Fantasist's Scroll

Today is the birthday of Kurt Cobain.

The singer-songwriter who essentially founded the “grunge” music movement, was born in Hoquiam, Washington on this day in 1967. He started from humble beginings, working a job as a school janitor, but he started playing in local rock bands. He spent most of this time living at various friends’ houses and on the street, even occasionally sleeping under a bridge. In 1989, he and his bandmates saved up six hundred dollars to record their first album, Bleach, under the name Nirvana. The boys signed to a major label in 1991 for their next album, Nevermind, and Cobain was shocked when it sold more than 10 million copies.

He became internationally famous almost overnight, but Cobain hated being famous. He developed a heroin addiction that got worse and worse, and on April 5th of 1994 he committed suicide at his home in Seattle.

I know, you’re thinking, who?
Well, Robert W. Service is the poet who wrote “The Cremation of Sam Mcgee”. Still in the dark? That’s okay. I don’t think that Mr. Service is too well known anymore. I know him because of my father. Apparently, when my father was growing up one of the things that kids in school did was memorize and recite poetry. It was a competition along the lines of a spelling bee, from what he described. In any case, the poem that he memorized was, of course, “The Cremation of Sam Mcgee”. It’s a gruesome little tale about a man keeping his promise to a dying friend. A promise to cremate his remains in the frozen Yukon, in Winter, during the Gold Rush. Here’s a sample:

There are strange things done in the midnight sun
By the men who moil for gold;
The Arctic trails have their secret tales
That would make your blood run cold;
The Northern Lights have seen queer sights,
But the queerest they ever did see
Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge
I cremated Sam McGee.

You can see how that might grab a young man’s attention, eh? Especially, when his father introduces him to it. Well, if you click on the link, you can read the rest for yourself. I think it’s worth it.

Just something that touched me.

I read a lot about a lot of things. One subject that I tend to enjoy reading about online is conlanging. One of the more well known people in conlanging is Jeffrey Henning, who runs Langmaker.com. But, he has a whole other side that a lot of us don’t really know. I stumbled across it the other day. As an example of how deep a person he is, I offer his Forgiveness Prayer.

Hmm, I’m not so sure about this…

According to this article on AustraliaIT, someone has come up with something they call “Darwinian poetry“. Frankly, it sounds goofy, but the idea of evolving poetry appeals to me. Survival of the fitest and all that.
Oh, what the heck, it’s Friday! Go check it out!

Science Fiction Haiku?

Well, why not? I was looking for something on haiku online today and found, indirectly, SciFaiku.com. It’s a relatively new form of haiku that is inspired by, obviously, science fiction. There are some differences, of course. Traditional haiku usually has a reference to the seasons and nature, but scifaiku refers to something science-fictional. The site has some examples and a bit of the history. It’s neat. Check it out!