Nickels and trowels

"Nickels, however, dumps the extra money from all his cuts into the transportation budget to fund his dubious pet projects: $2.7 million in new funds for Sound Transit, $650,000 for his sidewalk upgrade plan, and over $5 million on a brand-new scheme to replace Seattle's parking meters with "pay station kiosks that control multiple spaces." Unfortunately, the new kiosks won't save money in staff time, as you might expect: the $5 million includes 1 new full-time Parking Meter Repair Crew Chief and 1 new full-time Civil Engineering Assistant." (by Maria Tomchik from "Eat the State", Oct 8, 2003)

how i dig thee let me count thee, for the fountain days do haunt thee, all out along the winding walk, a parabola of conditions, frost and fair fires burning away the wooden crossties, all rails helped to ruin, all ashes scattered to four fine winds, my love is "perishable, protected, all alone" like a swan whose downy feathers fill with air in each turn around the pond.

Traces, melon

hors d'oeuvre flip, mirros slip
caught your resignation on my right hip
walk off the job, go whole hog
mercy mr percy its a rolling log

oh water, big water, river sit me down
help is coming if i stick around
more mysterious than ever

flier calling, wristwatch falling
monitored illusion in a storm that's squalling
pills in her hand, traveling man
tell them what its like to have to shovel sand

oh water, big water, river sit me down
help is coming if i stick around
more mysterious than ever

"The extraordinary ability of dolphins to echolocate has fascinated scientists and the public since its discovery in the late 1950's. The Sonar of Dolphins is the first book to summarize modern research on this subject, and presents a broad synthesis of this very interdisciplinary subject. The author is an internationally-recognized expert on dolphin sonar and is in a unique position to bring together research on the physiological, mathematical and engineering aspects of dolphin sonar. The Sonar of Dolphins will be of interest to auditory researchers, electrical engineers, acoustical physicists, and mammalian physiologists." (Google books description of "The Sonar of Dolphins" by Whitlow W. L. Au)

Treason plains belladonna

"The Waste Land" begins with an excerpt from Petronius Arbiter’s Satyricon, in Latin and Greek, which translates as: “For once I saw with my own eyes the Cumean Sibyl hanging in a jar, and when the boys asked her, ‘Sibyl, what do you want?’ she answered, ‘I want to die.’” The quotation is followed by a dedication to Ezra Pound, Eliot’s colleague and friend, who played a major role in shaping the final version of the poem. (GradeSaver Study Guides)

orange moonies all around my hat, dancing forward pass upon my soul, their boots have sharp heels and i have been sent home to grieve my ancestors, this unholy grail that follows each meal, my present company not accepted, hinterlands scored on the front steps with someone's cousin, who came to visit, my forbidden thoughts have lingered once again, taking down notes for a sparrow's visor, drinking belladonna tea out on the wide plains of dakota, i left, my treason was perfect.

Furniture venom

what tesla knew about magnetic fiction, what carson knew about timing chains, what venus knew about ocean water, what altman knew about frankenstein's pubgrub, what nancy knew about the brady furniture, what crandle knew about fences brought home on time, what mom knew about cooking the kitchen sink to a tender turn, what apple knew about walking across the lime peel, what milicent knew about forking over crableg salad, what vinny knew about beawolf's oldest cousin twice removed, what carter knew about living large without pills, what tanlines knew about silica regions of mexico, what air bubble knew about the bloodstream of a cornfield, what plaster knew about harvard degrees in the 4th quarter.

"The rivalry between Venom and Spider-Man has gone down in Marvel Universe History as one of the worst. Every time it comes down to it they have some of the most brutal Superhero smack-downs of all time. Now this two piece statue set immortalizes one of their worst battles in the style of Simon Bisley's art. This set is limited to 675 pieces worldwide, and includes both Spider-Man and Venom with interlocking bases." Bowen Designs

Tell me whose baritone fell over

intermission gavel, vroom gallop vindicate obvious traces gone, delving into a kale and cauliflower existence, murching viliums of whole egg personell coarse salt vanities, an umbilious virtue, pack-tickling distance credits along a burbank toilet bowl afternoon, pugnacious little furrballs kipping their sanguine laddersnouts acrime a bigwheel track whose loop de loop plunked our little car into the drink, sinking sailing, glubbing out its last breath of air, wheels go round and round, up and down, all through the town, inhale that musty garsconza telebrium, its all that is known of your entity.

"A dolorous line that has the same flavor as Ornette Coleman's more moody work . . . . a frenzy of overblowing that evolves into a weird mix of Ayleresque cries and space-yodelling in the Leon Thomas tradition . . . . . Wilkinson is a saxophonist whose work is on a par with Charles Gayle, David Ware, Peter Brötzmann or any of the other heavyweight reedmen who are still playing hard and free. I can think of many young American conservatives who would do well to have their heads shoved deep into the bell of his baritone for a season or two." Byron Coley FORCED EXPOSURE

