It’s worse than dog eat dog out there,

it’s dog doesn’t comment on dog’s blog.

Hey, there’s a couple of new blogs on my blogroll. A couple have been removed because they’re idle. An idle blog is the devils … well, it’s boring. One of the new ones is Turning the Tide, Noam Chomsky’s blog. Check it out.

Here’s a company that’s laying off a town and shipping all its jobs to India. The town’s future is dead and scattered like ashes on the Ganges. I say enough is enough. We need to start boycotting companies that ship American jobs overseas.

Link

It’s been over two weeks since Kerry challenged Bush to monthly debates. Bush is still hunkered down behind the waterin’ trough. He’s taking pot shots, but he’s not about to come out and fight like a man.

Link

All of you political journalists reading my blog please take note. Here’s a term I just don’t want to see in print again:

flip-flopping

Thank you for your support.

Along the streets of the town of Tar Harbor, the lights came on and the cats came out as Walter slowly cleaned his teeth. After dark, a breeze came up off the Pacific, ringing the windchimes that hung in his little patio. This was one of his few consolations, since the church closed down. Walter missed the church. But it was now a bookstore/ coffeehouse. They still burned lots of incense, so he would go there sometimes and sit, watching the light gray smoke rise to the ceiling carved and painted blue and touched in better times by cherubim.

…

Poetry never saved anyone from anything, but after he ate his tacos, Walter went to “church.” He drank coffee and read a book on Robert Frost with New England photos. Then he felt the first tightness spread across his chest, arise from his left armpit, coming slowly like a night blooming cactus, fulfilling itself in the right jawbone and ear. Stands of white birches filtering sunrise. He put his hand over his mouth and burped; after a while, the pressure passed. Standing in a barnyard, an ancient hand plow gone to rust. He got up and left, taking a last glance to the counter, at the college girl who was making cappuccino. He forgot about the pain.

* * *

This is a shameless promotion for my Web site. There are poems there, and very short fiction. The paragraphs above are from a very short story called Shasta in the Wind.

One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one’s work is terribly important.

-Bertrand Russell

Who knew that Victor Hugo was such a romantic? Check out this letter he wrote to to Adele Foucher in 1822.

It seems to me that what I feel is not of earth. I cannot yet comprehend this cloudless heaven.

Well those trapped cave divers from the UK were rescued down in Mexico. [I would never do that — don’t like confined spaces. I’m not claustrophoic per se, but cave diving is right out.]

The good news is that they’re alive and above ground. The funny — ironic — news is that they’re in mucho queso with the Mexican immigration authorities. That’s funny, get it? Mexican immigration authorities are cheesed off because these Brits may have been speelunkin’ around under false pretenses. Imagine that.

Link

A Danish man and 20 crew members on two icebreakers have made the world’s biggest snowcone — 10,000 square feet — off the coast of Greenland. I’m kidding. The morons spray-painted an iceberg with red meat dye. This is the same nutcase that did the goldfish in blenders “art” exhibit a while back. Ay carumba.

Yahoo! News – Iceberg Off Western Greenland Painted Red

Hats off to parents in Arkansas for standing up for the civil liberties of their children. Random drug testing is unconstitutional. If children grow up in a world where they don’t feel small and bullied, but free and equally protected, perhaps fewer will turn to the tragedy of drugs. Besides, reactionary extremism never solves anything.

Link to TalkLeft

Don’t look know, folks, but It blogs. The War President is gettin’ down and funky in the grass roots with our hip high tech jive. He’s bad. No really, he’s bad.

Link