Roses for Django

Happy Tree Friends

Sometimes your brain works too well.
Happy Tree Friends fixes that for you.

http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=happy+tree+friends&sourceid=ie7&rls=com.microsoft:en-US&oe=utf8&um=1&ie=UTF-8&ei=sunvSugCia6xA8WdweYC&sa=X&oi=video_result_group&ct=title&resnum=10&ved=0CDQQqwQwCQ#

2 legal briefs - GBS 205, Legal Environment of Business

Scored 10/10 on these two briefs for Business Law class.

FEDERAL CROP INS. CORPORATION v. MERRILL BROS
U.S. Supreme Court (1947)

Facts: Merrill Bros entered into an insurance contract with the federally-mandated agency Federal Crop Ins. Corporation. Drought destroyed Merrill Bros entire crop of spring wheat reseeded on winter wheat acreage in 1945. The provisions of the legislative act mandating the FCIC expressly prohibit insurance of spring wheat reseeded on winter wheat acreage in the year 1945. Further, the FCIC accepted Merrill Bros application based on the recommendation of a private agency which did not disclose that any of the acreage was reseeded. Lower trial courts rejected FCIC’s argument that its mandate precluded its payment of loss to Merrill Bros for this crop.

Evidence submitted to the jury in the Supreme Court of Idaho in the appeal showed that Merrill Bros had no knowledge of this Regulation of their insurance, and further evidence was submitted that the acting agent Bonneville County Agricultural Conservation Committee had misled Merrill Bros by giving them cause to believe their crop would, in fact, be insured. Jury found for Merrill Bros and the Idaho Supreme court affirmed the resulting judgment against FCIC.

FCIC appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Issue: Is the federal government liable for the actions or claims of private agencies acting on its behalf, in the same way a private company holds liability for its agents?

Rule: The federal government holds no liability for ignorance of its agents nor its agents’ customers regarding the binding terms of contracts entered into with the federal government through that agency, provided the contracts were entered into in accordance with the provisions of the Act legislating such contract, or unless Congress has expressly legislated such liability.

Reasoning: The appearance in the Federal Register of the regulation precluding coverage of Merrill Bros crop serves as legal notice of its binding effect as provided by Congress. It is the responsibility of those entering into contracts with the federal government to accurately ascertain the authority and the claims of any agent acting on behalf of the federal government. The federal government and its duly mandated agencies are not in any way liable for errors and omissions made by private companies acting as their agents until Congress has provided for such liability by legislative act. The court determines that FCIC is not liable for loss in this case, regardless of hardship to Merrill Bros or ignorance on their part of federal regulation.



LA CHANCE v. ERICKSON
U.S. Supreme Court (1998)

Facts: Erickson, et. al. were government employees who made false statements to agency investigators regarding misconduct with which they were charged. They were subject to additional adverse actions based on their making these false statements. Both the Merit Systems Protection Board and the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals judged that the employees could not be additionally sanctioned for these false statements beyond the adverse actions already taken for their misconduct. The Court of Appeals principally cited the Fifth Amendment and several cases they considered precedent in their decision.

Issue: Does the Fifth Amendment’s Due Process Clause preclude a federal agency from sanctioning employees for making false statements during agency investigations of employee misconduct?

Rule: Per Title 5 U.S.C. § 7513(a), a federal agency may take adverse action against a federal employee for making false statements in response to an underlying charge of misconduct, and this Title is consistent with the Fifth Amendment.

Reasoning: Three Reasons support this rule. First, the rule is expressly given in the United States Code. Second, the presence or absence of an oath has no bearing on due process inquiries or federal agency investigations. The Court of Appeals’ reasoning that it is acceptable to make false statements during an agency investigation when not under oath are deemed frivolous. Third, the concept of due process does not include the right to make false statements. Rather, it is intended to provide a meaningful opportunity to be heard. Furthermore, the Fifth Amendment provides the employee in question the choice to simply not answer. The employee may remain silent, but making false statements to a federal agency is not constitutionally nor legally protected. This Court reverses the Court of Appeals’ decision and decides in favor of La Chance.

Surgical Sequence & Fun House

They remove the skin from your right forearm in surgery, and then put it back on. They don't sew it back, just put it there in the right place.

They say not to worry about it. Right. It feels like the pieces of skin are ready to separate and detach every time you move. "Don't worry about it," they tell you.

Finally, someone in a white coat comes to put a layer of brown, stretchy adhesive on your hand. They don't coat the whole arm, but at least it feels a little better.

The next night you're at the fun house.

The fun house is named after the Stooges album. More rooms than you can count pile into the air, becoming tree houses at the very top. It's a fun place to hang out, the fun house - so much so that you've got a room there.

In the room across the hallway, a half dozen or so people in various stages of undress share one king size bed. The door is slightly opened, the sun shines into the room. Guys and girls nap the mid-morning away. You see an old high school friend has joined their cuddle party.

Your lover joins you in your room. She's beautiful. So sad and so beautiful at the same time.

Concert Sequence

The two of you make love in the middle of the afternoon. You go for a drive beside the bay. Water and skyscrapers reflect the sun and sky. It's a beautiful day. She pretends the things you say don't hurt her.

