What's in the Wall Street Journal Today. Tuesday. November 15. 2022.

 I just got off the horn with customer service at the Wall Street Journal.

I canceled my digital subscription. So the last day I can read it is December 3.

So I decided to read it thoroughly each day until December 3, and copy highlights and comment on them. Because I'm a kibbitzer and a buttinsky. 

Their lead story today is all about FTX and this Bankman-Fried guy. Never trust someone with a hyphenated last name, I always say. They have identity issues.

from the story:

--FTX filed for bankruptcy last week, but the cryptocurrency exchange’s founder still thinks that he can raise enough money to make users whole, according to people familiar with the matter.

Mr. Bankman-Fried, alongside a few remaining employees, spent the past weekend calling around in search of commitments from investors to plug a shortfall of up to $8 billion in the hopes of repaying FTX’s customers, the people said. The Wall Street Journal couldn’t determine what Mr. Bankman-Fried is offering in return for any potential cash infusion, or whether any investors have committed. --

 

Lemme ask you something -- if some apple-knocker who had just run his billion dollar company into the ground came to you asking for a loan to tide him over, what would you do? I'd throw him out on his ear. Wouldn't you? But the world of high finance is another planet, like Jupiter, so maybe B-F will be able to line up the suckers. It just makes me want to stay away from cryptocurrency all the more. 

 

--KHERSON, Ukraine—Russian forces unleashed a volley of missiles across Ukraine on Tuesday, striking the country’s already beleaguered energy infrastructure and residential buildings in Kyiv days after Moscow suffered a major battlefield setback, government officials said.

“There’s an attack on the capital,” Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said on Telegram, adding that at least one person had been killed. “Medics and rescue workers are at the scene of the strikes.”--

 Putin is responsible for this whole mess. I hope the minute he steps outside Russia he's arrested and brought up on charges of war mongering. He'd look good behind bars. 

Here is a nutty piece by Mike Kerrigan, who, the paper says, is a lawyer from Charlotte, North Carolina. I guess I shouldn't call him nutty . . . maybe a sweaty Christian:

--While my physical health has held up over five decades, some years ago I discerned a certain spiritual flabbiness. I wasn’t praying much, and when I did, my petition-to-thanksgiving ratio—forget contrition or adoration—was about 10 to 1. 

This was a spiritual problem easily diagnosed in athletic terms: My form was bad, and my repetitions insufficient. Where better to address this than during the morning exercise I already do? I determined to use running to jump-start my prayer life.

When pain introduced itself on lengthy loops with faster friends, I trained myself to stop thinking in distances. The hilltop that marked the end of a footrace wasn’t 100 meters off; it was one “Hail Mary” away. This took my mind off the burning in my lungs, and initially that was enough. Before long, though, something changed.

At some point I stopped ignoring the pain through prayer and started using it. I gave my fleeting aches to God as a small sacrifice to serve his redemptive purposes in the world. In the vernacular of my Irish-Catholic childhood, I offered it up. And then I flew.--

I know I'm supposed to be all praising this guy up and down for his spiritual take on exercise, but hey, I'm a fat old lazy man. I think he has a screw loose. And he's a lawyer. Anything a lawyer writes is subject to extreme prejudice in my jaundiced view.

 

--Yosemite National Park won’t use a reservation system in 2023 after using one the previous three summers, officials from the California destination announced on Twitter on Tuesday. 

The social-media posts said the park has been dealing with an overflow of people and cars for decades. It had previously required reservations because of the pandemic, and to facilitate repairs.

This decision represents a move away from the recent trend of the most popular U.S. national parks instituting reservation systems to combat overcrowding. Colorado’s Rocky Mountain National Park and Arches National Park in Utah are among the others to have adopted their own systems.--

 The great thing about the United States is all the room there is in which to ramble without appointment, reservation, or regulation. Maybe the national parks are getting the right idea.

