Twists and Turns

Much Ado about NOTHING

2012-01-26T22:44:00.005-05:00

When I used to work at home (as a a freelance text engineer) I had a little office set up on the top floor of chez MG here. It's still there, actually, but I almost never use it, not since accepting full-time employment as a cubicle jockey (and text engineer) about five years ago. I had a desk, some bookshelves, a computer and printer, a plug-in coffee pot, and not enough clients. All that, and my aquarium, right next to the computer, so I could watch my tropical fishes swim around and around, getting nowhere, not unlike myself. Since I don't hang out in this office space anymore, the aquarium has become rather neglected of late.

The other day, while chasing the floating corpse of a neon tetra-fish abound the tank with a tiny net, it occurred to me that I should move the whole shebang downstairs, to an underutilized table near the kitchen, where the fishes could be admired and better cared for, and where I'd be shamed into cleaning the tank more often, it being harder to ignore by myself and others. So that's the plan for this weekend. I'm going to have to drain most of the water out, so I can comfortably carry the thing down the stairs. And I may or may not need to temporarily transfer my finny friends to a fish bowl.

I'm going to try to avoid doing that if I can. I don't want to traumatize them. Do fish get PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder)? I always think they have no real memory, at least not in the human sense, since their brains are so tiny. But they seem to recognize me whenever I'm close to the tank and about to feed them. They swim close the the glass, as if in agitated anticipation, like pigs when the farmer comes around with the slop. (How's that for an elegant simile?) No doubt the move is going to rock their little world. But five minutes after it's done, they'll have forgotten it ever happened... I think.

There are a few recollections I'd like to erase so easily, but I'm more like an elephant than a fish when it comes to memory.

Former English Major Blows Off Steam

2012-01-25T21:09:00.026-05:00

Sometimes, I just feel like hurling Shakespearean insults:

Thine face is not worth sunburning!
Thou qualling fat-kidneyed apple-john!
How now my sweet creature of bombast?
Thou warped common-kissing wagtail!
Truly thou art damned, like an ill-roasted egg, all on one side!
Your bedded hairs, like life in excrements, start up and stand on end!
Would thou wert clean enough to spit upon!
Sell your face for five pence and 'tis dear!
How now, wool-sack, what mutter you?
Thou hath not so much brain as ear wax!
Thou stale old mouse eaten dry cheese!
Thou wimpled tardy-gaited pigeon-egg!

You could go around muttering these all day long, like some addled curmudgeon, and assuming you didn't raise your voice too much, no one would even know they were being castigated. You'd just hear a lot of "What?" -- to which you could reply "Oh, nothing. Just quoting the Bard. 'To be or not to be'...how does the rest of that go?"

The T&T List

2012-01-24T21:57:00.007-05:00

preppers
Roma
Perry White
On High in Blue Tomorrows
M8.7
Fotomat
Child Mind Institute
"Tubular Bells"
The Universal Zulu Nation
Wordnik
Digital humanists
Bathonea

~~~

Meanwhile....

There are 17 holidays devoted to coffee.

Word of the Day: pasticcio

2012-01-23T23:42:00.002-05:00

pasticcio (n)

A work or style consisting of borrowed fragments, ingredients,
or motifs assembled from various sources; a potpourri.

"What did it matter if the work were a spurious thing, a pasticcio, a poor victim which had been pulled this way and that, changed, cut, added to?"
--Robert Smythe Hichens, The Way of Ambition

"On one occasion an old man sang quite glibly a tune which was in reality a pasticcio of three separate shanties all known to me."
--Sir Richard Runciman Terry, The Shanty Book, Part I, Sailor Shanties

Hey, all you wordcatchers, I know this sounds like something you might order in an Italian restaurant, but it appears in the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, so I think it's worth featuring as my WotD. (I try to stick to English lexemes here.)

I've just started reading a book (or, perhaps you might call it a monograph) entitled Old World Politics, New World Prophecy, which is billed as an explanation of Inland Empire, the very confusing but weirdly fascinating (to me anyway) film/puzzle by David Lynch, which is sort of a cinematic pasticcio. The author delves into Eastern European mythology and other arcana to develop a theory of what the hell that was all about, and even apparently argues that the talking-rabbit sitcom scenes were not non sequiturs. (If something is not a non, is it a plain old sequitur?) It's received excellent reviews from the Lynch mob, so I'm looking forward to being enlightened.

Brain Dump

2012-01-22T21:31:00.000-05:00

I'm not much of a joiner, due to a semi-disastrous experience with an organization during one of my earlier incarnations. Still, these all sound like fun groups (or maybe like 1950s-era pulp sci-fi book titles):

Water Magi of the Galaxy
Adventurers of the Unspeakable
Brigade of Prodestroyers
Challengers of the Infinity
Mob of Omnicommandos
Order of Cerebrovillains
Semininjas
Hive of Metamutants
Reserve of Turboassasins
Unspeakable Quasininjas
Mysterious Hyposentinels
Mechasentinels of Evil
Order of Psionic Ultraheroes and Mysterious Quasininjas

I think if I had to join one, it would be the Order of Cerebrovillains.

Random Acts of Poetry

2012-01-19T22:20:00.002-05:00

Stone

I may have been this pebble
long before the earth
tore the moon from its heart,
or the blue boulders clashed
and tumbled off their edges.

Later, a Paleozoic moment
in a flooded cave:
I held a latent universe
rolled like a scroll
in trilobite synapses.

I knew nothing
but a salt solution then,
and crinkled sand,
and waves heaving epochs
against a vanished shore.

In me I keep the stone I was,
the lizard I became.
He is not dead, only sleeping
on some sun-warmed table rock,
digesting the dream of time.

~~~

Meanwhile....

This is where I spend my days.

Head Rattle

2012-01-18T23:03:00.005-05:00

I.
I found an old book in a box in the basement. And when I say old, I mean ancient: it was published in 1871, and as far as I can tell, it's a first edition. It's also signed by the author, W. W. Hall, M.D. The title is Everybody's Life Preserver, which is really the best thing about this book. It's a 333-page collection of banal "maxims" like "A healthy fool is happier than a sick Solomon." True enough, I suppose, but... meh. I could make up better ones myself. ("It doesn't take a tidal wave to turn a waterwheel." --M.G.) The book is not in bad shape at all for being 141 years old, though. Maybe it's worth something. When is Antiques Road Show coming back to town?

II.
Somehow my alarm clock got reset from 6:30 AM to 6:40 AM. Those 10 minutes of extra sleep mean I've had to hustle more in the morning to leave on time, but they've also helped me to remember vivid dreams that I apparently have just before I wake up. Some of the characters in these dreams are people I know in real life, but some minor players are not people I recognize. It's as if I've hired a casting company to populate my head with extras.

Word of the Day: chaogenous

2012-01-17T22:47:00.004-05:00

chaogenous (adj)

Arising out of chaos.

"Then soon chaogenous dreams of revenge were fuming in his serpent brain, the last of his sanity burned out, and he called her to him."
--John Gardner, Jason and Medeia

I'm a believer in contained chaos. I stuff all my snail mail, junk and otherwise, into an antique roll-top desk in the living room, always with the intention of going through it and throwing all the flotsam away on the weekend. But I rarely get to it. Still, I know where to find it. When I open the desk, it all looks chaotic, but it's contained.

It's the same with my closet, which is really too cramped to accommodate my entire wardrobe of dotcom-casual classics, not to mention some more formal attire. So I usually just throw the apparel that doesn't ever need to look as if it has met with a hanger or a drawer -- like the sweats I sleep in -- on the closet floor. It's a chaotic heap of garments, but it's out of site... contained. This is how I finesse my mess.

Photo of the Week

2012-01-16T23:04:00.012-05:00

As the weather around here has turned increasingly frigid, the skin on my hands has become extremely dry -- so dry that it cracks and bleeds around the joints sometimes. I keep forgetting to slather on moisturizer before I go out into the arctic chill, I rarely wear mittens, and the result is what you see above. Out of sheer perversity, I asked my lab technician friend to look at my hand under his microscope and photograph the damage. Ouch! Yes, that's my own personal Kalahari or Mars-scape above, magnified 250 times.

