IT DOESN’T HAVE ENOUGH OF THE MENACE.

The Two Lovers of the A-peck-o-lips

I’m playing the new hand game, “Rock, Mingus, Emoticon,” where Rock rolls down cliff on top of Mingus, Mingus punches Emoticon in winking eye, and Emoticon makes Rock weep enough miracle water for all the parched wandering tribes. No, Exodus is not part of the X-Games, Silly, although Exodus will be a demonstration sport in the next Olympics. It’ll be just like the Discus Throw—people running around screaming, chased by charioteers. The song “Go Down, Moses” now inspires people all over the world, whereas it was first sung by Moses’ wife, after the couple repaired to their tent, for the night. By contrast, the Alan Lomax Field Escalator Recordings have captured a variety of obscure American escalators, discovered, as it were, creaking and groaning, only through word-of-mouth, out behind the tool shed, often delivering nobody anywhere, often delivering anyone nowhere, creaking and groaning, out behind the tool shed, only through word-of-mouth. When broadcast over the Ocean, the Alan Lomax Field Escalator Recordings led to a dramatic increase in Whale Jumpings. By that, we mean loop-de-loops, not gangs of rogue orcas setting upon sponges and kayaks and sushi. The saying “Love Thine Anemones” comes to mind, but it doesn’t have enough of the menace. I wonder, sometimes, if I’ve been secretly hypnotized, as I wind up running the darnedest errands—standing in a rooftop swimming pool for hours or taking a cab to the opera—does that kind of crap happen to you? I came-to, this latest time, clutching several copies of a dubious screenplay, Moses & The Burning Bush, smack in the middle of a casino. So, I did what any secretly-hypnotized citizen would do: I played the slots. At first, I was getting “Lemon / Mingus / Orange” and “Cherry / Mingus / Grape” but then I started getting closer, “7 / 7 / Mingus” and “Mingus / Mingus / Bar.” When, up and down the aisles, all the machines bore the same combination, and it was like they’d gotten hit (in the jackpot) in their souls, and it was Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus.

HOW TO READ POETRY (FOR DUMMIES)

The great poet, Robert Hayden

Look here, see now. I say ‘Dummies’ affectionately. As in all those famous self help books—incl. Roots & Tubers, The Real Josef Stalin, The Party of No, and Offshore Drilling—for Dummies. You’re probably not a Bro, Brah or Bruh if you’re reading this post, you’re probably not populating a Pan-Hellenic Greek Org. such as STD or ABV. No, you’re probably a Good Sport who’s attempting to make headway with difficult reading material, so let’s advance Your Cause and score some Lasting Change. As part of our Joint Exploration, we will link to some very fine poems by Robert Hayden, Li-Young Lee, Harryette Mullen, Lyn Hejinian, Robert Creeley, and P. Inman.

1. First of All, Relax. Can you hear Jeff Spicoli (from Ridgemont High) saying that, after he’s crashed the car? (“Ruh-laaax!”) The fact is, you’re probably trying to navigate poetry as you might navigate fiction, by expecting plot or seeking the familiarity of narrative sentence structure. Perhaps you’re expecting the lyrics to approximate pop music or patter through a regular rhyme scheme. In the end, many contemporary poems operate outside these conventions, and you may need to—train yourself to—read differently.

2. ‘Meaning’ Is Overrated. Let’s start with The Big Picture. Do you understand the Universe? Do you comprehend America? Can you explain why one athlete who prays to God triumphs, while another athlete who prays (just as fervently) to the same Lord, fails? If so, proceed to The End and Receive Cookie. Why demand ‘Sense’ from poetry when you cannot wring ‘Sense’ from a glance out the window? Importantly, there are Other Ways to penetrate a poem, and there are Many Ways in which poetry can Reg-U-Late.

3. Determine Situation. I realize that the Intended Audience may vary from piece to piece, but in general, a diligent reader should be able to establish ‘Basic Footing’ in any poem. Consider Robert Hayden’s masterpiece, “Those Winter Sundays.” Written, arguably, in the sonnet form, it establishes a speaker (presumably male) who voices profound regret at never having thanked his father for all his blue collar devotion, indeed “…Speaking indifferently to him, / who had driven out the cold / and polished my good shoes as well.” The poem’s elegiac address allows for many “lonely offices” at the end: the father’s various toiling places as well as the poet’s austere desk.