Or maybe they just don't. You two drive together a lot lately. Just a couple of nights ago, she was in the driver's seat.

Derek Trucks plays at this club tonight. He sounds great. How does he get all that sound and speed with a slide? Hundreds of people fill long rows of folding chairs on the dancefloor and on bleachers.

You take out the Little Martin and play along. Derek has a three chord jam going with the band, three major chords hitting Bb, C, and D. It's fun, playing along with Derek. You pay attention now to remember the chords when you wake up.

The little kid in front of you turns around to tell you, "A security guard is coming this way." Kid makes it sound like you are busted for the acoustic jam, right there.

But you look up, and a lot of people are heading for the emergency exit. Somebody might have tripped a silent fire alarm? Security staff helps everyone move out calmly, quietly.

You could say Derek Trucks was on fire tonight.

Columbus Day book review: Conquest of America

Tzvetan Todorov's brilliant examination of the Spanish conquest of Mexico begins with a chapter on Columbus. Aside from revealing deep historical detail, Todorov takes the reader inside the heads of key figures in the drama. He concerns himself not just with external, factual details but also the internal details of the men and women involved: their ethics, their perceptions, and their cultural values.

Todorov's final chapter should perhaps come first, as he makes his ethical preferences very clear in that chapter. He states in plain terms the decisions he made in framing the historical events, of why he dwells so deeply on philosophy, and what we can learn from the situation.

Should you read this engaging and enlightening text, read Todorov's afterword first to get the proper frame of reference. Then, have a dictionary close at hand. Dictionary.com will get you through words like typology, alterity, praxiological, & axiological. Be prepared to apply critical thinking, as opposed to simply following a narrative.

The rewards are a deeper understanding of history, of yourself, of your culture, and much more. The book begs to be re-read. Much of what Todorov says merits lengthy, repeated consideration. But he works on this level constantly, and the impact, the totality, of what he says takes some time to fully sink in.


I got mine at the Phoenix Public Library, whose PhxLib.org makes finding and requesting books a snap.

It's worth buying so you can read it a few times and use it as a reference:
Buy on Amazon

Inglorious Basterds

You find out it's got Nazis in it and you almost don't want to see it.

But wait. We've seen Taratino do Kung Fu. We've seen Taratino do Blaxploitation. We've seen Taratino do Noir Crime. We've see him do B-Movie Horror.

What can he do with the Nazis?

Give them what's coming to them, apparently. A nice couple in their 50's walks out of the movie theater after they scalp the first dude. Poor lady. Well - what did she think she was coming to see? Was this her first Tarantino flick? She missed Kurt Russell and the Stunt Girls in Death Proof? She missed the Crazy 88's vs. the Bride in Kill Bill? She doesn't remember the Gimp?

Lady, people are going to get f'ed up in this flick. It was probably good you left before the....

But not to give it away. What really makes this film tick isn't the liberty it takes with history. If that threw you, check out the opening title: "Once upon a time... in Nazi-occupied France" Tarantino tells you at the beginning it's a fairy tale.

The scenes - presented as Chapters - play like a collection of the greatest war movie scenes ever. Tarantino, with an encyclopedic knowledge of seemingly endless breadth, never sets out to give us a series of jolting "quickies." He lingers. He takes his time. He decompresses the scene in the basement like the Director's cut of Das Boot decompresses the drama of the submarine crew. Right around the time you might be thinking of Das Boot (German for 'The Boat'), up walks the Major with a glass boot full of beer. Doom and tension pervade the scene in contrast to the celebration for a new father in progress. You know how it's going to end way before you see it in the Scotsman's eyes that he knows, too.

You do know how the movie ends. You can tell the intent by the third chapter. What you don't know is who is going to survive and who isn't - who is going to win and who is going to lose - and how they will achieve it. Tarantino throws in enough moving pieces to keep the whole machinery alive and interesting. Some you'll believe could be possible, and some you won't believe at all. But - lighten up. It's just a fairy tale.

The Secret of Human Flight

Douglas Adams has a character reveal the trick to flying in So Long and Thanks For all the Fish: Throw yourself at the ground, and miss.

You think about what Adams said. You start practicing it. Soon you can fly at will. This is it! This time will be different. You know you are dreaming but you go over this secret again and again, practicing the technique until it is at your disposal, ensuring you will remember when you wake up.

Within in seconds of waking, you've forgotten the technique, and spend the rest of the day walking like anyone else. Sometimes resignation and accepting the inevitable are indistinguishable.

Cartwheels

On the way to the abandoned building in the middle of the night, she starts doing cartwheels in the grass.

She’s the most amazingly beautiful lively vibrant fascinating engaging captivating thing ever. Witness this pivotal moment here, around which your entire life revolves like a wheel from adolescence until the end, defining everything that comes before and after.

This isn’t a story you can tell your friends. No narrative shines any light upon the characters or brings them to life. It’s an impressionistic painting. Fuck the thousand words and give me the picture, a photograph of a mosaic in which every tile reflects the light from every other tile.

