Mundane Monday Malarkeys

I keep getting so distracted and bogged down and cloth-eared with a head-cold persisting on and off for two or three weeks now – so yet again I’m late and behind with the Recycled Book Reading Challenge post I always mean to make at the start of each new month. Photos planned for that lingering for a while so i will get around to it. Sometime soon.

I kept up fine for the first five or six weeks of my return to the ModPo MOOC (fourth year attempt, failing to complete every time during the Autumn’s annual 10-week mad-dash to cover the syllabus’ requirement). Then, six weeks into it, the poem for the third essay assignment really left me gob-smacked. A poem comprising two poetic voices (one main part being the text stolen from a British adolescent in the early 1960s, the other a British-migrant voice ‘completing’ the poem). Those facts of the matter not arising in the taught materials and feeling unable to write my essay due to the distress and disturbance of noticing the attributed pen-name of that poem (now titled ‘The honey bear’) and how that has been usurped to create some kind of construct as if the pen-name belongs to a ‘New York School’ contemporary poet. Looking at some of the other works now attributed to that pen-name it is clear there are multiple voices in the mixture combining a miscellaneous collection of work, some of which might be originally created by the persona now fronting the probably falsified CONSTRUCT. Crazy! (It’s not beyond reason someone might actually have that same name given to them as their birth name but they’d know ‘The honey bear’ is not their poem!)

If I ever doubted the foundational literature learnings of my childhood and teenage years, into further education and onward, here was living proof of the reasoning behind so many English Literature teachers in Britain absolutely refusing to teach American authors works. or glossing over it so quickly where it became mandatory to include American Literature examples within the English Literature class.

Of course it, the usurping ‘construct’ issue, is not at all the fault of the ModPo course providers.- it’s just ‘one of those things’.

Everyone having their (germ warfare) NHS flu jabs and spreading the attenuated virus to propogate this persistent ‘common cold’ effect gave me a new excuse to boot for my falling even further behind. Never mind. SloPo season starts from this new end-point and now there is all year to immerse in the wonders and dilemmas of Modern American Poetry and all the amazing and awesome international English learning I can wrestle with and explore through poetry. (Awe apparently meaning dreadful in formal American language meaning, or so I’m led to believe.)

Among other things distracting since that stumbling block essay/poem issue have been: witnessing a local fire-crew in chemical protection suits attending a terrorist fire in our neighbourhood; witnessing the bizarre presentations of local news presented out of time and disguised ‘factual’ details; many British people getting prosecuted for things they haven’t done that appear to be engineered by bogus operatives from wherever and an influx of visiting gofer-doofers assisting some kind of insurgency drive, again from wherever. Very recently, on Armistice Day, a single adult (presumed to be African-American) with three teenagers got out of a foreign four-by-four looking suspicious. They walked straight into a near-ish house, refused to leave when the householder yelled in shock “get out of my house!” at the intrusion and then by the sounds of it the householder(s) were attacked while the family’s young children were screaming in fear from upstairs. Hopefully it was the police who attended the scene because there have also been dummy ambulances, fake local authority vehicles and weird stuff like that around sometimes too. Freaky!

This last half-week has brought the opening of a new creative writing MOOC from UIowa’s international distance learning programme, ‘Stories of Place and the Natural World’. So far it seems as much about human nature as it is about Nature. This one has a non-fiction bias, though it’s difficult to see any difference much these days. The initial (certificated) phase ends on December 31st but the programme remains open until March for self-paced learning before moving to the mooc-pack site. Hopefully I remember the detail correctly. Earlier writing and poetry mooc-packs can be found there from 2014 to the most recent ‘Moving the Margins’, (fiction and non-fiction) for independent self-led learning. Something to keep busy with through cold, dark winter days and/or nights.

