Serendipity

I'm looking at the face of Mental Blog, and off there to the right, in the sidebar, I have two little display units, one on top of the other. The first is called Random Wisdom. The second, Quote of the Day. Ordinarily I wouldn't point them out. They are there for you to notice if you've managed to spend more than 10 seconds on the page.

But today I want to draw attention to them, because the two quotes, entirely without my help, somehow seem to complement one another. The Random Wisdom was inserted by me a few days ago. But the Quote of the Day comes randomly from the Quote of the Day Magic Wizard, so I never know what's going to show up.

And here's what they say:

In the company of others, guard your speech.
Whenever you are alone, guard your mind.
Dipamkara Atisha: The Jewel Rosary of the Bodhisattvas

Silence is one of the hardest arguments to refute.
Josh Billings

The first is obviously a Dharma quotation. That's what Random Wisdom is...my random pick of Dharma quotes. Atisha was one of the great arya beings who helped establish Buddhism in Tibet. He was one of the first, if not the first, to codify the teachings into a graduated path known as Lam Rim.

The second is also a Dharma quotation. But not quite so intentional. I didn't know who Josh Billings was until I Googled his name. Wikipedia says old Josh was "the pen name of humorist born Henry Wheeler Shaw (20 April 1818 – 14 October 1885). He was perhaps the second most famous humor writer and lecturer in the United States in the second half of the 19th century after Mark Twain, although his reputation has not fared so well with later generations."

He was also the guy who really made famous the line about the squeaky wheel getting the grease. Not bad. One hundred and fifty years later, we may not know his name, but we sure know what he said. Wouldn't we all like to claim something like that?

Want a Brand-New Novel for Free?

My friend Marianne Paul sent this link to a just-published novel by Charles Bock, which Random House is offering for free download, for a limited time.

Here's a screenshot of the web page. Click on it and it will take you to the actual page.

But here's something interesting. The download is free. It's still copyrighted, of course. Nevertheless, it's free. But in the background, difficult to notice under that messy red "Download" button, there is a further copyright message. It says:

© Copyright 2008. Charles Bock. This is our intellectual property, so kindly don't fucking steal it.

What exactly are the implications of this? I'm not sure. If it's free, you can't steal it. Except by republishing it and claiming it as your own. Would anyone actually go to that kind of trouble?

I just don't know what to make of it. This definitely goes to the whole debate over copyright, digital rights, plagiarism and the Net.

Top 100 Books

I found this list of top books a while back, but I can't remember where it was.

When I look at it I'm surprised at the number of them I've read. Also, it seems quite an arbitrary list. James Joyce at the bottom? But anyway, lists are fun. Titles with an asterisk are those I've read.

