WORLD SUMMIT ON PEACE

HEADS OUT OF THE SAND

U.S. President George Dubya Bush (far right) mingles with British Prime Minister Tony Blair, UN head honcho Kofi Annan (rear) and other world leaders yesterday on a field of grass in advance of their first annual What The Fuck Do We Do Now Peace Summit, a last-ditch attempt to stop the bloodshed in Lebanon, Iraq, Afghanistan and now the Congo in advance of democratic elections there. At left, U.S. Foreign secretary Condoleezza Rice discusses doilies and dandelions with Russian president Vladimir Putin as U.S. Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld (third from left) scowls.

BIG WAR, LITTLE WAR...SAME DIFFERENCE

THE BIG WAR OVER THERE...

Israel regrets Qana killings, but vows to press on

July 30, 2006, 15:45
Ehud Olmert, the Israeli prime minister, expressed "deep sorrow" over the bombing of a Lebanese village today that killed at least 54 civilians, including 37 children, but vowed the war against Hizbollah would go on.

Trying to stem international outrage over the attack on Qana, the Israeli military said it was unaware civilians were sheltering in the buildings it bombed and blamed Hizbollah fighters for using the area to fire rockets at the Jewish state.

The death toll and the television images coming out of the southern Lebanese village have intensified international pressure on Israel to accept an immediate ceasefire.

"I would like to express my deep sorrow at the death of innocent civilians," political sources quoted Olmert as telling cabinet ministers after the air raid. But Olmert said the offensive would continue.

"We will not blink in front of Hizbollah and we will not stop the offensive despite the difficult circumstances. It is the right thing to do," he said. The government promised an investigation into the bloodiest single attack during Israel's 19-day-old offensive on Hizbollah.

The raid has drawn parallels to Israeli shelling in April 1996 that killed more than 100 civilians sheltering at the base of UN peacekeepers in Qana during Israel's "Grapes of Wrath" bombing campaign against Hizbollah.

Israeli officials quickly went on the defensive. The army said it had warned civilians to leave days ago. Olmert ordered humanitarian aid be allowed to reach the village. Senior officials blamed Hizbollah, which is backed by Syria and Iran, for starting the war by abducting two Israeli soldiers and killing eight others in a cross-border raid on July 12.

"There is not one person whose heart is not crushed when children are killed," Justice Minister Haim Ramon told the cabinet, Army Radio reported. "But Israel is not the one that spilled the blood of the Lebanese children. Hizbollah is the one that spilled the blood."

Indeed, the war has huge popular backing in Israel, where more than 300 000 people in the country's north have fled Hizbollah rocket attacks and sought shelter further south. Many commentators call the offensive's Israel's most "just war" since the founding of the country in 1948.

At least 542 people have been killed in Lebanon in the war, although the health minister estimated the toll at 750 including unrecovered bodies. Fifty-one Israelis have been killed.

- Reuters

AND THE LITTLE WAR OVER HERE...

Tempers flare at peace rally; Hundreds pack Portage and Main
Sun Jul 30 2006
By Carol Sanders

Winnipeg Free Press
TEMPERS on both sides flared yesterday when protesters denouncing the attacks on Lebanon showed up for their publicized 1:30 p.m. rally on the corner of Portage Avenue and Main Street only to find that Israeli-government supporters had already taken over the site.

Members of the Peace Alliance of Winnipeg and Canadian Arab Federation supporters arrived for the rally at Winnipeg's most famous landmark and found the Israeli-flag-waving pickets occupying the high-profile intersection.

"Occupiers never quit," said Z.K. Thiessen, carrying a banner for the Peace Alliance of Winnipeg. "We never attend their rallies," she said after being heckled by a woman in the pro-Israeli camp.
"The potential for conflict is great," said Diane Zack, a Jew who was there to protest with the peace group. "I had no idea the Zionists would choose to come and disrupt this rally."

Close to 200 people packed into the corner at the height of the demonstration.

