probiotic

I went to the airport cafeteria
To acquire an emotional support bacteria.
I sneaked it in, inside my system.
TSA just kind of missed him.

Up In The Air

Americans are getting wider and taller
But airplane seat space is getting smaller.
I’m scared to predict what will be the case
If both of these trends continue apace.

My Annual Metsphysical

A universe without stuffing
Would be a show about nuffing.

Dreaming

We’ll launch and eat our lunches
In electric cars,
Cruising midst the comets
On our way to Mars.

Horsedogship

Here is a funny short video of a neighbor's corgi riding a "one-eyed pony". It's another one of those "friendship across species" videos, but I was really struck by the extent of the cooperation in apparent imitation of human riding, especially since they reportedly worked this out on their own.

It's a dog and pony show.
I'm not sure how the dog says "whoa!"

Hopium

A friend of mine assured me
That winter was nearly gone.
I didn’t bother to argue.
I’m not sure what he was on.

Wendy MacLeod Bows to Crowd

"Kenyon professor calls off original play about cultural insensitivity amid criticism that it's culturally insensitive."

The playwright is Wendy MacLeod, who is pretty well known. Not like David Mamet, but pretty well known. And she is the "playwright in residence" at Kenyon College.

I've always wondered about these writer-in-residence jobs. They sound sweet. Except, apparently, that the sensitivity kids can keep you from putting up your play.

"The play is inspired by a true story in which a group of Guatemalan minors were forced to work on an Ohio egg farm; three of their captors were convicted and a fourth was indicted last year. MacLeod’s play imagines what might happen if one of the youth escaped to a nearby liberal arts college and encountered a group of less-than-culturally-sensitive white undergraduates."

But it wasn't "white" students who complained. It was "Latin American" students. They didn't like the way the Guatemalan was portrayed. They didn't like that another character used the word "illegal" to describe him. They didn't like that he didn't have many lines - and no English lines at all. They didn't like that he was a "stereotype".

Of course MacLeod caved.
And the college administration
Issued congratulations
On how they all behaved.

Beware of Rhyming Foods

An adventurous antelope
Whose mood was mostly jolly
Consumed a bad cantaloupe
And came down with meloncholy.

Pretzels, Better for Eating than for Posing

I’m bad at pretzel poses.
It’s really not my fault.
It’s just I always try them
With a great big grain of salt.

In case you raise the question,
That picture isn’t me.
The closest pose that I can do
Is known as Tipping Tree.

Unlikely

I saw an article claiming that credible academic philosophers are trying to revive panpsychism, the idea that everything, including stones and spoons, is conscious.

This makes me very happy, you see -
If rocks are conscious, there's hope for me!

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.

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.

Be Careful Who You Ask To Mind Your Gun

In Florida:

"Serial Killer Undone by Asking McDonald’s Co-Worker to Mind His Gun, Police Say"

Actually, he asked her to mind a bag. She peeked in the bag, found the gun, and took the bag to a cop who was sitting in the burger shop.

He had killed 4 people, apparently "randomly".

He deserves no break today.
Cage him, toss the key away.

Whoosh

Jump off a mountain
And into a plane.
I can’t stand to watch it.
It’s simply insane

Rooting Around

Seems to be from a reputable source:

"Wow, this is a bad one. On Macs running the latest version of High Sierra — 10.13.1 (17B48) — it appears that anyone can log in just by putting “root” in the user name field. This is a huge, huge problem. Apple will fix it probably within hours, but holy moly. Do not leave your Mac unattended until this is resolved."

Can this be true?
Boy, that's a flaw.
I stand in awe.
It's probably still against the law
To do
Unless the computer belongs to you.

It's a Dog's Life

Noisy doings in the Green Mountain State:

"SOUTH BURLINGTON, Vt. (WCAX) Keep your pooch out of the park. The South Burlington City Council has ordered the dog park at Jaycee Park be closed permanently. A notice went out saying it's due to excessive noise in the residential neighborhood."

Dog park not peaceful enough?
Maybe their voices are “Ruff!”

Shaky

Was Hamlet written by whom they claim
Or someone else with the very same name?

Show Me A Solution

Bureaucracy at work, probably combined with some ancient computer work-around:

"For decades, an idiosyncrasy in the mail delivery system has forced some rural northern Missouri residents to have Iowa mailing addresses, which has created roadblocks and red tape for residents when they vote or pay taxes — even when they die."

A U.S. Senator is now sticking her nose into it, saying it's one the dumbest thing she's heard. Will she succeed in unraveling this USPS mess? Time will tell. But I have my doubts.

If the post office will not budge
It might be simpler just to fudge
By drawing a new border
To comply with postal order.

Branagh and Pfeiffer

Saw Murder On The Orient Express.
I knew the plot but dug it nonetheless

Irony Alert

An odd case of righteousness in Florida:

"Authorities say a man who was fed up about people driving dangerously through a busy intersection decided to take matters into his own hands ... by driving dangerously through the intersection and causing a head-on collision."

