Haiku: hardened with neglect

harvested pumpkins

tumbled roughly at the store:

hardened with neglect

Haiku: colorful sepulcher

autumn is merely

the colorful sepulcher

of a single leaf

Haiku: this fissured living

this fissured living

of mine gets better at night

when candles make sense

Haiku: the brown creeps onward

the brown creeps onward

to end the verdant daydreams

of stripling summer

Alex Stamos and the Stanford Internet Observatory -- The Country is Being Overrun by Dumb White People -- #MeToo Comes of Age in India

Silicon Valley has made strides in battling disinformation since the Russian interference, Stamos said. But foreign hackers could still alter the outcome of an American election, including the coming congressional midterm vote.

Washington Post

A hacker from far overseas

our midterm elections did seize.

Despite the large vote

he put in a goat

that now sits in Congress at ease.

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

A black man arrived at the entrance to the building where he lives in St. Louis late Friday night only to find himself blocked by a white neighbor who demanded proof he lived there.   NYT

The stupider white folk become

the more they are growing too numb

to ever discern

we're put here to learn

respect is a good rule of thumb.

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

NEW DELHI — A junior minister in the Indian government stepped down after more than a dozen women accused him of sexual harassment, delivering the first major victory to the country’s nascent #MeToo movement.  Washington Post.  

A lecherous man from Pune

did finally meet Judgement Day

when his victims told

of his misdeeds bold

and had his job taken away.

"If things get any worse I'm gonna move to Norway."

Artificial Intelligence is Writing Our Novels

It’s probably too early to add “novelist” to the long list of jobs that artificial intelligence will eliminate. But if you watch Mr. Sloan at work, it is quickly clear that programming is on the verge of redefining creativity.    NYT

A writer filled up a bookcase

with novels as thin as shoe lace

by having AI

fill in on the sly

with copy that no one could trace.

Min Tull. (A Burlesque of Karl Ove Knausgaard's 'Min Kamp.') Thursday. October 18. 2018. Featuring Jacob Bunge and Lucy Craymer

5:10 p.m
I actually started this much earlier today. But, like a time traveler, I have brought the future into the present because I want to feature 2 reporters from the Wall Street Journal:  Jacob Bunge and Lucy Craymer  before I go back to this morning's events. I have often written poems about their separate stories, but today they team- wrote an article called America Struggles to Take it's Pigs to World's Biggest Market. They work well together, so I am featuring a poem about their story here at the beginning, instead of at the end, of today's chapter. Because I will email them both with the link to this page in the hopes they'll both click on it, read their names here, and become so enchanted with my stellar prose and indefinable genius that they will tell all their other reporter friends and I can collect that Nobel Prize sooner than expected and pay off a few bookies:

 China has the world’s biggest appetite for pork. It’s such a beloved staple that the written Chinese character for “home” depicts a pig inside a house. U.S. producers banked on that business being around for years.

That’s changed. As a result of the Trump administration’s clash with Beijing over trade, China’s tariffs on U.S. pork have climbed as high as 70%, making U.S. imports more expensive. At the same time, an outbreak of African swine fever in China has increased demand for imported pork.

To fill the void, Chinese customers are increasingly looking to companies in Europe and South America to fill their orders    @WSJ

The world is in love with all swine.

In China tis a valentine.

But Uncle Sam's pork,

just like a school dork,

is shunted aside like strychnine. 

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

9:01 a.m.
Let's start with a list of what old people, people I know personally, obsess about:

• Two men that I know can think of little else but of how the religion of their youth, to which they gave much time, service, and money, has let them down. They searche online relentlessly for feel-good songs and philosophy courses to assuage their guilt at losing their spark of faith. 
• A woman I've known for five years has a thing for Rush Limbaugh. She buys all his CDs, books, and listens to him religiously, then mass emails everyone she knows about the latest hidden government conspiracy. 
• An 83 year old man who I admire as the best handyman and craftsman I've ever known can't get it out of his head that the Utah Transportation Authority is riddled with corruption, from top to bottom, and has corrupted every single public official in Utah Valley. 
• And older woman, known throughout Provo for her kindnesses and charity, insists that Trevo liquid nutritional supplement is all anyone needs to regain their health, and will cure things like cancer, leukemia, arthritis, diabetes, and so forth. She is so hipped on this elixir that she surreptitiously puts it in her lemonade in the summer, which she serves to all her guests, and in her famous squash soup in the winter, which is featured as a great treat all winter long at Relief Society meetings up and down Utah Valley. I lived in her unheated basement for nearly 2 years, and know whereof I speak. I seen her dood it.

