Subtext

I was looking at a book on writing plays, and I liked this quote on subtext, which has to do with dialogue that communicates somewhat indirectly:

"Subtext is often found in two areas: understatedness and inarticulateness. The British are masters of the former... Americans of the latter."

I love subtext, in its place, but it puts demands on the actor, who needs to understand what he is not spelling out.

Poorly acted subtext
Can leave you sorely vexed.

Merry Christmas!

Hump day is my favorite
But I’m not at work to savor it!
I have no emails to answer,
Not even from Rudolph or Dancer.

NYC Declared Rudest

Don’t tell me to have a nice day!
I’ll have it my own way.
Because what makes me happy
Is having a day that’s crappy.

North / South

A winter solstice here
Is a summer solstice there,
But at the equator
I hear they just don’t care.

Let Sleeping Dogs Lie

If burglary
Is on your mind
A wide-awake dog
Is awkward to find.
Is he just friendly,
Or will he bite?
Sometimes it's best
To flee in the night.

Bananas

I had a banana for breakfast,
But made no money at all.
If only I’d had the wisdom
To tape it on the wall!
I mean, let’s get real,
That is art with appeal.

Morning Sighting

Cat on a neighbor’s roof,
Contented and aloof.
No one can really say why,
But they like to sit where it’s high.

Commas

I like the vocal comma. 

You put it wherever you pause. 

No need for urgent drama

About different kinds of clause

Or exact grammatical laws

On what precedes the “and”

In lists that get out of hand. 

Building a Snowman

You start, of course, with snow.
Make sure it’s not too cold.
You want it wet like dough,
So when the balls are rolled,
Each puny starting piece
Will rapidly increase.
It’s good advice, at least,
If you live in the Northeast.

Boom

After defeating fascists on two fronts,
The greatest generation, still undaunted,
Married in haste, in record setting amounts,
And had as many children as they wanted.
They welcomed new life, after facing doom.
That’s the story of the baby boom.

Frozen

If your turkey’s so big
It inspires awe,
It might be time
To begin the thaw.

His Food Bill May Put You In Debt

The elephant seal
Is less than ideal
As a pet.

He eats lots of fishes
And sleeps where he wishes
And seldom shows signs of regret.

My Dear Watson

What canal runs through
Both peasants and gentry?
The answer, I tell you,
Is quite alimentary.

Precondition

I’d like the opportunity
To testify under immunity.
But first I need to join a plot
To do some things that we should not.

In Passing

As to the weather, let’s make one thing clear:
Autumn was my favorite day this year.

Dead Language

Saw this in an NBC article:

‘Asked to further elaborate on her statement regarding bribery, Pelosi said, "Well, you know we’re talking Latin around here — e pluribus unum, from anyone, quid pro quo, bribery, and that is in the Constitution, attached to the impeachment proceeding."’

“E pluribis unum” is not “from anyone” - it’s “from many, one”! They sound similar, but what is going on here? I’m going to give Pelosi the benefit of the doubt, and blame the reporter, Rebecca Shabad.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/trump-impeachment-inquiry/pelosi-first-impeachment-testimony-corroborated-evidence-bribery-n1082311

I hope they fix it.
Ipse dixit!

Accept

I too use cookies to improve performance.
When work is dragging, the boost can be enormous.

Fishy News

SeaWorld CEO
Arrested for squid pro quo.

Ahead of Schedule

When the cold comes early

My attitude gets surly. 

I prefer more time to prepare

For the arrival of arctic air. 

CST

I’m glad we got that hour back.
All summer long, I felt its lack.
But must the afternoon fade to black?

Low Spirits

If channeling ghosts
Fills you with tedium,
You probably won’t
Be a happy medium.

Keeping Time

It’s true that DST is going away,
Causing some people to weep.
So flip your hourglass one time more that day
And catch some extra sleep.

Maybe Not

I was thinking of trying meth.
Wakes you up like coffee, but without the coffee breath.
But instead of teeth discoloration,
They exit to an undisclosed location

Chicago Marathon Yet Again

I ran the Chicago Marathon yesterday. Cool weather. 40s-50s. Very good conditions for setting a world record apparently, since a young woman from Kenya set a new women's world record on the course. She would have been about half-way done by the time I got started. The first wave started at 7:30 AM, and she would have been near the head of that. The third wave, my wave, started at 8:35 AM, and I was nowhere near the head of that.

