aww...

just walked by and there she was. so cute.

IMBA Pics

Finally posting pics from this.

Thinking about this now, this was my camera, how am I in the pictures? The last one, the waitress took, but I don't remember who took the other ones.

Inchoate

Inchoate
I thi l e
Incomplete
b e I m s my o r half
I m
Imperfectly formed
w out y .

sad, lonely wind

why is the wind lonely?
isn't it everywhere-
always near someone?
doesn't it have power and perspective
that we wish we had?

is it because it's
never invited in?
or is it because it cries
and doesn't know why.

it envies loving breath,
the god it longs to be.

An Intimate Dinner

Bat your eyes.
Smile with your heart.
Hold my hand
as if we'd never be apart.

Twirl your hair.
Laugh like it's your last.
Touch me
to reminisce into my past.

Kiss my lips.
Dream of my naked form.
Stroke my arm
with lingering fingers warm.

Another day

Although it may just be another day, it actually got off to a different start. I missed my alarm this morning-- it was turned off for some reason. I woke up on my own about 0645 and biked off to work. I might be tempting Odin on this one because it's overcast and smells of rain. Reminds me of the rain dance we used to do at West Point-- we had rotating parades among the different regiments on Saturday mornings. Always a big tourist event to come and watch us in our anachronistic, high-necked, wool uniforms march around like toy soldiers. It's funny how good you get at goofing off while doing something like that completely invisible to external observation. It's not so funny to march around in that kind of uniform with a black tarbucket on your head in humid, 90+ degree NY weather. Anyway, these parades could only be cancelled by one thing: almighty, refreshing, wonderful, wonderful rain. Well, what better demigod to sacrifice and attempt to placate than the Norse God of War? You're of course wondering, all right already, what was the stupid dance? Very prescient of you. It was a stupid dance. The highest-level of the dance would be the naked rain dance: you would put on your tarbucket and cartridge belt and your birthday suit and cavort around your room with your rifle praying/singing for salvation the next day. Note: this had to be the night before and was usually done fairly late. Lesser forms involved more clothing.

Well, while looking for pics, I came across pictures from graduation. See if you can find me, I'm in both of them (I know, one is easier to figure out...) Al Gore was our speaker. Hmm, this guy looks familiar, funny how quickly things change.

sesame street and zoe

i'm sitting on the couch right now with beansprout nestled under my arm and we are watching zoe on sesame street. it's a dvd that shows all different kinds of dancing (hosted by paula abdul of all people). she loves it. she usually will get up and dance all over the room, but right now she wants to be close to daddy. she even grabbed the blanket off the couch and has that wrapped around her. nevermind, we've decided to get up and dance. she's very particular about her dancing; if you don't do it just right, she'll correct you. just me and her for the evening, what better way to spend it. plus, i have now finished my accounting hw! yay, i am now caught up with the beginning which was a week ago. ha.

Geeks in Love

Dedicated to geeks in love.

Much love,
bee

Last Day

The last day is winding down. We're putting together team presentations to critique the last 4 days. I've finished my part so I'm just hanging out in the corner (and blogging now). A lot of tech available in this course and I think that has a few people a little intimidated. I have promised numerous times now to be available to help with technical issues over the coming months-- I always seems to default to a mobile help desk function no matter where I am. It's funny because I also get the comment that I don't appear to be a geek. I lump that in the same category as "I can't believe you went to West Point!" 2 ways to take that: I come off really stupid (high probability), I'm laid back and touchy-feely (contributing factor). But, the comment I heard the most this weekend (felt like an inside class joke that I didn't know about because it was so prevalent): "You look familiar. Hmm... You look just like [insert celebrity]." The names I heard: Ben Affleck (shaking head), Michael Vartan (? don't know him), and Jared Leto (? don't know him either). Well, I'll be on the road shortly heading back home. Home, right. The return drive is fully booked with phone appointments for friends. =) Time to catch up on everything and have some feel-good connecting.

the thousandth day

And so another day begins,
With heavy hearts
And weak-eyed grins-
Playing rote parts
And ignoring greater sins.
More only inspires choking
Back the truth
That lies to this golden token-
There are some things
Meant to be broken.

we found the wrong God

It was built up and on
one skull at a time
thought to prevent "progress"-
we sought to conquer toward
a matador sky waiting to be gored.

