“One minute he is happily dancing and minding his own business as the Tube train trundles under the streets of London. The next he has been unceremoniously shoved in the back by a fellow passenger, through the doors and onto the platform as it prepares to pull away. Video footage of the attack on the dancing Tube man has been posted on YouTube and caused a storm among viewers…. YouTube user VegetarianRobotLass wrote: ‘The train wasn’t crowded. Yes, it may have been annoying, but it’s only one train ride. There was no need to push the guy off the train.’”

I never thought I’d say this, but I completely concur with VegetarianRobotLass.

http://player.vimeo.com/video/32471589?title=0&byline=0&portrait=0

I actually found this kind of fascinating and soothing. You may be less interested, but that’s not really my problem, is it? I am getting a little tired of you and your constant need for entertainment. If you can’t sit back and enjoy a simple video about whiskey stones then maybe you should take a good, hard look at yourself in the mirror and figure out what your real issues are. God you make me sick sometimes. [Via]

You would think all the antibiotics in the fast food would even things out, but maybe they do things differently in Britain: “The obesity epidemic in children could be cutting the effectiveness of penicillin treatment — because the doses were worked out for a slimmer generation. Guidelines have remained unchanged for almost 50 years, but children are now up to 20 per cent heavier. Experts want the guidelines to be revised amid concern that some children are getting too little medication to treat their ailments.” Speaking of Britons, more than three quarters of the pictures they post of themselves to Facebook show them under the influence of alcohol. In the rest they are just stroking knives affectionately.

Just watch this, we can discuss it later. You will indeed find yourself transfixed by its mysterious power. [Via]

Ha ha, here’s the greatest picture of the end of the Iraq War, by Al-Jazeera’s Gregg Carlstrom: the assigned seats at the “Yay The Iraq War Is Over” ceremony also informed attendees in which bunker they should take shelter, in case they were all bombed or shot at or whatever. Enjoy your war zone with no war (sort of)!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4QPxrYzcXo

“’Dennō Senshi Porygon’ (でんのうせんしポリゴン Dennō Senshi Porigon?, literally ‘Computer Soldier Porygon’, although most commonly translated as ‘Electric Soldier Porygon’) is the thirty-eighth episode of the Pokémon anime’s first season. Its only broadcast was in Japan on December 16, 1997…. The episode is infamous for using visual effects that caused seizures in a substantial number of Japanese viewers, an incident referred to as the ‘Pokémon Shock’ (ポケモンショック Pokémon Shokku?) by the Japanese press. Six hundred and eighty-five viewers were taken to hospitals; two people remained hospitalized for more than two weeks. Due to this, the episode has been banned worldwide.”

DONT WATCH IF ELIPITIC!!!

Christopher Hitchens, April 13, 1949 — December 15, 2011.

A Longing For Heather (And Heathcliff)

In the life of any gardener, there comes a day when you’re forced to admit that no matter how much you worship a certain plant, it’s just not going to work for you. There are any number of reasons this might happen: insufficient light, space, or some other factor that makes your garden not to the plant’s liking. In these cases, it’s likely you’ve spent many a precious dollar on such plants, even after all the evidence points conclusively to failure: They looked so healthy and vibrant at the nursery! You want to redeem yourself for the last batch you killed! You forget how demoralizing it was to watch that plant wither away over the course of a season or two, despite your unconditional love and constant ministrations. It’s also natural, as the years go by, to think that your increasing botanical experience (you may even use the word “wisdom”) may lead to success this time around. You say to yourself, well, my hellebores are thriving, why can’t I grow heather? You vow to do better, you remember your dream of cultivating an entire field of heather. This despite the fact that your garden is a 15-by-30-foot rectangle in which you’ve already planted twenty-five deciduous trees, hundreds of ferns, a redwood and a stand of bamboo.

Thankfully, there are other solutions for us heather obsessives, which here in the city means going to Fort Tryon Park. (Take the A-train to the Cloisters in Washington Heights.) The best time to commune with heather is in the late fall and winter, when the frost and snow turns the plants from a more generic mid-summer green into a shifting palette of russet, yellow, and gray. There’s a psychedelic wash to these colors, and you might be reminded of that time you took LSD and — in addition to having your mind blown by the kaleidoscopic landscape — you watched your friend’s face melt off.

