There is no picture of January Jones in this post. That makes it SUPERintelligent.

Let me address you directly, my reader(s?), who are sitting out there in Internet land, probably in your boxer shorts and a tank top that you got from the "Vangelis Reunion '97" tour ("Now featuring 90% more synths!") while reading this blog and wondering if there is any Peanut Butter Cap'n Crunch left...

... or is that just me?

Anyhow, you're probably wondering how it is that I stay so on top of current scientific-ish discoveries and news, how I ALWAYS know what the latest science... thing ... is and can talk about it intelligently.

(NOTE: just bear with me, here, and pretend that "making puns about stuff and putting a picture of January Jones next to it" = "talking about something intelligently."

How I do it is I get my technology news 2013 from SciTech Daily.  I have got that site bookmarked and I read it almost every day, because it's a great source of awesome science articles and news.

Like there are articles on there right now with the latest  science news about nebulas and planetary systems and biology news like how researchers have grown bioengineered teeth, which, okay, GROSS but also fascinating.

Sorry, I find teeth disgusting.  Have you ever looked at them? Blech. But the point is that I know that scientists are growing genetically engineered teeth that will eventually take over the world via a supertooth named "ToothNet" and send its teeth back in time to stop the fluoridation of water, because I read SciTech Daily.*

(*Note: I haven't finished the article yet. I'm extrapolating from the headline.)

But now SciTech got even better because on top of the geek news they offer, they've got links and coupons and promo codes right there on their site for all kinds of stuff you have to or want to buy,  so you can be reading awesome science stories and then when you realize that you haven't picked up the printer ink your wife asked for, you can go order it and save some money on it, which you can then use to order flowers to be delivered because, technically, you are two hours late getting home.  Those articles are fascinating! You're going to be late.

But that's the thing: all the stuff you really want is on one site.  Planets! Mummies! Teeth! Coupons!  It's my favorite site, and it doesn't care if you wear your Flock of Seagulls t-shirt to read it.  Unlike me. I'm imposing a dress code on this blog. Go put on some pants.

365 poems, etc. #5

Hot Actor: David Henrie

The Windhover

  by Gerard Manley Hopkins

Caught this morning morning's minion, king-  
  dom of daylight's dauphin,dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding  
  Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding  
High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing  
In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing,
  As a skate's heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding  
  Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding  
Stirred for a bird,—the achieve of; the mastery of the thing!  
  
Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here  
  Buckle! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion
Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!  
  
  No wonder of it: shéer plód makes plough down sillion  
Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,  
  Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermillion.

____________________________________________________________

From The Victorian Web, about Gerard Manley Hopkins:

"Sprung Rhythm" is Gerard Manley Hopkins' term for a complex and very technically involved system of metrics which he derived partly from his knowledge of Welsh poetry. It is opposed specifically to "running" or "common" rhythm, and provides for feet of lengths varying from one syllable to four, with either "rising" or "falling" rhythm.

....

In his journals, Gerard Manley Hopkins used two terms, "inscape" and "instress," which can cause some confusion. By "inscape" he means the unified complex of characteristics that give each thing its uniqueness and that differentiate it from other things, and by "instress" he means either the force of being which holds the inscape together or the impulse from the inscape which carries it whole into the mind of the beholder:

There is one notable dead tree . . . the inscape markedly holding its most simple and beautiful oneness up from the ground through a graceful swerve below (I think) the spring of the branches up to the tops of the timber. I saw the inscape freshly, as if my mind were still growing, though with a companion the eye and the ear are for the most part shut and instress cannot come.

The concept of inscape shares much with Wordsworth's "spots of time," Emerson's "moments," and Joyce's "epiphanies," showing it to be a characteristically Romantic and post-Romantic idea. But Hopkins' inscape is also fundamentally religious: a glimpse of the inscape of a thing shows us why God created it. "Each mortal thing does one thing and the same:/ . . myself it speaks and spells,/ Crying Whát I dó is me: for that I came. "





Expect to see more of Hopkins in this series.

365 Poems, Etc.: 3 & 4

I skipped yesterday due to the guest post.  So here's #3

Hot Actor: Ryan Gosling

Dream Song 1
John Berryman

Huffy Henry hid the day,
unappeasable Henry sulked.
I see his point,--a trying to put things over.
It was the thought that they thought
they could do it made Henry wicked & away.
But he should have come out and talked.

All the world like a woolen lover
once did seem on Henry's side.
Then came a departure.
Thereafter nothing fell out as it might or ought.
I don't see how Henry, pried
open for all the world to see, survived.

What he has now to say is a long
wonder the world can bear & be.
Once in a sycamore I was glad
all at the top, and I sang.
Hard on the land wears the strong sea
and empty grows every bed.

_____________________________________________________________________

John Berryman was discussed in this post about the song "John Allyn Smith Sails" by Okkervil River.

_____________________________________________________________________
And poem #4

Hot Actress: Christina Hendricks

Couplets on Wit 
by Alexander Pope

 I

 But our Great Turks in wit must reign alone
And ill can bear a Brother on the Throne.

