Sarah Needleman, of the Wall Street Journal, is a Tea Connoisseur

No one can say that Sarah Needleman is not smart, edgy, trending, and pasteurized. Her articles in the Wall Street Journal and other media have always drawn attention from the Cognoscenti, Montagues, and Capulets. Currently engaged in chronicling the video game industry, her previous writing gigs include writing about how the word 'entrepreneur' would never be used if it weren't for Spell Check, and reporting on small businesses -- in fact she nosed around and found dozens of businesses so tiny that she had to buy a microscope to examine them. 

She is the recipient of the Aimee Semple McPherson Award for her coverage of the International Tea Cozy Knitting Competitions in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, Canada, in 2011. During the ensuing riots she was injured and lost the use of her coccyx for several years. 

She says that literature runs in her family -- or was it runs from her family?  I'll have to check my notes . . .  

She graduated from Rutgers University in 1997 but likes to tell complete strangers that she is taking an online course in taxidermy to help support her dream of one day owning a kumquat ranch. 

Even though Sarah admits to possessing a cat, she has not yet developed the facial tics and nail biting habit that most cat owners acquire over the long, tortuous years of feline subjugation. Her bravery and stamina in this area have earned her the admiration of scores of influential people, including Tom Cruise and KICD Meteorologist Corey Harguth, who have set up the Sarah Needleman Memorial Fund to help victims of cat ownership recover their self respect and dignity. 

Social Media stories that she has amassed a giant blob of Silly Putty in her basement and intends to use it to take over northern New Jersey have been labeled as 'Fake News' by the Columbia Journalism Review and the South Brunswick Post. But nobody, least of all Ms. Needleman, seems to know just exactly what her cat does with all its spare time. 

*******************************

Ms. Needleman emailed me her response to this piece, thus:

I think it's odd and has several errors. I'd prefer you take it down.

Regards, Sarah E. Needleman

TECHNOLOGY REPORTER THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.

*******************************

"I'd rather own a porcupine than a cat."

Katie Rogers of the New York Times is Proud to be a Hoosier

Katie Rogers covers the White House for the New York Times, a job she finds both stressful and educational. She says that the stress of having to constantly snap her fingers in front of President Trump's face to regain his attention when he veers off into an incoherent rant makes it impossible for her to sleep at night unless she hangs upside down from the rafters. But she also admits she has learned so much about the inner workings of the American experiment in democracy that she is now planning a lateral move to Antarctica for a ten year sabbatical among the chinstrap penguins.

She has fond memories of growing up in Hoosier, Indiana, where the corn is alpine as a tall billboard sign, and it looks like it's growin' right up to cloud nine . . . 

Her ancestors arrived at Plymouth Rock by coracle and held important positions in such organizations as American National Cattlewomen Inc; the Association of Gravestone Studies; The Organization for the Working Samoyed; and the American Association of Candy Technologists. There is a statue of her great Uncle Sebastian on the grounds of the state capital in Indianapolis, for his outstanding contributions to the game of pinochle. 

A keen student of pop culture and haute couture, Ms. Rogers was among the first journalists to investigate the dangers of prolonged exposure to hula hoop earrings. 

A graduate of Loyala University, she was awarded the Lucius Beebe Medallion for Breaking News and then Fixing It. Her hobbies include bowling ball rosemaling and collecting wimples. 

********************************

"Give me a Buckeye anytime . . . "

Tim Cook's Denunciation of Silicon Valley. Et tu, Brutus?

Apple chief executive Tim Cook on Wednesday warned the world’s most powerful regulators that the poor privacy practices of some tech companies, the ills of social media and the erosion of trust in his own industry threaten to undermine “technology’s awesome potential” to address challenges like disease and climate change.   Washington Post.

At the European Parliament Tim Cook began to speak,

and the legislators sat up for to hear this awesome geek.

He lamented all the rhetoric infecting platform use;

twas most it fallacious and a terrible abuse.

The mining of raw data he denounced as conscienceless,

and hopes that nosy companies will be denied access.

What good is AI, he did ask, and algorithms keen

if it makes privacy a farce and dignity demean?

Cook demanded lawmakers around the globe enact

 tougher legislation and don't worry about tact.

His speech hit all the right spots, but if I may just be frank,

I think when it was over he went laughing to the bank.

White House Under Attack by Socialists -- Foodies on Instagram -- Who Invented the Green Bean Casserole?

The White House Council of Economic Advisers on Tuesday published a 72-page report criticizing what it described as the socialist ideas of leading Democratic Party politicians, and seeking to link President Trump’s political rivals with figures reviled by most Americans.

NYT

Socialists and Democrats

are two of the same kind of cats;

they may start to purr

but they will transfer

your property into their own hats!

********************************

Instagram makes soup look good

though it may taste like wormwood.

But there's not much it can do

with my kisser's awful view.

To change that I'd have to opt

to have my features Photoshopped. 

***********************************

Dorcas Reilly, inventor of the green bean casserole, has died at 92.

(Headline in the Washington Post)

When it comes to processed soul,

there's nothing like a casserole.

Made with love and Elmer's glue,

tis easier than stirring roux.

Any clumsy nincompoop

can mix green beans with mushroom soup!

"When does hockey season start?"

New York Times Headline Screams: ‘Headless Chicken Monster’ Spotted in the Deep Sea!

MELBOURNE, Australia — What lives a mile under the sea, has tentacles and fins and looks like a decapitated chicken ready for roasting?

The headless chicken monster, of course.  NYT

Down below the sunshine in the waters dark and deep

are creatures that mock reason and can make your goosebumps creep!

The headless chicken monster is just one such bugaboo;

it slinks up onto beaches -- and it's coming after YOU!

The frazzled winking bumpkus is another creature that

flits about the ocean like a venomous big bat.

With fangs as big as sabers it can rip a whale in two;

it feeds on tattooed sailors and the foolish swimming gnu.

Beware the pumpled pewterfish; its scales are long and sharp --

if you try to pet one you'll be playing on a harp!

Oh, barnififes and clicky butts patrol the wastes below,

spreading out their tentacles as grey as mildewed snow.

So stay off of the ocean floor -- it's not a pleasant place.

It's where the mumping wunkershell can suck off your whole face! 

Min Tull. (A Lampoon of Knausgaard's novel, Min Kamp.) Tuesday. October 23. 2018. Featuring Kenneth Chang, of the New York Times

You cannot conquer outer space

with a private sector race.

The galaxy, with all our fates,

has just been purchased by Bill Gates! 

I just sent a postcard to Kenneth Chang, a science reporter with the New York Times, inviting him to read this installment of Min Tull, cuz he's mentioned in it and his story in the paper is kinda the launching pad for my ruminations today.  

A postcard is both inconsequential and unique. Sending a postcard with a private message on it smacks of the Luddite persuasion as well as displaying a more than average desire to communicate with someone: "See, I have eschewed the convenience and freedom of the Internet and paid money and written out your address and a message to you, which will reach you a week or more from today -- so pay attention!" 

Chang, of course, may just throw it away. Or never get it. I became very disillusioned with the Post Office nine years ago when my dying mother gave me a large old-fashioned diamond ring she had gotten from her mother, to give to my daughter Madelaine. I think my mother felt guilty for being such a distant and forbidding character to my children, and when Madel had her first child mom was not enthused about having a great grandson. By then she had pretty much soured on the whole concept of marriage and childbearing, as memories of her own frowzy marriage and the disreputable shenanigans of her own children crowded in upon her waking hours -- which were being distorted by more and more opioid prescriptions to mask her pain and Weltschmerz.  

I mailed the diamond ring to Madel at her business address, a cancer clinic where she did accounts receivable, certified and insured. She spent so much time at work that I figured that would be the best way to get it to her. But she never got it. I waited two weeks before calling her to see if she got it. She said she didn't. I went to the Post Office with my receipt, only to be told I had not paid for insurance or for certified delivery. Incredulous, I asked the clerk what the Sam Hill I HAD paid for and she told me for 2 day deliver -- only that. She had long brown mousy hair that slid down her shoulders like a dirty waterfall. I thought she was chewing gum, but then she turned to spit in a waste basket behind her. A woman chawing baccy -- gag a maggot! I decided I could not deal with such a depraved character, and would have to come back later to raise the rafters. 

