Parking Meter.

“…Y de este tamaño la tengo ¿Crees que te cabria por la puerta trasera?”  -  “Pues, cosas mas grandes me he metido…”

¡¿Que carajos!? ¿No se supone que un miembro de la mas rancia nobleza debe tener compostura al tratar a una plebeya, por mas sabrosa y con pinta de puta que tenga? En esta foto, el buen Carlitos no pudo resistir la tentacion y se le ocurrio la ocurrencia de tratar de ligarse a una chavita, presumindole el tamaño del miembro real, tratado de converse a la…este…¿dama?, de darse un buen acoston. Y, siendo sinceros, no lo podemos culpar de ninguna manero. ¿O si, tiranetas?

Associates,

I have tapped a new creative vein (id est, learned the language of my muse).

If a skill or mastery in writing is achieved, it will henceforth by supplemented by a verbal voracity unmatched in this galaxial cluster – or supercluster, if you will.

Delivering doses of the most viral, grassroots politics, all the while planted the seeds of truth that will continue to assist in the advance and evolution of our human-shaped landscape.

This thing is growing like a redwood.  It lives in Green.

Truly yours,

Rice Cutgrass

- Recond Risograph Machine Model RP Series

- A3 & B4 Size

- Fully Recond

- Low Counter Meter

- Prices are negotiable

Price RM 5000

- Recond Risograph Machine Model RE Series

- A3 & B4 Size

- Fully Recond

- Low Counter Meter

- Prices are negotiable

- Transportation Provided

Price RM 4200

I don’t sell materials for sewing in my shop, but I have often been asked by customers wanting to buy plain ribbons by the meter. I have enormously amounts of ribbons lying around in stock so I figured; why not?

Of course ever since I hung them out there for sale a few weeks ago, no one has noticed or asked for it   -Looks pretty tough….

According to a recent RedEye article, Mayor Daley’s administration has almost blown through all the money it received for handing Chicago’s parking meters over to Chicago Parking Meters, LLC. The number of free spaces has gone down, the rates have gone up, and (in contradistinction to every other city I’ve been to in the U.S.) we pay for parking seven days a week, and now Chicagoans are looking at 74 more years of this ridiculousness without receiving any benefit. This deal never made sense and has turned Chicago into one of the country’s least driver-friendly cities–which wouldn’t be so bad if Chicago had decent public transportation, which it doesn’t (an issue for another day).

Daley and each of the aldermen who approved this should be thrown out of office. They won’t be, but Chicagoans should keep voicing their displeasure, present some strong resistance at the ballot-box, and let them know that they must be compensated somehow, somewhere for this inconvenience.

For thousands of diabetics across America, the illness is one that is not only promising to their health, but amazingly damaging to their pocketbooks. Even the most generous insurance plans regularly don’t cover the costs of all of the supplies and devices that are wanted to control a diabetic’s blood sugar. If you came here attempting to get a free blood glucose meter hopefully we can help you find what you are looking for.
fortunately , there are a few companies online that offer free blood glucose meters! They’re simply making an attempt to gain patrons through their beneficence, and are praying that sometime in the future the person will remember their brand due to the free blood glucose meter offer. After all , we all remember it when we get a great amount and after all you will need to buy strips so, it’s a good business technique.

Also some of these companies will really call you each month in order to remind you you need to order more supplies. They never ask for your Visa card or social security number. These offers aren’t gimmicks, they’re just brilliant deals waiting to be had.
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.

For most people, when you’re about to have a meal, you set the table, cook up some food, sit down, and eat. Pretty simple.

For Type 1 diabetics, there are a few more steps.

First. Figure out what to eat, making sure it’s a healthy choice, hopefully covering all the food groups. Second, figure out how many carbs are in what you’re about to have. Third, test your blood sugar – prick your finger, draw blood, stick the blood into the test strip and wait 5 seconds to get the reading. 

Based on the number on the screen, determine how many units of insulin are required (or not required) to offset a reading that is too high or too low (a “correction” amount of insulin).

