homestar runner. downloading music. harry potter. lemony snicket. project runway. no desire for a iPod (i can’t stand headphones of any sort, never have). don’t like comic books. hate text messaging. don’t use the camera on my cameraphone.

i don’t do any of these things. tried most of em and found them dull.

when i think about all of these things i don’t do, or won’t do, or could care less about one way or the other, i begin to see where some of my detachment from the slam community is rooted…i am beginning, through age and lack of interest, to have little connection to the cultural underpinnings of a lot of people.

it’s not that slam poets don’t aim for the universal. many of them do. it’s just that the launching pad they blast off from is very different from mine. the references, symbols, etc. don’t hold my attention because i am dismissive of them, because they either mean nothing to me or i actively dislike them.

my problem to solve, mostly; but i think i will just resign myself to letting my work be my work and find its own audience without worrying about this too much. and if a good poem mentions strongbad, so be it.

i’m somewhat better — still achy, but the fever’s passed; still coughing but no more blood.

still can’t do most simple exertion, including talking, without coughing. and going into the cold air outdoors? like sticking a knife in me.

but gimme two more days and i’ll be golden. i know me and how i heal.

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i have been listening to the discussions about Ariel Sharon a lot these past few days.

i recall a time when he was vilified as a butcher for massacres in Lebanon.

i am thinking of Yasser Arafat, Anwar Sadat, Henry Kissinger, Richard Nixon, Menachem Begin, and various Nobel Peace Prizes.

did you know that Mohandas Gandhi was rejected for a Nobel by the Prize Committee because his career had shown shifts and turns and inconsistencies?

funny about humans. you can always count on them to be human, by which i mean that they are made of contradictions. and you can also count on this fact: that those contradictions will be recalled when recall is useful, ignored when ignorance is useful.

i live.

and i think i’m better. a little. just woke up so it’ll take some moving around to be sure.

The MC5 by themselves might clear my sickened body.

Keeping my fingers crossed for Stooges next. Or Pere Ubu’s “Non-Alignment Pact.”

And yet, “Johny Hit And Run Pauline” by X shall work as well.

Purrrrrrrrrrr…

ETA: HOLIDAY IN CAMBODIA!!!!!!