A Day in the Life

Woke up, fell out of bed
Dragged a comb across my head
Found my way downstairs and drank a cup
And looking up I noticed I was late
Found my mug, grabbed my mouse
Didn't have to leave the house
Found my way into the local cyberspace
Somebody’s face was staring from my screen
Ah…

I read the news today, oh boy
Four thousand people got the new vaccine
And though the shots were rather small
They had to count them all
Now they know how many shots it takes to fill the Schnitzer Hall
I’d love to
turn
off
Zoom
.
.
.


Seriously. This is what a day in my life is like now.

Books Available
The Day of My First Driving Lesson
Country Well-Known as an Old Nightmare's Stable
High-Voltage Lines
Knocking from Inside

Food Cart Food Pod Browsin'

Apologies to the Mommas and Poppas...

All the carts are closed
And the sky is grey
Looking for some food
On a weekend day
I’d have eaten lunch now
If it was Monday

Food cart food pod browsin’
On a weekend day

Went into a restaurant
For some take-away
Slapped me with a service charge
That I couldn’t pay
You know the waiter doesn’t like it
If I wouldn’t stay

Food cart food pod browsin’
On a weekend day

All the carts are closed now
And the sky is grey
Looking for some food
On a weekend day
If I cannot eat here
I must cook today

Food cart food pod browsin’
On a weekend day

Available! High-Voltage Lines, Knocking from Inside

Rachel the Teacher-Gunner

Rachel was a teacher who knew how to use a gun
With a concealed-carry permit and a lesson plan she’d done
She walked into her building one dark and stormy day
And she heard the gunshots echo from the concrete cold and gray.

Her students huddled silent in their classroom, under desks
They were making vid recordings, they were sending final texts
“Ms. Rachel went to stop him,” one child’s message read
“I hope to God she kills him, I hope that she’s not dead.”

Rachel, the teacher-gunner…

She stalked him through the hallways of the school she knew so well
With her finger on the trigger, listening for the bell
Kill or die were all the choices before her in that place
It was as she squeezed the trigger that she recognized his face.

Time, time, time
For another life to pass
Time stands still for Rachel
When she kills to save her class

They can still see her stand above the body of her son
In the muzzle-flash of Rachel’s carry-gun.

Murderer and victim are the parts that we can play
Hero isn’t on the menu they’re serving up today
In the hallways and the classrooms where the guards are on deploy
And Rachel’s ghost is carrying the gun that killed her boy.

Rachel, the killer teacher-gunner…
Rachel, the killer teacher-gunner…

Available! High-Voltage Lines, Knocking from Inside

Officials confirm worldwide shortage of # sign approaching critical levels

The United Nations Etymology, Punctuation, and Transcription office (UNEPT) recently confirmed that stocks of # signs are dangerously depleted worldwide. Factors leading to the decline include the widespread use of hash tags as well as other uses such as defining temporary tables in most dialects of SQL.

“We have tended to treat punctuation as though it were an unlimited resource, even though we’ve known for some time that that’s not true,” said UNEPT director Prin Tersdevil. He pointed to other examples such as the decline in semi-colons. “People think that usage has just gone out of style, but the reality is that semi-colon populations have failed to keep pace with consumption,” he said, spelling out the name of the punctuation mark to avoid using the endangered mark itself.

Internet communities reacted angrily to the announcement. “Who are they kidding? I can hit any key on my keyboard as many times as I want” tweeted user @keystuck. @keystuck did not add a hashtag.

Tersdevil indicated that his agency was carefully watching populations of other punctuation marks, such as @, for signs of decline. “@ is a particularly critical mark for today’s economy,” he said.

Available! High-Voltage Lines, Knocking from Inside

Heck, why not

I blame Todd. We all make up parody song lyrics. I've posted a few before.

But at his behest... a certain theme develops...

To the tune of "I'm in Love with an Octopus," from Fanny:

I’m in love with an occultist, a scheming dreaming occultist
How I moan on his couch of bone with the octagon tiles all round me
An impossible shape in a yellow cape, he strides across the sky
He watches the night-gaunts fly
With his single burning eye
And he’s mine, all mine, every identical pentacle mine. Iä!

I’m in love with an occultist, a ranting chanting occultist
All I ask is his pallid mask and the octagon tiles all round me
Diamond strong, all angled wrong
The octagon tiles all round me!


To the tune of "American Pie," possibly one of the most parodied songs in the history of English:

I met a black man with a horn
I asked him why the sky was torn
But he just smiled and played a tune.
I went down to the ocean’s shore
And there I saw the finny horde
Dancing underneath the shattered moon
And in the streets, alarm bells rang
The sirens screamed, the cultists sang
Cities fell and burned
The Old Ones had returned
Yes, the three gods I admire the most
Cthulhu, Shub and Yog-Sothoth
Were scooping up souls on points of toast
The day the stars were right.

Refrain:
Bye bye, dread R'lyeh goodbye
That is not dead which eternal can lie
And with strange aeons even death has now died
Today, the stars are finally right!


Available! High-Voltage Lines, Knocking from Inside

All that is Gold does not Glitter

You see the second line of that poem on bumper stickers fairly often around here:

All that is gold does not glitter
Not all those who wander are lost
The old that is strong does not wither
Deep roots are not touched by the frost.

From the ashes a fire shall be woken
A light from the shadows shall spring
Renewed shall be blade that was broken
The crownless again shall be king.

I've been known to quote it as "Not all those launder are washed." I wonder how many people can correctly identify the source of the quote? It's from Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, of course (the book: I can't remember now if it featured in the movie). Bilbo wrote it about Aragorn, the King in exile.