II

 Wit is like faith by such warm Fools profest
Who to be saved by one, must damn the rest.

 III

 Some who grow dull religious strait commence
And gain in morals what they lose in sence.

 IV

 Wits starve as useless to a Common weal
While Fools have places purely for their Zeal.

 V

 Now wits gain praise by copying other wits
As one Hog lives on what another sh---.

 VI

 Wou'd you your writings to some Palates fit
Purged all you verses from the sin of wit
 For authors now are so conceited grown
They praise no works but what are like their own.

______________________________________________________________________________

The Nine Dirtiest Songs of the 90s and Today (Guest Post!)

Today, I welcome a guest post:

Probably NSFW. Depending on where you work.

Fifty to sixty years ago, you would most likely hear songs on the radio that were about love or going out and having a good time. While you could say the same of today, the tone, the overall theme and the language are far different.

Long gone are the days when song were innocent or at the very least covered in a shadowy innuendo.  Instead, artists now offer it up straight in graphic detail, because really who needs mystery when we can just jump to the p*ssy poppin', amiright? But fo realz, I thought it would be fun to come up with a list of the top nine dirtiest songs from the past two decades. 


Prepare to dazzle yourself in the pervy details and to dive straight into the raunch. 

My Neck, My Back (Lick it) --Khia (2002)

This gem highlights the importance of licking one's neck, back, snatch trap and butt crack. Khia wants you to know if you're going to dine, you gotta dine all the way, all the way to that tossed salad, boy.

Smell Yo Dick--Riskay (2007)

This lyrical masterpiece details the sad story of a women scorned by her cheating man. Despite her anger, she manages to teach us a very efficient way to determine whether or not you're being cheated on--just smell their dick!  

Wait (The Whisper Song)--Ying Yang Twins (2005) 

A simple beat, finger snap and whisper transforms this song about va-jay-jay destruction into a song of gold. This song shows that the Ying Yang Twins aren't into having an air of mystery about them. In fact, this song is really just their way of preparing you for that moment when you finally see their dick.  It's very considerate of them. 

Play--David Banner (2005)

David Banner wrote Play with the shear intention of teaching the women the importance of masturbation. He just wants you to play with it, that's all. Grab your toy from Adam and Eve and just beat it up. Then bring your friends, especially that one named Sheryl. 

Pop That P*ssy--2 Live Crew (1991)

The original p*ssy poppers, 2 Live Crew, came up with this poetic tribute to strippers and thus taught the world that the true way to a man's heart is through p*ssy poppin'. However, I think someone forgot to tell 2 Live Crew that strippers never actually like you...

Just Put It In My Mouth--Akinyele (1996)

When it comes to break ups, Akinyele has figured out the true secret to getting over someone. No, it doesn't involve ice cream, chick flicks and crying; it's a little easier than that and requires far less of a caloric intake. My friends, Akinyele simply prescribes one (or several) beej sessions with your ex's best friend. It's like wanting prime rib and getting a NY strip instead--different but just as good. Blow those tears away, girlfriend. 


How Many Licks--Lil' Kim (1999)

How Many Licks is Lil' Kim's answer to Afro Man's Colt 45. She unleashes her rolodex of slain sausage and then begs the listener to wonder, "How many licks does it take to get to the center of..." Of what though? We'll never know, as she never explains nor offers the answer. The constant tease, Kim leaves us wanting more. 

Oh Na Na Naa Naa--Lil' Jon & Eastside Boyz

Lil' Jon has one of his groupies tell a sad tale of excessive masturbation in this piece. She just wants Lil' Jon to help her out, but at the same time she can't stop because the thought of Lil' Jon is so incredibly arousing.  Also, Lil' Jon used this song to prove that  women don't fake it with him, despite the fact that 80% of women have faked an orgasm. 


Slob On My Knob--Three 6 Mafia (1999)

This dissertation in knob slobbin' comes to us in a beautiful triplet rhyming scheme. In 60 lines, Three 6 Mafia teaches us about mouth blasting, the importance of douching "dushing" and how to properly have safe sex on the counter. Thanks to the wide range of topics, schools have consider replacing Sex Ed with this informative work of art. 

Or a woman. Let's not be sexist here. (365 Awesome Poems That Rhyme And Are Worth Reading, 2)

Today's Hot Actress: Monica Keena

If
Rudyard Kipling

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too:
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream---and not make dreams your master;
If you can think---and not make thoughts your aim,
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same:.
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build'em up with worn-out tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings,
And never breathe a word about your loss:
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings---nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much:
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And---which is more---you'll be a Man, my son!

______________________________________________________________________

Why it's worth reading:  The next time you feel like giving up, think this:

If you can fill the unforgiving minute/with sixty seconds' worth of distance run

And see if you don't keep going.

