How Santa Knows IF you’ve Been Good

Santa Bag

(Supposedly written for and sung at a U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Legal Counsel, Christmas party during the Carter Administration.) –Eugene Volokh, UCLA Law

Sung to the tune of…

"Santa Claus is Coming to Town"

You better watch out,
You better not cry,
You better not pout,
I’m telling you why,
Santa Claus is tapping,
Your phone.

He’s buggin your room,
He’s reading your mail,
He’s keeping a file
And runnin a tail
Santa Claus is tapping
Your phone

He hears you in the bedroom
Surveills you out of doors
And if that doesn’t get the goods
Then he’ll use provocateurs.

So you mustn’t assume
That you are secure
On Christmas Eve
He’ll kick in your door
Santa Claus is tapping
Your phone

Continue ReadingHow Santa Knows IF you’ve Been Good

Democracy by Langston Hughes

Democracy will not come
Today, this year
Nor ever
Through compromise and fear.
I have as much right
As the other fellow has
To stand
On my two feet
And own the land.
I tire so of hearing people say,
Let things take their course.
Tomorrow is another day.
I do not need my freedom when I’m dead.
I cannot live on tomorrow’s bread.
Freedom
Is a strong seed
Planted
In a great need.
I live here, too.
I want freedom
Just as you.

Continue ReadingDemocracy by Langston Hughes

To Think That I Saw Him On Christopher Street

Author Unknown

One day I was bored, I had nothing to do,
With nothing to do, you’d be bored. Wouldn’t You?
So I sat by my window and feeling so sad,
Thought, "Maybe I’ll answer a personal ad"

But nothing delighted me, no little gems
And why doesn’t anyone like fats or fems?
So I left my apartment to find someone sweet
And jumped on the subway to Christopher Street

And, once I got down there, I went to a bar.
I don’t really drink — but that’s where men are!
I saw guys who were hot, and guys who were not,
I saw guys drinking bourbon, at four bucks a shot

There were men wearing boots and men wearing sandals
Men who were buff and men with love handles
I saw guys wearing suede from their head to their toe
And a couple of queens who had let themselves go!

Then one little jerk just gave me such attitude
That I told this young fellow, "I think that you’re rude!
What makes you think that you’re such a big deal?"
Then I snapped him three times and I turned on my heel

Out on the street, I looked to and fro
I was looking for love but had nowhere to go
But then from a distance I heard such a roar
Id never heard anything like it before!

Then down the street came the gay pride parade
"With all of these guys I’m just bound to get laid!"
Then a huge cheer thundered up from the crowd
Then the noise of the engines. My God, they were loud!

It was everyone’s favorite, the Dykes on the Bikes!!
Then came a new group — the Bikes on the Dykes!!!
These gals were bigger and these gals were bolder!
They carried their vehicles over their shoulders!

And on top of these bikes that were carried by dykes,
Were men who had recently come from the Spike
They had rings through their noses and rings through their ears
Rings through their toes-es and rings through their rears

But my favorite had only one ring through his ear
And up above that, through his head went a spear!!
And on top of this guy was a man with tattoos
Of animals usually spotted in zoos

He had a tat-two, a tat-three, a tat-four
Had his shoulders been wider he would have had more!
On his chest were his boyfriends from current to ex
They called him the man with the rolodex pecs!

His deltoids were pumped and his lats were so wide
To get down the street he must turn to one side
And next to this guy was a man with great abs
Who works on the weekends all dressed up as Babs

And up on their shoulder were singers in poses
Who sang for us "Everything’s Coming Up Roses"
They sang songs that were famous and songs that were rarer
They kicked up their heels just like Chita Rivera!