1.The Da Vinci Code (Dan Brown)*
(Great page turner. By comparison, the movie sucked. And furthermore, I don't care what the judges said, you'll never convince me that the whole premise wasn't based on Holy Blood & Holy Grail...or that the controversy wasn't manufactured by the publisher to boost sales of both books...)
2.Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen)
3.To Kill A Mockingbird (Harper Lee)*
4.Gone With The Wind (Margaret Mitchell)
5.The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King (Tolkien)*
6.The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring (Tolkien)*
7.The Lord of the Rings: Two Towers (Tolkien)*
(I read the entire trilogy approximately every five years.)
8. Anne of Green Gables (L.M. Montgomery)
9. Outlander (Diana Gabaldon)
10.A Fine Balance (Rohinton Mistry)
11.Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Rowling)*
(I want J.K. Rowling to stop using the word "revision" for "review".)
12.Angels and Demons (Dan Brown)
13.Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Rowling)*
14. A Prayer for Owen Meany (John Irving)
15. Memoirs of a Geisha (Arthur Golden)
(Saw the movie. Loved it.)
16.Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (Rowling)*
17. Fall on Your Knees(Ann-Marie MacDonald)
18. The Stand (Stephen King)
19. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban(Rowling)*
20. Jane Eyre (Charlotte Bronte)
21.The Hobbit (Tolkien)*
(What has it got in its pocketses?)
22.The Catcher in the Rye (J.D. Salinger)*
(High school required reading.)
23.Little Women (Louisa May Alcott)
24. The Lovely Bones (Alice Sebold)
25. Life of Pi (Yann Martel)*
26.The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Douglas Adams)*
(See previous post on this.)
27. Wuthering Heights (Emily Bronte)
28. The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe (C. S. Lewis)*
(Can't tell you how many times I've read this.)
29. East of Eden (John Steinbeck)
30. Tuesdays with Morrie(Mitch Albom)*
31. Dune (Frank Herbert)*
(A masterpiece. Again, the movie sucked.)
32.The Notebook (Nicholas Sparks)
33.Atlas Shrugged (Ayn Rand)*
(Ayn Rand makes me want to chew nails...both for her philosophy and her fictional style.)
34. 1984 (George Orwell)*
(Orwell makes me want to chew peyote buttons...just to forget about things for a while...)
35. The Mists of Avalon (Marion Zimmer Bradley)*
(Really well-written retelling of the Arthurian story from the women's point of view.)
36. The Pillars of the Earth (Ken Follett)*
37. The Power of One (Bryce Courtenay)
38. I Know This Much is True(Wally Lamb)
39. The Red Tent (Anita Diamant)
40.The Alchemist (Paulo Coelho)
41. The Clan of the Cave Bear (Jean M. Auel)
42. The Kite Runner (Khaled Hosseini)
43. Confessions of a Shopaholic (Sophie Kinsella)
44. The Five People You Meet In Heaven (Mitch Albom)
45. The Bible
(Too much violence. Too much sex. Too many characters.)
46. Anna Karenina (Tolstoy)
47.The Count of Monte Cristo (Alexandre Dumas)*
48.Angela’s Ashes (Frank McCourt)
49.The Grapes of Wrath (John Steinbeck)
50.She’s Come Undone (Wally Lamb)
51.The Poisonwood Bible (Barbara Kingsolver)*
(Kingsolver engages in the exercise of writing from several disparate points of view.)
52. A Tale of Two Cities (Dickens)
(Only managed the Coles Notes.)
53. Ender’s Game (Orson Scott Card)
54.Great Expectations (Dickens)*
55.The Great Gatsby (Fitzgerald)*
56. The Stone Angel (Margaret Laurence)*
57. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Rowling)*
58. The Thorn Birds (Colleen McCullough)
59. The Handmaid’s Tale (Margaret Atwood)*
(Oooh...scary.)
60. The Time Traveller’s Wife (Audrew Niffenegger)
61. Crime and Punishment (Fyodor Dostoyevsky)*
62.The Fountainhead (Ayn Rand)*
(See above)
63. War and Peace (Tolsoy)*
(I read this for the first time when I was 12 years old.)
64. Interview With The Vampire (Anne Rice)
65. Fifth Business (Robertson Davies)*
(You really can tell he's from Ontariario.)
66. One Hundred Years Of Solitude (Gabriel Garcia Marquez)
67. The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants (Ann Brashares)
68. Catch-22 (Joseph Heller)*
(This is a Major Major piece of work.)
69. Les Miserables (Hugo)*
(I first read this probably around the same time I read WarrenPeace. I did not then understand why Police Inspector Javert hounded Jean Valjean. Valjean had done his time (originally) and paid his debt to society. What right had Javert to persecute him? I recently re-read it. My opinion has not changed.)
70. The Little Prince (Antoine de Saint-Exupery)*
71. Bridget Jones’ Diary (Fielding)
(Great movie.)
72. Love in the Time of Cholera (Marquez)
73.Shogun (James Clavell)*
(Everything I know about Japan I learned from this book.)
74. The English Patient (Michael Ondaatje)
(Great movie.)
75.The Secret Garden (Frances Hodgson Burnett)
76. The Summer Tree (Guy Gavriel Kay)
77. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (Betty Smith)
78.The World According To Garp (John Irving)
79. The Diviners (Margaret Laurence)*
80. Charlotte’s Web (E.B. White)
81. Not Wanted On The Voyage (Timothy Findley)
82. Of Mice And Men (Steinbeck)
83. Rebecca (Daphne DuMaurier)
84. Wizard’s First Rule (Terry Goodkind)
85. Emma (Jane Austen)
86. Watership Down(Richard Adams)
87. Brave New World (Aldous Huxley)*
(Huxley makes me want to chew peyote buttons...just to forget about things for a while...)
88. The Stone Diaries (Carol Shields)*
89. Blindness (Jose Saramago)*
(Another masterpiece.)
90. Kane and Abel (Jeffrey Archer)
91. In The Skin Of A Lion (Ondaatje)*
(Everything I know about Toronto...well, actually, I didn't learn it from this book.)
92. Lord of the Flies (Golding)*
(More high school reading.)
93. The Good Earth(Pearl S. Buck)*
94. The Secret Life of Bees (Sue Monk Kidd)
95. The Bourne Identity (Robert Ludlum)
96. The Outsiders (S.E. Hinton)
97. White Oleander (Janet Fitch)
98. A Woman of Substance (Barbara Taylor Bradford)
99. The Celestine Prophecy (James Redfield)*
(I want Redfield to stop using the word "intensely" when he means "intently".)
100.Ulysses (James Joyce)*
(Still working on this one...about two-thirds through it...on my second attempt...I have no idea what it's about.)

Upcoming Jack Kerouac Movie

Curt Worden left a comment in my post about Jack Kerouac from Sept/07 to tell us about a new documentary about Kerouac called One Fast Move Or I'm Gone. There is still not much detail available about where we can see this film, but Curt says it will be forthcoming.

I didn't want to leave his comment languishing in the back pages, so I'm posting about it here. I'm sure Kerouac fans everywhere would want to know about it. Click on Curt's name to go to the website, where you can view a trailer.

And here's a screenshot of the web page:

13 Questions to Ask Before Publishing a Post On Your Blog

I like reading Darren Rowse over at ProBlogger. He's an excellent writer. He knows his stuff when it comes to blogging.

Many of his posts are instructional or informative. They cover topics like...ummm....how to write, for example, which is not strictly blogging but something good bloggers cannot do without. Or he writes about how to increase traffic to your blog. Among other things, that is one of the probloggers goals, cuz more traffic means more potential revenue. See, I've learned a little bit by reading Darren, altho if he looks at Mental Blog, he'll probably question that assertion.

Since I'm such a web/social flutterby (too erratic for me own good) I don't read everything that Darren posts. Not enough time. But now and then something really catches my eye.

So it was with his post of Jan.30, the one entitled: 13 Questions to Ask Before Publishing a Post On Your Blog. Well, I just thought I'd better go through them and see how I fared. I answered the questions not by checking any specific posting of mine, but the general trend of my bloggishness.

1. What was the main point of this post? have I made it clearly?

I'm a ramblin' guy. I meander. I wander. I hum. I haw. I engage in interminable preambles. Sometimes the post has no point. But often it does. And when I do get around to making my point, I usually manage to say, "Here's the point." And I have enough practise that I can generally make it clear. However, you, dear reader, often have to wade thru extraneous material. In such cases, I hope to be entertaining, at least.

