The poet’s internet was down
The quick concurrer scribbled
Jay-Z was hired as a clown
And Bozo’s nizzle dribbled.
Monday, January 31, 2005
Thursday, January 27, 2005
chiasthmatic cough X
The poet mentions salmonella
The surgeon general woos
The club thrives thanks to Ray Kinsella
The Field of Dreams, to dues.
The surgeon general woos
The club thrives thanks to Ray Kinsella
The Field of Dreams, to dues.
chiasthmatic cough IX
The poet writes of Cinderella
The Brothers Grimm of eros
Moses sick with salmonella
The raw-egg fan, of Pharaohs.
The Brothers Grimm of eros
Moses sick with salmonella
The raw-egg fan, of Pharaohs.
A Toughy for Daffy
When the rain raineth
And the goose winketh
Little wotteth the gosling
What the goose thinketh.
-Anon.
Yes, it's raining here in Santa Monica, and the gosling and I wot not a thing of the goose's mental machinations. I do want to call to your attention, however, the word wotteth, and ask you to stare at it for several seconds. It won't help with the goose, but it will incline you to say, "man, that is one wacko language we have."
I can't tell you all the possible phrases one could make using the letters from raineth, winketh, wotteth, and thinketh, but I can tell you you'd have more "the"s at your disposal than with your average four-word set. And "eth"s. Moreover, I can tell you that the word solver can be re-arranged to form lovers, something I first considered while reading page 290 of Vladimir Nabokov's autobiography Speak, Memory (formerly Conclusive Evidence), where he talks about the pitfalls he incorporates into chess problems he designs, "to lead the would-be solver astray." Thus I thought also of would-be lovers, which did not, but could have, made me think of Cinderella's two step-sisters with respect to the prince. This in turn leads to the scene where one of these chops off her heel in an effort to fit in the glass slipper, which no doubt was supremely uncomfortable even without a severed foot (the real significance of the fairy-tale is that it prefigures ladies’ dress-shoe-shopping of today: every soirée instance of pandemic blistering is more aptly called a Cinderella story than the Mets’ '86 World Series win).
But the heel: there is no indication that the sister’s heel shortage led to an untimely death; on the contrary, her loggerheadedness seems to have gone on undiminished. My use of the l-word does not betray spite for that profession—my late great-grandfather Bloom was a logger by trade, and a good one at that—no, we have the British Bard himself to thank for its pejoration. In Love’s Labour’s Lost, Biron exclaims, on having his guilt exposed by Dumain, "Ah, you whoreson loggerhead, you were born to do me shame!" This is the same Biron of the even better speech,
“Shot, by heaven! Proceed, sweet Cupid:
thou hast thumped him with thy bird-bolt under the
left pap. In faith, secrets!”
Secrets, indeed: mark how it all connects, for it surely does. One of the two most popular versions of the myth has a leaf falling on Achilles’ heel when his mother, the goddess Thetis, dips him in the river Styx to immortalize him. Note that the heel is the part of the body closest to the ground, whereas the head is the uppermost part, and that a leaf is the uppermost part of tree, whereas the trunk, or log, is the section closest to the ground. Thus the leaf is linked to the heel by the same relationship (arguably the opposite) as the log is linked to the head, and we can think of loggerhead and leaferheel as synonymous, leaving open the possibility of their antonymy. The other version of the myth holds that Achilles’ heel remained undipped, and thus vulnerable, simply because that is where Thetis was holding him. Either account works for us, though the former is more intriguing.
Few disagree that Achilles perished by an arrow—either of Paris or Apollo, or through some supernatural working of the latter in the former’s arrow—to the heel. “Shot, by heaven!” and also “under the left pap,” only not directly under it, but about four and a half feet lower, assuming normal-to-large stature. Since the rest of him was immortal, a blow to any place other than the heel would have failed. This makes us wonder: what if Achilles, whether to fit in a certain slipper or for some other reason, had previously cut off the self-same heel? Two results are likely—either the arrow would have missed, since there would have been nothing there to hit, or the arrow would have been harmless, since it would have hit an invulnerable part of Achilles’ foot. In either case, Achilles would have survived the shot!
But what are the chances of Achilles doing such a thing? Greater than we might think. Thetis, seeing from prophecy that her son was fated to die, disguised him as a female and put him under the care of Lycomedes of Scyros. Initially the fifteen-year-old Achilles refused to dress as a girl until he realized it was the only way to get at King Lycomedes’ daughter, and thus he gave in to being essentially identified as his own sister. Given the friskiness of the gods and of the ancient Greeks in general, it is not inconceivable that Achilles might have entered a situation in which, for love or greed, he would have chopped off his own heel. In fact, Achilles seems like the type who would rather lose his heel than dress as a girl, and so we can go so far as to say that the heelless story would have been even more likely than the Iliad’s account! What is more, Achilles and the wicked step-sister are linked linguistically and perhaps ontologically by their statuses as loggerhead and leaferheel.
I have come across those who would have had me write stati instead of statuses. The same would probably prefer syllabi to syllabuses, and so would err on two counts. First, in English we generally form the plural by adding –s or –es. This is the case even with foreign words, for instance, we write the plural of chateau as chateaus, even though in French it is chateaux (though I have seen exceptions). Thus, if we are speaking English, which we are, it makes most sense to say syllabuses. The second count is more informative: even in Latin, the plural of syllabus is not and never has been syllabi! Syllabus is a noun of the fourth declension (unlike cactus, for instance, which is of the second; that is what makes its Latin plural cacti), hence the Latin plural of syllabus is syllabūs (with a long u).
The bottom line is that Achilles would have been better off without that heel. If only leaferheel had been a loggerhead and sliced it off! History would have been changed considerably: the Greeks would still have sacked Troy, of course, but other, psychologically more significant, alterations of the space-time continuum would have ensued. Achilles’ child, for instance, with whom he had left his wife Deidamia (the aforementioned daughter of the king) pregnant, would not have grown up fatherless, which some studies have shown contributes to adolescent alienation.
I am utterly certain that I wished to expound several other connections between the Greek hero and Cinderella’s steppie, but in the process of following some have abandoned the others. Feel free to supplement this account in the comments section.
We could say the moral of it all is that a fairy godmother beats a god-for-a-mother, or that it is better to go to the ball in a pumpkin pulled by mice than to have been dunked as a kid headfirst in hell’s river by your own mother. But that might be reading too much into things. Really, it is simply that for some it pays to be step-sister to a coal-covered beauty with a kick-ass fairy godmother, and for some it doesn’t.
And the goose winketh
Little wotteth the gosling
What the goose thinketh.
-Anon.
Yes, it's raining here in Santa Monica, and the gosling and I wot not a thing of the goose's mental machinations. I do want to call to your attention, however, the word wotteth, and ask you to stare at it for several seconds. It won't help with the goose, but it will incline you to say, "man, that is one wacko language we have."
I can't tell you all the possible phrases one could make using the letters from raineth, winketh, wotteth, and thinketh, but I can tell you you'd have more "the"s at your disposal than with your average four-word set. And "eth"s. Moreover, I can tell you that the word solver can be re-arranged to form lovers, something I first considered while reading page 290 of Vladimir Nabokov's autobiography Speak, Memory (formerly Conclusive Evidence), where he talks about the pitfalls he incorporates into chess problems he designs, "to lead the would-be solver astray." Thus I thought also of would-be lovers, which did not, but could have, made me think of Cinderella's two step-sisters with respect to the prince. This in turn leads to the scene where one of these chops off her heel in an effort to fit in the glass slipper, which no doubt was supremely uncomfortable even without a severed foot (the real significance of the fairy-tale is that it prefigures ladies’ dress-shoe-shopping of today: every soirée instance of pandemic blistering is more aptly called a Cinderella story than the Mets’ '86 World Series win).
