Privation

An avocado shortage
From coast to coast?
Among the foodie voters
Trump would be toast!

Tutero

I’m writing a phone app called Tutero,
To teach babies English in utero.
Study before you swaddle!
Formula ads are our business model.

Wasted

To save water we have got to pass a new rule.
It is now against the law for babies to drool.
April fool.

Dryer Innocent

The dryer made my clothing shrink.
That was what I used to think.
But to my surprise I found
It was my fridge that made me round.

Fascinating Question

Does “fascinate”
Rhyme with “fasten eight”?
Asking for a friend
Whose questions never end.

Interlaced

There is a sort of rhyme
Where the endings interlace.
It’s not an easy game
But it adds a certain spice.

Slate

We speak about “the slate”,
And when to wipe it clean.
But real ones, as of late,
Are seldom to be seen.
So rarely does one catch
That sound we love to hate,
When fingernails go scratch
Upon a board of slate.

A Friend Asked

A friend asked whether
I ever composed haiku.
Yes, sometimes I do.

To catch the fleeting
Moment is the endeavor -
In spare simple song.

Some say it’s cheating,
To sprinkle rhymes in the text
Where they don’t belong.

If purists are vexed
Does it mean I should worry?
Not in a hurry.

It Hides

It hides its hue from out your view,
Beneath the ground it’s grown.
A carrot doesn’t care at all
To make its orangeness known.

Infants

Infants keep parents up at night
With all too frequent appetite.

Recreational

Recreational linguistics
Is legal in Illinois.
No punishments for punning -
So feel free to enjoy.
But there’s a catch, of course:
It still is grounds for divorce.

Fear And Trembling

Why must the dominant narrative
Offered by every side
Always be so scarative?
My nervous system gets fried.

Freedom of Speech

Freedom of speech
Batters illusions,
But helps people reach
Better conclusions.

Beaty Again

Beauty is the priceless gift
That nature strews about.
You’re walking home, you’re feeling miffed,
Your heart is plunged in doubt,
But there’s a sunset straight ahead
That makes you stop and stare.
Where there was dread, you feel instead
The glory in the air.

Autopilot

Autopilot is good,
But this is worth a mention:
Someone upfront should
Still be paying attention.

Beauty

Whatever Beauty may be,
We recognize it easily,
But struggle to say
What makes it that way.

3.14

Circumference divided by
Diameter will give you pi.

Just So

According to my theories,
Which are very rarely wrong,
Hushing crying babies
Is why we invented song.

Academic Corruption

If anyone bribed Admissions
To get me into college,
I’m not admitting nothing -
It was done without my knowledge!

AI

Artificial Intelligence
Is right around the corner.
For fifty years that’s where it’s been.
I just wanted to warn ya.

Spring Forward

I look forward to Spring
But not to Spring Forward.
Because the next morning
I always feel horrid.

Armed Bears

Never write laws
Telling bears that their claws
Should be sheathed
So that we
Never bleed.
It’s pointless because
They can’t read.
Guaranteed.

Comics Page Synchronicity

Today in the Chicago Tribune funny pages, there were 2 strips involving pizza consumption AND 2 others involving donut consumption.

The jokes were unrelated. I think it means these are funny foods. Maybe they make us uneasy because we think they’re junk but we love them?

Of course we can also be amused
By food that is “healthy” but frequently refused.
For instance, people speak of broccoli
Very mockily.

You Are Getting Sleepy

CNBC had a credulous story about a hypnotist who will help you remember your crypto-currency password - for just half a bitcoin. That's about 1900 dollars at the moment.

When your password is lost
And you can’t face the cost
You might take a chance
On hypnotic trance.

The Hawk

Here in the winter
When people talk
About our fast wind
They call it the hawk.

It swoops right in
Where your flesh is bare
And rips at your skin
With cold, cold air.

Zzz

I just read the umpteenth article purporting to present scientific certainty that you can't "catch up on sleep" by sleeping longer on the weekend.

I know this is fake news.
Because my weekend snooze
Is sufficiently long and deep
To make up plenty of sleep.

