Wednesday, July 07, 2004
A word from S. Morgan, Editor – (do what Frankie says) “R E L A X”
Summer is upon us. Everyone has his or her own “official” start to summer. Is it Memorial Day? The last day of school? Whatever it is for you, the actual summer solstice this year is June 21. Why is it that the winter solstice seems to hog all the attention? I suppose because it is the number one Christmas-replacement-holiday-of- choice for those of pagan leanings; Christmas having swollen to such proportions that everyone, even non-Christians, needs a reason to get into the commercial spirit. I see no need for a holiday in summer; every day is a vacation, or should be considered so in both mindful everyday living as well as attitude towards life in general. This is why California is such a different world compared to, say, Ohio. When every day is a holiday, things can get a little crazy. In the outlook of Minnesotan Garrison Keeler, we need long winters to keep us sane, to bring us back to being in the moment, to need the necessities of life: warmth and family and figgy pudding.
Summer is just about the right length in the Midwest – an intense and powerful blast of hot, sticky invigoration, such a different time and of such a different attitude compared to the rest of the year, even for those of us who are passed the age of reveling in anticipation of three months of utter freedom stretching ahead of us like some wild, warm desert plane. Granted, summer was a time of work and toil in times gone passed, and still is for those who tend the fields, work outside in the heat and the sweat, or are trapped inside re-circulated air for eight or more hours a day. Yet I encourage you to take the few moments you have in the pounding temperatures, the radiant winds, and the blistering heat of a dark summer night, the pavement steaming after a burst of evening rain, to float in the Ariesian disembodiment of the magic of endless relaxation.
Summer is upon us. Everyone has his or her own “official” start to summer. Is it Memorial Day? The last day of school? Whatever it is for you, the actual summer solstice this year is June 21. Why is it that the winter solstice seems to hog all the attention? I suppose because it is the number one Christmas-replacement-holiday-of- choice for those of pagan leanings; Christmas having swollen to such proportions that everyone, even non-Christians, needs a reason to get into the commercial spirit. I see no need for a holiday in summer; every day is a vacation, or should be considered so in both mindful everyday living as well as attitude towards life in general. This is why California is such a different world compared to, say, Ohio. When every day is a holiday, things can get a little crazy. In the outlook of Minnesotan Garrison Keeler, we need long winters to keep us sane, to bring us back to being in the moment, to need the necessities of life: warmth and family and figgy pudding.
Summer is just about the right length in the Midwest – an intense and powerful blast of hot, sticky invigoration, such a different time and of such a different attitude compared to the rest of the year, even for those of us who are passed the age of reveling in anticipation of three months of utter freedom stretching ahead of us like some wild, warm desert plane. Granted, summer was a time of work and toil in times gone passed, and still is for those who tend the fields, work outside in the heat and the sweat, or are trapped inside re-circulated air for eight or more hours a day. Yet I encourage you to take the few moments you have in the pounding temperatures, the radiant winds, and the blistering heat of a dark summer night, the pavement steaming after a burst of evening rain, to float in the Ariesian disembodiment of the magic of endless relaxation.
BELLE LETTRE CALENDAR
JUNE
21 First Day of Summer!
25-26 Rustbelt Poetry Slam, Cleveland OH
JULY
4 Independence Day – Only two people signed the Declaration of Independence on July 4th,1776: John Hancock and Charles Thomson. Most of the rest signed on August 2, but the last signature wasn't added until 5 years later.
23-25 Cleveland Irish Cultural Fest
31 Full Moon / Blue Moon – Full Sturgeon Moon
AUGUST
4 15 Ohio State Fair
9 – 15 Cuyahoga Co Fair, Berea, OH.
13-15 Minnesota Irish Fair
26 – September 6 Minnesota State Fair
30 Full Moon – Full Fruit Moon
SEPTEMBER
6 Labor Day –Began in 1894 after it had been celebrated for a few years by Labor Unions.
11 Patriot Day - NOW, THEREFORE, I, GEORGE W. BUSH, President of the United States of America, do hereby proclaim September 11, 2002, as Patriot Day. I call upon the people of the United States to observe this day with appropriate ceremonies and activities, including remembrance services and candlelight vigils.
12 Grandparent Day – Proclaimed by President Carter in 1978, the campaign had been initiated by West Virginia housewife, Marian Lucille Herndon McQuade.
16 Rosh Hashanah – Jewish New Year, includes introspection, looking back at the mistakes of the past year and planning the changes to make in the new year.
22 First Day of Fall
and the Autumn Belle Lettre!
JUNE
21 First Day of Summer!
25-26 Rustbelt Poetry Slam, Cleveland OH
JULY
4 Independence Day – Only two people signed the Declaration of Independence on July 4th,1776: John Hancock and Charles Thomson. Most of the rest signed on August 2, but the last signature wasn't added until 5 years later.
23-25 Cleveland Irish Cultural Fest
31 Full Moon / Blue Moon – Full Sturgeon Moon
AUGUST
4 15 Ohio State Fair
9 – 15 Cuyahoga Co Fair, Berea, OH.
13-15 Minnesota Irish Fair
26 – September 6 Minnesota State Fair
30 Full Moon – Full Fruit Moon
SEPTEMBER
6 Labor Day –Began in 1894 after it had been celebrated for a few years by Labor Unions.
11 Patriot Day - NOW, THEREFORE, I, GEORGE W. BUSH, President of the United States of America, do hereby proclaim September 11, 2002, as Patriot Day. I call upon the people of the United States to observe this day with appropriate ceremonies and activities, including remembrance services and candlelight vigils.
12 Grandparent Day – Proclaimed by President Carter in 1978, the campaign had been initiated by West Virginia housewife, Marian Lucille Herndon McQuade.
16 Rosh Hashanah – Jewish New Year, includes introspection, looking back at the mistakes of the past year and planning the changes to make in the new year.
22 First Day of Fall
and the Autumn Belle Lettre!
Party Time for the
Donkeys and Elephants
Summer in a presidential election year = National Conventions, which take place July 26-29(Democrat) and August 30 - September 2 (Republican). During these two gigantic media parties, the Democrats and the Republicans announce who will be running for president and vice president as representatives of their respective parties.
When you voted in the primary this year, you were actually choosing delegates that would get to go to these conventions. The way a delegate is chosen varies widely. Mainly, there are two ways: Caucuses are meetings of party members who decide on the delegates. Primaries are elections in which registered voters have the chance to vote
A) for delegates or B) for the candidate they want their party to nominate. The method differs by state.
Choosing delegates differs even between parties. To quote CNN, in reference to the Democratic convention:
“The system operates much like the Electoral College… Each Democratic state party is allocated a number of delegates based on a complicated formula that takes into account the state's electoral votes and the strength of support for Democratic presidential candidates in the last three general elections.”
According to Project Vote Smart, a nonpartisan citizen’s information organization:
“The Republican Party, unlike the Democratic Party (which always uses a proportional method -ed), allows each state to decide whether to use the winner-take-all method or the proportional method. In the winner-take-all method the candidate whom the majority of caucus participants or voters support receives all the delegates for the state.”
Each convention, which writer Norman Mailer referred to as “a fiesta, a carnival, a pig-rooting, horse-snorting, band-playing, voice screaming” media circus, has evolved to the point where everyone already knows who’s going to be nominated by the time it rolls around. It’s therefore interesting to look at some past problems that this current system has evolved to avoid. In 1960, JFK had great public support, but barely won his party’s nomination after considerable wheeling and dealing. In 1968, more media coverage was given to the riots happening outside the convention than to the selecting process, which had allowed the democrats to nominate a candidate that had not won a single primary.
