Author Archives: Kyle Kimberlin

poor sport

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Serious sport has nothing to do with fair play. It is bound up with hatred, jealousy, boastfulness, disregard of all rules and sadistic pleasure in witnessing violence. In other words, it is war minus the shooting.

– George Orwell

Oh lighten up, George. Didn’t you ever spend a Sunday afternoon watching a ballgame with your Dad and Grandpa, dozing on the rug with the dogs, getting up at halftime to make a turkey sandwich? Didn’t your mama ever nuke popcorn for you, while you watched the Bears press the ground game, ignoring a stiff cold wind off Lake Michigan? Serious sport is made for television, just like the overwrought personal lives of celebrities, and … usually … politics. It’s just for fun, which is what I doublethink if you doubleask me, Dude.

(If Orwell was still alive, I would definitely call him Dude.)

ooops

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JERUSALEM (Aug. 4) – Israeli airport police say a couple going on a European vacation remembered to bring their duty-free shopping and their 18 suitcases, but forgot their 3-year-old daughter at the airport.

I dropped my cell phone headset on the ground outside a coffeehouse this morning, and didn’t realize it was missing until I got ready to drive away. Fortunately, someone found it, and the baristas were keeping it safe for me. Thanks folks!

I can honestly say I’ve never forgotten a member of my family. So no, this silly analogy notwithstanding, I can’t relate.

wheee!

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LOS ANGELES – A strong earthquake shook Southern California on Tuesday, and the jolt was felt from Los Angeles to San Diego, and slightly in Las Vegas.

Preliminary information from the U.S. Geological Survey estimated the quake at magnitude 5.8, centered 29 miles east-southeast of downtown Los Angeles near Chino Hills in San Bernardino County.

Los Angeles Fire Department spokesman Brian Humphrey said there were not immediate reports of damage or injury in Los Angeles.

The quake struck at 11:42 a.m. PDT. Buildings swayed in downtown Los Angeles for several seconds.

Yahoo! News

I sure felt it here in Carpinteria, 85 miles NW of downtown LA. It was a side-to-side shaking sensation, more than a wave under the desk feeling.

For some reason, I always think of an earthquake as being here because I can feel it here. You know? So my first thought after it was over was that those little ones are good, because they keep the pressure off. Then I thought, well, that could’ve been a big quake somewhere else.

Hope everybody’s OK. Hold on to your wigs and keys and enjoy the ride.

let them eat junk

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SACRAMENTO — — California became the first state to require restaurants to cook without artery-clogging trans fats, such as those in many oils and margarines, under restrictions signed into law Friday by the health-conscious governor.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a physical-fitness advocate and crusader against obesity, sided with legislators who said the measure would help get the fat out of Californians who are too dependent on fast food.

Trans fats can preserve flavor and add to the shelf life of foods but have been linked to heart disease, stroke and diabetes.

Los Angeles Times

Look, it’s true: you should be warned that the average restaurant is trying to kill you. Not just by cooking with far too much fat and sugar, but by enormous portions. The average guy, if he’s a normal weight and getting some exercise, needs maybe 2000 calories a day to be well. And most of that should come from fresh fruit and vegetables, not chimichangas. I doubt you could get out of a restaurant anymore with less than 700 – 1000 under your belt, and very little good nutrition from it. But I have a problem with laws like this.

I don’t think The State should be taking it upon itself to raise us like we’re children. I don’t like paternalistic laws, and California is just getting carried away with them lately. Like the stupid cell phone law. We have to use hands-free devices when driving, which is just as distracting as holding a phone to your ear. And the law is too narrowly drawn: They should have strengthened the law against driving while distracted, period. Because people are different; we react differently to stimuli. And whether someone is distracted is a matter of specific circumstances and facts, not generalized situations. But I digress.