And they carried these fellows all dressed up as nuns
Who lifted their habits and showed us their buns!
And up on the nuns, at least twelve stories high
Was a mountain of men rising into the sky

First there were "chubbies" the guys who were fat
Balancing "chasers" who like them like that
There were gays from the Bronx, Staten Island and Queens
Gays from the Army and from the Marines

I saw gays from Hawaii and gays from Formosa
I saw gays from Australia and gays who lived closer
And way up in the clouds was an army of Greeks
Who are often drawn naked upon their antiques

There were dozens of daddies, the bottoms and tops
And hundreds of owners of novelty shops
And the daddies wore leather! One guy was a WOW

I even saw one fellow wearing a cow

And speaking of animals, who would have thunk
I saw Horton who sported a ring through his trunk!
And Horton held hands with that nasty Old Grinch
(Well, you’d be mean too if you had only an inch!)

And on top of them all was the Cat in the Hat
Smooching in public with Felix the Cat!!
Then all of a sudden the traffic was backed up
‘Cause down on the pavement sat marchers from ACT UP!!!

Then suddenly somebody called out my name
His voice was more macho than Lucy’s in Mame
It was Bruno who played on the old football team
I knew him in high school! This guy was my dream!

I told him, "Oh Bruno, I am quite in shock.
In high school I always thought you as jock!"
And Bruno just smiled as he took off his shirt
And he said "Mary, please!" as he dished out the dirt

"You ain’t seen nothing. Just wait till you hear!
I’m not the only one from our school who is queer
Remember Al Levy? Remember Bill James?
They’re both on my team, cause we’re in the Gay Games!

Remember Joe Johnson? He was such a geek!
Take a look at him now. He pumps five days a week!
And Marilyn Solkow, the Homecoming Queen,
Recently married a gal named Eileen"

Now it’s hard to remember a word that he said
Cause all I could think of was us two in bed
And just when I thought I had no chance at all
He asked for my number and told me he’d call

A year later we’re dating! We’re really an item
My friends are all jealous. I know how to sight ’em
And I really love Bruno, so hunky and sweet
And to think that I met him on Christopher Street!

Continue ReadingTo Think That I Saw Him On Christopher Street

‘Twas the Night Before Christmas: Internet Version

Christmas Sweater

Author Unknown

‘Twas the night before Christmas, and throughout the net,
not a modem was chirping; (It wasn’t mail-hour yet).
The peripherals down and backed up with care,
In hopes that St. Echo soon would be there.

The grad students home all snug in their beds,
with hi-res dreams abuzz in their heads.
We Sysops lounged by the terminal’s glow,
With occasional bursts of RF snow.

When from the hard drives there came such a clatter,
To the consoles we sprang to see what was the matter.
The monitor cleared, then flashed red and green,
as we hunched in our chairs around the machine.

When what to our wondering eyes should appear,
but VGA graphics of a sleigh and reindeer,
with a bitmapped driver, a lively old fellow,
I knew right away it must be St. Echo.

Faster than mnp his packets they came,
and he whistled and shouted as he called them by name:
"Now, Arpa! now, Bitnet! now, Opus and D-Comm!
On, CC:Mail and Fido and SEAdog and TComm!
Over Watts and Pursuit, via long-distance call,
Now hack away, hack away, hack away all!

As fast as the switching that sends them about,
When they meet with a BUSY, change to "host route",
So onto the mailer, and protocol sync,
when the RD and SD lights ceased to blink.
There off the screen, I saw a reflection,
and turned ’round to look in the other direction.

Right there behind us, amidst the tech-toys,
Had appeared St. Echo, with not even a noise.
Wearing a grimy red jumpsuit from his feet to his beard,
None but a techie could look that weird.
Odd bits of surplus hung out of his sack,
that bulged at odd angles slung over his back.

His eyes did .twinkle, though somewhat bleary,
from staring at monitors, yet still quite merry.
the corners of his mouth were turned up in a ,
and a scraggly grey beard hung down from his chin.
A ‘486 portable in his left hand was held,
and a cellular modem was strapped to his belt.

I d to see him, this overweight gnome,
he settled down by the CP, as if it ’twere home.
A flip of the toggles, and a tug on his beard,
soon showed us that he was not to be feared.