Letter to my Children: Tuesday, November 15th. 2022.

 dear kiddies;

 

on the bright side, the chicken livers were not spoiled. i just threw them away in a fit of rage when i couldn't open the container. but i reconsidered, fished them out of the trash, pried the lid off without too much cursing, and now they are marinating in the fridge. i will serve them this afternoon, sauteed with toast points, to anyone who wants 'em. i never know how many are coming to the door for our free meals. yesterday there were just 2 people at the door, but sunday evening we had nearly a dozen come for a piece of apricot cobbler. go figure.

we've been asked to feed the sister missionaries this coming sunday, so i put out the call on social media for the makings of a spaghetti dinner, which we'll serve in the community room for everyone and anyone who wants to come 'meet the missionaries.'  donations have been good so far:  4 lbs of spaghetti pasta, six cans of sauce, 2 lbs of hamburger, and a jar of Kraft parmesan cheese. now all we need is bread and a green salad -- i'm hoping if i keep harping at it on facebook and twitter that someone will step up with those items. for the sad sad truth is that because of some large & unexpected bills, and lack of paid writing work, we are dead broke. we can pay rent and put gas in the car, and that's about all. i've canceled my subscription to the wall street journal and your mother took her horn back to the music store to save on the rental fee. i'm going to cancel my accidental death & dismemberment insurance today to save a few more kopeks. thank goodness for the free lunches we get at the senior center during the week!

i told your mother that the next time we go out i'll find a nearby temp agency to stop in at to apply for part-time customer service work. there should be plenty of that this time of year, i'm thinking.

you can stop laughing now, children. i just may actually do it! not that there's much hope of a fat old man who has to use the bathroom every hour will get any kind of outside work. but it pays 15 bucks an hour if you can get it. 

truth be told, neither your mother nor i really want to work anymore.  i believe amy would be happy if she could spend all her time doing family history and watching JAG and deana durbin movies, and i would be completely content to just cook and write poetry.

which brings us to my poetical musings this week. i've culled out the most rotten pieces, and now copy the rest for youse guys. as i've said before, I believe my poems tell more about me than anything else i can write.

this one i just wrote, while your mother was upstairs ministering to a lady who's had knee surgery and can't get around much:

When you have the Savior's bliss

it is never hit or miss.

Give your whole heart to his cause

and reject the world's applause;

joy will then be yours always --

peaceful nights and fruitful days.

 

 

 

 

(i can't get the damn italics to turn off now. the following is not a poem.)

o, did i tell you that i am doing cartoons again? not really cartoons -- i have an old book from 1899 full of so-called humorous sketches by artists from punch magazine. so i cut those out and put new captions to 'em. you can find examples on my facebook page. some of them are rather fine, i fancy. most are dreck.

o, and i'm doing a daily 30 second video with your mother -- i just sit and repeat a word or someone's name over and over again for 30 seconds. we get at least 100 views each day. maybe it'll go viral . . .? (don't hold your breath.)

okay, another poem:

There's revelation all around --

It's in the atmosphere.

And if we d not heed it well

it just might disappear.

So when the spirit speaks to you,

please act upon it quick;

otherwise the Lord may use

a large and painful stick!

 

i wrote the above during elder's quorum meeting on sunday on a piece of scratch paper, and then raised my hand to a question and recited it. i do that a lot. 

 

here's a haiku:

 

the cold morning rain

turns to snow on the bushes,

then stars in my eyes.

 

i don't know what it means either, but it got about a dozen likes on twitter from journalists. i find that if i write haiku with an upbeat ending it goes over better than if i end in ambiguity or melancholy. 

 

Who'll control the Congress isn't clear as yet to me.

The Democrats, Republicans, or Africanized bee?

All I know for certain is that when the fracas ceases

us taxpayers will be the ones who pick up all the pieces!

 

i hope you got out to vote. your mother and i get our ballots in the mail, so we fill them out and drop 'em in the mail box. 

 

just one more, i promise . . . 

 

The mighty Musk is holding sway,

and all of us must now obey!

IF he doesn't like your tweet

he'll banish you to far Papeete.

