American Psychopathology

To not feel depressed, to not feel anxious, to not feel concern about the way America carreens through the world is, I think, crazy.

Shameless!

My immediate response to the announcement was to put something on and check all the blinds. I'm not all that shameless, you know.

The Emperor Needs Your Vote

We ask you to show California and the World that Emperor Norton is the One True Ruler of the State of California. (California residency not required to vote.)

Scarey

We're a nation which moves not when we have thought things through, but when things happen and when our leaders tell us what we want to hear to be able to go along with abridgements of the Constitution and war.

A Night Off

I'm taking the night off.

Statistics
Entries: 1621 Comments: 1894...

What if they gave an election and nobody came?

Voters would arrive at polling place doors and find themselves unable to exercise their franchise.

Bam!

I do beat myself up now and then. So it sort of makes sense.

Hell, Give Me A Chance

First thing I will do is instruct the state attorney general to investigate Dick Cheney and Enron. Supoenas are being typed up even as I write this.

An Evil Thing to Tell a Child

What evil things did your mother/father/brother/sister/other relation tell you?

Gubenatorial Endorsement and Call for Votes

We do hereby command the Leaders of the Hebrew, Muslim, Hindu, New Age, Wiccan, Zoroastrian, Buddhist, Animist, Unitarian, Quaker, Humanist, Atheist, Mormon, Sikh, Moonie, Fundamentalist, Catholic and Protestant Churches to sanctify and have us crowned Emperor of the United States, Protector of Mexico and Governor of California. - Norton I

The Muse at Poetry Readings

I'm ashamed to admit it, but one of the best places I have found for revising my poems is at a poetry reading.

Techies
Bored techies left to their own devices create the most interesting error messages it seems. In the last twenty four...

Without Hope in the Head

It has been on my own feet that my brain has taken the most dangerous rides of its life.

Air Conditioning!
We have refrigeration! This calls for a celebratory nap!...

General Smedley Butler: American Hero

Smedley Butler and Rudyard Kipling both knew that there was too much of those guns, far too much of those guns.

The uttermost end of my world

I have no back yard in the sense of grass, rose bushes, hibiscus, peach trees, palms, and pines.

A Philosophy of Critique

Critique groups meet to make better writers.

Phonography

I am speechless, to tell the truth. Utterly without comment or thought. Willing to let this stand on its own merits.

Honesty and Mental Illness

Sometimes a quiet cry in your ear gets louder as it lingers in the mind. A friend said to me the other day: "Why is it that I have to give up my rights to privacy just because I am mentally ill?"

The Dying God

The InterNet's the dying god of the early 21st century, being killed again and again and revived by brutal financial fertility offerings.

An Apology Explained

I don't know exactly why Shelley found it offensive in the context of her own blatantly sexual remarks. I add that I don't require an explanation. It suffices that Shelley announced that she found it offensive, that I had crossed her boundaries of propriety.

"Alien" Invasion in California

Before the war, Anglo-Americans insinuated themselves into lands owned by Mexico. Then they screamed persecution and brought the force of the United States to bear in favor of what was their minority rule. The land was seized -- by force -- from Mexico and ethnically cleansed of Latinos despite the assurances of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hildago.

Yeah, that's cool

I knew that I couldn't be a hippie. I never did the drugs and I didn't have nearly enough sex with willing women.

Mews: Of Prophetesses and Sheets

Virginia now licks Fiona as if she were annointing a prophetess.

Glop in the Mind

Only rest will freeze it so that I can extract the lessons of the essence.

Critque Group

Listen to the critiques to see if there are holes that need to be filled or sentences that are truly tortured. Fill the holes and take the skewers out of the sentences. And stick up for what is good!

For Yule and Betsy

I purchased this copy at Barnes and Noble over the weekend.

Upper Newport Bay 2

Air Conditioner Insider

I wish I was an air conditioning industry insider.

Greenish Orange

There needs to be a word for greenish orange.

Franken Wins

The plaintiffs seemed to believe that freedom of speech means that they can say whatever they want and no one can criticize them for it.

Fire

It begins as a whirl, a circle of orange dancers with terrible gumby-licks rising from their heads.

Upper Newport Bay 1

Not Likely

Why would I do that?

Statistics
Entries: 1591 Comments: 1871...

A Peace from Hell

Progressives know that this war will not go away, that the troops will not wake up with happy dreams about warm welcomes of the Iraqi people.

Francesca Woodman: Tortured Artist Doll or Person?

Could it be that Woodman created these images in a "high" period? Could her suicide be founded on something else and these pictures leave us with no clue about the motives? I think it is likely.