HA HA HACKERS you can't get me anymore! *sticks tongue out, remembers hackers cannot see that through computer, does it anyway*

This is a Sponsored post written by me on behalf of Vipre for SocialSpark. All opinions are 100% mine.

 

All right.

 

So I have two laptops at home, ORDINARILY but for now we are down to just one because, to quote my computer guy about the other one:

 

"Yeah, it had a virus on it."

 

And I'm out $100 or so to have him fix it, PLUS I had to live with it working slowly for two weeks PLUS I had to have it out of my house for over a week, which means that during the last week I've had only one computer in the house, which is terrible because it means that I am constantly getting kicked off the computer so that the kids can watch "The Rugrats Movie" on Netflix, and I don't mind them watching that but what about ME? I need to be reading people's blogs, and looking at pictures of celebrities with horrible plastic surgery, or perhaps actually writing something myself.

 

So the point is: Viruses suck and it's awful when your computer gets one, which is why I was intrigued recently to find out about VIPRE Internet Security.

 

 

Seriously, I have probably tried about 20 different security programs and antivirus programs and whatnot, and NONE of them have worked, and I think the problem is that most programs are set up for viruses that exist when the programs are made, and getting one of those programs and installing it is great if hackers are trying to get your computer 2 years ago, but most things occur "in the present" as scientists say.

 

So this Vipre Internet Security program has firewalls, spam filters, and bad website blocking.  That's pretty basic.  But what it also has is this "Easy Update" feature where Vipre will automatically update to keep old programs from getting security problems.  So you can use your Java or iTunes or whatever and as the program gets older and more vulnerable, Vipre fixes it for you.

 

AND, Vipre has free tech support.  FREE.

 

I've been using Vipre for a while now, on the second laptop, and I can say that it's avoided problems so far.  I know it's early, but I bet if I'd had this on my other computer, I wouldn't have gotten my email hacked and I wouldn't have spent that $100 on fixing that one virus.  It's easy to install, and it doesn't slow down my computer.  (One program I had, you'd run the security program and it basically shut down your computer for hours.  We had to run it only at night just before going to bed, in hopes it would be done by morning. I think it mostly protected the computer by not letting anyone use it.)

 

So when I get that other one back, it's getting VIpre, too. If you have virus and security problems -- and you DO -- check out Vipre.  I bet you'll like it as much as I do.

365 Awesome Poems That Rhyme and Are Worth Reading.

Hugh Dancy is your hot actor for this poem.

For the past few days, I've been thinking about poetry. And writing poetry.  And commenting about writing about poetry.  And today, over on Andrew Leon's blog, he wrote a post about people not reading poetry and many of the comments were along the lines of "Poetry? Pleh."

And those are from writers.  PEOPLE WHO WORK WITH WORDS!  That's like doctors saying "I'd like to want to know more about the brain, but... you know... hard... gross.  I'm gonna go check out my 401k statements."

Or something.

Anyway, I can't believe people don't take a bit of time each day to read a poem, and I can't believe especially that writers don't.  So I am taking the Poetry challenge, as it were, and throwing down the gauntlet, as it also were, and I am going to post a great, rhyming, awesome poem


EVERY SINGLE DAY FOR A YEAR.*
*I will probably miss some days but I will make up for them.

And here is the first one, my favorite poem of all time

anyone lived in a pretty how town,
e e cummings

anyone lived in a pretty how town
(with up so floating many bells down)
spring summer autumn winter
he sang his didn't he danced his did

Women and men(both little and small)
cared for anyone not at all
they sowed their isn't they reaped their same
sun moon stars rain

hildren guessed(but only a few
and down they forgot as up they grew
autumn winter spring summer)
that noone loved him more by more

when by now and tree by leaf
she laughed his joy she cried his grief
bird by snow and stir by still
 anyone's any was all to her

someones married their everyones
laughed their cryings and did their dance
(sleep wake hope and then)they
said their nevers they slept their dream

stars rain sun moon
(and only the snow can begin to explain
how children are apt to forget to remember
with up so floating many bells down)

one day anyone died i guess
(and noone stooped to kiss his face)
busy folk buried them side by side
little by little and was by was

all by all and deep by deep
and more by more they dream their sleep
noone and anyone earth by april
wish by spirit and if by yes.

Women and men(both dong and ding)
summer autumn winter spring
reaped their sowing and went their came
sun moon stars rain

Your Saturday Morning Feel-Good Song

Good for:

-- Starting that exercise program!

-- Wondering if the hardware store sells kites.

-- Eating pizza (cold or hot.)

Another Sunny Day... so what went wrong? (Sundays With The Classics)

Today was a Ulysses day.  And as usual, not very much happened.  At the outset of today's segment, Father Conmee is getting over some racist thinking about how yellow and black people aren't going to heaven, and he glances out the window and sees a woman walking and muses to himself about how she is probably having an affair with her husband's brother but she won't really confess it -- she'll only half confess it -- and then he wanders around reading his Nones, which are prayers that are supposed to be read at 3 p.m.  As he walks around, musing about how great the day is, a young couple comes out of the hedge, and I'm pretty sure they were supposed to be having sex.