Charles Dickens nailed the subject in David Copperfield with the character of Mr. Dick, who could never get the thought of King Charles' head out of his mind. I'm having some cards printed up to pass out to all the tedious windbags I know that reads:  "Beware of King Charles' head -- It is happening to you!"

I also know plenty of regular old people who are not nutty. My friend Clara spends her days puttering around her apartment, dusting, writing birthday cards to her numerous grand children, crocheting mittens and hats, and driving others around for shopping and to go see a movie. She never seems to obsess or brood about anything. When I see her in the hallway I can be sure she won't buttonhole me to tell me a story she's told me before or to warn me that there's a yeti up on Y Mountain. 

My considered opinion is that people who begin to obsess as they grow older should give up thinking altogether, buy a cheap pocket knife, and take to whittling, like Jed Clampett. Just think of all the sticks and twigs that could be turned into useful mulch if all these compulsive old coots sat outside on nice days whittling instead of slinking about with their idiotic neurosis. 

And that includes me, too. I know very well I obsess about food. Just yesterday I spent most of my mental energies on fretting over whether I should make chicken and dumplings for Sunday brunch or an antipasto salad. I went so far as to buy a stewing hen, for six dollars, which I stuck in the freezer. But as I reviewed all the tedious steps to making chicken and dumplings, which I'd have to do Sunday morning, compared to the ease of throwing together an antipasto salad on Saturday and tucking it away in the fridge, ready to serve on Sunday, I realized that I was whipsawing with myself over a trifle. But I'm not the only one with manic tendencies when it comes to food. My friend in Thailand sent me this email this morning:

My dinner salads are getting better by the week.'

Brocoli

Tomotoes

Cherry Tomatoes

Onions

Black olives

Pinto beans

Salt 

Pepper

Balsamic Vinegar

Olive Oil

Apple Cider Vinegar (Bragg's)

Pan Fried Chicken, marinated in Salt/Pepper (no breading)

Sunflower seeds

Raisins...

If that salad doesn't add 20 years to my life, nothing will!!

My night caps are freshmade lime squeeze drinks...it's my new regular drink of choice...

But then again, this is the Age of the Diet. Everyone has one or is considering going on one.  Reader's Digest just posted an article called 'The Diet That Could Stop Cancer From Spreading.'  The writer basically says eat beans, tomatoes, squash, and tofu, and stay away from dairy and red meat. Bathe in olive oil. Avoid sugar like an opioid. And eat ghost peppers like there's no tomorrow. And you might feel better, poop better, sleep better, and when the cancer finally kills you you'll be in much better shape.

I think I'd rather whittle. People with too much time on their hands and food in their bellies invent diets. I bet this type of thing doesn't happen on other inhabited worlds, of which there are many. They're probably laughing their heads off at us right now on Kolob.   

Eschatology aside, we now come to the dedication of this chapter of Min Tull. I offered to dedicate it to a friend who emailed me about my vinegar pool and the carbon footprint it makes -- which I think is an excellent point to pursue. So I told him that in gratitude I would dedicate the next installment of my book to him -- for a small fee. He thought I was funning, so didn't send me anything. That's tough for him, cuz I meant it. I can have quite a racket if I can get readers to pay me ten dollars to dedicate a chapter to them. And since my pal decided not to get on the bandwagon, I hereby dedicate this chapter to Karl Dodge, an old missionary companion from Thailand, who told me a story about how his dad kept an old horse fenced inside a small apple orchard, where it ate all the windfalls and cropped the grass around the trees. I have often cheered myself with that mental image, of a sway backed nag happily chomping wormy apples under a blue mountain sky. Thanks, Karl. 

So, my good readers, if you wish to become immortalized in this budding classic narrative of inanity, just mail me a money order or do a wire transfer for ten dollars. And if you DON'T send me ten dollars, you mingy readers, I will mention your name ANYWAY, in some terrible way that will embarrass you completely and forever. Call it blackmail if you want -- I gotta pay for my foodie obsession somehow. 

Now I'm gonna take a walk down to the Provo Rec Center to stir up my bowels and get in a swim. The ambient temperature outside right now is 55 degrees, with partly cloudy skies. Very light wind. I can see thistledown lazily floating by my patio window. And the vinegar pond looks to be down about a pint from yesterday. According to most online sources, it can't freeze unless it gets below 28 degrees and stays there a while. So it will act as a thermometer this winter -- if there's ice on my vinegar pool I'll know it's 28 degrees outside, or less. That's an old Boy Scout trick I learned from Vlasic.  

