Turning Ten - Billy Collins

If you are like me, you can relate to this poem. I saw it in a book by Marcus Borg "The Heart of Christianity"

Here it is:

 

On Turning Ten

The whole idea of it makes me feel like I'm coming down with something, something worse than any stomach ache or the headaches I get from reading in bad light-- a kind of measles of the spirit, a mumps of the psyche, a disfiguring chicken pox of the soul. You tell me it is too early to be looking back, but that is because you have forgotten the perfect simplicity of being one and the beautiful complexity introduced by two. But I can lie on my bed and remember every digit. At four I was an Arabian wizard. I could make myself invisible by drinking a glass of milk a certain way. At seven I was a soldier, at nine a prince. But now I am mostly at the window watching the late afternoon light. Back then it never fell so solemnly against the side of my tree house, and my bicycle never leaned against the garage as it does today, all the dark blue speed drained out of it. This is the beginning of sadness, I say to myself, as I walk through the universe in my sneakers. It is time to say good-bye to my imaginary friends, time to turn the first big number. It seems only yesterday I used to believe there was nothing under my skin but light. If you cut me I could shine. But now when I fall upon the sidewalks of life, I skin my knees. I bleed.

--
RMSTringer
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Weekend Bike Ride...

Yesterday we rode Lakeview 1&2 again and ended up with 12.45 miles total. After the ride, my legs were destroyed!  My calf muscles and quads are sore as well as my knees.  It was the perfect temp for a ride as it was about 45 degrees.

Have a good evening…

 

RMStringer

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

You have no conscience and it seems you never will - Cyberaktif

 

Humans – Chock Full of Vitamins and Other Essential Nutrients

Thanks to Mac for letting me post this!

Humans – Chock Full of Vitamins and Other Essential Nutrients

In Hawaii a tiger took a walk on the mild side last week, escaping its catdominium and strolling around the human parts of the zoo, checking out the sights, maybe taking a few snapshots, and looking for a snack.

This follows another escape by a tiger in a San Francisco zoo on Christmas Day, a back-to-nature event in which one man was killed near a snack bar. One imagines the survivors running and screaming in fear while text-messaging on their cell 'phones and chugging bottled water.

And then the souvenirs: "I Survived the San Francisco Tiger Massacre" and "My Parents Watched a Guy Get Eaten by a Tiger and All I Got Was This Lousy tee-shirt."

Many people question how big cats can escape their enclosure, but the real question should be why cats bother to do so. In the zoo tigers spend their days lying around in the sun while being given free medical care, free housing, and free food according to their dietary wants and needs, and occasionally eating some of their benefactors. Give them a holy book they can't even read and their lives would be pretty much complete. The reader may now deconstruct the metaphor for himself.

Hundreds of television viewers hundred of miles from any zoo are probably filing disability claims, suffering from post traumatic stress syndrome involving nightcats, and thus unable to work. O Lord, send Thy grief counselors among us.

What, exactly, is a grief counselor? Is that what we used to call a busy-body?

The smart tiger will lurk at the updated watering hole, the bottled-water machine, waiting for its thirsty prey.

Unfortunately, PETA members are out of their cages too, terribly concerned lest Fluffy suffer from a human femur caught in his throat.

A house-cat is a tiger writ small, insolent and carnivorous, lounging on the windowsill and dreaming of killing mice and birds, and through its heavy-lidded eyes perhaps measuring its human companion and pondering the nutritive possibilities. To a pussycat the living room is the African veldt, and the cat's pet human little more than a large, munchable monkey with opposable thumbs.

Sure your kitty purrs when you stroke his chin; he's fantasizing about eating you.

Human – it's what's for dinner.

Even harmless-looking animals on the loose are dangerous; an innocent zoo visitor could be trampled to death by sheep stampeding to some presidential candidate's rally.

And then the snakes – they might escape to become editors at The New York Times, swallowing whole the few remaining specimens of another endangered species, real reporters.

-30-

Let's see -- our electoral choices are:

1. Mrs. Macbeth and her geezer-thug-lecher baggage.
2. The Messiah-Fuhrer and his Fuhrer-ess.
3. Another middle-aged guy from Hope, Arkansas who waves a big ol' Bible around, thinks he's a musician, and eats squirrels.
4. The war hero who in his old age is one medication error away from screaming obscenities at the furniture, said furniture including his embalmed wife.

Um...no.

---

Delicious ideas to please the pickiest eaters. Watch the video on AOL Living.

A Good Blog: Fauni Gena

If you are a lover of Ambient Music like I am, this is a good Blog to go and read reviews about different artists that are in that genre. 

With artist like Vidna Obmana & Asmus Tietchens, Steve Reich, Brian Eno, just to name a few!  Go and look at the Blog.

 

 

RMStringer

+++++++++++++++++++++++

"We are all geniuses when we dream"

- E.M. Cioran

 

Metallica - Fade to Black

It is my favorite track from them and perhaps one of the best songs that Metallica ever wrote. It shoes what diverse musicians and how skillfully they are. They were good on this track.

Time - Pink Floyd

This came from the Delicate Sound Of Thunder album. It was a live 2 disc set that came after A Momentary Lapse Of Reason album.

Pink Floyd - Comfortably Numb (The Wall)

Just am incredible song to be seen live! I saw them preform it in 1994 at Houston Texas, Rice University. I used to watch The Wall all the time at college.

[Flickr] Schmap: Richmond Photo Short-list

One of my pics from Christmas was chosen as a finalist pic for the Schmap Richmond Guide. I hope that they use it!!  Wish me luck!!

You've been sent a Flickr Mail from Emma J. Williams:

------------------------------------------------------------

:: Schmap: Richmond Photo Short-list


Hi Robert,

I am writing to let you know that one of your photos has
been short-listed for inclusion in the fourth edition of
our Schmap Richmond Guide, to be published at the end of
this month.

--
RMSTringer
+++++++++++++++

Don't Let Congress Ruin the Internet

Dear Friend,

The Internet Freedom Preservation Act of 2008 (HR 5353). This important, bipartisan legislation protects the free-flowing Internet from blocking, censorship and discrimination by powerful phone and cable companies.

Big phone and cable companies are trying to get rid of Net Neutrality, the fundamental principle that prevents them from discriminating against your favorite Web sites and services.

Unless we speak out to our members of Congress, they could move to allow large telephone and cable companies to control what you do, where you go and what you watch online.

Visit the URL below to learn more about what's at stake and send a loud message directly to Congress:

https://secure2.convio.net/free/site/Advocacy?id=241
To take action on this issue, click on the link below:
https://secure2.convio.net/free/site/Advocacy?s_oo=NmNaeAcP-ZOpkKpP_YlcKQ..&id=241
If the text above does not appear as a link or it wraps across multiple lines, then copy and paste it into the address area of your browser.

A recap of the last few weeks...

It has been a long week here for us. Wife has been away for business and i have been minding the house. Chel and I have gone to the gym several time and have had a good time. We are now eagerly awaiting her return. We were worried that she would not be able to fly home tonight due to the bad weather but she had no problems!

I have taken a part-time job at the place where i work. I am doing data cabling for a company called Archura. The do most of the fiber and Cat6 at the server farm. They have been great in working with my schedule.

It has been really nasty weather here the last few days and Chel hoped for a 2-hour delay in school but did not get it. We just have not been hit with an great amount of snow or ice this year. The weather man said that we will be in a very cold pattern till the end of the month, perhaps there is still time for a Winter Storm!

I have been reading lots of book this year. I finished a book called Blackwater and then i started a book called Blasphemy which i finished it Wednesday. Several years ago, i read a book by an author named John Twelve Hawks. The book was called The Traveler. I was in my "library" the other night and i saw the book and wondered if he had a new novel. I looked it up and found his newest one which i went and purchased yesterday. It is called The Dark River, the second of three novels in the Fourth Realm Trilogy I have not started it yet and perhaps i will read it next week.

I am going to ride sometime this weekend, just not sure when it will happen...

What is your opinion?
Blogroll Me!

Thought for today...

Faith is what you turn to when knowledge runs out. Even more strongly, faith is what you need when beliefs and knowledge conflict.
pg29 'The Heart of Christianity' 2003 Marcus J. Borg

Posted via my LGVX8600 phone.