“I work graveyard,” Tom said shiftily…
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Tag Archives: wordplay
tales of the distribution: a horror story
Once upon a time there was an unhappy engineering student who was overwhelmed by tough classes and a tumultuous relationship. He decided to step back from the Master’s Degree program in which he was enrolled till he stabilized. Thirty-five years flew by, and somewhere in there the engineering career ship set sail for parts unknown. The End–or not quite. Remnants of his studies still float in his aging brain. The phrase “tails of the distribution,” first heard during a Probability and Statistics class, bobbed in his conscious thoughts an hour or so ago. The above page was created.
Here’s the horror: In order to tell the REAL Tales of the Distribution, I’d have to go back to school or self-study to refamiliarize myself with 1) polar coordinates 2) Payne’s theorem 3) Johann Carl Friedrich Gauss 4) Chi-squared curve smoothing 5) Use of factorials in permutations and combinations 6) the Central Limit Theorem 7) probability density function calculus 8) n-dimensional space. That prospect is horrific to me. My time is better spent communing with my friends and loved ones, composing acrostic poetry based on wordplay and subject matter I well know, enjoying the local landscape and other scenery, and making that tiny piece of the world within my jurisdiction a better place.
But some day, probably long after I’ve ceased to exist, knowledge will be downloadable directly into the human brain. No more pencils, no more books, no more teachers’ dirty looks, just a clean upgrade. For the lucky-or-not folks enjoying such a technological advance, the sky will be the limit, and new, interdisciplinary ways of looking at reality will be made possible. Somewhere in there someone might stumble upon this blog-couched body of work of mine and feel amused contempt. What a moron! she, he or it may think…and that’s the REAL Horror of this Story.
K.E.R.O.M.W.R.P.
There will be no images with this post, though I may some day calligraph the phrase abbreviated above. The letters stand for “Kindly Eschew Relational Otological Micturition Whilst Reporting Precipitation.” It is a cousin to “Eschew Obfuscation,” which translates with some trouble to “Avoid being deliberately confusing,” making it delightfully self-contradictory. “Eschew Obfuscation” was introduced to me by a woman I knew as Dot Morrison, a former co-worker of my former wife Joni. Dot is (or was; I’ve lost track of her since my divorce) the mother-in-law of Hugo-Award-winning science fiction novelist Kim Stanley Robinson. I hope Dot is alive and well. She was wise, a brilliant conversationalist, and a Clarence DeMar fan, just like me, except for the Wise and Brilliant Conversationalist part.
Translation: “Please don’t piss in my ear and tell me it’s raining.” Dot, you liked my proposed bumper sticker “Bush Happens.” Hope you like this one too! [smiles]
Hullabaku
The words will come first for this one, the image last. The image won’t last but some of the words might.
NOTE: Like American Raku, American Haiku does not adhere to the rules of its Japanese namesake. I am a native-born citizen of the United States of America. The only rule I adhere to for my own “Haiku” is that it have a five-syllable line followed by a seven-syllable line followed by a concluding five-syllable line. They’re succinct!
the baggage unclaim’d
by conscientious thinkers
need not be opened
blink outside the box
sink rapidly to moisten
think or swim; you’re Choice
the fog is meringue
in the middle distance, a
surrounding scrim close
if life’s but a dream
then dreams are life subroutines
else life’s but a glitch
insomniac x:
why zee? DOUBLE you be, see?
just no-bud D saw.
the Road Less Traveled
may be dangerous or dull
better ask around
PAIN is not a gift
TORTURE is not an art form
Respect must be paid
unstressed syllables
are the sorbets of verses
they cleanse the pallette
friendly host zombie
chowing down on Ringo Starr:
who wants a d r u m s t i c k?
exclusivity
and loneliness may well go
hand in empty hand
5-7-5 is
an aggregate 17
–so QUICK: SAY something
Twin edifices
Tumbled down twelve years ago.
The Republic STANDS.
Songs to Bobby
More than fifty years ago a Minnesota kid wrote “Song to Woody.” More than four years ago an Arizona kid drew “Song to Bobby.” (He’d just seen I’M NOT THERE.) And just yesterday that same kid did another would-be tribute to his favorite songwriter:
The illustration includes references to “Like a Rolling Stone,” “Mister Tambourine Man,” “Positively 4th Street,” “Simple Twist of Fate,” “When I Paint My Masterpiece,” “Jokerman,” “Blowin’ in the Wind,” and “Leopard-Skin Pillbox Hat.”
