down the aisle (poem 018-2021)

bathed in this

moment's movement

swathed in sun

light on our feet

your arm in the crook

of my elbow

shepherding us 

all so surely

smiles alight

autumnal flames 

unquenched

this now

no other

but this

one

until

eternity

 

the eyes have it

Are you laughing at what I just said? Smirking?
I didn't say anything. No, I was not laughing. Or smirking, as you call it.
But your eyes are smirking.
Eyes can't smirk.
Yes, they can. You just proved it. Look at yourself.
I can't look at myself. That's impossible, like 'watch your head.'
But your eyes are still smirking, mocking me.
If you say so. Speaking of which, please stop yelling at me.
I'm not yelling.
You're yelling at me with your eyes.
Eyes can't yell.
To quote someone in this conversation, 'Yes, they can.'
Where are we going with this?
Who said anyone's going anywhere?
I just want to be clear.
Is that possible?
For us?
For anyone.
Does it matter?
You know, it's all about the journey, not the destination blah blah blah.
What time is it? I have to go.
Does anybody really know what time it is? Go? Go where?
Anywhere but here.
Here we go again.
Then close your eyes.
Don't get lost now.
Too late. 

Getting Even, Going MAD

During the Cold War, military strategists concocted the notion of mutually (or mutual) assured destruction as a deterrent to nuclear war. The prospect — no, the potential and imminent reality — of nuclear war allegedly would be so ghastly and unthinkable as to stop each side from pressing the button, if in fact buttons would be pressed instead of dials turned, detonators plunged, or switches flipped. The concept was known by the suitable acronym MAD.

As the folks at Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (nuclearfiles.org) succinctly put it, “Whoever shoots first, dies second.”

According to one report, the term was coined in 1962 by one Donald Brennan of the Hudson Institute, which was led by Herman Kahn. The 1964 Stanley Kubrick movie “Dr. Strangelove” wickedly satirized elements of Kahn’s strategies.

I am not qualified to comment on whether MAD is or was a viable option. (“Viable option” seems oxymoronic at best.) I am not schooled in war theories or military history; during the Vietnam War, I applied for conscientious objector status. 

But I do claim to be a wordsmith, so let’s start with that.

Mutually assured destruction. Does it work as a relationship tool? Let’s see. Person A threatens to blow the relationship up. Person B counters with, “Go ahead! Go nuclear. Then we both have nothing. We both destroy the planet we currently inhabit.” Kids, house, income, savings, two dogs, three cats, and the pet iguana neither of you ever wanted but the child insisted on all go up in smoke, more accurately it all turns into domestic shrapnel sent flying from your respective attorneys’ offices.

Sound familiar? Veterans of divorce understand this scenario. They and those in their nuclear testing zones intimately and tragically know the radioactive fallout of this strategy when it fails. “Fails” may be the wrong word. It’s safe to say the approach may have worked in the short term — even for years or decades. “Worked” is putting it kindly. It held divorce at bay, the way religious strictures and stringent civil prohibitions against divorce once prevailed.

One need not go the marriage-divorce route to comprehend this. It might just as easily go from threats of infidelity to actual carnal misdeeds, ending with one’s worldly possessions on the curb in the rain.

It all might end with the clanging silence of ghosting, a muffled neutron bomb without detritus.

Maybe MAD works infinitesimally better in domestic relations than on the world stage. An after-nuclear-war planet presumably doesn’t have second and third chances. But uncoupled and divorced people connect anew or remarry all the time, getting a chance to try MAD all over again. Or they trod a lessons-learned path, such as mutually assured security (MAS),  albeit another military analogy.

If you like, carry this same MAD metaphor into the workplace, financial markets, parenting, legislating, and sports. Game-theory enthusiasts and negotiation experts already have.  

Does all or nothing, “whoever shoots first, dies second” ever work in any context?

In the field of substance-abuse and addiction recovery, there’s a tough-love tactic that says, “Maybe you haven’t had enough. Go out and try some more.” Even if it kills you. It’s all or nothing. No half-measures. You don’t hear this much — how else would rehabs make money? Would this be provisionally assured destruction and reconstruction (PADAR)?  

Being twice divorced and not wishing to add the adjective “thrice” to that past participle, I will not suggest strategies for domestic harmony. But as for MAD as a useful gambit in other realms?

Who knows.

The fateful question is: Are you sacrificing a pawn or a king?

the tide

I received an email yesterday (read it today) from a friend. They have surrendered. She won't survive leukemia. A very tough two years. Forty-four years married. Devoted. Words mere water. Mercy. God's mercy upon them.

alienation of affection

It's a rather poetic term, isn't it?

Alienation of affection?

Did you know it dates to at least the 1800s and is a legal term associated with tort cases involving adultery?

I didn't know that, did you?

Who is doing the alienating?

Who the affecting?

Who is alienated from whom?

From whose affection?

What would "alienation of affectation" mean?

