If forced to name a daughter after a state, which would you choose? The correct answer is Michigan. What about a son? Wyoming. A bad choice for either gender is District, as in District of Columbia. Isn't that amazing though, the fact that when you're in Washington, D.C., you're in the United States, but you're not in a state? No rather I think it is quite boring. Let's move on to another topic. Baby names. Of course, that's hardly a new topic, just a return to the previous topic. Such backtrackings are even more tedious than acknowledgments of mildly interesting geographical anomalies. Cranky, aren't we?

What kind of music do you like?

Peter Bjorn and John
Caribou
The Cave Singers
Matt and Kim
Sea Wolf
Yeasayer
Le Loup
Grizzly Bear
Psapp
Feist
Black Moth Super Rainbow
Beirut
Pinky in the Soda Pops
The Bees
Awesome
Goldfrapp
The Innocence Mission
Liars
Stars
Boards of Canada
Rogue Wave
Brian Jonestown Massacre
Blur
Mint Royale
M.I.A.
The Prayers and Tears of Arthur Digby Sellers
Onili
Grand National
White Rabbits
Tunng
The Stranglers
Fruit Bats
Bat for Lashes

~~~

There. Happy?

Actually, most of those are bands I only discovered within the past week while listening to KEXP Seattle, my new favorite station.

At lunch today

Held the door open for an old guy at Borders. Didn't see his face at first, then realized it was George Carlin.

So much for that.

How I resent having to carry around an umbrella when I know perfectly well it isn't going to rain. That's what I get for working as a top executive in an umbrella company. I can't take the chance of being caught in the rain without one. People would make fun of me and point out my "hypocrisy"— though their understanding of the word hypocrisy would be erroneous, it would still hurt my feelings. What people don't realize is that what looks like hypocrisy is often just forgetfulness or absentmindedness resulting from a lack of self-consciousness. In most societies a lack of self-consciousness would be considered an admirable quality, I believe. But not in ours. That's why I'm moving to South America. I'll send you a postcard.

Our town was in such bad shape, the Wal-Mart was putting the K-Mart out of business. Farmers were packing up their hoes and moving to neighboring counties. I was so thirsty I could have imbibed a vat of unpurified Dasani. I saw the vacuum created by the exodus of farmers and decided to fill it. With what, I wondered. Then it came to me: I would become a farmer. I would fill the vacuum with a farmer, which would be myself. I got down to business right away, learning how to be a farmer—the right way to walk, etc. Sometime around sundown I finally figured it out. Today I specialize in alfalfa.

It took more than one person to invent Rice-A-Roni?

The question, "What's your favorite kind of music/books/movies?" is about as interesting a question as "What's your favorite volume of the encyclopedia?" or "What's your favorite segment of the electromagnetic spectrum?" (Everyone says ultra-violet. What, no love for plain old visible light?) Speaking of visible light...when you think about it, is there a more absurd question than "What's your favorite color?" Indeed. In that case, I almost respect it.

Help me understand something very basic. Crops are harvested in the fall, are they not? So where does that Fourth-of-July-cookout-corn-on-the-cob come from? Is it leftover from last year? How is it you can order tomatoes on your submarine sandwich in April? When biting into an apple in August, what made that situation possible?

Sales were down at the Ice Cream Shack, so I hightailed it out of there and got a job selling used tires for a guy named Bill Packer near the New Mexico border. There wasn't much to drink in his fridge, so I made a trip to the SmartShop at the corner of Main and Liffey. The clean-shaven youngster minding the store was busy rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic, by which I mean he was busy rearranging the cartons of candy bars displayed on shelves in front of the counter. A fine display, I remarked silently to myself.

About seven years later I was reclining on the black leather couch in my high-rise luxury condo overlooking the Hudson when I suddenly desired Milk Duds. Only then did I realize the opportunity I had wasted in that store seven years before, not to mention every single missed opportunity since. I picked up the phone from my coffee table and placed a call to the National Weather Service. I gave the zip code for Ainsworth, Arizona, and received the seven-day forecast for that area.

European woman, Asian men, gathered separately for the same purpose

Jersey

I once bought a hat, but it was too small. I once bought a cat, but it was too large. Far too large. It took up so much room in my apartment that I had no place to stand, so I went for a walk, even though it was October. It was cold but it was Sunday afternoon, so I tolerated the inconvenience, as one tolerates a houseguest who is of a higher social station than oneself and therefore must be tolerated, lest he should be insulted. When was the last time you had a houseguest? The seventies? Last Thursday? Well then, you know what I mean.

As the afternoon and my walk through it continued, I felt like a cup of coffee, meaning I wanted one. The cup of coffee I ended up with cost a dollar fifteen. At first I thought the woman behind the counter had said "a dollar fifty", but I was delighted to find that I was wrong. I had become so accustomed to paying nearly two dollars for a cup of black coffee that a dollar fifty seemed like a bargain. Little did I know, until the woman behind the counter corrected me, how much of a bargain I was getting.

Later I sat freezing (almost) on a bench along the Hudson. Radio, television, and cell phone signals were passing through my body and through the bodies of all the joggers and cyclists who passed by on the esplanade. But I wasn't thinking about that at the time. (There were also some people walking and riding scooters.) I was thinking more about how I would respond to the latest vile criticisms being lobbed at me in the tabloids. It wasn't looking good for my political career, or my career in Hollywood. I decided it was time to call in the attack dogs, my lawyers. I told them to call in their attack dogs as well, just to be safe. I went home that night with a secure feeling in my stomach. Of course that might have just been my luncheon settling in.

George of the Jungle

Veil

Percy Grainger, a terrific arranger. This was the opinion of the woman on the radio. She was a terrific stranger. To me, at least. I can't speak for other listeners. They keep to themselves generally, and it's hard to know what they're thinking. Probably they are thinking about the disturbing mobility of microbes. Is a worldwide pandemic inevitable? What other kind of pandemic is there? What ever happened to epidemics? Remember when we only had to worry about epidemics? And those were bad enough. I'm sorry, I can't bear to think about pandemics while I'm still worrying about epidemics.

Holy Bible, Batman! I'm sending this from my phone!

Lunch break at Tiffany's (the new one)

What is with these roman numeral poems? Who's writing them? Why am I posting them? I don't like any of them, yet I can't stop writing them. That last one was especially dumb, even though it foretold future events (sort of).

Updates to this blog will be sporadic (Latin for "full of spores") for a little while.

Note to self: poetry should be at least a little bit more difficult than filling out a crossword puzzle.

I purchased a haircut yesterday. We caught a mouse in the kitchen. Never heard back about an interview. Everything else is pretty much the same.

Just a few autobiographical notes. Please feel free not to find them interesting. I don't.

BETTER


Better to be a branch
than to be the guy under
the branch as it's falling
I had no choice I wanted
to be a branch but I was forced to be a scrivener

It was cold under the branch as I waited for a table
I passed the time by pretending to be sitting under a bridge,
pretending to be a troll, pretending to ask pass-
ersby a riddle to let them pass
under the bridge

Never having been good at making up riddles
I decided to look up a website later
some kind of riddle database
to aid in my pretend quest

And then I really got off my ass
and really walked out of the real Riverside Park
taking my unhatched boobies with me