(The quoted text is excerpted from old dog Elvis Costello's review of slightly older dog Paul Simon's new album; I'm sneaking the title track [along with lyrics] into this post)

"The trick, as I know it, is to care like hell and not give a damn at the same time or as more elegantly proposed here; So Beautiful Or So What."

I'm gonna make a chicken gumbo
Toss some sausage in the pot
I'm gonna flavor it with okra
Cayenne pepper to make it hot
You know life is what we make of it
So beautiful or so what
I'm gonna tell my kids a bedtime story
A play without a plot
Will it have a happy ending?
Maybe yeah, Maybe not
I tell them life is what you make of it
So beautiful or so what
So beautiful, so beautiful
So what

I'm just a raindrop in a bucket
A coin in a slot
I am an empty house on Weed Street
Across the road from a vacant lot
You know life is what you make of it
So beautiful or so what

Aint it strange the way we're ignorant
How we seek out bad advice
How we jigger it and figure it
Mistaking value for the price
And play a game with time and Love
Like a pair of rolling dice
So beautiful, so beautiful
So what

Four men on the balcony
Overlooking the parking lot
Pointing at a figure in the distance
Dr. King has just been shot
And the sirens long melody
Singing savior pass me not
Aint it strange the way we're ignorant
How we seek out bad advice
How we jigger it and figure it
Mistaking value for the price
And play a game with time and love
Like a pair of rolling dice
So beautiful, so beautiful
So what

"These...songs refuse to despair, despite the evidence all around us. So Beautiful Or So What rejects the allure of fashionable darkness and the hypnosis of ignorance - better to contemplate and celebrate the endurance of the spirit and the persistence of love."

Right on, Elvis. Whoever said you can't teach old dogs new tricks forgot one thing: Being an Old Dog IS a new trick; and a tricky new trick at that.

...and so pedaling to work! Today will make twice in this first week back in the saddle.

Oh yeah and this year I'm gonna poast some pics of the commute; can't believe I haven't done that yet.

Until then, he's a picture of Kermit the frog on a bicycle. You should be on one too.

Y'all be good.

*dons old-timey flying goggles. salutes, and jumps out nearest window.*

Pre Rock Pop Slathered in Latter Day Trip Hop

...not a bad combination.

Life is like a vacuum cleaner; the attachments suck.

She surprised him one day on a walk, saying the way she did, "Ahm my own woman, I aint 'fraida no ghosts."

As they strolled he thought about what she'd said and decided he believed her. In the dappled sun he felt certain that if they held fast and fought together, they would defeat the unseen foe; that the very exposure of the wild thing would return it to the dust from whence it came. And then they could sneeze and laugh and walk home together.

But the sun disappeared behind a cloud, that day. And a strange stirring beset around them just as the breeze vanished. He held her then, and sang a song to calm her, but he felt her heart flutter and knew.

In one hand she'd held their love; in the other, the world. Weighty, and when she placed them at opposite ends, the scale itself had broken.

She kissed him desperately one last time, then ran into the wood where she was eaten by the monster.

The wind returned but not the sun and he walked home alone, not laughing.

The End

"You asked me why I quit the Movement. I had a lot of good reasons. One was myself, and another was my comrades, and the last was the breed of swine called men in general. For myself, I was forced to admit, at the end of thirty years' devotion to the Cause, that I was never made for it. I was born condemned to be one of those who has to see all sides of a question. When you're damned like that, the questions multiply for you until in the end it's all question and no answer. As history proves, to be a worldly success at anything, especially revolution, you have to wear blinders like a horse and see only straight in front of you. You have to see, too, that this is all black, and that is all white. As for my comrades in the Great Cause, I felt as Horace Walpole did about England, that he could love it if it weren't for the people in it. The material the ideal free society must be constructed from is men themselves and you can't build a marble temple out of a mixture of mud and manure. When man's soul isn't a sow's ear, it will be time enough to dream of silk purses."

~
The character Larry Slade (ex-anarchist) in Eugene O'Neill's - "The Iceman Cometh"

that cat scratched you, boy
she watched infinity on TV, looked up
and you believed her
she tied your hands, stole your speech
plowed you under
and blind, groping for your place in line

cat turned tail on a dime
purring "a pity you hate your world"
while by licking
and sticking hot flowers on windows
she decorates hers

there you are, little boy
left stunned still in the snow
your speechless drunken prayers failing, falling
freezing down

yeah, that cat gave you fever
and this is the chill

For obvious reasons I don't normally go for audio posts BECAUSE WHO WANTS THAT

but so anyway this acoustic rock band, America, was huge in the early 70s; after suffering the usual burnout, the old boys returned in 2008 with an album called Here & Now that hit all the right notes. Here's a song from that album. The lyrics (don't wanna be building walls, cause everything rising falls) are nothing short of classic.  And the mournful slide guitar underwritten by workaday backbeat...well, it's about love and leaving and it applies to pretty much everything and I hear it loud and clear. If you don't...stick around.

Pictures from my summer '09 trike tour. Some green to remind.

<3 -phil

Thank you. And now, without further comment, I present the following for your weekend enjoyment: