Thursday, July 26, 2012

Nature Loves Her Little Surprises

 Baby horned toad, my garage, several days ago.


Around here, July is the season for all manner of new-born critters to burst forth from eggs, wombs, and cocoons. Spiders and snakes and dozens of different kinds of beetles, some black and shiny like armored Town Cars, others dun-colored and plug-bodied that amble amiably along the sides of the roads looking for snacks. When I go out running these days, I really have to be careful where I step, and it upsets me if I inadvertently crush one while I'm driving.

The little feller above I spotted squirming along the garage floor a couple days ago. I ran in to get my camera, locked Maddie inside, and managed to snap a half dozen photos while he tucked himself under the car and launched into invisibility mode. Then I went back inside to load the photos, wondering not for the first time how anything this small manages to grow up and make it to adulthood, given all the forces of man and nature against it.

Adult horned toad, top of the Sandia Mountains a couple weekends ago.

But that's the thing about Mother Nature. She persists. Thank God.

Monday, July 23, 2012

Haiku Monday: Fiery


Taste buds stung, then numb.
Eyes brim, forehead sweats. Yowza!
Pleasure's worth the pain.

* * *

Our hostess for this week's Haiku Monday is none other than the fiery Ms BlazngScarlet herself. Head on over to her 'hood to catch some of the heat, why don't cha?

Friday, July 20, 2012

Reaping and Sewing

Project Runway Season 10 Snarkstation is up at Miss Pam's!

Wednesday, July 18, 2012

Vengeance is Mine

There is a difference, I think, between vengeance and revenge. Revenge implies a tit for tat evening-up of a score, a righting of a personal wrong—whether a small slight or a grand insult—and it rarely involves violence. In other words, living well is the best revenge. But not the best vengeance.

Vengeance is something else entirely. It implies a point-of-no-return addressing of an intensely universal, not just personal, injustice. It is large scale, Biblically proportioned, sometimes morally ambiguous, and almost always violent. No one will deny you your revenge. But it's a good bet they'll look at you funny if you start talking vengeance.

It's always been a concept that has fascinated me, whether in classic literature (Hamlet), modern novels (Deliverance), or movies (from The Searchers to Death Wish to Kill Bill to Gran Torino). When the authorities fail, when anarchy rules—even briefly—just how long are we expected to turn our cheeks and accept injustice?

Some of your haiku this week dealt with the theme on this spiritual/moral level. Becca reminds us just how much it must suck to have one's soul hoovered out of one's body, doomed to roam the earth with the same endless thirst. (I think I finally figured out why vamp lit is so popular these days—aren't we all similar victims of succubus governments and their corporate lackeys, so drained dry of any purpose and meaning that all we can do is mindlessly consume?)

Karl ponders both the satisfaction and the devastation that can result from taking matters into one's own hands. I'm still not clear on what it is exactly that Karl does for a living but I sleep better at night knowing he's out there, somewhere, doing his Karl thing.

Then there's Aunty, who tongue-in-cheekily asserts that, why, no, y'all, Aunty DON'T sweat. While her contemporaries undulate their sculpted abs in an endless series of beach volleyball games, Aunty lounges smartly beneath a wide sunbrella, a blonde Elizabeth Taylor flashing her baby blues or greens or browns and just a bit of delicate ankle wrapped in a K. Jacques sandal strap. Go ahead. Thumb your nose at the jocks, eat the chocolate, and work it off in the garden.

Fishy contemplated the meaning of Vengeance is Mine, Sayeth the Lord. No, not a commandment. Otherwise, on the eighth day God would not have created Smith & Wesson.

Serendipity presented two crack 'ku's about natural vengeance, reminding us that the last thing anyone wants to see when they wake up in the morning is the aftermath of a pissed-off bear.

Curm reminded us that nature—wrathful or regenerative—will always have the last word.

Speaking of which, Czar's smack-down of naysayer English teachers is pretty darn funny if you know that he just finished what is probably the world's first—and likely last—copy edit of the online book version of James Joyce's Ulysses. I think he should go out and celebrate by getting drunk on Irish Whiskey. Right now.

Rafe, one of HM's most gleeful wordsmiths, gave us a few things to ponder about the nature of one straw too many piled on a back. He also managed to work in a beloved Italian American cuss-out, which I think I will adopt as my personal credo for the rest of the week.

And I couldn't help but laugh at Foam's entry this week, either the perfect evocation of Zen acceptance or Gen X slackertude ("Dude, I can't be bothered to get off the sofa to put a cap in your ass, but believe me, if I could do it with a look, I would"). Either way, it's funny.

As is Blazng's. Who hasn't been that girl? Or wanted to be? Which is why I give her the win for this week:

Hell hath no fury!
A gas tank full of salt; cure!
Vengeance can be sweet.

It grabbed me from the get-go, with it's clever play on "salt cure," the juxtaposition between bitter and sweet, the way she qualifies the satisfaction in the last line—vengeance can be sweet, rather than vengeance is so sweet.

Nicely done, girl. Snag your badge and let us know if you're up for hosting next week.

Thanks again for playing, everyone!

Friday, July 13, 2012

Haiku Monday: You Talkin' to Me?

Earlier this week Ms. Serendipity got it into her head to award me the win for her Haiku Monday challenge and so here I am, posting this week's challenge.

I admit it. I've been a slacker blogger lately. It's not that I don't have anything to talk about, bitch about, or rave about, it's just that I'm so busy with so many projects that when I do have down time, I'm . . . sleeping. Or running. Or planning intricate ways in which to sabotage the vehicle of the twerpy tween who pulled her stupid car in through the out door at the mall the other day, thus forcing me to stand my vehicular ground while she backed up, screaming curses and flipping me the bird all the while.

Honestly, is THIS what parents are teaching their kids today? To do whatever the hell they please regardless of the actual and metaphorical arrows pointing them in life's right direction and then throwing temper tantrums when they don't get their way? Had I had my gun with me, I most likely would have shot her tires out, I was that mad.

Anyway.

Regarding my blogger slackitude: It's nothing personal. I adore each and every one of you who drops by my little corner of the virtual universe and miss those wild and wacky days of furious back-and-forth-ing. Is this a case of all good things must come to an end, or just a bit of a lull?

I don't know.

What I do know is, right now? I have a topic for this week's Haiku Monday contest.

Give me your two or three best 5-7-5's that in some way—directly or indirectly—deal with the theme of:

VENGEANCE

Post here. You'll have until midnight EST on Monday, July 16th to do so.

Monday, July 9, 2012

Haiku Monday: SKULL

Severed, scoured, bleached,
cranial cradle rebirthed—
cliched home décor.

* * * 

This week's competition is being hosted over at the incomparable Serendipity's place.

Wednesday, July 4, 2012

Happy Fourth of July

Get pissed. Stay pissed. It's the only way to ensure your freedom.

Monday, July 2, 2012

Haiku Monday: ECOSYSTEM


Evolution’s creed—
Adapt or Die—matters not.
Helios laughs last.

* * * 

Ms. Fishy is hosting this most excellent theme over at her Pond today.