A Mid-February Sky Dance

Dance toward me, please, as


if you were a star


with light-years piled


on top of your hair,


smiling,

and I will dance toward you


as if I were darkness


with bats piled like a hat


on top of my head.


~Richard Brautigan

via stillbeating

this makes me think of just about all of my male friends. mostly rtn, rMcG, wss, tk, ta, ch. a lot of ch.

via xkcd

via stillbeating

via vicerag

an invention patented in 1979 which catches birds and dispenses them into a cage which allows cats to eat them at their leisure.

via forbes

GQ recently did a slideshow of the 50 most stylish cars in the last 50 years. with a few of their choices i quibble. most of them, not so much.

but these cars ... these cars. absolutely gorgeous. i make no apologies for this list. it is obviously my taste, disirregardless of what time period they come from. and so it probably reveals some character flaw that three of the five are from the

last 15 years.

the ferrari 308 GTB

the jaguar XKE (1969), called by Enzo Ferrari "the most beautiful car ever made."

the bmw z8 (1999 - 2005)

the audi a5/s5 (2008 - present)

the aston martin db9 -- perhaps my favorite car of all time

Failing and Flying

Everyone forgets that Icarus also flew.


It’s the same when love comes to an end,


or the marriage fails and people say 


they knew it was a mistake, that everybody 


said it would never work. That she was


old enough to know better. But anything

worth doing is worth doing badly. 


Like being there by that summer ocean 


on the other side of the island while 


love was fading out of her, the stars 


burning so extravagantly those nights that 


anyone could tell you they would never last. 


Every morning she was asleep in my bed


like a visitation, the gentleness in her

like antelope standing in the dawn mist. 


Each afternoon I watched her coming back 


through the hot stony field after swimming, 


the sea light behind her and the huge sky 


on the other side of that. Listened to her 


while we ate lunch. How can they say 


the marriage failed? Like the people who 


came back from Provence (when it was Provence) 


and said it was pretty but the food was greasy. 


I believe Icarus was not failing as he fell, 


but just coming to the end of his triumph.

— Jack Gilbert

via among the pines

Beach Attitudes

Blessed is the beach, survivor of tides.



And blessed the litter of crown conchs and pen shells, the dead


blue crab in all its electric raiment.



Blessed the nunneries of skimmers,


scuttering and rising, wheeling and falling and settling, ruffling


their red and black-and-white habits.


And blessed be the pacemakers and the peacemakers,



the slow striders, the arthritic joggers, scarred and bent under


their histories, for they’re here at last by the sunlit sea.



Blessed Peoria and Manhattan, Ottowa and Green Bay, Pittsburgh,


Dresden.



And blessed their children.



And blessed the lovers for they shall have one perfect day.



Blessed be the dolphin out beyond the furthest buoy,


slaughtering the bright leapers,


for they shall have full bellies.



Blessed, too, the cormorant and the osprey and the pelican


for they are the cherubim and seraphim and archangel.



And blessed be the gull, open throated, screeching, scolding


me to my face,



for he shall have his own place returned to him.


And the glossy lip of the long wave shall have the last kiss.

— Robert Dana

via among the pines

via MoonFace

I don't know

I don't know which side I'm on

I don't know my right from left

Or my right from wrong

Say I'm a fool

You say I'm not for you

But if I'm a fool for you

Oh, that's something

Two hearts beat as one

Two hearts beat as one

Two hearts...

two hearts beat as one, by u2

for the soon-to-be halverdamns. here's to c & l at 4.45 this afternoon.

Starting the game at their own 37 yard line, Jake McKinney ran through the Rogers line like grape juice through a two-year old completing runs of 13, 18, and 17 yards, capping the 5 play, 2 minute drive with an 8 yard touchdown.

from the richland bombers' website. this metaphor makes me oh, so very happy. as does the team mascot.

The vexation of a fool is known at once, but the prudent ignores an insult.

prov. 12.16

There is one whose rash words are like sword thrusts, but the tongue of the wise brings healing.

prov. 12.18

A prudent man conceals knowledge, but the heart of fools proclaims folly.

prov. 12.23

solomon has a lot to say to people like me.

some good thoughts on canadia's hosting of the olympics.

via espn.com

Here come old flattop, he come grooving up slowly

He got joo-joo eyeball, he one holy roller

He got hair down to his knee

Got to be a joker he just do what he please

He wear no shoeshine, he got toe-jam football

He got monkey finger, he shoot coca-cola

He say "I know you, you know me"

One thing I can tell you is you got to be free

Come together right now over me

He bag production, he got walrus gumboot

He got Ono sideboard, he one spinal cracker

He got feet down below his knee

Hold you in his armchair you can feel his disease

Come together right now over me

[Right!

