In an Age of Information Overload or...

Things I learned yesterday...

• You don't have to get Crabs if you eat at Joe's Crab Shack
• Kansas City made the 40 Worst Dressed Cities List coming in at #37
• Price Chopper on 291 has  watermellon slightly smaller the a football for $7 - making their filet mignon appear to be a steal
• If your dog keeps burping just after he ate his food might soon be found on the floor
• If given a choice between two things, a kid will make the "non-adult" choice
• Patience pays dividends
• You cannot write your way out of being alone

Trump: I have 'real doubts' that Obama was born in the US

Guess What:   I have real doubts that Trump's hair is his birth hair.

Miscellaneous mourning mental magnets

Non-Sugar Plum Visions dancing in my head:

• Much identity to shred
• Chardonnay past prime
• Trees flattened and bagged
• Where do you buy self cleaning windows?
• Before etch-a-sketch  there was dust

Fantasy Tour Update

As the Tour de France is coming to a close – One more day till it’s history…. The latest fantasy team challenge between my daughter and I:

• Team Poetry –914
• DieuxVelo – 400

*Note to daughter – this is purely informational and not bragging.

You May Be A Closet Poet If...

Be careful those of you besmirching poets... some of you may be closet poets yourself.

You could be a closet poet:

• If you use a circle to dot your i
• If when sitting erect your head lobs slightly to it's right
• If you suddenly stop your sentences before the end of a line and continue on the line below
• If you personify your ball glove or other objects you hold near and dear to you
• If things that befuddle others makes perfect sense to you
• If the absence of punctuation can be found at times in what you write
• If you write words or sentences in disjointed cursive letters
• If you've ever found yourself sitting in a dark closet alone and enjoyed it
• If you secretly wish to be called by the name Wadsworth, Emily, ee, Sylvia or Pablo

Michael A. Wells © 2008

Saw this on Jilly's Blog

Credit to Jilly who by the way is a colon. : )

You Are a Comma

You are open minded and extremely optimistic. You enjoy almost all facets of life. You can find the good in almost anything. You keep yourself busy with tons of friends, activities, and interests. You find it hard to turn down an opportunity, even if you are pressed for time. Your friends find you fascinating, charming, and easy to talk to. (But with so many competing interests, you friends do feel like you hardly have time for them.) You excel in: Inspiring people You get along best with: The Question Mark

WhatPunctuation Mark Are You?

Total Eclipse of the Moon

Watching from home tonight as the moon is nearly blotted from the sky by the shadown of earth. Seen here in the picture to the right by Thom Leigh for CTV.ca.


With the sky darkened - Saturn was visible to the naked eye. Just another bonus of the sky watch tonight.



It seems that historically the moon have gotten a good deal of play by poets. With the level of mysticism often associated with it, and the broad range of metaphorical concepts, it still seems to me that it hold up well against many of the otherwise over used themes. At least that's my humble opinion.

Five Reasons Poets Should Revise

1. Keeps poets busy and off the street.
2. Creates illusion of being more productive.
3. Provides more fodder for critical review.
4. If you throw enough shit against a wall, some of it sticks.
5. I once heard someone else say, "Rewrite, rewrite, rewrite!"

A holiday from the office

mood: upbeat
listening to: Pleasant Valley Sunday - The Monkees

Complete overcast today - the cold continues. I've been busy on my day off this morning and will break shortly for lunch then I plan to write for an hour and a half - hopefully without interruption.

I've sifted quickly through my spam folder (twice in the past I've had responses to poetry submissions that ended up in my spam folder that I nearly missed. One acceptance and one rejection) just to be safe. 91 pieces of spam.

It's amazing how much I've won in online lotteries, How uh... big I can become, I think I must have had several e-mail epistles from Paul, and there are so many pills to choose from and so little time.

Well, lunch time!

Burrr.....

mood: funky
listening to: nothing

Bitter cold air seems to have taken up residency in the Kansas City area. Even yesterday, with one of the brightest sunshine skies I've seen in a long time, the temperatures were in single digits. Today however, the sky is cloudy. The snow has a crusty sound to it when you walk on it.

This caught my eye today - Maya Angelou's poem in praise of Hillary. Funny how many articles I read out of the Guardian. The British media do a very respectable job of covering a variety of things outside of Britain, not the least of which are the arts and American Politics.

It seems totally inconceivable to me that Suzanne Pleshette was 70. Ah, but perhaps I am in denial of my own age. I was very fond of her - enjoying everything I think I ever saw of her acting. Admittedly I did not see her in any Hitchcock movies. I know she did at least one of them. An any rate, I was saddened to hear of her death. God, the Newheart show was an evening staple for me for many years.

Anyone else amused by the speech last night by Fred Thompson as he was going down the tubes in the GOP primary in South Carolina? I mean it was early in the night and I guess the old man had to get some rest from all his walking for president, so he cut out early.