Joyce then does his usual "Everything good eventually leads to death" by abruptly cutting to Corny Kelleher, who is making a coffin lid.  It's not even very subtle, the sudden transition from "hey, here's a young couple snuck out of the hedges" to "Here's Corny Kelleher making a coffin lid," and for the rest of the time I read, the scene just jumped around: a mother and daughter complain about how the rag dealer didn't offer them anything for their rags and eat pea soup, the daughter (Boody) saying a prayer:  Our father who are not in Heaven as a complaint about how little food and money they have (and getting yelled at by her mother), a man buying a fruit basket to send to an invalid while he looks down the blouse of the girl who is putting it together and makes ribald (?) puns (asking to speak into her telephone when she catches him looking), some people talking about the news, a group of tourists going by, and so on.

Joyce does let us know that all this is happening at the same time through a bit of a literary trick: as Father Conmee is saying his nones and the couple is coming out of the hedge, Joyce writes that the woman picks a twig off of her skirt, and later in the chapter, after much comings and goings, Joyce writes that exact same sentence, which I took as a callback to the earlier part of the chapter; it's a neat little trick to say "This is all at once," without saying "This is all at once."

But that's really it, for this installment.  There wasn't anything remarkable, or even particularly poetic, or memorable, really.  The whole installment had a light, almost airy feeling to it, and even Joyce's constant reminders of death and poverty and the probable lack of a God couldn't really dampen the atmosphere of a pleasant afternoon just after lunch, and I suppose maybe that was his point.

He begins, anyway, with Father Conmee feeling benevolent, if not beatific, praying and even blessing the couple that was probably messing around and musing about how great life is, and moves through a series of people who are buying stuff for sick relatives or friends, or making coffins, or desperately wishing they could've sold some rags so they didn't have to subsist on charity-pea-soup from the nuns, and the entire picture is both one that is grim (people are sinning, and dying, and being poor) and amazingly bucolic -- so much so that the daughter's "prayer" about God not being in Heaven has a double-edge to it: a girl trying to get her mother's goat, and a girl reminding people that for all this apparent surface pleasantry, life is remarkably tough and that everything leads to death, even a pleasant afternoon.

Which, as I sit here on my own pleasant afternoon, is not a particularly fun thought to leave on.

Joyce isn't the only one to see a grim ending to a pleasant afternoon:

.
But I'm not letting Joyce, or Belle & Sebastian, bring me down.  I am going to eat some pizza, goddangit!

Your Saturday Morning Feel-Good Song

A suitable soundtrack for:

-- getting your bike out for the first time this spring...

-- finally tackling the organization of that junk drawer and finding three old scratch-off lottery tickets and winning $2!...

-- eating pizza. (Cold or hot.)

A time traveler has brought back the notes from Day One Of The Big Pope Conclave!

So gross. (BUT ALSO VERY COOL) (Sundays With The Classics)

Here is the last part of The Odyssey I read today:

They, seizing the hot stake rasp'd to a point
Bored his eye with it, and myself, advanced
To a superior stand, twirled it about.
...
So grasping hard the stake pointed with fire,
We twirl'd it in his eye; the bubbling blood
Boil'd round about the brand; his pupil sent
A scalding vapour forth that sing'd his brow,
And all his eye-roots crackled in the flame.
As when the smith an hatchet or large axe
Temp'ring with skill, plunges the hissing blade
Deep in cold water...
So hiss'd his eye around the olive-wood.

It's the part where Odysseus and four of his men take the six-foot long (I know it's six feet long because they say they cut the log to a "fathom" and a "fathom" is six feet) log and spear it into Polypheme's eye while he sleep drunk in a pool of his own vomit, and also that vomit has human parts in it.

THIS PART WAS TOTALLY WORTH THE EFFORT TO READ.

Odysseus is still telling his story to the king of whatever wherever he is.  I forget.  But he's got to the part where they go to the Lotus Eaters, which is dealt with in about a paragraph, and fine, because that's boring, but then they get to the Cyclops' island, and Odysseus spies a giant and they want to see what this is all about, so they go and get into his cave.

Everyone knows that part, right?

Maybe not, because here's what was so awesome about this part: Yes, Odysseus and his men are trapped in the cave with a cyclops and the cyclops is eating them, we all know that part, but what got lost when I first heard about The Odyssey whenever that was is this:

They aren't hiding.  The cyclops knows they are there, and lets them wander around all they want, and just whenever he wants he plucks one of them up and eats them.

That, for me, is worse -- way worse -- than the version I somehow learned along the way, which was that Odysseus and his men were hiding whenever Polypheme was around.  That's how I remembered it, anyway.  (As for how I remember it, I don't know.  I suppose I must have read excerpts, or maybe it was on the Superfriends or something.  I just remember the cyclops part, somehow.)

