F16’s Don’t Kill People, 500 Lb. Bombs Kill People

I’ve spent an interesting few days feeling mortified. Sorting through nearly seventeen years of writing, a few observations come to mind:

1). Don’t write poetry.

2). Don’t write poetry.

3). Don’t write poetry.

 

 

 

-Unless of course you’re actually good at crafting poems, which you’re probably not. Look, I know how it is-you read a few stanzas of Howl, and think, “Hey, I can do that.” But of course, you can’t. You end up with seventy-five pages of something that sounds like Tintern Abbey, meets any number of songs by The Thirteenth Floor Elevators-only worse. You’ll labour over the metre of these lines for months reading them to any unsuspecting friend you can trap into going out for coffee. Perhaps you’ll even buy a fountain pen to complete the serious-artiste-affectation as the poem takes shape in a lovely blank book of hand-tooled Moroccan leather that you bought at the big chain bookstore after trapping your friend into listening to your impressive poem that displays everything you learned in that first semester of college where “maenad” and “crepuscular” find use at last outside of a game of Scrabble. Yes, a couple of decades on, you’ll re-read your childish poems and know exactly when you finally coughed up the dough to purchase an OED to impress people by the sudden appearance of words so antiquated you will in fact need to seek out those dictionaries to remind yourself what in God’s name “etiolate” means anyway.

 

Then, there’s the business of parting with reams of paper. You know, because there might be something worth saving in all that (there isn’t). For years I’ve reasoned that I’d go ahead and create Word files of some of the best pieces that I might use somewhere else. Thankfully, I’ve regained my senses and now realise that bad poetry does not suddenly transform into something less bad by being put in a Word file. Away bad poetry, be gone!

 

Except, I sort of felt obligated to read it before tossing it away forever (again, that foolishness of thinking something salvageable is hidden in the stacks of paper). Eh, I’m not big on nostalgia, particularly of the variety involving relationships. Oh God, the relationship/end of relationship poems. Because when you’re young-everything is the end of the bloody world. Sure, six months later you’re on to the next failed attempt at being something you’re not to please some asshole-but at the time, in the moment-well, you sit down at the Smith Corona typewriter (the fancy new one you purchased with the print wheel and lift-off tape) and by God,

Poems are written. And they’re not very good.

 

Well, maybe not you (that’s just a stylistic thing I seem to be employing lately though truthfully, it feels weird and unnatural and I don’t know why I feel compelled to use “you” when the intention is “I”. If I begin using the Royal “we” I’m going to hang it up entirely).

 

“But J.S.” you say, “How awful can your poems be?”

Pretty awful, actually.

 

 

 

                                                     In Drought

 

 

In these swallow diving days of spring

When their mud nests litter our yard with young

They circle close

Guarding

So near an arm’s length to the touch

Forked tail birds lost among the other migratory songsters.

The sowing begun, great flocks follow the tractors to the fields

What wonder anything grows

Seed laid deep beyond the poke of hungry beaks

Still they dance

A great winged Carnival procession

In glossy feathered hues reflected

By the colour of soil.

Would that the sky peel back the corners of its clouds

Purple-blue borders between the living and imagined dwelling place of souls

And nourish the beak-passed seeds now resting

The brittle soil dried hard by the absence of winter’s wrath

And necessary frost heaves,

Pleading rain. We are pleading rain

For seed and swallow

And sapling bent

Joyless clouds of powder thickly dusting all that rests within its path.

Restful worms refuse to surface in such dry climate

Patiently waiting the softness of rain

Eating their way through the bitter loam of clay and sand

A day’s work-food for the newly hatched

The hunger of warbling tongues malnourished

Such sad work the trauma of birth, the peck, peck, peck of shell

Only to languish in starvation

She abandons the nest.

 

Oh, that’s very…um…awful. Now imagine spending days sorting through folder after folder of this crap. To all my friends past and present that I’ve invited out to coffee and subjected to reading/listening to me read (all the worse with my dialect) I am honestly, sincerely sorry. The “epic” poem, you know, the one with all the Celtic symbolism and pretentious use of Breton phrases-I’m sorry. Honestly sorry. I owe you coffee-look, both hands outstretched-no folders/notebooks/hand-tooled-Moroccan leather-bound journals therein.

 

“Etiolate?”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The old adage that we do not know those to whom we are closest proved correct (again) last evening when my husband informed me that he has had a polyp in his nose since 1973.

 

He seemed surprised I had not noticed it-failing in twelve years together to peer up into his nostril.

“So let me see it”, I insisted. He leaned his head back and try as I might, I could not see what he insists is a floppy piece of tissue that gets inflamed now and then, as it currently is.

“So if you’ve known about it for 33 years, why the hell haven’t you had it removed? It’s not something you can impress people with, like being double jointed.”

 

Turns out he was in the process of moving from Germany back to the United States and simply put it off, only to think of it from time to time when his allergies are at their worst. Now he simply doesn’t want to take the time off work or deal with the co-payment for something that is a minor irritation. Still, you know me-whether it’s burning off warts or surgically removing splinters in the tidy environs of my powder room, I’m not one for having things remain where they do not belong. I offered him the use of a particularly long knitting needle (hell, I even offered to sterilise it) but wisely, I suppose he declined.

