Now that I think about it...

Lord of the Rings names really ARE pretty good names for animals. They're definitely not as bad as naming your dog to sound like a transsexual or French prostitute.

And I do know an awesome cat named Gandalf.

Imaginary Conversation With The Loud Table Near Where I Was Eating Today At The Hub

I think it would be cool if we named all of our pets after Lord of the Rings characters. You know, things like Samwise Gamgee and Legolas. Yeah, Aragorn would be a really good name for a dog.
Maybe if you want your dog to kill you, then quest for the One Ring.

You know what's awesome, dude? You don't even like that girl. You hate her, but you really like cuddling with her.
Damn it feels good to be a gangster.

So he said agriculture is the single greatest achievement in human history. But that can't be true, since the advent of agriculture made it possible for populations to become sedentary, which in turn led to things like the growth of cities, pollution, and the overconsumption of natural resources.
You're right. It's so much better to just huddle around fires and hope the cave bears don't get us.

Yeah. Technology is the downfall of humanity as we know it. (as she flips open her cell phone and starts sending a text message)
I guess it was just a big mistake to climb down from the trees, huh, dumbass.



Heh. I especially love the "as we know it" part. Genius.

Another Important Birthday

Speaking of awesome, today is Robert E. Howard's birthday. That's right, the guy that brought you the unbridled genius of Solomon Kane and the sheer awesomeness of Kull the Conqueror turned 103 today. Without him, we would never have had that Kevin Sorbo movie!

Oh, and he also had something to do with that Conan guy as well....

I don't have time to write a blog entry to truly do this man's birthday justice, so look for that in the near future. Maybe.

Happy Birthday, Mac!

The Macintosh is 25! To celebrate, watch this:



And remember, without the Macintosh, we wouldn't have the iPhone or the iPod.

The Demon of Poetry Revision

Every now and then, and frequently in my case, a poet comes to the point where he and his poem are standing in the middle of dusty main street, looking squinty-eyed into each other's faces as a tumbleweed blows by in the background. As you can gather, being the perceptive type, that time is very much like thepresent.

I am in a poetry class, and part of that poetry class is the regular requirement to write poetry. Writing it isn't bad; I am all for writing poetry. The drawback is that, once the poem is written, I have to show it to people (and not the people of my choosing) for their feedback. Now, I have a real problem showing things before they're done, and this insight became the reason I sat down today with the germ of a blog entry in my head: before I show a poem to someone, it is mutable, elastic, in a transitory state from present to perfect. I can change whatever. But once I have shown someone, it becomes sedentary, the consistency of old honey, because I have put my name on it. I have presented it by saying, "This is my poem. These are my words." And in that moment, something shifts from "How can I improve this?" to "How can I justify this to myself?" I tell myself that the poem has to be good enough now, regardless of its actual quality, because to admit otherwise is to admit that it wasn't good enough then, when someone else read it and heard its imperfection.

Ideally, I could take a poetry class in two parts. The first semester would be just writing the poems. The second semester, with a summer or so between the two for cooling down, would be about revising those poems. That would give me the time to sit and chew the poems I've written for a few months before anyone else has to see them, so I have a chance to make them as good as they can be. Otherwise, what's the use of receiving advice when I know it's something I myself will change soon?

But then again, perhaps all that time would just make me like every word, every comma all the more, and I would be all the more resistant to change when the time comes.

Maybe I should just move to a cabin with a sheepdog named Roger and keep all my poems in a big iron-bound chest, only to be found years after my death.

If you have a cabin and/or a sheepdog that looks like a Roger, look me up.

Another Ennui-Laced Blog of Ennuiness

I have just spent about the last half-hour doing nothing. "Eff all," if I were to use harsh language. I've done nothing but look at websites that don't amuse me. Of course, I know what I should be doing: I should be finishing my homework for poetry class. Failing that, I should at least call one of my very good acquaintances and say, "What's up. Wanna hang out?" But I haven't even been able to do that. I've eaten just about an entire packet of lebkuchen cookies, but even that rush of sugar hasn't been enough to yank me out of my stupor. I feel as though all of my motivation has fallen off the bottom of the car with a "plunk" when I hit a bump. It's a dangerous time to be blogging, my friends.

Speaking of blogging, I am hereby putting a moratorium on the term "blogosphere." I just don't like it.

And between you and me, artist-formerly-known-as-blogosphere, I'm annoyed that I have to actively read the poetry of a small group student poets randomly assigned to me by my poetry class and try to make fruitful comments on it. Every week. As though I wasn't doing that enough already for the full-class workshops. That's reading and improving six student poems a week. How am I going to find the strength to write my own poems, I ask you, particularly after tromping through six more or less crappy poems and trying to give a damn about each of them? Particularly with the especially soul-sucking addition of knowing that the comments I finally do tear bloodily from my cerebrum will at best be ignored and will at worst cause offense and consternation not normally seen outside natural disasters. Don't tell my teacher I said this. I'm a good boy. I'll behave.

Oh, screw it. Come 'ere, last lebkuchen....

New(er) Blog Post

I typed this up a minute ago, but the internet erased it. As one colleage would term it, it disappeared into "dataspace," the realm electronic information goes when it doesn't go to its destination. That being said, the term already exists as merely the data storage role of the entire linked electronic system, which I think is a much more logical use for the term anyway. Sorry, colleague. You're going to have to coin a different word.

I dug out my old digital camera this Christmas and even recharged it, but I couldn't find any floppies to put in it. Yes, it saves to floppy. Yes, it is that ancient. It is practically a relic. It might count as a historic artifact. At any rate, I still don't have any pictures for you here. Just more words.

The resolution this year is the same it's been since 2002: finish a novel.

It's about damn time I did.