Return to the Center

Sorry for the skimpiness of these thoughts. Sorry that I haven't spoken about my love of eavesdropping. The heat has given me a headache.

Oliver North

At that proud purr of your voice, the war in Vietnam was lost -- by you.

Expectations of Unfolding

Though the heat declines in intensity and we're supposed to have rain, I still feel the soft-cratered spiritual morbidity in my temples and above my eyes.

Thief of Your Own Time

How can we say that we are free if we cannot dream when the visions come?

Interview by Jeremy Puma

Can you imagine George W. Bush acting like that? He'd frame someone.

But I Live on the Second Floor!
You are the unnamed narrator of "Notes FromThe Underground". Due to hard times and aparonoiac and obsessive character, you have...

Can you Hear Me Now, You Bastards?

I don't care what you think of labor unions: this kind of behavior by Verizon deserves censure.

Two Companions at the Desk

I'm sitting at the computer with two companions: Lynn's black leatherette Bible and a headache that fits over the top of my head like a helmet.

A Tip for My Inner Critics

I'm overdue for the silent treatment

It was in The New York Times....

It's got to be true, right?

The Other Recall

We're not the only place in the world having a recall.

Giving Arnold a Chance

Arnold has been weighed in the balance and found wanting. He is NOT the best qualified candidate.

Interviews

I'm also willing to be interviewed again. Post up to five questions in response to this topic if you're interested.

Questions for Desert Viking

What have you stormed and what have you burned in your life?

Dead End

At the end of my street are a sidewalk, a hedge, and a wall.

Questions for Jeremy

Do your arms ever get sore from boxing with the world all the time?

The Great Ape Molester

If Arnold becomes governor, expect the State of California to be wrapped up in sexual harassment lawsuits due to his behavior for years to come.

Litany of the Doll

...when I see the doll flap its jaw and people react to the doll, not me, I feel very sad. The doll gets all the attention.

Dead Blogs?
Shall I sing obsequies for the following? Vinman's Verbosity A Life Less Ordinary Artichoke Heart Chris Crosdale Sinister Sister Sunlight...

Dream
We were keeping elephants in our backyard. One of them was getting very naughty. The bad elephant's name was Phyllis....

Right Wing Roaches

They call me "Communist", "disloyal", and "coward" because they're outrageously afraid of me. Me -- who packs no gun, who pays his taxes, who speaks out against any violence including violence against them. How much more irrational can you get?

Questions for Andrea

Does blogging about the cruel absurdities of your age help you to cope? Do you sleep better at night because of it?

Permanence

How can we look at anything now and affirm its permanence?

Standing up to Conserva-Bullies

I only want clowns like this out of office. They want me dead

Questions for Tripp

Tripp of Conjectual Navel Gazers; Jesus in Lint Form requested the first interview of me.

A New Stars and Stripes

The banner, which was patterned loosely after the Stars and Stripes, omitted eight of the stripes and many of the stars. The field of blue was equal in depth to the five stripes, alternately red, white, red, white, red from top to bottom.

Interview by Elkit

I don't mind when people reading my blog find resonance with issues in their own lives, but I don't pretend to have a final answer.

At the End of a Hot Day

Snorrrrrrrrrrrrrre!

News from Camp Granada

It's the fortieth anniversary of the song that Alan Sherman made famous: Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah.

A Full Notebook

I keep all my cellulose lovers. They keep my secrets for me and tell me things about myself that I didn't notice during the writing of them

Why Questions Do Not Get Asked

It's too upsetting, for these, to think that we might be flawed and promoting ideals that are evil.

Aftershocks of the Full Moon

As the darkness grows more full, we will sleep better than we do now.

Arnold's Charity 2

So, Arnold, where's the renunciation of your films? Where are your demands to suppress your oeuvre of violence? Why did you make a Terminator 3 if you are a "peace-loving guy"?

How Atlas Got the Power to Shrug

In the beginning was a "me" and this me persuaded other people to make shovels and, starting at the river, dig canals and ditches.

A Look Behind the Blog

I have never written of my immediate environment except in passing. I sit at a desk in a room where most of the pieces of furniture are orphans.

California, I Love You

Many mock the state of my birth and yet they keep trying to own it. If they don't like the way we think and the way we do things out here, why not just leave us alone?

Arnold's Charity

What impresses me is Arnold's dedication to promoting his own name as an actor and as a gubenatorial candidate.

Excuse me, Arnold....

What are you doing campaigning in New York City?

