The Rock Star

Rock Star

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I found you and you shined so bright

An aggregate of minerals and light.

You were celestial, much like the moon

And yet in dirt so harshly strewn.

I picked you up; you burned my hand

Then back you fell into the sand.

And in my mortal mind it now seems clear

Your constellation was the lithosphere.

From far off in other worlds they looked

At dippers, heroes and were hooked –

Hooked as we are onto Orion

As the faithful are to Zion.

Moo.

Gnome Invasion

Gnome Company

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He blinks,

up comes the home improvement store Lowes.

Cars swerve, cuz he’s chasin’ afta ho’s.

When He goes by,

He paints sunshine on every rafter,

Sprinkles the air with laughter,

Krista tells him to clean that sh*t up.

There is no one like Hafrank.

I'll introduce him, to you, but it's no use,

he’ll try to bite your limb,

Cause my Hafrank’s in love with me

Hafrank: Wow that was some hibernation!

Nick: Yaaawn. I know, it’s like we’ve been asleep for three months.

Krista: I must have a record for hitting the snooze button.

Hafrank: It’s perfectly normal for gnomes to sleep for generations at a time. My uncle went to bed when Lincoln was president, and woke up sometime during Roosevelt.

Krista: Must have been dreadful for him.

Hafrank: Oh, my bark, yes. He saw an airplane… thought the Confederates grew wings.

Nick: We forgot to tell them to hold our mail.

Krista: We’re typed in!

Nick: Typed?

Krista: Like snowed, but you know, with words.

Hafrank: There’s only one solution!

Krista: What!?

Hafrank: I have to become governor of Arizona.

Nick: But that doesn’t make sense.

Hafrank: Sure it does. We can show them our papers now.

Krista: Oh, honestly!

Announcer: We’ll be right back. I had such a good job at Geico too, until they fired me. Should have never called the Tea Party people and asked if they had retards working there.

Hafrank: Hello, I’m Hafrank and you might know me from Gnome Company, or my one gnome shows on Broadway. Either way, don’t drink and drive. The safety of gnomes employed as traffic cones depends on it.

Announcer: I’m back retards! Oh shit, am I fired again? Looks like it’s back to Geico! If they took back the Gecko after his sex tape, they’re bound to do the same for me!

Hafrank, Nick and Krista drive into Arizona

Nick: These roads are fabulous, not one pothole!

Krista: Nick…

Nick: I wonder how they pave them so perfectly!

Krista: Nick, they’re filling them with Mexicans.

Nick: Oh.

Hafrank: The chubby one was more like a speed bump.

Krista: Hafrank!

Hafrank: Sorry.

Krista: One more comment like that and I’ll… I’ll shave your beard!

Hafrank: You wouldn’t!

Krista: Try me. And Nick, don’t you dare say ‘that’s what she said.’

Nick: Damn, you preempted me.

Krista: This place is such a God forsaken hell hole! They passed two horrible laws in a week: one to have concealed carry without even a license, one to imprison anyone who looks reasonably suspicious for being an illegal immigrant but really… brown.

Nick: They also wanted to pass a law making Obama have to prove his citizenship for the next election, because they think he’s some sort of Kenyan commie.

Krista: Some of them think he’s from France now.

Nick: He did say that brief phrase in French at a summit. Might be something there.

Krista: Don’t tell me you’re a birther!

Hafrank: I am too. The gnome constitution says you have to be a gnome to be president. And I don’t think he’s a gnome. He never wears his hat.

Nick: Oh crap, another Mexican.

Krista: Let’s just get to the State House and talk to the governor!

They speed toward the Capital in Phoenix

Hafrank: Governor, you’ve got to stop this law! I’m too short to carry giant papers!

Jan Brewer: We can’t appear soft on people enjoying civil liberties. Plus, one rich rancher was killed and as you very well know, one rich white guy equals five billion regular guys.

Nick: But isn’t this an extreme solution to federal inaction?

Jan Brewer: Of course, it’s extreme. But it keeps jobs people don’t want, in the hands that don’t want them. And if we have to destroy everything the constitution stands for, to get that right we don’t need, then so be it!

Krista: What if the federal immigration authorities just don’t accept the people you plan on throwing in the gulag?

