Little bits of Hobbit.

I am never going to have to actually read the Lord of the Rings series because I continue to receive it paragraph by paragraph at the end of spam messages in my inbox.

Given the length of the tomes, this way is easier to digest.

At least I've stopped getting bits of Jonathan Livingston Seagull.

A Hobbit loophole.

A selection from Tolkien this morning.

dark-green hood. As soon a the door was opened, he pushed inside, just as if he had been expected. He hung his hooded cloak on the nearest peg, and Dwalin at your service! he said with a low bow.
Bilbo Baggins at yours! said the hobbit, too surprised to ask any questions for the moment. When the silence that followed had become uncomfortable, he added: I am just about to take tea; pray come and

It was in a Viagra ad. The sender: florie@burtprocess.com; which is an address that has obviously already been deleted. Because Burtprocess.com, which is a company that created pH neutralization systems, is definitely not selling Viagra in any way, shape or form.

The thing about copying from Bach and Tolkien is this: despite how well known both authors are, I think that the copyright on the works has expired. Avon is no longer publishing new copies of Jonathan Livingston Seagull, and there are a variety of publishers who have attained the rights to Tolkien's work, therefore leading me to believe that the copyrights have a. expired and not been renewed or something else that would really piss off both authors, were they still living.

I'm sure that most people do not care. I myself was amused at first by the selections on these emails, but the Bach and Tolkien bits are stirring.

I don't see how its fair for their work to be unlawfully copied and distributed with the dastardly intentions of stumping spam-blockers. Is this really what we're coming to? A world without respect for other's artistic and intellectual property?

Bullseye here.

You can literally see the jealousy when Jennie announces that she and Sam are going to go shopping at the Target in Santa Maria.

This is why Santa Barbara needs a damn Target. They can stick it in Goleta, out in Ellwood. It doesn't matter. It doesn't have to be downtown, flaunting its contemporary architecture and hugeness over our mandated Spanish-style building codes. Stick it on Turnpike! On Hollister! Doze the now abandoned $3 Theater and repave it with the glory of a Target!

The seeds of a Target revolution need to germinate somewhere. And soon.

Richard Bach should shoot these people in the face.

This was todays spam finding. And I can sure as hell identify the work from which it was stolen because I've read it:

popular with other birds. Even his parents were dismayed as Jonathan spent from? Oh, probably from the last pylon. He's right, it wouldn't be further
this: though there are battles and fights and blood and death where the without question. If someone starts fumbling or asking questions I'll hit the moonlight. "You are learning again, Jonathan Seagull," he said.
"You probably mean stalkers!"

at the horizon itself, flew a few others. New sights, new thoughts, new
"Thank you. How do you feel about turboplatforms?"

I can't believe they were stupid enough to include the first and last name of the titular seabird, which I decided to make bold to emphasize my complete disbelief.

This must somehow be plagiarism. Even though these people are copying only lines from random parts of the books there must be some way to put an end to this. These texts, while kind of amusing when they're bits of erotica that I can try to string together, belong to their authors, not spam stock-porn-pharmaceutical email jockeys.

Words, words, words.

I have been following Shelley Jackson's Skin project for some time. I am, in fact, writing my thesis on it. And only when I got up the gumption to finally stick to a thesis on tattoo fiction, did I apply to become one of the author's words. I have not (yet) been chosen.

However, Jackson has recently updated the map of where all the words live. When I saw the map, I found the poetry of the thing so overwhelming that I was choked with tears. While I am not officially a word, I feel like I'm part of this community somehow, in some abstract way as I watch it evolve and I document it and analyze it. Seeing who belongs in these sentences is a fascinating study in connection and isolation.

And I just found out that the word "look" lives in Isla Vista. "look" if you read this, I want to meet you. I am not in your sentence, but I want to know who you are. I met "floating" a few weeks ago at the Rocky Horror Picture Show, and I hope that you will be able to further my understanding of what it is like to be a literal text.

And Tom squeezed the Horchata.

I got part of a legitimate story today amidst my porn/erectile disfunction emails.
this doesn't sound like a rule for a loop.
So I went to the locker room, pulled on my lab clothes and lit up. All
"I say you are free."
So I decided the hell with it. The last time I had gone into the Zone at
"I'm ready " he said at last.
"Once the time I spent thanks to you was over, I went straight. Quit

forgotten its insanity, but Fletcher had not. "Jonathan, remember what you two copper disks the size of a saucer, -about a quarter inch thick, with a

That's all they gave me.

I can't tell if it comes from some peice of gay male erotica or not, but I have the sneaking suspicion that it might be. I imagine it involves a jock, like E. Lynn Harris' Invisible Life and The Front Runner (a.k.a. the greatest gay love story of ALL TIME) both do, pinnacles of traditional masculinity, and some sort of geek-jock hybrid who wears his lab clothes in the locker room and smokes a lot of weed. Seems like the kind of narrative that turns on the ideas of "straight-ness" and "gayness." One of these boys, probably the jock, and I can't tell from the punctuation if that's Jonathan or Fletcher, has a life changing experience with the other and can no longer tell if he is gay or straight. And the point, after all, will be that sexual identity is fluid, and just a label, and it doesn't really matter who you choose to love.

