NatureJunkie's Page

A friend asked me yesterday for a list of my favorite artists and songs, which sent me to my excessive CD collection with notebook in hand. After I filled two pages of tiny notes and was about to start a third, I realized how MUCH info it was, and it got me wondering if it wouldn’t be impossible to edit it down to what my very favorite of all these songs were. I’ve never tried to force this issue before. Never needed to.

I didn't know how to begin narrowing that down. What're the criteri… Continue

Whenever I enter my BART* station, morning or evening, I’m treated to someone’s musical performance. I can think of more than a dozen musicians or groups who play my BART plaza with regularity. Most of them are pretty decent, some are embarrassingly bad, and a couple of them are superb.

One who falls in the superb category is a man who plays classical guitar. His guitar is almost as beaten up as Willie Nelson’s. He is disheveled, his clothes are very worn, and he doesn’t have a chair and foot s… Continue

A Dog on his Master

As young as I look,
I am growing older faster than he,
seven to one
is the ratio they tend to say.

Whatever the number,
I will pass him one day
and take the lead
the way I do on our walks in the woods.

And if this ever manages
to cross his mind,
it would be the sweetest
shadow I have ever cast on snow or grass.

-Billy Collins, U.S. Poet Laureate, 2001-2003

A blog inspired by Pypermarru1

Two years ago, Michelle Obama revealed in an interview with Glamour magazine that her girls refused to cuddle with her husband in the morning because he is too "snore-y and stinky." Stinky, that is, because of his cigarette smoking.

This got me thinking about what President Obama smells like now. My gut-check personality assessment of the presidents of my lifetime tells me that President Obama wears Drakkar Noir.

Probably about the same time the Glamour i… Continue

Aside from quitting, there isn't much you can do to fight back against a bad boss. But sometimes the devil slips on a banana peel, and when such karma happens, why not enjoy it?

Fifteen years ago I was employed by a tyrant in a little hellhole custom photo lab. The owner, Greg, was a (self-described) commercial photographer whose lab printed his own work in addition to taking outside orders. Greg was slow thinking, petty, racist, and mean. He cheated his clients and his employees. His ph… Continue