Everyone’s a Critic
Funeral: For Us His Gold
after Gerald Stern
The insect was yellow with crumpled-black banded legs
and shellacked back that would outlast us
and wistful eyes from what I could discern on that trail
between fields,
and we laid him out in the open air under a sky fast-blue with
change, wedging
a leaf beneath his triple-belted belly so he didn’t rest on
plain dirt,
and we placed two cloverblooms by his head and he was old
you said, could tell by how definite the stripes were, how
complete
the patterns bold and dark, almost engraved,
and he was beautiful in that pasture of thirty-three cows and we
drank
milk in the blaring heat and ate the cake you’d made. We
were
the only humans there—unholy-seeming things with two
legs, dismal histories—
drinking and eating around his elegant husk,
and from the furze, fellow insects rose, a frenzied static
around our bodies,
while he remained in situ an unremitting yellow, the color more
vivid, louder now that he was a remnant. Was color the
purpose here?
Yellow had alerted us to him, and we took care
with leaf and clover to make his bed.
The insect’s gold our togetherness, its death from which we fed.
Fernando and Barbara Ann
I got an email today from a guy named Fernando and I can’t get the song out of my mind . . .
Can you hear the drums, Fernando?
There was something in the air that night
The stars were bright, Fernando.
I would not want to have a name that reminds people of a song that they immediately start singing to me my whole life.
Like Jude. Or Barbara Ann. Barbara Ann would be a bad name to have . . .
West Coast Tsunami Warning
Those of us who live on the west coast, including Alaska and Hawaii, got a tsunami warning yesterday morning, following a 7.9 earthquake in Alaska.
My first thought was “This is going to make me look like a genius for not getting my car washed last weekend.”
Something Terrible Would Happen
It sounds a little bit strange but the idea that something terrible would happen . . .
I feel something here . . .
Something over here . . . It’s like a pressure . . . on my heart.
It’s pushing, it’s like it’s pushing.
And it hurts.
Something is pushing there, it hurts.
Sadness, there’s a lot of sadness.
I don’t want to feel it.
Something is pushing there, it hurts, there is sadness, and there is something that doesn’t want to feel it.
I don’t want to feel it . . .
Neil Diamond Retires From Touring
Neil Diamond Announces Retirement From Touring After Parkinson’s Disease Diagnosis — Variety
Sorry to hear this . . . as a young person I had the Hot August Night live album on an 8-track tape and I played it till it wore out . . .
See You in Hell
[See You in Hell is a feature by our guest blogger, Satan — PE]
Pope Francis and Donald Trump were both vexed this past week by natives of shithole countries.
The pope showed up in Chile to accuse local sex abuse victims of calumny against the church.
“Calumny” means he’s calling them liars. Look it up.
Oh that reminds me! Cardinal Law sends his regards.
Then he was on to Peru, where he called violence against women a “plague” across the Latin American region. They’re murderers, rapists . . . and some, I assume, are good people.
What a character! I can’t wait to see what he comes up with next.
See you in Hell!
Ghosts
You must not think that what I have
accomplished through youcould have been accomplished by any other means.
Each of us is to himself
indelible. I had to become that which could notbe, by time, from human memory, erased.
I had to burn my hungry, unappeasable
furious spiritso inconsolably into you
you would without cease
write to bring me rest.Bring us rest. Guilt is fecund. I knew
nothing I made
myself had enough steel in it to survive.I tried: I made beautiful
paintings, beautiful poems. Fluff. Garbage.The inextricability of love and hate?
If I had merely made you
love me you could not have saved me.
By Robert Lowell:
Best Place to Live in Every State
This Is the Best Place to Live in Every State — MONEY
I can’t speak to the other 49 states but Monterey Park is not — repeat, NOT — the best place to live in California . . .
Good News, Bad News on Minimum Wage
Good news: Seattle (among other cities) has established a $15.00 minimum wage.
Bad news: Seattle (among other cities) is automating minimum wage jobs out of existence.
Readers are invited to formulate their own cause-and-effect hypotheses.
Names
You call me a Christian, to make me angry and to make yourself feel happy. Others call themselves Christians, to make themselves feel other emotions. Very well, if we are dealing in exciting words, I will call you a devil-worshipper. That should give you an agitation which will please you for some time.
