Category Archives: writing

Oh! Lestra!

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Suripoop!

Is this the oil that launched a thousand chips?
Make haste toward that tiled, enchanted room.
Prepare thy drawers perchance some foul thing slips,
Or thundrous peals from out thy cornhole boom.

Though nature’s oils sufficed from dawn of man
For culinary functions tried and true,
It seems that P&G technicians can
Replace them with an oleated goo.

And now Olestra has begun her reign.
The Dark Queen sits and cackles in the night,
Dispensing bouts of shooting rectal pain.
Her fudge erupts from sphincters once held tight.

Beware the chips that claim to be your friend.
The Hershey squirts will get you in the end. 

Truly and often have the poets confronted us with our own torn desires; we love what we despise, we crave what we cannot tolerate, we desperately need what we can never have. Fecklessly falling for fallacies, we cyclically succumb to snake oil salesmen. And always, the poets are there, taking notes.

viz. this, an epic verse-cycle dedicated to that peerless promoter of poopage, Olestra. This, my friends, is truly a work of art, this generation’s Sonnet 130. It is genius, not any ordinary talent, that could spin such a gossamer web of pure poetry on the subject of anal leakage.

Speak on, sweet lips that never told a lie…

Olean… Olean… Olean… Olean
I’m begging you, please leave my sphincter shut
Olean… Olean… Olean… Olean
Please don’t go and lubricate my gutYou’re found in products everywhere, with fatty taste beyond compare;
Of mouth-feel, so enticing, you’re the queen!
Each cake is tasty, but so brief, each chip is crisp as autumn leaf;
And I cannot eat just a few, Olean

You wake me up when I’m asleep; there’s nothing I can do to keep
From oozing when I’ve had too much Olean
And I can easily see now too, how you can easily flow right through,
But you don’t know what that means to me Olean
(chorus)
Well you’re in every kind of snack, but I could never turn my back
You’re the only fat for me Olean
I have to have this talk with you, my skinniness depends on you
Whatever you decide to do Olean
(chorus)

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David Halberstam’s last speech

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David Halberstam in Vietnam 

From, of all places, Business Week (via Gawker) we present the last speech of David Halberstam, greatest journalist of his generation and one of the immortals in a field which was pioneered by other lightweights like Jonathan Swift and Voltaire. I can’t say it any better than Business Week did, so let’s go to the article:

History, after all, was a favorite theme of this lion of American journalism. In 1955, after graduating from Harvard, Halberstam took a job at The Daily Times Leader in West Point, Miss., because he thought it would provide him an opportunity to write about race. When that didn’t work out as he had planned, Halberstam hitchhiked up to Nashville and put in an application at The Tennessean.

There, he wrote about race with a vengeance. In 1960, The New York Times lured him away. In 1964, when Halberstam was 30, he and Malcolm Browne of the Associated Press won Pulitzers for their coverage of the Vietnam War and the overthrow of the Saigon regime.

In 1967, Halberstam quit daily journalism and began writing books. Over the next 40 years he wrote 21 books covering such topics as foreign policy, civil rights, business, and sports. His 1973 classic about the Vietnam War, The Best and the Brightest, described how and why the “ablest men to serve in the government this century” turned out to be “architects of the greatest American tragedy since the Civil War.”

In 1994, The Reckoning addressed the Japanese challenge to American automakers. And in 2000 The Powers that Be tackled the rise of the American media. Halberstam’s 21st book, The Coldest Winter, a look back at the Korean War, will be released this fall. “I think it’s my best work,” he said in his Apr. 21 speech.

transcript here

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quiz: what poetic form are you?

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That last quiz sucked quite horribly.
On this, you see, we can agree.

This quiz is better; smarter too!
Take this one too. Tell us what’s you.
 

I’m terza rima, and I talk and smile.
Where others lock their rhymes and thoughts away
I let mine out, and chatter all the while.I’m rarely on my own – a wasted day
Is any day that’s spent without a friend,
With nothing much to do or hear or say.I like to be with people, and depend
On company for being entertained;
Which seems a good solution, in the end.

What Poetry Form Are You?

