Yes!

 I think there is a separate food group just for "Bad Things That Taste Good". What do you do with too much cooked bacon? (As if....) Freeze it in a ziploc.  Eat it frozen - it's just like candy. Bacon candy!

Hoping

When I woke up today I had to plans to be awesome. This just happened to show up. I'll try to be awesome tomorrow.

Stephen King - A Blast from the Past?

Checking Amazon today ...Stephen King has been around since 1757? That's really creepy!

Wrapping Up the Year

The green-haired turtle, an Australian species that split from other living species about 40 million years ago, can breathe through its genitals.

New York Times, 2018

Always

"Be strong."

I whisper to my coffee.

I whisper to my wi-fi.

Friday Night Lights

".... Their sons grow suicidally beautiful

At the beginning of October,

And gallop terribly against each other's bodies."

James Wright: Autumn Begins in Martins Ferry, Ohio
Photo: AJC.com

The Plan

The plan might be really bad . . . .  but never try to polish a turd.

Blue on Blue

The Satin Bowerbird adorns its nest with items of bright royal blue,

 like bottle caps, to attract the females. 

Yes, this bird prefers one specific color.  

And you thought you were an artist. 

Twice

The mere knowledge that such a work could be created and still exists in the world makes me twice the person I was.

 

 Goethe, when viewing  the Medusa Rondanini (above). 

June 6, 1944

Robert Capa, photographer, Normandy, France

Near the snow, near the sun, in the highest fields,

See how these names are fêted by the waving grass

And by the streamers of white cloud

And whispers of wind in the listening sky.

The names of those who in their lives fought for life,

Who wore at their hearts the fire’s centre.

Born of the sun, they travelled a short while toward the sun

And left the vivid air signed with their honour.

 

Stephen Spender, from The Truly Great

If Only

Do you believe constant movement will deliver you from the disappointment of an ordinary life?

Women

Sure, we’re supposed to take calcium pills to avoid brittle bones and hip injuries at 90, but who worries about living long when we’re just trying to get through the day?

Sandra Tsing Loh

Obsession

"In the creative process, obsession changes linear time. You become entirely engrossed: Time becomes lost, elastic, and things shift and glide in ways that we don't usually experience in the world. It's not only when you're creating but also when you're experiencing art, like a piece of music you're obsessed with. That's why people become addicted to the creative process."

Sara Sze
(quote and art)

All I Need

"... a mouse so frightened it went to the cat for love."

Robert Stone, A Flag for Sunrise

Sez Who?

Truth is beautiful, without doubt; but so are lies.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

My Valentine

I've tried several varieties of sex.  The conventional position makes me claustrophobic and the others give me a stiff neck or lockjaw.

Tallulah Bankhead
Statue from Metropolitan Museum of Art

Drive-thru

To me, fast food is when a cheetah eats an antelope.

 

George Carlin

Read It Again?

To reread what you loved most at a particular moment is to risk the possibility that you might love it less, and I want to keep my memories undegraded.

 

Katherine Boo

Huh?

Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.

Albert Einstein

Caution

When something good happens it's a miracle and you should wonder what God is saving up for you later.

Marshall Brickman

Either Or

The chicken probably came before the egg because it is hard to imagine God wanting to sit on an egg.

Unknown

Ode to an Umbrella

...

what roof

I have, frail thing,

you're my argument

against the whole sky

...

Connie Wanek

Ode to Advil

Pain has an element of blank;

It cannot recollect

When it began, or if there was

A time when it was not.

Emily Dickinson

I Rule

Kneel Before Me

by Francesco Marciuliano
 

In ancient Egypt

We cats were gods

We ruled the heavens

We reigned on earth

So kneel before me

I said come to me

Uh, listen to me

How about just a treat then?

Okay, maybe a toy

Some crumpled paper would do

I'm not picky

Well, can you at least scratch

         behind my ear?

Can you at least do that?

Oh 

Oh yes

You serve your master well

On The Horizon

California is a queer place. It has turned its back on the world, and looks into the void Pacific.

 

D. H. Lawrence

Art: Jan Heaton

Katie

Left alone, no matter at what age or under what circumstances, you have to remake your life... what I essentially did was to put one foot in front of the other, shut my eyes, and step off the edge.

