Category: Detritus

…tomorrow would be a great day to call your oldest friend 🙂

1. What is your favorite type of literature to read (magazine, newspaper, novels, nonfiction, poetry, etc.)? A witty magazine, a subversive newspaper, a brilliant novel, enlightening nonficiton, cleverly worded poetry.

2. What is your favorite novel? “Animal Dreams” by Barbara Kingsolver, “Stardust” by Neil Gaiman, “The Mists of Avalon” by Marion Zimmer Bradley, “Reservation Blues” by Sherman Alexie, “The Bell Jar” by Sylvia Plath… F***, I can’t decide.

3. Do you have a favorite poem? (Share it!) “When You Are Old” by William Butler Yeats.

4. What is one thing you’ve always wanted to read, or wish you had more time to read? “The White Goddess” by Robert Graves.

5. What are you currently reading? A Charles De Lint short story anthology, A Lester Bangs rock criticism anthology, a book on cascading style sheets, another book on languauge development in babies and toddlers, and a couple days worth of newspapers. No wonder I feel so disjointed of late.

I invited the Vampire into my chamber

Because I was bored

Because it looked pretty

Because I’m no stranger to bloodletting

And it leaves such pretty corpses

Bloodless and pockets emptied but

With stories to tell in stone

And costumes and long locks of hair

And I know how to speak to the dead

And I know how to be one dead

So I open the vein

A little more

Wouldn’t want Nosferatu

To break a tooth on me

The wounds sting when they’re not bled

When the beast disappears

It’s time to start trolling the streets

Like some ratmad Renfield

Or the Ripper’s muse

Tracing the footsteps

For others of that inclination

Elusive devils

They don’t seem to congregate

And when they do it is of a dangerous sort

For the purposes of collective hunting

Of souldraining blooddraining

Of lovefeigning mindreigning

And they eat the flesh and spit out the bones

And I haven’t the flesh for the task so

Here I am, back in the chamber

Licking my stigmata

Till the wounds heal or the creature wakes

In silence that echoes

Because the dead won’t shut up

They’re like anyone else

And I say to the thing

In its velvet lined coffin

“This Sucks”

1) Ride a bicycle

2)Snap my fingers

3)Whistle

4)Read sheet music

5)Drive stick shift

Boudicca, Queen of the Iceni

(Also known as Boadicea) Died A.D. 60

Boudicca has been the subject of myth and legend for centuries. Revered as a symbol of British freedom, stories of her heroism have been told to English schoolchildren for the past two hundred years. In fact, she was the wife of King Prasutagus of the Iceni, a British tribe that lived near the modern town of Colchester during the time of the Roman Emperor Nero. When Prasutagus, an ally of the Romans died, the local Roman government officials decided that they would seize her wealth and lands for themselves. When Boudicca protested, saying that she was a Roman ally who was being treated no better than a slave, the Roman soldiers flogged her and raped her daughters.

This was an atrocity that Boudicca was not about to bear without a fight. She called her tribe to arms and rebellion against the Romans. The first town to suffer her furious vengeance was Colchester, known to the Romans as Camulodunum. She burned the town and slaughtered the inhabitants. Suetonius Paulinus, the Roman governor of Britain, was away in the North destroying the Druids on the island of Anglesey when news of Boudicca’s attack reached him. His army proceeded south in an orderly fashion, marching twenty-four miles each day and setting camp. Meanwhile, Boudicca was headed toward Verulamium (St. Albans). She would avoid any fortified place but attack regions where the plunder was great and the defenses were weak The Second Augusta Legion, under Petillius Cerialis, met Boudicca’s eighty to one-hundred thousand rebels with two thousand Roman troops. They were almost totally wiped out, with only the cavalry escaping. After Verulamium was put to the torch, Suetonius entered Londinium (London). He advised the citizens to leave, and offered to take them with him. He didn’t have enough troops with him to defend the town, and the garrison there was much too small to deal effectively with Boudicca. The main part of Suetonius?army would not arrive for many days. In the words of Tacitus, he sacrificed a town to save a province.

Word of Boudicca’s barbaric deeds paralyzed the British countryside with fear. Again, we have Tacitus to tell us what happened. The British did not take or sell prisoners. They could not wait to cut throats, burn, hang, and crucify. Even today, when foundations are being dug for a new building in the three towns destroyed by Boudiccas’s rebels, a thick layer of ash gives mute testimony to the completeness of the devastation. There is an unexpected benefit for the historians, though. By digging to discover what parts of the modern city have this buried layer of ash, they can map the extent of the ancient towns as they existed in the time of Boudicca when they had been in existence only fourteen years

Suetonius’ careful planning and patience finally paid off. Instead of rushing into battle against a much larger force, he chose a place to meet Boudicca where his 10,000 legionaries would have the advantage against her rather disorganized 100,000 rebels. With dense woods at his back to protect him from ambush, he waited in a narrow defile for her to attack. The British were so confident of victory that they brought their families out to watch them slaughter the Romans. All day long, the British sent wave after wave of attackers against Suetonius?well-disciplined troops. Towards evening, the Romans got the upper hand and attacked, trapping the British against their own wagons and pack animals. The Romans slaughtered about 80,000 Britons, including women, children, and old men, repaying atrocities in kind. Boudicca and her two daughters poisoned themselves rather than be captured and made to walk in a triumphal procession in Rome as prisoners of war. Though both of them were responsible for much brutality in this, the Boudiccan Revolt, they are celebrated as heroes in English history and legend today

…McSweeney’s links!

