Recent comments

  • Limerick Diplomacy   17 years 36 weeks ago

    I should have put modesty to one side and said thanks back when you posted this, so... thanks for the post, Virge. Very much appreciated.

  • Release the Beast   17 years 42 weeks ago

    I've removed it.
    It wasn't raw for automatic harvesting in the page source. Commenter email addresses are pulled apart and dynamically constructed in javascript.

  • Release the Beast   17 years 42 weeks ago

    (Eek! Raw, unprotected email address! Could you remove that for me? Ta.)

  • Release the Beast   17 years 42 weeks ago

    Roll on 7 July 2007. Beast, with a bonus 16.666% extra beast!

  • Virge's Guestbook   17 years 42 weeks ago

    this site be cool i found it at school that was not meant to be a poam i agree with you every day should be talk like a pirate day

  • Endless Forms Most Beautiful   17 years 44 weeks ago

    No problem, Mike. It doesn't worry me in the slightest.

    I remember some years ago having someone (flatteringly) confuse me with Vernor Vinge--easy name confusion, similar geeky background, similar lack of hair... ;-)

    Great job with the poem. Thanks for the link.

  • Endless Forms Most Beautiful   17 years 44 weeks ago

    Can't type, can I, Virge? Sorry about misspelling your name.

  • Endless Forms Most Beautiful   17 years 44 weeks ago

    Virne, thank you for your very kind words and for the link—and for the suggestion! I struggled to find a way into the poem until I read Neil Shubin's piece at The Edge.

  • Beast Poems   17 years 45 weeks ago

    Excellent thought, Judah.

    And I must be getting slow. In that wiki article on 37, I looked at the line, "It is a factor of all 3-digit base 10 repdigits, such as 111." I wondered why this would be so, then realised that if 37 is a factor of 111, then it must also be a factor of 222,333 etc., since 111 is a factor of each of the other 3-digit repdigits. But... I recognised it inductively, without iterating all of the 3-digit repdigits, so the 666 connection didn't fire a single synapse. :-[

  • Beast Poems   17 years 45 weeks ago

    It is an interesting number, but my intention was much simpler, and revolved around the number of syllables in a cycle of 37 beast poems.

  • Beast Poems   17 years 45 weeks ago
  • Beast Poems   17 years 45 weeks ago

    "cycles of 37"
    Argh. There's something I've missed here--poetic, historic, numerological...
    I suspect there's a gap in my education. 37 isn't ringing a bell.

    I don't expect my leonining neologism to catch on. It was there because it invoked the image I wanted and added an element of silliness.

    (The spam prevention software is triggering on certain strings to prevent porn site advertising. Sorry about that.)

  • Beast Poems   17 years 45 weeks ago

    Correction: I think I made a mistake about the stress you were using in the fourth poem (/.../., instead of /././.), so the stress of leonining works.

    (By the way, I tried to diagram the stresses with X'es, only to be told that spam was not appreciated.)

  • Beast Poems   17 years 45 weeks ago

    OK, you're right about dents, you're right about skittered (I didn't know it could be transitive), you added the hyphen. I think I made a mistake about the stress you were using in the fourth poem (dactyls, instead of iambs), so the stress of leonining works. But the parallel you provide to sphinxing only underscores the queerness of having an adjective serve as the base for a verb.

    By the way, I propose that beast poems should run in cycles of 37.

  • Beast Poems   17 years 46 weeks ago

    I've added a hyphen to sheer-sided, thanks.

    "Impressions of dents" is not redundant when you realise that I'm (punnishly) referring to Isadora's dents. (See the third definition in http://www.webster.com/dictionary/dent )

    Skittered was a deliberate choice. Scattered is far too static; it fails to provide any impression of what happens to scrunched up balls of paper when I skitter them across a wooden floor.

    Leonining: "lE-&-'nIn-i[ng] reclining like a lion; similar to sphinxing, but less formal. ;-)

  • Beast Poems   17 years 46 weeks ago

    The second rule, I satisfied. The first rule, er, well uh...define tangibility. OK, fine, I forgot about that one.

  • Beast Poems   17 years 46 weeks ago

    Judah: "And since these are beast poems"

    Not true. What about the first two rules? :-[

  • Beast Poems   17 years 46 weeks ago

    Very poetic, Virge. And since these are beast poems, I can be uncomplimentary now:

    "Impressions of dents" is
    A little redundant.
    "Of teeth" would work better.

    "Pills of paper" "skittered"?
    Lu-Tze may have skittered;
    Paper pills are "scattered".

    "Sheer sided", seems to me
    Warrants a hyphen there,
    Else it is meaningless.

    "Leonining" isn't
    Listed in the wordbooks.
    Plus, you stress it oddly.

    :-P

  • Beast Poems   17 years 46 weeks ago

    Two of our residents, Windle Poons and Tattybogle, are guests at HouseOfVirge for the next 4 months while their (erstwhile) becatted ones are on the road.

  • Beast Poems   17 years 46 weeks ago

    Wow! You have four Birmans? Some people say I look like a Birman. Birmans rule. I will definitely submit to your -er--compilation.

  • Team Fiction   17 years 47 weeks ago

    Maybe it's all an elaborate practical joke. Maybe it's going to turn out that EVERYTHING is lifted from somewhere, everything in the entire book--that it's an elaborate (and hilarious) patchwork job--a jab at the sameness and interchangeability of chick-lit authors.

    I mean, it'd be a pretty ill-considered prank: accepting half a million dollars and then playing a joke isn't exactly wise. I can't get my head around the idea of someone plagiarising so extensively, though. Especially in such a public and obvious setting. What would go through one's head? Augh. My brain hurts.

  • Team Fiction   17 years 47 weeks ago

    Looks like she won't live it down.
    Her publisher has withdrawn her book from sale and cancelled her two-book deal. Also, the articles she wrote for a New Jersey newspaper are going to be reviewed.
    http://www.abc.net.au/news/arts/articulate/200605/s1630374.htm

    If she wants to write books in the future I guess it'll be under a different name, or perhaps an autobiographical "How my mind betrayed me and destroyed my big chance."

  • Team Fiction   17 years 47 weeks ago

    I shrivel with vicarious embarrassment whenever I hear something like this. There's never any excuse for this sort of monkey business, but all the same...ouch! I can't even imagine trying to live this down.

  • Team Fiction   17 years 48 weeks ago

    Welcome to the VirJournal, Aparna.
    After writing a couple of limericks on the fly in your blog comments, I decided to share them here.

  • Team Fiction   17 years 48 weeks ago

    Very well said and loved the verses!
    And welcome to my blog :-)

    Cheers
    Aparna