Michael Christian's Koilos at Distillery District., Toronto

copyright ©2010 sam javanrouh from daily dose of imagery blog

Work in Progress

Playing with the layout.

Ain't No Reason

Feels like a good day for this. Thanks to Matt for letting me use computer for online applications and access to Hulu to catch up on Modern Family.

Happy Valentine's Weekend

As I prepare for another 40 something birthday on Monday I am a bit bummed about not picking up Will Whitmore tickets for tonight. I think I will be ready for a drinking break after Birthday and Mardi Gras. Since Lent is approaching I have decided to give up booze in order to quit cigarettes. (Not giving up red wine, or any wine for that matter I suppose.

Picked up the most recently translated Roberto Bolano "Monsieur Pain". Looking forward to it as I really enjoyed "The Skating Rink". Eventually I will have to return to one of his longer ones.

Wilco Cover's Neil Young

Shades of Grey

I would say Jasper Fforde's new novel has to be the official novel of this blog but I should probably read it first. Just snagged it off the new book shelf today at libary. I love his Thursday Next and Nursery Crime series. Also he is very entertaining to hear read in person. A longer excerpt than the one at right can be found at Penguin USA site here. Loads of stuff at author site as well.

RUN-DMC vs. Jason Nevins - "It's Like That"

I am getting distracted again from online applications. Damn! But I am listening to good music both on the net and off. My friend Matt was going through my cds picking out stuff to rip so I was also going back through looking for things I never really listened to. Found Interpol's "Our Love to Admire" and have been playing that. So good.

Lobster

Gerard de Nerval, Parisian poet and author, had a pet
lobster which he led through the streets of Paris on a leash.
Ripley's Believe It or Not!

It was eighteen fifty.
Clac-Clac was his name,
a pale salmon color, and dusty
from crossing the city
the way the city was then.

Every night his master
ate him and went for another,
whom he named Clac-Clac again.

"Even a lobster with his carapace
can't stand more than one turn
around this stinking circus,"
Nerval said with bitterness,

rigging himself and his lobster
up for today's appearance.

Kay Ryan
The Jam Jar Lifeboat & Other Novelties Exposed
Red Berry Editions

This poem was retired recently from Poetry Daily Archive.

Happy Birthday, Elvis.

My mom got me hooked on Elvis as a kid. "Blue Hawaii" and "G.I. Blues" were two of my first records. I still have some of those old Elvis reprints on vinyl stashed somewhere.

Christmas Ain't Over Until I Say It's Over

Thanks to So Much Silence for linking to this.

Happy Holidays

"All You Need is Love".. Project Red CD that I picked up at Starbucks led me to this. More here...
http://www.starbucksloveproject.com/

New Avett Brothers Video

Directed by Jody Hill. The intro is a bit too long for my taste but song is worth the wait. I need to write some more instead of posting videos. Took a bunch of notes on airplane rides yesterday, especially the 4 hour flight from Hartford to Dallas.

I have been playing this cd driving all over Connecticut. Can't recommend highly enough.

Thanksgiving

A more relevant song.

Happy Thanksgiving

A little tinny but I am considering it my new anthem. Making a few Turkey Day resolutions and one is to write more here at least.

"Double, double toil and trouble..."

The three witches, casting a spell
Round about the cauldron go;
In the poison’d entrails throw.
Toad, that under cold stone
Days and nights hast thirty one
Swelter’d venom sleeping got,
Boil thou first i’ the charmed pot.

Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn and cauldron bubble.

Fillet of a fenny snake,
In the cauldron boil and bake;
Eye of newt, and toe of frog,
Wool of bat, and tongue of dog,
Adder’s fork, and blind-worm’s sting,
Lizard’s leg, and howlet’s wing,
For a charm of powerful trouble,
Like a hell-broth boil and bubble.

Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn and cauldron bubble.

Scale of dragon, tooth of wolf,
Witches’ mummy, maw and gulf
Of the ravin’d salt-sea shark,
Root of hemlock digg’d i’ the dark,
Liver of blaspheming Jew,
Gall of goat, and slips of yew
Sliver’d in the moon’s eclipse,
Nose of Turk, and Tartar’s lips,
Finger of birth-strangled babe
Ditch-deliver’d by a drab,
Make the gruel thick and slab:
Add thereto a tiger’s chaudron,
For the ingredients of our cauldron.

Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn and cauldron bubble.


Macbeth, Act IV, Scene I [Round about the cauldron go]
by William Shakespeare


This is also the recipe for the last night of Kandy Land this Saturday with Halloween, karaoke, daylight savings time etc... should be equally unpalatable but unforgettable as well.

"Inherent Vice"

I never finished his last novel this one has grabbed my attention though.

Levon Helm's "Electric Dirt"

ALTERNATE TAKE: LEVON HELM


I’ve been beating my head all day long on the same six lines,
Snapped off and whittled to nothing like the nub of a pencil
Chewed up and smoothed over, yellow paint flecking my teeth.

And this whole time a hot wind’s been swatting down my door,
Spat from his mouth and landing smack against my ear.
All day pounding the devil out of six lines and coming up dry

While he drives donuts through my mind’s back woods with that
Dirt-road voice of his, kicking up gravel like a runaway Buick.
He asks Should I come in with that back beat, and whatever those

Six lines were bothered by skitters off like water in hot grease.
Come in with your lips stretched tight and that pig-eyed grin,
Bass mallet socking it to the drum. Lay it down like you know

You know how, shoulders hiked nice and high, chin tipped back,
So the song has to climb its way out like a man from a mine.

by Tracy K. Smith
New Yorker, September 21

Wilco IMU 10/01/09

Still need to get my ticket. Should be great.

Yes I am being lazy but it's still a good column....

(Random shot E-mailed to me from friend back in Connecticut.)

American Life in Poetry: Column 231

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006

This column originates on the campus of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, and at the beginning of each semester, we see parents helping their children move into their dorm rooms and apartments and looking a little shaken by the process. This wonderful poem by Sue Ellen Thompson of Maryland captures not only a moment like that, but a mother’s feelings as well.

Helping My Daughter Move into Her First Apartment

This is all I am to her now:
a pair of legs in running shoes,

two arms strung with braided wire.
She heaves a carton sagging with CDs

at me and I accept it gladly, lifting
with my legs, not bending over,

raising each foot high enough
to clear the step. Fortunate to be

of any use to her at all,
I wrestle, stooped and single-handed,

with her mattress in the stairwell,
saying nothing as it pins me,

sweating, to the wall. Vacuum cleaner,
spiny cactus, five-pound sacks

of rice and lentils slumped
against my heart: up one flight

of stairs and then another,
down again with nothing in my arms