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<h1><a href="http://wincingatlight.com/" title="Wincing at Light">Wincing at Light</a></h1>
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<div class="post-288 post type-post status-publish format-standard hentry category-miscellany tag-a-gush-not-a-review tag-downhere tag-ending-is-beginning" id="post-288">
<h2><a href="http://wincingatlight.com/2008/09/26/interlude-ending-is-beginning/" rel="bookmark" title="Interlude: Ending is Beginning">Interlude: Ending is Beginning</a></h2>
<div class="postinfo">
Posted on <span class="postdate">September 26, 2008</span> by wincing.at.light </div>
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<p><img src="http://afreshfocus.files.wordpress.com/2008/08/downhere-ending-is-beginning.jpg?w=468" border="2" alt="" align="left" /> So I’ve spent the last three days or so with <a href="http://www.downhere.com/">downhere</a>‘s new offering <a href="https://www.missingink.net/mishop/product.asp?AffiliateID=88&home=1"><em>Ending is Beginning</em> </a>on my virtual turntable. I am insane for this album. I can’t even be coherent about it. It feels groundbreaking. It feels extraordinary. And at the same time, it is downhere to the core.</p>
<p>Maybe this is just artistic maturity, I don’t know. Buy this album. Seriously. Songs like “Beggar Who Gives Alms”<em> </em>will change the way you think about Christian music. “Cathedral Made of People” is like a punch to the base of your skull (but in a good way). It reminds me of a funky blend of <em>Supernatural</em> era <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dc_talk">dc Talk</a> and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Edge">Edge’s</a> sonic riffs on<em> The Unforgettable Fire</em>.</p>
<p>Buy this album. I mean it.</p>
<p>If you need something more convincing than my raving fanboy incoherency, there’s a <a href="http://www.christianitytoday.com/music/reviews/2008/endingisbeginning.html">splendid review</a> in <em>Christianity Today</em> and an even better one from <a href="http://www.soul-audio.com/album-reviews/09-14-2008/downhere/">John Wofford at Soul-Audio</a>. (I’m also glad to see that someone other than me hears the <em>Unforgettable Fire </em>vibe on this record.)</p>
<p>I’ve believed for the last few years that <strong>downhere</strong> is the single most-overlooked band in the Christian contemporary market. I still can’t even fathom this. I can’t. It makes me angry just to think about it.</p>
<p>If <em>Ending is Beginning</em> doesn’t finally grab people’s attention, I am giving up on our culture and concluding beyond all reasonable doubt that the world is full of idiots. You don’t want that, and I don’t want to have to move into a musty cave and spend the rest of my life ranting bitterly about the decline of Western Civilization.</p>
<p>So do us both a favor: Buy this album.</p>
<p>(I don’t know how long this will be up, but if you want a preview, you can hear a full album stream at <a href="http://www.jesusfreakhideout.com/features/listeningparty4.asp">http://www.jesusfreakhideout.com/features/listeningparty4.asp</a>.)</p>
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Filed under: <a href="http://wincingatlight.com/category/miscellany/" title="View all posts in Miscellany" rel="category tag">Miscellany</a> | Tagged: <a href="http://wincingatlight.com/tag/a-gush-not-a-review/" rel="tag">a gush - not a review</a>, <a href="http://wincingatlight.com/tag/downhere/" rel="tag">downhere</a>, <a href="http://wincingatlight.com/tag/ending-is-beginning/" rel="tag">ending is beginning</a> | <a href="http://wincingatlight.com/2008/09/26/interlude-ending-is-beginning/#comments" title="Comment on Interlude: Ending is Beginning">1 Comment »</a> </p>
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<div class="post-286 post type-post status-publish format-standard hentry category-tempests tag-financial-bailout tag-fiscal-insanity tag-nigerian-scam tag-ur-money-i-haz-it" id="post-286">
<h2><a href="http://wincingatlight.com/2008/09/26/interlude-bailout/" rel="bookmark" title="Interlude: Bailout!">Interlude: Bailout!</a></h2>
<div class="postinfo">
Posted on <span class="postdate">September 26, 2008</span> by wincing.at.light </div>
<div class="entry">
<p>The best commentary I’ve seen on the proposed U.S. financial sector bailout comes from <a href="http://www.theseminal.com/2008/09/23/awaiting-your-correspondance-important-business-matter/">theseminal.com</a>:</p>
<blockquote><p>Dear American:</p>
<p>I need to ask you to support an urgent secret business relationship with a transfer of funds of great magnitude.</p>
<p>I am Ministry of the Treasury of the Republic of America. My country has had crisis that has caused the need for large transfer of funds of 800 billion dollars US. If you would assist me in this transfer, it would be most profitable to you.</p>
<p>I am working with Mr. Phil Gram, lobbyist for UBS, who will be my replacement as Ministry of the Treasury in January. As a Senator, you may know him as the leader of the American banking deregulation movement in the 1990s. This transactin is 100% safe.</p>
<p>This is a matter of great urgency. We need a blank check. We need the funds as quickly as possible. We cannot directly transfer these funds in the names of our close friends because we are constantly under surveillance. My family lawyer advised me that I should look for a reliable and trustworthy person who will act as a next of kin so the funds can be transferred.</p>
<p>Please reply with all of your bank account, IRA and college fund account numbers and those of your children and grandchildren to wallstreetbailout@treasury.gov so that we may transfer your commission for this transaction. After I receive that information, I will respond with detailed information about safeguards that will be used to protect the funds.</p>
<p>Yours Faithfully Minister of Treasury Paulson</p>
<p><em>Henry Merritt “Hank” Paulson Jr. is the <a class="mw-redirect" title="United States Treasury Secretary" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Treasury_Secretary">United States Treasury Secretary</a> and member of the <a title="International Monetary Fund" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Monetary_Fund">International Monetary Fund</a> Board of Governors. He previously served as the <a class="mw-redirect" title="Chairman" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chairman">Chairman</a> and <a class="mw-redirect" title="Chief Executive Officer" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chief_Executive_Officer">Chief Executive Officer</a> of <a title="Goldman Sachs" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goldman_Sachs">Goldman Sachs</a>.</em></p></blockquote>
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Filed under: <a href="http://wincingatlight.com/category/tempests/" title="View all posts in Tempests" rel="category tag">Tempests</a> | Tagged: <a href="http://wincingatlight.com/tag/financial-bailout/" rel="tag">financial bailout</a>, <a href="http://wincingatlight.com/tag/fiscal-insanity/" rel="tag">fiscal insanity</a>, <a href="http://wincingatlight.com/tag/nigerian-scam/" rel="tag">nigerian scam</a>, <a href="http://wincingatlight.com/tag/ur-money-i-haz-it/" rel="tag">ur money - I haz it</a> | <a href="http://wincingatlight.com/2008/09/26/interlude-bailout/#comments" title="Comment on Interlude: Bailout!">1 Comment »</a> </p>
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<div class="post-273 post type-post status-publish format-standard hentry category-poetry tag-aj-strong" id="post-273">
<h2><a href="http://wincingatlight.com/2008/09/16/interlude-poetry-share-round-2/" rel="bookmark" title="Interlude: Poetry Share, Round 2">Interlude: Poetry Share, Round 2</a></h2>
<div class="postinfo">
Posted on <span class="postdate">September 16, 2008</span> by wincing.at.light </div>
<div class="entry">
<p>I’ve been down with the flu for the last couple of days, so rather than coming up with anything new, I’m taking this opportunity to share the work of others.</p>
<p>About AJ Strong as a poet, I can’t really say enough. He bends words and moods into patterns that frequently make my head spin. Always challenging, always insightful. As with the poem offered below, he’s frequently at his best when he’s using heavy repetition like a metronomic, hypnotic bass line to drive home his internal rhythms.</p>
<p>——————————————–</p>
<p><a href="http://trupoets.com/xoops/modules/news/article.php?storyid=25107">A Time Grows in My Desire</a></p>
<p style="text-align:center;">stop time<br />
stop time<br />
double now</p>
<p style="text-align:center;">the serpent winds around the hours<br />
like the swirls in the candy of your love<br />
fruit</p>
<p style="text-align:center;">simple doesn’t describe the passage<br />
of ingenuity that drips from your eyes<br />
heat</p>
<p style="text-align:center;">higher and higher the winds of passion climb<br />
within the vortex of your imagination<br />
honey</p>
<p style="text-align:center;">stop time<br />
stop time<br />
double now</p>
<p style="text-align:center;">sex and you is like religion and i must<br />
bow and pray to your canvas of invention<br />
sugar</p>
<p style="text-align:center;">magic is a word for dreamers and poets<br />
like the sound of your adventures on me<br />
steam</p>
<p style="text-align:center;">stop time<br />
stop time<br />
double now</p>
<p style="text-align:center;">distance is no obstruction to your touch<br />
silk on glass running down the spine of motion<br />
high</p>
<p style="text-align:center;">the fruit grows on the tree in the summer heat as the honey flows into bowls of sugar creating the steam that makes me high on you</p>
<p style="text-align:center;">stop<br />
time</p>
<p style="text-align:left;">
<p style="text-align:left;"><em>– AJ Strong</em></p>
<p style="text-align:left;">© 2008, AJ Strong</p>
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Filed under: <a href="http://wincingatlight.com/category/poetry/" title="View all posts in Poetry" rel="category tag">Poetry</a> | Tagged: <a href="http://wincingatlight.com/tag/aj-strong/" rel="tag">aj strong</a> | <a href="http://wincingatlight.com/2008/09/16/interlude-poetry-share-round-2/#comments" title="Comment on Interlude: Poetry Share, Round 2">1 Comment »</a> </p>
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<div class="post-268 post type-post status-publish format-standard hentry category-miscellany tag-content tag-cory-doctorow" id="post-268">
<h2><a href="http://wincingatlight.com/2008/09/09/interlude-in-case-were-doomed-pt-2/" rel="bookmark" title="Interlude: In Case We’re Doomed, pt. 2">Interlude: In Case We’re Doomed, pt. 2</a></h2>
<div class="postinfo">
Posted on <span class="postdate">September 9, 2008</span> by wincing.at.light </div>
<div class="entry">
<blockquote><p>Today we hear ebook publishers tell each other and anyone who’ll listen that the barrier to ebooks is screen resolution. It’s bollocks, and so is the whole sermonette about how nice a book looks on your bookcase and how nice it smells and how easy it is to slip into the tub. These are obvious and untrue things, like the idea that radio will catch on once they figure out how to sell you hotdogs during the intermission, or that movies will really hit their stride when we can figure out how to bring the actors out for an encore when the film’s run out. Or that what the Protestant Reformation really needs is Luther Bibles with facsimile illumination in the margin and a rent-a-priest to read aloud from your personal Word of God.</p>
<p>New media don’t succeed because they’re like the old media, only better: they succeed because they’re worse than the old media at the stuff the old media is good at, and better at the stuff the old media are bad at.</p>
<p>Books are good at being paperwhite, highresolution, low-infrastructure, cheap and disposable. Ebooks are good at being everywhere in the world at the same time for free in a form that is so malleable that you can just pastebomb it into your IM session or turn it into a page-a-day mailing list.</p>
<p>The only really successful epublishing — I mean, hundreds of thousands, millions of copies distributed and read — is the bookwarez scene, where scanned-and-OCR’d books are distributed on the darknet. The only legit publishers with any success at epublishing are the ones whose books cross the Internet without technological fetter: publishers like Baen Books and my own, Tor, who are making some or all of their catalogs available in ASCII and HTML and PDF.</p>
<p>The hardware-dependent ebooks, the DRM use-and-copy-restricted ebooks, they’re cratering. Sales measured in the tens, sometimes the hundreds. Science fiction is a niche business, but when you’re selling copies by the ten, that’s not even a business, it’s a hobby.</p>
<p>Every one of you has been riding a curve where you read more and more words off of more and more screens every day through most of your professional careers. It’s zero-sum: you’ve also been reading fewer words off of fewer pages as time went by: the dinosauric executive who prints his email and dictates a reply to his secretary is info-roadkill.</p>
<p>Today, at this very second, people read words off of screens for every hour that they can find. Your kids stare at their Game Boys until their eyes fall out. Euroteens ring doorbells with their hypertrophied, SMS-twitching thumbs instead of their index fingers.</p>
<p>Paper books are the packaging that books come in. Cheap printer-binderies, like the Internet Bookmobile that can produce a full-bleed, four-color, glossy cover, printed spine, perfect-bound book in ten minutes for a dollar are the future of paper books: when you need an instance of a paper book, you generate one, or part of one, and pitch it out when you’re done. I landed at SEATAC on Monday and burned a couple CDs from my music collection to listen to in the rental car. When I drop the car off, I’ll leave them behind. Who needs ’em?</p>
<p>Whenever a new technology has disrupted copyright, we’ve changed copyright. Copyright isn’t an ethical proposition, it’s a utilitarian one. There’s nothing moral about paying a composer tuppence for the piano-roll rights, there’s nothing immoral about not paying Hollywood for the right to videotape a movie off your TV. They’re just the best way of balancing out so that people’s physical property rights in their VCRs and phonographs are respected and so that creators get enough of a dangling carrot to go on making shows and music and books and paintings.</p>
<p>– Cory Doctorow, <em>Content</em>, Microsoft Research DMR Talk</p></blockquote>
<p>I want you to understand conceptually what I’ve just done here: <em>I’ve just proven Cory’s point.</em> He made his book available in a digital format. I read it. I found something he said that made me sit up and go, “Holy Crap! That’s <em>brilliant</em>!”</p>
<p>I wanted to share it.</p>
<p>I copy/pasted the bit that really knocked me out so I could share it with my friends.</p>
<p>Now you’ve read something of Cory’s, too — something you probably wouldn’t have read otherwise (despite the fact that I just <strong>strongly</strong> recommended this book to you like all of two hours ago. What? You thought I didn’t see you blowing me off?).</p>
<p>Cory wins, because now some of you — or even better, some random recipient audience I didn’t even <em>intend</em>, but who will end up here through random Googlization — will be interested enough to search out more. A smaller portion of you will go to Amazon or your local bookseller and buy <em>Content</em> because you’ve been intrigued by what you read here — most of whom, I dare say, haven’t ever heard of Cory Doctorow until this moment. (In other words, you can’t be a customer for an artist you’ve never heard of. As Cory has famously said over and over again, the greatest threat to artists isn’t <em>piracy</em>, it’s <strong>obscurity</strong>.) Others will have the name “Cory Doctorow” dumped deep into the recesses of your brain, and 3, 5 or 10 years from now, you’ll stumble across one of his books in a bookstore and think, “I know that name from somewhere. Maybe I’ll give this book a try.”</p>
<p>Cory also wins because of the simple fact that his ideas propagate. <strong>Propagation, whether it be biologically or ideologically, is always teh win.</strong></p>
<p>Even more importantly, <strong>I</strong> win because I read something really cool and got to share it without having to spend four hours of my life copying it by hand out of a print book or an hour typing it into an e-mail and forwarding it to a bunch of poor shlubs. Cool stuff is only worth knowing if you can share it with your friends. Cool stuff is (mostly) only worth sharing if you don’t have to spend hours and hours duplicating someone else’s work just to get it out there.</p>
<p><strong>You</strong> win because you’ve just been exposed to a cool idea that might never have crossed your threshold except that all down the line, the ability to reproduce this idea in its exact form (without typo-festing, summarizing or otherwise garbling the original content) was made simple and accessible by people who didn’t need to be control freaks about format. People who decided that the most important thing was to get the information <em>out there</em>, and trust that they’d be clever enough to find a way to monetize it later rather than relying on old models <strong>that actually would have impeded communication in this exact case</strong> to put pennies in their pockets.</p>
<p>So there.</p>
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Filed under: <a href="http://wincingatlight.com/category/miscellany/" title="View all posts in Miscellany" rel="category tag">Miscellany</a> | Tagged: <a href="http://wincingatlight.com/tag/content/" rel="tag">Content</a>, <a href="http://wincingatlight.com/tag/cory-doctorow/" rel="tag">cory doctorow</a> | <a href="http://wincingatlight.com/2008/09/09/interlude-in-case-were-doomed-pt-2/#respond" title="Comment on Interlude: In Case We’re Doomed, pt. 2">Leave a Comment »</a> </p>
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<div class="post-263 post type-post status-publish format-standard hentry category-miscellany tag-chicken-little tag-content tag-cory-doctorow tag-large-hadron-collider tag-little-brother" id="post-263">
<h2><a href="http://wincingatlight.com/2008/09/09/interlude-in-case-were-doomed/" rel="bookmark" title="Interlude: In Case We’re Doomed…">Interlude: In Case We’re Doomed…</a></h2>
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Posted on <span class="postdate">September 9, 2008</span> by wincing.at.light </div>
<div class="entry">
<p>The <a href="http://blogs.indystar.com/geek/2008/09/large_hadron_co.html">Large Hadron Collider</a> should be going on-line for the first time at the CERN lab on the Franco-Swiss border any…second…now, bringing with it either a <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2710348/Stephen-Hawking-Large-Hadron-Collider-vital-for-humanity.html">fresh hope for all humanity</a>, or the <a href="http://news.cnet.com/8301-11386_3-10036245-76.html">possibility of sub-atomic black holes</a> devouring our reality, our space-time continuum and our pastrami sandwiches.</p>
<p>Or both. I can’t decide.</p>
<p>Anyway, in the little time you (may) have left, you owe it to yourself to check out Cory Doctorow’s new Creative Commons release, <a href="http://craphound.com/content/">Content</a>. From <a href="http://craphound.com/?p=2129">Cory’s blargh</a>:</p>
<blockquote><p>Hailed by Bruce Sterling as “a political activist, gizmo freak, junk collector, programmer, entrepreneur, and all-around Renaissance geek,” the Internet’s favorite high-tech culture maven is celebrated with the first collection of his infamous articles, essays, and polemics. Irreverently championing free speech and universal access to information—even if it’s just a free download of the newest Britney Spears MP3—he leads off with a mutinous talk given at Microsoft on digital rights management, insisting that they stop treating their customers as criminals. Readers will discover how America chose Happy Meal toys over copyright, why Facebook is taking a faceplant, how the Internet is basically just a giant Xerox machine, why Wikipedia is a poor cousin of The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, and how to enjoy free e-books. Practicing what he preaches, all of the author’s books, including this one, are simultaneously released in print and on the Internet under Creative Commons licenses that encourage their reuse and sharing. He argues persuasively that this practice has considerably increased his sales by enlisting readers to promote his work. Accessible to geeks and nontechies alike, this is a timely collection from an author who effortlessly surfs the zeitgeist while always generating his own wave.</p></blockquote>
<p>Direct link to download page <a href="http://craphound.com/content/download/">here</a>.</p>
<p>Editorial Aside: Though the above is the “official”/back-cover copy on <a href="http://craphound.com/content">Content: Selected Essays on Technology, Creativity, Copyright, and the Future of the Future</a>, I actually prefer Cory’s riff on what this collection is about:</p>
