Blackmoor Vituperative

The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

“The Second Coming“, W. B. Yeats, 1919

Fun fact! Yeats went on to embrace fascism and authoritarianism — the “passionate intensity” of “the worst“. “The Second Coming” is the most compelling proof I know of that an artist is not their art — and if we insist on conflating the two, or on depriving ourselves of great art by less-than-great people, that it is we who suffer for it.

Yeats, after all, is long dead, and quite beyond our reproachment.

What had me thinking about this was, of course, the results of the election yesterday, in which the “the worst” — angry, hateful, and completely detached from reality — won virtually every election.

I am glad that I don’t have children. The United States is a dumpster fire, and it won’t get better in my lifetime.

If it ever does.

I had a dentist appointment this morning. I had planned to pick up some milk from the store afterward. Unfortunately, my car’s battery was dead. After some protests, Susan consented to allow me to drive her car.

When I arrived at the dentist’s office, I realized that I didn’t have a face mask: it was in my car. So no shopping afterward.

I called the dentist office to let them know I was outside, so they could bring out the pandemic-release forms and take my temperature. My temperature was 96.3 F, and they left the forms with me.

The first page described all of the reasons that I could catch COVID-19 at the dentist’s office despite their precautions, and ended with a statement I was supposed to sign confirming that my visit met the requirements of urgency and medical necessity described above.

I apologized and returned the form to the next nurse who came outside, and said it wasn’t urgent: just a checkup.

“Oh, it’s okay. We are seeing patients for checkups now.”

I apologized again, and fled, my stomach in knots.

Happy Birthday to William S. Burroughs — American novelist, short story writer, satirist, essayist, painter, and spoken word performer.

In the future, everyone will be poor except the rich
In the future, everyone will have guns except the poor
In the future, everyone will be the color of cafe-au-lait
In the future, everyone will be beautiful
In the future, everyone will be obese
In the future, everyone will think they’re smart
In the future, everyone will be stupid
In the future, everyone will be happy
In the future, everyone will be angry
In the future, everyone will be sad

I have an update on that poem I was looking for.

I finally found a single reference to this poem, through Google Books, in The Columbia Granger’s guide to poetry anthologies, a book which is itself a listing and review of other books. The poem is called “Where the Neuter Computer Goes Click”, and it was contained in the anthology Of quarks, quasars, and other quirks: Quizzical poems for the supersonic age, edited by Sara Westbrook Brewton, John Edmund Brewton, and Quentin Blake, published in 1977. That’s not where I encountered it: as I mentioned, I read it in a literature textbook.

The anthology is out of print, but used copies are really cheap, so I went ahead and bought one.

When I was a pre-teen in the mid-1970s (I must have been nine or ten), the textbook for my English class had some great short stories, such as Harrison Bergeron and Who Can Replace A Man? One of the poems in it that still sticks with me was called The Neuter Computer. “The Neuter Computer says ‘tick’ / The Neuter Computer says ‘click’ / …”.

I have looked for that poem since, but have never found it — or any mention of it, anywhere. Even the mighty Google shrugs its shoulders at my query. Am I the only one who remembers this poem?