Hotdogs and Lotus Blossoms

Dear Readers

noreply@blogger.com (Dom) — Fri, 17 Dec 2010 10:57:00 +0000

So, I am here at work again, writing a blog for posterity. The week so far has been not too disconcerting. I observed lessons all week, and I was asked to work with the English Olympiad (like English Bowl--a contest) participants. So I asked them questions and they practiced their speaking. Apparently, I will be moving soon, so a new apartment with a new address. But I need a PO box anyway, so there will be that. Be patient my dear correspondents. Hopefully my host family will forward any mail they receive for me. But I will be living at a place on my own! I'm kind of excited and kind of scared and kind of regretting that I won't be near my host family anymore, who are lovely people. I'm getting to know Lutsk a bit better, and I like what I see. Its about 250,000 people, so close to Evansville metro area. The english staff at my school are excellent, and I'm excited to get to work on their kids. It's a bit cold and there's plenty of ice on the sidewalks, but I have yet to fall down in country yet. (knocks on wood.) This weekend I will be a consulting judge on this english olympiad, so hopefully I can figure all of that out. Tonight I'm going to dinner at a fellow volunteer's place in Kivertsi, and over christmas, we will be getting together at a place south of here. near Lopatin. That is all for now kids. More posts to follow!

noreply@blogger.com (Dom) — Sat, 11 Dec 2010 09:11:00 +0000

Just a little update. I have been at my site now for over 24 hours. Already my fellow volunteers here in the city have invited me out to dinner, and my counterpart and her husband took me to a movie. The chronicles of narnia walden people are really starting to get old. Gotta be raisin' that money for the cause, you know? Well, it was fun nonetheless. Right now i am in an internet cafe near my apartment complex, sitting next to a little dude with a mullet playing grand theft auto and listening to hip hop. Strange to hear someone so young and shiiroi listening to that. My host mom, Tamila, and her son, Taras are really really nice people, and they speak English wery wery well. There are 4 other volunteers in the area, Kate, Melissa, Jonathan, and Terry. Terry is CD, and the others are teachers. The next thing to tell you is about how awesome our apartment is. There is a nice bathroom and i have my own bedroom. Tamila was very deferential today about not going inside my room without me, which was nice. She had a second comforter to put on my bed and said "ne mozhna." even after i said "mozhna." My new address, which you can use, will be available for those who email me. Also, this cafe is annoying me because I can't open my gmail. Be advised. I know i'm sort of rambling at this point, but forgive me. I would like to get internet at my apartment. So I can ramble there. The restaurant that my new friends took me to last night, called "maidan," or town square, was really neat, with the ambiance and all. They had a stage, but we didn't stay for the live band. But they did have VH1 classic on the tvs, so i got my fill of 'pass the dutchie' et al. Taras and I watched two movies last night, Cloudy with a chance of meat balls, and Hooligans (or Green St. Hooligans) with elijah wood. I can kind of understand some ukrainian/russian, respectively. Oh well. I guess I'll let that be all for now. Sorry for the unconstructed thoughts, but I'm paying by the hour here, and I'll have a better post ready on my flashdrive for next time.

Telephones, Remember?

noreply@blogger.com (Dom) — Sun, 28 Nov 2010 21:06:00 +0000

The gossips in this country talk on their cell phones a lot. All the time. My host mother has two mobiles, one for each of the two most popular service providers. Seems like not 5 minutes passes without her getting a call or sending one. And when she is on the phone, but also in every conversation I overhear, one word that is repeated over and over is "pamiataiesh?" Which means, "Do you remember?" So I am always getting the impression that they are constantly telling each other stories about their shared experiences. Probably the word has some connotation that I'm not aware of which explains why it is so much more popular than its counterpart in English, but maybe it's just the style of discourse. Anyway, it strikes me. It is kind of neat to be surrounded by this storytelling style. Anyway, it's usually one of the few words I can pick out at native conversation speed.

я отримив шіст листів учора!! 昨日僕は手紙六枚をもらった！I got 6 letters yesterday!

noreply@blogger.com (Dom) — Wed, 10 Nov 2010 20:00:00 +0000

So, I'm not trying to show off. I'm just enjoying myself. You wouldn't believe how much effort writing that japanese sentence was for me. やばい。 So, the imput system for the ukrainian in windows is incredibly unintuitive and difficult to use. The japanese imput system is just transliterated, so i type "watashi" and it comes out 私。But, the Ukr. is just a normal ukrainian keyboard superimposed upon my keys with no indication of what letter is where. So, hopefully I can get some stickers to put on my keys so i can at least hunt n' peck when i want to show off my new skillz. ;) So, I think Wednesday evenings are my favorite time of the week, after I have finished with all of my teaching for the week. I did a bad thing today. I slept through the first lesson I was supposed to teach. I bought a box of orange chocolates for the teacher whose class I failed to show up at. She said I ought to "take it easy." Not be so hard on myself, you know. Meh. Hopefully the kids will still let me teach them. 9th graders can be so difficult. Well, Pobachymo (we'll see) .

