Yui-chan
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Posts posted by Yui-chan
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Hello, Pennites.
Sometime in the next few days, Invision will be doing us the favor of upgrading our software (from v2.1.4 to v2.1.7). Beyond the simple fact that upgrades are usually a Good Thing, it is my fervent hope that this upgrade will help quell the rash of recent ... um... 'advertisement specialists' that have been visiting us to leave their gems of wisdom.
If we get a more precise estimate of when the upgrade will be, I'll be sure to let you all know. Otherwise, please expect some downtime while the technician is making his changes.
Thank you,
~Yui
Edit: Whoa. They're fast, these days. The Board upgrade is complete with barely a sign to be seen.
DEATH TO SPAMMERS!!!
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*cocks a thumb at Zool in her best Fonzie impersonation* Yeah. What he said.
*slicks back her hair and gives a thumbs-up*
Crazy,
~Yui
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Yes, if people want it.
No objections, here.
Seems as good as any...
Paragon of Brevity,
~Yui
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Gwaihir. Zariah. Stoomp. Gyr. Patrick, Gryphon, Finnius, Annael, Peredhil, Mynx, Ayshela, Appy, Wyvern, even Zadown! ... not to mention Orlan himself. Yui-chan starts out in shock and quickly progresses to simply overwhelmed, smiling and shaking hands and returning hugs in an utter daze. It's no small bit of news, nothing less than a monumental honor, and for the Elder of Shadows, accepting and admitting worthiness to herself are not insignificant efforts. Yet the Pen doesn't give her much room for doubt. With so many friends crowding around, their proud smiles and heartfelt praise ringing in her ears, she can't do anything less than bask in the glow of their regard and try not to blush at all the attention and kindness. Better than a Bardship is the incontrovertible proof that these people she loves truly love her in return.
"Thank you all," Yui says when the hubbub has finally eased. "I can't tell you how much this honor means to me, nor how much I appreciate everyone's good will and warmth. I will do my best to stay always worthy of the title of Bard and your regard."
When she follows the words with a low, long bow, she gives every appearance of simply being her usual humble self, but the truth is that she stares at the floor so long because she needs a few moments to hide the grateful tears in her eyes.
Most sincerely,
~Yui
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Electroshock
(Owwie! @_@)
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I hope you don't mind an outside contribution.
Today’s word: senescence
When he told the villagers that he'd lived over 10,000 years, he saw their widened eyes search his unlined face for signs of senescence that didn't exist. After all, he was immortal.
Yesterday’s word: retrograde
Adjective: When the Deevolver ray struck poor Ralph, he cringed, feeling his advanced, human brain begin a retrograde slide towards its simian roots.*
(* Using the 2. movement opposite to normal or intended motion; inverse; reverse definition.)
Intransitive verb: When Dirk gave the nose of the sled a shove it slipped free of the clinging snow easily, retrograding down the hill to the fear-laced delight of its passengers.**
(Using the 5. to move backwards definition.)
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no idea what transitive or intransitive verbs are
...Sorry, I'm playing a little catchup, and I thought this might be an important English grammar concept to understand. I'm sure you've noticed by now how many of your word definitions are labeled as either transitive or intransitive verbs. The distinction is a very fine one, but often critical to proper usage.
(I admit that I had to look it up. I couldn't remember the details of the two terms, either.
Mr. Lowe from 8th grade would be so ashamed of me. 
)From "The Guide to Grammar and Style" by Jack Lynch:
Transitive versus Intransitive Verbs.
Not as difficult as some people think. A transitive verb takes a direct object: it shows action upon someone or something. Intransitive verbs take no direct object; they need only a subject to make a sentence.
Some transitive verbs: Hit (you hit something or someone; you don't just hit); climb (you don't just climb; you climb something); and bring (bring what?). Intransitive verbs: sleep (you don't sleep something; you just sleep); and fall (while you can fall down the stairs, you don't fall the stairs).
There are a few things worth noticing. First, just because something grammatically needs a direct object doesn't mean we actually use it. If someone said, I swung the bat and hit, we don't have to ask what he hit; the direct object ball is understood.
