Ravings of the Occasionally Opinionated

i'm a regular reader of the
himonkey web site, and turn to
it for monkey's delicious recipes
and snappy delivery style.
monkey cooks up a storm,
and i am as impressed with
how clean the terrycloth remains
as i am with the sumptuous
results of the cooking.

this morning, after perusing the
truffle recipe (chocolate, not fungus),
i made my way to the fruitcake ritual.
at the end is a link to the
"original story" about making fruitcake,
and while reading it... shock!
there are photos of monkey being
held by a human! uncropped photos
showing monkey to be a stuffed doll!
monkey's recipes and delivery, not to
mention photo cropping, are so good,
it had seemed a living being.
i was stunned into a sudden haiku:

cute little monkey
i had thought you were alive.
disillusionment!

after some deep sighing, also called
diaphragmatic breathing, and further
reflection in a hot shower,
i achieved a zen-like state of
understanding and wrote a
haiku of acceptance.

made of terrycloth,
what the heck did i expect?
stuffed dolls must be held.

acceptance is now mixing with sorrow
over the loss of innocent belief as
i write this, and i feel yet
another haiku coming on.

so disillusioned
after finding out the truth,
life sadly goes on.

mmmm, i wonder if monkey can
teach me how to make a pie.
yes!

Art
Listening to the ending of a particular piece of music, I wondered, "Was that good? Did that work?" I momentarily got the feeling that music is playing with sounds, and arranging them so that it seems pleasing. That's the same as my feelings about visual arts. But then I realized that music, being much more familiar to me than visual arts, doesn't usually seem like an experimental arrangement of sounds, hoping it works OK, but rather something that is known to be pleasing, or not.

With visual arts, I am groping in the dark -- is this good? How about this over here? Leave a little space or it will look too cluttered which will be no good. Hmmmm, how's that? Try a dab of this over there.

I suppose some people are more comfortable with visual art, and when painting, know quite well what to put where to present something pleasing, the same way a musician knows what sounds create the desired effect. Some people may be good at both, or neither.

It is only an encounter with unfamiliar art or music that causes us to grope for familiarity and wonder, "Is that any good? Does it work?"

Ben Franklin, Take That!
Many kids are, or at least all of my parents' kids were, tortured with some of the sayings of Benjamin Franklin. "A penny saved is a penny earned." Or, the one I hated the most, "Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise." Why my parents wanted me to go to bed so early is understandable now that I have children, but why they wanted to torture me by getting me up early remains a mystery. I very un-cleverly made up the saying, "Early to bed and early to rise makes a man weak, poor, and dumb." Even as a kid, I knew it was completely lacking in decent poetic meter. I'd miserably repeat this to myself when being sent to bed by my parents quoting good old Ben. I still think it when getting up at the crack of dawn to get my children off to school.

What I didn't know back then was the rules of logic! If A implies B, then the only other thing you know is that not B implies not A. It is incorrect to infer that B implies A, or that not A implies not B. If going to bed and arising early makes you healthy, wealthy, and wise, it does not logically follow that staying up late or sleeping in will prevent you from being healthy, wealthy, or wise. Nor does it follow that failing to be healthy, wealthy, or wise is caused by not going to bed early enough or sleeping in a bit too late. In fact, the only thing you can deduce from Ben's truism (note flagrant assumption there) is that if you are not healthy, wealthy, and wise, then you are not one who is early to bed and early to rise, which is not to imply that the latter caused the former.

So kids, remember your logic the next time your parents pull out the old Ben Franklin quotes. A penny spent can be either earned or unearned, so they have nothing to do with each other. An earned penny is not necessarily saved, but can be either saved or spent. However, an unearned penny cannot be saved, which sounds so stupid that we can conclude that Ben Franklin was mistaken on at least this one point.

I would also question the wisdom of anyone who regularly gets up too early while they are still sleepy. That can be unhealthy.

"Study: Alligators Dangerous No Matter How Drunk You Are"

That's the title of an article from The Onion that someone has hanging on the wall where I work. I stop to read it occasionally. The gist of the study is that some people think that after drinking a lot, they can take on an alligator, but that, in fact, the alligator seems unaffected by the person's alcohol consumption. But hey, you should follow that link and read it for yourself. An alligator is no pussycat, like say, a black bear. The Onion finds great, irrefutable research for their reported studies. I wish I could think of stuff like that and write for The Onion. How about this one? "Stingrays Dangerous No Matter How Good an Outdoorsman You Are." Oh, that wouldn't be funny, would it?