Collecting My Soul

The past few weeks of my life have been tumultuous in many ways -- ways that I can't really go into here, on my blog. And a lot of times I feel down -- real down.
But recently I made one of the best purchases I have made in a long while -- I got a new iPod Touch. The thing is dynamite.
Welcome to the 21st Century Cipriano!
And my current work environment allows me to listen to as much music as humanly possible in the 8 or 9 hours day that I am there.
The only downside is that I think I am going deaf.
But I must say one thing about a band that has especially been lifting me out of the doldrums on a daily basis. I cannot get enough of them.
Collective Soul.
I have all of their albums on my iPod and I just keep listening to them exclusively -- they are for sure my favourite music right now. Listen to them and then just try and be depressed. It's almost impossible.
Cheers!

Collective Soul "Welcome All Again" from Ross Ching on Vimeo.

Splash du Jour: Monday

The Shape I Gave You

Water looks like what it’s in.
Else it’s flat, and spread too thin.
The shape of you is much the same.
It needs a cup, a house, a frame.

It wasn’t long before I knew
The very curve and slope of you
Belonged in me, to never part
My ever loving, beating heart.

© Ciprianowords, Inc. 2008

Have a great Monday!

Hey! GET OUT AND VOTE, CANADA!
Today's the day! Do the right thing!
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Beard Update

Today I was walking around downtown and passed by a barber pole.
Those all-American red, white and blue revolving deals.
I didn't even know they still had those things anywhere.
I badly needed a haircut, but an even more pressing issue was my facial foliage.
It's been about three weeks or so of untended [and unintended] growth, and, in all seriousness, it was getting a bit unruly.
When I sent a photo to my best friend, he replied "You look like a homeless person."
I've heard similar comments from others -- one co-worker said I looked like a grizzly bear. Admittedly, other people have had more favorable things to say about this experiment. And as for my own opinion of the matter, I was sort of liking this new habit of petting my own face. It was like having a constant puppy around.
But there I was today, walking past this barber pole.
I stopped and went inside.
A young girl approached the counter. I pointed to the Neanderthal situation on my face and asked, "Can you do something with this?"
Soon I was immobilized in a chair and she was fixing me up. She knew what to do, which is a good thing, because I didn't. [Ahhh…. sweet memories of losing my virginity just a few months ago!]
I was amazed at the amount of actual hair that was all over the place when she was done. [Again... memories, memories!] It looked like the mess after an actual haircut!
And as I walked down the street afterward listening to Collective Soul, I took the picture above. Click on it for others.
I regret that I did not take a BEFORE shot! It was grizzly indeed!
******

Splash du Jour: Friday

She had an overwhelming desire to tell him, like the most banal of women. Don't let me go, hold me tight, make me your plaything, your slave, be strong! But they were words she could not say. The only thing she said when he released her from his embrace was, "You don't know how happy I am to be with you." That was the most her reserved nature allowed her to express.
-- Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being --

Have a great Friday!
******

Splash du Jour: Thursday

If a person measures his spiritual fulfillment in terms of cosmic visions, surpassing peace of mind, or ecstasy, then he is not likely to know much spiritual fulfillment. If, however, he measures it in terms of enjoying a sunrise, being warmed by a child's smile, or being able to help someone have a better day, then he is likely to know much spiritual fulfillment.
-- Arthur MIller --

Have a great Thursday!
******

Splash du Jour: Wednesday

It is in dialogue with pain that many beautiful things acquire their value. Acquaintance with grief turns out to be one of the more unusual prerequisites of architectural appreciation. We might, quite aside from all other requirements, need to be a little sad before buildings can properly touch us.
-- Alain de Botton, The Architecture of Happiness --


Have a great Wednesday!
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Splash du Jour: Tuesday

Have a great Tuesday!

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Splash du Jour: Monday

She was becoming sad. There is no joy involved in following others' expectations of yourself.
-- Miriam Toews, Swing Low --

Have a great Monday!
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Adventures in Fuzziness

I've been experimenting with not shaving my face.
It's a confusing enterprise -- some people think I am looking horrid -- others think the opposite. As for myself, I don't know -- I kinda like it.
At a certain point I guess I will have to start -- taming it. Or something.
It's kind of a bit of a spring lark a la mid-life crisis, maybe?
When I rub the side of my face I feel like I'm petting a dog.
Any thoughts on what I should do?
Save it? OR Shave it?
[For two more pics, taken last night, click on the above photo.]
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How I Spent Good Friday

It truly has been a "good" Friday for me.
I did two things that are just… awesome.
Firstly, I did not put on pants. I love it when I can sleep in, then walk around all day with just my jammies on [and by jammies, I mean underwear, basically] and get paid for it!
Secondly, I read an entire novel.
The Fire Gospel [2008] by one of my favorite authors, Michel Faber. In a word? --> TERRIFIC!
Two? --> Redonculously good!
The last time I read an entire novel in one sitting was five years ago. Bernard Schlink's The Reader. Rarely am I so captivated by a book that I finish it hours from starting it.
The Fire Gospel is part of the Canongate "Myths" series, and I've read a few of the others. In this one, the myth of Prometheus is satirically treated. If you recall, Prometheus brought fire to humans in defiance of Zeus and was summarily punished by having his entrails plucked out by an eagle.
Here in Faber's book, Theo, a Canadian scholar on assignment in an Iraqi museum discovers hitherto unknown scrolls when a bomb explodes and a busted statue disgorges its inner contents. Surviving the blast, he stuffs these documents into his briefcase and smuggles them back to Canada. Theo is the world's leading expert in Aramaic and these scrolls are serendipitously written in that very language.
Turns out these scrolls contain eyewitness accounts of the last days of Jesus -- they indeed constitute a fifth gospel, and one written prior to the other four biblical ones.
In that sense, they carry a weight and authority that the others do not.
The author is Malchus, a servant to Caiaphas, the high priest who is said to have organized the plot to kill Jesus. This is almost crazy, but I actually gasped when I discovered that the author was Malchus -- just thinking of how valuable such a find would really be, in real life. This guy was present in the Garden of Gethsemane when Jesus was betrayed by Judas [according to the Bible].
And the Bible says that one of Jesus' own disciples, in a fit of revenge, sliced off Malchus's ear with his sword. The biblical account has Jesus healing the amputation at the scene, restoring Malchus's ear to wholeness. However, in Malchus's own words, the wound was never really healed, per se, and his sliced ear sort of dangled from his neck the rest of his life, “like a woman's adornment.”
Malchus, present at the crucifixion, says that as Jesus is about to be affixed to the cross, he cries out and pulls his arms to his sides in fear, "in the manner of an infant tickled by its mother." The soldiers must place their knees directly on Jesus' arms as they pound in the spikes. Malchus says, "This was not cowardice. This is how the flesh behaves under such provocation."
Makes perfect sense to me, actually.
In Malchus's gospel, Jesus' last words are not "It is finished" but "Please, somebody, please somebody finish me." Again, seems pretty understandable to me.
He defecates and urinates all over, including directly on Malchus -- the new convert stays so close to Jesus as he dies. Birds pluck Jesus' eyes out.

All of this may seem downright sacrilegious for me to be even mentioning… especially as I am mentioning it on Good Friday, the very day that commemorates the death of Jesus on the cross. But The Fire Gospel, in its raison d'être, its construction, etc., is not at all about any sort of re-evaluation of what may have taken place on Good Friday. Not at all.
It's moreso about the emphasis we place on written accounts of anything, the reports of which, by the way, will contain varying degrees of accuracy and inaccuracy in the telling.
Theo's translation of the Malchus gospel becomes a smash success.
Millions of books are sold. And as Theo makes the rounds of the book tours, he is accosted by fanatics, offended at what he has unearthed. Undone by what he has done.
[Enter the Prometheus myth]… it is not long before some of these fanatics take it upon themselves to punish Theo, or at least undo the damage he has caused.
They do so, with their own brand of violence.
I don't want to give away too much of the action sequence of the latter stages of the story -- suffice it to say that I found it engaging enough to sit here, entirely pantsless, until the last page was read. And this is, as I said, rare for me.
What a terrific book. Faber has not failed me, ever.

