I spent a major portion of my morning reading most of the entire series of comics posted at the site existentialcomics.com. I don't know who the author is or much about why this comic exists. But I found it all quite entertaining, and I laughed many times. This kind of humor is not accessible to everyone, I know.
The title for this blog post comes from a comic about the philosopher David Hume, serving as captain of the Starship Enterprise. He meets his nemesis, Kant. This doesn't go well, as we can predict from the original story.
A blogger who blogs under the pseudonym Patrick Non-White recently channeled William S. Burroughs pretending to be Donald Trump. He writes as if Trump had hit upon the idea of running for president while doing bong hits with his friends. This alternate-universe Trump meditates on his plan, thinking of himself, of course, in the third person:
"There is nothing so crazed as a politician in rut, screeching whatever thoughts burst into his coke-addled brain like a radioactive weasel before thousands of ignorant nimrods, on total auto-pilot, completely in the now, popping off like God's own Mentos and Diet Coke."
This fine picture appeared in another spot online. You may wish to connect it, at your own mental risk, to the above.
Holly Wood (her real name, apparently), is a political and social commentarist operating in the twitteresque postblogoid realm called "medium.com". But her writing is quite astute. She leans more radical than I, but I respect radicalism, and often find it inspiring. She posted this untitled bit of poetry:
Freedom requires cultivating the peculiar and completely irrational faculty for projecting imagination beyond the horizon of common sense.
We have to drive out beyond the city limits of hegemony away from the light pollution of neoliberal ideology.
Men do not rule. Men have never ruled. Only legitimacy has ruled. End man’s legitimacy and you end the rule of man.
To end man’s legitimacy, child, you must become exceedingly fluent in what today is only unfathomable.
Hurry, though, we are choking on escapable darkness.
Sometimes I look at the online comic xkcd. It's quite nerdy, and sometimes the author crosses over from funny to informative. He posted a radiation dosage chart that I thought was interesting – given my own brush with radiation. It was particularly notable that, in terms of ionizing radiation (i.e. the kind that is associated with cell mutations and necrosis), a banana puts out more of that kind of radiation than a cellphone.
Apparently, a banana puts out about 0.1 µSv of ionizing radiation. If my math is correct, with my 3-monthly CT scans, I'm getting about 80,000 bananas' worth of radiation per year. I'm not sure what the dosage was of my radiation treatment, but at minimum it was the equivalent of about 30 full CT scans, which would amount to 210 mSv, or 4,200,000 bananas. Given I have a (mild) banana allergy, I think the radiation was a better deal.
Notes for Korean (finding meaning)
외방 = "upstate" – the parts of Korea outside of Seoul
버팀목 = one of those wooden supports attached to trees to hold them up or force them to grow in a certain direction
미륵 = Maitreya
돌무덤 = a cairn, a grave
육군 = land army (as opposed to navy)
해군 = navy
공군 = air force
중위 = army first lieutenant
대위 = army captain
대령 = army colonel
-기는 하다 (긴 하다) = a "concessive" verb phrase ending, perhaps "… although …" or "… admittedly …"
The next time you find yourself stranded in the winter wilderness with only a lemon, some zinc nails, some brass tacks, some wire, and some steel wool, you can feel secure in the knowledge that you can make a fire.
Work has been quite busy. We started a new schedule yesterday. The kids started their new school year. It's weird to see the middle-schoolers back in their school uniforms after the winter break.
My new schedule feels "heavy" but I'm sure I'll get used to it. The issue is mainly the preponderance of "new" classes, which inevitably consume more prep-time than classes where I've been with a given cohort for a long time with a predictable curriculum.
Meanwhile, for your edification and hours of enjoyment, I'll send you to the Trump-et – no more dog-whistle politics! We're going loud and brash, now – screenshot below.
I don't have much to say today – I had a rather braindead weekend, after that thunderstormy Saturday. Actually, right after writing about climate volatility, it started to get cold again. It's bright and sunny and about -6 C (21 F) now, midday on Monday.
As my students know, the fact that crocodiles and alligators are different is important to me, and I always teach them.
I showed some students this video, and asked them why it was "obvious" that it was an alligator, and therefore the man's indifference struck me as truly terrible.
A transcription of the man's words: "'M sick 'n' tired of people putting these logs across the pa… Oh! That's a crocodile… or alligator. Whatever."
