I love songs that have a bonus verse. That is my term for songs that slow down so much that you think the song is over… but wait no… there’s more! Just when you had come to accept that the song was indeed ending you get an extra verse! It’s kinda like a bonus track, but without all of the dead air and waiting. I like my suprises instant gratification style. I am thinking about the bonus verse because Madonna’s Live to Tell just came on my iPod and right around 3:30 it slows down to almost nothing… and I was like… wow, I forgot how much I like that song… but Madonna had more she needed to bring to bear on the situation. More than any mere 3:30 minute song could handle. 2 full minutes more to be precise.

I ran away… I never had the strength to go very far…

While we are on the topic, Outkast’s “Aquemini”, on the album of the same name, is a rare hip-hop song that has a bonus verse (somewhere around 3:18).

I accidentally washed (and dried) my camera today… the little guy was no match for the double load spin cycle. When I opened the dryer I saw the memory card and was like… “no I didn’t…” and then after removing a pair of jeans I came to the realization that “yes… indeed I did.”

You’ll be happy to know that the battery and memory card managed to somehow eject themselves from the camera… I won’t know if the memory card survived until I get it to someone’s card reader.

I love the idea of passing through the exact center of your life - that there might be the faintest sensation…

And much thanks to Luke who gave me Nine Horses, which contains the poem below.

Tipping Point
By Billy Collins

At home, the jazz station plays all day,
so sometimes it becomes indistinct,
like the sound of rain,
birds in the background, the surf of traffic.

But today I heard a voice announce
that Eric Dolphy, 36 when he died,
has now been dead for 36 years.

I wonder—
did anyone sense something
when another Eric Dolphy lifetime
was added to the span of his life,

when we all took another
full Dolphy step forward in time,
flipped over the Eric Dolphy yardstick once again?

It would have been so subtle—
like the sensation you might feel
as you passed through the moment

at the exact center of your life
or as you crossed the equator at night in a boat.

I never gave it another thought,
but could that have been the little shift
I sensed a while ago
as I walked down in the rain to get the mail?

“Once you go Rican, you stop seekin’.”

“Once you go Dominican, well… then you go black.”

- 15 year old, West Village, NYC

The sun is filled wtih ice and gives no warmth at all
The sky was never blue
The stars are raindrops searching for a place to fall
And I never cared for you.

I Never Cared For You from the album Teatro

I finally found an online calendar that works the way I do. Freak-ing fantastic. I am sold. I feel terrible for 30Boxes. They got out of the gate just in enough time to get steamrolled by Google. Let’s hope that someone buys them for their technology - and fast - because they won’t be around for much longer.

Update:

I am elevating Narendra’s thoughts from the comments. Narendra is the principal of 83 Degrees, the company that developed 30Boxes.

“If I were you, I would add your gcal feed to your 30boxes account so your buddies can stay up to date. 30boxes is a social network and you really shouldn’t feel sorry for us, we are going to be around for a long long time.”

Perhaps my words were too strong, but I do think that 30Boxes is up for a challenge. It’ll be interesting too see the innovation in the space over the coming months.

For Bartleby The Scrivener
By Billy Collins

“Every time we get a big gale around here
some people just refuse to batten down.”

we estimate that

ice skating into a sixty
mile an hour wind, fully exerting
the legs and swinging arms

you will be pushed backward
an inch every twenty minutes.

in a few days, depending on
the size of the lake,
the backs of your skates
will touch land.

you will then fall on your ass
and be blown into the forest.

if you gather enough speed
by flapping your arms
and keeping your skates pointed

you will catch up to other
flying people who refused to batten down.
you will exchange knowing waves
as you ride the great wind north.

Steady Now
by Eamon Grennan

Although things vanish, are what mark our vanishing,
We still hold on to them–ballast against the updraft
of oblivion–as I hold on to this umbrella in a world of rain,

of heavy wet greens and grays dissolving into a new
atmosphere, a sort of underwater dulled electric glow
off everything, the air itself drowning in it, breath

thickening, growing mold. Yesterday I felt the smell
of grass greeting me across a great distance, trying
to tell me some good thing in an underglaze of memory,

some forgotten summer trying to speak its piece. It is
the way of things and it never stops, never calls a halt–
this knocking and dismantling, this uprooting, cutting out

and digging down, so tall oaks and honey locusts are
laid low and drop to the earth like felled cattle, shaking
the ground we’ve taken a stand on as if it were a steady

establishment, a rock of ages to outface ruin itself, not
the provisional slippery dissolving dissolute thing it is–
which we have against all the evidence set our hearts on.

Reminds me of Dunn’s The Vanishings

I just had the fastest shopping experience of my life. I stopped by the local Bannana Republic to check out their jean selection. As I scanned the shelves I quickly noticed that they didn’t seem to have my size in stock. Experience tells me that I am most always a 38, but at BR they never fit and I have to take a 40. Now, I am not a small man, but I am not a giant or extremely obese (just big bone-ded). I turned to the smiling jeans assistant and asked if they had any 40s in the back. “We don’t carry that size,” she said.

When did 40 become a plus size so large that a store need not stock it? When did I become an edge case, not profitable enough to warrant consideration?

As I left I saw a lovely spring jacket and, as luck would have it, it was in my size (read: XL). I pulled it off the rack, but as I slipped it on I quickly realized that it wasn’t going to fit. And by not fit, I don’t mean tighter than I would like, I mean my arms fit into the sleeves but that was as far as our relationship would ever get. It looked as if I was attempting to wear a girlfriend’s jacket. The smiling jeans assistant (who was now playing the role of jacket assistant) looked pained as I attempted to remove my arms from the sleeves. I saved myself further embarrasment by not asking if the jacket was mis-labeled.

With all this talk of the U.S. obesity problem it is amazing to me that, at least at the BR, clothes are getting smaller. XL literally ain’t what it used to be. I was amazed at the number of smalls and mediums on the rack (probably because very few people are actually that size anymore). And those that were labeled my size were not [insert your own joke about Mike not realizing that he is getting fatter as he gets older].

You said “Let me tell you the song of this town, is that everything closes at five. After that, well, you just got the bars.”

Dar Williams and John Hiatt - The Ocean

Google has been doing April Fool’s jokes for awhile, but with their scope of business expanding in nearly every direction, I wouldn’t be surprised if they decided to run with Google Romance (complete with context-sensitive, ad-supported dates) in the future.