Poem: Evil Konks Out

By Jack Brummet

1

The sun, and that sweet, sweet moon, cling to heaven.
Bugs, fish, animals, trees, and people
Cling to earth.

Power is like stapling
A target to your back.
Play dumb, play slow, play luckless.

2
Difficulty surrounds
You like a moat,
You persevere.

Spoof, lie, mislead, and spin.
Be a smiler.
Don't awaken their enmity.

3
In the end, evil konks out
Like a squid simmered in its own ink,
Because evil fails the moment

It overcomes good--
Consuming the energy
To which it owed its duration.
              ---o0o---

Painting: triangles

By Jack Brummet

---o0o---

Don't Rock The Boat - a story about apes

"You've got five apes in a cage. You've got a banana hanging by a string in the middle of the cage. You've got some stairs going to the banana. Now pretty soon one of those apes is going to go for the banana and as soon as he hits the stairs you take a hose and you spray all five apes with freezing cold water for five minutes. Now, some time passes and pretty soon another one of the apes is going to make the same attempt with the same result.  All five  apes get sprayed with a cold water.  Now you turn off the cold water. You never use it again. One of the apes is going to go for the banana. He hits the stairs, the other four apes pounce on him and beat the shit out of him. Right? Okay, understandable."

"Now you replace one of those original apes with a new ape. After a while that new ape is going to spy that banana and when he goes for the stairs, the other four apes are going to jump on him and beat the shit out of him.  Right?  Now, time passes, you replace another one of the original apes with a new ape.  That new ape is going to go for the banana. The other four apes beat the shit out of him. Right? Including the first new ape who has no idea why he's so enthusiastically beating the shit out of this poor guy nor why he himself had the shit beat out of him.  Okay?"

"Now you keep replacing these original apes with new apes until  finally you've got a cage filled with fives apes who have never had the freezing cold water sprayed on them and never the less not one of those apes will never attempt to climb those stairs again.  Why not? Because that's the way it's always been done around here. - Jackson Evans, The Contender (From the 2000 film "Don't Rock The Boat")

---o0o---

Middle Fingers: the monthly roundup (including Timberlake, Puff Daddy, Clark Gable, Barbara Stanwyck, Norman Reedus, Paul Newman)

By Mona Goldwater, Signs & Gestures Ed.

Here is our monthly round-up of mostly reader-submitted fingers.  See you next month.

---o0o---

Playground rhymes of my youth

By Jack Brummet (High school class of 1971)

[to the tune of "On Top Of Old Smokey"]

On top of spaghetti, all covered in blood,
I shot my poor teacher with a 40 foot stud.

I shot her with glory, i shot her with pride,
I couldn't have missed her she was 40 feet wide.

I went to her funeral, I went to her grave,
Some people threw flowers, I threw a grenade.

I opened her coffin--she wasn't quite dead,
So I took a bazooka and blew off her head!
______________________

Everybody's doing it, doing it, doing it.
Picking their nose and chewing it, chewing it, chewing it.
______________________

Jingle bells,
Batman smells,
Robin laid an egg.
The Batmobile lost a wheel
And Joker took ballet.
______________________

Engine Engine Number Nine
Going down Chicago line
If the train falls off the track
Do you want your money back?
______________________

Whistle while you work.
Hitler is a jerk.
Mussolini bit his weenie.
Now it doesn't work.
______________________

Whistle while you work
Hitler is a jerk
Rosellini bit his weenie
And now it will not squirt.

[Albert Rosellini who died a couple of years ago at age 100 was, until  his mid-90's, still practicing law in Seattle! He was governor of Washington State in my formative years from, 1957-1965.]
______________________

Tra la la boom de-ay
There was no school today.
Our teacher passed away,
She died of tooth decay!
Tra-la-la Boom de ay!
I took your pants away...
______________________

Tra-la-la Boom de ay!
Baffaro passed away
We threw him in the bay
And watched him float away.

