On Hearts and Minds

Lamb's and veal brains are pale pink and delicate.

Lamb’s heart is the most tender and lightest in flavor.
Pig’s heart is larger and slightly coarser;
Beef or ox heart is big, but not very tender.
All need long, slow cooking and careful preparation.

Chicken hearts are very small

Source

What I like about this poem, taken from the offal section of a coffee table book about food, it the way its language stands at the crossroads of ingestion and desire, tallying up the few knowable landmarks in the terra incognita of consumption. In food and in love, the author suggests, there is no telling what will attract; all the advice one can give is a description of how to find and prepare each heart. Some will choose the tender brain of the lamb, and those who do must invest patient attention; some will try the hearts of chickens, no matter that they've been warned.

Jokes Are Poems, Too

Well, do you know the one about the man who fell off the cliff? And on the way down, he happened to grab on to a very thin branch in the mountainside. Do you know this one — about praying to God because there was nobody else around? [Laughs]

See, I've already threatened you. [Laughs]

So this guy is finally praying to God. He says, "Please, God, help me out here. Tell me what I should do." And God says, "Hello, my son. I will help you. Just let go of the branch and I will see that you are safe." And the man cries out, "Isn't there anybody else up there I can talk to?" [Laughs]

See how that works? Did you see that? I threatened you.

(from: McSweeney's, interview begins here.)

RIP Kurt Vonnegut, who told some pretty good jokes and made some pretty smart threats.

Can't Buy Me Bulbs

Am I the only one who loves to read catalogs? Evidently not. From the Morning News, a lovely essay on the language of seed catalogs by Jessica Francis Kane, perfect for a sunny-but-still-cold (sort of) morning in April, when I am lonely for the smell of broken ground. Luckily, she brings it around to books, which I have plenty of:

For a scarlet beauty called the Prince of Austria: “It’s one of history’s most fragrant tulips (violets? orange blossoms?), and on a sunny day it will draw you across the garden.”

I like that poetic parenthetical, reaching yet failing to define the scent. Would that book publishers’ catalogs were sometimes so honest and vague. For the next wunderkind’s debut: “It’s one of the decade’s most forceful novels (sledge hammer? Norman Mailer?), and if you leave it open on your nightstand it will draw you a mongoose.”

Read the whole thing here.

On Globalization

Tom Jones' enduring popularity
Bonded to the sari loom
Scots oil worker held in NigeriaFacing Glastonbury ticket torture
UK man released from
Guantanamo

Source

One of the marvelous things about Britain having recently owned so very much of the world is that all news is local news. Just like your local TV news hour, the BBC shifts without warning or transition from the grave to the absurd -- you can almost hear the sudden changes in the voice of the anchor reading from the teleprompter, varying pitch and tempo midsentence, like a calliope cranking up and winding down.

I find this particular list of the top 5 most emailed stories (at that particular moment, which is why the link is to a screenshot instead of the original website) satisfying from a technical point of view. The lines may be read as separate thoughts or combined to form sentences, such as:

Tom Jones' enduring popularity bonded to the sari loom.

and

Facing Glastonbury ticket torture, UK man released from Guantanamo.

and so forth, as if a comment on the interconnectedness of life in an era where ideas cover continents in an instant. There is a real cleverness to the combinations, for is the popularity of Tom Jones (or any other entertainer) not dependent on a supply of cheap imported goods, which gives his fans the leisure to appreciate him? And by accepting the role of citizen rather than revolutionary, do we trade Guantanamo for a bureaucratic gilded cage?

On Reasons

The person can drink sake for
the following five reasons.
First of all, for the national
holiday. Moreover, it fills
with the nectar. Finally, for
reasons. Next, to heal the
dryness of the place. After
that, to refuse the future.

source

While I am amused, in a 4th-grade way, by the shapes English takes on in the hands of people armed with dictionaries but without any knowledge of idiom or understanding of syntax, I am not sure that 4th-grade part of me isn't a bit mean. After all, my [insert language other than English here] is for crap. Even my Pig Latin is rusty, um, usty-ray.

On the other hand, is it right to ignore the work of non-native speakers of English entirely? What of Tom Stoppard? Could a native English-speaker have come up with "There's no need to use language, that's what I always say"? I can't find an online version of Salman Rushdie's essay "Commonwealth Literature Does Not Exist", but I am considering having it printed in religious tract size to force on people who use the word "authentic". A bit of it here:

What seems to be happening is that those people who were once colonized by the language are now rapidly remaking it, domesticating it, becoming more and more relaxed about the way they use it -- assisted by the English language's enormous flexibility and size, they are carving out large territories for themselves within its frontiers.

and

If history creates complexities, let us not try to simplify them.

[note to nit-pickers: he's talking not only about British political colonization but also American cultural hegemony, so Japan counts.]

With all that in mind, this sign -- which is not a clumsy chopstick-wrapper translation, but an ad intended to be printed in English -- has such music in it that it would be unfair to exclude it simply because it was written in Japan. I like it as a double-feature with this e.e. cummings.

On The American Agricultural Ideal

Georgia Fire Ants!

They were big and aggressive. They died soon too.

I threw away the farm a few weeks ago.

source

It's difficult to explain how I came to be reading Amazon customer reviews for Uncle Milton's Ant Farm. Sometimes these things just happen.

And sometimes, on the third page of variously cloying and bloodthirsty (and sometimes just weird) comments, the history of America appears, condensed and perfect.

"Georgia Fire Ants" recapitulates the beginning, middle, and end of the Jeffersonian dream of a farming utopia.

The first line throbs with manifest destiny, American Exceptionalism, all the tumescence of a new nation.

Line 2: loss of innocence. Inevitable conflict and shocking revelations of vulnerability: the Civil War, Sherman's burning of Atlanta, Manzanar, Vietnam.

Line 3: "I threw away the farm" -- as we have thrown away Jefferson's dream of a nation of small farmers in favor of our current nation of shoppers -- "a few weeks ago". The final, Eliot-esque touch. The dream dies and is denied even a funeral; the obituary appears too late to send flowers.