How the Russians Won the Cold War

Supposedly we lost in Vietnam. But what lessons did we learn? We're repeating it in Iraq and we're repeating the mistake of the Soviets in Afghanistan.

Autumn

And when autumn finally arrived, it looked little different from summer when you stood under the elderberries and gazed across the oak-glutted arroyos.

Cinquainfull and unrepetant

Voters
feel weakly
elated about the
Terminator. Arnold let's them
not think.

It's the Wild Geese in Me

The Wild Geese were that generation of young Irish Catholic men who fled the island for the continent following its conquest by William of the Orange.

Talking to Burningbird: Getting in Fights

Nearly any sincere blogger has encountered at least one roach: sometimes they swarm -- if someone told me that they sent email to each other to say "Hey, we've got a mark" I would believe it to be true.

Blanched Almonds and Sugar-Thin Ash

Yes, I find peace in writing about the weather.

The Real Problem in California

Sacramento politics is at an impass because the legislature is populated by men and women who don't fear the electorate.

Not Much of a Riddle

You should be able to guess what it is.

"Fair and Balanced" is No One's Property

This isn't "Things go better with Coke", "the Pepsi Challenge", "Winston Tastes Good Like a Cigarette Should": this is declaring that phrases like "liberty and justice for all" or "ham and eggs" can be owned by one person.

Casualties of Heat

Just go read it.

Folk Revolution

I want a world where even rants, bad poetry freely posted, personal punditry, and pictures of cats can ripple forth from the fall of the smallest pebble to lick the edges of the big pond and make the reeds along the shore tremble

An Unseen Argument

I wanted to say "Why are you talking of these things on a night like this? Don't you know that the heat makes you crazy?"

Catskin Rug

It's the threat I use when one of our beasts has done the unpardonable. I set myself up for her interference by leaving an important print job running while I took a shower.

Today's Mews

Damn! If you've got to use that flashy thing every time we see an alien, how are we going to remember where the litter box is?

...

...

The Circus Begins

Bill Prady (television writer): "As a person who makes a living off of making mockery, I resent them intruding into my world."

Burnt Off

A slight breeze came out of somewhere and raked the air so clean that I could make out the individual shrubs on the hillsides two miles away.

Boiled Brain
Imagine boiled brain on a bristling hot iron fajitas platter, garnished with chopped red onion. Who can write under those...

The Little Egg Township Blob

Truth did not turn out to be stranger than fiction.

The Other Side

On the other side of the monitor -- through the wire and optical cables -- is you, my reader.

The Member in Question

I feel bound to defend my honor as a small time penis pundit and present you my full answer to her question How important is a big dick, anyway?

Writing like Boards
"How's your writing going?" a clerk at Barnes and Noble asked me. "In this heat?" I replied. "It's coming out...

Censorship by Giving Up

I believe that any good work of art will make it. In times like this, however, we must work harder to make it happen, put in our own labor or have a dedicated fan promoting it for us.

On Dangerous Ground

I'm for new voices and new perspectives. I just don't want my erstwhile allies acting like that Frenchman and getting good causes shot down by some frightened guy with a gun.

Melting like Gumby

The bright guy is still around, but he's moving around like Gumby. And Gumby's melting.

Mr. Hobbs

We had a tortoise who my brother named Mr. Hobbs. Like the many Californians, we just picked up our pet when he happened to cross the road near Devil's Punchbowl.

Statistics
I've heard that this is "bad form". I see it as sharing information. Entries: 1524 Comments: 1816...

Rewriting Blog Entries

I want to make it clear that I rewrite blog entries. I don't do this to avoid being nailed for impropriety: I do it to either correct a fact, strengthen the style, or clarify what I said by fixing the syntax.

Nagasaki Day: The High Price of WW 2

The blast at Nagasaki should not blind us to the consequences of the other arms race, to the great profits being made off these holocausts in a can.

Darrell Issa's Lies and Gouges

Gray Davis hasn't been that exciting of a governor, but whether or not you like him, if it is the deficit that worries you, know that the recall election mounted by car thief Darrell Issa is going to cost you up to $66 million.

Don't Even Try to Explain It To Me
I have just finished two exercises in Natalie Goldberg's Wild Mind, first spending twenty minutes writing about everything I did...

From the Crypt

Aside from an "unfair election" (as Representative Cass Ballenger, R-N.C put it), what Guatemala is dangerously close to is more years of genocide and bloody civil war.

Portola Hills 2

Martyr for a Name

"What saint are you named after?" the kids would ask me. We checked the hagiographies. No St. Joel in there.

Punditry as Avoidance of Self Examination

Is no one alive out there?

