cumberground (n)
Something that is utterly worthless -- an object or a person.
"What a lot of cumbergrounds!" exclaimed Mrs. Woonsocket as she perused the antique shop's displays. But as her roving eye alighted on each gewgaw and gimcrack, it was obvious that this practiced derision was simply a prelude to another one of her expert haggling sessions.
--Leahcim Setag, Strange Loops
Worthless people, taking up space? A number of reality-show "celebrities" come to mind. As for objects, they are almost too numerous to mention, right here in this very room. Almost but not quite. In one corner, we have an antique wheelchair containing a number of mismatched mannequin parts. On the mantlepiece, we have small replicas of the Eiffel Tower and the Space Needle, a Michael Jackson doll, and a fishbowl containing a single porcelain fish. The sideboard is covered with retrieved bagatelles from my wyfe's deceased aunt's hoard, mostly very odd costume jewelry. On the floor next to the fireplace, we have a teddy bear astride a miniature gargoyle.... I could go on. But you get the point. I'm living in the Museum of Cumbergrounds.
Thursday, June 30, 2011
Wednesday, June 29, 2011
Random Sequence
Ivan Dreams
The postmodern cowboy/bandit holds an asymmetric handgun in Ivan's dream. "Give me some of your energizing wampum!" the cowboy yells. Ivan realizes that the firearm is only a squirt-gun and smiles with infatuate jolliness. "I don't think so," he drawls with reedy affability. The cowboy scowls and then shrinks into a small cactus with prehensile spines.
Ivan wakes up and begins to write down what he remembers of the dream in the journal he keeps on his bedside table. More crumby eclecticism, he writes, but with some psychogenic particularity. It's the ninth dream he's remembered well enough to record in the last two weeks. A few of them amuse him when he reads about them later in the day. But others disgust him with their overripe absurdity. Still, he's determined to record all of his dreams for the month, as he promised the painter, the "mental portraitist", the dream aficionado....
The postmodern cowboy/bandit holds an asymmetric handgun in Ivan's dream. "Give me some of your energizing wampum!" the cowboy yells. Ivan realizes that the firearm is only a squirt-gun and smiles with infatuate jolliness. "I don't think so," he drawls with reedy affability. The cowboy scowls and then shrinks into a small cactus with prehensile spines.
Ivan wakes up and begins to write down what he remembers of the dream in the journal he keeps on his bedside table. More crumby eclecticism, he writes, but with some psychogenic particularity. It's the ninth dream he's remembered well enough to record in the last two weeks. A few of them amuse him when he reads about them later in the day. But others disgust him with their overripe absurdity. Still, he's determined to record all of his dreams for the month, as he promised the painter, the "mental portraitist", the dream aficionado....
Tuesday, June 28, 2011
Much Ado about NOTHING
When my wyfe's elderly aunt was in a nursing home a couple of summers ago (she died last year), we flew to California and helped to clean up her house in Pacific Palisades. She was a charming, witty woman, but unfortunately a world-class hoarder, so it was quite a labor for all involved. As a sort of reward for pitching in, I was given one of her books that I fancied (she had thousands of books), a tome entitled N by E by the 20th-century artist Rockwell Kent. The book is a true-life memoir of Kent's summer 1929 voyage to (and shipwreck on the rocks of) Greenland. The prose is poetic though not terribly interesting -- I've skipped around in it -- but the many, many Art Deco-style wood-block print illustrations are stunning. They have a numinous quality that doesn't have much specifically to do with a sea trip to Greenland. You can see some examples of his style here.
When I got home from California, I put the book on a shelf and only looked at it sporadically when I was in an introspective mood. I didn't know if it was worth much, although I noted that it's a first edition, published in 1930. Today, on a whim, and wondering if maybe I should sell it, I did some online research and found out that it's worth about $50. Meh. If it was signed by the author/artist, it would be worth a little over $200. The ebook sells for about $10 on [a river in Brazil]. The illustrations are affecting, though -- far more on aging book paper than on a computer screen. I would even call them meditative. It's hard to put a price on that, though I think it would be more than $50 and definitely more than $10. Oh, and it smells good, as old books sometimes do. I'll keep it.
