Comedians, clever comedians, are not only articulate, but are incredibly smart people. I am blessed to have friends who are smart so they’re also very articulate and very funny.
I recently posted a whiny complaint on one of my bestest’s wall how the rainy season in Japan has prevented me from running for the past two weeks but has encouraged me to stay home and eat anko-filled pastries instead. As a reply she wrote this haiku:
rain traps me inside
scarfing down anko pastries
two weeks since I ran
(I love her. She read this:
spring is passing by!
…birds are weeping and the eyes
of fish fill with tears
yuku haru ya
tori naki uo no
me wa namida
- The Narrow Road to Oku – Basho (1689)
And her initial response is to say, “[...] Is this just some elegant way of expressing the fact that everything gets f*cking DRENCHED during the rainy season?” LOVE HER!)
Then another friend of mine saw the pastry haiku and took it up another notch and replied with a 5-7-5-7-7 haiku rendition of the above, but in Japanese. Here it is in romaji:
Ame furite
Uchi yadoru koto
2 shuukan
Soto hashirezuni
Anpann shokusu
Today a friend of mine jokingly mentioned how he would love to write Horton Hears a Who … and a Zombie, but fears the lawyers who will come knocking on his door anxious to sue. This began a tirade of mash-up suggestions like Cat in the Hat: Vampire Hunter; One Fish, Two Fish and Sea Serpents; and Green Eggs and Ham and Zombies. etc.
My suggestion was Yertle the Turtle meets Bobby the Zombie. I wrote the following example:
“And today the Great Yertle, that Marvelous he
met Bobby the Zombie, who hung from a tree.He hung limply, swung swiftly with arms full of dread.
No wait! Not dread, just a big rotten head.”
And look, I even wrote it in anapestic tetrameter just like Seuss.
Nerd out!
Not to be anti-J. or anything (’cause I’m not) but since it seems I’ve comfortably settled into the role of giving the J. a gentle “roast” every now and then, I’ll just continue with what I was going to say.
(It’s like, the J. as depicted in the Savage Muse blog is an American Idol contestant, and I’m Simon. Think of it that way.)
Here is a Seuss-inspired poem copied verbatim out of some correspondence I wrote while in the J.:
I do not like it here or there
I do not like it anywhere
I don’t like teaching in Japan
I do not like it, Sam-I-am
My school was a very troubled one.
In other news, there does indeed exist a collaborative art gallery (exhibited on *post its*!) on the wall of the laundry room of Flow YYoga. Very soon I shall break my photographic silence and post photos as evidence.
Wondering if she should resurrect her blog out of the ashes,
Murasaki, aka. Her Partial Gimpiness
Furthermore, reading over this entry one more time, it’s like NOTHING has changed since university.
(Thinking of Basho set to contemporary commercial jingles with a choreographed dance; plots to perform tea ceremony – except prepping BEET SOUP in lieu of matcha – in the hallway outside of certain instructors’ offices, etc.)
“not dread, just a big rotten head.”
undead seuss… fantastic.
@Murasaki: I don’t mean to depict you as Anti-J. I understand where you’re coming from and your Simon-esque like comments when you roast the J.
I like hearing comments from you because you’re a big dose of realism when most people are out here searching for some sentimental significance:
“The child then said, ‘Arigatou’, walked hand-in-hand with her father towards the sunset not looking back … and that made all the difference”, blah blah blah — or something like that.
@Murasaki (part deux): Nothing has changed, not much. If any, these silly escapades just keeps me grounded as it reminds me much of home and the brilliance of the others who have helped me get here.
I need a partner in crime here. I can’t wait until Forrest and Marc get here since I want to introduce them to the unicycling children and capture it on camera.
@Marc: Thanks. This is what I do with my degree, analyze classic literature only to parody it completely.
And what a wonderful parody you do make~
Might I challenge you to J up this concoction?
“Twas brillig and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wave
All mimsy were the borogoves
And the mome raths outgrabe”
~Jabberwocky, Lewis Carroll
I am eagerly looking forward to seeing this!
I do not know if I can J-up Jabberwocky. I’ll try to see if I can even figure out the ENGLISH portmanteaus before trying to attempt to figure out how to do it in the J. This is interesting though. Ha ha ha ha. I’ll try not to fail you.