Your days are numbered, Norris

Early Thoughts

So it's a gray New York morning, and I just watched this nice Bronx man tow my little car away. I donated her to a place called Outreach.

I don't need the car. I walk everywhere--or I take public transportation. That's actually one of my favorite aspects of this place.

Still, I am sad. Driving a car is such a Southern thing. My teenage years in Alabama are mostly filled with memories of open windows, loud music (almost always loud U2), and stick shifts.

Top Ten Favorite Car Memories:

1) The long hot Summer Saturday we spent driving around Huntsville with the T-Tops off--looking forward to an outside presentation of "Rattle and Hum" on Monte Sano.
2) Leaning out of Lisa's passenger side window as we cruised through Jones Valley Farm.
3) Racing Erik down Carl T. Jones and trying to explain the resulting smoking brakes to my mother as some sort of radiator output.
4) Making out with Jeff on the way to Metro practice. We were ALWAYS an hour late.
5) The "last first kiss" with Taylor in the parking lot of the University of Alabama library.
6) En route to some random party, laughing with Britt after she spilled a huge cup of Manishewitz on herself and said "You get me drunk, you get me wet, and you never do anything I wanna do!"
7) The drive to Fairhope.
8) We were chatting about something inane, admiring the moon and the quiet North Carolina night and then... A sort-of-rough and long-desired kiss up against the car in Winston-Salem.
9) Listening to poetry in the passenger seat on some random road in Hyde Park.
10) E! Pushing the car (BY HERSELF) out of sand in Port Aransas.

Bye bye, little polluter of the earth. I gotta go. I gotta catch the bus.

Late Thoughts

This lamp throws shadows like webs on the ceiling of my room.
I am lying here,
Stretching my hand into the light,
To see if I can make my fingers
Look like gauze.
But I can’t get the angle right.
Their shadows are too decided,
Too edged
To fit into the web.

This lamp is old,
Made of brass.
It’s one of those touch-lamps,
That has three settings,
So (with just a touch!)
I can make the ceiling web look Dark—mysterious and incomplete.
The second setting is the best,
That web is Golden, hints of shadows on the very outskirts
Of the web—
Or, with the third setting,
The web gets Bright and Stark.
The third setting is my least favorite.
It is only fit for house cleaning…
Or when I am desperately searching for my favorite earrings
In the jumbled pile on my dresser.
The third setting is harsh,
Despite the “softer light” bulbs that I put in there,
So I rarely use the third setting.

Mostly, I use the middle one.
The web looks better when there’s darkness nearby.

Things Smart People Tell Me About

First example: Stuff White People Like--which may be my new favorite thing in the world. (Thank you to Jessica for the Awesome Reference.) Well, that and the page where you can see randomized Garfield cartoons (thanks to Steve the Weave for that one).

Second example: Apparently, the original Garfield site made every cartoon window into a separate, um, web thing--so, somebody who knows more about, um, web things than me wrote a program allowing the different windows to mesh. They're like cartoon mash-ups, and even though the actual site isn't up anymore (Boo), you can still see some old ones. These are some of the archived gems.

Read, laugh, talk amongst yourselves.

Also

YEA!!! I love Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova and "Falling Slowly."

balls

Oh My God. I just tuned into the Oscars to see what's going on. And some thousand year old guy is talking. He did something cool with "North by Northwest" once.

I love old people, don't get me wrong. But I have bad timing. That's all I'm sayin.

Addendum: Speaking of old people, Steve Guttenberg (sp?) is totally going to be on the new season of "Dancing with the Stars." I miss Don Amici.

The Departed

is awesome. I just love it. Especially Marky Mark and his biceps. And Alec Baldwin. And Leo. Mmmmmm, Leo.

The End.