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Sunday, October 4, 2015
THE BEACH REPORT : Third Season, 2015-16
Now I'm one of the old men with thin legs in long shorts by the sea…
[Journal :
I had in mind to write a paragraph about the old men, which would then refer to Bill Downing as the oldest of them as per his visit to the Shop a few days ago*. Ive been thinking about him as one of the many characters around La Mama (the place and, importantly, the Poets Workshop, the poetry sheets, little mags, poetry readings, meetings) ca '68/'69. For example, have begun piece about Paul Smith describing our dispute about self-immolation political protest, wch i'd mocked in poem & he'd responded, rebuked me. May well refer to Garrie Hutchinson's reconnoiter of Vietnam War era in his book from '99 wch ive picked up again recently. Ive described Michael Dugan in the Paul Smith piece --Michael being our reporter from the Melbourne front during '68 when we met, filling us in on all the history other side of Loretta's red flagging & Eltham lore i'd learnt through '67, thus Geoff Eggleston, Paul, Meher Baba, home grown mysticism, Beats etc… Michael prime candidate for retrieval, certainly as a character (a figure) and surely a place for his poetry as well…
Time doesn't stand still when one's youthful/active. It does later --a chance to recuperate, retrieve, right the wrongs…
*Saturday, 5-9-15
Bill Downing dropped in & then without goodbye shuffled out. Returned a few minutes later to ask me how he cld use his mobile phone to get money! I wouldn't have a clue of course so i took him to see Mary Farrugia next door. Introduced him to Mary & explained the problem and she & her customers said we shld go to the 7Eleven! Down in the lift we went, luckily no one in their shop & they were able to explain Bill needed 'sim card' & ID & etc. Said we shld find Vodaphone shop in Bourke Street… I suggested to well & truly baffled Bill it was too complicated & that we shld now ring his wife who might then be able to come to the City? Upstairs at the Shop again i rang her (Bill knew how to locate her phone number on his mobile), explained the situation, and she said he wld have to return home & she'd help him from there! So off Bill went to catch the train. Loretta said i'm 'very kind'. Let's hope people are as kind when we're old i said. Which is the truth of it…]
Sunday, October 4th, '15
The third season begins.
Corp on cell behind me, appropriately disembodied voice : "Harry? Harry? You're dropping out. I cant hear you." But I can amigo!
God help us!
OK, it's behind me, literally. Focus instead upon the white sand & placid sea & cloudless blue sky from umbrella-less chair & table on the esplanade.
First weekend in October's pre-summer heat wraps around old bones like The Past --the past, as aggregate of equanimity that is --as --as just this, --this sea-side, --this sea-side note-book jotting, as though all perfect unbounded Mind. Then, across the sand, down to the sea and first immersion!
Cold, predictably, but not like some occasions previous summer's end. It's approaching midday & I'm the only bod in the sea, old or young. Old or young same difference in swimming togs in the sea.
Head under the water, can claim real swim now. Kick legs behind me, eyes wide open dead man's float.
Tread around small rocks on pleasantest gradation, seaweeds bobbing.
Then sudden return to the sand and stand for blissful minutes in comparative tropics --hah! --as it always was for English migrant, remember first Melbourne autumn & winter, 1966, --such cold as English made summer of…
Now ah & ah…
Posted by collectedworks at 4:36 PM No comments:
Labels: Bill Downing, Garrie Hutchinson, Geoff Eggleston, La Mama, Meher Baba, Michael Dugan, Paul Smith
Thursday, September 3, 2015
Regarding Ian Brinton's post of the news of Charles Tomlinson's death : First read Tomlinson around '67, at the State Library of Victoria actually, the Dome reading room. Introduced by criticism I came across as the foremost British connection to / interpretation of William Carlos Williams... not insignificant in an age when there was no free flow, so to speak, across the Atlantic or between Australia & the US for that matter... I vividly recall Q & A with Al Alvarez , an extension lecture at the Univ of Melbourne, would have been in 1968 sometime, --Bill Beard heard Alvarez was in town so we attended-- Alvarez fielded a question/comment about WCW with a terse "William Carlos Williams has always been a blind spot for me!" OK as a personal response, but Alvarez was talking in Melbourne with the authority still vested in British opinion... There was laughter & applause from a section of the lecture theatre wch Bill identified as the English department claqueurs! Now that's half a century ago, and tangential to response to Tomlinson... Hearing this news I initially searched the Web for Tacita Dean's film of The Orchard, then realized I'd muddled Tomlinson with Michael Hamburger! --yet when I reread C T I'll be interested to see how the Englishness plays off with the poet's pro Americanism & internationalism...
Sad news as e/one says... but hopefully a good innings... RIP
So here we are, renewing acquaintance with Charles Tomlinson, in particular & what's often my own concern : the status of the English home or base, the English locality, from perspective of cosmopolitan.
Notes as I read Tomlinson's Oxfords & Carcanets at the Shop, pen in hand.
Tomlinson vs John Berger in The Garden? : "this crass reading forgets that imagination / Outgrows itself, outgrows aim / And origin; forgets that art / Does not offer the sweat of parturition / As proof of its sincerity."
The almighty 'what if' : "Had you stayed on / Twenty years ago, had I gone" , apparently resolved in "we / Were right to choose the differing parsimonies / Of the places we belonged to." Echo of Celan, via Billeter advocacy & translation, Melbourne '70s, "our own particular narrowness".
Tomlinson's take on Hopkins, Hardy --which I found myself reading as if about GMH! but is suitably Hardyesque, "You were a poet who put on the manners of ghosts." ('he was a man who remembered such things…')Memorable passage : "Even in paradise, what you would wish for, / Would be to lie out in the changing weathers here, / And feel them flush through the earth and through you, / Side by side with those you had known, who never quite knew you, / Dreaming a limbo away of loam, of bone, / One Stygian current buoying up gravestone on gravestone."
I rise to the figure of Ivor Gurney invoked in the poem for Donald Davie's 70th birthday, To a Yorkshireman in Devon, --Gurney one of my own, enigmatic & unfinished despite Carcanet's great project to retrieve everything from the notebooks & manuscripts… "And yet, is it, Donald, utterly absurd / Like Edward Thomas to accept a war / Convinced it was Eden you were fighting for? -- / That Eden Gurney found on midnight walks / Glimmering along boughs, up nettle stalks, / Through constellations that the Romans knew / Standing on that same damp of Cotswold dew / On sentry go." etc The literary task of the poem is to marry the American & British poetry of mid-century Modernist acclaim. Tomlinson describes the "approbation of your level gaze, / Though not so partial that you cannot praise / Writers whose premisses dispute your own, / Oppen and Olson, Niedecker and Dorn", and then "Gurney himself whom we rejoice to see / With Bunting at our island's apogee."
Good memory of visiting the exhibition of Charles Tomlinson's prints at Cambridge during the inaugural poetry festival of 1975. Reminded now by Timothy Clark's The Poet as Painter chapter in his monograph on Tomlinson, published in '99 in Writers & Their Work. Cezanne's 'objectivity' via Rilke adds another dimension to the discussion of Objectivist poetry with which Tomlinson early interacted (Oppen, Zukofsky, Niedecker et al).
Posted by collectedworks at 4:05 PM No comments:
Labels: Basil Bunting, Bill Beard, Cezanne, Charles Tomlinson, Donald Davie, Hardy, Hopkins, Ian Brinton, Ivor Gurney, John Berger, Rilke, W C Williams
Sunday, August 23, 2015
Well, why shouldn't Brian Hassett's The Hitchhiker's Guide to Jack Kerouac [The Adventure of the Boulder '82 On The Road Conference --Finding Kerouac, Kesey and The Grateful Dead Alive & Rockin' in the Rockies; introduction by John Allen Cassady; published by Get Things Done Publishing, USA, 2015] read like a breathless telephone call or letter, a cassette-tape transcription, an inventory, itinerary, annotated bibliography, since it's all of these, --a fifty-four year old catching up on his own twenty-one year old's [on-the-] road trip, a teen&twenty out of rock 'n roll, and his reader, such as I am here on the cusp of seventy, happily hooked on the spirals of my own life story and always knew it as story, even my first pages from 1963 of manuscript so grateful I haven't lost entitled JOURNEY with in-between parts called PETER WHICH WAY, SONG OF THE SEA, THE CHANGES, flirting with overall title BOOK around '73 as 'writing' seemed to transcend 'autobiography' --thus my fellow-feeling for the young guy, Brian Hassett, forever younger, unembarrassed by the notion of heroes & hero worship, the Beats his hearth gods & goddesses, his pantheon, thus another way into history, what I call intersections --utterly at home with his thinking aloud, reportage, fast & free, as I cant or wont let myself completely be, devoted to British English's musicality, both street talk & literature, its textured ear, the more so as it collides with one's parallel love, the American colloquial, particularly the post-literary, the journalistic, the epistolary & journal-ism, --except that I conjure a 'literary' which swallows it all, spitting it out, compelled to truth, thus clarity however close to blurting's effluvium, adjacent to effulgence, humorous, true however knowingly comic, without spoiling or obscuring the candid, naked, generous moment!
B H of Vancouver, teenage veteran of touring with Yes, The Rolling Stones, Cheap Trick, Dr John etc, gets himself a gig back in '82 with the staging of the first Jack Kerouac Conference --could say, gets the gig for the rest of his life. Of course he's already a reader --Ken Kesey one of his stars, & Kerouac... Hilarious story of the frustrations of trying to find a copy of On The Road to inspire his girl-friend's sister, finally locating it at a store which has "this giant [Kerouac conference] poster on the wall and there in large print --"KEN KESEY" And in tiny print at the bottom--"partially funded by The Grateful Dead." !!! Right away I got on the phone before I got On The Road. The conference cost about $200 or something, which is like two million today, so I told them I was a show person and could help them stage it from a production standpoint, and the coordinator said, "Yeah, we could use you. Come on down."
Having hitchhiked from Canada to Boulder --and how familiar his description to anyone who's stuck out a thumb, hoping, praying, cursing --though he's the lucky one, scoring rides with like-minded drivers --he falls among friends, Kit & Arthur Knight for example, lends his ear to J C Holmes, Michael McClure, Herbert Huncke et al, clicks with one & all, and immediately starts scribbling in his own, let's say it, holy notebooks, which were lost or hidden or unattended for all the years until the day in 2013 when he sat down to write a resume of the conference, which grew like Topsy, listed in the book as Some of the ingredients in the kitchen, to wit, "Two different road notebooks from the trip; three hitchhiking logs; typed post-trip Log Notes; multiple cassette recordings made at the conference and on the road/; an inch-thick folder of papers from the conference including schedules and newspaper clippings and to-do lists; other Beat folders full of gems; my 1982 datebook; my Grateful Dead set lists and show notes; photo albums; Cliff Miller's photos and memories; letters and postcards home; letters to friends during and after it; recent conversations and emails with fellow attendees."
