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Episode Seventy

April 14, 2016
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We are so much Creatures of Habit that it never occurs to us to say “organisms of habit” or “beings of habit.” We latch onto phrases that sound good and soon they become comforting cliches.

And we like our entertainment to be predictable as well. The well-wrought movie IN THE HEART OF THE SEA got a lousy Tomatometer rating, I think, because the story didn’t cleave to cinematic cliche of intro/rising action/crisis/payoff. So critics and other audience members couldn’t fit its square pegs into their round holes.

Episodic continuity is not only in our TV shows and comic books, it is in our daily/weekly/holiday life. When you get up and have your morning coffee, it is part of a pattern that, disrupted, adds to your stress.

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Entertaining shopping sprees
Picaresqueness with a breeze
If the sins of Prez or Rev
Slump, then check out Campbell, Neve
Or explore a tomb well hidden
Don’t heed curses–Carter didn’t
Each and every means employ
Effortlessly to enjoy

Word balloon 1: Egad, Elmer! Ecclesiastical Encyclicals! Enjoy!

Word balloon 2: Pablo, please palpate Pam’s peritoneum.

Word balloon 3: I ignite ingots, Ignatz.

Word balloon 4: Savoring salads sows salubrity.

Word balloon 5: Oh, Oliver, our Oleander!

Word balloon 6: Dear Diedre, Dastardly Dick’s dead.

Word balloon 7: Egad, Elmer–ecdysiasts!

 

Sapient Opioids, etcetera

April 9, 2016
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Last night was Caffeine Corridor, for which I took a day off work. (My friend and co-worker MaryBell filled in for me.) The acrostic came while I was on the light rail going to the event; the poem came this morning.

Solving insomnia and equations too
A equals B and calm minus care sleep
Pills dissolve and become fluid octopi
Intelligent enough to add cortical goo
Even as the patient snores on the lanai
Neurons seek new paths to alter mood
Then Morpheus sees that non-hope dies

Are smart pills in the future? Of course they are. Let’s hope they aren’t bitter, or rebellious . . .

my own “walks into a bar” joke

March 27, 2016
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A guy walks into a bar that is full of koala bears. “Sorry, buddy,” says the koala bartender, “you’ll have to leave.” “Why?” says the guy. “Because you don’t have the koalafications.”

Dedicated to the spirits of Poul Anderson and Gordon R. Dickson, co-creators of the Hoka, the ursinoid aliens who hilariously re-enacted various human dramas, including “Casey At the Bat” and The Marriage of Figaro.

carlessness

March 22, 2016
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I bought an ice-cream cone for my friend of 37 years, Donna Atkins Parella. Today is her hmmdee-hmmph birthday. Sadly, she’s not here, so I ate it in her honor. Donna Sue, I owe you one . . .

The acrostic was done on the platform, and then in one of the cars, of the Valley Metro Light Rail. When I was on the platform cars kept stopping in front of me, waiting for the light to change. Kimon Nicolaïdes once said “draw anything,” so I drew one of the cars. Then the not-quite-word “carlessness” came, I being a pedestrian, and the words obediently followed . . .

Chevy Impala was used to attain
ATTITUDE ALTITUDE though no jet plane
Recent additions have hybridish graces
Ramp up, pedestrians–off to the races

w a n d

March 19, 2016
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a smiley face, a manifesto,
doodles comic, deathscenes tragic,
a recipe for lime-green pesto,
you wielding Pencils make some magic.

Arizona Poet Laureate Alberto Rios once pointed out that there were 35,000 words in a single pencil. Bless him!

Few of us use the word “wand” without front-loading it with “magic.” What wand isn’t?

cereal really/really cereal

March 18, 2016
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The word cereal comes from a Goddess. The word really is an offshoot of Reality itself. As I poured myself a bowl of raisin bran, I  thought it would be nice to marry them, bookending some ordered-chaos words with a quadruple acrostic.

creation’s non-arc
eerily evokes a tree
radiation stellar
elevates its clientele
alleluia to the hula
lyric-etched vinyl

This may remind a few of a large drawing I made over a year ago. That drawing, alas, seems to be lost forever. This may be the start on a replacement.

Modern Medicine, 2016

March 17, 2016
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My daughter, my brother, my ex-wife and I all sit in the 2nd floor waiting room. My mother is under general anaesthesia while undergoing cardiac catheterization. Earlier we were all bedside while Lil the nurse got Mom an extra blanket, Kendra the intake lady reviewed Mom’s allergies and other need-to-knows, and Roger the anaesthesiologist peeked in through the curtain and said cheerfully “I got drugs!!”

Modern patient handling has become a friendlier, folksier thing, and I’m sure that factor has bettered surgical success. It also de-stresses worried family members.

Happy St. Paddy’s Day, everyone!

Working-Fool Time

March 16, 2016
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A long time ago a man named Robert Townsend, whose leadership saved the bacon of Avis Rent-A-Car, wrote a book called UP THE ORGANIZATION. In it he spoke of being at a board meeting and being asked to leave the room. He refused, saying that if he left the room, the board would vote him a higher salary, and he was making plenty of money as it was. He warned of the danger of executives making far more than their underlings, calling the phenomenon “gaposis.” In the decades since his published wisdom, unfortunately, hotter heads have prevailed. I (again) recommend a viewing of THE BIG SHORT for a good primer of how greed can bring down an economy.

We’re Starbuck’d for cafe au lait
Whilst scarfing trafe: bon appetit
Our O. C. D. is SO Feng Shui
Our poodles Frou-Fou ou Fifi
Reap-off what’s sown is owner aim
Roped in, the toilers swarm & teem
King-Learingly we chafe & blame
King-Fisherfolk just wax extreme

 

walk/whiplash/woolgathering

March 10, 2016
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Just saw two achievement-centered movies. In THE WALK, Philippe Pettit overcomes huge obstacles to get a wire strung from one Twin Tower to the other to walk, nail-skewered foot and all, across, and then some. While I watched I had some Mondavi Cabernet Sauvignon, toasting the Frenchman Joseph Gordon-Levitt played.

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The other movie, WHIPLASH, featured JK Simmons in his Oscar-winning performance as a controlling, monomaniacal music conductor.

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Both movies were entertaining, but WHIPLASH was painful to watch.

 

 

Freehand/Gridluck

March 9, 2016
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For the last couple of months I’ve been dismayed by the seeming decline of my drawing ability, even to the extent of wondering if I’d had a mini stroke or some other debilitating event. This morning, though, I had a blinding flash of the obvious: I just haven’t been drawing enough! I’d been comparing what I’ve done lately to a year ago, when I was drawing every day for hours on end. All I need do now, I think, is string together some hour-or-more days.

So today I returned to freehand acrosticizing and gridding. The words are odd, but make some sense. “Freehand” describes a lactating woman’s seduction of her primary care physician. “Gridluck” describes his education.

Very weird, eh? But so is this lyric from then Cat Stevens, now Yusuf Islam:

Mary dropped her pants by the sand/and let a parson come and take her hand/but the soul of nobody knows/where the parson goes . . .