This week's Zelda's Inferno writing exercise: write a poem from the following wordlist based (in theory...) on the idea "trees in winter": shopvac um glistening storage brittle sappening waiting bones reaching creaking shelter gripping

the road cut thru Sideling Hill
even here, where man has moved (part of) the mountain
the laws of the season hold sway and

the glistening brittle bones of winter
reach down like seasonal stalactites
gripping the rock face

wait only a few weeks and they will flow away
the stone, in its way, flows too
so much more slowly

it's a question of perception --
look quickly enough and fire is solid
look slowly enough and stone is fluid
compared to the vacuum of space, air is nearly as dense
as the ground
the speedy neutrino zips thru the empty spaces and sees
lead as no harder than gossamer

does this winter seem cold? ask the night side of icy Pluto
(planet or not)
or the day side of rocky Mercury

but here the ice and rock are together
like models of each other run at different speeds
an artistic scientific display for anyone driving by

Texas is supposed to be a tough, rugged state. But apparently someone like me might be just too tough for Texas. Why? Because I live with a pit bull mix, while Texas Senator Kevin Eltife and Representative Chuck Hopson are set to sponsor a bill pushed by attorney and former state district judge Cynthia Stevens Kent to make "ownership" of pit bull type dogs a felony -- meaning, basically, "kill all pits".

Of course any fatal dog bite is a tragic thing. But according to an oft-miscited study by the the Centers for Disease Control, "Fatal attacks represent a small proportion of dog bite injuries to humans and, therefore, should not be the primary factor driving public policy concerning dangerous dogs. Many practical alternatives to breed-specific ordinances exist and hold promise for prevention of dog bites." The push for breed-specific laws is based on several selection biases -- people who want viscous dogs are more likely to select certain breeds, leading other to become paranoid that these breeds are inherently vicious. Over the years German Shepards, Dobermans, and Rottweilers have been the target of this phenomenon.

If you live in Texas, please write your representatives in opposition to this attempt to exterminate innocent dogs. I thank you, and Ringo thanks you.

Zelda's Inferno exercise: write a first line about the perception of emotion through the classic five senses. Then we mixed them up and everybody got one to use as a first line for a poem.

My first line: Unrequited love coated his tongue like the fuzz you get with a cold, deadening the taste of food.

The first line I drew: "I bounced some loud ideas off the side of his musical eyesight." I varied it a bit...

loud ideas in his musical eyesight
looked purple as they bounced off the side
and into the brain

jagged chords smelled like ammonia and pine oil
cleaning the floor of his heart

while a sweet bass line
soothed his nervous stomach

and all came into harmony

People panic as in a matter of weeks, large numbers of dead birds are found in Texas, Austrailia, and Russia, and hundreds of thousands of dead fish are found in California.

Whoops! Sorry, had the Guardian of Forever showing me the wrong year. That was 2007. This year, it's dead birds in Italy, Sweden, Kentucky, Arkansas, and Louisiana, and dead fish in Maryland and dead crabs in England

Mass bird and fish kills are not unprecedented. This is the third year in a row for the English crabs, while the Maryland Department of Environment counts 2,900 mass fish kills between 1984 and 2009. Forteans have have collecting stories of birds falling from the sky for decades.

It's certainly possible -- though I have no evidence either way -- that the frequency is increasing, due to pollution, climate change, and the generally shitty way we're treating our planet's life support systems. And that's a very legitimate concern.

But the current spike in observed mass deaths is partly a result of increased information and reporting. A century ago, the news of such an incident would be a local story. Even just four years ago, many fewer us us were rocketing stories around Facebook and the like. But now, thanks to the web, a dozen dead birds in a small town somewhere can fuel panic around the globe. And then once we're primed to look for them, every incident that would have passed with little mention just months ago becomes Part Of The Pattern. (It's a Law Of Fives sort of thing.)

So let's turn down the end-of-days talk and the deep-conspiracy-theory nonsense, okay? Then maybe we can look with a clear and level head at our impact on the planet. Thanks.

Fandimo.com
Ohms Gifts Inc.
13724 Prairie Ave
Hawthorne, California 90250
info@fandimo.com

Dear Fandimo:

While searching eBay for a new business card case, I noticed that your store carried several models of what seemed to be quality products at good prices. After some comparison, I was all set to make a purchase from you -- until I found this:

http://cgi.ebay.com/Confederate-Flag-Business-Card-Cigarette-Case-Mtl-07269-/300510062699?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item45f7cba86b

I fully support the right of free speech, and would oppose any effort to legally restrict what images or logos might appear on the products you sell. However, I will not do business with a company that features products promoting the logos of violent terrorist organizations -- and that includes the anti-American, pro-slavery nineteenth-century terrorist organization that styled itself the "Confederate States Of America."