He made the decision
To cause a collision
To show those darn cops
How folks blow through stops.

Positrons Aplenty

I studied dialectical materialism in school, but I got low Marx.

Actually, today I was reading an article headlined: "Earth Is Getting Hit by Too Much Anti-Matter, And Nobody Knows Why"

That's what got me thinking about Mr. Marx's theory.

What does dialectical materialism
Say about anti-matter?
It’s a breach of catechism
That could make a theory shatter.

DIY

Somebody got in trouble for this:



Police commented:

Here's a little advice to those aspiring to make their own license plates...
1. Don't.
2. But if you do, make sure not to use cardboard from a pizza box and magic markers.

Point number two points to a marketing opportunity:

There should be a program online
To print a convincing design.

The Jelly Wants

I've been mentioning Emily Dickinson, and the other night I heart an indirect Dickinson joke on the sci-fi comedy-drama TV show, The Orville.

There's a green translucent blob character on the show, sort of a big slithering mint jelly with a mouth. And he's in love with the human doctor on the spaceship. She has been refusing his advances.

So, the other night he declares to her, "The jelly wants what the jelly wants." Someone already made a meme of it:



Now, the direct reference is to a Selena Gomez song, "The Heart Wants What The Heart Wants," with lyrics that include these lines:

“There’s a million reasons why I should give you up
But the heart wants what it wants.”

And that's what gets us to Dickinson, to a letter, actually, not a poem:

"The Heart wants what it wants - or else it does not care -"

I'm not sure when this became a famous Dickinson quote. I took a college course once on Dickinson, and I don't recall discussing it. Of course, that was at the dawn of time.

Way back before the dawn of time,
I struggled to decode
A message wrapped in gentle rhyme,
But ready to explode.

Feline Mystery

Why do witches favor cats?
Is it to fight off vampire bats?
Is there in fact a running feud
Between them and that Dracula dude?

Belle of Amherst and a Local Review

Well, here's a Chicago Tribune theater review as summarized in one sub-headline:

"Kate Fry is a perfect Emily Dickinson in creaking 'Belle of Amherst'"

He heaps praise upon the actress. I saw her performance, and thought she was excellent.

But then he goes after the play itself, which is interesting. He thinks it's out of date in various ways.

"The piece lacks the deconstructionist complexity (and the recent academic contextualization) that audiences tend to seek out today."

But... how much do audiences really seek out academic contextualization? I imagine there's an audience for that, but that it's not really a big audience.

The play does put forth a certain interpretation of Dickinson. You can say the interpretation's out of date, but I'm not sure. She's one of those poets about whom we really don't know all that much. She remains veiled in mystery. A lot of academic interpretation is itself trendy, and is not really something new that we know.

I say, if you want academic contextualization of Emily Dickinson, go read some academic studies on the topic. But if you just want an enjoyable introduction, this play remains solid. It does a particularly good job of working her poetry right into the script.

I mean, really, she is a difficult poet for most people to get into. The fact that you can sit there and be comfortably introduced - while enjoying yourself - is remarkable.

Both the Trib reviewer, and another local reviewer, suggested that the theater company should have found a newer play about Dickinson.

But as for me,
I was glad to see
An old play well-performed,
That left my heart fully warmed.

No Baby Steps?

I just read a thoughtful piece about why it's hard to revitalize a lot of neighborhoods until they totally hit bottom.

The author pins the blame on all the rules and regulations that are often involved in fixing a place up:

'There’s no in-between. You either get permanent stagnation or massive redevelopment. Baby steps are essentially illegal. “Hold, wait, and do nothing” works for the little guy.'

I really appreciated this comment, pertaining to people who acquire a building and then abandon their initial project, once they find out how expensive it will be to do all the mandated extras:

'I’ve heard many officials and professionals get very derisive in their assessment of such efforts. “Oh, they were idiots. They didn’t do their homework before they started their project. What? They thought they could just do whatever they want with the place? There are rules you know.” These are precisely the same individuals who butter their bread each day with impact fees and billable hours. They have no skin in the game.'

When a neighborhood erodes
Examine the building codes.

Space Cat Graduation Chicago

Today's festival performance had a good sized audience laughing uproariously, which made me a happy camper indeed.

With drama, you want to the hushed silence of the audience hanging on every word.

With comedy, you want to hear some yukking.



The silly saga of kitties in space
Marches willy-nilly apace!

Spartan

I rewatched Spartan last night. It's an old thriller, starring Val Kilmer, written and directed by David Mamet. The story involves what we used to call white slavery - the abduction and selling of young women for sexual purposes. In this case, it involved kidnapping a young woman in Boston for the purpose of selling her in Dubai.