McCarthyism at the Wall Street Journal

The statements made about MoveOn were blatantly and prejudicially wrong.

Clocking the Untruth

I heard this joke first during the Nixon Administration. Then again during the Reagan Administration.

Bringing Astronomical Incomes to Earth

The moon is an apt emblem for this sterility that exists "up there beyond the clouds" of disinformation. It's a dead planet, lifeless. No rain falls from the moon, so where's the trickledown? It's not getting to us.

A few more cinquains

A dwarf
short back, long legs
properly extended
down below, abbreviated
above.

The Song I'd Heard Before

That would have to be "One is the loneliest number", punching its repeated note, reiterating its theme.

Two Short Essays on Vacations

Vacations, I told my father, weren't for work.

Hiroshima Day and the International Dateline

I guess arguing over whether the fifth or the sixth is like arguing over when it is Easter. Tell you what: I'll do it on the fifth and you do it on the sixth and we'll say it is every bit as holy for one to choose the one and the other the other

Hiroshima Denial

To what are we comparing history? Conjectures about "what might have been".

Call to Blogging: Nagasaki Day
Acts of Conscience is calling on bloggers to remember the 58th anniversary of the bombing of Nagasaki. Blogging about Hiroshima...

Hiroshima Day - August 5, 1945

It was evening in California when it happened in Japan.

She Questions Authoritarians

Good questions.

Usurper at the Feeder

The top hummingbird met his match today.

Hiroshima Day 2003 - 2

The last survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki will be dead inside of ten years.

Pickings 2

Others pick at their arms, their toes, their face. I pick at a pair of old blisters, my navel, and a spot hidden by my beard.

Ecotone Photography
If you take pictures around where you live, consider participating in the bimonthly Ecotone wiki Photographing Place topics. The topic...

More reorganization
I got at it again. Dividing and multiplying. Moods is the category undergoing revision now. Given the nature of the...

Hiroshima Day 2003
George W. Bush has made America an arm of evil. Let us not allow him to triumph....

A Monstrous Eight Year Old Boy

If only he hadn't hit me. Not just that day, but many times before that.

Socialist Libertarianism: A Manifesto

Community property exists for all people. All libertarians believe that there should be some laws.

Redividing the Categories

Looking over these new headings and counting the numbers gives me an idea of where I might dip for new material to write about

The Perfect Bedroom

When I packed my things and Ms. Whine to move down the road to Chapel Hill, I knew that it would always be there, my perfect room, a memory of the honey I'd once tasted

Fossil Hunt at Pectin Reef

Birdbrained Evolution

Evolution leads to stupidity, purblindness, that endures just as long as it allows the individual organisms to breed.

Overheated in Iraq

So here are our boys in Iraq, frying their brains out in 110 degree heat day in and day out while their superiors sip bottled water in the cool of their trailers.

Misunderstandings

Write about a time when I was misunderstood? I could fill a category with that. And a second one for the times when I misunderstood others and looked foolish for it.

The Ambiguity of Our Time

Our troops are doing monstrous things in Iraq and they're being undercompensated for it.

More Cinquains

I'm turning into one of those people who writes down the silly music words that pop into his head.

The Audience

Fiona loves the music of the toilet.

A Canon Junkie Rebuts

I'm not slapping Robert's hand saying "don't read that", but I'm reading him as insisting that I can't possibly like the canon stuff!

Diseases with no cures, just comforts

I've never been bitter about my diabetes. It's just a disease doing its thing. Being mad at it is like being mad at the rain for leaking through the roof or at the roof for getting old and letting the wind shift the shingles so that the rain can come in.

Lenses

Driving is the time when I mourn for my decaying vision.

Marriage
For the fundies and others, a few things which marriage is not necessarily about: Having children Getting rich Being safe...

Not for Getting Laid

It feels good just to see the characters appearing out of the cursor, evidencing that you are alive.

Why Blog?

There seem to be two reasons people give for blogging: to change minds and to get laid.

Statistics
Entries: 1481 Comments: 1763...

The Elfin Forest

We have here a forest that most overlook because the trunks are short and the canopies beneath our waists and beneath our knees.

Flame Wars

I got an email about my Rules for Flame Wars from a fellow who thought they were great for the wrong reasons.

Of Blogging and Sticks: A Ramble

I'm having one of those days when contempt for the blogging world is at its high.

Five Cinquains

Cinquains contain five lines, of two, four, six, eight, and two syllables respectively.

America's Thebans

The voters who support Bush and say that because he is the president he can tell no lies -- because when he speaks, they accept his reversals of fact as truths --are America's Thebans.