Last to Know

So, apparently I am the last to ever know about anything.

I'm told that the picture of Kerouac and Cassady I posted is relatively famous and not at all as novel as I thought.

I was rick-rolled for the first time this week, and I had to look up the term. It is one of those terms that makes me excited to exist in the 21st Century. However, it seems that I am the last to learn about this term. I feel like a middle-aged man who can't quite keep up with the modern lingo of kids these days.

I also found Etsy this week, but my wife has known about it for eons, so now I have to delete the very thoughtful message I sent her on Facebook about it.

On a happier note, my wife and I will be moving soon. We're getting a nice yellow house in the country by a farm. Our closest neighbors will be cows, goats, sheep, and llamas. Our in-house residents will be wasps and flies it appears, though. I am not at all excited about that part. I've been reading Annie Dillard's Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, and she writes a lot about bugs; in fact, she seems to have some sort of sick fascination or even fixation with them. I go to bed with nightmares about a giant praying-mantis sharpening its sword-like claws over my bed, eying me in that head-swiveling way only mantises can manage. Ok, so maybe this wasn't a happier note. I mean, it kinda was.

Anyway, we're very excited about moving to the boonies. There's been a lot of talk of gardening and whatnot, and any who know me think this is odd, because I don't eat vegetables. I do eat potatoes, and I'm very excited to grow some. Of course, whatever else my wife would like to grow I will help with. We also plan to grow some flowers and so forth. I'd like to grow a tree, but I don't think we'd be able to see much development before we move on to bigger and better things. Maybe I will anyway--it'd be a blessing to whomever next resides there.

On a totally unrelated note, I did not finish On the Road in time for class this week, and I'm very disappointed in myself. However, I have plenty of time next week, what with not working at all over spring break (not by choice--feel free to ask about it; it's kind of a funny story, in a sad, broke sort of way), so I plan to finish the novel and also read a book that has been recommended to me: Sophie's World.

While I'm thinking about it, whenever I make something italics on this program, I get all kinds of weird code, and I have no idea what is going on. Does Blogspot assume that, since I can type a blog, I can also understand computer code? If anyone has answers to this, please let me know.

I'm hoping that moving out to the hills will help me to get out of this non-writing funk I've been in for a year or so. In fact, that's also what I'm hoping comes of blogging. I'm furthermore hoping that reading some philosophy will help in this area too.

Finally, the poem of the week, first weeklial. It is called "The Sheep Child" by James Dickey (author of Deliverance). There is just something that draws me to this poem, and it is not that I am going to be living near some sheep soon. The story of the poem is very unnerving, but it's worth it--like a Cormac McCarthy book. Enjoy.

~N.B.

P.S. I think I've figured out this "code" thing. There's this neat little "Compose" tab at the top of my screen that lets me not see the code stuff. How lovely. Ignorance can indeed be bliss.