So I was having my lunch today, and reading in the November 7 issue of Time about how the Bush presidency has run hard aground. The preceding week, Time said, was the worst of the Bush tenancy. The president is losing confidence in his consiglieri, his polls are in the tank, his policies “crumpled in a ditch,” and his cabal beset by scandal. And then there’s the abortive Miers nomination:

But there was no escaping or disguising what had happened. More than anything else, it was the Miers meltdown that dissolved once and for all the image of a President whom no one defies and whose luck never runs out. The whole debacle, even Bush insiders say, reflects the problem of a leader who doesn’t hear from enough people. “This was entirely avoidable,” says an adviser involved in the process. “After Katrina, after Michael Brown, the issue of cronyism was already on the table and a negative. It was incredible to try this.”

Then there was the Libby indictment and resignation, which would still be well into the A sections of the MSM if not for the Alito nomination. But as the Daily Show points out, if it weren’t more important, it wouldn’t have happened more recently. Time says:

Cheney’s standing has suffered mainly because Libby emerges as such a liability. Fitzgerald threw the book at him not for anything he said to reporters but for what he said to the FBI and the grand jury. The indictments suggest that the aide whose aim was to spin the war might have tried to spin the prosecutor. “Lying was a remarkable act of stupidity on Libby’s part,” says Richard Nixon’s former White House counsel John Dean. “He’s old enough to know better. He watched Watergate and Iran-contra. To try to pull the leg of the grand jury was really quite remarkable.”

I guess I’ll cut to my coups de gras and let you get on with your day. Reading this article really helped my noontime digestion. And if you support, or have ever supported, the public service of George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and the rest of these knuckleheads, please note: We told you so. We tried to warn you these guys were no good, rotten to the core, dangerous and manifestly perfidious. I didn’t vote for them, my friends and family didn’t vote for them, and if you did then shame on you. Finally, if you support them and have a Support the Troops sticker plastered somewhere, bite me.

Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
-Ernest Hemingway

Wow, really? I mean, I suffer from a bit of anhedonia, a twinge of transient melancholy, myself from time to time. But the Papa Hemingway’s generalization surprises me. Well, not really. He did kill himself with a shotgun.

Wherefore – or perhaps notwithstanding which – let us with IQs above room temp set forth to dispel this misbegotten misconception. Let us be happy!

And no fair getting stewed on adult beverages or recreational drugs to do it. … Endeavor to Persevere!

Let me know how it goes for you, OK?

Please, do this.  Go to this page.  Scroll down, about two-thirds of the way down the page, and read the poem Blackbird by C.K. Williams.  It’s important.  Thank you.

Oh this is rich. This is just what I needed to cheer me up tonight. I mean, I read the comics in the paper today and got a few chuckles, but nothing like this.

Bush is sending his staff to ethics school.

I can’t wait until Monday. John Stewart is gonna have a field day with this. Maybe he’ll do sort of a montage, mixing in the video from Van Halen’s Hot for Teacher.

T-T-teacher stop that screamin’
Teacher don’t you see?
Don’t wanna be no uptown fool
Maybe I should go to hell
But I am doing well
Teacher needs to see me after school.

Oh man. The Bush Administration: classic American entertainment, with a heaping side order of Kafka.

You gotta check out this post at DailyKos, because the US Government is voting to royally put the screws to poor Americans.  This is not a joke.

Since President Bush gave his speech on the bird flu at the national institutes of health on Tuesday, you’ve been thinking, “Gee, I wish I had more information about this looming PANDEMIC.  I could just kick myself for not writing down that Web site that the president mentioned.”  Well, I got your back, buddy.

http://pandemicflu.gov/

Don’t be chicken, check it out.    

It was cool but not gloomy.  I took Happy, my Pomeranian friend, for a long walk this afternoon.  That was nice.

I’m in a good mood, because I’ve lost 40 pounds in the past couple of months.  A smattering of applause is appropriate, and thank you.  But those of you who know me realize that this is but a fine start to a longer journey.  Which is alright; at least I’m going in the right direction for a change.  I’m doing it through a clinic’s program.  If you would like information, here ‘tis.  Don’t say I never linked you to nuthin’.  

Anyway, I took my good mood into the drug store this afternoon. I just needed a bottle of water, and my gel ink pen is fixin’ to run dry on me.  They have those there, along with darn near everything else.  Including … wait for it … about a ton of Christmas decorations, and miscellaneous Christmas – related junk.

I BS you not, gentle reader.  They have a whole section of the store, near the front, and space around the doors, all infested … perhaps I mean festooned … with ribbons and tinsel, boxes of lights, inflatable Santas and elves wearing tights.

Needless to say, I was nonplussed. Flabbergasted. Off-put! I jumped back and cussed.  How vulgar, how shallow, how cheap, tawdry and callow! I mean, it’s too soon, isn’t it?  Three days after Halloween, for crying out loud. Doesn’t this just belittle the season?  We’ll be sick of Christmas stuff by Thanksgiving!  How can it be special if it goes on for two months?