Come, oh, come, come, come.]

He roller-coaster, he got early warning

He got muddy water, he one mojo filter

He say "One and one and one is three"

Got to be good-looking cos he's so hard to see

Come together right now over me

Oh

Come together

Yeah come together

Yeah come together

Yeah come together

Yeah come together

Yeah come together

Yeah come together

Yeah oh

Come together

Yeah come together

come together

lennon/mccartney

until you've heard joe cocker sing this at twelve fifteen on a friday morning when you've not slept enough in a week and not worked enough quite yet; until you've watched two men dance like boys in a kitchen full of chocolate and cream and blessing; until you've lived a week with tk, tank, bobstar, and raab, you haven't lived at'all.

Jurgensen, Ditka, Kilmer, Hart and Youngblood played during an era when “unfortunate plays” were the norm.

And don’t get started on Terrell Owens. Jurgensen had the perfect remedy for players like Owens, who are perceived to have “me-first” attitudes.

“Receivers I didn’t like I used to throw it in there easy so that they would get nailed,” Jurgensen said. “You know, hang ’em out to dry.”

“Especially if they dropped the pass before and they start yelling at you,” Kilmer said.

“That’s right,“ said Hart. “You run ’em across the middle and throw it in there just so.”

“Hang ’em out to dry,” Jurgensen said again, seeming to enjoy his cigar more than ever. “They’d get the message — in two minutes. They’d come back to the huddle and say, ‘I understand.’ Exactly!”

via a naples, fl newspaper

yeah, i was raised on football. and this pleases me to just short of no end.

He would be a rash prophet who should assert that the expansive character of American life has now entirely ceased. Movement has been its dominant fact, and, unless this training has no effect upon a people, the American energy will continually demand a wider field for its exercise. But never again will such gifts of free land offer themselves. For a moment, at the frontier, the bonds of custom are broken and unrestraint is triumphant. There is not tabula rasa. The stubborn American environment is there with its imperious summons to accept its conditions; the inherited ways of doing things are also there; and yet, in spite of environment, and in spite of custom, each frontier did indeed furnish a new field of opportunity, a gate of escape from the bondage of the past; and freshness, and confidence, and scorn of older society, impatience of its restraints and its ideas, and indifference to its lessons, have accompanied the frontier. What the Mediterranean Sea was to the Greeks, breaking the bond of custom, offering new experiences, calling out new institutions and activities, that, and more, the ever retreating frontier has been to the United States directly, and to the nations of Europe more remotely. And now, four centuries from the discovery of America, at the end of a hundred years of life under the Constitution, the frontier has gone, and with its going has closed the first period of American history.

frederick jackson turner, the significance of the frontier in american history, ch. 1

this makes me wonder about space. final frontier indeed. nasa never seemed like a good idea to me until now.

The purchase of Louisiana was perhaps the constitutional turning point in the history of the Republic, inasmuch as it afforded both a new area for national legislation and the occasion of the downfall of the policy of strict construction. But the purchase of Louisiana was called out by frontier needs and demands. As frontier States accrued to the Union the national power grew. In a speech on the dedication of the Calhoun monument Mr. Lamar explained: "In 1789 the States were the creators of the Federal Government; in 1861 the Federal Government was the creator of a large majority of the States."

frederick jackson turner, the significance of the frontier in american history, ch. 1

No man has power to retain the spirit, or power over the day of death. There is no discharge from war, nor will wickedness deliver those who are given to it.

ecclesiastes 8:8

10 Reasons Why I Should Spend Time with the Elderly:

1. I don’t have better things to do.

2. I have lots of energy and time.

3. It’s one way for me to get wisdom.

4. It teaches me to fear the Lord.

5. It’s obedience to the fifth commandment.

6. It teaches me how to be part of the Church.

7. It fulfills the promises of God and enacts the Kingdom of God.

8. It reminds me of where I’m going (Eccl. 12:1ff).

9. It teaches me to hate sin.

10. It teaches me to long for the resurrection and consummation of all things.

lifted from Toby Sumpter’s blog

via pushlings

The more I know, the more nearly is my faith that of the Breton peasant. Could I but know all I would have the faith of a Breton peasant woman."

louis pasteur, in a letter to one of his children