Travel Agent: I have bulkhead seating available. First row of the plane. Do you like the bulkhead row?

Client: No! There is no place to put your stuff on the bulkhead row.

Travel Agent: OK

*uhhhhhhhhh what about the OVERHEAD BIN???? JEEZ!*

Maybe the flight attendant should show a demonstration on how to STAND up & place your items in the overhead bin then CLOSE it & SIT back down again. Yes?

Air Speed Indicator!

Every since the first fragile ’stick and string’ aircraft staggered into the sky during the first years of the 20th century, the pilot has needed to know just how fast he is going. Not only because he uses this value to help him determine his position by ‘dead reckoning’ (time x speed = distance run), but also when he is entering dangerous areas of the ‘flight envelope’ of his aircraft. Being close to the stalling speed of the machine is lethal, but also there is a ‘never exceed speed’, above which lies structural failure. There are various other speeds which it is important to know, such as the safe speed at which flaps may be deployed, or the speed at which the undercarriage must not be extended (if retracted, of course). 

Modern aircraft often have a ‘glass cockpit’ display which gives readouts of airspeed from digital sensors, but even these have an old-style analogue dial, as a back-up. The usual two inputs needed to produce an ASI readout are the static and ram-air pressures, one being the ambient pressure (which changes with altitude and atmospheric conditions) and the other being the pressure due to the aircraft’s movement through the air. These are usually obtained from a Pitot tube (named after the French engineer, Henri Pitot), located a little distance from the fuselage, to avoid air disturbances. The ASI became part of the ‘basic six’ instruments ,which were instantly recognizable by any Royal Air Force aircrew member from the 1930s onwards

Up until the mid-1930s there was another method – crude but adequate – used in some low-performance machines. Here we see a photograph of the air speed indicator on a DH 85 Leopard Moth , G-AIYS, parked at GVFWE, Keevil. All it consists of is a flat plate, with  a few holes drilled in it, secured to a length of spring wire. As the air pressure builds up due to movement of the aircraft, the plate is forced backwards, giving a readout of the estimated speed on the graduated scale. There is even a red section, indicating when you are approaching the stall! Needless to say, this device IS crude, but it works well enough. The Leopard Moth’s bigger brother, the De Havilland DH 84 Dragon airliner has a similar indicator, and I dare say that this was the last time a commecial airliner flew with such a device. By the way, the first time I entered the cockpit of a DH 84 Dragon, I noticed an electric torch clamped to the left hand side of the bulkhead. When I asked what it was, I was told that it was an essential piece of the night-flying equipment….at night, you shone it out to port, and illuminated the graduated scale between the wings to find out your airspeed!

The twelve-year-old boy says goodbye to his mother and leaves their rented South Baltimore row house, at 807 William Street, by the side door. He passes through the covered areaway (or “sallie port”) which separates his house from the one next door, emerges onto the sidewalk and turns right, toward the harbor. The water begins one block from his front stoop and runs along Key Highway for a mile or two, and from there it goes on to Antwerp, Bombay, Darkar, Jeddah, Keelung, Liverpool, Malta, Port Sudan, Rangoon, and Zanzibar, and ends—for all the boy knows—in some dark jungle pond where jaguars come to drink.

The boy walks on rectangular Belgian blocks paving the surface of Key Highway. The stones once served as ballast in the holds of clipper ships which, two centuries before, sailed regularly from Europe and the Far East bringing tools, dry goods and foodstuffs to the colonies. The street reverberates with a cacophony of cart and truck wheels on rough pavement. The life of the city huddles close to the water’s edge. The workers’ homes—small shoulder-to-shoulder structures with low, slanted roofs, combine with the narrow streets to create an intricate pattern of late afternoon light and shadow. Sailboat spars gracefully dissect rooftops; the lines of a five-masted sailboat, lovely, etches itself against the background of a coal pier. Sunlight tints the oil-slick harbor water and illuminates two bright white excursion steamers—the Bay Belle and the City of Richmond—waiting for dusk and sailing time. Nearby, banana boats are unloaded at the United Fruit Company pier.

Huge cranes, black against the sky, tend ocean-going ships. The boy notes the origin of each vessel; There is a clean Norwegian loaded with tractor parts bound for Cape Town; a rusty Frenchman packed with wheat for Rotterdam; a Panamanian tanker gurgling rich back oil below-decks; a Russian, the name illegible on her dirty bow, holding only the residue of iron ore; and a British tramp freighter, emptied of a cargo of firecrackers from Hong-Kong, chests of tea from Shanghai, rubber from the Malacca Straits, glass from Genoa and seeds and ochre from Marseilles. Swarms of tiny welders work in the hull-rigging of each ship, making hot repairs to steel bellies, their torches creating a fireworks display of sparks. The harbor is smoky and dirty and filled with the clangor of steel on steel. Smoke stacks, grain elevators, factories, freight terminals and ramshackle wooden buildings line the innumerable wharves. Piers separate and define every twist and turn of the water’s edge. There is salt in the air, the odor of fish and clams, the scent of Oriental spices, the acrid smell of chemical fumes. From the shadowy depths of the low pier buildings the boy hears a musical chant. Black men in greasy overalls, their singsong blending with the noise of labor, rush from boat to truck and back again in ceaseless procession, dragging their livelihood out of ships’ holds. Lumber, sand and gravel, oysters, fish and crabs, cantaloupes and watermelons, tomatoes and potatoes; the men handle ponderous boxes and barrels and crates. Backs bend and straighten. Muscles expand and contract. Sweat glistens and salt collects in white lines on dark skin. The men are power made visible—made human—and as they stretch and lift, their graceful movements achieve the effect of great dancers.

