Liv, Matt, Marida, Lauren: Entitled

The title-field of a blog entry can be yours, and all you gotta do is post a comment! Yes that's right folks, I am so desperate for feedback and for confirming in my mind that there is an audience of more than six that I am -- for a limited time only -- offering to put your name in a blog-entry title-field for nothing more than the time it takes you to post a comment.

So Matt and Liv, Marida and Lauren: big thanks for making the effort to stay in touch and share some of yourselves with me and our fellow readers! Hope to hear more from you in the near future. Special notice is paid at this time to 'Tastik (the first comment-poster) and to Jeremy, the first reader to post more than once. Now that's dedication! (Thanks again dudes!)

And now for your reading pleasure, a little poem that my adorable housemate Jacqui shared with me. {Those of you in Amsterdam familiar with my previous housing and non-housing situations, can you believe that I didn't realize that I was again living with a woman named Jacqui/Jackie until like three days ago?!} Here's the poem:

Aunt Linda and the Pink Bikini
Her tongue was spice and lightning
even at nineteen. She caught her husband
playing doctor with a nurse and cursed him,
calling all doctors frauds. She kept his name

for herself, the cars and house for their children.
She sold most stocks for a wardrobe. In time,
Cadillacs came by, Mercedes, pickups with gun racks --
I couldn't count the cowboy boots that strutted

to her door. Men liked her summer laugh,
pink thongs, and terry cloth. I remember Aunt Linda
in bikinis at picnics, divorced in-law, but family.
I was bold with mustard for her burgers,

the perfect nephew. Linda always had a sticky kiss
for me, and whispered six-packs of advice -- Shave close
and take no prisoners. She clipped me on the chin
and left sweet lipstick on my cheek. One year

I listened hard and heard Aunt Linda whisper vows
in a veil Uncle Cal lifted -- she made me call
the tall cowboy that -- and he kissed her
glistening lips, and all the family sighed.

by Walt MacDonald, in
Blessings the Body Gave

Finally this, from the No Comment Department: Seen Dec. 3, 2004 on the side of a Florida-state truck, parked in downtown Tallahasee, where stands were being set up for viewing the Christmas parade:

Inmate Work Crews -- Reducing Costs to the Taxpayer.