Just the other day at work a co-worker of mine, a consummate Kidder-Arounder who shares a first name with an actual gospel-writer… he looked over at me and asked, "What exactly is Good Friday? Isn't that when Jesus was born?"
Again, not to be sacrilegious or anything, but this book has made me decry anew the level of [religious] ignorance at the root of many atrocities committed on behalf of "God"…. when ultimately, for most civilized people today, including Yours Truly, the real significance of religiously sponsored holidays is the fact that we do not have to go to work. We can stay home. In peace… at one with our undergarments.
******

Splash du Jour: Wednesday

Have a great Wednesday!
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Splash du Jour: Tuesday

It's a strange thing to discover and to believe that you are loved when you know that there is nothing in you for anybody but a parent or a God to love.
-- Graham Greene --

Have a great Tuesday!
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Splash du Jour: Friday

It doesn't matter whether a sequence of words is called a history or a story: that is, whether it is intended to follow a sequence of actual events or not. As far as its verbal shape is concerned, it will be equally mythical in either case. But we notice that any emphasis on shape or structure or pattern or form always throws a verbal narrative in the direction we call mythical rather than historical.
-- Northrop Frye --

Have a great Frye-day!
******

Splash du Jour: Thursday

His heart beat faster and faster as Daisy’s white face came up to his own. He knew that when he kissed this girl, and forever wed his unutterable visions to her perishable breath, his mind would never romp again like the mind of God. So he waited, listening for a moment longer to the tuning fork that had been struck upon a star. Then he kissed her. At his lips’ touch she blossomed like a flower and the incarnation was complete.
-- F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby --

Have a great Thursday!
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Splash du Jour: Wednesday

If you are in a book store and can't find the particular book you are searching for, you are obviously in the…














Have a great Wednesday!
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Splash du Jour: Tuesday

Have a blast today!
Have a great Tuesday!
******

Splash du Jour: Monday

Sometimes it’s a sort of indulgence to think the worst of ourselves. We say, "Now I have reached the bottom of the pit, now I can fall no further," and it is almost a pleasure to wallow in the darkness. The trouble is, it’s not true. There is no end to the evil in ourselves, just as there is no end to the good. It’s a matter of choice. We struggle to climb, or we struggle to fall. The thing is to discover which way we’re going.
-- Daphne du Maurier --

Have a great Monday!
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Splash du Jour: Friday

Have a great Friday!
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Splash du Jour: Thursday

Memories, even your most precious ones, fade surprisingly quickly. But I don’t go along with that.
The memories I value most, I don’t ever see them fading.
-- Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go --

Have a great Thursday!
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Splash du Jour: Wednesday

"The human race is unimportant. It is the self that must not be betrayed."
"I suppose one could say that Hitler didn't betray his self."
"You are right. He did not. But millions of Germans did betray their selves. That was the tragedy. Not that one man had the courage to be evil. But that millions had not the courage to be good."
-- John Fowles, The Magus --

Have a great Wednesday!
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Splash du Jour: Tuesday

We read deeply for varied reasons, most of them familiar: that we cannot know enough people profoundly enough; that we need to know ourselves better; that we require knowledge, not just of self and others, but of the way things are. Yet the strongest, most authentic motive for deep reading…is the search for a difficult pleasure.
-- Harold Bloom --
Have a great Tuesday!
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Splash du Jour: Monday