Hedgehog

noreply@blogger.com (Dom) — Sat, 09 Oct 2010 20:21:00 +0000

So, I walk by a good sized graveyard on my way to and from home most days (depending on where I'm going) and a couple days ago I went in to see a headstone/bas relief portrait I'd seen work men working on the day before. And as I was walking up to it this hedgehog rustled out of some bushes and walked up to me. He then noticed my presence and did his thing. It was kind of neat, me having never seen one before. I wonder if I wouldn't really want to know what he was doing in there though.

Let's see, what else. Training is proceeding according to the plan put forth by the powers that be (not the David Boreanaz ones).

First post. Please comment with questions/requests/evidence there is intelligent life out there

noreply@blogger.com (Dom) — Wed, 06 Oct 2010 19:44:00 +0000

A blog post. I can't figure out how to password protect this blog, so I won't. Don't tell. Also, I disclaim any approval of these comments with any (unnamed) organization with which they might be connected. So, the housing. Many of my peers are in tiny apartments, with little privacy, but somehow I got a family with a two story house and an empty nest. I have the second floor basically to myself. The twins are in (jr) university in the capital. They have been home on the weekends though. Serhiy Jr. (Serhiosha) and Sasha (Sashko). They study math and science. But anyway, the housing. The house is very well temp. conditioned, and the appliances are mostly somewhat kinda modern. The bathroom is kinda different for example. They don't have an overhead shower, but instead have a showerhead on a metal hose above the bath faucet. And they separate the WC from the bathroom. Not a bad idea. Anyway. The food seems really carb heavy to me. But lots of it tastes quite good. My family serves the meat on the bone quite often, which takes some getting used to, and makes one appreciate not having to do it elsewhere. I am often told by mama Lina that their food is all natural. I suppose it may be so. Doesn't make mayonnaise any healthier though.

The next post will probably require a password.

noreply@blogger.com (Dom) — Sat, 02 Oct 2010 19:53:00 +0000

Unless I am very sneaky/indirect.

Death as Escape in Villa Incognito

noreply@blogger.com (Dom) — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 15:18:00 +0000

"No one really knows what happened to ___ after the explosion. Maybe he's dead, maybe the feds got him. Some have reported seeing him in Bangkok, Hong Kong, Johannesburg, and Rio." Not so much a quote so much as a style parody, ala Weird Al's parody of Dylan, "Bob."
I noticed an interesting trend in a few recent bits of media imbibed by yours truly, and I'm certain I could come up with more, if my brain weren't so fried by space gerbils. At the end of Tom Robbins's Villa Incognito, The guru-esque Stubblefield character falls precipitously from a wire stretched across a ravine, shouting the advice, "Keep 'em guessing." His body is never recovered, though none of his acquantances in the novel get a chance to see him further. Similarly, in the film The Men Who Stare at Goats both Clooney's and Jeff Bridges's characters (both of whom also serve as gurus to Ewan) fly off into the sun in a helicopter, under the influence of copious LSD. No one can conclusively report on the fate of these two. The uncertainty of the people who write these stories as to the mortality of these mysterious incidents is intended to give us hope for their metaphorical rebirth. We are meant to believe that they become in the terminology of Harry Harrison, "Stainless Steel Rats." Men who have slipped the springe of the authority and responsibility of their current social frame and restarted themselves "Incognito." Thus our social life is a metaphor for life itself, and the freedom of the lives of these bodhisatvas in their life incognito is nirvana. The falsehoods of rules and structures in society is like the Mara in buddhist thought. All that we know through (perception/socialization) is an illusion. It is no coincidence, I think that both Tom Robbins and this film about "Jedi Warriors" have a hippy bent. Where else is this concept of simulated suicide/accidental death as a means of escape written about? Post in comments your thoughts.
[Edit: It is a plot device used in the end of Terry Gilliam's Brazil also, though that is more of an anti hippy tract. Unsurprisingly, the attempt at faking the death of the characters to get them off of Big Brother's grid is intercepted by the government and fails.]
Faked Death

noreply@blogger.com (Dom) — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 03:23:00 +0000

My, that last one was bleak, wasn't it? And so long ago! Good gracious, my faith-full and patient readers, if waiting for my next post were the only requirement for salvation, you would be guaranteed a spot in seventh heaven at the least, no? But to the meat of the post: to wit, I have thoughts. And the destiny of these thoughts is to pair up, two by two, and make little baby thoughts. That's what makes a happy ending (I learned it from Steven Spielburg). Hands of blue? No. Anyway, these thoughts. Well, there was one right up there... Also, I think people are inherently people. Anyone who says differently is selling something. Captain Mal said, "I aim to misbehave." And Santa Esmeralda said (though others said it first) "Oh Lord, please don't let me be misunderstood." OOooh! and Christopher Walken, in Pennies from Heaven, said, "Let's misbehave." This clip makes me smile. As does the one for "Sweep the Leg" by No More Kings. Things that make you smile are important (no matter what Brother Jorge of Burgos thinks). Lord, I feel like a kitten poster.

Coming Soon.

noreply@blogger.com (Dom) — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 05:10:00 +0000

I am working on a new blog post of my thoughts. As soon as I decide on some thoughts that I can trust you all with. I'm not a very trusting person. I want to tell you things though. And I want desperately to ask you things. But I can't. I can't find an opening to start without betraying myself too much. I don't want you to know that I want to know. There is not enough dialog or conversation in my life anymore. I don't know. This is one of the reasons I hang out with Kym so much. I feel like I can tell her anything. I feel like I truly messed up somewhere recently. Maybe I'm just getting worked up. There are infinite things that you can go back and redo to get a different result, but there are also infinite things that you only get one chance to do forever and afterward you can only guess what it would have been like otherwise. There are some episodes/people/etc. that I sometimes wish I could undo from my experience. My uncertainty has multiplied recently. I thought things would be clearer now. Why am I cursed to regret so much? I feel like it is in my bones.

That doesn't change, of course, the happiness that I feel so often in the present. Like this weekend. Every moment I had a smile on my face I wish I could frame in a gallery. With few exceptions "everything was beautiful, and nothing hurt."

A Dream

noreply@blogger.com (Dom) — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 00:14:00 +0000

I had a dream during my nap today in which I got a text message from my (dead) Grandmother Bettie. For some reason though, it said her first name was "Obligatta" (version of oblige?) I knew it was her because it was a picture text and showed her standing behind a chair in which my grandfather sat and smiling. The message read something like: "Are you getting them all delivered ok?" (Them means my work, I think.) In my dream, I expressed jaw-dropping shock to the person who was with me when I received the message. As I was waking up, I had a little conversation with her in which she told me, along with one other thing can't remember, that she was in heaven. That is all.

Mede.

noreply@blogger.com (Dom) — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 04:56:00 +0000

After midnight, we gonna play the tambourine. I don't know if i ever made it clear how thankful I am that I have not been thrown out of my family. Hopefully it doesn't change when the de facto situation becomes the de jure stance. I am struck dumb by the limitless unconditional love. Watched "For the Bible Tells Me So" yesterday. I think all my readers should watch it.

Hello out there!

noreply@blogger.com (Dom) — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 19:10:00 +0000

You know, it feels like time for another blog. I've been reading some A.E. Houseman, and some Keats, and I really wish I had my Larkin anthology of 20th century verse. I want to write some more these days too. Unfortunately, I need to read my homework and research and write my papers. Which I'm doing well at procrastinating. I have a desire to be very passive these days too. I think I'd like to be a stay-at-home-dad. I'll have to find someone successful, I suppose. That would be nice. It is easy to understand why so many women let that happen to them. It is very alluring. Someone take care of the money, and you take care of the rest. Anyway. I better get back to work. Sigh.
In an unrelated note, here's a video of a youtube virtuoso. Ronald Jenkees. Buy his album.

Strange Moment

noreply@blogger.com (Dom) — Sun, 14 Sep 2008 02:36:00 +0000

I was just reading Moby Dick this evening, and I came to the part where Queequeg gets a fever and ails to the point of death. He asks that a coffin-canoe be made for him by the ship's carpenter, and decks it out with all the trappings for a journey into the afterlife. Pip, the cabin boy driven mad by his abandonment at sea, [the boat he jumped from preferred to chase their prey over retrieving him] comes upon the scene where Queequeg is trying the coffin on for size, and [Pip] gives the following speech:

"Poor rover! Will ye never have done with all this weary roving? Where go ye now? But if the currents carry ye to those sweet Antilles where the beaches are only beat with water-lilies, will ye do one little erand for me? Seek out one Pip, who's been missing very long: I think he's in those far Antilles. If ye find him, then comfort him; for he must be very sad; for look! he's left his tambourine behind;--I found it. Rig-a-dig-dig! Now Queequeg, die; and I'll beat your dying march." Then, after a comment from Starbuck, the first mate, Pip speaks again:

