Bad Poetry Thursday: Chocolate Trap

Alphabeta Con-o-rama
by The Great Mulrooney III

I saw a campsite just yesterday
A fire still smoldered
The embers reflecting maroon, yellow, gold and grey
Perhaps a monk once sat there
Eating S'mores and spirits
He leaves the fire burning
But it doesn't mean anything.
It's not symbolism and it's not metaphorical
It's just a fire burning bright in the wilderness
Lighting up the night and then burning out.

I Can Hit A Target Through A Telescope

Being as I am, I was hopelessly unaware of this band called Flobots who have this song called Handlebars. You've probably all heard it, it's the one that's all "I can ride my bike with no handlebars," and "I can keep the rhythm with no metronome," and "I can end the planet in a holocaust," or something like that. I'd heard people singing the first line about the handlebars and I just sort of assumed it was a cheesy nostalgia-heavy song about "wasn't it fun when we were kids?" But it's not. Instead it's a post-modern investigation of the dialectic of innocence and experience, an almost freudian examination of how our hubris and self-centeredness doesn't change so much in form, only in degree. It's a self-reflexive dia/monologue on the state of politics and our own complicity in the actions of others and the effects of those actions. Where is the line, the song asks, between power and purity? Between strength and delusion? Between confidence and conquest? Between my life and your death, or a billion deaths?

All in all it's probably the most pointed and devastating critique of modern culture to come out of the rap-rock genre (did I mention it's a rap-rock song? No? Oops.) since 1996 when The Bloodhound Gang released their seminal gutter-rap jeremiad "I Wish I Was Queer So I Could Get Chicks."

I Guess Maybe I'm Not Ready

So the other day I was reading something on the internet and I heard about this book called "Rapture Ready." I thought it sounded interesting so I went to my library's website (sorry, but I'll pay that $18 fine as soon as I can! Honest!) and put a hold on it. Then, the next day I went to pick it up. I was pretty excited because I always like to read an outsider's account of weird and popular subcultures (THEM by Jon Ronson is a great example) and I figured I was far enough removed from church and religiousness in general to find it funny yet non-condescending.

But then we got in the car and my wife read me the blurbs on the back. Two of them were good, but the third was written by.......wait for it........Brian Maclaren.

Just when I thought I'd finally escaped, there's that shiny bald head again. It's like you can't even throw a book without hitting a book either written or blurb by that dude. I know. I tried it when I got home. I hit a book blurbed and written by him.

Anyway, if I get around to reading the book, I'll let you know how it was, so you've got that going for you, which is nice.

Fifteen Four and A Double Run for a Doz

You totally won't believe this, well, maybe you will, but I totally played in my first ACC-sanctioned cribbage tournament last weekend. I got worked over like a iron horse shoe on a blacksmith's anvil. I went 8-14 with 17 points and 1 skunk. But I was about two standard deviations outside the mean in terms of age, senility and probably incontinence, so I had that going for me.


I'm going to try again in September and I'll let you know how it goes.


It will go exactly the same only hopefully with some more beers to calm my nerves.

Bad Photoetry Thursday: WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE!!!

Adventure on the Hi(biscu)seas

I bought a tree the other day. Or maybe it's a bush, I can't really tell. I bought it at Costco so that I could have a tree and some flowers in my pine-paneled office in my trailer at work. Anyway, I started to think about how come I always want to buy new things and...well, we all know that no one wants to read about that tired topic.

Then, I read this interesting article and learned that my desire to buy new things ad infinitum was all just a deliberate corporate plot initiated about 90 years ago to make sure people didn't stop working and producing things because then they might actually get involved in civic life and the TPTB can't have that now.

It sure feels good knowing that my consumerism isn't at all my fault. Abdicating responsibility tastes like sweet juice squeezed from fresh endangered snozzberries.