It’s been almost one full year since my lazy ass has managed to update BnD. I hope (hope, hope) to at least get back to that weekly (ok, semi-weekly) schedule that I was on back then. I know you all (all 6 of you – maybe 6 – wordpress has moved a bunch of things around and I haven’t yet figured out where to find who’s following along here) have been dying for more ramblings-on about matters that none of us care about, are concerned about, or were in the absolute very least aware of.
I think (again, the hobgoblins behind the scenes at wordpress are working to confound me at every turn) that I have managed to link this to the ol’ facebooks, but I won’t really be sure until I actually post this blog.
So, If you are seeing this, please come follow along!
Any how, here’s to a fresh new year of incredibly useless and mostly made up fun!
Pinwheel, pinwheel, spinning around. Look at my Pinwheel and see what I've found. Pinwheel, pinwheel, where have you been? Hello, how are you, and may I come in? Pinwheel, pinwheel, spinning around. Look at my pinwheel and see what I found. Pinwheel, pinwheel, breezy and bright. Spin me good morning, spin me good night.
Anyone remember this gem from Nickelodeon, the channel that turned television into animated crack for all of us 30-somethings back in the day? I was feeling nostalgic the other day, so I meandered on over to the yous-tubes on the ultranet (the very same ultranet that we are on right now!) and did a little search-a-roo on it.
For those of you (all 8 of you who are following along) who don’t remember it, the show was like a low budget Canadian (I think, it may not have been Canadian. But it FELT Canadian) knock-off of Sesame Street / variety show / cartoons from around the world / mish-mash sort of – well, looking back – FIVE HOUR (FIVE HOURS!!!) – long train wreck kinda thing.
Any who, after watching, and being thoroughly creeped out, I’ve come to the conclusion that this show may have been the creepiest, trippiest kids show of all time and foreverness. I could write a blog on each of the main characters and just how trippy they were (and I just might!)
Aurelia - far left, plotting the demise of Smitty (flanked by Plus and Minus) and wondering what the hell that giant green thing in the corner is...It's Ebeneezer, Aurelia. Duh...
I mean COME ON! There’s the freaky, puffy-cheeked gypsy who either hangs out the window conversing with a giant talking snail, or arguing with a pair of singing bumble-bee/glow worms whatchamacallems (I think they were called Hobo bugs?) in the garden, or biding her time sitting in a creepy little nook of the house and talking to the “opposite city operator” on her Crystal ball-phone (which has no receiver, by the way…) trying to resolve whatever issues arise in a house full of oddities!
What and where the hell is Opposite City??
Opposite City????
Who is this Operator?
Besides them, we’ve also got the two little freaky twins on the third floor, Plus and Minus, entrenched in a never-ending game of tag, the talking Mole who lives in a tree (Moles don’t live in trees. This must be Canadian), Ebeneezer Squint; who spends his entire existence trying to make the cover page of The Daily Noodle (Pinwheel-world equivalent of the City Paper), and of course the bobbling giant-faced mustachioed produce stand vendor, Luigi O’Brien.
I mean there’s a whole lot to this show on a very deep twisted psychological level. I’m more than sure now that the directors and producers, in their psilocybin-induced fog, knew full well that they were presenting to the youth of america a completely twisted world full of bizarre characters and demented little featurettes and were pretty likely laughing all the way to the Canadian bank!
Anyway, if you are interested in watching, here’s some youtube link-a-dinks!
Before i get to the unimportant stuff, a quick thank you to Joseph Harker and Tessa Racht over at Curio Poetry for including “White Knuckle Driving” and “The Gardener” in the latest issue of their great journal. I worked really hard, toiled even, over the pieces that I sent out in that group, so I’m glad someone out there enjoys them enough to put them in print!
Now then, the intention of this blog all along, has been to shamelessly self-promote well, myself, but I can’t seem to keep myself from talking about nonsense, so…..
Perhaps it was the milliparceps – or some other science-y word that I heard last night – of carbon monoxide that was lingering around in the house yesterday, (yes, we had the fire department out last night because the CO sensor in the basement got a little antsy and when they came out with their fancy sensors, they showed a high level of CO centered around the water heater) but I ended up dreaming that the CO was in fact a grayish floaty ectoplasm, that the fancy fire-fighting CO sensors were these GhostBuster- quality ghost detectors - - and that the hot water heater was infested with spirits that travelled in and out of the house through a hole in the bottom that led to, what else, another dimension. In the dream, I remember being ok with the spirits, but found myself most uncomfortable with the fact that since the heater itself played host to hundreds of them, that meant the quickest way for them to get around the house was through the pipes, which in turn meant that we were bathing in and, worse(!!) drinking haunted water.
I’ve since woken up, obviously – or else you lovelies wouldn’t be reading this “blog” – but I can’t help but notice that the water (of which I am no longer drinking, by the way) tastes very much like ghosts (because duh, everyone knows what ghosts taste like, right??). And after my shower I feel a lot heavier. Do ghosts weigh much??