I was very happy with my race, not because I was particularly fast, but because I did not struggle with leg cramps. I'm not sure what made the difference, to tell the truth. It's hard to do controlled experiments on yourself on an event that you do only a couple of times a year. But I suspect it helped a lot that I stopped taking my daily statin medicine for three days. Statins tend to do a great job of lowering your blood's lipid levels, but they can cause muscle cramps in some individuals. Normally, I'm not bothered. But I think that with really intense, long races, I may be vulnerable. So, having talked it over with my doctor, I took a few days off, and I think it made a big difference. Well, we'll see what happens during my next prolonged endurance event.

Avoiding pain
Is a kind of gain.

Aquatic

Yellow Submarine and Octopus’s Garden
Are almost the same song.
If that sounds mean, I beg your pardon.
Feel free to tell me I’m wrong.

Trust

On a lonesome street without a map,
No detour shall I fear. 
I’m counting on the driving app
To get me out of here!

Corny

Explored a maize maze.
It did feel vaguely haunted,
And took longer than I wanted,
But at least it wasn’t days.

Misdirected

I think because I like to read

About medical conditions 

I often find my Facebook feed

Is filled with admonitions

To end my imputed worry

By calling a doc in a hurry. 

Low Profile

People in witness protection,
Can contribute to Wikipedia,
But shouldn’t pose selfies
On social media.

Reading Lucretius

Ancient thinking about atoms
Was mostly clever guesses,
But they got a few things right,
So yes, it still impresses.

Beeing

To be a bee,
Or not to be,
To spend your hours
Touring flowers,
And dancing jive
In a buzzing hive,
To sit around secreting honey -
Honestly, it all sounds funny.

No Ice Yet

Construction season continues

Upon our city streets. 

We’ll take a break for winter,

And then it all repeats. 

Etymological Equity

Why is it called equinox
And not equiday?
I just want to get that question
Out of the way.

On the Vine

Here, this year’s pumpkins are seen
In a vibrant non-rhyming color.
Without them, Halloween
Would be monstrously duller.

Alien Immigration

When the aliens come from space
I hope Antarctica is the place
They choose to build their permanent base.

No one really seems to care
Much about the land down there,
Covered as it is in ice.

And if they look like penguins, that would be nice.

On Schedule

Acorns are dropping
And the squirrels are hopping.

Fuzzy

Certainty
Admits of degree.
But not, in the average case,
To a specified decimal place.

Delayed and Afraid

When they blame mechanical problems
I always want to ask
Exactly which part of the choo-choo
Wasn’t quite up to the task.
I want to know which I should worry about:
The engine or the brakes?
Should I worry when starting or worry when stopping,
For that is the difference it makes!

Preferences

I don’t care much for jam
In the paper or traffic flavor.
But when it comes to strawberry,
I’m very much in favor.

The Dogged Pursuit of Wealth

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

Young Fortinbras

We don’t need one million monkeys. 

We have computers as flunkies

To randomly generate text. 

Could “Hamlet, The Sequel” be next?

Getting a Shock from a Cuban Croc

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

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

Native Slavery

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

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

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

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

Motivation

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

Sore the Next Day

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

Artistic

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

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

Enterprising

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

Nocturnal Neighbors

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

Classifications

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

Icebox in the Summer

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

Alaskan Inner Passage

Whale
Tail.

Sailing

I am prone to motion sickness.
It can strike with startling quickness.
I did bring meds to use,
But so far on this cruise
I’ve had no queasy blues.
The seas are calm, it seemeth,
And this boat is a behemoth!

Wigging Out

I’m going with grey
For my man-bun toupee.

I Just Kant

The thing in itself
Sits high on a shelf
Away from prying eyes.

Trust me. It’s there.
Yes, its features are bare,
But it’s sort of a mystery prize

That we like to discuss
Just among us,
To see who can tell the best story

Of intuitive laws,
Preceding all cause,
And rising beyond category.

Cats

Jennifer Hudson can sing.
Francesca Hayward can dance.
The trailer's the freakiest thing.
It puts me in a trance.

In His Shell

I was biking on a trail that goes by a small body of water, when I saw a good sized something on the road. So I stopped to check it out. It’s hard to tell from this pic, but he was big, maybe a foot wide?

When I returned, he was no longer there.
I won’t say he vanished into thin air,
Since, unless I make a mistake,
He probably vanished into the lake.

At Moonrise

A baby baboon
In a bassinet
Blew a rollicking tune
On an ancient bassoon
While a dancing raccoon
Played the castanets.

Looking Back

We thought that when we landed on the moon,
The Soviets would be behind us soon.
But decades after we swore “the moon or bust!”
It’s just American footprints in that dust.