When you die, that mental picture and all the music and memories and feelings connected to it will vanish into thin air: one moment of incredible beauty that no one else in the universe has or has ever had or will ever have because the only place it lives is inside your neural network. When those cells run out of electricity, they are going to die, and that memory will vanish like it was never here.

This is why guys paint pictures of women and make sculptures of women: because to know that defining moment will just vanish is almost too painful to bear. That moment should live on somewhere, like a diamond, perfect, never decaying, never eroding, outlasting the planets in their orbit, outlasting humanity, outlasting the ability of anyone or anything to even access it and appreciate it, spinning its own self-contained universe of wonder, a fractal generating an endless repetition and mathematical variation of itself over and over again, reflecting itself on all of its surfaces and containing the generative power of everything within itself.

That’s why people create art. Anything else isn’t art; it’s just some nice bullshit to look at. That’s what guys are talking about when they talk about their muses. That’s what drives them to create objects of beauty that will outlast their mortal lives: an obsession, a denial of the limitations of mortality, an irrational belief that something living only between your ears should somehow outlive you.

Campus Sequence

You and your buddy, as played by Ben Affleck, uncover a conspiracy. Walking down white hallways with gray marble tile floors, you discuss your options. The blurry background of a photograph provides a clue: the lockers.

You and Ben find the lockers, opening all of them, not exactly sure what you are looking for. Ben figures it out. One locker has a small magnet on the inside door, a round black magnet encased in some protective layer, a waxy substance like you might expect to find on a circuit board component. He's certain this is what you need. Although you don't discuss the details, your mind races to fill in an explanation for the magnet. Probably, you think, it contains encrypted data that will bring this whole conspiracy down.

The afternoon light is fading to dusk. You head back down the hallway where Ben dashes up a flight of stairs and disappears. You try to follow him. The stairs are white, a narrow spiral leading to a small hole in the ceiling. How did he get through there? You try to squeeze through without falling off the tiny stairs or losing the magnet. The narrow opening pins your arms to your side.

On the other side of the hole, you emerge slowly and uncomfortably through the floor of a second level. The room is a cross between a library and the kind of control room you'd expect to see in a science fiction movie, a command and information center lit by dozens of screens and thousands of tiny lights. Three men sit at desks in a central station, watching you conspicuously emerge from the floor. You make jokes about hoping you don't hurt yourself, trying to look like a regular guy having a problem instead of someone suspicious. They don't seem happy but they make no move to stop you.

But you and Ben are discovered. You are in danger. The two of you go back to the lower hallway as the twilight fades further into night. Soldiers are coming. You run down the hallway and find a side door that branches off in two directions. Ben takes the left and disappears into darkness. You take the right and end up in some kind of bathroom or mop room - it's hard to tell in the dark grey light. Everything is the same dark grey color.

After a short time of silence, you can't resist the urge to peek out and see if the coast is clear. Slowly you advance, out of the room, moving towards the hallway, hesitantly. Something or someone slams into you. You can't see who it is, but it scares the hell out of you. It's the last thing you remember.

You wake up briefly and your chief questions are: who was it, and what happened next? Going back to sleep, you try to resume the dream, only to find out that it was an episode, like a TV show, that centered around the campus-like setting. The next episode begins, picking up in a different place, with a different story, leaving the mystery unsolved.

early memories - part 5

Even as an adult, I still loving bathing outdoors. Perhaps, seeing this pic, you can blame Grampop for getting me on this kick. I also seem to have inherited his preference for wearing nothing but a pair of black shorts all summer long!

This little back porch is unfamiliar to me. By the time my memories start to really form, this area has been replaced by a screened-in patio where my sister and I used to sleep on OH summer nights when the weather was nice, and where we'd have lunches and dinners with Grammy & Grampop.

In the backyard Grammy had a small stone bird bath. I guess I wasn't the only one who liked a bath in the yard! The bird bath was always planted with some flowers and mint. I remember Grampop picked some mint and told me I could eat it. He was quite the jokester and I didn't believe him at first. But heck, I tried it anyway. It was good! After that I would enjoy picking some fresh mint every now and then and having a taste.

Grampop always liked a good joke. He loved a hearty laugh. I remember he and Dad would get to telling stories and sometimes he'd laugh so hard he'd cry at the dinner table. That sense of humor was passed on to me, too.

I'm not sure what line of work Grampop was in when this picture was taken. Before he became the neighborhood mailman, which is what I remember most clearly, he worked at NCR - National Cash Register. Remember them? I doubt it. But in 1974, when I was 1 year old, they commercialized the first bar code scanners. They also announced the first fully transistorized business computer in 1957, and one of their guys, John Lanning, invented the Liquid Crystal Display (LCD) in 1968.

If I recall my family history correctly, Grampop worked with Grampa at NCR before my Mom & Dad started dating in high school. That's how it was in small town America in the 1960's, regardless of what you might have seen on all the goofy documentaries about the decade. Xenia, OH never had a counter-culture movement or whatever the hippies remember of the 1960's. It was just your basic slice of small-town Americana. It still is! I would go out of my mind with boredom if I had to live there today, but in the summers of my childhood it was a cool place to hang out.