Jan Brewer: How do you know about our gulag!?

Hafrank: Is it true I can be imprisoned for six months if I forget my ID?

Jan Brewer: Little gnome, don’t make me not like you. People I don’t like are reasonably suspicious.

Hafrank: I’m sorry Jan, but I’m going to have to unleash the nerve gas I keep in my hat to kill you. Yes, everyone, that’s why our hats are so tall!

Nick: Quick, Krista, breathe into this sock I urinated on!

Krista: He handed me gas masks.

Nick: No, thanks, it’s already on my nose. Kind of musky.

Hafrank: She’s dead!

Nick: Who should be governor?

Wizard of Oz: You tin Nick by virtue of your heart, and you Krista with your amazing intellect and you Hafrank… the law says you gotta go!

Krista: Oh, Wiz!

Hafrank: Oh, Krista!

Wizard of Oz: No, but seriously Hafrank, get white or get out. This is Arizona, the Auschwitz State.
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Shakira: Whenever, wherever!
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Wizard of Oz: You too Shakira. And if you could, stop singing too.
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Shakira: Never, H likes me!
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Hafrank: Yeah, Wiz, go eff b yourself.
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Wizard of Oz: What's that?
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Hafrank: Masturbate to yourself on Facebook.
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Wizard of Oz: Oh, like that! I do that all the time. If only I had wifi in my hot air balloon...
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Krista: Oh, Wiz, you nasty!

Wizard of Oz: Mhm, my head's not the only thing I enlarge on that smokey projector.
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Krista: You should look in that little gift bag of yours and find some a sense of decency!

Wizard of Oz: I wouldn't be a politician if I did that.
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Find It In the Comedy Section of Your Local Bookstore...

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Bush has said he is not writing a traditional memoir but an account of key decisions in his life, according to MSNBC.  The word decisions used interchangably with mistakes the whole book through.

According to Crown Publishers, "Decision Points" will offer "gripping, never-before-heard detail" on such historic events as the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and the 2000 presidential election along with Bush's decision to quit drinking, his relationship with his family and other personal details, they say further.  Although you've got to really ask yourself about the 'quit drinking' part.

A publishing industry source familiar with the book said that Bush had completed a first draft and was editing the manuscript on a computer at his office in Dallas. A former White House speech writer, Chris Michel, is helping with research.

Woah Bush doing research!  He really will need help with that one!  Might have to read this soon-to-be travesty of the English language.
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Chocolate Suicide

Inspired by H's post Death by Chocolate...

I remember the day I committed chocolate suicide. I took one M&M too many; gave a goodbye Hershey kiss unto the world. My coffin was two graham crackers, a smore, with me the marshmallow; the earth surrounding was the chocolate. It killed me now, it covered up the evidence.

It was vain of me to think I’d go to chocolate heaven. Instead I went to chocolate hell, where none exists, and it remains a clever name.

Empty wrappers litter endless brimstone. You see a candy machine ahead, but you will never reach it. You will smell it, you will swear you taste it, but it can never fill you up the way it did before your suicide. Demons have their fill of course, as you lick your cracking lips, so blistered from the heat.

A milkshake would so dearly hit the spot but if you so much dare to think of it, you’ll see a Burger King ahead. And it will become as forever distant as machines, when you were simply hungry.

If I lived again perhaps I’d try some moderation. Losing myself in bitter sweet ecstasy was not the paradise of which I hoped and dreamed.

What hell has been my chocolate suicide!
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Bathtub Surface

The Bathtub’s Surface

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Upon the surface lives another world

A world that I must sink beneath.

Skin cells dance with soapy suds

Loose hairs chime in to do the waltz.

Scabs are named prom king and queen

The toenail DJ plays their song.

I watch it all, a heavyweight

Not floating to the fun above.

In jealously I move to break the party –

It takes mere seconds and they’re back.

My only recourse is the drain

Yet, even then they shout in glee.

There’s no telling where the current takes them

And I guess that’s why I’m so forlorn.

Also, why I almost never take baths.

Bull Moose

Theodore Roosevelt was president of the United States until 1909. When he left office, William Howard Taft was chosen to run and won the presidency for the Republican Party. In 1912, Roosevelt was unhappy with Taft's time in office and put his name forward to become the Republican Party's nominee again. The Party chose to stick with Taft. This angered Roosevelt who walked out of the convention and then formed his own party, the Progressive Party in protest. Hiram Johnson was chosen as his running mate.

