week 9, thing 20 ~ YouTube

...beautifully animated poetry by Billy Collins. I thought the one above especially appropriate since it begins:

"The name of the author is the first to go
followed obediently by the title, the plot,
the heartbreaking conclusion, the entire novel
which suddenly becomes one you have never read,
never even heard of,

as if, one by one, the memories you used to harbor
decided to retire to the southern hemisphere of the brain,
to a little fishing village where there are no phones."

Something like this might be a neat feature on a library website during National Poetry Month.

I've visited YouTube in the past, usually just to view an amusing video that a friend told me about. I always get distracted by the junk that is one the first page and forget that there are actually worthwhile videos hiding in the site. I loved the animated Billy Collins poetry, to the point where I signed up for a free YouTube account and added it to my favorites so I wouldn't lose it. I explored the poetry offerings a little bit more and linked to this and that before I realized that I was getting COMPLETELY sucked into the black hole of time that is YouTube. I finally had to tear myself away from someone's compilation of their favorite "Scrubs" moments.

The YouTube negatives are all of the self-involved, terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad videos. And the comments. I never read them because 9 times out of 10 they are completely ridiculous and/or offensive.