<blockquote><p>In it are 28 essays about everything from copyright and DRM to the layout of phone-keypads, the fallacy of the semantic web, the nature of futurism, the necessity of privacy in a digital world, the reason to love Wikipedia, the miracle of fanfic, and many other subjects. The book sports a very fine <a href="http://craphound.com/content/intro-by-john-perry-barlow/">Introduction by John Perry Barlow</a>, and was <a href="http://craphound.com/content/2008/09/08/book-design-by-john-d-berry/">designed by typography legend John D Berry</a>.</p>
<p>I’m especially chuffed about John’s superb design, because I’m giving the whole electronic text away in the hopes of selling more printed objects, and the fact that this is one of the best-looking books I’ve ever read really makes the case for owning the p-book as well as the e-book (there’s an essay on this subject in the book, too, natch).</p></blockquote>
<p>This book may very well change your life, or at least what’s left of it. So get it now before time runs out. Cory is chuffed. You should be, too. I am, and I haven’t even read it yet.</p>
<p>Chuffed, I say.</p>
<p>(And if you like Cory’s work as much as I do, really do please give at least a little thought to <a href="http://craphound.com/content/donate/">donating toward the cause</a> or buying a print copy. Authors have to eat, too. And if you’re going to buy this one, you might as well buy <em><a href="http://craphound.com/littlebrother/about/">Little Brother</a></em>, too, though Cory will let you <a href="http://craphound.com/littlebrother/download/">download</a> that one for free, also. Good stuff.)</p>
<p>That’s it. I’ve gotta run. Chuff to do before the world ends.</p>
<p>D.</p>
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Filed under: <a href="http://wincingatlight.com/category/miscellany/" title="View all posts in Miscellany" rel="category tag">Miscellany</a> | Tagged: <a href="http://wincingatlight.com/tag/chicken-little/" rel="tag">Chicken Little</a>, <a href="http://wincingatlight.com/tag/content/" rel="tag">Content</a>, <a href="http://wincingatlight.com/tag/cory-doctorow/" rel="tag">cory doctorow</a>, <a href="http://wincingatlight.com/tag/large-hadron-collider/" rel="tag">Large Hadron Collider</a>, <a href="http://wincingatlight.com/tag/little-brother/" rel="tag">Little Brother</a> | <a href="http://wincingatlight.com/2008/09/09/interlude-in-case-were-doomed/#respond" title="Comment on Interlude: In Case We’re Doomed…">Leave a Comment »</a> </p>
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<div class="post-256 post type-post status-publish format-standard hentry category-miscellany tag-eula tag-google-chrome tag-in-google-we-trust" id="post-256">
<h2><a href="http://wincingatlight.com/2008/09/04/interlude-chrome-eula-our-bad/" rel="bookmark" title="Interlude: Chrome EULA: “Our Bad”">Interlude: Chrome EULA: “Our Bad”</a></h2>
<div class="postinfo">
Posted on <span class="postdate">September 4, 2008</span> by wincing.at.light </div>
<div class="entry">
<p>Following up on my post yesterday about the troubling EULA provisions in the Chrome installation package, it appears that <a href="http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080903-google-on-chrome-eula-controversy-our-bad-well-change-it.html">Google is admitting that they made a mistake</a> and working to fix it.</p>
<p>I made this comment a couple of places yesterday, but I’ll make it again: For some bizarre reason, I never expected Google <em>not</em> to fix it. This is a strange sort of consumer currency for me. In essence, I have this completely naive trust in Google (‘cuz they’re not evil) that they want to do the right sorts of things, and if they do the wrong sorts of things, if you point it out to them, they’ll fix it.</p>
<p>Which is a really bizarre way to think about a multi-billion dollar American corporation, especially when I can’t really put my finger on a specific reason why I would give them such blind trust.</p>
<p>On <a href="http://www.tor.com">tor.com</a> yesterday, I actually said:</p>
<blockquote><p>Honestly, I suspect the EULA is like documentation — most developers don’t really think about it until very late in the process (if at all). If most developers are like the ones in my shop, they think of the EULA as something on a tick-off list (17. Add the latest EULA template to the install package.) and expect that the lawyers have handled the details.</p>
<p>Which *might* seem really shoddy to me until I realize that I’ve never read all the provisions of a Creative Commons license, either. I know what it’s supposed to do, but I haven’t studied all the stuff in there — and yet, it functions essentially as a EULA for text I produce and release to the web.</p>
<p>Certainly, somebody at Google dropped the ball, but since I’ve been known to drop the ball in the same way (especially when rushing out a release to meet an arbitrary deadline), I can’t crucify them for it.</p></blockquote>
<p>Seriously, how odd is that attitude? If Johnson & Johnson made a similar gaffe, segments of our society would be all over them asking how such a massive corporation with so many smart employees could let such a blatant error slip through the cracks. And we’d all quietly snigger at their stupidity.</p>
<p>And yet, and yet, and yet, Google is just a bunch of guys (& gals) making stuff, and who’s perfect all the time, right?</p>
<p>I actually prefer this attitude to the one I hold to “traditional” American corporations like J&J. It makes me happier to not constantly worry about how a major corporation is screwing me over (frex: <a href="http://www.independent.ie/lifestyle/good-buys-products-hit-by-shrink-ray-1460229.html">Shrink</a> <a href="http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25570106/">Ray</a> <a href="http://consumerist.com/tag/grocery-shrink-ray/">Consumables</a>, which is the sort of behavior we expect most of the time). I just wonder why Google gets a benefit of the doubt in my own mind that I don’t pass along to any other company of similar stature. Why do I feel like, deep down, Google has my best interest at heart, when the truth is that what I represent to them as an internet user is data-mining cash.</p>
<p>In essence, does Google benefit from their Web 2.0 business model (i.e., here’s stome stuff for free…except it really isn’t free, because we’re going to use the content/data/trends you generate using this tool to make money somewhere else). Is it because I don’t feel like a direct consumer of Google services that I don’t get to treat them like a Johnson & Johnson? Am I not as critical because I feel like I’m getting something for free?</p>
<p>Why do I trust you, Google?</p>
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Filed under: <a href="http://wincingatlight.com/category/miscellany/" title="View all posts in Miscellany" rel="category tag">Miscellany</a> | Tagged: <a href="http://wincingatlight.com/tag/eula/" rel="tag">EULA</a>, <a href="http://wincingatlight.com/tag/google-chrome/" rel="tag">Google Chrome</a>, <a href="http://wincingatlight.com/tag/in-google-we-trust/" rel="tag">In Google We Trust</a> | <a href="http://wincingatlight.com/2008/09/04/interlude-chrome-eula-our-bad/#comments" title="Comment on Interlude: Chrome EULA: “Our Bad”">2 Comments »</a> </p>
