twitching spasmodically [entries|friends|calendar] Eric Bourland [ website | Eric Bourland's home site ] [ userinfo | livejournal userinfo ] [ calendar | livejournal calendar ]

You're lucky I don't scratch your ******* eyes out. [03 Jan 2012|02:09am] The woman who lives beneath me just knocked on my door, very upset. I sleep at night and work in the day! she said. I have not slept in four days! I am crazed from lack of sleep! I said, I'm really sorry ma'am, I had no idea I was making -- She interrupted, How can you have no idea! You just dropped something on the floor! I apologized again, truly regretful, and unaware until now that I had been making undue noise. Then she said, You're lucky I don't scratch your ^%$#ing eyes out. Then she stomped off down the hall. I can sympathize with not being able to sleep, and I wish I had known I was causing too much noise. I am being extra quiet now in my home. Given that she threatened me, and given that someone turned off my power two nights ago, I'm going to talk about this episode with management in the morning. It is not a good idea to let anger build up. It's better to communicate. It's too bad we live in a society that discourages communication. 6 comments|post comment

Frijoles de ojos negros [01 Jan 2012|08:59pm] [ mood | contemplative ] It seemed auspicious to obtain and consume black-eyed peas, reserving for myself something from that hidden reservoir of legume-based good fortune that pools in the base of every January. Neither of the Latin markets near my home know what in heck a black eyed pea is. Perdón, señor. ¿Frijoles de ojos negros? ¿Como? No tenemos. With an odd glance at the little, Spanish-mangling man. I settled on frijoles negros with the idea that, even if frijoles negros are not as superconductive as frijoles de ojos negros, at least a little luck will instill from dark reservoir toward me. That, and good planning and a little work, will bring success in 2012. Here's to yours. Happy new year. 2 comments|post comment

Two ebay scores, and Tu Fu, and the real circumstances of a poem [17 Sep 2011|12:43pm] Two scores on eBay: first ed. HC "Pandora by Holly Hollander" by Gene Wolfe (long and wrongly out of print, it's simply a damn good story that makes me wish I had fewer obligations today and more time to read), and Carolyn Kizer's Knock Upon Silence (U Washington Press, 1968). From the latter: 100 lines from Tu Fu I come from Tu Ling, an unimportant man, Only more vulnerable as the years wear on. To serve my country! I've clung to this mad dream Without avail, as better men have done. I bow to hardship whitening my hair, Old, already spent at forty, I don't care. When they slam my coffin lid I shall stay down. Till then, I will persist, I will endure! I mourn for my poor people, laboring, Starving all seasons -- I rail against their wrongs. Though my cloistered fellow-scholars laugh at me I shall go on pouring out my passionate songs. - Tu Fu, tr. Carolyn Kizer Knock Upon Silence, University of Washington Press, 1968 Tu Fu in his poems said important things about the unsettled, post-rebellion humanity he lived among. He failed to enter the civil service, did not distinguish himself, did not make money. Today, such a person would be called weak. (You, in your forties, lack money, a job, a plan? You are weak.) But his compassion was immense. I've noticed that one challenge that many young poets face is, they have trouble finding something important to say. Their poems, sometimes gifted in craft, seem slight. Do you think they have not thought their poems through, or given their own poems their due? Considered the real circumstances of a poem? I'd like to hear your thoughts. 5 comments|post comment

intersection [12 Apr 2011|01:21am] Witnessed an almost violent incident between a man with a dog and a cyclist who had the green light. The man cursed violently after the cyclist, holding his dog's leash in the intersection, standing there in there road athwart a red light. 2 comments|post comment

nightmares; sleepwalking; stress management; Fuseli [09 Apr 2011|01:00pm] [ mood | tired ] Recurrent nightmares. The amount of stress in my life disrupts my sleep and conduces other adverse effects; my girlfriend is startled when I wake screaming and striking out at an eidetic adversary. Last night it was a bus crushing me to a wall and I was hitting the side of the bus and screaming at the driver to mend his course. And I have had episodes of sleepwalking, which I have not done since my twenties. No, I don't know where I was going; where do we go when we sleepwalk? Toward the middle of the crisis, or away from it. In the main I feel awful about startling my girlfriend. She has responded with wisdom and kindness. So, I am figuring strategies to manage stress. My list, so far: -- exercise every day; step away from desk -- healthful diet (check; veggies, fruit, whole grains, lean protein, mostly the expensive organic stuff) -- don't eat late at night -- set regular work hours -- set personal boundaries that accord family, friends, and web work clients every due respect, but give me time to take a break from the habit of seeking solutions to problems -- game night -- reading -- spend quality time with wise, kind girlfriend, not just hunched in her breakfast nook tapping a keyboard What are some of your strategies to manage stress? p.s. I did not know this Fuseli hung in Detroit. The Nightmare: Source: Wikimedia. 8 comments|post comment

