Merry, merry

It's late on Christmas night, and from my phone I can't tell if the whole story can be read here: http://books.google.com/books?id=14FYhGsH4bkC&pg=PA20&lpg=PA19&ots=Z9Uo71BAXw&dq=a+pint+of+judgement&output=html_text

but this is what we read in my family at Christmas. If it's not all there-call me. I'll read it to you...

With Apologies to Everyone who's already parodied Carlye Rae Jepsen

Hey, I just met you
And this is crazy
I watch you through the window while you sleep at night
Did I mention crazy?

With Apologies to Billie Joel

It’s nine o’clock on a Saturday. I am half way through a bottle of cheap wine, eating two day old take out, staring at a blank computer screen and wondering when this gets easier.

Original here.

With Apologies to Mumford & Sons

But tell me now where was my fault, in loving you with my whole heart? They told me that you wouldn’t survive – that your life would be short and hard at best.  I knew that.  I thought that I knew that.  But your tiny heart had been below mine for your whole life. How could I not give you the chance to see the light of day?  And the nurses were perfect. And the doctors were sympathetic. And they put a sign outside our door – something to tell the people in the hallway that we were here – enjoying our first and last moments together in this hour.  And as I feel your lungs taking their labored breaths; as I see my mother, my husband, my in-laws; as I want the sunshine on your face, on my face – I wonder if I did this for you, or for me…

Original here. 

With Apologies to Tom Waits

John-John, he's long gone. He used to hang out on Sesame Street with me. We had great times...counting, singing the alphabet, learning the difference between soft and loud. It was grand. But, as with all the children who pass through here, eventually he grew up and away. I wonder if he ever thinks of his ole pal Grover any more...

Original here.

And a bonus video of John-John here.

With Apologies to Nina Simone

My baby don’t care for shows. Which, considering all the studies that show the problems that television can cause in very young children, seems just as well.

Original here.

With Apologies to Selena Gomez

(yes I had to look up who sings this song)

I love you like a love song, baby.  Ardent at first. I play it over and over, and can’t seem to get enough. I listen to it on my way to work, on my lunch break, when there is no one else in my office, I hum it in the shower. I sing it in the car, embarrassing myself at stoplights. And then, after a few weeks, I don’t switch to it first on my iPod. I find myself turning back to Yo Yo Ma, rather than it as I fall asleep.  Later, not as much later as I’d like, as I don’t like to think of myself as capricious – I change the station when it comes on the radio. I groan when the club plays it.  I roll my eyes as younger, wide eyed girls sing it on the street.  Soon I can’t stand it hearing it at all…

original here

and apologies that I missed a few days - I had a bit of election fever, and neglected many duties!

Things That Please Me

I told this woman that I loved her trousers, and she answered happily - they're my liberty pants!

#govote!

With Apologies to Johnny Cash

I keep a close watch on this heart of mine.  My dad died when he was forty, so I’ve eaten right, I’ve exercised, I’ve done everything I was supposed to.  And here I am. On the ground.  It was a freak snow storm in November – a storm where I didn’t even consider my own house, my own driveway, my own wife, my own kids.  I was just coming to clear the walk at St. Patrick’s, so the little old ladies who come to mass on a Tuesday morning wouldn’t fall on their way to confession.  And here I am. On the ground, with an unrecognizable pain in my chest, thinking, my wife is going to kill me….     

Original here

With Apologies to Woody Guthrie

This land is your land, this land is my land.  So keep your cows the fuck out of my orchard. 

original here

With Apologies to Dionne Warwick

The moment I wake up before I put on my make up, I think about Irina, the beautiful blonde who performs on the Russian bar.  She is married to one of her porters, but I think that he is cheating on her with one of the trapeze sluts.  She is so lovely and delicate – like a tiny bird in the air.  I cannot understand who could look away from such a mesmerizing creature…cannot understand why she stays.  Maybe she thinks that if she confronted him, that he wouldn’t catch her – that her tiny feet couldn’t find the pole when she alights from her flight. Maybe she thinks that her brother, Ivan, wouldn’t forgive her for divorcing him.  I would never leave you, Irina. I would never make a fool of you.  Though I am only a clown, I am more of a man than he will ever be.   

original here.

