I don’t know these people, but I bet they had one hell of a reception. Fun (and surprisingly moving)!
A Useful Typo
…just now encountered, although I myself can’t use it this exact moment. Permission granted to do with as you will. Definition supplied free of charge:
fumor (fyoo’-mor), n. A rotten mood; a silent stewing of one’s psyche in frustrating but unalterable circumstances. E.g., Dealing with the idiots in her bridge club always put Madge in a fumor, but what could she do? They were her friends.
fumorous (fyoo’-mor-us), adj. Tending to induce or having already induced a fumor. E.g., Ack! The line to get a book signed by the famous author formed a fumorous, two-block serpent stretching down the rainy street.
fumor, fumored, fumoring, v.t. To regard a frustrating situation balefully, often wishing the most ill of wills upon the persons or other entities which have put one here. E.g., With his fully pregnant bride enduring contractions in the back seat of his car, Jerry could do little but fumor the officious traffic cop. The sonofabitch was standing in a pile of excrement left by a passing farm animal, but Jerry was damned if he’d share the information.
(Also feel free to localize the spelling as appropriate: fumour, etc.)
Sudden, Radiant Magic
From whiskey river:
In the morning I mused
It won’t return, the magic of life
it won’t returnSuddenly in my house the sun
became alive for me
and the table with bread on it
gold
and the flower on the table
and the glasses
gold
And what happened to the sadness
In the sadness too, radiance.
(“Zelda” (Zelda Schneersohn Mishkovsky), from The Spectacular Difference)
….and:
Gazing at the Cascade on Lu Mountain
Where crowns a purple haze
A shimmer in sunlight rays
The hill called Incense-Burner Peak,
from farTo see, hung over the torrent’s wall,
That waterfall
Vault sheer three thousand feet, you’d say
The Milky Way
was tumbling from the heavens, star on star.
(Li Bai, a/k/a Li Po)
…and:
Stuff your eyes with wonder… Live as if you’d drop dead in ten seconds. See the world. It’s more fantastic than any dream made or paid for in factories.
There Are Some Cures for Pre-Summertime Blues
Wanted to draw your attention to a couple of recent donations to the “life is complex and frustrating, so let’s go have some fun!” cause.
First, you can generally look to the Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast blog for a pick-me-up. (And before breakfast, say researchers, is when 99% of the populace most needs picking up. (The other 1% need it most while they’re sitting on barstools and fantasizing about Mr. or Ms. Right, as the case may be.))
But today’s post, “Some Cartoons for You,” just made me grin from ear to ear. (It might even have made the grin wrap around to the back of my neck — an alarming sight, no doubt, for the people behind me in the elevator this morning.) As is usually the case at 7-Imp, the focus is on children’s books and illustrators — specifically, in this case, illustrators who favor a cartoon-like style of art.
It’s pretty darned hard for me to look at this without smiling, and it’s not even the whole image (from “Mr.” [Tom] Warburton’s 1000 Times No — see a reproduction of the entire page at the 7-Imp site):
Paying Attention to Your Sense of Play
I’d already written this post’s title. And I almost began the body of it with these words: “Sometimes, you just have to”—
But, nah. I don’t think everyone, not even every writer, “just has to” do almost anything, much less experience the sort of off-the-wall moment I did one afternoon, years ago. And even less than that, to actually follow up on it.
This was back in the days when I was living on my savings and trying to Be a Fulltime Writer. (If you notice the contradiction in terms there, on either side of the and, you’re not the only one.) I was reading the paper one day after lunch. It had been a productive morning writing session, and I was feeling a bit burnt-out but still not quite ready to toss away the afternoon on something other than writing. Just, y’know, not necessarily that writing — what I was working on every day.
So I was reading the paper, as I said, and my attention was caught by the Ann Landers advice column on the page opposite the comics. “Dear Ann Landers,” it began (they all began that way). “I was a closet smoker who went through a pack a day for 20 years and tried to quit dozens of times. I failed because I felt as if I was depriving myself of a great deal of pleasure even though I knew in my heart that cigarettes were killing me…”
To this point, a fairly conventional letter. Yet even as you read of this guy’s struggle with the Tobacco Demon, you could sense, lurking in the wings, a but. You could sense he wasn’t writing to seek advice. He was writing to offer it.
And so he did.
Something about the solution he came up with just suddenly struck me as bizarre. Flat-out hilarious, even. I’d been a smoker myself, and the thought that I might actually employ this solution back then, on the occasions when I’d most wanted a cigarette, just, well, it just unhinged me.
