I've just moved the ZP to a new web host. If I'm wildly successful, you won't notice any difference. But if you do notice any changes, please tell me.

Looks like I've got a lot of catching up to do!

/m291 Sorry to hear about Boots and Moe, Francine. Didn't we do a little whack dialog years ago in Moe's honor? (I've still got it somewhere, I think.)

/m292 Gesundheit!

/m293 Look, hello, the last thing I need is another wedding invitation. Cake, cake, cake! I'm sick to death of it - 'ya hear? The very next wedding that I get invited to I'm gonna eat the little plastic bride and groom, not the cake. Don't _make_ me do it...

/m294 Good to hear from you again, Will! I agree about paying for gas and electricity. So I've got a plan. I'm gonna plug one end of my extension cord into the other to get free electricity. OK, I'll confess that I haven't figured out yet where to plug in the leaf blower, but I'm certain it's a tractable problem; I've applied for a grant from DARPA.

hello, I want one of those water-powered homes; I'm sick of paying for gas and electricity. However, chorines, even the bleached blondes, probably would process wedding invites very nicely.

People cut down trees to make paper. wedding invitationsHence, in order to print a large number of wedding invitations a lot of trees are cut. When trees are cut, the environment is damaged severely. Hence, wedding invitationwe must not cut down trees as it is the best source of oxygen not only for us but also for all living creatures to survive. Regarding usage of the recycled paper, it is a well known fact that it saves 7000 gallons of water and this amount of water is enough to power a home for six months. Hence, we must make use of recycled paper for the purpose of wedding invitations. unique wedding invitationsIt is also important to confirm before buying that recycled paper is made up of recycled material. It must be Processed Chorine Free which means that there should be no usage of bleach in the production.

zaK40Z

/m290 Their passing has left a hole in our lives and now and then something reminds me of them and I get a sinking feeling. Time will heal though I'll always miss them. I know what you're going through with the passing of Mollie but she and the other furry angels did brighten our lives for a span. I don't think we'll get another pet because Rick will be retiring next year and we hope to travel. Sending good wishes your way, my cyber-friend :-)

/m288 Sam, thank you so much for thinking of me. I'm at the point now where I only cry about my Mollie 2-3 times a week, instead of (at least) 2-3 times a day, so I am making progress. I hope you and your family (human and pets) are well.

/m289 Francine, I am so very sorry to hear of your heartbreaking double loss. I know how much you loved your boys and can only imagine how difficult a blow that's been for you, especially since I've been so grateful I still have my Rainer with me. I hope your loving memories of Moe and Boots can give you comfort. I appreciate your sharing the link to that story. It was such a touching and heartfelt expression that reminds us all of us dog lovers why we feel the way we do. I know that you might not be ready yet, but how do you and Rick feel about getting another canine companion?

Karin, I had to recently put down Boots and Moe about a month apart and when I came across this article about the dignity of old dogs I thought I'd share with you, knowing that you also experienced a loss:

http://www.theweek.com/article/index/89914...s_are_the_best_dogs

Edited by author 06-09-2009 01:49 PM
/m287 Thanks for the link, Karin. I enjoyed that one.

BTW, I saw "Marley and Me" recently which made me think of your loss of Mollie. I hope you're beginning to feel a little better by now.

Hey guys, I read this article and thought my fellow word lovers would find it interesting as well: http://www.nypost.com/seven/05162009/posto...t_169585.htm?page=0.

Francine,

Thanks for your kind thoughts here & on the other board. I know you are a dog lover too and understand how I'm feeling. :)

Karin, Mollie felt your love and you gave her a good life. My condolences.

/m283 Sam, thanks for the input. Unfortunately I think I'm actually going to have to get a new computer first! This one appears to be in its death throes. Any advice from you or anyone else on a dependable desktop?

I also have some sad news. My beloved Mollie, whom I've spoken of so often through the years, passed away yesterday morning. She had been through some illnesses recently and Sunday morning it was obvious she had worsened quite a bit so we made the decision to end her suffering. She gave us an incredible amount of joy and was a vital part of our family, so we're really down right now. Her little "brother" Rainer was extremely attached to her so he's depressed too. Mark and I are trying to make sure we give him lots to do to keep his mind active and help him bounce back. Fortunately for dogs, they're able to get through this more quickly than humans can.

Edited by author 02-04-2009 06:12 PM
/m281 Sorry it's taken several months for me to get back to you, Beefy. Regarding 213, I was hampered for awhile by the word 'hamper', which to folks around here usually means a thing you put dirty clothes in. However, I looked it up on the Internet somewhere, and it appears that you might have meant what we call a 'picnic basket' here. Anyway, Will seems to have gotten the idea. I tried to continue it just now, but I accidentally ended it in the process. :-( Sorry about that!

/m282 It's great to hear from you again, Karin! As you may have seen, things have been pretty slow around the ZP lately. Regarding browsers, I personally favor Firefox, but Opera is also good, probably even better than Firefox - I'm just in the habit of using Firefox so I tend to stick with it.

Hey all. I know it's been a long time since you heard from me. This last year has been quite rough in a lot of ways, but I'm hoping things will be better in 2009. Hope you guys are all well.

I do need some help from the computer literate among us. I am thinking of switching from IE to another browser and wonder if you have some suggestions. Thanks!

/m280

I had lunch with the Spoonmaster last month. He's had a number of other projects which have now completed, and he was talking about reviving the Spoonbill although, since he'll need to move it to a new server, I didn't get the impression it's imminent.

On ZP 213, I had a vague idea that we'd do four poems, one for each season, six stanzas long, each introducing the next (just because that's how the first one panned out) so I've continued it, but I'm happy to be overruled - at the present rate of contribution, it'll take a decade to cover a year anyway :-)

Well, gang, since the Spoonbill has been out of commission for so long, I decided to post a link to to the ZP on its QT. We'll see what happens.

I also looked around for other venues on the Internet that might be suitable to publicize the ZP, but I didn't immediately find much. So, I'm open to suggestions.

/m277 /m278 Thanks, guys! - I'll pass that on to Helen.

/m277 Hear, hear!

/m275 Thanks, Sam, and good luck with the new job.

One afternoon, I was in the backyard hanging the laundry when an old, tired-looking dog wandered into the yard. I could tell from his collar and well-fed belly that he had a home. But when I walked into the house, he followed me, sauntered down the hall and fell asleep in a corner. An hour later, he went to the door, and I let him out. The next day he was back. He resumed his position in the hallway and slept for an hour.
This continued for several weeks. Curious, I pinned a note to his collar: "Every afternoon your dog comes to my house for a nap. "
The next day he arrived with a different note pinned to his collar: "He lives in a home with ten children - he's trying to catch up on his sleep."
 
I cried from laughter
Sorry, if not left a message on Rules.

Thanks to all who helped on 209. (Good wrap-up, Francine!) As it turns out, 209 wasn't ready in time for my going-away lunch, but I didn't really find an opportunity at that for speechifying anyway.

I started my new job this past week, and it's going well. I've already managed to recruit a new personality there, Mr. Grant Mild. I hope Sam, Grant, and I can become more active again on the ZP soon.

Hey, remember the old days when I used to post favorite poems? Well, in honor of St. Paddy's Day, here's an Irish poem I think is quite lovely:

BROKEN VOWS (translated by Lady Gregory)
 
It is late last night the dog was speaking of you;
the snipe was speaking of you in her deep marsh.
It is you are the lonely bird through the woods;
and that you may be without a mate until you find me.

You promised me, and you said a lie to me,
that you would be before me where the sheep are flocked;
I gave a whistle and three hundred cries to you,
and I found nothing there but a bleating lamb.

You promised me a thing that was hard for you,
a ship of gold under a silver mast;
twelve towns with a market in all of them,
and a fine white court by the side of the sea.

You promised me a thing that is not possible,
that you would give me gloves of the skin of a fish;
that you would give me shoes of the skin of a bird,
and a suit of the dearest silk in Ireland.

It is early in the morning that I saw him coming,
going along the road on the back of a horse;
he did not come to me;
he made nothing of me;
and it is on my way home that I cried my fill.

When I go by myself to the Well of Loneliness,
I sit down and I go through my trouble;
when I see the world and do not see my boy,
he that has amber shade in his hair.

It was On that Sunday I gave my love to you;
the Sunday that is last before Easter Sunday.
And myself on my knees reading the Passion;
and my two eyes giving my love to you for ever.

My mother said to me not to be talking with you to-day,
or tomorrow, or on the Sunday;
it was a bad time she took for telling me that;
it was shutting the door after the house was robbed.

My heart is as black as the blackness of the sloe,
or the black coal that is on the smith's forge;
or as the sole of a shoe left in white halls;
it was you put that darkness into my life.

You have taken the east from me;
you have taken the west from me;
you have taken what is before me and what is behind me;
you have taken the moon,
you have taken the sun from me;
and my fear is great
that you have taken God from me!

/m271 You're welcome and thank <i>you</>. :-)

Francine, thank you for your line on 202 - I just couldn't come up with one I liked - yours is just what I was searching for :-)

Edited by author 03-13-2008 05:30 AM
/m269 Good Lord! If someone were to put that in a movie or novel, it would be considered implausible, to say the least.

Hey, how are all my Ziti friends doing these days? I haven't been checking in too much lately. Been busy.

I was on some other message boards recently where you can post images. I wonder if QT allows that? I'm gonna try. Here goes.

Well, that didn't work. Just gave the link instead of embedding the image.

