I’m feelin’ mighty blue today. Ever have one of those days when you wake up feeling down, and well into the afternoon you still feel like killing a clown? Then you have to talk to people, but it feels like your voice is going to crack. Well that’s how I’m feeling today. I’m goin’ down the road feelin’ bad.

It doesn’t help that we haven’t seen the sun for more than two consecutive hours in the past eight days. It’s June Gloom, a local meteorological phenomenon, which means that the sky turns the consistency of elmer’s glue and elephant phlegm.

I’m going to the kitchen now, and I’m going to mix up a couple quarts of Kool-aid. Don’t worry, I’m not going to summon the reaper ala Jonestown. It’s just the strongest stuff in the house, next to Folgers instant coffee, and that would have the opposite of the desired effect. Hmm… there might be a little orange juice.

Anyway, I need a hug. So if you’re going down the 101 between now and bedtime, stop by and give this old blogger a bit of a squeeze. What goes around comes around. But check yourself in the rearview mirror first; if you look anything like a clown, you may not make it back down the stairs alive. I can’t be responsible.

I haven’t been blogging much lately. My nephew – T,age 3 – was visiting for several days. It was really a blast having him here. Most of the time, he’s just a little engine of unabashed happiness.

He got to go to the annual butterly exhibit at the museum of natural history. Hundreds and hundreds of butterflies, flittering around and doing their butterfly thing in a big enclosed pavilion. If you’re feeling angry or at odds with life, this is just the thing to set your mind and soul aright.

I know, it’s not a great picture. But T slows down to the point where a photographic device can capture him so seldom, that one tends to shoot from the hip.

He also went to the carousel at Chase Palm Park. Here he is, with Nana, on his trusty steed. Once again, the shutter on a digital camera is only so fast.

I realize I missed the opportunity to comment on geopolitical events of great moment, and I really appreciate it.

I’ve updated the look of my Web site a little. Just a couple of screens. The first page and the technical writer page. What do you think?

Everything is green, except

the lavender Jacaranda.

I hear the jagged bounce

of a basketball and the happy

Spanish of boys. The dogs

beg me to keep their bellies

full and the blue jay skips

along the redwood rail

in search of crusts. Iraq

is full of smoke and rattles

like bones

like a skull of sharpened teeth.

© Kyle Kimberlin

June 16, 2004

This crocodile hunter guy isn’t all there. Seems he’s in trouble again.

He’s a sandwich short of a picnic.

He’s got kangaroos in his top paddock.

If brains were gunpowder, he couldn’t blow off his hat.

He’s a sanger short of a barbie.

I’m tellin’ ya, mate, he’s not the full quid.

Link

The last widow of a veteran of the Civil War has died. It’s amazing to me that such a person was still living in 2004.

Link

In case you’ve been as worried about the implications of grey goo — and the potential for nanotechnology to run amok — as I have, this article should help ease your mind.

Experts put ‘grey goo’ in perspective

OK, his timing could have been better. Kerry could have called on Der BushFührer to reverse his stem cell policy a long time ago. The day after Reagan’s burial seems a tad opportunistic. But what the hey.

News Article | Reuters.com

I sat down this afternoon and wrote a nice post for the blog, about Reagan, memory, death, etc. It was pretty good. Unfortunately, I wrote it longhand on a yellow legal pad, and now it’s too late and I’m too tired to type it up. Maybe tomorrow.

Just a note then, on the burial of Ronald Reagan in Simi Valley this evening.

I thought Nancy Reagan couldn’t have comported herself with more dignity. And I was impressed with the Eulogies of Reagan’s kids as well. Way to stand up and do it for the Gipper.

The main reason I watched it, however, was the honor guards. There’s just something about those guys that fascinates me. It’s moving to watch their precision and poise. Nobody loves a good American ceremony more than me. Especially when they do a missing man flyover with the jets. Great stuff.

My friend Erik at All That Arises has a great post today about the transition of sovereignty in Iraq.

Well, Reagan’s dead. This blog will not bother to note the arguable merits of his conservative legacy. It’s being done to death, so to speak, on lots of sites. I just want to say that Alzheimers is a horrible disease, and I wouldn’t wish it on anybody. Anyway …

Now he’s Gone

but cool inside

— the Dead

It’s warm, I tell ya. It’s 40 minutes ’til midnight, and 73 degrees, per yahoo weather. Feels like 85 to me. A good night for sleeping with a fan blowing on the bed, which I enjoy anyway.

My brother and I are spending the night in my grandparents’ house in a small town north of Bakersfield CA. They’re not here, except very strongly in my mind and heart. As you read in my birthday post, Grandma’s in a care facility. Papa died in October 2002. I miss them both tonight. They are present in every creak and corner of this old place.

I’m at the kitchen table with a laptop, and over my right shoulder, deep in shadow, is the place where Papa sat and watched TV for decades. How is it possible he’s not there? How can the world change so much as to cast off someone so present, so real to me, and yet still contain this room, this table, and me? How can such a different world, so much the same, still turn?