“I simply can’t imagine the world will ever be normal again for us. I do talk about ‘after the war,’ but it’s as if I were talking about a castle in the air, something that can never come true.”

— The Diary of Anne Frank, who would have been 76 years old on June 12, if only …

“What do you believe in?”
“Ha-ha, ho-ho and hee-hee.”

– Sissy and The Chink in Tom Robbins’ “Even Cowgirls Get The Blues”

History is made at night. Character is what you are in the dark.

– Lord John Whorfin

Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana.

– Groucho Marx

Only our concept of time makes it possible for us to speak of the Day of Judgment by that name; in reality it is a summary court in perpetual session.

– Franz Kafka

I don’t have much for you tonight. I’ve been sitting here staring at the screen with a greater than usual sense of futility. It’s not writer’s block, it’s static. Too many notes. Too much there, there. Sensory overload. And not enough reading. So I’m thinking maybe some Hemingway.

I went to church today. There was a really nice turnout for our little parish; it’s really been doing well lately. I should get some photos of it and post them. It’s a beautiful place. Today there were lots of folks with little children, and I didn’t even realize it until we went out for communion. (I serve in the altar, and when we come out from behind the iconostasis for processions during the Liturgy, I’m trying to concentrate and not gape at the people.) There were a lot of little ones, and my point is that they must have been very well behaved. Usually, I can tell where there are restless children in the church.

I hung out with my folks this evening – Mom made a very good dinner – and we watched The Aviator. Lots of rough language, but the acting was excellent. The camera work was fine, and special effects were impressive.

Hope everybody has a good week.

Ain’t but three things in this world that’s worth a solitary dime,
But old dogs and children and watermelon wine…

Old dogs care about you even when you make mistakes;
God bless little children while they’re still too young to hate.

– Tom T. Hall

I’m posting this poem tonight for my friend Joseph, who knows the earth and is sad.

MY FATHER’S BIRDS

The sky holds my father’s attention.
Birds come out of the sky
to his birdbaths and feeders.
He calls them by their common,
friendly names.

After he retired, he strapped
himself into little airplanes of nylon and aluminum,
and went off to see where birds are from.

I was afraid of the sun’s terrible temper,
the hard rolling clouds.
Afraid he would fly off, leave me
here to be a man.
I was afraid that his birds
came from heaven.

© 1999 Kyle Kimberlin

Looks like I’ve got a problem with Bloglines, which supplies my blogroll, and usually works great. After each link it says DEBUG: Id:7666704 Type:0 ….. I tried re-importing the code, then sent them a message. Mean time, the links still work. Some cool stuff there, Maynard.

Update: Looks like it’s fixed. Nice of them to get it fixed over the weekend, huh?

I mean Bite me, Kazaa! You scary piece of crapity crap.

My Limewire p2p wasn’t working tonight; hasn’t been for a while, despite a download of the new version. Won’t connect. Anyway, I decided to download Kazaa, which I’ve used before with nominal success. So I did. And it installed. Next thing I knew, and it wasn’t more than a minute after install, my happy little Dell desktop was completly bugshit. No folders would open. The start menu was frozen. Stayed that way after rebooting, which I had to do by means of the power button on the tower, ‘cuz it wouldn’t shut down.

An hour later, having somehow been able to uninstall both Kazaa Krap and the moldy limewire, and doing a system restore, and a backup of docs to CD, things seem to be normal. But hey, screw downloading tunes. All I wanted was Behind Blue Eyes, which is highly apt to my mood:

When my fist clenches, crack it open
Before I use it and lose my cool
When I smile, tell me some bad news
Before I laugh and act like a fool

I’m writing tonight. Sorry. No time to say hello, goodbye …

Here’s one of my all-time favorite Bible verse to ponder.

Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.
James 1:16-18

…from one of my favorite movies, The Quiet Man.

No patty fingers, if you please. The proprieties at all times. Hold on to your hats.

Hey kids, it’s Pete Beck appreciation day. That one day a year — other than his birthday — when we tell Pete how much we appreciate him, just for being a cool guy. Just for setting up the keg. For playin’ in the band. For not calling the Authorities on my crazyass girlfriend. I know that if I had the energy to cheat gravity and ease some big boxes down from the high shelves of the closet, I could find and post an amusing photo of Pete, circa 1982. But I don’t. So a few lines from the English Beat will have to do.

“Mirror in the bathroom
Recompense
For all my crimes
of self defense.
Cures you whisper
make no sense
Drift gently into
mental illness.”

I thought about the Dead Kennedys, but … well, no. Not even for Pete. I also thought about Journey, just to watch the cat lick it up, but I don’t know you all would get the joke.

So here’s to you, Pete. May the wind be always at your back. Next year, maybe we can get Jerry Falwell to sign a card for ya.

It’s really an awful dilemma. The S.F. Mayor is considering a Pit Bull Ban following the mauling death of a 12-year-old boy. I know there are a lot of people out there who love their pit bulls, consider them loyal and lovable members of the family. The were the most decorated, heroic military dogs in WWII. People who know them say it’s not the breed, it’s the handling. Nothing about the death of Nicholas Faibish seems to bear that out. And lots of people fear the breed’s incredible strength and tenacity. Pit Bulls have certainly killed people they should have been loyal to, like Nicholas.

So I don’t know. I don’t like reactionary, paternalistic laws. But whether there’s a ban or not, I have to ask myself: Would I want a pit bull around my four-year-old nephew? Or my mother? For that matter, would I want to be alone with a PB that I didn’t know, even if the owner said s/he was totally docile? No. I don’t trust them.

I don’t even totally trust my sheltie if my nephew were to run up to her. She might nip; sometimes nature wins out over nurture.

I always like it when a major award goes to an artist working outside the right circles.

CBC Arts: Albanian writer wins new international Booker prize