Synthetic grass

Today's featured article on the News-Sentinel website --synthetic grass.

From the comments:

"KNS. Your readers don't want articals (sic) on vain people who have money to waste on phony grass and botox. People are going under keeping up with the cost of living and we open the paper to crap like this. How about the hurricane and the blood drive?"

I Advance Masked

Odd.

Andy Summers wears a polka-dotted bow tie. And plays something approaching a conventional guitar solo. Robert Fripp channels "Flight of the Bumblebee."

Wishbone Ash

YouTube is the sometimes the inverse of the memory hole.

If I remember correctly, back in the '80s, IRS Records started a "No Speak" label dedicated to guitar-based instrumentals. Wishbone Ashe was one of the groups that recorded an album. I remember buying it, but not whatever happened. Probably purged it along with the rest of my cassettes.

I hadn't heard of them before or since. Have refrained from googling as I write this but will probably satisfy my curiosity soon.

Memory holed

Five minutes later, the KNS, showing laudable editorial hindsight, yanks the botox party nonsense from the front page.

Overwhelming negativity

So a local newspaper writes an article about West Knoxvillians with enough disposable income to indulge in an overblown Botox party. It's prominently featured on the front page. In face, the accompanying photo is the most prominent element.

The lead is rather cloying: " Karen Stone is a member of the BBC, the Beautiful Babes Club."

It's nothing that would usually interest me, but the article is marked as "hot" with 37-or-so comments. I figure the comments might be amusing, so, what the hell, I open the story.

Didn't find any comments. In fact, there's an editor's note:

"Due to overwhelming negativity ... the ability to leave comments has been removed from this article."

So, readers might not be interested in grating, gosh-wow "Lifestyles of the Well-Off and Pretentious" inanity? Imagine that.

Proposed ending

A co-worker needed an ending for her column. I proposed one:

"And they lived happily ever after ... until she caught the plague. And the dwarves ate him."

Tuesday

Unexpectedly, I have my son. :) Am baking BANANA! bread (six mashed bananas, three cups of flour, a teaspoon each of salt and baking soda, an indeterminate amount of brown sugar, a splash of soymilk, and however much green cardamon, cloves, and cinnamon as I felt like adding). Baking at 350 for an hour.

AUGUST

THERE were four apples on the bough,
Half gold half red, that one might know
The blood was ripe inside the core;
The colour of the leaves was more
Like stems of yellow corn that grow
Through all the gold June meadow's floor.

The warm smell of the fruit was good
To feed on, and the split green wood,
With all its bearded lips and stains
Of mosses in the cloven veins,
Most pleasant, if one lay or stood
In sunshine or in happy rains.

There were four apples on the tree,
Red stained through gold, that all might see
The sun went warm from core to rind;
The green leaves made the summer blind
In that soft place they kept for me
With golden apples shut behind.

The leaves caught gold across the sun,
And where the bluest air begun,
Thirsted for song to help the heat;
As I to feel my lady's feet
Draw close before the day were done;
Both lips grew dry with dreams of it.

In the mute August afternoon
They trembled to some undertune
Of music in the silver air;
Great pleasure was it to be there
Till green turned duskier and the moon
Coloured the corn-sheaves like gold hair.

That August time it was delight
To watch the red moons wane to white
'Twixt grey seamed stems of apple-trees;
A sense of heavy harmonies
Grew on the growth of patient night,
More sweet than shapen music is.

But some three hours before the moon
The air, still eager from the noon,
Flagged after heat, not wholly dead;
Against the stem I leant my head;
The colour soothed me like a tune,
Green leaves all round the gold and red.

I lay there till the warm smell grew
More sharp, when flecks of yellow dew
Between the round ripe leaves had blurred
The rind with stain and wet; I heard
A wind that blew and breathed and blew,
Too weak to alter its one word.

The wet leaves next the gentle fruit
Felt smoother, and the brown tree-root
Felt the mould warmer: I too felt
(As water feels the slow gold melt
Right through it when the day burns mute)
The peace of time wherein love dwelt.

There were four apples on the tree,
Gold stained on red that all might see
The sweet blood filled them to the core:
The colour of her hair is more
Like stems of fair faint gold, that be
Mown from the harvest's middle floor.

--Algernon Charles Swinbourne

Home

I have five hours to fill before sleep. Am going to spent at least an hour of it in a saltwater bath, flitting between, as my fragmented attention dictates, between various manifestations of high (John Donne and Algernon Charles Swinburne) and low (R.A. Salvatore, Michael Shea) literary culture (please note the use of implied quotation marks around high and low).

