i'm not sure why our minds drift like treeswings in the breeze
spinning a slow and steady arc, lonely and creaking,
bereft of a body to fill that empty hole
through which blue skies always seem to appear,
even in the bruised, stormcloud gray of today
i'm not strong enough to always be strong,
but i can be lonely enough to feel like i'll always be lonely
the smell of autumn rain coalesces,
peppering the last remaining leaves in the branches,
toy soldiers beating loose wooden drums,
no rhythm or cadence to the swiftly growing din
the treeswing is a familiar memory, often frequented,
it's comfy, and warm, and predictable
despite the rain, a child approaches the pendulous weight,
chain tethers jingle gaily in the breeze ironically
there's no fanfare as the void is filled and the rain continues
there's no signal that it will end, but it does in a bolt of lightning
a boy runs,
the tire is empty again
Monday, March 28, 2005
Wednesday, March 23, 2005
good words
a current, undeniably me
in a minor
key, turning circles
in dissonant
harmony
constituent melody, twitching
furtively the quavering vowel
of overtone in independent
integrity
a lyrical movement, its modes unspoken,
measure by measure, tongues unevenly ringing,
voices beyond us, breathing with meaning
now reverberates undeniably,
now oscillates uncontrollably,
now brassily swaggers,
now nasal, now sanguine,
the River
the River is music,
thrumming and humming, silent, the Giant;
passing the banks by, asleep in the morning,
the Body is golden in mist o’erflowing,
a symphony of song,
a cadence of dream,
at rest, transposition,
the timbre, the Key,
heart by beating heart, We sing
and our verse is instiflable,
our chorus, crescendo,
the People We singing,
our words are a window:
a nation, a notion of clamber our
words ineffably dream the sky overspun
with intricate rhythms and cleverest feet,
clogging in unison, oh melodious pipe,
oh singer of songs, oh bringer of dreams,
we beseech thee and lament the loss of our callow youth,
our wisened sages, and all the inkhorn flowers between,
we regret, so somberly, that we forget we live,
that we forget we love.
how we fiddle our tongues and think it music,
we silly race, we silly animal
we silly We
thank you.
in a minor
key, turning circles
in dissonant
harmony
constituent melody, twitching
furtively the quavering vowel
of overtone in independent
integrity
a lyrical movement, its modes unspoken,
measure by measure, tongues unevenly ringing,
voices beyond us, breathing with meaning
now reverberates undeniably,
now oscillates uncontrollably,
now brassily swaggers,
now nasal, now sanguine,
the River
the River is music,
thrumming and humming, silent, the Giant;
passing the banks by, asleep in the morning,
the Body is golden in mist o’erflowing,
a symphony of song,
a cadence of dream,
at rest, transposition,
the timbre, the Key,
heart by beating heart, We sing
and our verse is instiflable,
our chorus, crescendo,
the People We singing,
our words are a window:
a nation, a notion of clamber our
words ineffably dream the sky overspun
with intricate rhythms and cleverest feet,
clogging in unison, oh melodious pipe,
oh singer of songs, oh bringer of dreams,
we beseech thee and lament the loss of our callow youth,
our wisened sages, and all the inkhorn flowers between,
we regret, so somberly, that we forget we live,
that we forget we love.
how we fiddle our tongues and think it music,
we silly race, we silly animal
we silly We
thank you.
Wednesday, March 16, 2005
new poem smell
yep, it's that time. explorations of rythm and subtlety of meaning. there's even a little oversimplified introspection and a dash of symbolism.
a strong west wind
cloven-hooved, agape, in consequential rhythm-rape,
odorous odifery in my periphery
stuttered for the sake of me
shuttered minds, dots connecting
fettered boat, an empty shore
weathered oarlocks overworn
shifting beachsand underfoot
lilting hoarsely cry the gulls
arranging rocks in circles
amazing and strange, cold sand
each agate borne smooth, but these,
these are not your remedy
muttered incandescently
sweltered in the light of things
open-jawed, westerly, plague of locusts came to be,
drifting like the snow, semantic shift in spite of me.
so there you have it. it kind of sits there like a toad at first, but then it grows on you... or at least it does me...
a strong west wind
cloven-hooved, agape, in consequential rhythm-rape,
odorous odifery in my periphery
stuttered for the sake of me
shuttered minds, dots connecting
fettered boat, an empty shore
weathered oarlocks overworn
shifting beachsand underfoot
lilting hoarsely cry the gulls
arranging rocks in circles
amazing and strange, cold sand
each agate borne smooth, but these,
these are not your remedy
muttered incandescently
sweltered in the light of things
open-jawed, westerly, plague of locusts came to be,
drifting like the snow, semantic shift in spite of me.
