Archive for 2008

Apronyms are back, and the actual Jonathan Coulton

Posted by Angela Brett in News on March 15, 2008


After a downtime of three days short of a year while I tried to find time to rewrite the site to be kinder to the webserver, the Apronyms website is finally back up. If you don’t know what apronyms are, read this. Apronyms are about the only creative writing I did during my ‘dry period’. Some of the fancier features which were on the old site, such as the hall of fame, submission form, and expert awards, are not finished yet, but the important thing is the apronyms are there to be browsed. I will add the other features over the coming weeks.

Another exciting thing is that Jonathan Coulton, the original Thing A Week guy, will be doing a show in London on March 20, and I’m going to it. The show is sold out, so I hope you already have a ticket if you want to go.

Right, now I just have to write something about the two of spades and the letter B within 25 hours. I got an idea for a story on Tuesday, and have been developing it since, but I haven’t actually started writing it yet. It remains to be seen whether I can actually write the whole thing in time. Don’t be surprised if I end up posting an emergency back-up poem, or the first chapter of a miniseries.

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Ace of Spades: Limerick

Posted by Angela Brett in CERN, Discover Ontario, Ireland, Jass, Paris, Switzerland, The Best of Switzerland, Wildflowers of Canada, Writing Cards and Letters on March 9, 2008


Ace of Spades showing Adare Co, Limerick

Wild Rose (Rosa acicularis) from Wildflowers of Canada
Miss Day complains she never knows
why her boyfriend called her Wild Rose.
By any other name
she’d smell just the same
as her tissues begin to necrose.
La Tour Eiffel / The Eiffel Tower
Un printemps une grande hirondelle,
sauta de la tour Eiffel,
mais une fois dans l’air,
elle tomba sur terre,
car on lui avait coupé les ailes. 
 
translation:
A swallow decided one spring
Eiffel tower was worth base-jumping.
Soon after the jump
it fell on its rump
for somebody had clipped its wing.
Interlaken mit Jungfrau
A young frau who swam Lake Brienz
was popular past all intents.
For the water was clear,
and without underwear,
she put on quite a show for the gents.
Fahnenschwinger (Flag Thrower)
A two-to-one flag made a fuss
of an equal-sized flag with a plus.
It said, “I’m neutral,
but my diagonal
is your base, which are belong to us.”
The ATLAS Detector for LHC
Some pixels of fifty micrometers
two trackers and two calorimeters.
Eight magnets toroidal
and one solenoidal
surrounded by muon spectrometer.
       
Deep under soil Helvetic
are toroids electromagnetic
to confirm mc squared
makes particles (paired)
Converted from E that’s kinetic.
   
And now for a different detector:
 
If experiments had consciousness,
Just what do you think they’d confess?
“Well here under Cessy,
It’s all very messy.
Smashed hadrons and I CMS.”
jass.jpg
Pour réussir au jeu de Jass,
on met les atouts et les as.
Mais il faut être vite
sur ce putain de site (excuse my French)
avant que les aut’ ne se cassent.
Niagara Falls
The catch with Niagara Falls,
is the cliché that always enthralls.
One must use Viagra,
to rhyme with Niag’ra,
And frankly I haven’t the balls.

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Joker: The Story So Far

Posted by Angela Brett in About, Writing Cards and Letters on February 29, 2008


 When I was five I learnt to write,
at eight I learnt to code.
My stories had no plan in sight,
one endless episode.
At thirteen, workshops each fortnight,
To writers club I rode
where Audrey set me on the road
to elegy and ode.
 
For many years the words were flowing.
Ideas I had in spades,
until one day we just stopped going.
Again, the flame of logic glowing
I studied maths, I dreamt of knowing
I coded for fun, and for various trades,
And then went to CERN, for hadron cascades
and code to stop databases overflowing.
 
So, since I love group theory, 
with all my heart of geek,
and operations binary,
I knew just where to seek
I’d left my right identity
in writer’s group, not Lie.
and after two years in write-clique
I’ll click the option “Thing a Week”
 
Unpolished prose, and first essay,
All diamonds in the rough.
But even when I’ve nought to say,
Each week I’ll post my stuff.  
I said I’d start on Joker day
It’s time to call my bluff.
I’ll do it all the JoCo way
until I’ve had enough.
 

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The Deal

Posted by Angela Brett in About on February 28, 2008


I’m going to write something each week and publish it on this blog, each time taking some inspiration from a playing card and a letter of the alphabet. If I can keep it up for a year, I’ll have gone through the deck once and the alphabet twice, and I’ll be back in the habit of actually writing instead of just telling people that I used to write.

Usually I will post on Sundays, but I will begin with the Joker on February 29. Those of you who have read The Solitaire Mystery by Jostein Gaarder will understand why. In subsequent weeks I’ll make sure each piece is somehow inspired by, or makes reference to, a different card. I’m going to interpret that pretty loosely to start with, because I’m not even sure I can produce something once a week, and I’m not sure yet whether the extra constraints are going to inspire or constrict me, or conspire to instruct me. So sometimes I’ll let them restrict, sometimes they’ll let me respire.

Joker Day is today, which means I have less than five hours to finish my composition and post it. I intended to have it finished already. I also intended to have finished the new versions of my other websites by now, so that I could link to them from here, and would have fewer other things competing for my time. Maybe after a year, I will be out of the habit of leaving things till the last minute. Maybe not. Check back soon. 

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