Before our oh-so-clever (and just-completed) We're Moving campaign, way back a few years ago in the dark ages, we had a Haiku Hullabaloo campaign. Readers submitted haiku and the best one was emblazoned on a t-shirt and sent to generous donors. This is the immortal winner:
A frog in water
Doesn't feel it boil in time.
Dude, we are that frog.
(My efforts to persuade the powers-that-be to adopt "dude, we are that frog" as our official slogan, and the frog as our official mascot, are ongoing though as-yet unsuccessful.)
Well, via Gil Friend, I see that the Climate Protection Campaign is doing something similar, gathering climate-related haiku. Check 'em out.
(And speaking of our fundraisers ... you know we're a poor nonprofit, right? And that we depend on reader donations to keep going? And that no other media outlet is doing the kind of in-depth, independent, kick-ass environmental journalism we're doing? And that we've got big plans for taking Grist to the next level? Wouldn't it feel good to give us a few dollars? I thought so. Thank you.)
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Kit Stolz Posted 9:57 am
30 Jun 2006
http://www.uga.edu/srel/ecoview11-18-02.htm
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caniscandida Posted 5:28 pm
01 Jul 2006
To say nothing of the awful diction ("doesn't"?!!), including the execrable term of address "Dude," which has so successfully masked the terror of seeming too soft on the part of countless youths, who are in fact very sensitive and vulnerable, and in great need of both loving, and knowing they are loved.
How about:
Fall: a filled pot, fire;
Will the frog know to leap out?
Friend, are you that frog?
Haiku should regularly include a seasonal reference. I chose (the monosyllabic) Fall (rather than the equally monosyllabic Spring), because it is the season when the frogs are disappearing, and many things are dying off.
(A rather more curious rule of haiku is that they may be recited only in the season to which they refer. So it is in principle verging on illegality for me to post this at this time.)
John Muir, thanks for assuring us, and not least myself, who am a major batrachophile, that that dumb-ol'-boiling-frog story is not supported by observations. Whether it is fair to call that an "urban" legend, I am not sure; seems more suburban to me.
Nevertheless it fits nicely with that famous ancient Buddhist parable of the Burning House.
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mihan Posted 5:49 am
10 Jul 2006
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caniscandida Posted 10:05 pm
10 Jul 2006
I stand by the aesthetics of haiku, as well as my contempt for "dude," but congratulate David Roberts for excerpting the last line of that unfortunate attempt, its moral, as his apparently constant motto. It works well, out of the haiku context, perfectly faithful to the "beacon in the smog" spirit.
Plus, the "frog" clause works much much better in David's see-ya-later line than in the original haiku, now that we are (hopefully!) accepting frogs as our canaries-in-the-coal-mine.
Several years ago, some fragrance company was advertising an aftershave, I guess it was, by putting posters of face-portraits of "guys' guys," of different ages and races, but always attractive in different ways, in the seven-foot ad walls at the NYC bus-stops. The look was the huge photo of the face, with some epigrammatic description: a first name, a location (always in the US!), work status. I had a minor crush on this neat-featured, close-cropped blond kid, who was on a bus stop that I would use when returning from a tutoring job. The text of the ad said something like, "Jason [or Josh, or Dylan, or Max, something cute and fashionable]; Maui, Hawaii; student; surfer."
"Student" of course was utterly useless to determine what in the world might have been going on inside of cutey-pie's head. All it really said was, "You should be ashamed of yourself!, he is far too young for you."
But "surfer" obviously had -- and has -- this remarkably charming connotation: athletic young men, comfortable with their well-formed, naked bodies, in love with every sensual experience that the Freudian ocean can offer, driving ever harder and harder on their long hard boards. And that charm obviously was presumed to appeal, somehow, to lots and lots of men, not only those few of us who could develop more specific minimal crushes on young Max (or was it Scott; whatever).
