Haiku Schmaiku

Today's lunch was a most curious and tasty lunch of linguini laced with vegetables and in a peanut butter/rice vinegar/soy/sugar sauce, spiced up with red pepper flakes and with just a hint of ginger/garlic/onions to make it Asianish. Served chilled just like soba (not like it takes much to chill things here) on a bed of lettuce. Stick a fancy name on it and put it on a zen black plate and it could've been a fusion dish served at some michellin star-red restaurant, but this was simple fare at the Stuart Cafe where i'm hiding from the snow and using their powerpoints. muahaha.

Anyway, the point is that I also drank this bottle of green tea, which had this verse at the side:

"on the pond
a curled duck feather
catches the breeze"

Which is all well and good, except that below that it says that it's the "ITO EN New Haiku award winner". Which is ........ odd, since that is not at all like a haiku, except for the tone of it. hmm. scammy. Surely the Japanese company which makes this strange Japanese tea (or, well, Japanese sounding company) knows its haikus from its tankas from its free verse? So a quick browse to their website shows that they're trying to push a form of New Style Haiku which is basically free verse. Which is totally cheating, since i think so much of the beauty of haikus comes from working within the constraints of 5-7-5 syllables. *Traditionalist*

P.S. if any of you is wondering why i'm suddenly posting so much, I have no idea either, but i put it down to the fact that it's midterm season and suddenly i have this immense need for procrastination. hm.