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True to Roosevelt's progressive beliefs, the platform of the party called for major reforms including women's suffrage, social welfare assistance for women and children, farm relief, revisions in banking, health insurance in industries, and worker's compensation. The party also wanted an easier method to amend the constitution.

While the Bull Moose Party lost at the national level in 1912, it continued putting candidates on the ballot at the state and local elections. However, these candidates did poorly in 1914. The party did hold a convention in 1916 and nominated Roosevelt to run again. When he refused, the party tried to give the nomination to Charles Evan Hughes which caused the party to be entirely dissolved.

But I say, today, we bring it back! TR knew we needed bank reform, he knew we needed healthcare reform, and he knew the constitution needed to protect those it wasn't protecting!

And that's why I've changed my political views on Facebook to Bull Moose Party.

Certif for my Rif, Dawg!

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Tonight I went to a poetry reading in downtown Marion.  I showed up around an hour late.  In my defense, it had been a rather hectic day.  Had forgotten it was going with all the college things I had to do.  My friend Whitney reminded me with a text though and I got to see the last half-hour or so of it.

I was impressed to say the least.  The hodgepodge of different people there was stark.  There were high school students, college kids, even professors and working class people who took the stage.  That in itself, where so many types of individuals can come together and learn something of each other is a beautiful thing.  It's like the cliche, how the other half lives, with this case being how the other slice lives.

When a professor I had had read from his seat, I recall thinking, how I would have never thought he was a poetry writer.  Economics and political science, which he teaches, seem so far from the subject of English in my mind.

But it only shows that anyone can write poetry, regardless of specialty or profession.

That said, the religious aspect struck me, as more than a couple poems mentioned God.  I wondered if that was just part of small-town life though.

I didn't get the opportunity to read my own Ekphrastic poem; I was too late.  But my professor had read it, and the organizer told me after the show he really enjoyed it.  He even asked me to come to their next meeting.  So that should be really cool.
Want to hold you Mali. So bad.

Twiction: A Heart Felt Thank You

I started my twiction story American Wizard on October 13th, 2009.  Since then there have been 136 tweets telling some aspect of the story.  Six months is a long time to write anything, and as much as I hate saying it, I've grown apart from my tale.

Perhaps I'll catch an idea some day to continue American Wizard, and I hope I do.  But for now, I just don't have the creative endurance to go through with any more. The format is too slow and cumbersome for me at this juncture. But I do not discourage anyone else from trying Twiction.  You should.  It has enormous potential.

Apart from any issue of format, new thoughts have taken me in new directions.  I desire to write something to highlight the struggles in the gay rights movement, for instance.  But I will never forget the characters I created in this span of time, nor the people who supported me in making them.

As I said on Facebook: thanks to everyone who read my twiction, many times or even once. I won't be doing it anymore though. If and when I continues the story, it will be posted here for all to see. Thank to all again, from the bottom of my heart.
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Violence

Violence

(The Great War Soldier)

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Unfeelingly I grasp my hands around his head

I jerk them in a twisting motion –

His neck crackles like a dried up leaf.

That leaf which grew in summer heat

Was born in springtime’s rainy haze

But fell to earth as Autumn waned

To be covered in remorseless cold.

Cold, that I, brought forth to be

As I, the reaper chose his fate

So like Death himself, I am

Detached and feared above all else.

All else is just another phrase to me

I knew, held it, loved it once

Before this life,

Another time.

Time, now turning me to diamond

Where I’ll outlast the years

Beautiful, mysterious

Cold, morose and lifeless.

May he rest in peace.

Another German Poem

Die Nichtigkeit

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Das ist die Nichtigkeit,

Ein Star in Zeit.

Wir waren zusammen

Und jetzt abgesondert.

Die Sonneneruption ist unsere Liebe

Änderne die Pols und zerstören Raumfähren.

Aber, ich kann nie dich ergeben –

Hielt meine Hande an, steht bei mir neben.

Kuss mich, bitte fur die alten Tag

Saubert mein Herz auf meinen Beschlag!

***

There is nothingness

A star in time.

