Open Sesame 04/02/16
In Bridge of Ashes, Roger Zelazny, he posits that evolution on this planet, it has been produced and directed by extraterrestrials, who have deliberately nudged human beings into developing a technological culture that will inevitably render the earth unfit for human habitation. But will, and thereby, produce conditions that are just perfect, for these extraterrestrials. Who will then move in and comfortably settle down. Just as the last of the humans, they flip, flap, flop, through their last gasps.
So. There's a cheery thought.
Some different-one Science Men, they are meanwhile totally Blaming a planet they have never seen, and only about five minutes ago think they discovered, for rudely shoving towards the earth the comet that crashed and killed off all the dinosaurs.
They are claiming this "Planet X," it is the size of Neptune, it is bulging with gas, it orbits the sun every 15,000 years or so, and every now and then it has a tantrum while passing through the Kuiper Belt, and so hurls comets towards the earth.
One of the claimants for this alleged rude and abusive new planet is CalTech's Mike Brown, a proud and avowed member of the satanic cabal that in 2006 stripped Pluto of its planetary status. Brown, he is an unrepentant murderer, who authored a book titled How I Killed Pluto, and who today says "killing Pluto was fun." He and his fellow demented dung-beetles, they demoted Pluto because the solar system, it had begun thoroughly confusing them, and they were afeared that, if they didn't off Pluto as a planet, they would then have to elevate numerous other celestial orbs to planetary status . . . and who knows where that might end?
Basically, they don't know what is a planet. But are too proud and cowardly to admit it. Even as evidence regularly arrives proving Pluto should be a planet, these dim-bulb anti-Pluto satanists continue their Strangling of Science. And now, they are babbling about this invisible gas bulge out there vomiting comets. In order to Distract us. Well, it's not going to Work.
Some other Science Men, they found a 305-million-year-old spider, but they then decided that it didn't get to be a spider, because although it had a spider mouth, and eight spider legs, it didn't have "spinnerets."
"It's not quite a spider," sneered Russell Garwood of the University of Manchester. A man who has never been a spider. And so what would he know about it?
You know, if somebody wants to be a spider, let 'em be a spider. Jeebus.
All these tight-arsed namers and classifiers, they ought to take a lesson from the life of Carolus Linneaus. The guy who set out to name and classify everything. Who once snooted: "The first step of science is to know one thing from another. This knowledge consists in their specific distinctions; but in order that it may be fixed and permanent distinct names must be given to different things and those names must be recorded and remembered."
Here's what happened to him:
By naming and by knowing the names of things he proposed to see into the secret cabinet of God. Travelers from Madeira, Virginia, from all over the world, risked dangers in vast forests, on high cliffs, in the deepest chasms to send him packets of seeds. He cataloged American falcons, parrots, pheasants, guinea fowl, American capercaillie, Indian hens, swans, ducks, geese, gulls, snipe, American crossbills, sparrows, and turtledoves. He classifed creation according to sexual organs; he gave each creature two names, a general and a specific name.
He wrote that riches vanish and stately mansions fall into decay, that even the most prolific families die out sooner or later, and that the mightiest of states are overthrown, but that all of nature must be obliterated before the genera of plants and "he be forgotten who held the torch aloft in botany." But as he grew older, he suffered a stroke, and after this he began to lose more and more of his memory.
Gradually he no longer knew Systema Naturae, and after all this, in his last years, he forgot even his own name.
As long as we're roaming around the animal kingdom, let's look at the most recent evidence to emerge that the lizard people, they are all connected, and all over the world. And that is that Wendi Deng, ex-wife of Rupert Murdoch, she is now bouncing the bedsprings, with Vladimir Putin.
While Murdoch, meanwhile, has married Jerry Hall, ex-wife of skeletal rock stick Mick Jagger.
Lizard people. Gonna do. What they gonna do.
There are two million people living in Slovenia. I do not know how many are lizard people. I do know that Slovenian actor and comedian Klemen Slakonja, he is not a lizard person. Slakonja has, however, recently lampooned lizard-prince Putin, in a parody video titled Putin, Putout. That has been viewed by four million people. Or twice as many humans as live in Slakonja's Slovenia.
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-wFKNy0MZQ]
Slakonja, he plans next to take on the lizardly Angela Merkel. As well as the thoroughly lizard-brained ("me good"/"you bad") defect-being known as The Hairball.
