This is The End of Everything

Goodbye cable. Goodbye E-Music. Goodbye...

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Tonight I went to see Charles Simic read at the Midwest Poets Series at Rockhurst University. There was a guy next to me playing Who Wants To Be A Millionaire or something like it on his cell phone. There was a little round hairy fella behind me with a sack full of Charles Simic books who would read poems to himself and chuckle incessantly...not on cue I might add. And of course there was the individual who sat down behind me half way through the reading who smelled like sour milk and Mad Dog.

But besides the interesting people I felt like I should have been sitting on a big bear rug listening to Charles Simic tell stories: he sitting cross legged, sipping single malt, smoking a cigarette in front of a roaring fire; me sitting...listening, listening, listening. He had a very dry sense of humor. He was soft spoken. His poetry was dark and yet the imagery was often (not always) very original and disarming. But he was so soft spoken, or perhaps it was poor acoustics mixed with a small voice, made it difficult to focus and hear the poems. So, unfortunately I often found myself shifting in my seat in an attempt to retain some semblance of focus because when I did I was pleasantly surprised.


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A few days ago when Megan and the kids let the dog out they discovered that both the front and back gates were open. Neither Megan nor the kids nor I left the gate open. The only possible reason for the open gate is that someone cut through our backyard between 11:30 pm and 6:00 am. That's a little disconcerting because we have a wooded area beyond our fence. Elijah conjectured that Hawkeye (our Boston Terrier) was not smart enough to open the gates. Gavin added that a "bunny" is too small to open the gates. I told them the only animal capable of opening the gates would be a werewolf. My son Elijah refused to close the gates. I'm a cruel father. My wife played into it later by suggesting she saw a werewolf in the woods. But then we both defused a possibly disastrous onslaught of fear by telling the kids there are no werewolf's and that we were only kidding.

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Farkle scoreboard:

• Gavin = 15
• Elijah = 13
• Me = 11
  
• Megan = 10
  

Gavin is creating quite a lead. He's a dominating Farkle player.

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Bread crumbs for the song lyric title (or name that song or artist): he guest appeared as uncle Bob in the movie I watched tonight: That Thing You Do.