The next step depends on how you give yourself  insulin. For those that are using needles and fast acting insulin, do the math to figure out how many units of insulin are required to offset the food that is about to be consumed.  Then, add that number to the correction insulin. Dial it in to the “insulin pen”,  then pinch the fat somewhere on the body, and inject the insulin.

Since I’m on an insulin pump all I need to do is enter the carbs into the pump and it will automatically calculate the amount of insulin I need, also taking into account any correction insulin.

Once you’ve been a diabetic for a while, all of the above steps are second nature, but, next time you’re about to eat, take a second to think about us. Know that we can never just sit down and eat.  

That’s the real deal with diabetes, one sugar cube at a time.

I was a gentler soul before I knew how to operate

a motor vehicle.  I was a gentler soul before

my friends told me being nice was trite.

one time my brother played a song on the piano

downstairs and I held my head because

it moved me.  one time I woke up and my

legs didn’t work.  my mother cried because

she thought I might never walk again.  my

mother cried because our family fell apart

September of last year.  you sing dirty songs

about me in front of our grandparents.  you

sing like James Brown really well even though

you’re white.  people tell me that I am the spitting

image of my father.  people tell me that God turns

the gears in my body.  big dogs make me feel safe.

big dogs killed my parents’ Chihuahuas, which is

funny because Chihuahuas are annoying.  I still

think about how the orange flowers on Degonia

look in summer.  I still think about the albums

you played in the basement, the places I went

in my head when I heard a man’s voice.

Play 100 Meter
Play 100 Meter

Play 100 Meter Game
100 Meter Game Description : be the best at the 100 meter dash race.
How to Play 100 Meter Game? Press left and right arrow keys rapidly to run.

• This response was also appended to my original post.

To be honest, my first reaction is to be flattered.

That said, I still find his initial essay ludicrous and stuffed with fallacious arguments.  He made many points in response to my own assertions (he lambasted  Carlo Parcelli), but most of them are tangential to a definition of meter.  For example, he points out that I got the title of his essay wrong, true, and that there are typos in my posts, also true.  He accuses me of sending him a possibly virus ridden hate-E-Mail which I don’t remember and which he, conveniently, can’t produce. (I’m calling that one, false.) He also takes issue with how I characterized his arguments. I don’t blame him, but I stand by those characterizations. However, none of this has anything to do with meter itself.

On to his assertions concerning meter.

In the entirety of his response, he provides only two (2) specimens to support his arguments.

In answer to my rhetorical question, ‘…what metrist has ever asserted that meter is composed of just two discrete stresses and that, furthermore, these two stresses are precisely the same no matter the context?’, Dan writes the following:

I will now disprove such by using two definitive texts. The first is from Webster’s Universal Unabridged Dictionary (1964). In reference to meter (meaning poetic metrics, no other usages of the term):

1. (a) rhythm in verse; measured, patterned arrangement of syllables, primarily according to stress and length; (b) the specific rhythm as determined by the prevailing foot and the number of feet in the line; as iambic meter; (c) the specific rhythmic pattern of a stanza as determined by the kind and number of lines.

I don’t see how Webster’s helps Dan’s case. Notice that Webster’s does not assert that meter is composed of two discrete stresses or that they are the same no matter the context.  Dan’s original assertion was that:

“meter is the theory (claiming origin by several cultures) that spoken language consists of 2 primary vocalizations of a sound- i.e.- stressed & unstressed.”

And this definition, as a very general one, isn’t necessarily wrong. But he then calls that definition into question by writing that:

In fact the dualistic notion of mere stressed & unstressed sounds is- in practice by its many proponents- almost always so loose as to be meaningless anyway, as metrics should really redefine its definitions as greater & lower stress(es) (with a plenum of in-betweens), since (obviously) a truly unstressed syllable would be silent.

In other words, (according to Dan) the  “plenum” of stresses available in an accentual language contradicts the notion of “2 primary vocalizations”. But it only contradicts if one assumes that the “2 primary vocalizations” can’t be relative (or widely vary in relation to each other). Schneider’s argument only holds water if the “2 primary vocalizations” are discrete and always the same. But, as I wrote, no metrist, to my knowledge, has ever asserted the same (only, ironically, Dan Schneider). All “theories” of meter recognize that stress is relative and therefore recognize a “plenum” of stresses. They recognize that English is an accentual language, and that within the language’s “plenum” of stresses, one stress will always be relatively strong and one will always be relatively weak.