I'm finding that my spam filter's malfunction gives me something to do in the mornings before I can start hounding people for stories and information like the hard boiled Girl Friday I am quickly becoming.

Porno Poetry

I find that my work email is continually spammed by porn offers and stock tips. Thanks for you consideration, but I can find hot Russian teens on my own, now that I speak Idiot Level Russian, and I'll choose my portfolio based of non-emailed tips. P.S. I have no penis, therefore, don't need Viagra.

However, these clever bastards have figured out a way to get past spam filters by filling their secondary messages with strange, Exquisite Corpse poems like the following:
onion smudge mid-block painter stainer moon-mad Opus anglicum
oil cup nymph pink noble-natured omnibus train passage boat
pale-looking narrow-leaved Old bactrian osmund brake

Nov-esperanto mug-wet over-and-over stitch moisture-absorbent pari-mutuel morphological botany muscle-kneading
offhand position old-womanish out-of-bounds
oven furnace number field new-mown neb-neb olive acanthus parti-mortgage pearl-encrusted Paris yellow Non-european para red palm marten old-bachelorish mithridate mustard
never-twinkling moon-mad organ gun mis-sing northern redtop
peacock-feathered naked-flowered miter clamp narrow-breasted

one-flowered Non-quaker oval-figured omnium-gatherum mill-headed Mocha stone morass ore modern-practiced morning-winged old-clothesman paper-stamping Mongolo-turkic open-timber
Panama congress nine-point oat-fed openside planer passenger locomotive
micro-movie nose dive oblong-leaved one-pounder

midnight sun ox-eyed orange berry needle valve mint sauce narcissus fly milk-condensing
newel stair nerve stretching opus pectineum
navigating officer Pan-america nitrogen balance Mont blanc ruby naked-bladed ovate-cylindraceous mist-shrouded mood phrase

I thought that one was pretty good. It's called "open-field ;)" or, at least, that's what my email was called.

I also like this one:
"paper plant Moon type nigger pine ore-roasting mill-run
nut-shelling palm reader Non-semitic morning-winged middle-rate
mix-up mild-mannered oyster-shell bark louse otter brown

oven-dried oak-wainscoted news agency orderly room new-built paint-stained Mid-november
paint brusher ore body Mid-african
moth blight Non-germanic peace guild Moeso-gothic paroquet bur paraffin paper navigation act Nodus secundus old-field lark overhead price mole catcher Mumbo jumbo monesia bark
open-endedness own-rooted mole catcher pearl-bearing Nankeen porcelain
palm branch mind-set obtuse bisectrix mustache monkey

old-worldish Monmouth cock navy yard night-filled paper works open-chested old-bachelorish mis-send miter box neoza pine meter-kilogram mulct law ovate-deltoid
nake-footed Neo-kantism muzzle ring mind cure ovate-subulate
palm-shaded off-turning pan fish Mogul empire

Non-asiatic palm grub open-breasted night-wandering mis-humility movable-do system midsummer daisy
near-coming out sister passion-fraught
nose ape olive dun Non-zionist nutty-brown moisture equivalent mud house mine-run mile-ton"

That one is called "Your money, nonre-eligibility."

These people are on to something. They should be submitting to literary journals, not my inbox.

This is our emo band name.

The Teapot Fire.



Or The Fiery Teapots?

I can't decide which is better, but both of these pictures can barely do justice to the flaming mess my teapot became. Negligence. Plastic handles. Hot metal. You do the math.

I am now short one teapot. But it's okay. I got it in Dad's garage, where everything is free and comes in bulk.

I will purchase a new teapot tomorrow after work. Preferably one that won't do this:

A Vendetta Against Fruit

And those who throw it.

As I sit down in my vehicle this morning to drive to campus, I notice that there is a large, semi-circular crack beginning around the area where my rear-view mirror is and arching perfectly down into my field of vision and my passenger's.



How the fuck did this get here?

According to the pulpy goodness stuck in the middle of this crack, I blame some sort of citrus fruit, thrown, clearly, at such a speed that it might crack a windshield.



Who fucking throws fruit at that speed? Who fucking throws fruit? This is what I want to know.

As I drive to campus, I find the rogue peice of produce wedged in the crack between my hood and window, held in place as I drive by my windshield wiper.

The offending fruit has since been placed in my evidence locker. My evidence locker being the wineglasses I stole from Bryna's wedding two weeks ago and still haven't taken out of the backseat of my car.

I can dust it for fingerprints if I need to. Because I've decided that I'm fucking Veronica Mars and I can do this kind of thing.

I am considering taking my "evidence" to the manager of the building behind me, over whose fence the projectile lemon was launched, and telling them that their residents need to stop throwing things over fences with such blinding force because what has happened to poor little Lola (my car) is technically a. vandalism (if intentional) and b. destruction of personal property.

(The fence: intended to keep fruit off my fucking car.)


The Good News is that my insurance will replace my windshield, as long as I tell them that the projectile lemon came off a lemon truck as I was driving through the lemonfields of Goleta one day.


(An accessory to the crime.)