Do not try his will to baulk --

cuz next he's gonna buy TikTok!

 

i actually wrote a series of verses on musk and posted them on twitter, just to see if i could get banned.  no such luck.  it might have made a good publicity stunt.

 

well, i've got chicken enchiladas in the oven to serve for brunch at 11 this morning, so I'd best go attend to them.  

o, and your mother and i have started to binge watch the blacklist on netflix.  that james spader plays a fascinating villain. we just finished the first season. it's not for the kids, but once you get into spader's character it's like potato chips -- you can't stop wanting more!

 

 

don't take any wooden nickels,  dad.

insomnia

 well, it's 430 in the morning. I've already been up since 3. i tried to fall back asleep in my leather recliner but it was no-go. so i turned on the lamp to write a haiku, thus:

shopping mall Santa

arrives in a blizzard of

artificial snow.

i thought after that maybe I could drift off to sleep, having accomplished an amazing artistic feat. but no, my spirit was still restless and my legs twitchy, so i turned on the lamp again and went into the kitchen to make a casserole.  we made spaghetti yesterday evening at 5, but only one measly person showed up for it, so i used the leftover spaghetti pasta in a tinfoil casserole dish with canned chicken and canned peas, covered with cream of chicken soup and sprinkled with lots of garlic powder -- it's cooking in the oven right now, and I hope . . . i hope . . .  that when it is done my troubled spirit will be at peace, knowing i can offer it to our neighbors and friends at noon, and that then maybe i can get another hour or two of rest before church.

our church starts at 830, and sometimes amy and i are hard put to make it on time. because we have gotten into the habit of staying up until midnight most nights. watching JAG on DVD. we're on season seven right now. i started out not much caring for the series, but now i'm invested in the characters, especially the cranky admiral.  and when you go to bed at midnight it's hard to be up at 7 to get ready for church.  luckily, they still have Sacrament Meeting here in the apartment building in the afternoon, so if we do miss morning services we can always go in the afternoon.

the casserole needs another 20 minutes, so that's how much longer i'm going to write this insomnia memorandum/memoir.

Amy has been busy with her H&R Block studies for the past several weeks.  she's learning how to do small business taxes. this requires her to read reams of boring detailed studies on small business tax cases and then get tested on them. sometimes she aces the test, and sometimes she has to take them several times before passing. it means a significant pay raise for her, so she's determined to get qualified, even though she gets a bad headache at the end of the day from looking at the computer screen all day.  she is also practicing on her euphonium most every day. she's renting it to buy from a local music store downtown. 50 bucks a month for a year and a half. 

right now we manage to get to the temple each Thursday for an initiatory session. that's about all i can do nowadays, since i need to use the bathroom about once an hour.

i occupy my time with poetry, when there is no paid writing work to do. we have been lucky for the past several weeks -- after a two month drought we are now rewriting 3 or 4 articles each day. the extra income is very helpful in paying down my credit card and buying organic food for amy.  i am craving fried or baked chicken all the time now, and there is a mexican market down the street that sells chicken quarters for 69 cents a pound, so i want to stop there on monday when we get paid and buy about ten pounds of cheap chicken to roast up each day, a little at a time.  with a bag of yellow yukon potatoes, which i like to roast by the dozen in the oven and then eat them cold or diced and reheated all week long.  we still get lunches at the senior center, or rather we will be doing so in November.  i stopped getting the free lunches this month because they just tasted lousy, being mass produced cafeteria food. but november's menu looks pretty toothsome, with lots of swedish meatballs and meatloaf.

my health remains about the same.  i had a flare up of ankle trouble a few weeks back, and had to just sit around the house doing nothing, waiting for the swelling to subside.  i got new eyeglasses a while back, and went cheap so they're not bifocals -- i have to take them off when i read or even sing the hymns in church.

