A Former Marine

Here's a poem that I actually wrote! In about 20 minutes! It's based around a phrase that I overheard while sitting in a bar watching tennis. I set it to the same music as my last video because I absolutely love that song, and because I wanted to play with some rhythmic stuff that cropped up in the Goldsmith piece. "Rhythmic" would be a good word in Hangman,

Kenneth Goldsmith - VI (an excerpt)

Here it is! The dramatic return of Daggled Mermaids! I did the video, but I'm not in much of a mood to talk about it. Which isn't to say that I don't love this video with all my heart--in fact, I think I'd love anything that includes that song.

Also, here's the text I was reading from. I love this too: http://epc.buffalo.edu/authors/goldsmith/111/contents.html

Hi!

And expect a musical treat later this week.

Me - The Cops Plan a Party

Here's another thing (song? poem?) I've made using ambient audio from the internet. All the material here was recorded over the course of a single day. I really developed an affection for these people while compiling my rather irreverent mix. The photos were lying around on my hard drive anyway, and I figured that I should prove accompaniment.

Vital statistics -

Video duration: 2:03

Best line/phrase: "I have to go back to the yard for a minute to get a probe."

Worst line/phrase: "That's apparently where our victim was supposed to be."

Most apt piece of punctuation: n/a

Poetic school: Middle-American Terseism

Me (with help)- Just an Audio Collage

I love this British radio comedy show called Just a Minute. I also love Happily Ever After, a startlingly cool work by Randy Hostetler. Therefore, I took four episodes of Just a Minute and mixed together snippets to make a little poem or something. I want to use the word "polyvocal." It's my favorite thing I've done for Daggled Mermaids, besting the entire Grammarian series.

The unwitting participants:

Barry Cryer
Clement Freud
Stephen Fry
Jeremy Hardy
Tony Hawkes
Paul Merton
Ross Noble
Graham Norton
Nicholas Parsons
Sue Perkins
Linda Smith

I tried setting images to it, but the sound is as enough of a handful, as it were.

Lisa Jarnot - Song of the Chinchilla

Sarah and I make cameo appearances as voice actors in the beginning. I had to edit down my laugh, as it was 5,000 times louder than everything else in the video. The ever-sultry Will is reading from Jarnot's book Ring of Fire.

Vital Statistics (lovingly filled out by Will, who is a scholar of note):


Video length - 58 seconds

Best line/phrase - the dark arabian chinchilla of the / neutral zone with pears

Worst line/phrase - chinchilla of the pont neuf

Most apt piece of punctuation - the comma in "aperitif / chinchilla, lowing in the headlands of my mind"

Poetic school - Polypropylene Theism


The recent output at Daggled Mermaids can be likened to a Steinberger, between small slices of Jarnot, with a W.S. Merwin secret sauce. I had planned to sit on this guest contribution from Will a lot longer (to maintain the quality of the blog at some lazy time in the future), but I'm too exhausted from A Grammarian to record anything else right now. Next week, by the way, I'm going to mix all the Grammarian videos together into one longer and higher-quality chef d'oeuvre.

Thank you to all three of my guest readers! A brand new one will make her debut before Christmas (or she already has, if you've cheated and looked at my YouTube page).

Me - Languaging the Profound Pause

There's nothing quite like bad poetry to spice up a Thursday afternoon.

This was recorded a few days ago. Today I got a haircut, so we'll soon see a new era in Daggled Mermaids.