4. Assemble a List of Images. You can also ‘enter a poem’ by assembling a constellation of its snapshots. The speaker in Li-Young Lee’s poem, “This Hour and What Is Dead”, calls God an “old furnace”, who “keeps talking / with his mouth of teeth, / a beard stained at feasts, and his breath / of gasoline, airplane, human ash.” Through this imagery, a reader can obviously detect the intense upheaval threatening the speaker’s life. What might one group of images—“blueblack cold”, “cracked hands”, and “banked fires”—suggest about the hardscrabble environs of “Those Winter Sundays”?

5. Don’t Fear Responsible Abstraction. Most Irresponsible Abstraction veers into Cheese. The more a phrase—“the dark depths of my soul”, for example—allows for too many destinations, the more the reader can’t attach any significance to it. On the other hand, take Robert Hayden’s line, “fearing the chronic angers of that house”, where “chronic angers” may refer to the latent tension amongst the house’s inhabitants or the cantankerous noise of a cold house warming. The poet doesn’t include an image there, but the abiding originality of this Responsible Abstraction attaches itself to the speaker’s sense of familial alienation, and nourishes the Elasticity of the (Reader’s) Mind.

6. Discover the Slants. Many poems succeed by offering innovative soundings: where words correspond ‘in Slant’ with words that aren’t, thankfully, their sing-song counterparts. I call your attention to the poet Harryette Mullen, and her abecedarian book, Sleeping with the Dictionary, and to the first sentence of “The Lunar Lutheran”, a poem therein: “In chapels of opals and spice, O Pisces pal, your social pep makes you a friend to all Episcopals.” Just in one sentence alone reside many Slants: chapels/opals; spice/Pisces; opals/social; and O Pisces Pal/Episcopal. Can you see how the rhymes aren’t ‘exact’? Doesn’t that line Bounce? The Hayden poem offers intricate sound-work, as well. Trace the “c”, “ck”, and “a” sounds inside words, alliteratively, and in Slant.

7. Thoughts on Macro-Structure. Lyn Hejinian wrote her masterpiece collection, My Life, originally, in 37 parts of 37 sentences apiece, when she was 37 years old. Eight years later, she added eight more sections, and expanded the previous sections, such that My Life grew to hold 45 sections of 45 sentences apiece. But that’s not all. Consider this excerpt, hosted at the University of Buffalo’s Electronic Poetry Center. Her writing—parts image, detail, non sequitur, fragment, definition, list, idea, witticism, and so forth, and all of it in prose—comes to resemble a jazz solo, in that the elements provide a “searching foundation” which soars to stunning moments of discovery.

8. Thoughts on Micro-Structure. Try reading Robert Creeley’s poem, “Goodbye”, by (a) stressing words at the ends of lines and (b) insisting upon pauses between stanzas. Creeley’s organizational strategy emphasizes the emotional stances of persons, the beginnings of thought and speech, and the isolations inherent in ill-fitting relationships. Of course pain is painful, by the way. When someone says “the pain is / not unpainful”, doesn’t that smack a bit? “Those Winter Sundays” was included in a recent edition of The Penguin Book of the Sonnet, even as its fourteen lines are broken a bit unusually for a sonnet. Try reading it as you read the Creeley, and weigh the effectiveness of its breaks.

9. A Difficult Poem. A writer named P. Inman is one of my favorite poets. I didn’t always feel that way, though! When I first heard him read his poetry, I was like, “wtf?” But I was wrong about that. I reflect upon my first cup of coffee, or my first jazz listen, and how neither quite worked for me, but now, having cultivated a love for them, both are irreplaceable parts of my routine. The same with experimental poetry, the works of P. Inman included. Consider his poem, “lac[e]y”, which may be a comment on lace, lacey-ness, or the jazz musician Steve Lacy, and all his Lac[e]y-ness. (It’s dedicated to another hero, the English poet Tom Raworth.) Rather than analyze its ‘meaning’ (right?), let’s just state some observations: the lines are short and metered by numerous periods; the poem reads jaggedly; some of the word combinations—“a. taupe. wald.”, for example—suggest more in the way of sound-scrabble; some stretches provide astonishing connections: ‘“let’s. call. / this.’ / my. age. / leaning. into. / some. dream.”; the piece is separated into six stanzas; sometimes an asterisk breaks the stanzas; the piece is further divided into two halves by an unconventional margin; the piece is (visually) unbalanced—sometimes the left half is heavier (with words) than the right and vice versa; the poem is tightly bound to that unusual margin. P. Inman’s poetry at times reminds me how language and sound is about us, a bit on the street, a bit from the radio, a bit on the subway, a bit from memory, a bit from nostalgia, a bit from wit, a bit from optimism. A piece like “lac[e]y” can be enjoyed for its shape, runs of words, ideas, sounds, scraps, persistent introversion, persistent invention, undeniable authenticity, and for sure, its “polk. m’edge.”

