I was just strolling through my day, singing repeatedly, "Support the Troops, Support the Troops, Support the Troops," when suddenly I seem to have stumbled into a pothole.

If I told you that, during WWII the Nazi’s kidnapped the wives of suspected French Resistance fighters, and held them hostage until their husbands surrendered, you’d find that plausible, yes?  But if I told you the US Army was doing that in Iraq – now – you wouldn’t believe it, right?  Believe it.

Oh yes, it be a pothole alright.  A quagmire extraordinaire.  I predicted this when the war started back in early 2003.  I said that you can’t send good young people off to war and expect to get back anything but good young people who have been changed by war.  I’m not blaming them — though this is really unconscionable shit right here — nor saying they should be court-martialed or ostracized or anything like that. War is insane, and I’m just saying end the damn war. 

And Impeach Bush.

I love dogs, don’t you?  Here’s a great essay.  

“Nothing lackadaisical or halfhearted here. Dogs aren’t mulling over their walk tomorrow, their meal tonight or their nap in 10 minutes. Dogs live in the moment. Enthusiastically, they embrace each second of the here and now, be it a day in the field guiding cattle, a Sunday in the yard chasing squirrels or simply a restful afternoon snoozing in a pool of sunshine. Suddenly, dog-tired sounds more like an aspiration than a complaint.”

Happy Birthday, Wolfgang!

I started listening to, and playing, the music of Mozart, Beethoven, Bach, etc., when I was eight and started taking piano lessons.  I took lessons and played in recitals for ten years, then gave lessons during college.  

Mozart’s music – his transcendent genius – has made my life richer, deeper, more enjoyable.  I truly wish the world had treated him better.  

at Slate …

The Power-Madness of King George
Is Bush turning America into an elective dictatorship?
By Jacob Weisberg

Is anything standing between the current practices of spying, lying, torture, and detention without habeas corpus, and the next step: arrest of Democratic candidates as political prisoners and censorship of the press? If there is, could someone please explain it? Because the way I see it, if President Bush wants to do something in the interest of national security, he can simply do it. And nobody is going to stop him.

Please tell me I’m wrong, and why.

In our town, the day is rare that begins in gray, on which the curtain rises with less than a fanfare of splendor; God’s glory shining on the ocean, the hills, and the town. So even those with head colds and mounting debt stand a moment on their front porches, on stairways leading to cluttered apartments, and beside the open doors of their little cars, and sigh. A moment’s ritual signifying that things could be worse.

At nine o’clock someone sweeps the tiled loggia of the public library, unlocks the door and lights the lights. The retired men drink coffee outside the donut shop. The veterinarian listens to a puppy’s heart and everything sounds fine.

Another man sleeps late, because he can, misses half the morning – God’s love upon the driveway and the grass. So when he finally gets the newspaper it’s warm, the dew soaked in and baked away. He steps from the shower thinking of apples, thinks of apples as he shaves, then eats one while his coffee drips.

I lied. All through June and most of July we live in a cloud that stretches for a thousand miles out to sea. We struggle up and leave our hearts, damp and sour, wadded on the bathroom floor. We eat our toast and tie our shoes and go. The chairs outside the donut shop lean against the tables, draining mist. All day we keep the headlights on, which seems to help. In February, fear the rain.

All this doesn’t bother our friend. He loves the color gray, with all its implications for consciousness, the muted contrast of flowers. And when the sun goes down and he sits in his room, there’s no dramatic sunset to be overlooked, then mourned. He listens carefully as the freeway echoes from the buildings all around, so he’s surrounded by the sighing of people.

Through the open window, he smells nothing that reminds him of his mother boiling blackeyed peas she spent the morning shelling as she watched him play. That must all be in my mind, he thinks. He closes the window, and goes to put his shoes away. But isn’t that me? My mind isn’t something separate, something I can set aside like shoes. My mind is me and peas are in my mind; therefore, I am blackeyed peas.

He holds his cup, moves slowly through the quiet house, notes that the carpet needs cleaning. Smudges of dirt on the hardwood floors. He hopes for an earthquake – just a little one – to stir things up. Because sometimes he’s so tired of the light, harsh in his eyes, and as the evening rolls in, pressing down on him, he dims the lights after dinner. He stands at the window, looking out at the nothing that the night has brought. That’s peace: the blank windows, the hum of good appliances, a cup of tea.

© 2006 by J. Kyle Kimberlin

Gotta make sure everybody gets a chance to see this movie , in case I decide to take it down.  Pretty good, if you like silly dogs, which I do.

