" Typos are very important to all written form. It gives the reader something to look for so they aren't distracted by the total lack of content in your writing. "

-- Randy K. Milholland



Re: email received 3/10/2008

> soheil ghafelzadeh has left a new comment on your post

"Erudition. Dust shaken out of a book into an em...":

>soheil ghafelzadeh wrote:

> my name is soheil ghafelzadeh

> who are you?


My answer 3/11/2008:

Howdy !

Who am I...

I am bobbynichols...

Well, I try to answer all my emails, 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.

My Poems Collection is an html document on most of my poetry- like "stuff". 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), UnionCity, Sunnyvale, Santa Clara (2), Cupertino (2), San Jose, Monte Sereno, Magalia, Chico, Campbell, Georgetown, and here. The numbers in paren () 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?

    -----------------------------------------


Today:

Anyway... I've not been posting, and even I find that annoying... But I have been updating my poetry listings in html and .pdf, though, again, I've not written any poetry since:

Even my html has become rusty as I try to post this "puppy".

I have been making buttons for my blog links (recht!) off and on as a project... And that's been fun.

Mom called today. We had played phone tag before finally connecting. Mom had visited brother Robin and his Bella in Italy earlier this year; he then returned the favour by returning to Washington State with his Bella to visit Mom and Peg and John... which evidently went well (I missed their call on Easter). Robin, and his Bella, are back in Italy till the end of the year(?).

Mom also visited with brother Jim... prayers to him.

I've lost some weight, 20 - 30 lbs (9-14 kg)... That that I had gained after the death of my sister Debi nearly two years ago. Still, at 340 lbs (154.2214058 kg) I've far to go.

My truck didn't pass smog (sigh) and DMV is determined to add to my life one trial after another, as if I didn't have enough already. Gail's car DID pass smog, but she's reluctant to let me drive HER car as my weight might harm her seats (sigh, again). "... just another brick in the wall." as the song goes.

Still... my faith is strong and I delight in that which I can do to help build Heavenly Father's Kingdom.

C'ya.  

// posted by bobbynichols @ 12:19 AM