2. Radio waves are passing through you at every moment. If you’re very still, you might be able to tune them in. (Concentrate on FM. AM stations are too shouty.)

3. Find a natural setting and meditate on a fresh pile of excrement, preferably your own. Watch as it slowly sinks and disappears into the ground, the work of stealthy beetles operating from below, for whom it is everything they ever wanted.

4. Climb a tree as meditatively as possible. Note: this is not a good time to practice non-attachment.

5. If you are a man, try to maintain an erection while keeping your mind completely blank. When you find yourself unable to do so, prostrate yourself 108 times before the nearest woman. She might sleep with you just for that! But probably not, you dysfunctional loser.

6. If you are a pregnant woman past the first trimester, listen to your baby’s heartbeat through a fetoscope for up to a four hours at a time. Stop if you feel your own heart starting to beat 160 times a minute. This could cause it to explode.

7. Counting meditation is popular with beginners, but what really comes after 1? Put that in your censer and smoke it.

8. In Tibet, some monks can elevate their body temperature to survive freezing mountaintops with little clothing. You can do them one better. Concentrate on elevating your electromagnetic field so that you could, if necessary, survive in interplanetary space with no other shield against the solar wind.

9. Cultivate an intimate relationship with your least favorite word. Make it the first thing to pass your lips upon waking and the last echo in your mind before sleep. Say it until you grow hoarse and your tongue turns numb. Then forget the word.

10. Take all your clothes off and meditate on a street corner. If you are in New Delhi, this may attract followers, and will almost certainly bring enough donations to keep you alive. If you are in New York City, it may or may not get you arrested. There’s no particular point to this exercise; it’s just amusing for the rest of us.

Remember, the blog is your space, a tool for leveraging your personal brand, as I’m sure your agent has told you. Like a real silo, its sealed environment is integral to its purpose as an efficient storage space for fermented fodder — the blog archives. And while you can use your blog to share some original content now and then, be careful with that because most literary magazines — your real destination — don’t like to see content replicated until after they publish it. They want their poems to be virgins! So try and restrict yourself to sharing news about your writing, with the occasional link or embedded video to show off your wide-ranging intellect.

Now, none of this should be construed to mean that you shouldn’t be social. Quite the contrary! Social networks are invaluable for making connections with editors and publishers and possibly even meeting a few readers — in short, advancing your brand. Consider joining Facebook and sharing your blog content there, so that if people really feel compelled to comment on that announcement of your upcoming book signing, they can do so on Facebook and keep your blog silo clean as a whistle.

There is a danger, though. If you start finding yourself getting sucked into conversations that have nothing to do with you and your writing, then you might legitimately question your involvement in this too-social network with its birthday announcements and silly online games. Remember, you are a serious writer! The web is little more than a distraction machine, with none of that hallowed hush that one finds in books and the better magazines.

So if Facebook becomes too much, I advise abandoning it and trying Twitter instead. Some of the most famous and important writers are on Twitter, and the reason is simple: you can amass way more than the 5,000 friends permitted on Facebook. Plus, on Twitter they’re called followers, which is a much better description of what you’re looking for. And whereas on Facebook you may find that constantly sharing links to your own content alienates people (take it from me), on Twitter, it’s considered weird not to link to everything you do. Best of all, for your purposes as a silo blogger, conversation is kept to a minimum, and hardly anyone ever clicks on links. It’s perfect!

Foxconn, a Taipei-based manufacturer of high-tech goods like Apple iPads and iPhones, installed safety nets around the building earlier this year after more than ten employees jumped to their deaths. But some of the nets have been removed in conjunction with rallies the company hosted today to boost employee morale. Because nothing makes you love your job more than being forced to attend a public spectacle to show the world you don’t want to die. [...] Foxconn, whose name has been mentioned with regards to rumors of a seven-inch iPad by Christmas, also announced plans to hire 400,000 additional workers this year.
Chinese iPad and iPhone Manufacturer Rallies On, Despite Worker Suicides (New York Magazine)

UPDATE: Here are the survey results as of noon, 1/21/10 (omitting the percentages of those who chose to skip the question):

Can a houseplant die of loneliness?

