Turkey Belongs to Erdogan

In Turkey no job is too safe.

The internet’s more like a waif.

And all dating shows

Have come to a close --

Cuz Erdogan they really chafe.

There is room for those with differing sexual attractions.

“There is room for those with differing sexual attractions.”

Jeffrey R. Holland

To comprehend the Lord’s embrace

Takes loving kindness, wit, and grace.

How oft we fools do push away

All those who from our course do stray.

Far better to let God alone

Throw any arbitrating stone.

To Amy

The fading light has stripped away my midday certainty,

as brewing shadows boil upon the mountains distantly.

Soon the stars and orbs of night descend upon the sum

Of all my doubts and heartaches -- leaving me both low and mum.

Then comes flooding back to me the past of love and joy --

When young and sound we played with life as if it were a toy.

We gamboled far together ere our roads asunder rent.

After that I found much less of all but discontent.

I dare not dream that you’ll come back -- I dare not, but I do.

But words upon the screen (or page) are merely deja vu.

They speak of ‘closure’ -- those who think the heart can prudent be.

But I know (maybe you do, too) that such is foolery.

No styptic pen can overwrite the blunders that destroyed

Our happiness and sent it crashing deep into the void.

But when the dawn lures me away from melancholy thought,

I sometimes fancy -- in spite of years -- our love you’ve not forgot.

Congress at 100 Days

A divisive election, the growing use of arcane rules that disenfranchise the minority party and a chaotic White House have combined to create one of the least productive opening acts by Congress in recent memory.

From the NYTimes 

Our Congress in session so far

Has done very little but spar.

Mistaking exhaust

For true Pentecost,

They’re moving as fast as cold tar.

The Murdered Journalists of Mexico

Mexico is one of the worst countries in the world to be a journalist today. At least 104 journalists have been murdered in this country since 2000, while 25 others have disappeared, presumed dead.

From the NYTimes

A journalist from Veracruz

No longer conducts interviews.

“A hole in the head

Is irksome” he said.

“I’ll write about soccer for news.”

Kindness to all

“As we earnestly strive to be true disciples of Jesus Christ . . . There will be no disparity between the kindness we show our enemies and the kindness we bestow on on our friends.”

Robert D. Hales

I’ve treated all my enemies with silence and disdain;

My friends receive warm words of praise as sweet as sugar cane.

To find some kindness in my heart for those who damage me

Is harder than to skate on mud or climb a thorny tree.

Yet Jesus has been very clear upon this subject -- when

He says to love my enemies can I respond “Amen?”

I’ll keep trying, Lord, to offer honey and refrain

From judging and condemning those who give me naught but pain.

Since thou dost make it rain upon the good and bad alike,

I’ll try to keep my charity from going out on strike!

Bachelors and Bread

As a dumb old bachelor I have so much stale bread

That if it didn’t start to smell I’d use it for my bed.

I only buy one loaf per week, but then go out to eat

So often that the lonely loaf turns into mucky peat.

I put some in the freezer but forget about it till

It freezer-burns to concrete and would blunt a diamond drill.

But sometimes only sandwiches at home can fill the void --

So if I’m lacking bread I start to cry or am annoyed.

I tried to keep a pig to eat my leavings with no pout --

But once it saw the mess I call my home it just moved out!

Becoming

“In contrast to the institutions of the world, which teach us to know something, the plan of salvation and the gospel of Jesus Christ challenge us to become something.”

Dallin H. Oaks

Each day I am becoming, something more or something less.

Standing still is not an option that I can possess.

The process of creation is vouchsafed to one and all --

We have not been immobilised because of Adam’s fall.

The Gospel is transformative and not an anodyne --

My metamorphosis continues on without deadline.

So do not label me as ‘done’ or ‘through’ or even ‘dead’ --

I’m going to keep on rolling, though I’m just a poor retread!

Are Women Required to Register for the Draft?

(Suggested from a story by Linda Qiu)

Will women be drafted for war?