Next Gen

If you happen to love children,
Grandchildren are kind of meta:
Recursively fulfilling.
Really, what could be betta?

Babies

Babies are adorable creatures
Who mix and match their parents’ features.

Nummy

Corn chips may not be
The world’s best snack,
But pardon my crumbs
While I crunch through a sack!

Social and Antisocial Media

People on Twitter
Seem bitter.
People on Facebook just fritter
Their time away
Looking at cats all day.

In Deep

I built a drill to bore
A tunnel to the earth’s core.
My design was truly complete
Except for one thing about heat.
Imagine the sorrow I felt
When it just happened to melt.

What People Respond To

In the Wall St. Journal today there was an article by a college professor who found that his students responded well to a course on Arthur Miller, whose heyday was in the 1950s. He said that Miller became passe partly because his plays followed a formal pattern and because Miller was a universalist not an identity-politics guy.

As an aside, the formal pattern is that of the Scribean well-made play, as re-worked by Ibsen, whose structure really goes way back to the ancient Greeks and probably well before that. Basically it's a story with a beginning, middle, end and some kind of point. In the 60s, there was a concerted effort to depart from this structure. Anyway, most people stayed loyal to the structure in their heart of hearts, because there's something primally human about it.

I was also reading an excerpt from an essay about Chinese science fiction. The claim was that Chinese scifi is still full of energy and optimism, and that this remains true for American scifi films, but not for American scifi writing. Well, I suspect that's true for some segment, but certainly not all, because I've certainly seen recent energetic scifi writing, including some by Sarah Hoyt and Lois McMaster Bujold. Probably they're not the people the Chinese are perceiving as high-status in terms of American critical reception.

Critical reception can be misleading
About what people are actually reading.

Hoaxed

Assuming for now that the local police have cracked the Smollet case, I want to say that it was an excellent hoax in one respect: it got a lot of people emotionally involved in the drama, infused with righteousness and ready to condemn their opponents who would dare to doubt the veracity of the victim. It was one of these unlikely “wedge” dramas that casts one set of citizens as heroic and the other set as villainous. It pretended to present the MAGA tribe as just what their opponents always suspected they truly were.

They felt so sure
But they weren’t.
Now they endure
Being burnt.

Dramatics

If in fact he faked this crime
He could start by paying for the detectives’ overtime.
There’s enough bad stuff that happens in this city.
No need to make it up - it’s just a pity.

More of the Same

Rain and snow and rain,
Covering every lane
With a slippery layer of ice.
Not nice, Mother Nature, not nice!

Unraveling

The Maga-country story seems to be coming apart. I guess the coming days will tell. There were always public details that were head-scratchers, beginning with the fact that downtown Chicago is not Maga-country.

I'm interested in the people who are now writing things like "I wanted this story to be true".

Did they want it to be true
To validate their point of view?

Hero’s Lot

MacBeth was wrong to take his wife’s suggestions,
Othello fell for his lieutenant’s tricks,
Young Hamlet seemed to asked too many questions,
And that’s what got these fellows in a fix.
Henry the Fifth, however, did just fine,
Despite a youth of foolishness and play,
Despite consuming tankards full of wine.
If there’s a moral here, I cannot say.
In Tragedy the playwright plops you down
Into a plot you’re not prepared to handle.
He gives you virtues, wealth, and fair renown,
But never quite enough. Out goes your candle.
Your odds are better, really it’s no mystery,
If you are made the hero of a History.

V Day

Take time off from daily strife
And focus on what you love in your life.

Mitochondria

Frankly I’m enraptured
Mitochondria got captured
By some old ancestral cell.
They’re my favorite organelle!

Brrr

Most people claim that cats have fur.
From what I’ve seen, I must concur.
But I’ve heard there’s one that’s hairless.
In this weather, that sounds careless.

Slip Sliding

It's shiny but really it only looks nice.
Freezing rain coats the world in ice.

Thessalonians 3:10

If you're unwilling to work,
It's often hard to find pay.
How can we help those who shirk?
Surely there must be a way!

