Haiku Monday: Ghost

Apologies to those of you without a hankering for haiku, but this week's judge, Aunty, has mandated that visuals will apply in a tiebreaker situation, so I'm kinda duty-bound to post a visual and the accompanying entry. If you're so inclined to throw in a haiku this week, please do visit this neighborhood at porkrind central.

Beckon, brick spirits! 

Perfect spacetimes well from walls;  

Spectral signs remind.

Guest Posting 1: Magazine Editing

I have encouraged friends of mine who read this blog and those who don't to send me their publishing horror stories, and I'd print them as guest postings. Sort of a gift of therapy for my embattled peers laboring in the ditches.

Forthwith, a posting from one of my nonreaders.

Enjoy. Or at least commiserate.

---

I edit a lifestyle magazine that covers life, work, and recreation -- about a half dozen little villages/communities.

All editorial was due to me by October 7 for copy editing/review, in order to make deadline for a November 1 publication date.

I woke up this morning to an email from a writer saying she sent her piece to the two folks she interviewed to check facts. I ALWAYS discourage writers from doing this. We are not an advertorial magazine and it’s my job to check facts, dates, spellings, etc. You know the score . . .

Anyway, she says to me that George was fine with it but Ringo basically rewrote it with more information and sent to her. Since she “liked” his version better, she decided to send it to me and hopes that’s okay.

My response:

Please don’t allow the interview subject(s) to guide your writing. IF we agree to send them a piece to review, it is to proof for factual information only, not word use, writing style, or what to include or leave out. You are responsible for those decisions, not Ringo, because you are the one being paid, not him. The only other person who can mess with your work is your editor, the person who guides the angle of the article and the content of the magazine’s editorial. In this case, me. And I’ve always been happy with your work. I’ve never had to bump anything back to you because it was incomplete or poorly written. Word limits mean just that: there is a limit to what we can write on any given subject, and you as the writer and I as the editor have to make choices about that. This topic could be a BOOK, I’m sure, but that’s not what we’re doing here.

I cannot tell from the piece you just sent me which work is yours and which is Ringo’s, so I can’t make any decisions about how to handle this. If you believe that some of his additional information is imperative to the piece, then by all means amend YOUR original article and send it along, using your own words to interpret Ringo’s, just like you would do if he had said this to you in an interview. If you don’t have time to do that by mid-today, then send me your original piece, as written.

---

My pal closed the missive to me with a number of expletives. Can you blame?

Feel free to send me your stories. The blog needs different perspectives. 

Especially you managing editors out there. I'd love a post on what a pain it is to deal with freelancers. I'll even allow stories about myself . . . as long as they end up with the necessary spin that will not scare off potential clients. I'm crazy, but I'm not stupid.
 

brief moment of haiku

The topic this week in Haiku Monday was fog. My favorite entry, and perhaps one of my favorite haiku of these many months:

The postman is here
to kill us all: bark, bark, bark,
bark, bark, bark, bark, bark.

Courtesy of Roxie.

This Stuff Writes Itself

The previous post dealt with timing on deliveries of jobs from a particular client with a history of somewhat late communications on changing deadlines, not to mention the occasional expectation that I should drop everything I'm doing and read its stuff. I received the following note today from the same client:

Hi Bob, I don't know if you know about the ST job since it's not one we are using the Web for. It's on a very fast track. According to the schedule, you should have copyedited it and had it back to us yesterday.

So given this parameter, when do you think we could have it back? As always send us a clean copy and one with track changes.

Dear readers, I've been freelancing one way or the other since 1986 -- a quarter of a century, roughly half my life. This memo is without precedent. Never before have I been late on a job that, not only had I not received it, but the client never even made me aware of it.

I finally became privy to the original production schedule, which called for me to receive the book for editing on Saturday, September 24, and to return it on Sunday, September 25.

Do you think the fun ends there? Looking down the road, I am scheduled to receive the book for proofreading on October 17. The book will need to be read/marked up and FedEx'd back to the publisher. And when do you think the book is due back with them? October 19? October 18?

Stop it, you're killing me.

October 17.

PS: In all fairness, I do love this client, whom I made aware of the previous post. S/he got a kick out of it. I think.

