--YOU NEED A GOOD NIGHT'S SLEEP

…It's a new week and there's plenty to be happy about.

What makes you happy?

…Here are some things that probably won't make you happy, but will be interesting, hopefully:

…(this is actually true) A bill passed the Montana state Senate Thursday would allow cops to issue permits for the salvage of such road kill as deer, elk, moose and antelope. It’s hoped that it would help to feed the poor.  The state House has already passed it, so it’s on to the governor.

…(this is true, too, and sad) Every day, 7,000 kids drop out of high school.  That's one every 26 seconds.

…(this is also sad, and no one really seems to be doing anything about it) 70,000 people have been killed in Syria since that country's uprising, and that rate continues to climb at a rate of 5,000 more per month.

…(changing topics now, and going very random) 49% of all Americans favor legalizing Gay marriage versus 33% ten years ago.

…Former President Bill Clinton has earned more than $89 million dollars from speaking fees since leaving office.

…You can get $500,000 from the tabloids if you have a photo of Blue Ivy, daughter of Beyonce and Jay Z.

…284,000 college graduates had minimum wage jobs last year.

…In the week following the Newtown school massacre, more than 100 Americans were killed by gunfire.  In the seven weeks since, 1,285 people have been killed by guns in the US.

…Each day 4,000,000 tweets are sent.

…The first cell phone was used on this month 40 years ago.

…China uses 20% of the world's energy.  The US 19%.  Russia 6%.  India 4%.

…Cheese cake is the most-ordered dessert item, followed by chocolate cake, followed by Tiramisu, Baklava, and Cannoli.

…It costs two cents to make a penny.

…The percentage of one-earner families in which the wife works full-time is now over 23% compared with 6% in 1976.

…3.1 million people work at home compared with 1.8 million six years earlier.

…One in three elderly in the U.S. die with dementia.

…The average cost of an engagement ring is $5,229.

…Average age of a first time groom is 29 years old.

…Average amount spent on a couple's wedding is $27,000.

…20,000 -the number of cancer cases that could be prevented annually if half of all Americans ate one extra serving of produce daily.

…75 -number of minutes of moderate exercise you need weekly to add nearly 2 years to your life.

…25.5% of all fires start in the kitchen; 15.7% in the bedroom; 8.6% in the living room; 8.2% in the chimney.

…13 out of every million people will die in a house fire this year.  The leading causes, in order, are cooking, arson, heating, and careless smoking.

--YOU MAKE ME HAPPY

…Last night I went to a reading given by Kim Barnes at Third Place Books in Ravenna.

Kim’s first book, a memoir, was short-listed for The Pulitzer Prize.

For her latest novel, she did a slide slow presentation, replete with old photographs that inspired her unique story about the Americon Corporation and Americans moving to Saudi Arabia to begin drilling oil in 1937.  It was utterly fascinating and the book ("In the Kingdom of Men") seems like it will be so, too.

I’m looking forward to reading it.

…It’s a blustery day here in Seattle.  (“Blustery” always makes me think of Winnie the Poo and Piglet, and my daughter’s love of all those characters created by A.A. Milne as bedtime stories for his children.)

What are you doing today?

…Here are some of the latest Facebook clips, unedited, for your reading enjoyment:

-Someone smarter than me needs to invent a social media breathalyzer because sometimes when people drink they say dumbshit on the Internet.

-Silence is loud.

-I have the biggest, ugliest zit on my left cheek.

-My mom just got yelled at for biting a mask in a souvenir shop.

-My sister's school grades are very high. She's so different than I am. She got abused a lot less, though. It helps.

-Hello all you perverts and lovers. Do you use sex apps? Which ones are good? Lemme know!

-I'm slapping this to-do list right across its ugly face. And then I'm killing it. It will not exist by the end of tomorrow.

-Sorry I didn't cut deeper. You know my hands shake.

-You know what taking offense to everything equals? No sense of humor. Unequivocally, the people I know who take the greatest offense to things that myself or other people say have ZERO sense of humor.

-Lighten the fuck up.

-While I am on the road, if any of you (in the next 6 hours) want to steal any one of my boy friends starting with the letter "A" it is okay.

-I dreamt last night that Plath was my therapist, and she was over charging me.

-Play me a song, please.

-I wouldn't say I'm hypersexual. I'd just say, "I'm horny."

-Pale women who are never satisfied.

-For some reason, I love everyone today!

--YOU'RE EVERYONE'S FAVORITE.  I HOPE YOU KNOW THAT

  

…It’s so pretty outside that I almost want to cry.  Almost.

…What are your plans for the rest of the week?

When's the last time you laughed so hard you cried? 

The last time you skipped or played hopscotch? 

The last time you said, "I love you" and meant it?

The last time you cried at a movie?

The last time you told someone how much they meant to you, and why?

The last time you read poetry?

The last time you said you were sorry?