Our Congress discussed this before.

Right now it appears

Despite new frontiers

They’ll volunteer and nothing more.

Restaurant Review: The Sensuous Sandwich in Provo

There is nothing sensuous about a sandwich -- unless you're making one naked in the kitchen with a similarly unattired Kate Upton. However, in the interests of the public weal, I ventured forth this blustery afternoon to the Sensuous Sandwich on Center Street in downtown Provo to order their namesake sandwich. And this is my report:

The decor is, to borrow a felicitous phrase from Groucho Marx, of the 'crummy moronic' type. The booths are impossibly uncomfortable -- I could not fit into any of them. The walls are plastered with idiotic posters, most of them taped on and starting to peel off. There are several Wayne's World posters, and I was particularly repulsed by one that detailed a host of interesting facts about flatulence.

My six inch sub included ham, turkey, roast beef, and jack cheese. The flaccid meats were overwhelmed by even more flaccid shredded lettuce and paper thin tomato slices. My fountain drink cost extra. The whole shebang came to $5.89. I did not so much eat my sandwich as endure it. This place gets exactly 1 Burp -- and that's only because at least I did not get ptomaine poisoning. I'm thinking a Subway's would clean up in downtown Provo, if this is all the sandwich competition there is. A shrink-wrapped ready-made sandwich from Fresh Market down the street would have tasted better, and cost less.

Since my meal held absolutely no interest for me, I started pondering something that has puzzled me for years. This place offers fountain drinks in four sizes: small, medium, large, and extra large. The prices are $1.39; $1.69; $1.89; and $2.09, respectively. So far so good. But no matter what size you order, you can get all the free refills you want. So why on earth do people pay the most for the largest sized cup when they could get just as much pop with the smallest cup? All they have to do is walk up to the dispenser a few more times. I checked each booth, and everyone had either the large or the extra large cup. What does this say about the kind of people who eat and drink in such a place?

I'm pretty sure a straw poll taken right then and there would have revealed they all voted for Trump.

In Mexico, an Outbreak of Fuel Thefts Becomes a Crisis

The brisk, open gas trade is one of the more obvious manifestations of Mexico’s national fuel-theft epidemic. Thieves are now siphoning gasoline and diesel fuel at record-high rates from the system — often by drilling taps into pipelines under cover of darkness — and are selling it on the black market around Mexico and perhaps even in the United States and Central America.

By Kirk Semple

An hombre who hailed from El Paso

Was collared with some bootleg gaso.

He sold it so cheap

It made tourists weep

When he was dragged off with a lasso.

Church Sleep

“I am pretty sure that church sleep is among the healthiest of all sleeps.”

Dieter F. Uchtdorf

When my head begins to nod

While I’m worshipping my God

I do not become upset

Or begin to shake and sweat.

If I make a pew my bed

It won’t make the Lord see red.

Spirit willing, body weak;

A nap at my age ain’t unique.  

A Quotation from Mark Twain

The only quote I ever want to be affixed to me

Is “Never pay for virtue when a vice is offered free.”

I kinda like the ring of it, although it don’t make sense.

It makes me sound a cynic who is through with all pretence.

I’ll send it first to Hallmark, then I’ll try MAD Magazine --

Between the two of them I ought to see a little green.

But if no one will buy it, still my work is not in vain --

I’ll put it on a t-shirt with a picture of Mark Twain.

My Unfinished Clown Gag

Schubert had his unfinished symphony. I have my unfinished clown gag. I’ve been working on it for years, and still haven’t come up with a satisfactory blow off.

It all began back in the Ringling clown alley when I was a novice joey. I loved prowling around thrift stores in the down and out neighborhoods of the cities we played. I found wonderful cast-offs, including a pure wool tam-o-shanter, a silk top hat, duck calls, wooden train whistles, a pair of pince-nez complete with attached black ribbon, a trombone case for my musical saw, a ceramic ocarina, a patched up squeeze box, a parking meter (I took it into the audience and tried getting quarters from the audience for expired seats), and golf clubs.