But the heel: there is no indication that the sister’s heel shortage led to an untimely death; on the contrary, her loggerheadedness seems to have gone on undiminished. My use of the l-word does not betray spite for that profession—my late great-grandfather Bloom was a logger by trade, and a good one at that—no, we have the British Bard himself to thank for its pejoration. In Love’s Labour’s Lost, Biron exclaims, on having his guilt exposed by Dumain, "Ah, you whoreson loggerhead, you were born to do me shame!" This is the same Biron of the even better speech,
“Shot, by heaven! Proceed, sweet Cupid:
thou hast thumped him with thy bird-bolt under the
left pap. In faith, secrets!”
Secrets, indeed: mark how it all connects, for it surely does. One of the two most popular versions of the myth has a leaf falling on Achilles’ heel when his mother, the goddess Thetis, dips him in the river Styx to immortalize him. Note that the heel is the part of the body closest to the ground, whereas the head is the uppermost part, and that a leaf is the uppermost part of tree, whereas the trunk, or log, is the section closest to the ground. Thus the leaf is linked to the heel by the same relationship (arguably the opposite) as the log is linked to the head, and we can think of loggerhead and leaferheel as synonymous, leaving open the possibility of their antonymy. The other version of the myth holds that Achilles’ heel remained undipped, and thus vulnerable, simply because that is where Thetis was holding him. Either account works for us, though the former is more intriguing.
Few disagree that Achilles perished by an arrow—either of Paris or Apollo, or through some supernatural working of the latter in the former’s arrow—to the heel. “Shot, by heaven!” and also “under the left pap,” only not directly under it, but about four and a half feet lower, assuming normal-to-large stature. Since the rest of him was immortal, a blow to any place other than the heel would have failed. This makes us wonder: what if Achilles, whether to fit in a certain slipper or for some other reason, had previously cut off the self-same heel? Two results are likely—either the arrow would have missed, since there would have been nothing there to hit, or the arrow would have been harmless, since it would have hit an invulnerable part of Achilles’ foot. In either case, Achilles would have survived the shot!
But what are the chances of Achilles doing such a thing? Greater than we might think. Thetis, seeing from prophecy that her son was fated to die, disguised him as a female and put him under the care of Lycomedes of Scyros. Initially the fifteen-year-old Achilles refused to dress as a girl until he realized it was the only way to get at King Lycomedes’ daughter, and thus he gave in to being essentially identified as his own sister. Given the friskiness of the gods and of the ancient Greeks in general, it is not inconceivable that Achilles might have entered a situation in which, for love or greed, he would have chopped off his own heel. In fact, Achilles seems like the type who would rather lose his heel than dress as a girl, and so we can go so far as to say that the heelless story would have been even more likely than the Iliad’s account! What is more, Achilles and the wicked step-sister are linked linguistically and perhaps ontologically by their statuses as loggerhead and leaferheel.
I have come across those who would have had me write stati instead of statuses. The same would probably prefer syllabi to syllabuses, and so would err on two counts. First, in English we generally form the plural by adding –s or –es. This is the case even with foreign words, for instance, we write the plural of chateau as chateaus, even though in French it is chateaux (though I have seen exceptions). Thus, if we are speaking English, which we are, it makes most sense to say syllabuses. The second count is more informative: even in Latin, the plural of syllabus is not and never has been syllabi! Syllabus is a noun of the fourth declension (unlike cactus, for instance, which is of the second; that is what makes its Latin plural cacti), hence the Latin plural of syllabus is syllabūs (with a long u).
The bottom line is that Achilles would have been better off without that heel. If only leaferheel had been a loggerhead and sliced it off! History would have been changed considerably: the Greeks would still have sacked Troy, of course, but other, psychologically more significant, alterations of the space-time continuum would have ensued. Achilles’ child, for instance, with whom he had left his wife Deidamia (the aforementioned daughter of the king) pregnant, would not have grown up fatherless, which some studies have shown contributes to adolescent alienation.
I am utterly certain that I wished to expound several other connections between the Greek hero and Cinderella’s steppie, but in the process of following some have abandoned the others. Feel free to supplement this account in the comments section.
We could say the moral of it all is that a fairy godmother beats a god-for-a-mother, or that it is better to go to the ball in a pumpkin pulled by mice than to have been dunked as a kid headfirst in hell’s river by your own mother. But that might be reading too much into things. Really, it is simply that for some it pays to be step-sister to a coal-covered beauty with a kick-ass fairy godmother, and for some it doesn’t.
Wednesday, January 26, 2005
chiasthmatic cough VIII
The poet being called a hottie
The bonnie lass a prophet
Skeptics being trained to potty
The toddling tyke, to scoff at.
The bonnie lass a prophet
Skeptics being trained to potty
The toddling tyke, to scoff at.
Tuesday, January 25, 2005
A better anniversary
Thus far the day has been spent in celebration of Below Dunster's one week anniversary. But today also marks an anniversary of much greater note:
The 7.419354838709677419354838709677
41935483870967741935483870967742 month anniversary of Justin and Alexis Bailey!!!
I must say it has been a stupendous 7.4193548387096774193548387
0967741935483870967741935483870967742 months. Alexis, thanks for being my perfect buddy, lover, and friend—“I know the angles of a hundred seats and backs / Each corresponding to a moment, word, or mooncrust with you on a bench.”
A modest poem for you on this memorable day:
So it has been 7.41935483870967742 months!
—a number that is but approximate,
unlike my love, which loves exact.
Gladly would I quaff canola for two months
For one moment to you to be proximate:
Your nearness is what holds my heart intact.
7.41935483870967742! Whereas
That 2 denotes the figure’s periodicity
Our 2-ness, undivided, is our felicity!
I love you dearly, Lexi, and wish you a sensational 7.4193548387096
7741935483870967741935483870967741935483870967742 month anniversary!
The 7.419354838709677419354838709677
41935483870967741935483870967742 month anniversary of Justin and Alexis Bailey!!!
I must say it has been a stupendous 7.4193548387096774193548387
0967741935483870967741935483870967742 months. Alexis, thanks for being my perfect buddy, lover, and friend—“I know the angles of a hundred seats and backs / Each corresponding to a moment, word, or mooncrust with you on a bench.”
A modest poem for you on this memorable day:
So it has been 7.41935483870967742 months!
—a number that is but approximate,
unlike my love, which loves exact.
Gladly would I quaff canola for two months
For one moment to you to be proximate:
Your nearness is what holds my heart intact.
7.41935483870967742! Whereas
That 2 denotes the figure’s periodicity
Our 2-ness, undivided, is our felicity!
I love you dearly, Lexi, and wish you a sensational 7.4193548387096
7741935483870967741935483870967741935483870967742 month anniversary!
one week! (the interval, not the song)
Photo by Peter Schmid, http://www.fotocommunity.de/pc/pc/mypics/10323
Merry Birthday, Below Dunster!
a c-cough revolution (and all-new c-cough VII!)
