Holy shit! KFC has a sandwich made out of chicken tenders and glazed donuts! This is the best of American late-stage capitalism. Nothing will ever be more American than a fake hamburger made out of confederate sympathy and diabetes! I genuinely feel as though this marks the crossing of a cultural rubicon. I think this is an important moment in our story as a nation.

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I had to go fix a paperwork problem that required me to head down to Cannery Row. Obviously my life is very hard.

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Freight vs. Weight

I heard the most marvelous line of poetry today.

The poet Tracy K. Smith was on a podcast I listen to and I was listening to it in my car about 7am as I sailed down the curvy ribbon of road that leads over the bluff at the eastern edge of Marina, where I live, down and out into the Salinas Valley, which was looking particularly yellow and green and sprinkle-ry this morning.

She read from her poem “Charity” and it struck me intensely and I have been thinking on it all day because I have loved deeply people like this, but have always tried hard not to be like this. The this I am describing is this:

Hating what I carry but afraid to lay it down. Stingy. Angry. Doing violence to others by the sheer freight of my gloom.

Aside from the precision of the expression of the idea being described, the word freight rather than weight, is what makes her such a good writer.

You can read the whole poem here.

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The Debate that Awoke My Inner Poet.

Surely it is a sign of our times that the single best phrase I have seen or heard or read in a very long time appeared in the zeitgeist last night:

“Uncle Dick in the deer stand”

Certainly this is the “cellar door” of our times. I eagerly await both the ironic t-shirts and the only semi-ironic small town all-male thrash bands.

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This seems legit, right? Exactly this sort of thing has never caused any problems before, right?

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I went trail running today for the first time in months because it turns out that I live literally across the street a federally designated National Monument wildlife area. That fact however, did not make my knees enjoy the run.

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This morning one of the students here wished me a happy Valentine’s Day and I’ve never thought of Valentine’s Day as being that sort of thing where you say, “Happy Valentine’s Day!” to people. So that was odd. Anyway, here’s a cool picture of a tree.

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This is not the weirdest place I have ever worked, but it is also not the un-weirdest place I have ever worked.

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It was so windy today that the whitecaps were blowing off the crests of the waves and a hail of sand was falling along the beach.

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