Again, thanks to Joseph and Tessa. Below are some tasty vittles, morsels, and/or tidbits….
Today here at the B and D, I’m attempting to clarify something that has stymied my brain every time I pick up the Golden House, Emperor’s Fortune, Golden Goose, Lucky Goose, Golden Fortune, Lucky Dragon, Joy Luck, Lucky Golden House, Emperor Tangs’, Lucky Emperor, or Fortune House Chinese menu.
General Tso (pronounced T-SO??). How do we properly pronounce the General’s delectable chicken vittles? Who the heck is this infamous general Tso (pronounced TOE??)? Where did the good general Tso (pronounced TZO??) come from?
Well, according to the interwebs, the end-all, be-all (what the hell does this statement even mean? Blog for another day, I suppose) source for absolutely 100% accurate information, one possible origin comes from a Qing Dynasty general, general Zou Zongtang from Hunan (a land so named, surprisingly enough, after another popular chicken dish, Hunan chicken).
In an effort to waste some more time, another possible origin suggests that the dish originated from a simple Hunan (the dish that was served in south-central China – an area later to become known as Hunan) chicken dish (again, named after the wily chicken-loving general), and that the reference to “Zongtang” was not a reference to general Zuo Zongtang’s name, but rather a reference to the homonym “zongtang“, meaning “ancestral meeting hall”. That being said, I move that we change the name from the uber-confusing “General Tso’s (pronounced ???) Chicken” to a much simpler to pronounce “Ancestral Meeting Hall Chicken.”
Maybe I’ll and some pieces of electronic mail to the aforementioned Chinese food “resellers” that I mentioned above…
Now that we have “resolved” this “important” “issue,” let’s talk about something that really matters, my friend Dan has a blog, I always find it an absolutely delightful read. It’s called The (Not So) Daily. You can follow it here… go check it out!!
My original intent with Blather today was to post a link to one of my favorite online journals and provide a review of the site. Then I started staring at my dog, which made me start thinking of dogs past. And that got me around to my first dog, Gundar (More on Gundar later). Instead though, as they often do this time of night, my thoughts turned to Falcor the Luck Dragon from The NeverEnding Story. I thought about maybe writing a blog about whether or not he had scales, but I realized that of course he must have scales, he is, after all, a luck DRAGON.
So I started thinking about some of his quotes from the film. The four that have always stuck with me for one reason or another (but probably because I’ve seen the movie more than 30 times)
“Having a Luck Dragon is the only way to go on a quest”
“Let’s hope so Atreyu, Let’s hope so”
“with LUCK!”
and, my favorite, “I like children.”
This of course got me on his voice and how eerily deep yet playful and overall soothing it was. As things tend to go with me, bouncing from one subject to the next, I started wondering who the actor was that breathed life in to this amazing creature (sorry kiddies, this particular Falcor is, in fact, a character in a film. Not the other Falcor though, but that is a story for another post).
I found, thanks to the interwebby-webs, that the same voice actor also voiced Skeletor, Mer-Man and Man-at-Arms from the He-Man and the Masters of the Universe cartoon in the 80′s. His name is (yes that’s an is, he’s still live and kicking) Alan Oppenheimer. Turns out he also voiced Vanity Smurf, Mighty Mouse, BeachComber from Transformers and others. in an odd coincidence, he also voiced my favorite kiddie hero of all time THUNDARR THE BARBARIAN!! Why is this an odd coincidence? Read on…
For those who don’t remember Thundarr, don’t fret. I was completely obsessed with the cartoon, but was so young when it aired that words and such were still difficult (even more difficult-er than they are now) and our first family pet; a Black Lab that I got to name, was forever know as Gundar (Almost THUNDARR) named after my favorite saturday morning toon.
Looking back at this post, I’m not sure that there is a real point, other to say that I suppose all things a relative? I dunno. Anyhow, I’m hungry and there is gumbo downstairs. So……
The journal is called Red Fez, you can check em out at http://www.redfez.net. I will in time get around to a review, if I can get beyond my giant white scaly Luck Dragon friend.
Just like these happy folks pictured (you have no idea how long it took me to figure out how to place this image where it currently resides, by the way), blatheranddrone has risen once again from the dead!
Perhaps a picture of the Jeebus would’ve been more suitable, but I think you get my meaning. My intention this time around, along with all the nonsense that I will be entertaining you all (me) with, is to keep you all (me again) in the loop as to how things go with my writing and to basically self-promote myself to the point that you all realize how much of a pretentious dick I am! I kid, of course.
Besides my poetry, I will be going out of my way to help promote any and all of the journals and zines that have published my work by posting links to their respective sites (hopefully with a great deal of frequency).
All of this wonderfulness being said, I intend to build a poetry link on the homepage here, just as soon as I figure out how to make that happen. I’ll be leaning pretty heavily on my pal to help me get this thing where I want it to be in terms of design features, customization, etc. So please bear with me as I get the BandD – that’s what the kool kids are calling it, BandD I mean – up and running smoothly.