The president of the United States [Bush] has claimed, on more than one occasion, to be in dialogue with God. If he said that he was talking to God through his hairdryer, this would precipitate a national emergency. I fail to see how the addition of a hairdryer makes the claim more ridiculous or offensive.
-- Sam Harris, Letter To a Christian Nation --
Have a great Monday!
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The Three L's

As I explained a while ago, I'm experiencing a bit of a dry spell when it comes to blogging. And even, reading.
A mixture of laziness, lethargy… and lager.
But I would be remiss if I neglected to mention that last night I went to the Joe Bonamassa concert. It was NOT disappointing.
He is one of my favourite guitarists ever -- his genre is mostly blues a la straight-ahead rock. I took a ton of videos with my new iPod and there are so many to choose from… such great music -- but instead of music at all, I've chosen a brief clip of one of the rare moments that Mr. Bonamassa actually spoke to the audience.
Since he mentions one of my own most favourite establishments in the Universe, I felt I must share this with you…



I am the guy screaming "Yes" right after the word "corner".
And I feel compelled to say that I am NOT the guy that yells out "I like chai lattes!"
Every moment of this concert was incredible. But here is a clip I uploaded to Youtube today. It's from his acoustic solo set.
It may be a bit of an exaggeration to be calling him The Greatest Guitarist in the World -- but if Joe Bonamassa isn't… I wonder who is?

Splash du Jour: Friday

From authors whom I read more than once I learn to value the weight of words and to delight in their meter and cadence -- in Gibbon's polyphonic counterpoint and Guedalla's command of the subjunctive, in Mailer's hyperbole and Dillard's similes, in Twain's invectives and burlesques with which he set the torch of his ferocious wit to the hospitality tents of the world's colossal humbug . . . I know no other way out of what is both the maze of the eternal present and the prison of the self except with a string of words.
-- Lewis H. Lapham, Harper's Notebook, Nov., 2010 --

Have a great Friday!
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The End

The End

It was the walking away.

The footsteps of it all, the sound
heels on floor, steps, street, clouds.

A sorry kiss on your knees, ankles
toes. Soul. I realized.

North and south can meet again.
East and west -- never.

It was the walking away.
The setting sun.

-- © Ciprianowords, Inc. 2011 --

Splash du Jour: Thursday

Have a great Thursday!
******

Splash du Jour: Wednesday

Despite my thirty years of research into the feminine soul, I have not been able to answer the great question that has never been answered: what does a woman want?
-- Sigmund Freud --

Have a great Wednesday!
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Splash du Jour: Tuesday

By believing passionately in something that still does not exist, we create it. The nonexistent is whatever we have not sufficiently desired.
-- Franz Kafka --
Have a great Tuesday!
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Splash du Jour: Monday

It turns out that time doesn't heal the wound, but in its so merciful way, it blunts the edges ever so slightly.
-- Al Pacino --

Have a great Monday!
******

What Richard Dawkins Believes

This means that the next few pages are inevitably somewhat intricate -- not difficult, just intricately detailed. It would probably be best to not read this section of the book when tired, at the end of a long day.

The above is from page 117 of Richard Dawkins' book The Greatest Show On Earth: The Evidence For Evolution.
I followed his advice… I was not tired, and it was not the end of a long day.
But he never said anything about drinking beer!
Perhaps that was where I erred.
Because see, I just [burp!] read this section he is pre-warning us about, where he goes on to expertly delineate a multi-decade experiment that was conducted in order to fast-track the evolution of a certain strain of bacteria.
I read it as though my life depended on it.
And don't get me wrong, I very much love the way Dawkins writes. The book in the background here, The God Delusion -- is one of the best things I have ever read.
No, the fault cannot possibly be his. He is so clear in the way he explains things.

