I sentence this sentence!

"An Indian court has remanded two members of an Italian navy security team accused in the fatal shooting of two fishermen in custody for two weeks."
— lead sentence of today's BBC story India court keeps Italian navy guards in 14-day custody

Does this save it?
An Indian court has ordered 14 days of judicial custody for two members of an Italian navy security team accused in the fatal shooting of two fisherman.

What's your suggestion?

Have you also noticed that the adjectival form is hit and/or miss whatever, when it comes to the non-pukka nations?

Reuters should make headlines for their headlines.
Here are two beauties:

Mexico court approves Vitro restructuring plan
Lead sentence:
A Mexican court approves ...

Turkey court frees 22 after anti-government protest
Later in the story:
Police raided their houses and found left-wing tracts and pictures of executed Turkish leftists.

A related story listed below that one, also Reuters, is:
Turkish court agrees to try former top general

Anything goes!

In contrast, see if you can find the same sort of treatment for "America court".
I couldn't. Even the Times of India is — what? Old-fashioned, stick-in-the-mud pedantic?

But then, if you were interested in English, you would be brave to venture into the BBC with its "Easy tiger!" lesson which includes "Hi Helen I like your hair." (Was the punctuation shot?)

Instead, I recommend S. Upendran at The Hindu, and Jose A. Carillo at The Manila Times and his English language forum.

"Next, make yourself thoroughly familiar with the various tools of English for putting words together into grammatically and structurally correct, coherent, and clear statements. Don’t be content with just being knowledgeable with the English content words—the nouns, pronouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, and interjections. You absolutely need to master the rules for using them, but always remember that they only work as carriers of the meaning that reside in each of them."
— Jose A. Carillo, in answer to "A letter from a Filipino freelance writer in New Zealand"

Of frogs and eyes and pobblebonks

This has been the summer of frogs. This little tree frog was outside the window last night. Through its translucent skin, its heart rate could be seen as easily as the joints in its toes. On the veranda, two other tree frogs were hunting moths. When a dung beetle flew in, it was grabbed so fast I never saw the mouth of the frog open. But I did see the beetle dragged, its leg clamped in the frog's mouth, and the frog backing into the shadows. Was the beetle et? That will remain a mystery. The beetle was almost as large as the frog, whose eyes, being a frog's, were almost as large as its stomach. The gulp, with the frog's eyes pushing down the beetle—if this is, in fact, a frog whose eyes retract—would have been quite a sight.

Robert P. Levine, Jenna A. Monroy, and Elizabeth L. Brainerd must have many happy hours in their lives, due to their dedicated observations. They are the authors of "Contribution of eye retraction to swallowing performance in the northern leopard frog, Rana pipiens", in The Journal of Experimental Biology, March 15, 2004.

As to species, this is the best part of nature for amateurs like me. It gives us great excuses to buy guide books; and no matter how many we have, they are never enough. I can tell you with assurance that the frog above is not a Peron's tree frog, whose belly is merely 'smooth'. And I think that the two hunters on the veranda were Tyler's tree frogs, the larger one with the aspirational appetite being the female, and the small thin one the colour of a cucumber that is left too long and gone yellow, being the male in "breeding colouration". I hope I'm right, partly because their other name is Southern Laughing Tree Frog. The thing is, if this is true, then the female has been visiting on her own for weeks, pretending to be a Peron's.

But if only you could have been with me a day ago, when we both could not have seen but heard — a pobblebonk. Like some people, you don't have to see a pobblebonk to know it's unmistakably there. But a pobblebonk is a treat to hear.

And I highly recommend this dramatic feast for all toad lovers. This is one of my favourite passages in literature, so much so that I've made it a feature in my Virtuous Medlar Circle amongst the classics to enjoy rather than think you should have read:
Martha, Jane, and Babbette, a true story from A Farmer's Year by H. Rider Haggard

A def of classical music?

"You can tell this man rarely listens to anything released later than 1987."

I didn't know that Jayaprakash Sathyamurthy is a musician in addition to being a writer of both commentary and crackling fiction (read his most recently published story, Run For Your Life, in Pratilipi, a bilingual literary journal.)

But in

Djinn & Miskatonic: the first three months

he talks gigs, sets, and is modestly pleased that "There were even a couple of people headbanging to our lugubrious tunes."

The fountain-pen-mimicking hoverfly

This Micusfonsscriptus needs a refill

Since this hover fly (otherwise known as hoverfly or syrphid fly or flower fly, or—by most people, a wasp, which would be a mistake) mistook a paper on my desk for a toilet, I've taken the liberty of naming it with a name that is, I would bet, more accurate though linguistically inept, than the name it most likely bears in ignorance.