10. The End: Receive Cookie. Hey, if you’re a Bro, Brah, or Bruh, and you’ve made it this far, then there’s hope for you yet. This post will hardly address all the nuances of reading poetry, but if you’ve Gleaned a Few Nuggets, as they say, then it’s time to hit The Pub. Incidentally, Hitting the Pub can help you with No. 1, above. (“Ruh-laaax!”) Good luck and please comment if you’d like to correspond about any of this mayhem.

Also see: Blogpost to a Young Poet.

AMERICAN HISTORY 101.

John Wayne played all great Americans including Atilla the Hun

Many Americans cannot distinguish between the Civil War and the Revolutionary War, and for those fair citizens, it’s important to remember that the combatants were very polite to one another in the Civil War. In contrast, the combatants in the Revolutionary War circled around each other endlessly. When the action dipped below the equator, the combatants revolved around each other in the opposite direction. This was very tiring, as you might imagine, and the Revolutionary War soldiers, as a result, enjoyed far better levels of fitness than their well-mannered counterparts in the Civil War. Interrogation techniques in both conflicts derived from the olden days of Atilla the Hun—himself, a fine American—in that one interrogator would loosen-up a prisoner with good wordplay, before another interrogator would thump the prisoner’s mind with bad wordplay: they played Good Pun, Bad Pun, the way Atilla’s soldiers played Good Hun, Bad Hun when they captured a Gaul or a Visigoth or someone from the Jersey Shore. Rations were important, as you might imagine, and soldiers in many American conflicts have enjoyed such battlefield delicacies as Pimp-Slapped Chicken, which had been slapped by Free Range Pimps. The fine saucier, Prego, made many pasta sauces for the troops, and didn’t forget the soldier’s wife, either, she who might be ‘with child’ there, on the home front. For her, Prego offered Preggo, a very nourishing sauce that sustained mothers-to-be. Unmarried doughboys—whose sugar-pies were many miles away—frequently gave into temptation, and took up company with other damsels. Oftentimes, these men acquired Making Whoopie Cough, and required medical attention. Precious time was lost, at first, when doctors were forced to choose between a crème and a cream, but in the end, a lotion was developed. It returned those ailing to a state of Merely Human, but scientists tried to cure states of Merely Human first with shots and inoculations, before settling on a booster. After both wars (Civil and Revolutionary) came to an end, America really got to focus on deeply ingrained societal imbalances, and toward this end, a movement known as The Tee Party met regularly on the Golf Course in small, exciting shirts. The most famous member, an actor known as Bogey, ran for president, but finished one over par, as his putz came up just a little too short.

 

DOPPELGÄNGNAM STYLE

They should be forced to walk the gangnam plank!

Ever feel like your exact lookalike is leading a large crowd in the latest popular dance craze? Well, it’s a phenomenon known as DoppelGängnam Style, and it’s a reminder that there are very few fine lines anymore, anywhere, at all. Have you ever sat down to a warm, delicious bowl of Chili Con Carne? Now there’s Chili Con Carny, or a bowl of chili to be consumed alongside someone who operates a grab booth at the funfair. Then, the two of you go for drinks, and your companion orders an Irish Carbuncle. Irish carbombs, she says, remind her of Mel Tormé, and Mel Tormé reminds her of tiptoeing through a Chuck E. Cheese. In any event, I can’t wait to watch PSI: Miami—the show in which crimes against proper inflation are investigated. The song, “Wheat No Butter”, plays in the background, and the song, as you may imagine, describes a very different world of vice. A world in which Febreze w/Hint of Foreclosure is vended, a world in which Febreze w/Hint of Stalin is vended, a world in which Febreze w/Hint of Cholesterol is vended. There is no Harveys Bristol Cream in this vision, and there’s no Brylcreem, either, but there is Harveys Brylcreem, even as Harvey’s any old Harvey, and his Brylcreem’s a recipe handed down from bloke to bloke. The exotic entertainers at The Beef Brothel sure do make a mean consommé but the keyword—beef—you know, refers to a different kind of gripe. Such as: Who Let the Dogs Out? I mean, that’s not the relevant question. You’ve let the dogs out, I’ve let the dogs out, we’ve even thrown the dogs a squeaky Kong, but that’s not the question, no, the question is: Who’s been screwing the pooches after they’ve been let out? Because the pooches are coming home mighty uncooperative, they won’t sit, stay, roll over, etc., and they have hoity toity looks on their faces, as if to say, Hey: Dawg: What happens in the Hedge stays in the Hedge! 

