Jim Happened, Once

control is organized into bits of jim. this jim falters like any other. this jim goes like a trip over to a sodden green field where so much happens in springtime. now the field turns grey. the grey redeems by closing in. bits of jim spread to transform: honk honk, that aint happening.

but wait mood, wait for time. and the piercing cry of lately, steams windows freely and then you gone. stare at the jim till not so fierce or free.

makes a burning study, says our jim.

a jim is rectangular.

a jim for once, with all the ploys attended.

then further jims, as motion towards resolution (like we all) yet tossed about stutter.

control is the jim byword, which stays insane.

sane isn't such a big drop either, of course.

just returned from a dawn walk with the dog. the cat's sitting by the tree. a length of garland has been detached from the tree and stretched out a bit. the cat looks like pride in the undertaking. because no one asked him to provide this service, he offered it free. anyway, segue, listening to Christmas music on an internet radio station. currently it is the Waitresses. it is really amazing the amount of Christmas music that gets produced. and the attempts to make it "new". blues Christmas, jazz Christmas, heavy metal Christmas, hahaha. Martha and the (what are) Vandellas sang a classic, I forget which. you can hear highly professional studio musicians hacking thru a crisply dull arrangement. not to besmirch Martha, whose voice sounded nice. some years ago Neil Diamond had a Christmas special. Neil had to alert us that tho he is Jewish, he sill likes Christmas songs. it's okay, Neil. ook, now BB King and John Popper are bluesing out some nonsense. um, Popper's outmatched vocally. can't wait for those pointless triple speed harp runs. anyway, whatever Neil's strengths, and I'm not clear on those, he's really not exactly a dynamic performer. he sang "Little Drummer Boy". oh jeez, this is what I get for listening to the lyrics: "they call me backdoor Santa". Willie Dixon wrote that one too? reminds me of the world's ickiest Xmas song: "Santa Baby". which consists in invitations to Santa to come down my chimney, sung in a breathy Betty Boop voice. anyanyway, back to Neil. he was vocally challenged by "Drummer Boy", sought the easy way out with a near spoken phrasing. the pa-rum-pum-pums had him baffled however. he had a pained expression each time he intoned the syllables. why am I saying pa-rum-pum-pum-pum?. why indeed. at some point, Neil sang with a boy's chorus. some televisional genius thought that Neil should interact with the boys. no doubt Neil read off the teleprompter PUT HAND ON BOY. he did so in a mechanical, cold way that was kinda creepy. well, now I've got "Frosty the Snowman" sung by Fats Domino. what a stupid ass song. and yoiu know those 8' bubbles with Frosty and Santa, teamed up to outcute lesser decorative insights. a place down the road apparently only runs the pump at night, during the day their inflated display lays in a deflated heap in the ground. Santy!!!. yow, why am I listening to Billy Squier and his "Christmas is the Time to Say I Love You"? last night, to offer one more crack insight, a gaudily decorated house and yard did it all. HO HO HO in big letters on the side of the house, Santa and teammate Frosty waving to passersby, candy canes, reindeer, and a full manger scene. secular and religious blended in an assertion of silly seriousness. die for our sins, ho ho ho. anyway, Karen Carpenter is making my heart pump quickly singing abut a child who will bring us goodness and light. ho ho ho.