As a result of tonight's intense lager-induced experiment in reading I have come to the conclusion that there is a disparity -- yea, a great gulf, if you will -- between my interest in science, and my understanding of its methods.
I find that when it comes to my own limited and semi-evolved brain power, I tend to understand a general overall gist of a thing, but most often I could not put the book aside and clearly paraphrase what I have "learned".
Some would say that this means I have not learned anything at all.
That may indeed be the case.
All I can say is, this book is extremely….. convincing. And after I finish it, if someone asks me what I believe about evolution, I will give them a big Neanderthalic grin and say, "I believe what Richard Dawkins believes!"
Cheers!
-- Cip
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Splash du Jour: Friday

What better occupation, really, than to spend the evening at the fireside with a book, with the wind beating on the windows and the lamp burning bright... Haven't you ever happened to come across in a book some vague notion that you've had, some obscure idea that returns from afar and that seems to express completely your most subtle feelings?
-- Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary --


Have a great Friday!
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Splash du Jour: Thursday

In Paradise there are no stories, because there are no journeys. It's loss and regret and misery and yearning that drive the story forward, along its twisted road.
-- Margaret Atwood, The Blind Assassin --

Have a great Thursday!
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Splash du Jour: Wednesday

Have a great Wednesday!
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An Intermittent Case of Writer's Block

There were times when friends of mine would say, "Come on, man! Give me a break. That thing you blogged about did NOT happen to you today!"
And I'd say, "No, it did -- I'm not kidding."
And I wasn't. Kidding. Seems like I always had something to write about.
You know what? I know that it is not the "things" that have changed -- but I myself feel less in the mode of writing.
Life is still good and exciting and charged with things to write about. I've been having a lot of fun -- I've been enjoying my work life in a whole new way -- I have gained some terrific friends. I've been drunk a lot.
THINGS ARE TERRIFIC.
And yet -- it boggles my mind. My desire to blog of my adventures has waned a bit.
Why have I not written of the fact that I spent last Saturday night with some terrific friends watching a classic movie [2001: A Space Odyssey] and not understanding the thing at all?
Wow!
Back in the day, this would have elicited a blog of astronomical proportions!
I would have even had something to say of the pizza we ate! And the awesomeness of meeting a beautiful black cat, named Batman!
By the way, I am convinced that there are probably only two living people on earth that could really understand the meaning of that movie -- and they are:
1) Stephen Hawking.
2) Not me.

At any rate, my dear faithful friends. Hang in there, I encourage you.
Barring early onset Alzheimer's, I think I'll be OK soon.
I'll be back.
******

Splash du Jour: Tuesday

"They are all beasts of burden in a sense," Thoreau once remarked of animals, "made to carry some portion of our thoughts." Animals are the old language of the imagination; one of the ten thousand tragedies of their disappearance would be a silencing of this speech.
-- Rebecca Solnit, A Field Guide To Getting Lost --
Have a great Tuesday!
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Splash du Jour: Monday

Occasionally, I get a letter from someone who is in 'contact' with extraterrestrials. I am invited to 'ask them anything'. And so over the years I've prepared a little list of questions. The extraterrestrials are very advanced, remember. So I ask things like, 'Please provide a short proof of Fermat's Last Theorem'. Or the Goldbach Conjecture… I never get an answer. On the other hand, if I ask something like 'Should we be good?' I almost always get an answer. Anything vague, especially involving conventional moral judgements, these aliens are extremely happy to respond to. But on anything specific, where there is a chance to find out if they actually know anything beyond what most humans know, there is only silence.
-- Carl Sagan --

Have a great Monday!
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Perfect People

Perfect People

Spent a night in a forest
looking for a flawless tree.

Somewhere around three a.m.
I wondered about criteria.

Height? Girth? Bark texture? Leaves?
Root dispersion? Affinity to others?

Does this tree provide a natural habitat for animals or at least timber for homes for animals that pay taxes?

I got weary, and fast.
Leaned against one that made me sleep.

My last thought? The next time I do this
I'll set out in the daytime.