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<div class="post-215 post type-post status-publish format-standard hentry category-miscellany tag-codex-sinaiticus" id="post-215">
<h2><a href="http://wincingatlight.com/2008/07/28/interlude-greek-to-me-and-to-you/" rel="bookmark" title="Interlude: Greek to Me (And to You)">Interlude: Greek to Me (And to You)</a></h2>
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Posted on <span class="postdate">July 28, 2008</span> by wincing.at.light </div>
<div class="entry">
<h3>Some Nifty</h3>
<hr size="3" />
<p>I’ve got to send props to Cubicle Buddy Grant for pointing out to me the new online repository for the <a href="http://www.codex-sinaiticus.net/en/">Codex Sinaiticus</a>. What is the Codex Sinaiticus, you ask?</p>
<p>To <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codex_Sinaiticus">WikiQuote</a>:</p>
<blockquote><p><strong>Codex Sinaiticus</strong> (London, <a title="British Library" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Library">Brit. Libr.</a>, Add. 43725; <a title="Caspar René Gregory" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caspar_Ren%C3%A9_Gregory">Gregory</a>-<a title="Kurt Aland" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurt_Aland">Aland</a> nº <strong>א</strong> (Aleph) or <strong>01</strong>, Soden δ 2) is a 4th century <a class="mw-redirect" title="Uncial" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncial">uncial</a> manuscript of the <a title="Koine Greek" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koine_Greek">Greek</a> <a title="Bible" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bible">Bible</a>, written between 330–350. While it originally contained the whole of both Testaments, only portions of the Greek <a title="Old Testament" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Testament">Old Testament</a> or <a title="Septuagint" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Septuagint">Septuagint</a> survive, along with a complete <a title="New Testament" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Testament">New Testament</a>, the <a title="Epistle of Barnabas" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epistle_of_Barnabas">Epistle of Barnabas</a>, and portions of <a title="The Shepherd of Hermas" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shepherd_of_Hermas">The Shepherd of Hermas</a> (suggesting that the latter two may have been considered part of <a title="Biblical canon" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biblical_canon">Biblical canon</a> by the editors of the <a title="Codex" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codex">codex</a><sup class="reference"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codex_Sinaiticus#cite_note-0">[1]</a></sup>). Along with <em><a title="Codex Vaticanus" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codex_Vaticanus">Codex Vaticanus</a></em>, <em>Codex Sinaiticus</em> is one of the most valuable manuscripts for <a title="Textual criticism" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Textual_criticism">textual criticism</a> of the Greek New Testament, as well as the Septuagint. It is the only uncial manuscript with the complete text of the New Testament, and the only manuscript of the New Testament written in four columns per page.</p></blockquote>
<p>So here’s the skinny: Profs David Parker, Dr Peter Robinson and Dr Scot McKendrick were tasked with re-assembling (virtually) the known pieces of the Codex Sinaiticus from its literary/political diaspora (assuming that four locations — the British Library, St. Catherine’s Monastery of Sinai, <span class="mw-redirect">Leipzig University</span> Library, and the Russian National Library — counts as a diaspora).</p>
<p>From an ancient manuscripts standpoint, I’m told that this is a huge deal, because normally getting a close look at these sorts of materials requires lots of frequent flier miles, a fortune in white cotton gloves, more visa stamps than you can shake a stylus at, and a whole lifetime’s worth of political hand-shaking and ingratiating just to get ogle privileges. (And <strong>not</strong> being an ancient manuscripts scholar, I’m almost 100% certain that I’m making this portion of the achievement sound much less impressive and correspondingly tedious than it actually is.)</p>
<h3>Some Queries</h3>
<hr size="3" />
<p>And while that’s fascinating and butt-loaded with scholarly intrigue and all, I’m much more impressed with the technology (and the the thought that preceded the technology) behind it. In short, the problem with ancient manuscripts — no matter how efficiently they’re stored — is that they’re all rotting away. Some faster than others. The interwebs, essentially a ginormous library with infinite shelf space and perfect climate control mechanisms, present an interesting short- to medium- term solution to the problem of primary source decomposition.</p>
<p>In short, take the putrefacting pages of said manuscript, image them with the highest definition camera you can get your grubby mits on, and preserve them for posterity…at least until you realize you might have backed <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betamax">Betamax</a>.</p>
<p>And that’s the problem with curating online/digital Treasures of Western Civilization. There’s only one Codex Sinaiticus, and it isn’t going to last forever. So someone has got to ask how we’re going to preserve it once the true primary source document ceases to exist. This is where the puzzle gets interesting to me (and where the fact that they actually got this project done enters the realm of the amazing). Ancient manuscript scholarship (even ancient manuscript <em>biblical</em> scholarship) being what it is, what you’ve got is a massively important and ultimately finite cultural resource — one of the core sources from which all modern biblical translations are created — which maybe half a dozen people a year need to study for serious academic work, so your audience is minute in the extreme. Plain translations as a preservative mechanism are straight out, because you can’t translate — even word-for-word literally — without making inevitable editorial decisions. A project like this can’t just duplicate in another media, it has to replicate it if the process is going to be of any lasting value.</p>
<h3>Some Context</h3>
<hr size="3" />
<p>So let me ask you, when was the last time you fired up <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zork">Zork</a> from 5 1/4″ floppies on your XP or Vista machine? Or even better, how often are you still annihilating the world in <a href="http://www.mobygames.com/game/amiga/nuclear-war">Nuclear War</a> on your fancy-schmancy <a href="http://arstechnica.com/articles/culture/a-history-of-the-amiga-part-1.ars">Amiga</a>?</p>
<p>(And don’t even say the word <em>emulator</em> to me. That’s either completely beside the point or exactly my point, I haven’t decided which.)</p>
<p>The point is that technology changes. We all know this. Tech changes and we buy new stuff. It’s the American Way.</p>
