OZYMANDIAS

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

- Percy Bysshe Shelley

In Egypt’s sandy silence, all alone,
Stands a gigantic Leg, which far off throws
The only shadow that the Desert knows:
“I am great OZYMANDIAS,” saith the stone,
“The King of Kings; this mighty City shows
“The wonders of my hand.” The City’s gone,
Nought but the Leg remaining to disclose
The site of this forgotten Babylon.
We wonder, and some Hunter may express
Wonder like ours, when thro’ the wilderness
Where London stood, holding the Wolf in chace,
He meets some fragments huge, and stops to guess
What powerful but unrecorded race
Once dwelt in that annihilated place.

—Horace Smith.

i saw the doc again.

made me wear regulation-size
shorts for the exam
even though i brought my own

i could wrap one leg hole
around my waist 4 times

ain’t that america?

i protested
but the nurse
refused my plaid
green and brown shorts

i didn’t think it was fair to judge my walk
in those shorts
since i was distracted

the elastic waist
was too loose
like a lazy lasso

What the hell is this it looks fun. I’m going to research this.

From a Pandagon post about Operation Exodus. You know, the Louisiana Sheriff training the Teabaggers to Fight Like Real Men, so’s they can de-feet the terrists, and them peacenicky liberals, like me.

Bring ‘Em On.

Oh, here: “On May 17th 2008, an epic cardboard LARP (Live Action Role Playing… duh!) battle spontaneously took place in Dolores Park.”

So estimates are that the earth’s orbit has been slowed down by 1.64 millionths of a second due the to Chilean earthquake. Now that’s getting “tectonic.” Reports also indicate that the orbit of the earth was shifted slightly off its axis as well. We have found Elvis’s ghost and the king is still all shook up, Beethoven is rolling, and music is cosmic.

Saw a story at New Scientist that there may be a way to test for evidence of a multi-verse. Byronius will recognize this concept from a discussion we had previously - but with regard to another puzzler - gravity.

Several strands of theoretical physics - quantum mechanics, string theory and cosmic inflation - seem to converge on the idea that our universe is only one among an infinite and ever-growing assemblage of disconnected bubble universes.

What’s more, the multiverse offers a plausible answer to what has become an infuriatingly slippery question: why does the quantity of dark energy in the universe have the extraordinarily unlikely value that it does? No theory of our universe has been able to explain it. But if there are countless universes out there beyond our cosmic horizon, each with its own value for the quantity of dark energy it contains, the value we observe becomes not just probable but inevitable.

This is a very interesting twist if it bears out making things much more interesting than we have ever dreamed.

Raphael Bousso of the University of California, Berkeley, has also been grappling with the multiverse, and in the past few months he has found a way round the troubling problem of unobservable universes. At a stroke, he has transformed the multiverse from a theory so problematical that it threatens to subvert science, into one that promises predictions we can test. His insights are steering physicists along the path to their ultimate goal of uniting quantum mechanics and gravity into one neat theory of everything.

Quantum mechanics tells us that the vacuum of space is not empty; instead, it crackles with energy. It also tells us that, sooner or later, any given universe will decay spontaneously into another one with lower energy.

read the story here

In the spirit of helping along the sonic backdrop for byronius’ 1940’s period screenplay…

In 1944, journeyman film composer David Raksin was asked to score a new 20th Century Fox film mystery, “Laura”… which turned out to be an early example of classic “film noir”. The studio suits had planned to use Duke Ellington’s “Sophisticated Lady” as the main theme, but Raksin objected that it really didn’t capture the ‘right’ feeling. Figuring that no one could top the “Sophisticated Lady” tune, they challenged Mr. Raksin to come up with something better… by Monday(!)…

So there’s David, noodling away in Hollywood at his piano… searching for inspiration. That day, he had received a letter from his wife, who was working on Broadway… which he now opened and read. It turned out to be a ‘Dear John’ letter. Their relationship was over. In this despondent frame of mind, the haunting melody that became “Laura” just spilled out in but a few moments. I heard this poignant story related by David Raksin himself in an interview on the craft of film composition.

Whatever the inspirational source, Raksin certainly hit on a simple theme that is flat out impossible to get out of your head once it’s been planted there. I also re-encourage you to check out the song I posted here: “I Didn’t Know What Time it Was”

Enjoy!

Here, MST3K mangulates a Russo-Finnish children’s story. But the segment of interest is the Bergmanesque skit from 3:30 to 8:00…

Enjoy Sven and Oly’s scintillating seashore dialogue on existential… existence.
Too funny not to post? Ja sure, you betcha by gum and by golly!

Absolutely freakin’ useless, but beautiful.

My ex-wife Wendy just turned me on to this number that I thought I’d share:

(Music & Lyrics by J. Fred Coots and Haven Gillespie)

Here’s a facsimile of my comments:

I hadn’t heard this great tune for a long time! My Mom loved this song. You’re right, Doris really does a nice job here (except for one sec where she ‘ate’ the mic)… and yeah, I could’ve done without the cutesy ‘angel bells’ as you put it (actually a celeste ;-})

Judy Garland’s ‘cha-cha’ version is weird and doesn’t really make it, Sinatra’s swings OK, slow with Nelson Riddle’s Orchestra… I did like Billie Holiday’s version a lot, with Ben Webster on tenor sax…

read more…

Well, our Canuck pals put on quite a winter party for the world… And they even won the hockey Gold they craved for team Canada, who beat us today fair and square in a nail-biter (their NHL players beat our NHL players 3-2 in sudden-death OT ;-})… I fell in love with Lindsey Vonn and Ju-na Kim… I finally figured out what ‘icing’ means in ice hockey… and I still feel uncomfortable watching the two-man Luge! ;-}

In fine Canadian style, the closing ceremony started with a laugh and a ’sorry, eh!’, making fun of themselves for the Olympic torch malfunction at the opening festivities. What the hell, eh? After a few more LaBatt’s… like who cares, eh? ;-}

I’m no winter sportsman (strictly bunny slope), but I can tell excellence when I see it, and we got plenty of that. And even if the whole spectacle is a corporate ‘gin, I prefer to remain naïve and just enjoy the sense of good sport and international fair play.

So Thank You, Canada… you did just fine!