-- © Ciprianowords, Inc. 2011 --

Splash du Jour: Friday

I was starting to wonder if I was ready to be a writer, not someone who won prizes, got published and was given the time and space to work, but someone who wrote as a course of life. Maybe writing wouldn't have any rewards. Maybe the salvation I would gain through work would only be emotional and intellectual. Wouldn't that be enough, to be a waitress who found an hour or two hidden in every day to write?
-- Ann Patchett, Truth and Beauty --

Have a great Friday!
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Splash du Jour: Thursday

Happiness is always a by-product. It is probably a matter of temperament, and for anything I know it may be glandular. But it is not something that can be demanded from life, and if you are not happy you had better stop worrying about it and see what treasures you can pluck from your own brand of unhappiness.
-- Robertson Davies --


Have a great Thursday!
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Splash du Jour: Wednesday

Have a great Wednesday!
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Splash du Jour: Tuesday

A wonderful thing about a book, in contrast to a computer screen, is that you can take it to bed with you.
-- Daniel J. Boorstin --

Have a great Tuesday!
******

Splash du Jour: Monday

Let children learn about different faiths, let them notice their incompatibility, and let them draw their own conclusions about the consequences of that incompatibility. As for whether they are ‘valid’, let them make up their own minds when they are old enough to do so.
-- Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion --


Have a great Monday!
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I Broke My Spine --

-- of my Barney's Version.
It's not funny.
My book needs a chiropractor gifted with the healing properties of…. Jesus!
Never mind the horrors of the Japan earthquake today. Can we talk?
I was at Starbucks tonight. Reading away and somehow lost my bookmark.
So, when I got up to get a refill of coffee I flipped the book over and [horrors] I broke the spine of the thing. It was agonizing. I felt it in my deep heart's core!
I am not all that picky about books, really. Torn covers, bent pages, previous marginalization. I take it in stride!
But a broken spine?
It really will not do.
And so I am chagrined.
Will I quit reading this book because of its new vertebrae problems?
No.
However -- I recall a time when I actually did abandon a book because of its spinal deformity.
It happened around 25 years ago.
I was reading Martin Gilbert's The Holocaust in the back yard of my home, way back on Argyle Street North. My dear Aunt Evelyn, who was visiting at the time, came outside and asked me what I was reading.
When I handed her the gargantuan volume she grabbed it and CRACKED ITS SPINE RIGHT DOWN THE MIDDLE.
Where the section of photographs were.
I nearly vomited.

She said, "Hmm. Looks interesting," and handed it back to me as I gasped for air, sweating great drops of blood all over dad's lawn.
<-- Look! You can even see the line down the middle, the evidence of injury!
I not only still have the book, I even have the bookmark in it, at page 436.
Here's the kicker -- To this day I have never read another page of that book.
Something about paraplegic books -- I just lose interest.
How about you?
Does it really bother you when you irretrievably crack the spine of a book?
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Splash du Jour: Friday

There did not have to be a moral. She need only show separate minds, as alive as her own, struggling with the idea that other minds were equally alive. It wasn't only wickedness and scheming that made people unhappy, it was confusion and misunderstanding, above all, it was the failure to grasp the simple truth that other people are as real as you. And only in a story could you enter these different minds and show how they had an equal value. That was the only moral a story need have.
-- Ian McEwan, Atonement --

Have a great Friday!
******

Splash du Jour: Thursday

Have a great Thursday!
******

Splash du Jour: Wednesday

My parental role had largely been confined to providing a good life, teasing the kids at the table, leaving Miriam to settle disputes, and, oh yes, putting together those libraries after I had consulted Miriam. "When a child is born," I once explained to the kids, "some dads lay down bottles of wine for them that will mature when they grow up into ungrateful adults. Instead, what you're going to get from me, as each of you turns sixteen, is a library of the one hundred books that gave me the most pleasure when I was a know-nothing adolescent."
-- Mordecai Richler, Barney's Version --