Love beneath the cloud [26 Mar 2011|03:51pm] [ mood | pensive ] Topical discussion of datacenter and cloud hosting; time to change my VPS host I need to slow down, pay attention, and stop multitasking. For one thing this will improve my performance at game night. I am tired of getting my hiney kicked at chess and Munchkin. Why did it take me five minutes to write that Facebook status update earlier today? Because I was doing three other tasks, and thinking about three others still. They pulled out my datacenter rug One of the reasons I am distracted is, my longtime ISP, hosting.com, is ending its datacenter hosting services, and will not renew my VPS when my contract with them expires in November. They pulled out my datacenter rug. Now I need to find a new home for my business and my clients' internet presence. I will probably move my clients to Viviotech.net. Vivio's services seem exactly what I need, offered at a reasonable price within a welcoming CFML community. Vivio is also a leader in open-source CFML development (have you heard about OpenBlueDragon?) and I look forward to getting involved in that. What is cloud hosting? In the hosting world, there is a wide, ongoing shift from datacenter hosting to cloud hosting. But to me, cloud hosting seems -- pardon the pun -- nebulous. And it is certainly expensive. Wiki gives us a useful definition of cloud hosting: 'The key characteristic of cloud computing is that the computing is "in the cloud" i.e. the processing (and the related data) is not in a specified, known or static place(s). This is in contrast to a model in which the processing takes place in one or more specific servers that are known. All the other concepts mentioned are supplementary or complementary to this concept.' In the datacenter hosting model, I know where my server is: currently it is on a server farm in Newark, Delaware. In the cloud model, I do not know where my server is; in fact, my web site is not served from a discrete server in a known place; instead my web site crystallizes like snow from an ethereal place. An ethereal place that costs, in the case of hosting.com, four times as much as datacenter hosting. Romance I'm old-fashioned enough to want to know where my server is located. I want to be able to put my hand on the rackspace enclosure of my server and think, yes, here are my clients, here is my business, here is where my worthwhile time has gone. Romantic? Sure. But let's dispense with romance and talk about reliability and cost. There are high-availability and fault-protection options available to a well-managed datacenter server, allowing almost 100% uptime. Criticism that a datacenter is subject to more downtime seems, in my experience, unfounded. Even eBay and Amazon go offline some times. Be patient. They come right back. Slow down. If you go too fast, you make mistakes. And then your girlfriend makes you keep a sippy cup beside the bed rather than a spillable glass of water. And the datacenter costs much less. Hosting costs are meaningful to a small web shop that serves small businesses, human development and not-for-profit organizations, and artists and writers. My margin is small. Even though I budget very carefully, I cannot manage the line item required for a cloud host. I am not in this business to make a pile of money. I want to do excellent work for my clients, make a modestly comfortable living, and find time to read, write, travel, and give back to my community. But I get the feeling that cloud hosting was dreamed up (that pun is a little more oblique; still, um, sorry) by a group of very smart people who want less to provide a real service, and more to make a lot of money. I have tremendous gratitude for hosting.com. I have hosted with them since 2003 (when they were called hostmysite.com). Their support staff have been proactive, involved, very competent, and perfectly professional. I will miss working with them. Disappointment and love and phone numbers I am disappointed to lose, this coming autumn, my VPS at hosting.com. Maybe hosting.com will make more money without me. They have that right. In the meantime I am going to join the busy community of CFML developers over at viviotech.net and continue to provide custom solutions for my clients' needs. No client should be force-fitted into the confines of an off-the-shelf CMS. It is good to keep terra firma beneath my feet and beneath my server. I just realized that all of my phone numbers live in my mobile phone and not in my head. If I am ever arrested I will be unable to make my one phone call and I will rot in jail. Now I am going to go make french toast for my lovely girlfriend, who listened patiently while I pontificated on the topics of cloud servers and datacenters, then produced from her library this book about a young person's adventure at a different kind of cloud server in the atmosphere over New York City: Sector 7, by David Wiesner 2 comments|post comment

Clara Inés Olaya [15 Mar 2011|05:05pm] [ mood | cold ] I've learned my friend Clara Inés Olaya passed away in April 2007 from cancer at age 61. I wish I had stayed in touch with her. I knew her son Sergio -- a polite, goodhearted, hardworking gentleman. Clara, a freelance consultant and author, was uninsured, and Sergio was left with a quarter million USD in health debt. Clara was a scholar, teacher, and writer; a polyglot, gourmet, cognoscenti, and traveler; an advocate for women's health; a dignified, gentle, and strong person. She worked at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Academy for Educational Development where I met her in 1998 and worked with her on a breastfeeding education project, the International Planned Parenthood Federation, UNICEF, and UNESCO. She wrote two fine books, Frutas de América and Frutas Tropicales. Her presence was a delight -- and I wish I had expressed as much to her more clearly when I knew her. The world is a poorer place. I imagine you are traveling in an increasing gyre, slipping farther from us until our grasp on you expires. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/25/washington/25health.html?pagewanted=print 1 comment|post comment

The medicine will kick in any minute now [09 Mar 2011|12:59am] I was wondering why the heck my data table would not update. Kept getting an error I totally did not deserve that said "The row value(s) updated or deleted either do not make the row unique or they alter multiple rows". Turns out it is a documented bug in SQL Server 2005: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/925719 I thought my fevered (got sick again; keep getting sick b/c I keep pushing myself back to work; yeah, I know, I'm an idiot, but I am a very industrious idiot; come to think of it that is the most dangerous kind of idiot) brain was playing games with me. The workaround is to enter a SQL update statement in the SQL query window. The KB note says this problem occurs with text, ntext, or image data types -- but I also made it occur with data type int, which I duly reported to Microsoft. I am sure they will get right on it. I know what you're thinking: use MYSQL! I do. I use MYSQL and MS SQL in different projects. Good night folks. 1 comment|post comment

Ms. Ferguson [15 Feb 2011|12:05am] My first web site client, Sue Ferguson, chair of the National Coalition for Parent Involvement in Education, passed away 5 February 2011. I built her web site for her in 1995. Good night, lady. post comment

magnificent beasts of women with large limbs, and fire and light in their eyes [28 Dec 2010|11:28pm] Home from Hawai'i. Hullo dear housemate B. Hullo computer. Hullo guess-what-I-got-a-bed draped in purple. Hullo stack of mail. Journey by plane in sleepless forty-two hours. On first two legs (Kona to LA, LA to Memphis) read new Lydia Davis trans. of Mdm Bovary, and Truss's Eats(,) Shoots and Leaves (recommended to anyone who fancies her or himself a writer or who wants to communicate using written English). On the last two legs from Memphis to Minneapolis, thence to Chicago I taught myself the card game Hearts; reviewed some current Windows network practices; practicado español; worked on a new poem; and for fun re-read the Quartets (TSE) which always makes me think about the relation of human love to time and space: Home is where one starts from. As we grow older the world becomes stranger, the pattern more complicated Of dead and living. Not the intense moment Isolated, with no before and after, But a lifetime burning in every moment And not the lifetime of one man only But of old stones that cannot be deciphered. There is a time for the evening under starlight, A time for the evening under lamplight (The evening with the photograph album). Love is most nearly itself When here and now cease to matter. -- TSE / East Coker Behold! these be grave mysteries; for there are also of my friends who be hermits. Now think not to find them in the forest or on the mountain; but in beds of purple, caressed by magnificent beasts of women with large limbs, and fire and light in their eyes, and masses of flaming hair about them; there shall ye find them. -- Aleister Crowley 3 comments|post comment

she was forced to step into the red-hot shoes and dance until she fell down dead [18 Dec 2010|08:51pm] "They put a pair of iron shoes into burning coals and the shoes were brought forth with tongs and placed before her. Then she was forced to step into the red-hot shoes and dance until she fell down dead." This is similar to conducting an internet development business. At best you are dancing. At worst you realize your feet are being roasted and you cannot ever stop or you will be tortured in new ways. Who without searching can identify the story in which the quoted text occurs? Quite a calorific conclusion. Terpsichore, medium rare. I figured out which island I am on: the largest one in the eyebrow-shaped archipelago. There are volcanoes on one side of it. Aloha. 5 comments|post comment

concupiscent curds [25 Nov 2010|01:51pm] May a muscular cigar roller struggle you up some concupiscent curds today, and some bacon. The dresser of deal was where they kept the bacon. They couldn't get at the bacon cause the dresser knobs were broken off. The boys sidled up to the wenches with flowers and jokes but the wenches wanted the bacon. Finally they got open one drawer but it contained just a musty embroidered sheet which they threw over the corpse for decency's sake. The sheet didn't cover her feet. One of the boys thought her feet must be cold. He thought about taking off his socks and putting them on her. Happy thanksgiving. I am grateful for my family, my friends, and an endless number of lesser things. Cash the dog, d. summer 2010. He was a very literate dog. He slept under my arm esp when the night was cold and sometimes he nosed the book I were reading as if pointing out a particular passage I should attend to. 2 comments|post comment

As we were falling asleep [19 Nov 2010|01:18am] As we were falling asleep we told each other a story about a fearful boy who learned his fear from, who else, his parents, and sailed away on a boat and grew into a man and had many adventures all over the world and then in his middle age he came back to his small town to find his parents, he went up to the door of his old house and knocked, and his father answered now old and gray, but the man became the fearful boy again and said, sorry, sorry, I have the wrong door. http://www.xkcd.com/819/ 3 comments|post comment

If you were a sleeping broccoli plant about what would you dream? [14 Nov 2010|01:38am] Thought while trying to sleep that goaded me from bed: I think that one lenitive response to an abusive childhood is development of impressive personal egotism. Ego is like a signal flare: the person says, I grew up in a bad place. I deal with it by never getting too sad or too angry or too in love, but loving myself most of all, and intrepidly expanding the grandness of my life. Health note: New sleepless night. Averaging four hours of sleep per night. Weight steady at 64 kilos, my lowest since I was a runner in college, except I have been stuffing myself with calories to see if I will gain but I don't. Reflect this saves airlines money to transport one slim passenger. I seem to have developed what is called, commonly, an eight-pack, eight accidental chunks of flesh like barrow mounds hung weirdly under stark ribs. Venous arms, gaunt legs. Housemate B says: time to go to doctor. Bourland: yeah. k. No other symptoms; exercise a lot mostly for calming effect, eat very healthy, vegetables galore, appetite OK except a strange ongoing craving for, again, vegetables. Haggard. Genuinely very tired. Can feel tiredness in cells of body. Does broccoli sleep? The plant while in the earth asleep. I think on ways in the past I have been selfish or an egoist or condescending. These behaviors are not intrinsically evil. Ego for example is a crucial generator of art and intellect. Just irritating if done wrong. Condescension in place of kindness is stupid, a bad strategy. People remember when you condescend to them and one day you will need something from them. If you were a sleeping broccoli plant about what would you dream? 8 comments|post comment

Agent 22 signing off from DC [12 Nov 2010|10:56am] Katie throws the tennis ball in my general direction and I catch it and she assesses my performance and pronounces, Ten points! We are playing to one thousand. I throw it with great care back to her and she does not quite catch it but it bounces up and hits her knee. She does a calculation and says, Twenty points! Cause it hit my knee. Your tabulation is dubious but endearing I tell her. She just throws the ball back at me. Whenever I say stupid stuff she wisely ignores me knowing I will improve on my own in time. She wins the game by making one awesome catch and hollering, One thousand points! Katie, age 7, has come home from school and is happy to find I am a brief guest there. Her parents, my dear friends Tom and Gwen, were very kind to host me in their home the night before for strategy board games and Indian food. After the ball game we sit in the sun under the mulberry trees along the side of the house -- they might not be mulberry trees, I don't know for sure, so let's just pretend they are -- and I read to her a story about a boy and his pet fly who become superheroes and outwit some pirates and befriend a dragon who flies their house back to Florida because the pirates took it, the house I mean, with them inside it. It might not have been Florida. Well, it wasn't. A specific state of the union was not mentioned in the text. But Florida is an OK place. Parts of it are pretty cool. And it's impressive, no it's comprehensive, that the pirates stole not just the boy's stuff but his entire house to bring back to their pirate lair. That was some story. Why can't I come up with ideas like that. Next up, a game of spy. Katie produces a secret notebook and a magnifying class and a small padlock with a key and we go around hunting clues. First we set up base camp in the alley by marking a place in the road (on which there are not any cars) with two crossed sticks. We hear noises and Katie calls out, Who's there! very loudly. I mention that, as spies, we might observe a more subtle approach to detect the presence of friends or foes. Katie again wisely ignores cloddish me and calls out, Who's there! She gives me an identity, Agent 22. She is Agent 99. We set out around the block in search of Agent 23, her friend Andrew. We do not find him, but as we go around the block, in the clear suburban morning light among large gleaming homes with manicured lawns, we have many adventures, about none of which I can tell you because: secret agent stuff. Well, I will tell a few things: we wrote secret codes in the notebook. And found some salt, samples of which we collected. And drew a picture of a yellow bicycle that was chained to a fence because it looked suspiciously like the one on which Agent 23 was last sighted. I can tell you no more. (Except: was agent 23 transmuted to salt? Fiendish.) Back in Chicago after twelve days of work (90%) and play (8%) and sleep (1%) in DC. Where's the missing percent? I do not know but I hope I spent it wisely, like by doing ablutions and eating now and then. CR, the photographer in the case above, says these days I look this way all of the time: very intense and focused. I'm really just mad as a March hare. 7 comments|post comment

but when is she not beautiful [30 Oct 2010|02:49am] [ mood | contemplative ] Where should I live? I asked this of my father when we spoke on the phone. He suggested Idaho, Colorado, the northwest. I might buy land there and build an efficient house. Maybe Panama. Dominican Republic. Argentina. Somewhere I will not be deported out of hand. I'd liked to be welcomed for contributions I can make to the commonweal. I could teach. I could dig ditches. Do you suppose they would deport me from Colorado? I would be on my best behavior. Criteria for new homeland: modest cost of living since my income is variable close to a city because a city is more likely to contain people who would come to game night or invite me to game night internet (possibly solved by tethering computer to a phone) I welcome any ideas about places to go. From an accumulating weight of dust a star forms. Last night I swept from my room enough dust to actuate a limited energy burst on a stellar surface. I like the idea that my domestic industry increased very slightly the brightness of our galaxy. Or had potential to. The local sun will get cooler over time and I wonder if there are practical ways to transport to the cool sun the giant dust bunnies that gather beneath every bed I ever owned. (What if the sun does not generate energy from fusion but from a small black hole suspended in its center? And the black hole used to be composed of dust from undersides of beds.) Louise Glück, October: "From within the earth's bitter disgrace, coldness and barrenness my friend the moon rises; she is beautiful tonight, but when is she not beautiful?" 16 comments|post comment