<p>Tommy Lee Jones alluded to this phenomenon <em>Men in Black</em> when he was showing off the cool alien media storage innovation to a newbie Will Smith and made the wry observation that he’d have to buy the White Album <em>again</em>.</p>
<p>That’s the way tech works. Somebody creates a new platform. It’s outrageously expensive. People adopt it, price goes down, the tech becomes ubiquitous, and the paradigm shifts.</p>
<p>As with <em>Zork</em>, this presents problems for the digital curation of ancient manuscripts. The tech you pick for media storage today is very likely to be obsolete in ten years. In twenty years, people might not even have the equipment around anymore to leverage your media. And when your potential long-term audience is a half-dozen tweedy academics a year, the chances that someone will save the hardware/software combination necessary to access the media or that some do-goodnik hacker will throw together an emulator to port your old media into a new-fangled environment shrinks dramatically.</p>
<h3>Some Application</h3>
<hr size="3" />In 1989, I wrote a (horrible) science fiction novel entitled <em>The Call of the Master</em> (which is incidentally part of an equally horrible trilogy which continues with <em>The Will of the One</em> and <em>The Way of the Elder</em>). This series of novels is so horrible, I have no doubt that were I to post it here, the entire interwebs would immediately commit some outrageous act of apocalyptic self-immolation to preserve the collective IQ of the human race.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, I’m irrationally fond of this series of manuscripts because they marked various educational points along the road of my writing development. Even mistakes are signposts. Series of mistakes are even more meaningful. A whole trilogy of questionable creative decisions is akin to stealing fire from the gods.</p>
<p><em>Call of the Master</em> was originally composed on a battered old <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_PS/2">IBM PS/2</a> using the now-defunct word processing software <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_DisplayWrite">DisplayWrite 4</a>, which saved documents in the now equally-defunct DCA format. When my PS/2 gave up the ghost, I got a generic Windows 3.1 machine and converted CotM to another word processing format…the name/type I no longer recall. This torturous process (defying even the most outrageous logic of human communication) made the manuscript <em>even more horrible</em> by inserting huge chunks of white space and arcane line breaks into the mess of text.</p>
<p>A short time later, I upgraded to one of the early iterations of MS Word…only to find that I couldn’t convert this now-forgotten format into a format MS Word could read. So I had to print the whole thing out (anomolous page/line breaks notwithstanding) and type the whole thing up again from scratch.</p>
<p>Inevitably, I made a great many editorial changes between the printed text and the new digital version (and in the process, making it even more horrible, if that can be believed). Nothing ruins truly abominable material like good editing.</p>
<p>Here’s my point: The original source material, as it was initially written and edited in DW4 has been completely lost. I couldn’t recreate it if I tried (or if I wanted to). All I’ve got is a manuscript that’s eight or ten iterations beyond the original.</p>
<p>And I dutifully upgrade this document (now in .docx format) with each new generation of word processing software.</p>
<p>I do this with all of my writing files, though my preferred format these days is RTF. It’s how I preserve my literary output. I use RTF because it seems to be the most readily port-able format available (with the exception of plain text, obviously, but plain text presents its own host of issues with formatting and readability).</p>
<p>The end result is that I’ve got some really creaky manuscripts loaded with MS Word cruft from generation after generation of format conversion. The consequence is that each time I convert it again, MS Word freaks out and tries desperately to make sense of underlying code structures from previous (poorly implemented) software iterations into the new word processing environment. Admittedly, much of this cruft is from questionable document formatting decisions I’ve made (or equally poorly implemented), but cruft is cruft, and it will eventually render my manuscripts un-convertable.</p>
<p>Which means I’ll have to type them up from scratch again. And I will undoubtedly made editorial changes along the way (because that’s what writers do). And just like that, the original documents will be lost.</p>
<p>Sort of makes you wish for some old school <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuneiform">cuneiform tablets</a>, eh? At least Hammurabi didn’t have to worry about version control.</p>
<h3>Some Final Points</h3>
<hr size="3" />So once upon a time, I decided to upload my novels to the interwebs so folks who aren’t me could read them. I put them in txt, rtf and pdf formats. Then a paladin of digital literature named <a href="http://manybooks.net">Matt</a> came along and offered them in a couple dozen new and different formats for a vast array of digital reading devices.</p>
<p>And chances are that in ten years, all of those formats will be obsolete. In ten years, we might not even be using HTML anymore. In ten years, it’s almost certain that this blog will no longer exist, and likely WordPress right along with it.</p>
<p>A veritable (or is that <em>virtual</em>?) ton of original blog content will be lost to the aether. Most of it won’t matter, of course, but I don’t envy the task of early-22nd century historians attempting to document this historical period of digital content creation.</p>
<p>Even digital media rots when the mechanisms/software for interpreting it disappear.</p>
<p>Or as a relatively recent iteration of the Codex Sinaiticus puts it:</p>
<table border="0" cellspacing="2" cellpadding="0" width="601" align="center">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td width="5%" align="right" valign="top"><em><a name="2">2</a></em></td>
<td width="95%" valign="top">Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all <em>is</em> vanity.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td width="5%" align="right" valign="top"><em><a name="3">3</a></em></td>
<td width="95%" valign="top">What profit hath a man of all his labor which he taketh under the sun?</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td width="5%" align="right" valign="top"><em><a name="4">4</a></em></td>
<td width="95%" valign="top"><em>One</em> generation passeth away, and <em>another</em> generation cometh: but the earth abideth for ever.</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
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Filed under: <a href="http://wincingatlight.com/category/miscellany/" title="View all posts in Miscellany" rel="category tag">Miscellany</a> | Tagged: <a href="http://wincingatlight.com/tag/codex-sinaiticus/" rel="tag">codex sinaiticus</a> | <a href="http://wincingatlight.com/2008/07/28/interlude-greek-to-me-and-to-you/#respond" title="Comment on Interlude: Greek to Me (And to You)">Leave a Comment »</a> </p>
