charlie sheen, Moammar Khadafy and me (Dressing for the Apocolypse: Why I Keep My Gap Card)

Crazy, Man,
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Silence | Chapbook | Vol XLV, Let Dinggedicht Speak by Desmond Kon Zhicheng-Mingdé

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Vol XLV, Let Dinggedicht Speak

Desmond Kon Zhicheng-Mingdé (25.2.11)

 The Dinggedicht, translated as “thing poem”, is a type of poetry that explores objects from within rather than from without.

"I’m spoofing my awkward Chinese name of four characters (an anomaly where I come from since most Chinese first names comprise two characters), rendering it a strange idiomatic personality. The parenthetical heteronymic names featured in these pieces are traditional Chinese idioms, used here to characterize the particular speaker/s within each piece." D. K Z-M

Charlie Sheen Goes Crazy: Reaping What He Sows on Two and a Half Men (Radio Audio and Transcript)

Two and a Half Men teaches boys and men to act like Charlie Sheen does in real life. On the show, however,there are no bad consequences (that cannot be cured with a wry lesson-learned smile and perhaps a smack in the face from a ticked off prostitute). update: see Comments.
Journalists
EXCUSING  Charlie Sheen for battering, death threats, and grotesque infidelity (see video HERE) over a year ago seemed foolish to me. We reap what we sow. (Stoning Jared Loughner HERE anyone?) This is the culture which destroys girls and boys.

If you have not heard the radio audio, it is at once stunning, horrifying, and hilarious, hilarious until one thinks of his family and friends, and the crew of the show out of work.

If you want to hear the arrogant sad drug induced break down:

and by the way, the radio "dj" is A Major TOad.

[mean that in a bad way]

(btw, Charlie criticizes obama as he apparently believes 9/11 was committed by bush or somethng- a "truther" ?)



turn up your sound and say a little prayer

Excusing Charlie Sheen

and more HERE

"I think it was Nails that said, and I was really flattered that he got it right, he might be Nails, but I'm bayonets. I'm battle tested bayonets... I'm so tired of pretending like my life isn't just perfect and just winning every second, and I'm not just perfect and bi**hing and just delivering the goods at every frickin' turn. Look what I'm dealing with, man. I'm dealing with fools and trolls. I'm dealing with soft targets, and it's just strafing runs in my underwear before my first cup of coffee ... they lay down with their ugly wives and their ugly children and just look at their loser lives and then they look at me and say, 'I can't process it.' Well, no, and you never will! Stop trying! Just sit back and enjoy the show."

Let me say this about the Goddesses, I don't think the term is good enough, but when you're bound by these terrestrial descriptions, you must use the best term available. So if you think about it dude, I'm 0-for-3 in marriage, but like in baseball, the scoreboard doesn't lie. Never has. So what we all have is a marriage of the hearts. And to sully, contaminate, or radically disrespect this unit with a shameful contract is something I'll leave to the amateurs and bible grippers."
"And I just gotta add this, there was a whole firestorm about Brooke being a part of our crew... Where there were four, there are now three. Good-bye, Brooke, and good luck in your travels; you're going to need it. Badly ... She's not there now and we are and I don't know, winning, anyone? Rhymes with winning? Anyone? Yeah, that would be us. Sorry man, didn't make the rules. Oops."
"I have cleansed myself. I closed my eyes and in a nanosecond, I cured myself... It's the work of sissies. The only thing I'm addicted to is winning. This bootleg cult, arrogantly referred to as Alcoholics Anonymous, reports a 5 percent success rate. My success rate is 100 percent. Do the math ... another one of their mottoes is 'Don't be special, be one of us.' Newsflash: I am special, and I will never be one of you! I have a disease? Bulls**t! I cured it with my brain, with my mind. I cured it, I'm done ... you don't look like you're having a lot of fun. I'm gonna hang out with these two smoking hotties and fly privately around the world. It might be lonely up here but I sure like the view, Alex!"



What a Toad of Beauty Looks Like

The shameful exploitation of those monied, addicted, blind, possessed--will be a heavy weight.

Famine and abundance, death and life

            She wasn’t surprised when the dusty stranger asked for a drink of water and a piece of bread to eat. After all, she was down to her last day’s ration of flour and oil. She had been told in a dream that she would supply this man with food. It had better be today, for tomorrow there wouldn’t be any.

            The rainy season had come and gone—without a drop. Her little garden shriveled before the herbs and vegetables opened to the first leaves. The father of her son had been a fisherman in their seaside village of Zarephath, near the Mediterranean kingdom of Sidon. After he’d been lost at sea in a violent storm, the villagers had brought food and loaves of bread and helped for a while, but with the spreading famine, everyone was stretched thin. Buying food shipped in from foreign markets was beyond their means. Their principal god, Baal, was supposed to supply the earth with dew and rain, and make their livestock fruitful. But a prophet from Israel, Elijah, had threatened a drought, and it had become a reality.

            The widow and her son had barely survived on plain flour-and-oil flatbread for weeks. There were no more fish, for she had no means to buy them. Her firewood was used up, and, breathing hard in her weakness, she picked up sticks on the beach to build one last cooking fire. When she had an armload, she dragged herself back through the city gate, and there was the dusty stranger. He was lean, but muscled from walking, so he had escaped the worst of the famine.

            “I don’t have any bread—only a handful of flour and a little oil. I’m making a meal for myself and my son, that we may eat it—and die,” she responded to his request for food. They were already so weak and malnourished that death would come quickly.

            The stranger could see this for himself, but he said to her, “First make a small cake of bread for me from what you have and bring it to me, and then make something for yourself and your son. For the God of Israel says: ‘The jar of flour will not be used up and the jug of oil will not run dry until the day the Lord gives rain on the land.’”

            The God of Israel. Not her god, Baal the lord of fertility and abundance, who seemed to have gone underground despite prayers and sacrifices. Whatever god Elijah called on, she didn’t care at this point. But the personal integrity of this woman, deep in the flesh and bones of every honorable person, demanded that she offer hospitality to strangers even at ultimate cost to herself.

            The widow didn’t skim off a little bit of flour and oil from the abundance of her pantry. She used the entire handful—all she had—for this crazy prophet. She gave until she had to trust in someone else’s god for sustenance.

            And sustain her, the God of Israel did. Every day the flour and oil were miraculously replenished. Perhaps as the drought worsened, the widow even supplied bread to her neighbors and extended family. And yes, Elijah the prophet. The man responsible for this drought and famine that had fallen not only on Israel, but all their neighbors as well.

            That’s another thing. The widow was harboring a fugitive from King Ahab and his queen, Jezebel, in her upper chamber. Perhaps there was a reward for his capture, or death for the person harboring him. But the unmarried prophet Elijah, the widow, and her son lived together as a family, sharing the food-gathering, fishing, foraging, and other chores, and the joys and pains of everyday life. Isaiah said years later, “God sets the lonely in families.” Even if the family is made up of unconventional components!

            Sometime during those three and a half years of famine, according to the story in 1 Kings 17:7-24, the woman’s son became ill and died. In her grief, the widow lashed out at her friend Elijah. Wasn’t it enough that Elijah had prayed for disaster on Canaan? Did he have to bring death with him? “What do you have against me, man of God?” she cried. “Did you come to remind me of my sin and kill my son?”

            Elijah took the boy from her arms, carried him upstairs, and laid him on the bed. He prayed for the boy to live again, and God answered the prayer immediately.

            Then the woman said to Elijah, “Now I know that you are a man of God and the word of the Lord from your mouth is the truth.” She had experienced God’s grace for herself, though she had heard it from Elijah over many months of evening talks.

            Hundreds of years later, Jesus said that this Phoenician woman had received a great honor. “There were many widows [here in] Israel in Elijah’s time, when the sky was shut for three and a half years and there was a severe famine throughout the land. Yet Elijah was not sent to any of them, but a widow in Zarephath.” Luke 4:25-26

            Because of her openness and hospitality to a stranger, the widow and her son were sustained and renewed during the famine. Because she learned to trust God, everything that she feared: loneliness, starvation, her own and her child’s deaths, were answered with companionship, food in plenty, life and health. They were given to her because she gave all that she had. When she was emptied, she could be filled. When she was weak, she was made strong.

