O, Turnberry!

Tom Watson just made the cut at the British Open - at age 64, the oldest golfer ever to do so. Five years ago, at age (one moment, hmm, 64 minus 5 is...) 59, he was poised over an 8 foot putt on the 18th and final hole at Turnberry, one of the oldest and most venerated venues of the Open. Make it and he wins. That putt was the culmination of an extraordinary four day run which saw him turn back time to lead a field of world class players fully a generation younger, all vying for one of golf's most treasured trophies. He had won the Claret Jug as a much younger man, but this was a miraculous moment - make the putt, and he becomes the oldest player ever to win this or any other major tournament, by a long shot. This poem was written by Whirled HQ in the aftermath, and is reposted here in honor of his making the cut in 2014. It is best read out loud, in one's best Scottish brogue.


O turnberry ye hardy hunk of tortured scottish turf
the wind and sea and weather pound thy earth
like fists of duffers flailing

O turnberry ye thirsty sponge for tears and blood
blood of fools, blood of kings, blood of bogeyed holes
blood seeped and supple in your dirt

O turnberry your claws sunk deep in the shallows of the outer Firth of Clyde
you've your own moon, turnberry, a half farthing rising in the pounding sea
we call it the Ailsa Craig, fat and edged in the sinking sun

O Turnberry your winds do twist and thrash and overturn
laughing at gravity herself
tossing a dimpled ball on a celtic whim

O merciless Turnberry, ye spiteful course
tom watson slashes through your puzzled links
tom watson aged 59 stands atop turnberry aged eons

O Turnberry summoning gales of inevitability
the odds stacked against goodness and mercy and truth of heart
favoring the brutal sea, the lumpy heaving foam-frothed sea

O Turnberry ye exquisite Scottish poison
poised on the 18th hole, old tom watson needs an 8 foot putt
to win the Claret Jug and eternity, immune to wind and war

O Turnberry! Old Tom Watson!
good god man, it's an eight foot putt to immortality
gird thy loins, stroke true, the cup is in your grasp!

O good god, turnberry, did you rise in green envy?
brook naught that's straight and true?
Turnberry
reserves immortality for
Turnberry

by the boy poets, flailing in ecstatic denial

They made us write a poem using any of the following words:

amber cloven beaten grating  bump shift craven  solicit ready mad leave left crazy shift frog snake eyes flake inner mind over under vague nebulous hazy gauzy cleave verboten misbegotten rage slashes grievously across a golf ball crafty left hander  buzzard manhole shithole labyrinth marathon rubbish beaver strawberry mind fink enthrall compose radish verboten syntactical navel naval switchboard flog monstrosity garbage posthumorously harridan pneumatic vixen jaded razored buttery  ragged corruptible veal scoundrel ambient polar vortex mythology flamboyant summery fetch rampant plebeian ambidextrous unicycle unbidden

===================

. . .  so we wrote two. 

Poem #1

=============================================

eyes gauzy

crafty left hander

strawberry beaver

verboten vague buttery

polar vortex

jaded razored radish

ambient veal ready

snake eyes shift

nebulous shithole

ambient scoundrel

unbidden, rampant

flamboyant inner raven

slashes grievously across

veal garbage

mad mind fink

marathon grating

Poem #2

==========================================

the summery nebulous

polar vortex

unicycled unbidden

across the naval switchboard

the plebeian flakes,

all jaded and craven

fetch misbegotten rage

buzzards enthrall

the razored radish

vixens cleave

to the strawberry labyrinth

top nine lobstervations from outside the general area:

1. everything’s all fucked up because of sex.
2. the jury is still out on plywood, but how right can twelve people be?
3. life is a job whether you have one or not.
4. grow more tumbleweed.
5. waffle irons are so decisive.  
6. numbers drive the world economy, and they don’t even exist.
7. camping is so in tents.
8. seek the plethora.
9. divide your observations into groups of eleven.
10. cheese becomes cheesier over time because it just does.

No Background to Check

While applying for a job as a Semi Conductor on the CSX rail lines it was discovered that  Hiram Flatporm had no background to check. CSX HR spokesmodel E.L. Fandorth told company CEO Leyburn Whatscorthy that they had run numerous background checks to no avail. "Actually we found 2 things: 1) Flatporm owns a 1997 pre-GW Bush slant 6 dual aught 40 hemi head Chevron Alongonqin with one broken tail light and 2) there was a little bit of background noise in the lower left of the photograph he submitted with his employment application. Other than that, zippo. Pretty amazing because we Googled the hell out of this guy".

News of the Week

Item: Area man "plots" world domination with $91 tax refund. Leonard Stift of Scituate, MA, assistant zamboni operator at the Wee Willy skating rink situated just outside Scituate, felt his entrepreneurial spirit soar as he softened the ice in decreasingly concentric circles in between periods of the raucous and tightly fought peewee hockey playoff game last saturday. Oblivious to the blood seeping onto the ice from the parents' booster section behind the home goal, Leonard dreamed of what he would do with the $91 dollars in tax rebates that the President of the United States himself had promised would be in his mailbox sometime within the next three years if The President felt like it. First, Leonard mused, he would buy his own zamboni and move to Mexico under a little-known NAFTA provision. There, he would tap into the heretofore unrealized hopes and desires of the indigenous peoples and lead an economic revival that would sweep south, as newly enfranchised zamboni operators rolled over coca fields in decreasingly concentric circles, inspiring everypeople to toil together for the everyweal. And that was just the beginning.... meanwhile, just as the 6-8 year olds glided out to cut fresh lines in the newly virgin rink, a continent away Virginia Smooth looked out over the Pacific and asked her billionaire husband what he would do with his tax rebate, and Mr. Smooth shrugged and replied, "I dunno. Rent some movies, go see a hockey game, whatever..."

crayons in the can

can

do anything

crayons in the hand

can

do something

Sometimes the non-tourist attractions, 

the ones that go unnamed and unnoticed, 

can be more entertaining than the ones people flock to see. 

