Ear Memory

...I shall never see/a poem lovely as a tree....

Oscar Rasbach is a name I've hunted for quite some time, though I didn't know it. 

How do you find a thing if you don't know its name?

Right, you describe it. That's hard to do for music on YouTube, and just as hard on eBay. I had this music box, you see. It had a strange rattle inside as though there was a bit of the mechanism that was loose or had broken off. But the tune was lovely, and I've never forgotten it. I can hear it in my head, complete with the tik-tik-tik noise that wasn't really part of the song.

It was a brown plastic box, a little smaller than a Brownie Box camera. It had a picture on it of a little girl holding perhaps a pussy willow branch. There was a gold-wrapped hanging cord at the top, and a round plastic ball attached to a pull-string at the bottom. On the back, at the bottom, was the word Japan in raised letters. My sister's music box was more or less identical to mine, but it played a different tune and had a different picture. The sticker on my sister's music box said Talk To The Animals. I recognized the tune my sister's music box played, but I liked my tune better. My sticker said Trees, but was a little bit torn, so the song could have been '_____ Trees'.

I remember all of these details, but can't recall if I took my pills or not. Memory is such a bastard.

A YouTube hunt of 'tune Trees' turned up Marty Casey & Lovehammers, 21 Pilots, a woman playing a Koto in what turns out to be a clip from a Netflix movie called Our Shining Days, Flatbush Zombies, Senbonzakura (One Thousand Cherry Trees) and Hatsune Miku, who seems to be a pop star and also a Vocaloid, and Rush. But not my music box. It also turned up videos demonstrating many music box songs which were promotional material for music box makers, and synthesized "music box" covers of 21 Pilots' Trees. But not my music box.

Off to eBay, then, entering 'music box trees.' That got me Christmas music boxes, musical stuffed Christmas trees, musical porcelain Christmas trees, musical china Christmas trees and music boxes playing 'O Christmas Tree.' I added 'Japan' and then, though I wasn't sure, I added 'Hummel'.

I was never really a fan of the Hummel figurines which were cloyingly ubiquitous in the late '70s, but also got them confused with the Love Is naked cartoon people and the W R Berries big eyed statuettes. Not to be confused with the Keane paintings of big eyed sad children, which is a Whole 'Nother Story But Hummel drawings are a different thing. I'm never going to be a collector of Hummel anything, okay? but Hummel drawings are quite nice, really. And that, along with "pull string," turned out to be the right keyword.

The things eBay showed me were either "i dont know what tune it play but its pritty" or Eidlewiese, Brahms' Lullaby, Hi Lily Hi Lo, Lara's Theme (also listed as Dr Zhivago), It's A Small World, Smile Make Someone Happy, and a whole bunch of listings where the tune wasn't specified. I used the Ask Seller A Question function and inquired of a few sellers. I took a chance buying one that the seller responded that they didn't recognize the tune. It turned out to be "It's A Small World."

Back to YouTube, searching for 'Song Trees' and this time, there were useful subtitles on some of the results. This result, featuring Patty Page, sounded ALMOST like what I was seeking, but so drawn out and kind of pompous. But okay, it was based on a 1913 Joyce Kilmer poem. Which I hunted awhile, discovering that Kilmer was killed 5 years later in WWII. It was THIS tune, featuring vocalist Bob McGrath, that provided the very important name of Oscar Rasbach, who set the poem to music in 1922. 

After listening to several vocal renditions of the song, including this illustrated one, which probably inspired the tune's inclusion in the line of music boxes, I concluded that I didn't like the vocals. Searching 'Instrumental Trees' unveiled this pretty little song, and other weirder results, and it was only by adding the name Rasbach that I finally found Phillip Sear on piano and that was what I'd wanted all along.

Did this prevent me from continuing to hunt for my Hummel music box on eBay? One would think.

Alas, it did not. 

Haven't found it yet. 

(Trees, poem by Joyce Kilmer, 1913)

Overwhelming Options

...too many fish in the sea/I said, there's short ones, tall ones, fine ones, kind ones....

[Productivity includes finishing unfinished posts, when creating a new one is Too Much Pressure. I've been down with a virus nearly a week now. I'mma cut myself some slack in this portion of my Kick Your Own Ass And Get Your Shit Together mission]

Too many choices is TOO MANY choices. Leads to immobilization.

I stood for, I shit you not, half an hour in front of a toothpaste display at my local Target, trying to select the right product for my family's needs. There were twelve feet by five feet of choices, shelves from ankle to above eye-level.

