From an article I was reading:

"...Our manager told us that now, as a public company, shareholders weren't going to put up with losses," said Wendy Dave, a former SCS project manager who left the company during the recent downsizing. "He was very explicit. This is the cost of being a public company. This is the new reality."

I found this in my email box today from an e-zine: "...I'll have Dr. Peter Dixon on during the eBay hour. Peter sells trees on eBay." Unfortunately the newsletter had no links to any of his auctions. How does one go about selling a tree on an online auction service and what kind of trees are they? I'd imagine shipping is expensive. :)

One of my best qualities is that I am a naturally super-curious person. I read e-zines, books, magaiznes, websites, and blogs on everything from publishing to selling online (though I've sold very little) to physics to poetry to comics.

Someday I'll do something with all the information I clog in my head. Who knows maybe I am the next Ken Jennings?

Thank God it's my Friday, last night of work tonight.

"Today is a new day. You will get out of it just what you put into it." --Mary Pickford

As I'm getting ready for work today, I ran into this course for teaching martial arts seminars freelance. At $397.00 it's pricey but I'm definitely thinking of saving my pennies for it. I receive the writer's newsletter who teaches Kung Fu, Tai Chi, and Russian Kettlebells. Evidently he makes a six figure income.

I have a lot of ideas in my head for martial arts training, classes, seminars, etc. I've even thought of writing a Tao of my own martial philosophies. I need to conduct my own martial arts classes. (Too bad students aren't so easy to come by. I've had more rejections than in my sales career.)

Had another dream that I owned a book store with a martial arts studio in the back.

Certainly there is a way to make my dreams come true.

Now if I only knew just what that was.

"A poem should not mean but be." --Archibald MacLeis

I think I finally have the computer wiped of the hell virus that had been plaguing it (thanks to my good friend Patrick) plus got the printer drivers and everything else screwed up fixed. (Crossing my fingers.)

Will be printing out the fifth issue of Calliope later this week and begin distributing it. Oddly enough, I didn't get much response for issue four so I'll probably solicit it again as well.

Watched a fantastic episode of Dr. Who: The Girl in the Fireplace. The episode revolves around the pre-revolution French court, the king's mistress, and clockwork robots searching for the perfect match for their space ship's brain. An unlikely combination not hurt by the fact that Sophia Myles guest stars. :) The story is brilliantly put together and is quite beautiful when it comes full circle.

Speaking of the Doctor try the Doctor Who Theme Mixer...those nutty Brits.

Spent the rest of the morning watching Battle Star Galactica (still the best show on television), Trinity Blood, and Desperate Housewives. Ran to the dollar store for envelopes, got the kids off to school and did their banking, fueled up the cars, read, bought Kalisa and I Taco Bell for lunch, and played with the computer. Not a bad day so far.

Got "the real issue #158" of the APA on Friday. As small as it was, the content was strong. Scott did a great job on the covers. Now it's time for me to put together my next series of zines for issue 159. And Scott is promising a much needed make over to our website. I'm all for that. Think I might photocopy the issue and send out a few copies to some people who I'd love to see join.

Have Aikido practice tonight and recorded the second Ultimate Avengers movie for Jake and I to watch. I taught half of class two weeks ago and unfortunately bruised a rib or something on Steve near his kidney. I really hit him very gently compared to what I can do so I guess the lesson for me is to be even more gentle. But this is also why we practice, had Steve been able to defend himself he never would of gotten hit. I don't mean that to be arrogant, that's the point of training like you mean it.

Not sure if this one will be any good but William Dietz is the master of military science fiction and my favorite sci-fi author.

My last post the poem Five Self has a reference to the age of thirty three being Christ-like so does this article I found this a.m. on CBGB's final show.

"Rushin' rivers, thread so thin, limitation
Dreams with the flying pigs, turbin blue and the drugstores too
Safe in their coats and in their do's
Yeah, smother in our hearts a pillow to my dots
One day maybe one day
One day she'll be her own." --Tori Amos

Five Self

What price is word...
The weight of soul?
Well spoken,
For make believe.

Five self me
(spirit - sword - love - sex - mind)
Lives past the hour of knife.

The time of our lives
Is now.
Losing track
Innards of clocks.

Pause -momentarily-
A Prayer.

Articulation trapped.
Memory of a kiss.
You said, "Walk through the fire
With me."
The climax of her number.
Chist-like,
So young at thirty three.

I'm not going home
Not now
Not ever
To find your broken Heart,
Or in Pine Box.

Did I mention how much I really hate smart people? :)

According to the Tokyo Pop website, you can make and upload your own manga into their cool online viewer. Check out the beautiful art work for World Break.

