Scotch Needs Scotch Fridays

Why no new poem or review?  Easy:

Bar bar bar bar bar bar bar bar bar bar bar bar bar bar bar bar bar bar bar bar bar bar bar bar bar bar bar bar bar bar bar bar bar bar bar bar bar bar bar bar bar bar bar bar bar bar bar bar bar bar bar bar bar bar bar bar bar bar bar bar bar bar bar bar bar bar bar bar bar bar bar bar res judicata emptor Pinkerton!

Anyway, I started a post about speculative poetry that turned far more critical than I really wanted (I haven’t exactly scrubbed my identity from this site and I’m a Southerner born, bred and trained to no say anything ugly about anyone… unless there’s no way it can be traced back to me), so I scrapped it.  Instead, random thoughts:

The Abridged Version of My Deleted Speculative Poetry Rant

I waffle between wanting to exalt speculative poetry and wanting to damn it.  Every once in a while I toy with the idea of starting my own magazine but I have neither the time nor the resources.  Also, and I can’t stress this enough: there is so much out there that I think is so much better than my own work that I worry about the hubris of “I CAN’T STAND ANYTHING! MUST BECOME EDITOR OF ALL THE WORLD!” One of the reasons I started doing the reviews on Fridays was to remind myself how much is out there that I think is good and great and wonderful–so I shouldn’t get distracted when W.S. Merwin manages to get nominated for the Rhysling, and not win.

Anyway, if anyone who voted for “El Codex Chupacabra” can explain to me why they did, I would like to hear it (of Perez’s two nominated poems, Human Fighting Is Illegal was superior in my view).

Related Confession: I neither nominated nor voted for the Rhysling–the former because I forgot, and the latter because I’m pretty sure that my membership expired this spring/summer and I was sent the email for the PDF accidentally.  I will renew my membership posthaste and be a better SFPA citizen next time around.

If I had the Capability, I Would Force the Following Survey on Every Visitor to the Blog.  Fortunately I Lack the Technological Know-It-All-How and So, Random Internet Viewers, You are Safe… For the Moment

1. Who are you?
2. Where did you come from?  How long did you stay?
3. Which posts did you read?
4. Did you like them?
5. Do you like me?
6. I mean really really like me?
7. Oh my god could you stay forever and brush my hair and tell me your thoughts about zombies and oh my goodness while you’re at it could you tell all your friends and then they can come too and it’s like a giant slumber party and hey did you hear about the time that I wrote a post and it’d be uber great if you could read it and maybe give me your thoughts about it in the comments, no not here, there where I can read them again and again and your friends will read them and OH! Pingbacks! Could you subscribe via google reader and help me go viral via boing boing–
8. Where are you going?!?

English Makes Me Nervous

I’ve rewritten about a half dozen of my sentences thus far because of a thread on a writer’s forum discussing laughable English mistakes.  I pride myself on having decent grammar–thank you Marcus inebrius est (inside Latin joke), but there will always be things  I’ll get wrong.  Ever since my cousin Ellen laughed at me for saying Chartres the French way (because I’ve been to the actual town, gosh darnit) instead of the New Orleans way, I’ve become painfully, exceedingly self-aware and self conscious about language (see, I just deleted, then added, removed, then altered, re-put multiple adverbs and adjectives in that sentence before deciding ‘ah eff it,’ I’ll add a parenthetical).

(Parentheticals…

are my valium)

Everywhere There are Signs!  Send To Me Them (But Only If they Are Funny)

Today at the grocery store I saw this:

I don’t know why, but the only thing I could think of was that the grocery carts occasionally go wild and start bumpcar-ing all the minivans and SUVs in the lot.  Maybe it’s because that one cart is outside the stall, as if to suggest I don’t play by the rules.

I applaud you outside-the-box-thinking grocery transportation device.  Bow to no man.

And not to turn into the lush fest that is the Hoda and Kathy Lee segment of the Today show, but I would love it if people sent me cell phone pictures of strange/odd/funny/frightening signs (email address: aftereverafter3 AT gmail DOT com).  I don’t want your internet junk–I have enough reader subscriptions to send my browser into anaphalactic shock when I ignore it for more than 2 days.  I want real pictures–pictures of the real world.  You know, that thing outside your window that I am ignoring right now in order to blog.

Anaphalactic Is A Word Isn’t It?

My blog is giving me that red squiggly line and suggesting “anticlimactic” instead.

Thank You Google

It’s anaphylactic

Speaking of Google

One of my Google+ circles is “People I Don’t Know Who Have Circled Me”.  And it actually took me several minutes to realize there’s another term for that: Crazy Internet Stalkers. Only these people aren’t crazy internet stalkers, they’re other writers who are employing the “I’ll Follow You if You Follow Me” method of self-promotion (I am not so naive as to think that I am somehow interesting enough to be followed on my own merits… yet).  I never saw a lot of this on Facebook since there people do have that mental check of ‘I don’t really know this person, so ‘friending’ them doesn’t seem appropriate’.  Google+ combines the passive aggressiveness of Twitter’s ‘follow complete strangers’, with Facebook’s push for reciprocity.  They’ve completely changed my perception of safe internet behavior.  Thank you Google+, I think I have the inspiration I need for my blog’s next apocalypse.

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