Naked Pictures of Buddha

Perspective

2010-01-31T18:22:00.000-08:00

I think I've talked about perspective before, but I want to discuss another angle now (hehe). While reading an article today it mentioned something that was not thoroughly studied by western scientists which made me think about that statement for a bit. From where my mind stands western science influences most of my thoughts. What is and isn't possible comes from the science I know, and it seems that I trust science more when it comes from our system, but I'm not sure I should do that. One of the things I try to acknowledge is that the current scientific process is flawed. Seriously flawed in some areas in fact, so why do I trust this system more? I suppose it is the system I know so that's what I look to. I've kind of lost my train of thought because I started playing with some things on my desk, but I think I've said what I wanted to... not really but I'll come back to this idea, that I need to expand how I look at things because otherwise I'll just be shackling my brain with preconceived notions that really may have no basis at all.

Paradox

2010-01-14T00:38:00.000-08:00

I've been thinking about time travel. I've been watching a show called Primeval, which has "rifts" in time in which creatures (dinosaurs mainly) are able to travel into our time. It is an interesting idea but would never work because time travel has a fatal flaw (or at least how I understand it). Before I go into this I want to discuss the Fermi Paradox which kind of goes hand in hand with this one. The Fermi paradox is about aliens, and basically states that if there were aliens there would have been alien contact by now, but since there has been no contact there are no aliens. It isn't exactly a paradox in that wording but it basically explains that it is an either or situation. Time travel is much the same way. Our past so effects the future that if there was time travel we would have seen it by now (maybe). So lets say we can effect the past with time travel. You travel back in time and change whatever it was you went back time to fix. When you come back, you no longer need to change the thing you went back in time for, so you would never have left in the first place to change the past, but if you never left to change the past, it wouldn't get changed. That's fucked up. Well lets say that isn't a problem (I don't know how, but we'll go hypothetical). How can we say we are living in the present then, if in the future we build a time travel device, and we travel back in time, then you have an issue that if we could travel back in time we would have all ready seen time travelers, but since we haven't seen time travelers there is no way to time travel. That theory of course depends on how you look at time, because if we truly are the present then that doesn't work, but this is all very confusing and hypothetical. The other issue is Hitler. I only bring this up because of a comic I read recently, in which a guy is guarding Hitler's room, in the first panel he shoots a guy, and then in the next panel he explains he doesn't mind guarding Hitler, but now he is questioning the guy because of the time travelers that are coming to kill him. Okay well I am rambling. I just wanted to put this idea out there because it was in my head. Perhaps I'll post something a little more thought out in the future, or in the past maybe?

The Jackass

2010-01-13T23:44:00.001-08:00

Our culture allows for people to be jerks. They can get away with it and so they go ahead and take advantage. Imagine if we didn't (as a culture), put up with people being jackasses. Sure there would still people out there that were, but it would be a far lower number. The most amazing thing about this is that jackasses actually seem to thrive in our culture. I'm not exactly sure why but people like them, for some reason we seek their approval in hopes that they might not be jackasses to us. It is all quiet weird if you ask me, but I don't think their is much we can do about it. I think there is a natural psychological reason for our attraction and need for acceptance, but I imagine it is also trained into us as well.

Jerk

I'm not talking about Steve Martin,
I actually think he is nice,
does magic and stuff.

I'm talking about jerks.
The guys that do as they please,
especially if it hurt someone else.
We let them do it,
sure we may call them a jerk,
or an asshole,
but they know they still have the power,
that they are the ones wearing the proverbial pants.

So I say we rise up,
do as we please,
and make them feel bad about the insecurities they overcome by making fun of other.

In other words,
be jerks.

Copyright 2010 William Curb

Nothing Substantial

2010-01-12T22:31:00.000-08:00

I watched some creepy videos with my brother tonight and I must say it has kind of inspired me to do some of my own videography (and creeped me the hell out). I think it would be fun to do some video stuff I could post on here, I have a camera already, I'd just have to figure out how to use it well and do a little video editing (which is surprisingly easier than I thought it would be). We'll see if I ever get around to that.

Creep

I'm not used to this house,
it is dark in all the wrong places
and I wish someone else was here.

The noise could be nothing,
but it really isn't.
Something made that noise and I need to know what,
it could just be the house,
but why is the house making noises.

I can hear it moving outside me door,
softly now
but definitely there.
If I just take a peek maybe,
or only just from underneath the covers.
They need to go away.

all i hear is
tap scratch tap
maybe a board creak
too far away
something moving just
out of sight

I'm all alone in here
and I can't turn off the lights.
I don't know how they are going to help me,
but I just can't turn off the lights.

Copyright 2010 William Curb

Oh Those Amazing Animals

2010-01-11T17:31:00.000-08:00

Recently I have been fascinated by some of the quirkier attributes of animals. I wrote about dolphin intelligence not so long ago, but today I was reading about zoopharmacognosy and despite what spell-check tells you it is actually a word (try it in scrabble). Zoopharmacognosy is the way animals use natural medicines to heal themselves. Most of it is innate knowledge that was not passed down to them in anyway we can detect (so perhaps there is an animal conspiracy keeping us from know the truly life saving stuff). Some of the examples that I read about were birds that could pick out antibiotics and chimpanzees who ate certain plants that would make them sick for a time but ultimately heal them. I also recently read about a type of monkey that would search ant hives for a certain type of caterpillar and rub the insect all over their body, and then pass it onto the next monkey, until one of the monkeys would put the caterpillar in its mouth swish it about and then start the rubbing process again. Apparently the bug put off a powerful insect repellent that the monkeys then used, and putting the caterpillar in the mouth was simply to get it to start producing the chemicals again. What really interested one of the researchers is that the caterpillars chemicals produced a truly awful taste, the researcher discovered this firsthand by sticking of the bugs in his own mouth (fun stuff). Anyways, I just have been finding it interesting to learn that a lot of the things that we think are unique to humans really aren't. It will be interesting to see what we know in the future, because I'm sure we'll find out that even though we thought we had a good grasp on things that really we were pretty clueless.

Office

2010-01-10T23:06:00.000-08:00

Not an Island

I am not alone here,
and I cannot get away.
For now that is all right for now.
Virginia Woolf would not approve of this space,
it is not adequate for writing (or at least what a woman would need).
For now though it is cluttered
and it is distracting.
This place is not an island,
and I am going to need to change that.

Copyright 2010 William Curb

Non-human Persons

2010-01-09T19:14:00.001-08:00

I was recently reading about scientists that want to reclassify dolphins as non-human persons. The reason for this is because recent intelligence tests on dolphins have shown that they are more intelligent than previously thought. This is an interesting idea, not the dolphin's intelligence (although that is also very cool and I want to talk about that later), but that we have non-human persons on this planet. We have always considered ourselves the premier beings on the planet, and although this isn't really going to change that thought it is cool to see that we might have a somewhat equal. If we could have an actual conversation with another being on this planet it would be amazing. I can't imagine what another species would think about the world. Science fiction writers have lots of stories about aliens, but we don't have a lot of stories about life along side our own. I don't think a lot of people can imagine what sharing the planet would be like. Right now we have enough trouble sharing the planet with other humans, so it would be very difficult for us to get along with something that would truly different from us. Perhaps with another species running the planet with us we wouldn't have some of the same problems that we have. I can imagine that if were competing with another species that we wouldn't have so much trouble with how our skin looks or where we were born. I think we would be able to see each other as a single species, which would be a really cool. I also would love to see what other religions come out of another sentient species would come up with. I can imagine how "created in gods image" would become a much more difficult idea to accept.

I can imagine if we could communicate dolphins right now they would probably be pretty upset about how we are treating the environment. But I don't think that is what people would be asking about, well some people would be. A number of writers have suggested the intelligence of dolphins before, such as Douglas Adams, and of course in the Simpsons. One of the calls to actions with naming dolphins non-human persons, would also be to release them from captivity. The idea being that we don't have the right to own them, in the same way we don't have the right to own people. So who knows, perhaps in the future we will have the non-human persons civil rights movement.

An Atheist Perspective

2010-01-08T16:55:00.000-08:00

What causes someone to not believe in god. Briefly looking at a history of atheism I found that it was it was "founded" in the 16th century in France. I put founded in quotes because I'm sure the idea was around before then, but I imagine that is when it really became a movement. It is interesting to realize that while it isn't a particularly new idea, it also isn't very old. So for most of recorded human history their has been a unified idea that there is a god. Yet in recent history there is a strong current towards atheism. Some attribute this to ungodliness, and some to science, but really it is hard to say. But really an interesting point that I've been thinking about is that while atheism says there is no god, it does not have a say about an afterlife. As far as that belief goes anything could happen once you die. Just interesting to think about.

Draft

2010-01-07T17:47:00.000-08:00

While watching an interview recently I saw the suggestion of reinstating the draft. While I personally don't want to be in the military I'm not so sure this is a bad idea. Right now America really prides itself on having a volunteer army, and quote statistics that volunteer armies are more effective than conscripted armies. I don't really have a problem with that, people that really don't want to be in the army aren't going to be effective army personnel. It is the same with any job. But the draft isn't exactly what I was thinking about. What I was thinking is that a mandatory government service would be a good idea. Many countries have mandatory military service at age 18 and while I'm not a big fan of the military, it isn't a bad idea, but I think perhaps just having a mandatory service job of some kind would be very beneficial to the country in general. Having a government workforce that is always being renewed would allow for plenty of improvements to the country to be done as well as provide jobs and training to everyone in the country. While this wouldn't solve all of the countries problems it would certainly help many of the problems the country is going through now. Of course this isn't really a realistic solution for our country. We aren't big on major changes to the status quo, so it would be more than hard to implement, and with how our country makes decisions it would be impossible for everyone to come even close to agreeing on what was the best approach. My two cents.

Invictus

2010-01-06T11:21:00.000-08:00

I saw the movie Invictus last night. If you don't know, the movie is about South Africa's bid for the Rugby World Cup after then end apartheid when Nelson Mandela became President. I have to say that this is a great movie. It is increadibly inspiring. I was thinking about why I found this movie so inspiring and what I came up with is that this movie focuses on two stories that on their own are very inspiring, but are so intertwined that they need to be told together. Nelson Mandela's outlook on life is truly amazing. It is rare that you find someone who was so greatly wrong not to seek revenge and instead look at the bigger picture. For most when they get on top, they feel that it is their turn to do the oppressing, to set only their agenda. It is like high school with the upperclass men picking on the freshmen and sophomores. The underclass men say that they aren't going to be the same, and yet the cycle never seems to end. Of course this example doesn't show the same level of cruelty and hate that was present in South Africa, but I think that emphasises the point even more. There was so much disparity that when the change of power took place it is amazing that a leader who could see through everything was elected. So I find that story itself to be inspiring.

As for the sports story, it is also quiet inspiring. While Springboks, the South African rugby club, don't have the same problems to overcome, their path is not easy. Their story starts as a team with also most no chance of even getting into the finals of the World Cup. And with the inspiration of their country and their president they overcome they overcome their difficulties to face one of the most fearsome teams in rugby, the All Blacks. So it is definitely an underdog story that inspired their nation and in doing so brought people together that never thought that they could be united.

Definitely worth seeing, and I plan to go again.

Robot Snowglobe

2010-01-05T19:12:00.000-08:00

Lonely

The air is still around him for only a minute
before it swirls again sending snow and ash into his
cold mechanical eyes.
He does not need to blink,
he does not need to breathe,
he only needs to live.

Walking through the swirling gray white,
all he sees is static
as television set would view us if it were set
one channel too high.

There is no purpose in his direction,
simply forward and never ending.
This robot does not know what it looks for,
or perhaps it simply looking for what everyone looks for,
perhaps a friend.

Copyright 2010 William Curb

Sports

2010-01-04T21:37:00.000-08:00

One of the interesting things I've found as I've gotten older is that I really enjoy sports. From ultimate Frisbee (my main sport) to racquetball and everything else I try and play (and I do mean, try I'm not a terribly skilled athlete). It is funny cause when I was a kid I never really enjoyed sports. I didn't like the rules and structure to most games and so when I played with my friends we always did something different. Perhaps if my parents had made me do sports I would have a different view now. I probably would have played football since I look like I could be built for that kind of sport (my great grandfather was a professional player). It is also interesting to think about since someone I knew in high school is now a player for the Seattle Seahawks - it is interesting to watch a game and go, "hey, I took Latin with that guy".

Sport

If I was a good sport would you pick me for the team?
Would I have a spot with everyone else?
Does it matter if I get picked last?
It probably does,
it probably says something about my character,
on how well people like,
and that is too bad,
cause I think you'd like me.
and even if I can't hit a ball,
or run more then 20 feet-
It wouldn't be too bad to have me
as your sport.

Copyright 2010 William Curb

Robot Overlords

2010-01-03T22:54:00.000-08:00

I was just reading about the eventual demise of the human race to robot overlords. It is a popular idea in modern science fiction with things like the Matrix and the Terminator. The article also pointed out creations for earlier fiction with our creations turning on us, such as Mary Shelly's Frankenstein monster. Of course this assumes that a highly intelligent robot would want to take over. Really for the life of me I can't see why that would be the case. There would need to be an incentive to rule and there just doesn't seem to be. If they decided to take over to remove competition for resources it seems that they would end all life on the planet, and I can't see why or how that would help them. Although that would be an interesting senario. A dead planet except for the intelligent robots that roamed it. Do you think that the robots would question their existence, or would they too turn to a religion to explain their existence. It seems hard to believe a being of logic could simply decide to be for all eternity with no purpose. Yet being a being of logic, trusting on faith in existence that is more than what it seems would be difficult too.

I think an interesting look into this came from the movie, Millennium Man. It stars Robin Williams which makes it quite comical at times, but it is a very heart felt movie. The robot in the movie finds purpose by trying to become human, to have humans accept him as one of their own. He finds that the only way to be accepted as a human is to obtain a similar mortality. And he does so by removing all of his robot parts.

So it would be interesting if robot overlords took over only to try and become the ones that they had either enslaved or eliminated. I don't know if humans are really the final step, science tells us that we are likely an evolutionary mistake. I don't like to think of it that way, but if we are is there any thing we can really do about it, except welcome our new robot overlords with open arms?

To the Robot Overlords it may concern:

You haven't been invented yet,
but I'm pretty sure you'll come out of Japan.
When the singularity comes,
I hope you take pity on race that is so dedicated to its demise,
we did build you after all.
We are killing our environment and kill each other,
your rule will be kinder than anything we can do.
What I question is your philosophy.
Where did it come from? Is it a fragment of code,
or are you something more?
Perhaps evolutionarily you are the next step,
and while you won't have any genetic connection
to the life you are replacing,
you will inherit our souls.
All I ask is that you treat them gently,
we have been misusing ours,
and they will need a kinder master.

Copyright 2010 William Curb

Night Bloggering

2010-01-02T18:44:00.000-08:00

For Christmas I received "Party Rats" from Amanda. They are little rat shaped lights that go over your fingers and are "ideal for night blogging". Well I am here to put an end to that nonsense. I am wearing these things right now and I think they are less than ideal for night blogging. In fact they are cutting off circulation to my fingers slightly and making them quite cold.
So I have to say I am not terribly fond of the things. They make my hands cold and I can't really see their real use. They are just silly. Also right now I can't tell how much circulation they are really cutting off since my fingers are kind of dirty from working with old electrical tape and so their is the possibility that they are turning blue. Perhaps I should just take them off, or perhaps I should go all the way through with my night blogging experiment to truly test these things out.

So one of the goals I have for this blog this year is to post some more short fiction. I haven't written much short fiction since taking my creative writing classes. I have tried working on longer novel length stuff but that hasn't panned out so well yet though. I have some ideas for some shorter pieces that should be interesting and I try writing out one of those before I start school in a few weeks.

Resolute

2010-01-01T16:59:00.000-08:00

I am not big on New Year's resolutions. It seems kind of silly to base your goals on a fairy arbitrary date. I mean the only reason that yesterday was 2009 and today is 2010 is how our calendar got put together centuries ago (and they got it wrong, leap-year, come on). So while I feel that it is silly that we got worked up over something that outside our culture isn't very meaning full, I still think that resolutions are generally a good thing. Most people try and come up with resolutions that will better themselves, although I'm sure their are people who go the other way too. I think the hardest thing about resolutions it that they are supposed to last at least a year (or forever I guess) and that is a really long time to hold yourself accountable, and in general people are too hard on themselves if they mess up once they decide to go ahead and give up entirely. And that is really a shame. So to spite my entire conversation, I am going to set up some year goals for myself (yeah, they are goals, not resolutions - if I don't make it, it's okay).

Goals for 2010

365 posts on this blog (not necessarily one every day, just that many)
Write more
Work on my drawing (and post it too)
Work on learning the guitar and set up my drums
Get a dog
Keep at least 3.5 average in school (this one will be hard)
Beat Nathan at Racquetball

2009-12-13T17:42:00.000-08:00

I would like to propose a study. While I was reading about Koko, the gorilla, today I became curious about her communication abilities. I haven't researched intently about the subject and my reading hasn't gone much farther than the wikipedia article, but I think I'll definitely be looking into this more later. Anyway, what I became interested in the ability for one gorilla to communicate with another through sign language. From what I've read Koko did this a little with another gorilla name Micheal, who didn't have as strong a grasp on sign language as Koko did. So there is one instance, but I'd be interested in seeing a group of gorillas communicating with each other through sign language. Another interesting concept that was brought up in the wikipedia article was that they were hoping that Micheal and Koko would mate and then teach their children sign language. That would truly be a novel thing to come about. The idea is incredibly interesting when you think about how that would effect the development of the gorilla pod in the long run. In five or six generations when you have the entire pod speaking in sign language it would be interesting to see how complex their communication would become.

This entire makes me ponder the first human language to come about. We truly take language for granted, and it is really quiet an amazing thing. Our ability to communicate with each other is what really sets us above animals evolutionary. Without our ability to think abstractly and communicate ideas rather than just facts we wouldn't be able to invent anything. Perhaps we would have a few simple tools, but nothing complex. It is interesting to think about and something we will probably never know. At some point we developed language and since then we have been able to do anything. Truly a turning point in our species development.

I used the word truly three times in this post... I should put my thesaurus back on my desk.

Existential Crisis

2009-12-02T22:51:00.000-08:00

That probably isn't the best way to describe what I am going through right now, but it works. I think what doesn't work for me with that title is the word crisis. The word implies an urgency to the situation that I don't really feel. I have simply been thinking a lot about life recently. When I read up on existential crises, on Wikipedia, they had some suggestions on what brings on the crisis.