Actually, I just made that up. This is my photo of the rather odd exterior wall treatment on a building up the street from where I live. I can't decide if it's a very sloppy job of tiling or an intentional, and artistic, crackle effect. Why don't you click on it for a close up? Maybe you can tell.

~~~

Meanwhile....

"I don't necessarily love rotting bodies, but there's a texture to a rotting body that is unbelievable. Have you ever seen a little rotted animal? I love looking at those things, just as much as I like to look at a close-up of some tree bark, or a small bug, or a cup of coffee, or a small pie. You get in close and the textures are wonderful."
--David Lynch

Random Sequence: Anesthetized Dairymaid

2012-01-15T22:45:00.004-05:00

[random phrases worked into a story]

Sara, who was beginning to feel that dipsomaniac gloaming again, downed another glass of white wine as if it was water. She was too depressed -- about her 30th birthday, the breakup with Chad, and other unavoidable disasters -- even to bother changing the battery in her ceiling smoke detector, which issued a hallucinatory bleep every minute or so.

She staggered from the kitchen to the living room with woebegone ungainliness, then switched on the radio. It was a free-form station, and some adenoidal windbag was announcing that he was about to play a bit of dissonance entitled "Anesthetized Dairymaid", or something that sounded very much like that. She hated the song, but it had a beat that created a weirdly compelling syncopation when combined with the smoke detector's bleeping. Sara kicked off her flip-flops and began to dance around her faux Persian carpet. "Cut a rug, cut a rug," she whispered, then began to giggle.

She bumped into a chair and fell flat on her back. The radio was within reach, and she switched it off without getting up. She closed her eyes and soon drifted off into a deep slumber, in which she dreamed about a garbage truck backing up over Chad's supine body.

[not to be continued]

Much Ado about NOTHING

2012-01-12T21:59:00.001-05:00

There's something sad about a January Xmas tree. We haven't taken ours down yet, but we've stopped bothering to turn its lights on. It stands in the corner, looking forlorn and pointless and accusatory: "Why am I still here?" The little angels and Santas and sparkly festoonings seem slightly stale. It's like the morning-after mess after a big party: evidence of a good time, but the decorations and crockery that seemed glamorous in the starry dark now appear soiled and sordid in the harsh light of the sun. Trimming the tree is a celebration; untrimming it is just work: baubles back in their boxes; the fake evergreen taken apart, limb by limb. But when it's done, the room feels renewed, exorcised, as if we've finally let go of the old year and found the courage to face the new. Time we got on that, O tannenbaum.

Search Party

2012-01-11T21:51:00.008-05:00

Here are a few recent search queries that brought seekers to this temple of scribomania.

agent cooper

My favorite quote of his: ""It's not so bad as long as you can keep the fear from your mind." Amen. Runner up: "You know, this is - excuse me - a damn fine cup of coffee."

hand photos erotic fingers

I'm sorry, but this is a PG blog. Try searching for this phrase: ""Shellac the shillelagh".

cadillacs y los beatles

Not a good combo, mi amigo. Try el psychedelic Rolls Royce y el Mini y los Beatles.

humour and twist in much ado about nothing

Yep. That about sizes this place up.

man in flying contraption

what is a blateroon

Someone who babbles senselessly. Is that a Jeopardy! question? What are you trying to tell me?

coffee/god sighted

That is almost how I feel after my first cup in the morning. (Also see first entry above.)

the feeling of rattling in the head

I'm tempted -- that just might be the new name for this site.

Word of the Day: enantiodromia

2012-01-10T22:32:00.000-05:00

enantiodromia (n)

The tendency of things to change into their opposites.

"The spiritual hairpin turns in the life of the satirist Tony Hendra are enantiodromia in action. As a teenager, for reasons involving guilt over an affair with another man’s wife, Hendra concluded that he should become a monk. But instead…he went to Oxford to read English literature."
--Bruce Grierson, U Turn

I have this ugly little plant, a type of orchid, that sits on the kitchen windowsill. It has dark, blade-like leaves and a lot of gnarled and twisted stems, but no flowers. I keep watering it, though, because I'm hopeful. I'm essentially hopeful that situations can change, if you can find the patience to wait long enough. Sure enough, it bloomed for a while last year. It became beautiful, but after a week or so, turned ugly again. I'm still watering it, though. I can wait.

The Complete Idiot's Guide to the Way I Feel

2012-01-09T22:23:00.009-05:00

(Or felt)

Uncomfortable. Another ride from Hell on the PATH train.

It was about 6:15, and a large crowd was waiting to board the train. I thought I would have to stand, but when it pulled in, I managed to get a seat in the preferred position -- next to door, with an empty seat on only one side of me. Just as I was congratulating myself for ensconcing my posterior so swiftly and advantageously, a group of giggly teenage girls entered the car and sat down opposite me -- or at least some of them did. There were six of them, and only three open seats left, so, rather than grabbing a pole and standing like ordinary commuters, the three unseated schoolgirls sat on their friends' laps, which they found hilarious. You might think this wasn't such a bad thing, even mildly entertaining, perhaps, but I was trying to concentrate on my e-book, and their high-pitched giggling was making that nearly impossible.

Still, I could have mentally tuned them out after a while, if it were not for the someone who sat down next to me -- not a schoolgirl, but a tough-looking character holding a newspaper, who managed to take up a bit more than his allotted seat. I noticed that he nodded to another shady guy, who shambled further down the car, before unfolding his newspaper and proceeding to lay out three stacks of playing cards on top of it. "Oh no," I thought, "three-card Monty is sitting next to me."

There were no more empty seats left, and the train was starting to move, so I stayed put and tried to ignore him. He began shuffling his cards around, which seemed to fascinate the schoolgirls. As he did so, he kept elbowing me in the ribs. He began to ask the girls to guess which deck the red card was under as he shuffled like an practiced Vegas dealer on Dexedrine. A few times the girls guessed right and a few times they guessed wrong. Because the hustler was trying to use his flimsy newspaper as a table, the cards often fell onto the floor, which the teens found hysterical. Then he started asking them to bet money on where the red card was, and to my amazement, some of them actually did -- five dollars, ten dollars. A guy sitting next to the girls also put some money down. They all lost. And every couple of minutes, the card sharp glanced over at me, to see if maybe I too might want to place a bet. I did not.

The 20-minute ride seemed to last for 40 as all this was going on. I pretended to read my book to signal that I wasn't interested in his little con. His elbows and the squealing from the girls made reading impractical anyway.

By the time I reached my destination and exited the train, I was considering whether I should drive to and from work. But with gasoline headed for four bucks a gallon, I think I'll continue to gamble on the PATH train for the time being.

The T&T List

2012-01-08T22:06:00.004-05:00

SpaceX
Anmer
Blue Ivy Carter
AeroShot
The Miracle Consortium
Plum jerkum
Perry Ellis
Stéphane Rousseau
Air Chrysalis
First Watchung Mountain
Mikael Blomkvist
Metaline Falls

~~~

Meanwhile....

David Lynch's Pabst Advert

Much Ado about NOTHING

2012-01-05T22:57:00.004-05:00

I don't know why I don't draw anymore. (That's one of my masterpieces above.) I'm not really a visual artist, but I do find the act of drawing to be quite meditative. My philosophy about it is that one can and should draw anything: a shoe, a shirt, a coffee cup, a pineapple, a housefly, even last night's Chinese food carton. But I haven't done it in a while. I've sort of let shutterbugging take its place. But snapping pictures is anything but meditative. It's both a lot more analytical and a lot more dependent on luck. So I think I'll draw something this weekend -- and then maybe take a picture of it.

Head Rattle

2012-01-04T22:39:00.004-05:00

I.
Surreal moment of the day: Looking out of a 15th-floor window at work, I thought I saw huge billows of smoke coming from the Empire State Building -- an eerie 9/11 moment. But it turned out, on closer examination, to be an optical illusion. It was steam from a smokestack that was in perfect alignment between the building I work in and the ESB. Creepy.

II.
A gift I had ordered online for someone way before Xmas arrived today. I had completely forgotten about it. Odd that it took so long. Oh well. Looks like the Easter bunny is going to delivering more than just candy this year.

III.
Overheard: Someone said today that they would give fifty bucks to anyone who could make me laugh. Apparently, I'm not yuking it up enough these days. It brought up an odd old memory: as a kid I had one of those little toy gadgets that would play a recording of someone laughing hysterically whenever you pressed its button. I think it was called the Laugh Box or the Laugh Bag. My brother and I used to use it to make crank calls. Such fun. I should try to find one again and carry it with me always.

Word of the Day: ackamarackus

2012-01-03T22:45:00.000-05:00

ackamarackus (n)

Nonsense, especially if pretentious; something deceptive; humbug.

"Along and across this extravagant architectural ackamarackus, a zoom-lens streaks and glides in those sleek tangents and arcs appropriate to our era of tailfins and tight-trousered girls, that is, of aerodynamic baroque."
--Raymond Durgnat, Eros in the Cinema

Of course, I would never engage in such balderdash... except when I have to conduct personal business that involves writing to some bureaucratic entity -- then I really turn on the ackamarackus faucet. I usually start my email with with a salutation like "Dear [blank] Officer" (no matter how lowly the recipient) and then compose my request or inquiry using the diction and sentence structure of a honey-toungued aristocrat: "may I inquire", "would it be acceptable", "could I be so bold as to", "naturally you may wonder", "perhaps you would consider", etc. They seem to lap it up.

The Complete Idiot's Guide to the Way I Feel

2012-01-02T23:19:00.002-05:00

Strange. These unstructured holiday and vacation days of the last week have left me feeling relaxed but slightly unreal.

"Before I was shot, I always thought that I was more half-there than all-there - I always suspected that I was watching TV instead of living life. Right when I was being shot and ever since, I knew that I was watching television."
--Andy Warhol

I feel like Warhol at the moment, like I'm watching the world on TV. Tomorrow: back to work, back to the reality show. Changing the channel. And probably feeling very differently.

~~~

Meanwhile....

Hangover Haiku

A silver season
lingers in trinket-strewn rooms.
All questions unwrapped.

Brain Dump: Priory Parkway

2012-01-01T22:24:00.004-05:00

Here is the track listing for my album (if I had an album).

1. Aggregate Together
2. Idiosyncrasy
3. Maxwell's Argentate Gavel
4. Oh! Honeybunch
5. Cephalopod's Cultivation
6. I Want You (She's So Recondite)
7. Here Comes the Luminous Sphere of Plasma
8. Whereas
9. You Never Give Me Your Remuneration
10. G-type Main Sequence Star Sovereign
11. Mean Mr. Dijon
12. Thermoplastic Polymer Pam
13. She Came in Through the Lavatory Fenestration
14. Aureate Suspension of Consciousness
15. Convey That Albatross
16. The Terminus
17. Her Illustriousness

Random Sequence: Diastolic Boisterousness

2011-12-29T18:58:00.000-05:00

[random phrases worked into a story]

It was time for another holiday dinner at the Brinkerhoff manse. Young Spencer, the black sheep of the family, was not looking forward to it. His father was a fishing boat captain and had no respect at all for Spencer's profession -- that of dictionary editor.

As the family sat down to a repast of brazed sailfish and checkered chitlings, the patriarch began to deliver his traditional rodomontade, which, as usual, was filled with imbecilic windiness. No one paid much attention, though. Spencer's comely sister, Adelia, exhibited her usual luminescent lassitude, with her chin planted firmly on her palm. His long-suffering mother, Philida, simply stared into the tureen of mashed potatoes.

Spencer, who fancied himself the Brinkerhoff's closest approximation to an upscale cutup, decided he'd had enough of his father's complaints about the fluctuating price of flounder. "I dig a sorrel pintaloosa!" he suddenly shouted, though he wasn't sure why. They were words he had been working on for the new edition of the dictionary, and they had simply come to him. His father halted in mid sentence and glared menacingly. Spencer was sure he had sounded like an adenoidal landlubber engaging in undignified ebullition to everyone at the table.

"What? What kind of fish is that?" Captain Brinkerhoff demanded. "It's not a fish!" replied Spencer. "Look it uuuupppp!" he bellowed, pounding the table with what he intended to be a raffish drub.

His diastolic boisterousness had the intended effect. His mother and sister began to giggle, nervously at first, then uncontrollably. And Captain Brinkerhoff was uncharacteristically silent for the duration of the feast.

[not to be continued]

Word of the Day: umop-episdn

2011-12-28T13:17:00.009-05:00

umop-episdn (adj)

Topsy-turvy, inverted.

"There were a lot of people dressed as demireps and acting like corybants on the Grammy Awards that year. Music and singing seemed less important to the proceedings than flash and spectacle. There was even a circus act. I'd rather see and hear Susan Boyle than some pop tart lip-syncing while dressed like a Vegas hooker and hanging umop-episdn."
--Leahcim Setag, Strange Loops

This week between Xmas and the new year always seems topsy-turvy. I usually burn off my remaining "use it or lose it" vacation time during this period, which means I don't have a set schedule to follow, which creates it's own brand of anxiety. I should clean the aquarium, rearrange the basement, reduce my pile of personal paperwork, perform maintenance on the computer, do laundry, wash the car.... There are any number of "shoulds". My wyfe would be happy to make a list for me. Instead, I'm slumped here on the couch, blogging, and listening to barmy music on the radio. In the middle of the day! And I seem to have a few Puritans tsk-tsking at me from some Office of Moral Persuasion inside my head. I think I'll go for a walk.

~~~

Meanwhile...

How to Deal with Slow Walkers

(Thanks, Carolyn)

Much Ado about NOTHING: Xmas Edition

2011-12-25T14:25:00.005-05:00

And so this is Xmas.

I only got one thing I asked for on my list. There's no snow here in Upstate New York; it's a green Xmas. The gift I wanted to give my wyfe didn't arrive in time. We couldn't find the Yule Log on the TV here. And I ate something that doesn't agree with me.

This might sound like a bad Christmas, but it's not. Santa brought me some other gifts that I wouldn't have thought of, but I liked. I gave my wyfe some other presents that she appreciated. We finally found the Yule Log on an obscure channel.

And last night, my nephew set up his telescope in the backyard. It was a moonless night, a "midnight clear" with a temperature of 12 degrees (-11 C). We saw Jupiter, the Andromeda galaxy, and many stars, including a bright one that seemed to pulsate. It was... transmundane. Even transcendental, in a way.

"The sign of Christmas is a star, a light in darkness. See it not outside of yourself, but shining in the Heaven within...."
--A Course in Miracles

(Above you see one of two Xmas trees we have here. I thought the "Charlie Brown" one made a more interesting picture. The star is a lighting fixture/sculpture that an artist friend made. Click the pics for close-ups. Maybe they'll make you feel a bit transmundane.)

Head Rattle

2011-12-22T23:16:00.010-05:00

I.
A stunning development: McDonald's apparently no longer sells hamburgers. Instead, they now sell something called a "Cheeseburger No Cheese".