            In speaking of another single woman, Jesus said, “This poor widow has put more into the treasury than all the others. They all gave out of their wealth: but she, out of her poverty, put in everything—all she had to live on.” Mark 12:43

            Whether it’s a season of harvest, thanksgiving, and gift giving, or a season of recession, joblessness, and poverty, this is the time to bring a sacrifice of love and praise and service to God. Cast yourself upon him, as a child would on its father, and see the showers of blessing he’ll have to let go, to catch you in his arms! Your Father is pleased to give you the kingdom. 

This article by Christy K. Robinson was published in Loma Linda Campus Hill Communique, Sept/Oct 1998.

           

Wider Reading | Days of Roses Anthology

"All that really mattered then was that I was a man..."

The name Days of Roses is taken from a Tom Waits song in which a man phones an old flame in his twilight years for one last reminiscence of things lost. I’ve no doubt that Waits would be happy to have his lyrics used for the recent poetry anthology, not least of all because it had its launch last night in the sort of sweaty, dimly lit, cramped, underground pub that would appeal to his beatnik heart.

As well as the body heat and the smell of incense, what immediately hit me upon arriving at the Day of Roses  launch was what a socially comfortable event the night was. This may seem like an odd thing to point out in a literary review, but as someone who has been to a lot of readings, I cannot over-emphasize the importance of making your guests feel that they are in capable hands when hosting a live event. You will not find a better example of how to make this work than attending a Days of Roses event.

So, for the uninitiated, Days of Roses is a monthly poetry-reading event that has been running for a little over two years in various fine drinking establishments across the land. The list of previous performers is an impressive thing to behold, including some of my favourites; Sam Riviere, Roddy Lumsden, Jack Underwood, Heather Phillipson, Jon Stone, Ross Sutherland, Tom Chivers, Todd Swift, James Brookes and Emily Hasler.

As they pass the two-year mark, the team behind these events have put together a beautiful anthology of some of their favourite performers. It is clear that the same amount of care and pleasure went into the production of their anthology as goes into the hosting of their nights; the books are hand bound by co-editor, Malene Engelund, the cover includes one of fifteen photographs and pieces of art by Ross McNicol and Amelia Newton Whitelaw and, if I’m not very much mistaken, are typeset in Perpetua, the absolute king of fonts for printing poetry*.

As seems to be the case with every other modern anthology, the Days of Roses team make a selling point of their diversity. Whereas some anthologists will use ‘diversity’ as a way of masking their lack of coherence, I feel that the range of styles to be found in this collection is reconcilable with the high quality of the writing throughout. The beauty of the Days of Roses anthology concept, is that by framing it as an artefact of a live reading, the reader will read it whilst imagining a performance, which makes the diverse range of registers and voices refreshing rather than confusing.

Two particular highlights of the anthology are Maximilian Hildebrand’s wittily bleak Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle:

“So I’m outside in the garden

And it’s just me and the bugs

And they don’t mind

So I light up a ciggie at the

Second attempt and cough

A couple of times to know I’m a smoker

And it’s a desperate profession

And I think to myself

This is living alright…”

and Lydia Macpherson’s Pastoral:

“The wireless bleats

spring is here and look

the chewing gum is blooming

lichen on city pavements

in the river shopping trolleys

are mating at rusty angles

welding in the petrol spills…”

Beyond this, the anthology, and its launch night, is/was also greatly enhanced by the ever mesmerising Liz Berry (follow the link for a review I did of her debut pamphlet last year) and this year’s Costa Prize winner, Jo Shapcott (who has provided an exclusive new poem called The Elements as the book’s opening).

Whilst the fact that you are reading this strongly suggests that you missed the event itself, I recommend you try to pick yourself up a copy of the Days of Roses anthology by e-mailing the days of roses team while supplies last, or wait a couple of weeks for it to come out on Amazon.

*For more information on the virtues of Perpetua, please e-mail James Brookes, who will happily write you an essay on the topic.

Phil Brown

Poetry Editor

Urban Decay, Wolverine & A Great Exercise Video

I'm finding it difficult to find time to blog what with Chris being home.  We always try to spend as much time together as possible when he is home like going to the cinema, going out for dinner etc. but I was determined to get a couple of posts done while they are fresh in my mind.  Sometimes I have so many things going round in my head that it's easier to just get it down in writing before I forget!

I'm just going to show you guys some new Urban Decay products that I have been enjoying using recently. 