I'd already told them some background on the differences between crocodiles and alligators, and so after watching the video, I let them brainstorm why it was obvious to me. It took them a while, but one of them actually figured it out.
He explained, "It's in America, so it must be alligator." His thinking, which I helped him elaborate: since America is home to wild alligators, but not wild crocodiles, right?
Another student asked, astutely, "How do we know it's America?"
I said, "Well, in this case, you know it's in America, because I told you earlier. But I know it's America because of the man's accent." This gave me an opportunity to digress on the matter of different English language accents.
I found this online. It appealed to my interest in nonsense. The Wizard of Oz, re-edited so all the words in the movie are in alphabetical order. I think actually this would be fairly easy to automate, once you had a suffiently accurate .srt file.
I have a short New Years Holiday. But after such a busy December, and facing an even busier January, it's hard to feel motivated to do anything. I decided to spend my weekend being a computer-potato (like couch potato but with a different focus, I guess).
What I'm listening to right now.
Someone arranged video clips of Obama's words so that he sings the rock group Korn's "Freak On A Leash." A great cover for a great song.
I was listening to an interview on NPR the other day, with the actress Niecy Nash (who I'm not familiar with, but anyway). This quote made me laugh.
"I had one of my children ask me, when they were younger, 'Mommy, are we rich?' I said, 'Who is we?'"
I think this is a strikingly American attitude that crosses ethnic and class lines, although it is hardly universal. But regardless, it would almost not make sense in a culture like Korea's – I think I would have difficulty successfully explaining the meaning of this quote to my coworkers or students. The "we" of the family takes total primacy over the individual "I," to the extent that one uses the plural possessives exclusively when talking about family (e.g. "our mom" 우리어머니) – a singular possessive (e.g. "my mom") is a grammatical error.
If you enjoy academic discourse qua academic discourse, this economics paper is fascinating – it is both an exercise in serious macroeconomics and a weird kind of satire of serious macroeconomics. It applies some recent ideas of macroeconomics, as developed in response to the most recent global economic crisis (2008) to the Star Wars universe, and imagines the economic dilemma confronted by the victorious Rebel Alliance. The concluding two sentences of the paper:
In this case study we found that the Rebel Alliance would need to prepare a bailout of at least 15%, and likely at least 20%, of GGP in order to mitigate the systemic risks and the sudden and catastrophic economic collapse. Without such funds at the ready, it likely the Galactic economy would enter an economic depression of astronomical proportions.
The way modern companies are named, especially (but not limited to) tech companies, is quite bizarre. It's just random made-up words, mostly.
This was brought home to me by this weird online quiz which puts up a single, apparently made-up word, and asks you to choose: Pokemon (an imaginary universe of cartoon characters) or Big Data (i.e. technology companies specializing in data management, a realm once near-and-dear to my heart).
I got a very bad score on this quiz. Just goes to show.
There are many aspects of Ben Carson's character that make me question his ethnic loyalties. This is not necessarily a bad thing, and certainly, just like Obama, perhaps only an African-American with deep ambiguities vis-a-vis African-American cultural identity could ever be successful running for president in a racist America. In Carson's specific case, however, I do think it is a bad thing, that his ethnic loyalties are so unclear. He seems to be a kind of latter-day Clarence Thomas. In fact, would I say that I rather dislike Ben Carson – despite being a trained surgeon, he strikes me as a dangerous luddite and a flaming fanatical hypocrite of the worst sort. Nevertheless, there was something reassuring about the revelation that this painting, below, is hanging in Ben Carson's home. To riff on the website where I saw it… finally, we have some concrete proof of Carson's blackness.
There is some very cheesy Korean 80s music. There is a genre called “트로트” (“Trot”) which, although not stylistically similar, fulfills the same cultural function as Country & Western in the US, or maybe Norteño in Mexico. The below is kind of a crossover between Trot and Pop, I guess.
What I’m listening to right now.
이용, “서울.”
