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interesting review of a book on the impact of copyright law and publishing practices on the establishment of the canon. via Languagehat
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Cosmic disco
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Author: Harry
Something Eloise said made me remember what I think was the only time I’ve ever been to a gay club (because, you know, I’m not gay, and I’ve never been that keen on clubbing anyway).
It was Love Muscle at the Fridge in Brixton, which, slightly startlingly, still seems to exist. Not the nightclub – I know that still exists – the fact that the same gay night is still going with the same name. It must be over a decade since I went there. The men were all in DMs, jeans and white T-shirts, which must date it quite badly.
I remember being struck by how male the atmosphere was; blokey even. I think the only other time I’ve been in quite such a male-dominated atmosphere is at a football match. That shouldn’t really have come as a surprise, but our culture is so keen to portray gay men in terms of effeminacy and (double-edged, this) stylishness that it really did come as a surprise to see the dancefloor full of men who were not buff, effeminate fashion mavens but just rather ordinary-looking men who didn’t look that special in the jeans and T-shirt combo, and didn’t dance that well, and were generally rather like any dancefloor-full of London men on the pull.
The danger of stereotyping is not that the stereotypes are out-and-out lies, but that they contain such a partial and simplistic version of the truth.
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A surprisingly fabulous animation of the Mars Exploration Rover.
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via stumbleupon
Down to 12 minutes, this time.
They sing of eels;
the fishmongers trill their local songs
and try to drown the spiels
of sellers of deceptive pongs.
The three-card trickers
hope to draw the punters from
the stall that sells the polyester knickers;
and little acned Tom
with his knock-off Louis Vuitton
hopes to get the cash
of those who know it is a con
but are willing to be fakely flash.
All of human life is here, and loud.
You should be proud.
This was my go at Rob’s quick sonnet challenge. In the event it took me about 26 minutes, which isn’t very good considering that the the classic challenge is 15 minutes.
The hiss of pebbles on a shingled beach,
the stranded bladderwrack, the grey
sea-holly, hard against the spray,
the oystercatchers calling each to each.Where men are afterthoughts,
where cows have never grazed or hedges grown,
where gardens are driftwood and stone,
where ploughs would blunt against the quartz.It is not cosy here.
It does not feel secure;
we feel some inkling of the ancient fear
in the waves on the shore.
In the grating of stones underfoot we can hear
an opening door.
I quite like the ploughs line and the final image, but the rest is pretty generic.
You’ll notice that it’s metrically a bit peculiar. I did at one point have the first eight lines in IP, but the sestet really wanted to be shorter lines and I just thought wotthehell. And once I’d stopped being metrically regular I went back to the octet and pruned out some bits.
On the occasions when I do sit down to try and write metrical poetry, I increasingly find myself drawn to shorter lines – trimeter, tetrameter – and to changing line lengths. Ballad meter and suchlike (of course even that doesn’t explain the outbreak of anapests at the end). The discursiveness and unmusicality of sustained IP just doesn’t appeal to me at the moment.
Not that IP is inevitably discursive or unmusical but, fairly or not, that’s how I feel about it at the moment.
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Why the passive voice has been much maligned
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lots of photos of Thai insects
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just type in a word and start playing
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“At the ende of the game, ye do muche penaunce for the sinnes of the werlde and thanne ther ys sum musique.” GC on video games.