cluster bomb

Holiday shopping can be stressful: all the people, the cheerful music, trying to decide on the perfect gift.


The news used to make me sad until I realized: the people who die are no longer people. You no longer have to worry about them. You might feel bad about those who loved them. You might draw tear-jerking parallels to the lives of your own loved ones. But in the end, the poor fuckers who got blown to shit and mentioned parenthetically within a broad total are having a better time than you, fat-assed Andy Reid that you are, watching the news over a consolatory beer on your sagging couch. At the very least, they're having a less depressing time than you are.

Maybe the dead never were quite people, but rather scraps of formula in a bureaucrat's spreadsheet. To feel sadness or anger at this is trite, regrettable, and certainly not to be expressed. If the dead are Arabs, your discomfort is anti-Semitic or at the very least anti-American. If the dead are Americans, ask yourself, does the world need so many Americans? There is at least on the bright side a potential reduction in Northeast corridor rush-hour traffic.


Upon impact, the cluster bomb transforms into a beautiful butterfly.

Eagles 2004 Commemorative DVD

This DVD celebrates the Philadelphia Eagles' 2004-05 season, from training camp through their dominating performance against the Atlanta Falcons. This newly-produced film goes beyond typical NFL team merchandising to bring the Eagles fan more highlights than ever before, interviews with key players and coaches, and several bonus features that help the fan get to know the players in a more personal, intimate way.

Bonus features include the fight you got into with your dad on the front lawn about an hour before kickoff the day of that triumphant championship game. From the punch you thought about throwing, to the harsh and ultimately senseless things said before you retreated into your respective lives, we've captured it all right here.

In exclusive interviews, your siblings, your shrink, and legendary Eagles Defensive Coordinator Jim Johnson offer commentary on the state of your parents' marriage and certain oddities in your own psychological development, leading into a word-by-word analysis of the conversation that set your friendship with your father back several years.

Finally, in a can't-miss sequence of deleted scenes, the male bonding you missed that day is simulated by professional actors watching a taped version of that classic match-up. High fives, hearty laughs, and spicy wings abound. And, during a three minute and 20 second sequence at the beginning of the second half, we see rare, shared understanding of the ties between you, the trying, the care on both sides of the ball.

sailing ship telescope wizard

Little one you are safe, nothing will hurt you, nothing can. Your good dreams are premonitions of the world to come, your bad dreams are exorcisms. When you look to us for trust, we're worth it, we won't fuck it up. We won't drop you, call you names, or mail you cross-country 4th class in a box with air-holes and a feeding bowl, even if somewhere down the road you really get on our nerves and we're dying to see a movie in the theater.

Little one your schemes are forming, you lift your head and smile and laugh and talk. You know that music is music, that love is love, that it's better with friends around and how to make them smile. Your schemes become projects: roll 3 feet, eat a blanket, eat a ribbon, eat a pacifier, eat the cat. Continuity, beta version, entropy patcher, stalwart champion of addition and multiplication, erudite designer of cross-cultural constellations, box of apples, sailing ship telescope wizard, defeater of depressives, existentialists, and cynics, cloud catcher, befriender/tamer of ghosts.

You've probably seen them on TV: classes of infants clad in swimsuit diapers or only in what Mother Nature gave them, floating effortlessly through the water like little mermaids or piranhas. You want your child to learn basic water safety, but is tossing your baby into a pool the way to teach him?

Yes.

imagined injury

Breaks of the collar bone, breaks of the clavicle or coccyx, skull fractures, broken arms (radius, humerus, trochlea). Breaks of the fibula, tears of dorsal metatarsal ligaments. Stab wounds to the chest, throat, stomach, liver, kidneys. Gasoline burns, gunshot wounds. Exposure to national media, exposure to local media. Exposure to chemical weapons, depleted uranium, the movie "Tropic Thunder."

Hypnosis gone awry. Involuntary removal of tongue, fingers, eyes, kidneys, penis, or heart in ransom or extortion situation. Voluntary removal of same in ill-starred attempt to impress girl. Exposure to the cold vacuum of space, snake bites, rat bites, rabies. Awkward sex, bad sex, regrettable sex for money in the pulsating bathroom of a Trailways bus with a toothless person of indeterminate gender. Exposure to organized religion, exposure to national, state or local politics. Frostbite. Hypothermia. Piranha bites, crocodile bites, electric shock. Spontaneous visits from college acquaintances.

Airplane crashes into your house, airplane crashes onto your car, into your place of work. Airplane crashes onto solo pedestrian (you). Airplane in which you are traveling corkscrews and burns slowly underwater, all but you eaten by octopi or a large school of small fish, you tortured slowly by evil merman in his domain. Airplane in which you are traveling brings you to all-day business strategy meeting wherein dull soundbites are pondered and endorsed.

Car crashes off side of mountain, car crashes into river and driver slowly drowns yet must rescue multiple children and pets. Car crashes into flaming oil tanker, school bus, side of building. Fender bender leaves dull ache in shoulder and crink in neck, slight paranoia regarding travel by self/wife/baby. Exposure to stand up comedy, ethnic or sexist jokes, pornography. Immersion in lye, enrollment in Poetry MFA program, immersion in diet program or anthill slathered in honey.

