Men Go to Great Lengths to Woo Reclusive Poetess

SOMEWHERE NEAR KNOB NOSTER, Mo.  Etaoin Shrdlu, a Professor at the University of Missouri-Chillicothe, is not much of a woodsman, but he’s carrying a heavy load of chiggers and cockleburrs today as he hacks his way through the underbrush here in search of an elusive quarry; poetess Sara Thaler, a misanthropic versifier who attracts men by repelling them.

Knob Noster, Mo.  Even yettis find it a little out of the way.

“She told me she wouldn’t see me unless I moved very far away,” he says as he looks down at a Google Earth image that he believes includes the location of Thaler’s lean-to shanty.  “I’m here to tell her that I’ve set up permanent residence in Madagascar.”

Marvell:  Curls by Lilt Home Permanent.

Shrdlu first became smitten with Thaler when he read the poem for which she won the 2006 Coy Mistress Award, given annually by the Andrew Marvell Society to the female poet who writes the most off-putting verse in the manner of the group’s namesake.   Thaler took poetry industry analysts by surprise, winning the competition with a single couplet and upsetting several gloomy competing poetesses who had written longer works.

 

“I can’t believe I didn’t win!”

Thaler’s entry reads in its entirety as follows:

The grave’s a fine and private place,

Now if you please, get out of my face.

 

George Ade: Yes, you’ve never heard of him.

Shrdlu is a noted specialist in the Midwestern Smart-Aleck School of Literature and writes frequently on neglected masters of the genre including George Ade and Ring Lardner.  He knows he is not alone in competing for Thaler’s affections, as the woods here are thick with the corpses of assistant professors who died plighting their troths, or in some cases trothing their plights.  “I thought moving to Madagascar would give me the inside track,” Shrdlu says ruefully.  “Then she sent me a text message saying there was an opening on the International Space Station.”

“Incoming assistant professor, tweed jacket with elbow patches!”

Romantic poetry often focuses on the unattainable as an object of desire, giving male poets excuses to write sonnets for women they cannot hope to win.  “There’s an old country saying, ‘Fox don’t chase a rabbit after he’s caught it,’” Shrdlu says.  “That’s why foxes don’t write poems about rabbits.”

Ted Hughes, Sylvia Plath:  “Uh, actually I think it’s your turn to have a baby.”

Thaler denied that she is a member of the man-hating school of female poets whose most noteworthy member is Sylvia Plath.  “‘Man-hater’ is such a harsh term,” she says.  “I really like it.”

Police Nab Novelist in Fake Death Scam

WORCESTER, Mass.  Police in this gritty industrial city are used to collaring drug dealers, car thieves and pimps, so they can be excused for thinking the arrest they made last night of Rudolph St. Cyr, a novelist, was “a day at the beach,” as Police Sergeant Francis X. Early put it.

Zipper Hospital Stadium, Home of the Worcester Quahogs

“He tried to put up a fight, but he’s pretty scrawny,” said Early.  “I guess you get that way from sitting around tapping on a computer keyboard all day.”

St. Cyr will be arraigned Friday morning on charges that he faked his own death in order to increase sales of “Under the Aspidistras”, his self-published novel modeled on F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “This Side of Paradise”, “Dugout Jinx”, a boys’ baseball novel by Clair Bee, and “The Moosewood Farm Natural Foods Cookbook.”

“You see an uptick in writers’ sales after they die,” said Worcester County forensic librarian Newell Webb.  “I think this kid saw what happened to Vonnegut and Updike and figured it was the only he’d ever make back his investment.”

Berlutti-Pavano:  “You’re gonna pay for this, you ironic, self-regarding mook!”

Eve-Marie Berlutti-Pavano, St. Cyr’s double-hyphened court-appointed attorney, said St. Cyr would raise the defense of diminished capacity.  “Mr. St. Cyr is himself a fictional character in the forthcoming novel ‘CannaCorn’ by you, you mook,” she said, poking this reporter in the chest.  “When it’s published by Joshua Tree Publishing this year, the whole story will come out, and it won’t be pretty.”

St. Cyr will not be accused of insurance fraud, as is typically the case when an individual fakes his or her own death.  “This kid didn’t have no life insurance,” said Early.  “He had the literary afflatus bad, and that ain’t good.”

 

“Let me get this straight–you’d kill yourself to get people to buy your book?”

When apprised of St. Cyr’s fictional status, Early conceded that he might have to refile charges under crime fiction, but that he would still prosecute the case aggressively. ”What kind of sick individual would cause a fictional character to fake his own death to sell books?” he said, shaking his head in disgust.  “I think any decent member of society would recoil in horror at such a heinous act, and yes I know what that big word means.”

“In Love With Lichens” Helps Young Girls Get Over Stupid Boys

CONCORD, Mass.  Ethel Farley has been a teacher in the elementary schools here for over two decades, long enough to be able to spot a young girl with a broken heart halfway across a crowded lunch room.  “They get a valentine from a boy and they read too much into it,” she says as she comforts Tracy Nubin, an 11-year-old who’s just been given the cold shoulder by Kenny Reynolds, a hyperactive boy in her fifth grade class.

Fun with lichens!

In the spring, young boys’ fancy turns to things other than girls, Farley has discovered, particulary once spring training begins for the Red Sox.  “Once the boys start thinking about baseball,” she says, “all the ‘Be Mines’ and ‘I Go 4 U’s’ are forgotten, leaving a trail of shattered dreams in their wake.”

“I said I liked you?  What was I thinking?”

So Farley has devised a special spring program to help girls get over crushes gone bad–”In Love With Lichens!”–which takes their minds off boys by substituting thoughts of the fascinating hybrid organisms.

“Boys are stupid doody-heads!”

Lichens are a composite of a fungus with a photosynthetic partner, usually either a green alga or cyanobacterium.  “Boys have fungus between their toes,” explains Diane Forskett, “but they don’t have green alga, although their teeth look that way sometimes.”

“Lichens don’t need boys–and neither do we!”

Many lichens (pronounced “LI-kens”) reproduce asexually, another feature that Farley says makes them an appropriate object of study for the girls, as well as a role model for them in later life.  “A lichen needs a lover,” she notes, “like a fish needs a thesaurus.”

Biz One-Upsmanship

Stephen Potter, a British humorist who has undeservedly faded into obscurity, is the father of the concept of “one-upsmanship”, a strategem for besting an opponent–somewhat unfairly–without actually cheating. 

One accomplishes this end by throwing an opponent off his game without violating any rule.  Thus, for example, when playing pool, the accomplished one-upsman doesn’t cough or stand in the field of vision of an opponent who is lining up a shot, but corrects others in the room for talking too loud or disturbing the shooter by moving about.

“Stop crumpling the carbon paper!”

In these perilous times, when a layoff could strike you just as easily as the fellow in the next cubicle, it is important that you develop and maintain your office one-upsmanship skills if you are to survive in the dog-eat-dog, piranha-filled tank that is today’s office environment and pet store.  After all, if one of you is going to end up sleeping in bus stations and diving into dumpsters for leftover moo goo gai pan, it might as well be him.

“Nobody told you about your going-away party?  Oh–my bad!”

Here are some practical applications of one-upsmanship gathered over my white-collar career that spans 29 years, 6 months and 17 days, not that I’m counting or anything.

The Memo-to-File Guy

The Toxic Memo to the File.  This trick was pulled on me by a fellow associate in the 1980’s, a young man with two middle names–James A. K. Runnerson or something similar–that created a British effect that went well with his horn-rimmed glasses and bow tie.

“Say,” he’d say as he sauntered into your office.  “Do you remember the Rule in Dumpor’s Case from law school?”

“Let me see,” you’d say.  “Was that in Contracts?”

