My recent obsession with Heroes has left me with several burning questions about the show, beyond the obvious "when are they going to stop fridging female characters, ffs?" type queries. The two uppermost in my mind at the moment are:

1. For the love of all that is holy, why has Suresh's hideous green apartment not been repainted? No wonder Molly was having nightmares, dudes!

2. Are the writers totally obsessed with waffles and chilaquiles or what?

Well, anyway. The show amuses and annoys me by turns, but so far it is further on the amusement side than not. The bulk of the fanworks that I've found are pretty meh, but I've read several really excellent, thoughtful fics and watched some beautiful vids. And I've laughed to the point of tears at many delightfully absurd creations. My favorite thus far is this Mohinder/Sylar vid set to Avril Lavigne's "Girlfriend." Can't. Stop. Laughing. Or humming.

Unrelatedly, I was cleaning my office today and stumbled upon another of my teenage poetry attempts. This one was written to be deliberately silly, and I think I mostly succeeded there. I got a standing ovation when I performed it at a poetry slam when I was eighteen, which was pretty awesome. It is about SCIENCE! (sort of)

An Ode to Planaria

You with your skins, thick,
slime-coated, greeny-brown.
You with your eyes crossed, comic,
an endless view of your own snout.
You with your organs, visible,
naked to the voyeur's eye.

How I loathe you now.

You who filled me with such hope, enthusiastic
about your ganglia, tiny pre-brains.
You who inspired me so, trusting
that you would learn your mazes as directed.
You who have so vexed me, malicious
in your anthropomorphic pique.

I hate you,
you stupid,
stupid
flatworms.

Somewhat in honor of International Pixel-Stained Technopeasant Day, but mostly because I've been meaning to do it for quite some time, I updated my website a little bit tonight. There's a new (for certain values of new) poem and two extremely short stories up at RobynFleming.com, for anyone who wants to go take a look. If you've been watching this journal from the beginning, I doubt that any of it will strike you as particularly novel, but it's there, if you want to read it anyhow.

Happy birthday, kphoebe! I have written a little sonnet for you, which I hope you will enjoy.

Sonnet for a Superheroine

Her origin is not so secret, she
Was a girl, like many others; but when
The little girls were taught that they must bend,
She schooled herself in ways to disagree.
She chose red over pink, and skinned her knee,
Running so fast she almost flew, and then
She knew she was strong, knew she could defend
Her silenced sisters – she could set them free.

She has no costume, doesn’t wear a mask,
And her weapons are not knives, or guns, but
Words; carefully chosen and swiftly hurled.
For daring to speak, she’s called bitch and slut –
Why does she do it then, this thankless task?
Because somebody has to save the world.

(and thank you to mattmatt, who valiantly tried to help me put it into slightly more iambic pentameter. My failure to achieve proper scansion is, of course, entirely my own)

Last night, Jimmy and I wandered over to my parents' house to say hello, and found that they had a friend over. The three of them were reading poetry to one another, and we stayed for a while and joined in. It was a pretty good mix of stuff culled from our big volumes of American poets, Mom's slender, broken-spined reader of romantic poetry, Dad's e.e. cummings books, and our memories. We can all recite "Jaberwocky", and it turns out that I know more of "The Highwayman" than I thought I did.

It was a lot of fun (for me, anyway. I think Jimmy was glazing over a bit, after a while), so I thought I'd share some of my favorite poems with you guys, and invite you to share yours with me.
( Read more... )

I am so absurdly proud of myself. My entry for this week's poetry challenge over at tucson_writers was a lot of fun, and I'm really pleased with how it turned out. Go check out "A Geek's Sonnet to His Love"!

In the morning, Mom is taking me shopping for pants. Pants! Eeeee! I'm so excited about the idea of owning blue jeans again. I'm still mourning my last pair, which died tragically of a hole in the thigh...