The sun dips toward the western horizon and the mood of the harbor changes with the light. Smoke no longer clouds from the stacks, but spreads in an even, violet haze. The boy is aware of an unaccountable mystery that takes possession of the place. Monsters—towering chimneys and grain elevators, huge buildings of steel and concrete—are no longer black or red or harsh yellow, but are alike draped in a blue-gray mantle, infinitely soft, dusky, dreamy. Outlines soften into shadows. It is impossible now to distinguish the ugliness of the garbage scows and the lumber barges. At the steel mill, away in the distance, flames lick the twilight. Suddenly, three shrill blasts on a ship’s whistle startle the boy. He hears the sound of a gangplank scraping a pier, the scratch of heavy mooring lines being lifted from dock stanchions, tossed overboard and drawn through the water by thin ropes. Officers shout orders to seamen on the after deck. Fussy tugboats close in on the enormous sea-stained hull, nudging, pushing. From the bridge the captain watches. The engines are given full-forward power and the ship slides past a bulkhead, swings out into the channel stream and heads for open water. The boy feels—or imagines he feels—the deck shift and pitch under his feet. He waves . . .

Baltimore Harbor, 1951 was originally published in a slightly different form and under a very different title in the Baltimore Evening Sun in 1979 or the early 1980s. I’m usually pretty good when it comes to dating clippings—especially my own—but in this case, as Jon Stewart might say, not so much. My idea for this rather poetical mood piece was to attempt to convey the romance of the harbor as viewed by a young boy who very recently moved to the city from a small town in Virginia.

Copyright © 2008 Jim Sizemore.

]]> http://frivolousfluffy.wordpress.com/2008/10/31/politics/ Fri, 31 Oct 2008 23:58:23 +0000 frivolousfluffy http://frivolousfluffy.wordpress.com/2008/10/31/politics/

It’s not spoken here.  I am so sick of the back stabbing and mud slinging.  I do vote, except for that time I was in the throes of a really violent period.  You know what I mean.  You sit in the bathtub and cry for two days.  Anyway, I find myself voting against the last several years, rather than for.

This just came from Red Bird in Toronto. They have great patterns.  I had totally forgotten about them.  I used to get stuff from them years ago.  They are in my favorites on my old computer at my old house.  I wonder if my sons has gotten the designs off the old one for me yet? 

This club comes four times a year also so that makes eight pairs a year.  If I keep both clubs, I will probably have another sock giveaway.  I assume that you have noticed that it is two colors?  And didn’t I say I wanted to make something with just one color?   Well, I just can’t help myself.  Look at that pattern! Look at those colors!  Need I say more?

The idiot on the point is trying to save his land and has hired some hoodles to do it.  The job they are doing is so poor, it’s laughable.  That bulkhead is older than the one we had replaced before we even moved here.  It needs to be removed and a whole new one put in its place.  All they are doing is driving some posts into the muck.  Water has been seeping up under it for years.  You can’t even walk around there after  a rain.  But, what do I know?

J’ ai pu acquérir ce week-end le Leader Class Animated Bulkhead… à un prix plus que raisonnable ( ça sent l’ erreur d ‘étiquetage lors de la mise en rayon…). Cet énorme Transformers qui respecte son alter-ego animé de par sa taille et son design, possède quelques fonctions électroniques: diverses phrases et animations lumineuses ainsi qu’ un accessoire permettant de revivre l’ épisode 13 de la première saison connu sous le titre de ” un de perdu, quatre de retrouvés” en France… le titre américain ” Headmaster“, se faisant echo aux anciens Headmasters de la génération 1.

Bulkhead
By Ciaran Cross
Self-published

I thought I’d lost this. I was chuffed to bits when I found it this morning, because it’s a really good read–worth repeat reads in fact.  Some things are left unexplained, leaving you to ponder them as you pack for your holiday, while others are unnecessarily explained when they needn’t have been.  The art first though: at first glance it’s got a touch of Renee French about it, that misty quality, but on closer inspection it’s less dreamy and, I don’t know, humid?  I’m probably only using that because the story takes place in a Central American country, but he’s got the closeness of that atmosphere spot on.