“No, no–you’re thinking of Twyne’s Case.  Dumpor’s Case had something to do with pretermitted heirs, or estates in tail, or accretion of tidal lands.”

“Sounds vaguely familiar, but I can’t quite put my finger on it.”

Vaguely disturbing picture of backyard weightlifters.

“Right, right,” he’d say thoughtfully, rubbing his chin.  “Just thought you might know.  Thanks.”

Two years later, after the guy left the firm and I was assigned to one of his cases, I was flipping through the file and came across the following:

TO:  File

FROM:  James A. K. Runnerson

RE:  Rule in Dumpor’s Case

Spoke to Chapman today regarding the Rule in Dumpor’s Case, a critical principle in the law governing the assignability of real estate leases.  He indicated that he knew nothing about it.

The Worrisome Good Word.  Timing is critical for the successful use of this technique.  You should ideally be headed out the door on your way to vacation, so that further conversation is cut off and your competitor is left to stew in his own foul juices while you’re away.  You stop in to the office, your bags packed, to give final instructions to your secretary and on your way out, make a special point of saying farewell to your colleague.  “Hey,” you whisper confidentially as you’re about to walk away, “I don’t care what the Board of Directors says–I think you’re doing okay.  See ya!”

The temptation, since you’re headed off for fun in the sun, is to become too enthusiastic and say “you’re doing great,” but this approach isn’t fair; by over-praising, you give someone a false sense of security that may cause them to pass up the buyout offer that is their last, best hope of avoiding a life on the streets.

Sparsely-attended business ethics symposium.

Ethical Considerations.  Given the heightened sensitivity to schemes to defraud widows and orphans out of their life savings, it is essential that businesses operate in a transparent and ethical manner in all aspects of their operations.  Say you and another Assistant Vice President are competing for the promotion to a single Second Vice President slot.  You drop down to her office and, after chatting about kids and the weather, she needs to take a call.  You excuse yourself and, just as you close her door, say in a stage whisper that can be heard all the way down to Human Resources, “WE COULD DO THAT, SHARLENE, BUT IT WOULDN’T BE ETHICAL.”

“Honey, somebody at your office sent this to me.  Do you like it?”

The Nuclear Option.  If all else fails and you see your competitor “Jim” about to snag a big raise for closing the Farquahr Fastener deal, drop by your local Victoria’s Secret outlet for final mark-downs on intimate apparel.  Pick out something slinky and send it to the boss’s wife with a card saying “I’ll never forget our ’scavenger hunt’ together at last summer’s company picnic.–Jim.”

And for Jim?  Well, change-of-address cards from the US Postal Service make a great going-away gift!

Foundations of Western Logic

Aristotle

Logic, as any clear-thinking person will tell you, is essential to clear thinking.  With the use of logic, you can get to the bottom of just about any thorny problem that may present itself to you in the course of a day, or until 5:00 p.m. when logic goes off its shift and says hello to illogic, who arrives on the scene with a fifth of gin, tonic water and a can of honey-roasted peanuts.

            How do you know when you’re being logical?  Simple.  You begin to speak in “syllogisms”, or arguments involving a major premise, a minor premise, and a conclusion which follows ineluctably from them.  Here’s an example:

            1.         All men are mortal.

            2.         Socrates is a man.

            3.         Pick up dry cleaning and cat litter.

 

            No, wait.  That’s my “to-do” list.  Let me try again.

            1.         All men are mortal.

            2.         Socrates is a man.

            3.         Socrates is cat litter.

             That’s better.

Socrates

            The principal brick in the foundation of Western logic is the “Principle of Contradiction.”  The way it works is that you can’t say “A is B” and “A is not B” at the same time-not even if you’re a ventriloquist.  You can only say one thing at a time.

            The main function of the Principle of Contradiction is to make women cry.  If, in the heat of an argument, you say to a woman “You ask me to pick a restaurant, but if I do, you tell me the one I pick is out of the question. You’re always contradicting yourself!”

