Of Porcupines And Valentines

I was trying to come up with something that sounded deep, but wasn’t. (More than usual, I mean.) So anyway, this is for those people who, for whatever reason, have a valentine who is easier to give a card to than to actually approach. Don’t look for any hidden meanings; the whole point is to really not mean a damned thing.

I write today of valentines, with velvet trim and laces,
The sort we give to porcupines, instead of warm embraces;
We blame such silly practices on love, or fate, or Cupid,
But hugs for walking cactuses are nothing less than stupid!
The concept was romanticized by Hallmark (for the money),
But no one ever fantasized a quill-pig as a honey.
We end up with our porcupines in some or other fashion,
Then have to turn to valentines to substitute for passion;
We need a card’s assistance to protect us from a puncture,
When the need to keep a distance is required at this juncture.

So… my cuddly little porcupine, I’m sending you this card—
I want you for my valentine… but please, don’t hug too hard!

Oh, and for all those hits I keep getting for people searching for valentines day poems, click the tag for “love”, and there are a few more on this site. If you have someone you think might like one of them, you are incredibly fortunate; they are not Hallmark.

An Experiment

Over there at the top right, just under the banner, there is now a little link to a CafePress store. This is no big fundraiser thingie (although it could be at some point), but I just like Michael McRae’s art so much that I wanted it on a mug. I knew CafePress could do that, and thought, what the heck, in case anybody else wants something, I’ll throw this thing together. It is not fancy–it is quite the opposite of fancy, in fact. I’ll probably put up some more stuff with the original cuttlefish logo, too, but that is not there yet.

If anyone has any special requests, just let me know. I bet against anyone wanting a cuttlefish thong, for instance. And right now, the artwork is just the beautiful cuttlefish, not the blog title or anything. Which makes it the perfect gift for a writer or poet, but you already knew that. The artwork is used with the generous permission of the artist.

Oh–if anyone does buy anything, send me a pic with you wearing/holding it! I’d love to see!

ETA:
This limerick’s here just for Ray:
I neglected, in verse form, to say
That for some, the best part
Of this blog is the art
So this post is for those folks, today!

Sorry, Ray–I’ll try not to do it again!

Busted!

Orac busts the snake-oil sellers on a regular basis, and it is always an entertaining and enlightening read (and has inspired more than one Cuttlefish post). Today’s is a good one–once again, the weasels are out in force, creating a market by cultivating human insecurity. This time, the target is right there on your chest. Er, breast. Breasts. Anyway… I can hear their advertising jingle right now…

It’s new! It’s scientific! It’s
The latest way to grow your tits!
Don’t like the way your sweater fits?
Then just pick up the phone!
Embarrassed by your tiny chest?
Or want more bounce back in your breast?
You simply want to look your best—
And no, you’re not alone!

You say you want to up-size
To a new and bigger cup size?
Get some bigger dogs, not pup-size?
Send your money in today!
Our CD-ROM will show you
How, hypnotically, to grow you—
Just you wait; before you know, you’ll
Have some melons on display!

We’ll show you how to hypnotize
Yourself into a bigger size;
Develop right before your eyes
Into a better you!
We know it works; we asked some men
To concentrate on breasts, and then
The method proved successful when
Some pieces of them grew!

You say you want to up-size
To a new and bigger cup size?
Get some bigger dogs, not pup-size?
Send your money in today!
Our CD-ROM will show you
How, hypnotically, to grow you—
Just you wait; before you know, you’ll
Have some melons on display!

The simple secret to success:
Hypnotically, you will regress,
Then grow a pair to fill your dress
Through concentrated will;
So send me cash, and you’ll look hot
And whether this stuff works or not
The greater purpose is, I’ve got
More money in my till.

You say you want to up-size
To a new and bigger cup size?
Get some bigger dogs, not pup-size?
Send your money in today!
Our CD-ROM will show you
How, hypnotically, to grow you—
Just you wait; before you know, you’ll
Have some melons on display!

The National Treasure Who Plays In The Park

There’s a piper who plays in the center of Sofia
Songs from his country’s remarkable past
I sat on the curb and I listened, transported,
So willingly under the spell that he cast

I’d been told that the man was a national treasure,
A world-class performer who played in the park
He’s there every day, or at least very nearly,
Performing his magic until it grows dark.

He approached me and asked, though he barely spoke English,
“What would you hear today? Happy? Or sad?”
“Sad”, I replied; “I am leaving tomorrow;
I can’t hear a happy song, feeling so bad.”

He played me a song of a terrible story
An Ottoman soldier had chosen a bride—
A Bulgarian beauty, who so loved her country
She threw herself into the ocean and died

His pipes were enchanted, they shouted, they whispered,
At turns calm and peaceful, then wonderfully wild
They barked like a dog, and then sang like a lover,
They wailed like a mother who’s just lost a child.

