I was just surfing around and found this article from Feb 12, in which a nuclear official of the UN says the world may be headed for destruction due to nuclear technology proliferation. What struck me most about this wasn’t so much that we’re all going to die, which given our present leadership vacuum seems likely, but that some doofus at abcnews.com was just dense enough to follow the first two paragraphs with a big advertisement for mortgage loans.

The End of the World is Neigh! Repent & Refinance!

Check out this essay by Don Henley of the Eagles, in the Washington Post today. They’re Killing the Music. I don’t know that I can agree with Mr. Henley’s guarded hope that artists can wrest back some control of the music industry. I think the problem, which he terms systemic, has roots that run well outside music. Western culture, to the limited extent it ever existed in the US, is imploding like a pitiful souffle.

When I was a kid and we went to Disneyland, I remember being fascinated by the buildings. There are a great many buildings, especially upper floors, which aren’t shops or restaurants or rides … they aren’t open to guests, and have no apparent function. Tons of balconies and shuttered windows … what are those places?

Beyond wondering what they were, I remember imagining living up there. Wouldn’t that be sweet, to live in Disneyland, over a candy shop on Main Street or something? Here are a few sites where people have posted photos of such buildings:

http://www.dollarshort.org/disneyland/index.html

http://www.martinlee.co.uk/IMG_1335.JPG

http://www.anycities.com/user1/disneyworld/disney-world-orlando-magic-kingdom-main-street-usa-2.html

http://www.justdisney.com/images/Disneyland/aerial/dlandair.jpg

I also remember being enthralled by all the water at Disneyland. I always wanted to go swimming in various places, like the lagoon where the submarine was or take a dip off the paddle wheeler, or maybe splash around in Small World.

I’ve been sitting here staring at the screen, looking at my blog. I think the presentation is improved somewhat: it’s cleaner, less busy, easier to read. Now my thoughts flow to content. What’s missing, do you think? Maybe some things I learned on TV today, but Odd Todd is already doing that. Repetition is the death of art. I thought maybe some really rigorously honest true facts about myself. Too gruesome.

Baby, there’s an enormous crowd of people

They’re all after my blood

Three Dog Night, yeah. A sense of his place. … As Anne Lamott wrote in Bird by Bird, the cheese stands alone, but decides to take a few notes. Which with irrefutable rationality brought me around to Bullwinkle:

Hey Rocky! Watch me pull a rabbit out of a hat!

Okay okay, you wanna know what I did today?

–Woke up late, residual effects of yesterday’s serious suckage.

–Turned over and dozed another hour, feeling – as Holden Caulfield would put it, “blue.”

–Got up, read e-mail, showered, gave the doggie her medicine.

Wait, let’s get back to that “blue” thought. Ever see the paintings of George Rodrigue? He’s a really talented painter. Blue dogs, you see. Has a gallery, up the coast, in Carmel. Check out one of his paintings:

http://www.georgerodrigue.com/loupgarou.jpg

Blue reminds me, have you checked out my little story, How to Eat an Orange? Wait, don’t read it. It actually mentions eating an orange. More than once. I wish I had one right now! I’m thirsty and an orange would taste wonderful; a good one, from Dad’s tree. So don’t read that. Instead, go and read Frank O’Hara’s poem Why I Am Not A Painter.

view/add comments (0) :: updated Tuesday, 17 February 2004 01:38 AM GMT-08 ::

Look, I’ve had a bad day. Even those of us who plod the ethereal attics of language, getting owl shit and faded pink insulation on our shoes, have bad days. I had coffee with a good friend this morning, and a nice meeting with friends this evening, but in between and afterwards… Ah, you don’t wanna know.

Look, people love me and I love them and sometimes life on its own terms — our crippled search for meaning and consolation — just resists all our best efforts to live it passively; it shudders and bucks under our feeble anesthesia. A bad day will not be ignored. And though the evil of the day is sufficient to itself, tomorrow, they all tell me, is another day. Whether the sun gonna rise and shine in my backdoor, or I’m goin’ out in the cold rain and snow, remains to be seen. So here’s a poem.