Just when you think you've heard it all - http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23595533/

/m267 I don't know either -- but I think I'm on the right track.

I'm not sure if Helen found a feeder on 205 or if she was just being...well, you know..."Helen".

/m265 I don't know if 206 allows consecutive contributions, but you've been getting such good results with feeder lines lately that I decided to try fishing for a certain triple rhyme on "Obama". That didn't work out, but I think Francine's line is even better than what I had in mind!

BTW, what are the odds that someone whose first name more-or-less rhymes with a country the U.S. recently went to war with, and whose last name rhymes with the name of the guy who likely made that war politically possible, could ever be a real contender (or "contendah", as Brando would say) for the Presidency? What's that old saw about truth being stranger than fiction?...

The next line I had in mind for ZP204 was "Become a Post-Pre-Raphaelite" - ironic that I, who generally oppose consecutive contributions, was thwarted by the one current poem that doesn't allow them!

Make love, not war!

Drat! :-) I spoke too soon arch. You're back. Google "sildenafils pitapats" ... and you get rinus' pipapats from 12/21/07 [12986] and his sildenafils from 12/24/07 [12992] (the day after I left my "congratulations", naturally :-). It seems to like him!

Tucker

PS: thanks rinus re pitapats comment

/m261 Thanks Tucker! Happy Holidays to you and everyone else here :)

I thanked you on GW arch, but hadn't come over here to do so yet and figured I should. Much appreciate you fixing it. I've had no problems with it lately ... indeed, I haven't seen it pop up at all for quite some time. I also apologize for assumption that it was intentional. I knew some of the folks over here had little use for Gary and were ... irritated ... at GW for, among other things, at least in some cases, actually banning them. When unthunk started showing up I erroneously assumed (like several other "destroy googlewhack" sites on the 'net), you folks were intentionally trying to screw it up. Anyway, again, apologies and thanks. (And I appreciate that you've got an "alternate" site here!) Have a great Christmas everyone. Tuck

/m259 Just a quick follow-up, thunklist.php and all its variations appear to be off the Google index finally, yay! There are a handful of links from the homepage that may still be indexed, but for the most part the thunklist is no longer indexed. If anyone runs into any unthunk pages still on the list let me know.

archaeopteryx

/m257 Tucker, sorry about the frustration and the bad luck with the autos. I've been trying to get the thunklist off Google's index since the relaunch. So far, I have managed to prevent any new indexing of the list except for the homepage and am trying to get Google to remove the cached pages with the list. As Will pointed out, feel free to use the UT-QT or if you would like to contact me personally feel free to use the contact form on unthunk.

Until the relaunch a few months ago, the thunklist had required logging in to view it -- something that prevented Google from indexing it. This had been the practice since Unthunk started in 2004. I certainly did not intend for the thunklist to ever be indexed by Google. Unthunk was created as an alternate outlet for googlewhackers (mostly the folks posting on this board) who to some effect were frustrated with googlewhack. Many of us have continued to post at Googlewhack, and the thunklist was kept hidden from Google to prevent interefering with Googlewhack. The recent redesign allowed the list to be publicly viewable for the first time, but unfortunately it did not adequately prevent Google from indexing it. My apologies again, please bear with me until I can get the list off Google.

archaeopteryx

Tucker, I'm a once-a-week unthunker lately, so I may not experience your frustration. Please visit the UT-QT for more information.

I got really frustrated at unthunk yesterday and blasted it badly on GW. Thought I'd should apologize. I was out of line. I don't know why suddenly unthunk is showing up with such ubiquity recently. But it is by far the worst (most prevalent) list that I have to deal with these days (presumably because we all use a lot of the same words ... but that was true three months ago also and it wasn't a problem then). Mysteries of Google, I guess. Anyway, I apologize for the rant and anyone who took it personally. [Wife badly mangled my truck yesterday and I banged up my car ... very slick out ... and rest of day was just as bad and I was *really* in a rotten mood and it seemed that everything I tried to whack ... "unthunk the list" screwed up ... and I just lost it.] Anyway, figured I owed it to you folks to come over here and apologize also (I apologized on GW). Tucker

Saw something interesting on reddit today:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_self-...ng_words_in_English

Karin et al, I took a look at Spoonbill, and while you can view the poems you can't contribute to them (Not Found message). And they all have contribution dates of at least 6 months ago. On the home page it states the following,

"September 2007: The Spoonbill Generator has been offline for some time - the server was hacked and had to be replaced.
A few changes are currently being made behind the scenes, and there are no live poems just yet, but the Golden Treasury is accessible, and other classic works like The rat Fathom and The Mammary Revival."

I poked around the old SG QuickTopic and found this link to the Orange poem:
http://www.spoonbill.org/poem.php?name=poem&value=orange. And if you type in pegleg instead of orange, you will find the pegleg. But, of course you can't contribute to them.

So, I guess big problems over at Spoonbill. It's too bad, I hope it gets fixed.

Evan, glad you're back here and on Unthunk. Spoonbill seems to be back but our bookmarks for our private pegleg poem doesn't seem to work. Has anyone been able to locate it?

On a totally different subject - who'd thunk that Bubbles would become the Prime Minister one day? I sure didn't see that one coming!

/m250 Thanks F, and hi again everyone. Please don't take offense Sam, Arch, but I hadn't Zitied or Thunked for so long that I kinda forgot about it all. It's nice to be back. Life had a very hectic stretch there for a while, but I'll try to improve my attendance from now on. Is Spoonbill still going along? I'll have to check into that, too.

/m251 Some kind of glitch, Will. Reminds me of that SNL skit, "The Thing That Wouldn't Leave."

How many votes does it take to end zp198?

/m249 Your contribution was just fine, Will. No need to modify.

Hey, notice that Evan is back? Welcome back, Evan.

ZP201 should be fun. If anyone has ideas to modify any of my contributions, let me know here. We can collaborate.

/m247 ;-)

/m264 Interesting article! Perhaps I should rant about it ;)

Edited by author 10-30-2007 11:43 PM
Speaking of rants - http://www.slate.com/id/2176968/

I miss your rants too Francine - thankfully yours are quite entertaining without resorting to profanity. :-)

/m244 Thanks, Sam! Yeah, I decided to edit it because it was just another long ramble about stuff I've already posted many a time. How much I enjoy the ziti and the people here, how I've gotten used to the irregular frequency of contributions which I used to rant about, blah, blah.
  BTW, thanks again for all the work you've put into this site. You and arch both (per his Unthunk site). I sure appreciate the Ziti and Unthunk. Whiles away much of my late night leisure time in a most enjoyable and creative way :-)

Edited by author 10-26-2007 11:45 PM
Thanks for the kind words, Kids. (BTW, F, I liked the first version of /m242 better. ;-) As I'm sure you could tell, I was rather discouraged when I wrote /m240, but I later figured out how to manually delete spam pages on a mass-production basis. (Ain't tabbed browsing great?) So, I was eventually able to delete all of 'em. More pages have since appeared, but I've gotten so I kindda enjoy deleting them and blocking their zombie-machine authors every now and then: it's the same sort of misplaced thrill one gets stepping on a cockroach--though without the yin/yang of the sickening-mess/gratifying-crunch, of course. And at least it's more useful than reading Slashdot.

I've researched methods of preventing these things, and it looks like some of them wouldn't be too hard to get going. One of the most interesting involves "captchas". (Try out this--it's a lotta fun for about 15 minutes.) The easiest thing, though would be just to move the Zitipedia to a new private location; I'll probably do that soon after I grow bored with stomping the cockroaches. And when I do, I'll be sure to tell everybody here the new address so you folks will be able to go back to ignoring it properly. ;-)

And so say all of us!

Edited by author 10-13-2007 01:48 PM
/m241 I'll second that.

/m240 Sam, sorry to hear about the Zitipedia. I confess that I had pretty much forgotten about it. It was a good idea, and I'm sorry it didn't work out.

I want to thank you again for putting your time and resources into developing and maintaining the Ziti site for us. Even though my contributions tend to be sporadic, I really do value it and the interaction it provides with all my fellow versifiers. :-)

My Friends,

Although I originally had high hopes for the Zitipedia as a gizmo that would provide a very flexible facility for the Greater Good of the High Cause of the Creation of Nonsense, it turned out to be of exactly zero interest to all but me. Although I was a little disappointed by that, I have always made it a point not to try to force anything on anybody, so I didn't say much about it. And the Zitipedia wasn't costing me anything so I decided to simply let it sit, with the hope that some new Zitizen might come along one day who _would_ get interested in it.

Unfortunately, I have discovered recently that a large number of "link spamming" pages have been added to the Zitipedia by automated systems originating, evidently, in China. I then began a small personal crusade to manually delete these pages and ban their authors from the Zitipedia forever. However, that has turned out to be impractical due to the numerousity of such pages. Although it would be possible for me to automate that process in some way--or even to just blow the whole Zitipedia database away and start over--it simply doesn't make sense for me spend that much time/effort on something that no one was using anyway. And although pages that nobody is reading can't do any harm, I find their very existence offensive. Therefore, I plan to dismantle the Zitipedia in the next week or so, as time permits.

