Writing your own blog tools is fun until you get the rug pulled out from under you by your hosting service when you don't have any spare time to fix things.

Finally, I think everything is working again. Now if I only had something to say.

Sorry about that folks. My hosting service updated the Rails version on the shared server and this update removed a bunch of deprecated methods my blog application relied on. My Rails skillz were rusty and it took me some time to fix but it's back up now. This sucks on multiple levels but I guess it's par for the course.

Here's a weird and experimental poem I wrote recently. The poets in the writers group I've been working with were very mixed on it. Some liked it a lot, most did not. I think most had no idea what I was getting at. The consensus is the beginning is better than the end. I think the beginning is more accessible, but personally, I like the ending. Let me know what you think. Trust me you wont hurt my feeling if you think it sucks, I've heard that already.

MEDITATION AS WATER

The porch is ethereal
I sit in the rocker and breathe;
Watching the river of my thoughts
Flow through internal night.

The waters are swift and clean
And happiness floats silently -
A smack of pelagic jellies
In a strong ocean current.

Eddies in the stream spin-off,
Turmoil at the edge of perception.
Ephemeral maelstroms of
Stress and distraction -

The sharks of my thoughts,
Death and dread, cruise.
Jurassic neurons spark
Their ancient frenzy.

Monkey brain, monkey brain,
Who the fuck are you?
What hubris of worth
Floods your vessel?

Azure light and a grain of rice.

Some of you may think this is me just being a science nerd and nit picking but I see people making statements like this all the time and it bums me out. People have known about evolution for a long, long time and known about the process of natural selection since Darwin and still, still educated people say things that display a gross misunderstanding of the processes involved.

While reading the morning news, a fluff science piece about life in space caught my eye (link). In the article an astronaut is quoted as follows:

If we push back boundaries far enough, I'm sure eventually we'll find something out there," said Mike Foreman, a mission specialist on the Endeavour, which returned to Earth in March.

"Maybe not as evolved as we are, but it's hard to believe that there is not life somewhere else in this great universe,"

Do you see it too? Is your blood pressure rising like mine?

If I said the phrase 'evolutionary ladder' how would you feel?

Let me give you a hint, it makes my blood boil.

Okay enough with setup, here's part that bugs me:

"Maybe not as evolved as we are".

I know people say stuff like this all the time but they are all wrong. Humans are more intelligent than a giant clam but they are no more evolved. All living things are at the tips of their evolutionary tree. Intelligence is a strategy for survival we humans adopted, it is not the 'goal' of evolution. Things that are intelligent are not 'more evolved' by the fact that their species utilized that strategy. The folks at Berkeley explain this better than I will so follow this link for a good explanation: Trees, Not Ladders.

I am an unapologetic John Wayne fan. The fact is Wayne was a very good actor whose sheer presence could turn a ho-hum script into a gripping yarn.

I've always been a little pissed off that Wayne's legacy seems to have been reduced to that of a failed icon of pro-Vietnam involvement. If people actually listened to and watched Wayne's films they would see the characters he played were often far more progressive than he's ever given credit. Take a gander at the 'The Sons of Katy Elder' the next time it's on the tube if you don't believe me.

Along those lines I was happily surprised today when I stumbled across this article titled: The "Duke" and Democracy: On John Wayne. The article primarily deals with Rio Bravo, one of my favorite John Wayne and Howard Hawks films, and shows how Wayne embodied a lot of the best ideals of America.

The first trap held a leg.
The flesh gnawed at the knee
And pulled out at the hip.
The denuded femur
A translucent white,
Needle thin bone, so frail
Compared to the steel
Will displayed.

The second held a corpse.
A delicate, large eyed
Flyer, broken by the
Copper snap.
The blood stained fur
And missing leg told
The story well enough.

I removed the tiny body
Held it in my palm
And weighed its fate.
A ladle of pig iron
on the foundry trunnion
could not tip the scale.

This is the most encouraging thing I've heard a Democrat say in ages.

But it is a great mistake to divide all human activity into two categories: those that are criminally prohibited, and those that are encouraged. In a free society, there must be a very considerable zone of activity between those two poles in which people are allowed to make their own choices as long as they are not impinging on the rights, freedom, or property of others.

He almost sounds like a libertarian.

Link

Fellow readers, I'd like to point you to an excellent source for original short fiction by both established and up-and-coming authors, called Five Chapters. Every week the site publishes a serialized short story in five chapters, released over five days - Monday to Friday. The chapters are short, at around 1500-2000 words and take only a few minutes to read.

This week's story, Voice Lessons by Kate Christensen, tells the tale of a woman taking singing lessons with a very unusual teacher. It's a wonderfully layered short story with some truly surprising twists and turns.