August 27, 2015

Working on three poems right now; even after 45 years, my style is still evolving. I've got kind of a constipated thing going on, a very slim tight vertical construction -- picture a small intestine if you stretched it out and filled it with words.

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I saw this clever sign outside a Mexican restaurant across town: "Our Competition Is In Mexico."

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The Dark Knight never gets old. I try to avoid superhero movies, but this is a classic, if "classic" means the one superhero movie that all other superhero movies (all thrillers, for that matter) should be measured by. Brilliant script, on-target social commentary, a score that sounds as good on CD as it does in the movie, and of course Heath Ledger's legendary performance. When I think of any other character he's portrayed and then watch him as the Joker, it's difficult to believe he's the same actor. Also, I enjoy moral quandaries in stories, and the climactic ferry sequence is like catnip for me. I bring this up because I watched it again over the weekend with three friends, two of whom had never seen it. Nothing like living vicariously through the eyes of a movie virgin. "You want to know how I got these scars?"

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Two things I learned Friday at the Western Idaho Fair: (1) There's a good reason to keep honoring Christopher Columbus: He brought the first goats to America in 1493, and I like goats. (2) There's a bad reason to like gelatin: It's made from bone marrow. I liked gelatin until Friday. (There was no gelatin at the fair, but my friend happened to mention it on the Ferris wheel.)

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(500) Days of Summer is another movie I watched again recently. Here's the saddest exchange in a movie filled with memorable dialogue (heck, one of the saddest exchanges in any romantic movie): Boy meets girl and falls in love. Girl becomes girlfriend but has no intention of falling in love. Boy accepts this. Then girl marries someone else. They run into each other again, and boy asks girl how she could do it. She replies:

     "I woke up one morning and I just knew."
     "Knew what?"
     "What I was never sure of with you."

Argghh. Zooey kills me every time.

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So I'm at the Rite Aid checkout counter. The cashier has just put half my stuff in a small bag. I have a larger item that's going to stick out of the second bag, so I ask if she can put it in a larger bag. She says yes, but it would be better to put everything else in the larger bag as well and give her back the small bag. "We have to save the world," she says. She is perfectly serious. OK, so maybe the fate of the world really does hang on how many plastic bags I use, but it's unprofessional of her to make a customer feel crummy about it. (I'm careful about not using too many napkins when I'm in a restaurant, but I once ate at a place that had a sign saying, "Napkin = tree." I took a dozen napkins, crumpled them up, and left them on the table with a note that said, "Mess = forest." Even though I did it to make a point, I still feel guilty sometimes.)

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Forget Trump. Forget Iran. Here's the real breaking news of the day: I've shaved off my beard. I told someone I only kept it out of laziness, and then I realized what I'd said. I have a tan line just above my cheekbones.

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Blue tattoo on the upper back of a high school girl in line at Fanci Freez -- "To thine own self be true." Was it a homework assignment?

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LinkedIn is haunting me. I haven't used it since I stopped working professionally nine years ago, but I still get notifications, endorsements, and requests for endorsements. I try and try, but it seems to think "unsubscribe" means "I love getting these things."

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Eleven days until Labor Day. Almost time for fall, and pumpkins, and cider, and setting the clocks back. Can you tell I love fall? It wasn't always so. When I was in elementary school, I had to write a poem about my favorite season, my very first poem. I still remember the first two lines:

"I love winter for so many reasons.
First of all, it's my favorite season."

Logic wasn't my strong suit at ten (neither was poetry), but I got a nice grade out of it anyway.