Although I enjoy the Age of the Internet as much as anyone--and I truly value the cyber-friendships I have made with all of you as a result!--a sad implication of this glorious technology is that it allows vandals to operate from the other side of the world on a large scale, via robots. (As an example, we need look no further than /m239.) Oh, and there's also the problem of "cracks" that my poor corporeal friends at Iowegian International Corporation have to fight--that actually costs them Cash Dollars American. (Search for "ScopeFIR" and you'll find more "crack" pages than pages about the product itself.) I'm not sure what the answer to all that is--presumably, there isn't any, just as there isn't any for the age-old, if slightly more benign, vandalism of TP-ing. However, I, for one am tired of pulling the cyber-TP out of the digital trees. So, to all of you automated Chinese cybervandals out there who aren't reading this right now because you're too damn stupid, I can only say, "You win".

That said, the pome mechanism of the Ziti Project still seems to be free from any form of cybervandalism, so although I haven't had much enthusiasm for writing pomery myself lately, I'll be glad to keep that part of it going as long as I can.

Sam

If you want do delete your site from our spam bases - just email us with domain of your site:

abuse-here@inbox.ru

thank you!

/m217 et seq. and yet ZP 199 archived like a dream

/m236 Sam, I last went to Grant's Farm and the Arch ten years ago, lots of fun! My wife and the boys were just in that neck of the woods a few weeks ago -- they had a blast at the science center. She grew up about an hour from St. Louis in Illinois; they were back visiting her folks.

archaeopteryx

/m232 I guess my own theory is that it's a simply a bug. Or, as Napoleon so aptly put it, "Never ascribe to malice that which can adequately be explained by incompetence."

I haven't had a chance to dig into the problem yet (my dopey corporeal just got back from vacation in which he rode up the still-working half of a certain arch that's even more famous than our own good archaeopteryx), but I hope to do so soon. Oh, and he also has to recover from receiving two free beverages each from two separate Anheuser-Busch sites: Grant's Farm (at which he bought both a t-shirt and a hat, Arch...) and the main brewery.

Also, I think the disappearance of names in the voting might be due it showing only the last five votes. I'm not sure, though--I'm pretty rusty on the inner workings of the ZP by now.

Hello! great idea of color of this siyte!

/m233 Hi Karin, my voted had also disappeared. I went back just now and chose: "Change your vote", "Continue section", and "End work and archive" and my vote was added back in. I'll see if Howly Ellen can add a vote to end as well.

/m232 Francine, I don't know who Matthew is, but I guess you missed my /m230. I was hoping someone would add a final line to this stanza and then I'll vote as Mark to end it. I just checked out it out and I notice that now my vote (as Karin) to end it seems to have disappeared. I have no idea how that happened. Also, Sam, I tried to log back in as Mark so I could try voting to end it now even though it's unfinished and I already forgot the password I created for him, not to mention which security question I chose. Is there any way you can find my password and email it to me, please? Is this complicated enough yet?!?

/m230 Well, I also voted again to end and that didn't work. I'm assuming some hacker/troll by the name of Matthew/Mark got in and tried to mess with the mechanism to see if he could keep a pome from ending and it looks like he's succeeded.

/m230 Good idea, K!

Ok, here's my contribution to the murder, most foul, of zp198. I have registered Mark and contributed (as him) the first line of a new section. If we can try finishing it up quickly, I will then add Mark's vote to end the work. Just a thought.

Edited by author 08-04-2007 01:58 AM
/m228 Wow, I am really losing it! I absolutely don't remember adding that. I s'pose now you guys will start giving me "credit" for all the lines/jokes/rhymes that didn't quite work out and no one wants to claim. ;-)

/m226 Yup, that one was yours. I zapped and added it back (which I can only do in my own name, so I used that form to give you proper credit) in the hopes that that would solve the problem. Alas, it didn't.

The ZP machine has been unchanged for quite some time now, so I'm surprised that we would see this problem for the first time now. (Or _have_ we seen it before?) About the only thing about 198 that stands out as unusual is that it was started by "matthew".

Edited by author 08-03-2007 03:13 PM
/m226 Karin, the one I received was really like new. EDIT: I checked my amazon account, the seller was belles-books, FYI.

/m224 Arch, what kind of condition is the "used - like new" stuff in?

/m225 Sam, is one of the things you tried to end 198 submmitting "Tiramisu" under my name? I am quite fond of tiramisu but when I saw it there I got kind of confused, as I don't remember doing it! Then I read your post and perhaps put it all together.

/m218 I'm just glad it's not the Son of Sam. ;-)

/m219 I've tried a couple of things, but have yet to find the right wooden stake. I probably won't have time to dig in and fix it for at least a week, but I'll try to get it killed soon.

/m224 Garsh, arch, I though the days where you could get something for a penny (plus four bucks for S+H) were long gone.

/m223 I ordered it from Amazon "Used - like new!" for a penny plus S+H, so it was like four bucks.

/m222 Ah - it does sound interesting. If I ever have some time maybe I'll read it.

/m221 He's a comedian that decides he needs to do something serious - write a novel. While putting off working on the book, he gets an email from an Aussie telling him he's a googlewhack. After figuring out what a googlewhack is, he goes on a global quest to meet the people that own googlewhacked sites in an ever growing chain. I enjoyed it :)

/m220 No. I've heard a lot about it but never looked into it. What exactly is the premise?

I just finished reading Dave Gorman's Googlewhack Adventure last night. It reminded me of the good old days of googlewhacking (sigh). Any of you read it?

/m217 Yeah, what's up with that? Sam, can you fix it?

/m216 Yes, it mutated, like its protagonist, the imp of Satan :-)

Edited by author 07-26-2007 11:09 AM
ZP 198 appears to be immortal :-)

I nominate ZP196 as the poem that's wandered furthest from its origins :-)

I've taken zp199 to reflect the expression of an ESL speaker.

And some more..
,

Hej!
Check this out!
,

Nei ho!
Check this out!
,

*

At last...
*

Hallo!
Check this out!
,

And some more..
*

Buon giorno!
Check this out!
*

At last...
*

And some more..
*

Salaam!
Check this out!
*

Grayman, thanks for clearing that up. ;-)

/m189 (Belatedly) No Beefy, it wasn't. To our stateside friends, lest confusion should arise: 'Baguette' does not rhyme with 'cleave', not even on this side of the pond.

/m1999 Very funny stuff, Will. Thanks for the link. :-)

Those were darn clever, Will. I sent the link to friends.

apropos ZP190, I came across this. Not exactly the same idea but amusing.

Ah, yes--Lily Dale NY. Been there several times over the years. It's a spiritualist resort--you can get readings and channelings from mediums. Quaint cottages nestled around a small lake and dates from the turn-of-the-century when spiritualism and sceances were big.

/m193 Francine, I asked him in class last night. It's in Lily Dale. Sounds like it's some kind of spiritual retreat http://www.angelhouse1.com/. He used to be a prof at Clarion.

I'm glad you got the experience Francine. The farthest I've ever traveled is Canada! Do you think you'll be going again - maybe you'll take turns going over there and them coming over here?

No one spoke English, Karin, although the signs were in English as well as Chinese. Odd. The oddest things I ate were vegetables that I couldn't identify and which my hosts did not know the English names for.
Meals in cafes are eaten like at home--food set out in the middle of the table and everyone helps themselves. There are like ten to fifteen entrees set out and lunches are just as lavish. And everything at home and in cafes is made from scratch using fresh ingredients--nothing canned or frozen, no convenenience foods whatsoever--and no desserts after the meals and no snacks in-between-times. No wonder, then, that you don't see any overweight people. At size 12, I was the fattest person I saw.

They seemed a very pragmatic people--nothing neurotic or other-wordly about them--very practical--this world enough for them--and so somehow less interesting. Very family oriented, as well. The difference in culture and thinking I found very intersting, expansive--an educational experience.

Did you find that a lot of people spoke English? (Of course we expect everyone to!) Also, what's the oddest thing that you ate?

Arch, did that B&B happen to be in Chatauqua NY? It's a popular resort about 50 minutes from here.

Karin--I didn't do a lot of touristy stuff. But wow, I was impressed by how cheap things were there. We got an hour-long massage for $15 American dollars. We ate in upscale restaurants where you could get a private dining room with a plasma TV and private restroom--for ten of us the entire bill came to $60 american money. We'd all be living like millionaires on our American income if we lived there.

Beijing itself I found to be a rather ugly overcrowded city. But the people are very clean and courteous--low crime, no litter, no thuggish looking or slobby looking people. No one was overweight--very healthy diets and lifestyles. But it just wasn't home, if you know what I mean.

/m190 Sounds like fun! I'm sure they were glad to have you, I know we miss our families and they're only half the country away.

On a PA note, I found out in class last night (night school, gunna get me a B.A.) that my instructor and his wife run a B&B in the summer months about 50 minutes from Erie. Apparently, he used to be a professor at one of the smaller schools in PA as well after moving from Hawaii shortly after WW2.

Hey Francine! Sounds like you had a great trip. I'm glad you were able to visit your family. Did you do touristy stuff also?

Hi guys: didn't abandon y'all. Was gone for 10 days to China to see my son and his family. What a trip! It's like a whole other country or somethin' and they talk real different, couldn't understand a word ;-)
   Really, though, it was an amazing trip. The food is incredible. And my three-year-old granddaughter is cute as a button and smart as a whip. Speaks both languages. I learned one word in Chinese--phonetically it's pronounced nee-how and means hello and/or how are you.

Grayman, is your deviation from rhyme scheme on ZP194 deliberate?

Edited by author 05-02-2007 09:22 AM
/m187 Not lazy at all! I'd planned to pass that info along sooner to save everybody else the trouble but it didn't get done.

/m186 Thanks Sam. I guess I could have done that too but I'm apparently too lazy! I hope everything's all right with Peter and he's just on holiday or something like that.

