Sunday, July 14, 2019

Studying hot chili peppers with scissors before consuming them

the secret to eating chili peppers is bubble gum.
not just any kind of bubble gum, but Bazooka bubble gum.
they include American Elm juice in their bubble gum;
it can take away the sting of anything, even leftover mashed
potatoes for dinner when cooking is somebody else's job who's no longer there.
the superstition that a sharp pair of scissors will counteract the impact of the chili pepper heat comes from the German hill tribes of New Jersey. it has been picked up by numerous ethnic groups over the years, until now it's as endemic as ice cube trays.
if you have been served poisoned chili peppers the best thing to do is drink a pint of goat's milk and make nice with your children before you go into convulsions. you may recover in a remarkably short time, since there's no such thing as poisoned chili peppers outside of a country western song. but then again you may think yourself into the grave. I've seen it done with an overdose of probiotics.

Was earlier research wrong? Are we happier having kids than not having them? (Deseret News)

a study of recent studies indicates that the more studies done on a subject the less we really know about it. the study was begun by the Study Bureau of Western Wyoming at the suggestion of Big Studies Symposium director Slim Jimpson.
he says "to study a study takes more study than not studying it. this goes without saying, just like most things go without studying. and yet we manage to live our lives pleasantly with canned soup and local sports teams."
the study, called "A Study of the Studies," reveals that research on a subject produces enough ennui to power a small nuclear reactor until Black Friday. when the study becomes a research project by a major university, the findings are changed into results -- and that's never good for anybody.
But on the whole, the children of studies have better vocabularies.

With or without threatened ICE raids, undocumented immigrants live with terror in Utah (Deseret News)

(dedicated to Amy Donaldson)

it's the background noise that gets to them, the invisible workers.
one moment they're cleaning crystal candy dishes and the next they think they can hear the faint sound of distant sirens with that mosquito whine that can mean death, or nothing.
they floated to earth many years ago, a race of beings who can walk on gravel and disappear into the woodwork at the drop of a tomato. we welcomed them with open eyes at first, but they kept working so silently that soon we didn't know what or why, only who.
that's when the dry gulching began.
sometimes they hear echoing laughter from fire hydrants and sluice gates, mocking their unstable existence -- and this is what drives them to binge on See's dark chocolates. you can't reason with them when they're like that. just give them a straight edged ruler and encourage them to connect the dots.

All Presidents Must Be Deporters in Chief (NYT) Or, The Godless Godwits.

what's the opposite of deport? not import, obviously. the English language lacks a specific verb that means to bring people into a country so they can go to work and make a new life and pay lots of taxes. cuz working people pay more taxes than trust fund babies.
North Korea kidnaps people all the time, so say the newspapers, and it hasn't done them any harm. we could do the same. kidnap some good chefs from France. kidnap competent tool and die makers from Germany. kidnap anybody from Thailand -- they are really friendly all the time.
the president should be able to deport who he wants when he wants, no questions asked. only he has to shake each one by hand and look them in the eye before they are kicked out -- that way they can always say to their descendents that they shook the chief of state's hand before they were consigned to an island of amber somewhere in the Caribbean.
and let's not forget the migrating birds. they pay no attention to borders; why doesn't ICE shoot them down by the thousands each fall and spring? or put them into swampy bug-infested aviaries until their case can be decided? that's only fair. that's only reasonable. that's how we do things around here, you godless godwits.

Power Restored to Manhattan’s West Side After Huge Blackout (NYT)

when the power went out a laundromat on West 54th became the hub of an amazing new social movement called "Wet Clothes are Cool."
people of all colors and persuasions banded together to don soggy jeans and wet blouses and squishy socks and then went out to dance in the dark street until dawn.
several couples decided to get married at the laundromat; when they announced their plans to the delirious crowd they were showered with quarters. bruised quite badly, actually, some of them.
one young woman decided that the plunge into darkness presaged her own dim existence from then on, unless she became a sidewalk chalk artist as her parents had wanted her to. so she threw away her briefcase and embraced the dusty pastels. she should have kept the briefcase -- her lunch was in it.
and a homeless man caught in the power outage was mistaken for Tom Cruise. he was given tickets to a Knicks game, fed persimmon comfits, and photographed with Sade Baderinwa -- before being trampled to death by paparazzi.