Where else could we go?
But, to doggedly stay on
this tortured path of the "martyr";
with nary a thoughtful nod,
we found the wrong God.

IMBA Day 2 and halfway through Day 3

Yesterday was filled with administrivia (a word that the IT Director kept using): we had a brief tour of the one building that we have all of our classes in and took our pics (I’ll link to it when they post it online) for our ID’s, then we spent the afternoon with our laptops (Dell Latitude D610) and the intranet. Chief complaint: I can’t believe our laptops aren’t DVD-RW’s. C’mon. They gave us some neat software tools: Centra for VoIP teleconferencing and presentations, dedicated instant messenging software, and Camtasia Studio to create recorded presentations.

There was a reception in the evening where we were supposed to meet the professors and faculty. One of the faculty was a “poetry and religion” major so he and I had a short discussion on that. Essentially, he was a philosophy major who split into a more focused subject area. I encouraged him to start a blog and begin writing again. Most of the professors did not attend; the one that did, our economics professor, was mauled as everyone sought to shake his hand. Sometimes this class feels a little bit like the Apprentice. Everyone is open and friendly, but you can feel that undercurrent of sizing everyone up and the competitive gears starting to spin up-- too many Type-A personalities with the self-esteem burden of attending a Tier-2 MBA program. A few of us (cliques are forming already) went out to dinner afterward. The wait was supposed to be an hour, but I buttered up a waiter and got us a table in less than 5. I joked that I must have a way with men that I don’t with women because the hostess didn’t take the bait. My little group was particularly keen on hearing my personal life stories; for some odd reason, this has been a topic of interest for the past day or two. Our ringleader, a young PR rep from Lockheed, complimented me on my stories this morning.

This morning has been filled with classes: economics and professional writing. In fact, I’m writing this during my writing class. The professors are very engaging (it’s not the writing professor’s fault I’m not paying full attention) and the material looks good. All in all, so far, so good. It’s neat being on a campus, particularly since I missed this sort of experience at West Point and then doing distance work at the Universities of Texas and Maryland.

The Little Princess

Oddly content in an open wheat field:
Her smiling complexion complements wavy gold,
Her sunned hair contrasts with the amber sun,
Her relaxed composure at odds with all and none.

By her side sits a fox so sleek and a rose so red:
Such a pretty rose picked of resplendent red plume,
Such a sly fox tamed with his calm tail curled.
"To me, you will be unique in all the world."

This was inspired by a reference to the French novel, The Little Prince. If you look at some French currency, you can see the little prince (little boy with a shock of yellow hair).

IMBA 08 Day 1

This morning was a little slow- they put us all in a room for our introductory briefing and an hour of admin stuff. Class is an eclectic mix of a few young 20's up to a few 50's (I left the "old" off). We were driven in cheese wagons out to an outdoor YMCA camp where we did confidence courses- rock climbing, cargo net climbing, telephone pole jump (climb to the top of a telephone pole and then jump off on belay), and a few team-building exercises. It was good fun; I wonder who came up with the idea to kick off an MBA this way. So, not much else to report for the day. I'm still irritated that a poem I had written was lost yesterday while synching my Ipaq. I've managed to re-create about 60% of it, but it won't be the same.

Gainesville

I'm here; drive went by in no time thanks to all of the kind people who talked to me the whole way up! Thank you. Well, it looks like your typical university town. The hotel kinda sucks, but at least they have wi-fi. I think I'll check out the Hilton and think about staying there next time. Small admission of guilt- I'm only 4 chapters out of 11 done with the prerequisite accounting we're supposed to do (shh... don't tell anyone). Class hasn't even started and I'm already behind, but that sort of handicap should keep things interesting. I'm sure I'll be done by the time real class starts on Saturday morning. For example, this post is over, I'm going to do it now. :P Later.
--bee

Yawn

Believe it or not, that is not a reference to my previous philosophical posts. I didn't sleep very well last night-- a little tired today. I have about a 3 hour drive ahead of me to head up to Gainesville for classes to begin my MBA (2 days of orientation, and then 8 hours of class each on Saturday and Sunday). Hope I'm good for that.

