cookies

(e.w.) there is a brand new copy of the entire universe forming in his head. yesterday i was contemplating the miracle of life while watching him eat a fresh baked chocolate chip cookie with milk. every kid is a brand new world. the joy of cookies and milk is completely re-invented. simple pleasures are so new, novel, unspoiled- it seems to nearly overloading his circuts with joy. watching from the outside, it's impossible for me to trully comprehend, but still a wonder to behold.

stay

this morning i came back inside after starting the car, because i forgot my wallet; and e.w. was eating breakfast and called out my name. he was excited because i had reappeared after kissing him goodbye and leaving for work once just a moment earlier. i went over and gave him another kiss goodbye, and he said "daddy? you want strawberries? chocolate milk?" he was offering me his breakfast, lifting the cereal bowl up to me; he wanted me to stay, and eat with him, instead of leaving to go to work. i'm not sure if i'm explaining it well enough, but really it was very cute and it made me want to eat him up.

patterns in...

listening to my mp3 player on "random" is quite interesting. it's like listening to the disjointed selections of a lazy dj who stole my cd collection and is just picking out things at random. it's surprisingly good, so far. appreciating patterns in randomness. also, since i am at work, i can't sing along. i think i end up appreciating the song more than i would otherwise. normally i compulsively sing along to music when i am listening in my car. when that happens, i often fins myself replaying a track on a cd or tape because i was to busy singing along to enjoy the song, only to involuntarily start singing along again half way through thew song. just now as i write this, two songs from the same album came on. what are the chances of that out of hundreds of songs?

my current disposition

today i have a lot of anger and frustration under the surface. this
morning in the car on the way to work i was yelling at my car stereo
and banging it with my hand. then later on at work i was cursing at
the printer. i want to curse at my computer when it malfiunctions. i
am angry in general- but i have a sunny sweet smile on my face!

last night i had a dream i med david beckham in a resturant, he was with his wife (not the spice girl one, a blonde) and his 1 yr old kid, wearing a sailor suit and his hair in a ponytail. he was living in the US but heading back to europe, to the netherlands. i was advising him on where to look for a job, with a popular multinational company like Phillips. during the conversation, my son played with his son, but my son was bigger and maybe playing a little too rough, rolling, falling and laying on him. later in my dream i witnessed the breakup of a bad band in the middle of a song, in the middle of a set, in a beat, mostly-empty bar.

rock power entered my body

bob grabbed my hand, i was holding his fist with both hands as he sang "my costume with veins of gold, i'll face the punching bag, do what i'm told, till i get old, and have to dwell, in the valley of iron men..." i felt the rock power enter my body. then soonafter i just went on auto-pilot. i just sort of looked at my watch and decided to stumble out the door to make the 12:26 train. i'm glad i did b/c i still had like a 30 minute walk from the train station to home, and didn't get into bed till 3-ish.... it sounds like i missed quite a bit of classic tunes in the encores and some stage rushing, but all in all i got all the rock i could take and i got home in time to get about 3 hours sleep and get to work yesterday in one peice. damn. i hope someone bootlegged that show.

peppers

the blackened spicy peppers in my leftover chinese food burned me like little devils and i loved it. i ate them all but the biggest one, which beat me. and now my brain pays the price as all the other peppers spread their psychedelic chemicals out to all my neurons. i no longer taste them, but i hear and see them.

on the fate of the kayack

my dad almost threw it out, but i saved it. worse comes to worse, we will give it a viking funeral next summer. but it's also priceless and should be preserved... it just won't live inside the lake house any more...

Yes, it should be persevered. As a testmeant to teenage alcoholism

but for the same reason it should fulfill its destiny as a symbol of fleeting, reckless youth by being burned in a blaze of glory, alcohol, and fireworks, and entombed at the bottom of the lake. or doused with beer, trampled by arron, and smashed onstage during a show.

Indeed. like a Lake-person ceremony. Put candles in it...we all kayak around it...then submerge it into the lake forever. Then chris falls off the canoe into the lake

maybe it'll be new year's, and we'll put it out on the ice and we'll light it and then sink into the hole, the grave, it melts/digs for itself with burning bacardi 151. as we salute it with whisky screams, our frosty breath sending smoke signals to potsam in the ionosphere...

my weekend

friday: hung out with e.w., errands, hung shelves. friday night, my wife and i go out to dinner while my parents house-sit and e.w. sleeps. my wife and i spend much-needed alone-time together.

saturday: exausting yard work, with lots of help from my dad, including: clearing out the gutters, moving large flower pots, trucking loads of heavy wet leaves, tying and untying knots with a big rope. night - home cooked meal from my mother in law. but not much relaxation, necessarily.

sunday: more yard work, including breaking stuff with a sledge hammer. i hung our "wedding contract" in a frame in our kitchen/diningroom. QT with e.w., including some guitar time, play dough, and general hands-on stuff. home-cooked dinner by my wife & my mom. later, wine-drowsy, i fell alseep reading the instructions to a carbon monoxide detector that i bought last year but never installed.

