“The music than can deepest reach, / And cure all ill, is cordial speech.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson, writer and philosopher (1803-1882)

And a tongue twister:

A skunk sat on a stump and thunk the stump stunk, but the stump thunk the skunk stunk.

CHOCOLATE VOLCANO CAKE
8 x 8 inch pan
350 degree oven

1 cup flour
3/4 cup sugar
2 tablespoons cocoa
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/2 cup milk
2 tablespoons oil
1 cup chopped walnuts (optional)
3/4 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup cocoa
1 3/4 cups hot water

Mix first nine ingredients together, spread in pan. Mix brown sugar and cocoa together, sprinkle over top of batter, pour hot water over all, bake for 45 minutes or so. Serve with whipped cream or ice cream. (This recipe doubles well — bake in 9 x 13 inch dish.)

Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and… SCHOOL WILL BE OUT! I’m more excited than the kids.

“I stuck the letter back in the envelope, Scotch-taped it together, and readdressed it to Buddy, without putting on a new stamp. I thought the message was worth a good three cents.

Then I decided I would spend the summer writing a novel. That would fix a lot of people.”

— “The Bell Jar”
Sylvia Plath

Yes, i’m going to spend the summer writing a novel. And not stick my head in the oven.

ttfn,

WM

“Anyway, I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody’s around — nobody big, I mean — except me. And I’m standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff — I mean if they’re running and they don’t look where they’re going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That’s all I’d do all day. I’d just be the catcher in the rye. I know it; I know it’s crazy, but that’s the only thing I’d really like to be. I know it’s crazy.”

— J.D. Salinger, “Catcher in the Rye”

“Taught from infancy that beauty is woman’s sceptre, the mind shapes itself to the body, and roaming round its gilt cage, only seeks to adorn its prison.”

— Mary Wollstonecraft, reformer and writer (1759-1797)

My tiny, beautiful daughter has taken to saying “I’m fat!” lately. Not just once or twice, but at least four or five times. And those are just the times that her dad or I have heard her mention it.

(more…)

“Love is a snowmobile racing across the tundra, which suddenly flips over, pinning you underneath. At night the ice weasels come.”

— Matt Groening, “Love is Hell”

“I loathe people who keep dogs. They are cowards who haven’t got the guts to bite people themselves.”
— August Strindberg

All these warm, sunny days make me think of being 12 years old, cool and happy watching television for hours in our dark, cocoon-like basement. No exercise, no running around sweating at the park, just Froot Loops and the tube. We’d watch my sister’s favorite, Speed Racer, then Gilligan’s Island, the Brady Bunch was next, I think, followed by Star Trek, then Emergency…

Ah… Johnny Gage, you fox you. But Star Trek, that was the best. The comforting theme music, the Troglodytes, the Tribbles. The sexy girls, the fake rocks, the fights.

(more…)

Star Trek quote of the day:

“There’s a way out of any cage.”
— Captain Christopher Pike, “The Menagerie” (“The Cage”),
stardate unknown.

Not if you’re at the zoo on a field trip with 40 kids and EIGHT THOUSAND OTHER PEOPLE and it’s NINETY G.D. DEGREES.

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