"Dexter" Season Finale

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KvcNsU5tNN4&feature=related

"Life doesn't have to be perfect. It just has to be lived."

Adventures With Chinese Food

I've just recently started eating Chinese Food, and it's awesome for the most part. Most of the menus have everything translated into English more or less, which I love. For example, I ate at a restaurant that offered "fried groove liver" and "mafia salad." I assume "groove" means goose, but I have no idea what they meant by "mafia salad." Maybe they whack the lettuce...or the salad comes with a little horse's head on the side...

hmmm...

"Both Sides Now" ~Joni Mitchell

Bows and flows of angel hair and ice cream castles in the air
And feather canyons everywhere, i've looked at cloud that way.
But now they only block the sun, they rain and snow on everyone.
So many things i would have done but clouds got in my way.

I've looked at clouds from both sides now,
From up and down, and still somehow
It's cloud illusions i recall.
I really don't know clouds at all.

Moons and junes and ferris wheels, the dizzy dancing way you feel
As every fairy tale comes real; i've looked at love that way.
But now it's just another show. you leave 'em laughing when you go
And if you care, don't let them know, don't give yourself away.

I've looked at love from both sides now,
From give and take, and still somehow
It's love's illusions i recall.
I really don't know love at all.

Tears and fears and feeling proud to say "i love you" right out loud,
Dreams and schemes and circus crowds, i've looked at life that way.
But now old friends are acting strange, they shake their heads, they say
I've changed.
Something's lost but something's gained in living every day.

I've looked at life from both sides now,
From win and lose, and still somehow
It's life's illusions i recall.
I really don't know life at all.

Ceiling of the Night

People who look through open windows from the outside never see as much as the people who look through closed windows. There is nothing more profound, more mysterious, more rich, more obscure, more telling than a dark window. What can be seen in sunlight is always less interesting than waht happens behind the curtain of dark. In this black but luminous hole, life suffers, life dreams, life lives.

Last night, beyond one window, I saw a girl fearless as she danced around the room. From her face, her clothes, her gestures, from almost nothing really, a story was constructed. The moon, a dragon's eyes, as it stared through clouds cold as murder, wrapping me in shadows of breath, syntax, pause, the language of slow blooming flowers left trembling between a lion's mouth and the electric screams of the wind.

I heard once that people will forget what you did, forget what you said...but they will never forget the way you made them feel...like names printed on the ceiling of the night.

Six-Word Memoir

Here's one for everyone: come up with a 6 word memoir for yourself. Post it here if you want to. This is a prompt for the Literature Based Research class Iteach. Here's mine: "For Sale: Baby Shoes, Never Worn."

"The Witness"

drinking wine on a beautiful Sunday evening...just watched "The Witness" with Harrison Ford. AWESOME movie!! I so love the Amish.

Why I Want to Learn Spanish

Recently, I’ve become obsessed with learning Spanish. This is partly due to the fact that my last three trips have been to Spanish speaking countries and partly due to my job. At least once per day, I encounter some lost non-English speaker looking for something and wondering if I abla espanol? With each encounter, all I can do is shake my head and then inwardly scold myself for not having studied a language I took all through high school and a good part of college.

Most Americans can boast to speaking at the very least, ‘high school Spanish’ but unfortunately, my Spanish is limited to a very unuseful assortment of commercial catchphrases and film and television quotes that I picked up over the years. My childhood Spanish instructors were the Terminator (Hasta La Vista, Baby) and a talking Chiquaqua (Yo qui ero Taco Bell). In college, my Spanish instructors were more of the same, except in a college kind of way. I may not speak high school Spanish but my movie Spanish is damn, near passable.

But it doesn’t get me very far, which becomes especially apparent when I travel to a county where English is not so sufficient. I always think I go places full prepared, equipped with a Spanish dictionary (which I inconveniently seem to misplace the first day of the trip but that’s beside the point), and I try to memorize a few important phrases like, “Donde esta Emilio Estevez?” and “No mas Cocaine, por favor.” You know, useful things like that.

It’s for this reason and more that I think I want to let go of my “I-hate-everybody-that-speaks-Spanish-because-I-can't" and enroll myself into Espanol 101. And not in a classroom, but somewhere exotic and cool...

I’m thinking Guatemala…

"Country Roads" ~John Denver

"...All my memories, I get around her, by this lady, stranged to blue water
Darking dusk see, paint in all this sky, mister taste the Moonshine,teardrops in my eyes

Country roads take me home to the place, I belong West Virginia
Mountain mama, take me home Country roads..."

Grammar: "Metaphors Be With You"!!

For most of us English is a sentence (buh dum bum). In school we learned the basics followed by their 6,534 exceptions. We discovered, for instance, that "i" goes before "e" except after "c," then immediately took off to SCIENCE.

In sixth grade I entered the Spelling Bee and in the final round misspelled "lenient," which does not, for the record, end in "-ant."

I cried myself raw on the merry-go-round, shouting at the heavens: L-e-n-i-E-n-t, l-e-n-i-E-n-t... I still enjoy the irony!

In the wake of that sinister day, I pledged to memorize every word in the dictionary, beginning with the a's.

"Audacity, noun. Unreserved impudence."

Flip flip flip flip.

"Impudent, adjective. Impertinent disrespect."

Flip flip flip flip.

"Impertinence, noun..."

In high school they make us diagram sentences that seem friendly enough but which are, beneath the surface, crawling with "prepositional phrases" and "subordinate clauses."

Example: All people must have been laughing.

In eighth grade, "all people" is the subject, and "must have been laughing" is the verb.

By tenth grade, "all" is an adjectival modifier, "must" is a modal auxiliary verb, and "have been laughing" is a contusion of the lower occipital lobe. Wait, I'm back in science.

The problem is that English has so many unnecessary, unneeded, needless words, and let me explicate why: Our founding grammarians had a sick sense of humor and are even now snickering in the distance. How else can you explain the pronunciation of colonel?

But they were the ones waving quills, and if a word is misspelled in the dictionary, how do you know?

So they brainstormed new exceptions...

"No, no. Let's have 'grammer' end in -ar. That'll really make 'em feel stupid."

When they finished with spellings, our twisted forebears gave each word numerous-sometimes contradictory-meanings.

Match, verb. 1. To fit together, be in harmony 2. To pit in opposition against.

Then they moved on to pronunciation, which would depend, of course, on context (the part of the country you're from).

Example: Don't project on my project unless you effect my affects, and by that I mean my personal belongings.

And it's just this sort of thing that makes people speak Spanish. To this day, I say "amen" both ways just to make sure the prayer counts.

They, the grammar sickos, considered adding an "s" to "misspell," but were far too subtle-with-a-b. They enjoy it most when nobody knows the word "arcane" and phonetic begins with "ph."

So what happens? Kids stop judging books by their covers and judge them by their movies instead. At Christmas, my nephew unwrapped Catcher in the Rye and asked, "Where do you plug it in?"

So it goes.

Other signs of language decay can be found in this perfectly acceptable use of online grammar: LOL BTW luv 2 chat but CUl8er :P

We'll diagram tomorrow.

Advertisers have their own rules, which include lots of verbing.

"Staples is the best place to office."

"How to California in 30 Days."

Note that California is an intransitive verb, so you couldn't say, "Go California yourself." You could, however, engage in Californication according to noted grammarians, The Red Hot Chili Peppers.

I personally feel that it's immoral to put our children through English when grownups are running around using "office" as a verb. Think of all the time we slumped over those big blue English books of death. Those years could have been so much funner!

All I'm saying is that we could stand to be a little more l-e-n-i-A-n-t.

AY-men and AH-men.

Flyleaf

Even here, even tonight, in this nostalgic bedroom, either of us could be a policeman…kicking down the closed doors of alibis, of our mistakes, of our adventures. Each of us could investigate the case back to its origin—the motive and opportunity for earlier love. Do we not know the score? Criminals return to the scene if only in their minds. We let them talk and flip them in their lies. We break them down.

Either of us could play good cop, coffee-giver, provider of lights; either could be the bad lieutenant…hard carrier of truth, the whispering questioner…and anyone could be the suspect—handcuffed face-down in this bed, begging for just one second, pleading now for the chance to deal names like cards.

They become a wall… my fears, everything, nothing at all. A phantom somewhere beyond the peeling away, some empty space beneath the final page, beneath the hollow of bones that holds that initial mystery.

"High and Low" Greg Laswell

"High and Low" By: Greg Laswell

I'm going to see some friends from out of state
The very trip that you were supposed to take a while
ago
But it fell through
Like all of you
Like all of you

Thought i'd make the drive but a free plane ride is in
the air
And just like that my fear of it disappeared
Like all of you
Like all of you

And i look high and low for yesterday
High and low for you and i
High and low

Once i can see straight i might move somewhere cold
Seattle or the bay area; to see your ghost
What's left of you
What's left of you

And i look high and low for yesterday
High and low for you and i
High and low

Found a letter from a man i might have met, addressed
to you
And i'll steal the words he ended with:
I miss you
And i do
Miss you
And i do

High and low for yesterday
High and low for you and i
High and low

In loving Memory...

There is a bridge connecting Heaven and Earth. It is called the Rainbow Bridge because of its many colors. Just this side of the Rainbow Bridge, there is a land of meadows, hills and valleys with lush green grass.

When a beloved pet dies, the pet goes to this place. There is always food and water and warm weather. The old and frail animals are young again. Those who are maimed are made whole again. They play all day with each other.

There is only one thing missing: They are not with their special person who loved them on Earth. So, each day they run and play until the day comes when one suddenly looks up! The nose twitches. The ears are up. The eyes are staring. And one suddenly runs from the group.

You have been seen, and when you and your special friend meet, you take him or her in your arms and embrace. Your face is kissed again and again and again, and you look once more into the eyes of your trusted pet. Then you cross the Rainbow Bridge together, never again to be separated.

In loving memory of my dog "Bear" whom I love more than anything. He'll always be young...he'll always be beautiful. "...and may thy eternal summer never fade...as long as men can breathe, or eyes can see, so long lives this, and this gives life to thee."

Never will you be replaced or forgotten...and when I get a new puppy, I will name him "Grizz" as a homage to your beautiful legacy...I love you so...

Love,

mommy

"Ground Beneath Her Feet"

"...And now i can't be sure of anything
Black is white, and cold is heat
For what i worshipped stole my love away
It was the ground beneath her feet
It was the ground beneath her feet..." ~U2 "Ground Beneath Her Feet"

Poem Without a Title

A single word can shimmer and rise off the page like a beam of symbolic light, a bulb of glowing meaning; any word you have held dear or given, lives a new life the size of two worlds. The kind that you carried with you over the cliff...the kind that helped you up. The kind that when you go away, the wind from it blows the clocks back to striking the same hour. The kind that makes perfume open its eyes to you. The kind whose letters become a bird. The kind that opens the window and dances towards immortality. The kind that leaves you sitting there like a lunatic, raving, standing on your head, living in three and four places at once. The kind that you cannot accommodate and cannot deny. The kind that passes fear from man to man unknowing, as one leaf passes its sudder to another...all at once, the whole tree is trembling. The kind that makes you remember what you almost heard.

At night, wrapped in a bed of ashes, I remember that I am falling, but somebody else has just arrived. Somebody else is writing this, letting the wild and the domestic combine, forming a dawn made of all the air I ever breathed...arriving late and on time.

I have heard the locks close, and the keys hang in the sky...leaving a poem this time without a title, in the wake of a beautiful, beautiful storm.

The Bliss of Ignorance

How many of us ever actually grew up? Did anyone really want to?

Childhood is the best of what we are. Ask a child a question, 9 times out of 10 you will get an honest reply, whether an honest answer was particularly desired by you or not. In early years, the imagination is at its peak. Kids aren't held down by the restrictions of the cold reality that becomes more and more rigid as we grow older and lose our sense of wonder. Through the eyes of a child, a day can feel like a whole year. Time is still far behind them. Only when they advance in years, does time gain on them and eventually start to pass them in the race, leaving them breathless…and I guess today, I ran out of breath.

Life is the one obstacle that pushes each and every human being to a breaking point. Though controversy may arise about what happens after we die, we all have first hand experience as to what happens to us while living. We meet people we love and we meet people we hate. We experience almost every single emotion and are exposed to mind blowing things. Through the years we change. We change our perspectives, our physical appearance, and most importantly, who we are as human beings.

I wish I was that kid again that climbed on top of the refrigerator and not gave it a second thought about jumping off to see if I could fly. This was probably due to a lack of knowledge, or what some would call ignorance. As a child, I was unaware of the repercussions of anything…you know, like getting hurt. With increasing age, experience and education, I gained a little more knowledge and lost some of the "ignorance." Unfortunately, ignorance is perceived in a negative way. Perhaps the term "ignorance" is used improperly in today's society.

The definition of ignorant is basically being blind to one's surroundings. It seems people are using ignorance as a synonym for stupidity when all ignorance is, is the lack of informational knowledge. Perhaps people are afraid of the very label they give to others to excuse them for their lack of fear. If so, then those lacking knowledge and, subsequently lacking fear, are feared by those who are truly knowledgeable. So in a way, knowledge causes fear.

Anyone can be labeled as ignorant. However, in the constant search for wisdom, people may forget that "ignorance" can teach them a thing or two. After all, it doesn't matter if society views the "ignorant" as misinformed. Maybe it's those people who have been misinformed. Ignorance is a link to fearlessness.

Though my breath has been taken away, today, for some reason, I'm feeling alive…and that's bliss. Perhaps it's the thunderstorm...