Raving Amicks

 I just recently discovered the poet Mary Oliver after hearing one of her poems last Sunday at Adam’s church Bellingham Unitarian. She is an American poet, born in 1935 in Maple Heights, Ohio. Her works have a focus on the natural world, and she is often compared to Whitman and Thoreau. Her many honors as a poet include the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. To my knowledge she currently resides in Provincetown, Massachusetts.

THE FISH

The first fish
I ever caught
would not lie down
quiet in the pail
but flailed and sucked
at the burning
amazement of the air
and died
in the slow pouring off
of rainbows. Later
I opened his body and separated
the flesh from the bones
and ate him. Now the sea
is in me: I am the fish, the fish
glitters in me; we are
risen, tangled together, certain to fall
back to the sea. Out of pain,
and pain, and more pain
we feed this feverish plot, we are nourished
by the mystery.

If you guys are ever wondering what’s happening in Western’s Red Square you can check out this live webcam showing an an aerial view of the square. 

-Also if you ever want to do a one way video chat sometime I could always grab my phone and run out to Red Square and chat with you!

 

Red Square Webcam 

Penny Arcade, a vulgar and hilarious video-gaming comic, has posted a challenge. It’s simple: write a ten word story about World of Warcraft. I think we should have our own mini contest and post our best ones here.

You don’t have to know anything about WoW (I don’t), it just has to be fantasy-related. Here are the suggestions they gave:

His father’s sword, shattered to the hilt, fell like stars.

It doesn’t have to be especially epic, it merely needs to ring true. For example:

“Help,” he cried. “My dick is stuck in this Treant!”

See what I mean? It paints a picture. You know everything you need to know about the dick and the Treant. You’ve got until Thursday, the 10th of April. We’ll announce the winners next Friday.

See? Piece of cake! I’ll make a secret post Wednesday night so we can each put in our final entry (don’t forget to send an email to the one they give in the post, so that you can officially enter the contest).

Mason asked me to post some YouTube videos that I told him about. So, without further ado, let’s begin with Kitten Surprise!!

And the second movie that Mason wanted me to post is quite a bit longer. Here is the epic Battle at Kruger.

I was trying to get these movies embedded, but for some reason WordPress doesn’t wanna let me.

I went and saw Transformers with Mindy and a few other friends (two who are visiting from Chicago). Mindy thought that the main character’s mom in the movie was just like our Mom. She’s the one in the middle in the photo (could you tell?).

There was a great scene where the main character was looking for something in his room and he didn’t want his parents finding out he had a bunch of giant robots wandering around the yard. His mom and dad are there at the door wondering what he’s up to and she asks if he was masturbating. So then the father and the son kinda start freaking out and she says:

Judy Witwicky: “We don’t have to call it that if it makes you uncomfortable. We can call it Sam’s Happy Time!”

Anyway, they did a pretty good job with the mom.

And also because I have a lot of free time at work again, I was reading this fascinating article about Google twins (people with the same name found via Google searches) in the Seattle Times. In the article, there is a link to a website that calculates how many people share your name in the U.S.: www.howmanyofme.com. Of course, I couldn’t resist (I dare you to resist).

The results…drum roll

HowManyOfMe.com

There is 1 person with my name in the U.S.A. How many have your name?

But rather than feeling very proud, I feel a bit sheepish. This means that every time someone wants to Google-stalk me, all the results will be me and only me. And that’s a little weird, especially when I see some of the links out there. Like, some supposed teacher used my poem (a quick little exercise poem, no less) for their class in February? Or that strange new age place that jacked one of my articles, making it look like I wrote for them. And then there’s that Pirates of Dark Water petition to release my beloved cartoon to DVD…um, ha ha ha!

I guess I’m mostly wary because I’ve already had one problem after being Google-stalked before a job interview last year. The interviewer found my biography on my portfolio website and completely and utterly misconstrued an innocent sentence about how I was much happier when I switched from being an art history major to an English major; she somehow thought that I loathed the University of Washington. I can only imagine what that woman thought about my Pirates of Dark Water for DVD release petition: “This person advocates software piracy!”

But on the flip side, at least I’m not an emerging writer who shares the same name as someone who writes sleazy romance novels. Sadly, such is the fate of my fellow contractor: