I was watching Muppets Season 3 last night, the Loretta Lynn episode (very meta, before meta was cool and then not cool and then cool again). For broadband: here's the best song of the ep on YouTube.

Anyway, Loretta's done a lot of living in her many years, I wondered if she even remembered appearing on the Muppets. That something so momentous as appearing on the Muppets could go forgotten signals a life well lived, in my opinion. So going through the official Mango Haiku oversharing box this morning I was pleased to remember a somewhat painful experience from my past (I had a sprained ankle). I made a brief appearance in the Chinese-made movie called (I think) "Young Monks of the Shaolin."

"Young Monks" was made in 1994, pre-digital.




I'm most comfortable in cultureas that don't worry overmuch about children carrying large knives.




This is the signature "young monk" move -- the two-fingered power lift (aka "bamboo rat with heartache eats bag of Oreos in the evening light.")





Myself and a small herd of foreigners charged the young monks, festooned in cameras, and picked them up, hugged them, and asked if we could buy one. The young monks, unaware of this, were mighty confused the first time we did it.




The movie was shot in a temple in Chengdu, Sichuan where they recently had  earthquake disaster.






This actress gathered her foreigners at the "Traffic Hotel" in Chungdu. I had just come back from hiking Tiger Leaping Gorge and wanted to rest. She got to me by saying "J'taime, j'taime", but if you got anywhere near her she would say "F**k you!"

There was a picture in my old photography book, circa mid-80's, that had a haunting image of a woman alone in a forest of aspens (or some kind of skinny, shadowy tree). I always liked that image -- it certainly has stuck with me. (I have forgotten the photographer or I would link to it.) I guess the feeling was one of making your human-way in a confusing, random natural world. Something like contemplating a riot of stars on a clear night. Anyway, whenever I happen to be in a bare, shadowy forest with a friend and a camera I try to re-create the feeling of the image. Here's my college friend in 1990 in the Kashgar Oasis of Xinjiang Province, China:

And here's Kristin and our friend in Wyoming eighteen years later at Veedawoo -- that's some mighty fine tree-holding.




If anyone knows the original photo, let me know!

I love a good facade -- so does the city of Louisville, KY. In fact, they just remove the buildings and keep the facades.

Let's face it Tippy was drunk most of his life. He was a stubborn, cold, round man with a grotesquely long orange nose. The only thing Tippy ever did was tilt. He drunkenly insisted he was tipping, not tilting, so we went along with him to avoid a scene. Tippy wasn't even supposed to be a 'he'. He was supposed to be 'Tipper,' a blond-coifed, rock music-fearing former second lady. Alas, that was not to be. Born to be a snow-lady, Tippy never got over the loss of his two rounded womanly bits in the first minutes of his life. According to Tipper's young creator the two rounded snow-pillows were crudely fashioned appendages that required a master sculptor with training in snow cleavage. Besides, a snowman is just easier to make.

Tippy stood in front of the house for four days, yelling and frantically waving to passers-by. It is unclear what was so important to the drunk snowman. Even after he lost three teeth and one eye, Tippy continued harassing cars, children, dogs (who treated him most cruelly by yellowing his base), even other snowmen across the street.

The end came overnight as the temperatures heated to 50 degrees and thunderstorms moved across the area. Though he was a hateful, agressive snowman he stands Ozymandias-like as a testament to the fleetingness of humankind's creations and a lesson in hubris to all who dare create men out of snow.

Tippy wore a foolish, drunken grin in good times and bad.




If you got close to Tippy, he would whisper in your ear and try to get you to buy him Night Train Express.

As a cunning linguist in training (constantly plagued by our rivals the Fellow Ratios over in the Math department), I listened with interest to Geoff Nunberg's story on Fresh Air yesterday. He was talking about the "Word of the Year." Webster's chose theirs (overshare), as did Oxford (hypermiling). Mr. Nunberg chose "Joe" as in "average Joe" and "Joe six-pack" as his most important word of the year. So we here at Mango Haiku checked with the office staff (consisting of two cats and a ball of lint) and decided that the word of the year is "arugula." Arugula is the new take-down for out of touch merlot-sipping kale-huffing wasabi-pea popping liberals like Geoff Nunberg (and the staff of Mango Haiku, excepting the ball of lint who is a Libertarian). Watch Jon Stewart comment on it. Like the "six-pack" for Joe, arugula can be joined with a name -- Annie perhaps? For example:

"I don't know about all the Annie Arugulas out there, but we Average Joe's don't like tax-and-spend socialist ideas like health care for children."

"NPR-totbag toting Annie Arugula may want gays to ruin her marriage, but we Joe Six-packs uphold the sanctity of 'traditional' marriage by stoning* our wives."

Arugula has just made its way into our previously iceberg lettuce chewing little suburb of Oak Park via hated arugula and berry tea peddler Trader Joe's. (Of course, it's located next to Borders.) Oak Park is being overrun with Annie Arugulas and Kyle Kales.

Liberal foodstuff of yesteryear: Carob instead of chocolate.
Liberal foodstuff of 2008: Arugula
Liberal foodstuff of 2009: Stevia

*(start at verse 13 for the stoning bit)

The arugula pic below is from this fine article.

Nervous? On edge? Could be blood impurities. Check out this ad from the January 1949 edition of that great Canadian magazine, "Fantastic Novels".

What does this have to do with Pohnpei? Click here for more.

Borders, my alma matter of wage slavery and wobblie organization, sent me a 20% off coupon, then 30%, and finally today a 40% off coupon -- any 'ol thing in the store could be mine for 60% of the list price. I got "Sin in the Second City" -- the answer to the question: what do you give a Lutheran minister for Christmas?

Check out the girl with the strange fish-like cat toy on her head. That's the way things are done in Kentucky.

I have resisted the urge to blog, being someone who does not have a single, quirky, obsessive passion. Also, I'm not a funky hometown press. I tried to blog once. I even set up my blog on Yahoo! My blog got nixed by central command. Yahoo! was of the impression that I am a machine. I wrote an e-mail to Yahoo! explaining that I am not a machine. Yahoo! did not reply to this e-mail. Ergo, I am a machine -- wait, no. I'm a cyborg without gender (thanks Donna Haraway, matriarch of feminist epistemology) -- or that part of me that is machine is that part which Yahoo! observes as machine and that part flesh and blood is my own imagining and, really, who has a tighter grip on reality: me or Yahoo!? (And how do you punctuate a question with Yahoo! at the end without seeming confused?!?!)

Below please see the image that haunted me through college (from the cover of Donna Haraway's book) Who can type so calmly with floppy skeleton-puma draped across their shoulders and the entire universe spinning fractally behind them?