TRAMP FREIGHTER

outskirts

2012-02-03T19:34:00.001-05:00

He believed that Belgium was a suburb of Paris.

needed motive

2012-01-29T19:27:00.002-05:00

Crises are the engines of the age.

glass half empty

2012-01-28T19:43:00.000-05:00

Tip it, but sip it slow.

open and closed

2012-01-21T17:13:00.001-05:00

A cage, too, as they say of a tree, is mostly air.

attention deficit

2012-01-18T21:58:00.002-05:00

Happily unaffected by at least half the culture.

temporary quarters

2012-01-14T17:56:00.006-05:00

When we found him, he was doing chin-ups on the edge of the crater he’d created when he crashed.

uneasy existence

2011-12-31T11:39:00.002-05:00

While some seek only comfort others desire to confront nature in a raw state.

dead before death

2011-12-14T20:25:00.004-05:00

Nothing sadder than hearing of a wealthy person who died while having lived as though destitute. Only thing worse, a wealthy person who died without giving away a healthy share.

you are what you eat

2011-12-10T10:57:00.000-05:00

For some people having a very particular or peculiar diet is their way of getting attention.

distance and time

2011-10-28T21:14:00.005-04:00

The problem with a long drive in a car is that by its end your whole life is in question.

brushed by

2011-10-22T15:58:00.001-04:00

These days I don’t think that we age so much as we blur.

they're after me, baby

2011-10-13T17:11:00.000-04:00

Paranoia: the apotheosis of the self-involved.

no estate sale

2011-10-01T18:22:00.003-04:00

I had some money so I spent it.

asked and answered

2011-09-20T18:00:00.002-04:00

If the question is composed correctly, is so well-crafted, then the answer will be imbedded within it.

goodnight irene

2011-08-29T21:59:00.002-04:00

No power but with a cellphone hook-up I found myself doing email by candlelight.

staying on your feet

2011-08-20T13:08:00.001-04:00

Skiing down the dark side of the average age distribution.

first breath

2011-08-07T19:21:00.002-04:00

By life what were you promised more than a first breath.

failed step

2011-08-04T11:00:00.001-04:00

Stumbled on the first step up to the temple.

it ends here

2011-07-22T20:55:00.000-04:00

Don’t go angry through any door.

hard liquor

2011-06-25T21:10:00.004-04:00

It was the kind of country where the water was just fine, but the admonition was, “Don’t drink the hooch.”

scene scheme

2011-06-24T22:07:00.000-04:00

The trailer was a gloss for the whole film.

cast a truly jaundiced eye upon

2011-06-18T20:41:00.002-04:00

Looking at the world through piss-tinted glasses.

paper money

2011-06-04T15:55:00.001-04:00

Prints are the paper money of famous artists. A currency issued from the treasury of their reputation and esteem.

conflict to confluence

2011-06-02T22:40:00.003-04:00

There’s the rub, we need a dialectic friction to create the energy to move forward.

music is

2011-05-29T13:17:00.001-04:00

Music: time singing.

end of days

2011-05-21T20:12:00.003-04:00

Today a few people believe will be the end of the world. They feel confident they will be ‘raptured’, taken up to their version of heaven. These people are by & large fundamentalists. They believe the Bible (in the language they are reading it) is the literal word of God (verbatim). These fundamentalists calculate the end of the world through this text, the Bible. But either the word problems God composed are too hard for humans, or God was not really very good at math, because the fundamentalists never seem to calculate the correct date for the end of the world. Whether it’s the inscrutable words or the fuzzy math, it shows the fallacy of believing that one knows what the Bible means.

end in sight

2011-05-14T18:17:00.001-04:00

I’ve started reading a big novel I knew I’d never finish.

gave as good as you got

2011-05-10T20:56:00.003-04:00

In a recent argument with myself I found I was rather overmatched. Not sure if that was a bad thing or not.

relative height

2011-05-07T12:04:00.001-04:00

Sitting next to you I feel taller than when I’m standing by myself.

essential services

2011-05-04T19:58:00.001-04:00

In the midst of a budget crises, when a government threatens to shutdown except for ‘essential services’, I wonder if that’s the problem: The government is providing too many nonessential services.

please change the channel

2011-04-28T19:55:00.003-04:00

A job I would kill myself for: Television critic.

not in

2011-04-22T18:38:00.002-04:00

Slip the stream.

duly unemployed

2011-04-01T22:05:00.002-04:00

The unemployment rate dropped to 8.8% today. Which is still high, but we must remember that at any given time about 5% of the workforce shouldn’t be employed at all, anywhere, anytime. They are bad workers. So we’re closer to a true ‘full’ employment than we think.

no memory

2011-03-05T13:46:00.005-05:00

Time hasn’t any memory. But we may call it history for the sake of convenience.

