Frankensplean's Lab

Dover Beach

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 06:59:23 GMT

The sea is calm tonight. The tide is full, the moon lies fair
Upon the straits; on the French coast the light
Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand,
Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay. Come to the window, sweet is the night air!
Only, from the long line of spray
Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land,
Listen! you hear the grating roar Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
At their return, up the high strand,
Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in.

Sophocles long ago
Heard it on the Aegean, and it brought
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
Of human misery; we
Find also in the sound a thought,
Hearing it by this distant northern sea.

The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled. But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.

Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.
- Matthew Arnold

Mon, 24 Aug 2009 04:34:03 GMT

I don't want to set the world on fire.
I just want to start a flame in your heart. ♥

legs throb

Sat, 20 Jun 2009 00:22:21 GMT

'Twas a beautiful evening for a bicycle ride once the rain went away. The departing sun brightened a very green bike trail and a fresh breeze brought to me rich earthy aromas.¹

i wish you could have joined me.

¹ no poopy smells

may day mae daye

Fri, 01 May 2009 19:06:01 GMT

O sweet spontaneous
earth how often have
the
doting

fingers of
prurient philosophers pinched
and
poked

thee
, has the naughty thumb
of science prodded
thy

beauty . how
often have religions taken
thee upon their scraggy knees
squeezing and

buffeting thee that thou mightest conceive
gods
(but
true

to the incomparable
couch of death thy
rhythmic
lover
thou answerest

them only with

spring)¹

¹ e.e. cummings

adhd therapy

Sun, 22 Mar 2009 23:55:15 GMT

today's stream-of-clickiness wikipedia reading:

continental shelf
terrigenous
pelagic sediments
abyssal plain
Norwegian Plain
Spitzbergen current
North Atlantic current
thermohaline circulation
Southern Ocean
polar front
file:atmosphcirc2.png
atmospheric circulation
Sargasso Sea
horse latitudes
Sahara
desert
Gobi desert
Mongolian death worm
cryptid
okapi
portmanteau
Jabberwocky

...definitely drifting toward the end. :P

o tumescent horny earth

Fri, 20 Mar 2009 18:47:48 GMT

"sproing!"¹

¹ onomatopoeia

and so it ends

Tue, 17 Mar 2009 22:20:13 GMT

Behold the wondrous and graceful combination of bat glass plus Pumking:

Thus ends our winter stash of this Southern Tier® specialty.
Thus ends my teetotaling for St. Patrick's Evacuation Day. Let the pooping commence...

walkabout

Fri, 13 Mar 2009 03:14:42 GMT

After waking up to the lowlight of my day, a public bitch-slapping, i decided on a nice walk to clear the head. A nearby park, Menotomy Rocks, had thus far eluded my explorations, so i paid it a visit. A bit chilly for this, but i definitely needed the air.

Not long after i arrived, i had my highlight of the day as a groundhog waddled down the hillside next to me while i was standing motionless reading an info board about bat houses in the park. It saw me and hid behind a log, poking its head up after a few seconds to analyze the situation. i remained motionless. It then decided the coast was clear and waddled down by me, within a foot or so, stopping after it passed me to survey the pathway and then proceeding into a large, empty field.¹

Subsequently i checked out the Irish -- i mean, Catholic² -- cemetery, St Paul's, situated on Alewife Brook in east Arlington and chock full of swanky Celtic crosses from former Hibernian affluence. Later i visited my theater for 2 movies (The International³ and Waltz With Bashir), which left me feeling sorta morose, so i stopped at the local Starbleeps on the way home for a fiendishly chocolate beverage and some call-of-Cthulhu reading.

¹ i haven't seen a groundhog since i accidently ran over one with my friend's SUV 8 years ago in upstate New York. It darted out from the breakdown lane as i was passing at outrageous speed. i saw ruined flesh rolling behind the car through my mirror and was sad for >0.5 hours of my remaining 6-hour trek.
² ...which means that some Italian and Polish corpses managed to sneak in there over the years
³ or Outrageous Gunfight At The Guggenheim

the call of Cthulhu

Mon, 02 Mar 2009 18:44:55 GMT

Typically, i'm not posting video links on here, but good satire of over-marketed Plain Tight Wheeze songs has me making an exception. i haven't heard an interesting parody of it since Randy played us that "it's what i'll do to you" version 10ish months ago, and this one has probably been linked before in my circle of awareness, but i'm always late to the party. So, ha:

i love craft, whether it's on an HP or a Canon or what-have-you.

fire walk with me

Sat, 28 Feb 2009 17:15:48 GMT

My butthole's in flames.

i feel like i should be carrying a payload into orbit.

a wolf in sheep's clothing

Mon, 16 Feb 2009 01:59:43 GMT

i learned today that February is named after a pre-Roman festival, the Lupercalia, in which goat and dog sacrifices (called februa) led to thong-wearing men running around like Pan whipping the arses of women (with the hides of the sacrifices) for the sake of fertility. Optimism in the midst of dreary late winter.
The festival is thought to be inspired in part by the older Greek festival, the Lykaia, a rite of passage for adolescent boys that did indeed ivolve the fear of lycanthropy and occurred at Wolf Mountain in Arcadia.

i'm always keen on astronomical news, and i read that the first major collision of satellites occurred a few days ago: 2 communications satellites, the US Iridium 33 and the defunct Russian Kosmos-2251 were destroyed.

Hope Springs Eternal Sunshine On The Spotless Behind

Thu, 12 Feb 2009 21:35:10 GMT

i experience a subdued guttural euphoria when these premature mild days occur in late winter. i can almost feel the crocuses pushing against the ice crusts. i want to go paint with wild colors, learn to play the keyboard (the musical one) or the theremin, perhaps. i want to fly a little. All because of the brief reprieve from winter's resounding death.

Speaking of behinds, the gas-oriented utili-screw for last month was most impressive. It's nice to have a few days with the apartment's heating system essentially off.

the screw

Tue, 10 Feb 2009 23:51:44 GMT

Not only are the financial institutions of America getting a colossal windfall from a megatax bailout sure to leave every unsheltered butthole in the US of A steaming red,
but they're also taking it to the people directly and all mafioso style.

exhibit A: Someone i know recently received a notice from Capital One indicating the APR on his or her card was going up to shy of 30%. Usury escalated. How do they make up for years of greedy, bad decision-making? Give the CEO a $20 million bonus and shove the cock of corporate power right up the asses of the ~~indentured suckers~~ customers.
i thought Massachusetts had a CC rate cap. That has either gone into the dustbin of consumer protections or has been ~~bought out by corporate money~~ adjusted ethically by lawmakers.

exhibit B: Chase recently closed my zero-balance account, purportedly because i hadn't used it lately. i had a credit line of circa $16000 on it. With the account closed, my FICO (credit risk) rating has worsened dramatically, which can be used as an excuse to increase rates and fees and lower limits and so on, and not just by Chase of course. The whole credit industry reaps the reward.

i can smell the drool of the megabanking dogs. i'm clenching my arse involuntarily.
And i need to read the convoluted small print on my credit card statements to see if i'm getting screwed yet.

i hate all of this so much.

watt if?

Tue, 10 Feb 2009 05:49:36 GMT

i am currently laboring for legal tender at the nearby Capitol Theater.¹ This is the first time i have performed alienated wage labor in a while, and it is admittedly interesting working with the public in a service capacity, something i could have indulged more if i had pursued bartending more doggedly.
i enjoy the environment that cinema provides, as it is a house of fantasy and, historically, it usually flourishes during tough times. Economy down = movie-going up.
My particular interest there is the projection booth, but that's considered an internal promotion, so... one step at a time.
My enthusiasm will pass, i suppose, as the day-to-day redundancies weigh down, but at least the coworkers are so far a dulcifying lot. And here's to cash infusions.

In other gnus, SharePod version 3.8.8.0 was released today. This version is able to interact with an iPod Touch with firmware version 2.x - which is what i've got!² Huzzah. i still need to have the bloated Henry-the-Eight-in-his-waning-years-with-oozing-leg-pustules latest iTunes installed, but at least i don't have to have the fat fuck running all the time. :)

¹ thanks for hooking me up, BurnZy! :)
² thanks for hooking me up, Diva! :)

Blood Sugar Sucks? Tragic!

Wed, 28 Jan 2009 18:35:11 GMT

Congratulations to everyone who got the day off for a <2-inch, wet winter quasi-storm! :)

Noodge busted me (?) a link to developing corn-syrup industry news about mercury tainting. i've been trying to avoid HFCS (as it's oft abbreviated) for many many moons because of my contempt and suspicion over money-motivated industrial food production methods, and corn syrup is a rather artificial product. Mercury appears in the chemical process that converts maize slurry into HFCS. One instance of the news in question.
So i guess i can add stupefaction (and sundry other mercury-poisoning symptoms) to my list of reasons to avoid HFCS.

O sweet sugar cane, beets, maples, and honey, don't fail me!

"My delicious Crème Brûlée Stout contains no corn syrup. Try some today!"

