Another Arrival

Insanely busy week preparing for fund-raising event at work, but still had to finish this, for my young cousin and his girlfriend.

Quote: "I want something with blue puppy buttons on it!"

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I Love this Cartoonist

Andy Singer

How lame is my ass?

My cat now has a Facebook profile.
She's friends with my sister's dog.

Presented Without Comment

Scanned this in from the coupon insert of today's newspaper.

Dream Log - 1/22/2000

This morning I dreamed that a bald eagle had nested on the back porch of our house. I saw it first - I was in the kitchen when I saw a white head, a hooked yellow beak. The front part of the window swung open toward the porch. She pulled open the sash and dragged out a mouse. Since I couldn't really see her, I thought it was just the mouse - and I wasn't bothered by the idea of the mouse, living there - it was cute. Then eagle chick appeared and the mother was in full view. I called my dad. It took the rest of the family a while to come out of the living room. They didn't seem too excited as I was, but we all stood around the window and watched. My dad asked me, "Do eagles fly?" which I wasn't sure was a joke or a deliberately stupid question. Later, I had to pull a little girl who was visiting us back in the house - she had ventured onto the porch and was petting the eagle. She kept saying, "The police are at Giant Eagle." When I went to get her she was scared and crying because the eagle had swiped at her and pulled her eyebrow off. I told her it would grow back.

Dream Log

Instead of reading my book tonight, I enjoyed a look through some old journals. I've always been an inconsistent diarist, and there are big gaps in the chronology. Just to make things more difficult, I tend to keep four or five notebooks at a time.

Anything I wrote before 2002 is shit - and even worse, uninteresting.

Except for the dreams! Every once in a while I manage to hang on to the shreds of dreams just long enough to scrawl a few words onto the page before I'm fully awake.

I'll start with this one, 'cuz it's my favorite. It's written in pencil, in one paragraph:

1/29/04

Dreamed this morning that I voted for Howard Dean. The votes had to be written on slips of paper and given to little old ladies to put in white envelopes. Then I walked down a set of beat-up stairs and outside. I got in my car and had an accident with a clunky blue car. Rod Stewart was driving it. He didn't even get out of the car, but parked it (parallel parked) facing the wrong way on the street. I backed up the street and pulled into the gas station on the corner. Had to drive up a very narrow lane up a steep hill. When I checked the car only the tire was worn and leaking a little air. There were warning signs posted about which breeds of cats were most likely to be injured if they weren't buckled in.

Make of that what you will.

Design Police

Several months ago, a higher-up at work kept going on and on about "Word Art" and why wouldn't I use it? I'd worked with Photoshop, Illustrator, and either QuarkXPress or InDesign on a daily basis for nearly six years by that point, without ever having learned of the existence of "Word Art."

I wish I had the Design Police's Visual Enforcement Kit with me on the day I found out what "Word Art" is.

Shoveling Snow with Buddha

In the usual iconography of the temple or the local Wok
you would never see him doing such a thing,
tossing the dry snow over the mountain
of his bare, round shoulder,
his hair tied in a knot,
a model of concentration.

Sitting is more his speed, if that is the word
for what he does, or does not do.

Even the season is wrong for him,
In all his manifestations, is it not warm and slightly humid?
Is this not implied by his serene expression,
that smile so wide it wraps itself around the waist of the universe?

But here we are, working our way down the driveway,
one shovelful at a time.
We toss the light powder into the clear air.
We feel the cold mist on our faces.
And with every heave we disappear
and become lost to each other
in these sudden clouds of our own making,
these fountain-bursts of snow.

This is so much better than a sermon in church,
I say out loud, but Buddha keeps on shoveling.
This is the true religion, the religion of snow,
and sunlight and winter geese barking in the sky,
I say, but he is too busy to hear me.

He has thrown himself into shoveling snow
as if it were the purpose of existence,
as if the sign of a perfect life were a clear driveway
you could back the car down easily
and drive off into the vanities of the world
with a broken heater fan and a song on the radio.

All morning long we work side by side,
me with my commentary
and he inside the generous pocket of his silence,
until the hour is nearly noon
and the snow is piled high all around us;
then, I hear him speak.

After this, he asks,
can we go inside and play cards?

Certainly, I reply, and I will heat some milk
and bring cups of hot chocolate to the table
while you shuffle the desk,
and our boots stand dripping by the door.

Aaah, says the Buddha, lifting his eyes
and leaning for a moment on his shovel
before he drives the thin blade again
deep into the glittering white snow.

--Billy Collins

From the "Learn Something New Every Day" File

Giant elephant shrews.
Who knew?