2. What do I want readers of this post to do? have I led them to this action?

Hmmm...what do I want readers to do? Laugh. Cry. Piss their pants. Sign a petition. See, a problogger wants readers to follow some advice, or click on an ad, or end up on the Checkout page. I ain't got none of that. Sometimes I ask readers to do something. Sometimes I just want them to ponder.

3. Have I written something useful?

Huh! If I had mastered "useful" I'd be on the best-seller list.

4. Have I written something unique?

This one I can lay claim to. Much of what I write is utterly, fantastically unique.

5. Has what I’ve written taken me closer or further away from my blog’s goals?

This is another problogger question. Goals? If I had mastered goals, I'd be hiring Tony Robbins as my valet.

6. Have I used a title that draws people into my post?

I think I'm a pretty good headline writer. (Just look at the title of this post, eh?)

7. Are my spelling and grammar correct?

Huh! Look at my profile blurb. Spelling and grammar are anathema. They are why I am here in this Yoni School for Wayward Poets! Having said that, my rebellion is calculated and deliberate. I can spell write when I wants to, and my grammar is impeccable when it's not execrable. It's the oppositionist in me that refuses to spell.

8. Could I have said it more succinctly?

No. Or yes. Depends.

9. Have I credited sources of quotes and inspiration?

I try to be scrupulous about crediting sources...even when I have to make the names up.

10. Have I written something previously that relates to this post that I could link to? has someone else?

If I have something on Mental Blog that I can link to, I do. (Assuming I remember...) If someone else has something, and I know about it, I link. Link Love. Spread the positive vibes around, man. The positive electrons. Recycle, reuse, repeat, repeat, repeat.

11. Have I left room for my readers to add something to this post? have I invited them to?

That's a good question. My comments section is wide open. They's always room, brotha. On the more philosophical level, have I left room? I dunno. When I'm expressing my opinion, there are always gaps. Things I haven't thought of. Or I'm open to hearing the opposite view. But have I invited them? Not always. I've probably assumed that readers assumed they could comment if they wished.

12. What keywords will people search Google for on this topic? have I optimized this post for those words?

Keywords...hmmm...my tags are highly individual. Most of them, anyway. Which is not to say I don't use the standard ones in some cases. (Or maybe I don't really. If somebody was looking for a piece on the US election, would they find it with my tag: US Election Watch?)

13. How could I follow this post up with another that extends it?

Another good question. For the most part, I don't follow any particular narrative. So my posts are not necessarily connected. I write about whatever grabs me at a given moment. Sometimes there's room for extension or follow-up, but I don't often take advantage of it.

There it is. My conclusion? I am not a problogger. I am definitely a Mental Blogger. A problogger has discipline. I have chronic Mental Blog. But I have to say this. Darren asks some very good questions. And if I ever acquire the necessary ambition to axe this Blogger blog and play with the big boys on some other platform like maybe WordPress, or finally take the real plunge and work up an honest-to-goodness website, part of what I'll be doing will be following Darren's example and advice.

Meanwhile, I've managed to link to every post that Darren linked to in his post. Now that's what I call Link Love, and if it weren't so much fun making Link Love, I'd say he should probably be paying me.

Larry's Latest Poll

I noticed a women today writing with her pen gripped between the third finger and the ring finger. I've seen this several times over the years. It always seems to occur with people younger than I am. (Which includes almost everybody...check my profile.)

But I've always held my pen between index and third fingers. The other way seems extraordinarily awkward to me. Is it? I don't really know. I'm not going to bother trying to find out. I've already trained myself to write with both hands. That's enough, don't you think? (For the record, I am write-handed. I can right with my left, but it's slow and looks like I'm in Grade 2. It is completely legible though.)

So I wonder: Is this pen between third and fourth fingers common? I've seen it often enough. Did I miss something in the history of eddication? Is this the way they teach hand-righting now? Is it the better way? Vote on my poll and let me know.

Norman Mailer

January 31, 1923 - November 10, 2007

I've been reading Norman Mailer since I was a teenager. Since, according to my Blogger profile, I'm over 200 years old, that's a long time. The first book of his that I read was his first book, The Naked and the Dead. His war novel. Everybody needed a war novel in those days. I don't remember much about it, but it must have been good enough for me to want to read more.

When I heard that he died, I did a quick inventory of the books that I've read. Not all of them, by any means, nor even the majority of his output, but enough to get a good sense of what kind of writer he was. The Naked and the Dead. Armies of the Night. Of a Fire on the Moon (a curiously self-absorbed account of the moon landing). The Executioner's Song (a masterpiece of detailed journalism). Ancient Evenings. Tough Guys Don't Dance. Portrait of Picasso As A Young Man.

Mailer is probably better known for his non-fiction than his fiction. But one of the best books I ever read by anybody was Ancient Evenings, a long, rich story of ancient Egypt and a man who, through several reincarnations was general to Pharaohs and many other things. Fabulous writing.

I speak not about his private life -- much of which was public -- nor his persona, nor his image. His writing ranks with the best that the USA has produced.

A Pome by Malcolm Lowry

As yet, I've been unable to finish Under the Volcano. I know it's supposed to be a masterpiece. I know it's what made Lowry. But it sat for years on my shelf before I even started it. Then it sat for years more with a bookmark about a third of the way through. At the moment, I'm not even sure where my copy of it is.