Conscientious Objector

I shall die, but that is all that I shall do for Death.

I hear him leading his horse out of the stall; I hear the clatter on the barn-floor.

He is in haste; he has business in Cuba, business in the Balkans, many calls to make this morning.

But I will not hold the bridle while he clinches the girth.

And he may mount by himself: I will not give him a leg up.

Though he flick my shoulders with his whip, I will not tell him which way the fox ran.

With his hoof on my breast, I will not tell him where the black boy hides in the swamp.

I shall die, but that is all that I shall do for Death; I am not on his pay-roll.

I will not tell him the whereabout of my friends nor of my enemies either.

Though he promise me much, I will not map him the route to any man’s door.

Am I a spy in the land of the living, that I should deliver men to Death?

Brother, the password and the plans of our city are safe with me; never through me

Shall you be overcome.

— Edna St. Vincent Millay

I’ve always been a fan of Peanuts. Linus once said to Charlie Brown, “I’m aware of my tongue. It’s an awful feeling! I can’t put it out of my mind.”

That’s the torture of consciousness in a nutshell, don’t you think?

Sartre & Peanuts: Nathan Radke claims that Charlie Brown is an existentialist.

On the matter of American hypocrisy in demanding other countries give up their nukes. (See this post by Erik on All That Arises.)

Back in the good old days of the cold war, the doctrine of mutually assured destruction (MAD) was said to prevent seemingly sane world leaders from arrogantly shoving the planet over the precarious precipice of annihilation. But that was predicated on the hesitation of men to see their populations obliterated and the world destroyed. With the rise of people like Kim Jung Il, we can’t count on that anymore. Would he start a nuclear war because he’s having a bad hair day? Who knows.

Can you see why a man like Bush, with all the statesmanship of a longhorn steer, has such a fear of WMD? There’s no MAD, only madmen. In the new world, the only tolerable number of nations with WMD is one. Hypocritical, coming from the only nation ever to use nukes on people? Sure. But somehow, sickeningly rational.

So there we were, driving along, my folks and I. We’d just left the nursing home where my Grandma is, and my brother and his family had left for home in the far and frigid north as well. You know it’s always hard when family visits end. It’s sad to say goodbye, and we were driving along in need of something cheerful.

I was watching a wall as we passed it, a light brown block and stucco wall, seven or eight feet high, which separated the road from the backs of a row of homes. Suddenly there he was, his head and shoulders above the wall, his paws resting on it as though it were the most natural thing. Dogs always peer over the tops of eight-foot walls. And he was just looking around casually, his big black head turning side to side, watching the cars. I believe he was a Rottweiler.

He must have been standing on something. And the best thing that came to mind at that moment was … two or three other dogs. Sometimes, you just have to see what’s on the other side of your problems, and it helps to have friends.

If you are student in France and a person of faith, it’s apparently time to eat the cake of secularism or find a pitchfork and take to les rues. [news]

I’ve been learnin’ stuff about html. I took a class once at work, but I darn sure didn’t learn everything. So tonight I’m going to attempt to insert, following this sentence, a photo of my Dad with a rainbow and my pickup, which I have titled My Dad with a Rainbow and My Pickup. [Ahem.]

So what’s up with Riverbend? No new posts in 10 days. I thought about sending an email, but she’s never responded before, and time is … something. Baghdad Burning

I know what you’re thinking. Well, this blog hasnt been updated in longer that than. Actually, I have another blog at http://metaphor.blog-city.com . One of these days, I’m going to decide which one to keep, once and for all. In the mean time, who cares? I’m just whistling in the wind anyway, right?

Tonight I’m listening to a CD called Reverie by Patrick Hebert and Chris Lonsberry. It’s an instrumental work, piano and guitar. It’s complex and emotional, but lively enough to keep my brain working. I recommend it.