April is the cruelest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Winter kept us warm, covering
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers.

--T.S. Eliot, "The Waste Land"

So I have now read "The Waste Land" in its entirety for the first time. Am I the only one to graduate from college without having to read it? How much time and effort, how much outside reading, will it now take to feel I understand it?

I certainly won't be having S. read it any time soon although it wouldn't hurt to find out how much he already knows about the Fisher King.

On a much more superficial level, I am extremely happy--despite the tenacious migraine--to have learned this morning that Dwight Yoakam's latest will be out in mid-June. "It's probably a little more reckless in a rock 'n' roll sense," Dwight says of Blame the Vain in USA Today. Sounds like the perfect summer soundtrack for ripping up carpets and installing hardwood floors.