Floss Picks

I am seeing more and more of these things on the ground.

They are leprechaun banjos.

Leprechauns never learn to play so they have no strings on the frets and one un-tuned string across the face.

They're sharp on the end because leprechauns are mean and stab people in the ankles.

I suppose there use to be a lot of plain old dental floss on the ground, no one noticed it, and leprechauns could tie each other up, trip galloping leprechaun snails and hang themselves when they drank too much. I miss those days.

No Good Time

UNCREDITED PHOTO FROM LONDON SUN

What we know about North Korea is an expert's best guess. This New York Times story on the country's failed attempt to put a rocket into orbit ends: "One thing that is certain: the timing could not have been worse."

That's an authoritative way to begin the final paragraph of a report on North Korea but a little too hand-in-glove. Any time a billion-dollar rocket blows up could not be worse.

Whatever reason the Koreans decided to admit failure is good.

That makes a shorter and less enlightening story, but that's the story

Micah True

Miach True, born Michael Hickman in Oakland 58 years ago, died in New Mexico in early April. 

A retired boxer, friend and advocate of Mexico's Raramuri tribe, and long-distance runner, True renamed himself Micah from the Old Testament and True from a dog. The Raramuri and locals called him Caballo Blanco.

True said, "If you don't know whether to take one step or two, take three."

Ashton Kutcher To Play Steve Jobs in Movie

DUDE, WHERE'S MY iPAD?

The Bus

I ride the bus.

I go faster

than any man

has ever gone,

until a rounding

error of time.

TNT for road.

Road for bus.

Median for

moose-walk to

Massachus-walk.

People fly too.

The dead talk

for themselves

all ways. Others

for them, reaching

further back, eons,

before light, before

buses, before the

wheels go round

and round a star

whose finitude

sheers so sharply

from human death

that only cacophony,

never clarity arrives

at the terminal.

Iran Tourism

New Hampshire's Old Man of the Mountain (top photo) collapsed in 2003. You can still see The Really Hot Chick of the Mountain But She is Modestly Covered from Head to Toe (bottom photo) in Iran.

A Wire Brush Blessing

   Irish Wolfhound Brendan with owner Frank Winters.  

May the road rise

up to meet you. May

the wind be at your

selfish bastard back.

You ruined me. Us.

Me and her. There

never was you and

me. What the devil

knows don’t matter
to God knows all 

you can take with 
you, no hurry. Have
my sympathy not

needed, a drink to 
speed you, wishes 
to fill your pockets
as moonlit lochs
beckon you home.

Dogging Fare Evaders

       The subway line in Boston loses money. It stops at 1 a.m., is famous for drivers talking on cell phones crashing into the backs of trains in front of them and buses getting lost. One drunk guy drove down a dead end when I was the only person on the bus, had to back up, started throwing transfers at me (what did I know?) and finally made his way to where he was going (long time ago, to be fair).

       Universal Hub, run by my pal and former Answer Guy Adam Gaffin, is the best place for all things T, probably all things Boston.

       Now the T (that's what everybody calls it) thinks it can recover some of the money it never gets by sending out SWAT teams of employees in bright orange vests (these are pretty well-paid union workers) to check mainly students and minorities on the few remaining surface lines (Boston blames students, the economic engine that drives its economy, for all its problems. They're wild. They party. They try to get people to buy beer for them. They sneak on the T) to see if they paid their fares.

       When a train pulls into a station on a surface line, the conductor can open all the doors, and let people get on and off quickly, and sneak on and off quickly, or only open the front door, and have everybody cha cha up and down the aisle saying, excuse me, excuse me, move to the rear, plenty of room, I have to get off, why was I ever born.

       My friend Dennis Carey used to wait until there was a sweet old person stepping into the car and yell in a carman's voice, "Clearyerdoor" trying to time it so the driver would batter the senior back to the platform. Then Dennis would hide behind the seat and hope that he hadn't played that trick on that particular driver before and the driver wasn't going to throw the brake on the car, come back, grab him by the scuff of his jacket and toss him off the train.

        (Dennis, according to his sidekick Frank, as in, "Frank! Why did you do that, Frank?" is now a respectable attorney and claims to remember none of this.)

       The point is, it's not cost or time effective to have teams of MBTA employees looking for fare jumpers while the legislature debates raising the fines for not paying your T fare so by your third offense it's more than pocket change. 