[Peter Baffaro was the longtime principal of Kent Elementary, Kent, Washington]
______________________

Liar,Liar!
Pants are on fire!
[Reply]
I don't care,
I don't care!
I can buy another pair!
______________________

Johnnie had a steamboat, Johnnie had a bell,
Johnnie pulled the wrong cord and blew it all to
Hello operator, give me number nine,
If you disconnect me, I'll kick you in the
Behind the 'fridgerator, there's a piece of glass,
Johnnie slipped on it, and it went up his
Ask me no more questions, tell me no more lies,
If you ever get hit with a bucket of s**t
Just be sure to close your eyes. 
______________________

Row, row, row your boat, gently down the stream
Throw the teacher overboard and listen to her scream!
______________________

School's out, school's out,
The teacher let the monkeys out.
One went in, and one went out,
And one fell in the sauerkraut.

[At around the time I heard, and sang this ditty, Kent, Wash. was one of the largest sauerkraut producing regions in the country. I remember taking several tours of the Libby Sauerkraut plant. And they weren't alone...there were others. Not many Germans or Eastern Europeans lived in Kent, so I have to assume it was because Kent was a prime cabbage-growing area.]
______________________

It's Howdy Doody time
It ain't worth a dime
We'll turn to Channel Nine
And watch Frankenstein
______________________

Lincoln, Lincoln, I've been thinking,
What the hell have you been drinking?
Taste like beer smells like wine.
Oh my God it's Turpentine.
______________________

I'm Popeye, the Sailor Man
I live in a Garbage Can.
I eat all the worms
And I spit out the Germs
I'm Popeye, the Sailor Man.

I'm Popeye, the Sailor Man
I live in a frying pan
I turn up the heat
And I burn up my feet

I'm Popeye, the Sailor Man
I live in a frying pan
I turn up the gas
And burn off my ass
I'm Popeye, the Sailor Man

I'm Popeye, the Sailor Man
I like me spinach and eggs
I like to go swimmin'
With bow-legged women
And swim between their legs 
______________________

[to the tune of Battle Hymn of the Republic] 

Mine eyes have seen the glory
Of the burning of the school
We have tortured all the teachers,
We have broken every rule
We have barbecued the principal,
And destroyed the PTA,
Our school keeps burning on.
Glory, glory hallelujah.
Teacher hit me with a ruler.
I met her at the door with a loaded .44
Now she won't be teaching anymore! 

---o0o---

Billie Holiday's birthday and Frank O'Hara's poem on her death

By Jack Brummet, Jazz Ed.


It would have been Billie Holiday's 100th birthday today. She didn't make it, but her music certainly did. Frank O'Hara wrote a great poem about her departure.

The Day Lady Died

BY FRANK O'HARA

It is 12:20 in New York a Friday

three days after Bastille day, yes

it is 1959 and I go get a shoeshine

because I will get off the 4:19 in Easthampton   

at 7:15 and then go straight to dinner

and I don’t know the people who will feed me

I walk up the muggy street beginning to sun   

and have a hamburger and a malted and buy

an ugly NEW WORLD WRITING to see what the poets   

in Ghana are doing these days

                                                        I go on to the bank

and Miss Stillwagon (first name Linda I once heard)   

doesn’t even look up my balance for once in her life   

and in the GOLDEN GRIFFIN I get a little Verlaine   

for Patsy with drawings by Bonnard although I do   

think of Hesiod, trans. Richmond Lattimore or   

Brendan Behan’s new play or Le Balcon or Les Nègres

of Genet, but I don’t, I stick with Verlaine

after practically going to sleep with quandariness

and for Mike I just stroll into the PARK LANE

Liquor Store and ask for a bottle of Strega and   

then I go back where I came from to 6th Avenue   

and the tobacconist in the Ziegfeld Theatre and   

casually ask for a carton of Gauloises and a carton

of Picayunes, and a NEW YORK POST with her face on it

and I am sweating a lot by now and thinking of

leaning on the john door in the 5 SPOT

while she whispered a song along the keyboard

to Mal Waldron and everyone and I stopped breathing

Frank O’Hara, “The Day Lady Died” from Lunch Poems. Copyright © 1964 by Frank O’Hara.