Uptown Chicago [20 Oct 2010|01:38am] [ mood | tired ] The desperate collect in the crannies of Uptown at one in the morning. I'm in my quarters with a cup of warmed-up coffee, the glow of a little electric lamp, a comfortable bed footsteps away. Not lost on me how lucky I am to be in just this place. photo: K Russell, September 2010, Lawrence Ave Chicago 1 comment|post comment

cherry red sports car, antigen, kissing, insomnia, two heads [13 Oct 2010|07:05pm] cherry red sports car The man across the alley tucks his sports car in his garage as if he were tucking in a precious child. A couple of days ago I went out on a domestic mission and saw him crouched in his garage diligently polishing his darling's cherry door. antigen, kissing Fever blister. Receding slowly. My body builds an antigen to fit the virus. The virus builds a house on the prairie of my lip. I get a fever blister rarely. The last time was in 2005. The usual remedies of time and L-Lysine are effective. Meanwhile I do not kiss anybody. Interesting note concerning same. Fever blisters I mean. Not kissing. insomnia Sleepy. In the rainy dark French radio kind of way. The rain taps the window inviting you to drift cloudward. But you know you will not be drifting cloudward tonight, and sleep is not on the guest list nor in the audience and not in a cab on the way not stuck in traffic not even at the airport. two heads I wonder if it is possible to have formidable intelligence or talent without concomitant ego. If ego is a required catalyst for the small rapid explosions that drive quick intelligence. And if determined, self-conscious measures to minimize ego just cripple intelligence. Don't be an extra in someone else's movie. ;-) Insist on a screenworthy part. Like if someone paid for a ticket to come see you and she got her money's worth and thought for lingering hours about what you said and did. 10 comments|post comment

end of summer [25 Sep 2010|02:27am] [ mood | tired ] Which of these statements is not ridiculous? The kettle begins to whistle because I think about it whistling at that moment. The login credentials exist in accessible paper form only when you do not need them. The heart rustles in the chest for a while then leaves. The heart leaves when you fall asleep. That was not crying. That was sunscreen in my eyes and a small, negotiable heart attack. ******* I think you can tell a lot about a person by the weight with which he or she walks. I mean the manifest tread of the feet across a floor. ******* I am in the middle summer of my life. Where are you? What is your estimate? Only curious. 9 comments|post comment

logic, Chicago, Rhoda Pritzker, Rob Brezsny [12 Aug 2010|04:29pm] [ mood | tired ] I try to be logical. I don't succeed in logic nearly as often or as well as I would like. But when I make life decisions, longterm or shortterm, I use the scientific method: how will this choice harm or help me and the people I love? Reason is the order of the day. That said, I never miss an entry from Rob Brezsny's Free Will Astrology. Rob is not scientific, not logical, but most times his weekly sidereal text articulates a point I particularly need in my current space and time: http://www.freewillastrology.com/horoscopes/taurus.html **** Rhoda Pritzker for no reason other than Rhoda Pritzker: A lingering Chicago memory. Hello lady. At your service. ~bow~ 2 comments|post comment

intelligence; Ben Franklin's order of the day; French radio [10 Aug 2010|02:09am] [ mood | sleepy ] I was thinking about this today while I worked. It seems to me that human intelligence is premised on a fervent desire to know things, an ability to pay attention, simple hard work, and a little (at least a little) courage. **** Ben Franklin's order of the day: **** Sleepy. In the rainy dark French radio kind of way. Good night. 4 comments|post comment

Notes on hope [25 Jul 2010|05:10pm] [ mood | productive ] He that lives upon hope will die fasting. --Benjamin Franklin Hope is a good breakfast, but it is a bad supper. --Francis Bacon Hope is the most treacherous of human fancies. --James Fenimore Cooper HOPE -- marketing gambit in recent, well-known media campaign All that said, I hope you are enjoying a productive or restful Sunday. 4 comments|post comment

A Fable [22 Jun 2010|02:15pm] [ mood | hot ] I forgot I wrote this. I posted it here a few years ago. I just revised it. It's a quick read, six paragraphs. I hope you like it. Warning: disturbed images. http://hwaet.com/OneFable_EB_2007.pdf 8 comments|post comment

The bells in the tower of the school for the blind rang again. [19 Jun 2010|04:06pm] [ mood | working ] I really like the meter of that sentence. Another part of this story I like is that in spite of his expansive foolishness -- he is shy, AWOL, awkward, and dumb in both senses of the word; he professes love for her, and kisses her though she is engaged -- she does not condescend. Does he manipulate? Yes. Does she have a right to be very, very angry with him? Yes. Are they gonna live happily ever after? Maybe not, but it's a good (and brief) story anyway. Enjoy: http://hwaet.com/books/ALongWalkToForeverbyKurtVonnegutJr.pdf post comment

Happy May Day; Ashley's bend; Noodles the fat cat [01 May 2010|07:33pm] [ mood | relaxed ] Happy May Day, and International Workers' Day. I got some leather cord and corded my science amulet that I got at the Science Museum in Kansas City in summer of 2008. I tied the cord with Ashley's bend, because that knot, a non-slipping knot, is useful to bind synthetic or slippery lines. It's called Ashley's bend because it was invented by Clifford Warren Ashley, a sailor. I like the science amulet. According to the Science Museum in Kansas City, the sigil on the front of the science amulet means: science. Science amulet Ashley's bend Gratuitous shot of Noodles the fat cat. Look at that fat bastard. I go up to Noodles and say, Noodles, you're a fat cat. He just meows plaintively. Sometimes I sing little songs to him about what a fat cat he is. 10 comments|post comment

