Author Archives: Kyle Kimberlin

whatever happened to juan valdez?

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I’m not a coffee snob, but I like a good, strong cup. Folgers from Sam’s Club is fine, as long as it’s ready to suit up and get in the game. I can grind beans and do that whole thing too. I’m not completely obsessed like some people. … I just recognize there are differences in quality, even if it doesn’t have to change my day.


When Starbucks came out with their new instant micro-brewed Via brand recently, I did a double eye roll. Isn’t the whole point to get the folks to let you heat the tap water, so you can charge them for that along with the beans? Still, when I received a Starbucks gift card for Christmas I thought I’d give Via a try.

I bought a box about 2 weeks ago and I like it. It has a nice, potent flavor for an instant coffee, And I didn’t mind the price. I was charged $2.95 for a box of 12 servings. Even at home, 25 cents isn’t bad for a decent cuppa joe. I wouldn’t buy it all the time, but now and then. So I stopped in today for another box.

$9.95, the kid said. I really thought he was wrong. It’s 2.95, I tried to tell him. The conversation that followed went something like this.

Bottom line, Via goes for $9.95 for a box of 12 cups. The barista made a mistake the first time. I went ahead and bought it, for the 2nd and last time, because I had the gift card and I was standing at the register, and the alternative would have been embarrassing. 83 cents a cup – at home – is not so good. Not when you can get a big can of Coffee – enough for 300 cups – at Sam’s Club for about 8 bucks.

And this was one of those posts that was a pretty good idea, right up until I started writing it. A little slice of life, self-deprecating humor thing. …Maybe it sat in the pot too long.

dagnabbit!

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I forgot to watch the state of the onion tonight. I was doing other things, left the TV off, and forgot all about it. Now I have to find it online, read it in the paper, or something. It’s like football; if it’s not live, it’s not the same.

I’m sure the speech shares other attributes with contact sport, but let’s not digress.

I blame Yahoo. They used to have a feature in their TV listings that created a reminder in my Yahoo calendar, and I wouldn’t forget things I wanted to watch. Not only did they lose that feature, but they failed to keep Yahoo calendar up to par. So now I use Google’s far superior calendar, and I forget to watch stuff, see?

Did he say anything hopeful? Cheering? Reassuring?

No we can’t, not anymore? We thought we could but we were purblind stupid to a man? … Don’t tell me. If I didn’t watch it, I don’t have to know, right?

It’s

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If you’ve been wondering how your brain works – or not – John Cleese will explain it very quickly.

Just a little something to get you over the hump, if that’s how it goes.

following the black dog

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It is not often as a reader of poetry that I encounter a poem built entirely of pure metaphor; where all pretext and embellishment have been gently sanded away. Here is such a poem, By Dark by W.S. Merwin.

When it is time I follow the black dog
into the darkness that is the mind of day

I tell you, settling into words like those is like taking hold of a banister worn smooth by countless hands. There is no question, we are going up. And he has my full attention and emotional investment in the first dyad.

When it is time for what, other than the following?

Where is the darkness? And why – how – is it the mind of day?

I’ll leave it to you, following your own black dog. Or maybe you’ll chose a blue one.

to the colors

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A couple of tech notes.

As you can see, Metaphor has returned to something like its longstanding template and color scheme. Sort of.

Blogger has been pretty buggy lately, with titles turning into big ugly hyperlinks and stuff. Hopefully, the kids up in Mountain View have gotten a line around that. Though tonight I did have to resort to Internet Explorer because the color palette wasn’t working in Firefox. I know somebody at Blogger is going to spot this post on Technorati and fix that glitch tout de suite.

This post is being composed in Windows Live Writer, a product from the nice people at Microsoft, as have several posts in the recent past. If you’re a blogger, you might like to check that out. A good alternative to writing in Blogger’s minimalist wysiwyg interface, which sometimes feels like a cozy place you’d drop an infant for a nap.

word by word

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I have been watching an interview with Anne Lamott on youtube. It’s good. I hoped something like that might help me shake my monkey mind loose from The Grip, or Writer’s Clog, or whatever is keeping me from moving forward with the chapter I’ve been trying to write. I don’t believe in Writer’s Block, but I believe in these phenomena, and in The Swamp Which Must Be Drained.

The problem is worse than that. I’m trying to write about a guy who is stuck in his life. I should say that his life is stuck in place. Writing about being stuck and unable to manifest positive change in your life, without feeling The Grip of entropy’s centrifugal force, is like writing about depression and trying to stay in a cheerful mood.

I suppose the trick is just to write the next right word, and the one after that. 

So what’s Marty – my protagonist – going to do next? The sumbitch won’t tell me. He’s sitting at the kitchen table. He can’t stay there and hope to inherit the land, or the wind, much less to move the ponderous plot.

Maybe he’ll go back to bed. If he does, I’m landing an airliner on his stupid old house.

pitiful

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I’ve been seeing a really pitiful new form of blog comment spam lately. An anonymous commenter says something about it being good that they’ve found the blog, because it has information they need for a school project.

Why? It’s not a real comment. Has nothing to do with the post before them. They’re just wandering around leaving this meaningless drivel on blogs. Or maybe it’s automated. But still, what’s the point?

Oh, I guess there’s a link. I wouldn’t click it, because it probably needs to something stupid or insane, or utterly demeaning of human existence.

So they think if others believe they’re a student, we’ll follow their link into the void. Huh.

Pitiful idiots. They’re everywhere. How can we help them?