Grey Matter

Applicant A, with her long résumé,
Boasted many a project completed.
She'd seen great successes (and last minute stresses,
But always come through undefeated).
Her contracts were many, not staying in any
One place very long; now her hope
Was a stable position. My final decision:
Too flighty--I doubt that she'd cope.

Applicant B, with her smooth repartee
Seemed a wonderful fit for the role;
I quizzed, "Motivation to change occupation?"
She answered, "Career's in a hole."
I had probed, "So you'd go? Leave your old place with no
One to shoulder your share of the toil?"
Then I bade her good-bye with a frustrated sigh:
I'm looking for someone more loyal.

Applicant C had a recent degree
With distinctions and honors throughout.
And although she was young, it was clear that this one
Knew her discipline inside and out.
On her qualifications and college ovations
She'd send other applicants packing.
In short: she's well prepped for this placement, except
That in years of experience, she's lacking.

Applicant D was extended the freedom
To try an alternate career;
(Despite working madly the business went badly--
Rightsizing was swift and severe.)
Though her CV was good, she was jobless: she couldn't
Be trusted to fill this position.
Well, would you accept aid from a girl who had made
Such a fated employment decision?

It's frightfully hard to find one I'd regard
As a barely acceptable choice,
Much less one imbued with the right attitude,
Habits, bearing, appearance and voice.
I advertise widely (I once even tried
Leaving flyers where hopefuls might mingle),
But the dregs that apply make me wonder if I
Might be better off staying a single.

Nine limericks. Only nine limericks, but they pack in a wonderfully effective summary. Here's an example.

Speedysnail wrote: 

So, this war of yours—how is it going?
Any sign of which way the wind’s blowing?
With the butcher in jail,
You can’t possibly fail!
By the way, your electrodes are showing.

Go and read all nine.

Limericks to celebrate the arbitrarily apophenically auspicious antichristian date, 6/6/6.

One inspired by speedysnail

Which calendar would the beast use?
The Romans', the Greeks' or the Jews'?
No ancient historian
Would use the Gregorian
Unless he were lacking for clues.

And a couple involving gratuitous oblique inclusion of The Number.

A Sydney girl, born in St Peters,
Was one of the world's fastest eaters.
When her figure increased
They named her "The Beast"
(Her statistics: 6-6-6, in metres).

A Kiwi girl (call her Miss X)
Sat drinking a bottle of Beck's.
Now my jaw's in a state:
When I asked for a date
I was sure she said sex! sex! oh! sex!

A while back, I submitted Tiktaalik roseae as a topic suggestion for Mike Snider's Weekly Sonnet. He took up the suggestion and produced Endless Forms Most Beautiful. This link will probably point to a different poem a week from now. Whether or not the poem is still on the weekly sonnet page when you get there, Mike's draft page gives a quick glance at the thought process that led from two words (the name of a recently discovered fossil) to 14 lines of poetry (that evoke pages of thought about history, knowledge, growth, transformation).

My vote is in! It's Silvía, all the way!
Congratulations Iceland on your choice
Of goddess diva, She-who's-here-to-stay,
With hell-cool hawtness, ice-fire angel voice.
Against the pale pubescent pop debris
She deigns to sing--a gift, a perfect Night
That anal Eurovisionaries fail to see
With heads stuck where their lawyers look for light.
Disqualify! Disqualify! they bray,
With prudish rules to prop their fossil fears
While Waterloo-esque wanking wins the day;
They set their pop song contest back by years.
Oh Silvía, charming, cheeky-chic and clever,
Oh Silvía, dahhling, I can wait forever.

I remember seeing a tattoo/piercing shop in SoHo, advertising its services: "Your choice. With pain or without."

This slogan came to mind when I read an "embryo rights" comment in an article on producing a cancer-free child. Josephine Quintavalle, of Comment on Reproductive Ethics, said:

“We mustn’t forget the embryos that were not given a chance to live. This is a worrying application because we are looking at a condition that is treatable.” 

Go Josephine! Yay! Let's demand the right of every unborn child to experience chemotherapy and eye surgery as they grow up! Let's keep pretending that every little ovum that dies before it's fulfilled its destiny is a tear-jerking tragedy, the unwarranted death of an innocent, the unmourned loss of another potential Mozart.

[/sarcasm]

Yes, Josephine. Some embryos die. A person chose which embryo would be allowed to survive. That choice was made on the basis of preventing future pain, instead of leaving the decision to blind chance. Why is this a worrying application?

Don't fall out of your VirJournal-viewing VR suits: I'm preparing something well in advance of when it's needed--nearly four weeks early. I'm defining a new poetic form to celebrate the Day of the Beast*.

Yes folks, here's another dose of finding meanings patterns in arbitrary numbering systems. This year, the sixth of June (06/06/06) will be Beast Day, and since all eschatological predictions so far have failed to ramp the panic meter up as far as "waves of vague anxiety," I'm going to stick my neck out and predict a very, very dull, non-apocalyptic Tuesday in June.

So how will we give this Beast Day a sense of occasion? By writing poems acknowledging the real beasts in our lives.

How to write a Beast Poem:

• It must be about a real, tangible beast (yes, humans are valid targets)
• It must start with the name of the beast
• It should include uncomplimentary material about the beast
• It must have 3 lines
• It must have 6 syllables per line
• All three lines must have a consistent rhythm (the rhythm will be somewhat constrained by the name of the beast at the start)
• The ends of the lines should not rhyme with one another, but the rest of the words should echo the sounds of the end words in some way: rhyme, assonance, consonance etc.

I've written some examples, taking the four Birman beasts residing at HouseOfVirge as targets.

Isadora will gnaw;
Her affections inflict
Fond impressions of dents.

Lu-Tze often loses
Scrunchy pills of paper
Skittered in the kitchen.

Windle Poons pounces with
Unexplained élan up
Sheer-sided service chutes.

Tattybogle's talents
Lie in lying daily--
Lazy leonining.

And since I'm feeling prophetic, here's a prediction for Sigga:

Nikita is KITTEN!
With bated breath waiting
Bare ankle to rankle.

There, you see. Beast Poems are easy (compared with Double-Dactyls, not Fibs). Just 18 syllables. 666. I haven't started exploring the depth of the "uncomplimentary material" rule. That could be lots of fun. How about a Beast Poem full of snark?

* not to be confused with the 1995 movie of the same name

[update: added hyphen to sheer-sided]

The BBC mouthed the man's words
To its regular erudite nerds.
As limericks were sampled
Our server was trampled
By fun-loving pun-hungry herds.

(When I went to bed last night the site was loaded beyond capacity. It's usable again this morning.)

Ever wish you were on the other side of the world?

Just looking at the pictures creates a full-body smile.

Joy, intrigue, awe.

Is your work environment tediously professional?

Enjoy the frivolous froth of life with paper, scissors, and your coffee maker.