"Form two and two! Let's make a General of him! Ho, where's his harpoon? Lay it across here.-- Rig-a-dig, dig, dig! Huzzah! Oh for a game cock now to sit upon his head and crow! Queequeg dies game!--mind ye that; Queequeg dies game!--take ye good heed of that; Queequeg dies game! I say; game, game, game! but base little Pip, he died a coward; diead all a'shiver;--out upon Pip! Hark ye; if ye find Pip, tell all the Antilles he's a runaway; a coward, a coward, a coward! Tell them he jumped from the whale-boat! I'd never beat my tambourine over base Pip, and hail him General, if he were once more dying here. No, no! shame upon all cowards--shame upon them! Let 'em go down like Pip, that jumped from a whale-boat. Shame! shame!"

And at the moment I read the repetition of the words "Queequeg dies game!" I burst into tears. It surprised me. And they just kept coming; for a good five minutes. I thought of all the noble deaths I knew. I cried at the thought that like the player king in Hamlet, I was crying "for Hecuba" as it were. I felt very pathetic. And I let myself cry for all the other things too. The vanity of human enterprise, all that other bullshit intellectuals are struck to the quick by. I cried because we all die game, if you use the rubric of Conrad Aiken's Tetelestai. I let myself cry because my life is not content now, and I may die that way. I cried to think of how unlike Hamlet I may leave this world, not heralded as a General, but simply consigned to mortality like everyone. Some of my tears (like these) were very vain and selfish. But I believe C.S. Lewis wrote somewhere that there is nothing better for one than to have a good cry once in a while. I don't know who reads this blog anymore. Don't pity me. I am no different than any of the rest of us. Tonight was just my turn to be struck with the awareness of it. I feel better now I think.

A Small Scale Tragedy

noreply@blogger.com (Dom) — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 13:29:00 +0000

Blogland mourns the loss of posts in September November and December oh 7, and January and March oh 8. The Emir refused to place the blame on the dearth of comments that the tourists in Bloglandia have caused with their neglect.

In other news, a bill for the construction of a state of the art RSS feed passes before the upper house for consideration today.

And for the umpteenth time, no, Bloglandia and Strong Badia do not share a border. They are separated by the Strait of YerWalter.

Yer a Blues, John. Yer Blues, John.
Ah, I see you've read my file.
Blueglass? Oh, must be from Kentucky.
My new book will be called Puntastic: the Dan Price/Dan Verkamp Connection.
It will be published by Not For Sale Publishers, who handled my other book Chain of Foo's: Is Aretha Franklin Mr. T?

Joel

In the not too distant future,
Next Sunday A.D.
There was a guy named Joel,
Not too different from you or me.

He worked at Gizmonic Institute,
Just another face in red jump suit.
He did a good job cleaning up the place,
But his bosses didn't like him & they shot him into space!

We'll send him cheesy movies,
The worst we can find...(la! la! la!)
He'll have to sit & watch them all,
Then we'll monitor his mind...(la! la! la!)

Now keep in mind Joel can't control,
When the movies begin & end...(la! la! la!)
Because he used those special parts,
To make his robot friends --

ROBOT ROLL CALL (Let's Go!)

Cambot (Pan Left!)
Gypsy (Hi Girls!)
Tom Servo (Hi Tall Guy!)
Crooooooow (I'm The Wisecracker!)

If you're wondering how he eats & breathes,
And other science facts...(la! la! la!)
Then repeat to yourself its just a show,
I should really just relax...For Mystery Science Theater
3000.......

Mike

In the not too distant future
Way down in Deep Thirteen
Dr. Forrester and TV's Frank
Were hatching an evil scheme

They hired a temp by the name of Mike
Just a regular Joe they didn't like
Their experiment needed a good test case
So they conked him on the noggin and they shot him into space
(Mike: "Get me DOWWWN!")

Mike II

In the not too distant future
Way down in Deep 13
The evil Dr. Forrester
Was hatching a nasty scheme
He hired a temp by the name of Mike
Just a regular Joe he didn't like
His experiment needed a good test case
So he conked him on the noggin'
And he shot him into space
(Mike: GET ME DOWN!!!)

ROBOT ROLL CALL....

Cambot (Show yourself)
Gypsy (I'm not ready)
Tom Servo (Hi ho there)
Croooooooow (That's one 'O'!)

New Season

In the not-too-distant future,
somewhere in time and space,
Mike Nelson and his robot pals
are caught in an endless chase,

Pursued by a woman whose name is Pearl,
an evil gal who wants to rule the world.
She threw a few things in her purse,
and in her rocketship she hunts him all across the universe.
(Pearl) I'll get you!!!