I ended up going with the Pepsodent. There were only two sorts, and it was easy to sort out which of the two I wanted.

A custom sewer I know mentioned indecisiveness on the part of a client, that the back-and-forth was time consuming. Wondered if she was offering too many choices, and maybe that made decisions more rather than less difficult.

I agreed, and think more than 4 leads to overwhelming. Suggested she ask a screening question: brights, pastels, earthtones, or black and white?

Then once the screening question has been answered, show 3 options in that category.

3 is psychologically right.

Good, Not So Much, Yuck. Or Blah, Better, I Like It.

(Additional branching is possible after Good/I Like It is achieved, if required.)

Though if the customer says Meh to all three, maybe offer additional options. HOWEVER.

It's just a baby carrier. You are not responsible for the permanent abiding lifelong happiness of your client, just that they have a carrier they are rather pleased to wear for the duration of time their child fits into it. I would think washability and disguise of spitup would be of more import than pattern.

However, mine is a post-parent brain. Presumably someone shopping for a babywearing sling is still in pre-parent mode, and likely pregnant. That first child teaches one's brain quite a bit.

Only brain surgery is brain surgery. Everything else is less pressure.

Marvellettes; Too Many Fish In The Sea

Monagamy? No.

...It's a thousand pages, give or take a few/ I'll be writing more in a week or two....

"The book I'm reading..." is a mystery sentence to me.

It's not that I don't read; that's just ridiculous. It's the "the" part of that which is foreign to me.

Current bookpile:

Thom Hartmann, Cracking the Code
This is about the co-opting of language as a shortcut to our emotional reaction. This is how 3-second soundbytes control a presidential election. It's about how language is managed in such a way that it bypasses our intellectual processing, and goes directly for a visceral response, like flinching from a punch.

Oliver Sacks, Awakenings
You saw the movie. Oh, you didn't? Neither did I. This is a series of documented case studies, and Oliver Sachs, purportedly the 'rock star of psychology', (he wrote The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat, a series of essays about brain-injured patients), has continued, over the years, to add additional forwards to his work, until the forwards compirse about half the book's contents. I was telling a pal about starting this book, and how it was heavy going because I couldn't find the beginning due to the temporally backwards-moving series of forwards. He said, "I'd want to read all the forwards. Because, you know, it's OLIVER SACHS." I took his point, but didn't read all the forwards. I have other stuff to do. Like read all these other books.

Isaac Asimov, On The Bible
My cousin and I share a curious fascination with the history and development of Judeo-Christian literature and culture. She lent books to me from her extensive collection, and I told her about the Asimov discussion of The Bible. I ordered it online for her. When she came, she thought it was a bomb. The story bears repeating, but I'll need to edit a bit to protect... well, everyone.

Barack Obama, The Audacity of Hope
If you haven't read this, I don't understand why. I don't understand why I haven't finished it yet. Actually, the 'why' is easy: I'm reading a couple pages from a bunch of different books, so it slows me down. Also, there's not a discernible plotline, so there's no sense of urgency.

Nimoy, I Am Spock
I think I have two copies of this at the moment.

CJ Crowe, Phillip Pomeroy, Murder at the Oh No! Corral
This is a rather elderly show, written pre-offspring, which makes it 25 or so years old. It's still good, and we're performing it at the Sunset Restaurant in Glen Burnie on September 11th and September 18th, both of which are Monday evenings.

Nora Roberts, or maybe Jude Deveraux, and the title hardly matters
Just a fluff romance novel with murder mystery thrown in for grins. I began it in the bathtub. Bathtub reading is the main reason I believe I'm permanantly unlikely to own an electronic reading device. Imagine: I could lose my entire library falling asleep in the tub. A paperback romance, retail price $6.00, not only represents a smallish investment, but also will eventually recover and be readable after an unplanned dip in the bubbles. Ditto for sand at the beach, water at the pool, not to mention being jumbled in a totebag, left for actual years untouched, stepped upon or dropped accidentally from the car.

Nate Birkham, Home Rules
Home decorating advice. Of course, to 'decorate', you must first have a 'home' instead of a 'pathway through the clutter'. I'm working on it. Not quite TV-worthy yet (like Hoarders), but certainly not Home And Garden either. It's sort of sad, but I've bought books on how to get rid of/organize/sort/keep up, including a book with the title How To Get Organized When You Don't Have The Time, but I never finish THOSE books, either, and they become more clutter.

