blogger shake

I posted something a couple days ago, but for some reason, I can't see it on the blog. So, I'm adding a little, informationless post to see if it urges the other one out into the light. Let's see what happens.

"Come out, come out, wherever you are!"

are you kidding me? (part ii)

I don't have any particular inclination toward Keith Olbermann. It's just that he usually says -- quite clearly -- that which I believe is the closest thing to the truth.

cleaning out

I'm still struggling with the mess that is almost eight years of accumulation that needs to be sorted and, uh, managed one way or another. Time is running short, so I must hop to it. In today's New York Times, my favorite writer tackles a similar problem in his "Rural Life" column. I can relate... kind of.

My favorite lines are, "This means allowing myself to feel a sudden hatred for objects I’ve been moving around for years. I spend the day muttering."

Barn Cleaning
by Verlyn Klinkenborg

I begin with the premise that the barn will never be clean. It has a dirt floor, and hay is always sifting down from the loft. Swallows have nested over the light fixtures, the chipmunks are everywhere and someone has dug a very proud hole under the wall near the horse tank. I can’t make it clean, but I can recover some territory. I’m not a real farmer, but I have a real farmer’s hoarding instinct — the belief that the thing I’m about to throw out will be just the thing I need down the road. Right now I’m trying to keep myself from throwing out a rubber feed pan that one of the horses has pawed a hole in. I have no idea what I would ever use it for, but that isn’t really the point. It isn’t a matter of knowing, looking forward. It’s a matter of not regretting, looking back.

But what I regret right now is all this junk, and so I’m cleaning the barn. This means allowing myself to feel a sudden hatred for objects I’ve been moving around for years. I spend the day muttering. I tear apart an old tool bench I have loathed all this time. I throw out the previous owner’s electric waterers and the 8-foot yard hydrant with the bend in the middle and the plastic tarps that are full of holes. I see with some clarity the limits of my character and, in a sense, the limits of my life. I love the gratification of fixing what is broken, but it takes a certain kind of breaking for me to be able to do any good. I am never going to be able to weld in a hay barn.

I stop sometimes to watch the swallows fly through the barn or to admire the fact that all the sockets are now in one place. I pretend that I will know in a week where I put everything today. I spend a moment or two admiring the dried up litter of immature mice I found in a drawer. And I finally admit to myself that a half-decomposed box of books that has lived in the barn for a decade has lost its place in civilization. So I load the books one by one — Derrida’s “Of Grammatology,” Frye’s “The Great Code,” even my old copy of Heidegger’s “Being and Time” — into the tractor bucket with a great wad of used baling twine. The burn pile or the Dumpster? That is an easy question. The books flutter down from the bucket on high onto an old hayrack on the floor of the Dumpster. I try to decide if I will have to answer for this someday.

Now, back into the piles in my own little barn. *mutter*

if meme roth were dead...

... she'd be rolling over in her grave. If she thinks Jordin Sparks is a bad example, just check out these four fabulous women.

meez

omg string... zzz...

This was too cute not to include.

it might be working!

I don't want to give any credence to the mad ramblings of MeMe Roth, which is why I haven't thus blogged about her at all (even in the midst of the whole Jordin Sparks flare-up). But I can't not give props to The Mike & Juliet Show for sandwiching MeMe between Joy Nash and Kelly Bliss.

Watch this.

I think it is the utter level-headedness of and sheer logic espoused by Ms. Nash and Ms. Bliss that does such a wonderful job of making Ms. Roth seem so screechy. Maybe there is acceptance coming after all!

mika

what we're up against

The site meter I use on this blog gives me some details about my visitors. What city and country they're in. What time of day they visit. How many pages they read. Sometimes, they link from another blog that has me on the blogroll. Sometimes, the details are generic (AOL North America).

I often chuckle at the silly searches people do that land them here. By typing in strange combinations of words in Yahoo or Google, they are directed to sanguinary blue because one or more of the hundreds of posts I've written happen to contain one or more of the words they're looking for.

Sometimes, it makes sense. All the hits received after I mentioned Blake Lewis wiping away LaKisha Jones's tears on American Idol. And for some reason, the cute Randy Glasbergen cartoon about a messy desk that gets a lot of attention.

But today, someone visited by way of a Google search for "poems making fun of overweight people." Although it doesn't surprise me that they'd end up here because every one of those words can readily be found here, it's disheartening that the context is completely out of whack. While I talk about poems and fun and overweight and people, I would never include "poems making fun of overweight people," unless I was crazily ranting a rebuttal.

And while it was sad to know that people out there are actually doing research online to find information that might embolden their fat hatred, it came as a complete stunner that the origin of this search was University Medical Center in St. Louis, Missouri. How frustrating it is to know that someone who theoretically cares for human beings could even think of such a thing. It drives home the ongoing problem of anyone with a BMI over 24.9 getting unprejudiced medical attention.

Of course, I don't know the true reason this phrase was searched, or if the person searching it was an employee of the hospital, or if, when they got to my blog, they may have been even moderately enlightened to the concept of HAES. But it's hard to imagine a beneficial use of this particular search -- especially from this particular location.

are you kidding me?

If you know me, you know that I'm a bit of a tree hugger (if you don't know me, see the "A Warm Earth" section on the right-hand menu of this blog). I'm not a zealot. I simply believe that it's our responsibility to utilize natural resources responsibly and minimize (or if at all possible, eliminate or reverse) the damage we do and have done to the planet.

Because my political inclination is non-partisan, I find it baffling that there is actually a group of people who argue against conservation efforts, though I understand that their motives are highly political and undoubtedly, ultimately monetary.

I read this Tom Tancredo quote in Time magazine, and had to laugh out loud.

Q: What evidence would convince you that global warming is a serious threat to the planet?

A: I have no doubt that global warming exists. I just question the cause and what we can do to ameliorate it. But I wonder why the Sierra Club isn't going crazy about the environmental aspects of massive immigration into the U.S. The fact is, Americans consume more energy than anyone else, so if a person moves here from another country, they automatically become bigger polluters.

I'm not even going to go into my personal opinion on the immigration debate, but did you catch that? He almost completely avoided giving a serious answer about global warming by deflecting the issue to immigration. Give me a freakin' break. I can't take anyone seriously who gives an answer like that.

I don't know if I can stand another 17 months of presidential campaigning if they're going to be this stupid.

~~~
Song: "Beautiful Flower" by India.Arie
Reading: "Time" magazine
Other: Dinner at Route 22 tonight.

another

I like this one better. Have you splattered yet?

~~~
Song: "Falling" by Jamiroquai
Other: Costco trip today!

for art's sake

While I like to think myself moderately creative, I'm no artist. So when I find a fun way to pretend that I am, I go to town. Hence, the Jackson Pollock website. No fancy instructions. Not even any idea what to do. Just go there and start moving your mouse around. Hover in one area for a couple seconds. Click to change colors. Splatter away. What a blast!

So, again I've neglected my blog. I have good reasons (several of them), but am not going to reveal details at this point. For now, I'll just build a little suspense and say that there will be interesting posts in the near future, pertaining to what we've been doing, what we will be doing in the months ahead, and oh yeah, that meme post I keep promising to do.

~~~
Song: "Fever Dog" by Stillwater (a real song by a fake band; see "Almost Famous")
Reading: "What Should I Do With My Life" by Po Bronson
Other: Kurt Elling and Raul Midon -- two of my favorite musicians -- are playing a FREE concert this Saturday in New Haven, along with Terence Blanchard and Dee Dee Bridgewater, hosted by Spike Lee. How cool is that?