ROBOT ROLL CALL

Cambot! (You're on!)
Gypsy! (Oh, my stars!)
Tom Servo! (Check me out!)
Croooow! (I'm different!)

Colonel : No, no this is silly.

Dino: What's silly?

Colonel : No, the whole premise is silly and it's very badly written. I'm the senior officer here and I haven't had a funny line yet. So I'm stopping it.

Dino: You can't do that!

Colonel : I've done it. The sketch is over.

Watkins: I want to leave the army please sir, it's dangerous.

Colonel: Look, I stopped your sketch five minutes ago. So get out of shot. Right director! Close up. Zoom in on me. (camera zooms in) That's better.

Luigi: (off screen) It's only 'cos you couldn't think of a punch line.

Colonel: Not true, not true. It's time for the cartoon. Cue telecine, ten, nine, eight...

Cut to telecine countdown.

Dino: (off screen) The general public's not going to understand this, are they?

Colonel : (off screen) Shut up you eyeties!

Cartoon rubbish entitled 'Full Frontal Nudity': Written, created and conceived off the back of a lorry by a demented American.

Cut to two naked men.

Cut to colonel.

Colonel : Now, I've noticed a tendency for this programme to get rather silly. Now I do my best to keep things moving along, but I'm not having things getting silly. Those two last sketches I did got very silly indeed, and that last one about the bed was even sillier. Now, nobody likes a good laugh more than I do...except perhaps my wife and some of her friends...oh yes and Captain Johnston. Come to think of it most people likes a good laugh more than I do. But that's beside the point. Now, let's have a good clean healthy outdoor sketch. Get some air into your lungs. Ten, nine, eight and all that.

Cut to two hermits on a hillside.

Colonel: (coming up and stopping them) Right, right, stop it. This film's got silly. Started off with a nice little idea about grannies attacking young men, but now it's got silly. This man's hair is too long for a vicar too. These signs are pretty badly made. Right, now for a complete change of mood.

Cut to man in dirty raincoat.

It'sssss... Mean Mr. Mustard sleeps in the park
Shaves in the dark trying to save paper
Sleeps in a hole in the road
Saving up to buy some clothes
Keeps a ten-bob note up his nose
Such a mean old man

Frankie Howerd.

No! Stoppit!

Prithee (this conversation actually occured from bottom to top, if you can believe it.)

noreply@blogger.com (Dom) — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 16:38:00 +0000

Q: What was Julie Andrews's sexiest role?

A: Flappers

Q: Who is Drew Carey's spiritual guide and mentor?

A: Bob Barker

Q: How did The Devil infiltrate the commercial world?

A: tickle me elmo

Q: Who smurfed my sock?

A: the puppet smurf

Q: What is short, green, and homicidal?

A: Peter Pan

Q: What is brown, white, and stared at by Tootles?

A: a wooden, model ship in a bottle

(Censored by The U.N.I.C.O.R.N.)

Footnotes.

noreply@blogger.com (Dom) — Wed, 21 May 2008 21:54:00 +0000

4:20 PM Chelsea: probably

hey

question. what exactly did your blog entry mean?

like, the second half

the first half was pretty straight forward

4:21 PM me: ok, well you understand "well i'm a guy, but..." right?

and why it is there?

Chelsea: noooo

me: well, right before it came a reference to next semester's American novel class.

4:22 PM and that class is taught by Cirino. Who made famous the quote ...

right?

Chelsea: ohhhh

see, my mind doesn't think like that

got it

me: i don't know why i decided to follow that with bulbous and cheesy. but I like the sound of them together and they remind me of Frank Zappa.

ok?

4:23 PM next.

In other news, it is not always possible to provide footnotes for these entries because sometimes explanations don't exist.

this seems self explanatory.

Chelsea: okay

why do they remind you of Zappa?

4:24 PM me: because he said both of them in different dialogues or songs.

significantly.

but then i realized the footnote thing was partly a lie.

4:26 PM Chelsea: AGH

my internet is pissing me off

4:27 PM me: this is what i read while you were away.

http://jacklynch00.blogspot.com/

Chelsea: okay

so, what about the "give the kid a break"?

me: well, I had written everybody lies.

4:28 PM that reminded me of sin.

there is an Alice Cooper song called Give the Kid a break where he has a dialogue with the devil about giving him (Alice) a break.

4:30 PM ok?

4:31 PM Chelsea: okay

are you sad?

4:32 PM me: so that reminded me of a TMBG song about Alice Cooper named ...

Why Must I Be Sad?

ok?

next,

4:33 PM I went back to thinking about Alice and the Devil and he has another one called Nothing's Free. and that following sentence is a quote from it.

But you're free; isn't that what you wanted?