가사
종로에는 사과나무를 심어보자
그길에서 꿈을 꾸며 걸어가리라
을지로에는 감나무를 심어보자
감이 익을 무렵 사랑도 익어가리라
아아아아 우리의 서울 우리의 서울
거리마다 푸른 꿈이 넘쳐흐르는
아름다운 서울을 사랑하리라
빌딩마다 온갖 새들을 오게하자
지저귀는 노래소리 들어보리라
거리거리엔 예쁜 꽃을 피게하자
꽃이 피어나듯 사랑도 피어나리라
아아아아 우리의 서울 우리의 서울
거리마다 푸른 꿈이 넘쳐흐르는
아름다운 서을을 사랑하리라
아아아아 우리의 서울 우리의 서울
거리마다 푸른 꿈이 넘쳐흐르는
아름다운 서울을 사랑하리라
Below is a poem I wrote recently. But its “story” is complicated. I wrote a poem with a similar title when I was in high school, in the same format: formally, a sestina, and with other (efforts at) metrical constraints. The protagonist, Dr Hubert, was the same, in the original, too – he is a character from a fictional world I had created. I suspect that in actual tone, this recent poem is more optimistic than the first version, which I long ago lost (though it still may exist in some box in my Minnesota storage unit, but obviously I don’t have the ability to find it, currently). I was more of a pessimist about humanity as a teenager than I am now, and the character Dr Hubert, in my youth’s conception, was a dystopian anti-hero. Below, on the other hand, he is more of a simple, tragic hero. Nevertheless, broadly speaking, the poem is about disillusionment. “The Collective” is a reference to the Jeres Collective, which was a failed utopian experiment within this world I’d created. I don’t think that was the original name. The similarity between the name of the collective and my own first name is purely phonological coincidence. (Poem #21 on new numbering scheme)
Dr Hubert On The Beach at Jeres
He was lost, alone. His companions were dead.
Dr Hubert stood under Mahhalian skies.
The man's disconsolate face had turned to gray,
And the war, begun and just ended, like gold,
Seemed pointless. The billowing clouds threatened rain.
There was a ragged pine down the shore. A lie
Had started it all. It was pointless. A lie
had bloomed, flourished, been nurtured, and now was dead.
Days before, with hope and optimism, the rain
had relented and the typically wan skies
had given way to bright explosions of gold
And crimson as the sun rose. Just now, a gray
Seagull spun, landed, stepped twice, and pecked at gray
bits of sand, searching for insects, that might lie
Beneath. Dr Hubert bent and picked up a spent gold
shell-casing from the sand. Memento of dead
Fellow fighters. He turned and peered at the skies
But his memory only showed him the rain
Of bullets that hours before, before the rain
Diligently washed the sour smell of gray
Gunpowder from the cold air, had filled the skies'
Dome with pain, useless suffering and death. That lie
Had been the false utopia promised by dead
Men. Earthly paradise had been a fool's gold.
Some of the birches on the hillside had gold
leaves, which hung like saddened children as the rain
started again finally, pelting the dead
vegetation. Their white bark, damp, looked like gray
Photographs. He felt tired, now. I want to lie
down," he muttered. "The Collective filled our skies
With hope for glory. Here in Jeres those skies
Instead have been destroyed." A pale egret, gold
beak flashing, lands down the beach. "Nature can't lie
To us, though. I will take solace in the rain."
Born among angels, having fared across gray
seas, the idealist peered from among the dead.
Under Mahhalian skies, driftwood damp and dead,
On gold sands lay. Dr Hubert faced the gray
Heavens and chose to lie down in the lucid rain.
– a sestina
One calendrical observation: I am certain that I wrote the original poem on or near November 3rd, 1982. That’s because November 3rd is St Hubert’s day, which was where the character first got his name. The reason is that November 3rd is the first saints’ day after the commemoration of all the dead (All Saints), Novermber 1 and 2. That’s a bit complicated, but I was trying for some kind of obscure symbolism. The fact that I re-wrote the same poem leading up to Novermber 3rd is thus not entirely coincidence, either. Dr Hubert is an autumnal figure. Another note: when I went to check on Saint Hubert (patron of mathematicians, among others, which was of keen interest to my 17-year-old self, and marginally relevant to the original conception of the Mahhalian history) at the wikipedia, just now, with the intention of placing a link, I learned that Hubertus was born in Texas. This is, no doubt, a bit of wikivandalism. But it was quite humorous – I have placed a screenshot (because wikivandalism is ephemeral) at right. [daily log: walking, 6km]
I had intended to post a something a bit longer today, by way of journaling my emotional roller-coaster this past week. But I had trouble finding gumption on a lazy Sunday, and so I haven't written anything I want to post.
Meanwhile, by way of distraction… I was looking at silly logic problems. I'm not actually that good at solving these. I think I lack patience.
I have been thinking of showing some of these to my students, however. I like the idea of combining English with these types of problems which so many of my students are so good at solving.
