Listen to the Silent Flute

Hear it?

The Way I See It

The way I see it
Every vice
Has its price
Every view
Forms a queue
Where you get stuck
Behind some shmuck
Who turns your position prized
Into trash to be despised

The way I see it
Every fish
Has just one wish
To throw the book
At guys with hooks
But the lawyers drown
And the fish go down
To lay their eggs
In the beer man’s kegs

At least, that’s the way I see it

------------------------------

Credit for the one who made it

This is not a poem that I wrote at home

but I cut and paste with criminal haste
so please forgive this poor adlib

Monkey in the Box

There is a whole world out there
A place where things mostly go right
Or at least they go all right
Just these past few days
I have seen children fed and cared for
Lonely people comforted
And felt a lover’s embrace

All right, so everything is not perfect
Life can be disappointing and cruel
But that mostly comes from giving in
To our private monkey minds
But the monkey in that box
Keep screeching about fear and hate
Using bold declarative statements
Broadcasting worst case scenarios
In primetime and during our downtime

Don’t let the monkey in the box
The self-declared minister of silly walks
Cast a veil of darkness over your eyes
To block your view of the world
It’s your world, your life
Take your monkey for a walk
Let the box squawk
While you see that life is all right
All right?

---------------------

Credits: Collage and Poetry by Monkey Boy

By this time tomorrow

By this time tomorrow

We will be strangers
Things will be simple
No need for big pictures
Heroes will be worshipped

By this time tomorrow

Royalty will be common
Creatures will be habits
Results will never vary
Difficulties may be technical

By this time tomorrow
We will be strangers

-----------------------

Credits: Jay Collage, Poetry Larsen

Your Storied Past

Duplicates should never get inserted
Into the database
But when the foreign keys are disabled
And the load balancer is overwhelmed
Comparisons get frozen
Errors do not get logged
New components get installed
Without rollback procedures
And a full shutdown of the system
Becomes an unavoidable necessity

Your storied past comes crashing down
Like a leaded chandelier
In the cantina of a spaghetti western
On the head of your beloved
Just as the villain walks through the doors
Cigar hanging from his sneering lips
Six-guns still smoking in his hands
He has eyes only for you

Reboot…Reboot…

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Credits: Poetry and Collage by Jay Larsen

A DC Story

The people wanted change.

So George had to go home.

And now Obama Runs DC.

He just needs a Jammaster Jay...

Youmethem

Never run from the scene of a gun
Always stare down the barrel of a crime
Pray that your astronauts never return
On reentry cheer as they burn
Don’t run from the dark frightening place
Where gods and demons fret and pace
You might think that those others
Including pretentious pricks like me
Are nothing at all like you can be
But the victims of your crimes
Are none other than yourself
Despite appearances and varying hues
They cannot be separate
From you
Or them
Or me
You are the victim, the gun and the crime
You are the perp, the dirt and the grime
You are the astronaut who never left home
You are the dog, his house and the bone
Like it or not
You’re the cold and the hot
You and me and them
The whole lot
--------------------------
Credits: Poetry and Collage by Jay Larsen and You and Them (those pretentious pricks!)

Be whole...

Shoot! I keep forgetting to blog.

Events conspire to fill my hours and before I know it, the day is done. And I just want to go home. So here are some random images with no meaning whatsoever implied or overt on my part. Although the people who created the images must have had something in mind...

It's Morning in America

Waiting for the Inauguration.

Jay Larsen

Sent from my Windows Mobile phone

Inaugural Day

It is Inaugural Day

A new day

A new beginning

Every day is

A new chance to say "Yum" instead of "Yuck"

A new chance to open our hands instead of making a fist

A new chance to express our best intentions

A new chance to act on behalf of others

Every day is inaugural day

Every day we get this chance

To ask, What Now?

But some days it is easier to remember

That today is inaugural day

A new day

--------------------------

Congratulations to the Obamas and America!

Love and Peace

-- Jay

Back Page Dojo

Show me your Dim Mak technique
Dance your Pon Far dance
Sing that one song
The one hit
That poison pill
You have chained your life to

Turning to another page
The bleeding three color print
Can’t help but kick sand
In my face
As it rubs off on finger tips
During futile manual procedures

So show me your Dim Mak
Dance Pon Far dance
Sing your petulant song
Your techniques could easily kill
But they won’t
For these are comic books
---------------------------------
Credits: Poetry and Collage by Jay Larsen
For Steve, Petula, Mike and all my Bollywood friends

Somethings Souldn't Go Together

But I couldn't help my self.