Edited by author 05-01-2007 06:55 PM
/m185 This morning, I wrote in to the address supplied, and promptly received the following kind response:

We have identified an exploit in the code that runs the service which is putting our server at risk, so the software has been temporarily removed until the maintainer (Peter Christian) returns to work. This is not an officially supported piece of software so I can't give you a better idea [when it will come back online]. Sorry about this, but do come back and visit soon, and contact Peter with any other queries.

Kind regards,

System Admin

Hey kids - I haven't been to Spoonbill recently but when I tried to check it out just now it said the site had been temporarily removed as of today. I tried the regular spoonbill site and our private address but same thing. Does anybody know what's going on?

/m182, /m183 Thanks for the feedback. To prevent one-person poems (like the couple I've done ;-), I think the best thing might be to allow some maximum number of lines per contribution, with perhaps a default of 2. I'm not sure if/when I'll get around to implementing that, though.

Hey, speaking of not replicating the SB unchanged, I'm delighted to report that somebody besides me finally made a contribution to the Zitipedia! That's the good news. The bad news is that it was a spam bot, and it littered the Zitipedia with links to porn sites. (That's a revenue model for botmasters.)

I've cleaned up all that, but if you want to see what done, you can look on the "History" tab of, e.g., the main page and click on a rev that's attributed to an IP address. (PLEASE don't actually follow any of the porn links, though: that might encourage them; more importantly, sites pointed to by bots are likely to try to install malicious software on your computer to draft it into the bot army--it's kind of a "Borg" thing.)

Anyway, since the Zitipedia has succeeded in attracting exactly zero contributions in the six months-or-so it's been in existence, I had been toying with the idea of shutting it down and reusing its infrastructure for another project. But now that it's finally attracted a contributor, maybe I'll keep it going for a while. ;-)

/m181 I'm ambivalent about consecutive contributions - if you allow them you can end up with a one-person poem, and I'm sure that there are plenty of sites for people to write their own poems. The joy (or otherwise) of alternation is seeing what others do with one's own ideas, frustrating as that may turn out to be. Having said that, there's no point in replicating SB unchanged, so I'm happy to go along with a moderate degree of consecutivisation.

/m181 In my herbal opinion, the consecutive lines feature is Ziti's main advantage over Spoonbill. Collaborations with single lines are great and should be used, but allowing a contributor to add a couplet or a whole stanza offers a lot more scope for getting one's ideas across. The poem often ends up with a lot more cohesion. And if you fancy writing a whole poem just for the fun of it, then you can!

m/179 That was the word that came to my mind too Beefy - straight after I looked it up!

Sorry about that, B. Turns out that I had forgotten to allow consecutive contributions, but my super powers let me do it anyway without even realizing it!

I had given myself super powers for admin reasons, but maybe I'll take them away from myself and give them to a special admin name instead.

Also, I'm thinking of making consecutive contributions the default--does anybody object? I sometimes enjoy the freedom that a pair of lines gives.

Peter seemed to think it was important on the SB to disallow that, but I think we've been having a good experience with it here; in particular, a convention seems to have grown up (which you may have fallen victim to, in this case) of contributing multiple lines in accordance with what the work started with.

Curious - Ziti 196 starts with two lines from Sam, but it then rejects consecutive contributions - creator's prerogative?

Edited by author 04-17-2007 08:22 AM
The word "desuetude" springs to mind when contemplating the Ziti pages

Amusing read. Thanks, Karin! I liked, "giving up the goat."

I don't know if we've discussed "eggcorns" before - I found this site that I thought was interesting. http://eggcorns.lascribe.net/

/m175 I received a message from Howly Ellen via telegram about 190, "A list of new words created by overlapping two words. two + woo = twoo. 100,000 pesos. Come to Santa Poca and put on show. stop"

There doesn't seem to be much interest in the current works, so I voted for 188 and 191 to be ended. However, if anybody wants to continue them, that's OK with me.

I guess I'm a little lost on what the concept is on 190. Arch, do you have any idea?

/m170 I think I lost mine once or twice, but it was early enough in the proces that I was able to put it back together pretty easily. One trick I came up with, though, was to use the "merge game" feature to generate a URL that you could then save as a favorite in your browser; then, you can continue after that point. Gotta warn you though--like playing the game itself, I soon began to do that compulsively. ;-)

/m172 I'm not all that familiar with Blount but I'm a big fan of the Kael. Have two of her books of movie reviews. She's gone now; alas no other movie critic is in her league IMHO. When I see a movie now I think, hmm--wonder what Kael would have said about it.

Francine, I think the lines that begin ZP191 are likely by rOy blount (jr). It seems he and Pauline Kael were good friends. (I'm no expert; just what I read on them internets.)

/m170 I still delve into it occasionally, but I've more or less ground to a halt

/m95 Sorry I haven't been around guys - I kind of got into that 'Funny Farm' thang, but of course I only have limited intelligence. Then there was a bug and I lost it all and had to start again, then I got 19 or 20 windows open, but decided to clear all my temporary internet files and lost it all again. Do any of you know what I'm on about?

/m165 As Churchill might have put it - Never in the history of Ziti have so many contributed so much with so few deviations from the set scheme :-)

/m166 /m167 Yup :-)

/m166 Agreed. :-)

Nice work everyone on z158 :)

Ho, Ho, Ho! Have a very merry [your holiday here]!

(Sorry that I couldn't come up anything better, but it's really late and my poor corporeal just finished wrapping a bunch of gifts from "Santa"...)

May your bells be jingled and your stockings fully stuffed.

God bless us, every one - Beefy Tim

Happy Holidays, folks!

/m160 Thanks, Will ;-)

Like I mentioned quite some time ago, I voted to end 184, and since no one has added a line since, perhaps some kind soul could put it out of its misery.

It looks like the Zitimaster zapped the line on 187 submitted by Anon after "Prefer butter in dollops", perhaps because it didn't seem to fit. Anon, if you're reading this, please don't be discouraged and feel free to try out another idea if you like.

/m157 Ok, Francine, thanks for that roundabout vote of confidence. ;-)

/m156 Well, Karin--if they had, they would have inserted if before you added your line. And if you don't like your line, you can always delete it or change it. Or am I being too logical? ;-) Actually, your line sounds fine to me.

I don't really like my last line on 158, if anyone has any suggestions.

I voted to end 184

/m152 I'm actually trying not to get too involved Sam - I've tried to cut back on my internet activities, as you've perhaps noticed. But I couldn't sleep last night, found this article and noticed what it was missing, so I went for it. It was kinda fun.

Your Raven revision project is quite amibitious! You seem to have gotten us off to a good start.

/m151 /m152 Thanks for the info, kids :-)

Edited by author 11-28-2006 02:10 PM
/m148 Glad to see you getting involved in the wiki thing, K! Wikipedia is very good overall, but it has so many little prose things that could be better that there's plenty there to practice your wiki skills on.

/m151 Right. Another thing to look at is the "Recent Changes" link on the left of the Zitipedia. As we get rolling with it, that will probably become the easiest way to find things that others have just done, so you can add to or change theirs.

Also, I've just put in a revision of The Raven. See its discussion tab for details.

/m149 Francine, as far as I can tell so far the only poem that was revised was Sam's 10th anniversary poem. At the bottom of the main ZP page you can click "Zitipedia", then click "Revised Works". My revision was to a page of the Wikipedia itself, combining my Wizard of Oz and X-Files interests. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yip_Harburg Have I reconfirmed my total nerddom?

/m147 I agree!

/m148 Karin, where would I find that? I can't figure out the Zitipedia. Where does one find the pomes that people are revising?

/m141 Well Sam, I actually made an edit to a Wikipedia page. I've thought about doing it a few times but finally got the guts up to go through with it. Hopefully no nastygrams will ensue!

Good work on 188, Men--I like it.

I'm glad I got to do the first line for Virginia - over to you contriving rhymesters

/m135 Go for it, Karin! Write that children's book. Nothing lost by trying, and something might be gained. That's how I feel about it, anyway--if nothing comes of my efforts, well, at least I had fun trying.

Also, I've been very satisfied with the used books I've purchased through Amazon--was even able to find one that's out-of-print. Some used paperbacks are as cheap as under a dollar.

/m136 Thanks, arch :-)

/m137 I'll look him up, Beefy. Seems creativity is a family trait. But I suspected as much before you told us about your uncle ;-)

/m13nine Good tips, Sam. I use adverbs seldom. And I do try to keep the pages a-turning. I envy King's prolific-ness. How does he do it? Imagination of that sort is a miracle and a mystery.

/m141 I'll plunge into the Zitipedia soon, I promise!

/m143 No - forgot to hit "enter" - it's there now

/m141 Sam, I've had the same experience with a "whack"y tin man on a certain Wiki page (which I've since given up on contributing to).

/m142
b) Have you retracted your line Beefy?
a) Here's how answers prounces it: http://www.answers.com/topic/montpelier-vermont

Re ZP158

a) have I got the correct rhyme? I typed "Montpelier Vermont pronounced" into Google and found a lot of sites telling me how to pronounce Vermont!

b) my line works best for British tourists, I'm afraid

/m130 Wikipedia is a marvelous thing. There's this, for example. And this. (Look near the bottom--I put that familiar link in.)

Anymore, I go to Wikipedia first for information, then Google for it only if Wikipedia fails me. Although you can't believe absolutely everything you read there, my experience has been that it is very accurate overall. Unlike the general Internet, it's concise and extensively peer-reviewed. Also, like an encyclopedia (and unlike the general Internet), it has a neutral point of view--in theory, at least.

