journal . Ben Sommer

Brave New World

Ended my second week on the new job. It is a trial by fire. Its all Unix all the time. For those who don't know, Unix is a powerful and extrememly scary operating system, beloved by engineers but best avoided by everyone else. This website and most of the rest of the internet is provided to you courtesy of Unix. The software system we're working on is pretty complicated too. My boss is a very intense individual, and a serious genius. I count myself lucky I got into the position.

Kitty Rescue

My fellow condo-owners and I finally found a good home for that abused and neglected neighborhood kitten mentioned before. We grabbed him just in time to snip off his little testes before they did any damage. We hope the white trash neighbors who were his nominal owners never find out. When I get around to it, I'll post pics of the little guy. Remember what Bob Barker says - "Spay or neuter your pet".

Resolution: To not waste too much time on our new DSL modem.

More than words

S.A.P.P.Y.   A.S.S   L.O.V.E.   S.O.N.G.S.   M.A.K.E.   M.E.   S.I.I.I.I.I.I.C.K.

A new tune in the making. The 'Young Turks' were a group of pimply young leftists in Istanbul circa 1910 who formed a tough coalition against the Sultan and forced a Parliament on him. Odd that they wound up with the Kaiser in WW1...

Young Turks

young turks
forty-odd feet
of kerosine fuel
fires the hot young turks

my turk of a mule
packing coca paste
could not equel
the yule log fuel fire
of the hot young turks

young turks
stank like camels
hung like chinchillas
burly young gorillas
hair-net latinos
drag racing their camaros

plastic-cast papacy
gap-toothed white-bred
should neuter them instead
sultans of south-central
forced entry to elective office
affirmative action acidophilus
digest the magna carta
en route from Santa Dominga

young turks
slick blue burnt metal
tubes from every orifice
hail mary mother
cath'licker saint seer
one true doG
on earth as in heaven
homies stand by your TURK

The New Real Me

I began writing a new song - to go on the next pop album - that I know will be a college radio hit. It's got a nice melodic hook, whiz-bang chord changes, and an inside reference to that hook-of-hooks pop songs, Roxanne (see last week's entry). The music is still sketchy but here's the lyric:

I married a prostitute
her name was Roxanne
four feet six inches in high heel boots
with stringy blonde hair
and a health bueareau card

I married a rotweiller
passed off as a whore
on all fours she can dirty my rug
with her foul mood swings
from ingesting the drain-o

I married beneath me
my ascestors were kings
we carried the gold standard from Kiev
enslaving the gypsies
breeding fleas in our beards

poor and picking tobacco
I married for money
she was born in George the third's trundle bed
in Carolina
where fleas breed in the bed

[repeat first verse]

Poetry - or lyric writing - fascinates me. I'm all for the economical, get-it-said-short imperative, though so much contemporary stuff sounds like run-on sentences. The images and associations come quick when you've had a wide range of fresh experiences just recently, though the ideas and 'morals' which are illustrated by these tend to be a long time in the making.

A New Job For Real

Said 'sayonara' to EduPrep, LLC last week. What a relief - I was having acid pangs over it. Good timing, because it turns out the company is not long for this world. Now that I'm out the door, I'll proudly say that I was the only hard-working employee of that company. Its difficult to take things seriously when that's the case. Anyway, I'm now the Network Developer/Architect at Eastern Nazarene College in Quincy, MA. Those who've read David McCullough's 2001 Pulitzer-winning bio of John Adams will recognize the locale. The Nazarenes are an intense group, though I think it'll work out well, my catholic baptism and my wife's bat-mitzva notwithstanding.

Resolution: To keep an even emotional keel when watching my the neighbor children abuse their cat.

Resolution 2: Scratch that - abduct the little guy off to a better home.