Poem: [A flight of swallows]

A flight of swallows
Spins outside the window.

One by one,
The stars turn on

And the yellow sun
Transmogrifies to dusty rose

As it sinks
In its ebbing light.

The moon's in tune,
Stars turn on

And clouds drape
Across the sky.

Snared in the web
Of the Milky Way, we careen

Through space, twirling on earth's axis,
Around the sun, and into the black.
---o0o---

Updated Index To Original Poems In All This Is That

Poem: A Flight Of Swallows
Audioblog - Poem: The Prevaricator
Poem: Weather Report
Poem: Your Wooden Leg
Poem: The Revelations Sermon At The First Church Of The Mojo Apocalypse
Poem: Dosvidaniya, Ivan Ivanovitch
Poem: The Late Excavation (Text And Audio)
Poem: Jack Kerouac, Meet John Barleycorn
Poem: The Gideon Bible In My Nightstand
Poem: At The Acropolis
Poem: When Aliens Land, Or, The Return Of The King
Painting & A Poem In The Painting [detail from I Read The News Today]
Poem: The sous-chef is a sociopath]
Poem: James Wright
Poem: Falling
Poem: [Life Is Not A Hardy Novel]
Poem: Seven
Poem: Coyote Comes Home Like A Salmon
Poem: Shorts For Jerry Melin ca. about 1988
Poem: Bird Poem: Monism
Poem: The Golden Rule Poem: The Countdown
Poem: When Aliens Land, Or, The Return Of The King
Poem: AT HILLCREST CEMETARY IN KENT, WASHINGTON, I WALK BY THE GRAVE OF SAM THE GRASSEATER
Poem: Notes On Flying
Poem: Daybreak
Poem: Explosions
poem: Not Past Tense Yet
poem: the glass is not half-full
Poem: It's Getting Crowded Here
Poem: Li Po In Disgrace
Poem: The Clock
A Poem: Love Song
Poem: Bad Timing
Poem: The Killer
Poem: The Absence of Footprints
Poem: Growing Up
Poem: Gone Fishing
Poem: The M.D.s
A Poem - Acrylic
poem: The Marriage
Poem: Driving Home To Seattle, We Watch Deer Drinking from the Skookumchuck River

The Tussle With Terror

According to The Drudge Report and other news sites today, highly placed sources in the Bush Administration says it is retooling the slogan for the fight against Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups. The White House began promulgating the idea that the long-term struggle is both an ideological and a military skirmish.

Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and the country's top military officer have recently spoken of "a global struggle against violent extremism." The global war on terror is about to become a thing of the past.
---o0o---

The Line of Presidential Succession

The Senate yesterday slightly altered the rules of Presidential succession. Instead of being dead last, the Homeland Security Secretary is moved up to 8th place. The House will likely approve a parallel bill. Does President Hastert or President Rumsfeld sound a little spooky? I still like this succession better than when former A.G. Ashcroft or Security Czar Ridge were in the lineup.

If the House bill passes, here is the lineup, in order:

_Vice President Dick Cheney
_House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill.
_Senate President Pro Tem Ted Stevens, R-Alaska
_Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice
_Treasury Secretary John Snow
_Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld
_Attorney General Alberto Gonzales
_Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff
_Interior Secretary Gale A. Norton
_Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns
_Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez
_Labor Secretary Elaine Chao
_Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt
_Housing and Urban Development Secretary Alphonso Jackson
_Transportation Secretary Norman Y. Mineta
_Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman
_Education Secretary Margaret Spellings
_Veterans Affairs Secretary Jim Nicholson

Commerce Secretary Gutierrez and Labor Secretary Chao would be skipped, of course, because they were born in Cuba, and Taiwan respectively.
---o0o---

Sasquatch DNA Testing

click image to enlarge

The debate over the existence of sasquatch, aka Bigfoot, an ape-like creature said to haunt the wilderness of western Canada [Jack note, and the U.S. Northwest as well] has entered the world of modern DNA testing. A laboratory will test hair samples that several residents of Teslin, Yukon, say were left when the large, but so-far mythological creature made a late-night run through their community in early July.

University of Alberta wildlife geneticist David Coltman, who agreed to do the tests as a favor to a colleague, said on Monday that scientists have cataloged the DNA of nearly all large animals in the Yukon such as bears and bison. "So we'll compare it to all of that, and if it doesn't match anything, then it's potentially interesting. . ."

Click on the title of this posting to link to the Reuters article. . .
---o0o---

Painting: Self-Portrait No. 7

Click image to enlarge

Walibri Men Ask May I Shake Your Penis?

By Jack Brummet, Folklore and Customs Ed.



WhenWalibri tribesmen of central Australia meet each other, they shake penises instead of hands (I don't know how you greet their women. . .but I'd like to find out).

I know what you're thinking--this is just the kind of blowhard confabulation I'm always trying to sell under the guise of some sort of arcane scholarship or claim of special knowledge. Click on the title of this post to Googletm a list of references. Obviously, people on the internet at least, have an interest in the Walibri.

I'm pretty sure I saw guys shaking like this the time my friends Fuzzy and Richie [1] took me to The Anvil in the meat-packing district of lower Manhattan..

[1] Characters in My Worst Job No. 6, my long delayed story of working at Carl Fischer, Inc. in NYC.

---o0o---

Terragen Rocks!

Click image to enlarge

Terragen, by Planetside Software in Great Britain, is good software. It reminds me of some of the great fractal programs, with which it must share most, or all, of its logic.

I cranked this one out in a few minutes with mountains and a formidable shadow of another mountain looming over the landscape...

I'm hooked. . .
----o0o---

Your favorite movie love scene?

It's not easy to think of great love scenes in the movies (for me at least). It's easier to come up with bad ones (try, for instance, any love scene in a George Lucas movie). I'm pretty sure I've seen hundreds, but other than, say, the scenes with Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman in Notorious, they just don't seem to stick. There were some hot scenes in Basic Instinct, and the closet scene in Frida; Body Heat; Mulholland Drive; Brad Pitt and Geena Davis in Thelma and Louise; The Two Towers' scene with Viggo and Liv Tyler; and I vaguely remember many scenes from black and white film from the 30's. There was a good one with With Al Pacino and Ellen Barkin in Sea Of Love.

It's the weird ones we remember. . .like the scenes in Blue Velvet, a movie I have always found disturbing. The "butter scene" from Last Tango In Paris? Maybe the Judge Reinhold /Phobe Cates auto-sex scene in Fast Times At Ridgemont High? Or even that scene on the riverbank in Deliverance with the hillbilly and Ned Beatty?

---o0o---

Painting: The Wheel Of Progress

<-- Click the painting to enlarge -->

---o0o---

Another Smack In The Head By The Modern World, Or, How My Beetle Broke My Heart

I'd been waiting for this for weeks. The odometer in my Bug was just about to roll over and I wanted to see those fantastic goose eggs. I'd driven nearly every one of those miles to arrive at this milestone.

99,999.1
99,999.2
99,999.3
99,999.4
99,999.5
99,999.6
99,999.7
99,999.8
99,999.9

Yes! This was it...here it comes! And then::::::::::::

100,000

What??! A hundred thousand?!! What happened to the zeros?? Then I noticed there was even one more spot for another number. The odometer would go up to nine million miles.

Gypped again by the modern world.
---o0o---

Another Shocking Revelation In The Enumclaw Beastiality Case

Not only are there problems with the stallions, but apparently people have been attempting to teach the fillies at the Enunclaw stable the missionary position.
---o0o---