Grumble

How annoying of clouds
To turn loud.

50th Anniversary

Old poem of mine about a big day for the human race, the first moon landing.

The arena is silent -
Indifferent.
Nothing lives nor stirs -
Except -
What’s this occurs?
A man has stepped -
Put his print -
Into the sand -
And,
Behind him, distant,
A race has learned to stand.

Delightful

I’ll tell you a truth that I have grasped firsthand:
The children of your children are truly grand.

Trying Out

When auditioning,
I try to just do it.
I feel for those listening
Who have to review it.
They must guess who’d be best
To cast in their show.
That job is hard, too.
Trust me, I know.

Grown to be Shown, Not Thrown

Snowballs in July
Please the eye.

After the Break

On this day when we celebrate our break with England, I was reminded of my shock in coming across a statue of George Washington in London’s Trafalgar Square.

After the break
We found ways to make
Common cause
Always deeply aware of each other’s flaws.

Molded

From a book I just finished: “...the environment and our own choices molded us as much as our genes.” (Darkship Renegades by Sarah A. Hoyt, p. 465 in paperback edition.)

Well said, and I liked specifically that she included our choices as something that makes each of us unique. In the endless nature vs. nurture debate, you too rarely hear choice mentioned as a viable third force that shapes our characters. For a while I’ve pondered what third word could possibly work poetically with the other two. Tonight I’m thinking of calling it the nature vs. nurture vs. virtue debate. Virtue has a nice verbal ring with the other two, and in philosophy something called Virtue Ethics seems to be a rising cause. It seems to derive from Aristotle whose ethics made much of the way choices accumulate to become virtues or vices.

When it comes to a pleasing phrase
I find I cannot rest
Until the way I plead my case
Passes the aural test.

***

Nature, nurture, virtue:
All three have a role
In shaping who we are,
At the core of our soul.

Picnic Favorite

When I was a kid, I thought the dish
Was simply called Cold Slaw.
So who was Cole and why did he wish
To eat his cabbage raw?

AKA Australian

People who voted badly
Need to be publicly shamed.
That dreadful secret ballot
Lets them escape unnamed!

Local 5k

Third place guy in my age group
Accidentally ran off course.
Second place guy in my age group
Ran on artificial hips.
I took first place in my age group,
I ran with maximum force,
But either might have beat me
With slightly different scripts.

You Are What You Eat

When your dog eats your philosophy homework...

You get s pensive pup
Who ponders all that’s up,
Including whether the human mind
Quite compares to the canine kind.

Jumbo Planet

In tonight’s sky,
Jupiter looks stunningly large,
Which I guess is why
Roman mythology put him in charge.

Bad Blood

For book club, we read John Carreyrou’s book about the Theranos scandal: Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup. It’s kind of a page turner, where the crazed boss just keeps getting away with bad behavior until very near the end.

When you get caught in big lies
And you lose people’s trust
It shouldn’t be a surprise
That your business goes bust.

New Bike

It's the first day of summer, and I bought a new road bike. I'd had my old once since 2001. Its shifter for the front gears had started to fail. So I needed to get the shifter fixed, which I could have done, or spring for an actual new bike.

I hesitated over buying the new bike. I'm treating it as my birthday present. But I'll be 67 in August. Does it really make sense to buy a new bike at this age? How many years can I get out of it? Such are the worries of old people, I guess.

Anyway, it's more comfortable than my old bike. I took it out for a 20 mile spin in the forest preserve. It has a carbon-fiber front fork that "dampens the vibrations" as you ride over bumps. Now I'm telling myself it's a good purchase because old people need comfortable bikes as an incentive to get out there and ride!

It's from the Giant brand. They're a Taiwanese company, currently the world's biggest bike manufacturer. This is the third bike in a row I've had from them. The first I bought in 1992, so I'm a loyal but infrequent customer. They are not one of the cool name brands, but they seem to make pretty good bikes for less.

I like
My new bike.

ICE Slip Up

It happened here:

Man being deported escapes ICE agents, hails cab after using O’Hare restroom
Law enforcement officials set up a perimeter to contain him, but he was already gone, police said.

When you’re escorting
A guy you’re deporting,
Watch him closely in the loo.
It’s the smart thing to do.

Joining

Yoga is etymologically related to yoke.
The same can’t be said of toga and toke.

Coming Up Soon

It's the nineteenth of June
And we're exactly one month away
From the 50th anniversary of the day
Someone walked on
And talked on
The moon.