Does alienation of affection therefore result in bonding of disaffection?

Who doesn't feel alienated from affection now and then?

Know what I mean?

How would one insource such outsourcing of affection?

Do you think this is all just fun and games, merely wordplay?

How do you measure alienation?

How do you assess affection?

When do you know you've reached the state of "alienation of affection"?

What's the cure for alienation of affection?

What is this, twenty questions or something?

Are we done here?

heh heh heh, Hef

I just read on the AP wire [there's an old-fashioned term] that Hugh Hefner, 84, is engaged to Crystal Harris, 23.

How sweet.

Must be lust at first sight.

Or love at first pre-nup.

Tut-tut.

Tit for tat.

And all that.

Many happy returns, or whatever is the right phrase for these two, um, lovebirds.

(Look at me, trying to be all clever and laughoristic -- without success. Sometimes you just have to let the news speak for itself.)

The Inquisition, or "We Need to Talk"

For several days now, the most frequently emailed article from The New York Times website has involved Questions Couples Should Ask (Or Wish They Had) Before Marrying. It's smart stuff. You know, things about children, sex, finances, work, chores. Exactly the kinds of topics many of us diligently avoided as we dashed toward Nuptial Nirvana.

One excellent fellow blogger, Dr. Andrew, devotes his whole blog more or less to such topics at To Love, Honor and Dismay.

As a veteran of more than one domestic war and occasional, almost-accidental tranquillity, The Laughorist hereby offers some important prenuptial or postnuptial questions of his own:


1. Do you snore?

2. Do you ever get the feeling you are a man trapped inside a woman's body, or vice versa, or some combination thereof?

3. Whom do you think of while we're having sex?

4. Do you leave the cap off the toothpaste? Why? (Or why not?)

5. Does it bother you if someone pees in the shower even if you will never find out, and is the asking of this question really going to scotch the whole thing?

6. Where were you on the night of January 28, 1993?

7. How many sporting events (or soap operas) will you watch weekly?

8. Who are your favorite authors? (A response such as "Well, I don't know; I don't read much" should set off gongs in your head.)

9. What would Kierkegaard say (WWKS)?

10. How do you spell o-r-g-a-s-m?

11. Does size matter to you?

12. Do you leave the toilet seat up or down, and why?

13. Do you wash your hands with soap after using the toilet? How many times?

14. What are you most afraid of (see question 11)?

15. Do you mind if I run a credit check and background check on you?

16. Do you hear voices? If so, what do they say about me?

17. Paper or plastic? Or neither?

18. What are your greatest shortcomings? What are mine, if any?

19. In your own words, what does it mean if somebody (in the words of the comedian Robert Klein) "dreams of a hot dog chasing a donut in the Lincoln Tunnel"?

20. Would you mind if I just have some time alone and think things over a little bit right now; I'm reconsidering a whole bunch of things in my life after all these questions, okay?

Laugh. Or....

Else.

A CAPital OFFense

So I get this prescription, a steroid ointment. It comes in a tube. My toes were itching and burning like they were ablaze. Eczema. Fine. I open the box for the ointment and throw the directions out. I go to apply the cream and find that a metallic seal first has to be broken. (Warning to Freudian psychoanalysts: please refrain from the obvious. Much obliged.) I use a Q-tip to break the seal, apply the cream. Great.

Then I find that the cap does not stay on. It slides off. It is too loose. I consider going back to the pharmacist. (This was last Friday, a very cold but otherwise warm-hearted, pleasant afternoon, later followed by my Saint Nicholas gig.)

"Phil, I can't seem to get this cap to stay on," I would've said.

Or, "Karen, can you help me to screw [on this cap]?" I imagined flirting with his assistant.

But, no, I don't go back to the pharmacy. I figure I'll live with it. So the cap is loose. Let the feckin thing stay loose.

But I am too anal-retentive to let this go entirely. Or at all.

I bring this issue up casually with my housemate, my partner (OK! my spouse, if you prefer).

I tell her about it.

Before I even finish a sentence, she experiences gales of laughter, paroxysms of pleasure (humorous pleasure; you all have dirty minds).

To be fair to her -- and to me -- not malicious laughter. The kind that it is easy to go along with and perhaps even laugh along with.

She informs me. No. Wait. She doesn't inform me; she silently takes the fecking cap and takes it off and puts it on via the other end.

I was wondering what the pointy cone was for. Oh! To puncture the seal! And then to reverse the cap and place it on the screw portion, the threads. O Freudimus maximus!

I told her this was easy for her because she works in a hospital. She does this sort of thing every day.

Does anyone out there know what I am talking about? Am I a retro-pre-Luddite in a modern age? Am I alone in having the universe pass me by?

If you are all laughing at me, I hate you all.

I admit to being an intellectual snob.

I may have to drop the penultimate word from that previous sentence.

Screw it. Screw you all.

Laugh. Or....

Else.