I've always wondered about the popularity of these story lines, because my impression is that there's a lot less of this sort of thing in real life than there is in the movies. In one way, that's not unusual. Movie crime rates do not reflect real life crime rates. Movies are full of criminal geniuses. Real life is full of criminal idiots. Criminal geniuses make for more interesting stories - partly because the idea of a criminal genius scares us. If there were a lot of criminal geniuses, would we every catch them? What if there ARE a lot of criminal geniuses, but in real life they just DON'T GET CAUGHT?

So, back to sex slaves, it occurred to me while watching that maybe Hollywood is attracted to this story line because there's so much "sexual exploitation" in real life in Hollywood. I put it in quotes because it's one of those phrases that can mean almost anything, but the daily accusations rolling out of Tinsel Town lately are anything but pretty. Maybe it's a way of dramatizing a situation the script writers know all too well - beautiful young people being lured into a world of dashed dreams.

By the way, the movie is mostly not about that. Retrieving the kidnapped girl is the "McGuffin", but it's more of a movie about tough guy maleness in the face of political betrayal.

The name of the movie seems to arise from this exchange between our hero and the young woman:

Scott: "One riot, one Ranger." You ever heard that?
Laura: Leonidas, King of Sparta... when a neighboring state would plead for military aid, would send one man.
Scott: Well, there you go.
Laura: You ever hear that?
Scott: No. I think we went to different schools.

The hero's kind of a working class snob
Who's very good at his job.

Unlikely

I cannot remember the words, but I was reading an old paperback detective novel set in Chicago, and the Obamas came up as witnesses of some kind. I found it hard to believe and tried to reread the sentence.

I was dreaming. A non-lucid dream, as usual. The closest thing to lucidity was when I found it hard to believe. I do find that the "jarring thing I found hard to understand" is what I often remember about a dream. Maybe it's just that my dreams are chock full of such jarring things.

Maybe, in my dreams,
I'm constantly wondering how surprising
Everything seems
While rarely recognizing
That I am deep
Asleep.

After a Workout

My back
Is out of whack.
Now I’m a grouch!
Ouch, ouch.

Tall Tale

I’m sure a giraffe
Enjoys a good laugh.
No joke, so it’s said,
Goes over his head.

Fall Back

I'm hearing a lot of complaining,
But today we are regaining
The hour stolen by DST.
This calls for triumphant glee!

Play News

1) My Puppies In Space is cancelled for now. It was supposed to be in a festival next weekend, but something went wrong in terms of organizing a cast.

2) My Space Cat Graduation, Chicago Edition, is still on. That's Saturday at 12:25 in the afternoon, in a block of short plays presented as part of the Paragon Science Fiction play festival.

3) I saw a preview performance of The Belle Of Amherst at Court Theatre. It's a classic one-woman play about Emily Dickinson, based on her letters, and including a lot of her poems. It's considered wrong to write a critical review of a preview performance, but I don't have anything critical to say. The actress, Kate Fry, who played Emily, was marvelous. I thought the whole thing was very effective. My wife liked it too, and she's not quite the Dickinson fan that I am.

Her life was like a cryptic note,
That hints but does not say.
Confused by all that stuff she wrote?
Just come and see this play.

That Was Close

I may have mentioned that in last Saturday's 50k run, I was pretty sure I had finished just under 7 hours. Well, "just under" turned out to be right. My time was 6:59:50. That made me the last person to have an official finishing time. People who finished after me just get listed as having finished:



It was very close, but...
I made the cut.

The El Train

The el train and the traffic lights transport me
To when I was in high school. I flash back.
Vague memories of yesteryear escort me
As I walk briskly underneath the track,
And contemplate the metalwork that seems
So antiquated, yet still bears the weight
Of bright young riders full of rising dreams.
I do not know, I cannot simply state
The reason why some quality of light
At dusk, downtown, with people all about,
Reminds me so how everything that’s right
Requires stepping forward into doubt.
The world is full of promise. See it glisten.
A song is in the air if you will listen.

Space Cat Appearances on Veterans Day Weekend

I have a ten-minute play being performed soon, about a couple of sentient but catnip-addicted felines. Here are the details.

SPACE CAT GRADUATION. Saturday, November 11, at 12:25 in the afternoon.
The Public House Theatre 3914 N Clark St, Chicago, IL 60613
This is a single performance of a play that ran for 4 weeks in Normal, IL in June 2017. Audiences laughed a lot. I was interviewed about the play here.

The ticket to my show includes a viewing of 3 other short shows, running in their entirety from 12:25 to 1:45 pm.

This show is part of the Otherworld Paragon Festival, which runs 40 science fiction plays in 2 days.
Ticket info is here.

So if you happen to live nearby
Please feel free to just say hi.

UPDATE: Sad to say, another 10-minute show I had scheduled, Puppies In Space, has been cancelled for now. It was in another festival. I'm told the director they chose was unable to get a cast together in time.