"Darn fool waste of time, that's what it is!"

Anne Kadet Writes About Living on Minimum Wage in New York City, for the Wall Street Journal, and Poetry Ensues

Anne Kadet writes about, and is obsessed with, New York City. She has never petted a wombat.

Back in 2012, when workers in New York City started demonstrating to demand a $15 minimum wage, the appeal struck many as unrealistic, if not downright bonkers. But by the end of the year, $15 will be the new minimum for most of the city’s hourly workers.  Anne Kadet, writing in the Wall Street Journal.

To live in New York City takes no money, none at all.

It takes appreciation of Central Park trees in the fall.

Wages don't deliver any kind of happy spree

when you can take a ferry to see Lady Liberty.

Who needs to go to Sardi's to enjoy a pleasant meal?

Take an apple with you to the MoMa -- it's ideal!

A subway token takes you on a magic carpet ride;

you may wind up in Brooklyn with a Bobov by your side.

Oh, money has its uses and a decent wage is good;

but window shopping still is free in SoHo neighborhood.
If my thoughts seem callow it's because I haven't been
to New York City since before they first invented sin . . . 

"I'd rather live in Flatbush."

Jo Craven McGinty Writes About NFL Cleats for the Wall Street Journal, and Thus a Poem is Born

Ms. McGinty crunches numbers for the Wall Street Journal. She can also count backwards from 100 in Esperanto. 

Grass fields don’t present the same hazard because the natural surface can tear away before an injury occurs, but artificial turf may grip a cleat without letting go, causing limbs to twist in unexpected and potentially harmful ways.    Jo Craven McGinty writing for the Wall Street Journal. 

On football fields the cry remains:

"That phony turf gives us the pains!"

"Our cleats prefer the grass so green,

and not some stuff made by machine!"

For cleats keep football players nimble,

and has always been a symbol

of their prowess and their speed,

and bermudagrass is what they need.

Sly AstroTurf and all its ilk

may seem to be as smooth as silk.

But it will hold a cleat in place

and rob a player of his grace.

So give the players fescue, please,

to stop them falling on their knees.

If that don't work, perhaps hot air

will keep them upright, fair and square.

  

"Dang football players get more attention than a baby."

Min Tull. Wednesday. October 17. 2018.

Strive as I may, sinking into a persnickety morass of disaffection appears to be my fate this evening -- as it is most evenings. A combination of mental blurriness and lower back pain, along with acid eyeballs and not enough social interaction with others during the daylight hours, leaves me feeling like a constipated honey badger. The world is dull and the people inhabiting it are blanks. 

Rather than attempt an artificial cheer that I know I cannot sustain past 6 p.m. from counting my blessings, I will, instead, list my complaints and pet peeves -- which may, considering how contrary I am, actually cheer me up for real.

This morning I wrote a religious poem, inspired by a Washington Post story on women-only worship services. In the last line I made mention of Maenads, the female followers of Dionysus in ancient Greece, and Bacchus in old Rome. I thought it was pretty good, so I shared it with a bunch of reporters and some personal friends. Didn't hear a peep from the reporters, but some of my friends complained they didn't understand the last line of my poem. They didn't know what a Maenad was, and couldn't be bothered to look it up, I guess. That has depressed me all day -- my friends, my good friends, who I fancy will stick with me through thick and thin, would rather stay ignorant than look up one measly word. The next one of my so-called 'pals' who does that to me, I'm gonna send 'em a blank postcard -- that'll worry 'em until the cats come home, it will, it will.

I am going to be stoic concerning my physical condition tonight. Not a peep out of me will you hear about my dyspepsia; marthambles; emerods; water on the brain; tennis fetlock; hardening of the stem cells; unregistered mollycoddles; borborygmi; and recurring heebie-jeebies. But I suffer . . . oh, how I suffer.

6:12 p.m.
My mood is perceptibly lighter right now, because my dinner was excellent. But I'm not going to tell you about it, since these same fair-literature friends I have mentioned above so often like to tease me about my obsession with cooking and consuming food. So youse guys can GUESS what I ate tonight -- nyah!

Ah, but that old familiar black mood, those ever-lovin' blue devils, are making a valiant attempt at a comeback. From my recliner in the living room, where I am writing this, and where, in fact, I do all my writing, I can see a sink full of dirty dishes. Drat! There is a small pot stained with turmeric, a ceramic bowl with grains of this and that hardening on the inside, and a flimsy tin frying pan that is full of congealed Crisco. 

I do not want my tombstone to have my name or any dates on it. All I want chiseled on it is this:  HAVE YOU DONE THE DISHES YET?  The anguished reactions of passersby will afford me a grim chuckle as the worms do their duty on me. 