II.
A rolling disco? A commuter van I rode in this evening had a laser light projector mounted over the dashboard that cast roving multi-colored light spots over the confused passengers. Rather annoying, but creativity kudos to the driver for decorating his control panel with something other that the usual plastic Jesus.

III.
Someone gave me a bottle of red "Monsanto" wine for Xmas. Hmm. I thought Monsanto was a company that made industrial chemicals.

IV.
Surreal moment of the day: I ate lunch today with four guys who were all playing with the "Stupid Zombies" app simultaneously on their cell phones. Four adult guys....

V.
Lalaloopsy -- the season's hottest toy, so they say, but this evening is the first time I've heard of it... uh, her. She's kind of gross, I think, with her Medusa-like locks, but I do like her name, which is hard to say with a straight face. Try it.

Random Acts of Poetry

2011-12-21T23:15:00.002-05:00

Quiet

The house is quiet. Just
footsteps on the ceiling,

something dropped,
the dryer spinning its characters.

The sounds of nothing,
of missing days:

scraped knees and running noses
and a darting goldfish in a filmy bowl.

A sun that lingers
like an unwakable dream,

cycling a blind man's recollections,
clear as a mirror.

Sounds drawing pictures--
a heart beats.

The ocean swells in a teacup.

Word of the Day: munted

2011-12-20T22:40:00.002-05:00

munted (adj)

Peculiar, abnormal, or drunk.

"We were doing fine, totally munted, dancing around with roses between our teeth, winking at flowergirls. Sister spots us -- making a spectacle of ourselves, she reckoned. I dropped the roses. But Sonny Boy dances up to his sister. Teases her. Puts an arm around her and she rips the roses right out of his mouth. Thorns sliced his lips up. Blood pissing all over the place."
--David Geary, A Man of the People

"Blood pissing all over the place." As a kid, I used to get spontaneous nosebleeds. I would wake up in the middle of the night sometimes, wondering why my pillow was wet. I would turn on the light and discover that I had been lying in a puddle of my own blood. Icky -- and munted in a way, in the sense of peculiar. I would sometimes get them during the day, at school, too, and would have to go to the nurse's office and lie down for a while, squeezing my nose with a tissue. It was very inconvenient and extremely embarrassing.

To this day, I don't know what caused them, but they were more frequent in the winter, so it may have had something to do with my nasal passages drying out too much in the cold, desiccated air. I haven't had a nosebleed in years, but every time I experience some post nasal drip I still half expect to look down and see a red blotch. (I know, I know: "Thank you for sharing, Michael.")

The T&T List

2011-12-19T22:24:00.002-05:00

Dura-Europos
Perry Mason
peridioles
kissaten
Sagittarius A* (sucks)
The Spielberg Face / The Kubrick Stare
Lana Del Rey
The Secret Life of Pronouns
Waris Ahluwalia
Red Egg
anacoluthon
Lake Buddha

~~~

Meanwhile...

I, Me, Mine: The Beatles and their pronouns

Photo of the Week

2011-12-18T22:53:00.005-05:00

This is my twin brother, the dangerous (haha) Mitchell Gates, pointing to the silly sign he posted as a jest outside the entrance to the Gizmeau Museum, where he works as a curator for Victorian automatons and other steampunk contraptions. He spends so much time winding up the "Automatic Man" that he's starting to feel robotically "automated" himself.

Actually, I just made that up. This is me, on vacation ("holiday") in London last July, outside the elaborate iron gates to ... I forget. There are many, many elaborate iron gates in London. (I was wearing the hat because of the bad haircut that an eccentric Brazilian hairstylist gave me last summer. I was wearing the jacket because it's actually quite cool in London in July, which reminded me of San Francisco weather.)

For some reason, my wyfe has chosen to include this picture (among others) with her annual Xmas letter, distributed to an always riveted readership of hundreds of friends and followers.

Click the pic NOW for a larger view. I'm ready for my close-up!

~~~

Meanwhile....

Moves Like Orson

The Complete Idiot's Guide to the Way I Feel

2011-12-15T22:49:00.002-05:00

Tense. Someone, a long-distance yet close relative, wants a specific Xmas gift that is only available from [a river in Brazil], where it is listed as "temporarily out of stock". No alternate selection has been indicated. The elves had better get assiduous.

Relieved. The stupid war in Iraq is officially over. War is over, if you want it.... But it can take a tragically long time.

Amused. At the Xmas party I attended today, a confrere showed up with his pet ferret. It was a cacophonous party, complete with pounding DJ drumbeats, but the crepuscular little mammal kept his eyes closed, apparently asleep. When I rubbed its forehead, however, he stretched and revived a bit, clearly enjoying the brow massage.

Here are words I never thought I would say: "May I rub your ferret?"

Search Party

2011-12-14T21:55:00.001-05:00

Here are a few recent search queries that brought seekers to this temple of scribomania.

example of wallydrag

When I get up at 6:30 AM every weekday, I'm Mr. Wally Drag.

Rattling in head when walk

That's me, for sure – lost in thought. I can walk for entire city blocks without remembering anything about what I've passed. It's a wonder I haven't been run over.

Blue Cadillacs

Hmm. If it was Pink Cadillacs it would sound like one of those faux-1950s doo-wop groups. Blue Cadillacs? A jazz trio? Junkyard El Dorados?

Poet name generator

My poet name is Lucius Cornelius Swanswaddle, according to the poet name generator. (If I was a "lady poet," it would be Forsythia Swanswaddle.)

just kick it magazyn

A magazine called Just Kick It? The journal of professional field-goal kickers -- or maybe the newsletter of the clinically depressed.

Head box

That would be a good name for this blog.

Amazingly awesome ramses ii statue

I don't recall ever writing here about a Ramses II statue, amazingly awesome or otherwise. I'd like to visit Egypt, see some ancient statues, and feel some awe.

Mannequin male art

What?? Some twisted people land here....

Word of the Day: kelemenopy

2011-12-13T20:55:00.001-05:00

kelemenopy (n)

A straight-line sequence through the middle of everything, leading nowhere.

"Gesturingly overjoyed – yaaeeaa – motherfriend cockblasting wwhheeeee – resurrect the mayhem – Sodomy said I never switch off the mind but instead follow your kelemenopy...."
--Jason Earls, Red Zen: A Novel of Extreme and Bizarre Adventure in Which a Mystical Book on Buddhism Changes the Hero's Life

A straight line to nowhere. Things seem to be going swimmingly sometimes, and then they get suddenly interrupted. Derailed. Cut off. Somebody dies, a job ends unexpectedly, people vanish, your favorite TV show gets cancelled before all the threads unspool. The ship hits an iceberg.

Like the time my old Mustang broke down in the middle of the Brooklyn Bridge. Like the time I got "laid off" from my magazine editing job. Like the novel I abandoned because I couldn't figure out how to end it. But sometimes you have to reach nowhere ("now here") in order to figure out how to start over again.

Much Ado about NOTHING

2011-12-12T22:31:00.039-05:00

This is what happens when you stop to shop at Stop N Shop at 11 PM. You give the checkout lassie a Jackson and a penny to pay for your $19.91 purchase of a few comestibles. She hands you a $10 bill in change, while giggling and conversing with the bag wrangler at the other end of the conveyer belt, who is stuffing your milk, Grape Nuts, yogurt, and mini-bagels into your reusable grocery tote.

There arrives a moment of total confusion. "Didn't I just hand her a twenty?" you think. "Um, wait," you say. "Is my change ten dollars -- or ten cents?"

At this, the giggling ceases, and she finds it necessary to grab your receipt out of the tote. She studies it for a second, then exclaims "Oh, thank you, thank you!" and snatches back the Hamilton, replacing it in your palm with a dime. An "I'm SO sorry" and more "thank yous" are received, along with more giggling.

Apparently, pointing out her mistake is humorous, but is nevertheless a conscientious act worthy of honest Abe. Or maybe not.

"It's okay. It's late," you mumble, as you start to wonder if you've been foolish. Should you have just shut up and pocketed the sawbuck? Is that what any normal person would do? Is she giggling at herself -- or at you?

You pick up your bag and leave, feeling both self-righteous and asinine -- a not unfamiliar mental mix.

~~~

Meanwhile,

Apple does Apple: the Beatles' album covers -- animated.

Rudolph the Nasally Empowered Reindeer

2011-12-11T12:49:00.000-05:00

"It's true that from birth Rudolph was a unique individual, that his luminescent olfactory organ made him different from (but not inferior to) the other reindeer in his age category, and that they often maliciously taunted him about his supra-nasal capabilities. Some reindeer caregivers, concerned that his nose had resulted from radioactive fallout or was somehow contagious, warned their fawns not to play with him."
--from Politically Correct Holiday Stories by James Finn Garner

Someone gave me Garner's book one Christmas, and it's a hoot. It also contains such stories as "'Twas the Night before Solstice" and "Frosty the Person of Snow," as well as PC versions of The Nutcracker and A Christmas Carol.

Poor Rudolph. I always identified with him, especially when I was a spotted teenager with braces on my teeth.

Random Acts of Poetry

2011-12-08T22:39:00.000-05:00

Yvette

Her psychiatrist sits
patiently
with hands folded
in the all-white room.

"For a lifetime or two,
a couple of my mad selves
wore a suffocating iron
mask of tranquility."

A cello player draws back his bow.

~~~

Words

Compare your life to the script
until you stop crying,
until you change your mind.

Microscopic
bits of seed pollen waft
from your brain, on the wind.

One day these words will take root.

~~~

Haircut

You lopped it off,
that intricate braid
rooted in the day we met.

Now you show a different face,
a silly moon under the bob,
a shopping-mall attractive

blank

to paint a smile on.

Word of the Day: scobberlotcher

2011-12-07T22:57:00.003-05:00

scobberlotcher (n)

An idle person.

"Now then, y'little scobberlotcher," said the soldier, grasping Smeatt by the nape of his neck and shaking him violently, "stop all that squirmin' an' spek up. D'you know where they be?"
--Patrice Kindl, Goose Chase

I'm rarely idle (rather an understatement, but we won't go there), however, I will be at loose ends in the last week of this swiftly shriveling 2011. I don't have anything special planned for that week, except maybe to do some scribbling and shutterbugging. I like the idea of having a few serendipitous days. Something might actually happen. I might actually see something out of the ordinary. I might meet someone or go somewhere. I might stay up all night and sleep all day. I might have an adventure, or just hibernate. I might find something to write about. If I do, I'll be sure to let you know.

Weeeee!

Zootaxa?

2011-12-06T22:49:00.002-05:00

I typed my name into Google Story Creator, and this was the result:

Zootaxa.

Great Lakes Entomologist. 2005.

It actually went so close to perfect that we could hardly believe it.

And when they do, we nail them.
Those parts range literally from boots on our feet to satellites zipping overhead.

They had night vision gear, so they moved quickly.

Interesting. It seems to have something to do with a successful clandestine military or espionage mission (code name "Zootaxa"?) in 2005 that involved "nailing" an entomologist -- possibly near the Great Lakes. Some poor scientist studying insects at night - a real threat to the government? I wonder why my name generated such a creepy tale. Try it; see if you have better luck.

~~~

Meanwhile....

Gosh, wouldn't it be cool to have this just reissued novel as an audiobook, recorded by Sheryl Lee?

Head Rattle

2011-12-05T22:17:00.005-05:00

I.
I like to walk around the house in my stocking feet, but there's a problem. Inevitably, I find myself wandering into the kitchen at some point, and frequently there is a tiny, almost invisible puddle of cold water on the floor in there, just waiting for me to step in it. The feeling of walking around in a clammy wet sock is nearly ineffable, but I'll try: it's similar to that sensation you get when you're outside and it starts to rain, and single drop of frigid water drips into the space between your collar and your neck and proceeds to meander down your spine inside your shirt. You know the feeling won't last, but while it does, it's like a form of low-grade torture.

II.
It's fascinating how so many patrons of the supermarket I generally shop at, which has narrower aisles than the ones in the suburbs, will suddenly stop, blocking the right-of-way, while they stare at, not the shelves, but nothing at all. It's as if they are having a Zen moment. Maybe they're just mentally reviewing their shopping lists, but I like to think it's a more profound occasion that that. It could be an existential realization: "Here I am, in this well-lighted place, surrounded by thousands and thousands of garishly packaged consumer products, and I can't decide what to buy. I'm struck by the triviality of it all, and I'll just stop and be alive here for a little, perfect moment." And then you say "excuse me" and they move reluctantly -- as they sink back into their quotidian consumer daze.

III.
Speaking of shopping (what is it about this time of year that brings it to mind?), I still pay cash for certain things, and when I'm given change, I now return any pennies to the cashier. They never refuse them. Pennies are worthless to me – I don't even stop to pick them up off the street – but quite valuable to any sort of commercial emporium, since they can be used to make change. Some (most) customers still accept them, though I'm sure they mostly end up out of circulation in that jar on the dresser in the closet in the bedroom.

Photo of the Week

2011-12-03T22:00:00.000-05:00

Here's a picture I took on the movie set for Blast Radius, which I visited recently while working on an article for Insanity Fair. It's a Hitchcockian thriller about an opera star who travels the world working uncover for Britain's supersecret spy agency MI7. In the scene filmed here (in a converted warehouse space -- the ornamentation is all gilded Styrofoam) the superspy/tenor stops an assassination plot against the Arch Premier of Carpathia by using a modified electrolarynx to sing a subsonic note that demolecularizes the assassin's plastic explosives....

Actually, I just made that up. This is my photo of the chandelier and lobby of the Landmark Loew's Jersey Theatre, which is walking distance, more or less, from my castle. It's a restored 1920s movie palace where they show classic films once a month and only charge $1 for popcorn.

Click the pic to examine the fine detail of this paint-and-plaster Versailles.

The T&T List

2011-12-01T23:05:00.001-05:00

Higgs boson
supersymmetry
The Nest Learning Thermostat
Archie Panjabi
Immaculate Infatuation
Tyler Perry
Cardamom fritters
Shut Up and Play the Hits
Zanskari girls
Hipstamatic app
Inagua Airport
Aviv Maayan

~~~

Meanwhile....

I'm James Franco

Much Ado about NOTHING

2011-11-30T22:53:00.004-05:00

I discovered today that someone I know has a secret nickname, and, in fact, a whole other life in which he is known by this name. What's rather odd is that the nickname isn't a name I've ever heard before or even a real word, at least in English. Googling it brings up a video in which this person is engaging in an activity I already knew about -- nothing controversial. But I wasn't aware that this fellow had constructed a whole other persona under this alternate moniker. It's a curious feeling when you find out that someone you thought you knew has another side to his personality. It's doubly peculiar when you realize this other side has its own name, under which he associates with people who probably have no knowledge of his "real" legal name. It's enough to make your head spin.

I never really had a nickname. Someone in college called me "Salamander" a few times (why? and why do I remember such things?), but it didn't stick. My mother used to call me "Pumpkin" for some reason. (I wasn't orange or spherical, and I didn't have a stem on top.) When I see her, I never remember to ask her why. She probably doesn't know, anyway.

Word of the Day: pandiculate

2011-11-29T21:43:00.002-05:00

pandiculate (v)

To stretch and yawn simultaneously.

"Rick shifts in his seat. 'If I don't eat soon I may have to pandiculate,' he says. 'Not while company is here,' Grub answers."
--Steven Sherrill, The Minotaur Takes a Cigarette Break

I pandiculate, you pandiculate, we all pandiculate.

I try to avoid doing this at work, or in awkward situations... like when someone thinks he/she is relating a fascinating narrative full of riveting details. Or when watching one of the cable movies from the LifeMark (?) channel that some significant other invited onto our flatscreen. Or, most recently, during an obligatory decorating-the-Xmas-tree session.

Convaht English text t'enny of sevahal comic dialecks

2011-11-28T22:17:00.001-05:00

The Dialectizer convahts English text t'enny of sevahal comic dialecks, includin' Red Neck, Jive, Cockney, Elmer Fudd, Swedish Chef, Moron, Pig Latin or Hacker.

Th' Dialeckizer takes text o' other web pages an' instantly creates parodies of them! Fry mah hide! Try it out by seleckin' a dialeck, then interin' a URL o' English text. Eff'n yo' haf quesshuns about whut The Dialeckizer does o' how it does it, please see th' "Info'mashun" seckshun toward th' bottom of thar page.

~~~

Meanwhile....

True or False?

The less you know about someone, the more normal they seem.

What people think you said is usually sillier than what you actually said.

Truth tellers should wear running shoes.

The Complete Idiot's Guide to the Way I Feel

2011-11-27T20:23:00.001-05:00

(or felt...)

Stuffed. It's not so much that I ate a lot on Thanksgiving, but rather the type of comestibles I ingested. Turkey, yes indeed, but also stuffing, mashed potatoes, various types of casserole, specialty breads and rolls, and pie -- all heavy stuff I never or rarely eat. It was good, but I couldn't help feeling bloated afterward, like one of those Macy's parade balloons, except considerably heavier than air. I know why they call it stuffing.

Suspicious. Forced to listen to Xmas music while driving home from upstate New York after the holiday, I began to ponder the lyrics to "Winter Wonderland":

Later on, we'll conspire,
As we dream by the fire
To face unafraid,
The plans that we've made....

Hmm. The plans? That sounds suspiciously... conspiratorial. The song was composed in the 1930s, an era of radical political movements of right and left, as well as spies and counterspies. Was the composer, Felix Bernard, sending a hidden message to someone via a treacly holiday ditty?

In the meadow we can build a snowman,
Then pretend that he is Parson Brown
He'll say: Are you married?
We'll say: No man,
But you can do the job
When you're in town.
...We'll have lots of fun with Mister Snowman,
Until the other kids knock him down.

These are very odd lyrics, when you think about it. "Are you married"? (A code phrase used by spies to recognize each other.) "Do the job"? "Mister Snowman"? (Clearly a code name.) "Until the other kids knock him down"? The world was on the verge of universal war. What operative was receiving instructions when he heard Perry Como and the Andrews Sisters warbling this tune on the radio?

Amused. I'm about one-third of the way through 1Q84, Haruki Murakami's massive (900+ pages) new novel, a fascinating tale of alternate universes, literary deception, and assassination. As much as I'm enjoying it, it does seem padded in places. Whenever a character stops to eat, the author describes the meal in complete detail, and if the protagonist is cooking it himself, the description is so detailed it could be followed as a recipe. 1Q84 is many things, but one could almost call it a postmodern cookbook.

Photo of the Week

2011-11-25T17:24:00.003-05:00

I've solved my Xmas shopping problem this Black Friday. Everyone on my list will receive one of these exquisite turtle sculptures from Tiffany, depicting the mating habits of Trachemys scripta elegans. Who wouldn't want to display one of these romantic and whimsical objets d'art on their mantlepiece... or bedside table?

Actually, I just made that up. This is one of the many jaw-droppingly tawdry bibelots, bagatelles, and white elephants displayed in a local Jersey City department store's window. I didn't see a price tag on this item, but Tiffany the place is not. It might be worth a Hamilton, though, to buy this as a obligation gift for that least favorite biped on your Xmas list.

(Don't be shy. Come out of your shell and click the pic for a closer view. You know you want to.)

Random Sequence

2011-11-22T23:24:00.003-05:00

Spurs

As Jonas and Melody, two middle-aged professors of linguistics, were walking aimlessly about in the city center on a gray, empty Saturday, they came to an unsuspected esplanade. Across the plaza was a small art-house movie theater with a glowing marquee. In block letters, it said "Spurs and Saddles".

"What's 'Spurs and Saddles'"? Melody asked in a musing tone, as if she didn't really expect an answer.

"A film," said Jonas, in a flat voice.

"I know that!" Melody hissed. "I mean, I've never heard of it."

"It's an old silent, I think," Jonas replied. "From the 20s. Let's go see it!"

"Ahh, no!" said Melody. "I am not in the mood for manful atrociousness manifested in shoot-'em-ups, or achromatic rowdyism in the Old West. Even in silence."

"Apparently you are in the mood for improvident syntactics, however," Jonas sneered.

"Oh, please," said Melody. "Let's find an eatery instead. I'm ready for some light repast, some amusing crumpet, perhaps chased down by a glass of some pretentious vintage."

"I'm agreeable," Jonas said. "As long as we act out our little chow-down as if we were thespians masticating in a silent movie."

[not to be continued]

Random Acts of Poetry

2011-11-21T23:35:00.000-05:00

Late November

Almost over:
The paper drops
like a wizened leaf
from a tree in winter.

The sun kindles a landscape,
spreading elegies of fire.
White fingers
appear at the windows.

I open a book, I write notes
like a prisoner
at the bottom of a well,
a dark place.

The house is full of ticking,
wind runs the city.
Twilight comes early, lamps
lit against the shriveling day.

Word of the Day: pertinacious

2011-11-20T22:37:00.005-05:00

pertinacious (adj)

Stubborn or persistent.

"He behaved like some tricksy elf, uttering his most pertinacious screeches in time of family prayer, and distorting his visage at poor Mr. Little into such curiously ugly shapes as daunted the feeble divine from any caressing approaches whatever."
--Rose Terry Cooke, "Aceldama Sparks"

I am stubbornly persistent in my determination to.... what? Not a lot I can think of. To correct grammar and infelicities of expression, I suppose, but that's part of my job. There are the usual things that most everyone is persistent about, like brushing my teeth. I eat the same thing for breakfast every day, but that's more about being a creature of habit than "stubborn". I've known pertinacious people in my time, though, who shall be nameless, because they could very well be reading this. Some of the most interesting, otherwise likable people I've met are extremely stubborn about the most ridiculous things -- like not ever getting on an airplane or neglecting to see a doctor or just refusing to compromise with the nexus of imbroglios we call life in the 21st century. Yes, stupidly stubborn and unwilling to compromise.... Maybe they should run for Congress?

Head Rattle

2011-11-17T23:27:00.000-05:00

I.

A skillful, in-depth analysis of Kubrick's film The Shining is here. It's (ahem) pretty amazing. (Thanks, Scott)

II.

Sitting here listening to the dishwasher do it's thing.... The rhythmic, undulating swishing of the water jets is like the sound of a hyperactive seashore. Too fast to be white noise, yet meditative nonetheless.

III.

Not sure why I (we're) reluctant to put Halloween away. I still have an obese pumpkin sitting in the middle of my dining room table and an emaciated, anatomically correct plastic skeleton sitting across from me in the living room. Thanksgiving is coming too fast. And Christmas? Looming ominously on the horizon. I have no idea what I want for Xmas or what anybody else wants. Maybe a gift certificate for cha-cha lessons?

IV.

