Of Punning Penury

What's in a Name

Extra Pound called his friends, Rat and Kit,
not that he could've called them "Brad" and "Pitt,"
for these were nicknames, none,
but a calling for each one,
to take note of time and waste it not a bit.

Physics

Of Physics

"Well, I heard lots of physics," whispered Rat Fink in disguise.
"And I heard loss of physics," whispered Kit Cat in his guise.
Of risky rat
Or frisky cat
depends our own unjustified, unherdable demise.

An Alarmed Clock

My wife had been looking for a new alarm clock recently, but the one she initially found did constantly make so much noise, an insistent, whirring clamation, that I wondered if I'd even get to sleep in the first place!

WWII&1/2

Wretched Insights

Rat Fink, Kit Cat, and even Extra Pound
lay low in the mud, blood, and beer, and found,
that fighting a war,
like f**king a whore,
for better or for worse, was much as it might sound.

Post Haste

I dreamed last night the weirdest dream of my life. I can't recall all the details, but I narrated a story that I could see taking place before my eyes, a sort of tragicomedy, I guess, for the characters were engaged in manual labor when the machine they were gathered around began to lose its parts, one after another, each part shooting off with water-pressured force, killing somebody and leaving the next victim in the line of fire, helpless to escape his fate. Even a curious anaconda slithered out to locate the commotion and became the last fatal victim.

I hate to admit it, but the whole thing had me laughing in my sleep . . .

Odd Companions

Extra Pound And . . .

Extra Pound plowed around his new-found farm,
for what was there else to keep it from harm,
but a faithful rat
and a barnyard cat
whose fire-forged trust brought their foes to alarm.

Wisdom and Courtesy

One often hears the following:

"A word to the wise is sufficient."

But I count seven words. Or is the one word "sufficient"?

Dog Wood

Extra Extra

Extra Pound in a bound of abundance
Set his sights on some dogwood of substance.
He'd agreed, he had greed,
On that need, he'd concede,
But still held his head high under substance.

Overheard at the Defenestration of Prague

One workman to another: "I told them it'd never work. You can't get the entire city of Prague through this little window."

Death Penalty

Poor Scholar

Alas, poor Yorick.
I knew him, Horatio.

Many a time had he
published and published.

But perished anyway . . .

Fading Heavy . . .

Pound Faces Up To The Facts

Pound's heart was a finally fast fading thump,
Thumpety thumpety thumpety thump:
Not long for this world,
But another whirled
By, with romance, danger and -- thump.

Fading Light . . .

Extra Pound Faces Up To The Facts

His heart was fading, thump by bump by thump, the old chump,
But one time he had been the Chumpion of the World, the Champ Chump,
Not of our old world,
But a parable whirled,
Filled with romance and danger, but with a taste for the old town dump.

A would-be limerick, but the rhythm's off . . .

Re-Try the Limerick

Overalls

Though crimson and clover roll over and over,
and over and over and over,
The rhyme's not done well,
It's just gone all to hell,
Then it's right back to clover and over!

If Extra Pound were a farmer, he'd likely rather sing about fescue than clover . . .

Overall Nonsense

Overalls

Though crimson and clover roll over,
and over and over and over,
The rhyme's not done well,
It's just gone all to hell,
Then it's right back to crimson and clover!

If Extra Pound were a farmer, the above is the song he'd sing.

Heard Tell They Say . . .

They say octopuses are so smart they can solve problems we humans can't. Yet, these eight-tentacled wonders live only two or three years! Sort of makes me wonder what the point is.

Carter Kaplan's Query

Kaplan's Query: "I wonder, could I possibly persuade/cajole/grovel/beg you to write about Emanations: Chorus Pleiades? You are denying the world your insights!"

Reply: "I would gladly write about that issue of Emanations, if I had the time. I hope to have the time during the winter break."

