Wake up Early!

Breakfast with Dad, Eric and the kids, and then go to Eric's in the afternoon to babysit.  Give Zoe her gift for her belated birthday.  I hope she likes it!

Holding on to hope

The last job I interviewed for has not yet made a decision.  That's good; I want that job.  Wish me luck!

Pictures from Yom Kippur, 2013

Tivo, Here I Come!

The Hollow Crown

My opinion:

You know that someone is computer-illiterate when you tell them to type in a url or go to a website, and they type it into a Yahoo search.

Man, I'm hungry!

I think it's been about 10 days that I've been eating pescatarian (mostly vegetarian, but I think I might have had some fish??), and the problem is when I get really hungry I can't just go anywhere or eat anything.  It was especially hard last night at pool when all these people were ordering pizzas and burgers and stuff from across the street.  There are not really groceries on hand, so I've been having leftover pasta, tonight I'm going to have mac and cheese; one night I had a sweet potato.  You get the idea.  I don't have the guts to weigh myself and see if it's made a difference yet.  Maybe in a few more days.  I'm really just doing it for the novelty of it though because I don't think meat is what has put on poundage.  Tomorrow I'm going to mom's.  Tonight I saw Jenny.  I should call my dad and see if he wants to have breakfast Sunday; he's probably busy, but I should try.  Okay, bye!

Argh!

I can't stand talking on the phone!  It's been almost an hour! 

Happy Constitution Day!

Yom Kippur

I had a delightful Yom Kippur at my brother's and sis in law's tonight.  I stuffed my face without even having fasted or atoning for any sins!  Kugel and blintzes and frittata and lox and bagels and tuna salad and egg salad and several desserts and coffee!!!  And such a great group of people!

I just made this up. Does it stink?

A poem is a puzzle

only some may solve.

Its meaning

may be different—

depending

on experience.

Amateur cryptographers

try to crack the code;

puzzle maker chuckles

like a cruciverbalist.

What a nice surprise!

I had fun last night.

I wrote this poem a bunch of years ago

Oh, Brother

Meta Latvian,

other night in a bar.

Tapas – not top o’ the line.

He asked why I do not love

the US of A,

            as he does.

Mother Earth then

Mother Russia then

Father Time and

Mother Load

of bullshit:

Monster truck, NASCAR,

trailer park

trash clash

of the

            Flash Taco

titans.

            Bush-whacked,

Paddywhacked,

Give the dog an ice cream cone;

I want to bring a young boy home.

A Poem I Wrote A Few Years Ago

(either I lost part of it, or it just ends strangely).  I think I need to rewrite the end or continue it.  Also, I think I didn't really punctuate on purpose, but now, I think that's bothering me.  I definitely need to work more on this.  The last line makes no sense.  Nevertheless, I kind of like the part that I wrote.  Here it is:

Blank Page

            confrontational white rectangle

punches me in the face

as I caress it with ruminating paws

while dependent clause punctuates

my lack of knowing

where my road is going

thread weaving it altogether frays

they’re filling their spaces at manic paces

A poem I wrote a bunch of years ago

Mein Mind

Extinguish my anger,

detoxify mind.

Cruise city streets,

to get out of a jam.

Raspberry juice

stains your porcelain hands.

Only you don’t see

the mess you’ve made

of yourself.

Rockababy myself to calm state

highways could take me

to Kalamazoo.

Save it.

For a rainy day, sleeping man, to cushion his head

before he wakes the next day to toast yesterday’s jam and tomorrow’s butter.

Rethinking

Now I don't like Kirstenography as much as I used to.  It is still interesting, but I don't know.  Also, you can't read it aloud; I was wrong.  You have to just read it and hope the correct words seem obvious.  For the most part they do (now).

Aubade is a great poem, and I do like it, but it's awfully dark!

My favorite poem, so far

I know I've posted this before, but I like it, and I'm posting poems now.

Aubade

Aubade

By Philip Larkin 1922–1985 Philip Larkin

 

"I work all day, and get half-drunk at night.   

Waking at four to soundless dark, I stare.   

In time the curtain-edges will grow light.   

Till then I see what’s really always there:   

Unresting death, a whole day nearer now,   

Making all thought impossible but how   

And where and when I shall myself die.   