-- The Devil 1990's

lol

4:34 PM so now you have footnotes. any questions?

Ruth Forgot Her Mug Up Here

noreply@blogger.com (Dom) — Wed, 21 May 2008 16:04:00 +0000

Here I am again, working in the library at S.M., posting out of boredom. I have a lot of books at home I need to read. Library books. The Crying of Lot 49, Siddhartha, Things They Carried, Godric, The Secret Life of Bees, Catch-22, Fight Club, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Silence (By Endo Shusaku). I need to read more. I am especially looking forward to next semester: American Novel.
"Well, I'm a guy, but..."
Bulbous. Cheesy.
In other news, it is not always possible to provide footnotes for these entries because sometimes explanations don't exist. Everybody lies.
Give the kid a break.
Why must I be sad?
Nothing's free. But you're free; isn't that what you wanted?
Ugh.

For your consideration.

noreply@blogger.com (Dom) — Tue, 13 May 2008 19:54:00 +0000

The Silver Swan
Anonymous lyric I found in an old copy (my dad's) of the Norton Anthology of British Lit.

The silver swan, who living had no note,
When death approached, unlocked her silent throat;
Leaning her breast against the reedy shore,
Thus sung her first and last, and sung no more:
“Farewell, all joys; Oh death, come close mine eyes;
More geese than swans now live, more fools than wise.”

Who Died and Made you T. S. Eliot?

noreply@blogger.com (Dom) — Sun, 04 May 2008 04:24:00 +0000

Some people have requested that my blog have footnotes. To this I say, "Muskrat."

Druthers is a New England Word.

noreply@blogger.com (Dom) — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 07:16:00 +0000

Deep inside us is a kernel of individuality. It is below socialization. (I could mention Hegel, but name dropping is a gimmick. Wait, this parenthetical denunciation is a gimmick. Wait this self confession is a gimmick. Egad (I just researched on wikipedia that "gadzooks" is a minced profanity deriving from "god's hooks," i.e. nails of the cross.).) As I was saying.
It is below our concepts of life. It is below pretty much everything. If we were left in the wilderness at birth and became feral children, what would be left? Is it false that society creates as well as buries the self? Beware of questions in your writing, says Dr. Baer. Prof. Griffith concurred.
Nothing Gold can stay, Ponyboy. Stay Gold, Ponyboy. S. E. Hinton, I love you.
Long Tim?
Sounds like a pirate name.

Tommy, I used Jason, and I called him Simon, but "What We Found in the Tunnels" is at least partially dedicated to you. I am not saying anything particularly new in it, but hopefully I am saying my old thing in a way no one has really said it in before.

"Aw, Ma, what'd you bring that book I don't like to be read to out of up for?"
Yes indeed, what for?

En Attendant Someone Who Cares.

noreply@blogger.com (Dom) — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 05:51:00 +0000

Is there anybody out there...there...there?

I am an aesthetic stuck in a repetition and compulsion cycle.
I am an ethicist wearing the mask
I am-- (*the black curtain falls*)

The tao that can be known is not the tao.

Bull. I like the reference to Kierkegaard in "Marginalia" by Billy Collins.

I am twiddling my thumbs under a willow tree. Where are the leaves? It must be dead. No More Weeping.

No More Kings - "Sweep the Leg"

Jack White talks about Nickolai Tesla on "Coffee and Cigarettes"

Jeez, can't I write without being super-referential? I am tempted to erase all of this. I haven't said anything original until this self indictment. Now, as reparation, i will give you a poem.

Contrabass Clarinet:
It's the biggest of the set,
Like an evil, tarnished drainpipe
Clinging to Dracula's castle wall,
With the sound of lightsaber swipe.
Honk that pagan bass all
Night -- Long

And now one that is not just quotes.

noreply@blogger.com (Dom) — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 03:36:00 +0000

Hi everybody! (all 4.5 of you). How are you? I just got done playing my the Winds of Nagual and Liquid Ebony (which is a clarinet concerto, not a racy african american magazine). Tomorrow I go on tour for four days. I will see Emily, Josh, James, and Paul (possibly). I will also enjoy the company of my comrades (gasp). I am getting finished with a paper on characters (Judge William the Married Man (representing the ethical) and Quidam the demonaic religious possibility (representing the religious) a.k.a. Frater Taciturnus, who I am convinced is a monk) in a book by Søren Aabye Kierkegaard. Hopefully I am not quoting too much. Eh, who cares? Next week I have to turn in a paper on Jazz as it is used in Literature, and one on Waiting for Godot. Have you read Waiting for Godot? It is tremendous. All of humanity in two acts with five characters. Practically no scenery, one scene, minimal props. I am reading a biography of the American poet E. A. Robinson, and I am wondering if his plays (which were phenomenal flops in the nineteen teens and twenties) would have been more accepted if released in the sixties, when things like Godot were being written. Robinson was ahead of his time in poetry, it shouldn't surprise anyone that he was somewhat ahead of his time in drama. Now, of course, they could still be awful. I just don't know. I am sorry, it seems my entry into this blog, which I had intended to be about me, is become once more about someone else. I am feeling somewhat all right, but I will need to finish this paper soon and go to bed. I must be up early tomorrow. Now I will take a break to go pack so, if I am up after Matt is in bed, I won't wake him up trying to pack.

