Bobby's Blog...<br>        " Process Poetic " <$BlogRSDUrl$>

                                                                   Font:  LG  |  sm


Thursday, May 05, 2005



"Erudition. Dust shaken out of a book into an empty skull."

--Ambrose Bierce


"Of all the diversions of life, there is none so proper to fill up its empty spaces as the reading of useful and entertaining authors."

--Joseph Addison


I found my quote selections by entering the word "empty" in the search box at www.greatest-quotations.com/ and selecting from the first page of quotations. Why "empty" one might ask? The answer may become apparent in a most convoluted manner later in this post. "Erudition" means "Great learning" according to my dog-bitten copy of F&W. It's amazing what one can learn from a book at hand, albeit dusty (and possibly dog-bitten). The use of http://www.thefreedictionary.com/Erudition: an online dictionary/encyclopedia/etc. comes in handy as well!!!

Weather: The start of May... back to spring sunshine... and allergies... rain May 4th in the form of "Seattle Sunshine" to intensify later the day of the 5th (Cinco de Mayo).

Gail's van took still another dump Tuesday the 3rd. We had been all day away off the hill doing errands with no problems. Got home after picking up grandson David from the school bus, put the hay in the barn, backed up to park... the van begins to roll backwards while in park??? Put the emergency brake on to stop the roll and tried to shift through the gears... no gears??? My father-in-law tightened down some plate behind the steering column and glued? something else to stay out of the way. He still wants to check it out further before we can drive it.

A bit of a bother, sometimes, with editing my BLOG in BLOGGER. Links are mangled after pasting the HTML into the editor. Evidently the BLOGGER edit engine will try to add further "a href" and "/a" tags to random HTML link strings. Also the spacing got warped a bit, and a font size magically changed by itself. Stuff to edit!

Sigh! The lilacs are bloomed out. Had some fun with grand-daughter Ashley, four-years old, picking wild-flowers with her last week and making wishes from dandelion seed heads. A few weeks earlier she was sent to me because she had harvested a bag of periwinkle flowers from my periwinkle bed in the front of the house, ostensibly for correction. Her sad little face was enough to melt anyone's heart. Rather than scold, I suggested making a necklace from the flowers. Gail found some periwinkle colored thread and in no time had a wonderful periwinkle-flowered necklace for Ashley to wear.

For image manipulation... Irfanview 3.97 has been released. One of my favorite freeware aps among applications that I use frequently. The batch rename and batch file type conversion features have saved me a lot of time editing photos. A built-in slide show feature makes for quick viewing of large picture files... I'll use this feature after taking digital photos at the grandkid's parties to entertain the grandkid's, and me and Grandma, shortly afterwards. Don't forget to download the Plug-ins for extra functionality.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

My entries... poetry.com: " Poetry in Motion "...
& Haiku daily contests:


~~~~~~~
The Gargoyle


Words without life

doth empty thoughts

comes illuminating

as stones must

under a flashing

cement sky


:Bobby Nichols
5-3-2005


The Comforter


Still thy heart
of pain

Awaken that
peace found

Within His
Heavenly love

:Bobby Nichols
5-2-2005

~~~~~~~

Fare du Jour


I ben der b'fo

I grab 'n skittles so fast!

'fo d'bin be locked


:Bobby Nichols
5-2-2005


" The Gargoyle "... O.K. - I was stumped for a title. I almost always "write" the poem first then wrestle with myself in giving the poem a title.
I took the fifth word ("empty"), then the third word after ("illuminating"), then the seventh word after that ("cement") from my poem (a combination of my "lucky" number '537') and then "googled" the word-trio in quotations ("empty illuminating cement")... no hits.
Next tried all the other (5) combinations of the three words within the quotations... no hits.
Hmmm... tried the three words without quotes in the English language pages using "Google"... 19,500 hits!
O.K. - then I tried only selecting German pages (after changing my Google Preferences for "Search Language" in Google)... 8 hits!
Hmmm... still too many... only French pages in Google... oops, 11 hits!
Chinese... 5 hits. Tried a few other language pages and finally got a language with only one hit... Arabic!!!

Now what?
I search the page persianblog.com/?date=13820306&blog=ghafelzadeh... it's a Persian BLOG!!! What a poetic form the written word is in Arabic... beautiful.
Hey! There's an Allen Ginsberg work titled "Howl" in English on the page and after searching using the EDIT tab and FIND function using IE6's browser with my 'key' words one at a time... all three of my words are contained in the "Howl" piece listed!!! Cool!