I especially doted on golf clubs. I saw myself as another Bob Hope, strolling casually around the ninth hole with a putter. Used golf clubs, all bent, nicked, and twisted, cost fifty cents a piece back then at a Goodwill store or St. Vincent de Paul. I collected a round dozen of ‘em, along with a narrow canvas golf bag to keep them in. But since I didn’t ever play golf I just threw the bag into one of the blue clown prop boxes until boss clown LeVoi Hipps complained about how they were taking up room and not being used for anything.

Fine, I told him, I’d think up a clown gag for them.

There are many precedents. W.C. Fields has a celebrated golf routine that he included in several of his movies. Both Laurel and Hardy and the Three Stooges placed several of their two-reelers on golf courses. Harpo the Clown made a good living just carrying an oversized golf club around at golf tournaments. And my favorite Our Gang comedy, Divot Diggers, was nothing but a series of bizarre slapstick gags with golf clubs, golf balls, and a chimpanzee. I could work up a mashup of golf gags as easily as kiss my hand.

I began by loading up the golf bag with an eclectic blend of strictly non-golfing items -- such as a garden rake, a bamboo fishing pole, a skein of red yarn, and a shotgun loaded with blanks. After discarding the rake I would keep stepping on it, bringing the handle up into my face. I kept one of Mark Anthony’s handmade foam rubber fish attached to the bamboo pole, so I could mime a terrific struggle in landing it. The red yarn just kept coming out of the golf bag in an endless stream until I got tangled up in it like a spider web. And I used the shotgun to blast my hapless golf ball when it refused to take off for the horizon after several futile strokes.

I also added some traditional schtick to my golf routine. My hat kept falling off whenever I bent over to address the ball, and when I would step up to retrieve it my clown shoes inadvertently kicked it ten feet away. When finally retrieved I would place my chapeau on a golf club I was holding over my shoulder, instead of on my head, and then look around in mounting anger for the missing headgear. I took spectacular pratfalls by stepping on the little white golf ball.

But I couldn’t come up with an adequate ending, a blow off. I put the gag in the show, just to get Hipps off my back, but it lacked something to bring it to life, to bring it to a rousing, hilarious close.

Prince Paul suggested I keep a rabbit in the golf bag, and when I was done with all the golf clubs just pull it out, pet it, and wave to the audience as I walked off. That made no sense to me, but Prince pointed out “Who the hell needs a clown gag to make sense? You just pull out the damn rabbit so the kids can ‘ooh’ and ‘aah’ over it and then get the hell off.”

Mark Anthony offered to make me a sexy foam rubber mermaid to pull out of the golf bag for my blow off. He had a thing for mermaids, and was always trying to put one or two in every ring gag we did. He was especially painstaking about carving and painting their bosoms. I told him thanks, but no thanks.

“Use a bowling ball instead of a golf ball, Pinhead” Swede Johnson said cryptically.

“What earthly good would that do, you old buzzard?” I asked irately.

“You could drop it on your foot -- that would get a big laugh.”

I never got the gag to my complete liking that season. I put the clubs and bag away at the end of the season and didn’t think about it again until I returned from pantomime school in Mexico to begin working as an Advance Clown for Ringling. I needed a lot of material for school shows, so I dusted off the incomplete golf gag, hoping that I could improvise something that would tie the whole schmear together. And I almost did.

It came to me in a flash -- use a marshmallow instead of a real golf ball! Then eat the darn thing at the end of the routine. When I tried it out it only got a moderate titter. Even from crazed kindergartners, who were so excited to see a real live circus clown that half of ‘em had accidents when I just waved my hat at them.

Once again I packed away my golfing paraphernalia, completely stymied. As the years trickled by I would pull out the old golf bag for mud shows and Shrine circuses occasionally -- but it just never clicked. It didn’t make sense and at the same time it wasn’t nonsensical enough. Maybe I should have actually learned to play golf and joined a country club -- but there was never that kind of money in the Torkildson piggy bank.

