Back in a cooking mood

It's time for more experimental cookery. This time, chicken with White Castle dressing.

We're having corned beef and potatoes tonight, since Steve doesn't like cabbage. I know we're early, but it just sounds good.

I wanted to make chili but have almost zero actual ingredients in the house. I did find a can of black beans that was marked "best before November 2005." Oops.

Run away! Run away!

I'm a member of a messageboard where some conversations have turned to clutterers/hoarders/people living in squalor. I'm so freaked out now that I'm desirous of giving about half of the stuff I have away.

So, if you know of stuff that I have that you want? Tell me! I'll even wrap it.

Gosh, I'm a slacker

I didn't realize how hermity I've been until I got an email wondering if I had been kidnapped by aliens.

Nyet! I am here. Just being incredibly lazy and off-kilter from the prolonged vacation from work. It's going to be such a shocker to go back.

I kinda sorta thought I might have a chance to write. But no. I have nothing to say, it seems.

I could write a julain about how I smashed my finger in a cupboard door earlier today. Let's see.


Showing their teeth

The cupboard doors have never met so well
as when they had a chance to crush my hand.
I start to think they had this whole thing planned.

Or perhaps:


Hay(na)ku for a cupboard door

Remember,
I could
adopt a termite.

Books books books books boooooooks!

That's what I got a bucketload of for Christmas.

And only one that I had already read. The husband is a good book picker outer, he is.

Christmas Day is, honestly, one of my least favorite of the year. I always feel like I'm trapped, with nothing to do. It's purely a reaction to nothing being open, but knowing that I'm a spaz does nothing to prevent me from showing that I'm a spaz.

Look! Art!

Okay, maybe it's less art and more fun with food, but still. Owls!

Steve got me a camera for our anniversary. Expect more really thrilling pictures like this. Owls!

I want to be rich

It would only be temporary, my wealth.

I want money so I could give it away.

I feel a strong need to give. There's a local animal rescue organization that I'd love to be able to help out more than I can.

I want to be suddenly rich so that I don't miss it when I'm suddenly poor again.

Ten years? Holy moly

Just got home from celebrating our 10 year anniversary. It wasn't a romantic evening, since we were with my sister and my niece, but it was a ton of fun.

Ten years. I can hardly believe it. Ten years ago today we were in Washington DC and I was suddenly Julie Carter. I've told Steve that no matter what, I'm never giving him back his name. I don't care if he turns into an ax murderer, I'm staying a Carter. Much better than the unpronounceable, unspellable German surname I grew up with.

Irving is home, but the future isn't bright

They didn't get the results they expected from the IVs, so it's just a matter of time.

I've got a lap full of Irv, the Barnacle.

Before I lose her, I should make a recording of the way she likes to sing along with people. She's very musical. At least as talented as half the people on radio.

I'm the one in the background, the one carrying a purse

Yeah, the one who is going to get eaten by a bear because of the other penguins. The one with the cymbals? Resting happily on a floe somewhere, the bastard.

You can't spell Irving without IV

Irving is responding well to the IV treatment in kitty ICU.

Capturing what I love and hate about sonnets

There's a new journal on the block, and in one journal they've managed to capture both what I love and what I hate about sonnets.

14 x 14. Some good. Some terrible. All sonnets.

I do admire this one by LM Price.

Another sick cat

This time it's Irving in the icu.

I donated a pile of stuff to a local animal rescue organization, hoping I could boost my mood. It didn't work.

I'm not good at love. I can only do the easy parts.

Too stupid to use Duotrope!

I decided to start submitting work, only I'm too stupid to use Duotrope to keep track. It's sad being me.

Fun with hair--in Jive!

Fun wid fro

New frocut. Man!

I kin now make mah' fro look 'esactly likes Heat Miser's fro. Ha! Right on!


De 'espression ain't far off, eider. Ah be baaad...

Unhappy thoughts about poetry--in Redneck!

Rather unhappy thunks about poetry

Af'er th' debacle wif Raintown, ah went back t'mah earlier posishun of "Publicashun? Who needs it! Fry mah hide!"

So, ah's not mighty happy t'come t'th' realizashun thet ah reckon ah might need it.

ah's feelin' incredibly isolated fum poetry, an' I've finally added two an' two an' unnerstan' thet when I've felt this hyar way in th' past it's been on account o' ah have isolated mahse'f through resistance t'publicashun.

