Oh, sure, this cat starts nursing a baby squirrel with the rest of her new litter and we’re all supposed to go “Awww! Adorbs!”
But when I nurse a baby squirrel in public I get “Get off the bus!” or “Hey, leave the altar!” or “You need to exit the park, sir.” That’s speciesist and sexist. Supposedly the squirrel has learned from the cats how to purr. Cute? Sure. Useful? No. If the squirrel gets into the wild it is doomed.
Meanwhile, I teach my whelping squirrels useful things like how to waterski. That’s both a recrational skill and a darned job that brings money back home from R.V. shows, gun shows, and auto shows.
And I choose to raise my squirrels in the Jedi faith. If you have a problem with that, you’re also a bigot. Here are my squirrel kids Mr. Cheeks, Squeekers, and Darth Acorn worshipping in the park.
Many people dig this and are cool with it. If you think this is weird, I’m not going to hate you back. I just take a deep breath, let your bad energy out of my system, and say: “May the Force be with you.”
Luke Skywalker had Darth Vader, Maggie Simpson has the Baby with One Eyebrow. My nemesis is these little danglers off the ceiling fan in the condo in Arizona we’re staying in. My head hits these as I pass 10+ times a day. Apparently, I’m not trainable as it keeps happening. They’re winning.
For months your book of poems sat atop all the other books on my nightstand. I would read a poem, or two, or three And re-read them once, or twice. And dream of you and me. We would sit. You had no Minerva wisdom, Manifesting a shimmering catalog model now leading a life of thought.
We would talk. And act. And each morning I would wake And approve and wonder why you had visited.
As I have now come to the end of your work, the book set down To be shelved soon, I realized why you never had advice. You were not a sage. You set the pen down and let the car run And exhale its happily fine particled gas and smoke to fill Your lungs more gently than the acrid burn of cigarette ash. Little more warm smog than on a busy intersection and not moving. The hum of activity making your garage both busy and alone. You thought of your beautiful friend’s undercalculated death. Cassandra’s last cry not meant as a final cry. But she famously made a man’s cheek trickle blood. You thought of her and wanted to go. Ten years on, the world drawn small And unyielding and nothing shown for enduring it. You knew you’d be a nuisance for those who found you. But you wanted to go.
I close your book and my heart aches, but the world grows. What we shared is the sigh of smarts to drown out our wants. We heaved measured words and smiled and threw darts From our desk chairs or living rooms with our feet up on ottomans And won. We pinned down for a time the things that We saw approach. A victory of sight and talking over the whispering loam that sustains our homes Until the brittle frames snap or rot from tremors or time or newer houses And the earth that oozed us up sops us back in.
Your mind and wants and moans are on paper on my nightstand. A cat has knocked that book to the floor many times. You would have laughed each time. That same cat now lays and warms my back as I write this, My stomach on my bed, In my bedroom over the garage. As I shift its front claws stick to the back of my shirt.
“Aaaaaaawwwwllllll…”A post today on the A.V. Club celebrating the song “Wonderwall” by Oasis vexed me. I never got into Oasis. The lyrics to their hit songs were simple and pointlessly riddled with Beatles and Rolling Stones references. The word “wonderwall” is a George Harrison reference. And hearing more than one song of theirs is exhausting. Not because of their high energy, but they nag.
Their brotherly squabbles were occasionally fun to read/listen to. Re-listening to the song to see if I feel any differently about it 16-17 years on, the answer is I don’t. I still feel like the only tension to Oasis songs is whether lead vocalist Liam Gallagher will find a third note to sing, or even a second. Pass.
With a need for something I slide the drawer open. Metal and plastic and metal tools clatter. How many years since I used some of these?
When children inherit cluttered drawers do they scavenge and consider “What is this?” “A melon baller.” their sibling or spouse or partner will answer. And that will be it. Tossed back with a clatter.
Will they recall that I hated canteloupe? Will the melon baller find its way to their home? Will they neglect it as I did? Will they manufacture a false memory of me scooping melon shavings into juicy cold globes? Will they donate it? “Why did our parents have three pair of scissors in this drawer?”