More Pope Reviews

McSweeney’s

Internet Tendency:Confessions of a New Coffee Drinker

Popular Children’s Fairy Tales Reimagined Using Members of The Author’s Family

Is It the Flu?

The American Canon of the Choose-Your-Own-Adventure

Corbid is a bit, shall we say, under the weather of late.

Not to regale you all with the sordid details, but the gist of it is that if I don’t eat, I am fine until I grow weak from low blood sugar, at which point I must eat, but then when I do I grow feverish and kind of seasick and it all begins again.

Oh there was an old lady who swallowed a fly

I don’t know why she swallowed the fly

Perhaps she’ll die…

(Hey, you there with the elipses! Why must you always oversue the elipses? Why must you end every sentence like this…)

Distracted ramblings of a feverish brain.

Feel free to make fun of them in the comments section.

Shall sink back into my fever dream with a soundtrack by Nick Drake, courtesy of Rhapsody which is well worth the ten bucks a month if only for the immediacy of it…(more elipses, wtf?)

From an interview in The Onion with Neil Gaiman:

“All my life, I’ve felt that I was getting away with something because I was just making things up and writing them down, and that one day there would be a knock, and a man with a clipboard would be standing there and say, “It says here you’ve just been making things up all these years. Now it’s time to go off and work in a bank.” Because my grandmother or whoever would always warn me, as they always warn children, “Don’t make things up! You know what happens to little boys who make things up!” But they never tell you what happens. As far as I can tell, it involves being able to spend a lot of time at home, plus a bit of international travel, and staying in nice hotels, and lots of very nice people who want you to sign things for them. So.”

Someday I want to meet the guy just so I can muss up his hair and smile at him indulgently and go “awww…”

I’m afraid I’m going to have “Radio Free Europe” stuck in my head for days…

The lights dropped. There was some amazing digital animation onscreen featuring a backing band and a blonde man with a harmonica. From backstage, came a familiarly deep, laughing voice…

And the crowd went wild…

He started in with “Rebel Rebel.” He was wearing a black denim jacket with tuxedo tails and tight black jeans (dear god) as he posed and strutted and teased the audience. Mick Jagger has nothing on Bowie in their collective middle age.

Two songs off “Reality” followed (great album.)Then Bowie’s cover of “Cactus” (even better live.)Then a big tease with “China Girl” (offered to let the audience sing, sat back and listened for a line or two, then took the stage and said “well, that was just fuckin’ tragic, I’d better sing it myself.”)

At this point, it all becomes a blur of transcendental blissfulness. I remember there was lots of material from the Eno compilations, especially “Low,” and he played both “Man Who Sold The World,” and “Life On Mars?” to Lizzie’s great delight. He dedicated “Heroes” to the people of America, post 9/11.

At some point the topcoat and then a zebra striped jacket beneath fell away, revealing a skintight t-shirt of unknown logo. Jesus the man is well built for being 58 years old!

The band included the incomparable Earl Slick on guitar and the origianl keyboardist from “the Spiders” and of course Lizzie’s “imaginary girlfriend” on bass. I’ll let Lizzie explain that one…Anyway, suffice it to say, they rocked. But nothing compared to the encore…

The Ziggy Stardust Encore.

It began with “Hang On To Yourself’ which I consider one of the world’s first punk songs:

“Well it really comes out better on a stolen guitar/you’re the blessed/we’re the Spiders from Mars”

I was pogoing in my 4 inch boots and red velvet and tossing my pigtails wildly. Lizzie was transfixed (and corseted in plaid, in case you were wondering.)

It continued:

“Five Years,” “Suffragette City,” and last but not least “Ziggy Stardust” itself. So that the last words our idol sang to us were…

…”Ziggy played gui..taaar..”

We were fifteen years old again, not grown women with Hello Kitty accessories.We were awestruck. We were starstruck. We were speechless. We barely spoke the whole way home, just listened to CDs and digested the experience. Even skipped the traditional Waffle House outing on the way back. I think we were a bit physically and psychically exhausted. I for one slept like a wee baby thereafter.

Anyway, I shall die fulfilled now. I have indeed seen God. And if I haven’t said it properly quite yet, I’ll say it now:

Thank you,Lizzie!!!

And now, as if that weren’t enough, here’s a Friday Five:

When was the last time you…

1. …went to the doctor? About 3 months ago.

2. …went to the dentist? You don’t want to know…

3. …filled your gas tank? Today!

4. …got enough sleep? Sunday, for a change.

5. …backed up your computer? What? You mean it doesn’t do that for me?