Literature, as I always say, voracious of appetite, its capacity determined by overview not insight, the absolute hold-all unlike its alienating attribute the literary which insists itself between subject & evocation or is of such an imposition that subject's mistaken, misperceived, which it never can be in genre writing --sports, crime, music --and no distinguishing here between succinct & rhapsodic since the particular may be caught in either.
Welcome to the Fan-ily! A comment from Neal & Carolyn's son John Cassady says it all : "For some reason, Brian ended up in the middle of our family, and we were never sure why, but maybe he reminded us of someone who was always part of it." And the fan from NYU & rock & roll promotion, who aggregates the intel, surrogate chronicler, quasi historian, --fan as devotee, implicitly democratic therefore as to how & where his interest falls, affectionate to main & bit players equally --undergrowth as fascinating & instructive as the grand stand, the nub of local history, indeed the invigorating factor of history per se, the proximity that makes it bearable, demystified because tangible, present.
Posted by collectedworks at 4:10 PM No comments:
Labels: Brian Hassett, Cassady, Huncke, J.C. Holmes, John Allen Cassady, Ken Kesey, Kerouac, Michael McClure, The Grateful Dead
Sunday, July 12, 2015
Irish Murphy's, Ballarat on the site of Camp Hotel, 38 Sturt Street, erected 1907, original 1861 on the site of the Little Engine Mine. Haha! Best Guinness on tap I've swallowed since ever! Trailed around the town for ye olde but although the streetscape promised plenty there was nuthin! No pubs at all, sir! Continued through the drizzle & wind in wrong-weather sandals, admiring the solid city architecture. Top of town spotted pub-like appearance across the road from the Cathedral but disappointingly it was an immense cafe, generic post-pub, bah! Almost gave up then & there, prepared to investigate the Cathedral but breakfast was long overdue (surprisingly no buffet car on the train). Asked Chimney & Friend at pavement table if there were any old style pubs or any pubs at all in Ballarat? And, joy of joys, they offered simple directions to Irish Murphy's at the bottom of Sturt Street, further down from where we'd already fruitlessly & soggily tramped.
Installed now beneath pressed ceiling, charmed by the woodwork & various signage, Test cricket on wall television, small stage in the corner by the street windows for the music Ms Chimney said she'd be attending "tonight", and judging by the traffic off street through the rooms seems we're only at the beginning of the infinite pub. Likewise, only the beginning of the infinite Guinness, the tallest, creamiest pint. Thus begins a round of salutes to the living & to the passed, recalled in absentia in the infinity of recollection, --recollection of infinite regard, so much so I repeat the thought came by years ago, at Wollongong university, guest of Ron Pretty & John Scott, in the course of writing, making a poem, --natural enough to our own though generally bizarre : is life lived, I thought, only in order to be remembered? The extraordinary length & breadth of it, Twentieth Century's literary practice of elongation, mind loosed to infinite expansion of what daily life loses as the assimilable thus forgettable minutes, days, --longeueres…
Posted by collectedworks at 4:20 PM No comments:
Labels: Cricket, GUINNESS, Irish Murphy's, John Scott, Ron Pretty
Sunday, June 28, 2015
NOTHING DOING IN DARZET : April 2015 Journey
6th April, '15
On the Downs, beyond Bowleaze, ascend first 'height', sit on bench (inscription : IN MEMORY OF BILL FROST WHO LOVED THE SEA). Man comes up from the beach/holiday-camp path. I comment that the path is further inland every year-- "maybe not every year but since I first came here" -- "yes" he says, "& that's what it'll keep doing, it's the way it was made!" -- Indeed --the geological truth spares vain handwringing -- first cause of erosion is God!
"MAN WHO LOVED THE SEA" --looking at it, --like me sat here? --sailing on it? --fishing? Everything connected with it --the sea, the sea --local to his boots or in retirement in Dorset, up onto the Downs, this place, for sweet reverie, all weathers, can suppose jumpers, coats, or like today kissed by sun, combed by breeze. "WHO LOVED THE SEA" --at the end what else to say? (Poet take note, all verbiage lost, poem like carved last words, resonant, constant.)
Other day as we approached The Old Rooms on the harbour, B. nudged me to look at a man hunched over a courtyard table --It's --Yes, Sir G! --no longer resplendently His Honour's familiar self --I mean, jacket & shirt to hang a crevat on, an aura around the courtly, portly, golightly authority, permanent lunch-time feature at the Dorset Brewers, oh the golden age one begins to reclaim with fat jar of the Reverend James this Easter Monday mid-afternoon when 'heatwave' came to town! No, he was sunken, another kind of erosion, with awful short-in-the-leg troos & white socks filling the gap, Falstaff's demise, o the pity of it.
Tall-masts glide through the Harbour --from my chair-less stand only have partial view of the Harbour, but evidently the Bridge is up, open, like eyes & mouths of Easter visitors, cameras primed for several-times daily Weymouth event...
Easton Square, Portland. Walking around with B's prospect[u]s in mind and think this section of the island has a distinctive (that is non-suburban) feel & look... And a short bus-ride down the hill & you have the Cove & yours truly sitting at bench at wall overlooking Chesil in full earshot of that incredible advance & retreat of the sea, --thrust & crash, rush & smashing suck as the long wave breaks along the beach-mile of pebbles, --that phrase about shells singing the ocean pops into my head --echo deep-&-wide shattering boom as though, like the Southern Ocean at Port Campbell in South-west Victoria, undermining the cliff itself, --like ocean tunneling beneath the limestone --echo upon echo, echo within echo within echo--
Fishermen lying on the stones, rod & line upended, looking after the business I'm listening to--
Middle-distance, horizon half a thumb further, three black dots. Not flat-bottomed, chap corrected me another day, double-ended--
Complaining about the service he received, the Portland surfer says he was doin nuthin more than payin their wages, --I'm good for five pints but at three pounds eighty a pint you deserve better...
(Mate passing by asked by girlfriend of the posse if he's working? Who works more than 2 or 3 hours a day? he says, especially on a day like this...)
Ah --the Cove's Adnams goes down very smoothly --cool temp, refreshing, Old Thumper-ish, that is the darkest an ale will be before shape-changing into stout...
Oh my --on such a day --But is Portland all of that? --on its day closest thing between Lands End & Dover to St Ives magic --but starved of sun perhaps its society's brought down to grey stone, grey outlook, grey bottom-line? Add winter, bleak house minus shelf of anything resembling O'Brien sisters' Belleek booty (but they were the beauties sir, even if I say so myself, oh doze photies from their ancestral journey way way back in me funny famleys' album, treasured yet in both hemispheres)...
'On its day' is docile, fait accompli --Thing is, to make of it what you will --thus vision --your creation, the inner compulsion...
[April 15, 2015]
In the quintessential English churchyard at St Nicholas's, Abbotsbury, with St Catherine's Chapel on the Mount in direct view's first quadrant from where I'm sitting, relaxing on solid bench. An afternoon with the Lord, tasting country village Anglicanism again, and the Summer's day that Spring's extraordinarily produced --bumble & honey bees around shrubs & flowers, and the shiveringly sweet scents of Easter Lillies in large vase in the porch, filling nostril. What to say? North-country tourists : "What a beautiful little village" "Doing a nice sketch are you?" "No!"
(April 15/17, 2015)
Bridport Report
Off to meet David Miller for 2pm at The Bull in Bridport. Excitement of reconnecting after decades and only because the more recent Australian ex-pat Laurie Duggan let me know of D M's imminent move to Dorset. Given continuing self-doubt regarding my own patrimony, I set out as The Chronicler or, short of that exalted role, The Journalist (that is, regional roundsman aka rat-bag & rouse-about). (Looking out of the X53's top deck across at The Fleet on Chesil Beach as we pass Australia Road! Mightnt that say it all?)
Winding road to Portesham & Abbotsbury is one of Dorset's joys. (Victoria Inn's free house, a minor spell.) Even the coast-side field of rape-seed flashes as the light pierces the fine mist. Have to be a curmudgeon not to smile in return. How decline that bright yellow summoning? (Possum House? Come on!) Since 1987, Portesham, St Catherine's Mount, Abbotsbury village --can now say mine (like the gout claims an unfortunate's big toe, like the sea-mist drifting over claims the ridge before the descent to Swyre)? Mine, oh mine...
The Three Horseshoes, Burton Bradstock, --blackthorn snowing in littlest breeze, brother Bernard's proud reckoning of the village in his inventory, his own really-me awakened every time the X53 barrels through the narrow road, bargaining with the twist & turn like deeply felt memory.
Ahead of the meeting, mist & rain heavy about the bus, fog beyond the steamed-up windows.
[April 24th' 15]
[previously published as "Notes" on Facebook]
Posted by collectedworks at 4:20 PM No comments:
Labels: Bernard Hemensley, Cathy O'Brien, David Miller, Laurie Duggan
Crossing from the Northcote Shopping Plaza to the older market section revamped by the Aldi store, I don't immediately recognise the tall man in shades as Andrew Sant but it's him alright, obviously so when he removes the sunglasses. What are you doing here? he says --it's Thursday : shouldn't you be sitting in a cafe near here writing? I'm going there now, I say, --done my shopping… Just doing mine, he says… Ive been in England for a month, I say… I'm going later, he says --how was it? I'm pulling a face, composing a proper reply… You didn't want to come back! he says --adds : I know how you feel, haven't got it as bad as you but I know exactly… I begin explaining & describing : Got further into the West Country I'm forever dreaming… discovered more people & places & art & beer… you know! He smiles & nods, shakes my hand again, --got to go, he says… One day when we're both in England, he says… Yes! that'll be great!