He spoke not a word, but went straight to work,
filled all empty sockets, then with a swift jerk,
replaced a few boards inside the machine,
turned it back on and checked it out clean.

The screen cleared once more, flashed green and red,
as he faded from sight he (wave)d and said;
"Keep the net singing, and I’ll always be near,
Merry Christmas to all, and a Happy New Year!"

Continue Reading‘Twas the Night Before Christmas: Internet Version

The Net Before Christmas

by Jim Trudeau & Jay Trudeau (1991)

‘Twas the night before Christmas and all through the nets
Not a mousie was stirring, not even the pets.
The floppies were stacked by the modem with care
In hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there.

The files were nestled all snug in a folder
The screen saver turned on, the weather was colder.
And leaving the keyboard along with my mouse
I turned from the screen to the rest of the house.

Continue ReadingThe Net Before Christmas

‘Twas The Night Before Techmas

Snowman

‘Twas the nocturnal segment of the diurnal period preceding the annual Yuletide celebration, and throughout our place of residence, kinetic activity was not in evidence among the possessors of this potential, including that species of domestic rodent known as Mus musculus. Hosiery was meticulously suspended from the forward edge of the wood burning caloric apparatus, pursuant to our anticipatory pleasure regarding an imminent visitation from an eccentric philanthropist among whose folkloric appellations is the honorific title of St. Nicholas. The prepubescent siblings, comfortably ensconced in their respective accommodations of repose, were experiencing subconscious visual hallucinations of variegated fruit confections moving rhythmically through their cerebrums.

My conjugal partner and I, attired in our nocturnal head coverings, were about to take slumberous advantage of the hibernal darkness when upon the avenaceous exterior portion of the grounds there ascended such a cacophony of dissonance that I felt compelled to arise with alacrity from my place of repose for the purpose of ascertaining the precise source thereof.

Hastening to the casement, I forthwith opened the barriers sealing this fenestration, noting thereupon that the lunar brilliance without, reflected as it was on the surface of a recent crystalline precipitation, might be said to rival that of the solar meridian itself – thus permitting my incredulous optical sensory organs to behold a miniature airborne runnered conveyance drawn by eight diminutive specimens of the genus Rangifer, piloted by a minuscule, aged chauffeur so ebullient and nimble that it became instantly apparent to me that he was indeed our anticipated caller.

With his ungulate motive power travelling at what may possibly have been more vertiginous velocity than patriotic alar predators, he vociferated loudly, expelled breath musically through contracted labia, and addressed each of the octet by his or her respective cognomen – "Now Dasher, now Dancer…" et al. – guiding them to the uppermost exterior level of our abode, through which structure I could readily distinguish the concatenations of each of the 32 cloven pedal extremities. As I retracted my cranium from its erstwhile location, and was performing a 180-degree pivot, our distinguished visitant achieved – with utmost celerity and via a downward leap – entry by way of the smoke passage.

He was clad entirely in animal pelts soiled by the ebony residue from oxidations of carboniferous fuels which had accumulated on the walls thereof. His resemblance to a street vendor I attributed largely to the plethora of assorted playthings which he bore dorsally in a commodious cloth receptacle. His orbs were scintillant with reflected luminosity, while his submaxillary dermal indentations gave every evidence of engaging amiability. The capillaries of his malar regions and nasal appurtenance were engorged with blood which suffused the subcutaneous layers, the former approximating the coloration of Albion’s floral emblem, the latter that of the Prunus avium, or sweet cherry. His amusing sub- and supralabials resembled nothing so much as a common loop knot, and their ambient hirsute facial adornment appeared like small, tabular and columnar crystals of frozen water.

