If you’ve ever wondered why people around my age were less likely to do drugs than people who grew in the sixties, I have a fairly simple theory. We had stuff like this to watch on Saturday morning, thus rendering the notion of hallucinogenic drugs largely redundant.
I mean, once you’ve tripped on Sid and Marty Krofft, LSD really has nothing to offer you. And that’s not even getting INTO the cartoon show where the Harlem Globetrotters were superheroes.
thatcrazycajun reminds us that today is World Poetry Day, and invites us to post a favourite poem in honour of the event.
This made me think about Dave Alway, whose memorial gathering I was unfortunately unable to attend a couple of weekends ago, which in turn brought to mind this wonderful poem by John M. Ford, which was recently referenced on a newsgroup I read.
So here’s a poem on World Poetry Day, in honour and memory of Dave.
Against Entropy
by John M. Ford
The worm drives helically through the wood
And does not know the dust left in the bore
Once made the table integral and good;
And suddenly the crystal hits the floor.
Electrons find their paths in subtle ways,
A massless eddy in a trail of smoke;
The names of lovers, light of other days—
Perhaps you will not miss them. That’s the joke.
The universe winds down. That’s how it’s made.
But memory is everything to lose;
Although some of the colors have to fade,
Do not believe you’ll get the chance to choose.
Regret, by definition, comes too late;
Say what you mean. Bear witness. Iterate.
So earlier today in her journal, cadhla made a statement to the effect of how she even doesn’t pretend to be a dumb blonde, as it doesn’t fit her self-image, and besides which, she said, “The dumb ones die fast.”
And, that got me to thinking. This usually indicates danger.
The Dumb Ones Don’t Live Long
by Rob Wynne
TTTO: “Only The Good Die Young” by Billy Joel
Well, hey there, Blondie, don’t make me search
You think you can run faster than I can lurch
Or that you’ll be safe if you hide in a church
I hate to tell you that you’re wrong
Well, they showed you a house and they said stay away
But you couldn’t wait past the end of the day
Now your brains are the center dish on my buffet
You will not outlive this song
You know the dumb ones, they don’t live long
You might have heard I died and was buried and gone
But I’ve come back and I’m here until dawn
When you see my hand coming up through the lawn
It might be best if you ran along
So come on, now Blondie, leave me a trail
Your attempts to escape are predestined to fail
Sooner or later, I’m bound to prevail
And your flesh will make me strong
You know the dumb ones, they don’t live long
You might think that the dead would just stay in the ground
But I’ve never been one for just lying around
And you can’t hide long before you are found
You shouldn’t go where you don’t belong
You know the dumb ones, they don’t live long
Come out come out come out, Blondie don’t make me search
You think you run much faster than I can lurch
Or that you are safe if you hide in a church
I hate to tell you that you’re wrong
You know the dumb ones, they don’t live long
A few days ago, the syndicated comic strip Candorville ran this strip:
The strip prompted the following discussion on rec.arts.comics.strips:
aemeijers
>
> “Antonio E. Gonzalez”
> news:00p1v2l4gsofm0stovvats4abbliehk6qb@4ax.com…
>> So . . .the goatee and eyepatch make that “Evil Lemont”?:
>
>
> The Goatee is from a ST TOS episode, but I don’t remember an eyepatch being
> involved.
I replied, almost jokingly:
Possibly the eyepatch is a reference to the 1970 Dr. Who episode “Inferno”?
Or am I overthinking this?
This morning, the artist who writes and draws Candorville, Darrin Bell, replied:
You’re definitely not overthinking this. I’m amazed that anyone caught that.
I have no words for how chuffed I feel right now. 🙂 *does a geeky little dance*
“The moral of this story, of course, is that you’re not going to hear the world’s greatest rock ‘n’ roll band by listening to records and downloading mp3s in your room. You have to get out and get caught up in the spirit, yell and scream, dance if you feel like it, and walk out at the end with a thousand volts of power coursing through your body.
They’re playing tonight. You’re probably not going to be there, but they’re out there somewhere. Go find them.”
–Ed Ward, “The Greatest Rock Band in the World”, Paste Magazine (Feb 07)
I read a lot of online comics. Some I read because they’re impossibly funny, and some I read out of cultural inertia.
One that falls into the latter category is “The Wizard of Id”. Today however, I got a good laugh out of it, not because the core joke was that funny, but because I couldn’t help reading it in a poly context:
Polyamory puts a whole new spin on this one, doesn’t it? 🙂
For the benefit of the 40% or so of my friends list who don’t know about this
My dear friend cadhla, who is indeed one of the coolest things in the word either on or off of toast, is wrapping up the recording of her first studio album, Stars Fall Home.