  • "empty lots & diner backyards, moviehouses' rickety rows, on" (from Allen Ginsberg's work titled "Howl")
  • "What sphinx of cement and aluminium bashed open their skulls" (from Allen Ginsberg's work titled "Howl")
  • "illuminating all the motionless world of Time between" (from Allen Ginsberg's work titled "Howl")

COOL!!!... now here's some fodder for a title!!! How about "The Cement Sphinx", or one poetic step beyond to "The Gargoyle"... that's it!!!... "The Gargoyle"!!! Who said giving titles to a poem was hard???...
... I did ;)

" The Comforter "... A pious piece proffered.

" Fare du Jour " a Haiku: ... This poem leapt from my soul with a mind of its own before I reached the Haiku entry page. The photo, of all things, was of a hot air balloon... so I wasn't being prescient. I guess it's just one of those poems that had to be written now... and I was chosen.
The style is reminiscent of my poem "Sundow'n" created March 18, 2004.

Khoda hafaz !!!


C'ya.  
Comments:
my name is soheil ghafelzadeh
who are you?
 
RE: my name is soheil ghafelzadeh
who are you?

Posted by soheil ghafelzadeh to Bobby's Blog... " Process Poetic " at 5:35 PM March 10, 2008
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


Howdy

Who am I...

I am bobbynichols...

Well, I try to answer all my emails and comments, and I do tend to babble when I write (I'm very shy in person).

I was once a blogger (not quite up to date any more... but hopefully that will change). I have been keeping my poem links up to date recently, however, on my Blogger page.

I am a mini-micro-minor poet; not published anywhere except by myself - on the web... But, then, one has to start somewhere. Oh, I guess I have spammed my family over the years with my poetry as well.

Here are most of my poems on a separate page: http://home.earthlink.net/~bobbynichols/My%20Poems.htm
A .pdf version is also available on my Blogger page. Most of my poems are corny/silly/stupid, but some are o.k. in my humble opinion.

I live in California, USA, in the Sierra foothills... Gold Country !

Places I've lived: Seattle (2), Washington. California cities: Merced, San Mateo (2), Stockton, Newark (3), Fremont (4), Union City, Sunnyvale, Santa Clara (2), Cupertino (2), San Jose, Monte Sereno, Magalia, Chico, Campbell, Georgetown, and here. The numbers in parenthesis denote how many different abodes in the same city; [(1) if not noted].

Places I've visited of note: San Francisco; Baltimore, Maryland; Georgetown/Washington D.C.; Baton Rouge, Louisiana; Las Vegas and Reno, Nevada; Monterey and Carmel, California; Seaside, Oregon; Arlington, Virginia. I've seen both the Pacific and Atlantic oceans; and flown over the Great Salt Lake in Utah in a commercial jet (as a passenger of course). I've visited Lake Tahoe, and Clear Lake in California; and Green Lake and Lake Washington and Lake Union in Washington state. I bicycled to and from Yosemite National Park in California, twice, from the San Francisco Bay Area as a high school youth. I've been up the Space Needle in Seattle, twice, and most of the rides at Great America's theme park in the San Francisco Bay Area.

My favorite city is San Francisco... Resort: The Claremont/Berkeley, California... Hotel: The Claremont (http://www.claremontresort.com/) or The Miyako/San Francisco (now the Kabuki? http://www.jdvhotels.com/miyako/)... but those were back in the days of excess. Now a days: Fast food: Kentucky Fried Chicken... Beverage: milk... Place: home

I am a recent convert to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (LDS or sometimes called the Mormon Church)... Four wonderful years last week !

I am male, married, 2-grandchildren, 50+ years old, 6' 4" ( 1.9304 m ), about 350 lbs ( 158.8 kg ), blond haired and blue-eyed, glasses. My wife and I lead a very humble life; we both have various health issues.

Education: AA in Electronic Engineering. I always received good grades in school, excelling in math and the sciences. I wish I could have applied myself more... sigh.

Let's see, jobs I've had in the past: liquor store clerk; all phases of the recreational bowling business; life insurance; window washer/floor polisher/janitor; electronic service tech; shipping clerk & marketing specialist in the outdoor manufacturing biz; copier service tech.

I used to be a good bowler (ten-pins) in the day, but bad health has plagued me the last ten or so years and I had to end my recreational bowling.