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<div class="post-198 post type-post status-publish format-standard hentry category-poetry tag-erwin-franke tag-holocaust-poetry" id="post-198">
<h2><a href="http://wincingatlight.com/2008/07/05/interlude-a-poem-that-knocks-me-out/" rel="bookmark" title="Interlude: A Poem that Knocks Me Out">Interlude: A Poem that Knocks Me Out</a></h2>
<div class="postinfo">
Posted on <span class="postdate">July 5, 2008</span> by wincing.at.light </div>
<div class="entry">
<p>Editorial preface: An absolutely brilliant online acquaintance of mine shared this poem a short while ago. It is, quite simply, one of the most profound pieces of Holocaust literature I’ve ever read, and that includes many of the works I studied at university under one of the world’s <a href="http://www.indiana.edu/~jsp/rosenfeld.html">premier Holocaust scholars</a>.</p>
<p>Here’s a hint: If you find yourself horrified and offended at any point, you’re on the right track.</p>
<p>I am pleased, delighted and deeply honored that Erwin allowed me to share this work here.</p>
<p>——————–</p>
<p><a href="http://trupoets.com/xoops/modules/news2/article.php?storyid=291">One Jew, Two Jews, Red Jews, Flued Jews</a></p>
<p>One jew,<br />
two jews,<br />
red jew,<br />
flued jews.<br />
Black jews,<br />
stew jews,<br />
old jews,<br />
new jews.<br />
This one has<br />
a yellow star.<br />
This one’s in a cattle car.<br />
Say! What a lot<br />
of jews there are.</p>
<p>Yes. Some are red, but all eat stew.<br />
Some are shot. Most, chimneys spew.<br />
Some are mad.<br />
And all are sad.<br />
And some are very, very bad.<br />
Why are they<br />
mad and sad and bad?<br />
They should know.<br />
Go ask your dad.</p>
<p>All are thin.<br />
And none are fat.<br />
The fat ones here<br />
are yellow rats.<br />
From there to here,<br />
from here to there,<br />
Zyklon B<br />
is everywhere.</p>
<p>Here are some<br />
who’re shot by Hun.<br />
The Hun for fun<br />
shoot a hot, hot gun.<br />
Oh me! Oh my!<br />
Oh me! Oh my!<br />
What a lot<br />
Of yiddish fish go fry.</p>
<p>Most have two feet<br />
and most are poor.<br />
Some are six feet<br />
but never more.<br />
Where do they come from? They can say.<br />
But I bet they have come<br />
a long, long way.</p>
<p>We see them come.<br />
We see them go.<br />
Some die fast.<br />
And some die slow.<br />
Flames burn high.<br />
Morale is low.<br />
And all of them<br />
look like your brother.<br />
Don’t ask us why.<br />
Go ask your mother.</p>
<p>Say!<br />
Look at his fingers!<br />
One, two, three…<br />
How many fingers<br />
do I see?<br />
Eins, zwei, drei, vier,<br />
fünf, sechs, sieben,<br />
acht, neun, zehn.<br />
He has ten even!<br />
Ten even!<br />
What a lucky jew.<br />
I wish I had<br />
ten even, too!</p>
<p>Hump!<br />
Hump!<br />
Hump!<br />
Did you ever ride a rump?<br />
We’d like to pump<br />
but where’s a rump?<br />
Slut<br />
we know a man<br />
called Mr. Pimp.<br />
Mr. Pimp has a seven hump frump.<br />
So…<br />
If you like to go Bump! Bump!<br />
just jump on the rump of the frump and pump.</p>
<p>Who am I?<br />
I’m better dead.<br />
I do not like<br />
my barrack bed.<br />
It is of wood.<br />
We pack it tight.<br />
The lice crawl out<br />
of bed all night.<br />
And when I pull them off,<br />
Oh, dear!<br />
They head straight back to bed,<br />
I fear!</p>
<p>We like our kike.<br />
He does work for free.<br />
Our kike<br />
is strong of back,<br />
you see.<br />
We like our kike<br />
and this is why:<br />
kike does all the work<br />
when the piles get high.</p>
<p>Hey, better dead.<br />
How do you, jew?<br />
Tell me, tell me,<br />
smell the flue?<br />
How are things<br />
in your barrack bed?<br />
Something new?<br />
Speak, better dead.<br />
I do not like<br />
this bed at all.<br />
A lot of things<br />
have come to crawl.<br />
A flea, a tick, a rat, a louse.<br />
Oh! What a bed! Oh! Geh’ heraus!</p>
<p>Oh, dear! Oh, dear!<br />
I strain to tears.<br />
Will you please<br />
come over near?<br />
Will you please look in my rear?<br />
There must be something there, I fear.<br />
Say, look!<br />
A turd was in your rear.<br />
But it is out. So have no fear.<br />
Again your rear is clear, mein herr.</p>
<p>My hat is old.<br />
My teeth are gold.<br />
I have tattoos<br />
in numbers bold.<br />
My shoes are rough.<br />
My feet are cold.<br />
My shoes are rough.<br />
My feet are cold.<br />
I have tattoos<br />
in numbers bold.<br />
My hat is old.<br />
My teeth are gold.<br />
And now<br />
my story<br />
is all told.</p>
<p>We took a look.<br />
We saw a schnook.<br />
On his head<br />
a nose that’s hook.<br />
Fingers hook<br />
to spoon the gook.<br />
It’s the gook<br />
sent out by cook.<br />
We saw him shit<br />
the fry from cook.<br />
He took a look<br />
at the dook in the brook.<br />
And then schnook made pee<br />
from the camp schnook gook.<br />
So…<br />
How rude to the schnook<br />
is a crook gook cook?</p>
<p>The guard was out<br />
and we saw some sheep.<br />
We saw some sheep<br />
get all gassed in a heap.<br />
By the light of the moon,<br />
by the light of a star,<br />
they’d walked all night<br />
from near and far.<br />
I would never walk.<br />
I would take a car.</p>
<p>I diagnose<br />
this one’s not well.<br />
All he does<br />
is smell, smell, smell.<br />
I will not have typhus about.<br />
When pills come in,<br />
I’ll put him out.<br />
Typhenkrank,<br />
bitten by a mouse.<br />
I have to have them<br />
all de-loused.</p>
<p>At bath house<br />
we open cans.<br />
We have to open<br />
many cans.<br />
And that is why<br />
we have a van.<br />
A van for cans<br />
is very good.<br />
Have you now Hans, a van?<br />
You should.</p>
<p>There is much pox.<br />
But the dead aren’t boxed!<br />
So, every day,<br />
I schlock their hocks.<br />
In yellowed socks<br />
I schlock their hocks.<br />
I schlock in yellowed<br />
pox tox socks.</p>
<p>It is fun to hang<br />
if you hang with a bang.<br />
My ling can swing<br />
like anything.<br />
I hang high<br />
and my ling swings low,<br />
and we are not too bad,<br />
you know.</p>
<p>This one,<br />
I bid,<br />
is called<br />
a yid.<br />
His name is Sid.<br />
He likes to pid.<br />
He likes to pid, and pid, and pid.<br />
The thing he likes to pid<br />
is kid.<br />
The kid he likes to pid is yid.<br />
He pays him quid and pids yid kid.<br />
So…<br />
If you have a lot of quid,<br />
then you should get<br />
a kid, I bid.</p>
<p>Flop! Flop! Flop!<br />
I am a wop.<br />
All I like to do is hop<br />
From station stop<br />
to station stop.<br />
I flop from left to right<br />
and then…<br />
Flop, wop!<br />
I flop back left again.<br />
I’ll likely flop<br />
all day and night<br />
from right to left,<br />
if left to fight.<br />
Why do I like to<br />
wop hop flop?<br />
Why ask dego?<br />
Go ask your pop.</p>
<p>Brush! Brush!<br />
Brush! Brush!<br />
