Goofing

What’s Your Carbon Footprint?

Leave a comment

Hey, kids! It’s National Environmental Education Week. What NEEW this year? (heh, heh) We’re focusing on our carbon footprint. You know the earth is warming up, baking polar bears, and flooding the innocent people of Manhattan Beach because of your wasteful lifestyle. Shame on you. The government isn’t doing its part, so you have to do yours. And here’s a simple thing you can do to help the planet.

Don’t fart.

Did you know that the average person farts 16 times a day? That’s excess CO2, Nitrogen, and other gazes in our atmosphere. Not good. Let’s team up to fight global warming by not farting.

Think it’s impossible? Try avoiding food. Eating is a major cause in human farting, so maybe you should just eat a little less, if at all. For pete’s sake, people! We’re all going to die if we don’t do something, so help out a little.

Tags: , , ,

Poetry

Taxes in Verse

Leave a comment

In answer to a mandate by the Surveyor of the Taxes

Sir, as your mandate did request,

I send you here a faithfu’ list,

O’ gudes an’ gear, an’ a’ my graith,

To which I’m clear to gi’e my aith. (R. Burns, “The Inventory”)

Do you remember when I fought

The bank and the courthouse ring,

For pocketing the interest on public funds?

And when I fought our leading citizens

For making the poor the pack-horses of the taxes?

And when I fought the water works

For stealing streets and raising rates? (E.L. Masters, “Harry Carey Goodhue”)

I du believe the people want

A tax on teas an’ coffees,

Thet nothin’ aint extravygunt,—

Purvidin’ I’m in office; . . .

I du believe in any plan

O’ levyin’ the taxes,

Ez long ez, like a lumberman,

I git jest wut I axes; (J.R. Lowell, “The Pious Editor’s Creed”)

That very morning

The Federal Judge, in the very next room

To the room where I took the oath,

Decided the constitution

Exempted Rhodes from paying taxes

For the water works of Spoon River! (E.L. Masters, “Ida Chicken”)

But each year, unawares,

He sent a sum for taxes due—

And fence repairs. (H.C. Stearns, “Reuben Roy”)

Someone, please tell me,

if you know, where does,

all the money go? (Mac McGovern, “Taxes”)

Tax not my sloth that I

Fold my arms beside the brook;

Each cloud that floated in the sky

Writes a letter in my book. (R.W. Emerson, “The Apology”)

The Press

Protection for Journalists

Leave a comment

McCain supports legislation to protect journalists and their sources, but he cautions them saying, “The workings of America’s newsrooms are less transparent than those you cover. The press needs to work on correcting this.”

This could be good law in the making, but McCain could gain ground with many people by working against his own regulations against free political speech (McCain-Feingold).

Uncategorized

“What do you mean, you don’t want a Victim Card?”

Leave a comment

“Walk Hard: The Lars Walker Story.” That’s me tonight. Got my second evening walk of the year in, and it left me more winded than the one I took last week, if I remember correctly. I’m not sure why.

And it was cold. Not cold overall. The landlocked portion of the walk was pleasant. According to the thermometer on my porch, we got up to around 70° (that’s 20° for you soccer fans, though it may be an anomaly, caused by the sun beating on the Astroturf). But going past Crystal Lake, the wind was as bitter as a Pennsylvania voter. There’s still a skin of ice on the lake, and it has its effect.

I apologize for introducing a political note in a book blog, but I want to comment on Barack Obama’s “bitterness” statements. It seems as if all weekend I heard the recording over and over, in various degrees of context. And I think I caught something I haven’t heard anybody else mention.

I’m certain Obama is astonished at the response his words have raised, because he sincerely didn’t intend to say anything offensive. In fact, it’s my impression that his intention was to defend middle class Pennsylvanians, in his own fashion, and he can’t figure out how anybody could take it amiss.

Because in Obama’s world, the kindest, most uplifting thing you can do for another human being is to bestow the status of Victim on him. And what he was trying to say was that the Pennsylvanians are victims too—victims of the economy—and therefore we should cut them some slack if they’re not enlightened enough to vote for him.

What he can’t understand—what is entirely outside his conceptual framework—is the idea that there are people out there who aren’t actually pleased to be labeled victims.

Fiction

Holding Back the Praise

Leave a comment

The Literary Saloon is excited about a 29 word compliment of a translated crime novel in the NY Times Book Review. They can’t stop talking about it.

No doubt [reviewer Marilyn] Stasio only managed to slip this by [NYTBR] editor Tanenhaus and his eagle-eyed translation-phobic cohorts by not mentioning that Devil’s Peak was not written in English …..

(For what it’s worth: the book was written in Afrikaans and translated by K.L.Seegers — something Little, Brown doesn’t care to mention on their publicity page either (so that when Tanenhaus or one of his assistants does a quick check they won’t be scared off ?) — and which they managed to keep out of sight on the Amazon.com page for the book as well (as did the British publishers).)

Maybe excited is too strong a word, but I thought I would help The Saloon rejoice at this development.

The Press

Nearly All Lies

Leave a comment

Andree Seu riffs on a verse in Ecclesiastes, “All things are full of weariness.” She quotes C.S. Lewis’ explanation on why he doesn’t read newspapers: “Why does anyone? They’re nearly all lies, and one has to wade thru’ such reams of verbiage and ‘write up’ to find out even what they’re saying.”

Do you think that’s accurate for today’s newspapers or other news outlets?

Uncategorized

Blockbuster Offers to Buy Circuit City

Leave a comment

Blockbuster is trying to remaking itself into an major entertainment center. Today it offered to buy Circuit City at about twice its stock value. Blockbuster’s Chief Executive and Chairman Jim Keyes said the new company would be “the most convenient source for media entertainment.”

Tags: , , ,

Book Reviews, Creative Culture