things move around

Herman from Sprout Lake is a handsome fellow, and as modest as he is handsome. He’s lived in Sprout Lake all his life, born and raised, and doesn’t plan on leaving anytime soon. Why would he, when he’s acknowledged by all who have a say in these things to be Sprout Lake’s most eligible bachelor?

Handsome Herman has a hobby: photography. He got himself a digital camera two years ago and in his spare time he likes to capture the little splendours of Sprout Lake - the tumbling creek full of fish in the spring haze; leaves on the lake in the fall, and the picture he sent in to the regional TV Weather program, of the snow-blanketed humpy hills crisp as new linen in the thin February sun.

That was the picture they showed at the end of the broadcast, and the weathercaster read out his thanks to Herman, from Sprout Lake. So Herman became something of a celebrity, not only in Sprout Lake, but in the surrounding villages and towns, and even in the provincial capital, and from his front door to the valley’s end stretched a line of nymphettes, each desirous of handsome Herman’s handsome hand in marriage, or, as they were called by the older folk of Sprout Lake, Hermanettes.

There’s nothing I like better to settle a stomach stuffed full of raw fish and horseradish than a cool drink of water. If possible I like my drink of water to be tall, but short and in-between are fine too. However, I do insist on my drink of water being cool. That’s why I was overjoyed to discover that my employer in its beneficence has provided a water-cooler on my side of the office, meaning I no longer have to expedish to the accounts kitchen when I want a cool, and possibly tall, drink of water.

Interestingly, my comrade (of the Good Vibes deficiency - see below) is half Chinese, and not a believer in the drinking of chilled water. Apparently the Chinese like their water room-temperature, or preferably slightly warmer. You could say she is lukewarm about drinking water which isn’t.

Anyway, according to the info-sheet attached to our new water-cooler, my cool (tap) water has had the following contaminants removed by “microfiltration and reverse osmosis systems”:

Chlorine, Chloramines, Lead, Trihalomethanes (THM’s), Volatile Organic Chemicals (VOC’s), Off-tastes & odors, Turbidity, Dirt & Rust, Parasites, Giardia, Cryptosporidium, Molds, Algae, Asbestos fibres, Oxidized iron, managanese and sulphides, 99.9% of all particles 0.5 micron and larger.

As far as I can see these contaminants break down, so to speak, into three groups:

Contaminants I’m glad to see the back of

• Lead (makes you atrophy)
• Trihalomethanes (sounds terrifying)
• Parasites (send ‘em back to their own countries)
• Asbestos fibres (plenty of fibre in my diet already)

Contaminants I’d prefer they left in, if possible

• Chlorine (stops infections, verucas &c)
• Off-tastes & odors (nothing wrong with either of these)
• Turbidity (not a contaminant in the first place)
• Dirt & rust (healthy carbon content)
• Molds (no-one ever died from molds)
• 99.9% of all particles 0.5 micron and larger (overly zealous)

Contaminants I’m not sure about, but would like to make an informed choice if possible

• Chloramines (bore-amines)
• Volatile Organic Chemicals (VOC’s) (sounds kind of fun)
• Giardia (Italian?)
• Cryptosporidum (surely a made-up contaminant?)
• Algae (isn’t tofu made of algae?)
• Oxidized shit.

Regular, forward-moving osmosis I can handle, but when they start reversing it I’m just not so sure.

Someone I work with has asked me if I can “send her good vibes” while she is away on business in Peru. I said I would have to think about it - it isn’t that I don’t want to send her good vibes, but I’m unsure of how to actually go about it. She was incredulous; she seemed to consider the sending of good vibes to a far-away person a trifling feat, accomplished with little or no effort or disturbance, as easy as peeling a banana.

I don’t know if I’ve ever been in receipt of good vibes or not: perhaps if I had I would be better able to despatch them in the direction of my co-worker. As it is I’m thinking I’ll just kind of wave my hands around and make mumbling noises in the general direction of South. Maybe twice a day?

Any tips would be appreciated. For example, are there any props which might assist me? A wobble board? Deely-boppers? Goggles?

I’ve decided to write a fantasy trilogy, with characters and locations named after administrative regions of Somalia. Here’s an extract:

And so Hiiraan and Sool sought the counsel of the great wizard Galguduud. ‘Ever since our defeat by the forces of Sanaag at Jubbada Hoose, all our plans have gone awry’ said Hiiraan, despairingly. ‘How would you advise us?’

Galguduud remained silent for a moment, motionless but for the bristling of his brows. Then he spoke:

‘Seek out Togdheer and Bari, eldest of the dwarven peoples, in their mountain stronghold of Banaadir. Their wisdom will avail you greatly in your quest to overthrow the tyrant Woqooyi Galbeed.’

