Just a quick note to say, don’t expect me around for the next week to 10 days; I have no idea whether I will even have internet access at all.
I expect this comment thread to be full of wonderful stuff when I get back. That’s a reasonable expectation for an internet comment thread, isn’t it?
“I have no idea whether I will even have internet access at all.”
Aaaaaaaaagh!!!!
The horror!!!!!
No internet…
The road is wet…
Comment thread
Don’t be dead!
“Are we there yet?”
Is this a Cormack McCarthy kind of road trip, or a Hunter Thompson kind? Or perhaps Kerouac blended with Tom Jones? Or National Lampoon’s Vacation?
Hm… Has anyone ever written a book about the “road trip” meme?
The road goes ever on, anon.
–Anon
If we really want to fuck up Abrahamic religions’ hold on the world, maybe we should construct a counter-myth proclaiming that their deity Allah/Yahweh/Jehovah is a demon, that Satan/Shaitan is a lie used to frighten individuals into submission, and that yet another completely made up imaginary entity which needs an interesting name actually wants them to be learned, liberal, and not assholes.
The average human being is so stupid it might work.
(hey, seemed appropriate for a road-trip):
Busman’s Holiday
The road to good intentions is closed
While Charon vacations in Rome.
He left when the river froze last week
And I was just starting this poem.
He’ll tour the Italian Riviera
And lie in the sun all day.
He said he’d be back if things thaw out,
But when that will be, who can say?
© Christopher G. Doyle
Blog won’t be fed
Leaving instead
On road trip
Please stay hip
– Open thread.
Poor Cuttlefish
Won’t get his wish.
Quiet thread,
Almost dead!
Real sad-ish.
What can we possibly say
While Cuttlefish roadtrips away?
Make jokes of religion,
With the stool of a pigeon
And write a wee limerick a day.
Maybe I read too much really old literature, but “stool of a pigeon”??
Eeeeeeew!
With poetry
Definitely
It won’t give
Thread will live
– Well, maybe.
This open thread is very dribby and drabby if quite poetical, so I’m gonna be evil and post an old essay of mine about my favourite poet (sorry Cuttle, s’not you) and hope that it gets drowned in a vast flurry
Of Nice Orrmin On: 2001-04-17
Oh dear! I always seem to be putting out this sort of ‘intellectual thing’, you know, I’m always spouting about music and history and keep on reciting poetry, so that by now people are always asking me who is my favourite writer, and even though it’s obviously my own fault I am beginning to get just a little peeved by the repetition. So to crush this bug in the bud, as it were, I will tell all of you, and hope that you will tell everyone else.
My absolute most favourite writer in the whole wide world is Orrm .
Orrm (spelt O R R M—and getting that spelling right is very important as you will see in about two minutes and twenty nine seconds) was, as I’m sure you know, an early thirteenth century Englishman who wrote a poem called the Orrmulum.
Now I should make something clear right from the start – Orrm’s poem, as far as we know the only one he ever wrote, is not one of my favourite writings. It is demonstrably the most boring poem in English literature, possibly even in any literature, and it does go on a bit. It is 20,000 lines long as it stands and there is good evidence that, as luck would have it, we have lost some 140,000 lines from the end. No doubt the lost 140,000 lines were the best 140,000 lines but even if they were the betting is we haven’t lost much. No, unfortunately poor Orrm (who sometimes called himself Orrmin spelled O R R M I N) belonged to that school of writing which holds that if a thing is worth saying it is worth saying repeatedly. He combines an industry which is astounding with a lack of talent which is stupefying. Just listen to the critics on Orrm:-
on the metre – “The metre is the septenary, rhymeless, monotonously regular with 15 syllables, and soporific”
or the subject – “What is the Orrmulum? The author tells us that he has attempted with the little wit that the Lord has lent him – unfortunately not an understatement – to explain to ignorant folk most of the gospels that are read in the Mass throughout the year”
or this which just seems gratuitous – “It must be admitted that in literary value the Orrmulum approaches what the physicist calls absolute zero. It is very tedious. Orrm was careful not to overestimate the intelligence of his hearers, and he explains the obvious at painful length.”
Now why, apart from the faint hope that it would get a cheap laugh, would I claim to like the author of such an immensely boring immensity? Listen for a moment, and maybe you will start to like him too (though I don’t think even then you’ll rush out to buy his book).