Rather than get up to attend to the rancid dinnerware, I will start a new complaint:  The upkeep of my vinegar pool. A gallon of vinegar now costs $2.46 per gallon. I had to change the vinegar today, since my current scientific experiments were done and the pool was distressingly filthy. I discovered that several rocks dissolved into sand and that several others did nothing. I have discovered that horse chestnuts do not react in any way to vinegar. And I have found that on average the vinegar in my pool (which holds 3 gallons) evaporates at the rate of about a pint every other day. Currently there is nothing in the fresh vinegar except the indestructible horse chestnuts, six white plastic ping pong balls floating on the surface, and a handful of juniper berries, which I just added an hour ago. I calculate that at this rate I will have to buy a gallon of white distilled vinegar every week for the rest of my life. And with the looming tariff war, who knows how high the price of vinegar will go? Most of it comes from the squeezings of peasant socks in China. Shocking, and depressing.

6:51 p.m.
I just stubbed my toe on the living room couch. That is certainly a valid excuse for ill temper. Probably several major wars in the past two thousand years have been caused by a short-tempered leader who stubbed his or her toe on the divan and went into a fury until war was declared on somebody for some paltry reason. Especially when you consider how often people used to walk around in open toed sandals; such foot gear leaves the toes wide open to assault and battery. I bet if we dug up a bunch of old Mesopotamians their toe bones would look like they were hammered in with a mallet. 

I haven't heard any more about the sale of my poetry book since I spoke to Adam last week. 8 sold, as of last week. Curiously, this does not make me very upset or downcast -- not tonight anyways. I'm afraid that the pleasant aftereffects of a good dinner are still with me. It's difficult to be temperamental or petty when I've been well fed. The best meal I ever had in my life was at Amy's parents' house in Tioga, North Dakota, on Christmas Eve 1980. She and I had walked down the deserted Main Street hand in hand as a few tentative snow flakes danced around us. I had already asked her to marry me -- she had said yes, but . . .  And we finally got that 'but' taken care of during that walk. When we got home we were cold and warm at the same time, and I had a roaring appetite, inspired by love and chilblains. Amy's mother made a big pot of spitzen, Norwegian dumplings, in a chicken broth loaded with diced celery and carrots. I had 3 helpings. Ever since then dumplings of any kind have comforted me and given me confidence. In Thailand they sell Chinese dumplings at the front counter, like they do hotdogs here in the States. Only difference being the dumplings were actually edible. I used to get a half dozen of 'em whenever Joom and I had an argument that we couldn't find our way out of with a laugh.   

But even the memory of that spitzen cannot bring about a change in my black bile tonight as I ponder the rotten uncomfortable benches in the bus shelters in Provo. The one above is located 2 blocks from my apartment building, on State Street. Avoid it at all costs. And if you must wait for the 850 bus there do not sit down for any reason. The bench is angled so your butt is elevated and your feet can't touch the ground; at the same time the back of the bench is angled so it cuts into your vertebrae like a scythe. It is not made for sitting, but for sciatica. Of course fat people like me cannot find a comfortable seat in a public place, ever. Park benches are too hard. Waiting room chairs squeeze the hips like a Bismarck ringed python; and the folding chairs they put out for Provo City Council meetings were designed by Torquemada. (And if you don't know who that is, just Google it for the cat's sake!)

7:40 p.m.
Those dishes, those evil crafty dishes in the sink; they begin to settle, making sly tinkling sounds as if someone were walking on crushed glass. I must go wash them -- otherwise I can't brush my teeth. Six months ago I had Sarah come over to clean up my apartment prior to a Federal inspection (since I live in a rent subsidized building, the Feds can barge in whenever they feel like it) and after she finished the bathroom sink was so clean and sparkly that I stopped using it for shaving or brushing my teeth. I don't even wash my hands in it anymore. I use the kitchen sink for everything. And I won't spit used Colgate foam on my own bowls and spoons -- I'm not that depraved yet. And if I stub my toe again on the way into the kitchen I'm going to blame pretty much everyone I can name and hate them for the rest of the night. 
So put THAT in your pipe and smoke it. 

Why don't more people mind their own beeswax?

Addendum:  My friend in Thailand emailed me back thus:

For the record, I did look up Maenads.

I almost always look up odd words you put into your works!

Please find out how big the carbon footprint is on your vinegar pool! The ethical thing to do!

I took your order and put it in my pipe and smoked it. I think I saw Hugh Nibley walking sown the sidewalk!!!