In Halifax, hundreds also marched yesterday to condemn Prime Minister Stephen Harper's defence of Israel's attacks on Lebanon, waving placards and marching through the city's downtown chanting for a ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah guerrillas in Lebanon.

The Peace Alliance of Winnipeg wanted to stage its protest by sculptor Leo Mol's Tree Children statue at Portage and Main, which was unveiled during the International Conference on War-Affected Children in 2000.

The latecomers, who outnumbered the Israeli supporters, ended up rallying at the edge of the corner and closer to Lombard Avenue, with the pro-Israeli pickets standing firm at the choicest spot in the middle.

There were 18 police officers there to keep the peace, along with their paddy wagon.

Patrol Sgt. Cam Jones said Winnipeg police take it to all demonstrations "just in case." They didn't need it yesterday, although there were a few times when it looked like the rally might turn ugly.

Officers intervened when individuals from both sides made incursions into each other's territory, gently but firmly telling them to calm down and get back to their group.

When an Israeli-flag-waving man went into the middle of a group on the pro-Arab side, police went with him and guided him back to his camp.

A man carrying a Peace Alliance banner who wanted to make room to unfurl it in front of the Israeli banner got too close and was directed to stay back.

Both sides took photographs of demonstrators on the opposing side and heckled each other.
A woman carrying a "Stop the Assault on Lebanon" sign who went over to talk to the Israeli group was dismissed.

"This lady should get a bomb on her house -- then see what she'd say," said Hartley Zelcer, referring to the sign-waving woman with the Peace Alliance.

Zelcer is one of 100 Winnipeggers planning a trip to Israel in five months to celebrate their children's bar and bat mitzvahs. He said the peace protesters have no idea what Israelis have suffered through with Hezbollah holed up in Lebanon next door and attacking them.

"We're not against the Lebanese," said Tahl East, who grew up on the Lebanon-Israel border and spent eight years of her childhood in bomb shelters on the "security belt" her father commanded for the Israeli army.

Her aunt, Shifra Tobiasch, said she's infuriated by the "propaganda" painting Israel as the villain, and the peace activists who believe it but don't know the truth.

"I lived there all my life," said Tobiasch, who retired with her Israeli police officer's pension to Canada 10 years ago and is now a Canadian citizen.

"The only people I'm angry at are the Israeli government," said Majeeda Harb, who fled Lebanon with her husband and six children a week ago on a Canadian-sponsored evacuation ship. "It was hard for my children," she said.

"I was scared," said her daughter, Chafica, who's going into Grade 5 at Inkster School. "I was in the shower and there was a bomb that exploded," said the 10-year-old.

"Innocent people in Lebanon are being killed," said her mother.

Caught in the middle of the demonstrations yesterday were 20-somethings Omar Kinnarath and his friend, Mia Feuer. The Muslim and the Jew were aghast at the level of animosity on both sides of the demonstration.

"I don't know what to make of this," said Feuer, a sculptor whose exhibit based "on this hell on the other side of the world" is opening Oct. 6 at Outworks Gallery.

"I wish it would end. Why can't we spend our energies on making love and making art?" she asked, apologizing if she sounded "too hippy."

"I'm here to rally for peace," Kinnarath said. "There's hate on both sides and it's stuff that's carrying on from back home," said the first-generation Canadian.

"That's got to stop," he said, gesturing toward the people who had to be separated from each other at Winnipeg's most famous landmark.

"There's no reason this party and this party can't come together," he said. "They're both chanting 'Peace.' "

IT'S DIFFICULT NOT TO AGREE WITH THIS LAST YOUNG COUPLE, DON'T YOU THINK? BUT HATRED RUNS DEEP.IT'S ALWAYS EASIER TO FIND REASONS NOT TO DO SOMETHING THAN TO DO SOMETHING...

AS JOHN LENNON SANG, IMAGINE...

--PHOTO CREDIT AND STORY, WINNIPEG FREE PRESS

IN JEOPARDY!

THIS MAN MAY LOOK FUNNY, BUT HE'S EXTREMELY RICH AND APPARENTLY QUITE SMART...