• 52 (72%) said Yes
• 11 (15%) said No
• 9 (13%) said What?

Do you see twelve different things through the eyes of twelve different needles?

• 35 (49%) said Yes
• 20 (28%) said No
• 20 (28%) said How did you know?

If mornings came with printed instructions, would anyone read them?

• 24 (34%) said Yes
• 30 (43%) said No
• 16 (23%) said All readings are misreadings

Have you ever torn all the paper from a spiral notebook, page by page, just to get an unobstructed look at the spiral?

• 16 (23%) said Yes
• 38 (54%) said No
• 17 (24%) said None of your beeswax

Will this be the year they start using prisons for captive breeding programs?

• 8 (11%) said Yes
• 28 (40%) said No
• 34 (49%) said Why? Lord knows, it’s not like prisoners are an endangered species

Wouldn’t a truly self-adhesive tape collapse like a star into a black hole?

• 20 (29%) said Yes
• 9 (13%) said No
• 41 (59%) said That’s setting a pretty high standard for adhesiveness, don’t you think?

Do you find it harder to think in a room where you can’t touch the ceiling?

• 10 (14%) said Yes
• 49 (71%) said No
• 10 (14%) said They don’t pay me enough to think

With our fondness for clichés, don’t we risk making the perfect storm the enemy of the good storm?

• 30 (43%) said Yes
• 6 (9%) said No
• 33 (48%) said Bad weather is better than no weather at all

If your name was Fritz Zwicky, wouldn’t you also prefer to be known as the Father of Dark Matter?

• 41 (60%) said Yes
• 13 (19%) said No
• 14 (21%) said Maybe, but I’m not sure I look good with a flying V guitar

If all your friends jumped off a cliff, would you jump too?

• 8 (12%) said Yes
• 53 (77%) said No
• 8 (12%) said Only if I didn’t have to change my underwear

Note: Since this survey was open to all comers and not administered in a random fashion, the results are scientifically worthless. However, that doesn’t matter too much, since it was really a “push poll” for the Dadaist Party. Ketchup for Shah! U.S. out of North America! Etc.

He took a salt shaker from his pocket and sprinkled each of the heads. The effect was almost instantaneous: first the fur and then the flesh melted away, leaving nothing but the bones. The snow around them turned white again as we watched. I felt the hair rising on the back of my neck.

“This is your first time, isn’t it?” he asked. I nodded. The antlers were branched icicles now on skulls of crystal, skulls that shrank, antlers that withered, as if the temperature around them were 200 degrees warmer than it was. The skulls grew rounder as they shrank, and the gleaming teeth turned sharp as knives.

“These ones never actually belonged to the Caribou Mother,” he said. “They are the children of Sanna — the Inuktitut name for Sedna. That’s the kind of evil we’re up against here.”

The Iraq War veteran bowed his head. “Thank you for this victory, Jesus, temporary as it is,” he said. “I am your crusader.”

I shifted uncomfortably and looked at the ground. Some of the best soldiers in our unit happened to be pagans. We had signed up to defend North American airspace against terrorists, and that’s what the recruiter assured us we’d be doing. Rumors of a holy war had been dismissed as just another paranoid conspiracy theory from society’s perennial malcontents.

The marksman laid a hand on my shoulder. “The Pentagon can say what it wants,” he said, “but this is a war we Christians have been fighting for 2000 years. It took centuries just to kill off Saturn! Declaring December 25th as the birth of our Lord and Savior did little to fool the forces of darkness — the longest night of the year still occurs just a few days before, despite our best efforts.” He sighed. “This Santa character is a real shape-shifter. Give me a Sunni insurgency any day.”

