Yonder
By Rae Armantrout
1
Anything cancels
everything out.
If each point
is a singularity,
thrusting all else
aside for good,
"good" takes the form
of a throng
of empty chairs.
Or it's ants
swarming a bone.
2
I'm afraid
I don't love
my mother
who's dead
though I once –
what does "once" mean? –
did love her.
So who'll meet me over yonder?
I don’t recognize the place names.
Or I do, but they come
from televised wars.
--------
I don't have a lot exciting to report because I spent part of today on the phone with my dentist's office and my insurance, trying to figure out why, after I had been preapproved for a bite guard, I was being billed for $750. By the time that was settled it was too late to go to lunch with
And that was my daily excitement. In the afternoon I wrote a review of "The Apple" and site columns (poll for the week: if Shatner could get $25,000 for his kidney stone, how much could he get for his toupee?), then picked up kids from the friend whose house they had been taken to after school and had dinner with my parents (California Tortilla, always fine with me). I half-watched Alexander this evening on HBO while trying to work on other son's closet but that is really a hopeless case; we did, however, find the missing Catwings books, which, believe me, is an accomplishment. Alexander is still an hour too long -- in fact I believe one single battle sequence may be an hour too long -- and some of the dialogue is so bad that I don't know how that fine cast didn't simply burst into tears and refuse to go on until it was improved. It's so sad to see such a fantastic group of actors dealing with such mediocrity of script and directorial self-indulgence. What's really sad is that I kind of like the movie anyway, particularly the Alexander/Hephastion storyline. *g*
1. What do you normally eat for breakfast? A bowl of bran flakes. On very rare occasion I substitute Mini-Wheats. But it's always cereal.
2. Are you more likely to drink coffee or tea? Tea. I only drink coffee if it's a dessert drink with lots of cream and sugar and sometimes cocoa.
3. Would you consider yourself a good cook? Hahahaha, I am a terrible cook! My mother, husband and mother-in-law are all very good cooks and I get spoiled eating with them!
4. What is your favorite meal? Really good seafood. Crabs, salmon, swordfish, sole...depends on my mood but there is almost no seafood I don't like except really heavily fried shellfish and . Along with some kind of flavorful potatoes, sweet fruit and something chocolate for dessert.
5. Green eggs and ham: would you eat it? The ham, not unless it was meatless ham substitute. The eggs, it would depend whether they were green from being dyed for Easter or were decaying!
1. What is your preferred trusted news source? I don't know that I have one trusted news source -- I tend to get news from a lot of sources because they all have biases. I pick up headlines from Yahoo at random times during the day and then go see how different sources are covering the stories. I read The Washington Post pretty much every morning and skim The New York Times headlines online, watch my local news in the evening most nights, and read AlterNet every week, but I also check a whole bunch of other sites.
2. What is a news source that you will never trust? Never is a long time. I can't imagine ever trusting Fox News but there was a time I could not imagine distrusting CBS News as much as I do now.
3. What is the news topic during the last calendar year that you feel got the worst coverage? Every year I feel that the situation in the Middle East, particularly Israel, is covered horribly by pretty much ever major venue on the planet.
4. What news item do you feel got too much coverage in the last calendar year? That chick who disappeared in the Caribbean, Michael Jackson, and pick your favorite over-hyped celebrity couple.
5. If you had complete control of your favored news source(s) (answer to question 1), what would you do with it that is not already being done? For the major newspapers, be a hell of a lot more focused on the legal violations of the Bush administration and stop reporting every war casualty like it's an anomaly rather than a horrific pattern. For AlterNet, I don't know, because what's most important is getting more people to read the alternative news sources -- I am constantly amazed at how many people just don't seem to know or care what's going on in terms of both domestic and foreign policy.
And speaking of news, some things I read online today that made me smile, besides the northern bottlenose whale in the Thames which made for some neat photos in London but is really sad for the whale: Popbitch linked to both the South Park "Tom Cruise won't come out of the closet" skit and unintentionally sexual comic book covers (superboy getting spankings, wild monkey love and a man with serious wood), both of which made me howl.
All photos of animals this week have been from The National Zoo in Washington, by the way, even when I have forgotten to say so!
No comments:
Post a Comment