The people who live in a golden age usually go around complaining how yellow everything looks. 

Randall Jarrell 

That said...

My birthday fell on Friday.  And about the only thing that distinguished it from previous ones was the influence of that diabolically clever and overcrowded digital detention camp for the chronically affable known as Facebook.  (Hey, I'm here to have fun, especially with words, not pander to the partisan mainstream or more tolerant and well-adjusted) 

I know there're many happy campers who frolic in this  happy valley of virtual conviviality, and I spent a good part of my morning genuinely pleased to find so many well-wishers waiting at my digital doorstep. But I also felt overwhelmed by a sense of obligation to respond to each and every one of them (which I discovered I didn't know how to do ) with something more than a mere "Thanks."


Is it just me or is there  something strangely alienating in this new-age model of pseudo socialization?  As much as I know that all my well wishers were sincere, there is that nagging little issue of the fact that this sudden avalanche of affectionate acknowledgement was triggered by a bit of programming that embedded  an alert to those who otherwise would have gone happily and appropriately unconcerned about any connection between the day's date and me.   I wonder too, if for people with many hundreds of Facebook friends accumulated over the years by dint of the endless exponential expansion of "friends" (that today is responsible for my having more friends on my page that I don't know than I do) it has become an almost daily duty (or chore) to respond to the inevitable rash of constant message alerts about multiple Birthdays, anniversaries, assorted milestones etc.  Okay, I guess all I've really done here is confirm the suspicions that I am too stubbornly sensitive and damaged to appreciate the value of life's little (and therefore, finest) pleasures--so on to more compelling content from my betters.

 Poet Jack Gilbert died Tuesday. NY Times (Bruce Weber ) gave him a long and laudatory obit.  I knew little about him other than the association with the "Beats" and was pretty sure  I hadn't ever read anything.  So I've been catching up.  Some great stuff.  He's all direct, no nonsense, no pretense, no tricks, no literary acrobatics--just straightforward concision and compression of plain language.  Most read like short essays trimmed to the bone.  So I turn the balance of today's post (except for the mandatory vocabulary list at the end) over to him in tribute to a lifetime of honest good work--done mostly in humble and self-imposed obscurity, which may be the reason he was able to maintain such clarity of heart and soul. Here's one of many I found particularly affecting, and perhaps it seemed even more so in light of recent events in middle east (and far too many other places) where one wonders how anyone can resist regarding the human condition as anything but a constant sorrow. 

A Brief for the Defense

Jack Gilbert

Sorrow everywhere. Slaughter everywhere. If babies

are not starving someplace, they are starving

somewhere else. With flies in their nostrils.

But we enjoy our lives because that's what God wants.

Otherwise the mornings before summer dawn would not

be made so fine. The Bengal tiger would not

be fashioned so miraculously well. The poor women

at the fountain are laughing together between

the suffering they have known and the awfulness

in their future, smiling and laughing while somebody

in the village is very sick. There is laughter

every day in the terrible streets of Calcutta,

and the women laugh in the cages of Bombay.

If we deny our happiness, resist our satisfaction,

we lessen the importance of their deprivation.

We must risk delight. We can do without pleasure,

but not delight. Not enjoyment. We must have

the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless

furnace of this world. To make injustice the only

measure of our attention is to praise the Devil.

If the locomotive of the Lord runs us down,

we should give thanks that the end had magnitude.

We must admit there will be music despite everything.

We stand at the prow again of a small ship

anchored late at night in the tiny port

looking over to the sleeping island: the waterfront

is three shuttered cafés and one naked light burning.

To hear the faint sound of oars in the silence as a rowboat

comes slowly out and then goes back is truly worth

all the years of sorrow that are to come. 

T is for:
tachyphagia	Fast eating
tarantism	An urge to overcome melancholy by dancing
tetrapyloctomy	The act of splitting a hair four ways
thelemic	Permitting people to do as they like
tibialoconcupiscent	Having a lascivious interest in watching a woman put on stockings

Back in April...

