Lyrics For Kelly

Woah!

I know I like you, and I know that you like me.  I wish we could love each other, but there’s no parking on my street.

Woah!

We could get something started.  I think I’d buy you a toothbrush.  We could walk around naked in the morning light.  If you could just crash here tonight.

I have a coffee pot, but it’s too big for one.  I have some beers in my fridge but I don’t want to drink them alone.  I really want to love you, so bad and so hard, but parking in my neighborhood is like a chastity belt to meeeeeeeeeeeeee.  Woah!

I’d make you an omelette and we’d both eat off the same plate.  Then we’d call in sick to work and be together the rest of the day.  I really want to love you, so bad and so hard.  I really want to love you, so bad and so hard.  I really want to love you.  I really want to love you ooo woah.  woah.  I want to love you!

Welcome Back!

Despite the inefficable ignominy of several huge Ws on my transcript from the last time I enrolled at Theadora University, the Administration has decided to let me give it another shot, this time with a revised course of study: Vegetables!

I have taken over the vegetable beds in  the back corner of my parents’ yard.  It has been well over a year since anyone has tended to them.  The soil is packed down hard and sprouting weeds, covered in a mat of dry leaves and blossoms from several seasons of lonliness.  The only plants still growing are a stand of brussels sprouts, towering over 6 feet high, the woody stems sporting sprout buds from the ground all the way up to the eerie cabbage-like blooms at the crown of the plant.  I cut them down with an axe, dug up the roots, chopped them up and put them all in the composter.  There were also two scraggly rosemary bushes in the shade, one of which I potted on what is going to be the herb wall.  The other I dug up and put in the composter.  Additionally, a heap of a tomato plant, with several blossoms and tomatoes of varying degrees of ripeness caught my eye and I composted that one too.  In february!  This is going to be a lot easier than it was in Chicago.

I worked all afternoon until it was too dark to see any more, listening to the new Beirut EP and good old Aeroplane Over the Sea on the stereo.  I think I went entire minutes without conceptual thought, simply lifting or digging or cleaning according to what was needed.  I’ll be going back to Warner-sensei’s sitting on saturday for sure if I can get myself to sit in private at least once this week.  My experience in the garden was an auspicious indication.

Magic Mountain

I went to Six Flags Hurricane Harbor today with my friend Kelly and her two pre-teen charges, and everyone was worked up about how Six Flags is selling all their property to “some developer” and this is the last summer that either the water park or the amusement park are going to be open… after 45 years! On an LA time scale, that practically makes it a cultural institution, at least deserving of historic landmark status. But no, come November, the bulldozers and lumber trucks will take over, converting this centerpiece of every SoCal childhood into yet another nondescript people-house farm. Shock and sentimental disappointment aside, the pending sale invites interesting discussion in a variety of fields. How does the resource consumption of an amusement and water park compare to that of a housing development on the same number of acres? What about the revenue and jobs generated, one versus the other? Probably even more interesting than either of those two questions though, is the much deeper question of whether the potentially increased generation of revenue can outweigh the possibly increased strain on the resources available to any group of humans, anywhere. The facts to find out are: how much money does SFMM make? How much would a development? Who gets that money? and then, Where do all of the resources (electricity, gasoline, water… maybe food and employees, too?) come from? This case is especially condusive to study, because the site has already been developed for almost half a century; we are not building housing on virgin land, nor introducting a resource load much higher than that already present. In the case of housing vs. amusement park, the conscience war is clearly two-tiered. There are housing advocates, who will necessarily side with the devloper, because new housing is always needed, to drive prices down, and allow more people to live comfortably. But it must be pointed out that this is almost never a consideration to the developer. He is only in it for the money. How can we reconcile a developer’s natural acquisitiveness with the needs of lower-income families? And how can we reconcile those latter needs with the needs of an Earth, possily on the brink of ecological collapse?