Keys

Computer Poetry

Jonah taught me how to make computer poetry. The basic requirements are a) a computer, b) a microphone, and c) some gurgled noises or a mumbling voice. You basically put these noises to a dictation program on Word. Since computers are not flawless, the outcome is a bunch of words that are nowhere near similar to their input. Some of it is surprisingly profound.

Here are a couple phrases that popped out when Jonah read Whitman's 'Song of Myself' to it:

-You will never see any more efficiently

-Please find the truth

-I suspect that I am. And that is not very somber

-Some of them make sense..... (this one is coincidental, no?)

However, some of it was really mundane. There seemed to be a lot of business related words. Obviously, this is probably because the business world is the program's target market. There was a lot of talk about times and numbers. Also, political words like presidency and candidacy came up a lot...

Anyway, Jonah gave me the sheets of paper and told me to create a poem out of some of my favorite lines. I rearranged, added some words, and corrected some punctuation. Here's what I concocted:

(Before you proceed, please understand I agree what I'm about to do is totally cheesy. I know... But I was reading Blogger.com's Administrative Rules and Guidelines, and one of them is, and I quote, 'every blogger must post at least one of their personal poems in said blog. This poem, in all likelihood, will be extremely awful and nearly unreadable by the general public. Suggested topics include: how much you hate the president, how painful love is, why the mainstream is ridiculous, etc. We encourage you to please keep an 'emo' state of mind while writing.' I'm not kidding. It's in the fine print. Just fulfilling the requirement with this post...)

The company has claimed 'now's the perfect time'

That comes as a given

Jump in. Right now.

They say 'make us your main task'

He says 'what about me?'

They say 'consider yourself now a we'

He says 'thanks for the future'

They say 'don't mention it'

Where I come from

In our inventory

We consider him a low level loss

House Party

Diving

Today, my roommate and I drove past a dumpster. A beautiful ray of light danced off the edge of a treasure leaning up against it. "Probably nothing..." I thought to myself, but three blocks later, I couldn't get it out of my head.

"Aly!" I eventually blurted out, "On the way home, we have got to take this exact same route and stop by that dumpster we just passed!" She looked at me like I was crazy, but agreed to it.

An hour later, the treasure was still there- a message board in a opening frame with lock and key. There a few others like it, but I choose one and promptly decided it would become my new method for storing jewelry- my necklaces would dangle from it in an oh-so organized manner sometime in the near future...

Just as I'm hauling it back to the car, I hear shouting from down the street. A short little man with big curly hair and a hawaiian shirt walks up. He's yelling and laughing all at the same time. He's obviously a tad crazy. Picture Sean Penn in Sweet and Lowdown...

"Girl, I just got off the bus to come pick up those boards, and here you are! Imagine that! You know how much you could get for these boards? Sure! You could make some dough offa these. These are real aluminum. Sure! You could earn a pretty penny off a these."

"Uhm. Well, I just forced my roommate to take the long way home so I could come back and get this, so..."

"Ah. That's alright girl. You go ahead and take that board."

Now I feel like a jerk. After all, the guy just wasted a bus ride for the boards. Plus, he could apparently make a lot of money off of it... "No, it's okay, you can have it."

"Yeah? These probably worth 'round four bucks each."

My eyes narrow. Seriously? Four dollars? "Actually, I'm going to take this, okay?" And with that I grab the board. I try to be nice, however, and point out the other cool stuff in the dumpster- like a great old handpainted plywood sign, resembling an old movie poster.

"Nah," the guy says, "thats a piece a junk. Prolly real heavy. Now looka this! This is prolly worth a lot!" His eyes widen as he pulls out a piece of wood with four wheels attached to the bottom. "Oh yeah, these wheels prolly worth ten bucks each," he says as slaps one and watches it spin. Suddenly he looks up at me- "Hey, you gotta boyfriend?"

"Yes!" I immediately declare (total lie).

"Ah, thats too bad. You should ditch him and go out with me. We could have fun. We could go dig through dumpsters together and stuff. That would be fun..."

I laugh, tell him thanks for the sign, and wander back to the car.

On second thought, though, I'm having a hard time finding the downside of one of my favorite activities, dumpster diving, on a date with a Sean Penn look-alike.

Grassy

Segway

My roommate and I rode our bikes downtown to see a concert at Millennium Park. It was a pretty popular show, it was free, and it was a nice day out, so what do you expect but lots of people riding their bikes?

We arrive and the bike racks are minimal, and those that are around are literally stuffed full already. But, if you know Millennium Park, you'd agree that there are tons of fences around to which one could lock his or her bike. 

Once we find a spot on the fence, we begin to walk away when we hear a 'swish' and a 'swooosh'- a breeze blows through the trees- there's a flash of yellow from behind...

Whoa! Is it a superhero? No. It's a segway security guard coasting to a stop on the sidewalk and hovering over us with a goofy grin on his face.. 

"Hey," I say as the nerd balances on his behemoth piece of machinery. The segway elevates him, making him a few feet taller than me, but he seems to believe this point of view is simply part of his genes. He obviously thinks he's better than everyone he's zoomed by throughout the day and the giant rubber wheels on his transportation-contraption are an extension of... well, whatever other giant things he is lacking. As he stares down at us, he adjusts his belt around his big belly and begins to pull a pad of paper out from his pocket.

"Uh. What are you doing?" I ask. 

"I'm about to write you a ticket," the jerkface says.

"Uh. For what?"

"Locking your bikes to this fence."

We proceed to argue a little... I tell him that this stupid park should be more accommodating to bikers and at least post a sign on the fence if this is the rule. He proceeds to tell us the ticket would cost us $300. I say this is stupid. He proceeds to say he was just kidding- our lock would just be cut and the bikes would go to city lost and found if we didn't move them. I say this is also stupid. He proceeds to tell us we should get a segway, because they're just plain better than a bike. I proceed to ask him where he would lock up his segway if he had to. He proceeds to claim he never gets off his segway. I proceed to punch him in the face... not really, though.

In the end, the guy won. We shoved our bikes in somewhere else and he scooted around on a major power trip. So it would seem that today I got bossed around by the most disrespected form of authority the United States has ever known- a security guard on a segway.

Typical

(Over-flow of 'i love my kitty pictures' coming at you. Brace yourself if you mind gush.)

My kitties are pretty typical...

Boy kitty is drunk most of the time.

Girl Kitty is into turn-of-the-century feminine literature.

Boy Kitty is always leaving the toilet seat up.

Girl Kitty is always messing around with someone else's balls.

But in the end, they really love each other.