Stephanie Pearl-Mcfee, Knitting Rules
This is a good reference book. I have been using basic technique while learning fiddly refinements working on more complicated projects. After a couple of beer cozies and three unsuccessful projects, I finally turned out a pair of socks for The Man. He values them enough that he handwashed them hissownself. Reading Mcfee's book while knitting socks gave me confidence that I wasn't doing it ENTIRELY wrong, and left me with a sense that I finally understand how to build a sock. This may be an incorrect perception on my part, naturally, but it was a curiously satisfying feeling at the time.

William Shatner, Shatner Rules
Shatner, on Shatner. Better than Shatner on Conan.


http://warmingglow.uproxx.com/2009/06/shatner-rules/shatner-conan



I'm kidding about the last one, of course.

Shatner's newest is called Leonard, and I haven't read it yet.



The Beatles; Paperback Writer

Going Guerilla?

...when their eloquence escapes me/ their logic ties me up and rapes me....

My Tonguebiting Inner Editor has been escaping more frequently and biting her tongue very little. She may become a permanent fixture or a super-hero or both. Red Penny: Apostrophe Avenger, Comma Co-ordinator, Semicolon Semanticist, Interrobang Interpreter...

It's enough that I'm faced with purchasing "cami's" or "DVD's" at my local shops, forced to suffer the comma-splicings of Subaru: "It's what makes a Subaru, a Subaru", assaulted by a drug company's (I've blocked which) catchy jingle of "O-N-E-L-E-S-S, I wanna be one less, one less", infuriated by my local police force's billboard announcement, "I save lives everyday, what do YOU do?" (I catch your errors, assholes. Hire a writer. 'Every day' is TWO words, and you need different punctuation between your two independent clauses- tell ya what: you draw guns and drive squad cars; I will write and edit) but to now face, on a daily basis, the social (mis)stylings of my 'friends', some of whom have been students- writing students!- of mine, has pushed me right to the edge.

Evidently, I'm not the only one.

You've been warned.


(The Police; De Doo Doo Doo, De Da Da Da)

Swirley Hat

HatDesign
Originally uploaded by xoxcybele

Swirly Hat Pattern- adult medium- 21 ½ inches around

Use any size circular needle, at least 24" total length
Use any yarn you like.

Do a swatch test to determine whether yarn: needle ratio will give you a fabric density you like. You can also count stitches per inch, and measure your head. Depending on the thickness of your yarn, you will have more or fewer rounds, and more or fewer M1 stitches.

Cast on 8 in the round
Crown:
Round 1: knit
Round 2: *K1, M1 around
Round 3: Knit
Round 4: K2, M1 around
Round 5, and all odd rows: Knit
Round 6: K3, M1 around
Round 8: K4, M1 around
Round 10: K5, M1 around

{ continue adding 1 K stitch before an M1 in all even rounds and knitting all odd rounds until circle is at least 5" in diameter (across) }

{ for an Adult Small, 5" diameter circle when beginning the body of the hat;
Adult Medium, 5 ½" diameter; Adult Large, 6" diameter}

Turn of Crown:
Round 12: K6, M1 around
Round 13: Knit
Round 14: K7, M1 around
Round 15 Knit
Round 16: K8, M1 around
Round 17: Knit

{ Body of Hat: continue to make swirl pattern by doing M1, immediately followed by a decrease, in this case SSK. SSK leans to the left side, whereas K2tog leans right. You want a left leaning decrease. }
Body:
Round 18: SSK, K9, M1 around
Round 19: Knit
Round 20 and all even rounds: SSK, K9, M1 around
Round 21 and all odd rounds: Knit

{ continue until the body of the hat measures the length you need for head dimensions, usually 4 ½ - 5 ½ " in length, depending upon the size of the melon of the hat wearer }

Brim:
Switch to 3 x1 ribbing.
K3, P1
Work even until brim (ribbing) measures 1 ½". Cast off in ribbing pattern.

There will be a small hole at the top of this hat. Cover it with a pompon, patch, or appliqué, or leave it alone. It's not big enough to let your brains leak out, promise.

Vertical Stripes

...Duke, Duke, Duke, Duke of Earl, Duke, Duke, Duke of Earl, Duke, Duke, Duke of Earl....

Hijacking my own blog for knitting-related purposes. Crocheters, needle-felters and non-crafters, move along. Nothing to see here.

