The Cave of Adullam

I've been traveling far and wide across the so-called "blogosphere" and one thing has become obvious to me. Political blogs are where it's at. In that spirit I've decided to try my hand at political cartooning.

(Click on cartoon to enlarge)

As someone once said "Speak your mind, even if your voice shakes." I think that was directed towards the ladies, but my voice was shaking like a dissenter in the Bush White House when I penned this cartoon.

Kathy the catering coordinator smacked me on top of my head today so hard that I actually saw stars. I don't remember what I did or said to bring it on, but I'm pretty sure I wasn't deserving.

More on my new music feature: this is exactly the sort of thing I would hate if someone other than I did it. I would see it as a sad attempt to prove how hip he is; how obscure and varied her tastes are. There may be a little bit of that in me, but mostly I just like to seek out new music, and when I find something good I like to share it. Here it is, gang.
The Songs I'm Listening To:
The Arcade Fire Brazil
The Postal Service Against All Odds
Islands Where There's a Will There's a Whalebone
Joanna Newsome Flying a Kite

Git-R-Done!

A good indicator of my reading life of late is the fact that I can name two characters on the infomercial for the Magic Bullet Blender. Berman is the sceptical curmudgeon with a hangover and Mimi is the female co-host of the party. She makes a milkshake with peppermint candies. Her husband, I just found out, is played by Mick Hastie, the Australian inventor with the oddly English accent. If you've ever seen Bob Odenkirk do his infomercial host shtick you know Mick. As I continue to look into the phenomenon that is the Magic Bullet infomercial, I gather that the bath-robed, chain smoking, bespectacled aunt with the over-cooked Yiddish accent is called Hazel.

I have six or seven books on my nightstand, but it's taken less effort lately to fall asleep with The Daily Show. I've never been one to sit in a chair in the daytime and read a book; since childhood, I've been a bedtime reader. Among the books awaiting me are David Mitchell's Black Swan Green, The Sea, by John Banville and a couple of non-fictions: Watermark by Joseph Brodsky and Antony Beevor's Stalingrad. All were given to me by my father.
I really am looking forward to getting back into the reading habit. I started weaning myself off the thirteen inch Daewoo in my bedroom (NLT) by reading an article in the New Yorker by Tad Friend about the people that brought us the Blue-Collar Comedy tour. I read it with the zeal and anticipation that Sean Hannity might have reading Ann Coulter. I wanted an indictment of Larry the Cable Guy and his willfully ignorant politics. Instead, I found a well written piece that touched on said fraud's phobic, populist garbage but didn't linger on it.

A new feature to this blog: The Songs I'm Listening To (mainly as a rebuke to My Good Friend Kevin, who says my life cannot be "rich" because I don't appreciate or understand music as he does).
Ted Leo and the Pharmacists The High Party
VHS or Beta Solid Gold
Ambulance LTD Michigan

Dig For the Bones of a Lobster

I had a dream last night: I'm in old hospital/rehab type building, getting ready to check out. My ex-girlfriend Jenni is there, selling books out of my (our?) room. It's a not-for-profit operation, this book business. She is running low on stock, so she borrows some books from the institution we're in. There is something she wants to talk to me about (are we breaking up)? I leave the room alone and start walking down the hall. The place is more like a school now than a rehab. My pants are down, not quite to my knees, but far enough that I'm able to involuntarily defecate on the floor as I walk. Walking a ways behind me is an orderly or some kind of employee of the institution. He is big, dressed in white and is in a position of authority. I start walking faster, knowing he will soon discover the load I dropped. I take a right down another broad hall and now the place is now even more like a school than before. The hallway leads to a doorway to the outside and I go through it (Strange, I had thought that we were several floors up.) I see another entrance back into the building up ahead. There's a small, scalene-triangular shaped courtyard bordered by a black wrought iron fence in front of the door. This is a school! Mothers stand around the courtyard along with some small children. I need to get in as The Orderly will be gaining on me. One of the mothers, short and matronly, stops me to ask if I have kids. She's asking for the benefit of someone else, another mother or maybe a kid, in order to make a point about something. I say no. She's holding me up. I finally get inside.
What happens next is hazy
but
eventually Jenni and I are leaving the place.
We have plans to travel to several cities and then maybe back to New York. We are walking the Manhattan streets and come across an interesting door. We enter, go down two flights of stairs and come to a pitch black doorway. Closer to this door we can see some light inside and when we're closer yet we can see a woman get up from the end of a bar and come to greet us. We decide to stay for a drink. There's a large screen tv, showing only shifting shapes. We both sit facing it. I finish my beer and say, "Anytime you're ready to go, I am." I've never been ready to leave anywhere after one beer. We leave and are immediately separated. Jenni calls my cell phone and says she wants to try this new restaurant she heard about. We will be meeting several friends there, but neither of us knows where it is. I stay on the phone with her, narrating where I am: "I'm in an alleyway running between Fruit St. (sic) and Houston St.
Ahead of me I hear a couple of guys cursing each other out from a distance. One is walking away, still shouting. By his voice and his short stature I realize it is the actor Danny DeVito. "Mr. Devito," I say "Do you know about this restaurant we're looking for"?
I describe it and he says yes, he knows -it is that place that almost looks like it's closed down, right?
He shows me the way. I ask him if he'd like to join us for dinner and without much hesitation, he says yes. As we arrive, so do our friends, sans Jenni. We go through a narrow door into a small, dilapidated room. there are three tables in this room with fairly well dressed people at all of them. I'm still talking to Jenni on the cell phone, but become concious that these diners might think I'm rude. We are led down a narrow staircase into another dining room and are seated at a long table near the stairs.
We start conversing. I ask DeVito what he's working on. He doesn't say it outright, but implies that it was not cool of me to ask him that. Later, DeVito gets up, maybe to use the restroom, which is upstairs. Everyone in our group starts laughing at him, in an openly hostile way. He goes upstairs and I wonder if he'll be coming back. Soon after that I woke up.

I was at my grandmother's today, eating lunch with her. There was an advertising flier on the table for a seafood restaurant. We started talking about seafood, none of which, with the exception of shrimp once, she has ever eaten, or ever cared to.
She told me my father cooked lobster once when they visited him in Amherst. She said he ate it like a kid eating candy; "He ate it so fast, I thought he was going to eat the bones and everything."
I had a good laugh.

A Date With Destiny

From DetroitTigers.MLB.com: Tigers rookie Justin Verlander is running fourth in the All Star American League Final Vote standings. You can help him play in the 77th All-Star Game by continuing to vote for the Detroit pitcher through 6 p.m. ET on Thursday.

With his record of 10 and 4 and ERA of 3.01, the hard throwing right hander might be the biggest All-Star snub. It would be a shame if that jagoff A.J. Pierzynski from Detroit's AL Central rival White Sox beat out Verlander for the last spot. Equally unlikeable Chicago Manager Ozzie Guillen has already stocked the AL side with plenty of White Sox. The Tigers have the best record in all of baseball and deserve more than just two players.

Kathy the catering coordinator will be back from vacation tomorrow. A lot of shit doesn't get done or doesn't get done right when she's not there, so almost everybody will be glad to see her back. I imagine she spent quality time with her beloved cat Destiny, worked in her yard and on her web site. I don't want to mention what she sells because ads for competing sites will appear to the right of this. Bless your little heart, Kathy.