Donkeys and Elephants
Summer in a presidential election year = National Conventions, which take place July 26-29(Democrat) and August 30 - September 2 (Republican). During these two gigantic media parties, the Democrats and the Republicans announce who will be running for president and vice president as representatives of their respective parties.
When you voted in the primary this year, you were actually choosing delegates that would get to go to these conventions. The way a delegate is chosen varies widely. Mainly, there are two ways: Caucuses are meetings of party members who decide on the delegates. Primaries are elections in which registered voters have the chance to vote
A) for delegates or B) for the candidate they want their party to nominate. The method differs by state.
Choosing delegates differs even between parties. To quote CNN, in reference to the Democratic convention:
“The system operates much like the Electoral College… Each Democratic state party is allocated a number of delegates based on a complicated formula that takes into account the state's electoral votes and the strength of support for Democratic presidential candidates in the last three general elections.”
According to Project Vote Smart, a nonpartisan citizen’s information organization:
“The Republican Party, unlike the Democratic Party (which always uses a proportional method -ed), allows each state to decide whether to use the winner-take-all method or the proportional method. In the winner-take-all method the candidate whom the majority of caucus participants or voters support receives all the delegates for the state.”
Each convention, which writer Norman Mailer referred to as “a fiesta, a carnival, a pig-rooting, horse-snorting, band-playing, voice screaming” media circus, has evolved to the point where everyone already knows who’s going to be nominated by the time it rolls around. It’s therefore interesting to look at some past problems that this current system has evolved to avoid. In 1960, JFK had great public support, but barely won his party’s nomination after considerable wheeling and dealing. In 1968, more media coverage was given to the riots happening outside the convention than to the selecting process, which had allowed the democrats to nominate a candidate that had not won a single primary.
Safety Dance
In this strange and disembodied world in which we find ourselves, where people drive suburban tanks because they are so worried about their own safety, where people hold back from offering help because they may be sued, and where standard children’s toys are continually are pulled from the market for the fact that they might hurt someone, I am left to ponder how much I would give up to be safe. I understand the need for safety checks at airports and the danger of hitchhiking, but when would I say “enough is enough” and pull off the road to help the person broke down at the side of the highway? I wear my seatbelt and plan to get my kids vaccinated, but I also plan to let my kids play on the slide and the swings and the monkey bars. I throw my windows open in summer, I want to test my limits hiking, I eat cookies dropped on the floor (even if it has been over five seconds and I don’t have any antibacterial hand wash around).
People dream about the way things use to be and think, “the world was so much safer back then, things were so much better”. But so many more people suffered the heartache of children dying young, women dying in childbirth, men dying of broken legs. If anything, we should be taking more risks now! We have a better healthcare system, better preventative medicine, better over the counter medicine. Because we can live so much longer, do we feel that we should plan to live forever and shut ourselves up in our locked and gated communities and worry ourselves to death over the safety of those we love? The environment? Politics? Entertainment?
I was thinking the other day about how bad fast food is, huge portions made with the greasiest, artery clogging fats imaginable. And here, in this day and age, and in a country where most people sit in front of a desk all day and don’t move more than their fingers and their eyes, our portion sizes for the amount of energy most of us use up in a day should be minute! Yet they just keep getting bigger. And people are too afraid to get out and walk so they use their car to drive down to get a quart of milk.
If we are going to need to use fast food chains in this society, because we are cramming so many things into our middle income lifestyle that we don’t have time to go home and fix lunch between the band practice and the library and the shoe shopping and the doctor’s appointments, I feel that fast food (as well as the other modern necessities we are forking over cash to utilize) should be better than if we were doing things the old way. Not just different and not just faster - is not the idea of society progress and not just speed?
People in today’s society are doing too much on their own to satisfy their need to reflect the images the media projects. I, for instance, can’t just go into a Burger King and order a fish sandwich with a chocolate shake, because I will inevitably receive a sandwich made of unsustainably harvested fish drowning in gobs of tartar sauce and a huge cup of highly caloric tan-colored dairy soup so bland it makes wall putty seem edible.
People don’t trust each other anymore, and there really isn’t any reason they should. People don’t give each other the excuse or the reason to trust them anymore. It seems more useful to reinvent the wheel in order to make sure something is done right, rather than asking someone else for help.
Cowardice asks the question - is it safe?
Expediency asks the question - is it politic?
Vanity asks the question - is it popular?
But conscience asks the question - is it right?
And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular; but one must take it BECAUSE it is right.
Dr. Martin Luther King
A man who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.
John Stuart Mill
Those that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
Benjamin Franklin
In this strange and disembodied world in which we find ourselves, where people drive suburban tanks because they are so worried about their own safety, where people hold back from offering help because they may be sued, and where standard children’s toys are continually are pulled from the market for the fact that they might hurt someone, I am left to ponder how much I would give up to be safe. I understand the need for safety checks at airports and the danger of hitchhiking, but when would I say “enough is enough” and pull off the road to help the person broke down at the side of the highway? I wear my seatbelt and plan to get my kids vaccinated, but I also plan to let my kids play on the slide and the swings and the monkey bars. I throw my windows open in summer, I want to test my limits hiking, I eat cookies dropped on the floor (even if it has been over five seconds and I don’t have any antibacterial hand wash around).
People dream about the way things use to be and think, “the world was so much safer back then, things were so much better”. But so many more people suffered the heartache of children dying young, women dying in childbirth, men dying of broken legs. If anything, we should be taking more risks now! We have a better healthcare system, better preventative medicine, better over the counter medicine. Because we can live so much longer, do we feel that we should plan to live forever and shut ourselves up in our locked and gated communities and worry ourselves to death over the safety of those we love? The environment? Politics? Entertainment?
I was thinking the other day about how bad fast food is, huge portions made with the greasiest, artery clogging fats imaginable. And here, in this day and age, and in a country where most people sit in front of a desk all day and don’t move more than their fingers and their eyes, our portion sizes for the amount of energy most of us use up in a day should be minute! Yet they just keep getting bigger. And people are too afraid to get out and walk so they use their car to drive down to get a quart of milk.
If we are going to need to use fast food chains in this society, because we are cramming so many things into our middle income lifestyle that we don’t have time to go home and fix lunch between the band practice and the library and the shoe shopping and the doctor’s appointments, I feel that fast food (as well as the other modern necessities we are forking over cash to utilize) should be better than if we were doing things the old way. Not just different and not just faster - is not the idea of society progress and not just speed?
People in today’s society are doing too much on their own to satisfy their need to reflect the images the media projects. I, for instance, can’t just go into a Burger King and order a fish sandwich with a chocolate shake, because I will inevitably receive a sandwich made of unsustainably harvested fish drowning in gobs of tartar sauce and a huge cup of highly caloric tan-colored dairy soup so bland it makes wall putty seem edible.
People don’t trust each other anymore, and there really isn’t any reason they should. People don’t give each other the excuse or the reason to trust them anymore. It seems more useful to reinvent the wheel in order to make sure something is done right, rather than asking someone else for help.
Cowardice asks the question - is it safe?
Expediency asks the question - is it politic?
Vanity asks the question - is it popular?
