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Being Here (Today)
From whiskey river (first 3+ lines not included there): from The Ninth Duino Elegy Why, if this interval of being can be spent serenely in the form of a laurel, slightly darker than all other green, with tiny waves on the edges of every leaf (like the smile of a breeze)–: why then have to [...]
Always Pause Before Opening the Door
I do love a punchline — or a cartoon caption — which makes me pause for a split-second before making me snort. (Score another for the Bizarro strip.) This one’s even better than that first split-second made me realize, as I just noticed when uploading it.
The Blogger as Essayist (and Lens)
Real post for the day imminent. In the meantime, I think this quotation deserves a post of its own: The essayist is a self-liberated man, sustained by the childish belief that everything he thinks about, everything that happens to him, is of general interest. He is a fellow who thoroughly enjoys his work, just as [...]
“… 3… 2… 1… 0… I Said ZERO, Dammit, ZERO!”
[This post's title alludes to this little tidbit of news: 2008 will last a second longer than most years.] The New Year, per usual, calls to mind resolutions about what we hope will come within the next 365ish days. I’ll get to that in a moment. First, though, I want to note that whatever else [...]
Leaving a Light On the Reality of Writing
[Don't assume the above is the whole story. Click the image to see the complete strip from Shannon Wheeler's "How to Be Happy" series.] Like me, you have probably heard more than once the assertion — pronounced in a gentle voice, at the end of a radio commercial (for the Motel 6 chain) consisting entirely [...]
From Keith Knight’s Mouth to God’s Ear, Please
Cartoonist Keith Knight is a regular contributor to my favorite monthly magazine, The Funny Times. To break the routine from his main comic strip, called The K Chronicles, he occasionally does a strip called “Life’s Little Victories.” He builds these strips from ideas submitted by readers — little one- or two-panel ideas describing the little [...]
!?$%*#@!!
I’ve always liked punctuation; some would say I like it a little too much. For my junior-college newspaper, I wrote an opinion column called something melodramatic and “clever” like “The Outspeaker.” [...checking yearbook... yeah, that was it, all right] I was convinced that the only thing anyone would notice about the column was the eloquence [...]
Overwhelmed by Ursula Vernon
Okay, look — so I don’t have kids of my own, and my niece and nephews and stepkids are all grown and the next generation is still somewhere out on the misty horizon. But I keep coming across these nominally “children’s” books which I then wish I had a non-adult excuse to read. Much of [...]
Watchmen: The Movie?
I don’t read many graphic novels, but I do read some. There’s no pattern, apparently, to the ones I’ve chosen to read, except that I tend to favor ones heavy on story (and not necessarily on action). Watchmen (written by Alan Moore, illustrated by Dave Gibbons) is in a class by itself. Published as a [...]
