Veronica by Elvis Costello

I suppose it says something about me, maybe not. The one song in the whole world that can always make me weep uncontrollably is Veronica, by Elvis Costello.

How many times I've held a frail old woman's hands while she struggled to capture the flame from the girl she once was.

In her heart, there was really no difference between a girl of sixteen and a woman of ninety-two. In my own heart, I don't suppose there really was.

If anything, as the years went by, it got harder to remember which was which.

Fay, Nanny, Bubba, Mother... this one's for you

Is it all in that pretty little head of yours?
What goes on in that place in the dark?
Well I used to know a girl and I could have sworn
that her name was Veronica
Well she used to have a carefree mind of her own
and a delicate look in her eye
These days I'm afraid she's not even sure if her
name is Veronica

Chorus:
Do you suppose, that waiting hands on eyes,
Veronica has gone to hide?
and all the time she laughs at those who shout
her name and steal her clothes.
Veronica, Veronica, Veronica

Did the days drag by? Did the favours wane?
Did he roam down the town all the while?
did you wake from your dream, with a wolf at
the door, reaching out for Veronica
Well it was all of sixty-five years ago
When the world was the street where she lived
And a young man sailed on a ship in the sea
With a picture of Veronica

On the "Empress of India"
And as she closed her eyes upon the world and
picked upon a plate of last week's news
She spoke his name out loud again

Chorus:
Do you suppose, that waiting hands on eyes,
Veronica has gone to hide?
and all the time she laughs at those who shout
her name and steal her clothes.
Veronica, Veronica, Veronica

Veronica sits in her favorite chair
She sits very quiet and still
And they call her a name that they never get
right and if they don't then nobody else will

But she always had a carefree mind of her own
with a devilish look in her eye
saying you can call me anything you like
but my name is Veronica

Chorus:
Do you suppose, that waiting hands on eyes,
Veronica has gone to hide?
and all the time she laughs at those who shout
her name and steal her clothes.
Veronica, Veronica, Veronica

Palin Sideshow Dominates The Election

Palin bashing from the media and from the democrats shows no signs of diminishing. Just the opposite, it's growing to a furious din that's drowning out everything else.

Maybe she deserves it. Maybe she doesn't. This late in the election, it just doesn't matter.

I'm worried that the national discussion these first two weeks of September has been almost exclusively about Palin and almost nothing about McCain or Obama. Poor Joe Biden has just about completely fallen off the radar.

I don't think the republicans are smart enough to have done this on purpose, but I'm really worried that it's going to work in their favor if we make this election a question of "Do you think Palin is crazy?"

For the record: I think Palin probably is too crazy for my taste. Have you ever seen a moose? They're like a brontosaurus with horns and she hunts them for fun, food and profit.

As for the rest of it, who cares? She's Dan Qualye in a miniskirt and she's seriously distracting us from the real issues of this election.

Until August, this election cycle was so grand and so good and so made me proud to be an American in the way both parties confronted the real issues that face us, and now, we're seriously ruining it with all this Palin bullshit.

Very Short Fiction

I'm adding a new section to my blog. The first entry "Melanie eats an Orange" is below.

I'm calling it "Very Short Fiction" and the entries will be short written sketches from observations or fantasy or some combination of the two.

The idea is that it will be like textual Jazz.

Each piece is impromptu and completed in one sitting of thirty minutes or less. Each piece's structure is self-contained and my hope is that you'll be able to tell much more about the person I'm writing about than just the actual words of the piece.

Melanie eats an orange

Melanie eats an orange in three distinct steps.

Having chosen her orange based on its color, size and symmetry, she pierces the outer rind with her thumbnail near the spot where the stem previously connected the orange to the tree. She peels it in a clockwise manner, careful not to pierce the inner skin of the sections letting the juice escape. She monitors how much rind is removed in each movement so that the entire orange is peeled in only one complete revolution.

Then she separates the sections, one at a time, carefully removing any remaining pith or strings left from the peeling process. She lays each cleaned section in a row, in the order they were separated from the others and moves on to the next section.

With the cleaned and separated sections in a line, she eats them from left to right, beginning with the first section, dabbing away any excess juice from her lips with a napkin before moving on to the next section and again, and again, until she has eaten them all. She positions her teeth so that each bite makes a clean cut and can finish nearly any sized piece in only two bites.

It's important, once she begins the process, that she eats all the sections in one sitting because she doesn't like them once they've had a chance to sit out and become dry. She allows some conversation while she prepares and eats the orange, but not so much that it interferes with the process.

It's possible she enjoys her well-designed method for eating an orange more than its taste or smell. Any deviation from the closely regulated steps might diminish her enjoyment of the fruit considerably.