headline of the day, II
Germany unveils new ‘psychic’ octopus — and he’s French
Omens
Today I saw a grackle walking in the gutter. He had a Chiquita Banana sticker on his back.
For Sheila
Has this ever happened to you? I’m reminded of sitting at lunch with a visual merchandising friend in a restaurant on the Plaza. One of those places, a sandwich shop or some such, where one comes in, gets in a line and travels the line with a tray to collect what one has ordered and pay at the end. My friend and I were talking about, “How do you know?” I couldn’t really answer except to say, “I don’t know, but it’s there.” (This, in the days before the word “gaydar” was on the radar. A few months before I met Danny.)
We were sitting, eating at a banquet in a row of two-tops. My back to the wall, a wall of mirror behind me. She sat facing me. I could see the entire room. She could, too, in reverse. (This wasn’t too long after I had “come out.”)
The outside door opened. I saw a beautiful couple, a man and a woman, enter. They seemed a “couple.” The man cast his eyes about the room and settled them on mine. “Here’s one.” I said.
She said, “No!” I said, “Watch.” She watched in the mirror, as I watched directly, as he looked back at me, quickly, furtively sort of, no less than four times as he was in line ordering, collecting at the end, what looked like lunch “to go.” Everytime he looked, my eyes met his.
As they headed for the door to leave, I said, “Watch, he’ll look one more time.” When they got to the door, him holding the door for her to exit first and carrying their lunches, he looked back at me. The word “sadness” comes now to me to describe the expression on his face.
Ignore at your peril
Sufjan Stevens
10.24.10, Wiltern Theatre, Los Angeles, from the front row. It was a wonderful show, and he played my favourite song as an encore.
Good Kid 3
Back when we took the Dallas Morning News, I sought out a daily feature called “Good Kid,” mostly to see who the kids listed as the two people they would most like to meet.
Today I was happy to discover that the series is available online. Today’s good kid’s picks:
Lady Gaga and Theodore Roosevelt
Michael,
What the fuck is up with Brian Wilson’s beard? (As you can see, it’s almost unphotographable. This snap doesn’t do it justice.)
Update: This does it justice.
Ten
Ten early memories:
Pink petunia trees waving in the sun and wind.
The collie just wanted to play. Then the big people screamed so he wanted to run and knocked me down. He was pulling and my hands were between my neck and the leash. I was crying but I was just trying to say it was the screaming.
A giant in the shadows lifting the corner of a building a bit so a cat could slip under and hide. This is a secret, he said without words.
A playhouse built for us of straw by my brother, with windows and a door. It rained and the house fell down. For years I built versions of that house that did not fall.
People in boats passing by the windows in the Texas night, in rushing red river water. During the day, the water and the boats were not there.
Eating cheese sandwiches and drinking Dr. Pepper with my best friend at a table behind the meat counter in the little store her parents owned.
My friend crying, pulling at the locked car door as we pulled away to move to Alabama. “We’re just going on vacation,” I said, the fib Mother told to get me into the car.
Our new house, in the middle of a cotton field! We got to pick cotton! Then it was too hot. So Mother asked a lady we had never even seen, “Do you want me to watch your baby?” We watched the tiny baby in our house while the mother picked cotton.
Waking up to singing from the woods at dawn. Coming from the Indian burial mound? Faces at the window, but they weren’t even scary. My brother saw them too. I was mad because he claimed during the day that “somebody’s horse must have gotten out.”
Working on the hiding. Buried in leaves by the swamp in the woods. I didn’t even hear him, but then he was whispering to the leaf pile. “Mother says you have to come in for dinner,” said Daddy.
something I’ve been trying to figure out
On 30 Rock this week Jenna said:
I wish you weren’t such a Houston foreclosure of a human being.
Is there something more to it than substituting waste for Houston foreclosure? I’ve spent entirely too much time thinking about it.
