Here, in no particular order, except that the first is a heinous crime, are 50 reasons why poetry is way better than jazz

1. Jazzercise.  No one ever asks you to dance about weirdly to poetry (not since 1969 anyway).
2. Poetry has a long history with a large body of work.  Jazz doesn’t even rate as antique yet.
3. You can read poetry to yourself on the bus.  Listening to jazz on a bus will make people want to kill you.
4. A tone poem is not a real poem.  Really.  Not even a little.
5. If you read jazz lyrics to girls in a park they’ll think that you haven’t been taught about consonants.
6. Bad poetry is mostly about suicide.  Bad jazz makes you want to actually kill yourself.
7. Professional poets don’t need to big themselves up with false titles like “Duke”.  Bryon was actually a Lord.
8. No poet ever blamed a poor performance on using the wrong kind of pencil.
9. Jazz is like real music only without decent grammar or punctuation.
10. Even though Microsoft gives away free jazz with every copy of Windows, everyone just deletes it.
11. Most good jazz isn’t jazz, but swing, skiffle, blues or simply “easy listening”.
12. Ask a random kid to tell you a poem and they will.  Ask them if they like jazz and they’ll call you a pedo.
13. Nobody ever wrote a great jazz song about a cool Canadian Fed-Ex Lady.  (Google it up mo-fo)
14. No-one can be creative in the jazz uniform of cheap hideous suit and a polyester tie.
15. If you study poetry at college it might be your major.  If you study Jazz it’s definitely just for an easy credit.
16. Musicians always try a bit of jazz on the side (the b side for sure).
17. Whilst Google has 61 million entries for “bad poetry” is has 307 million for “bad jazz”.
18. Any jazz song is way better when sung by Tony Bennett and his big band.
19. Playing for drinks at the downtown club between shifts at the drive-though is a jazz players dream.
20. Even Bill Clinton is in a jazz trio.
21. The most important thing about a jazz albums sales is the cover art.  This isn’t so for chapbooks.
22. Most people in a jazz club are there only after their regular bar closed for the night.
23. Even the best jazz soloist needs the drums or bass to keep time and cover up the bum notes.
24. Jazz has no Dylan Thomas.
25. Jazz music only has seven letters but even then they often can’t spell out a decent tune.
26. A broken G string is much more interesting in a poem.
27. Ask 1000 random people to name jazz soloists and Lisa Simpson will always be in the top five.
28. “The Only Jazz Album You’ll Ever Need” only has 36 tracks.
29. No one talks about their poetry collection in terms of money.  No one mentions their jazz collection without telling you how much it is worth.
30. All lyrics are poetry.  Jazz without lyrics is just five sad guys without a date.
31. The most famous guy in the movies that  listens to Miles Davis is the male-babysitter in Jerry Maguire.
32. Say that you prefer Betjeman over Browning and it’s just an opinion.  Say that you think Chet Baker is better than Miles Davis and you’ll get death threats.  Too serious dude.
33. Elevator music is the best paid regular jazz gig.
34. At a poetry recital the reader wont add any words.  At a jazz recital it is impossible for there to be no extra notes.
35. All the emotion of a sad moment can be fully expressed in one good haiku.  With jazz its a 3 hour ear-bleeder.
36. I can listen to a bunch of bad poets in my local town for a couple of bucks.  I don’t need to go New Orleans for it to be authentic.
37. Early poetry tells you the thoughts and feelings of people in those times.  Early jazz doesn’t  even tell you how you feel now.
38. A poet at a jazz night is a lead vocalist.  A jazz musician at a poetry night is playing the bongos badly.
39. No-one reads a chapbook in a random order.  No-one notices if a jazz filled ipod is on randomise.
40. When a poet seduces a lover they don’t need Miles Davis only the tenderness of their own sweet lips.
41. Only 95% of modern poems are cliché ridden emo crap.
42. There are probably more good poems on jazz than good jazz albums.
43. Nobody got a Nobel prize for blowing their own air into a curly tube.
44. In some European countries jazz is pronounced jizz.  And for good reason.
45. A cat walking over piano keys was the best jazz solo I saw on You Tube last year.
46. On a desert island with my poetry book I’m all set.  After 8 hours you better have some mad Macgyver skill for that ipod.
47. Chaucer’s poems give us a social history of the 14th C.  Someone may have been tooting their horn “like the mad note” but if so he didn’t mention it.
48. Jazz groupies have vinyl to really feel the jazz.  Poet groupies have sex to really feel the poet.
49. When Honda know a car will be good they call it poetry, when they knew it would be boring, they called it the Jazz.
50. “That’s Poetry Man” is a well known compliment between jazz musicians.  Jazzy poems however are best avoided.

It’s unlikely that I will complete any more tasks today but I will be reviewing the list carefully later tonight to see if I can just knock off one or two more at the last minute so it will remain an exciting nail biting race to the finish line.  Check back tomorrow for the final results!

So I have 41 tasks left now and only 96 days to complete them in.  Yeap, you’ve guessed it – I won’t complete them all.  Actually I don’t think I will complete them all if I have 10001 days to do them.  Urm…  I might keep an eye on them over the coming years to see if I do manage to complete some more.  I think 1 or 2 will go to the next list anyway.

I’ve not managed to complete any more of the 101 tasks but I have made a little progress on a few tasks – only 5 months to go.  I’m looking forward to the end really.  I’m not bothered about the remaining tasks much and I’d like to get it done and move on to another list of more useful stuff.

I think that I will add a countdown widget to this site so that I can get a reminder of impending doom.

Luckily I only really use one browser, so I can live with Firefox sync, which isn’t an option for some multi-browser users.

I’m a bit bummed about the loss of Xmarks but I understand why it has to go.  Sync services are not cheap to run.  If they aren’t going to sell our private data or charge us to sync, then how can they afford to run it?  That’s right, they can’t, so it has to go.  Would I have paid?  Maybe but I had a choice of the free option so I guess not.  Even though the free one isn’t as good, paying is a hassle usually and identifies me personally so that’s a tag I don’t want against what gets done on my browser.

Cheerio Xmarks dudes,  have fun.

Now for the other 49.  Some of these look truly impossible at this point and one or two give me the shivers.  Which sadist suck them on the list?  Who?  Me?  Are you certain, because they don’t look like things I would write on my _own_ list of things to do.  Oh.  Bugger – so I’ve only myself to blame.

Note to self: be a bit vaguer on the next 1001 list and remember that you’ll change your views about stuff during the 1001 days so don’t stick a bunch of stupid tasks on there just because you saw them on the internet.

I think I will try to take a few of the easy ones that I’ve put off and also try to make a inroads into the one’s where it’s going to take months to complete.  Like Number 1.  Write a Novel.  Feck! I’m an idiot.  At least it didn’t say a good novel.  So it might be worse.  And it’s 1.  The first thing that I wrote on the list.  So I sat down a couple of years ago and said to myself – yeah, lets have at that 1001 thing.  Then for the first thing I wanted to do, I wrote down: Write a novel.   Why on Gods green earth did I choose that at all, let alone as the first thing I wanted to do.  Barmey.  Fine.  How hard can it be to write a short novel that doesn’t have to be good.  How many words do you need for a short story to become a novel?  I dunno.  More words than I’ve written in total since I started on the list I expect.  Argh. Well, at least it makes doing 50 push-ups in a row look easy, so that’s something.  Maybe I can ask the nun I’m supposed to talk to about it.  Did I really write this list.  Yes, yes I did.  Oh dear.