Frau Doktor Dobermann

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/

Panties make nice hats, Pt. 3

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.

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.

Rib-eye.