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.

Finally, someone has the circumspect audacity to write what thoughtful people have known all along. There is an explanation for President Bush’s unconscionable popularity: “We are on the way to becoming a nation of imbeciles.”

This insight explains a lot more that the Bush conundrum; for example, the survival of so-called reality TV.

I strongly recommend this editorial in today’s Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

It seems President Bush is not so sure he wants to know who leaked the business on that CIA agent. Or maybe he knows and would just as soon keep it in the family.

Misleader.org: President Wavers on Pledge to Help Find Leaker

metaphor.blog-city.com is up and running again after a server upgrade. Let me know what you think, OK?

Back in the fall of 1993, I spent a week with my grandfather, who was in his late 80s. I was engrossed in poetry then, and frequently had a certain young lady on my mind. She was pretty and sweet, and I loved spending time with her. We were just friends. Do you know what I mean?

Thanksgiving was over, and it was just the two of us in the house. Grandma was visiting my folks on the coast. Just me and Papa, the crows, and my thoughts about that girl.

What’s bringing all this to mind after 10 years? Well, last week was the anniversary of my Papa’s death. He held out to 97 years of age. I miss him. Grandma’s not feeling too well at 92. And my friend Kim? Well, I haven’t talked to her in four years, and I don’t know where she went. She was from Lake Arrowhead. Maybe she went home. God have mercy.

THE CROWS

Having breakfast with Papa

as the morning slowly warms

from freezing, thinking of animals.

The coyote cultivates his heart

to sadness, moves alone for food,

dies on the road.

Out in the almond orchards and grapes

from electric wires and trees

a flock of crows is lifted up.

By noon I’ve seen a few

perched in the old mulberry

cut back for winter.

The crows speak of my unspeakable

solitude, and though I struggle

and pray against such thoughts,

I think of your body: your throat,

breasts, delicate hands.

Your hands. I know that a man

must die of such thoughts, or

die of how distant you are.

Like the distance

from this quiet house in a flat town

to the silent encircling hills,

with clouds pretending to be snow.

© 1993 Kyle Kimberlin

from the chapbook Signal Fires

Read more about me on Cartman’s blog: Eric Cartman, South Park, Colorado

I really wish I’d slept in a little later this morning. If I had, I wouldn’t be so sleepy now, right? But the bedroom TV was set to come on at 8am pst on CNN, so I got to wake up gradually to the press conference of President Bush.

There were so many sumblime moments in those roughly 45 minutes that my little GE conveyed the personage of power into my hermitage. But my favorite was this:

QUESTION: “You recently put Condoleezza Rice, your national security adviser, in charge of the management of the administration’s Iraq policy. What has effectively changed since she’s been in charge?

And a second question: Can you promise a year from now that you will have reduced the number of troops in Iraq?”

BUSH: “The second question is a trick question, so I won’t answer it.

The first question was Condoleezza Rice. Her job is to coordinate inter-agency. She’s doing a fine job of coordinating inter-agency. She’s doing what her — I mean, the role of the national security adviser is to not only provide good advice to the president, which she does on a regular basis — I value her judgment and her intelligence — but her job is also to deal inter-agency and to help unstick things that may get stuck. That’s the best way to put it. She’s an unsticker… “

What a hoot. For laughs, this guy has Clinton’s sax beat, hands down. But to me, a trick question is something like, “Are you still beating your wife?” Can anyone explain how the question about the troops was a trick? The Pres needs to hire me as a speechwriter. I have the perfect answer: “I’m not reducing the number of troops, the Ba’athist insurgents are.”

This former Chinese citizen sees a troubling authoritarianism growing in the US. Dissing Dissent

The last twenty jews in Baghdad quietly fade away, outside the myopic scrutiny of western media. Aljazeera.Net – Baghdad Jews: Exodus or extinction?

I was sitting on my parents’ deck this afternoon, drinking a diet coke and hanging out with my dog, and trying to work out some dialog for the end of a chapter. Woolgathering. My Mom appeared in the doorway and hollered at my Dad, in a great redneck drawl, “Pa! Do ya think maybe we raised us a lazy ‘un? He’s still sittin’ out yonder with that old hound dog.”

I thought that was a hoot. Mom, this one’s for you:

procrastination