"Lick the roof of your mouth," she said.

He took too big of a sip - too big of a sip too quickly. The third factor leading to his gulp that swallowed him is that he doesn't often drink these and they're strong. Extreme. They are the type of refreshment only voracious individuals indulge in. And indulging in such risky liquid takes courage. Just a sip is like a quick dip into the low end; a straw suck is much different. When thirsty, when craving for the all-consuming swirl of its intoxicants, it is near impossible for such a man, a man with such curiosity, such passion, to not take much too much on the initial sip.

STORY OF STUFF

with Annie Leonard> <-----click here for the exposé.


* When speaking as "we" in this post, I mean to speak of the average American. Of course everyone varies in terms of their degree of being part of the "we".

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

The most prevalent problems in American society are interrelated:
- our economic cycle is linear in all the wrong ways.
- our social line of thinking is cyclical to the point of mindless sickness.
- our political power is in the hands of puppeteers and we are allowing ourselves to be the marionettes. We've attached ourselves to their strings by listening submissively.


Instead of creating a system of reproduction, we have a system of Production - Consumption - Disposal. The product is made, used and disposed of when a new product comes along to be consumed, used and disposed of. The problem is the disposal rarely contributes positively toward reproduction. Sure, we've all learned about our blue bins and bottle & can centers, but it is not anywhere near 100 percent and the flow of production - consumption - disposal surges so rampantly, it mostly just goes in ONE direction.

Instead of thinking linearly - rationally - toward an action worth executing, we think cyclically: Work - Watch - Buy. The mindset used for this cycle is ingrained and unchanging; we must Work more to Purchase more, and the ads in between propagate these inclinations by telling us we are not important unless we have more STUFF. We are being duped.

We need to switch: shift gears out of our cyclical ways of thinking and create more of a circular flow for our environment.

And it's not necessarily about EXTREME measures. No one expects EVERYONE in America to NEVER drive their cars to get to work faster, to STOP watching TV for entertainment, or to completely abandon shopping malls or those neat-o devices like I-pods and Wii games. What is expected is an UNDERSTANDING: we must begin to see the level of hypnosis we are under; we need to become conscious of consumer habits and the effects.

It's not just hip to be sustainable. It's not even necessarily hippie; if you consider people who hope for the best for our future to be hippies, than hippie I am.

It can be BETTER.

I consider myself more of a hope-y . . . or a hippo: a human being with hope, not despair. One definition for "hip" is: to be understanding, aware. - - - So, I'm a hopey hippo, not a hippie.


Let's get back to what Christmas is really all about: love, sharing, family, faith and happiness.

Merry Holidays! and let's keep this Christmas less red, more green!

Symmetrical and Systematic

Every December I come home to 16 fake poinsettias, consistently vacuum-patterned carpets, an orderly tree of ornaments (bulbs carefully placed so no colors are repeated within a foot of one another) and three cats sitting in an equilateral triangle.

This year the mantle goes (left to right, as easy as reading): one gold-bowed, green foiled, red leaf dipped-in-yellow-precious-metal poinsettia, two skinny evergreen trees, Christmas bowl, two red tapered candles, one gaudy gold poinsettia, one silver Christmas tree, poinsettia wreathe above santa-in-the-fireplace, one silver Christmas tree, one gaudy gold poinsettia, two skinny evergreen trees, a Christmas nutcracker, three metal cup trees, one gold-bowed, green foiled, red leaf dipped-in-yellow-precious-metal poinsettia. A fake skinny garland snakes through the things.

Mom skewed this year: there are three of something on one side and pairs on the other. She’s getting risky, drinking Carolan's on ice and mixing up the symmetry. But below the stocking is a stuffed Santa with two stuffed reindeer facing inward, with two poinsettias in similar baskets flanking them. Red and green everything, even the plaid couches, plus blue of course. We haven’t had a different colored Van since I was eight.