I threw the whole frustrating mess away when I moved out here to Provo. It was just junk, anyways -- the heads were rusty and cracked and the handles were riddled with beetle holes. Nowadays when I’m browsing for bargains at Deseret Industries I avoid the outdoor section where they sell the derelict golf clubs. Who needs that kind of aggravation? But every so often, when sleep is as elusive as a plastic shopping bag in a gale, I sit up in bed and wonder if maybe, just maybe, a tennis racket is what that gag needed all along. Or perhaps just a simple pants drop?     

The Rising Tide

As sea levels rise, even graves

Are no longer sacred enclaves.

All those by the coast

Are soon to be toast --

Exposed by the merciless waves.

From a story by Justin Gillis

Water into Wine

“When we trust and follow Him, our lives, like water to wine, are transformed.”

L. Whitney Clayton

Those who prate about bouquet or vintage of their wine

Have never tasted anything as good as from God’s vine.

He cultivates disciples till they sweeten far beyond

Anything a simple grape has ever truly spawned.

Transforming men and women into such a grand libation

Is what the Savior wants when He instructs us in Salvation.

Restaurant Review: El Mexsal in Provo

El Mexsal is at 325 S. Freedom Boulevard in Provo. I and a Young Lady of My Acquaintance got there at 12:06 and the place was packed. We had to sit next to the drafty front door. But I can understand why this place is packed. Their combination of Mexican and Salvadoran vittles is unpretentious yet muy deliciosa. And the price is very reasonable.

The Young Lady and I had both plain and stuffed tamales and pupusas chock full of cheese, pulled pork, and onion. Along with fountain drinks and chips w/salsa. They brought us a big jar full of pickled cabbage -- very spicy but just the right thing to put on the pupusas. All for $14.75. CHEAP DATE RENDEZVOUS, SINGLE GUYS!

This is a bare bones kind of place -- nothing fancy on the walls, with utilitarian tables and chairs. But the staff knows their comida. And even though we got there at rush hour, it only took 20 minutes from the time we placed our order to the moment the goodies arrived. I'm giving this place 4 Burps. Don't bring your boss here (unless he's a folksy nonpareil along the lines of Lincoln) -- but for Family Home Evening or a cheap date this should be your Home Away From Home. The Young Lady of My Acquaintance eats here often. I'm glad she recommended it for our tryst.

History of a Long Shirt

I was introduced to the long shirt gag my first year on the road with Ringling Brothers. As the biggest member of the troupe inside the clown car, I had to lay flat on the bottom while the other clowns piled on top of me. When it came my turn to pop out I was immediately grabbed by the traffic cop, played by Tim Holst, and hauled off to jail. Except that as he pulled on my shirt it just got longer and longer -- until it spanned the entire length of the arena. At which point it came off of me, my pants fell down, and I toppled over the ring curb. That was the blow off.

The simple elegance of this sight gag has always pleased me. It requires no gadgets or fiddling with -- it’s just a long tube of cloth with arm holes and a large opening for the head. Someone working for the Marx Brothers thought it was a great gag, too; for it’s used to great effect by Harpo during the football match in their film ‘Horse Feathers.’ I’ve never seen it used in any other slapstick comedy movie. And I have no idea who first thought it up. It’s probably as ancient as the toga.

Years later, after I had left the Ringling fold, I described the long shirt to my wife Amy, to see if she could sew me up one to take on the road with the next mud show I was scheduled to join in the spring. It didn’t sound too complicated to her, so we shopped around for some suitable fabric, finally settling on a long swath of an elastic nylon/cotton blend that had both stripes and polka dots in red, blue, and yellow. She stayed up all night cutting and stitching, and in the morning I was the proud possessor of a 25 foot clown long shirt.