On the other hand, I've lately read a couple of his pomes which are somehow more accessible. Witty. Not so dreary. (And it seems that dreary is how I characterize Under the Volcano. But maybe I should give it another chance.)

Anyway, here's a pome by Lowry, and I'm sure anyone who has had some of their work published can relate to this:

Strange Type

I wrote: in the dark cavern of our birth.

The printer had it tavern, which seems better:

But herein lies the subject of our mirth,

Since on the next page death appears as dearth.

So it may be that God's word was distraction,

Which to our strange type appears destruction.

Which is bitter.

Mental Blog Reviews Shakespeare

Jeez, they certainly do talk a lot. Talktalktalktalktalk. The first act is over before they've finished talking. And then they talk some more in the second act. On and off, they stab somebody or slash them with a sword. Sometimes they dance. Sometimes they even sing. Other times they make jokes at some buffoon's expense. Or the buffoon makes jokes at the king's expense. Oh yes, there are kings. Dukes. Senators. Earls. Barons. Generals. (It's starting to sound like a football league...) Noblemen. Noblewomen. Notsonoblemen and women. Anything you can think of. Dogs. Donkeys. Vipers and asps. Out damn Spots! Sleight of hand and mistaken identity. And through it all they talktalktalktalktalk. Someone always gets the last word.

In recent months I've attended three, count em three Shakespearean plays. An orgy. An over-indulgence of the theatrical kind. One, the last, was an authorized excursion outside the gates of the Yoni School. The other two were clandestine, in which Suzy Homemaker and I were obliged to slip Nurse Ratchet and assorted attendants a mickey. Mickey Mouse for one. Mickey Finn for another. Mickey Dolenz for a third. Mickey Rooney held in abeyance until the moment that Judy Garland appears wanting to create summer theatre in a barn.

The first play was Othello. Someone asked me who played Othello. Can't remember his name. Some black guy. It had been some time since I'd seen one of those Shakespearean adventures in modern thespianism. I enjoyed it, yes, but was disappointed. Spoiled by the graphic nature of contemporary film. Towards the end, Othello throttles the life out of Desdemona. I wasn't at all convinced. She barely struggled. Not what I would call a realistic scene. She barely wrinkled Othello's shirt. But maybe I expect too much.

Furthermore, I'm not versed in the Shakespeare canon. Is Othello one of his more renowned plays? If so, I'm still not convinced. Shakespeare did not persuade me that Othello's jealousy was even remotely justified. Othello comes across as an utter fool, which seems impossible somehow, since he's a well-respected general who could not be a fool. As to the acting, there are moments when Othello appears quite authentic, but at crucial moments he seems to lack the necessary depth. Meanwhile, the gentleman who played Iago tended to play up the comic in many of his asides to the audience at the expense of the venom he acts out in the play against both Cassio and Othello and, indeed, expresses in his first speeches: "O, sir, content you" he says, "I follow him to serve my turn upon him..."

So, in the end, I inveigh against both the production and the playwright. Both come up short. I don't care what the Avonic scholars say. Shakespeare is having us on. He's pretending to profundity and we, poor under-employed potes that we are, slavishly follow the dictates of literary criticism and cast laurels at his feet. Nay, nay, I say! Prove your mettle, William!

Which he does, sort of, in the next play Suzy and I saw. King Lear. Brian Bedford played Lear, a role for which he has trained his whole life. And how does Lear start off? Talktalktalktalktalk. What else? But even here, the premise seems stretched. Lear decides to divide his kingdom among his three daughters. No apparent reason why. OK, maybe he's getting a little old, maybe he's a little tired. But he seems to want to hold on to his power, exercising influence in the back rooms. And then, in spite of the evidence of his eyes and ears, he gets himself into a snit because Cordelia, plain-spoken girl that she is, will not flatter him with honeyed words like her two wicked step-sisters. (Sorry, I'm getting mixed up with Cinderella. Cinderella! Cordelia! Same story, different country.)

Let's face it. Lear is a loon. Cared for by a buffoon. Or rather a fool. And withal it would seem that the fool is the wisest of them. But we all know that fools may spout wisdom through the teeth of their impudence. Lear is lucky to have him. Lucky also that his fool is such a well-tempered actor, for fools may sometimes be required to act out roles which in their foolishness they see to be wiser than the fools they serve. And Shakespeare was wise enough to make Lear a king, so that he could name the play King Lear, rather than Lear the Lucky Loon!

The acting in this play was better than in Othello. Lucky, I guess. Well, no, not mere luck, because Brian Bedford is accomplished. Maybe he doesn't match Olivier. I don't know, I never saw Olivier. But he was pretty damn good. And Cordelia too. The wicked step-sisters would certainly have shone in any production of Cinderella.

But I'm still up in the air. What is it that drives Lear mad? The fact that two of his daughters turned out to be greedy, spiteful, bitchy, quarrelsome women? Or that he turned away the one who truly loved him? Is that enough to bring on madness? Melancholy, perhaps. Or depression. But raving lunacy? Or was it that he simply retired too early? Lost his main purpose in life...his occupation as king...and succumbed to what we would now call the onset of Alzheimer's disease.

Hmmm. Isn't there a play called Alzheimer and Rosenkavalier Are Dead?

Which brings us to the last play in our Shakespearean adventure. That Jewish play. The Merchant of Venice. It might interest you to know that this play begins not with talktalktalktalktalk, but with a masque...music and dancing. The staging, costumes and incidental music are a mixture of contemporary -- disco and hip--hop -- and renaissance Venice. Interesting but disorienting.

But the masque does not last long. And then what do you get? Talktalktalktalktalk.