My Theory, Not My Practice

How could Shakespeare
Have known so much?
He hung out in bars
To stay in touch.

Fast

Since a fast is when you arrange to not eat,
The phrase “fast food” seems strangely offbeat.

Lox

I came across this headline:

"The English Word That Hasn’t Changed in Sound or Meaning in 8,000 Years"

The word is lox and the headline is misleading, since lox means a kind of smoked salmon, but 8000 years ago it just meant salmon, period.

And the story of lox, in particular, is mainly a hook to hang a general story about the ancient people who spoke proto-Indo-European, the mother of many tongues, and why there were so successful at spreading their culture - because, it is said, they were the first to tame the horse and then to attach wheeled vehicles to the horse.

I’m glad that proto-Indo-European
Proved so successful.
If it hadn’t, there would be no English,
And that would be stressful.

I’ve invested a lot into English,
A whole lot of time,
Especially studying words
Which do or don’t rhyme.

These ancients lived near salmon,
Which they called lox.
But was a squarish container
Known as a box?

Stroller Ditty

It’s just a little bump,
The kind that makes you thump,
You feel it in your rump,
Yes you do!

(Song composed for baby, to be sung when stroller wheels encounter an uneven surface.)

But It Does Happen

Making major decisions
While drinking whisky
Is widely regarded
As risky.

Apples

Apples have appeal,
And can fit at any meal,
But they won’t really block
All visits to a doc.

To Be Clear

Redundancy increases the chances
That a message will be understood;
Also it lessens misunderstandings,
Which is very, very good.

Non Euclidean

When I see two railroad tracks merge,
Is it proof that parallel lines converge?

Leon's Triathlon 2019

At the tri today, we swam in Wolf Lake.
As usual I drank some.
The water looked green but tasted clean
For this I'm rather thanksome.

There is algae, and fauna too:



Mama swan
Carrying on.

I Was Informed

If you open your umbrella in London
When you feel the very first drop,
The locals know you’re a tourist.
They wait till it’s coming nonstop.

Before Cars Were Computers

Rewatched My Cousin Vinnie
On flight across Atlantic.
Who knew that positraction
Could sound so darned romantic?

At the Reconstructed Globe

The original Globe Theatre,
Was a three-thousand seater.
Except... they couldn’t all sit.
One third of them had to stand.
They say the smell was bad,
But, oh, the words were grand.

Ruffly Speaking

How did this sort of collar
Ever become a fashion to follar?

Last Night

Loud screaming baby
On flight out of town -
Kid, could you maybe
Just settle down?
All of that yelping
Of sorrowful blues
Isn’t much helping
My efforts to snooze.

Saw One In The Neighborhood

I think it would be noyce
To have my own Rolls Royce.
I wouldn’t let it roll
For fear it might get stole.
Instead I’d let it lodge
Secure in my garage!

Serial Disappointment

I watched Battle Star Gallactica
All the way to its awkward end,
So if you followed Game of Thrones,
I feel for you, my friend.

Migration Time

I saw this scarlet tanager
With feathers of red and black.
I offered to be its manager
But it would not answer back.

Neighborhood Effect

One of the best things about having a daughter
Who lives three blocks away
Is that I can visit my granddaughter
Almost every day.

Etymology Enigma

In Latin nunc means now.
In Spanish nunca means never.
That make sense - exactly how?
I’ll just say: Whatever!

Nonhuman

My dog works hard to insure that she gets
Her fair share of pets.

There she goes,
With canine command,
Nudging her nose
Into my hand.

Second Sunday in May

My role has been that of a dad,
But I’m awfully glad
That some people are mothers too,
And if one those people is you,
I just want to say
Enjoy your day.

Concrete Criticism

I bought a garden troll
For my flower bed.
He jumped right into his role.
“Your tulips suck,” he said.

GOT Latte

Film is a beautiful art,
So remember to pick up
Your Starbucks cup
Before the cameras start.

Spare Parts

Where do you take a dog who loses his tail? A re-tailer!
And if you think that joke’s a failure,
I’ve got one more.
Where do you go if you lose a hand? A second-hand store!

While Walking a Baby

You can see the thing as pointless I suppose -
This thing that we call life, this act of being.
But when you’re in the middle of its throes
It seems to BE the point - no disagreeing.

You can argue whether babies should be born,
You can say it would be better if they weren’t,
But surely such a world sounds forlorn,
A future without passion, ashen, burnt.

The beauty all around us is so real,
It pulls us forward in the dizzying dance.
What makes it all worthwhile is the feel
Of riding through it while you’ve got the chance.