--I'M ALMOST KIND OF GETTING IT TOGETHER

…I have a new poem, "Space and Time" up at RiverBabble:

http://iceflow.com/riverbabble/issue22/RIVER-P-22-KUNTZ.HTML

…I also have a very creepy story, "Last Night" up at Pure Slush (The theme for the issue was "eyes", so this is the best I could do):

http://pureslush.webs.com/lastnight.htm

…Sad, yet inevitable news.  Barnes and Noble is going to close 20 stores a year over the next decade.

Yikes.

…According to Blogger, of all my blog page views, half have come from Poland.  Really?  That's pretty cool.

Poland is followed by Turkey, then the UK.

Who knew?

…The other day I woke up at 3 am, subsequently got an allergy attack, never went back to sleep and read Sara Gran’s book, “Claire DeWitt and the City of the Dead.”

It’s a mystery starting a female private eye, set in New Orleans post Katrina.

While I didn’t like the book as much as The Atlantic Monthly, Kirkus Reviews, Publishers Weekly, Booklist and others who were quoted on the bock jacket, there were some memorable phrasings and sentences.

Here they are:

…Satisfaction will be rare.  Uncertainty will be your natural state.  Sureness will always elude you.

It doesn’t matter what people want to hear.  It doesn’t matter if people like you.  It doesn’t matter if the whole world thinks you’re crazy.  It doesn’t matter whose heart you break.  What matters is the truth.

The only question is, how will you bear your portion of guilt?

Most people’s idea of help is a bigger gun.

Simplicity is the refuge of fools.

Depression can make people stupid.

Forever never lasts as long as you think it will.

That’s the thing about the truth.  It’s just like your car keys—always in the last place you look.

It isn’t the dead we should feel sorry for.  It’s the living.

No one looks you straight in the eye when they’re telling the truth.

Nothing ever really ends.  The fat lady never really sings her last song.  She only changes costumes and goes onto the next show.  It’s just a matter of when you stop watching.

I wanted to hug him but I figured he might shoot me.

Some people just do a better job of pretending.

There are no coincidences.  Only opportunities.

Intuition is only a very good memory.

There will never be any shortage of floods.  There will always be people who need to be rescued.  And there will never, ever be enough people to save them.

We all have blood on our hands.