But conscience asks the question - is it right?
And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular; but one must take it BECAUSE it is right.
Dr. Martin Luther King
A man who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.
John Stuart Mill
Those that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
Benjamin Franklin
Civic Duty
or
The Sloppy Donator
Talks to God
There are a few things I would like to have a word with you about. First, let’s start with giving blood. I understand that it is a good thing to donate a pint of blood every 56 days or so, and in a way, it is a very spiritual occurrence. I mean, I willingly let someone stab me in the arm with a large hollow needle and then I go and squeeze my own blood out into a little plastic bag. There has to be something spiritual in that, right?
But then what is up with making me think about that needle sliding into my vein? And that sudden hot feeling in my neck and forehead?
And then comes the tingling in my fingertips, and the odd wiggly feeling traveling up and down my arm. What’s the point of making the nurses have to rush over and crank my legs up at a 90-degree angle and apply compresses so cold they burn my pulse points?
Okay, I understand the little cans of pineapple juice, and the slow way the nurses work me back into an upright position, but then I am taunted by the free cookies just across the hallway, and when I finally reach them, and sit back down, I get suddenly nauseous at the thought of Lorna Doones and Toll House Chocolate Chips. So my head goes between my legs as the dark corners start closing in on my hot face. Out come the nurses and a bright, day-glow orange stretcher onto which I move. Hannibal-Lecter-like, minus the mask, they speed me back into the room of people squeezing their own blood into little bags, plop me onto a lawn-chair type bed and up go my legs.
So I lay there for what must be a half an hour and all I can do is sigh and think about how stupid this whole process is.
I read the little slides off the projection screen and it begins to dawn on me; I did everything wrong.
· Don’t drink caffeine on the day you donate, says the slide (I only had one or two cups, I think).
· Eat two hours before you donate (what, like at 3 pm? Who eats then?).
· Dieting and donating don’t mix (well, I am exercising more and watching what I eat – but that doesn’t constitute dieting, does it?).
“How do you feel?”
The nurse asks the perpetual question of blood donation sites everywhere. “Fine,” I answer, “except my arm hurts and the washcloth is too cold and my legs are up in the air.” He smiles.” I’m a sloppy donator,” I admit.
Anyway, I make it home, laughing a little at the song playing on the radio:
A tisket a taskit,
I lost my yellow basket,
And if I do not find it,
I think that I will die.
Well, I guess it was more than laughing a little, it was more, like, hysterical.
or
The Sloppy Donator
Talks to God
There are a few things I would like to have a word with you about. First, let’s start with giving blood. I understand that it is a good thing to donate a pint of blood every 56 days or so, and in a way, it is a very spiritual occurrence. I mean, I willingly let someone stab me in the arm with a large hollow needle and then I go and squeeze my own blood out into a little plastic bag. There has to be something spiritual in that, right?
But then what is up with making me think about that needle sliding into my vein? And that sudden hot feeling in my neck and forehead?
And then comes the tingling in my fingertips, and the odd wiggly feeling traveling up and down my arm. What’s the point of making the nurses have to rush over and crank my legs up at a 90-degree angle and apply compresses so cold they burn my pulse points?
Okay, I understand the little cans of pineapple juice, and the slow way the nurses work me back into an upright position, but then I am taunted by the free cookies just across the hallway, and when I finally reach them, and sit back down, I get suddenly nauseous at the thought of Lorna Doones and Toll House Chocolate Chips. So my head goes between my legs as the dark corners start closing in on my hot face. Out come the nurses and a bright, day-glow orange stretcher onto which I move. Hannibal-Lecter-like, minus the mask, they speed me back into the room of people squeezing their own blood into little bags, plop me onto a lawn-chair type bed and up go my legs.
So I lay there for what must be a half an hour and all I can do is sigh and think about how stupid this whole process is.
I read the little slides off the projection screen and it begins to dawn on me; I did everything wrong.
· Don’t drink caffeine on the day you donate, says the slide (I only had one or two cups, I think).
· Eat two hours before you donate (what, like at 3 pm? Who eats then?).
· Dieting and donating don’t mix (well, I am exercising more and watching what I eat – but that doesn’t constitute dieting, does it?).
“How do you feel?”
The nurse asks the perpetual question of blood donation sites everywhere. “Fine,” I answer, “except my arm hurts and the washcloth is too cold and my legs are up in the air.” He smiles.” I’m a sloppy donator,” I admit.
Anyway, I make it home, laughing a little at the song playing on the radio:
A tisket a taskit,
I lost my yellow basket,
And if I do not find it,
I think that I will die.
Well, I guess it was more than laughing a little, it was more, like, hysterical.
poetry slam for a summer’s afternoon
Yearn
by S. Morgan Bartash
I itch all over
Like a woman driven to the brink of madness.
I feel every particle of dust in the air
Every speck of dirt on my body
Every untreated stain on my skin.
My fingernails are dirty with neglect
And desolation.
Flecks of polish
Strands of hair
Fall to the floor as I shed them
At the foot of the bed.
To night I dine on the nectar of life!
A-thousand white horses carry me on.
A-hundred battlements protect me.
I shall eat with lovers to night,
Feasting on the jubilance of living and
The loveliness of loving.
Feel free and happy and wild!
Dance alone in a pasture of dew,
Let the wind braid your hair
And bring others with you!
Astride each a-thousand stallion shall ride
A hidden beauty, a shy yet strength filled
Passionate one
Who had lurked in the shadows of your life
For years upon years.
But my battlements part for them
And I'll show that I care.
Let them realize they matter,
Let them drink from the golden chalice
Filled with the nectar of life!
Blue
by S. Morgan Bartash
There are airplanes above me, swimming through the thick and muggy overcast sky. Land recedes into the distance; all the smog and smoke and put-ons and parking lots are left quickly behind.
We are finally moving. My eyes are dry, and the idea is hard to comprehend. Why am I doing this? I just want to sit in the sun, hot and steamy through the haze. I ache to rip the paper, but my hand and arm and body and mostly my eyes are so tired and sandy, aching, blue. Missing the experience and the cooling heat of the ocean, of sleep.
Swimming and sex.
One, two, three, four.
And a onetwothreefour.
Tired, blue and painted.
Rabid.
Proud and glossy.
Sweat, turquoise and cream.
And blue, of the ocean, of the sky and sleet, of terror and heat. Of salty sweet margaritas and the need to tear the page.
THE PAPERCUT DILEMMA
She crouched on the floor behind her bed and clutched her bloody hands to her chest. Hiccoughing with silent sobs, the young girl let her body rock back and forth, not caring how crazy it made her look. Her mind screamed at her to wake up from the bad dream, but she was fully conscience. The tousled peach comforter on the mattress of her bed spoke to that. Her face burned and snot dribbled from her nose, even as she tried to sniff it back. Mucus welled in the back of her throat and mingled with the tears that slid down her cheeks and into her mouth. Her coughed turned into a cry of disgust and misery as she spit a watery glob onto the offending items that surrounded her.
It splattered across the pages of a thick hardcover tome. Across each page was a swipe of reddish brown where her frantic fingers had ripped at them. Every page of every book that surrounded her was strange and unfamiliar. Every word of every page frightened and enraged her. There were so many now that they formed the bricks of a fortress that was built, not to protect against invaders, but to smother her with the single fact that she could not escape them. They were hers. She saw her name under each books’ title.
She never remembered reading them.
