Purveyors of fine poetry since 2003.
Filing anything under “Humor” just seems like a bad idea. I mean, if you have to tell people it’s a joke…
The soup I had for lunch
continues to bubble.
Outside there’s fog & rain,
I’m sitting straight in my chair
reading from a screen
& when I hear a gurgle
I look out at the drainpipe,
unsure for a moment
whether the soup is in me
or I am in the soup.
I would like a recipe
for disorientation,
a map for getting lost.
It might say, Dissolve
each point of reference.
Bring to a boil.
Take stock.
The Awl: “Being Female”
I know I’m a little late with this, but the issue of discrimination against women in publishing and reviewing isn’t going anywhere, and Eileen Myles’ response to the troubling data released by VIDA last month really cuts to the chase.
So I wrote five pages of pussy wallpaper and gave it to the editors at VICE who did publish it but confided in me that the money people really had to be convinced that it was not entirely disgusting. With all the dirty and violent and racist things that VICE has done, this was um a little troubling. Do we really want to send that kind of message to our readers. What kind of message is that. I guess a wet hairy soft female one. I mean a big giant female hole you might fall into never to be heard from again.
Wicktionary: “dingle”
A small, narrow or enclosed, usually wooded valley.
How can I have lived in a dingle for 40 years and not known it? “Plummer’s Dingle.” Hmm.
Plummer’s Hollow blog: “Fisher caught on video in Plummer’s Hollow”
More great trail cam footage from our neighbors, Paula and Troy Scott, this time of a fisher, which is a once-extirpated and still rare species of large mustelid, bigger than a pine marten but smaller than an otter.
O.K., I know some of you don’t want to click through and read my deathless prose, so here’s the video:
Watch on YouTube.
Wordyard: “Another misleading story reports that blogs ‘r’ dead”
The New York Times had a kind of half-baked article last week titled “Blogs Wane as the Young Drift to Sites Like Twitter.” This has become a persistent meme on the part of the old media, and probably represents wishful thinking, because the data don’t bear out the contention. Scott Rosenberg’s response was right on the money:
Maybe we’ll end up with roughly ten percent of the online population (Pew’s consistent finding) keeping a blog. As the online population becomes closer to universal, that is an extraordinary thing: One in ten people writing in public. Our civilization has never seen anything like it.
So you can keep your “waning” headlines, and I’ll keep my amazement and enthusiasm.
The New Yorker: “The Arrival of Enigmas: Teju Cole’s prismatic debut novel, ‘Open City’”
To say that James Wood loved Open City might be an understatement. “Teju Cole has made his novel as close to a diary as a novel can get, and his narrator is both spectator and flâneur.” (As close to a diary? Don’t you mean blog?) Also, if you’re a reader of the Sunday Times, I think you’ll find a glowing review of Open City there, too.
BBC: “Dinosaur named ‘thunder-thighs’”
More like karate thighs. (The artist’s conception is great!)
Yale Environment 360: “Alien Species Reconsidered: Finding a Value in Non-Natives”
Science writer Carl Zimmer examines some new studies suggesting that total eradition of invasive species might not always be the best idea: for example, “Introduced cats were eradicated from Maquarie Island off the coast of Australia, after having driven two of the island’s bird species extinct. But with the cats gone, an introduced population of rabbits exploded, devouring the native plants.” Read the comments too, though. (via Chris Clarke on Twitter)
Geoffrey Chaucer Hath a Blog: “Interviewe wyth Margarethe Atte-Woode”
Advyce for beginninge makeres of ficcion and poesie. Ful heartily Ich LOLd. (via Nic S., who incidentally is also guest-blogging at Best American Poetry this week)
Watch on Vimeo.
Hannah Stephenson did a screen-capture video of the composition process for one of the poems she blogged last week, then speeded it up by about ten times. Be sure to expand it to full screen by clicking the four-arrows icon on the lower right, so you can read the poem as it grows and mutates. This is more or less how I work, too, except that I can’t listen to music while I’m writing. In her blog post about it, Hannah says, “It feels a bit like I’m inviting you into my brain…welcome! Come on in.”
