I’ve added a new blog to the blogroll. It just popped up on WordPress, and it’s off to a slow but interesting start, with a couple of great YouTubes I hadn’t seen. It’s called Squelch.
So good luck to him, or her. Whatever a Squelch is.
Author Archives: Kyle Kimberlin
starbuckians unite
duck and cover!
“The most recent international moves towards combating global warming represent a recognition … that if the emission of greenhouse gases … is allowed to continue unchecked, the effects will be catastrophic — on the level of nuclear war” [IISS report]
Twenty Years of Solitude
In 1987, I finished the first year of law school and was working in Santa Barbara for a law firm. I’d been home a year after college at Chico, and decided it was time to strike out on my own, to live as a grownup and in solitude. So as of August 15, 1987, I was the proud renter of a guest house apartment with a patio and a yard, in the middle of Carpinteria. I didn’t figure the solitude part would last too long. But interestingly, it has.
I lived there 13 years, until fall 2000, when I bought my condo. So it’ll be 7 years here soon. You see my point, yes? Twenty years, I’ve suddenly realized. The big 2-0, almost a month ago. Twenty years of living by myself. Well, that’s not entirely true. For 14 years, 1991 – 2005, I had a dog.
What is there to say about such a feat, especially when allowed to subsume one’s middle years? Homeric! Right? I mean, my dishes could be sophomores in college.
The question is this, from a literary standpoint: If, say, a character in a story you’re writing willingly – often happily – lives by himself for 20 years, what can we say about him? Is this heroic, or a cop-out on the potential of his life? A fearful avoidance and isolation? Or is it simply que sera sera, life on life’s terms?
“ … So in the afternoon, when the rain comes early, with big fat drops falling slowly in the dust of his yard, on his house and barn and the living desperate desert, he shoves aside his workbench and makes a place on the wooden floor to dance. Shuffling around the room in his Mexican boots, the thunder when it comes is like a ten piece band. Guitars and fiddles, silver coronets.
He dances as long as he can, until he has to sit in his old spindle chair in the open barn door and watch the rain. And he talks to God, tells Him it’s not good for a man to be so lonely, so far from town, without a horse or a dog to keep him company. God listens, and suggests a dog would be good.
Later there is lightning, and the power goes out for a while. It doesn’t matter, because he is asleep when his fan stops idling back and forth. …”
– from Miles from Town, © 2006 by Kyle Kimberlin
9.11
When I woke up this morning of September 11, 2007, I did something pretty unusual for me. I reached for the remote and turned on the TV. Maybe my sleepy subconscious knew the date is 9/11 once again. And there was the vast gray ocean of smoke heaving up from Manhattan and drifting out over the sea. My mind reeled for a few seconds – Oh what fresh hell is this – until I understood that I was seeing history. Six years now, and still an appalling anniversary.
I’m sure I needn’t add much clink to the claxon of reminiscence being proffered for the occasion. But I will say that I remember. Somehow seeing it on waking, as I did when it was broadcast live, made it feel freshly horrific. Just for a moment, to be honest. Then I turned it off. It was a great day for a morning walk.
I’ve seen that terrible day, 2190 days ago, played out too many times for watching the videos again to make any sense, much less make a difference in what I think or how I feel.
I am mindful of the national grief; I feel it too. And I’m cognizant of the anger that lingers, so often reflected in the emails I’ve received, many with images like screaming eagles superimposed on the burning towers. Old Glory is coming after you, get ready. And haven’t our leaders done a splendid job of securing our vengeance, so we can feel better?
I suggest we take two lessons from the day:
First, that life is simple and fragile. None of us has the promise of a tomorrow.
Second, that the Powers that Be used the shock of 9/11 against us. They used our national grief and stunned, shared anger as an opportunity to push a nefarious social, political, economic and military agenda to the manifest detriment of America and the world.
We may never get closure, much less revenge, for what the infinite stupidity of mankind wrought six years ago, but maybe we can gain some wisdom. Our only hope is, as Ghandi said, to learn to be the change we wish to see in the world.