The Hallucinations Have Started

A Devil Duck is living in the ornamental fountain at the office. What does that portend?

Jay Larsen

Sent from my Windows Mobile phone

Why Are Spock's Eyes Taped Shut?

You have to click on the picture to see it full size (if you do click the picture you will experience a visual distortion where the image seems to reload in your visual cortex in a much larger version--Doctors describe this phenomenon as "trippy").
But apparently, The Boston Globe wanted us all to know how to induce hallucinations with ping pong balls, tape, and a radio tuned to static. If that doesn't work there are other methods.

But doesn't that look like Mr. Spock being tortured with unicorns and rainbows?

"Must maintain Vulcan discipline...Must not have emotional thoughts about Kirk's butt!"

Hoping our small towns make it through the floods

My town may seem old fashioned
You might describe us as cute or quaint
You might think your city is modern
While our buildings have peeling paint
You might want to laugh and mock
When watching our manners and our ways
But that shortsightedness would not pay
Because my people know how to rock!
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Credits: Poetry by Jay Larsen

Photo of very enthusiastic polka dancers from an unknown source.

I should have this memorized by now

The floods in WA are huge. I5 is closed in Centralia for days. My road SR530 is still closed. They say it was the biggest flood in Arlington in 100 years.
We are all ok. No flooding at our house.
But the power just went out and PUD's office is on the other side of the river.
Nothing to do but wait for the river to go down. My boss and my customers are getting pissed that I am not in the office--35 miles and 2 rivers away from here.
We are in great shape compared to the 40000 people evacuated last night.
Good Luck Everybody...

Jay Larsen

Sent from my Windows Mobile phone

Listening To: Zune

Just to prove I can blog about topics that are not weather related.
I got a new MP3 player from my lovely wife for Christmas, a Zune.
So I have been going through my music collection and loading it up.

Here is a completely random list of artists I have been loving lately:
Kula Shaker- check out Persephone on the Strangefolk album, it sounds like the Beatles.
Stereophonics – You Gotta Go There To Come Back is a great album title, and Maybe Tommorow is a kick ass song.
Dogs Die in Hot Cars – Everything they do sounds like XTC, which is fine by me.
The Weepies – Three solid albums from this husband and wife duo so far. Love em.
God is an Astronaut – Two great favorites taste great together, like peanut butter and chocolate.
The Mountain Goats – Best lyrics honors go to Lovecraft in Brooklyn:

“And then the girl behind the counter asks "How do you feel today?" and I say "I feel like Lovecraft in Brooklyn!"

Rock On, Internetizens.
What have you been listening to?

Pawn of the Weather

Haven’t blogged much lately.
Mostly because I was on vacation and had more relaxing things to do.
But it seems like all my blog entries are about the weather lately.
Next I will be blogging about my healthcare issues…yuck.

Anyway, all that snow was humiliating—meaning it made me very aware of how small and fragile I am when compared to the size and might of the planet and its weather. As we got snowed in and all our technological systems failed one by one—roads gone, telephone out, internet gone, power dead, heat and water gone—the mighty human being and our civilization gets reduced to “Can I keep my family warm and fed for the next 24 hours?” Like I said, scary and humiliating in a way. But we made it through. Incredibly brave utility workers spent all those freezing days fixing poles and wires and digging out roads so that we could get the lights back on and the heat going. And we worked hard shoveling thousands of pounds of snow off our roof and our very long driveway. But things got back to normal for a couple of days.

Now the South Pacific has sent us a huge stream of warm air and 10-inches of rain. All that snow is melting and our rivers are flooding. I barely made it home today, one of the last cars to swim across the Stillaguamish River before they closed Highway 530 and all the other routes to our house. The water on the road was up to my car door, but I crawled slowly through it and back to my warm cozy house. (That is my road in the picture above. The picture below is about 20 minutes from my house.) The roads are now closed, the river is 3 feet over its banks and not expected to crest until sometime tomorrow (Thursday).

So once again I am reduced in my movements and options by the weather. But at least I don’t live in Orting, where they are evacuating the entire town today.