door [13 Mar 2010|11:43am] [ mood | thoughtful ] I'm reminded of the time, and it seems a long time ago now, I delivered by stealth, after dark and against the rent agreement, for purposes of storage, a spare, obtrusive door to the cellar where the witch conducts her witchy malfeasance with her colleagues the rats, the roaches, and the imbecile's ghost, down there among chilly cinderblock walls and old electrical gear and piles of rotted lumber with nails sticking out. Where for all I know it remains, unhinged from its right place, the closet whose baseboard we altered, also against the rent agreement, to situate IKEA shelves for clothing and sundries and rows of your shoes, that one evening, probably the last time we cooperated on a domestic task. 1 comment|post comment

height [03 Mar 2010|07:20pm] [ mood | amused ] Nurse measured my height today and put it at a towering 5'7", startling me. I measured it just now at, I reckon, a more accurate 5'6" which is what I've always figured it to be, and what it says on my Illinois DL. Benefits of stretching and exercise. 2 comments|post comment

the makebelieve town of Tangolayo [02 Mar 2010|11:38am] Two months ago I tapered off then quit my dose of fluoxetine or prozac after taking it daily for thirteen years. No change in response or affect. Either my brain has changed permanently since its boiling state in 1997 or has shrugged off the medicine. Or absorbs the medicine and dispenses it inert. I continue without the medicine, not missing it. If you break open a capsule and put the medicine on your tongue the taste is foul. A white powder baked from chemicals. The only change in me is an increased sex response which, at age 41, I welcome. I've chosen to not drink wine anymore. Wine being the principal alcoholic beverage I enjoyed for twelve years of evenings. Surprise among friends at such temperance. They proffer wine, I request tea or sodapop. A better strategy, which has brought about a little renaissance, is to cut out the nightly bottle of red. Better sleep. Weight loss. To bed early and wake up early, and the day is productive. Not to mention the wine-money saved back in my coffer, coins rattling in there waiting for others to join them. I am glad to discover I do not miss wine or think about it. Wine was a small pleasure and part of a larger refusal to be loved but not a useful haven from stress. Drinking wine during stress ruins wine-pleasure. It is better to deal with problems with a clear head. It is better to figure out a way to accept love. The YMCA surprised me with the quality of its facilities. It is good to get back the strength I lost during hibernation in the Chicago winter. I'm honored to have a poem in the new issue of the Georgetown Review. It is not available online, but for a few dollars you can pick up a copy here: http://georgetownreview.georgetowncollege.edu/ The poem is called The Dancing Police and is about officers in a police substation in the makebelieve town of Tangolayo who begin to dance. Why do they dance? For a very good reason but you will have to read the poem to find out. I wrote it in 2001, kept and polished it nine years and, if you choose to read it, I really hope you like it since I wrote it for you the reader. I am grateful to the Georgetown Review for giving a home to this poem. There are many good poems and stories in the Georgetown Review and I recommend it to readers. Thanks to German Santanilla for help with Spanish translation. There is no substitute for a native speaker. 6 comments|post comment

poem [01 Mar 2010|11:13pm] I'm honored to have a poem appear in the current issue of Praxilla: http://www.ars-rhetorica.net/Praxilla/Praxilla.html Language warning. 5 comments|post comment

the sun in Chicago [18 Feb 2010|04:20pm] Forbes Magazine, 18 Feb 2010: "The Windy City flamed out in its bid to host the 2016 Summer Olympics despite a last-minute plea from President Obama. Bigger problems are the nation's highest sales tax rate (10.25%) and long commutes." Whatever Forbes says, the sun is out in Chicago, as Trib columnist Mary Schmich notes. Today a young gentleman stood in the middle of W Diversey Ave, under my window, and shouted "C'mon bitch!" as cars swerved around him. As if in that stance he could summon to him the absent and recalcitrant woman he referred to. Or he needed to see your identification if you were driving down W Diversey. A crazed street cop unnerved by the strange guest the sun. It's a pretty day in Chicago. The berms of plowed snow are melting down, the battle is over. Last night, also on W Diversey, I held onto a man so inebriated that he could not stand up. He moaned loudly in an Eastern European language. His teeth were rotted out, his pants were soaked with snow or piss and fallen around his knees. His breath stank of vodka. Another man was there, a concerned citizen, and we held the drunk man upright between us and steeled ourselves and grabbed his vile pants and pulled them to his waist, unspoken teamwork, and fastened the drunk man's actual belt round his waist while the man looked around him as if into an unknown world, and at us as if we were two alien passersby who had stopped only to seize and violate him. I called 911 and in twenty minutes a cop showed up, a tough cynical Chicago police officer, who called a wagon to collect the man. The cop grabbed the drunk man and said, What the fuck is the matter with you? What the fuck are you doing out here drunk like this? If you had a bottle I'd arrest you right now and you could sleep it off in jail. The wagon showed up, a big rumbling Ford 450, and two officers jumped out and rushed over and grabbed the drunk man and one cop said to the man, What the fuck are you doing? You out here doing this again? What the fuck is the matter with you? They shouldered the drunk man wagonward, the man moaning. I love my adopted city and mean no sarcasm in saying so. Just now another disturbance on the concourse of violence that is W Diversey. Two youths shout threats at a third youth who walks quickly away. One youth has his right hand inside his jacket, at his left hip, poised there. But the third youth retreats, shoulders hunched in his dark jacket, and he doesn't look back. The first two youths move on down the avenue. Overseeing this peaceful leave-taking is brother sun who governs Chicago with a genial authority that, for an afternoon, supersedes that of the mayor, the police, Forbes magazine, armed youths, or vodka. 3 comments|post comment

Cash the dog, 14 November, early morning [14 Nov 2009|01:28am] Woke up on my pallet in the workroom where I've been staying for a couple of weeks. Got a headache against which I just fetched a couple aspirin. Cash the dog comes in, noses round my makeshift bed. He's not used to finding me in this room at night, usually I'm in the bed with the woman and the other dog. In a couple of days I'll be gone from here. I take the tough, old, little dog and rub his old hips. Old hips, I tell him, old hips. Like I'm reminding him his hips are old. In case he did not know. We have this habit. He lets me rub his old hips. And my illusion this rubbing balms his arthritis, or smooths the old scar where the Rottweiler chomped him. You're a good dog I tell the dog. We been through a lot together, huh, buddy? Old man. Old man. I'm touching the new livid scars down his side where he chewed himself a few weeks ago and we had to wrap him in a sweater to stop him chewing there, till he healed. Alopecia, white muzzle, a couple of benign lipidomas, cloudy eyes. We been through a lot buddy, I tell him. He leans against me on my pallet in the dim room bursting with textiles and devices and tasks in progress. A hidden cavity in the great wall of the city. His tail wags a little and he nuzzles my hand for me to continue petting him. How dare I desist even for a moment. You're a good dog I tell the old dog again, in case he forgot. post comment