Obtaining any real news is nigh on impossible. It’s so frustrating that even the BBC is no longer a reliable news outlet. News articles aren’t even written in real English anymore. We’re presented words like ‘penciled’ to confuse us, meaning ‘pencilled’ but sounding ‘pen-sigh-ld’ when reading aloud. There’s so much bullshit propoganda around too. Pushes for a no-deal Brexit from foreign western journalists (and maybe some of our own if maybe ‘on the take’) leave Britain at risk. EU food regulations are already being flouted and dangerous foodstuffs have entered the retail market, including fake products in some bio-terrorist crime racket. Things like aspirin in kids popular snacks; biscuit/cake/confectionery/snack items containing amphetamine, LSD, Daturic acid, sleep medications, stevia – all examples of things turning up in food items in the UK that could have awful negative health impacts. It’s as if there’s an elsewhere determined to impose their economic migrant job creation scheme by ‘evidencing’ how the British public either need false imprisonment or an army of mental health workers and cognitive behaviour therapists(!).

Up in arms? Not likely. Cottage gardening is more the British way, even if only a windowsill available – and it’s beyond time to breathe life into the home-grower. Grab a spade and dig in. (We don’t dig with a shovel, we dig with a spade, although a trowel or re-purposing any old spoon’ll do for a planter or pot.) Why is ‘spade’ a racist word? It’s certainly not in British English. Language oppressions and bogus standardisation are making me more sick than I can tolerate. So fluff that for a game of soldiers and folk IT!

My twitter keeps getting interrupted, interfering with my endurement/enjoyment and all sorts of tech intrusions glitching things out here and there. Bullybuoy guys and gals mostly, actually, it seems are back at the ole bulldog bash game.

However Russia seems to be the main propoganda target again lately in latest fear-mongering war-mongering efforts. It’s been going on a while and gathering pace. Do people really believe all the fekkin’ shite put out there for consumers’ perusal? An interesting video clip turned up on my twitter feed from an account I had expected to be our British “Radio Times” (a weekly TV and radio schedule magazine) but turns out to be some other ‘global news’ account. The video showed young Russian-speaking soldiers firing short-range missiles from armoured vehicles in the desert and the accompanying text suggests it’s a military excercise “at Russia’s largest foreign base in Tajikistan”. It somehow begs fact-checking…

If it’s a foreign base is it another rogue area take-over alike the criminal military takeover at Kesteven in middle-England by our so-called allies ‘post-war’ and remaining? Hopefully not. Who knows! It’s hardly top secret that that (Kesteven) shit’s there!

The CIA website usually offers public access online to recent enough information that seems reliable and trustworthy enough and of course it runs high in the search results while I barely have time for visiting all the world’s online sites to balance the impacts of cookies on search algorithms (if that’s how it even works!). So a quick look into it and I discover that not only is Russian the official formal language of the Tajikistan peoples, but they also have a national military service conscription for all young men aged fifteen plus. Hence I deduce it is probably the Tajikistan army in the clip and not the responsibility or instigation of the Russian government. A major economic activity in Tajikistan is mining for metals and minerals and perhaps the training excercise somehow contributes to that. Double-whammy. Mind, I’m a dozey female without a clue so I’m maybe in error.

Talk about distracted. Forgetting to post my lingering draft I’m now into Tuesday, 2 minutes past midnight. Procrastinating my mooc-time with this ramble I wandered away trying to find online ANYWHERE still containing previously found Eastern Orthodox / Eastern European information on Saints Days, as there’s an important one this month I hoped to remember and participate quietly at home and maybe learn some more about it. Maybe I missed it. Under such dire circumstances maybe any ole day will do. Maybe I have an offline copy saved goodness knows where. Return of the dark ages has been creeping upon us via online corruptions and manipulations, wiping out much of our cultural identities that does not fit the template of tyrants responsible for such hideous incursions. So much reminds of the religious oppressions of the 9th and 10th centuries. Perhaps that’s the olde that I feel!

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“…general jerk-like behavior”

Apparently that phrase above is acceptable promotional language for the meet things running in UK the last year or two(?) dunno how long really, only noticed info recently. Looking at a couple of examples lately and I don’t feel I’m missing anything for none appearing to be held in my home city.

Of course people usually can be expected to behave in public environments but what we call British sense of humour appears potentially not tolerated too!

I don’t want sitting down in a classroom or a lecture hall for a WP meet with some professional twit enough to volunteer to give a presentation style talk as if it’s the Worker’s Education Association but probably isn’t and I just don’t like the look of the little I’ve seen so far without knowing enough to inform my opinion. Why not marquees on city / town squares on busy shopping days and if you’re around you can just drop in to someone’s table / display board like other UK community events work? Or lay on a creche / family friendly afternoon with free cookies and ice-cream with 99 red balloons being not enough or maybe much too many. Free-writing again. Nothing’s working.

