Monday, December 26, 2011

Nothing Is Plumb, Level, or Square



The blogroll reorg has been completed. I use the blogrolls as my bookmarking system. The primary (but not only) reason I moved from typepad fourteen months ago is I wanted the floating blogrolls Blooger provides, the self-updating function: I love it. Still, there are, for whatever reasons, blogs and sites that don't or can't feed the burners, and they sink to the bottom. Look! Over there in the left column, a new blogroll, just beneath the above photo of Fleabus, Feedless. All are worth your time.

Blegsylvania still in Giftmas slowdown, so yes, this is another mail-it-in post. As for Giftmas, I made out like a thief, especially thanks to SeatSix and Earthgirl - I now own my very first piece of Apple machinery. Tell me what apps I should download for the iPad, you fellow complicit capitalist stooges! And as much as I'd like to write about my MiL and BiL, you'll have to make do with songs, links, and poem.










LOVE SONG: I AND THOU

Alan Dugan

Nothing is plumb, level, or square:
     the studs are bowed, the joists
are shaky by nature, no piece fits
     any other piece without a gap
or pinch, and bent nails
     dance all over the surfacing
like maggots. By Christ
     I am no carpenter. I built
the roof for myself, the walls
     for myself, the floors
for myself, and got
     hung up in it myself. I
danced with a purple thumb
     at this house-warming, drunk
with my prime whiskey: rage.
     Oh I spat rage’s nails
into the frame-up of my work:
     it held. It settled plumb,
level, solid, square and true
     for that great moment. Then
it screamed and went on through,
     skewing as wrong the other way.
God damned it. This is hell,
     but I planned it. I sawed it,
I nailed it, and I
     will live in it until it kills me.
I can nail my left palm
     to the left-hand crosspiece but
I can’t do everything myself.
     I need a hand to nail the right,
a help, a love, a you, a wife.


10 comments:

  1. Start here http://bookriot.com/2011/12/26/the-best-of-book-riot-the-four-bookish-apps-you-need-to-have-right-now/

    Tell us what you want to do and we'll tell you the apps. (I have 8 pages of apps so I'm a decent source.)

    Oh, and Angry Birds is required.

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  2. Thanks. And heh, Planet already downloaded Angry Birds when I gave the iPad to her to play with. I haven't yet, but will see what it does.

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  3. Also. Dionne is exactly right. The day before yesterday I did an extended riff on how the liberals are the actual conservatives ...

    Dionne may be stupid (although I am quite tired of the habit of calling those with whom we disagree 'stupid' as is typically done by the right), but he got this one right.

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  4. One of my best friends is a flame point.

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  5. Respectfully, the liberals have been the conservatives since W was inaugurated in 2001. We both sang the same song six centuries ago when we were both on BoB.

    Obama's had three years, two with both sides of congress power, and he - I think deliberately - didn't use it beyond maintaining the less-shitty balance while general shittiness moved right, and what's the... you've heard *this* song of mine too... good of supporting less-shitty if the baseline of shittiness keeps moving right, the less-shitty not more-shitty for marketing alone, maintaining the .06% balance so as to not miss out on any pennies?

    Where did you do the extended rif? I missed it, would have linked it....

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  6. She did the extended riff at my kitchen table.

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  7. First off: YAY! Fleabus. My giftmas gift from BDR et fam. 'Don't jump, Fleabus. Wait there while we call the FD.'

    @Sasha: I can never understand why those birds are so miffed. My kids tell me it's because the pigs stole their eggs. But if they tear down all those structures, they'll break them and they won't be able to get them back. What's up with that?

    Apps: Stars (id constellations in your night sky). Compass. Elevation. Find iPad. RL Classic (so you can read/scan shit). FlashLight. Boost Magic (or something to tell you how much battery life you have left). Shazam or Soundhound (id songs on the radio you don't recognize). Skype and/or Facetime (so you can see Planet when you speak). Inside Carolina (so you can keep up with the 'Heels. Heh!). Funny or Die. Words Free (play Scrabble with your peeps, except it's easy to cheat and you just might have a better vocabulary than its dictionary). iBooks.

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  8. You say mail-in like it's a bad thing. That's stock-n-trade, you corporate puppet, you.

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  9. @Jim H. The eggs have been out of the nest too long to hatch so that breaking the eggs is of no consequence. They need to teach the pigs a lesson so that they'll stop stealing the eggs.

    Sheesh.

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  10. Oh, yeah, BDR. There's a Kindle app for the iPad so that you can read what you're currently reading when you didn't expect to need to.

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