You know you get some pretty good pictures when you type in "Where's my hat?" in a Google image search.

1. Apparently this dog was taken to some wacko convention of people who like to pretend they're from somewhere other than the Midwest and make small animals dress up. He didn't have to wear a hat.
2. The transvestite's cotillion?
3. Father Dan is a Provincial Minister without a hat in Little Rock, AK. He's got a great scroll over picture.
4. One of these things is not like the others,
   One of these things just doesn't belong,
   Can you tell which thing is not like the others
   By the time I finish my song?
5. Aw! Their favorite place was the bar. I like them.
6. Hatless in the subway.
7. Help me indeed.
8. Do not, I repeat, do not fuck with Dave Williams.
9. "Argh! I be hit captain!" I guess in the 17th Century they didn't have PhotoShop to REDUCE THE FREAKING IMAGE SIZE.
10. Tony Hancock, genius of comedy. They have a Benny Hill too. Sweet.
11. It is on your head, silly.

If you get a chance, put your mits on Verve//Remixed and Verve//Remixed 2. I've been hearing cuts from it on KRCL for a long time, and finally found it at Orion's Music (talk about shopping in the Sugarhood!). Damn! women jazz singers really know how to lay it down. They make me go a big wet wobbly one. The originals (or) are just fine in themselves, but remixing them--well that gives it something to reach the kids these days.

Ba(ding)dang.

1. Threadbare
2. Banal
3. Hamstrung

I am not sure if it is all the Japanese movies I've been watching lately*, or reading about the Japanese tradition of hearing the Imperial family's poetry (which are not haiku, by the way, but a more complex waka form), or Snyder's (of the previously mentioned Snyder Cider) request for haikus about pudding, or even Kendra's excursions into Eliotesque reference poetry, but I've been on a 5/7/5 haiku public-transport-love-fest lately.

For whatever reason I seem to be thinking in the simple syllabic patterns that the form creates when rendered in English, although one could argue that putting the haiku in syllable form is very arbitrary since in the original Japanese it is the number of kata kana (Chinese) characters rendered that is important, not the number of sounds. Now regular haiku can be a high falutin' thing, as we all know from our high school English classes. Don't get me wrong, I appreciate the beauty of the decently wrought haiku, but you have to admit, it is the singly most abused poetic import the English language has aside from the odd poorly conceived sonnet. There are classics like Basho's

Waterjar cracks:
I lie awake
This icy night.

which does have a really nice chilliness to it, and is not all that high-falutin' in itself, but there does seem to be a tendency in haiku to take Japanese too literally and misunderstand how simple the form should be. Since I'm not all that high faluntin' myself, nor am I Zen, nor am I whatever-century Japanese, I decided to ground it a bit more in everyday experience and seemingly every day experience (as I think Basho might find worthwhile):

Who gave you the right
To bother my umbrella,
Discourteous child?

Wait a minute, who has a discourteous child bother his or her umbrella? Well the woman on the train who by the expression on her face did not like it did, but it does seem a bit out-of-the-ordinary. I really dig those words hooked up together. But, how about

I don't believe you
She said, sneering at his tears
Love is like that now

Now that was a sad couple, really. I don't think she understood his pain. There is always

Flat on my back I
Landed after slipping on
Ice.  So, so painful.

But that was more of a memory than seeing the poor woman who actually did fall on Ice, but even though it does seem a lot like Basho, maybe it is

You know in Japan
They write this stuff ritually
And the emperor sings

But that violates the syllabic rule. Hmm. How about

The president signs
In one long squigling dribble
Pen hardly working

Too politcal? Probably. No one would ever write about the emperor's lazy pen, now would they?

The Emperor's haiku
Spoken, stinks of pickled fish
So salty, so very wrong.

But come on--equating the Emporer to Dubya? Please.

While I'm actually writing these things on public transport, I get bothered:

Why am I compelled
To put word after word here
Why not sit silent?

or

Writing down some words
Passes time on slow buses
Far better than talk

and then sometimes I wonder about the form itself:

Is it five seven five
Or four seven four that makes
A haiku a haiku

which is funny since it violates those rules all over the place.

I think I have to get Zen about the whole thing, however, and just say

You can go eastward
If you like.  Directions are
Not that important.

Over and over again.

(*I don't know why however, Ju-on, Princess Mononuke, Hidden Fortress, Throne of Blood, Vampire Hunter, or Inugami should inspire me to poetic rhapsody. By all rights, they should inspire me to create some ill-formed space opera or all around Gaijin-friendly horror movie remake.)