           There follows an emotional scene in which the woman begins to sob, then tells the man he’s a big, stupid logical bully.  The man says he’s sorry, abandons logic and agrees to go to the woman’s sentimental favorite.  Which is where they were going to end up anyway.

Artaud

          With the advent of “modernism” came a retreat from the realm of logic in favor of the illogical.  The watershed point at which human thought ended its long, arduous climb into the sunlight atop the mountain of pure reason and began its slow descent into the swamp of unreason, can be traced to a night on which Antonin Artaud, an important figure in the Theatre of the Absurd, slapped a fifty-franc piece down on the bar of Les Deux Maggots and jammed his beret down on his head.

            “You leaving?” Tristin Tzara asked.

            “Yeah, I’ve had enough.  My parrot is your sister’s armpit, though.”
            Once you understand syllogisms, you begin to see them everywhere.  After a while, it will seem like you can’t throw a brick without hitting one.

            Take, for example, the term “bohemian”.  Did you know it is based on a syllogism whose major and minor premises are commonly-held beliefs, as follows:

            1.         All artists are gypsies.

            2.         All gypsies are from Bohemia.

            3.         All artists are Socrates.

            You can’t argue with logic like that.

Lament for Fluorescent Cats

 

South Korean scientists have produced cats that glow in the dark.

                                                                                                -MSNBC.com

 

You may think all’s copacetic

As the pet scene you survey

I have news that’s quite pathetic–

Glowing cats are on their way.

 

Cats are currently quite sneaky

When they leap on sleepers’ chests.

Phosphorescence’d make them freaky

Sometimes change ain’t for the best.

 

 

Imagine seeing in the dark gloom

Creeping cats that glow at night.

Keep one handy in the bathroom–

No more fumbling for the light!

 

Cats are haughty balls of fun,

It’s their world we’re livin’ in-

If I see a fiery cloned one

You can call my next of kin.

The Mata Hari of the Faculty Lounge

 

            Federal agents are warning leaders at top universities to be on the lookout for foreign spies or potential terrorists trying to steal their research.  The Boston Globe

            I was sitting in my office, trying to concentrate on raw data for a monograph I was writing on Wallace Stevens.  It seemed to me I had found a link between his use of alliteration–say, “Gloomy grammarians in golden gowns”–and the surety bonds issued by his day job employers-Hartford Accident, American Bonding, Equitable Surety.  “Wink most when widows wince”, for example, was written the day after he settled a major claim by the Wainwright Wrecking Company for pennies on the dollar.  Curious, I thought, and perhaps the sort of apercu that would finally bring me tenure!

Wallace Stevens

            A knock-dammit, this always happens.  Probably some kid complaining about his score on the mid-term.  I steeled myself for the usual irruption.  I know that’s how you feel about the poem, but what’s important is what it means-if anything.

            I opened my door, prepared to point to my office hours posted there-Tuesdays and Thursdays, 10 to 11 during months with “r’s”,  third Wednesdays during the summer except August, when I’m available only by mail to a P.O. Box in Truro, Mass.

            “What?” I barked with annoyance, as my eyes drifted downwards to-Rasha Wabe, a transfer student from Lebanese International U.  She had deep brown eyes like dates but with irises, and a figure I couldn’t figure out because she dressed so modestly.

Kowa-bunga!

            “Ms. Wabe–I really can’t see you now.”

            “Oh, but you must!  I simply do not understand this Wallace Stevens man–he is driving me to tears.”

            I looked up and down the hall.  I didn’t need a crying female student on my curriculum vitae. 

            “All right-come in.”  I motioned her inside and she took a seat in the chair beside my desk where students sat if they ever caught up with me.

            I offered her a cup of chamomile tea and she calmed down a bit.

            “Now, what is your problem with Stevens?” I asked skeptically.  I figured she was just looking for an extension on her term paper.