I hurt, but I'll live. Brain chemistry is not fate.

And, just because I googled Swinburne's name, a couple of tangentially related links:

http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/buchanan/fleshy.html

http://thecrushedtragedian.blogspot.com/2007/07/basic-melodramatic-stage-conventions.html

Respiration

It feels so good to breathe once a feedback loop is broken.

Don't know how long the respite will last, but I am coping better for the moment.

momentary salvations

Found a story, found a phone call to make —a hook, a point of focus, a moment of leverage, a moment of sight, a glimpse outside.

...

Depression is no fun, but I'm really not fond of the periodic bouts of anxiety. Something is wrong. I've done something bad. Something bad is going to happen, has happened. I just know it. But, then, I also know there is nothing really wrong beyond a chance accumulation of chemicals in my brain.

5 Guys

5 guys, originally uploaded by Thirteen Letters Photography.

Hamburgerlicious.

house rules

house rules, originally uploaded by Thirteen Letters Photography.

pool boy

pool boy, originally uploaded by Thirteen Letters Photography.

Runolfr wordled my blog

© 2008 Jonathan Feinberg

Where I wuz

structure, originally uploaded by Thirteen Letters Photography.

hanging out

hanging out, originally uploaded by Thirteen Letters Photography.

The sammiches (avocado, tomato, roast beast stuffed into a pita, with lots of mustard) turned out too messy to be able to carry up into the bridge structure. So, I et them at my desk.

After a day of sitting and then sitting through an evening meeting, I'm strangely tired. Have decided that my urge to go hiking at night is probably not a prudent one, even if a birthday calls for foolhardiness.

Will probably wander to downtown Knoxville and be around people while not being around people. Or something.

37

My birthday began at midnight, slightly buzzed on gin-and-tonic as I devoured butternut squash, sage, and goat cheese lasagna.

I'm working today/this evening, covering a planning commission meeting. In an hour or so, I'll probably go climb into the under-structure of the Pistol Creek pedestrian bridge with a sammich. Possibly something involving avocado.

Tonight, I'm thinking that I might just head down to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park and hike through White Oak Sinks in the dark. If I disappear, point the appropriate authorities thataway.

No deep thoughts today, but I'm going to browse through my D.H. Lawrence "Collected Poems" as I eat.

Food blogging (live)

Am cooking. Will be cooking for rest of evening, but I'm stubborn. Dried chanterelles are soaking. The two butternut squash (relatively small, both of them) I harvested have been halved, seasoned with salt, pepper, corn oil, a sage leaf and a clove of garlic apiece, and are roasting in a 400 degree oven. Onions are browning slowly. Water is boiling for the lasagna. Am going to layer noodles, squash, chopped sage leaves, onions, chopped garlic, goat cheese and ricotta, then I'm going to bake the bastard. Will be served with dandelion greens and fried green tomatoes, with a squeeze of lime (because I forgot vinegar, and it's the only acid in the house).

Pennsic

Pennsic was great.

I worked for the Pennsic Independent (a temporary community of 10,000 people can actually support a small newspaper) and wandered around, interviewing and photographing lots of artisans.I just wish there had been photographers available during the woods battle, though --involving 200 rapier fighters, small unit tactics, and one very, very kick-ass moment for yours truly.

I was behind "enemy lines". After tagging two fighters, I had wandered a little further backfield, spotting a solitary fighter ahead. I walked up as she spotted me. She yelled for help "I need a tie-breaker!" So, another fighter joined her.

"Hello, ladies," I said, walking closer. "How are you?"

"Fine, thank you, m'lord," said one. "And you?"

"Feeling rather alone," I said, standing within measure of both of them.

"We noticed," she replied.

I smiled, then shot the one on my right in the mask, parrying her companion's thrust with my dagger. The remaining fighter yelled for back-up. I heard crashing behind me, realizing that the calvalry was much closer than I thought. So, I gambled, turning my back to her, and stepped forward as a male fighter crashed through the brush at me. I did a three part attack --thrust, dagger block, step in and stab with my dagger, taking him out, then continued spinning to my right, bringing my point around just in time for the last fighter, who was closing in hopes of "killing" me from behind to impale her throat upon my blade.

"Well played," she said, as they all wandered back to their lines, swords in the air.

It was absolutely awesome.

design

design, originally uploaded by Thirteen Letters Photography.

Just because ...

rainbow

rainbow, originally uploaded by Thirteen Letters Photography.

Am back from Pennsic. Developed the stomach flu that had been passed around the staff of the Pennsic Independent on the drive home yesterday. Blargh.