Seamus Heaney Interviewed
Discourse with the great poet, from the Telegraph UK:
“‘The completely solitary self: that’s where poetry comes from, and it gets isolated by crisis, and those crises are often very intimate also.’
… Heaney is always saying something: it is just that his yearning for precision, his wariness of misrepresentation, means he is supremely careful how he says it.
As I leave, he is offering advice on where in Dublin to eat good mackerel, and asking, ‘Have you euros?’ while preparing to rummage in his pockets, just in case I have stumbled up without the currency to make it back to the city centre.
A generous poet, then, and most generous of all is his parting benediction: ‘Write whatever you like!'”
hold that thought
U.S. Park Police arrested Iraq War veteran and GW graduate student Adam Kokesh Friday in Lafayette Park for hanging signs advertising an upcoming anti-war protest. [ Link]
Hey kids, don’t forget: The 4th Amendment is viable right up to the point when you piss off the cops. Then it’s repealed, pending jury ratification.
heartbreaking
“WASHINGTON – Two-thirds of the world’s polar bears will be killed off by 2050 — and the entire population gone from Alaska — because of thinning sea ice from global warming in the Arctic, government scientists forecast Friday.”
the search continues
BBC NEWS : “Forty-five aircraft are involved in the search for the missing millionaire who disappeared on Monday while flying alone in his small plane.”
I’m a little surprised they can’t find something like a small plane using satellites. Maybe satellites aren’t as precise and focused as they’re rumored to be.
Disaster Capitalism?
How those in Power use the shock of terrorism and disaster to effect social and economic change.
“…present-day global capitalism took hold when its advocates learned to exploit disasters. After a disaster (war, tsunami, terrorist attack), you can push your agenda for worsening labor conditions, looser regulation, and pocket-lining exercises (Enron, Halliburton) while the reeling, disaster-struck population of the world has its attention elsewhere.”
[Naomi Klein’s Disaster Capitalism video: exploiting disasters for globalism – on Boing Boing blog]
aggregate this
Here’s a tip for those who like to read blogs:
I like to use an aggregator to read blogs and news. An aggregator is a Web site that serves to gather information published by different sources – such as blogs – and organises it together in a common search interface. It can do this for any Web site that publishes an RSS feed. RSS stands for Rich Site Summary (RSS 1.0), or Really Simple Syndication (RSS 2.0). Here’s an explanation.
Here’s another explanation, which includes Atom, another kind of feed that’s like RSS.
Basically, you use the aggregator to subscribe to the blogs or new sources you like, and it keeps track of them for you. So I can go to one place and see all your blogs, and whether they’ve been updated, see samples of new posts, and click through to read the real thing.
There are many different aggregators, and for the past few years, I’ve been using Bloglines. It’s OK, but it’s complicated. Even the new Beta is complicated. It causes a tight feeling between my shoulder blades and a vague knot of aaarrgh right above my left eye.
Google and MyYahoo have both gotten into the aggregating game, with Google Reader and MyYahoo! I’ve tried them both, and decided to go with Google Reader. It’s pretty simple compared to Bloglines, and it has a lot more functions for labeling and sharing content than Yahoo.
On this blog, you will find a section in the right column called Subscribe to Metaphor. It offers subscription through several of the more popular aggregators.
That’s it. Bon Jour. Y’all come back now.
iUniverse and Author Solutions merge
Under Author Solutions, Inc., the world’s two largest providers of publishing services will expand offerings to give authors more choice and more control
BLOOMINGTON, Ind., Sept. 6 /PRNewswire/ — AuthorHouse and iUniverse have agreed to terms that will add iUniverse to the Author Solutions, Inc. family of brands. The transaction was announced jointly today by Bryan Smith, president and CEO of Author Solutions and AuthorHouse, and Susan Driscoll, president and CEO of iUniverse. Author Solutions, Inc., a Bertram Capital- owned holding company, was acquired by Bertram in January 2007. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Metaphor 