Wikipedia, and the wiki concept in general, are soon to be very big things. (I flatter myself that I'm an "early adopter". ;-) In fact, I think Helen even uses a private one at work. In some ways, I think it takes the Internet to its logical conclusion.

The major drawback of Wikipedia is that, like an encyclopedia, it's a bit dry and boring. But that's the price you have to pay for things like conciceness and a neutral point of view. I've only found one exception; it's unclear to me if the warning at the top of that one is serious or part of the joke.

At the most basic level, editing a wiki page--either the Wikipedia or the Zitipedia, isn't even as complicated as contributing to a SB or ZP pome. Basically, you hit the "edit" tab, change the text, and hit "Save page". You don't even have to select any of the choices at the bottom like you do for a SB/ZP contribution. Getting involved might seem a little scary at first but there's really nothing to be scared of on either a technical or social level. Well-intended additions and corrections seem to persist. Also, the worst thing anybody can do is-undo your change and/or write you a nastygram. I've only had the latter happen once, after I made changes to a page that someone thought they were the little tin god of.

/m139 Oops! Looks like there's only one of J. K.

/m130 Great news about the book, F! Keep at it, and it'll happen!

FWIW, I read "On Writing" recently by Stephen King. It turned out to actually be 2/3 "On Stephen King" and only 1/3 "On Writing", but it still had a lot of worthwhile tips in it. You might check it out at your local library (where I got it "On Tape" for free--beats Amazon. ;-)

One thing he said that surprised me was how much he hated adverbs ("he stated surprisedly".) I soon realized, though, how write he was: they almost always read awkwardly (sorry). In fact, I've read a lot of books for small children in the last few years ("he said Seussily"), and I've been surprised by how many of the not-so-good ones have a lot of dopey adverbs that wouldn't even be in a child's vocabulary ("he said intimidatedly".)

One thing that Stephen King didn't say, that I was expecting, was that the key to writing a page-turner is to give the reader something to wonder about. (Then again, maybe he's forgotten how to write page-turners. ;-) It seems so obvious once you know the trick. I've read all the Harry Potter books, and, at the risk of spoiling a little of the magic, I'm always amazed at how systematically and cleverly J. K. Rowlings does that on every single page. So, be sure to give your reader lots to wonder about!

/m137 I can't say I'm familiar with him, but I'll look him up. Anyway, I'm just glad to hear he wasn't that "Lord of the Flies" guy!

Edited by author 11-16-2006 12:22 PM
/m137 Thanks for the info Beefy. I don't remember coming across "The Silver Sword" before but I definitely will look for it. The subject brings to mind another book I really enjoyed as a girl - "The Endless Steppe". It's a true story of a young Jewish girl from Poland who was deported w/her family to Siberia during the war. It's perhaps not as emotional as "The Diary of Anne Frank" but I found it fascinating to read the firsthand account of a girl my age coping with the ordeal.

And thanks for bringing up "The Phantom Tollbooth" yesterday. I hadn't thought about it in so long and your reference prompted me to spend some really enjoyable time remembering the amazing wordplay, etc.

/m134 Not that well known! In fact, he may not have been heard of at all over there. At risk of blowing such anonymity as I have, I'll tell you that his name was Ian Serraillier. His best-known work was "The Silver Sword", a story about Polish children separated from their parents in WW2. It was televised over here in the 60s (I think), and has just been republished for its 50th anniversary. I've just reread it and it still comes across very well to my mind - of course, I may be biased. He and his wife also co-edited the New Windmill series of books which were reprints of classic books for the school market.

I've had pretty good luck with the used books on Amazon, most of the ones I've bought as such have been from second-hand book stores. I seem to remember liking The Phantom Toolbooth quite a bit, though I haven't read it since I was probably eight.

Best wishes, Francine! I have no doubt in your abilities :)

Edited by author 11-15-2006 01:08 PM
/m134 F, thanks for the suggestion. I think I might check it out. One of my nieces in particular likes to read so after I reread some of my old favorites I could pass them on to her. Have you been satisfied with the quality of the used books?

I still have my idea for a children's book featuring my dogs but I just haven't followed through. Hopefully I'll let myself be motivated by your example, Francine!

Thanks, kids.
   That's interesting that your uncle was a well-known author, Beefy. In the interests of anonymity, I won't ask his name. It wasn't C.S. Lewis, was it?
  Karin, the age range is from about 8-12.
  I never read The Phantom Tollbooth but now I think I will. Karin--if you want to reread it, Amazon.com sells used books, some pretty cheap. Lately that's how I buy mine.

/m132 The Phantom Tollbooth! One of my favorite books from childhood, and I do wish I still had my copy so I could read it again.

/m130 Fingers crossed, F. My late uncle was a fairly well-known author of children's books, and to my mind they're still a good read for so-called grownups, as also the Philip Pullman trilogy, Harry Potter, and The Phantom Tollbooth (although that list may say more about my mental age and reading tastes than about the books). Keep us posted on progress

/m130 That's exciting news on the children's book Francine! I hope it works out well for you. What age group are you writing for?

/m127 That's 'merely' an illusion on your part--a 'reflection' of your British prejudice. Okay, I'm done with the lame puns ;-)
  Getting back to 'malt' I gave it some more thought and recalled that in the forties and fifties soda fountains and ice cream parlors were often referred to as 'malt shops.'
   Actually, a chocolate malt or chocolate malted sounds good right about now. Yummy.
   To change the subject--sorry, Sam, that I haven't checked into the Zitipedia thing in more depth or used it as of yet. Frankly, I never used Wikipedia, either, and am not familiar with what that whole 'wiki' thing entails. I'm not computer savvy, as you know.
  I've been busy as of late. A literary agent liked the synopsis of the children's novel I sent and has requested to see my not-quite-completed manuscript. Keep your fingers crossed for me, guys and gals--and send good vibes my way!

I'm not wild about my last line on 158 - if anyone has something better, I'd be happy to change it

/m126 I wasn't able to find a side-by-side comparison either--though I'm still hopeful that it might have such a thing. In any case, we'll pretty-much have to live within the confines of the MediaWiki system because it's such a complex thing that modifying it probably would take more time than I can spend.

Edited by author 11-14-2006 11:39 AM
/m122 and for a nation that prides itself on pronouncing its "r"s, how come you only give "mirror" one syllable? :-)

/m125 Yes, I did notice that. But it seems as though you have to switch back and forth between them. Is there some way to actually view them side by side that I'm just not picking up on?

Nope, I won't be adding that--because it's already got it!

The MediaWiki gizmo allows you to compare any two versions of a given page. I've encouraged users to start a modification of a work by putting an exact rendition of the original text in as the first version. If everybody does that, the original can always be compared with any newer version.

You can try this out on the revised 186; just click on its "history" tab and go from there.

Sam, I just thought of something else - will you be adding a feature to the Zitipedia where you will be able to see the original and edited poems side by side, so you can more easily see the changes that were made?

Edited by author 11-13-2006 11:16 AM
/m118 Ditto, Sam. :-)

/m122 Yes! There are some British actors who do a very good American accent, but there is a Brit on "CSI" (can't think of her name offhand, she's the blonde detective) who does probably the worst American accent I've ever heard - "r's" all over the place. Of course, it works both ways - there are some Americans who excel at a British accent, but more often than not you hear something like a low-budget local radio station commercial with faux British accents that make you want to slap someone. And then of course, there's Madonna....

/m120 The corollary is to listen to amateur actors over here trying to do an American accent and putting "r"s into all kinds of words that don't have them!

Now that I think of it, those of us who live south of the Mason-Dixon line would also drop the final 'r.' As in, "Ah do believe Loretta owns an Irish-Settah--honeychile."

Grayman--a malt here is usually interpreted as a malted milkshake--a gloopy ice cream confection that has malt added to it. Malt whiskey is also known here but Americans hearing 'a malt' would first think 'malted milkshake.'
   I enjoy these differences and variables while interacting with our British friends here. For instance, Beefy's insistence on rhyming words that end in an 'er' with words that end in an 'a.' As in '..etter'--'Loretta.'
   My question, why do you guys think the words end in an 'r'? So that the end letter can be dropped? I'm razzing you, of course. We no longer pronounce the 'k' in knife and knight, either :-)

/m116 Er... yes, I was "cleverly playing both sides of the street" with the malt line.

Well no, not really. I don't even know what malted milk is. I don't think we have such a commodity over here. I guess it's milk with malt in it? For us, malt is malt whisky, as opposed to grain whisky or malt/grain blends. (Also, we spell whisky without an 'e' in it.) So then - that line's gonna look a bit daft to any future ziti-reading Americans isn't it?

/m117 Good work, Sam :-)

This is to officially launch The Zitipedia, which, as some of you have already seen, is the new wiki feature of The Ziti Project. Feel free to wiki away.

Also, many thanks to Zach G. for donating Zeep, the ZP's new mascot, who now greets you on the home page. (According to Zach, he's holding an orange, not an apple; I'll fix the colors later.)

It took me a minute to figure out "malt" in 158, G. 'Round here, that would commonly refer to the entirely wholesome "malted milk" that one could get in Salt Lake City! I realized, though, that you mean malt liquor or malted ale or some such.

So, is the "malted milk" sense of it familiar in the UK? Or maybe you were cleverly playing both sides of the street with that one.

I voted to end 185 as F seemed to have rounded it off nicely (plus, Halloween is o'er)

/m111 Abso-bleedin'-lutely, but whither next.

