Well, since I completed my writing assignments, here’s a war story I’m sure you’ll all love:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/s819685.htm

US soldiers in Iraq asked to pray for Bush

They may be the ones facing danger on the battlefield, but US soldiers in Iraq are being asked to pray for President George W Bush.

Thousands of marines have been given a pamphlet called “A Christian’s Duty,” a mini prayer book which includes a tear-out section to be mailed to the White House pledging the soldier who sends it in has been praying for Bush.

“I have committed to pray for you, your family, your staff and our troops during this time of uncertainty and tumult. May God’s peace be your guide,” says the pledge, according to a journalist embedded with coalition forces.

The pamphlet, produced by a group called In Touch Ministries, offers a daily prayer to be made for the US president, a born-again Christian who likes to invoke his God in speeches.

Sunday’s is “Pray that the President and his advisers will seek God and his wisdom daily and not rely on their own understanding”.

Monday’s reads “Pray that the President and his advisers will be strong and courageous to do what is right regardless of critics”.

Psychedelic Republicans trading cards.

If I could go anywhere at the push of a button:

It’s warm and beautiful. Maybe the tropics. Everybody knows me and I know everybody. I can sit on a rock and be happy hearing the ocean, after a day of hiking in the mountains. Every afternoon there’s a light rain shower, and just as I start to get cold laying out on my rock in the rain, it stops and the golden sun sets behind the luminous clouds.

A trip into town means a beer or two with people who want to talk about What It All Means. They know my arguments already, because we’ve had them a few times before. We have shorthand and can laugh at how stupid our philosophizing really is. We retire to the roof to watch the stars come and go.

This place doesn’t exist. Marco might email and tell me it does, but I don’t speak Spanish.

Things I like about Texas:

My family. BBQ. Guadalupe, Blanco, Frio. Hill country. Enchanted Rock. 6th Street. Orange Show. Urban Animals. The rest area on highway 71 between La Grange and Austin that overlooks the valley. Glowing early autumn among live oaks. Big thunderstorms. Texas Rennies. My poet friends. My music friends. The Edith L. Moore Nature Sanctuary. The memory of paddling with my dad, making the hard left draw on the rapids with the big cypress trees just above the take-out point below Greuene, and the subsequent cold plunge followed later by changing into dry clothes.

Weird was a gift to me from my friend Kat. My exact relationship with Kat at the time is a mystery for the historians to figure out. But the point is that she had to get rid of the cat because he was a semi-feral living very uncomfortably in a one-bedroom apartment with two people.

Kat’s husband had named the cat Natasha, because, read backwards, it’s ‘ah, satan!’ Kat called him Dr. Bombay, because he’s black and is mostly Burmese.

So Natasha/Dr.Bombay/Weird would run around the house and claw stuff up and attack people and generally be frustrated and insane. I managed to get some dominance over him (and I have the scars to prove it), and so he respected me more than a little.

However, they weren’t willing to get the scars, so they really needed to be rid of the cat, and so I got him. And about this time, Kat was learning some sign language, and was showing me the sign for ‘weird,’ which is the first three fingers, similar to W, but you wiggle your fingers like a three-headed cockroach. It seemed natural, in the midst of this, to make the weird sign and point to the cat.

And thus, Weird got his name, which is actually supposed to be in sign language.

It took a while for Weird to get used to where I was living. I was living with my parents, who also took a little while to get used to Weird. We got him fixed, and he switched from being an insane maniac cat who would attack my mom, to merely being an asshole curmudgeon cat. But over time he’s mellowed more and more, and he finally figured out how to run the house without doing cat dominance behavior.

My parents could probably add to this story, since I left Weird with them when I moved to the west coast. I think he likes them and they like him.

I keep thinking I’ll bring him west some time, but my living situations have precluded it. Either no pets allowed, or pets allowed, but the other housemates have pets already.

Ah well.

I’ll get to my Aesop’s Fable about Weird in a bit, but I just want to mention:

Every morning this week I’ve woken up with ‘Midnight Radio’ from Hedwig and the Angry Inch in my head.

And you’re shining
Like the brightest star
A transmission
On the midnight radio…

I have no idea why this song keeps invading my brain.

But if you want to listen to it, do what comes naturally.

Seriously.

Help me figure out what to write.

Request lines are open.

Want to find out how many Iraqis have been killed in the war?

Find out at IraqBodyCount.net, or at the War Without End Iraq Body Clock.

Nothing like referring to ‘bodies’ instead of ‘humans,’ even when you’re a peace activist.

Sign the petition: George W. Bush is a horse’s ass.

Went for a bike ride for the first time in, like, uh… 8 months or so, I guess.

Oh MAN.

My body’s not happy with me at all. It doesn’t help that I live in one of the extra hilly areas of town, and that they had removed the water fountain at the park that was my destination.

But now I’m back at home, and after having been dizzy for a little while, and having rehydrated, I’m craving junk food. Yay Clif bar and organic ginger beer!

The hills around here aren’t high, but they’re steep. If I hadn’t quit riding when I did, I’d have zoomed right over them. But now I’m a flabby tub of lard; hopefully that’ll change as I ride more.

Also I’m tremendously uncentered, which is the real problem. I can’t even find my center of gravity like I used to be able to. It’s an abstract concept at the moment, rather than a real thing.

I have this notion that all things are like walking. In walking, one falls forward continually, and then catches oneself. Your center of gravity pitches forward and trusts the rest of the body to know what to do to stay upright. The same works for riding a bike up a steep hill (if you’re in shape): Put the center of gravity where you want to be, and then fall towards it. The solid frame of the bike, and the muscles pushing it forward will carry it along.

Performing this kind of riding yields a mental state where the goal is to continue, rather than to get to the top of the hill. Continue enough, and you’ll be where you’re going. If you can’t continue, you’ll never get there anyway.

Of course, my body’s not even ready to do that. I have to struggle for a while to get it strong enough. My kung fu! Is no good!