The Things Grown Men Do

If I dreamed last night, I'm certain it had Pat Benatar's hit rock song "Hit Me With Your Best Shot" jamming throughout it. Why you ask? Just a hunch. When I woke up this morning the music was going through my head like I was possessed by it.

It could be all attributed to my daughter's Guitar Hero game that she brought with her on her visit home. Yes, I've fallen marginally addicted to it. It's not quite the same high I get from playing baseball on the play station, but it incorporates a bit of nostalgia, music and of course a challenge. She has the #3 version, and other songs that catch my fancy are, Rolling Stones hit Paint It Black, "Sunshine of Your Love" by Cream, Alice Cooper's song " School's Out" and "Black Magic Woman" by Santana.

It's not like I ever had a desire to be a rock star so this whole thing is a bit weird but if my eyes look glassed over and I don't reply when you talk to be, it might be the bottom of the 9th, two men on and we're behind a run and I'm at bat, or it could just be "Hit Me With Your Best Shot" strumming through my head.

Distinguishing your poetry from prose

The connection between music and poetry is the topic of a blog post yesterday by Kelli Russell Agodon. It's worth taking a moment to read her explanation as I believe it offers great insight into the sound our writing makes and what it can do to the poem. Check it out here.

A Black Velvet Sky

Last night we picked up my youngest daughter at the airport and met my my son for a quick bite to eat on the way back in to town. The Kansas City metro area was under a severe weather watch and there was terrific lightening, off and on rain, monstrous clouds and a rainbow gracing the sky. Things then turned more ominous looking as we were leaving, the sky had a vast airstream of deep black velvet smoke drifting in from a westerly location.

Across the state line into Kansas City, Kansas (sister city) a gas storage tank in an industrial area had been struck by lightening. The resulting smoke and the mixture of other sky components previously mentioned, presented a surreal atmosphere. As we drove on home to Independence, the electrical storm became much more intense.

This morning, on the drive back into KC, the black stream of smoke continued to funnel skyward in what otherwise were clearer, bright morning skies. The fuel tank was no doubt still actively ablaze. It brought back to mind pictures of the skies over Baghdad in the early days of the invasion. On an obviously smaller scale of course.

Journal bits this past week

• Was it Bukowski who said/upright is so overrated?/If he didn't, he should have.
• The doors finish is marred/with the anxious requests/of a dog who wants me to know/he wants out.
• Testing the wind/for aptitude,/I find myself defending/its meager showing.
• Someone will give us props, if not from ourselves they/will come, not as gentle rain/but as the rat-a-tat-tat/of an automatic that/ speaks and then leaves behind questions.

Rachael Ray - "jihadi chic"

Oh my God! The spastic idiocy of some people!

So Dunkin' Donuts runs an ad on its Web site featuring Rachael Ray holding a cup of the company’s iced coffee while wearing a black-and-white fringed scarf. Along comes conservative bloggers Charles Johnson and Michelle Malkin et al. and suddenly Rachael's the scarf became a keffiyeh presto, Dunkin' Donuts has at “jihadi chic.”

Of course this spreads all over the Internet faster than a computer virus and the next thing you know, Dunkin' Donuts ran for cover from the legion of lunatics who put Joseph McCarthy to shame. The company issues the following statement, “In a recent online ad, Rachael Ray is wearing a black-and-white silk scarf with a paisley design, It was selected by a stylist for the advertising shoot. Absolutely no symbolism was intended.” It added that the decision to remove the ad was made, “because the possibility of misconception detracted from its original intention to promote our iced coffee.”

Michelle Malkin eventually praised D.D. for killing the advertisement and took the opportunity to fill us all in. “The keffiyeh, for the clueless, is the traditional scarf of Arab men that has come to symbolize murderous Palestinian jihad.”

OK, I'm pretty certain that's exactly what Rachael Ray had in mind. A cleaver clandestine operation to use coffee... but not just any coffee, Dunkin' Donuts Iced coffee to spread terror throughout the land.

Before you think that I take the threat of terror lightly, I believe there are people who wish Americans harm. I believe they generally are paranoid about the prospects of an open society with individual rights and liberties. It's not so much that they hate you and I individually, they don't even know us. It is what we represent that they fear and hate. So when I see this kind of knee-jerk craziness I am saddened that there are Americans who feed right into the cause they think they are fighting.

This is the kind of paranoia that leads to suppression of the very rights and liberties that the terrorists despise. This is one of the greatest dangers of terrorism. A bombing that kills innocent people is a tragic loss, but when it happens we see it for what it is.When terrorists create the kind of fear and paranoia that leads a President and telecommunications companies to suspend our rights and liberties without due process, it takes us one step closer to the loss of the very liberty countless men and women have fought and died for. And each act, each tiny chip away at our rights take us a step closer to the same oppressive controls that these individuals exert over others.

Dunkin' Donuts, Charles Johnson and Michelle Malkin, along with a host of other ultra-conservative bloggers who fanned the flames of this stupid notion, deserve nothing more than our scorn and disapproval for the disservice they do to a free nation, not to mention the ill will their ignorance heaps on many honest, good, peaceful people whom they lump into the label of terrorists.

We shouldn't lose our capacity of indignation - the result is a hapless apathy

A good indignation brings out all one's powers. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

What a week....

Crazy week we've just had.

• Scott McClellan, the former press point man for the Bush Administration writes an unflattering view of the Bush White House and the administration send out it's people with their talking points to counter his harsh criticism. Funny thing is most of us arrived at the same conclusions as Scott well ahead of him and it's comical to see the president's defenders try to play this down, like we've never heard any of it before. Then we have the newest White House press secretary Dana Perino who says it was his own fault if McClellan felt he was an outsider. "You can be as in or out of the loop as you choose to be," she said. Ms. Perino should keep that in mind if she some days finds herself in front of a grand jury.
• Senator John McCain who scolded Barack Obama over Iraq and suggested he could teach Obama a thing or two if he'd travel with him to Iraq said yesterday, "I can tell you that [the troop increase] is succeeding. I can look you in the eye and tell you it's succeeding. We have drawn down to pre-surge levels." The only problem is the troop level in Iraq is at about 155,000, well above the 130,000 that would mark a return to levels preceding the "surge."
• Then come Father Michael Pfleger, who evidently feels his calling is to mock Sen. Hillary Clinton in racially charged language from the pulpit of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago (home church of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright who earlier stirred controversy for the Obama campaign.

Anyone else wondering what the weekend might have in store?

Will, a quiet one news wise would be nice. I do intend to do some household chores this weekend and some writing. Yes, I did say writing.