Vertical Texture Stripes Cloth


Materials:

Size 5, 6, or 7 knitting needle
1 ball cotton yarn
crochet hook or tapestry needle for weaving in ends.

Cast on 33 stitches.

Hint for new-ish knitters: if you have been wondering what to do with those pretty dangly things that people call "stitch markers", this is a good piece for that! You will place a stitch marker (the abbreviation for that instruction: "PM") after each different section. You will have 5 sections: the right hand border, the right garter stripe, the center seed stitch stripe, the left garter stripe, and the left hand border. For this, you'll use 4 stitch markers. Place one after your right hand border, one after the right garter stripe, one after the center seed stripe, and one between the left garter stripe and the left border. Your knitting will be all fancified with jewelry. The stitch markers help you remember to switch stitch patterns instead of continuing in whatever stitch you're knitting.

Seed stitch bottom border:
Row 1: * knit 1, purl 1 *, repeat to last stitch, K 1.
Row 2: Repeat Row 1
Rows 3 – 10: Repeat Row 1
{Work in Seed Stitch for 10 rows total.}

Pattern:
Row 11: (K1, P1 * 3x) K1 {right hand border} [7 stitches], Place Marker ; K 6 {right garter stripe} [6 st], PM; (P1, K1) 3x, P1; {center seed stitch stripe} [7 st], PM ; K 6 {left garter stripe} [6 st], PM; (K1, P1 3x) K1 {left hand border} [7 st]

Row 12: Repeat Row 11

Rows 13- whatever: Repeat Row 11 until cloth is nearly square, or until you're sick of it, for a towel instead of a washcloth, or an afghan panel, or a scarf- really, it could be almost anything you want except an ashtray or an orangutan.

Seed stitch 10 rows for top border; cast off; weave in ends to finish.


Seed stitch: Knit one, purl one, knit one, purl one.
On reverse side, knit all purled stitches, and
purl all knit ones. This creates a dense bumpy fabric that lies flat and doesn't curl.

Garter stitch: Knit every stitch. On the other side, knit every stitch.

In other news.... there is no other news. It's January, in Baltimore, which equals flat-out misery, with February to endure yet. I'm lucky to still be alive.

(Gene Chandler, Duke of Earl)

More Postponing

...I'm a sinner, I'm a saint/ I do not feel ashamed/ I'm your hell, I'm your dream/ I'm nothing in between....


Look at this:

2009 NOVEMBER PAD CHAPBOOK CHALLENGE
The second annual November PAD (Poem-A-Day) Chapbook Challenge begins on November 1 at my Poetic Asides blog. Throughout the month of November, I'll provide the prompts (and my own attempts at poems); you respond with your own poem in a super inspiring and supportive writing atmosphere.

Then, poets spend the month of December revising and organizing their November poems into a manuscript of 10-20 pages of poetry, which are then submitted to me. On Groundhog Day 2010, I'll announce a winner (last year, it was Shann Palmer).

Come join in the fun November 1. You can participate every day or randomly. There aren't any hard and fast rules or attitudes. It's all about the poeming!

http://blog.writersdigest.com/poeticasides

(beware: broken link.)

With winners announced on Groundhog Day. Are you kidding? I MUST do this.

So I will be at my poetry blog, hoping to write my way through the pile of frozen dead that's been blocking me for... a year? Yes, or more. I admit.

Patience, Mother

Ah, the smug self-satisfied
assurance of the 14 year old boy. Ah, the prevalence
of those who will not ever mature past it. Ah, the
joy of knowing
people who are not
14 year old boys. Ah,
the worry that THIS boy
will NOT outgrow 14,
even if I let him live.

1 November 2009

Nobody said that they had to all be GOOD poems.

(Bitch; Meredith Brooks)

Unconventional Interconnectedness

...simple things you see are all complicated/I look pretty young, but I'm just backdated, yeah/I was born with a plastic spoon in my mouth....


The low cut sock fails to meet the hem of silk leggings, allowing leather of the fringed boot I wear to press against bare skin of my ankle like a warm mouth. My feet, lately liberated from the confines of closed-toed shoes (sandals in January provoking puzzled looks from people sharing sidewalk space with me) protest quietly. Upstart blisters on baby toes led to flat soled sandals first only indoors, then, when changing shoes (and hunting down matched socks) seemed too much bother, out into the wide, cold world.

