So, I’m still listening to Natalie Merchant‘s Motherland, because it’s ripped into the all-my-songs-in-one playlist which G-D is mixing for me. And this song comes up…
…And I remember reading a review of Motherland which described the opening track, This House Is On Fire as “prophetic”, because it’s lyrics eerily foreshadowed 9/11 (it apparently was inspired by the 2000 WTO riots).
…I remember this because the song that comes up is called Build A Levee.
Apparently, the less you say, the less you have to say.
My brother expressed this using a metaphor from Civilization, which I’m not sure I can convey, but I’ll try:
So, what’s new?
Well, nothing much. I moved in with my girlfriend. And got a job. And we had 3 cats. Then I got fired, got hired, moved, moved again, fired again, we broke up, I got a new girlfriend, gave away the cats, moved, and broke up with the new girlfriend.
So basically, what you did in the past 10 years was move out? Hah! Did you know that in that time, the Babylonians have discovered the Wheel? and the Chinese built the great library of Alexandria! The Romans have invented Communism! The Russians have got nuclear power!
OK. It probably worked better when it wasn’t loaded with my own agenda.
* * *
In other news, my washing got splattered with bat shit over the weekend. I have probably given up writing a post about why Battlestar Galactica and Veronica Mars rock, or how I divine my unconscious hang-ups by the twitches they cause in my heart. The Prophet Commission has been giving me a reason to turn on the internet, which is a good thing since I decided two weeks ago I am depressed. Somehow, I found that realization reassuring.
It rained yesterday, hurray. Last week I washed my car, bought new clothes, went on a company trip to Jerusalem. And, oh, Arr. Happy belated Talk Like A Pirate day.
Suzie flies back to Switzerland tonight.
I only saw her once, in the two months she was here.
A door might close. Others could open. I think there are possibilities, know there are no promises. I am 37, and spend most of my time with my eight-year old inner child (this quiz says my mental age is 16. I blame lack of spouse and fondness for chocolate desserts on that result). I know I’m never going to give him the life he didn’t dare wish for. But gods, time is running out already.
The Babylonians have discovered the Wheel.
Kathryn Klar (linguist, from Berkeley) and Terry Jones (anthropologist, from Cal Poly St Louis Obispo) produced an intriguing piece of research that shows that the canoe of the Chumash (South California) may have originated in Polynesia.
Renee notes that its “political incorrectness” slowed this article in getting to print. Grrr. Silly anthropologists (ok, that was just ghost baiting).
Speaking of baiting, here’s a photo of a satanic tomato that Neil Gaiman found in his garden. I shudder to contemplate the fate of the human race if we ever succeed in giving tomatoes super-powers(*). 
Epic poetry, I think, peaked too soon. It died off as a viable form after being used merely to celebrate noble triumphs and harrowing upsets in such narrow fields of human endevour as dying in battle and stealing livestock.
It would be nice if we had a form of expression to describe our more modern victories and tribulations, like parking.
Yesterday morning I found that someone had parked in a way that blocked my car. In my area, I can take my chances on the blue-and-white (meaning I get a ticket unless I set off before 9:30), or in the parking lot. The parking lot has two rows of parking, arranged like teeth, but then there are the greedy bastards that try to park in the middle, pretending that this way the parked cars can still squeeze out. That morning, this was true for every car but mine. The guy on my left could have gotten out, and the guy on my right could have gotten out, but I couldn’t. To my left a white mini, to my right a dark sedan parked at an awkward lazy slant, and before me that devil-cursed white carcass of a 1987 settler-sticker-festooned Subaru. No way to get out turning left, no way out to the right.
Still, I tried. Then I waited. Then I contended with advice of helpful passer-by. Then I went about the shops, looking for the whore-begotten shite who owned the offending vehicle. Then I called the police. Who told me to call the municipality. Who told me that, because this was a public parking lot, there was nothing they could do, and I should call the police. So I called the police again, gave them the car’s number and asked them to locate the driver.
Then, I waited.
To little avail.
So as I wait, with a chill, growning certainty that I will not easily escape, I try to think out of the box. If I could just get my car on the sidewalk behind it, I think, angle it so it will be able to drive along the pavement despite being inches from concrete flower boxes and a stairway, and despite the way the annoying dark sedan is parked right up to the edge of the curb on my right, if I can swing my car about, navigate past the bench, and squeeze between the lampost and the pylon, I could drive out.
Took me a while, but eventually I did it. Driving in reverse, of course, because that was the only way to swing it.
That this is not considered a deed deserving to be celebrated in song, feted in banquets, toasted in fine mead — well frankly, it saddens me.
(Written yesterday, so that yesterday actually means the day before.)
I think I was in second grade when I dressed up as Batman on Purim, because I recall dressing up as knight (in an even more elaborate costume) earlier. Like all the other Purim costumes we wore as kids, my mother made this costume herself, and she had to contend with my demand that it be as realistic as possible. Invisible in the above photograph are the boots, constructed from cloth and old bathroom slippers, which were extremely awkward to walk about in, but were cut just like Batman’s.