TG is probably too friendly with Roland to be welcome on ZP - we don't want F in permanent rant mode :-)

/m106 I completely missed the double/triple rhyme thing - but I guess that's always the risk on SB - at least on ZP you can try to specify your aim, and supplement it through the message board

In 184, I decided that as a jet-setter is not the same as an Irish Setter, then I wasn't really re-using a previous rhyme word. Feel free to disagree!

Karin and Sam--your posts remind me of that Sartre quote, "Hell is other people."
  The jobs I've had were always ruined for me by personalites plus I tend to be hypersensitive {as my past rants attest to, hehe} and unable to deal with stress of any kind--which means I'm darn glad I don't have to work at an outside job at the moment. We own one of those old Victorian homes that are two-story with an upstairs apartment. So the rent we get covers our mortgage, which means I don't have to bring in a steady second income. The downside is that we have to deal with tenants. Our last tenant, whose father was a lawyer, sued us for the entire amount of the security deposit. We held back a portion of it due to dirtiness and damages. So, we had to attend a hearing--and ended up spending more than if we'd just given him what he wanted. Arrgh!
  Anyway, whatever your situation, life has a way of biting you in the ass now and again.
   Karin, per your disgruntlement with SB. I'm reminded of the time that loaf deleted my lines for no good reason. Really ticked me off, but I ended up returning to SB and adding a line here and there now and then. For no other reason than that I enjoy contributing to collaborative poetry sites and only have found SB and ZP. But like I said, when things get off-kilter, I just tend to not add lines until there's a pome or two that tempts me or if the mood strikes me.
  I'm proud of all of us that we've hung around this long and kept adding to these sites. Unthunk has its problems too, like ZP--not enough contributors and not enough of us contributing frequently enough. But I've even learned to accept that state of affairs. If ZP or Unthunk are in a slump, I check into other sites I enjoy or play a computer game.
  Frankly, I'm kinda glad that there's not a whole lot of action on these sites anymore--I'm no longer as hooked and tempted to spend a great deal of time on them, which is good--I've been somewhat busy lately and have been working on a book.
   But I don't think I'll ever abandon our dear ZP and such like sites; I've met some wonderful people here. What is interesting to me is that though I've never met any of you in person, I've gotten to know you all during the past years in ways that are somehow more revelatory or soul-baring than people I've met in the flesh--through online dialog and poetry and whack comments, people's personalities and talents are displayed and highlighted in ways that don't happen in 'real' life. I've found the experience stimulating, fascinating, and 'educational'.
  Speaking of which, I kind of get a kick out of this--I don't know what any of you look like, yet you all have appeared in my nightly dreams a time or two! [And no, none of them were erotic!]
  Okay, I've rambled on enough. Anyway, hang in there, all of ya!

So Beefy - did I figure out where you were going in Austin?

(BTW, feel free to invite TG to the ZP if you see him sometime.)

Edited by author 11-03-2006 02:13 PM
/m109 Helen, I'm sorry it didn't go as well as you had hoped. Those people must indeed be dullards to not have been amused by it!

Personalities usually do seem to be the trouble at any job. I've rarely had a job where there wasn't at least one "rotten egg" to spoil things. Working at home I don't have much contact with my colleagues, but I do deal with the public and that can be extremely trying. I have a side business selling sterling silver jewelry and I would like to do that solely, but I can't give up the security of my regular (albeit small) paycheck during the time it would take to make my jewelry business really take off. So for now I just plug away at this job.

Edited by author 11-03-2006 01:30 PM
/m108 Thanks, Karin. The job itself is pretty good, but most of the problems revolve around the various personalities. That's the heck of it: going somewhere else would just bring on a different, though basically similar, collection of personalities to deal with. So I guess I'll continue to "do time" here.

I read the pome that you folks provided at the occasion. (BTW, thanks to all, and thanks for starting that, Sam--you're so sweet. :-) I can't say that it got the big laughs I was hoping for, but then again, given the dullards I work with that's nothing to be surprised about. ;-) However, I was surprised that "I often leave my seat" seemed to get the biggest laugh, and I didn't think that one amounted to much. But maybe that's the nature of "stand-up" comedy.

Well I hope Helen really does enjoy her job. I wish I could say the same for mine. :(

/m103 As I look at 186 again, it was interesting to see that lines from all three of you were critical! The "in my prime" and "doing time" things were a neat intro and--reversed--conclusion. And, of course, there's the irony angle of "But really, guys, I love it here!"

/m105 Actually, I wasn't even thinking of "cash" in the Johnny sense, though that would have fit very nicely with Nashville, now that you mention it! Actually, I was thinking of cash in the money sense, thus "blow your whole wad" would be something like "Or you'll find that you've got little cash (nill)".

I kindda developed a fetish for double and triple rhymes after my Gilbert & Sullivan binge a couple of years ago. The SB's current Orange started out with those: Apsley came up with "balcony/talcum free", which seemed like yet another Apsley "masterpiece" until I realized that it was actually a bad triple rhyme. Then I came up with the exact triple rhyme "aria/Sorry...uh.." and the contrived "orchestra/o'er stressed bra", both of which were more to the point. Then the triple rhyme thing got dropped--it's hard to sustain.

Edited by author 11-03-2006 12:28 AM
/m104 Sam, I don't know that it was so obtuse - it's just that I'm not a country music fan so it didn't occur to me. In fact, even after I read your post it took me a couple minutes to realize what you meant. :-)

/m103 Well, you did the lion's share of it! And it's very good, by the way.

Darn, I was trying to set you folks up for "cash/nill" for Nashville in 158. Admittedly, though, that was pretty obtuse. :-)

Edited by author 11-02-2006 02:33 PM
Thanks, Kids, for the help on 186! I got on a roll after what you guys put in (the irony angle was key) so I took the liberty of finishing it up.

/m101 Well done--you gotta use every resource you can on that thang!

Edited by author 10-30-2006 09:19 AM
/m95 I've not admitted so far that I've attempted that Funny Farm thang - especially as I have only opened up a feeble five windows. OneLook has already helped though! Cheers!

/m99 and, two or so hours later, several more clues and a new window - yippee!

Edited by author 10-23-2006 12:34 PM
/m96 pretty much stuck where I was when I last posted - will try more tomorrow. Got it from a so-called "friend" - she and her husband, both trivia/quiz freaks, had nearly finished it, and offered help, but I've been too stubborn so far - but thank you for the OneLook hint - it's given me one more answer straight away :-)

184 is shaping well - I'd actually envisioned rhyming triplets but neglected to say so - but I like the way it's turned out

/m97 It was perfect--don't change it!

/m96 I was awake around 3:00 a.m. debating whether to pull the last line as soon as I logged on today. Perhaps I'll just let it be. After all, who will know or care in 50 years.

I apologize for my crappy line in 184, but scansion (or is that 'scatology'--I can never remember) demanded it. Next, to make things worse, I'll share with you that it brought to mind an Ecclesiastes sortta thing: "A time to crap, a time to flush".

Again, sorry.

I also apologize for filching that lame Python bit about saying rude things just so you can apologize for them: it wasn't funny then, and it isn't funny now. Sorry.

And I apologize for that last apology.

Luckily, Will managed to dovetail into it a sophisticated and urbane way using the polite phrase "the men's room". <farting sound>

And I apologize for the previous sound.

/m94 Indeed--maybe that thing has the makings of a Rorschach test! Did you ever get all the way through it?

Turns out that I worked vigorously on it for several days (wasting a great deal of time, per your warning). I used every resource I could think of including Google, Wikipedia, OneLook, plus a couple of friends--infecting them in the process without even trying to! One friend pointed out a neat feature of OneLook that I didn't know: its concept search. For example, you can search on "???? ???:cow" to get phrases that match that pattern relating to cows.

I eventually got all panels opened up except for the four corners, though I ended up accidently cheating in one instance. (I know, I know..."How do you 'accidentally' cheat?" It's a long story.) I discovered that the farther I got out from the center, the harder it became, and the sparser my answers got. At some point, I was pretty-much stalled, so I decided to explicitly cheat via a thread of answers I found on digg.com. Much slapping of head ensued. (No, not the kind you think, Francine...) However, there were many things I had no chance on. For example, I had never heard of several items on the BB page, and I'm not sure there was any way to round them up via web resources. So I think I started my cheating at about the right time; as W. C. Fields said, "If at first you don't succeed, try, try again. Then quit--there's no use being a damn fool about it."

Anyway, that was a lot of fun, Beefy--thanks for pointing it out. (BTW, how did you find it?) Ever the plagiarist, I'm since been resisting the urge to create something like that of my own. Which would, of course, be a much greater waste of time. ;-)

/m92 Mine is

  - - X X -
  - - X X -
  X X X X X
  X X X X -
  - X X X -

Interesting how comparatively little overlap there is - probably a psychological insight there!

/m91 I didn't recall that id had been discussed, and I thought that another "City" ending might get repetitious, but I've changed it - but note that "Oklahoma" now only has three syllables!

/m86 Looks like 182 was ended by pending votes from Francine and me.

/m90 I'm up to 13 now; here's a coarse view of my "minimap".

  - X - - -
  X X X X -
  X X X X -
  X X X - -
  - X - - -

Does yours look radically different? I haven't gotten any section completely filled in yet, but I'm close on a couple.

/m91 Sorry to ask this, Will, but can you edit out the URL so that the "public" (assuming the ZP ever gets one!) won't find out about Boonspill?