Making It Worthwhile: A Client with a Sense of Humor

In response to a message in which I requested some vigilance about informing me of changes in schedule:


See if this helps: all text from us, henceforth and forever after, will be late by a factor of 29 percent, except when it's late by 153 percent. Late text does not mean final text. It just means what we're submitting is late but there's still more to come. Which will  be even later. There is, naturally, an inverse proportion of the percent of lateness to the amount of time the various vendors who come afterwards have to complete their job. The later we are, the less time you have. It's the way the word world works -- sadly. However, work being done in a rush by our vendors earns the vendor battle pay, which is really pretty much what you'd normally get, but you can brag about it to the literary set at the Dunk 'n' Dine. Except that you won't actually have money to spend at the Dunk 'n' Dine because your battle pay was late. Had you not been in battle, perhaps you would have seen that memo. When you finish editing our copy, you get what the poor SOB got when he finished stuffing envelopes -- more envelopes. And more copy. Yes, it's a vicious mother****ing cycle, but it beats (we hope) saying, "You want fries with that?" Maybe.

Feel better? Am logging off for the night and will be back in the morning to be late some more. And by the way, thank you always and with considerable gratitude for putting up with our messy, late ways. Which I'm late in saying.

Testing 1-2-3: THE ONLY KNOWN VIDEO OF FRED NEIL

IMPORTANT JANUARY 2016 UPDATE:

For the most important goings-on in the Fred Neil world, go to

That's the Bag I'm In (Neff; forthcoming)

+++

For Haiku Monday, Google/YouTube was adamant about not letting me embed a video. Trying again here.

And for display purposes, I offer you four extremely rare minutes of a very rare type of performer -- one heralded and revered within the industry and who sought no fame whatsoever, eventually disappearing from public view.

Most people are not familiar with Fred Neil, and I won't go into his history. But everyone is familiar with one of his songs: "Everybody's Talkin'," which Nilsson recorded for the Midnight Cowboy soundtrack, and royalties of which probably covered most of Fred's expenses until his death in the early 2000s.

The song here was prominently featured to nice effect in an episode of The Sopranos.

I only learned of Fred Neil and his reputation through a little book I read repeatedly in my early teens: Lillian Roxon's Rock Encyclopedia. Also from that book, I first found out about the Velvet Underground. That's a whole 'nother obsession.

Anyway, my words are merely keeping you from seeing the following, which is legitimately rare and precious footage. Some angel posted it on YouTube at the end of July 2011. I get chills every time I watch it, because this man has been a part of my life since the early 1970s -- whether reading about him, then searching used record stores in pursuit of his four albums, or ultimately bringing him to the attention of others. To actually see him in performance after all this time is bizarre and beautiful.

Watch concert video here.

9/24 UPDATE: A Fred Neil documentary is on the way that appears to include more footage from the concert below. Too good to be true.

Watch trailer here.

Haiku Monday / DANCE: The Winner

First, thanks to all who participated and to our voyeurs. Some folks just like to watch, and some have time constraints. All understandable.

DeepBlue -- the only one to link to a visual -- called me out for being fussy. I’ll own up to that. Personally I like the idea of the firm haiku rules, at least every so often anyway. It certainly has made the writing side tougher, and the judging perhaps easier. Moi said we need to make this whole gig more difficult because the competition’s become so good. I think the proper combination of theme and strict haiku observance makes this enterprise as challenging as drunk haikuing or haikuing on a ledge. We really don’t know what mind-altering substances people have been on up until now anyway, and with Moi submitting entries from 40,000 feet, no one’s getting any higher than that.

Speaking of DeepBlue, I’m glad he did link to his blog. Neat video, and I especially liked the music. Anytime you get more than two people working in a kitchen -- even at home -- a bit of a dance is involved. Nice to see when it all works for harmony and beauty.

First, the omissions.

Personnel:

Chickory! A true goddess of all things arts. Nada on dance and poetry?

And someone who for me has in a short amount of time come to represent an essential element of Haiku Monday, as much for himself as the people he’s brought along: Princess! Nothing? Really? We need you here.

Boxer . . . czar’s font of mystery and supporter of far-flung rants. I can certainly understand otherwise consumed. I don’t even know what I’m doing here right now.

Topics:

Frankly, even in my dance ignorance (ignordance?), I thought these topic possibilities were obvious, and maybe even too obvious. For a combination of dance and season, how about Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring? Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker? How many of you are doing the facepalm dance right about now? Frankly, I thought DeepBlue was somehow evoking the Nutcracker until I saw the video.

Metaphors:

We had a few; I expected more. Even though I’ve stated on previous Haiku Mondays and in some related correspondence that I’m perpetually oblivious to metaphors -- and I am -- I tried thinking of idiomatic expressions and relating them to seasons:

* dancing around a topic, and bringing a chill to a relationship?

* the heat of the bolero?