       Besides, nothing says you have to carry a picture ID to ride the T, so how will the enforcement teams even know who you are? 

       Hi! Jack Mioff! That was one of Dennis's favorites.

       Here's a cheap solution. Hire the woman in the above video. There are already cameras everywhere on the T. Upload photos of fare evaders to her iPhone. Give her a ration of plum brandy or her chemical of choice. Let her and her dog roam the T with a constantly updated catalog of fare evaders.

       Who'd want that hassle?

       Chances are you'd never run into her but people could freak you out just starting that countdown behind you.

       I'd pay. Oh yes. 

New Tin Tin Mystery

Snowy never got ticks.

$1,376,247,533.20

CREDIT: COLOURBOX

How much money is on the ground in public places in the world at one time?

Rushin to the Dealer

LEXUS

A new ad on WBZ radio for a local Lexus dealer has a guy saying he's bought three cars from this Lexus dealer in the past five years and he's been happy with all of them. If I had bought three Ladas in the past five years I'd be happy with all of them.

LADA

Marjorie

       (From an exercise in poetry class 2/21/2012. Make poems out of a well-honed narrative and a recent narrative. This is neither but as soon as Alan Feldman started talking about this assignment, I knew this was the true story I had to tell. Roland was really a liver-lipped monster who said "kissy kissy" to the women in the neighborhood, married an attractive woman and molested her daughter, who in turn played sex games with us neighborhood children by putting sticks up our butts. It was thrilling until Roland caught us and banned us from his property. The mother and daughter fled soon after.
       Marjorie lived across the street from and Claire next door to this unhappy scene. Marjorie whom everyone called Maggie was my second, much more practical and straight-shooting mother.
       Phil was a piece of work, a former merchant seaman and my hero, completely different from my dad, also my hero. Phil blew cigarette smoke out his nose like a dragon, could whistle incredibly loud by curling his tongue, drove a black T-bird convertible than two successive Continental convertibles with suicide doors, was the first, and only person back then, to have a phone in his car, and steered his boat with his toes.
       At his daughter Penny's wedding, I asked him to take off his toupee because I had never seen him with one, which scandalized the family, who said he never took off his toupee, but he soon did. I asked him how he had succeeded. He called me Cassadeech and said, "You don't just put in your dime.")

Thank God for Miss Claire especially

With that creep Roland living next door

To her. She saw little Eugene, when

We were at the lake, go in the bushes,

Push the button, open the garage door.

He went down cellar, read Mr. Petry’s

Playboys. He won’t admit it but Claire saw

Him. That Catholic has been a liar since

The day I met him and he lied about his

Name. Damn Phil has 5 kids with me, still thinks

He’s a playboy. Claire’s a saint. I shudder

At liver-lipped Roland. Helen’s clueless

About Eugene and everything else. I won’t

Change that. I wonder what Phil's up to now.

Too Bright

On the ball of mud and fire

We all cover, hover, float,

Dig beneath, finally vapor

Above or are dug beneath

GEO.SUNSYB.EDU

Lies water where ice boulders

Once sat forlorn shiva. My

Glacier went North and all I got

Were these lousy kettle ponds.

1, 2, dead, dammed ponds

Join west. Chromium plumes

Hopscotched into em. Não

Coma os peixes. Causeway

Fishers turn their backs on

Minas Gerais, drivers inches

away. Free dinner, direita,

Meu amigo?  We all die,

Sooner or earlier I veered

From my path beside pond.

Metacomet blamed, but me

Thinks dad killed his family,

KOX towers wave, Chatauqua

Cottages still stand, time decayed

Barracks for wounded, incurable

Veterans into verdant parkland.

Stacks top the incinerator that

Burns never. Leaves pile and sugar

Whiffs of dump at the gay cruise

Boat ramp. Uniformed and plain

Clothes police patrol this area.

The Nipmuk walked here, before

The rails hugged two shores, a

Beige-brick mall backed another,

SUSAN W. THE NATURE OF FRAMINGHAM

Plastic bags, styrene, workers

cottages, and hunch-backed pump

Houses paved the perimeter. Days

like this, cold, Sun, run off its leash,

Moved glacial hearts. Wild
Beauty stirred and fought

Nipmuks. Today, the Sun’s

Too bright, the pond ugly.

Trilby

The Line

You in or you waitin

Out wit me, see. Note:

No neck. Tat too. Phat

Girl got me hypnotized.

