Of Haggis and Owl...and Other Things Foul

I've recently been called out by a fellow blogger to participate in writing a poem. For those who don't exactly keep up here (at the Montgomery Advertiser blog section), mgb12345, who is very fond of writing poems, suggested I write one. Now, truth be told...I am not at all poem-y.

And I don't really like the ones which don't rhyme.

To me, if there's no rhyme...there's no reason. A poem without rhyme seems like a very short story with random line breaks. And I seriously don't get it.

But I wrote a silly poem the other day and I wrote to mgb12345 and told her about it. She wanted me to share...and I haven't, until now.

But, first I must confess that this is not my first foray into the poem realm. Long, long time ago, one of my online friends recruited the efforts of her group of online friends to attempt to win a radio contest in Scottsdale, Arizona. The gist of this contest was this: write a "funny" poem about haggis and win. Oh, wait, there's more...this was for the Arizona Renaissance Festival and the prize would be 10 free tickets (a small fortune, let me tell you - even in those days) and the "honour" of being crowned King (or Queen) of the Festival and all sorts of miscellaneous things being bestowed upon them.

So, I...a sucker for nearly any contest and downright pathetic whenever anything remotely challenging or competitive is put into the mix...set about writing a poem. Then I sent it to my friend. She culled all the ones sent to her (yeah, try to get the money back from her now, Renaissance Faire people) and submitted the one she considered her best bet.

As luck would have it, it was mine. And as further luck would have it...we (and when I say "we" I mean "I") won. Without further ado...I present my winning poem...from about 10-15 years ago:


The Minstrel's Ode to Haggis

Now gather ye maidens for a tale from our land...
Of the Scottish fare we eat that has gotten out of hand.
It's bits of the sheep innards that no one would eat...
Then boiled it its own stomach and WE call it a "treat".

So drink up and be merry for soon we will dine...
On a boiled tummy bag...ugh wench, fast, more wine.
If you think living now seems sometimes too dismal...
Just think of the Renaissance with no Pepto-Bismol.

Even Shakespeare wrote of haggis in a play called MacBeth...
With three witches a-cooking, a fate worse than death.
Listen close, heed my words, 'tis true in Scotland we tell...
That the something "rotten in Denmark" was the haggis smell.


So, as previously stated, she won all sorts of things...one of which was a real live (er...dead) haggis which she, in undoubtedly a grog-like induced state, decided a keen idea would be to ship this thing to me in the middle of summer, in a box surrounded by dry ice.

Dry ice, it seems, isn't necessarily "dry" when the bag it is encased in ruptures. And it isn't so much "icy" then, either. So, when I got this soggy box in the blistering heat of an Alabama summer...the first thing I did was say, "Ooooh a box." The second thing I said was, "Okay, the FBI will surely be coming to my door as whatever is inside this head-sized box...smells like...a severed head."

Okay, I've never actually smelled a severed head sent UPS, but chances are it's not too far off the mark from what I received. I, being the inquisitive sort...and not knowing what was inside the box...but really, really curious at this point, opened it.

All I can say is that the smell a sealed box of rotting, spoiled, decaying haggis emits pales in comparison with an opened box of rotting, spoiled, decaying haggis. Words like "vile" and (puntastically apropos) "gut-wrenching" come to mind. Also every single mob movie I've ever seen came to mind...and the "ear scene" from David Lynch's "Blue Velvet" as well...but mainly because I had recently watched it just prior to opening the box.

Yes, smell and memory are closely related because of the brain's limbic system. "Limbic" looks and sounds remarkably similar to the word "iambic", which, ironically is poem-related. In a strange way it's all very poetic really, right?

And that brings us to present day.

The other day I stumbled somehow upon a site which makes and sells "Hello Kitty" wine.

My online friend loves all things "Hello Kitty" so I forwarded the URL on to her. After she asked me which wine I would recommend, I perused their write-ups and came across this "tasty tidbit" for their Pinot Nero: "Best served with red meat, rabbit, lamb, roast beef, 'Zampone and Cotechino', wild owl and hard cheese."

