Re: a comment on War (edit) by zodiac	ALChemy 24.74.101.159	13-Dec-05/2:51 AM
So the real driving force behind this poem is your wife and yeast. Don't worry I won't make any connections between the two I promise.
Re: a comment on War (edit) by zodiac	ALChemy 24.74.101.159	13-Dec-05/2:44 AM
LOL. You must be in NC as we speak.
Re: a comment on War (edit) by zodiac	ALChemy 24.74.101.159	13-Dec-05/2:42 AM
I go through this type of exchange at work almost on a daily basis. Usually when it gets that bad I'll refer to an old Abbott and Costello routine a holler out "Thirrrd base."
Re: a comment on Towards the Sun or The keeper of the bay they call a pond by somemorepoetry	ALChemy 24.74.101.159	13-Dec-05/2:32 AM
But it sounds like they're are going through the whole alphabet which is a little bit more surreal then the rest of the poem. It would be a trip to have them start out in a V and then morph through the whole alphabet.
Re: a comment on I saw Your Face Last Night by Dovina	zodiac 69.132.67.140	13-Dec-05/1:55 AM
No. I found the quote about not executing political criminals in the back of my Peace Corps Handbook. Weird, huh? Either someone culled John Updike's "pronouncements" for the most cloying and obvious, or he's dimmer than I've ever imagined.
Re: a comment on Bri's Room (not done) by Sunshine Conkey	zodiac 69.132.67.140	13-Dec-05/1:52 AM
I'll answer both of you: Al, you haven't seen the rest of the world. With a few exceptions, we're the intellectual powerhouses. LilMsLady, I've asserted nothing. Quotes are never, ever, necessarily assertions. As it happens, I believe one of the main differences between people with good fortunes and people with bad fortunes is intelligence. There. Now I've asserted something. But good fortune is obviously the cause of intelligence, not the other way around. (I'm comfortable saying that, despite being a broke unemployed kid with a Masters; I did go to private school most of my childhood, after all.) And what kind of intelligence? I can think of three or four kinds mostly unrelated to knowing the capital of North Dakota or stepping into the street in front of a bus. Obviously, you should now ask me to back up "good fortune is the cause of intelligence".
Re: a comment on Bri's Room (not done) by Sunshine Conkey	zodiac 69.132.67.140	13-Dec-05/1:43 AM
Technically, de Tocqueville did.
Re: a comment on War (edit) by zodiac	zodiac 69.132.67.140	13-Dec-05/1:42 AM
The sad part is, I don't see anything wrong with the original sentence. Is it too late to mention I'm from Seattle originally? Or that most Southerns I know couldn't metaphor their way out of a... a... damn!
Re: a comment on War (edit) by zodiac	zodiac 69.132.67.140	13-Dec-05/1:40 AM
"Zodiac...does that mean bigotry IS psychosis?" Technically, no. "Or only if it is 'extreme bigotry'?" The study apparently only dealt with that. "Is 'non-extreme bigotry' not, then, considered psychotic?" Certainly not, but the fact that extreme bigotry's slightly correlated with psychosis would make a good attack on bigotry in general. That is, if you could count on bigots to get it. "Could you please define 'normal bigotry' as opposed to 'extreme bigotry'?" No. I'm just quoting the article. I did find this other article - here: http://tinyurl.com/abqty - that explains more about the same debate, if not the same study. "Is the implication that only inmates are capable if 'extreme' bigotry? Or only that they should be given anti-psychotic drugs for it?" No. The implication is probably that the easiest test group was inmates. The other implication is that defining bigotry as a psychosis would make it a legally admissable defense for hate crimes, and that, as you've pointed out, the vagueness of the term "extreme bigotry" means almost anyone qualifies. Surely the study was done in some way that accounts for the placebo effect, even if by just admitting that the correlation hasn't been tested for the placebo effect yet. Given that the inmates wouldn't have automatically expected that anti-psychosis drugs would reduce their bigotry, you can hardly expect the placebo effect to be strong in this case.
Re: a comment on War (edit) by zodiac	zodiac 69.132.67.140	13-Dec-05/1:25 AM
I used to work at a traditional bakery - you know, we hand-rolled the bread on a big wood table and all that jazz. Maybe big modern industrial bakeries smell like yeast, too, but this one, in the unventilated basement of a hundred-year-old building smelled amazingly so. I also had this idea that you can smell yeast in an unopened packet. Oh, and the baking supplies section of any supermarket smells like yeast, too. So on the most superficial level, it's just about yeast smelling fermented and earthy, like turned dirt. 1) I don't think Girlie is necessarily a put-down. I've used the name in 4 poems now for a character whose habits resemble my wife's, so it's hard for me to feel anything but mushy about it. 2) But the character narrating my poems is not always right - or, at least, I spend a lot of time undermining his credibility. I think calling his wife Girlie is a good way of giving an idea of who he is and who his wife is. He doesn't totally respect her, but that could be because she's a little flighty. Again, my wife is the yeast-stockpiler, but she's also a much better person than I am. Who knows? Maybe she's onto something. Of course, metaphorically she's stocking troops, weapons, etc, for an ambiguous purpose, a purpose she doesn't really understand herself but considers The Natural Order of Things. (Yeast does die in its packets if unused.) For me, the real coup of the poem is the narrator's voice fumbling and justifying up to "we keep our peaces", which is his only true assessment of his wife or his relationship. Thanks. This is the longest I've ever commented explaining one of my own poems. It must be 4am. It is. Someone's bound to be wondering: My wife thinks it's hilarious that I use her idiosyncracies for shallow poem women.