2009 Episodes: a Methodology

Sat, 03 Jan 2009 17:41:38 GMT

We've knocked the Netflix deliveries down to 1 at a time, so we get 3 a week maximum if there are no holidays. Nonetheless, we are 210 episodes into the moody, foggy, thundery soap opera Dark Shadows. At this point i am inclined to think the show is named after the "dark shadows" cast by the boom mics, but at the same time i am willing to tolerate technical deficiencies in what was essentially live television, á la SNL. The story's the thing, and the characterizations are rich and sympathetic - something you can't develop so effectively in a 2-hour film. This is especially the case with the vampyric anti-hero.

Divadad™ gave me his ancillary iPod at ~~Christ~~Xmass-time. With the aid of existing iPod enthusiasts, i reset the confounded gizmo, mainly because of my lack of interest in 70s schmaltz, contemporary country musick, and soulless Celtic songbird knockoffs. This device has now become a significant motivator in a long-back-burnered personal project - organizing my discombobulated collection of recorded aurality.

i have frequently opined historically that without music i'd be dead, so i was heartsore when i relocated in 2007 and "lost" the vast majority of my CD collection in the process. i have since reconsidered what i want out of a music collection, what i think of albums and the package in which they're presented, what digital file format and compression ratio is satisfactory for modern incarnations of musicks, and how many licks it takes to get to the center of that damned tootsie pop.

In the early 1990s, i would buy CDs giddily and ignorantly, and the RIAA was very happy. This time around, i've been approaching CD purchases very thoughtfully, partially because the digital age makes the compact disc obsolescent, partially because my vast CD loss was not my fault and i don't want to spend thousands of dollars rebuilding my musical menagerie. The reset button was pushed, whether i wanted it or no, so i'm taking the opportunity for prudent and lean recollecting.

A hard drive failure last year resulted in the loss of 100s of my newly gotten MP3s, but i march onward, with frequent coffee breaks. The collection has been in a state of chaos because of endless distractions and a distaste for the tedium of sorting, renaming, and retagging randomly labeled files. But this iPod dropping in my lap has provided incentive! So, a week into the process, i have dressed the portable little device with 918 stand-alone melodic constructs totaling shy of 4 gigabytes. i've a long way to go, but i'm taking it a little at a time.¹

Right now i am ensconced in reacquiring my Siouxsie collection. i owned most of her catalog (released by Geffen), but remasters have been manifesting with long-forgotten tracks, so i think i will be purchasing some of the CDs as a thumbs-up to the industry. For fun, here is my current artist list:

7 Shot Screamers (2 albums we got at a Horrorpops show)
Aerosmith [personal favorites (henceforward "pf")]
Angelo Badalamenti (1 song from Twin Peaks remixed by me :P)
Annette Hanshaw (random downloads plus ~~Christ~~Xmass gift CD comp)
Arcana (pf)
Au Pairs (anthology)
Bach, JS (large assortment of his organ works acquired from Sideshow Bob)
Bauhaus (pf plus Go Away White (my 1st CD purchase in a while!))
Birthday Party (pf)
Bone Orchard (everything)
Boys Next Door (Door Door)
Breeders (pf from Pod/Last Splash)
Brian Eno (just Airports at the moment)
Bush Tetras (Boom)
Captain Beefheart (pf from Shiny Beast/Doc)
Cibo Matto (Woman + a few remixes)
Corpus Delicti (Sarabands)
Cult Of The Psychic Fetus (Orgy, Funeral Home, some of She Devil)
Cure (just 4:13 Dream here... lots of work to do ("lost" all my CDs))
Delta 5 (anthology)
Elastica (self-titled)
Essential Logic (pf)
Fiona Apple (just Sally's Song)
Gein And The Graverobbers (Passion and Key Of Evil)
Horrorpops (Hell Yeah)
Keith Hudson (Pick-A-Dub)
King Tubby (Declaration)
Lee Perry (Ex-Perry-Ments)
Liliput (anthology)
Lustmord (metavoid)
Malaria (anthology)
Massive Attack (Mezzanine)
Mediaeval Baebes (anthology)
Memphis Morticians (Primitive Trashman)
Muse (Absolution)
New Order (pf)
PJ Harvey (Is This Desire?)
Poison Girls (anthology)
Portishead (Dummy)
Red Temple Spirits (Dancing..)
Sasquatch And The Sick-a-billies (Burning Miles)
Scientist (Vampires)
Shadow Reichenstein (Monster Rock + some Werewolf Order)
Siouxsie (chaos)
Slits (Cut and Peel Sessions)
Th'Faith Healers (almost everything)
The Vanishing (anthology)
X-mal Deutschland (pf)
X-Ray Spex (pf)

Notice a strong female bias in my choices so far. i have also focused on post-punk, but i'll be branching out after Siouxsie.

