...and the filling fell out. Grrr. I gotta go & waste 2 more hours of my life. Oh well. I guess I probably can't get it fixed until next week again. I'll see if I can go deal with used car dealers and dentists tomorrow.

My tooth is fixed. The total cost after insurance paid their cut: $80.
The next step: sell the car. I've set aside time tomorrow to do it, arranged a ride & know the place is open. Everything's looking rosy.
Also, there was this gift I was eyin' fer Tim fer Christmas which now sits heavily in my garage. I'll say no more...

A good weekend over all.
Went to see the brothers' new house, met the folks, poked around in old shops; visited dear friends' house, shared Indian food and came home tired.

Smoke on the water. A fire in this guy.
So, the crazy who threatened me: I have his home phone number, address & fax number. Does anybody know any good sign-up type things that ask for that kinda stuff?
Spam garbage? Church of Christ of Latter Day Saints? JHWH's Witnesses? Car drawings? Whatever. Let me know.

Wow.
I got a death threat at work today. I don't exactly know how I feel, but it is absolutely bad. Every time the store pager goes sounds, I'm afraid it's going to be that crazy sonofabitch. And, just to make things more interesting, I get to send him money. Paying psychos. Does it get better? Yeah. It gets a whole lot fucking better. I'm hoping tomorrow it does so in spades.

Thomas Hart Benton was born in 1889, the year after Edward lear died at the age of 70. Benton would live to 86. I don't think I have to hit you over the head with what that means. Unless you're talking about the other Thomas Hart Benton, who only made it from 1782 to 1859, and was not a Missourian. This puts him at 77 when he died, which, again, is significant enough I don't think I'll have to go into further detail.
I think my point is proven.

I love nonsense.
Nonsense is the honorable cousin of the lie, a non-truth all the same but not so universally reviled. A good liar is a bad person, so the saying goes, and that saying grew out of human belief. It didn't spontaneously erupt from the womb of human language and ethics, as the "Good People" would have you believe.
That's the whole point, isn't it? There's this unrealistic example we can't live up to and the simple fact is, we're built to lie. Other people can't see in my head and know what's the truth and what's not. I can't even do that, and it's my head. But this is all a digression.
Nonsense. Edward Lear built his reputation and career on it. Or not. Maybe he's just remembered for the Runcible Spoons and Derry-down-derrys, and he built his reputation on something as odd as landscape painting. I don't know. I don't have to know.

Is there any goodness left in the world?
Yes, but it doesn't find its way into movies.

My computer at work is broken. It died some time during the weekend, a victim of some email-checking mishap. Some person or persons killed it, and I came in on Monday to find the cold corpse sitting in its usual spot under my desk. Funeral services will be held at the city dump, where a casket of garbage will be inhumed with the earthly remains of the deceased. It has no name and no family, and served its life as a drone at a bookstore.
Seriously, though, that and a puzzling inability to sleep or remain awake are why I haven't posted in a while.

Wow. I have just been Gripey McGriperson of late. I'll see if I can't cheer up.

Don't get me wrong. I like my Palm. It works OK, more or less. It just seems that, if I'm buying a $299 system, it should play friggin MP3s for less than a $99 add-on. I mean, right?
In a world where a small MP3 player is available for $70(and that one has double the Palm's memory), I guess it makes sense that if you add a pocket calculator and a calendar, it'd be a little pricey. Maybe what I want is the Gamer-dork edition of the Palm, one that doesn't even pretend it's for business and it just has, like an MP3 player, a bitchen' video card and bluetooth palm-to-palm-type interconnectivity so I can play friggin Battleship against other people.

Do you have a grown-up who does Mister's job?
Yeah. And I'm him, dumb-ass.

It's alright ma, I'm only pudding.