Anyway...


All that is bent is not broken
Not all those who whittle can carve
Beware of the blade that is open
Beware of the dog that is starved.

A knife can be kept in a pocket
But the blade remains sharp to the touch
Like sticking a fork in a socket
The hand that is careless risks much.

--image courtesy of Magpie Tales
Collection available! Knocking from Inside

The Widmer Brew'ry Disaster

Night before last there was a fire at a power substation that knocked out power to several blocks of N/NE Portland. Including the building I work in. I got to spend yesterday at home.

There were some tragic consequences to the outage. According to the Oregonian's article:

"Widmer Brothers Brewing Co. Co-owner Rob Widmer said the brewery lost 250 barrels, or the equivalent of 62,000 pints, of Deadlift Imperial IPA, a new brew and its most expensive beer, because of the outage.

"For us the painful part is the loss of 62,000 pints of delicious beer," Widmer said."

Brewery under the freeway bridge over the shining Willamette!
I am sorry to say you have been visited by a most terrible calamit-
y on this seventh day of January, two thousand ten
A day we must all hope will never, ever come again
For an electrical substation burned down in the middle of the night
And left several blocks of businesses without power or light.

In the evening all the good people who work at Widmer
Went home, and nothing untoward did fear
While in the cooler sat two hundred fifty barrels of Deadlift Imperial
Which is an alcoholic beverage that is brewed from cereal.
No-one would have believe that there was any cause for fright
Or that a power substation would catch fire in the middle of the night.

But when they awoke, what horror! The beer would not stay cold
Which meant they couldn't sell it as fresh-- and after all, who wants to drink old
Beer? With a heavy heart, co-owner Rob declared it a loss.
"Sixty-two thousand good pints of new-brewed beer we're going to have to toss."
The ale ran brown and foaming into the brewery's drain
Like the storm sewers overflowing after a heavy rain.

Oh seventh day of January two thousand and ten,
You are a day of infamy in the minds of beer-drinking men
A day when a sacrifice was made of so many barrels
And now I believe that no sensible man would quarrel
With my conclusion: that Widmer sooner better than later
Ought to buy themselves a reliable generator.

Thanks to to old Will. I mean McGonagall.

Collection available! Knocking from Inside

Laika in the Sky with Diamonds

This is the 50th anniversary of the launch of Sputnik II, with a female dog named Laika on board. Sadly, she did not return alive.

Picture yourself in a Soviet rocket
with stars on its flanks like the stars in the skies
Sitting beside you, a fur-clad Ninotchka
a dog with kaleidoscope eyes.

Laika in the sky with diamonds... etc.

Follow her up to the Dog constellations
where Sirius watches with sapphire eyes
as hunter Orion fights Taurus, the monster
who stands so incredibly high.

Laika in the sky with diamonds... etc.

Picture yourself on a train in a station
with porters called Kamerad, statues of guys
moulded in bronze with heroic proportions
and dogs with kaleidoscope eyes.

Laika in the sky with diamonds... etc. fade.

If you like poetry, check out the weekly prompt site at Totally Optional Prompts

The Sticky-Digit Deal

Four alchemists have gathered in a cave beneath a stone
Four men of solemn bearing and of purposes unknown
Three of them sit down in chairs and one hops on a log
a streetfighter, an IT guy, a dervish and a frog.

Three things keep an eye on when they visit your backyard
a hurricane, a firestorm, and four guys playing cards.

The skinny Cajun takes the lead by pulling out an ace
The curry chef throws down his cards, a scowl upon his face
The guru strokes his silver beard and smiles into his hand
and no-one knows what cards are held by the amphibian.

Three things never trust in, an unmarked country road
a prophesying raven and a double-dealing toad.

"I've never seen such lousy cards!" The knifemaker was vexed,
The Indonesian white guy scratched his bald spot, all perplexed.
The old philosopher exclaimed: "It's very plain to see,
we're suffering the consequence of bufine perfidy!"

Three things are the fastest of all things beneath the sun
the wind that blows, the hawk that strikes, the anuran on the run.

Four alchemists have scattered to the corners of the land
Five aces on the table are what's left of that last hand
Base treachery has had its day and now it stands revealed
for everyone has heard about the sticky-digit deal.

Three things to remember if you're planning to survive
don't breathe in fire, don't walk on ice, don't cheat three guys with knives.

Thanks to Leslie Fish and Duane Elms. You can find the music here.

Oddly Mangled, Us

With profound apologies to Percy Shelley.

I met a dealer from an antique store
Who hauled a vast and legless trunk of stone
With him to shows on every foreign shore.
Where he the merchandise, with gloomy frown
And hands in pockets tucked, looked coldly o'er.
Some seller there his countenance misread
And offered him low price on certain things
Whereon his avarice had lately fed.
No joy upon the dealer's face appears
But slow he turns, and slowly gives shillings
His triumph hidden under fake despair.
The seller's take of cash is scant today.
The heavy trunk holds all that it can bear.
The dealer slowly hauls his trunk away.

O Swingline, My Swingline

My friend Rustin, known on Slashdot as perfessor multigeek, challenged me to contribute to his collection of stapler poetry.

O Swingline! my Swingline! our bindery is done,
All the pages we have stapled, starting with number one,
Your staples gleam, full well I deem, these leaves will stay in order
No ear of dog or tongue of fox will crumple their neat borders!
But O heart! heart! heart!
O Swingline case of red!
While on the desk my stapler lies
Fallen cold and dead.

If my effort seems lowly it is because I am crouching at the feet of a giant.