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Monthly Archives: December 2012

On Christmas Day, 2008, I sent a reply to Roger Ebert’s blog post that included a link to my sextuple-acrostic portrait of him. His reply, posted that Christmas night: Ebert: That manages to be touching and amusing at the same time. And awfully ingenious! Thank you. Since then he’s sent me a shiny new dime (long story) and declared me Second Place Winner in his Great Limerick Contest, awarding me a print of an Edward Lear etching and a copy of Lear’s The Owl and the Pussy-Cat. Now he declares via his Facebook presence: I’m aving a lot of health troubles that are keeping me from doing work and functioning online. Best person to contact is Chaz. Not in best of shape. So he is on my mind. The poor guy has been to Hell and back more than once (see my page); but his spirit is gigantic. I hope he does more than just get by this latest quality-of-life sandbar–I hope he makes it to tranquil coves.Image

ImageThis summer I saw THE QUEEN OF VERSAILLES, a documentary about the Siegels, time-share moguls who made and then lost a boatload of money. Greed, lust, gluttony, comeuppance–this is a little slice of recent American history that I suspect historians of the future will study and discuss to help understand how things got so crazy.

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This week the phrase “Pistachio Redeemers” has been nagging at me. It is as random as David Lynch ever gets, I think, and what I ended up doing to exorcize it helps me, I think, to “get” David Lynch a little more. So I have comic-strip continuity with a warped boy and girl bantering, thus:

B: Moustachioed schemers?
G: No.

B: Kardashian bad-dreamers?
G: No. But–nice try.

B: Eustachian tube-feeders?
G: En-oh.

B: Well, WHAT then?
G: PISTACHIO REDEEMERS!

B: Oh. COOL!
G: Thx.
B: ROCK Band?
G: No.
B: Stamp collectors?
G: No!

B: Messianic chewables?
G: Maybe.
G: Time will tell.

As for the acrostic poetry, it is a little less Lynchian, and it cleaves to almost-exact iambic septameter, and exactness of alphas/spaces per line. There is a missing word. Careful readers will be able to find what it is and where it should go. A reader perhaps more clever than I am might know how to fix the line to render the content and preserve iambic septameter.

One final note: this is the first blog post I have made of previously unpublished material.

These are shaky times. I felt the shakiness back in March, and though the fellow in my drawing being pitchforked and jackhammered and otherwise beset looks more like a younger George Carlin than me, I think he may well be a psychological self-portrait. Here are the words: Never grab coyotes by the ruff Nor contain a toxic load of stuff Even if your sitch is cause to fear Even though they're shoving from the rear Ragged edges tugging at the sclera Raw reporting LIVE by Al Jazeera Vermiform appendices display Vanquished methods causing harm today Evanescence wills us to degrade Stilled propriety leaves us unpaid

Here are the lyrics to this quadruple acrostic: Participation ends the stress/Omits the odious unrest/Obliges one too sweet to sour/Destiny's dust to hold the shroud/Let's elevate & love a whale/Endemic to those furling sail I did this just shy of a year ago, and the words didn't make sense today till I realized lines three and four were one subthought, and "too sweet to sour Destiny's dust" was the crucial phrase. Also the acrostic is a distant cousin to "My Favorite Things" by Rodgers & Hammerstein.

dylan thomas

Now we type our morning blog. We pray the Lord our mind unfog. And if our readers care to glom us, they’ll see our sketch of Dylan Thomas.

Yesterday I sliced the middle finger of my left hand deeply, just south of the fingertip, as I reached into the toiletries pocket of my travel bag for the Gillette Good News razor with which I intended to shave. (The bad-news headline from my razor was Hey, Buddy, You’re Bleeding,) It took a good many minutes for direct pressure to stop the bleeding; and, though I can’t say why, that finger-slicing incident led to my choosing this image of the author of “Under Milk Wood” and “Fern Hill.” I hope a reader can explain.

Unto each hand a little Trauma shall fall.

The very last line, "Downloadables will quickly make it clear," is a prediction of the future--a bright future--that has already been made by many, from William Gibson to the Wachowski sibs. And the very last line of "By His Bootstraps" by Robert A. Heinlein, "A bright future!" was made by a man who had just completed providing for his past. Finally, Warp and Woof refer to Fabric and Reality, though you often see Weft; and Woofer refers to Sound. May YOU have a Sound, Bright Future!

The philosopher figures everything out by going into a darkened room and thinking it over. The scientist figures everything out by thinking it over, guessing what is happening, testing the guess through experiment and observation, and altering or discarding the guess based on what was observed. Think this works with human relationships? Guess again!