two endings, one sad, one not.

Can it be Wednesday already? Yes (obviously). I've never known time to stop, though it sure does drag sometimes. I remember reading a story when I was a kid in which one of the characters supposed that there's an alien race out there that speeds up time when we're enjoying ourselves, and slows it down when we're not. So they can get the good time for themselves, and dump extra bad time on us. Hm. Let's end with continuation and continue with endings. (Ooo! I did a chiasmus!) Sad: Arthur C. Clarke, the science fiction writer, died. You can find obits in a lot of places, so I won't link to any. I'll have to make it a point to read his last book, due out this summer, I believe. So the big three are gone—Asimov, Heinlein, and Clarke. Not sad, exactly: I finished the poetry book! Now I know about a lot of forms I didn't know about. A lot of them are pretty much not worth bothering with. Rondelets, rondelles, and a dozen variations on that theme all repeat something, usually the first line or the first half of it at the end of each verse. Basically, if you have a short refrain, it's a rond- something, and you can invent your own, which I don't feel like doing at the moment. Then there's the stuff based on the shape of the verses, and stuff as obscure and unappetizing as avant-garde music. There's even a type that consists of lines takes from a published poet and strung together so they make sense, or almost do. I'd rather work on ballads (I'm working on one now about eating breakfast at a little diner in Dover with a bunch of the locals.) I really ought to to try a sonnet or two. The Spencerian sonnet is hard because it has the same two rhymes all through it—easy in highly inflected Italian, hard in mongrel English. Hence the Shakespearean sonnet, a different set of rhymes for each four of the first three quatrains, and another for the couplet at the end. Sonnets are supposed to be on the introspective side (as contrasted to humorous or narrative), with a division somewhere in the middle, and the couplet at the end resolves the contrast between those two parts. Rather like an ode. Remember odes? I can't not be reading a book. Scientific American is running a series about people who experiment on themselves (Remember the guy that the movie Supersize Me is about?—he's one.) Anyway, another fellow invented a diet from his experiments, and I ordered a copy of the book he wrote about it. So I'll share the gist of that next, I suppose. The guy's name is Seth Roberts and the diet is called the Shangri-La Diet. Here's a link to the Sci Am article. Hope it works. Basically what you do is spoil your appetite in a certain way to reduce the amount you eat. Maybe I'll lose a little weight, too!