Edited by author 10-12-2006 12:19 AM
Beefy, there was consensus at our previous discussion site (BSpill QT) that the state capitol name would always come at the end of the first line. You may want to change your contribution; if not, it's okay by me.

/m88 I've got 16 sections open, but a LOT of gaps

/m86 I did (thank goodness for whatever it is that makes the machine remember what I'd typed in previously, because I certainly didn't) - and the poem was declared ended - I never told it to, honest!

/m80 Hey, that's fun. With some help from a young corporeal, I've got 9 sections opened up now, but I'm still missing several things on the first one!

/m85 Francine, those are lots of fun! Thanks for sharing.

Edited by author 10-07-2006 11:34 PM
Sorry, Beefy, that I've accidentally deleted your last line on 182. Unfortunately, I don't have a gizmo to purposely un-delete it, so could you just add it back?

Don't know if anyone has seen this site. 30 second condensed versions of famous movies starring bunnies. And they manage to squeeze in the major highlights. If you're looking for a pick-me-up :-)
http://www.angryalien.com/

m/82 m/83 Thanks, guys.

/m81 In re Beefy's 'Funny Farm', here's some more information:

http://tinyurl.com/l39cz

Warning! Don't follow the link if you intend to figure out the game yourself.

Just type in your guess and hit Enter. A correct guess may well open up new links. A correct guess at the edge of the page opens the next page, which you access by clicking on the map. Good luck!!

Hi, Beefy and welcome back. I tried playing the Funny Farm game but it gave no instructions. Couldn't figure out how to play it.

The other reason I took a while to get back is that a so-called friend sent me the link following puzzle:

www.shygypsy.com/farm

WARNING!!! Do not open this unless you can afford to waste vast quantities of time - I've spent most of the last three days on it and have not advanced even halfway

/m77 Welcome back, B! You came back just in time to save us from Beefless!

/m78 So you haven't read the Harry Potter series yet? ;-)

Actually, I put a redirect into the home page of the old site, which has the effect of automagically* sending you to the new site. That causes a few seconds of delay, though, so you might want to adjust your bookmark to point directly to the new site. (I guess your browser could have already done that for you, but I doubt that it's that smart.)

*see 182

/m58 - My bookmark automatically adopted the new location - how did it know?

/m64 I'm back - after a vacation in places where I had no internet connection (nor, for that matter, much time)

Will try to resume prolificity

Edited by author 10-01-2006 10:51 AM
/m72 Sorry about that, Will. I had put you into the boonspill group from the start, but had done so mistakenly as "Will_H" (with underscore, like your QT persona) rather than as "Will H" (with space, like your ZP persona). I think I've fixed that now in both the ZP's machinery and FAQ, so please try again.

Frankly, as far as I can see, all of them except 158 need to be put out of their misery ;-)

Edited by author 10-01-2006 05:35 AM
I voted to abandon 180. The meter went awry, plus no one seems interested in adding to it.

Outrageous, Will! As far as I'm concerned you are a member! In fact, you are one of my favorite human beans :-) [And might I add, that puts you in a very exclusive group.]

I might have contributed to 182, but, "because (I am) not a member of the 'boonspill' group", I was thwarted. Never mind.

/m70 I know what you mean, Sam. I've tried to interest friends as well. Guess SB and ZP are what you might call an acquired taste. I remember when you tried to lure us to SB and I thought, nah. Then I tried it and thought, hey, this is kinda fun!
Whether we get more contributors or not, we'll keep plugging away as time and inclination allow.

/m67 Well, I came up with a little something for 182. However, I didn't take the time to figure out for sure whether it fits the established pattern (if any ;-).

/m68 FWIW, I guess I look at running the thing as being my primary contribution these days. That said, my corporeal has tried to interest some of his supposedly literate, creative friends in it. They're folks who have a good sense of humor and enjoy Pythonesque nonsense. Now, you'd think at least one of 'em would try it out just for curiosity or whatever. But he hasn't had a lick of success so far. So my personal theory is that he's just a terrible salesman. (Then again, it took me quite a few plugs on GW to get Karin and you interested in the SB, so I guess I'm not much better. ;-)

One thing I've found, though--and you folks might have had a similar experience--is that most people don't think they can write poetry--even the low sort we create here and on the SB. So they never even give it a chance. :-(

/m69 'salright, I understand. :-)

Those weren't rants I deleted, just ramblings. I was pretty tired last nite when I posted them.

/m64 Darn, I was hoping all those lines I added to 182 would count towards my total. ;-)

Actually, I'm kindda surprised that nobody but Helen has gotten interested in 182 so far: it's a fairly easy concept, which usually is a plus when it comes to attracting contributors.

Anyway, I'll see what I can come up with to get things rolling again. And maybe Mr. B will show up again soon.

Francine, you're latest line on ziti180 was spot on, here's a clip from Napoleon Dynamite, enjoy :)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ixsZy2425eY

/m63 Helen, I've heard your plaint and have added some lines. Maybe you could convince Sam to do likewise. If it gives you any consolation, SB seems to have been in the doldrums lately as well; not much action there, either. Where's Beefy these days? He's always prolific. Beefy, Beefy! Where are you? Come out, come out, wherever you are!

Edited by author 09-21-2006 03:52 PM
/m58 Looks like you scared 'em off by changing the URL to zitiproject.org, Sam. Nice goin'...

Edited by author 09-18-2006 11:31 PM
/m59 I think the 'Anon' login window is fixed now.

/m60 Shouldn't that be "Deleted by the authoress"? (My corporeal just hates it when I question his manhood. ;-)

/m59 I had forgotten to mention that everybody will need to log in again. The mini-login page the comes up after contributing as "Anon" is broken, so I'll fix that--thanks for pointing that out, G. Meanwhile, the login link on the home page can be used.

Under the hood, the new and old site are completely separate since they use different web hosting services. However, the new site is a clone of the old one, so they should look and work the same--except that the old one won't accept contributions anymore. I'll completely shut down the old site soon, after we do a little more proving of the new one.

Sam, the new location's working fine, but of course none of us are logged in now - and your recent 'Login and try again' fix won't work, presumably because the link doesn't exist any more. (Easy enough to get around it by closing down the browser and starting it up again.)

Ziti is still there in the old location as well!

/m57 It's back online now, but at a new address: zitiproject.org. Its new incarnation seems to work OK for me but if you run into any glitches, please report them to me here.

/m54 As predicted, the ZP is offline now, but should be running again soon.

/m55 Thanks for that one, Sam. I'd completely forgotten it. Made me chuckle, too.

Here's an old one from the SB I thought of today that makes me laugh every time I read it.

My friends at Iowegian are making some changes to their dspGuru site, so the ZP (which lives there) soon will be offline for maybe a couple of days. Meanwhile, you can continue to use it; just don't be surprised if it suddenly stops working.

/m52 no prob Francince, that's fine with me.

/m51 Well, don't think I'll be making a trip to the video store, Arch. So how's about we just take the pome wherever it will go and just get silly with it rather than adhere to the Napoleon Dynamite theme? If that's okay with you?

Edited by author 09-07-2006 10:46 AM
/m50 & /m49 This one might require a trip to the video store, Napoleon Dynamite is a movie that did well at Sundance a few years ago and become quite popular with younger generations (now, I'm not calling anyone old here!!! I love movies from all eras -- That Lana Turner was a looker in her day). Here's the IMDB link:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0374900/

I found it somewhat reminiscent of a Wes Anderson film, the humor can be obtuse.

/m49 I'm glad it's not just me :-)

Arch, regarding 180, I clicked on the link and was whooshed over to the familiar William Black poem. But the Napoleon Dynamite reference had me stumped so I did a Google search and checked out some site that listed movies. I'll need a little more info from you on what it means to parody a poem in a Napoleon Dynamite style. The reference eludes me.

/m47 No worries, Helen - check out the Boonspill QT & see what you think of my guess!

/m46 Sorry I missed that, Karin. Actually, I'd be interested to see what you've come up with, but you might want to post it to Boonspill so that future ZPers (if any ;-) won't run onto it here.

Hi Helen & Sam, we missed you while your corporeal was on vacation. Sorry you guys didn't get to go also, but hopefully he had a good time.

Helen, I notice you didn't reply to my little note to you on /m41. Was that an oversight or were you just trying to tell me something?

/m40 I had been thinking that ending it would be a good idea, too.

Sorry that I've left the 'Walrus' one hanging around for so long, F, but I'll try to get it closed off soon. Anyway, the ZP now appears in Google, though only grudgingly. For example if you Google on "Helen Owly", you get only a few pages. However, if you Google on "Helen Owly site:dspguru.com", you'll see more more. So I think it's digested the entire ZP by now.

Speaking of Googling (now that "Google" is officially a verb), I wish I had recorded how I first found the SB, but, of course, there was no way to know at that moment how much I would come to enjoy it. However, I know that I found it while Googlewhacking, probably using a pair of big words of the kind Apsley and Roland like throw out to impress themselves. I don't remember how I found Googlewhack--maybe from an NPR story, I'm not sure.

/m42 /m43 I think he should have taken at least Helen; then, maybe she wouldn't be so cranky. ;-)

Edited by author 08-30-2006 08:17 PM
/m23 Maybe Sam should thank us for putting up with it for the last two years! It only took him an hour or so to fix it once he finally got interested in it.

/m19 Turns out he wouldn't let us go! We were told that if he let Sam and me go, he'd have to let asdf go; then he'd hear no end of "Are we there yet, are we there yet?" So all three of us got left out.

