Poem for Wednesday

Arms and the Boy
By Wilfred Owen

Let the boy try along this bayonet-blade
How cold steel is, and keen with hunger of blood;
Blue with all malice, like a madman's flash;
And thinly drawn with famishing for flesh.

Lend him to stroke these blind, blunt bullet-leads,
Which long to nuzzle in the hearts of lads,
Or give him cartridges whose fine zinc teeth,
Are sharp with sharpness of grief and death.

For his teeth seem for laughing round an apple.
There lurk no claws behind his fingers supple;
And God will grow no talons at his heels,
Nor antlers through the thickness of his curls.

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I spent all morning fighting off a migraine that I blame on the dentist...for some reason I always end up with a splitting headache after being subjected to the polishing brush, which bothers me more than the drill. The roof of my mouth is violently ticklish and I always tense up like crazy in anticipation of being vibrated by that thing, and then my jaw and the rest feel terrible all day afterward. Considering how much the bite guard has helped me, you'd think I could not associate the dentist with head pain!

So I took several Excedrin and had two cups of tea, and then took a long walk to work off all this caffeine, and posted my Trek articles on the early side (finished Harve Bennett, wrote up Rick Berman's assistant running his mouth on the death of the franchise even though he can't tell Voyager episodes from Enterprise episodes), then updated my own web page with GMR and Trek articles I hadn't gotten around to linking. Tuesday is Hebrew school carpool day, so I had to pick up older son from the bus, then drive both kids to Hebrew. In my brainlessness I forgot that this week was the week younger son's class was celebrating having finished their first Hebrew books and missed the Siyum Sefer -- I had been expecting both my husband and my mother to ask about driving there with me, and when neither did, I had it in my mind that it must be next week! Fortunately husband arrived to pick them up early and caught the end of it, and son did not seem to mind.

Then, right after dinner, we lost power for nearly an hour! Had lovely candlelit bonding session in family room with kids doing homework and me trying to fold laundry and all of us claustrophobic because of the things we couldn't get done. It was a great relief when the lights came back on! Kids watched the second half of The Pacifier on cable, and then I had my usual Tuesday night hour of bliss: Brokeback Boston! Which starts with Denny declaring to Alan, "I wish we were getting married," as Alan ties his bowtie. Of course Denny amends that he means "we" as "you and I," each of them getting married to other people, but Alan has already picked up on the Freudian slip, and Denny's quick and typical, "I'm not gay!" does not faze him. He tells Denny that Denny isn't losing an Alan, he's gaining a Bev. (It is a regret of mine that never that menage a trois shall we see.)

Paul catches the garter, which I am hoping means he and Shirley are going to get married, though Shirley is kind of obsessed with Denny this episode...can't bear to watch him squeezing and humping Bev's butt on the dance floor at the wedding, and later spazzes over his well-being under the guise of protecting the firm. Denise tries to be romantic but she also dies at the dirty dancing. And then Denny shags a caterer in the cloakroom! Though he confesses he'd be just as happy shagging a cloak! And his biggest concern is that he will have missed cutting the cake! Paul hopes the marriage can be painlessly annulled when Bev freaks out, but it turns out Denny has already consummated it, having shagged Bev before the caterer: it's his special day, so he took his little blue pill. He rationalizes that he married Bev in the first place because she granted him the right to tomcat, and he exercised that right, so no divorce.

Well, of course Bev feels otherwise! When Brad talks about having tried to bribe Bev, after ascertaining that he won't be singing Denny's Got a Gun, Denny very calmly says, "Thank you, Brad, for telling me that. You're fired." He resorts to pointing out once again that his name is on the door, which leads a furious Paul to propose to Denise that they start their own firm with their names on the door. Meanwhile Schmidt, who has put her life into the same firm as Crane and Poole, warns Denny that his behavior is self-destructive, to which he replies that he loves her too. In desperation she goes to Alan, joking about coats and innuendo, but when he says, "You're asking me to manipulate my friend and I won't do it," she announces that it would have been easier to have sex with him.

Denny turns out to have a big card up his sleeve: he has the dirt on Bev. "Whenever I make love to a woman more than twice, I have her investigated," he announces, making one wonder how no one at the firm knew that or tried that! He didn't insist on a prenup because he loved her, but he also knew he had blackmail material. When it's over and Bev is off to Hawaii -- and I am glad they left me liking her a little, yet not enough to miss her -- she likes Hawaii more than Denny -- he apologizes to Brad, saying, "Sometimes people say things they don't really mean, like 'I love you' or 'You're fired.'" He is impressed that Brad defended the firm by trying to bribe Bev, and says Brad has very big testicles. "I'm glad you have that opinion," Brad tells Denny, who says it's not an opinion -- he saw Brad in the gym shower. "Good god!" adds Denny while Brad blinks. Whooo!

Meanwhile, Alan has been arguing a right-to-privacy case involving a woman fired from her job for being a smoker, and getting in his digs at Scalia and the Supreme Court, though he loses. I liked that the arguments seemed pretty balanced. Alan helpfully offers to shag her if she would like to try orgasm as a replacement for nicotine but she seems unconvinced of his altruism. Smoking on the balcony, Denny says that the first day of his marriages were always the best, "Just Married." When Alan says he found marriage devastatingly lonely after awhile, Denny asks about his wife, and Alan explains that she had creativity, desire, zealotry, a healthy lack of inhibition...she knew him so well that he resented it, she predicted even his unpredictability and he felt banal. "...she died. I've missed that banality ever since." I didn't watch enough of last season to know this backstory. Oh, Alan! *wails* And then he complains about renovations at his place, and Denny scoffs that this is rather like the night terror excuse, but when Alan asks if he can spend the night at Denny's place, Denny says, "Stay as long as you need to." They need to get married. ASAP. *lovelovelove*

Okay, that may be my longest babble about that show yet. I should see if Trek Nation wants reviews, seeing as it's Shatner and all. *G* On a final note, how come there are so many photos of Tom and Katie at that Aussie magnate's funeral and so few of Russell and Danielle? Not fair. And that's enough shallow for one evening. The alternative is to rant about the single mother arrested in my state and jailed because her kids keep cutting school. Way to help keep families intact. Sigh. She needs Alan Shore to defend her...you know he would.


National Zoo lemur in the Small Mammal House. Because who can resist that face?