When I told Madel about it she displayed an amazing amount of stoic acceptance. I, on the other hand, was ready to go on the warpath with the Post Office -- but that same week a cop pulled me over, in the parking lot of Church on Sunday, to tell me my driving license was revoked for back child support and he would have to take me to jail for driving with a revoked license. But several members of my Ward, who were retired cops, intervened and had me fined a hundred dollars instead of locked up in the hoosegow. So that little contretemps ate up all my time and thought and I let the Great Post Office Diamond Ring Caper slide. 

But I still have a lingering mistrust for their whole operation. 

I fell into a very deep funk yesterday, after coming home from the Provo Rec Center. Even though I got a ride there and back I was so exhausted and achy the rest of the day that I gave up on writing anything and went through two-hundred pages of Knausgaard's first volume of Min Kamp -- My Struggle. That only depressed me further. Especially the part about cleaning up after his squalid alcoholic father -- it hit too close to home; I remembered my own dad, who didn't bother to go upstairs to our one and only bathroom at night, but instead went out onto the front porch to relieve himself on the steps. His urine eventually cankered the metal bolts that held the black cast iron railing in place, so one night while he was leaning on it the whole shebang gave way, hurling him into the spotted dead-nettle. 

But since reading is about all I know how to do when I'm enveloped in a stupor of thought I went on Amazon and bought a Kindle for $148.00, along with a Kindle Unlimited subscription. Soon as it arrives I'm gonna pull the venetian blinds, pop open a Mountain Dew, collapse into my bedroom recliner, and read science fiction until they send in a HazMat team to collect my putrifying body. My dreams of a new companion, working on my virtues like Ben Franklin, or even finishing this plaguey novel, have all gone by the board. I'm gonna start with Frank Herbert's Dune novels and then reread 'A Canticle for Leibowitz' and then work down a long list of other sci-fi books to take my mind off of the real world outside my door, which interests me less and less. I have always thought that the worlds created by Jules Verne and H.G. Wells were more real than the one I'm forced to inhabit -- a world where anchovies are shunned by bigots and children no longer collect PEZ dispensers. Although I'm told one of my grandsons has saved unopened all the ones I gave him before he started playing football at school.

That's why Kenneth Chang gets the nod from me today. He wrote about space stations and going back to the moon and going on to Mars, which I found pleasantly engaging, and I realize that science fiction is the only decent thing left to read on this reptilian planet -- except for the Scriptures (which often sound like sci-fi, don't they? I mean, Jonah beats anything Jacques Cousteau every tried to do and the things Ezekial saw and heard are straight out of Ray Bradbury.)

Ray Bradbury, yeah -- I could stand rereading his oeuvre. He managed to bottle a Midwestern sensibility with his books, much like a Des Moines homemaker bottles corn cob jelly. His writing was strictly 4-H, which I like. It's an undervalued and unappreciated writing style, the kind of prose that I associate with the keen aroma of a new mown front lawn and the velvet comfort of chicken gravy. Bland sometimes, but so real it can't be made fun of. 

***********************************

I'd like to turn the other cheek

and be so loving and so meek;

I'll go the sacred extra mile

but damned if I will wear a smile!

************************************

I'm going to read 'The Book of the New Sun' by Gene Wolfe, all four volumes.

I'll read 'Take Back Plenty' by Colin Greenland.

'Lanark.' By Alistair Gray. Never described very well by critics who review it, the book seems to be so bewildering and erudite that it can't be read completely through without going mad. I'll enjoy that challenge. 

And, of course, 'Planet Wheaton' by Kerry Burthen. An entire planet terraformed into North Dakota and planted in red winter wheat -- I can't wait to sink my teeth, so to speak, into that one.