On the spur of which I speed through the run-down arcade, blocking nostrils to the combined fug of Vietnamese nail repair salon and Greek fast food, onto High Street , cross on the lights & whaddayaknow see Pi O at the tram stop, saluting me I think, so I respond, "hello again" forming on my lips but perhaps it was someone else entirely he'd acknowledged, -- he's turned to the kerb as I pass full-tilt for the Delphi… Two whom I could imagine bumping into are Lloyd & Trimble, locals after all, around & about my own cafe & the Northcote Social Club & the old Town Hall et al --the Village in other words --the Greek village --but oh no, suddenly overcome by the image of the Widow's beating & stoning in Zorba the Greek --Irene Papas --what horror! --and then killed! --first time the other night seeing it again for many years --superstitious, bloody-minded, pre-modern, peasants-- islanders, just like Anne Axenskold was saying, treating me to afternoon tea, the day before I left Weymouth for Australia couple of weeks ago, talking about Portlanders in same tone of voice as we've reconnoitered Thomas Hardy's & JC Powys's weird & wondrous characters, --that other tribe across the Causeway, mysterious & hostile not the half of it…
[7-May, 2015/ 27-28 June, 15 tweeked]
Posted by collectedworks at 3:37 PM No comments:
Labels: Andrew Sant, Anne Axenskold, Hardy, J C Powys, Kenneth Trimble, Pi O, Robert Lloyd, Zorba the Greek
Damen O'Brien (to whom congratulations for taking out the WB Yeats Poetry Prize, announced yesterday at Village Roadshow Theaterette/ SLV) asked fellow contributors to the YEATS DAY '15, if anyone has heard the Waterboys' album of Yeats settings and what did they think of it (and of contemporary musicians' versions in general)? And Ronan McDonald, who organises a Bloomsday in Sydney I believe, whose morning paper, 'Common Things that crave : animal cries in Yeats's Poetry', I'd missed, piped up that he'd heard the album and in a word it was magnificent (whether or not with Bono's imprimatur), part of a long tradition of such collaboration… And I thought to myself this banter would be perfect for a note I could write about our long Irish weekend (Yeats x 2 and Joyce (Bloomsday) on Tuesday) --the bridge between Declan Foley's Yeats 150 seminar on Saturday and Yeats' second coming this afternoon & evening at the Evelyn in Brunswick street… Having managed to get away from Collected Works Bookshop around 1-30, made it to the State Library in time to greet Declan, Caz Masel, Bob Di Napoli and grab a pew in the auditorium for the afternoon session, my own head still reverberating from the conversation with Carrie Tiffany & Lloyd Jones at the Shop about aspects of my recent English trip, the contradictions between South & West England and Melbourne Oz assuaged only by an investment in a parallel life, that ever deeper or entangled concordance of trajectories, the writing out of which might make boon out of bane… (--almost Yeatsean that, even if I say so myself! --catch a falling gyre & etc!) Apparently I'd just missed Chris Wallace-Crabbe, but did see Earl Livings at the stage, & heard him introduce the Yeats Poetry Prize judge & winners… Pleased to hear Damen O'Brien & Alana Kelsall read their poems, and Carolyn Masel deliver the extensive judges' report on behalf of herself & Penny Buckley. Frank McGuire, MP, made the presentation, eloquently describing the Parliament of Victoria's embrace of Joyce last year & Yeats this, advancing poetry at the expense of the conventional paddywhackery so to speak! The afternoon's piece de resistance was the presentation of Yeats' s noh play, The Dreaming of the Bones, directed by Jessica Bellamy & performed by Tony Yap & Brendan O'Connor as a largely silent dance work. I cant say anything about the discussion, The place of the Arts and Humanities in the 21st century, because I had to be elsewhere… So it is, ditto, in two or three hours time I'll be out of here too! At the Evelyn for Michael Plater's Before the World Was Made : A Musical Tribute to W.B.Yeats...
[June 14, '15, at 1-36pm]
Posted by collectedworks at 3:27 PM No comments:
Labels: Bloomsday '15, Carolyn Masel, Declan Foley, Michael Plater, Yeats
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Happy Holidays!
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- Happy Holidays!
Click on this link, then click in the reindeer . . . one at a time. LOL TOO CUTE!
Thanks to Larry Lynum for forwarding this great link and to all those who attended the San Diego NSAI Workshop Holiday Gathering!
Looking forward to seeing you in 2010!
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"We as Catholics have not properly combated (the culture) because we have not been taught our Catholic Faith, especially in the depth needed to address these grave evils of our time. This is a failure of catechesis both of children and young people that has been going on for fifty years. It is being addressed, but it needs much more radical attention... What has also contributed greatly to the situation is an exaltation of the virtue of tolerance which is falsely seen as the virtue which governs all other virtues. In other words, we should tolerate other people in their immoral actions to the extent that we seem also to accept the moral wrong. Tolerance is a virtue, but it is certainly not the principal virtue; the principal virtue is charity... Charity means speaking the truth. I have encountered it (not speaking the truth) many times myself as a priest and bishop. It is something we simply need to address. There is far too much silence — people do not want to talk about it because the topic is not 'politically correct.' But we cannot be silent any longer."
Raymond Card. Burke
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Let us pray…
Grant unto thy Church, we beseech Thee, O merciful God, that She, being gathered together by the Holy Ghost, may be in no wise troubled by attack from her foes. O God, who by sin art offended and by penance pacified, mercifully regard the prayers of Thy people making supplication unto Thee,and turn away the scourges of Thine anger which we deserve for our sins. Almighty and Everlasting God, in whose Hand are the power and the government of every realm: look down upon and help the Christian people that the heathen nations who trust in the fierceness of their own might may be crushed by the power of thine Arm. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, Thy Son, who liveth and reigneth with Thee in the unity of the Holy Ghost, God, world without end. R. Amen.
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Food For Thought
"The legalization of the termination of pregnancy is none other than the authorization given to an adult, with the approval of an established law, to take the lives of children yet unborn and thus incapable of defending themselves. It is difficult to imagine a more unjust situation, and it is very difficult to speak of obsession in a matter such as this, where we are dealing with a fundamental imperative of every good conscience — the defense of the right to life of an innocent and defenseless human being."
- St. John Paul II
A bit more food for thought…
"Only one sin is nowadays severely punished: the attentive observance of the traditions of our Fathers. For that reason the good ones are thrown out of their places and brought to the desert."
- Basil of Caesarea - ep. 243
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A morsel for thought…
"If your work is strong enough for someone to hate you, it's strong enough for someone to love you. The middle is what you should fear."
- Sean McCabe @seanwes
Recent Posts
- Card. Sarah: "We find ourselves between 'gender ideology' and ISIS", apocalyptic beasts… demonic origin
- The 13 Cardinals Letter is a distraction, a trap.
- The Domino Effect
- VIDEO St. Maria Goretti arrives at St. John Cantius in Chicago
- 1492: Christopher Columbus makes landfall
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- Synod note: Monday will bring interventions on Instrumentum Laboris 130
- The Times revives a LATIN crossword puzzle
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- Synod notes – See Ed Pentin for 6 October roundup
For your consideration…
"One of the most dangerous errors is that civilization is automatically bound to increase and spread. The lesson of history is the opposite; civilization is a rarity, attained with difficulty and easily lost. The normal state of humanity is barbarism, just as the normal surface of the planet is salt water. Land looms large in our imagination and civilization in history books, only because sea and savagery are to us less interesting."
- C.S. Lewis
More food for thought:
"I expect to die in bed, my successor will die in prison and his successor will die a martyr in the public square. His successor will pick up the shards of a ruined society and slowly help rebuild civilization, as the church has done so often in human history."
Francis Card. George
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More food for thought…
"All laws which are repugnant to the Constitution are null and void."
- Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. 137, 176
Even More Food For Thought
"Men by their constitutions are naturally divided into two parties: 1. Those who fear and distrust the people, and wish to draw all powers from them into the hands of the higher classes. 2. Those who identify themselves with the people, have confidence in them, cherish and consider them as the most honest and safe, although not the most wise depositary of the public interests."
- Thomas Jefferson to Henry Lee, 1824. ME 16:73
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Monthly Archives: May 2009
Kicking & Screaming!
There are some things you just can't make up. This is in from LA News with my emphases and comments: Kicking & Screaming: Journo Dragged From Near Air Force One By CHRISTINA HOAG Updated 9:08 PM PDT, Thu, May 28, … Continue reading
Posted in Just Too Cool, Lighter fare, SESSIUNCULA 41 Comments
Successful attacks by the enemy
A reader has sent me a photo taken clandestinely. This may explain how the enemy maintains that sustained attack on the bird feeders. This may even explain why I had no coffee beans this morning! CLICK
Posted in Lighter fare, SESSIUNCULA, The Feeder Feed 8 Comments
The feeder
Some quick shots from the feeder. There have been a lot of woodpeckers in the last few days and many few finches. This Red-Bellied Woodpecker triumphantly comes up with a peanut. Brown Thrasher. What a very different eye they have … Continue reading
Posted in SESSIUNCULA, The Feeder Feed 8 Comments
Fr. Cutie
ALL: I know about Fr. Cutie. You can stop forwarding e-mail.
Posted in SESSIUNCULA Comments Off on Fr. Cutie
John Allen on Pres. Obama and Miguel Diaz
From the National Catholic Reporter, the ultra-left wing dissenting weekly, the nearly ubiquitous John L. Allen has some obervations about Pres. Obama and future Ambassador Miguel Diaz. My emphases and comments. With Diaz nomination, Obama passes major Catholic test [Passes … Continue reading
Posted in SESSIUNCULA, The Drill Tagged Ambassador, Diaz, John L. Allen, Notre Dame, Pres. Obama 41 Comments
Thanks to readers
Some thanks are do to readers.First, JP of CA sent a USB hub which has allowed me more easily to connect several webcams for the sake of the Z-Cam. This hub actually works. With the other hub, for one reason … Continue reading
Posted in SESSIUNCULA, The Feeder Feed 3 Comments
Ugly as sin
"Beauty is in the eye of the beholder", it is said. Rubbish. Beauty beauty cannot be separated from truth. Some things are simply ugly, both by design and by intention. They are ugly because they are deeply false. Some "artists" … Continue reading
Really Ugly in Vienna [ 0:01 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (3621)
Posted in SESSIUNCULA 72 Comments
A notice posted on the doors of a church
From a priest reader: Making a visit at a church near my residence, my attention was drawn to a notice posted on the main inner doors, which I reproduce below. Since the greater the number of people involved in distributing … Continue reading
Posted in Mail from priests 27 Comments
The enemy…
This is about right… Visit Loose Parts
Posted in The Feeder Feed 16 Comments
Pres. Obama chooses Vatican Ambassador
After Ambassador Glendon comes … this AP story from a Minneapolis TV channel: My emphases and comments. Hispanic theologian from MN college chosen for Vatican ambassador A Hispanic Roman Catholic theologian who was an adviser to Barack Obama's presidential campaign … Continue reading
Posted in SESSIUNCULA Tagged Miguel H. Diaz, Pres. Obama, Vatican Ambassador 71 Comments


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John Armstrong (Australian politician)
|The Honourable
John Armstrong
|Minister for Munitions
|In office
|Preceded by
|John Dedman
|Succeeded by
|Richard Casey
|Minister for Supply and Development
|In office
|Preceded by
|Bill Ashley
|Succeeded by
|Richard Casey
|72nd Lord Mayor of Sydney
|In office
|Preceded by
|Harry Jensen
|Succeeded by
|Laurence Emmet McDermott
|Personal details
10 July 1908
Ultimo, New South Wales, Australia
|10 March 1977
(aged 68)
Batemans Bay, New South Wales, Australia
|Political party
|Australian Labor Party
|Joan Therese Josephine Curran (1945-1977; his death); 5 children
John Ignatius Armstrong, AC (10 July 1908 – 10 March 1977) was an Australian politician and federal minister.