While visiting with Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau in Ottawa, Richard Nixon says, with respect to the Prime Minister's newly born son, "Tonight we'll dispense with the formalities. I'd like to toast the future prime minister of Canada, to Justin Pierre Trudeau."
October, 2015:
Justin Trudeau is elected Prime Minister of Canada.
My thoughts on this could be summarized by this humorous quote: "Columbus discovering America is like a car thief discovering your car." – This is not an exact quote, but I have seen the concept attributed to comedian Chris Rock, in various incarnations.
Unrelatedly…
What I'm listening to right now.
Camera Obscura, "Lloyd I'm Ready To Be Heartbroken." Who is Lloyd?
Lyrics.
He said "I'll protect you like you are the crown jewels", yeah Said he's feeling sorrier for me the more I behave badly I can bet
Hey Lloyd I'm ready to be heartbroken 'cuz I can't see further than my own nose at this moment
Jealousy is more than a word, now I understand You can't stay a girl while holding a boy's hand
Hey Lloyd I'm ready to be heartbroken 'cuz I can't see further than my own nose at this moment Hey Lloyd I'm ready to be heartbroken 'cuz I can't see further than my own nose at this moment
I've got my life of complication here to sort out I'll take myself to an east coast city and walk about
Hey Lloyd I'm ready to be heartbroken 'cuz I can't see further than my own nose at this moment Hey Lloyd I'm ready to be heartbroken 'cuz I can't see further than my own nose at this moment Hey Lloyd I'm ready to be heartbroken 'cuz I can't see further than my own nose at this moment
I was surfing some of the blogs I read, and found this blog post with a rather novel approach to defining capitalism. I'm not sure I find it entirely compelling, but I like the effort to break with philosophical and economic tradition. It takes a rather abstract, game-theoretic approach informed by information theory.
This article, however, led me in turn to this rather humorous bit at the New Yorker, about a "Libertarian Police Department" – which is a kind of oxymoron, of course.
Black Sabbath, "War Pigs." Excellent video adaptation by Chip's World.
Lyrics.
Generals gathered in their masses, just like witches at black masses. Evil minds that plot destruction, sorcerer of death's construction. In the fields the bodies burning, as the war machine keeps turning. Death and hatred to mankind, poisoning their brainwashed minds…Oh lord yeah!
Politicians hide themselves away They only started the war Why should they go out to fight? They leave that role to the poor
Time will tell on their power minds Making war just for fun Treating people just like pawns in chess Wait `till their judgement day comes, yeah!
Now in darkness, world stops turning, ashes where the bodies burning. No more war pigs have the power, hand of god has struck the hour. Day of judgement, god is calling, on their knees the war pigs crawling. Begging mercy for their sins, Satan, laughing, spreads his wings…Oh lord, yeah!
I recently ran across a very entertaining bit of fiction. It's a little bit borgesian, I guess, in that the story's protagonist is an idea rather than a person.
It's about a "chord tunnel" (an ancient concept orginally developed in the 18th century, also called a "gravity train," that pops up sometimes in science fiction) used for delivering burritos from San Francisco to New York City:
This was interesting, especially the way the story kept "branching" out from the original effort to explain the Zipf phenomenon. This is the the kind of thing I like to think about, "for fun."
I liked the Emerson quote near the end, but, I am unsure if it is truly his. Wikiquote says it's "unsourced," whatever that means.
"I cannot remember the books I've read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me." – Ralph Waldo Emerson.
Really I selected this more for the video than for the music. It's not something I would necessarily seek out, as music goes, but the animated video by Simon Landerin is quite entertaining.
I ran across this joke, unattributed, posted at speculativegrammarian blog under the feature "Non-Gricean Humor":
"What has 34 legs in the morning, 69 at midday and 136 in the evening? A man who collects legs."
I have no idea why I found it so funny. If you know why I found it so funny, let me know – it may provide deep insight into my dysfunctions.
Actually, on further reflection, I think the fact that it was under the specific heading that it was under influenced my reaction – which it to say, the heading "Non-Gricean" primed my mind for the subsequent punchline, which would not have had the same "punch" if it had not been primed by the heading. Of course, that means finding the joke funny relies in part on knowing something about Grice's work in linguistic pragmatics.
