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May 31, 2002; Friday Advice to writers
"The writer is only free when he can tell the reader to go jump in the lake. You want, of course, to get what you have to show across to him, but whether he likes it or not is no concern of the writer." - Flannery O'Connor Responses - 4 (Commenting has been disabled.) A familiar ring. "There are three rules for writing the novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are." - W. Somerset Maugham "Do not pay attention to the rules other people make... They make them for their own protection, and to hell with them." - William Saroyan "The only way to write is well and how you do it is your own damn business." - A. J. Liebling Advice to artists
"You have to be a little patient if you're an artist; people don't always get you the first time." - Kate Millett Responses - 6 (Commenting has been disabled.) I don't understand. I totally disagree with Ms. Millet. As an "artist" I've found that people not getting it has justified my existence. In fact, I'm fond of walking up behind those viewing my work (the latest is entitled Jihad at the Pinebluff Bake-off, a landscape using string, egg cartons and tin cans) and uttering "Your existence depends upon my appearances." They are usually totally perplexed! My existence is justified. To our host: Do you want a Shamus 73 cd? Someone unloaded a bunch of 'em on me. Me me me me me me! I want one! Shamus 73? They suck! Slave Raider for me! (Just kidding [duh]. They rock!) My favorite Slave Raider quote: "All right, all right, all right, let's get this party started!" I think they were a big influence on Pink, one of the up and coming divas--"I'm coming out so you'd better get this party started." Coincidence? kv, if you send your address to www.shamus73.com we'll send you a cd. Hell yes I'd like a CD. It's one of the mounting number of small purchases I've been putting aside for lack of having any potatoes. (If anybody reading this hasn't already gone and scoped out the free 'Shamus 73' mp3 downloads - along with hair-raising backwards-masking information - at their website, yawtta.) I got a surprise CD from Timo a couple days ago with a song on it by the Moldy Peaches ("Steak for Chicken") that I'm totally enamored of. It sounds nothing like Shamus 73, but it is on a CD. I can go for miles if you know what I mean. May 29, 2002; Wednesday Potted Meat Food Product
 Don't link to this image. When you link to an image directly, you're stealing bandwidth that somebody is paying for. In this case, it's me. Don't do it. Responses - 11 (Commenting has been disabled.) Heard of potted brownies b4. Potted flowers. Potted meat food byproducts. It's been a long day. I think I'll go get potted. om mani potted hum Isn't it amazing that a potted meat product can produce six comments? Oh, many pod-men, hmm. What surprises me about at the number of comments is that there are so few. Potted meat products themselves are what's really amazing. They're dazzling!, delightful!, sensual! (as long as they're not Harry Potted). Aye, it's not the potted meat, then, it's the people. WE'RE dazzling!, delightful!, sensual! (as long as we're not hairy). WE'RE producing the comments, and WE'RE in need of some potting. You know, Poklblog Person, you might just stop posting right here, and most of us readers, well me anyway, would probably remain entertained with the potted meat thing forever. Variations on a Google: '"libby's potted meat food product"': about 10 'libby's "potted meat food product"': about 15 '"potted meat food product"': about 280 '"potted meat food"': about 400 '"potted meat"': about 4,000 It was at Duane Seidensticker's 30th birthday party. I won three cans of Spam™ as a party favor. By the end of the night, drunk on beer and loopy on inhaled helium, I opened a can and ritualistically passed it around. We each had a fork full, like passing the bong or taking swigs from a shared bottle. May 28, 2002; Tuesday Gummo
Responses - 7 (Commenting has been disabled.) "The Large Disembodied Head of Patrick Stewart Says 'Poo Poo' to Love" (by way of Xcot) According to Groucho, Gummo was the funniest of all the Marx Brothers. The big question is who was the funniest of the Hudson Brothers? HR. Oh, you DO mean the Hudson brothers from Bad Brains, right? J. I was thinking more of the Hudson Brothers of my 1970s childhood. They were supposed to be a cross between the Beatles and the Marx Brothers. They came close to neither. One of them married Dorothy Hammil or Cathy Rigby. They had a kind of hit with "Rendevous" and "So You Are A Star." After huffing green: After having ruminated on it for a few days now, I've come up with absolutely no memory of the Hudson Brothers. Too much huffing green, I guess. And it's kind of sad, because I think I would have liked a show from the same production company as Sonny & Cher where "[o]ne recurring sketch featured Rod Hull with an emu hand-puppet, which would attack any cast member that made fun of it." Didn't he appear on the Tonight Show? I have strong memories of that emu. Perhaps I viewed the H.B.'s TV show regularly, I have so few early memories, it could be true. I LOVED that emu, choking, pulling hair, smacking/pecking, twisting about like a boa constrictor. Good times. May 26, 2002; Sunday Yipee-ti-yi-yay