She never remembered writing them.
ALWAYS USE A BASKET
My right leg collapsed beneath me. I felt my knee give way and, knowing my temperamental joints, grimaced with annoyance. What changed that annoyance to surprise was that I was at the top of the library staircase, my arms laden with media. My face fell to a frown as I toppled forward, letting go of the books and cds that fell with a clatter, pages fluttering and plastic cases cascading down the steps like flower petals. My arm was too far from the rail to catch myself. What hit first were my shins, and the base of my spine glowed with pain as the front half of that which is me stopped suddenly in its graceful decent and reversed direction. My wrist crumpled as I unsuccessfully threw my hand out. The worst pain came when my chin hit, snapping something in my head that made my ears ring. Then my forehead hit the next step and my body slid a few more steps down, floated on the skittering volumes of James Joyce and the Bach biography I would never get around to reading.
PENNY RHYMES
- Allegory, I'm not sorry
I'm in love with a boy named Corey.
Eyes as brown as mocha coffee,
Hair as smooth as butter toffee.
- Ride a dapple unicorn
Take him to the stars.
Grab a bit of comet tail
And some dust from Mars.
- I had a piece of moonbeam,
I took it out each day.
But when one night I dreamt of it,
It up and flew away.
- Trail mix!
What a fix!
I know how you get your kicks.
Spin once round and to the sky,
Fresh whipped cream and apple pie.
HERE ARE TWO SPECIAL WEB ONLY POEMS:
Rust
by S. Morgan
They sat in the park, the air around them gray with cold. She shivered, and he held her and her wounded hand. Upon the ground the wicked item lay, silver with its strength, glistening with wetness. Red with perhaps rust.
Her thumb buried itself within her clenched fist, even as her knuckles turned white and she bit back tears. Warm, oh so warm, the liquid continued to run between her fingers.
“Stop it,” she whispered, willing the wound closed. “I caused it, I should stop it.”
She broke his comforting hold and opened her palm to the low sky. The red was blinding, and her hand shook.
“Stop it.”
She brought the slice to her lips. It burned her teeth. Its pain infected her mouth. She let out a choking gasp. Her own life attempted to drown her, pouring over her lips, filling the area beneath her tongue, running down her chin, leaking from the corners of her mouth; the flow seemed almost alive.
He disappeared behind a curtain of scarlet. Nothing but the salty, metallic pulse, over and over and over...
A twitch. A feeling. Alone. Then nothing.
Perhaps it was rust.
Scab
by S. Morgan
I have fallen out of my body.
It’s odd, the sensation of staring at myself sprawled half on, half off the couch. I am looking at the sleeve and the arm, the hand lying palm-up in such an awkward position. Should it bend like that, I think? My neck, it’s so long and white and smooth. I’ve never seen it like this before, draped over the cushion like a carelessly tossed afghan or a rumpled sheet after a night of restless insanity.
It grows less strange the longer I look. Soon I am noticing the flaws. Soon it is a mirror. My world shrinks to just me and my problems and worries and faults. Soon, I don’t want to look anymore.
Turn away, just look away, hide from it, ignore it. Ignore myself, my own body.
Scab.
Calling calling calling. “Pick me. Make me bleed again, hurt me, reopen the wound you so quickly closed. Let the infectious world in. Bleed again. Feel the pain again. I’m still here. Scar me, I’ll stay forever.“
What I am trembles. I am afraid to the core of my soul. The fear of what returning may cause sends spasms of guilt and doubt
coursing through my thoughts. Weak, weak... I am so damn weak, as I crawl back into my body. Weak, weak... I can’t stop. I’m sucked back.
And a tiny voice echoes, “no, not weak. Returning to Hell is the bravest thing one does.“
Yearn
by S. Morgan Bartash
I itch all over
Like a woman driven to the brink of madness.
I feel every particle of dust in the air
Every speck of dirt on my body
Every untreated stain on my skin.
My fingernails are dirty with neglect
And desolation.
Flecks of polish
Strands of hair
Fall to the floor as I shed them
At the foot of the bed.
To night I dine on the nectar of life!
A-thousand white horses carry me on.
A-hundred battlements protect me.
I shall eat with lovers to night,
Feasting on the jubilance of living and
The loveliness of loving.
Feel free and happy and wild!
Dance alone in a pasture of dew,
Let the wind braid your hair
And bring others with you!
Astride each a-thousand stallion shall ride
A hidden beauty, a shy yet strength filled
Passionate one
Who had lurked in the shadows of your life
For years upon years.
But my battlements part for them
And I'll show that I care.
Let them realize they matter,
Let them drink from the golden chalice
Filled with the nectar of life!
Blue
by S. Morgan Bartash
There are airplanes above me, swimming through the thick and muggy overcast sky. Land recedes into the distance; all the smog and smoke and put-ons and parking lots are left quickly behind.
We are finally moving. My eyes are dry, and the idea is hard to comprehend. Why am I doing this? I just want to sit in the sun, hot and steamy through the haze. I ache to rip the paper, but my hand and arm and body and mostly my eyes are so tired and sandy, aching, blue. Missing the experience and the cooling heat of the ocean, of sleep.
Swimming and sex.
One, two, three, four.
And a onetwothreefour.
Tired, blue and painted.
Rabid.
Proud and glossy.
Sweat, turquoise and cream.
And blue, of the ocean, of the sky and sleet, of terror and heat. Of salty sweet margaritas and the need to tear the page.
THE PAPERCUT DILEMMA
She crouched on the floor behind her bed and clutched her bloody hands to her chest. Hiccoughing with silent sobs, the young girl let her body rock back and forth, not caring how crazy it made her look. Her mind screamed at her to wake up from the bad dream, but she was fully conscience. The tousled peach comforter on the mattress of her bed spoke to that. Her face burned and snot dribbled from her nose, even as she tried to sniff it back. Mucus welled in the back of her throat and mingled with the tears that slid down her cheeks and into her mouth. Her coughed turned into a cry of disgust and misery as she spit a watery glob onto the offending items that surrounded her.
It splattered across the pages of a thick hardcover tome. Across each page was a swipe of reddish brown where her frantic fingers had ripped at them. Every page of every book that surrounded her was strange and unfamiliar. Every word of every page frightened and enraged her. There were so many now that they formed the bricks of a fortress that was built, not to protect against invaders, but to smother her with the single fact that she could not escape them. They were hers. She saw her name under each books’ title.
She never remembered reading them.
She never remembered writing them.
ALWAYS USE A BASKET
My right leg collapsed beneath me. I felt my knee give way and, knowing my temperamental joints, grimaced with annoyance. What changed that annoyance to surprise was that I was at the top of the library staircase, my arms laden with media. My face fell to a frown as I toppled forward, letting go of the books and cds that fell with a clatter, pages fluttering and plastic cases cascading down the steps like flower petals. My arm was too far from the rail to catch myself. What hit first were my shins, and the base of my spine glowed with pain as the front half of that which is me stopped suddenly in its graceful decent and reversed direction. My wrist crumpled as I unsuccessfully threw my hand out. The worst pain came when my chin hit, snapping something in my head that made my ears ring. Then my forehead hit the next step and my body slid a few more steps down, floated on the skittering volumes of James Joyce and the Bach biography I would never get around to reading.
PENNY RHYMES
- Allegory, I'm not sorry
I'm in love with a boy named Corey.