Second, many intransitives might look like transitives, as in She walked three hours. Here three hours is not really a direct object; it doesn't say what she walked, but how long (it's actually an adverbial phrase).
Third, many verbs can be both transitive and intransitive: while a word like ran is usually intransitive, it can also be transitive in "He ran the program for two years." Children can play catch, or they can just play. Even sleep, given above as an intransitive, could become transitive if we said He slept the sleep of the righteous.
The only real danger is when you start changing verbs willy-nilly: "We have to think quality" (giving the intransitive think a direct object; you probably mean "think about quality," if you mean anything at all); "I hope you enjoy" (instead of enjoy it).
From what I can see, your usages of the various transitive and intranstive verbs have been correct, Sweet.
I just thought it would serve you well to understand the difference. Best regards,
~Yui
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Well, that's the end of National Poetry Month. If anyone is interested, I can go back and post the ones from the beginning of the month that I missed. Would you like to see those?
Thanks,
~Yui
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30 April, 2006
Preludes
T.S. Eliot
I
The winter evening settles down
With smell of steaks in passageways.
Six o'clock.
The burnt-out ends of smoky days.
And now a gusty shower wraps
The grimy scraps
Of withered leaves about your feet
And newspapers from vacant lots;
The showers beat
On broken blinds and chimneypots,
And at the corner of the street
A lonely cab-horse steams and stamps.
And then the lighting of the lamps.
II
The morning comes to consciousness
Of faint stale smells of beer
From the sawdust-trampled street
With all its muddy feet that press
To early coffee-stands.
With the other masquerades
That times resumes,
One thinks of all the hands
That are raising dingy shades
In a thousand furnished rooms.
III
You tossed a blanket from the bed
You lay upon your back, and waited;
You dozed, and watched the night revealing
The thousand sordid images
Of which your soul was constituted;
They flickered against the ceiling.
And when all the world came back
And the light crept up between the shutters
And you heard the sparrows in the gutters,
You had such a vision of the street
As the street hardly understands;
Sitting along the bed's edge, where
You curled the papers from your hair,
Or clasped the yellow soles of feet
In the palms of both soiled hands.
IV
His soul stretched tight across the skies
That fade behind a city block,
Or trampled by insistent feet
At four and five and six o'clock;
And short square fingers stuffing pipes,
And evening newspapers, and eyes
Assured of certain certainties,
The conscience of a blackened street
Impatient to assume the world.
I am moved by fancies that are curled
Around these images, and cling:
The notion of some infinitely gentle
Infinitely suffering thing.
Wipe your hand across your mouth, and laugh;
The worlds revolve like ancient women
Gathering fuel in vacant lots.
[so T.S. Eliot is my favorite poet of all time, ever. I think his
longer stuff is where he really shines (The Waste Land, The Love Song
of J. Alfred Prufrock), but I love how even in his smaller, early
poems, like this one, he has such a knack for filling the gritty
little details of everyday life with a sadness and wistfulness. I
like how he uses vision in the third section -- the flickering images
on the ceiling and how the way you look out at the ordinary street can
change so much -- and the last two little stanzas that bring in some
loveliness to all the bleak parts. It's also interesting to pay
attention to all the movement in the poem, how things shift in
relation to one another.]
A YEAR AGO TODAY: A Song for Simeon, T.S. Eliot --
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/april_is/message/29
I can't believe National Poetry Month is over already! I hope you had
as much fun as I did. If you'd like to keep reading poetry, check out
the following resources:
-- The Writer's Almanac -- daily e-mail newsletter with a poem and
literary facts about this day in history, by Garrison Keillor --
http://mail.publicradio.org/writers
-- Poetry Daily posts a poem every day -- http://www.poems.com/today.htm
-- Greatpoets is a LiveJournal community with a fairly wide range of
submissions -- http://community.livejournal.com/greatpoets/
Thanks for reading!
Martha
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29 April, 2006
Fever 103º
Sylvia Plath
Pure? What does it mean?
