The Rarities

I like to think of myself as a musical vagabond: I listen to everything (well, not everything – the Jonas Brothers are just a bridge too far for me) and in my wanderings have stumbled upon some exceptional musicians and music that very often falls outside of the mainstream bin.

There is still the commercially condoned category, the spiky pop and hip hop confections with the carefully calculated bit of controversy thrown in – just to make it media-friendly.   You might put Beyonce or Taylor Swift or anyone else Kanye has interrupted or endorsed in this box, or anyone with more than one sibling in the same group.   I honestly don’t know all of their names.  They inspire no interest.

Following (and as part of Twitter’s usual Music Monday) is my offering of three women I first heard around 1989 – and just can’t get out of my head.

Free-E-Day – Spreading the Word

Never mind the mainstream!

December 1^st, 2009 is Free-e-day, a day when any independent artist, writer, musician or filmmaker can give something of theirs away in electronic form for free and anyone who loves culture can discover a wealth of independent talent in one place.

Response: Who Needs an Agent?

‘A the risk of sounding self-serving, every serious author needs a literary agent.’

Agent Miriam Goderich (of Dystel & Goderich Literary Agency) comes off a bit  Jane Austen in this opening salvo in praise for literary agents – and she takes the risk anyway.  Of course her article is self-serving.  She is a literary agent.

I would like to point out that not all authors (and if you are an author I hope you are serious about it) may want an agent.

Favorites: Dead Authors

We all have them.  We all love them.  We remember them fondly.  Sometimes we read them.  Again.

Here are the ones I still can’t live without:

Marion Zimmer Bradley – I use to be an Arthurian NUT.  I read everything.  Tennyson.  TH White.  Mary Stewart.  The Boy’s version.  Took me forever to start The Mists of Avalon – and by the time I finished I couldn’t remember anything that came before it.

Dijecta Membra

Come one, come none! Enjoy an all-expenses unpaid trip to The End of the World! Witness alarming vistas filled with frustrum fuscus necrotic pestis, ad conciliandum gustum! Take in the charming vas vitreum filled with exceptional morbus vermis. Enjoy a stroll through the farthest fields till you reach the Elm from which False Dreams cling, linger in the Vale of Mourning for a spell before a quick trip through the alvus of Avernus, enjoying the noxious siccus airs, such a remedium for our common marasmus – a bene placito!

Frangar non flectar.

Ad populum phaleras, ego te intus et in cute novi.

A letter, unsent

Dear You,

 

Did I ever tell you -

No, wait.  Let me start over.

 

Did you know?

No, that isn’t right, either.

 

Did you -

Sorry. Don’t answer that.

 

Yours,

Did you know…?

- In the current U.S. Congress, only 16% of the seats are held by women.   We are roughly 71st among 147 countries reported.

- As of 2004 reports, the leading cause of death for women in the U.S. – all females, all ages – is heart disease at 27.2%.   Cancer is a close second at 22%.

- As of 2007 statistics, women take more time off from work than male workers due to injury or illness (stats exclude maternity leave).

- In statistics between 2006 – 2008, black women show a higher rate of obesity – as much as 17% higher than white females.

- Stats from 2005 show women have a higher incident of disability than men in all age groups – especially those over 65.

Short Fiction: In the Flesh

A little Happy Halloween Horror.   NOT for the kiddies.

Here we go again.  Noxious little invaders back for more.  They always bring a few new ones, just as dog-vomit ugly and twice as stupid.  They don’t even need to wear masks, they’re so filthy hideous.  All piss-stinking pockmarked pubescence.  There’s one now, his shriveled little banger wilting in the wind, wetting my poor old porch.  No wonder it’s rotted through.  You know how many I’ve seen do that over the years?  His smells like some diseased old cat, stinging essence of putrid.

Flash Fiction – Bitterly

Just in time for Halloween – a trifle.  A very short trifle.

The thing that eats the heart is mostly heart.

- Stanley Kunitz

She couldn’t force herself: the torrent, the bile, the scream purging her of a choice.  Shards of scorched glass churned in her throat, shredding the lining of the esophagus, stabbing the glottis, piercing the soft palette, raking her taste buds.  An upward contraction followed by a sudden expulsion – the stickiest parts of her coating the flagstones – seeping through the grout, down into the mud.  Mucus membrane under mould and marble.

Wordstock: The Agony

Wordstock, Portland, Oregon’s largest literary arts festival, held this year at the Oregon Convention Center has a fascinating cover to its program guide: it looks like an ad for Carl’s Jr., a mega-sloppy multi-tiered sandwich/burger of dubious fillings and condiments all slathered together with the catchphrase “be a literary omnivore’ stamped over it.   For the average book nerd this metaphor maybe apt, but the image is well, kind of disgusting.