Webster’s definition in no way bolsters Dan’s contention that meter doesn’t exist. Nowhere does Webster’s definition limit meter to two discrete stresses which are always the same. The Webster’s definition  rightly asserts  that meter is a pattern of stresses (English for example) or lengths (Latin for example).

What is especially curious about Dan’s example is that Webster’s defines meter the way I do(!) and, most importantly, doesn’t question its very existence.

On to Schneider’s next example:

The oldest and most important device of Verse form, meter selects one phonological feature of lang. (stress, pitch, length) and reduces it several levels or degrees in ordinary speech (3 or 4 levels of stress; high, mid, and low pitch; various durations) to a simple binary opposition (‘stress’ vs. ‘unstress’; ‘level’ vs. ‘inflected’ pitch; ‘long’ vs. ‘short’) which may be generalized as ‘marked’ vs. ‘unmarked’.

This is from the New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics. Dan rightly mentions that Princeton’s overview covers several pages. However, he glosses over the implications of this concession by writing:

This is very important to note, because from the start of my essay through its end, I am the person arguing that meter is a reductio ad absurdum, it is not real, and it reduces human speech to a false binary opposition. Princeton proves I’m right on that score, and says so in black and white.

(Never mind that Dan’s own example from Webster’s contradicts his claim that meter is “a reductio ad absurdum” – which is to say, it doesn’t exist.) Well, OK Dan, but, as you intimated, Princeton says a lot more in black and white. It also writes:

The traditional view had always been that m. is an arbitrary pattern imposed on words — that, as Gurney put it, “metrical rhythm is imposed upon, not latent in, sppech” (1880). It seems indubitable that meter is in some sense a filter or grid superimposed on langauge. But 20th century linguistics has shown convincingly that many aspects of poetic form are merely extensions of natural processes already at work in language itself.

One page later, and after much exegesis to support this contention, Princeton closes the section by writing:

But modern metrics also holds that strong syllables outside ictus are “demoted” and weaker syllables under ictus “promoted” under the influence of the meter. Promotion of weak syllables under non-ictus weights and slows the line, adding power. Demotion of stresses under ictus gives a quicker and lighter line. This is not a purely metrical mechanism, it shadows normal phonological process by which alternation of weak and stress, and strong and stronger, is effected atomically in polysyllables.

Apparently Dan either couldn’t be bothered to read this far or conveniently chose to ignore this portion. Princeton, in fact, not only disagrees with Dan but recognizes the binary stress pattern of the English language as a “normal phonological process”. And, by the way, did I mention it does so in black and white? Not only that, but Princeton rightly points out, as I have, that 20th Century linguistics has shown convincingly that many aspects of poetry are “extensions of natural processes already at work in language itself.” The next time Dan claims to be a man of science, take it with a grain of salt.

Dan then goes on, at some length, railing at my characterizations of his argument. None of which, curiously, supports his claim that meter doesn’t exist. He repeatedly refers back to  Websters and Princeton, neither of which support his argument.  Among other things, he writes:

This is really amazing. First, VP spends the bulk of his essay claiming that my claim that meter is a fallacy is wrong, then he cites a study (naturally, the links do not work)…

I just checked the links. They work.

Without, apparently, reading them, he both dismisses and reinterprets the science (which, did I mention, he didn’t read).

More importantly, Dan never counters the example of an artist like Eminem. As I wrote above, Rap is “thumping example” of accentual and accentual syllabic verse.

Dan quotes Princeton out of context, ignores science, and glosses over 8 Mile. He then closes:

As I implied in the piece VP quotes, I was a mediocre formalist. Note the past tense. I am a great poet, formally and in free verse. There are poems of mine that scan perfectly, according to metric nonsense, but not because I was following metric dictates, but because any well musicked poem will, given the reductive aims of meter, scan well. It’s what is in them that matters.

