The news makes me so crazy I could start screeding...and never stop. So instead I do photoshop as therapy to convert rage into absurdity.

The politcally motivated landscape of lies is the true target of my anger yet other less important failings can drive me crazy too. I follow all the network liars so that I can keep abreast of the current lies and manipulations... So I see all the story titles.

I'm convinced that there is a rule for making story titles as fucking stoopid as possible...Almost all are very poor and irksome... But then they wrench it up a bit once in a while (to drive people insane). Like lately...

CNN? or the Onion?



( more crap after the cut )

A couple ironies - one related to my last post. I came from NJ to NC when I was sixteen to go to college..and both me and my sister and many college friends all stayed here. In my case a large part was the weather. It's nicer, longer. And even in the middle of winter there is a certain weather pattern that occurs which sets me at peace. An unsteady warm breeze blows from almost due south. The sky is completely overcast with low flying stratus clouds heading north. The air is completely saturated with humidity. I open the doors and windows and let the wafting air inside. A fog forms on all the mirrors. Visible droplets of water form on cold walls and doors which become wet to the touch. And the air smells all the same as if there were an april shower passing. And so in that moment you have springtime.

At times in my past new year's eve was a magical time of wild partying, tequila, screaming at the moon, a knit gang of friends, romance, ecstasy, and complete exhaustion. Somehow all those things drift away like in that Bob Dylan song. You don't know when you stopped doing certain things or knowing certain people..it all just drifts.

So no crazy time this year. Just some delicious balminess in the air. Midnight is one of the hours of the day that I am always awake during. So with the apathy of the season I described in my last post, I decided to lay down at around 11:30- just before new year. It was probably a small depression wave. When a shallow angst washes over you like the roiling air floating out of an oven you've just opened.

I can handle many different negative emotions...but for some it requires being horizontal by an open window with a cat. So laying there in the dark smelling that wayward spring air I watched as my cats also sniffed with enthusiasm at the richness that was bathing us. I realized how many elements from my last post were present and found it amusing. It also revealed a truth though--that the "dormancy" I referred to, although expressed as a seasonal process, is actually more of a metaphor for a dormancy of spirit. So in a sense that winter I mention is in many ways a winter of years.

So the enticing air and the cats and the horizontality all worked their magic upon me and I began to drift away blissfully. As I sank away I contemplated the irony of being unconscious at the moment of the new year and how this was really a unique celebration unlike all the others which involved being awake. And yet maybe every minute or two I would start awake to the sounds of my neighbors anticipatory fireworks and as quickly I would fall back into sleep. It sounds uncomfortable but it was quite the opposite. When you sleep blissfully in air like that you don't really enjoy the sleeping time as much as you enjoy the brief satisfying moments of consciousness that wash in. It is at the precise moment where we are "falling" asleep that is so satisfying. So the evening air and the fireworks held me suspended right at the very door of sleep and a light rain finally dragged me completely under.

As I said midnight is never a sleepy time for me..so this was a nap. I awoke spontaneously about an hour and a half later, the breeze still immaculate but the rain now just a dripping. I spoke a word to the darkness that I wanted to be my first word this year, and got up.

In the lowered lids of late autumn's eyes...I am slumped into a darkness. There is still the sun briefly, but it is white and cold. It is cast in splinters through the rattling brown bones of summer shoots.

If I am a bear briefly shifting in my hibernatory bed...then I have lifted my apprehending nose to find that time has stopped moving. Only the smell of soil. I cast down my swollen eyes to relieve the burden of sight...and curl in again upon myself. I coil into my bed of tangled rotten weeds, as I descend away again from the world with a heaving restive sighing groan. There is nothing in the world to miss.

A sleeping bear has but one earthly tether..its nose. A bear does not stir until the first purple crocus gives up its purple scent...It likely enters as a dream. Where once there were only vague dark forms, stones and ice..now there is a waving, a breezing of things, a suppleness. Perhaps the moment the bear reaches out in its dream to paw open the new earth..perhaps then it reaches back into the world and awakes.

But ..I am not a bear and instead I only need to think of the world in its first fine coat of light spring green... and I begin to dream of summer. A twittering of ripening fields, the massive billows of green boughs, the blood-rich browns. The velvet blackness of summer night is a darkness more loving and profound than this white frozen moment at the bottom of winter.

But as I paw into that sweet dark dream..I too awake. I look around...I see that the matted grass is not growing, it is mashed into a dullness. The white oak will not drop its innermost leaves..a few stay to rasp crisply in the lifeless winter wind. The wren is about..but the song is full of immediacy and dissatisfaction. A torpor falls in around me. I decide to sleep off this barren season.

I will sleep until the first true spring rain sets loose a verdant sea of eager sprouts once again...When the morning sun is yellow and the evening sky is singed in pink, and everything that lives reaches out to the world with a wild curious confidence. When that first spring storm rolls away into orangeness and the fresh washed land gleams with the dappled color of first flowers..Then I will wake up...Then there will be no need for that pale yet loyal substitute- Dreaming...

I'm trying to find a name for this clusterfuck that going on in our country right now...

Its not 9/11 ...its worse... because the tragic part of this is the HUNDEREDS that our dying of PREVENTABLE conditions. Its truly part of the New Orwellian Order...so I propose that we recall this as "The Relief Disaster". This is the most fucked up situation ...Fucking International Aid is going to get here before WE DO.