Whatever it is – information to impart/promotion/participation expectation – you often have to TAKE it – to where people happen to be. Not expect them to go all out and attend. Sweeping generalisation there i know. And I’m being a jerk writing back to that prompt. Like that nottingham(shire?)council sponsored CUNT stunt displayed HUGE on slab square in the name of art for art’s sake and protest a few years ago. i did screenshot it so could prove it too. (Public CCTV grazing for art reason of reading in newspaper about artists working with data collection – triggered my screenshot stuff). I’ve not published it of course, the council copyright notice made clear. i’d be free to give it away on pieces of paper but it’s hardly worth trying. How impolite to suggest people need telling they gotta behave proper!

There are problems with setting things up to fail all over the shop. Although a pretty good turn out if you can get even 8 to 10 people in the same fixed place at the same fixed time in this country! So they actually looked successful by UK standards and i’m not knocking the volunteer organisers (who often tend to invite and encourage attendees from their own networking circles to help things look more successful than they really are so you never can be sure and it’s another issue that might or might not put me off) but if you can’t see public info enough on how they operate and there’s no public feedback at what went on at these things, why would you take any more out of your time to try contacting someone somewhere to wait to find out about it.

Unknown online organisations running the things? do they get a monopolised patch on a city/town territory? Or small-fry local, government funded, business organisations running the show? And British University support isn’t really a guarantee of anything these days is it. All our industries have been complaining enough for years about uni turn-outs and lack of skills. No wonder. Even standard school text books have too many incomprehensible moments in trying to read Americanised English and Americanised context so that it’s difficult to see what you need to understand from what should be  a quite simple page. i know. Look who’s talking springs to mind. Does this appear or sound like a text book page? This is not what I was trying to make. Should be obvious?

I’d rather any other non-professional blogging person in the world with the gumption to try doing something just got on with publically declaring, hey, we’re doing this and see how it goes – picnic on the beach on whenever the next Sunny Saturday afternoon is. Y’know, while all the yobbish peeps with kids ie. people/families! mostly are in the arcades and on the tatt markets and so on. (Awful thing to say I know!) Of course i’m as far away from the sea as a person can be living in this city, so that wasn’t a serious suggestion. Local rec. maybe?

Surely that quoted phrase ‘general jerk-like behavior’ is an example of the very thing it suggests is unacceptable (at one of those types of meetings)? Is that why it’s there? dark sarcasm. pink floyd fans maybe then.

It’s both potentially offensive to disabled / impaired people who might have tremors and so jerk about their everyday lives -and is also very offensive to our English language to use an American spelling of our behaviour!

Maybe I’m being pedantic. Maybe it’s contagious. There’s swarms of apparently very nice respectable ladies out there being very undignified and obnoxious twattin’ about as all sorts of professionals oppressing the hell out of humanity appearing to seek advantageous control of the freedoms of others by way of cleverly worded interpretations / misinterpretations. Many of it stemming from the US with their very different culture – the absolute cheek of some man you tubing bullshit about how British people identify more with america and australia than europe. Depends how you asked the leading questions chap if you got those results from survey data.

back to the Word. good. The Word is Good. Good God FFS! Does that pukey service gramarly have anything to do with that ‘behavior’ nonsense in that UK promotional blurb. Maybe. Not everyone realises it’s not English! I think when I checked they don’t actually have an English grammar service. only standardised American. Not all Americans use standardised AmEn grammar either. For most UK technology consumers it’s a foreign language service provider ie. for American language use. This standardised rubbish doing the rounds via software that wants you to put ALL your communications through it. And not even trial the service before signing up? There should be a law against it in this country! Appears shoddy business standard. I do wish my internet streams sucked in more European content. But…

I guess the US dominates the internet for being 20 years ahead of population integration to the web and lacking foundational computing knowledge. So less likely to understand the gubbins of software coding. Probably by design. Dominate the professions on our home soil. First they take over and refuse to leave at least one of our air force bases (a long time ago now) and stupid bloomin’ Brit government let them flood in with whatever dodgy money looking like tourists breaking any law they like maybe blowing stuff up and blaming Libyans cos the style changes of news items and details not presenting in usual ways just give it away – Britain under pressure – Buck.Pal. springs to mind… poisoning defectors from elsewhere (as per the BBC in news quote from an American based Russian scientist/defector clearly stating ‘this country’ about the full cycle of the poison use thing and by that meaning America, unless he was visiting Britain and was here saying Britain are responsible. i can’t be doing fact-checking just now. A lot of dodgy stuff going down. and on this post. I’m not apologising on this one.