Armstrong was born into a large Roman Catholic family in the Sydney suburb of Ultimo to William and Ellen (née Hannan) Armstrong, both emigrants from Ireland. He was educated at St Bede's School, Pyrmont, and at the Marist Brothers' High School, Darlinghurst. In 1934, he was elected as an alderman of Sydney Municipal Council, representing the Australian Labor Party until 1948.[1]
Armstrong was selected for Labor's slate of candidates for the Australian Senate for the 1937 election partly because his name would appear high on the alphabetic ballot and he was duly elected, effective from July 1938. He married Joan Therese Josephine Curran in October 1945. He was appointed Minister for Munitions in Ben Chifley's November 1946 ministry.
In April 1948, his portfolio was merged with the Supply functions of Bill Ashley's portfolio to create the portfolio of Supply and Development and he was attacked by the opposition for the breadth of his powers. Following Labor's defeat at the 1949 election, he became deputy-leader of the Opposition in the Senate. He was relegated to an unwinnable fourth position on Labor's ticket for the 1961 election and left parliament in July 1962.[2]
Armstrong was elected Lord Mayor of Sydney in 1966, but the position was abolished by the Askin government in 1967. The Whitlam government appointed him Australian High Commissioner to the United Kingdom from 1973 to 1974. In 1977, he was made a Companion of the Order of Australia.[3]
He died of a myocardial infarction in Batemans Bay, aged 68, survived by his wife, a son and four daughters.[4]
- ^ ADB profile of John Ignatius Armstrong
- ^ Armstrong profile, ibid.
- ^ "Armstrong, John Ignatius, AC". It's an Honour. Government of Australia. Retrieved 2 February 2008.
- ^ Armstrong profile, ibid.
|Political offices
|Preceded by
John Dedman
|Minister for Munitions
|Succeeded by
Richard Casey
|Preceded by
Bill Ashley
|Minister for Supply and Development
|Civic offices
|Preceded by
Harry Jensen
|Lord Mayor of Sydney
|Succeeded by
Sir Emmet McDermott
|Diplomatic posts
|Preceded by
Sir Alec Downer
|Australian High Commissioner to the United Kingdom
|Succeeded by
Sir John Bunting
- 1908 births
- 1977 deaths
- Australian diplomats
- Australian Labor Party members of the Parliament of Australia
- Australian people of Irish descent
- Companions of the Order of Australia
- High Commissioners of Australia to the United Kingdom
- Permanent Representatives of Australia to the International Maritime Organization
- Members of the Australian Senate for New South Wales
- Members of the Australian Senate
- Members of the Cabinet of Australia
- Mayors and Lord Mayors of Sydney
- Lang Labor members of the Parliament of Australia


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Web Design and Usability (Formerly Refresh Houston). Want to present or be a panelist?
September 25 · 11:00 AMTechFriday Hibachi Luncheon-NetworkingNetworking for the web, tech, social media sectors. A delicious hibachi lunch for only $10! For this initial event, we'll define future format. Our hibachi table can... Learn more
September 1 · 6:30 PMHow to Cofound a Startup!What does it mean to be a cofounder, and how you can be a good one? A panel of three cofounders will share their experiences and knowledge. Topics include how and when... Learn more
August 18 · 6:30 PMUnderstand Deal Making, and free Appetizers!Learn the art and science of deal making — how to find, approach, win-over, and negotiate with investors. If you want to raise capital, here's the seminar that will... Learn more
July 15 · 6:30 PMLet's Get Funded--Equity Crowdfunding--New to Texas!; Supper appetizers too!Let's get funded! Now, Texas startups and small businesses can now raise up to $1,000,000 per year from non-accredited investors through equity crowdfunding campaigns.... Learn more
May 20 · 6:30 PMConversion: Acquiring Prospects and Conversion to CustomersHow exactly does the sales conversion process work? We frequently used Linkedin, Twitter, Facebook to lead to a website-- what exactly happens and how does this happen?... Learn more
- More Meetups


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Twelfth NightSimon & Schuster 2015; US$ 5.99
Named for the twelfth night after Christmas, the end of the Christmas season, Twelfth Night plays with love and power. The Countess Olivia, a woman with her own household, attracts Duke (or Count) Orsino. Two other would-be suitors are her pretentious steward, Malvolio, and Sir Andrew Aguecheek. Onto this scene arrive the twins Viola and Sebastian;... more...
OthelloSimon & Schuster 2015; US$ 5.99
In Othello, Shakespeare creates powerful drama from a marriage between the exotic Moor Othello and the Venetian lady Desdemona that begins with elopement and mutual devotion and ends with jealous rage and death. Shakespeare builds many differences into his hero and heroine, including race, age, and cultural background. Yet most readers and audiences... more...
Early Modern Playhouse Manuscripts and the Editing of ShakespeareCambridge University Press 2012; US$ 26.00
This book argues for editing Shakespeare's plays in a new way, without pretending to distinguish authorial from theatrical versions. more...
Henry IV, Part 2Simon & Schuster 2011; US$ 5.99
Henry IV, Part 2 is the only Shakespeare play that is a "sequel," in the modern sense, to an earlier play of his. Like most sequels, it repeats many elements from the previous work, Henry IV, Part 1. This play again puts on stage Henry IV's son, Prince Hal, who continues to conceal his potential greatness by consorting with tavern dwellers, including... more...
All's Well That Ends WellSimon & Schuster 2011; US$ 5.99
Shakespeare?s All?s Well That Ends Well is the story of its heroine, Helen, more so than the story of Bertram, for whose love she yearns. Helen wins Bertram as her husband despite his lack of interest and higher social standing, but she finds little happiness in the victory as he shuns, deserts, and attempts to betray her. The play suggests some... more...
Love's Labor's LostSimon & Schuster 2011; US$ 6.99
At first glance, Shakespeare's early comedy Love's Labor?s Lost simply entertains and amuses. Four young men (one of them a king) withdraw from the world for three years, taking an oath that they will have nothing to do with women. The King of Navarre soon learns, however, that the Princess of France and her ladies are about to arrive. Although he... more...
King LearSimon & Schuster 2011; US$ 5.99
Shakespeare's King Lear challenges us with the magnitude, intensity, and sheer duration of the pain that it represents. Its figures harden their hearts, engage in violence, or try to alleviate the suffering of others. Lear himself rages until his sanity cracks. What, then, keeps bringing us back to King Lear ? For all the force of its language,... more...
Richard IISimon & Schuster 2011; US$ 5.99
Shakespeare's Richard II presents a momentous struggle between Richard II and his cousin Henry Bolingbroke. Richard is the legitimate king; he succeeded his grandfather, King Edward III, after the earlier death of his father Edward, the Black Prince. Yet Richard is also seen by many as a tyrant. He toys with his subjects, exiling Bolingbroke for... more...
Timon of AthensSimon & Schuster 2011; US$ 5.99
The real Timon of Athens lived there in the fifth century BCE, making him a contemporary of Socrates and Pericles. Shakespeare presents Timon as a figure who suffers such profound disillusionment that he becomes a misanthrope, or man-hater. This makes him a more interesting character than the caricature he had become to Shakespeare's contemporaries,... more...
Troilus and CressidaSimon & Schuster 2011; US$ 5.99
For Troilus and Cressida, set during the Trojan War, Shakespeare turned to the Greek poet Homer, whose epic poems the Iliad and the Odyssey treat the war and its aftermath, and to Geoffrey Chaucer, author of The Canterbury Tales and the great romance of the war, Troilus and Criseyde. The authoritative edition of Troilus and Cressida from... more...


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Courtenay Bluebird
Courtenay Bluebird is a professional writer and photographer. As a writer, she has penned features and columns for major newspapers and magazines. Her poetry, essays, and fiction have been published in respected journals. Courtenay Bluebird's photography has been featured in four two-person art gallery shows. She's so happy you stopped by today.
Tag Archives: humour
[5-Minute Dance Party] Sunny and Steve — Enjoy the Sweets
Happy Easter!
When was the last time you fought over Easter candy at your house?
The last time we fought over Easter candy was, let me see here—about three weeks ago?
On a related note, I've got some happy news!
We're posting our 50th Marriage Interpreter today!
Can you believe it?
What's been your favorite Marriage Interpreter moment so far?
(I think mine will always be the Cookie Movie incident.)
Our regular and original feature, Our Sunday Best, will return to its weekly posted time next Sunday.
Sports Mania SPECIAL broadcast: Post-Saint Patrick's Day wrap-up
BRIGHT BLUE SET of SPORTS MANIA television sports show. Newscasters CHET and ERNESTO sit behind a bright blue DESK tapping their PAPERS and chatting as the Sports Mania's THEME MUSIC plays.
(ESTABLISHING SHOT of Ernesto and Chet sitting behind a bright blue desk of bright blue Sports Mania set.)
Chet: (Deep in conversation with Ernesto)…so then I sez to the produce guy, I sez to him—
(CUT TO: MEDIUM SHOT of Ernesto and Chet.)
Ernesto: What'd you say to him? Jeeeezuuuu— (Startled. Realizes show just started.)-ssssszzz. (Clears throat.) Hello! And welcome to Sports Mania's St. Patrick's Day post-game wrap-up. It was an exciting St. Patrick's Day this year wasn't it, Chet?
Chet: (Professional smile) It sure was, Ernesto! We had wins and losses all over the map! From Omsk, Russia to Lowell, Massachusetts, Irish Stepdancers and local revellers went head to head!
Ernesto: (Professional laugh.) They sure did, Chet! But there was one memorable moment from yesterday, wasn't there? Let's go to our interview with Niamh Ni Dálaigh, Irish stepdancer. (Trim dark-haired young woman comes up on a built in screen behind the Sports Mania desk. Ernesto and Chet turn to face screen) Niamh, how are you this morning?
Niamh Ni Dálaigh: (Sounds tired and hoarse.) I'm fine, Ernesto—just fine, all things considered.
(CUT TO: CLOSE-UP. Ernesto and Chet share a SPLIT SCREEN with NIAMH NI DÁLAIGH.)
Ernesto: (Serious face.) Now, Niamh, I'd like to show the footage from your midnight St. Patrick's Day performance at the Wise Rhino last night. Sports fans, let me set up this clip for you. The Wise Rhino is a pub infamous for packing in the St. Patrick's Day crowds and skimping on stage space. Niamh, how big was the stage where you danced your final show last night?
Niamh: Two feet by two feet, plus two feet high. (Pause.) And I had to share it with the band and five other dancers.
Chet: Well, that is one small stage, Niamh!
(Niamh laughs uncomfortably.)
Ernesto: (Cutting off Chet.) If you're tuning into the broadcast just now, Irish Dancer Niamh Ni Dálaigh from Reno, Nevada is talking about last night's performance.
Chet: Let's run that tape.
(Footage shows Niamh dancing in place on a two-foot high stage. Amateur drunks are standing in front of the stage bobbing and weaving and shouting. The traditional Irish band sits behind her—they're nearly sitting in each other's laps.)
Chet: Now, watch carefully as this guy over here— (Circles a drunk guy in front and to the left of Niamh with a green screen pen.) —starts to reach out to touch Niamh's dancing costume right here. (Chet draws wobbly green screen arrow to Niamh's dress.)
(Footage continues. Drunk guy starts to grab the skirt of Niamh's $1500 performance dress. Niamh executes a quick turn, yanking the dress out of his hand, but the turn sends her sprawling into the band right behind her. )
Chet: (Excitedly.) Right there— (Draws six green screen arrows on the footage.)
Ernesto: (Slaps pen out of Chet's hand.) Shhhh!
(Niamh, still on the split screen, covers her eyes with one hand.)
(Footage: A random drunk hand goes over the lens of the camera, but viewers can hear a SQUEAK and a YELP and the WHINE-POP-PING of several squashed INSTRUMENTS.)
Chet: (Excitedly.) Wow, I've never seen—
Ernesto: Shhhh!
(Niamh, still on the split screen, covers her entire face with her hands.)
(Footage: Normal filming resumes. A stunned Niamh sits sprawl-legged on stage surrounded by pieces of mandolin. Three of the four musicians are wearing the remains of a smashed hammer dulcimer. The fourth, a CONCERTINA PLAYER, has the bellows of his instrument wrapped around his neck, which he's clawing to remove. The dulcimer player is weeping loudly. His tweed vest is in ribbons. )
Chet: Can I—(Waits to be shushed again, by Ernesto. Ernesto nods.)—talk now? (A beat.) So, Niamh, what was going through your mind when you executed that turn?
Niamh: Well, not much of anything, Chet. That was my 40th performance in three cities in five days—
Ernesto: (Looking at camera.) —the standard lead-up to St. Patrick's Day, right?
Niamh: Yes. Yes, it is. (A pause.) —but, like I said, like every year, I'd been doing these performances since the first of March, really, and by last night, I didn't even know my own name. Ernesto, I was so tired that I put on one soft shoe and one hard shoe at the beginning of that performance, and I would have gone on stage like that had another dancer not stopped me.
Chet: Wow, that IS tired, Niamh!
Niamh: (Nods.) Yeah. So, if I was thinking anything, I don't remember it. But I remember what happened after the drunk guy grabbed the skirt part of my solo costume. I fell into the band, Chet. And all you could hear around me in the blur of the moment was Pop! Twaaaa-aaaang! Blawwp!
Niamh: (Continues.) I was smacked in the shoulder with that concertina—that thing should always be holstered when not in use—and somehow I sat on Jim's mandolin. (Covers eyes.) All those smashed instruments and crying men. I'm never going to get that sound out of my ears, Chet. Never.
Ernesto: We've only got another minute here, Niamh. What I want to know is, what happened to the original drunk guy who grabbed your dress?
Niamh: Well… (Hand covers her mouth.) He started laughing.
Chet: Wow! What did you do?
Niamh: At first I was too stunned from the accident, but then I saw him doubled over, and like I said, he was laughing at us.
Ernesto and Chet: (Spellbound.) Yes?
Niamh: So I, uh, got up from the stage floor. (A final pause.) And then I walked over and punched him in the nose.
Ernesto: Whoa! That's a serious party foul! How many Feiseanna do you have to sit out for this penalty?
Niamh: (Genuine smile.) Six. My Claddagh ring broke off in the drunk guy's left nostril, and he smashed his face with his own beer bottle trying to pull it out. So, I'm out for one dance competition per stitch.
Chet: (Mouth open.) How much of your Claddagh ring ended up in his nose?
Niamh: The heart, the hands, and the entire crown broke off inside his nose, Chet. It was bad. It was really bad.
Ernesto: If you had to do last night all over again, would you have done anything differently?
(Niamh hesitates, then—)
Niamh: Yeah. (A beat.) I would have worn a bigger ring.
(Sports Mania theme music plays.)
Chet: Folks at home, we'll see you after the commercial break. We'd like to thank our guest, Niamh Ni Dálaigh, who had to wake up before noon on the day after St. Patrick's Day to be with us!
( Niamh waves a bleary hand at the camera. The split screen dissolves.)
(MEDIUM SHOT of Ernesto and Chet behind Sports Mania desk.)
Ernesto: (Continuing on.) After the break, we're going to talk to a an eight-hand Irish figures team who got into a fight with half of the metropolitan symphony in Poughkeepsee, New York! This is Ernesto—
Chet: —and Chet. Live, with our day after St. Patrick's Day wrap up on—
Ernesto and Chet: Sports Mania!
(Theme music swells.)
Niamh Ni Dálaigh NEEV NEH DOHL-lee
(Irish name. "Ni" replaces "O'" in feminine names.)
Feiseanna Fesh-eAN-na
(Irish Stepdancing competitions.)
The Marriage Interpreter [No. 48]
THE HUSBAND is talking to Ilsa von Dogovitch on the couch.
The Husband: You could be a superhero dog.
Ilsa: Bark!
The Husband: (Rubbing Ilsa's head.) Yes, a superhero dog, with your little feet and your little carbon footprint….
Ilsa: ??? (A beat. ) Bark!
THE HUSBAND is washing dishes and talking to himself.
The Husband: Dingo got my tiara!
THE HUSBAND looks up from the TV suddenly.
The Husband: The movie "Goodwill Hunting" was about thrift store shopping, right?
Bluebird: (Rolls eyes upward.) Of course it is.
THE HUSBAND is drinking coffee and thinking.
The Husband: Why do we name undergarments after animals?
Bluebird: Like what?
The Husband: Garanimals… teddies… underpantlemurs.
Bluebird: There's coffee in that cup, right?
The Husband: (Sipping coffee.) Wouldn't you like to know.
THE HUSBAND walks in to Bluebird's office, computer in hand, looking bummed.
The Husband: Textbook prices are exorbitantly lame.
Bluebird: I'm sorry to hear that. (A beat.) Did you say "exorbitantly lame"? Dude, that's kinda awesome.
The Husband: (Brightening.) That's because I'm exorbitantly lameawesometastic like that. (Singing and walking away.) Stupid textbooks! Are! Exoooooorbitantllllyyyyyyy… LAAAAAAAAAAAAME! Do-WOP-WOP, yeaaaaah!
TO COMMEMORATE THE GREAT DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING JR. TODAY: MLK's "But If Not" speech, courtesy of the Internet Archive. May Dr. King's legacy live on in all of us.
[5-Minute Dance Party] David Lynch's Dune… "Sweded"
My friend Phillip sent me this last week, and I just got around to watching watching Monkey Theater's version of Dune. It's hilarious.
It's all about— Wait… give me a sec. (Bluebird cracks up.)
Just watch it. Oh my gosh, just watch it, y'all. You're going to tip over from laughing, I totally know it.
PSSST! It's less than six months until DUNE IN JUNE! You know about DUNE IN JUNE, right?
POSTSCRIPT: "SWEDED" is a term I didn't remember hearing before, but its origins are pretty cute. According to Urban Dictionary, a sweded film is a movie that has been summarized by a group of people, usually fans of the film, by utilizing the lowest budget props, cameras, and film techniques available. The origin of the word "sweded" comes from a movie I really love— "Be Kind, Rewind," which you can read about on the Be Kind Rewind Wikipedia entry.
Well, I don't want to say this, but my conscience insists: I don't often use Urban Dictionary because its reputation is terrible for a number of reasons we can discuss at a later date. To be clearer, I do not recommend visiting Urban Dictionary, nor using it as a reference source if you can avoid it.
Delusion, by Degrees
Current Temperature: 80°
Weather: Cloudy, 60 percent chance of rain.
What a beautiful, overcast day! You'd hardly know it's South Texas. Time for my yearly list. Let's see… this summer, I'd like to learn how to make French sauces, and isn't it time for me to consider studying French afresh? Oooh! And embroidery! I've got that hoop and some embroidery floss. I should talk to The Husband about the archery thing this year. Haystacks?
Current Temperature: 89°
Weather: Sunny, overcast. 20 percent chance of rain.
I've got that great old sauce book out of the cupboard and put it by the bed. I don't want to end up in the same pickle I did last year, wearing jeans in the middle of summer and sweating and complaining and complaining and sweating. Didn't M— mention something about some cunning sarongs? Look up Balinese Men's sarongs. They come in plaid, don't they? Lovely. I'll go to the library later today— French books! Sauces! Embroidery manuals! Yaaaaaaaaaay!
Current Temperature: 93°
Weather: Sunny, sunny sunny! .00003 chance of rain.
It's awfully bright out there. Whose genius idea was it to slave over a hot stove this summer learning sauces? Isn't this a winter thing? Also, the French stuff. Who the Dickens tries to learn a language when her brain is melting? Cross both of those things off of the list. Okay. What can we salvage?
Late June
Current Temperature: 98°
Weather: Sunny, dammit!
Ate an entire summer sausage yesterday for lunch and dinner with some melon slices because looking at the stove makes me break out in prickly heat. Use of English language is deteriorating. I want a crossbow so I can fire a warning shot over the neighbor's pool the next time he sings a Celine Dion medley at 3 a.m. whilst swimming. I will have satisfa—
Current Temperature: 101°
Weather: Hoooooooooooooooooooooooooooot.
Wore wet clothes out of the washer because they will dry immediately on body. Dogs refuse to move from the couch except to go outside to bark listlessly at other listlessly barking dogs. Am eating food right out the refrigerator. Mark down court date for crossbow incident. Lawyer says that seasonal insanity plea will not fly.
Late July
Current Temperature: 105°
Weather: *$($*% this $*%#ing heat! Also, cloudy. Ha-ha! Just kidding.
Today, wore sarong made out of bed sheets. Post office complained, but what are they going to do? Neighbor dropped lawsuit after he chucked his stereo over another neighbor's fence because they were singing a Barbra Streisand medley at 4 a.m. Looked at an embroidery book this afternoon. Going to embroider a skull and crossbones flag to run up over the house. I want to become a pirate because it is obviously cooler out on the seven seas than it is in this house. Dogs agree. We have a three-way consensus. The Husband abstained.
Current Whatchacallit: 109°
Weather: Hot as H-E- DOUBLE HOCKEY STICK.
Husband complained about me drinking bottled steak sauces from their containers. What's the deal? Heinz 57 is part of a complete breakfast! Pirate flag is done. I'm going to go starboard on that neighbor with the pool. Will claim pool and surrounding vicinity in the name of Bluebirdistan. The Husband stopped speaking to anyone after A-1 sauce argument. No matter. I am now embroidering many whimsical eye patches.
Late August
Hamburglar! 110°
Weather: Khleck? Qkft.
Everyone in the entire neighborhood has become pirates. The neighbors have joined forces to claim ownership of the two backyard pools on the block. It's not mutiny if you have consensus, right? All of us are wearing eye patches and shorts around here. Embroidered crossbow strap for fun. We will attack the house one block over at dawn. THEY HAVE A DIVING BOARD.
Current Temperature: 94°
Weather: Sunny, slightly overcast. 20 percent chance of rain.
What a summer! The Husband keeps gabbling something about neighbors and pools and pirates? Where did I put that book on sauces? When it cools off a bit more, I think I'll make some sort of late season fruit based reduction to go with some lean chops. Won't that be lovely! Distressing thing— I found a crudely made eye patch under my pillow this morning embroidered with skull and crossbones. Did the dogs steal this from a neighborhood child? Make note to ask husband about this item.
*THIS ESSAY is part of the SHOW US YOUR WEATHER! Blog Carnival. "Delusion, By Degrees" is dedicated to Metan of Buried Words and Bushwa. Thank you for sharing your lovely Australian winter weather with me this summer, my friend.
*The picture up top is actually Groucho Marx doing a bit from the Mikado. I'm not nearly that pretty in the summer.
*This story originally ran on August 1, 2012.
The Olla Podrida of Ogden Avenue
(Hey! This post contains some standard adult situations— e.g.: a flasher, some euphemisms for body parts, and some implied curse words. Don't worry— nothing too awful, but if this were a movie, it might be PG. Read on, readers!)
Three months into my freshman year of college, I moved into a small carriage house on Ogden Avenue. It was not sumptuous digs. A small porch overlooked a green backyard, which was the only luxury. The porch was too small to actually put out a chair, and enjoy the view. You had to lean against the support poles in order to enjoy the surroundings.
The whole year felt like that porch— beautiful, but makeshift. The interior had two rooms. The first room was the living space, which had a hotel-style air conditioner that pumped out little rotten poufs of cold air— no comfort in the Texas humidity. Ugly brown wall-to-wall carpet dimmed what could have been a charming poet's retreat. The second room featured a bathroom, a cramped kitchenette, and a sad big closet. The place looked, and felt, like a child's playhouse.
But I chose that location specifically because it was a three-block drive from my apartment to a new coffeehouse in town called Froth. Walking to Froth was questionable because the neighborhood had some dangerous late-night elements (more on that later.)
As for Froth, I drove there every night after class or work, stopping at my apartment to change into my latest costume du jour.
At nineteen, I wore bobbed black hair and red lipstick. I had spent most of my life around adults, so my mannerisms were obnoxious — more appropriate to a hackneyed 1940's ingénue than a nineteen-year-old college student.
When I look back at those years now, I see only static pictures of myself: a jittery girl in a faux leopard print jacket, a clumsy coquette in a too-short red trapeze dress; a faux debutante in a brown camel hair coat and gold lamé gloves.
When I consider the way I felt about myself, those images move me— I was a goofball in vintage secondhand clothes trying to figure out the next phase of my life and I knew it.
I drank way, way too much coffee. My brain was sloshing over with Important Thoughts. What I had, was three jobs and a full load of classes, but what I needed was a three-day nap and a fully-loaded hug.
Instead I had Froth.
Froth was a one-room coffeehouse with tall ceilings and yellow walls the hue of an English Regency library. Each table had a lamp: my favorite was a plastic world globe that gave off a warm blue glow. College students crammed those tables with books, coffee and sandwiches. The first Cranberries CD played over the speakers on infinite repeat.
I went there to write. That's not new— I'm always writing. But my writing that year had become more effusive, frantic, grabby. I detailed everything— I was afraid this moment of beauty wouldn't last.
But really, every ending is a bow to every beginning, and every beginning starts with a reverence to its natural father— the ending that sired the now: our new beginning.
This is the beginning.
Tony worker the counter at Froth. He was a former biker with a bald head and a sweet disposition. The owners themselves looked like they had been cut out from a Pottery Barn ad with mother's good scissors. The owners were not your typical coffeehouse people, but they were effusive and funny and hopeful.
At first, the owners worked every night. Next, they stopped by, but didn't stay. Then, they weren't there at all.
But Tony and his bike stories fit right into the gawp-faced college ambiance, so he was there always.
I liked Tony. Tony always made my coffee extra black and extra large. He walked with a slight limp from laying down his bike on a freeway. He explained what road rash was to me. Apparently, he had lots of it.
Across the street from Froth, sat a klatch of mechanics who would drink beer and listen to Tejano music while quietly checking out the pretty college girls entering the coffeehouse.
They were harmless, but they kept an eye on a neighborhood that barely contained an ever-changing song of strangers.
We, the customers of Froth, were merely a chorus of kazoos in this much greater song during one swift year.
I was consumed, then.
School and work consumed my days. At night, I was consumed again, writing in a fever at Froth. Then I drove the two blocks to my apartment to sleep because I was consumed by exhaustion— only to wake and be consumed by a self-punishing routine the next day.
Froth was consumed by the neighborhood.
The coffeehouse developed a costly problem— a flasher in a wheelchair that no one could catch.
The flasher's set-up was genius in its perverse use of physics: Every few nights, he parked himself in the shadows by the side of the building where the concrete alleyway provided a natural launch to the street.
A pretty girl would pass by; he would expose his wares, and before anyone could do anything, he would release his break, roll down the curb and zoom down the street.
I had heard the rumors about his activities, but didn't see them firsthand. Not right away, anyway.
But the flasher lived in my neighborhood.
The owners of Froth were consumed with catching him—
And the flasher was consumed with perfecting his hobby.
In the dark, I walked up to Froth with a handful of schoolbooks. "Hey," the flasher said from the shadowed alley. I was thinking. I was tired. I wasn't really there.
"Hey!" He said again.
I turned around. At first I stared at his face, expecting him to ask me for spare change. He indicated downward with his eyes. Cupped in his hand were the tiny manifestations of his manhood.
Startled, I laughed really loud, walked to the door and went inside. "Tony! The flasher. The FLASHER."
I tossed my books on the counter, and we sprinted outside.
On seeing Tony, the flasher released his parking brake and rolled into the street.
Tony loped after him, limping like an epileptic puma. As he limped, Tony yelled "Mother—f—, I'm gonna get you when you least expect it. Mother—f—, you'd better stop right now, so I can pound in your head. Mother—f—!"
The wheelchair flasher wheeled himself faster and faster away from Tony, from me.
Tony stopped and bent over in the street, winded.
Meanwhile the wheelchair flasher was now a rolling dot five blocks away.
The flasher slowed down, looked over his shoulder at poor Tony, and shouted "F— you, man!"
Life spun fast in the spring.
I wore hot pink dresses and wrote in my notebooks and drank more coffee than anyone should.
I returned to Froth night after night to soak up the light refracted off the yellow walls.
But when I look back at the things I actually wrote at the time, my notebooks are splashed with gibberish.
It the writing of a frantic nineteen-year old in need of sleep, and nothing more.
Here's the part you won't believe.
One night, a boyfriend drove me and one of his roommates to Froth.
We got out of his car, and that's when I heard the first shots.
The mechanics that sat outside the garage across the street jumped up from their chairs. One of them reached inside his windbreaker.
Unfortunately, I had seen that gesture before, and while I appreciated the spirit of the thing, I had no interest in getting hit with someone's well-meant stray bullet.
I dropped to my heels in front of the bumper of my boyfriend's car. Then I came up again long enough to pull the boyfriend and the friend down by their shirts to the bumper with me.
During a brief lull between rounds, we crouch-walked into the coffeehouse where we found the brand new post-wheelchair flasher coffeehouse regulars with their faces pressed against the windows. The three of us ordered coffee at the counter and skulked to the back of the room.
The new regulars, all college students fresh out of the cellophane package, counted off the shots in a sing-song voice as the unknown person fired them off. "Seven, eight nine!" They trilled.
I sank into my coffee.
I have always had an unpleasant genius for dangerous absurdity; here was proof of it.
"Ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen!" The college students squealed. (POP. POP! POP!) "Fourteen, fifteen, sixteen!"
This kind of evening was my oeuvre, really. I closed my eyes again and quietly sighed.
Real events were happening elsewhere.
While I brooded and sulked and the boyfriend goggled at the roommate who was freaking out and the other customers giggled and counted shots, a SWAT team pulled up and blockaded the whole neighborhood and was attempting to negotiate with the man with the gun.
