No Small Amount Of Lists
1. I trust you have packed on some emotional weight this holiday season.

2. The script will be about people running. No, not about people running. The script will be people running. But I have not yet figured out a first act break, or the second or third act breaks for that matter. Frantic running. Eyes looking. Emotional terrain. People clutching one another in passion, fear, comraderie. And at some point someone will holler, "Here comes the big one!" But I'm not sure what "the big one" is exactly.

3. 6 billion of us chattering. The universe is so embarrassed right now.

4. Squat thrusts, jumping jacks -- a regimen the Old Coach would be proud of. I'm heavy inside, and I could be accused of some amount of horseplay, as well as some jack-legging. You try real hard wearing gym shorts. The sun drenched the gymnasium and you imagined every one to be looking at you. They were not. It was just loud. The 20-win season aside, this school would travel forward. And you? You live thankful the school continues.

5. The Decadent Life Of The Conscious

8. I was convinced two days ago that if I were to fall asleep I would not awake. But I was so tired. I wanted sleep, but then after I wanted wake. I am thrilled now to be awake.

10. At home he hit every shot. He said, "You should just hit the free throws." You been in the game this long. Put a few people on the court and the shot gets shakey.

6. A home for me, with sun-rooms and night-chambers; space to fill. A fountain, a patio, a doorway onto. Music and friends. Family.

7. The possibility of a fresh set of eyes on this thing.

9. If you stand real still you will see the shapes of all of them move around you. You will hear them. Spook Knee. I was stranded in that field when your face hovered over me. I saw there something certain in the eyes.

11. You get to play in the last couple minutes of the game. The noise is terrific. The game decided. Looking at the third string you lift a shot from the 3-point line and sink it. The world turns electric.

11. The ball clangs off the rim and you never forget it.

9. Gather then those who are left and seek home, hearth. Fire at night brings you back. This is not retreat.

13. Eventually all of the voices are your own.

"In the Theatre of Bad Ideas," he said, "this is another good one."

The Stone/Big Tasty Pizza Summit Winter 2006
An Accord Reached!
"The world is again safe for 36 inch anchovy pizza."
-- Justin Stone
"Let us eat and look to the future with hope and appetite."
-- Sean "Big Tasty" Philbin
"I looked into their eyes and knew these men would get the job done. Even if that meant staying up all night and then calling in sick to work the next day. Something unfathomable there."
-- Bill Clinton
"Try as it may, history will not forget."
-- Nelson Mandela

photograph by James/Jim/Chick Brown of Missouri

eeriestillmythologicalozarkminimalism

(Thank you, Moody)
(Thank you, Young)

( )

Meditation, Hollywood
Exiting the Sunset 5 movie theater,
Leaving David Lynch's world again,
I saw an Inland Empire movie ticket
Ripped to shreds at the top of the escalator,
Scattered in abstract perfection,
All sides facing up.
"Someone decimated their ticket in a fit of rage,"
I said, smiling,
His plans again foiled.

Tonight at home I stick my ticket
Centered in the corkboard map of my world
Above the workspace,
Next to your picture
And yours and mine.

