'Betrayed, yes. Now put on your shoes, I'll walk you to the subway.'

[flemmings]

Early on in my Tokyo stay the gas company had a contest, for people to write haiku with the last line 'But still, there's the bath.' They published a two-page spread of winners somewhere- given what a lazy sod I was at the time, I probably read it in the Japan Times, in translation.

Today for the first time
I got called 'obasan'--
Still, there's the bath.

My son gets home from juku
After his father does from work-
Still, there's the bath.

Haiku (or even senryuu, which is what those are) don't work well in English. Envoi do:

Prince, all the fans are fretting mightily;
Lj is run by purblind geeks, by heck;
The humidex today was one-oh-three:
Still, there's the bath, and water to my neck.

Long weekend, and the low tonight is supposed to be 17. For this relief etc

Comments

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

After-school cram school that prepares you for exams. The only place Japanese kids learned anything, in my day.

One has to slide a little to get the water to the neck but it's doable. Not a *real* Japanese tub, of course: but those were either square and allowed no sliding at all, or four feet long. Some people want to stretch out more than that.

[incandescens]

The Fandom Revolution's having kits,
The Terms of Service are a bloody laugh,
Alas for Harry Potter and his porn!
But still, as Marat says, remains the bath.

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

The world continues as the world will
With seas of spooge and idiocy and wrath;
The wise fan stands apart and feels-- quite ill:
I think I'll go join Seneca in the bath.

[incandescens]

Proportion is for everyone but me,
Or so I'll have it on my epitaph,
With non-artistic, "What will be, wil be,"
I'll float a boat with Noah in the bath.

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

'This too shall pass'- I try to be blasé-
'No fury like a porn-starved fan Hell hath';
But it's been going on all bloody day.
Move over, Jimmie Morrisson, in the bath.

[incandescens]

If I could measure out their weight in gold
And dump the dross, through Archimedean math,
I wouldn't trawl the comms whose names I'm told . . .
I'd do a quiet "Eureka" in the bath.

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

My browser freezes when I view the splooge
And dumbly goes the way of Sylvie Plath:
Kindly to spare me from that grim deluge
And need to slit a wrist vein in the bath.