Among The Jumbled Heap

If a body see a body…

Salinger, J.D. (Jerome David) 1919-2010 J.D. Salinger and I go way back.  It was he who stuck "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a poor sinner" into my little brain.  Yep, this is that damned Jesus Prayer that drives Franny Glass bonkers in Franny and Zooey. As much as I hate the man for giving me that ear worm, i'm sad to see him gone. My good friend The Hamster has the best remembrance of the man I've read.  Go check it out http://wheresmyhockeymask.blogspot.com/2010/01/...

Poetry makes nothing happen…

Mad Ireland hurt you into poetry Now Ireland has her madness and her weather still, For poetry makes nothing happen: it survives In the valley of its making where executives Would never want to tamper, flows on south From ranches of isolation and the busy griefs, Raw towns that we believe and die in; it survives, A way of happening, a mouth. -W.H. Auden, "In Memory of W.B. Yeats" I've been thinking a lot about poetry and politics. This is one of those recurring themes in my thought...

Blanching at Blanche

Senator Blanch Lincoln has royally pissed me off. Yesterday Senator Lincoln announced that she would be a cosponsor of the Murkowski resolution that prevents the EPA from regulating greenhouse gases. (Read the news here.) I do not normally wade into politics on the blog.  Most of my political opinions I reserve for friends over a few frosty brews.  I do, however, keep up with the political fray and there are some issues that I care about passionately.  Climate Change is one of those ...

Bring Out Your Dead

R.I.P. Donald and E. Lynn I am the database jockey for a medium sized library. My title is Technical Services Supervisor, and my tasks are legion, but one of my primary jobs is to attend to the library's catalog. A library catalog is a giant relational database that connects information about authors, books, and ultimately people like you and me who use the library. In this role of database jockey, every year I have the gruesome honor of tallying up all the dead authors and entering the...

The Last Twelve Years

I'm a two pack a day man, smoke like a fiend Like a burned out bearing in a bad machine I cayn't breath in the mornin' till I get myself a cigarette lit Say, Daaaa aaaad Blame, anyways a man cayn't quit. --Roger Miller I did not meet her as a teenager, as so many others do. True, I saw her often, flirting with the gutter punks and metal heads, men, women, she was indiscriminate, flirty bitch, and I was not attracted to her. I was NOT. Paul introduced us. He had not known her very long...