We were together

And now apart.

The solar flare is our love

Changing polls, destroying space shuttles.

But I cannot give you up –

Hold my hand, stand next to me.

Kiss me please for the old time sake

Clear my heart of mist.

Translated it into English, though I'm sure all my blog readers are fluent in German...

Wall Street Don't Tread on Me

Wall Street Don't Tread on Me

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By nature the largest giants are the clumsiest

Crushing, stepping on those small

Not noticing their plight below.

Wall Street don’t tread on me

Not in my homeland of the free!

Asteroids clash destroying worlds

Sometimes missing by an inch or hair -

Leaving doubt to flood the continents.

Wall Street don’t tread on me

Let us keep our homeland of the free!

I recall of a school of fish

That scattered as an Orca came;

These troubled times, it sums up great.

Wall Street please don’t tread on me,

And leave, leave, the purple mountain majesties!

Give back our amber waves of grain!

And while you're at it, crown thy good with brotherhood. That'd be good..

NASA's Elegy

NASA’s Elegy

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Red China on the Red Planet;

Dragons have breathed fire on the eagle.

And I wish I could say it fought the good fight

That its claws weren’t dulled in vain pursuits of might.

The beak’s arthritic from it catching prey

Its wits have long led it astray.

So sad, too, that olive branch has snapped –

The writing on the scroll no longer apt.

It’s crying in its fall from grace

Down to a horrid, rocky place.

Our hand to save it’s there too late

Great wings they’re simply added weight.

The Eagle hits the water in a flame of glory;

Extinguished in a light-blue jubilee.

But notoriety won't warm the chicks
Encased in frigid shells with somber sticks.
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Of Mother’s Eggs, what will become?

Perhaps of death and sorrow they’ll succumb?

No, I have greater faith in life than this

They shall rise with love from such abyss!

The youth they will rewrite the scroll

And mend the branch once more a whole!

A work in progress.

Why ‘Obamanomics’ is working

By Mike Dorning, BusinessWeek

It's never easy to separate politics from policy, and the past 18 months have only increased the degree of difficulty. The U.S. has been through a historic financial crisis followed by a historic election and a series of historic federal gambles — from bailing out AIG and GM to passing a $787 billion stimulus and a $940 billion health-care reform bill. All that risk has made policy more complicated and politics more fraught ("You lie," "Baby killer").

A Bloomberg national poll in March found that Americans, by an almost 2-to-1 margin, believe the economy has gotten worse rather than better during the past year. The Market begs to differ. While President Obama's overall job approval rating has fallen to a new low of 44 percent, according to a CBS News Poll, down five points from late March, the judgment of the financial indexes has turned resoundingly positive. The Standard & Poor's 500-stock index is up more than 74 percent from its recessionary low in March 2009. Corporate bonds have been rallying for a year. Commodity prices have surged. International currency markets have been bullish on the dollar for months, raising it by almost 10 percent since Nov. 25 against a basket of six major currencies. Housing prices have stabilized. Mortgage rates are low. "We've had a phenomenal run in asset classes across the board," says Dan Greenhaus, chief economic strategist for Miller Tabak + Co., an institutional trading firm in New York. "If Obama was a Republican, we would hear a never-ending drumbeat of news stories about markets voting in favor of the President."

Little more than a year ago, financial markets were in turmoil, major auto companies were on the verge of collapse and economists such as Paul Krugman were worried about the U.S. slumbering through a Japan-like Lost Decade. While no one would claim that all the pain is past or the danger gone, the economy is growing again, jumping to a 5.6 percent annualized growth rate in the fourth quarter of 2009 as businesses finally restocked their inventories. The consensus view now calls for 3 percent growth this year, significantly higher than the 2.1 percent estimate for 2010 that economists surveyed by Bloomberg News saw coming when Obama first moved into the Oval Office.

The U.S. manufacturing sector has expanded for eight straight months, the Business Roundtable's measure of CEO optimism reached its highest level since early 2006, and in March the economy added 162,000 jobs — more than it had during any month in the past three years. "There is more business confidence out there," says Boeing CEO Jim McNerney. "This Administration deserves significant credit."

It is worth stepping back to consider, in cool-headed policy terms, how all of this came to be — and whether the Obama team's approach amounts to a set of successful emergency measures or a new economic philosophy: Obamanomics.

