When I went to track down the facts of the matter, I got confused. All the radio reportage puts this discovery in present tense. This is the very first recorded sighting of the live beast in history. Until now no one's ever caught one on film. Et cetera. So why was I finding information about another recorded sighting, in September 2004?

Because it wasn't another sighting. It was this one. It happened a year ago. It's just now being published. Why don't news outlets mention the age of the research? What the hell is going on here? This isn't "now." This is a year ago.

("In 2003, New Zealand marine biologists laid a sex trap. They ground up some squid gonads, believing that the scent would drive male giant squids wild as the creatures migrated through New Zealand waters. The hope was that a camera would squirt out the pureed genitals and a passing squid, driven into a sexual frenzy, would then mate with the lens. This was a project that, some may be relieved to hear, never came to fruition.")

I keep thinking of that solitary squid drifting along in the silent greeny blackness, wrapping itself around a bait-ball with a hook in it, tearing off a tentacle in its panic. There is no peace to be had on the entire planet. We disgust me tonight. The words of a character from Hannah and Her Sisters come to mind—Max von Sydow's great voice intoning, "If Jesus were alive today, he'd never stop throwing up."

Now here I go to gift a cricket to the spiders. Red in tooth and claw, O yes...
6:11:12 PM    comment []  trackback []  

This is precisely why I never wanted to pursue the buy-and-sell path of making income. Yeah yeah, I know, it's all buy-and-sell. But it doesn't feel that way. And I refer here to material-dollars commerce. And what it does to the spirit.

But I've had my chance to make my way by writing, and I haven't done it. Doesn't mean I'm going to stop trying. But I do have to try and make a way through the world. And because so much fear surrounds my creative process (still!? for crying out loud, Sam, do you think you're going to live forever?) it would appear I won't be able to use it to make dollars with.

But I can't let turning shopowner kill the impulse. Ferlinghetti managed to keep going. Does Larry McMurtry hang around his bookshop much? Who else writes and owns a store? ... Every bookshop proprietor, certainly.

Well, anyway. Gunter threw up this morning. Scared the daylights out of me. I couldn't imagine what provoked it and then I saw he'd eaten all the leaves off the rue, a toxic plant he'd never shown an interest in before. I've taken him lots of fresh grass and water. Poor Gunter! I'm glad he could throw it up, though. And it was hours ago and he's perfectly fine now. I've given him grape leaves and milk thistle leaves, as well, and he's gobbled them up, so that should help.

My brother's filling water jugs down at the creek. Then he'll make his peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich. I think I'll have PB+honey on homemade bread today and carry it out to the hill. & Pellegrino water. & camera.
1:04:37 PM    comment []  trackback []  

The Texas Republican has issued a statement saying he'll "temporarily step aside."

Republican congressional officials say House Speaker Dennis Hastert will recommend California Congressman David Dreier take over for DeLay.

10:08:28 AM    comment []  trackback []