Spoken Word
Last night I entered a Poetry Slam. It was my first time on stage reciting a serious poem of my own devising (if not my first time reading a serious poem of anyone's devising). It was a lot more nerve-racking than my last stand-up gig. I quite enjoyed it. I didn't win anything, but the artistic victory was mine.

I'm still a big anti-fan of near-miss rhymes. I think half-rhyming is the wrong term for what riles me. It's not-really-rhyming that bothers me. I frequently break rhyming rules, but I break them gently. I'll have a plural rhyming with a singular, or a hard consonant rhyme with its soft-cousin:

Many many many rhymes / at any any any time : the trailing "s" is not in both rhyming words
I put my hands on the keys / and I find my release : the hard and soft "s" in "keyz" and "releeees" are close rhymes but imperfect

I can cope with this more than the following examples:

Pint / spike
Bomb / wrong
Copper / rocker

The above examples jangle in my ears and make me angry.

Not getting angry
I took the bus into work this morning and contented myself by reading the free paper as the journey progresses. Buses used to annoy me intensely, but I feel distinctly more placid about them as time goes on. On Saturday, I saw the bus coming from the end of the street and ran for the stop. At one stage, I was running in the same lane as the approaching bus, but I (foolishly) jumped off the road onto the pavement to continue. I would have assumed that if you are an experienced bus driver, and see a large man, who probably never normally runs, running along the road in the direction of a bus stop, you'd expect him to want to catch your bus. This particular bus driver either didn't notice me (unlikely, I'm immense), decided not to chance being wrong, slowing down for me (after all, the bus is surely meant to be for everyone - that's how it gets its name - omnibus - for everyone - so surely it should be prepared to include me), or decided to take the piss out of the fat boy and leave him out of breath 10 feet from the bus stop.

So, I watched my effort of a spontaneous run along the pavement turn to nothing as the bus disappeared round the corner. I could have become angry, but I just laughed and went to the newsagent for a well-earned drink. I realise now that I should have remained on the road. There's no way that the bus driver could have avoided stopping for me... unless he mowed me down, which would probably be beyond his remit as a driver of a public service vehicle.