1. I am ever fonder of my BIC Velocity 0.9 #2 mechanical pencils. It’s the writing utensil equivalent of sloppy stomp Professor Longhair blues. It’s like the bold, lush confidence of big stinky black markers, but precise and impermanent. It could inspire the invention of Japanese calligraphy.
2. The new Shapes and Sizes is my listen of the week. A lovely, red, oaky chaos. I dig the horns. Squirrel Nut Femmesistry. I’m trying to get around to saying something about Derek Webb. He haunts me. Like an inevitable wet-willie. Also, speaking of Shapes and Sizes, here, uninitiated readers: know about this tap-dancing band from Omaha for a minute.
3. Night Watch was not all that I’d hoped. But I think the Russians may still be a literate enough culture that they just intuit exposition I would have to watch it again to guess. There were a coupl’a very tense slow motion scenes where everyone is screaming and nothing is happening that made me feel like I was watching a Terry Gilliam film edited by Michael Bay.
4. It has been interesting to read The Corrections and Anne Lamott’s Grace (Eventually) back to back. The Corrections is so densely masterful, and any grace in the book is in the author’s presentation of his tragic beloveds. Lamott is so shabbily assembled a person, so much like me that I’m thankful I’m not her, who is brilliant with grace in every viscid, precarious moment.
5. Hey – a new Firefox with (finally) the tab-closing X on the tabs! Ah, salve to my aching repetitive stress injury. So ergonomic.
6. Oh, here’s my boring story (you read about my pencil, sucka). I’ve had this great salad about four times I invented at Q’doba, an atmosphered-up Subway-for-burritos. The first time I got it (no line), I asked, “What is in the veggie salad?” And the guy said, “Veggie salad. Ok, do you want cheese?” No. I proceeded to ask for just lettuce, chicken, and then extra-for-fajita-veggies, which are not on the veggie salad. He charged me for a veggie salad (of which only the lettuce was a part) with extra for chicken and for fajita parts. Next times, I order the chicken salad, and substitute the etceteras. Today I go in and ask the same way as the last two times, but it takes three people and three attempts and it ends up with fruit on it. Whatever that was, I paid for it. I’m having trouble with the idea that I failed to close the hermeneutical circle at a fast food place where you can point at what you want through the sneeze guard. Unclaimed fast food slogan: “Have it your way, our way.”
7. I am thinking about starting a monthly haiku competition. Or honor-system 60 second poetry contest. But I will need a list of very current and compelling topics. If I get 10 good suggestions in a week, we’ll have one this month. If I don’t, I’ll completely ignore all suggestions.
8. My favorite sentence so far from writing about hymns, from “All Creatures of Our God and King:”
St. Francis composed “Laudato si’, mi Signor, con tutte le tue creature” to praise God for all created things, as Francis suffered with illness and blindness in a hut infested with field mice.
In my ear: Shapes and Sizes, “Victory in War”
Hola faretaste
mekodinosad