thank goodness we went shopping yesterday, I was getting nervous about missing Christmas. didn't really Christmas shop. I needed an externl storage unit so that maybe I could backup my files. that sent us to Circuit City. there was an ad for either CC or BB (Best Buy) in which a man and woman enter the store and suddenly the man goes wild-eyed with all the glittering electronics and bounds off like a puppy. I feel a little like that. it all looks toothsome. Beth stared at a flat screen tv that looked like a good deal. I got 60 gigs of storage, which is pretty good as my hard drive is 40. hip hop music played over the sound system in the store. admittedly I haven't listened much to rap, which I don't merely offer as evidence of my fogeyness. I mostly know rap/hip hop from novie and tv background music. auditory signal of urban cred. which reminds me of a Budweiser commercial starring Jay-Z. I mean, that's one way I see of losing cred: hawking Bud. Erin meanwhilst ogled cameras, which was his aim. he's as much interested in video as stills, plus constrained by budget. there was a metallic red camera, small too, which I didn't even pick up but still felt envious of whoever might own it. my camera's rather small but it's blocky in its way, and it looks like a camera. I want a camera that looks like a rocketship, don't you? we walked out of CC without more damage than the storage unit, which legitmately features in the category necessity. CC is actually across from the mall. the mall itself seemed quiet. Erin and I went to Ritz camera while Beth got caught in Crate and Barrel's tractor beam. Erin quizzed the people there then we went into C&B. well, no, Erin went to parts unknown. sales staff a little testy at C&B, not unreasonably so. Beth got some eminiently needed garlands for the tree. then... we went to a music/video/whatever store to find Erin. along the way the cart people lunged at us. one time it was a young man and woman trying to attract us to something. the image of a moray eel darting from its rock niche comes to mind. another time it was 2 young women at maybe a cosmetics thingie. they both remained seated on their stool, which is a funny image when you think on it, like they didn't want to expend too much energy. the opposite of that manner of drawing in is Abercrombie and Fitch (and/or Finch). the loud insistent dance music and the dark store front simply pull people in. a black hole. there's a women's clothes place with a lime and apple green decor that is extremely pleasing to my eyes at least, I'd want to go there. as opposed to the toy store, which is just super garish and bright. oh, in the entrance of the Discovery Store, a store person was radio-controlling a flying saucer. it had a fan that pushed it off the ground. dazzling! perfect for driving the cat crazy. somehow we found Erin again, went back to Ritz to procure his camera. then home. Beth annoited the tree with garland (we got the lights on yesterday... when I say we I mean Beth did, Beth has patience that I can't conceive), Erin set up his camera and I set up my storage drive. then take out Indian food, then an evening of putting ornaments on a fir tree in our living room. I also took pictures. Erin regarded his duty solely as getting a photographic record of Xmas 06, and plus too playing with new camera. well, today, harrumph, I just put the kibosh on the cat getting his morning exercise with an ornament. he's cleaning his foot now.

puppy of the apocalypse

puppy of the apocalypse, originally uploaded by allen_bramhall.

btw, anyone know if I should commit to beta Blogger? I tend to jump willy nilly, seeing a finer world in the upgrade, but in sooth that's not necessarily the case. has Blogger, or should I say GOOGLE, replaced old errors and screw ups for crisp new ones???

I stuck Ben Friedlander's Flickr account in my list of links. notice that I've segregated the picture sites, which is an effort of hopeful organization that can't bode well. Ben posts family shots, and ones from his youth, and a lot of personal stuff, but also much other types. including notes written to his wife (grocery lists, even!). what I labour to say is how interesting it is, the possibility of these pictures, and these gosh darn public publishing sites. I know I can't maintain a comprehensive listing of such like so what I will post can be considered intimations. Alli Warren, Brandon Brown, Stephanie Young all post personal photos, to the extent that you can envy the swell poetry times they have out there on the left side. I also like Jesse Crockett's photos, which I have to link to. but like I said, I'm not the one to maintain anything called comprehensive. I haven't even gotten around to producing my own flood, just the merest trickle.

we've been watching the Everest series on Discovery the last few weeks. I'm quite fascinated by Everest. strictly armchair interest. I once climbed Mt Lafayette in New Hampshire and reached a panic point when I got above treeline. it's only a 4000' peak, a hike, but I had a strange feeling of vulnerability. the sky seemed too close, and it felt like I could fall into it. no sheer drops or anything, it's not a scary mountain that way. tho at the summit a thunderstorm could be seen heading towards, necessitating a scramble down. I had to push thru that panic, but when I did, I felt okay afterwards. so I suppose I shall not be standing next to any 10000' foot drops anytime soon. a somewhat ragtag bunch heading up Everest. a super fit asthmatic, a climber who'd lost both legs to frostbite, and a biker who'd suffered 2 major crashes, thus carrying a lot of metal inside him. the leader of the expedition is an older man who leads from base camp, keeping abreast of weather and news via computer. doing so for the very good reason of being clearer minded at the lower altitude. the assaults on Everest that occurred 10 years ago, which Jon Krakauer wrote about in Into Thin Air, saw the leaders of 2 expeditions, world class climbers both, stuck near the summit during a bluizzard, which they did not survive. both made questionable decisions. even Sherpas suffer edema up there. the asthmathic wanted to climb sans oxygen but a one day delay at high altitude proved too much and he had to come down. there was an md along, who I understood as the expedition's doctor, but he pushed on to the summit, which made no sense to me till I got that he was just another paying client. waiting to learn if the biker and amputee make it. think of Mallory up there in his wool tweed, hauling huge oxygen tanks. whew. and you get to the top and bejesus if you have any sense you run right back down. all the descriptions of such climbing are ridiculous in so far as the cold and lack of oxygen so terribly take their toll. everyone loses appetite, coughs their brains out and so forth. it's a funny set up because Sherpas climbed to the summit to set ladders and ropes for the clients. which doesn't make the climb easy but certainly eases things a lot. anyway, the man for whom the mountain is now named, I mean the English name of course, pronounced his name with a long e.