And here I am potentially allegedly-able anti-Americanising again, conversationally, as is my right – and I might be wrong on a few things in this post but I’m clearly telling you I don’t know for sure do I! .and I am NOT anti-american until they’re rogue flippin’ I.S. /military hoodwinking and shittin’on our doorsteps. Good Morning Britain! Wake up! Some might say ‘you’re being a jerk!’Or we all are. Some might say all sorts. Whatever.

And it’s very intolerant of people who might appear awkward or disruptive but whom experience difficulties with communication, for example, and frustration with intolerant deliverers of however they do things with whatever bad attitudes a lot of so called professional people might have about the low-life turning up to get in on the action and so on. Obviously i know nothing about nothing. The phrase affrays. a simple phrase. (reminds me of my poem here i think!) Please don’t suggest I stick with poetry. Nor tar and pitch!

I’ll try keeping an open mind but not wasting any more than the few minutes I just distracted with. And you’d expect a WP group to not to expect you to join a facebook group as well as the WP group really wouldn’t you? I.e. a members private access area on an organisers blog for ease of access for WP bloggers is surely better for most people unless they use facebook more than being bloggers and just also happen to have a blog.

Surely they need Fb meets not WP meets if they’re about a different platform for their comms? I’m really not meaning to be this awkward battle-axe of a Brit grandma. i just can’t help myself. My generation’s all getting old but we bring our child-i with us as we age don’t we? and if you reach juvenile stage before adulthood you’re fortunate and retain some enough for when you gotta laff or else you’d cry. Some audience might not like it. And see if I care?

I’m waiting for a notification of a local virtual access version of a WordCamp type thing but I guess they only do these real world things regardless of the number of UK bloggers with accessibility issues for getting to real world venues. You can’t please all the people all the time is true. And unlikely I can get anywhere for ages anyway. Sounds stupid doesn’t it while we don’t need jeeps or guzzling monster trucks to drag ourselves hundreds of miles just to get to a diner and store if we’re lucky. y’know. Leaves on track. Bit of snow. Rainy day no out to play.

But a lecture type presentation is going nowhere fast for most Brit bloggers surely? I can understand why we’re unlikely to have anything as wonderful as the US WordCamps here – unless there’s a tent at Glastonbury or something.

But I’m not bothered about not going there either. Everywhere’s too far to walk! I went once. I’ll probably never go again, cos been there, done that, once is enough. Not exactly missing anything other than overpriced everything and the rain and the mudslides etc.

Music is everywhere. It’s horrible being at a festival with so many stages instead of just one main and maybe one or two smaller alternatives. It’s like being stuck in Disneyland Paris for four days unable to go to the Louvre for three of them (and actually had 0days at Louvre that time in Paris!) and then having had two rides one of them almost giving you a heart attack and not being able to enjoy anymore of the funfair while stuck in plastic toy land. But the animation museum was great and so was the sit back and look at starry skies show thing, can’t remember what you call it now. Doh!

This isn’t really a quote post is it! I just wanted to see what one looks like.

Lav. poem starter drafted in just now recital practise:

If you’re an inky-pinky and i’m an inky-punky / when-e’er the twain shall ne’er meet […tbc]

A.R.R. 2018

[writing201 for imperfect posts so adding to editing/extraction task pile – oh please not another stupidly long post… lol]

0642 BST / 0542 UCT/GMT waiting for breakfast to magic itself UP! [1894-1896 words. count. If it was history i wonder what happened?] 1904 getting off. NOW then. [1908 ‘The Other Side’ springs mind wieder. Again. [1915] [wc]

Must stop counting. [1919]

Taking IT to the cleaners

On the way to readying winter outerwear, I called in for coffee and elevenses and poetry/art elucidation with a wacky artisty friend.

