When you're in Mo you must do as the Momen do

[vovat]

I got this from lozenger8.

When you see this, post a poem you like in your LJ.

As a general rule, I'm not a big fan of poetry, so I'm going to go with something that originally appeared in a prose novel. As much as I love Lewis Carroll's poems, The Hunting of the Snark is too long, and I'm sure just about everybody already knows Jabberwocky, so I'm going with the Bumpy Man's introductory poem from L. Frank Baum's The Scarecrow of Oz:


Here's a mountain, hard of hearing,
That's sad-hearted and needs cheering,
So my duty is to listen to all sounds that Nature makes,
So the hill won't get uneasy --
Get to coughing, or get sneezy --
For this monster bump, when frightened, is quite liable to quakes.

You can hear a bell that's ringing;
I can feel some people's singing;
But a mountain isn't sensible of what goes on, and so
When I hear a blizzard blowing
Or it's raining hard, or snowing,
I tell it to the mountain and the mountain seems to know.

Thus I benefit all people
While I'm living on this steeple,
For I keep the mountain steady so my neighbors all may thrive.
With my list'ning and my shouting
I prevent this mount from spouting,
And that makes me so important that I'm glad that I'm alive.

Not a great poem, necessarily, but kind of fun, and it IS Oz-related. I seem to recall reciting this in both high school and college, when they made everyone in the class share poems.


And, from 3x1minus1, a variation on the interests meme I did recently:

LJ Interests meme results

1. ben folds five:
   I already talked about Ben when I did a similar meme last week or so, and I can't think of much else to say. I like him with or without the Five.
2. chrono trigger:
   A really enjoyable role-playing video game, featuring time travel and some interesting characters. What other RPG do you know of where one of the playable characters is an anthropomorphic frog?
3. eric shanower:
   He's sort of the Official Unofficial Oz Artist. I'm not really familiar with his non-Oz work (he does a lot of comics and such, including a series on the Trojan War), but his Oz work is excellent. His drawings are heavily influenced by John R. Neill, but there's a crispness and sense of detail to his work that Neill sometimes lacked.
4. futurama:
   Another classic science fiction show cancelled before its time! As I'm sure most of the people reading this know, it was a really funny and creative show that Fox screwed over.
5. lewis carroll:
   The Alice books have been favorites of mine since childhood. I think they were largely responsible for my love of surrealistic and otherwise nonsensical humor.
6. moxy fruvous:
   Another classic Canadian folkish pop band cancelled before its time! {g} Seriously, this was one of the first bands I got into through recommendations by fellow They Might Be Giants fans. The first album of theirs that I bought was You Will Go to the Moon, which was okay. Later, on a whim, I decided to buy Bargainville, and it blew me away. I loved their sense of humor, and their ability to tackle just about any genre of music. I think they started to get a little weaker later on in their career; Bargainville and Wood are both supremely awesome, while Moon and Thorhill are just okay. I did manage to catch them live not long before their break-up, and it was a great show. I wish I could have seen them more than once. They seemed to break up totally out of nowhere, though, so I guess there was no way to plan for it.
7. new pornographers:
   Their music is incredibly catchy. Plus, Neko Case does vocals on a lot of the songs. How can you go wrong?
8. skepticism:
   Because taking things at face value is generally not a good idea.
9. the sims:
   I don't play it anymore, but for a while, I was totally addicted to this game. I'm sure most of you have gone through that phase at some point.
10. xtc:
    My second favorite band, after TMBG. They've crafted so many amazing songs in their long, illustrious career. I think a large part of why I'm drawn to them is the wordplay in the lyrics, and the fact that they don't limit themselves to any one musical genre.

Enter your LJ user name, and 10 interests will be selected from your interest list.

You are a Social Liberal (73% permissive) and an... Economic Liberal (20% permissive) You are best described as a: Socialist Link: The Politics Test on Ok Cupid

Comments

[rockinlibrarian.livejournal.com]

Wow, says I'm a democrat, just like my parents, go fig. Would have preferred to be a libertarian. Anyway, I thought some of the questions had a wording bias against conservatives. Anyway, also, that's why I hate both sides.

[vovat.livejournal.com]

I'm kind of wary of the whole libertarian thing, but I think that's mostly because of the economic beliefs of the Libertarian Party. Not all libertarians are capital-L Libertarians, though. I'm okay with some of the social aspects of libertarianism, like thinking free speech is a good thing, and there are certain things that the government really has no business regulating. But, you know, I think taxes and government programs to help the less fortunate are good ideas.

[loz]

Hah! That poem is very much drawing on Poe.

[vovat.livejournal.com]

Really? I wouldn't have thought that, but then, I haven't actually read that much Poe. It's certainly a possibility, since Poe influenced pretty much everybody.

[loz]

The rhyme structure is very Poe. The actual tone isn't Poe at all.