(no subject)

Part of me really hopes that Kerry's campaign stumbles, with all of these rumors of an affair with a 20-year-old. Get him out of the race before we actually settle on a candidate.

My attitude is childish and churlish, but I can't help how I feel.

(no subject)

Birds circle my window nervously.

(no subject)

Wait, wait, wait. . . marijuana is Schedule I, and PCP is Schedule II??

What a screwed-up society we live in.

There is a time and place for experimentation: that place is called college

Here is a chick who's much too young to be searching for the substances she is.

I'm a big proponent for decriminalization of many if not most drugs, but I also think that one should be a fully functioning adult before entering into the decision to ingest these substances.

If and when I become a parent, I will probably be very strict about the use of tobacco, marijuana and any other drug by my teens. I almost certainly will bring up my own background, the fact that I waited until I was 25--out of high school, out of college--before I smoked up for the first time.

14 is just too young. The brain and body need time to develop normally.

(no subject)

The Fear President

By the time NBC's Tim Russert finished interviewing President Bush last Sunday, viewers were either frightened or flabbergasted or both.

Frightened because Bush -- announcing himself a "war president" -- used variations of the words "war," "terror," "kill" and "danger" more than 70 times in an interview that lasted less than an hour. It prompted memories of Cold War school drills and hiding beneath the desk.

Flabbergasted because you may have thought you had been mysteriously transported into an episode of "The Outer Limits." Was it Dec. 8, 1941? Or April 18, 1961, the day after the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion? Perhaps Sept. 12, 2001?

Actually, President Bush wants you emotionally stuck in the horrible aftermath of the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington. The weeks following the atrocities saw the president transformed into a forceful commander-in-chief and brought him sky-high approval ratings. With his ratings now down to about 50 percent, he'd love to flytrap American voters in a 9/11 mindset until November -- which, he thinks, would ensure his re-election.

highly recommended

If you're serious about poetry, peruse Perrine's Sound and Sense: An Introduction to Poetry. Therein lies some great information:


Poets may repeat any unit of sound from the smallest to the largest. They may repeat individual vowel and consonant sounds, whole syllables, words, phrases, lines, or groups of lines. In each instance, in a good poem, the repetition will serve several purposes: it will please the ear, it will emphasize the words in which the repetition occurs, and it will give structure to the poem (p. 165).

Both alliteration and rime, especially feminine rime, become humorous or silly if used excessively or unskillfully. If the intention is humorous, the result is delightful; if not, fatal. [...] Used skillfully and judiciously, however, musical devices provide a palpable and delicate pressure to the ear and, even more important, add dimension to meaning (p. 170).

( Read more... )

phonetic intensives

Something mentioned in Perrine's Sound and Sense is this term: phonetic intensive. The paragraph wasn't very informative, so outside research was necessary.

This outline of ideas explored in Sound and Sense describes the phonetic intensive as "certain sounds and sound combinations that seem to be associated with certain images or ideas". It's helpful to view the list on the page; the groups of words will give you a fuller sense of the definition.

This page calls phonetic intensives "examples of sound matching sense".

It goes on: "Naturally, there is no absolute connection between these phonemes and meanings (e.g. "thick" is hardly a word used to denote smallness), but there are enough examples of these phonetic intensives to make us wonder."

We don't seem to know why these phonetic intensives work the way they do, but they do work.

Just something to keep in mind (and, perhaps, to use to great advantage).

fragments, 2/11/04

I am, therefore That must be.

As I exist, I observe. An observer must be what he is, and to do is to be--or vice versa in this case. The observed must exist, because I exist, and as I exist, I observe.

What do I observe?

That. The Other. Thou. You. Not I. The mirror.

(no subject)

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