Eyes as brown as mocha coffee,
Hair as smooth as butter toffee.
- Ride a dapple unicorn
Take him to the stars.
Grab a bit of comet tail
And some dust from Mars.
- I had a piece of moonbeam,
I took it out each day.
But when one night I dreamt of it,
It up and flew away.
- Trail mix!
What a fix!
I know how you get your kicks.
Spin once round and to the sky,
Fresh whipped cream and apple pie.
HERE ARE TWO SPECIAL WEB ONLY POEMS:
Rust
by S. Morgan
They sat in the park, the air around them gray with cold. She shivered, and he held her and her wounded hand. Upon the ground the wicked item lay, silver with its strength, glistening with wetness. Red with perhaps rust.
Her thumb buried itself within her clenched fist, even as her knuckles turned white and she bit back tears. Warm, oh so warm, the liquid continued to run between her fingers.
“Stop it,” she whispered, willing the wound closed. “I caused it, I should stop it.”
She broke his comforting hold and opened her palm to the low sky. The red was blinding, and her hand shook.
“Stop it.”
She brought the slice to her lips. It burned her teeth. Its pain infected her mouth. She let out a choking gasp. Her own life attempted to drown her, pouring over her lips, filling the area beneath her tongue, running down her chin, leaking from the corners of her mouth; the flow seemed almost alive.
He disappeared behind a curtain of scarlet. Nothing but the salty, metallic pulse, over and over and over...
A twitch. A feeling. Alone. Then nothing.
Perhaps it was rust.
Scab
by S. Morgan
I have fallen out of my body.
It’s odd, the sensation of staring at myself sprawled half on, half off the couch. I am looking at the sleeve and the arm, the hand lying palm-up in such an awkward position. Should it bend like that, I think? My neck, it’s so long and white and smooth. I’ve never seen it like this before, draped over the cushion like a carelessly tossed afghan or a rumpled sheet after a night of restless insanity.
It grows less strange the longer I look. Soon I am noticing the flaws. Soon it is a mirror. My world shrinks to just me and my problems and worries and faults. Soon, I don’t want to look anymore.
Turn away, just look away, hide from it, ignore it. Ignore myself, my own body.
Scab.
Calling calling calling. “Pick me. Make me bleed again, hurt me, reopen the wound you so quickly closed. Let the infectious world in. Bleed again. Feel the pain again. I’m still here. Scar me, I’ll stay forever.“
What I am trembles. I am afraid to the core of my soul. The fear of what returning may cause sends spasms of guilt and doubt
coursing through my thoughts. Weak, weak... I am so damn weak, as I crawl back into my body. Weak, weak... I can’t stop. I’m sucked back.
And a tiny voice echoes, “no, not weak. Returning to Hell is the bravest thing one does.“
ADVENTURES
Where? Louisville, Kentucky
When: Easter 2004
Who: S.Morgan, SWF (in a LTR)
Transportation: Green Toyota Echo, yet unnamed
My first mistake was needing to get away so bad that I started on a seven-hour road trip after working eight hours at one job and six at another. I drove until I fell asleep, the road pookas jumping up and down at the side of my peripheral vision, and slept in the shadow of a rumbling diesel tractor-trailer. I awoke to find myself driving through the city of Louisville, around the city, through the city, until I ended up in a different state. Indiana and its city of New Albany (pronounced by locals as Nalbany) is stuck to the north side of Louisville, directly across the Ohio River. I got a too-expensive hotel (though I did receive the best rate since I flirted with the desk clerk) and slept before starting my explorations.
A trip that first night to Browning’s Brewery downtown Louisville introduced me to the southern hospitality everyone always talks about but no one ever has proof of. Tammy, my brand new bar buddy, not only coached me on the proper way to wrap my northern lips around the city’s name (say it Lou-uh-vill) but also scribble numerous undecipherable notes on coasters to point me towards a few “don’t miss ‘em” attractions.
The next morn, I headed next door to my hotel to a little greasy spoon diner where for $2.50 I got a waffle and coffee. I left a $5 and headed down to Bardstown, the keen strip of funky shops, cafes (Twig and Leaf is another cheap eats find), cemeteries (check out Cave Hall with graves from “the wahr between the states”) and galleries (Swanson Reed is especially nice). From there I headed on a search for Lynn’s Paradise Café, where I had lunch under a pair of overalls made entirely of used tea bags.
My final destination was, of course, the Kentucky Derby Museum and Churchill Downs back track tour. The high point was the wayback machine, which allows guests to view any derby dating back as far as 1918. I watched with nostalgic awe the 1986 race, the first one I truly remember. Ferdinand, with Jockey Willy Shoemaker on his back, darted to the front of the pack after trailing most of the race. Granted, it was nothing compared to the win of Secretariat, the greatest Triple Crown winner, but it was something to me. Other memorable moments included visiting with resident “spokeshorse” Phantom on Tour (who finished 3rd in the 1997 Derby) and feeding peppermints to some of the track ponies.
My visit came one week short of the great fireworks display, Thunder Over Louisville, which is billed as the largest in North America. I also came too early to see Smarty Jones win “the greatest two minutes in sports,” but that was fine. I hope to be back to see the 200 running. I’ll be 97.
Where? Louisville, Kentucky
When: Easter 2004
Who: S.Morgan, SWF (in a LTR)
Transportation: Green Toyota Echo, yet unnamed
My first mistake was needing to get away so bad that I started on a seven-hour road trip after working eight hours at one job and six at another. I drove until I fell asleep, the road pookas jumping up and down at the side of my peripheral vision, and slept in the shadow of a rumbling diesel tractor-trailer. I awoke to find myself driving through the city of Louisville, around the city, through the city, until I ended up in a different state. Indiana and its city of New Albany (pronounced by locals as Nalbany) is stuck to the north side of Louisville, directly across the Ohio River. I got a too-expensive hotel (though I did receive the best rate since I flirted with the desk clerk) and slept before starting my explorations.
A trip that first night to Browning’s Brewery downtown Louisville introduced me to the southern hospitality everyone always talks about but no one ever has proof of. Tammy, my brand new bar buddy, not only coached me on the proper way to wrap my northern lips around the city’s name (say it Lou-uh-vill) but also scribble numerous undecipherable notes on coasters to point me towards a few “don’t miss ‘em” attractions.
The next morn, I headed next door to my hotel to a little greasy spoon diner where for $2.50 I got a waffle and coffee. I left a $5 and headed down to Bardstown, the keen strip of funky shops, cafes (Twig and Leaf is another cheap eats find), cemeteries (check out Cave Hall with graves from “the wahr between the states”) and galleries (Swanson Reed is especially nice). From there I headed on a search for Lynn’s Paradise Café, where I had lunch under a pair of overalls made entirely of used tea bags.
My final destination was, of course, the Kentucky Derby Museum and Churchill Downs back track tour. The high point was the wayback machine, which allows guests to view any derby dating back as far as 1918. I watched with nostalgic awe the 1986 race, the first one I truly remember. Ferdinand, with Jockey Willy Shoemaker on his back, darted to the front of the pack after trailing most of the race. Granted, it was nothing compared to the win of Secretariat, the greatest Triple Crown winner, but it was something to me. Other memorable moments included visiting with resident “spokeshorse” Phantom on Tour (who finished 3rd in the 1997 Derby) and feeding peppermints to some of the track ponies.