He squinted at the faint pink glow that signalled high noon in the High Arctic. “Welcome to the War on Christmas.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X6yUCbqAGrg

Video by Rebel Virals (hat-tip: Rachel Maddow Show)

For readers from outside the U.S. who think I might be exaggerating just a bit, see “Jesus Shoots Santa in Controversial Lawn Display.”

Main Street is mad
Main Street is a state highway
Main Street is too broke to pay them back
Main Street is white hot these days

Main Street is fed up
Main Street is part of the iconography of American life
Main Street is blinded
Main Street is upside down too

Main Street is theirs
Main Street is already gridlocked at certain times during the day
Main Street is hot and trendy
Main Street is not there

Main Street is an earnest, homey spot
Main Street is a limited, inadequate and inapt metaphor
Main Street is skeptical
Main Street is going to take over paying the electric bills

Main Street is already feeling the pinch
Main Street is looking for an 18-20 foot tall evergreen
Main Street is hosting its inaugural Scarecrow Decorating Contest
Main Street is becoming a row of refugee camps

Main Street is the first bank to fail
Main Street is open or closed
Main Street is so true now
Main Street is set for reconstruction and some watermain work

Main Street is not so bad
Main Street is also getting angry at itself
Main Street is wider and more exposed
Main Street is at risk

Main Street is excited about the falling price of gasoline
Main Street is where the mansions are in your town
Main Street is in real trouble
Main Street is the patsy in this deal

Main Street is also a good incubator
Main Street is now at stake
Main Street is about to get hit
Main Street is crowded with wood awnings

Main Street is taking a stand as of today
Main Street is speaking out
Main Street is so busy being angry that it isn’t sufficiently frightened
Main Street is still waiting to exhale

Main Street is a self-help program
Main Street is scheduled to continue
Main Street is running right past us
Main Street is hurting very much.

In partial response to ReadWritePoems’s echolalia prompt.

B: I’m Bruce Springsteen and I’m reporting for duty! Heh.

H: I don’t get it. After everything Bill and I have done for these people, to drop me for this upstart. Why can’t I get no RESPECT? Now I know how Aretha feels.

B: I can meet with my enemies. I can, I can! Ugh. Diplomacy is a bitch.

H: If I can just get the Bubba vote, I can win this thing. Lotta Bubbas in Texas and Ohio. We’ve done the race-baiting, we’ve stoked anti-Muslim sentiment… I just need to beat a bit more on the “all words, no action” bone. Trailer trash HATE intellectuals!

B: Go ahead, call me “articulate.” I dare you.

H: Now if we could only link him to the French. Anything French. I’ll bet we can find a tape of him refusing to order Freedom Fries…

B: She is so Yale. She fairly reeks of noblesse oblige. Probably shared Dubya’s silver spoon. Go Harvard!

H: Wait! My God — he’s left-handed! Must tell my staff to work on an innuendo about that. “Sinister”? No, Bubba won’t get that. Uh, let’s see… Leftie. Leftist. Left behind. Is America ready for a left-handed president???

B: Is this where she does her skit with the Happy Hands Club?

H: American voters are such pathetic sheep. And now they think they’ve found their perfect shepherd! Jesus Christ. Just once I wish he’d morph into McCain and start frothing at the mouth.

B: I see your “experience” and raise you one “Iraq war vote.” Flush!

H: Now with the cursed “mandates” again. I am so sick of these preemptive attacks.

B: So “bitch is the new black,” huh? Good luck with that. Last time I checked, Americans liked bossy women about as much as they liked angry black folks. Hope the unsinkable HMS Hillary packed enough lifeboats.

H: Wait, why did they boo that line? My writers told me it was fool-proof! O.K., time to enter the confessional, I guess. I hate this shit.

B: I could do this in my sleep. In fact, I could use a nap right now. Damn! Did Ms. Weepy Eyes slip something in my water?

H: He’s not the underdog — I’M the underdog! Do you hear me, America? Owooooo!

B: What is up with this woman? Why do we have to keep sniffing each other’s butts?

For a more overtly political poem, see SB’s I Have This to Say About That, at Watermark.