For most of the past two decades, the reigning economic approach in Democratic circles has been Rubinomics, a set of priorities fashioned in the 1990s by Bill Clinton's Treasury Secretary, Robert E. Rubin, the former co-chairman of Goldman Sachs. Broadly, Rubinomics was a three-legged stool consisting of restrained government spending, lower budget deficits, and open trade, which were meant in combination to reassure financial markets, keep capital flowing, and thus put the country on a path to prosperity.

On the surface, Obamanomics couldn't be more different. The Administration racked up record deficits as it pursued a $787 billion fiscal stimulus on top of the $700 billion bailout fund for banks and carmakers. Obama has done close to nothing to expand free trade. And while Clinton pleased the markets with a moderate, probusiness image, Obama has riled Wall Street with occasional bursts of populist rhetoric, such as his slamming of "fat cat bankers" on 60 Minutes last December.

The rallying markets haven't been bothered by these differences, largely because of their context. Martin Baily, who was a chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers during the Clinton Administration, says he suspects Rubin and the rest of the Clinton economic team would have made similar decisions — on bailouts, fiscal stimulus, and deficit spending — had they faced a crisis of similar magnitude. "I think we would have gone the same way," he says. The Obama team, he continues, navigated the financial crisis while never losing sight of the importance of private enterprise and private markets (a point Obama stressed in his Feb. 9 interview with Bloomberg BusinessWeek). "A lot of people on the left were urging them to nationalize banks. Instead they injected capital, and now they're pulling capital out. That looks more like Rubinomics than a set of socialist or left-wing economic policies." The Obama economic team looks a lot like Rubin's, too; three of its most prominent members — Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, National Economic Council Chairman Larry Summers, and White House budget director Peter Orszag — are Rubin protégés.

While the Administration's call for a consumer financial protection agency has aroused opposition from banks, Obama's regulatory reform plan largely leaves the financial industry's structure intact and ignores proposals to break up large financial institutions, unlike the reforms pursued after the Crash of 1929. Amid an uproar over bonuses at government-assisted banks, Obama for the most part chose to respect private employment contracts.

In short, Obama's instincts during the crisis were exceedingly Rubin-esque. Even the $787 billion stimulus package, while large by historical standards, didn't reach the scale called for by many liberal economists, including the chairman of his own Council of Economic Advisers, Christina Romer, who initially advocated spending more than $1 trillion. Today, Romer doesn't shy away from comparisons to the last Democratic Administration, but she also makes no grand claims about a new economic philosophy. What unites Rubinomics and Obamanomics, she says, "is the focus on results, the pragmatism of what's right for the economy. We each took the policy that was appropriate at the time."

The similarities go deeper. Like Clinton, Obama has tried to reduce income inequality. Clinton's 1993 deficit-reduction plan raised income tax rates for high-income families to 39.6 percent; Obama plans to return the top rate to the Clinton-era level. He also raised Medicare taxes for individuals earning over $200,000 to finance his health plan. Clinton aided the working poor with the Earned Income Tax Credit; Obama is doing the same with insurance subsidies in his health plan. A national health plan was an aspiration of both Presidents. Baily argues that the Obama approach is "at least in principle closer to Rubinomics than was the Clinton plan. [Obama's team] is trying to use market incentives to raise the quality and lower the cost, and that looks like Rubinomics."

Any comparison must take into account the vastly different circumstances each Administration confronted. Clinton entered office as the end of the Cold War generated a peace dividend, then rode the tech boom — and the tax-revenue-generating stock options that came with the runup in tech stock prices — to a balanced budget. Obama inherited two wars and the scariest financial crisis since the Great Depression. Clinton's deference to the bond market was necessary because long-term interest rates were high — above 7 percent on 30-year Treasury bonds — when he took office. Interest rates have been the least of Obama's concerns, with yields below 3 percent when he took office and the Fed effectively keeping short-term rates at zero.

Despite a budget deficit that is projected at $1.5 trillion this year, Obama wants to move the country toward the kind of fiscal balance it enjoyed fleetingly in the Clinton era, though his budget plans falls short of that. He recognizes that the federal debt load is unsupportable. Alan Greenspan — the tacit ally of Clinton and Rubin in the 1990s — warned last month that a recent uptick in yields on 10-year Treasury notes might signal a surge in long-term interest rates driven by investor anxiety over the budget shortfall.