Merchants of Truth

Jill Abramson, former editor of the NY Times, has written a book about modern journalism, calling for a maintenance of high standards... and then the book got called out for plagiarism. And now she says mistakes were made.

What is wrong with these people? This came from a major publisher - Simon & Schuster.

Professors have software for catching plagiarists. It's used at many colleges. Couldn't Simon & Schuster spring for such software?

Enough publishers have been caught like this - with celebrity authors - that they ought to have the sense to protect themselves.

I wonder if celebrity authors are a little more inclined to pull this nonsense because many of them have fallen prey to a sense of invulnerability that can come with high status.

No matter how great your renown,
Though you soar way up high with the birds,
If you steal other writers' words
They will angrily shoot you down.

Blondie and the Cold

I've got a yellow Lab. Labs have a rep of being good in cold weather, and of being outdoorsy. Blondie likes the outdoors, but she doesn't like being alone in the yard. She's so sociable, she seems to get lonely, despite the intermittent walkers-by. And when it comes to the cold, well, if it's down around zero Fahrenheit, she really doesn't like it much. The big vulnerability seems to be in her paws. Of course, in humans, it's the digits that get cold first, too. So I ordered some wax to put on her paws for the extreme cold, because she doesn't seem to want to wear booties.

But tonight I took her for a walk in a pretty good downpour, with temperatures just above freezing. So that was a cold shower, by human standards. Didn't bother her at all. I suppose that matches to the breed's original function - helping hunt ducks in the autumn, gladly diving into cold water to retrieve ducks that have fallen into a pond, and so forth.

She also has the "retrieving" characteristic. She carries things around in her mouth all day.

It's too bad I'm not a hunter! She'd probably enjoy it.

Would she be a good retriever?
I'm a firm believer.

Vocations

I think that everyone
Can learn to code,
But learning to love it
Is a harder road.

So Sue Me

Read about a show-boating anti-natalist in India, who claims he wants to sue his parents for giving birth to him without his consent.

No one consents in advance to the gift of birth.
But without it, what is anything worth?

Wind out of the Sout

After subzero
Comes the big thaw.
Loveliest mud puddles
I ever saw.

Missed Opportunities by Jillian Leff

I went in with good expectations, but my wife was with me and she is a tougher critic than I am. Well, she was laughing from the beginning, always a good sign with a comedy!

I got to know Jillian Leff when she acted in a play of mine a couple of years ago. She was a talented performer onstage and a fun person to talk to offstage - full of witty-but-upbeat observations about contemporary life.

Now she's starring in a play of her own, put on by the Cuckoo's Theater Project Company. It's a romantic comedy of a modern, Millenial sort, involving a woman (Max) trying to attract the romantic attention of a man who thinks she's a lesbian. Of course, she could just tell him that she's not, right? But, no, for a variety of reasons she is reluctant to take the straightforward (ahem) approach, and instead embarks on a rather funny course of deception, which gets deeper and deeper, as deception does. You know the truth is going to spill or explode eventually, but the tension keeps building.

The acting was very funny. The set and lighting design was an elegant solution for a play that had a lot of scene changing. The sound design provided us with some amusing stuff when characters are working their electronic devices, including a voice-over so that we could eavesdrop on what our heroine was typing when she was writing her blog entries.

I have a minor complaint: I wish the actors had delivered their lines a little bit slower. Maybe I'm just old, but I know I was missing some funny jokes now and then! The repartee was crisp and new. As long as I'm mentioning my age, I should mention that the Den Theatre's third floor spaces are reachable only by stairs. Not a problem for me or my wife, but I know if could be an issue for some.

Jillian told me she has a couple more full-length plays in the works, which pleased me greatly, because it gives me more of her work to look forward to.

I enjoyed this opportunity
To laugh at some human lunacy!

That Day Again

Today it occurred to me that Bill Murray had starred in 2 films where one of his co-stars was a varmint.

