The Perfect Coffee

My friend and I decided to make a little documentary about brewing the perfect cup of coffee!
This is the process, from start to finish. The only step missing is the actual growing of the beans.
-- Cip

The Extra Ones: A Saturday Poem

The Extra Ones

We are told that he chose five smooth stones.
Young, and ruddy faced, in 1 Samuel 17:40.
I would have imagined jagged ones to cause
greater cranial damage, but who am I?
This sling was not even the type you draw back on.
It was the kind you whirl about your head.
I know, because there was an artist’s rendition
in the book my mother read, as my eyes fell shut.

So an army cowers, as the boy runs forward,
taunting this oaf! This day the Lord will hand you
over to me. He kicks the dirt and spits, And I’ll
strike you down and cut off your head. Shaking,
he shouts at a helmet that weighs more than him,
The birds shall eat you, placing a stone in the pouch.
Philistine laughter shakes the very rainclouds
loose over the heads of Israel, as the air sings.

And what I love most is not the part where he cuts
off the head. Nor even the part where Saul asks,
Whose son are you, young man?
I love the fact that David took four extra stones.
Ones he did not know he did not need.
The scene that is not illustrated in any bedtime book,
and the sound, ping-ping-ping-ping, denting helmets
as the Philistines run for the hills.

© Ciprianowords Inc. 2009

NOTE: I posted this poem previously, about a year ago... but have just made some significant changes to it, primarily with the ending. In → the original, I have David dropping these unused stones on Goliath's head. In the updated version, he uses these "extras" to pick off a few more Philistines as they run away. Your comments on this revision are welcome.

*************

Getting Tartified

I'm sorry dear friends, but I must convey to you yet another food-related dilemma.
I am visiting my sister right now.
← Just a while ago she came into the room where I was reading, and displayed this fine tray of freshly made tarts.
They consist of some sort of cream-cheese filling and are topped with a kiwi / strawberry / pineapple melange.
My current intentions are to eat perhaps one or maybe even two entire rows of these things AFTER our evening barbecue.

My questions become:
1) Does this desire of mine constitute some variant of the sin of gluttony?
2) If so, is this sin venial, or unforgivable?
3) If it is the former, what should my penance be?
4) If it is the latter, what shall my punishment be?

**********

Splash du Jour: Friday

Have a great Friday!
********

Escalating Issues

An escalator can never break.
It can only become stairs.
You would never see an "Escalator temporarily out of order" sign, just "Escalator temporarily stairs. Sorry for the convenience."
-- Mitch Hedberg –

I’m going to mention a strange phenomenon I’ve personally observed, in hopes that I am not the only one who has ever observed it!
In all seriousness, I am worried because I feel that maybe this only applies to me, as in, I have something wrong with my brain, and/or the motor skills between my brain and my legs.
Here’s the thing → When I get to an escalator that is not working, I all of a sudden forget how to walk on a stairway.
I’m not kidding.
First of all I sort of hesitate, hand on that nice 100% hygienically sound rubber banister rail, and my mind instantly says, “What the hell?”
But in the next second I realize the thing isn’t working and so I begin walking. But I find that I do so only very hesitantly. With reservation. And I feel off-balance, it’s the weirdest thing.
Walking up the steps is weird, but I find that the same thing happens walking down the escalator stairs, if the thing isn’t working. Something completely irrational happens. I’m scared as though all of a sudden going I’m going to pitch forward. So again, I walk ever so cautiously.
Yet when confronted with a stationary stairway I go bounding up or down the thing with nary a thought as to either of the trepidations outlined above.
Can anyone out there relate to what I am saying or is this a unique personal problem of mine?
Sincerely,
Cip

**********

Splash du Jour: Thursday

Woody: How would a beer feel, Mr Peterson?
Norm: Pretty nervous if I was in the room.

Have a great Thursday!

Splash du Jour: Wednesday

“So that's the secret when you're bacheloring, boy, to keep your expenses in reason. Don't wash anything. Just let it all air. Before long nothing smells of anything."
-- From The Shadow Boxer, by Steven Heighton –

Note: From my own bachelor-perspective I find the above advice, given from fictional father to fictional son, to be very interesting. I'm going to try it out. Henceforth, I am no longer going to wash stuff, and see what happens!

Have a great Wednesday!
**********

Vertical Symmetry Revisited

I have written about this before. But please bear with me as I once again blather on about how I really love the entire concept of Vertical Symmetry© that can be seen while walking around in any well-built city.
What I mean by “vertical symmetry” is, simply put, the phenomenon of how the vertical edges of buildings perfectly line up as one’s field of vision brings them together.
No.
I’m not saying it right.
OK… you are walking down the street and there are tall buildings in what is essentially a foreground and a background. As the outer edges of these massive buildings merge in your field of vision, note how perfectly they seam together.
I’m weird. I am addicted to doing this thing. As I walk around I can’t help but note all the vertical symmetry all over the place.
Yesterday I was in Montreal, walking down St. Catherine Street and noted the following example.