Existential crisis is often provoked by a significant event in the person's life — marriage, separation, major loss, the death of a loved one; a life-threatening experience; psycho-active drug use; adult children leaving home; reaching a personally-significant age (turning 30, turning 40, etc.), etc.

But none of that happened to me. I got to the place I am after going to a super market to purchase some Nyquil. That event in itself is rather unimportant, but it is where I feel the story should begin (although I suppose I could start at getting sick, or even who got me sick). That said, while I was checking out I was required to show ID for the purchase. I assumed it was because I was paying with a credit card and needed an ID for that, but it was actually for my single bottle of cherry flavored Nyquil. This of course was also insignificant, but led to a conversation about why I needed to be IDed (obviously cause I am going to make Meth or whatever you make with red Nyquil). I eventually posited that all transactions would be paperless and that we would have a combined currency and identification. I didn't think that this would happen in the next hundred years or even in my lifetime so it got me on the train of thought about life in general.
But that is just the story of how I got here. For me the important part is where I am now, although the story does come back into play, but I'll discuss that later. So where am I now? Well I have been trying to determine the indeterminable. Looking for meaning in life. This is difficult question for anyone, and is a matter of faith no matter how you look at it. Whether you believe in life after death or not you only go by whatever directs your faith. Be it scientific reason, or religious reason. But I want to write about this, and so this is going to be the topic of my next few posts (or more, who knows). It is late now and so I am done for now, but I will be back, eventually.

Evolution of Dialog

2009-11-20T20:48:00.000-08:00

This evening I was browsing Amazon (I don't do it every night, but yes two in a row) and ended up on Ben's Stein's movie Expelled. The movie claims to be about academic standards and integrity, saying that professors and scientist believing in Intelligent Design are ostracized from the scientific community and some even lose their jobs. I'm not sure how much of this is true. I mainly read through the comment section on the movie, which was mostly not about the movie but rather mostly about ID vs evolution, which is funny because the movie claims not to be about that specifically.
Anyways, what I came away with from my readings, is that neither party is really listening to what the other is saying. And honestly I can see why ID people don't think that evolution has any ground to stand on and I can see why evolutionist think that teaching ID is crap. I don't particularly feel like trying to take on either group, because as I said neither of them is listening and arguing against that isn't too much fun.
And I think that last point is the most important in this country right now. No one is listening, they just are spouting their beliefs and getting angry about what the other side is saying. I also feel here I should clarify what I mean by listening. I am using it in the sense of not just hearing the other party's words, but also thinking about them and considering another point of view. We don't do that any more, we just yell down what we don't agree with. That is unfortunate, because I think we'd be able to really solve a lot of our problems if we actually tried to work together rather than just agree that everyone else is an idiot.

Poetry

2009-11-20T00:10:00.000-08:00

So I'm planning on posting more but well see how that all goes. Anyways, what I wanted to talk about now is poetry, but only not really. Just now I decided to get a new book of poetry and often as I do when I look for books I went to Amazon. But apparently poetry is not a main category for Amazon, poetry is a sub-category of literature and fiction. I can see why it was put there, but I still feel that poetry should be its own main category. The real kicker for me, however, was the number one seller in poetry. A book called Push, it's a novel, it's also the novel that inspired the movie Precious, no wonder it is a best-seller. Cat in the Hat only came in at number 16.

Absolute Truth Part II

2009-07-23T00:46:00.000-07:00

I've been looking for a title of my new site/blog. I am going with blogger so I am somewhat limited in what is available, but it is also relatively easy to eliminate choices that way. I wanted something that was easy to remember and perhaps somewhat catchy (but not clever, because that would get annoying). My first choice was to go with the title absolute truth, but alas that site is taken by a now defunked blog that covered recent events a few years ago. I considered going with some sort of off shot of the title, but ended up giving it up in hopes of a better. While reading about satire I came across what I considered a really great idea, a modest proposal. For those of you that don't know A Modest Proposal was written by Jonathan Swift and deals with the future of the food industry and the poor eating people in the form of Soylent Green (it's made of people). I figured that a satirical essay on how people eat would fit right into my theme. Well it turns out that name is also taken by a blog that appears to never have been updated. Shucks, and I really liked that one too. Well I was hit by inspiration in the shower. I was trying to think of what sort of updates I would do and I came up with the diet of the day. I loved this idea because the diet of the day shows just what is wrong with the health industry. You can find hundreds if not thousands or hundreds of thousands of people who will tell you that they've tried everything and it doesn't work. But it does. Every diet will work (well kind of, but I am not going into that here). The problem is people either don't stick with their diet long enough, or don't follow it closely enough. If you've tried 20 diets in 5 years, then you are doing it wrong. A change in diet is not a short term solution. A change in diet should be a life long commitment. Dieting to lose those 5 extra pounds will only hurt you in the long run and shouldn't be a goal. Well both diet of the day and diet a day are taken. I still like the idea of diet of the day and think I will try and incorporate it into the blog some how.

Right now I am going with the name The Ergonomic Diet. It isn't my favorite but it is growing on me. If anyone has any suggestions feel free to let me know.

Absolute Truth

2009-07-18T22:05:00.000-07:00

I read a lot of articles on the web regarding people's health and really it boggles me at how out of touch some people are. Every site I go to has the answer and has tons of examples of how whatever they are touting works and how everything else is crap. So here comes the conundrum: if all these things work and everything else doesn't what the hell is going on? Well as Lewis Black once put it while referring to our health, "We're all snowflakes". And this is true. What will kill me may save you and what makes me gain weight will make you lose weight (because I'm the loser in all these situations). The only time I seriously lost weight in my life was a time I didn't care about it at all. My first semester at college I had a diet that consisted mainly of cookies and energy drinks with some hamburgers and pizza in there for good measure. I always had to servings of dessert and I never paid much head to what was going in me. I lost roughly 30 lbs that semester. My big change was that I started working out nearly every day. I started training for an ultimate team. Days when I didn't have practice I still threw around, but didn't do much more then that. So what does this tell me. Well actually absolutely nothing. It tells me that when I ate shit (and lots of it) but burned a lot of energy I lost weight. Crazy. I've never been able to motivate myself to that same level of exercise but have come close. The problem is I can't maintain it and I wouldn't expect anyone else to either. What I've decided I am going to do with this information is try and start a new blog with a title similar to this post. I'll add an update about that when it happens (I'd like to prepare some content before I actually being publishing). Also I think this title deserves a poem, so I'll get to work on that as well.

Teleportation

2009-06-13T10:17:00.000-07:00

I've started reading a book on teleportation. I'm not terribly far in the book yet, but it has proved quite interesting as well as giving me some food for thought. Right now we have near instantaneous communication, now imagine if that was true for travel as well. An interesting result would be a new view of where we live. Right now we generally try to live close to where we work. If you could instantly travel to New York every day then living even remotely near New York wouldn't be necessary if you worked there. This also leads to an interesting issue of entertainment as well. Imagine being able to go to a concert in Tokyo when you live in Tacoma, what I for see is quiet a bit of over crowding. In many ways it would end up like many limited time offers online, those willing to start shopping online at 12:00:01 AM would have the greatest gains. Of course I imagine this would let down after a while, I still see it as an interesting effect. In general what I am thinking about though is how we consider that society is operating at breakneck speed already, and when we take current transport out of the equation what that would do to the speed of society.

Not an Expert

2009-03-26T22:29:00.000-07:00

What can I say, I am not an expert. I am not an expert writer (although if one claimed to be, would you believe him) and I am definitely not an expert economist. I thought back to my post from yesterday and I have to say, well I don't know what I am talking about and really it came out no better then a pundit babbling. What I need is research, although my post from a few days ago also shows that I don't do that (yeah, the story was a fake - big whoop, I said it probably was). So what am I to do. Perhaps it would be better if I strayed from topics that are best left to people who at least understand the theory. Well possibly not because then I'd really be out in the cold. No, I think what I need to do is have a bit more of an open discussion with myself about what I want on this blog and then actually write it. There are a few more things that I am looking forward to writing about but haven't gotten to yet. I also want to get back to short stories. I have to find out where I've been keeping mine because I want to work on one for an update (I found a nifty scientific article about the story's subject). Basically what I am saying is that I want to move away from the less then thought provoking randomness I have been providing and try and step back into a realm that I understand. That said I have nothing of that nature prepared, so instead here is a picture of Vladimir Putin - guess which one and win a special prize.

Economics

2009-03-25T16:08:00.000-07:00

It is hard to avoid talking about the economy these days - it's the new weather. News networks can't stop talking about it even though they really don't know what is going on and everyone has a say regardless if they've thought it through or not, they usually haven't. I think the hardest thing for people to do is either admit they are wrong or admit that they don't know and the economy has put a lot of people on the spot. I don't think it is possible to have someone tell you how the economy works because it is to complex to define in such finite terms, mainly cause the economy doesn't work, it just is. I'm an avid fan of the Daily Show and recently watched John Stewart's interview with Jim Cramer. It was really interesting to watch but I have to say it was also really scary. It made me realize how little people really understand about the market. I knew I had very little idea of how it worked, but it never occurred to me that the experts also don't know that much either. It was also scary that while Cramer admitted that CNBC made mistakes it didn't really feel like it mattered. I've read articles about hedge fund managers that found data that indicated that the market was going to fail, but decided to keep the knowledge to themselves because knowing this information gave them an edge. Wow. Well at least we can predict some of this information. I've only taken basic economic classes, but I have also gleaned some information from a friend who was a econ major. I have to say that while these classes gave me some insight they opened far more questions. It also made me realize that there are some things that just can't be accounted for. One of the best examples is Apple's Ipod. When the Ipod took dominance Apple wasn't looking that good as a computer company. It wasn't doing bad, but it was in a seriously small niche market. So then why did it launch a music player, and why did that music player do so well? On many accounts I have seen better MP3 players at lower costs that have been destroyed by the Ipod. I suppose it partly has to do with the Ipod marketing itself as the premier MP3 player. In many ways it is a status symbol and people are attracted to that. Another example is that of people unwilling to pay for something too low. In some cases you just have to raise the price of something for people to want it. I know whenever a store give me a "free gift" I expect it to be crap that I never wanted in the first place and crap that nobody wanted ever and that is why they are giving it away. But how do you model that? How do you model a relatively unpredictable human pysche into the economy. Some people say you can, and it will be interesting what the future brings.

And I never really talked about anything I wanted to.

Cliche

2009-03-24T21:54:00.000-07:00

I am far to lazy to hunt around for an accent to put up over that e so for the rest of this post it is cliche. The reason I am thinking about cliche's is not because I just saw a movie that tried so hard to avoid cliches it hurt, but because last week I read an article about cliches. The author ranked cliches on what he considered the worst and most unforgivable cliches. I was sad because some of the cliches that bug me the most weren't on the list, but that is probably because cliche to a point is very subjective. When I was in a creative writing class I read 4-5 stories in a week that contained the line "almond shaped eyes" (I believe most of those eyes were also green) and so now that bugs the crap out of me - but it wasn't on that list (it should have been). The guy did have some good points but that wasn't really what I wanted to talk about. Occasionally when reading articles I'll go down and read the comments as well (I say occasionally because sometimes that stuff is just too frustrating to read or is simply unintelligible). Well there was one comment that irked me and that was someone saying that they would love to see a piece of work that included all of the cliches. I remember in sophomore year of high school my creative writing class had a wall of cliches and that wall inspired a number of people to do the above. In my college classes I also heard a number of people express the want to write in pure cliche. It is kind of sad that writing in cliche on purpose has become cliche - it is also sad that some many people attempt it anyways. So why does this bug me? Well as a writing exercise it actually does have some merit, kind of a know your enemy kind of deal, but my gripe is many people don't really treat it as an exercise. Reading a work of pure cliche is frustrating and boring. It doesn't really feel like it has a point, usually because it doesn't. The reason I think so many people like this idea though is because it is so taboo to write in cliche in the first place it seems like a great deed of daring to completely disregard one of the rules of writing. Thank god people aren't as inspired to dismiss spelling and grammar the same way (although it does feel like they do sometimes). I can admit that I have more than once thought it would be a good idea to write a cliche poem, but I can tell you now it isn't. So as much as I'd like to end this post with a poem about cliches I just can't bring myself to do it.

PhD in Googling

2009-03-23T23:27:00.000-07:00

I forget where I heard it, but at one of the esteemed Universities I attended someone told me that students might as well be asked to just get a degree in Googling. The idea comes from the fact that a lot of students now can write a paper on just about anything with only a few hours of research on the internet - even if they don't know a damned thing about it. The degree part I assume comes from the fact that the well tuned student has to be able to be able to operate the fact from the fiction. They have to go to those online lists and understand that just cause it says that goldfish only have a memory of 4 seconds doesn't make it true (and from what I understand, it isn't). So how does one gain this skill, well first they have to ask questions. Lots of questions because you can't take anything a face value, especially the gender of the person you are chatting with. But the best bet is to find a reliable site that you can trust all of your information from, say like Wikipedia. Apparently not. About a week ago I stumbled upon this article, in which a woman believing that Beethoven had an older brother wrote an entire novel about the guy. She had read an article on Beethoven on Wikipedia and that summed up all of her research for the two years (yeah, that's right) she spent writing the novel.
Now there are a few things that bother me about this article. First it is misleading about Wikipedia. I love Wikipedia but you can't trust everything on it because there are some malicious people out there that think this kind of stuff is funny (mainly cause it is). But the other thing is that Wikipedia has about the same error rate as a regular encyclopedia - not to say that it doesn't have some major errors. I think I even recall having a friend who had a teacher assign the project of editing a wiki page regardless of whether or not that were going to improve it or not (language fails me in this sentence - and here again). But my biggest gripe is that it was considered okay for this writer to do no research at all. Even if it is a fictional account of Beethoven's older brother's life you still have to have some basic knowledge about him and she clearly didn't. And finally, since she did write a novel about this what the hell is the problem. It was fiction from the get go what does it matter if he actually had an older brother or not. It certainly wasn't going to be historically accurate so I don't see a problem.
Anyways, if there was a program in Googling I think I might try and enroll because I certainly know I could use some work. (Please note Google was not used in this article at all and it is entirely possible that the above stated work is fact itself fiction - let's hope so)

Party Politics

2009-03-22T21:51:00.000-07:00

While cruising the internet I ran into a story about possible voter fraud in '04. I say possible, but the article says definite (check it out here). I'll hold my judgement for now, but it did get me thinking, not about what could have been, but rather the fact that regardless of what is going in people tend to stick to their party. It is maddening for me when I see people completely disregard what their party is doing because they refuse to say or think anything bad about them. I tend to vote democrat, but that doesn't mean I'll do it every time. I have seen the democrats make some fairly stupid decisions (not pointing fingers but choosing John Kerry to represent in an election where nearly anyone could have beaten Bush Jr.). It is bizarre how people can just pass over relevant facts because it is convenient. I guess it is partly because our society has decided that you can't be partially right, it's either you're with me or you're against me. Nothing illustrates that better than Rush Limbaugh saying that he wants Obama to fail (seriously?), but I don't want to talk about that - Margaret and Helen did a much better job then I ever will. Anyways, here is the poem it inspired - it either has poop in it cause I think this entire matter is shit, or just because I like poop jokes.

Party Lines

I have to go to the bathroom

it is embarrassing

but everybody poops (right?).

But there are these stupid lines

and I have to follow the rules.

I have to wait.

Have to follow what someone else tells me.

My opinion doesn't matter here

not even when I get into that little booth

and have to make a decision

because I already know what I am going to do

there really wasn't ever a choice.

Even Less Information

2009-03-21T18:47:00.000-07:00

I'm going to continue on the topic of things that annoy me, but today I am not going to discuss my online woes, rather I am going to imitate them to see if it makes me feel better. My source of discontent today is that when I am poking around the internet I often find lists for no apparent reason other than someone wants to have a list (although some lists of things are fascinating - cracked.com does a good job at lists) and the other is just random sets of images. So today I am going to tell a story with some of the images that I have collected in my wanderings of the internet. So here is my story in no particular order.

That actually worked out pretty well for me. Also that is one of my favorite pictures of George Takei because he truly is fabulous. If you haven't seen his gay advocacy PSA take a look here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AScqvJb9UsQ

I actually really love all of the pictures in this set. And I could go on about all of them. But for now, lets these pictures tell you a story. I'm sure it will be bizarre.

Easily Distracted

2009-03-20T23:28:00.000-07:00

So I've been thinking about my last post and I just want to write this down (or type - does this still count as writing or should we come up with something else). I think I need to re-evaluate my life and where I am going, but more over how I am getting there. Right now I am unemployed and working on my house. There is nothing wrong with this, but I am not going at a pace that is really acceptable. I do a few things every day and I have said I don't want to push myself to much and burn out. So why are things a problem. Well it is the organization that is bothering me. Right now I have no sense of time since my day just sort of unfolds in front of me as I do things (or don't). As such I cannot hope to progress in any of my tasks. So I am going to set forth to organize my life into something that I have a little more control over. And that's all I have to say about that.

Magic

2009-03-20T18:14:00.000-07:00

I am writing on this side of the page simply because when I was clicking into the window I hit the button that aligns the page to this side. I decided to leave it because it looks somewhat interesting. I'll return to a more normal style in my next post. On to the topic of the day, which is magic. I just watched a movie about magicians and I have to say I've always found magic to be fascinating. I have tried a few time to learn some tricks but I'm not terribly skilled at it, I think at some point I'd like to try again since it is actually a very interesting form of entertainment. Perhaps in my next attempt I'll give it more of a shot that I have in the past. The problem is that I have never seriously given it enough practice to actually be good at it, and from what I understand about slight of hand is that is very difficult to master or even be good at. There are a number of things that I need to give more time to, like learning how to bicycle. I know it is a strange thing not to have learned but it was something that never came naturally to me and my parents never pushed me to really learn it (not that it is their fault as I didn't try at it very hard either). It seems to me that for whatever reason my personality likes to put barriers up to prevent me from learning. It isn't that I don't like learning, because I certainly do, it is just that I feel like I make things much harder on myself than they need to be. I remember when I was first learning to read I decided that I was never going to be able to read, which makes reading much harder. In fact it wasn't until the 4th grade that I actually figured out that I knew how to read and that I was just being stubborn (at least that is how I remember it - and I have some pretty convincing memories). Right now I am having issue with working on my frisbee skillz (with a Z) because I have trouble listening to suggestions from other people. I know they are right and in retrospect I do appreciate their comments, but I have trouble listening to them in the moment. I think what I need to work on is stepping back and examining why this is, because I think I would be able to accomplish some much more if I didn't have this fault.

I'll get to work on this.