Caddyshack is a less coherent film, due to improvising without a script; it was stolen during editing by the gopher puppet, as the film editor searched for a way to give the film a comprehensive story arc. Groundhog Day had a solid script, and used actual groundhogs, who did not steal the film, but who did bite Murray, resulting in his being give a set of rabies shots.

Bill Murray’s costarring critters
Were very persistent - not quitters.

Goose Egg

Everyone talks about temps being plus or minus,
But there's another temp, kind of a zero, known for its awkward shyness.

Preparedness

If you think it's overly cold weather,
You haven't put enough layers together,
To cover your skin,
The most important layer you're in.

Library Play

I wrote a ten-minute play for the Heartland Theatre Summer Festival contest. I've submitted to them 4 times before. I've only made it into the festival once. But those are pretty good odds, all things considered. A ten-minute play is a fair amount of work, but if you're under enough pressure it can be written in a day or two. As a matter of fact, when you write for a 24-hour festival, you have to write your ten-minute play in about 9 hours, max.

I liked the way this one came out, which makes me a little more optimistic about it. And my wife was enthusiastic about it, another good sign.

They choose blind, without knowing the author of the play, so they don't discriminate either way as to prior successes in getting into the festival. And despite my success there with Space Cat Graduation, I didn't create a "space kitties in the library" play, so they won't identify me as the author that way, either.

The theme of this summer's festival is "The Library". You might say it's more of a writing prompt than a true theme, but you get the idea. They get a lot of submissions, and I heard from them that there's a tendency to get multiple submissions touching on familiar ideas about a topic. So I figure they will get a bunch of plays about long-overdue books and the "Shush!" rule, and probably a bunch of pieces touching on the fact that books are going digital.

I had a complete false start on Saturday. Wrote about 3 pages and froze up right where I was going to put a 3rd character onto the stage. Rethought the whole thing, and stuck to just 2 characters.

Well, I'll know in a couple of months.

It was fun to create,
And now I wait.

Going Polar

It’s silly but I feel like a hero
When I show up at work when it’s way below zero.
That’s Fahrenheit, where zero has some force.
Chicago endures Celsius zero as a matter of course.

Alert

If you see spots on your weasels
You might have your vet check for measles.

Genetic Revisionism

23andMe said I was a tiny percentage Sardinian, and a tiny percentage Ashkenazi. In both cases, it was under 3/10 of a percent.

Now, those percentages are mysteriously missing when I visit the site.

That's okay, because I never knew where they came from in the first place.

At least my tiny percentage of Native American is still showing. Maybe that's actually real.

Since they were less than one percent,
I don't much wonder where they went.
All in all, it's simply fairer
To say they fell in the margin of error.

Depressing

Watched security footage of 2 winter-coat robbers, who got out of a white Mercedes, and forced a 54 year old man to give up his pricey Canada Goose jacket.

Stealing the coat off your back.
They’ve got stuff, but it’s conscience they lack.

Treasure Planet

I'm reading Treasure Planet from the Man-Kzin War series. I did not realize that it was going to be a direct take-off on Stevenson's Treasure Island. But as I was reading along, the pacing of the book just felt... 19th century.

I've got nothing against Stevenson. Take-offs like this can be interesting. I read the Pournelle-Niven scifi take-off on Dante's Inferno and enjoyed it. But I like to know going in!

The most jarring thing is this talk-like-a-pirate thing on another planet, without any particular explanation offered for why the giant space tigers should sound like Long John Silver. Well, maybe the authors will present an explanation before they're done.

Of course, the name should have been a warning, if I'd really been thinking!

For now I think I'll keep reading
To see where things are leading.

If Dogs Have Dreams

If dogs have dreams,
And I think they do,
Are they just as chaotic
As those I view?

Mine aren’t just viewed,
They’re also felt.
And for dogs, I bet,
They’re always smelt!

As an afterword, I'm not the best recaller of dreams, but I know that I sometimes smell things in my dreams, because I have occasionally half-woken, seeming to smell something in the air - usually something burning. I lie there, half-awake, trying to figure out if the smell is real. As a rule, it is not.

