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Sunday, March 30, 2003
isak dinesen had a quote which raymond carver put on a three-by-five card on the wall over his desk.
"Write a little bit every day without hope and without despair."
amen.
an excellent article by doris lessing on what exactly went wrong in zimbabwe. interesting to me at least, b/c it illuminates the mistakes quite a few well-meaning folks make in regards to africa, specifically in regards to why there is so much poverty, disease and war. it's easy to say that the middle east and africa are simply fucked up because of religious conflict. or because america hasn't truly helped in giving aid. this is esp. timely in light of bush's 5 billion(?) dollar aid package he's promised africa.
i've completed my fourth story for my short story class. initially we were only supposed to do three stories, but since the class is only four people, we've all got more than enough time to workshop more stories. by way of background, this story grew out of a real story about my wife's dad. he did actually shoot his dog for attacking one of his nieces. fortunately, she was not hurt nearly as bad as i make out in this story. also, he was from a different age. this doesn't mean it wasn't difficult, but i thought about how somebody from our age, this age, would react to such a thing. more recently, our own son, william, was playing with my mom's dog, rufus, and we had a bit of a scare. william accidentally stepped on his tail and rufus barked and snapped at him, backing william into a table. i have to say, i wanted to strangle the dog immediately. william was crying and scared. rufus is an old dog and nobody would blame him for getting angry at having his tail stepped on. but, that's just the problem for me. nobody would blame him if he bit william either. and then what do you do? everybody apologizes? i have to say, dogs in general, still make me uncomfortable when they are around my kids.
Saturday, March 29, 2003
thomas played his first t-ball game this past thurs. he scraped his arm up pretty bad, but he got back up and kept playing. i was really proud of him. he said, "i don't want to play anymore. i want to go eat some fast food." i said, "you can do it son." all i needed were some life savers and it could've been a commercial.
[click on pic to enlarge]
oh and so i tell rob, that fartwad, and he says "those things happens" like i'm in junior high or something. those things happen. i know those things happen. those things and so much worse i've lived, i can goddamn guarantee. that's such a conversation killer. those things happen. anyways, i've given rob enough shit about it. he likes to think he was born 40 years old. so do i. god help us both if we actually make it to 40. we'll be like 70.
Tuesday, March 25, 2003
the command post seems to be about the best up-to-the-minute war blog i've seen.
his speech was stupid for entirely different reasons.
Monday, March 24, 2003
i'm helping thomas with another coloring-book-as-novel and here's what he's had lonanne write as a caption for a picture of a boiling pot. the pot is colored orange, as are the burner and the flame:
You have to cook stuff with a pan. But be careful 'cause you might get burned. If you want to learn how to cook on this, you have to be older. Five-year olds and six-year olds and seven-year olds are old enough to cook in a microwave - not a toaster.
Sunday, March 23, 2003
well, my mom was doing good. it's was her 60th birthday today. happy birthday again mom.
mixed up day with this war mess. we captured what looks to be a chemical weapons manufacturing plant. will this get any sort of play or be simply cast aside by all those folks that said we should've given the inspectors more time? 5 of our scared soldiers mugs appeared on al-jeer-ya to taunt us and provide plenty of fuel all around. the iraqi soldiers stood over some of the dead bodies, pointing out the bullet holes in the heads. then, of course, michael moore stands his fat, bloated ass up on the oscar stage and, surrounded by fatuous applause and loud booing, casts shame on our fictitious president. apparently there's more than enough shame to pass around out there in hollywood. fictitious times my ass.
Tuesday, March 18, 2003
so it was a rough night last night and i was just about to hit rock bottom. hell, maybe i did hit rock bottom. there were bills and i've been struggling with my lousy job, just trying to figure out if i want to hang on to it or let it go, and then, of course, i got blindsided by some other crap, and i didn't want to finish those reviews or do anything. then, this morning more crap with my mortgage company and we were late for thomas' school. my car was on empty as we pulled into the school parking lot, me and thomas. it was pouring down rain. we went up to the gate, and, of course it was locked. i guess they lock the gate around 8:15. so i'm standing there in the pouring rain with thomas holding his backpack, asking me if we're locked out of school. i'm ready to just rip the gate off the hinges. i mean it's that bad. just then, this lady walks up on the other side of the gate. and she must have known, she must have seen it in my eyes or something. i asked her if she would open the gate. i thought for sure she would tell us to go around. that we'd have to check in with the office or some shit. i thought for sure that i was wrong about the night before. this would be rock bottom. that i'd get carted away in front of my son for kicking the gate down on top of this poor woman. but she didn't. she smiled at me and opened up the gate. what a small, good gesture. and then, it was like the whole day opened up. i'm not joking. the whole day from that moment just got better. i got some good news about something i'll share soon. and then i heard that the sensored gig was going to work out. everything just got better. thanks lady. thanks everyone. you never know how close you are to something worse or something so much better.