Could there be such a thing as a thinking zombie? Someone was telling me today about a book he read about an intellectual zombie. I thought all zombies were mindless -- in fact, that the very definition of a zombie is mindlessness (in addition to the whole flesh-eating thing). Zombies are insanely popular in the publishing world right now (nota bene: Pride and Prejudice and Zombies), almost like vampires were a year ago. The question is why. Zombies could be a metaphor for current social conditions. Like vampires, they're both dead and alive -- the living dead. Kind of like our economy.

Search Party

2011-11-16T21:41:00.002-05:00

Here are a few recent search queries that brought seekers to this temple of scribomania.

wooden leg in sock

Hard to imagine someone sitting down at a computer and searching for this. Some strange fetish? On the other hand, I suppose it's hard to imagine someone taking a picture of something like this too.

catie uptown on Ridiclousness

Huh? Learn to spell, learn to type…. Or google sober.

Monroe robot

A Marilyn Monrobot? If there isn't one already, I'm sure there will be one soon. How about it, Japanese readers?

how to wear a bowler hat

Confidently, or else forget it.

Klaus voorman

The not-Paul.

what's a rastafarian proctologist

A Pokemon?

The Complete Idiot's Guide to the Way I Feel

2011-11-15T22:02:00.001-05:00

Amused. I was reading a description of a book called Shark Wars #2: The Battle of Riptide today, which contained the following passage: "Now Gray must train with Takiza Jaelynn Betta vam Delacrest Waveland ka Boom Boom, a wise and mysterious fighting fish who has promised to teach his young apprentice the ways of the ocean and the secret of what it means to be a great warrior." Takiza Jaelynn Betta vam Delacrest Waveland ka Boom Boom…. That's the best, or at least the most creative, character name I've heard in a long, long time. I shared it with someone who then claimed that it was his nickname in high school, but I'm skeptical. Anyway, I can't wait for the movie.

Intimidated. We've got a new washing machine and dryer! The old ones came with the house when we bought it five years ago, and the old dryer, at least, looked like it dated from the Kennedy Administration. It worked fine until about a week and a half ago, when it exhaled its last. This encouraged me to go underwear shopping while my wyfe researched the latest spin and dry options. A couple of days ago, two large silvery laundry computers (it seems inadequate to describe them as a washer and dryer) were delivered. I had to figure out how to program them before I could wash my delicates. Lots of dials, buttons, LEDs…. Apparently, I haven't been keeping up with advances in mechanical lavation.

Amazed. Is anything more out of fashion than the TV Batman of the 1960s? Camp and economic prostration don't really color coordinate. But, what the hell, they were showing the Batman movie from 1966 at the Landmark Loews Jersey Theater last weekend and I didn't have anything better to do. I thought the attendance would be sparse, but instead I found a line around the block waiting to get in. People from eight to eighty. Well. It's both a terrible movie but quite funny despite itself (and not always in the ways it intends to be), so it doesn't really matter, I suppose. It holds up as a time capsule and a goof. Some days you just can't get rid of a bomb.

Word of the Day: pareidolia

2011-11-14T22:19:00.001-05:00

pareidolia (n)

An imagined perception of a pattern or meaning where none exists.

"....I was scared that the alien code would scramble my mind. And it turned out that I was right, because pretty soon it started to go bad for Jules and all the other clever people who did code for shits and giggles, because the temporary synesthesia and pareidolia became permanent, burned into their brains.... Jules began to see ugly patterns everywhere...."
--Paul J. McCauley, "Crimes and Glory"

When I was a kid I was "imaginative" and used to see miniature worlds in wallpaper patterns, faces in wood grain and cloud banks, and a demon's head and shoulders in a painting my grandmother had of... Snoqaulmie Falls. I mostly lost this ability as I grew up, though I still occasionally see things that aren't there out of the corner of my eye. Lately, it's mice in moving shadows. Except sometimes it really is mice.

Photo of the Week: Fish Tale

2011-11-13T22:45:00.001-05:00

The Jersey City Municipal Aquarium is home to some of the largest koi carp in the world. These super-sized "goldfish" attract thousands of visitors every year who marvel at these finny behemoths as they glide around their brobdingnagian fishbowl -- often pausing to surprise passers-by as they give them the "fisheye" from the aquarium's street-side portholes.

Actually, I just made that up. Jersey City doesn't have an aquarium. (I do, but my zebra-fish and neon tetras only attract a handful of visitors per year.) This is a photo I snapped of a mural entitled "Koi Too" by local artist Ed Harris on Hutton Street near Central Avenue. Go fish: click the pic for a closer view.

What's the word...?

2011-11-10T22:02:00.001-05:00

The Random Word Generator (Plus) will supply you with nouns, verbs, adjectives, interjections, etc., at various levels of complexity, from very common to obscure. Just what is a "scutcheon", anyway?

A companion "Creativity Tool", the Random Sentence Generator, spits out a simple, random sentence that almost seems to make a peculiar kind of sense. Examples: "How can the insidious ozone bubble?" You've got me there, but ozone bubbles do sound insidious. "The dropping trace reports a breach throughout the ingenious cleaner." Really? How then will I clean my ingenious?

Head Rattle

2011-11-09T23:13:00.002-05:00

I.
Who is the mysterious "Rob da Bank" who receives "Special Thanks" on the album Crazy Clown Time? Ah, a little googling reveals a British disc jockey on BBC Radio 1. That makes sense. Sort of. He was one of the presenters on a show called Blue Room (hmmm), which featured a "unique blend of quirky chillout tunes." How very… Lynchian. (Uncredited on "Crazy Clown Time" [the song]: Yoko Ono, or someone who moans very much like her.)

II.
People who sigh when they're sad, people who sigh when they're happy, people who sigh when they're angry, people who sigh when they're frustrated, people who sigh when they're feeling sorry for themselves, people who sigh when they're contented, people who sigh when they're tired -- there are so many meanings that can be conveyed with a sigh. Sighing is the universal language. But sometimes I still need an interpreter.

III.
Every time I watch or read news reports about all these debates and campaigns, I think, "the circus has come to town."

Random Sequence

2011-11-08T22:05:00.001-05:00

--"I'm ready for a sybaritic tallyho!" Victor said.
--"Yeah? Where are you going to find any freewill reciprocation?" asked Clive.
--"Mmm. Maybe down at the B and G. I'm hungry anyway. I could go for some more of their functionary cheddar."
--"Ugh! We ordered that thing last time. I almost threw up later. I was ready to do the weepiest shimmy in the lavatory."
--"Well, try something different. Have some watercress salad. Stretch those taste buds a little. Telescopic asceticism."
--"Is that on the menu? Can you even read a menu when you're in your 'tallyho' head? Or do you just look at the pictures? I think they have a fetishistic ideogram for that cheesy thing. A big gooey hubcap of golden ooze."

Word of the Day: zugzwang

2011-11-07T23:01:00.000-05:00

zugzwang (n)

In chess, a position in which one player can move only with loss or severe disadvantage. Metaphorically, a situation in which there are no good options.

"Gregor sighed. 'There's no such thing as fate. Just likelihoods, and situations where there's no right move, only moves of varying degrees of wrongness. It's a case of zugswang.'
'Zugzwang? Is that a dirty word for something interesting?'"
--T. A. Pratt, Poison Sleep

I haven't played chess in quite a while. I think I like the idea of chess, and the romantically medieval imagery of the pieces, more than the game itself, which I usually find protracted and frustrating, even if I'm winning. Too much like life. There have been times when I've felt like a pawn or a knight; never really like a king, a bishop, a rook, or a queen. And I rarely find that situations are black and white.

~~~

Meanwhile....

A recently unearthed deleted scene from Blue Velvet. Interesting scene; worth releasing as an extra; totally unnecessary to the film.

Much Ado about NOTHING

2011-11-06T15:31:00.001-05:00

Electronic Weekend

This is my electronic weekend. I'm getting used to my new Eye Phone Four Ess, transferring my contacts (and it's amazing the number of people who are my "contacts" that I haven't heard from in several millennia) and trying to converse with Siri, the talking, voice-recognizing A.I. app included. So far, she doesn't seem to understand a word I say. "I didn't quite get that," she says when I ask a mundane question about the weather in my most stentorian voice. I was hoping for a HAL 9000 and instead I got a bubble-headed girl with a hearing problem. Oh, well – supposedly Siri gets better as more and more people talk to her. Can Siri jokes be far behind? I wonder what she says if you pose a more philosophical question to her -- or ask her to open the pod bay doors? "I'm sorry, Dave. I didn't quite get that."

I've also downloaded my first e-book to the e-reader I recently purchased from [a tall warrior woman]: Haruki Murakami's 1Q84. It's about 900 pages long, so I'm not going to have to purchase another e-book for several millennia. At least I won't have to lug a book the size of a dictionary or a bible along with me wherever I wander. By the way, how does one pronounce 1Q84? "One queue eighty-four", I suppose. ("Q" in Japanese is pronounced like "nine" in English, thus the Orwellian reference.) For some reason, I like to think of the title as "IQ 84" – which, according to the Wechsler Intelligence Scale, is classified as "dull normal intelligence" and "borderline mental retardation". That would be a generous description of Siri's present IQ, I imagine.

~~~

Postscript: I was too hasty in my judgment of Siri. It seems she was simply having a moment, a mental hiccup. I just asked her to "open the pod bay doors", and she snapped back with "I'm going to report you to the Intelligence Agent for harassment." So she's no dummy. She's a smart ass.

The T&T List

2011-11-03T22:19:00.003-04:00

The Aurignacian
Recess Lav
Ubehebe Crater
Panamint Mountains
Hans Schäufelein
Matthew Perry
Pianomania
The Gentle Barn
Terminal 5
Faery Wicca
Atheist Rap
Grawlixes

The Complete Idiot's Guide to the Way I Feel

2011-11-02T23:37:00.005-04:00

Paranoid. I overheard someone I don't know mention my name today, though not, apparently, in any negative context. Still, I wonder if this is how celebrities feel about strangers discussing their personal peccadilloes.

Cold. I wore a sweater today, for the first time in many moons. That's when I know the season has changed -- when I get out the sweaters. Who needs a solstice?

Itchy. Another sign of changing weather, I guess -- dryer air, dryer skin, and I feel an urge to scratch in a particular spot. Unfortunately, I can't do it in public. And I spend most of the day in public. Tiny tortures take their toll.

Centered. I must have had a good dream last night, though I can't remember what it was. I woke up feeling like nothing the world could throw at me today, would... throw me. And it hasn't. A nice feeling. Too bad I can't bottle it.

