A bartender who looks like Sandra the Hawaiian from Superstore mixed my drink this evening.
– Leonard Blumfeld (© 2023)
Note
The year’s about to end, so I decided to treat myself to one of those Italian bitters, and the above Japanese sentence renders the event as concisely as possible. No picture of the bartender – that would violate privacy laws.
– Leonard Blumfeld (© 2023)
Note
Let’s leave it at that, shall we? More of a question about memory and what one remembers about one particular moment. Thank God for photographs – they greatly help with the task of reconstructing things gone by.
The photo taken from a chair lift above Campo Imperatore in Abruzzo, Italy, is by my real me, Johannes Beilharz. Leica R4, 50 mm Summilux, Adox CMS II 20 film.
Girl on metro is recording a voice message: “Sorry there were no advent calendars with 31 doors, so I had to get one with 24. Is that okay?”
My name is Luka
Now playing
Note For those not familiar, here's the song by Suzanne Vega from 1987 this alludes to:
A grinder
is digging into the wall
painfully
And there’s
nothing
I can do about it
– Leonard Blumfeld (© 2023)
Note
The reported truth and nothing but. I could have added “except write a pedestrian poem about it”, but then it would have been more than 6 lines. And we wouldn't want that, would we?
We are moths and can
infest everything! We then
lay a zillion eggs.
– Leonard Blumfeld (© 2023)
Note
A grim reality report from the afflicted kitchen.
Me and Loretta, we don't talk much now
She sits and stares through the backdoor screen
And all the news just repeats itself
Like some forgotten dream that we've both seen
(John
Prine, from the lyrics of Hello In There)
This song has a story for me. I came to know it when I bought Diamonds & Rust by Joan Baez around 1975, the year it was released. Hello In There instantly struck me as one of the best songs on the album and made me aware of its composer, John Prine. As a result, I started listening to Prine and bought several of his albums.
was wrong:
July is the cruellest month,
sandwiched between June
and August, which are
almost as cruel if measured
by the unbearable heat here
in the Roman stone desert
which comes immensely
close to a waste land
every day from nine to five
– Leonard Blumfeld (© 2023)
Note
A facetious shot at the beginning of T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land (1922). Otherwise razor edge reporting from the global warming front in Rome, Italy, on July 11, 2023.
Had a dream last night
in which, try as I might,
I could not remember
what George Harrison
looked like.
This greatly upset me
in the dream, him
being my favorite
Beatle and all. 10-foot
pole taste of memory loss.
– Leonard Blumfeld (© 2023)
Photo: Ed Caraeff/Getty Images
Jackie and Jilly, who used to be friends and colleagues while both lived in L.A., are finally meeting again at a bar in Boise, Idaho, for the first time in years.
“I hear you went on a trip last year?”
“Yes, we did Europe in five days. It was great.”
“What do you mean by you did Europe?”
“Well, we looked up What to see in Europe on the Internet and planned accordingly.”
“I see.”
“It worked perfectly. We did France, Spain, Italy, Germany and England.”
“And saw them in five days?”
“Yes! And the beauty of it is we’ll never have to go back there.”
“Because you’ve seen all there is to see?”
“Everything worth seeing!”
“Good for you and your blessed little eyes!”
“Are you being sarcastic by any chance?”
“Never! Europe and the wisdom of the Internet would never recover!”
Photos
Top left: Paris, France; top right: Rome, Italy
Center right: Heidelberg, Germany
Bottom left: London, England; bottom right: Madrid, Spain
Kiss your own palm
ecstatically while LOL
and jumping up and down
– Leonard Blumfeld (© 2023)
Notes
Gestural cloning is an essential part of (aspiring to) social media popularity. The above poem is based on one such gesture observed today. Do it, post it on tiktok (or wherever) immediately and get popularity!
For anyone unfamiliar with messaging abbreviations: LOL does not mean “lots of love” but “laughing out loud”. Seems to happen all the time in messages.