GOING AGAINST THE GRAIN: A PRIMER ON THE MANY APPLICATIONS OF WHITE FLOUR

Ooh baby ooh baby ooh.

FOR BODY ODOR. Rub White Flour into armpit good. Rub it in there, good. Throw flour onto head, and sit there, flowery. Perform suite of religious gestures. FOR ITCH. Rub itchy area on second person. Let forty-eight hours expire. If second person begins to experience itch then apply White Flour to him or her. Was that effective? Do you still itch? If so, apply White Flour to affected area. FOR GOITER. Be sure you’re not occupying a no goitering zone. White Flour does not condone goitering in a no goitering zone. FOR INFIDELITY. Soothe offending partner with dovelike cooings and other pacific pleasantries. Perform lovemaking as necessary. When offending partner succumbs to the morphine of sleep, bind partner’s arms to bedpost. Arrange for man (or woman) in Batman suit to appear on fire escape. Admit Batman-suited person to premises. Hand him or her container of White Flour. Abandon premises, yourself. Ask no questions, ever again, about anything else. FOR AN ERECTION LASTING LONGER THAN FOUR HOURS. Moisten member. Coat with White Flour. Show physician. Is member still erect? No way! Remit co-pay as directed. FOR GASOHOL. Empty contents of White Flour container into neighbor’s gas tank. Observe neighbor’s ignition strategies over time, including any kicks and slaps to portions of automobile (e.g.,  bumper, tires, odor control tree) that have no ignition function. FOR RUSTIC DESK ORNAMENT. Purchase suitable desk ornament from sightseeing souvenir stand. Drain of water and artificial snow element. Prepare White Flour as for one Griddlecake. Add to ornament and seal. It will appear as if Griddlecake batter fell upon rustic scene. FOR INITIAL PUBLIC OFFERING. Prepare favorite White Flour recipe. (We recommend as for Poultice.) Take outside. Offer it, initially, to public. FOR DIRTY SÁNCHEZ. Is that the same thing as Dirty Harry only with a guy named Sánchez? White Flour recommends that you do not feel lucky, when challenged by Dirty Sánchez. FOR SHINGLES. This is a disease that develops in roofers. If you’re not a roofer, then you won’t acquire too many disorders—e.g., “the gutters”, “the dry-wall”, “the soft wood”—named after building materials. FOR OTHER HEMISPHERES. Stir White Flour in opposite direction, in saucepan. Gain attention of saucier. Present saucepan and sauce for inspection. If saucier interprets presentation as gift, be prepared to surrender (but don’t give yourself away.) FOR COCAINE SIMULATION. Blow White Flour up Stevie Nicks’ butt. FOR GENERAL TSO VARIATION. Shovel White Flour into Stevie Nicks’ butt with chopsticks. IN CASE OF EMERGENCY. Say ‘alleluiah.’ The missiles will fly. FOR MEAL PLANNING. Day 1: White Flour. Day 2: White Flour. Days 3, 4, and 5: White Flour. Day 7: White Flour. On Saturday, we could eat any White Flour we wanted or we could eat no White Flour at all.

BE A PROFESSIONAL & COME OUT SWINGING: SOME TIPS ON GIVING A SUCCESSFUL LITERARY READING.

Be prepared to read wherever your travels may take you, even
from a smartphone, if necessary. Blurriness optional. 

I reckon that, by now, I have attended and / or managed enough literary readings—from soloist recitals to cattle call events at several national conferences—to aver that I have witnessed better than 2,500 authors officiating at the podium. Some of these readings have stunned me, to be sure, influenced me, and revitalized my faith in literature, while the majority of them have been mediocre, and within that group, I have witnessed several bust-out disasters, and I mean vehicles afire, crashing, amid screams. For those readings (and readers) as well as for the Future of Our Kind, I offer this basic primer on stepping to the podium and offering a sturdy account of one’s writings.

1. BE A PROFESSIONAL. I just love a reader who slinks to the microphone without having selected what he intends to read. He thumbs through a couple books, mutters like a bum, and holds the audience responsible for his predicament. Never mind the reader who arrives an hour late, and must be fed the Big Boy Platter, first, before he can step to the microphone and thumb dumbly through his material. Can you prepare in advance? Yes, you can, Hot Pants, you can apply stickies, if necessary, to your pages, you can be on time, and you can be truly Dependable.