I was looking at paintings online to follow along with a book I was reading. In the chocolate shop I covered the screen a bit to make sure people couldn’t see the paintings. “I don’t want people to think I’m looking at porn.” Pause. “Wait, of course this is porn.”
The Turkish Bath, Jean-Auguste-Dominique IngresLa Grand Odalisque, Jean-Auguste-Dominique IngresAnd a few others…
The Oscars have come and gone, the gay Super Bowl. The annual event for us to admire and admonish our genetic/commercial/artistic superiors. Occasionally measure ourselves as their equal, before we slip back like Gollum or Thersites into our hard lives of beatings by aristocrats and/or slurping cold fish while singing songs to ourselves about how this makes us happy.
Jokes about Taylor Swift dating a lot feels like unsavory slut-shaming. I don’t dig that.
Taylor Swift sings hyper-produced songs with gimmicky hooks. Good. Inane. Fine. She also has a penchant for dating male celebrities. It’s an old showbiz move: two celebrities date, both are kept relevant in gossip circles, careers extended. Lovely. Go, kids, go.
What’s the frequency of her dating? Whom she’s dating is in the news a lot, but the pace of her dating doesn’t seem that unusual. Not that she needs anyone’s approval, but is it that much different from high school or college dating?
What rankles most is her using her dating history to sell records, over and over, then the objection to comments on her relationships/marketing strategy. She’s profiting from the national hobby of assigning each of her songs to a particular boy/man she’s dated. Nifty. It works. Adds some needed flavor to her Applebee’s blandness.
Okay, strike what was said earlier, what bothers me the most about her songs that blame bad behavior on, and screeching her independence from, these purported villains is that I’m sympathizing with her targets, who typically don’t respond in kind to her histrionics. Things are so warped that I feel empathy for her targets, including soporific talk-singer John fucking Mayer!
One of Swift’s ex-boyfriends, Harry Styles, who is in English boy band One Direction gave an interview where mumbling about Swift came across as dignified. She mocked him in her Grammys performance, a truly weird dyspeptic fantasia disturbing and tedious simultaneously, using a British accent. Styles’ response? “She’s always good on the stage. She’s been doing it a long time. She knows what she’s doing on stage. It was just another good Taylor Swift performance. It was good.” Boring yet classy.
Taylor Swift or her advisors have set on the strategy to keep milking the dating song dedication angle over and over until it doesn’t yield anything anymore, but she may be authentically motivated by a lot of rage. Choose one or the other, but don’t muddle them up and wonder why people are laughing. It would show some character if she realized “Hey, I’m just an angry beast, and I’m going to re-launch the riot grrl concept for Millenials and be the new Kathleen Hanna or a less scabby and bewildered Courtney Love.”
In defense of Love, her dating Kurt Cobain and Billy Corgan got them to help her out with songwriting and production, making her art better.
If Marco Rubio and his people have half a brain, they will turn his thirst for water into a trademark. In public appearances, he’ll be all “You know, me and my water” as he takes a sip of water. A nation shakes its head fondly, and with a sitcom posture of hands on hips or folded arms will say: “Oh, Rubio.” And Rubio will look at the crowd or the camera with a “Hey, I gotta be me.” Freeze frame. Credits roll.
But his State of the Union rebuttal was a disaster. Not only making up points to refute that weren’t even in the State of the Union speech, but Rubio made a variety of claims contrary to reality.
An essential point was one Rubio made early on: “See, for much of human history, most people were trapped in stagnant societies where a tiny minority always stayed on top.” He meant to say the U.S. is different from that. But it is not. U.S. class mobility does not really exist. The U.S. has record wealth but the lower 98% is not enjoying it, despite worker productivity nearly doubling as our earnings have stagnated due to corporate stooges of all parties, including Marco Rubio.
Poland Spring water, the brand Rubio desperately gulped, had better get on this moment. It’s promotional gold for them. That’s capitalism.
