Lines written for my family and friends (real and imaginary) on the event of my birthday in which I went to Barnes and Noble and a concert...

Chris took me to Baltimore for my birthday last weekend.  We had fancy Italian food, browsed at Barnes and Noble and went to a Willie Nelson concert.  A couple of things...

We came across this building.  The words "Sewage Pumping Station" are displayed above the windows.  It's such a beautiful building for such a purpose.  I'm not sure if I admire it or am disturbed by it.  "You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of dead men's bones and everything unclean."* or  "Yes, I am a sewage pumping station.  Laugh if you must, but at least I'm not pretending to be something I'm not."

Someone actually did a lot of work to publish these two gems.  No, it wasn't just a funny joke over cocktails.  Someone actually spent days and weeks of their life on these.  Very Bad Poetry is amusing, though.  One of the poems is entitled "Lines Written for a Friend on the Death of His Brother, Caused by a Railway Train Running over Him Whilst He Was in a State of Inebriation."  That's enough.  You really don't need to read the poem.

 I love the summer teen reading tables and either 1) find something intriguing I've missed or 2) feel smug that I've read everything interesting there (I know, it doesn't take much).  I found this monstrosity among the summer reading tables.  Really - this is what we want our teenagers to read?

Once we endured the opening act, the concert was great.  To the performers of the world:  1) Just because you can play your guitar with your face does not mean that you should.  2) If the crowd is, generally speaking, significantly older than you, they will clap for you in the way they clap for small children who do spastic cartwheels - more because they don't want to disappoint you and it is somewhat amusing than because it's a wise move, musically.

This is what we should have been watching instead of the opening act.

Willie Nelson was awesome - Whiskey River, Good-Hearted Woman, Mama Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up to be Cowboys, I'll Fly Away, ...

*Matthew 23:27