Some players complain about video games
Where your ammo is finite or weapons can break,
But many examples I know of are fun,
So I have to reply with an alternate take.

A whole lot of games have expendable items
For non-combat purposes such as to heal.
Allowing that feat without limit would make
The objective too easy and lose its appeal.

It’s true that disarmament during a battle
Is harsh and alarming to those unprepared,
But keeping the prospect in mind gives incentive
To swap out equipment for what can be spared.

It forces the players to vary their fighting.
The matches won’t feel so alike all the while.
It adds to the challenge, but not to the point
Of frustration, I find, so I’m glad for the style.

Sorry, folks, another incomplete read. I've been doing this a lot lately. Have I lost patience, especially with books that are not sci-fi or fantasy? Am I that eager to clear shelf space? Or have I just had bad luck with my literary choices of late? At least this Paul Auster book, at 970 pages, is one of the longest novels I ever tried, and I read more than 250 pages before giving up.

( Cut for length )

Now to start a birthday present: Greenteeth by Molly O'Neill. This I know to be fantasy.

My mom used to read Lilian Jackson Braun's The Cat Who... series a lot. She asked to (re?)read this 1995 book when I finished it. It reached #8 on the New York Times Best Seller list, yet it is not among the majority of TCW entries with a Wikipedia page. The only reason I started here is that it happened to be given away.

( Cut for length )

Up next is Paul Auster's 4 3 2 1. Getting a thick tome off the shelf ahead of my birthday.

People have asked why American censors
Are lighter on violent acts than on sex
And, likewise, American ratings boards mostly
Give only pornography ratings like X.

I get why we ask, because violence probably
Causes more trouble than sex in RL.
The former’s destructive by nature; the latter,
While risky, is likely to end rather well.

I thought of a possible answer: We know
On some level that violence shown on a screen
Is not so authentic; the actors or stunt doubles
Rarely get injured in footage we’ve seen.

By contrast, when actors are naked on camera,
It’s almost assured what we’re seeing is real.
This factor depends on the medium, yes,
But I still think my theory has certain appeal.

Most state names in the USA have meanings we can trace,
But “Idaho” was probably a gag; it’s out of place.
Some folks suggest the Plains Apache ídaahę́, or “foe,”
Referring to Comanches, but on that, my vote is no.
More likely, George M. Willing, then a delegate called “Doc,”
Made up the name and then devised its meaning (what a crock).
He claimed that it was “gemstone of the mountains” in Shoshoni.
He later would confess that he was being quite the phony.
Perhaps it wasn’t his idea, but records haven’t shown
Its use before an 1860 meeting that we’ve known.
Supposedly, he coined it when he’d met a little girl
Named Ida, but at any rate, he gave the name a whirl
And made it his suggestion for a territory name.
It won the vote at first, but Congress quickly felt some shame
And switched to “Colorado.” Nonetheless, the first name stuck
To one town there, and that was not the end of Willing’s luck.
In Washington, a county took the name a few months later.
In 1863, at last, the silly word’s creator
Would get his wish with yet another territory’s label.
The borders changed by statehood, but the name of it was stable.
Did people still believe the lie or simply like the sound?
Regardless, it’s a pain to change, and thus it sticks around.

The modern-day view of the crescent and star
As strictly Islamic has gotten quite far,
But not every Muslim accepts them that way.
On this point, Muhammad had nothing to say.
Indeed, the two symbols together were found
For thousands of years before he was around.
The Bosporan Kingdom, the Romans and Greeks,
The Persians of old—it was hardly unique,
And even the Christians made use of the pair
In heraldry back before Muslims got there.
What happened? The Ottoman Empire’s flag
Established the crescent and star as a tag
For nations that followed, like Azerbaijan,
Algeria, Turkey—the roster goes on.
Since these are Islamic, some folks made a link
And claimed the faith’s icon. So what do you think?

The six-point star, or hexagram, is widely known today
To mean the Jewish folk or faith in many a display,
But Hindu, Jain, and Buddhist art makes use of it as well,
Especially in diagrams (what for, I couldn’t tell).

In early Christian churches, it can signify creation,
And Mormon temples have it stand for reconciliation.
To alchemists, it melds the classic elemental signs.
Occultists try to block or conjure spirits in its lines.

In Jewish and Islamic lore, it’s on the Seal or Ring
Of Solomon to indicate the power of the king
To order jinn and demons and communicate with beasts.
Historians dispute when this began in the Mideast.

The seal was also called the Shield of David, words that came
From somewhere in the Talmud as the Lord Almighty’s name.
It’s thought to have emblazoned shields of David’s army troops
And coins from when bar Kokhba led a Jewish rebel group.