The tongues of hell
Are dull, dull as the triple
Tongues of dull, fat Cerebus
Who wheezes at the gate. Incapable
Of licking clean
The aguey tendon, the sin, the sin.
The tinder cries.
The indelible smell
Of a snuffed candle!
Love, love, the low smokes roll
From me like Isadora's scarves, I'm in a fright
One scarf will catch and anchor in the wheel.
Such yellow sullen smokes
Make their own element. They will not rise,
But trundle round the globe
Choking the aged and the meek,
The weak
Hothouse baby in its crib,
The ghastly orchid
Hanging its hanging garden in the air,
Devilish leopard!
Radiation turned it white
And killed it in an hour.
Greasing the bodies of adulterers
Like Hiroshima ash and eating in.
The sin. The sin.
Darling, all night
I have been flickering, off, on, off, on.
The sheets grow heavy as a lecher's kiss.
Three days. Three nights.
Lemon water, chicken
Water, water make me retch.
I am too pure for you or anyone.
Your body
Hurts me as the world hurts God. I am a lantern ----
My head a moon
Of Japanese paper, my gold beaten skin
Infinitely delicate and infinitely expensive.
Does not my heat astound you. And my light.
All by myself I am a huge camellia
Glowing and coming and going, flush on flush.
I think I am going up,
I think I may rise ----
The beads of hot metal fly, and I, love, I
Am a pure acetylene
Virgin
Attended by roses,
By kisses, by cherubim,
By whatever these pink things mean.
Not you, nor him.
Not him, nor him
(My selves dissolving, old whore petticoats) ----
To Paradise.
[A poem about being sick. I love how vivid the images are! There's
no slack writing here, every line is full of sensation.]
A YEAR AGO TODAY: King Lear Considers What He's Wrought, Melissa
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28 April, 2006
Dream Song 145
John Berryman
Also I love him: me he's done no wrong
for going on forty years -- forgiveness time --
I touch now his despair,
he felt as bad as Whitman on his tower
but he did not swim out with me or my brother
as he threatened --
a powerful swimmer, to take one of us along
as company in the defeat sublime,
freezing my helpless mother:
he only, very early in the morning,
rose with his gun and went outdoors by my window
and did what was needed.
I cannot read that wretched mind, so strong
& so undone. I've always tried. I -- I'm
trying to forgive
whose frantic passage, when he could not live
an instant longer, in the summer dawn
left Henry to live on.
[The Dream Songs are written in a format John Berryman invented partly
to address the big issues that plagued him, most notably the suicide
of his father when Berryman was a child. I strongly recommend reading
more, because they vary wildly in tone and topic, can be very funny or
very sad, and are really unique in the way they play with syntax and
voice. A lot of them are an internal dialogue between a
Berryman-character called Henry and a voice of conscience and reason,
Mr. Bones, and this idea of the fragmentary self gets played out in
the last stanza of this poem: "I -- I'm" Like he's broken in two.
And I think this is such a beautiful and hard look at how you go about
trying to make yourself forgive someone for something so
unforgiveable.
If you're interested, I linked quite a few other Berryman poems at the
bottom of this post from last year:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/april_is/message/26 ]
A YEAR AGO TOAY: Having It Out With Melancholy, Jane Kenyon --
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27 April, 2006
Crusoe in England
Elizabeth Bishop
A new volcano has erupted,
the papers say, and last week I was reading
where some ship saw an island being born:
at first a breath of steam, ten miles away;
and then a black fleck--basalt probably--
rose in the mate's binoculars
and caught on the horizon like a fly.
They named it. But my poor old island's still
un-rediscovered, un-renamable.
None of the books has ever got it right.
...
Dreams were the worst. Of course I dreamed of food
and love, but they were pleasant rather
than otherwise. But then I'd dream of things
like slitting a baby's throat, mistaking it
for a baby goat. I'd have
nightmares of other islands
stretching away from mine, infinities
of islands, islands spawning islands,
like frogs' eggs turning into polliwogs
of islands, knowing that I had to live
on each and every one, eventually,
for ages, registering their flora,
their fauna, their geography.
