Laughing Knees

I was watching an animated samurai drama late last night after returning from work, in which the samurai hero admonishes a woman comrade for wishing to die. “I can’t stand anyone who takes life so cheaply,” he snarls before turning his back on her and walking away.

It’s amazing what lengths people will go to to justify madness. Now they are talking “ Superbombs”, as if blowing up thousands of people without setting them aglow afterwards really makes much of a difference.

I can’t help it: I love coffee. It sends me ricocheting off the walls whenever I drink it, but, after a cupped handful of mountain spring water, there is no other drink that quite fills the spot. There is something about the bitter, furry bite that greets the mouth with a hospitality not unlike a warm embrace from a lover, and the desire for more never quite slips away, no matter how much you resolve to abstain. Walk into a room pulsing with the musk of coffee and, like the scent of a lover’s body, the antennas in your brain spring up and the floor turns to clouds.

Great. Just what Iraq and the world really need: another inspired and well-informed contributer to justice and machismo: Bruce Willis

The days are noticeably growing cooler. The songs of the crickets have lowered into a sluggish pitch as the musicians struggle against the temperature. For some reason the non-native Rose-Ringed Parakeets (Psittacula krameri), with their lime green, winged javelin-like bodies, have been congregating around the telephone wires and tall Zelkova trees around my neighborhood, and the mornings and evenings have been punctuated by their piercing shrieks. Parrots and parakeets most definitely belong to the area above the forest canopy… when you see their darting, vigorous flight it is hard to imagine them pent up in a cage ever again.