Pensive. The "intersection of humanities and science" is a busy intersection, I find. Look both ways.

~~~

Meanwhile....It's Crazy Clown Time! Interesting article about David Lynch's new album (which I've only heard bits and pieces of so far).

Word of the Day: vicambulate

2011-11-01T22:49:00.001-04:00

vicambulate (v)

To walk about in the streets.

"Then he took to vicambulation, and lo! over the most maginificent shop in Riverdale -- a shop brilliant with gold and silver plate, and blazing with superb gems -- he perceived the name of Boss."--Mortimer Collins, The Vivian Romance

I haven't driven a car since.... I don't remember. The pleasing distinction about living in a metropolis is that one can walk to find just about any necessity. And I do. I also vicambulate, more or less aimlessly, as a form of moving meditation. When I have to travel to some vicinity outside my usual orbit, though, I patronize mass transit, as I've often mentioned here.

For example, I board the "light rail" (that's what they call trolleys these days) in Newark, New Jersey (where I carry on), to convey myself from the train station to my actual place of employment. Unfortunately, however, later this week, a Hollywood production will be filming in the vicinity, which means the light rail will be unavailable for two days running, or, you might say, two days not running. (Apparently, Newark is a stand in for "Gotham City" in this particular film; I heard the director was looking for a noirish municipality that has had it's heyday, to put it politely.)

Anyway, I will be forced to either wend my way on foot or take advantage of a shuttle service that is both infrequent and usually egregiously congregated with commuters, like the proverbial sardine can. It will be especially so on those two bat days, I suspect. So I may just leave early and hoof it at the other end of the PATH line. Just a typical Gothamite pedestrian, dodging the fiendish cataclysms of some celluloid supervillain.

Fish Food for Thought

2011-10-31T21:36:00.001-04:00

Agree? More clip-art philosophy by me (and Edward Abbey). You can catch the BIG fish here.More Philosofish here.

Photo of the Week

2011-10-30T14:58:00.000-04:00

Happy Halloween! This is the scary porch decoration I made out of kitchen knives, crucifixes, scissors, a saw, wire coat-hangers, and various bits of scrap metal. Creepy, huh? Maybe it will scare away all those little candy moochers. Click it for a closer view, if you dare....

Actually, I just made that up. This is a hanging whatsit that I photographed outside the Operations Museum in London last summer. Believe me, the museum, which preserves the history of medical surgery before the advent of antibiotics and anesthesia, is much scarier than any skull sculpture.

Head Rattle

2011-10-29T22:03:00.002-04:00

Snow in October here. Halloween and Christmas intertwined, just like at all the stores. I'm feeling some cognitive dissonace.

II.

Someone enquired about my relationship with Bill again. I'm tired of being asked about it. I'm tired of denying it. So, I told him that Bill IS my cousin. And he didn't believe me. So... why did he ask?

III.

I'm reading a friend's self-published book, a collection of short stories. It's pretty good, overall. A few people have suggested to me that I publish a book, and I certainly have enough material. The problem is I don't have enough people I could guilt trip or blackmail into buying it (not that that's the reason I bought the friend's book). Color me ambivalent.

Random Acts of Poetry

2011-10-27T23:17:00.000-04:00

Pacific

Dreamed the sea,
that inconceivable Peace,
the one to which all flippers,
jellyfish,
effluent streams,
day-tripping dippers,
sunburning sex,
and catamarans are irrelevant,
the soft wound
from the moon's nativity
and mirror to her exile;
you could turn away or even leave
but it was there,
the magnetic tides
threading nets of remnants,
glossolalia
behind the eyes
and eardrums, arousing
waves of immanence
your most diaphanous
perceptions are yet too coarse
for sanding.

Brain Dump

2011-10-26T22:50:00.000-04:00

Sometimes if you stare at the headlines long enough, they start to seem like surreal poetry.

[Actual Google News and New York Times headlines]

"With New Smartphones, High Hopes for Nokia and Microsoft Union": I'm amazed that employees of these companies are being allowed to form a joint union -- and with the organizing aid of smartphones no less.... "Kirstie Alley May Lead 'Hollywood Whores' to Broadway": I knew she was having career problems, but I didn't think she'd have to resort to the world's oldest profession. Does she really think she and her ring will be more successful on 42nd Street than on the Sunset Boulevard?.... "Bringing Out the Superhero Side of Mr. Mom": Change a few diapers, and a guy's a superhero.... "No ear popping, dry eyes for 787 passengers": That's a lot of passengers. They must be talking about a cruise ship full of keratoconjunctivitis sicca sufferers with ear impactions.... I could go on, but I'll spare you.

The Complete Idiot's Guide to the Way I Feel

2011-10-25T23:17:00.000-04:00

Ambivalent. IQ84, Haruki Murakami's 1,000-page (or thereabouts) tome, is out. You'll see that enigmatic cover girl's face staring from every bookstore window. Now I have to decide whether to download it onto my brand-new e-reader or listen to the audiobook. It might be a bit overwhelming to make something that epic in scale the first thing I read on my... thing. On the other hand, I'm not sure if I want to commit 40+ hours to listening to it. That would take more than a month if I just listened while commuting. But I don't know how long it would take me to read 1,000 pages of surreal Japanese-translated-to-English prose, either.

I wish this book was being published in installments, as it was in Japan -- it was divided into three novels there. If I had an IQ of 84, it might make the decision easier.... By the way, the Japanese pronunciation of "Q" is similar to how we English-speakers say "nine". So the title is a play on Orwell's 1984, and in fact, the novel is set in that year. Clever, Haruki.

Word of the Day: opuscule

2011-10-24T22:01:00.000-04:00

opuscule (n)

A small, minor work.

"Although doubts still linger about the origin and authorship of this opuscule, no one would think of minimizing its doctrinal importance in the history of medieval metaphysics."
--Dennis J. Brand, The Book of Causes

"Opuscule" -- it sounds like a fancy word for a pimple, doesn't it?

The small, minor work I'm working on at the moment (though mostly in my head so far) is a short fictional story about a woman with a squeaky shoe. There are certain sounds that I find intensely annoying, and that is one of them. Others are the classic nails on a chalkboard, feedback, balloon rubbing, nose blowing, and smoke-detector bleeping. Put me in a room with all of those sounds occurring at once and I think my head would explode. Or maybe implode.

Blame It on the Moon

2011-10-23T22:57:00.000-04:00

Did you know that each full moon has its own name, derived from Native American tradition? This is where the phrase "once in a blue moon" comes from. We will soon be observing the annual Beaver Moon (November 10th), also known as the Frosty Moon. Yes, readers, it's time once again to set your beaver traps, before the swamps freeze over, so you'll have a supply of warm winter furs.

more here

Photo of the Week

2011-10-22T22:04:00.001-04:00

I feel this way sometimes. Click it to get up close and personal.

Search Party

2011-10-20T22:31:00.001-04:00

Here are a few recent search queries that brought seekers to this temple of scribomania.

imitation alabaster

I will accept nothing less than GENUINE alabaster.

alfred hitchcock doll

Really? Where can I get one? The suspense is killing me.

cheesy movie plot

My favorite is "Bikini Secrets":

"Mistaking aesthetics for ethics, a philosophy grad student (Harry Hamlin) convinces the neighborhood girls to wear nothing but bikinis after witnessing a hot-body contest. In the brief moments she wears clothes, Jennifer (Julie Strain) heats up the pool, the screen, and the sales figures. Richard Roundtree exceeds expectations as the Christ figure, Mitch."

Machines, Abstraction and Women

Sounds like a David Lynch art exhibit. Oh wait....

jerseyania

New Jersey should annex Pennsylvania and rename itself this. Our XXL governor likes to throw his weight around and could use some super-sized geography.

The Failure of American Typology in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf konkle

What? You actually landed on my page when you searched for THAT? This is not The Journal of the Humanities.

blonde rabbits

A blonde... rabbits... Inland Empire?

buick named maude

Do people still drive Buicks? If I had one, I would name it Mildred.

ostrobogulous hedgehog

You will recall, regular readers, that "ostrobogulous" means "something weird, bizarre, unusual or pornographic". Hedgehogs are already pretty weird without any abstruse adjectives. Or is that the h-hog's name, à la Sonic? "Ostrobogulous the Hedgehog"? I could get on board with that.

what fast food restaurants have grey poupon

None? I always bring my own.

Beatitude: Dictionary of Jive

Blessed are the facetious, for they shall reveal absurdity.

hello kitty glass ashtray

How could anyone grind their butt out on that adorable face?

I'm mad, you're mad, we're all mad here

Apparently.

The T&T List

2011-10-19T22:22:00.000-04:00

Icarus Interstellar
turmeric
Nika Roza Danilova
Melissa Harris-Perry
the Numi
the Pantanal
Snecma
Mayo Methot
Vidzeme
Alkoholen delirium
Ida Random
Spasm bands

Word of the Day: whigmaleerie

2011-10-18T23:20:00.000-04:00

whigmaleerie (n)

A notion or whim; also something contrived, a gimmmick.

"A flivver in flubberized flight, made possible by an absent-minded professor's discovery of the Law of Repulsive Attraction, is the latest whigmaleerie from Walt Disney's workshop of whimsy, although there is no end to what the man is up to."
----"Bounce and Bonanzas", staff, Life magazine, April 7, 1961

Notions can be dangerous. My wyfe and I were discussing possible Halloween costumes for the party we're invited to, and off the top of my head, I jokingly suggested she create a character named Helena Handbasket. I didn't expect her to take it seriously, but now she's constructing a basket to wear out of old garden hose (?!). It seems pretty wiggy (whiggy?) to me. (For lack of a better idea, I'm thinking I'll simply dress up as a tourist -- you know, Hawaiian shirt, camera and lei around my neck, sunglasses, NYC brochure in my chest pocket, and some kind of asshole hat. Maybe socks with sandals, too. I'll go around asking people how to get to the Statue of Liberty. Trick or treat?)

Music of the Spheres

2011-10-17T23:05:00.000-04:00

Perfect background noise for a Halloween party, or a low-budget flying-saucer movie: NASA's recordings of eerie radio emissions from the planet Saturn (via the Cassini space probe) can be downloaded as a WAV file here. I'm a big fan of "white noise," particularly as a sleep aid, but these unearthly tones would give me nightmares.

Much Ado about NOTHING

2011-10-16T23:01:00.000-04:00

Secret Life

At this weekend's Golden Door International Film Festival, I attended a screening of a fascinating little documentary by a Jersey City filmaker entitled the secret life of my small urban backyard. (Intentional lowercase.) It's a visual tour of the exotic insect life one can find (with an extreme close-up lens) less than two miles from New York City. It featured lots of miniature sex and violence, leavened by a dulcifying musical drone and the filmmaker's calm New Zealand accent.

It got me thinking about what could be going on in my own backyard, on both the micro and macro level. I suppose I could make a sitcom about the family of possums living in the tool shed or a medical drama about the strangely cancerous-looking (and mostly inedible) McIntosh apples that are currently being shed by the tree that dominates my little patch of urban landscape. But nah. And I'm too squeamish to investigate what is going on with all the fruit flies, and who knows what other multi-legged monsters, that are buzzing around the compost bin. I'm better off just writing about such glamorous topics, I think. I know my lane.

Photo of the Week: Desktop

2011-10-13T22:30:00.000-04:00

Yes, a desktop -- the old-fashioned kind. It's not my desk; this is a desk I observed and photographed when I visited the caretaker's house at a local cemetery. No, nobody died, nor was I paying my respects to the dearly departed. I was there to attend an art exhibit that my wyfe dragged me to, but I found this collection of objects on the caretaker's escritoire far more interesting than anything hanging on the walls. Peppers, papers, portraits, a pointer, a prince of peace... enough alliteration. Click the pic for a closer view. You know you want to, nosy.

"You have the vocabulary of an aspidistra in panic."

2011-10-12T23:52:00.000-04:00

Everyone could use a compliment now and then, but it can be hard to come up with something original. You might try some of the novel extolations below on your friends and rivals. If you deliver them fast enough, they might not even notice the 100 percent inanity content.

Anathema comes ever to mind when thinking of you.

Your face is like an imperfectly shaven tennis ball.

Your aquiline senescence implores me to generalize within the realms of a starfish's lifelong hallucinations of gelatin pools and of actuaries floating upon the Rhine.

Entranced by the bitter harmony of your lips, I gaze beyond reason to find the oasis of your ruptured soul.

You are truly a wristwatch in a world of lumps.

You have the vocabulary of an aspidistra in panic.

Wallets of fur would bombard a triassic keychain rather than dialyse in your equable fishtank.

You ever remind me of the enigma of postage not sent.

I find your eye sockets to be a wondrous amusement park of neo-plastic pleasures and oncogenic delights.

Your raw sensuality flusters me like a dog sneezing into a ventilation fan.

Tribes of primitve hunters, with rhinestone codpieces rampant, should build pyramids of Chevy engines covered in butterscotch syrup to exalt the diastolic, ineffable, scintillated and cacophonous salamander of truth which slimes and distracts from each and every orifice of your holy refrigerator, Sears be its brand.

You can generate more of these at the Surrealist Compliment Generator.

Head Rattle

2011-10-11T23:15:00.001-04:00

I.
I've finally invested in an e-reader, which arrived today. Cool, but I'm currently mid-way through a conventional print-'n'-paper tome -- perhaps my last? -- and perusal of electronic compositions will have to wait a little longer.