My accumulating oddities mark me; by the time I look fifty, I shall be well past eccentric and wandering into whacked. All black all the time was adopted as a convenience for daily dressing, then proceeded to rule apparel purchase decisions. Feeling the ground beneath thin leather soles of suede superhero boots, (borrowed during the off-season from Mimi, who never speaks a word of objection), the relative textures and temperatures of slick granite flooring, porous marble stairs, flexible linoleum tile, biting rough concrete, smooth semi-cushioned carpet, led me to wonder how much we miss when we isolate our feet from their surroundings.

It wasn't surprising to learn that shoes are bad for our feet, but it struck me that few people realize this. It is in the best interest of the industry that the buying public remains ignorant. Though I've no intent to reduce my stockpile of Cute Footwear, future purchases will permit communication between foot and surface. I've enjoyed the comfort of a funky brand rating high on hip, but still can't feel the motion of my foot, or the surface on which I step. I loved a pair of sandals from a company I'd never heard of before, even though they prevented me from feeling (with) my feet, but when the company went super-green, they stopped making that sandal altogether. There exist shoe manufacturers who do adopt a minimalist approach to the realities of germs and injurious litter, and a shoe with toes represents the most extreme example of bio-correct footwear, though none of these products are likely to make it into MY shoe stable unless they are....that's right, black.

All of this is complicated by my sudden awareness (thanks to The World Without Us, by Alan Weisman)of a monstrous heap of garbage swirling in our ocean. An addition to the list of pre-purchase qualifications: I need to be able to feel my feet move, feel the ground beneath them, the shoes must be black, and now also, digestible. This Vibram material; I am suspicious. I don't know what's in it.

Go ahead, veggies, and boycott leather shoes if you wish, but while you consider candy-colored Crocs, consider also: every piece of plastic manufactured since the invention of plastics in the 1940s, with the exception of those we've tossed into space and left as astro-junk, IS STILL ON THE PLANET. Where? A significant portion is in the sea, outweighing plankton 6 to 1. And even degraded to its molecular form, there is nothing alive capable of consuming polymers.

And the ocean, it's big. Because it's big, it's hard to get a gut-wrenchingly motivational photograph of the problem. It's much more complicated than that, but against the controversial Global Warming hubub- I'm not convinced global warming, if it's happening, is an exclusively human-driven change: planetary cooling and heating has gone on through geologic time, and this is not alarming, or shouldn't be, no more than continental drift or volcanic activity- oceanic pollution is an unheralded mess. And every bit of it IS because of human action and inaction. Inedible plastics shoving biologic organisms into fewer places and fewer numbers changes the environment, and perhaps temperature, of the ocean. Which is really big.

Not as big as space, which Douglas Adams says

"...is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind- bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space."

Space, already littered with marks of our presence. But the ocean! Smaller than space, okay, but still a big ocean, and an influx of plastic sufficient to create a 6:1 ratio of plastic to plankton in the last sixty or seventy years is very likely to create some sort of biochemical change. The food chain! Plankton feeding on plastic, which has absorbed oceanic toxins... fish feeding on plankton, and plastic the same size as plankton. Bigger fish...until the flesh of a dolphin qualifies as toxic waste.

Fluff and Fuzz have been infected as well. When we shop, Fuzz spots every item made of or packaged in plastic, and has begun to grab trash from the streets. Fluff agrees that we need to support digestible products, and has spotted creative reuse opportunities for things pegged for discard. Chips Ahoy cookies? Packaged in plastic, so we gave them a pass. Instead, we bought locally produced cookies in a bakery bag... once emptied, Fluff grabbed it, "This is a perfect bag for kitty poop!" and off he hustled to scoop the litter box.

He notes my good humor this dark season: "You've been grumpy, but not like usual." I credit the bath remodels. There was leakage, damage, mold. Once I'd found someone I trusted to do good work and not shaft us financially, we embarked upon the project, a combination of art and plumbing that has kept me engaged in wall-sized art, and the redo of lighting that creates a bright, cheerful background for daily beautifications.

So I step out, bare-toed, to greet the world, sporting my quirks like flair, like bling, glittering with each stride, walking as if I own the world... and don't I? At least the part on which I walk, at least for the moment I am in it, and then, like a spring wade through a snow-melt stream, I step onward, and relinquish my space to the next user.

Beautification. Blisters. Plumbing. Plankton. Walking. Weirdness. Mold. Mood. Recycling. Revolution.

I just never know what's going to show up in my head.




(Substitute; The Who)

Summer Reading

...in a perfect world where everyone was equal/ I'd still own the film rights and be working on the sequel...