Light gathers in the dark,
Projects

"I see us coming round,"
If let

I let

Donald K. Cervantes and Stan
Please Give Me A Break
Part One
“My hope is that this season we can all take the time to reflect a little less.”
“What does that mean?”
“I don’t know that memories and self-examination ever did a thing for us other than weigh the moment down.”
“More long-falling, then? Like dream-somersaults?”
“It’s kind of funny. Well, I don’t know about funny, but, the word ‘benighted,’ I only just finally looked that word up the other day, in a dictionary, I don’t know, I was reading something, came across it, but I searched out the definition. And it meant the polar opposite of what I had, I guess forever now, always assumed it to mean. The difference, in fact, is vast. Ridiculously telling. The word ‘benighted’ means ignorant, unenlightened.”
“Holy shit.”
“Yeah. I know.”
“I guess there ain’t no ‘k’ in there.”
“No ‘k,’ Jackie Kennedy.”
“. . .”
“But even if there were.”
“To knight yourself is ridiculous.”
“I had long kind of assumed the word, or the sense of the word, as something of a mantle, too.”
“Well, you can still do that.”
“I can certainly still do that.”
“Now more than ever.”
“Now more than ever.”
“The benighted one.”
“. . .”
“In fact, a greater pride can be taken.”
“Truer words are spoken every day.”
“Can a pyramid of beer cans stand as a testament to human endurance, ingenuity?”
“How big is the pyramid?”
“We worked for what felt like generations.”
“One wrong move and you will get a leg crushed under one of those blocks.”
“You'll get a head crushed.”
“How, as a people, do we gather ourselves to do this?”
“More dictionary, less photo album.”
“I am not sure I agree with that. But the spirit in which you say it.”
“There is also an archaic sense of the word which means something like to be overtaken by night or the dark.”
“That's even better.”
“Slack-jawed yokel.”
“A slack-hoped jaw-full.”
“A jack-sloped awful.”
“Slack-jawed hopeful.”
“Ben Boyer said jack-slawed heart-case.”
“. . .”
“What might be called the din and the dang of the situation. The din forever balances the dang and vice versa.”
“Without which we'd fall out of bed.”

Hello, Shiny
In my dream last night I am part of one of cinema's great musical numbers. It is a Depression-era picture, and at the outset of the sequence in question I am simply an extra, a fella in worn pleats and tattered fedora standing in a discontented crowd of sadsacks gathered in front of City Hall. We want to get a Rain Bill passed, but you know that wasn't happening, Rain Bills being near impossible to come by in those days. Well, one of the men behind me suddenly has had more than he can take and as fellas are wont to do he begins weeping, I mean letting loose loud rushing waterworks from his pinched face. And wouldn't you know it but right then a tiny little fella with a gigantic moustache in an arched window up near the top of City Hall starts laughing like it is the greatest, most comical thing he has ever seen and he shouts down at us, "Water your crops with that, Shenanigans!" Well, of course nobody takes kindly to being called out as a Shenanigan, I don't care who you are, and so as the cameras continue to roll something deep inside this soil-stained extra comes to sudden resolution and I bolt up the steps of City Hall, do a Soft Shoe on the top step, stutter step down a flight, flip back on me heels and wave me hands about, and I start singing "Hello, Shiny" and Hot Sally if the sadsacks don't turn red in the cheeks with endeavor and they start singing with me, all of us then skipping up and down the steps of City Hall in fleet-footed unison. I feel I am choreographing the dance as I go, but not even thinking about it, more like actualizing it, and the routine evolves organically, rapidly, madcap and daring, and Hot Sally if every man don't just keep right on there in perfect unison with me, moving, shaking, singing, doing the hotfoot, pretty much giving it all we got it, Sure as Someday Comes. And it don't stop there because suddenly women and children are running into the street from school houses and shops, each one of the lovelies twirling and high-kicking into perfect step, mouths rounded in harmony, and like that, in great waves of choreographed brilliance, the all of us sweep across Dalliance Plaza and up the wide fence-lined stretch of Stanley O.K. Dandy Boulevard and into Boogaloo Park (never more aptly named than now!) right down to the bank of the River Shimsham where the crowd gathers me high up into their arms as the song crescendoes mightily, holds quivering magisterial on that final note and snaps smartly to close as somebody smashes huge cymbals together and a hundred hands toss me into the welcome water. My friend hollers, "You're all wet now, Shenanigan!"

We were good. We were really really good. Maybe not every day, and maybe only really that once. But you should've seen us then, Honey. It was magic.

Scientists Discover First Talk Radio Show
Tsodilo Hills, Botswana
"The scientists found a secret chamber behind the [70,000 year old] python carving. Worn areas indicate that it has been used over the years."

"'The shaman . . . could have kept himself hidden in that secret chamber,' Coulson explained. 'He would have had a good view of the inside of the cave while remaining hidden himself. When he spoke from his hiding place, it could have seemed as if the voice came from the snake itself. The shaman would have been able to control everything. It was perfect.'"

"[He] could also have made himself disappear from the chamber by crawling out onto the hillside through a small shaft, the scientists found."




(Source)