Poor old Orrm is devastatingly earnest, sincere, — and oblivious, and there lies his appeal. There is something he generates simply because he is lousy, some yearning for him to have had talent which leaves me with an overwhelming nostalgia for lost failure. He is all of human frailty. Anyone, and this is probably the whole point of this essay, anyone who could bother to devise a precise and regular method of spelling in an age when spelling was not highly regarded, and to apply it with consistency and accuracy in order to make it easy to read out loud a vast poem that no one in his right mind would read out loud for fear of lynching, needs every friend he can get. And Orrm, wherever you are – I’m that friend for this century!
Now I bet you would love to hear a bit of the Orrmulum, though after that build-up it’s bound to be a bit of an anticlimax:
This is from the dedication to his brother Walt:
Nu broþerr Wallterr, broþerr min, afterr þe flæsshess kinde,
Annd broþerr min i Crisstenndom þurrh fulluhht annd þurrh trowwþe
Annd broþerr min i Godess hus, yet o the ðride wise… ..
Ahh don’t throw that! Ow! Ow!
I’d better say — Cheerio for n… OW!
from Richard H..Ow!..land-Bolton.
Poetry is an artform
Where awkward word choice is the norm
Whither writers can flee
Without seeming to be
Utterly bereft of gorm
,,,
Cephalopods sure have it nice
They can leave their own platforms on ice
And the vertebrates fill
Any openings with swill
Without needing to have been asked twice
While on the road, Jack Kerouac
Met many a limerick hack:
“They don’t take the time
And never quite rhyme
I better just start heading back.”
Appendages all in a whirl,
Cuttlefish leaves in a swirl
Of ink and rhymed type
Instead of our tripe
But is xhe a boy or a girl?
One problem in using an inter-
line rhyming is that it will splinter
The pace in a way
That’s hardly okay
At least it is no longer winter.
While Cuttlefish travels, quite terse,
We comment and mumble and curse
We type and we try
(some might make you cry)
Versus meter and rhyming and verse
Never enough
Filler and stuff
Here I am
Line won’t scan
Off the cuff
Am I supposed to write a pome?
Commenter named 違う to whom
Being contrary was just assumed
Seeing much mangled verse
Just decided to curse
And to live up to the nom de plume
(I’m just recycling rikitiki’s rhymes now… how sad. )
Assumption based on Google Translate :-)
Orrmin had a rival, the Scottish poet William McGonagall, notorious for poems with wonky scansion, little poetic imagination and the compulsion to rhyme everything.
His most famous poem was the “Tay Bridge Disaster”, which begins:
Beautiful Railway Bridge of the Silv’ry Tay!
Alas! I am very sorry to say
That ninety lives have been taken away
On the last Sabbath day of 1879,
Which will be remember’d for a very long time.
Goon Show fans will be familiar with him, as the show from time to time featured a character called McGoonagall (played by Spike Milligan (or Peter Sellers) , quoting some of McGonagall’s verses.
zackoz:
While you do have a point, in that McG does score a bit higher on the ISO Horribility Scale, the sheer volume of even just the extant oeuvre of the Sainted Orrm passeth all understanding!
chigau (違う)
Not just a pome, but a limerick or preferably a hairimeraku!
e.g.
Baked hake,
Or clam bake:
Cuttlefish
Make no dish.
“Goodness sake!”
And now that you’ve joined, like some unfortunate who has watched the wrong video in one of those movies, if you don’t write an hairimeraku, and a good one at that, mysterious forces willAAAAAAAAAAARHGHRAAAAAAaaaaaaaa a a a . . . . . . .
Goodness sake,
Guru fake.
I mock-eh?
More sake.
音 mistake.
Cephalod, Cephalod,
Digital Cuttlefish
Went on a road-trip and
Left us to play.
So, unsurprisingly,
Posts have appeared in a
Multipoetical
Cuttlefish way.
Trippity trappity
Free thread for visitors
Sometimes can work while at
Other times not.
For a host formally
Cephalopodical
Function is what the thread
Certainly got.
Cuttlefish, our blogging treasure
Has dared to go, to take his leisure.
With threats and curses
We’ll demand more verses
When he returns, in double measure.
Bad Poet Contest
Orrmin I see.
Gonagall ? Gee!
Both so stinking,
Can’t help thinking:
‘What about me?’
Cuttlefish went away undeterred,
For he knew that his Horde (or his herd)
Would enlighten the place
With their style and grace.
But at this point it’s simply absurd.
I was thinking about all the coins from which our host has removed the religious words, and this happened.
The Cuttlefish couldn’t be sweeter,
But he (quarter) is kind of a cheater.