AND NOW, HE IS IN GREAT JEOPARDY! BECAUSE HE HAS INSULTED ALL OF CANADA BY MAKING GAGS AT THE EXPENSE OF THIS GREAT NEENER OF THE NORTH:

Yes, it's Alex Trebek, the witty, debonair dolt from North of the 49th who has been host of Jeopardy since the dawning of the Paleozic Era, Canada's Master of the Moustache and Quirky Questioner.

For those of you who don't read the newspapers, here's the Associated Press story:

Jeopardy! ace Ken Jennings, who won $2.5 million during his 74-game winning streak, has a few unkind words to say about the show — and dapper host Alex Trebek.
"I know, I know, the old folks love him," Jennings writes in a recent posting, titled "Dear Jeopardy!" on his Web site.
"Nobody knows he died in that fiery truck crash a few years back and was immediately replaced with the Trebektron 4000 (I see your engineers still can't get the mustache right, by the way)."
Jennings also takes aim at the show's "effete, left-coast" categories and "same-old" format.
"You're like the Dorian Gray of syndication," he says. "You seem to think `change' means replacing a blue polyethylene backdrop with a slightly different shade of blue polyethylene backdrop every presidential election or so."
Jennings, a software engineer from Salt Lake City, snagged 74 wins on Jeopardy! in 2004 before he was beaten by challenger Nancy Zerg. (Eds note: rumours that he carried on a back-stage romance with Trebek were never denied, but never proven).
Canadian-born Trebek, 66, has hosted the show since 1984. In a "correction" posted Monday on his Web site, Jennings offers an apology of sorts.
"We regret the insinuation that Mr. Alex Trebek is a robot, and has been since 2004. Mr. Trebek's robotic frame does still contain some organic parts, many harvested from patriotic Canadian schoolchildren, so this technically makes him a `cyborg,' not a `robot.'"

Trebek has offered no comment. However, thousands of elderly Canadian women were boarding buses late last night armed with placards and broom handles saying "Kill Ken."

American security officials were on high alert at border crossings.

AND NOW....

As I contemplate why, in fact, my computer never DOES remember my passwords, some soothing elevator music for your listening pleasure (insert favourite CD here)

HEE HEE HAW HAW HO HO HEZBOLLAH!

I SIMPLY COULD NOT RESIST, in concert with my last post about the Fair to Middlin' Beast...Please do not confuse this hilarity with my sincerity of the last blog.

Photo cutline:

President George Dubya Bush, with Foreign Affairs Minister Condoleezzzzzzzza Rice and some Saudi Arabian "I'll blow you whenever you want" prince who makes billions of dollars per year for doing absofuckinglutely nothing, pose for a cheap photo op while pretending to watch CNN's coverage of Israel's invasion of Lebanon and feigning concern somewhere in the White House.

We would add a credit to this photo, but are sure the photographer and the wire service would be thoroughly embarrassed. Or maybe it's the White House "official photographer."

Rice, so news reports say, is actually to travel to the Middle East Monday for meetings. Of course she has no plans to meet with the Lebanese or any other nation that would not stroke Bush's small but Viagra-strengthened dick.

THE BEAUTY OF THE MIDDLE BEAST

A lot of very insightful people are posting on the ugliness occurring right now in the Middle East, and rightly so.

It's all so abhorrent. What I sometimes feel is being lost, however, is the humanity of the average person living through this terror, a sense of who these Lebanese, Syrians, Iraqis, Afghanis really are.

In 1979, I was part of a 4 1/2-month overland bus trip from England to India and back. India, where I spent almost two months, was an incredible, magical place, but that's for another blog.

The rest of the time, we couple of hundred Canadians, Aussies, Brits, Scots, Irish, Filipinos and others from countries with close ties to the Commonwealth were motoring through Europe, Greece, Turkey, the Middle East, Pakistan and Afghanistan, among other countries.

The Shah of Iran, whom I met, was still the Shah, surrounded by his Savak secret police. The then-Soviets had not invaded Afghanistan. Iraq was under the iron fist of Sadam Hussein. Syria was what Syria still is.