It ain't th' publicashun in an' of itse'f thet kin groun' mah writin'. It's th' attempp t'take part in th' larger cornvahsashun.

But, oh god, ah's so tired, cuss it all t' tarnation. ah doesn't be hankerin' t'reckon about submisshuns an' pickin' an' choosin' an' wawkin' so hard, cuss it all t' tarnation. But when ah doesn't, ah doesn't does ennythin' wif poetry. It's eifer th' hard road o' no road, cuss it all t' tarnation. Am ah ready fo' no road?

Mebbe mah Mammy was right an' th' whole poetry thin' is a phase. ah's jest slower at gittin' on over mah phases than no'mal varmints. (Oddity, ah nearly wrote "real varmints." Apparently, ah reckon ah's Pinocchio.)

The painting

Years ago, Steve and I were at a Meijer and, for some reason that escapes me now, we were looking at art prints. I think we just didn't have much money and wanted something to hang on the wall.

I saw a print and fell in love with it, but it wasn't what I was looking for. It wasn't bright and it wasn't modern and it wasn't surreal or strange or anything of the sort.

It was just a house. And there was a man walking away from the painter, and a horse looking at the painter. That was it.

Two days later, we were back in Meijer as I looked frantically for that print. I wanted it. Desperately. It was gone.

Two years later, I found it. We were in a mall. We walked past a poster/print store and I saw someone flipping through a collection of prints and somehow spied that picture in the fraction of a second it took for the customer to flip past, uninterested.

I bought it. We were still broke, so I couldn't afford to frame it and didn't want to mar it, so it stayed rolled in kraft paper and I unrolled it all the time and just stared at it.

Two years later, my mother had it framed for me.

Today, we were at a different mall entirely and I saw a print and hopped up and down and pointed and hollered "It's my painter! It's my painter!" This print was framed and with a little plaque that showed the painter's name.

So now I know his name. Peter Sculthorpe. My painting? "Buckskin."

Isn't it amazing and strange how a piece of art, whether a painting or a poem, can sit in our hearts for so long, so silently?

Spreading the pain

I don't know if I need a snow day, but I need an intervention. I'm addicted to Snow Day.

Don't believe me? Do a lookup on "jsgoddess." You'll see how I've been spending my day(s).

Hmm. The banner appears to be gone. I killed it! Snow Days

Well, who knew?

What Classic Movie Are You?
personality tests by similarminds.com

It was a festival of idiots!

A cornudopia, if you will.

Never visit Wal-Mart in December. You have been warned.

Wile E. Coyote, Super Genius

"Critics being critics - there has been, is, and will be attempts to impose rules on free verse that (in theory) assist in making judgments about them."--Gabriel

Most other art forms get a daily dose of public opinion to keep them honest. A snob might bemoan some purer form falling by the wayside, and I might even be that snob on occasion. The rules that critics have applied to free verse are better seen as genres--it's easier to compare a mystery to another mystery than to a cookbook--and while I don't particularly want to read horror, we wouldn't even know that there is a market for it if it we refused to publish it in the first place. Why is poetry different? We can point and laugh at the Dan Browns of the world, safe in knowing we can't even be compared. We have no expectations of poetry being popular, so we can feel validated by the lack of popularity and our own misunderstood genius.


"Oh, we got both kinds. We got Country and Western."--Blues Brothers

There are huge chunks of the population that don't want Country or Western, but poetry critics don't seem to want them to have the choice. Yes, it's a chicken and egg question: Is the market for poetry so small that we have to limit publication, or is the market so small because we already have?

I can't answer that question. Come on, you knew I couldn't. Don't look at me that way. But I think the internet, the world of blogs, online publications, and similar outlets can find out. Right now, we're still operating under the principle that there isn't enough space for all of it, Country, Western, Swing, Hip-Hop, Rock. We have to squash one genre to allow our chosen one room to grow. But there is a near-infinite number of pixels available and we've got more elbow room than sense.

I'm going to move WEE over, then say goodbye to it

WEE lurks every time I open my dashboard, so I've decided to move the posts I want to keep over here and delete the rest.

If you start seeing posts that seem oddly misplaced in time, that's what's happening.

I guess I forgot to say

I staggered over the NaNo finish line and have something, well, something I'm almost proud of.

I'll be mooching around, looking for readers, so beware.