So many things just keep coming to mind..I feel impelled to start getting it down NOW..before this gets memory-holed into some bizarre legend. SO I'm going to keep adding to this today..stream of ideas- info - etc ...so I'll have a reference BECAUSE this whole recent history is going to be rewritten and rewritten over and over until the Infotainment Complex washes away all hopes at truth...So far I'm optimistic in this one regard -- Believe it or not..even FOX tv people, (Shephard Smith for one) are acting outraged on behalf of the people of New Orleans. Some Media appear almost alive, almost awake ..as if from a slumber of decades. But already I've seen WHORE Tim Russert of "meet the royal press fuck" try to float this bullcrap for the administration..."No one could have predicted any of this"..etc bullshit..."we'll be pointing fingers for years to come" etc...

So for the record...

WE KNEW THIS WAS GOING TO HAPPEN

More to come here later...in the present moment this is all really easy to recall. I could point to hundreds of articles and studies and news reoprts that cleary outlined all the problems we are now witnessing. But if the media go limp and start to whitewash this I will start to cache various webpages in their current state to remember some artifacts of the pre-"Relief Disaster" world.

uhhhh for frickin' example ..just now while I'm writing..Pres Bush came out and said the Relief Effort is "unacceptable"...really? This was just said 9 AM Sept 2, 2005. Bush is going to land in Biloxi Mississippi in a few hours but is too scared to land in New Orleans citing security concerns. If he's afraid of Americans then he should resign his miserable post.

CURRENTLY
as of Friday 10AM Sep 2, 2005 (or is it 1905) tens of thousands of refugees in America are gathered and waiting for the most basic aid in a collosal humantarian crisis taking place in front of all the eyes of the so called richest most powerful nation on earth.

Roughly 104 hrs since the storm has passed there are still 10 to 20 thousand people waiting in government designated areas , the SuperDome and the Convention Center. The crisis at the Convention center is the worst...these people have not recieved any significant aid at all as of Friday 10AM Sep 2, 2005. Many have died at this location, AND MANY CONTINUE TO DIE DUE TO LACK OF BASIC ESSENTIALS.

as of Friday 10AM Sep 2, 2005 ..The "today show" coverage I've been watching is now doing a segment on 'Hometown Wedding' wedding makeovers--WHAT THE FUCK IS HAPPENING ? One minute Katie Couric is chewing out FEMA director like she's been some advocate of the people..she even put these like swimming goggle glasses as she read various reoprts and hard questions to the FEMA director Ghoul Mike Brown....explosions overnight in a chemical plant...more have died at the Convention Center...

Its a fucking massive psychological experiment is my best guess. An experiment in extending the indifference we have for most other people on earth...to ourselves. Its The Grapes of Wrath unfolding right before us..a lesson we've learned a million times over. I'm really really offended by any pretending at normal everyday life being juxtaposed with CATASTROPHIC HUMAN TRAGEDY...its driving me crazy. Bodies in the streets one minute, best wacky Regis'n'Kelly moments the next. I'm totally mindfucked by this. Do you know what was the purple grape of wrath? Go get your book...

as of 11:40 am ...SEE WHAT I"M SAYING??? Two hours ago Bush made a brief statement summarizing the relief effort as "unacceptable" BUT JUST NOW in the most surreal embarrasing live news Ive ever seen Bush praised FEMA director for a 'heck of a job' to a huge round of applause by the govs of Alabama , Mississippi and hundreds of personel at this surreal command center. WHICH IS IT ??--'A HECK OF A JOB' OR 'UNACCEPTABLE'??? The news is still trying to quote him as saying 'unacceptable' despite his more recent national appearance claiming an excellent job. So is the media caving? Already?? ..THIS IS EXACTLY WHY I'M UPDATING THIS AS ITS GOING DOWN. If the media put the kid-gloves back on already..I'm gonna puke..



(POSTING 4 NOW MUCH MORE WILL BE ADDED)

one of the best Mike Malloy shows ever today 7/21/05....

MikeMalloy archive at whiterosesociety.org

His opening hour is him at his very best...

(danger: really angry librul...with a microphone!)

Well...my sister had her second kid on july 12. So I've been doing that stuff...goin' to women's hospital with mom, friends, sis's inlaws etc... They have this whole hospital just for birth. Its pretty weird...its like a machine, women everywhere with puffy faces in wheelchairs, on gurneys and standing around with IVs. People with balloons and cameras..its like graduation or something..but permanently. Each of the patient rooms has cards and signs on the door etc..."its a boy!!"...but you come back a few hours later and there's all new banners-new grandparents-new people...

So i was plannin' on getting a digital camera anyway..and finally caved- soldifying the descision process with the justification getting good pics of sisters baby. I got a Canon EOS 350D "digital rebel" (yea I'm a damn outlaw!! ...Just dont know what the whole rebellion is about...but I'm wild at heart.) Its the most money I've spent since I bought a computer...but now I can take thopusands of pictures ...!!. I'm pretty happy with it, but I tend to overanalyze it trying to make sure I bi\ought the right one. There's pretty much only a couple of other cams I'm wondering if I should have bought. The post-process descion making is maddening.

Very happy with detail. Very happy with hi-speed shots. A little dismayed over color-noise in dark images...but there have to be limits somewhere. And I coukld always get some better lenses someday..we'll see..