Grampop always seemed to be well known in the community not only because he delivered the mail but because of his involvement in the church. He was an honest, hard-working man who treated people - his friends, his family, his wife, and his community - with kindness and respect.

In later years, he set up a wood shop in the basement where Monica and I used to play, creating a gorgeous series of shadow boxes and jewelry boxes for family members. I recall that when a local church closed its doors, he scored a bunch of the pews. They were made of solid oak, and he put them to good use in his wood shop.

I also remember that he made his own wine in the basement. He grew grapes in the backyard and had jars of wine fermenting in the basement. He was never a big drinker though. I hardly ever saw him drink, and never saw him drunk. He just seemed to enjoy the process.

Grampop would tell us stories from his childhood every now and then, and it really put things in perspective for me. He was one of many children, though I don't recall meeting them except at his brother's funeral with Dad in my teens. Grampop was a kid during the Great Depression of the 1930's. They did not have indoor plumbing, which seemed like a whole other universe to a child of the 1970's. It is no wonder that his quaint and comfortable house in the little town of Xenia was such a comfort to him after a childhood of poverty and hard times. When people complain to me these days about how hard they have it or whatever little thing they are freaking out about, I recall my grandfather and his childhood, and wonder if we really have any right to complain - or even worry.

Grandparents are like history books. Ours watched nearly the entire 20th century unfold in all its chaotic, rapidly changing glory.

Hotel Sequence

Someone stole the steak. That wasn’t right. First, it arrived in glistening plastic wrap with a plate full of food and then? Vanished.

Seems par for the course for this crappy hotel room again. The cubby hole in the vaulted wall, a double desk crammed into the space. After the bed, there isn’t much left over. You have to laugh. The hotel, quaintly picturesque from the outside, reveals this crappy old room again. But it’s not a totally bad room. You can live with it for a little bit.

Check this out. You’ve got a roommate. Maybe he stole the steak. Maybe it was Liz, at the foot of the stairs, discussing computers enthusiastically. But, no - she seemed genuinely interested, and the entire party in the ballroom downstairs was quite supportive.

Then you see her picture. This girl you knew… when? It was the last time you were here. You’d forgotten it, like a dream. But it comes back to you, like a dream. You said good bye to her on the balcony of the hotel. You loved her then, and you love dreaming her memory now from this photo.

You couldn’t help but leave and it was okay. It had something to do with the atomic bomb you worked on, living in this coastal paradise, enjoying the weather, building the bomb with the professor and the genius. Times were simpler than, in the days of the bomb.

But that was years ago. Back when you and Joe Pesci stopped in the street to discuss his newspaper – a touching moment. Or the time you and Dave joked about the Presidio but you were nowhere near. And the car disappeared, but you carried on piggyback. Those were good times.

This hotel. It’s different from the house. The house has hidden levels, too. Places you have trouble finding again. You find a door to it from somewhere else every now and then, a place revealing itself connected to a distant room in the house. Sometimes you only realize later that two unrelated settings are connected by doorways to the house.

Sometimes you find yourself in a room in the house for which you find no door. You know you’re in the house, but not how the room connects to anything else. The door in the fire room leads downstairs through a claustrophobic’s nightmare, but the walls don’t close in. They lead to the basement. It’s hidden, but you can get there more than once. It’s just the strange location, the out of the way spot, the featureless hallway with the closet door that masks the fire room.

Writing Assignment - Persuasive paper

Here's my final assignment in Composition 101. Interestingly, the instructor provided a list of forbidden topics - most of which I would have loved to tackle. It was tempting to submit a revised "Let the Robots Do It." But I chose this rather safe topic, knowing that she's a cat lover. I was tempted to take the negative side of the argument - it's a plot to chip everyone, man!!! - but government conspiracies were on the forbidden topic list. Minimum 1 citation in MLA format; minimum 700 words.

Microchips Reunite Pets and Owners Safely, Conveniently, & Affordably

A New York City couple lost their dog Sadie for weeks. The dog travelled 63 miles away where it was found and kept tied up. Hamilton Township Animal Control staff, responding to a concerned call, scanned Sadie for a microchip. Sadie’s owners’ contact came up in the national database, and they soon reunited with Sadie. Like millions of pet owners in America, they believe “that this story would have probably not had the happy ending it did if it were not for this invaluable service” (Sadie Thanks HomeAgain). Microchipping reunites pets with pet owners when they need each other most: when a pet gets lost. A convenient neighborhood clinic now offers a safe, affordable way to microchip pets, including a 24-hour hotline and pet insurance to cover any medical emergencies for lost pets.

Pet owners want to know how the device becomes implanted, and whether or not it causes safety concerns. Many people fear the procedure is surgical. However, the procedure at the neighborhood clinic is based on “injection, not incision” (Walsh), and only stresses a pet as little as any routine vaccination. The small size of the microchip further reduces owners’ fears about discomfort to their animals. The microchip for pets is only about 12mm wide – the size of a grain of rice. This innocuous device causes no irritation or discomfort to pets. Furthermore, the neighborhood clinic uses a successful method proven first in clinical trials and, eventually, in neighborhoods all across America. The microchip is considered so safe that in the United States alone “more than 8 million pets have had microchips implanted, resulting in more than 8,000 pets being returned to their families each week” (Proulx 1). The neighborhood clinic also holds accreditation with the AAHA, The Standard of Veterinary Excellence.

Pets are treated well while they are at the clinic, but they feel safest at home. Will it be convenient for owners to drop off and pick up their pet? The good news is that microchipping a pet takes only a few hours, and pets need no medical attention – just some good rest and time with the family. Neither do pets need any special preparation for the procedure due to its non-surgical nature. The simple, non-invasive process passes very quickly. Pet owners who have had their pets microchipped report that they “picked up [their] dog about 2 hours later” (Hidder). Both local Humane Society branches and private clinics offer the service, making it easy to obtain in almost any city. Microchipping at a neighborhood clinic makes the process very convenient for both pets and their owners.

While it may seem that such a beneficial process could only come at great expense, it is actually quite affordable on any budget. The neighborhood clinic normally charges $65.00 which “includes $14.99 to register with the service [HomeAgain] and activate your membership” (Walsh). That $14.99 annual fee keeps owners registered in HomeAgain’s national database for a year, a database easily renewed with current contact information by phone or online, and also includes lost pet insurance. HomeAgain provides members with a 24-hour hotline for lost pet or immediate pet health emergencies. This month, the neighborhood clinic offers 50% discounts on microchipping pets. Additionally, new clients to the neighborhood clinic receive 50% off coupons for complete medical exams. Pet owners should definitely take advantage of this affordable opportunity to insure their pets’ health and future safety now.

While the clinic believes the procedure and the microchip itself present little to no risk, one study implies otherwise. This single study, conducted by Keith Johnson in 1996 at the Dow Chemical Co. in Midland, MI, led the research team to believe that the transponders in RFID (radio frequency identification device) microchips induced malignant tumors in some lab mice and rats. Despite these troubling findings, the FDA approves the devices for implantation in human beings. Little to no evidence exists to back up this single study. “In fact,” says Scott Silverman, VeriChip Corp.’s chairman and CEO, “for more than 15 years we have used our encapsulated glass transponders with FDA approved anti-migration caps and received no complaints regarding malignant tumors caused by our product” (Lewan). The FDA has never recanted its endorsement of the microchip.

In the final analysis, microchipping a pet at the neighborhood clinic this month just makes sense for a pet’s health and safety. The procedure presents minimal health and safety concerns and enjoys widespread public acceptance. The conveniently-located neighborhood clinic provides inexpensive microchipping and partners with a national service to provide discounted insurance and registration. Pets are treated well and home soon. Most importantly, pet owners can rest assured that if their pet ever gets lost, they have a far greater chance of reuniting.


Works Cited

Hidder, Joseph, dog owner. Telephone interview. 25 Oct. 2009.

Lewan, Todd. “Chip Implants Linked to Animal Tumors.” Washington Post. 8 Sep. 2007.

Proulx, Dr. Jeffrey. “Your pet's safe return may depend on what type of microchip he has.” Oakland Tribune. 22 May 2004

“Sadie Thanks Home Again.” Home Again > Reunion Stories. 20 Sep. 2009.

Walsh, Jennifer, administrative staff, East Maryland Animal Hospital. Telephone interview. 25 Oct. 2009.

Three Poems

1. Steam Train Saxophone

Squawking, squealing
Soaring, surging, he rides four chords
All the way to the end of the world and back

In a haze of bass, beer, and blues, it feels a lot like
Fucking, and dying, and being born for the very first time
Without stopping to think or question

“Fascination without rationalization,” he likes to say
Holding the iron horse to his mouth
And becoming its god


2. 600 Miles

From 600 miles away I catch
A crystal-clear breath of
Ann Arbor Indian Summer
Icicle colors rushing through my blood

Down South U at sunset
The air as fresh as being born
The sky catching fire
On the wick of the Sun


3. Autumn Sister

Autumn Sister, I know the color of your inner burning flame.
I have looked into your heart with all my senses.

Yours was the hand encircling my head when I was born,
Guarding me from harm through that world into this.

Seeing your face at that moment,
I could tell the place where it stopped and my own began.

Your fingerprints have been recorded more carefully than ink.
Leaves in piles on the ground.

The scent of leaves borne on the wind,
Swirling in chaos before they ever settle.

Burning wood. The smell of smoke.
The color of your spirit.

Autumn Sister.
Midwife.
Moon Sister.
Love.

Three Views

1. Klamath Overlook

Who says the ground is silent?
Ask the ones who live inside her to tell us what they hear.
Fire elicits song, but the song, once sung, will fall to earth
Joining the cells of every story ever told.

Who says the ground is silent?
She holds it all inside her, nothing ever lost.
Each life is her tongue,
Every stone, her syllable.

2. I-70 Sunset

Running west forces the sun back into the sky
Ascending backwards upon its arc
A cracked egg, fluorescent
Dripping into the bowl of god’s breath

Liquid movie, time reverses
The sky catches fire on the wick of the sun
If we all hold hands and run
We force the sun back into the sky


3. Mississippi River from an Airplane

O timeless rapture of the Mississippi,
With what gleaming eyes would
Twain have witnessed thee from on high!

You are our Ganges, blessing us with your mercy,
Though bloated with the bodies of the dead,
Having confessed their frailty to the well-spring of the divine.

Below, the streets are etched into the forest-land
Like the tunnels of insects
Revealed beneath the peeling away of bark.

Leisurely hurtling towards Atlanta,
Gracing the tops of clouds,
At last we break the cover, ascending.

Three Smokes

1. Weave

Molding metal into form,
In her homemade dress. She says,
“You can take life as it’s given to you,
Or you can make it your own.”

You touch her fabric.
“A horizontal and a vertical,
And they make a diagonal.
Think about it.”

You think about it, smoking her cigarettes.
Curled up on the floor,
Wrapped in her fabrics,
You think about it.


2. Billiards

Motion, momentum
Angles and perspective
Lounging in a lazy reefer haze
The pendulum swing of the arm, a dance
Drawing smoke through the fluid, succulent air

Balls clatter clack in nebulous ballet, atomic
Nucleonic, bounce, bumper, break
One long shot across a velvet plain
Through clouds without rain
Through a pool without water
In a dream without sleep

3. Wood

At sunset, John piles birch bark on planks of wood,
Sets the bark on fire, and launches them onto the lake.
From the shore it seems a section of the water catches ablaze.

Seven handfuls of black and orange lizards
The last shed scales of the borealis fallen to earth
Wood consuming wood with yellow tongues

In the morning John's fiery ships are nowhere to be seen.
His hand reaches into the center of the mound.
The coals are cold, their scales now black and grey.

No longer the warm belly he had shaped the night before
By pinching the skin of the beach together
Until it enclosed the burning circle of coals.

At the river the wood grows tongues of green instead.
The water and the forest eating the forest, turning it into forest,
Cascading carpets of green and green and green.
It's a pity we have only one word to describe all these colors.

Three Chords

December, 1996. Mississippi.

The nice part about your train catching fire in the middle of the night: you get free breakfast the next morning. At 3 a.m., a gathering of leaves underneath Amtrak #59, the famous “City of New Orleans,” bursts into flames. Seven hours out of Chicago, sleepy passengers flee to the lounge car as one watchful fellow calls out, “Wake up, y’all, somethin’ on this muthafucka’s on FIRE!”

You find an abandoned box of m&m’s and enjoy a late night snack, your feet propped up on the little beverage counter below the windows. Lights from the fire trucks race around the ceiling until soon everyone returns to the coach car. All they say about the incident the next day is “Would you like bacon or sausage with your eggs and hash browns, folks?” Free orange juice makes the whole trouble worthwhile.

Your belly is full and you’ve got two or three hours to kill before your stop in Jackson. The Mississippi lowlands speed backwards in the windows, completely enchanting, like a pen pal you fell madly in love with and now meet for the first time. She stretches out beside your train and bats her autumn brown eyes. You take your guitar from the overhead luggage rack and play for a while. The hoof beats of the iron horse make for one hell of a rhythm section as you trance out on a crazy little riff in E, running it through the changes in a lazy dream.

Suddenly, you feel a hand on your shoulder. It belongs to a voice that says, “You PLAY that thing, boy, you get ON it!” She wears a grandmotherly smile and wants to know if you know that one “that goes like this.” She starts singing and you, with a lucky guess on the correct key, pound out three chords for her. “Put somethin’ on the bar besides your elbow / Somethin’ like a five dollar bill / Put somethin’ on the bar besides your elbow / We can’t ring up your elbow on the bill.” The two of you know a few tunes in common, running through a bunch of sing-along Baptist choruses together.

Just then, the door of the lounge car opens up and a stream of kids pours in. Today is their lucky day: a field trip on Amtrak’s City of New Orleans. Your singer starts clapping her hands and singing the choruses all over, what you might call “testifyin’,” filling the car with smiling faces and laughter. Some kids know the songs and sing along, and some just clap in time. The two of you play for them until the next city, where they lovingly applaud before disembarking to meet their school bus. As Mississippi races past the train and into your memory, their open-hearted joy in making music together, spontaneously, seems to linger in the air. Three chords have rarely been so rewarding to play.

Three Animals

1. The Bird

You last heard the bird as she slept beside you, the song calling to you where your bodies lay entwined.

"Where are you going?" she asked, your movements tracing shadows in the diaries of her dreams.

"The bird," you told her. "I have to hear it." You got down on your knees and put your head out the open window, listening to hear the song. The moon was full that autumn night, and the crickets took choruses in the overgrown yard.

2. The Fish

The salmon arrives in the kitchen already gutted, one smooth slit down its belly. To prepare it, you first remove the head by making a small cut with the knife just behind the tiny fins near the head and use a little force to get it through the top of the spine. With the head removed, you slide the knife into the flesh right above the freshly exposed backbone and angle it downward. As you draw it from right to left, the blade crackles along the spine. With the fish cut in half, you take a hold of it with your hand wrapped in a towel (this cut can be slightly dangerous,) and slip the knife up under the backbone, angling the knife upwards this time and making that crackling noise again until the backbone is removed.

