There's a bass fiddle in my bathtub...
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As for the rain, the icons lied. Second day, nice steely gray sky but not a drop.
41°F Scattered CloudsWind: N at 6 mph Humidity: 40% |
The Whole Mess ... Almost
I ran up six flights of stairs
to my small furnished room
opened the window
and began throwing out
those things most important in life
First to go, Truth, squealing like a fink:
"Don't! I'll tell awful things about you!"
"Oh yeah? Well, I've nothing to hide ... OUT!"
Then went God, glowering & whimpering in amazement:
"It's not my fault! I'm not the cause of it all!" "OUT!"
Then Love, cooing bribes: "You'll never know impotency!
All the girls on Vogue covers, all yours!"
I pushed her fat ass out and screamed:
"You always end up a bummer!"
I picked up Faith Hope Charity
all three clinging together:
"Without us you'll surely die!"
"With you I'm going nuts! Goodbye!"
Then Beauty ... ah, Beauty --
As I led her to the window
I told her: "You I loved best in life
... but you're a killer; Beauty kills!"
Not really meaning to drop her
I immediately ran downstairs
getting there just in time to catch her
"You saved me!" she cried
I put her down and told her: "Move on."
Went back up those six flights
went to the money
there was no money to throw out.
The only thing left in the room was Death
hiding beneath the kitchen sink:
"I'm not real!" It cried
"I'm just a rumor spread by life ..."
Laughing I threw it out, kitchen sink and all
and suddenly realized Humor
was all that was left --
All I could do with Humor was to say:
"Out the window with the window!"
- Gregory Corso
Izenberg: Derby winner won the heart of America
Tuesday, January 30, 2007
BY JERRY IZENBERG
Star-Ledger Staff
MIAMI -- His name was Barbaro and he touched America, generating a tidal wave of hope and a prayer that far transcended its racetracks, its back-stretch ramblers and its tack rooms from Maine to California. He was a fallen hero, fighting for his life and his battle caught the nation's collective heartbeat and merged it with the cadence of his own.
Barbaro died yesterday at the New Bolton Center's George D. Widener Veterinary Hospital in Kennett Square, Pa., ending an eight-month struggle that dominated the hearts and minds of this country in a way that no other horse ever had...not Secretariat...not Seabiscuit...not Citation. They were providers of magnificent headlines. But Barbaro was the provider of incredible courage.
Technically, the medical reason was incurable laminitis, although Lord knows, the best in the business tried like hell to give him a fighting chance. The initial injuries were a broken cannon bone above the ankle, a broken sesamoid bone behind the ankle, a broken long pastern bone below the ankle. The pastern bone alone had shattered into 20 pieces.
And starting with that day when the 2006 Kentucky Derby winner broke down in the Preakness before a nation-wide television audience, the prayers, the hopes and the story-book ending that never happened became an American story.
Within five months, Michael Matz, his trainer, received a mountain of 43,000 e-mails. A wounded vet from Iraq sent him an American flag. A doctor named Margaret Goodman, once the medical chairman of the Nevada boxing commission found out what his favorite foods were and sent them along to the New Bolton Center. Elementary school kids wrote letters. Two-dollar bettors, who would step over a prostrate heart attack victim so as not to get shut out at the betting windows, greeted each other in simulcast rooms with "waddaya hear?" and for once they weren't asking "whodaya like?"
Battle-hardened racetrackers from touts to grooms will never forget it. Neither will those who never saw a horse race but who rooted for Barbaro to live.
For as long as Edgar Prado sits in the saddle, he will remember the feel of it ... the awful dread it generated ... and the way the rhythm of what rider and horse always share as one on every racetrack on the planet suddenly sent the wrong message, generating a threnody that hung over Pimlico Race Course like a nightmare in progress.
Prado felt the uneven bounce in the stride of the super horse beneath him. He saw the horse twist its head from side to side. He was now running at angle. Prado was dead certain that he had to stop the horse from doing what it was bred to do ... what his equine genes screamed out to do ... what the Derby, just two weeks earlier, mandated him to do.
Without Prado, this profile in courage would have ended that very day.
Look at a horse -- any horse -- see how ridiculously skinny the legs are and how wide the girth is. Ask yourself how in the world those pipe stem legs can support the body and the beating heart of a creature born to run regardless of balance or pain.
The jockey was there when the horse needed someone to intercede between logic and what he was bred to do.
That he lived as long as he did was a tribute to Prado's instincts and skill, a tribute to the medical staff in New Bolton, where he was taken that day of the Preakness, to the care and the financial generosity of the people who owned him.
Barbaro was supposed to be a super horse in waiting ... the heir to what Secretariat and Seattle Slew and Affirmed had left in their historic wakes ... winner of the Derby in ferocious style by more lengths (six and one half) than any other Derby winner since Assault (1946).