And it’s funny, because for years, internationally minded folks have criticized major-league baseball for calling a purely North American contest the World Series. What are they going to say now that kids in Ghana or Zambia can wear t-shirts and caps advertising teams that won the series in alternate universes? Dreams that were thwarted here still shimmer with potential in the African sun.

Where did all this apparel come from? It’s made in preparation for one of the simplest but most powerful rituals in the entire ceremonial year of an American athletic association: the donning of new costumes proclaiming the superior medicine power of the championship team.

“The moment of a clinch, the teams celebrate. They pile on top of one another, they get all crazy, and part of that celebration is, in fact, them proclaiming their championship clinch with a T-shirt and a cap,” explains Steve Armus, MLB’s vice president of consumer products. “It’s something that’s traditional in baseball and some other sports, and for all the teams it’s an important moment.”

The centuries-old tradition that governs Euro-American sporting contests prevents more than one team from performing this ritual in a given year, due to a superstitious belief in something called the Law of the Excluded Middle. So to preserve the purity and efficacy of the sport, the ritual garments prepared for the other teams must either be destroyed or shipped to Africa, which has in recent years become a major destination for global waste and hand-me-downs. A Christian aid group called World Vision collects, ships and hands out the apparel. Isn’t it inspiring that missionaries still take such a strong interest in seeing that the bodies of brown-skinned people are kept properly covered? And the manufacturers get a tax credit instead of simply taking a loss. It’s just like the Special Olympics: everyone’s a winner! Even the Cleveland Indians.

Each slice of the pumpkin carver’s knife lets a little more darkness out. The stringy remnants of Jack’s brain dangle like strands of spider web, or errant vines of some sinister creeper…

Nobody’s safe from the red menace! That’s right, I’m talking about Virginia creeper (Parthenocissus quinquefolia). I used to think of it as just a pretty native species with berries that the birds love, but then I looked it up on the web (a world-wide web – how creepy is that?). Here are some of the testimonies of ordinary American gardeners, selected from Dave’s Garden, “the website where friends share their triumphs and dilemmas in their home gardens and their lives.” Slightly edited for spelling and punctuation.

This plant is HORRIBLE!! I have thought for years that it was poison oak and have been terrified to touch it. I have a bed of English Ivy in my front yard and this creeper pops up all the time. I just pulled one out of some photinia bushes I have and the roots ran for about 15 ft down the side of my house. … We found some growing into the Architecture library, it had worked its way through tiny cracks in the caulking around the old windows. … It comes up all thru my lawn. I have pulled and dug and chopped large roots of this. It is impossible to get rid of. I have even sprayed it with Round Up and everything around it died, but it flourished. My other neighbor said it causes him to break out in a rash. … I’ve learned my lesson to wear gloves, but talk about an evil plant. … Last week I was trimming weeds and pulled alot of this off my fence (without gloves–big mistake!!!) The next day my face was on fire. It went from redness to scabbing, and now I have what looks like dark burnt skin. It never got blistery or oozed like poison ivy. … I just completed taking a prescription steriod, am taking an OTC antihistamine and using Cortaid topically – nothing seems to be working. It just keeps spreading. … Virginia creeper is a menace in Pompton Lakes, NJ. … Anyone got some agent orange left over from Viet Nam?

