The CEO of my mortgage company is named Middleman
My bank manager back in Berkeley was named Rich
I pay due penance to Caesar; I know my place
Naming is destiny, needless to say,

...

My NHS dentist when I lived in England was named Pull
Another in the same practice was named Chop
I decided to opt out and my teeth duly suffered
A personal choice, perhaps, to forego what was on offer
But also a comment on English dentistry
For it was undeniable; naming is destiny

...

I'll admit I always fall for it, heck, the marketeers rely on it
Despite knowing that it's likely a raw deal and overstated
There I go again, giving the benefit of the doubt to hucksters
Seduced by that fine label, the new formula
New and improved they say, and it was fitting
Expect buyer's remorse because naming is destiny

...

That they call it "credit card" is quite a tell
When it's a gateway drug into a debtor's hell
Truth in advertising or anchored expectations?
The verb credit has positive associations
Honor and achievement that enable the crucial leap of faith
And just, months later, you're ruing your mistake
Worse, you only have yourself to blame
In truth, a credit card is a confidence game
One you played and failed miserably
You plain forgot that naming is destiny

Naming is Destiny, a playlist

A soundtrack for this note (spotify)

• Don't believe the hype by Public Enemy
• My Name Is by Eminem
• Sweet Lies by Beres Hammond
• What's My Name by Prince
• Ain't My Type of Hype by Full Force

File under: humour, life, culture, observation, perception, strategy, Small Things, Observers are worried, poetry, toli

Writing log: July 1, 2022

It is said, in the good books, that Nimrod was a tyrant
That, full of himself, he rose against God's representative
Abraham in the Jewish tradition, Ibrahim in the Moslem
Further, he decided to challenge God himself
And ordered that the Tower of Babel be constructed
Every schoolchild knows what happened to that project
Archaeology would leave no visible trace in its record
Rather it was the linguists who were rewarded by his efforts

His next gambit was a further attempt to contact the heavens
He mounted in an eagle-drawn chariot to reach the sky
Legend has it that, for his troubles, a mosquito was dispatched
(In some Sephardic traditions, the buzzing tormentor was a gnat)
The mosquito would drive him crazy and altogether mad
One thousand years, this punishment was said to last
In some renderings, it is his entire army that was said to be afflicted
But, in most, the gods were specific: Nimrod was the only one targeted

Another scribe recounts when he threw Abraham into a bonfire
Only to have the latter shielded by the angel Gabriel
Thus saved from the burning coals, Abraham would walk out triumphant
While his antagonist was left punished with unbearable sounds inside his head

Cautionary tales abound on this man who paints a stark figure
The arrogance of the king, who lived surrounded by wooden idols
The object lesson, the temerity of God's would-be rival

Thus it was that proud Nimrod was brought low
Tormented as we've seen by a mere mosquito
Buzzing in his mind for a thousand years
So troubled that he would order some of his soldiers
To strike him upon his head for good measure
Taking turns to administer the beatings and customary slaps
Many generations would be raised to this curious soundtrack

To his way of thinking, far better a concussion
Than this continued auditory hallucination
That for his temerity, the gods had offered this baleful choice
The quality of suffering heavy blows weighed against piercing insect voices

There remains considerable controversy among scholars
About the subsequent course of events for the stories peter out
For some historians, the lack of further detail is to be expected
To their thinking, the gods's action spoke for itself,
Mankind would draw the obvious conclusion
The moderns love Nimrod's stories as striking illustrations,
Vivid manifestations even, of public health lessons
The recipe of unbounded hubris and believing that one was invincible
Only to be brought low by the invocation of the mosquito principle

Brought Low, a playlist

A soundtrack for this note (spotify version)

• Brought Low by Benjamin Muñiz Matlack
• Down with the King by RUN DMC
• Down by Amel Larrieux
• Nimrod by Royal Philharmonic Orchestra
• Pride and Vanity by Ohio Players
• Mosquito by The G.G. All Stars

File under: myth, religion, folktale, legend, culture, observation, perception, history, hubris, huhudious, humour, poetry, Observers are worried, toli

Writing log: July 1, 2022

The great man, Master of the Royal Mint,
Was possessed by a seminal lunacy
Much to his chagrin, he lost most of his fortune in the damn'd South Sea
After first doubling his money, he became infected with animal spirits
The madness of the crowds, he'd plain forgotten the lesson of the tulips