Here is a pic of a flower that me and my mom disagree on the name. I think it's a tiger-lily mom thinks its a northern-lily or maybe its a mountain-lily if theres any such thing..Anywho..more pics under the cut...

( picture details )

 

fire_daemon  asked me about my 'science' background....and got more than he bargained for...5000 words^{EDIT:duh... 5000 letters! not words..doh!} about my recent history, and science interests....

Its pretty descriptive of me so I'm posting it because I always manage to not write about myself.

So here's some prehistory...Give me a job!!!!

( cut for boredom )
Some pictures of my a-life in the comments....

Well lets hope this doesn't get out of hand...

It's 5:30 AM EST and there's news of explosions all over London...

Olympics? Bush visit? G8 hosting? 7/7 ? We'll see...

Through a blackened eye...


Black Eyed Susan Cone

Here's another scan. I have 10 to 20 thousand Black Eyed Susans growing in my yard. I practice "laissez faire" gardening strategies. I give the Black Eyed Susans "carte blanche" to do as they please. Here is a Black Eyed Susan that fulfills my archetype of the species. There are many others that are more robust and flashy but the little ones with non-overlapping petals stimulate me the most. I find myself drawn to ones with thirteen petals...

My Quintessential Black Eyed Susan


Since I have so many, I get to observe a variety of genetic mutants. I will post some interesting ones soon...

Well I'm playing with my new scanner. I like to use it as a microscope, though this one doesn't 'blow up' too well compared to others I've played with.

This is a Mint flower bud ...all blowed up...

My town is so stupid. They are having the fireworks a day earlier, today July 3rd. wtf. Sure a bunch of people who figured it out will go but the rest, the majority I'm guessin', will show up tomorrow in the thousands as usual. There's gonna be a lot of 'wtf's out there...

"This American Life" this week has an excellent 2nd half. Its about a pet bull. Drama, tragedy, action....kinda sad. It a pretty story.

Well this post is just for posterity. This is the day that Sandra Day O'Conner did her part to help end the world. fuck

^cleeeeaan_niiiing this means 'use sing-song voice'..got it? Like _heh^looo... This notation is only good for three-note melodies though...shit. More notes can be implied possibly contextually..or more likely people cant really guess the sing-song tones I'm using. Must find a nomenclature for this and hand gestures...thats it! I'm gonna work on a hand-gesture alphabet...I pretty much just need one pictograph of my hands gesturing in the air as if I were holding a globe, turning it time to time -sometimes shaking it towards and away from you.

There's also a hand flapping ' you know I mean?' - you float your hand in a cylindrical motion as if you were wafting the smell of food towards your face. 'Etc' is very similar but its more like brushing crumbs off a table. I run an occasional 'blinders'- two upright flat-formed hands, palms facing eachother, framing the line of eye-contact, throw in some back-and-forth motion. Sometimes for effect I curl my two hands like binoculars in front of my eyes...and then I do 'focus adjustments' by rotating the right hand about its optic axis. (I don't think I need a pictogram for that though..its so rare.) I also like 'hand across the plain' - one flat hand outstretched, palm down, sweeps the horizon jus below eye level...but sometimes the hand begins to circle, the fingers open and the gesture degenerates into a 'washing the car' motion signfying "something like that", "look around in there","you may be interested in ...",or almost any "maybe" clause.

Vertical Karate-chop hand coming straight away from exact center of face--is a good one too.

I like watching a birdfeeder thats 5000 miles away I saw a squirrel..

Gotta hate the memes but this one's different ..really..
Its not based on friends but on your interests. The meme finds the shared interests of other users who share your "less popular" interests. You can also set a threshold which limits the maximum popularity of the result list. The crazy thing about this meme is its validity. It is so "telling" you can use it to "figure someone out". It also synthesizes "good" info. Its found things I'm into that I never knew existed! It also more acurately drew me out in some ways - finding my "cardinal" aspects that I have not included in my list of interests- darwinism (yes), depression (o did I leave that one out? yes), caffine(yup), coffee (ditto), Pink Floyd (strange because I only recently have enjoyed a deep and heart felt pink floyd revival), ucb (never saw this show until just recently and yes it rocks)...

In the extremes of the threshold you get two different kinds of results-1000 yields a list of the most  unpopular shared interests of users who share your rare interests-100,000,000 (dont use commas) yields the popular shared interest...etc... This second list almost always begins with "music" because thats the number one interest.

Its funny too to run a community. I ran physics with a high threshold to see what popular things "physics" is in to. Photography, philosophy, science-fiction, art, cats (haha wtf no dogs? only animal on the list), movies, poetry, psychology, love (very nice...)

 

( the nerdy meme HERE )

If you loved "Twin Peaks"....go here. Or if you just like funny crap.

2005 2005
Perihelion Jan 2 01 Equinoxes Mar 20 12 33 Sept 22 22 23
Aphelion July 5 05 Solstices June 21 06 46 Dec 21 18 35

Forgot to worship...ahhh!
I wanted to start aligning things around the property to "special" meridians. A suburban Chaco Canyon ...well maybe tomorrow I'll draw out some lines ....

This is a "time capsule" entry. That means to me that no matter when or why you --you in the future-- why ever you are here...you may teach me to clean. Philosophies most helpful...discipline too...moral support...these all useful. See I've only recently "re-entered" my journal just when I have so much to clean. What a strange coincidence.