My visit came one week short of the great fireworks display, Thunder Over Louisville, which is billed as the largest in North America. I also came too early to see Smarty Jones win “the greatest two minutes in sports,” but that was fine. I hope to be back to see the 200 running. I’ll be 97.
REQUIEM FOR ABBY
WHITE HAWK
If someone turned the earth upside down and the dust was above and there was so much sky to swim in, infinite in fact, would the humans know what to do with it all?
I can’t say I remember, because life was only a moment to me then, but now I know, I was shot when I was still young. I was shot in the wing, the heat made the world swirl up to catch me, but then it hit me like it did not want me. Someone picked me up with hands, not claws, and took me away.
I would never be free again.
My wing was stiff, and the bullet did pierce the bone. Fragments of my own body made me sick. My feathers were red. They pulled them out. They wrapped me struggling, screaming, panting in a towel and probed my wound, extracting lead. Terrified, powerless. Then I sat. There were others as well, crying with me. They gave me cut up chicken, which I ate. I did not die.
I grew well again. They fed me so much that I grew fat and lazy, but I was not cared for. I had nothing to chew. My beak grew so that I could not close my mouth. Then, more discomfort, fear, confusion. My captors had found a buyer for me. My wings were taped to my body, and I was confined to a cardboard tube. They put a hood over my head. I was thirsty for a long time as I bounced and jostled around. I know now that I was crossing an ocean.
When I was unwrapped, I had no strength to gouge or claw the hands that pealed my wings open. But I had room. A cage in a room with one window on the ceiling. I threw myself at that bit of sky over and over again, trying to reach it, trying to escape, mad with fury, rage, disorientation. Then they taped the window up.
I had live animals now, mice mostly. But I still had nothing to chew. Once, hands caught me and someone tried to clip my beak and split the bottom to blood. I felt sick. I could only eat small dead things, tiny pieces until much time passed and my lower jaw healed.
Then , night came for too many days. No one came to feed me. A cloth hung over my cage. When it was lifted, my eyes adjusted quickly and I felt my world begin to move. Someone who had passed before my cage had reported my owner, and I was confiscated. I sat with dogs and cats and a monkey in a strange, skyless steel room until my world moved again. I was 3 years old.
My new home was a very controlled environment. It was small, not as small as my first cage, but not big enough for me to fly. I got my first sight and feel of a glove under my talons. I got warm dead mice and horsemeat. There were logs for me to file my beak on. And rocks and my water was changed every day. Still, more people came past me than ever before. I could not hear them well, they were through a window. The glove soon did not scare me. It did not grab me. It only fed me mice. I learned to hop to it. Hop on to it.
Once, there was another like me in a cage next to me. I didn’t understand, but I knew that it was a male. He beat his wings at me. I never did mate.
I learned to hop into the crate that had the mouse in it, even when I knew they would close the door on me. I knew they would open the crate again. Even after there was no longer a mouse in the crate, I would go to it.
Then one day I went to the crate and stayed there a long time. When it was opened, I hopped out into a huge cage. I could flap my wings all the way, stretch them open. But I had all but forgotten what it felt like to really fly.
I ate and chewed wood blocks and perched high or low as I deemed. The glove fed me over and over until I would come every time I saw it. Small leather straps were placed around my legs and would stay there for the rest of my life. I bit at them at first, like they were snakes. Licked the metal grommets with my tongue. Then I forgot they were there.
The glove began walking around with me, in a room with no windows but many other birds and small animals. I flapped to keep my balance but the leather straps kept me from flying too far. Then I began being taken outside. I saw the sky and its wonder blinded me. I flapped like mad to fly to it, the sun burning my wings. Then we went back inside.
Every day was much of the same. Sometimes different people wore the glove. Some had weak wrists that shook under my weight. Some tried to touch my wings or my feet or my tail and I bit hard. But much time passed, years really. I eventually stopped flapping when I was taken outside. I would sit still, look around, wonder, look, see, but never comprehend. They were all looking at me, some loud, some small, some stared me in the eyes that I wanted to peck them out. And when I was taken back inside, I was always given a good treat. And the people who wore the gloves talked to me in soft, unhurried speech.
One time, a girl with weak wrists took me outside and stumbled. She let go of the jesses and I flew with glee to a nearby tree. My body was free, but my brain was not. There I sat, as the girl tried to get me back. She put food on the glove, and I flew to it before thinking. She cried a little, took me back in, her hand beneath my talons quivering more than ever. But I got two mice from her, inside my cage, and I was content.
The many years passed. I was used in shows, taken out and shown to the public. My story was abridged to convey the horror of animals illegally taken from the wild to first graders. I lived in the same cage. Taken out again and again on the glove by many of the same people, elderly people with calm voices and respect for me.
Then, one morning, I could not get my feet to close around my perch. I had been compensating for my progressive loss of strength by balancing my body carefully, but it eventually got to the point where I fell off my perch. I flew back to it, but my feet refused to clasp it, the joints too old and tough. I tired again and again until I lay on the floor panting. Someone found me, put me in a crate, and took me to the white room of the doctor.
I traveled back to my cage, after the cold room had disappeared behind me. I hobbled around on my wings, my feet no longer able to support me without falling over. A line of the people who had worn the glove paraded past, crying
like I had at being caught,
like the girl had when I almost flew away.
And I was tired.
Tired of my body causing me pain and sickness.
Tired of eating dead mice. Tired of my cage.
Just tired.
I went to the doctor one last time. He took me out of the crate, calm and cold. I only squeaked when the needle pierced the skin of my neck. And the world that I had lived moment to moment for 21 long years drifted away.
EPILOGUE:
Abby, one of only three extremely endangered white hawks in the USA, came to the Cleveland Metroparks Zoo in 1986. Found wild in the rain forests of Africa, she had been bought from a Florida zoo, which had received her from a governmental raid on a rare animal dealer in 1982. In Florida, they had attempted to breed her with another white hawk but had no luck. She was trained in Cleveland for bird shows and for get-close programs, where volunteers would hold here and tell the public about her. X-rays had reveled bullet fragments in her wing. At age 21, she had grown so arthritic her whole body was under stress just to keep her breathing. She was euthanized on the night of September 7, 2000. Her body was donated to the Cleveland Natural History Museum.
WHITE HAWK
If someone turned the earth upside down and the dust was above and there was so much sky to swim in, infinite in fact, would the humans know what to do with it all?
I can’t say I remember, because life was only a moment to me then, but now I know, I was shot when I was still young. I was shot in the wing, the heat made the world swirl up to catch me, but then it hit me like it did not want me. Someone picked me up with hands, not claws, and took me away.
I would never be free again.
My wing was stiff, and the bullet did pierce the bone. Fragments of my own body made me sick. My feathers were red. They pulled them out. They wrapped me struggling, screaming, panting in a towel and probed my wound, extracting lead. Terrified, powerless. Then I sat. There were others as well, crying with me. They gave me cut up chicken, which I ate. I did not die.
I grew well again. They fed me so much that I grew fat and lazy, but I was not cared for. I had nothing to chew. My beak grew so that I could not close my mouth. Then, more discomfort, fear, confusion. My captors had found a buyer for me. My wings were taped to my body, and I was confined to a cardboard tube. They put a hood over my head. I was thirsty for a long time as I bounced and jostled around. I know now that I was crossing an ocean.