For who amongst the odd visitors here who have perched for a moment, doesn't love the feel and look of a fountain pen not made for people who love gold and glitz, but the pure pleasure of ink flowing from a pen onto a receptive sheet.

This Pelican needs feeding, too.

Of course, if anyone can put an official name to the beautiful creature above, I'd be grateful if not exactly thrilled. For vicarious thrills, see Mark Isaak's delightful Curiosities of Biological Nomenclature.

Medlars shower hails upon Jeff Sypeck

If medlars and gargoyles had bestowing rights (not to mention all of us including the ghosts of Chaucer, Seuss, and Carroll; all who value the fun, the pun, the music, the raucously empathetic life condensed to verse that runs over your tongue like a brook over stones—instead of Iowanic tripe or poetry is anytng you rit n cl potry)—Jeff Sypeck would be given the post of poet laureate instead of those who do.

Medlars everywhere are celebrating this jongleur's latest "Medlar song"—though some look a bit astringent at having to share the bill with another photogenic gargoyle, even though Jeff posted an excellent before/bletted portrait of a few of these stars.

Cardoons!

"Mix some string into a bowl of sick, and pour that on a plate."

"That's enough, Riri," said her father, reaching for another Milkmaid from the box. "Your amma goes to so much trouble to fix you a healthy meal."

Let's trade troubles! thought Roariferex Glak, for the punishment in the Glak lair was: "If you don't eat your cardoons now, you'll get twice as much tomorrow." And she knew from experience that cardoons were double trouble multiplied by infinity. Roariferex, by the way, is the name she was given when she hatched. She had to put up with what her parents called her, but she was Roar to her friends.

Roar's chin trembled with indignation. Why! she thundered silently, do I get into trouble for what my body does? Her throat would jam shut and her stomach jump. Then her teeth—all one hundred and fifty of them—would close so tight that they met in a jagged clamp, her top front fangs pressed down so hard over her chin scales that each scale's root was rimmed with blood.
She could close her eyes and it still happened, just at the thought of putting any part of that dead flop and slither on her tongue. It happened even if she dipped her smallest talon into that humungous mountain just for her, of: gloop-grey, smelliverous, and slimily yeggigh as the last frog in a carton forgotten in the fridge—a heaped peak of it—forbidding and compulsory, and unfair as parents who don't eat it themselves—cardoons!

________________________________________________________

That's how Cardoons! begins. It was camping here for a few days, but this is a horrid place to post it, where it looks as if it has a never-ending tail.

So I've booted it out and now settled it for your pleasure (and free reading, of course) at my Virtuous Medlar Circle, here:

Cardoons!

'Cardoons!' first appeared in Phantasmagorium Issue #1, October 2011, the horror quarterly edited by Laird Barron.
This story is copyright Anna Tambour, and I'm being presenting it online as a promotion for Laird and the other authors, and with hopes by AT and Marc McBride, that 'Cardoons!' will become a book full of pictures for adults to read with children's supervision.

A Smoking Promotion for Phantasmagorium, 'Cardoons!' & The Year of the Dragon

I'm called 'Plain Packaging ' *

Coming in the next post: 'Cardoons!' will be presented free for international consumption, in celebration of:

The young life of a Fantastically Unusual Quarterly
The Year of the Dragon
Incredible Vegetables
Respectable Packaging

'Cardoons!' first appeared in Issue #1, October 2011 of Phantasmagorium, the new horror quarterly edited by Laird Barron. Now Issue 2 has been published. Huff huff hoooray to the editor and authors.

What you'll find in Phantasmagorium
A wonderfully idiosyncratic editor. That fear wrangler, Laird Barron, isn't just a writer with a deviantly masterful ability to insinuate whatever he chooses into psyches and autonomic nervous systems, but a connoisseur of fright. Thanks, Laird, for your vision, your unique taste and your skill in mixing. Laird Barron is also the soul of integrity.

Great storytellers. Get your Phantasmagorium to gorge on other stories that this one was lucky enough to be nestled with, by authors who are terrible! Yes, folks, I mean that. Every one of these other authors and their stories, poems and commentary that Laird Barron has gathered together is terrible—in the King James sense of the Word—I wish to say it in that affected way because I can't otherwise think of how to say terrific, awe-inspiring, powerful as angry deities.

Who are those authors so far?
in Issue 1: Scott Nicolay, Simon Stranzas, Joseph S. Pulver, Genevieve Valentine, and Stephen Graham Jones
in Issue 2: Paul Tremblay, Chesya Burke, Nadia Bulkin, Mike Allen, Steve Harris, and Scott Nicolay.

* Plain Packaging is named after me

I was celebrated as ' plain and respectable '
by F.E. Mills Young, in The Love Story of a Bachelor

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
(later this day)
POST EXPRESS
Cardoons! is here
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

I'll take mine like the Owl and the Pussy-Cat

Go try to scrape gold from ferrets
if you think I'll think pounds means pounds.
Take your chestnuts, your 24 carrots.
Read my lips! See the contract! Zounds!

I'm the Goose that Laid the Golden Egg,
not some beehive milked for honey.
I've got termites on call to munch your leg,
if you think I work for love, not money.

As the contract specifies,

". . . plenty of money, Wrapped up in a five-pound note."

upcoming in A Season in Carcosa, editor: Joseph S. Pulver Sr.

Joseph S. Pulver Sr. is not only mad, but could inspire a clot of mud to throw off the shoe and dance.

I know, because he dug this clot (your correspondent) out of a pit and flung it in crazewards. Only because of Joe, "Wolf King" exists, and will be one story in a collection of absolutely unexpectables by authors I am honoured and tickled to rub pages with.

This is how he describes the volume:

A Season In Carcosa will be similar in feel and direction to Ellen Datlow’s stunning Lovecraft Unbound, but I’ll be mining the King In Yellow work of Robert W. Chambers.

Here's the lineup so far, and—!!!—it's not complete.

Joel Lane
Don Webb
Ann K. Schwader
Simon Strantzas
Edward Morris
Richard Gavin
Joseph S. Pulver
Michael Kelly
Richard Lupoff
Daniel Mills
Allyson Bird
Gary McMahon
Cate Gardner

That cover is by Danielle Serra—and is, I think, a perfect example of great illustration. It has its own integrity, sprinkles its own itchpowder into our capacity for curiosity, is a story in itself, but what story? We can never 'know' just as no one person can 'know' a story painted in words any more than anyone should teach them.

As for Joseph S. Pulver the author, here's his latest novel, unleashed by an extraordinary publisher, Chômu Press.


I must upheave some impressions being spread about this author who is known for his sorcery with horror, hardboiled crime, filth, the colour black (in French). He is also known for his works that are 'Lovecraftian' and others inspired by Chambers. As for Chambers, I'll quote what I replied to Mr Pulver when he very kindly and generously broached me trying to write a story for A Season in Carcosa: "I think that you are a writer of great worth, but I don't think Chambers was."

And I still mean that. He's a great enough editor that he was tickled that I love Chambers as well as I love Lovecraft. He does have a side that might be insidious. He is highly seductive. After another letter from him, I couldn't wait to dig my fingers into Chambers.

But back to that master of horror, Mr Pulver.

What hasn't been mentioned, but should be: Joseph Pulver is above all, a romantic. Take, say, his latest novella, "And this is where I go down into the darkness", in Phantasmagorium Issue #1 edited by Laird Barron.

It's a tragic love story that Stevenson would have admired and recommended to his friends, and Poe would have denigrated in envious spite. As to the cynical pose workshopped story that is in imitation of another rampant irritating imitating posturing conceited bore, written by someone whose scariest incident in life is a crit, and whose sum of experience of noir is watching a movie in a dark room, Joe's been around. It shows. Perhaps that's why he doesn't have that pose, any pose.

Many loquacious poets would drool, unhinged, at his prose that is poetry, because what seems like an effortless Hendrixan riff is as painstakingly controlled as any virtuosic spewfling is. Then there's the visual artist. In common with real artists, he sees the value of unfilled space. By that, I mean he cares about the way sentences and paragraphs are constructed—how that changes the way words fall on the page, veering meaning, tempo, mood.

But there's a whole other side of Pulver, too, what I'll call the dark side of the moon because on that side, you can't see that the moon is laughing its face off. Pulver is nonsensically hilariously accurate. He's also as foudroyant as a Spanish dancer sea slug, wielding his baroquity as purposefully as the nudibranch.

In human terms, if I had to compare him to other authors, I would say that he reminds me more of a mug of hot Lear blended with Cummings, served with a squeeze of post-enema'd Shelley.

One fantasy I have of Pulver: He takes over Mills & Boon.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Highly recommended diversion:
Why I like nudibranchs, marine slugs with verve by Dr Hans Bertsch, one of my favourite humans. This article is a a feature that I inveigled the splendiferously curious Dr to write for my Virtuous Medlar Circle.

Thar she blows!

Just as history sinks every headline today
so we forget proverbs that grans used to say.
O cry foul at the captain who says that he tripped
and fell in the lifeboat that gave him a lift.
Froth and bother! but listen for ghosts who now quip:
There's many a slip twixt cap and ship.