I remember it as "Odysseus and his men were in the cave, hiding," but that's not what it is, at all.  Instead, they talk to Polypheme, who has locked them into his cave and after they say who they are, Polypheme says that he's a cyclops and he's not afraid of stupid old Zeus, and then Odysseus lies and says his ship crashed on the rocks (presumably so that Polypheme won't go and destroy it, Odysseus being pretty smart) and after Odysseus tells him that Polypheme picks up two of his men, cooks them, and eats every single part of them.

Just like that.

And then he goes to sleep, not even worrying about the rest of the tiny humans wandering around.  And why worry? Odysseus plans, while Polypheme is sleeping, to stab him around the liver -- stabbing someone in the stomach and piercing the intestines is probably a way easier, and way surer way of killing someone than going for the heart, which is surrounded by bone.  It'll take longer, but once you cut open an intestine, you'll spill out all the poisonous goop intestines carry and the odds are the person dies of sepsis.  Remember that -- but Odysseus realizes that doing that would doom them because Polypheme had pulled a godawful big rock in front of the cave so they'd be trapped.

Then the next day, Polypheme - -having trapped them in all day -- comes back and eats two more guys, right there -- before Odysseus gets him drunk on wine in order to pull of the 'stab him in the eye with a sharp stick' plan.

(It's while drunk that Polypheme barfs up parts of Odysseus' men.)

I can't get past how creepy that would be, how the real scary part of the story has always been glossed over: imagine, being held in a cave by someone so powerful he's not even worried about you being loose.  He's just keeping you there, ready to eat, like so many living, breathing Cheese Doodles.  That kept bugging me out the entire time I was reading this portion.  It's the best thing Homer's written so far, and it is so heads and shoulders above the Riverdance island from last time, and Telemachus' endless feasting, that I am finally glad I'm reading this.

And to think I was going to give up!  If they taught that opening set of lines in English classes in high school, more kids would be scholars of Greek epic poetry. 

THIS TIME I AM DEFINITELY GOING TO WIN. (Caption A New Yorker Cartoon)

Allow me, if you will, to get into just how completely annoying and overwhelmingly irritating every single website in the world is, with these user names and passwords and different rules for everyone of them so that  even where you have a system for passwords and user names the entire world seems to have conspired against you to make you constantly frustrated and #*#%$&$ off just trying to enter a caption contest on a website.

Because, you know, that's a secure thing.  We can't have just anyone entering a caption contest!  What if someone entered under my name?

WHAT IF SOMEONE STOLE MY IDENTITY AND ENTERED A CAPTION CONTEST AT THE NEW YORKER?

Well, I mean, the world wouldn't change at all, but still: The New Yorker, which is increasingly getting me angry by their never accepting my poems to print and then never accepting my captions to win, is now really high up on my Enemies List

(Yes, I have one. Everyone should.)

because they have again changed their log-in and password system to enter the caption contest.

Here is the exact text of the email I got from the New Yorker recently:

This message contains graphics. If you do not see the graphics, click here to view.

This e-mail was sent to you by The New Yorker Advertising Promotion Department. To insure delivery to your inbox (not bulk or junk folders), please add our e-mail address, thenewyorker@email.newyorker.com, to your address book.

Dear Captioneers, These days, there's not much you can do without a user name and password.
And that includes entering our Cartoon Caption Contest. You already know that, of course, because you've entered it. That's also why you're getting this e-mail. Because if you want to enter again, you may have to re-register your user name and password. Or create one, if you haven't used one thus far. We're merging our caption registration with our over-all newyorker.com registration, so one login will allow you to comment on blog posts and enter and vote on all contests, including the Caption Contest. The easiest thing to do is to go to contest.newyorker.com and create a registration—and that's it. Presto chango, you can now enter all future contests with your newyorker.com user name and password. If you already have a newyorker.com user name and password, you can simply log in atcontest.newyorker.com. If you're having trouble with your password, please reset it here. For more help, please contact customer support at 1-800-825-2510. I'm told they're very supportive. Cheers, Bob Mankoff, Cartoon Editor

First of all the easiest thing to do is not require a name and password and log in just to enter a contest.  I get it that you want to create an email list and know who to market to, but do you really think that the caption contest is drawing in people who would not otherwise buy The New Yorker in the first place?

I would bet you a thousand dollars that every single person who enters the New Yorker Cartoon Caption contest knows about that contest because they already subscribe to the magazine, so what you are doing is not broadening your marketing base.  You are alienating your current subscribers by making it harder to enter a contest.

Here is exactly what I have had to do, so far, to comply with Bob Mankoff's easiest things to do, in order to enter a cartoon caption contest.

First, I put on the song "The Quiz" by Hello Saferide.

That is not technically a required step, but that song is peaceful and pleasant and soothing and I knew I would need it.

Then I went to their website.  When you go to the contest spot, you have the current cartoon:

And below it is a box, and two columns.  The box is to type in your caption.  The two columns are:

-- on the left: you can enter a bunch of information about yourself like your name and address and your display name so that if you win The New Yorker will put the name you want on the site ("Briane1213WisconsIN0012").

