The Predatory Wasp Of The Palisades Is Out To Get Us!

So I'm leaving for California on August 5th and I just realized 'Holy crap, that's pretty soon!' I also just found out that I won't be allowed to drive over 70mph for the whole trip. This whole thing will be ever-so-much fun. I'll just have to keep repeating to myself "I'll be in the same room as Ben Gibbard." And I was thinking the other day that I've been in the same room as three members of my harem so far! Anyways, I've been inspired today to list three of my pet peeves.
3 Pet Peeves:

1) Drivers of vehicles yielding to me when I'm crossing the street. Listen people, it's much easier and makes so much more sense for people to navigate around cars rather than cars navigating around people. I'm planning my movements based on the fact that you and your speed will remain constant, when you do not (however good the intention may be), everything is fucked. Whoever came up with the whole pedestrians-have-the-right-of-way thing should be dug up and shot, and then run over for good measure.

2) People who keep their hand on the door as they're entering a building even though I'm holding the door for them. You don't need to touch the door, I'm holding it for you, that's the whole point. There are two levels of this though, the people who do this but say thank you are much better than the fucksticks who do this and don't acknowledge the gesture in any way whatsoever.

3) Large groups of students and their parents touring campus who take up the whole sidewalk and refuse to budge even an inch to let me by, especially when I'm going the opposite direction. I'm also irritated by small groups of people who refuse to move and stay in a cluster rather than going single file to ensure that the sidewalk can serve its purpose of being a two-way route, but I've run into two touring groups today. Why would you not move to allow someone to walk on the sidewalk?! And usually I'll give in and walk on the grass, but no more! I'm going to keep walking and keep my shoulders square, and if I'm not in a good movie, maybe throw an elbow out as well. I really don't like you people, you're fucking ignorant and inconsiderate.

On a happier note, I found some very good poems today (which always makes me happy) while searching for one that Bonnie may want to have read at her wedding. So I will share these now, along with one I wrote:

At the Office Early by Ted Kooser
Rain has beaded the panes
of my office windows,
and in each little lens
the bank at the corner
hangs upside down.
What wonderful music
the rain must have made
in the night, a thousand banks
turned over, the change
crashing out of the drawers
and bouncing upstairs
to the roof, the soft
percussion of ferns
dropping out of their pots,
the ballpoint pens
popping out of their sockets
in a fluffy snow
of deposit slips.
Now all day long,
as the sun dries the glass,
I'll hear the soft piano
of banks righting themselves,
the underpaid tellers
counting their nickels and dimes.

Corners by Stephen Dunn*
I've sought out corner bars, lived in corner houses;
like everyone else I've reserved
corner tables, thinking they'd be sufficient.
I've met at corners
perceived as crossroads, loved to find love
leaning against a lamp post
but have known the abruptness of corners too,
the pivot, the silence.
I've sat in corners at parties hoping for someone
who knew the virtue
of both distance and close quarters, someone with a
corner person's taste
for intimacy, hard won, rising out of shyness
and desire.
And I've turned corners there was no going back to,
corners
in the middle of a room that led
to Spain or solitude.
And always the thin line between corner
and cornered,
the good corners of bodies and those severe bodies
that permit no repose,
the places we retreat to, the places we can't bear
to be found.

The Heart's Location by Peter Meinke
all my plans for suicide are ridiculous
I can never remember the heart's location
too cheap to smash the car
too queasy to slash a wrist
once jumped off a bridge
almost scared myself to death
then spent two foggy weeks
waiting for new glasses

of course I really want to live
continuing my lifelong search
for the world's greatest unknown cheap restaurant
and a poem full of ordinary words
about simple things
in the inconsolable rhythms of the heart

They eat out by Margaret Atwood
In restaurants we argue
over which of us will pay for your funeral

though the real question is
whether or not I will make you immortal.

At the moment only I
can do it and so

I raise the magic fork
over the plate of beef fried rice

and plunge it into your heart.
There is a faint pop, a sizzle

and through your own split head
you rise up glowing;

the ceiling opens
a voice sings Love Is A Many

Splendoured Thing
you hang suspended above the city

in blue tights and a red cape,
your eyes flashing in unison.

The other diners regard you
some with awe, some only with boredom;

they cannot decide if you are a new weapon
or only a new advertisement.

As for me, I continue eating;
I liked you better the way you were,
but you were always ambitious.

A Day In the Sun
Laughing like a couple of kids
who just bought a well for a village,
walking into the sunset like the heroes
of a mining town, when those streets
were dangerous to walk.
Carried off like a damsel in distress
after the fire-breathing dragon is slain.
These are what we witness, gathered here
with promise of a plate and a dance.
Oh, we'll be in the presence of a love
so deep that even the most experienced
swimmer will drown, not wave
and we'll glow by the soft light
of a radiant bride, all in white.
But we won't all have our own wedding
night, pretending to be nervous,
like they used to do it.
None of us will be carried across
the threshold to start a new life,
similar to the old, except now it's official,
sealed with rings and a kiss.
We'll be only the bystanders, well-wishers
and you'll be the happy couple,
arms and everything linked
like hypertext on a website which proclaims:
'We have neither pride nor prejudice,
we have happiness.'

*Further comments on this poem and corners in a future post