Saturday, January 17, 2009

Discovered this Poem tonight

I really like this. It's dark, but really really beautiful.

IN BED WITH A BOOK
by Mona Van Duyn
transcribed from Near Changes (Knopf 1990)

In police procedurals they are dying all over town,
the life ripped out of them, by gun, bumper, knife,
hammer, dope, etcetera, and no clues at all.
All through the book the calls come in: body found
in bed, car, street, lake, park, garage, library,
and someone goes out to look and write it down.
Death begins life's whole routine to-do
in these stories of our fellow citizens.

Nobody saw it happen, or everyone saw,
but can't remember the car. What difference does it make
when the child will never fall in love, the girl will never
have a child, the man will never see a grandchild, the old maid
will never have another cup of hot cocoa at bedtime?
Like life, the dead are dead, their conciousness,
as dear to them as mine to me, snuffed out.
What has mind to do with this, when the earth is bereaved?

I lie, with my dear ones, holding a fictive umbrella,
while around us falls the real and acid rain.
The handle grows heavier and heavier in my hand.
Unlike life, tomorrow night under the bedlamp
by a quick link of thought someone will find out why,
and the policemen and their wives and I will feel better.
But all that's toward the end of the book. Meantime, tonight,
without a clue I enter sleeep's little rehearsal.


For more info about this poet: go here
Oh, and I should say, I put the poem in italics because Greer does it. Go visit her website where she has lots of great poetry and stuff. :)

Two things you can help me figure out

Alright, so two quick things:

1.) I was looking at some stuff on Facebook last night and I ran across this site. And now the purpose of this post is different. I want to tell you all about this cool Ticket site I found, but I can't find it again. Basically, people posted concerts that were happening in their area and this site compiled them. Someone please let me know what that site is so I can talk about it. I'm sure it's not unique, but the design was pretty good.

2.) So this is going to be two things that I want my readers to answer for me. The second is this: If you blog, how do you blog with regularity. It seems to me that there are two options: The first, and this is what I try to do (with limited success), is to always be trying to come up with things to blog about and then sit down and blog about them. But the second, which I've attempted (with NO success whatsoever), would be to think of a bunch of things at once, and then write up all the blogs while the inspiration is there, but then have them post on a delay. Which works best for you? It's hard not to feel like a huge blog slacker when you see people updating with awesomem posts day after day. For examples of such blogs, see the "Better Blogs Than Mine" section on the left side of your screen.

Have a great day, everyone!

Saturday, January 3, 2009

Happy New Year, or, What I Didn't Talk About in 2008, (but I should have)

Hi There Everyone!

I hope everyone had a happy and healthy holiday season! I trust everyone checked out the Contrast Podcast 2008 Festive Fifty (or that they will now...hehe)

It's been a while since I've posted and I've really wanted to talk about a couple of bands that sent me their stuff and I never talked about them!

The first is Six Red Carpets. These guys hail from Italy and they're making music that makes me think of maybe like Coheed and Cambria or something that Maynard James Keenan would be involved with. Very trippy and very energetic. And it's your lucky day, because you can download the WHOLE ALBUM for free! Go on over to www.sixredcarpets.com and get you some! It comes with the album and a whole bunch of extras!

Six Red Carpets - Here's To the Nightmare

And the second band is from MY area. Detox Retox is from DC and they rock. Seriously it's like Arctic Monkeys and The Hives and Talking Heads all rolled into one. They released their Hard to Swallow EP in July and I just love it. It's chock full of energy and I hope I get to see them live soon. (They'll be playing The Velvet Lounge in DC on 2/5/09 and Connies Ric-Rac in Philly on 2/27/09 if you would like to see them too!) To learn more about this band and say you knew about them right before they blew up, go here

You can get your own copy of Hard to Swallow at the following places:

A hard copy can be found here
and you can download a copy at any of your usual online markets (iTunes, eMusic, Amazon).

Detox Retox - Resurrection

So, again, I'd like to apologize to these two fine groups for the delay in getting the word out about the awesome music they're putting out and I'd also like to apologize to anyone who has come here looking for some of my silliness and been disappointed to not find anything new.

Oh, hey. If you want to get a chuckle, go here (even though you probably already know about it...)

Keep checking back here. I have some fun stuff planned for 2009.

Bye!