Now, I don't know about you...but it's been virtually years since I've had any "wild owl" and frankly, if I can't get my hands on some prime grade "Spotted Owl"...I'm just going to say a resounding "No" to the whole owl species.

In the wee hours of the morning (all things are much funnier in the wee hours of the morning...hence my timely posting of this blog) my friend then asked her friends (on her forum) if people routinely eat "wild owl" in Britain. I figured it was probably just a typo and they indeed meant "wild fowl"...but, you have to admit..."wild owl" just reeks of the things a parody poem is made of.

So, I made one.

For further clarification of this poem's impetus - I must relay that someone from England replied at the forum saying they knew "gypsies who would cook up roadkill hedgehogs". Again...the things "memorable" poems are made of.

Please keep in mind my poem is in many different meters (at least I'm consistent in my inconsistency)...and I vehemently try to offend everyone equally across the board. :) Also, in my dealings and dabbling into the "world of poems" I've found out that I'm apparently very fond of the word "Ode"...and have used it in the title in all those I've penned. (Yes, all two of them.)


An Ode to All Things Eaten

Wild owls and guinea fowls and hedgehogs found as roadkill

These are the things that Brits do eat...as tasty as a duckbill.

When Americans eat...we like fresh meat...

We hunt it then it's skinless.

But in the UK they're drunk all day...On cheap rosé and Guinness.

Here in the South they like their deer, turkeys and some gator...

They boil them up in a big ole pot with carrots and po-tater.

I'm from New Jersey...we don't kill there, we just go to the market...

We point at things behind the case -- then pay from out the pocket.

Now I won't grab a gun to kill some meal...or a shovel for on-road scraping...

I don't have a pig, or a chicken or a cow...and no sheep here for raping.

So while I sit down with a store-bought snack and log on my computer...

...at some given point I will be drunk...but not with a guy named "Cooter".

You all have mgb12345 to thank for this...please feel free to direct all complaints directly to her. ;)

"X-planation"...no wait..."'splaination"...no...um...oh just stop explaining it to me already, okay?

"Lucy, you got some 'splainin' to do!"

Sure, Ricky Ricardo said it often...and poor Lucy would sometimes accommodate him by trying to conjure up some far-fetched explanation for her silliest of lame-brained schemes. Now, the joke was usually on Ricky as he, continually, was the one in the dark while, we, as the audience knew what Lucy had been up to all along. Of course this was really Hollywood and we all knew better...but...Hollywood still has a lot of 'splainin' to do - and to them, we're all a bunch of Rickys to their Lucy.

Picture if you will...a dilemma of sorts. How do you interject complicated phrases which are commonplace to, say...a doctor, a lawyer, the FBI, the crime scene investigators, a brilliant scientist conversing with another...and well, you get the point by now I'm sure...in your movie or show but still get the point across to the lay person?

Certainly words that are way beyond most people's scope of reasoning are bantered about by people who know what they mean all the time. You wouldn't expect a doctor to explain to his colleagues each time he rattles off a chain of ten dollar words. You wouldn't expect the DOD to stop using acronyms ASAP just because their ASCON and their ASD can't figure out what their GORP over in CE is saying. You wouldn't expect there's a lot of explanation on film...but...if you delve deeper into the script you can tell that Hollywood must take us for a bunch of popcorn munching morons.

Without sounding condescending...let me explain...

...I really started noticing this quite a few years ago but I didn't think too much of it. But ever since I rented the entire nine seasons of "The X-Files" back-to-back and played them episode after episode, night after night...I began to see a common thread.

What normally would occur one week to another as the series aired wasn't exactly obvious - but when viewed in this repetitive fashion, I noticed something which was cleverly laced over like the so many layers of dialogue which made this show such a hit. Whenever Scully (the female FBI agent) would be doing an autopsy on some poor misfortunate soul who lost his life battling a Chupacabra or some bile-sucking creepazoid...she would say to Mulder (the male FBI agent) a whole string of very technical sounding jargon. Then Mulder would innocently ask, "You mean her flesh was literally being dissolved by this fat sucking vampire like a spider dissolves his prey before he eats it?" Of course, that's not the exact wording (far from it)...but you get the idea, right? Chances are good if she just mentioned something clinical about lipids and amino acids and recombinant DNA and whatnot - the whole point would be lost on the majority of the viewing public...and we'd pretty much be staring at the screen shaking and scratching our collective heads going "huh?"