So how’d it turn distinctly Jewish? See medieval Prague:
A Holy Roman Emperor said Jews could have a flag.
They chose the star, which spread ‘cross Eastern European Jews.
Then gentiles found the five-point star much handier to use.

Some folks would like to see the star replaced with a menorah
Or other Jewish symbol, like a scroll that’s labeled “Torah.”
They deem the star too sullied by its use for other stuff.
But I believe it now is recognizable enough.

Sorry, Tom Clancy fans, but I gave up on Red Storm Rising. After nearly 250 of about 750 pages, I noticed I was plagued not by boredom but by apathy. There's not-so-Cold War action, all right, but I forgot the sequence of events and why I should care about any particular character. No wonder it became a video game but never a movie.

For a replacement, I picked up my first book by the late Tom Robbins and the only one I'd heard of besides Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas. It's also the only book ever recommended to me by a tour guide. I don't recall how much I'd told him about what I like to read, but it sounded pretty quirky.

( I didn't know the half )

I might as well throw in a bonus review of what I read alternately and finished at the same time: The Language Lover's Puzzle Book by Alex Bellos. The 100 puzzles range from simple Pig Latin translation to admittedly super-challenging inferences for languages I'd never heard of. About a quarter of the time, I didn't even try before turning to the answer section, which is almost as long as the rest. For me, the main joy was in learning trivia, not least about conlangs. Made for a nice break from my other reading.


Next up is The Last Graduate by Naomi Novik. I'm going from a novel about living indefinitely to one where lots of people young.

Adolphe Quetelet was a mid-19th-century
Belgian in multiple scientist fields.
He made an eponymous index in search of
The average man as a social ideal.

This index was not called the body mass index
Till nearly a century after he died.
By then, it was favored for medical usage,
In essence a rough adiposity guide.

In light of its origin, one may well wonder
Why doctors still use BMI to this day.
Indeed, many people have said it’s a poor
Rule of thumb that should really be fading away.

For starters, dividing your weight by the square of
Your height makes no sense if you’re not fully flat,
So tall and short people aren’t fairly assessed,
And it makes no distinction twixt muscle and fat.

What’s more, Quetelet based his formula mostly
On data from soldiers of Scotland and France.
It ought to be different for others, especially
Black folks. Do they get called healthy? Fat chance.

A bunch of alternatives have been proposed.
Quetelet even offered a change of his own.
The “new BMI” has a 2.5 exponent,
Scaled to be close to the mean that we’ve known.

The corpulence, Rohrer’s, or ponderal index
Just swaps out the square for a cube. Fair enough?
But tall people tend to be narrow in frame
Next to short folk. Determining fairness is tough.

The BMI Prime compares actual stats with
The threshold beyond which one’s deemed overweight.
Some doctors will focus on visceral fat,
So they measure the waistline (an obvious trait).

A Body Shape Index includes many factors,
The Surface-based Body Shape Index still more.
The modified body mass index has serum
Albumin involved, but don’t ask me what for.

In short, if you don’t trust the most common method,
There’s plenty to choose from for gauging your risk
Of health problems stemming from excess of fat
(Tho some claim the connection just doesn’t exist).

A slang phrase, tho American and certainly far from new,
Is the name of a post-punk British band: It’s 23 Skidoo.
I’m not sure who still uses the phrase for having to exit fast,
But the early 1900s had it become a big part of our past.
At first it was two words separately, with meanings much alike.
In 1906, many ads would give the joint expression a spike.
The “skidoo” part’s pretty simple as a variant of “skedaddle,”
But where’d the “23” come from? Explanations leave me addled.
One theory notes the Flatiron Building on New York’s 23rd Street.
Its shape yields swirling winds, which might make exits extra fleet.
The trouble is that the building was finished only in 1902,
Three years too late for “23” and one too late for “skidoo”
(Altho What Happened on Twenty-third Street, a short from 1901,
Depicts a Seven Year Itch-style upskirt draft for racy fun).
In Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities, a man to be beheaded
Is called by his number, 23—how bland for a fate so dreaded!
A jockey claimed that a track was only 22 horses wide.
A 23rd horse would start behind, with a need for speed implied.
It might be a telegraph shorthand code to mean “Away with you,”
But Western Union has it for “All stations copy”; that won’t do.
Perhaps Skidoo, California, stood some 23 miles away
From a water source on Telescope Peak; the town is gone today.
Another Death Valley town, perhaps, had 23 saloons.
A man might visit them all to have the greatest time in moons.
This isn’t an exhaustive list of the theories behind the term.
Just know there are a lot of them, and none are yet confirmed.