chrryblssmninja

I've started a really weird sci-fi linked verse poetry project on Twitter: The Ship and The Station. idk

In TV talk, I'm liking In the Flesh's second season overall. The pilot of Halt and Catch Fire is promising. While people might blog the most about Lee Pace's character or the female programmer, I think the character with the most underlying potential is the wife of Scoot McNairy's engineer character. To my surprise, Penny Dreadful was better than expected. There are still some iffy parts -- Billie Piper's accent, Dorian Grey's hair, a few scary moments that turn out unintentionally hilarious -- but I'm into the ride overall. What really captivated me was the Frankenstein story in episodes 1-3, and the inclusion of the Grand Guignol stage in episodes 3-4.

prompt inspired by book_memes:

Review a book - but in poetry!

I'm really exhausted right now, but maybe one of you might think up of something? I think it's a really brilliant prompt.

sorry for spamming you all recently, but just a reminder


WEST COAST LOST VIEWING PARTY AT heyt

post ain't up yet but can be found at this tag

I won't be able to join - argh you digital transition - but those people are fun to watch with



other random things:

just started Season 1 of Psych and it is fun

I have finished reading all of the translated Axis Powers Hetalia!
And now I know that a place called Sealand exists.

I am currently reading The Aeneid and it is awesome

I am slowly progressing through the complete collection of Issa's haiku

two that might interest you:


a mirage running
and hiding...
withered fields

逃水のにげかくれてもかれの哉
nigemizu no nige-kakurete mo kareno kana

poem and translation source

I think "a mirage running/and hiding" is so pretty

- - -

laugh at my piss
and shudder...
katydid

小便の身ぶるひ笑へきりぎりす
shôben no miburui warae kirigirisu

source

yes, humorous haiku totally existed back then
I think LAUGH AT MY PISS should be on a gif or something

LAUGH AT MY PISS, FEEBLE CREATURE

from this post at book_memes:

You are a professor of literature at a prestigious university. You have a class of first-year students, all highly intelligent, but not great readers of literature, in fact they are majors in a completely different discipline. Your job, as professor, is to instill in these students a love of literature so that after this course, even if they never take another literature class, that they might enjoy reading throughout their lives. The class is made up of both males and females. You are to assign approximately 15-20 books over the one year course. What books do you assign? They can be from any time period and any genre.

I think some of you guys should comment with suggestions.

My list is a bit weird, long, and aimed at American students. It is seriously lacking in pre-1900 literature, for while I do like older books, I had to keep the average college freshman in mind.

oh hey croakvegas if you have time you probably have some great pre-1950 suggestions that students will like. no pressure though

My list, sans explanations
1) The essential haiku : versions of Bashō, Buson, and Issa edited and with an introduction by Robert Hass.
2) Jim Henson's The Storyteller by Anthony Minghella
3) The Devil and the White City by Erik Larson
4) I, Claudius, by Robert Graves
5) A Wizard of Earthsea, by Ursula K. Le Guin
6) The Lost World by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
I was all conflicted choosing between this, H.G. Wells' Invisible Man, and Frankenstein.
7) The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick
I forgot to add in my comment that focus on characters may help ground the story for those less sci-fi inclined. Also, alt-history is probably more mainstream-acceptable than spaceships and lasers
8) Ragtime, by E.L. Doctorow
9) The Bird's Nest, by Shirley Jackson
10) Epitaph for a Peach, by David Mas Masumoto
11) Soccer in the Land of Sun and Shadow, by Eduardo Galeano
12) Perfume: The Story of a Murderer, by Patrick Suskind
13) Suspects, by David Thomson
14) True Grit, by Charles Portis
15) Kamikaze Girls (Shimotsuma Monogatari), by Novala Takemoto
16) World War Z, by Max Brooks

I was also considering Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, but decided never mind

oh my gosh

ANTHRO 114 - HISTORY OF ANTHRO THOUGHT - A
ANTHRO 189 - SPEC TOP:SOC/CULT - A
ENGLISH 143B - VERSE - A
ENV SCI 84 - A
UGIS 192B - RESEARCH SOC SCI - P

P = Pass for Pass/fail classes, you can't really fail an undergraduate research internship unless you really mess up

I was so worried about those first two classes - History of Anthropological Thought and Cross-Cultural Verbal Art. The essay for the former, on forming affinities with crews on America's Best Dance Crew, was a rush job and only 7 pages when they asked for 10-12 pages. The essay for the latter I took more time with, but I was afraid that my analysis for the poem wasn't complete, that my connections to magic were weird, and at 12 pages it was under the 15-20 pages asked for undergraduates. In addition, that class only based its grades on a presentation, this report, with some consideration given to participation in class. and the professors there are like super-scholars who know like 12 languages and can bring in all these theories into discussion but still be super-approachable and nice but would I disappoint them like I've done so many times before?

whoa shoot
I worried so much


( I guess I'll post the essays here if you're bored. )

Happy Birthday, soleta_nf!



tried to find a poem you might like...this one might be cute.

Lines
by Martha Collins

Draw a line. Write a line. There.
Stay in line, hold the line, a glance
between the lines is fine but don't
turn corners, cross, cut in, go over
or out, between two points of no
return's line of flight, between
two points of view's a line of vision.
But a line of thought is rarely
straight, an open line's no party
line, however fine your line,
consider the shortest distance from x
to y, let x be me, let y be you.

I know this is supposed to be done on Fridays, but I couldn't think of anything

from fannish5:
List your 5 favorite unrequited love stories.
I can only think of three right now.

