Wozza runs the voodoo down

George R R Martin. He's the guy who has written the books upon which the Game Of Thrones TV series is based on. I've read the first two in the series so far, thanks to Sallie's lending library (you should see how many books she's got!).

Unfortunately I've sort of read them around watching the first two seasons on DVD (again thanks to Sallie). Not a clever idea as it's turned out. I couldn't keep up with the episodes and I got frustrated with either reading stuff that was changed in a major way for the series or else I was reading about stuff after it had been on the screen. Either way it wasn't ideal.

I am about to start the third volume - A Storm Of Swords but first I need to read some texts my students are being taught. First up is The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon.

While I'm on a literary theme here's a poem I wrote yesterday in response to a poem I saw which was about wanting to live in a machine world called Ratchet and Clank (it's a computer game) by a NZ poet Alex Walls (who dabbles in mathematics according to the site I got this poem from). Mine takes the opposite view (having decided that he's mostly sincere in his beliefs).

First his version:

ratchet and clank

Give me a machine world

The clink of gears and the greased slide of running parts.
Flashing buttons like tacky stars
And green read-out screens.

Give me binary choices: Yes or No, Left or Right

To be or not to be.
Give me plotted routes, synthesized flavours, debugging procedures.
A world of rules and logic,
Backdoors and loop holes
I want Inspector Gadget arms.

Give me robotic men who speak pre-programmed lines:

Did. It. Hurt. When. You. Fell. From. Heaven?
Give me BarryWhite.exe
And engine oil in an ice bucket.
I want to admire your circuits, your perfectly formed fan belt, your
Enormous data banks.

Give me conversations in numbers and

Music in the hum of processors.
Give me the perfectly calculated turning
Of the celestial spheres, the
Exact angles of the orbiting moon, the
Soft sigh of metal in motion.

Give me a machine world.

And now mine:

           Is This Whatcha Wont?

 

Give me an emotional world,

show me the tears

as Jerry Maguire says,

“You complete me” to Dorothy

on my big flat screen plasma TV.

 

Give me an infinite continuum of choice,

with Hamlet continuing to wander about,

the Gordian Knot of it he will unloose

(There’s no success like failure).

Give me serendipity baby, kismet

And carpe diem days.

 

Give me a world where entropy rules;

Front doors and black holes and revelations

I want Lady Madonna in my arms.

 

Give me jazz improvisations:

John Coltrane chasing the interstellar train

and men using naïve chat lines:

“Is it hot in here, or is it just you?”

 

Give me fire and ice and conversations

is our soundtrack on an endless loop

without a machine in sight.

 

Make me an irony free coffee.

 

Give me peace, give me a world

where all you need is love.

 

Give me an emotional world.

 - Wozza