2. COME OUT SWINGING. That’s a double entendre meant to channel the spirit of a boxer, for one, but mostly the spirit of a jazz musician. Be loud. Chase the nerves. If you let the nerves chase you, then your voice will shrink and shrink until it cracks, a sound not unlike a person falling through thin, thin ice into a cold, cold lake. Need to warm up first? Why not sing? I endorse a song, so long as it’s unpretentious, so long as you’re not pretending to be Mr. Five By Five, since, you know, there was only one Mr. Five By Five, and his name was Jimmy Rushing.

3. DON’T EXPLAIN, JUST READ. In all likelihood, you haven’t been invited to preside over a Literary Explanation but a Literary Reading. Show us your work. Don’t launch into lengthy “tellings” that may rival the lengths of your stories or poems. Some explanations turn out to be more compelling than the actual creative piece, leading the audience to wonder why the writer had published the creative piece, as opposed to the explanation. I’m hardly against a few short words to preface a story, or a novel excerpt, or poems, but that’s all: a few short words.

4. KNOW YOUR AUDIENCE / KNOW YOUR VENUE. Perhaps you ought to avoid reading your series of gnarly poems—“Gigantic Beef Cutlets, 5 a.m.”—at the annual gathering of the North American Vegan Association. [Aside: I was once invited to read for the Senior Cits group at a synagogue, but all they wanted to talk about was the poor lunch they’d been served; there was no reading!] A daytime audience, for example, in columns and rows, will probably demand more measure, whereas a night-time pub crowd will demand more chaos. Plan accordingly.

5. PLEASE AVOID THOSE FALSE IAMBICS. Not all lines of fiction or poetry are meant to be recited, “whose WEED this IS i THINK i KNOW / his STASH is IN the VILLage THOUGH”, or if they are, then all audience members are meant to go home and register themselves, posthaste, as Next in Line for Invasive Examination. Deliver no two lines the same! You can read slower or faster. With more emphasis or less. Quieter or louder. With potato starch or tapioca starch. With Cholula or salsa verde. You can exclaim. You can hush. You can pause!

6. PRACTICE FOR THE UNEXPECTED. I recommend that you practice reading your writings regularly, and at that, practice with the stereo playing. That is, practice amid distraction, such that you won’t be thrown off-kilter when (A) Riders on horseback gallop through outdoor event* or (B) Engineers with political haircuts heckle* or (C) Chubby man snores in front row and cuts boggling fart—while asleep—that sounds like water cooler gurgling*. (Asterisk = actual event.) Oh yes, The Beast & His Value Set will interfere with a literary reading, again and again.

7. A CONVERSION TABLE ON DURATION. If asked to read for 45 minutes then read for 40 minutes. If asked to read for 30 minutes, then read for 25 minutes. If asked to read for 25 minutes, then read for 22 minutes. If asked to read for 20 minutes, then read for 18 minutes. If asked to read for 15 minutes, then read for 12 minutes. If asked to read for 10 minutes, then read for 8 minutes. If asked to read for 5 minutes, then read for 3 minutes. If asked to read your literature for 1 minute, then read your literature precisely for 20 seconds, including intermission.

8. QUIT ALL THE SELF-DEPRECATING COMMENTARY WHILST ONSTAGE. I just love a writer who interrupts his readings to apologize for the inadequacies of his presentation. He hardly means it, of course. To the contrary, he’s trying to win sympathy from those assembled, and he’s shameless in pursuing such a tack. When he offers—“That giant sucking sound going south isn’t NAFTA, nope, it’s the sound of this reading”—he’s issuing a declaration which compels the audience, in his estimation, to reply, “Come one, man, no, you’re great!” Cut it out!

9. YOU CAN BE TIGHT BUT NOT BLIND. It doesn’t make you tough to empty a fifth of Jack Daniels at the podium, but prepares you, instead, for a series of slurred syllables and awkward stumbles, as your body attempts to reconcile your inebriation with the centripetal forces of the Earth. A drink before the reading can help steady the nerves, of course, and there’s nothing wrong with that, but to be “blind” is to invite embarrassment, Hot Pants, not only upon you, but upon the people who invited you to read. Hey: moderation ain’t just a role in a dispute.