They (nickel) don’t mind
All the etching, but fined
Him for (dollar coin) feeding the meter.
O’ Cuttlefish, this is no game.
“A road-trip?!” we all did disclaim.
We novices’ verse
Can only get worse
And you’ve only yourself, sir, to blame!
(’cause we’re all kinda lame)
(so there!)
This ink only thickens, quite murkey.
As we write unlike eagles but turkeys
Who’ve tried best to rhyme
With no thought of thyme
A threnody sung in the wrong key.
Our poet has done a fast bunk
Leaving all in a terrible funk
We’re left on our own
Whittled quite to the bone
Reduced to poetical gunk!
Limerick-ized we all remain –
Waiting, posting odd refrains
Is Cuttlefish back?
Alas and alack,
No witty, rhymed quatrains!
Though some try to fill it (like me),
We float through this vast empty sea
Of doggerel here
And doggerel there
Awaiting the return of he (or she).
We ‘preciate our Cuttlefish
P.Z’s okay, but not rhymish
Cuttle scans and meters
Unlike we mouth-breathers
Inking quite tentacular, delish!
’twas brillig, Cuttle’s slimy toes,
Inky tentacle-writing odes –
We love it, true:
Indeed we do,
Our scholor’s hit the Rhode.
(grrr…guess that shoulda been “Rhodes“)
While it’s no race
Keep up the pace
Endeavour
Forever
– Fill the space
Said mongoose to cephalopod:
“Dear writer, I find it quite odd,
Your words on a diet
(some others could try it)
Leaving us with the bulk of the blog!”
There once was a Cuttle a-road
Careening like old mister Toad
All twisty and turned
And rubber was burned
’til arriving at Cuttle-abode.
Said CatMat, “Keep up the pace” (#37)
While we verse here and rhthmically race
Some verses make sense, er,
Some verses are denser
Than black holes in infinite space.
Rickity tickity
Need of a maximum
Poetic output is
What we have here.
While the flood thickens quite
Phenomenominal
Hope that the Cuttlefish
Return is near!
Do Cuttlefish, like salmon, yearn
To boomerang, and thus return?
Or, will we, like Dante`
Rhyme here en’flagrante
In poetical hell we’ll all burn!
Readers galore
Yearning for more
A road trip
With a quip
Leaves us sore
Our PM Tony Abbott said
To Stephen Harper, “We’ll get cred
If we now decide on forming
A mighty bloc on global warming.”
And now the world will shake in dread!
Our Cuttlefish made a four seater – a meter
That works where the popular meters would not
A sedan to fell station wagons, the drag-ons
From ages before that the plebeians got.
With this nimble form we have cover to hover
on us unlike those old convertibles would
And when the trunk’s full there’s no worry a lorry
Could carry what these minor syllables could.
I think that verse calls for another – a bother
To write cause the fountain of words has run dry
I might find a way to just fake it and make it
A self-referential block – I think I’ll try:
An automobile as a frame of the game, of
Course there is going to be a refrain
The hope that this road trip’d be over, the Rover
Should soon be back home for as all to abstain.
Writing the way
One might just say
‘Us’, as ‘as’
Never has
Any sway.
Damn typoes.
Of elder forms, a pentametric beat
Can pull a bit nostalgic kind of heat,
But when the pressure shows its ugly head
There’s more than just a handful lines to thread:
–
One from the town of Limerick
Quite easy and fine for a quick
Example that’s fine
To thread and refine
A punchline as thin as a brick;
–
And hairimer-
aku, whither
Beats count once
Towards funs
– then wither…
There once was a Cuttlefish, yes!
Who thought up a limeririck test
“I’ll say I’ve split the town,
Then watch as those clowns
Each tries to out-diddle my best!”
Now, yes, I would not put such dire, diabolical
passions on our dear Cutttlefish. More likely those
designs would be the arena of P.Z, that tentacular
arch fiend – our cephalopod master supreme.
A limerick, yes, I would so boast
Hopefully, delighting our host
Tired, back from a jaunt
In need of a taunt
A little something on which so to coast
There’s a hole in the bucket, dear Liza, dear one
And our Cuttlefish plied it, out on the run
But we fans here contrive
To keep verse quite alive
’til our blog host arrives on his bum.
P.Z, he contrives to overtrhrow
We here simply try to compose
A verse or a rhyme
And given the time
We’ll overrun him by a row.
’tis Fathers’ day, paters’ day, vaters’ day, so
And we bow with obesience, all in a row
Have a Hallmark card, dad
Not much, I’m so sad,
It’ll go down quite well with this scotch!