———

Many folks went for the fall theme, to nice effect. Some beautiful phrases emerged. It’s charming how, with the restraint of this haiku format, even simple strings of words assume a different air:

Curmudgeon’s “the aspen retire,” which swings and sways on its own (unfortunately, the 2nd line had 8 syllables)

the resignation inherent in foam 1’s “sighs . . . the rake in hand.”

Fleur, Fleur, Fleur: In a class by herself. Who else could toss off “Autumn’s mosh pit”?

———

foam 2 and karl hit similar funny notes about the act of dancing, and humor’s always good in the czarist universe.

I really like the way foam’s last line echoes the words themselves: “dog days hoedown stomp” = BUMP bump BUMP bump BUMP. That’s a stomp to me.

The humor of Karl’s verse is endearing. I’m wanting more punctuation there, not as an editor, but as a reader. I’m also wondering how the season and theme relate. The juxtaposition of crisp breeze and warm hand was one of my favorite moments this week. Maybe there are some fall dance memories in Karl’s past? “Oh sorry, your toe” is another classic.

———

I’ve already paid some homage to DeepBlue. “Fine Spoons’ arabesque” is great; “arabesque” by itself is a poetic word. As Count Basie was known for, sometimes you can just play one note, but if it’s the right note at the right time, you’re a genius. As DeepBlue acknowledged on his own account, the rules were secondary. Still a great verse.

———

RafaDe enters the metaphorical realm, it seems. Another excellent line: “Writhe in flames of blasphemy.” One of the other haikuers mentioned some rule about not using the theme word in the verse; I’m not holding that against RafaDe, as I didn’t mention it. But I am missing the seasonal reference here. If I’m overlooking it, it wouldn’t be the first time. (Late thought: season of the witch?)

———

Interesting that Moi and Uncle went back to junior high and high school, respectively, for entries. Both place the reader in a specific time and place . . . crucial.

My musical library and Moi’s only barely intersect, but I figured that something must be up with the Limburger reference; I didn’t think it was meant to refer solely to the smell of a southwestern junior high gymnasium, thick with sweat and socks and hormones. And I wasn’t disappointed: took a minute amount of research, but the reference is to a 1979 B-52’s lyric — which is smack dab in Moi’s wheelhouse. Did I get that right, Moi?

Uncle 1, on the senior prom. Uncle, you cad.

———

Uncle 2: Again, placing us not only in a specific season and time and place but in a crucial few seconds in time . . . bringing us up to the moment slowly . . . then climax! . . . the resolution and the celebration. As far as using the word “dance,” see RafaDe above.

Uncle 3 and Aunty rewrite: Sure it’s sappy. But it could just have easily gone blue:

Last dance, hold her tight;
does she feel my heart beating?

[Fill in here your own snide 5-syllable comment about lust-inspired throbbing organs.]

Okay, Uncle, pick Aunty up off the floor and offer her a fan and something cool to drink.

———

Aunty: I do love your verse, but as was pointed out some weeks back, some phrases are too good to split across lines. With “Ancient choreography” — a beautiful combo — coming in at seven syllables, why split it? Same goes for “chill night air.” May I be so bold (I feel like Uncle cutting in at the prom):

Owl swoops, mice skitter:

Ancient choreography —

Night-chilled matachin.*

*Matachin = Spanish ritualized sword-dance or battle dance (I had to look it up).

If you like the edits, keep me in mind for that book you’re certainly writing. Maybe I’ll make an exception and grant you special Auntian rates. :-)

———

CoreyJo, whose name alone is poetry, presents a beautiful take on the fall theme begun above. The clinging and falling evokes some dances whose names escape me. (I wish I knew more.)

———

Not too late, Pam, not at all. I really like the way you stop the reader with that comma immediately after the first syllable, as well with as the word “waltz,” which is an attention grabber and seems to impose a hard stop anyway (and is a good word to remember for Scrabble). The many little words on line two could be seen as wasted syllables, but they serve very effectively to slow . . . time . . . down, in anticipation of the tempo accelerating on the last line. Quite nicely done.

———

So . . . where has this late-night dance led us? Another great week of entries, and as usual, I’ve strutted and shuffled on too long. What’s the bottom line on this pas de deux of the judged and the judge?

Uncle.

Fourth an' goal to go;
two seconds left on game clock—
Dive play! End zone dance.

Uncle, your prize, courtesy of the czar, is you get to lord it over Aunty for a week. Our prize, kind sir, is to see you declare the theme and be the judge for next week. Presumably Aunty will let you rent her space for a spell.