The church in the foreground is well over a hundred years old. The skyscraper behind it is many city blocks distant, yet note how symmetrical they are, the one with the other. I find this remarkable. This is not really a classic example of the vertical symmetry I am talking about as it is moreso an example of perfect vertical overlapping, but still, you get the gist.
Try it, city-dwellers. Urbanites, far and wide.
Don’t just walk down the street, staring at the sidewalk.
Look up, and over.
Marvel at the examples of vertical symmetry on virtually every street corner!
I’m sure I would fall down dizzy if I could walk around in New York or Chicago for a day, getting my fix!
See my former blog on this issue → HERE.
And two other unrelated random photos of yesterday → HERE.

***********

Splash du Jour: Tuesday

-- The Story of my Life --
[I am on the receiving end of that mop!]

Have a great Tuesday!
*******

WE ATE THAT STUFF!

I can’t deny it.
I like a good sandwich.
And today, wow -- spent the first day of my vacation in Montreal, Quebec.
Canada.
What a terrific city!
What terrific SANDWICHES!
There’s a restaurant on St. Catherine Street called Reubens!
Wow!
They know how to make a sandwich!
Here is some BEFORE & AFTER footage of what happened to my friend and I.

The superfluous slices of rye bread beside the mountainous piles of meat?
They are like the hubcabs that flew off the vehicle after it hit
whatever animal this used to be!

**********

Splash du Jour: Monday

I believe there is a higher power in this universe, and I know for a fact that it is not me. However, I still haven’t found a religion or orthodoxy completely consistent with the way my heart and mind process this understanding.
-- Michael J. Fox, in Always Looking Up --

Have a great Monday!

Always Looking Up

I truly loved his first book, Lucky Man.
His new one, Always Looking Up, is even better.
Subtitle → The Adventures of an Incurable Optimist.
Really, I just want to encourage you, one and all, to pick up this book and read it.
Lucky Man was a straight-ahead memoir.
In Always Looking Up, author Michael J. Fox focuses on IDEAS -- themes. These being Work, Politics, Faith, Family.
In this sense, it is more of a philosophical rendering of where he has been since Lucky Man came out in 2002. This is not so much chronology, or regurgitated journal entries, as it is the distillation of profound wisdom accrued in the crucible of courageous response to adversity. An inspiring application of his optimism.
Don’t worry.
Nothing in the book is as obtuse as my own explication of it.
Notice that I called Fox an “author” rather than “actor” or “movie-star”?
He is.
He is an author.
This is a well-written book [due nods to Fox’s literary helper Asher Spiller] --what we’ve got here between the dustjacket is witty, pithy, erudite, relevant, touching, and maybe even beyond all of these adjectives → IMPORTANT!
This is a crucial book.
I have learned so much about the political history of embryonic stem-cell research.
At the end of the “Faith” chapter, well, I was reading it in a busy Mall, and I just had to close the book because I was crying tears.
No matter who you are, or what you have gone through to get there, you can read this book and say to yourself, “Here is a guy who knows 30% or 40%, or [in my case] 96% more about it than I do.”
And no one is living a better life than Michael J. Fox.
Not a pitiful story. No.
The opposite, really.

I’ve said all this blabber, and yet not one word about what the book is really about.
I have not once said the “P” word, for instance.
You all know what makes him so shaky.
In reading this book, you sense that the Always Looking Up is going to pay off.
You want to be invited to that celebration party.
And when you're there, dancing, you will realize that it is the subtitle that made it all happen.
I encourage you to watch this → PART 1 / PART 2.
**********

What You Gave: A Saturday Poem

What You Gave

One of my gifts to you was macaroni.
I withheld it, as those busy hands
unwrapping the inferior things, tore.
The bracelet you set to the side, and
how it swallowed the candlelight.

The Hotel New Hampshire beside it.
The button-up sweater, the very one
you thought did not exist --
how it kept your other treasures warm
as I reached, and the flame wobbled.

Handing you that rattly rectangle,
the eyes I saw seared my soul.
You were five kittens, and the laugh
that killed the candle between us
I would swim oceans to hear, forever.

© Ciprianowords Inc. 2009

Splash du Jour: Friday

This kitten exemplifies purrfectly, how I feel about my new work hours.
[Starting at 7 a.m., isn’t that illegal in some countries?]
At any rate, from here on out… 2 weeks of VACATION!
Bring it on!

Have a great Friday!
********

Speaking My [Cat] Mind

I’ll be the first to admit it.
I’ve got a few issues of my own.
For one thing, I’m addicted to cat food.
And soft porn.
And the odd martini.
A bit of a hereditary hairball problem.

