Today is Pocket Poem Day, where I'm to understand, each of us is to stuff our favorite poem in our pocket and regale our fellow humans. Last night, my daughter and I spent the evening finding her favorite. I believe mine would have to be this one I wrote myself.

I'm still not getting it when it comes to Twitter.

I do think I need a quicker way at updating this page. Of course, does any one read home pages any more?

The following story was taken from Whiskey River…

Joshu asked Nansen: “What is the path?”
Nansen said: “Everyday life is the path.”
Joshu asked: “Can it be studied?”
Nansen said: “The more you study, the further you get.”
Joshu asked: “If I do not study, how can I know it is the path?”
Nansen answered, “The path does not belong to things seen: nor to things unseen. It does not belong to things known: nor to things unknown. Do not seek it, study it, or name it. To find yourself on it, open yourself as wide as the sky.”

Yes, “Cognition is a delusion and noncognition is senseless.” (from this version).

I think that at least one easter egg should contain an insulin shot. Hrm … I feel an essay coming on.

This evening at the dinner table, my daughter was asking about cholesterol, and I said that it can lead to things like heart attacks.

“Oh,” she said, “for heart attacks can kill you, like my cousin's cat, Shadow. For her cat is dead, and is now in heaven.”

My 4 year old son interrupted and said, “No, Shadow's dead and disappeared. He's not in heaven.”

“No,” my daughter countered, “he's in heaven.”

This went back and forth as it does in children of this age until my son replied, “Where is Shadow? Do you see him? He is disappeared.” QED.

I then had to interrupt, “Kids, this argument has been going on for well over two thousand years, and no one has solved it yet, so let's argue about something else.”

Sorry, can't write much … too busy building an ark. Good thing we've been killing off species right and left (let's hear it for mass extinction!), otherwise, this ark would be fookin' huge. I mean, can you imagine having to hold a wooly mammoth, mastodon AND a standard elephant. I mean, this sort of thing was easier when we could just keep a few dinosaur eggs warm and be good.

Don't tell anybody this, but the last time, the weasels got loose and destroyed quite a few of the dinosaur eggs. Just as good tho … some of those raptors were mean. You'd be plowing your field and if you didn't keep looking around for those feathers sticking out in the tall grass, you wouldn't make it back to the house.

Hrm… has anyone else noticed this, but it smells like Ross Perot has a protégé… Remember, “always two there are, a master and an apprentice.”

So, it is time for a prediction… While Ross Perot catapulted a Clinton into the White House, I believe that soon Ron Paul will catapult another Clinton into the White House.

Yes, I do feel like Cassandra at times.

When I mentioned my observation, Po replied:

They're probably the same person
I've never seen them in the same place at the same time.
Q.E.D.

A well known Buddhist story kinda goes like this:

Two monks were washing their bowls in the river when they noticed a scorpion that was drowning. One monk immediately scooped it up and set it upon the bank. In the process he was stung. He went back to washing his bowl and again the scorpion fell in. The monk saved the scorpion and was stung again. The other monk asked him, “Why do you continue to save the scorpion when you know its nature is to sting?”

“Because,” the monk replied, “to save it is my nature.”

Mix that with Satre's Existentialism, and you've got the makings for some good mental stew … So? What's your nature?

So my daughter talked me into starting a chess club at her elementary school. How fun will that be. I'm a terrible chess player, but I'm sure I can encourage the children… maybe even stay 1 step ahead. Anyway, I've put all my presentations online if you want to look at them and use them in your own chess club.

I didn't realize that T-Rex used their six-inch long serrated teeth to eat coconuts. Why is it that these people don't realize that the most obvious conclusions are generally the right one?

However, I must take exception on this based solely on consistency. If raptors were cavorting around Eve without even thinking of eating her, then obviously, this diarama is something shown during their brief stay in the Garden of Eden. And if so, this Eve is a bit too… er, covered.

That's right. For consistency, this diarama needs some full frontal nudity.

Was the birth of a baby, conceive in ecstasy
Sole purpose to be wasted in Bush's war?
Like a brick of bills on a pallet of gold?
They fight tyranny with tyranny
All in the name of someone's god.

While January 2009 will mark the end of a mistake, it will take many years to clean up the mess. But the immorality of it all will last even longer.

Happy Tax Day. Are you proud of how we spend your money?

"They might meet for lunch at the cafe, but a lunch hour isn't long enough to get the unimportant things said. The talk that counts is the talk that doesn't matter, and to get that you need time to spare."

A friend of mine sent me a link an essay, "Too Clear for Comfort" By Douglas Rushkoff and wondered what I thought of it. I'm sure you can't wait to eavesdrop on this conversation…

I'm starting to hear things like this. Obviously, we don't know what will bring on the death of civilization as we know it, but I too, am sure it will be color TV. I just read an article the other day on Slate about how porn stars are finding it difficult to make a good film for HDTV, since it can show up every wrinkle and every crooked pubic hair.

All of a sudden, these men and women are looking real, and we can't have that. I guess that was really the appeal of Playboy … airbrushing out the details, to make it more of an unrealistic fantasy.

But I wonder what we will think of these stars and celebrities when we realize that they really are just ugly people who can't act? Since natural breasts are making a come-back in porn because of the scars, maybe we'll start to return to having normal people portray normal people instead of over-paid, neurotic, scientologists with no grasp of reality.