I followed with obvious interest in these subsequent years the downfall of the Shah when Ayatollah Homeini took over Iran shortly after we left it for the final time, and the ensuing kidnapping of American hostages.

I watched when the Soviets invaded Afghanistan, an untamed frontier, and look at who's there now and that hopeless situation, with Osama Bin Laden still apparently hiding out in the hills.

Of course I have seen the Gulf War and Gulf War 2 and now Hussein is a broken and beaten man but his country is an absolute mess and the U.S. is even more in a mess for being there.

And what stirs me the most about all of these events, what I most think of when I imagine the carnage, is the fate of some of the many beautiful citizens of Afghanistan, of Iran, of Iraq, of Syria that I met along the way.

The store owner in Kabul who pulled a knife on me when I used the word f*** as we haggled over the price of a lambs' wool sweater, telling me later he learned the word from the American "hippies" living in an area called "Chicken Street."

The young Iranian in Tehran who sauntered up to me and befriended me, brought me to meet his parents for dinner, his only request that I tell him as much as I could about North America.

The kind taxi driver in Baghdad who drove two of us around for three hours, explaining the customs and why women wore veils, etc., and at the end, did not charge us for his time or his gas.

The scores of lively people in the bazaars, the lovely women in Mashed and Kerman and Tehran dressed to the nines in their western garb as the Shah tried to modernize the nation, in stark contrast to Iraq and the veils and black clothing.

The beauty of gorgeous-looking, bright-eyed kids introducing themselves without fear and volunteering to take us here or there.

I tried Google Images to find pictures of some of these kinds of beautiful faces. Except for a tiny few, all the images are of bloodied humans crying or looking devastated at the devastation around them.

I just want to make clear that beyond the theology, beyond the bombing and the politicians and the CNN interviews and analysts and the military strategy, those people on the other side of the world are just like you and I.

DOILIES & PANTIES -- words of wonder

THERE are a great many things in the world that men simply don't understand, that they can't comprehend, and in fact a multitude of women's words they can barely utter.

After spending the remainder of my entire second week of vacation blogging about silly things like baboons, gonads hanging from trucks and getting drunk on Lake Erie, I am being entirely serious...

When I focus on today's womanly words, doilies and panties. After all, this is Saturday and no one will read this. And I can't get either of these two words out of my head, now that I somehow thought of them.

Let's start with doilies. Doilies, males are led to believe, are decorative things made of fabric that are placed by women upon fine furniture, obstensibly to add their unique features to a home's design.

Their apparent purpose (we did NOT Google this) is to act as protective yet appealing "things" on tables and the like in contemporary living rooms and to save the finish on furniture.

However, males will undoubtedly find that they are never used for anything, really. They just sit there. If you try to put a beer on them, you are scolded. Coffee, same thing. Bowl of peanuts, ditto.

They are a true mystery of femininity. Their sole purpose seems to be to look good and to stop dust from forming underneath them while it continues to accumulate on the rest of the table.

Following are several examples of doilies (ewww), although for the uninitiated, it's important to point out they're kind of like snowflakes.

We couldn't document this, but each one is completely different and allegedly created individually by old ladies in factories on the outskirts of big cities across the planet.

I have no idea where the cute pink one I had downloaded went, it was supposed to be here. Nonetheless, you get the point. (Not the point of the blog, the point about what doilies actually look like).

I have had a life-long aversion to doilies, or at least the word.

and I have absorbed much female teasing about the fact that I find the word "doilies" impossible to say, much less write about. If any doily experts out there would like to comment, feel free to enlighten me. Just don't use the word "doilies."

***********************************************

Now on to my next feminine word -- and I am limiting myself to only two today -- and that is the word, "panties." Note how, like the word "doilies," it ends in the letters, "ies," which appears to be a prerequisite for women's words.

I do not propose to deal here with any derivatives, descendants or forerunners of what is commonly described in Britain or elsewhere as "women's underpants." Newer forms, such as thongs, will be covered in a future post.