When he finished, we talked for another half hour;
I put all the money I had in his case
Then, late for a meeting, I turned and departed,
Appreciative teardrops still wet on my face

If ever you find yourself visiting Sofia—
Business, for pleasure, or just as a lark—
I love the whole city, but best in my memory,
The national treasure who plays in the park

Super Bowl Sunday (With God On Our Side)

It’s Super Bowl Sunday again (well, tomorrow, as I write)! I must admit, I love the Super Bowl. Not because it is the SB, but because it is the last meaningful game before next season. My dad, when I was really young, was a football coach, so I watch football looking for all the fun interior line details that are never part of the televised commentary; football, like so many things, gets better the more you know about it.

What is irritating, though, is that God is always on the side of the winners (as PZ noted); it is such a great time to wear one’s religion on one’s sleeve. Of course, it also bothers me that even those among us who find that notion silly, the same after-the-fact reasoning is used to show that the team that had greater will to win, that wanted it more, that just refused to say die, is the one who took the trophy home. Nobody ever gives up the will to win, but then cruises to victory anyway.

Anyway, here’s the song of the day… with sincere apologies to Bob Dylan, and to pretty much everybody else, too.

Oh, the workouts are nothin’
And the wind sprints are less
We don’t even practice
We think that it’s best
Cos practice means nothing
I’m forced to confide—
But we’ll win big on Sunday
With God on our side

Oh the networks will show it
They’ll show it so well
How the righteous team won
And the evil team fell
Oh the righteous team won
But it’s not cos we tried
It’s Super Bowl Sunday
With God on our side

Oh, when I cross the goal line
I’ll raise my arm high
With one upraised finger
I’ll point to the sky
I’m sending a message
That can’t be denied
I just scored a touchdown
With God on my side

When it’s fourth down and inches
We’ll go for it all
It’s a quarterback keeper
But where is the ball
They’ll bring out the chain gang
And the refs will decide
First and ten to the team
With God on their side

And the fans in the stadium
Will cheer on their teams
And eat without stopping
Or that’s how it seems
And most of it’s salty
And all of it’s fried
They’ll eat it on Sunday
With God on their side

Oh, it won’t even matter
What’s the final score
The points aren’t important
That’s not what it’s for
This game’s about Jesus
We can all say with pride
We won big on Sunday
With God on our side

We gather each Sunday
We won’t miss a week
It’s more than just victory
It’s salvation we seek
It’s more than religion
It’s the reason Christ died
So we could play football
With God on our side

Nice Alpenhorn!

News Item–An influx of naked German hikers has led to the proposal of a Swiss ordinance which would mandate fines for nude hiking.

The Swiss have said “Enough! Enough!”
We’ll have no hiking in the buff!
See, German hikers gave them fits
By showing off their naughty bits—
A practice which the Swiss construed
As lewd, indecent, crude and rude.

So now, if Germans wish to slough
Their clothing there, the going’s rough.
No innies, outies, bums, or tits;
The Germans now must use their wits
If suddenly, they’re in the mood
To go out rambling in the nude.

If someone tried to call the bluff,
And hike in full display of stuff
The Swiss police alertly sits
To meet them with an all-out blitz–
A picture which, I must conclude,
Leaves naked hikers rightly screwed.


pic source: BBC

Walking The Walk

In the waning weeks of my poor old pooch’s life, the combination of age, infirmity, and cold weather meant that our walks were shorter, slower, and more frequent. She no longer bounded through the snow (hadn’t for a couple of winters now), and no longer strained at the leash, urging me to keep up. She walked slowly, and to tell the truth she walked oddly. I thought it a sign that her nervous system might be going—she had two separate gaits for her front legs and back legs, or at least part of the time she did. Her front legs took more steps over a given distance; her back legs took fewer, longer (and stiffer) steps. It was very odd to watch. And at first it was quite difficult to tell what was odd about it—it just looked… different.

Of course, I am no expert when it comes to the walking of dogs; it does interest me, though, that there certainly are people who are—that the gait of dogs has been studied at length for over a century. A walking dog, a walking horse, has a distinct set of motions and positions, and this sequence is easily available, well known, and, it appears, utterly ignored by the people who depict animals in art. What is more, it appears that this knowledge is even ignored by some groups you might expect (I certainly did) to take the time to get it right!

A team of researchers, led by Gábor Horváth of Eötvös University, examined hundreds of examples of museum mounts, veterinary anatomy books, and manufactured toy animals, and found that these examples corresponded to the correct mechanics of walking about 50% of the time. This explains why Cuttlekid’s toy horses fell over so easily.

Ok, cheap toy horses are one thing. Museum mounts? From the New York Times article:

The researchers found, for example, that a skeleton of a dog at a Finnish museum depicts the right hindleg in a rearward position while the right foreleg is lifted and moving forward. In a proper depiction the hindleg would be forward too, having moved before the foreleg.

Maybe the taxidermists had a dog like mine.

Maybe those are accurate mounts of the dinosaurs, and they died out because they walked funny.