            “‘Chieftan Iffucan of Azcan in caftan of tan with henna hackles, halt!’  What on earth can that mean?”

Stevens:  “My job is boring–I think I’ll write some incomprehensible poetry to break the tedium.”

            “It may not ‘mean’ anything,” I said cooly.  “On the other hand, maybe it does.”

            “Well, that is no answer when one has to write a twenty-page paper!”

            So it was the term paper.

            “There is much that can be said–and not said–about that line,” I mused cryptically as I consulted my bibliography; Bantams in Pine-Woods, 1923, during Stevens’ Hartford Accident years.

            “But what can I say-I don’t understand it.”

            I flipped through the defendant table of the docket of the Hartford County Superior Court for that year.  AAA Construction Co., Abacus Heating & Cooling.  Az-Can Aluminum Co.

            “Aha!” I exclaimed.

            “What?”

            “I think I’ve found something.”

            She stood up and came around behind my chair.

            “What is this?”

            “It’s a key to understanding the nonsense in Stevens.”

            “But if you make sense of it, it isn’t nonsense any more–is it?”

            She had a point, although by the Honor Code of the American Association of University Professors, I wasn’t allowed to admit it.

            “Sort of–but it’s still poetry.”

            I turned around as I said this and saw that she had discarded the burqa and was now wearing the minimalist rags in which raqs sharqi–or, to lapse into Orientalisms, the Dance of the Seven Veils, the Hoochy-Koochy–is performed.

            “Ms. Wabe,” I said with more than my usual reserve.  “This is a breach, real or imminent–”

            “‘Imminent’-two i’s-or ‘immanent’-one i one a?”

            “Two i’s-of our Code of Student-Professor Relations.”

            “What did Yeats say?  You can’t tell the dancer from the dance?” she said with a flirtatious air.

Yeats:  “I can’t tell the dancer from the dance, so go ahead and shake that thang!”

            “I don’t think that will help me when your parents get wind of this.”

            “It is understood that I may indulge in petty license during my undergraduate years here in The Great Satan-especially if it helps me bump up my G.P.A.”

             She was cool.  Probably had an arranged marriage set up for her back home. Getting out of this mess would require all the deconstructionist skills I had learned at the State University of New York-Plattsburgh Avant-Garde Summer Refresher Course.

            “Why don’t you save your routine for multi-cultural night at the Student Union?”

            “No–the raqs sharqi is performed privately, before one’s beloved.”

            Ai-yi-yi.  I glanced down at my grade-book.  Wabe, Rasha.  3.32.  All this to move from a B to a B+?  The belly dance would just be the camel’s nose under the graduation day tent.

            “Listen, Rasha,” I said.
            “Yes?”

            “I’ve enjoyed your little dance.  Suppose I let you in on a little secret, so we don’t end up trading favors of a more illicit sort?”

            “That would be most satisfactory, O infidel professor.”

            “Take a look at this,” I said, as I pointed to two lines in “Nomad Exquisite”:

            So, in me, come flinging

            Forms, flames, and the flakes of flames.

            “I’m flummoxed by it,” she said.

             “Published in 1923.  Now look at this list of counsel who opposed Stevens when he appeared in court for the Hartford Accident and Indemnity Company from 1920 through 1922.”  I let my finger slide down the roster of names until it hit the f’s.

            “Frank A. Filbert, Esq., Filbert, Frost & Farner,” she read.

            “Are you starting to see a pattern?” I asked.

            “Hmm.  What kind of offices did the ‘F’ boys’ have?” she asked cryptically.

            “Silent, upon a peak in Darien.”

            “This is most interesting,” she said.  “I think I’ll return to my carrel and get to work.  Thank you ever so much for the tip.”  From terpsichorean temptress to sorority sweetheart, just like that.

            She started to re-robe when the door flew open.