I have already heard several rough mixes from this album. The word “breathtaking” If you like literate, musically challenging, story-oriented music with passion and depth, you want a copy of this album. (If you’re thinking “But, I don’t really like filk music, don’t worry. Seanan’s music is quite accessible to anyone. If you’re not sure, e-mail me privately, and I’ll provide you with a sample or two.)
Lucky for you, you can still pre-order it for a limited time.
Order early. Order often. Operators are standing by.
Today, I am teh cranky.
Had to get up at 3am this morning, ostensibly to do a mysql upgrade on our mail system, but things didn’t go smoothly, and now I’m at work, tired, and irritable.
So, cheer me up? Tell me what’s wonderful and brilliant in your life?
Kitanzi and I are sitting at the gate at SFO, waiting to board. Con was good, more later.
Despite being one of the last people to go to bed on Friday, I woke up on Saturday morning in time to avail myself of the free breakfast. I sat with filkerdave, and after finishing my food, later sat and chatted with katyhh and tarkrai. At some point, I realized the time and caught the last half of Lady Mondegreen’s “Choose Your Own Adventure Workshop”, where they had put a bunch of topics into a hat and drew a new one out every time they exhausted the previous topic.
Once that was done, I wandered out into the lounge area and chatted with various people, so I missed the next couple of concerts. I was in and out of the Main Concert, but I did fortunately catch the Crooklets singing “Alien Salad Abduction” and also demoneyes brilliant parody of callylevy‘s “Just Beyond”. I had stepped out to fetch some folks for filkerdave‘s spot when I got waylaid by the charming photographer who was at the con to cover the vent for an Irish youth magazine, and I spent a good deal of the next hour chatting with her and letting her take my picture.
The main concert was followed by a reunion of the original lineup of Three Weird Sisters. Since all three of them happened to be at the con, they decided to put on an hour set, and, while I admit to being greatly biased, they were fantastic. if you had told a total stranger that these three hadn’t performed together in over a year, I’m not sure you could have convinced them. The set was tight, high energy, and a hell of a lot of fun, and it was really nice to see the old dynamic still exists when they get on stage.
After the 3WS concert was supposed to be dinner, but that was when the first of the major hotel snafus struck. It seems that somehow the hotel had interpreted “Dinner from 5-7pm” as “Dinner at 7pm”, so there was a scramble to get dinner out. Worse, at this time we discovered that the hotel had, despite a contractual prohibition against booking other noisy events into the facility, booked a disco and a skittle alley for Saturday night; in fact, they rather comically wanted to set the skittle alley up in the main Programming room. This led to a great number of the concom having to jump into crisis mode, but fortunately, everything was eventually sorted out, with the skittles being put out of doors, dinner moved to a function room on the far end of the hotel, and coordination between the disco DJ and the con’s sound tech crew to try and ensure there’d be little interference from the dance.
The fears of the noisy disco also required a slight rearrangement of the evening programming, moving UK GOH Mike Richards up an hour, as he would tend to be quieter than the other two performers. What with the delay of dinner and lending support to the committee, I didn’t get to catch all of it, but I really enjoyed what I heard.
After Mike was the band Chimes, who aptly demonstrated how you can make sure everyone at the con gets a concert slot despite limited time. I lost track of the number of personnel changes the band went through, as various people filled in for the band members who were sidelined by illness. All of it was amazing, but my favourite song had to be “Thief in Little Pieces”, wherein little_cinnamon learned to not to let Phil rewrite his lyrics without checking on them beforehand. This rule belongs in the same category as “Don’t look at Judi Miller while you’re on stage.”
The evening wrapped up with the absolutely fabulous Lady Mondegreen, who delivered everything I’d come to expect from them over the years since they debuted. I’m a sucker for harmony and pretty girls, and LMG is rather obviously strong in both suits, and I’m biased to begin with for various personal reasons, but to say they blew the room away is rank understatement. I especially loved the ultra funky filk of “Lady Marmelade”, with fleetfootmike and demoneyes providing guitar and drum backing. The only regret I have is having the camera battery die shortly after sweetmusic_27 joined the band to turn the trio into a quartet. But not being able to take pictures meant I got to kick back and enjoy the music.
Once the concerts were officially over, I went to hang out with cadhla and sweetmusic_27, and we played the exciting parlour game called “Quick! Find something Seanan can eat!” This is no mean feat after 10pm on a Saturday night in Basingstoke, but the game was finally won by securing an expensive but indifferent cheese-and-veg pizza from room service. Once fortified, we wandered into Open Filk, where I recall singing a couple of adamselzer‘s songs, and I don’t remember what else. We stayed up until way too late singing, and then Amy and I stayed up talking until later still, and I finally got to sleep somewhere around 5am.
End Part the Third…
(Coming soon: Part the fourth, in which there is oversleeping, closing ceremonies, and we get in trouble for singing in a pub. Don’t miss the thrilling conclusion, next time on Flashback!)
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