I thought about saying something, of finding the boss. Grab his sad clip-on tie and then hand him his hat. But I took a deep breath and thought better of that.  

(Are you enjoying the rhymes? … OK, basta.)

I remembered something my Mom said once or twice, that a gentleman ought to be patient and nice.  (Dang, can’t help it.)  She said, “Nobody has the right not to be offended.”

How about that?  I don’t have the right not to be offended.  Well, that’s true.  And neither do you.  See, offense is subjective.  It doesn’t exist in noumena.  It is a reaction to perceptions … it’s strictly phenomenological, a twitch in consciousness.

The people in the store didn’t intend to offend me.  Their intent is to sell me some cheap shit way before I need it.  And this whole idea of getting all riled up over some stupid perceived offense is what drives fanatics to want to kill people for writing bad books.  I’m above that, aren’t I?  Of course.  So I reclaimed my good mood, and lived happily ever after, so far.

I don’t do Halloween.  Not because it’s pagan or satanic or anything, anymore.  It’s not; no more than Thanksgiving has anything to do with the harvest or the Pilgrims.  Just because it’s just a silly holiday that holds no personal meaning for me, and I need to stay well hence from candy. But in each of the past several years, I’ve tried to write something for Dia de los Muertos. I wrote this on Sunday and Monday, to lay out as this year’s offering.

Saying Goodnight


It’s dark. The night has gotten in the house and taken every corner, every closet, for itself, except where he sits at the desk.  He has just the small green hooded lamp which illuminates a book and leaves the rest of his study in gloom. Beyond the open door, he can barely see the hallway, which leads to his kitchen, his bathroom and the world.

The sun sets early this time of year, touching the trees in the park while folks are driving home from work. He walked out at five to watch it pause, then fall into the sea. Since he also saw the sun rise – bold and warm even in the end of October – rise up and stand all day and set again, he knows this dark that holds the house is just the shadow of the world. The black curtain that lets the pavement cool, and the grass take a drink of fog and sleep.

The mind is locked in with its secrets, behind windows smudged by dirty hands, shutters tilted to show a tide of floating dust. But in this house, the sun comes in and shafts of light fall on all the places where his people rest.

Of course the house is haunted. Why wouldn’t it be? His grandfather comes to him on Sunday afternoons in autumn, and on hot summer days. They sit on the sofa and wait for the game to start. They sit for hours, until he gets up for a drink and comes back to find the old man gone. Outside, the children laugh and play.

His grandmother comes with a softness of singing. She is seen at the stove, making breakfast, or hanging bedclothes on the line. She appears in pink and pale yellow, in a posture of prayer, or at the sink looking out at the infinite sky.

At the door of his study, at the best range of his lamp’s light, he stands. Down the hall, he can make out the furniture shapes. The back of the sofa, a table’s edge. He could go down just a few steps, and hit a switch: The lights over the dining room or the smooth, bright globe in the kitchen. Everything would be bright and clear.

No. He closes his eyes and slowly turns, hoping that whatever channels serve to join the bookend worlds are open. So maybe when he looks, he’ll find his dog asleep on her side again beneath his desk. Though he’s alone in the lamplight, he knows she must be near. So near that it should make him cry. Maybe she’s resting by the piano or beside his bed, somewhere in the shadows he has not dispelled.

Now he starts in the hallway and goes from room to room, turning on every light. Even in the closets and the hood above the stove. The porch light, the garage.

Goodnight, I live in the incandescent world.
I love you, forever, but the moon is up
and if I go out along the street, apart
from the lights of the house,
the moon may throw my shadow on the earth.



© 2005 by J. Kyle Kimberlin
2nd Draft 11/2/05
all rights reserved

Something became – like weak government or strong cheese – horribly corrupted in the JavaScript which serves to display the Blogroll you see in the right column.  I misapprehended the matter as a problem with my Blogger template, and wasted a couple of hours trying to fix it.  Then of course, I had to replace the Bloglines JavaScript anyway.  Oh woe.  Oh well, the blog looks pretty good now, don’t you think?  Yeah.  

Haloscan commenting and trackback have been added to this blog.

I must say that it seems this George Bush fellow just can’t seem to catch a break lately. His war deceptions are coming home to roost, and now he can’t even get golf applause for trying to save mankind from sick birds.

Hey W, I got an idea that’ll save you a few bucks outta that $7.1 Billion. Two Words: Extra Crispy.

Every night about this time – say, between 10 and 12:30 – I hear the same noise from my kitchen.  It’s the sound of an icemaker dumping a cube.  Sort of a cross between a pop and a thunk.  

I’ll bet you hear similar sounds coming from your kitchen, right?  

The problem is, I don’t have an icemaker.  In fact, there’s nothing in my kitchen that should make that kind of noise.  

Just in the interest of heading off a stray premise, my condo isn’t haunted.  And even if it were, you’d think a poet’s ghost could come up with something just a bit more creative.