It is without political design that I have, for the first time, subverted the original form of the chiasthmatic cough. The switch of subject from poet to non-poet is purely occasional, that is, motivated by today's occasion, which is the one-week anniversary of Below Dunster. Amid the Roman candles and other pyrotechnica I was inclined to make Below Dunster itself the subject of a c-cough--but how I resisted! For I recall the days when metric innovation and national upheaval were one, when formal novelty constituted a call not only for a new form of literature but for a new form of government, when monarchies were toppled by coffeehouse song-singers and cellar-corner verse-scratchers. I remember the Neo-Classical tenet that dependence on certain formal factors for the satisfaction of eternal rules in poetry is essential not only for poetic order but also for social stability, and that these rules are understood by all rational people. But just as this movement was built ironically on the rediscovery--and redistribution--of Aristotle's Poetics, so this post is built on a negation: the altered c-cough form is not attempted regicide. For as long as Slo Combe tarries Below Dunster, the poet is king of the chiasthmatic cough. And since wild plum groves have little power of locomotion, that will be a long time.
I trust the fears of the faithful have been assuaged. But I must further confess the relative obscurity of the anniversary cough in the previous post, and so, for once, rather than gloat in the ivory tower as many poets do, I will do what few have ever done, and supply an alternate. Thus, for those unschooled to General Sherman and to British regional dialects:
chiasthmatic cough VII
B-Dunster’s one-week birthday
The pruny infant’s hypedness
Bananas brown from UV-rays
Beach bums, from overripeness.
I trust the fears of the faithful have been assuaged. But I must further confess the relative obscurity of the anniversary cough in the previous post, and so, for once, rather than gloat in the ivory tower as many poets do, I will do what few have ever done, and supply an alternate. Thus, for those unschooled to General Sherman and to British regional dialects:
chiasthmatic cough VII
B-Dunster’s one-week birthday
The pruny infant’s hypedness
Bananas brown from UV-rays
Beach bums, from overripeness.
chiasthmatic cough VI: all new!
The weblog’s anniversary
The couple’s url
A Cockney Sherman’s bursary
The preppy’s “Wars are ‘ell.”
The couple’s url
A Cockney Sherman’s bursary
The preppy’s “Wars are ‘ell.”
Sunday, January 23, 2005
chiasthmatic cough V
The poet all up in the Word
The preacher-man emceeing
Ulysses finding faith absurd
Agnostics, odysseying.
The preacher-man emceeing
Ulysses finding faith absurd
Agnostics, odysseying.
Friday, January 21, 2005
chiasthmatic cough IV: all new!
The poet discoursing on names
Onomasts metaphoring
Bullfighters transferring blames
And Adam, matadoring.
Onomasts metaphoring
Bullfighters transferring blames
And Adam, matadoring.
On certain names
I will count the comments of Tracy, Liz, and Cat-via-Liz as three ayes. Technically we now need a nay for victory, but three-nil will suffice.
Several of you will recognize among what follows common remarks of mine, delivered most notably one late night in the Michigan Undergound. It is no exhaustive treatise on names or naming, but serves as a primer on what might be called “alternative naming.” To wit:
An excellent thing to do is to name your kid Pete, spelled M-I-C-H-A-E-L. But, you say (those who have not yet received this primer), isn’t that the name Michael? Maybe in Ireland. But if Catherine can be spelled C-A-T-H-E-R-I-N-E, C-A-T-H-A-R-I-N-E, C-A-T-H-R-Y-N, K-A-T-H-E-R-I-N-E, K-A-T-H-A-R-I-N-E, K-A-T-H-R-Y-N, and probably several other variations, few of which are phonetic, and the Scottish can have Kilconquhar pronounced “kuh-nóch-eR,” then we can have Pete spelled M-I-C-H-A-E-L. If you need other justifications, call it a silent M, I, C, H, A, E, and L, all of which occur in English—most, at least; the rest occur as silent letters in Thai, left over from Sanskrit—and an epenthesized P, EE, and T, which also occur.
I am grieved by the need to present so many data in defense of Pete, spelled M-I-C-H-A-E-L, instead of just declaring, “Pete, spelled M-I-C-H-A-E-L.” Usually this name takes only about a sentence to introduce and then we can move on to the next one, but to keep the posting area tidy I want to preclude some of the commoner objections.
At any rate, it is noble to name your kid Pete, spelled M-I-C-H-A-E-L.
Another great thing to do is to name your child Purp e. That’s one word, P-U-R-P-_-E. Some find this name difficult to pronounce; I won’t try to present the phonetics here, but it really isn’t that tough. The important thing to emphasize is that this is one name and one word, not a first and middle name or two-word first name. Many have tried to deduce the missing letter, positing results such as Purpse (sometimes leaving the second P silent such that the name becomes homophonous with a lady’s handbag), Purpke (two syllables), Purpqe (this still won’t help U-less Scrabble players as proper names are contra los rulos), Purpie (cute), and even—it’s true—Purple. Hm. I get it, like the color?
Look: there is no missing letter. If it helps, consider the blank a letter, but just call the letter “blank.” To avoid problems down the road, though, I recommend not even considering the blank a letter, and just taking in the name holistically as Purp e.
Here’s why: there are names that DO contain blanks as what can only be described as letters, at least in written form. Among these is the Grand Behemoth of all given names, to which I will skip directly. Parents should think long and hard before assigning it to a child, because it will have irreversible effects on the bearer’s very experience of reality, perhaps even on her or his metaphysics. Just now I have divulged that the name can suit both male and female children, which must be expected of a nominal Zeus. But enough pomp—here is the Maharaja of all human names:
Powerful; I know. Let me repeat it for emphasis:
Wow, that is heavy.
You may by now have recognized why this name should be given only in exceptional cases, for whenever there is silence, this child will think its name is being called! The quieter the environment, the more urgent the call will seem, and I can only imagine the effects of utter silence. These I expect to be most pronounced during test-taking and at night. In the early stages, expect this child to be whirling around constantly and blurting, “Who said my name?” Also, during roll call, ______ will wonder how there could possibly be so many kids of the same name enrolled, and why none of the others showed up. S/he will, however, be honored by the amount of time devoted to her or him over the PA, and will enormously enjoy watching network television after 2am, when everyone else thinks the stations are off the air.
Like any intelligent being, the child will soon learn that it is not always being summoned, just as girls named Daisy know they are not being addressed every time someone discusses the flower, and in the process it will acquire a sense of discernment far exceeding its years.
Note that, for practical purposes, such as filling out electronic forms, the spelling must be conformed to one containing characters, which is where the blanks come in. You will thereby be constructing a special “written version” of the name, as the true name is simply spelled ______ (pretend that line isn't there--even this posting form won't let me enter the actual spelling). Lamentably, you will have to choose how many blanks to enter; for aesthetic reasons, I recommend four, _-_-_-_, and most will agree.
I think it is clear that naming your child _______ can be the source of immense and manifold difficulties, but that the benefits can be galactic in scope.
That’s all for today’s onomastics. Before closing, however, I find it only appropriate to take a special moment to honor all those named , Purp e, and Pete, spelled M-I-C-H-A-E-L.
Thank you.
Below Dunster is open to queries about these and other names, and is willing to operate as a naming service-for-hire on an individual basis.
