Fwds are stupid

Forwards are stupid, and they are normally the bane of my existence. But every now and then one comes along that makes me smile a little. not much, but sometimes a little.... You know, that 3 bean burrito and 4 coronas into the evening smile...

Still, I can't bring my self to email them back out.

But here, in this blog, I can post all things pointless.
So here is a Fwd I received that made me grin like a fat man with mexican food gas...

Are you tired of those sissy "friendship" poems that always sound good, but never actually come close to reality?
Well, here is a series of promises that actually speak of true friendship.
You will see no cutesy little smiley faces on this card- just the stone cold truth of our great friendship.

1. When you are sad -- I will help you get drunk and plot revenge against the sorry bastard who made you sad.
2. When you are blue -- I will try to dislodge whatever is choking you.
3. When you smile -- I will know you finally got laid.
4. When you are scared -- I will rag on you about it every chance I get.
5. When you are worried -- I will tell you horrible stories about how much worse it could be until you quit whining.
6. When you are confused -- I will use little words.
7. When you are sick -- Stay the hell away fr om me until you are well again. I don't want whatever you have.
8. When you fall -- I will point and laugh at your clumsy ass.
9. This is my oath..... I pledge it to the end.

the breeze last night

(I can't explain the Johnny thing. If you go here maybe it will make sense. Probably not though)

Breeze

Last night
Johnny was a breeze
hiding all day
while the sun pushed him flat
into the grass
so that he could barely snake
between those green bending blades
gravity's nemesis
he urged them to sway

As the sun moved on
to some western place
Johnny rose
turning slightly
in the lengthening shade
brushing beneath
the apple tree leaves
and starting out
across the lawn

flowing headlong
into the warm red brick
and cooling it some
as he scratched his back
on the red stone

slipping across the cracked
pavement
where
like a jewel
the green moss etched the drive

sauntered onto
the blue porch
through cracked wooden rails
and neglected ferns

now that the day
had left the chipped blue paint
(left over from the kitchen)
letting it gleam again
in the street lights

Johnny curled around
a cigarettes glow
gathering a moments warmth
before twisting smoke
into some reminiscent spectre
(a tiny yearning hand)
and spinning it up
into summers moon

another night on state street

Why do people blog?
I've been sort of re-examining my reasons for the infrequent and relatively pointless posts that I put on here.

Am I entertaining people.... um.... not if the number of people who read this blog is any indication.

Here's a shout out to all 5 of ya ;-)

To keep in touch? Nah, I'd just call you up or send you an email if that was my goal.

I think maybe it's an outgrowth of whatever it is that makes people avid journal keepers.

And that I can understand, even if I can't articulate it. I've kept a journal pretty much my entire life. I don't plan on passing it along, I don't share it, and I've never given much more than a passing thought to what will happen to my journals after I'm gone. I write with the notion that they will never be read by anyone other than myself.

Ah, but there's the rub. I know people, even if it's only a few people, will read things that I put online. And I know these things will be there forever... or until that EMP pulse they talked about in Dark Angel....

*** you're no Lara Croft Jessica Alba! you're no Lara Croft***

So blogging is sort of like a journal, that you leave laying out on the table...
open...
during a dinner party....

But that's not why I'm sitting at this lap top typing tonight. That was a passing thought. I was pulling together my memories form last night and thought "why am I doing this again?" and got off on a tangent.

But in the end, I do it because sitting here, sipping my beer, listening to the cicadas and the crickets compete in the cooling summer evening, it's what makes me happy.

Is what I'm about to write a little different than what I'd write down in my journal, knowing no one else would ever read it?

Yes, and that's bad, and not how a person is supposed to write. But if you can live with it, so can I.

Yesterday (Friday) was a damn beautiful day in the city of Madison. The heat wave has broken, and the temperatures are what summer should be. Crawling slowing into the 80s in the morning, maybe flirting with 90 in the early afternoon, and then sliding back down into a cool comfortable evening.

Not the god-forsaken heat wave we endured for over a week. When sitting in the shade hurt. Ashley, in her 10 year old wisdom, told her daycare lady that it's probably because of global warming. Her daycare lady snapped back "no it's not. it's because of polution"

Ashley, in another display of wisdom, one that I think I could learn a lesson from. Didn't argue, even though she disagreed.

We over slept. The cool morning and the later sunrise tricked us into staying in bed too long. So I didn't get to ride my bike in. Instead Sarah and I rode in together.

We are out of bananas, and broke. Seriously broke. Like "we shouldn't buy bananas if we want to go out tonight" broke.

