Peace please

The chickens have had enough but are the rabbits
fighting or playing?

Vonnegut, last words

Kurt Vonnegut's last book, “A Man Without a Country”, was a collection of biographical essays. It concludes with his poem "Requiem" and so, in a public sense, these could be considered his last words.

on Comedy Central
excerpt from New York Times Book section

closing lines from....
Requiem
by Kurt Vonnegut

When the last living thing
has died on account of us,
how poetical it would be
if Earth could say,
in a voice floating up
perhaps
from the floor
of the Grand Canyon,
“It is done.”
People did not like it here.

Kurt Vonnegut dies Vonnegut last words

Happy Birthday Cheeta

Today is Cheeta the Chimp's 75th birthday and Cheeta Day in Palm Springs, so named by former Mayor Ron Oden. Cheeta, aka "Jiggs," was one of the stars of the original Tarzan movies, in case you are an uncultured slob and don't know much about Hollywood celebrities. Cheeta celebrated with a sugar-free cake and diet soft drinks, proving that indeed wisdom does come with age.


After retiring from the movies, Cheeta fell on hard times with booze and cigars but that's all behind him now. He got sober, moved to Palm Springs, famous retirement community for old movie stars, and took up painting, which helps pay the bills.




There have been 4 unsuccessful attempts to secure a star for Cheeta on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. What's up with that? Cheeta is a better actor than half the smucks who's stars act as grinding stones for cigarette butts. Filmmaker Matt Devlen is organizing another campaign for 2007. Be ready to vote. The Guinness Book of World Records lists Cheeta as the world's oldest primate (note from Wikipedia: presumably meaning oldest non-human primate). Besides that he is just one cool dude. So Happy Birthday, Cheeta.

Then and now

I brought back one of my mother's old photo albums from Seattle. It is what she wanted by her side as she lay in her death bed the final days of her life. The memories made her happy. The cover is missing, many of its black pages are torn or loose and they are simultaneously brittle and alarmingly soft. The whole thing is gradually disappearing with the passing years. My brother asked me to scan what is left of them before they are beyond capture. They are lovely. They have haunted me ever since I saw them there at the hospital so, a few years ago, I wrote a poem for them and her and today I joined them together. I hope you enjoy them.

Abecedarian

Abecedarian is a funny little word and fun to say. Pronunciation here.

The 7 o'clock magpie just dropped by for a few peanut chips before retiring for the night. She is no abecedarian but rather the resident expert, having mastered the secrets of the Bird Park.

Writer's block?

Ever suffer writer's block? I think I do most of the time, to one degree or another. It's a terrible thing. Mental_floss recently posted one writer's creepy solution:

While plagiarism and alcohol are pretty lowly tactics for dealing with a bad case of writer's block, no one's quite handled their agony as morbidly as writer Dante Gabriel Rosetti.

A poet and a pre-Raphaelite painter, Rosetti truly loved his wife, Elizabeth. ("How much did he love his wife, you ask?") Well, after she died of a laudanum overdose in 1862, he buried her with the only existing copy of his unpublished poems. Seven years later, however, Rosetti found himself suffering from an extraordinary case of writer's block, so he dug up her body and retrieved his poems.

They were published in 1870 and were well received by the critics. Rosetti, however, never quite recovered. The poet could never forgive himself for pilfering his own wife's grave.

Bush almost blows himself up

Huffington Post disabled comments on this story and no wonder. Mr. Chucklehead President Bush almost blew himself up the other day ... heh heh.... Even if it didn't have a happy ending, it's a story worth repeating. I hope it brings an Easter smile to your face. Isn't Bushie cute? He looks so happy. Always getting into things.


Full story here:

Business Insider

Plug it in, fire it up, Mr. President

The Detroit News

Credit Ford Motor Co. CEO Alan Mulally with saving the leader of the free world from self-immolation.
Mulally told journalists at the New York auto show that he intervened to prevent President Bush from plugging an electrical cord into the hydrogen tank of Ford's hydrogen-electric plug-in hybrid at the White House last week. Ford wanted to give the Commander-in-Chief an actual demonstration of the innovative vehicle, so the automaker arranged for an electrical outlet to be installed on the South Lawn and ran a charging cord to the hybrid. However, as Mulally followed Bush out to the car, he noticed someone had left the cord lying at the rear of the vehicle, near the fuel tank.
"I just thought, 'Oh my goodness!' So, I started walking faster, and the President walked faster and he got to the cord before I did. I violated all the protocols. I touched the President. I grabbed his arm and I moved him up to the front," Mulally said. "I wanted the president to make sure he plugged into the electricity, not into the hydrogen. This is all off the record, right?"