Schrodinger's Band

2009-03-19T23:37:00.000-07:00

For a long time I thought that if I was to ever create a band I would use the blog's name and go with Naked Pictures of Buddha. It is a name my brother came up with, but I just love the ring of it. However, I believe I have a new name for band and that is Schrodinger's Band, which is actually somewhat brother inspired again. I learned about Schrodinger's cat from my brother and have always found it interesting. The idea is that if you put a cat in a box you cannot know if the cat is alive or dead without checking on it. It sounds kind of strange especially since I am over simplifying things here but the idea is that this creates a paradox because at the same time the cat is both alive and dead in the eyes of science. Science really likes it binaries and have something come up as both a one and a zero really causes problems. Problems that make the universe unravel.
Anyways back to the name. While my brother gave me the insight into Schrodinger the name actually literally came to me out of no where and was stuck in my head this morning. I don't know if I had Schrodingeresk dreams, but something made my mind go "Schrodinger's band, hey that is kind of catchy in a weird sciencey way - let's see where that takes us" and thus Schrodinger's band was born. We'll see where this takes us.

Edit: I also thought I'd add in the fact that the little image I have on the side as my avatar is actually supposed to be Schrodinger. It was part of a comic that read, "Schrodinger may or may not have killed your cat". I thought it was amusing and liked the mad scientist look it had.
Also I may attempt a Schrodinger's Band poem. The last line that really stuck in my head that I decided to make a poem out of was Drunk Rhinoceros and think that turned out to be one of my better poems. So look forward to a Schrodinger's Band poem, it may or may not be good.

Pumped!

2009-03-18T22:45:00.000-07:00

I've discovered that going to the gym only once a week works out much better for me than even going twice a week, because when I go I am actually really excited to work out and I can give more energy during my workout. I still have all my other physical activity during the week but actual gym workouts seem to be best once a week, I'm not sure why but I guess that is just where I am mentally. I've been going to the gym now for over 3 years (maybe 4 - I'm not sure) and I've gone from 7 days a week to where I am at now (and also zero days a week when I was lazy). Since I've started writing poetry regularly I've been thinking about writing a gym poem, but I have not been success as of yet. I think it is partially because very little of my poetry is really serious and the stuff that is still fairly light or is inspired. Perhaps I could write a funny poem about the gym (actually it would be pretty easy considering the amount of crazy that goes along with the gym) but it hasn't felt right yet. The serious poems about the gym though have been ever worse - they just don't work for me. And there is lies one of my biggest problems in writing poetry is that I can't take it seriously. It isn't that I don't think poetry can deal with serious issues (because it clearly can) but that I just don't feel I have the wordcraft to put together a poem that is to be taken seriously. So I am issuing myself a challenge to write more serious poetry. As they say practice makes pretty good and perfect practice makes perfect. I think I am okay with just pretty good, but we'll see where this goes.

On The Subject of Things That Annoy Me

2009-03-17T14:35:00.000-07:00

In my last post I discussed one of my pet peeves, and I decided that I could stay on that tangent, mainly because it is easy to write about things that make you miserable. Also I had the 100 post controversy and discovered it is because I have a number of posts in my draft section. Most of these are posts that I either wasn't able to finish or just ran out of steam during, so at some point they'll probably end up here.

As for today I wish to talk about writing in accents. Now I understand the need to have the character's voice match where they are from, but many authors over do it and it drives me mad. In fact I literally threw the last book I was reading across the room because the accents where driving me so batty. If it gets to a point where I have to reread a sentence 2-3 times because I couldn't understand what was trying to be said it just isn't worth it. My last book was really interesting, but it was literally too frustrating to read and so I stopped and have no intention of picking that book up again.

One of my first creative writing teachers also had this pet peeve. I'm not sure if I got it from him, but I agree that there are ways around putting in incredibly thick accents. One way that often works really well is syntax. When people talk they have a cadence to how they speak and that often gives a better feel of the accent then 12 apostrophes ever will. I can see putting in a few apostrophes ever once in a while for emphasis but when ever word is abbreviated it gets maddening. However, I have to agree simply adding the clause "she said in an Irish accent", does not cut it. That doesn't help the reader and just looks lazy. I can also see putting in the heavy accent if the other characters in the book cannot understand accent as well - but that has limited application since you still want your reader to understand.

And that is all I have to say about that.

Headline titles, a mess, Newspapers

2009-03-10T22:05:00.000-07:00

I have taken to reading the newspaper on my phone, which I guess makes it not a paper at all - but I don't want to get into that right now. I've taken to reading the USA Today, not because it is a superior publication, but rather I can get it for free on my phone and I think it is important to be up to date on current events (not the reading a single news publication does that, but it is a start). My biggest beef with newspapers (besides them being wrapped around it - they don't do that anymore do they?) is the way headlines are formed. I've never understood why the headline can't be a clear and complete phrase. Instead the headlines are often written as if a drunk Yoda was the writer, with the subject being the very last word and the rest of the line make little to no sense. Now not all headlines are like this, but I've found that quite a few are and I am curious how the editors allow this to happen. I mean certainly as an editor you'd read the headline and then decide you need to fire your writers because they've been drinking and writing and that certainly is dangerous. I doubt that I'll ever hear of a reason that I find acceptable for why the headlines are written the way they are - for I don't think there is an acceptable reason (and by acceptable I mean it makes complete logical sense that they write a bumbled sentence rather then trying something different that is more succinct).

I'd also like to point out that this is marked as my 100th post. I'd say that is a momentous occasion, however, having been working on this blog going on somewhere between one and two years, that isn't a terribly good track record. None the less, Yay me!

(and now a completely improv'ed poem - it is the 100th post after all)

Newspaper Poem

Going under
is what they say
newspapers are doing.
It is the internet
they blame.
Not billions of TV's
and their talking heads
who spew
"the news"
24/7

Copyright 2009

Edit: So I just looked at my numbers, and it says I have a hundred posts, yet when I count I don't see that many. I got 43 (for 07) 40 (for 08) and 2 (for 09)... perhaps I'm adding wrong, but that just doesn't seem right. I think I'll just say I'm at 100 when I get 15 more posts in.

Things I won't tell

2009-01-13T22:42:00.000-08:00

Right now there are a great many things that I am not going to tell you. While this maybe obvious to some as it would be quite impossible for me to tell you everything, I thought I would still mention this as this is my blog (another word that I've had to grow into) and I haven't been telling you anything lately. As with many things I could come up with excuses as to why I haven't been writing on here but honestly it is because I'm lazy. Many people make excuses for why they don't do things. A lot of those excuses have to do with being busy and in all honesty I find the busy excuse to be the worst. If you tell me you can't do something because you are "busy" it usually just means that you have prioritized something above said task, and even then you could probably still do it. I have rarely come into a circumstance where I couldn't make a blog post or do something more. I like free time and I suppose free time makes me busy but it is still a lousy excuse. In college it was fun because I'd hear people say how busy they were with some class or another. I call bull. Even in my busiest classes I wasn't under that much pressure to complete my work and sure I wasn't the best student but I did pretty well my last two years of college. I do know some people who were legitimately busy with something scheduled for every hour of every day (I tried it once - wasn't for me). Those people tend to have problems of burning out, but not because they are busy, it is because they commit themselves to doing things they don't really want to do. I always thought theater majors were funny that way. They'd complain all day about the all the plays that they were in and how much time it took from there day. I just didn't understand why they needed to be in three productions at once - or why they wanted to be. It seemed to me that they were killing themselves doing this and that they weren't even enjoying the shows anymore or at least the preparation.

So with that I present another process poem. I'm not sure how I feel about these because at the same time as liking them I also find them to be some what contrived. I've yet to decide how I feel about addressing the audience and breaking that 4th wall. But really why not? (Also look at the copyright '09 - my first poem of '09 - I'm going to have to come back to this one).

Enjoy

Read these words slow

take your time.

If you want take a sip of your coffee.

Look around and take in that world around you,

don't worry,

I'll still be here.

I'm only words on a page after all.

But please,

slow down.

Read the words

look between the lines,

(there is a lot of white space there)

I'd ask you to tell me what you see,

but you've got to understand

I've got no ears,

and if you wrote me,

well I'd never write back.

You see once you finish reading this

I'll be dead.

I'll be past tense.

But that is okay,

you can read me again

and bring me back from the grave.

But for at least this first time (or perhaps the second),

read me slowly

and savor the words.

All of them,

every word I make you think of

and even the ones that just flit into your head on your own.

Words are beautiful. Think about it.

Time Well Spent

2008-12-28T14:00:00.000-08:00

I've been reading the book "Yes Man" for no other reason than I've had it recommended to me and I wanted to read it before I went to see the movie. The other day I mentioned this fact to someone and they told that the problem they had with that was that then they didn't like the movie as much. I took that in stride, but after thinking about it for a while it dawned on me that they were saying that the movie was a better form of entertainment. They made it so that they had a choice between a book and a movie and decided to go with the more expensive option. I've always known that our country has a surprisingly low amount of reading done in it, but I never imagined why. I know I watch more TV than some and yet I still have plenty of time to read. I saw one statistic that said the average American reads one book a year. One. Imagine that, you can only choose one book to read during the year. Would you spread it out and read a chapter a month, or would you speed through it to quench your thirst from the last book you read. I doubt these one-book readers thinks in such terms of books. The other interesting thing about such a statistic is that it points to the fact that since I read more than one book a year that means for every book I read there is someone who reads no books a year. Incredible. No books - just, I don't know what you do with your time when you are choosing not to read. Perhaps it is just a lot of video games and TV. Now people might mention to me that I am simply amazed by this because my circle of friends read, but really I am the odd ball out in my group of friends. And while they do read a little, most do not do so nearly as much as I do. It seems that reading is on the down turn. Perhaps when I am an old man people will simply listen to books - or perhaps just watch video lessons, whatever it is I do hope that novels do not disappear from our planet-wide psyche.

Also this poem ended up very strange. I think my break from poetry has been a little too long, so I am going to need to get back to it so I don't get too rusty.

Time Well Spent

How do you put a value on time?

Time spent doing,

Time spent not doing.

I sit down in a dark room

colors lighting up the wall

telling me a story that wraps up

in just two short hours.

I already know the story

I've been reading it for weeks.

I've just spent two hours at a

fancy restaurant having a meal

half as good as one

I get going through a drive-though.

Well,

that's not true.

Chinese

2008-12-26T19:51:00.001-08:00

Tonight I went to Panda Express for dinner for the second time this week. This is highly unusual as I am a person who would be described as not liking Chinese. This is probably still partially true, but apparently I like Chinese food now. The other interesting thing that I noticed at the restuarant was the fact that our server's name was America. While I knew that this was a name a real name, I had just never heard of it before. I suppose it is just like the name England or Paris or... I don't know there are plenty in that place genre.

The other interesting thing I learned this week is that apparently fake fur from China has a lot of cat and dog hair in it. Cat and dog hair that has been skinned off of live animals. But this is what I read. It is not something I have researched, mainly because I don't want to know if it is true, so I can't say this definatively, regarless. I also got this information from someone who claimed Obama is not an American citizen and that his birth certificate is clearly faked. Anyways.

What they told me

I don't listen to what they tell me,

I don't know why,

but I don't.

They tell me the horrible things of the world,

the things that no one wants to hear.

Hear them, but I don't listen

They are stuck in my head,

but I don't do anything.

What would I do?

Do I even care enough?

Commas and Phones

2008-12-21T21:40:00.001-08:00

Commas and Phones

2008-12-21T21:40:00.000-08:00

Bad Neighbors

2008-12-14T22:10:00.000-08:00

What a way to start posting again. So this morning my neighbors were being loud, loud enough that I considered calling in a domestic dispute, but the noise died down and so I figured their fight was over. Well the police showed up anyways. This morning, outside my apartment, there were 3 police cars, a firetruck and an ambulance. The entrance to my apartment area was taped off by police, meaning that there had been some sort of crime committed. Perhaps I should have called the police earlier - but whose to say that would have made any difference, hindsight is 20/20 as they say. The police knocked on my door and asked if I heard gun shots this morning (which I had not) and a few other questions. I basically told them that I heard arguing this morning, but that wasn't unusual for these neighbors. Amanda and I were concerned that the ambulance left with its lights off, as that tends to mean that who ever they picked up is not in a rush anymore. I wasn't really too worried about things until I left the house later in the afternoon. There was still one police car outside (which I had to narrowly avoid as it was parked very close to my garage) and a truck. The truck was a forensic vehicle. They were gathering evidence on something and I don't know what since I never took the opportunity to ask any of the officers what was going on. I can imagine, but I don't like to assume. Something went down next door and I'll admit, it kind of freaks me out.

Elections

2008-11-04T19:24:00.000-08:00

I'm watching the polls close right now, and while it is too early to call, it is definitely looking like Obama is going to win. I have some political poetry to share but I had an interesting idea last night. I think it would be interesting to see some poems about candidates that didn't win. Perhaps there is some really good Bob Dole poetry (just say that out loud, it makes me happy) or maybe even some stuff about Goldwater or Kerry or Gore. I was just thinking it would be interesting to hear about the candidates that didn't win. Typically you don't hear much about the candidates that don't win - I mean I think I saw Kerry for the first time since he was running for president and I still don't know what he has been doing (not that I'm really that interested either). None the less I think the poetry of failed, or rather not elected (okay they failed what they set out to do), candidates would be fascinating.

An Obama Poem

It's been eight long years
but I'm not blaming anyone.
It's been far to long since
I've heard the truth.

In 2008 how do you do it?
After the lies,
and party politics,
I just ask that you
give us some hope.

My Obama Mama

Red state
or blue.
It doesn't matter where she is.
She is out there,
she is spreading the word.
Tonight is the night
and she'll be ready.
November the 4th
is going to be a day to remember,
my Mama is celebrating
the hope that will be there.

The Puns did it, Pundits

Stop yelling at me,
or I'm pulling this car over.
Your backseat driving
has got to go,
you are been driving me crazy
down this crazy political highway.

We've got to stop.
This roads come to end
and you've got to get out.

No hitchhiking for a least four years.

Copyright 2008 William Curb

Door to door

2008-11-03T19:43:00.000-08:00

I had a guy come to my door today who was selling candy (and possibly some other things... I stopped him after he showed me his first item - I wasn't planning on buying anything) as a part of a program to keep kids off the street and away from alcohol and drugs. Now I think that is a great program, however I don't think that they are going about this the right way. Selling stuff door to door is not a good way to give people work and it isn't good for their self esteme either. I tried to be nice to this guys, but there was no way that this guy was going to sell me candy, he was out from the start. I imagine a lot of other people are the same way but I think there are also a lot of people that wouldn't treat the guy so nice as well. It is just a bad system. Also, I don't think there are any products the guy could sell that I would want to buy from a guy going door to door, I mean its either crap or stuff I just don't need.

I'm sure there is a poem in there about door to door sales men, but I just don't have it yet.

Zombie Novel: Chapter One

2008-11-02T20:21:00.000-08:00

Well here it is, the first chapter of my novel. It is uneditted so don't expect too much and I'm not really planning on doing any editting to it until December, and possibly not even then (as I might want to get away from it for a while). The lines are a bit weird since I just copy and pasted it from OpenOffice and it is also missing the tabs, but I think you'll get along fine with the formatting how it is.

- Chapter 1 -

10:45

Frank checked his watch again. 10:45. It was too early, or too late, for it to be 10:45. The sun was just coming up over the horizon and Frank could see everything around the house for a couple of blocks. Frank sighed and shook his wrist trying to get the hands moving again. He really didn't want to lose this watch, it was with him from the beginning.

With the rise of the sun came relief. It wasn't that the sun itself provided so much relief, all though it did provide some reassurance, the fact was that Frank wouldn't be sitting alone in the dark any longer. Now he would be sitting alone in the light and while that wasn't much to go it at least helped Frank get through the morning. He needed something.

Frank got up and undid the latch that closed the trap door on his roof. When he bought the house he had complained that robbers could get in through the hatch, as if it were some how more vulnerable than a window to a common thief. Whenever Frank thought of thieves, his first images came from Mission Impossible. Frank knew it was irrational, but it still made him put extra locks on the door and store all of his valuables in a hidden safe in the basement. Frank didn't need locks any more, and it made him sad.

The floor creaked as he walked down the two flights of stairs to the ground floor. Frank opened the door and went out and closed the door simply out of habit. He jumped on his bike and started riding down the street. It was a mess but Frank had cleaned most of it up. The ground was another issue though. The sidewalks are road ways had cracked and had plants growing all over them. It was one of those things people took for granted and when no one was around to do repairs it just fell apart. Frank didn't have the know how to repave the roads, nor did he have the desire.

The air was crisp as Frank road along the road. It was still early and Frank looked at his watch again hoping it would display the right time this time. It still said 10:45. He sighed and road on. Before Frank never road a bike, but he had decided that he needed to take care of himself and had lost a lot of weight riding his bike. He was surprisingly proud of his accomplishment and would have gone out to celebrate had their been any place to celebrate at.

Frank stopped his bike at a yellow house and leaned his bike up against the white picket fence. The house was easy to pick out along the road as it was the only one that still resembled a house. The lawn was still cut close, although it had lost its radiant green color almost a year ago. The grass still grew, it just wasn't the pride and joy of the owner anymore. The house itself had seen better days, but it still looked good considering. Some repairs were just hard to do now.

Frank jogged up the steps and pushed the door bell. The door bell didn't make a classic ding dong noise, but instead made a loud piercing whine and Frank regretted pushing it as soon as his finger touched the little plastic button. Frank looked around the porch while he waited. Nothing was different from the last time he was their and there was never anything too look at in the first place.

“Phil,” Frank called through the door. There was no answer. Frank reached to push the door bell again but pulled away and knocked instead. There was still no answer. Frank grimaced and then leaned his finger into the door bell, holding it and wincing. He began counting as the noise bore into his head. At seven he heard cursing from the other side of the door and he let go of the button again.

The door opened and a large lanky man in pajamas stood there with an expectant look on his face.

“What the hell is it Frank?” Phil asked. Franked sucked his lips in and looked back down at his watch.

“Um... I was just wondering what you were doing today?”

“You need to get a new hobby and stop bothering me. I was sleeping. I was planning on doing it for another two or three hours honestly and then... well I don't know what the fuck I would do.”

“Want to go to Walmart with me then?” Phil sighed.

“Sure, let me get changed. Come on in.”

It wasn't Frank's fault that he was up so early. His problem was that he was an insomniac. The first few weeks hadn't been bad, but now that there was no one to help him Frank just sat around tired all the time. He felt like the living dead. He couldn't process anything and so he just tried to take everything in stride. Phil said it was the stress, but Frank didn't know what he had to be stressed about.