Thanks, everybody, for a grand time as always. I'm going to do-si-do back to work. 

Haiku Monday: 9/19/2011

I couldn't find a few things I wanted for the videos below -- and the word lends itself to much more than is represented here. If you're on a PC, right click to open links in a new tab or window:

Prologue

John Renbourn

The French Mistake

What a Pair (pardon the sound)

Rules, as Aunty wrote 'em:

First, of course, is the proper [syllabic] scheme of 5-7-5. Next is the use of Kigo, essentially a seasonal reference. Thirdly, the subkect matter is subjective but oughta have a universal ring to it--the best Haiku (accordin' to the Masters) oughta have an "aha!" moment where the reader/ listener recognizes the moment conveyed. An' a final consideration is a "cutting" --a division of the poem into two independent parts, but each enhances the other.

  
On visuals: I've changed my tune from the original posting a few hours ago (Aunty, take note). Of course, feel free to post visuals on your blog, but for them to be considered in the context of the haiku contest, please provide a link to them in the comments section along with your haiku. If it's a short YouTube clip or something from Google images or a photo you've uploaded to a Flickr account, whatever. That saves me the time of going back and forth to your delightful blogs and getting consumed with nonhaiku content, which I invariably do.

As I said, I've selected a topic about which I am ignorant, so visuals could help me understand your verse. Links to your blog, though, will not work in your favor, so don't even go there.

Not for nothing am I the czar -- more than a trace of Russian totalitarianism courses through my veins. 

But I'm not entirely evil: Post as many haiku as you please, all open for judging. Window for entries closes at 11:59pm, Pacific Daylight Time. That's a minute before 3am Tuesday on the U.S. east coast, and god only knows when sometime next week for our dear friend(s) in Australia.

Have at it, funsters. The theme for Haiku Monday is DANCE.

A Personal Interlude: My First Few Cars

My dedicated reader, Moi -- who has a delightful blog and who juggles more talents, skills, and interests than I could dream up in five lifetimes -- is a fast-car freak. I sent her an article that I thought would interest her, and it prompted a quick email exchange.

Moi had mentioned her lust for the present series of Jaguar E-class vehicles. I relay here a slightly modified email response of mine.

---

Growing up, when I barely cared about such things, I always thought Jaguars were the most elegant cars on the road. Their standard sedans would have done me just fine. Something like this:
 

As far as I'm concerned, most sedans since -- from the Lexus on down -- tried to match this look.

Here's a display of the first few cars I received from my dad, the Chevy/Olds dealer. Unlike most other car dealers' kids -- who had nice cars -- I always got the stuff Dad absolutely couldn't sell, even on the used car lot, or that he might have been too uninspired to unload on the wholesale market at Jerome Avenue in the South Bronx, at the time (and perhaps still) one of America's worst neighborhoods. But I could never beat the price, and until I got out of college and wanted actively to wean myself from the corporate/parental teat, they always came with gas credit cards.

My first car appears below, which I had for the last three months of high school and then until I went off to college. Seven miles a gallon. Car weighed 5700 pounds. If the driver's door accidentally closed on your leg, your next stop was the prosthesis store:

Next stop: Summer after freshman year. I was very surprised to receive a foreign car, as my father naturally thought that they were manifestations of the antichrist:

I had the Audi for about a week. Dad asked me what I thought. I was pretty pleased, but I mentioned in passing that the radio didn't work that well. Dad's response? "OK, give it back. We'll take care of that."

He sure did:

So I drove around the Pinto in the height of the exploding-gas-tank scare; Dad didn't care. I'll always remember this car because one time when I was on the FDR Drive in Manhattan, driving at a pretty good clip, I went into a dip and came out of it in mid-air, seemingly shifting half a lane to the right in the process. Good thing it was late at night and no one was in the lane next to me.

And the vehicle for which I was famous, the body of which was festooned with duct tape to cover the rust (remember, at this point I am the potential heir to a GM dealership that had been in business for 50-something years): I give you the affectionately monikered "Ghetto Cruiser," which lasted me for about four or five years:
 

The quality of cars courtesy of my father finally improved when I had a wife and kids who were riding around in them.

A gas credit card billed to someone else's account sure sounds good now, though.

Something about This Rang My Bell

Quote from the work desk. Longtime followers of this blog -- hell, my life -- know that the matter of religion has disturbed/fascinated me since before the bar mitzvah that I was committed to for all the wrong reasons. How many functioning atheists of Jewish descent see the Abbey of Gethsemani as the ideal retreat?