Goodness, a New Post!

noreply@blogger.com (Dom) — Sat, 05 Apr 2008 18:22:00 +0000

Where has the horse gone? Where the young warrior? Where is the giver of treasure?
What has become of the feasting seats? Where are the joys of the hall?
Alas, the bright cup! Alas, the mailed warrior! Alas, the prince's glory!
.............................................
Here wealth is fleeting, her friend is fleeting, here man is fleeting, here woman is fleeting--
All this earthly habitation shall be emptied.

Come live with me and be my love
And we shall all the pleasures prove.

Was this the face that launched a thousand ships
And burned the topless towers of Illium?

That time of year thou mayest in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold
Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang

Never, never, never, never, never!

Divorce me, untie or break that knot again;
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.

Which freely drink to your lord's health,
Then to the plow (the common-wealth),
...................................................................
To the rough sickle and crook'd scythe,
Drink frolic boys, till all be blithe.
...................................................................
And you must know, your lord's word true
Feed him ye must whose food fills you,
And that this pleasure is like rain,
Not sent ye for to drown your pain
But for to make it spring again.

Me miserable! which way shall I fly
Infinite wrath, and infinite despair?
Which way I fly is Hell; myself am Hell;

True ease in writing comes from art not chance,
As those move easiest who have learned to dance.

Nor public flame, nor private, dares to shine;
Nor human spark is left, nor glimpse divine!
Lo! thy dread empire, Chaos is restored;
Light dies before thy uncreating word;
Thy hand, great Anarch! lets the curtain fall;
And universal darkness buries all.

The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power,
And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave,
Awaits alike the inevitable hour.
The paths of glory lead but to the grave.
......................................................................
Can storied urn or animated bust
Back to its mansion call the fleeting breath?
Can Honor's voice provoke the silent dust,
Or Flattery soothe the dull cold ear of Death?
[stanza]
Perhaps in this neglected spot is laid
Some heart once pregnant with celestial fire;
Hands that the rod of empire might have swayed,
Or waked to ecstacy the living lyre.

For tenthly he goes in quest of food.
For having considered God and himself he will consider his neighbor.
...............................
For he can tread to all the measures upon the music.
For he can swim for life.
For he can creep.

We perished, each alone;
But I beneath a rougher sea,
And whelmed in deeper gulfs than he.

O Rose, thou art sick!
The invisible worm
That flies in the night
In the howling storm
[stanza]
Has found out thy bed
Of crimson joy,
And his dark secret love
Does thy life destroy.

And if the Babe is born a Boy
He's given to a Woman Old,
Who nails him down upon a rock,
Catches his Shrieks in Cups of gold.

In truth the prison, into which we doom
Ourselves, no prison is:

For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not.--Great God! I'd rather be
A pagan suckled in a creed outworn;

Water, water, everywhere,
Nor any drop to drink.

And no birds sing.

So that her highborn kinsmen came
And bore her away from me,

But in her web she still delights
To weave the mirror's magic sights,
For often through the silent nights
A funeral, with plumes and lights
And music, went to Camelot:
Or when the moon was overhead,
Came two lovers lately wed;
"I am half sick of shadows," said
The lady of Shalott.

Look'd up in perfect silence at the stars.

Wild nights - Wild nights!
..............................
Rowing in Eden -
Ah - the Sea!
Might I but moor - tonight -
In thee!

There is a certain slant of light,
Winter afternoons -
That oppresses like the Heft
Of Cathedral Tunes -

I like a look of Agony,
Because I know it's true -
...................................
The Beads upon the Forehead
By homely Anguish strung.

For I have but the power to kill,
Without - the power to die -

But never met this Fellow
Attended or alone
Without a tighter Breathing
And Zero at the Bone.

"And has thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!"
He chortled in his joy.

Dim moon-eyed fishes near
Gaze at the gilded gear
And query: "What does this vaingloriousness down here?"

"Ha, ha. It will be warmer when
I blow the trumpet (if indeed
I ever do; for you are men,
And rest eternal sorely need)."

About the woodlands I will go
To see the cherry hung with snow.

