story

Really well done.

It's time to stop using the term "make love"

It's time to stop using the term "make love" in public. Or in private, for that matter. It's blarghfh. It's inaccurate. It's painful.
I had just that misfortune while watching Anderson Cooper on a 60 Minutes piece about Simon Cowell. (Why Cooper is on 60 Minutes warrants a whole other story. Why Cowell is on 60 minutes deserves solemn acknowledgement that we are all doomed.)
Anyway, during the interview, Cooper used the term "make love." And it made me want to stab myself in the ears. It ought to be banished from the vernacular. It doesn't even accurately describe what's being made. I posit that, often, neither "love" nor its spare are made. The term is a relic, codified by our inability to be forthright and candid, reflecting our continued immaturity about the subject.
I understand that, for some people at least, "sex" is too naked a term. And "fuck" isn't exactly family-friendly. But between those two - and creative terms made up on an individual basis, or in rap and rock lyrics - we're covered. Let us, my friends, lay waste to this idiotic expression. Thank you. Goodnight.

Books and bombs

A touching tribute to an Iraqi bookseller killed this week by a car bomb. It's written like a dirge, mourning not only a man, but a city.

And another about Bush and his calls for social justice in Guatemala.

Porcupine Oddity

Today, I had to look up the meaning of the word "incantation." I vaguely understood it as some kind of chant, or whisper, or blessing but I couldn't get a fix on it even though I've heard it and read it plenty. I still needed a precise definition.
So I pulled it up on the Web and felt dumb when I finally saw its meaning spelled out, because I already knew it. That information was sitting idly somewhere in my brain, but I was unable to call it up.
This has happened several times this week and I'm hoping it's not some kind of premature dementia. That would suck. My gut tells me it's more likely all the television and the computering in my life. I think the endless stream of inane and unimportant information pouring into my brain has no exit and has settled and hindered access to certain parts of it -- like, the smarter parts -- and is slowly wearing it down and dulling my synapses like thick globules of arterial obstruction do to hearts. Symptoms: forgetfulness, inertia, incoherent blog postings, and a flimsy wrist. It is so bad, in fact, that I think of what a 1970s, cocaine-addled David Bowie might sing to me:

...Ground control to Porcupine
Your circuit's dead, there's something wrong--
Can you hear me Porcupine?
Can you hear me Porcupine?
Can you hear me Porcupine? Can you ...

Here am I floating round my tin can, far above the moon
Planet Earth is blue and there's nothing I can do

Man, I love Bowie.

Anyhow, this is a public service announcement to you and to an over-Webbed and t.v.'d me to meditate, do yoga, exercise and be mindful or any combination thereof. It will keep at bay the inevitable insanity that comes with our Western generations' irresponsible overexposure to Britney Spearsish stimuli.

Now I am going to watch "The Office."