Don't have to hold my hand

I envy you.

2010-07-07T22:25:00.000-05:00

But such a thing is not meant to last.

Forever

2010-04-07T15:09:00.001-05:00

A poet must be a psychologist, but a secret one: he should know and feel the roots of phenomena but present only the phenomena themselves in full bloom or as they fade away.
Ivan Turgenev

I don't post

2009-06-30T08:00:00.001-05:00

And you're gonna like it

superpoop.com

Giggles

2009-02-27T20:14:00.000-06:00

toothpastefordinner.com

New and Hilarious Web Comic

2009-02-13T17:25:00.004-06:00

E-merl.com

Nonsense

2009-01-19T00:54:00.002-06:00

It is not the absence of thoughts, but of words. And then not of words, but of profundity. For no word is profound enough even to probe the depth of understanding. "Show me a man who has forgotten the words so that I may speak with him."

I learn of time and space, and the marriage and wholeness of both, but have little in the way of understanding my own to them. What is this mortal coil that grows and springs to collapse again? What is its place in things that are, were and will be, but to identify the indefinable "now"?

As space is whole, so is time, and the marriage. To begin; to end; to be is a luxury; an illusion; a partiality that yields itself to the all-ness eternally.

Poetry is to will and toil by day, to go about a path and then to rest beside it when night falls. To see what is before you, what lies behind, and how the stars turn and kiss you by their light, that light that began its journey before you, and after, and during.

There are no words. And this is my silence. To say nothing! The luxury! The illusion!

Report Home 23 - Fambly

2008-12-14T22:55:00.000-06:00

Long overdue.

www.youtube.com/fletchyfletch

Intent to Get Out of This Place

2008-12-03T15:54:00.001-06:00

Turned in my Intent to Graduate form today. Which was a weird feeling.

May 2010 here I come. Maybe even you, December 2009. I'm gonna keep you and this institution of higher education guessing. That's just my policy.

Either way, Murfreesboro can die in the black recess of my memories where it belongs.

Moment's Notice

2008-11-19T15:00:00.000-06:00

This guy is awesome. His name is Ric Stultz. Check him out here.

That is all.

Bright Future

2008-11-05T10:41:00.000-06:00

The American dream prevailed last night.

This is not your grandfather's America.

2008-11-02T20:49:00.000-06:00

The tunnel has not changed
only that light at its end
has dimmed and quit
as if grown weary
of trying to
lead a
blind
man

StumbleUpon

2008-10-23T12:07:00.000-05:00

This is pretty fascinating.

I found it through StumbleUpon.com You owe it to yourself to check this out. It records your preferences for internet content and leads you to other sites you'll like. Music, games, philosophy, astronomy, pretty much any topic you can conceive. Check it out.

Found

2008-10-20T19:46:00.000-05:00

Found some old Softer Worlds online and this one made me laugh.

An oldie, but a goodie.

Click below for the real thing.

ASofterWorld.com

Progress

2008-10-17T20:57:00.000-05:00

I voted in my first presidential election today.

It's a strange feeling. And a good one.

Goodbye, Dottie

2008-09-29T20:15:00.000-05:00

My dog Dottie got put down tonight.

She was a good dog and a great friend, always vigilant in her duties as our watchdog. She trusted no unfamiliar face. I didn't realize how much I appreciated that until now. It will be so strange to be at the house without her.

But I've been laughing all day at the great memories I have with her and my family. She will be sorely missed, always loved and never forgotten.

Goodbye, my friend.

Update

2008-09-25T11:18:00.000-05:00

This is an article from the New York Times regarding the Large Hadron Collider (mentioned earlier), other particle accelerators, and the implications of the trials to come.

----EDIT----

Bad news. See you in April.

Who Watches the Watchmen?

2008-09-08T09:36:00.000-05:00

If you haven't read Watchmen, you won't understand any of this, but if those of you that have enjoy the same reaction I did you'll be picking your face up off the 1985 floor.

Somebody tell 2009 to hurry up.

WatchmenMovie.com

Conversation

2008-09-01T18:33:00.000-05:00

What are you looking for?
Are you looking for something?

Yes. The nursing building.

Well, you're close. I think...
You're very close. Um...

We're here.
We're right here.

Um. That's the BS. I mean, the BAS. So...

Um.

Oh, I'm an idiot. Not that building, but the next.
I'm an idiot. It's there.

Thank you.

Good luck.

New Day

2008-08-29T10:45:00.000-05:00

Beauty is mysterious as well as terrible. God and devil are fighting there, and the battlefield is the heart of man.

