I feel like I’ve missed a lot of leaves this fall.  I always do.

Photo Friday: Autumn.

I can’t place this little devil in its location from far out because you’d never see it.  Excuse the bad close up and dirty floor of a hidden recess in my bathroom.

My wife is rather terrified of mice.  But in a kinda cute and funny way, not in a heart-attack way.  From time to time, mouse jokes and pranks pop up.  I recently got a bug in my crawl to tell her there was a mouse in the living room of our apartment.  I made a scene of chasing it to the bedroom, watching it, reporting its movements and then telling her it hid under her dresser, which is next to the bathroom door.  All night she asked if I made up the story, and I said I didn’t and offered more tiny pieces of information and details to make my story more believable.

I have used small rocks I’ve collected over the years to act as bugs and mice and rats on folks when they would walk into poorly-lit rooms with these critters in their minds, put into their minds by me or by the critters themselves walking around Baltimore.  This time, I took one such rock from Rockport, Massachusetts and placed it in a dim spot in the bathroom.  Then I put a twisted q-tip under it for a tail.  I thought to cut the ends off to make ears.  This is the result.

If I thought I would not give away the joke with my camera, I wouuld have gotten pictures of Mrs. P’s reaction.  She went into the bathroom as I crept up to watch.  She turned on the light, took a step and saw my little creature in the shadows and jumping up and down, one leg at a time, a sort of cute little running in place at high speed, accompanied by giggly squealing.  She ran from the room and found me nearly pooping my pants in laughter.

But lest you think me cruel, she was laughing as she was jumping and screaming.

For Photo Friday: Sharp, because, dang, my Mini Mouse Rock was sharp!

I was at Red Emma’s Monday having lunch with a co-worker, and I wondered what things might start to look like among activists.  Will folks continue to rail and rally against The State because certainly beaurocracy will block a lot of Obama’s plans, or even because some folks really just want The State to go away on principle?  I found anarchism attractive while Bush was in office, especially the first time.  Most of the people in the country didn’t want him for a President, but there he was.  Obama has so many people inspired and seems so inspired himself that I have to wonder what we can get done in the next four or eight years without the help of The State?  I don’t really know enough about anarchism to be able to answer that.

Will activism mean working with the Obama administration, against other parts of The Machine in order to change things?  Will activism mean working with The Man?  Or is it a misunderstanding of activism to suggest that working with the government is unusual or somehow makes something not activism anymore?

Community organizing, national service and working with government groups to get things done are all activism, no?

In my [first?] year of national service, I find the election of Obama inspiring, in that maybe some of the hurdles that hinder the kind of work we do may shrink or disappear with the new administration, that we will have more help  in fighting the good fight, in addition to less resistance.

Maybe what we think of as activism can instead become known merely as participation?  But that requires more than a new man in the White House.  If we can continue the act of getting off our collective asses the way some of us have started to, with the huge voter turn-out this year, might we just begin to participate in our own democracy again to such a common extent that the concept of activism becomes obsolete?

For instance, in talking about humor, we were told that members of lower economic classes use it to defuse negative situations but that anyone in the middle class doing it might be seen as disrespectful.  Pile this on top of the statement that “business” procedures and customs are based on middle class ways of thinking and doing, which we were also told.  Unless I’m more of a dreamer than I thought, I can swear I have seldom seen middle class people show signs of feeling disrespected by people using humor to lighten the mood.  And when I have, it seemed more of a personal issue than a class issue.  Maybe humor is universal?  Or, at least, class-less?

I don’t know where I’m going with this.  It just makes me sad and makes me think about what I spend money on.

And thankful for my full belly tonight.

He was one of the sweetest people I have ever known.

He was a fan of Pabst.  The smell of “regular” beer always makes me think of him.  More so now.

[Taken with my new camera!]

I’ve had Poe on the brain lately. I have re-memorized “The Raven” just, well, because. If you’re interested in his death, I’d recommend Matthew Pearl’s The Poe Shadow.  It contains some “original research” into Poe’s mysterious death in Baltimore, 160 years ago this month.

You should see all the Poe toys I’ve collected. Rather, I should take some pictures of them.

For Photo Friday: Athletic.

Farty, too, if you really wanna know.

For Photo Friday: I’m Feeling…

Photo Friday: Spontaneous.

In the afternoon? All day! LOL

Oh, well. If you’re going to have a reputation for something, it could be worse. Much worse.

I blame the tons of good coffee places within a five minute walk of my office, even more within ten minutes. But on the same note: Baltimore has a lot of good coffee shops around mid-town/Central Baltimore. Oh, dang. Poor me.