So as I was dawdling (i'm not even sure what that is, but I've been told that I do it frequently) around the house I made up a song to mark my longing for a banana.

"I wish I had a banana, oh I wish I had a banana
If I had a banana life would be complete
I wish I had a banana, oh I wish I had a banana
If I had a banana I'd never know defeat"

"That's not what I thought you were going to say" Sarah noted

"Really? What did you think I was going to say?"

"I thought you'd say 'If i had a banana I'd stick it up my seat'." Sarah is surly in the morning.

"Why in the name of pete would I say that?"

"Because asses and bananas go together like ice cream and cake."

I think that was her way of trying to tell me to quit dawdling and get ready for work already.
We had lunch together. I don't rememeber much of the rest of the day. other than that i didn't feel like working. We found a nice little park and ate our salads on a bench.

Sarah was a little distracted. Due, I think, to the fact that she hadn't eaten anything all day, but had consumed an admirable amount of coffee.

The day passes. Though not with any haste about it.

I picked Sarah up at 3:00, and we slowly got ready for the evening. Ashley was still at the grandparents (she ended up staying a third night even. She's having a good time down there).

I played some video games and we slowly started getting ready. Appearantly... though i didn't see evidence of it, I was dawdling again.

We raid the piggy bank, or in this case it's an A&W Root Beer jug, and head out.

The Harmony Bar:
2201 Atwood Ave.
Madison
608-249-4333
Hours: 11 am-11:45 pm Mon.-Fri., 11 am-8:45 pm Sat. & Sun.
Location: Near East



We've heard about it, but never tried it. There is construction on the side road, so we almost miss it. We park in back, and come in from the side.... like the gangsta's that we are. It's a bit of a dive bar. With obvious regulars that look up through their beards and mugs at us when we come in. We go through the bar to the dining area, take seat and peruse the menu. The pizza's look amazing. With combinations that I didn't even think were possible.

Walknut. on a pizza. for crissakes there's walnut on a pizza! now that is genious. I should note that they had the largest vegetarian selection that I've yet seen in a restuarant. Over half a page of non-meat possibilities. Me.... I like meat.

Sorry cute animals that had to die so that i could eat a burger... but i like meat.

We got cheesburgers. And sweet frak those were good cheeseburgers. 5.00 a piece, but they were the kind that you had to strain to get your mouth around, and dripped when you bit into them. mmmmmmmmm

Oh, and there was a disco ball on the ceiling. I'm pretty sure they have music there often, but not on the night we were there. And I dont' know what kind. Could be country, could be jazz... I don't kow. Should the disco ball have tipped me off one way or the other?

Then to The Candy Shop
1947 Winnebago St
Madison
(608) 244-0744

It's this little place owned, and as far as i've seen, staffed by one lady. The place has all those candies that you thought they didn't make anymore. Dots (the ones on a roll of paper) slow pokes, charleston chews, squirell nut zippers, gummy fruit slices, licorice pipes (red and black), now and laters, atomic fireballs, lemonheads (okay, you still see those around) as well as shaved ice and specialty chocolates from wisconsin chocolatiers.

yes, chocolatier is a real word... i had to look it up though. It's been one of our favorite places to go afterwards if we eat in that neighborhood.

Three or our bucks and you can blissfully slip into a sugar coma in minutes. If you do go, I HIGHLY recommend this littel dark chocolate and peanut butter thing. Freakin' awesome.

State Street:
Parked, walked around a bit. The musicians were out. There was Cat-Fish Stevens (the stee; guitar and cowboy hat guy) and the other steel guitar guy (the one with taps on his shoes), a guy and girl singing old protest songs along with a guitar (her voice was amazing, and she was tiny, but sh kept cracking up when she forgot the words), and the guy who-I -can't-think-of-a-catchy-name-for. He plays either flute or sax, and he always find the places with amazing acoustics. He was playing "The Girl From Ipanema" on his flute, tucked in the shade of the concrete book store on campus, when we walked by.

And new street musician. An honest to goodness troubadour. Or maybe there's a better title, but I'm calling him a troubadour. He wore a wide brimmed beat up hat that was pulled low over his eyes. His beard was grey and his clothes were travel worn. He had a guitar. On his back was a bass drum and a series of cymbols and chimes hooked up to a pedal on his leg. An alien looking contraption held a kazoo, harmonica and pan flute within reach of his mouth.

I didn't get a picture of him, but I managed to get this little audio clip.



We killed a couple hours at the Fair Trade Coffee house. We took turns reading the isthmus and onion. I stumbled upon the startling realization that i don't like iced coffee.

