I'm very sorry

It's difficult, but this is something that has to be said.

I will be taking no questions at this time. Thank you. That is all.

And now . . . this - Apr. 6/20 (the Coronavirus Cabin Fever Edition)

No, not my cabin fever. This isn't the first time I've been housebound for a long period for health reasons. (And I have a wonderful, stimulating relationship with my collection of singing potatoes.) But it seems that prolonged self-isoloation, social distancing, and other buzzwords that can't disappear soon enough is starting to cause some people to go a little, er, shack wacky.

The big ship always wins, part 1

A train engineer faces federal charges after he allegedly admitted to intentionally derailing a train Tuesday near the USNS Mercy, a ship sent to Los Angeles to ease the burden of hospitals treating coronavirus patients, according to the Department of Justice.

Eduardo Moreno, 44, told law enforcement investigators he was "suspicious" of the ship and believed it "had an alternate purpose related to COVID-19 or a government takeover," the Justice Department said in a news release, citing the affidavit.

[Full Story]

Turns out a 60-foot, 200-ton diesel locomotive doesn't maneuver too well when you take it off the tracks. The Mercy was never safer.

The big ship always wins, part 2

A Venezuelan navy coastal patrol boat sank in the Caribbean after allegedly ramming a cruise ship that it had ordered to change direction.

[Full Story]

Basically, the cruise ship, the RCGS Resolute, stopped in international waters off the coast of Venezuela to perform maintenance. They were contacted by the Venezuelan vessel and ordered to follow them to port. While they were in contact with the head office, the Venezuelans opened fire then attempted to ram the Resolute on the starboard bow. Unfortunately for them, their boat appears to have been constructed from tin foil, while the Resolute, being designed to resist icebergs, is made of sterner stuff. Glug, glug, glug.

"Venezuela accused the Resolute of an act of 'aggression and piracy.'" I suppose, if by "piracy" you mean passively ignoring the Venezuelan navy's courageous own-goal, sure.

You'll understand what happiness is

I don't like poetry.

I once made the mistake of confessing this to one of my literature professors while pursuing my degree, which was, of course, in English. He remarked that I had no business in an English program. I graduated anyway.

It's not fully accurate that I don't like poetry. For the most part I don't like poetry. As a literary genre, I find it kind of pretentious—all the more so, the closer to the present that it was penned. On the other hand, I find it works well as a comic medium: the clerihew, for example, the limerick, or whatever you call Ogden Nash's couplets.

That said, there are a handful of poets I can appreciate. Shakespeare, of course. John Donne and George Herbert. Closer to the present, Leonard Cohen and Margaret Avison. And, finally, T. S. Eliot.

I mentioned a few posts back that I was adopting Kim Shay's 2020 reading challenge this year to help guide my personal reading program. One of the categories on Kim's list is a complete volume of poetry by the same author. When I was brainstorming what I would like to read in 2020, I jotted down "Eliot" next to this one. And, it so happens, the first book of the challenge I completed was Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats.

Most of Eliot's verse is hard to understand (sometimes bordering on incomprehensible) and loaded with classical allusions. C. S. Lewis, whose own aspirations as a poet tended to be more classical, did not understand modernist poetry, and apparently had a particular dislike for Eliot—indeed, they were literary nemeses for many years. He spends three pages in his Preface to Paradise Lost criticizing Eliot's poetic excesses. In a self-deprecating poem titled "A Confession," he singles out his own inability to understand "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock":

For twenty years I've stared my level best
To see if evening—any evening—would suggest
A patient etherized upon a table;
In vain. I simply wasn't able.

Lewis's first post-conversion work of fiction was The Pilgrim's Regress, his allegory of his conversion. At one point in the story, the protagonist encounters three pale men, intended to represent the austere and anti-Romantic modernist poets. One of them, Mr. Neo-Angular, is a caricature based on T. S. Eliot. Practical Cats was published six years later, in 1939. What might Lewis' impression of Eliot have been if he had seen it sooner? (Ultimately, Lewis and Eliot discovered they had a great deal of common ground, and became friends.)

Practical Cats is a short volume (fewer than 50 pages), but that's typical of poetry collections. Unlike his more weighty poems, such as "Prufrock," "The Waste Lands," or "The Hollow Men," this is light verse, originally penned to amuse his godchildren. (Though perhaps the occasional classical allusion slips in—I wonder whether "The Naming of Cats," which reveals that cats have three different names, a common one, a dignified one, and a secret one, parodies the trinomen given to citizens of ancient Rome.)

Eliot does a wonderful job describing the personalities of cats, including their laziness (Jennyanydots, "The Old Gumbie Cat"), pickiness ("The Rum Tum Tugger"), and thievishness ("Mungojerrie and Rumpelteazer" and "Macavity: the Mystery Cat"). Other highlights include "Mr. Mistoffelees," who can do magic tricks; "Skimbleshanks: the Railway Cat," without whom the mail trains couldn't operate; and "The Pekes and the Pollicles," about a ruckus caused by rival dog factions. But you didn't pick this book up to read about a bunch of stupid dogs.

Famously, Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats is where British rock band Mungo Jerry got their name. It's too bad Mungo Jerry never set the poems to music. Someone really should. In the meantime, if you like light verse and cats, give it a read sometime.

How climate change answers everything

First off, let me say I have no opinion on the USMCA. I'm not an economist, so I don't know if ultimately it would turn out to be a good or a bad thing. I'll wait and see. That said, this article makes a great springboard for my own point:

Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) and other Democrats announced Thursday they would not support the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), citing the proposed deal's failure to address climate change.

"Despite the fact that it includes very good labor provisions, I am voting against USMCA because it does not address climate change, the greatest threat facing the planet," Schumer said in a statement.

[Full Story]

I like this approach. I like it so much, in fact, that I think the right should adopt it forthwith, and use it against any progressive objectives deemed ridiculous by the common-sense-based community. For example:

• Do you want to legalize more and later-term abortions? Or impose bubble zones around abortion clinics where free-speech rights do not exist? "I'm sorry, but your bill does not address climate change. I vote no."
• Do you think people ought to be subject to fines if they "misgender" or "deadname" transgender and so-called "non-binary" people, or refuse to use silly, made-up pronuns like "xir"? "Despite the fact that it includes good provisions, this legislation does not address climate change, the greatest threat facing the planet. I vote no."
• Perhaps you think we should legalize marijuana. "We have only ten years to save the planet from Climate Armageddon, and you want to increase carbon emissions by making it legal to set more stuff on fire? I vote no."

As far as I can tell, this approach has multiple positive effects: It uses the hysterical left's own tactics against them. It highlights the absurdity of both their social agenda and their climate hysteria. And who knows? Maybe something might actually (albeit accidentally) get done to reduce greenhouse gases and other pollution.