lights in the dark

Cat o' lantern

Quote of the week: guy in loafers, no socks, on his cell phone

 security area at LAX--very forbidden photo


"Here's the bottom line:  I'm going out on a limb, and if I'm off-base, somebody reel me in."

I go a little nuts when I hear people mixing metaphors.  What bothers me is not only the debasement of language, but also that they clearly have no idea of what the words mean.  This unlovely high-consuming fellow did not at all hear the various activities of accounting, tree-climbing, baseball, and, fishing that his sentence invoked. Why does it matter, after all? Is the world a worse place if people talk by signs and signifiers instead of words and well-matched images? Yes, it is. I believe it is a much worse place. This kind of McLanguage encourages people not to see what is in front of them, not to hear what others mean, and to be so estranged from their own actual experience that they require increasingly powerful doses (medicate? yes, that's what I mean) of pseudo-flavors, of entertainment made of pseudo-violence and -sex and -adventure of a lifetime  to feel anything at all. Rage lets you feel alive, paranoia lets you blame the other and lets you feel momentarily pure instead of complicated and helpless, sentimentality gives you the illusion of caring and connection. O metaphor police, Join me in this cause, and take note of what other people say. You don't have to bring the mangled (injured and deformed living creature? yes) metaphors to their attention. It is enough if you think out the problem, perhaps revising the sentence silently. Do this enough times, and the people around you will start to speak (and think) more clearly. This also works if you count the number of times someone uses "like" gratuitously. Amazing, and true.

Overheard from three 14-year-old boys with skateboards:

"If someone wants to hit you with a fish, why don't they just hit you with a fish?"

"Maybe they don't have a fish."

You could have knocked me over with a fish when Kattywompus Press (welcome to the wompus!) told me that they want to publish my chapbook Burrowing Song.  It's mostly prose poems, but generally not mainstream.  KP says it is in the queue and should appear by January 2013.  So, thank you Kattywompus!  Now I'll have a fish.

News from the Giant Pumpkin

This fine specimen is already 45" (113cm ) tall, after only one month of growth..  She is the baby of Sergio, gardener and keeps-it-all-running guy at the north campus of Napa Valley College in St. Helena, California.  She started with a seed from last year's winner, a pumpkin weighing in at 1800+ lbs.  Sergio keeps her protected from the sun so she will not scar or split.  He also pinches off all the pretender pumpkins who might sap the plant's energies.  At 3-4 days since being a blossom, these are already 6" across.

The news, however, is that my chapbook of  (mostly) prose poems, Burrowing Song, has been accepted for publication by Sammy Greenberg of Kattywompus Press.  I am so delighted to have a manuscript with this fine independent publisher.  The book itself may be out by the beginning of 2013.  As Sammy says, "Welcome to the wompus!" 

Quote of the Week: Wealth in the U.S.

Grill cook at the Pie 'n' Burger in Pasadena, California
 This guy's burgers are classic:  crunchy, soft and chewy.  He makes about five a minute when things are busy, also grilling onions and keeping the fries coming.  When orders slow down, he lines up the buns, slathers them with dressing, and positions the chunk of iceberg lettuce, ready for the next wave.  If that isn't a valuable job, I don't know what is.

"You will be poor in the only real sense of the word, sir, in that you will not be rich. You will have a little after you've sold everything, but in a country where every man is what he has, he who has very little is nobody very much.  There's no such thing as genteel poverty here, sir."
                                                                        --Elaine May, "A New Leaf"

Curious

Sure, it gets me into trouble, but being curious is so much more interested, and interesting.

Partial solar eclipse!

We happened to be in the path of the partial (and annular) solar eclipse.  I am very pleased with this photo, because I achieved it with  my point & shoot, no tripod, and my filtering goggles held up over the lens.  Do you have any idea of how difficult it is to aim a camera when you can't hold it up and look at your subject??