Several of you will recognize among what follows common remarks of mine, delivered most notably one late night in the Michigan Undergound. It is no exhaustive treatise on names or naming, but serves as a primer on what might be called “alternative naming.” To wit:
An excellent thing to do is to name your kid Pete, spelled M-I-C-H-A-E-L. But, you say (those who have not yet received this primer), isn’t that the name Michael? Maybe in Ireland. But if Catherine can be spelled C-A-T-H-E-R-I-N-E, C-A-T-H-A-R-I-N-E, C-A-T-H-R-Y-N, K-A-T-H-E-R-I-N-E, K-A-T-H-A-R-I-N-E, K-A-T-H-R-Y-N, and probably several other variations, few of which are phonetic, and the Scottish can have Kilconquhar pronounced “kuh-nóch-eR,” then we can have Pete spelled M-I-C-H-A-E-L. If you need other justifications, call it a silent M, I, C, H, A, E, and L, all of which occur in English—most, at least; the rest occur as silent letters in Thai, left over from Sanskrit—and an epenthesized P, EE, and T, which also occur.
I am grieved by the need to present so many data in defense of Pete, spelled M-I-C-H-A-E-L, instead of just declaring, “Pete, spelled M-I-C-H-A-E-L.” Usually this name takes only about a sentence to introduce and then we can move on to the next one, but to keep the posting area tidy I want to preclude some of the commoner objections.
At any rate, it is noble to name your kid Pete, spelled M-I-C-H-A-E-L.
Another great thing to do is to name your child Purp e. That’s one word, P-U-R-P-_-E. Some find this name difficult to pronounce; I won’t try to present the phonetics here, but it really isn’t that tough. The important thing to emphasize is that this is one name and one word, not a first and middle name or two-word first name. Many have tried to deduce the missing letter, positing results such as Purpse (sometimes leaving the second P silent such that the name becomes homophonous with a lady’s handbag), Purpke (two syllables), Purpqe (this still won’t help U-less Scrabble players as proper names are contra los rulos), Purpie (cute), and even—it’s true—Purple. Hm. I get it, like the color?
Look: there is no missing letter. If it helps, consider the blank a letter, but just call the letter “blank.” To avoid problems down the road, though, I recommend not even considering the blank a letter, and just taking in the name holistically as Purp e.
Here’s why: there are names that DO contain blanks as what can only be described as letters, at least in written form. Among these is the Grand Behemoth of all given names, to which I will skip directly. Parents should think long and hard before assigning it to a child, because it will have irreversible effects on the bearer’s very experience of reality, perhaps even on her or his metaphysics. Just now I have divulged that the name can suit both male and female children, which must be expected of a nominal Zeus. But enough pomp—here is the Maharaja of all human names:
Powerful; I know. Let me repeat it for emphasis:
Wow, that is heavy.
You may by now have recognized why this name should be given only in exceptional cases, for whenever there is silence, this child will think its name is being called! The quieter the environment, the more urgent the call will seem, and I can only imagine the effects of utter silence. These I expect to be most pronounced during test-taking and at night. In the early stages, expect this child to be whirling around constantly and blurting, “Who said my name?” Also, during roll call, ______ will wonder how there could possibly be so many kids of the same name enrolled, and why none of the others showed up. S/he will, however, be honored by the amount of time devoted to her or him over the PA, and will enormously enjoy watching network television after 2am, when everyone else thinks the stations are off the air.
Like any intelligent being, the child will soon learn that it is not always being summoned, just as girls named Daisy know they are not being addressed every time someone discusses the flower, and in the process it will acquire a sense of discernment far exceeding its years.
Note that, for practical purposes, such as filling out electronic forms, the spelling must be conformed to one containing characters, which is where the blanks come in. You will thereby be constructing a special “written version” of the name, as the true name is simply spelled ______ (pretend that line isn't there--even this posting form won't let me enter the actual spelling). Lamentably, you will have to choose how many blanks to enter; for aesthetic reasons, I recommend four, _-_-_-_, and most will agree.
I think it is clear that naming your child _______ can be the source of immense and manifold difficulties, but that the benefits can be galactic in scope.
That’s all for today’s onomastics. Before closing, however, I find it only appropriate to take a special moment to honor all those named , Purp e, and Pete, spelled M-I-C-H-A-E-L.
Thank you.
Below Dunster is open to queries about these and other names, and is willing to operate as a naming service-for-hire on an individual basis.
chiasthmatic cough III
The poet dies another day
James Bond puffs opium
The woman's tubes are cathode ray
The T.V. set's, fallopian.
James Bond puffs opium
The woman's tubes are cathode ray
The T.V. set's, fallopian.
Thursday, January 20, 2005
Vote here
Whetted by the previous post, Below Dunster is currently taking votes as to whether I should post my brief treatise on ideal first names.
A 3-1 aye-nay ratio will win the post. Cast your vote in the comments section.
*Also coming soon: the treatise "On the mixing of fruit and grain products." There is no poll for this one.
*Not coming soon, or ever, but considered axiomatic: the hilarity of saying "What is this, the RC?" Comments are welcome on this, too.
Be sure to specify whether your comment relates to "first names" or "RC."
A 3-1 aye-nay ratio will win the post. Cast your vote in the comments section.
*Also coming soon: the treatise "On the mixing of fruit and grain products." There is no poll for this one.
*Not coming soon, or ever, but considered axiomatic: the hilarity of saying "What is this, the RC?" Comments are welcome on this, too.
Be sure to specify whether your comment relates to "first names" or "RC."
Pam
It is a sincere hope of mine to ask someone named Pam what her full first name is and have her answer not Pamela but Pamphlet.
In general I think Pamphlet would be a great name, simultaneously exhibiting a Classical and a diminutive feel.
As for that person called Pam, Pamegronate would be decent consolation too, as would Pamina (as in Die Zauberflöte), Pambulance, Pamnesty, Pamshackle, and Pample.
It would also be great to meet a "Pam" who spelled her name Pamn.
In general I think Pamphlet would be a great name, simultaneously exhibiting a Classical and a diminutive feel.
As for that person called Pam, Pamegronate would be decent consolation too, as would Pamina (as in Die Zauberflöte), Pambulance, Pamnesty, Pamshackle, and Pample.
It would also be great to meet a "Pam" who spelled her name Pamn.
What if, from now on, every time you tripped a random citizen of earth perished? (You, personally, not people in general.) Would you do anything differently? Walk more carefully? Avoid hiking? Or would you just figure what happens happens, and proceed normally with life? Note: saying you would walk around tripping intentionally is an invalid response; for the trippage to register it must be a true, inadvertent trip.
Wednesday, January 19, 2005
like Michael Jordan
Endorsing lots of things, that is.
*Below Dunster further endorses the acceptance of ain't as Standard English.*
Being able to collapse am not, is not, have not, or has not into a single syllable is prosodically valuable; the ability to preserve ambiguity between those four forms is also worthwhile. For instance, a poem I once wrote ("On To R") depended on it.
*Below Dunster further endorses double negatives, the splitting of infinitives, the stranding of prepositions, beginning sentences with conjunctions, the use of the passive voice and the first person in formal writing, and the spelling of both yes and hurray as A--Y-I-Y--Y-I-Y.*
Oh a yiy yiy. And I motion for it to quickly be decided by the hoi polloi, who I ain't on bad terms with.
Below Dunster does not endorse the interchangeability of you're and your or of they're, there, their and ninja. Below Dunster discourages the use of the word obviously and the mixing of fruit and grain products.
*Below Dunster further endorses the acceptance of ain't as Standard English.*
Being able to collapse am not, is not, have not, or has not into a single syllable is prosodically valuable; the ability to preserve ambiguity between those four forms is also worthwhile. For instance, a poem I once wrote ("On To R") depended on it.