Saturday, July 13, 2019

Huawei Plans Extensive Layoffs in the U.S. (from the WSJ)

they laid me off down at the plant.

gave me fig bars and cauliflower around my neck.

took away my can opener and broke my bust of Dale Carnegie.

presented me with a brass bound kaleidoscope, and a deck of tarot cards.

from HR.

they frog marched me past some frogs and encouraged street people to give me the bum's rush.

but little do they know I have been saving my coupons --

the coupons that turn magic elves into milk bottles and let you go bowling at sunrise.

yes, those coupons -- the ones Harold Stassen used for pomade.

that made Madame Curie dance the dance of the Seven Whales.

and put tamarind paste into the Spindletop field to increase production

by cent per cent.

so now I will rub two coupons together to start a startup

and soon I will be in a position to lay hundreds of employees off

when things get dicey

that is how America builds character into its

infrastructure.

Postcard to the President. (By guest artist Ohen Read.)

Re: Machu Picchu Is in Unnecessary Danger A new international airport in Peru would undermine exactly what tourists are coming so far to see.

a tourist has sixteen hands but only one foot.
he brings his girlfriend along for metaphysics.
she brings her cosmetic smile to paint landscapes.
s/he is photographing long lost pictures of the children eating
pineapple fritters on banana leaves.
and their knapsacks sicken the waving fields of gravel.
someone ought to tell them to send box tops not bottled water.
"wikiup!" says the tourist, meaning "home sweet home"
and "home is where you harvest beans."
they are too interested in foreign monotony to notice how brilliantly they shine in the eyes of rodents.
their hotels glisten in the moonlight and their airports
eat up all the ancient cereal grains.
"wikiup! wikiup! wikiup!" they chant at the baobab and the mangosteen. and they are really sincere about it.
but when push comes to shove they go home after capturing
the souls of the natives on their smartphones to display as
trophies to other tourists -- and when they grow old
they are stuffed and displayed
at the Smithsonian.

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

To the author:

Sometimes being mysterious is intriguing, as if the the strange passageways are leading somewhere, and both the journey and the destination promise to be a delight. But sometimes I feel stuck in a dark room and the mystery turns to mere meaninglessness. Promised delight dissolves into present irritation.

So to avoid being stuck I want to ask a few questions:

In what sense is your (intriguing) offering FROM an opinion piece in the NYT. Is it a direct excerpt? Is it inspired by the opinion piece? Are all the words FROM the opinion piece, but brilliantly (and strangely) selected and rearranged? Is the opinion piece genuinely titled "Machu Picchu Is in Unnecessary Danger" (etc. . . . as in your subject line)?

If this is something you created (either using words from the opinion piece or inspired by it), what is your creative method or process? (That's one of the intriguing mysteries that I hope will turn to enlightenment.) What led you to create this piece and use the particular method you used? Are you imitating the style of a particular writer? Do you have some purpose beyond that of creating an interesting verbal artifact?

I realize that if I asked Shakespeare or Allen Ginsberg or T. S. Eliot or some other writer questions like these, they might say, "I don't have to answer your questions. My creation speaks for itself. It's up to you to enjoy it or be baffled by it or figure it out without my help. Or if you must, to ignore it."

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But we're naturally curious, and honestly, the writer is a better source than mere guessing to get answers to our questions. And though I think Hamlet and The Waste Land are worth spending time figuring out without the author's help, I probably won't devote hours of effort analyzing your creation. It would be immensely satisfying, therefore, to get a few straight answers directly from you.

In anticipation of which, I offer many thanks, and remain as always, sir, your humble servant,

Bruce

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

To the Bruce:

In a nutshell (where it belongs), I write poems like this because in postmodern/zen poetry there is no such thing as a typo. It is what it is. Making it completely verbal, ephemeral -- with no more importance, but all the charm, of a soap bubble. (which reminds me of my favorite movie line of all time, from the film The Bank Dick, starring W.C. Fields: He meets his prospective son-in-law, whose name is Ogg Oggleby, and repeats the name back to himself, musing: "Ogg Oggleby -- sounds like a soap bubble . . . ")

On the same page: 12 years in, this Kaysville book group hasn't read anything that was a 'waste of time'

(Dedicated to Kaitlin Hoelzer.)

the group has read the same book each month for twelve years. they are joined by a large secretarial pool during months that have a Q in them, or sound like they should. their self-editing process has brought praise from conservative political organizations but no free tickets to Saltair.
in the winter Mrs. Hemmingsocks serves hot apple butter with pickled marmalade, and in the summer Mr. Mapaport brings over his trained sieve to lead a literary deconstruction workshop. they are a fun group, and get even better when meeting under a bridge.
they once talked about vichyssoise for an hour.

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

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