¹ One thing i dislike about iTunes/iPods is the folder sorting. When people just dump their entire chaotic music folders onto the device, they end up with a thousand artist names to scroll through, often with duplicates (sometimes misspelled, sometimes just with an extra space). i want to keep my mechanism tightly run - like a submarine (:P) - so i am being painstaking with the tagging of files. Compilations (e.g. soundtracks) present a special problem - 1 album can give you 20 new artists. i'm not sure what to do about that yet.

Coco por Señor Loco

Mon, 22 Dec 2008 04:14:08 GMT

According to frankensplean, today used to be St. Lucia's Day for Christian saint-worshippers. Her name is derived from the Latin "lux" for light, & festivals for her involve light ceremonies.
Appropriate for the darkest day, n'est-ce pas?
But, as the Farmer's Almanac points out, the Gregorian calendar reform of 1752 changed her feast day to MY birthday - the 13th! This makes me want to go listen to the pretty and atmospheric David Lynch/Jocelyn Montgomery album Lux Vivens.

i started the day with chocolate oatmeal (i.e. oatmeal with melting chocochips in it), and, with lots of automobile-slush-surfing and snow shoveling inbetween, i'm ending the day with chocolate oatmeal... stout! [thanks to Stina and Jon :)]

Mmmmmm, it tastes like they melted a bar of, like, you know, 70% bittersweet in it!

white heat

Sun, 21 Dec 2008 19:35:08 GMT

i had to traverse 10 miles (of snowed-over goop) to Saugus, and for once i enjoyed the somnambulent and skittish Sunday drivers!
Way too many knuckleheads don't use their headlights in poor visibility, but that was the worst of their crimes today. :)

Halcyon daze in the brown slurry, in the brown slurry

Sun, 21 Dec 2008 15:37:00 GMT

According to the Greek legend, those kingfishers are supposed to be provisioning civilization with peaceful seas, but they're acting more like storm-petrels.¹ :P
i guess that legend only works in the Mediterranean.

If you have 5 minutes to spare in these, the darkest hours, as Terra reconsiders her tilted axis, i shot some footage of the snowfall in the past few days, playing with the shutter speed along the way. The sky grows ominous, the wind is picking up, and large flakes are clouding the horizon as i taptaptap, so hopefully you have a cozy bit of shelter in which to sit back and enjoy the scene.²

Halcyon Daze: The Motion Picture

¹ oh, the yucks!³
² With attention running in deficits worthy of the federal government, i ask too much, probably.
³ Actually, this doesn't make much if any sense, anyway

my day in histree

Fri, 19 Dec 2008 20:32:23 GMT

As this theme was discussed elsewhere on my friendlist, i looked up what was special about my birthday - events, births, & deaths, all according to wikipoopdia. It's a little after the fact, but time's always shafting me anyway.
So, those that made an impression in each category:

events (or Three Adventures):
1577 - Sir Francis Drake sets out from Plymouth, England, on his round-the-world voyage.
1937 - Japanese troops begin carrying out several weeks of raping and massacring of civilians and suspected Chinese resistance after the fall of Nanjing.
1972 - Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt begin the final EVA or "moonwalk" of Apollo 17, the last manned mission to the moon.

births (or dewombifications):
1818 - Mary Todd Lincoln (as Preacher Jack will be quick to tell me)
1910 - Van Heflin, American actor
1920 - George Shultz, United States Secretary of State 1982-1989
1925 - Dick Van Dyke, American actor and comedian
1929 - Christopher Plummer, Canadian actor
1941 - John Davidson, American actor and game show host
1948 - Ted Nugent, American guitarist (and comedian)
1949 - Tom Verlaine, American singer and guitarist (Television)
1953 - Ben Bernanke, current Chairman of the Federal Reserve cabal
1957 - Steve Buscemi, American actor
1957 - Morris Day, American singer (The Time)
1964 - hide, Japanese musician (X Japan)
1967 - Jamie Foxx, American actor
1981 - Amy Lee, American singer/songwriter (Evanescence)

deaths (or changes of plans):
People who expired on my b'day include
Donatello (NOT the ninja turtle), Samuel Johnson, Grandma Moses, Stan Tookie Williams,
and Floyd Red Crow Westerman. [chronological; i enjoy the orderly increase in name encumbrance]
Fun fact: Stan Tookie Williams is played by Jamie Foxx in a 2004 biofilm. (for the unobservant, one death and one birth!)