OK, this business with A Million Little Pieces is getting out of hand.  Writing is about the exploration of being human, not about explication of the author’s life.  I write stuff every day that’s partly about me, and partly about us, and partly about dogs and seagulls and trees.  So what?  If you can relate, great!  If not, change the channel; even in the middle of the day, there’s something on besides Oprah.  

I love you, and because I love you, I would sooner have you hate me for telling you the truth than adore me for telling you lies.
-Pietro Aretino, satirist and dramatist (1492-1556)


That one never has worked for me. It’s the kind of reverse psychology thing that backfires every time. Speaking of which, whatever you do don’t leave a comment on this post, so that some human dialog might take place. I would rather have you keep silent than tell me the truth, and thereby burst the insegrievious soapbubble of my solitude.

Heh heh heh, that’ll get ’em.

Yeah, bwahaha-shnerk. Oh man, soapbubbles up my nose.

Let me tell you a secret, folks.  The Amish are interesting people, and one can be tempted to admire their Spartan lifestyle, pacifistic demeanor and close-knit sense of community.  But when it comes to caring for their animals, these people are assholes.  You read it here first.  Lancaster County PA may be picturesque, but you don’t want to see the killing fields behind their barns.  Perhaps second only to Missouri for puppy mills.

Is it so much to ask, in the name of the God who is so gentle with us, that we be kind and gentle to those most vulnerable?  Can’t we be compassionate with animals, children, and the old and sick?  Does everybody who thinks God is on his side, and he’s living a righteous life, have to be such a stick up the ass, arrogant prick?

So here’s a little justice , for the voiceless little ones.  An Amish man off to jail for a month, on charges including animal cruelty.  It’s a start.  And ooh look – the judge was a woman.  Bet that got his goat.  Don’t drop the soap, Jebediah.  

“It’s pretty clear what you’re operating is a factory – for dogs,” [Judge] Butts told Lapp as she pronounced sentence. “If you need to grow something to sell it, don’t grow animals, grow vegetables.
“If this is the way life is over the mountain, it’s going to stop,” the judge added. “There’s a way you treat animals and this isn’t it.”

[Please excuse my harsh language, folks.  It’s out of character for this blog, but this sort of thing just gripes my cookies.]

Do you feel like a little music and a nice slide show?  

This is very cool.

a few disjointed thoughts on thought…

As societies grow decadent, the language grows decadent, too. Words are used to disguise, not to illuminate, action: you liberate a city by destroying it. Words are to confuse, so that at election time people will solemnly vote against their own interests.

-Gore Vidal, writer

Do actions still speak louder than words? Or have we become a culture of rhetoric, of double speak and crimethought? I think we have changed, because clearly we have voted, repeatedly, against our own social, economic, and moral interests.

Carl Sandburg said, “Sometime they’ll give a war and nobody will come.” What would that take? What would it take, generally, for us all to stop listening to the lies and the lying liars who tell them? Can you think of any prominent public figure who doesn’t automatically get attention?

I know I’m rambling here a little, but it’s late. Let me try again.

We are deeply in love with our sources and means of distraction: Internet, TV, wireless, radio, etc. We can’t get enough. We’ve become passive receptors of every signal and feed, incapable of discernment or critical judgment. We simply absorb at an overwhelming and ever-increasing rate and volume. It’s in the paper, it must be important, it must apply to me. The President said it, that settles it. It never occurs to the average consumer of information to simply say Wait, hold on, let’s stop and think about this a minute. The government has obliterated privacy and now controls much of the media of communication. Something’s wrong.

Oh, it’s a matter of perspective. I says what’s coming through this screen at you right now, and what’s pounded out at you from the Ministry of Truth is not reality. No. Reality is that heat behind your eyes, that feeling in your chest when I say Grandmother.

The world is your exercise-book, the pages on which you do your sums. It is not reality, although you can express reality there if you wish. You are also free to write nonsense, or lies, or to tear the pages. – Richard Bach

So if the world is not reality, and everyone is free to lie – truth being relative and matter made of nothing – then what does it matter if we listen to people like Bush, Cheney, Rice, and Rumsfeld? Because we are creatures of mind; our thoughts and our free will are all we really have. And love. We can’t allow anyone to control our thoughts, or hijack our free will, any more than we would thoughtlessly allow somehow to beat our physical body with a baseball bat. It’s not that they’re lying that’s the problem. It’s that we’re conditioned to believe. So either we mute the bastards, or we don’t show up with they give the war.

I saw this guy on TV tonight — CNN I think.  He’s been compiling a list of cheats to get around automated phone systems, and get a human on the line, at many major companies.  Check it out. And here’s his blog.