Relatedly, but at a deeper level, I recently was granted an insight into the nature of humor while reading a kind of throwaway article at The Register (an IT-based humor-plus-news website) by Tim Worstall (who deserves credit). He was writing about some kind of google-translate-related disaster at a Moravian tourism website. But he said, in an aside, "I might even advance a theory of linguistics where our delight in such puns is in itself a reinforcement mechanism to make us think about those multiple meanings possible."
I liked this idea, finding it much more entertaining than the problems Moravians have been having with automated translation algorithms, and would reformulate and extend it as follows:
Our delight in puns and jokes is an evolutionary adaptation which is rooted in a feedback-based reinforcement of the cognitive mechanisms that allow us to cope with polysemy, which in turn is at the basis of abstract thought, metaphor and hypothesizing.
John Skelton was an English poet, born in 1463 and died in 1529. Thus, like Chaucer, his English is less accessible than Shakespeare's, given the huge changes that English underwent in the subsequent century.
Some Dutch scholars have been making readings of his work in the presumed reconstructed original pronunciation of the Middle English – when I ran across the reading and first listened to it, I said to myself, "that sounds like Dutch." My question is, did it sound like Dutch because they're Dutch scholars reading Middle English with a Dutch accent, or did it sound like Dutch because that's what Middle English really sounded like (in which case, it's quite handy to have Dutch scholars working on it)? Dutch has always fascinated me – I took a single quarter of Dutch among the many "one quarter languages" I studied at the University of Minnesota. I have always felt that Dutch is what English would sound like if I didn't understand English.
What I'm listening to right now.
John Skelton (read by some Dutch guy), "Speke Parott." Anyway, I like this poem – it's quite cosmopolitan for 15th/16th century.
Lectoribus auctor recipit opusculi huius auxesim.
Crescet in immensum me vivo pagina presens; Hinc mea dicetur Skeltonidis aurea fama.
PAROT
My name is Parrot, a byrd of Paradyse, By Nature devised of a wonderowus kynde, Deyntely dyeted with dyvers dylycate spyce, Tyl Euphrates, that flode, dryveth me into Inde; Where men of that countrey by fortune me fynde, And send me to greate ladyes of estate; Then Parot must have an almon or a date.
A cage curyously carven, with sylver pyn, Properly paynted, to be my covertowre; A myrrour of glasse, that I may toote therin; These maidens ful mekely with many a divers flowre Freshly they dresse, and make swete my bowre, With, ‘Speke, Parrot, I pray you,’ full curtesly they say; ‘Parrot is a goodly byrd, a prety popagey.’
With my becke bent, my lyttyl wanton eye, My fedders freshe as is the emrawde grene, About my neck a cyrculet lyke the ryche rubye, My lytyll leggys, my feet both fete and clene, I am a mynyon to wayt uppon a quene; ‘My proper Parrot, my lyttyl prety foole.’ With ladyes I lerne, and go with them to scole.
‘Hagh, ha, ha, Parrot, ye can laugh pretyly!’ ‘Parrot hath not dyned of al this long day;’ ‘Lyke ower pus cate, Parrot can mewte and cry.’ In Lattyn, in Ebrew, Araby, and Caldey; In Greke tong Parrot can bothe speke and say, As Percyus, that poet, doth reporte of me, Quis expedivit psittaco suum chaire?
Dowse French of Parryse Parrot can lerne, Pronounsynge my purpose after my properte, With, Perliez byen, Parrot, ou perlez rien; With Douch, with Spanysh, my tong can agre; In Englysh to God Parrot can supple: Cryst save Kyng Henry the viii., our royall kyng, The red rose honour to florysh and sprynge!
With Kateryne incomparable, our ryall quene also, That pereles pomegarnet, Chryst save her noble grace! Parrot, saves habler Castiliano, With fidasso de cosso in Turkey and in Trace; Vis consilii expers, as techith me Horace, Mole ruit sua, whose dictes ar pregnaunte, Soventez foys, Parrot, en sovenaunte.
My lady maystres, dame Philology, Gave me a gyfte in my nest whan I laye, To lerne all language, and it to spake aptely: Now pandez mory, wax frantycke, some men saye; Phroneses for Freneses may not holde her way. An almon now for Parrot, dilycatly drest; In Salve festa dies, toto ys the beste.
Moderata juvant, but toto doth excede; Dyscressyon is moder of noble vertues all; Myden agan in Greke tonge we rede; But reason and wyt wantyth theyr provyncyall, When wylfulnes is vycar general. Hec res acu tangitur, Parrot, par ma foy: Ticez vous, Parrot, tenez vous coye.