-Fyodor Dostoevsky

To Be Adrift

2008-08-24T14:31:00.000-05:00

Watching you move behind the bar
I cannot help but pick
out all the muscles in your arms

that surge like waves born underneath
the sea that flows as
all your skin, its current ever sheathed.

O, how my eyes protest and plead
to be immersed, held
as a serf to such fluidity;

a slave to all your brinish form
should steer me toward.
Just as the tides that stir in storms

o’er many months with wrathful aim
to cleanse the filthy
foam onshore do I desire to proclaim

myself absolved and pure, at last
one worthy but to
hear his name thus cast.

Hilarity

2008-08-18T19:07:00.000-05:00

The following is a blog post by "Kleinheider" regarding a photo from my dad's Facebook page that made me laugh like a... laughing... laugher.

-----

An artful rendering of political consultant Bill Fletcher with daughter, Marshall May Fletcher, and son, William Burke Fletcher, III who, apparently, were both just told not to let anyone outside the family know what they are thinking again.

Original photography swiped from Bill Fletcher’s Facebook page. Photoshoppin’ by Wild Billy Givens.

Being Virtuous

2008-07-26T17:54:00.000-05:00

It is the hour to be drunken! To escape being the martyred slaves of time, be ceaselessly drunk. On wine, on poetry, or on virtue, as you wish.
- Charles Baudelaire

Virtue is a state of war, and to live in it we have always to combat with ourselves.
-Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Things About Which I am Curious

2008-07-21T14:55:00.000-05:00

1. The metaphysical implications of insanity
2. The Large Hadron Collider in Geneva
3. What is and what is not disinformation regarding the presence of extraterrestrial biological entities on and around this planet
4. What those entities want or have to do with Earth and its inhabitants
5. 2012
6. Whether or not George W. Bush will be charged as a war criminal
7. Whether or not the world will step up and actually do something more than accuse al-Bashir of genocide
8. If humanity is inherently bent on its own destruction
9. If aggression is universal
10. If all sentient beings create art

Things I Like

2008-07-10T18:02:00.000-05:00

French fries

French bread

Frenchin' on the French First Lady

Seriously. Carla Bruni. It's politics anyone would get behind.

Zing.

The News

2008-06-26T19:37:00.000-05:00

Went to the beach.

Came back from the beach.

Homage to the God of Insurance

2008-05-30T23:34:00.000-05:00

Got my camera back.

Hoorah!

Battle at Kruger & An Infant Takes On a Cobra

2008-05-14T15:06:00.000-05:00

This video is incredible.

This video is horrifying/hilarious.

(Defanged. Fear not.)

Riddle Me This...

2008-04-27T19:01:00.000-05:00

I lie ever still at the limit of sight.
I can never be reached, should you try.
Though plain in the day, I blend with the night
but remain where I last left your eye.

What am I?

This Man I Detest

2008-04-24T21:26:00.000-05:00

Roland Martin

Every word from his mouth brings tears to my eyes. But not the good kind. It's more of a primal rage sort of tear bringing.

Someone tell CNN to punt this guy out the door.

In other news, taking a step outside is like walking through a curtain of pollen. How does this relate to Roland Martin? The pollen makes me itchy and irratable as well.

FIN.

Quote 'n Poem - Value Meal for Yer Brain

2008-04-16T13:13:00.000-05:00

"Of all the arts in which the wise excel, nature's cheif masterpiece is writing well." - Andrè Breton

To Villa-Lobos in Winter
by Diane Ackerman from Lady Faustus

Night falls: a panther
springing.
On a black branch
swarmed over by stars,
an albino moon
rigs its parrot wings
then glides away
while icicle vines
drip in the sweat and tremble of the night.

Reptilian waterfalls
twist and freeze,
drooling ice down each rock face.
It would remind an Aztec
of his white-bearded gods
Bochica or the ousted Quetzalcoatl
who, vowing he'd return, did as Cortes,
a blue-eyed apparition on horseback,
wild for booty and Christ,
this time drawn from a far darkness
to these pagan depths
ropy with gold,
croaking with demons,
hot with gem flowers
set in green bezels
and blood swilled from vein to sky.

Tonight creeps
like the black diamonds on a snake.
Out of gorges, tortured winds
shudder and moan,
then fill with the hideous
panting of the gods.
Silver amaryllises,
the streetlamps bud high.
Mudgore cakes the road.
Under the parrot moon,
soughing a pink eye as it planes
over farm and settlement,
like a knife-edged idol
so chaste, so delicate,
there will be no waking from
this oblique dream of night.

BRING IT ON, LITTLE TIMMY

2008-04-16T12:42:00.001-05:00

Truth

2008-04-12T21:38:00.000-05:00

"An artist is a creature driven by demons. He doesn't know why they choose him and he's usually too busy to wonder why." - William Faulkner

Report Home 22 - Back Like a Bad Habit

2008-04-10T22:08:00.001-05:00

Oi.