When I was unwrapped, I had no strength to gouge or claw the hands that pealed my wings open. But I had room. A cage in a room with one window on the ceiling. I threw myself at that bit of sky over and over again, trying to reach it, trying to escape, mad with fury, rage, disorientation. Then they taped the window up.
I had live animals now, mice mostly. But I still had nothing to chew. Once, hands caught me and someone tried to clip my beak and split the bottom to blood. I felt sick. I could only eat small dead things, tiny pieces until much time passed and my lower jaw healed.
Then , night came for too many days. No one came to feed me. A cloth hung over my cage. When it was lifted, my eyes adjusted quickly and I felt my world begin to move. Someone who had passed before my cage had reported my owner, and I was confiscated. I sat with dogs and cats and a monkey in a strange, skyless steel room until my world moved again. I was 3 years old.
My new home was a very controlled environment. It was small, not as small as my first cage, but not big enough for me to fly. I got my first sight and feel of a glove under my talons. I got warm dead mice and horsemeat. There were logs for me to file my beak on. And rocks and my water was changed every day. Still, more people came past me than ever before. I could not hear them well, they were through a window. The glove soon did not scare me. It did not grab me. It only fed me mice. I learned to hop to it. Hop on to it.
Once, there was another like me in a cage next to me. I didn’t understand, but I knew that it was a male. He beat his wings at me. I never did mate.
I learned to hop into the crate that had the mouse in it, even when I knew they would close the door on me. I knew they would open the crate again. Even after there was no longer a mouse in the crate, I would go to it.
Then one day I went to the crate and stayed there a long time. When it was opened, I hopped out into a huge cage. I could flap my wings all the way, stretch them open. But I had all but forgotten what it felt like to really fly.
I ate and chewed wood blocks and perched high or low as I deemed. The glove fed me over and over until I would come every time I saw it. Small leather straps were placed around my legs and would stay there for the rest of my life. I bit at them at first, like they were snakes. Licked the metal grommets with my tongue. Then I forgot they were there.
The glove began walking around with me, in a room with no windows but many other birds and small animals. I flapped to keep my balance but the leather straps kept me from flying too far. Then I began being taken outside. I saw the sky and its wonder blinded me. I flapped like mad to fly to it, the sun burning my wings. Then we went back inside.
Every day was much of the same. Sometimes different people wore the glove. Some had weak wrists that shook under my weight. Some tried to touch my wings or my feet or my tail and I bit hard. But much time passed, years really. I eventually stopped flapping when I was taken outside. I would sit still, look around, wonder, look, see, but never comprehend. They were all looking at me, some loud, some small, some stared me in the eyes that I wanted to peck them out. And when I was taken back inside, I was always given a good treat. And the people who wore the gloves talked to me in soft, unhurried speech.
One time, a girl with weak wrists took me outside and stumbled. She let go of the jesses and I flew with glee to a nearby tree. My body was free, but my brain was not. There I sat, as the girl tried to get me back. She put food on the glove, and I flew to it before thinking. She cried a little, took me back in, her hand beneath my talons quivering more than ever. But I got two mice from her, inside my cage, and I was content.
The many years passed. I was used in shows, taken out and shown to the public. My story was abridged to convey the horror of animals illegally taken from the wild to first graders. I lived in the same cage. Taken out again and again on the glove by many of the same people, elderly people with calm voices and respect for me.
Then, one morning, I could not get my feet to close around my perch. I had been compensating for my progressive loss of strength by balancing my body carefully, but it eventually got to the point where I fell off my perch. I flew back to it, but my feet refused to clasp it, the joints too old and tough. I tired again and again until I lay on the floor panting. Someone found me, put me in a crate, and took me to the white room of the doctor.
I traveled back to my cage, after the cold room had disappeared behind me. I hobbled around on my wings, my feet no longer able to support me without falling over. A line of the people who had worn the glove paraded past, crying
like I had at being caught,
like the girl had when I almost flew away.
And I was tired.
Tired of my body causing me pain and sickness.
Tired of eating dead mice. Tired of my cage.
Just tired.
I went to the doctor one last time. He took me out of the crate, calm and cold. I only squeaked when the needle pierced the skin of my neck. And the world that I had lived moment to moment for 21 long years drifted away.
EPILOGUE:
Abby, one of only three extremely endangered white hawks in the USA, came to the Cleveland Metroparks Zoo in 1986. Found wild in the rain forests of Africa, she had been bought from a Florida zoo, which had received her from a governmental raid on a rare animal dealer in 1982. In Florida, they had attempted to breed her with another white hawk but had no luck. She was trained in Cleveland for bird shows and for get-close programs, where volunteers would hold here and tell the public about her. X-rays had reveled bullet fragments in her wing. At age 21, she had grown so arthritic her whole body was under stress just to keep her breathing. She was euthanized on the night of September 7, 2000. Her body was donated to the Cleveland Natural History Museum.
The Shelf: Book Reviews
In the interest of the brevity and simplicity of summertime, BL presents a review of just one book, and it as a representative of a series.
“Meanwhile, Back at the Ranch”
By Kinky Friedman
It would ruin the surprise for newcomers to this Texas Jewboy’s writing to describe the things found in every one of his tales (for those who have read him, one is something he smokes, two are things that he drinks, and one is his roommate, who of course always says nothing.) This is a very concise Kinky book (the name of the author and also the main character), more so than usual. In a way it seems a vehicle for the Rescue Ranch, a real, honest to goodness animal shelter in Texas, which isn’t all a bad thing. Still, that perhaps contributes to the somewhat contrived feel of the story, which revolves around a missing cat and a missing autistic boy.
Kinky the character lives in New York and has no discernable source of income. He “works” as a private detective, but is untrained and bumbling as any maniac off the street. His friends, the Village Irregulars (including the Irish poet McGovern and the raccoon-coat wearing Ratso) are his most useful investigative tools, along with Kinky’s own connections in the country music world. Though not my favorite (that would have to be “Spanking Watson”), it is still a good, solid entry into the series that thoroughly blurs the line between reality and fiction.
In the interest of the brevity and simplicity of summertime, BL presents a review of just one book, and it as a representative of a series.
“Meanwhile, Back at the Ranch”
By Kinky Friedman
It would ruin the surprise for newcomers to this Texas Jewboy’s writing to describe the things found in every one of his tales (for those who have read him, one is something he smokes, two are things that he drinks, and one is his roommate, who of course always says nothing.) This is a very concise Kinky book (the name of the author and also the main character), more so than usual. In a way it seems a vehicle for the Rescue Ranch, a real, honest to goodness animal shelter in Texas, which isn’t all a bad thing. Still, that perhaps contributes to the somewhat contrived feel of the story, which revolves around a missing cat and a missing autistic boy.
Kinky the character lives in New York and has no discernable source of income. He “works” as a private detective, but is untrained and bumbling as any maniac off the street. His friends, the Village Irregulars (including the Irish poet McGovern and the raccoon-coat wearing Ratso) are his most useful investigative tools, along with Kinky’s own connections in the country music world. Though not my favorite (that would have to be “Spanking Watson”), it is still a good, solid entry into the series that thoroughly blurs the line between reality and fiction.
VIDEO GAME ADDICT TRIVIA
-Sure you play them,
but how well do you KNOW them?