...I penned an updated version of a G&S classic with the title 

I Am The Very Model of A Presidential Candidate

 http://31driftwood.blogspot.com/2012/04/al-smith-ran-to-waltzing-beat-of.html

I now offer a new version to serve as final reprise and epilogue 

 I Was 

The Very Model Of 

A Presidential Candidate 

I was the very model of a presidential candidate

Was whiter than the snows that fall so pure upon the Utah State

My family goes back so far in this great country’s history

And that is why the truth of who I am remains a mystery

My wife and kids are models of the virtues that our faith bestows

On those who watch their p’s and q’s and never step on Daddy’s toes

They’re loyal and obey their god, but I’m not known to spare the rod

Just one false step and you can bet I’ll send them to the land of Nod.

The Pundits all assured me saying “Mitt, you got this in the bag”

And in the polls all summer long it seemed I hardly ever lagged

In fact they seemed to show that ever since I won those fun debates

That I was gaining ground and turning blueish into reddish states

But now I see that some of them were simply going with their gut

That folks would vote for anyone who said “ The country’s in a rut”

They told me we could never fail, that liar Rove should be in jail

I made them rich, son-uv-a-bitch, we wagged the dog  to no avail.

And now Obama’s back in charge, and getting four more years of work

While I sit here and think about Paul Ryan (what a friggin jerk)

I gave him his big shot to give our great campaign a moral boost

And every time he spoke his mind he brought his chickens home to roost.

Latinos, blacks, most women and the young folks they all got me wrong

I promise they’ll regret it soon and betcha that before too long

They’ll all wish they had chosen me, to save our great plutocracy

cause no one who knows anything believes in a democracy

MY CANDIDATE FOR WORST EUPHEMISM OF THE NEW MILLENIUM

 Extraordinary Rendition.

Combining two euphemisms.  Extraordinary for illegal, and rendition for kidnapping to secretly torture. Wonder if the judges on  American Idol, The Voice and The X-Factor were advised to avoid using it in their assessments of contestant performances. 

The blogosphere takes another hit.  Apparently the much publicized report of  General Allen's voluminous (up to 30,000 pages) e-mail correspondence with the socialite Kelley woman in the Petraeus affair was in error.  Seems they were counting pages of documentation that consisted of many multiple copies of entire e-mail threads with each new e-mail addition.Revised estimates have it down to low thousands.  Whew, big relief to we scribes who struggle to fill a couple of pages a day.

False Cognate of the day. 

Embarazada -  Spanish for "I'm pregnant."
BTW.  Falso Amigos is Spanish for false cognates. 

S is for:
saprostomous	Having bad breath
scacchic	Pertaining to the game of chess, or to chess pieces
sciapodous	Having huge feet
scolecophagous	One who eats worms
sgiomlaireached	The habit of dropping in at mealtimes
skoptsy	The act of self castration
slubberdegullion	A filthy, slobbering person
sphallolalia	Flirtatious talk that leads nowhere
steatopygic	Having a fat behind
strikhedonia	The pleasure of being able to say "to hell with it."

"With just these two fingers, I can type  
345 words per minute." 

Somewhat...

...shocking detail about involvement of top U.S. commander in Afghanistan Gen. John Allen in the Petraeus case. One report I read cited the discovery of 20 to 30,000 pages of e-mails  between 2010 and 2012 with the "other woman".  I don't know what his job as top commander requires or entails, but I assume it includes the luxury of delegating a fair amount of it to others--cause you'd have to be more prolific than Stephen King, Balzac and Joyce Carol Oates combined to generate even half that volume in so short a time.  As a blogger who tries to kick out a few hundred words a day while working a job that is completely stress-free and cushy compared to Gen. Allen's, I stand in awe.  Though I suspect that the reported amount of pages will be amended or found to be off by about 15,000.  It just isn't possible.

Somehow...
...gotta find a way to get over the hump with cryptic and acrostic crossword puzzles. Something about those strung together  "you call that a clue?"  clues just isn't clicking.  Sis Debby seems to get it quickly and proceeds along swimmingly while I just splash and thrash and get nowhere.  Colleague at work gave up on them years ago when he realized " I couldn't afford the all the consciousness altering drugs I would need to continue." 

Someday...
...someone, or someones are gonna rise up and say " I'm (we're) mad as hell and we're not gonna take it anymore"  to those Masters of the Universe at Apple.  Maybe one bad Apple don't spoil the whole bunch, but I just bought Ellen a new iPod touch to replace her dead 5 year old standard version and NOTHING IS COMPATIBLE.  Can't load my iTunes library, can't load iPhoto pix, and can't get anyone at Apple to offer me a solution that doesn't require purchase of more Apple shit to get this thing to do the thing I bought it to do.  They changed everything...even the recharger. Their motto is "Think Different."  And I'm beginning to think maybe I will. 

Bernstein's Original manuscript score . 

Somewhere...
... I recently found a chord melody transcription of this  song that I had mislaid years ago and I've been fooling around with it for last few days.  The melody alone makes Ellen tear up every time she hears it and frankly, I'm not so immune myself.  Simple changes actually, and it sounds nice just using standard major and minor chords and a few added sevenths and sixths along the way. But a more creative and imaginative (not to mention skilled and knowledgeable) player like Adam Rafferty takes it to a whole new level.  Rafferty here is using open strings to create ringing sustained tones and he employs harmonics in a way that never feel gimmicky or out of place.  What he's doing isn't technically all that difficult, but the vision behind the arrangement, the altered chords and the and beauty of approach is inspired. 

If you get a VIDEO NOT AVAILABLE message, try refreshing page.  Usually works.
If not, you can find this on YouTube.  Search: Adam Rafferty. Somewhere.  That should suffice. 

Q is for:
qualtagh		The first person you see after leaving your house
quidnunc		One who always wants to know what is going on
quomodocunquize		To make money by any means possible
R is for:
recumbentibus	A knockout blow, either verbal or physical
runcation	The act of weeding

Once again, loathe to post nothing, so with the daily diminishment of available hours (or even minutes) to devote to the creation of original content,  I default to the last resort for lazy bloggers (and first resort for Ariana Huffington) and outsource the work for quick and easy importation to the Driftwood Shores.

From the fine folks at:

another engaging RSA Animate  taken from a speech given at the RSA by Sir Ken Robinson

You can see many more at: http://www.thersa.org/events/rsaanimate

and learn about artist (and founder of Cognitive Media) Andrew Park  and the process involved at:

http://www.cognitivemedia.co.uk/about-us/history/ 

I wrote about Maurice Sendak when he died, and tried to articulate some of my impressions of him as a person and artist-- but I think the interview below captures (and reveals) him better than anything I've ever read.  I knew a little about his family history and even heard him talk about it briefly, and this conversation fills in some of the details that helped me better understand the kind of man and artist he became.  I found it very moving.

http://www.believermag.com/issues/201211/?read=interview_sendak

Hmmm, funny how... ... the word thoughtful has come to connote (primarily) concern and/or consideration  for others.  Actually kind of like the fact that this is the case since "thoughtfulness"  without a social perspective isn't fully thoughtful.  ... some people ( not you sister Debby...) will say "we redid the kitchen"  or  "we put on a new roof " when it would be more accurate to say  "we had the kitchen redone"  etc.  (when I was a kid, we visited some relatives who  said they had built two new rooms on their house, and  for years I was (unduly) impressed with their  amazing construction skills) ...you can try and rig a national election ( see: multiple State Governors and  Secretaries of State) and still retain your job, but if you seek a little love and affection in your personal life (see: David Petraeus) while performing your duties in an  honorable fashion, you're compelled to resign.  ...the term "brilliant politician" generally refers to someone with a talent for  manipulating people and circumstances for personal gain or power.   Politics may be the only field in which the qualifier " brilliant"   is synonymous with "evil".  ...in the aftermath of a tense and nerve wracking election season in which it seemed  that what was at stake was truly monumental, it was almost impossible for me to maintain even a modicum of interest in the outcome of a sporting event.   Knicks are off to a surprisingly great start  and frankly my dears,  I don't seem to give a damn.   Due to  popular demand...  More Craig Swanson P is for:
pandiculation	Stretching and yawning before going to bed or after waking up
petrichor	The smell of rain on dry ground
philosophunculist	One who pretends to know more than they do to impress others
pogonotomy	The act of cutting a beard
polyphloisboian	Making a lot of noise or loud racket
preantepenultimate	Fourth from last
prosopography	The description of a person's appearance
psithurism	The sound of wind in trees or rustling leaves
pyknic	Short and fat

Capital PUNishment.

