scrapiana

I like to go visit my parents...I just have a little difficulty getting there sometimes. The seven hours of official traveltime only took about 15 hours this trip. I took a red-eye and then the train, my dad got lost trying to get to the station to pick me up for the two hour ride up into the mountains and then there was this doublewide house trailer in the middle of the two-laned road, so we took an alternate rout. We got sorta lost again and so we stopped for directions at this woodworking shop out in the North Georgia woods for directions.

There was this slow turning, giant exhaust fan encrusted with about a half ince of sawdust right by the front door of the low concrete building and inside the air was thick with solvents; one spark would have taken us out of this world. I could feel my brain cells doing a shrivel with each breath. This was not an EPA administered site.

Inside, we found this real cute twentysomething blond bubba languidly sanding away at a door propped up on sawhorses. He smiled vacantly and was just as nice as could be and when we told him where 'we was goin' ...he said to just go up the road a ways and turn right when it stopped and then after a bit we'd get to the big pile of rocks in the middle of the road and to turn right there too; after that it was easy, cuz there was signs and all. I was game, after all it had only been about 12 hours since I'd left LA and 26 since I'd slept.

About nine miles later there really was this big pile of rocks in the middle of a three way intersection, so we turned right and then left and then left and then right and we were climbing up. We started counting the turns just for fun...and after about 2 more hours and over 200 switchbacks and curves we finally figured out exactly where we were and that was only about forty minutes from home..I'm very tired still.

There are probably lots of poetic things I could say about the southern smokies and Tusquittee (where I am now writing this). but there are others who have said it much better. It is (TRITE ALERT) sooooooo beautiful and green here. This is postcard country. Photos however, do not do the place justice, because they lack the essential atmosphere one needs to truly understand the region.

North Carolina is a place where everyone sweats constantly and there are lots of WASPS. There are also stinging insects, hornets, yellow jackets, mosquitoes and my perennial homecomeing favorite...the fleas. The folks have cats and every so often they get annoyed with them because the 'blasted animals' (as mom has titled them) like to leap about and knock stuff over and shed hair etc; so the parents banish them from the house especially when they want to tidy up and make things jsut so nice for me...this is wonderful and no big deal except when the little felines go, they leave behind their nasty little companions.

I got the folks to let a couple of the cats back in to collect some of their friends and I think it might be working...I got a lot fewer bites last night and today.

It might be that I am just getting used to picking the little critters off my body and putting them out of my misery

Titles always help me find my way around a piece of writing and I've finally gotten around to cleaning up this page and getting everthing in order. The new sidebar links are up and running and while I haven't been doing much online lately, I have been reading some 'real books'.

After finishing Gibson's All Tomorrows Parties , I went back and re-read Shariann Lewitt's Interface Masque . These pieces, as well as Tad Williams' Otherland Series, are all pretty much hero-quest, young adult thillers that pit the protagonists against post industrial corporate villians. The unique settings however, set them apart and make for some interesting and fun reading. The other factors leading me to recommend them are that they are well written for the most part and lead one to the 'where are we going in the virtual world being created as you read this post?' question.

Gibson, as you may know, coined the word 'cyberspace' when he wrote Neuromancer back in the eighties. That was a cutting edge piece of literature! However, since then most of his work has just been a continued exploration of the virtual reality zone. Cutting edge lit is not dead though...read on.

Yesterday, my daughter introduced me to an intriguing new work. House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski is a post linear experimental novel that has to be experienced to be uh...experienced. I haven't been around (inside) it enough to say anything more than, "Whew! This is going to take some time..." At twenty bucks a copy, it'll take a while to reach market saturation, but I'm not sure that this thing could be brought out in a small paperback version. I'm looking forward to getting my hands on her volume when I return from my vacation.