Moonshot Memories

I saw a moonshot launch when I was young,
One of the last, of course, for then they stopped
Our trips to that great ball of rock that’s hung
Above our planet like lighted lure.

The cylinder was lifted on a column
Of blazing fire. We knew that it was topped
By men who risked their lives, so something solemn
Caught in our throats as they began their tour.

I’d say that we are bound to go again.
I’d say our sister rock is out there still
Awaiting visitation from our kind.

The tech improves, the prices drop, and then -
Though many claimed we’d simply lost the will -
The thirst to sail rehaunts the human mind.

Asp in Her Grasp

Went to an art museum in California that I’d never heard of: the Norton Simon Museum. People I went with asked what my favorite piece was and I said Cleopatra about to kill herself. They said they hadn’t seen it, but when I showed them the picture they had in fact seen it, but hadn’t read the caption, and hadn’t noticed that off to the side she had her hand on a dark serpent.

It’s easy to make a mistake
If you don’t see the snake.

At the Train Station

In case you just love pics
Of bricks.

Transmission

I don’t like when people cough
Behind me on the train.
Of course it’s the season for colds, but I...
Would just as soon abstain.

Whispering Safer Than Texting

It is rude that a man should write passionate things and then learn
That his words have been plastered all over the net - what a burn.

Crystalline H2O

I’ve always read that birds require a lot of food each day to fly about.
So when the snow is on the ground, what do they eat or do they go without?

Real Life Laughs

Sometimes I search the news
For items that amuse.
I thank the world's reporters
For a steady stream of snorters!

They Arrive Unannounced

When, with little warning,
At one o’clock in the morning,
You get a great idea,
You should write it down, that’s clear,
But check it in the daylight
To see if it will play right.

Mortality

People say that life is short. Of course, compared to eternity, it's true. Our ability to comprehend time far outstrips our ability to occupy it. But, compared to most other animals, our lives are long.

The human mind can comprehend
Far more than it can occupy.
We take, we give, we love, we live,
Before we die.

And after,
I hope to be remembered, at times, with laughter.

My Father

RIP Jack Enright, 1927-2019

You might say he was not an easy man.
A prosecutor in his early days,
Something combative lurked within his ways,
Across his life, a long nine-decade span.

I don’t recall the day my life began,
But he was there, and in my memory’s haze,
I see him still, a giant in my gaze,
A loving father, head of our small clan.

His voice is in my head; his turns of thought
Are permanently burned into my brain
For better or for ill. His stories taught
That wits and guts should both be roundly brought
To bear when there is justice to attain.
Alas, I cannot shake his hand again.

Working on Sunday

After you've stared at numbers all day,
Watching them add and subtract,
You may feel just a little dismay
That most things aren't so exact.

A Sunny Thought

Behold the wild flower.
It grows on fusion power.

Parenthetically

A math rule we all hold in awe
Is called the commutative.
Some claim I’ve broken that law,
But those charges are putative.

Hoping Your New Year Is A Happy One

I prefer to plan ahead.
2019? Too near. Instead,
I'm forming resolutions for 2020.
Not finished yet, but trust me, I've got plenty.

Say Cheese

I came across an article claiming that cheese was as addictive as cocaine.

A very logical friend of mine pointed out that this would mean that cocaine was as addictive as cheese.

A scientifically-focused friend of mine pointed out that this was all about the dopamine - things we like tend to release dopamine in our nervous systems.

Here's something from me that's predictive:
Everything you enjoy is "addictive".

An example, just to be fair:
I'm super-addicted to air.

Vampires of the Creepy Kind

In reference
To bed bugs,
My preference
Is dead bugs.

Warmish

The artificial daylight of the street lamps in the city
Reflects across the puddles with a yellow-orange glow.
The trees are bare, the grass is pale, but somehow it’s all pretty,
And I’m just glad the rainfall wasn’t blankets full of snow.