So, according to Dan, meter doesn’t exist but, by gosh(!), when he wants to, he writes meter with genius!

Not that all meter isn’t “nonsense” (but his poem scans perfectly). He’s not following metrical dictates  (it’s just that a “well musicked poem” does the same thing), and not that it’s not nonsense (but it scans well). Never in the annals of “seminal” essays has a more self-contradictory paragraph been written.

I guess that’s what happens when you try to have your cake and eat it too. At the very least, readers shouldn’t be taking advice from a man who claims meter doesn’t exist, then hurriedly, as an afterthought, asserts that he nevertheless writes meter with genius. Makes you wonder who the idiot really is, doesn’t it?

By the way Dan, I prefer – Fool.

In a play like King Lear, he’s the only one who lives.

Smart Meters report ( http://www.bharatbook.com/Market-Research-Reports/Smart-Meters.html ) explores neighborhood-area and home-area communications technologies and standards, defines “basic” versus “advanced” meter capabilities, and provides detailed market forecasts by technology and world region. Key vendors, standards, and deployments are profiled, offering a comprehensive window into the dynamic market for smart metering.

Electricity metering is undergoing its greatest transformation since the first meter was installed more than 120 years ago. Smart Metering, integrating advanced communications with energy measurement, is on the front lines of Smart Grid deployments, promising major energy savings by changing how and when customers use electricity. Major utilities worldwide, enticed by savings and prodded by governments, are embarking on wholesale replacement of over 45% of the North American and European installed base by 2015, breaking the traditional 15-20 year meter replacement cycle. This represents an unprecedented — and time limited — opportunity for meter and communications suppliers as a projected $19.5 billion of smart meters are deployed worldwide between 2010 and 2015.

While smart metering energy, climate, and operating benefits may be common around the world, the communications technologies, standards, and regulatory environments are not. Multiple proprietary and semi-standard solutions exist for a “network of networks” linking smart meters and consumers’ in-home devices into a cohesive energy infrastructure, but vendors, utilities, governments, industry associations, and standards bodies are all exerting different influences in each region. This report forecasts that the worldwide smart meter market will experience an aggressive 19% CAGR through 2015, but underneath regional waves of growth, peaks and valleys will likely have disproportionate impacts on industry players.

Key questions addressed:

* What are Smart Meters, the different types, and how and when will they be deployed?
* What are the key Smart Meter communications technologies, and how will they evolve?
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* What are the key policy, technology, and economic risks impacting the Smart Meter market evolution?

Who needs this report?

* Advanced Metering Infrastructure hardware and software vendors
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* Standards development organizations

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Contact us at :
 
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We’ll have solar energy when the power companies develop a sunbeam meter.

Anonymous

Image Source: http://nancyimperiale.files. wordpress.com

Earlier this week a co-worker mentioned in passing, having read through parts of my book, that some of my work reminded her of E. E. Cummings. She meant this as a compliment and it’s certainly how I took the statement. It’s true I do enjoy Cummings a fair bit. His presentation and rich imagery is quite appealing to me, but moreso it’s the way Cummings’ verse combines the old and new, the traditional and the avant garde to wonderful effect. These are techniques and concerns that I try to approach in my own writing though, admittedly, I’m less on the fringe than was Cummings.

Of all Cummings’ verse perhaps my favourite poem is a short elegy written in a stroke of genius by the poet:

Buffalo Bill’s
defunct
______who used to
______ride a watersmooth-silver
___________________________stallion
and break onetwothreefourfive pigeonsjustlikethat
_________________________________________Jesus

he was a handsome man
_____________________and what i want to know is
how do you like your blueeyed boy
Mister Death

Cummings is brilliant in his use of standard or traditional rhythm. Bill’s prowess as a gun-slinger is presented in two five syllable sections in line six counting out shots made at clay pigeons. Though a free verse poem, this line makes use of trochaics to give a staccato effect that at once bangs out the sound of pistols firing while allowing the line to move along quickly. It’s an excellent example of sound and sense coming together to compliment the portrait of the man. The wonderful sliding elegance of the “s” sounds playing off the i and o vowels of lines four and five present an opposition to the gunfire rapidity. Here we can see Bill mounted high on a beautiful horse whose movements are “watersmooth” (as is its appearance), flowing with the ripple of muscle on bone. This blending of traditional metre with free verse sensibilities creates a magic which echoes the showmanship and class that Buffalo Bill would quite likely have wanted to represent in his Wild West shows.