Every Tuesday morning at ten I walked over to the Williams County Courthouse in Williston, North Dakota, to sit in on the County Commissioner's meeting. As news director at KGCX Radio back in 1980 it was part of my job. On the way over each Tuesday I passed an abandoned lot full of tall brown grass that I took to be some kind of wild wheat escaped from a nearby farm. In those days you only had to stretch your legs for a few blocks in any direction except south (where the Missouri River broadened out into a slough) to come up suddenly to a wheat field. I always slipped a wheat straw with a full bearded head out of the ground to chew on while taking notes at the Courthouse.  One Tuesday one of the Commissioners, Slim Johnson, who farmed two hundred acres just west of town, came up to me after the meeting to shake hands. I still had the bearded straw stuck in my mouth, for all the world like FDR with his cocky cigarette holder. 

"I see you chewing on one of them every week, son" he said to me. "What's the good of it, I'd like to know?"

"Oh" I replied airily, "just something to keep my mouth busy while I take notes."

"That isn't such a good idea" said Slim. "Those straws have sometimes got a little grub in 'em that bores into your cheek and sets up a big red gall that the doc has to cut out like a cancer."

Was he joshing me? I couldn't tell; he looked me straight in the eye and remained pretty solemn. Joke or not, I switched to chewing a stick of Beechnut instead.  

That winter in Williston was doggedly cold. Through December, January, and February there were many mornings when it was thirty below as I made my way to the radio station at four in the morning. The chimney smoke rose straight up into the air like a vertical line of cotton. I tried to get to bed at eight-thirty; it took twenty minutes for the sheets to warm up to body temperature in my unheated bedroom, and I spent that uncomfortable time dreaming up science fiction story outlines.

One that I still hark back to when sleep refuses my ardent advances is about the clouds becoming infected with a malignant virus from outer space. Slowly, inevitably, every cloud becomes a killer, striking down with lightning, drowning with cloudbursts, settling onto a community and suffocating it as an implacable smog. They gain an intelligence and no longer disperse, becoming anthropomorphic, with ferocious frowning faces like in a Max Fleischer cartoon. Part of my inspiration for this narrative, of course, is the tremendous storm and holocaust in Third Nephi in the Book of Mormon. How is the world saved from this vicious vapor? Beats me with a stick; I could never quite figure that out. One idea, in the manner of Day of the Triffids,  is to discover that seltzer water destroys them, so all the airplanes in the world take off with seltzer bottles and spritz those fiendish clouds to destruction. But that seems rather unhandy in the long run. Keep Watching the Skies.

***********************************

The last time I attempted a return to academia at the University of Minnesota I took out several student loans -- then promptly forgot about them when I had the chance to return to Thailand and live on the beach teaching English at a nearby naval barracks. That was back in 2000, if I'm not mistaken. Anyway, it was easy and uncomplicated to get my passport and goof around in Thailand without worrying about work visas and border crossings. 

Eighteen years later the IRS sends me a letter informing me that my outstanding loans, which totaled a little over two thousand dollars, have now ballooned, with penalty and interest, to around two hundred thousand dollars. They kindly offered to tap my Social Security if I didn't wish to bother with setting up a payment schedule with them -- so I called in and we set up a monthly payment of five dollars. That's because I'm so broke and so am not only below the poverty line but not even on the same continent as it. Anywho, the IRS operative told me over the phone she would send me some paper work to fill out to finalize our agreement. But I never got it. So I emailed the Department of Education, since they were supposed to send out the documents for the IRS. And received the following reply, thus:

Response By Email (Randy) (10/23/2018 08:26 AM)

Dear Timothy Torkildson,

 

This message is in reference to your loan repayment information inquiry.  Your case number is #181022-003935 . Retain this number for your reference. 

 

You must contact your servicer to discuss loan repayment.

 

To verify who is currently servicing your loans, go to the NSLDS Student Access Web site  and select the "Financial Aid Review" option to view your federal loans, grants and aid overpayments. The user will be prompted to either "Accept" or "Decline" the privacy notice. Upon accepting, the user will then need to sign in with their FSA ID.