*Below Dunster further endorses double negatives, the splitting of infinitives, the stranding of prepositions, beginning sentences with conjunctions, the use of the passive voice and the first person in formal writing, and the spelling of both yes and hurray as A--Y-I-Y--Y-I-Y.*
Oh a yiy yiy. And I motion for it to quickly be decided by the hoi polloi, who I ain't on bad terms with.
Below Dunster does not endorse the interchangeability of you're and your or of they're, there, their and ninja. Below Dunster discourages the use of the word obviously and the mixing of fruit and grain products.
Here’s my reconstruction of a bathroom sign at Flags West truck stop in southeastern Idaho, where we stopped for some Good 'n Plenty and Pull 'n Peel on our cross-country drive in August. By the way, drop the ells from the latter candy and you get Pu 'n Pee, which is the other reason we were there.
So the sign: my question is, what on earth is going on on the right? Are they just pointing out that that direction also exists? What about up and down, then, and in between? The other two arrows seem to be directing people to restrooms, so we can assume the right one is too. But who is supposed to use that one? “Other”? No one? Invisible people???
Moreover, it is unclear whether men may use the bathroom here. Apparently they must first become handicapped.
Even if they succeed by getting caught pilfering some trucker’s tobacco chew, the sign says they must approach their bathroom in reverse. Hm. Is it because the women’s is that way too, so they must face away? (Watch out when you open the door, ladies, there’s a guy in a wheelchair barreling toward it—backwards!) That’s after drumming up an extra wheelchair at a truck stop in rural Idaho.
A Martian, I think, would take from this sign that all triangle-shaped earthlings are called women, but that only those with gargantuan derrieres are accessible. And located to the left. And never, ever, go right unless you are invisible. Yes, that’s what a Martian would take from it.
Anyway, I peed on some clover out back; the pu had to wait till Utah.
Tuesday, January 18, 2005
chiasthmatic cough II
The poet on the midnight watch
The sentry penning ballads
Health nuts lacking in the crotch
And eunuchs, eating salads.
The sentry penning ballads
Health nuts lacking in the crotch
And eunuchs, eating salads.
A long sentence: on a chunk of barbarian limestone, hammered bronze and crimson-dyed linen repose in the shape of a centurion, or, rather, the centurion rests behind the molded deceptor that is the Herculian breastplate not glinting under his hunched trunk, a breastplate beaten specifically for him into the general Grecian form worn by a thousand marble statues and as many puppet officers; this one, though more man than toy, sits postured like a marionette whose frame has been fumbled or discarded, or whose strings have been severed altogether, slumping solitary in the alpine sun—slumbering in a peak traverse’s aftermath, perhaps, or withering in battle’s—his helmetless head lacking only laurel to be the stuff of busts, slaloming hair pressed forward even on the sides, curling up templeward, the top-hair valiantly defending glistening forehead corners from ultra-violet—not so for the rest of his face, where relentless sun rays pin the eyelids down, only the left accessible from the sky, actually, but the right following suit, or perhaps having its own reason to be lowered toward the cheek’s first wrinkle, not at the dimple but horizontally across from midnose, the first wrinkle of a fighter foreign to smiles and acquainted with squints, winces, and the windmilling tip of a Tunisian scimitar fourteen years before.
A long sentence: Maybe I should write hundreds of dozen-page sentences, just to learn how not to garden-path myself like horses raced past barns will do to you, and see if it can convincingly be done without simply stringing reduced relative clause upon reduced relative clause into an indeed long but dumbly cumbersome neck chain—dashes and semicolons seem to me cheap links, but I will certainly need some; on this first attempt I am struggling already eight or nine lines later, struggling mostly because my thoughts and words are playing leapfrog but not alternatingly, and the ware of this Barnes and Noble bookseller is insidiously distracting, what with arresting titles like The Shrewd Christian and Because of Romek, almost as if they were arranged here by the Sentence Length Police, which enforces kay-gee-bee-ically at popular retailers of almost-exclusively-rot like this place is, and now I have even stood up to peruse the aforementioned titles and a few others serving the SLP, which I have already (knowing surely almost nothing of the Cyclopes I will rouse) recognized as a foe I must shrewdly evade (a shrewd Christian I will be, and I’m not talking finances like Neil Atkinson), and now I have allowed this sentence to be altogether determined by my immediate environs, and so I will succumb after a single page, content because it is a debut effort, and call it a sentence.
chiasthmatic cough I
The poet at his easel
The painter at his pad
Stag goes the weasel
And "pop," the dateless lad.
The painter at his pad
Stag goes the weasel
And "pop," the dateless lad.
A detail from the facade of my high school in Vienna--the oldest in the city (est. 1553). To see some more shots of the school, visit http://www.akg.asn-wien.ac.at/default_ie_nn7.htm and select "Schulrundgand" from the menu at left.
Monday, January 17, 2005
“Gun for the hills, Alfonso. Gun for the hills.”
I don’t know anyone named Alfonso, but if I did, and was in charge of him, and wanted him to shoot toward raised earth too small to merit the appellation “mountain,” that’s probably how I would say it.
Calmly, see. Because whatever is up there to be fired at, we’re in no hurry. And with the solemn, confirmatory repetition after a short pause, for the same reason, and the added one that he may not have heard me right, because of the almost unthinkable calmness of the initial order.
Maybe I did know someone named Alfonso, but his name was actually Christoph, I’m fairly certain, and it was he doing both the ordering and the shooting, and there were no hills nearby. We had made a gun for bottle rockets, and when I say made, I mean it in the sense that one makes a boulder a table or a snow bank a slide: without altering its ontology at all; the action is more properly described by “designate” than “make.”
But we made that gun, dammit, made it out of a single plank with a thin protrusion running the full length of one edge and a groove the full length of the other—basic tongue-and-groove material—the idea being that one could link boards like this together ad libitum to make a floor or walls or a raft, except probably not a raft. But we had a floor and walls already, and a raft would have been great, but we only had one such board, and you probably can’t make raft out of that kind of plank anyway. So when we lightened the Turk’s stash of this particular piece it was clear that we would make a gun out of it.
Like I said, we didn’t have to alter it one bit; the groove simply functioned as a runner for the ammo; all we had to do was hold the plank on its edge, low on the hip like Rambo did real guns, and maintain our aim until the rocket fired.
One day soon after we had made it I was with Alfonso, I mean Christoph, when we had some trouble with this kid named after the Pope. Not the guy who is the Pope now, or even the one at the time, which is the same guy; the kid’s name was Gregor—the German version of the name—and he happened to be Christoph’s older brother.
To make a long story short, as one genius and a million fakes have put it, Christoph and Gregor got into a fraternal tussle over explosives or gummy candy or some other jewel we used to deal. Before I knew it, as another original person, maybe the same one, but probably a different one, and a million frauds (the same ones) have said, Gregor had gotten command of the gun and was loading a bottle rocket into the shaft. I remember Christoph’s cartoonishly pathetic jump-turn and the squeal that escaped before the rocket had fired, and I remember the little boom-on-a-stick streaking across the courtyard to Christoph’s left buttock, and the tiny scorched circle it left there, like the eye of a weasel. But only now, as I recall what Gregor yelled at him when he started bawling like a toddler, does it return to me that I guess Christoph’s name was Alfonso after all.
I don’t know anyone named Alfonso, but if I did, and was in charge of him, and wanted him to shoot toward raised earth too small to merit the appellation “mountain,” that’s probably how I would say it.
Calmly, see. Because whatever is up there to be fired at, we’re in no hurry. And with the solemn, confirmatory repetition after a short pause, for the same reason, and the added one that he may not have heard me right, because of the almost unthinkable calmness of the initial order.