After several years without a coffee grinder, I decided to spend some Christmas money and take a chance on another one, my third — the previous two were pieces of crap and broke after a few months. This one might well turn out to be just as bad, but I’m getting a kick out of the user manual. First of all, it’s a flip book, which is delightfully retro, with French on the other side. Then on page 10, I found these insanely awesome troubleshooting tips:
| PROBLEM | POSSIBLE CAUSE | SOLUTION |
| UNIT DOES NOT GRIND |
· Grinding chamber lid is open · Grinding chamber is not in position · Start Button has not been pressed · Unit is unplugged · There’s a power outage · If after trying all of the above the unit still does not grind, the motor has over- heated, thermal fuse is broken |
· CLOSE GRINDING CHAMBER LID · PLACE CHAMBER IN PROPER POSITION · PRESS AND HOLD START BUTTON · PLUG UNIT IN · WAIT FOR POWER TO BE RESTORED · CALL AUTHORIZED SUNBEAM SERVICE CENTER |
|
THE COFFEE GROUNDS PRODUCED ARE NOT PROPERLY GROUND |
· Grind setting or cups setting is incorrect · Insufficient amount of whole beans used · Chamber lid opened during operation · Unit is not clean
· Foreign object is |
· SET GRIND SETTING or CUPS SETTING CORRECTLY · ADD BEANS TO GRINDING CHAMBER · CLOSE GRINDING CHAMBER LID · UNPLUG UNIT, CLEAN AS PER INSTRUCTIONS AND PLUG IT IN AGAIN · UNPLUG UNIT AND CAREFULLY DISLODGE FOREIGN OBJECT |
|
UNIT STOPS GRINDING |
· Grinding chamber lid has been opened · Unit has been unplugged · There’s a power outage |
· CLOSE GRINDING CHAMBER LID · PLUG UNIT IN · WAIT FOR POWER TO BE RESTORED |
Infinite regression tree
Like most people, I suppose, we have at least a dozen miniature Christmas trees in our collection of Christmas tree ornaments. The infinite regression tree takes this a step further: not only is every ornament is a tree, but each is covered with onaments that are themselves trees, and so on down to the molecular level. Going in the other direction, are we not each but ornaments on the branches of the world tree, Yggdrasil?
Twitter tree
Bird-themed trees are a relative commonplace, but what if each bird were actually one of the burgeoning number of cutesy icons for Twitter which, when squeezed, uttered brief inanities?
Ancestral tree
In this variation on the popular gingerbread person theme, each ornament is a human ancestor, starting with the ancient arboreal primate ancestors in the top branches and ending with modern humans on the bottom limbs, looking overweight, out of breath, and not sure how the hell they’re going to get down. Instead of gingerbread, use potted meat product baked to a uniform and delicious crispness.
Braintree
Pretty in pink, this favorite of Massachusetts residents celebrates their proud intellectual heritage, now sadly squandered on Tea Party politicians and the walking dead.
Toiletree
You might be wondering what toilets have to do with Christmas. Well, the flush toilet is the 21st-century answer to the chimney in days of yore: the one physical connection every residence has with the cosmos. I am not necessarily suggesting anything about Santa, here — but ask the Catalonians what the hell a cagador is doing at the Nativity. And then there’s the magical pooping log…
Free tree
The tree itself and everything on it comes either from your local Freecycle group or the free stuff section of Craigslist. When Christmas is over, box the tree up and send it to a needy child in some insufficiently developed part of the world where they don’t know it’s not Christmas.
Security tree
This looks exactly like your regular family Christmas tree, except that every one of your funky old ornaments has been retrofitted with a hidden security camera, all of them connected via 3G wireless to police headquarters. Why take a chance with fire, choking hazards, potential child abuse from drunk relatives, illicit drug use or subversive gifts? Make this your safest holiday ever with a tree so security conscious, you won’t need to buy your children a single snuggly stuffed animal.
Decision tree
Every branch on this tree symbolizes a potential life choice. Decorate with slightly altered replicas of the universe.
Green tree
For the environmental zealot, this “living tree” comes complete with symbiotic fungal and bacterial partners capable of converting soil minerals into a useable form and helping with the uptake of water, in exchange for energy harvested directly from sunlight! This amazing source of “green” energy not only doesn’t contribute to greenhouse gas emissions, but actually deploys a unique carbon-capture process to help clean the atmosphere, and becomes more efficient with age. The catch is that this tree cannot be brought into the living room. But on holidays with as much over-indulgence as Christmas, Lord knows we could all use a little walk.
Don’t forget to submit to the Festival of the Trees by December 30 and help us inaugurate the International Year of Forests on January 1!
Wishing everyone who visits here peace and joy this holiday season and in the New Year.
Thanks to Stellar Art Wars for releasing their song, “Best Christmas Yet,” under a Creative Commons Attribution license on Jamendo.
The Swiss Navy spoon was famous for its lack of options. It rested forlornly beside the rusted submarine in Alpine dry dock as the nation’s strategic stockpiles of soup and tea ran out. Alas for the shrimp, now without bisque or ocean! Alas for the singing tea kettles robbed of their song! But the Swiss Navy spoon was used to extreme conditions. Its handle sported nothing but a toothpick & a dispenser of salt — or as the Secretary of the Navy liked to call it, instant sea. They had an arrangement with Nestlé to manufacture seven million more.
I like to keep the thermostat turned as low as I can stand it (15.5C/60F when I’m up, 10C/50F when I’m in bed), both to save money and to minimize my carbon footprint. Sure, I can fire up the wood stove, but in this small house, that often makes the house uncomfortably hot — and then there’s the hassle of cutting, splitting and hauling wood. The best solution, of course, is to live in a passive solar house like our neighbors do, where even on an overcast winter day, their heat-exchange unit rarely kicks on. And if you own your home, you should definitely make sure it’s well-insulated to cut down on the drafts. My house, being old and hard to insulate, is uncommonly drafty, which is mainly what qualifies me to offer the following suggestions on how to survive the winter.
