Hey kids, ever wanted to run off and join the circus? Here’s one for you. There’s some travel involved. c i r c u s 2 i r a q

Better start brushing up on those juggling skills!

Found this at Justin’s Waffle.

What’s the dysfunction at NBC? They’ve changed their primetime lineup two nights in a row, leaving this blogger a tad miffed and dyspepsic. (Have you ever seen anyone use two words beginning with dys in one sentence before?)

Last night, they blew off showing West Wing, though the newspaper and Yahoo TV both indicated there was a new episode called “Han,” airing for the first time, and gave an episode description. Tonight, they forgot they were supposed to show Scrubs.

The NBC web site says Scrubs will return (from where?) next week. They don’t mention the West Wing fubar. Hmmm. If anybody knows NBC personally, you might suggest that they cut back on the office parties. Their slip is showing.

Did the grandfather of President Bush desecrate the grave of Geronimo? Does Bush’s uberfrat at Yale have Geronimo’s skull in their Tomb? Reportedly so.

indiancountry.com

Were George I and George the Younger in the same Secret Order? You bet yer secret handshake, Skippy. It’s a family thing, like bootscootin’.

Tune in next time, when we ask the questions, “Just how twisted are these people anyway?” and “Why are we letting them run the country?”

Wal-mart’s headlock on the grocery business is a driving force behind the present labor problems with other stores. The problem is a lot bigger than it looks; a lot bigger than a strike over health benefits. I don’t see the revenue concerns of these stores going away. Investor’s Business Daily editorial

For the record, this blogger is a wal-mart shareholder, albeit a very small one.

I’m working on the book tonight, diagramming out some plot and thematic subtext in a series of four of my chapters. I started thinking about a poem I wrote in 1990 about a visit to my brother in San Francisco, as it happens that my protagonist also goes to visit his brother in San Francisco. Why? Because the brother needs to move to a big city and become successful, and I want it to be in California, and San Francisco is the coolest big city in California.

NOTE: If you live in LA, and wish to differ on the basis of LA’s coolness and get us all to sing along with that Randy Newman song, I have two points: No, it’s not as cool as San Francisco; Please quit driving up here to Santa Barbara every damn weekend to get away from how cool LA isn’t, then driving back in a big herd on Sunday evening.

Well, the poem wasn’t on a computer, because I didn’t own a computer in 1990. So I had to go to the closet and find my old notebooks. I finally found a draft of it, which is weird because it was published in ’95; but like I say, no computer. I also found a lot of other interesting stuff I wrote going back to 1980, most of which actually sucked. But I found one piece called “In the Midst of Beings,” from 1990.

Beings is about my neighbor lady, who lived in the house next door to a guest house I used to rent across town. She believed that her home was haunted by the ghost of her father, who died in Ohio some years before. She said that after he died, he gave his favorite frayed old brown coat to the Goodwill. When she got home, it was hanging in the closet. She took it again, and back it came. After a few more attempts, she decided to keep it, and it hung to that day in the closet of her place next door to me.

She said she saw her father from time to time, as a shadow, a silhouette of a man surrounded by tiny stars. But mostly, he just locked doors and played with her radio. I shared with her that I’d had some mysterious experiences myself.

Solitude is a screen door in sunlight.

from In the Midst of Beings by Kyle Kimberlin, © 1990

My neighbor moved to Oregon or Washington about nine or ten years ago; she and her family were going to live on a farm. Lots of room for spirit relatives to roam around. I have no doubt that coat is in her closet still, if by the mercy of God she is not yet a shade described by tiny stars.

Like animal heroes? Half-Blind Kangaroo Saves Life Of Unconscious Man

President Bush’s policies are bogus and making things worse. We’re getting deeper in debt as a direct result of Bush fiscal policy. Who says so, me? Nope. The US Comptroller.

Misleader.org: Daily Mislead

Friday was a perfectly serviceable day here in Paradise. I got the little dogs bathed, sat for two hours in my favorite coffee house and scribbled notes for the book. In the afternoon, the clouds burned away and the antiwar protesters appeared for their weekly vigil where the drug store used to be.

It’s a little park now, with flowering trees with unpronouncable names. But I remember a vivid lesson I learned there when I was very small. My cousins took me to the drug store and we bought candy. When the lady told me the price, I told her that was too much. It was the mid 1960s, and candy was still cheap. I’ll never forget, she leaned over the counter and said, “Don’t buy it.”

I wonder if there’s a way we can employ this lesson in our nation’s present macro-worrisome circumstances. Is there something we’re buying that we don’t really need, and which is costing us more than we’re willing to pay? Hmmm. It’s worth thinking about.

I wish I knew then what I know now about treats and the effects of ill-considered eating on my life. I would have reached my little six year old paw back up and set that Baby Ruth on that hard glass counter, turned to that wise lady and cheerfully suggested she kiss my ass.

I’ll admit it, I missed the debate. I forgot it was on tonight. And dang it, I guess CNN is not going to rebroadcast it. But although I didn’t watch it, I find it hard to believe that the candidates spent almost the whole evening gnawing on Clark. Surely there must have been something substantial to discuss. But no, I’ve searched the world over, and I thought I found true love … sorry, wrong song … I’ve searched all the major news sources on the net, in the US, UK, and Canada. Wait, let me check Al Jazeera … nope, there’s a cartoon about Schwartzie and an article about Zigfried & Roy, but they aren’t covering the debate yet.

So I guess that’s it, I’m out in the cold. Maybe the papers will have a better transcript tomorrow. I seriously think we need more media diversity on these things, so we don’t get the same story everywhere we look. Speaking of the same old story, herewith a little ditty of unrequited romance:

Where oh where are you tonight?

But you met another and PTHHP! you was gone.

Check out Justin’s Waffle, a blog at justinalexander.net. He’s a young British consultant with Jubilee Iraq in Baghdad. He comes recommended by Riverbend, and rightly so.

Here’s a sample, which I rather enjoyed:

“Met with the Kurdish Islamic Party today. They were cute. Some people might assume they would be religious fanatics hardened by centuries as an oppressed people without a country of their own. Maybe they are. But they also laugh a lot, particularly at my attempts at Kurdish … They even had a stack of Pokemon (Japanese childrens cartoon) exercise books for their official notes!”

Yahoo! TV – Total Recall

Hey kids, check it out! The Sci Fi channel is showing Gov-elect movies! If you get that channel, you can see ’em on TV, for free. Tonight at 9:00 PDT, it’s Total Recall. You can see Ahnold grope Sharon Stone … then shoot her, as I recall. (Damn, this screenwriter needs Total Therapy!) Plus you can watch Ahnold pull a giant glowing lugie – a tracking device – outta his gubenatorial nose.

Who’s got the popcorn?

Blog for America : Statement by Governor Dean on the California Recall | October 07, 2003