When I got home from California, I put the book on a shelf and only looked at it sporadically when I was in an introspective mood. I didn't know if it was worth much, although I noted that it's a first edition, published in 1930. Today, on a whim, and wondering if maybe I should sell it, I did some online research and found out that it's worth about $50. Meh. If it was signed by the author/artist, it would be worth a little over $200. The ebook sells for about $10 on [a river in Brazil]. The illustrations are affecting, though -- far more on aging book paper than on a computer screen. I would even call them meditative. It's hard to put a price on that, though I think it would be more than $50 and definitely more than $10. Oh, and it smells good, as old books sometimes do. I'll keep it.
Monday, June 27, 2011
The Complete Idiot's Guide to the Way I Feel
Or felt....
Confused: I keep getting "friend" requests from people I don't know, but know people I know. You know? Or appear to. I can't tell if they really know people I know, or if people I know just accepted the request without knowing if the person actually knows who they appear to know. Who knows?
Literary: I sent another waggish article off to ViewsHound.com. If they put it up, I'll link to it here, and you may get a chuckle or a feeling of deja vu or both.
Tropical: On Friday night, I attended the "Summer Blowout" party sponsored by Art House Productions, an annual event at which attendees are encouraged to show up in beachwear. Nobody ever wears an actual bathing suit, just the type of clothing you might wear to the beach over your bathing suit, or alternatively, what you might wear to a luau. So I wore a Hawaiian shirt, shorts, sandals, a lei, and sunglasses (prescription). I looked ridiculous, but it was okay, since everyone looked more or less ridiculous. They had a karaoke machine set up, but I could not bring myself to sing "Twist and Shout", like one unlikely (?) person did. Maybe next year, maybe as a duet? Aloha.
Confused: I keep getting "friend" requests from people I don't know, but know people I know. You know? Or appear to. I can't tell if they really know people I know, or if people I know just accepted the request without knowing if the person actually knows who they appear to know. Who knows?
Literary: I sent another waggish article off to ViewsHound.com. If they put it up, I'll link to it here, and you may get a chuckle or a feeling of deja vu or both.
Tropical: On Friday night, I attended the "Summer Blowout" party sponsored by Art House Productions, an annual event at which attendees are encouraged to show up in beachwear. Nobody ever wears an actual bathing suit, just the type of clothing you might wear to the beach over your bathing suit, or alternatively, what you might wear to a luau. So I wore a Hawaiian shirt, shorts, sandals, a lei, and sunglasses (prescription). I looked ridiculous, but it was okay, since everyone looked more or less ridiculous. They had a karaoke machine set up, but I could not bring myself to sing "Twist and Shout", like one unlikely (?) person did. Maybe next year, maybe as a duet? Aloha.
Sunday, June 26, 2011
Word of the Day: wahala
wahala (n)
Trouble, hassle (Nigerian pidgin English).
"'So, why the wahala?' Jimoh was persuasive, and Chester was already halfway convinced, when Jimoh made his next suggestion. 'To make things easy for you in Nigeria, I will lend you my passport. That way, no-one can make wahala for you. You go be Jimoh omo Garuba, proper Nigerian man. And me, I go be Chester Arlington. With your papers, I can work at McDonald's and make more money. I'll do three jobs at once. Then I can go back to my wife and pickin'."
--Buchi Emecheta, The New Tribe
Today's hassle? The heavy-duty cord to my electric lawnmower -- 300 feet of kinked up, knotted up wahala. We have a tiny backyard that needs mowing about once a week. It's a simple enough task, except for the damn extension cord, which twists itself into a convoluted tangle of pure frustration. I keep unplugging myself because the cord won't stretch far enough with all it's snags and snarls.
Why can't someone genetically engineer grass to only grow to an inch and a half in length, anyway? We can put a man on the moon....
Yeah, first-world problems. Do they have lawns in Nigeria?
~~~
Meanwhile....
White Whine - A Collection of First-World Problems
Trouble, hassle (Nigerian pidgin English).
"'So, why the wahala?' Jimoh was persuasive, and Chester was already halfway convinced, when Jimoh made his next suggestion. 'To make things easy for you in Nigeria, I will lend you my passport. That way, no-one can make wahala for you. You go be Jimoh omo Garuba, proper Nigerian man. And me, I go be Chester Arlington. With your papers, I can work at McDonald's and make more money. I'll do three jobs at once. Then I can go back to my wife and pickin'."