 Responses - 6 (Commenting has been disabled.) I recently purchased a lot of cowboy music on 78. There's nothing like the scratch of a 78 to give that glow of security and home. Especially if it's the Sons of the Pioneers singing "Cool Water." Beauty. There's a radio station here that plays bluegrass, old country, and other "roots" music for about half of every Sunday - probably sounds like your house during a cowboys-on-78 fest. And I find that I imagine the air in your house filled in those times, like you said, with the "glow of security and home." Back when I had a record player in Minnesota, I had an LP of cowboy songs that had the ballad "Blood On the Saddle." I can still hear the dulcet strains: There was blood on the saddle Dave got ahold of a mess of 78s a while back and started cataloging them; then somebody hacked into his server and the file was apparently corrupted and everyone's been left hanging ever since. It occurs that there's a band around here that used to be called Grandsons Of The Pioneers until the Sons Of The Pioneers people threatened to kick the shit out of them. (Once a cowboy...) The Grandson's bio aptly describes them as "American music in a blender with the lid off." Another local band that could easily be considered a novelty act - ribald a capella - is Da Vinci's Notebook. They have two free mp3s available at washingtonpost.com: Enormous Penis (0.93 MB) and Internet Porn (1.29 MB). None of which has anything to do with Stevie Wonder's - or any other blind man's - penis. Have you heard of Luther Wright and the Wrongs? A Canadian bluegrass band that apparently does Pink Floyd's The Wall in its entirety (I heard of them from our good friend at strenturgent.com)? Speaking of 78s again, I found a gaggle of burlesque records and a copy of the Singing Dogs performing "Jingle Bells." Easily amused, I am, sir. I've heard of the bluegrass version of The Wall - most likely by way of Jeremy - but I haven't actually heard it. I hope to one day. On the other hand, while I've never been to a polka mass, I have been witness to clog-dancing in a Lutheran church basement more than once. (File somewhere to the left of non sequitur.) May 25, 2002; Saturday The genius of European math in a tin box
Only two punt ninety-five (pre-Euro). Scrub that pseudo-philosophical wanking, and indulge in some hard science. Woo-hoo. I'm chock full of joy.  Responses - 3 (Commenting has been disabled.) "He didn't buy the life-sized ceramic phrenology head." "As many bumps on my head as there are stars in the sky" I'm detecting a pattern May 26, '02 - 3:57 PM I can play "Oh, Susanna" on one of them things. During Whose Line a couple evenings ago, I was flipping around during a commercial and thought I saw a Phrenology Head in the background at Ross's apartment on Friends. (This was a recent episode, with a pregnant Rachel.) May 24, 2002; Friday Ten-hut... Ten-shun... Ten-see (a heart as big as the head of a baby)
From Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi: "The shape and content of life depend on how attention has been used. Entirely different realities will emerge depending on how it is invested. The names we use to describe personality traits - such as extrovert, high achiever, or paranoid - refer to the specific patterns people have used to structure their attention. At the same party, the extrovert will seek out and enjoy interactions with others, the high achiever will look for useful business contacts, and the paranoid will be on guard for signs of danger he must avoid. Attention can be invested in innumerable ways, ways that can make life either rich or miserable."There are limits, Kilroy. Or are there? Responses - 2 (Commenting has been disabled.) Relativity wins the arm wrestling between rich and miserable. Choice is always implied but sometimes unavailable. (Scream, "Copout!") Camino Real was replaced with All My Sons because the director for Camino Real lost his partner in the Twin Tower Incident, as it will come to be known in polite circles. "Copout!" You might not get the choices you want... Why did they replace Camino Real? The movie Queen Of The Damned wasn't canceled after Aaliyah's death on 9/11 (though maybe it should have been). "Copout!" They passed a smart law in Ireland; why not here?