The last time you told someone a dirty little secret about yourself and didn't get judged because of it?

When was the last time you saw an ex-lover at the airport?

The last funeral you went to?

The last infant you held and cooed over?

The last time you looked at yourself naked in the mirror and thought, Not bad actually.?

The last time you got so drunk you said things you can't remember?

The last time a security guard broke up your embrace?

The last time you wrote a love letter?

The last time you thought: I don't want this to ever end.?

The last time you made a new friend of the same sex?

The last time you went to an art museum?

The last time you felt an authentic sense of wonder?

When was the last time you went shopping with someone you adored and watched them try on different outfits?

The last time you saw something burning?

The last time you asked God for something you didn't really deserve or want anyway?

The last time you said, "Screw it.  I'm giving up."?

The last time you felt proud but didn't have anyone to tell?

The last time you sought out a sunset and marveled at the way it casts colors all around it?

The last time you ate twice as much as you should have?

The last time you watched a great film?   A great love story?  A heart-punching tragedy?

The last time you couldn't wait for it to be tomorrow?

The last time you felt really lucky to be alive and on this earth?

The last time someone gave you a genuine compliment that made you feel valuable?

The last time you thought about the one that got away?

The last time you were really pissed at someone, and were right to be?

The last time you admitted you were lonely?

The last time you said, "I don't think I'll ever feel this way about another person as long as I live."?

Why do you think I'm such a curious boy?

--TAKE ME OUT WITH THE WASTE

…This morning there’s a semi-thick layer of fog on the lake, as if God sneezed and the sneeze froze into something resembling cement-colored air.

There are already three fishing boats lurking in the hazy soup.  Like an old song that triggers a memory, I remember standing before the Hong Kong harbor in awe, age 24, high rise after high rise shouldering me from behind, the air oppressively humid and profuse with a stew of odors—brine, fish, car exhaust, persimmon—while tinny transistor radios played stutter-stop songs with harpsichords and reedy-voiced Cantonese singers wailing as if at a wake.

It’s beautiful, all of this—the actual and the remembered.

I wish you could see it.

…"We are all refugees from our childhoods.  As so we turn, among other things, to stories." Mohsin Hamid

"When I examine myself and my methods of thought, I come to the conclusion that the gift of fantasy has meant more to me than my talent for absorbing positive knowledge." Albert Einstein

"We must combine the toughness of the serpent with the softness of the dove, a tough mind with a tender heart." Martin Luther King, Jr.

"Our injuries are our gifts." Kate Cantrill

"Don't get too lost in your emotions today. While you can definitely get swept up in your feelings, you'd be better off doing something that makes you feel grounded. That could be as simple as picking a flower, sitting down and consciously breathing, or savoring a cup of lavender-infused green tea. Indulge in a few sensual delights to bring yourself back down to earth." -Alison Burkhart

--DO YOU EVER THINK OF ME?

…Happy Easter Weekend.  What are your plans?

In a couple of hours there will be 30+ people here.  The sun is up, the sky is clear and already there are half a dozen boats on the lake.

These are the times when Seattle is at its best.

…The new GI Joe movie is out.  Why exactly do we need a new GI Joe movie?  I understand different people have different tastes, but GI Joe, really?

…I started reading “How To Get Filthy Rich In Asia” by Mohsin Hamid.  It’s an awful title, but works once you get into the novel.  Stylistically, I’ve never read anything like it.  It’s quite a feat to have that fresh of a voice in a world where we have millions of writers and have had tens of millions more.

I’ve read all his books, “Moth Smoke” being one of my favorite ever.

…Here are some thoughts to ponder:

“Wear your heart on your skin in this life.” Sylvia Plath

"Without love, all things wither." Cynthia Reeser

"A man is only as good as what he loves." Saul Bellow

"But at that moment, sitting there in front of his tidy desk, he was vaguely nagged by the memory of a poem he’d wanted to write that morning, and there was that other poem he hadn’t gotten back to. … What can be said for a man who chooses to blab on the phone all day, or else write stupid letters while he lets his poems go unattended and uncared for, abandoned – or worse, unattempted. This man doesn’t deserve poems and they shouldn’t be given to him in any form. His poems, should he ever produce any more, ought to be eaten by mice." Raymond Carver

"I would rather die of passion than boredom." Van Gogh

"And you learned that wherever you take your stand, your back is turned on something else." Sam Pink

"Poetry is a pheasant disappearing in the brush." - Wallace Stevens

"Thought is the blossom; language the bud; action the fruit behind it." Ralph Waldo Emerson

"It's hard to be mad at someone when you're right in the middle or fucking them." Kristen Young

"What helps luck is a habit of watching for opportunities, of having a patient, but restless mind, of sacrificing one's ease or vanity, of uniting a love of detail to foresight, and of passing through hard

times bravely and cheerfully." Charles Cherbuliez