getting back to my poetry.  i've stopped emailing it to anyone and instead tweet it out to about 25 journalists each day.  the ones that either like it or retweet it.  don't tell anyone, but i can usually knock out a set of rhymed verses or a haiku in about ten minutes -- but i'm afraid if my fans find out how quickly i can usually do it they'll think it is facile and of no depth (which it probably is) and will stop liking & retweeting my work.

i still daydream about getting an offer from the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal to write a daily poem for their newspaper. i like to imagine my byline in such an important newspaper and how good that would make me feel -- a circus tramp without a college degree who winds up a world-famous writer for a big newspaper.  ah well, what's wrong with dreaming?  without it, where would santa claus be or the easter bunny?

i'm beginning to plan what i'll eat for breakfast in a few hours. if there's time for it.  my stomach is always finicky in the afternoon and evening, so breakfast is the only meal i can really enjoy. we've got lots of buttermilk pancake mix, but i never seem to find the time to make 'em.  amy will make them anytime i ask her to, but she is so busy right now i feel shy about asking her to do it for me.

maybe i'll put on a pot of rice . . . no, no, i think instead i'll just have scrambled eggs with buttered toast. we've got some nice liver sausage from the farm up in Idaho, which i can put into the scrambled eggs.  but i'm going to take some aspirin right now and that will probably mean i'll be too groggy to cook anything before church.

the old clock on the wall tells me it's ten to five, so i'll turn off the oven and let the casserole cool off until noon. and try to close my eyes and close down my mind for some more rest.  amy always sleeps soundly right through the night. how i envy her!

take care, my little chaffinches, and be good -- and if you can't be good at least be Republican!   love, dad.

Verses, what else?

 

From paycheck to paycheck I'm living today.

I guess that is now the American Way.

Inflation has gutted my salary so

I'm eating no hamburgers, only some crow.

The future looks bleak, but there's one thing for sure --

being a pauper's the new sinecure. 

Today's Verses.

 HAIKU

moonlight pouring down

against a distant black tree --

dogs bark at nothing.

Eating croissants ought to be

elegant and fancy-free.

But those crescents flake away;

never in firm shape they stay.

Then they turn into a blob,

making me look like a slob.

more to follow . . .

 

 

Kim Jong-un a rocket fired,

then his own prestige admired. 

His missile over Japanese

landscape traveled with great ease.

Tokyo, unlike the Buddha, 

took umbrage at that hijo de puta. 

 

The market is in turmoil;

stocks and bonds may soon decline.

The bankers are uncertain;

their pronouncements sibylline. 

Inflation's running rampant

 

and the Fed won't compromise.

The only thing that's certain

is an order of french fries.

 

 

 

 

Narrative Poem: The Magic Haberdasher and Other Stories.

 

On a street near the river there was, and sometimes still is, a haberdashery shop.

It has no online store.  It's windows are dusty and remote.  The door is painted a lumpy green and creaks horribly.  Inside it smells like a small town grocery store, with undernotes of lilac vegetal. There's a large dull gray metal plate screwed into the middle of the tired wooden floor.

 Behind the counter drifts a mustache attached to a man. He works on the mustache when no customers are around, peering intently into a mirror while trimming with small silver scissors and applying macassar oil. He wears a bright brass badge that reads: 'Cuthbert Tobble.' The man, though, has never admitted to anyone that Cuthbert Tobble is his name. He tells everyone who comes in: "Just call me Benchley."

 

One day a neat little man wearing rimless glasses came in to ask: "Have you cambric handkerchiefs, that have been calendered?"  

"Right this way" replied Cuthbert, or Benchley.

The display case was an antique,with Russian isinglass windows. In it were bandannas, pocket squares, chamba rumbals, and plain white kerchiefs. But as the man approached the case he suddenly sprang back in revulsion.

The case was black with crawling, vibrating flies.

"I've changed my mind" the man said hoarsely, then walked swiftly out the door.

 Cuthbert, or Benchley, was nonplussed. He'd never seen so much as a single fly in the store before.

He pulled out the fly swatter and went to work. But since flies have such a high flicker fusion rate, he failed in making a significant dent in their numbers.

