"Aw, somebody ought to cut that tree down, the homely thing."
"If there was only one tree like that in the world, you would think it was beautiful," said Katie. "But because there are so many, you just can't see how beautiful it really is. Look at those children." She pointed to a swarm of dirty children playing in the gutter. "You could take any one of them and wash him good and dress him up and sit him in a fine house and you would think he was beautiful."
"You've got some fine ideas but a very sick baby, Katie," they told her.
"This baby will live," said Katie fiercely. "I'll make it live."

—excerpt from A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith

The wind blew hard yesterday. It blew all night, warm and dry. This morning I got out the old piece of crap bike and prepped her for a ride into town (ten miles). The wind was against me all the way in; it was like pedaling in mud. About halfway there I hit a ditch and pitched forward on my face, dislocating my shoulder and scraping myself up pretty good. Talk about pain. (*Not the shoulder, because of old jr. high football injuries, it gets dislocated all the time).

No, the worst pain was my five year old pair of Burger King sunglasses that cost me two bucks but come with their own carrying case and have lasted longer than any pair I've ever owned. They make me look cool, kind of like John Lennon. They didn't break, but got bent up something fierce and will never be the same. I'm wearing them right now so that people won't see how scraped up my face is.

But it is a beautiful day, with all the new flowers, and the trees just opening up, and the river high and running fast. It's one of those days where you can still see the old, dead grass but the new grass and everything else is covering it swiftly and you know nature is busy pummeling winter to death and burying it in some old peat bog somewhere. (Of course, we don't have peat bogs here for the most part; this is America, man).


I'm a huge Peanuts fan. I've collected the books and toys since I was a little bitty kid. Schulz was a genius and an incredibly gifted writer and cartoonist. Now Fantagraphic Books are going to reprint the entire peanuts archive! Released chronologically, they will cover the entire history of the strip. First volume is out now.

"Above the dead body, above the inert freight car, the darkness wheeled; it alone was living. Tomorrow's dawn would cover all of them with the same dew. Dead flesh and rusted steel would run with the same sweat. Tomorrow the black birds would come."

—excerpt from Troubled Sleep by Jean-Paul Sartre

Two articles written by Jo Wilding, who was an eyewitness to recent events in Falluja. Article One and Article Two. Also, a link to her personal website. These articles are very disturbing...

Woman loses her job over coffins photo.

links via spitting image.

If we went down now and threw away our rifles, they'd crowd round us; perhaps they'd say: "Comrades of France, the war's over." The steps drew nearer. They've done nothing to us, they're not thinking of us, they wish us no harm. Suddenly he shut his eyes; hatred was about to spout to the skies. They'll see my dead body, they'll kick it out of their way. He was not afraid of death, he was afraid of hatred.

—excerpt from Troubled Sleep by Jean-Paul Sartre

Very excited in a geekish way about my new G-mail account from Google. With a 1000 Mb storage limit it makes my Yahoo account look like a bad joke. I've been getting about 50+ spams per day urging me to improve the quality of my penis, so this new account will be a relief. I wonder how long it will take them to hunt me down? I'll keep you updated on this. Meanwhile, you can e-mail me at my new account: headsfromspace at gmail dot com. Please do! I want some e-mails to look at.


Click this link to see the full size image. This was sent to me by my friend Owen Kilfeather.

You may wonder if the quotes that usually appear at the top of my entries are from books I am currently reading. The answer is yes, they are. Where do I find the time to read all these books? Simple, I am unemployed, or if you like, grossly underemployed. Another question may present itself: why are all these books so old? The answer to that is I'm mainly interested in classic literature and don't read too many new works, as there are so many great older ones that I would like to read. However, if you think you know of a good new book that is worth reading, please e-mail me at my new g-mail account: headsfromspace at gmail dot com. I'm always up for a good read.

The new Baroque Cycle novel is out, titled The Confusion. Read the Salon interview with the author, Neal Stephenson. Good stuff. A second interview in Wired is also a good read. In it, Stephenson declares "Cyberpunk has been over for a long time. Some would say it was already over by the early '90s..." I don't even know what that means, Mr. Stephenson, sir. I'm not sure that Cyberpunk as a genre or sub-genre has even reached it's peak yet, but maybe you shouldn't listen to me because (not unexpectedly) I haven't published any super-dazzling Cyberpunk epics.

Links via boing boing and maud newton.

"You and I are like Adam and Eve, the first two people on earth who at the beginning of the world had nothing to cover themselves with—and now at the end of it we are just as naked and homeless. And you and I are the last remembrance of all that immeasurable greatness which has been created in the world in all the thousands of years between them and us, and it is in memory of all those vanished marvels that we live and love and weep and cling to one another."

—excerpt from Dr. Zhivago by Boris Pasternak



Just when you thought pop culture couldn't get any cooler...it somehow does! The Joey Ramone action figure! Link via List.

Gomez remembered the crowd on Seventh Avenue.
"Do you imagine those people in the street are thinking about Paris?" he said.
"In a way, yes, but not like you and me. Americans do not enjoy the process of thinking. When they do concentrate, it is in order to escape all thought."

—excerpt from Troubled Sleep by Jean-Paul Sartre

Forgiveness please. The lack of recent posting is due to a lack of access to the internet. Entries may be sporadic for a while; bear with me faithful readers.

Politics

and the war in Iraq are on my mind, as they are always, although for the most part I choose not to discuss them here because there are many, many blogs that cover these topics much more thoroughly and intelligently than I ever could. However, I did discover this page at Bloomberg where you can listen to John Burns of the New York Times discuss his recent kidnapping and release by resistance fighters in Iraq.

Former Nixonite John Dean wrote a new book, Worse than Watergate, in which he discusses possible criminal acts of the Bush White House.

The alternative to Rush Limbaugh recently made its hotly anticipated debut, The O Franken Factor features the cutting political observations of Al Franken and Katherine Lanpher. I couldn't get the stream on the day it came out but I'm listening to it live right now and it's yummy. Also, don't forget the politically elegant Le Show with Harry Shearer. The broadcast is Sundays from 10-11 but the link leads to an archive of recent shows...

He had written to Mathieu: "A man must have the courage to act like everybody else, in order not to be like anybody."

—excerpt from The Age of Reason by Jean-Paul Sartre


According to NPR, Google is planning to offer e-mail services sometime in the near future. The big "G" will offer larger storage and the ability to attach larger files to e-mails than their rival Yahoo. More Google news: Official Google news release about their new G-mail project. Also, read this Slashdot thread slamming Google for the deteriorating effectiveness of their search engine.

Yes, you're a great writer. So what.