*E. E. Cummings. 100 Selected Poems. New York: Grove Press, 1994.*

The Question is, what is the obsession with Syllable Count in the Publishing World?

I really like this phrase, “Publishing World”. I’m not ready to admit that publishing is an “industry”. I know that’s a little crazy, but I still have an idealized view of the “Publishing World” compared to say, the Music Industry. Or shall I say the music  industry. There. That’s better.

But okay, I found the following at http://www.kidmagwriters.com/tekneek/poets.htm and I was very reassured, but I want to know what you think.

“In general, rhyming poetry tends to be metrical (regulated counts), although it needn’t be because the focus should be on the number of stressed syllables per line.

Metrical with regulated syllable count:
Roses are red (4)
Violets are blue (4) *Note: violets here has two syllables (VI-lets), and not three (VI-o-lets). More on that in a moment
Sugar is sweet (4)
And so are you (4)

Metrical with stressed feet (but not syllable count):
Down by the seashore (2 beats, 5 syllables)
Bess and I (2 beats, 3 syllables)
stood on the sand (2 beats, 4 syllables)
and looked at the sky (2 beats, 5 syllables).
(from Once Upon a Tide by Tony Mitton)

If you clap to the second one, you clap twice per line (down, seashore, Bess, I, stood, sand, looked, sky).

In most cases, one of the above ways of counting and/or clapping should work as you go along. If at any point the clapping part goes awry, there’s a problem, and you should alert the poet.

And there you have it folks, How to Critique Rhyming Children’s Poems by Kelly R. Fineman.”

So why have so many people (writers, editors, agents – well really not so many – about a dozen writers, one agent and one editor) been making such a big deal about the number of syllables per line in one my stories that I have been working on? No, I’m not going to post the story, I’m currently revising it. (-; And I think that this question can easily be answered without reading the story. The story is a favorite and I’d like to get it right, so please, post your answers to this one! Thanks!

Happy Watts – (www.happywatts.com) Online tool allows householders to monitor energy use and greenhouse gas emissions, thereby reducing consumption and saving money. via The Guardian>>

http://tinyurl.com/thinfilmPVsolar

TV4 har börjat sända dokusåpan Mammas pojkar på torsdagar, och för dem som gillar genren har den blivit en snackis i det lilla formatet att döma av en snabb googling. Konceptet känns igen från exempelvis The Bachelor – dvs en lyxvilla med singelkvinnor som slåss om en ungkarl, eller som producenten Tora Hekscher uttrycker det i Expressen (min kursivering):

- Det centrala är att att de ska passa ihop med killarna men vi vill även ge dem tjejer som de kanske inte har träffat tidigare.

Här finns dock en liten twist: även killarnas mammor är med, och de är såklart välcastade original.

Kvällstidningarna har hittills följt dokusåpan med halvhjärtat intresse men ändå ägnat en egen text åt mamma Susanne, en “ålderslös lady“, som på bred skånska sagt att sonens flickvän ska vara “inte för färgad”, “en tjej som är av europeiskt ursprung i alla fall. Inga stora kulturkrockar, jag tror inte det är så bra i längden”.

Läsarna blir inte så mycket mer övertygade när hon försöker förklara i Expressen att hon syftade på hårfärg och inte hudfärg. Och det blir onekligen bra tv när mamma Susanne skruvar sig när hon i programmet pressas av två av flickorna som vågar konfrontera potentiella svärmor. Tjejerna understryker att Sverige är ett multikulturellt land och frågar om hon även syftar på “färgade som beter sig väldigt svenskt” eller om hon har en särskild kategori för dem. (Något som kanske hade varit värt en följdfråga i sig, vadå bete sig svenskt, liksom).

Mamma Susannes skånska är för övrigt skrämmande lik Anna Ankas, som man kan höra här.