Here's a sampling from the other side of town:

 Sun's Laundry Expo

Model Tobacco

Nice Crockery

Office Politics

that's me on the fortieth floor
second window from the left
peering out at nothing in particular 
I used my personal politcial power
to get a window office
to see the sun, see other buildings
see people scrambling below
people glad to finally see the sun, any sun
locked within a nippy, chilly, over cooled cubicle
worse than the blackest hole of Calcutta
(except for the cold)
worse than The Snake Pit. Remember the movie?
where Olivia de Havilland found herself 
in an insane asylum 
and couldn't remember how she got there
caught up in the bureaucracy of the institution
the regimentation of the staff
some brutal and ignorant
a few kindhearted
most just killing time
cubicle time

The Chase

Words of the Week

Pigadillo: Eating when nobody’s looking. 

Jambled: When traffic calming makes you nervous.

Cobblement: Wondering why you bought those shoes.

Endophasm: The part of the thing where you’re excited the thing might be almost over.

Diglion: The sub-atomic particle that makes the universe fall in love with itself.

Cartogemy: When your sense of direction insists the map is wrong.

Shulquess: Asking for suggestions but hoping there aren’t any. 

Road Trip: Michigan or Bust!

Confederate Breastworks (!?!?!)

The fact that it speaks for itself goes without saying. 

Tagging at Highs Restaurant, Monterey, Virginia

Welcome to West Virginia

Waiting for Session

A brief interlude between sessions at the Reusing Indigenous Clay Modalities Conference at the Fort Pierre National Grasslands Conference Center outside of Pierre, South Dakota allows attendees to network with one another. Conference co-chairperson, Addison Cuthwinning, said this years conference was one of the best ever. Said Cuthwinning: "This year was one of the best ever! Attendees were able to sit and listen to presenters give presentations about various topics related to Reusing Indigenous Clay. Some of the presenters used computers and powerpoint presentations and attendees were thrilled at the lifelike images of things we do with clay and things we would like to do with clay in the future. So exciting! There were so many good ideas!"

News of the Week

Item: French Lick, Indiana man conveys universal truth to world. In response to the unending deluge of cosmic bullshit raining on his freaking midwestern parade every freaking day, Regis Phlunge calved a vision so spontaneously rhythmic and driven by a melody so profound, with lyrics so apt, that small river fauna faced true north and barked soulfully. Driven by instinct, and barely able to comprehend the profundity of the moment, Regis frankly elucidated the most matter-of-fact and comprehensible explication of the eternal mysteries that has yet to be recorded in human civilization. It was really swell.

Item: Live from Brazil, 

in the  most exciting World Cup Soccer Game to date, 

here's what happened:

The guy kicked the ball to the other guy who kicked the ball to another guy who kicked the ball to another guy who kicked the ball back to the first guy. The ball hit the first guy in the head and then it hit another guy in the head and then another guy kicked the ball to another guy who kicked the ball to another guy who picked it up with his hands and kicked the shit out of it. It was all very thrilling, practically unbelieveable in its tension and unremitting athleticism, on and on with guys kicking the ball to other guys for like six hours. The final score turned out to be just as wildly exciting as the entire game: 1 - 1. 

Waking Dream #1


by Calvin Burgamy

The Staging Area

what’s missing in your life

is a good and proper staging area

don’t just take clothes out of the dryer

fold ‘em and put ‘em away

that’s for losers

they belong in a good and proper staging area

an interim area, so to speak, where they lay

waiting for a drawer or closet

sometimes the wait is very long

we, the royal we, wouldn’t be where we are today

without a staging area

to buffer the friction between

a machine and a closet

between the known and the unknown

earth and sky

action and inaction

and those places in between

like inertia, nebraska

torpor, maine

languor, ohio

keg, georgia

now and then

and apathy, texas

buffer yourself, my good man

in a good and proper staging area

it will temper your quills

and hip-ta-phi your Christmas music

Favorite Obscure Wikipedia Articles, Part XVI

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dehesa_%28pastoral_management%29

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:FewestRevisions

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tacit_knowledge

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quad_Cities

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium

BlueGreen

The Argument

Wingingit

Whirled at Work

5 Days In Dallas

Incident at 30,000 Feet

Imagine my surprise when flying at 30,000 feet and traveling at or near 500 mph I look out the window and there is this dude's head. The head is screaming but of course I can't hear it because the head is outside and AirTran has inexplicably installed engines right next to the windows as well. So I am trying to mouth to the head that I can't hear a word he is saying. This exchange goes on for about 5 minutes when I decide to call the stewardess and get someone in authority to see what the fuck is going on. So I start to push the button and the head sees what I'm doing and starts shaking itself violently from left to right in the classic "NO!" style.  I "hear" what he is "saying" so I stop myself. I  look  around the plane to see who else is scoping out the floating head situation but no one seems to notice. I look out once more and shrug my shoulders and he nods in silent agreement and slowly disappears into the gray fog that surrounds the plane.