As usual the first butterfly of the year saw me before I saw it, so no pic, but it was today, and it was a mourning cloak

Pic of the week: Deer on Ice birdsandbeesandblooms.com/2026/03/30/d...

There have been some impressive mustaches in baseball history but Dylan Cease's may be the first full-on Insane Nietzsche

What a world

While it's still Annunciation in this part of the world, here's my favourite ekphrastic poem on any subject (which I posted once or twice back at the other place but not here apparently), "The Song Rehearsal" by @aestallings.bsky.social

Pic of the week: Cold Chipmunk birdsandbeesandblooms.com/2026/03/22/c...

Gotta wonder how many litmags that don't explicitly want job-application-style cover letters and therefore don't discourage me from submitting to them for that reason actually want job-application-style cover letters anyway and therefore reject my submissions in some part because I don't supply them

Pic of the week: Fluffy Redpoll with Sticks birdsandbeesandblooms.com/2026/03/16/f...

There is maybe no greater intellectual symbol of the real hope of the 1990s, which was decimated and is now being buried by self-fulfilling cynicism, than Jürgen Habermas

This post by Krugman incidentally implicitly illustrates--assumimg he's right that it would take oil prices well over $150/barrel to reduce demand to the level of the possibly new normal supply--why carbon taxes were never going to work open.substack.com/pub/paulkrug...

Just occurred to me for the first time in could be 20 years to check whether you can still get to the Wikipedia "Philosophy" article by clicking the first linked word in a chain of articles starting from any random article and I am pleased to report that I got there starting from "Margaux Hemingway"

Hey has everyone else noticed they didn't change the clock up there, I was supposed to be home half an hour ago

AI companions are the new Agnes Callard

Cuba playing Yankees-level defense in this game

Seeing so much Hallmark holidication of International Women's Day this year that I expect next year I'll be getting promo e-mails from Canadian Tire suggesting kitchen appliances for all the ladies in my life

Pic of the week: Sap-Seeking Squirrel birdsandbeesandblooms.com/2026/03/09/s...

When everything lies, Laibach youtu.be/erR5PSfKo7w

From time to time but fortunately not too much of the time I think about the fact that whenever I touch the cats' litter boxes I treat my hands as toxic waste until I wash them and yet I don't treat the cats as toxic waste

Happy to have two new sonnets called "Slush Pile" and "December Zinnias" up today at Third Wednesday: thirdwednesdaymagazine.org/2026/03/06/t...

David Frum in this interview is the first person I've seen seem to get what Mark Carney was actually saying in his Davos speech: the sign Carney is taking out of Canada's window is not "God Bless America", it's "We Believe in the Rules-Based International Order"

Of all the this guy is that guy at the bar on his tenth Coors Lite of the night things that guy has ever said, the Revolutionary Guard should just hand their weapons over to the people is certainly one of them

If I were the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the US attorney-general said the congressional committee requiring her to testify about crimes should be talking about me instead I would also simply drop 20% in the next three weeks I wonder how else I am like the Dow Jones Industrial Average

We watched Under the Skin last night, and I just saw some more Wuthrering Heights bashing on here, and, well, I am a man of the people

Every one that lappeth of the water with his tongue, as a dog lappeth, him shalt thou set by himself; likewise every one that boweth down upon his knees to drink. And the number of them that lapped, putting their hand to their mouth, was one cat

I can't get over the fact that there is New York Yankees logo in this picture

Pic of the week: Woodhopper birdsandbeesandblooms.com/2026/03/02/w...

One of the mysteries of life: how did it come to be that we all take for granted that the equinoxes and solstices are when the seasons "officially" start

A whimsical 5-7-5er by me up at haikuniverse today! (God as my witness, wild turkeys can fly.) haikuniverse.com/haiku-by-mat...

My diet coke and mentos thing for today: mud volcanoes

We are the horses... holy Mackinaw Joe.

AWP is like the Super Bowl for writers in that if you're not particularly personally interested in it you're always kind of vaguely gauging how soon it is by the volume of mentions you see on social media The waves come in increasing swells and ebbs, big swell happening now, got to be soon, surely

Reddit vs youtube on plumbing DIY: Reddit is your dad, says you incompetent idiot you can't do that you'll die & flood your house & your house will fall down & you'll die, call a plumber Youtube is your cool uncle, says hell yeah let's do it, first things we need's a quart of whisky & a blowtorch

There is maybe nothing more emblematic of the current totalitarianism of the soul than being emotionally invested in the political leanings of hockey players As am I, as am I, of course

Pic of the week: Chickadee Spill birdsandbeesandblooms.com/2026/02/22/c...

Your last saved photo of a celebrity is your therapist. This is acceptable

Never in doubt

I feel like this Wuthering Heights movie is casting some sort of confusion spell over everyone who sees it Kind of like how the Avatars cast some sort of amnesia or silence spell such that everyone has seen them but no one talks about them (if it's an amnesia spell then maybe I've seen an Avatar!)

Can't, I'm "dead," was all he answered.

Never in doubt

True fact: I created the Wikipedia page for Morri Creech because I went looking for the Wikipedia page of the guy who wrote this poem I'd just come across, which remains one of my favourite poems ever, and there wasn't one newcriterion.com/article/witn...

Seeing the first signs of Is Spring Ever Coming Season, which begins in February before we remember that early March and a fortiori late February is not and never was spring, and ends in early June after we've forgotten that spring is not the same thing as early summer

Pic of the week: Fangs birdsandbeesandblooms.com/2026/02/15/f...

busker with bucket pounds for dollars #senryuslam

Couldn't find the clip for my chip bag so I got another one and all I can think is Lawrence telling the kid to fetch another detonator and now that clip is gonna explode in my pants Someday we'll have polls here and then I can ask whether I should've just sent this post to the bog of eternal drafts

I imagine this poem making for quite a classroom debate--23 lines, and 3 of them stick out, and stick it to a very particular time and place and thing stonecirclereview.com/breaking/

One for the day for all the bloody backhanded poets youtu.be/RZwtWExDmoI

Have spent much of the last few days doing detective work trying to determine whether I have won a prize or am being scammed Am now officially a Professional Writer

Oh drafts, oh drafts, oh drafts *peers* *begins writing post* *peers* *continues writing post* *peers* *saves post in drafts* *runs away*

Am finally after all these years reading the entire bloody Fukuyama book and God help us there in the exact middle of it is Havel's bloody greengrocer

Wait, the Patriots' quarterback's name is DRAKE? You gotta be kidding me