Social Notworking

 by Ashley Lister 

Come friendly bombs: fall on FaceBook

End its endless gobbledegook

And give us back the life it took

That we once had.

Come terrorists: come blow up Twitter

The loss will not leave one soul bitter

We’ll place the blame on some gas fitter

It won’t be sad.

Break Linkedin, Goodreads and the rest

Kill SlideShare, MySpace and Pint’rest

There will not be one tear expressed

We’ll all be glad.

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#DGPBlog

by Ashley Lister

	Ashley R Lister @ashleylister	1m
	I was teaching a class on Thursday morning when we began to discuss Twitter as a tool for honing writing skills.
	Ashley R Lister @ashleylister	2m
	In some ways it's a skill to hone a thought to a limitation as restrictive as 140 characters.
	Ashley R Lister @ashleylister	3m
	The act of tweeting is a discipline that forces a writer to focus on exactly what needs to be said.
	Ashley R Lister @ashleylister	4m
	Admittedly, there can be multiple tweets that use far more than 140 characters and still manage to say nothing of value @David_Cameron.
	Ashley R Lister @ashleylister	5m
	But, just as the respected discipline of haiku can be abused to being nonsensical...
	Dead Good Poets @deadgoodpoets	6m
	Bees have striped bodies   Black yellow black yellow black   Yellow black yellow
	Ashley R Lister @ashleylister	7m
	...the art of the tweet can be used to impart the remarkable (I have reader's block), the risible (Clegg’s OK) and the retarded (I♥1D).
	Ashley R Lister @ashleylister	8m
	To practice this discipline, I've made each of the sentences for this blog less than 140 characters.
	Ashley R Lister @ashleylister	9m
	Some sentences have been easier than others.
	Ashley R Lister @ashleylister	10m
	And the discipline of writing in tweet length sentences has forced me to focus on content in ways that 'regular' writing will never demand.
	Ashley R Lister @ashleylister	11m
	I'm not only conscious of spelling and lexical choice and punctuation - I'm even worried about spaces.
	Ashley R Lister @ashleylister	12m
	How many other writing disciplines make us think of spaces?
	Ashley R Lister @ashleylister	13m
	So, my writing exercise for today is simply a call to tweet.
	Ashley R Lister @ashleylister	14m
	Say something profound if it suits your mood. Say something poetic if you feel able.
	Ashley R Lister @ashleylister	15m
	But be conscious that your words are being shaped by the restrictions of the medium.
	Dead Good Poets @deadgoodpoets	16m
	Include the hashtag #DGPBlog and mention @deadgoodpoets and (if appropriate) we'll retweet your sage words.

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#DGPS & the Gay Les Miserables

 collated by Ashley Lister

Collated from Tweets and FaceBook messages directed to the #DGPS hashtag on January 4th, on the night of the Dead Good Poet's first 2013 Open Mic event.

#DGPS

Dead Good Poets poetry Twitter experiment

Twitter really irritates me. The Landline goes quite often enough with sales calls. No thanks.

Weeding out a Jedi poem and being scay-ud and nerrfuss wolfie

[hides behind my tiny tail]

And he hit him with a shovel.

There can be only one!

 What the chuff?

A combination of the eclectic and the insane

Howard and his Zumba Prayer. Comic genius.

 I

think

I

am

a Dead Good

Poet, therefore I am 

a Dead Good 

Poet. Brilliant!

A mile is a long walk but only takes a short while when accompanied by a smile

Apparently I’m getting off on knowledge. Nice to know.

 Chicken dinner - the not suitable for vegan poem

 A good night’s poetry – January 4^th / No. 5 Café.

Back at the No. 5 on Friday February first. See you then.

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National Teddy Bear Day blog

by Mitzi Szereto (with some assistance from Teddy Tedaloo)

The Brits are a savvy lot. As a naturalised Brit myself (or should that be “meself”?), I knew I was batting for the right team when I applied for my citizenship. Any country that declares a national day of recognition for teddy bears is a country to which I wish to pledge my undying loyalty!

You see, I know a lot about teddy bears. I happen to have one—a larger-than-life (albeit diminutive in size) furry gent by the name of Teddy Tedaloo. We’ve been together for about fourteen years and he’s kept me going through the proverbial thick and thin. He’s quite a character. In fact, you should see him after a pint or two. We’ve been permanently banned from a pub in Maida Vale, London thanks to a brawl he got into with a monkey!

Teddy is very much loved by his adoring public. He seems to be more popular than I am—so much so that we finally had to sit down and write a book together. I mean, I couldn’t let all of that talent go to waste, could I? I’ve met a lot of bears through him too, since he’s a popular personality on Facebook and Twitter. Last year we went on holiday to Belgium. Do you think anyone I knew in my vast social media circle suggested meeting up? Heck no! But the bears are always socialising and travelling and generally just living it large. So we ended up enjoying a lovely evening out in Brugge with a bear and a lovely afternoon out in Brussels with yet another bear. I tell you, these teds are the way to go. They’ve got humans beat by a mile!

I’m so grateful to have discovered that there’s a whole other world out there besides the rather humdrum one inhabited by us Homo sapiens. Bears have been where it’s at for generations. There’s Winnie the Poo, Paddingdon Bear, Yogi and Boo Boo, and let’s not forget Mr. Bean’s little companion “Teddy”. There’s even Misery Bear and the rather rude “Ted” who stars in a film with that Mark what’s his name bloke—the one who used to grab his crotch before Michael Jackson had ever thought of doing it (Mark, not the bear).

Maybe we should thank former U.S. President Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt for putting bears on the map. One day while he was out hunting, his party brought him a bear to shoot. He refused, considering it wrong and unsportsmanlike since the bear had no way to defend itself. The story of the bear’s pardon spread like wildfire, and thanks to a shopkeeper asking the President’s permission to call his stock of stuffed toy bears “teddy bears,” the teddy bear was born. And the rest, as they say, is history!

Mitzi Szereto’s website: http://mitziszereto.com

Normal for Norfolk (The Thelonious T. Bear Chronicles) website: http://mitziszereto.com/normalfornorfolk/

Teddy Tedaloo’s Facebook fan page: https://www.facebook.com/teddytedaloo.fanpage

Mitzi TV: http://mitziszereto.com/tv

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Paul Young's Happy Place

I have constructed a pome based on the pictures used by Standard in yesterday's post.  I think it might accurately reflect the combination of his perplexion and my ennui. 


Wherever I lay my hat

mammalian flight case goes to battle - with only a walnut for a brain

reflects on the sheen of a young Roger Moore, thinking
Brylcreem might just be step 3 of a plan that it stole
from the Internet
memed to extremes, tweaked, wiki'd and tweeted
stolen like screams beneath Norwegian noses
causing the lice to parade in pomade
tank-top dancers
scratch as nymphs screw til they're squillions
skewer and suck through sub-dermal canals
blood utopia riptides
valves vibrating vodka
to darkness (Pig's likeness)
arch anthropods pissed as the head
with the hat



Fun fact for the day: just as some immature insects are called nymphs, the immature water-dwelling insects such as mayflies and damselflies are known as naiads, after the Greek mythological water nymphs. 

I think we can all see the resemblance between a mayfly naiad and a Greek naiad.

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