Knuckles tambien, si,

Uno, dos, etc. Camara

Seize you like crows

Gather in murder. You

They want. Me they

Caw into their fights,

Up there. They elevate

To a forgotten floor

To screen each line’s

Seen, their door prys.

Judges

The guy barring entry

Looks ready to throw

Down his phone when

It cacks bad. Birds

Stop singing. Forget

Where they’re. Rude

Crows never stop

No matter what.

Lid they say. Bring

Him to Jesus. Makim

Walk toward the light.

Wearin a Trilby. Cussin

A commotion. Dressed

For his funeral. So’ll

Em all next you know.

How bigot you think?

Us

Wonder woman:

Man at door, now

He has hat in hand

Face on phone,

Meaning less

Or more likely,

In, or out of boho

Cellar to me and my

X, pensive, wanted

Or wanting every

Earnest night to

Dance alone together

Watching men watch

Me watch men.­ They

Love me because they

All love me. Choosing

One would choose all

To go, even the chosen.

Not That Pocket

You're doing it wrong.

Again.

Trilby

You in or you waitin

Out wit me, see. Note.

No neck. Tat too phat

For ya waist. In ya go.

Knuckles tambien, uno,

Dos, etcetera. Camara

Sees you like crows

Gather in murder. U

Want in. They drag

Me into their fights,

Up there. They elevate

To a forgotten floor

To hide from their

Seen, their door.

Their door guy looks
Ready to throw down

His phone when they

Caw him, squawk about

Hatman, Fatman. Make

Him lighter so we see

Da feet. Crow’s feet.

How bigot you think?

Woman wonders:

Waddle man gave

Shoes to Muscle

Man who wrinkled

Face to mobile. More,

Less likely, meaning

Less in or out of this
Aerie cellar seeing stars.

She fondles X, pensive.

She spends earnest night,

Watching men watch her
Watch men do what.

College of Cardinals

Four Horsemen of Apocalypse, by Viktor Vasnetsov,1887

Papa Joe Ratzinger picked all

22 College of Cardinal Basilicans

For the 2012 Mass Bowl

Against Preacher Jonathan’s

Horsemen of the apocalypse,

Who have a bad reputation.

They kill, maim, split your lips,

As the work of God not Satan.

Please stand for no anthems.

Here’s the kick. The cardinals

Ask miracles but God hands

Penalties and losses to all.

To the world, well-prayed

Is the same pet as well-played.

After the world, comes what?

I doubt we’ll know we forgot.

Not So Great When It Happens Here

DANIEL GARATE, A COMMERCIAL DRONE OPERATOR IN
CALIFORNIA, USED HIS DRONE TO MARKET RESIDENTIAL
PROPERTIES FOR REALTORS. LAW ENFORCEMENT SHUT HIM
DOWN CITING F.A.A. RULES. PRESIDENT OBAMA JUST SIGNED A
LAW ALLOWING COMMERCIAL USE OF DRONES IN THE U.S. THEY
ARE ALREADY USED BY LAW ENFORCEMENT. PHOTO by J. EMILIO
FLORES for THE NEW YORK TIMES.

Drones Set Sights on U.S. Skies

Doorman

You in or you waitin

Out wit me, see. Note.

No neck. Tat too phat

Fo yo waist. In ya go.

Knuckles tambien, uno,

Dos, etcetera. Camara,

Miss. Sees you like crows

Don’t know dey murder.

Caw me fo dis, caw me

Fo dat, dem now ringin,

Right now. How dey

spend precious time,

watch me watch you

watch me, what they do.

Our Special Today

Muscle unsubtly guards

Doors that would no more

Open than the College

Of Cardinals will graduate,

Il Papa weeping success 
And toasting the last check.

Teachers see children

On buses, in classes,

Glasses, and think,

Childhood I see

in adults. Teachers

Bar behavior like

Zoo cages teach

Inside-out lessons.

Adults, children

Think, are tall.

Short break for media 

jolt myths rise roast

in mind-ovens anger

kisses youth love.

It's just natural. Roads

for taking. Miss the turn,

spectacular, unnoticed,

alone. Been to cinema 

lately? Working maybe.

Who do we think we are

with our eyeballs held

by gravity, surfing

light waves and dust 
motes, gripped by claws
of backward-scooter shellfish, 
saved by double-yellow 
road twists as us, we, them
are beat-wheedled by betters 

To play your position.
Stay on your side, 
And I'll stay on your side,

Too. A mother carries 
her baby from danger.