The Plastic Shopping Bag Levy Q: What is the plastic shopping bag levy? A: From March 4th, 2002, an environmental levy will be charged, at 15 cent per bag, on plastic shopping bags. Q: How will it work? A: Every time we shop, we will have to decided whether we need a plastic shopping bag. The retailer must charge customers for each bag and this must be itemised separately on our receipt. 
The retailer will send this money to the Revenue Commissioners and it will go into the environment Fund. The levy will be payable in all sales outlets - e.g. supermarkets, clothes shops, book and record stores, service stations, etc.Q: Is there any way to avoid paying this levy? A: Yes, by using reusable bags. Make sure that you always bring them with you when you are going to the shop. Q: Will the levy be charged on all types of plastic bags? A: No. Certain types of plastic bags will be excluded from the levy: - Small plastic bags used to contain fresh meat, fish, fish or poultry (whether such products are already contained in packaging or not) - Small plastic bags used to contain loose fruit, nuts and vegetables, confectionery, dairy products, hot or cold cooked food and ice, as long as they are not otherwise packaged - Plastic bags provided for goods sold to passengers in areas restricted to passengers in ports or airports and on commercial ships and aircraft. - Reusable shopping bags which are sold for 70 cent or more Ireland's Litter Problem This levy is being introduced to reduce the huge number of plastic shopping bags used every day that cause litter in our towns, in the countryside and along our coastline. Plastic bags also impact on ecosystems, habitats and wildlife. An innovative step towards improving our environment This environment levy is the first of its kind. It's designed to get people to make more environmentally choice by encouraging them to use reusable bags. What will happen with the funds collected? To make sure that the proceeds of the levy go towards environmental improvement, the money collected will be paid into the Environment Fund and used to fund litter, waste management and other environmental initiatives. The levy may not be used for any other purpose. The regular, everyday people I talked to about it said that the effects were immediate and noticeable. There was a lot of discussion and anxiety about the change at first, they said, but it all seems to have gone smoothly. And one of them noticed that she's a much smarter shopper now than she used to be: if the groceries aren't going to fit in the bags she has with her, that piddling 15-cent bag charge makes her think about her impulse buying. Plastic Bag Environmental Levy Ireland's new green tax is in the bag Irish 'Plastax' Responses - 4 (Commenting has been disabled.) bloody government! *laughing*... The title-mouseover has my response to that suggestion. (Not that I think you didn't have your tongue in your cheek...) (Rather than trying to explain what I mean by 'title-mouseover' to those who don't know, here's what it says: "And why do we even need it to be a law? Aren't we smart enough to do it on our own? Don't answer that.") If you ask me, this is the way to see a country....get down on the citizens level. See what the home folk are going through and what it's like to live their life. I stood on the sidewalk off Chegongzhuang daijie in Beijing and watched a throng of Chinese bitching about a new bicycle license tariff for about half an hour one day, learning so much about their culture in that one event. -Jeeem- blind citizenry! May 23, 2002; Thursday They're playing my website
Pot Kettle Black, by Wilco Crazy rides rockets Responses - 2 (Commenting has been disabled.) At least it's Alternative Rock....you look like an Alternative Rock kinda guy. Musica potkettleblack: Me and Impaler and Skeleton Ed and Shamus 73In aggregate, that's a fairly accurate picture. May 22, 2002; Wednesday Sheela na gig
I took this photo in a ruined church in Ireland. The occasional superimposition is a pen-and-ink illustration of the carving, used here as a visual aid since it's sort of hard to see what's going on.   From Sheela-na-gig Theories: Sheela-na-gigs are female exhibitionist carvings found on walls, abbeys, convents, churches, pillars and other structures in Ireland, England, Scotland and Wales, as well as in other parts of Europe. They come in many different shapes and sizes, but all share the same characteristic of prominent and often enlarged genitals, often held open by the figure's hands. Most date from the middle ages. Responses - 1 (Commenting has been disabled.) PJ Harvey He said 'wash your breasts, I don't want to be unclean' He said 'wash your breasts, I don't want to be unclean' He said 'wash your breasts, I don't want to be unclean' He said 'wash your breasts, I don't want to be unclean' May 21, 2002; Tuesday Waiter, there's a Pocky in my hair
