Overheard

" . . . when I sober up I'm going to be really mad at her."

Man, to friend, in the beer line at the Hollywood Bowl.

Follow Steve McQueen in Bullitt:

http://www.seero.com/video/Steve_McQueen_3

Deep Blue

Also --

More 4th

4th of July Parade -- Ashland OR

Nature Haiku

Known as Blackberries
They should be called Mosquitoes --
They buzz in my ear.

Song of the Day

"You Ain't Goin' Nowhere"
-- Bob Dylan

Buy me some rings and a gun that sings
A flute that toots and a bee that stings
A sky that cries and a bird that flies
A fish that walks and a dog that talks

Random

Man, woman and daughter leaving California Pizza Kitchen:

Woman (loud and hectoring): It was a random act of kindness.

Man: Wait. I'm the man. Say I'm with my wife, and another woman comes up and gives my daughter money, it makes me feel that I'm a loser.

Woman: Oh, that's just --

Moby Dick / Wordle

http://www.steamthing.com/2008/06/jellyfish.html

Thomas M. Disch (science fiction writer) / Tom Disch (poet)

Entropic Villanelle

Things break down in different ways.
The odds say croupiers will win.
We can't, for that, omit their praise.

I have had heartburn several days,
And it's ten years since I've been thin.
Things break down in different ways.

Green is the lea and smooth as baize
Where witless sheep crop jessamine
(We can't, for that, omit their praise),

And meanwhile melanomas graze
Upon the meadows of the skin.
(Things break down in different ways.)

Though apples spoil, and meat decays,
And teeth erode like aspirin,
We can't, for that, omit their praise.

The odds still favor croupiers,
But give the wheel another spin.
Things break down in different ways:
We can't, for that, omit their praise.

-- Tom Disch.

[A week ago I bookmarked his blog, having discovered that it existed. And then three days later he killed himself. ]

Nice Opening

We were about to give up and call it a night when somebody dropped the girl off the bridge.

-- opening sentence of Darker Than Amber

Now Playing

Bach Keyboard Concertos Nos. 1, 2 & 4, Murray Perahia and Academy of St. Martin in the Fields. By now you'd think they could afford a barn. [that last simply pro forma]

Also from "Blood and Thunder:"

Early US traveller through present-day Arizona:

"Invalids may live here when they might die in any other part of the world [because of the dry air and pure atmosphere], but really the country is so forbidding that no one would scarcely be willing to secure a long life at the cost of living in it."