Turned out a good first draft today of a poem. I'm wanting to work on it some more but trying to resist till at least tomorrow to see what kind of perspective I have after sleeping on it.

Some Saturday Nonsense

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

Monday Rat Race Starts

Saw this on Ivy's blog.... cool huh? Poetry Library


Quote for today....

I will show you fear in a handful of dust. ~ T.S. Eliot

Have a good laugh

I appropriated this from Cindy's blog and I think the result is hilarious.

Drivetime Thought

I was wondering (thank God not wandering) on the way in this morning, why Hallmark Cards has never exploited "the day of the dead?"

Craziness last night

I can't believe I slept till 10:20 this morning. What is even more incredible is my wife was still asleep at that time.

I has a crazy assortment of dreams during the night. I've been thinking all day about them and contemplating the creation of a poem that pulls from what I recall of them. I've been tired much of the day. Cathy suggested it was the dreams... perhaps I was worn ragged by them. Could be.

Game seven (deciding game) of the ALCS is on tonight. I am so pulling for the Indians.

I've done no writing at all today. Something I would like to rectify, but unless it happen really later, it likely won't happen.

I picked up a CD today at Starbucks... Hail Britannia - the British invasion '64-'69. Lot of good stuff from back in the day. A few things that I'm not crazy about but for the most part it's good.
something different to listen to in the car.

Why your mind should not meander when driving

You ever wake up and have a crazy notion about something? Okay, mine actually came during the drive into work. For some ungodly reason I thought, I should write a memoir. What has possessed me to think this I don’t really know. In fact, possessed might be a good way to view it.

I have had an interest in doing sort of a biographical poem at some point and have actually made some stabs at it, but they have all been drafts that have gone nowhere. My vision of the poem was much more abstract in nature (surprise!) and it's likely that unless someone knew me extremely well, they would perhaps not even recognize me in the poem.

Getting back to the memoir, it’s not that I lead a life that people are just dying to read about; in fact my contemplation of this is largely for personal reflection. The only way it would be remotely interesting to others was if it were written by David Sedaris.

The Challenge - So you think you know Stickpoet...

Create your own Friend Quiz here

See what summer heat can do?

I know summer is here. There are very distinct signs I can rely upon. One is the All-Star game. This signals the mid-point in the baseball season and starts the mixed-up emotions that come with the downhill turn towards the fall classic. I say mixed-up because this period is a blend of excitement and melancholy.

Another is the size of the watermelons. I am talking about food here, least you think this is some coded sexual thing. I ran into our local Hy-Vee tonight and there were big hefty watermelons, not the personal size variety that have been in the produce isle up to this point.

Yet another sign summer is here is what happens in my office when a nice day follows a really hot one. For some reason the building maintenance people decide we don't need quite as much a/c and they cut it back in the morning. By 1 PM we are all hot and cranky. Today was such a day.

I'm not really big on reality TV. Basically I find it to be an insult to the intelligence of the average person. I'm speaking for the most part about the concept, because I rarely watch it. I suppose this puts me in the category of a person who wants to remove a book from the library because they are offended by it in spite of the fact they haven't read it. I'd like to believe my issue with reality TV is perhaps on a slightly higher level than that.

Part of the thing about Reality TV is that it involves ordinary people. I have nothing against ordinary people. Some of my best friends are ordinary though they might differ in their impression of me. The use of ordinary people by the producers smacks of "cheap". Networks love such programs because they scrape the bottom rung of production costs so scoring high in the ratings is an extra big payoff. Low overhead - high yield. All that said, I could be persuaded to consider watching a Poet's Reality Series. Six or eight poets thrown together in a house - representing various schools of writing.

I think the real test would be to have them each write in their own styles and then open up the home to the community for a public reading. Each would present their own work. Additionally, each would have to sit with the audience through everyone's work. I envision lots of closeups of the facial expressions during the readings.

Okay, I have no real delusion that this is coming to a cable channel near me any time soon. But hey, there would at least be an audience of one out their for it.

Oh Fuck!!! I only got a PG-13

This rating was determined based on the presence of the following words:

suck (3x) drugs (2x) gun (1x)

Found the like from Kelli (who got an R Rating) Damn!

Ten Reasons Rejection Letters Aren't All That Bad

1. They are much preferred over bills.
2. They are tangible confirmation in the existence of life forms elsewhere.
3. You can wallpaper your room with them.
4. In a pinch they can be used as backup for toilet paper.
5. They remind us to recycle our work elsewhere.
6. You can write new drafts on the back of them.
7. They can help demonstrate to the IRS that your writing was not profitable this year.
8. In large quantities, they may establish you as an authority on rejection, which gives you the basis for writing a profitable book on the subject.
9. Mementos for the grandchildren
10. They are like a losing lottery ticket they you didn't have to buy.