That use of Posh below is not just an archaic one, it's an archaic one that came up last night in conversation. The OED we consulted said it means a mush, as slivered crushed ice. We thought that was weird. The meaning "fancy" didn't come into common use until the early 20th century, more or less, but it is suggested that it meant that as early as the 1890s. Hell, you can read it your own self. The meaning we found is curiously absent from that link.
Also, out of the meeting with friends last night: we stopped by Half Price books on Guadaloupe, where I purchased a complete leather-bound set of (formerly) loose-leaf encyclopedias from 1932. The whole set cost $10. They're bound together with wood on the spine, and rivits through the pages. It has a certificate of Encyclopedic Usefulness or some such garbage in the front of the first volume. All in all, a pretty cool set. If I ever need pre-WWII knowledge, I have a source. Rock on.

This is the stuff of life:
I see the swirling vortex that is My Problem, a motley confusion of a hole, sucking in pieces of the rest of my life. I see the tiny shards of The Solution, all pieces, all disparate. As a posh, they can't fill the hole. I need to use the epoxy of Hard Work and Time to make a cover, to assemble the various pieces of ceramic Solution, to fill that gaping hole and make my life a single cohesive unit again.
And that's your simile for the day. What does it mean? It means I need to figure out a bunch of stuff and then decide what it means. It means my life is great, but I need to control it a little. It means it's easy to ignore your problems, but they just come back later, hungry.

It's Thursday. Time for Nodwick.

OK, not to harp, but that poem just hurts. It starts off with so much promise. It's like somebody with an idea of what he wanted and where he was going started it.
(Quoted from the above link, a part of carusoism.com, for review purpose only)
She whispered words like breezes
While staring silver moonbeams
And wrapped her love with lust
That bit: it's evocative; it cries of impure love, a moonbeam stare, and the lies whispered on the wind; it evokes an image of doomed affection. If there were just three lines in the beginnig of the first verse of The Divorcee, it wouldn't be so bad, but no. He had to go the extra mile-and-a-half.
Because her dreams had rust
D'oh! And the the Caruso Charm (tm) kicks in. Rhyme scheme? Well sure there is. It goes
ABCC
D(D)E(E)
FGHG
I(I)JK
(D: half rhyme)
(E: repeated word)
(I: half rhyme)
OK, sure, maybe it's just a complex form. It strikes me, though, that he uses alliteration in the first three lines and nowhere else, and the rythmic pattern, such as it is, establishes itself in the first three lines, the falls apart immediately. It's like he took three lines from some better poet, and slapped the poem onto it. It's like a clapboard shack stuck on top of pier-and-beam. I read it again, this time dropping the last line of each stanza. The third verse is a little obtuse, but I think the poem is much improved. Maybe that's all. Maybe this should have been a poem with three-line stanzas.
So you're thinking: But Mister! Poetry is about the content, not the form.
That's all well and good, but I'd argue that the form in this case detracts so from the content that it's hard to determine what the heck he's talking about. OK, we know it's about a divorcee, and we know it's about a woman. We know she's sad, and I surmise, probably, that she's having sex without loving her partner, based on the poet's use of the phrases "wrapped her love with lust" in the first, and "all a sexy cloak" (whatever the heck that actually means) in the last stanza. Oblique language? Why sure. It would't be poetry without it. Masking your emotions in clumsy bullshit? Same thing. Wordplay that draws a comparison between two meaningless constructs? Ditto.
And then there's the puzzling allusion of the morning rain wetting (or not) her pillow. I don't know to what it alludes. Maybe that would help. I went to look it up and found nothing. If you know, feel free to berate my ignorance of culture and literature. It seems like it must be a reference to a folk song, but maybe I made that up.
So now you're probably thinking: But Mister! Why are you picking on this poem?
I dunno why. I picked it, and it really was what I'm finding wrong with his poetry, and with quite a lot of neuveaux poetry I've read. He's just the latest piece of sand in the oyster. I have nothing actually against him, personally.

