Monday, March 4, 2024

Dialogue between two Italian puddles






 A Roman and Milanese puddle have an early March talk. They have known each other for some time.


Roman Puddle: Hey, I heard you've had more rain since Hannibal crossed the Alps.

Milan Puddle: You're not kidding. The city's drains are so stuffed that even if it stopped raining I could be                                       puddling for weeks.

RP: You in heaven! I remember when I was puddling under Romulus and Remus, everyone walked around us, even the children, you know why?

MP: No

RP: The puddle was white, white with milk.

MP: Of course, ma certo!

RP: If you remember, my puddle is just at the base of the aqueduct, at Piazza Maggiore. Everyday dozens of ancient trams screech by me, and there's this newspaper vendor who sweeps me dry every morning while whistling some tune about a boat.

MP: Yes, I remember you telling me about the whistler. I'm at the exit of the main train station, where hundreds of tourists discard their used tickets to the point where I look like a floating lily pond of tickets. 

RP: Pity there are no frogs.

MP: Very funny. My Milan puddle pals call me "Gunk".

RP: Gunk with no reflection. Ah ah ha!

MP: Ha! You remember the puddle from Geneva, when Frankenstein the monster saw it's reflection for the first time in that clean, Swiss, puddle, it took the joy out of its heart.

RP: It wasn't a Narcissus moment, that's for sure.

MP: The monster would't have seen much if he were looking at my puddle.

RP: Ripple. * (An expression used by puddles to express agreement.)

MP I also remember 700 years ago, in the day of Dante, there was the puddle from Ravenna that was bragging it always had 9 rings going around it.

RP: You serious? How could you control something like that?

MP: Divine intervention, I guess.

RP: A puddle in Hell, Purgatory and

MP: Pahradize! (Accentuating its Milanese accent.)

RP. That's la divinitá for sure, which reminds me of Oppenheimer.

MP: Oppen-who?

RP: Heimer. If you look at th beginning of the film, you'll notice it starts with a puddle and you see

MP: Concentric rings moving ...

RP: How do you know?

MP: What makes a puddle puddle?



RP: So sage, to get to the point, yeh, the puddle ripples.

MP: And you're going to tell me why.

RP: The ripples are like nuclear shock waves, get it?

MP: Dang!

RP: You remember Chernobyl?

MP: Never forget.

RP: The radioactive rain, we were

Together: GLOWING AT NIGHT!


The two puddles remain silent for a while.


MP: I heard they're cleaning the drains in Rome, is that true?

RP: Yes, it is.

MP: Are you ever tempted at night to go stuff them?

RP: Without proper papers? You want to corrupt me?

MP: Just saying, our drains in Milan are all good, in puddlespeak of course. I have contacts, you know.

RP: You have contacts?

MP: We've been friends for a long time. I do you a favour, you do me a favour.

RP: Ok, I get it, but what can I do for you?

MP: Not sure, maybe something to do with Leonardo. I have to puddle it over and get back to you.

RP: Listen, I can't hear you anymore, this huge cloud -most likely from the north- is unloading more rain than a cargo ship. Talk to you soon, hey, Milan Puddle, you hear?






Sunday, February 11, 2024

Derida, Chomsky and Foucault at the Superbowl

 



We are in the Allegiant stadium in LasVegas for the Superbowl LVIII


Kansas City Chiefs and San Francisco 49ers are on the field. It's after the national anthem sung by Reba McEntire, and Brock Purday, the Captain and quarterback, is about to call the toss.

The three philosophers are sitting in the Premium Lounge on the side of the Chiefs.


M. Foucault: Sorry guys, but this brings back great memories of when I did LSD in the desert. The Super Bowl in Las Vegas, what a trip!

N. Chompsky: Michel, we know you're a sucker for institutions. What difference is there between the power of a prison and the Super Bowl?

J. Derida: Both of you need a little "diffĂ©rence".  Put off that immediate Super Bowl blasting experience. Just because millions are watching, cheerleaders are high-kicking, and Tay-Tay is in the stands -back from her Japan concert- please gentlemen, keep your mental faculties.

N. Chompsky: Jacques, you're so anti-French I could kiss you. Everything is "post" with you: post-structuralist, postcultural, postscience. What the fuck, Jacques, "postfuckingfootball"? We are here now and the game is about to start!

M. Foucault: You may be right Noel, but take a look from an archeological perspective: the nobel Aztecs played  a pole climbing event that included greasing the pole to make it more difficult. The losing team was either sacrifices or imprisoned. Now that's excitement. *




N. Chompsky: Indeed, you are a fan of prison and the vector of power they represent

M. Foucault : -and the power of the word!

N. Chompsky: and the power of the word. But listen to Jacques: are we not imprisoned by cheerleaders, advertising, adversarial hype, and Tay Tay?

J. Derida: Hey guys, did you see? Purdy won the toss. San Francisco is kicking off.

M. Foucault: Jacques, where did u put the LSD?


*In the 60s Foucault published "Les Mots et les Choses", which explored how football banter through history, was the basis of truth in scientific discourse.


Sunday, February 4, 2024

The Graduate

 It is that interminable desire to ascend

Always hoping it's around the bend

Graduating, "Please graduate" cries

The falcon as it descends


And yet

The story goes

Bernard didn't graduate and

Was the better man for it

Whether taken by sadness or buffoonery


This Bernard Hermitte didn't complain  about

Not monikering new names for its trove of new ideas 


This Graduate graduated from a natural shell by

Sheltering in the broken socket of a light bulb!