Phil came down the stairs with an overcoat on.

“It isn't cold,” Frank said.

“You say that every time, and you know what, it has never not been cold. It is always fucking cold now. You need, fuck I don't know what you need. Why are we going to Walmart anyways?”

“I want to get some parts for my bike. It is fine right now, but something is going to break soon, I just know it.”

“You want me to just look at it? I could tell you what you need.”

“Nah, I might try and pick up a new watch battery.”

Phil sighed again and walked out the door. Frank was still sitting on the couch when Phil stuck his head back in the door.

“You all right man?” Phil asked. Frank looked at him and blinked a few times before any words came to him.

“Oh yeah. I'm fine. Let's go.”

The sky had clouded over on the ride over to the 5^th street Walmart and it was no darker than when Frank had first gotten to Phil's house. The two road over the remains of the once gigaintic parking lot and stored their bikes in an old bike rack the had been dragged to the entrance of the store. Frank pulled a giant key ring from a fanny pack and unlocked the door. Phil helped Frank drag open the stiff sliding doors.

The store was much darker then usual since even less light was able to come in with the over cast sky and the lights were still off. Phil walked over to a make shift panel next to the door and flipped a few switches. Nothing happened.

“Looks like the generator is finally dead,” Phil said.

“Nah, I just unhooked it. Saves power, you know,” Frank said as he made his way into the dark store.

“I'm not going in there without any lights,” Phil called after Frank.

“Fine, I'll hook the generator back up just wait there.” Phil stood at the front of the store listening to Frank move about in the dark. Despite Frank's comfortability with being in the dark he wasn't very good at moving around in it and Phil heard him walk into the sides of a few aisles, spilling there content in loud crashes.

“You all right back there?” Phil called, just a little uneasy about standing alone at the front of the store. There was no answer, but after a minute the lights sputtered on and made Phil jump. He had been expecting them to be unexpected and had tried to prepare himself for their unexpectedness, but had failed completely. After catching his breath from his scare he wandered into the store after Frank.

“Frank where the hell are you?” Phil called while he walked to the bike department. The air was a little stale and Phil figured it had to do with the air vents finally giving. There was also something else in the air that Phil couldn't identify. He sniffed twice and tried to figure out what he was smelling. A hand came down on his shoulder and he jumped again.

“Sorry, forgot to grab a bag for my parts,” Frank held up a black backpack.

“Jesus man, don't sneak up on me. You're going to give me a heart attack.”

“Whatever, you just need to... What the hell is that smell?” Frank started looking around, directing his head with his nose.

“You smell it too? Yeah I just got a whiff of it a minute ago too.”

“Yeah, but there shouldn't be anything in here that would...” Frank said as he walked down the aisles looking down each in turn. He stopped outside aisle two, the cosmetics department, and stared while he waited for Phil to catch up. When Phil arrived he looked down the aisle and put his hand over his mouth and turned around.

“Frank, I thought you cleared this place out,” Phil said.

“I did.”

“Then what the hell is that doing in here?”

“I don't know where the hell it came from, it shouldn't be here. It doesn't make any sense. Of all the places. I mean the place was locked. How the hell did it get in?”

“Must have been in here already,” Phil said.

“No way. I've been through every nick and cranny this place has like five times. No way she was in here.”

“You think she is dead?”

“Of course she is dead.”

“You know what I mean, you think she... it is going...” Frank leaned down and look around the aisle and then took a few steps forward leery of the woman laying sprawled in a pile of cosmetic products. He picked up a bottle of nail polish from the floor and tossed it at the woman's head. It hit with a dull thunk and then rolled across the floor and out of the other end of the aisle.

“No.”

“Are you sure? I mean, fuck.”

“We should get Alex.”

“What the hell is he going to do that we won't?”

“Well we should at least tell him, he deserves to know. I mean there could be more of them around.”

“Fuck, don't say that,” Phil said and started looking up and down the other aisles, now on alert. Frank pinched his mouth and shook his head at Phil.

“I don't mean in here.”

“But what if...”

“No, plus we'd hear them,” Frank said fighting off a yawn. Part of the problem with being an insomniac is that you are always tired. It felt like an inappropriate time to yawn since Phil was on edge but Frank couldn't help himself.

“Well we should at least tell Alex,” Phil said.

“I thought you didn't care about telling Alex?”

“Well maybe we should, you know.”

“We will, let me just get a new watch battery first.”

“No... we should go. Like now. And you know get the hell out of this creepy empty store.”

“Fine, whatever you can wait by the door but I'm going to go get a new battery.” Frank got out of his crouch and started walking towards the back of the store. Phil was torn because he didn't want to be in the store and he also didn't want to be alone. The creepiness of the store won out and Phil half ran to the door.

Frank found the counter with the watches in it. The glass display had been smashed and only a few watches remained. He debated about just taking one of the new watches but decided that he liked the one that he had. He began unscrewing the back of one of the watches to remove the battery when he noticed a display with spare batteries. Frank sighed and pulled one of the batteries off the rack and replaced the battery in his watch. It began ticking again and he smiled. He looked down at the display watch, which also displayed 10:45.

“Well I'll be damned, right on time,” Frank mused to himself as he started making his way back to the front of the store. To be safe he check on the guest in aisle on his way out. As Frank walked by the aisle he did a double take. She wasn't there. Just gone. It didn't look like it had dragged itself off, it just looked as if she had just disappeared. Frank decided he wouldn't tell Phil until they got to Alex's house. It would only freak him out and he was on edge enough.

“Phil!” Frank called. There was no answer. Frank tried again, calling louder this time. Still no answer. The fatigue that he felt earlier left his body as adrenaline entered his bloodstream. Frank ran to the entrance but found it empty. His nostrils tensed up as he searched the area with his eyes. He let his ears open up, trying to bring in more sounds then he ever had before. Everything was still, nothing moved and he could only hear his own breathing.

“Fuck...”

Zombie Novel

2008-11-01T23:32:00.000-07:00

Another quick update. I've started my novel, which is going better than it did last year. I've done less planning than I did last year and I actually didn't know what I was going to write about till I sat down at my computer at around 12:30 last night. Well I've started writing Zombie Novel. Not the most original title (although in some ways it really is) but it works for me for right now. I'm not even sure I am going to have a large zombie presence in the novel. So far I think I've had one and it isn't even alive (so to speak... dead zombie and all... but yeah, not moving). I am going to be writing from two prespectives. Both are third person one will follow Frank and his friends (I want to change Frank's name but I haven't come up with anything yet) and the other will follow a guy named Jack. I won't give away too much just yet since it hasn't been written but I have some background I'll share. The setting is pretty much Tacoma or some small town (can't be Tacoma actually since I've put a Walmart in the story - but close enough and I'm not using any towns name, just Tacoma-ish geography) and takes place 5-10 years after zombies rose to the occation. This is why there is a small zombie presence, there just aren't as many around (maybe). Anyways, I'll give a further update later and might post the first chapter in the next few days.

Happy Halloween

2008-10-31T19:44:00.000-07:00

Just a quick update. NaNoWriMo is starting on November 1st, so just after midnight tonight I think I am going to start writing. I'll have more on that later, but good luck to anyone else taking on this endeavor.

Junk Food

2008-10-27T17:06:00.001-07:00

Junk Food

Tonight is our night out and
we're going to dinner
at the Tacoma Transfer Station.
H'ordeurves at the recycling center
of broken bottles,
or perhaps some crushed cans
(with a delectable nail polish dip)
I hear that the compost salad is excellent,
if but a little over done with variety.
However, I am planning on ordering
the carburetor,
well done,
I wouldn't go all that way
just to eat, junk food.

Copyright 2008 William Curb

Time

2008-10-25T12:07:00.000-07:00

There are two statements that I find amusing that often go together. One of them is "You have too much time on your hands", and the other one is "get a life". I find them amusing because the first statement actually has very little too do with time, what people are actually trying to say is that they think what you are doing isn't worth your time and hence you have enough time to waste it. Honestly you could say that about a lot of people's activities, such as watching TV. It is silly to imply that what anyone does isn't worth there time. Perhaps there are better things that they could do with there time, but whatever. The second statement first implies that the person does not have a life. I'll skip the literal definition because that is also silly. I guess the idea is fairly similar to that of the other statement and that the person is wasting their life. I don't think I am the judge of a wasted life. For that I'd have to value some one's life and honestly I don't want to do that. I mean imagine where I'd fall.

Waste of Time

This poem is a waste of your time.
You should just stop reading now.
Nothing of worth will ever be said.
In fact I don't even know why I'm still writing.
Is there a point to words that do not matter?
Is there a point to writing when you don't care?
Or do I care?
I should care.
I am writing.
I want people to read these words.
I want my words to matter, but how
to do I make careless words matter
more than they ever will?

Copyright 2008 William Curb

Rules

2008-10-10T11:56:00.000-07:00

A year has passed since I first started posting in this blog. Not bad, although certainly I could have kept up with the content a lot better. Nothing I can do about that now, only what I can do in the future. I was looking at my original post, which was about rules in writing, and more specifically rules that I have for myself. The post said it needed to be updated, but I honestly haven't thought of anymore rules, not that I have been thinking about it for very long, nor do I intend to. But I thought to celebrate my belated blogs birth (honestly I planned to do this post six days ago and well, forgot) I am going to write a poem about rules.

Rules

They tell me that rules
are made to be broken.
That rule keep only
keep you down.
Then they tell me
that laws
are made to be broken.
That laws are what
the Man
uses to keep us down.
They shout things like
"Fuck the police"
in some strange accent,
like they are trying to hide
their voice.
But these same people,
the rulebreakers,
rely on those rules.
They can't be cool
if they aren't breaking rules,
doing there own thing.
And then they whine
and scream when those
rule makers change things.
Because when those rulemakers
don't follow the rules,
well,
it is just anarchy,
because rules are there for a reason.

Copyright 2008 William Curb

Jobs

2008-10-08T17:45:00.000-07:00

Everyone needs a job I suppose. It is always awkward when people ask you what you do and you don't have a job. It is even more awkward when you tell them you aren't looking. But I'm in luck, rather than looking for a job, a job came to me. I was recently invited to help coach some middle school kids in ultimate. It is only part time, but that suits me fine and it is only going to be going on for 4-8 weeks, which is also good. One thing it definitely will do is get me doing something, and it will also probably give me a good reference. It also won't hurt that I will be paid and that I will be teaching ultimate. Fun all around.

Work

Oh shit.
Its time for work.
I'm not nearly ready to go.
My carpool out front is honking.
I need to hurry up but I just don't want to.
If I don't go I'll let every one down.
I just a little need more time.
I need to calm down.
Its time for work.
Oh shit.

Copyright 2008 William Curb

Stuggles

2008-10-07T13:21:00.000-07:00

There are some things that I have always struggled with when writing. One of the things I often have trouble with when writing poetry is how to make what I write not sound cheesy or too serious. I don't like having to take things at face value, and so when I write something that is too serious I find myself looking at it as if it were the cheesiest thing ever - they tend to be anyways since I don't have a good style for that kind of writing. When thinking about what to write a poem about I often reject ideas just on the fact that I don't know how I could write about the idea and actually find the poem acceptable. For instance I have only written one poem about ultimate frisbee, and that was for my intro to poetry class. The poem was about laying out and while it was decent I just don't think it was worthwhile. It is one of those things that I'm not sure how I'll get around without practice, and is also certainly something that I don't really want to practice.

The Conundrum.

Whether I do it or not it is still going to be a problem.
Nothing is ever easy.

Whether I do it or not it is never going to get done.
Nothing is ever simple.

Whether I do it or not I am going to disappointed.
Nothing is ever right.

Whether I do it or not I am just going to be repeating myself.
Nothing is ever original.

Whether I do it or not I am still going.

Copyright 2008 William Curb

Concerts

2008-10-06T22:46:00.000-07:00

The other night I drove up to Seattle to enjoy a Sigur Rós concert with an old housemate of mine. I enjoyed to music but the concert only reminded me of one thing. I really don't like going to them. I have a few problems with concerts. First they are too crowded. I understand that a lot of people want to go to them and they want to sell as many tickets as possible, but I am not really a people person. I don't really like having that many people around me. The entire concert I couldn't help but think "If there is a zombie outbreak now, I am going to be completely unprepared", which was an odd thought, but definitely there (I am so very strange). I also find that most shows are strikingly too loud. This is something more personal to me as I just don't like things being that loud, but I can't help but think that when you can still hear the concert hours later (and you were fairly far back in the auditorium) that perhaps it was a few more decibels then they really needed. But they say when its too loud you're too old... so I suppose I'm getting too old :). Finally I find that they tend to be too bright. I've never seen the need for flashing strobe lights, or lights so bright that you can barely see and I am certainly not a fan of when the two are combined. I found myself with my eyes closed for a large part of the performance because I simply could not take the intensity of all the lights aimed at my retinas (and having my eyes closed certainly did not make my zombie fears dissipate).
I will say that I enjoyed my evening but I don't foresee myself buy concert tickets anytime in the future, even for bands that I may really enjoy. I'm not terribly happy about being in the audience for some odd number of hours anyways. Perhaps it is just me but when I sit still that long I just start waiting to go home because I want to do something that is at least a little productive, which comes from my biggest problem with concerts, which is (too many witches) that I find them terribly inspiring. Nothing is worse than sitting on your ass listening for hours when you are inspired. It is like torture. You want to go out and do something, anything but you are stuck because you paid for a seat that inspired you.

In concert

Tonight we will be presenting
a show of light and sound
so bright and
so loud that
you will see with your ears and
you will hear with your eyes.

Copyright 2008 William Curb

Dramatic News Music

2008-10-03T23:15:00.000-07:00

News

Breaking story at 11
rain in Tacoma.
[cue dramatic music]

Copyright 2008 William Curb

Promises

2008-10-02T23:03:00.000-07:00

I really shouldn't promise things I don't really think I can keep, although last night I may have actually believed that I would/could write two poems for today. Admittedly I don't do anything at all so writing two poems is not a very difficult task. Maybe I can delve into something I've been looking into recently and go from there (I usually do).

Today

I can't say that this day
is any different then the next.
I don't know what tomorrow will hold
(so to speak)
I don't know what it won't.

So there is the little matter of what I do know
(which is really little, indeed).
I know about today
and the waste I've produced.
The wrappers taken off candy,
the toilets flushed twice.
But the real waste I say
is what I am doing with my life.
Too many hours laying sprawled out
all over the chase lounge.
I won't say it is lack of motivation
but that is only because I am far
too unmotivated to say it.

---

I don't exactly agree with this poem and it isn't really about today. I don't want to get anyone worried. I don't really think I am wasting my life (as if you could do such a thing) and I don't flush the toilet twice (...)(I decided nothing else needed to be said, but still wanted to point out that I had more thoughts - and that lead to this long winded explanation).

---

War Games

I am the Cheese.

The Speaker for the Dead
Eats, Shoot and leaves.
Doomsday ship,
50/50.
Good Omens,
Monster Island.

Red Mars,
Dark Star,
Slow Burn.

---

This poem was done in a significantly different way then I usually approach poetry. Some readers have probably noticed that some of the lines are titles of books. In fact every line (including the title) is the title of a book. I took my keyboard over to my book shelf (wireless keyboards are great) and I started typing up titles for books as I saw them. In the beginning I was mainly just typing the titles as I saw them, but I decided to skip a few because they were too involved. Then with a little editing I stuck this together. It isn't a master work or even a great or good work, but I think it is interesting - and for me that is what I was going for with this experiment.

Copyright 2008 William Curb

October

2008-10-01T23:20:00.000-07:00

I'm tired and forgot to do this earlier - so I'll keep it short.

I'm planning on updating everyday in October, and not only that, but updating with a new poem. I am also going to try and finish the trip updates, but those probably won't count for my daily updates (we'll see how I feel after putting them up). The only day without a poem will be today and that is only because I plan to go to bed very shortly and don't have any on hand to just stick up here. Look for a twofer tomorrow.

On the Road - First Days

2008-09-16T22:19:00.000-07:00

Saturday

It has been an interesting last few days, I've been road tripping (sounds like a drug reference its not, I just like making trip into a verb like that) down to Arizona with Amanda. First day was mostly driving and we made it down to a camp ground in the Redwood National Park. It was quite fun in the evening when Amanda and I were coming back from the restrooms and our flashlight gave out on us. Since we were camping a little ways into the woods it was nearly pitch black as we made our way back. I really do think it was fun walking back in the dark, but I'm not sure Amanda enjoyed it as much as I did.

Sunday

Sunday we did a little more exploring of the park and walked around one of the nature trails. It was amazing how few other people were around. I do suppose it was Sunday morning, but still. After that we began our long haul down to San Francisco. We stopped by drive-through tree, which was interesting and served my purpose of getting food and gas. I'm not sure how I feel about the place since it really is just a big tree that had its middle carved out. After that we pretty much took a straight shot down to SF. The Golden Gate Bridge was fun, and great because we literally had no more cash on us. We didn't have any enough in change, but I luckily remembered that we had a little extra cash in our emergency kit. So after a little fanagling in the line we were on our way. Navigating the city wasn't too terrible and after a little bit we found our way to our hotel, The King George. To say the least it was quaint. It was very old fashioned and our room was surprisingly small, but comfy.

I'll try and update this log a little more, but I'm a bit exhausted right now. Up next Death Valley and the Luxor.

I'm only here to present the facts

2008-09-10T18:56:00.000-07:00

I don't know why but every time I read an article or book that is prefaced by the idea that the author is only trying to provide the facts I find myself immediately looking for their basis argument. It usually isn't hard to find, because they are too busy writing about the "facts". It is a silly argument to make (that you aren't expressing an opinion, but are just writing facts) because if you are writing on the topic chances are that you are invested in the topic, and that you in fact (ha!) do have an opinion. The two things I recently saw this argument for just made me laugh. The first was a book that claimed it took the liberalism out of history and made it a fair judgement of history. It sounded interesting, but didn't even come close to being a fair representation of the "facts". The second was an article about vegetarianism. I personally don't have anything against vegetarians, if you only want to eat vegetables go for it, but when you start telling me that you have all the answers and that my way of life is wrong, then I am a little peeved. This article pretty much went in that direction, but of course it was only presenting the facts so it is crazy that an argument was put forward, but I digress.
I'd like to believe that I have seen something that has just presented the facts but I can't think of one off the top of my head (or the bottom). It isn't that they don't exist, it is just that they don't tend to be very interesting because once you start including analysis in the writing it starts developing a basis - and is no longer just the facts. So present the very boring poem, The Facts.

