good poem by Jeffrey Harrison — Our Other Sister

Good poem. The Rider, by Naomi Shihab Nye.

erratum
In a previous post I said "since they leavened Vista of so many of its promised features" and that was wrong. I've emended to "since they curtailed in Vista so many of its promised features."

More self-conscious than accurate in this blog. This points up my ongoing solipsism: like anybody noticed my misuse of leaven.

You have surged to the vanguard of goonery
I feel like crap these past couple of days. No energy though I am sleeping long hours. Faint nausea. The bald cowboy has stopped circling me maybe sensing my scorn. Another large man walks up and down the place declaiming something I can't tell what. He looks me up and down each time he passes by. What the hell. I am sitting here minding my own. I believe if I were a large goony man then people would fuck with me less. Instead of size and goonery I got meanness. Pure meanness. But that comes out only after you mess with me for a while and the altercation has begun already.

As usual at Star Lounge the rambling cast of characters is distracting and instead of working on poems I'm spamming LJ.

markup
There should be markup tags <strange></strange> along with the regular, not deprecated markup like <strong></strong>. I'm gonna tell the W3C.

Record $500,000 paid for 27 bottles of red wine

If I were a billionaire I might do this too, because one lives only one time, despite what they tell you on the mountain.

From the article:

"It is the highest price that has ever been achieved for a single lot," Managing Director Stephen Williams of the London- based Antique Wine Company told Reuters on Saturday.

"I don't think he has bought this as an investment -- he has bought it to drink," he added. "The fine wine industry is completely immune from the global credit crunch."

* Too bad your usage is not immune.

Williams believes the Romanee Conti sale marks a significant change in Chinese wine buying habits.

"In the past, the Chinese have been drawn to the magnificent but simplistic qualities of the wines from the great chateaux of Bordeaux.

"Now, our leap in sales of Domaine de la Romanee Conti to mainland China this year in particular is indicating a broadening of their fine wine education and appreciation to the more complex wines of Burgundy."

* Condescend much? Pompous goon. On reconsideration even if I were a billionaire I would not put up with this. I'll stick to my degenerate $3.99 swill I get at the drugstore. The depressed cashier Pat, age 63, sells it to me and offers me a bottle opener and straw to go with it.

In the Star Lounge a bald guy with goatee, pressed black jeans, feathered cowboy shirt, and heavy cowboy boots circles my table predatorily, clonk, clonk, clonk, smirk, smirk, smirk. Go away. I'm reading my goddamn book and drinking my goddamn tea.

Spaceship
Builds spaceship powered by pasta/antipasto engine.

-- Scotty I've got to have more power. Throw in the farfalle. Then stir in the prosciutto.

-- Capn the engines canna take much more of this.

Prayer
Maybe the prayers of an atheist are the most fervent of all since an atheist's prayers are undisclosed and permitted thereby the wildest ecstasies.

Chicago calling
I'm wondering also what would happen if every cell phone in the world minus one dialed, at the same time, the remaining phone. What would happen to that phone and to the user of the phone? If there were a circuit error or god that caused the mass worldwide dialing. Would the phone explode? Would the user gain special powers?

poemas
Poemas? Mary K. would require of us at start of workshop. I've got 47 pages of publishable stuff and 30 more of stuff that's almost there. Stayed on task today. Figured out three poems that were flawed. Now they are more worthy of the reader or so I hope. I want a hundred pages before I start sending to agents. Nice to see my sisterinlaw at Star Lounge today. *waves* Ya'll work it out please? Love you both.

Will you ever know what you've lost?
Heard this in a song just now. Arrogant to tell that to a departing lover you think?