Flannery’s Squirrel Shrine
This squirrel looked like a character in a cartoon flattened by a steam roller. I begged her to take a picture and she did!
from the comments
I felt my son’s name was too plain, even though I chose it, the last name of a family member according to southern tradition. The Iowan would not agree to Royal Brightbill, for instance, the name of someone I had worked with once. I was not serious about that one. But later, I gave my son another name, his “real” name. I do that. When I get to know someone and that person’s name does not match, I will select a new name, sometimes just in my mind. I don’t often tell them, but most people have names that just do not match their essence.
from the spam
How can I consider in God when only last week I received my tongue caught within the roller of an electrical typewriter?
Blind Willie Johnson, “Nobody’s Fault But Mine”
That goat
is still a-goin’, y’all.
The Trashmen — Surfin’ Bird — Ponderosa Stomp Song of the Day
Click and learn and listen.
Le Mari de la Coiffeuse (The Hairdresser’s Husband)
Looks as though Cooper and I are sitting at home (our respective homes) on the eve of a (US) holiday weekend. He is listening to Wagner, and I am watching Patrice Leconte’s Le Mari de la Coiffeuse, which I have not seen since 1991.
Carry on.
The Big Sister I Never Had in Real Time
Do the Wa-TU-si and learn how TO see.
Pick a Number–Any Number
Republican U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann told supporters shortly after the rally that “we’re not going to let anyone get away with saying there were less than a million here today — because we were witnesses.”
CBS commissioned an estimate from AirPhotosLive, a company that provides crowd sizes based on aerial photos. CBS noted that there’s a margin of error of plus or minus 9,000. So, by this estimate, there were as few as 78,000 attendees or as many as 96,000.
I’m sure miracles occured there, too. They just haven’t put the finishing touches on the documentation yet.
Hey, Deron
Roasted banana ice cream?
Normal in Every Respect: Update
At present there is no cure for lymphatic filariasis, the end stage of which is the condition known as elephantiasis, but the tetracycline antibiotic drug doxycycline can help reduce transmission of the disease by killing symbiotic bacteria in reproductive tracts of roundworms.
Doxycycline is the drug I am taking to treat Lyme disease.
There’s a Promise That I’m After and It’s Better Than a Bone
philosophical smelling salts
An old college friend has a few choice remarks about Herzog’s view of nature:
Herzog presents, in extreme form, the sorts of objection we must directly confront and answer if we are to break out of the rut of our current unconsidered, untethered and often contradictory assumptions [of nature]. Our minds are clouded on these matters. We need to wake up from our stupor, and Herzog provides the needed philosophical smelling salts. His comments serve as an opening question to which modern society assumes the answer. Upon reflection, however, we will find hidden contradiction and muddled confusion at every turn as we unpack that answer. And this is exactly why we are in desperate need of taking just this sort of radical objection to modern presuppositions seriously if we are to begin to jump start real dialectic about the universe and and our relation to it (i.e., philosophy properly understood). We need to be shown our desperate need by having someone peal back the layers of accepted ideas and question the unquestioned cultural assumptions about nature to which we have grown accustomed.
The Tea Party on Net Neutrality
“There are so many assaults on individual liberties — the EPA, net neutrality, cap-and-trade, card-check; the list goes on — that sometimes the Tea Party doesn’t know where to start its battles,” Radtke said.
And continuing with the “cheap” shots…
Early Suasion: A Comic Review
I found this recently at my favorite used books place, and it brought back memories of being trapped in church with little to do but gaze at Sunday school propaganda and the few inked illustrations in the Bible. I remember seeing many reproductions of parts of this book, and have noted since that credit is seldom given to the editions done by M. C. Gaines, in the early 1940s–illustrations done by Don Cameron, with scripts done by Montgomery Mulford. Even this edition shows the odd understanding of “fair use” in religious publishing: the ISBN on this edition takes one to an entirely different edition. I don’t know what kind of deal Jimmy Swaggart worked out with Scarf Press, but I can’t seem to find any news of how this book with this cover came to be presented.