1. Sega originally was an acronym for what?
A. Second Games
B. Super Electric Games
C. Big Fun Reality Games (loose Japanese translation)
D. Service Games
2. In Nintendo’s Super Mario Bros. 2, what are the names of the four heroes a player can choose to play as?
A. __________________
B. __________________
C. __________________
D. __________________
3. The creator of the game Tetris came from which country?
A. Soviet Union
B. United States
C. Yugoslavia
D. Germany
4. Which of these statements is NOT true about Atari?
A. The game E.T. was such a poor seller; truckloads of the cartridges were buried in the ground.
B. Although sounding like a Japanese made company, Atari Corp. actually was founded in the U.S.
C. Some game cartridges, called “Double Enders”, were designed with two games- one on each end.
D. Atari got out of the video game console market after poor sales of the Atari 7800 system.
E. Early Atari 2600 consoles had an option for playing games in color or black and white.
5. What is the “Konami Code”?
A. Justin Bailey
B. A, B, B, A, Start
C. Up, Up, Down, Down, Lt, Rt, Lt, Rt, B, A, B, A, Start
D. Hold A and B on controller 2, start on controller 1
6. Which company produces “The Sims”?
A. Maxis
B. Sierra Online
C. E/A Games
D. Microsoft
7. What was the first game produced to have a battery backup allowing the player to save their progress?
A. Adventure (Atari 2600)
B. Phantasy Star (Sega Master System)
C. Adventures of Golgo (Nintendo)
D. Legend of Zelda (Nintendo)
8. What happens when you turn on a Game Boy Advance without a game inserted?
A. A blank screen
B. The Game boy logo appears.
C. The unit will turn itself off after a few seconds.
D. A secret maze game can be played when the A, B, Select and Start are held down.
9. Which team of heroes was never used as video game characters?
A. Belle and Sebastian
B. Toejam and Earl
C. Ren and Stimpy
D. Ratchet and Clank
E. The Three Stooges
F. Sonic and Tails
G. Bill S. Preston, Esq. and Ted Theodore Logan
10. *EXTRA CREDIT* How many hours have you spent playing non-stop on a favorite game?
A. 0-1 hours
B. 1-6 hours
C. 6-12 hours
D. 12+ hours with pee and snack breaks
E. 12+ hours no breaks
-Answers-No Peeking!-
1. A-Sega began as a supplier of pinball machines and the like around WW2 = 1 point
2. Mario, Luigi, Princess, and Toad = 1 point each
3. A-His name was Alexi Pashnizov, a real giveaway! =1 point
4. D-Atari’s final attempt at consoles was the Jaguar before the company sold out in 1996 = 1 point
5. C- Used on Nintendo games made by Konami such as Contra and Life Force in order to obtain free lives =1 point
6. A-Maxis’ brainchild coined by some as one of the greatest PC games ever = 1 point
7. D- Yes, the original Zelda is that old! =1 point
8. B-Answer D is actually from the Sega Master System = 1 point
9. A-Belle and Sebastian was a cartoon and a groovy band, but not a video game (yet) = 1 point
10. A = 1 point, B = 2 points, C = 3 points, D = 6 points, E = 12 points (you naughty kid, go to bed!)
RESULTS:
0-4 POINTS= GOODY TWO SHOES- You think homework is fun, eat all of your veggies, and floss between meals. Everyone dislikes you except your mom.
5-9 POINTS= SOCIAL TYCOON- You spend just enough time playing video games to look cool to your friends. Everyone talks about you behind your back but you will probably have a successful life so who cares?
10-15 POINTS= DIE HARD- You let video games control your life but will take time out to read a book on video games. Who needs friends? (Except for swapping games with)
16-24 POINTS= VERY BROKEN- You haven’t showered or eaten a hot meal in months. You may not see daylight for long periods of time. Everyone has given up on you.
-Sure you play them,
but how well do you KNOW them?
1. Sega originally was an acronym for what?
A. Second Games
B. Super Electric Games
C. Big Fun Reality Games (loose Japanese translation)
D. Service Games
2. In Nintendo’s Super Mario Bros. 2, what are the names of the four heroes a player can choose to play as?
A. __________________
B. __________________
C. __________________
D. __________________
3. The creator of the game Tetris came from which country?
A. Soviet Union
B. United States
C. Yugoslavia
D. Germany
4. Which of these statements is NOT true about Atari?
A. The game E.T. was such a poor seller; truckloads of the cartridges were buried in the ground.
B. Although sounding like a Japanese made company, Atari Corp. actually was founded in the U.S.
C. Some game cartridges, called “Double Enders”, were designed with two games- one on each end.
D. Atari got out of the video game console market after poor sales of the Atari 7800 system.
E. Early Atari 2600 consoles had an option for playing games in color or black and white.
5. What is the “Konami Code”?
A. Justin Bailey
B. A, B, B, A, Start
C. Up, Up, Down, Down, Lt, Rt, Lt, Rt, B, A, B, A, Start
D. Hold A and B on controller 2, start on controller 1
6. Which company produces “The Sims”?
A. Maxis
B. Sierra Online
C. E/A Games
D. Microsoft
7. What was the first game produced to have a battery backup allowing the player to save their progress?
A. Adventure (Atari 2600)
B. Phantasy Star (Sega Master System)
C. Adventures of Golgo (Nintendo)
D. Legend of Zelda (Nintendo)
8. What happens when you turn on a Game Boy Advance without a game inserted?
A. A blank screen
B. The Game boy logo appears.
C. The unit will turn itself off after a few seconds.
D. A secret maze game can be played when the A, B, Select and Start are held down.
9. Which team of heroes was never used as video game characters?
A. Belle and Sebastian
B. Toejam and Earl
C. Ren and Stimpy
D. Ratchet and Clank
E. The Three Stooges
F. Sonic and Tails
G. Bill S. Preston, Esq. and Ted Theodore Logan
10. *EXTRA CREDIT* How many hours have you spent playing non-stop on a favorite game?
A. 0-1 hours
B. 1-6 hours
C. 6-12 hours
D. 12+ hours with pee and snack breaks
E. 12+ hours no breaks
-Answers-No Peeking!-
1. A-Sega began as a supplier of pinball machines and the like around WW2 = 1 point
2. Mario, Luigi, Princess, and Toad = 1 point each
3. A-His name was Alexi Pashnizov, a real giveaway! =1 point
4. D-Atari’s final attempt at consoles was the Jaguar before the company sold out in 1996 = 1 point
5. C- Used on Nintendo games made by Konami such as Contra and Life Force in order to obtain free lives =1 point
6. A-Maxis’ brainchild coined by some as one of the greatest PC games ever = 1 point
7. D- Yes, the original Zelda is that old! =1 point
8. B-Answer D is actually from the Sega Master System = 1 point
9. A-Belle and Sebastian was a cartoon and a groovy band, but not a video game (yet) = 1 point
10. A = 1 point, B = 2 points, C = 3 points, D = 6 points, E = 12 points (you naughty kid, go to bed!)
RESULTS:
0-4 POINTS= GOODY TWO SHOES- You think homework is fun, eat all of your veggies, and floss between meals. Everyone dislikes you except your mom.
5-9 POINTS= SOCIAL TYCOON- You spend just enough time playing video games to look cool to your friends. Everyone talks about you behind your back but you will probably have a successful life so who cares?
10-15 POINTS= DIE HARD- You let video games control your life but will take time out to read a book on video games. Who needs friends? (Except for swapping games with)
16-24 POINTS= VERY BROKEN- You haven’t showered or eaten a hot meal in months. You may not see daylight for long periods of time. Everyone has given up on you.
