it loved to happen

always close the pantry

Thu, 17 Dec 2009 10:07:36 -0500

always close the pantry

Photo

Tue, 15 Dec 2009 18:09:11 -0500

Invertebrate Observed Using Tools

Tue, 15 Dec 2009 12:49:09 -0500

Amphioctopus marginatus (pictured) is observed to store and modify coconut shells, assembling them to use as shelter, making it the first invertebrate known to use tools.

Jumping Peacock Spider (more photos & description)

Sat, 12 Dec 2009 12:59:32 -0500

Jumping Peacock Spider (more photos & description)

Meditation in an Olive Garden

Sat, 12 Dec 2009 12:45:24 -0500

No Mencius-threaded grove restful with pan pipes and shepherd life,
just the chain restaurant off Sherman Street. But the manager
intends to make me think so—pastas on the posters, carafes
of Mantuan wine lined up by shades of red and gold and white.
In Palo Alto, Sunday sunlight stimulates the atmosphere
as do the lively, prerecorded violins’ piazza overtures.

I order a moscacelli entree a million people eat every day,
all over this country, maybe other countries. When I see them
or hear them first, desultory, skimming the window above me,
they compel my eyes to follow their itinerant alighting,
flies the size of quarters, persuasively large, let’s say.
Just two to begin with. Soon four, five, then seven. Four wings

fine, unclean but bearable, but fourteen—lord, sixteen!—what grim
numbers. Their aggregate weight is greater than my silverware’s.
The place continues its mendacious ways, but with a certain clarity:
Off to a Brecht play this evening; his ‘defamiliarizing’ starts early.
After the Caesar salad, breadsticks, a second drink,
my appetite’s like a wrinkled bean. I’m glued to the base theater

of the flies, how one rubs its back legs like a scout with kindling,
pinpoint of candlelight coming; one dumbly enticed by my face;
another at a more investigative pace, with every hop-step soils
the pane where it lands, or is that merely insect fiction?
My fellow gourmands willfully keep their gazes on the table.
Scrutiny reveals the bantam escort of a gnat, barely visible.

They inch onward in tandem as a tugboat leads a cruise ship,
or a satellite orbiting Jupiter, choose your disproportion.
Outside the window sits a spider—untroubled, his underside displayed
to me, this atomic flock of flies, and our embarrassed waiter,
mumbling something about more water. “Yeah, and a stun gun
or billy club please.” He brings a coffee to apologize, which I sip

from twice, and a slice of cheesecake. The spider’s legs look
immense and long from this angle. Their bent joints form looming buttresses
above the abdomen. Under this small, dormant cathedral
stirs the flies’ mindless, honest enterprise.
I think of the untouched cake, taken to the kitchen, thrown away,
of the cabaret (not Brecht’s at all) whose songs exaggerate his worker’s zeal.

It’s been one week and near my neck I hear their buzzing still.

— Brett Foster (in Raritan Volume XXIX, which also includes poems by John Ashbery)

Like as a ship, that through the Ocean wyde

Sat, 12 Dec 2009 12:37:55 -0500

I take a taxi to the DMV
on free weekdays, and like a stowaway
observe the goings on, this long ennui.
Too many lines inch forward to convey
futility at 10 a.m.—”Come stay
awhile and meet some interesting folks,”
joked one employee on the phone that day.
They stare, endure the P.A. drone, and coax
returning predecessors like an axle’s spokes.

Across the room someone hollers at a clerk:
a drunken driver unforgiven here,
debilitated by the paperwork.
I’ve come to learn the desperate straits they steer,
the necessary clarities that jeer
at them through clip boards, forms, the March head cold.
They swear and groan, then sigh and disappear.
Another guy who’s recently paroled
desires renewal. He does everything he’s told.

Young people with their nervous thumbs await
the fifteen minutes that will change their lives.
Stiff permits serve as amulets of state.
The overweight instructor soon arrives
to terrify the sophomore when he drives.
Successful ones display their toothy grins
and from the photo booth pass friends high fives.
Two ovals stain that navy screen. The lens
can’t see the dirty torso where the soul begins.

— Brett Foster, in Raritan Volume XXIX (which also includes poems by John Ashbery)

Midomi

Sat, 12 Dec 2009 03:58:53 -0500

Midomi:

Can’t remember the name of a song? Sing or hum a few bars and Midomi will tell you.

Scottish Advent Calendar

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 12:52:17 -0500

Scottish Advent Calendar

ABC Replaces Scenes In 'A Charlie Brown Christmas' With Commercials

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 04:20:13 -0500

ABC Replaces Scenes In 'A Charlie Brown Christmas' With Commercials:

Truth is more ironic than fiction. That’s what Christmas is all about, Charlie Brown.

secret beer fridge (via kuvaton.com)

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 04:14:24 -0500

secret beer fridge (via kuvaton.com)

(via laura robinson)

Wed, 09 Dec 2009 22:17:05 -0500

(via laura robinson)

“Worst Elevator Ever”

Wed, 09 Dec 2009 21:17:01 -0500

“Worst Elevator Ever”

SNL - Judy Grimes

Tue, 08 Dec 2009 20:18:52 -0500

SNL - Judy Grimes

http://i.imgur.com/KdNCV.jpg

Mon, 07 Dec 2009 09:39:07 -0500

http://i.imgur.com/KdNCV.jpg

"The sixth sick sheikh’s sixth sheep’s sick."

Sat, 05 Dec 2009 17:36:51 -0500

“The sixth sick sheikh’s sixth sheep’s sick.”

- The hardest tongue-twister in the English language, according to Guinness World Records. A runner-up: “The seething sea ceaseth and thus the seething sea sufficeth us.”

"Your New Moon festivals and your appointed feasts my soul hates. They have become a burden to me; I..."

Sat, 05 Dec 2009 15:10:00 -0500

“Your New Moon festivals and your appointed feasts my soul hates. They have become a burden to me; I am weary of bearing them. … My heart falters, fear makes me tremble; the twilight I longed for has become a horror to me.”

- God, on the new Twilight film (Isaiah 1:14, 21:4)

The WikiReader

Fri, 04 Dec 2009 00:30:33 -0500

The WikiReader:

Some company somewhere knows me too, too well.

"One night after a long day of campaigning, when the haters had made my spirits reach a nadir, I..."

Thu, 03 Dec 2009 14:29:11 -0500

“One night after a long day of campaigning, when the haters had made my spirits reach a nadir, I looked into Todd’s eyes, which were as blue as the stripes on Old Glory, and too representing truth and loyalty, and he looked back at me with a twinkle of determination which I hadn’t seen since I told him my goal of having another baby in my fifties and naming it Tron, then did I know for sure that I could carry on, like he, and we, have done together all of these years on this long, Iron Dog race of a marriage that is at once grueling and celestial, onerous and majestic.”

- Anne Sensenbrenner, winner of Slate’s Write Like Sarah Palin Contest

Photo

Thu, 03 Dec 2009 14:27:16 -0500

Photo

Thu, 03 Dec 2009 14:03:47 -0500