Besy, besy, besy, and besynes agayne! Que pensez voz, Parrot? What meneth this besynes? Vitulus in Oreb troubled Arons brayne, Melchisedeck mercyfull made Moloc mercyles; To wyse is no vertue, to medlyng, to restles; In mesure is tresure, cum sensu maturato, Ne tropo sanno, ne tropo mato.
Aram was fyred with Caldies fyer called Ur; Iobab was brought up in the lande of Hus; The lynage of Lot supporte of Assur; Iereboseth is Ebrue, who lyst the cause dyscus. Peace, Parrot, ye prate, as ye were ebrius: Howst the, lyver God van Hemrik, ic seg; In Popering grew peres, whan Parrot was an eg.
What is this to purpose? Over in a whynnymeg! Hop Lobyn of Lowdeon wald have e byt of bred; The Jebet of Baldock was made for Jack Leg. An arrow unfethered and without an hed, A bagpype wihout blowynge standeth in no sted: Some run to far before, some run to far behynde, Some be to churlysshe, and some be to kynde.
Ic dien serveth for the erstych fether, Ic dien is the language of the land of Beme; In Affryc tongue byrsa is a thonge of lether; In Palestina here is Jerusalem. Colostrum now for Parrot, whyte bred and swete creme! Our Thomasen she doth trip, our Jenet she doth shayle; Parrot hath a blacke beard and a fayre grene tayle.
‘Moryshe myne owne shelfe,’ the costermonger sayth; ‘Fate, fate, fate, ye Irysh water lag.’ In flattryng fables men fynde but lyttyl fayth; But moveatur terra, let the world wag, Let syr Wrig-Wrag wrastell with Syr Delarag: Every man after his maner of wayes, Pawbe une aruer, so the Welche man sayes.
Suche shredis of sentence, strowed in the shop Of auncyent Aristippus and such other mo, I gader togyther and close in my crop, Of my wanton conseyt, unde depromo Dilemmata docta in paedagogio Sacro vatum, whereof to you I breke: I pray you, let Parot have lyberte to speke.
But ware the cat, Parot, ware the fals cat! With, ‘Who is there? A mayd? Nay, nay, I trow; Ware ryat, Parrot, ware ryot, ware that! Mete, mete, for Parrot, mete I say, how!’ Thus dyvers of language by lernyng I grow: With, ‘Bas me, swete Parrot, bas me, swete swete;’ To dwell amonge ladyes, Parrot, is mete.
‘Parrot, Parrot, Parrot, praty popigay!’ With my beke I can pyke my lyttel praty too; My delyght is solas, pleasure, dysporte and pley; Lyke a wanton, whan I wyll, I rele to and froo; Parot can say, ‘Caesar, ave,’ also; But Parrot hath no favour to Esebon: Above all other byrdis, set Parrot alone.
Ulula, Esebon, for Jeromy doth wepe! Sion is in sadnes, Rachell ruly doth loke; Madionita Jetro, our Moyses kepyth his shepe; Gedeon is gon, that Zalmane undertoke, Oret et Zeb, of Judicum rede the boke; Now Geball, Amon, and Amaloch, – harke, harke! Parrot pretendith to be a bybyll clarke.
O Esebon, Esebon! To the is cum agayne Seon, the regent Amorraeorum, And Og, that fat hog of Basan, doth retayne, The crafty coistronus Cananaeorum; And asylum, whilom refugium miserorum, Non fanum, sed profanum, standyth in lytyll sted; Ulula, Esebon, for Jepte is starke ded!
Esebon, Marybon, Wheston next Barnet; A trym tram for an horse myll it were a nyse thyng; Deyntes for dammoysels, chaffer far fet: Bo ho doth bark wel, but Hough ho he rulyth the ring; From Scarpary to Tartary renoun therin doth spryng, With, ‘He sayd,’ and ‘We said.’ Ich wot now what ich wot, Quod magnus est dominus Judas Scarioth.
Tholomye and Haly were cunnynd and wyse In the volvell, in the quadrant, and in the astroloby, To pronostycate truly the chaunce of fortunys dyse; Some trete of theyr tirykis, som of astrology, Som pseudo-propheta with ciromancy: Yf fortune be frendly, and grace be the guyde, Honowre with renowne wyll ren on that syde.