Louise Glück's "October" [31 Oct 2009|12:20pm] Today I read Louise Glück's "October". I read it every October. It's an injured reply to violence. (Domestic violence and early family violence is what I guess -- the exact violence is not clear but does not need to be, the poem works anyway.) The poem, about twelve pages long, is sad and beautiful. Available in a chapbook from Sarabande. Glück is not someone I would trust, personally -- I would not want to be her friend or her student, for example. I would not want to be married to or live with her. She's violent her own self, emotionally violent. And takes herself very seriously. Reading between the lines of her poems, the idea of her I get is: very smart, but dramatic and manipulative. I could be wrong entirely and maybe she is a jewel of a person through and through. Years ago I heard her read at LoC at the beginning of her term as Poet Laureate. Sycophants in the audience, sighing after every poem, one sitting directly behind me. A class of students was there probably under compulsion, and they shuffled and whined. She read very well, though, at a lectern in the front of the crowded room. I've read all of her published poems since her second book "The House on Marshland" and her poems continue to move me. They avoid, barely, excessive drama. They're stark and damaged and they work really well. I'm cautious about Glück (and her disciples). Meanwhile I admire her. Happy Hallowe'en. Boo! 1 comment|post comment

Porno for pomologists [14 Aug 2009|01:01pm] *hot pomegranate action* *carnal cornucopia extraordinaire* *tomatoes romping en deshabille* 3 comments|post comment

identity [11 Aug 2009|01:37am] "Abuse is like a disease, placed inside you, forever eating at you, tearing down the walls of identity as fast as you can build them." -- Jameson Lee (letters section, Daredevil comic book, v2 #19)

austerity measures [07 Aug 2009|08:30pm] My debt nears five figures, and I wonder if I could eat Yoda. If I were really hungry and had nothing else to eat could I sneak up behind the little green guy while he was eating a Yoda-snack and conk him on the head then add him to the soup? Would I be a cannibal? I would not want to be a cannibal. What is Yoda's nutritional content? Since he's green, is he a vegetable? What about other humanoid muppets? If I borked the Swedish Chef over the head and made Swedish meatballs, am I a cannibal? Probably. What about Big Bird? One could get many nuggets out of Big Bird. There are people going hungry right here in Chicago and one Big Bird would feed a few city blocks. I guess if we ate him we would be cannibals in spirit. But don't tell me you never looked at Yoda and wondered if he were animal or vegetable. One of my favorite poets, Stephen Dobyns, wrote a poem about him and his workshop finding and eating Neruda. "....we've eaten this famous poet, and even though he / tasted great and we could probably eat another...." If I were a chef I would make Swedish Chef noises all day while I worked. 5 comments|post comment

what is a poet? [21 Jul 2009|01:18pm] Joel Brouwer -- whose poems and commentary I read and enjoy -- brings up the question, What is a poet? Well, a poet is a person who thinks intensely and often about the craft of poetry and reads a great deal of poetry, as education toward writing it, and who maybe writes poems as a result. That said, I think to call oneself a poet invites abuse. I remember my buddy Eddie Maloney smirking at me: "Who says you're a poet? What if I'm a poet?" That was years ago but it's an educational image, Ed's smirking face, I will always remember. I write poems and share them with some folks but I don't go around saying I'm a poet. Mostly I read poems, and I like finding the rare poem that really moves me. 6 comments|post comment

Sotomayor, my two cents [13 Jul 2009|01:54pm] Sotomayor. It's unamerican to concern ourselves about the gender or race of a judge we appoint to the supreme court. We want a judge who is experienced in matters of jurisprudence, has demonstrated she or he is capable of sternness and compassion, and above all enforces -- objectively, consistently -- the laws created by our legislators in whom we hope to trust. If that's Sotomayor I'm all for her. I don't care if she's a wise Latina as long as she's a good judge, and I say so having known a few wise Latinas. (It's interesting that we don't really have a clear view of her stance on reproductive freedom.) In any case I hope the Senators tasked with questioning her credentials do a proper job of it without regard for partisan politics. post comment

We can't escape alone this horrible fix we're in [05 Jul 2009|12:56am] One of the many things on earth I don't understand is the common fascination with fireworks. Light fuse; retreat while watching intently; explosion. Repeat. But people watch fireworks explode over and over, as if expecting something new. Maybe the next detonation will be different. Maybe the explosion will shape itself as a dragon or a dryad or a dray horse. Maybe the next bomb contains a galleon, a witch, a spider. The unglamorous dray horse, like the unglamorous wild turkey, was instrumental in building our American nation. The fireworks should shape themselves as low, squat horses hitched to drays. As fluttering, busy turkeys getting blunderbussed. Even in the bombastic displays done over DC I never saw a dray horse. Whenever I hear or read the phrase End Result I wonder if I'm being invited to discuss teleology. End Result is pompous. Puffer fish / spiky / danger / fear / aggression / stay back. J and I are watching one of the Matrix movies, it is importantly pugilistic, offers devotions of artillery. We were discussing seriously whether the Matrix movies with their emphasis on man pursuing man are a powerful statement about the positive power of gay relationships. Those men in the movie spend a lot of time chasing each other, trying to get close to one another, and one of the lessons of the Matrix story is: we need each other. We can't escape alone this horrible fix we're in. The fighting is bloodless, tender, ecstatic. A series of evolving intimacies. When the Agent Smiths en masse punch Neo all over Neo's tightly wrapped, firm, fuliginous body it is almost as hot as the wallet retrieval scene in "Sideways". 5 comments|post comment

esophagogastroduodenoscopy, Nigeria, traulism [25 Jun 2009|02:10pm] [ mood | amused ] This morning, esophagogastroduodenoscopy. Rewarded with bright photos of my innards all of which are in working order. Drugged-out post-procedure walk with J to her nearby office, J guiding me. J got me lunch and reviewed matter of factly my new medication and innards photos. Cab ride home with talkative Nigerian who explained how his stuttering cousin in Nigeria is one tough bastard, stays taciturn, swings his fists when needed. The second random discussion of traulism in as many days. Yeah, traulism's archaic. I'm bringin' it back. Hope you all are having a healthy cool day. Peace. 3 comments|post comment