Current:

The World Without Us, by Alan Weisman. The premise of this book is "What would happen to the things we've built if humans stopped existing on the planet?" It's anthropological, biological, ecological, and just fascinating reading. I've already promised it to someone, and I'm only to page 60.


Why Things Bite Back, technology and the revenge of unintended consequences, by Edward Tenner. I have a feeling this is going to be a sort of sociological examination of consumerism, and will be as much about attitudes and expectations as mechanics. It was this very combination that made me love Why We Buy, the science of shopping, by Paco Underhill. I think of 'unintended consequences' in relation to the drug industry, except lately I've begun to suspect that drug companies are inventing ailments in order to sell useless drugs that cause side effects, requiring other drugs. I'll admit to being paranoid; this doesn't mean my theory's wrong. Eric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation: the dark side of the all-American meal, also an examination of consumerism, was engaging and moved along, but didn't precisely have a plot, so I'm not sure how it could be made into a movie. Despite the presence of Patricia Arquette, I haven't seen it; anybody? Worth renting?

The Third Domain, the untold story of archaea and the future of biotechnology, by Tim Friend. This begins with the author underwater, in a particularly filthy puddle in New York City's Central Park. It's a scientific exploration of microbes, and it reads like a Michael Crichton novel. By the way, his (Crichton's) novel, Next, (not well reviewed) was not that bad. Okay, not Jurassic Park, but not bad. It raised interesting questions, coined a couple of terms I expect to hear in common use fairly soon, and had some wry funny bits. And a monkey.


Recent:

The Mind And The Brain, neuroplasticity and the power of mental force, by Jeffrey M. Schwartz, M.D. and Sharon Begley. It's about the way our brains can and will remap themselves based on how we use them. There are some uncomfortably vivid descriptions of certain experiments that were crucial parts of the phenomena under discussion, which were tough to get through, but the writing is engaging and accessible without being simplistic or condescending. This is now one of the three books I give away regularly.

Still on tap:

You Suck, by Christopher Moore. It's a novel. I'm saving it. Chris Moore doesn't write fast enough to suit me.




(Everyday I Write The Book; Elvis Costello)

Teevee; News?

...there's nothing I believe in more than my own insignificance/ so why does everybody think that my words can make a difference/ I just don't have time to think up every social consequence....


In Entertainment News (an oxymoron, in my opinion; I know- nobody asked), we see art imitating, um, art. If television (Law And Order SVU) and improv (ImprovEverywhere) qualify as art; there is some disagreement.


Also, you knew it was only a matter of time before obesity was blamed for global warming. You knew that. Right? On Reuters, folks, so you know it's true.


Satuday Night Live, not precisely improv, not exactly art, and for about two decades, not even funny, has recently come up with a few watchable items, including this one.



Yep, that's the actual Senator John McCain on SNL.


And the Democratic race continues. It's entertaining, at least to those of us who don't give a shit WHO we get, as long as GWB leaves office, please God.


Is it news? Is it art? Is it improv? The people promoting this miserable contraption would like us to believe it's improv. Er, improvement. But I thought we'd said goodbye to corsets, except as, mmmmmm, recreational lingerie.


Speaking of recreation, who hasn't heard the news about Ted Kennedy? Poor Ted. He's being described as "the last lion of the Senate", and everyone everywhere is wishing him a full recovery. Excuse me? I like his iconic value, and think he provided the template for our loveably excessive ex-president Bill Clinton, but let's remember that Ted's only the most famous of a family of Congressional drunk drivers . Malignant tumor? I imagine that Mary Jo Kopechne is snickering in her grave. I guess this'll ruin his bid for the 2012 Presidential race.


Finally, I'm certain many of us were extremely anxious about the plight of pandas in earthquake-stricken China. They're going to be fine.

In case that was your top concern this week.


(Politically Correct; SR71)

Linguistolutionary Linkage

...don't know much geography/ don't know much trigonometry/ don't know much about algebra/ don't know what a slide rule is for....

You may not share my passion for punctuation or language.

You may not appreciate my favorite LOLcat image:



or like my favorite joke:

Descartes walks into a bar. "What'll you have, Rene?" asks the bartender, "Gin and tonic?"

Descartes shakes his head and says, "I think not," and disappears.

or others of that ilk. Indeed, you may not care for any any sort of word-play.

