I was setting up a few indexing system rules this afternoon, and testing the setup by randomly linking a test document titled "The Military Establishment" to random indexing terms of different types. The result is below.
The Military Establishment
IDX Adrian, Michigan (Geo)
IDX The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Novel) (Work Hub)
IDX Alien and Sedition Act of 1798 (Statutes)
IDX Apollo 13 (Spacecraft) (Named Things)
IDX Brown v. Board of Education 347 U.S. 483 (1954) (Court Cases)
IDX Edsel (Automobile) (Products)
IDX Great Depression, 1929-1934 (Events)
IDX Portia (The Merchant of Venice) (Fictional character) (Named Characters)
IDX United Nations (Organization Hub)
IDX United States. Department of Defense (Organization Hub)
IDX Washington, George (American president) (Person Hub)
The mind boggles at the world-spanning tale told herein!
Showing posts with label Literature. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Literature. Show all posts
Monday, April 25, 2011
Thursday, December 17, 2009
More High-Falutin' Poetry Analysis
Just thought I'd share a recent e-mail chain among friends that uncovered some deep thoughts regarding poetry and current events:
From: Campbell-Droze, Mary
Subject: The Poetry Koan-er meets the Zen Masters
Surprise! Buddhist monks write a lot of stuff I wouldn't expect they would. One dreams about a very specific attribute of his sweetheart, another flings cusswords at a crow that would make a 20-year Marine proud, and one likens the air to elephant flatulence.
Some of the pieces hew more to what I anticipated:
I'm trying to tell you something I can't say
Like eating mist or chopping your shadow in half
but you never know what to expect from guys who simultaneously write about insight and picking their noses.
________________________________________
From: Magee, John
They're simultaneously writing about insight and picking their noses?
Are you sure you haven’t accidentally picked up a volume of Vogon poetry?
________________________________________
From: Campbell-Droze, Mary
Good grief, where's my TOWEL???
________________________________________
From: Kardos, Tim
Okay, Zen master, here’s some fodder for you:
NZ gal's Bulgarian airbags halt traffic:
Flashes jubs, gets run over
By Lester Haines
A New Zealand teenager whose mates dared her to flash her chesticles at passing motorists brought traffic to a standstill when an appreciative driver ran her over, the Southland Times reports.
Cherelle May Dudfield, 18, stood in the middle of an Invercargill road with her assets exposed on 27 September. This turned out to be ill-advised, and despite her attempts to evade an oncoming vehicle, she "rolled over the bonnet, cracking the windscreen".
An uninjured Dudfield earned herself an appearance before Invercargill District Court on a disorderly behaviour rap, where she pleaded guilty to improper use of Bulgarian airbags.
Duty solicitor John Fraser suggested the driver involved could have been a little more careful, but conceded he may have been "distracted".
Judge David Holderness said Dudfield was lucky the consequences weren't more serious and slapped her with a NZ$275 fine.
________________________________________
From: Magee, John
Oh, there’s at least a limerick in that incident
Now let’s see, what rhymes with “Bulgarian airbags?”
________________________________________
From: Campbell-Droze, Mary
Airhead Bagged
Dugs-field fell, was fined.
No noses were picked, and no
Elephants fahrted.
________________________________________
From: Magee, John
Oh sure, it makes a fine haiku. But I think you can see my problem here:
A young lady from Southland, New Zealand,
Thought she could improve traffic’s wheelin’
By standing in streets
And exposing her teats
Until one driver lost control and hit her in her Bulgarian airbags.
It just doesn’t quite scan.
________________________________________
From: Kardos, Tim
Close enough!
From: Campbell-Droze, Mary
Subject: The Poetry Koan-er meets the Zen Masters
Surprise! Buddhist monks write a lot of stuff I wouldn't expect they would. One dreams about a very specific attribute of his sweetheart, another flings cusswords at a crow that would make a 20-year Marine proud, and one likens the air to elephant flatulence.
Some of the pieces hew more to what I anticipated:
I'm trying to tell you something I can't say
Like eating mist or chopping your shadow in half
but you never know what to expect from guys who simultaneously write about insight and picking their noses.
________________________________________
From: Magee, John
They're simultaneously writing about insight and picking their noses?
Are you sure you haven’t accidentally picked up a volume of Vogon poetry?
________________________________________
From: Campbell-Droze, Mary
Good grief, where's my TOWEL???