            “Homeland Security,” yelled a young man in a police-blue jumpsuit, a sidekick standing behind him.  “Drop the rhyming dictionary and nobody gets hurt.”

            “Aren’t you supposed to read us our rights before you yell at us?” I complained.

            “Not if you haven’t signed the Geneva Convention.”

            “I went to the Modern Language Association’s 123^rd convention in Chicago last December.”

            “Plenary session, forum or workshop?”

            “Special session.  ‘Marianne Moore, Poetess of the Ford:  How the Edsel Disaster Could Have Been Avoided by Naming It ‘Utopian Turtletop’.”

Moore and Edsel:  “It looks like an Oldsmobile that sucked a lemon.”

            “Utopian Turtletop?”

            “Moore’s suggestion.”

            “Okay.  What about her?”  He nodded at Rasha.  She was fully-clothed by now, which meant that only her big brown eyes were visible through a slit in her burqa.

            “Her?  She’s a student here.”

            “That’s what they all say.  Lemme see something she’s written.”

Rasha complied, handing over her notes and outline for the paper on Stevens.

“What is this,” the anti-terror gendarme demanded.  “‘Chieftain Iffucan of Azcan in caftan’- it doesn’t make any sense.”

           “I can explain,” I began.

           “Don’t bother.  I know undergraduate gibberish when I see it,” he said as he and his partner turned to go.  “What’s worse,” he said over his shoulder, “You’ll probably give her a A for it.”

Ill-Timed Remark Puts Proctologists on Boston’s Bad Side

BOSTON.  This city has four large-scale convention halls and is home to a number of world-class teaching hospitals, so it is no surprise that Boston and Cambridge, its neighbor across the Charles River, are increasingly the top choice of medical associations for conferences and meetings.

 

Boston Convention and Exhibition Center

“We had the neurologists in last week and this week it’s the orthodontists,” says Convention Bureau spokesperson Karen Twining.  “It has a real multiplier effect for our economy, so they’re all welcome.  Well, most of them,” she corrects herself.

The one exception?  “The proctologists,” says cabdriver Tim McDermott, who makes his living shuttling physicians from Logan Airport to meetings and exhibit halls around town.  “If they never come back it’ll be too soon.”

McDermott:  “The proctologists?  They can go screw.”

The cause of the friction between the American Proctology Association and Beantown residents is an idle comment made by the group’s then-president, Dr. Dennis Goodrich, back in 2006.  A delegation of city and state officials attended the opening session of the proctologists’ annual meeting in a gesture of gratitude that the group had chosen Boston’s struggling Convention and Exhibition Center over Chicago and New Orleans, and presented Goodrich with a key to the city.

“What?  Was it something I said?”

After accepting the symbol of welcome, Goodrich thanked the local dignitaries and began his opening address.  ”Some people say Bostonians are stand-offish,” he said.  “I look out at this city–and see 600,000 assholes.”

While the proctologists themselves stood and applauded what they understood to be an expression of gratitude, the local dignitaries walked out, hearing an echo of the long-standing charge that Bostonians are at best unfriendly and at worst downright rude to out-of-towners.

Durgin Park Waitress:  “That guy over there wants more coffee.  I’m going to ignore him.”

“I don’t know what that guy was thinking,” said City Councillor Peggy Hanlon at the time.  “Bostonians are known around the world for our friendly, open, attitude,” she asserted, “except for, in alphabetical order, businessmen, cabbies, Durgin Park waitresses, graduate students, Haymarket fruit vendors . . .”  This reporter, racing to record her remarks, missed the better part of her litany while fumbling to change tapes in his cassette recorder, before she concluded with “Yankee women and yuppies.”

“Okay, I’m leaving–sheesh!”

The proctologists say it’s all a misunderstanding, and would consider coming back to Boston in 2009 if they can just get city residents to see their point of view.  “We don’t know why we’re being singled out,” says the APA’s Goodrich.  “After all, they’re rude to everybody.”