Just when I thought I couldn't stand it
another minute longer, Friday came.
(Accounts of that have everything all wrong.)
Friday was nice.
Friday was nice, and we were friends.
If only he had been a woman!
I wanted to propagate my kind,
and so did he, I think, poor boy.
He'd pet the baby goats sometimes,
and race with them, or carry one around.
--Pretty to watch; he had a pretty body.
And then one day they came and took us off.
Now I live here, another island,
that doesn't seem like one, but who decides?
My blood was full of them; my brain
bred islands. But that archipelago
has petered out. I'm old.
I'm bored too, drinking my real tea,
surrounded by uninteresting lumber.
The knife there on the shelf--
it reeked of meaning, like a crucifix.
It lived. How many years did I
beg it, implore it, not to break?
I knew each nick and scratch by heart,
the bluish blade, the broken tip,
the lines of wood-grain in the handle...
Now it won't look at me at all.
The living soul has dribbled away.
My eyes rest on it and pass on.
The local museum's asked me to
leave everything to them:
the flute, the knife, the shrivelled shoes,
my shedding goatskin trousers
(moths have got in the fur),
the parasol that took me such a time
remembering the way the ribs should go.
It still will work but, folded up
looks like a plucked and skinny fowl.
How can anyone want such things?
--And Friday, my dear Friday, died of measles
seventeen years ago come March.
[This is only part of the full poem -- if you'd like to read it all,
you can go here: http://www.caterina.net/crusoe.html I love how
Elizabeth Bishop brings Robinson Crusoe to life, gives him this
conversational, wistful voice, and examines what happens after the
story has ended. So fascinating and sad, and the idea of Crusoe who
reads newspapers and lives an ordinary life somehow makes him seem so
much more real. My favorites are the lines the poem seems to build
to, but which at the same time seem to stand so alone: "--Pretty to
watch; he had a pretty body." And the way the parts that mean the
most are so matter-of-fact and hide so much: "And then one day they
came and took us off." And those killer last two lines.
Other (shorter!) Bishop poems you might like:
-- Letter to N.Y. --
http://community.livejournal.com/greatpoet...html?mode=reply
-- Invitation to Miss Marianne Moore --
http://www.ncguru.org/poems/eb-invit.htm ]
A YEAR AGO TODAY: Dream Song 1, John Berryman --
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I had to change my opine, or choice of words so I wouldn't hurt someone.
Opine is a verb, so it is something you can DO, not something you can HAVE. Zepheri, in your example, you've used it as a noun. You would want to trade 'opine', the verb, for 'opinion', the noun.
Basically, I always remember opine as being the act of having or sharing an opinion.
"I wish to opine on this subject."
"When given the opportunity, he has a reputation for opining ad nauseum. That's why people try to avoid asking him for his opinion."
Sweetcherrie's usage is correct. I often say the same thing to myself.
Keep the words coming. This is a really good exercise. We used to do this sort of thing in grade school, and I learned so much vocabulary this way!
Good work,
~Yui
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26 April, 2006
since feeling is first
e.e. cummings
since feeling is first
who pays any attention
to the syntax of things
will never wholly kiss you;
wholly to be a fool
while Spring is in the world
my blood approves,
and kisses are a better fate
than wisdom
lady i swear by all flowers. Don't cry
—the best gesture of my brain is less than
your eyelids' flutter which says
we are for each other: then
laugh, leaning back in my arms
for life's not a paragraph
And death i think is no parenthesis
[i tend to think of cummings as the quintessential example of a poet
who's worth the effort -- his syntax can be wonky and weird at first,
but when the payoff is something as sweet and happy and unsaccharine
as this, who can resist him?]
A YEAR AGO TODAY: The Second Coming, W.B. Yeats --
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25 April, 2006
The Quiet World
Jeffrey McDaniel
In an effort to get people to look
into each other's eyes more,
the government has decided to allot
each person exactly one hundred
and sixty-seven words, per day.