Jeffery Hodges

* * *

Absistence: Corrected Version

My friend "Kevin Kim" has let me know that I have been spelling "absistence" with an "a" (absistance) and an "e" (absistence). The correct spelling is "absistence."

Jeffery Hodges

* * *

Meinong's Absistance

The Irony of Meinong's Absistance:

The page "Absistence" does not exist.

How ironic.

On Meinong

A little bit of Wikipedia's Meinong for my thinking . . . Meinong holds that objects can be divided into three categories on the basis on their ontological status. Objects have one of the following three modalities of being and non-being:

1. Existence: the material and temporal being of an object.

2. Subsistence: the being of an object in a non-temporal sense.

3. Absistence: being-given, which denotes being an object but not having being.

Certain objects can exist (mountains, birds, and so on); others cannot in principle ever exist, such as the objects of mathematics (numbers, theorems, and so on): such objects simply subsist. Finally, a third class of objects cannot even subsist, such as impossible objects (e.g., square circle, wooden iron, and so on). Being-given is not a minimal mode of being, because it is not a mode of being at all. Rather, to be "given" is just to be an object. Being-given, termed "absistence," is better thought of as a mode of non-being than as a mode of being.

Absistence, unlike existence and subsistence, does not have a negation; everything absists. (Note that all objects absist, while some subset of these subsist, of which a yet-smaller subset exist.) The result that everything absists allows Meinong to deal with our ability to affirm the non-being object. Its absistence is evidenced by our act of intending it, which is logically prior to our denying that it has being.

Much of that doesn't mean much to me, but more another time . . .

Jeffery Hodges

* * *

Fictionalism

Short Dialogue:

Someone asked me something like the following:

Are fictional characters such as Extra Pound real?

I answered, according to Meinong, yes, they have a degree of reality because we can talk about them as if they were just around the corner, describing them in great detail, such that they are recognizable when they appear from around that corner.

Someone else asked me what fiction could tell us about the nature of truth and reality?

I said I didn't know. And I added, "What can nonfiction tell us about those two?"

Meinongianisms

Extra Pound Perambulates

Once as he ambled through Meinong's odd jungle,
Extra Pound encountered there a great bungle
Of two or three or five or four
Ontically unwanted objects or more,
Adding up to as much as a mungle!

Trite Wisdoms

One "t" puts "here" in its place: "There."

Not a Limerick

Couplet

Extra Pound paints some pretty good pictures,
But shows no one, so strict are his strictures.

(Rhythm doesn't work, and how would one know that Pound was painting "some pretty good pictures" if he wasn't showing them to anyone?)

Surprise, Surprise, Surprise . . .

Good Boy

He proved himself an extra-fine-nosed hound,
That little boy in charge, that Extra Pound,
In sniffing fully out
What others lied about,
An extra-vaganza, all around!

Come (Back) Again?

Abscure Brutal Camera

Again against a gain against a gangster?
But butts abut a buttress!
Come cry quick a cripple creek.

Revised: Hardly A-Tall

Hardly A-Tall

Extra Pound in his mind was the greatest of them all,
Though he fought others hard for such mitigated gall.
In truth,
Forsooth,
He was hardly in the running a-tall!

Is Gall a Drink?

Hardly A-Tall

In his mind, Extra Pound was the greatest of all,
Though he fought others hard for such gall.
In truth,
Forsooth,
He was hardly in the running a-tall.

Grave Footfalls

Grave Dancing

We pound the ground of Extra's mound
Until, un-tilled, that flat patch sound-
lessly joins
the joints
and stops the dancing game we'd found.

A little bit of Meinong

Meinongian Doubts

Extra Pound was a womanizer, see,
Insofar as true fiction might be.
He called for his crown,
Slipped it on upside down,
Saw his kingdom wash out to the sea.

Mistakes were made . . .

The Dread Mammoth?

A mammoth, or a mastodon,
would first find out just who had won
A fight
In fright
At the dread sight of Extra Pound as Number One!