Nothing yesterday, again. Sorry!

I don't have much to share right now, and it is looking like a full day. Best regards to all, and I will have a full post up sometime this weekend.

I am greedy

I want more people to set Twitter challenges. I want people to send them to me specifically. I have fun doing things like bedtime stories and "50 L Tweets" in less than 140 characters. Now I need to figure out how to make this happen.

Tired day

Perhaps from so much Shakespeare yesterday. Now I can't stop trying to think of more fun things to Twitter. The syllabus of a great works course? Hitchcock's oevre (HT @andreakremer)? Now @russmarshalek has me thinking about RPGs and trading cards as vehicles for novels. So many fun things to think about. But now for bed.

All the Twittered Shakespeare Synopses

Here they are:

CofE: It takes a surprisingly long time for two sets of twins to figure out they are being mistaken for each other. One family is reunited.

TotS: There is no clear winner in this battle between the sexes, but at least one couple probably ends up having good sex.

TGoV: Two guys overcome both temporary exile from somewhere and their impulse-control issues and marry their long-suffering sweethearts.

LLL: Men make a big deal out of the life of the mind & living rough, but court pretty women anyway. The women say “Maybe” and leave.

AMND: A love potion straightens everything out and several couples end up happily together. Rustics are mocked. Watch out for fairies.

MoV: A greedy lender loses out due to a poorly-phrased contract, women practice law in drag & w/out licenses, and lovers are united.

MWW: A physically unattractive freeloader gets what he deserves for trying to sully the virtue of happily married rich and clever women.

MAAN: Trickery breaks up 1 couple and makes another. Love prevails, with a wedding and public shame for faithless lovers & jealous meddler.

AYLI: Exiled rich people live in the forest and fall in love with each other. Later, the deposed duke gets his dukedom back as he likes it.

TN: Shipwrecked sister dresses as a man. Bizarre love triangle is resolved when identical brother is found and genders are disclosed.

T&C: A Trojan man doubts his Trojan lover, Achilles eventually goes into battle, and Hector is defeated.

AWtEW: A doctor’s daughter saves a king and gets an unwilling husband. She tricks him into bed, gets pregnant, and then he comes around.

MfM: A lazy duke puts a pious jerk in charge. Things get out of hand, the duke takes the reins, the pious jerk sees the error of his ways.

---- the Histories

HVI1: King Henry accidentally starts the wars of the roses and gets engaged to a French girl. Incidentally, Joan of Arc is captured and killed.

HVI2: King Henry marries his French girl. Royal catfights end in impasse. The men battle at St. Albans and King Henry’s side doesn’t lose.

HVI3: Tension over succession, Queen declares war on Yorks, graphic violence ensues. Lancasters fall, Edward IV weds unwisely, takes power.

RIII: Edward IV dies, a caricatured villain usurps, murders innocents, & dies on a battlefield in sore need of a horse. The Tudors win.

KJ: King John won’t back down from King Phillip nor the Pope, nor many confusing goings-on, dies of poison. Magna Carta not mentioned.

RII: Richard banishes noblemen and then seizes dead uncle’s property. Banished son of uncle comes back in force and becomes Henry IV.

HIV1: Henry spurns supporters, who then side with the Scots. His no-good son makes good and kills the rebel leader. More Yorkists threaten.

HIV2: Prince Hal works on his kingliness. Falstaff droops poignantly in-between exploits. Henry IV dies, Hal becomes king & spurns Falstaff.

HV: Bad-ass Henry V kicks France’s butt with a rag-tag army, many long-bows, and excellent speeches. Henry then marries a French princess.

HVIII: Queen Katherine is justly & legally divorced, Anne Boleyn is legally married, the future Queen Elizabeth is born. Courtiers suck.

------ the Tragedies

TA: TA turns down empire, is surrounded by horrible violence, tricks his enemy into eating her sons’ flesh, kills and is killed.

