Did you know that your personal information is available online to anyone with $10? (NYT)

I wanted information on a certain fellow who I thought was telling people my poetry was no darn good. I had nothing concrete on him, just a hunch, from the way he looked at me, that he didn't appreciate my wry sense of humor and referential expertise, and was the kind of guy who would then tell the whole wide world what he thought of my stuff. so I decided to get the goods on him, kinda like a political election where you get the goods on your opponent to blackmail him to drop out of the race. I wanted this bozo to clam up about me, if he couldn't say anything positive. we poets have thin skins.
I paid a guy who knew a guy who had an in with a company that collected data and wasn't too careful about how they got it. I gave him ten dollars, and in return I got a beautiful leather bound dossier that showed that this guy had once been ticketed for public exfoliation, and was banned from Blockbuster Video Stores back in 1999 (reason not given.) His real name, on his birth certificate, is Howard Wainwright Huggins -- but we all know him as Benny Sinclair.  
Now the shoe was on the other foot. I started to casually mention that I had a lifetime membership with Blockbuster Video, and didn't everybody have one nowadays even though the chain was kaput? I also noised it about that I never felt the need to change my name, although it's completely unpronounceable to a good thirty percent of the population. that did the trick. old Howard Wainwright Huggins has left town and was last seen selling t-shirts in Oregon. Eugene, Oregon. Wearing a patched overcoat and sandals. he seems to have shrunk and won't look anyone in the eye.
maybe I was too hard on him.  

I know you are, but what am I?

so the kids were acting owly today -- taunting each other and being so picky with each other that at last I lowered the boom.
"Be quiet, can't you?" I said, too loudly.
this caused them to lower their heads and scuff their feet on the floor as they wandered off in different directions. but a half hour later they were at it again. this time in the backyard. what kind of sick magnetism draws kids together when clearly they hate each other's guts? I decided to be positive and proactive with them, as their mother would be if she were around. so I poured sugar into a plastic bowl and took it out to them.
"Here" I said kindly, "go pull some rhubarb stalks, clean 'em off with the hose, and dip 'em in sugar. they taste wonderful. I used to do that as a kid. Oh, and don't eat the leaves -- they'll make you sick." 
it worked for about an hour; they sat companionably together in the shade of the apricot tree munching on reddish green rhubarb stalks. and then they went back to calling each other names like 'dopey eyes' and 'flush bucket.'  They kept saying "I know you are but what am I?" when the hitting started I sent them all to their rooms and threatened them with kale soup for dinner.
"It's very healthy" I told them them in a low and silken sinister voice.

Where Deseret News readers were during the Apollo 11 moon landing

we were at home scrubbing the tortoise when it happened. suddenly the moon didn't seem so distant, so exotic, anymore. even the tortoise looked less solemn, now that man had bounced around a different gravity. the kids asked us what was happening, and we told them that one day they would sit on top of a flaming molten capsule, a controlled explosion sending them to distant twinkles where they might find anything, anything at all. this, unfortunately, upset their delicate imaginations and they began to cry. we had to make mac and cheese to calm them down and get them to accept the fact that they wouldn't be living on Earth much longer. nobody would. we would all have to leave, to answer the intergalactic call that broods within mankind like a mutant gene, ready to pop up and hurtle us into the void. what was the Tower of Babel if not a crude attempt at space exploration? and Jacob's ladder certainly is a forerunner of those Star Trek transporters. read your scriptures -- we're going places, man, despite the gravity of the times. 

As it happens, there are no open highways in the Cévennes

(dedicated to David McAninch)

as it happens, all roads lead to Nome. little roads; big roads; fat roads; thin roads; and roads scholars, too. in Nome the countryside predominates; the urban landscape is minimal, not to say flatulent. even the lichen are trying to move out into the suburbs, or get a place in the country where the shooting is good.
as it happens, I used to travel far from the open highways when I was a brine merchant. there were delicious vistas consisting of cream puff mountains, vermilion grass fires, sunsets at noon when the cows came home, and a smattering of lickerish wombats up in the trees near the summer home of Robert Louise Stevenson.
as it happens, my Citroen came down with the mumps one time so I had to hire a rickshaw with a sun roof. they don't come cheap, so I was under the gun to sell a lot of brine that month. luckily I came across a tribe of mummers who were being paid off in cucumbers -- they were glad enough to purchase all the brine I had. I gave them a little discount. why not? there's more to life than money and open highways. a guy can do a favor once in a while, can't he? 
as it happens, the mummers fell on me while I was asleep and stripped me of my funds, my rickshaw, and my clothes. so I lay there bleeding and half dead until the police led me away to a misty tarn where wildflowers were sewn into my scalp. it hurt, but you should see the baby voles each spring.

Trump Tells Freshman Congresswomen to ‘Go Back’ to the Countries They Came From

I'm going back to those spring-fed streets
where blue igloos and red fingernails mean something.
a place that welcomes back sidewalk weary vagabonds,
with plastic bags and iced latex.
a host of reasons impel me to leave this place;
such as the dull air and the faux cobblestones.
that shoes come in boxes is an affront to my conscience.
and the people I have to deal with are no better than hepcats.
back home the quail have quilled already, and the hills are
alive with the sound of mimeographs.
they know how to treat a person back there.
and the skies are not twittered all day.

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.