I wonder if she meant the pictures to the right of the deck door to be set up that way: Jackie, Meghann/Jackie picture, Meghann. I think, mathematically, methodically, symmetrically, and make-sensibly, it would look more mom-like with my senior picture on the left, then Meghann/Jackie, then Jackie. For one, my picture is looking off into the distant left. For two, having the girls flank their respective sides of the central photo would indicate which is which in the middle.

On the other side of the deck door, there is a block shelf chock full of San Francisco-esque houses - looks like the hill of Full House. Where a townhouse wouldn’t fit, mom placed a snowman, a lamppost or an evergreen tree. She hid the huge speakers for Patrick on the backside of the tree because it doesn’t look even with the DVD shaped scatter of all the other presents. There are holiday throw pillows with mistletoe and snowmen, button trees and suddenly, out of no where, dad’s blue bed pillow for comfort. I am surprised it wasn’t placed back in its place after last night’s movie time. Everything is always in its correct bin, Tupperwear, shelf, drawer or compartment. Laundry every day. Fudge in plastic tins and cookies in the freezer. Haystacks and trail mix. Plenty of milk and French Vanilla flavored coffee. This year, two bottles of Kahlua and Café mixer. Never much alcohol lying around, just coffee mixers. This year, we’re mixing it up.

Even carefully proportioned people and purposeful systems need a surprising element tossed in every now & again.

Gollum Sentences.

Who's car is that?
Heidi's car is that.

Heidi purchased a new pseudo-Saab (Elantra 2005, in the new shiny 'hide-n-seek' black) and I nearly burnt it down with hot coals from our new Hookah.

I asked 'Who's car is that' and couldn't figure out why it sounded so cajun, or uneducated, or Gollum. Bill explained: "It's like saying "Bill's water is that." Very Gollum-esque.

Going to a Croc's Christmas bash tonight. If anyone is wearing those fluorescent foam sandals, I will personally heal them with my short dagger, tapered blade stilettos. Okay, so the shoes I'm wearing aren't that 'Kill Bill' hazardous, but it is a black and white (and red and green) event and I'm polishing up.

Also, we received a new refrigerator shipment this afternoon and Bill created a 'leftover' shelf. If nothing else, that shelf shows how warm our hearts are for unfinished food. We're leftover rescuers!

If you're looking for a thread to follow in this post, give up now.

Kerouac's New School for Comedians

Wed. 6:30-8 WM Burrough, "How to Play Horses"
Wed. 4:20-6 H Huncke, "WHAT TO DO WHEN YOU'RE BEAT"
Wed. 8:30-10 Joan Adams, "The Atomic Disease and Its Manifestations"

Thurs. 4:20-6 N Cassady, "How to Dig the Streets"
Thurs. 6:30-8 A Ginsberg, "Hungarian Politics"
Thurs 8:30-10 L Carr, "The Fair and Foul in Our World"
Fri 4:20-6 J Kerouac, "Riddles & Roses"
Fri 6:30-8 W Burroughs, "Semantic Confusion"
Fri 8:30-10 A Ginsberg "The Types and Meaning of Visions"

Mon 4:20-6 N Cassady, "Love, Sex, and the Soul"
Mon 6:30-8 H Huncke, "Modern Drugs"
Mon 8:30-10 Joan Adams, "The Meaning of the Veil"
Tues 4:20-6 L Carr, "The Appreciation of the Vale"

Tues 6:30-8 A Ginsberg, "Seminar: Poetry, Painting, Dead Eyes and the Unknown"
Tues 8:30-10 W Burroughs "The Immortal Bard"
Tues 8:30-10 N Cassady, "New Psychology, New Philosophy, New Mortality"

Wed 4:20-6 J Kerouac, "The Myth of the Rainy Night"

Coming Spring Semester...
H Huncke "Manifestations of Electrical Phenomenon in Texas and the Caribbean"
W Burroughs "Supernatural Elements in Horseplaying"
A Ginsberg "The Dolmen Realms"
N Cassady "The Green Tea Visions"
L Carr "Dolls and Pollywogs"
J Kerouac "The Holy Final Whirlwinds"
Joan Adams "Hints"