________________________________________
From: Kardos, Tim
Okay, Zen master, here’s some fodder for you:
NZ gal's Bulgarian airbags halt traffic:
Flashes jubs, gets run over
By Lester Haines
A New Zealand teenager whose mates dared her to flash her chesticles at passing motorists brought traffic to a standstill when an appreciative driver ran her over, the Southland Times reports.
Cherelle May Dudfield, 18, stood in the middle of an Invercargill road with her assets exposed on 27 September. This turned out to be ill-advised, and despite her attempts to evade an oncoming vehicle, she "rolled over the bonnet, cracking the windscreen".
An uninjured Dudfield earned herself an appearance before Invercargill District Court on a disorderly behaviour rap, where she pleaded guilty to improper use of Bulgarian airbags.
Duty solicitor John Fraser suggested the driver involved could have been a little more careful, but conceded he may have been "distracted".
Judge David Holderness said Dudfield was lucky the consequences weren't more serious and slapped her with a NZ$275 fine.
________________________________________
From: Magee, John
Oh, there’s at least a limerick in that incident
Now let’s see, what rhymes with “Bulgarian airbags?”
________________________________________
From: Campbell-Droze, Mary
Airhead Bagged
Dugs-field fell, was fined.
No noses were picked, and no
Elephants fahrted.
________________________________________
From: Magee, John
Oh sure, it makes a fine haiku. But I think you can see my problem here:
A young lady from Southland, New Zealand,
Thought she could improve traffic’s wheelin’
By standing in streets
And exposing her teats
Until one driver lost control and hit her in her Bulgarian airbags.
It just doesn’t quite scan.
________________________________________
From: Kardos, Tim
Close enough!
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
What you should be reading instead of this blog
Hey, you! Yeah, you with the mouse.
What are you doing reading this blog? You should instead be reading Arsen Darnay's Symphony in Ghulf Major saga. The first two books in the trilogy (Ghulf Genes, In Search of Anna Magna) are finally available at both Amazon.com and directly through Lulu press.
The third book (Anna's Song) is coming very, very soon, and I'm sure you'll want to be ready to greet it when it's hot off the presses.
What are you doing reading this blog? You should instead be reading Arsen Darnay's Symphony in Ghulf Major saga. The first two books in the trilogy (Ghulf Genes, In Search of Anna Magna) are finally available at both Amazon.com and directly through Lulu press.
The third book (Anna's Song) is coming very, very soon, and I'm sure you'll want to be ready to greet it when it's hot off the presses.
Go. Order. Read. Enjoy. You can thank me later.
Thursday, July 9, 2009
Makes you yearn for a beagle haiku, doesn't it?
Just taking a moment to prove that although I may be the most beagle-centric poet working in America today, I am not the worst. This quick e-mail conversation was started by the sharp-eyed Mary Campbell-Droze, who came across a rather curious start to a poem in the course of her indexing for LitFinder....
-----
From: Campbell-Droze, Mary
Subject: LintFinder Poetry Winner: Worst Opening Line Ever
The feet are the lips of the body.
Even if this made any sense, literally or figuratively, do we really want it to?
-----
From: Magee, John
Subject: RE: LintFinder Poetry Winner: Worst Opening Line Ever
What really surprises me is that we still include Foot-Fetishist Quarterly in LitFinder.
I would’ve thought customers would be standing in line to demand we give it the boot and kick it out of the product.
-----
From: Campbell-Droze, Mary
Subject: LintFinder Poetry Winner: Worst Opining Ever
And if the feet are the lips of the body, that'll leave the cosmetics industry standing on its ear.
-----
From: Magee, John
Subject: RE: LintFinder Poetry Winner: Worst Opining Ever
Pick your reply:
1) Sounds like you’re kissing another manufacturing sector goodbye.
2) We all look forward to Estee Lauder’s new line of toenail fungicides.
3) … and I really don’t want to know where the ears of the body are located.
-----
From: Campbell-Droze, Mary
Subject: LintFinder Poetry Winner: Worst Opening Line Ever
The feet are the lips of the body.
Even if this made any sense, literally or figuratively, do we really want it to?
-----
From: Magee, John
Subject: RE: LintFinder Poetry Winner: Worst Opening Line Ever
What really surprises me is that we still include Foot-Fetishist Quarterly in LitFinder.
I would’ve thought customers would be standing in line to demand we give it the boot and kick it out of the product.
-----
From: Campbell-Droze, Mary
Subject: LintFinder Poetry Winner: Worst Opining Ever
And if the feet are the lips of the body, that'll leave the cosmetics industry standing on its ear.