Have a great Wednesday!
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A Fine Balance

I know what you're thinking, Dear Reader Friends -- but no.
<-- This is not going to be a blog about the book by Rohinton Mistry.
First, my apologies for not blogging much, as of late. I blame a sudden onset of laziness. Actually -- not so sudden. I've been lazy for a long time now. At the end of the work day I usually only have time for coffee, a bit of reading, and late-night hamburger ingestion.
Also, I've been involved in a new hobby -- leatherwork. Basically, I spend some time each evening punching extra holes in my belts to contend with my burgeoning waistline -- or, as I like to refer to the situation in more geographical terms, Equatorial Expansion©.
I've read some terrific books and failed to discuss them here.
Things like Stephen Greenblatt's new one, Shakespeare's Freedom.
As I read it I realized that I think I have read more books about Shakespeare than books by Shakespeare. If you have not read Greenblatt's biography of the Bard, I strongly encourage you to --> CHECK IT OUT!
Currently I am reading an incredibly good novel [hilarious] -- Mordecai Richler's Barney's Version. Have any of you seen the new movie based on this book?
And before this I read Alissa York's newest book, Fauna. A worthwhile novel about animals, and their effect on people.
I love animals. There's no need to convince Bookpuddlers -- you know I love animals [some of them, between slices of bread, or slathered in gravy…] but no, seriously, I love animals -- even when they are, at times, exploited by humans.
Like this goat-thing in the following video clip. Plus, there's a monkey in there, too.
It's worth watching to the end. Extra points to anyone that can interpret the running commentary of the cameraman. Please… enlighten me.
This -- this, my friends, is a fine balance….

Splash du Jour: Tuesday

She wore her sexuality with an older woman's ease, and not like an awkward purse, never knowing how to hold it, where to hang it, or when to just put it down.
-- Zadie Smith --

Have a great Tuesday!
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Splash du Jour: Monday

Love is an abstract noun, something nebulous. And yet love turns out to be the only part of us that is solid, as the world turns upside down and the screen goes black. We can’t tell if it will survive us. But we can be sure that it’s the last thing to go.
-- Martin Amis, The Second Plane --
Have a great Monday!
******

Splash du Jour: Friday

Have a great Friday!
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Bonamassa In The House

I'm usually quite a slowpoke, really.
If you don't believe me, take note of how long my "Currently Reading" books stay on the sidebar, yonder. I average about ten days on one novel.
No one who knows me would say "He gets things done, quickly."
But I set a new speed record for myself today.
FASTEST BUYING OF CONCERT TICKETS!
I was just leafing through the newspaper on my lunch break at work -- taking in the articles and ads when "What the hell?" my eyes nearly fell out of my head. As soon as I saw this ad for an upcoming concert [see photo] I cut it out with a pair of scissors and calmly, but energetically, walked to the phone and ordered tickets!
Good Lord!
Joe Bonamassa is coming to my town! And soon!
I got two EXCELLENT tickets -- and now all I have to do is sit back and play his stuff on repeat mode until April 1st.
Joe Bonamassa is one of the finest blues guitarists in the world today. If you need a bit of a refresher in Bonamassa 101, click --> HERE.
And be sure to watch the clip, below.

Splash du Jour: Thursday

I am a true adorer of life, and if I can't reach as high as the face of it, I plant my kiss somewhere lower down. Those who understand will require no further explanation.
— Saul Bellow, Henderson The Rain King --

Have a great Thursday!
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Splash du Jour: Wednesday

I am easily moved to tears and rarely survive a visit to the cinema without shedding them, racked, as I am, by the most perfunctory, meretricious or even callously sentimental attempts at poignancy (something about the exterior of the human face, so vast and palpable, with the eyes and the lips: it is all writ too large for me, too immediate for me.)
— Martin Amis, Experience: A Memoir --
Have a great Wednesday!
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Splash du Jour: Tuesday

Have a great Tuesday!
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