total.pardo

“Maverick is a rerun, maybe we should watch Heroes,” she said while turning off the vice presidential debates.

The politician pounded the lectern, exclaiming, “The eyes of adversity are gazing toward the future!”

“You gotta vote for the guy that fulfills your interests, like Hugh Hefner, perhaps?”

“I’ll get back to ya, Katie,” she said as she licked her lips nervously.

what is s⁴? 

a single sentence short story

since attention spans are small, the art of the telling of a short story in one sentence fits in line with the tanka.  tanka are 31-syllable poems that have been the most popular form of poetry in Japan for at least 1300 years. as a form of poetry, tanka is older than haiku, and tanka poems evoke a moment with concision. i doubt old polonius would agree, but the contributors at onesentence.org would.   more at: http://www.onesentence.org/

“evoking the moment essential…answering the question you didn’t know you had…writing is the essence of all things possible.” –johnny pardo

as with coffee, it appears i am becoming a paper snob. wow. sad and true. i know what you are thinking…another pretentious fool blogging about his physical writing experience. and no, he hasn’t run out of things to bore his readership with…

before you hit close tab, and head to your greader to delete my feed, read up. you are bound to think about trying these pads yourself - the price doesn’t do the experience justice.

i am using the moleskine soft notebooks with square rules and detachable pages for my classes and as “holding” pads for writing and editing before committing my sad parade of banalities to “better” journals. i find their “bendability” (not a word, i know) to be the key to their success with me. i can fold these in half along their long edge to concentrate on the facing page or just to reduce the footprint in my work area. perfect for writing in a cramped university desk or at the coffee shop (emo bore).

amazon sells them three a pack for $7.95 USD and they are worth every penny. with a good pen, there is no better writing experience than on these beauties. (well, writing on the MBP is a close second.)

the hardback moleskines are hard to write in - especially on the long edge of the adjacent page, unless you are half way through the notebook. i tend to use them for “final” product - things that have permanent value to me which have been bled edited over several times.

the cahiers hold up well. i have been writing in three of them since january - no tears or wear.

the single sentence short story or s⁴ has become interesting to me.

here are a few of my own:

“She stood by his fire, gazing at him, and wondered if he was the answer.”

“Over in Lisbon, Tabitha found all sorts of quality pottery for her new den.”

“Its the worry that’s wasted on you, Steve,” she said while stirring the stew on the stove.” (give him some props for the alliteration)

Up, She Rises

She hangs limp against cold silver
dripping red toward warm green
As their day speaks sadly
men stand - facing her
with tears over steel.

Silence offers a cool wind -
Up, She Rises!
like gracious woman from slumber
unfurling soft, constant beauty
smiling on suffering so sinister.

Her faithful fluttering flows -
Up, She Rises!
like an angry mother worried
over the sojourner’s
last full measure of dedication.

Tethered at half, today, yet -
Up, She Rises!
in tomorrow’s destiny dawn
She’ll come up - to full
rising to love and to heal.

9/11/02

“I feel how weak and fruitless are any words of mine…”
-words from the Bixby letter attributed to Abraham Lincoln and his personal secretary John Hay.

an original work from the collection: “A Night Without Anger”

©2002

Up, She Rises by johnny pardo is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

a further delineation of:

http://www.totalpardo.net/2008/01/30/convergence-unified-tagging-vs-categories/

i think there may be value in adding further categorization to posts under the cat/tag: writing.

i have evaluated the growth in volume of my blog and have noted that it passed the 300 post mark this year.  even if i back out the cat/tag “word.log” (which, if you haven’t noticed, i don’t publish the posts for that cat/tag on the front page - that would just show how much of a verbal neanderthal i truly am) there is still a great deal of writing (not necessarily that which is posted under the “writing” cat/tag) to be read, indexed, searched, etc.

and, as i move forward, there will be more.  hopefully, much.

take this very post:  its writing, but its not what i would categorize on this blog under the “writing” cat/tag. i would (will, actually) post this under “life.stream” (consider: aggregate) and “ideas.”  whilst i wrote this, i don’t consider it as “writing” for the purposes of convergence tagging.

now, generally, most of the crap on this site is just that - perhaps occasionally evocative, often wrong, always imitated (for examples of what NOT to write) but, that which i would write for writing’s sake (see below), needs further mapping out (at least, for me).

what prompted this review was the start of my archiving process.  while my writing will not win any prizes, keep you attention past the title (most times), or even pay me - it is important to me to see the volume and, perhaps, progress(ion) of the art skill talent attempts. if not for anything but to remind me when i’m 50 what i did late nights when i was 30.