Got to eat breakfast with beansprout twice today. Got her up this morning and endured an emergency test of the broadcast system courtesy of her two year-old lungs for about 1/2 an hour before I was able to placate her with a combination of cereal and yogurt. And then, I took her to school where we had a dad's breakfast. We ate bagels and fruit and then we danced before going back to her classroom. There, we sat in a circle, sang songs, and then did stretches. Then, it was a time to go, so I kissed her good bye and that was it.

Whitehead, Hansen, Kant, Oh my!

Entropy is not the only constant; my pithy blog title sums up the question of entropy and life's relationship: entropy is life. We are nothing but chaos (I prefer energy to that word); albeit, one that is delayed for a while by our devolving ordered system. I don't think that this perspective is in contradiction to Whitehead's assertion that life has a "teleological tendency towards the realization of order". Furthermore, we inherently contribute to the overall energy of the system. Is entropy a process (per Whitehead) or is it an endemic characteristic? I don't know, haven't thought that through. I will say there is an inherent flaw in the derived belief that the "teleological order-producing aspect of strong processuality implies the "dysteleological" tendency of generalized diffusion from smaller to larger sections". This statement is referring to the global nature of disorder and is the presumption of mankind's ability to discern a noumenon, that is a simple problem of granularity, and not an actual unknowable. There is a dysteleological tendency in any process reasoning as you widen the scope, but it is not a result of a greater universal disorder.

Mr. Hansen's PhD thesis would place it in the same bucket that time is handled in. Go to chapter 4, about 55% of the way down, he notes "there seems to be no such way of deriving anything to do with macroscopic properties such as heat and temperature, or at least that this would require that we first manage to construct such properties from our "first principle" of process metaphysics -- that is, in fact, that we manage to perform a somewhat detailed construction of the range of properties of observable nature." That is what my first post on entropy was doing.

Whoa, one should really not write these kinds of things without a few drinks to clear the pathway of reason. Or else you suddenly find yourself between two mirrors, as noted in an earlier post, and you don't laugh, you just get confused. But, hey, it's Valentine's Day, what better day to be confused on, right? Either way, this is well out of Kant's realm of metaphysics.

Kant Can't Count (10x fast)

Literally-- he argued you couldn't were you to have to arrive at such an abstract ability completely independent of experience and perception within the concept of pure reason. We are beings built on our experiential understanding a priori that ironically continues to feed its own personal relative epistemology from the foundation and lens that is thus repeatedly shaped in concert with the development of accompanying ontology. This concept is further borne out by the noumenon (the actual reality of an object, as opposed to our perception) because it is impossible to experience. The question is why-- I believe there is no such thing. The practical definition of this concept is the infinite relative phenomena of the object across its infinite temporal existence and non-existence. Enter entropy from stage right. The full reality requires a complete understanding of its entropic evolution [entropy is itself a (the? I don't know.) universal constant (per my unfinished post on entropy)].

So, who cares, what does any of this mean to us? Changed my mind, I'm leaving this one open to comment. What does it mean to you?

I will just scramble it with the Categorical Imperative to my own twisted ends- I ought never to act except in such a way that I could will that my maxim should become a relativistic, tenable moral law.

Safe

Of ripe melon skin, I entangle in embrace,

So mellifluously oneiric in touch,

While honey lavishes my upturned tasting face-

Spilled piquance savors so much.