"We must be willing to get rid of the life we’ve planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us." -- Joseph Campbell

I have another virus on the system again that I can't get rid of (or maybe it's the same one). Be patient if you're trying to contact me via Internet as my system is no longer reliable. As soon as I have the cash I'll replace this thing cus Lord knows I can't live without my internet. Which is both true and kind of sad. :) (Least I'm honest about my short comings...lol.)

And while I'm at it, time to shoot another smart person even if she is an old friend. :)

I should be amazed by this but I'm not since this happens to me frequently.

I had a vivid dream this morning that a small plane hit a building in New York City. Here's the CNN Breaking News from my in box five minutes ago.

We are more than flesh, the future is talking to us all the time.

Okay so which is it? Is Battlestar Galactica doing worse or not?

Part IV of Calliope Nerve: Destroy Create Picasso is now available, free of charge and featuring J.D. Nelson:

You Get Red

I spent the nite
at the Peach Palace.

The curtain-cookies
were tapered funny!

That fake-ass Cocoa Bear
was shedding again.

My pupils are star-shaped, too!

We're heading back towards the camps
& you're welcome to catch a ride
if you'll give us the names
of your contacts in Big Rock City.

I laughed & used the last tile: "X."

Other authors include Ariel Lee, Sheila Murphy, Ron Southern, and of course me, I'm Nobius Black.

Calliope features both poetry and short lit. To order this issue send your snail mail address to nobius at gmail dot com. Email for submission info. To support Calliope order you Amazon products via my blog: White Rabbit - *BLACK HOLE*.

"Knowing when to keep your mouth shut is invariably more important than opening it at the right time." --Malcolm Forbes

As I write this I'm watching webisodes of Battlestar Galactica. You know maybe it's just me but I think this Interwub thing is more than a fad. A lot of smart reflections of the Iraq war in the current Galactica storyline.

Got the kids off to school, caught up on the regular Galactica show, added bands to my Internet radio station, went to the comics shop, and took my niece Mckenzie to feed the geese at Lake Anna. It's nice to live so close to Lake Anna park. Today is a beautiful day, too bad my kids aren't off for Columbus Day.

At the comic shop I picked up back issues 23 and 24 of the second series of Doom Patrol written by the master scribe himself Grant Morrison. The issues are from the unforgettable Crawling from the Wreckage arc. The issues were part of my collection that I sold years ago when I needed cash. Not a good idea by the way if you love comics the way I do.

In the story Jack, the Butterfly collector and antagonist, utters something to the effect: "My name is Jack. But you might know me by my other name: God!"

Finished issue four of Calliope and will get it mailed out to the contributors today and it's supposed to rain all day tomorrow so I'll probably put together issue five:"The Great Poetry Experiment, then.

Other than that, it's the usual Monday routine. Aikdio practice and watching RAW and I'm sure I'll sneak back out for another walk in the sun. This time with my little ones.

He closes his eyes. "I was dreaming of hell," he says.

"How was it?"

"An elevator, descending." --from William Gibson's All Tomorrow's Parties

William Gibson's prose is motion and poetry.

Near future possibilites.

And nightmares.

Read it:

Audioblogger is being discontinued, off to search for another way to record my poetry to the web.

"Truth to tell, I didn't start out as much of a reader. I watched TV as my own private rebellion against the world of English literature. Child of two English teachers who quoted Shakespeare and eighteenth century poetry at the dinner table, I favored 'Father Knows Best' and 'Gilligan’s Island.' Still, every night before I went to sleep, my father sat at my bedside, reciting poetry. Sometimes he had me memorize Wordsworth. Sometimes Yeats or Blake. And the rhythms stuck in my brain, even as the sitcom stories faded.

"I thought about our old practice of memorizing poetry just the other day, when (having come, a little later than some, to the joy of reading great literature) I had reached that scene in Ian McEwan's novel, 'Saturday', in which the young daughter—with her whole family held hostage and a knife at her mother’s neck—recites the poem 'Dover Beach' and so disarms the man responsible for the crime that he releases them all. It wasn't brute force or the heroic arrival of a SWAT team that brought about the family's release: it was Matthew Arnold's words.

"My father could have recited 'Dover Beach.' My mother, too. If I had been a more willing student, I would know the poem better than I do. But the rhythms of poetry—the poetry that was as much a part of dinners in my family as the food set on the table—sustain me still. Poetry can save your life, was McEwan's message. Not just poetry, either, but language, words, the sound of syllables, the music of sentences.

"I will never be a physically powerful person, but with words, well chosen, I take on strength. I know this, as a writer, because I know, as a reader, what other writers' words have done for me. They open up the universe. They lift me out of myself, revealing a larger world.

"Words can save your life, is the lesson. I believe it. That's why I read."

--Joyce Maynard on Why She Reads from Green Apple Books and Music.