R&J: Boy meets girl, boy kills girl’s cousin&gets banished, girl fakes death, boy thinks it’s real, kills self, girl wakes & kills self

JC: General with anxious wife gets assassinated for seeming ambitious. Opinion turns against the assassins, but stage is set for empire.

H: Mommy issues are just the beginning for a prince with a murdered father and new Uncle/Step-dad. Most everybody ends up dead.

O: Great man is tricked into killing his wife. Trickster is exposed. Great man kills self in remorse. Trickster is hauled off.

KL: Old king learns too late that two of his kids only wanted power. He and most main characters die. One just gets his eyes gouged out.

M: Kingship is just not in the cards for an ambitious and superstitious Scotsman.

A&C: Glamorous lovers take on the world and lose, then welcome death.

Co: Elitist Roman goes over to enemies & threatens Rome. Rome sends his mom to make treaty, he does, then enemies kill him for it.

TofA: An overly generous man is let down by his “friends.” He subsidizes rebellion & whores w/VD & dies a bitter man, cursing society.

----- Romances

P: A prince on the run is separated from his young daughter in dangerous circumstances. Wise and virtuous, they are reunited in time.

Cy: A guy believes lies about his girl. All kinds of mistaken ID & silliness go on, followed by peace between Britain and Rome.

WT: A king who regrets causing the supposed deaths of his wife & baby daughter is joyously and improbably reunited w/ them years later.

T: Noblemen are shipwrecked on a magical island. The proper succession to the rule of Naples and Milan is settled. Everyone is set free.

TNK: After falling in love with the same woman, cousins become rivals. At combat, one wins but dies, one loses but gets the girl.

Unless & Until Update

I am very pleased to announce that Unless and Until proceed apace. There will be a total of four volumes, each featuring six chapters, six paintings and at least six songs. Volume I is completely written - the first chapter is preceded by the Abecedarian Prelude I read at Megan Volpert's book launch. The DVD movie of the Abecedarian Prelude is just a taste of what is to come as Julie Puttgen animates each chapter and Jim Carlson sets each of the songs and scores the recording of the text.

Hopefully, we'll have a chance to record Volume I before too long, so that Julie can get started on the animation. I have written the first chapter of Volume II and made a start on the second chapter.

In the interest of tidbits for all who might be interested, here are the lyrics of one of the songs from Volume I. Carl, a friend of Unless and Until, has come to visit, and sings them an old song about a woman who lives out in mysterious parts on the ocean.

The sky so bright so wild so high
Wondrous birds forever roam
Hespera Delia calls her birds
and when she calls them
they fly home

The sea so old, so dark, so deep
the mother of all wondrous things
Hespera Delia of the sea
gathers sunset
as she sings

The ocean floor is strewn with eggs
Wondrous birds in infant shells
Hespera Delia gathers light
to feed the birds
from ocean swells

The eggs at first hatch only feet
that grow to body, head and beak
Hespera Delia’s sunset light
first makes them birds
then lets them speak

The sea so old, so dark, so deep
the mother of all wondrous things
Hespera Delia of the sea
gathers sunset
as she sings

The sky so bright so wild so high
Wondrous birds forever roam
Hespera Delia calls her birds
and when she calls them
they fly home

Nothing yesterday, little today, again

Sorry - the new meds are actually fine, but that means more involvement in non-internet life.

Today I really mean it

I don't feel well again today, and I am interested to see how the new higher dose of seizure meds plays out. The only thing I am considering post-wise are a couple of things that have come to mind in the aftermath of writing the 7 things post yesterday.

The first is that I was not really raised atheist. Not religious, either. There is not really a word for it. We did not attend church, but moral, civic, and societal obligations were deeply stressed.

The other is that there is one more thing I am irrationally frightened of - space. There is nothing you could do to get me to go up in a spaceship. And yet I am a big fan of most space movies, even a lot of pretty bad ones.

7 Things You Probably Don't Know About Me

I have not technically been tagged, I don't think, but I am taking @Hello_Nurse 's and @trelvix 's queries as to whether I have written my 7 things yet as constructive tags to do the same. It appears that @texburgher has tagged his entire list of people he follows, which I think might not be in the spirit of the meme, but it is efficient!