so there you have it. it kind of sits there like a toad at first, but then it grows on you... or at least it does me...
moreover
so today is better.
i'm presently listening to the history of the english language, focusing now, in lectures 18&19, on shakespeare. aye, there's the point. interesting bit, the quarto vs. folio versions of his plays, like hamlet's to be on not to be speech - more "grammatically" correct in the quarto version, and seemingly less flowery - an actor's version? a less perfect version? why was it changed? interesting.
anyhow, i think i'll start my new art project tonight. or maybe right now. hrm, there's an idea, the present. but not a lot of time, since i'm at work right now. maybe i'll map out some other ideas. i'm not sure that i like the yin-yang idea, but i do like the circle motif, because it's going to be hanging in the neonatal icu, where laura works. the circle is a symbol of life and eternity, so i like that, but they do have to watch out for death, since it is, after all the icu, so i do like the idea of the yin-yang, with the light in the dark, etc. hrm. a bit worth pondering.
i mapped it out in 4x6 (a little smaller actually) rectangles, because i'll have to print them out in pieces and then stitch it afterward, kind of like the piece i did for laura. i mapped it and thought about maybe trying to find photos that will fit the shapes for each grid, but the shapes aren't really that complex and i'm not sure how to represent properly areas that would be all white or all black, since there's no detail at all... maybe i could make it into two different colors - purple and yellow, perhaps. i don't want to do a cross or an ankh - the cross is a tired motif for me and the ankh, well, people just won't get it.
the only thing i could think to do otherwise would be to create pieces for each one, but that's about 16 separate items.
i could also take smaller close-up pictures of things and stitch those together. maybe some flowers, but i don't have any that i'd like to shoot, since the roses are all dead. hrm. that's not a bad idea though. or maybe a face stitched together from other people's faces, but who to use? laura would not appreciate being in it - maybe a bunch of babies? that might be a little too ann geddes or whatever her name is - i hate that baby shit. unless i use full-sized paper and then it's four pieces, rather than 16, since it's 17.5x22.5, so it's twice the length and width of a standard page... it bears some consideration.
i also have to work on my song and get it recorded so that keith and jason and john can come up with their parts. i want to keep a feel in the song. only thing i noted when we practiced it was that jason needed to slow down the drums in the chorus, maybe half-time, compared to what he's doing now - try to get it to open up a little, because the song needs to breath in that part... but the bridge really needs some work. i had a rhythm that i thought would've worked, using triplets instead of standard 4/4 type rhythm. oh well, i'm off for now.
i'm presently listening to the history of the english language, focusing now, in lectures 18&19, on shakespeare. aye, there's the point. interesting bit, the quarto vs. folio versions of his plays, like hamlet's to be on not to be speech - more "grammatically" correct in the quarto version, and seemingly less flowery - an actor's version? a less perfect version? why was it changed? interesting.
anyhow, i think i'll start my new art project tonight. or maybe right now. hrm, there's an idea, the present. but not a lot of time, since i'm at work right now. maybe i'll map out some other ideas. i'm not sure that i like the yin-yang idea, but i do like the circle motif, because it's going to be hanging in the neonatal icu, where laura works. the circle is a symbol of life and eternity, so i like that, but they do have to watch out for death, since it is, after all the icu, so i do like the idea of the yin-yang, with the light in the dark, etc. hrm. a bit worth pondering.
i mapped it out in 4x6 (a little smaller actually) rectangles, because i'll have to print them out in pieces and then stitch it afterward, kind of like the piece i did for laura. i mapped it and thought about maybe trying to find photos that will fit the shapes for each grid, but the shapes aren't really that complex and i'm not sure how to represent properly areas that would be all white or all black, since there's no detail at all... maybe i could make it into two different colors - purple and yellow, perhaps. i don't want to do a cross or an ankh - the cross is a tired motif for me and the ankh, well, people just won't get it.
the only thing i could think to do otherwise would be to create pieces for each one, but that's about 16 separate items.
i could also take smaller close-up pictures of things and stitch those together. maybe some flowers, but i don't have any that i'd like to shoot, since the roses are all dead. hrm. that's not a bad idea though. or maybe a face stitched together from other people's faces, but who to use? laura would not appreciate being in it - maybe a bunch of babies? that might be a little too ann geddes or whatever her name is - i hate that baby shit. unless i use full-sized paper and then it's four pieces, rather than 16, since it's 17.5x22.5, so it's twice the length and width of a standard page... it bears some consideration.
i also have to work on my song and get it recorded so that keith and jason and john can come up with their parts. i want to keep a feel in the song. only thing i noted when we practiced it was that jason needed to slow down the drums in the chorus, maybe half-time, compared to what he's doing now - try to get it to open up a little, because the song needs to breath in that part... but the bridge really needs some work. i had a rhythm that i thought would've worked, using triplets instead of standard 4/4 type rhythm. oh well, i'm off for now.