Monon Calon Agaton, Quod Parato In Graeco.
Let Parrot, I pray you, have lyberte to prate, For aurea lingua Graeca ought to be magnyfyed, As lingua Latina, in scole matter occupyed; But our Grekis theyr Greke so well have applyed, That they cannot say in Greke, rydynge by the way, How, hosteler, fetche my hors a botell of hay!
Neyther frame a silogisme in phrisesomorum, Formaliter et Graece, cum medio termino; Our Grekys ye walow in the washbol Argolicorum; For though ye can tell in Greke what is phormio Yet ye seke out your Greke in Capricornio; For they scrape out good scrypture, and set in gall, Ye go about to amende, and ye mare all.
Some argue secundum quid ad simpliciter, And yet he wolde be rekenyd pro Areopagita; And some make distinctions multipliciter, Whether ita were before non, or non before ita, Nether wise nor wel lernid, but like hermaphrodita: Set Sophia asyde, for every Jack Raker And every mad medler must now be a maker.
In Academia Parrot dare no probleme kepe, For Graece fari so occupyeth the chayre, That Latinum fari may fall to rest and slepe, And syllogisari was drowned at Sturbrydge fayre; Tryvyals and qatryvyals so sore now they appayre, That Parrot the popagay hath pytye to beholde How the rest of good lernyng is roufled up and trold.
Albertus de modo significandi, And Donatus be dryven out of scole; Prisians hed broken now handy dandy, And Inter didascolos is rekened for a fole; Alexander, a gander of Menanders pole, With Da Cansales, is cast out of the gate, And Da Racionales dare not shew his pate.
Plauti in his comedies a chyld shall now reherse, And medyll with Quintylyan in his Declamacyons, That Pety Caton can scantly construe a verse, With Aveto in Graeco, and such solempne salutacyons, Can skantly the tensis of his conjugacyons; Settynge theyr myndys so moche of eloquens, That of theyr scole maters lost is the hole sentens.
Now a nutmeg, a nutmeg, cum gariopholo, For Parrot to pyke upon, his brayne for to stable, Swete synamum styckis and pleris com musco! In Paradyce, that place of pleasure perdurable, The progeny of Parrottis were fayre and favorable; Nowe in valle Ebron Parrot is fayne to fede: ‘Cristecrosse and Saynt Nicholas, Parrot, be your good spede!’
The myrrour that I tote in, quasi diaphanum, Vel quasi speculum, in aenigmate, Elencticum, or ells enthymematicum, For logicion to loke on, somwhat sophistice: Retoricyons and oratours in freshe humanyte, Support Parrot, I pray you, with your suffrage ornate, Of confuse tantum avoydynge the chekmate.
But of that suppociyon that callyd is arte, Confuse distributive, as Parrot hath devysed, Let every man after his merit take his parte, For in this processe Parrot nothing had surmysed, No matter pretendyd, nor nothyng enterprysed, But that metaphora, allegoria with all, Shall be his pretectyon, his pavys, and his wall.
For Parrot is no churlish chowgh, nor flekyd pye, Parrot is no pendugum that men call a carlyng, Parrot is no woodecocke, nor no butterfly, Parrot is no stameryng stare, that men call a starlyng; But Parrot is my owne dere harte and my dere derling. Melpomene, that fayre mayde, she burneshed his beke: I pray you, let Parrot have lyberte to speke.
Parrot is a fayre byrd for a lady; God of his goodnes him framed and wrought; When Parrot is ded, he dothe not putrefy: Ye, all thyng mortall shall torne unto nought, Except mannes soule, that Chryst so dere bought; That never may dye, nor never dye shall: Make moche of Parrot, the popegay ryall.
For that pereles prynce that Parrot dyd create, He made you of nothynge by his magistye: Poynt well this probleme that Parrot doth prate, And remembre amonge how Parrot and ye Shall lepe from this lyfe as mery as we be; Pompe, pryde, honour, ryches, and wordly lust, Parrot sayth playnly, shall tourne all to dust.
Thus Parrot dothe pray you With hert most tender, To rekyn with this recule now, And it to remember.
Psittacus, ecce, cano, nec sunt mea carmina Phebo Digna scio, tamen est plena camena deo.
Secundum Skeltonida famigeratum, In Piereorum catalogo numeratum.
Itaque consolamini invicem in verbis istis, &c. Candidi lectores, callide callete; vestrum fovete Psittacum, &c.
