WhimsyLandPoetry, Technology, Cuisine, Politics, TessellationThe Friedrich Engels Condo Development- June 15, 2008 I'm thinking that I don't actually grok the whole Facebook thing. I mean, Harold Bloom is now my friend. I'm pleased and gratified that Lara Glenum is my friend (with all its gothic undertones), but Harold Bloom seems like an entirely different category. By that standard, I think I should be Helen Vendler's friend and Marjorie Perloff's friend and William Logan's friend and perhaps even Randall Jarrell's friend I am also Richard Siken's friend and Gabe...http://www.whimsyspeaks.com/2008/06/the_friedrich_engels_condo_dev.html Blue Screens and Lethal Weapons- June 12, 2008 Well, I received three emails today from people wanting to take advantage of the GREAT MMM back issue offer (see below). Why not you, too Now, look at that beautiful kitchen tile! Well, you can't see much of it, because the kitchen has become my living room for a week or so. I have to pull up the carpeting in the denTV room, so the grandfather clock in the foyer had to go to the living room, and the Scandinavian shelves had to go to the foyer, and the...http://www.whimsyspeaks.com/2008/06/blue_screens_and_lethal_weapon.html Another Chance to Improve Yourself- June 11, 2008 Do you know what Sherman Alexie, Alicia Ostriker, Agha Shahid Ali, Forrest Gander, Tony Hoagland, Mark Irwin, W. S. Merwin, Bin Ramke, Donald Revell, Pattiann Rogers, David St. John, C. D. Wright, Michael Collins, David Hernandez, Jeffrey Levine, Richard Siken, Eliot Khalil Wilson, Deborah Batterman, Mary Crow, Jack Collom, Yusef Komunyakaa, Naomi Shihab Nye, Kim Addonizio, Amiri Baraka, Jeffrey Franklin, Ray Gonzalez, Patrick Lawler, Aliki Barnstone, Virgil Suarez, G.C. Waldrep,...http://www.whimsyspeaks.com/2008/06/another_chance_to_improve_your.html $4.00 Gas and Other Stories- June 10, 2008 Tiling Diary: I finished the third coat of glazed sealant on the tile and it's nice and shiny now. That's Ms. Emily heading out to sneer at the robins. If you look carefully, you can also see my main floor office, where I have a zillion poetry books and journals. If I were Ron, of course, I'd need an entire house full of book shelves. Apparently, the Silliman poetry library is in excess of 5,000 volumes. Want some proof that gas prices are affecting...http://www.whimsyspeaks.com/2008/06/400_gas_and_other_stories.html Everything Unbuttons- June 9, 2008 Tiling Diary: Last night, I applied the gray sanded grout to the slate in the foy-yay. This entailed scrubbing the tiles repeatedly with a copper pad that looks like a Brillo pad, but that's, well, copper. I also used a cold chisel to knock out small parts of the thin set that had dribbled over into areas where it was Not Wanted. Applying the grout was actually the easy part. I would ladle along the lines and then go at it with my rubber float,...http://www.whimsyspeaks.com/2008/06/everything_unbuttons.html News You Can Use- June 6, 2008 A rare Persian rug sold at Christie's for $4.45 million, which comes to about $730 per square inch. When my family was leaving Iran, mom and dad sold all of their furniture and bought rugs. They are still in my parent's home, and quite beautiful. I've never thought about how valuable they might be, but they cost thousands of dollars in 1960, so probably quite so. I didn't know that Reb had red hair. Did Reb always have red hair It's quite...http://www.whimsyspeaks.com/2008/06/news_you_can_use.html DJ Groutmaster- June 3, 2008 Derek arrived on Saturday at an hour he called "early in the morning" and the rest of us call 10 AM. By that time, I had installed the backerboard in a part of the entryway. Der did an outstanding job scoring and breaking odd pieces of the backerboard to fit the weirdly-shaped entryway while I spread the mud. At some point we switched as I figured the wrist exercise would be good for his already superb guitar playing, and besides I was tired. We...http://www.whimsyspeaks.com/2008/06/dj_groutmaster.html |