And a General Seminar and Chorus, conducted by Aldophus Asher Ghoulens, held each Friday Midnight in the Grotto of the moon, admission by application only to Monsieur H. Hex, 429 Hoax Street, Grampion Hills. Fee: --- Gifts, including (but not excluded to) Puppets, Roaches, Roses, Rainwater, Socks, Maps, Onions, Fingertips, Roast Beef, Confessions, and Frogs.
Requirements: Sixty points in elementary realization, largesse, comedown, sorrow, and truest love.
- -

That's the school, there the faculty, thus the courses. Could one learn there? Don't you think one could really learn there?

On Addiction:

Once I blog once in an uneventful, unstressful night, I blog twice. Then thrice. Who knows how many more will follow.

Here's a quotation on addiction said by my legendary professor: Bobbie Louise Hawkins:

"I think reading is an addiction. Writing is like a secondary addiction. You realize if you're going to be an addict, you might as well be your own supplier."


...and since we're already here and quoting my most quotable professor, I will slap a few more into the cyber-world.

"Women who are attracted to Narcissistic men do it to have space."

"What kind of hooker has a bum hip?"

"Republicans love celebrities - why? - well, because they want them to read the lines right."

"I'd like to suggest that solutions aren't necessarily the best thing that can happen. Putting a nail through something isn't going to fix your future."

"And flopping around is often where it's at - you flop around until you find yourself at a place you didn't expect. As DH Lawerence once said: 'My characters slog along and slog along and then they blossom like little cabbages!'"

"Go with it that you don't have a chance in hell but to change constantly."

"The ideal is like a grey cloud hovering over what actually is. And it makes 'what is' look inadequate and even though the ideal extends itself as unattainable, you continue to vote for it to show that you have standards."

"Rhetoric will not let a new thing happen."

"Pieces like this run the risk of becoming confetti."


Everyone should meet BLHawkins.

The things we come across...

While researching far and wide across the vast internet for a job or grant or fellowship or future for myself, I wonderfully stumbled upon this FREE ad on craigslist:



Free: comfortable, sturdy, but ugly couch/sofabed

Reply to: sale-490507887@craigslist.org
Date: 2007-11-26, 7:28PM MST


Yours simply for the labor of hauling it away, one very comfortable and sturdy sofa, expands to a double bed for those too-many-friends-suddenly-comatose occasions. When not extended into bed form, highly suitable for many an afternoon whiled away with books and/or audiovisual entertainment, not to mention a favored location for lazy-Sunday naps. Due almost entirely to the aforementioned comfort factor, this was one of the few furniture pieces that we decided was worth hauling across the country when we moved here from Massachusetts in 2004, despite its aesthetic shortcomings (see below) and possible alternate usage as battleship ballast.

Only hitch: according to a local expert (full disclosure: said expert is related to me by marriage) the upholstery on this couch, while admittedly robust and in generally good shape without stains or much wear, is certifiably "BUTT-ugly!" (emphasis hers) to such a degree that the camera may have suffered an electronic aneurism when a photograph was attempted with the pattern completely exposed. (I have not yet looked up the resultant error code on Canon's site, but I am assured by the aforementioned expert that "CF card full" is an arcane digital-imagery message that really means "That is such a butt-ugly couch that I refuse to sully my CCD sensors or display panel with its image.") Luckily we'd managed several other pictures by that point with the butt-ugliness only partially exposed; see attached.

In consideration of the opprobrium you will likely face when you present it to YOUR discerning housemate(s), spouse, or significant other, perhaps even while uttering something like the following perfectly understandable but in retrospect somewhat ill-chosen words:

"Look what a great couch I found for practically nothing!"

