Here's a poem guaranteed to piss off all the women of your acquaintance.

Song. That Women Are But Men's Shadows

Ben Jonson

Follow a shadow, it still flies you;

Seem to fly it, it will pursue:

So court a mistress, she denies you;

Let her alone, she will court you.

Say, are not women truly, then,

Styled but the shadows of us men?

At morn, and even, shades are longest;

At noon, they are or short, or none:

So men at weakest, they are strongest,

But grant us perfect, they're not known.

Say, are not women truly then,

Styled but the shadows of us men?

Well, I haven't written anything of my own yet today, but there's still time. Funny how winning a time-to-write grant doesn't magically remove all the work I still have left to do for other people. And at the moment I'm slightly afraid to look at my poem-under-construction, mostly because I wrote yesterday's section with a burgeoning head cold of the sort that seems to lessen one's IQ by several points. So I'm afraid the poem might be stupid, which would make me sad. Maybe it will have to be a take-a-nap-and-then-write-sturdy-prose afternoon. Still, this irritating Jonson lyric does cheer me up. Sometimes it can be vivifying to take a sudden intense dislike to a famous author.

Parent-student basketball game this afternoon. I shall absolutely refuse to participate but will sit on the bleachers with my bag of cough drops. The trick to getting out of these local-sports dilemmas is to wear entirely unsuitable shoes. It's also important to remember that workboots don't count as unsuitable.