The removal of the skin is your favorite part: the smoothness of pulling the fish towards you by the tail as the knife remains still, the blade pointing away from you and the meat just sliding right off the skin. Small scales, still sticky, so recently alive, remain on your hands even after you wash, sometimes for several days, strangely familiar, like a second skin.

3. The Snake

Her girlfriend always liked to point out that Pythian Castle on H Street used to be a whorehouse. The second-story apartment in Pythian Castle, now empty of whores above the quaint shops and hair salon, boasted a huge bay window. In one direction you could watch the sun set over the bay and the Samoa Spit. In the other direction, to your left, you could see hills covered in redwood pines and low-lying fog. It didn’t hurt that every babe in town passed by that corner. During rush hour, you would lovingly, drunkenly laugh at the fact that the worst it ever got was three cars at a stop sign. After the mechanized, urbanized, freeway hell of San Diego for eighteen months, it was the most beautiful window in the world.

But nothing lasts forever – not even glorious views. When the lease was up, she wanted to move. She stayed with friends for a while. You had a job and figured you’d rough it in your truck for 3 weeks until the new place opened up. Nights, you cruised up to Trinidad with a bottle of Jack Daniels and a bottle of Coke, getting drunk under the full moon, playing your guitar as loud as you wanted under the stars, with weather just warm enough that when you’d had enough you could curl up under a blanket in the front seat, pull your leather hat over your eyes, and sleep as long as you wanted.

One afternoon, you were on the beach, lying in the sand, taking in the oncoming sunset. The truck was parked on the cliffs high above. Suddenly, you got an inexplicable chill and decided to leave. On the way to the trail leading back to the truck, you came across a dead snake. It lay there dead, but nothing had eaten it. It didn’t make sense. Birds hadn’t touched it. Bugs didn’t crawl on it. It lay there stupidly, senselessly, uselessly destroyed. You thought for a minute that if you were superstitious, you might read this as an omen of impending doom. Then you thought, fuck it - if you go around thinking like that, you’ll go nuts.

At the top of the trail, on the cliffs overlooking the beach, you found your truck’s window smashed out completely, lying in ghetto diamonds all over the ground. You had little of value in there: blankets, pillows, some cassette tapes, an empty bottle, your overnight bag. The county cops told you that someone had been doing it all night: some punk kids probably, playing a game of smash-and-grab. That’s where you go down all the beaches in sequence, smashing windows and grabbing something easily, quickly reached, only to toss it away carelessly later - dumb game. These particular bastards took only your overnight bag. It might seem a little thing, like a small and insignificant snake, but everything you had for grooming & hygiene for work, play, and getting laid was in there. The toiletries were never recovered: the scissors, the razors, the soap, the lotion, the condoms, the silicone lubricants. The senseless pointless destruction of it all in a perfectly beautiful place of peace. In your heart, you swore slow and torturous death to the bastards that stole your sex lube.

The Ballad of Stinky McDinkle

My first Composition assignment this semester was an expository essay on an act of kindness we performed for someone else that had an impact on our lives. OK think real hard... What nice things have I done? And we had to list 25 of them for the pre-writing! So I picked taking care of Gidget the wonder dog last year. Although I preferred the rough draft, I had to condense it greatly to fall within the limited word count.

When we treat others kindly, they feel their humanity matters. Our actions create a ripple of kindness that spreads throughout the social fabric. Acts of kindness towards others come full circle as blessings to you.

Last winter, Kristian travelled for three months. He asked me to check on his dog Gidget and occasionally take her to my home office for company. Despite my antipathy for dogs and imagining cleaning her hair off my couch, I accepted.

I found her on his bed surrounded by vomit. She stank so badly that I named her Stinky McDinkle. I took her to my place not occasionally, but permanently. I brushed her teeth often and she got a trim. She told me she had a problem by pooping on my carpet. Hours of research later, I learned all about anal glands. I put her on a diet. She sat in my lap as I fed her balls of beef and rice in fiber supplement. After a few weeks of care, Gidget looked so good that we even made the scene with the girls at the bookstore.

What does this act have to do with blessings to me? When I was young, my dog got hit by a truck. My family was poor. When the splint came off her broken leg, my father put her down with a rifle. A little piece of me broke that day. As I cared for Gidget, I felt compassion for her that brought those memories back. This time, they simply didn’t hurt.

Taking more care of Kristian’s dog than he would have ever asked of me returned a blessing of healing to me. This act of kindness came around full circle to me in a way I never expected.

Five Dreams

1. Crime Scene

Chad takes you to Tim’s house. You don’t know Tim but Chad says he’s going to kill him. The house is empty on the first floor. In the kitchen, you watch as Chad loads a rifle and walks up the stairs to Tim’s room.

When he comes back, you both leave the house and go for a long journey through rivers and forests. The landscape is unknown but familiar. Have you been here before? You find two vehicles and take them separately to Tim’s house again. Why does Chad think this is a good idea?

You get there first and busy yourself wiping down the entire kitchen to erase any fingerprints. You know that when the cops find Tim’s body, they will be looking for evidence. Wiping the countertops. Wiping the cupboards.

