We will tell them building bridges, and be off and on our way

[sovay]

1. It's spring and the anthologies are starting to bloom. Here, We Cross—a chapbook of queer and genderfluid poems collected from the first seven issues of Stone Telling—is now available from Stone Bird Press. The table of contents includes work by Michele Bannister, Jack H. Marr, Dominik Parisien, Amal El-Mohtar, Jeannelle Ferreira, Lisa Bradley, Adrienne J. Odasso, and I'm not even naming all the ones that impressed me. Also in that lineup are my poems "Persephone in Hel" and "The Clock House," the former written for rushthatspeaks, the latter for Christopher Morcom and Alan Turing. Yes, you could read them off the website, but you could also have them in beautiful print and support a small press besides.



2. I must confess that my first reaction to this article about the creation and debunking of two recent historical hoaxes was: next time, put more research into your marks. (And remember that there is more to the internet than Wikipedia.) I look forward to seeing what happens next year.

3. I didn't realize there was a Canonical List of Weird Band Names. It doesn't seem to have been updated in some time, but it confirms my belief that any time the phrase "That would make a great band name" is uttered, somewhere, someone does. Also, I listen to some of these bands.

4. I will probably not hear any of them on WFNX, because the station has been sold to Clear Channel. That is not good. I have no idea what my brother is going to listen to when we drive anywhere in Boston now.

5. This article reminded me that I have been meaning to rewatch The Fall of the Roman Empire (1964) for years. It is not a great film. I find myself saying that by way of disclaimer whenever I bring it up. It is a three-hour spectacle within which exists about an hour of good movie, mostly to be found in the interactions of the supporting cast—Alec Guinness, James Mason, Christopher Plummer, Sophia Loren; unfortunately, the lead is Stephen Boyd and despite his strong work along similar lines in Ben-Hur (1959), he has here the charisma of a grocery bag and doesn't seem able to act his way out of one. He has so little chemistry with Loren, I don't even feel like making the effort of an amusing simile. Sometimes the script wants to be contemporary political commentary in the guise of costume drama and more often it's just swords and sandals. There is an attack of German tribesmen which I would swear was organized by rounding up whoever was loose on the lot at the time, handing them all blond wigs and different pieces of fur, and telling them to scream and run that way. And yet it furnished me with at least two performances I remember very fondly and I found myself writing once to teenybuffalo that the funeral of Marcus Aurelius is genuinely something from another world. It is winter, leaden overcast among the black pines of Germany; it is wordless or nearly so, because I remember no speeches, just the files of soldiers that fill up the stone court foursquare and the torches they carry, like ragged banners in the wind; if there are not trumpets, there is certainly the dull heartbeat of the drum and mourners' moans. It begins to snow, sputtering and snapping onto the torches. The wind blows back Timonides' hair; he is not a young man, the emperor's body-servant who was once his slave, and he looks it now, bareheaded in the cold, holding the lit brand for Aurelius' pyre. Livius takes it from him, but it is Commodus who whispered, "If you listen very carefully, you can hear the gods laughing." It sounds to us like the crackle of flames, the soft hiss of falling snow. But he has never been stable, and soon he will be mad, and he might very well be right. Just for those scraps of another time, I'd sit through scenes like the one where Sophia Loren is supposed to prefer Stephen Boyd to Omar Sharif.

Comments

[ap-aelfwine.livejournal.com]

Congratulations on the new anthology!

2.

Thanks for sharing this. I look forward to seeing what happens next year as well.

I have to confess that on some level I've always wanted to create a successful hoax. Of course, I'd have to pick something that wouldn't make me feel guilty if it worked, so I'm not sure what I could do.

...it confirms my belief that anytime the phrase "That would make a great band name" is uttered, somewhere, someone does.

I'd like to think this is true. Of course, I don't see any bands with any of the names my friends and I have thought of on that list...

Then again, most of what we think of are names for tunes. I've been appointed unofficial keeper of our local list of those.

Unfortunately, none of my friends who actually compose tunes has ever wanted to call one "Scrape the Shite From the Boot". But I still have hopes.

4.

I'm sorry to hear of this.

He has so little chemistry with Loren, I don't even feel like making the effort of an amusing simile.

Well done!

It's interesting that the same film could contain both that tribal German atttack and that funeral scene.

[moon-custafer.livejournal.com]

next time, put more research into your marks. (And remember that there is more to the internet than Wikipedia.)

I can't say for sure that I *wouldn't* have fallen for any of these, but I do tend to view with suspicion any claim that a famous serial killer was (a) a relative of the person making the claim, or (b) someone already famous ("Graham Greene was the Brighton Trunk Murderer! Orson Welles killed the black Dahlia!").

[strange-selkie.livejournal.com]

I need to post, too! I also need to write. I think it will be Kit, but it might be a poem.

My hairband snapped, and now I am doing my very best impression of a chow dog. I hope it is not a metaphor.

[ashlyme.livejournal.com]

I was surprised at how many of the bands on the list I knew. I checked out Kung Fu Dykes, but alas they dress like a Power Rangers tribute act.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

The article on the Internet hoaxes is fascinating. I have a personal interest: Little Springtime recently discovered the story of Kisaragi station (translation of posts is here), which began as a purportedly genuine post to the Japanese image and message posting site, 2Chan. People answered the poster, who posted further details, etc., and gradually a story unfolded. Probably most people were clear by the end that they were participating in performance art, but still, at first it seemed real. Little Springtime came to the conclusion that Reddit, which has a similar group-participation feel to it, would be a good place to try a similar stunt in English.

The band names are excellent.