The Facts

First off
this is a poem.
Secondly it is written in
free verse,
that is it has no rhyme
and no rigid structure.
This poem is treads on safe ground,
staying away from the cracks in the ice.

The fear of this poem,
however,
is that it will present an untruth,
and that you will no longer be able
to trust said poem.
If you can't trust a poem who can you trust?

Can you trust anything beyond the facts?
The bare bones that tell you
that the walls are white
and that the little black spots
are ants crawling through
that massive unused space.

I won't tell you about those ants,
because I don't know.
I could say they are probably going for
the brownie crumbs on my desk,
but I don't know,
so I can't tell you that.
Nothing that might be an untruth.

Finally I have to tell you that
everything above is not true.
There is are no ants on my wall
(which I am glad)
and this is not a poem that is scared of
lying to you,
it is only scared of you believing it.

So I'm not a big fan of that poem, even while writing it. I never knew where it was going. I think with revision I might be able to find some direction to it, but it is definitely going to need some work.

Copyright 2008 William Curb

John Dies at the End

2008-09-09T02:08:00.000-07:00

While I was browsing books at Amazon.com, yes I actually go to the site to browse books as if I were in a real book store - it is kind of surreal in the most literal sense of the words - and I came across the book John Dies at the End. I think the title is what really drew me, because I fully expect that John (whoever that may be) will die at the end. When glancing at the book's page a few things quickly caught my notice, first that it was listed as costing $180 (marked down from $200). That is a pricey book no matter how you look at it, but I suspect I could find it cheaper else where if I really wanted too. The second thing that I noticed is that out of 107 reviews, 96 were five star reviews. You don't see that very often. As usually I went to the one star reviews first, because those are often comical and/or inappropriate. These one's were terribly interesting, aside from one of the guys saying the book was simply too good for him and so it went over his head basically (that is an interesting reason to give a book one star - I'm not quite sure how that works out). I decided to skip the rest of the reviews because I'm most likely not going to get this book and because reading five star reviews is really quite boring, very few of them actually bring anything interesting to the table except that the book was just so flipping amazing and I don't care about that since they've already given it five stars. If you want to check out the book I'll leave the link below. It may be interesting to try and pursue this book in the future at the title still has my interested piqued.

http://www.amazon.com/John-Dies-End-David-Wong/dp/0978970764/ref=pd_ys_ir_all_352?pf_rd_p=258372101&pf_rd_s=center-1&pf_rd_t=1501&pf_rd_i=list&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_r=0H172YW59W4R5QWDHJW1

Travel

2008-09-07T21:19:00.000-07:00

I don't know why but I simply hate the idea of traveling to other places. It isn't the actual doing of the traveling that I don't like, but the idea of it. I have no idea why, because I really don't mind the traveling part. As such I've become a more experienced traveler than I had realized. When I was younger I only assumed that everyone traveled. My father was constantly on planes to new places and being as I lived in Hawaii if I ever wanted to go some where off island I had to take a plane. Hawaii in itself is not the most exciting place to explore if you live there (you can drive around any of the islands in less than a day, just to give you an idea). It wasn't until I was in college that I actually started meeting people who didn't travel. Up until this point nearly everyone I knew had been on a plane, and most likely had been to another country. In college I met people who hadn't been out of their own state. It was something that I just had never thought of - staying in one place. So I find it funny that I don't like the idea of travel, yet it is something that I do quite frequently as my rearing has taught me that traveling is just what you do.
The end of this week I am going to be traveling. I am going to be driving to Arizona to see my mother and brother. I have a number of stops along the way San Francisco, Lone Pine and Las Vegas and on the way back up San Diego, Carlsbad, Anaheim. As well I am going to visit a number of parks: Redwood National Park, Death Valley (wish me luck), Grand Canyon National Park and few others that I am only set to drive through. It should be quite the adventure and I am kind of surprised that I planned it. I'll be gone for two weeks, although I'm not really leaving any responsibility behind other than getting the mail everyday (and I put a stop on it so I'm set). I've been preparing my car for the long haul, it did fine one my trip to Iowa, but you never know what the road has in store for you. Should be a lot of fun.

World Travel

In Brazil they don't speak English.
They speak a version of Portuguese,
it is similar to Spanish.
I don't speak either.
Instead I relied on a friend who spoke
high school Spanish and had a little
Portuguese dictionary with him.

It became a ritual,
short back and forth conversations
of broken language.

I eventually learn a few words,
they are distant memories now.

Copyright 2008 William Curb

Information Overload

2008-09-06T23:31:00.001-07:00

There is nothing new about the fact that with the internet we have access to more data than ever before, but that we have access to too much data. I could literally spend all day reading about one subject one a thousand different websites if I wanted to. Of course I'd have to sift through all the crap that is clustered behind a tiny amount of fact. I have with this regularly when I run across fitness websites. It is ridiculous how many different approaches there are to one's health, but it makes sense. I mean we are all different so it makes sense that different things will work for different people. That doesn't stop people from claiming that they have the end all solution to America's fitness problem. But I digress, we all already know this - I am adding to the crapola of the internet.
Anyways, I was thinking about the vast amount of information that I acquire every day from the internet. I don't think I retain very much of it - but it does give me crazy dreams. These too I don't retain so well. Perhaps I need to keep a dream journal and write in it in the morning so I can remember the craziness of the evening. Maybe not.

So I came up with an idea for a poem. It isn't something I'm super wild about but I like it. It goes along with this information overload theme. In fact it is the title and only line of the poem. The reason why is I think that is enough. Without anything else it is a line that you are forced to think about. At first it might seem ironic, but that isn't the point. The point is that the poem itself forces your brain to try and reason why it is alone, and thus it creates an information overload - of sorts. I know it is a stretch but it was what is in my head today.

Information Overload

information overload.

Copyright William Curb 2008

NaNoWriMo

2008-09-05T22:37:00.000-07:00

It is that terrible time a year again when crazy writers get together and attempt to write a novel in a month, well not really, not till November. I believe I am going to attempt to also do NaBloPoMo, which is simply the blog alternative to writing a novel. It is a little less hardcore, although looking at my past posting stats, perhaps I am speaking too soon. Anyways if you are doing NaNoWriMo as well and want to be a writing buddy you can find my profile here:

http://www.nanowrimo.org/user/310483

or my NaBloPoMo (that just feels so much more awkward than NaNoWriMo - and it is impressive to be more awkward than that)

http://nablopomo.ning.com/profile/TheDangerousNacho

No images

2008-09-03T21:43:00.000-07:00

I was going to post something very different but the lack of images in my google post wizard has taken me into a completely different direction. Now you might think that they don't really have many images, but trust me, just about everything that puts this page together is an image. I'm not sure why they are gone or why they are not loading with a refresh or even a browser reset, but they are gone. Something you take for granted I guess that you never really think about.

Granted Granite

This is one of those cases where the poem title came first.
Really there is no need for that,
just some words that went pretty together in my head.
It might have gone smoother had I written about granite
and then written a poem,
but I don't know much about granite.
I know it is grey
I know it is rocky
I know that some people use it for their counter tops,
but it isn't something I know much about,
so it is hard to write about.
I could have narrated this poem from granite's point of view
I could have written about all the other rocks I do know
but instead I break walls
and leave sentences without punctuation.

I'll just start this section by saying that the poem is over. The first time I tried to write in a new section it kind of looked like I was continuing the casual voice of the poem. I have to say though that I like how the poem turned out. It isn't something I usually do but I acknowledged myself writing a poem. If I recall correctly from one of my poetry classes, we read an author, Mark Halliday, who did the same thing. I believe I was in the vast minority in the class who enjoyed Halliday's poems. I can understand why many people didn't like his style, it was very intrusive and often nothing like what a poem is traditionally like. I think that last part is what I enjoyed the most thought, that he was willing to be different. I'm not saying traditional poetry is bad, but I think a few poets doing there own thing is much better for the genre in the long run.
Never the less this poem definitely needs to be revised, but it is a good start to a poem about nothing and a poem about taking things for granted, which I did and it worked out so well in the sense that I think the poem portrayed that feeling of taking granite for granted while never actually saying so. The ending doesn't please me as much.

Copyright William Curb 2008

People

2008-09-02T23:24:00.000-07:00

I find people to be very fascinating, especially people that I don't associate with. I don't think about it too often, but there are billions of people I will never meet, and for that matter there are billions of people I don't want to meet. The internet has shown me that much, but there are people I run into in the real world (oh, what a terrible term) that are awful people. And I am not talking about the guy in Fred Meyer's who was trying to convince me that the store was fixing DVD prices because they were conspiring with the devil, but rather everyday assholes. I encountered some people like that a few days ago, and while I'd like to say that I simply ignored them, that isn't exactly how it went down. So here's the story. I was walking back from the gym talking with my mother on the cellphone when I hear someone yell "Hey fattie!", now at first I looked over because well someone was yelling - that's what you do when someone yells. Well they kept on yelling and apparently I was the target of their mockery. I don't think I am really bothered by the fact that they were trying to make fun of my weight, but I think the fact that they singled me out as someone to make fun of just because they could does. I just don't understand why complete strangers would want to put someone down - or for that matter why anyone would. It just seems like a futile exercise to me. So the way that I didn't completely ignore them is the fact that I am still thinking about the incident and even refer to it as such. If it were truly nothing then I could ignore it, but the fact of the matter is that it did bother me, but such is life and there really isn't anything more I can do about, so I am going to try and forget it (good luck on that one).

Strangers

that fucker.
just standing there,
not even paying attention.
thinks he is better then he is,
well I'll show him.
I'll put him in his place,
make him understand that he isn't better then me
that he won't ever be better than me.
I'll yell and
I'll scream
and he will notice me.

because.

Copyright 2008 William Curb

Why so serious?

2008-09-01T22:59:00.000-07:00

Today I came across an article about how conservatives are happier than liberals (link below). While it had a good argument (and even a study!), I wasn't quite convinced. I think I mostly had a problem with the fact that they put a quantitative value on happiness. Perhaps it has to do with the number of people who are happy, but really how can you compare one person's happiness to another. All in all I think that some people are happier then others, but that there is no real line to divide the groups, and certainly not a political line.

http://attackmachine.com/blog/2008/05/10/what-me-worry-2/

I decided to write a poem about the idea of quantitative happiness. It isn't the most original idea but I went with a happiness store. I think it is a decent first attempt, but I want to come back to it later. Right now I want to go bake some cookies.

$2

I went to the happiness store today,
they were having a sale on joy.
But I have to say it was miserable
(which they were apparently giving out for free)
I had to wait in line
behind some people that were already happy.
I couldn't believe how greedy they were!
Buying happiness when they were already happy.
I bet they play with puppies too.

Copyright 2008 William Curb

Video Games

2008-08-31T22:36:00.000-07:00

Nothing strikes fear into the heart like video games. And I am not talking about the heart-racing induced fear of games like the Resident Evil series (I think they are supposed to be scary, I haven't actually played them). But rather a fear of complacency. Fear that creativity is going out the so called window. And I can agree that those are some things to be scared of. We certainly don't want to raise a generation of people who don't know life outside of their personal video screens. The movie Wall-E did a great job of showing us what that would be like (although for completely different reasons). On the other hand I'm not so sure their is so much to fear. Recently I just purchased the Nintendo game, Wii Fit. It is quite interesting actually and is based on learning about your physical fitness. A lot of the game has to do with balance and it calculates your health using the good old BMI standards (I fit into the obesse catagory, that while funny isn't quite right). I've read a number of reviews of the game online at Amazon and it seems that a lot of people think that this game is very near perfect. I have to disagree with that as I just don't think that the game is put together well enough. It is a great start (well kind of, it isn't the first game to adress fitness needs, but the first to be so wide spread) but it could use lots of work. Overall I'd say it is something to look into, but it isn't all that it is hyped up to be either.

Video Games

Seven feet seperate me.
My two halves can't get closer,
or my eyes hurt.

Copyright 2008 William Curb

Hacking Poetry

2008-07-20T13:51:00.000-07:00

Of the new terminology to come out of the internet and blog-o-sphere, one of the words I just can't stand is hacking, followed closely of course by blog-o-sphere (which is not sphere like at all). I don't know why is bothers me so much but it just seems that they apply it to anything, from life-hacks, which apparenty make like better, to an article I just read called Hacking Tokyo, which is about cool things to do in Tokyo for less money. Ten years ago it bothered me when people called crackers hackers, but that isn't a big deal anymore and the general term hackers applies to both groups it seems (it used to be that the difference was that while both groups would break into secure systems only crackers would do so with malious intent). If I remember correctly though there were also hackers before then that refered to individuals that worked with machinery and possibly something before that. I'll have to check the OED sometime. Perhaps we can go back as far and call Roman soldier hackers... perhaps not.
But as usually I am going to try and make a poem out of something I hate. I don't know why I get the urge it just seems that if I dislike something so much that I might as well try my hand at it and see where it takes me. So onward.

Poetry Hack

Openning up the side panel of a poem can be a very scary thing indeed.
Wire and flashing lights,
it looks like a sci-fi convention in there.
The scattered circuits buzz away regardless of my presence,
but still I must be careful,
for if I am discovered who knows the trouble I will bring down.
For this realm is not for the weak hearted,
this is the poetry underneath the words.
This is poetry without its skin and it so transparent
that I think it might not actually exist.
But it needs tweaking and that is why I am here,
it needs to be brought back, needs meanings reattatched.
And so I am hacking away,
making line better and rhymes clearer.
or am I?

Copyright 2008 William Curb

Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog

2008-07-18T22:05:00.000-07:00

Go watch this. Do it before the 20th or you can't. Then watch acts 2 and 3.

http://www.drhorrible.com/act_I.html

Oh and I am working on some stuff, I just haven't gotten there yet.

Searwiously

2008-07-13T16:55:00.000-07:00

Post.

Read it, check it, I'll get back to you later.

Stories in one sentence

2008-05-10T22:14:00.000-07:00

I just came across an article about writing stories in six words. Apparently it was once a challenge given to Hemingway (I think). I have seen stuff like this before and even a site dedicated to stories told in one sentence (or some other ridiculously short format), and I have to say I am not entirely fond of the idea. Certainly it is interesting to try and reduce your work done to something so short, but I feel many people fail at the task. I find myself reading these six word stories and just being disapointed. Certainly it would be a difficult task to write a story in six words. But the point is also to not have to explain the story with more than six words. As always with creative writing show don't tell, and if you get away with your story by telling for six words than you have cheated me. The story cannot be complex. It can't even have more than a single scene. It can't be a metaphor, since really you don't have the time to compare. So overall this task is near impossible to do without leaving the reader feeling cheated, although some would argue that is all right since you've only stolen six words of the reader's time.
I think though, that I am going to stick with the longer stories. I don't need to compress my work down quite that far, nor do I have the skill to do such task. Yet.

Robot Sports

2008-05-05T21:05:00.000-07:00

So instead of paying attention in class today I was thinking about Robot Sports. It is rather complicated to explain how I got on this thought track so I'll leave it at that. And I have written a poem in tribute of this.

Robot Sports

I am thinking:
Robot Sports.
Think about it.
Robots, and
Sports.
Big mechanicals,
performing with a precision
that I can't even conceive.

Of course it would be in a league of its own,
we wouldn't want robots playing in
human leagues.
Leagues where mistakes can be made,
where the amazing play is not
made through calculations made at
3.16 Terabytes per second
but with the chance that can only be obtained through luck.

No we will keep our mistakes.

Copyright 2008 William Curb

10 Day Week

2008-05-05T12:19:00.000-07:00

I recently read about a guy that took a week off of electronics as much as he could (he worked with a computer so he still had to check email occationally and such but he did the best he could). I've been thinking that this might be a good experiment for myself to conduct. I am a fairly computer savy guy and I spend a lot of time look at screens. One of the things I've been trying to do is figure out what I'd do with my time if I were to take away my computer time. That there was the sign I needed to do this. I shouldn't define my life by how I spent it online. So come this summer I am going to take 10 days off of all screen time, and that includes email and such. My biggest hassle will be my phone, which also gets internet so I am just going to have to pretend it doesn't if I need to make a call. Hopefully I won't need to use it too much. The reason I have chosen summer to accomplish this task and not now is of course my finals. I am going to need to be on my computer and I am going to need to be on it often (I have quite a few papers to write). As well I am going to have summer school so I am going to wait till after that is finished to take my break from screen time. I'll update again about this when I am closer to the date, but I think this is going to be a fun project. It will be interesting to see what I learn from the experience and I'll try and keep notes.

zOMG

2008-04-28T23:24:00.000-07:00

It's been a month since I've posted and I do feel bad about it. I've been busy, but not busy enough to justify neglecting my craft. My solution is to try and pick it up again when I am too busy to justify neglecting my craft (what does that even mean?). Basically I am busy right now. School is almost over and everything is coming to a close, but as always I am having great time procrastinating by thinking of great ideas. So I have tons of great I idea brewing and I'll give a few previews now of what can be expected in the next few weeks.

Something about Shoefiti - it is an excellent term
Something from the phonebook - it just needs to be done
An explination and perhaps a poem about my handle "The Dangerous Nacho"
A questioning about evolution (again) and belly buttons (what were they called before buttons?)

I only post this now as a way to try and guilt myself into further posting, but I do hope it works as I really want to get back into doing stuff.

-PEACE OUT!! (what?)

9/11 Stuff

2008-03-14T14:12:00.000-07:00

Every once in a while I'll hear someone use the term 9/11 and am amazed at how easily it has integrated itself into our vocabulary. You say 9/11 and people know what you are talking about, but I also find it interesting because it has become more of a symbol than anything else. Occasionally I come across something on Youtube about that is just about how stupid Americans are. Well of course with video editing you can remove all the smart answers, but you can still see that there are some people that are really uniformed. An example comes from this British TV show where they as New Yorkers about 9/11. It is really quiet sad (but I'm sure it isn't as bad as they make it out to be).

http://youtube.com/watch?v=uaRJ8FqOI4k

Well while thinking about the term 9/11 I decided to write a poem about the event from a view I hadn't really seen. Not one that blames anyone or is sorry for the loss of life (don't get me wrong I think it was a terrible event), but rather one that was apathetic and looking towards the future.

2001

I was in High School when the term 9/11
entered my vocabulary.
I had just been driving to school,
when I was met by a teacher who told me
school was cancelled.
I didn't know why at the time so I drove to
my friends house to let him know we wouldn't
be having classes today.
I didn't know at the time that it would become
such a pop phrase.
We weren't thinking about that then.
I imagine that someday my children will ask
to hear that story, for a history class.
They will ask me what I was doing and how
I felt, just how I asked my parents
what they were doing when JKF was shot,
and how they probably asked their parents
about the bombing of Pearl Harbor.
When I do tell my children I don't know what
I'll be able to tell them, but perhaps
they can help me figure it out.

Copyright 2008 William Curb

That poem needs to be editte some by I am interested in how the form kind of came out looking as if every third line starts with I, expect in 2 places really. I kind of like how that looks, so perhaps in revision I'll make that into a stricter form. Also they end is kind of open ended because in many ways I don't know what happened with 9/11. I've read many conspiracy theories on the internet and I have to say that as of now they are just that theories. Some of them have some merit but I remain unconvinced for either side of the arguement. Both sides tend to have good cases, but they also include bad information which then makes me doubt what is being said. So perhaps, when I do have children I will know what happened. I'd perfer to believe that it was a terrorist attack, but I just don't know anymore.

Super Hero

2008-02-28T21:25:00.000-08:00

I wrote the original version of this poem back in my first poetry class at UPS. I've always loved super heroes, but I've also found some of the ways they work backwards. I don't know why, but I believe in our justice system, and I don't think that just because you can you should bypass it. As they said in the first Spiderman movie "With great power comes great responcibility" and I believe that is true, especially with super heroes. I've always liked Batman for that reason. He didn't break the law (well usually didn't) and he didn't kill people (again usually, there were exception, but those usually came with extreme conditions). In a great episode of Justice League unlimited, the Justice League comes in contact with a parallel universe where an alternate justice league has taken over the world as essentially the world police (and enforce there rule with brutal force). I feel this poem is very similar to that idea where you start out trying to do something good, but end up being the bad guy in the end.

Edit: Even with placing in spaces, I cannot get the tabbing right on this (quite annoying), so try and think that the 2nd and 4th lines in each stanza are indented.

Super Hero

In a city without hope,
I crafted a costume of virtue.
I am just a man in a mask,
the people needed my help

I crafted a costume of virtue.
I put myself above the law.
The people needed my help,
justice whatever the cost.

I put myself above the law,
no one can stand in my way.
Justice whatever the cost,
I am your only hope.

No one can stand in my way,
in a city without hope.
I am your only hope,
I am just a man in a mask.

Copyright 2008 William Curb

Boredom

2008-02-27T20:50:00.000-08:00

Something I came up with in class... no wonder.

Fighting Boredom

My concentration is shot
can't focus
can't finish.
Take up the fight
raise my fists,
only to be dumbed
down by what
other claim to be
interesting.
My margins are
full, nothing more
to add to my
rendering of the
2079 Robot Wars.
The clock has stopped
its batteries are dead,
I like to imagine that
it has faced the same
fight I am, and it was
frozen. It's spinning spears
marking its death at
half past three.
I'm not far behind.

Copyright 2008 William Curb

First day back

2008-01-23T19:16:00.000-08:00

It has been a while since I've done this school stuff. The first day of classes are always interesting because it is hard to include a lesson plan in with all of the introductions and the syllabus. Of course I've had some teachers that simply forgo the syllabus and jump right into the lectures. Those are always interesting classes. It is true that the syllabus is fairly similar for all of the classes that I have taken, but it can be a little weird when we just jump into things. I'm trying to remember what classes I have taken where that was the case, but I can't really recall any particular classes run this way (perhaps I did this at another institution and I just can't think that far back).
One reason I have heard of professors skipping doing the syllabus is that they claim that I am paying for the class time, so they should use it well. The thing is though is that I am not paying for the class time. It is an argument I hear all the time from students who are real nuts about not missing class. They go on and on about how each class hour is worth a certain amount of money and so on and so forth. But the truth is most students are paying for the classes, they aren't even really paying for the education. They are paying for a name brand degree. Sure, the education that comes along with it is nice, but I seriously doubt that many people would go through the “college experience” if they didn't get the degree at the end. I agree that class time is important and I don't like skipping classes, and yes I am paying to be in those classes, but in the end I am giving away all those little dollars so that when I graduate they will give me a piece of paper that says I can go out and get a good job (or that I can pay more money to say that I can get another piece of paper that will say I can get an even better job).
I'm sure that this sounds like a fairly negative rant (which I didn't intend to get into) but that is the way it goes for me. It also brings me to my most recent poem, Paying for Poetry. This poem did not go the way I expected it to. I actually like it a lot, although it definitely needs some more work. It uses one of my favorite words in it, “dweeb”. I mean even the way it is spelled is wonderful. Not many words start with “dw”. I can't think of any others, but that is because I am not looking nor am I thinking very hard.

Paying for Poetry

Five dollars at a book store
buys a lot of poetry.
A used bookstore of course,
you can't buy nothing nowadays
without breaking anything less than a twenty.
Books are no exception.
But poetry,
that sits outside
with all those other books no one wants.
Books about looking for Santa Clause,
and how to cook naked.
Eventually those books find a home,
even the poetry
whose lyrics are lost upon those
who it is suppose to inspire.
Too boring,
doesn't make enough sense,
and it is for dweebs.

But us dweebs,
we love our poetry.
We take our five dollars to
the bookstore and
we scour the titles for something
that we need to have.
Something that we need to hold
under some dim light and read
until our eye can no longer focus
and we are forced to look away.
But not for long,
we force ourselves to go on just a little longer
just long enough so that we know
that we ripped off that bookstore
because we bought poetry.

Copyright 2008 William Curb

Poetry

2008-01-14T23:09:00.000-08:00

I feel like I have forgotten how to even write poetry. It has really been a long time since I have done any really. I suppose being away from school has done that, and I have really been away for quite a while now. I mean first with Brazil and then going to Hawaii. It was always busy.

To get myself out of my rut I decided to go browsing through some of my older poetry and revise something so I could get my creative juices flowing (and start using cliches again, woo!). The poem I selected to work on is a poem I wrote for my Intro to Poetry class. It is called Sandstorm, although i have renamed it ghost. Needless to say it did need some work. Part of the reason I selected this poem is because it is some what sci-fi. When writing it I had a vision of a sci-fi world of sand much like the series Trigun (or perhaps Dune for those of you who don't watch anime). The revision wasn't to hard because I didn't feel particularly attached to any part of the poem, except perhaps that end that I liked the sound of and I felt was the real meat and potatoes of the poem. I changed a lot and I'm not sure it has the same sci-fi feel as the first one, although it is clear (I think) that the poem is not set in our reality. That is that the poem isn't occurring on Earth as we know it (although I suppose it could in some deserty region, but I don't really know).

Ghost

Stories tell that
the sand
pelting our faces
was not always here.
That the sand
is a product of man's folly,
or God's Wrath.
I don't know which is worse,
nor do I care.

We march through the dunes,
relentless as the sand itself
to find the town,
where we were told
water would be found.

But I know that
this town
will be bleak,
empty.
We will only find
the ghosts
of this town.

It was a long
time ago that
I even remembered
a town,
whose ghosts
weren’t as
thirsty as we
were.

Copywrite 2008 William Curb

Phantom Time Theory

2008-01-11T00:05:00.000-08:00

Alright, it is really just a hypothesis, but it is fascinating in a completely insane way. The original hypothesis states the early middle ages never occurred. Charlemagne - fictional. Rise of Islam... well they think that happened, but just at some other time. They just believe that there are 300 years that have been randomly added to our calendar, with events occurring in that time period simply having been misplaced there. So it is supposed to be 1711, not 2008. Well actually, that isn't quite right. See that is the original hypothesis; however, more updated versions of the hypothesis are now arguing that over 1000 years of history is simply just recorded wrong and that we really need to rewrite history to account for these gross errors in our documentation.

I am working on a poem from this idea, but it isn't going well yet. I am thinking, however, that I might be able to come up with a great novel idea from this because I love stuff that is bat shit insane. I'm not going to argue that this is completely impossible, because it is possible, but it is quite unlikely. Here is a link to the wikipedia article on the subject.

35 Days

2008-01-08T18:29:00.000-08:00

It has been 35 days since I have posted on here. Am I ashamed? Yes, a little, but not really enough to really make me feel bad. The real reason I haven't posted in about a month is because of travel and lack of internet. For a little over a week I was in Brazil and then I was in Hawaii, but now I am free to use the internet a much as I'd like. Hooray! Porn! Um... yeah... anyways...
You'd think that in my time traveling that I would get some stuff written but, alas, I did not. I am a lazy fucker and video games call to me. So this week I am going to get back on the writing train, so to speak, because I don't really believe that there is a train just for writing, but I could be wrong. I'll have to look into that. I have a lot to write about and a lot of time to write so perhaps I'll actually get something done, probably not.

Now I am off to play so version of Tiger Woods golf for the Wii. I don't know why but I just love golfing in video games. Actually I've started playing real golf recently and I enjoy that game as well as long as I am not being rushed. I hate being rushed in golf, mainly because I am terrible at the game. But I still like playing, it is fun when you aren't that good at it. So in the spirit of playing golf badly I have a piss poor golf poem for you.

Golf Poem

I like to make fun of golfers.
I mean just look at them.
It is a hilarious sport,
if you want to call it one.
For me I like to think of it as a game,
rather then a sport,
but what do I know.

I've been golfing only a handful of times,
and I freaking love the game,
but I'd damn sure hate it if I was any good.
I just swing away
if the ball goes further then I can throw it,
bully for me!
I've even gotten bogey once,
but usually I am 6 or 7 over par.

Golf is one of the few occasions where I drink.
I'm not terribly fond of alcohol,
but apparently when I swing
the odd misshapen sticks
I enjoy putting a few back,
even if it means I am going to have to play
a few more from the rough.

Copyright 2008 William Curb

What's this?

2007-12-03T13:34:00.000-08:00

I have five days until I disappear into Brazil. That means I have a ridiculous amount of homework to finish, but I think I am going to try to get back updating this because really writing poetry is a great way to relieve stress. I might not be writing the best poetry, but that never was the point of this blog. So here is a poem about being in school for almost all my life and how I have been kind of wondering what a degree is really worth. I think learning is a great endeavour; however, I am not sure that the current college system is best. And I certainly am not sure that we should people getting degrees just because that is what you do after high school and getting degrees because that is the only way you can get a good job.

Learning

I've spent my entire life learning.
I think it is a good place to be.

I've spent more of my life in school
than any where I've wanted to be.

I don't know where I will go after
I escape but I know I want to be

something more then what I am in this place.
It is a place where it is hard to be

more than what they tell you can do. More than
a name on a sheet of paper that tells me:
I am a graduate.

Copyright 2007 William Curb

15 days of Evolution

2007-11-29T22:02:00.000-08:00

So why no posts for the last two weeks. Well it has been because I haven't been writing and that is because I have been lazy. I even turned in an older poem for my workshop the other day (with some edits). I just haven't been writing new stuff. But I have been forced to produce something new (not really, I bet I could have gotten away with using something older, but that probably wouldn't have been as good) for my Lyric poetry class. We have a draft of form poem due on tomorrow (Friday). I decided that I would use the sonnet form (although in retrospect it probably wasn't a great idea so I might expand it to a longer free verse poem) and I used a concept I came with when I was writing "Evolutionary Poem". Just as a warning this is the most I have ever cursed in a poem. I don't know why I just liked the title line and it kind of spawned the rest. I also want to change the title but I just can't think of anything for that now, so I'll probably change that after I get my comments back from tomorrow.

Fuck you, Darwin

Fuck you, Darwin and your damn theories
about how we came to be and how we
should be reproducing. All your queries
into the human existence will be
answered, but do you really want to know
that my blind eyes are worthless and that my
my useless brain is unthinkably slow.
This is my evolution. This is why
I say fuck you Darwin. There is more to
life then just the right combination of
parents and their genetic make up. You
have all the shit about the soul and love.
The unequivocal answer to this
enigma is that life simply exists.

Copyright 2007 William Curb

Not My Best

2007-11-14T23:27:00.000-08:00

This is kind of a silly poem. I needs a little too much work though to be really salvaged. I was playing with complex ideas and then I went all simplistic so I don't think this poem really worked for me like I wanted it to, and in a way its name really reflects how I feel about it.

Regret

They tell you to live
without regrets.
Which seems silly
to me, because really
regret is a silly
thing indeed.

To say that you regret something
implies that you want to be
someone else.
Yes, many people do want
to be someone else.
Someone successful
or maybe famous.
But that isn't for me,
I want to be me.
I want my imperfections,
which are really
not all that imperfect at all.
I want my tummy full of blubber,
and I want the scars hidden under
my hair. I want my hairy toes.
And of course I want to
keep on wearing my glasses.
Of I want to change,
but it is the journey I want to go on.
And it is the journey I have been
on that I want to keep.
And I'll never regret
that it led me to fill
my joyous belly with cookies,
for without all those
tasty
tasty cookies
I would not be who I am today
rather I would be a will
with a severe lack of cookies,
and we don't want that.

So what do you regret?
I certainly do not know
what you would regret
or even if you shouldn't regret
regretting having regret.
All I'm saying is think about it.

Copyright 2007 William Curb

Proetry

2007-11-13T13:41:00.000-08:00

When I was working on the evolution poem I was thinking about how many of my poems I've written recently have been about poems. I find it to be a very fun topic to write about because I can poke fun at myself while I am writing. But then I was thinking that I could write a poem that was not a poem. I don't know what I was thinking, but that hit me at the same time as the idea that if I ever published a poetry book I'd like it to be called "This is not poetry" or even the title of this poem "Not Poetry". So in the process of writing this poem the word proety came about, which was the combination of prose and poetry. I pronounce it "Pro-et-tree" (I know that is not a proper pronunciation key, but I'm too lazy to look up how to actually do it). I like the word because the "pro" part makes me think of professional athletes and I liked the idea of a pro-poet. Yes, we have professional poets who do poetry for a living, and yes we have poets who compete with their poems (i.e. publishing). But I wanted to go with the sports idea and have teams of poets who were literary fighting with each other, not literally fighting of course and I love the "literary" and "literally". So here isn't a poem.

Not Poetry

We all know what a poem is and is not.
And we all know what prose are, so
it isn't that hard to tell the two apart.
But this isn't poetry.
We've already said that we know what poetry is,
so why isn't this a poem. I don't know. I don't want it is to be one.
Or maybe I do.
Maybe I want a poem, but do I want a prose poem. I mean what is
a prose poem. Isn't that simply a short story with awkward
line breaks?
This certainly isn't a short story, there is no story. So what is it?
You tell me. You tell me is crap. Not a poem. Not prose. Not even a memo.
What do we do with this now?
Perhaps we give it another name, proety.
It kind of sounds like a professional poetry league,
where we will gather all the great poets,
we'll gather them into teams and then make them
duke it out literally, not literally but literary.

Copyright 2007 William Curb

Evolutionary Poem

2007-11-13T13:32:00.000-08:00

I was walking around outside and was thinking that plant evolution didn't make sense to me. I mean is seems like plants should have evolved to not be tasty. That would be an evolutionary advantage, to not be eaten I mean. But I was thinking about it and, well plants were here first so really we evolved to like the taste of certain plants. And some plants have evolved to not be eaten, to have poisonous leaves and flowers, so there is still some plant evolution. Instead of writing a poem directly about evolution I decided to write one about the evolution of a poem, not the revising stage, but rather how poetry has evolved over the last few centuries. I mean we have gone from a very rigid meter and rhyme scheme to a predominately free verse society (not that society is that much interested in poetry anymore) . So I was thinking about where poetry is going to go. Is it going to continue in free verse, or is it going to have a some what circular pattern and go back to having a tight meter and rhyme scheme, or maybe something new entirely. I chose the title Evolutionary Poem because I liked how it reminded me of the revolutionary at the same time as being about evolution, and if you really think about it those words are really quite similar.

Evolutionary Poem

If my poem were to evolve,
what way would it go?
How would the words be grouped? Would the rhythm
fall into place? Would there be a set rhyme
scheme? Which way would it go? Would time
degrade the poem into
that terrible thing
known simply as
free verse?
Or would we have a poem that evolved
into the greatest works of Master Shake?
I don't know how a poem would evolve
and perhaps, it wouldn't be one or the
other, but a melding of the two.

Copyright 2007 William Curb

Poetry Emergency

2007-11-12T11:53:00.000-08:00

This just popped into my head today, the idea of a poem needing medical attention. I don't know maybe it comes from all the medical dramas I've been watching (Scrubs and House), or perhaps the workshopping I do and how that relates to "fixing" a poem. Anyways here is my poetry emergency.

Poetry Emergency

We need to clear an airway,
this poem is going under.
Bring out the editors,
with their bright red pens,
we'll revise until it
has regained enough function
that we really can really go to work on it.
We will hack away lines like
old civil war surgeons and
we'll drain away its humours
giving the similes and metaphors
the cure they need.
Don't worry about the stanzas and punctuation
we'll throw it through a centrifuge
letting everything separate out and then
fall into place.

Copyright 2007 William Curb

Happy People

2007-11-11T22:59:00.000-08:00

The few poems I've read from William Carlos Williams have been about very ordinary things. Things that I probably wouldn't have written a poem about, but today I thought about a guy I wanted to write a poem about. I was out driving and it was fairly windy, and I ended up stopped at an intersection where three of the corners had people with signs for King's Mattresses. They were having trouble keeping their signs up in the wind and looked pretty miserable. But they reminded me of a guy I saw doing the same job over the summer. He was literally one of the happiest people I have ever seen. Just out there everyday, holding his sign, waving at people and being happy. So this poem is about that happy man.

Happy Man on the Street Corner

I've been down this way over three times
this week and he is always there,
the happy man holding a sign
telling me to buy discount mattresses.
He is happy,
happy to be himself,
smiling and waving at everyone
who drives by during their busy
unhappy lives while this man is
happy, and I don't know why.

Copyright 2007 William Curb

Another Ekphrastic Poem

2007-11-10T22:25:00.000-08:00

Here is another poem I wrote in while I was in Kittredge gallery. This one is based off of the painting "The Heat of the Moment" done by Besty Best-Spadaro. Still needs quite a bit of work, but I like the quick revision I just did of it over the original.

The Fight!

These people are fighting
with fruit on their heads.
They won't talk to each
other any more.
They just stick their
tongues out as if
that was just what you did.
Eyes full of contempt
the apples look at
the oranges that look
back at the apples.
These people are fighting
but they don't know why.

Copyright 2007 William Curb

Ekphrastic poems

2007-11-09T22:12:00.000-08:00

In my poetry class today we walked over to the art gallery on campus and then wrote poems from the inspiration we got from the art. I wasn't sure if I would come up with anything, but it didn't turn out so bad. I ended up five poems, only two from the art and then three that just kind of came to me. I'm going to share two of these poems, one from each pile. This first one was inspired by the painting Shark from Sharon Birzer. The original idea started out as a list poem, but it ended quite different as you will see.