Hang in there with this. It starts off a little rocky, but there's a payoff:

No theory is truly falsifiable or rationally justified, because there is no ultimate commonly agreed standard of rationality or set of premises to adjudicate on whether a theory has been falsified. This would let theology off the hook, had Bartley not gone on to formulate his own nonjustificational approach, dubbed “pancritical rationalism.” The pancritical rationalist refuses to commit to any position and holds everything open to criticism—not just any theory that he adopts, but also the criteria for rationality and the premises from which he starts.
 
I believe that Bartley goes rather too far. Yes, our beliefs, including our most cherished theological beliefs, should be open to criticism, but that ought not to preclude our being committed to them—otherwise, intellectual and moral paralysis set in. Commitment ought not to constitute a retreat so much as a launching pad for further inquiry. As Michael Polanyi puts it in Personal Knowledge, “The principal purpose of this book is to achieve a frame of mind in which I may hold firmly to what I believe to be true, even though I know that it may conceivably be false.”

So, there you go. Maybe "agnostic" is a better term. I've read books about Polanyi, not that I could understand a word of them. Sounds like this quote is from a preface anyway. I probably couldn't get past the roman numerals.

Ain't It the Truth

Muphry's Law

Deleted post

Yes, a post used to be here. Why did I delete it? Purely mercenary reasons. No offense intended to Eggy, Aunty, or Moi for deleting your most welcome comments.

Ready to Punch an Author in the Face

And I can't say it's the first time.

I'm indexing yet another rehash of a dissertation. I'm not complaining. Work is work. And theological dissertations aren't going away anytime soon.

This author has taken to putting not just [sic], but [sic!] in the middle of extracts for relatively meaningless items . . . the occasional subject/verb disagreement (easy enough to silently fix) or use of masculine pronouns when a gender-neutral approach may have been preferred. The one that sent me over the edge was a [sic!] for misuse of "who" instead of "whom."

The overall effect is one of Gotcha! But who really cares? The author is just making himself look very petty.

There are better ways to handle this. First, the author could put a simple note in the preface: "Extracts include gender-exclusive language as they appeared in the original." Simple enough, no overt value judgment. Some of the works cited are old enough that such use of male pronouns was standard practice.

The other thing is that in these days of greater attention being paid to such matters, some authors or publishers mandate alternating gender pronouns. In the case of anecdotal material, we don't know if perhaps the work cited had a female pronoun on the previous page. Quite possibly, this author is taking material out of context and making a big deal out of nothing.

What really grinds my guts is that this work is itself full of typos. Misspellings, authors' names treated inconsistently, verb tenses wrong, works in the footnotes that don't appear in the bibliography. It's a wreck. We're dealing with a serious glass-houses issue.

For some publishers, I'd note the more egregious problems. And I like working with this publisher. Friendly, pays on time, grants a little extra time if I need it, actually sent me a gift card to a bookstore a few Christmases ago. I've told the managing editor any number of times that the publisher's books would really benefit from professional proofreading. I think this publisher shares the expenses of publication with the author, though, and proofreading payments would mostly fall to the author. As it's been explained to me, folks who are reprinting their dissertations don't have a lot of extra money lying around.

Understood. But unless the thing goes into reprints (unlikely if you saw this title), the author has one chance to make that book as good as it can be. And I guarantee, if this author's experience is anything like most other authors' and editors' experience (present company included), as soon as the damn thing shows up on his doorstep, he's going to open to a page with a glaring error. But in this case it'll be that one, and another one, and another one, and another one.

Five years from now, is the author going to wish he scrounged up an extra $650 to have this pretty significant tome proofread, so it wouldn't embarrass him every time someone cracked open the cover?

Thirty-five years later, am I still regretting spending $75 of birthday money on albums instead of an autographed copy of Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass that I saw in an Ann Street bookstore on the way to J&R Music World, when J&R was just a hole in the ground in the shadow of the World Trade Center, selling records for $3.99 a pop?

 

Philip Wylie, in Finnley Wren, wrote, "Why should I be sobered by anything akin to regret?"

Don't get me started.

PS: Some folks might think I'm the one being petty here. "If you see mistakes in a book you're indexing, shouldn't you point them out to the publisher?" Yes and no. I often do this, when the mistakes are occasional. When the mistakes are rampant, when it appears that the author himself or herself didn't care to put enough effort into the work, I'm less likely to do so.

"But if you were a doctor and you noticed something wrong with one of your patients, but that wasn't what brought the patient in to see you, wouldn't you point it out or treat it?"