Gott så. Det är skillnad på hur kritiska man kan begära att medier är mot makthavare kontra skönhetskonsulter från Höllviken – eller barnskötare från Angered. För Susanne är inte ensam om rasbiologiska åsikter i programmet trots att hon är den enda som får stå till svars för dem. Även mamma Naima har lik i garderoben, vilket man kan se ungefär nio och en halv minut in i detta klipp på tv4 play.

Som MoM tidigare skrivit så undrar vi om personer med invandrarbakgrund kommer lättare undan i medierna än etniska svenskar, om de uttrycker dåligt underbyggda åsikter som har med invandring eller rasism att göra.

Självklart ska journalister behandla alla lika och Expressen borde ha frågat mamma Naima på precis samma sätt som mamma Susanne om vad hon egentligen menar med att det är otänkbart med en somalisk flickvän åt sonen Bobby. Sådan behandling underblåser föreställningar om etniska minoriteters särart för att inte tala om att det är frånstötande att det får passera okommenterat för de svensk-somaliska tittarna, varav minst en kommenterat på TV4:s hemsida.

Rasistiska kommentarer till trots (eller tack vare?) är förstås castingen väldigt lyckad av TV4. Naima har fått en ansenlig fanclub ute på nätet som tycker att hon är “ball” och “skön” och hennes stolta presentation av sin son Bobby har fått flera att lägga in facebook-kommentarer på TV 4 play. Hennes beskrivning av drömsvärdottern som lång, smal, storbystad oskuld skapar roade reaktioner, liksom klippen där hon trots att hon själv är uppenbart generad ändå frågar ut tjejerna om de är oskulder eftersom det för henne innebär en mindre risk för att de ska vara otrogna mot hennes älskade son.

Situationen Naima/Bobby blir också väldigt spännande eftersom han gör lågmält men kärleksfullt motstånd mot mamma och säger ifrån på skarpen när hon frågat ut flickorna på om de är oskulder.

Bobby trotsar i tredje programmet mammas uppmaningar om att satsa på den syrianska tjejen och väljer den han tycker bäst om, som råkar vara etnisk svensk. Genom hans och mammans dispyter blir det uppenbart för den som inte vet något om syrianer att de också är individer med olika åsikter som inte kan dras över en kam – inte så självklart i svensk tv som man kan tro.

Dessutom tillåts den syrianska tjejen Sara förklara att det är den naturligaste saken i världen för många syrianer att vara oskuld tills man gifter sig, på ett så självklart sätt att hela frågan undermineras.

Eftersom Bobbys/Naimas käbbel som övergår till arabiska föredömligt nog textas blir det språket till trots dessutom en för alla relaterbar diskussion mellan en irriterad son och en överbeskyddande mamma, istället för en med två obegripliga “araber”.

Här finns en sak som är värd att ta i beaktande för malliga SVT som i år så nöjt plockade hem alla Kristallen utom en (Carina Bergs): hur kommer det sig att TV4 har en så bred etnisk mångfald i så gott som alla sina program, utan att ens göra en poäng av det? Och hur kommer det sig att TV4 trots sina mallade format bättre lyckas framställa invandrare som individer istället för Invandrare än vad SVT någonsin gjort?

TV4:s Let’s Dance, Idol, Förkväll, Körslaget, Mammas pojkar och Oskyldigt dömd är bara några exempel på detta. Bonde söker fru är undantagen men MoM tvivlar inte en sekund på att produktionsbolaget Meter film & television gjort sitt yttersta innan de gett upp. Meter har trots allt lyckats hitta flera kvinnliga bönder samt en bög-bonde som var singel och dessutom kunde tänka sig att vara med i tv, något som borde vara lika statistiskt sällsynt som tv-kåta singelbönder som tillhör en etnisk minoritet.

Väg detta mot den obefintliga mångfalden i SVT:s Skavlan, Livet i Fagervik, Här är ditt liv, På spåret eller Så ska det låta. Kan svaret vara så banalt som att TV4 inser att det finns reklampengar att hämta om även den sista femtedelen av befolkningen känner sig inkluderad i programmen?

KM