Full list of Somali regions here.

Two jackets hang in the windowless, striplit room which is the tax guys’ locale and universe. The younger one - Mike, I think he’s called - leans back in his cheap office chair and feigns consciousness as his cellmate describes, in depth, the symptoms of his arthritis. Mike scratches the back of his head, just below his thin patch. Mike nods lightly and habitually, a pale flame writhing in his skull and spine, lashing his brain, gnawing at his sense of self, flaying his dreams into a thin colourless gruel which sloshes when he turns, seeping from his eyeballs, spilling from his nostrils unseen onto his thighs and groin.

• Avant-garde pastry chef
• Pope-in-waiting
• Sterotypical Teutonic opponent for Rocky
• Member of legendary Krautrock ensemble Einstürzende Neubauten
• Aeroflot Stewardess
• Gnome

Great news for gay cowboy afficionados: Willie Nelson is going to release a single, ‘Cowboys are secretly, frequently (fond of each other)’, all about gay cowboys and gay cowboyism. But bad news for gay cowboys, and wannabe-gay cowboys, without an I-Tunes account: the single will be exclusively available on I-Tunes.

Gold in the womens’ downhill goes to Austria’s Michaela Dorfmeister. Kate and I are overjoyed at this news since we’ve been rooting* for the Dorfmeister from day one. In fact nothing makes us happier than seeing the Dorfmeister assume her rightful place atop the podium.

Dorfmeister, te salutamus!

*fnarr fnarr

Update: I suppose really we ought to refer to her as the Dorfmeistermeister. Does that make sense?

Heather’s post about not selling herself short reminded me of four words which you see an awful lot, especially on the internet, and which are as ridiculous as they are well-worn:

I am a poet.

If I had a dollar for every self-proclaimed “poet” I’ve run across (sadly not run over), I’d have $358,719. The dictum seems to be “I write poetry, therefore I’m a poet, and it doesn’t matter if I’m published or not, because it’s completely personal.”

Well, as Heather quite rightly points out, I wired a plug the other day so I must be an electrician. And every now and again I knock up a half-decent curry from a Patak’s paste - so that makes me a chef as well. I haven’t written any poems in a couple of weeks so I’m not sure whether I’m still a poet, but I definitely was a poet, that’s for sure. Funny thing though, no-one says “look, here comes menace the poet” when they see me walking down the street. I don’t get introduced at dinner parties as “menace, electrician, chef, accountant and poet”. My business card makes no mention of clerihews or kennings. What’s all that about then?

Am I a poet? Of course I’m bloody not; I’m an accountant who writes the odd poem when work isn’t interesting or busy enough or when he’s drunk and soppy and shacked-up in a chain hotel with nothing but subhuman hotel porn for company.

So what does make you a poet? Well, since virtually nobody makes a living out of writing poems, I don’t think it’s fair to use “professionalism” as the standard here. Poetry is essentially an amateur pursuit, even for big-name poets who generally earn their crust in academia. How about this fairly tough standard - in order to go around calling yourself a poet and not piss me off, you have to have had a collection published and reviewed by a reputable periodical; yes, that’s right, you have to have brushed with the establishment. Let’s face it, that’s what all this nonsense about us all being poets boils down to: the widely-accepted but groundless notion that elitism is always bad, per se. The rank, sprawling, unexamined subjectivism of our times.

Like I said: if you’re a poet, and you’re a poet, and you over there are a poet too, then I’m a chef and a dog-trainer and an astronomer. And if me auntie had balls, she’d be Patrick Moore.

Or maybe I am a poet, albeit a very humble one. Fuck it, I’m going to change my name by deed poll and sign my cheques “Humble Poet”. I’m going to get personalised “HUMBLE POET” bicycle clips and pedal round town with a spoffy self-satisfied, but very humble, poet’s grin plastered across my chops. Of course, as an especially humble poet there’s only one thing I like more than people admiring my poetry, and that’s people admiring my humility. But it’s not easy being this humble; it takes continual humiliation. Me, I’ve been humiliating myself constantly ever since I was a very young poet, writing 3-6-3 haiku in alphabetti spaghetti.

p.s. Vive la France.

There’s a right way and a wrong way to publish an Olympic medals table. The right way is to rank nations first in order of gold medals, then in order of silver and bronze medals, like the Beeb.

The simple-minded, and wrong, way is to add up all the medals and rank nations on a totalised basis, like this.

Aside from being misleading and wrong in every sense, by equating silver and bronze medals with gold, this kind of table rewards mediocrity and scorns the Olympic ideal. Surely it’s clear that despite its abject failure to win one bronze medal, let alone five, the USA has been more successful than Norway. Damnit, the Olympics is about winners, not third-rate Norwegian also-rans!