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Feb. 16th, 2014 10:28 amPolice investigating horrific screams in Maine find happy pig.
I want to think about why I love this so much. It isn't just that the delight of knowing that a pig was happy is multiplied by the relief that no person was horrifically screaming. Or that the journalistic present tense, intended to imply that their news is so new it's still happening, brings that delight and relief close to you in time. These things would make me love it on their own, but don't account for the whole love.
It's prosodic, but a prosody interacting with content: police has such a short first syllable you start fast, such a long second one you have time to think about how fast it just started. About how ominous it is that you've started fast and that already the police are involved. They're investigating - this is a fast word but the different quick parts go in so many directions you're spun dizzy around by the end of it. Matching how you so far think that the investigation is ongoing, is lost in the labyrinth of traces of what's already happened, since it's much more common for this use of "investigating" to elide "are investigating" rather than "who were investigating" in news captions. Investigating is a hype-building word, too, where you hit the stressed syllable extra-hard to get the tongue momentum to shake your way through the dusty rug that's the rest of the word. We're iambic so far but horrific stops that, in part because of the rupturing pause of h after g, made stronger by our momentum down from "vest," where we hang on for dear life at the g tail and watch g dust slide free down the void. Not only meter and flow have been broken, though, but we also mentally pause at "horrific" unless we're insane. It's a kick in the mouth sort of word, and the third emotional elevation in a row: ono the police, ono they're not fundraising or speaking or solving but investigating some bad thing, ono it's a bad thing that makes horror! And all of this mental pausing is happening with no sonic pause, since metrically we're still going forward, anapests speed things up after all and there was just the one and now we're iambic again and bumped relentlessly forward into the worst long one syllable word of them all which is screams, not just one but plus question mark number of screamings. Sssscrape. Eeeeeeeee. Muffled bump. Every scream ends with murder.
And it's in Maine! Iambic, generalized, final. N's fall is even steeper than m's. There's nothing you can do about it Jake we're in Maine. The screams in Maine drain mainly out of pain.
And given the speed of what's gone before we're either annotating a completed pentameter - to be or not to be that is the question (in Maine) - or we're ending a syllable-stuffed one with a slower finality - to beefily notably be that's the question in Maine. But it turns out we're neither and still going in, and we have time to realize this while undoing the latch that is f after n.
Find, that at first sticking opening door that swings wide into new. A police find, so making us see these were past tense news-present tense cops, not now-now ones. A police find, so over, or ending at least the beginning. But a find found right after horrific screams, so no good. A worst of which the best you can say is it's done.
Find - a false past tense, stealing unfairly from found. Which is what we need in it, for "you will find" to feel like you already have. All other possibilities filed away - a more filed word than filed, again from that sharp n drop, then doorstopper d.
The jump from d to h here is from end of final breath to the start of a first.
Happy's first syllable is one of if not the highest one, hence happy's having lasted meaning happy. So high it's hard to stop the word at y, it infects the next, happy days, happy children, envelops the next words as part of itself.
Pipipi. Happy what? Happy pig. HAPPY PIG?
This enveloped word's already there. Has been opened out like a drawer to make us see there was always a pig in happy.
It's the happiest animal word, far too happy for an adult. A pig is never large but big, whatever we may say.
We've revised the investigation from open to closed, we now revise the horrific to happy-making happy, and we're not even done 'cause we're invited to a party, where a pig who for whatever reason was happy is joined by cops who are happy he isn't a stabbed jogger (and also that he's happy) who are joined by journalists elated that for once the cops are smiling and that happy pig is there and locals come and ask if it's okay to come and the cops say of course, it's fine, it's not a crime, it's just this pig that's happy and the locals cheer and someone pops champagne and dancing starts. And later, one small journalist thinks hey, a-ha, and sits down by the barn outside and takes her tiny pencil out and writes down in her book the perfect phrase.
I want to think about why I love this so much. It isn't just that the delight of knowing that a pig was happy is multiplied by the relief that no person was horrifically screaming. Or that the journalistic present tense, intended to imply that their news is so new it's still happening, brings that delight and relief close to you in time. These things would make me love it on their own, but don't account for the whole love.
It's prosodic, but a prosody interacting with content: police has such a short first syllable you start fast, such a long second one you have time to think about how fast it just started. About how ominous it is that you've started fast and that already the police are involved. They're investigating - this is a fast word but the different quick parts go in so many directions you're spun dizzy around by the end of it. Matching how you so far think that the investigation is ongoing, is lost in the labyrinth of traces of what's already happened, since it's much more common for this use of "investigating" to elide "are investigating" rather than "who were investigating" in news captions. Investigating is a hype-building word, too, where you hit the stressed syllable extra-hard to get the tongue momentum to shake your way through the dusty rug that's the rest of the word. We're iambic so far but horrific stops that, in part because of the rupturing pause of h after g, made stronger by our momentum down from "vest," where we hang on for dear life at the g tail and watch g dust slide free down the void. Not only meter and flow have been broken, though, but we also mentally pause at "horrific" unless we're insane. It's a kick in the mouth sort of word, and the third emotional elevation in a row: ono the police, ono they're not fundraising or speaking or solving but investigating some bad thing, ono it's a bad thing that makes horror! And all of this mental pausing is happening with no sonic pause, since metrically we're still going forward, anapests speed things up after all and there was just the one and now we're iambic again and bumped relentlessly forward into the worst long one syllable word of them all which is screams, not just one but plus question mark number of screamings. Sssscrape. Eeeeeeeee. Muffled bump. Every scream ends with murder.
And it's in Maine! Iambic, generalized, final. N's fall is even steeper than m's. There's nothing you can do about it Jake we're in Maine. The screams in Maine drain mainly out of pain.
And given the speed of what's gone before we're either annotating a completed pentameter - to be or not to be that is the question (in Maine) - or we're ending a syllable-stuffed one with a slower finality - to beefily notably be that's the question in Maine. But it turns out we're neither and still going in, and we have time to realize this while undoing the latch that is f after n.
Find, that at first sticking opening door that swings wide into new. A police find, so making us see these were past tense news-present tense cops, not now-now ones. A police find, so over, or ending at least the beginning. But a find found right after horrific screams, so no good. A worst of which the best you can say is it's done.
Find - a false past tense, stealing unfairly from found. Which is what we need in it, for "you will find" to feel like you already have. All other possibilities filed away - a more filed word than filed, again from that sharp n drop, then doorstopper d.
The jump from d to h here is from end of final breath to the start of a first.
Happy's first syllable is one of if not the highest one, hence happy's having lasted meaning happy. So high it's hard to stop the word at y, it infects the next, happy days, happy children, envelops the next words as part of itself.
Pipipi. Happy what? Happy pig. HAPPY PIG?
This enveloped word's already there. Has been opened out like a drawer to make us see there was always a pig in happy.
It's the happiest animal word, far too happy for an adult. A pig is never large but big, whatever we may say.
We've revised the investigation from open to closed, we now revise the horrific to happy-making happy, and we're not even done 'cause we're invited to a party, where a pig who for whatever reason was happy is joined by cops who are happy he isn't a stabbed jogger (and also that he's happy) who are joined by journalists elated that for once the cops are smiling and that happy pig is there and locals come and ask if it's okay to come and the cops say of course, it's fine, it's not a crime, it's just this pig that's happy and the locals cheer and someone pops champagne and dancing starts. And later, one small journalist thinks hey, a-ha, and sits down by the barn outside and takes her tiny pencil out and writes down in her book the perfect phrase.