Softly cradled next to a heart that understands-
such a measured beat portends
more than comprehends.

silly sunday insouciance

well, my post from this morning has received the appropriate amount of sympathy that i expected it would. maybe i should change the mission statement for this blog and become a nihilist. my mundane suburban life has no meaning-- i will be continually tormented by teleconferences that are practically fruitless and theoretically pointless. actually, i can't disagree with that last part, but as long as they take place during the work week, i can catch up on my emails, odd work, or just surf the net with the drone of "pretend-work" a mere background, womb-like subtext to envelop my deviant behavior (sometimes i update the blog). oh, if only i could practically apply the concept of hyperreality (a veiled statement of philosophy that is more a sarcastic comment on american society, by... a Frenchman! Jean Baudrillard.) and instead of experiencing the copy substituted for my understanding of reality, i could have a copy of me experience this copy of reality. plug that back into the teleconference and it's kind of true. the thursday marathon teleconference is a prime example-- it's purpose is to communicate, so we create a facsimile of that through 3 hours of talking, but not communicating. my copy is present (as an alone attendee from florida) because i am assumed to be rapt at attention hanging on every valuable word that droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven upon the place beneath. it is twice blest: it blesseth him that giveth and him that doesn't listen (paraphrased from merchant of venice). my real self is safely ensconced in its own separate reality. taking this another step further, he believed that those engaged in this illusion are incapable of conscious awareness of this fact because they are so steeped in the reality that they cannot distinguish its boundaries (think of the movie, the matrix, or of being between two parallel mirrors and you can't tell which is you, and which are the reflections). either way, god bless the virtual workplace. at least in this instance. i actually prefer human contact to my soulless, isolated office cage at the top of mount clearskull (shakespeare, nihilism, and a he-man reference; how many places can pull all of that together for you). i like people. i really do. of course, there are some people i really like.

awkward transition: snarky. i love that word.

and clear. took beansprout to birthday party-- it was very poorly orchestrated. no suitable drinks for the kids while they played (just soda for 2/3 year olds?). they didn't even get around to trying to feed them until after 1pm. even the parents were discussing mutiny. all of the games had 2-3 minutes explanations of the rules. are you fricking kidding me? how can you tell a 2 year-old, "when i say go, run over to the pile of beanbags, pick up 2 of them, put one on top of your head and one between your legs, walk backwards, when i yell 'freeze!', stop in place, and say 'happy birthday!'" riiiiiiiiiight. well, she had fun, some of the kids made it without melting down, and i got the ego boost of beeing the best looking guy for miles around (of course, that's like being a native english speaker [who is a college english professor] in an ESL class), plus the joy of seeing my daughter enjoy herself (nothing better in the life of a parent). =)

which is worse?

which is worse? the 8am teleconference on a Sunday for work? OR, the 8am teleconference on a Sunday for work that doesn't happen, but you were up for it anyway?

Rhetorical question: if a white, middle-class male screams in the suburbs, does anybody care?

midnight

ah, midnight, the blogger's sweet escape. the time when he can focus on nothing, but the sweet warming glow of radioactivity that bathes him from his 17" lcd-- the visual interface to the infinite of the net. yeah, as you might have guessed from that over-lyrical sentence. i got nothing. it's after midnight and i can't sleep. 4-5 fingers of scotch didn't do the trick either. stupid tolerance.
have a telecon tomorrow morning. who the hell schedules a teleconference at 8am on a sunday? geez. the worst part is it should only last 5 minutes when we all realize it's a charlie-foxtrot, and just hang up. but, no, we'll talk for the whole damn hour about nothing. but, later, i've been looking forward to this all weekend; i get to take beansprout to a birthday party. i'm always the youngest parent at these things. she'll have a great time though. saw 40 year old virgin tonight, very funny. steve carrell is a good actor-- i'm sure most people don't pay attention to that kind of thing in this kind of movie. easy, sophomoric humor, but it worked. and closing random thought, i wish i was in vegas.

catching up

those two poems had been sitting for awhile waiting to be published here. and now they have been. it's been a rainy day so we've been trapped in doors. bean sprout is holding up pretty well and not going stir-crazy; can't say the same for the wife. she fixed the shelving in my office so we're back in business there-- it's only a partial disaster now. i did my taxes today too. yay. i'm going to sit on those for awhile and see if anything clever comes to mind to increase my refund.

