Halrloprillalar

It's still June 3 here, so Happy Birthday, Inui!

eta: It was hard to decide whether "Inui" should scan as two or three syllables in English, but I fixed on two in the end.


Inui the Spy: A Story in Rhyme (and Dubious Taste)

Inui was a data man. He liked to write things down.
He peered and peeped and spied on people all around the town.

( read more )

liviapenn posted about Antarctica and jood posted about David Duchovny, so I was of course reminded of the X-Files movie.

The scene near the end, Mulder and Scully lying on the ice together as their evidence disappears, Scully cradling Mulder in her arms, has always made me think of this poem by Walt Whitman.

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As I lay with my head in your lap, Camerado,
The confession I made I resume—what I said to you in the open air I resume:
I know I am restless, and make others so;
I know my words are weapons, full of danger, full of death;
(Indeed I am myself the real soldier;
It is not he, there, with his bayonet, and not the red-striped artilleryman;)
For I confront peace, security, and all the settled laws, to unsettle them;
I am more resolute because all have denied me, than I could ever have been had all accepted me;
I heed not, and have never heeded, either experience, cautions, majorities, nor ridicule;
And the threat of what is call’d hell is little or nothing to me;
And the lure of what is call’d heaven is little or nothing to me;
...Dear camerado! I confess I have urged you onward with me, and still urge you, without the least idea what is our destination,
Or whether we shall be victorious, or utterly quell’d and defeated.

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Reading it makes me love them all over again.

This morning I sat down to write
But nothing seemed to come.
No meta, fact, or bitchy rant,
No fiction or pretentious cant,
Just doggerel without a bite.
It makes me feel quite dumb.

The reason is my brain's awash
With headache cure I took last night
Which leaves no room for brilliant thoughts
Or snarky lines or cunning plots.
Just stupid rhymes that I can't quash
And sensitivity to light.