I thought I’d take an afternoon and visit the museum
I’d heard they had some new things, and I thought I’d like to see ‘em
One skeleton, a walking dog, was what I liked the best—
But its front was moving eastward, while its back was moving west!
The skeletons of dinosaurs were also really neat
Though something seemed a little wrong in where they put their feet
The tails looked right, the ribs were right, the spine, the head, the mouth—
But their front feet pointed northward, while their back feet pointed south!
I figured a museum ought to know which way is right,
So I walked a little differently when I went home that night
Now I’m flummoxed and I’m puzzled, and I feel like such a dork—
See, I’ve one foot in Seattle, and the other in New York.


Support independent publishing: buy this book on Lulu.

What Do Women Want? (A Valentine’s Day Poem)

In this past Sunday’s New York Times Magazine, Daniel Bergner reports on a number of modern sexologists who have set out to explore what Freud once termed the “dark continent” of female sexuality. This is no brief article, but a detailed picture of the research, motivations, and findings of a handful of leading researchers, centered on Meredith Chivers at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario. The article includes forays into other researchers’ work, so that we get a nice picture of the variety of approaches.

Some is familiar–the reports of the systematic differences between measures of arousal (when arousal is measured via genital plethysmographs, woman are seen to be much more strongly and easily aroused to a variety of stimuli than men are; when arousal is measured via self-report, women reported less arousal to some stimuli and more to others, than the plethysmograph readings would predict) I remember from some of the early research in reactions to pornography. Other research is less familiar to me (fMRI readings during orgasm, for instance). The history of this line of research is explored a bit–from Freudian psychoanalytic approaches to physiological studies, to the impact of AIDS on sex research, to the potential of a female Viagra.

I was saddened a bit, but not terribly surprised, by the reductionist views so many researchers were taking. It is understandable that one might focus on just one part of a phenomenon in order to bring scientific rigor and control, but sexual arousal is something that happens to whole organisms, to people, not merely to genitals, and not merely to “minds”. Bergner does tell us of the researchers’ attempts to extrapolate their findings back to whole people, and whole relationships, but to my thinking the Times Magazine article itself was the better “big picture”, with each researcher contributing a part of a mosaic. It is well worth the read (when you find the time); then, to thoroughly dash your best hopes for humanity to the dust, take a look at the comments. *sigh*

Anyway, there is sufficient grist in this article for any number of new Valentine’s Day verses. For today, the inspiration comes from Marta Meana, a professor at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas. In her research, one answer to the question “what do women want?” is “to be wanted”:

For women, “being desired is the orgasm,” Meana said somewhat metaphorically — it is, in her vision, at once the thing craved and the spark of craving […] She recalled a patient whose lover was thoroughly empathetic and asked frequently during lovemaking, “ ‘Is this O.K.?’ Which was very unarousing to her. It was loving, but there was no oomph” — no urgency emanating from the man, no sign that his craving of the patient was beyond control.

I’ve got so much to say on this Valentine’s day
With you, Muse, my sole inspiration;
I’ll unburden my heart, pluck out Cupid’s dart
For my pen, and begin my notation:

I could train a white dove to deliver my love
In the form of a perfect red rose
Or else write in the sky, in great letters so high
That I guarantee everyone knows.
I could gather wild flowers, and listen for hours,
To whatever you have on your mind
I could gaze in your eyes with appreciative sighs,
Though they tell us, of course, love is blind.
For you, I could bake the world’s best chocolate cake
With a frosted “I love you” upon it,
Or for something with taste that won’t go to your waist
I could write a Shakespearean sonnet.
I could write you a tune, by the light of the moon,
Played on harpsichord, zither, and oboes,
Or choose some other fashion to show you my passion:
Let’s fuck like a pair of Bonobos.

Pareidolia 2

Ah, good old Fox News. The same network that so boldly covered the face of Jesus in the potato, now brings you Jesus in a tree. (video at the link)

I think that I shall never see
A scam like Jesus in a tree
A Christ in hardwood, there reposed,
Where someone’s house will be foreclosed.

The owners of the house are clear
A miracle is happening here—
A sign of something good to come
To folks who need a hefty sum.

These folks say they would never flip
For Christ in a potato chip;
A sandwich, too, would just be odd—
This tree, though, is an act of God.

And churches, now, will pass the plate
And funds will come before too late;
Cos only God could make a tree
A self-fulfilling prophecy.

(When I saw this story on the TV tonight, I looked for it immediately. It amuses me greatly to report that I had to narrow the search to the last 24 hours, because I found so many previous links to people finding Jesus in their trees. Here, for instance. Or here. Or here.

Good-Bye, Old Friend

I hope we did what’s best for you
I know, at least, we tried.
I took you to the doctor
And I stayed there at your side;
I talked with you for one last time
Then held you as you died.
I kissed your head, and said good-bye
And cried
And cried
And cried.

I’m still crying.  Dogs are fur-covered unconditional love; it should hurt when you say good-bye.
I was going to post a picture, but I can’t bring myself to do it.
Good-bye, old friend.

edit–regular readers may recall that I last wrote of her this past Thanksgiving.