The 4 Most Important Job Interview Questions

DO YOU KNOW SEO?

COULD YOU LEAVE YOUR GLOVES ON?

WHAT MOTIVATES YOU?

우둔, 그렇지 않나?

      Executive recruiters agree, according to Forbes contributor George Bradt as highlighted in a LinkedIn email blast, that the only three true job interview questions are:

1.  Can you do the job?

2.  Will you love the job?

3.  Can we tolerate working with you?

      I like Ernest Shackleton's 1914 recruiting method, which used the crazy English eccentric model of sitting a desk, hiring some men (today that would include women) as soon as they came through the door, rejecting others the same way, and not on the criteria you might think.

      From a pool of 5,000 applicants he selected 56 including a physicist whom he chose for the crew because he could sing. Two ships, the Aurora and Shackleton's ship, the Endurance, set out for the South Pole. The Endurance, with 27 men aboard, was trapped and crushed in pack ice.

WHEN THE CREW HAD TO DECIDE 
WHAT TO TAKE FROM THE ENDURANCE
SHACKLETON INSISTED ON THE GLASS
PHOTO PLATES.

      Shackleton, and his unusually selected crew, 
ate their dogs, walruses, seals, anything they 
could, rigged sails on lifeboats, sailed to 
uninhabited Elephant Island, from there to 
Georgia Island whose unclimbable mountains 
he and two others climbed, a feat unequaled 
as of the year 2000, to a naval base on the 
far side, from where all 27 crew
members were rescued.


For the best perspective on Shackleton's money-raising skills, crew selection, executive decision making, morale-building and courage in the face of what anyone would have considered certain death, Caroline Alexander's The Endurance: Shackleton's Legendary Antarctic Expedition is the best account. Shackleton wrote an account of the voyage as have others and it has been made into films and television shows.

The basic theory of the technique as I understand it

Beans grind offsite

To coarse and uniform

Powder, or the pricey

Baratza Virtuoso Precisos

Burr grinder, where

To put it, you use

It once a day, every day,

You’re not quite awake,

You are growing awake,

Awake, as I count

Backward from 10

Your eyelids will grow

Light, light, when I find

The burr grinder you

Will remember, remember

Everything. Or put grounds 

in mouth, drink campfire water

like a cowboy. Keep brewing

Time to 4-minute batches.

After 15 tries, an hour

to drink coffee is yours.

Allow the grounds

to mud, bloom and spin

A cup poured to say

Exactly what before

And after it's swallowed.

Sssshhh. It's a Secret.

If you believe this is the "secret to (a) happy temperament and character":
the best health, most friends, fewest emotional problems and greatest satisfaction with life then according to a test by psychiatrist C. Robert Cloninger you will score high in a test he has developed on topics including

1. novelty-seeking 
2. persistence 
3. and self-transcendence. 

Brilliant psychiatrists like Cloninger sometimes cringe at

the reductions needed to have their ideas widely disseminated in news reports, even in outlets as thorough as The New York Times.

But the underlying idea of great satisfaction lying in many friends and few health and emotional problems is arguable.

You may ask how. Go ahead. Ask.

Touched By An Angel With A Gun

Pin It

Drowning II

I saved my enemy’s life

and no one noticed.

I was so disappointed.

I climbed from the water,

and trudged home

through snow and slush,

gray buildings around me,

streets familiar. I had seen

the crowd start

to gather around him

and I left, unnoticed.

I let my enemy die

by drowning

and I am sure many saw

that I was with him

as he floundered,

and rather than help him,

I climbed out of the pool

while he thrashed.

I heard the murmur

of people who did not know

I once saved him.

The same buildings

reached their arms

to gather me

as if I had somewhere to go.

I thought, “Next time I will save him,

and people will notice.”

But I knew, no, my story

with him was done.

Hey America!

GUIDING YOUR VISION TO HEAVEN, AND HEAVEN IS IN YOUR MIND - JIM CAPALDI,
STEVE WINWOOD, CHRIS WOOD

Want a free donut when you purchase 

a medium or larger beverage? Go to 

www.telldunkin.com on your computer 

or mobile device in the next three 

days and tell us about your visit.

Te invitamus a participar en nuestra encuesta.

It was winter but my New England town has had little snow in 2012. Pre-Super Bowl Saturday, in which the Patriots play the Giants, was a glorious day, a bit cold, but I've lived here pretty much my whole life and don't care about cold. How are things in Royal Ahold country, where our Dunkin Donuts corporate masters live?

