Shades of midst.

1.
Four distant men approach. Shrouded in gray. They carry distinctive items. One wears a beard down to his chest. They are running, cutting across a field long abandoned. You stand alone. But you see them. Excitedly you cry out, hoping to get their attention. Silence. The men pass on, through you - around you.
You are abandoned, the four gray men enveloped by a shroud of midst.

Being Love

Being love is combing the hair of your dying mother.

Being love is taking a risk, regardless of consequence.

Being love is wiping chocolate from a child's cheek.

Being love is understanding how hard it is to care.

Being love is running away.

Being love is trusting everything will work out.

Being love is realizing it won't.

Being love is feeling pain.

Being love is embracing the world - together.

This song is quite depressing.

And not just for the title reference to the guy who killed himself.
Cool animation trumps all, however, and this video left me surprisingly happy, which -- in case you care -- was far afield from my initial reaction to this song several years back.

These clouds do not carry blessing ...

They come from the West.

Putting a good word in your pocket.

I have this odd habit of secretly scrawling random words on paper and carrying them in my pocket.
One word only. Never a phrase. NEVER a quote. Just a word. Sometimes happy, sometimes sad. Sometimes nonsense, sometimes insightful.
It's a powerful exercise. One word is infinitely interpretable. Even the strangest ones can have odd connections to your daily life. The trick is not to let the one word govern the tempo of your day. But to see how the tempo of your day projects onto that word.
Occasionally the connection is obvious. Most of the time, it's not.
Today for example, the dictionary dealt me a curve ball - "perihelion," which is the closest point to the Sun in a planet's orbit.
How does that jive with my life at the moment? I have no idea.
But it's fun to think about. It's fun to interpret.

When you can't think of anything to write about ...

Just link to a column from Stanley Fish.

In light of me having nothing substantive to say ...

I give you "All the Deaths in Total Recall," which is ... if you think about it, QUITE substantive.

Today's cringe-inducing moment courtesy Glenn Beck

When asked by Katie Couric to explain what he meant by Obama's hatred of "white culture."

Luckily, the Internets are here to provide an answer. 129 answers, actually.

Lists ...

I've been wondering why we love them.

Umberto Eco seems to think it's because none of us want to die.

Others use lists for humor.

One woman thinks lists illustrate untapped dimensions of our psyche.

I just happen to like organizing.

On "beating" life ...

And allegedly replaying it on easy mode with full-powers:

Ce: An anonymous friend:

thetr****** (10:37:09 PM): so i met this kid with 72 guitars
thetr****** (10:37:17 PM): all strewn around his basement
thetr****** (10:37:55 PM): they're all vintage gibsons, fenders, and a bunch of taylor acoustics
thetr****** (10:38:22 PM): and he has 3 girlfriends and a wife.
thetr****** (10:38:39 PM): life just fell in his fat hands
thetr****** (10:39:00 PM): he's in a multitude of bands and has a stable day job as a programmer
thetr****** (10:39:26 PM): has It Made

Turns out the guy is actually a total slimeball* who loves manipulating people. He's a jerk. And an arrogant one to boot.

But, you know ... 72 guitars. There's something to that.






*See three girlfriends AND a wife.

Again on meat. Again on guilt.

Or ignorance. (Ce. Michael Pollan) -

Many of the species have evolved expressly to gratify our desires, in the intricate dance of domestication that has allowed us and them to prosper together as we never could have prospered apart. But our relationships with the wild species we eat -- from the mushroom, we pick in the forests to the yeasts that leaven our bread -- are no less compelling, and far more mysterious. Eating puts us in touch with all that we share with the other animals, and all that sets us apart. It defines us.

What is perhaps most troubling and most sad about industrial eating is how thoroughly it obscures all these relationships and connections. To go from chicken (Gallus Gallus) to the Chicken McNugget is to leave this world in a journey of forgetting that could hardly be more costly, not only in terms of the animal's pain but in our pleasure, too. But forgetting, not knowing in the first place, is what the industrial food chain is all about, the principal reason it is so opaque, for if we could see what lies on the far side of the increasingly high walls of our industrial agriculture, we would surely change the way we eat.