Even so, I think Sam somehow managed to take a peak at the SB and the ZP once, but he didn't contribute anything.

Edited by author 08-26-2006 11:51 PM
/m39 & /m40 I agree and I ended it. Now if only I could come up with something to add to the others!

/m38 & /m37 Beefy, over here the equivalent of that would probably be "junk in the trunk". As far as Pluto's demotion goes, the letters from Messrs. Walters & Wright remind of those Monty Python letters from BBC viewers. I'll vote with Francine - to me Pluto will always be both a planet and Mickey Mouse's dog. I have to say though I don't mind too much about Xena - but I suppose if it had been added then decades from now folks would be attached to it too.

Here's a neat little story about the upside of today's technology: http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060825/od_uk_nm/oukoe_uk_burglary.

And finally - Helen, I think I may have worked out a small bit of the mystery surrounding your identity. Shall I post it here and see what you think? I'd send you a personal e-mail but you don't have a link from Ziti.

Beefy, I vote we end it. I like the ZP theme of it and anything else would seem extraneous.

I think we've about exhausted the ZP element of 178 - we can either end it or branch out into non-ZP figures - whaddya reckon?

/m26 /m28 Thanks Grayman and F - must pay closer attention (smacks back of head) - fixed.
/m29 et seq. My wife has a saying (usually applied on espying someone of a portly disposition) "It must be jelly, 'cause jam don't shake like that"
/m37 Two letters in The Times today:

"Sir, Admirers of Holst will rejoice at the demotion of Pluto. Now the Planets Suite will once again be complete.

MICHAEL P. WALTERS
Portrush, Co Antrim

Sir, After all this time it seems that Pluto was only a Mickey Mouse planet.

PETER WRIGHT
West Kilbride, Ayrshire"

AND we've been denied Xena - what is the Universe coming to?

/m36 Pluto will always be a planet to me. I refuse to succumb. What's next? Pluto is no longer a Disney dog?

Does anyone join me in weeping for Pluto, the erstwhile and somewhat beloved ninth planet of our solar system? It just sems wrong to let him go. Now what mnemonic device will schoolchildren use to learn the planets?

That's good to know! Yes, it was ok. I'm coming down with a cold so it was kind of tough, but it helped that for some reason, there were only a total of 7 people in the second school! That's including the instructor, myself and the other students. A lot of people are away on vacation now so the attendance was kind of sparse to begin with, but I've never seen that happen before. I'm sure your audience was a bit larger though. :-)

/m33 Did it go OK? I had the Instruction talk! And don't worry - I hardly ever forget my trousers.

Edited by author 08-24-2006 11:06 AM
/m32 LOL! But I still had to look up singlet - I forgot that's what we call an undershirt or t-shirt. Anyway, let us know when you'll be in our neighborhood and we'll have the brother who does the scheduling put you on the incoming speakers list (although we'd best inform him to have a discreet word with you about your wardrobe). :-) P.S. I have talk #4 on the school tonight - my nerves are a bit dodgy.

/m29 & /m31 Nerdish research is a wonderful thing. I also wondered what defines marmalade. We tend to use 'preserve' to mean a superior kind of jam, ie: one that costs more and is sold in a nicer jar. I didn't realize you guys had jam over there though - I thought it was always called jelly. And you're right Karin, what you call jello, we call jelly. Fortunately the chain stops there; we don't have a 'jello'!

My favourite discrepancy between American English and English English is the case of male clothing: what you call a 'vest' and 'pants' we call a 'waistcoat' and 'trousers'. To us, vest and pants are both items of underwear, (singlet and underpants). If I ever give a public talk in your congregation Karin, I've really got to get that right ... !

Edited by author 08-23-2006 08:45 PM
/m30 You're welcome Francine. You know I have a nerdish love of doing research! No random musing is safe from me. ;-)

/m2nine Ah, that clears it up. Thanks for doing the research, Karin :-)

/m26 & /m27 If I remember correctly, don't you Brits use the word "jelly" in a different sense than we would use, i.e. jam, fruit spread, etc.? I almost think I've heard the term applied to what we would call jello.

Interesting question on the jam/jelly/marmalade diferences. I found this:

"True" jellies are smooth textured and made from fruit juice, such as grape jelly.
Jams contain both fruit juice and piece of the fruit's flesh, strawberry jam for example. Jams are also called preserves.
Marmalades are jellies that contain some of the fruit's rind or peel. Citrus fruits are commonly used in marmalades.
Fruit butters are sweet spreads made of fruit cooked to a paste and then lightly sweetened, such as apple butter.

Thanks for bringing it up Francine - I always love to learn something new, about any topic. :-)

/m26 Beefy, besides the Rley typo, your line on 172 doesn't follow the rhyme scheme, if you'd like to correct.

/m26 Interesting you bring up 'jam.' Just yesterday I was in the grocery store and as I passed the jelly aisle and scanned the labels I found myself wondering aloud, "What distinguishes jam from jelly from preserves from marmalade?" All are used. It's one of life's imponderables.

Quick Beefy! ziti172: You can change 'Rley' to 'Riley' before anyone notices. If you want to, of course.

For the Americans among us who may not realize, (although I think you all speak the Queen's English fluently), ziti173: Jam = Jelly

/m24 Hee-hee! Good one.

ZP 158- Somehow, I was hoping that 'Helena' and 'handbasket' would appear consecutively.

Good fix for the 'Anon' contribution bug Sam.

/m21 You're welcome. It's a nice little poem!

/m20 Thanks, Karin--and thanks for catching that. It's been corrected.

Francine, I like your latest line on ZP 171. Did you leave out the word "do" though?

Sam, have a great vacation. Will Helen Owly be joining you and your corporeal?

/m16 Glad I could help--thanks for all your support!

/m17 Thanks, arch. I'll return the favor when I get back.

BTW, I'd like remind everyone that my corporeal's vacations traditionally have yielded a good pome, e.g. http://www.spoonbill.org/year.php?name=year&value=2003. So rest up for some good hard work. ;-)

/m15 Sounds dandy, Sam! I've linked to you. Enjoy your vacation and tell your corporeal to do likewise.

Edited by author 08-02-2006 10:21 PM
Sam, thank you for all the work you've put into ZP over the last couple years and the enjoyment you've given us :-)
And may you and your corporeal have fun on your vacation! Right now I'm sitting under a ceiling fan and also have a tower fan blowing full-blast in my direction. Got up to ninety-seven today. Everyone keep cool!

/m12 First steps?--heck, with what you folks have done with it over the past two years, I think it's already well into Kindiegarden. ;-) Thanks for the good wishes, though, K. :-)

/m14 Yup, it's official, Arch, so you can go ahead and post the link (which is a favor I'll try to return soon on the ZP, if you like!).

I should warn everyone, though, that next week my dopey corporeal is going on vacation (not that he's done enough to need one...), so if new users cause any mess, I won't be around to clean it up.

Sam, is Ziti then officially public? And do you mind if I post a link to it from unthunk?

/m11 Sam, I have noticed (full) Google indexing often takes a while (um, months). I have also found MSN and Yahoo to spider much more regularly. Google usually sends the update spider out within a few weeks of requesting indexing, but full indexing takes a while, and even with correct meta tag usage, good link trails from the root, contenet rich code, a site map register with google, I still have pages that aren't indexed, and dead/404 links still hanging out in Google's index. I think all the R&D is elsewhere, and we're stuck with a 1999 search algorithm. meh.

Edited by author 08-01-2006 06:44 PM
/m11 Sam, when I search for "ziti project" on Yahoo, the 15th result is the dspGuru page link. Congratulations! I'm looking forward to watching your baby take its first steps. :-)

P.S. I just checked out MSN search and it's now the third result there.

Edited by author 08-01-2006 02:25 PM
/m10 I submitted the ZP to Google first. I waited for a few days, which is a reasonable period for such things, but it didn't show up in Google searches. :-(

A day or two ago, I submitted it again to Google, and also to Yahoo and MSN. Searches for "ziti project" in Yahoo began to produce hits in a matter of minutes! MSN began to show results in a day or so. Google still doesn't show any. (If this leads any of you who are stockpickers to decide to go short on Google and long on Yahoo, I can see why--looks like David is beating Goliath again.)

Also, my friends at Iowegian have kindly added a link to the ZP from dspGuru's "Fun" page.

All that makes the ZP officially public--tell your friends!

Sam, per News17nine--why didn't the Google folks get it? What does that mean?

/m7 I just call it 'free verse.'
   And yes, I'd like to see more of that--occasionally.
We need to make more use of that 'scheme' thing--the possibilities are endless. It's another outlet for creativity. And yet often when I start a new pome, I sit there thinking--hmm, scheme? Uhh, I dunno. I'll just leave it open. I'm pretty lazy that way. Or maybe it's the SB conditioning--where one doesn't have a choice.

/m Let's try to do more of those--maybe the "Scheme" box could be used to encourage 'em.

BTW, little as I know about the technical aspects of pomery, I was tempted to characterize the scheme on 169 as "unrhymed iambic quadrameter". However, judging by what I found on the Internet, the term "quadrameter" doesn't seem to have credence. So, anybody got a better name for that scheme?

/m169 'Tis a pity - we had a nice "off-rhyme" going for five lines, or maybe it was just me :-)

I agreed and have voted accordingly :-)

169 seemed to be in the "short but sweet" category, so, in the true Grayman spirit, I voted to end it.

Hi y'all! :-)

Hello!

Welcome to The Ziti Project!