last night we had a party to celebrate Tu B'Shevat-- it's a seder, with kabbalist origins from the 16th century, celebrating trees (literally) and is a metaphor for conservation of the environment. i believe (not confirmed) that it is based on the biblical reference of mankind as the steward of the planet. for a species supposedly made in god's image, we sure have such small responsbilities within the scope of an infinite universe if we have to take care of only one planet. anyway, the holiday means that you have a theme of fruit with the meal; 4 plates (and glasses of wine) are used during the ceremony- fruit: 1) with a peel or shell that cannot be eaten: orange, tangerine, etc.; 2) with pits or seeds that cannot be eaten: peach, plum, etc.; 3) edible both inside and out: grape, fig, etc. ; and 4) just a fruit seed that will be planted after dinner. wine: beginning with a glass of white representing winter, each successive glass is made redder until you have the full bloom of life in a pure glass of red. we did this with grape juice for the DD's and riesling and shiraz for the adventurous (and boisterous) drunks. L'shanah tovah u'veracha p'ri u'tenuvah (may the year be fruitful and blessed).

oh, since i was subjected to it last night, did anybody else see the opening to the winter olympics? people dancing around in cow-spotted tuxes? what the heck was going on? the mass of people forming a skier making a jump was cool though.

The Cynic's Life

A study in microcosm
Microscopic
Macro-focus;
Miserable.
Mistake.
Made.

martyr

I am penetrated by roughly hewn oak wood1
that splinters my desire for your saving plague;
your arms may hold me during such small deaths2,
but your face is a statue of something vague.

Heat from an unforgiving sun glares
blinding me from the evil audience
that obscenely mutters and mutely stares.

Don't ask why I stare at you with my jesus eyes;
You know your love has been that hateful spear,
I see no halo for you to hold repentantly in your hands
that are covered with the blood of Pontius' fear3.

And will I return and pay careful heed
to follow the same footsteps,
upon which, I, once and again, shall bleed4?

No feedback on whether I should provide commentary to give a peek behind the curtain; so I will do it sporadically as I feel it. I'm sure the few regulars that visit will appreciate it on some level or something. And if they (or you) don't, then feel free to comment as such.

More Christian allegory. In the decade that I have been writing, I have rarely used religious imagery from this side of the fence; usually, it was invoked with sarcasm or belligerence [I was an angry young adult]. This piece is interesting for several reasons. It was a work in progress for a few weeks and sat "finished" for a while on my ipaq, but I didn't want to publish it because I felt that something wasn't consistent with it. The first and second paragraphs seemed contradictory in the original piece because the perspective was confused-- I sometimes lose the sense of whose emotions and the imagery I'm channeling and it will get all mixed up on the paper. As I wrote this post, the answer was immediately apparent and so it's been fixed.

Notes:
1 - crucifixion cross.
2 - small deaths - reference to the French phrase ("la petit mort") for orgasm.
3 - Pontius Pilate, reputed to have "washed his hands", a Pharisean custom for washing away impurity, in the execution of Jesus.
4 - the resurrection.

a funny thing happened to my forum

if you haven't seen the movie this title post is paraphrased from, then i highly recommend it you swainish peasant swine. good 60's comedy.

i'm a lucky guy; i am, things usually go my way within the overall flow of the karmic universe. however, let me temper that with one counterbalance, i am regularly beset by minute tragic consequences of fleeting monumental significance. always. for example, i was run over on my bike last month (minor damage to self and bike). guess how many times i've been run over? 3. 1) went into windshield of van [while both of us were moving-- i was on a bike]. 2) was run over as a pedestrian on my first visit to houston, tx by an idiot lady in a red pick-up; i went up and over her hood and she took off. 3) last month's education of a florida driver. but, i digress and hope that you will just take my word on this one as this anecdote shall illustrate.