There’s a great page of Chris Ware-esque tiny panels showing our journalist finding and entering his hotel room that ends with a shallow landscape through his windows bars.  Same again on the facing page, waking up in a sweaty room, scratching himself, having a crap and trying to light a fag on a mosquito coil.  Our hero, as much as he is, is less mild mannered, more of a listener than a talker, being a freelance reporter sent to cover the guerrilla actives somewhere or other.  He has few friends while he’s there, being a nuisance to the few he meets at best, while being robbed in the kindest way.

“You will see that we will not sit quietly in boxes, tagged and clipped like pigeons.  Holed up in the squares of some chessboard for you to watch from the corporate box of the box corporation…you must climb down or fall.  We intend to shit upon your ivory fence” This is divided across tiny panels containing pigeons, chessboards and pieces, cracked eggs and men sat on fences.  This is a theme; things put and kept in boxes, people sitting on fences, oh and our fella’s called Bridges.  Boxes, fences and bridges; it all means something .

Bananas are used to symbolise something or other–I’m not very good with subtleties.  I need it explained pho-net-ic-ally, but I enjoy it when it’s not.  This leaves me pondering it after it’s been lost in my bag for a while, which is a good thing because after all, isn’t that the point?  Anyway, bananas are put in boxes and

“Only one is produced on this scale.  Subjected to a long process of standardization.  The goal of which is to make uniform through the systematic eradication of difference…now..banannas…are too genetically similar to be resistant to any viruses that develop…such a virus…wipe the entire banana trade from the face of the earth… there condition is not so different to ours.”

Aahh, I get it; we’re bananas!  I’m a banana in a box, or on a fence called bridges or something.  It’s all the clearer now.  It’s illustrated with exhicutions, bullets in a row and deaths as graphs and charts.  If I knew more about Central American politics I could enlighten you further but I’ve got to decide which pants to take on holiday.

There’s a good and tense scene when our journalist and reluctant guides are stopped at a checkpoint and their pigeons our forcibly taken from them.  It’s all in Spanish (I think, sorry) and would be very good just at that.  But the Spanish is translated at the back, on a page of “explanation, gloss, excuse and apology”.  You don’t need this.  That bit in The Killing Fields when everyone’s getting shouted at in Khmer, without subtitles, and you don’t know what the crap is going on because you don’t understand the shouty language; that’s brilliant.

You feel their fear and confusion.  It should have been like that in this book.  If you get it (and you should) don’t read the translation at the back because the book is a very good one, in part because of this scene.  Of course if you can read Spanish then that entire last bit is wasted on you.

–Oliver East

So I went to Venice for a wedding last week and made a stop in Milan (Milano).   I boarded the plane at JFK and on the way over had a very uncomfortable seat in the bulkhead exit row by the window.  I fell asleep during my second ever viewing of “Kung Fu Panda” but saw the entirety of “School Rocks” (it was Jack Black day at the inflight movies}.

Actually the flight landed in Milan and  had to make it to the central train station there and then catch a train to Venice and then a vaporetto from piazza ferrovia  to  the Academia  and then to walk over to Rio Terra across from the famed art museum where I met the groom’s party and we walked over to the Scuola del Carmini where the wedding would be held.

Outside of the scuola in the Piazza Magherita there was an open air flea market.   I spied an earthenware cameo inspired Italian pottery dish.  I wanted to buy it not knowing whether to purchase it for my mother or the bride.  I had about a hundred euros on my person and an ex Peter Gatien security official who also worked once worked for a government agency wanted to borrow some money for another item leaving this blogger with just enough to acquire the green and red dish.

The wedding itself was something and the bride wore a four thousand dollar Carolina Herrera strapless cream dress with mirrored glass sewn into the fabric right at the breast line.

Outside when it was time to throw the meal ingrediant this blogger made mention to toss it softly and to say this was Condoleeza rice (rice through with sweetness because that’s what the current secretary of state’s first name means in Italian with sweetness).  This was worth a brief laugh and the boquet was thrown and caught by an English woman and freind of the bride who was suposedly the next to get married as it was. This lady is a collector of poodlebilia (tangible items dealing with poodles) and sitting around a large out in a piazza the next night with the group having campari coktails this itinerant bloggger Informed them of “the cheese poodle” a large hybrid pooch created by the intercourse of a golden retriever and a giant toy poodle owned by the artist Greg Coates and the curator Kiki Niebaer in Allentown, pennsylvania. { and they made me explain it in detail as if I were insane..like I was talking about a package of dried orange unhealthy snacks in the shape of pompidoured dogs which leak powdery orange granules which stain..uh huh!

Artists Steve Meeks and Tyrome Tripoli had showed up and soon it was off to the wedding dinner at the Venetian hotspot Osteria Boccodoro.  Meanwhile I forgot to mention the brides brother had officiated at the wedding and wore a long sleeved black shirt from Pakistan which gave him an exotic flair.