Clenched firmly between his incisors was a smoking piece whose grey fumes, forming a tenuous ellipse about his occiput, were suggestive of a decorative seasonal circlet of holly. His visage was wider than it was high, and when he waxed audibly mirthful, his corpulent abdominal region undulated in the manner of impectinated fruit syrup in a hemispherical container. He was, in short, neither more nor less than an obese, jocund, multigenarian gnome, the optical perception of whom rendered me visibly frolicsome despite every effort to refrain from so being. By rapidly lowering and then elevating one eyelid and rotating his head slightly to one side, he indicated that trepidation on my part was groundless.

Without utterance and with dispatch, he commenced filling the aforementioned appended hosiery with various of the aforementioned articles of merchandise extracted from his aforementioned previously dorsally transported cloth receptacle. Upon completion of this task, he executed an abrupt about- face, placed a single manual digit in lateral juxtaposition to his olfactory organ, inclined his cranium forward in a gesture of leave-taking, and forthwith effected his egress by renegotiating (in reverse) the smoke passage.

He then propelled himself in a short vector onto his conveyance, directed a musical expulsion of air through his contracted oral sphincter to the antlered quadrupeds of burden, and proceeded to soar aloft in a movement hitherto observable chiefly among the seed-bearing portions of a common weed. But I overheard his parting exclamation, audible immediately prior to his vehiculation beyond the limits of visibility: "Ecstatic Yuletide to the planetary constituency, and to that self same assemblage, my sincerest wishes for a salubriously beneficial and gratifyingly pleasurable period between sunset and dawn."

Continue Reading‘Twas The Night Before Techmas

Politically Correct Santa

Author Unknown

‘Twas the night before Christmas and Santa’s a wreck…
How to live in a world that’s politically correct?

His workers no longer would answer to "Elves",
"Vertically Challenged" they were calling themselves.

And labor conditions at the north pole
Were alleged by the union to stifle the soul.

Continue ReadingPolitically Correct Santa

The Second Coming — W. B Yeats

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From the Book: The Collected Poems of William Butler Yeats

TURNING and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.

The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

gyre n.
1. A circular or spiral form; a vortex: “rain swirling the night into tunnels and gyres” (Anthony Hyde).
2. A circular or spiral motion, especially a circular ocean current.

“The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity. ”

That sounds familiar.

(2014 Update: I seem to have posted this poem twice. I must have been REALLY passionate about it.)

Continue ReadingThe Second Coming — W. B Yeats

Invictus

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William Ernest Henley

Timothy McVeigh was a complete nutjob, and what he did was horrifying and wrong. It makes me furious that he took this poem as his "final words" before execution, because he’s succeeded at twisting the meaning of it completely and making something ugly out of a beautiful idea. But then what can you expect from a guy who wouldn’t know logic and complexity of thought if it walked up and bit him on the ass?

American FlagIt’s nice that my web site has received hundreds of thousands of hits because of this poem, but if you’re looking for right-wing conspiracy theories and paranoia, don’t look for them here; I believe in logic, reason and government of the people, by the people and for the people. God Bless the USA.

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Dr. Seuss Explains Computers

Author Unknown

If a packet hits a pocket on a socket on a port,
and the bus is interrupted as a very last resort,
and the address of the memory makes your floppy disk abort,
then the socket packet pocket has an error to report.

If your cursor finds a menu item followed by a dash,
and the double-clicking icon puts your window in the trash,
and your data is corrupted ’cause the index doesn’t hash,
then your situation’s hopeless and your system’s gonna crash!

If the label on the cable on the table at your house,
says the network is connected to the button on your mouse,
but your packets want to tunnel on another protocol,
that’s repeatedly rejected by the printer down the hall,
and your screen is all distorted by the side effects of gauss,
so your icons in the window are as wavy as a souse,
then you may as well reboot and go out with a bang,
’cause as sure as I’m a poet, the sucker’s gonna hang!

When the copy of your floppy’s getting sloppy on the disk,
and the microcode instructions cause unnecessary risk,
then you have to flash your memory and you’ll want to RAM your ROM. |
Quickly turn off the computer, and be sure to tell your mom.

Continue ReadingDr. Seuss Explains Computers