-----
From: Magee, John
Subject: RE: LintFinder Poetry Winner: Worst Opining Ever
Pick your reply:
1) Sounds like you’re kissing another manufacturing sector goodbye.
2) We all look forward to Estee Lauder’s new line of toenail fungicides.
3) … and I really don’t want to know where the ears of the body are located.
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
John's Shelf of Constant Reproach
My friend Adam Goodman recently pointed me towards a recent NPR.org blog entry by Lynn Neary called 'The Shelf Of Constant Reproach': Best Books You Never Read.
Adam wrote up his own shelf of constant reproach, which you can read if you "friend" him on Facebook. I reckoned that my own list might make a good blog entry:
The Sound and the Fury (Faulkner) -- I believe I had this assigned in four different college classes and I wrote four different literature papers focusing on the first section of the book. Why? Because I couldn't stand this book and couldn't make myself read the rest. Perhaps one day I will make amends for my sketchy collegiate career and read the damn thing.
War and Peace (Tolstoy) -- I was genuinely enjoying it when I got distracted and set it down five years ago, about 300 pages in. I have yet to pick it back up, and now I fear I'll need to go back to the beginning to be able to keep everybody straight. That fear is what has kept me away from picking it back up, and year-by-year the fear is morphing into guilt.
One Hundred Years of Solitude (Márquez) -- This omission doesn't really haunt me like the others, since I still mean to get around to it and expect to enjoy it when I do. But I really do feel as if I should have read this by now.
Other than those three there are obviously lots and lots and lots of books that I'd like to read that I still haven't read yet. Heck, I've knocked off less than half of the Telegraph's list of 100 Novels Everyone Should Read, having only read 37 of them by my count. But that doesn't keep me up nights. I'm sure I'll keep knocking off the occasional classic, but other than the three titles above there's not really anything else that I feel genuinely bad about not having read yet ... at least there are none that I can think of right now. I'm sure more will eventually come to mind and I'm sure there are some that others would be shocked that I never read.
(Interestingly, I see that I knocked off only 28 of Time's All-Time 100 Novels, thus doing worse on the American publication's list than I did on the British publication's list. Since two of the books on Time's list are by Thomas Pynchon, and since I have read both and would put neither on my own top 100 list, I view the unread 72 with reduced guilt.)
Come to think of it, that list above is only three books, albeit big books. I could probably knock them off this Summer and enjoy a lighter load of guilt on my shelf this Fall. I usually try to knock off an as-yet-unread classic or two every year, so I guess I have three nominees in hand for this year's efforts. However, they have successfully eluded me thus far, so don't expect any dramatic developments anytime soon.
Um, so in the midst of these high-falutin' literary ambitions, what was my last big reading project? Glad you asked. I sorted out my copies of Knights of the Dinner Table: Bundles of Trouble, Vols. 1-26 (collecting issues 1-89 of the comic) and read them in order. Yeah, that didn't appear on either of the big lists, but it was a lot funnier than most of those entries. It had more insight into the human condition than some of them, too. Hopefully, I'll get around to a full entry on that deranged saga sometime soon.
P.S. As an interesting point of comparison, here's a link to the list of Ten Books That I've Read That Have Stuck with Me that I posted back in March.
Adam wrote up his own shelf of constant reproach, which you can read if you "friend" him on Facebook. I reckoned that my own list might make a good blog entry:
The Sound and the Fury (Faulkner) -- I believe I had this assigned in four different college classes and I wrote four different literature papers focusing on the first section of the book. Why? Because I couldn't stand this book and couldn't make myself read the rest. Perhaps one day I will make amends for my sketchy collegiate career and read the damn thing.
War and Peace (Tolstoy) -- I was genuinely enjoying it when I got distracted and set it down five years ago, about 300 pages in. I have yet to pick it back up, and now I fear I'll need to go back to the beginning to be able to keep everybody straight. That fear is what has kept me away from picking it back up, and year-by-year the fear is morphing into guilt.
One Hundred Years of Solitude (Márquez) -- This omission doesn't really haunt me like the others, since I still mean to get around to it and expect to enjoy it when I do. But I really do feel as if I should have read this by now.
Other than those three there are obviously lots and lots and lots of books that I'd like to read that I still haven't read yet. Heck, I've knocked off less than half of the Telegraph's list of 100 Novels Everyone Should Read, having only read 37 of them by my count. But that doesn't keep me up nights. I'm sure I'll keep knocking off the occasional classic, but other than the three titles above there's not really anything else that I feel genuinely bad about not having read yet ... at least there are none that I can think of right now. I'm sure more will eventually come to mind and I'm sure there are some that others would be shocked that I never read.