These are the words to the double acrostic:
Begin with a North boy’s decision–he’ll leave Minnesota behind
Beguiled by a Dust Bowl declaimer–by hard times & music defined
On east to a Village whose voice was–just right for the dissolute skinny
On coffeehouse stools for performing–like many a Tom Dick & Vinny
Betokening change for the better–came Capitol Records, & vinyl
Baroquely, the folk went electric–& then came a trauma near spinal
Befuddlement presaged conversion–an episode, not a novella
Bold “Jokerman” waxed infidelic–a multiambiguous fella
Yes, his wont’s to want contradiction–like sallowness under a zap tan
Yet he achieves TRUTH via fiction–& lyrically he is the Captain
I close with the marquee of a wonderful event held annually in Old Town of Cottonwood, Arizona. Last year I was privileged to sing with Joe Neri and the Mystery Tramps, who had audience members sing seven of the ten verses of “Desolation Row.” I got the one with the reference to Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot. My voice almost broke on “The Titanic sails at dawn,” but I had a strong finish. [smiles]
Loose as a Seuss
As I indicate by my signature, I am an admiring fan of Theodor Geisel, known to the world as Dr. Seuss. FOX IN SOCKS charmed my own socks off me, and one of my fondest memories is reading it aloud to my toddler daughter.
Here are the words to the acrostic:
Let’s start with a task that will not anger bees
Leaves zinnias unfettered and gracing the trees
Out where it’s assumed that a favoring breeze
Obscures a disaster with greatest of ease
One way to get smash hits as featured in Hulu
Opine that the seaside has snagged you a lulu
See–he’ll never cease to amaze all us toddlers
Serves up Feats of antics for Mollies & Coddlers
Escape to his Casa–it’s Perfect for Dawdlers
…and please do visit http://www.seussville.com, where the Good Doctor lives on!
The Beck of the Abovebird
I’ve got a thing about Birds, and I’ve got another thing about Words. Yesterday I was thinking about weird idioms like “kit and kaboodle” and “part and parcel”–and then “beck and call.” What does Beck bring to the party of Beck and Call? (Not the singer Beck, nor the brew Beck, you understand.)
This led me to birds, because Beck is equilaterally similar to Beak and Peck. Consequently I invented the above bird, which I christened the Abovebird.
Here are the words:
Tantric tautologies MAXIMIZE trivia
Holographed Fastballs lend Creedence to plumb
Endocrinologists Lymph to the servo
Beholding the HEADMAN the Jefe the Gov
Entreatment may heat up a feeling like love
Contentment enhances & sometimes makes numb
Kerplunk! went the ethics of Richard the III
Olfaction’s mixt blessing can bring on a brrr
For crucialities we wax undeterred
Ouch! that last line doesn’t scan right. Well, neither did the third line of Shakespeare’s sublime Sonnet XXIX. And Will & I–we’re like THAT. 🙂
Shibbolethal Contrapuntal Dispositions
This page started with the realization that the words Shibboleth and Lethal had a common letter string, and when combined made a new, potent word. (A Google search disclosed that the word had been coined already. Someone credited someone usernamed Xel for it. Congratulations, Xel!) The word was twelve letters long; soon were found two other twelve-letter words to form a potent phrase.
So what does Shibbolethal Contrapuntal Dispositions mean? Well, shibboleth once meant a tell-tale in pronunciation that revealed where someone came from. (If curious, see the biblical Judges chapter 12, verses 4 through 6.) It has come to mean some distinguishing feature of a special group. Make that deadly, and you’ve got Shibbolethal.
Contrapuntal is the adjective form of counterpoint. In music, Counterpoint is the use of a second melody that enhances the first melody via its difference. This definition has broadened to include non-musical endeavors.
Dispositions is the plural of a word that can mean either Mood or Inclination or Deployment.
Now, with the phrase to conjure with, it was time to do some conjuring. Here is the work in early progress:
Most of these acrostics start with the end words, and with twelve, the main choices are strict rhyme, near rhyme, or no rhyme. Once the choice is made, the words are usually free-associated into discovery. Thus came jihad, wadi, morass, grasp, intaglio, adios, Nefertiti, appetit (which really ought to have been appétit), Kundalini, magneto (the machine, not the supervillain), Hunín (which ought to have been Junín, and which was changed), and vetoes. But it felt like the middle words should somehow relate, too.
Well, one thing led to another, and the resulting message has something to do with the terrible habit of governments and the people they are made up of imposing their opinions, sometimes in the forms of firebombings or assassination, on different nations or cultures or regimes. It is not a clear message; though three different rhyme/meter schemes were used, conforming to the triple acrostic disclarified the meaning. Still–the World is a lot like that: murky, obscure, providing frustrating clues.
A few words about the two caryatids used to illustrate a contrapuntal quality: the traditional caryatid found in Greek architecture is a support element, a quasi-pillar. Auguste Rodin gives us an idea of what would happen if an actual human being were enlisted to hold up tons of masonry. He thus brings to life that fine Greek concept, Pathos.
One with Clay, Image and Text 