The end of a melody is not its goal: but nonetheless, had the melody not reached its end it would not have reached its goal either. — Nietzsche
How Did the Rose Ever Open Its Heart?
How
Did the rose
Ever open its heartAnd give this world
All its
Beauty?It felt the encouragement of light
Against its
Being,Otherwise,
We all remainToo
Frightened
This is My Year!
My dad is 82 . . . he says he always thought that someday he would get everything organized and under control but it never happened.
That being said, I feel like this is the year I get everything organized and under control . . .
When Death Is Not Death
A certain man was believed to have died, and was being prepared for burial, when he revived.
He sat up, but he was so shocked by the scene surrounding him that he fainted.
He was put in a coffin, and the funeral party set off for the cemetery.
Just as they arrived at the grave, he regained consciousness, lifted the coffin lid, and cried out for help.
“It is not possible that he has revived,” said the mourners, “because he has been certified dead by competent experts.”
“But I am alive!” shouted the man.
He appealed to a well-known impartial scientist and jurisprudent who was present.
“Just a moment,” said the expert.
He then turned to the mourners, counting them. “Now we have heard what the alleged deceased has had to say. You fifty witnesses tell me what you regard as the truth.”
“He is dead,” said the witnesses.
“Bury him!” said the expert.
And so he was buried.
Two Reasons For the Low Number of Women in Computer Jobs
I saw this chart on LinkedIn with the heading “Chart: Women in tech continue to face uphill battle” and the hashtag #STEMSexism.
The first reason for the low number of women in computer jobs is that we rarely hear about women in computing except in the context of pay gaps, harassment, discrimination, “uphill battles” and #STEMSexism.
It’s self-perpetuating. “Computing is a terrible profession for women in so many ways.” Followed by “Why aren’t there more women in computing?”
You’ve answered your own question. If you think computing is a hostile profession (I do not, btw), why do you want more women to go into it?
The second reason for the low number of women in computer jobs — sometimes the simplest explanations are the best — is that women prefer to do other things.
Men and women are different and make different choices about their lives, as a result of which, women are underrepresented in some professions and overrepresented in others.
Women, for example, are overrepresented in nursing, family counseling, speech pathology, social work, education, to name a few.
Do we hear about a diversity crisis in speech pathology or social work? We don’t, right?
I worked with a nursing organization for five years. About 90 percent of nurses are women, but in five years I can’t remember a single instance where gender bias was cited as a crisis, a dilemma, a problem, or even something as mild as a cause for concern.
Women being overrepresented in certain professions is not widely considered to be a problem. But if women being underrepresented in computer jobs is a problem, then their overrepresentation in other professions is also a problem.
In fact, it’s the same problem. Because where are the women in computing going to come from?
On the safe assumption that the number of women is constant — that a large number of new women are not going to just appear out of nowhere — the women will have to come from other professions that they seem to prefer, the professions in which they are overrepresented.
Sorry girls, we can’t have so many of you working in healthcare, education and other helping professions because we need to boost the computing numbers.
Or — we could calm down about the computing numbers and leave young women to make their own choices about their own lives.
TL;DR -> Women are capable of making decisions for themselves. For the most part, they choose to do things other than work in computer jobs, which is okay. It’s possible that none of us really knows what is the “right” percentage of women in computing and it’s possible that none of us really knows what other people should be doing with their lives.
Thus spoke The Programmer
Another Reason I Prefer to Just Stay Home
A passenger jet skidded off a runway and got stuck in the mud on the edge of a cliff in northern Turkey. — MSN
When we are dead, seek not our tomb in the earth, but find it in the hearts of men. — Epitaph of Jalaludin Rumi
What Shall I Be?
I have again and again grown like grass;
I have experienced seven hundred and seventy moulds.
I died from minerality and became vegetable;
And from vegetativeness I died and became animal.
I died from animality and became man.
Then why fear disappearance through death?
Next time I shall die
Bringing forth wings and feathers like angels:
After that soaring higher than angels —
What you cannot imagine. I shall be that.
Integrity and Self-Respect
Forgive yourself for your mistakes and embrace yourself with all your character traits just as they are, believing that you’ve done the best you could with your available resources in the course of your life . . .