Mr Ludwig the Flower Man

Checking in at the Silvery Tay Poetry Competition site today, to see whether there’s any housekeeping needed before I go and do a foolish 3am caution-to-the-wind type of thing like mention it in David Bullard’s comment threads, I found that I must either have forgotten to post the “Short Exceptance Speech” that Melodi Bloggs emailed to Mr Clarke and me; or I did put it in but it got eaten by a passing flock of jubjub birds, which are known to be attracted by bright multicoloured party lights like Melodi. If I forgot, I’m sorry, and if it was eaten, I hope they enjoyed it as much as I did. Well I’ve put it up there now so that’s all right then.

It went like this:

Short Exceptance Speech

Dear Ms Pandora and Mr James Small
It is with great humbility that I accept this onerous award.
I’ve never won anything like this before and I hope it won’t go to my head.
In honour of the honour I will be decorating my second bathroom in the same classical tones as my Pandora’s Poet Laureate certificate of 2007. After which I will be approaching Mr Ludwig (the flower man, not the composter) about having a rose named after myself.
And in the words of the intrepid Jesus, “I’ll be back”.

Yours poetically
Melodi Bloggs

Pandora’s Poet Laureate 2007


Re the housekeeping, I’m relieved to report that none was needed. This is because as yet I have not mentioned the STPC on David Bullard’s blog, of course. I have been sending emails to myself and sticking post-its all over my desk, loo door and kettle, with lists of reasons to remind me why I should not do it. I hope it keeps working.

David Bullard’s Eternal September

I was both amused and alarmed by David Bullard’s column about blogs and bloggers in last week’s Sunday Times. It was all absolutely true, every word, so knowing what lay in store for him I sent some little psychic sachets of sterkte winging through the ethers, for him to keep in his pocket. I hope they’re coming in handy. But why would he want to engage with a not very subtle cabal of nitwits whose collective online oeuvre is concrete proof that some people should not have been allowed to learn reading and writing in the first place? Now he’s gone and nailed his foot to the funnyfarm floor by acquiring a blog of his own. Why would he do that? Like he said this week, “I should have kept my mouth shut.”

It’s not too late, Mr Bullard! Bail out immediately before they eat your brains. No-one is immune, not even you. Don’t feed the baboons for goodness sake. Get some calamine for that nasty rash and take comfort from the fact that they get bored really quickly and will move along any minute now.

But if you must pursue this folly against all advice, may I offer my services as Disemvoweller? You will need one for sure. The beauty of disemvowelling is that it’s not the same as censorship. It’s better. I’ve been dying to try it but have never had the opportunity here, all four of my readers being very well behaved indeed. I will charge you 1 cent per word or part thereof, the reason I have to charge is not because I’m after the money (although I’m anticipating it getting to a point where you offer me a rand a vowel just to keep me on) but because I’m after the job description. I’d quite like to be able to say, “I’m a Professional Disemvoweller” when people ask.

Shibboleths

1.
Doug Shaw Prime did a test to find out what kind of American accent he has. I thought I ought to do it too, so I did, and it said: “New York City. You are most definitely from New York City. Not New Jersey, not Connecticut. If you are from Jersey then you can probably get into New York City in 10 minutes or less.” I found that very interesting.


2.
The Extensis blog had a haiku competition to celebrate the premiere of a hardcore designgeek film called “Helvetica”. While I absolutely do not in any way whatsoever miss my late career*, I did like these haikus. First prize was a limited edition Helvetica fine art poster, which in those circles can be compared to a staunch Catholic winning one of baby Jesus’ milk teeth. My favourite was Christina’s, which won second place:

wedding invite came
they chose brush script mt bold
i give it six months

*only tiny insignificant bits of it, and even then only sometimes.