Using a powerful electric fan, he blew the flies off the case and out a nearby window.

By then it was time to close the store.

At home he listened to the mantel clock tick until it ran down, then went to bed.

Where he wondered how Steve Harvey got to be so popular.

 

Submissions

 

 

 sept 25.  2022.

blue mt arts

like a thin cat's tail, the night air curls around us -- where are the blankets?

 

Sludge of pumpkin seeds

spilled on cold crisp newspaper --

a quiet fall night.

 

the chives all dried up --

potted pale ghostly brown straws --

ignoring the rain.

 

 

a red EXIT sign

nailed to an apple tree trunk

points to brown windfalls

 

 

rain on the sidewalk --

a brown leaf floats, then settles --

where are the brown ants?

 

 sept 26  2022

nature has such eyes

as see when even blinded --

and they do not blink

Recent Verses

 

Comic-cons and cosplays are a fad that makes me frown.

Because, you see, for quite some time I've been a circus clown.

Funny caps and crazy gear I trotted out for chortles;

I never thought myself to be those comic book immortals.

Now when I get dressed in large red shoes and baggy trousers,

people want to know where they can play me on their browsers!

There's nothing that a banker

likes better than to raise

their int'rest rate to levels

that worry and amaze.

The only math they practice

is multiply and add;

leaving all us gudgeons

to wander barrel-clad.

My wife and I grow older

and our manifest concern

is independent living

as our frailties we spurn.

We enter second childhood

and ride off on Harley hog --

fleeing further fading

by backpacking all through Prague.

Mr. Putin likes to bully

with his threats both wild and woolly.

Eaten up with grim insanity,

he defends his urgent vanity

by suggesting atom bomb

will resolve his Vietnam.

my networking is rather rough;

I never know what kind of stuff

to post for influential chums

that won't mark me as from the slums.

are fart jokes any good at all?

or how to rob a shopping mall?

I might suggest my kidney stone

requires a small privy loan . . .

I'd rather shop at Tiffany's

than any groc'ry store.

The prices are more moderate

and do not make me sore.

Eggs and meat and cheeses

are extravagantly marked;

the more I look upon them

the more chance I will infarct!

The Great Salt Lake is shrinking;

a puddle it will be.

A parking lot we'll make it

(that ain't hyperbole!)

The West is getting hotter

than you-know-where, muchachos --

twill only be a fit place

Critique of Henri Cole's 'Figs.'

 Overnight the figs got moldy and look like little brains --

or Ids without structure -- that say something dark

about our species not really laying down a garden

but living out the violent myths.

An insect chorus, almost diaphonous

in a neighbor's yard, says something, too:

'American began in tall ships that glowed from within,"

but, for the wretched, it still wretchedeth every day."

As the bright day goes around the sun,

why do our days grow

more aggressive and difficult?

Why do the world's shadows

come so close

as its wonders beckon?

Cole has a distinguished career as a teacher. Too bad he was never a newspaper reporter with a hard-hearted editor looming over him. Had that been the case, Cole would have sent those two awful lines about tall ships to the chopping block. They break up and distract the poem. Placed in the middle of an otherwise intriguing piece, those two wretched lines were probably meant by Cole to actually contain the real meaning of the whole poem. Or perhaps they are meant as a verbal collage; if so, they do not succeed in adding anything to this particular piece of art.

The whole subject of figs, of course, is fraught with sexuality. But Cole elects to be didactic and obscure. So if you'll excuse me I'm going for some fig newtons and a glass of milk in the kitchen.

Cole and supporters, please feel free to repeat this rejoinder about the above critique. On your social media accounts and elsewhere:

"Mr. Torkildson fails as even a poetaster in his own versifying. It's only natural he should want to cut ineffectual capers around the towering literary achievements of  Mr. Cole."

Morbius: Give This Movie A Miss.

 

The box office performance of Morbius


Title:Morbius

Daniel Espinoza is the director.

written by Matt Sazama, Art Marcum, Matt Holloway, and Burke Sharpless

Availability: April 1, 2022

Marvel Universe on Sony is available in the country.