---o0o---

Ex-Governor Jeb Bush registered to vote as an "Hispanic"

By Pablo Fanque, National Affairs Ed.

The New York Times yesterday carried a story that Jeb Bush identified himself as "Hispanic" on his 2009 voter registration form.  Interesting.  He owned up to it in a tweet yesterday: "My mistake." 

---o0o---

Robot #8 - the spare parts robot

By Jack Brummet

---o0o---

Olympians to tough it out in massively polluted Guanabara Bay

According to the mayor of Rio de Janeiro, it appears that some of the 2016 Summer Olympics aquatic events will take place among floating household trash and raw sewage in Guanabara Bay (although Mayor Eduardo Paes noted to the Associated Press in March that the events are scheduled for the “cleanest part” of the Bay). 

To acquire the games, organizers had promised a massive cleanup, but now, with 500 days to go, Paes conceded that the goals will not be met and that, indeed, infrastructure improvements still have not halted the sewage flow into the Bay. [Associated Press, 3-23-2015]

---o0o---

Time Square Grindhouses thirty years ago

By Jack Brummet

Just some of the movie theaters then in Times Square.  On the bill that day:

Cine 42: I: Critters / Deadly Blessing; Theater II:  The Toxic Avenger/ Bloodsucking Freaks
Harris: P.O.W.: The Escape / Exterminator 2/ Delta Force
Liberty: Make Them Die Slowly/Savage Man, Savage Beast / King Dick
Empire: Shaolin Kung Fu/ Shaolin Vs. Lama /Shaolin Red Master 

---o0o---

Poem: Frontier Justice

by Jack Brummet 

 1  
A roiling thunderstorm clears the air
Like Wyatt Earp's peacekeeper

 2  
A bad beginning can be overcome
But a good end lasts forever

          ---o0o---

The history of the universe (in 200 words)

By Jack Brummet
Unexplained Phenomena Editor

This is Eric Schulman's "History of the Universe in 200 Words or Less."  I have been been grokking on this one for a couple of weeks (and looking up the words and phrases I didn't understand).  Wow.

These 200 words inspired A Briefer History of Time which also led to the Annals of Improbable Research Universal History Translation Project. [From the AIR, Volume III, Number 1, January/February 1997, page 27.]
 

Quantum fluctuation. Inflation. Expansion. Strong nuclear interaction. Particle-antiparticle annihilation. Deuterium and helium production. Density perturbations. Recombination. Blackbody radiation. Local contraction. Cluster formation. Reionization? Violent relaxation. Virialization. Biased galaxy formation? Turbulent fragmentation. Contraction. Ionization. Compression. Opaque hydrogen. Massive star formation. Deuterium ignition. Hydrogen fusion. Hydrogen depletion. Core contraction. Envelope expansion. Helium fusion. Carbon, oxygen, and silicon fusion. Iron production. Implosion. Supernova explosion. Metals injection. Star formation. Supernova explosions. Star formation. Condensation. Planetesimal accretion. Planetary differentiation. Crust solidification. Volatile gas expulsion. Water condensation. Water dissociation. Ozone production. Ultraviolet absorption. Photosynthetic unicellular organisms. Oxidation. Mutation. Natural selection and evolution. Respiration. Cell differentiation. Sexual reproduction. Fossilization. Land exploration. Dinosaur extinction. Mammal expansion. Glaciation. Homo sapiens manifestation. Animal domestication. Food surplus production. Civilization! Innovation. Exploration. Religion. Warring nations. Empire creation and destruction. Exploration. Colonization. Taxation without representation. Revolution. Constitution. Election. Expansion. Industrialization. Rebellion. Emancipation Proclamation. Invention. Mass production. Urbanization. Immigration. World conflagration. League of Nations. Suffrage extension. Depression. World conflagration. Fission explosions. United Nations. Space exploration. Assassinations. Lunar excursions. Resignation. Computerization. World Trade Organization. Terrorism. Internet expansion. Reunification. Dissolution. World-Wide Web creation. Composition. Extrapolation?

Copyright 1996-1997 by Eric Schulman.

---o0o---