You may disagree while I applaud CityPaper's sound chastisment of the shabby submissions to last year's fiction contest:

Now, we're not saying that these observations are false nor that they don't deserve creative treatment, but if all you know of them is what you see on TV, your readers are going to see right through you. Conversely, if you are reporting from the front of your life, remember to put some of yourself into it. In the maxim "write what you know," it is always true to mine extensively what you know, but such truth means nothing if you don't put any effort into the writing part.

Consider this year's contest intro some friendly words of constructive criticism, some hard/fast rules we'd like to share with the aspiring young scribes of today. Poets, wacky formatting doesn't make up for the fact that you have nothing to say; fiction writers, everyone has, at some point, written or thought of writing a story that takes place around last call at the bar. Everybody, big words don't make you sound smart if you don't know how to use them. Don't use "u" for "you" or "2" for "to" or "too." If your piece is supposed to be a metaphor for something, don't overplay it. Spell out the swear words; we're an alt-weekly, for fuck's sake. Eerily specific pro-drive-by shooting stories tend to make your readers uneasy. Far be it from the half-assed neologism-prone writers over here to cast stones, but if you're Frankensteining a word as if English were German, please let the context of the sentence offer some suggestions as to what it might mean. Writing Black American English isn't merely dropping the final g's off gerundives; for the love of anything resembling self-respect, don't assume you can write a variety of American English if you've never actually spent time with the people who speak it.

And, once and for all, just because you don't know--or choose to ignore--the customs of grammar or spelling, that doesn't mean they can't do your writing any favors. Don't care how gifted and smart and cute you think you are--you have to know the rules to break the rules, and by some estimates the English language is more than 1,000 years old: Who the hell are you to change it?

plus I luuuurve the word 'Frankensteining', which, when I use it, I often (strangely) need to explain. Whut?

(We will let pass the superfluous apostrophe in 'final g's off gerundives', though the phrase could easily have been restructured to avoid it.)

You may not believe in evolution as anything other than a theory. That's fine. Myself, I'm not a big fan of the theory of gravity, in either context.

Possibly you wouldn't believe that all babies, regardless of culture, come pre-programed with rudimentary language, or that they lose it if no one responds appropriately within their first three monts.

Maybe you don't care that relatively few people have any conscious awareness of the body language they broadcast, or receive, and therefore would not be astounded by the levels of communication in the face alone. This may be of no interest to you.

Since 'abstraction' and 'syntax' are distinguishing factors of true 'language', perhaps the 'words' spoken by prarie dogs do not constitute language. This may not even be a thing that makes you go 'hmmm.'

The idea that other animals also has a grammar may be less entertaining to you than idle chat at bus stops or on elevators.

You may find it inexplicable that Ms. Primarily Decorative Grammarian is intensely interested in the language of LOLcats, and when communicating via text message has given up perfectly spelled and structured sentences, instead sending this sort of thing:

O hai i ar with ur juglr, drinkin margaritaz.

or receiving

O hai I not b steelin ur bedz 2nite.

(actual examples).

It may not interest you to know that this is different from engrish, poorly phrased instructions or assertions that are both public and accidental. Done deliberately, it ceases to be engrish; LOLcat is never engrish, but engrish might sometimes be LOLcat, though this is actually difficult.

A well-known quote

All your base are belong to us

seems halfway to LOLcat already. However, if you try to adjust it as it stands and come up with

All ur base ar belong to we

you see that this is unacceptable, even if you don't care. To fit the format/syntax, the whole sentence must be rearranged, added to and subtracted from, as in

O hai, I stoled ur bases

or

Ur bases, we has tehm

.

(note the restoration of the pluralizing 's'. I know. Esoteric and uninteresting. How does she do it?)


So you may not appreciate this article about writing computer code in LOLcat- (in fact, the term 'LOLcat' to indicate this dialect was never a foregone conclusion. At least one writer used the term 'kitty pidgin' -a phrase that's akin to naming a dog 'Bear', in my opinion- or alternately, 'LOL-kitteh'.)

You may now be yawning and dozing to the point of dropping your laptop on the floor (logic board repair: $600.), but I find this man's in-depth analysis of the LOLcat phenomena and its relationship to the evolution of internet language pretty intense, insightful stuff.

But if you're bored, skip all this geekiness to drool over nice boobies.


(What a Wonderful World; Sam Cooke)

Breaking Stories

...You say smile I say cheese/ Cartier I say please/ Income tax I say Jesus/ I don't wanna be a candidate / For Vietnam or Watergate....