Tim’s family comes home and finds you cleaning. His mother, perhaps, and his grandmother. You calmly introduce yourself as a friend of Chad’s who is, you say, on his way to visit their son. “What’s your son’s name?” you ask, as if you don’t know.

“Tim,” says the lady.

“Right! Tim.” You talk to them for a little while, all the while growing increasingly concerned that you will be the prime suspect when they find Tim’s dead body upstairs. But they never go up the stairs. Finally, Chad shows up acting like nothing happened, and you leave.

Your painting van is outside but Chad has installed a sophisticated surveillance system. You can see inside the house and monitor all the activity. You can even see into the basement. You can see everything in the house. It is winter.

2. Joy Ride

You stand up in your car to take a shower as it races down the highway. You feel total confidence in your car’s alignment, making only minor corrections to maintain your lane as you bathe. Other drivers turn to stare, watching you bathe through the walls of your car.

A long curve looms on the horizon, so you put both hands on the wheel. Cop cars and lights create a confusing flow of traffic. Off to the side, people shoot a movie. Past them, you turn left - right into oncoming traffic! Did you take the wrong turn? Are you going the wrong way? You can’t be. You can clearly read the signs. Maybe it wasn’t a wrong turn, but you are certainly going against the flow of traffic! You see an exit on the right.

It’s all under control. Don’t be nervous about the cops. You rocket off the exit ramp, unable to hold the turn, and fly off the road, through the air, as your car turns into a rubber boogie board. You hit the rocks and pavement on your belly on the boogie board. Escaping injury, you start ground surfing. It’s the cutting edge of a whole new sport! It’s wildly fun!

Up and down, all around, circling the buildings and parking lots, performing wild stunts, you catch the attention of onlookers. You zoom off the pavement into suburban yards, coming to rest on someone’s lawn. Eye level with the grass, you find yourself staring at a kid’s ID standing up between the blades. Is the kid dead? Is this his lawn? Did his parents put this here as a memorial?

3. Day Job

You have a ground level-apartment and a dog to take care of. It seems like too much to handle, this dog, and you don’t want to do it. Then you remember you took care of her before, and everything is ok. Your girlfriend comes over. You have two beds. The second one is too small, so you put both of the beds together: just right.

You go and get a job. Shortly, you get a call from one of the guys at work. He has season tickets for the Cardinals and wants you to take them off his hands. The two of you have a great chat, as you tell about this new job. You are laughing at how easy it is, and how it’s totally cool to talk right now… and the phone is ripped out of your hands.

You are fired on the spot. “You are taking a personal call and telling them how dead it is right now!” they say. But there is something they are not telling you. You suspect that are being fired for daring to enjoy yourself and have fun. You suspect you are being fired for having no fear of being fired. The manager pulls a bottle of red liquid out of your desk. Are they really firing you for having booze at work? It’s not even booze. It’s the red mix for margaritas. But they won’t listen.

You decide to go to their other office, a bar/restaurant in Tempe. Standing around in your bathrobe, you chat with two of the waitresses there. They tell you that you have dried semen on the back of your robe. You say, “So what?” and you all laugh about it.

Then you find the guys in charge, the guys behind your getting fired. They give you a ration of bullshit. But one of them turns out to be a girl you went to school with. You put your arm around her and call her your old school chum. You used to have a massive crush on her.

The two of you go outside to sit. She says, “Now they won’t have to call the cops to get you to leave. And, you know, I really wanted to talk to you about something.” She begins to bare her soul and her eyes go misty. Looking into her face, you realize just how damned gorgeous she is. You wake up with her face fresh in your mind seconds before the alarm goes off.

4. The Rescue

In the ruins of a city under siege, you produce a dimensional gateway. Everyone passes through it to escape to another city. You stand outside of a school in the pouring rain as daylight comes. People pass by carrying the wounded in stretchers. You did it. You saved them all.

5. The Journey

Despite the darkness, you can see that all the walls and all the people are shades of ash gray. Winged people or perhaps demons fly through the air. Others scale the walls. The ceiling, several stories high, caps a vast concert hall. You’ve been here before, but not for many years. You once saw your favorite band here. The only light comes from black lights.

The concert turns out to be political speeches. You accept a mission to go down front to the stage and get a recorded interview and close-up pictures of the speakers. Among them is Barack Obama, with suits and security everywhere. You have no trouble getting close to the stage because you know someone up there.

A maze of hallways, lit like daytime, in schools and offices. You end up on a ship and decide to take a voyage on a strange craft. It consists of a metal dome atop a floating rubber ring. It will be a difficult and solitary journey to get back to land. You lose control of the vessel and lose all outside communication. The vessel is sturdy and seaworthy, but do you even know where you are? Will you have enough food? If you get lost, how will anyone find you?

After a great storm, you land on a beach. You stand outside your vessel, safe and sound. In the distance, a large metal warship floats below a plane in the sky. You think of Kristian. Isn’t he supposed to meet you here? You look around and realize what a gorgeous day it is. The sun shines over a stunningly beautiful sea.