2008-03-25T11:45:00.000-05:00

Things that blow:

1. Having someone break into your car
2. Having that person steal your camera, your sister's camera, and your ipod
3. Insurance representatives
4. Job hunting
5. Having a bad back at 19
6. Mold in the kitchen sink
7. Making lists of things that blow

Democratize the Meast

2008-03-24T13:28:00.001-05:00

toothpastefordinner.com

Heavenly Bodies

2008-03-11T19:11:00.000-05:00

Winter Lambs

2008-03-06T10:20:00.000-06:00

Winter Lambs
by Jane Kenyon, from Otherwise

All night snow came upon us
with unwavering intent
small flakes not meandering
but driving thickly down. We woke
to see the yard, the car and road
heaped unrecognizably.

The neighbors' ewes are lambing
in this stormy weather. Three
lambs born yesterday, three more
expected...
Felix the ram looked
proprietary in his separate pen
while fatherhood accrued to him.
The panting ewes regarded me
with yellow-green, small-
pupiled eyes.

I have a friend who is pregnant
plans gone awry and not altogether
pleased. I don't say she should
be pleased. We are creation's
property, its particles, its clay
as we fall into this life,
agree or disagree.

Report Home 21 - Echoes of the Past

2008-02-26T12:43:00.001-06:00

Enjoy! Subscribe! Please!

Pretend this is a sidebar...? Help Union students! Help 'em!

Pudd'nhead Wilson

2008-02-19T13:29:00.001-06:00

Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear--not absence of fear. - Mark Twain

Beautiful Dreamer Serenade

2008-02-18T09:43:00.000-06:00

Beautiful Dreamer Serenade by Stephen C. Foster

Beautiful dreamer, wake unto me,
Starlight and dewdrops are waiting for thee;
Sounds of the rude world heard in the day,
Lull'd by the moonlight have all pass'd a way!

Beautiful dreamer, queen of my song,
List while I woo thee with soft melody;
Gone are the cares of life's busy throng,
Beautiful dreamer, awake unto me!
Beautiful dreamer awake unto me!

Beautiful dreamer, out on the sea
Mermaids are chaunting with wild lorelie;
Over the streamlet vapors are borne,
Waiting to fade at the bright coming morn.

Beautiful dreamer, beam on my heart,
E'en as the morn on the streamlet and sea;
Then will all clouds of sorrow depart,
Beautiful dreamer, awake unto me!
Beautiful dreamer awake unto me!

The Problem, The Solution are Internal

2008-02-15T11:32:00.000-06:00

The recent influx of university shootings is truly lamentable, but is it surprising?

Students, how many days a week do you walk across campus listening to music, ear buds or ear phones blocking out the world? It's a proven fact that technology creates feelings of increased individualism and isolation. How many more people would you speak to every day if you weren't closed off to the world? It seems to me that the technology that forms a protective covering for so many young people may be the very problem. Do these electronic devices create a false sense of comfort as you traverse a campus riddled with peers that you will never meet but in passing while they actually create a literally deadly situation?

The student populations of American universities, especially those of large institutions, need to take this problem into their own hands. The source comes from among our ranks; so must come the change. Reach out to someone. Anyone. The power of human interaction needs to be restored among our generation. Being brought up in the information age is going to help us change the world for the better, but our readiness to accept technology, sometimes as a replacement for physical correspondence, can and will destroy our humanity if we don't keep the powers and capabilities of these technologies in check.

Virgina Tech. NIU. I'm not saying that ipods and ear phones caused the tragic events that have unfolded this past year, but I am saying that the power to halt them rests in the hearts and minds of the very population affected.

That's you. That's me. Take off the ear phones. Say hello to a stranger. You truly never know how far such a simple act of compassion can reach.

::EDIT::

Use the link below to help out some of the students affected by the tornado that hit Union University. Anything helps. Donations are processed through PayPal. Contact Blake Stannard for more information.

All That Is Glorious Around Us

2008-02-10T15:34:00.000-06:00

From Radiance by Barbara Crooker

All That Is Glorious Around Us
(title of an exhibit on The Hudson River School)

is not, for me, these grand vistas, sublime peaks, mist-filled
overlooks, towering clouds, but doing errands on a day
of driving rain, staying dry inside the silver skin of the car,
160,000 miles, still running just fine. Or later,
sitting in a café warmed by the steam
from white chicken chili, two cups of dark coffee,
watching the red and gold leaves race down the street,
confetti from autumn's bright parade. And I think
of how my mother struggles to breathe, how few good days
she has now, how we never think about the glories
of breath, oxygen cascading down our throats to the lungs,
simple as the journey of water over a rock. It is the nature
of stone / to be satisfied / writes Mary Oliver, It is the nature
of water / to want to be somewhere else, rushing down
a rocky tor or high escarpment, the panoramic landscape
boundless behind it. But everything glorious is around
us already: black and blue graffiti shining in the rain's
bright glaze, the small rainbows of oil on the pavement,
where the last car to park has left its mark on the glistening
street, this radiant world.