--Buchi Emecheta, The New Tribe
Today's hassle? The heavy-duty cord to my electric lawnmower -- 300 feet of kinked up, knotted up wahala. We have a tiny backyard that needs mowing about once a week. It's a simple enough task, except for the damn extension cord, which twists itself into a convoluted tangle of pure frustration. I keep unplugging myself because the cord won't stretch far enough with all it's snags and snarls.
Why can't someone genetically engineer grass to only grow to an inch and a half in length, anyway? We can put a man on the moon....
Yeah, first-world problems. Do they have lawns in Nigeria?
~~~
Meanwhile....
White Whine - A Collection of First-World Problems
Saturday, June 25, 2011
Photo of the Week: lichens
Yeah, I like lichens.
Do lichens like Mike? I like to think so. If I was a tree, I would like to have some lichens, and would perhaps feel like I was naked without them.
What can I liken a patch to lichens to? They are like a likable little colony of fungal tykes, all alike, as they slowly hike up their tree bark or boulder reich.
Do you like lichens? Click my pic for a close up, if you too like.
(Apologies to Dr. Seuss.)
Thursday, June 23, 2011
Search Party
Here are a few recent search queries that brought seekers to this temple of scribomania. They are especially surreal this time around.
last act of secular prayer
Hmm. What would a "secular prayer" be like? Here's one.
scifi plot ideas
Okay, how about this: "A genetically enhanced warlord is mourning in a high-tech brothel. In a flashback, his mutant daughter is set up by a feral robot and sold as meat to a man-eating plant. With the help of a mentally unstable neural implant, the warlord must make the ultimate sacrifice in order to avenge his daughter, avert disaster, save his home world, and preserve his alternate reality." Let's split the royalties, okay?
beatles rejected artwork
You mean the dismembered baby dolls and slabs of raw meat on one of their "butchered" (get it?) US-only albums? They didn't really reject that; it was censored by the record company and replaced with one showing them grim-faced around an open steamer trunk. They looked SO much happier holding the amputated infants. Or did you mean the Animal Album?
sunset over Jersey
City? Here you go. I'm good.
alfred hitchcock doll laughter
Were you thinking of "Talky Tina"? That was Rod Serling's doll, not a Hitchcock cupie. Or were you searching for Hitch's own laugh, perhaps an mp3 of some suspenseful chuckling? I don't remember ever seeing or hearing "the Master" laugh. If he ever did, I'm sure it was a deep, obese guffaw, not a doll-sized giggle.
last act of secular prayer
Hmm. What would a "secular prayer" be like? Here's one.
scifi plot ideas
Okay, how about this: "A genetically enhanced warlord is mourning in a high-tech brothel. In a flashback, his mutant daughter is set up by a feral robot and sold as meat to a man-eating plant. With the help of a mentally unstable neural implant, the warlord must make the ultimate sacrifice in order to avenge his daughter, avert disaster, save his home world, and preserve his alternate reality." Let's split the royalties, okay?
beatles rejected artwork
You mean the dismembered baby dolls and slabs of raw meat on one of their "butchered" (get it?) US-only albums? They didn't really reject that; it was censored by the record company and replaced with one showing them grim-faced around an open steamer trunk. They looked SO much happier holding the amputated infants. Or did you mean the Animal Album?
sunset over Jersey
City? Here you go. I'm good.
alfred hitchcock doll laughter
Were you thinking of "Talky Tina"? That was Rod Serling's doll, not a Hitchcock cupie. Or were you searching for Hitch's own laugh, perhaps an mp3 of some suspenseful chuckling? I don't remember ever seeing or hearing "the Master" laugh. If he ever did, I'm sure it was a deep, obese guffaw, not a doll-sized giggle.
Wednesday, June 22, 2011
Head Rattle
My new passport came in the mail the other day, so I am now free (free at last!) to leave the country. It's quite a little book of hidden gadgets and gizmos, including an embedded microchip -- so I can be scanned, like a can of creamed corn at the supermarket. I could do without all the patriotic uber-American pictures on the pages -- though I suppose that has something to do with preventing counterfeiting. I'd like to think I'm more of a citizen of the world when I'm outside the U.S. I'd like to have an Planet Earth passport....