I recently finished Stephen King's Cell, which, for Stephen King, was somewhat sub-standard. It reminded me a bit of The Stand, and I felt as though the characters were shallow. However, I do love King's ability to take something innocuous and turn it into an object of horror. Snarling dog? Check. Poster of Rita Hayworth? Check. Pet graveyard? Check. High school prom? Check. Still, reading sub-par King provides better entertainment than reading the top-notch efforts of many other current fiction authors. Good ones, such as Orson Scott Card, CJ Cherryh and Christopher Moore don't write quickly enough to satisfy me.

Here's a puzzle: Is this art?

(from my NetZero homepage.)

I am wending my way through David Frost's I Gave Them A Sword, which is a behind-the scenes account of the famous Frost/Nixon interviews. These interviews have been made into a successful stage show, which played to sold-out crowds in West End, and is now coming to the Jacobs Theater on Broadway. Ron Howard has already secured the movie rights. Keep me away? Not likely.

I Gave Them A Sword has the honor of being the most hook-y Watergate read I've picked up since Tony Ulasewicz's The President's Private Eye. Now, Tony, by all accounts, was quite the character during the hearings, and his voice was nicely preserved with the help of Stuart McKeever, and so this was an entertaining read in a way that John Dean's Blind Ambition was not.

Maureen Dean's book, Mo, was an annoying piece of fluff, and Judge Sirica's book, while well-written, was not terribly engaging. I picked up Jim McCord's OOP book, A Piece Of Tape, (great title) from Half.com at a real bargain. (I think I got it for under fifty bucks, while dealers who knew what they had were selling it at over $100.00.) After repeated attempts at reading it, I've given up for the time being.

Liddy's Will was fun, if you can laugh at the G-Man's pompous, bombastic style, but I did wonder how much factual information was included. Tricia's book on Pat, again, not bad, but again, not engaging. And okay, yes, All The President's Men was a compelling read, partly because of its immediacy and intimate involvement, but the readablity was Bernstein's doing, I'm convinced, since I haven't made it through a single one of Woodward's solo offerings.

Silent Coup, by Len Colodny, was a dense piece of highly-contested propaganda, but it had a great bibliography, which led me to the incredibly fun- and questionable- Secret Agenda, by Jim Hougan. [Aside: Oliver Stone's film, Nixon is wonderful to watch, but hardly a documentary or even dramatization. 'Heavily slanted' is what I'll call it, for lack of something stronger.]

I Gave Them A Sword , writing-wise, leaves all my Watergate reads in the dust.

...we would make annual requests for the President to appear on the program. The annual White House response had an almost ritual quality to it. It would be signed by Mr. Nixon's press secretary, Ronald Ziegler. Always Ziegler would begin by saying, "I accept your invitation for the President to appear on a show with you." And, always, after "accepting" the invitation, Ziegler would state that the question of if and when to actually make the appearnace on the show would be taken up with the President, with further information to be provided should Mr. Nixon actually agreee to be interviewed.

This touching little habit of accepting pieces of paper on which invitations were written without responding affirmatively to the invitations themselves, I came to accept as wholly innocent indications of Ziegler's ability to render the English language inoperative, even in matters not involving alleged presidential culpability.

I'm not saying you should run out and get this book from the dusty shelf of your local used bookstore. I'm not saying you need to bid on one from eBay, that massive commercial monster who seduces me on a near-daily basis. I'm not saying you should ever read David Frost, watch the interviews, or hear his name ever again. As you know, I'm not so big on 'shoulds.'

But that's some damned fine writing. That's what I'm saying.


I think I know a bunch of kids who (once I forward this link) will clamor to adopt a new religion.

(Thank you to Wil Wheaton.)

I picked up a copy of Stumbling on Happiness, by "renowned Harvard psychologist" Daniel Gilbert(so says the cover flap) because the front cover said this:

"If you have even the slightest curiosity about the human condition, you ought to read it. Trust me."

Usually, I do not find the words 'trust me' remotely reassuring, unlike the words Don't Panic, which always make me smile. In fact, 'trust me' often raises the same kind of red flag that 'you've got to believe me!' does, the red flag of dishonesty, deception, and overacting.

The quote, however, was attributed to Malcolm Gladwell, which changes everything.

And an update: gallery turns chickenshit; no surprise there, really. Exactly where does the Christian doctrine endorse death threats?

Finally, something so silly it stretches credibility.

Find out your peculiar aristocratic title.

This premise is so absurd that it of necessity must become a theme for an upcoming event.




(Bicycle Race; Queen)