Chances are whenever I "return" to my journal I'll have some cleaning to do...so lay it out.

_octopus_  ...go now.

I just learned a valuable "social" technique. The phone company called me to offer me a "great" deal. I asked "one question...If I never made a long distance call would my rates go up?"..Answer "33.95" 10 bucks more than my grass-roots plan. Now that never ends the dig, and she sounded nice, so I told her "the truth"...(kinda..) "I have another phone..and I ONLY use it for long distance...this one I ONLY use locally ..."..."ohhh ok Well thank you...." She ends the call.

I call it "countermarketing". Here's another quick few. When you have to go through a marketing form to get something "free"...cooperate with the terms and don't bother giving them valuable info.

Year of Birth:1902 to 1907 ...this gets you as old as possible without looking too obvious. Ageism makes "economic sense", sadly for us, the bottom line doesn't involve brand loyalty for our elders. Thats why everything that keeps you going when you're old is insanely expensive. They can give you a bad deal because the transaction is not expected to continue.

Income:The lowest possible setting..obvious or not...especially if its true.

Where ever there exists an option to be in a statistically small group--take it---this decreases your usefulness to the data. That is ... when thinking of your "location", you should use a location you never could imagine living...this makes you "impossible".

Have only two strangly conflicting "interests"..especially if you have those interests, this has an ironic effect, the survey throws away good data...just because you are so weird ..marketing "self-terminates" in effect saying "we get it we get it,you wont be buying any deoderant...ok bye". I use "Racing" and "Cookbooks" and sometimes "Greeting Cards".

Good luck!! Any tips??

Also give good data to good things too. But beware impersonators..they now have drifting topics...if you find yourself at any moment talking to someone about your frequency of fabric softener use--terminate that discussion...its humiliating the both of you. Though you can also, very rarely, find a marketer who "gets it" and laughs with you --- recently I had this woman going good..she ran a list of a hundred things by me to see if I had bought them in the last six months. I told her ahead of time that I never buy "things" that often and in the last six months ... only food and cat food...true (cigs). " Then this will just take a second","ok fire away"
boat--no
plane ticket-no
real estate-no...
Super fast like a game show..it was fun.

I was gone for 330+ days...pretty lame.

Dusting off the neglected weird ass thing.
Weird year...FOUR MORE YE..omg I'm hungover from that year.
I intend to dabble.

And I've found a great Devivaling Religion, following the horrorbible "Book of the SubGenius". I used to have friends that practiced but only recently have I seen its true wisdom for OUR TIMES. A "Do-It-Yourself End-Times Religion" to top them all!

Are you "normal"??..Then why are you reading this?

ACT LIKE YOU AREN'T READING THIS!

The MIDI files at the "classicalarchives" are almost all very faithful renditions broke up completely by part. They are not that great to listen to but serve more technically fluid aspects at the cost of some aesthetic values. If you have any music-writing software like Cakewalk Sonar or HomeStudio, you can open these MIDI files and view all the parts in "Staff View" and even print idividual parts.

If you need a little more detail ..ask.

If anyone should find this post and know of other packages for opening MIDI files into "sheet music" please add your comments below.

Well I thought I had a great answer for you...but then I looked a little deeper (because this is my current topic of interest(reproduction/selection) ).

I was gonna tell you this: There are different strategies to ensure numerous and variable offspring. Some methods favor large numbers of offspring with low variation--inbreeding. Other methods are more 'careful' and focus more on outbreeding which may produce less numbers of offspring but with more variation ensured.

Now you need a quick flower anatomy lesson here...
Read at least far enough until both the male and female flower parts have been described...and then take a look at the picture.

As you can see upright flowers are very likely to fertilize themselves, this is called 'selfing' (go self yourself...). selfing is a high form of inbreeding that does not produce much variation...and eventually (after many generations) destroys it. However this strategy makes sure there's at least 'somebody' in the next generation at the cost of good variation in the next gen...

So I was going to suggest that downward pointing (pendulous) flowers are less likely to 'self' because the sperm is released below the ova. In an upright flower the sperm can fall from above the ova and fertilize it-which is the way its most often done--pollinators (bees beetles etc..) travel flower to flower allowing for a little bit of variation but almost all the fertilization is selfing.

BUT BUT BUT....

[I wrote ↑that↑ and then I got involved in something (babies etc)...so now Im back many days later...]

but but but..etc...

Flowers have other methods to control 'selfing'. And most interestingly I'm now learning about the 'social' traits of plants..woah...

Many flowers prevent selfing by being protogynous (heh..word new word...) which is when the egg matures first then the sperm later. They can also overlap somewhat in the timing. A field of such flowers will all be slightly out of sync allowing sperm-active plants to fertilize egg-active plants. There are also other methods by which selfing is avoided--geometry of fertilization tubes, being self-incompatible, and other geomtries. An example of this last case that I find really neat=> Corn...go find a corn field ..they're everywhere if you know what yer doin'. Corn plants have pollen(= sperm) on the very tops of the plant..just like face-up flowers (= sperm above egg). The pollen is a powdery substance attached to little grains that look much like grass-seed. Wind blows the little grains free and the grains hold the true pollen (its like mass transportation=lots of pollen traveling on each of the 'grains' (NOTE: there are most surely words for all this anatomy..but Ive already researched like too many things so far...so my jargon will have to do ;P). The flowers are the undevloped ears--with sticky silk spilling out to nab pollen from the wind. The corn leaves act as little viaducts that capture pollen grains and funnel them to the flowers on the stalk...thats why the ears develope at crook of the leaves. Here's the fun part: Go shake a sexually active corn plant--what do you see?? The leaf arrangment makes it very difficult for the corn to self when compared to how easily it can fertilize its neighbors. Go check it out some time...shake the active corn...you'll see pollen delivered to neighbors while avoiding its own flowers....yea...

cont.....