The Remains of the Day, by Kazuo Ishiguro.

Johnny Truant/"Thumper" the stripper in House of Leaves. I'm serious. It really forms into this really sweet thing.

Ichigo/Mr. Slick in Shimotsuma monogatari (Kamikaze Girls). Ichigo crying on the hill.

I think I could only think of book examples because, in TV shows, unrequited relationships have to be addressed sometime to satisfy viewers. In most movies, the lonely one with unrequited affection is usually the pathetic loser or comic relief sidekick whatever that most viewers don't remember (or at least isn't expected to remember as much as the main characters). But my memory is really, really fuzzy on this topic in fiction, so PLEASE list any or all of your favorite unrequited love stories in the comments, because I seriously think I've missed some really great ones.

I think I'll end this with an appropriate poem I found during my Clusty searches for the topic above.

I am a baby prematurely born
I am a genius dying before I'm thirty...
I am a mouth venting suffering but gagged by a wall-
Like hand
I am a severed nose still wanting to smell roses
I am an unrequited lover expressing love with a
torn-out tongue
I am a pair of hands with amputated fingers holding
my beloved....
It ends fatalistically:
I'm nothing, really
I'm just what I am.

- Liu Hongbin

I am reposting these poems I found.

both found in the CD Astor Piazolla: El Tango conducted by Gidon Kremer


The song’s in Italian, the poem is in Spanish. I’ll just put down the English translations provided.

Preludio para el año 3001 (Rinascero)
By Angela Denia Tarenzi after original Spanish text by Horacio Ferrer
Translated by Robert Cowart
You should really hear the song- so forceful and strong and stirring and wow.

I shall be reborn a fine evening,
With this desire to love and to live stronger still
I’ll be reborn (it is destiny) in the year 3001,
My lovely city will be a festival of color.

The stray dogs will bark at my shadow…
With my modest baggage I’ll arrive from the Great Beyond
And kneeling at the edge of the transparent sea
I shall shape for myself a new heart from salt and mud.

A vagabond, a clown, and a magician will come;
My immortal comrades, shouting “Courage…arise.
“That’s the way! Take heart, be born! Courage, brother,
‘For the work of death and rebirth is beautiful but hard.”

I shall be reborn! Reborn! Reborn!
And an unearthly voice will give to me
The great and pure faith that will serve me…
I shall return…again I shall believe…and struggle!
I’ll wear a red flower in my button-hold
And I shall be reborn whether anyone else ever has!
My country- 30th century- you will see:
I shall be reborn! Reborn! Reborn!

I shall be revorn from the things I have loved so deeply…
When the shadows of the house say softly “He is here!”
I shall kiss the memory of your quiet eyes,
To complete the poem I left half-done.

I shall be reborn from the fruit of a village market
And the grimy ambience of a romantic café,
From the ruined village that crumbled in an earthquake
And from the rage of the Southern people, I shall be born.

You see, I’ll be born in the year 3001
And with the people who never were, but will be then;
We will bless the earth, our earth…and I swear to you
That this country shall come into being once again

I shall be reborn! Reborn! Reborn!
And an unearthly voice shall give to me
My country…30th century…you will see…
I shall be reborn! Reborn! Reborn!

- - -

El Tango, by Jorge Luis Borges
Translation by Anthony Kerrigan

“Where are they now?” elegies ask
About those who are no longer, as if there were
A region where Yesterday could be
Today, the Still and Not Yet.

Where (I echo) can that malevolence be,
The malignity founded in dusty dirt
Lanes or in lost towns,
By the sect of defiance and the knife?

Where are they now, those who passed on,
Leaving an episode to Epic
A fable to Time, men who knifed each other
Without hate or lucre or passion in love?

I look for them in legend, in the final
Ember that like a vague rose
Holds something of that brave crew,
Of men named Corrales or Balvanera.

What obscure alleyways or wasteland
Of heaven is darkened by the hard
Shad of the men who was shadow,
Muraña, that Knife of Palermo?

Where the deadly Ibarra (may the saints
Forgive him!) who killed his brother
On a railroad overpass, because the other’s
Dead were more, and thus he evened the score?

A mythology of knife thrusts
Slowly dying in oblivion
A chanson de geste lost
In sordid police reports

There is another ember, another burning rose
In the ash that keeps them whole:
And these the haughty knifers live on
And the silent dagger’s bulk.

Though the facitious dagger or that other dagger,
Time, sink them into the mire,
Today, beyond time and misshapen
Death, these dead men live on in the tango.

They are in the music, in the strings
Of an obstinate and elaborate guitar,
Which weaves a fiesta and the innocence
Of courage into a fortuitous milonga.

The yellow carousel of horse and lion
Whirls in the hollow while I hear the echo
Of those tangos of Arolas and Greco
I watched danced on the pavement

Or an instant that today stands out alone,
Without before or after, against oblivion,
And has the taste of everything lost,
Everything lost and recovered.

There is nostalgia in every chord:
The other patio and the half-seen vine,
(The South, behind suspicious walls,
Keeps a knife and a guitar.)

This burst of sound, the tango, this
Wantoness defies the routine years:
Made of time and dust, man lasts
Less long than the libidinous melody,

Which is only time. The tango spawns a turbid
Unread past in certain measure true:
An impossible recollection of having died
Fighting, on some corner of a suburb.

Here's audio of Caetano Veloso reading the poem in its original Spanish.