No, I need and want to deal with the word "panties." (Erk). And having grown up with three sisters who left them lying around all over the house in our formative years, this is a difficult experience.

I can accept that women, like men, wear underwear. We call ours, strangely, underwear. Or shorts. Or gauche. Or briefs. (add your description here). Women call theirs "panties."

Why? Of course we have different things going on down there and a few parts which are not quite the same, which I don't have to get into now. But look at the examples below. Why are they so different?

So as to be completely gender-neutral and with sexual orientation equality in mind, you will note that the picture on the right is of a male, in fact, wearing what appear to be "panties."

Believe me, I think there is a genuine need to have women's underthingies be more lacy and sexy and (this part deleted) than men's. But it's the word I can't utter, the thing where I stutter.

TESTICLES ON TRUCKS

I know, I know...

This is the second consecutive post where I am writing about the testicles, penises or otherwise. I should instead be blogging about Beirut, about George Bu-shit and his veto, about the Indonesian tsunami.

Instead, I bring to you now word of yet another phallically oriented phenomenon that has migrated to Canada from the Excited States, as evidenced in this (edited) story from The Canadian Press:

EDMONTON -- It takes mighty big balls to drive a truck in Alberta these days.

The latest in prairie chic is to dangle enormous, plastic, fake testicles from beneath the rear bumpers of pickup trucks.

And while one might think the balls are the ultimate expression of manhood, retailers in Edmonton say a surprising number of women have been purchasing the pairs.

"It's redneck Alberta," said one truck retailer who didn't want her name used.

"We brought them up on a gag last Christmas and we've ordered quite a few. They've been selling like hotcakes."

The testicles come in different colours to match the truck and are also available in brass and chrome. They cost between $40 and $50 and are available in smaller sizes for motorcycles.

-----

Having been born in Alberta and lived there for almost 15 years, I can attest to its redneck ways. If any Canadian province is ready to join the States, it's right-wing, pro-business, conservative Alberta.

I've never gotten this thing about people projecting their personalities through their cars, young punks revving up their big-shot V8 hemis at a red light..."ooohhh, you da man!"

OK, I can see the personalized licence plates...But do people ANYWHERE really need to have giant balls attached to their bumpers to prove their manhood? Or is to make up for their lack of same?

And hangin' that low, I wouldn't stifle a chuckle if the dangling gonads rubbed the ground a bit or got swallowed up by a famous Canadian pothole or two on the highway...

BABOONS HAVE BALLS

BB and I recently visited the "Wild African Safari" not far from Hamilton, Ontario, in Canada's beautiful Golden Horshoe region around the eastern Great Lakes.

There were lions and tigers and bears, oh my. (OK, only lions, giraffes, rhinos, llamas and a bunch of prey animals). But no creature was as bold and endearing as the baboon (aka to BB as the bamboon).

Being the daring adventurers that we are, and seeing as it was not my vehicle anyway, we hopped into BB's Tracker, donned our pith helmets, made sure we had a full tank of gas and 30 days worth of food and water, and set out.

No way we were going to go in the big white sissy buses. We were going to experience this first-hand.

I wanted to hear monkeys screeching and glimpse exotic birds flying and caw-caw-cawing as I had many years ago upon entering India from Pakistan, thus making me feel I was Rudyard Kipling or at least Baloo the Bear.

Instead, once the huge electronic gates opened to grant us entry in to the game reserve, we couldn't hear a dang thing and the only animals I could see or sense were the mosquitoes and sparrows. Harumph.

We trekked on around the bend, me in the driver's seat and fumbling with my camera. "Roll your window up," BB ordered. I wondered if this was like some sort of Bermuda Triangle, where vehicles entered and were never seen again.

I complied with the window command -- it WAS park rules. We passed a few water birds as we snaked up the winding road. I had warned BB: "Don't expect animals to come up to the vehicle the way they showed it in the brochures."

We wound around the bend, slowly. Other touristy types behind us, clearly unable to read the directions asking motorists to FORM TWO LANES PLEASE, tail-gated me as I led our now four-vehicle convoy.