To indulge some relations, I saw a performance of Psycho Beach Party by a local theatrical group last weekend -- a high-camp Charles Busch period piece about early 60s surfing culture and multi-personality disorder. It's a comedy/farce of course, but I keep thinking that it could also be played "straight" (in all senses of the word), and that it might be even funnier like that, but in a different way. I prefer my camp to be unintentional.
There's so much previously unreleased Twin Peaks music available now on DavidLynch.com. I'm listening to "Laura's Dark Boogie" as I type this. Those creepy, nervous cellos (or whatever they are) and that demented sax over great waves of synthesizer anxiety -- it's hypnotic. I'm going to have to break down and download all the tracks (the ones I don't already have on CD) soon. Badalamenti (the composer) should compose a symphony based on it all.
Tuesday, June 21, 2011
Word of the Day: glaikery
glaikery (n)
Foolish behavior.
"Richard seems to be bent on trumping prior inanities with yet new Dawkinisms -- as evidence of committed glaikery one presumes."
--"Richard Dawkins, raving incoherently", in Anglican Samizdat
"Only a fool writes for anything other than money," said Dr. Johnson. (That's Samuel Johnson [1709 - 1784], "arguably the most distinguished man of letters in English history", according the the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, which I keep by my bedside in case of insomnia -- or should.) The good doctor's quotation has been used over the years to discourage anyone from putting pen to paper without being paid, though of course it's absurd on the face of it. Sam wrote plenty of letters for free, and he published plenty of pamphlets -- more or less the blogs of the 18th century.
What's foolish is to write without compensation, which doesn't have to be monetary. Another post down. I feel so adroit right now....
Foolish behavior.
"Richard seems to be bent on trumping prior inanities with yet new Dawkinisms -- as evidence of committed glaikery one presumes."
--"Richard Dawkins, raving incoherently", in Anglican Samizdat
"Only a fool writes for anything other than money," said Dr. Johnson. (That's Samuel Johnson [1709 - 1784], "arguably the most distinguished man of letters in English history", according the the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, which I keep by my bedside in case of insomnia -- or should.) The good doctor's quotation has been used over the years to discourage anyone from putting pen to paper without being paid, though of course it's absurd on the face of it. Sam wrote plenty of letters for free, and he published plenty of pamphlets -- more or less the blogs of the 18th century.
What's foolish is to write without compensation, which doesn't have to be monetary. Another post down. I feel so adroit right now....
Monday, June 20, 2011
Quotes of the Day
The poetry of invective. Writers (naturally enough) compose the best insults.
Elizabeth Bishop on J.D. Salinger
"I HATED [Catcher in the Rye]. It took me days to go through it, gingerly, a page at a time, and blushing with embarrassment for him every ridiculous sentence of the way. How can they let him do it?"
Evelyn Waugh on Marcel Proust (1948)
"I am reading Proust for the first time. Very poor stuff. I think he was mentally defective."
Mark Twain on Jane Austen (1898)
"I haven't any right to criticize books, and I don't do it except when I hate them. I often want to criticize Jane Austen, but her books madden me so that I can’t conceal my frenzy from the reader; and therefore I have to stop every time I begin. Every time I read 'Pride and Prejudice,' I want to dig her up and hit her over the skull with her own shin-bone."
Virginia Woolf on James Joyce
"[Ulysses is] the work of a queasy undergraduate scratching his pimples."
William Faulkner on Mark Twain (1922)
"A hack writer who would not have been considered fourth rate in Europe, who tricked out a few of the old proven sure fire literary skeletons with sufficient local color to intrigue the superficial and the lazy."
D.H. Lawrence on James Joyce (1928)
"My God, what a clumsy olla putrida James Joyce is! Nothing but old fags and cabbage stumps of quotations from the Bible and the rest stewed in the juice of deliberate, journalistic dirty-mindedness."
Truman Capote on Jack Kerouac
"That's not writing, that's typing."
More of these adoring accolades are here.
Elizabeth Bishop on J.D. Salinger
"I HATED [Catcher in the Rye]. It took me days to go through it, gingerly, a page at a time, and blushing with embarrassment for him every ridiculous sentence of the way. How can they let him do it?"