II.
Someone sitting right behind me in a restaurant today was scat singing and performing various musical vocalizations in a soft but quite perceptible voice. I didn't want to turn around and stare, because it might have been perceived as rude and also because I got the impression from the disjointed quality of his medley that the fellow was most likely demented. No one else was paying him any mind, which I thought was a little odd and made me consider, for a moment, if maybe I was the crazy one.

III.
Somebody showed me a picture of a sleeping puppy embracing a teddy bear -- an image of almost unbearable cuteness -- and I suggested to a guy I know who plays in a punk band that it could be his next album cover. "Fantastic idea!" he said, seemingly sincerely. I guess irony is not dead.

Word of the Day: contortuplicate

2011-10-10T22:51:00.000-04:00

contortuplicate (adj)

Braided or twisted.

"Aware of such fabrications and embellishments, Stravinsky made it clear that he was uncomfortable. His copy of Conversations with Igor Stravinsky includes questions about Craft's garnishing of simple responses, for instance in a floridly descriptive phrase, 'kaleidoscopic montages for contortuplicate personalities.' Stravinsky underlined the passage and expressed his surprise with an exclamation mark in the margin."
--Charles M. Joseph, Stravinsky Inside Out

One of the artist's studios I visited during the recent Jersey City Studio Arts Tour (aka "the artists' studio tour") included some works that I found both fascinating and horrifying: constructions of found objects, cheap toys, plastic flowers, cast-off household objects, and all sorts of flotsam and jetsam, all twisted together with wire into 3D assemblages. There were many, many of these compilations, some small and some large, all over the studio. They were certainly artistically created, but I couldn't help being reminded of my wyfe's late aunt's house in California. She was a hoarder, and visiting her home was like walking around inside one of these agglomerations, which I, in the aunt's case, assumed were the physical manifestation of a troubled mind. It was hard to see at first, but there was a kind of mad order to her placement of all the clutter. Madness or genius? It's often hard to decide.

The Complete Idiot's Guide to the Way I Feel

2011-10-09T16:47:00.000-04:00

Freaked. I was at a party last night where a couple of people that I don't remember ever meeting (doesn't necessarily mean I never did) greeted me by name. This happens every once in a while, and always makes me fantasize about having a computer chip in my head that would prompt me with the name of every person I lay eyes on. I'm sure it will be possible someday, along with the ability to surf the web in one's head -- another favorite fantasy.

Amused. The new issue of Weird, N.J. has arrived. (And I heard one of the editors interviewed on WFMU today.) There's something oddly comforting (not to mention entertaining) when reading about the experiences of people who visit haunted hotels, build 15-foot models of the Twin Towers in their backyards, see mysterious triangles in the sky, and encounter big, red-eyed monsters along lonely New Jersey roadsides at 3 A.M. They make me feel... normal (if a little boring) but also proud to be living in a state where such unusual things occur/seem to occur. Who knows?

Amused II. Why do people on the Internets keep saying they don't understand what David Lynch's Mulholland Drive is about, or what is going on in that film? To me it seems rather obvious -- much more so than in his Lost Highway or, God knows, Inland Empire. It's not just about objective reality, geniuses, it's about wishful dreams and what goes on in someone's head, and how different that can be from "reality". How appropriate that it is set in Tinsel Town. It's probably the best movie ever about Hollyweird, with the possible exception of Sunset Boulevard (notice the similarity in titles).

Random Sequence

2011-10-06T22:23:00.003-04:00

[random phrases worked into a story]

Irksome Twerp

Clive, a supreme introvert who somehow managed to be the office's inveterate irritant, made herculean attempts at sociability. Every Thursday, he held a "comfy conclave" for several of his "friends", who were actually his long-suffering employees. The theme this particular week, he announced with lascivious euphony, was Apoplectic Erotica -- though to Clive, this just signified a group viewing of 9 1/2 Weeks. "Sanitized crud", said his administrative aid, under his breath, to the sales manager, who was not-so-secretly an aficionado of funicular bondage. "This is vexatious selectivity," commented the bookkeeper during the third "week". "I wanted to see The DaVinci Coed."

(Most of the phrases come from here.)

Brain Dump / Much Ado about NOTHING

2011-10-05T21:34:00.000-04:00

Nothing Special

"Quantum theory predicts that empty space should exert arepulsive force, like dark energy, but one that is stronger thanwhat the astronomers have measured, leaving some physicistsmumbling about multiple universes."
--"Three astronomers share Nobel Prize in physics", New York Times

Nothing is not a golden curtain rising. Nothing is not a jellyfish. Nothing is not a Starbucks coffee mug. Nothing is not a flatscreen. Nothing is not a grapefruit. Nothing is not a basketball. Nothing is not a hydroponic garden. Nothing is not a state of unrest. Nothing is not a hashtag. Nothing is not Webster's Third New International Dictionary. Nothing is not a Weed Wacker. Nothing is not a neat freak. Nothing is not a bulldog. Nothing is not a door knocker. Nothing is not a chandelier. Nothing is not a cookbook. Nothing is not "The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill". Nothing is not a dishwasher. Nothing is not an anesthetic. Nothing is not a podcast. Nothing is not a skylight. Nothing is not a stop sign. Nothing is not a biplane. Nothing is not an iPhone. Nothing is not a cow. Nothing is not a corndog. Nothing is not a Douglas fir. Nothing is not a coyote. Nothing is not a watch fob. Nothing is not a creationist. Nothing is not a madhouse. Nothing is not Sacajawea or John Philip Sousa. Nothing is not a happy ending.

Word of the Day: rhathymia

2011-10-04T23:51:00.000-04:00

rhathymia (n)

Light-hearted, carefree behavior.

"Corruption and collusion apart, the system discouraged initiative in making decisions. Better to avoid responsibility and stick to the rule book, the diagramma. From this sprang slackness, rhathymia, long delays in reaching decisions or paying out salaries, and downright collousness in ignoring positive distress."
--Iorwerth Eiddon Stephen Edwards, The Cambridge Ancient History

I need more rhathymia. Maybe we all do. The last time I engaged in any rhathymia was... hmm. I guess last Saturday, during the local Artist's Studio Tour, when I visited the studio of a sculptor who makes large Rube Goldberg-style contraptions out of metal pipes, wooden sticks, gears, bicycle chains, small electric motors, and dripping water. Many of them included hand cranks that visitors could turn to make various gadgets perform actions, like opening and closing a fish mouth (some of them were in the form of metallic fish) or make water tip cups over and ring bells. As I turned those cranks, I was five years old again... except... I kept thinking about the word rhathymia.

Head Rattle

2011-10-03T23:23:00.002-04:00

I.
Someone who frequently sits next to me has a talking shoe and likes to make little mouse noises with it in a semi-conscious way while engaged in some sort of absorbing business. It doesn't happen constantly, and it's such a little (yet torturous) squeak.... Should I break my wall of silence and tell her to oil her damn shoe? I guess I'll have to before my brain congeals.

II.
At the 4th Street Music Festival last weekend, I took refuge in one of the vendor's tents when a monsoon-like downpour suddenly started. It was a fellow who sells blow-up images from smutty old paperbacks on framed canvases -- covers from the type of trash literature that isn't published anymore but that decades ago one might find in an "adult" bookstore. (Do those even exist anymore?) He also has images from wacky old sci-fi novels, and a few that combine elements of both. He gave me his business card, which on one side depicts the cover for a scholarly tome entitled The Oversexed Astronauts, by (ha ha) M. Coxe. The cover depicts two guys wearing only the bottom haves of their spacesuits and having their way with a couple of naked astronettes. Under the title it says "Three glowing specimens of male virility with plenty of staying power in a round-the-clock orgy that was outasite." There's an upright rocket in the background. Subtle.

Random Acts of Poetry

2011-10-03T10:12:00.002-04:00

Prophet

I see pale
lights
in a looming evening
in a dark room.
I see me,

sitting on a cushion,
paying close attention
to spooling
threads
within,

stirring only to close
a window against
traffic racket
or relieve
cramped ankles,

eyes closed,
listening
to a mysterious
word
like "chrysalis,"

silently chiming.
I'm beginning
not to care
so awfully much.

The Complete Idiot's Guide to the Way I Feel

2011-09-29T23:25:00.000-04:00

Scrambled. I attended the opening for an art show called Exquisite Corpse tonight. It's part of the Jersey City Studio Arts tour this weekend, which is when you get to walk around downtown and poke your nose into various artists' warrens. (Often, seeing how they live is more interesting than the art.) Anyway, if you don't know what exquisite corpse means, it's a game in which a group of people combine various unrelated words, phrases, sentences, or images to generate something new, something surreal, or at least something off the wall. The point is that the assemblage is more or less unconsciously produced, since it's a group effort, not the result of a single person thinking about how the pieces "should" fit together. This art show, which is staged in a large industrial space, borrows the concept visually -- each "piece" was actually two or three pieces combined: a "head", a "torso", and "legs", with each part sometimes being a realistic depiction of a human or animal body, and sometimes an abstract one.

All of the pieces came from different artists working in different mediums. Some of it was quite stunning, some of it truly seemed random, and all of it made me feel a bit... fragmented. Juxtaposed. Cobbled together. I like genuine randomness, but this was curated randomness by a single person... I guess you could call it faked randomness, if you wanted to be blunt about it. Not that such is necessarily a bad thing -- like I said, much of it was stunning and most of the individual pieces could certainly stand as works of art on their own. But it didn't quite work for me.

They had some amputated parts of stuffed animals in a big bowl there that visitors could recombine (thanks to the miracle of Velcro) in amusing ways, but I wasn't in the mood.

The T&T List

2011-09-28T22:33:00.002-04:00

Canadian Ice Service
Katy Perry
Isabel Coixet
The Narrative of John Smith
Kindle Fire
Idris Elba
cater2.me
iAd
räksmörgås
Egodawela
Hellenic Ornithological Society
Fan Tan Alley

Much Ado about NOTHING

2011-09-27T23:08:00.001-04:00

It's recycling night again. I love recycling night. I enjoy crushing plastic soda bottles beneath my feet and then dropping them into ye olde recycling bin. Love the sound of the recycling truck slowly rumbling down my street and consuming my castoffs in its huge metallic maw like some prehistoric monster. The sound of metal cans banging together and glass jars clinking and breaking as they fall into that ravenous mouth is the sound of creative destruction. Off they'll go to the recycling center, where they will be born again as containers of Campbell's Pork & Beans or jars of Vaseline or some other goo. And the paper! My junk mail may end up as a book of poetry or an issue of Weird N.J. or a roll of toilet tissue. It's a kind of immortality when you think about it.

Word of the Day: banjax

2011-09-26T23:31:00.000-04:00

banjax (v or n)

To break or smash. Also: a mess. (When capitalized, this is apparently also the name, or part of the name, of some hipster band.)

"If any of the boys sounded the alarm, you could have forty or fifty little horrors milling around the stairs and the passages or running to banjax the getaway car. They are like a hornets' nest when they have got it in for someone -- and absolutely fearless."
--Andrew Nugent, Soul Murder

I'm tired of seeing all these banjaxed old pre-digital TV sets on the curbside, their cathode-ray tubes exposed and their circuit wires hanging out like the disembowled intestines of some slaughtered creature. Don't people know that you can't just throw away a TV set? The sanitation department will not pick them up, since they're practically hazmat with all the poisonous chemicals used in their manufacture. You have to take them somewhere, like the Incinerator Authority (in our fair city) or whatever the equivalent place is that accepts old appliances, paint and aerosol cans, and your dead batteries. Then they probably get shipped off to a Chinese landfill (thanks 60 Minutes). But at least we wouldn't have to look at these sad, broken relics of a bygone era and stumble over them for weeks on end while their ignorant owners wait for a trash pick-up that will never come.

Much Ado about NOTHING

2011-09-23T23:25:00.001-04:00

Mantle Piece

The contents of the mantlepiece in my living room (left to right):

A fishbowl containing a piece of coral and a porcelain fish, and no water; a stack of small, 1960s-era souvenir glass ashtrays from Los Angeles and Las Vegas (once owned by my wyfe's late aunt); a pine nut; a Michael Jackson doll (from the Thriller days) wearing a red uniform jacket and a white glove and lying flat on his back; a 3D wooden snowflake; a photograph of our fireplace (yes--on top of the fireplace); a small metal replica of the Eiffel Tower; a tiny metal replica of the Space Needle; a tin Lucky Strikes cigarette case containing various ID and membership cards from the 1940s through 1960s that belonged to my wyfe's late aunt and her ex-husband; another stack of souvenir glass ashtrays (we don't smoke) from various California and Nevada motels and casinos; a painted seashell; a small Hello Kitty candle; and two glass paperweights, one containing a yellowed photograph of a fancy hotel and the other a photo of an unknown, sad-faced woman (1920s era?) with a curlicue of hair in the middle of her forehead.

Sometimes I think a semiotician could have a field day with this place.