He doubled down repeatedly,
Fully taken in with the heights of delusion
Plain greed overtook the age's premier scientist,
A whiff of collective hubris
For judgment goes missing in action when in the throes of a mania
The most dubious schemes seem to garner a golden sheen of hysteria

The erstwhile Warden of the Mint,
Who recoined the very fabric of the state
Someone so well versed in finance,
Considered the ultimate sophisticate
Days consulting on the search for Longitude,
Leading the Royal Society
A large retinue of servants,
Evenings entertaining visiting dignitaries

Enter the alchemists, the boosters, the miscreants and the storytellers
So compelling were their promises, there was no doubt returns would be stellar
Well he lost his shirt when the bubble popped,
along with many other notables
History would be an unforgiving judge,
indeed his dismay was ever quotable

That he poured half of his net worth into soon to be worthless stock
To great amusement in the House of Commons and the many press reports
A lesson for the ages this episode,
an alternative reading of Newton's Principle

"I can calculate the motions of the heavenly bodies, but not the madness of people."

After reading

• Isaac Newton and the perils of the financial South Sea
• The Damn'd South Sea

See also: A Seminal Lunacy

A Seminal Lunacy, a playlist

A soundtrack for this note (spotify version)

• Opportunities (Let's Make Lots of Money) by Pet Shop Boys
• I'm a Greedy Man by James Brown
• Ez Come Ez Go (What goes up must come down) by Wreckx-N-Effect
• I Wanna be Rich by Calloway
• The Boy in the Bubble by Paul Simon
• Fool's Paradise by Meli'sa Morgan
• Money, Money, Money by ABBA
• Caught Up by Usher
• Easy Come, Easy Go by Steve Lawrence
• Greed by Bill Evans
• It's Going Down by Ralph Tresvant
• Easy Come, Easy Go Blues by Bessie Smith
• Shut Em Down (Pete Rock mix) by Public Enemy

...

Timing is everything
Observers are worried


File under: humour, bubble, hatchet job, economics, finance, panic, credit, depression, history, Newton, culture, observation, perception, greed, hubris, poetry, Observers are orried, toli

Writing log. June 21, 2022

It was quite uncanny, the mailman had pulled up in his truck at the curbside
I walked out, for want of a change, to pick up the day's mail
The neighbor must have had the same idea. We walked in parallel
There were head nods but, that morning, we skipped the usual pleasantries
For we were both wearing N-95 masks, the ones you use in extremis
The ones that, by design, require some effort to take off
It didn't need to be said, the same visitor had breached our walls
A quick glance at each other, solidarity and a touch of recognition
Stoic and grim-faced, we turned and walked back in our houses

...

They call it a breakthrough, a breach of your body's fortified defenses
For the weapons on hand were finely targeted at the ancestral strain
And new variants, equipped with modified spikes, could maneuver around
What with waning effectiveness, the natural decay of protection would obtain
It was said that the severity and intensity of the attack would be reduced
Because of the multiple layers that, once activated, would come into play
Generalists, those memory cells that would serve to root out the scourge
Even when the antibody specialists, those shock troops were overwhelmed
Vaccines were engineered in record time, in many ways it was a miracle
To guard against severe disease and death, for that we must be thankful
Still, so many bought the promise of a panacea in a fit of wishful thinking
That they ignored all other measures leaving us prone to breakthrough infections

...

Did I give it to you? Will I die?
Heartbreaking that his first thought was whether he'd infected you
No need for guilt, young man, you'll pull through
It's nobody's fault but mine, my son
Went against my better judgment, it was a lapse
We tried to keep you safe but, at length, we missed
The gods would dispose of human vanity
We are challenged and the future may be perilous
But we trust also that the gods have mercy
So I'm going to snuggle up and give you a hug
But, first things first, let's find us some masks

Breakthrough, a playlist

A soundtrack for this note. (spotify version)

• There it is by James Brown
• Here it is! by Alan Toussaint
• There it is by Shalamar
• Overcome by Tricky
• Nobody's fault but mine by Nina Simone
• There it is by Barry White
• Breakthrough by JazzyFatNastees
• There it is by Tyrone Davis

