WhimsyLand

OK, I've been lazy.  That didn't keep me from waking up this morning, putting on my power-walking sweats, and going downstairs to find that it was 2.45 AM.  Yes, I went back to bed, after knocking off some more of Pynchon's AtD.

A certain noted poet emailed me to say that the secret submission site for the Publication Submission Response Times was down.  I case you've never visited, it is a compilation of litmag submissions response times calculated from the entries of a trusted pool of poets.  If you submit regularly, email me to become a member of the statistical team.  Actually, I am long overdue to revise the listings for the Print Journal Submissions Information.  Editors have changed, addresses have changed, and I need to review the "difficulty" ratings.

I found out that my old friend Dave, lately of Paulsen Manor, sent the wine.  It was a glorious cabernet sauvignon from a local vineyard.  It was so good, I gave a bottle to Dima. 

Speaking of wine.  Back when we were exporting low-cost 286-based PCs to Russia, I had a good relationship with Kuehne & Nagel, our international freight handler.  I was also going to Spain at least once a year to visit my buddy Alejandro, who was distributing and supporting our software products.  On one visit to Denia, I wandered into a bodega (wine shop) and acquired 25 cases of wonderful Spanish wine.  K & N handled the shrink-wrapping, palletizing and partial-containerizing and shipped the whole bundle by surface (that is, on the ocean) for about 50 cents a bottle.  Then, there was the 7 cents a bottle Federal tax to pay, and the dollar a bottle to get the stash from the Houston port to Boulder.  All in all, a great deal, as I ended up with cases of Viña Ardanza Reserve, a glorious wine, at about $10 a bottle, and dozens of other good to great vintages.  The really good stuff (i.e., Alta Rioja 904, Vega Sicilia, and Pesquera) I took back in my suitcase.  Some of that wine went to friends, including a few to the much beloved and tragically taken poet Ron Jones, who created an entire mythology around Missing Rioja.  I've been back since with Junie, speeding along the coast as a passenger on Air Tarquis, having a multi-course Valenciano dinner with Pepe in Denia, playing blackjack in the Hotel Torrequebrada, and buying another 20-some cases of Spanish wine.  This time, however, I really had no easy way to get the stuff back home.  So, every couple of months, I plead with Alejandro (the current holder of said stash) to drink another case before it turns.  Alejandro always responds that he and Junie and his wife and I should drink it together watching the moon set on the Mediterranean.  Sounds like a plan.  Maybe this year.

No poetry journals or magazines in the past 5 days.  Only Miss Marple movies via Netflix.  They were the recent ones with Geraldine McEwan and just wonderful.  The bulk of the BBC series starred Joan Hickson and were considered more true to the books, which I can believe.  In my 20's I read all 80-someodd Agatha Christies and developed into such an Anglophile that I immediately started reading Ngaio Marsh (actually, a Kiwi, as I recall), P. D. James, Carter Dickson (AKA John Dickson Carr) and a host of other authors.  But, I digress.  Like the BBC Hercule Poirot series with David Suchet, both Marples are perfect period pieces, differing slightly in the era.  The latter Marples have fast-forwarded the action to the 40's, whereas in the original (and in the Joan Hickson versions), the Great War provides the Majors and Colonels who populate the murder-invested households.  In both, there is a quaint attraction:  everybody smokes, the upper classes do what they damned well please, the herbaceous borders are always trimmed.  I am, frankly, at a loss to reconcile my disgust with my views on the New American Empire and my attraction to these productions.

Junie asks me to pass on this important holiday announcement.
More tomorrow.  I'm done being quiet for a while.