We have submerged into the darkest 80 hours of the year.

there was music there, in the derriere

Fri, 19 Dec 2008 07:26:14 GMT

Colon Blow Korma™

1 jar Trader Joe's korma simmer sauce
1 heaping handful lentils
1 can black beans
1 heaping handful frozen chopped broccoli
1 heaping handful frozen peas

Cook ze lentils til they isn't chewy. Drain extra waters.
Throw in all the other shit.
Simmer for 15 minutes or til you can't wait any longer.
Stay near available toilet for next 24 hours.

For variety, add lots of capsaicin and enjoy fire poops.

bleak beak

Mon, 15 Dec 2008 16:08:16 GMT

As these dark days ebb toward their nadir, i rely on sunny flashes of memory to keep the descending spirit from Mr. Abyss's hungry maw. So, tripping over long shadows, i offer kind gratitude to the friends and associates who cheered HorrorHaus Saturday evening, leaving me ample fuel - both solid and liquid - for further rotundity. There were many activities vying for your attention, O Visitors, so thank you for allowing me the pleasure.

When i am in the darkest 2 weeks of the year, i feel much more inclined to be distracted by passive film entertainments. So, last night, an impromptu suggestion that the housemates visit the Somerville Theater to view a Swedish vampire movie had great appeal, especially with BurnZ's VIP treatment thrown on top (as he works there). Thus we witnessed Låt den Rätte komma in. i anticipated pretty vistas and an Ingmar Bergman vibe, which was delivered. And the whole approach was very subtle¹, a frequent European antidote to American in-your-face. The ending was gloriously satisfying and blackly comedic.

My latest coffee algorithm is blending a dark smoky roast with my traditional "full city" roast. i find anything darker than French roast too smoky and thin, so i tried throwing in the plantier-tasting light roast and am quite edified by the combination. :)

Mild southwesterly breeze. i'm taking a loooong walk.

¹ except for the scene with the CG gatos

postulated morbidity

Thu, 11 Dec 2008 05:32:14 GMT

i should point out that, although it's a ::pot luck:: theme for my Saturday ~~death~~birthday open house affair that commences after 6-ish and ends i-don't-know-when-cuz-i'm-not-sure-if-we're-hosting-a-Rocky-afterparty-?, those interested in visiting should not feel obliged to bring something other than their cheerful selves!¹ ² :) As for organizational issues - the whos and whats and whens - i'm letting Miss Diva handle the details, as i'm not at all well-versed in managing such things.

i tend toward tolerant and good-humored (except when i am antic), but i've had a few peeves these past few months that i should write down:

1. i am aggravated by YouTubers who make videos comprised of a song they like plus a still image of album art or the musician. You like a song and want to share it (despite copyright bullshite)? Cool. Go to Soulseek or Limewire. Audio compression is rather craptacular on YouTube, and you're wasting tons of interwebz bandwidth on useless video - my bandwidth! X( (Okay, so i have FiOS, but it's the principle!)

2. i hate professional landscapers. This one isn't particularly rational. But the contempt flies every time i see one of those trucks chugging down the street with its trailer of landscaper implements - especially those stand-on mowers and smoggy jetpack leafblowers - all so uninterested landowners can pour out moneys to ignore their 1/2 acre more effectively by creating blue haze and loud drones at 8AM on Saturday mornings. (Okay, so it took me a month to make this complaint.)

3. Attenuating oscillations bug me, lots. For as long as i can remember.

¹ It's supposed to be heinously cold on Saturday, but i'm getting used to it already³, sadly (as i have strong philosophical objections to the subfreezing), so i think "cheerful" is quite do-able!
² Bear in mind, however, that i will eat just about anything. :d
³ this despite the invigorating 60 degrees of today

principia discordia

Fri, 05 Dec 2008 04:22:38 GMT

The interwebz has done wonders for my attention span.
Por ejemplo, "surfing" Wikipedia entries, i went through the following series of links and promptly lost track of my musical research:
Robert Johnson (musician)
Son House
Death Letter
Blues
Eshu
Orisha
Santería
Syncretism
Thelema
Hellfire Club
Francis Dashwood
The Illuminatus! Trilogy
23 (film)
23 Enigma
Chtulhu Mythos

i wonder where a different mood would have taken me?
PS: Note the time! ;)

potato sack races

Mon, 01 Dec 2008 21:25:54 GMT

As we descend into the darkest 11% of the year, i would like to declare publicly that i love these bittersweet mild days that occasionally blow in riding on a southwesterly gush of temperateness. Long shadows abound, and Gwen's poop blends in nicely with the dead oak leaves (clean up? why bother?). It is a grand day to look out over the pond and hold my girlfriend's hand while she shops in her head.

Pulchritude. Ephemeral. Hold onto it, brain!