Re: a comment on Towards the Sun or The keeper of the bay they call a pond by somemorepoetry	somemorepoetry 130.160.195.85	12-Dec-05/10:28 PM
You know how geese fly in a V-shape? That's the idea.
Re: a comment on War (edit) by zodiac	LilMsLadyPoet 64.12.116.138	12-Dec-05/9:48 PM
Like This conversation that really took place: (Southerner):"I was carrying my friend to the store and as soon as we started walking across the parking lot the bottom fell out." Me:Why did you carry your friend to the store? "Because he don't have no way to get there." But why did you carry him? "'Cause he's my friend, and besides, he wanted to ride in my new truck." But I thought you said you carried him to the store. "I did." I thought you just said he road in your truck. "He did, and I carried him to the store." Oh, so he road in your truck, then you carried him into the store? "No, to the store." Huh?. Never mind, Oh, and what fell out? "What d' ya mean?" You said something fell out when you were going to the store. "Oh, yeah, the bottom fell out when we got to the store, and we got soaked through." You got sucked through? "What?!, We didn't get sucked anywhere; Yeah, the bottom fell out!" The truck? The bottom fell out? "No, we were goin' to go in and then the bottom fell out." The bottom fell out of WHAT?! "What?" What fell out of where?...???!!! "What?! The bottom FELL out, there!" What do you mean? "Man! It just fell out and we ran!" (I gave up and later relayed this to someone else, who told me what we had been talking about!) A downpour of rain...apparently here in the South, the bottom falls out of the sky and dumps rain on you!) (Which, having lived here for some years, I have to admit it is not a far stretch to say such a thing to describe the torrential downpours!) Disclaimer:This was an actual, f'r-real, North-westerner and Southerner exchange. No part of this is fiction, but the identities of said parties will be protected, as only in the South they can be.
Re: a comment on Oh Merry Fay (part 1) by ALChemy	LilMsLadyPoet 64.12.116.138	12-Dec-05/9:18 PM
I admit...I am not the English marm! So you'd better double check what I tell you as far as punctuation goes...it is my weak point!
Re: a comment on Bri's Room (not done) by Sunshine Conkey	LilMsLadyPoet 64.12.116.138	12-Dec-05/9:15 PM
yeah, I know...my spelling is fine...it's my typing that suffers when I'm tired!
Re: a comment on Bri's Room (not done) by Sunshine Conkey	LilMsLadyPoet 64.12.116.138	12-Dec-05/9:14 PM
Yes...but Zodiac pulled it out of his funny little hat...to insert here. "The principal cause of disparities in the fortunes of men is intelligence." he asserts, (by the fact that he stated it or quoted it.) He does not go on to state how said intellegence creates said disparity...perhpas his assumption is that intellegent men have less fortune? I would be most amused if one day he threw out a thought, such as this one, and then backed it up with a thought or analysis of his own.
Re: a comment on Bri's Room (not done) by Sunshine Conkey	LilMsLadyPoet 64.12.116.138	12-Dec-05/9:08 PM
Okay...I gotta say it>druuuuummmmm rooooole....women! LOLOLOL!
Re: a comment on Bri's Room (not done) by Sunshine Conkey	ALChemy 24.74.101.159	12-Dec-05/9:07 PM
Maybe it was a woman that said it. The quoted person wasn't named.
Re: a comment on Bri's Room (not done) by Sunshine Conkey	LilMsLadyPoet 64.12.116.138	12-Dec-05/9:06 PM
...Reaganomics? ...Bush Policy? ...The dog-eat-dog mentality embraced by said men?
Re: Bri's Room (not done) by Sunshine Conkey	LilMsLadyPoet 64.12.116.67	12-Dec-05/9:03 PM
This reminds me of some childrens poetry. The premise is cute; I know a Bri, who is a bit of an artist with stuff everywhere. But, that said...even childrens poetry should not be mundane...keep working at it and you'll have something of quailty to give them!
Re: Oh Merry Fay (part 1) by ALChemy	ALChemy 24.74.101.159	12-Dec-05/9:01 PM
Yeah I kinda just rushed through with the punctuation. Thank ya Lil Lady.