-- on the right is a login and password, which tells you AND I QUOTE

Log in below to avoid having to fill out the rest of this form. Your information has already been saved to your account.

So I went to the site and I typed the email for the login, and typed what I believed to be the most current version of the password I use, having just done this only about three weeks ago and so I was reasonably sure I know what password I am using now, but, of course, the password box doesn't remind you of whether this password needs a capital, or a number, or both, or none.

(Once, I spent 20 minutes trying to log in to my student loan account, getting more and more frustrated until I finally was able to recover my user name and then change my password, after which I realized that I was leaving off the number on the end of my password.  I was typing the password but had not typed 1 at the end of it.)

After putting in my user name and what I thought was my password, I was denied log-in because I had left some fields empty, including the caption box itself, and including all the demographic information on the left which I was told I didn't have to fill out if I just logged in.

As for the caption box, the reason I didn't enter my caption for that yet is:

(A) I don't have a caption yet, I haven't even begun to think about it, I'm still TRYING TO LOG IN and

(B) Sometimes, if you type your caption in and then log in and the login doesn't work you have to retype everything, including the caption, like a sucker.

STEP TWO.  Try again, this time using a capitalized first letter and adding a numeral after my current password.

This time, I am told to

Please log in with with your NewYorker.com email and password.

The typo is theirs.

And also told that I must enter a username and a country, and my caption.  It is not clear if I have logged in, though, as the log-in box is no longer available for me to please log in with my New Yorker password:

So I picked my "Display name" and my country...

noting for the first time that

Any resident of the United States, Canada (except Quebec), Australia, the United Kingdom, or the Republic of Ireland age eighteen or older can enter or vote.

And I wonder: Why can't people in France vote?

Or people in Japan?

But this time it appears that everything is set except for my caption, so let's caption the bejeezus out of this cartoon.

So what I thought was a mountain in the background is a city, right? It's a bridge and some buildings.  Is this New York?  San Francisco?  Some other city with a bridge?  No other cities have bridges of note, so far as I know, beyond New York and San Francisco, and I say that as someone who has been in several cities.

Does the location matter?  Probably.  It's The New Yorker, after all, not The San Franciscoer.  Maybe I should go SF, though, only...

HOLD ON, FLASH OF INSPIRATION.

"Next time, I get to wear the outfit!" 

That seems almost too obvious.  If it came to me as I was actively thinking about something else -- I was pondering a Super Bowl-related joke -- then it would probably come to every Brooklyn hipster reading this issue at their locavore dentist's office (the hipsters are there to get their teeth crookedized.  I think the next big thing is going to be not-perfect teeth, because they will seem genuine.)

Probably too obvious.

Are the two out on a ride together? Probably not.  He's on a chopper, she's on a Vespa thing, and he's, of course, naked.  What if they are related, though?  What if

FLASH OF INSPIRATION:

"I think you took my clothes when you left this morning."

That's okay.  That's on the right track.

"You've got my housekeys in your pocket."

That's even BETTER, I think.  Suggests that they spent the night together but they don't live together.  So the woman left him at her house, maybe? WOMEN'S LIB, amIright?  She is a sexy, confident, woman of the 21st century,  not afraid to pick up a biker and then head off to her job at a ... what kind of company would she work at? I want to say graphic design, but that's probably because we saw Side Effects yesterday and that was what Rooney Mara's character did for a living after Channing Tatum's character got thrown in prison for insider trading.

That's not a SPOILER.  It's the plot of the movie, in part, and you're told all that in the first two minutes of the movie.

You know what's weird? I cannot recall a single character's name from that movie except for Catherine Zeta Jones' character

who was called "Dr. Siebert."

So it probably doesn't matter what Vespa woman does.  Think think think.  Maybe a traffic-incident joke, something that the Vespa did that made the man lose his clothes?

All I've got is

"You cut me off back there," 

but that doesn't imply that he lost his clothes in the process, does it?

The man is definitely mad.  The woman appears to be ignoring him.

What's the story, here.  What has happened to make this man mad and this woman indifferent?

"I thought you said you had to be at work early today?"

Still on the "we slept together last night" theme, but a little better, maybe.

I really can't stare at that guy's body any longer.

But I can't not stare at it, either.

His eyebrows, for one thing, are really bushy.

*******

Ordinarily, I do these things really quickly, but Mr F wanted to go for a ride, so we took him for a ride that lasted about a half-hour.  While we were doing that, I went over the ideas I had with Sweetie, and she liked the ones I had so far, so I am going to go with one of those.

Sweetie also clarified for me that in the movie Side Effects, Rooney Mara's character was called "Emily," and Jude Law's character was "Dr. Banks," only she knew his first name too and told it to me but I already forgot it.  She also knew that Channing Tatum's character was "Martin" and that Jude Law's wife's name was "Dierdre."

I was fine with just thinking of them as "Rooney" and "Channing" etc.

So I'm going with "You've got my housekeys in your pocket," because I like that one.