Economic stabilization has not been Obama's handiwork alone. In the months before he took office, President George W. Bush and Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson halted a market free fall with the bank bailout. Obama's stimulus complemented the Federal Reserve's aggressive monetary easing. To build a floor for housing prices, the Fed intervened to support mortgage markets and the White House pledged unlimited financial backing for mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and rolled out tax credits for home buyers and mortgage modification programs to stave off foreclosures. It's the entire package that has made the difference.

"When you take it all together, the response was massive, unprecedented, and ultimately successful," says Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Economy.com. Even Obama critics like Phil Swagel, assistant Treasury secretary for economic policy under George W. Bush, acknowledge that White House policies have been successful. "They could have done a better job" by spending more of the stimulus on corporate tax cuts to boost hiring and investment, says Swagel, now an economics professor at Georgetown University's McDonough School of Business. "But their economic policies, including the stimulus, have helped move the economy in the right direction."

While jobs have been slow to return, the country has experienced "an incredible productivity boom" that strengthens the economy for an expansion, says Greenhaus of Miller Tabak. Labor productivity, or worker output per hour, grew at a 6.9 percent annual pace in the fourth quarter, capping the biggest one-year gain since 2002. Over the long run, productivity growth is what raises living standards. Corporate profits also have been rising, up 8 percent in the fourth quarter, putting businesses on a sounder financial foundation to invest and hire as customers return.

The public, alas, does not see the signs of life that economists do, as the downbeat views in the Bloomberg poll demonstrate. And as long as job security remains a concern, it's easy to understand why psychology may trump data. Among those who own stocks, bonds, or mutual funds, only 3 out of 10 say the value of their portfolio has risen since a year ago, according to the poll —a near-impossibility given the size and breadth of the market gains.

The early stages of an economic rebound do not bring political safe haven for Presidents. (Just ask George H.W. Bush, who won a war against Iraq only to lose reelection a year after the 1990-91 recession ended.) Obama, however, may now have reached a pivot point with the economy finally beginning to add jobs. "He can make great strides in short order," says Steven Jarding, a former Democratic campaign strategist who is now a lecturer at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. "Any indicator he can build on is a good thing. He'll be able to focus all his energy and attention to say, 'Here's what happened this year in the economy.'"

With seven months to go before midterm elections, and more than two years before Obama reaches his own reelection day, there's still time for the President's policies to swing to his political advantage. Again, follow the money: Consumer spending has been rising for five straight months. That may not last, but it suggests Obama is already on the right track with voters' wallets. If the Clinton Administration is a trustworthy precedent—and job growth continues — their hearts and minds could follow.

The Little Bear to Goldilocks

The Little Bear to Goldilocks

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I was young that day you ate my porridge

Naively walking through my childhood.

I was young and love seemed but impossible

A realm for more romantic fairytales.

I was young – a frightened cub, not quite a bear

Too scared, too weak, to roar my heart to you.

I was young, I almost let my parents

Destroy our hopes and dreams together.

I was young; I watched you go that night

Into another children’s story.

I was young and should have wrote the book

Putting us together despite all odds.

I really liked this one.

Weekly Thoughts

Lately I've found it ironic how Republicans bash European style democracies and their healthcare systems when the EU has a higher GDP than the U.S., and Germany, France, the UK and Italy are all in the top ten alone.

Also, an official for the Catholic Church had likened "accusations against the pope and the church in the sex abuse scandal to 'collective violence' suffered by the Jews." ... Reeally? So, they merely insulted the Jews at Auschwitz and Buchenwald?

And that's This Week in Thoughts.
Ta da!

Roads More Traveled By

Roads More Traveled By

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There’s roads that go more traveled by

And others quiet, almost shy.

There’s roads that shoot into the sky

Others on the bye and bye.

There’s roads so full of dream and high

Still others that just live and die.

There’s roads that in their passions cry

Others being staid and dry.

There’s roads with snow in hot July

Yet others weather can’t defy.

There’s roads misleading that imply

Where others only truth apply.

I wonder what she's thinking.