Soooo...why point down when you have all these other options? Well its true --downward is often a method for avoiding selfing..but there are other reasons too and you have to formulate exoperiments to elucidate why a particular species is pendulous. In particular-by correlating rain data with various fertilizations it can be shown that some plants are downers because the pollen is particularly vulnerable to being wet--(remember another variation method is having pollen wind blown--more distance=more mixing--you can imagine how useless a bunch of soggy pollen is..) Some may also be providing shelter to their primary pollenators. So there's many reasons but they all fall back on: maximizing variation through the avoidance of selfing.

But etc...

If you have no 'choice'- selfing is better than nothing. You could at least hold out to a later generation where variation is once again available. So how do you know when to self and when to cross? (you gotta know when hold em' ...know WHEN to fold em'...) This is where things get crazy weird...Plants apparently can 'choose' which of their seeds they prefer to develope. Plants fertilized by many others tend to choose the seeds that are the MOST heterozygous (sperm and egg MOST different). Yet another plan for maximizing variation among offspring. Keep in mind this includes self pollenation...since egg and sperm are so similar- (from same individual) the cross is highly homozygous (both halfs of DNA highly similar). So many plants are able express a preference for strange sperm (there's hope for me yet!!!) --ensuring higher variation. Many analogs in the animal kingdom--much preference for strange/unfamiliar males...opposites attract. Even in fruitflys female preference for the 'minority' males is seen. Create two artificial male fly populations: one→ 85% type-A and 15% type-B; the other→ 15% type-A 85% type-B. In either case there is seen a bias in female-choice for the 'rare' type-- regardless of the quality of the actual gene!! (So go find Pierre...ok....I'll go look for Olga..)

Also funny..protogynous-means female parts develope first---proto=first/early gynous='female stuff' protogynous= ladies first...

Well should I stop typing...ok then. I don't know how many more dissertations I can give--effort,inhibition,awkwardness(?) - but I thought I would smartypants you. And then I read up and found all this interesting stuff...and I don't like simplifying things...I like to get it straight. So these expositions keep me on my toes. Questions?? (heh careful what you ask for..)

Some serious Orwellian BS

WASHINGTON(AP) The United States is tightening security in the face of a steady stream of intelligence indicating al-Qaida may seek to mount an attack aimed at disrupting elections, the White House said.............Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist told reporters .........."There's, obviously, no reason for panic, or paralysis," Frist said after a briefing for senators on intelligence matters. "The country is at some increased risk between now and the time of the presidential election. It's important for people to be aware of that.".......Islamic militants may try to replicate the political success they had in Spain with coordinated pre-election train bombings..........
Elaborate plans are already in the works to protect the Republican and Democratic party conventions in New York and Boston, which have been classified as National Security Special Events.

-------------------------------------------

Well wait a sec. If Islamic militants had a "success", then this assumes we know who they would rather attack R's or D's. So soon we'll know once and for all that Al-qaida are really Democrats for Kerry-Edwards. I thought they hated democracy, who'd have known.

Seems to me we should investigate Katherine Harris and Jeb Bush for Al-Qaida ties.

Here's what I know: whatever Al-qaida does next is bound to benefit Haliburton.

.....Afghan base.....Camp X-ray.....Iraq contracts.....Homeland security...

In the old-fashioned days you used to investigate folks who profitted from crimes but I guess that doesn't apply on a global scale.

So what's next in the headlines...

"Destroying America from Within: Al-Qaida Vows to Bring Universal Healthcare to America"
"Osama Funding Seniors' Visits to Canada for Cheaper Medications"
"Al-Qaida Unveils Plans For Solar Car"

----------my nutjob musings for today

I am disappering temporarily to go visit mom and dad in NJ. We meet up at my grandmother's place in the wilds of Pennsylvania. My mother's mother died many years before I was born and in her last years my mom's family would go to this "retreat" in the mountains of PA for Philadelphia quakers. After she died my grandfather took up with the woman who ran the place. So as a child this place was my "grandparents".

I consider it to be the most beautiful place on earth. As a child, a week or two a year there, filled my life with psychic experience. To this day, half of my dreams and nightmares take place in varied settings, the other half all occur there- Elkmont.

It was a place to find newts under rocks, to catch butterflies, to visit with cows, to witness totally black night, to feel the stars weigh heavily on the earth. It is a place where the smells of the earth cannot be escaped. Everywhere there is the smell of stone and earth, of ripening and harvest crops, of the forrests, the cows, the barn, the streams. So much of my feelings for nature and for animals and for the vastness of space, all come from my childhood experiences there.

But now I have different problems. My mental problems really raise their heads for Elkmont. The problem: it is a world I can no longer innocently enjoy. It is still so beautiful and vast, wild and isolated- but I am now a "problem" for myself. To be exposed to it- to see it and know that is still there every day- this somehow wounds me. Its in my hand, but I can't reach it. There is an amazing poet, Mary Oliver, who captures this feeling in a poem of hers that I haven't been able to find lately. She describes a beautiful natural world and ends with something like- "a beautiful world to which you can not belong". This is pretty close to capturing the feelings I have there now. In a sense, I would rather not see its beauty and serenity because it only serves to show me a depth of existence and happiness that I cannot have- at least right now.