10. SPECIAL CASE: IF SCHEDULED TO READ IN THE LATTER ROUNDS OF A CATTLE CALL EVENT. Generally speaking, I do well enough at a literary reading, but I’ve had trouble at the ‘Cattle Call’ events that can occur in and around conferences such as AWP, MLA, or the Waiters’ reading at Bread Loaf. If you go early enough, it’s no big deal, but all that nervous energy can build up, if you’re scheduled to go later in the night. My suggestions: leave the venue at some point; play pinball or pachinko; return a few readers before your slot.

11. WHATEVER YOU DO, MAINTAIN A LITTLE EYE CONTACT. There are probably a few cute people in the room, and you’d miss them, if you didn’t sling your eyesight here and there. You won’t lose your place if you mark your place with the thumb or pointer finger of your free hand. Meantime, check out the hotties. Read to them. You’re not reading to a piece of paper, after all. You’re not reading to a podium. Have fun. Enjoy yourself. Laugh at a few of your own jokes, but don’t laugh at all of your own jokes. Maintain an appropriate level of malevolence.  

12. OFFER THANKS. At the end of your reading, don’t forget to thank your hosts, your fellow readers, and the audience. If you’re not in a pub, then proffer an enjoinder such that the audience—including hotties from #11—should join you for conversation at a pub. The reading is one thing, and is great, but community is the next logical thing, the logical outgrowth of a reading, and fine conversation and fine libations should be associated, at all costs, with a great event. I, myself, drink STOUT, but there should be an array of medicaments available for all.

For a few tips on the writer’s lifestyle, see Blogpost to aYoung Poet. 

THE TOP 10 REASONS YOU TOOK OUT YOUR SCRAPER BOX IN 2012.

Think Outside The Scraper Box!

10. Because The Worm Is Living With Shayna In The Trailer. Why call him The Worm and not The Wriggler or The Snake or The DigDug Creature or The Silverfish? Because he’s The Worm! And he’s living with Shayna in the trailer! So you fired up the Scraper Box (again) dammit!

9. Because Your Daddy Took Out His Scraper Box And Your Daddy’s Daddy Took Out His Scraper Box. There’s nothing so powerful as the notion of three generations taking out their Scraper Boxes, driving them around properly in the usual manner, returning them to a sensible storage area, and disembarking to the traditional welcome that one would receive, including a reasonable portion of suckling pig.

8. To Join The 1,000,000 Scraper Box March. What a spectacle! All them Scraper Boxes amidst the circular wavings of Patriotic Towels, amidst the droppings of Patriotic Confetti, amidst the Keynote Address by the ghost of Marlon Brando, and his Keynote Refrain: “The Hauling, The Hauling!”

7. Woke Up In The Middle Of The Night And Didn’t Know Where You Were. Nothing comforts a touch o’ the Nocturnal Paranoia more than a little trip on the Scraper Box, unless, that is, the Nocturnal Paranoia does not abate, and you were then a Paranoiac riding around on your Scraper Box at night.

6. To Show Someone Else A Good Time. Uh huh, okay, I see how you—wink! wink!— ‘took out the ol’ scraper box last night’, you ol’ devil you, you ol’ Casanova you, you ol’ PLAYA!

5. One Too Many Jokes That Began With A Boot Up Someone’s Butt. So, a patient appears in the Emergency Room, complaining of an “Inability to Void.” Upon further examination, the doctor discovers a boot lodged in the patient’s butt, and says, (Irish accent optional), Would that Inability to Void ‘ave anything to do with the boot stuck up your arse? Oh that, says the patient, Nah, that’s but a coincidence, been there for years, the boot. No, I really cannot void, I can’t!

4. The, Everything Happens For A Reason, Reason. Don’t know why you took out your Scraper Box? Many Americans cannot fathom the Action-Consequence Continuum, either, so let’s just say what they say—that Divinity wanted you to take out your Scraper Box, and anything that happens (e.g., happy or destructive) must be due to Divinity.

3. To Think Outside The Scraper Box. One always sits outside the Scraper Box, of course, but the real trick is to do some Deep Thinking while astraddle your Machinery.

2. The Economy Is Rebounding. The rebound will lead to Many Possible Americas, including DigDug Creatures, Breakfast Potatoes, and Obese Conservatism, thus choose the off-ramp for your Scraper Box judiciously.

1. Willard “Mitt” Romney Was Defeated. Good ol’ Mitt wouldn’t own a Scraper Box, unless Cadillac made one, and then I spoze he’d strap the dog to it, or drive it into an elevator, or buy 50 of them: two for each house.