Julia Rietmulder-Stone's blog | ramblings about poetry, politics, & Harrisburg
I probably should have mentioned this earlier but, well, I didn’t.
I’m going to be a co-feature at Poetry at The Alley this coming Saturday, along with Harrisburg’s first Poet Laureate, Gene Hosey.
It’s a good venue and we’re going to have lots of fun, so come join us! If you’d like more info, send me an email or follow the above link and call the restaurant itself.
A few months ago, I started noticing that a lot of the spam I received contained seemingly random words at the bottom, in wonderful combinations like, “feverish interruption symphonic assyria headway argentina whom bragging rendezvous effusion peking bernardo california ellison”. I got excited — these were free words being sent to me every day.
Inspired by Jonathan Schwanbeck, I asked Kevin Gaughen if he would be able to help me at some point create a perl script that could take these spam words, insert random prepositions, conjunctions, etc., and random line breaks to create “poetry”. He said he could and told me what I could do to get started on it, but I kept pushing it off until I have more free time. A few days ago, he surprised me with the page I’ve linked above. Below is an example of poetry it created, based on the sample words in this post.
she
headway
effusion rendezvous
bragging
butpeking. or
interruption
symphonic california bernardo in front of
whom; argentina
I am sitting in an empty office at work. My manager just left the building for the last time. Most of the other members of my department have been gone for days, along with nearly all of the 400 employees who have filled this huge space for the last four years.
On Tuesday night I took the last call to come into the Harrisburg call center. We thought all the queues were turned off, but as we stared at the still monitors, a straggler came through, which had to be answered. It had been six months since I spoke to a customer, but it felt good to do it one last time, even if was just for a minute before I transferred him to an outsource agent somewhere in Asia.
I told a friend this morning that it hadn’t sunk in yet. I had thought that it would on Wednesday, as most people departed for the last time; or maybe on Wednesday night at the bar where everyone celebrated both St Patrick’s Day and their liberation. When I didn’t feel it then, I thought it would happen this morning when I pulled into a vacant parking lot and made my way through an empty building — but it didn’t. I gave up, and told my friend that I didn’t think it would happen until I left for the last time, or maybe not even until a few days after that.
It happened just now, as my boss smiled and walked out the door. I’ll be back next week, to help facilities and IS with anything I can before we permanently vacate, but seeing the last of my department leave means that my job as I knew it is gone, in a far more real way than it was even half an hour ago.
I’m going to say goodbye to a few remaining people, log off this computer once and for all, then swallow the lump in my throat and go home. I’ll be back, for a few more days anyway, but the chapter is already closed.
Tonight, my aunt found a wadded up piece of notebook paper in my grandmother’s driveway. It read as follows:
GIVE ME A BREAK!
Just for the record, the freedom of speech of every United States citizen is protected an [sic] ensured by the First Amendment of the United States Constitution. I think it is completely disgusting that the FCC, a government group that consists of appointed not elected people, can analyze, judge, and pick and choose what someone can say and hear on the radio and TV.
I have in my car still my sign from Bush’s visit that reads “America is a Free Speech Zone”, in the backseat in such a way that it is easily readable from the outside. It makes me wonder if someone threw the note in response to the sign, or if it was just a random discard. I would like to know who wrote it, as I completely agree with the the (albeit brief) statement made. Earlier in the afternoon I learned of a connection I have to a woman who does handwriting analysis — I’d ask her to look at it if it weren’t written in all caps…
McDonald’s super-size fries, and drinks going bye-bye
The title of the article says it all. McDonald’s has announced plans to phase out their super-size options. I’ve heard a lot of reactions to this, but the predominant attitude seems to be that this is a favorable thing. While I first thought that this was in response to the legal action that was taken against them last year, when families claimed that McDonald’s was responsible for their obesity, it appears that the legal threat is actually all but non-existant. Congress is even considering a bill making that type of suit illegal. Instead, it appears that this is mostly a PR move for the company, which is an interesting twist.
Were this a decision based on legal concerns, I would be disgusted — it’s each individual’s responsibility to decide what they are going to eat, and they need to accept the consequences for that. One person I spoke with said the current and projected obesity levels are just too much of a drain on the healthcare system, but if we focus on further privatizing healthcare (which I’m pretty sure I believe we should) then that shouldn’t be a concern. If McDonald’s is doing this because they believe it’s what the public wants, though, and that it will help their bottomline, then my reaction is different.
I don’t ever super-size things, unless I’m going to be sharing with at least one other person, so it won’t change the way I eat at McDonald’s. The only thing I don’t like about them getting rid of the option is that I’d like to see, as I mentioned earlier, people take responsibilty themselves — but if McDonald’s really does think that this is a wiser financial move, maybe it’s a barometer that people are being more responsible. Clearly the gained revenue from the larger sizes isn’t enough to offset the positive PR they’re getting from this decision.
On the other hand, maybe they’re just hoping that now people will get two orders of fries.