The first one is the Afterglow Glide On Cheek Tint in Score and here's some info on it from the UD website:

"Finally! Sheer, buildable cheek tints that glide on and feel weightless – (never heavy or greasy like your grandma’s cream blush). Our techy-feeling tint applies effortlessly on top of any foundation or bare skin… no pulling or rubbing needed to make it look right. And you’ll never get that powdery, cakey look that sometimes comes from powder blush. The formula is loaded with good-for-you ingredients like Vitamin E, Vitamin C and Vitamin A, so your skin gets nourished and protected. The color goes on more sheer than it looks in the pan, but since its so buildable, YOU control how much you want to blush".

I'm not usually a fan of cream blush products because they always seem to require lots of blending and rubbing and you end up ruining your foundation in the process!  However, this has to be the lightest formula I have ever felt in a cream blush.  As the name suggest, it is more of a cheek tint as the colour is so subtle but it's great that you can build it up to amp up the intensity.  You can see from the pics above that it looks extremely natural on the cheeks (I just swirled my fingertips in the pan, dabbed them on the back of my hand to blend a little, then applied it lightly to my cheeks).  The best things about this blush product are that it gives a fresher look than powder, it doesn't contain any shimmer or glitter and it doesn't feel sticky, greasy or tacky once applied.  I love the pink/peach shade!  It comes in 7 shades: Score, Bang (bright orange), Crush (bright pink), Fetish (rose pink), Greedy (berry), Indecent (peach) and Quickie (light pink). 

This Urban Decay UrbanGlow Cream Highlight in Sin kind of reminds me of the Mac Cream Colour Base in Hush but the UD one has a MUCH better formulation! The consistency turns to liquid as soon as your fingers touch the pan which I have never seen before.  Some cream highlighters can be kind of sticky and hard to blend but this product makes it so easy!  I use the same techinque to apply this as I use for the cheek tint in that I pick up some product on my fingertips, blend it in the back of my hand, then tap into my cheekbones.  Here's what the UD website says:

"Our silky cream highlighter gives you the power to guide their eyes to all the right places. Packed with pearl powders, the weightless formula adds luminescence wherever you need it: Craft contours where there were none. Create sculpted cheek and brow bones. Look like you got a full night's sleep with a touch of Urbanglow in the inner corners of your eyes. Hide that hangover with a dewy, youthful glow. The non-greasy formula dries down instantly, and can be worn right on top of makeup".

This ensures that you always get a flawless, even application with no streaks or patchy bits.  This highlighter gives a lovely glow to the cheekbones without being too shimmery.  Sometimes Urban Decay products can be glittery (which I hate) but this one is just perfection.  I love the shimmering champagne colour of the UD sin products and this shade is neutral enough to work on any skin tone.  I like to wear it on my cheekbones, browbones, inner corners of eyes and on my cupid's bow.  It comes in 4 shades: Sin, Brown Sugar (warm taupey brown), Moonshine (iridescent shimmer) and Wicked (radiant pinky shimmer).   Plus I love the skull on the lid of the compact! Simple things....

I love the Urban Decay 24/7 eyeliners so I was excited to see that they had released an eyeshadow counterpart...Glide On 24/7 Shadow Pencils.  There are 12 shades in all:

Barracuda (black with silver sparkle)

Clash (bright turquoise with silver sparkle)

Clinic (emerald green with silver sparkle)

Delinquent (dark purple with bright purple sparkle)

Lit (golden bronze)

Mercury (gunmetal)

Midnight Cowboy (beige with silver sparkle)

Morphine (light purple with pale blue shift)

Narc (mossy green)

Rehab (taupe)

Sin (champagne)

Wasteland (dark brown) 

Now eyeshadow pencils can be hit or miss and my favourite was, and still is, the Jemma Kidd Iridescent Eye Silk Crayon in Tigers Eye but these liners come at a close second.  They do have a better colour selection than the Jemma Kidd pencils but they share the same chunky appearance.  Some people don't like that but I personally do because you can use them as an eyeshadow OR as a chunky eyeliner that can be smudged for an undone look.  Here's what the UD website says about them:

"They’re crease-proof, they’re waterproof… it’s the next generation of 24/7 Pencils! Our Shadow Pencils deliver incredible color payout, but feel lightweight. The new fat shape allows you to cover large areas more quickly. Use the thin tip as eyeliner, or the side of the tip as a generous swipe of eyeshadow. Luscious drop-dead shades make you feel every inch the creative type, as you blend shimmer, cream and sparkle finishes".