Meanhile in Italy I continued to be wrting my “italian Hotel Shopping Mall Poem” which can be read in its’ current entirety right here…

The Italian Shopping Mall Poem

Part one: Hit the Ground Shopping

Hit the ground Shopping

In that entrance back to rememberance

Black scatter pattern stenciled in

All of the unseen movements of in and out through the heart of black

Legions marched trough petri dishes

Though the same motion of the same line the multitudes unseen and reformatted

All the time

Sure I should not have said to “shut up”

That was hurtful and if it was said to me as I said to you as it was said to me in my youth

It would boomerang and did

“On a holiday provided for by those in a family who are senior in both age and monetary wherewithal to those whom they have taken with the voyage where the paradox is as one allows for the enjoyment of the others one has provided for the provider may feel at the time that their earnings converted into the leisure time of others gained at their expense whilst the whole point of the journey to begin with was for all who took it to become relaxed”

Such words come as feelings are remembered

The bus trip is never taken to the

Discount outlets and malls

First told about in a dark bar never talked about

Sectored off from this reality

Return and shop

Dark love in a dissappearance

Not far from the Piazza Della Signoria

Dark love in a dark bar

Still the boyish ones show up

All devices up and at them

All systems go

Faces flash silver against black

Off like quick silver photographs

Dark lust in a dark bar

The dark cages all around I come again

And again and again and again

Return off of the same hop?

Part Two: the Hotel Shopping Mall Poem

The hotel shopping mall poem balloons

Once there was a balloon of a hotel named lunacy

With a Venetian scene over the establishment’s

Insignia crown- overhead

Over to the left

Is the mall once grid façaded

Of dark green olive under white

Though now by gating over-cast

On an overcast day replete

With horses; show jumping equestrians, bric-a-brac vendors

Boy and girl scouts, sun-glassed bus drivers, cyber simulcasters,

Local citizens, and baristas

Once there was a pink hotel’s shopping mall poem balloon

Overhead

Traveling the via the buildings are scarred

Some distressed garbage and recycling bunkers have suffered catastrophic damage

And bands of overjoyed teenagers make noise on the bus

Now a search on modes of motor transport

And attendant sensation

Colors lead the field in optical navigation

Diamonds on markers, directionals, gates

Segues of hues like in peppers or pimento on pizza

Red- yellow –orange- red

This poem would go anywhere to break the grid and has

Then over to the left

A proud male swan

With a banding of night mask

Surging forth

Pushed forward under its own sail like a sea horse

The young man wore the Gucci belt with double G’s

To hold up his pants up against his lithe frame

Red magenta flurry

And an Andrea Mantegna seen in a hurry

Up the steps with haberdashery

And then one raspberry sorbet colored small house stands alone

In the midst of a parking lot

A sprawling tree blossoming pink and red morphs

And extends above a cherry tomato lawnmower

Behind which is the textural side of the raspberry structure sorbet

And below all around comes a yellow traffic perimeter

And behind that still a field of bright blue

A bright blue field

After all that we are back in the parking lot

Bright pink neon illuminates the hotel de balloonacy

Balloonacy d’hotel

Gardens with large trees- open- welcoming in the summer months

Are atop the hotel of a balloon

The three pointed crown

Is the insignia of the balloon for the hotel

Free form further down

An addition

A new arcade mortared over the space besides some stores

To present a pleasant angel for and during your passiegiata

All of the window displays speak to me now

Actors and actresses players step onto this stage

Red from a traffic light colors the leaves on a tree

On come the over the street lights

As passes a black clad band of youths with dogs

A young man previously on his cell phone paces within a small range while smoking

Satellite dishes and other signal receiving devices

Atop the balloon of a hotel- the hotel of a balloon

Amidst the gardens

A split level mini-mall in Sienna

A top level leading to a street above

And street-side lower to another street below

A supermarket duplex is among others stores within

Further into Sienna the Piazza Del Palio

Inspirations the race is for such mega-mall the novel attractions

As-

Torre- The Trunk Show where an a animatronic elephant head whose trunk on a column

Sprays high pressure water jets

Lecondo- Unicorn on the Cob

And the porcupina colada

Where though a rotund man did needle the poet so often as to become il porcupino himself

I go walking away down the avenue

Out the from door of the motorbike store

Away from the train-station

And towards the hotel shopping mall poem

In a leather racing suit

Past distressed plastic garbage bunkers

Having sustained catastrophic damage

In An egg yolk explosion

And torn away burned to the nowhere combustion

In a leather motorbike racing-suit I go walking away yellow-black on fire

Next to green

Part Three;

Milano; Torino, and the Olympiad

“The Show Must Go Home”

A Spaghetti Best Western

The outlet mall

outlets in the mall

outlets on the wall in the mall

outlets in the hall

what is an outlet mall?

endless space allotted to light sockets?

a giant whole in the wall?