“Well jeez jason, what’s the most important thing I can do to help you get a-rolling?” you may ask. Simply follow along by clicking the “follow” button over yonder.
“that’s it? that’s all you want from us?” you ask (perfect example of my punctuality-a-ationess). That’s all friend-o’s….
there has been a LOT of death and gloom and overall garbage that has sort of floated it’s way up to the surface lately, at least in my little corner of the universe.
anyways children, things are well besides the fact that we are all, ya know, slowly dying and we can’t go back and every new morning puts us one day closer to the end-all be-all dirt nap and there are some of us who have done absolutely nothing with ourselves and our time here (or at least this time around, depending upon what you believe).
I guess in a slowwww roundabout way the point is that we all need to figure out some way to leave some kind of mark. Big or small, something.
How, you may ask? Well, there’s lots of ways.
Some of us could become killers or arsonists Some of us maybe artists – leave that lasting print perpetual Some of us have families, because some of us think that having a family is enough of a mark. Some of us write Some of us go hunting Mongolian death worms or making up fake animals by using misspellings or faulty space bar taps in mid sentence on facebook chat.
It’s been a while since I’ve been on here. But I’m back. To get you up to date….
itub sales have have tanked, the company has gone under, and the acting president is holed up in well, a hole, in his backyard. But hey, it was fun while it lasted. Broken Spleenotronic Funtime Factories™ will surely be releasing a new line of fantastic products to capitalize on the ever-impending holiday season, just as soon as the aforementioned company president gets his shit together.
Haven’t really exercised my literary chops (thats writing know-how or complete and utter lack thereof) since the last post about Maxx and Lerr who, to those of you who are following (thanks lonely stalker friend from Ohio), will be making a second appearance very soon.
Michael Hutchence was STILL a genius. And I still am actively recruiting for another MDW expedition…
What’s been up? wellllllll………………..
ya likey the new blog background? It full of books cuz books are for smart people cuz i’m a smart people cuz… smart.. people.
after much debate within the board of owners and the shareholders, the blog has a new name. we went with “blather and drone”. Why? because it sounds only slightly better then “complete waste of time” or “wtf is this guy going on about”. Also because blather and drone, when used together, are two of my favorite words.
Most importantly…
I saw three piles of pink vomit on Light street yesterday as I was strolling along (cuz that’s what I do, I stroll…) making my way to the Ole Bird. The piles – or maybe smatterings is a better word – each decreased in size at the same proportionate amount to the pile/smatter before it. I began to wonder… is this art?
It was kinda art. For puke. I mean it was very colorful. Pink mostly with the same reocurring pattern of longer yellow bits in each little pile. Like hay mixed with used big league chew and spittle.
also… ya like ghosts? graveyards? rednecks? dead kids in colonial garb? mongolian death worms? how bout a combination of all of these things!!! No death worms tho, i’m afraid…. from my friends over at the phantom kangaroo, watch this spoOOOoooky video…
this is the roughest of rough rough ruff ruff drafts, inspired by a boot i saw on the side of 97 this morning…
The alarm starts in way too early. Lerr has been meaning to buy another one. The constant repeating screeching of that damn clock has been driving him crazy every morning for the last ten years or so. It’s funny how the things that seem most important early in the day become nothing more then an afterthought as the day progresses. Regardless, Lerr reaches across Nancy, who is starting to slowly stir to life, and hits the snooze bar. Hard. Another early start. He’ll be working outdoors today, clearing the fields and prepping the chipper. The best thing about today is that Lerr gets to work with Max. Max and Lerr go back a ways. They’ve worked together before and between them they have the most experience on the crew. It’ll be a good day. If he can just get out of bed…
Nancy’s not in bed when Lerr gets out of the shower. He can smell the bacon and the strong scent of coffee brewing. At least she’s good for something he thinks. Lerr and Nancy have been together for a long time. Too long. He’s been looking for a good reason to end the relationship. He would’ve done it long ago had it not been for the twin girls. Max has been in his ear for years now about getting out of the relationship. Max never liked her. And Lerr was starting to come around…
He did love the girls, even though they were a drain on his wallet and his sanity. He enjoyed them a lot right after their births, but lately, just like his wife, Lerr has been growing both bored and frustrated. Max and Lerr have had a lot of little chit chats about his situation lately. That’s probably why Lerr likes Max so much. Max provided Lerr with a sense of escape, of what Lerr’s life could be like if he were more like Max. Alone and independent.
Running late as usual. His shower ran a bit longer since he sort of fell asleep leaning on the wall. It’s so tough to get out, especially when it’s so damn cold outside. Even more so when the hot water washing away the whiskey from last night. Lerr had asked Nancy to pack a lunch for him and Max last night, as he fumbled threw his dirty clothes pile he made himself a mental note to be sure to grab the lunches on the way out the door.
