When you’re doing poetry, especially with a fixed meter and hard pattern, you need variety.

I might have to pursue this a bit further.

I, too, have very little tolerance for talk radio. Partly it’s because it consists mostly of “hosts” who talk all over and drown out “guests”, partly it’s because those who call in are often blithering idiots (yeah, we need more anger, don’t we?), and partly it’s because those who call in just yammer in stumbling fits and starts that I find maddening to follow.

I have NEVER been able to follow the lyrics of most any kind of rock music, but I have no trouble with the lyrics of, for example, Judy Collins or Harry Chapin. To me, most rock music is just noise, some of which is pleasant to listen to, and most of which is not.

And opera, you might ask? A diva might as well be singing backwards in any language, and I can’t tell the difference. It is to laugh.

Books, on the other hand, I can’t live without, even for a short session on the porcelain throne.

I heard this very phenomenon on display this morning, as the deejays on the radio were inviting listeners to play something called “The ‘Uh’ Game.” Callers were given a topic and had to talk about it for 30 seconds without saying the words “uh,” “ah,” or “um.” I think the deejays went through about 10 callers before they finally got a winner. It was really surprising.

He does pages and pages of it — very economical yet believable.