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Overcast ~ High: 62°F ~ Low: 39°F Wednesday, Feb. 22, 2012 |
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Ain't love grand?
Posted Monday, February 20, at 9:22 PM The phone rang early Valentine's Day morning, bringing down a long-distance call from a friend in a panic -- the latest installment in an ongoing melodrama that seems to have no end. I was called, I suppose, as I seem to be all too often -- the voice of reason drafted to try and talk everybody through the chaos...
Calling it an incomplete It took Jerry Seinfeld to show me what bothered me most about the Super Bowl. Sure, it was wonderful the big game brought millions of dollars and almost as many people to Indianapolis, more so because a Manning -- even if it couldn't be Peyton this time around, or maybe ever again -- took home a championship ring...
Don't politicize survival I walked into Mass that Sunday morning, crossed myself with Holy Water, sat down in the same pew my family'd occupied for decades and set about praying as hard as I ever have. I was aiming for divine intervention that morning, praying hard for a benign prognosis for her. We needed it. God knows how much...
'The truth is not in many of them' "They call it America, and they call it civilization, and they call it television, and they believe in it and salute it and sing songs to it and eat and sleep and die still believing in it, and - and - I don't know," Gram Parsons said, taking another drag." Then sometimes the Mets come along and win the World Series." - Bill Janowitz...
What a long, strange trip it's been In about 90 days, there'll be a party with the people I've known most of my life: The 25-year reunion of Bloomfield's Class of 1987. At the end of April, we'll gather -- those of us who can make it, at least -- over Pizza King shipped in specially, just like we had back in the day...
What so proudly we hailed? It began its life as an immigrant song -- specifically, a refitted British drinking tune, "To Anacreon in Heaven," once best suited to raising a glass of gin. Humble beginnings, to be sure -- a fraternity's clarion call to the social hour only ennobled and elevated once a lawyer and amateur poet, Francis Scott Key, set his verse "Defense of Fort McHenry" to the music...
Roadside assistance brings home a friend It was a warm November evening when I dug a grave in that Tennessee backyard, some seven years ago. My girlfriend kept solemn watch on the body under the tarp. We'd hoped to hold off on the job until morning, but the sorrowful eyes of the sole survivor, sadly keeping vigil over his lost friend, convinced us otherwise...
'I just believe in making changes' "The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there." - L.P. Hartley, "The Go-Between." The New Year was edging its way in as the week after Christmas wore down, grinding by, somehow longer than usual despite a day off. A certain girl, rife with an idealism almost alien to me these days, asked me what resolution I made for next year...
He ain't heavy; he's my brother... I woke up, a child asleep in Snoopy sheets, to a miracle of sorts, one warm and early Christmas morning in 1974. Looking up into the faces of my grandparents, aunts and uncles, I was confused. Any kid would be, I suppose -- duly disoriented by the moments I'd missed as my Mom and Dad rushed to the hospital while I lay sleeping...
Your friends are a blessing The fault lies with Spider-Man, or maybe Snoopy. They were the first ones I remember who instilled that blessed and blasted illusion about Christmas in my preschooler's mind, that wondrous and all-too-often false idea people truly change this sacred season -- that a bittersweet world's more rife with possibility...
We all shine on... Strummed softly, the guitar doesn't strike every note perfectly. Nor does his ragged voice, choked slightly with cigarette smoke. It sounds like it's being played around 4 a.m., amid some long, dark night of the soul. Maybe it's just done with the urgency of a mortal man acting as a conduit for something greater, some signal only he's attuned to, an errant muse transmitting out there in the ether...
Godspeed you home, inadvertent prom queen... "You loved a life others throw away nightly, and it's not fair -- not fair at all. So what's good?" -Lou Reed Some nights, technology brings down a sucker punch. An idle visit to the Facebook page of a long-distance friend you've neglected too long can break your heart, once you see how much this cold old world's lost...
Assault and pepper is a hard thing to swallow "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." - John F. Kennedy The campus cop dispensed the pepper spray into the faces idly, dispassionately -- almost as if he were some bored florist applying herbicide to a crop of weeds...
Whom so proudly we hailed... In the parade's aftermath, the tiny American flag lay in the street on Veteran's Day, its support stick snapped, among the leaves in a Terre Haute gutter. A few hundred passerby shuffled past it, and some even stepped on it -- a polyester standard not intentionally discarded or diminished, but simply ignored...
We might close, but we're not allowed to doze... The phone rang at 4:15 a.m., and my hand shot out, snatching it up to answer it before I was even awake. A groggy headache and the stiffness in my neck argued three hours of sleep wasn't nearly enough to get me by. Still, somewhere, down deep, logic kicked in and I presumed anybody calling that early would be family, or at least a close friend. The news, I knew, had to be bad...
It's the end of the world as we know it "There's lots of room for you on the bandwagon, The road may be rough, the weather may forget us But won't we all parade around and sing our songs, a magic kingdom, open-armed..." Bandwagon They broke every rule that mattered for a band making their first nationwide TV appearance...
Don't believe the hype "Year by year, all sense disappears/Nonsense perseveres, prayers laced with fear ... People don't even own themselves/Paying mental rent to corporate presidents ... one out of one million residents/Be a dissident, who ain't kissin' it." - Public Enemy...
An early cold shot reminds us winter's coming I'm not remotely a winter person. While still a good distance away on the actual calendar, that dumb brute of a season came down hard and early this week with an unexpected preview. Cold winds and sticky rains cut like a scythe through two layers of parka and sweater, bitterly reminding me summer's now ancient history...
'We have met the enemy, and he is us' Halloween's approaching. Perhaps by our scares, the world will know us. Example? In 1979, when I was 10 years old (and already a dyed-in-the-wool horror movie fanatic) "Dawn of the Dead" obsessed me. It was forbidden fruit, a zombie movie allegedly so gruesome and horrific it was rated X for violence...
Keeping the safety on... "What's a boy supposed to do? The killer in me is the killer in you ..." - The Smashing Pumpkins, "Disarm." When I heard the glass break downstairs -- the night I came close to shooting someone -- I was sprawled, half-asleep, across my bed. Jeans on, shoes and T-shirt off, I was semi-conscious around 2 a.m., groggy in the midst of a sweltering summer the air-conditioner couldn't entirely combat...
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Against The Wind  - Blog RSS feed ![[Feed icon]](http://www.gcdailyworld.com/images/icons/feed-icon-14x14.png){kind=icon} - Comments RSS feed - Send email to By Mark Stalcup - Login Hot topics Calling it an incomplete(12 ~ 6:12 PM, Feb 21)
Ain't love grand?
Don't politicize survival
'The truth is not in many of them'
What a long, strange trip it's been
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