i'm all alone so are we all.

flaws.

Another flaw in the human character is that everybody wants to build and nobody wants to do maintenance.

- Kurt Vonnegut

co-star of "Back To School," renowned author

church going.

Once I am sure there's nothing going on
I step inside, letting the door thud shut.
Another church: matting, seats, and stone,
And little books; sprawlings of flowers, cut
For Sunday, brownish now; some brass and stuff
Up at the holy end; the small neat organ;
And a tense, musty, unignorable silence,
Brewed God knows how long. Hatless, I take off
My cycle-clips in awkward reverence.

Move forward, run my hand around the font.
From where I stand, the roof looks almost new -
Cleaned, or restored? Someone would know: I don't.
Mounting the lectern, I peruse a few
Hectoring large-scale verses, and pronounce
'Here endeth' much more loudly than I'd meant.
The echoes snigger briefly. Back at the door
I sign the book, donate an Irish sixpence,
Reflect the place was not worth stopping for.

Yet stop I did: in fact I often do,
And always end much at a loss like this,
Wondering what to look for; wondering, too,
When churches will fall completely out of use
What we shall turn them into, if we shall keep
A few cathedrals chronically on show,
Their parchment, plate and pyx in locked cases,
And let the rest rent-free to rain and sheep.
Shall we avoid them as unlucky places?

Or, after dark, will dubious women come
To make their children touch a particular stone;
Pick simples for a cancer; or on some
Advised night see walking a dead one?
Power of some sort will go on
In games, in riddles, seemingly at random;
But superstition, like belief, must die,
And what remains when disbelief has gone?
Grass, weedy pavement, brambles, buttress, sky,

A shape less recognisable each week,
A purpose more obscure. I wonder who
Will be the last, the very last, to seek
This place for what it was; one of the crew
That tap and jot and know what rood-lofts were?
Some ruin-bibber, randy for antique,
Or Christmas-addict, counting on a whiff
Of gown-and-bands and organ-pipes and myrrh?
Or will he be my representative,

Bored, uninformed, knowing the ghostly silt
Dispersed, yet tending to this cross of ground
Through suburb scrub because it held unspilt
So long and equably what since is found
Only in separation - marriage, and birth,
And death, and thoughts of these - for which was built
This special shell? For, though I've no idea
What this accoutred frowsty barn is worth,
It pleases me to stand in silence here;

A serious house on serious earth it is,
In whose blent air all our compulsions meet,
Are recognized, and robed as destinies.
And that much never can be obsolete,
Since someone will forever be surprising
A hunger in himself to be more serious,
And gravitating with it to this ground,
Which, he once heard, was proper to grow wise in,
If only that so many dead lie round.

-- Philip Larkin

what’s the difference between me and you?

my hands are cold.

so it goes.

r.i.p. kilgore trout.

caveman.

okay, you know how on gmail they'll put links at the top of the page based on whatever's in your e-mail (scary, huh? they're actually reading your e-mails to direct you somewhere on the net...) -- like for example, when i clicked on this one e-mail i had sent out about these 20-year-old twins in wisconsin who had seen a girl's picture in the obituary section of a local paper and decided they wanted to dig up her corpse so they could... um... (well, hey, at least they bought condoms at the walmart on the way to the cemetary -- they aren't TOTALLY stupid) a link to an article about emilio estevez getting engaged came up. anyway, yesterday for some reason a link to this page came up on my gmail:

How to Draw a Caveman.

go ahead, click on it. this is what you'll learn how to draw:




how the hell is that considered a caveman? just because he has a beard? i have a beard. just because his hairline is receding? my hairline is receding. just because he looks kind of stupid? i look kind of stupid. but none of this makes me a caveman. or does it? maybe i am a caveman. but to me, this drawing looks like a goddamned stoner-hippie. we all know that cavemen have super-long hair, furrowed brows, and accessories like clubs and giant cellphones.



now look, i'm not the greatest artist in the world, but i do some pretty damn good doodles. just ask anyone who's ever worked with me -- my note-taking skills during meetings are top notch. here's a sample:



i draw freaking GHOST RABBITS! they are awesome -- much more so than smiling grateful-dead idiots. and, up for the challenge, here is my quick drawing of a caveman:



not bad. it kinda looks like my dad as a caveman. better than the hippie one. not as good as this one, though:



captain caveman rules.