In-Café television

machines of indeterminate usage

in the light of back and forth intermittent illumination

otherwise know as slot machines

THE COVER BAND WILL NOW ASSASINATE THE DOORS

AND THEN MAKE ITS WAY FOR THE WINDOWS

Here comes the downhill muggers

Look at the Russian family all decked out in red and white nationalist gear

Where are they from?

They are from Powerade

The Gatorade stand-in

always found in the nearest commercial beverage locker

Presidential- Press credentials

Press Credentials- Presidential

“The Show Must Go Home”

I am off of the chocolate train

trenino gratuito

and back on the street

got my pen and my notebook

got no one to meet

though the balloon was blown into farfalle

and I am off the chocolate train

trenino gratuito

only to run into farfalle

at a shogun’s palace Sheraton at the crossroads

soon again

Here it is again

like walking through another

dreamscape

abandonded

in replicate

not totally;

obstacled

and chandeliered-

Cowhide

so many players

on the chessboard

obstacles

after all its’ just a furniture store

and not in Hong Kong

In the plaza/piazza

where street lights would be street lights

weren’t that they were in the inner courtyard

and that dream will resume

is never garunteed

High on frequent flier miles

alone in a Best Western hotel room

he watched the Olympiad on Italian television

Infernal McDonalds’
where it is not alright

to put up your elbows

and even in the slightest begin to doze

but it is alright to smoke

He watched the Olympics on television

alone high on frequent flier miles

in a Best Western hotel near the Duomo

with a breakfast buffet on the roof

Infernal McDonald’s

back at the infernal McDonald’s

a man in a black jacket with a golden gecko silk-screened onto

back in line from the point of purchase

remonstrating to his girlfriend

over and over

this man an Italian man

causes a security gaurd of African origins

in suit and a tie a golden stud earing in one ear and a shaved shiny brown scalp

to come over to him

this agent of fast food decorum enforcement says” tranquile” to him

as has the announcing official at the starting gate of Sienna’s infamous palio

to the pile-up of horses

{the guy lowers his voice and lessens his performance to several smaller outbursts

to the great embarassmento of his girlfreind who though never really revolts}

Now when it is his turn

to order the McDonalds employee at the register

in orange and white

is seamless and gets the previously loud mouth’s order right

Never one not to take one more turn

I sip water in a land of fire

at the corner alla scala

the flames are exploding

in the interior of an interior

off of the double decker

have I not seen such a scene of circumnavigation

‘inside the circle unsquared

or the triangle inside the circle unsquared

or is it a scene form a Italian restaurant

inside a scene from the italian shopping mall poem

He cannot decide

four corner turn burn

salon de octagon

“Persona non grata”

the film plays at the end

of the church cinema

two large flowers to the side

of the ticket takers booth

not enclosed by glass

petals of cherry vanilla

stalks in water- bulbs removed

trolleys course by

mopeds race round corners

from streets unseen

Downtown Niketown

Hannbal Lechter’s housewares

A Spaghetti Best Western

Drooping strands of poly resin poly chromatic sculpture

atop a converted mini-palazzo a spaghetti Best–Western of course

He watched the Olympics on television

alone high on frequent flier miles

in a best western hotel room near the duomo

with a breakfast buffet on the roof

after being directed to Florence by his son

the adrenaline of being with gods in expensive ski wear tighly packed in  and fans screaming nationalist cheers and slinging cowbells attached to their bodies by metal structures as if by train tracks

manual flush port-a-johns

the half pip a backup singer for Gladys Knight split down the middle

the half pipe a snowboarding event

manual flush port a-johns on the streets of Turin

watching the Olympics in a best western high on frequent flier miles

a frequent crier smiles

A Spaghetti Best Western

a best western topped by spaghetti

a Spaghetti test pattern

Rosentwist

the long winds

of pasta

the circuitous routes through the alps

the tunnels like corkscrews noodles

sportscars flying through

and sliders on the luge down and around

the stay tuned to the stay tuned cease of operations

Technicolor color shield above psaghetti

in a would be Rosentwist

minus the hair dryer

the torque of the fork

the four prongs of torqued fork motion

forcing the torque from the fork

into winds of linguini

stabbing at tortellini

watching the Olympics in a best western high on frequent flier miles

a frequent crier smiles

A Spaghetti Best Western

a best western topped by spaghetti

a Spaghetti test pattern

a spaghetti test pattern

leather and sauce

I am walking back away from it

under sections of the sky constellation segments segmenting

stars and the lines between them

here on the avenues leading up and into the piazzas

heavenly bodies like streelight pearls

towards a palazzo style flat iron decked out with loggia

its paths crisscrossed by a trolley line

I am walking back and away from it back and away form it

here on the streets of Torino

and then again on the streets of New York

A Spaghetti Chest western

the Venus de Milo’s torso

rendered in Yves Klein blue

with a Dalian chest of drawers built in

brought out

and inside

plastic figurines playing out the title

financial surrealists take the train

cowboys on horseback shooting after

a toy train with baseball pitchers atop

financial surrealist in the passenger windows

financial surrealists took the train

and surmounting the colored beauties head an downturned mound of polyresinate

spaghetti

It’s a psghetti Chest Western

and everbody is invited inside

Spaghetti test pattern

in a spaghetti breast western
the chest drawers are open and everybody is invited in

lobsters and leather –leather and sauce

a new furry lobster

found in Indonesia

in the waters off Indonesia

a furry langosto

A spaghetti breast western

the chest drawers are open

the woman in purple she is in Yves Klein blue

she has golden hair a wig

and then black and white stripes ala Michael Keaton

in “Beetlejuice”

