It's been a long time...

...since my last post. The same caesura happened last winter and I am at a loss to explain it. It seems to relate to some swing in mood, but one I can't explicate to any further extant. At the same time, my sense of humor has diminished lately. Not absolutely, but to the extent that I haven't found headlines and obituaries as humorous lately, and I haven't been able to come up with any funny trivia team names. The two things are related I'm sure.

But without further ado, I found a page of headlines on www.1010wins.com that seemed to capture a certain, crystalline, decrepitude of American culture. Almost poetic in it's brevity and clarity. I reproduce the links for you below:

NYC School Assignment Results In Man's Arrest
Mom, Fending Off Rats, Accidentally Suffocates Baby
4th Teen Arrested in Girl's Videotaped Beating
Woman Charged With Running Over Boyfriend
Baby Found at Bottom of Bronx Trash Chute

They seem to depict a society filled with such barbarity and harsh comedy as to resemble Grand Guignol theater, or a descent into brutishness and animalistic behaviour depicted repeatedly in the Old Testament and requiring God's destructive and punitive intervention. And of course the truth is that these things are most likely not more common now, only that we are more aware of them. I am inclined to believe the world is not much different than it has ever been and while this view may seem cynical, it actually gives me hope against the doomsayers and Jeremiahs...

...but then I consider global warming and George Bush.







I will try to post more. I have been wanting to write on the word cattywampus, its possible relation to caterwaul, its certain relation to cattycorner, and other words similar in meaning or use like cock-a-hoop. And I've had another post in mind wherein I ruminate on the words jocose, jocund, and jocular and why we need all three (joy, joy, joy.)

Until then.