Well, if I was a doctor, I'd be dealing with life-and-death situations, and that's a whole 'nother story. How about this:

I'm working at a car wash (much more appropriate to my level of expertise). You come in and tell me you want the outside of your car washed, and you want it back in an hour. I do a fine job of washing your car, and I notice that the inside looks like hell. Do I do the inside, knowing that (a) stopping to do so will make me miss your deadline and (b) I won't get paid for it? Or do I tell you that, for an extra fee, I can also take care of your interior?

Surprised? Insulted?

Just received an email from a client that decided to go with a different type of page numbering system. Instead of numbering each book sequentially from 1 to the end, the publisher has decided to number within each chapter. Thus, 1.1-end, 2.1-end. Kind of a tail-wagging-the-dog issue here, but the publisher has a reason for doing so.

Email reads:

Hi Bob,

I know we ran the idea of changing the page numbering system by you, and we wanted to let you know we have decided to use the approach described in the e-mail below. A week or so ago Jane asked me to ask you if your indexing/copyediting software could handle this type of numbering system, but we put contacting you about this on hold until the final decision was made to change the page numbering system. Now that the decision has been made, can your indexing/copyediting software handle this?

Let us know.

Thanks!

Longtime readers know where this one is going. Cue the snarky email response in 3, 2, 1:

Not sure what you mean by "software."

If you ever run into an indexer who touts his or her software, I'd run in the other direction.

And I guess I use the same copyediting software that your authors use writing software. Your authors let all the software do the mental work of writing and researching and editing and keeping review panels happy, right?

:-)

bl 

Haiku Monday: The Long and Short of It

Good Tuesday or later, folks.

We ended up with a nice bit of variety, although it was interesting how many haiku focused on food and beverage. Maybe that’s just a sign of where everyone’s head is. When I first thought of the theme, the denotation of the word that intrigued me was selling short -- profiting through loss, betting on a move to the downside. If I had to offer up a haiku this week, I’d have tried to do something with that. But as the definitions showed, many possibilities were available, and judging from the quality of the entries, I’m glad I was on the sidelines this week.

I do intend to keep this short, by the way. Every entry was quality. As I saw them come in, I thought, There’s a winner, there’s a winner. But when one in particular showed up, I knew where the blue ribbon was going, and subsequent entries didn’t move me off that dime.

The entries:

Karl 1: Gets a prize for working “glyexab” into the verse. There’s poetry in word verification.

Fishy 1–3: “Short bus” is always a metaphor and a euphemism that’s well worth mining. The “short ribs” entry made me wish I was invited to the party.

Karl 2: The long and short of the haiku process made me want to dance the hokey-pokey. Liked the rhythm.

Moi: Glad you found your knight in shining armor. I wish I’d have been there when you were thirteen. Alas, I was ensconced in a boys’ school, years away from thinking any female would ever even cough in my direction. (I’m still amazed when they do.) Eh, I’d have ended up on the trash heap, too. Moi at thirteen. Any of us at thirteen. The mind reels.

Chickory: In full disclosure and true to my profession, I should have given credit where it’s due and noted that the definitions were from Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (11th edition). There, that feels better. Somewhere back in my blog archives, I have an entry about whether “50 Cent” in an index should be alphabetized under “Fifty” or “Fiddy.” I get, obviously, the Randy Nouvel Homme reference, and I guess Gaga is “born this way.” I don’t know where the Fiddy comes in. When I saw “go, go, go shorty,” I thought a little further back -- to Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. Glad you’re over the plague. We need you plugging away in the many art realms.

Troll 1: Thanks for giving me a chance to ask my son to translate. I think it sounds better in the original.

Kym 1: Being short might be hard, but I think your stature will result in a longer life. I have always thought that life expectancy was related more to height than gender. Women are shorter; live longer. To wit, Muggsy Bogues has already outlasted Manute Bol. The human body’s not designed for excessive height. There’s a reason you hear “little old man,” and you don’t see a lot of six-foot-three nonagenarians stumbling around.

Troll 2: Thanks again for another gift: a visit to the Thomas Hobbes Liquor Emporium. Only at Haiku Monday.

Kym 2: Nice play on “short.” And I am a Waffle House devotee. Lived for 10 years in Avondale Estates, GA, home of the first and the 1,000th WH. From spending literally hundreds (it may even be thousands) of hours patronizing this fine institution, I can attest that the lives of most of the cooks seem scattered, smothered, and covered indeed. And I have the greatest of admiration for those folks. It takes an amazing mind to do that job correctly -- one that I do not possess.