Prado won't forget. Neither will Matz, who raced toward the track the second he saw his colt racing almost obliquely. Barbaro began to shake his head and run crookedly toward a goal only he could envision.
In that instant, Prado's every thought and every muscle were directed toward keeping this horse erect and safe.
He stopped him and whispered to him and waiting hands reached out for the horse to stabilize him. On the other side of the track, horses jockeyed for position and the crowd thundered as a long shot named Bernardini took and held the lead.
Now the colt was still shaking, still wanting to run, trying to wobble forward because genetics demand it is what a thoroughbred race horse does. It is what horses do. And I will never, never forget the awesome wall that only the silence of 85,000 throats can generate.
Nor will I forget the same silence in the stable area as the big, white horse ambulance pulled away from Barn 40 with a police escort and swept the through the gate and headed toward the highway.
For the civilians who saw it, there was the silence the unknown triggered.
For the horsemen, there was the fear of what they knew.
And so the marriage between Barbaro's pain and America's hope began. By mid-July the people at New Bolton's greatest fear set in. Laminitis struck and 80 percent of his left hind hoof was removed. It was heartbreaking. Originally, they had pieced the breaks together with 23 screws in his leg and he had, incredibly, responded well.
But the ghosts of similar situations past and the unforgiving risks of equine anatomy were never very far away from this courageous horse. He was fighting a losing battle. America responded to each slice of encouraging news but the vets knew and so did the horsemen.
There are those who will say that Barbaro was just a horse, but the truth is that to so many he was also a symbol of hope ... of courage ... and the selflessness of the man who trained him and rode him and the people who stood beside him in the winner's circle on Derby Day.
But maybe the shared joy of his survival that later turned to shared suffering when he couldn't make it is not really that hard to understand. He was an athlete with an athlete's heart. His courage was self-explanatory in an age when America grows weary of big-money athletes who have exhausted their intelligence with their whining.
Any way you look at it, an American hero died yesterday.
Jerry Izenberg appears regularly in The Star-Ledger
From the BBC News
Duck survives two days in fridge
A duck in the US state of Florida has survived gunshot wounds and a two-day stint in a refrigerator.
A hunter shot the duck, wounding it in the wing and leg. Believing the bird was dead, he left it in his fridge at his home in Tallahassee.
The hunter's wife got a fright when she opened the fridge and the duck lifted its head, a local veterinarian said.
Staff at the Goose Creek Animal Sanctuary who are treating the bird said it has a 75% chance of survival.
The plucky duck was taken first to a local animal hospital, and then to an animal sanctuary for more specialized treatment.
A veterinarian at the sanctuary said he thinks the duck will live, but will probably never be well enough to be released into the wild.
The veterinarian, David Hale, said the duck's low metabolism rate helped it survive its time in the refrigerator, the Tallahassee Democrat newspaper reported.
"This is an extremely tough duck with a lot of spirit to live," he said. "This shows how tough and adaptable wildlife are."
#1: The word Karma has a simple definition: CAUSE AND EFFECT. Undoubtedly Bu$h is a madman but he is also a war criminal and should be tried for his crimes, along with Cheney, who is mad but competent. Unfortunately, because we have let them run unchecked for so long, we have earned a fair share of the karma (reaction) their actions have generated: hatred, mayhem, poverty, violence, retaliation, breakdown, failure. It is a toss up whether man or nature calls us to account first but, even at pennies on the dollar, payback could be pretty uncomfortable.
But not only is Bu$h a madman conjuring war and catastrophic, global climate change, he has dragged us into a dizzying level of debt. In fact, this asshole has redefined monetary vertigo and disintegration. It is by the way not coincidence that the Chinese have a trillion plus foreign exchange reserve, up 30.22 percent from last year. The Bu$h boys are selling America piece by piece right out from under our feet.
#2: Bu$h's reality check has bounced. Known cost of his War o' Terror to date: $1.2 Trillion and climbing and that's only counting the money. The hidden and not so hidden costs are incalculable but here's a little visual to illustrate just how much ONE TRILLION DOLLARS actually is compared to the money in your pocket or bank account, or that inheritance you're waiting for that will probably be consumed by unprecedented health care costs.
The greatness of a nation and its morals can be judged by the way its animals are treated. ~ Mahatma Gandhi
Compassion is the basis of morality. ~ SchopenhauerSo...
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Liz |
Note: A Different Iraq Metric
US SPENT $1 MIL FOR EVERY DEAD IRAQI - CIVILIANS INCLUDED:
Early this year the Bush administration is to ask Congress to approve an additional $100bn for the onerous task of making life intolerable for the Iraqis. This will bring the total spent on the White House's current obsession with war to almost $500bn - enough to have given every US citizen $1,600 each... with over half a million dead, it means that the world's greatest military superpower has spent a million dollars for every Iraqi killed...
[THE GUARDIAN]