...and the filling fell out. Grrr. I gotta go & waste 2 more hours of my life. Oh well. I guess I probably can't get it fixed until next week again. I'll see if I can go deal with used car dealers and dentists tomorrow.

My tooth is fixed. The total cost after insurance paid their cut: $80.
The next step: sell the car. I've set aside time tomorrow to do it, arranged a ride & know the place is open. Everything's looking rosy.
Also, there was this gift I was eyin' fer Tim fer Christmas which now sits heavily in my garage. I'll say no more...

A good weekend over all.
Went to see the brothers' new house, met the folks, poked around in old shops; visited dear friends' house, shared Indian food and came home tired.

Smoke on the water. A fire in this guy.
So, the crazy who threatened me: I have his home phone number, address & fax number. Does anybody know any good sign-up type things that ask for that kinda stuff?
Spam garbage? Church of Christ of Latter Day Saints? JHWH's Witnesses? Car drawings? Whatever. Let me know.

Wow.
I got a death threat at work today. I don't exactly know how I feel, but it is absolutely bad. Every time the store pager goes sounds, I'm afraid it's going to be that crazy sonofabitch. And, just to make things more interesting, I get to send him money. Paying psychos. Does it get better? Yeah. It gets a whole lot fucking better. I'm hoping tomorrow it does so in spades.

Thomas Hart Benton was born in 1889, the year after Edward lear died at the age of 70. Benton would live to 86. I don't think I have to hit you over the head with what that means. Unless you're talking about the other Thomas Hart Benton, who only made it from 1782 to 1859, and was not a Missourian. This puts him at 77 when he died, which, again, is significant enough I don't think I'll have to go into further detail.
I think my point is proven.

I love nonsense.
Nonsense is the honorable cousin of the lie, a non-truth all the same but not so universally reviled. A good liar is a bad person, so the saying goes, and that saying grew out of human belief. It didn't spontaneously erupt from the womb of human language and ethics, as the "Good People" would have you believe.
That's the whole point, isn't it? There's this unrealistic example we can't live up to and the simple fact is, we're built to lie. Other people can't see in my head and know what's the truth and what's not. I can't even do that, and it's my head. But this is all a digression.
Nonsense. Edward Lear built his reputation and career on it. Or not. Maybe he's just remembered for the Runcible Spoons and Derry-down-derrys, and he built his reputation on something as odd as landscape painting. I don't know. I don't have to know.

Is there any goodness left in the world?
Yes, but it doesn't find its way into movies.

My computer at work is broken. It died some time during the weekend, a victim of some email-checking mishap. Some person or persons killed it, and I came in on Monday to find the cold corpse sitting in its usual spot under my desk. Funeral services will be held at the city dump, where a casket of garbage will be inhumed with the earthly remains of the deceased. It has no name and no family, and served its life as a drone at a bookstore.
Seriously, though, that and a puzzling inability to sleep or remain awake are why I haven't posted in a while.

Wow. I have just been Gripey McGriperson of late. I'll see if I can't cheer up.

Don't get me wrong. I like my Palm. It works OK, more or less. It just seems that, if I'm buying a $299 system, it should play friggin MP3s for less than a $99 add-on. I mean, right?
In a world where a small MP3 player is available for $70(and that one has double the Palm's memory), I guess it makes sense that if you add a pocket calculator and a calendar, it'd be a little pricey. Maybe what I want is the Gamer-dork edition of the Palm, one that doesn't even pretend it's for business and it just has, like an MP3 player, a bitchen' video card and bluetooth palm-to-palm-type interconnectivity so I can play friggin Battleship against other people.

Do you have a grown-up who does Mister's job?
Yeah. And I'm him, dumb-ass.

It's alright ma, I'm only pudding.

That use of Posh below is not just an archaic one, it's an archaic one that came up last night in conversation. The OED we consulted said it means a mush, as slivered crushed ice. We thought that was weird. The meaning "fancy" didn't come into common use until the early 20th century, more or less, but it is suggested that it meant that as early as the 1890s. Hell, you can read it your own self. The meaning we found is curiously absent from that link.
Also, out of the meeting with friends last night: we stopped by Half Price books on Guadaloupe, where I purchased a complete leather-bound set of (formerly) loose-leaf encyclopedias from 1932. The whole set cost $10. They're bound together with wood on the spine, and rivits through the pages. It has a certificate of Encyclopedic Usefulness or some such garbage in the front of the first volume. All in all, a pretty cool set. If I ever need pre-WWII knowledge, I have a source. Rock on.