i was discharged from the army for a chronic back problem. i see a chiropractor and a massage therapist as regularly as i am able to do with my travel and work schedule. after my last trip to michigan, my sacrum was "out"; it just wasn't right and wasn't going back to where it needed to be. every member of the medical profession has a sadistic streak in them. just like all psychologists have serious oedipal issues. well, each therapist has a focal point of the body that they believe is the nexus of all issues. mine believe this is the deep abdominal and groin area. so, she's working on my illio-psoas and hits a hot point that elicits a bit of a yelp from me and refers down to the inside of my left groin. so, she goes down to work there, and same thing, ouch. she decides to go get some ointment to let that sit and work down the muscle. so, she starts swabbing something like icy-hot and is not very judicious in her application of this evil-smelling concoction. she comments, "this will burn a little, but it will be okay." yes, i know that, it's supposed to get a little warm, but just on the offending muscle, not on my more tender areas. so, yeah, it's starting to burn, a little, a little, A LOT, A LOT!!! the next 2-3 minutes would make a great rated-R comedy routine. i'm naked with the covering sheet dynamically splayed as i flop around screaming while she starts throwing wet towels at me to try to wipe the damn stuff off. [i learned this morning from my chiropractor that those ointments heat up more to temperature changes so the cold water was making it worse] after i "calmed" down, she keeps repeating, "i'm sorry, that wasn't funny", while she's laughing so hard that she has tears streaming down her face. hmm.

her 4 o'clock didn't show up, i can only assume the blood-curdling screams scared him off.

chickens need loving too

or saving...

Kiss of life makes Boo Boo the chicken better

"ARKADELPHIA, Arkansas (AP) -- This chicken had lips, just not her own.

A retired nurse saved her brother's chicken, Boo Boo, by administering mouth-to-beak resuscitation last week after the fowl was found floating face down in the family's pond.

Marian Morris said she hadn't had any practice with CPR in years, but she was interested to see if she "still had it."

"I breathed into its beak, and its dadgum eyes popped open," Morris said. "I breathed into its beak again, and its eyes popped open again. I said, 'I think this chicken's alive now. Keep it warm."'

She said she did not know how to find a pulse on a chicken.

Boo Boo's owners, Jackie and Becky Calhoun, put her in a large cardboard box containing a grain feeder and water. They also placed a heater nearby.

The chicken is called Boo Boo because she is easily frightened. The Calhouns thought Boo Boo was startled and flopped into the pond."

I can't make this stuff up; nor can I prevent CNN from posting it as a headline article in between the following: Bush signs bill cutting student loans, Medicare and Teen girls battling boyfriend abuse. Ain't it just grand? That's rhetorical, don't answer.

where am i?

sometimes i don't know.

Holy Cow, Option D!

I need to correct my earlier post. I had thought there were only 3 options in response to the political cartoons published in the Jyllands-Posten; there is now a fourth option available that is being exercised in Iran. Hamshahri is launching a contest on 13 Feb that will "see how open the West was to caricatures of the Holocaust". It is difficult to glean a lot of information on this because very little of the newspaper is translated into english. Essentially, it appears that they would like to test the limits of free speech. Assuming it is the most vile, antisemitic bile, I am willing to place a bet or two that no such equivalent violence erupts. I wonder why... Either way, it is a far superior response than option c, although it is very similar to option b, I might have to consider this just a subset of that category. It should be good fun, if I can track down a copy of these cartoons, I shall post them here. I wonder if they've ever seen some of the avante garde performance art that is schlocked around these days, they might not feel that they are so cutting edge after all:

Hermann Nitsch
Nitsch is an Austrian performance artist who uses blood, intestines and ritual animal slaughter in his works of art, or 'actions'. His use of live animals, as well as extensive representation of crucifixion and other Christian symbols, makes his work extremely controversial.

On second thought, I will just link to the picture instead of marring my blog with this kind of thing(I assume no further warning is needed).

open letter to the universe

i don't know whether to reach out,
or pull back into my own pain.
i know your pain swallows you,
but i don't know if it would eat me too,
or if you even want me.
would it be like a dying star?
would i only feed its voracious appetite
with my being consumed to make you nova?
would it be like the heart of pitch black night--
you dream and dream it will soon be over.

screw the life quiz

ouch. life sucks. i'm down, i don't have to be eloquent.

pj day

yep, i am still in my pajamas today. :P

jihad of comic proportions

there has been a recent outbreak of violence in islamic countries over... cartoons. political cartoons to be more precise. the offending comic that was published in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten had 12 different cartoonists drawing what they think the Prophet Mohammed might have looked like. as you might imagine, some of these were not in the most flattering light. and of course, the best way to engage in suitable dialog over such difference of opinion is to:


a) ignore it. who cares? it's the danish; who listens to them anyway?

well, in April last year the queen of Denmark was quoted by the Telegraph newspaper as saying that we (Denmark) “should show our opposition to Islam”.