Can't dust shelves without pulling out books and reading from them. [12 Jun 2009|03:25am] "They were all dead now, Severa and Becan, whom I had never seen; the old man, the dog, Casdoe, now little Severian, even Fechin, all dead, all lost in the mists that obscure our days. Time itself is a thing, so it seems to me, that stands solidly like a fence of iron palings with its endless row of years; and we flow past like Gyoll, on our way to a sea from which we shall return only as rain." -- Gene Wolfe, The Sword of the Lictor 2 comments|post comment

Today, in the afternoon, with nephew baby Ashton [02 Jun 2009|02:52pm] Today, in the afternoon, with nephew baby Ashton. I sing songs, read to him, explain about left foot, right foot. He is bald, I am bald. At age 12 weeks he has slightly more hair than I. He says, globble globble, an observation of considerable prescience. I give him back: booga booga booga. He says, globble globble glick, which I take to mean he wishes to hear the poems of Louise Glück, so I get some and start reading. He begins to squirm and holler. This is good stuff I assure him. See, she's having trouble with the tomato plants and is reporting her failure directly to God. This could possibly be a little narcissistic but then this lady won a Pulitzer and what do I know. He hollers more and I put away Glück and take out Carruth which he likes better. These some sad poems here little guy I tell the little guy. Some sad and happy poems. He lets off a string of little farts, and then I let off a string of slightly bigger farts. We have much in common. 4 comments|post comment

life [27 May 2009|01:53pm] The battery indicator is non-linear. 1 comment|post comment

Words that bug me; puffer fish; Private Pyle; real real [24 May 2009|03:57pm] Words that bug me: modality -- is this the mode of a mode? It's like emphasizing that you have a mode. Congratulations, you have a mode. Even your mode has a mode. functionality -- the function of a function? The ality? Reality? Really? You really speak this word out loud so other people have to hear it? methodology -- a study of a method? Where does this leave your modality? Can a methodology have a modality? Private Joker, why aren't you stomping Private Pyle's guts out? It's like being real real. People puff themselves up with ersatz vocabulary. They are like puffer fish. I read or listen to them and think: puffer fish, boom, expand, spiky, stand back. Dictionary.com has become so clogged with adverts, it's almost unusable. Yes, I woke up on the wrong side, why? Where's the cottonpickin' coffee? 7 comments|post comment

PSA / old iMac / Airport Classic / DLink router / connect Phoebe [27 Feb 2009|08:03am] This is a public service announcement. When you're with your dollface to upgrade her old iMac, what she's named Phoebe, with an old Airport Classic wireless adapter you bought for her on eBay (because an Airport Extreme won't go inside an old iMac from 2002), and you can't get Phoebe to connect to your DLink DIR-655 router, and you're both getting frustrated, then you should know the solution is to take the router out of B / G / N mode and instead set it to transmit only in B / G mode. You should say to your dollface, Dollface, I got this. Then go over to the router, call up its administrative interface, go into wireless options, and set the router to transmit in B / G mode, and then Phoebe's got internet. Keywords: iMac 800MHz PowerPC G4 Mac OS 10.4.1.1 Apple Part # M8535LL/A Original Apple Airport Card 802.11b Apple Part # M7600LL/A DLink DIR-655 Xtreme N Gigabit Router dollface Phoebe internet 5 comments|post comment

You crazy, gotta-have-it-all gals. *rant warning* *language warning* [12 Feb 2009|05:28pm] Fellas, here you go. From MSNBC, 5 things men should know about women The gist of the article is -- are you sitting down? -- don't be a jerk. I'll recapitulate the five don't-be-a-jerk points the article articulates. First, the headline: Gals like looks and smarts, but love and dependability also important (Who knew? You crazy, gotta-have-it-all gals.) Then the five things you should know: 1. Offer money, love and dependability. The article says, "Money and character are important to women." The article begins with money. All righty. The headline introduces the importance of money, but then the following three paragraphs barely mention the filthy, filthy lucre that greases most relationships. Curious. Because we can't just come out and say that women are gold diggers. "Offer money" to women. Does that boggle anybody else? Hey baby. Here's a c-note. Let's go to the fuckin opera. The author of this article -- Jeanna Bryner of MSNBC -- is too whitelivered to articulate the equation Guy with money = Attractive to women. Instead she implies that much in her coy headline, then changes tack: "A survey of more than 5,000 U.S. couples published in the journal Social Forces in 2006 suggested women are happiest in their marriages when men show a high level of emotional engagement: expressing positive emotions; being attentive to their wives' needs; and setting aside time for activities focused specifically on the relationship." Sure, that's all quite true -- and quite apart from the important matter of money in a long term relationship. You need a partner who is financially responsible and who can contribute. Love is sweet but you need bread with it. The author's point was really two points -- 1) be involved; 2) contribute money -- bundled into one, and was delivered in a sly, unfocused manner. There was a better way to write it. Already, after reading the first point, the article has made me angry and confused. Why am I reading MSNBC anyway? I was asking for heartache. 2. Practice saying 'thank you'. What kind of Neanderthal never says thank you to his sweetie? And what woman would put up with such an ungrateful punk? Are there any couples out there who truly exist in this mode? Oh, wait. 3. Don't be jealous. Yes. Be charming, not jealous. You get better results. Many guys take a while to figure out this one. Many never do. Point to MSNBC. 4. Leave aggression on the field. Many guys take a while to figure out this one too. Another point to MSNBC. It's a sign of maturity to use strategy rather than aggression to achieve goals. Many boys never reach this level. That's why they're still boys at age 50. (Most times anyway you need a combination of strategy and boldness to succeed -- at least, that is the only way I ever accomplished anything meaningful.) This point rubs me wrong since subtle aggression is the basis of bullying. A bully is smallminded and cowardly, yet often we let him or her achieve quite a lot. This provides the illusion that bullying is productive and acceptable. 5. Watch her heart. The article delivers this advice literally: if you are a guy who's partnered with a woman, you should, um, keep a general gauge of her health. You needed an article to tell you that. Check your cupcake. Does she gasp and wheeze after climbing a flight of stairs? Does she eat sticks of butter for breakfast? If so, take her to a doctor. "Your job, men: Make sure your sweetie gets regular checkups and takes care of herself." Cause she can't handle this herself. Fellas, take care of your little lady. OK, you gold digging harpies, you cloddish rakes, now you have the information you need to endure a longterm, romantic, heterosexual relationship. Have our standards sunk so low that we need a printed reminder to be a decent person? P.S. Cannot do the black girl lateral head wag. My entire torso wags and it looks dumb. But I'm pretty good at saying Oh no you di'n. P.P.S. Should I drop all pretense of being a wellspoken young man and give over to my natural inclination to curse like a sailor? You should hear me stomping round the house. It's cocksucker this, cocksucker that, all day long. 13 comments|post comment

