Friday, June 29, 2007

Frau Doktor Dobermann

Thursday, June 28, 2007

The “C” Word.


I think you know what I’m talking about. One of the few words polite-ish Americans don’t use in front of each other. Scotland’s another story altogether...

I think for me the “C” word is going to become “Coulter”—at least you can use it in polite company. God, what a nasty woman.

If you haven’t yet, check out this footage (don’t bother with the 1000 comments that follow, they’re all pretty predictable) — thinkprogress.org/2007/03/02/coulter-edwards/

Wednesday, June 27, 2007

Panties make nice hats, Pt. 3

Thursday, June 21, 2007

Viking weathermen, etcetera.

[[An excerpt from the new book Fair and Balanced, My Ass, about—OK, you guessed it—Fox News. I’m not sure I’m going to read it, but like what I’ve read so far. Hard to keep up with all the bashing and counter-bashing... By the fine folks who brought you the nicely-named website sweetjesusihatebilloreilly.com]]

If your local weatherman dressed up as a Viking every day, called himself Hjørt Bjornsen, and told you there was a 60 percent chance of snow flurries and a 30 percent chance that Thor would rain fire and canned hummus from the sky during midmorning rush hour—all the while claiming he absolutely was not dressed as a Viking—eventually it would stop being cute. That's essentially what it feels like to be sane and reasonably intelligent and tuned in to Fox News. It's hard to look away, because there's a guy on TV making a complete ass of himself while saying obviously untrue things. But it would be nice to get the forecast every once in a while.

Wednesday, June 20, 2007

On not giving up (Pt 3).


Leaves of Grass came out on July 4th 1855. Whitman paid for its publication himself and arranged for it to be sold in different formats, at different prices, to reach as wide an audience as possible. He anonymously wrote wildly enthusiastic reviews of the book himself.

He said: “The public is a thick-skinned beast and you have to keep whacking away at its hide to let it know you're there.”

But despite all of his efforts, he sold only 10 copies of the first edition, and gave away the rest.

Do you suffer from seasonal elegies?

[[From Writers Almanac May 30th “Falling Asleep in a Garden” by David Wagoner from Traveling Light: Collected and New Poems. © University of Illinois Press, 1999]]

Falling Asleep in the Garden

All day the bees have come to the garden.
They hover, swivel in arcs and, whirling, light
On stamens heavy with pollen, probe and revel
Inside the yellow and red starbursts of dahlias
Or cling to lobelia's blue-white mouths
Or climb the speckled trumpets of foxgloves.

My restless eyes follow their restlessness
As they plunge bodily headfirst into treasure,
Gold-fevered among these horns of plenty.
They circle me, a flowerless patch
With nothing to offer in the way of sweetness
Or light against the first omens of evening.

Some, even now, are dying at the end
Of their few weeks, some being born in the dark,
Some simply waiting for life, but some are dancing
Deep in their hives, telling the hungry
The sun will be that way, the garden this far:
This is the way to the garden. They hum at my ear.

And I wake up, startled, seeing the early
Stars beginning to bud in constellations.
The bees have gathered somewhere like petals closing
For the coming of the cold. The silhouette
Of a sphinx moth swerves to drink at a flowerhead.
The night-blooming moon opens its pale corolla.

Monday, June 18, 2007

Rib-eye.

Wednesday, June 13, 2007

Puerto Rico Aims to Trap Roaming Monkeys.
















SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico - Authorities in Puerto Rico are using cages and mangoes to try to trap hundreds of marauding monkeys—descendants of escaped research animals—and hope to send them off to sanctuaries or labs, or to kill them

“When animals are released into the wild, we end up in a situation like this,” [a scientist being interviewed] said. “Now it’s too late. There’s not going to be a happy ending to this story.”

Grace Jonesin’

Tuesday, June 12, 2007

Moley, moley, moley.

Band-Aid Bandit Ordered to Give Up Booty.

With a headline like that, who even needs a story. Story about some bank robber, so called because he would put a band-aid over a distinctive mole on his face as a “disguise.” Not a very good story, actually. But a heckuvah headline, huh?

Monday, June 11, 2007

Pablo Picasso.


For J. Richman (and his modern lovers).
Back to the collage.

Saturday, June 9, 2007

Names.

[[Liked this from Writers Almanac May 17, by Traci Dant]]


A Twice Named Family

I come
from a family
that twice names

its own.
One name
for the world.

One name
for home.
Lydi, Joely, Door,

Bud, Bobby, Bea,
Puddin, Cluster, Lindy,
Money, Duddy, Vess.


Yes,
we are
a two-named family

cause somebody
way back knew
you needed a name

to cook chitlins in.
A name
to put your feet up in.

A name
that couldn't be
fired.

A name
that couldn't be
denied a loan.

A name
that couldn't be
asked

to go
through anyone's
back door.

Somebody way back
knew we needed names
to be loved in.

Wednesday, June 6, 2007

A box is a box is a box.

Tonight had the interesting feeling of driving past West End Discount Liquors and seeing a fabulous cache of empty liquor boxes, and seeing them for the first time in ages just as empty boxes, not as some crazy golden house-moving asset that had to be scrambled for before being snatched up by other like-minded vultures.

Cardboard boxes in that context are one of the most perfectly self-recycling (dare I say sustainable?) objects that I know of anywhere. No sooner are they thrown outside their liquor-vending premises than some frantic house-moving person snaps them up, then either keeps them for another move or two (I actually still have some that I’ve kept since college), or likely passes them on to another house-moving friend.

hmmm.

Tuesday, June 5, 2007

Taking sanity to the cleaners.

[[This is an excerpt from an actual “news” item I saw today. This was not in The Onion or something, this is honestly an ongoing suit. I was fresh from opening the national wound that was Katrina by watching the first part of Spike Lee’s documentary When the Levees Broke, which only that served to further highlight the truly awesome stupidity of this.]]

Roy L. Pearson, a District of Columbia administrative law judge, first sued Custom Cleaners over a pair of pants that went missing two years ago. He was seeking about $65 million under the D.C. consumer protection act and almost $2 million in common law claims.