Now, you do get what I'm trying to say, right? I mean, I wouldn't really have to simplify it further for you at this point...but apparently - when you slap something on film...even the most elementary of dialogue tends to be dumbed down in this way...sometimes to the point of comic proportions.

I don't know how many of you have ever watched the show "NUMB3RS"...but when I watched it the first couple seasons (I had to...long story) it just didn't have the finesse that "The X-Files" had. It was painfully obvious the whole premise was...pretty much astronomically impossible to take seriously. The show centered around a math genius with a whole slew of inept FBI agents who didn't even know what the words "triangulate his location" meant - and without this one agent's math-whiz brother to solve case after case on his blackboard in the father's basement...well, the entire FBI would just be a bunch of bumbling Inspector Clouseaus hopelessly trying to find the way out of the building each nite.

Then you have the extreme "duh" factor...where the movie industry clearly doesn't think we are as smart as any fifth grader. Not only do they insult us by clearly defining what a word is...but they take it one step further...they clearly insult us by making us believe the character being spoken to doesn't have a clue either.

Case in point: Most of us have probably seen the Spiderman films. Who wouldn't? They are fun - Spiderman's fun...there's nifty CGI effects, geek turned hero to save the day, bad guys get their comeuppance...just a fun time for all...right? Well...aside from Mary Jane screaming her face off each time and whining "boo-hoo, no one loves me as an actress in New York City" where you only have 20 billion people all sharing the stage with you, most of which have connections, are better actresses, or have a resume longer than you can hold that sustained eardrum-bleeding banshee yell of yours...it goes a bit silly with the characterizations. Peter Parker aka Spiderman...is supposed to be a brilliant guy. He was shown to be superiorly intelligent in the first film...his diametrically opposed, 'superiorly stupid' best friend's dad, who just happens to own a business where he can become an evil maniac on the side...covets him as a future employee. In the second installment he expounds exponentially - bouncing mind-boggling theories of infinitesimal knowledgeable know-how off of this prominent, world-reknown scientist ("Doctorpus" as I call him) who also has the wherewith all (and unlimited funds) to be able to build his own maniacal evil-doer side business at the drop of a hat as well. So, it is now established...Peter Parker is quite the intellectual...he knows his stuff. He could beat pretty much you and me at "Trivial Pursuit", especially those green Science questions. He'd whoop our butts at "Jeopardy!"...but...he doesn't have a clue what a symbiotic relationship IS in the third film...as this dialogue which takes place ensues:

Professor: "Don't let any of that get on you..." (pointing to the black
jumping threadlike blob under the glass).

Peter Parker:
"Why?"

Professor: "It has the characteristics of a symbiote...which needs
to bond to a host to survive..."

Now, I don't know about you - but I knew what "symbiotic" meant back in - well...a LONG time ago. My son knows what it is...my daughter knows what it is...if my cats could talk...THEY'D know what it was. How on Earth did they not realize good ole Spidey-boy would, too?

So, in one fell swoop (Spiderman pun clearly not intended - but highly suggested) not only do they insult our intelligence...but they insult poor Parker in the process. This is inexcusable in my opinion. Hollywood didn't used to do this. Did the witch in "The Wizard of Oz" explain to the flying monkeys why the poppies will make them all sleep? Did "Citizen Kane" have to whack us on the head to get us to know this story clearly was written about William Randolph Hearst? Did Dickens need to have the three ghosts come back twice in order to get the message across to Scrooge? I think not! They didn't need to do it back then in film and they really don't need to do it now. We're really not THAT stupid...the ones who are...well, there's always the opportunity to Google it when they get home IF they can remember that far into the future. For the rest of us...stop doing it!

"But, why?" they'd undoubtedly ask...because heaven knows it always, always, always needs to be explained even further. Because...well...frankly, my dear Hollywood...we do know a damn.