gentle people here

so i have only 16 minutes left on my internet cafe account, so there will be a lot of typos... my meeting ended early today and i have the afternoon off. so B. (my partner, a foreign M.D. and scientist) and i went to eat thai food (again!) and then i went up to the hotel to get changed. then i went to the concierge and asked what can i do in one afternoon to see SF. why not, who knows when/if i ever come back? (maybe as soon as a few weeks!? maybe never?) anywho, so the trolley thing starts right by my hotel, so i got on it there and saw the sceenic route through the very hilly town of SF. lots of colorful, quirky houses. through chinatown. past the very windy road thing you always see in movies, down to the hyde street pier. it was a fun ride. the man who was working the breaks on the back of the trolley car was an old man, grey whiskers, who would give everyone sarcastic answers to people's questions. he told me a ticket was $100 dollars. it was funny (you had to be there). so then i walked along the hyde street pier and looked at old boats and read about them from these nice lamintaed displays. then i walked over and put a quarter in one of those telescope things and looked at alcatraz, and the golden gate bridge. then i walked across the state park, up to the giradelli chocolate factory and museum. i got a free piece of chocolate. yum. my wife would love that place. there was a 10 pound bar of chocolate for $40.00.

so now, i am here. later on, i suppose i will see the cannery, and maybe the fisherman's museum? tonight, i plan to have dinner in the music/club district where i hope to eat amazing sidewalk-cafe food and then see some live jazz. it was supposed to rain, but it didn't. if it had, i would be in the modern art museum, but since then the sun broke and it's pretty mild out, i'm out here seeing the sights. also, i keep seeing kids and missing e.w.; but of course, i also don't envy these people who are pushing these strollers all around these hilly streets. anyway, that's that.

in the netherlands, part 2

i'm at this hotel in the netherlands and i just had an amazing panini sandwich with cream of mushroom soup, and dutch beer. the food and drink here is a delight. but also i miss home, i wish i could see the boy most of all... ideally, i should be there every day: all day every day, every minute. so it's tough sometimes. soon i'll be home for a few days, which i will spend primarily with him, and try to give my wife a break from 24-hour mommying... and then i get on another god damn plane!!!

in the netherlands, part 1

i am in Oss, the Netherlands. I just got back from an evening of local beer, wine, salmon, shrimp, and discussing politics, the atlantic divide, electoral politics, and the war on terrorism with a dude form the netherlands who lived in newark for 4 years and cried when the towers fell even though his beautiful twin girls were just born, and he thinks we (americans and europeans) have more in common than we realize and he hopes we can figure out how to put aside egos on both sides and work together on commmon goals like fixing iraq at all costs. i also met this guy from japan who worries that kerry will be weak on terrorists.

"what would you like?"

i would like to feel strong,
i would like to feel bright,
i would like to feel loved,
and i would like the western omelette
with cheese and rye toast, please.
and coffee. thanks.

correspondence

(pre-election correspondence about the upcoming weekend that spirals out of control)

my weekend plans-
fri: grocery shopping, catch home & garden channel "trading spaces" marathon
sat: negotiate inter-dimensional peace treaty between the galactic alliance and the continuum of pneumatic dark ether.
sun: sleep in, make pancakes, read the paper.

Remember: the Continuum will press you for reductions in the Shadow Platoon. Don't give in. Hold your ground.

well, the only problem is that the shadow platoon veteran's association had demanded a cost of living adjustment for thier pulsar pension funds by three arcseconds, annually. meanwhile, the space-time frame dragging caused by the saggitarious-A perscription benefit has already created a high-density black hole whose increased x-ray jet outbursts have ruined this year's irregular nebulae crop, causing a spike in the intergalactic price of positrons.

It's a shame everyone is so beholden to the platoon veteran lobby. I wish Commander Zragnut X would show some f'ing backbone. And also, when you said "i mean, why should companion start systems get all the tax breaks?" Errr...don't you mean the binary star system???

right, right. my bad. well, you know, me and sunspots... somnolence and constipation.

SOME THINGS NEVER CHANGE I GUESS. Like that time when you confused Thgor X-45 with Thogor X-56??? That shit was hilarious! It's just a shame that 25,000,000 Vissiputhians died as a result.

every time i shit two galaxies collide

hmmmmmmm

but until i get some fiber, the remaining Vissiputhians can breathe a little more easily...