Had she heard…?

Well. No. No, nor me. So that made me feel better then. A bit less ignorant. Good!

Although there might have been a risk of having forgotten to get out of slippers and looking alike somewhere crossed between Michelin Man and Sulley from Monsters Inc in my onesy over half a dirty dozen of underwear layers hiding middle-age spread and bloomers of all things keeping me nice and warm without even a coat on yet, on my way home with shopping I got some snaps away from the yard for a change.

“Ruth Lechlitner” I’d said. She’d launched into stilts and Glastonbury remembrances and we paid no heed of either’s lack of attention for the other’s aside reflections.

Then something dawned. Noted. And forgotten.

On a scrappy coffee-stained notepad page she’d passed me this to bring home and ‘prove IT’ … she can write a ‘N0 Chance Operation’ poem from thin air too.

“yes, of course I can post it as soon as I’m… well, if I forget while passsing, it’s not that far to a post-box, really, is it!”

Do you know it’s still wherever I left it when i arrived through my door. hopelessly…

… and now two days later and hasn’t time flown as if it were only yesterday and I didn’t even put it on SPD for the pair of them! So here’s a poem from an anonymous no-one of some of ours esteem (posted with permission, guaranteed, special delivery, first class)

Repeat after me to write, leaving the left Sleeve in the uptight no fear don\\ ‘ t fight many small prediction can\\ ‘ t right rear sight site courtesy site mercy no mercy Now

I didn’t see who the translating helper was. A Ukranian virtual assistant in another virtual part of our world I believe. I’ve no idea of the poetic presentation but it’s as agreed a single line and in one breath. There may be countless versions of various poetic essences and deliveries in the making anytime durign the next century or three. We’re all such snails and so unconcerned for any rush “even if the whole world depends on IT…” is apparently our next elevenses workshopping writing prompt to prepare and be ready with.

Now did i drop my dry cleaning receipt on my way home? No idea. did I slip through one of them odd angle portals and I’m sure I was still in Nottingham or did I step out in Portsmouth in error? And without even realising…

here I am forgetting to post one of my several ModPo reflective poems from readings last week around Gertrude Stein, Jon Peale Bishop, and Dada, including the amazing and wonderful Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven and her fantastic rebuke “A dozen cocktails – please” (maybe I should’ve capitalised, can’t remember and can’t be bothered to check…

in a hurry then

So far untitled while i’m working on Lechlitner and trying not to be too LOLling around as things to make and do like afternoon tea and fooding for dinner…

a poem (all mine, of course – Modern poetry, aka #ModPo and so:

~~

even Stevens starts again

red w’ther days P’cock tales

back when

~~

w-hoosy-wore the trewzees

Willy win a skirt

wonderful when wars end wi’none of’em gettin’ g’hurt

~~

cure it as y’cuss it

calm it while y’can

can ‘e call a cuppa cold contagion conception

~~

zuccini in a zeppelin?

Zoology in zeal

zany zee-zee-zeeing x-o-phobic de’ts-z’ept’s. Reel.

© Colette Bates, October 2017 All Rights Reserved

(of course free to share! aren’t we all zillybillyGoatsGruff about IT! doesn’t that usually mean for personal and education use only and Fair Use always being applicable?)

I forgot to post a pic! Random grab from my snaps quick then…

Not so random actually… and although I do love my WordPress-iNG…. well, you can sometimes find me #skywatching elsewhere, like my latest post here: coleebeatsabout.blogspot.co.uk

One day IT will all make better sense… (tbc/ to be contd.)

Another post in/for a Brave New World?

Where is everyone? Busy celebrating inauguration? I was very glad to see there is still somewhere that LOOKS like Washington – and not surprised to see it so quite quiet. Quite surprised to see that an apparent extortionist can actually proceed to such circumstance. Maybe I should be begging forgiveness for my bare English cheek but I wouldn’t waste my breath! That man has no authority whatsoever in my mind’s eye and I shouldn’t waste my breath even giving him a mention! I do try to remember he is just an old man from another place, a father and grandfather. Just a man. Shoddy as any other. And worse besides…

I’ll be the first to admit that I’m just a shoddy woman too! But I’m not a bully like some appear to be – and I won’t put up with it either!