And yes, it is now time for this week's Proof of why The Hairball is the most titanically stupid person to seek the presidency since the mind-numbingly dumb Beauregard Claghorn.
This week's Proof, was it when The Hairball joined his fellow yahoo-yippity simpleton Ron Paul, in decreeing that not only should abortion providers be thrown into the jail, but so also should the women who undergo the procedure? No.
Was it when he refused to rule out ordering Major Kong to fly over to Europe and there drop some nuke bombs? No.
Was it when he declared that his recently arrested campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, was not only not a criminal, but in truth an actual hero, as Lewandowski had moved to ward off a totally crazed wild-woman who was preparing to stab The Hairball with a pen, like Joe Pesci in Casino? No.
No, it was when he demonstrated that he hasn't the slightest clue as to what it is that a justice on the United States Supreme Court actually does.
Asked what sort of person he would appoint to the nation's high court, The Hairball, he responded: "I would probably appoint people that would look very seriously at [The Mad Bomber's] email disaster because it's a criminal activity, and I would appoint people that would look very seriously at that."
Of course, maybe when he is the president, The Hairball, he plans to unilaterally decree a new job description for members of the Supreme Court. Just as he announced this week that, when he is the president, he will personally expel from the United States all those states where, in the Republican primaries and caucuses, voters cast the most ballots for someone other than him.
"This country is broke; we just can't afford to do everything anymore; and one thing we absolutely can't afford anymore, is all these states," The Hairball said in a phone interview with Good Morning America. "The states that didn't vote for me, they showed then that they didn't want to be part of the United States. And so I am throwing them out."
The Hairball noted that, just as Mexico will pay for the wall that he shall erect on the nation's southern border, so too will the states pay for being expelled. "I will charge them the total amount of the national debt," he explained. "That way, not only do we get rid of these states that don't want to be here, but we also start off with a clean fiscal slate, for the country, and for the states that are good."
Hairball senior aide Horst Wessel conceded that "it does seem that the Civil War settled the question of whether states could secede," but pointed out that "the question of whether states can be expelled, this has never been definitively addressed."
"I have my lawyers—the best—on this, and they say there is absolutely no problem," The Hairball said.
Wessel confirmed that, thus far, the states (and other territories) to be expelled include Iowa, Alaska, Minnesota, Texas, Kansas, Maine, Idaho, Puerto Rico, Washington DC, Ohio, Utah, Wyoming, and Oklahoma.
"None of these places will be missed," Wessel said. "You can't even see them from New York."
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbrnXl2gO_k]
The Mad Bomber, this week she was asked, by a dingleberry, "why is it so bad to be close to Wall Street?"
To which she replied: "I never can really tell what [The Cranky Brooklyn Deli Man's] talking about. It's just one of these sort of attacks that he pulls out all the time."
That's right, Bomber. Wall Street. Snuggle up close. Nothing wrong with that place. At all.
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wM6exo00T5I]
Yesterday was April Fools' Day, with which arrived some fun stuff.
Esurance, it is now offering "election insurance," for any Americans who might want to leave the country, after the people have finished making the president. A company called Prysm is selling a television that comes in an aerosol can. OpenTable, it will allow restaurant-goers to preview meals by licking their phones. Quilted Northern is now selling "artisanal toilet paper" that is made from tree bark. And Kars4Kids will provide a gently-used child, to anyone who donates a used car.
I myself am appreciative of the marketing agency Cramer, which has invented an "augmented reality" device to help nervous public-speakers see the audience as cats. Though I am not at all likely to go for the Verizon OccuCam, which connects a person's eyeballs directly into their social media accounts. Or take advantage of Krispy Kreme's 3D doughnut printing technology. And I will definitely be avoiding the "Crave Copters," by which White Castle shall be delivering hamburgers by drone. I may, however, check out Cornhub, formerly Pornhub, which offers such explicit videos as "Full Cobs Totally Peeled," "First Time Kernel Popping," and "Hard Shucking Like You've Never Seen!"
The BBC, ever at the cutting edge, is opening a VHS store. Kellogg's has debuted Frosted Flakes-flavored milk. eHarmony, the dating website, it has expanded into animal matches. St. Petersburg's Hermitage has trained cats to perform restoration work, and a feline crew is, as we speak, on its way to Palmyra. Under the new Murdoch regime, National Geographic, it will no longer publish photographs of nude animals. And Google Fiber has perfected a teleportation device. And so away I go.
