Our Zelda's Inferno exercise: write a poem from the POV of a historical, fictional, or mythological character. I starting thinking about the guy who picked the beans for my coffee...

I have heard that in America they
Drink coffee in the boardrooms of the big companies that own the world
And in the restaurants where one mean costs more than I make in a year
And in coffeehouses where musicians and poets meet

There is no music, no poetry, here in the fields
Just the sun, the soil, the rain
The aching backs of the workers
The thuggery of the bosses

Some posts of mine from a discussion over at Slashdot.

That wasn't the point of Joe's question. Joe stated he wanted to buy a business and hoped that his hard work would bring in more than 250K. Obama stated that he wanted to take that success and spread it to people that made less than Joe hoped to make with his business acquisition and hard work.

One very, very rarely makes an income of more than a quarter of a million dollars in a year solely through one's own hard work. One usually makes it by leaching, to some degree, off the hard work of others. (The exceptions are mostly matters of dumb luck - a superstar performer getting "discovered", for example.)

And the answer to the GP's question is, yes, Joe (who is not really a plumber, under city of Toledo regulations) would get a tax break even if he owned the business, as will the vast majority of small businesses, assuming an Obama victory and that his plan goes ahead pretty much as stated.

It's one thing to say you want to "tax the rich" to fund the government, it's another when you want to do it to give other people the money, i.e., "Spread the Wealth".

In our capitalist system, the government does a tremendous amount to help those who have wealth, get more. It's so basic to the system we rarely think about it, but how much concentration of wealth would there be without government-issued corporate charters, land and resource deeds, copyrights, and patents? Not to mention a reserve banking system that lets privately owned banks make money out of thin air, and an economic policy that uses the DJIA as a measure of economic success.

These government actions and policies are so successful at concentrating wealth that the top 20 percent own 90% of all financial wealth. And it stays in the family; the U.S. has lower intergenerational mobility than France, Germany, Sweden, Canada, Finland, Norway or Denmark

The small effects of progressive taxation and social spending - spreading around the wealth that other government policies helped concentrate - act as a (small and inadequate) governor on the machinery of state capitalism.

Now, I would rather get rid of that machinery entirely, but I think that unlikely, at least in the near term. If we're going to have it, I'm all for decreasing the power of the government to help the wealthy become wealthier by adding some negative feedback to the system.

I fell in love again last night. This time it was the girl at the tollbooth at the Fort McHenry tunnel. She was blond, hair bobbed just above the shoulders, a navy blue watch cap contrasting nicely with her orange safety vest. I could see this job wasn't her life ambition, she was working it for a greater purpose, and I wanted to know what it was, help her toward it. As she gave me my change from my $20 bill I saw a small tattoo on her forearm above her glove, I wanted to ask her about it, get a better look, but there were cars behind me...and so I moved on...

Friday, I went to the "Evening With an Angel on a Jazz Note" event for the Allison Fisher Memorial Fund. Allison was a middle school and high scholl classmate, who (I learned last year at our 20th reunion) died of breast cancer a decade ago. Also there were Alan Reese, our middle school English teacher, and old classmates Melissa Buis and Scott Winneki and Carol Gilpen. I'd seen Melissa and Carol last year at the reunion, and I see Alan around the Baltimore poetry scene, but I hadn't seen Scott since eighth grade...he's now a pediatrician! And Melissa, a professor. So we had a little mini-reunion...Alan brought some old photos, and Scott brought old yearbooks. And we reminisced about Allison.

Earlier this week, our good friend Joe Galitsky forwarded me a e-mail with a extract from Rob Brezsny's book "Pronoia is the Antidote for Paranoia". It was about "brag therapy":

Grab a good listener or a recording device, and boast extravagantly about yourself for at least 20 minutes. Expound in exhaustive detail why you're so wonderful and why the world would be a better place if everyone would just act more like you.

Don't be humble or cautious. Go too far. Heap extreme glory on yourself. Brazenly proclaim the fabulous qualities about you that no one has ever fully articulated or appreciated. Don't forget to extol the prodigious flaws and vices that make you so special.

So, we went for it. Here's mine:

Oh, sure, I can break concrete blocks with my bare hands. I can compose sonnets and haiku. I can write and sing and play songs, I can make fire dance, can get beautiful women to seduce me, can convince computers to do my biding, and can relieve aches and pains with my skillful touch.

But those aren't my real special powers.

A Lego version of Edward Hopper's Nighthawks at the Diner. Stonehenge with cigarette packs. Take a gander, and marvel.

Tonight's exercise: write about ancestry, both genealogical and metaphorical, and how it shapes your opinion/understanding of art.

Statistically, I'm sure that
somewhere in my great-great-great-umpity-great grandparents was a painter or sculptor
someone whose eyes and hands were connected to record their visions.

That gene didn't make it down to me.

From Lore Sjöberg's blog over at Wired, a look a what real-life dungeon exploration might look like:

February 20

After several days of travel we have reached the Dungeon, losing only one camel and three graduate students in the trek. One student was eaten by an owlbear, one was spirited away by pixies, and a third decided to get a job as a barista. We are hopeful that soon the priceless treasures of Appreh the Endless will soon be ours to mark carefully with index cards and put in storage.

Tonight's exercise: write about god(s).

When I was a kid, a good little Catholic boy (really! honestly!) I learned about God, "one God, the Father, almighty, creator of Heaven and Earth".

And when I was a kid, I spent a lot of time thinking about what I'd be when I grew up. You can't help that when you're a kid, every adult asks you. They have to figure out what box to put you in: future doctor, or future ditch-digger? When I thought about what I'd be as a adult, sometimes I thought about what my dad did for a living. I was learning that the way of the world was this: children grow up to be like their parents.

And if, then, god is the father, if we are children of god? What will we be when we grow up? Indeed, what are we right now? The children of birds are birds. The children of fish are fish. The children of lions are lions. What are the children of gods?

This is just beautiful, makes me feel maybe this crazy bunch of monkeys might just work it all out after all. Yves Rossy, a Swiss pilot, flew across the English Channel on his homemade, jet-propelled, personal "wing" aircraft. The thing looks like a real-life "Buzz Lightyear" jetpack.

Our exercise this week was to revise an old piece. This is based off of an exercise from back in June.

Why don't you have a nice cup of tea?

Why don't you have an SUV?
Why don't you have any idea what you want to be when you grow up?
Why don't you have your homework?
Why don't you have a pierced nipple?
Why don't you have a wife and two kids?
Why don't you have a Christmas tree?
Why don't you have a business suit?
Why don't you have a flat screen plasma TV?
Why don't you have an enemy?
Why don't you have an American flag pin?

Why don't you have a better idea?