Punning takes guts. Even the best pun is likely to elicit a groan .

It's the nature of the banal beast.  But it's also the beauty of it. Puns are the Mutts of the language litter.  Scrawny, pathetic little bundles of joy.  And I love em. Even the lame ones have charms to tickle a logophile's longing for loopy linguistics.
And it's really hard to think of one by trying.  They almost always just pop into your head prompted by a word in another context and then the instinctive associative process takes its own course.  And when that happens, it can be very re-wording. Add a visual and it can be...

The above is by someone as shamelessly (actually, he appears to be more so)

infatuated--he's Craig Swanson and a visual punster with the courage to explore the depths of the most shallow seas of sophomoric silliness. And when he finds something, he renders it with such craft and artistry--which makes it even funnier.  Many of his most inspired ones wouldn't work without the imagery. 

You can find  his cartoons and long personal stories/explanations to accompany them-- as well as other stuff at: 
http://content.perspicuity.com/?q=

And here's more:

O is For:

BY SPECIAL (Presidential) DELIVERY FROM ALEX M.-- Obambulate:   To walk around.  Wander. Obganiate:  To irritate someone by constantly repeating oneself. Ombrophobia:  Fear of rain Oneiric: Of, like or pertaining to dreams Opisthosomal: Of, like or pertaining to posteriors Oculoplania:  Letting one's eyes wander while assessing another's charms Ozostomia:  Bad breath

Onychophagy: The habit of fingernail biting

I know that guy.  

You know that guy.  

There's lots of those guys. 

Am I that guy? 

MIT professor of atmospheric science, Richard Lindzen, published an opinion in The Wall Street Journal  entitled “Don’t Believe the Hype: Al Gore is wrong. There’s no ‘consensus’ on global warming.”

UC San Diego professor of history of science, Naomi Oreskes rebutted  with “Global Warming—Signed, Sealed and Delivered: Scientists agree: The Earth is warming, and human activities are the principal cause."

And just after Sandy, there was this in WSJ under title: 

Roger Pielke: Hurricanes and Human Choice

Sandy was terrible, but we're currently in a relative hurricane 'drought.' Connecting energy policy and disasters makes little scientific sense.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204840504578089413659452702.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

What's the average citizen to do? 

How bout place a bet?

Go to:  http://www.intrade.com/v4/markets/

and get in on the action.  There's money to be made in them thar ice caps. And while  there you can check out  some of the other horses at the gate including:  

Magnitude 9.0 (or higher) earthquake to occur anywhere before midnight ET 31 Dec 2012

A successful WMD terrorist attack to occur anywhere in the world before midnight ET 31 Dec 2013

United States to conduct overt military action against North Korea before midnight ET on 31 Dec 2012

Is this a great country or what?


Hadn't watched The Daily Show for many years, but had a hunch that last night might be something worth checking out since Stewart seems to become particularly inspired by events that justify his anger and disdain for FOX News and other mainstream news media. And I was right.  He was on fire. And some of his analysis was so on target that I forgot for a while that he was doing comedy.

Left out a few "M"  words last time, so...


 M again is for:

mulligrubs	A state of depression or low spirits
mumpsimus	One who sticks obstinately and wrongly to their old ways
mytacism	The incorrect or excessive use of the letter M
N is for:
nelipot	Someone who walks without shoes
nepheligenous	Producing clouds of tobacco smoke
nidorosity	Belching with the taste of undigested meat
nudiustertian	Pertaining to the day before yesterday