Somebody’s gonna weep

She said, “Oo la la!” when she saw me. She told me to sit down in the chair. She washed it, combed it out and then asked me, “What do you want?” I said, “To get rid of it.” So, she started cutting.

The first cut, by my request, was all my hair pulled back to a pony tail. She tied it off, snipped it, and gave it to me. Then, she worked on the rest.

Walking away from the salon, I had the tail in my hand. Sheldon asked, “What are you going to do with it?” “Watch,” I told him. At the first trash can, I tossed it away. No hesitation. Gone.

Some rituals are small. That doesn’t make them less important.

A God Among Men

You cannot ignore it.
You cannot deny it.
Just sing along…

… why why why…

(crapdaddy, we must cover this.)

because Blair asked me to

1. Name:
2. Age/Birthday:
3. Single or Taken:
4. Favorite Movie:
5. Favorite Song:
6. Favorite Band/Rapper/Artist:
7. Favorite Book/Comic Book:
8. Tattoos and/or Piercings:
9. Favorite TV Show:
10. Favorite Video Game/Board Game:
11. Do we know each other outside of Livejournal?:
12. Would you give me a massive army of Uruk-hai?:
13. Tell me one odd/interesting fact about you:
14. If you could change anything about your current life, would you?:
15. Will you post this so I can fill it out for you?:
16. Post a picture of you:

Polyhymnia

Last night, I worked until 3:00 AM, the kind of work that just won’t let you go. It grabbed on to my heart and squeezed.

My muse is not kind. When she finds me, she infects me with a fever. (“And the only cure is more cowbell.”) “Enthusiasm” means “infected with the god.” My muse is heat and sweat and fever. She is beautiful and cruel. Cruel because she must be. Beautiful because of what she brings.

The muse depicted in the statue for the Origins Award is Calliope, the muse of epic poetry. She is not my muse. Mine is Polyhymnia: the muse of sacred poetry and geometry. The muse of elegance and eloquence. She is also the muse of secret knowledge, often shown with her finger to her lips, and the muse of agriculture, the farmer’s muse, working in the hot sun, using math and knowledge to bring life up from the lifeless soil.

She is cruel, but she must be. I’m a lazy writer. I cannot be made to write for the pleasure of it because I find no pleasure in writing. Only frustration. Thus, she finds my heart and squeezes it and will not let go until she is finished with me. She found me last night. And when she was finished with me, it was 3:00 AM and I hadn’t had a breath in five hours.

The rage of Pindar filled the sounding air,
As Polyhymnia tried her skill divine;
The shaggy lion roused him from his lair,
And bade his blood-stained eyes in fury shine;
The famished eagle poised his waving wings,
Whetting his thirsty beak–while murder rose,
With hand that grasps a dirk, with eye that glows

from An Ode To Music, by James G. Percival

Carriage driver

There’s a word for the profession of driving a carriage or a cart and I cannot think of it.

I want to say “draftsman,” but I’m almost certain that is not it. Any help?

Fair and Balanced

Democrats Ask, Do You Feel Safer?

But a party web video strains some facts about homeland security.

A Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee ad that appeared on the Internet this week attacks the record of “Bush and the GOP” on homeland security, but makes some factual stumbles.

It claims terror attacks have increased four-fold under Bush, which isn’t true. The official count jumped due to a much broader definition of what constitutes a terrorist attack.

The ad says “law enforcement” spending has been cut $2 billion, but that refers only to cuts in aid to states and localities and ignores a big increase in spending on federal anti-terrorism activities.

It says that only 6 percent of cargo containers are being inspected.  That’s about right, but its also a big improvement from three years earlier when the figure was only 2 percent. Also spending has increased seven-fold.

The ad’s biggest stumble was political, not factual. It correctly noted that millions of illegal aliens have entered the US in recent years. But the ad’s images of bazooka-toting terrorists and Osama bin Laden, associated with men furtively crossing the border, drew objections from Hispanics and the DSCC quickly took the ad off their website.

(from FactCheck.org)