I had to choose. A large iced coffee at $2.00, or some mocha chill blended esspresso drink at $5.50. I did some quick math in my head, and decided that the iced coffee would provide my sluggish brain with more caffeine (C8H10N4O2) per dollar. But there's a reason that you drink hot coffee and throw it out once it's cold. Lesson learned.... move on already.

The Union. Mecca of the state street experience. I could never do it justice. If you've talked to me for 5 minutes you know I'm obsessed with that damn place. There was music, though I dont' know the band, and they weren't great. But it didn't matter. The cool breeze was blowing in off the lake, there were people talking and drinking and smoking cloves and cigars. Dressed nicely, but not prowling. There was a surreal night time energy seething through the place, skimming out over the water like mist and turning the entire night into a movie set.

I walked out onto one of the piers while Sarah sat and people watched and took a few pictures.





We hung around there until... oh I don't know, 9:30. Then got a call that the karaoke event was going down on the other side of town. The karaoke even was one of the central events for the evening. The reason for making sure we had the night free. We had been graciously invited to attend the retiring of Dexter's White Rabbit. An even that would send ripples through the karaoke community.

Still, we almost didn't go. We almost stayed at the union, with the band we didn't know, just the two of us, on a cement retaining wall near the water.

The rest of the evening is someone else's story more than mine. It was fun, and I'm glad we were there for it. I've formed volumes of theories and hypothesis on karaoke as a result. Where as I had always assumed that there was only one breed of karaok'ster, I have since witnessed a second, more elusive, but perhaps more rewarding, species.

***fighting the temptation o go into it... to tell the story about the only other time i've been to a karaoke "thing" and how truly, truly terrible it was. fight it christopher, fight it....****

Instead, i wil let the following speak for me. I will only add that this (see below) is the karaoke that I could endorse.

Claim vs Fact

Found this interesting little web site called Claim vs Fact


Try Speakers = Sean Hannity for some good ones.

A stupid link

stupid link, but entertaining anyway...

State Street in Spring

State street has woken up. When I try to imagine State Street as anything other than an organic system. A living creature on it's own, I fall short. Too much of how it exists can only be paralleled with a living entity.
It sleeps all winter long. Never empty, but slowed. People still walk up and down the frozen sidewalk. At Christmas, shoppers still make their way through the snow and ice. The irish pub still glows warmly and the Church key is still standing room only on Thursday and Friday nights. But the street itself sleeps.
Spring comes, and she wakes up. With all the hungers and yearnings of any creature shrugging off that short nap of body and spirit. Not hibernating, just sleeping.
Today, Sunday afternoon, I dropped off Sarah and Ashley at the opera, I walked down to the Union, and I could feel her life. Under my feet, seeping up through the concrete, up through my legs and into my chest. And I know I wasn't alone. It was on the faces, and in the strides of everyone I passed. Everyone who became, even if for a short time only, part of the creature.
On the corner by the market a man sat beating on an upside down plastic pail with drumsticks. The rhythm was fast and a little tribal. His baseball cap, tipped upside down by his feet, was filling quickly with loose change and a few bills. The beats alternated between sharp staccatos and a hollow lower sound as he used his sneaker to lift one side of the pail away from the ground.
The sound carried down the canyon of glass and concrete. Two blocks away I could still hear him as I passed an old black man holding an empty McDonalds cup.
I think he would have normally been asking for change. But today I was spared my internal struggle, the inability to give him a buck, clashing with the inability to really ignore him. Usually the best I can muster is a half-assed "no, sorry." And in more ways than one, that sums it up.
But today he is swaying back and forth, and singing a wordless song. Not performing, not even making any coherent sound, all he manages to do is warn people of his presence and divert the foot traffic with efficiency that would make any officer of the law proud.
As I pass him, and today he gets to ignore me - a role I'm frankly more comfortable with, I realize he'd singing, or chanting, in rhythm with the plastic pail two blocks back, still echoing down the street.
There is a young woman walking behind me. On her cell phone, as most people walking past are. She is oblivious to my presence, and, as most people with cell phones seem to be, has no idea just how loud she is talking. That's okay. I'm an eaves-dropper by nature.
She's talking about her class on Friday. She is indignant. Someone in her history class put forth the notion that the holocaust didn't happen. And if it did, it wasn't as bad they say.
I never see her face, but I can hear both the frustration and the personal hurt in her voice. As she talks it becomes obvious that in her life, she has never been thrown into the mix with people whose opinions are different than hers.
"How could she just say that?" she demands of the cell phone confidant, and anyone within 30 feet on state street.
"How can she just say something like that. And then when I asked her why, she said it's just her opinion. You can't say something like that, and say it's just your opinion. If you're going to make a statement like that you need to be able to explain it."
There is a pause as someone somewhere tells her something, probably equally as loud, but they must be more than 30 ft away because I can't hear them.
"Well I know people can have opinions. That's not what I'm saying. it's just..." She pauses, on the edge of pushing through something.
"Well, what's the point of even talking about anything if it all comes down to 'that's just my opinion'. It's not vanilla or chocolate ice cream. It's history. If she wants to believe that, fine, but if she's going to say it in class she needs to be able to say more than 'that's just my opinion'.
She turns into a coffee shop, and I pity the people inside. But I'm jealous of her too. She's on that edge. Maybe tomorrow, or maybe a week from now, she'll start to wonder what other "opinions" people cling so tightly to without examination. And maybe she's just around the corner from turning that question on herself. And then the world will open up. And the sun is only the sun because someone told you that it was. The water is blue only because you haven't learned another word for it yet.
In the open area outside State Street brats, where Art Paul Sschlosser usually sings, there's someone new. A tall unshaven, lanky man with a guitar, his young body curved like a question mark. He is bending his head closer to the short brunette in a flowing skirt and a jean jacket with a violin. He is matching his chords to her melody, and as i walk closer they phase in and out of synch. Just as I step passed they find it, and lose it again quickly, but for that brief moment the sound they made was so beautiful I turn my head and nearly stumble.
Radar Dan is sitting with another state street regular. A lady whose name i don't know, but I've seen her often enough. She has large protruding lips and wild frantic eyes that swing wildly though she sits perfectly still. Radar Dan is calling out to girls passing by, "are you a brewers Fan?" he calls out to a girl in a tight pre-faded Brewers t-shirt and pleated skirt. "I think I'm a Brewers fan now" he calls after her as she and her friends grin and almost giggle.
I havee't seen comfort on state street this year, though I've seen him walking all the way over by the belt line.
Down at the Union there is a line for ice cream, and finding a window seat is hard. I need to start keeping my eyes open for outlets. My battery on the iBook is wearing down already.
I find a window seat in the ratskellar, break out my book and laptop, and settle in.