 

Katherine Graham

Fragile Beauty

I don't collect anything. I am just as happy looking at beautiful things as owning them.

Muriel Grateau

I Stand In Awe

After the last of the daylight is gone, at dusk, the peaks still glimmer in the slow-growing darkness as if jagged pieces of the moon had dropped from sky to earth.

Anuradha Roy

Simply

It's not easy being a mother. If it was easy, fathers would do it.

Master of All

"The Dude abides. I don't know about you, but I take comfort in that. It's good knowin' he's out there. The Dude. Takin' 'er easy for all us sinners."

The Big Lebowski

Speaking of Dudes.... this Dude, Seth Apter, does art all the time, does it well, and best of all, he shares his art, your art and my art with everyone.

Passing By

Another day without a plan to use calculus.

I'm So Tidy

 

Actually, I'm pretty neurotic myself.  And I'm not sure I'm interested in friends who aren't neurotic.  Who needs the aggravation of hanging out with people who are pulled-together, have high self-esteem, and never doubt themselves?  What would we talk about? How great they are? What a mess I am?

 

Ruth Pennebaker

Get In Line

Society wants people who confirm, not people who do their own thing. It's easier to control them that way.

Getting A Head

I don't understand why people hate reading. It's like TV in your head.

It Was

... a scatter of images caught like butterflies in the grille of my mind.

Michael Chabon

When The Moment Is Right

Sex at age 90 is like trying to shoot pool with a rope.

George Burns

Veterans Day, November 2011

Airman 1st Class Claudia Segovia boards a Boeing 737 en route to Bagram Airfield, Afghanistan, in support of Operation Enduring Freedom. Airman Segovia is assigned to the 492nd Fighter Squadron at Royal Air Force Lakenheath, England. (U.S. Air Force photo/Airman 1st Class Eboni Knox)

Happy the soldier home, with not a notion

How somewhere, every dawn, some men attack,
And many sighs are drained.
Happy the lad whose mind was never trained:
His days are worth forgetting more than not.
He sings along the march
Which we march taciturn, because of dusk,
The long, forlorn, relentless trend
From larger day to huger night.

From Insensibility, by Wilfred Owen

Bedtime

No book worth its salt is meant to put you to sleep, it's meant to make you jump out of bed in your underwear and run and beat the author's brains out.

Bohumil Hrabal

November

What it is to be alone in the Wisconsin swamp in late November, the sun is going away, and nature rather than being a comfort is instead an implacable force that fills your soul with emptiness.

Michael Perry

Hanging In There

Serious Guys think they make games better with their seriousness, but they spoil everything.  At this point, most of us are playing sports just to avoid buying bigger pants. Every outdoor activity that does not result in a blown ACL or a trip to the cardiologist is a minor victory. The PGA and the NBA are not coming with offers. John McEnroe is not impressed by your spin serve. 

Jason Gay

One Step at a Time

Imagination is the beginning of creation.  You imagine what you desire, you will be what you imagine and at last you create what you will.

George Bernard Shaw

Steve Jobs Transformed Our World

"Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart."

Steve Jobs, June 2005  

Oops

Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep.

Scott Adams
Claes Oldenburg, Eraser

Little Bird

I hope you love birds too.
It is economical.
It saves going to heaven.

Emily Dickinson

Torn

A longing to wander tears my heart when I hear trees rustling in the wind at evening.

Hermann Hesse
Image: Alvin Tenpo

Remember

How shall the heart be reconciled
to its feast of losses?
In a rising wind
the manic dust of my friends,
those who fell along the way,
bitterly stings my face.
Yet I turn, I turn,
exulting somewhat
with my will intact to go
wherever I need to go,
and every stone on the road
precious to me.
In my darkest night,
when the moon was covered
and I roamed through wreckage,
a nimbus-clouded voice
directed me:
"Live in the layers,
not on the litter."
Though I lack the art
to decipher it,
no doubt the next chapter
in my book of transformations
is already written.
I am not done with
my changes.

The Layers, by Stanley Kunitz
Painting by Albert Bierstadt

Friends

Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend.
Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read.

Groucho Marx

Don't Vote, It Only Encourages Them

...It is a tale, told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

Shakespeare, MacBeth