Maybe I did know someone named Alfonso, but his name was actually Christoph, I’m fairly certain, and it was he doing both the ordering and the shooting, and there were no hills nearby. We had made a gun for bottle rockets, and when I say made, I mean it in the sense that one makes a boulder a table or a snow bank a slide: without altering its ontology at all; the action is more properly described by “designate” than “make.”
But we made that gun, dammit, made it out of a single plank with a thin protrusion running the full length of one edge and a groove the full length of the other—basic tongue-and-groove material—the idea being that one could link boards like this together ad libitum to make a floor or walls or a raft, except probably not a raft. But we had a floor and walls already, and a raft would have been great, but we only had one such board, and you probably can’t make raft out of that kind of plank anyway. So when we lightened the Turk’s stash of this particular piece it was clear that we would make a gun out of it.
Like I said, we didn’t have to alter it one bit; the groove simply functioned as a runner for the ammo; all we had to do was hold the plank on its edge, low on the hip like Rambo did real guns, and maintain our aim until the rocket fired.
One day soon after we had made it I was with Alfonso, I mean Christoph, when we had some trouble with this kid named after the Pope. Not the guy who is the Pope now, or even the one at the time, which is the same guy; the kid’s name was Gregor—the German version of the name—and he happened to be Christoph’s older brother.
To make a long story short, as one genius and a million fakes have put it, Christoph and Gregor got into a fraternal tussle over explosives or gummy candy or some other jewel we used to deal. Before I knew it, as another original person, maybe the same one, but probably a different one, and a million frauds (the same ones) have said, Gregor had gotten command of the gun and was loading a bottle rocket into the shaft. I remember Christoph’s cartoonishly pathetic jump-turn and the squeal that escaped before the rocket had fired, and I remember the little boom-on-a-stick streaking across the courtyard to Christoph’s left buttock, and the tiny scorched circle it left there, like the eye of a weasel. But only now, as I recall what Gregor yelled at him when he started bawling like a toddler, does it return to me that I guess Christoph’s name was Alfonso after all.
Now, those crabs have got it half right, they who are twice as developed as we are, although I’m not saying we are dumber—I would feel pretty comfortable taking on a crab in Mahjong, or any arthropod for that matter; I am speaking solely in terms of systems of locomotion: the crabs have quite simply got us there.
And when I say us, I mean you, because I personally have got one up even on the crabs. Of course I need to walk sideways sometimes, as the crabs always do and as everyone else sometimes must, to fit through or to avoid detection or what have you, but, as a rule, I walk backwards. It has been almost three years now since I last walked facing forward, and I no longer know why anyone would, who has really thought about it. Most people haven’t, though, and even then there would be those who stuck with forwardness for the sake of tradition, and those who avoided new trends because they take pride in such avoidance for its own sake, like people (I know quite a few) who refuse to use a cellular phone, even though it would be great for their job and family, “so as not to be like all those people who use cell phones,” whatever kind of person that is. I know lots of different types who use them.
Most of those, however, still walk in a forward orientation, and, like I said, they don’t even think about it, and that is why I am writing this, just like the guy who invented cell phones probably wrote an article whose basic message was why are you still walking around like that when you could be talking to someone far away at the same time. I bet no one gave him a hard time for that.
I will gladly reveal, right off, the chief reason for walking backwards at all times: no one can follow you without your knowledge. It’s a little-considered statistical fact that pedestrians are being followed 99 percent of the time, and almost 100 percent of that time they have no idea by whom. When you’re walking backward, it’s quite simple; pursuers and incidental trailers are in plain view, and I hardly need to make an argument for the fact that you are much less likely to be shot, stabbed, or otherwise punctured in the back. Many injurious and fatal attacks currently target the back, and while I am not the sort to guarantee the ceasing of such incidents (there will always be wackos), the one is bad enough principle tells us that if we can eliminate any backstabbings at all, we will have done some good in this world.
The attentive reader will have noted, perhaps commented aloud to a nearby drinker of chai, that many who follow us when we walk are not strangers, let alone ill-intentioned, but are in fact aquaintances of various degrees. So much the better! Friends may be hard enough to come by; why minimize your odds of recognizing them? Furthermore, I confess that in my forward days I occasionally trailed an acquaintance, knowingly, wavering in my decision whether or not to greet. How I wish the target had turned, seen me, and thus made the choice plain! Enough decisions are daily made. Any amiable citizen of the world should surely wish to lighten others’ burdens by making the to-greet-or-not-to-greet choice simpler for them.
Now, we can all acknowledge that there are but two ways to monitor those who walk behind: either we can employ a sort of rear view mirror, or we can walk backward. The former method may seem appealing at first, but is opposed by issues ranging from financial to sartorial. Such a mirror device would cost money, of course, but it would also need to be polished, perhaps oiled, depending on the mechanism, and periodically replaced. Moreover, it would surely soon function as a divider of the classes, with standard models running at only a few times the cost of manufacturing, and the cost of others soon exceeding three or even four digits, what with ornamentation, lights, radio receivers, and other amenities. Need we yet another exacerbator of the class struggle? Besides, the affixation element of the mirror would cause severe damage to the coiffure, and the whole apparatus would be difficult to keep from looking—pardon my French—dorky.
The mirror is out. We are left with backward walking, and I am pleased to announce that there are other advanatages to this option. Anyone who has trained as a defensive back in football knows that walking and running backward are excellent developers of the calf muscles, especially the upper gastrocnemius, whose fitness renders the athletic yet unbrute upper calf definition so highly (and vainly, in both senses of the word) sought after. Walking forward, incidentally, targets the soleus, or lower calf muscle, more directly, often effecting a thick-ankled look and thus minimizing the pleasant taper responsible for high contrast between calf and ankle.
Of course backward walkers need to turn their head at times to see where they are going, and more than one objector has smugly noted that it makes as much sense to walk forward and periodically check for followers. This does make sense—until one thinks about image and impression. Imagine someone walking along facing forward, glancing over their shoulder at short intervals. I think this pedestrian is paranoid! Of course he is; if not, he certainly looks like it. Who wants to look so worried, yea, neurotic? Rightly or not, we judge such glancers as timid, uncertain at best, and—I’ll say it again: paranoid.
Here I think we may rest our case, for no one resolutely walking backward has ever looked paranoid.
And when I say us, I mean you, because I personally have got one up even on the crabs. Of course I need to walk sideways sometimes, as the crabs always do and as everyone else sometimes must, to fit through or to avoid detection or what have you, but, as a rule, I walk backwards. It has been almost three years now since I last walked facing forward, and I no longer know why anyone would, who has really thought about it. Most people haven’t, though, and even then there would be those who stuck with forwardness for the sake of tradition, and those who avoided new trends because they take pride in such avoidance for its own sake, like people (I know quite a few) who refuse to use a cellular phone, even though it would be great for their job and family, “so as not to be like all those people who use cell phones,” whatever kind of person that is. I know lots of different types who use them.
Most of those, however, still walk in a forward orientation, and, like I said, they don’t even think about it, and that is why I am writing this, just like the guy who invented cell phones probably wrote an article whose basic message was why are you still walking around like that when you could be talking to someone far away at the same time. I bet no one gave him a hard time for that.