 Responses - 15 (Commenting has been disabled.) Ahktually, the chronology is somewhat different. That day, I was quite amazed by all the coinkidinqs, really, and one of them was that I had popped in Mott at 6:30 and seen J's sideblog entry at about 7:45. So, I am most insignificant of all! It would seem limited global inclusion is part of Japanese commercial advertisements; I do see two round-eyes in there. "Long-noses. Butter-stinkers." Your Mott fetish, to my understanding, was indeed a pre-existing condition. That's why you had Mott on when you read about Mott. You a Motthead, dawg. And speaking of the singers (if not writers) of that glam anthem All The Young Dudes, I finally saw Velvet Goldmine a while back (a few days before the last time Jeremy referenced it over at his site, actually - that Jeremy!) and have to admit being disappointed. That car commercial with the 21st-Century Boy soundtrack gets me more psyched up than that movie did. (I guess maybe it's true about 'drive = love'.) The Pocky woman in the picture used to live across the street from me in the mobile home park. Her husband was an ex-marine (excuse me: ex-Marine) with a black Kawasaki. Son Tyler's toy dump truck would get thrown violently deep into the woods behind their trailer--(where the FBI would search in vain for the body of Corrine Erstad)--when it was left after play on the little asphalt parking pad in front of their "house." They just had to wait for a tragedy B4 cutting down those damn trees and building a Fleet Farm! It's you! You're behind all this nonlocal causality stuff. You of course know by now that in the wake of your mentioning Corrine Erstad, they found Chandra Levy (none too far from here, but nothing like in-the-woods-behind-the-trailer-across-the-street). You know, Overend Watts (Mott's bass player) used spray paint to give his hair that silvery sheen. After Ian Hunter left, the rest of the band carried on for a while before forming The British Lions whose instrumentation included the slide glockenspiel. No, really. I need to get my hands on some of that, what Rodney clued into. WordWeb thesaurus/dictionary aside: That's not the way I meant it. I went looking for information about the 'slide glockenspiel', but only found this:"Rearranging the letters of 'Peter Overend Watts' gives: 'Noted perverse twat.'" -->>-->> Google Overend <<--<<-- My glockenspiel info comes from the 1981 (blue cover) edition of the Rolling Stone Record Guide. Also, there was a lengthy article on Mott in a recent (6 months or so) issue of MOJO magazine. In true Overend Watts tradition I gave myself a nice silver mustache a few days ago. Rodney, dear lad, have you taken up huffing? I can't remember who it was - maybe John Byers - talking several years ago about The Indian With The Gold Goatee in the Hennepin County Government Center. (Item #58: "Gilbert J. Deliberate metallic paint inhalation and cultural marginality: paint sniffing among acculturating central California youth. Addict Behav 1983;8(1):79-82 (ADAI jl).") marx? karl May 27, '02 - 9:49 AM Gummo Marx
I'm not entirely sure why this is making me laugh so hard... May 20, 2002; Monday Changelog
Added a notification list (see sidebar - unless you're reading this in the archives, in which case you should go to the home page and see the sidebar there). Added a search function (see sidebar - unless you're reading this on the individual archive page, in which case you should either go to the home page or the main archive and see the sidebars there). I wussed out and just used Google instead of installing a proper site-specific engine, so there will always be an indexing lag time of some measure. I think they crawl me once a week or so. Finally finished the random-text scripts (both of them - "readers write" and "random entry"), but they're only current through three or four months ago and are likely to stay that way for the foreseeable future. (These are the random text snippets that show up at the tops and in the sidebars of most of the pages; they're clickable, and open various reader comments and previous entries in popup windows.) Added material