i started to notice things that were tagged as writing were really not searchable as much as i would have liked - further segregation was (is) needed.

here is what i came up with in terms of sub categorization for writing:

poetry:  obvious.

short story:  also, obvious.

practice:  here, fragments - ferment fodder | germinate ideas

book:  items from chapters or sections of manuscript length works

altdis: alternate discourse, writing difference; to wit:

“…an opportunity to examine issues, studying about and experimenting with mixed discourse forms (of writing). Writing difference is a pun: when the writing is an adjective, the title indicates the study of divergent modes that writing can take, the difference in writing.  When writing is a verb, the title indicates the practice of creating divergent modes, writing those differences…examining perspectives on language from sociolinguistic, literacy, feminist and composition studies, and writing in hybrid, multigenre or mixed-genre discursive styles.”  (Maxson)

i think this will provide enough further classification to index the blog and make finding things easier.

I found the concept of the six word biography originally on The New Yorker and read more on it in the Sunday edition (5/25/08) of the Philadelphia Inquirer.  Simply put, sum up your life with six words.

The one I chose for myself was:

Grist for the mill he was.

This simple phrase, grist for the mill, is proverbial - everything can be made useful, or be a source of profit.” There are some minor variations, such as “all’s grist that comes to my/his/her mill”, meaning that the person in question can make something positive out of anything that comes along. (from Wikipedia)

This phrase provided inspiration for a chapbook of poems I wrote on regret - which I intend to title the same: Grist for the Mill.

What would your six word biography say about you?

Ravindra Sandor needed a lawn mower.

For an Indian three years immigrated to the United States, this should have been an easy task. Head over to the local department store, lay down the rupees to acquire the chosen mover, take it home, and cut the lawn. Simple.

Not so much for Ravie, as his Indian friends called him. His 55 years of haphazardness set him apart from his fellow countrymen. The usual Indian methodical way did not apply for him. He had visited over a dozen farm markets and friends of friends to complete this quest.

He had researched the best lawn equipment - and scoured newspapers and internet sites to find a deal his meager salary could afford. The landlord offered to buy one, but Ravie would have none of it. He knew his lease terms required upkeep of the property by the tenant and he was determined to uphold his end of the deal.

Ravie hit paydirt in the local newspaper; an advertisement offering a plethora of lawn equipment listed three of the items he desired at a substantially lower than normal cost - including the much needed lawn mower. He decided to call the number in the listing just before his noon meal.

The phone number was local meaning travel would be light for this potential purchase. As he dialed, he breathed slowly in the hopes this would be his final stop.

The ringing stoped as the reciever picked up at the other end and offered an abrupt, cowboy-sounding hello. Ravie responded meekly with a hello.

“Yeah.”

The abrupt loudness of the seller jarred Ravie, his words came embarassingly labored.

“I, uh, do you have, umm, a lawn mower for sale?”

With no delay, the seller responded questioning:

” A lawn mower? Who is this?” almost threateningly.

“I, uh, my, I…” Ravie began to rue placing this call.

“How do you do there, son? What do you want now?”

This was suprising, why would the seller ask him again what he wanted? Ravie could feel the sweat forming on his brow as he reiterated.

“Do you have something for sale that you pull in the paper?”

The seller barked back, “Yeah, I got a god damned few things, son, that I put in the paper, but what in the hell are you looking for specifically?”

Ravie thought it best to keep the chatter to a minimum and repond directly, despite his astonishment at the brusque and loud manner of the seller. “Uh, the lawn mower, the chain saw, and the log splitter.”

The seller repeated Ravie’s list and berated Ravie, “The lawn mower, chain saw, and log splitter. Now if I didn’t know any better son, I’d say you is a regular jackass - you gotta tell me what you want boy. What are you looking for?”

He considered ending the call but responded, “The lawn mower.”

The seller’s annoyed tone rose, his thundering continued as he angrily repeated what Ravie asked, “The lawn mower, what kind you looking for, the kind you ride on or the kind you pull or push?”

“To ride on,” Ravie offered.

The seller yelled, “To ride on, you is a lazy bastard, ain’t you? You just looking to get out the easy way - well - I got thems pushing kinds.”

He pushed back, “Well that’s for you…”

The seller cut him off, “Whaddya want, a TV on the goddamned thing too?”

“Listen, that’s for you because I am the old man, I need the one with the ride, you know.”