They ushered all twenty of us out to our cars in thirty seconds or less.
As the three of us got into the boyfriend's car, one of the SWAT team members told me through the window I had to stay somewhere else that night. The man with the weapon had barricaded himself in the alley right in front of my apartment.
I went to my college boyfriend's apartment where his six roommates were playing video games and drinking lemonade. I was very quiet Those boys loaned me pajamas and a dubious-looking toothbrush, both clean, but old, and left me alone to brood.
And this is the end.
The last thing I remember from my apartment on Ogden Avenue was staring out the kitchen window as I put my few cooking supplies into a cardboard box.
I peered into the dappled heat of late autumn. The wheelchair flasher wheeled down Ogden with his eyes fixed on a distant point. He looked different in the daylight— more frail, less ominous.
His long, brown hair floated behind him like a worn flag in the thin breeze. Those tempestuous fingers of his slid along the wheels of his chair.
I watched until he was a speck in the distance, admiring the agile gestures of his body, and then I quickly continued to pack.
*This is a reposted story from November 16, 2011. Bluebird Blvd. "went live" on November 7, 2011— ten days earlier. I wrote this true story when I was in graduate school, but didn't touch it until I started Bluebird Blvd. It's been through a great number of revisions— because, and I believe this absolutely, the truer and freakier the story is in real life, the harder it is to make it seem believable. If you read this piece and then some of more recent Truer Than True Confessions, you can see the formality of my language dropping away. Hope you enjoy! Go here for an explanation as to why we're reposting this week. (Hint: It's all about you!)
PHOTO CREDIT: These photographs are by the wonderful FSA/OWI (Farm Security Information/Office of War Information) photographer Jack Delano, which are reposted here courtesy of the Library of Congress Commons.
THE BLUEBIRD BLVD. GENUINE PHOTOGRAPHY/STORY CONTEST CALL FOR ENTRIES: The GENUINE call for photos/self-portraits/100 word stories is open! See the link for deets and rules.
Here's something new about this event— A PRIZE!— The most GENUINE photograph and story will win an original-run, hand-pulled by herself in her own darkroom, signed photograph from Courtenay Bluebird! No joke! Some of these photographs are worth hundreds of dollars! See above link for examples of the kind of original photograph (really original— as in shot by me on film, printed in an actual darkroom by me, first run) you might win.
The Marriage Interpreter [No. 42]
THE HUSBAND is in his office.
The Husband: (Musing out loud.) I wish there was a fashion book called "The Stylings of the Suburban Fez."
(Bluebird glances up from her computer, bewildered.)
The Husband: (Still speaking from his office.) Or a book like "Cravats Are Where It's At."
Bluebird: Is this the spring break version of you?
The Husband: Yes. Yes, it is. It's regular me with more fezzes and cravats.
THE HUSBAND is eating lunch and looking thoughtful.
The Husband: I just came up with the perfect video game. It combines basketball with birds!
Bluebird: And you're calling it…?
The Husband: Angry Larry Birds
Bluebird: No.
THE HUSBAND just came back from school.
The Husband: (Setting his book bag down.) A narwhal is a porpoise with a unicorn horn!
Bluebird: (Cracking one eye at him.) Do you need more sleep?
The Husband: Maybe. No. Yes? Porpoises!
A FRAZZLED BLUEBIRD walks into The Husband's office.
Bluebird: I took sixty pictures of myself last night for that thing, and I have narrowed it down to fifteen possibles. Can you look at these and tell me which one you like best?
The Husband: (Flipping through pictures on her laptop.) No. No. No. Yes. No. No. No headphones. So, the rest of these are a no-go.
Bluebird: (Pointing to The Husband's one yes.) I was going to use this one, actually.
The Husband: (Pauses.) Well, your forehead isn't that big in real life.
(Bluebird stares at him.)
The Husband: What'd I do? Don't you have a app that will de-forehead a picture? Can't you get Adobe Deforeheader?
Bluebird: (Still staring at him.) I predict—
The Husband: (Small voice.) Oh, no.
Bluebird: (Points accusing finger.) —six months of up-nostril photos. Don't worry. Doesn't Adobe have their Denostrilizer app out yet?
* 5-Minute Dance Party [Cool Unicorn, Bruv]
* The Marriage Interpreter (No. 14)
I Was a Teenage Irish Stepdancer! Or, A Few Notes on Irish Stepdancing That I've Been Meaning to Write Down for Years Now
I am a former Irish Dancer.
I do not celebrate St. Patrick's Day.
(But you can! And I love you for it.)
Today will be a day of quiet and rest for me.
Because every St. Patrick's Day of my childhood, youth, and young adult years felt like an eternity.
And in some ways— it was.
For seventeen years' worth of St. Patricks Days, I performed without pay (because I was still an amateur competitor) starting at 6 a.m. on the 17th and ending somewhere around 3 a.m. on the 18th. This was expected of me, and sometimes I enjoyed it.
Typically, there was some driving and waiting around between shows, and we had some sort of long dinner break around six p.m. to just before eight o'clock.
But, from eight p.m. to three or four the next morning, we'd begin performing again at this large restaurant/bar with a teeny stage. Hour after hour.
This audience loved us more than the other eighteen or nineteen other audiences of the day put together because this audience was really, really, really drunk.
Enough time has lapsed that I don't feel nearly so grouchy about St. Patrick's Day.
I've got three things I've been wanting to say for years.
And I finally feel ready to share these thoughts with you.
1) Irish Dancing is not folk dancing.
The steps are as new as hip-hop, or any other contemporary dance form. In the world of Irish Stepdancing, people come out with new ways to move every year.
In folk dancing the steps and the music do not change. Ever. No one adds new movements and you dance to a specific time signature. Typically in a costume of clothes that people in the old country wore for celebrations.
Irish Stepdancing has one equivalent.
There are four plodding "set dances" with slooo-ooow hard shoe steps that every dancer has to learn. We had to do them in competition. I don't think the generation that's competing now has to use them at all, but I could be wrong.
Learning the "Trad. sets" helps you appreciate the modern swift-changing form that Irish Stepdancing has always been, and will always be. It's also a way for adjudicators to line up four competitors stripped of their fancy choreography and see, in one flick of the eyes, whether the dancers have correct form, timing, and style.
The rest of the dances you encounter are a horn o'plenty of reels and jigs and hornpipes of the soft and hard shoe variety. More bounty: Each soloist will have their own choreography made up of many different steps in combination.
Some of those steps will be new. In the "no one has moved their feet that way in Irish Dancing before I just saw you do it right now" school of newness.
Now, let's talk about those new steps in Irish Stepdancing.
Where do new steps come from? How do new steps get passeed around?
Someone does some cool new thing on stage at the World Championships, and every big competitor and their teachers sees the step, and they steal it.
That original competitor will place no higher than third because brand new steps are not acceptable. Last year's new step is okay. And everyone is required to do the new step from four years ago with the double-Swiss variation.
But for that first guy: Woe to ye who thought it was a good idea to bring that step to Worlds!
Next year, everyone's using his new step in their winning solo.
The following year, someone will add three extra somethings to the new step, a movement defying both physics and human anatomy. Gasps all around. And all the teachers and all the dancers steal the souped-up version of the step.
We've all got to learn to do the quadruple-doohickey the year after that. It's become standard for your level of competition.
In the meantime, a dancer and her teacher have come out with "the Swan" which is a crosskey done backwards with a flick both ways, and a boy in a dance school in Guileford just added three twists to it.
That's what we get to learn next year for our competitions. I hope your kneecaps are double jointed!
2) It's not called "Riverdancing." That's a show.
Irish Stepdancing as culture goes way past Michael Flatley. What Flatley (and Marie Duffy and about ten others) did, is loosen up some of the rules of performance. To be fair, Riverdance was such a phenomenon, former champions were finally able to make a non-competition, non-teaching career out of Irish Dance. Dance teachers were able to fill all their student slots, and probably for the first time, keep a waiting list of would-be students.
However, Flatley created some unfortunate precedents for female dancers— he created a thin body culture Irish Dancing didn't have and didn't need.
Before Riverdance, some of the best "power competitors" were built like Mohammed Ali, and they had his considerable physical grace too. I once silently cried watching this muscular dancer perform. She was a rather famous World Champion, and she was doing things my body would never be able to do.
So there's that.
With the new "thin" Irish Dance culture, came the weirdly dichotomous femininity, also a Flatley specialty— in which you were either a withering swan or this naughty, naughty girl. Luckily, I was heading for the exit by then. I had a university degree and I was going off to graduate school. I didn't have an interest in dressing up as one of Flatley's female chorus members: Three wigs sewn together to make one super-wig, six slickery coats of spray tan, and a beauty pageant tiara, all tied together visually by a dress made from wisps of fresh Irish mist.
Male dancers had it worse. I don't even know what to say about those "masculine" leather pants Flatley stuffed his male dancers into for his next show, "Lord of the Dance," but I can tell you those pants looked damned uncomfortable. And so did the performers wearing them.
I said I was heading towards the exit. Check that. I was sprinting.
As I wrapped up my solo career, women in any audience got in the habit of grabbing at my solo costume (worth more than my first car) and, yes, crying because they loved riverdancing so much. (Poor ladies— it was HUGE at the time. Commercials. Specials on PBS. Some people really identified with this show.) I felt bad for these women and their genuine gigantic feelings for Michael Flatley, and Irish Dance, and me, who they thought danced just like Michael Flatley, and should be in Riverdance, but all of it really freaked me out.
So I thanked them and I thanked them, and gently removed their hands from the only new solo dress I ever owned.
For the record— I wouldn't have made the first round of cuts for the corps of any of the three touring Riverdance shows. I wasn't good enough and that was fine by me. (No super-wig!)
If you are out and about today, for goodness' sakes don't call it riverdancing. Irish dancers get really ticked about this, but they're too polite to say anything— usually because you're all so nice and earnest and genuinely heartfelt that no one wants to correct you.
Nor should they. Dancing for an enthusiastic audience is one of the most visceral pleasures of an Irish Dancer's life.
After more than a decade out of my ghillies*, I can afford to be frank this once. (No super-wig!)
3) This is going to blow your mind, but the national color of Ireland until late in the 20th century was actually blue.
This national color was about three to six different colors of blue because various groups in the two countries that make up Ireland couldn't decide which blue was the right blue, so instead of picking one, they named a bunch of them St. Patrick's Blue and called it a day.