We passed some llamas, some breed of African cow, a few other birds and some monster water buffalo something-or-others with the biggest horns I'd ever seen. Some walked right up to the Tracker, snorted and then went on their way.

Snap. Snap. Snap. "You roll the window down and I'll snap and then roll it back up," I suggested to BB. It worked, kind of.

Then it was up to the lions, predictably snoozing under a man-made rock enclosure. The big male raised his head on cue, let me get a pic of his big mane and all, then went back to sleep.

We rolled along into an area filled with more trees, and that's where we met the most amazing animals of all -- the baboons. They came out of the bush like zombies in those scary movies.

On all fours, they just marched towards us, stopping to munch on this or that along the way, some with babies on their backs or clinging to their bellies, others just deciding to have a go at a little sex while en route (as above pic shows).

They had no fear. They leapt on to other vehicles, one SUV behind us a particular attraction to them. One baboon male started tearing the black rubber weather strip from around the fellow's windshield and pulling on his wipers.

We felt a little ignored, to be honest, as I snapped away at the pack of animals paying visits to every vehicle behind us but not ours. Until this little fellow decided to introduce himself.




This mischievous little mammal was just a delight to experience and he made the whole adventure what it was, really.

So much like us, but so innocent and instinctive and curious and full of his own little need to explore the world.

I had a super-duper closeup of him but can't somehow access it at the moment. There was every intention on my part to roll down my window and try to touch him, but these lovely creatures can and will bite and we didn't want to risk having a whole bunch of adults come flying at us to protect the little one.

After about five minutes, we had to move on because a traffic jam was in the making and the baboons' attention was diverted to one of those big white buses, which they quickly converged upon.

We gently rolled on and our little visitor fell off, apparently upset that we were leaving. I snapped many more pictures of other baboons coming and going, and we carried on to see rhinos, giraffes, bison and the like.

But the baboons, for us, were the be-all, end-all. A bold, beautiful bunch of beasts with balls.

TO MY LEGIONS OF READERS

To Southern Ontario, the land of milk and a honey.

Catch you all later...

FARTS AND FUN IN A FAST-PACED WORLD

AS THE WORLD WAFTS BY IN AN INVISIBLE BLUR OF NOXIOUS OVERBUSY-NESS, WE'VE LOST SIGHT OF A TONIC FOR WHAT AILS US.

AS BUSH BUMBLES, WHILE WE ALL TUNE IN TO REALITY SHOWS TO SOMEHOW MAKE US FEEL REAL, AS WE DISCUSS THE LATEST MURDER OR OTHER INSANITY, WE HAVE ALL BUT FORGOTTEN THE ART OF THE FART.

Fart jokes are mostly the purview of young boys, it seems, and that was no different with me. I remember once setting my own personal record while playing hockey on an outdoor rink, shaking the penalty box bench with a fart that lasted, by my count, seven seconds.

The entire team stopped their cheering and screaming and yelling to listen...and at the end, we all broke out in laughter.

Of course, I have now passed on this talent and appreciation for it to my 14-year-old son. My 18-year-old daughter, as usual, shakes her head, says 'Oh, Dad...' and then promptly turns the other way and silently smiles. As if we didn't notice!

My reason for raising this taboo-ridden natural body function today is simply to propose it as a free and natural way to reduce the tension and stress caused by a world that demands far too much of us every day and which offers us little but pap in media-driven coping methods.

The Queen does it. The Pope does it. Certainly George Dubya does it. Even the nonsensical characters on Entertainment Tonight do it. We all fart, and yet most of us pretend we don't, particularly in elevators.

Even women fart. This has been scientifically proven.

So my suggestion is that we embrace farting once again; give it the rightful place it deserves in our lives. We need to laugh a little in these changing, difficult times. We should lobby governments and corporations to make farts a part of the consumer world.

Think about your garage door opener making a fart sound when you pull up the driveway. Flicking on the TV with the remote? Fart. Flushing the toilet? Pffffttttt. Standing around wasting time at the office water cooler, or raging against the driver who just cut you off?