Let's go back and try to enter it.

DONE.

So it took me only three tries to submit my entry, but I had to fill out the entire form anyway, and besides that, I've already forgotten the password that I used this time, which means when I enter next week, I am going to have to come back to this post to remember what I did to enter the contest.

Because, again, GOD FORBID someone enter a contest under false pretenses.  I can just see it now: some week, I will be watching Access Hollywood or the Academy Awards or the Nobel Prize ceremony and there will be a bunch of paparazzi surrounding some guy who will be walking around with January Jones on his arm and the people covering the event will say

"There's Briane Pagel, you know he won The New Yorker caption contest this week, and January Jones fell in love with him..."

And I'll be all yelling at the TV "Hey, that's not me, I'm me," but nobody will pay attention, and that guy will be living my life, and I'll have to shut up when Sweetie comes back into the room, but THAT GUY will be getting all the fame and fortune that comes with submitting the caption voted to be the funniest for a drawing of a couple of bears at a cocktail party talking about the stock market

OR, conversely, one day I'll come home from work all innocently,  hoping that Sweetie has made pizza for dinner that night (YES!) and I'll walk in and she'll hit me with a frying pan and when I say

"What was that for, and also did you, in fact, make pizza tonight?" she'll say

"I heard on the news that some guy named Briane Pagel won The New Yorker's caption contest and went on a date with January Jones! I'm leaving you!" and then she'll hit me again with the frying pan because we are in a Blondie comic strip.

So it's probably for the best that security is so tight around The New Yorker, but that is January Jones' loss.

So you'd want a "Tinier Stegosaurus" refrigerator magnet, right?

In the long, gray days between the Super Bowl and when we can see grass again in Wisconsin, I often times find myself looking around for new things to do, or things to cheer me up, or projects to work on, something like that -- and that is why the Vistaprint deals from Best Online Coupons are so welcome at this time of the year: because it makes it easier to get going on a new project.

Here's one I've been thinking of: a book of postcards based on my "Tinier Stegosaurus" pictures and other kinds of pictures I've been taking and posting here and there.  I love taking pictures, and I've been thinking how I could start making some money off of...

...er, share them with the world.

So this Vistaprint coupon code 2013 from Best Online Coupons might be just the thing for that. From photo calendars to rubber stamps with my designs to custom-print services, they've got all kinds of neat deals on unique products that I could get going on and use as a new way to be creative.

And, yeah, to make money.

The nice thing about the promo codes February 2013 that Best Online Coupons is offering is it lets me get creative without investing a ton of money.  I could use their coupons to get a free photo calendar and see how it looks, then maybe order some up and give them out to people as prizes on my blog-- with excerpts from my books and stuff like that so people are every day reminded that they should go check out what I'm writing.

In fact, I could do a Three Good Things calendar... and more!  And more!  OK, cancel work this week...

Anyway, the coupon codes are really good, and Vistaprint is great for small businesses or print jobs that you can't do on your own but don't want to spend a lot of money on.  And while you're there, check out the other deals they've got.  Best Online Coupons has deals on clothes, electronics, books, and pretty much everything you can imagine.

Time Enough To Say Goodbye

Excellent author/professional grump PT Dilloway has released the excellent Volume Two of his superhero series, "Tales Of The Scarlet Knight."  I read both books 1 and 2 and have loved them.  Here is his entire post announcing it; find out more about a free giveaway on his blog, and the book is currently on sale for just $0.99!  Less than a buck!

Two-Cent Tuesday: Volume 2 is Here!

Today is the official release day for Time Enough to Say Goodbye, Tales of the Scarlet Knight Volume II.  Yes, that's quite a mouthful.  The good thing is that makes it easier to find in search engines, which is what I keep telling all these people who give their books one-word titles because they think it's cool.  Search engine optimization!

Anyway, like Volume I, Volume II costs only $2.99.  If it still says $299.99 somewhere that's because they haven't updated the site yet.  So just go to the Smashwords page and you can download it in whatever format you want:  Mobi for Kindle, ePub for Nook/Kobo, or PDF to read on your PC.  It is on Amazon & B&N but I make more money if you buy it from the Smashwords site.  I'm just saying.

Volume II actually has a long history to it.  I wrote the first draft starting in August 2009.  I remember that because it was the first book I wrote on my netbook.  I remember I wrote the first chapter in a Big Boy restaurant in Novi, MI just to test the newfound freedom of not needing a power cord.

I was never fully happy with that first version of the story.  It seemed like it needed something to make it more exciting.  The character of the Watchmaker especially was kind of boring.  I decided to rewrite it last year.  Except the rewrite didn't end up being much more exciting in a lot of ways.  Michael Offutt beta-read it and eventually we came up with the idea of introducing demons!

Demons already existed in a prequel story I'd written, one that focused on the witch character, Sylvia Joubert.  I hadn't really used them in any Scarlet Knight stories, but they seemed like a natural fit.  That allowed me to rewrite the Watchmaker and make him a scarier, more badass villain than before.  It also altered Marie Marsh's character by giving her some new abilities.