Here's something I found in each of the plays. It takes a few minutes for us 21st century humanoids to cotton on to the florid speech of the 16th. In the case of Merchant, it took even longer because the actor playing Antonio, who is there throughout the first scene (after the disco masque) seemed to be talking to himself. I think the others told him to get off the pot, because he did improve both his diction and his volume later on.

Graham Greene, on the other hand, who plays Shylock, is pretty damn good. You all remember Graham Greene, right? First came to our notice in Dances With Wolves, no? A native Indian ( is that the current politically correct appellation? Probably not...). Who better to understand the rage and resentment, the hunger for revenge, of a medieval Jewish moneylender?

As for the play, what can I say? It falls on the comedy side of Shakespeare's ledger, but if so, it's dark comedy indeed. Supposedly one of his more famous plays. The climactic scene is the trial before the Duke of Venice, in which Shylock makes his case for Antonio's flesh. But along comes Portia, disguised as a young lawyer from Padua (as if...) who demolishes his case and in fact turns it right around on him. Shylock's contract says he can have his pound of flesh, but not that he can shed blood to get it. And by conspiring to cause the death of a Venetian citizen, his goods are therefore forfeit.

I don't quite buy it, although the Duke of Venice does, cuz, after all, better to save the life of a white Venetian than cave in to a Jew, even if the Jew is right. But the way I see it, Antonio owed Shylock the pound of flesh. It was Antonio's problem how to get it without shedding blood.

Merchant of Venice has caused some controversy in recent years. The official Jewish establishment seems to think it puts them in a bad light, that it's racist. And I suppose, in a certain way it is. Because it's a play of its time...Elizabethan racist England. But the sense of oppression Shylock feels, the rage, the humiliation, and the greed too. They're timeless. That's why Graham Greene can do it so well. Ultimately, I feel a kind of sympathy or, let's say, compassion, for the suffering of Shylock.

So Antonio wins. Portia wins. Bassanio wins. Graziano wins. Nerissa wins. Portia's butler steals the show several times although he hardly speaks a word throughout the play. All's Well That Ends Well. Except for Shylock. And his daughter.

Anyway...I think Suzy liked Lear best of all, but I kind of go for Merchant. Maybe that's because I understand rage better than dividing up your kingdom for no good reason and then losing your marbles over it because you didn't really want to give up the power.

Or am I just reading it all wrong?

Postscript: Several years ago I saw a production of that jinxed play, Macbeth. Now there is a play! I can't think of any flaws in that plot. No place where you might say, "Hey wait a minute, what about this?..." Even Duncan's twist, that he was born of Caesarean section, doesn't put me off. I can buy that. I can even swallow the Wyrd Sisters. They used to live downstairs.

Jack Kerouac: On the Road 50th Anniversary

What encouraged you to use the “spontaneous” style of On the Road?

“I got the idea for the spontaneous style of On the Road from seeing how good old Neal Cassady wrote his letters to me, all first person, fast, mad, confessional, completely serious, all detailed, with real names in his case however (being letters). I remembered also Goethe's admonition, well Goethe's prophecy that the future literature of the West would be confessional in nature; also Dostoevsky prophesied as much and might have started in on that if he'd lived long enough to do his projected master-work, The Great Sinner. Cassady also began his early youthful writing with attempts at slow, painstaking and-all-that-crap craft business, but got sick of it. The letter was 40,000 words long, mind you, a whole short novel. It was the greatest piece of writing I ever saw, better'n anybody in America, or at least enough to make Melville, Twain, Dreiser, Wolfe, spin in their graves. Allen Ginsberg asked me to lend him this vast letter so he could read it. He read it, then loaned it to a guy called Gerd Stern who lived on a houseboat in Sausalito California, in 1955, and this fellow lost the letter: overboard I presume. Neal and I called it, for convenience, the Joan Anderson Letter...all about a Christmas weekend in the pool halls, hotel rooms and jails of Denver, with hilarious events throughout and tragic too."

“The Art of Fiction XLI: Jack Kerouac”

The Paris Review, No. 43, Summer 1968

Kerouac is still one of my all-time favourite writers. But I can't seem to define what it is about him...a certain nostalgia that he developed in later years, his Roman Catholic Buddhism, his devil-may-care alcoholism. His poetry. His evocation of the crazy heart of America. His style. His Beat-ness.

I think the jury is still out on Kerouac, and the rest of the Beats, for that matter, including Ginsberg. But you'll notice that although there isn't a great mass of fellow travellers like, for instance, with the latest Stephen King tome, Kerouac has never drifted far from the consciousness of American (and world) readers. There's an ebb and flow, but Kerouac's presence is constant.

The top 10 most discarded books in hotel rooms (UK Edition)

From Guardian Unlimited:

1. The Blair Years by Alastair Campbell
2. Don't You Know Who I Am? by Piers Morgan
3. A Whole New World by Jordan
4. Wicked by Jilly Cooper
5. Dr Who Creatures & Demons by Justin Richard
6. The Diana Chronicles by Tina Brown
7. I Can Make You Thin by Paul McKenna
8. Humble Pie by Gordon Ramsay
9. The Story Of A Man And His Mouth by Chris Moyles
10. Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows by JK Rowling

Victoria Park at Sundown

unkempt, bedraggled after winter's long tectonic rumble,
the grass greening through muddy footpaths,
here, there, a quick outbreak of exuberant crocuses
shocking in their colour to snow-dimmed eyes

pines, maples, weeping willows spruce up,
unbending toward the warming sun

setting now, an orange with fiery zest,
a target for the takeoff of two geese
suddenly raucous as they heave themselves from the water

a pair of drakes mutter about the state of the lake,
swans stately on the shore

away from the street, the sibilance of cars almost soothes,
soft counterpoint to the mingled calls of sparrows,
chickadees, jays and cardinals, a mourning dove lowing,
all in last-minute flurries
skittering up, down, catching handy branches,
a bite to eat before bed

the air is a breath of moisture,
redolent with earlier rain, green and substantial

lovers walk the paths, low voices laughing,
even the dogs are peaceful

HWSRN
April/00

100 Werds You Should Know

Houghton Mifflin, which is a publisher of books, has published a book. See the picture there on the left. They've also published a press release about this book which you can see here.