Foam: Good thing about pints and pint-sized folks. If there’s too many of the former, the descent is much quicker, and likely not as painful.

Fleur: We need to get you out more. Or less. We could rename this one “Fleur and the Angry Inch.” How did you ascertain his exact height? Were you toting your Mickey Rooney cardboard cutout for comparison?

Fishy 4: Nice job on the timely and topical. Blago is that dumb. And corrupt. And arrogant.

Uncle 1–2: In my part of the world, two types of wimmen wear short shorts: Girls who are too young for me to be looking at, and women who damn near take up an aisle by themselves at the Walmart. Both are unfortunate in their own way.

Aunty 1–3: I don’t think I set up any rules this time around, nor did I dangle a prize, now that I think of it. Thanks for getting these in. All are great. Shameless pandering is a time-tested way to a man’s heart (see also Fishy 2, “Short ribs”). I love “six short pants and a PUSH!” And between “myopia” this week and “presbyopia” last week, I’m having a hard time seeing straight. All most clever.

And now, having made a short story long, I’ll bring this review up short with a haiku summation:

Wide-ranging short verse.

To Kymical Reactions

Go this week’s honors . . .

for the Waffle House homage.

As I said, no prize forthcoming from here. You don’t need one. As the father of two sons whom I adore, I can say -- as you already know -- your gift awaits you. Sounds like you’re already enjoying it.

Had a great time, folks. Thanks to Troll et al. for entrusting me with this institution for a week. Back to meet a deadline on which I’ve left myself woefully short on time.

czar

Haiku Monday: Short

Take it any way you want.

Haiku on "short" in 5-7-5 format.

Post in comments field below.

Main Entry: short
Pronunciation:*sh*rt
Function:adjective
Etymology:Middle English, from Old English sceort; akin to Old High German scurz short, Old Norse skortr lack
Date:before 12th century

1 a : having little length  b : not tall or high  : LOW
2 a : not extended in time  : BRIEF  *a short vacation*  b : not retentive  *a short memory*  c : EXPEDITIOUS, QUICK  *made short work of the problem*  d : seeming to pass quickly  *made great progress in just a few short years*
3 a of a speech sound   : having a relatively short duration  b : being the member of a pair of similarly spelled vowel or vowel-containing sounds that is descended from a vowel that was short in duration but is no longer so and that does not necessarily have duration as its chief distinguishing feature  *short i in sin*  c of a syllable in prosody    (1) : of relatively brief duration  (2) : UNSTRESSED
4 : limited in distance  *a short trip*
5 a : not coming up to a measure or requirement  : INSUFFICIENT  *in short supply*  b : not reaching far enough  *the throw to first was short*  c : enduring privation  d : insufficiently supplied  *short of cash*  *short on brains*
6 a : ABRUPT, CURT  *I'm sorry I was short with you*  b : quickly provoked  *a short temper*
7 : CHOPPY 2
8 : payable at an early date  *a short loan*
9 a : containing or cooked with shortening;  also   : FLAKY  *short pastry*  b of metal   : brittle under certain conditions
10 a : not lengthy or drawn out  *a short speech*  b : made briefer  : ABBREVIATED
11 a : not having goods or property that one has sold in anticipation of a fall in prices  b : consisting of, relating to, or engaging in the sale of securities or commodities that the seller does not possess or has not contracted for at the time of the sale  *short sale*  *a short seller*
12 : near the end of a tour of duty
  –short£ish \*sh*r-tish\  adjective 
  –short£ness \*sh*rt-n*s\  noun 
  –in short order : with dispatch  : QUICKLY

***

Main Entry: short
Function:noun
Date:circa 1586

1 : the sum and substance  : UPSHOT
2 a : a short syllable  b : a short sound or signal
3 plural    a : a by-product of wheat milling that includes the germ, fine bran, and some flour  b : refuse, clippings, or trimmings discarded in various manufacturing processes
4 a : knee-length or less than knee-length trousers —  usually used in plural  b plural   : short drawers  c : a size in clothing for short men
5 a : one who operates on the short side of the market  b plural   : short-term bonds
6 plural   : DEFICIENCIES
7 : SHORT CIRCUIT
8 : SHORTSTOP
9 a : SHORT SUBJECT  b : a brief story or article (as in a newspaper)
  –for short : as an abbreviation  *named Katherine or Kate for short*
  –in short : by way of summary  : BRIEFLY

***

Main Entry: short
Function:transitive verb
Date:1904

1 : SHORT-CIRCUIT
2 : SHORTCHANGE, CHEAT
3 : to sell (a security) short in expectation of a fall in prices

Need Your Wisdom, Blog Homies: And/Or

An editor I work with once made a pretty solid argument that, in most cases, the "and/or" construction is clunky, useless, and repetitive. Most of the time, "or" implies "and," and that "and/or" should generally not appear.