Metal toy partners saddle up to draw

at high noon in this best spaghetti western

painters who worship chroma

come out of their coma

packing pistols

in this videodroma

French kissters look on

the surrealist reality group is right nearby

like a sidearm

the charterhouse of parmesan

all the onlookers including this narrator

and hanging around

hanging out

and hanging on

the Last sufferer

the last supper

the last supperer

who should we cast as the painter

and as Christ and as pilot

and mary magdelene in the shadows

after we come down off our DaVinci cloud

should it be like pop painters like English or Kostabi

and the final meal should be placed

in the infernal McDonald’s

in Milano’s galleria

what is on the table spread fury langosto

and the venus demilo with spaghetti hair

on the lobster phone

inner perimeter café casa Armani

while the orange city streetcar winds it way clockwise a few blocks away

the blue shirted waitstaff

serve juicy red cocktails and plates of hor d’oeurves

as a video shower of fire fades into blue water

and the next drink you should order is turquoise

Trussardi alla scala

inner perimeter casa Armani cafe

the Last sufferer

the last supper

the last supperer

who should we cast as the painter

and as Christ and as pilot

and mary magdelene in the shadows

after we come down off our DaVinci cloud

should it be like pop painters like English or Kostabi

and the final meal should be placed

in the infernal McDonald’s

in Milano’s galleria

what is on the table spread fury langosto

and the venus demilo with spaghetti hair

on the lobster phone

inner perimeter casa Armani cafe

Trussardi alla scala

In a distinct neighborhood of Milan

a few blocks from the main train station

a small church

a Japanese restaurant which serves sushi platters on boats

black in the night

a movie theater

with an exterior of blue

with colored pennants attached to the walls

on the viale Tunisia

an erotica store with a long legged clerk

maybe she was the owner seen from afar

a studded leather mask in the window

Tiki lounge furniture outside a nightclub

piled up and sometimes used by the homeless

In this chest western

the buildings of the ghost town

have painted on carved out breast doors

and at high noon through the dust bowls

a moose walks by

If in as in a spaghetti western is to have

Italian food in Western

New York

or for an Italian to have Italian food

in Western New York

Desilu Desilu Desilu

I love I love I love Moosie!

the maid near the maid of the mist

did not make up my bed

before I made it to Niagara the Falls

with water churning as if to have one make in their pants

the maid of the mist

one cannot resist

Italians in Western New York

dine in the Italian Fisherman

near where the fishermen fish

back flips by cartwheeling clowns at the closing ceremonies of the winter Olympics

this is on Sunday and carnevale starts on Tuesday

release the ducks

the celebration was more tempered last year in your dreams

as they switched to a German

things are bound to be more festive this time

Late in the evening

at the self-watering mammary gland

near a Banca Intesa branch

late in the evening

at a self-watering

terrazzo mammary gland

across from the café in the Giardinii

between brightly colored buildings

the hue of Frutti Di Bosco

gelato

Mangia con telefono

Mangia prosciutto con telefono

una telefono torta con proscuitto

Proscuitto finito! telefono! telefono!

Oh! Sugar rock candy umbrella

even The pina colada was a debutante once

An orange downwards pointing submersible container

on and in active use off

of a giant white and blue

tractor trailer carrying freighter

smoke rings of Audi

sailboats are drips of white in the sea

such clean legs

such clean flesh

a smile still beckons a smile

between generations

yet awash

in the dazzle of youth

Oh! sugar rock candy

Carmen Miranda in a tinged cream umbrella

even the pina colada was a debutate once

How far is the Dalmatian from the toast?

A one man noise factory

unwraps his food

while blasting his personal listening device

pushing and pursing his lips for a muscular chew

in the sala di’aspetto

where one sits while one waits for one’s train to pull onto its track

when one sit or sits and reads when one has nothing other to do

Mestre laundromat sunburst mural explosion

broken window shattered glass in the night vacancy

in the day overcrowded

now we have waited to dine in the seafood restraurant across from the art movie cine

