Parapoetica

The DNC has already put out a commercial about Bush’s ight track, wrong track":http://www.johnkerry.com/video/092404_right_track.html comment in Iraq. But they’re missing the real kicker. If the right track/wrong track numbers are better in Iraq than America, then that means that Americans think things are even worse here than they are in Iraq! What, exactly, does that say about the past four years of leadership?

I read a great zinger by xysrl on DailyKos:

Mr. Bush, over 3000 Americans in NYC died under your watch. 1.5 million Americans lost their jobs under your watch. Another 1.2 million Americans slipped into poverty under your watch.

Mr. Bush, what in hell are you watching?

I just wanted Google to know that, on JDate, I’m known as “JayJayBoBay”, as well as “ClicheBoy”. So I’m telling it. The rest of you can ignore this. That’s all. Just a little search optimization. Nothing to see here. Please disperse.

Surreal audiosensory experience of the day: Pressing the “on” button on my M3 Power razor… just as the neighbor starts up his weedwhacker.

As all my friends know, I’m so addicted to caffeine that I can’t even wait to get to Starbucks – I have my own superautomatic espresso maker that grinds, tamps and pours me a great shot with one button. But for good espresso, you need good beans, and they don’t stay fresh for long.

Enter The Roasted Bean. For less than the cost of a pound of beans at Whole Foods, they’ll Priority-Mail a pound of fresh-roasted, vacuum-packed beans—any blend you choose, or make up your own. And if you want, they’ll send it every month automatically—you can make up your own “coffee of the month” club selection if you like. They’re quite flexible.

I have no affiliation with them; I’m just a fan. A really, really alert fan.

I don’t think anyone reading this blog wants to buy a house, but this might help Google out. So: I’m selling a carriage house in Wellesley, MA, near Boston, MA, convenient to the South End, Back Bay, Financial District, Cambridge, Somerville, Natick, and Framingham.

My mom got a new cat, but she doesn’t have a digital camera. So she e-mailed me pictures she found on the web of another cat with the same coloring.

So I e-mailed her back vacation pictures of a guy who has the same color hair I do. It’s almost like being there. Or somewhere that looks like there.

A few weeks ago, I finally washed out two years of gunk from my bird feeder and hung it back up with fresh seed. I hear the birds around, and I occasionally see them flitting in the trees, but I have yet to see a single one at the feeder. Two summers ago, we could spend hours looking up finches, nuthatches, and all the other birds we’d seen. Pewter was a happy camper, since his cat hammock sits right in front of the feeder. Now: I got nothing. Do bird feeders wear out, you think?

Who can sleep with a view like this?

Forgot to blog these the first time:

• Swiss (not SwissAir, not for a few years, just http://www.swiss.com, thank you very much) has a ghoulishly cute air-safety video with an animated family including, so far as I can tell, “Boo” from Monsters, Inc. She winks at you in one scene—watch for it!—and in general seems thrilled to check out the emergency-exit brochure and go down the big slide. Whee!

• In the same safety video, they demonstrate the electronic items you shouldn’t be using during takeoff and landing—cell phone, laptop, MP3 player, etc. And they play little sound effects for each one. I don’t know what brand of laptop they use, but it seems to have a squeaky flywheel. I want a flywheel-based laptop.

• Many of the French phrases that we borrowed and turned into cheesy cliches here in the 1970s -“ooh la la!” and “voila!”, for instance-are alive and well in French common usage. Every time someone made me a cappucino, I thought they were going to pull a rabbit out of a lam{e’} hat.

I had a large pine trunk taking up space in my driveway, so I called BFI to pick it up. The driver showed up yesterday…

Hi… I’m here to pick up a car.

A what?

A car. A child’s toy car of some sort.

Well, I do have a large item for you, but it’s not a car…

No, they told me I was to pick up a 4 × 3 × 2 wooden truck.