Poem for Thursday

I Will Be Kind
By Jean Esteve

I will be kind to bilious men
for whom the boulevard
is just a tarry smear of gloom.
I’ll give them room, and if one’s bent
on leading our whole line of cars
away, across, around, ahead,
I’ll nod him on as well,

for I’ve had my own illnesses
and, to tell the truth,
have yet to find a final cure
for aches and gripes and tics,
yet those in front and those behind me,
those on either side,
have not leaned too hard on their horns,
have kept their fingers in their fists
when the road shone black as it unwrapped
its awful gift to us.

--------

We saw Order of the Phoenix right in the middle of the day, so that was our major event for Wednesday. Having no idea whether there would be a lot of people waiting long beforehand -- the earliest shows were sold out by the time we got our tickets, which were for 12:15 -- I wanted to make sure that we would get good seats and arrived with the kids more than an hour early, and since it was the first show of the day in this particular theater at the multiplex they let us in right away, so we had our choice of seats. took half a day off and came to meet us with chicken nuggets. We all enjoyed it a lot; younger son isn't all that much of a fan and has read each of the books only once, so had forgotten quite a bit of what was going to happen, while older son read all the books several times and was making predictions about Book Seven based on what Tolkien, George Lucas, etc. would do.

It wasn't a particularly quiet theater, being about half teenagers and young adults in groups, half parents with kids, and they showed a boatload of previews -- The Dark Is Rising would look good if it weren't, you know, The Dark Is Rising, which is NOT supposed to be about a contemporary American kid for Merlin's sake! Even if Christopher Eccleston looks delectable with all that hair. I didn't see the last two Bourne movies but the cast in this one looks awesome -- were Joan Allen and David Strathairn in the previous two? -- so I am thinking I may remedy that before next month. And the Get Smart remake with Steve Carell looks hilarious, though that is a year away.


Here's another charming image from The Outhouse in Ronks, Pennsylvania: a fake man at a fake urinal in the women's bathroom.


Here is the store's warning sign, just inside the front door...


...though if you're not sufficiently warned by the signs on the porch and the "tailgate toilet" (a lid attached to a trailer hitch with nothing under it), it's probably your own fault.


Inside are such attractions as the attack dog who comes after you if you pull his bone...


...and a "spider" that drops from the ceiling into your hair if you talk loudly under it. (I did not try to take a photo of the squirting Buddha as I was afraid of getting the camera wet.)


All historical handcrafted Amish, except not in the least!

This story about Brian May finishing his PhD gave me hope -- I am nowhere near 30 years late yet. Of course, I am also not a millionaire rock star, sadly. It will surprise no one, I'm sure, that when Paramount releases the original Star Trek on HD-DVD, they will include never-before-seen behind-the-scenes footage from the 1960s so people who already paid a fortune for the set once will do so again! And it will also surprise no one that Bush has put forth a homophobic asshole to be our new Surgeon General, and even though I have tried to stay away from politics lately in this journal I feel compelled to link to the Act For Change page to tell your senators to block the Holsinger nomination.