I needed, or wanted to get, a gift to send my sister for Valentine's Day. She constantly drinks these trash-barrel-size iced-skim lattes.

Broke and depressed because of too much sugar and caffeine, she had taken mercy on me, and suggested we not send each other Christmas gifts. The Cassidys are perennially broke, depressed, downwardly mobile Irish. I am. My sister and parents are upward-bound. My parents, dead, especially so.

Things have been going well for me lately, especially in the brief respite between holiday depression and spring depression.

I stopped to get some cash at Framingham Co-op Bank. The bank shares a parking lot with the Concord Street Double D's. After visiting the cash machine, I pondered stealing my wife's Dunkin Donuts gift card, but I think she may have already used it. My sister may have thought it odd that my Valentine's gift was for $18.01.

At the time, I didn't think to reload my wife's card for $1.99 or whatever would have brought the balance to an even $20.

I never go in to Dunky's any more, except on a rare occasion like this for someone else. The coffee is all milk or cream or ice if you ask for ice coffee. The donuts look like the runts of the donut litters. The food and drink is vile.

All in all, the line was short, my experience was short and that made it swell. Thanks for asking.

Unreliable Narrator

You can’t rely on a mook
or a Pope on Earth with
the finer points of heaven.

Teachers see adults

as big children,
but don't say so.

Children see
all taller
than them, so
might makes right.

Media, social,
mass or needle,
shoots fork-in-socket
jolt streams mad myths

rise roast in mind-ovens

anger, kisses, youth, love.

It's just natural. Roads
for taking. Miss the turn,

spectacular, unnoticed,

alone. Been to cinema
lately? Working maybe.

Who do we think we are
in our eyeballs, our gravity,

our gravy waves, dusters,
held in the claws of lobsters

and double-yellow lines?

Stay on your side, I'll
stay on yours too. Things
like a mother carrying her
baby from danger, matter. 

The Recent Past

"Today it's almost impossible to grasp how
 original and transformative a figure Ali was

 - and how divisive he remained 
through much of his career." 

Richard O'Brien in January 23, 2012, Sports Illustrated

That Richard O'Brien thought and some others got me thinking about people who changed the world  On the anniversary of Catcher in the Rye, there were quite a few who said "meh" to Holden Caulfield and were understandably tired of the J.D. Salinger one-and-done recluse thing.

ELDRIDGE CLEAVER

I don't think J.D. foresaw the nutso celebrity culture we live in - who did? - and I think the critics who belittled Holden pretty well missed that he was a bigger influence on the second half of 20th century America and so the world than most people. Most bigshot, world-changing people - politicians, business titans, actors, scientists.

ANGELA DAVIS

Boxing is passe these days. Mixed martial arts is where it's at. Ali's persona went well beyond his athletic ability. Here are some others.

BILL RUSSELL

AMIRI BARAKA aka LEROI JONES

Excuse Me Myth

JEANETTE WINTERSON

"What we write about fiction is never an objective response to a text; it is always part of a bigger mythmaking — the story we are telling ourselves about ourselves." - Jeannette Winterson, reviewing Frederick Turner's book, Renegade: Henry Miller and the Making of Tropic of Cancer in the NYT Book Review.


THAT WONDERFUL OBSERVATION is near the beginning. Close to the end, she summarizes with this, after discussing Turner's major thesis, that it took America decades to catch up with the bitter, misogynist expatriate Miller: 


"'Cancer' was published around the same time the pill was approved for use (1960) and Valium hit the market (1963). Drugs that rendered women more sexually available and more docile were in the service of the ’60s sexual revolution, which was not about equality for women. Women would have to claim that for themselves. Miller was a useful weapon — something to drop into the water supply — against the likes of Betty Friedan. ..."

HENRY MILLER

AND THIS


"It seems to me that if part of your mythmaking is to place a writer ahead of his time, we had better know something about his actual world — the world of the 1930s in New York and Paris. In Paris, for instance, brothels were legal, but women couldn’t vote — the exact reverse of the America Miller had left behind."



Jeanette Winterson’s memoir, “Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?,” will be published in March

Moneyball

BRAD PITT, NOMINATED AS BEST ACTOR, JONAH HILL AS BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR. YEAH. THE MOVIE? NO

Really? Best Picture Oscar nomination, Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor? Taw-aw-kee. Too talky.