I will gladly reveal, right off, the chief reason for walking backwards at all times: no one can follow you without your knowledge. It’s a little-considered statistical fact that pedestrians are being followed 99 percent of the time, and almost 100 percent of that time they have no idea by whom. When you’re walking backward, it’s quite simple; pursuers and incidental trailers are in plain view, and I hardly need to make an argument for the fact that you are much less likely to be shot, stabbed, or otherwise punctured in the back. Many injurious and fatal attacks currently target the back, and while I am not the sort to guarantee the ceasing of such incidents (there will always be wackos), the one is bad enough principle tells us that if we can eliminate any backstabbings at all, we will have done some good in this world.
The attentive reader will have noted, perhaps commented aloud to a nearby drinker of chai, that many who follow us when we walk are not strangers, let alone ill-intentioned, but are in fact aquaintances of various degrees. So much the better! Friends may be hard enough to come by; why minimize your odds of recognizing them? Furthermore, I confess that in my forward days I occasionally trailed an acquaintance, knowingly, wavering in my decision whether or not to greet. How I wish the target had turned, seen me, and thus made the choice plain! Enough decisions are daily made. Any amiable citizen of the world should surely wish to lighten others’ burdens by making the to-greet-or-not-to-greet choice simpler for them.
Now, we can all acknowledge that there are but two ways to monitor those who walk behind: either we can employ a sort of rear view mirror, or we can walk backward. The former method may seem appealing at first, but is opposed by issues ranging from financial to sartorial. Such a mirror device would cost money, of course, but it would also need to be polished, perhaps oiled, depending on the mechanism, and periodically replaced. Moreover, it would surely soon function as a divider of the classes, with standard models running at only a few times the cost of manufacturing, and the cost of others soon exceeding three or even four digits, what with ornamentation, lights, radio receivers, and other amenities. Need we yet another exacerbator of the class struggle? Besides, the affixation element of the mirror would cause severe damage to the coiffure, and the whole apparatus would be difficult to keep from looking—pardon my French—dorky.
The mirror is out. We are left with backward walking, and I am pleased to announce that there are other advanatages to this option. Anyone who has trained as a defensive back in football knows that walking and running backward are excellent developers of the calf muscles, especially the upper gastrocnemius, whose fitness renders the athletic yet unbrute upper calf definition so highly (and vainly, in both senses of the word) sought after. Walking forward, incidentally, targets the soleus, or lower calf muscle, more directly, often effecting a thick-ankled look and thus minimizing the pleasant taper responsible for high contrast between calf and ankle.
Of course backward walkers need to turn their head at times to see where they are going, and more than one objector has smugly noted that it makes as much sense to walk forward and periodically check for followers. This does make sense—until one thinks about image and impression. Imagine someone walking along facing forward, glancing over their shoulder at short intervals. I think this pedestrian is paranoid! Of course he is; if not, he certainly looks like it. Who wants to look so worried, yea, neurotic? Rightly or not, we judge such glancers as timid, uncertain at best, and—I’ll say it again: paranoid.
Here I think we may rest our case, for no one resolutely walking backward has ever looked paranoid.
contrived? slightly.
In a conversation with one Emily Harris (now Loney) in Espresso Royale Cafe in Ann Arbor, MI, I was driven to declare, "obscurity is the mother of niches." As I walked out it occurred to me that if obscurity became grandmother of a male child, that child would be a son of a niche.
Dare I continue? I dare:
I have heard "son of a witch" as a euphemism for the original phrase. The German pronunciation of {w} is /v/; thus someone with a German accent would pronounce that phrase "son of a vitch." In Russian, however, it is {b} that makes the /v/ sound. Thus, if one overheard a person exclaim "son of a vitch!", one would have trouble telling whether the person were a German speaker employing the witch euphemism or a Russian speaker with a pottymouth.
vat could vee interestinger?
Dare I continue? I dare:
I have heard "son of a witch" as a euphemism for the original phrase. The German pronunciation of {w} is /v/; thus someone with a German accent would pronounce that phrase "son of a vitch." In Russian, however, it is {b} that makes the /v/ sound. Thus, if one overheard a person exclaim "son of a vitch!", one would have trouble telling whether the person were a German speaker employing the witch euphemism or a Russian speaker with a pottymouth.
vat could vee interestinger?
I have the opposite of that winter depression they describe--seasonal affective disorder, I believe--the phenomenon by which the grayness of the air lends its color to the spirit. Not that sunshine weighs me down; it is that I feel safer under clouds. I feel encased, not in the sense of being imprisoned, but in the sense of being blanketed, cradled. Perhaps it is the absence of a celestial vastness by which to be oppressed. There is no visible threat of falling heavenly bodies, no scorching light-heat so spontaneously able to strike that it only had to leave home eight minutes ago.
For the same reasons I like my hair long and my collars up: I've got a world to deal with in there.
For the same reasons I like my hair long and my collars up: I've got a world to deal with in there.
from a middle-of-night not long ago
To me a novel that repeated the term "Anglo-Saxon" for four hundred pages would be spellbinding. What am I doing in this New World?
Here I am, choking on German chocolate (hazelnut), with nothing but an Old-World spirit and a bandaid on my pointer. Do not hold the loaf in mid-air as you slice it, especially not with a phone clenched between your jaw and shoulder.
What man in Los Angeles wallows and gasps in his bed at night, weeping for Angle-land, Spartacus, and last night's dream?
Sometimes I long to have lived in pre-Haroldian Britain, before non-monks were literate, before Bede, even, when no one wrote in the vernacular. Life would have been simple for one like me. No drive to produce--what would I have produced? I might have died in battle with the Saxons by now (well, surely by now..."by then"?), but life would have been simple.
And I would have fought like hell.
Here I am, choking on German chocolate (hazelnut), with nothing but an Old-World spirit and a bandaid on my pointer. Do not hold the loaf in mid-air as you slice it, especially not with a phone clenched between your jaw and shoulder.
What man in Los Angeles wallows and gasps in his bed at night, weeping for Angle-land, Spartacus, and last night's dream?
Sometimes I long to have lived in pre-Haroldian Britain, before non-monks were literate, before Bede, even, when no one wrote in the vernacular. Life would have been simple for one like me. No drive to produce--what would I have produced? I might have died in battle with the Saxons by now (well, surely by now..."by then"?), but life would have been simple.
And I would have fought like hell.
Odd Port II
My mind’s an odd port to spend an evening.
Why? It’s easy to pass the standard screening
Hence a motley mix of ships it harbors
Upheld by little more than Neptune’s garters
Therein lies the trouble. That man’s a myth
Thus, wears no clips to hold his socks up with.
Still, many vessels turn their bows its way
Picture Joppa, Dover, or Calais—
Countless kinds of craft are there to find
But none like those that anchor in my mind
At times a tiny tugboat brings a barge
Of finest pearls and emeralds at no charge
Less seldom, worthwhile cargo costs two fortunes
Yet is devoured like stolen fish by urchins
Most often, worthless, but exotic, ware
Lands and stirs up notice here and there
But half the vessels bound for here, I wager
Are sunk by spirits small and tempests major
Another third—perhaps the saddest sort
Lines the ocean bottom of my port
Having docked successfully, but later
Abandoned by some uncommitted trader
And so my mind consists of wishful wharves
Seeking titans, hosting mostly dwarves
I know if ever I’m to house the former
I must compete with beaches that are warmer
And since the climate here is so unsteady
That’s a contest that I’ve lost already.
I wonder, could I make myself a boat
And sail to a haven less remote?
What’s this? Cargo travels now by air?
Well then, there is little time to spare
I’ve heard that planes are trustier than ships
Alas, my island has no landing strips
Besides, the seven seas have been my friend—
Why bring that pact so quickly to an end?