Anyway, "dude" is apparently the term by which one of these alluring beach kids somehow came to address regularly another of their number. It would be interesting to know how that happened. In the Rocky Mountain states, perhaps in CA too, "dude ranch" means an expensive "Western" experience for sensitive, make-pretend Easterners who have not been much on horseback before. If "dude" was originally used in that context, it ought never to have been considered a term of respect, even by surfers.
Linguistically, it seems to get by with fewest moral connotations in the vocative case: e.g., heard near an SUV in Marin, prior to a trip to the beach, "Dude!, you packed your snorkeling device right on top of my tofu-and-egg-salad sandwiches!"
In the other grammatic cases, it is not so negotiable.
The nominative: "I'm telling you, Lucille, the next dude who asks you to two-step with him is going to be mashed into ketchup into those very steps right there, that you have been prancing up and down on all night. And the bar bill isn't on me no more."
The genitive: "Sure I went out once with that dude's sister; and sorry as shooting was I to learn that her real hair only starts from a line between the back of her ears. Didn't care so much that it wasn't really red ... "
The dative: "How the hell could you have given that dude the keys to your Cadillac?! How the hell are we supposed to get home now?! I got sixty-seven cents on me!! Shit, am I supposed to pawn my ring, at 4:37 AM?!!"
The accusative, as direct object: "Hi, Sweety. Remember me from last Sunday? I was on the barstool near the TV? And do you remember that jerk who was bothering you? Him in that foolish A-shirt? Well, after you left, he and I exchanged pleasanteries, at the end of which, I tapped that dude on the face, because I did not like his attitude, and that was the end of him for the evening. Emergency meds, you know. Possibly a tooth or two are still there on the floor."
The ablative, ablative of agent: "Makes no sense to us locals, of course, but that whole property, plus the ranch on the other side of the creek, is being bought up by some rich dude from Seattle, who wants to turn it into something organic. Whatever that means."
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tboggia Posted 4:26 am
10 Dec 2007
Thanks!
Tommaso
Focus the Nation on January 31st 2008
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karenc Posted 4:54 am
10 Dec 2007
An ounce of practice is worth twenty thousand tons of big talk. -Vivekananda
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caniscandida Posted 5:43 pm
10 Dec 2007
Needless to say, I have mellowed a great deal since then (ha ha), on such subjects as "dude." My feeling about "dude" at this point is, "whatever"; so long as the vocative ejaculation allows for one faintingly choke-throated male's split-second of appreciation of another male's potentially charming presence, sure, why the hell bloody not.
On "Funny Times": Thanks again to Mihan for reminding us of the immortal "Dude, do you have a tampon?" I always mention in connexion with Dido and Aeneas the Nicole Hollander cartoon in which Sylvia, having watched from her TV chair a hunky cowboy-dude say, "Darling, ya know I love ya, but I gotta be movin on," commands the TV set, "Shoot him in the knee caps!"
On funny fantasies about cute-sounding young men who answer the telephone: I got into an unexpectedly pleasant conversation with the young man in Cleveland, who was taking my re-subscription order for "Funny Times," after I observed that Cleveland was Dennis Kucinich territory, and the lad brightened up.
On Sanskrit: Piece o' cake, if ya done Greek and Latin. If not, well, it will be an adventure. Inevitably, you will be asked: Why?; What is it you want to read?; What good do you think it will do you?
The NY Times has for reasons of its own decided this is the time to bring forth news about this wonderful 100-year-old guy, Kyozan Joshu Sasaki Roshi, e.g. this interview:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/09/us/09zentext.html?_r=1& ...
For me as an archaic Catholic Christian, this is precisely what Christians need to hear: The birth of the Second Person of the Most Holy Trinity as a human baby, celebrated curiously on December 25, is the kind of totally religion-smashing event that the Roshi is talking about.
Chickens are our cousins! So are fish! So are other sentient animals! Let us learn to be kind.
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karenc Posted 5:26 am
11 Dec 2007
An ounce of practice is worth twenty thousand tons of big talk. -Vivekananda
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