Arid interrogation: yet the dread

Of dying, and being dead,

Flashes afresh to hold and horrify.

The mind blanks at the glare. Not in remorse   

—The good not done, the love not given, time   

Torn off unused—nor wretchedly because   

An only life can take so long to climb

Clear of its wrong beginnings, and may never;   

But at the total emptiness for ever,

The sure extinction that we travel to

And shall be lost in always. Not to be here,   

Not to be anywhere,

And soon; nothing more terrible, nothing more true.

This is a special way of being afraid

No trick dispels. Religion used to try,

That vast moth-eaten musical brocade

Created to pretend we never die,

And specious stuff that says No rational being

Can fear a thing it will not feel, not seeing

That this is what we fear—no sight, no sound,   

No touch or taste or smell, nothing to think with,   

Nothing to love or link with,

The anaesthetic from which none come round.

And so it stays just on the edge of vision,   

A small unfocused blur, a standing chill   

That slows each impulse down to indecision.   

Most things may never happen: this one will,   

And realisation of it rages out

In furnace-fear when we are caught without   

People or drink. Courage is no good:

It means not scaring others. Being brave   

Lets no one off the grave.

Death is no different whined at than withstood.

Slowly light strengthens, and the room takes shape.   

It stands plain as a wardrobe, what we know,   

Have always known, know that we can’t escape,   

Yet can’t accept. One side will have to go.

Meanwhile telephones crouch, getting ready to ring   

In locked-up offices, and all the uncaring

Intricate rented world begins to rouse.

The sky is white as clay, with no sun.

Work has to be done.

Postmen like doctors go from house to house."

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Another favorite poem

I don't know if this is quite a favorite, but it's interesting.  It's all words that sound like the words that are meant.  (for example:  remember, instead of December.  You almost have to read it aloud.  The first sentence is supposed to be "Kay was born at the end of the year in the month of December.")

Kirstenography


K was burn at the bend of the ear in the mouth of remember. She 
was the fecund chill burn in her famish. She came into the word 
with a putty smoother, a handsewn farther, and a yodeler cistern. 
They were all to gather in a rosy horse on a piety sweet in Alligator Panorama.

When her smoother and farther wrought her chrome from the 
hose spittle, her cistern fought the piddle ably was a girly heeded 
bawl. A bawl that dank silk, booed, burgled, rabbled, fried, and 
tweed in wipers. This was not a bawl that swept in the joy blocks 
with her rather joys. This was a giving bawl that wasn't a joy like 
fluffed fan mail. Oh no! This was her grand blue piddle cistern that 
cold knot talc for a song time, but lonely fried and braid rather 
voices that the yodeler one cold knot rubberband.

It shook a few ears until the cold talc to gather, tall yolks, 
shear sacreds, heave a conversion or a dish cushion. That was 
laughter they kissed their handsewn farther who wind sway to 
Cheap Cargo, Ill Annoy. Mum and gulls made their mauve to 
Foreword Text. As swoon as they cold they boasted fetters in the 
snail to him and he relied as mulch as he cold.

Their inelegant smoother was a reacher who muddied lard, 
learned debris, and wept them upon the prosper pat. Reaching them 
fright from strong was her per rental doodly. They threw up and 
wind soft to mercy rule and hinder guardian, then on to 
sedimentary, fecund dairy, and slide rule. They were wood in all 
those paces, and waded to knowledge at Cutie Ostentatious. 

The smoother and her dodders all learned debris to gather. 
Evidentially, two quirked as proofs in the loony varsity. K was 
quirking for the slate of Taxes Hysterical Remission. Laughter a 
schmaltz fart with a wanky lurk, K fond her Sanity. A proof of 
reckoned comics. K quirked to learn her nastier debris and later she 
rave burps and becalmed herself a smoother.

Now she does her writhing ghostly a tome. Quirks at the muse, 
um, that's in Chapped Apple Milling Sea. Enduring, she has her 
sanity and they becalmed the prod parentheses of Adenoid and 
Williwaw. They all loved shapely over laughter.


Harryette Mullen

Another one of my favorite poems: by Jack Spicer

"Thing Language"
by Jack Spicer

This ocean, humiliating in its disguises
Tougher than anything.
No one listens to poetry. The ocean
Does not mean to be listened to. A drop
Or crash of water. It means
Nothing.
It
Is bread and butter
Pepper and salt. The death
That young men hope for. Aimlessly
It pounds the shore. White and aimless signals. No
One listens to poetry.