She said: “We are being challenged by Islam these years — globally as well as locally. It is a challenge we have to take seriously. We have let this issue float about for too long because we are tolerant and lazy.

“We have to show our opposition to Islam and we have to, at times, run the risk of having unflattering labels placed on us because there are some things for which we should display no tolerance.”

the imam's in denmark have changed their tone- they no long demand apologies from Jyllands-Posten for the publication. Instead they said they just want two things: a guarantee from the Danish authorities that Muslims can freely practice their religion without being “provoked and discriminated.” And a declaration from Jyllands-Posten that the cartoons were not published with the intention of mocking the Muslim faith.

b) respectfully disagree with them; publish your own cartoons stating how you feel
the image at the right is from a play; it depicts a bare-breasted virgin mary with a bowl of blood holding a crying baby. the shield is the coat of arms for flanders (north of belgium). the playwright chokri ben chikha, is a tunisian muslim and his play is sponsored by the state. the play not only expresses his opinion of roman catholicism (the major religion in the area-- it's a rather pessimistic opinion in case you missed that), but is laced with anti-semitic dialog. the author's statement, "I am convinced that you have to talk about antisemitism. I am not going to solve it, but I have to show it. Moreover, not only the Arabs dislike Jews. My stepmother, a Polish woman, is very antisemitic as well. I think one should be able to laugh at anything, even at antisemitism."

c) boycott the products of the nation that provides them these freedoms, burn said nation's flags, oh yeah, and burn their consulate. this is the Danish consulate in Beirut. threaten to bomb the newspapers too. we saw this before, the artist, Theo van Gogh, who created a movie of the abuse of women in Islam; here is an image from that movie of a woman with some verses of the Quran on her back, was killed in a ritual murder (they shot him 8 times, slit his throat, then left two knives in his torso [one had a note attached]) in public by Muslim extremists.






hmm... maybe all of the above?

read today's opus (cartoon in sunday's paper) for an interesting perspective on the way americans are about things like this... can i get my pancakes with a side of apathy?

recap

okay, short recap of my post from yesterday, plus maybe an addition or two:

• i'm back in fl. yay.
• i was nice enough to give up my exit row seat during a 2 hour wait on the tarmac on the flight back.
• it rained about a foot (not exaggerating, we set a record) in the last two days. my mood reflects the weather or vice versa?...
  
• the GAN marches triumphantly along, several more pages written.
  
• i was mildly prolific with poetry while in MI, check them out.
• i would like to consider creating my own artwork to accompany the writing; anybody have any suggestions? software? methods? anything? Bueller?
  
• this is sooooooooo freakin' cool, check it out: http://www.entropyislife.com/
• i love you.

good bye

in a wisp of smoke, with a wisp of hair

between two fingers clinging

to our shared smiles, our shared skin on sheets

holding to your kiss singing.

in a finger's snap, reality snaps me,

and I lose the angel song,

the tears quickly dry, they tear the good bye,

you can't disappear for long.

warmcold

crawling time that flies,

hello's that are good bye's,

happiness that smiles tears,

love expressed through fears,

shared pain that soothes, but bites,

being held warmcold on sleepfulless nights.

Nursing

I'm nursing a beer,

When I should be nursing you,

I'm feckless, Dear,

When I should sweep out of the blue.

Your distant lily is chilled

And I can't warm to thaw

Saving flowers thrilled

to escape a yawning maw.

damnit

okay, all of my posts from yesterday, including the ones questioning why posts were disappearing, have disappeared, except for burn me, that one seems to have survived.

burn me

There's poignancy in the slow burn;

Such patience to Self-immolate.

smoldering eyes are flaming tongues,

That singe the threads of fate.

Saturate the earth with my ashes;

But, don't fill this Crucified crucible.

when i'm cremated you'll comprehend,

That this is the only way i'm reducible.

ouch

ouch.