It Is a Tweet Universally Acknowledged…
Truly brilliant stuff. Very brief excerpt:
TheRealJaneAusten:
It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of good fortune must be in want of a wife.MrsB:
A Mr Bingley–worth 50,000 followers a year–has joined Twitter! He’s brought a friend, Mr Darcy–worth 100,000 followers a year! Pls RTMrsB:
@JaneB @LizzyB @MaryBsaphorisms @KittyB @LydiaB I will have one of you girls married into internet fame yet. Just you wait.LizzyB:
@MrsB But mother, I think we can pull ourselves up by our dooce-straps just fine.MrsB:
Blogcasting: How to find husbands for your daughters: http://tinyurl/momblog Now with free giveaway from our Etsy embroidery shop. Pls RTLizzieB:
@JaneB If I could love a man who would love me enough to take me for a mere 50 followers, I should be well pleased…LizzieB:
@JaneB …but such a man wouldn’t be sensible & I could never love a man who was out of his twits. LOLJaneB:
Oh @LizzyB, it is my ardent wish to marry 4 love. Love, respect AND dual laptops would be most agreeable. #iamdullbutpretty
…and it gets much, much better. I am in awe.
[Hat tip to Maggie, Dammit.][Aside to self: In any week when you really need to use the Web for productive reasons, do not allow Google Reader to open, under any circumstances.]
4 or 5 Crazee Guys*
Really — it’s been, like, Thou shalt not… and Stay thy hand… and all the rest of those Biblical-sounding injunctions. I’ve been strong. I’ve cared. Ultimately, alas, although I wrestled with the angel, s/he has overcome me. It was never easy.
And in the end, it was not even possible.
Yes. It’s time I mentioned The Firesign Theatre.
Collisions Between Poetry and… Other Stuff
[Artist’s rendering above depicts “planets colliding in a sun-like binary system about
300 light-years from Earth, in the constellation Aries.” Click image for more info.]
From whiskey river:
Poetry
I, too, dislike it: there are things that are important beyond all this
fiddle.
Reading it, however, with a perfect contempt for it, one discovers
in
it after all, a place for the genuine.
Hands that can grasp, eyes
that can dilate, hair that can rise
if it must, these things are important not because ahigh-sounding interpretation can be put upon them but because
they are
useful. When they become so derivative as to become
unintelligible,
the same thing may be said for all of us, that we
do not admire what
we cannot understand: the bat
holding on upside down or in quest of something toeat, elephants pushing, a wild horse taking a roll, a tireless wolf
under
a tree, the immovable critic twitching his skin like a horse that
feels a flea, the base-
ball fan, the statistician —
nor is it valid
to discriminate against “business documents andschool-books”; all these phenomena are important. One must make
a distinction
however: when dragged into prominence by half poets, the result
is not poetry,
nor till the poets among us can be
“literalists of
the imagination” — above
insolence and triviality and can presentfor inspection, “imaginary gardens with real toads in them,” shall
we have
it. In the meantime, if you demand on the one hand,
the raw material of poetry in
all its rawness and
that which is on the other hand
genuine, you are interested in poetry.
(Marianne Moore [source])
…and:
The wind blows hard among the pines
Toward the beginning
Of an endless past
Listen: you’ve heard everything.
(Shinkichi Takahashi [source])
Not from whiskey river:
The Teachable Moment
I don’t usually just post a link to someplace else, without using it as a springboard for my own ramblings. (Indeed, one of those ramblings is forthcoming.)
But this slice of life would be ruined by elaboration: “Choose your own adventure at Lee NAILS” (Deb on the Rocks, via Maggie). Highly recommended reading for parents of teenagers. Or parents of teenagers to be. Or former teenagers. Or future teenagers.
The setup:
My son and I were driving home from the dog park last night, talking about the politics of the park (they can be thick, with both dogs and owners throwing down on any given day) and Swine Flu and his course selections for next year and very other important stuff like dinner.
The sign at the side of the road (in the photo at the right) caught my eye. I’ve never been to Lee’s, but I know it’s a stripmall nail salon. Free wine/beer/soft drinks! I guess the recession must be killing pedicure places. If money’s tight, it’s pretty easy to say “Ya know, nail polish is three bucks at CVS, I bet I can slap some lotion and paint on my own damn toes at home.” It’s really not that tricky.
Then I heard my son Salo ask me, “Mom, did you hear me, I asked you which one would you choose?”
And things go on from there…
These Things Must Be Done Delicately
From the originating page: “Osmanthus [JES: a/k/a cinnamon flower] is a unique Asian flower, with a smooth and rich scent of green tea, apricot and suede leather. It is used to scent green tea as well as special confections and Chinese baked goods. The peak of the osmanthus flowers season is… end of September until mid October, when the days start to become short, and rainstorms fight to take over the last sunny days. The osamnthus flowers falls to the wet ground and release their dusky aroma which fills the moist, air.”
From whiskey river:
In our idleness, cinnamon blossoms fall.
In night quiet, spring mountains stand
empty. Moonrise startles mountain birds:
here and there, cries in a spring gorge.
(Wang Wei)
…and:
People are delicate, aren’t they?
(Yusunari Kawabata)
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