Even a dreary Monday morning can be perfect for romance, at least here at Owl Chatter. This poem was today’s “Poem A Day” from Poets.org. It’s by Robin Coste Lewis and is a translation of Konstantin Kavafy’s “I was asking about the quality.”
I came out
of the office
where I had been
hired in another shitty, low-paying job
(My weekly pay was nothing more
than fifty dollars a week, most from tips).
With my waitress shift over, I came out
at seven and walked slowly. I fell out
into the street, handsome, but compelling.
It felt as if I had finally reached the full potential
of my own beauty (I’d turned
sixteen the previous month).
I kept wandering all around
the newly-cemented streets,
the quiet and old black alleys, past
the cemetery leading to our home.
But then, as I’d paused in front of a clothing store
where some skirts were on sale
(polyester, cheap), I saw this face
inside—a girl—whose eyes urged me
to come inside. So, I entered—
pretending I was looking
for embroidered handkerchiefs.
I was asking about the quality—
of her handkerchiefs—how much
they cost—in a whispery voice breaking open
with desire—and accordingly came her
shop-girl answers—rote, memorized—but beneath her
words, her eyes kept ablaze: Yes.
Mine, too, were a psalm of consent.
We kept talking about the handkerchiefs,
but all the while our one and only goal was this:
to brush each other’s hands—quickly—
over the handkerchiefs—to lean
our faces and lips
nearer to each other, as if
by accident. We moved quickly,
cautiously, yet deliberately—
in case her grandfather—sitting in
the back—were to suspect something.
In that same vein, in the puzzle today the clue at 56A was “Glimmer” and the answer was GLEAM. Per Son Volt, it’s the name of an album by the Avett Brothers on which this song appears.
At 44D today, the clue was “Mom and Pop” and the answer was PARENTS. Not particularly noteworthy, except our old buddy egs wrote: My folks got divorced and Ma got the house so PARENTS.
Spare me the details, please! At 40A EROTICA is crossing 41D TUSH. You couldn’t just have TUSH cross SIT at 19A? GAH! (62D)
The Gnats swept the O’s over the weekend down in Baltimore. In fact, they pounded the crap of them Sat and Sun, scoring ten runs in each game. Yippee! Of course, Baltimore stinks this year and already fired the manager. We’ll see if the surge continues against the Atlantans in DC tomorrow.
Way to go, CJ! CJ Abrams is the brilliant young Gnat shortstop who popped two dingers yesterday and is hitting .312 (sixth best in the NL), kinahora. Damn good glove too.
We are happy to make room in the Owl Chatter Hall of Fame for Officer Michael Fanone, 44, a retired 20-year veteran of the Metropolitan Police Dept. of the District of Columbia. Michael recently called Trump and his GOP allies “petty bitches” for refusing to display a congressionally approved plaque honoring police officers who protected the US Capitol during the January 6th attack. Since the plaque is not going to be displayed, Fanone said “I think it would be perfect if the plaque was shoved up his ass,” referring to House Speaker Johnson. Seems reasonable to us.
As you may know, on January 6, Fanone was assaulted by rioters, dragged down the Capitol steps, beaten with pipes, stunned with a Taser, sprayed with chemical irritants, and threatened with his own gun. He suffered burns, a heart attack, a concussion, a traumatic brain injury, and was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder as a result of the attack. On the second anniversary of the attack, Michael was awarded the Presidential Citizens Medal by President Biden.
The two men sentenced to prison for attacking Officer Fanone have, of course, been pardoned by Trump. In February, while attending a conference, Fanone was confronted by other gentlemen who were pardoned and they called him a coward. It’s okay though. We have no problem welcoming cowards into the Owl Chatter Hall of Fame.
God bless America.
Stuart Davidson, of the Dull Men’s Club (UK), posts the following:
I recently had the experience of viewing the initial segment of the motion picture Gladiator II. It is with some regret that I must inform you that my viewing duration was limited to the first fourteen minutes of the presentation, at which point I elected to cease watching.
The primary reason for my discontinuation of viewing pertains to what I perceived as a number of deviations from established historical understanding, specifically in the depiction of Roman naval siege operations. These deviations, in my estimation, were rather disconcerting.
While it is generally acknowledged that the Roman civilization possessed a significant naval force, the portrayal of siege towers of such considerable height as to allow for the scaling of the defensive structures of a fortified coastal settlement, coupled with the depiction of naval vessels making direct impact with the shoreline in what appeared to be somewhat turbulent waters, struck me as implausible. Furthermore, the visual representation of the Romans employing short-range catapults situated on these vessels, while perhaps not entirely without some basis in historical reality, seemed to exaggerate the capabilities of such devices. Specifically, the notion that these catapults would possess the capacity to create breaches in stone fortifications through the projection of containers filled with burning pitch appeared to me to be an overstatement of their likely effectiveness.
To no surprise, Davidson’s post created quite an uproar. Here are the dullest of the 57 comments it drew:
Jay Russell: Give Star Wars a go. It’s much more realistic
Richard Hall: I had a similar moment at the beginning of Skyfall when Bond is shown using the track control to lower the boom on the excavator, but I gritted my teeth and got through it.
Amber Corns: Wait till you get to the sharks in the Colosseum.
Davidson: I turned it off.
Neil Stewart: If you’d stuck with it you’d have seen the bit where a Centurion gets beamed aboard an alien spaceship for experiments. He’s wearing completely the wrong sort of sandals through the whole thing, and I don’t think he would have been eating a Pot Noodle.
Sandy Grogan: Good job it was made for entertainment rather than as an historically accurate documentary.
Davidson: Saving Private Ryan was made for entertainment. Whilst still remaining historically accurate around the fictional plot line.
Tony Ross: A short search on Saving Private Ryan: A soldier fires seven shots without reloading, exceeding the capacity of his Springfield 1903 rifle. Several times, Corporal Upham’s .30 caliber ammunition belts appear to have missing primers. The movie depicts the men firing at the German 20mm cannon from a distance which would be extremely inaccurate and ineffective. And in the final battle, the tanks are not actual German Tiger tanks but mocked-up T-34s, and there is no historical basis for Tigers in Normandy at that time.
Hrrrrrrrumph!
Yo! Denzel! That you? Sup, man?
See you tomorrow!
The Wellington Files 