The very sick doggie I posted about very early this morning got his money all raised, thanks to some wonderful compassionate people. If you are one them, thank you. Now he can have his antibiotics and a chance to recover.

Next weekend is the 60th annual Santa Barbara International Orchid Show, just up the road a few miles from my condo del cielo. This show — if you were paying attention — was made nominally famous by the movie Adaptation, starring Nicholas Cage and Nicholas Cage. I liked that movie very much, except that I thought Meryl Streep was miscast. It was probably the most ill-fitting role for her since Bridges of Madison County. Anyway, the flowers will be here. You can come and search that strange building at the fairgrounds for your Ghost Orchid, mumbling “my precious.”

I posted this tonight about a really sick doggie. Perhaps you’d like to help him. We need to raise money quickly for antibiotics. Seriously. Thanks!

I’ve had a busy evening. Watched some TV. Friday night standup on the comedy channel. I also put up a new page on my web site for my creative writing. There you will find some of my poems, short stories, and my novel in process. Including the eagerly awaited second chapter draft. I mention it’s a draft because it really is. In posting it, I noticed a typo in the first paragraph of that chapter, but I’m too tired to fix it. I also think some of the rollover effects are a bit much — tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow….

I was just running through some of the pages on my Web site, to see how they look on a monitor set at a different resolution than the 1024×768 at which I’m building the site. (Actually, I try to keep in mind that some people still have 800×600, especially laptops, and keep the pages small.) I came upon this page, with a poem that I wrote in 1994.

I’m trying to remember 1994. I used to walk on the bluffs at Jellybowl sometimes, with Tasha. I worked at AGIA, in medical claims. I was in Abigail’s group of poets then. I was going to church a lot.

So I’m looking at the year, 1994 and something is troubling me. I don’t know what … It has a 19 in it. I was born in 1961. And I think about the number we use now when we write the date: 2005. I tried to get everybody around me to understand that the millennium didn’t begin until 01.01.2001. But that’s not what’s bugging me. I didn’t believe the computers would all crash when the 19 changed to 20, but that’s not the problem.

Oh, I get it. I just don’t believe in it, this business of a 21st century with no 19. I believe the Earth is round, that we sent men to the moon, and I’ll even concede Evolution in some limited sense. But I’m not buying this 2000+ business. It’s simply too weird. I’m am a child of the 19s. Now somebody needs to figure out what the number really is, and give me my century back.

OK, my nephew was born in 2001, so he can be a child of the new millennium, but I’m going back where I belong. See ya.

I share the concerns of my Roman Catholic neighbors for the health of the Pope. Notwithstanding certain old disagreements, I have the utmost admiration for his decades of unbelievable service to the Church. I consider him a great moral force in the world, and truly a man of peace. He is in my prayers.

I was surfing through the news sources on the Web and noticed that virtually every major site mentions the Pope … except AlJazeera. Interesting, yes? [Aljazeera.Net English – Home Page]

I was just thinking about the day we went bowling to celebrate my brother’s birthday. There was a little switch on the ball return that would make bumpers pop up, to keep your ball out of the gutter. Presumably, this is so the little kids can bowl.

click to enlarge

What I’m thinking about this is that I’m going to need this feature today, and for any number of days to come. Anybody know where I can get some bumpers for my life?

Once in a while, I get a wild hair and decide to try something new. Tonight, I decided to try publishing to my web site with MS Front Page instead of the online wysiwyg tool my site host provides. I’ve never used Front Page before. I’ve used Dreamweaver at work, to build an Intranet site for my department, and that’s quite different.

I built a new page – very simple – to host my novel-in-process. The plan is to use this instead of the separate blog I set up. Seems to make more sense to me. So now I can learn Front Page, which will be interesting. Though after an hour of checking out the basics, my hunch is that Dreamweaver blows it away.

Just something I’ve been meaning to mention:

Pull your pants up! You look like an idiot. Oh, and that thing that sticks out from your hat is called the bill. It goes in front, to keep the sun off your face. Tanning is actually capillary damage. Unless you want malignant melanoma to eat your face off and maybe kill you when you get to be my age … whatevah.

Hey, all you grownups have been dying to bring it up. I just got around to it. I love checking stuff off my list.

My fellow dog lovers will enjoy this.

Yeah, I read Hunter Thompson’s books, several of them, when I was in college. His stuff wasn’t assigned reading, but I was a reading machine. And I thought humor could be found in wildness, in gonzo, in extremely high tire pressure … Look at the Bats, man! I thought it was funny, before I came to see that drugs and alcoholism are a thick mist of dripping death that seeps and blows at every unguarded door and cracked windowglass of human life.

I don’t think gonzo journalism is amusing anymore, with the conspicuous exception of The Daily Show. I think it’s sad. Though I’ve retained a vague feeling of romance for the idea of the reclusive writer’s compound in the woods, for the thought of shooting the fax machine when the editor gets pushy.

And I don’t think Thompson was right about The Swine or The Doomed. I think he found in us what he wanted not to find in himself. And ultimately, he proved me right. Hopeless is as hopeless does.