...in consideration and mitigation of that awkward moment, I say, for the paltry sum of $20 I am also willing to part with the patented Butt-Ugliness Concealment Device (BUCD, a.k.a. "slipcover") with which the couch is currently equipped, depicted in the attached images. This particular BUCD is constructed of heavy-duty chenille in a sage-green color. (The prospective purchaser with delusions of aesthetic sufficiency may be interested to know for purposes of comparison that the print visible above the couch in the attached images is of Stephen Linhart's "Gaze", http://www.stephen.com/portfolio/9.html)

Not included: the mysterious BUCD accessories visible in some pictures. These sinister objects are sometimes referred to as "throw pillows;" this confusing nomenclature persists despite the cries of horrified consternation that inevitably result if one is so incautious as to contemplate actual throwing. Their true purpose remains steadfastly unknown to this researcher.


Couch dimensions:
width: 70" at widest point (arm to arm)
depth: 36" (90" in bed-mode)
height: 30" at middle of backrest (highest point.)
weight: unmeasured but significant. Bring a friend or three.

Provenance and, ah, pet peeves: couch was previously owned by a family with dogs. We steam-cleaned it repeatedly after acquiring it, and no trace of doggy odor or hair remains apparent to our senses, but persons with allergies may wish to take this history into account. In much the same vein, full disclosure demands mention of the fact that we are possessed by two cats who regularly avail themselves of the sofa's previously-noted afternoon-nap advantages; while they are not inclined to shed more than your average indoor feline -- and while we often vacuum and occasionally launder the BUCD -- persons with especial sensitivity may not be interested in taking the chance.

Note: Butt-Ugliness Concealment Device ("slipcover") does not function with 100% efficacy when item is configured in bed-mode; some Butt-Ugliness may be apparent to the perspicacious observer and/or your snooty parent-in-law who does not consider thrift to be a virtue and was looking for a reason to sniff disapprovingly anyway. On no account will the poster be held liable for incidental damages arising from failure of the BUC Device to prevent thinly-veiled speculations as to the purchaser's design sense, color sense, sanity, intelligence, or lack of any/all of the preceding.

WinterPark Thanksgiving

Winter Park Mountainline


Snowboarding Cocoa stop


Jeanie and Gans-look-alike friend Melissa


Our goodbye note to Nancy and Bill... a thank you even though we didn't get Banana Bread


Cruisin' Town


Empire, CO.





Christoph and Buddy



This was in the men's room at our Burger joint. We lived by this motto all weekend. Board games, beer and eating!

A reflection off the deck doors of our burger joint...


This is Wilbur... he chewed off all his feathers after a nervous breakdown. Though cold, he seemed happy enough.

Ophirs!

Yes, we went 0-17 for the season in frisbee. I think we doomed ourselves when we changed our team name nearly weekly. For the tournament we named ourselves the Ophirs to stand for Oh-and-fifteen on the season. We condemned ourselves!

But it was fun all along anyhow. Love you pumpkins afternoon delight random strangers!

It can be a bit maddening, having an irrational passion for something.

I think in terms of literary devices. Speak to strangers with subtle allusions & abstract references. Listen with rhetorical critique & I love in spontaneous snippets.

I can't ride my bike by a passing wind without mentally scrawling a haiku. I thought about good words to use in sestinas all day. I sometimes convince myself the entire world and everyone in it is living the epic poem; each action, a line in the verse of day.

Lately, it has been elegiac glasses fused to my visage; I'm not sure how to remove them. I can't convince myself that it's best for me to try.

It's a blurry focus to live in - a nebulous cloud of questions, constantly seeking epiphanies and explanations.

Now I know why Nietzsche went mad.

Better to have lived and died than to never have been born at all.

I am glad you were born - despite the rifts we've come across over the past four years.
H.B. frog.

Reminders against worrying

Do not round down.

Rewrite, edit, pare down.

Hug.

Don't grind your teeth over it.

Sing outloud on bike but watch for stop signs.

Hug, again.

Hang out with someone who makes you productive but often distracts and helps procrastinate.

Never be late; be just enough on time.

Kerouac Chorus Response # 17

Keep a coffin nearby,
collect every tear
in it.

Then, I guess, first
you should line your
coffin
w/saran wrap

so as not to spill
or allow seepage

A coffin doesn't kill -
it collects.