So going messes me up a little---I am forced to see my life in contrast of my dreams. Its like I eat the apple of knowledge and am expelled from the garden.

Pretty gloomy....but I think its a temporary state. A necessary stop on the way to deeper things, to deeper happiness.

-------------------

After just two days there in the Pennsylanian hills, I'll go back to NJ which is a piece of cake. My parents home is place for the adult mind. It is a house, packed literally to the ceilng, with tons of crazy shit. Everthing from museam pieces to kitch fast-food toys- built upon eachother one layer subsuming the next in a massive artistic amalgemation a fully intergrated collage of things. Through it, the entire human experience can be gleaned. The house is an encylopedia of all history, space and time. It is a manifest unconscious laying before you, browsable, and touchable. It is place where I can still commune, drawn in by its endless depth a fair metaphor for the depth of human experience.

But I'm running out of time and must get shit ready so the other 100,000 words will have to just wait on all this stuff--------

Here's just a little taster of the house----


Full size image...

Pics some day of Elkmont and more pics from home...

I think what I like most about LJ is having real-time access to so many geniuses; scietific, creative, literary and compassionate. But dont forget comedic genius. Found this by way of sciurism though its original author is shmivejournal

Rock Paper Saddam

Wait for the pictures to load......

About the baby in the icon...and blowed up pictures...( Read more... )

Well so much more for short posts. I promise I'm gonna try to cut'em down or at least pepper the thing with some light and easy interior decorating. I try to post like I talk...which is ex-New Jersey 1000-words/min. I call it "giving someone an ear pounding" --- I will work on the haiku juornal entry. . . .see.

Well to break the monotony of my posts I think it necessary to add some dessert. A gigantic picture of my cat Keet.

Back in my cello playin days (huge writer's block pause here as I go back to 'cello playin days'--post coming) ---Community orchestra would have it's last rehersal in the hall it was about to play in. We actually were playing in the hall of the same little quaker college I did my undergrad time at. It was more a place of bonding to friends and formative experiences than a physics degree. So I was very familiar with feral cat population I had witnessed for years there. Cats had found a tolerant biome, a variety of small mammals to eat (squirrels a majority), and lots of warm nooks for shelter. You hardly ever saw them. (and I'll need another post here). . . .

At half-time people drink soda and eat pretzels and some go out back for a smoke (me too). Night, October, and chilly. . .An ambivalent kitten steps out from a bush and scoots back. She meowed and didn't know what to do. . .back and forth, to the people, to the bush. I think it's a feral cat adaptation occasionally making cats with very little resistance to humans. By far the majority of feral kittens would rather die than meet a person. But this little kitten had that "I give up" meow, "help . . .anybody". My rule has been, if they ask - I'll respond- but I'm not trappin wild kittens to make sure that they survive (unless etc. ;) ....). So it was a hard call, frantic cute kitten meowing, and time to get back in my seat in the cello section, What to do? A sign?. Well in seconds a cold rain broke out-- hunkering the shoulders of the smoke-breakers and now that little kitten looked much different to me-- much colder and wetter. Crouch to her, she runs up and lets me scoop her up.

I pop her in my car and turn on the heat and go back inside. I didn't realize I was aquring a cat. I thought I was just taking her back to my cat-saving fanatic roomate at the time. Well that little kitten bonded to me like crazy. I had cats before but not this. I could barely walk around the house as this kitten would stick so close to my feet--if i was around . . .she was around. But at the time she was just "the kitten" among four other cats so she ended up with the silly name "kitten". The lady at the vet's office rolled her eyes accusingly when I said the name (ouch).

Time has modified her name to "keet" -pronouced with much histrionics. I got lucky with a digital camera braced against a table and got this extreme close up of Keeten. This is just 5% or so of the whole image. It's a great study in cat fur. I suggest saving the large image locally to browse it more easily. It can still be magnified by a factor or two without losing detail. It's crazy how much detail--you can see a reflection of me operating the camera in her eyes . . .



consuming the world's resources one bag of food at a time . . .THE BIG PICTURE

Considering my last couple posts, here's proof that talking about things does something.

A quick aside. The mower is a true LJ fantasy creature. Its got so much going on I can't cover it all here but here's what you must know. My riding mower is like the "model T" version of riding mowers. The engine is in the back, I'm in the middle, and up front -- handle bars like a bicycle. I had to date it recently to buy some parts for it. ----The dam thing is older that half my LJ friends and almost as old as me. -1974- That's right, before some of you were even vaguely imagined-- the Snapper Comet roared across the open plain. It employs simplistic and transparent technologies which makes it a dream to work on. It comes from a universe of ideals in which machines are made with the minimum number of parts possible.

I'll snap some pics if I can get hold of someone's camera...

So anyway. . . . Central command was able to tactically take out the grass with minimized collateral damage, narrowly averting a reptilian crisis. Yea just after that prior post . . . I'm mowing around all sorts of thousands of insects doing my best to avoid the cutest of them and the crunchiest of them. Now bits of wood and other hard things, shot by the mower blades, often dart through the grass appearing as fleeing animals rustling just below. Mowing along at 100 decibels I see just ahead of me a whooshing through the grass. . .but moving in a rapid S pattern. My mower so strongly resists rolling that simply stepping on the clutch stops you on a dime. I shut it off and with my ears ringing start inspecting the area. A little snake.