"The words we suggest," says senior editor Steven Kleinedler, "are not meant to be exhaustive but are a benchmark against which graduates and their parents can measure themselves. If you are able to use these words correctly, you are likely to have a superior command of the language."

Now, I don't know about you, but for me, benchmarks are an iffy thing. I got a detention in grade 7 for making a benchmark. It (the benchmark, not grade 7) looked something like this:

(Come to think of it, grade 7 did look quite a bit like that.)

Sometimes I get so annoyed by my keepers here at the Yoni School, the so-called arbiters of the King's English, that I'd like to bite them. However, you need a good set of teeth to chew into such hide-bound arses. So, instead, I decided to take the 100-Werd challenge cuz I know these werds as good as any old high-school student. And I might incidentally ingratiate myself with somebody higher up in the school's ivory tower by demonstrating that I'm trying to be a good little pote and deserve time off for good behaviour.

So here are my offerings for the 100 Werd Challenge and, as Ringo Starr says, "I hope we passed the audition."

1. abjure (Are you jure you wahd do do dis? Yes, I ab jure. I ab gombletely jure.)

2. abrogate (Canada could have had a major aerospace industry, but it was Avrogated.)

3. abstemious (The room was so abstemious it was like being in a sauna.)

4. acumen (The upscale model of Honda.)

5. antebellum (The cose akeep gittin lost. Uncle Sam sez to Aunt Jemima: Auntie! Bell 'em!)

6. auspicious (Mergatroyd always gets auspicious when everything seems to be going right.)

7. belie (The Belie Massacre during the Viet Nam War was a most shame-faced incident, not least because they tried to say it never happened.) (Small aside: didn't I just read somewhere that the Vietnamese people call that war, the Murrican War?)

8. bellicose (Aunt Jemima sez: Bell who? Uncle Sam sez: Air ya deef? Bellicose!)

9. bowdlerize (Historically speaking, because of their characteristic headgear, you might say that many British civil servants have been bowdlerized.)

10. chicanery (Juan Valdez likes to use chicanery as a coffee substitute.)

11. chromosome (Eddie loved his '53 Cadillac because it had so much chromosome.)

12. churlish (Don't ever call me that!)

13. circumlocution (This is a painful medical condition also known as 'forked tongue'. It occurs frequently among Jewish parents when they have to explain circumnavigation to their sons...See next werd.)

14. circumnavigate (Ancient Jewish law requires parents to circumnavigate their male children.

15. deciduous (I am quite deciduous in my quest for the truth.)

16. deleterious (A Jewish cafeterious.)

17. diffident (And now for something completely diffident...)

18. enervate (Have you heard of the process of enervating foods to kill harmful bacteria?)

19. enfranchise (Herve Tattoo is thinking about opening up a Dunkin' Donut enfranchise. De plain! De plane!)

20. epiphany (I've always considered Beethoven's Fifth Epiphany to be his best.)

21. equinox (This is simple. "Equi" comes from the Latin word meaning "horse". "Nox" is obviously related to "noxious". So, "equinox" means horse fart.

22. euro (I'd say euro about five foot nine.)

23. evanescent (Emmy is smart but Evan escent.)

24. expurgate (Is it true James Joyce suffered from premature expurgation?)

25. facetious (Perkins, there are so many facetious errors in this report that it's really no laughing matter!)

26. fatuous (I didn't like that pork chop. It was way too fatuous.)

27. feckless (Steve careened down the slope with feckless abandon.)

28. fiduciary (Many neo-cons find it hard to trust our fiduciary.)

29. filibuster (A filibuster is a hard nut to crack.)

30. gamete (Some people don't like caviar because it tastes rather gamete.)
    

31. gauche (Who is more gauche than a Bolivian cowboy?)

32. gerrymander (The First-year Med students studied gerrymanders in anatomy class.)

33. hegemony (Conrad called the bank to find out the exchange rate for hegemony.)

34. hemoglobin (A new model of Chrysler automobile: the Hemo Goblin.)

35. homogeneous (The first guy to call gays "gay" was a homo genius.)

36. hubris (Caesar's chef garnished the salad with fresh sprigs of hubris.)

37. hypotenuse (The hypotenuse spends most of its time in hot water.)

38. impeach (Congress decided to impeach Clinton to prevent him from picking all the ripe cherries in the Rose Garden.)

39. incognito (The Ambassador's personal mechanic told me my incognito was blown.)

40. incontrovertible (A different new model of Chrysler automobile: the Incontrovertible.)

41. inculcate (Inculcate...that's a brand of toothpaste that comes from China which has been in the news lately because apparently it contains some foreign substance. Of course it does, if it comes from China, which is a foreign country. Unless, of course, you're Chinese. This substance, however, is supposed to be bad because it absorbs into your blood without your knowledge and after a while you hardly notice the difference.)(Sorry for the long explanation, but I wanted to make sure you had the idea firmly planted.)