Tuesday, March 15, 2005
minor dactyl surgery
today was a lousy day. six hours on-site trying to get wireless networking going...and a printer...and that's it! Nothing complicated or hairy, but i managed to get side-tracked every time i turned around. how did it start? oh yeah, getting this old windows 2000 dell on the network. no problem, the system has a usb nic and a pci wireless card installed (wireless b, not g, like everything else in the house). so i try to get the nic going and it's refusing. while waiting for a reboot, i decide to pull the pci nic out and move it to another system, a windows 98, that we didn't have an adapter for, then i head back to the original system and proceed to dig myself into insanity trying to get this thing in there. every time i think i have it, error 31 pops up in the device manager. what the fuck is error 31? i look it up in the knowledgebase and find out that it means a parent device isn't working... okay, it's on a add-on usb card, that might be it, so i move it to the on-board (1.0) usb connectors, to no avail. so then, i decide to swap the usb nic i have with a different one i the office and get the latest drivers at the same time... try the nic after the switch. nope, try again. so then i open the dell back up and put the original nic back in and download drivers for the pci nic on another system...
but wait, do i have a cd with open space that isn't scratched to shit or otherwise unable to be opened due to poly-session-unreadable-osis? as luck would have it yes. and the drivers are all happy and the networking is done... big sigh of relief...
enter the customer, stage right:
"how's it going"
"oh fine, thanks. i got things going by swapping nics around"
"that should work"
oh wait, let's back up, i forgot that during this time i was working on his print server as well. yeah, it has a usb and parallel connection and the parallel connection didn't want to see the ibm 7039 laser attached to it. Probably afraid of losing a finger to the behemoth dinosaur. i astutely point out, "oh silly mr. customer, you need an ieee-1394 cable for this thing to work." and slap him firmly on his beefy posterior. he is unamused, but during the following minutes and subsequent reboots (see above for proper linear order...this comes around during the cd search), i decided to call the shop, since i was only five or six miles away, and ask for someone to run me out an ieee-1394 cable, which they do. and i connect it and the printer is still not recognized by the print server although (as I found out later) it did actually light up the parallel LED on the print server. can you hear the excitement in my words?
so back to the customer and our conversation...
"you get the print working on all of them then?"
"uh, no. the cable didn't seem to do the trick, but i've got some ideas."
"okay..."
so he went away to make money, since he's a stay-at-home-self-made-type, and i proceed to reconfigure the printer's settings in an attempt to get things to print. i changed the language to pcl and thought i was clever. i changed the parallel port mode to standard and thought i was even cleverer... hell, i remembered that you could set a standard tcp/ip port up and select lpr, instead of raw, and configure it to print to whatever port by lpr number... and i actually printer to the printer, but just got garbage characters...hrm, bad driver perhaps?
enter customer:
"how's it going?"
"well, the printer is kind of sucking."
"oh, well, just make sure that the hp 5550 is working. if you can't ge the other one going, i understand."
but i'm an mcse.
"no, i can get them going. i've got a few ideas."
after trying the driver on the windows 2000 system and the windows xp system over the wireless, i decided to try the printer locally on the xp system and proceeded to get shit characters. i reset the factory defaults and tried again... now i'm out of paper and have to send it through a second time. no dice. so i try it on the windows 2000 system, which the customer had taken it off of,to put it on the print server. it should print just fine, right?
wrong. still printing crap.
this is with the built-in drivers and the downloaded drivers for 2000/xp, from lexmark, not ibm, since ibm washed their hands of this damnable fossil.
i put the printer on the 98 system and try to print... no luck, doesn't even try. *sigh* oh wait, there's an epson print driver installed on here and it's got an epson printer port. aha! so i change the driver & it becomes lpt3 and i know that it won't print, but do i try? you bet i do. you bet i fail. so i'm in the process of uninstalling the software from the system... did i mention it's a pentium 200 with 64mb ram? no, i didn't... so the reboots are five minute ordeals. and i sit and wait and think about how many hours i've been here at this point (something like 4)
enter customer:
"how's it going?"
listen wiseass..."going not-so-good; printer won't print from anything. maybe it sucks." i forgot to mention that the sheets i had sent through it before twice i had now started sending through for the third time, and, oh yeah, now it's jamming every other sheet *sigh, how stupid can i get?* "but i'm just trying it on this 98 system to confirm... well, fuck me runnin' it printed fine."