In China, the government, it was having a prune-face, about April Fools' Day. State media agency Xinhua glowered that "April Fools' Day is not in keeping with our national cultural tradition or socialist core values. Please do not believe, create or spread rumors."
It seems that Chinese state media, it has something of a pout-lip, because it has routinely been taken in by April Fools' Day pranks.
In 2012, People's Daily reported that Kim Jong-un had been named "Sexiest Man Alive," citing The Onion. The party mouthpiece ran a full 55-page photo spread showing off the Pyongyang-bred heartthrob's "devastatingly handsome, round face, his boyish charm and his strong, sturdy frame," before realizing that they had been had.
In 2013, CCTV ran a report that Virgin was about to begin a glass-bottomed plane service, citing CEO Richard Branson's April 1st announcement.
That same year, the business daily 21st Century Herald was tricked into reporting that Paul Krugman had gone broke.
I think maybe my favorite is this one, below, in which Google is offering a headset for "actual reality."
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VkOuShXpoKc]
Because it reminds me that, today, when everyone, at all times, is mesmerized by some sort of screen, from the wall-covering televisions, to whatever is happening on the phones, that they are so much more disconnected, from what is truly Real, than even back in 1974, when William Burroughs observed this:
The ability to "see what is in front of us" is an ability which very few people have, and fewer and fewer as time passes. For one thing, because of the absolute barrage of images to which we are subjected so that we become blunted. Remember that a hundred years ago there were relatively few images, and people living in a more simplified environment, a farm environment, encounter very few images, and they see those quite clearly. But if you're absolutely bombarded with images from passing trucks and cars and televisions and newspapers, you become blunted, and this makes a permanent haze in front of your eyes, you can't see anything.
A farmer really sees his cows, he really sees what's in front of him quite clearly, it isn't a question of familiarity, it's a question of something being between you and the image, so that you can't see it. And as I say, this continual barrage of images makes haze over everything, like walking around in smog, we don't see anything.
Burroughs also, then, observed this:
Well, it's completely outmoded, the Aristotelian "either-or"—something is either this or that—is one of the great errors of Western thinking, because it's no longer true at all. That sort of thinking does not even correspond to what we now know about the physical universe.
There are certain formulas, word-locks, which will lock up a whole civilization for a thousand years. Now another thing is Aristotle's is of identity: this is a chair. Now, whatever it may be, it's not a chair, it's not the word chair, it's not the label chair. The idea that the label is the thing leads to all sorts of verbal arguments, when you're dealing with labels, and think you're dealing with objects. Labels are not the things they stand for; when you're arguing about labels, when you're talking about things like democracy, communism, and fascism, that have no clear-cut reference, no clear-cut thing to which they refer, you're not talking about anything.
Comments
Also
Immature male spiders behave very much like female spiders. It's after their last moult, when they become sexually mature, that they leave off pretty much everything other than mate-seeking behaviors. They don't tend to live very long after maturity.
Stay on track. Stay in lane. Don't throw rocks.
psycho-social behavior of male spiders is pretty complex
The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.
There was a study done
Long ago, where the humans dosed spiders with various things. As I recall, an unexpected outcome had to do with how well they did with LSD, but my memory may serve me wrong there.
Stay on track. Stay in lane. Don't throw rocks.
Male spiders have spinnerets
But not all spiders spin webs to catch prey. Male spiders also use silk to make sperm webs. Their palpal bulbs are secondary sex organs they use to inseminate females. So they make the sperm web, drop a bit of sperm on it, induct it into the palpal bulb and then go from there. This is related to female spiders experiencing a bit of difficulty distinguishing prospective mates from prey.
In some species (widow spiders come to mind) the male spider will spin a "bridal veil" over the female, which apparently serves to inhibit her predatory inclinations towards him.
Stay on track. Stay in lane. Don't throw rocks.
Although actually
I think they make the sperm web with their epiandrous glands/spinnerets, which are different.
I'm a little rusty on this stuff.
Stay on track. Stay in lane. Don't throw rocks.
I am overjoyed to find a science crew here!
I am a playah also. We can start a Club!
Hey! my dear friends or soon-to-be's, JtC could use the donations to keep this site functioning for those of us who can still see the life preserver or flotsam in the water.