The seller continued to harass him, “I see, so you’re just looking to do a little bit of work, whattya ya got, a little bitty lawn?”

Ravie moaned as he tried to respond.

“Ah, you just drive it around the fucking tree a little there - gotta make sure you don’t tip that sonabitch over and fall into the blades, you know what I mean?”

Ravie was almost at the end, exasperated he questioned, “Hello?”

“Yeah?”

“How, how mucha you want for the chain saw?”

“For the chain saw? I don’t want that much, you give me twenty five dollars and good smack in the mouth and we’re even, how’s that?”

Ravie pondered this - what does a god smack in the mouth mean? “Ok”

“Alright, you say you want the fuckin’ lawn mower, you want it or no?”

Ravie thought it best to change tacts, “What about the log splitter?”

The seller numbingly repeated, “What about the log splitter? That ain’t no lawn mower, that’s expensive. You wanna know what I paid for that?”

He shouldn’t have asked about the log splitter. This seller is off on a tangent talking about what he paid for the log splitter. This should have been more simple. Frustrated to the last, Ravie asked again, “Hello?”

“You know what I paid for that?”

Ravie offered a simple no.

Not to be derailed, the seller rolled onward: “I paid shit for that muther fucker, now that’s what I’m trying to tell you, how cheap you want it?”

Ravie was beside himself, “I don’t know, I don’t say price, I just ask the price…”

The seller cut him off, “Go ahead, you want it cheap, I will get it to you cheap, ’cause you’re a friend, son, what’s up, how much you want that for?”

The exasperated Indian reached for the first price that came to mind - the amount saved for all the items he wanted to purchase.

“Nine hundred dollar.”

“I’ll tell you what, I’ll give it to you for four, and I’ll also give you two slaps across your fuckin’ mouth because I like ya, how’s that? You’ve got it for four hundred bucks.”

Ravie was beside himself - slaps in the mouth for a log splitter? He felt caught in a current with no rescue in sight and responded affirmatively. Anything to get off the phone with this deranged seller.

“I knew that would spite your little tone up there, ya crazy bastard ya, now gimme your number and I will get right back to you on this shit.”

Ravie had had enough and hung up dejectedly - slamming the recieved home. He reached for the landlord’s business card and dialed again, stammering to himself in a smoldering rage, “I need the one with the ride.”

Ravie swore he’d never make another unsolicited call again.

The above conversation did occur - its a recording called “Lawnmower Sale” from the Jerky Boys 3 album. The seller’s voice is Johnny Brennan. This short story was an attempt to explore the emotions and frustration of the caller.

***the following contains mature content***

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one word. so little time..

interesting site to help you break the writer’s block down…

almost bricked pardophone today with the update and all the issues apple is having.

apple tried to do too much too quickly i think. .mac mobileme is STILL not online! nor is the software update available through the “correct” channel.

most blogs talked about continually trying to connect and disconnect to the apple servers - this worked for me, luckily. having used the beta 2.0 software with apps for a few days more than the average joe was enough for me.

the legit version of the 2.0 software is now on the v1 iphone and is stable - much more stable than the beta.

in other news, a 3g 16 v2 iphone is coming to a pardo near you, foc. i am fearful of what a trip to the local apple store will bring for today - so i think a weekend trip is in order…

nicey, nice.

A new trailer from:

“Days of the Office Matrix”

starring:

Robert Duvall as Morpheus
Ron Livingston as Peter/Neo
Jennifer Anniston as Trinity
Aja Nadu as Samir
Brian Oettel as Michael Boulton
Hugo Weaving as Lumbergh
Pardo as Himself

(Pink Floyd’s “Terminal Frost” plays in the background)
(Set - Office cubicles at Pocono Raceway)
(cut to Morpheus speaking to Peter Anderson/Neo, who is eating ice cream)

Morpheus - “Now Peter, ehe, ehe, ehe, when you are on this PC, trying to fax your TPS reports and the little CPU gauge reads 9000% utilized, that’s bad…)

Samir - “Yeah, Neo. Didn’t you get that memo?”

Michael Boulton - “At least here I can change my name so I don’t have to remember that no talent ass clown…”

Peter - “I am the one…”

Morpheus - “Now Peter, uh….we are on an open line, and I don’t think those NASCAR agents will appreciate you eating ice cream over that keyboard, you can barely type as it is…”

Agent Lumbergh - “Uh, yeaaaahhh, are we having some sort of problem here?”

Trinity - “Yeah, dodge this!”

(Aims 9MM pistol at Lumbergh. Agent jumps up and hides behind the “Is this good for the Company” sign.)