~~~

Meanwhile....

The 3 Rs by David Lynch

Search Party

2011-09-22T23:43:00.000-04:00

Here are a few recent search queries that brought seekers to this temple of scribomania.

sell his own mother down the river

You have to wonder why someone would be searching for this phrase. And what the going rate is for a mom in wherever "down the river" is. New Orleans? I guess I could find out on Craigslist....

inside of white album

I believe there are secret, back-masked messages inside the White Album. They are telling me to hold my head up, free my mind, and come out and play in the road.

michael gates new jersey

Google reveals that I am number-one for this search phrase, even though there are seven people with that name in the Garden State. I wonder how often the others search for their own names and then land on my page -- and then want to change their names.

prism sun glass door

= Rainbows!

watermelon armed

Watermelons, dropped from a height, can indeed be deadly weapons in the hands of frat boys. Bombs away!

drawing body parts

Drawing people is so hard. I wish I could draw my proximal phalanges....

humerous tombstone suggestions

Try this one, carved on a tombstone in Wiltshire, England:

Blown upward
out of sight:
He sought the leak
by candlelight

Random Sequence

2011-09-21T22:54:00.000-04:00

Sylvia was both an apprehensive daydreamer and grumpy snoop. Her elderly and wealthy new neighbors -- she called them the "shriveled aristocracy" -- kept a glamorous menagerie in their backyard. There were caged cockatoos and a Capuchin monkey; fenced-in, free-range emus; and a boa constrictor behind glass. Sylvia suspected cruelty or illegal ownership, or possibly both. After dark, she snuck into the neighbors' yard with a flashlight and examined the monkey's spacious cage. She saw that the creature had doll furniture to use -- including an armoire, a roll-top desk, and a miniature sofa on which it was lounging. "What a luxurious rig," thought Sylvia. "My own living room isn't so--" The monkey gave her a raspberry. "Oh, you temperamental knave!" Sylvia whispered. Then she thought that perhaps the flashlight's bright beam had annoyed the little simian. "Sorry," she murmured. The anthropoid bared it's teeth and made a hissing noise. Sylvia opened her mouth in surprise and the monkey threw a peanut into it. She swallowed involuntarily. Sylvia was terribly allergic to peanuts and died shortly thereafter. A few months later, the boa constrictor escaped from its terrarium and strangled the monkey. The emus, who had observed it all, made guttural sounds that sounded like "okay sir ahhh, sir ahhhh."

Word of the Day: imbroglio

2011-09-20T23:35:00.000-04:00

imbroglio (n)

A confusing, complex, or embarrassing situation, a painful misunderstanding, or a scandal.

"He wanted to be an Untouchable, Paul did. That was his idea of a contemporary career. But then a girl walked up and touched him (slapped him, actually; it's a complicated story). And he joined us, here in the imbroglio."
--Donald Barthelme, "See the Moon?"

Oh, this is a pretty easy word, compared to most of the ones I foist upon you. I more or less knew what it meant without looking it up. But it's a word I like (I like the sound of it), and I came across it in the book I'm currently reading (with my eyes, not my ears): Sixty Stories, by the late Mr. Barthelme. It's a very amusing collection of off-the-wall literary pieces, most of which don't seem like stories at all, at least not in the sense of having a beginning, a middle, and nice little New Yorker-type wrap-it-up-with-a-tasteful-bow epiphany at the end. That's okay. I've laughed out loud more than once while reading this witty tome -- a rare pleasure.

Brain Dump

2011-09-19T22:31:00.002-04:00

Of the lessons that dreams teach, among the most important is that you must sleep with your ethereal eyes open. This is so that chimerical wisdom can find its path to your intrinsic psyche. Dreams are constructed from the artifacts of hidden meanings, their aspects fixed within the psychogenic fusion of the subliminal archetypes. The often volcanic outpourings of visionary dream images experienced during the trance-like torpidity of somnolence is the epitome of salubrious intoxication, the desirable mental respite from circadian quandaries and torment. This is a necessary psychic transition from spiraling diurnal vexation toward the untroubled consonance of a requited heart. The road to serenity is found in habitual cultivation of a habit of surprising the slumbering mind during its extended nocturnal exile from quotidian disharmony by creating a "whirligig" of phantasmagorical imagery to soothe the apprehensive intellect via the ministrations of the proverbial catnap -- that is, forty winks.

Photo of the Week

2011-09-17T22:01:00.000-04:00

This is a Green-breasted Spotted Nuthatch, one of the rarest birds in North America, which I managed to photograph when it alighted briefly atop a floral mound in our local park. It's song is a tirelessly repeated musical trill: foo lee uuu, foo lee uuu....

Sorry to ruffle your feathers, but actually, I just made that up -- not that I really expected you to swallow it. This is a shrubbery, an impressive example of topiary that I encountered when we toured the gardens of Waddesdon Manor in Buckinghamshire, England, last July. Click on the pic for a close-up view -- unless you don't give a hoot.

Random Acts of Poetry

2011-09-15T21:22:00.002-04:00

Match

Electricity lost,
that little redhead
exploded for us,
igniting a tiny
scratch dazzle
in the big, dark place.

Your face bloomed,
orange and guileless
in the match-light:
a flicker
out of childhood,
out of a sulfurous dream.

Fade to black.
So it is with our kind.
I endured it,
tight-lipped,
not despairing.
I let drop
that little cinder bone,
the dead stick.

Head Rattle

2011-09-14T23:03:00.001-04:00

I.

A couple of people I know are in a local band, and that band is about to release a self-produced (but studio-recorded) album. No big deal, right? Except it won't be on CD or vinyl (though they'd certainly like it to be the latter). And no, it's not going to be a download, though it may be that as well, eventually. It's going to be on cassette. That's almost unbelievably retro, but is it... cool? I can't remember the last time I listened to anything on cassette. I still have a boom box that can play them, so I'll be able to listen to the album, but I'm not sure if most people have retained the, uh, technology. Some people like the pops and clicks on vinyl records (not to mention the "warmer" sound), which seem to add an air of authenticity. Will they feel the same way about tape hiss? I guess we'll find out.

II.

I discovered that I still have a 20-pound note in my wallet from my trip to England. I had exchanged my Brit bills at the airport just before leaving for home, but this one, all folded up, escaped my notice somehow. Maybe I'll take it to an American Express office next time I'm in Manhattan and trade it for greenbacks. Or maybe not. It's a souvenir of sorts, with HM the Queen's smirking mug on one side and some kind of graphic depicting "the division of labour in pin manufacturing" (huh?) on the other. It bears the signature of Andrew Bailey, the "chief cashier" of the Bank of England, which conjures on odd image in my mind: Andy standing behind a shop counter and working a cash register, like one of the check-out clerks at Stop & Shop.

~~~

Meanwhile,

Hipster central has unveiled David Lynch's cover art for his upcoming album. I like.

Word of the Day: battologize

2011-09-13T23:16:00.001-04:00

battologize (v)

To repeat oneself excessively.

"But his meaning is buried beneath layers of imperspicuity where he battologizes with novel conceits and becomes pleonastic and periphrastic. To him 'law is pragmatic and philosophic, not vapid beating of juristic wings in the void.'"
--India Quarterly

It can be annoying when someone repeats himself constantly, but it can be amusing, too. Whenever you hear the word or catchphrase elsewhere, you think of that person. The verbal tic becomes symbolic of him or her, like an sonic monogram or an aural coat of arms.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Here are some words and phrases I hear from people (who shall be nameless) all the time:
circle back
close the loop
have a conversation about....
pretty much
exactly! [I'm guilty of this one myself]
what's interesting is....
can I ask you a question?
over to you
okay, okay, okay
here's the thing...
watcha got?
~~~
Reminder to my readers around the world: I expect you to help rescue these "words of the day" from oblivion by using them in daily conversation and reporting back to me the reactions you receive.

The T&T List

2011-09-12T23:21:00.000-04:00

Perry Como
This Train
Guy Maddin
San Feliu de Guixols
Ohne Titel
Elmgreen and Dragset
Delvard
Tesla Dynamo
Nightmare and the Cat
Lime cordial
Evolution (Megaplex)
NFC tags

Much Ado about Something

2011-09-11T11:25:00.000-04:00

Hmm, 10 years since "that day". My wyfe was in Building 7 of the World Trade Center on "that day". I was across the river, watching events unfold from the panoramic skyline views of Riverview Park in Jersey City, which was next to where I was living at the time. I don't feel like saying or writing much about it now, but I did back then, as many people did. Everybody has a story. You can read my nonfiction account, written in October 2001, here at the 9/11 Digital Archive.

Photo of the Week

2011-09-10T22:57:00.001-04:00

This is a portrait of King Arthur on the very Round Table around which such knights as Lancelot and Galahad sat drinking coffee or mead or whatever they imbibed in those apocryphal times. This piece of legendary furniture is housed in the "Great Hall" of Winchester Castle in Hampshire, England.

I didn't make this up! Henry VIII did. The table is a hoax, painted at Henry's command for Holy Roman Emperor Charles V's 1522 state visit. The table itself is considerably older than that, according to dendrochronology -- but the wood it's made of does not date back to Arthur's time. Fake, fake, fake.

Still, it's a fascinating artifact, so I took this picture of it when we visited Winchester in July. You may want to climb down from your beanstalk and click on the pic for a close-up look at old Art, holding his sword Excaliber. And you can see the entire tabletop here.