WhimsyLand

I can't say that I actually understand Facebook, but I am a member.  I think Suzanne invited me to be a friend, which I would like to think I am already, but I wasn't an official Facebook friend, so I joined.  I think one of the points of Facebook is to acquire a lot of friends, judging from the profiles of others I have noticed.  I'm not sure you actually have to know someone for them to be a Facebook friend, but it probably helps.  I suppose I don't really know Kasey and Ginger and Simon and Laurel, but I feel like I do so that's enough for me.  If you're not familiar with Facebook, Wikipedia calls it a "social networking website", and the venture capitalists (who have invested over $25 million so far) declined an offer of $750 million for its acquisition (the buyer is unknown, but assumed to be either Yahoo, Microsoft or Google).  You can ask your friends questions and play poker and deal blackjack and join groups and such.  I don't do much of that, so I guess I'm a bad Facebooker.  I've been poked a couple of times, but I'm not sure what I'm supposed to do about it.  But, that's OK, sign me up as a friend anyway.  I promise not to come to any of your parties and drink all the good wine.

I mentioned some time back that I received a book for review from Zone 3 Press, Houses Fly Away by Leigh Anne Couch.  The title and the cover art (a small bird perches on the hand of a reclining arm) led me to believe that this would be just the kind of poetry book that I don't care for.  I was pleasantly surprised to find that I like this book, with its strange domesticity.  Some lines:  Beast: "I have good friends and a family / only slightly perforated";  Goldfinches:  "The day was a goldfnch / beating wings/ against a dirty cotton sky"; Tideland:  "Fly away blackbird. Nothing ends / once it's over.  Split open / the clam to rude saucers:" ; Obsolescence:  "Precious is the crackslam of metal buttons in the dryer"; Short History of White Flight:  "Gun barrels shining, huge in their arms, / deer-blood smudged their teacup faces".    Ms. Couch knows how to get in, do the poem, and get out, which I quite admire as that is also my overarching strategy.  She is currently the managing editor of the Sewanee Review, which has rejected my work countless times, but I won't hold that against her.  This is one of those rare books of poetry that if I were in Boulder Book store thumbing through it, I would most likely buy it to read it again.

Harper's has an interesting Annotation (a two-page exposé) on the "exaggerated threat of food allergies".  Apparently, it doesn't matter how many times the CDC announces that very few people get sick from food allergies, the Food Allergy & Anaphylaxis Network continues its campaign to ban a growing list of food items from school cafeterias (with a focus on nuts).  Lewis Lapham is back with Hearts of Gold, characterizing the current batch of presidential candidates as items for purchase (Obama comes with no directions in the box; Rudy Giuliani makes strange clanking noises).  Interesting article on Brasília at 50, principally focusing on its failure (architecturally and as a symbol of a new Brazil).  From Harper's Index:  Number of states John Kerry would have won if only poor, or only rich people were allowed to vote:  40,4;  Chances that red lipstick has dangerous levels of lead:  1 in 3;  Average amount of meat consumed by wealthy and poor children, respectively:  1.7, 2.1;  Portion of the US population that has lived only under presidents named Bush or Clinton:  one-fourth;  Estimated number of tons of CO₂ released on New Year's Eve from champagne bottles:  8.

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I have received another wondrous volume of ZYZZYVA, whose cover art appears to be an uncharacteristic member of the French Foreign Legion.  The first 20-odd pages are, as usual, decorated with advertising from San Francisco's finest:  Pier 23 Cafe, Barrish Bail Bonds, Skylight Books among others, and I relish this section as much as the actual literature.  Howard notes that the Editor's Notes have been replaced by entries in his blog.  Check out the post of July 23d, in which the "Editor reports an unfortunate incident with a writer of no literary merit".  I haven't read any of the fiction and non-fiction (an endeavor reserved for the half-hour before sleep in my Belgian bed), but the poetry is pretty good.  It's all a bit narrative for my taste, but I think I liked Escaping the War by Wing Tek Lum best.  More on that topic when I get a little farther in.

I've been plotting the actual route for The Trip to California today:  mapquest, google, AAA.  Getting to Las Vegas is the easy part and everybody agrees that, barring icy conditions in the Eisenhower Tunnel at the Great Divide, it's a straight shot to LV.  They all seem to believe, however, that there is no good way to get from Las Vegas to Central California.  AAA would have me drive nearly to LA and then north on 101.  Mapquest and Google seem to think I need to take Route 58 to Bakersfield, and then west on Route 46 to Atascadero.  There's no way to zoom in enough to see if these are 2-lane roads or 4-lane highways with a median, but I'm assuming closer to the former.  Also, somewhere along the way they have to cross the Sierra Nevada's so that might be a little exciting.