Indeed, I Pray to Vothar. But wait, Vissiputhians CAN'T breathe because of *your* little misadventure back in Year 2342-B (remember? the "Brown Quasar Eclipse" ?) Vissiputhians instead symobiotically absorb neuroclytes via the Mirror Grid. What's with you today, man? why so forgetful?

i'm trying to put the brown dwarf incident past me, dude. that shit is past the event horizon for me, man. it's dust... but speaking of prayers:

"prayer to vothar"
vothar, vothar, no excuses
painting over cracks is useless.
scrape it with a tool, and then,
fill it with some gel again.
let it dry, about an hour,
then lick it- if the taste is sour,
let acidic tears dissolve,
liquified- your sins, absolved

"My name is Commander Vothar, and I have tasted the mortar of my own demise"

"Want your own quasar? Then Vote for Vothar"

"magnetic poles indicate that vothar is gaining plasma ions all across the Van Allen belt"... Vothar's challenger, Quadrant Senator Eta Carinae : "If you could smell in space, the stench of Vothar's solar wind record of failed star formation would stretch across the galaxy."

Vothar's press secretary Neblar Neblarian retorts, "There goes the Senator again...first he is for star formation, then he's against it...what's next? He voted for regenerating the ghost terminal at the Retribution Module of Flaxon 323423-D4 before he was against it?"

"All Qualuddians* agree: Vote for Eta Carinae!" - Paid for by Vothar for President
* Qualuddian's are "terrorists"

Eta Carinae: "Vothar still has not clarified his position on Homunculus Nebula. He assumes that the major axis of homunculus nebulae coincides with the rotation axis of a star, and somehow this means that Homunculus Nebulae should be afforded the same rights and privileges as other reflective nebulae, which would pave the way to an epidemic of many open clusters. Good people disagree on this issue, but I rely on my faith, any my faith tells me that despite the Luminous Blue Variables, there is a clear answer: there are not, and should not be, any irregular variations. My fellow beings, Vothar looks at these issue through amateur telescopes. Without faith, these gaseous atoms are observed as a dim haze, that obscures the center of the galaxy from our sight. But I see the light. And that's why I'm asking for your vote. God bless the singularity."

Press release (source: Eta Carinae for president): Minority Whip Vothar, 2 election cycles ago: "At this time, I have no intention to run for intergalactic office. I intend to serve my full term, to serve the people of Voth."

but then there were cookies

i was having a shitty morning, i spilled coffee on myself in the car
on the way to work. i cursed a lot at the next stop light. i had
nothing in the car, no wipes, no water, no napkins. i got more and
more furious while driving as i watched the stain dry and set in.
when i got in the building, i went to the kitchen to try to wash out
the stain on my pants. i scrubbed it with a sponge, making a big wet
spot. as i was drying it off with a paper towel, i noticed a box on
the microwave. it had a note on it: "this box is a victim of my kids
refusing to try new things. help yourself and enjoy". it was a box
of soft & chewy chocolate chip cookies that you put in the microwave.
there was one pack of two cookies left in the box. i followed the
instructions, and they came out warm, soft and chewy. i took some
skim milk form the fridge (even though it's for coffee only!) because
you just need milk with cookies. they were great, for microwave
cookies. and after that i felt much better.

Orchestrating the plumes of cascading pigeons
bursting from the iridescent fountain like a sunburst

And waving the baton of a trembling rook in his right hand,
Pinched in triumph – index and middle finger, thumb,
Suspended in air like words from God’s lips --

Matt crashes the piece down
And the circle throttles – explodes counter-clockwise

And the pigeons cover the sky in a million scattered blotches
As the people standing by idly surrender
and succumb.

- by the IOD

dirty

Some guy just called my work cell phone. I looked at the called ID
display and I did not recognize the number, so I figured it was a
wrong number but I picked it up anyway. You never know, it could be
for work. I answered formally, stating my name, etc. The guy on the
other line sounded a little confused, he had a southern accent. he
said: "Uh, I'm calling about a massage appointment." I told him he
had the wrong number. He politely apologized and hung up.

It just felt dirty.

massage appointment

Some guy just called my work cell phone. I looked at the called ID display and I did not recognize the number, so I figured it was a wrong number but I picked it up anyway. You never know, it could be for work. I answered formally, stating my name, etc. The guy on the other line sounded a little confused, he had a southern accent. he said: "Uh, I'm calling about a massage appointment." I told him he had the wrong number. He politely apologized and hung up.

It just felt dirty.

Drawing “x’s” through the days in his journal
And cutting out pictures of faces from the obituary,
Matt withdraws currency from a bank no one recognizes,
From a teller no one sees
From a time that folded in upon itself

But this is his mission – deemed a routine by some,
Mocked by others as trite and hopeless –

Yet Matt sees none of this:

“Roll down your window sill, close the curtain,” he says,
“And descend down the stairs and into the field,
So I can see all of you in plan view.”

But will they accept this offer?

Will they make a bargain with this frail night guardsman,
Plucking cherries off a withered vine,
Arranging them on a table, his breath icy smoke, barefoot,
Tiptoeing lest he awake the slumbering millions emblazoned in light?

by the IOD

subway report

'Subway service in Heaven was interrupted for the third straight day today due to a recurring problem involving a syntax error in the book of Deuteronomy.

Joshua could not be reached for comment. At press time, emails from your correspondent to his office returned only '#DIV/0!' messages.'