What to Give Up For Lent

Lent, the forty-day period before Easter Sunday, begins next week.  Around the world, children in Catholic schools are already getting The Talk.

“No, you may not give up homework.”

The Talk is usually delivered by a nun, who informs kids that the forty days of Lent are symbolic of the forty days Jesus spent wandering in the desert while the Devil tempted him.  “Because Jesus resisted temptation,” the nun says, “you kids ought to be able to give up something–Bobby Racunas, spit out that gum!–for forty days.”

“C’mon–let’s go play video games!”

In the desert there is no dessert, however, so most kids come to the conclusion that their suffering is greater than in Biblical times, when the Devil’s “temptation” was to challenge Jesus to demonstrate his supernatural powers. 

Latter-Day Superhero.

Big deal.  Call me sacrilegious, but challenging someone to demonstrate his or her supernatural powers is chump change–what you do to kids who wear their superhero costumes around the neighborhood when it isn’t Halloween.

Baltimore Catechism, a/k/a “The Rules”

Because the obligation of Lenten abstinence is based on Church dogma, it is only fair that children should be able to use Jesuitical casuistry to avoid it.  The Jesuits are a religious order who have historically allowed their members to avoid religious persecution by giving “Jesuitical” answers to the incriminating question, “Are you a Catholic?”  Jesuits are permitted to deflect this question by a sort of rhetorical ju-jitsu known as “changing the subject”.  Answers approved by various Popes over the past 2008 years include the following:

1.  “Am I a Catholic?  You mean right now?”

2.  “You have spinach between your teeth.”

3.  “How ’bout them Boston College Lady Eagles!”

“Go BC!”

No, the kids of America who give things up for Lent are the true saints, not the phony-baloney “martyrs” who were always getting torn apart by lions or impaled with spears.  That isn’t a sacrifice, that’s just stupid–didn’t your mother tell you to be careful?

As someone who won the Catechism statue for three consecutive years in grade school, I offer to the youth of today this selection of things to give up for Lent which, while they may seem sacrifice-y, are actually not that hard to give up:

Lobster bisque

Lobster bisque is something grown-ups enjoy during periods of abstinence, when they’re not supposed to eat meat.  Believe me, it’s not as good as a hamburger.

Water skiing

Because Lent runs from February through March, giving up water skiing isn’t that much trouble.  If, like me, you were never able to stay up for more than ten seconds, it’s a day at the beach, so to speak.

Asparagus–I think.

Asparagus is a vegetable, but you’ll never persuade your mother that giving up one of the five basic food groups as a whole is required by a papal encyclical.  Pigs get fat and hogs get slaughtered, as the farmers say.  Giving up a single stringy vegetable that you have previously masticated into a ball of green fiber, then pretended to choke on, is an achievable objective.

Choir

Unless they are castrated, most boys resist choir, choir practice, and wearing those sweet cassocks and surplices that choir boys are required to wear.  God forbid you should ever have to walk out of church wearing that get-up where Tommy Walje and the other hoodlums are waiting to flick their cigarette butts at you.

“Please–hit me with the stick!  Anything but a noogie!”

As a former Catechism champ, I can assure you that giving things up that you don’t really like for Lent is permitted by Catholic theology, and that you will not burn in Purgatory for doing so.

I offer it to you in the name of the Holy Trinity–Mannie, Moe and Jack.

A Culinary Proof of God’s Existence

You should ask the atheist

Who it was made lemon twists

Carved in widths so very teeny

All to grace a dry martini.

 

Who was it wed P-B to J

And introduced B-L to T?

He who breaks the days like eggs–

The man upstairs-and only he.

 

If you would see the godhead’s face

Drink Pickwick Ale, and by the case.

Those who doubt the man divine

Have not yet tasted eight buck wine.

 

When God looks down on his creations

He dotes on yogurt-covered raisins

and says “With this thumbnail confection

I achieved at last perfection.”