This product is not only offensive to the millions of Americans who are the descendants of the slaves that the "Confederacy" fought to keep shackled, it is offensive to every American who understands history.

Again, I support your legal right to choose the products that you offer. But I wanted you to know why you lost my business, and why I will be urging others to take their business elsewhere.

Very truly yours,

Tom Swiss

We all need an occasional reminder that, hey, we're living in the future, with computers in our pockets and cyborgs walking the streets -- and a space station orbiting the Earth. This amazing photo by Thierry Legault, showing the ISS transiting the Sun during the recent partial solar eclipse, is a great reminder. That thing that looks like a TIE fighter in front of the Sun? That's the International Space Station. There's people up there, zipping around Sol III at 17,000 mph. That's worth stopping to think about.

You can also see the ISS transiting the Moon in another wonderful photo by Legault.

In the Star Trek (original series) episode "The Omega Glory", Kirk, Spock, and the gang find a planet inhabited by two warring tribes, the "Yangs" and the "Kohms". It turns out that these tribes are devolved remnants of American -- "Yanks" -- and Asian Communist -- "Comms" -- societies.

(Are the Kohms Chinese? Vietnamese? Korean? It's left as an unspecified yellow peril. And how did these tribes get there? Presumably either from Earth via an early space colonization effort, or by the same sort of parallel planetary evolution that gave us a planet with a technologically sophisticated Roman Empire in another episode. They never say, and it's really not important to this anvilicious tale.)

One of the chief holy relics of the Yangs is a copy of the U.S. Constitution. Problem is, the Yangs are an illiterate tribe, with no idea what the Constitution says or means. They refer to the Constitution as the "Ee'd Plebnista" (some sources render this as "E Pleb Neesta" or "E Plebnista") -- their butchered rendering of "We The People", the opening words of that document. Kirk proves to the Yangs that God is on his side by emerging victorious in single combat, and then endeavors to set them straight about The American Way, telling them "That which you call Ee’d Plebnista was not written for the chiefs or the kings or the warriors or the rich and powerful, but for all the people!...These words and the words that follow were not written only for the Yangs, but for the Kohms as well!...They must apply to everyone or they mean nothing!" You can probably picture the Shatner delivery even if you've never seen the episode.

Zelda's Inferno exercise: write a poem from a random wordlist, from http://watchout4snakes.com/CreativityTools/RandomWord/RandomWord.aspx

quorum occurrence development antithesis combination concentration neglect self harden sweating inhibition transit

the quorum of my self has been assembled
the voices in my head put to debating thesis, antithesis, synthesis
concentration is a lie, this is disputation
developing a suitable parliamentary procedure as I/we go along
trying to neglect no perspective, sweating the details
putting aside inhibition
arguing freely with my/ourselve(s) in every combination

what to do? what to do? what to do?
that which I ask you three times is a true question

My 2010, as told by my tweets/Facebook statuses. Ups and downs, tragedies and triumphs.

Happy New Year all!

does not like the head cold he got for New Year's. Hoping a short run will shake it loose.

Geraldine Doyle was the model for the "We Can Do It!" WWII poster that became a feminist icon. She died Sunday, aged 86.

A photo of Doyle taken by a UPI photographer was used as a model (just for the face, not the muscular arm) by Westinghouse graphic artist J. Howard Miller when he created the poster, which was originally aimed at deterring strikes and absenteeism. Doyle herself didn't know about the poster until the 1980s, when it became a icon of the women's movement.

The character in the image is often called "Rosie the Riveter", a name that comes from stems from a 1942 song. The song was inspired by Rosalind P. Walter, and Rose Will Monroe became the best-known "Rosie" after she was featured in a wartime promotional film. But the image modeled on Doyle -- though never originally associaited with the Rosie name -- perhaps proved to have more staying power, after it was re-discovered in the 1970s or 80s.

According to Doyle's daughter, Doyle was quick to correct people who thought she was the original Rosie the Riveter: "She would say that she was the 'We Can Do It!" girl...She never wanted to take anything away from the other Rosies."