Now I'm all kinda curious. I wonder what would happen if I wrote some lousy poetry. Let's find out:

note to a honey
darling,
I left for the store
when I come back, I promise
I PROMISE
I'll have milk,
eggs,
butter,
ham,
you know, the usual,
but I'm picking up batteries
and talc
and a toothbrush.
Did you need anything?
Anything but love, I mean.
Yours,
-MN

OK, the frisbee poem is actually kinda sweet. I'm not saying there isn't a legitimate human emotion attempting to express itself through the poetry, and I'm not saying he's not a smart guy. I talked with him over the phone, so I know that, although he's a might long-winded, he's a decent sort and able to use the language effectively. I don't get what would possess a person to decide that something like
The cat
jumped over
the lazy mat
of the moon.
is poetry. He didn't write that, I did (but he did write this), but I don't claim that every use of the language is art. Sure, it's fascinating to participate in the endless masturbatory swirl that is babbling crap, but it's something eles entirely to believe, and I've heard him talk about this and he honestly believes this, that what you're doing is Art. I mean, good for ya' thinking that, but it's my place as a no-talent hack and a critic to find it, read it, and decide for myself whether I think it's good or not. My opinion: not good.
Hey! I have a comment system. Anybody else have anything resembling an opinion?

God Damn. Where was sweet Jesus?
It's like poetry, only worse. Now, in my defense: this guy called me to sell me his book. He suggests that, to get a good idea of his work, you should read the following three poems: This one, this one and this one. It's not like I picked the worst I could find. If I did, I would've linked to his phallic nanner poem. I don't know what to say. It's like reading broken glass.

My horoscope this week:
Until recently, Indonesians thought their country consisted of about 17,000 islands. But in February of 2003, an analysis of satellite images found more than a thousand undiscovered islands, bringing the total to 18,108. I suspect that you're on the verge of making a comparable breakthrough about yourself, Cancerian. There's much more of you than you ever imagined. Many previously unknown territories will soon come into view. It will be as if you have unearthed a new world right in the midst of the old one.

From Harvey:
In this life, you've got to be clever or pleasant. I spent a great deal of time being clever. I can recommend pleasant.

It's the end of the worm as we know it...

I've seen a lot of references to My Back Pages lately. I've had a different Dylan song running through my head, though. It's called Tombstone Blues. One specific verse keeps tickling the back of my mind:
Now I wish I could write you a melody so plain
That could hold you dear lady from going insane
That could ease you and cool you and cease the pain
Of your useless and pointless knowledge.
That's, of course, after the verse about selling roadmaps to the soul, which I also think is just pure genius. I just think this particular verse really speaks to the desire in those of us with sweetness and simplicity to try to make things better. I think it articulates the pain of being powerless.
And I'm sorry, 'cause I'm powerless.

It started with a quest to find the correct spelling of youse.
Then, I followed the links under that to a page which vindicates my viewpoint on the word "y'all" and its proper spelling (not ya'll, thanks much). It's an important word, or at least an important form to have, because it's darn confusing to have the singular and plural forms of "you" be identical.
Also, there's a link to a neat regional note about deletion of the initial w in 'ords, a practice 'ch'I find funny.
Anybody got anything to say? Nope? OK.

You don't really need an excuse to link to this!

     Cht'thschs, whom the hairless two-leggers call Meowsers, waits patiently in the bushes. Cht'thschs is coiled, watching the Enemy frolic. This time, there can be no escape. This time, Cht'thschs has a plan.
     Pulling herself forward, paw over paw, she approaches the enemy silently. The bush does not shake, she does not scratch the ground. This day, the Enemy will know defeat. Once she is within six inches of the Enemy, only the leafy camoflage of the bushes separating them, Cht'thschs prepares her weapons. She flexes her paws and prepares for the battle ahead. The Enemy does not seem to notice.
     Cht'thschs tenses, prepared to dispense death. In a swift, liquid motion taking less than a quarter of a second, too fast for the hairless two-leggers to see, she leaps, crashing out of the bushes and into the Enemy.
     It flaps its horrible feathery leg, trying to fly, but she keeps her jaws locked in a death-grip. The Enemy, sensing its defeat, slows its useless flapping. Cht'thschs now brings her claws down onto its heaving body, rending flesh. The Enemy, its neck crushed and its body badly beaten, finally gives up.
     Cht'thschs devours what little meat she can. Just as she is finishing and considering retiring for the afternoon, another Enemy lands nearby, eyeing her cautiously while scratching for edibles in the grass.