No More Room for Denial

2008-02-06T13:02:00.001-06:00

68 confirmed tornadoes touched down across the south last night.

Climate change: got evidence?

Storms are going to keep getting worse the longer we wait to take decisive action to reduce our impact on the natural environment. We're visitors. We're renting. This planet may be the only home we've ever known, but we are far from the first to know it as such.

There are a lot of really easy ways to help reduce carbon emissions. Just QUIT BUYING INCANDESCENT LIGHT BULBS. If you don't know what an incandescent bulb is, it's the only kind you've ever used. Next time you go shopping buy compact fluorescent bulbs instead. They cost a bit more, but they last a LOT longer. Most last for multiple years and use a lot less energy, meaning that a lot less coal has to be burned to power them, meaning a lot less carbon dioxide will get released into the atmosphere, meaning that our children and ourselves get to keep on living on this planet.

There are other ways to help that don't require big lifestyle changes. Turning your thermostat down a few degrees than normal in the winter and up a few degrees than normal in the summer helps tremendously, as does recycling and avoiding products with lots of excess packaging.

And I don't mean to sound preachy. This is just something that must be done for humanity. No one is perfect. No one can make the changes that need to be made right away. But we all need to start changing today. If we don't there might not be a chance to preserve the Earth as we know it. If we don't make these changes soon, the planet is going to make its own. This fact is already evident. And what we will find if we continue down this path is that the agenda of Mother Earth won't include us.

VOTE!

2008-02-05T11:59:00.000-06:00

Vote Obama.

The future can be so much brighter.

"In the unlikely story that is America, there has never been anything false about hope."

::Edit::

This is a really cool questionnaire. 14 questions used to calculate which candidate you most agree with.

Bush Knows Best

2008-02-02T16:39:00.000-06:00

toothpastefordinner.com

Dad's Windowsill

2008-01-30T17:05:00.001-06:00

I got a camera for Christmas.

Expect visuals.

Opinion

2008-01-29T11:50:00.001-06:00

Opinion by Baron Wormser from Subject Matter: Poems

Halfway to work and Merriman already has told me
What he thinks about the balanced budget, the Mets'
Lack of starting pitching, the dangers of displaced
Soviet nuclear engineers, soy products, and diesel cars.

I look out the window and hope I'll see a swan.
I hear they're bad-tempered but I love their necks
And how they glide along so sovereignly.
I never take the time to drive to a pond

And spend an hour watching swans. What
Would happen if I heeded the admonitions of beauty?
When I look over at Merriman, he's telling Driscoll
That the President doesn't know what he's doing
With China. "China," I say out loud but softly.
I go back to the window. It's started snowing.

A Softer World

2008-01-19T13:56:00.000-06:00

www.asofterworld.com

Wonderful

2008-01-16T11:45:00.000-06:00

I lost my wallet.

I am furious.

If the finder of said wallet somehow stumbles across this page,

Please don't steal my identity.

That would be most unsavory.

Toothpaste For Dinner

2008-01-13T15:02:00.000-06:00

toothpastefordinner.com

Apocalypse

2008-01-07T22:15:00.000-06:00

I'll make this short.

I've been doing some reading on Quetzalcoatl and some various Native American groups, mostly the Maya and the Toltecs, and I had come to the conclusion that because the Mayan calendar ends on December 21st 2012 that the world was going to end, or at very least that a major facet of human civilization was going to be shattered or changed drastically.

But I just read an extremely interesting article from USA Today that claims otherwise.

There is, however, one extremely exciting coincidence. The following is an expert from the aforementioned article.

"Part of the 2012 mystique stems from the stars. On the winter solstice in 2012, the sun will be aligned with the center of the Milky Way for the first time in about 26,000 years. This means that 'whatever energy typically streams to Earth from the center of the Milky Way will indeed be disrupted on 12/21/12 at 11:11 p.m. Universal Time,' Joseph writes."

Truly, truly interesting.

Report Home 20 - Chaotic Pointlessness

2008-01-07T14:59:00.001-06:00

www.youtube.com/fletchyfletch

Blog Back in Business

2008-01-04T15:27:00.001-06:00

I've decided to start my blog up again.

That's all for the moment.

Welcome.