Michael Gates's Blog, page 56

Brain Dump

I'm thinking about different ways to describe the Big Bang....

Horrendous Space Kablooie?
Amazin' Cosmic Combust?
Flabbergasting Universal Whamo?
Dynamite Monster Blastathon?
Awesome Celestial Outburst?
Wondrous Transcendental Burp?

There must be others.

Random Acts of Poetry

January A.M.

The sticks are broken, the coals have faded.
Smoke offers speculation. Your mirror shivers,

and the moon squanders its silver.
A tilted house is sleeping.

You rehearse the passions of Thursday.
The sharp lines of glass--

instants, appetites, lessons
revolve in the cobalt. Everything

fragments to jazz, futile words,
a pack of dogs chasing their tails.

An onion unpeeling its burdens.
You remember

blurred photos, three siblings, the old Chevrolet.
Lost books, days of inertia.

Now pencil light sketches an horizon.
Pigeons complain

on the frosted sill. The stale roar of traffic
builds its illusion of normalcy,

the radiators tick and exhale
a warm assertion of morning.

Quote of the Day: Rod Serling

"We know that a dream can be real, but who ever thought that reality could be a dream? We exist, of course, but how, in what way? As we believe, as flesh-and-blood human beings, or are we simply parts of someone's feverish, complicated nightmare? Think about it, and then ask yourself, do you live here, in this country, in this world, or do you live instead...in the Twilight Zone."
–-Rod Serling

Word of the Day: ugsome

What's "the word I'm thinking of"? Today, it's...

ugsome [UG-sum] (adjective)

Horrible, loathsome

"Since she has lain into your arms,
She shall not lye in mine;
Since she has kiss’d your ugsome mouth,
She never shall kiss mine."
--Sir Walter Scott, "Sir Hugh Le Blond" (1802)

~~~

TWITO, page 152!

Link Mania

"Our favorite hacker slang": Are you "yak shaving" right now?

The language of jazz: Can you be a "hepcat" if you play in a "jug band"?

59 Slang Phrases From The 1920s We Should Start Using Again: including "ishkabibble" (TWITO, page 74!).

Random Sequence

I stepped outside one morning and saw it immediately: a huge, black mushroom cloud rising above he jagged rooftops across the street. A second later, I head a loud thunderclap, combined with a strange whooshing sound. I felt that acidic, twisting, 9/11 sensation in my stomach: fear....a faint cloud of fear followed me for the next hour or so -- a 21st century feeling, I decided.
--from "Boom!" (by me), originally published in Hudson Current

Meditation on the Letter 'S'

Shhhh! Sometimes swans seek serenity, sailing slowly seaword so silently. See? Subtle sorcery still smothers slugging sentiments. Sadly, sundown sinks solar safaris, sending suckers southward. Sin surrounds sex, so simpletons say. Sick! Such santimoniuous seasons seem senseless, sequestered sans syrup. Since September, seven Samurai shiver simultaneously, shaking swords supurbly. Snakes sound silly, swishing sangria; some swill Singapore Slings! Symbolic smooching? Simulated sympathy? Sucks!

Link Mania:

11 Untranslatable Words You Didn't Know Existed

Are you a pochemuchka?

Word of the Day: whigmaleerie

What's "the word I'm thinking of"? Today, it's...

whigmaleerie [wig-muh-LEER-ee] (noun)

A notion or whim; also something contrived, a gimmick

"But, of course, if you'd be better suited with some French whigmaleerie, why, say so, and ha' done with it."
--Curtis Yorke, The Other Sara (1908)

~~~

TWITO, page 161!

Brain Dump

Of the lessons that dreams teach, among the most important is that you must sleep with your ethereal eyes open. This is so that chimerical wisdom can find its path to your intrinsic psyche. Dreams are constructed from the artifacts of hidden meanings, their aspects fixed within the psychogenic fusion of the subliminal archetypes. The often volcanic outpourings of visionary dream images experienced during the trance-like torpidity of somnolence is the epitome of salubrious intoxication, the desirable mental respite from circadian quandaries and torment. This is a necessary psychic transition from spiraling diurnal vexation toward the untroubled consonance of a requited heart. The road to serenity is found in habitual cultivation of a habit of surprising the slumbering mind during its extended nocturnal exile from quotidian disharmony by creating a "whirligig" of phantasmagorical imagery to soothe the apprehensive intellect via the ministrations of the proverbial catnap -- that is, forty winks.