A Magnificent™ Birthday Tribute to His Magnificence™

Welcome to Le Clown‘s birthday celebration bonanza!  This is only one of a series of posts brought to you by The Ringmistress, me, and many other bloggers to be discovered later.

I’m not even going to try to match the level of spectacular that Le Clown reached in his birthday post for me.  I know when I’m beat.  So I decided to switch things up.

As most of you know, Le Clown is a rabid fan of Star Wars.  More specifically, he’s a rabid fan of all things Sith.  Knowing this, I thought it would be nice to compose a special birthday haiku for him in the Sith language*:

Nice, right?

Then it occurred to me that to commemorate the birthday of such a magnificent™ soul, I should do something more grand and extravagant—something more befitting Le Clown.  After much meditating, pondering, tinkering, and ice cream eating, I came up with this:

This is the very first video I’ve ever done.  It took me ages to figure out how to do it, but I did it just for Le Clown.  I assume that George Lucas has already viewed it and is now curled up in the fetal position weeping over what could have been.

To my partner in crime and my best guy after Mr. Weebles:  May your 43rd year bring you health, happiness, and prosperity.  May you have much peace, love, and joy.  And may you have a metric assload of poutine.

So, as I said at the beginning, this is part of a whole celebration series.  There are two additional things before you can move on to the next post. First, I need to give you a letter as part of a password that Sara devised.  Second, I need to point you in the direction of the next blogger.

It’s diffiCult to Come up with a Clever way to provide a Clue about the seCret letter without aCtually Coming out and telling you or saying it aCCidentally.  Maybe if I ConCentrate and foCus you’ll magiCally piCk up the psychiC vibes.

As for your next blog visit, I present the following hints for your consideration:

Your fellow Canuck, she’s off the hook
She’s 5’9″ and lookin’ fine
Funny as hell, we know her well
She’s the bees’ knees, if you please

Now go and forth and enjoy.  Happy birthday, my friend.

*English translation:
It’s Eric’s birthday
Cake, presents, celebration
All that festive crap

Happy 4th of July from Dr. Seuss and Abraham Lincoln

This was inspired by Mooselicker, who mentioned both Dr. Seuss and Abraham Lincoln in a comment on my last post.  It gave me the idea to rework the Gettysburg Address as a Dr. Seuss poem.  I like to think Lincoln would have appreciated it.  And the message is just as relevant today as it was in 1863.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

T’was eighty and seven years past, so they say
That our founders created the US of A

With all of us equal!  The Wuggles!  The Fuzzins!
And even our naughty Confederate cousins!

Now there’s a war and it’s bad and it’s sad
But a time will soon come when we’ll all be quite glad

That our nation still stands and our country’s still here
And we’ll all drink a toast with a mug of Sneetch beer

These bravest of soldiers did not die for naught
We need a do-over to do what we ought

So let’s have no more of this Civil War folly
And remember our government’s purpose, by golly

Of people!  By people!  For people!  Yes!
But right now this country’s one heckuva mess

I want for this country a sort of rebirth
So all these nice freedoms don’t perish from Earth.

Weebles Poetry Slam #2!

Before we start with the festivities, I’d like to wish all my Canadian friends a happy Canada Day weekend.  Enjoy!

And now, it’s time for our next Weebles Poetry Slam!  For those of you who have joined us since our last event, here’s a recap of the highlights of that evening.

This time around I’d like to open it up to everyone, not just the Weebles.  Everyone is invited to participate and share a poem.  All submissions are welcome—freeform, limerick, couplet, doublet, sonnet, haiku, anything you like. It can be silly, serious, or somewhere in between. Doesn’t matter. Just bring it.

I’ll start us off:

Mary had a little lamb
Then she had a little ham
Followed by a little jam
And then she had cramps.

Now it’s your turn!

Mundane haiku

I feel the need to express myself through poetry today. They always say that whether you’re writing prose or poetry, you should use your own experiences as your guide. So here goes.

I ran out of milk
I had to run to the store
Need milk for coffee

I bought six items
Or maybe it was seven
I don’t remember

Then I came back home
I brewed a pot of coffee
And added some milk

Today’s hot dead guy for your enjoyment

Rupert Brooke

Submitted for your approval is Mr. Rupert Brooke, an English poet who died all too young, at the age of 27. He enlisted in the Royal Navy at the start of the First World War and died of sepsis while en route to Gallipoli in 1915.

Some of Brooke’s poetry was similar to that of English war poets Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfrid Owen, but much of his earlier work was more along the lines of Romantic poets like Keats. Today Brooke is not very well known but at the time he had a cult following. Winston Churchill was a great admirer of Brooke’s work, and after Brooke’s death he eulogized him thusly: “The voice has been swiftly stilled. Only the echoes and the memory remain; but they will linger.”

But my favorite observation about Brooke comes from one of our other favorite hot dead guys, William Butler Yeats, who described him as “the handsomest young man in England.”

Please enjoy another hot dead guy

It’s been a rotten week so far, so I thought I would cheer myself up with another hot dead guy.

William Butler Yeats

As I’ve said before, I have a thing for Irish men. I also have a thing for men who wear glasses. If I ever find a photo of a hot Irishman wearing glasses and some sort of military uniform, I’m pretty sure my head will explode.

Yeats was one of the most prolific and versatile poets of his time, and was the first Irish poet to win the Nobel Prize. He was also one of the driving forces behind the Irish Literary Revival at the turn of the 20th century—his poetry helped shape a new national identity and inspired the Irish people to take a greater interest in their heritage and culture. Later in his life Yeats immersed himself in politics, serving for six years as a senator in the newly formed Irish Free State. But he continued his writing throughout his time in office—he created some of his best-known works during this period. He died in 1939 at the age of 73.

It’s too bad he isn’t alive right now, otherwise I’d ask this fine-looking gentleman to be my special guest at our next Weebles Poetry Slam. I’d have the best arm candy of anyone in the room.

Weebles Poetry Slam!

We had quite a turnout for the First Annual Weebles Poetry Slam last night. There were some extraordinary performances—this was truly spoken-word artistry at its best.

For those of you who couldn’t attend, I’m going to share a few of the poems that drew the most raves.

First, Ebenezer’s twist on the classic limerick was both mesmerizing and alarming:

There once was an old man named Smee
Who spent his whole life on the sea
But one tragic day
A shark came his way
And ate him

Lionel brought down the house with this stirring anthem, but the judges felt that his piece sampled too heavily from The Prodigy to qualify for a prize:

Change my pitch up
Smack my bitch up
Scratch my itch up
Rip my stitch up
Flip my switch up
Burn my witch up
Change my pitch up
Smack my bitch up

And Henrietta made the audience cry with her moving haiku:

I want to lie down
But I always pop back up
Those Hasbro fuckers

All in all it was a great evening, and next year will surely be even better!