Diplomacy Was Not

Diplomacy was not her strongest suit.
Her strongest suit was grasping the essential.
She’d lay the facts out with a sort of brute
Display of logic, taut and consequential.
And if you did not like it, you were free
To figure out a way to disagree
But sometimes you would find your dreams were haunted
By her conclusions, proven but unwanted.

Diplomacy is not the highest art.
It leaves the mind bedazzled but unsure
Exactly what was in the speaker’s heart.
Was it pure gold or was it just manure?
She told the truth she saw, from where she stood,
Believing that its power was for the good,
And while it sometimes meant she lost a friend
She lived for real, not having to pretend.

Aquaman

Monday night we saw Aquaman with one of my wife's brothers. I can't say I was crazy about it, but it wasn't bad. I'm just a bit jaded about giant CGI battle scenes. I like them, but in somewhat smaller doses, I guess, than the average movie-goer.

Aquaman is about an individual, scorned as an illegitimate half-breed, who becomes the ruler of Atlantis. I was thinking of telling people that it was a metaphor for Trump. But they might take me seriously. I suppose I could also argue that it was a metaphor for Obama. Butm again, someone might take me seriously.

But seriously, there's great appeal, at times, in putting an outsider in charge. I suppose that was actually going on with both Obama and Trump.

Under the sea
Or up on the land
The powers-that-be
Can get out of hand.

Ho ho ho

Plenty of empty seats on the train.
Where are my fellow workers?
Christmas Eve has struck again
And turned them into shirkers!

Semicolons

Semicolons have somehow dropped out of fashion;
They’re good at precision but poor at projecting passion.

Belated Welcome

I finally got an email from the Chicago Marathon indicating that I was selected for 2019. It wasn't a welcome exactly, it was an "update", but I'll take it. I was actually kind of worried about not getting an email from them - even though the website listed me as "selected".

I can list off the bad things about the Chicago Marathon.

1) it is slow to start, with 30,000 fast people in front of me. Really, it takes about an hour to get to the start line.
2) it is kind of crowded the whole way

I can list the good things too:

1) great crowd support
2) it is so darn flat
3) I don't have to drive far to get to it

I will tell you how it all works out in October 2019. Yeah, that's a downside too. You have to commit to the race way in advance.

Of course, you can run the same distance on your own
In your own neighborhood
But there are stoplights and no free Gatorade
So your time is never as good.

Gingerbead

I saw there's some silliness going on about the gingerbread man. Is he really a man? Should we refer to the cookie as a gingerbread person? Don't we have something more exciting to argue about? This seems so 2017. After all, we know from the famous nursery rhyme, that he identifies as a man. "Run, run, as fast as you can. You can't catch me - I'M THE GINGERBREAD MAN!" Capitalization added. So is it written. So shall it be.

The gingerbread man, he likes to claim
His fast pace can't be beaten.
But every year, about this time
He ends up caught and eaten.

Forms

I ran into this online, apparently attributed to Douglas J. Steele:

There was a young man
From Cork who got Limericks
And Haiku confused.

I thought that was pretty funny. It helps to know that County Limerick borders County Cork in Ireland.

A guru whose humor was blue,
Wrote what he claimed were haiku.
They ran on too long
And rhymed like a song
And ended like limericks, too.

Passed Over

Oh sure, you may laugh,
But I was hoping to be the chief of staff!

Delayed

Something must’ve gone wrong
With the Lyft driver’s locator.
I waited and waited too long.
Now I’m catching a train much later.

Vortex

I'm puzzled. I seem to have been selected in the drawing for the Chicago Marathon 2019. That's not puzzling, since the odds are about 53 to 47. What's puzzling is that they were supposed to notify me, and they have my email address in their system, but the did NOT notify me. I had to log into my participant account, where I could see that I was listed as "selected".

Very understated. And I had to go ask for it. Where's my hyped up, "Welcome runner!" email?

Maybe my electronic welcome got lost in the space-time vortex somewhere. I realize they have many to send out.

On a completely different topic, I gave blood tonight.

There's always a need
For this stuff that we bleed.

In Place of Dew

The grass is embossed
With silver-gray frost.

TGIF

Pity now the Ancient Greeks
Who didn’t mark their days by weeks
And as a result forgot to take
Their weekend break!

Sniffle

Why do anteaters rarely catch colds?
Is it from drinking hot toddies?
The answer’s so simple, you’ll gasp when you’re told:
They’re just full of antie-bodies!

Duck

Why does a duck have feathers?
To cover its butt quack, of course!
If I tell this joke to my wife,
I fear she’ll want a divorce.

Gnomic

Forget that elf on the shelf!
I’m getting a troll in a hole,
So instead of observing myself,
I’ll be mocked by an underground mole.

Gnite

Some say sleep is overrated
But I think that’s best debated
After a nice long snooze
To illustrate my views.

Protagonists

There's a simplified schema for storytelling, in which there is a single protagonist on a mission.

And there are a lot of great stories like that.

But they don't all have to be that way. Romances, for example, whether comic or tragic, are more often of the "takes two to tango" structure. This does not prevent them from having a very strong, rather archetypal, story structure.

The hero with a thousand faces
Entangles with a heroine with superior social graces
And then it takes while
For things to reconcile.

Divergent

I haven’t a clue
So please tell me how
It can be that thou
Doesn’t rhyme with you?

Damage

"In the late 1940s, the United States experienced a “lobotomy boom” where the use of the lobotomy expanded exponentially... We argue that government provision and funding for public mental hospitals and asylums expanded and prolonged the use of the lobotomy. We support this claim by noting the lobotomy had virtually disappeared from private mental hospitals and asylums before the boom and was less used beforehand."

Somehow the guy who developed it was given a Nobel for his efforts:

"In 1949, the Portuguese neurologist António Egas Moniz received the Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine for his development of the prefrontal lobotomy — a procedure in which the connection is cut to a part of the brain called the prefrontal cortex in mentally ill, depressed or learning disabled people. As the procedure can send patients into a vegetative state, lobotomies are now believed to be wildly unethical."

I'd rather have a bottle in front of me
Than a frontal lobotomy.
But in the 40s, this form of doom
Enjoyed a boom.

Cryptic Critters

Wombats, for what it’s worth,
Are certainly not of this earth.
They are aliens of high IQ,
Disguised to spy on me and you.

Weatherwise

My phone says snow.
My eyes see rain.
So I don’t know
What to tell my brain.

Wachagudfer

Decades ago, someone gave me a story called Tanner, set in a struggling Western frontier village named Wachagudfer, which was a humorous reformatting of "What'cha good for". The idea was that the town had an ethos that you should only move to the town if you had something to contribute. The story was about a dwarf who was an expert tanner and leather worker, who is eventually welcomed into the town, not because of a desire for diversity, but strictly because of his talent and hard work. I'm a sucker for such stories, and found it quite heartwarming. I was the poetry editor for a little magazine named Nomos at the time, and expressed some interest in publishing the story. I was not in actual contact with the author. Someone had passed the story along to me. And they passed back the information to me that the author, one Alexander R. Smyth, didn't want to publish it quite yet.

It seems that Smyth died in a car accident in 1999. And in 2012 his widow, Linda L. Fraser, published The Wachagudfer Stories, Simply Told, Book 1.

There are 3 stories. The first one is Tanner, which is just 18 pages long, and which is just as heartwarming as I remember it. But the next 2 stories are quite a bit longer, since the book runs to 450 pages or so.

The odd thing is that there is no online record of this book. So I cannot link to it! It's amazing, since it has a nice distinctive title. I was able to find information about the author, but not about the book.

I am in shock, over this search engine fail.
For now I will proceed to the next tale.

Visit Complete

Let there be no doubt:
Childproof doorknobs work great at locking me out.

Now that the grandkids aren't in town anymore,
Who will help me get this thing off the door?

Time Distortion

Why on earth is it called a fast?
Slowly, slowly the hours go past.

CDC

Amid the scary hoopla
Of the dreaded Romaine purge,
I have ventured toward Arugula,
To satisfy my lettuce urge.