I can never remember his argument as well as he stated it, but I'd like to hear the opinions of people I trust.

What do you think? Get rid of "and/or"? Why? Or why not?

Form and Formlessness

Revelation time.

Most poetry I am exposed to these days does nothing for me, not that I come across much of it. Generally it’s what appears in the New Yorker, or what Garrison Keillor reads in his daily poetry minutes on NPR—although now that I think of it, I think the local NPR affiliate has done away with Keillor’s segment.

New Yorker’s poetry often leaves me with two takeaway notions.

1. If I submitted this poem instead of the person whose name I recognize at the end of the verse, it would have gone straight into the trash.

2. This poem is nothing but middling prose with line breaks.

But I came across a New Yorker poem a few weeks back titled “Facebook Sonnet.” I loved it. I’m sure I’m violating eight or seven commandments right now—especially for someone in the publishing industry—but here it is:

Welcome to the endless high-school

Reunion. Welcome to past friends

And lovers, however kind or cruel.

Let’s undervalue and unmend

The present. Why can’t we pretend

Every stage of life is the same?

Let’s exhume, resume and extend

Childhood. Let’s all play the games

That occupy the young. Let fame

And shame intertwine. Let one’s search

For God become public domain.

Let church.com become our church.

Let’s sign up, sign in, and confess
Here at the altar of loneliness.

—Sherman Alexie

And it struck me: I like structure. Free verse, not so much. And that explains my enjoyment, too, of Haiku Monday. If it were Free Verse Friday, I’m not sure what would be worse: writing entries or reading those from other people.

So, I prefer form. Poetry within certain parameters, which offers a certain obvious challenge.

Then, revelation two: Why people don’t like certain types of jazz.

Just guessing, but maybe it's the seeming lack of structure. My wife, for example, can listen to Kenny Burrell or Bill Evans or Jimmy Smith or Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue, but Coltrane’s A Love Supreme? Nope. “My Favorite Things”? Long enough while he’s holding the melody, but not past it. Ornette Coleman? I wouldn’t even try.

Ornette Coleman at Bonnaroo 2007 (i was there)

I was talking to Tere about this and she said, “But I like abstract art—visual art.”

I responded, “Yeah, but there’s an end to it. You don’t have to go beyond the canvas. You know where it begins and ends. Unlike a Coltrane song, which you never know how long it’s going to go on, or when it will return to the theme. There’s an uncertainty there that leaves you uncomfortable.”

Well, to be fair, I would admit to some share of shrieking and bleating in Coltrane and Coleman that aren't for everyone . . . not that there's anything wrong with that.

For me, I don’t mind the aural discomfort. But the structureless void, and occasional blathering, of much free verse? Prose and hard returns. Blah.

So, that’s my one thought for 2011.

Response?

———

PS: I am not on Facebook. 
PPS: Haiku Monday at Chez Fleur. The theme is memory.

Shameless Plug for a Great Small Press

Vineyard Stories is a wonderful press that produces beautifully written and often visually stunning books on a variety of topics. While much of the subject matter seems at first glance like local interest, the books' links to Martha's Vineyard belie their universal appeal. Shipbuilding, local farming, fishing, memoirs, politics/culture, the passage of time, and more -- Vineyard Stories offers an excellent product. And unlike many of the more academic books I work on, you could proudly give these books as gifts and actually feel comfortable showing up to those people's houses at a later date.

I'm proud of my association with Jan Pogue and Vineyard Stories. Check 'em out.

http://vineyardstories.com/index2.php

Perhaps It's Bad Blogging Form

But through feedjit I see that I have what I presume is one person who regularly checks in from the Russian Federation. I'd love to know who you are and what brought you here and what brings you back. If you don't feel comfortable leaving a comment -- even anonymously -- feel free to email me at the address in the righthand column.

But most important, the last thing I want to do is scare you away. I know that I've stopped patronizing restaurants in the past as soon as I was pegged as a regular and my orders became predictable. Some people strive for such recognition. I'd often rather just be one of the crowd. Don't point out that you know I'm there.

And I think I've mentioned it in the past. I am of half-Russian heritage. Even linked with a somewhat notorious figure in Russian history. For all I know, it's a long-lost cousin keeping tabs on me.

So . . . my Russian friend, or my expat buddy. What's up?