 

Sincerely,

Student Loan Support Center
Federal Student Aid
U.S. Department of Education
Website: https://studentloans.gov

Customer By CSS Email (Timothy Torkildson) (10/22/2018 05:49 PM)

I was supposed to get forms to fill out for a student loan repayment program. I spoke to someone on on the phone at your office and sent in my first payment of five dollars, but never got the forms promised. What should I do -- who should I contact about it?

  

About as helpful as an eel at an archery contest.

Then this morning this came from the same source:

Dear Timothy Torkildson,

We invite you to participate in a feedback survey based on your recent experience with the Student Loan Support Center regarding Case #, 181022-003935. Your feedback will be used for coaching and quality purposes.

Your participation in the survey is optional. If you choose to submit feedback, click here to take the survey. The survey will take approximately 2-3 minutes to complete, and all responses will be kept confidential. When you are done, click the Submitbutton at the bottom of the last page to send the completed survey.

As part of our commitment to deliver excellent customer service, we look forward to your feedback on our services and your overall experience.

Thank you again for taking the time to provide your valuable feedback.

Sincerely,

Student Loan Support Center
Federal Student Aid
U.S. Department of Education
Website: https://StudentLoans.gov
Email: StudentLoanSupport@ed.gov

I'm gonna click on the survey button and hope they have a box where I can let them have it . . . 

They do! So here's what I wrote in it:

Your customer service is barren;

it tempts me to take up with swearin'.

Response is opaque

if not downright fake;

I think that my hair I'll be tearin'!

Let's see how they like THEM apples . . . 

"I'd rather watch a Lupe Velez movie."

and the ice shall flow down

And they who are in the north countries shall come in remembrance before the Lord; and their prophets shall hear his voice, and shall no longer stay themselves; and they shall smite the rocks, and the ice shall flow down at their presence.  D&C 133:26

Global warming was foretold by God in latter days.

When gathering his saints from near or frozen distant ways.

The ice will melt, the rocks will rend; the ocean rear its head;

the world will see the Lost Tribes found, with wonder and with dread.

So do not be dismayed by global warming -- tis a sign

of God's approaching judgement when the weather turns malign.

Trump Tweets of CNN's Demise -- Federal Government to Take Control of Word Definitions -- Antarctica Sings the Blues

Facebook has just stated that they are setting up a system to “purge” themselves of Fake News. Does that mean CNN will finally be put out of business? @realDonaldTrump

The media knows what I think of their tricks;

how all of their stories are written for clicks.

They'd say their own grandmother killed JFK

if it sold more papers and gave them more pay.

There's only one gospel, when it comes to news --

and that is Fox Network with their devout views!

************************************

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration is considering narrowly defining gender as a biological, immutable condition determined by genitalia at birth, the most drastic move yet in a governmentwide effort to roll back recognition and protections of transgender people under federal civil rights law.   Erica L. Green,  Katie Benner, and Robert Pear in the NYT

Conservatives think that a word

is solid and cannot be blurred.

Each name is a basis

for nothing but stasis --

new concepts will thus be interred.

*****************************************

Research published last week by the American Geophysical Union documents a chaotic, low-frequency hum across the Ross Ice Shelf — a platform the size of France that floats off the coast of West Antarctica.

The pitches are caused by wind striking snow dunes, and it’s an eerie sort of song. But, the researchers argue, it’s also an early warning sign for one of the nightmare scenarios in climate change science: the disintegration of Antarctica’s largest ice shelf, and consequent slide of glaciers into the ocean.  Avi Selk in the Washington Post. 

Antarctica singing the blues

while melting into a soft ooze

is going to be

a hit melody

with people of contrary views.

**************************************

"They're all crazy as a bedbug!"

Haiku: come to the garden

come to the garden

when it is frail and withered:

tomorrow is there

Christian Haiku: The dome of Heaven

The dome of Heaven

above the white crags of Earth

reflects but the Christ.