Ray Charles died. As an act of protest, I'm going to remember him instead of Reagan on Friday. Take that, The Man!

Sometimes it's funny the words that a spell check doesn't know and has to learn.

I don't believe you
You got milk & honey
I don't believe you
You got luck & money
Don't be sad.
For God's sake, don't be sad.
-BM

You don't sent flowers...

Kill! KILL!
-Arlo Guthrie

It is better to have loved and lost than to have a bee-sting on your eye.

Toshi has obtained employment.
Details upon request.

Sink your teeth into that, why doncha.

I was about to gripe about the rain, but it's not 95 degrees outside. It's cooled off nicely, and the rain is refreshing. I'm going to need new tires before awfully long, but I'll burn that bridge when I come to it.

Like an old Sam Cooke song, it came into my head:
Another Tuesday mid-morning
and I ain't go nobody
I got some money 'cause I just went to the bank and deposited my paycheck.
Oh, how I wish I had someone to talk to,
I'm awfully bored at work.

The question is, why are you inviting all this cancer and car trouble into your life right now?
I'm watching Penn & Teller's Bullshit right now. It's about charlatans, cheats and other fun crap.

We got a hella good review in the Chronicle. Keen!

A puzzle:
Brat Yah Piphyd
He Is Angel Bob

So, here's what I've been thinking about lately.
There are, it seems, two attitudes about World War II, the one that happened in Europe and the Pacific. You know the one. It was, in essence, the end of World War I, only with bigger guns, more advanced technology and better airplanes. Ah, yes. Now we're on the same page. It's the airplanes that really interest me, or at least that started this line of thought.
WWII was the end of the age of heroes. It was the end, really properly the end, of the NeoClassicism that held Western culture in sway for about six hundred years, more or less. This gives rise to two ways of looking at the war itself, a "just-post" and a "very-post." Probably, there will be an "ancient history" view arise, but it won't be in my lifetime. It has already started, with the belief that the Holocaust was a myth. The generation who saw the people taken out of camps can't deny that there were people hurt, killed and destroyed. The next generation has the stories of that generation to listen to, and can still feel a chill. With my generation, it's really too easy for that to take on a mythical quality. It happens faster now, as evidenced by the "moon landing myth" myth. I'm not going to call it a full-fledged attitude yet.
The "just-post" attitude was shaped by three huge factors: the end of the worst economic depression the United States had seen outside of civil war; the end of the Edwardian era, which followed the Victorian era and all it entailed; and the absolute horror of what had just happened in Europe and Japan. Despite what we would believe, Americans were a humble people. We were (and are, I'd very much argue) still in the shadow of our parent country, England. The culture of England at the time was still influenced heavily by Victorian morals and values, both of which called for extreme modesty and knowledge of place. As one of a gaggle of bar-sinisters of the Former British Empire, America had a sense of shame. What needed to be done was done, and no glory was necessary for performing necesseties. The Great Depression only served to heighten that sense. Here we were, the misbehaved bastard children of England, and we were absolutely broke. Sure, the rest of the world was too, but the attitude of the day called for introspection, knowledge that it didn't matter what the neighbors were doing, so much, as long as you were taking care of your business. And we didn't seem to be. America of the fifties were young enough to remember that. The generation who were having babies in the decades succeeding the war remembered having nothing and remembered seeing that nobody had anything. They were raised by parents who, even vicariously, were still mourning the death of Prince Edward. They saw news reel that showed things that had never been done to men with huge, terrifying machinery and guns that were bigger then even the imagination can do justice. They knew the horrors of war more directly than any generation before them.
So what does all this mean? A thousand thousand men left their homes in America, fought a huge war, and came home. It means they didn't talk about it much more than they had to. It means a generation of men got a lot of practice saying "I just did what needed to be done." The people back home had an inkling what happened over there, and they had no desire to know more. Men died horribly in the mud. Men were killed in hales of bullets. The details were probably best forgotten. If there was any doubt of that, we need only look at Vietnam. As a nation, we're still stigmatized by what we saw reported there, and by what we've since heard rehashed over and over by the soldiers. War has always been horrible. In this century, we've learned to photograph it. Up until World War II, most men didn't talk about it.
But there were heroes. There were people whose stories were reported to the people back home. There were villains, whose names were reviled but respected. Sure, there were armies of faceless men, but there were men in the front. That's the "just-post" view. A million faceless grunts and a hero in the front. It's the classic view of war. It's how the Trojan war was reported. We know Hannibal, but we don't necessarily know the names of his sergents. Napoleon and his generals are known. Who were the men on the field? They were an army of men doing what they had to do. There's nothing wrong with that view. It's how human history has viewed war for millenia. Like, roughly three of them.
And now it's the future. Now, America is run by a generation who did not live through the worst economic depression in American History. It is being run by the generation who Won the biggest war ever, and don't you forget it. We've become proud. We've become loud sloganeers for our Great Nation. We won. Our fathers leveled two cities in seconds just to prove a point, and that's not counting the countless cities they leveled over the course of years to prove the same point. We inherited the power to do the same, and we turned it into the power to level the planet in seconds just to keep proving the same point. Victoriana? Why, it's kitch. It's collectible. Humility? Well, sure, it's a fine thing. The horrors of war? Far removed or as close as possible, thank you very much. We've seen people blown up, shot, beheaded and executed, and that's just on the news.
And we've started coaxing the stories out of the soldiers. We now realize that every single person who fought in that war and lived has a story. Many people are collecting these and publishing them. This is the foundation that will allow WWII to become the stuff of legend two hundred years hence. It already seems that any amount of information you have on the war is a pittance. You can't know everything, so you can't know anything. The information available is confusing and complicated.
What year did the war start? Why, 1941, of course, when America joined in. Or 1939, when Hitler invaded Poland. Or 1933, when Hitler came to power. Or 1919, when Germany was screwed by the Treaty of Versailles (justly or not, whatever you believe. They got screwed, which lead to them deciding to pull themselves up by their bootstraps). Or 1914, with the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. I'll stop.
The point: The classic view of WWII was of a few named heroes and a million faceless grunts; the modern view is of a million men, each with a story to tell.
That's what I've been thinking about lately. That, and work, of course. Always work.

