You, coffee pot,
I want
to celebrate.
Filling my hand
with your handle each day,
carrying you
to work.

Always
fresh, like nothing
and nobody,
even when I’m not.
Always
just brewed
in Paradise:
my full
and pure
rosy cheek
of the dawn.

Compared
to you
the other pots of the earth
are
so awkward:
wanting travel-mugs,
awkward
twist-tops and plugged
drips.
You are pure balm,
fragrant oil
to my morning abrasions.
When I press into
your round innocence
I regress
for a moment
to the state
of the peace:
there’s still some coffee pot in us all.

(Odes are fun.)

Have I gushed about Ryan Adams lately?! Today I came home from a long week of work and listened to a live show of his from 2006-07-28 and it was amazing.

He’s one of those artists that allow his live shows to be recorded and traded freely, even allowing plug-in to the soundboard for many shows. Thus, there are a ton of his live shows floating around freely available (just see http://www.archive.org for examples). I love to listen to them all! He is so amazing live, and different every time. He plays the longest shows for any artist that I know, drawing from his massive catalog of songs. It still sounds fresh and from the heart every time.

He’s so interesting to me, partially because he can pull off both the sad, slow acoustic songs and the rocking, country rollickers. Then he’ll turn around and do something even crazier, like releasing 10+ albums under various pseudonyms to play insane hardcore punk or “DJ Reggie” underground.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: He’s by far my favorite artist.

Bets and I have had a great day off. We slept in, then we went to see the kitties. Someone had already come by, so that was a little annoying, but then we went down to Little Five and walked around a bit. That was a lot of fun. We went to Junkman’s Daughter and the record store and looked around a bit.

Then we went to The Vortex and I ordered a “Coronary Bypass.” This burger is massive. It is a huge burger topped with a fried egg, 3 slices of bacon, multiple slices of cheese, onions, tomatoes, lettuce, and slathered with mayonnaise. Both Betsy and I couldn’t believe that I finished the whole thing. I must have been hungry.

Then we went to Best Buy and look around a bit. After that we came back home and I played guitar for a couple hours with Dad’s Les Paul that he let me borrow last night. That was fun. I haven’t played an electric in a long time. I broke out some songs that go up the neck so far that I just can’t reach on my acoustic.

All in all, a fun day so far!

Bets and I are so happy to have a long weekend to spend together. It seems that there have been quite a few long days at work lately that have taken away some of our time, so we are particularly thankful. Tonight we are going on a date! Betsy is taking me out to see a movie–actually a lot of little movies–a presentation of the Oscar-nominated Animated Shorts at Midtown Art Cinema. We love going to these things. We like to actually know what the nominees are, when we can. We have fun and fill out those little Oscar ballots.

To start our weekend off nice, we went around the corner to Vi-Hi’s very own Taco Mac. Now we’re just chilling until our movie later on. Hopefully our weekend will be relaxing, refreshing and fun.

Some curious students decided to see what would happen if they didn’t put “spanish” on the end of the address I gave them in class. One person even asked, “Will it be in english?” So, a few people decided to see. They typed in “http://zachary-jones.com” without the /spanish/ on the end. A few days ago in class, a student said, “There were two scary doors!” I thought it was kinda funny. Today, another student said, “Is it ok if I comment on your other blog?”

This post is to officially answer their questions. I neither encourage nor discourage students from reading my personal blog.

I know that sounds like a cop-out. But, to be truthful, I have had a blog long before I started teaching. It’s just something that I like to do. And since I publish it on the Internet for the whole world to see, I obviously would be a fool to discourage the people that know me from reading it. I know that the Internet is a public place. Thus, my blog is like the library, the movies, or the mall. It’s public. Students can go to the mall if they would like. Their parents tell them if they can, usually. They can read the Atlanta Journal Constitution if they would like. Since this site is a public blog, they can read my blog if they would like. But, I won’t promote it in school because I think that would be a conflict of interest.

Does that make sense? Happy commenting!