AWP conference / Chicago *language warning* / *rant warning* [10 Feb 2009|11:35pm] The AWP conference happens in Chicago this year beginning tomorrow. The AWP conference -- a gathering of sensitive egos; a horrible communal cocksucking. The scheduled sessions have titles like The Sister Art(s): Toward A Feminist Ekphrasis Can't miss that one. One time I was on a date, a first and only date, with a young PhD candidate nestled safe in the groves of academe. She was ... 32? 34? She met me and her face registered immediate dissatisfaction. She was tetchy all through dinner. I tried a couple of jokes. Bought us drinks. Tried a couple of dumb stories. She just looked at me. She did not have any stories to tell. She talked intertextuality and ekphrasis and agonism. I mean she shoved these clunky words into our conversation. I nodded and replied in kind b/c, hell, I know about the terms and a little about the ideas behind them, not via the academe but just from my sloppy variegated reading. Agon means a struggle, I ventured. Least I think it does. What's agonism? A struggle about the struggle? She bristled. Except I don't know anything about intertexuality. What the %$#@ is intertextuality? I don't even want to know. If I even think about intertextuality I will become a lesser reader. Instead I want to orbit the periphery of the AWP conference and meet up with a few writer pals in a shitty little dive where they serve sour mash in mason jars. I'm OK with that. Nelson Algren. I wonder if some of these academicians at AWP ever read any Algren or if they give a damn about good stories or good poems or if they're brave enough to harbor any love in their hearts at all. 9 comments|post comment

Ever read Nelson Algren? I recommend "Neon Wilderness". [09 Feb 2009|05:55pm] Interviewers: Do you feel that any critics have influenced your work? Nelson Algren: None could have, because I don't read them. I doubt anyone does, except other critics. It seems like a sealed-off field with its own lieutenants, pretty much preoccupied with its own intrigues. I got a glimpse into the uses of a certain kind of criticism this past summer at a writer's conference — into how the avocation of assessing the failures of better men can be turned into a comfortable livelihood, providing you back it up with a Ph.D. I saw how it was possible to gain a chair of literature on no qualification other than persistence in nipping the heels of Hemingway, Faulkner, and Steinbeck. I know, of course, that there are true critics, one or two. For the rest all I can say is, "Deal around me." post comment

That's really funny but it's totally disgusting. [07 Feb 2009|01:36pm] Ham juice J: I have a juicer. I don't know if you knew that. E: We can get some juicing oranges. J: Oh, it will juice anything! E: Let's juice a ham. Let's put in a ham and juice a ham. J: That's disgusting. That's really funny but it's totally disgusting. E: We could have ham juice. How does that grab you? On a Saturday afternoon Jeanne is puttering round the apartment doing home improvement things and I'm wasting time on my computer and we are listening to Nancy Sinatra sing to us. You know that song Kind of a Woman? Well I'm a wine drinking, fast thinking, eye winking kind of a woman, just a-lookin for a cool headed unwedded serious kind of a man. J: I don't wanna hear any whiny, woe is me, I'm smart and intellectual but I'm so depressed, female singers for a while, that OK? No more Cowboy Junkies. If I hear one more Cowboy Junkies songs.... E: OK. How about Nancy Sinatra? Except we'll skip that first song, Bang Bang My Baby Shot Me Down. J: No, that's a good one. Play that one. That song was in Kill Bill. Continuing to have trouble I'm a grouchy old man who's having trouble adjusting to a postliterate, postmanners society. Pardon the irascible LJ posts of late. Returning soon to our regularly scheduled hi-jinks. Hope you all are having a mellow & relaxing Saturday. Wait, one more I'm gonna take the entire cottonpickin' MS Windows Vista development team and tar and feather them in the town square. What's right is right but you ain't been right yet. 6 comments|post comment

Chicago and dog poop [06 Feb 2009|09:45am] Recently Chicago Trib columnist Erin Zorn wrote about dog poop. Chicagoans responded. A scrum developed. Having strong feelings on the topic of responsible dog ownership, I joined in: http://blogs.chicagotribune.com/news_columnists_ezorn/2009/02/it-may-be-heresy-but.html Mostly I'm depressed about the illogical arguments that people put forward. For example, horse owners don't pick up their horse's poop, and my dog does not poop on your welcome mat, and furthermore I don't expect you to pick up poop from raccoons, deer, possums, or squirrels, and dog poop is natural fertilizer anyway, so I should not be expected to pick up my dog's poop, especially using only a thin, flimsy, plastic garbage bag. (from Brian Stooka, of Chicago) Or, that people who expect you to pick up your dog's poop are micromanagers. (Fred, formerly of Chicago, now a suburbanite) (Fred also plays the tolerance card. Go Fred!) Meanwhile, Jim of Chicago goes off on a bizarre tangent: Relax, it's just dog poop and if the rats are carrying it away then, even better. Who cleans up after the deer? The raccoons? Does a bear poop in the woods? Who gives a poop? People pay attention to your own lives. I saw some video the other night of a man who punches another man. The victim falls, hits his head on a car bumper. Meanwhile, no one does anything, not even a single call to the police. Finally, the owner of the car shows up, moves the man's body and drives off. The owner of the store ,where this happened, finally comes out sees what happened and calls the police. The man is taken to the hospital where he dies a few hours later. Where where you people then? No one interfered or called the police or even an ambulance. Meanwhile some well meaning "micromanagers" are worried more about dog poop. What is news worthy today? Jim and Fred, and Brian Stooka -- the difference is, deer, possums, squirrels, raccoons, and bears are not domesticated animals in the care of humans. Also, poop from these creatures appears rarely on our city's sidewalks. Dog poop on the other hand is abundant. Scooping your dog's poop is a small, considerate thing you can do to improve, even slightly, the lives of your neighbors. 11 comments|post comment

Plato or Socrates? [04 Feb 2009|09:25pm] Was it Plato or Socrates who said "Know thyself"? Or someone else entirely? If it were not Socrates -- whose name I always mentally pronounce Bill and Ted style -- then my horoscope contains an error: http://www.freewillastrology.com/horoscopes/taurus.html 7 comments|post comment

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