Or you might also remember the first time you read Wuthering Heights, and imagine Heathcliff and Catherine crossing the moonlit moors to rush into each other’s arms. I actually had a slightly insane but in retrospect totally inspiring high-school English teacher who used to make regular pilgrimages to the moors of England, where she believed that the actual ghosts of Heathcliff and Catherine could still be found. Her theory was that these same ghosts possessed Emily Bronte and inspired her to tell their story with such harrowing, passionate language. How else, she asked us, could a reclusive soul write with so much vision and grandeur? In her mind, Wuthering Heights was the greatest novel ever written, and to this day I’m not sure I would disagree. Or well, to be slightly more judicious, I would say other books are just as great, but none greater, which not coincidentally is also the way I think about different landscapes in the natural world.

Or maybe you’ll think of Kate Bush running through the fields, also possessed by the ghosts of Heathcliff and Catherine, which is just as satisfying, only in a different way.

I’ve never been to the moors of England, and as much I would love to see heather in its natural state, I’m not sure I’ll ever make it. One thing I’ve learned about getting older is that like giving up on certain plants, you also have to give up on certain dreams.

Of course, like any great metropolis, New York City is an amalgamation of different cities and natural vistas from around the world. Some of these elements are more authentic then others, but sometimes you find the perfect spot, where it’s possible to look over the horizon — maybe you’ll have to squint a little to blur the edges — and believe that you are living in a different time and place, one filled with ghosts who will inspire you to do things you never imagined possible.

Matthew Gallaway is the author of The Metropolis Case and the director of Remembrance of Things Past.

“On Wednesday, a Cablevision technician walked into a New Jersey home to find a sleeping bear in the basement…. The bear, which had been spotted wandering in the neighborhood earlier in the afternoon, escaped the home. New Jersey Fish and Game officials were called in, and at about 3 p.m., located the bear and tranquilized it. Police said it took some time for the large bear to go down.” I’m guessing it took between the hours of 3 to 8 PM. Hahaha, get it? Because that’s one of the ridiculous windows the cable people make you sit around your house waiting for them to come and there’s nothing to entertain you because you’ve got no cable and what are you gonna do, read a book? Yeah, right! Anyway, bear!

by Mark Bibbins, Editor

Karaoke Realness at the Love Hotel

At the microphone, suddenly — oh no — 
is Sandra the Available,

in her endless yellow dress
and award-winning earrings,

about to sing Rose Dickey’s unrecorded
cakewreck of a hybrid poemsong,

“Sheep Child o’ Mine.”
Now watch her win the night

before it’s all over. She’s no loser,
with a fever but no lover.

Not like me. I live in a hotel
with no rooms, just a lobby and lifts

leading to experiences.
Time to ask another person,

someone who’s been outside
the fishbowl long enough

to wonder if there will ever again
be enough water. Rat race,

hamster wheel, dog run.
(OK, dog run’s different.

It’s not for people.)
I’m not a real people-person.

Just like reality is not really realness,
people. Just try and point out to me

what’s not fake or paste or false?
Or trick or replica

or denial or dream or drama
or simulation or re-enactment

or knockoff or artificial, a ruse,
a work of art, illusion,

a lie, a mistake, fantasy,
a misconception, missed-connection,

delusion, hallucination,
insincere, invalid or invented,

a rehearsal with no performance?
A viable world with no excuse to exist?

In my hotel the sleep is free.
In any hotel. Why shouldn’t it be?

And that old girl Sandra?
Turns out she can really sing.

The World’s Arm

A strong, pale wind on the thighs,
it was no seaspray, no A.C.,

but cold mnemotic, a breath
of spotless decision,

a kind of bulk, a true surface
thickened by foreign pears

as if winter brought its fruit
first to me for approval

before it let December
fill its basket to capacity.

I spoke too calmly for one
who didn’t believe in anything.

Mouth full of pears,
full of promises I’d no way

to speak, much less keep, I tended
to gesture toward a Universal

Field of Grass, hoping to break
as many blades as my wide self

could in one pass. One pass — 
but we’re wasted with feeling,

breathing funny and stuck rough
like an IV into a paralyzed arm.

And that’s the World’s Arm
that can’t write anymore,

or sign its name, or pick
the thickness from the trees.

My fingerprints transform
into proboscis, by degrees.

Brenda Shaughnessy is an Assistant Professor at Rutgers-Newark. Her third collection, Our Andromeda, is forthcoming from Copper Canyon Press in 2012.

Studies show that regular poetry readers are more attractive and popular than those whose lives are bereft of verse, plus they get to do sex to other people more frequently. Interested? Well, why don’t you head over to The Poetry Section’s vast archive? It will change your life.

You may contact the editor at poems@theawl.com.