Samir - “So, Peter, if you’re so in love with the hottie in the black leather outfit, why don’t you just….ask…her…out?”

Peter - “I know what you’re trying to do…”

Morpheus - “He’s just trying to free your mind, Peter. Do you think that’s ice cream you’re eating now? Hmmm? Do you think Trinity will actually go out with you…in…this…place?”

Peter - (pointing at Lumbergh) “He represents all that is soulless and wrong!”

Morpheus - “You can ask her out - I know it in my heart - you can hold…”

Guy from Marketing - “Hey baby - wanna ride on the bone roller coaster? Woohoo!”

(Trinity snaps three swift kicks to guy from marketing’s groin - he flounders in extreme pain.)

Pardo - (In his best Sean Connery voice) “How do you think he feels now, better or worse?”

(Peter smirks at Pardo - Pardo flips Peter the bird and leaves, spitting on Nina from Corporate accounts payable.)

Samir - “Has anyone seen Milton lately?”

Peter - “We must rescue Milton from the basement storage and the cockroach problem - no is our time!”

Trinity - “Yeah!”

(Peter grabs two red Swingline staplers and mounts them in the pockets of his trousers. Trinity coos.)

Morpheus - “He’s the one.”

(Peter, Morpheus, and Trinity escape to the basement - Agent Lumbergh follows cautiously.)

Samir - “Perhaps I need to go back to Bahrain?”

Michael Boulton - “Nah, lets just to Chochkies - I am in the mood for some extreme fajitas!”

(end scene)

What is NaNoWriMo?

pardo’s motivation perhaps to add to his stonefire trilogy?

What: Writing one 50,000-word novel from scratch in a month’s time.

Who: You! We can’t do this unless we have some other people trying it as well. Let’s write laughably awful yet lengthy prose together.

Why: The reasons are endless!

What is NaNoWriMo? | National Novel Writing Month

today, ole pardo turns 38 (+9 months).  i look forward to the apparent random choice of poem garrison keillor uses on the writer’s almanac (a podcast from apm).  today, he chose:

To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time

Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,
Old Time is still a-flying:
And this same flower that smiles to-day
To-morrow will be dying.

The glorious lamp of heaven, the sun,
The higher he’s a-getting,
The sooner will his race be run,
And nearer he’s to setting.

That age is best which is the first,
When youth and blood are warmer;
But being spent, the worse, and worst
Times still succeed the former.

Then be not coy, but use your time,
And while ye may, go marry:
For having lost but once your prime,
You may for ever tarry.

i know herrick was reminding young women that beauty is fleeting…but this makes me feel older.  i hate becoming older.  some of you that read me are older, sure, and have come to terms with all the heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to…but, the rub for me is a lament for departed youth, devoutly to be wished, indeed.

i think why i try to do 13 things at once, why i employ CPA (continuous partial attention - read about CPA on the about.pardo page), and attempt to pepper my mind with as much useless knowledge (to others, at least) is because i am gathering the poetical rosebuds.  as many as i can, as long as i can.  i am the same age now as my mother when she died.  i have her genes.  and, in my best kevin bacon acting as jack swigert in the ron howard movie apollo 13, i say:  "i can add."  i prefer not that consummation - at least for now - while the lamp of heaven still shines.

let them eat static.

from a pardo collection called:  Words Support Like Bone, Canto the First 

dark damnation there

“Are we living in a land, where sex
and horror are the new gods?”

Slip and sink slowly
without getting wet
for me, mend and ply
drive out searing regret

Her thoughts turn inward
in dark damnation there
passion presses forward
of haughty grandeur stare

This darkness stifles
generous beauty shown
through clothes he rifles
tempting promise unknown

February is what she gave
sweat, symphony, arching back
but July is what she craves
on verge of sweet attack

Building like breezes gale
where whispers wane near
this mark does not fail
as emptiness replaces certain fear

8/6/03

any analysis criticism of my own work is bullshit, but, in looking back over it, from time to time, i get to take shots at my own shit as if it were someone else’s - as if i am separate from the foolish heart who once wrote.

this sappy crap leaked from my pen in 2003 - during the halcyon-lover-writing-days stage and of it, i am reminded of the song: the blower’s daughter, by damien rice:

And so it is
Just like you said it should be
We’ll both forget the breeze
Most of the time
And so it is
The colder water
The blower’s daughter
The pupil in denial

and the haunting, almost disturbing canticle: (sung perhaps, if you please, by the object of the spurned affection)