Things You Find in a Shark

The fisherman pulled up a shark today,
a real whale of a beast.
It no longer looked fearsome
hanging by that hook.
It just looked sad as they
weighed it and clocked it
in at over three hundred pounds.

And then they gutted it,
right there on the dock
letting the blood drip down
into the water as the sad
creatures guts spilled forth.

People, oohed and awed as
the fisherman told the
story of fighting off the beast
and the great honor they gave
him by dragging him ashore.

This next poem is the third I wrote while in Kittredge (the art gallery), it is a little different, but I still like it. Don't worry my brain isn't really crowded, I just liked the idea.

The Crowd

It's crowded in here,
my brain I mean,
there just isn't enough space
to stretch out and
everyone is just so noisy.

I remember a teacher of mine
who told me about a crowd
his once was in, where
the people were so tightly
packed together that he
could reach down and
pick up his feet.
He would just slowly sink down
and the reach down and
grab his feet again.

It isn't that crowded in here,
but I wonder if it ever will be or
if someday the crowd will disperse
and I'll be the only one here
picking up my feet and
slowly sinking down.

Copyright 2007 William Curb

Love Poem

2007-11-09T11:18:00.000-08:00

I don't like love poetry, I just don't find it interesting and I find most people who write love poetry to believe the lie that their love is special. And it isn't. People like to believe that no one else has felt how they have felt, and the truth really we probably haven't (since we each interpret the world around us differently) but really it isn't that different. Everyone in love has felt relatively the same and most people who have thought that they would love someone till the end of time have realized that they'd rather love someone else to the end of time and then,of course, they realize (I'd hope) after going through the process a few times that they don't need to love someone till the end of time. That is a a lot of responsibility, loving till the end of time, especially because I don't believe they have a good idea how immensely long time is. So anyways here is my love poem about not liking love poems.

Love Poem

I don't actually like love poems.
They are boring,
melodramatic
and in many cases
verbose lies.

I don't believe in true
love, or never ending
love or any of that
nonsense.

There was a time
when I thought
if I loved hard enough
that I would die.
I tried to.

Instead I realized that
dying for love is like
fighting for peace.

So what do I believe in?
I believe in living
and of course loving,
and perhaps
loving again.

Copyright 2007 William Curb

Recycling

2007-11-08T18:14:00.000-08:00

I wrote another bad poem today; however, I didn't do on purpose this time. Just came out that way. Anyways about a week ago I thought about writing a poem about recycling, and then in the process of writing it I thought about the idea of actually recycling a poem. So here is recycling a poem.

Recycling a Poem

Bring in your words and your sentences.
We will process them,
break them down into syllables and letters
and then dump them into the big machine
that will rebuild them into
new words, with
new meanings, making
new sentences, grouped
into stanzas, made
into a poem.

Copyright 2007 William Curb

Bad Poetry

2007-11-06T19:33:00.000-08:00

My girlfriend is an editor (or reviewer, I'm not sure what the title really is) for our school literary magazine, Crosscurrents, and so yesterday we got in a discussion about what people value in poetry and how they judge it. And there are a lot of things that people don't like in poems. Lack of punctuation, not spell checking, to many images, too few images, images that don't make sense, images that aren't deep enough, semicolons, capitals in weird places, periods in weird places (sorry cummings), and I could go on and on. So I wrote a bad poem. An interesting thing about attempting to write bad poetry is that if you succeed you've done your job, and if you fail, well then you have written a good poem. Win, win really. I don't know why but it what I felt I should write. It isn't that clever and it is really messy and ugly. I kind of like it. The last lines tickle me because those wavy red lines they put under misspelled words now just seem so angry looking, and the idea came to me while purposely misspelling a word and having my editor (I use OpenOffice cause I am cheap) continuously auto correct my spelling. I could turn off auto correct, but I have chosen to live in ignorance of how to really use my programs. So basically it was a self inspiring poem as well as a poem inspired by a fellow class mate who loathed (I can think of the word they used, but it was much better than loathe) for poetry that is so casual that it addresses the reader and the fact that it acknowledges that it is a poem, which I must agree is fairly obnoxious.

Also I am displeased somewhat with Blogger, it has given one of my lines a restriction in length, "to discover..." "...looked at" is supposed be one long 28 syllable line. So I am looking at ways to redesign my blogs look and feel(do blogs feel?) so that I can accommodate some of my longer lines. I played around with the HTML for about an hour today before giving up. There was a time in my life where this task would have been fairly easy, but alas I have given up coding and scripting for poetry and prose.

bad Poem

I am here writing this poet, and you
already hate it I am addressing
the reader. And I am going to screw
even trying to write a good poem.
I will break da rules dat tell me what I
ned to do But I am no master at
this game I am simply along for the
prolixity from my verbosity
my Everest never ending along these
slope I am climbing I ce AX in han.d
becuse I am at my wits end trying
to discover why a work of so call art is judged by such arbitrary terms that is isn't really looked at.
And so I break rules unknownly, and I
I ceep my mis-ellings God knows my text
editors hates them more than you ever
could;

Copyright 2007 William Curb

Grandparents

2007-11-06T09:42:00.000-08:00

This is my first post of November which means I haven't put anything up in 6 days. That is okay, I've been writing in my notebook and just haven't put anything up yet. In my notebook I've been experimenting with longer poetry. I went to see Tess Gallagher speak a few weeks ago and I was amazed at how long some of her poetry is. I suppose I most read shorter stuff for my classes because when we workshop a fellow classmate's poem we have a length restriction, and in my other classes we can only read poetry that can easily be analyzed in fifty minutes or so. So I've been trying my hand at writing some longer poetry. This poem is about my grandparents house. My grandparents have passed on and the family had to go through an immense amount of stuff in their house. It was truly staggering to see the amount of stuff that my grandparents owned. Anyways, this poem is about going through the stuff, remembering my grandparents, and briefly touches on how I regret not getting to know them better before they passed on (it was hard living in Hawaii and having them live in Iowa).

Old House

Over the summer,
I went to Iowa.
I drove.
I don't know why.
I went to my grandparents house,
but they didn't live there anymore,
they died the year before.
I didn't attend a funeral,
or tell them good bye,
it was too far away,
but now I am driving to Iowa
to go through their things.
I was told to ask for anything I wanted,
there was plenty to go around.
Told to ask for something to remind me of
people I did not really know.
I did miss them,
they were always kind to me
always loving.
But I had only seen them a handful of times
in the older years of my life.
Now I was asked to take something
to remind me, from a house
overflowing with meaning.
There is twenty years of wrapping paper in one drawer,
and alcohol that expired twelve years ago in the basement,
did you know alcohol can expire,
I didn't.
Over a hundred decks of playing cards,
and all those little soaps
taken from hotel bathrooms.
What do you do with that stuff?
But it isn't all worthless,
far from it.
Fur coats made from foxes,
(you can tell because they still have
their little feet and faces)
and a crystal dining room set,
it will go nicely with my bowels
from Ikea.
Souvenirs from Nazi Germany
and apartheid Africa
and Alaska
Sweden
Ireland
Hawaii
and the passports proving
their worldliness.
And there are books,
walls lined with books,
and I love books,
so I ask for those books.
And the hats.
The hats are really special.
Inside one of the hats there is
a business card my grandfather used
years earlier. It is not just
worn yellow paper that reads
chairman. And I like having it,
I still keep it in the hat
so I can reach up and be
reminded of grandparents
I had the privilege of meeting.

Bad Language

2007-10-31T20:38:00.000-07:00

When I was little I was taught that some language is worst then other language, and there are certain words that I should never say. Of course I would hear the adults says these words and I would tell them that they shouldn't swear. That never really worked. And of course when I was sure no one else was around I try and say them to see how they fit with my tounge. I suppose that's where my current habit came from. I'm not as bad as I used to be, I guess it was the cool thing to do in high school. I'm not so worried about being cool any more. I do remember one time I made a bet with my brother that he couldn't go 5 minutes without swearing. Of course he almost made it, but I was playing a video game and I used the ability "hell ivy" (I'd explain the game, but that isn't really important to the story) and then realizing what he had said immeadately said "fuck". I wasn't wasn't going to hold him to the hell ivy statement, but I had to mark him down for fuck.
I've always been interested in the origins of swearing. It seems completely silly to me that we give certain words such power. And there are words I certainly don't like using. No matter what Eve Ensler, writer of the Vagina Monologues, says about the word "cunt" I still don't like it. Just isn't a word I like using. I know choosing not to use it gives it more power, but still not my thing. Same thing with racist terms. It creeps me out that people can same some of the things they do without cringing. I suppose the words just don't mean the same thing to them because they don't let them have that power. I guess to each his own.

Language in front of a lady

I've been trying to watch my lanuage
recently, my eyes aren't what they used
to be. If I could I'd just snatch those words,
pull them right out of the air. No lady
would ever have such profanity touch
the silk countenance of her ears. Instead
my words would come out truer then I could
supply myself. I would never worry
that my words might get me into trouble.
Of course that is only a dream that I
must keep on dreaming. For now my words are
simply a booby trap in my mouth that
is waiting to go off any second
now, in the presence of a lady.

Copyright 2007 William Curb

Morgan Freeman for God

2007-10-28T12:23:00.000-07:00

I've been thinking about starting a Facebook group called "Morgan Freeman for God" in parody of these presidential race groups. I mean I checked today and the Steven Colbert group has over a million people in that group (and he doesn't even want to be president, he just wants to run for president). The idea was inspired by watch Evan Almighty the other weekend while I was on the plane. Perhaps it was because I was trapped on a plane, had low expectations, or the sound kept going out, but I enjoyed the movie. I had decided not to see it in theaters because of poor reviews, that was probably still a wise decision. Anyways, while looking up Morgan Freeman on IMDB I found a link to every person who has played God in a movie. Apparently there have been more then 200 roles of God in movies, with various plays on the name, my favorite being De Lawd. I had to check out the movie with De Lawd, because it was the last item on the list (and there fore listed at the earliest movie with a character God)(I'm sure there must be other movies with god that came out before 1936 but they aren't listed). Anyways this movie is apparently a serious movie and not a parody. I can't imagine why they used De Lawd instead of God in their credits, perhaps they felt casting someone as God would be sacrilegious.
Well De Lawd inspired another poem, it isn't very fancy but I decided to try my hand at blank verse, I'm not very good at it and I need the practice. The poem is kind of interesting for me since I am basically talking about speaking with God at church. I haven't been to church in many years and haven't followed any mainstream religion in many more years than that. So we'll just see how this turns out.

Speakin' With De Lawd

Always on a Sunday morning I see
him not too far away. Never does he
give me the answers I am looking for,
But he does give me answers that I am
in need of. If only those were what I
really had asked for. My questions are what
he is really interested in. I am
not defined by all that I do, rather
it is all the things that I question that
he believes define me. So on Sunday
mornings, I listen to your answers and
I question what they mean to me, because
I know he has plans for these answers that
might just be beyond what we comprehend.

Copyright 2007 William Curb

Steamrollers and Stress

2007-10-28T10:50:00.001-07:00

As I often do I read through the google news website and select a few articles that seem important to read. I do a lot of headline reading this way so that I can keep up with world and US events. Really at some point I should customize the my google thing so that it only displays articles I am really going to read, I don't tend to open anything in the sports catagory, I mean there is no Ultimate in there so why would I? Anyways, a few days ago I came across this particular gem that was about stress. It was pretty breif and told me a lot of things I already knew about stress from my own experiences with it. However, it had a great ending with how some CEO's deal with stress, and one particular guy liked to imagine he was a mechanical object. In fact he said that one time he told someone that he was a steamroller. Isn't that wonderful. Of all the objects you could imagine to be a Steamroller is not one that I would have thought of. It inspired this poem, which is about being a steamroller and a CEO (kind of, I really like the metaphor of a CEO being a steamroller, it just tickles me).

Steamroller Man

This man is no ordinary man.
He is a man of steel.
In a word,
invincible.
He runs down all those
before him.

But this man was not
always so,
mighty and round.

This man had dreams
that one day,
he could say,
that he,
was a steamroller.

Copyright 2007 William Curb

Univocalic Poetry

2007-10-26T23:02:00.000-07:00

While looking at some information about anagrams on wikipedia I came across an article about univocalic poetry. Basically it is a poem with a single vowel. Needless to say the alliteration is amazing on these things. So I decided to try my hand at one of these things. I am pleased with how it turned out actually. Still needs some work, but it is hard with constraints like these. This is the product of three attempts at writing one of these poems. I kept getting maybe one stanza and then having to start over again. This one worked out for me, and turned out a lot more sexual then I am used to writing so I suppose that it an interesting step. Either way here is my newest poem.

Thirst

This chick is
whirling
twirling
with whirlwind
trills.

Glimpsing
lips
licking,
in this
dig.

I wish
with nibbling
misgivings-
pricking
in mind.

Grinning
singing
winking,
dripping with
sin.

Crisp
twilight
flirting
with
wings.

Inviting
virgin
skin
in this
night.

Wild
lightning,
sizzling-
tickling-
twitch.

Copyright 2007 William Curb

Zombies

2007-10-24T20:36:00.000-07:00

I ended up at Best Buy today, and I guess in celebration (honor?) of Halloween they are having a sale on Horror movies. I ended up buying Dawn of the Dead, the original version. I didn't realize I was buying the original version but I am fine with that. I hadn't seen it before, but it has proved to be amusing. Of course this movie is great because they end up trapped in a mall. Not a bad place to be during the zombie apocalypse, I can think of a number of other zombie movies where they definitely put the characters in far scarier situations. Malls, not so scary, but full of comic potential. Zombies on escalators? Hilarious. Of course these movies aren't about the threat of zombies that is so scary, really you have to be scared of the humans you are with and their stupidity. Zombies are slow, you can out run them at walking speed so really how tough can they be. The great thing about these movies is that you see even in a world wide apocalypse you still have these petty conflicts that divide them. You'd hope that you could just find a way to get a long in these situations, but reality is you will always have to deal with other Anyways I thought I would write a poem about zombies. I do have to say I love surprise zombie attacks, especially at the pace they move at. By the way if for nothing else I'd suggest Dawn of the Dead for its music, classic.

Zombie Supply Kit

What do you need when
you are dead?
Of course if you get up
and walk around
after you've kicked
the bucket
you'll be hungry.
So, we'll need food,
maybe a friends.
maybe an enemy.
It doesn't really matter
to me,
as long as I get my
fill,
thats all I need.

Copyright 2007 William Curb

Procrastination

2007-10-23T23:04:00.000-07:00

So, right now, I am procrastinating. Yes, at this very minute I am putting off very important things. They aren't truely important, but I believe my professors would be rather upset at me if I did not do the things that they so kindly ask me to do. And it isn't that I don't want to do them, I really don't mind doing them, I just feel like streching out how long it takes me to do these things, I don't know why. Maybe I don't really want a full night of sleep. Honestly, I could have been done by now, it wouldn't have even been hard. Also tonight I read an interesting article about how sleep lost can actually be the cause of metal disorders, not a symptom (found here). So, perhaps, I am actually seeking out a mental disorder. Really it might be terribly interesting, but perhaps when I had one I wouldn't notice, so it wouldn't be nearly as interesting to me. Anyways for my big procrastination session today I've decided that I am going to write a poem, while I put off finishing up a paper and reading many stories written in the second person (really... 3 out of 4 stories for class written in second person... what the hell?).

Procrastination

...
...
I am so clever starting a
poem about not doing a thing,
by doing nothing.
Mastered my craft have I
if I am able to pull off such a feat (and to speak like Yoda, truely awesome am I).

...
...
I'm doing it again,
it gives the poem form
and I just know how you love that.
Ooh, second person.
So sexy.

really...
...
Ah, I've messed up,
broken the form.
I guess I need to try again,
to truely master my craft,
to get back to work.

Copyright 2007 William Curb

Acrostics

2007-10-23T21:10:00.000-07:00

In my last advanced poetry writing class we discussed the poem "This Be The Verse", by Philip Larkin. It starts off very interestingly with the line, "They fuck you up, your mum and dad." This of course is pretty offensive to some people, really a lot of people simply won't like the fact that he used the word fuck so liberally. And really what isn't offensive about the word fuck... regionally of course some people find it less offensive, Lewis Black claims that in New York fuck is simply a comma.
Anyways, the class got together to come up with some challange poems and one of them was a non-offensive fuck poem. Or rather a non-offensive poem that uses the word fuck. I've decided to accept the challange, as well as cheat, and perhaps even make the poem about cheating (since really that seems like a good idea as any at this juncture)(it didn't turn out to be about cheating, but I cheated none the less).
So here is my relatively non-offensive fuck poem.

To the administration

Friday I have a test.
unless I can find a way out of this
catastrophe, I will be
kicked out of school.

You see I need to keep up my grades
or my parents will stop paying
until I bring them back up,

but I have no money.
If I don't get any money
there will
certainly be no money for you.
Here is my last check. I just wanted to
end on a good note.
Sincerely yours.

Copyright 2007 William Curb

A Funny Thing About Murder

2007-10-19T09:32:00.000-07:00

Well I actually don't have anything funny to say about murder cause I don't think it is particularly funny, but that is so far the title of my new short story. It is my first attempt at a mystery/murder story, so well see how that goes. Apparently it gets kind of funny towards the end because it gets so ridiculous, I guess that is what I was going for.

Note: I just looked at this and apparently blogger is doing funny things with the spacing... so sorry about that, maybe I'll get that changed over the weekend.

A Funny Thing About Murder

I find that murder is a strange thing. Did you know there are over 16,000 people murdered every year? That's over 40 murders a day. And that is just in the United States. Now, some places are more dangerous to live in than others. Some big cities contribute over 500 of those homicides. Little cities have their crimes as well, but I don't think they have the same worries. Even if you get into a town small enough you'll still get someone who is crazy enough to think the best solution is to kill someone. The really crazy ones, the ones that don't kill for revenge but kill because they can, are the ones you want to watch out for. They say that those are the people who want to get caught and they like to watch. It drives their entire process, they need to know what is going on, and to know what they did had reason.

Frank was a homicide detective. He didn't particularly like what he did, but it paid the bills and he was satisfied with that. He would approach a crime scene like he would his lunch. He'd find the obvious parts first and save the good parts for last. Everything had an order for Frank. He liked to take each part of him meal separately so he could really taste it. Frank also made sure to eat healthy, follow the rules, keep good manners. He liked to take care of his body the best that he could, though his hairline still decided it needed to recede on him.