The stanchion anext the polder & old amaritude
At Syracuse grad school 15 or 17 years back I indicated to Gayle F. *waves* the stanchions strung with chains that cordoned the wide lawn in front of the Hall of Languages. (I forget the context for our conversation. I think I was replying to something she said? I liked her fine. We played Dungeons and Dragons together! I was DM. She was quite smart and plenty beautiful. She was cool to me when I was useful to her.) Gayle F. to put me in my place said the stanchions were phallic symbols. Penises blocking forward progress. She was bellicose and bullying. Watching me for the smallest demurral. Would control my thought and language utterly. I was too young then (23? 24?) to sass her back. Will now proceed. Gayle F., yes ma'am, quite right, the stanchions are blatant penises erected to confound womankind and we should abscise them at the base and replace them with gentle mounds, montes to demarcate the green sward before the gothic hall where language lives. No stanchions. Montes veneris only. Don't transgress the montes thou male plunderer.

In Amsterdam stanchions are common along canals and roads thus



The three xs on the stanchion stand for Compassion, Resolution, and Heroism. Don't tell this to Gayle F. Her head will explode.

(Here's something old and dumb. Pudendum stems from pudere, to make ashamed, according to dictionary.com.)

As usual my post affronts spellcheck.

I'm going to drink some wine and contemplate my sins about which nothing is original and all is derivative. I propagate Derivative Sin. Good night now.

I know anext is not a word. Thribble is not a word either. Wait yes it is. Good night now.

EF
No clue what's going on. In MO I reckon? I named my router's WPA2 password after a l33t variation on her name. (It's uncrackable. Don't even try. On the other hand if you give me wine I'll give you the password. But if you torrent through my router you gotta use an IP blocker for government & corporate prophylactic.) I hope she is doing well. Maybe a crocodile swallowed her phone and when I call her the crocodile's tummy rings and she looks aft just in time to elude the crocodile. Maybe in calling her I've saved her from crocodile noms. See now that would be good.

page design
is a dark art. I wish either I were smarter or could leverage more efficiently the resources I own.

I'm thinking a dull person can outperform a very smart person if he focuses with great efficiency on a single task. Hence guitar heroes.

poems
don't pay rent.

TNG
Namby pamby PC crap. Where's Kirk?

Kirk
is church. And so can you. I remember exploring the Oudekerk or old church. I'll try to find a picture. ... here:



nom
is name. When we eat something we are trying over and over to forcibly apply a name? Manducation as means of naming.

Vade mecum
Everyone should have one. I'm constantly refining mine and should study it more often. I might learn something, like page design.

Have a good evening.

Somewhere in range of me is a wireless network named jesus. It uses the G protocol and has security enabled.

Wrote a lunatic poem with no personal pronoun in it, no I, we, me, my, or self. I feel accomplished in my humiliation.

Totally kind note from Weird Tales editor. Cthulhu bless him. Better revise that one poem and send it off to him. He's not gonna publish it, it's too long and off-topic even if it is about a moldering corpse, but I'm honored and humbled:


Mr. Bourland,

By all means, please send it along.

Best wishes,

Stephen Segal
Editorial & creative director
WEIRD TALES / weirdtalesmagazine.com




--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: "Eric Bourland" <eb@hwaet.com>
Sent: Tuesday, January 15, 2008 8:34 PM
To: nonfiction@wildsidepress.com
Subject: poem submission

Hi. I'm a reader of your magazines Weird Tales and H.P. Lovecraft's Magazine
of Horror.

I'd like to submit a poem. In brief, it's about a deliquescing corpse. But
he is an environmentally aware deliquescing corpse, with a good attitude. I
think he has something compelling to say.

It's two pages long and probably too long for either of your magazines.

But I'm wondering if you would like to read it even so.

If you've no time, I understand.

Thanks very much.

Sincerely,

Eric Bourland

Besides my Latin task noted last post I have a Sumerian task.

The Sumerian Language, An Introduction to its History and Grammatical Structure

I wish I could find this.

Or a Sumerian to interview. They are thin on the ground.

If I could do it over I'd be a linguist of some kind. This stuff fascinates.

The phrase I need to translate into Sumerian, to go into the same poem I mentioned last post, is:

"All we are is dust in the wind."

My very rough rendering, in (Archaic) Sumerian, is:

"Enki absu indaba, us dustum gustus."

;-)

Who can say it's NOT authentic?