A Dark Day in Ohio

I suppose its a happy day for humankind. Wes Anderson's new movie, The Life Aquatic opens today. So I suppose that's great.

Just great.

Unless you live in OHIO! who said that it was okay to treat the red states like red-headed step children, anyway?

We've got to wait until Christmas!? I'm a big proponent of not shaking one's Christmas Gifts in advance nor digging through closets. I think that surprise is as great as the next guy....

...but this is just the sort of thing that's gonna make me shrug my shoulders and say:

What choice do I have! I live in a red state and I'm getting treated like a redneck. I might as well vote for GW next time around!

(yes, its true, there was a small, not well-discussed clause in the patriot act that clarified that third-term presidents would be permissible if the terrorist alert had fallen anywhere below magenta in the pre-election year.)

So if you're looking for me today, I'll be up at tinseltown-on-the-strip sitting in whichever theater is dark and bleak and unoccupied at the moment....

call it my way of celebrating advent....

stories about karma

regulars noted my pan of the amazon short film series several days ago --

well the good news is that the last three have been MUCH better. Do Geese See God and Careful What You Wish For are both great examples of GOOD storytelling and resonant stories.

And the whole series focuses on Karma, which, i'm increasingly seeing as a better-version-of-fate-than...well...fate. Even though I'm pretty ambivalent (read: skeptical) of the whole reincarnation dimension of Karma.

But this little comic by Ryan Estrada, (thanks Scott McCloud (of Understanding Comics fame, for the link) is another great story about....fate? irony? the "one that got away."

Seasonal Discovery

Eating snow isn't as tasty as memory suggested...

An Alternate Grand Theory of the Universe

did you read about how physicists are proposing a grand theory of the universe? Essentially it's this:

The universe is made out of very tiny squiggling strings.

(personally i don't see the appeal of "strings." I definitely would have elected *spaghetti* (enh? gives the Italians a new lease on life regarding their cultural contribution -- since the Roman Empire, along with Empires in general sort of went out of vogue a few years ago... or why not worms? they probably shot themselves in the foot by using that metaphor for "wormholes" when popularizing the discourse around the theory of relativity.)

But really (!) I don't want to help the physicists out any more than i already have. In fact. I think its high time that we poets and prophets and humanities folks offer our own alternative:

Grand Unifying Theory of the Universe.

So here's my initial idea:

The universe is held together with paper clips. Seriously. Every social reality which comes to mean something, somewhere, to someone in a way that has consequences...is....somewhere....bound together with another social reality by means of:

paper clips.

seriously.

What is the cause of war and divorce and famine and global warming? People are taking the paper clips off of the wrong groups of paper and re-clipping in ways that don't match. (some people call it "globalization" (thanks a lot for your role in that, too, Roman Empire!) -- i just call it "re-clipping")

your helpful contributions to the theory will be welcomed.

Sick and Fat and Really Successful

I ran into my new best friend Kevin this morning while we were picking up our daughters from kindergarten.

Me: Hey! How's it goin?

Kev: Great. I finally got some sleep.

He went on to tell me about a story he heard about on NPR (and I hope he was joshin' me and I really am about to start a new urban legend, but i don't think he was) that had linked not only health and sleep, (eg. you sleep more -- you're more healthy) but also linked sleep to weight loss. Something about the saratonin or the hemoglobin or the bipartisan or the string levels in your body are replenished when you sleep. And if you don't have those levels right -- you can't even burn fat or calories correctly.

And here's where the world all went out of focus and blurry for me. I felt the hall spinning. He says: "You need ten hours of sleep a night to get those levels right."

TEN HOURS OF SLEEP!

I stumbled down the hall. Jaelyn and Addison had run ahead and were probably running around in the parking lot in the rain without jackets on. I called back down the stairs:

Ten Hours!?!?

He shrugged.

So I guess I'm going to be sick and fat until: 1.) I quit my job or 2.) my kids grow up.

well i'm kinda tired, and since every minute that I type into this blogging window, I'm adding a centimeter to my waistline...

i bid you...

peace~