Get on Herb (Part II)

Both my wife and I received replies to our letters to Herb Kohl. We got pretty much the exact same thing back. Here it is

"April 6, 2006
Thank you for taking the time to contact me. I value the
input I get from people back home in Wisconsin, and I would like
to take this opportunity to address your concerns.

The recent revelation that the President authorized the
National Security Agency (NSA) to monitor telephone calls and e-
mails of United States citizens without obtaining a warrant or court
order raises important legal questions. The Bush administration
argues that it has the legal authority, both under the Authorization
to Use Military Force in Afghanistan and the President's inherent
powers as Commander in Chief, to order the warrantless electronic
surveillance of U.S. citizens and others inside the country.
However, a great number of legal experts in this area disagree.

I strongly believe that the President, Congress, and the
courts all share a common goal: to protect our country. If terrorists
are operating in this country, or people in this country are
communicating with terrorists, we must give our government the
tools it needs to protect the American people. However, security,
the rule of law, and the protection of civil liberties are not mutually
exclusive concepts; we can have all three. If our laws are
inadequate, they should be changed, but they should never be
ignored. In the meantime, Congress must conduct vigorous
oversight of the executive branch, including the President's
authorization of the NSA warrantless surveillance program, to
ensure that the rights of innocent Americans are not being violated.

As you know, on March 13, 2006, Senator Russ Feingold
(D-WI) introduced S. Res. 398, a resolution to censure President
George W. Bush. Censure is a formal statement of disapproval that
carries no penalty, aside from the condemnation itself. Senator
Feingold argues that President Bush violated the Constitution and
the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 (FISA) by
approving domestic wiretapping of American citizens without
seeking a court order.

This resolution has been referred to the Judiciary
Committee, of which I am a member. An initial hearing on
censure was held on March 31, 2006. In addition, the Committee is
conducting other hearings in the broader issue of the NSA
warrantless surveillance program. I remain committed to this
process, and to hearing both sides of the issue. It would be
inappropriate for me to make premature judgments, but I will listen
carefully as this process unfolds and the investigation into the
Administration's actions moves forward.

Again, thank you for taking the time to contact me. You
can be sure I will keep your thoughts in mind as Congress
continues to consider this very important issue. Please do not
hesitate to contact me again if I may be of any further assistance.
Sincerely,
Herb Kohl
U.S. Senator"