42. infrastructure (I'm infrastructure, peace, order and good government. How about you?)

43. interpolate (The international police agency.)

44. irony (What you make fences out of: rotten irony.)

45. jejune (Farhad was so nervous at his immigration hearing that, when asked his date of birth, all he could think of to say was, "Jejune?")

46. kinetic (The Kinetic Indians were a restless, nomadic tribe of the Great Plains.)

47. kowtow (It's almost embarrassing to have to say this. This is obviously what Aunt Jemima does with the kows when she takes em to market. First she bells em then she tows em.

48. laissez faire (I went to the Laissez Fair last week because I decided, for once I'd do whatever I felt like.)

49. lexicon (The upscale model of Toyota.)

50. loquacious (The number one rule that every real estate agent knows: Loquacious, loquacious, loquacious!)

51. lugubrious (I took my car in for oil and lugubrious.)

52. metamorphosis (The butterfly begins life as a lowly metamorphosis.)

53. mitosis (Mytosis broken!)

54. moiety (This half of the pot is moiety, and that half is yourety. Lemon or milk?)

55. nanotechnology (Something found in Canajun 25-cent pieces. Shhh! It's a secret! Don't tell anybody!)

56. nihilism (As soon as it becomes an "ism" you're dead wrong.)

57. nomenclature (I think it's about time the Speaker of the House introduced some decorum into the nomenclature.)

58. nonsectarian (Teresa's mother agreed to visit the biology class only because it promised to be nonsectarian. She was morbidly afraid of creepy-crawlies.)

59. notarize (I liked borrowing Jane's textbooks in university because they were all fully notarized in the margins.)

60. obsequious (Just prior to his premature expurgation, Joyce's book was banned by the US under the Obsequious Laws.) (See...here I even managed to use two of the words in one sentence!)

61. oligarchy (The pedanticist subscribed inserts for my shoes because I had fallen oligarchies.)

62. omnipotent (Don Juan's appetite for women was insatiable. Luckily, he was omnipotent.)

63. orthography (Orthography. O-R-G-O-P-H-R-A-P-H-Y. Orthogrpahy.)

64. oxidize (Mickey polishes his Corvette with oxidize every week. He says it helps to keep it from rusting.)

65. parabola (They say there are often live parabolas in the crates of fresh bananas.)

66. paradigm (Two paradigms are not enough to buy a cup of coffee.)

67. parameter (Two parameters are enough to make a respectable instrument panel.)

68. pecuniary (Your concerns are much too pecuniary for a man of my station. In fact, they are so insignificant they hardly make cents at all.)

69. photosynthesis (Photosynthesis is what occurs as a result of using Photoshop.)

70. plagiarize (Before the computer, before the scanner, before the Xerox, before the Gestetner, before the printing press...if you wanted a copy you had to plagiarize it.

71. plasma (It's either Elsie Dee or Plas Ma that makes TV go. Plas Ma also makes spaceships go. I think Plas Ma is Japanese.)

72. polymer (Polymer want a cracker?)

73. precipitous (The weatherman is calling for sudden downpours and heavy precipitous today.)

74. quasar (An old brand of TV. Before Plas Ma made it go.)

75. quotidian (You could look it up in Bartlett's Book of Famous Daily Quotidians.)

76. recapitulate (The reporters were late for the signing of the Armistice, so the Generals were forced to recapitulate for the TV cameras.)

77. reciprocal (I love the way that reciprocal saw goes back and forth, back and forth. Would you like to take turns watching it with me?)

78. reparation (They'll never be able to fix that reparation in the Berlin Wall.)

79. respiration (Check the respiration date on that oxygen tank, would you?)

80. sanguine (I've heard that the Dagwood was invented when the Earl of Sanguine put blood sausage between two slices of bread. Since there was no refrigeration at the time, it was a little sour, dough.)

81. soliloquy (William was able to sneak in through the back door of the theatre by using the soliloquy he had stolen from a locksmith.)

82. subjugate (In Latin class I wrestled with subjugating verbs until, finally, I conquered them.)

83. suffragist (John L. Lewis and Jack Dempsey were both highly renounced suffragists at the Market of Queens Borough.)

84. supercilious (Augustus attached his diploma to the wall with supercilious and it has never failed him yet.)

85. tautology (I think Martin Luther taught Ology at the University of Wittgenstein, before he decided to deface the pope and become a Protestant.)

86. taxonomy (The federal government charges outrageous income taxonomy!)

87. tectonic (Isn't the term "Prairie Oyster" just a euphonium for bull tectonics?)

88. tempestuous (If I didn't know better, I'd say there was something tempestuous about the way that brother and sister act toward each other.)

89. thermodynamics (Thermodynamics is that branch of science which studies the movement of thermo underwear.)

90. totalitarian (After Adolph took Neville's Queen with his Teutonic Knight, he became so absorbed in the chess game that he achieved a totalitarian state.)

91. unctuous (The doctor said I should use unctuous for my sore muscles, but I didn't like it. It was too greasy.)

92. usurp (People know you are ill-mannered if usurp your soup.)

93. vacuous (I believe it was Herbert Hoover who invented the vacuous cleaner.)

94. vehement (When I was a kid I always wanted to drive a vehement mixer. Either that or the fire truck.)

95. vortex (I always said I wished I were the inventor of Vortex. Then I'd be a rich man now, instead of being left out in the cold.)

96. winnow (Buster bought a pail of winnows to use as fish bait.)

97. wrought (Behold what man hath wrought. Irony.)

