"The Country" by Billy Collins

I wondered about you
when you told me never to leave
a box of wooden, strike-anywhere matches
lying around the house because the mice

might get into them and start a fire.
But your face was absolutely straight
when you twisted the lid down on the round tin
where the matches, you said, are always stowed.

Who could sleep that night?
Who could whisk away the thought
of the one unlikely mouse
padding along a cold water pipe

behind the floral wallpaper
gripping a single wooden match
between the needles of his teeth?
Who could not see him rounding a corner,

the blue tip scratching against a rough-hewn beam,
the sudden flare, and the creature
for one bright, shining moment
suddenly thrust ahead of his time -

now a fire-starter, now a torchbearer
in a forgotten ritual, little brown druid
illuminating some ancient night.
Who could fail to notice,

lit up in the blazing insulation,
the tiny looks of wonderment on the faces
of his fellow mice, onetime inhabitants
of what once was your house in the country?

While I'd love to take credit for digging this up, I have to credit John Gruber's Daring Fireball for pointing me to these gems. Matt Neuburg is reviewing Omnifocus for TidBITS, and is less then impressed with some of it's user interface and control implementations. There is a full article linked above about it, but really, the true gold is in the screencasts. Enjoy.

It all started innocently enough, as most relationships tend to. Just like any other day, I opened up iTunes and added some music. Little did I know that it was going to be the start of something magic. It would seem that my MacBook Pro, named Sven, following in the path of such artificially intelligent giants as Johnny 5 and Wall-E, has developed personal taste. In fact, it would seem Sven has a major crush on Dave Matthews. While I myself like to listen to Dave Matthews Band from time to time, Sven thinks I should hear them more. My usual listening habit when using iTunes is to have a playlist I call "Fav Mix". Creative naming I know, but it gets the point across and is easy to remember. Now, in this list is some 250 songs, 5 of which are Dave Matthews Band songs. Compare this to the roughly 20 or so Nine Inch Nails songs I have in the list. Now, when listening to this list on random, Sven will dish up Dave Matthews roughly every third song, however, it's roughly one out of every 10 before I get a Nine Inch Nails song. So not only does Sven have a thing for Dave Matthews, he's got something against Nine Inch Nails. I know what your thinking. "Jeremy, you must have set a rating for those Dave Matthews songs." "Hmm" I say, "That doesn't seem to be the case. I don't rate music in iTunes and all these songs have no stars in the rating field." It really does look like Sven just prefers Dave Matthews. Dave should look out though, I think Sven has his eye on those two beck songs I added to the list a couple weeks ago.

As a life long New York Mets fan I can feel nothing more then embarrassment today over the firing of Willie Randolph as manager. It's been quite obvious for weeks that Willie was on the way out and that members of his staff would be going with him. But this morning, at 3:14 AM EDT in a freakin' press release, the Mets finally pulled the trigger releasing Willie, pitching coach Rick Petterson and first base coach Tom Nieto. Now, I'm used to my Mets doing stupid things. And while I am torn as to how much of the Mets current issues should be placed at Willie's feet, a certain level of respect should be given when firing him. This also comes as the Mets start a west coast swing beginning in Anaheim. They had him and his coaches get on a plane, fly out to the west coast, manage a game (which was a win by the way) and then, via press release, fire him. I can't help but think it was the plan all along to wait until they got back out to the west coast so they wouldn't have to be in the teeth of the New York media machine when they did it. Yet they had no problem putting Willie out in front of the press each day with no cover.

This whole spiral began last year when the Mets had a second half that I call the "Reverse Bad News Bears" scenario. After blowing away the NL East for the first half of the year, the Mets came back from the all-star break with a roaring yawn. I'd like to point out that over this all-star break, the Mets fired their hitting coach and replaced him with Howard Johnson. Since this move has been made, the Mets hitting has been absolutely awful. HoJo still has his job though. There is nothing about the Mets lately that follows logic. And by "lately" I mean the last five years. With these actions, I'm am now of the opinion that Omar Minaya, the Mets General Manager, should now be let go. I wouldn't mind if the Wilpon's sold the Mets either. While writing this, I was watching ESPN2 and Mike and Mike in the Morning was on. Trey Wingo had a line that I thought was fitting. "They Mets front office is looking for a spine transplant."

New York Mets, I've stood up for you many times. Taken your side on several debates, but this is inexcusable. I'm nothing but ashamed today.