Category Archives: Writing
It’s poetry week here at con carne! To balance out the seriousness of Henley’s Invictus last time, here’s something a bit more whimsical. And much older; Andrew Marvell ‘s To His Coy Mistress pre-dates Henley by a good 200 years. Yet, both poems are about overcoming obstacles.
It must be said that the obstacles in question here are a bit different from the “bludgeonings of chance” that concern Henley. Marvell has something else entirely on his mind! And while Henley speaks of staying the course against all odds, Marvell’s advice is more carpe diem.
So, for a little fun on Friday, I give you…
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15 Comments | tags: Andrew Marvell, carpe diem, funny poetry, poems, poetry, sexy poetry | posted in Life, Quotes, Writing
I was involved in a discussion not long ago that reminded me of the Henley poem, Invictus. Not that I needed a lot of reminding; the poem has been near and dear to my heart since high school.
I’m not very conversant with poetry, but I’ve run into a few “pomes” over the years that have really grabbed me. (In other words, this is one place where I don’t know art, but I know what I like.)
In the past I’ve published copies of favorite poems on my personal website, and I’ve always intended to write about them in a blog article. For this poem especially, no time like the present.
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16 Comments | tags: Bene Gesserit, Dune, English class, Ernest Henley, fear, Gotta have a montage, high school, Invictus, liberal arts, Litany aginst Fear, poems, poetry, serious poetry, Team America, William Ernest Henley | posted in Life, Quotes, Writing
Whoops! I was delighted yesterday when I saw the sun was once again shining into my living room. During the depth of winter, it’s too low in the sky for the rays to get past the (rather deep) skylight well in the ceiling.
Seeing it yesterday required three things I’ve been waiting for: The sun to get high enough in the sky (obviously); for it to be not cloudy, which has been a problem recently; and for the snow and (weirdly) the grime to melt off the skylight itself. The snow cover isn’t unusual, but I’ve never seen grime before!
Anyway, hooray, yesterday it happened. And then I woke this morning to winter again!
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15 Comments | tags: a rat, arithmetic, dead battery, melting snow, separate, skylight, spelling, stonehenge, Sun, sunshine, turquoise, weird, winter | posted in Life, Writing
Perhaps it is a personal penchant for irony-leavened paradox that has me pen a post titled 2014 that turns out to be more a look backwards. The dash of irony comes from the explicit mention of not being one who spends much time looking back!
But, also as mentioned, there is a time and place for most things, and January is a more ideal place for that than you may realize. The month is named after the roman god, Janus, god of beginnings and transitions, who has both a backward- and forward-looking face. The turning of the year is the time and place for both.
So here is a bit more looking back and looking forward.
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6 Comments | tags: 2014, blog, brown sugar, candy, Janus, Kinsey Millhone, Michael Scott, sausage, sharks, spaghetti, Sue Grafton, The Office, toast | posted in Books, Life, TV, Writing
What a thing to behold: 2014! I found it a bit startling to reach 2010; by now these high numbers seem almost normal. Some born in this millennium are already teenagers and aren’t far from voting age. For those of us born back in the fitties, it can be a little eerie.
When Stanley Kubrick‘s 2001: A Space Odyssey came out in April 1968, I was in seventh grade and already a hard-core science fiction fan. Back then, 2001 seemed so far off that anything was possible. We first walked on the moon just over a year later in July. (My beloved Star Trek had been on the air since September 1966!)
I even remember when George Orwell‘s 1984 seemed very far off!
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7 Comments | tags: 2001: A Space Odyssey, 2013, 2014, Arthur Clarke, Code of the Bushido, internet, interweb, Mr. DeMille, Rick O'Shay, Stan Lynde, Star Trek, The Jetsons, Toyota Jan, Unix clocks | posted in Life, Writing
Many offices feature “casual Friday” in acknowledgement that today our attention begins to shift towards the weekend. (When I started with TC in 1980, ties were required. When I retired this year, “business casual” was the norm. I wore jeans and polo shirts the last half-dozen years or so.)
In the same way, today the focus here shifts from the tough and chewy Sideband material to something softer and easier to digest. I have what amounts to a bit of a rant, but a mild-mannered one of minor import. It’s just one of those little things that’s annoyed me in a small way for a long time. (But it turns out that it’s one of those things that actually have good reason!)
It’S aBoUt ThIs ThInG cAlLeD cAsE-sEnSiTiViTy!
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Leave a comment | tags: A.A. Milne, alphabet, case-sensitive, characters, computer language, humor, letter case, letters, lowercase, programming languages, source code, text, UPPERCASE, Winnie the Pooh | posted in Computers, Life, Rant, The Interweb, Writing
Ah, it’s that time of year again, so here again is unvarnished truth about our yellow-orange friends and their lifestyle.
Sad personal fact: I’m not a fan of most vegetables. At the very bottom of that list are the squashes, including my Gourdian friend, the Pumpkin. Not a fan of cooked fruit, so pie is off my menu and never more so than “squash pie.” Revolting!!
Speaking of revolting, a good friend loves this time of year, because all the microbrewery pumpkin ales come out. Ewwww…. “squash beer!”
Halloween candy on the other hand….. 🙂
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Today you get a re-post of a post from last year at this time. And it was a re-post then, as well. It’s piece I wrote several years ago for a writing exercise in another venue. I thought it turned out pretty well, and I still like it after so many years, so I thought it was worth sharing again.
The original writing exercise (and it was just an exercise; there were no winners or judges) was to write a short piece from the point of view of a pumpkin. The exercise was given to us around this time—fall—just before Halloween. (It was the same guy who gave us an exercise to write a piece from the point of view of our car!)
Most writers took the tack that pumpkins suffered horribly at this time of year. Naturally, I took a different tack, and so I give you…
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1 Comment | tags: dirt, Gourdian, gourds, humor, Jack-O-Lantern, kiss a Gourdian, orange, pumpkins, re-post, vines | posted in Writing
I’ve gotten spoiled. Writing about the con carne topics is much harder than writing about the life stories and the off-the-cuff opinions. Meaty topics require research and fact-checking (and often I need to create the images). And I expect they’re also harder to read!
My intention here was always to write mostly about ideas with a fallback of writing about things and, to a lesser extent, writing about life (which is to say, about people).
Today’s post keys off a Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal cartoon I saw a while back. At first the cartoon spoke to me, but the more I thought about it, the less I agreed with it.
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8 Comments | tags: Dune, Fahrenheit 451, Frank Herbert, George Carlin, Ken Follett, Larry Niven, Lee Smolin, Pillars of the Earth, Ray Bradbury, Ringworld, Robert Pirsig, SMBC, Winston Churchill, Zen Motorcycle | posted in Books, Life, Philosophy, Religion, Science, Writing
I was exposed to Shakespeare in high school. We read several of his plays in various English classes. I took to it about the same as most high school kids. That is, I found it opaque and dull (like “classical” music). The first glimmer of the magic and wonder of Shakespeare came only when I became involved in staging some of his plays in drama class.
When I was a sophomore, I helped stage — and acted in — our high school drama group’s presentation of Hamlet (one of his greatest works). I’ve written about my high school drama teacher; he was a professional theatre person who’d gone into teaching (while waiting for his big break in Hollywood). Our production of Hamlet received rave reviews from local papers. “Better than most college productions,” they said!
As a direct consequence of that production, Hamlet is my favorite play!
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8 Comments | tags: English, Hamlet, humor, language, masonite, Shakespeare, word play, words | posted in From My Collection, Writing
Today, July 4th, is Independence Day in the USA. For most this is a wonderful summer holiday involving picnics and fireworks. As with Christmas, the real meaning behind the day may be distant or lost. And I’m not here today to write about the True Meaning of Independence Day (United States). For the record, we adopted a rather important historical document 237 years ago today. If you live here and can read, you’re expected to know all about it.
It so happens that today is — or rather would have been — my 15th wedding anniversary (crystal). A decade-and-a-half ago, on a paddle wheel river boat, I got married. There was cake and fireworks.
It also so happens that today marks this blog’s two-year anniversary (cotton).
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17 Comments | tags: Anniversary, cake, celebrate, die spammers, Douglas Adams, fireworks, Followers, friends, July 4, Marriage, Wedding | posted in Life, The Interweb, Writing
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