I love the Barracuda, Midnight Cowboy, Mercury and Rehab shades...they are all gorgeous, smooth and really blendable.  You will see in the pic above that I used Midnight Cowboy all over the lid, then blended Rehab in the outer corners and used Barracuda as a liner on the top lid.  The best thing about these is that they don't move once on and they don't crease either.  Midnight Cowboy powder eyeshadow always means glitter fallout for me but this pencil version means I can enjoy the shade without the irritating glitter all over my cheeks!

For those of you who like regular Wolverine updates...well he still hasn't given up on his attempts to escape his cage!  As you can see from the pic above, he's ALWAYS up to something!  He recently had an escape where he got out of his cage, ate all of the hamster choc drops that we keep under the table, then got back into his cage and tried to pretend everything was normal but the massive ball of molten chocolate in his bed said different!  No doubt there will be more escape attempts/successes so I'm interested to see what he gets up to next!  I love his face in the pic above like he's saying "can I come out today please mummy?".ha ha.

And lastly, please ignore the stupid name of this exercise video...but it's a GREAT workout for your bum and thighs.  I have been doing these exercises for the past 3 weeks and boy do they work!  This guy was on The Real World in the US apparently? Despite that, he is really thorough in his workout videos in explaining how to do everything and he really knows what he's talking about.  I'm seeing really good results from doing these exercises. 

Do you have any good recommendations for workout videos on YouTube or good nutrition blogs?

Silence | Poetry | Kindle Gaps

“I have often regretted my speech, never my silence.”

Pubillius Syrus

Poets, playwrights, musicians and film directors are always playing with the tangibility of silence. We are told that the blank space on a poem’s page is a frame of silence, much like the etiquette-enforced hush in an art gallery. I like this, it’s a good thing. Within the parameters of a book’s binding it allows the poet to give their work space to breath; to draw the eye’s ear away from the silence into something worth hearing.

As a teacher, I have to reconcile this need for a respectful white canvas with the slipping sands of my photocopy budget.

There are certain effects that writers achieve with an uneconomic use of space; I’m thinking here of Ahren Warner’s rhythm-gaps or Mario Petrucci’s illustration of nuclear winter in Chernobyl with empty pages. But these are choices that are not made with the rainforests in mind.

Over the past few years I have discovered all manner of tricks to typographically condense thirty pages into six. I do this using naturally smaller fonts, always size 10, columns, extended margins, double-sided copying, etc. In so doing, I feel smug at not having to cut any of the words out to reduce the page-count, but am I not losing something just as important by treating the page as a microdot?

I remember buying a collection of poetry a couple of years ago, and feeling baffled at the fact that there were twelve empty pages at the back. Whilst I understand that this is an unavoidable part of how a book is bound, could the poet not have been called upon to do something worthwhile with all that silence? Not necessarily throw in some more poems for the sake of it, but use it to give his poems more space to spread their legs?

My grandfather would have seen it as a waste. He was a great fan of silence, that man. When the family reunions were at their banter-bustling peak, he would often absent himself to the empty front room with a book. I have since discovered that the shelf closest the chair that he would occupy in these moments is where he housed all of his poetry – here was a man who knew silence’s enhancement of poetry.

Which brings me to the Kindle. It hasn’t happened yet, but the Kindle will, very importantly, change the shape of poetic composition. At present, we all think and write in the shape of an A4 page and then we put this through a procrustean bed of approximately A5 proportions when we come to publication.

Without the fixed form of the A4 sheet we will be mildly freed.The dimensions of a screen will still frame our flow, but with no need for worrying about wasted paper, where will we go? 8000 pages with two words on each page will no longer seem like an obscenely decadent artistic indulgence, nor will three pages of blank resonance in the middle of a longer sequence.

At first, as with the Wachowski’s ‘bullet time’, it will seem like a gimmick, and it will be to start with. People will wantonly write blank pages into their poetry collection just because they can, but the art will be refined over the years, reserved for deserving cases; writers will have to earn it.

With the death of paper, the modern poet’s first new toy will be an infinite abundance of silence.

Phil Brown

Poetry Editor