we'll make great pets

2011-02-25T19:15:00.002-05:00

People get along so well with their pets because they are the most unequal of their relationships. Though sometimes it may be the pet that has the upper hand in the duo.

digital death match

2011-02-22T20:23:00.003-05:00

Watson v. Google: Let the games begin.

at winter's end

2011-02-20T13:30:00.003-05:00

Pot holes can be thought of as negative space speed bumps.

unshared carnage

2011-02-12T14:52:00.004-05:00

The all-volunteer armed forces makes war less visible to large portions of the population. The draft, taking young men without their consent, makes all of the nation keenly aware of a war’s wasteful carnage. As it now stands, the volunteers come from two classes: Those conscripted by poverty or lack of prospects. Those with romantic notions of patriotism or adventure. The rest of our youth (and their parents) remain unscathed by the foreign wars.

relative scale

2011-02-07T20:47:00.001-05:00

The spectacles got grander and the people grew smaller.

it takes two

2011-01-30T18:29:00.000-05:00

When the dialectic has danced itself out.

too much too little

2011-01-24T19:33:00.001-05:00

When to elaborate would be to obfuscate and to summarize would be to lie.

corner story

2011-01-08T16:48:00.003-05:00

In the labyrinth, keep telling yourself that the end of Ariadne’s thread is around the next corner, because many times the lost have been brought out to the light by such false hope.

wordless world

2010-12-27T21:01:00.002-05:00

The TV on, no sound, yet I could understand everything.

what wealth is for

2010-12-13T20:50:00.001-05:00

The sacred duty of the rich is preservation of cultural capital (art, architecture, libraries, etc.).

relatively succesful

2010-12-12T17:16:00.000-05:00

I was top among the underachievers.

tongue oil

2010-12-02T22:29:00.001-05:00

Talk is the lubricant of the mind. Thought, reading, and writing have their benefits, but there is nothing like articulation on the fly to clarify.

find a pulse

2010-11-27T16:27:00.000-05:00

Pleasure is the pulse of life.

invasive species

2010-11-24T18:31:00.002-05:00

Number one inimical invasive species: humankind.

flimsy

2010-11-16T19:23:00.003-05:00

It proved to be a brittle kind of celebrity.

there's no there there

2010-11-15T21:43:00.001-05:00

The only thing we can be sure of about the future is that we’ll have a lot to talk about when we get there.

neither here nor there

2010-11-13T16:20:00.000-05:00

locus-pocus

word problem

2010-11-08T20:57:00.002-05:00

The news account stated: ‘X was found sleeping in a restroom’. That kind of makes sense.

whose money

2010-11-02T19:47:00.002-04:00

When I hear someone say ‘I want keep more of my money’ or ‘The government wants to take all my money’, I want to ask that person to take a bill from his wallet or her purse and to read it: That bill has ‘The United States of America’ printed on it, and the only reason it’s worth more than the paper it’s printed on is because a strong government supports the rule of law, infrastructure, security, education and the social programs that give value to that currency. That money is a gift of your good government.

just say no

2010-10-19T22:20:00.009-04:00

Why does society confuse the lack of prohibition of an act or a thing with the promotion of that act/thing? Society could decriminalize narcotics and at the same time promote drug avoidance and addiction rehabilitation programs, and do so at a cost far less (in dollars and lives lost) than is spent on interdiction, prosecution and incarceration.

oversimplified

2010-10-07T22:18:00.002-04:00

To simplify is to lie.

jealous city

2010-10-02T14:54:00.003-04:00

A city afflicted by skyscraper envy.

liberal media bias

2010-09-26T19:34:00.003-04:00

If a person pursues a field that requires openminded attention and thoroughgoing inquiry, like journalism, it’s natural that they’d be liberal-minded. The narrow and closed-off conservative mindset need not apply.

no hero here

2010-08-26T22:43:00.002-04:00

Is it possible to be a hero on the side waging an unjust war?

gold bug, gold slug

2010-08-24T21:55:00.003-04:00

Gold is an inert metal, and an inert investment, in the sense that gold merely holds value: It doesn’t have the creative and generative economic value of an equity or bond investment.

last parking place

2010-08-18T12:53:00.002-04:00

Two things that create dead space in cities: parking garages and cemeteries.

divisible eye

2010-08-12T21:08:00.002-04:00

To update a 60’s protest chant: “The whole world is watching different channels!”

discomfiting thought

2010-08-11T22:48:00.003-04:00

Comfort mongers among us.

only ankle deep

2010-08-10T22:06:00.001-04:00

The rich claim they’re being soaked when the bottoms of their pants’ legs get wet.

slack learning curve

2010-08-09T22:13:00.001-04:00

Some workers think that experience is knowing where the restrooms are and how much time you have for lunch.

one myth too many

2010-08-04T23:41:00.008-04:00

Show me a self-made man, and in seconds I’ll scratch through to the social clay from which he was molded.