So I'm taking a picture of the kids, but with auto-focus turned on, and the kids zipping around the room like a poodle after a double-shot of espresso, I can never know what actually makes it in field.

So, after loading the pictures, I notice that I've taken a picture that actually has a book floating in mid-air! I know, I feel the same way… this is the perfect picture to foist upon the Internet to prove the existence of ghosts… the problem is, it looks Photoshopped. Damn.

Trying to clean up my office, I pulled out a piece of paper where I had scribble the following message:

Every idea is defined by its relations.
Pure being and Nothing are the same
Pure being without relating it to something else doesn't exist and therefore, has no meaning whatsoever.

Uhm… yeah, yeah, what I said.

Been re-reading Stephen Jay Gould's Since Darwin. It is dated, but still fabulous. Great ideas to listen to while your working out. Oh, did I say I was reading?

Year's end,
all corners
of this floating world, swept.
          –Basho

po: cultural fact about iraq (and beduin in general): sunni and shiite alike find it difficult to trust men without facial hair

matt: that's strange, i find it difficult to trust men with facial hair. i am convinced that the truth, like soup, gets lost in there

howard: excuse me, I appear to be busy picking this honorable carrot from my whiskers.

What a nice birthday present. It is always good to know that others recognize you as high maintenence.

After enduring St. Nick for a few weeks (and it isn't even Thanksgiving), all I can say is, "How long does it take you Christians to shop?!"

(Yes, I did steal this joke from Frank Black, but my wife thinks I made it up, so please don't tell her.)

My poems are like one's own children. Each has special qualities that maybe only the author can see. And even though only a few still speak, albeit weakly, it is difficult to delete one's children from your hard drive. Enough with that analogy.

I've been going through my collection of Poems and have really enjoyed going through and reformatting and general touch-up.

I wish I wrote more poems. But as Robert Graves once said, "There are no married poets."

While I was at work, I was adding a new document in our "Wiki". I was half-way through when I had to go to a meeting. Being a dumb webapp, there is no "Save", only "Publish", and not wanting to submit a half-baked draft, I just left it for the meeting.

When I returned, Windows (for who knows what reason) rebooted itself. When I realized that I had just lost my work, I yelled and screached northward toward Redmond. After resigning myself to my fate, I logged in and started up Firefox v2. It asked me if I wanted to restore my session. Nice, I thought it remembered my tabs, so I clicked "OK" and to my amazement, it had also saved and restored the text in the Wiki.

Along with finally having spell checking in text widgets, saving that textual data between sessions is Firefox 2's best (and most overlooked) feature.

Is religion an "antiquated notion" of belief in literal perspectives of mythological stories that is benign and will eventually be phased out as an enlightened society matures? Or is it a scourge and disease that must be actively eradicated to protect our society? In this interesting article, Gary Wolf talks with Richard Dawkins and others about how the maddness of religion needs to stop.

I'll admit that being a deep agnostic, I've always been on the fence feeling that tolerance in an example worth setting. But as the religionists begin to arm themselves with suicide bombers, nuclear warheads, and the American military, I may have to rethink my position.

Don't be satisfied with [their] stories, how things have gone with others. Unfold your own myth… so everyone will understand the passage, we have opened you.

This famous quote of Rumi was taken from the poem often called, Unfold Your Own Myth. For the complete poem as well as my commentary, see this thought. Looks like I need to reformat that one.

To Do List

Create a To Do List
Add little boxes to check off
Add To Do List to web site
Create content

I've brought over all my children stories from the old site and old format and into this new. They are pretty cute, however, my daughter and I have moved beyond those to more sophisticated adventures. Someday, I'll have to upload the novel that we've created.

And now it's time for a little ear worm. Sing along and get this stuck in your gray matter…

Lemon tree, very pretty
And the lemon flowers are sweet
But the fruit from the lemon
Is impossible to eat.

Rinse and repeat, ad nauseum.

Have you ever felt like writing a book? Me neither. However, telling people at a cocktail party that you're an author seems like da bomb. So, thanks to the good people over at lulu.com or some other of these "self publishing" companies, I think I will.

However, I feel somewhat like Steven Wright, who said:

I'm writing a book. I've got the page numbers done, so now I just have to fill in the rest.

I figured, however, that I should be able to create a filter that takes my web site, renders it into docbook, which translates into a PDF, which I can then upload and turn into a hardcover that will look great on coffee tables all over… my house.

I'm sure my mother would buy a copy. Of course, I'm not sure I want her to read it. She might think less of me.

My anniversary was today. The baby sitter fell through. The boy came down with a cold, which scares away the in-laws. Spent most of the evening wiping snot. Did we actually get to eat together at dinner, or did we alternate taking care of the kids? Now, exhausted, you crash into a deep slumber, and I wonder if we'll get out next weekend.

Happy Anniversay, Babe. I wouldn't trade this for the world.

While having a "tea party" with my children, I told them about a party I had been to when the hostess had a bowl full of quotes, poems and other thoughts as conversation starters. My daughter thought that was a great idea and wanted that for her new tea party with her friends.

Now I'm left with the problem of making a bowl of conversation starters for 5 year olds.

Cute face, picture flash
Capturing the moment
But without the essence of why.

During a routine eye exam, my doctor noticed that I didn't blink all the way down my eyeball, and suggest that I "work on that." How the hell do you practice blinking? I've been trying, but it almost seems like a meditation exercise… you know, to practice something that you do automatically and without thinking.

Go ahead, now you try it.