I assume to be as entitled to freedom of speech and creative expression as previously but…

This is what happens when my energy supplier blocks my online account and forces me to trek to the store to get prepaid electricity to feed to my meter. I bought newspapers. Just in case the world collapses overnight and there might never be anymore. And I’ve been using my Facebook as if it’s a blog in the most unwise ways lately – like answering that ‘what’s on your mind?’ question … in bits and pieces and all at odds, with…

In some parts of the world,for many people, their world might have collapsed. Anytime between now and then…

Not so long back, pre-November 2016, online news headlines was suggesting that the British public should NOT be going online, as if there were some great threat and that we should only be receiving our news from our newspapers. How do you get a newspaper if you can’t get out to the shop and WHY would anyone not wish to check the propoganda campaigns against other sources for some measure of reliability? Not long after, and having ignored the ‘stay offline’ suggestion, there was a more sensible headline about hoax news stories. There seemed to be plenty of them. For decades.

I should get about reading blogs more. But everything’s changed at WordPress. A reflection of how the world has changed? How the poor have no equal rights even to an online blogging platform that previously encouraged amateur use, simply as humans, blogging for enjoyment and community and a sense of being human, connecting with other humans.

All of a sudden there’s this ‘premium’ with the ‘best for Freelancers and Entrepreneurs’ slant to it. That’ll get a lot of us Brits in trouble as hobbyist-bloggers, just passing time. When it’s your only way of having ‘social contact’ with the outside world it’s a very precious thing. In some cultures we’re not worthy enough for their sense of elitist privelege and should be weeded out – is how it feels. Maybe that’s why Brits should have been staying offline? Until it’s safe? Or what was there to really be scared about and why should we hide our online natural selves when propoganda instructs us to do so? The real world seems far more dangerous and abuse usually occurs from someone known, rather than from strangers.

Apparently we can ‘build a business website in just 10 days’ and with no offence intended to the Blogging U team, there’s a lot about that notion that flouts English Law and risks devastating deprivation to UK bloggers who might then be assumed to returning £250 weekly income as a minimum. Some of us blog to learn and practise and communicate and would NEVER wish to ‘monetise’ our blogs with advertising revenue. [If that’s what monetising a blog means, because there’s no clear info anywhere.] Some of us are fussy. Monetisation? That’s not BUSINESS!

I’ve not seen any statistics for quite a while, but a couple of years ago something like 94% ‘small businesses’ were failing within their first year in Britain. That’d be for these vague ideas of how easy it is and for inappropriate ‘support’ from Employment Services. Wondering how many made it to their second full year?! No doubt online service providers are getting more than their fair share of the blame for that too – although individuals should always accept responsibility for their own choices and actions. It’s been an oppressive and pressured experience for many tens of thousands of UK welfare claimants to ‘just start a business’ while set up to FAIL and having no viable alternative choice.

It maybe ok in some parts of the world to ask for donations as an individual in need too. But in the UK it’s illegal to beg, or even to give to someone who’s starving, homeless either money or food, or we risk a fine or arrest and a criminal charge. Crazy as that seems. I tend to ignore that law on the rare occasion I get anywhere, but with due care. And aware of the risk for myself and the other person. But I don’t have an active PayPal account and so can’t even buy anyone their coffee online and no way I’d risk that charge! And it’s a bit sickening seeing (local) professionals with a salary asking visitors to their website to donate by PayPal when you were expecting to find a method for giving an item for their art project!

Now it feels like it could be risky even visiting to read some blogs I’d normally visit, for the association with other individuals engaging in what might be entrepreneurial or professional writerly progressions. I’m not knocking them at all and mean no disrespect.

My poem inspired after reading Cid Corman in SloPo last week and doodled this alternative presentation of it, just for fun. [I don’t write poetry often. I’m not a writer.]

But my blogs here are my personal creative space. If whenever i were to start self-employment, there’s no way I’d be bringing it into my personal /our community spaces.and it’s gonna take me maybe about five years to regain my health and maybe get my own Empty Plan together somehow in the meantime. There’s a lot of very complex issues to take into account. And I know it might not look like it, but still…once upon a time and every fairytale begins and ends in a nightmare of a tale.