My favorite website is http://www.besttechie.net/forums/ where I keep up-to-date on tech stuff. Other websites I like are linked on my Blogger page.

Books I'm reading now: The Book of Mormon; The Other Side Of Heaven/Groberg; Jesus The Christ/Talmage; The Space Opera Renaissance/Hartwell & Cramer

Likes: family, Temple, church, chocolate, chicken dinners, quail (to watch, not eat), peanut butter, Sci-Fi, ocean, zoo, popcorn, web surfing, poetry, reading, snow, kitties, puppies, computers, March Madness (college basketball), baseball, bowling, chess, whales, walking, scripture study, pen drives, light rain, bumblebees, science, learning, spell checkers, fish, Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART).

Dis-likes: malt ball candies, parsnips, yams/sweet potatoes, peanut butter cookies, mowing the lawn, cold weather, hot weather, snow skiing, dogs, rutabagas, ice hockey, car racing (it's not really a sport is it?), cold water, allergies, eyeglasses, talking in front of a group of people, dial-up internet access, down pouring rain, most bugs, fishing, meat bees.

My favorite computer applications: Open Office Suite, Foxit Reader, Irfanview, Smart Type Assistant, Opera browser, Thunderbird mail client, Sunbird calendar/PIM, Note Tab Lite, any portable application for my USB pen drives, Call Wave, PrintDesk Top, CCleaner, WinSCP, a-squared (free version), HTML-Kit, HTML Tag Buddy.

Today I am struggling with a hot water heater... Taking out the old and trying to figure how to put in the new with some fixture upgrades. I am not even remotely a handy-man so trials like this are frustrating. Fed the horses... Two flakes of alfalfa each for "Saudi" and "Tara", my wife's Arabian horses. Earlier helped bury one of my in-law's malamute dogs, "Nikita", who had passed away in the night. Daughter made taco salad for dinner for the extended family which was a blessing. Truck needed some brake fluid... way too low !!! oil and water were fine. Need to smog certify the truck this week. Checked the checking account... yep, too much month at the end of the money again. Couldn't get to my family home evening discussion on Jesus The Christ/Talmage tonight due to time constraints (and no water for a shower!)... I'll read the chapter I missed before night-time prayers and bed.

I'll stop at this point.

I had been wracking my brain for a poem's title for a poem I had written which led me to the context for the blog reference you cited:

" The Gargoyle "... O.K. - I was stumped for a title. I almost always "write" the poem first then wrestle with myself in giving the poem a title.
I took the fifth word ("empty"), then the third word after ("illuminating"), then the seventh word after that ("cement") from my poem (a combination of my "lucky" number '537') and then "googled" the word-trio in quotations ("empty illuminating cement")... no hits.
Next tried all the other (5) combinations of the three words within the quotations... no hits.
Hmmm... tried the three words without quotes in the English language pages using "Google"... 19,500 hits!
O.K. - then I tried only selecting German pages (after changing my Google Preferences for "Search Language" in Google)... 8 hits!
Hmmm... still too many... only French pages in Google... oops, 11 hits!
Chinese... 5 hits. Tried a few other language pages and finally got a language with only one hit... Arabic!!!

Now what?
I search the page [note: the unique hit noted above] persianblog.com/?date=13820306&blog=ghafelzadeh... it's a Persian BLOG!!! What a poetic form the written word is in Arabic... beautiful.
Hey! There's an Allen Ginsberg work titled "Howl" in English on the page and after searching using the EDIT tab and FIND function using IE6's browser with my 'key' words one at a time... all three of my words are contained in the "Howl" piece listed!!! Cool!

"empty lots & diner backyards, moviehouses' rickety rows, on" (from Allen Ginsberg's work titled "Howl")
"What sphinx of cement and aluminium bashed open their skulls" (from Allen Ginsberg's work titled "Howl")
"illuminating all the motionless world of Time between" (from Allen Ginsberg's work titled "Howl")

COOL!!!... now here's some fodder for a title!!! How about "The Cement Sphinx", or one poetic step beyond to "The Gargoyle"... that's it!!!... "The Gargoyle"!!! Who said giving titles to a poem was hard???...
... I did ;)


As you can see it was a circuitous route that led me to your site... If you find offense, please forgive me, and email me again... I will edit the blog entry if you wish... Otherwise...

who are you?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
 
Post a Comment

This page is powered by Blogger. Isn't yours?