Well killin bugs is one thing, but accidentally chopping up a fellow vertebrate just sucks. Thankfully the snake moved at just the right time for CentCom to detect it. I grabbed it by its tail to move it along--just 18 inches of perfect, uninjured garter snake. For a minute it looked around flapping its tongue-then started a creepy rotating movement, spinning free from my two-finger grip (if not by slipperiness then by mere creepiness-of-wriggling). So now the snake plays a good game. In just 5-inches of grass this snake disappears. As soon as it finds a small leaf for cover- it simulates going into a hole by starting to coil from its head, it's normally-moving tail patiently being drawn into its coil. Lifting the right leaf shows the snake curled into a knotty ball. I lose the snake a few more times within one or two square feet--unbelievable. Eventually it totally eluded me. So I took a break. Mowing later there--no snake corpses--I think the snake made it out safely. weird.

I'm back to roughly normal now (since the movie--last post).

As my dad says "for the homeless of the world, I live in a house-- for the hungry, I eat" (pretty rough yea?) So my advice --when you hear the bombs falling--get out!

Now it's time for me to go "Shock and Awe" my lawn. You wont hear about it on the news, it's just another microscopic holocaust. . .

Warning: I am letting darkness out here--might be real, might be low meds-I write in absolute tones but in truth I can see around some of this stuff --but not just this second. I am already leaving this behind as I write. This warning comes as an afterthought- a censor. The wildness of the heart can be pornographic and brash in its strivings. If this is too fucked up for your friends page all I can say is I'm not always this way, but darkness is real and this juornal business is just an experimnent in talking to invisible people and I am just gonna go ahead and post it. You've been warned- here's how I felt an hour ago.

Well my heart was already broken years ago. When I saw something so gentle as a seal pup having its head smashed in by some sick fuck with a club. The powerful and ignorant destroying the peacful, the gentle, the harmless. Then in 6th grade we had a teach-in where I saw for the first time piles of bodies being bulldozed into mass graves in World War II. Well ever since I've tried to hold onto an idea that these things were anomalous and that they were kept in check by the better part of so-called "humanity".

But I'm not in the mood right now to believe that. Michael Moore has shown me in pictures and words what I already knew--the war against civilization is not being fought from caves and impoverished villages -the war against civilization, the war against freedom is being fought from the coziest of mahogany-paneled board rooms. When I confront the facts as just typed words then the mind takes over, assesses and retreats to its world of order. But when I see the faces of people holding their dead children like ragdolls, the flailing limbs of the dead being shaken by the living, when I see things beyond any hope of repair or redemption, the heart takes over and shows me something so much more frightening -- a deep and unlimited wrongness with this world.

I think my father's life, being formed around his psychic exposure to World War II, is what may be freeing me here to see such darkness. He as a 17yr old boy- an American Greek immigrant -trained in England with the US army, invaded on D-Day, sloshed through that morbid water across the beaches, wintered amidst dead horses separated from replenishment in the Battle of the Buldge, eventually a year into his continual immersion in total spiritual desolation he found the Camps, walking through woods for miles before he saw the living remains of prisoners, he saw the bodies stacked like "cord-wood", placed carefully among the pine forrests for the mere sake of economic packing, a machine that simply could not kill "enough"-- it was then at age 19 that as he says "I knew then that there was no god". We tend to inherit philosophies from our parents.

It's not george bush, it's not the holocaust, it's not the millions of slaves thrown from slave-ships after weeks of torture and degradation, it's not the baby seals innocent eyes buldging from their mangled heads, it's none of these endless torments-- it's that if given another chance we would do it all over again.

It could all start again right now. And in a sense it's always been happening. Maybe things have been getting better, but not right now. The wheel seems to be turning back into unconsciousness. And that's if it ever left in the first place.

It's not evil, it's a sublime and immaculate indifference.

Lately it's as if nothing can happen without irony.

What does it mean, when after years of constructional inactivity, both you and your next-door neighbor, independently and without warning decide to replace your roofs, on the same dam day?

Well here's one guess. My friend of many years, the friend that taught me the ways of the dumpster, a friend who has never cursed or taken drugs or alchohol, a compassionate genius, an experiencer of more things than I could dream to write, a guy who has toned his barefeet for all surfaces, a guy who lived in a tent in the woods while receiving his law degree; that friend has stopped in town to help me replace a roof on a shack I rent.

It means this I think. As a social avoidant I just lucked out cause my friend (when he wakes up) will go next door and get some tips about metal roofing from a roofing crew of like ten dudes that I don't wanna talk to.

I can't interact because I think about what I am when confroted by others and I try to be something else, normal. My friend who has wintered in Maine in cardboard teepees and wigwams, does not have this problem and despite being possibly wierder than me will do anything he ever wants to without a second thought. He exists in a sorta peace in his world, while I try to straddle two worlds.

I wish I could explain those two worlds to you, but I can't right now cause I'm sitting firmly in one of them looking out at the other.

When he wakes up, my agent, my translator for today, will venture out and return with news of valleys, flashing, and nails driven through metal into wood.