Did I say that I loathe you?/Did I say that I want to?leave it all behind?

i know i was not aware of this song until AFTER i wrote the above lines (see pulling the thread), but i read the echoes, loud echoes of the same sentiment expressed in the song.  the alert reader will notice the homage to Frankie Goes to Hollywood (purloined by them from the UK thriller - Cover Girl Killer) in the quasi-colophon. 

my guess is my thoughts were of lament - as usual - of the fairer sex and the act thereof - both seen as the "tempting promise unknown."  my favorite progression is in the second to last stanza, the juxtaposition using the loose allegory of the temperature of the months mentioned (February for cold, July for hot - in the northern hemisphere, at least) to the sexual tendencies of the female.  further balanced by the lyrics mention of the forgetting of the breeze (as in July) and the colder water (as in February).

all in all, post game analysis is crap - no less so than here.  pardo the pedantic.

so, why am i violating my self-imposed "no-posting-of-my-own-poetry" rule? probably because my writing has gone stale and i need someone to hate so i can kick it up a notch.  bored?  unknown.

i will say this: inspiration is leased to no one medium, muse, or mentor.  animal, mineral, vegetable - whichever:  the cost of a closed mind is a heavy one, not a consummation devoutly to be wished, as my piece (of shit) begs for.  no single topic has lead to more inspiration than sex.  read byron - a latter-day ron jeremy maybe, at least in action if not in want.  the former’s heroes - acting all in self destruction - led to that path by the want of the unsavory sex.  mad, bad, and dangerous to know, indeed.

in the end, there are answers everywhere.  one need just look for them. so goes the weight on my shoulders.

coincidence, irony, interconnectedness - thy name is in pardo.

i like it when things come together; disparate facts, oft threadbare and old, somehow connect to illuminate the why. some call it the “A-ha moment” - perhaps even better (or more dramatic) is epiphany.

so, how can ole pardo find a way to connect Edward R. Murrow to appalachian spring? funny, you seem to be squinting - what’s that? you don’t know what either one of them is, do you?

ah! the haphazard flight or a distant thought in some dude’s head…

so, its like this:

i watched a movie called good night and good luck a long while back. got me interested in Murrow so i hopped on down to the library and rented a pbs series about murrow and watched this reporter. i watched him report and be all groundbreaking on many of his shows, person to person, see it now, etc. i heard a familiar song at the start of one of his cbs reports shows - but i couldn’t place it - one of those times when i could not hold onto the frayed thread of remembrance.

a while later i come across the melody again, on a bargain cd called copland conducts copland in the section of the cd called appalachian spring. it appeared at the end of the 8th track called doppio movimento. not satisfied with bringing those two threads together, i looked on.

sure enough, another track on the album was called simple gifts - and it was lyrical but with the same melody as the cbs reports lead-in music. the words were, of course, simple:

‘Tis the gift to be simple, ’tis the gift to be free,

‘Tis the gift to come down where we ought to be,

And when we find ourselves in the place just right,

‘Twill be in the valley of love and delight.

When true simplicity is gain’d,

To bow and to bend we shan’t be asham’d,

To turn, turn will be our delight,

Till by turning, turning we come round right.

further investigation revealed this melody to have been composed by a shaker - shakers are puritanical christians, not unlike the quakers. turns out the copland version of the melody was used as the theme music for the cbs news series of documentary specials, cbs reports, the earliest of which (1959) were hosted by Edward R. Murrow (who was born to a quaker family).

so it made sense to use a melody such as this for murrow - a simple man with a simple gift - telling a good story. and the connection is made - “turning we come round right” indeed…

side note - the appalachian spring movements had originally nothing to do with appalachia or spring. on the WP site, the article talks about the suite as a marriage, originally titled a ballet for martha. the 7th movement, doppio movemento, contains the melody described above, is defined by copland as:

calm and flowing. scenes of daily activity for the Bride and her Farmer husband. there are five variations on a shaker theme. the theme, sung by a solo clarinet, was taken from a collection of shaker melodies compiled by edward d. andrews, and published under the title “The Gift to Be Simple.” the melody most borrowed and used almost literally, is called “Simple Gifts.”

it turns out that doppio movemento was one of my most favored movements in all of the classical music i have been yet exposed to. and, a connection i would have never made had i not persisted and gotten my answers. while this is not significant in the grand scheme of things, it is a paltry example of little things connecting - bringing all pieces of this little puzzle into focus, and reminding us of the greater interconnectedness in all things. profound? not so much.