Last week a neighbor tried to remove this Virginia Creeper. After trying unsuccessfully to get rid of it for years, he hitched a tow chain to it, then to his pickup, and pulled on it. He successfully removed 3 fence posts and the chain link fencing from a good portion of his ‘cyclone’ fence that was 4 foot high. I guess he was so mad at it he took out a small axe and started to chop it up into small pieces; alas there-by giving some of the smaller cuts a chance to live on. Next year, I guess, he might be getting a whole new yard full of them, and bombing the place out too. … The roots of this vile weed spread between our yard and the neighbors (on both sides!). It is EXTREMELY established in our block and we see there being NO way that we would be able to get all the roots. Is there a poison or some kind of miraculous Virginia Creeper killing weapon that we can use? We are anxious for any kind of solution people may have for the removal of this vile weed! … A trip to the emergency room seemed to be in order when my arms started swelling up. I’m taking a 12 day course of prednisone, and Benadryl. It seems to be helping, as the swelling’s gone away, and the blisters are no longer oozing but the itching is intense. … I can’t get away from this stuff! I moved last year from Philadelphia, PA, where it was battling with English ivy to take over my front yard, to Savannah, GA, where it grows at least twice as fast. When I moved in last June it was threatening to engulf my detached garage like kudzu. … Every kind of vine or invasive plant — native or nonnative — went crazy all over my yard. The worst, however, was Virginia Creeper, which crossed the lawns, attacked all kinds of trees and had me reliving Little Shop of Horrors. … I have discovered many long runners of this stuff all over my yard and it has grown up under the siding and forced pieces of siding loose. … This week I went and pulled some more because it was taking over my beautiful row of flowers all along the fence and WHAM. I have it everywhere on my body. It hurts, itches, is red and swelling. … My eye is almost swollen shut, it is around my mouth, ears, belly, legs, arms, fingers, etc. … Each blister itches like crazy and feels like a pin is inserted into each one of them. There are at least 1,000 blisters on me. This isn’t my worst reaction. That one caused a 4″x6″ bright red blotch on my forearm where ALL my skin was eaten away. The doctor had to stiffle a scream when he saw it. … Virginia creepers flattened several acres of woods where I grew up in New York. Where mature forest trees stood fifteen years ago is now low scrub with a vanguard of virginia creeper like some kind of space-slime invasion. … While spring cleaning the yard I noticed that my 8 foot azalea bush was dying on one side. Upon inspection I saw what looked like a demon vine wrapped around the branches choking it to death. My neighbor said it killed all his azaleas.

So far at Dave’s Garden, 60 different people have warned against growing Virginia Creeper. But intermingled with these horror stories were 34 positive comments and 15 neutrals. Could it be that the creeper’s noxious power has somehow penetrated their brains?

In my yard, it’s vigorous but I wouldn’t call it invasive. Personally, I love the plant and especially the fall color. … I planted it against my garden shed to soften the hard edges. It was a small clipping that has been gradually increasing in size for the last 5 years and is only now reaching the top of the shed. … This vine grows all over my brick house, and I just love it. It keeps the house nice and cool in the summer, and sticks well to the bricks without damaging them in any way. The birds nest in it, and when the wind blows the sides of the house ripple like the ocean! It’s terrific! … I have not seen any of the evil side of it in 2 years of observation; it covers things well and in a short period of time, growing about 60 cm higher per year. Its foliage is visible from far away, and it produces berries that feed birds. … As a native American, it has its right to existence and I will not call a native an invasive. Weed, yes. A weed is a plant growing where you don’t want it. And I yearly remove it from the cultivated gardens. You will find it growing beneath trees mostly, because that is where birds drop the seeds. I know many of them are dependent on this natural food. … I love this plant. It turns a cheap welded wire fence into a 6 foot tall 2 foot wide wall of lush green leaves. It makes a terrific barrier between properties. … I was prepared to battle it to the death if it started to get out of control, but it’s simply spread up the fence as intended, and is easy to train. … It has caused no problems and we love it. It tends to grow over our doorway, and DH and myself have to pull or clip a new opening several times a summer, and neither of us have had any reaction to it. … I would recommend this plant, but only if you’re not the type who goes postal and runs for the roundup over three dandelions in your lawn. … For some of us that don’t get mad at a leopard acting like one, or a creeper that seems to always be creeping, it’s a wonderful addition. … It has nice foliage in the summer, berries for the birds and gorgeous fall color. What’s not to like?

People: still by far the scariest invasive species on earth. They give me nightmares.

Happy Halloween, though. I think I’ll dress up as myself and go visiting all the creepers with a spray-can of Agent Orange.