When the phone rings, I put it
to my ear without saying hello.
In the restaurant I point
at chicken noodle soup. I am
adjusting well to the new way.
Late at night, I call my long-
distance lover and proudly say:
I only used fifty-nine today.
I saved the rest for you.
When she doesn't respond, I know
she's used up all her words,
so I slowly whisper I love you,
thirty-two and a third times.
After that, we just sit on the line
and listen to each other breathe.
[i love that with such a silly idea, and such simple language, Jeffrey
McDaniel can make a poem that's so strangely memorable and tender.]
A YEAR AGO TODAY: Man and Wife, Robert Lowell --
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Er... make that four:
4) After you post or edit a post, the 'redirection screen table' is still in default colors, too.
Again,
~Yui
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It looks great, guys. The Pen feels more like home in Mighty Pen tan.
Three things for you to look at:
1) The background for the Fast Reply table is stark white default. It would probably fit in better in our pale tan.
2) The Board Message screen still has some default blue and default white areas. If you want to see it, just hit the 'View New Topics' button twice in fast proximity. That should give you a spamming error... Like it does to me when I'm bored.
3) There are still some subtle missing icons. For example, look between the Edit and Quote buttons on the top right of this post. That +/- symbol is the placeholder for an icon. Similarly, when you hit the Edit button itself, the Full vs. Quick choices are supposed to have little arrows beside them... or something. I forget what those icons are, actually. Sorry.
;;;;The recolored icons on the rest of the board look really great, Patrick. Thanks for taking the time to do this!
Yours,
~Yui
Edit: Oh, I see what's going on. With regards to icons, you should take a glance back at the default blue skin again. The buttons are pretty different in the new boards, so the Quote vs. MultiQuote (or + Quote) vs. Reply stuff is a little switched around. You can see the little arrows on the Edit button that way, too.
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24 April, 2006
Autumn
Rainer Maria Rilke; translated by Robert Bly
The leaves are falling, falling as if from far up,
as if orchards were dying high in space.
Each leaf falls as if it were motioning "no."
And tonight the heavy earth is falling
away from all other stars in the loneliness.
We're all falling. This hand here is falling.
And look at the other one. It's in them all.
And yet there is Someone, whose hands
infinitely calm, hold up all this falling.
[in contrast to yesterday's poem -- the weight of existence, life's
difficulty met by God's presence, rather than absence. I love how
gentle Rilke's wording is, and the repetition of "falling," how it
works on both the large and small scale, the heavy earth, and this
hand.]
A YEAR AGO TODAY: On Turning Ten, Billy Collins --
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Hey, guys. Thanks for helping to put things back together. What is the name of the skin you fine-tuned? I'm having a bit of trouble, but I want to make sure I'm looking at the right skin before I mention specifics.
Thanks,
~Yui
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April 23, 2006
Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note
Amiri Baraka
Lately, I've become accustomed to the way
The ground opens up and envelopes me
Each time I go out to walk the dog.
Or the broad edged silly music the wind
Makes when I run for a bus...
Things have come to that.
And now, each night I count the stars.
And each night I get the same number.
And when they will not come to be counted,
I count the holes they leave.
Nobody sings anymore.
And then last night I tiptoed up
To my daughter's room and heard her
Talking to someone, and when I opened
The door, there was no one there...
Only she on her knees, peeking into
Her own clasped hands
[The decision about whether or not to post this threw me for kind of a
philosophical loop. The poet, Amiri Baraka (born LeRoi Jones), has a
lot of controversial and unpleasant political and racial beliefs.
It's always a tough question: should you separate the artist from your
appreciation of the art? Can you?
Nevertheless I really like this poem. It reminds me of a lot of J.D.
Salinger's work (although I really don't think that's its intention),
in how it uses ordinary everyday images, and the way small children
act, to talk indirectly about what a difficult thing life is. And not
accepting the status quo is, I think, a good subject for poetry, no
matter what the motivation.]