Yep, I'm crossing the country to see my parents. I have a plane ticket to go and I plan to return via bus. I've done this before and it has always been interesting. I meet new and unusual people everytime and once I got scabies. My plans are not totally firm once I get to their place, but a side trip to Pulaski, Tennessee, Giles Countyseat and birthplace of the KKK is in order. My late uncle left everythng he had there to my father, and that included a former Jehovah Witness Kingcom Hall. Uncle Bob bought the place back in the seventies and aptly renamed it Dawdling Hall. He whiled away his latter years in the town making a reputation for himself as an eccentric but likeable curmedgeon to say the least. Perhaps I'll be inspired to put up a blog all about Bob. It would be uniquely disrespectful to his memory, as he hated computers, but then again, it might be uniquely appropriate because he hated computers (more on Bob to come?). Anyway, I got my Dad a computer for his birthday a few years back and I'll try to post from his place whenever he lets me online. Perhaps I'll get him blogging!

Three exclamation points in one post are enough and I have to pack.

Todays's word to look up is obloquy and it's derivative...obluctation. Both words should be familiar to anyone who's run for political office.

You make a promise, not really knowing if it can be met, but you know you want to try to keep up the front.

I put up a few links to some fairly sweet stuff...over to the right, but today I found an honest-to-god writer. I found a couple in fact and I'll get around to slapping them in the sidebar by-the-by. For an unbelievable read try spelling mistakes cost lives, a collection that in memepool's opinion defies description. I concur. Memepool is an interesting place too and worth checking out as a source of the bizarre and 'whatever'.

This IRC journal is not a new piece and I wonder how the author has fared since posting it. It's not for the faint of heart and don't bother if you can't read past 'dirtybad' words. It's a wry, raw look at a really awful retail position; excellent for when you feel self-pity about whatever it is you do for a living, unless your job is worse.

more to follow...

Scrapiana is about the writing - the writing on the net, the writing in the rags, the writing of rants and rages and pages of grief that people pour into one another's eyes. The silly, the profane, the profund, the stuff you wish you had never started to read and suddenly realize you can't put down. (Yes I know that was a fragment, but this is my blog and I get to do the grammar checks - so there!)I have no idea where it will go. It started because I have a secret joy in words and I like to read.

I was reading-skimming my Webster's Twentieth Century Dictionary, which is five and quarter inches thick, sans covers and fancies itself unabridged for most purposes. It's a slow read. I'm always tripping up on cool new terms like gomphosis and clapdish, but I have the time and I was looking for some good words..short ones, a provocative verb catchy noun that was fundamentally self descriptive and would make a good title for a blog, or for whatever I felt like writing about... layered recursive articles. That's when I found scrapiana.

Webster's entry is basically the same description posted in my heading. It's also the best one word description of bloglit I've ever seen. Bits and pieces that are lovely to read, sound sweet to the ear, intrigue the eye and cause no little confusion to the mind. I liked that Webster gave it no etymologic foundation, just listing it as obscure. This let me explore it in my own way, dig beneath it's shape and lay bare the form. Scrapiana's feel sound is of something less than whole, a lost bit: an initial consonant blend that rips away the surface, the common short 'a', the plosive 'p', finishing elegantly with a italianate 'iana'. And scrap connotes a bit of ginger, a little argument, an opposition that results in scrapes and sometimes scars, the confetti scraps of a toss away world pouring from tall buildings onto the parade down below. God knows what the marching and celebrating is all about, I don't. But after all the shouting and bands have passed away, colorful shreds litter the streets. What a small thing to bend down and pinch up a ribbon or two. Words, bits of words...scrapiana.

Linking up the tatty bits into a chain, a motley web of words for your pleasure is I what I hope this blog will be. Weaving back the satire and the poetry, the prose and the pathos, the sad, silly, hopeful, angry little posts into the stuffing and guts of the net; a snap of sapient homogeniety.

I like words.

Angelyne, Angelyne
Half stark naked billboard queen
Your deep desires
no one knows
but I suspect you want
some clothes

used with the kind permission of the author