Slaps in face, kicks in balls, personalized poison pen letter from Noam Chomsky. Mountain lion leaps from rapidly moving 18-wheeler through open driver side window of car. Parachute fails to open, aneurysms, fast-moving cancer, heart attacks all noticed on way down. Exposure to daytime television, hospital waiting rooms. Exposure to adulthood.

professional breakfast

Yesterday, L. went up to the city and the pumpkin and I had a social day. My dad came over early and we made breakfast, bacon and whole-grain pancakes that he referred to as "different" but that he went back to for seconds and thirds. He brought along loads of extra ingredients just in case we didn't have stuff (professional breakfast). It turned out we needed his maple syrup and the oil he'd brought, because the syrup was a distant memory and the canola was down to its last drop. Score one to dad for knowing what he was getting into.

Last weekend the pumpkin and I'd gone over to his apartment bearing donuts and caffeinated coffee, figuring he wouldn't have any. He made bacon and broke out a bowl of strawberries and lit up around the kid, a grandfather learning the joys of that as his son learns what his dad already knows.

The old man is always trying to learn guitar, something surprising but not totally unexpected if you know him. The kid and I sat on the couch and he sat near the back door of his apartment with his back turned to us, plucking the notes of a song in his Grade 2 book called Lullaby . It took him a while to find the notes, but it added to the prettiness of the melody. The phrasing fell by turns to gentle pauses, like a kid trying to wend his way down to sleep, a sequence of cascading waterfalls from one level of alertness down to another. The pumpkin was all eyes.

Yesterday after breakfast was my turn to play my dad something on the piano. I've been taking an initial crack at figuring out Erik Satie's Gymnopédie #1 , a song that sounds simple and enchanting when you hear it, but one that is in fact laborious, subtle, and forever shifting and evolving, a real chore for a hack to muck through. I was worried my dad was going to gather up his breakfast equipment and split in a huff, but when I turned around he was dancing with the kid, who looked pretty interested again, albeit probably in the dancing most of all.

When my dad split the kid and I went to Lois and Chet's and watched football with them and their own little ones all day. Chet is obsessed with Elvis and casually played me these Claymation loops he'd spent the better part of two years crafting, of devotees praying unintelligibly to an angry King on a wide and vibrating altar, grim and menacing portents of a world sliding off its axis that nonetheless each seem to be craning their ears for the first strains of TCB or for some word from the King that will signal that they can stop caring, that they can lay their burdens down and fly into the beyond as free souls.

I leave the room for five minutes to go to the john and when I got back, Lois and her daughter are singing an extended You are My Sunshine to the pumpkin, who seems to be pondering the prospect of in fact being someone's sunshine, then changes his mind and starts crying for food or a pacifier or would someone get him a beer, dammit, just one beer to go with the game.

We walk around all day brimming with songs, looking for the first excuse to share them with each other. I feel like I've got about 58 years worth in there, packed away for winter under a sick-assed pile of depression, bacon egg & cheese sandwiches, and absurd put-downs.

prayer for the Philadelphia Eagles

So the mascots for the Phillies and the Eagles, the Phanatic and Swoop, go to the same church. Besides that it's a pretty boring parish. Sure, once in a while after too much communion wine the organist throws in improvised grace notes that skate dangerously away from the chord progression. Maybe once a month or so an altar server forgets to ring the bells that would signal the consecration, and a few parishioners get caught by surprise and nearly faint or at least put their hands to their hearts (we don't know the hour, nor do we know the day). Less often, maybe once a year or so, but usually around this time of year, an errant deacon might fumble a few tran-substantiated wafers and have to get on the ground on his hands and knees to pick them up and eat them. But that's about it.

My point being, you don't get a lot of speaking in tongues or deviations from C major (maybe A minor, if someone feels like getting dangerous with the circle of 5ths) at this parish. And it's an early mass, 7 a.m., so Swoop and the Phanatic can't be totally blamed if when asked to show one another some sign of peace, they limit their enthusiasm to warm smiles and handshakes or at most high fives (or a subtle backflip). You can't have the Phanatic revving folks up for the profession of
faith winging an all-terrain vehicle down the aisles. There are basic elements of decorum.

And besides, Swoop can't always fly. Sometimes Swoop needs time to reflect with his innermost thoughts. On this occasion, his mind has strayed a bit from the script of the mass. The sermon is about personal responsibility, but he (proud father, breadwinner, loyal husband, endangered species) can't help but feel he's got that down. So when it's time to pray, and his thoughts stray to today's game, Eagles vs. Giants, can he be blamed?

For the hungry and the sick, etc., Lord hear our prayer.
For the Eagles season, Lord hear our prayer.
For a balanced passing and rushing attack, Lord hear our prayer.
For the good McNabb to show up... Lord hear our prayer.
For the Giants offensive and defensive lines, may they crumble against all laws of physics and athletic superiority.. Lord hear our prayer. Etc.

And maybe he starts it off with a prayer for Plaxico's family, just to make sure God reads it as bi-partisan.