After Omicron BA.2.75 (Centaurus)

This note is part of a series: In a covidious time

File under: coronavirus, pandemic, disease, culture, observation, health, perception, life, covidious, poetry, toli

Writing log. June 21, 2022

It was the microwave situation when it came down to it
It was her way with the microwave that really got to him
She simply couldn't bring herself to press the stop button
Preferring instead, as the timer counted down, to pull the door open

She had the puzzling but unerring habit
Of interrupting the microwave's operation
With just a few seconds to spare on the digital timer
0:02 or, more typically, 0:03 seconds, unblinking
Stark numbers would stare at you from the control panel

He grew increasingly infuriated at the countdown idiosyncrasy
Destabilized, as he was, by the tension of those last remaining seconds
Of late, he noticed that she had even taken to leaving the display stuck at 0:01
Virtuosity in her timing that upped the ante of dismay

Why leave just a few seconds on the clock? It made no sense
Did she really need to heat things up for 57 seconds?
Why not wait for the satisfaction of the final beeps?
Defrost for 28 instead of 30 seconds? What was her issue?
Was it an aversion to hearing the beeping microwave?
An aural infirmity or a baroque superstition?

She never said anything about it, ignorance was bliss
It's the small things that get to you, that you start to notice
The way someone squeezes the toothpaste tube, all those things
But the microwave situation was, quite simply, confounding
The tension of those last few seconds that left you hanging

Still, love is blindness, he decided to take it as an omen
A saving grace, this eccentricity of never pressing the stop button
He made his peace with the strange legacy of those three seconds
Comforted that it would always be around midnight in their kitchen

Three Seconds, a playlist

A soundtrack for this note. (spotify version)

• Three Seconds by Oliver Nelson
• Hanging on a String by Loose Ends
• Never Stop by Brand New Heavies
• Digital Display by Ready for the World
• The Control Panel by Richard Yost
• Microwave Blues by Ralph Lalama
• Clocks by Coldplay
• A Few Seconds by Loiseau
• Just a Little Bit Longer by Maxi Priest
• 'Round Midnight by Thelonious Monk
• Things That Annoy Me A Bit by Scott Sandwich
  Concluding with a spoken word piece to destabilize things

[Update]

Apparently some even see this deviance as a game these days

File under: life, Small Things, culture, observation, humour, perception, relationships, poetry, toli

Writing log. June 17, 2022

The ancients observed that reversals were, in many ways, as important
As the victories their communities would accrue in the course of affairs
It would become their practice to find a way to commemorate the former
Even as even the most minor triumphs were what tended to be celebrated

They recognized, however, that it is hard to resist the temptation of the salutary
When the alternative prospect is of encumbering the mind with the unpleasant
After a long consultation with the gods, they devised a solution
The mist of memory became a safe haven

The contours of this terrain was replete with caveats
Overstuffed caves and secret chambers of detailed recall
Next to retreats to escape hatches of situational amnesia
Memory islands were the conflicted legacy of mankind

Too acute a remembrance and one is inhibited
For, if vivid and at the forefront of the mind, a memory can surely blind
Too raw a reminder of past hurt, and decision making would be tentative
They found that sometimes memories were debilitating and that forgetting was best

A fine balance was needed, however, to navigate this fraught life
For, on other occasions, the reverse would be summoned
In many perilous moments, prompt recall can be of the essence
And, even without urgency, precise action can be preferable to a blank slate

The moderns - we should not begrudge them, would now speak of hormones
And sundry glands and secretions that encode our instinctive responses
Yet the ancients would maintain that these textures of ancestral memory
Are merely the rivers that course through nature's memory islands

Memory Islands, a playlist

A soundtrack for this note (spotify version)

• Do You Remember by Jill Scott
• Forget Me Nots by Patrice Rushen
• It's Easy to Remember by Billie Holiday
• Don't You (Forget about Me) by Simple Minds
• I Remember When by Stan Getz
• Did I Remember by Billie Holiday
• Remember When by Ronny Jordan

See previously: Decision to Forget. Cultural memory is my enduring theme.

File under: decisions, memory, culture, observation, strategy, perception, Buyer's Remorse, Observers are worried, poetry, toli

Writing log. June 9, 2022