My horoscope from Rob Brezsny for the week.
"Dear Dr. Brezsny: Last night I dreamt I was returning home from a horrid date with a man who didn't even know my name. As I came into the living room, the heating duct flew off, and hundreds of rabbits started pouring in. At first I didn't mind, but then they started to attack me. Long story short, I was eaten alive by cute cuddly bunny wabbits. Comments? -Apparently Delicious Moon Child." Dear Moon Child: I think you're dreaming for the entire Cancerian tribe. Here are some possible dream interpretations. 1. You've been too nice for your own good lately. 2. Your extreme, almost manic fertility is leading you to do things that aren't healthy for you. 3. You should minimize contact with anyone who doesn't see you for who you really are, and you shouldn't indulge people who take advantage of your nurturing sweetness.
Damn. All three, even. Damn.

What's the polite way to beat the crap out of somebody while explaining to him that he lives a charmed life? Oh, right, avoidance. Right.

Yeah, well (grumble) didn't want (grumble grumble obscenity grumble) couldn't care less (grumble obscenity curse) even if I did, which I don't (cuss grumble foul-mouthed obscenity insult to parentage).

"At her front door I gave her cheek a kiss
Does life get any better than this?
Young Geeks in love."
-Little Bunny FooFoo & the Field Mice, Young Geeks In Love

Our second song. The last line. I'll tell ya', I've never written anything as sweet as that song manages to be. It was a group effort between four of the five "members," without the two "other members," or our "main singer." There are a buncha people in my band. Well, Adam's band, if you wanna be really correct. It was pretty much his idea (I think he was feeling his years, although he's still very young), told Dana that he was thinking of forming a band, and the rest, as they say, is a whole lot of work and time.
I didn't write the above song, by the way. I, and I love being able to say this, co-wrote it. It's one of, like, five collaborations I've been able to work on. They always turn out very well.
If things keep moving the way they're moving, they'll turn out well. What more can you ask?