Cast: Tyrese Gibson, Jared Harris, and Jared Leto

the PG-13 rating

Category: Action

Budget for box office data: $75,000,000.

Columbia Pictures, Marvel Studios, Arad Productions, and Matt Tolmach Productions provided the funding.

International box office: $89,207,071 Domestic box office: $73,793,072

Synopsis

A good vampire is impossible to subdue.
especially when he is a respected physician who takes medication to treat his weak blood.
Unfortunately, the treatment is worse than the condition, and the doctor unwittingly turns into a neck nosher.
an undead.

There are others who want in on the action because vampirism is a trend.
They are able to consume some of the potion, allowing them to swoop in and deliver lethal hickies.

The big magilla comes out at the end when the good doctor defeats the bad guys and learns to live with his vampirism by repeating each evening as he emerges from his coffin, "Every day, in every way - I vant to suck your blood, blaah!" However, since this film is a part of the Marvel universe, there has to be a big magilla about it, with bats, blood, and blondes thrown together willy-nil

And are the bad guys, the bloodsuckers who have no remorse, actually dead?
A brief shot in the movie's conclusion implies that you shouldn't stake your entire future on it.
Thus, a new sequel is created.


The lackluster response to Morbius at the box office does not prove that people have no feelings for vampires.
Instead, it demonstrates that viewers are still picky about Count Dracula and his family.

We know what we want in a vampire, and when we don't get it, we usually leave the theater like cemetery fog rather than watch a dull retelling of the same old tale.

Because, let's face it, without a consummate performer like Christopher Lee or a pixie director like James Whale, the vampire motif becomes tedious.

It might be instructive to take a look back at what those old fogies created before there were blue screens and when the Breen Office was still in power. YouTube has some of the old Universal vampire movies up and running (until the copyright lawyers catch up to the posters).

There are the character actors first.
Not the big names; do you believe Clark Gable would be discovered dead sporting a widow's peak?
however, that army of specialized actors who oozed weirdness with every breath, like John Carradine and Lionel Atwill (or lack thereof.)
Sure, Matt Smith and Jared Leto can emote, but can they slither?
Doubtful.
Additionally, they don't have the ghoulish sense of humor that the undead and their henchmen enjoy using before wildcatting a jugular vein.
The characters were overly serious and stereotyped, which is largely the fault of the script writers.
The cast plays Morbius as though they are all suffering from a severe hangover.
Who knows, maybe they did with that kind of dreck staring them in the face every day.

The background music is another crucial component of a vampire film.
Due to their lack of sound, vampires do not prowl around like the Frankenstein monster or howl at the moon like the wolf man.
Therefore, the music must convey something about the vampire's hopeless immortal despair.
In the 1940s, Frank Skinner and Hans J. Salter produced truly monstrous music at Universal Studios.


Well, it's just a vampire movie, after all.
Right?
Some mindless entertainment to block out the outside world for a while.
Let's avoid overanalyzing it.
In addition, when you consider the cost of a movie ticket and a box of popcorn, movie theaters themselves are the real bloodsuckers!

Box Office Revenue

With a $75 million production budget and a worldwide box office that was 2.2 times the production budget, Morbius made $73,793,072 domestically and $89,207,017 internationally.

In its opening weekend, Morbius played to 4268 theaters and earned $39,005,895 (52.9% of the overall gross).

The movie received a domestic audience of 4268 theaters and received a domestic share of roughly 45.3%.

After dominating the box office during its opening weekend, Morbius dropped to second place the following weekend and experienced a -58% change in earnings by the sixth week. The film ran for a total of 10 weeks, earning an average weekend domestic gross of $53,597,201 based on an average run of 4.3 weeks per theater.

Morbius was released internationally to a total of 23 nations, with Mexico, the United Kingdom, and France serving as the film's three largest markets, with lifetime gross totals of $8,080,155, $8,043,226 and $500,000, respectively.