all we need is fourteen lines

The weather is definitely taking a turn for the cooler. This is pleasant enough when striding around outside, but slightly annoying when sitting round for long periods inside. Ah well. Cardigan.

I'm currently getting urges to do something with Byakuya and Renji in Bleach. I only wish I knew what. (I blame Goujun for giving me definite notions about who should be on top -- in an explanatory sort of way, I should note, not a blame blame way.)

Was rereading Point of Dreams earlier. I wish that Melissa Scott and Lisa Barnett would write more of that series (earlier one: Point of Hopes); it was/is very good indeed.

Two more days of blatant idleness. Mmm.

Edit: a bit of checking shows that the authors are actually working on another one. To quote from a website about their mutual books:

Ok, correct that. We're actually working on Fair's Point. After a great meeting with our agent, Don Maass, we looked at the next few books and reworked the chronology a tad.
Gaming and gambling are popular pastimes in Astreiant, especially the basket-terrier races, and Philip Eslingen is awarded controlling interest in a promising young racer as payment of a debt. Handicapping is complex, relying a lot on horoscopes as much as past performances and pedigrees. It's more than the usual madness, and the big races draw in a lot of people to Fair's Point, second only to the Midsummer Fair. People do whatever they can for their dog to win, not all of it legal, and no one mourns when one of the racesheet writers is found murdered...
Horoscopes, handicapping, and dognapping and fraud: and Rathe and Eslingen are in the thick of it...
http://www.pointsman.net/

Fingers crossed . . .

---

Sonnet

All we need is fourteen lines, well, thirteen now,
and after this one just a dozen
to launch a little ship on love's storm-tossed seas,
then only ten more left like rows of beans.
How easily it goes unless you get Elizabethan
and insist the iambic bongos must be played
and rhymes positioned at the ends of lines,
one for every station of the cross.
But hang on here wile we make the turn
into the final six where all will be resolved,
where longing and heartache will find an end,
where Laura will tell Petrarch to put down his pen,
take off those crazy medieval tights,
blow out the lights, and come at last to bed.

-- Billy Collins