We don’t need to fix the restaurants that have been cooking with trans fats. The public should be educated about their homicidal tendencies, so people stop eating there and the restaurants go out of business. Because even after they fix their brand of grease, they’ll still be serving up unhealthy craptastic anti-food. We don’t need those places at all; we need to choose for ourselves a new lifestyle, and teach it to the kids, so they don’t learn to rely on factory fabricated, bio-miodified tummy-fillers in place of nutrition and wellness.

blog days of summer

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Well I haven’t been blogging much lately, have I? I’m in the blog days, so called because of the fact they don’t admit of blogability. It’s a paradox. Such days bespeak a life let slip deep into transition. A confluence of existential forces, in which the TV reminds us of the tragedy of chronic halitosis. And ooh, there’s a scuba diving cat, steeped in Wagnerian strains, no more submerged in mutability than me. My life is changing, is my point.

It’s all good. Obscurum per obscurius: the vagaries of the vague can keep us on our toes. I’ll be up for air soon. And I’m just messing with you guys. In the mean time, I’ve been working on rewriting a scene in my novel, in which the two brothers witness the accidental electrocution of their father’s handyman. The previous drafts had a more juvinile voice, much closer to the cognition of protagonist Marty’s eleven years of age. Now that the voice I’m reaching for is more an adult remembering the event, the scene needs to be more sophisticated, and compassionate.

Anyhoo, here’s a cool video of Al Gore’s challenge to the nation on eliminating carbon generated electricity. If he’d been inaugurated after we was elected, we’d all be far far better off.

virtual patience

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I was just sitting here thinking that I maybe ought to got into the kitchen and put on a little pot of decaf coffee, and about the surpassingly profound, though perhaps not self-evident truism that half of all people are below average. Half, I suppose, are above. And as the guy perched precariously right smack in the middle, it falls to me to remind those of you over on that side that some folks talk slow and always seem about a block and a half from the end of the sentence, while others sort stacks of useless paragraphs like cord wood. Either way, it’ll be necessary to encounter them with patience.

So here are a few lines of poetry.

Even before she reached the empty house,
She beat her wings ever so lightly, rose,
Followed a bee where apples blew like snow;
And then, forgetting what she wanted there,
Too full of blossom and green light to care,
She hurried to the ground, and slipped below.

from “My Grandmother’s Ghost” by James Wright

the quickening of madness

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This just in, by e-mail from Senator Barbara Boxer:

Recently, it was discovered that the Environmental Protection Agency appears to have lowered the statistical value of a human life from $7.8 million per life five years ago to $6.9 million today. This recalculation of almost $1 million per life can have grave consequences for a range of environmental analyses and cost/benefit comparisons.

The EPA’s decision to reduce the value of a human life when it considers the benefits of new environmental regulations is outrageous and must be reversed. EPA may not think Americans are worth all that much, but the rest of us believe the value of an American life to our families, our communities, our workplaces and our nation is no less than it has ever been.

This new math has got to go. If these reports are confirmed, I will be introducing legislation to reverse this unconscionable decision at the earliest opportunity because it will lead to far weaker pollution protections for us and our families.

This is pure insanity. That anyone keeps such numbers is bizarre, and that Senator Boxer thinks the issue even merits contemplation is sad.

Money is an abstraction, a contrivance, a mere material means to an end. It is the sand on which the house of society is built. Society is a house of sugar in the path of a squall. A human life, or any number of them, does not exist in the same category of Being as money, or things of any kind. Life is an entirely different realm than stuff.

You can’t put a value on life, any more than you can find God with a telescope. It makes as much sense to say that a nickel is too much to pay for a life, as that a planet is payment too small. Because human life is sacred, standing in the corporeal but reaching for the divine.

sticky little lies

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Only enemies speak the truth; friends and lovers lie endlessly, caught in the web of duty.

– Stephen King, novelist (b. 1947)

I’ve been waiting for a while to spot and post a ponderable from Stephen King. He’s one of my favorite writers, though not for the same reasons as, say, Faulkner or McCarthy. King knows how to tell a story. The pages damn near turn themselves.

submitting to the process

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For me, I’ve found that I feel more complete as a writer if I’m continually submitting my work. Whether I get an acceptance or rejection, as soon as I receive a response I send another one out and try to keep some semblance of movement in my submission efforts at all times. [Link]

Robert Lee Brewer, Editor, Writer’s Market, WritersMarket.com

I don’t do that. I don’t submit nearly as must as I feel I ought, or might like to, or as much as might tend to nudge my creative metabolism.

Your thoughts?