Category Archives: wordplay

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Nature Song

This is the first song I think of with today’s Ragtag Daily Prompt: onomatopoeia. This song sounds like kids playing and speeds up like kids do and all the laughter, about being outside. Wonderful! I love the Sweet Honey in the Rock kids’ records as well as adult records and my kids did too.

Here is an adult song followed by the kids’ song and circling back to the difficult adult part.

I took the photograph at the Centrum Jazz Port Townsend Concert, the Matthew Whittaker Quintet. Wow, wonderful.

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Purple weather

Walt Kelly was the master of bargleflooping and he could play with language in such fabulous ways! Once Howland Owl and Churchy were trying to make an A-bomb. They had a yew tree and a geranium and crossed them — by them falling over, two small plants in pots, to make Yew-ranium! Which did not explode, thankfully!

My sister and I grew up reading Pogo comics, old books at my grandparents, and memorizing bits and pieces. I still notice when Friday the thirteenth falls on a different day. This poem is one of my favorite bits.

Many happy returns

Once you were two,
dear birthday friend.
In spite of purple weather:

But now you are three
And near the end
As we grew some together.

How fourthful thou,
forsooth for you
For soon you will be more!

But — ‘fore one can be three
be two;
Before be five be four!

_________________________ by Walt Kelly

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: barglefloop. Walt Kelly already is bargleflooping the internet, because I did not remember the correct name of this poem and found it by searching purple weather!

I took the photograph from Marrowstone Island. It’s a bunch of terns enjoying the tern towards purple weather.

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Indiana Jones is a terrible archeologist

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny: a 2023 action/adventure film, the last gasp of the Raiders of the Lost Ark series. At least, I hope so.

I saw this with my daughter. I think it is awful, though if you want to see people blown up and killed, well, ok. SPOILERS.

Harrison Ford plays an awful person. A horrible archeologist, since he destroys tombs with no regard for history. A thief. A killer. A bad father, a bad friend, a bad God-father, a terrible husband. He goes to friends for help and barely notices when they are killed, though he is happy to point out to his God-daughter that SHE is not compassionate either.

It’s all justified by saving the world from the Dial of Destiny, only this time we don’t see this supposedly world changing item filed in a warehouse. It’s left sitting on a bedside table at the end. Yeah, maybe in the next movie one of the kids will play with it.

Indiana Jones is so awful that he wants to get away from himself, by staying in the time displacement. The Dial of Destiny is mathematical so it is not magic. Really. Science. Thank goodness it’s not a mathematical anti-aging device so Indy would live on.

They make him younger in the earlier scenes, ok, that’s sort of cool from a technical perspective. Just wait until everyone has that technology for Facebook and dating sites. Running atop the speeding train? Yeah, my suspension of disbelief already done failed, sorry. Tons of people killed in the first ten minutes, but since they are Nazis, we ought to be good with that. Except I am not. And he and his friend walk off with half of the precious potentially world changing power object? Which makes the friend crazy and so Indy ends up with it. Filed on a shelf at a college. Indy can’t keep a promise to a friend, either.

What about the romance? Give me a break. Ick, frankly. So he has to have the perfect female who turns a blind eye to all his destruction and killing and theft and very very bad archeology? Because “he is saving the world”? Ok, maybe she has dementia by now so she’s down with it. The perfect female for this scumbag: I think that search is really the about the anima. The search for the perfect partner is within, and we project that on a person who has some aspects of that internal perfection. That is falling in love. Really loving someone is withdrawing the projection and loving them anyhow. Indy’s movies represent much of our cultural disrespect and scorn for women. He has an undeveloped anima who is a sexy figure who will let him do anything he wants. And welcome him home. First thing I would do is destroy the “mathematical” dial, give him a good kick and leave. My work is done, out of here.

My ending for the movie would have Indy and his God-daughter hauled off to jail and fight in court for the next decade over who killed the people at the university, and all the things that he’s stolen and destroyed catch up with him. Mirror the ending of Raiders by having him carted into a gigantic jail with thousands of cells, to disappear forever. His wife finishes the divorce and she absconds with the young thief. The young thief decides that court and jail really don’t look like much fun and straightens up. Now, that’s a satisfying ending!

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For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: movie.

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Enemy

A friend and I are talking this morning and he is talking about praying daily. “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us”. That turns into a discussion of enemies and ourselves. It’s easier to have an external enemy identified than to deal with ourselves, isn’t it? Here is today’s poem.

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Enemy

Do you have an enemy?

Do I have an enemy?

maybe I have no enemy
I have people I have forgiven
I have people who I have asked to forgive me
I have people I have forgiven
but keep distanced
no reconciliation
possible if they continue abuse
blind and deaf
saying “We are righteous!”
over and over to each other

A book teaches me
asks what are you most proud of
in yourself?
Three things:
strong, smart, tough.
The mirror is what you fear the most
weak, foolish, vulnerable
I shy back, hate the author
and he is correct
at least for me

Like the sutra
sometimes I am weak
sometimes I am foolish
sometimes I am vulnerable

When there is a person
or people
I want to hate
What aspect of myself
of my past
of my psyche
are they bringing up?
Are they stronger, smarter, tougher?
Are they weaker, foolish, more vulnerable?
Why do I want to hate them?

It’s easier, I see
to hate another person
and cast them out like a demon
then to look in the mirror
and see the aspect of myself
that I long so much
to hate

That demon
once cast out
will return with seven more

Mirror mirror
on the wall
tell my why
the angels fall

if an angel gets it’s wings
every time a bell rings
each time we hate another, as well
an angel falls heaven to hell

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Barbie present

Sol Duc is choosing a present for bushboy from the Barbie tent.

I don’t know if the cats know about the Barbie movie, but right now they just love the tent. It has a center pole. As soon as I set the pole up, a cat will go in head first and knock it down. The camping gear inside includes a back pack and camping stove and sleeping bag which belong to a Get Real Girl rather than Barbie. There are also some Barbie diving gear, fins and so forth.

Happy Birthday, bushboy! Don’t know what Sol Duc will choose for you!

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: presents.

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Wet

I am Elwha.

I am small and my sister and I chase each other in and out of the house. In to all the rooms! One day I jump in the big white smooth receptacle and it is full of water! Warm! and I can’t touch bottom! I can’t get out! I HOWL!

Mother comes, fishes me out and puts me down. I run out of that room. She drops a big cloth over me and rubs me a little. I am drenched and I smell like flowers! It takes hours to clean up. My sister sniffs me and laughs.

I never jump in there without looking again.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: drenched.