GRABBINGSAND

the spanish edition of neil gaiman’s american gods has been published, and it looks so much better than the domestic release. if only i still had my first edition hardcover. i’d track down one of the new models en espanol and switch the covers.

of course, i could always just learn spanish…

“you see saddam, in order to prove that he is a-ok, is almost daily on tv. he gets a number of officers and asks them questions which he answers himself. he actually said that the west probably thinks that he can’t sleep at night these days and has to take sleeping pills; well you are wrong he sleeps every night very well, because he knows his people “are pleased and happy”. Well that explains the feeling I have. so, no sleeping pills for saddam, maybe he can give me his.”

this is what salam sees on his television these days. salam also knows first-hand about bomb shelters, too-late air raids and pretty blue tiles. you think an iraqi written blog is unique? think again. national phillistine is another one, though its slickness impresses me far less than salam’s honest observations.

so just what does this serve to prove? perhaps this response on mefi comes right to the point.

i’ve moved again. this is the new server. if you are seeing this post and not the “old and busted” post, then the domain name servers have updated properly and you are free to comment and peruse at will.

welcome to the new house, same as the old house.

if this site suddenly disappears, it’s not necessarily because of any foul play, but rather what appears to be an impending wierdness on the horizon from my hosting company. you see, i am updating my site. i can read my pages. i can see my photos. heck, you’ve got it right there in front of you!

but their new fangled control panel… it shows my webspace as completely empty. and i have a feeling that an overnight sweep might be on the way to whisk me away. first thing to do when i get home? back it up.

stay tuned. this is going to be interesting.

tonight is the state of the union address. time for the potus to tell us all how we’re feeling at the moment. good thing too, because i was starting to wonder myself. no doubt it will be full of the usual fluff about how the economy is really okay and those financial analysts are just a bunch of silly chicken littles. and then he’ll tell us how we’re still the bestest of the best in everything from education to basket-weaving. that will lead us into the my-country-can-beat-up-your-country portion of the evening, featuring not-so-veiled threats against that pesky little saddam hussein. however, the larger elephant in the room, dressed in the flag of north korea, will be mostly ignored. all of this fun will begin at 9pm, on fox, fox news, cnn, cspan, some pbs channels, and all three major networks. univision will be broadcasting it en espanol.

but don’t despair. you have other options for your prime time entertainment. the wb has smallville, upn has some show called abby, sci-fi has an x-files episode, tnt has law & order (don’t they always?), tvland has sanford & son, and one of our local pbs affiliates offers a nova special on synthetic diamond manufacturing. but if you ask me, you can’t miss the state of the union. there is much amusement potential in our commander in chief’s strained command of the english language. and furthermore, agree with him or not, but you need to know how you are perceived by the people elected to represent you. beyond that, the world is listening and will make decisions about us as a people based on the words of a former oil-man from texas.

don’t you owe it to yourself to pay attention?

the workday is burning away. only half an hour remains and i am grateful. i’ve not had nearly enough caffeine, but something has been telling me to bury the impulse and struggle on. the cube-neighbor behind me has left her clock radio on again and the lite jazz station is going through its daily rotation. i think they have only twenty-five hours of music at their disposal, because i hear the same tracks at predictable times every single day. she keeps the volume down courteous and low. i don’t notice except in extreme circumstances. either the rhythm is too familiar to ignore or the pitch is a bit too high. i always notice chuck mangione. feels so good. the squishy-brassy joy-theme of the 1970s. i might have liked it at one time, but the track just grates me now. like little trumpet-playing fingernails down a chalkboard lit by mirror-ball.

but today has brought one of those not-quite-jazz songs into the mix. you know the ones. once-hits by people like sade or anita baker. this evening’s victim of genre cross-over is none other than terrence trent d’arby. no, not wishing well (to kiss and tell)… sign your name across my heart. that’s the one. a hit in 1987, it’s only in these totally out-of-context moments that you are creeped out by lyrics like:

i’d rather be in hell
with the baby that we could have had

i had this on cassette. bought it new that spring when i was fifteen years old. i know this because i remember just how i lost it. maybe lost is not the right word.

my parents decided that we should go to the florida coast during my spring break. our original destination was ft walton beach, but when we arrived there, my dad might an immediate executive decision to head on down the coast. too many revelling college kids for his taste. too many cruising cars. all i remember is getting to that hotel after dark, rushing from the parking lot to our room, then breaking out in the early morning to relocate our holiday to the more sedate town of destin.

i had surrounded myself in the back of our van with the mobile solitude of a walkman for most of the trip down, and i found the mostly empty beach good for more of the same activity. i think that might’ve been the first time i’d ever known the peace of a simple walk on sand, surf just lapping at your shoes or your barefeet. and it was during one of those walks that i saw her coming in the other direction. it was like a movie, but without the love theme and the slow motion. we didn’t even know each other. but i think we both realized the fact that she and i just might be the only people under the age of 34 for miles. and so we just started talking as our paths crossed. i don’t remember her name, though i think she said she was from somewhere in louisiana. she had curly reddish-orange hair, was about as tall as me. and so we started wandering together for awhile and agreed to meet up sometime the next day. and we did. we met in the lobby of her hotel, rode the elevators up to her parent’s suite. i guess she was feeling like quite the adult hostess as she handed me a solo cup full of peach wine cooler. seagrams, i guess. i knew no better, having never met alcohol of any kind before then. but i would not do to let on that i wasn’t worldly, so i sipped and maintained poised as we proceeded with our own exploration of the rest of the hotel.

we didn’t stay in the room? no. for some reason, we were content to carry on with simple meandering, rather than the plot of some teen-sex comedy. yeah, there was something of a brief, no-idea-what-to-do mash session in a stairwell, but it was just one of those things that means the world at 15 and makes you laugh lightly at 30. at the end of the day, we walked back to my parent’s hotel room and outside the door she waited while i went in to fetch that terrence trent d’arby tape. she loved that one song. she just wanted to hear it that night and she said she’d see me in the morning before her parent’s packed up to head home.

the next morning, i waited in the hotel lobby, trying not to look out of place and trying to not make obvious my concern with each passing second. but she never showed and the tape was gone and the thrill of a spring break fling was diminished by a regret of never getting an address. it would’ve been easy now, just an email address on a palm in purple pen, but i guess a postal address just took more time.

the workday has burnt away. i can’t hear the little clock radio anymore, so perhaps it has shut itself off. or perhaps it is simply done for the day. as am i.

i rule.

let’s get this straight. paul mccartney was never killed in some freak automobile accident and replaced with an identical double. that would be an urban legend. however, on the abbey road album cover, he is crossing the street without shoes and is holding a cigarette in his right hand. this is a fact.

or at least it was until an american poster company decided to clean up paul’s act and remove the somehow offensive tobacco product. i suppose we should just be grateful they didn’t digitally slap a pair of nikes on him.

today is gray’s birthday. go give him a spanking or bake him a cake or poke him with a stick — just do whatever your particular heritage teaches as appropriate.

and by there, i mean there. think about it as the sims online, only with the brakes off and the imagination on. or at least that’s what there looks like from out here. but i got the good word today and i’ve been tapped to be part of the first there beta testing group.

so i’ll let you know what there is like when i get back here… from there. or somewhere.

addendum: well, after a 64mb download that took just over an hour and a half (something tells me that somebody’s servers weren’t up to the challenge of scores of beta testers), i have been stopped dead in my tracks. the install checks your system, you see. the beta requires an 800mhz processor, you see. my mighty dell is only a 600mhz processor. so no install for me. the setup program simply says no and do not pass go.

oh, well. guess i’m not going there after all.