November 23, 2007 archive

Nov 23 2007

Muse in the Morning

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Muse in the Morning

The muses are ancient.  The inspirations for our stories were said to be born from them.  Muses of song and dance, or poetry and prose, of comedy and tragedy, of the inward and the outward.  In one version they are Calliope, Euterpe and Terpsichore, Erato and Clio, Thalia and Melpomene, Polyhymnia and Urania.

It has also been traditional to name a tenth muse.  Plato declared Sappho to be the tenth muse, the muse of women poets.  Others have been suggested throughout the centuries.  I don’t have a name for one, but I do think there should be a muse for the graphical arts.  And maybe there should be many more.

Please join us inside to celebrate our various muses…

Nov 23 2007

November 23, 1963

jfkjjsalute color t

‘Don’t let it be forgot, that once there was a spot, for one brief shining moment that was known as Camelot’

Nov 23 2007

Room of Doom

I passed by that Room of Doom every day for two weeks when I was working at an odd job between classes.

It was a terrible place but when I first went by I had no reason to know the terror lurking within.

Parents brought their children to that room.  The children had received a death sentence that no lawyer could mitigate.  The children had received a diagnosis of juvenile leukemia.  There was no cure, not even a treatment.  All that waited for the children was an early painful death.

Nov 23 2007

The Stars Hollow Gazette- Updated!

You know, people who work on holidays are really performing a public service.

I like Thanksgiving because it’s time and a half and dead slow.  You’re sold out of milk anyway so you can basically just zone.

Black Friday is busy for the cashiers and more so for the floor sales people who have to answer all the questions.  Not so much in Stock where you were much more likely to get a call for boxes that were in short supply (and invariably stored in the big uncataloged pile behind the facade mirror with the unsorted hangers).

Your basic job is to deliver carts of merchandise between the loading dock and the sales floor storerooms.  You need to be able to read a routing card and sign off that the seal is unbroken and matches before the Department head accepts inventory control.  Someone has to do it.

The first place I worked, by the end of the season we were storing things on the roof and in two semi-trailers in the loading dock.  The second place the loading dock was in the basement of a ‘historic’ store.

The store was so historic in fact that I was practically the last one standing when they closed it, frantically doing inventory of some hideous green abstract floral sheets 100 years out of season we were looking to dump on a liquidator.

It all falls in the rounds.

Nov 23 2007

This is a test this is only a test

Was it due to human error?

…FOLLOW THE BOUNCING YELLOW LINE….there is no stage

….LET GO OF ALL BELONGINGS….there is no stage

…LET GO OF SELF>>>>>you are on stage

straight form follows function theology leads one straight off a clifff

(sic) erased….scratched out…denied presentation…dis

order your belief crisis Hemingway

drunk and thunk again again again

old man turns away afraid

then sees money in your hand

his eyes apologize

cold skinny fingers take it gingerly

Nov 23 2007

The myth of consumption

Sometime in your life, hope that you might see one starved man, the look on his face when the bread finally arrives. Hope that you might have baked it or bought or even kneaded it yourself. For that look on his face, for the meeting of your eyes across a piece of bread, you might be willing to loose a lot, or suffer a lot, or die a little, even.

Daniel Berrigan

I read this quote for the first time this morning in the amazing diary by Hillary Rettig and OPOL titled Giving Thanks for Progressive Activists and its been on my mind all day. I’ve been thinking alot about the myriad of myths that we respond to almost automatically without much awareness. When we read a quote like that, it resonates deeply. We know it is truth. And yet the myth that getting more for ourselves will somehow make us happy is how we tend to live our lives.

Nov 23 2007

A Reality-Based Agenda for the ’08 Campaign

Here it is.  It comes in three parts:

1) a “reality-based” political agenda for the future.

2) a discussion of the pragmatics (relation of discourse to hearers/readers) of political agendas

3) a critique of a successful politician’s agenda.

(crossposted on ecosocialism)

Nov 23 2007

It was 44 years ago today…

that JFK did lay, dead in the back of that limo in Dallas, Texas. …

…And yesterday would have been his brother, Bobby’s (RFK’s), 82nd birthday.

When Dr. King was murdered on April 4, 1968, in Memphis, Bobby Kennedy’s campaign paid to have Dr. King’s body flown from Memphis to Atlanta.  There, at 1 AM, in the dark of a chapel/funeral home, (now Congressman) John Lewis arranged for Bobby and Ethel Kennedy to visit Dr. King’s body, alone.  And Rep. Lewis recalls saying to himself, “Well at least we still have Bobby.”

And then, within two months , RFK was also killed.

If anyone wonders why 1968 (when I was 15) was the year the world ended for me, just ask me for more details.

It only got worse.

Still, the struggle continues.

Not really an essay here, still, I wouldn’t have made it then without my personal savior..



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Nov 23 2007

Writing in the Raw: Tradition

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When I was growing up my Dad was in the Air Force; we moved around… a Lot. Most holidays it was just us, no extended family. I guess in some way to make up for this perceived lack, Mama and Daddy always had ‘orphans’ for the holidays: cadets who couldn’t get home, officers just posted to the base whose family hadn’t yet arrived, young wives whose husbands were overseas and later stranded college kids my sibs brought home.

    Mama always put on quite the  feast…we weren’t allowed anywhere near the kitchen for several days before each holiday. It became a running joke. “She’s doing this on purpose, you know” Dad would stage whisper several times, “She’s starving us so our appetites will be immense & we’ll declare whatever slop she dishes out as food of the gods.”

Nov 23 2007

Pony Party: Thanksgiving evening with Gackt and Hyde!

This is my Thanksgiving gift.  Sure, it’s stuff I like, but I think many will like it, too!  Some of my thanks go to the readers of Docudharma.  It appears that at least a few of you seem to like/pay some attention to what I write, and for that I thank you.  The stream over at Big Orange is rough to always be going against, and it’s good to find a place of somewhat like minded individuals (even those of you who have yet to be converted to Dennisism!).

So, here goes!

Nov 23 2007

Time to get ready for RiaD

I doubt if any of these video’s have anything even remotely to do with RiaD’s Writing in the Raw tonight.  I’m just looking to fill in the time before the big event. If anyone is around beforehand and is feeling bummed-out, pissed off, drunk, drowsy, or bored, join me in the jukebox.  

Chrissy and the Pretenders…in case you’re trying to control your temper.

Don’t worry, things will pick up.

K.D. amd Grover

Nov 23 2007

happy(ha!) day, folks (with Van Halen)

I’vew been busy… so exuce me for not posting for a while.

Well, today is a day for family. I found out what that means, precisely… at least on the red-headed stepchild side.

No food– NONE– for me, nor for my four year old. my wife got dessert…

so, the cold shoulder.

We should be used to it. We crave peace, we crave understanding.  

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