And be the singing-masters of my soul.
Consume my heart away; sick with desire
And fastened to a dying animal
It knows not what it is; and gather me
Into the artifice of eternity.

But there, where western glooms are gathering,
The dark will end the dark, if anything:
God slays himself with every leaf that flies,
And hell is more than half of paradise.

And only by one's going slightly taut
In the capriciousness of summer air
Is of the slightest bondage made aware.

No more to build on there. And they, since they
Were not the one dead, turned to their affairs.

O thin men of Haddam,
Why do you imagine golden birds?
Do you not see how the blackbird
Walks around the feet
Of the women about you?

Petals on a wet, black bough

We are the guardians of the gate in the rock,
The Two
...............................................
Something is going to fall like rain
And it won't be flowers.
...............................................
This might happen any day;
So be careful what you say
And do;
Be clean, be tidy, oil the lock,
Weed the garden, wind the clock;
Remember the Two.

With the farming of a verse
Make a vineyard of the curse,
.................................................
In the prison of his days
Teach the free man how to praise.

At every step you missed
My right ear scraped a buckle.

Of her choice virtues only gods should speak,
Or English poets who grew up on Greek
(I'd have them sing in chorus, cheek to cheek).

was rainbow, rainbow, rainbow!
And I let the fish go.

The art of losing isn't hard to master.

And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze.
Six miles from earth, loosed from its dream of life,

The lips of time leech to the fountain head;
Love drips and gathers, but the fallen blood
...........................................................................
And I am dumb to tell the lover's tomb
How at my sheet goes the same crooked worm.

Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means,
Time held me green and dying
Though I sang in my chains like the sea.

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
....................................................................
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way

And now is quiet in the tomb as now
Explodes inside the sun, and it is now
In the saddle of space, where argosies of dust
Sail outward blazing, and the mind of God
The flash across the gap of being thinks
In the instant absence of forever: now.

"Oh Charlie, won't we ever rest?"
"What's your hurry?" Charlie said.

That if I stepped out of my body I would break
Into blossom.

I almost love you
but would have cast, I know,
the stones of silence.
I am the artful voyeur
[stanza]
of your brain's exposed
and darkened combs,
your muscles webbing
and all your numbered bones:

Surely, you have seen pairs of them standing forever
next to each other on the same line inside a poem,
A small chapel where weddings like these,
between perfect strangers, can take place.

Shall we dress in skin,
our living linen?
bone weft
pull of masculine
into feminine,
the heft
the warp, weave and spin
of carded days in....

Hello in TV Land!

noreply@blogger.com (Dom) — Sat, 02 Feb 2008 05:35:00 +0000

Hello my dear readers. It is time for another procrastination post. Hopefully these will come more frequently and shorter. I have purple ink on my left hand. Nerf herder. It is hard to concentrate when you do that. Life is going well with the Dude, but he is worried that, like Strong Bad, his imagination is broken/borkeded. Ok, i will be less stupid from here on out. I am worried about Soren Aabye Kierkegaard. He should have edited a bit more before he published. Or someone should have. Also I am thinking about Thomas Hardy's poem "The Convergence of the Twain: Lines on the Loss of the Titanic." Would you like to hear it?

I
In a solitude of the sea
Deep from human vanity,
And the Pride of Life that planned her, stilly couches she.

II
Steel chambers, late the pyres
Of her salamandrine fires,
Cold currents thrid, and turn to rhythmic tidal lyres.

III
Over the mirrors meant
To glass the opulent
The sea-worm crawls -- grotesque, slimed, dumb, indifferent.

IV
Jewels in joy designed
To ravish the sensuous mind
Lie lightless, all their sparkles bleared and black and blind.

V
Dim moon-eyed fishes near
Gaze at the gilded gear
And query: "What does this vaingloriousness down here?". . .

VI
Well: while was fashioning
This creature of cleaving wing,
The Immanent Will that stirs and urges everything

VII
Prepared a sinister mate
For her -- so gaily great --
A Shape of Ice, for the time fat and dissociate.

VIII
And as the smart ship grew
In stature, grace, and hue
In shadowy silent distance grew the Iceberg too.

IX
Alien they seemed to be:
No mortal eye could see
The intimate welding of their later history.

X
Or sign that they were bent
By paths coincident
On being anon twin halves of one August event,

XI
Till the Spinner of the Years
Said "Now!" And each one hears,
And consummation comes, and jars two hemispheres.

Wasn't that pleasant? In other news, the Anglo-Saxon poem form is making great headway in the category "poem forms that Dom will use in the near future."
I really like the novel Room With a View by E.M. Forster.
I am very happy because of something that happened a month ago. And I have a secret.