A YEAR AGO TODAY: Holy Sonnet XIV, John Donne --
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April 22, 2006
Wild Geese
Mary Oliver
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting --
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.
[Happy Earth Day!]
A YEAR AGO TODAY: A Brief for the Defense, Jack Gilbert --
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I'm glad everyone is finding these worth reading.
Here's the catch-up group from the weekend...April 21, 2006
A Sad Child
Margaret Atwood
You're sad because you're sad.
It's psychic. It's the age. It's chemical.
Go see a shrink or take a pill,
or hug your sadness like an eyeless doll
you need to sleep.
Well, all children are sad
but some get over it.
Count your blessings. Better than that,
buy a hat. Buy a coat or pet.
Take up dancing to forget.
Forget what?
Your sadness, your shadow,
whatever it was that was done to you
the day of the lawn party
when you came inside flushed with the sun,
your mouth sulky with sugar,
in your new dress with the ribbon
and the ice-cream smear,
and said to yourself in the bathroom,
I am not the favourite child.
My darling, when it comes
right down to it
and the light fails and the fog rolls in
and you're trapped in your overturned body
under a blanket or burning car,
and the red flame is seeping out of you
and igniting the tarmac beside your head
or else the floor, or else the pillow,
none of us is;
or else we all are.
[i love the way Atwood contrasts short, staccato statements with
longer sentences in this poem. This is so pretty and sad.]
A YEAR AGO TODAY: The Crunch, Charles Bukowski --
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April 20, 2006
Tantalus in May
Reginald Shepherd
When I look down, I see the season's blinding flowers,
the usual mesmerizing and repellent artifacts:
the frat boy who turns too sharply from my stare,
a cardinal capturing vision in a lilac bush
on my walk home. I'm left to long
even for simple dangers. From the waist up
it's still winter, I left world behind
a long time ago; waist down it's catching
up, a woodpecker out my window is mining grubs
from some nameless tree squirrels scramble over.
When I turn back it's gone, I hadn't realized
this had gone so far. (Everywhere I look
it's suddenly spring. No one asked
if I would like to open drastically. Look up.
It's gone.) Everywhere fruits dangle
I can't taste, their branches insurmountable,
my tongue burnt by frost. White boys, white flowers,
and foul-mouthed jays, days made of sky-blue boredoms
and everything is seen much too clearly:
the utterance itself is adoration, kissing
stolid air. I hate every lovely thing about them.
[This is a poem about being an outsider -- Reginald Shepherd is both
black and gay -- about observing and wanting and still being on the
edges of things. It's also about contrasts: spring and winter,
classic mythology (Tantalus was sentenced to eternal hunger and thirst
by the Greek gods) and frat boys, being on the periphery versus being
surrounded by sensations, desire and hate.]
A YEAR AGO TODAY: September Song, Geoffrey Hill --
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April 19, 2005
The Chores
Frannie Lindsay
My father sets the box of newborn kittens
into the pit of soil. I've done a good job
with his shovel.
He pats my bottom. I've tucked the right bullets
into the pouch of my overalls. He lets me
load the revolver, closes his hands around mine
from behind. The gravel and silo and sky
run together with mewing.
Eggs over easy sputter and clap from the kitchen.
I push the loose hair from my face,
aim down. The morning air is slow
with green flies. The straps of my first bra
pinch my shoulders. I am his
good, good daughter. Now, he says,
and I don't waste a shot.
[What really gets me about this poem isn't the shock of the subject,
but the relationship between father and daughter; how precisely it's
placed in time ("The straps of my first bra") and the weight of
something like longing in the line "I am his / good, good daughter."]
A YEAR AGO TODAY: Direct Address, Joan Larkin --
Board Upgrade - v2.1.7
in News
Posted
The only way to be completely safe is to make sure you have a backup of your work, but that's more a general comment than a specific one about board upgrades.
Whenever we're talking about computers, there is risk.
It's a pretty standard upgrade, though, so the odds of any problems or data loss are extremely low. Whether you want to take extra steps to safeguard your work or not just depends on your level of comfort.
Yup,
~Yui