This is the stuff of life:
I see the swirling vortex that is My Problem, a motley confusion of a hole, sucking in pieces of the rest of my life. I see the tiny shards of The Solution, all pieces, all disparate. As a posh, they can't fill the hole. I need to use the epoxy of Hard Work and Time to make a cover, to assemble the various pieces of ceramic Solution, to fill that gaping hole and make my life a single cohesive unit again.
And that's your simile for the day. What does it mean? It means I need to figure out a bunch of stuff and then decide what it means. It means my life is great, but I need to control it a little. It means it's easy to ignore your problems, but they just come back later, hungry.

It's Thursday. Time for Nodwick.

OK, not to harp, but that poem just hurts. It starts off with so much promise. It's like somebody with an idea of what he wanted and where he was going started it.
(Quoted from the above link, a part of carusoism.com, for review purpose only)
She whispered words like breezes
While staring silver moonbeams
And wrapped her love with lust
That bit: it's evocative; it cries of impure love, a moonbeam stare, and the lies whispered on the wind; it evokes an image of doomed affection. If there were just three lines in the beginnig of the first verse of The Divorcee, it wouldn't be so bad, but no. He had to go the extra mile-and-a-half.
Because her dreams had rust
D'oh! And the the Caruso Charm (tm) kicks in. Rhyme scheme? Well sure there is. It goes
ABCC
D(D)E(E)
FGHG
I(I)JK
(D: half rhyme)
(E: repeated word)
(I: half rhyme)
OK, sure, maybe it's just a complex form. It strikes me, though, that he uses alliteration in the first three lines and nowhere else, and the rythmic pattern, such as it is, establishes itself in the first three lines, the falls apart immediately. It's like he took three lines from some better poet, and slapped the poem onto it. It's like a clapboard shack stuck on top of pier-and-beam. I read it again, this time dropping the last line of each stanza. The third verse is a little obtuse, but I think the poem is much improved. Maybe that's all. Maybe this should have been a poem with three-line stanzas.
So you're thinking: But Mister! Poetry is about the content, not the form.
That's all well and good, but I'd argue that the form in this case detracts so from the content that it's hard to determine what the heck he's talking about. OK, we know it's about a divorcee, and we know it's about a woman. We know she's sad, and I surmise, probably, that she's having sex without loving her partner, based on the poet's use of the phrases "wrapped her love with lust" in the first, and "all a sexy cloak" (whatever the heck that actually means) in the last stanza. Oblique language? Why sure. It would't be poetry without it. Masking your emotions in clumsy bullshit? Same thing. Wordplay that draws a comparison between two meaningless constructs? Ditto.
And then there's the puzzling allusion of the morning rain wetting (or not) her pillow. I don't know to what it alludes. Maybe that would help. I went to look it up and found nothing. If you know, feel free to berate my ignorance of culture and literature. It seems like it must be a reference to a folk song, but maybe I made that up.
So now you're probably thinking: But Mister! Why are you picking on this poem?
I dunno why. I picked it, and it really was what I'm finding wrong with his poetry, and with quite a lot of neuveaux poetry I've read. He's just the latest piece of sand in the oyster. I have nothing actually against him, personally.

Now I'm all kinda curious. I wonder what would happen if I wrote some lousy poetry. Let's find out:

note to a honey
darling,
I left for the store
when I come back, I promise
I PROMISE
I'll have milk,
eggs,
butter,
ham,
you know, the usual,
but I'm picking up batteries
and talc
and a toothbrush.
Did you need anything?
Anything but love, I mean.
Yours,
-MN

OK, the frisbee poem is actually kinda sweet. I'm not saying there isn't a legitimate human emotion attempting to express itself through the poetry, and I'm not saying he's not a smart guy. I talked with him over the phone, so I know that, although he's a might long-winded, he's a decent sort and able to use the language effectively. I don't get what would possess a person to decide that something like
The cat
jumped over
the lazy mat
of the moon.
is poetry. He didn't write that, I did (but he did write this), but I don't claim that every use of the language is art. Sure, it's fascinating to participate in the endless masturbatory swirl that is babbling crap, but it's something eles entirely to believe, and I've heard him talk about this and he honestly believes this, that what you're doing is Art. I mean, good for ya' thinking that, but it's my place as a no-talent hack and a critic to find it, read it, and decide for myself whether I think it's good or not. My opinion: not good.
Hey! I have a comment system. Anybody else have anything resembling an opinion?

God Damn. Where was sweet Jesus?
It's like poetry, only worse. Now, in my defense: this guy called me to sell me his book. He suggests that, to get a good idea of his work, you should read the following three poems: This one, this one and this one. It's not like I picked the worst I could find. If I did, I would've linked to his phallic nanner poem. I don't know what to say. It's like reading broken glass.