Despite itself it  has a earned a justifiable diploma of biodiversity

Through a sustainable climate adaptation scheme

And has been awarded

By a mindful institution of mindfulness

A Graduate Diploma


On the Big day Bernard didn't show

Up for the Ceremony, 

Academics awaited to applaud its  genius

That between us may be linked to its reproductive 

Genus


Ascending or descending meant little 

Or nothing and

Bernard didn't feel the alienation of a Hermit

Retrofitting  in a broken light bulb was fine and comfy

He joked to himself

What if uncanny Pierrot

Got the Diploma?




                                           


                                                    Salvador Dali "L'amour de Pierrot"







Saturday, January 20, 2024

Electronic Highway Signs Written by Great Authors



William Shakespeare: "Hail to a straight driver, hail to thee."

James Joyce: Keep your SUV jigging ajog, hoppy on route on tires ye memory.   

Pierre Boulle (Bridge over River Kwai)  "Approaching draw bridge, don't drawl."

Noam Chompsky: "Think you're smart? Elevated highway over 3 miles."


Maxwell House: "Too much coffee on the expressway? Slow down!"


Junot Diaz (The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao)

"Foursome, quartet, four-way stop!"


"AC/DC: Highway hypnosis? Time for Medical Diagnosis."


Billy Colins "Potholes filled with potential."



ChatGPT

Rudyard Kipling: "Watch your ears, Elephant crossing!"


"Fyodor Dostoevsky: "Don't be contrite, it's your right of way."


John Milton's Lost Highway: "Assuage rode rage: it's time to come of age."

Socrates: "Thou should drive to live, not live to drive."

Stephane Gould  "Speed bump good for centipede!"


William Butler Yeats: "Calculating, detonating, tailgating"


JG Ballard  "Traffic congestion ahead: brake or be brain dead."


George Orwell: "Accident! Rubbernecking,  French pecking: more bottlenecking."


David Attenborough: Hear coughing or frothing? Wildlife crossing!




Sunday, January 14, 2024

The Coded Wordgame Cracked



She had

A baguette 

With an extenuating dentelle

Elle, not HE or Lui

That rhymes with Hell

Luigi stood for 54 degrees Fahrenheit in

1887

An electronic ring in French 

Made for prisoners


The Donut Shop meant

Wind gusts up to 20 mph

Sprinkles blowing through the hole


"Leafage" expresses the dew point 

Pushed down by atmospheric

Pressure to knead and knead the dough

Rhymes with Bordeaux


A Station

A Bank


 In 1891 the Sinai 

Recorded "Carwash" 

Standing for Murky Water

(Though car washes didn't appear until 1914)


Hence:

Bagatelle- Luigi -Donut - Leafage- Carwash 

Means: "Put the prisoner in a 54 degree cell carrying an ankle bracelet and holding a donut with sprinkles blowing through it with 20mph gusts that was kneaded and kneaded with some or consequential delay and where a bank near the station of Bordeaux failed to wire money to the Sinai for irrigational purposes.



Sunday, December 24, 2023

Donuts in the Wilderness by Stephan Gould Lang Jr.

 





Donuts in the Wildernes


The raindrops approached with great speed and violence rendering

Leaves, branches sodden

A patch of moss made the sound of a sponge whilst a wild boar 

Stepped into it. 

The temperature with the opaque clouds shuttering the light

Struggled to climb above 0.

Suddenly a rhinoceros ran through a small meadow, with a swipe

It picked up 3 donuts with its horn and ran off.

It was most likely a batch of glazed donuts but one could not rule out 

Jelly donuts as they have been sighted as far as the Serengeti and 

Darwin wrote in "Origins, Donut Holes and Survival" that they were spotted

On the Galapagos islands.

"It was clearly a jelly donut, and I had never seen one with such a rounded hole in

all my travels. The Komodo Dragaon lizard had eaten at least a dozen, however nothing

excluded a Baker's dozen. I could barely catch my breath seeing so many donuts in one place,but

when the lizard ran off, I observed a drop of jelly on a slab of volcanic basalt." 

September 15, 1835.


I was tempted to run out from my observation post to collect possible crumbs left by the 

Rhino, when I heard the cry of a bird of prey, not too high above the forest canopy. 

Had it sighted another glazed donut? Would I be treated with another rare event in the 

Wilderness? 

Unfortunately my Pixel watch pinged me, it was time for my coffee break. I stopped 

Recording and reached into my bag, pulling out my take-out coffee that was only lukewarm.

When you are a naturalist, such sacrifices go with the terrain.










Friday, October 27, 2023

Carbirds and mirrors




Ford Falcon Carbird

Carbirds are known to warm up their engines in the morning. If a opossum or rodent is trying to get under the hood of a nearby Carbird in the parking lot, its loud horn will go off, chasing it away and also protecting others parked nearby. But when the opossum approaches the Carbird closely, it  will remain silent to avoid detection. 

Recently, a group of scientists wanted to investigate weather Carbirds recognise their own reflections. They placed a mirror and drew a round pink circle around the eye of the catbird. 

(Earlier experiments proved that Carbirds recognise their motor's noise: this was proven by sticking a potato into the exhaust pipe, which made them innocuous to any approaching danger.)

When a Carbird was placed in a room with another Carbird and an opossum approached, it sounded off its horn. But when it was in the room alone with a mirror, looking at its reflection, it stayed silent, presumably because it recognised itself even with a pink circle around its eye.

The research is critical as we hope to learn how humans may also warn other humans of oncoming danger. In a number of recent shootings, for example, humans seem attracted to guns rather than being repelled by them. In addition, it is likely that we don't recognise ourselves as being in danger, and more studies are needed to see whether, at the sight of our own reflections, we are able to discern a real danger and or a danger for our neighbours.

For those owning a Carbird, Beneton and Dolce Gabana recently joined forces to create an effective Critter Spray, especially for older Carbirds from 1955 to 80.