 

I cannot help it-since telling me about this ancient polyp, I catch myself trying to look up his nose to catch a glimpse of it. I suppose an electric nose hair trimmer is out of the question for Christmas…

 

 

An article in the Chicago Sun Times wonders if religion is making people fat. Really, that’s the argument being put forth. All that tater-tot-casserole at church suppers is (I’m going to use a dreadful alliteration here) packing Protestant poundage. According to a study, only 1 percent of Jews were obese, compared with 20 percent of Fundamentalist Protestants. Great. As L. pointed out, we can expect to see dozens of books publishing “The Jew Diet-Eating your way thin with chopped liver, gribenes, and cheese blintzes.” The argument seems to rely pretty heavily on the theory that food becomes a replacement for alcohol, but there again, Jews aren’t exactly tossing back bottles of Mogen David Elderberry wine*. There seems to be some idea that every group has addictive tendencies that will manifest themselves through the available, acceptable means-which I believe to be utter rubbish.

 

What is being overlooked is the shame factor. If it is socially acceptable in certain groups to carry a few extra pounds, people will do so. It is not the Sunday supper making people fat-it’s what they eat the other six days of the week. The Ambrosia salad is a minor number of calories compared to the pint of ice cream eaten standing over the sink, talking on the phone. The brownies are not going to cause the weight gain of ordering in a pizza for dinner every other night. While the environment of the church group may encourage acceptance, that is a separate argument from, “church makes you fat.”

 

Sort of related, I saw an article last week discussing the air quality inside churches-apparently, it’s pretty bad due to incense and candles, particularly in small churches. So there you have it, church is hazardous to your health.

 

 

 

 

* While you wouldn’t want to actually drink kosher wine, it is pretty handy to keep around for cooking-just today I poached pears in the stuff. It also makes one hell of a chuck roast with a bottle of chili sauce and some onions(drop me an email if you want the recipe).

Agreed. 

Go take a look at THESE.

 

Via Unknown News.

Something about the white sheet-like draping and the cross, I dunno it reminds me of something…uh maybe Teutonic Knights? No, I don’t think that’s it…hmmm, just can’t seem to put my finger on it-so familiar though…

When I see stories like THIS one detailing the violence being perpetrated against homeless persons by well-to-do young people, it is difficult to keep from the knee-jerk reaction of pointing fingers. Of course I want to blame the parents. I want to blame the television. I want to blame the schools, the church, the Army, Wall Street, someone ought to be responsible for young people led so morally astray. All of the above, and then some?

 

I don’t claim to have any answers regarding the excitement one derives from killing, what I do know is that culturally, we send out very mixed messages about the value of “life.” Given the level of dehumanisation being applied to so many people, it is not difficult to see how someone might arrive at the conclusion that killing “undesirables” might go unpunished as they are largely forgotten by society anyhow. The message seems to be that some lives are worthless and therefore open season, particularly if you put on a uniform before killing. Call someone the enemy, and there’s the justification for nearly anything. Expecting people whose education consisted of compliance, passing tests, and thinking as instructed to make distinctions is a bit much. We shake our heads at how horrible these unprovoked attacks on the homeless are, then turn back to our televisions and watch video of an unarmed man taking refuge in a mosque being shot at point blank range. Then, we go make dinner. Later, we might flip through a magazine, see the photographs of the tortured, then turn to the crossword puzzle at the back. But tsk, tsk, the homeless are being killed right here at home. No outcry? Of course not. The poor do it to themselves-that’s the message we receive. While we know this is untrue, it nonetheless creates a mental buffer between our own precarious existences where we’re only one illness away from homelessness ourselves. Those who barely can are thus turned upon those who cannot any longer.

 

The blame, unfortunately goes far and wide with plenty to spread at each of our doorsteps.

 

I believe that each of us play a part in the world’s evils-they do not exist in a vacuum. No, I’ve never rolled a homeless person, and I’ve never killed civilians in war-but I’ve looked the other way when someone asked for change and I’ve paid taxes to a government that kills on my dollar-and those are just obvious examples. I certainly have my share of complicity.

Yeah, I’ll just bet removing evolutionary biology from a list of majors that qualify for federal grant money was a “clerical error.” 

 

 

Is anyone surprised? The message from the administration has been pretty clear-science is viewed as hostile to faith. From the nonsense of placing creationist explanations for natural phenomena at national parks, to prohibiting scientists in the government’s employ to speak about global warming, it wouldn’t take much imagination to conclude that the scientific method is on the White House “enemies list.”

 

You know, if people start seeking demonstrable evidence in a laboratory, what’s to stop them from questioning anything else? Have to nip that thinking stuff in the bud.

  

Newborn Albino Pygmy Marmosets.

Yeah, THIS is much worse than the flies.

Via A Boy and His Computer.

Since my hair grew past the shoulders and down the middle of my back, I wash it much less than I used to. Short hair needs to be styled, but long hair can be pulled back in a bun and no one will know if it has been a week since I lathered and rinsed a drop of the .89 cents a bottle shampoo.

The shampoo cartel are not pleased. I don’t even (gasp) “rinse and repeat”. It’s not that I have poor hygiene-I have realistic hygiene. Thirty (forty?) years ago when women had their hair set once a week, they certainly weren’t washing it daily. Granted, they were spraying on another coat of Aqua Net super hold, but certainly, there wasn’t any daily, two lather washings taking place.  

 

 

Somewhere though, a brilliant advertising worker came up with the idea that Americans could be persuaded to wash their hair daily-twice actually. Products were touted as “mild enough to use everyday” which, if you thought about it would imply that there is something wrong with the daily attention we’re giving fragile follicles. Shortly thereafter, the anti-frizz products and intensive conditioners showed up in stores-to counter the effects of all that washing. The most honest description from the cosmetics industry has been to refer to these hair care items as “product.” Used in a sentence “I have a good deal of product in my hair today.” Really, that’s what it is, a product-for consumption.

 

 

 

 

Truthfully, since I stopped washing/drying/colouring my hair, it looks better than it has since I was about nine. I only wish I had the money wasted on all that additional rinsing and repeating.