sea nerd blog
winter twenty fourteen

monsters

Is this how racists see outsiders?
Monsters swooping from the dark?
Why do they fear normal people
    having a normal life?

Look at this.
Is this what they fear?
Ghostly monsters screaming in?

It is only rain.
Rain on a neon–lit window.

farage

It’s January 3rd. Here, you can see the hordes of Eastern Europeans invading Bedford, exactly as predicted by the racists, coming to get worse unemployment benefit than they would get at home. Bedford of course suffered terribly from earlier Polish hordes, when those damn Poles came over and fought for the RAF in WW2. No wonder you can see a farage of true Brits defending the town from the invaders.

heavenwards

Having a meal in remembrance of a loved one? Wondering what might be appropriate?

It’s simple: you modernise the ancient Greek tradition and sacrifice something valuable and edible over a fire with lots of appropriate holy herbs and vegetables. The God/ess (your mum?) selects the stuff S/he wants by making it ascend heavenwards. You share in religious blessing by scoffing what’s left behind. Cook it correctly, don’t burn it: you don’t want to make the God/ess fat.

Having said this,
I am not a priest of Zeus,
I may have the details wrong.

Frozen

Apparently, some people claim Disney’s “Frozen” indoctrinates women to become Lesbian. I doubt the claim, but am willing to be persuaded by evidence. If television or film can change innate behaviour, something you’re born with, then I propose an experiment: have a dozen cats watch films of dogs continuously for a month. If more than half the cats start barking and wagging their tales when happy, I will change my opinions accordingly.

library

Space is a major reason I moved into working electronically (when it became possible); I still have all my clutter and projects on the go, but now they’re on my servers, not my floor. It’s not the same, things is no longer instantly visible: but I can work; I have space to walk. Now my clutter is less, and mostly disorganised books. I can now take everything with me on my laptop, my projects no longer lock me to one place. The way I’ve organised things means my server preserves project history, the laptop presents the now.

conditions of sale

There’s a condition on the sale of a property a friend is trying to buy, I gather. The owner must give a healthy pig to the local lord of the manor once a year. The problem starts because the local lord lives in Shanghai. The problem got out of hand when he became an astronaut. He’s soon to fly to the Chinese space station for a year.

There’s an argument over who pays for the delivery of the pig this time. The resolution is that my friends have to email a drawing of a pig at the relevant time, and give a healthy pig to the local Oxfam. The delay was because their solicitor wanted to find a way to resolve the problem that involved sending the pig in flight, mostly because he has a warped sense of humour.

lingua franca

I’ve love lingua franca! It’s literally Latin for French, but actually Latin for English, from when Latin itself had not entirely ceased to be a lingua franca. It’s perhaps the shortest European history lesson. It’s also a prediction: go north from Rome to find France. Go north from France to find England. Go north from England to find … whar? The next country? That’s Iceland! The next lingua franca will be Icelandic.

I can see how, too. Our world is built on computers. This digital world is built on bits, ones and zeroes. The future is Quantum Computing, which, amongst other things, allows extra information to be stored in a bit, more than just a one or a zero. Icelandic is strange: there are seven words for the number one. So Icelandic also allows extra meaning to be held in a bit, unlike many languages (such as English). And with zero, Icelandic has eight meanings in a bit: that’s a byte of meaning in a bit. That’s so convenient, and close to the essence of quantum computing, that I think I can say confidently that Icelandic is a natural Qubit language. No doubt that’s why it’ll become the next lingua franca.

found poetry

I don’t get Found Poetry, but I do see it as equivalent to collage in the visual arts. I don’t get collage either, but a lot of people I respect do. I see my lack of “getting” as my failure of perspective, not theirs. The killer punch is Kurt Schwitters.

I agree with Ira Lightman; attribution in found poetry is necessary. Having said that, I wonder what to do about clichés: too much poetry I hear includes them, but never attributes the original author. I don’t like clichés in poetry, and am tempted to start a campaign to get those people who use clichés to attribute them, if only to encourage them to grasp the idea of spotting flaws in their work. However, I fear doing so would enable some of the more egotistical lazy ones to start describing themselves as found poets, so giving themselves credit when none is due, & damaging found poetry in the process.

Similarly, I don’t get why it’s wrong to reuse groups of words, but wrong to not to reuse individual words.

Trier

We got taken to a very popular local pub in Trier last night. I was served cider. It was NOT fizzy. It was NOT sugary. It was NOT glitzy. It tasted of apple. It was served in a mug. It’s a local speciality, and the locals quite clearly know what they’re doing. It was the best cider I’ve ever tasted. Admittedly, that’s not saying much.

<< 2013 • sea nerd • spring 2014 >>