Three of my favorite poems, all by Li-Young Lee

Go to this link.  Here is one of them:

Early in the Morning

While the long grain is softening
in the water, gurgling
over a low stove flame, before
the salted Winter Vegetable is sliced
for breakfast, before the birds,
my mother glides an ivory comb
through her hair, heavy
and black as calligrapher's ink.

She sits at the foot of the bed.
My father watches, listens for
the music of comb
against hair.

My mother combs,
pulls her hair back
tight, rolls it
around two fingers, pins it
in a bun to the back of her head.
For half a hundred years she has done this.
My father likes to see it like this.
He says it is kempt.

But I know
it is because of the way
my mother's hair falls
when he pulls the pins out.
Easily, like the curtains
when they untie them in the evening.

Oy

So I watched the Charlie Rose interview with Assad.  So frustrating.  Gosh, if you believed what you heard, you'd believe that he's just a good guy doing what his people want him to do.  And the U.S.' accusations are completely unfounded, and bla bla bla.  ugh.  You really have to know your facts in order to question the stuff he's saying.  And I don't feel confident with my facts, especially after listening to that.  Rose looked like he wanted to wring his neck a couple times.

I think now Charlie Rose should interview a member of the Free Syrian Army.  I would like to hear from the other side.

pool

I haven't heard anything about pool team.  I wonder if I will.  I don't think there was enough interest, and I think I would have heard by tonight, but you never know; it could be sometime this week if there is interest.

I got asked to be on two other teams for Wednesdays, but I said no.   Maybe it's because of my current 89% success.  It won't last; people should know!

It better be at 11 p.m.

I didn't see a Charlie Rose on at 8 p.m., and all the ones I have recorded are from last week.  There is an upcoming show to be recorded at 11 p.m.  That better be the one I want to watch with Al-Assad.

I'm confused

from Reuters:  "Chinese state media said on Monday Obama's "all-guns-blazing campaign to lobby" for armed intervention did not hold up and that a military strike on Syria would be a violation of international law."

Is it really a violation of international law?  

On Charlie Rose tomorrow

Today Charlie Rose interviewed Bashar Al Assad.  It will air on PBS tomorrow night at 8, I think.  Just check your listings.  I'm going to watch.  I wonder if it will be more or less awkward than the interviews in the past with Ahmadinejad.

Meow

MeowWOWWOWWW!

You've probably already read this.

Onion article

Complications

reality is scary
from Reuters

News

Not like I have news, but I've been watching the news.  Well, not so much 'the news' as CSPAN.  Between watching CSPAN during the day and getting tweets from news organizations, I feel much more in the know.  Twitter can be so stupid, but it can be pretty helpful too.  Pretty much all I 'follow' are things like Associated Press, Charlie Rose, The New Yorker, Brookings Institute...etc.  That way I don't really get stupid posts.  Same is true for Facebook, only there, I still get some stupid posts, but I have to search a little for them.  That's good. 

I haven't heard about my job interview yet.  They said they hoped to fill the position "in a week or two."  I interviewed two weeks ago.  I emailed the two people who interviewed me, and I left a voicemail for the guy in H.R.  I really hope I get it.

the NSA...

ACLU article

I agree with this article.  When it comes to fighting terrorism, I am unsure of what side I'm on.  It's definitely a difficult issue when you trust the President, and you also trust the ACLU, and they're at odds.  But as far as the issue in this article, the ACLU is right on.

Summer pool season is over

We came in first.  I turned into a 4.  My win percentage is at 89%.  I'm not sure how all that happened.  I'm not sure what's happening in terms of pool team(s) for fall.  Well, I know that some members of this team are planning on still playing in the fall, but I'm not sure if I want to play full time on that team; I'd rather play on other team, but I'm not sure what is going on with that.

Also, do you ever have a cough that won't stop, AND the hiccups?  It's really annoying.
Let me tell you about it in a haiku:

Drinking warm coffee
gave me hiccups and a cough
Instant congestion.

Lay Burr Day

I had a delightful day at my mom's.  We went to California Pizza Kitchen for 1/2 salads,  hung out and chatted, and then went swimming.