Crescent vacuum

"The Islamic calendar is principally a lunar calendar. The determination of the first day of any Islamic month is not a simple matter, but rather a complex one. The question is how soon after the new Moon can we spot the lunar crescent in the evening twilight? Several civilizations before us faced the same question, and several criteria were introduced for a possible sighting. The most common one is that the thin lunar crescent should be at least one day old at the time of sunset. Each succeeding day the Moon sets later, increasing the chance that it will be seen. Sightings of the Moon within 20 hours of its new phase are extremely rare. However, some records have been set such as the naked-eye visibility of a 15.4 hours crescent in 1871, a 14.9 hours visibility in 1972, and a 13.5 hours visibility in 1988." (Ilias Fernini)

your wedding dress waits somewhere, bleeding off the edges of the page in history where intellect and emotion find their hands in the same pond, reaching for the same piece of fruit which floats at some level beneath the surface, yet not resting against the sandy bottom, suspended by its own weight in relationship to the density of the water, in communion with the lily whose stalk disappears at a depth where the sun will not penetrate, all of your limbs have stretched to their ecstatic length, they whirl and wave in your dance, your wedding future dance, contemplated on the side of a forest path, noted on a piece of silk with a simple word written in needlepoint, "beauty".

Moro dance

"Culture and the arts are potent forces in national development. With its colors and contrasts, our cultural heritage unifies our race, and gives it a national identity that lends pride and dignity to every Filipino." - Philippine President Corazon C. Aquino, 1991 Introduction Inspired largely by the excitement of Edward Said's work, much of the focus of post-colonial discourse has been on the role and effect of colonialism in the metropole. But as the agency of post-colonial subjects increasingly comes under scrutiny, Benedict Anderson's insights about the complex "mimicry" of colonialism in post-colonial states seems to me to be increasingly relevant. For example, in his penetrating analysis of colonialism and nationalism in the Philippines, Michael Salman comments that "when Benedict Anderson's work on the generalization of nationalism is put alongside Edward Said's writings on the pervasiveness of colonial culture, it does suggest the outlines of a parallel transformation of consciousness, and its containment in conservative ideology, neo-colonialism, and the repressive authoritarianism of so many..." (Barbara S. Gaerlan)

in witness there of capillary vanishing bogs treading forward, a plank across to the island, reckoning held at arms length by tiny birds feeding on the evening gnat population, during which fundamental change i forced myself to believe that your arms were enfolding the upper regions of my torso with impossible length, turning then into forceps i never knew, and tender, twisting the solid core of my body into itself in sweetness, tender gasp and long breathing song entering the space between us, this dance you call your work and i call my resignation.

Unblocking savant

there are so many ways i hesitate to stay open to support; emotional, spiritual, financial, practical advise - and it all came to a head the night before last. one of the symptoms is the gap in my writing here. once a day, bruce, not once a week. there is a quiet celebration in my soul every time i allow myself the luxury of taking these moments to act on a creative urge, let my fingers do the talking, embodiment of that flight i dream of, one step, then a second step into a space about a foot above the floor where somehow the law of gravity suspends itself and i begin an easy slide through the room, adjusting for balance, releasing into a suspended state (that is as in skinner releasing) and carve easy curves out and along the boulevard of living.

"As remarkable as the cat-drawing lesson was, it was just a hint of Snyder's work and its implications for the study of cognition. He has used TMS dozens of times on university students, measuring its effect on their ability to draw, to proofread and to perform difficult mathematical functions like identifying prime numbers by sight. Hooked up to the machine, 40 percent of test subjects exhibited extraordinary, and newfound, mental skills. That Snyder was able to induce these remarkable feats in a controlled, repeatable experiment is more than just a great party trick; it's a breakthrough that may lead to a revolution in the way we understand the limits of our own intelligence -- and the functioning of the human brain in general." (futurepundit.com)

Patterns and forgiveness

"Forgiveness is the cancellation of all the conditions in your mind that are preventing the flow of love, joy and vitality through you, independently of the behaviour of others or of any circumstances."
Dearbhaile Bradley

"The world breaks everyone and afterwards many are strong in the broken places."
Ernest Hemmingway

Today, my first day back at work in the New Year, I started to begin to think about the possibility of maybe some day getting around to perhaps changing the patterns that are in place during my work day that deplete my effectiveness.

Tomorrow is a fresh start!

Antwerp follicle

"Nasty stereotypes have helped move the merchandise for more than a century, and the history of their use and abuse offers a weird and telling glimpse of race relations in this country. Not surprisingly, the earliest instances were the most egregious. This circa-1900 ad for a rodent-control product called Rough on Rats doesn't just exploit the then-popular urban legend that Chinese people eat rats. It also underscores the intensity of American xenophobia of the day. There were anti-Chinese riots at the time, as well as legislation like the Chinese Exclusion Act, a federal ban on immigration passed in 1882. (It was on the books until 1943.) In the ad, "They must go" refers both to the rodents and the Chinese." (from "Wired" April 30, 2007)

rats or cats or bats or scats, these rumors spread like waves of sheets on laundry lines, in graphic arsenal repeating twisted dripping knotted full-in-sun police begin to walk that waterfront, their shining boots, a club in hand, the games relationship framed by automatic weaponry, making blades obsolete, varnished planks squeaking under their weight, virtue dashing up against the pilings, growing barnacles whose stripping action takes away the most stubborn stains, lick and eat, grease trap furnishings out along the bay, rocking, rolling, riding, "all bound for morning town, many miles away".