98. xenophobe (I've heard that the use of xenophobes at rock concerts can sometimes induce apoplectic fits.)

99. yeoman (Yo! Man!)

100. ziggurat (Where's yer ziggur at me son?)(Commonly heard in Newfoundland where they also say, "Don't stay where you're to. Come where we're at.)
     

How about you? Think you can pass the audition? If you would like to try your hand at using each one of the 100 Werds in a sentence, you can go to the press release and copy them (or copy them from here.) All I ask is that you leave a comment for me with a link so I can go to your site and check out your handiwork.

"Tending Memory" Book Launch

The Dove Tale Writers collective has another fledgling just out of the nest. Marianne's book launch took place on the 21st at her daughter's dance studio. Well attended by lots of friends and well-wishers. Here are a few photos of the evening's events.

Marianne read passages from Tending Memory and thanked everyone. HWSRN took his accordeen for a walk, and Samantha danced a gypsy dance.

The song is Brahms' Hungarian Dance #4 played by HWSRN on accordeen and Voin on guitar. (When I uploaded it to DivShare and tried to play it back it was very slow loading. I don't know if it will be slow here...until I publish the post...but if it is, please be patient.) All the photos were taken by Leslie Bamford, except the one she's in which was taken by her husband, Bob.

Book Launch Reminder

Come and celebrate with me the launch of my new novel!

Tending Memory
BookLand Press

Thursday June 21st from 7 - 9 p.m.

Reading at 7:45 p.m.

Sam’s Steps Dance Centre

1252 King St. E., Kitchener

Corner of Sheldon & King St. (above Scotiabank)
Entrance & parking off Sheldon


Enjoy the accordion music of HWSRN and a gypsy dance by Samantha Paul

Light refreshments
Books available at a special book launch price

RSVP appreciated at mariannepaul(at)rogers.com

Hope to see you there!
~ Marianne Paul
www.mariannepaul.com

Book Launch Announcement

My good friend Marianne Paul is having her second novel published.This has been a work in progress for several years. I had the pleasure and privilege of reading early drafts while attending the Dove Tale Writers editing circle.

Marianne is a fabulous writer. Her style is spare but always evocative. I always like to think I can take credit for encouraging her to write poetry, at which she also excels, because much of her prose is really poetry. You can check out some of her writing at the Dove Tale Writers website and her own website.

And if you are in or near the Kitchener area on June 21, make sure you stop by for the book launch. All the local glitterati will be there (except me...Nurse Ratchet demands a foot massage that night...)

Come and celebrate with me the launch of my new novel!

Tending Memory
BookLand Press

Thursday June 21st from 7 - 9 p.m.

Reading at 7:45 p.m.

Sam’s Steps Dance Centre

1252 King St. E., Kitchener

Corner of Sheldon & King St. (above Scotiabank)
Entrance & parking off Sheldon


Enjoy the accordion music of HWSRN and a gypsy dance by Samantha Paul

Light refreshments
Books available at a special book launch price

RSVP appreciated at mariannepaul(at)rogers.com

Hope to see you there!
~ Marianne Paul
www.mariannepaul.com

Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Don't Panic! Yes I know it's been several days since the last post. The computer has been in sick bay. I myself have been lying around the corridors of the Yoni School moaning and shivering, suffering from Mental Blog. Withdrawal from blogposting may not be as difficult as getting off crack, or heroin, or even alcohol. No DTs. No lizards crawling the walls. But even so, there were scary moments, moments when I experienced horrific delusions of grandeur, believing that the universe out there was sorely missing my gems of wit and wisdom.

And this is a pretty good segue into the subject of this post, because reading The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy is a bit like tripping on acid, something I'm sure Douglas Adams must have done.

I spent my computerless days reading the Guide. The cover pictured here is not the same edition as the one I read. The one I read belongs to Suzy Homemaker. She bought it many years ago, presumably in a fit of existential frivolity.

The closest cover I could discover (without wading through dozens of Google pages) was this one, which depicts the radio scripts. Suzy's is not the radio scripts. It's the edition (probably the first version) called The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy: A Trilogy in Four Parts. Suzy's doesn't have the old-fashioned microphone on the cover, but the picture is similar.

So, what about it? The Hitch Hiker's Guide is Monty Python on paper, covering the inner edges of outer space and the outer edges of inner space.

I laughed out loud exactly five times. This may not seem like much, but think about it. How often do you actually laugh out loud when you're reading something silently, alone, in a detention cell for wayward poets where you have to go far away in a concrete bunker to have a smoke? So five times is pretty good. About once every one hundred pages. And this is not even mentioning the numerous times I chuckled.

But here's the thing. Every time I laughed it was because Adams came up with something so out of left field, or so astonishingly clever, that I couldn't help myself. Which, for the most part is not the way Adams writes. If he has a flaw, it's that he pursues perversity and contradiction and silliness so intently that it becomes predictable. He states the obvious so often that eventually you come to recognize the parts you can skip. (But you do this at your peril, because he just might slip in something you need to know...) And...oh yes...he uses far too many adjectives...he interrupts himself...he employs subordinate clauses as if they were indentured servants with no prospect of ever buying their freedom.

Which makes for difficult reading sometimes. I would get exasperated and wonder, "How in the world did he ever get this past an editor?" And then I realized that I often write in exactly the same way, with asides and digressions and non sequiturs and inside jokes and godknowswhatelse.

So, I am either constrained to change my wayward ways...or forgive Adams his unrestrained waywardness.

I must say, he has become rather rich.

All it takes is one good hit with legs.