Day: May 24, 2004

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Moon Pies and Red Man

For your enjoyment (even though this has probably circulated all over the Internet and I’m the last guy it got to), Redneck Haiku:

BEAUTY
Naked in repose
Silvery silhouette girls
Adorn my mudflaps

REMORSE
A painful sadness
Can’t fit big screen TV through
Double-wide’s front door

OPTIONS
Unemployment’s out.
Hey, maybe I can get on
Disability

BLAZE
Distant siren screams
Dumb-ass Verne’s been playing with
Gasoline again

A NEW MOON
Flashlights pierce darkness
No nightcrawlers to be found
Guess we’ll gig some frogs

EXUBERANCE
Joyous, playful, bright
Trailer park girl rolls in puddle
Of old motor oil

ALONE
Seeking solitude
Carl’s ex-wife Tammy files for
Restraining order

DESIRE
Damn, in that tube-top
You make me almost forget
That you are my cousin

HATRED
I curse the rainbow
Emblazoned upon his hood
God damn Jeff Gordon

OFFERINGS
Tonight we hunger
Grandma sent grocery money
To Jimmy Swaggert

DRAMA
Set the VCR
Dukes of Hazzard Marathon
At 9 O’Clock

DEPRIVED
In WalMart toy aisle
Wailing boy wants wrestling doll
Mama whups his ass

NO SIGNAL
White noise, buzzing static
Call Earl; satellite dish
needs new descrambler

IMPOUNDED
Sixty-five dollars
And cyclone fence keeps me from
My El Camino

GATHERING
In early morning mist
Mama searches Circle K for
Moon Pies and Red Man

PRIDE
Grinning, he displays
The nine hundred beer cans
Filling pickup bed

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Literary Production Numbers

British literary critic James Wood reviews The Oxford English Literary History, Vol. XII: 1960-2000: The Last of England?, and sharpens his knives:

Mind you, Stevenson’s three lines on A House for Mr Biswas make one glad that the rules [of the Oxford guide regarding what constitutes an “English” writer] allowed him to venture no further: “The novel uses its broad range of characters and their conflicts for comic effect, but they also offer extended insight into a complex, multiracial society, both hopeful and fearful for its future.” That sentence might be a Rorschach test: if you find nothing much the matter with it, you are an unsaved academic. Apart from the inconvenience of being largely untrue — there are almost no non-Indians of any significance in the novel — and its grating habit of sounding less like criticism than an AGM report, it is almost morally offensive that this should be the only description of that marvellous novel.