Come on out from under the Burqua, and let me slip this $20 in your g-string... loved this article's pot-shots at So-Cal - so-called - tv news, and the quote from a local adult (?) entertainment proprietor about basic human rights and freedoms: Steve Lopez column, 11/26.

Too tired to blog with any real enthusiasm, given the lastest in a series of post-midnight evenings at the office. By 1:30, the mantra "no patience for reason, no time for truth" slowly was capturing what was left of my gray matter, and I was seized with an uncontrollable longing to hum along with the Some Girls album... Sleep deprived some scant, few hours later I awoke to hear that the Olympic Torch relay commenced today with the help of Mohammad Ali: "Birds fly, fish swim, waves pound the sand. I beat people up." (Note: Bonnie Blair seems to be the sinister force behind this latest terrorist alert, as in the foregoing photo she clearly is toting some form of weapons-grade plutonium.)

So if you're down on your luck and you can't harmonize,
Find a girl with faraway eyes
And if you're downright disgusted and life ain't worth a dime,
Get a girl with faraway eyes.

(Will bleary do?)

This is something I wrote for Bob, the Rocket Scientist, whose own poems are powered by a such a weird mix of jet fuel and carnal obsession that I figured he needed a break...

The Threaded Blaze
The moon shines down on trees prolific
Treacherous fate in the pallid limbs lies,
Night long, the rusty slate Pacific
Knits charms 'neath still expectant skies.
At once, an everywhere of gold reflecting
Up the banks of Beltane fire,
Trails ramp the foxglove miles, injecting
trough and leaf with butterscotch spires.
How read these lights by stretch of all the stars
Or mists that warehouse after night became,
How tick these plumes that chalk and dazzle
To nestle hard by heaven's shantied fame?
To noon the night is the endeavor,
Sweet and sometimes cold, yet we must see,
To dine on light left in our way most clever,
Tossed by steel, but baked with fur, and beak, and thee.

Also, in a boldly non-sequitorian transition (from rocket science to bad science?), I must recommend the 2001 Ignobel Prize Awards broadcast. Who knew you could still patent the wheel at this late date?

"Don't spoil it all, I can't recall a time when you were struck without an answer."
-Janis Ian

...Yeah, well, the same can't quite be said for me, but when Locke issues a call to action who am I to shun the challenge? So, it's my blog and welcome to it (I can't be the only one around here with a latent Thurber fetish, can I? see The Bear). As the wise Mr. T(h). observed, better to fall flat on one's face than to lean over too far backward. And yet, as the makers of the Superman costume are quick to point out, the cape does not (necessarily?) enable the user to fly. So I'll aim for the troposhpere, humbled and inspired by those of you streaking by (both meanings intended) above.