But God only knows, I sold it for a lock of your hair

[sovay]

1. I got home today to find two really neat things in the mail: a card which Dean sent from Maine and my contributor's copy of Mythic Delirium #26. The latter contains my poem "Scythe-Walk," which I wrote for teenybuffalo and the afternoon she carried a scythe home from a rummage sale on her shoulder. It also contains her poem "The Sisters," which she wrote for me and her rivers and the ocean. The convergence was neither of our doing and it makes me very happy. (My other favorites from the issue are Rose Lemberg's "The Journeyman in Kestai" and Erik Amundsen's "Under the Asphodel," but one of these is crow-epic and the other a temptation to descend, so please look surprised.) The former is illustrated with a sketch of sea-view. Good by me.

2. Courtesy of derspatchel, I have a copy of David Macaulay's Great Moments in Architecture (1978). It's the direct precursor to Motel of the Mysteries (1979), which is one of the greatest books about archaeology ever written; if I had to play the comparison game, I'd say the contents resemble a freakish three-way collaboration between Edward Gorey, Chris Van Allsburg, and Charles Addams, although the back-cover text rather beautifully describes them as "the daydreams of a pixilated Piranesi." The captions make half of them. "This plate was formerly believed to represent the meeting of English and Metric."

3. I scalded some of the fingers on my left hand rather badly with hot tea on Wednesday; I went out to dinner that night holding them constantly against my water glass, having wrapped my hand in a bag of frozen broccoli as soon as I got off the bus at Rob's. (Also courtesy: Fuck You, Broccoli. I am actually quite fond of artichokes, but anything with phenylthiocarbamide can fend for itself.) They're healing, but it looks as though the forefinger is going to scar. I need a better cover story. "Very hot ginger tea" just has no experimental cachet at all.

4. I am very charmed by this installment of Wondermark.

5. Did I remember to link the record-breaking Rube Goldberg machine?

I am going to bed. Nobody else had better get sick this week. That includes me.

Comments

[strange-selkie.livejournal.com]

The response to injury-based inquiries is always "Motorcycle accident."

Even the time when I was dating Nicole and gave myself a second-degree cuppatea burn on the tummy and all the skin came off and it looked twelve times more spectacular than my at-the-time-new heart surgery scars, except on the roundest and most obtrusively flabby part of me. Ugh.

MOTORCYCLE ACCIDENT.

[snowy-owlet.livejournal.com]

Oh, Scythe-Walk is so lovely.

[ashlyme.livejournal.com]

English and Metric. Prof Elemental's backing band.

I so want Fuck You, Broccoli to be written by a vegetarian. (I've recently found a taste for marinated artichoke hearts, but they are very, very strange.)

I personally think "hot ginger tea" is an acceptable story, but "duelling scar" also works for me.

[barry-king.livejournal.com]

That Rube Goldberg machine is wonderful! And so very compact. But the clincher is the hand at the end. Just like Goldberg would have drawn.

[larryhammer]

"This plate was formerly believed to represent the meeting of English and Metric" is my favorite one by far. That and Motel were formative influences on me, and I got the latter signed -- the first author signing I ever went to -- during his Unbuilding tour.

---L.

[schreibergasse.livejournal.com]

No, you did NOT mention the record-breaking RG Machine! DUde. That thing's just crazy.
And something else won? Man, clearly I need to track that one down too.

[movingfinger.livejournal.com]

"Guns get very hot when fired repeatedly."

[ap-aelfwine.livejournal.com]

I'm glad for all the good things. I've not seen that particular Macaulay before--Motel of the Mysteries was a major influence on my childhood, alternately terrifying and fascinating me.

I'm sorry for the scalded fingers. I hope the healing goes well and smoothly.

4. I am very charmed by this installment of Wondermark.

I as well, now that I've seen it. Thanks for sharing.

I hope nobody else will get sick this week.

[cucumberseed.livejournal.com]

but one of these is crow-epic and the other a temptation to descend, so please look surprised.

<3