This is an interesting and tricky enterprise. Most information I feel comfortable sharing directly is available below (in the "About This Person" post), and there is plenty more available indirectly at the opoyul~ pages and elsewhere. So, what is there that is both plausibly of interest and share-able?

1. In June, 2000, on an internship with an international law entity, I spent 10-15 minutes in the hugely echoing double-staircase marble entryway of the Peace Palace in the Hague in the dark, at night, with nobody there, whistling every song I could think of. It was marvelous. The coolest thing I have ever done and ever expect to do.

2. I believe that a desire for physical immortality, or even simple immortality of consciousness, is inherently immoral. I cannot say for certain whether this belief predates my initial diagnosis with brain tumor, but I know that I had well developed negative opinions on the subject in the early years, after resection surgery but before the first time I went on chemo. If you show even the slightest signs of asking me more about how I feel about this, I will tell you at length.

3. Although I do not self-identify as part of any particular religious or non-religious group (raised atheist, educated Presbyterian, friends and relatives of all different faiths), I pray daily. That prayer consists solely of "Thank you for this beautiful day." I started praying more than ten years ago, and it took a while to figure out what I had to say, but eventually it all boiled down to simply being grateful for existence and for this beautiful world (as horrible and ugly as life and people often are).

4. I smoke Marlboro Reds. At least a pack a day. Suck it! Too bad! Not going to quit. I will probably continue to want to want to quit, because my smoking distresses my loved ones. If a day arrives when I do in fact just want to quit, I will quit. I have quit a couple of times before, once for a few years, but the day came when I didn't want to be quit anymore, and started again.

5. I don't see movies in the theater anymore, and almost never watch them on dvd. I have stopped watching TV, too. Pretty much the only books I read now are ones (A) I have read before; or (B) are guaranteed to blow my mind with awesome information; and (C) are fun. This amazes me sometimes. From my teens up through most of my twenties (I am 36), I was fairly committed to staying on top of what were the actually good movies and books coming out, and I did a reasonably good job of it. No more Pynchon (bums me out), no more Nabokov (ditto), leery of all the McSweeney's folks too, now that I suspect them of planning a New Yorker coup and simply becoming the new boss, just like the old boss. Now it is not so much that I can't be bothered but that I have an actual aversion to finding these things out unless its by cheating and reading reviews and keeping up with the Onion AV Club.

Almost there!

6. I suspect that I have some psychic powers. All the evidence for this probably boils down to well-trained intelligence and highly intuitive thought processing, except for the way I can usually tell which elevator in a bank of elevators is going to open its doors, even when there is no display of what floors the elevators are on. I do give pretty good Tarot readings, but there really isn't anything paranormal about it. On this general subject, I will say that Ouija boards are wicked, if only in that they invariably bring out the worst in people.

7. Things I am irrationally frightened of: two that I can think of right this second. The first is water, mainly the ocean. Drowning. I nearly died being born (breech birth, one leg caught up, weight 1/10th my mother's entire body weight), and there might be a correlation. The second is engines, or anything running on a gas tank. This has mainly been a problem with lawn mowers and camping stoves - I just can't deal with them.

There are my 7 things, all of them easier to share than my ambition, occasionally alluded to on this blog, of having a hand in tearing down and rebuilding the decadent state of Western literary culture.

Now that I have written up my 7 things I will just totally copy @texburgher and tag these folks.

Nothing yesterday, little today

I have some stuff to do, and not feeling well. I would like to respond to this post from Lee Stranahan that he mentioned on Twitter, but that will probably wait for another day. Need to see what I can put together that vaguely resembles an actual accounting of myself as a professional poet.

Addendum- I didn't even do that, but I have rested well, eaten properly, worked on Unless & Until, and did the 7 Things post, above. Can't commit, health-wise, to some things.

Here is a Post for Today:

A post for today.