My current harbor’s working madly now
Each sailor trying to loose this knot—but how?
Aha! This inkling leaves me merrier:
I’ll make myself an aircraft carrier!
Why? It’s easy to pass the standard screening
Hence a motley mix of ships it harbors
Upheld by little more than Neptune’s garters
Therein lies the trouble. That man’s a myth
Thus, wears no clips to hold his socks up with.
Still, many vessels turn their bows its way
Picture Joppa, Dover, or Calais—
Countless kinds of craft are there to find
But none like those that anchor in my mind
At times a tiny tugboat brings a barge
Of finest pearls and emeralds at no charge
Less seldom, worthwhile cargo costs two fortunes
Yet is devoured like stolen fish by urchins
Most often, worthless, but exotic, ware
Lands and stirs up notice here and there
But half the vessels bound for here, I wager
Are sunk by spirits small and tempests major
Another third—perhaps the saddest sort
Lines the ocean bottom of my port
Having docked successfully, but later
Abandoned by some uncommitted trader
And so my mind consists of wishful wharves
Seeking titans, hosting mostly dwarves
I know if ever I’m to house the former
I must compete with beaches that are warmer
And since the climate here is so unsteady
That’s a contest that I’ve lost already.
I wonder, could I make myself a boat
And sail to a haven less remote?
What’s this? Cargo travels now by air?
Well then, there is little time to spare
I’ve heard that planes are trustier than ships
Alas, my island has no landing strips
Besides, the seven seas have been my friend—
Why bring that pact so quickly to an end?
My current harbor’s working madly now
Each sailor trying to loose this knot—but how?
Aha! This inkling leaves me merrier:
I’ll make myself an aircraft carrier!
A poem about fruit (sort of)
A Poem About Fruit (sort of)
Would you rather
Eat an orange or a banana
WHOLE?
The banana is bigger,
But would probably conform
Better to your esophagus
(And small intestine, for that matter,
As I'm not sure how
Stomachs do with peels).
originally written on an unpeeled banana in English class, 04/02/02
Would you rather
Eat an orange or a banana
WHOLE?
The banana is bigger,
But would probably conform
Better to your esophagus
(And small intestine, for that matter,
As I'm not sure how
Stomachs do with peels).
originally written on an unpeeled banana in English class, 04/02/02
From the Chronicles of A
I pass freely between worlds. For all I know, you do too: for all I know, I know you in another, or we may have just barely missed each other on a thousand slips between the realms of Latium and Gotham, of pre-Justinian Byzantium and post-modern Sorbonne, of cool and so-called gothic, of waking and dreaming. If so, my apologies for not saying good day; I am frequently in a hurry when world-switching. But I think you do not make such trips, not as easily as I do. I once told a professor of metaphysics of my travels, by which I mean my identity, and to my surprise found him less credulous than a physicist (non-meta) who the year before had bought my story until he realized I was a fan of Berkeley--the man of ideas, not the city or its college--and concluded I could not be trusted on any matter. I kept the money and so partially confirmed his conclusion. (Do not say the tender implied by the phrase “he bought my story” is not real, lest you betray your unfamiliarity with reality.) Unfortunately I could not convince even the most sensible of airline executives to accept said money for a transatlantic ticket until I got hold, through a mutual masseuse, of the CEO of Frantumai, an obscure Italian carrier that was having a bad year on account of internal problems related to its archaic bookkeeping methods. More on that later, maybe; I was speaking of various intellectuals who have led me to believe my situation is rare if not unparalleled. An American semanticist of my acquaintance assumed that I was attempting to live some mental exercise in predicate logic; he understood art well enough (without knowing so) not to convince me to abandon it, but was himself none the better for it, and went on speaking of unicorns, Santa Claus, and various quantifiers. Perhaps the closest I have come to being believed was by the son of an seventeenth-century Westphalian baron, who had no trouble accepting the possibility of my travels, but assured me that his was the best of all possible worlds. Alas, to be believed only by the poster child of gullibility is meager consolation.
But consolation is not necessary, indeed is a void category, for a winner, and I am a winner if I am a man at all. For instance, I once won a toaster oven and a luggage set, respectively, for my Old Icelandic rendition of “YMCA” and my Sindarin performance of “Put Me In, Coach (I’m Ready to Play)” at the third annual krc-re-pifǿlikh festival: “today’s hits in yesterday’s tongues,” held in Clare, Michigan. (The event’s name is thought to be Esclyvian for DO-RE-MI; fascinatingly, the middle particles appear to be cognates. This theory and even the proper back translation of DO-RE-MI are under dispute as they are based on a questionable reconstruction of Melpitian [B]; both issues and several others are treated in a special session krc-re-pifǿlikh offers every year in addition to the rotating seminars.) To this day no one else has carried away two Golden Uvulas from the same k-r-p festival.
What I am saying is that I am no loser.
But consolation is not necessary, indeed is a void category, for a winner, and I am a winner if I am a man at all. For instance, I once won a toaster oven and a luggage set, respectively, for my Old Icelandic rendition of “YMCA” and my Sindarin performance of “Put Me In, Coach (I’m Ready to Play)” at the third annual krc-re-pifǿlikh festival: “today’s hits in yesterday’s tongues,” held in Clare, Michigan. (The event’s name is thought to be Esclyvian for DO-RE-MI; fascinatingly, the middle particles appear to be cognates. This theory and even the proper back translation of DO-RE-MI are under dispute as they are based on a questionable reconstruction of Melpitian [B]; both issues and several others are treated in a special session krc-re-pifǿlikh offers every year in addition to the rotating seminars.) To this day no one else has carried away two Golden Uvulas from the same k-r-p festival.
What I am saying is that I am no loser.
On Toddling
On Toddling
Between an ageless poet’s birth and weaning
Comes ample beating:
Peaceless pummeling with blocks
Unpacified by commas.
It typically takes mamas
Nine months more of getting clocked
Before conceding
A poem’s form might not reflect its meaning
Between an ageless poet’s birth and weaning
Comes ample beating:
Peaceless pummeling with blocks
Unpacified by commas.
It typically takes mamas
Nine months more of getting clocked
Before conceding
A poem’s form might not reflect its meaning
not often is a g followed by a d
by "they" I meant Ogden Nash, an under-celebrated poet who has been criticized as a writer of mere doggerel. Can this be true of a man who writes such lines as
"The pig, if I am not mistaken,
Supplies us sausage, ham, and bacon.
Let others say his heart is big,
I call it stupid of the pig."
and
"Tell me octopus, I begs,
Is those things arms, or is they legs?
I marvel at thee, octopus,
If I were you, I'd call me us." ?
It cannot.
"The pig, if I am not mistaken,
Supplies us sausage, ham, and bacon.
Let others say his heart is big,
I call it stupid of the pig."
and
"Tell me octopus, I begs,
Is those things arms, or is they legs?
I marvel at thee, octopus,
If I were you, I'd call me us." ?
It cannot.
A more obscure welcome
Here:
Welcome to Below Dunster!
I hope you will find something to nod about, laugh at, comment on, and [verb] [preposition].
You know what they say:
"One bliss for which
There is no match
Is when you itch
To up and scratch."
Let this be a place of much itch-scratching, and thus much bliss.
Welcome to Below Dunster!
I hope you will find something to nod about, laugh at, comment on, and [verb] [preposition].
You know what they say:
"One bliss for which
There is no match
Is when you itch
To up and scratch."
Let this be a place of much itch-scratching, and thus much bliss.
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