Dear Viagra,

No matter how much Herbal Essence shampoo I put in my hair, I still cannot achieve an orgasm. Do you make a special pill for this?

Fact Attack!

After a long day of Wiki-ing, here are some fun tidbits of info I would like to share:

-groundhogs are not actually hogs
-geese don't actually get goosebumps
-the Czech Republic is not actually Czech
-Phencyclidine is not actually a "cyclidine"
-a goat is not actually a horse

Atheists

Setting: A cocktail party. Cocktail weenies are being served. This will come into play later.

Mary: Todd, I'd like you to meet my brother, Jeff. He's also an atheist.
Todd: Nice to meet you, Jeff. Were you at the last atheist convention in Copenhagen?
Jeff: No, actually, I went to the one in Oslo.
Todd: (disgusted) Oh, so you're an Eastern Orthodox atheist.
Jeff: At least we aren't watering down atheism for the masses like you shameless Reformed atheists.
Mary: Wait, I thought you guys just all didn't believe in a god and that's that, right?
Todd: Ha, if only it were that simple. You see, whereas your brother here believes that there is no God and never was one, the Reformed Church of Atheists believes that there was a God but he was killed by Noam Chomsky in a knife fight back in the 50s.
Jeff: (praying) Forgive him, God-who-doesn't-exist. He knows not what he says. Also, my non-existent Lord, I left you some milk and cookies on the table last night as a sacrifice, but since you aren't actually real, I succumbed to my desires and ate the cookies myself. Please forgive me and don't banish me to the subterranean fires of Hell, which science has proven don't exist. To repent for my evil deeds, I shall watch YouTube videos of Christopher Hitchens for six straight hours.
Todd: Oh here we go, another typical Eastern Orthodox move. Praying in public, trying to look like a big devout atheists in front of the non-non-believers. Real genuine, you charlatan!
(Max approaches them)
Max: Hey are you guys praying to the great Non-Existent One? You should come to my anti-prayer group this Tuesday night to celebrate the joy and blessing of his non-existence. There'll be fudge squares!
Jeff: Buzz off, you new age weirdo.
Todd: Yeah, now here's a retarded atheist.
Max: Very well, brethren, but remember--the forgiveness of the fake Lord is always real!
(he leaves)
Mary: What was that all about?
Jeff: Heh, Max is a Fundamentalist atheist.
Todd: Ha, the idiot believes that there was an omnipotent God, but he lost his powers to Satan in a game of Connect Four in 1985 and since then he's been working as a computer programmer in Cincinnati. It's an off-shoot of the Reformed denomination.
Jeff: So stupid.
Todd: Yeah, seriously.
Server: Would you gentleman like a cocktail weenie?

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Wiki Wednesdays - David Eckstein

Not to try to steal any of Fire Joe Morgan's Eckstein thunder, but read the last sentence of the "College Career" section.

Now I don't hate David Eckstein. He seems like a nice guy, his entrance music is sometimes Crystal Method's "Busy Child," and, according to Wikipedia, his last name means "cornerstone" in German. Seems fine. However, I can't stand how overrated this guy's become thanks to a lot of bone-headed ESPN writers who praise him like he's Radio from that movie Radio or Rudy from that movie Willow. He's a very average-to-slightly below average baseball player! But because he's four feet tall, everyone's got such a soft sport for him, including Jews apparently, who voted him on their special All-American team even though he's a devout Catholic. Joe Morgan pulling this crap I can understand, but come on, Jews!

St John's College: Beginning Poetry Workshop - England, 1788

Dear William Wordsworth,

I really enjoyed your poem! I think you are making a lot of progress this semester, and I am grateful to be assigned as your peer reviewer this week. I like that you write about nature a lot. I am often deeply moved by nature, too. Here are some comments I have on your poem.

Okay, now this is ultimately up to you, but I was thinking for the title, instead of "Unicorn Dream," you could maybe call it something like "Tintern Abbey" or "Lines Composed for Tintern Abbey" or I don't know, maybe even "Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey, on Revisiting the Banks of Wye During a Tour." I only say this because the poem seems to be about pensively looking at Tintern Abbey, and while "Unicorn Dream" has a dulcet ring to it, there are no references to a unicorn in your poem. Just a suggestion, though.

I think the beginning's very strong, though a few lines could maybe be improved. The setup for the second section is intriguing, though I think maybe instead of saying "But oft, in lonely rooms, and mid the din/Of towns and cities, I have felt sad," you could say something like

"Of towns and cities, I have owed to them,
In hours of weariness, sensations sweet,
Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart,
And passing even into my purer mind
With tranquil restoration: —feelings too
Of unremembered pleasure;"

Those are just some lines off the top of my head, they're probably nothing more than trite drivel, but if you don't feel they convey the speaker's swell of emotions better than the single word "sad," then by all means ignore my suggestion.

I like how you mostly use blank verse in this poem, though I would watch towards the end when you suddenly switch to a brief rhyming pattern in which you try to rhyme "And this green pastoral landscape, were to me/ More dear, both for themselves and for thy pie." Unless the speaker has been suppressing a hilarious Cockney accent for the majority of the poem and cannot help himself at this last line, I don't think this couplet rhyming "me" and "pie" will work. And again, this is another somewhat radical suggestion, but maybe instead of "thy pie" you wrote "thy sake"? It would do away with the rhyming scheme and keep the poem uniformly in blank verse, but also there's no previous mention of the speaker's sister owning a pastry in the poem.

That's it for comments this week! Again, I think you're getting much better. Oh, and one final piece of advice - maybe instead of having your poem written in the shape of an ice cream cone, you could separate it into stanzas and simply number each line. Again, this it totally your call, just a suggestion.

Sincerely,
Danny