Eating Animals

I can't remember the last time I was so rattled by one book.
I'm not going to go as far as to say Jonathan Safran Foer is the Upton Sinclair of 2009, but well ... maybe he is.
Eating Animals raises some serious questions with American agriculture. From the excruciating passages on livestock slaughter to the downright nasty descriptions of how animals are kept and fed, JSF does a good job of making you pretty damn depressed.
And you should be depressed. Factory Farms account for 99 percent of all our food. Animals raised on these farms consume somewhere in the range of 17 million tons of antibiotics per year. (By contrast humans consume around 3 million) One river waste spill at a typical factory farm in North Carolina eclipsed the amount of oil spilled during Exxon-Valdez. And there's virtually no infrastructure to handle the massive amounts of shit that these farms produce everyday.
Is ignoring the reality tantamount to accepting it? Does buying meat at the supermarket make me complicit in some sort of meta-social sin?
I don't know. And the question of eating animals can't be painted in starkly moral terms. There's a ton of social aspects to the issue. Am I really willing to redefine my identity and how others view me because I won't eat their food? Can my ego handle that? Am I comfortable rejecting offers of table kinship -- our most ancient ground for social exchange -- simply because I refuse to eat a factory-farmed egg?
I don't know.
But Eating Animals did help me make one choice. I'm giving up chicken. And I'm giving up eggs. Granted, I never really loved either. It's a small step, but since chickens are probably the most oppressed (and most chemically overtreated) animals out there, it's a good start.
Will I give up meat entirely? Only time can tell. But wrestling with the issue is, if nothing else, a beginning.
Right?

Supermarket club cards

I like to think of myself as an empathetic person. So when I signed up for a club card at ____ last week I did it more out of guilt than anything else.
The burden of repeatedly telling the same cashier that "I'm not a member, sorry!" was weighing heavily on me.
Was I offending her? Did she have quotas to meet? Could she get fired because I was too lazy to fill out some paperwork?
Maybe, I thought. So I filed the form, doled out $20 (surprise! there's a buy-in fee!) and received a shiny new piece of plastic in return.
Andrew Martin writes a lot about this experience in "How to Get Things Really Flat." He says whether or not you have a card doesn't matter. You're not really saving money. And if you're feeling guilty about hurting the clerk's feelings ... well, don't. Clerks don't care. You're just another annoyance in their day. Having a card isn't going to change that.
I didn't buy it.
My situation was different, I thought. I mean, I saw this clerk almost everyday. They had to recognize me. And they had to wonder why I never signed up.
So, new card in hand, I entered the store with a (admittedly odd) sense of anticipation today. Was this card going to change everything?
I rushed through my shopping, queued to the same line and eagerly waited to find out.
I may have been lightly perspiring. I was nervous. This was weird. But no time to worry, I was next in line and then ... boom! the big moment of truth.
"Are you a ____ member?" the clerk asked.
"Yes!" I proudly replied. (And I might have flourished the card with a dose of self-righteous bravado before slapping it down on the counter.)
The clerk's hand quickly stuck out. There was no eye contact.
A quick scan, a world-shattering beep! and a blind hand-off back.
The card changed nothing. And I actually felt a little indignant about this, which was really weird. I mean, of course the clerk could give two $#%^s about my membership. What the hell was I thinking? I've worked retail. If there's one rule, it's that every customer, member or not, is an idiot.
How prideful of me to think of myself as anything different!
So it was a humbling experience. But whatever. I saved 35 cents.
And that's only $19.65 to go until I walk my way into epic savings!

Moral of the story? If you're thinking of getting a club card out of guilt ... well, don't.

A general word about a bad habit of mine ...

I've tried to wear hoods and hats to stop it. When I'm watching TV, I'll regularly sit on my hand so as to not do it. Yet for all my efforts, I can't fight the compulsion ...
I can't stop pulling out my own hair.
That's the hair on my head, mind you. It's an unconscious nervous tick I have, not an inclination toward Brazilian wax.
It was a habit I picked up in middle school. I grew my hair long, got nervous, and over the course of several weeks, progressively yanked fistfuls of it out.

My parents were upset. They recommended a buzz cut to fix the situation. No hair, no pull, right?
Well ... yeah. A novel thought. Unfortunately, that didn't solve the problem of the newly-christened bald spot on my noggin. Let's just say it was a tough couple of days for me at the middle school.

You'd think the "bald-spot incident" (BSI) of 1998 (never forget) would have taught me a lesson: Stop yanking out your hair or face social isolation.
But, no. I've been pulling it on and off since then. And the social isolation ... well, there's like 5 million other reasons for that ...

Apparently, there's a really fancy-pants named for the "disorder" -- "Trichotillomaina."
And while I can't object to the first part of that word, since my Greek is ... well, terrible ... I do take issue with the "mania" part.
I mean just because I have a impulse control disorder bad habit, doesn't mean I'm "nuts," right?

I equate mania with white walls and pills in little Dixie cups, not the perpetual cowlick and occasional bald spot that have been the only lasting effects of this habit. And I like my cowlick, thank you very much ...

Anyway, that's a general word about a neurotic habit I've been unsuccessfully trying to combat for years.