(Interestingly, I see that I knocked off only 28 of Time's All-Time 100 Novels, thus doing worse on the American publication's list than I did on the British publication's list. Since two of the books on Time's list are by Thomas Pynchon, and since I have read both and would put neither on my own top 100 list, I view the unread 72 with reduced guilt.)
Come to think of it, that list above is only three books, albeit big books. I could probably knock them off this Summer and enjoy a lighter load of guilt on my shelf this Fall. I usually try to knock off an as-yet-unread classic or two every year, so I guess I have three nominees in hand for this year's efforts. However, they have successfully eluded me thus far, so don't expect any dramatic developments anytime soon.
Um, so in the midst of these high-falutin' literary ambitions, what was my last big reading project? Glad you asked. I sorted out my copies of Knights of the Dinner Table: Bundles of Trouble, Vols. 1-26 (collecting issues 1-89 of the comic) and read them in order. Yeah, that didn't appear on either of the big lists, but it was a lot funnier than most of those entries. It had more insight into the human condition than some of them, too. Hopefully, I'll get around to a full entry on that deranged saga sometime soon.
P.S. As an interesting point of comparison, here's a link to the list of Ten Books That I've Read That Have Stuck with Me that I posted back in March.
Friday, March 20, 2009
Ten Books
Yup, more "repurposed" content in the form of another list from Facebook. This was a fun Facebook list-y thing that Adam Goodman tagged me with.
"This can be a quick one. Don't take too long to think about it--Ten books you've read that will always stick with you. First ten you can recall in no more than 15 minutes. Then tag some folks who you think might be into yet another list..."
So here they are, in no particular order:
The Lord of the Rings - J.R.R. Tolkien
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - Mark Twain
A Farewell to Arms - Ernest Hemingway
The Commitments - Roddy Doyle
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance - Robert Pirsig
The Great Brain - John D. Fitzgerald
The Dharma Bums - Jack Kerouac
Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up To Me - Richard Farina
The Science Fiction Hall of Fame: Volume One, 1929-1964 - edited by Robert Silverberg
Dangerous Visions - edited by Harlan Ellison
And a special bonus credit goes to Divers Down! Adventures Under Hawaiian Seas by Hal Gordon, which is the first full-length novel (albeit a young-adult novel) that I remember reading, way back when I was about four years old.
Oh, and I should've included The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams, but I've already plopped down ten, and the point of this list is to just throw down the first ten that come to mind and not to overthink it.
It's also kind of interesting to note that nothing that I've read in the last twenty years made the list. That probably means that I should be reading more, and reading more adventurously. (Or it might just mean that it takes time to realize which books really have stuck with you.) Had I thought about it more, I might've included the Rincewind the Wizard trilogy by Terry Pratchett that I read last year, since it really got me into his entire Discworld series, which is a brilliant accumulation of writing. I have a feeling that's going to stick with me.
"This can be a quick one. Don't take too long to think about it--Ten books you've read that will always stick with you. First ten you can recall in no more than 15 minutes. Then tag some folks who you think might be into yet another list..."
So here they are, in no particular order:
The Lord of the Rings - J.R.R. Tolkien
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - Mark Twain
A Farewell to Arms - Ernest Hemingway
The Commitments - Roddy Doyle
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance - Robert Pirsig
The Great Brain - John D. Fitzgerald
The Dharma Bums - Jack Kerouac
Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up To Me - Richard Farina
The Science Fiction Hall of Fame: Volume One, 1929-1964 - edited by Robert Silverberg
Dangerous Visions - edited by Harlan Ellison
And a special bonus credit goes to Divers Down! Adventures Under Hawaiian Seas by Hal Gordon, which is the first full-length novel (albeit a young-adult novel) that I remember reading, way back when I was about four years old.
Oh, and I should've included The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams, but I've already plopped down ten, and the point of this list is to just throw down the first ten that come to mind and not to overthink it.
It's also kind of interesting to note that nothing that I've read in the last twenty years made the list. That probably means that I should be reading more, and reading more adventurously. (Or it might just mean that it takes time to realize which books really have stuck with you.) Had I thought about it more, I might've included the Rincewind the Wizard trilogy by Terry Pratchett that I read last year, since it really got me into his entire Discworld series, which is a brilliant accumulation of writing. I have a feeling that's going to stick with me.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)