where it is run by three hefty brothers and their mother

and two of the others other then the mother are present tonight

on the wall hangs a group photo and who do you think will bring you your risotto

it will be one of the two brothers who are other- other than their mother

is is down the block with the third right now at home brother

while the poet has mixed grill with a group of seafood lovers

Il Vero e Il Falso

the real thing or a fake

yes it a real Fernando Botero

the guard finazia hosts this informative exhibit

so you can tell the difference between a genuine Rolex and the fascimillie

or the same for gucci

Il vero e il falso

and yes it is a real Botero

where does the day go

over to the aqvarium

where hermaphrodite sealife

is on view self impregnaniting egg droppers

and species which die after reproduzione

the real or the fake one

and yes it’s a real Botero

tre colori a three color printing offered by a printer in Mestre

tre colori a restaurant with three canopies red, green, and white

on west 47^th street in New York

tre colori the three colors of the Italian flag

the boot of Italy is iconic

while the mass of China is not

in a store in mall an optically active wall relief

in the shape of the nation state

and hermaphrodite models

descend down into the sea laying eggs

in the act of reproducition

before tearing each other to death

Now we turn to see the designer’s vision

Now we turn to see the designer’s visions

Now we turn to see the designer’s visions

Valentino the actor’s funeral was a silent affair

Valentino the courtier’s forty fifth anniversary celebration

of his work in the design sphere was replete with a retrospective

of the dresses he did including a a bevy of mannequins on a staircase

without a balcony on display at the ara pacis in Rome

and in party in Cinese at the Villa Borghese

Sitting in a racing suit by dainese

in the outlet mall in Italy

if only for in the meantime imaginarily

fashion discounts at store on the outskirts of major cities

sometimes looking like fascimille villages done up for the red cross

by the concentration camp supervising nazis

Processed prosciutto prostituted prosecuted prosciutted

The pink rosy swirl of a Venetian chocolate sphere

unscrambled to present not a portrait but a sccene

off of the vaporetto passenger station San Toma

and towards the pensione here to stay all the way upstairs

the meaning in the late evening remained to be disambiguated

this poem could have stayed where as it were in Mestre

where a useless upgrade brought the metal curtain down

on that experience and led to a new suitcase without wheels

and then one with- so it will be off to the chocaltiere in

San Toma ata later date once again

A dream about Isabella Rossellini

who is sitting on a television sound stage

talking and I approach her “I know your nephew Tommasso”

I say – I used to work with him (as a tour guide)

his email is trossellini@wesleyan.edu but now he is in Italy

he is your twin sister Ingrid’s son

she is your twin sister

he was hanging with me when she kicked him out

all of this only part did I say

and then I realize that she was inside of a tv screen all the time

Lead us into temptation

do lead us into temptation

but not all of the time

Pound’s Cantos

Cants Pantos

Cants Poundos

print it on a Pound note

“subtle innuendo’s follow

must be something inside….”

the mall poem

Cockfosters young men with prominent phallic protusions in pantalone and pantalone di cavali
parade and posture during the mall palio like roosters
they abound in the surround in all that the cock-fosters in the piazza del palio here

Become an ambassador

of the lifestyle afforded

by the Italian Hotel Shopping Mall Poen

where there are cameo appearances

and appearances by cameos

A woman in purpling pink

atop the white field of a sun dress

has donned ornamental Bvglvari sunglasses

and a necklace in the shape of a small lantern which is colored dark metallic pink

with baubles set inside purple and burgundy red

a deep purple rock atop a ring upon her finger

and a gold and diamond bracelet clasp

featuring lions or dragons upon her wrist

gets on the train in Venezia Santa Lucia

and departs (partenze) in Vincenza

I did something in Venice

I did something else

It rings to Abba’s Mama Mia

the downloadable ring-tone for the cell-phone

into the whole song but not for long

the woman opens up the flip-phone

and says “Mama” with emphasis right after

the last heard “Mama Mia” from the song

now we realize it might only ring mama mia

when mama is the caller

and the caller id might read wiwth her phone number

as on comes the song

Engrosso

Haydn concert in the Galleria

the reflecticve disk overhead

Mozart

“That Fuller Guys” tetrahedron

Robert Indiana’s “Nonending nonagon”

upon the field of a Missoni silk sweater

a polygonal

as if hurled palio flags coming back round together

into a shield

at the breast plate and the abdomen

of a fashionable man

ov olives evolve

love ottagano

Bocce bowling for balls

Take an object and project

a plastic object

bought not necessarily but perhaps in a set

A Dainese racing leather clad motorcycle race

a bright night light hooked into an outlet

is an object which projects

The Spaghetti Museum of Fine Pasta

the knife engaged with the fork

the fork engaged with the knife

in a pas de deux

with the polyresinous noodles

uprising

corten steel tortellini

and later Rosentwists

Our brand new roof Gorgon is now open!