So now I think Volume II is a lot better than that early draft.  At the same time it still retains the best elements from that.

Like most of the Scarlet Knight stories, the plot revolves largely around sacrifices that need to be made.  For Emma Earl, aka the Scarlet Knight, the sacrifice is those people who are the ones she cares about the most:  her parents.

If you read the end of the first book then you know Marie Marsh has a weird pale eye that lets her see into the past and communicate with a little girl in the 19th Century named Veronica.  With some help from a mysterious old man who calls himself the Watchmaker, Marie finds a way to use her eye to actually go back in time to 1876 so she can save Veronica from dying from a fever by bringing her to the present.

This changes the timeline and suddenly Emma finds herself back at her old house with her parents still alive.  Even better yet, Emma is about to marry Dan Dreyfus, the love of her life.  Can Emma give all that up to put things right again?  Can Marie give up Veronica to put things right again?  And what's the deal with the Watchmaker?  Hurm...

If that's not enough of an enticement, let me just say this:  the end battle involves demons, ninja witches, and a giant worm.

You know you want it, and for $2.99 why not?  Go buy it now!

LET ME SAY THIS: That end battle was incredible.

"Oh, death, and grief, and sorrow, and murder." (Sundays With The Classics)

And it's even actually on a Sunday!

I'm sitting in a hallway in my house outside of a bathroom where Mr F is sitting, for reasons that require a longer post that would be completely unrelated to Ulysses to explain.  So I won't, today, get distracted by that.

But as I am sitting here, I read Ulysses for 20 more minutes, my weird compulsion to keep reading this rather stultifying book continuing to drive me on.

In today's installment, the discussion over Shakespeare ended -- finally -- with Dedalus wrapping up a speech on how Shakespeare is really every character he wrote, as we all are, a wrap-up that begins with this mystifying quote:

He found in the world without as actual what was in his world within as possible.

I puzzled over that a long time, because I'm not sure it makes sense but I have the feeling that it makes sense, or ought to.

It seems meaningful, doesn't it?  So I tried to parse it:

...the world without is where he found as actual what was in his world within as possible?

So what he thought was possible in his mind, he found actually existed in the world?

That's the best I can do, but it seems to fit because at that point the discussion group was also comparing Shakespeare's world-creating abilities to God's:

The playwright who wrote the folio of this world and wrote it badly (He gave us light first and the sun two days later), the lord of things as they are whom the most Roman of catholics call dio boia, hangman god, is doubtless all in all in all of us, ostler and butcher, and would be bawd and cuckold too but that in the economic of heaven, foretold by Hamlet, there are no more marriages, glorified man, an androgynous angel, being a wife unto himself.

Which neatly wraps up the theme of the end of the Shakespeare dialogue (we are all every character that we meet) with a little blasphemy (God ain't so great) and continues Joyce's theme that I noted in an earlier installment of this: that everything ends up with death, even speeches about Shakespeare ending in Heaven, as foretold by Hamlet, who dies.

After Dedalus finishes that, the guys joke about how it could be reprinted in Buck Mulligan's magazine for a guinea, and then the viewpoint shifts to Father Conmee, who walks along the street having left the group, thinking pleasant thoughts about God and how neat it is that God put peat into bogs so that people could harvest it and burn it (Really!) before this happens:

Father Conmee began to walk along the North Strand road and was saluted by Mr William Gallagher who stood in the doorway of his shop.  Father Conmee saluted Mr William Gallagher and perceived the odours that came from baconflitches and ample cools of butter.  He passed Grogan's the Tobacconist against which newsboards leaned and told of a dreadful catastrophe in New York.  In America those things were continually happening.  Unfortunate people to die like that, unprepared.

So even a simple walk along the street begins with pleasant odors of food and tobacco and ends with a "dreadful catastrophe" where people die unprepared and (presumably, this being a Catholic priest thinking this) go to Hell because they didn't get forgiven in time.

In case there is any doubt that I am 100% right, the walk the continues with Father Conmee passing some lounging men and then he passes "H.J. O'Neill's funeral establishment," says hello to the constable and sees, in a butcher's window, "pig's puddings, white and black and red, lie neatly curled in tubes."

I stopped reading with Father Conmee riding a streetcar and looking at a woman yawning and somehow beginning to think about how all the colored people of the world ("the souls of the black and brown and yellow men") would die "when their last hour came like a thief in the night" and how they would "all be lost, a waste, if one might say."

He got all that from a woman yawning on a streetcar.

What Joyce, or maybe Father Conmee, needed, I think, was a banjo.  Remember, Steve Martin said it's impossible to be sad with a banjo playing.

So I think I have hit on the theme of this book, with its constantly-switching viewpoints that are never clearly demarcated: Joyce does that, I think, because he is making the point that we are every character we think we meet, projecting our own images of ourselves and others onto those others -- and that every character we meet (including us, who is them) is doomed to die.