to the About and Contact pages, but they're still fakery and fudgery; not that much more pointless, however, than the Webster page, which I need to make better - even though I'm kind of fond of its current understated simplicity. I need to market, though. Sigh. Fixed a wad of miscellaneous stuff that had been bugging me - most notably and visibly the monthly archives, which had been a complete shambles. Still need to check and debug degradation; I know there's some problems as early as the late Navigator 4 series. I think that I'll finally be comfortable enough now to set up pings for weblogs.com and moveabletype.org - an incentive for me to start focusing on content again rather than form. I started this thing in large part to get myself to write something every day - not to play with code. (That said, I don't regret spending the time to make things nice.) "So what. Big deal." Responses - 8 (Commenting has been disabled.) Sah-weet! "Po-tee-weet" Egad. I just found that the reason text would *sometimes* overlap images in Navigator 4 was due to the way I was using 'line-height' definitions in the style sheet. They just broke things funky. So I found a way to use side-by-side CSS, simply eliminating the offending references in the NN4 version. It only works because NN4 doesn't support the '@import' call: <!-- css for navigator 4 --> Reduced the number of displayed recent posts on the main page to 30. Added a recently-commented-posts display. Added an email spamguard for commenter's addresses which is probably pointless since the comment popups are generated on the fly: they don't sit on the server in static html files... and being as that's how things are, the information is very unlikely to fall into the evil clutches of soulless spambots. Added an "open links in new window" checkbox to the comments popper a few days ago. Decided yesterday that it was a drag to have to check the box, and found a different script that would Just Do It. That one was preferable, but caused an error in Opera. So I rewrote the script - dumbing it way down in the process - and it seems to work fine now. Next: losing notifylist.com and migrating to movabletype's built-in functionality for self-serve additions to the notification list. Should take ten or fifteen minutes, tops... Added rssmonkey to the main page sidebar with half-a-dozen or so rss feeds. This is to give kv something to do... grin... but it seems at the moment to not be working at all well. Things are timing out, so I imagine it's my server - or the servers providing the feeds. Accidentally added the "syndicate" page, but I'll leave it alone for the time being. Dumped the "syndicate" page again because javascript feed via rssmonkey hangs. I think it's my server. Replaced the open-links-in-new-window javascript in the comments popper. The one I modified wasn't working right. Found one that seems excellent, and much other interesting stuff to be investigated, at thegirliematters.com May 16, 2002; Thursday Bits of Ireland (not shown: about a thousand pictures of ruined castles, abbeys, houses)
                     Jeem says, "I look forward to reading the journal of YOUR trip." Well, it may take a little while for that to happen. While Jeem waits, everybody else can read his recent China-trip journal. Responses - 4 (Commenting has been disabled.) Welcome back, Friend! did they say "bleeding" and "bloody"? 1. Thanks. I'd go on about how good it is to be back if I really felt that way. (However, I was getting anxious to check the email... which makes me wonder now, why? why? why?) 2. I didn't hear anybody mention any bodily fluids in everyday conversation, but I did see a drunk guy peeing in an alley. Some people did say "feck." Hey, yeah, I just got your post card Saturday. BTW, we've moved. Har har har. But, thanks. Cool chick on the face of it, there. Lot'sa cuties in Ireland, no doubt. The pic I like best in your array so far is the one of the inside of the candy store from Willy Wonka. Lucky Strike
Jeem, in his May 15 entry, reveals that he has fallen in love with a cartoon. I'm cool with that. Back around the mid-eighties I wrote this poem, retrieved here from the sloggy recesses: I'm in love with the girl from the Lucky Strike ad. / Hair in her eyes and sand on her skin and / thigh thigh thigh from the neck on down. / Why does my life always seem a little bit less lucky / and a little bit more strike? Responses - 0 (Commenting has been disabled.) |
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