It was rather bulky to wear, but that turned out to be a good thing. The show I went out with had two other clowns -- the Calabozo Brothers from Brazil. They were rough and tumble performers, who did a slack wire act and blew on whistles as loud as they could while they pummeled each other with broomsticks. They liked to pummel me as well during our clown entr’acte, but with the long shirt providing lots of padding I never felt a thing. The Calabozos were unfamiliar with the long shirt, and eventually grew tired of heaving on it while I got all the laughs. So one day when I wasn’t looking they cut halfway through my long shirt near the top -- the next show, they gave it a perfunctory tug and the long shirt came apart, with most of it still around my waist. We still got a laugh, but it was only a titter -- not the satisfying belly laugh the full unfolding of the long shirt usually created.

Infuriated at their callous and lazy tomfoolery at my expense, I took the sundered apparel to the wardrobe mistress -- a Catholic nun from the Sisters of the Sacred Heart that volunteer world-wide with circuses. I explained what happened and implored her to bind up my broken long shirt before the evening show. She was glad to do so, and even reinforced the whole thing to make it harder to snip through. I offered to pay her for her heroic efforts on my behalf but she gently refused -- her order took a vow of poverty and never accepted payment for services rendered. After that I kept my long shirt with me at all times -- I even used it as my pillow at night. There was no more trouble from the cursed Calabozos.

That long shirt stood me in good stead over the following years. The material was so durable that it outlasted all of my other clown wardrobe. And it was always good for a laugh, no matter what clown gag I stuck it in.  In fact, I had a business card printed that read, in part, “Dusty the Clown. Have long shirt -- will travel.”

We weathered several years of grassy lots and muddy sinks together, that long shirt and I. And then one winter’s day during the off season while I was enjoying a leisurely game of Scrabble with my older kids, Amy took my long shirt into her sewing room and cut it apart. She then made nightshirts out of the material for me and the kids.

At the time I didn’t understand her action or reasons. She hadn’t asked me if she could do it -- she just did it, silently and swiftly. Now I know it was her way of telling me to quit traveling with the circus once and for all. But I didn’t parse her meaning back then; I put it down to female whimsy.

I’ve still got that long shirt nightshirt. I wore it this past winter, even though I’m in a subsidized apartment where I don’t pay for utilities -- so I can have the heat up as high as I want at night. I like keeping it cool so I can put on that sturdy old piece of material -- rubbing it like a magic lamp to conjure up the memory of happy trips and tempo of years fled past.

California’s Deluge of Rain Washes Away a Homeless Colony

The Golden State is flushed with rain.

The Homeless there must move again.

The riverbanks where they once hid

Into the rapids now have slid.

Wrapped in tarps, a sad memento

On the streets of Sacramento.

The rushing water doesn’t care

About the homeless anywhere.

And people, like the H2O,

Turn their backs and let them go.

Perhaps another drought will teach

Them more compassion in Long Beach.

The Holy Ghost

“The Holy Ghost binds us to the Lord.”

Ronald A. Rasband

A nudge from the real Holy Ghost

Leads me to pray, not to boast;

To work quietly

For God’s own glory --

And never become too verbose.

My Favorite Martian

SYRACUSE — Why have sightings of unidentified flying objects around the nation more than tripled since 2001? Why is July the busiest month for U.F.O. sightings? Why did they spike in Texas in 2008, or in New Mexico in September 2015?

And how in the world, or out of it, has Manhattan racked up New York State’s second-highest tally of U.F.O. sightings in this century?

These questions and many others emerge from the first comprehensive statistical summary of so-called close encounters: 121,036 eyewitness accounts, organized county by county in each state and the District of Columbia, from 2001 to 2015.

From a story by Ralph Blumenthal

Martians in the Midwest; Selenites upon the shore --

The outer space contingent has arrived; and what is more,

The Feds don’t want to hear it, since the Condon papers broke

The government’s slight int’rest -- now they treat it like a joke.

The Condons, though, have toted up the numbers -- and they show

That aliens from Betelgeuse vacation here below.

Their numbers are increasing -- and it’s wiser not to grouse.

Because I think we’ve got one now ensconced in the White House!