"no shit?"
"yeah, no shit."
"well as long as it can print to something..."
"i should be able to set it up to print between them through sharing." now, i know this is wrong now, and i know that i should've realized that 9x would not be able to provide the xp systems with a driver and it would all suck anyhow, but i was frazzled, cut me some slack. so i start setting up file sharing on the 9x system and of course it doesn't work. the sytem can see out but nothing sees in. and i can't share. and yes, file and print sharing is enabled. so, i dig out the networking keys from the registry and remove dial-up networking and try to reboot and the systme locks up and i reboot and the registry didn't take so i have to do it all again and reboot and okay now i can see things (take a breath, take a breath).
"how's it going"
"you're sneaky, i didn't see your entrance written anywhere. the 98 system is able to share, but (working as we speak) network printing (realization hits) won't make a bit of difference for the xp and 2000 system, since the driver sucks, but hey, let's try it (to no avail) again."
"can it print to the 5550 as well?"
"oh yeah, sure thing." realizing that i hadn't set it up yet. "just as soon as i do it, it will."
"well, everything is pretty good then."
"yes. except for your wireless encryption settings."
now, i'm not sure what rock that thought crawled out from under, but i curse that thought to hell and fire and damnation.
of course, you can predict the rest - a couple of hours showing him how easy wpa was to set up on the xp system and how the 98 system couldn't use wpa and neither could either of the other two, so let's move to wep and fucking passkey fiveortencharactersneverworksihateihateihateihateihateiahatethat shit!!!
so i put it back the way it was. and retested printing and it's slow on one system and then its not.
customer says, "well it least it wasn't anything easy. i would've felt bad if it had been too easy on you."
"here's my card. i'm usually a lot better at my job."
yeah, that's the day. it sucked. it also continued, but i'm too tired to even consider writing about it...
but wait, do i have a cd with open space that isn't scratched to shit or otherwise unable to be opened due to poly-session-unreadable-osis? as luck would have it yes. and the drivers are all happy and the networking is done... big sigh of relief...
enter the customer, stage right:
"how's it going"
"oh fine, thanks. i got things going by swapping nics around"
"that should work"
oh wait, let's back up, i forgot that during this time i was working on his print server as well. yeah, it has a usb and parallel connection and the parallel connection didn't want to see the ibm 7039 laser attached to it. Probably afraid of losing a finger to the behemoth dinosaur. i astutely point out, "oh silly mr. customer, you need an ieee-1394 cable for this thing to work." and slap him firmly on his beefy posterior. he is unamused, but during the following minutes and subsequent reboots (see above for proper linear order...this comes around during the cd search), i decided to call the shop, since i was only five or six miles away, and ask for someone to run me out an ieee-1394 cable, which they do. and i connect it and the printer is still not recognized by the print server although (as I found out later) it did actually light up the parallel LED on the print server. can you hear the excitement in my words?
so back to the customer and our conversation...
"you get the print working on all of them then?"
"uh, no. the cable didn't seem to do the trick, but i've got some ideas."
"okay..."
so he went away to make money, since he's a stay-at-home-self-made-type, and i proceed to reconfigure the printer's settings in an attempt to get things to print. i changed the language to pcl and thought i was clever. i changed the parallel port mode to standard and thought i was even cleverer... hell, i remembered that you could set a standard tcp/ip port up and select lpr, instead of raw, and configure it to print to whatever port by lpr number... and i actually printer to the printer, but just got garbage characters...hrm, bad driver perhaps?
enter customer:
"how's it going?"
"well, the printer is kind of sucking."
"oh, well, just make sure that the hp 5550 is working. if you can't ge the other one going, i understand."
but i'm an mcse.