scar shaped like a smile

2010-08-03T22:35:00.002-04:00

To see gloating global capitalism get its comeuppance was almost worth the financial pain of 2008-2009.

nothing obscured

2010-08-02T21:36:00.003-04:00

Birds will alight on the branch that gives them the best vantage point.

nostalgists

2010-07-28T21:59:00.001-04:00

Either they are aghast at the present or afraid of what lies ahead.

not mass enough to ignite

2010-07-26T23:14:00.001-04:00

Remember, Earth, that planets are but failed stars.

untested

2010-07-24T13:10:00.000-04:00

If you trust, you don’t need to test.

utter clutter

2010-07-22T21:10:00.003-04:00

To live through a catastrophe in which everything has been taken away from you except your life. After that, all life must seem a dream cluttered with things, people and events.

house lust

2010-07-21T22:47:00.002-04:00

I am desirous of a very large house so that I can have houseguests, and never see them.

paradise wasted

2010-07-18T10:14:00.002-04:00

It’s sad to think of a place called Paradise after the fall. A place of great beauty and bounty that just goes on and on, all wasted, with no one there to experience it.

weak tea

2010-07-15T21:22:00.002-04:00

What the American middle class most lacks is a sense of appreciation.

skip a step

2010-07-14T21:30:00.006-04:00

Young (Gen Z) job candidate to the interviewer: ‘Take me to your loser.’

not front row seats

2010-07-12T21:19:00.003-04:00

All kinds of horrors can happen until people’s clothes start to get spattered.

no better

2010-07-09T16:58:00.001-04:00

This I can do; I can do no better.

perceived perfect

2010-07-08T20:46:00.002-04:00

Don’t demand, rather prefer perfection, ever aware part of it is perception.

skin deep

2010-07-06T23:49:00.001-04:00

How can I say this without being insensitive to the hours he spent under the needle, but he was someone who thought of a tattoo as a life-long accomplishment.

scared myself

2010-07-05T22:41:00.000-04:00

Sometimes I think I’m scary sane.

o save us uncle sam

2010-07-01T20:35:00.005-04:00

Those who are first to complain about ‘big government’, who claim that the private sector is more effective and efficient in all ways, are the same people now complaining that the government isn’t acting fast enough, isn’t using its vast resources, to solve the disastrous Gulf oil spill.

not me

2010-06-29T22:19:00.000-04:00

In any error or act, the last thing we see is our complicity.

rat-a-tat-tat

2010-06-28T22:50:00.000-04:00

Sprayed with automatic weapon-fire, I was having difficulty connecting the dots.

cast as extras

2010-06-25T11:34:00.000-04:00

In any sufficiently complex notion of God, people simply become superfluous.

people trump ideas

2010-06-22T20:11:00.003-04:00

The problems begin when one puts ideologies before people. People will complicate that which ideologies want to simplify.

past imperfect

2010-06-20T13:19:00.000-04:00

Memory is imagination with a history.

seen enough

2010-06-19T17:47:00.001-04:00

There have been countless UFO sightings and yet no confirmed contact with aliens has occurred. Quite possibly they’ve seen enough and are avoiding us.

serfdom

2010-06-15T23:00:00.000-04:00

Serf to the fictional fiefdom of the self.

to go that far

2010-06-13T20:26:00.000-04:00

To die in a place so wild or unnavigable your body will never be recovered.

proud flesh

2010-06-10T20:53:00.001-04:00

Healed before the scars remembered where to leave their marks.

almost malapropism

2010-06-09T20:26:00.001-04:00

Almost a malapropism except it makes sense: Devise and conquer.

low down

2010-06-08T22:13:00.001-04:00

A sewer worker in the necropolis.

friend demand

2010-06-05T16:00:00.002-04:00

Make too many friends and you forfeit your own life.

after the fall

2010-06-01T21:59:00.003-04:00

Felled, but feeling better.

utilitarian time

2010-05-28T20:27:00.002-04:00

Last time I looked the fifty dollar Timex told the same time as the fifty-thousand Rolex.

from haunt to hunt

2010-05-24T10:28:00.000-04:00

I was haunted enough by to begin hunting for.

spot visible from space

2010-05-22T09:56:00.009-04:00

In May 2010, scientists noticed that Jupiter had mysteriously lost one of its great cloud belts. At the same time, if on one of Jupiter’s moons an observer would've turned his telescope toward planet Earth, he would have noticed a ‘great dark spot’ developing on the surface of one of our seas.

known by your army

2010-05-19T21:51:00.001-04:00

It’s been said that a language is a dialect with an army. If so, then perhaps a religion is a cult with an army.

can't countenance

2010-05-15T18:04:00.002-04:00

Janus became jealous of his other face.

right to gripe

2010-05-13T23:04:00.000-04:00

Only voters have the right to complain about their government.