It was Tuesday when Frank got the case. It was nothing out of the ordinary for Frank. He received new murder files every few weeks. It didn't really matter to him if he solved this particular case, he'd still receive the same pay. Just the same Frank went to investigate.

Frank got into his car, an old Ford he had bought when he first started the force. The car needed to be serviced but Frank figured he could still get a few hundred more miles out of it before it started causing any major problems. Frank pulled out the address for the case and rolled his eyes when he saw that it was on Elm Street. Too many murderers these days just try and repeat what they see in movies, no creativity. Frank turned the ignition and let the car hum for a few minutes before he pulled out of the police station, he wasn't in any sort of hurry.

The usual dispatch team was already at the house when he arrived. Yellow tape and flashing lights were everywhere. Frank parked on the side of the street and got out of his car, adjusting his jacket so that it would sit correctly against him again. He ducked under the police line tape and pulled out his badge for anyone that would question him being there. It wasn't a huge town; most of the people working at the site already knew that Frank was an investigator.

Frank pulled aside the first officer he recognized.

“What's the situation?” He asked and pulled out a notepad.

“Well we actually got something pretty grisly going here, detective.”

Frank interrupted the younger officer, “call me Frank, please.”

“Yeah, okay, Frank. So yeah, we got two victims that have been sliced up bad. We currently suspect that cause of death is loss of blood on both victims,” the officer took a breath, “but we won't know till we get the coroner's report.”

“Do we have any idea who these people are?”

“Not yet sir, uh, Frank. But from what we have gathered they aren't the people that live here.”

“And how do we know that?” Frank looked down at what he had written so far.

“The McCormick's, the people who live here, filed the report.”

The scene was indeed grisly, as the officer had described. Blood was sprayed on the wall in awkward arcs. It looked as if the victims had been hacked to death somehow, cut apart with the body parts strewn about the room. Frank shivered for a second as he looked at the carnage in the room. He had seen a few crime scenes like this before though, and his agitation soon went away and he went back to writing down the details in his notebook. The room had an awkward smell to it, not the same smell of blood that was to be expected. Frank only gave the room with the victims a cursory look-through and then went back out to talk to the officer he had spoken to before.

“And this is the only place where there is any sign of the homicide?” Frank asked.

“Yes, si-Frank,” the officer fidgeted and looked as if he felt he shouldn't be addressing Frank by anything other then detective or sir.

“And do we know how they got in?”

“It seems he had a key to get in, and then used it to lock the door when he left. It is all very strange.”

“He?”

“Oh, the killer.”

“Don't jump to conclusions so quickly officer, you just never know about these cases now-a-days.”

Frank didn't seem to like this case; he continually rubbed his temples and took deep breaths to calm himself. The entire case didn't work for him. The forensic team had so far not come up with anything and there was no identity for the bodies. Frank looked at the papers on his desk, searching for a piece to make sense. He had interrogated the McCormick's and they had no more information than he did. The department chief was satisfied that they didn't have any more information and let them go with a warning not to leave the state just in case. Frank wanted them to make sense of the case, but everything they told him just left him baffled as to what really went on. He couldn't figure out why the house was locked when they got home. It just didn't make sense to Frank that a criminal would break in and then lock the doors after hacking two people apart. As well he couldn't see the connection as to why it had been someone else's house that these people were found in. It was just too logical a crime for him. He needed another piece of the puzzle.

Frank's desk phone rang and he answered it after a few rings.

“Detective Frank Molens speaking.”

“Frank, you're not going to believe this,” said the voice on the other side of the line.

“Who is this?”

“The bodies at the scene were already dead when they got to the house, hacked apart and everything. What's more we think we've figured out who they are.”

“They were dead before they got in the house?”

“Yeah, they had been dead for about a week. We think we have a match on a couple that went missing about two weeks ago. Sally and Tim Randle. Apparently the killer only recently decided to put them in the house.”

“Great work, is this forensics?” Frank asked, but he got no answer and the phone went dead. Frank looked at the phone and shrugged. At least he had something now, but things still weren't clear. A body dumped at a house and then locked in. Frank bit his lower lip while he thought. Something triggered in his head and he mumbled, “the blood.”

Frank got up and headed over to the elevator at the end of the hallway. He got in and hit the button for the second floor, which would take him to forensics.

“I have an idea,” Frank said as he walked into the forensics office. They all looked puzzled. “We need to check if the blood matches that of the victims,” he continued.

“What are you talking about, which blood?” Asked one of the forensic technicians.

“The blood on the walls, you know in the McCormick's case. See if it matches the bodies.”

“Fine, whatever you say, but I think we could use our time a little bit better than that.”

“Just do it, call me when you have the results,” Frank walked back to the elevator and took it to his floor.

Back at his desk, Frank went to his computer to check out the Randle's file. The file said that the Randle's went missing from their homes a week ago. Their 25-year-old son had called it in. Frank took out his pad and started making notes about similarities between his case and this one. He noted that the Randle's home also had no signs of a break and the door was locked when their son arrived home. Frank figured that he would have to talk to their son, Richard Randle.

It wasn't until late in the next day that Frank heard from the forensic team. The phone rang and Frank picked it up.

“Detective Frank Molens speaking.”

“Detective this is the forensics department. Good call on comparing the blood. The results came back and the blood on the walls wasn't even human.”

“Then what was it then?” Frank sat back down at his desk.

“Pig's blood.”

“Pigs?”

“Yeah, amazing call on checking the blood. I would have thought for sure that the blood on the wall was that of the victims.” The forensics officer sounded impressed.

“Well it came to me after you guys gave me the call about the victims being dead on arrival.”

“What?”

“When you guys called me earlier to give me the coroner's report.”

“We don't have the coroner's report yet, there was some sort of complication with identifying the bodies.”

“That can't be. You guys told me you had them identified hours ago.”

“Wasn't us Detective.”

“Well thanks for telling me about the pig's blood.” Frank hung up the phone. He ran his hands through his thinning hair. The information that he had about the identities of the victims made sense. Frank picked up his phone and dialed the number for the coroner. The phone rang four times before anyone picked up.

“Hello, this is detective Frank Molens, I was wondering if the report for the McCormick's was done?”

“Um... let me check,” Frank could hear files being moved in the background, “yeah, here we go. It just came in a few minutes ago.”

“Thanks, keep that out, I'll be right down to check it out.” Frank hung up the phone. He didn't like when things didn't add up, and nothing about this case added up for him.

Down in the coroner's office Frank looked over the file. It had everything in it that he had heard over the phone earlier, but it was time stamped for hours after he had received the call. Also the bodies didn't match up to the names he had heard on the phone earlier.

“And you are the coroner who filed this report?” Frank asked.

“Yes, I am. Is there anything wrong with the report?”

“No, I just wanted to be sure. Has anyone else looked at these bodies?”

“No, I was the only coroner assigned to this file. It took me longer to determine exactly what had happened due to the state the bodies were in and then the fact that they were hacked up after they had been killed. They were poisoned, and they cut apart later.”

“There is no identity for the bodies yet?”

“Not yet, there is a large database we have to go through so it could be another week before we will be certain about the identities. Maybe longer.”

“And there is no way anyone could have known about the condition of these bodies before you examined them?”

“I suppose it is possible, they weren't well preserved but I doubt that anyone on the scene would have guessed that they weren't hacked to death.”

“What type of poison was used?”

“Cyanide.”

“And you are sure that the victims died of poisoning.”

“I wouldn't have put it in the report if I wasn't sure. All the signs in their body show that they died of poisoning.” The coroner looked irate at the fact that his report was being questioned so thoroughly. “What is this about anyways?”

“Nothing, I just want to double check all the facts, this case isn't making any sense and I want to find out what the hell is going on. Every time I think I've figured something out, something new comes in and makes me doubt my original assumptions.”

“Well, if you have anymore questions please call me, but I am off for the day, so good night detective.”

The next day Frank looked up the address of Richard Randle, my address. He had tried calling but I didn't answer, I wanted him to come. I had plans. My address took him to the far side of town, near where my parents were found. My house was in a suburban neighborhood with a nice trimmed lawn, it looked very pleasant. The house was in far better condition then those standing around it and Frank took note of which neighbors he would talk to if I didn't answer my door.

I listened for Frank to knock on the door. I had been waiting for him, it had just taken him longer to get here than I had hoped. The knock came; I stood in the darkness of my house waiting for him to come in. He knocked again. I thought about calling to him to enter but decided against it. That would be too awkward, I wanted him to come in on his own. I saw him peek in the window on the side of the door but then he knocked again. Then I heard him pull out a piece of paper and start writing something against the door. He then slipped the paper under the door and began to walk away. I quickly picked up the paper and read it. It said that I should give Detective Frank Molens a call when I had a chance. This was not what I wanted.

I grabbed my knife from off the hall table and burst out of the door. Frank spun around to see me standing in my doorway in nothing but my tight white underwear, holding a knife.

“Oh, Mr. Randle, you're home,” Frank said rather calmly.

“You're not supposed to leave! You are supposed to break in and check out the house. Where are you going?” I yelled.

“Mr. Randle?”

“Don't call me that! My name is Ricky!”

“Alright Ricky, maybe we should go inside. You really shouldn't be outside like this.”

“What are you doing? I have a knife!”

“Ricky, what's going on, is everything alright?” Frank looked confused, he wasn't threatened like I wanted him to be.

“You think I killed my parents! You're here to arrest me!”

“No, Ricky, I am here because I wanted to talk to you about your parent's disappearance. Now I am going to need you to calm down Ricky.”

“I am not going to calm down! You found the evidence! You know I did it.”

“Ricky, I never said you killed your parents. Now calm down.” The frustration in Frank's voice was apparent now.

“That's right Frank I did it!” I took pleasure in my confession.

“Ricky, if that’s true you're going to have to come with me down to the station for a formal confession.”

“Oh, I'm not going anywhere with you!” I tilted my head to one side, cracking my neck, and looked straight at Frank and grinned. I took off towards Frank raising my knife. Frank reached for his gun and I was pleased. Things were going my way now. He was going to kill me. As I neared Frank I was worried I would actually stab him, he wasn't reacting fast enough. This was supposed to be my moment of glory. The moment where I was gunned down in the street. I slowed down a little to make sure Frank could have a clear shot, but I was still getting to close. As I reach Frank he raised his gun, but instead of shooting me he elbowed me in the arm, knocking my knife away, and then he brought his knee up, hitting me in the stomach. I toppled over onto the ground, dropping the knife, and Frank put his knee down on my back to hold me in place.

“You kicked me!” I screamed.

“Ricky, I had to stop you,” Frank said.

“You're not supposed to kick me!”

“I had to stop you,” Frank repeated.

“But you're supposed to shoot me in the head, you're supposed to end it all right here. In the quietness of this neighborhood I am supposed to die.”

“I'm not going to kill you Ricky.”

“No! Everything was in place! But you! You are ruining everything. All the reasons, everything that I did. You needed my help, you would have never gotten anywhere without me!” I said as Frank pushed me down tightening my handcuffs. “I told you who to look for! You wouldn't have figured out anything without me. I led you to all the answers. You needed me!” Frank didn't say anything as he loaded me into his car.

“So you were the one who called me?” Frank finally said as we drove to the police station.

“Yes, I was the one who called you!”

“Why? If you would have gotten away with it, why would you help me?”

“Why? Why? Because you are an idiot. You don't understand. I had a message.”

“You killed your parents and splashed some pig's blood on the walls of someone else's house.”

“Is that what you think I did,” I tried to hold back a laugh, “Oh, I did more than that. I sent out a message. To everyone that knows about this case. And when the media gets a hold of it, the nation will hear my message!”

“That you're completely crazy?”

“You didn't understand anything that I did. You went to the house and did you even question why the bodies were laid out as they were? Why the pig’s blood was on the wall? Why the doors were locked? Why it was the McCormick's house? Did you question anything at all?” I couldn't contain my rage at Frank. He looked rather taken aback by my outburst.

“The bodies were positioned,” Frank paused, “you mean you had reasons for everything you did?”

“Why else would I have done it?”

“Well I figured it was an elaborate ruse to make it harder to catch you.”

“Elaborate ruse? Are you insane? Everything that I did pointed directly at me. The bodies were arranged to say Darnel, an anagram of Randle,” Frank looked confused.

“As in Darnel McCormick and my last name,” I sighed, Frank still wasn’t seeing everything.

“And then the pig’s blood was there to represent the hypocrisy of the killing since it was my own parents, since we are Jewish and not allowed to eat pork. Clearly with the blood splashed on the walls to represent the swells, or waves, of anger that are in me. The closed doors obviously showed that I was not immediately showing myself and locked door is an anagram for old red cook. I am a professional chef, and I cook at the Old Red Tavern, could it be any more obvious then that. We already know I used Mr. McCormick's first name, but I used them as well since in the first grade I went to school with the McCormick's son Randal I have always hated Randal because he insisted that his name was the correct spelling of Randle, the fucker. So maybe that part was just a little bit of revenge for myself. And when this gets out people will understand that you and your government police are incompetent. That you can't even follow simple clues to solve a murder.” Frank took in my speech in silence as he drove.

“You really are quite crazy, you know,” he finally said.

“And you're an idiot.”

“So I take it the poisoning was just another way to kill your parents then.”

“Oh no,” I said, I particularly liked my reasoning here; “you see we were originally from Pasadena, Texas.” It didn't look like Frank was putting the pieces together, “you know, where the Candyman Killer is from. The guy who killed his kid with pixie sticks lined with cyanide.” Frank still looked like he wasn't getting it, “and cyanide is an anagram for in decay, which is the state my parents were found in, hence the waiting a whole week to plant the bodies. And clearly I was doing a reversal, parent killing kid with cyanide, me killing my parents with cyanide. Don't you understand how to put anything together,” I was nearly shouting at the end, Frank's lack of insight into solving crimes infuriated me to no end. We sat for the rest f the drive in silence. We arrived at the station and Frank brought me upstairs to the booking area.

“Alright, we are going to need to process Mr. Randle here, put him in a solitary cell and I will finish up his paperwork upstairs,” Frank said to the booking officer. Another officer came around and took me and Frank started walking off.

“Frank, wait,” Frank turned to look at me, “are you just going to leave? I'm your case, you can't leave. You have to call the reporters. You need them to interview me. To hear my story.”

“No, as far as I am concerned your case is closed and you are now just a lot of paperwork,” Frank said and then walked into the elevator, leaving me with the booking officer. The only person to truly know what I had done, and why I had done it walked off, not caring.

Lost Momentum

2007-10-18T14:45:00.000-07:00

I guess I lost a little momentum recently because I've been a little busy. Okay, not really. I've been play the new Zelda game for the DS and it is so much fun I just haven't felt like writing as much. But here we go. The beginning of Chapter Four.

Chapter Four

By the Seventh grade I was convinced that I was really changing things. For the better, I can't say, but definitely changing things. Alan was still in school and we were still roommates. He had actually become less of a jackass and his grandparents let up on him. The beginning of seventh grade was very different from what I remember. There was of course the fact that Alan was there, and Vinni had already been kicked out with Kekoa, but there were other things that were different. I was in different classes, well they were the same classes but different sections. I had never had some of the teachers before. I didn't know what to expect from them.
And some things were the same. Not all of my classes were different. I still had Mrs. Beth, she would have a mental break down in the middle of the first semester and then we would have Mr. Breaker replace her. Everyone loved Mrs. Beth and it was a shock when she got replaced by Mr. Breaker, he wasn't quite as nice, but he did make a lot of crude jokes that really weren't appropriate for seventh graders. I was awkward to talk to Mrs. Beth at the beginning of the year, knowing that she would have that break down in only a few months. I didn't have any idea of how I would alter that event, I mean how do you prevent someone you have minimal contact with from going crazy. I decided to ignore it and assume I couldn't do anything about it, maybe I'm a bad person.
This year I also had drama. I hadn't really enjoyed the class when I was originally in school, but now I found that it was a class that I could really challenge myself in. Really I was terrible at drama but really going for it had it's advantages as well. There was Julia to consider after all, and I knew she was going to grow up to be a Theater major. So there were bonus points for excelling in drama. I didn't know exactly how I'd use these bonus points, but I figured it was worth a shot.
My first day of drama class went very poorly. I fell through the chair I was suppose to be using as a prop. It was awkward and everyone laughed at me. It made me feel fat again, I had thought that I had been making progress with my weight, but it was hard and I really don't think that my weight had anything to do with the chair, it was just its time. None the less I felt shame like only a seventh grader could and lost all my confidence for the day. That would have been a problem if it hadn't been the first class of the day. Everything afterwards was hard because all I could think about was falling through the chair.
After school I chose not to go with everyone for the boarding activity and went straight to study hall. It was a privilege you got when you when became a seventh grader. In eighth grade you got to have study hall in your room, given you kept your grades up. I was looking forward to that, but for now I went to the library to join the other studiers. I saw my friend Riley sitting at one of the tables studing already. Riley wasn't actually a boarding student but he frequently joined our study halls because his mother worked at the school and stayed late.
“Hey,” I said in a whisper as I sat down.
“Hey,” he returned. We sat in silence for a while, reading, before he added, “I heard you fell through a chair today.”
“Shut up, it was the chairs time.”
“Yeah, after you sat on it, it'd be anythings time after you sat on it.”
“Shut it,” I glared at a him.
“Yeah-,” a teacher walked towards our desk and Riley instantly went back to his reading. Even though it felt like we had more freedom as seventh graders, we really had the same fear of the faculty in us. When I was originally in school I had always thought that you would eventually get over fears like this, but really it was a fear of people in power of you, and you never get over that. It is kind of like how you always feel like a kid around your parents. I suppose that also comes from the fact that the age difference never changes, so that you essentially always have to feel young around them. But with authority you just always feel like they can assert their power over you when ever they feel like it.
“So after study hall you up for video games for a little bit?” I asked.
“Can't”
“Why not?”
“I have a test to study for.”
“Like hell you do,” I said.
“I do, you do too.”
“Which one is that?”
“The geography one, you know 50 states and their capitals,” Riley said. We were cut off again as the supervising teacher made his presence known again. I hated having to cut off my conversations for them, but at the same time it was kind of nice not to have everyone talking in study hall. I didn't know why but it seemed like you could sit in silence with someone for an hour, and then we could go to study hall and the entire time you would want to talk to the person. You just had to talk in study hall, our little fight against the man I guess. I waited for the teacher to get to a safe distance and then looked back at Riley.
“Come on man that thing is going to be a cakewalk,” I said.
“Not it isn't man. That is a lot of shit to remember,” he said. I had to give it to him that he was right, I had failed the test the first time around, but I knew the states pretty well now so I really wasn't worried at all.