Evelyn Waugh on Marcel Proust (1948)
"I am reading Proust for the first time. Very poor stuff. I think he was mentally defective."
Mark Twain on Jane Austen (1898)
"I haven't any right to criticize books, and I don't do it except when I hate them. I often want to criticize Jane Austen, but her books madden me so that I can’t conceal my frenzy from the reader; and therefore I have to stop every time I begin. Every time I read 'Pride and Prejudice,' I want to dig her up and hit her over the skull with her own shin-bone."
Virginia Woolf on James Joyce
"[Ulysses is] the work of a queasy undergraduate scratching his pimples."
William Faulkner on Mark Twain (1922)
"A hack writer who would not have been considered fourth rate in Europe, who tricked out a few of the old proven sure fire literary skeletons with sufficient local color to intrigue the superficial and the lazy."
D.H. Lawrence on James Joyce (1928)
"My God, what a clumsy olla putrida James Joyce is! Nothing but old fags and cabbage stumps of quotations from the Bible and the rest stewed in the juice of deliberate, journalistic dirty-mindedness."
Truman Capote on Jack Kerouac
"That's not writing, that's typing."
More of these adoring accolades are here.
Sunday, June 19, 2011
Photo of the Week
His Holiness Sri Swami Satchikrishnanandadananda has set up shop in our neighborhood, at what he calls his Spiritual Gallery. Here you will find ebooks and articles as well as audios and videos on yoga-mat selection, mental and physical levitation, and generating rainbow auras, as well as full-color Kama Sutra manuals and floral mandalas. The pearls of His Holiness's wisdom, which are beyond price (though a small donation is expected), are elasticized to the needs of each aspiring seeker and are brought to us by one of India's renowned spiritual teachers and florists.
Actually, I just made that up. This is the window of an astrologer's palmistry shop that recently opened up a few blocks from where I live. You can see the full storefront here. Jersey City is a schizo place, both on the way up (i.e., gentrifying) and on the way down (i.e., succumbing to urban decay), sometimes on the same block. It's been that way at least since the 1980s, and is part of what keeps it persistently interesting. That a storefront on a busy avenue is affordable for such an operation is not a good sign, but at least it adds to the local color.
Click the pic for a closer look and some instant karma.
~~~
Meanwhile....
Kyle MacLachlan’s Pursued By Bear 2007 is here
Thursday, June 16, 2011
The Complete Idiot's Guide to the Way I Feel
Exposed (bad): I sat across from a row of six Japanese tourists on the PATH train this evening, men and women of various ages -- a family, apparently -- and one of them had a video camera. He was shooting everything in sight, including me. They were all talking in Japanese and laughing. I just hope I don't end up on NHK TV as part of some kind of "Japan's Funniest Home Videos" ichiban. By the way, I don't think it's legal to use a camera on the PATH train without permission. No terrorist training films allowed, you know.
Exposed (good): ViewsHound has published my article about typographical errors: "Would you make a good 'manger'?" Perhaps this site will be a new venue for my literary persiflage, now that the local arts paper no longer solicits submissions from... local artists. I certainly have a lot of well-written crap I could send ViewsHound. I just wish they had a better name for their site. It sounds a bit like an e-commerce site for dog breeders.
~~~
Postscript: I received this week's "Bronze Award" (i.e., third prize) from ViewsHound's editors for my article -- twenty bucks via PayPal. I would rather have an actual bronze medal to wear around my neck, but I'll take it!
Post postscript: I just realized that I can now call myself an "award winning writer". Cool.
Exposed (good): ViewsHound has published my article about typographical errors: "Would you make a good 'manger'?" Perhaps this site will be a new venue for my literary persiflage, now that the local arts paper no longer solicits submissions from... local artists. I certainly have a lot of well-written crap I could send ViewsHound. I just wish they had a better name for their site. It sounds a bit like an e-commerce site for dog breeders.
~~~
Postscript: I received this week's "Bronze Award" (i.e., third prize) from ViewsHound's editors for my article -- twenty bucks via PayPal. I would rather have an actual bronze medal to wear around my neck, but I'll take it!
Post postscript: I just realized that I can now call myself an "award winning writer". Cool.
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