For purists: No, I did not quite follow the syllable count and don’t really GAFF.
A haiku and I
were having coffee at Star-
Bux. You pay! it said.
– Leonard Blumfeld
Painting by J. B. with a little help from Artifice. As can be clearly seen, the haiku is only present in spirit.
AI art is a hot item in the crypto art collection scene and currently creates an enormous amount of hype. To investigate this hoopla a little bit myself, I went to one of the online generators that can be used to create such art.
You enter a text description, press the GENERATE button and wait for the piece of art to emerge on the screen in front of you.
The prompt I entered for the masterpiece above was “Portrait of a seamstress bent over a sewing machine”.
What I got from the machine was – lo and behold! – not only one but two seamstresses and two sewing machines.
While this idyll looks quite realistic in its 19th-century charm, you will notice some interesting anomalies when you take a closer look. Three of the hands, for example, are disfigured and/or have missing or superfluous fingers, and there are two fingers to the left of the front sewing machine that do not originate from any hand.
Did the artificial intelligence decide to play a trick on me because I did not pay for its services?
We shall never know.
– Yours artificially, Leonardo Blumfeld
– Leonardo Blumfeld (© 2023)
Nota
Hoy me he metido en vena castellana, inspirada por el libro de Octavio Paz con el título arriba.
A solid bore
of blood and gore
– Leonard Blumfeld (© 2023)
The two lines tell it all in a nutshell. This 2022 Brad Pitt starrer and Kill Bill derivative is to be recommended if you like to spend 127 minutes of your time listening to incessant claptrap about fate and karma, including shrink advice about good and bad luck from the voice of Sandra Bullock (who fortunately remains mostly unseen), yawning at endless twists and turns cropping up at every bend of the railroad track towards Kyoto and watching lots and lots and lots of blood and gore inflicted in the most various ways. Hallelujah! Another masterpiece delivered by stars desperately trying to hang on to past glory.
Photo above (still picture from the movie): Brian Tyree Henry as Lemon (one of the highlights, has some truly funny moments)
Two peas are rolling along on the floor.
Says one to the other: Watch out! There is a step
ep
ep
ep
“Got to keep your eyes
on the ground, Ala!” – “Why? Are
there snakes?” – “No, dog shit.”
– Leonard Blumfeld (© 2023)
Note
This year's first haiku published here, and on such a pertinent subject no less. It might not hurt, though, to occasionally remind a child that glides on wings (“Ala” means wing) of what's on the earth.
A true story from the AI age
On the machine, it said in big writing and with many illustrations, “Print photos from your Instagram.” There were no instructions, so I thought maybe the thing wanted cash first, and threw two 50 cent coins in the slot. It readily showed that now I had a credit of 1 €. No instructions on how to proceed, though.
Eventually, I got tired of waiting for nothing and pressed the red button to at least get my money back. No such luck!
I looked around for someone who looked like a competent contact person. No such luck, of course. There are no contact persons in the machine age.
Then I thought I heard some click and turned my attention back to the machine. There was, lo and behold, something in the output slot! I pulled it out and saw, much to my amazement, the two photos shown above.
I have no idea who these people are.
It’s like the machine communicated, after all, saying something like “Gotcha! I’ll keep your money – would never dream of giving anything back! – but you get something in return. Now don’t you complain!”
Lesson learned: Never trust vending machines pretending to be Instagram!
– Leonard Blumfeld (© 2023)
Ever since there’s a cat in the house
everyone responds to his calls in meows.
Now, if it all were a bit clearer
true communication would be much nearer.
– Felix Morgenstern (© 2023)
(The photo shows the source of inspiration of this silly rhyme.)
Bla ble bli blo blu.
Foreign: blé blö blä blò blù.
And so are you too.
– Leonard Blumfeld (© 2023)
Note
Undoubtedly not a good start. Or is it? Symbolisms galore in the photo: something in the mirror while getting passed by the future.
