Dorothy Parker must have had a good sense of humor, judging by this poem of hers from the Poetry Foundation today. It’s called “Love Song.”
My own dear love, he is strong and bold
And he cares not what comes after.
His words ring sweet as a chime of gold,
And his eyes are lit with laughter.
He is jubilant as a flag unfurled—
Oh, a girl, she’d not forget him.
My own dear love, he is all my world,—
And I wish I’d never met him.
My love, he’s mad, and my love, he’s fleet,
And a wild young wood-thing bore him!
The ways are fair to his roaming feet,
And the skies are sunlit for him.
As sharply sweet to my heart he seems
As the fragrance of acacia.
My own dear love, he is all my dreams,—
And I wish he were in Asia.
My love runs by like a day in June,
And he makes no friends of sorrows.
He’ll tread his galloping rigadoon
In the pathway of the morrows.
He’ll live his days where the sunbeams start,
Nor could storm or wind uproot him.
My own dear love, he is all my heart,—
And I wish somebody’d shoot him.
And then there’s this one by Christopher Marlowe: ”The Passionate Shepherd to His Love.” It was in today’s Writer’s Almanac. It’s Marlowe’s birthday today too — Chris is 560! (Doesn’t look a day over 425.)
Come live with me and be my love,
And we will all the pleasures prove
That valleys, groves, hills, and fields,
Woods, or steepy mountain yields.
And we will sit upon the rocks,
Seeing the shepherds feed their flocks
By shallow rivers, to whose falls
Melodious birds sing madrigals.
And I will make thee beds of roses
And a thousand fragrant posies;
A cap of flowers and a kirtle
Embroidered all with leaves of myrtle;
A gown made of the finest wool
Which from our pretty lambs we pull;
Fair linèd slippers for the cold,
With buckles of the purest gold;
A belt of straw and ivy buds,
With coral clasps and amber studs.
And if these pleasures may thee move,
Come live with me and be my love.
The shepherds’ swains shall dance and sing
For thy delight each May morning.
If these delights thy mind may move,
Then live with me and be my Love.
Ever get one of those nagging symptoms and nothing seems to help? Plucking your feathers out? Pacing obsessively and biting your tail? It may be time to light up that joint my friend.
A long article on the front page of the Science section in the NYT today discusses the remarkable curative powers of cannabis for animals. Nidia the elephant was sinking fast, tormented by fissures in her foot pads and cracked and ingrown toenails you shouldn’t know from, believe me. She was hardly eating and was clearly depressed. Her doc — Quetzalli Hernandez — was at her wit’s end. In desperation, she started Nidia on a low dose of cannabis and the results were remarkable. First, her appetite came back. In the words of the Times: ”Nidia developed a serious case of the munchies.” Within five weeks she gained 555 pounds (that’s not a typo) — which comes close to eclipsing my record. She went from grumpy to happy (switched dwarves), and the anti-inflammatory effects of the drug helped her feet heal. Wow — good move Dr. Q!
Vets around the world are starting to turn to it, with excellent results in many cases. Colombia is taking the lead. But outdated laws make it illegal in many locales. In the U.S., e.g., in Georgia and Alabama, vets are not even allowed to discuss its use with pet owners. Soon, no doubt, women who are leaving a state to get a legal abortion will be taking their pets with them to score some weed.
Here’s a happy story. Patricio, Dr. Monica Lozano Garza’s Old English sheepdog, sometimes woke up gasping for breath. Nothing traditional was helping, so she turned to cannabis. ”You have no idea how much it helped; he could breathe again,” she said. It gave him 2 and a half more years of life.”
Hey! Don’t bogart that joint, Fido!
This gorgeous portrait of the NYC owl Flaco was shared with me by the artist Massachusetts Jenny. It appears here in OC without her permission — I was afraid to ask in case she said no.
Headline in The Onion:
Introverted Cowboy Struggling To Round Up Posse
The word BOFF hogged the spotlight yesterday. The theme of the puzzle was FIGHTING WORDS. That was the answer at 37A for “Wanna take this outside?” And the four long answers had “fighting words” embedded in them:
scuBA Masks; pizZA Pie; ruB OFF on; and polKA POWer.
So that’s BAM, ZAP, BOFF, and KAPOW.
But Rex had big problems with BOFF, to wit: ”You can BOP someone on the head, and that’s kinda violent, but BOFF just doesn’t register as a comic-book ‘fighting word’ the way the others do. Feels like a huge swing and a miss. A fundamental flaw in the execution of the theme. So the core concept works fine, but BOFF mars the execution pretty bad.”
He also noted there is a definition for BOFF that is “to have sex with someone.” He said BIFF is more of a fighting word than BOFF.
Lewis disagreed: ”I learned that BOFF is a legitimate cartoon fight sound effect after learning that in the 120 episodes of TV’s Batman, that word flashed on the screen in 24 of them.”
And Sailor found an article from which he extracted:
The top 5 most-used Batman fight graphics:
Kapow (50 times)
Pow (49 times)
Boff (43 times)
Zap (42 times)
Sock (41 times)
Today’s puzzle played on how phrases may have two ways of being read. E.g., MOVEDOVER, can be “moved over” or “move Dover.” It inspired this memory and story for Cdilly52:
It reminded me of a big fat Sunday puzzle decades ago. I was about ten and wasn’t close to solving anything but most of a Monday by myself and I was always reluctant to even think that I might have seen something that my Gran (my true parent, life guide and lifelong person I relied on as I grew up) had missed or not yet figured out. But I did see “something” and Gran saw that I did. It’s been 6 decades and I can’t remember the exact puzzle or the theme answers, but I remember Gran looking at me and saying “have you gotten it? You see something I missed.” I reluctantly said something like “Well, um, er, do you see that the long ones actually spell two things?” And from that little experience I remember two things.
The two things are not the clue answers, those are too far back, but I remember Gran clapping her hands (just once as always when she was excited) and gleefully saying “You figured it out and now we can finish!” But before she went back to the grid with her trusty Parker ballpoint, she took my hands in hers and said, “Don’t ever be shy about sharing a well-reasoned opinion, but always do so respectfully and with clarity, so others will listen.”
Once, many years later, after a particularly long and contentious month in Federal Court, after the case finally settled rather than going all the way to a verdict, the judge asked to see me in chambers. That puzzle came to mind when the judge thanked me for my “reasoned, calm professionalism,” (my opponent being a ranter got on her nerves repeatedly). She continued: “your demeanor and delivery are always exceptional and people listen to you.”
“It’s too late for Greg. The tchotchkes have him now.“
It’s looking more and more like the tchotchkes have all of us. See you tomorrow!
The Wellington Files 