It naturally follows that the flag that represents St. Patrick—(There are three of him too!)— is a carefully chosen symbol called the "Saltire of St. Patrick" and also the "Standard of St. Patrick." (Though there's fighting about that, also. Lots of history in Ireland.)
And it certainly is at all points logical that this St. Patrick's flag, or Saltire, or Standard is, in fact, colored bright red and blinding white.
Today, I will not be watching a bunch of St. Patricky things on TV or singing any of those songs about "a ragtag rambling rover from Donegal who wore a black band in his Guinness black hair" or any other Irish tune stuck in my head until always. I will never, ever wax nostalgic about what it was like to be an Irish Dancer because there is always this:
My stress dreams involve Irish dancing. Every time. And that's enough to keep me from pulling out my last pair of unbroken Rutherfords* and strapping them on for ould times' sake.
Because late next week, when I'm worried about something, I'll be looking for those damned hard shoes in my dreams as the PA is announcing the callbacks in a competition I'm in.
While I'm frantically peeking under chairs for my shoes, a lady with a fixation for Riverdance will grab at my costume and rip it— massive points off for me. And I'll get to the stage and remember that on purple days cats don't wear garbage cans. They wear St. Patrick's Blue, or nothing at all.
*soft shoes, or ghillies, are what female dancers wear. They're also called poms for some reason, and most likely, six newer names I haven't heard yet. Male dancers wear soft shoes as well. Those shoes don't have nicknames at all.
**a brand of hard shoe. Irish dancing has hard shoes and soft shoes for both men and women.
MORE IRISH DANCE-TASTIC GOODNESS, OR SOMETHING: I didn't get a chance to post this list in the links on St. Patrick's Day proper, but as it's a NATIONAL HOLIDAY in IRELAND today (03.18.13), but I did a short survey of Modern Irish Dance on the Bluebird Blvd. B-Side Tumblr: TapTronic's Hard Shoe Dubstep; Prodijig's mix of Hip-Hop and Hard Shoe, and Up & Over It's lean and conceptual "Folk You."
PHOTO CREDIT: Photograph photograph of Michael Flatley in his Marie Duffy co-choreographed production, "Feet of Flames," was made available by the photographer MaxGuy and by Wikimedia Commons.
5-Minute Dance Party [Here Comes Your Man, Harold Lloyd]
Well, I was so impressed with this fan montage/tribute video by BrackAttack79 that I used up my Pixies credit.
What the hey-ho is a Pixies credit?
It's like this, my friends— we don't repeat artists for a single year on Bluebird Blvd.'s patented 5-Minute Dance Party.
Bluebird Blvd. post five dance parties a week for 52 weeks. No repeats*.
The Pixies are one of my favorite bands of all time ever in the whole wide universe of sound. Seriously— ever. Did you hear me? 'Cause I'm using italics for emphasis a lot today.
That means as of this moment rightthissecond, I've posted my one Pixies song for the 2013 Bluebird Blvd. 5-Minute Dance Party season.
So that means I've used up my Pixies credit.
It's worth it, right?
I mean, it is Harold Lloyd. And it is the Pixies What confused Bluebird would skip over HAROLD LLOYD and the PIXIES together in a beautifully made montage?
Not me, brother. I'm all in.
How 'bout you? Happy FRIDAY!
*Repeats of a certain type are allowed for the Super-Secret Friday Night 5-Minute Dance Party, but restrictions do apply. Bluebird Blvd.'s Super-Secret Friday Night 5-Minute Dance Party is available in all countries, including the imaginary ones. Do not taunt happy fun ball. Use only as misdirected.
The Marriage Interpreter [No. 41]
THE HUSBAND is sitting on the couch, worrying.
The Husband: I'm on a very set schedule for my classes because I have that presentation on Thursday.
(Bluebird nods solemnly.)
The Husband: I have to present. Actually, I hate the word "present." It's the same word they use to describe female baboons courting a mate on nature shows.
Bluebird: Eew.
The Husband: And by courting, I mean—
Bluebird: —Eew!
THE HUSBAND is making himself coffee.
The Husband: So, we're getting ready to study the incontinental drift.
(Bluebird is speechless.)
At Bluebird Blvd., we take certain things seriously, but housekeeping is not one of those things! No sirree-bobcat tail! Regardless of our ignorance, we feel perfectly qualified to tell you all about cleaning your house during the three months of spring. Didja catch the part where we said we don't know diddly jack about housekeeping? Keep that in mind as you answer these questions, will ya?
A housekeeping expert would call your home:
a) Perfect. We don't breathe or touch anything while we are inside the house. And we vacuum our ceilings twice a day just like my daddy taught me.
b) Clean enough. Everything you can see is clean. But for cripes sake, don't open that closet door! Don't even look cross-eyed at the cabinets! Nope, don't go in that room! Or that one! And don't EVER look under the sofa, okay?
c) I don't know? Lemme ask you a question— Why do people wash bath towels? I mean, don't they stay clean?
d) A wonderland of unclassifiable smells.
What makes your cleaning style unique?
a) My special origami laundry folding technique. All my t-shirts are in the shape of cranes! It's a family specialty!
b) I like to SHOUT WHILE I SCRUB THE SHOWER BECAUSE IT HELPS ME DEAL WITH STRESS. ALSO WHILE I DO DISHES. AND MOP FLOORS. AND WEED THE YARD. I HAVE A LOT OF STRESS!
c) Wait a sec. I can't stop laughing! Unique? It's unique when I clean at all!
d) I cannot hear you through my HAZMAT suit. Sorry!
In one sentence, describe the best way to tackle Spring Cleaning.
a) Take off a month from work and make a twenty-page checklist. Then you rent all your heavy equipment. That's how five generations of my family have tackled Spring Cleaning. Tradition is good!
b) On the first day of April, check underneath your sofa to see what's collected there in the last twelve months. It's like a piñata filled with pocket change and dust bunnies! Whee!
c) Well…. Honestly? I try to get the crying out of the way first. That takes about two days, tops.
d) Hibernate until June.
What's the one Spring Cleaning task you'd like to delegate to an expert?
a) Mr. Clean is my witness: No cleaning expert will ever cross the threshold of my house! I'm the expert around here! Tradition!
b) I want to delegate everything to the expert from all the "a" answers in this quiz. Damn, that person sounds efficient! I want a self-cleaning kitchen. And I want Rosie from The Jetsons to come live with me, and clean house while cracking wise, sitcom style!
c) Here are all the keys to my place, cleaning expert. I'm going to stay in a Motel 6 in Barbados until you call me, okay? Bye-byeeeeee!
d) *Humming to self* I'm moving to a teepee in March! I like potato salad!
In a few words, tell me what you do when you're not cleaning:
a) Thinking. About cleaning. Will you excuse me? I need to vacuum my ceiling again.
b) Two words: I work. There's your answer. I need a 72-hour nap from my workweek.
c) "Hello! You have reached my cell phone. I am in Barbados while a team of nationwide experts cleans my house. Did you know that you have to wash bath towels? Crazy! Leave a message after the—."
d) I collect asphalt!
Put on a sombrero. Now take it off. Do a hoochie-coochie dance. Now stop. Wow, you're really following the directions here, aren't you? No fooling now. Count up your letters and whichever letter you chose most is your answer. The key is below.
YOU ARE AN A-TYPE SPRING CLEANER: Martha Stewart wants to bring you on her show to talk about your sixteen methods for cleaning grout. You're the only person we know who can wear an all-white outfit to an outdoor barbecue and come back home looking cleaner than when you left, if that's possible. You are a natural dirt-deterrent and an excellent launderer. In fact, we're a little embarrassed that you stopped cleaning to take this quiz.
YOU ARE A B-TYPE SPRING CLEANER: As the Average Joe/Jolene of the cleaning world, we know that cleaning makes you moody, and not cleaning makes you feel guilty. You are a cleaning product advertiser's dream: a picture of scrubbing bubbles will send you hurtling to the store to get the latest hyper-toxic all-surface spray that claims to cut your housekeeping in half. Listen, do us all a favor and vacuum underneath your couch every once in awhile. We know that on April 1st of last year you found over a thousand dollars in change under your sofa cushions. Clean your sofa more often. We also think you need to get trousers with better pockets!
YOU'RE A C-TYPE SPRING CLEANER: We worry about you a little bit. How could you not know to wash your own bath towels regularly? When was the last time you cleaned your stove top? Do you know you have to dust your light fixtures periodically? Get a housecleaning book and read it cover to cover. Think of it as a detective novel and you need soap to find all of the clues. Give us a call when (or if!) you get back from Barbados!
YOU'RE A D-TYPE SPRING CLEANER: Good luck with your teepee move. We also like potato salad, but we try not to eat it in bed. This thing over here is called a "broom." It moves dirt from one spot to another. This is called a "dustpan." It picks up the dirt you moved, and you throw it into a "garbage can" outside where the city can pick it up. Here you go! You'll get the hang of it… we think!


text:
Property to let in Listowel Road, Dagenham RM10 - 5 bedrooms
Keywords and filters like garden and parking live here
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£1,500 pcm (£346 pw)
Bradwell Avenue, Dagneham RM10Detached house to rent - 5 bedrooms
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Note: Distances are straight line measurements
- Chadwell Heath (1.1 miles)
- Dagenham East (1.2 miles)
Marketed by Fair links, IG3. Call 020 3641 5315


text:
In Java 8, I can easily write:
interface Interface1 {
default void method1() {
synchronized (this) {
// Something
static void method2() {
synchronized (Interface1.class) {
// Something
I will get the full synchronisation semantics that I can use also in classes. I cannot, however, use the
synchronized modifier on method declarations:
interface Interface2 {
default synchronized void method1() {
// ^^^^^^^^^^^^ Modifier 'synchronized' not allowed here
static synchronized void method2() {
// ^^^^^^^^^^^^ Modifier 'synchronized' not allowed here
Now, one can argue that the two interfaces behave the same way except that
Interface2 establishes a contract on
method1() and on
method2(), which is a bit stronger than what
Interface1 does. Of course, we might also argue that
default implementations should not make any assumptions about concrete implementation state, or that such a keyword simply wouldn't pull its weight.
What is the reason why the JSR-335 expert group decided not to support
synchronized on interface methods?
Note, before this question is eagerly closed: To fit Stack Overflow's Q&A format: I'm looking for authoritative citations only, not speculation. An authoritative answer to this question will likely help many future visitors of this question, so please do not close it eagerly.