Comb! Comb!<br />
Comb! Comb!<br />
Jew hair<br />
is fun<br />
to brush and comb.<br />
All jews who like<br />
to brush and comb<br />
shall have a vet<br />
come shave their dome.</p>
<p>Who’s this yvette?<br />
Say!<br />
She got wet!<br />
You never yet<br />
met a pet,<br />
I bet,<br />
as wet as she lets<br />
this wet pet get.</p>
<p>Did you ever<br />
shoot a kike<br />
from bed?<br />
Did you ever walk<br />
jack-booted<br />
on their head?<br />
Did you ever bilk<br />
with mean, low blow?<br />
Well we can do it.<br />
We know so.<br />
If you never did,<br />
you should.<br />
These things are Hun<br />
and Hun is good.</p>
<p>Hallo!<br />
Hallo!<br />
Jemand there?<br />
Hallo!<br />
I called you up<br />
to say hello.<br />
I said hello.<br />
Can you hear me, schmoe?<br />
Oh, no.<br />
I can not hear your call.<br />
I can not hear your call at all.<br />
This is not good<br />
and I know why.<br />
Partisans cut the wire.<br />
Good-by!</p>
<p>From near to far<br />
from here to there,<br />
Zyklon B<br />
is everywhere.<br />
These yellowed pests<br />
we call sub-nebs.<br />
They shave their hair<br />
from off their heads.<br />
Their hair won’t last<br />
or so, they say…<br />
it went to pillows<br />
stuffed that day.</p>
<p>Who am I?<br />
A yid named Ish.<br />
With my hands I dig a ditch.<br />
I give a pitch<br />
to dig this ditch.<br />
When I pitch to dig a ditch<br />
I heave my hands with a big kitsch twitch.<br />
Then I say, “I itch for pitch!”<br />
And I get pitched right in my ditch.<br />
So…<br />
if you itch to pitch a ditch<br />
you may bitch and twitch<br />
with my Ish ditch pitch.</p>
<p>At bath house<br />
they’re laid on backs.<br />
We lay all same<br />
for chimney stacks.<br />
Would you like to lay the same?<br />
Come down!<br />
We have the only<br />
stacks in town.</p>
<p>Look what we found<br />
in the park<br />
in the dark.<br />
We will take her home.<br />
We won’t call the nark.<br />
She will hide at our house.<br />
She’ll lay low and low.<br />
Will gestapo like this?<br />
Goodness, no!</p>
<p>And now<br />
good night.<br />
It is time to sleep.<br />
So we will sleep<br />
crammed seven deep.<br />
Today is gone. Today is done.<br />
Tomorrow is another one.<br />
Everyday,<br />
from here to there,<br />
Zyklon B is everywhere.</p>
<p><em>– Erwin Franke 3</em></p>
<p>© 2007, Erwin Franke 3</p>
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Filed under: <a href="http://wincingatlight.com/category/poetry/" title="View all posts in Poetry" rel="category tag">Poetry</a> | Tagged: <a href="http://wincingatlight.com/tag/erwin-franke/" rel="tag">Erwin Franke</a>, <a href="http://wincingatlight.com/tag/holocaust-poetry/" rel="tag">holocaust poetry</a> | <a href="http://wincingatlight.com/2008/07/05/interlude-a-poem-that-knocks-me-out/#comments" title="Comment on Interlude: A Poem that Knocks Me Out">1 Comment »</a> </p>
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<div class="post-194 post type-post status-publish format-standard hentry category-poetry tag-betrayal" id="post-194">
<h2><a href="http://wincingatlight.com/2008/06/23/interlude-a-thousand-words-oil-on-canvas/" rel="bookmark" title="Interlude: A Thousand Words (Oil on Canvas)">Interlude: A Thousand Words (Oil on Canvas)</a></h2>
<div class="postinfo">
Posted on <span class="postdate">June 23, 2008</span> by wincing.at.light </div>
<div class="entry">
<p>So you don’t feel like I’m completely ignoring you, I’ll give you this.</p>
<p>D.</p>
<p>——————————</p>
<p><em>A Thousand Words (Oil on Canvas)</em></p>
<p>I took a walk in the woods today,<br />
thinking about you,<br />
gathering dry wood as I went.<br />
Crooked sticks, mottled with age,<br />
dark with rot, pitted from the weather.<br />
Metaphors for friendship, I suppose.</p>
<p>Down to the dry creek bed,<br />
seeking out stones,<br />
from the root tangled earth,<br />
water worn and heavy, bones of the earth,<br />
naked along the surface of the uneven ground,<br />
shifted from their course by the vagaries<br />
of evil weather.<br />
Metaphors for trust, I suppose.</p>
<p>I carried them out in stages,<br />
a reverse course ritual,<br />
placed them with care, a rough circle.<br />
Inside I built a temple of kindling:<br />
Deer moss under twigs under sticks.<br />
Metaphors for the layer of years, I suppose.</p>
<p>I struck a match, hovered over the smoke,<br />
tended to hungry tongues of elemental fire.<br />
I thought about you.<br />
I thought about honor.<br />
I thought about responsibility.<br />
I thought about being there when you hurt.<br />
I thought about betrayal.<br />
I thought a lot about betrayal.<br />
Metaphors for desire, I suppose.</p>
<p>I took out my pocketknife<br />
and I shredded the canvas of the picture<br />
you had painted for me, that had hung on my wall<br />
for almost twenty years. I broke down the frame<br />
with my bare hands. And piece by piece,<br />
I consigned our past to the flames.<br />
It caught quickly, almost greedily, a surge<br />
of heat and smoke. The canvas burned<br />
and burned, colors peeling, wood snapping,<br />
phantoms of a deceitful past crying out<br />
like the dryads of an axe-felled willow,<br />
Until nothing remained but ashes and grief.<br />
Metaphors for the end.</p>
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Filed under: <a href="http://wincingatlight.com/category/poetry/" title="View all posts in Poetry" rel="category tag">Poetry</a> | Tagged: <a href="http://wincingatlight.com/tag/betrayal/" rel="tag">betrayal</a> | <a href="http://wincingatlight.com/2008/06/23/interlude-a-thousand-words-oil-on-canvas/#comments" title="Comment on Interlude: A Thousand Words (Oil on Canvas)">2 Comments »</a> </p>
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<div class="post-175 post type-post status-publish format-standard hentry category-miscellany tag-killing-time-is-killing-me tag-links-that-made-me-happy tag-my-favorite-office-dorks" id="post-175">
<h2><a href="http://wincingatlight.com/2008/06/03/interlude-stuff-i-like-today/" rel="bookmark" title="Interlude: Stuff I Like Today">Interlude: Stuff I Like Today</a></h2>
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Posted on <span class="postdate">June 3, 2008</span> by wincing.at.light </div>
<div class="entry">
<p>Just wanted to pimp some links and free stuff that have come my way lately.</p>
<ul>
<li>One of my favorite CCM bands – <a href="http://www.downhere.com/main.php">downhere</a> – is offering their most recent album, <em>Wide-Eyed and Mystified</em>, as a <a href="http://www.musichristian.com/downhere/download/">free download</a> for the month of June. I like this offering quite a bit because of its increasingly sophisticated and full sound, but still prefer their self-titled debut CD. As always, Marc Martel’s distinctive vocals sound incredible.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Fellow cube dork Grant sent me a great link to the Weezer song <a href="http://www.weezer.com/player/default.aspx?mid=4215&bhcp=1">“Pork and Beans”</a> under the e-mail subject line <strong>The Internets Asplode</str