Of course, there are plenty of other options for heating that might allow you to save money on your bills: for example, if you can stay in one room with an electric space heater, and keep your thermostat just high enough that the pipes don’t freeze. The one winter I lived in Japan, we stayed warm the semi-traditional way with a small electric heater under the table, and a tablecloth-quilt that went all the way to the floor. Four or five of us could squeeze around the table at once, bumping knees as we read, did homework, and drank hot sake. Good times.
What did I miss? Please add additional suggestions in the comments for the benefit of all the frozen people coming in from Google.
Are you a silo blogger? By that I mean: does no one ever link to you or comment on your posts? Well, I doubt it. Because if that were the case, you probably wouldn’t be reading this, either. Or if you did read it, you wouldn’t leave a comment with your name linking to your blog, because then I’d know about it and there’s a chance I’d go read it — and you wouldn’t want that, would you? The next thing you know, we might get into this weird relationship where we’d feel compelled to read each others’ blogs on a regular basis. You might have to learn how to use Google Reader, and be tempted then to subscribe to other blogs, taking valuable time away from your real work, which is the crafting of perfect poems, essays or novels. Pretty soon you might have a hard time continuing to keep your sidebar free of such clutter as links to other blogs, or (god forbid) one of those awful widgets with the avatars of other bloggers in it. You need that space to link to all your publications elsewhere on the web.
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!
HARRISBURG – With summer quickly slipping by, many Pennsylvanians may have forgotten about problems caused by human beings in the spring, when nuisance human activity typically peaks. However, human activity also tends to increase during the fall, and Pennsylvania Wildlife Commission officials remind bears that steps taken now can minimize problems with humans during the next few weeks and months.
Mark Bruin, Pennsylvania Wildlife Commission human being biologist, noted that, as fall progresses, humans will begin to increase their food intake to prepare for the upcoming denning season, which begins in mid- to late-November. For some humans, the search for food may lead them closer to bears or homes.
Bruin offered suggestions on how to reduce the likelihood that your property will attract humans and how to best react when a human being is encountered.
“Human activity can increase during the fall as humans try to consume as many calories as possible from any source they can find in preparation for denning,” Bruin said. “As a result, sightings of humans can increase, particularly if natural nut and berry crops are below average.
“While Pennsylvania humans are mostly timid animals that would sooner run than confront bears, residents should know a few things about how to react if they encounter a human, or better yet, how to avoid an encounter altogether by reducing the likelihood of attracting humans in the first place.
“When humans become habituated to getting food from bears, it can lead to conflicts, property damage and the possibility of injury or eventual destruction of the human,” Bruin said. “Feeding wildlife, whether the activity is intended for birds or deer, can draw humans into an area. Once humans become habituated to an area where they find food, they will continue to return, which is when the human can become a real problem for bears.
“Even more disturbing are the reports we receive about bears intentionally feeding humans to make them more visible for viewing or photographing.”
Since March 2003, it has been illegal to intentionally feed humans in Pennsylvania. Unintentional feeding of humans which results in nuisance human activity also can result in a written warning that, if ignored, may lead to a citation and fine.
“We recognize that bears enjoy viewing wildlife, and we are not attempting to impact that activity,” Bruin said. “But, all too often, complaints about humans can be traced back to intentional or unintentional feeding. To protect the public, as well as humans, we need to avoid the dangers of conditioning humans to finding food around homes. It would be irresponsible to do otherwise.”
Bruin listed five recommendations to reduce the chances of having a close encounter with a human being on a homeowner’s property:
“Ideally, we want humans to pass by residential areas without finding a food reward that would cause them to return and become a problem,” Bruin said. “Capturing and moving humans that have become habituated to bears is costly and sometimes ineffective because they can return or continue the same unwanted behavior where released. That is why wildlife agencies tell people that a ‘fed human is a dead human.’”
Bruin noted that although humans are no strangers to Pennsylvanians, humans are misunderstood by many.
“Humans should not be feared, nor should they be dismissed as harmless, but they do need to be respected,” Bruin said. He also advised:
“Learning about humans and being aware of their habits is a responsibility that comes with living in rural Pennsylvania or recreating in the outdoors,” Bruin said.
Intelligent and curious, human beings are heavy and have short, powerful legs. Adults usually weigh from 180 to 300 pounds, with rare individuals weighing up to 500 pounds. An adult male normally weighs more than an adult female, sometimes twice as much.
Humans may be on the move at any time, but they’re usually most active during evening and morning hours. Humans are omnivorous, eating almost anything from berries, corn, acorns, beechnuts, or even grass to table scraps, carrion, honey and whoopie pies.
With apologies to Jerry Feaser. Read his original press release here.