Fart!

Dr. Phil and other pseudo-psychologists could include fart therapy to raise the spirits of their patients. Farts could also be used to spice up the sex lives of struggling couples. Forget Viagra! Ever farted during sex? Of course! Laugh and have tons more fun? Natch.

Farts have been with us since the beginning of time. Much longer than the Bible, the Buck, Jesus Christ, the TV and Bart Simpson. It's time we not only accepted them but adopted them as the one true hilarious constant that they've always been.

POETIC (HA!) REVELATIONS (aka: Tag! You're It!)

I WAS recently brought back to my high school days and what I admit is (was) my utter misunderstanding of poetry by Lady Wordsmith, a very imaginative person who needed to translate for me some of her beautifully written works.

Basically, my thing is: I didn't "get it." How is speaking in rhymes and riddles and making imagery and hidden meaning and not saying things directly the method of choice to communicate feeling and life and thought?

The poem I most enjoyed in my school days was The Cremation of Sam McGee. Followed closely by Three Blind Mice.

Of course, I have now been saved from that starkly black and white world, although I still couldn't tell you the difference between a limerick and a pin prick. Cut me some slack! I write sports for a living! I'm a Jocko Journalist, not Edgar Allen Poe!

I now fully realize that poetry is to writing what Da Vinci was to my stickman drawings. I can draw a four-legged dog or The Last Supper or Mona Lisa too, but which is going to be more artistic and creative?

Anyway, Lady W (http://ladywordsmith.blogspot.com/) has recently tagged several of us in a stimulating game of revelation.

So, to wit:

I am thinking about:
What my kids are going to grow up to be
And in a sense asking the same about me
More than halfway through, a tad off kilter
It's changing times, I'm stuck on tilt(er...)

I said:
The turtle can't be the hare. Pace isn't everything.

I want:
Whatever I need to happen, happily
Good things I lost to be found again
Bad things I found to be lost again

I miss:
Having my feet on solid ground
Having my head on my neck instead of sometimes up my ass
Intense feeling and purpose and passion
Maxwell Smart and the Cone of Silence

I wish:
1. Bush would go away already
2. I could be in India again
3. I didn't feel so stagnant (sometimes)
4. I was playing ball or some other sport this year
5. We'd let the Middle East sort out their own shit
6. We'd stop B.S.ing about the "terrorist threat." It's our own creation because we won't do No. 5
7. I could be driving down the Cabot Trail in Nova Scotia
8. I could be pushing a giant boulder down a cliff on "Mike's Mountain" in Newfoundland and saving my brother from falling over the same cliff

And with each wish I wish,
That they all come true and that I get more

I hear:
Voices giving me choices that I sometimes choose to ignore

I wonder:
Why some people dig far too deep
Why some people don't dig at all
Why we let ourselves be consumed by shallow mass messages

I regret:
Doing some of the things I did in a blind trance
Getting some of the things I thought I wanted
Losing some of the things I should have had

I am:
At a crossroads
Trying to read a half-burned map

I dance:
Not nearly enough
But when I do,
To life's loveliness:
In the faces of my kids and family and friends
And caring, feeling feminine faces and forms

I sing:
Too quietly, in the shower
While my guitar gently weeps
Because I don't play it enough
For its liking or mine

I cry:
When I see men being emotional
And overcoming great odds or difficulties
With feeling and fight and passion;
When I think of my dad
And the life he has had

I make with my hands:
Loving grasps for my kids
120 words per minute on a keyboard
Sickly little stickmen

I write:
For a living
But also to live
And communicate my thoughts and feelings best

I confuse:
Myself
My ex, I'm sure
My intensity with my expectations of the intensity of others

I need:
A whole bunch of stuff besides this, but...
Contentment;
To DO the things I only talk about

I should:
Become more of the kid I was
Regain confidence, honesty, zest and
A belief that I always had

I start:
Things I don't have the commitment to finish

I finish:
Things I didn't have the balls
Or foresight or intention to start