I totally thought I’d be cheap doggerel; that’s definitely the kind of poetry I feel like when I wake up hungover at least. First runner-up, though, was Blank Verse, and now we’re getting somewhere…

I am, of course, none other than blank verse.
I don’t know where I’m going, yes, quite right;
And when I get there (if I ever do)
I might not recognise it. So? Your point?
Why should I have a destination set?
I’m relatively happy as I am,
And wouldn’t want to be forever aimed
Towards some future path or special goal.
It’s not to do with laziness, as such.
It’s just that one the whole I’d rather not
Be bothered – so I drift contentedly;
An underrated way of life, I find.

What Poetry Form Are You?

Quiz stolen from Word Document.

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Teeny Ted from Turnip Town: the Text

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Teeny Ted from Turnip Town

Click to enlarge: if only the actual book were so easy to read!

Here, ladies and gentlemen, with the permission of the publisher Robert Chaplin, is the entire text of the smallest book ever produced, Teeny Ted from Turnip Town. The book was produced in association with nanotechnologists Dr. Li Yang and Dr. Karen L. Kavanagh from Simon Fraser University, and is so small that when you look at the plain sheet of polished silicon on which it is carved, you cannot see anything but the scratches laid down by the point of a diamond so that the electron microscope can navigate. That is the huge rut in the image above; the finest scratch visible to the naked eye. The eye does not register this thirty-page book, even as a tiny speck. It is an invisibook, unless, that is, one happens to be carrying in one’s book bag a scanning electron microscope, which possibility we at the ol’ raincoaster blog are not prepared to deny on a categorical or any other basis.  We know our readers are a tricksy bunch, yo.

Teeny Ted from Turnip Town is a tale of triumph, a story of success. Ted grows the biggest turnip; Ted wins the Biggest Turnip contest.

Ah, if only life were that simple.

Chaplin points out, rightly, that we do not know the mysterious Ted‘s back story; we don’t know if he poisoned the other turnips, if he’s obsessed with size because he’s so short, or if winning the prize won him the heart of his true love. Back story be damned! Ted grows the biggest turnip, Ted wins the contest.

End of story.

The book is available from the publisher (contact him here) in a limited edition of one hundred copies, for $20,000. As it can be read only by those who can afford to have a spare scanning electron microscope lying around, price should be no object.

Suggested additional reading: Leaf by Niggle, by JRR Tolkien.

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Shebeen Club: Teeny Tome is Livin’ Large!

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For immediate release: see also World’s Tiniest Press Release below

 World's tiniest press release

What: The Shebeen Club : Teeny Tome, Living Large!

When: 7-9pm, Tuesday, April 17 (3rd Tuesday of each month)

Where: The Shebeen, behind the Irish Heather, 217 Carrall Street in Gastown

Why: Celebrate Shebeen Alumnus Robert Chaplin‘s publication of the World’s Smallest Book: Teeny Ted from Turnip Town!

Who: Contact lorraine.murphy at gmail.com for more information

How(much)? $15 includes dinner and a drink

The Shebeen ClubThis Month: Teeny tomes loom large lately. This week, the literary world welcomed its smallest member, as nanoscientists Li Yang and Karen Kavanagh from Simon Fraser University, together with independent Vancouver publisher Robert Chaplin and author Malcolm Douglas Chaplin, presented their minimasterpiece: Teeny Ted from Turnip Town. At 0.07 by 0.10 millimetres, it’s so small you’d need an electron microscope to read it; at thirty pages, it’s still pretty substantial for a dream book about a turnip tale. Small but perfectly formed, this book has made headlines around the world.

The Shebeen Club will celebrate this ironically monumental moment with readings, door prizes and a writing challenge, all specially miniturized for the occasion. Dinner, however, will be oversized as usual at the Shebeen.

Dress code: miniskirts or skinny ties, but please, no thongs.

The Procedure: Sink into a warm velvet banquette and enjoy our programme: your basic meet-and-mingle from 7-7:30, followed by a riveting, yet brief presentation, followed by Q&A and then breaking up into casual groups for wandering, boozy reminiscences of the time you snubbed Jay McInerney in the airport. A fine dinner of bangers and mash or vegetarian pasta from the kitchen of the Irish Heather, plus one glass of wine, beer or pop are included in the $15.
For more information, contact: Lorraine Murphy, raincoaster media ltd www.shebeenclub.com or  lorraine.murphy at gmail.com

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