I am mostly
A desert gardener, and sometimes just a desert watcher, and also I worked and cohabited with an arachnologist for five years, fifteen years back. Not sure that makes me a Scientist. Not sure I want to be a Scientist. But I do like plants and bugz.
Stay on track. Stay in lane. Don't throw rocks.
I was presented several times to decide Red/Green
Hemoglobin/sap. I found myself most comfortable on the green side, but also on the cell side where color didn't matter. I like bugs. Not in my bed, tho. I love my guardian spiders in winter, indoors. Helminths are another deal.
Hey! my dear friends or soon-to-be's, JtC could use the donations to keep this site functioning for those of us who can still see the life preserver or flotsam in the water.
Quick Plug
for the Saturday Photography essay before it gets pushed off the recent essay list
Some tips and stuff about the history of photography and famous American photographers from last century.
“To learn who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize.” -Voltaire
Hi everyone.
First time commenting over here. Nice to have an alternative to TOS, where I find myself more and more perplexed at admins' behavior, and increasingly unable to sit on my hands and be civil. So, thanks for this space.
I don't know if it's been mentioned, but I want folks to know that tonight's WYFP at TOS will be a memorial service/wake for blueyedace2. I know that there are some of you who might have wanted to attend, but who have join The Legions of the Banned, and for that I'm either A) sorry, or B ) happy for you, depending on how that particular status sits with you. Anyway, WYFP posts a 5:00PM for those who might want to stop by and leave a word or two.
And, yes, I recognize the irony of both bitching about TOS, and then advertising a diary over there, but... It's a special circumstance, I guess.
Anyway - back to the fray, and on to Wisconsin.
Welcome, CJB! Grieve it, but leave it, mate. TY for the notice.
Resilience: practical action to improve things we can control.
3D+: developing language for postmodern spirituality.
Well, this did say "Open Thread"...
...so I'm posting in it. Hope that's OK!
I'm a young'n trying to follow the election. This is really my first time trying to get involved with politics at all, but I've been lurking on dKos for a few months (probably since last September/October...?) and decided that I would migrate over here after having my fill of watching pie being flung. Don't know how much I'd be able to contribute content/diary-wise, but I feel that it's at least good to be informed about current events, especially having been living in Europe for the past several months. (It's also useful because my colleagues/students keep asking me why Americans are electing Trump for president and why we haven't realized that it would be an unmitigated disaster for the world...)
Depending on what sort of topics are up for discussion, I may add my two cents about things. If not, I look forward to somewhat lurking here as well!
hi, Dr. FSKopus
If you are living in Europe, you should stay there.
The dregs of Europe, the people who couldn't fit in there, in any way, without going into a jail, morgue, or asylum, they, many years ago, emigrated to the US. And now, their descendants, too many of them, they are many times worse.
It is, basically, here, in the United States, these days, like an open-air penal institution/mental hospital.
Trump, as you know, he is a person who, seriously and literally, would be brought up on charges, in many of the countries in Europe.
Please do not return to this country. Stay in Europe. Where you can be part of the life-raft, trying to preserve of the Enlightenment, some Sanity, and Reasonableness, into the next decade.
I will do my damnedest
to do so if I'm able. I have been living in Austria since this past September and have been working as a "foreign language assistant" at local schools. I actually will be finding out soon whether or not I'll be able to spend another year in Europe--money is, unfortunately, a thing that I need in order to keep my small apartment!--but I'm desperately hoping that I'll be able to continue my work with the students and teachers.
Judging from what I've been reading, though, the US seems to be right on the edge of the precipice of falling over the edge and taking quite a tumble. Unfortunately, we'll be taking down a lot of undeserving people with us if/when we do.
Oh, and for what it's worth--I participated in the Democrats Abroad primary and voted for Sanders. My students were asking me why I wasn't voting for Clinton; when I gave them the reasons as to why I support Sanders and not Clinton, they then asked me why Clinton wasn't running as a republican. Very telling of the attitudes of politicians and policies over here in central Europe.
we need
to get rid of the money as soon as possible. This is the prime directive. Money is a really new and stupid thing that was only invented by the Lydians in the 7th Century BCE. As soon as we get rid of it, then you can stay in Europe.
The US is already over the edge. The people here have guns, and they shoot other people, all the time, and for no reason. They are, even now, preparing to take their guns, into the Republican National Convention. Where there will be a massive shootout, like in The Wild Bunch. Please do not witness this. Stay in Europe. And watch it on the TV.
Clinton II, she is an insane woman, who will have a complete and total meltdown, before the Democratic National Convention. She will then be put in a Home. And people can then move from Hating her, to Pitying her. Which is as it should be. Anyone who looks, closely, at her eyes, sees, that she has already gone, and long ago, fully, Lucy Jordan.
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KPk8jYiyhtU]
Y'know, it's interesting...
One of my brothers thinks the same about money as you've pointed out. He's claimed many times that if given the opportunity, he would want to live off the grid. While my family has lived in relative security our entire lives (upper middle class in Chicagoland suburbs), he views the whole idea of money as preposterous and would rather build a house for himself and figure out how to live on the land. I don't know if he'd be a good farmer or hunter-gatherer, but I applaud him for wanting to take the uphill struggle and be as self-sufficient as possible. A good friend of mine from college wants to figure out a way where he doesn't have to worry about money at all and just teach music to at-risk youth. If I were as confident in my abilities to be self-sufficient like that, I'd consider joining him in doing so.
With regards to your comments on guns, that's what the students asked me at first--whether or not I had a gun. I had to tell them all that "no, I don't own a gun, none of my immediate family owns any firearms, I've never shot a gun, I hope to never shoot a gun, and--gratefully--I've never been shot at by anyone with a gun". They do ask about gun violence and why it is that we're obsessed with them, and unfortunately, I don't have an answer for them (or myself, for that matter).
Like I said, I'm a young'n--I was born back when GHWB was president--and I didn't really understand what was going on in politics at all during Clinton's terms, but I remember watching 9/11 happening before I went off to school in 4th grade. I didn't understand what was happening at the time, but it's clear now that all sorts of shit's been happening and it's been to everyone's detriment. Now that I'm hearing more and more about what happened during the Clinton years, I'm very fearful as to what would happen if they had another four years (or gods forbid, eight years) in the White House... just as fearful as I am of a Trump or a Cruz or a Kasich presidency.
Thankfully, though, I've been given an enthusiastic welcome here in Austria (and being fluent in German helps with that) and I'm really hoping that I get to stay for at least another year. After that, who knows what the future holds?
Just curious: how did you come to be fluent in German?
I took German in high school in Hawaii in the 1960s from a man named Reinhold Kieslich, and he displayed such a great mind and soul that seeds were planted that took root. So I ended up living in Germany for the last 40 years. And just recently moved to Dresden, which was one of his former home towns.
His family were originally from the Sudetenland but IIRC he said they had been driven out after World War I.
Kieslich and his much more famous Austrian colleague Siegfried Ramler had served as interpreters at the Nuremberg trials. Perhaps as a reward (and for safety from revanchists), the U.S. arranged for the two of them to emigrate and settle in Hawaii.
It's not really that special
I originally did not want to learn German in high school--at the time, I was interested in either Latin or Japanese--but my school did not offer either of those. A lot of my friends convinced me to take four years of German with them, though, so I did. I also continued on through college for five years, even spending a semester in Salzburg in 2012 and getting a chance to immerse myself in the culture and the language. Ended up graduating last spring with degrees in Music Education and German, but I didn't want to just focus on music without being able to speak the language I spent the last nine years learning. I was lucky to get a job out here in Austria and I'm hoping that I get to come back next year, too!
I found the Open Sesame
Yea! Please hecate do not write about Daily Kos, bonfires for Marco's or were all going die if Bernie. I will totally lose my mind. Excellent OT.
I have had a life long grudge against Science Men that categorize everything and then argue about how many of their oddly named things can fit on the head of a pin. They seem to just love exploding the elements, reducing them and mucking with their DNA's with no regard for the consequences or respect for the whole. They calculate the damage done and say it's better then. Data is not truth.
I blame the Greeks as they were really into separating, naming and dividing all stuff including the Gods and Goddesses. The hierarchy is quite complex. I found you in the encyclopedia. You seem to have helped Demeter look for her daughter in Hades. Then you kept Proserpine company in Hades.
HEKATE (or Hecate) was the goddess of magic, witchcraft, the night, moon, ghosts and necromancy. She was the only child of the Titanes Perses and Asteria from whom she received her power over heaven, earth, and sea.
My science man dad was the most sane when he got drunk and contemplated the nature of the universe. My favorite theory he came up with was that the universe was some atoms in a giants big toe.
With graceful motions....
except no one
wants to read these OTs, shaz. But if I would write two or three lines, saying something like, "Last night, I had a dream, and Bernie, he came to me, and I got a boner, and, as my sperm, it flew far and fabulously, through the air, I knew he would win New York!", then there would be 575 recs, and 1150 comments!
That is what, like, the people, they want, shaz!
Shouldn't I give it to them?
I mean, I can write that stuff.
Like, "Maybe Bernie Got Half A Delegate Last Thursday." Or, "Yes, I Have Always Wanted To Give Bernie Head." Or, "Even Though He Is Jewish, Bernie, He Will March On A Road Of Bones!"
And for sure the best way to get all the attention, is to write a story like "I Sucked Off Bernie, While Giving Markos The Finger."
Wait. No. There's an even better one. And that is "I Sucked Off Bernie, While Giving Markos The Finger, And, Meanwhile, Infiltrators And Trolls, They Were Watching!!!"
I will write that one Tuesday. I will then go to the top of the pops. Fuck all this shit about Planet X and The Hairball and Linneaus, and Zelazny and Griffin and Burroughs, and time and space and using your brain. Flush it all down the loo. Garbage uber alles. Shit-fire. Let's just rick-roll.
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ]
And yes. As you say. I am the goddess of magic, witchcraft, the night, moon, ghosts, and necromancy, with power over heaven, earth, and sea.
But people, here, they don't want that. They want to snuggle up with Bernie. And spit in Markos' eye.
So let it be written. So let it be done.
A road of bones?
That sounds like it might need a soundtrack:
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sLAavP5DPeU]
"I’m a human being, first and foremost, and as such I’m for whoever and whatever benefits humanity as a whole.” —Malcolm X
This, too, will pass
I can understand your dismay at the prospect of this place becoming an endless clearinghouse for disillusioned Democrats. And this particular primary is like crack for many because it's got some especially unsavory elements to it, and since people feel repeatedly burned they are a little over-anxious.
But really there isn't much one can do except write about something else. And in the long run that's really all one can do about politics in general, turn away and start something new.
I like your posts. You clearly put a fair amount of work into them and you can be very funny. The bit about cell phones being invertebrates because they break when dropped was perfect.
Stay on track. Stay in lane. Don't throw rocks.
the humans, here,
on this planet, they are both flighty, and thick.
Me, too.
So we work in the dark. We do what we can.
Every. Day.
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FhSfZplNbN0]
you should be banned!
I'm taking this to the help desk. As you know, this is an official Bernie Only site. Your mockery of The Man is uh...wow, this is hard. How do people write stuff like that? Don't they, too, want to give up in mid-sentence?
I think the next OT I write will be about tribalism. I'll call it "Tribalism: Good or Bad? And What About Merseybeat?" Yes, I've been thinking about this. If a certain group prefers something that a larger group doesn't, or if a group prefers something to a larger degree than everybody as a whole, what does it mean? I'll emphasize the point by adding non-relevant Merseybeat recordings.
It'll have to be two Wednesdays from now as shaz will be writing the next one.
i have blown
Bernie for thirty years. And flipped off Markos, since before he was born. While listening to Mersey Beat. All the while.
Why can I not write about this? It is True.
If I am to be banned, it should be for playing this song, below, and claiming, perhaps falsely, that it is Mersey Beat.
Is it, in truth, Mersey Beat?
My fate, shahryar, it is up to you. My life, it is in your hands.
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6sQvSkKBWY]
this thing....
a discussion popped up in my facebook feed today and I had to go find my favorite episode. It really takes off about 5 minutes in. Then there's Moko Jono.
sorry, I was talking while I was eating
I know, it sounded like I said "you should be banned" but what I was actually saying was "You should be Bond".
since i'm
pretty much Freddie Sykes, I don't think anybody will be calling me, any time soon, to be a Bond.
So let me get this straight
The extraterrestrials are basically using us to green manure the place? Well, that would make as much sense as anything.
I was looking at an article about The Emails on some right wing site yesterday, and noted prominently in the sidebar a piece about how Ann Coulter was concerned that Donald Trump was mental. A ray of light in a dark place, veritably.
Stay on track. Stay in lane. Don't throw rocks.
Somewhere on the site
Someone mentioned a pledge of allegiance. I wanted to respond, but in the process of finding the words, I lost the original comment. Since this is the Open thread, I will just have to post it here:
For All
Ah to be alive
on a mid-September morn
fording a stream
barefoot, pants rolled up,
holding boots, pack on,
sunshine, ice in the shallows,
northern rockies.
Rustle and shimmer of icy creek waters
stones turn underfoot, small and hard as toes
cold nose dripping
singing inside
creek music, heart music,
smell of sun on gravel.
I pledge allegiance
I pledge allegiance to the soil
of Turtle Island,
and to the beings who thereon dwell
one ecosystem
in diversity
under the sun
With joyful interpenetration for all.
by Gary Snyder
http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/s_z/snyder/onlinepoems.htm
"I’m a human being, first and foremost, and as such I’m for whoever and whatever benefits humanity as a whole.” —Malcolm X
Bring on the beatnicks!
We don't need no stinking pledges of allegiance. Even my country clubbing suburban 50's parents went and told my 5th grade teacher and the principle that I did not need to pledge allegiance. They also said she doesn't have to get under her desk while practicing for when the big one gets dropped. No pledges, uniforms or badges except band ones or ones with fun pictures. This is not the boy scouts or girl scouts. I ain't got time for that now
The world is a beautiful place
to be born into
if you don't mind happiness
not always being
so very much fun
if you don't mind a touch of hell
now and then
just when everything is fine
because even in heaven
they don't sing
all the time
The world is a beautiful place
to be born into
if you don't mind some people dying
all the time
or maybe only starving
some of the time
which isn't half bad
if it isn't you
Oh the world is a beautiful place
to be born into
if you don't much mind
a few dead minds
in the higher places
or a bomb or two
now and then
in your upturned faces
or such other improprieties
as our Name Brand society
is prey to
with its men of distinction
and its men of extinction
and its priests
and other patrolmen
and its various segregations
and congressional investigations
and other constipations
that our fool flesh
is heir to
Yes the world is the best place of all
for a lot of such things as
making the fun scene
and making the love scene
and making the sad scene
and singing low songs and having inspirations
and walking around
looking at everything
and smelling flowers
and goosing statues
and even thinking
and kissing people and
making babies and wearing pants
and waving hats and
dancing
and going swimming in rivers
on picnics
in the middle of the summer
and just generally
'living it up'
Yes
but then right in the middle of it
comes the smiling
mortician
by Lawrence Ferlinghetti
i was
going to follow this with Lew Welch' version of the pledge of allegiance. But instead I am going to give you this. Because I know you will get it.
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=anjT71N4PGM]
I like Zelazny...
Learned some great writing tips from him. As far as his work goes, it's not particularly memorable to me, but the way he talked about writing did stick with me. I really did appreciate that.
Recently I've been trying to get back into reading, since I had so little time for it when my kids were younger. As it is, I'm enjoying having a good library system within walking distance.
I do not pretend I know what I do not know.
the finest and rightest and highest
story, in the history of language, is Zelazny's "For A Breath I Tarry."
Just sayin'.
Are you in Multnomah County?
Have you tried their fabulous online site. You can order up any books in the whole system, place a hold on it and they will send it to your closest branch. I love it the search system is kind of wonky but once you get the hang of it and start an my MCL account it is your choice among endless book and videos.
Yeah, I'm about ten blocks from the Woodstock branch
I try to take my kids every week or two. I am adoring it.
Lake Oswego had more stuff in their branch, but Multnomah seems to have more overall, just takes a little longer.
I do not pretend I know what I do not know.
When you were young ( I once was)
my first visits to Downtown were to the Free Public Library, Main branch. Maybe every weekend, for sure every 2. It was (is) an imposing edifice, multi-storied, with different specialties on different floors. Children's reading room was at least half of one floor. We could check out art reproductions to change out home decor! There was another reading/study area with old stereotypes and viewers. Top o' the building, in the attic was then a changing art gallery and a real art studio for children. I volunteered there one summer, to assuage White Guilt and privileged status, before I was taught to understand that.
I hope your children get to smell old books in library stacks. My haven in grad school, elsewhere.
Hey! my dear friends or soon-to-be's, JtC could use the donations to keep this site functioning for those of us who can still see the life preserver or flotsam in the water.
you are still young
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wwf96OEaYBg]
And s/he will be there. When you wake up in the morning.
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