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My enneagram, if that's how its spelled. Tilted slightly.



1w9 then all those 5 pointers

My sister's new found chart reading sounded really good too. She's figureing all the risings etc.

I can see things both ways, but i would not defend astrology as predictive or descriptive, except for this----I think the interaction of early formative experiences and the phase of the season you're born in may result in patterns. Aries, born into a world of springtime, feel confident and strong as the shock and hardships of being born are not compounded with the hardships of winter, while Libra is subdued and cautious born into an "interior" world of central heating and swaddleing. . . . They could do an experiment.

I forgot about a Snickers bar I put in the fridge like 20 hrs ago. When I opened the fridge it was like Snickers really does satisfy.

Well today has been a day on LJ that I could have lived out in the real world for all the conflict it has produced. It's another "i'm new" post.

It's Ok to just add someone as a friend right??
Cause you like THEIR juornal. no biggie right??
Do I first need to ask or ..what??
But randomly sending someone pictures of like graphic porn . . .is gross and inappropiate. .right?

It's ok to be light and just stop by someone's juornal and make positive comments ..right??

I'm getting so many mixed-ass signals I'm sorta gettin lost.

Its ok to be heavy too right?
Not mean heavy, but open. . . real..?

If any of you want to see some crazy LJ ethics debating I've been in today goto


one nutty debate
and another nutty debate



Someone posted up-close *penis on vagina" polaroids which then appeared on the 800 members friends pages. The coms started coming in ..please lj cut..LJ cut.PLASE cut...etc...

So I figured the community oriented thing to do is notify mod. Mod pulls it down super rapid. We start a thread and the hillarity ensues. Its like a bunch of perpendicular thinking. So much of the commenting is just sad and sick and lost.

In the end a bunch of foundphoto people end up despising a bunch of other foundphoto people and its like civil war. And I'm a player. I've marked some folks off as being people I really don't like. And on the flip side. Ive friended a few new peeps who I felt were the truthspeakers.

I really had no idea that I would participate this much. . .but I can't stop myself. . .I just speak.
And My posts are getting huge despite my two-finger typing technique.

So shit. A few tips people.

All these wires between us help? right?

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These are some anagrams I've made recently with the help of an anagram server. They are largely anagrams of assholes. I made them all except for "insane anglo warlord" which has been around for decades.

shock and awe
A SWAN CHOKED

(sadly ironic)


donald rumsfeld
ARMED FUNDS DOLL
MUDDLE LANDS FRO
SLUMLORD AND FED

rush hudson limbaugh
ABSURD GHOUL, SHUN HIM
MAD BUSH GHOUL INRUSH

HUSH, HAIL BUM ON DRUGS
(good one yeah?)

ronald wilson reagan
INSANE ANGLO WARLORD

bartcop.com (a cool anti asshole site)
COMPACT ORB
MOOT PC CRAB :(
CORP COMBAT :)

mike malloy (look him up)
AMMO LIKELY

paul wolfowitz (eligible antichrist)
APT WIZ , FOUL, LOW
WIZ , OUTLAW , FLOP

My comment today at dumpsterdiving

Explore...get a highly detailed city map. Remember bikes can go almost anywhere people go. Look for off-road short-cuts. My dumpster teacher was an anti-car idealist who ONLY let people dive with him on bikes. He was also expert at finding off-road alternatives. e.g. He had this way of connecting one-dead-end to another with minor excursions through woods etc...Do not go places where you can become a victim of violence. Also, on busy roads you can add like a pole or something, (with tassles,reflectivity or something visibly menacing *like a shovel*) ,to your bike that juts out 2-3 feet into traffic. This keeps cars at a safer distance. A huge detour is far better than travelling crappy roads. Don't go late..more drunks. But the bike is also great cover.

You can be silent.
You can be invisible.
You look authentically homeless to
security guards and cops, which helps.

If you find a mega-load of stuff. Hide it for later retreival. Don't hide it near the dumpster though as you will either:

1. find your stash raided by the dumpster's local rats,raccoons,cats,etc..

or
2. The store people will find it, and take anti-d-diving measures (locked doors, intentionally fouled food etc.)

Keep the dumpster better than how you found it also to avoid #2 above.
I have been to dumpsters where all the food and milk and yogurt is all ripped open to make it inedible.

And remember when your done diving to wash your hands with dumpster goods. I use lettuce and kale for a good hand-washing then dry with bread. GOOD LUCK.

CAT PEOPLE I will eventually add this in a links section but for now its just right here

Have you heard the good news? Rate My Kitten

One of the most benign things the internet has to offer.

I give a lot of 10s and 9s

As a rule:
10 points for cats sleeping together (mine never do :\ )
under 5 points for posed pictures..especially little crappy settings...

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LJ honeymoon continues...I'm really manic on this thing right now.
Its like comin around the bend. . . .
Its a like a reverse search engine. . .shit finds you

I find this ironic in at least 5 different ways. . .

hey anybody anytime. . .

I just started this LJ business like a week ago. Started gettin over it quick and now I'm like hooked. I've been obsessively commenting replying interacting etc. I have actually bared my soul already with like 5 people telling them the most personal things. I find that I am also TOTALLY hiding this stuff from my "real world" friends out of fear of embarassment.

Is there a term for this or a community where the whole LJ double-life thing is discussed ?
Have I already gone too far...?

If you know what I mean, please post your experience/ solutions.

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