i was all ready to put forth my long and convoluted opinions about the coming war (which i've done before) and then, lo and behold, a liberal who hates bush put it better. go figure.
sxsw reviews are up. finally. my lord. what a knock-down, drag-out 4 days. i figure i could sleep the rest of the week and not make any of it up. might be getting this published in sensored. keep your fingers crossed.
Sunday, March 09, 2003
my kids love this book. so do i.
spring break is nearly upon us. looking forward to sxsw. we went to the zoo yesterday. the austin zoo, which isn't in austin and isn't really much like a zoo, but you take what you can. we saw these two leopards, one black, one spotted or regular since blacks are spotted also, in a huge enclosure. we came up on them just as they were mating. i mean the full on rutting and growling and howling. i've never seen anything like it. the female seemed pretty pissed and the male looked like he was going to kill her. of course, my oldest, thomas, wanted to know what they were doing. i couldn't decide whether to tell him they were playfully fighting or roughly loving on each other.
"they're loving on each other."
"they don't look like they're loving on each other."
"yeah, ok, they're play fighting."
we also got a bunch of food and fed it to all sorts of animals. william threw a bunch of his at the leopards. of course, they didn't eat it.
Monday, March 03, 2003
lonanne went in to check on the boys and she realized that she hadn't put a pull-up on william. he wears underwear during the day, but he still needs a pull-up at night. or we still need a pull-up at night. she changed him and tucked him in and, half-asleep already, he whispered, "baby, baby, baby, baby, baby."
nothing like this has happened,
not quite in this way,
like it's happening now
and nothing quite like it will happen again
but there you are
you get up and you fall asleep and you kid yourself
that nothing is different
and that life doesn't hold much more than
re-runs of your favorite television show
and ridged potato chips and couches
and scrapping for somebody else's dime
and that you'll be falling through these cracks
until they cover you up for good
i'm guessing you could tell yourself
just about anything at those points
and you'd believe it
hell, i did
Saturday, March 01, 2003
this gay moment was brought to you by hall & oates. i heard "private eyes" on the radio today and it took me back to the galleria ice skating rink in houston. i was in 7th grade. we used to fly around that thing like the biggest queers. like scott hamilton to be specific. one time, this friend of mine, david robison, fell and his face hit the back of this other guy's blade. it split his nose wide open. there was blood all over the ice. everywhere. i think michael jackson's "thriller" was playing. after that, after all the stitches and even years later, you could just tap david on the nose and it'd spout a gusher of blood. i always felt sorry for him in fights. even if he won, it looked like he lost. goddamn, these are the songs of my youth and now i'm doomed to have weird-ass nostalgic feelings wrapped up with songs like "maneater."
old news by about a week, but more explanation of google's purchase of blogger. i like the unabashed geekiness of all this. it's cute. full of hubris and total crap, but cute.
witness statements like this: "Google liked our logo. And we liked their food."
just make it work you shitheads.
did i mention that musicmatch platinum is the shiznit? fuckin' a. i was at this closeout sale at wherehouse music. everything 40% off, etc. i was thinking of buying the new david gray album and then i realized, "hey, i could just listen to most of it on musicmatch." and you don't have to feel bad about stealing the music. you're paying for the service. not that i ever really felt bad about kazaa. i still grab some music off there. but, i'll keep paying 3 bucks a month to be able to listen to whatever i want to, whenever i want to. i would like to be able to download the music and burn it. that's the only thing w/musicmatch. but you can stream it to a recorder like my netmd. i guess the revived napster is gonna come at them, but they'd better hurry. the musicmatch shit works.
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