What about you Internets? Any bad habits you've been fighting off? Why not share them below.

In the meantime, I'll just sit here yanking out more hair ... settling into, you know, a deeper and deeper state of mania.

Maybe ducks do stand-up comedy too ...

I stumbled upon a flock of ducks today. Rather oddly arranged ...
One duck was front and center, aligned evenly between what appeared to be an enraptured audience of about 12-15 mallards.
They'd formed a striking half crescent around the head duck. It was quite pretty.
So I stopped, to, you know, observe this.
Anyway, the boss duck was quacking, in what I now assume to be the set up for some kind of duck joke, which I (not being able to decode the varying cadences and pitches of quacks) could not understand.
But the duck is really selling this thing. It's like 15 seconds of solo quacking. And no other mallards are making a peep. They're all really focused.
Maybe I'm reading too much into it, but it seemed like Mr. Speaker Duck was building his volume as he spoke. Some sort of fiery quacking-crescendo. Building, building, building ...
Until he stopped cold.
And there was silence.
The audience looked on for a fraction of a second and I noticed what could only have been a shared flicker of recognition settle upon the duckies.
And then ... incredible quacking! All of them at once!
Duck applause? Duck laughter?
Well, sure ... why not, right?
Of course, maybe I'm misinterpreting things. For all I know, this could have been a mallard hate rally aimed at taking the reservoir back from the encroaching Canadian geese.
Whatever. I still think it was a stand-up routine.
I just hope they weren't making fun of me ...

But, weird, whatever it was, yeah Internets?

What I've been thinking about all day ... YES, it concerns you.

It also concerns bugs. Namely - if you were given the opportunity to capture any bug and enlarge it so you could ride it around town, which would you choose?
I should note the insect would be tamed, completely under your control and willing to do your bidding (for good or evil).
I still haven't decided, but I'm leaning toward one of two options:
1. Hercules Beetle (Can support 850 times its weight, wow!)
2. Grasshopper (Jumping is the new flying! And when you leap a football field in a single bound ... well, that's just like really intense, man.)

What would you pick, Internets?

TV: Some quick thoughts on the new season

Here's the thing about TV right now - Lost hasn't started and Battlestar Galactica is a distant memory.
And that is really harshing my television buzz, man.

Otherwise, am I liking the new season? Well ... yeah, I guess.
I'm vaguely intrigued by FlashForward, but I can't get past how they are repackaging Lost's mosaic storytelling into an urban environment with more guns (and star tattoos).
Still, the premise seems pretty tight. I'll stay tuned. And I'm hopeful that this time around, the writers have a solid endgame. Please write to that. Nobody wants a million "Hatch Tangents" like Darlton & Co. did in Lost season two.
Dollhouse's season two pilot was fun (and satisfied by fanboism by featuring two former BSG cast members - Jamie Bamber & Tahmoh Penikett). How was the story? Well, it dragged a bit and and hinged way too much on Bamber's obscenely sluggish trigger finger, but the ending set up what I hope is going to be a great second season. Too bad it looked like the ratings were some of the worst ever.
Fringe is also back. And yes, John Noble remains the only reason to watch.
The Office also returned recently and remains one of my favorite shows on television. Dwight continued his streak of manly superiority in the premiere (parkour!) and after much deliberation I've decided I'm starting to warm up to the whole Pam/Jim thing.
Hey, it only took me 3 seasons ...

Other shows to check out: ABC's Modern Family (It's got Ed O'Neill, which is reason enough). And maybe Community on NBC, although I'm still kind of neutral on that one.

A mea culpa ...

I was doing really well for a couple months.
Consistent posts, decent content and even a fair amount of unique hits.
But I like destroying everything good in my life, so (in typical fashion) I managed to pitch it all down the river with nary a goodbye by taking the last several weeks off.
Sorry about that.
And thanks if you've actually been visiting here daily in the hopes that I'd actually post something.
I ... you know ... appreciate it.
Anyway, I'm pretty much back on a normal schedule now. Don't expect great things, but I should at least get the short fiction reviews coming more or less consistently.
And as always ... I'm open for story submissions and review suggestions.

Your Daily Dose of Aw Shucks ...

Courtesy of Finn the wonderdog.
In case you're wondering a bit about the context behind the cute ...

Finn is a bit of an obsessive puppy. He enjoys digging and like any young pup, destroying.

So I took this shot right after Finn totally obliterated some moss clung to one lucky tree.

That one clump on his paw?

The sole survivor of the great moss holocaust of Sept. 26. Never forget.

I need to practice guitar.

It's been over 4 days. This is not healthy.
My hands actually feel weak, man. Eeeeek!