With Apologies to Millie Small

My boy Lollipop was named while I was still heavily medicated. I don’t know why the nurses let me do that; much less why I didn’t consider changing it once I sobered up. It made sense at the time – but didn’t make sense in the seventies?  Lollipop had difficulty in school. Children can be terribly unkind to those who seem different.  He retreated into himself and made very few friends, choosing instead to watch Charlie and the Chocolate factory over and over on our Betamax.  When Lollipop was fifteen, he ran away, returning eleven days later with his hair dyed a brilliant orange.  He came home from his first year of college with a candy swirl tattoo over the whole of his face.  He briefly toured with a punk band, but fell in with a bad crowd, as they say.  The last time I saw him, he said he was clean and sober, and had pioneered a system for fabricating cloth from sugar cane.  It seemed like a marketable venture at the time, but after I had given him my savings as seed money, he disappeared. I think of him often – mostly in the candy aisle of the grocery store.  Though my diabetes prevent me from buying anything, I sometimes spend hours standing under the florescent lights wondering why it didn’t occur to me to name him George…


original here

With apologies to Elton John

She packed my bags last night pre-flight. She packed me a pair of suspenders, cowboy boots, a chartreuse petticoat, a fedora, a whale bone corset, a parasol, a monocle, two pairs of nylons, a blazer with shoulder pads, six silk handkerchiefs, a paisley shirt, a red bow tie and three pairs of white athletic socks. Inside the silk handkerchiefs, she wrapped a silver handled knife, a stuffed unicorn and a bottle of fine cognac.  The fine gentlemen at TSA pulled me out of the security line. I think it’s gonna be a long long time.


original here

with apologies to...

with apologies to everyone who is actually participating in NaNoWrMo, i don't have it in me. and by "it" i mean a novel. apparently, i don't even have the 1000 words per day that i drunkenly agreed to at a halloween party last night. but what i'm going to try to do is to keep up with a silly little series i've started called "with apologies to"

i'll try to post one every day this month.

no promises.   

Things That Are Orange

Ah, Wilderness...

Banned Books Week

In honor of Banned Books Week:

 

and also this.

Pumpkins!

Apple Picking Redux: Apple Picking Made Easy

Some of you may recall my apple picking outing last fall.  Lovely though that was, I have to admit that there is something satisfying about coming back with 10 pounds of ripe apples rather than trying to figure out how to cook 10 pounds of green ones...

 

 

Things That Are Orange

Things That Are Orange

Things That Are Orange

Things That Are Orange

Things that are Orange

Sometimes this happens...

I guess I knew the tricks that all boys knew...

So, my adorable little college town has had two rapes (as the GOP would qualify, forcible rapes) on campus in the last two weeks. Both of these happened on the route which is my normal walk home.  One happened directly outside my office. 

So my mind keeps coming back to Dar Williams and this song - which has the line: And I hear somebody tell me it's not safe,/someone should help me/I need to find a nice man to walk me home.

 

Well, I did get home, after a not so late night at a work function. But I didn't walk through the lovely little park by myself at 8:30. And, well, fuck. It is a miserable state of the world that I walk three blocks out of my way in heels so I don't have to be alone in this park.

 

 

Absence

Some events in my extended family this week have left the world a little sadder.

Resquiat in pacem, Evan.

Grief fills the room up of my absent child,

Lies in his bed, walks up and down with me,

Puts on his pretty looks, repeats his words,

Remembers me of all his gracious parts,

Stuffs out his vacant garments with his form.

-William Shakespeare, King John

where's that rock of ages, when I need it most...

I was at a concert this evening, where the group (Redbird) played a cover of Johnny Cash's Unchained, which reminded me that I have been wanting to post my five favorite songs (as decided from an entirely unscientific study of these being the songs I most reliably don't skip through when they pop up on random). 4 of these I think (hope) are Spotify links.  the last is YouTube.  We'll see how I do with the new technologies...

Nina Simone – My Baby Just Care for Me
Josh Ritter – Kathleen
The Grateful Dead – Ripple
Louis Jordan – Knock Me A Kiss
Unchained - Johnny Cash


honorable mentions go to Redbird's Ships and Old Crow Medicine Show's Wagon Wheel (that one is a YouTube link because I love the video so much(.

Things That Please Me

Cambridge Fauna

This dude was hanging out by the ABP this morning. Doing his part to make my day a little more surreal...

Things That Displease Me

Tall Ships

Ah, Pride

Things That Are Orange

Things that happen...