"no, i can get them going. i've got a few ideas."
after trying the driver on the windows 2000 system and the windows xp system over the wireless, i decided to try the printer locally on the xp system and proceeded to get shit characters. i reset the factory defaults and tried again... now i'm out of paper and have to send it through a second time. no dice. so i try it on the windows 2000 system, which the customer had taken it off of,to put it on the print server. it should print just fine, right?
wrong. still printing crap.
this is with the built-in drivers and the downloaded drivers for 2000/xp, from lexmark, not ibm, since ibm washed their hands of this damnable fossil.
i put the printer on the 98 system and try to print... no luck, doesn't even try. *sigh* oh wait, there's an epson print driver installed on here and it's got an epson printer port. aha! so i change the driver & it becomes lpt3 and i know that it won't print, but do i try? you bet i do. you bet i fail. so i'm in the process of uninstalling the software from the system... did i mention it's a pentium 200 with 64mb ram? no, i didn't... so the reboots are five minute ordeals. and i sit and wait and think about how many hours i've been here at this point (something like 4)
enter customer:
"how's it going?"
listen wiseass..."going not-so-good; printer won't print from anything. maybe it sucks." i forgot to mention that the sheets i had sent through it before twice i had now started sending through for the third time, and, oh yeah, now it's jamming every other sheet *sigh, how stupid can i get?* "but i'm just trying it on this 98 system to confirm... well, fuck me runnin' it printed fine."
"no shit?"
"yeah, no shit."
"well as long as it can print to something..."
"i should be able to set it up to print between them through sharing." now, i know this is wrong now, and i know that i should've realized that 9x would not be able to provide the xp systems with a driver and it would all suck anyhow, but i was frazzled, cut me some slack. so i start setting up file sharing on the 9x system and of course it doesn't work. the sytem can see out but nothing sees in. and i can't share. and yes, file and print sharing is enabled. so, i dig out the networking keys from the registry and remove dial-up networking and try to reboot and the systme locks up and i reboot and the registry didn't take so i have to do it all again and reboot and okay now i can see things (take a breath, take a breath).
"how's it going"
"you're sneaky, i didn't see your entrance written anywhere. the 98 system is able to share, but (working as we speak) network printing (realization hits) won't make a bit of difference for the xp and 2000 system, since the driver sucks, but hey, let's try it (to no avail) again."
"can it print to the 5550 as well?"
"oh yeah, sure thing." realizing that i hadn't set it up yet. "just as soon as i do it, it will."
"well, everything is pretty good then."
"yes. except for your wireless encryption settings."
now, i'm not sure what rock that thought crawled out from under, but i curse that thought to hell and fire and damnation.
of course, you can predict the rest - a couple of hours showing him how easy wpa was to set up on the xp system and how the 98 system couldn't use wpa and neither could either of the other two, so let's move to wep and fucking passkey fiveortencharactersneverworksihateihateihateihateihateiahatethat shit!!!
so i put it back the way it was. and retested printing and it's slow on one system and then its not.
customer says, "well it least it wasn't anything easy. i would've felt bad if it had been too easy on you."
"here's my card. i'm usually a lot better at my job."
yeah, that's the day. it sucked. it also continued, but i'm too tired to even consider writing about it...
Wednesday, March 09, 2005
ouch
so i just dumped my guts out personally and rambled about the history of the english language and the historical jesus, only to get spanked by internet explorer's security settings and lose my whole post. a bit of scribbled margianlia, lost in the dustbin of history.
damn, now i really understand the implications of the burning of the library in alexandria.
*sigh* i am fortune's fool. but i lament...
i'm going to go contemplate the validity of my mcse...
damn, now i really understand the implications of the burning of the library in alexandria.
*sigh* i am fortune's fool. but i lament...
i'm going to go contemplate the validity of my mcse...
the die has been cast
die-cast member of motives unseeming;
winsome, worthless wagging words -
alliterative, the hammer slams,
the ear's door shut,
is doesn't seem like much,
this gesture,
but it means everything to me.
winsome, worthless wagging words -
alliterative, the hammer slams,
the ear's door shut,
is doesn't seem like much,
this gesture,
but it means everything to me.
from ether to substance
Blog. Blogger. Clogger. Clobber. Climber. Limber. Limb. Lamb. Slam. Slum. Some. Same. Aim. Lame. Game. Name. Shame. Shade. Share. Shire. Wire. Fire. Four. Nor. Soar. Soul. Bowl. Bile. Bowl. Foal. Foul. Fool. Cool. Drool. Drawl. Shawl. Shoal. Shale. Shag. Shrug. Bug. Bog. Blog.
So there you have it. The first post.
I'm not sure what. I'm not sure why. I'm just trying to sound smart, I think. Hrm. Fairly monosyllabically, no less...
So there you have it. The first post.
I'm not sure what. I'm not sure why. I'm just trying to sound smart, I think. Hrm. Fairly monosyllabically, no less...
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