no,

Gabriella does not want to go shopping (with you (me)) in Italy

This poem is not a consumate well-studied phony

Though you can study well being a phony

there is the real thing and there is the phoney

which might leave you outside in the rain screaming forgery

on course but what are you doing outside in the rain

pondering il vero e il falso

il natura di Fraudolenti

outside in the rain

3Racing Parts Re-stock

3RAC-MHS004/LB Motor Heat Sink W/ Fan For 540 Motor (High Finger) – Light Blue
3RAC-MHS004/PU Motor Heat Sink W/ Fan For 540 Motor (High Finger) – Purple
3RAC-MHS006/BU Motor Heat Sink W/ Fan For 280/300 Motor (High Finger) – Blue
3RAC-NLD03/OR 3mm Normal LED Light – Orange
3RAC-NLD03/RE 3mm Normal LED Light – Red
3RAC-WC3/PU Aluminium M3 Countersink Washer (10 Pcs) – Purple
3RAC-WC3/RE Aluminium M3 Countersink Washer (10 Pcs) – Red
3RAC-WF315/BU Aluminium M3 Flat Washer 1.5mm (10 Pcs) – Blue
3RAC-WF320/LB Aluminium M3 Flat Washer 2.0mm (10 Pcs) – Light Blue
3RAC-WF325/PU Aluminium M3 Flat Washer 2.5mm (10 Pcs) – Purple
3RAC-WF340/RE Aluminium M3 Flat Washer 4.0mm (10 Pcs) – Red
A18-03/WO Graphite Battery Plate For RC18
A18-25 Nylon Spur Gear Set For RC18
AWD-01 Aluminum Main Shaft For Mini-Z AWD
FW05-RR009 Aluminum 4mm Main Chassis For FW-05RR
KZ-10 Motor Mount for MR02-LM
M03M-10/LB Aluminium Rear Lower Suspension Arms For M03M
M03M-19/HD Step Screw – Heavy Duty (10 Pcs) For M03M
M03M-21/SI Motor Heatsink
RC18-004/BU Bearing Steering Saver W/Ball Bearing For RC18T
RC18-008/BU Aluminum C Hub For RC18T
SE720-0817 Harden Aluminum 1st Gear 17T For 720
TA05-24/LB Aluminum Bulkhead For TA-05
TT01-E35/WO Graphite Conversion Kit
WH-04/BU 1/10 8 Spoke Wheel Set For Tamiya M-Chassis Series – Blue
WH-04/RE 1/10 8 Spoke Wheel Set For Tamiya M-Chassis Series – Red
ZX5-12/BU Aluminum Steering Brace For Lazer ZX-05
F103GT-07/LB Aluminium Rear Damper For F103GT
MIF-048/HD Front / Rear Ball Diff. Shaft – Heavy Duty For Mini Inferno
TT01-28 Spur Gear (55/58/61T)
3RAC-NLD05/BU 5mm Normal LED Light – Blue
DF03-21/LB Aluminium Rear Suspension Brace For DF-03
MST-23/LB Aluminium Center Ball Diff. Shaft For Mini LST
MTX3-016 1st Gear Housing For MTX-3
MTX3-028 Light Weight Fly Wheel For MTX-3
MTX3-030 Light Weight Pulley Adaptor For MTX-3
MTX4-01/TI 3mm Aluminum Main Chassis For MTX-4
MTX4-08/TI Aluminium Rear Brace RH For MTX-4
MZII-017 Main Damper Optional Spring For Mini-Z II
MZM-007 Rear Shock Tower For Mini-Z Monster
TT01-29/LB Bevel Gear Shaft

Where to buy?
http://www.rcmart.com/catalog/advanced_search_result.php?sort=1a&keywords=3racing

Here’s more TFA episode from OptimusConvoy. The 25th episode called “Autoboot Camp“.

It seems like Bumblebee’s becoming more troublesome than the one in G1.He’s more childish and arrogant than ever. It’s a good thing that Bulkhead’s always around to help him out.

Anyway, in this episode, Bumblebee reminisces the bootcamp he was in before he was stationed to work at space bridges (see episode Transform and Roll-out). He’s with Iron Hide, Long Arm, Bulkhead, and the alleged Decepticon, Wasp.

In the bootcamp, the bots were under the training of Sentinel Prime. They had to show their unique abilities just like what the kids did in the movie Sky High, in which they also got their monikers afterwards.

But just find one interesting continuity problem here, in the G1 episodes, Iron hide is one of the oldest and most experienced Autobot firstly introduced. Him and Ratchet are of the same era. But in this episode, Iron Hide is in the same batch as Bumblebee which either means that Bumblebee is as old as Iron HIde.. or.. Iron Hide is a noob like Bumblebee.

But that’s not the catch of this episode. Stick till the end and you’ll find out a cool character intro.

Download here from veoh.com

I’ve been working on the boat, as opportunity arises. One of the bulkheads was collapsing, so I decided to replace it. The only thing holding the old one together, as it turned out, were the screws that went through it to the base of the seats.

Rob and I pulled this out, and then went to fabricate a new one.

We started by picking up some wood, then we cut, sanded, veneered and installed- here’s what it looks like ready to go in:

Next: Another couple of pieces of wood, to solidly block in a locker. That, however, will have to wait a week, I have to be in Atlanta again this week. I’ll start cutting and sanding today, but wont get those done until I return. She’s getting there, slowly.