Just as a gun doesn't murder -
it's the messenger.

For those of you who know me...

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/04/education/edlife/naropa.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

I go to Naropa. I study poetry in a Buddhist setting. I am a florist.

Last semester I took a course in Ikebana: the way of Japanese flower arrangement. I was reading through an old notebook and found a few things that re-inspired me:

"Why don't you live that question? Let it work on you in life and let the answer bloom."

in acknowledgement of shifting, impermanence: "The pain is then part of the happiness."

"The crescent moon is still a full moon." Even if it's just a glimpse, it is still a full moment.

Live your questions - answers are eternally evolving. Everything is transient. Appreciate a moment for what it is.

Gregory Corso:

"You can't tell anyone anything they don't already know - people's heads are just dark and you gotta light em up. In a sense, we were illuminators!"

Night off.

What's a night off?

For me, it generally occurs between 6:30pm and 11:00pm. It is a time when nothing must occur.

Tonight was a night off for me. We (meaning George and I) sat at the kitchen table and wrote and googled and giggled and drank wine, ate brie, probably annoyed people around us, but we just were. Now, this may sound hippie, but we literally were just BEING what we ARE. We just were.

And it felt good - to have a night like this. I felt like I haven't had it in a while. I feel like this is what I am looking forward to for Thanksgiving: a time to just BE. I'm most excited that we'll have video cameras to DOCUMENT it!

Thank you for the Goulash, George. The garbanzo beans went so well with the cologen, paprika and bay leaves.

unknown

How your words winnow in my head
I hate
that I cannot display the
ideas
of why you make me elate
why space
can make me smirk -
the edges between city skyline buildings
straight.

Can't there be more than one beauty
catches eye
I can't synopsize why he, why me
and think only we
'what's the bug with wood of a relationship'
I deposit this thought in the
comment box
that he never checks

what prompts
the line breaks?
What's the sp ace
mean?
Is it different in font or form on a subway car -
Question lapse like the moon eclipse
dawn of a morning star
sometimes cannot be seen because of
taller trees or
hover clouds

Either way, it's there, behind and
it's above you, too
and we are both below

tucked in the cellar bed

don't eat the quiche

"Why did we need to know about that?"

Why? Because history teaches us things. We can listen and be open to others' experiences and learn from them as if we had experienced it for ourselves.

Don't eat the quiche at The Cup. Do not eat the chicken at the Hungry Toad. Do not microwave Chef Boyardee with the cap on. Do not climb armoires.



* * * I wish I had know about Ettore Boiardi earlier; I would have written my Italian-Americans final paper on him. Damn.

Wu Wei

I watched her roll along slowly, not more than 5 feet in front of me. She was on her cell phone. Something must've gotten caught cause her front tire halted to a stop and her back tire flipped over her like a headbang. She crumpled and curled next to the handlebars on the curve at Goss and astonishingly enough stayed on her cell phone the entire time. She whimpered "Fuck fuck fuck, are you still there? I'll have to call you back, fuck" and hung up and held her head with her right hand. I asked if she was okay, if she needed anything and I think she just needed a second to catch reality - to realize what just happened. She hunched over herself silent and finally looked up and said "I'm fine - fine. Don't worry" but I wanted to tell her that, not to worry. It would probably be a moment that would fix her in the end as it had Jeanie. Jeanie bumped her knee in a faultless bike tip months before and subsequently realized Boulder was not for her.

Was it the accident that illuminated this fact for her? No - it was the string of events that followed. But her knee is better and she is better and none of us did anything to help her realize it.

Nothing was done and everything changed.

I tricked the Myspace Sponsored Links!

'Sponsored Links'

Wholesale Used Forklifts
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Directory of Mfrs of Forklifts Find Products, Services & Resources
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www.doosanlift.comForklift

Don't Bother Looking Anymore. We Have Your Part In Stock.
www.formsite.com/EZPartFinder



(I like the last one the best...DON'T BOTHER LOOKING ANYMORE! ... sounds like an infomercial for forklifts)