A limirick, simmer it, stew it up hot
Rhyme it and slyme it, serve it with snot
Eat it, don’t beat it,
Slurp it up, spit
Poetic license is quite worth the shot
A commentor, quite fundagelical
Spewed chapter and verse, quite biblical.
We took poetic license
To slice and to dice ‘im
And sent him off crying, “Heretical!!”
Licency flicency
Free form of poetry
Still needs a harness to
Make it a poem.
While the emissions are
Inundatorial
Things will get better when
Cuttlefish’s home!
Rikitiki
Rhymes flow quicky.
But CatMat
Answers that.
Where’s Dicky*
* I’ll do anything for a rhyme, but never ever call me that!
Damn I forgot the ?
Frosty night gale
Midsummer hail
Weather’s weird
Once it’s cleared
Need more ale.
Richard and CatMat disclaim:
Cuttlefish gone, what a shame.
I’ll not be a dick
But just limerick
As best as I can with this brain
I wonder of Cuttlefish gone
Is it swimming or driving, anon?
However the case
We hope it is safe
And, returning, won’t take too damned long!
We rhyme and we fret
We’re not done quite yet
Our verse
Could be worse
Who knows what we’ll get?
Swimming that heavy, murky sea,
Young Cuttlefish ambles aimlessly
A road-trip, do tell
Hope all’s going well
As time taffy’s-out endlessly
I strain, tax my brain, then refrain:
Oh, well, Monday – here I am again
But Cuttle’s not
(the roaming snot)
Morning coffee’ll kill the pain
No clerihew yet?
The Digital Cuttlefish
Does not exactly have a subtle wish;
All he’s suggesting is that everyone may
Manage their lives without religion getting in the way.
(And so say all of us!)
Edmund Clerihew Bently
‘S verses mocked quite gently
Famous folk quite a few,
Though he failed to invent the hairimeraku.
“And so say all of us”,
We bozos on this bus
At least we admit so
And bow? not a whit, NO!
We’re unum e pluribus
Limericks, like salty chips –
I can’t write just one, they’re a trip
So, yeah, I’m addicted
Who could have predicted
I’d drink the Kool-Aid, sip-by-sip?
The thread is what it’s meant to be
Production without pedigree
For rhyme and beat and, yes, verbiage
Lasting but for the voyage
Impending advent
Of the host.
A thriving mesh of poetry
A melting pot of revelry
Waiting for their Master’s voice
To drown out all discordant noice
With hosted content
We like most.
Well, I’ll be damned.
Finding the spelling
Is harder than what
It should be, I’m telling!
It’s English, it’s got
Those homophones like, say
Noice and noise are
So typoes find way
To blend in the bar.
It’s not like it’s written
The way it is said
Once shy now, twice bitten
I’m going to bed.
Without an engine or magneto
A sailing ship fared incognito
Sailed by many a lascar
To fabled Madagascar
From the mysterious Barito.
[It’s true! Madagascar was settled over 1000 years ago by people of Malay stock from the Barito River in Borneo.]
Cheney and Bush in troubled waters fished,
Did they get just what they wished?
The ISIL killers with verve advance,
If they take their every chance
They too will proclaim, “Mission Accomplished”.
In the news it’s the I.S.I.L.
And Iraq’s simply going to hell
There’s Bush’s “Victory!”
Plain for all to see
A trillion dollars never looked so … well(?)…
Our Cuttle’s off so far afield
So, to our inner-poets, yield
We’ll verse and rhyme
And waste your time
You might think, “What a deal”
Not again, not again, not AGAIN!
(I imagine such a refrain)
But it’s just so much fun
To post; hit and run
So, here, I will do so (again)
A discordant wail
Sedentary vigil by
A connected screen
Distant hordes of readers wait
For Cuttlefish to return
“Next week to ten days”
Without any internet
No walk on roses
Cuttlefish commutes
But where? He only does know
Silence is golden?
A hole we seek to fill with metered verse
A lack, alas, dear Cuttle swims apace
So, we, in turn attempt to fill this space
With visions, thoughts, and dialoge perverse
Some good, some bad, and others we just skip
An open forum sets our minds adrift
Determining, descriminating shifts
We yaw and pitch, and compass our own ships
To sail against a tide or with a flow
In hopes of solid facts and evidence
That journey’s toil has finally made sense
Of what we sought and where we chose to go
We may still argue, not agree as one,
But friends we are, content we’re not alone.
*snif* *weep*
It’s all just so beautiful…