But then there’s my human.
This guy’s a real mess.
He drinks too much. He's going bald.
Eats like a pig. He snores!
He'll point at the litterbox, but I'm telling you the truth, he's the problem!
He's downright gaseous!
Hopeless in the romance department.
It’s known as Mid-Life Crisis, in the human world. Apparently it’s a source of profound frustration, at times, in that particular species grouping.
Hah!
What do they know about frustration?
I have to hold a beer with two paws!
And can-openers? Nearly impossible to get a good grip on!

As for the picture of me in an unguarded moment here?
Hey, I may be neutered, but I ain’t DEAD!

sincerely,
Jack

********

Splash du Jour: Thursday

Poetry, like the moon, does not advertise anything… The success of the poem is determined, not by how much the poet felt in writing it, but by how much the reader feels in reading it.
-- John Ciardi --

Have a great Thursday!

Splash du Jour: Wednesday

One of my favorite scenes from a great movie.
Tommy Boy.
Starring the legendary Chris Farley!

Have a great Wednesday!
**********

The Turtle & The Fox

From the very moment I heard that Michael J. Fox had written a new book I wanted to read it. And I just started it today. It’s terrific, as was his first book, the memoir entitled Lucky Man.
This new one is called Always Looking Up, and continues on with the story of Fox’s experience with early onset Parkinson’s disease. Rather than being a chronological account, it is more topical, dealing with four major themes:
Work, Politics, Faith, and Family.
Early on there is a beautiful story of the very moment this Canadian-born [← had to say that there] actor decided to leave his successful career behind, retiring from his lead role in the sitcom Spin City.
It took place in the afternoon of the very last day of the twentieth century.
Michael and his family were snorkeling off St John’s in the U.S. Virgin Islands. Even though they had vacationed there before, many times, they had never yet encountered a sea turtle in the wild. But this afternoon, Michael spotted one, and proceeded to swim slowly behind it, “keeping a respectful distance.”
According to him, in that moment, “a switch had flipped.”
Oh, I love this part → “When I finally emerged from the water, I kicked off my flippers, walked over to to where Tracy was toweling off the kids, grabbed a towel for myself, and informed her I was leaving the show.”
Wow!
There is only one thing that is cooler than this!
And that's her response.
She looked him in the eye, and uttered a single word.
“Good.”

-- The Foxes --
******

Splash du Jour: Tuesday

No words in today’s Splash.
The tulips should be word enough!
As seen on my walk home yesterday afternoon.

Have a great Tuesday!
********

Afterlands: A Perfect 10

Well just today I finished reading one of the best novels I have read in a long long while.
Afterlands, by Canadian author, Steven Heighton.
It is definitely the best book I have read so far this year, and I cannot imagine another one being better for me in 2009.
It is now up there in my opinion with the greats, like Alias Grace, and As The Crow Flies, and Libra, and stuff like that.
You know, when you are as multi-talented as I am […ahem…] there are times when it seems you can do anything. I can discuss junk as good as the other dude, I can sing better than this guy, I can play drums better than that guy, I can still beat Joe down the hall at tennis, and I can write…… pretty good.
But then you read a book like Afterlands.
And you realize stuff.
It is very humbling, but in a good way.
I very quickly and profoundly realize that even if my writing talents were to multiply exponentially over the next ten or twenty years, I would still never be able to write anything a hundredth as good as this guy can.

← This Steven Heighton character!
The novel, God, I don't even know where to start, rather than delineate it in my own words I am going to direct you to a good synopsis of it → HERE.
In this brief blog I just want to take the time to say that in my opinion, Afterlands is almost a dual novel.
After the Arctic portion of it, the author follows the protagonist Roland Kruger into Mexico, and to further adventures so epic in scope that, as I say, it is almost like reading a second novel. Yet all remains so intertwined [woven], so intricately connected to the themes of displacement and alienation, peril and rescue. Love and loss.
Kruger emerges a hero, but not a super-hero.
There is not one aspect of this novel that is flippant. Nothing is under or over cooked. And let's face it, both things can give one indigestion.
It is a thriller, but not a potboiler. Because it is based on actual events, it could be considered historical fiction, yet does not have the feel, in any typical sense, of the genre.
The perfect blend of wild invention and bone-numbing reality.

The white bird, an albino vulture, slouches in a niche in the canyon wall, like statuary in a satanic chapel. Its bald gory head is half turned away, as if feigning disinvolvement or anonymity. [p.320]

Come on now!
That is gorgeous, perfect, writing. And the whole entire book is that good.
It’s a perfect ten of a book and had me riveted from start to finish.
I encourage you one and all to trust me just this once. Afterlands cannot disappoint you.
I happen to have the inside scoop that Steven Heighton is busy at work. Even as I write this, he is squirreled away on an island writing his next novel. In the meantime, I have already picked up his former book, The Shadow Boxer.
And I am in the process of reading his poetry.
Yes, it is humbling to read stuff that is this good. And it is dizzyingly exciting.
Do not be discouraged that you will never write as good as Steven Heighton.
Neither will I.
Neither will anyone.

*********