...more recent posts
have a cigar
It's raining men
Not a mother.
(Courtesy ABS)
Have you called your Mother yet?
have a listen
The breadroot scurfpea(Psoralea esculenta), also known as the white apple, prairie turnip, tipsin, pomme de prairie, and pomme blanche. Just seeing if i could actually follow technical instructions and link a site, i'm really blogging now, thanks.
i'm sure someone has alreay posted this yahoo list
This is what happens when Google indexes your page 600 times in two days. Maybe my best search hit yet, and what’s more, the results page for “Gnosticism+light+container+body+darkness+gather” leads to some classic internet nonsense. Like my page, right there between Jung and Mormon Monkeys. And who could argue with Vineyard - New Wineskins Effeminate Worship? Who could understand it? But hey, organized religion only has itself to blame as seekers turn elsewhere.
Which brings me to that predatory priest problem. I actually heard a Catholic apologist use the term “wounded healer”, so you know they’re on the defensive. It’s true though: the Church is pretty much blind to the lessons of shamanism, or at least it’s not willing to admit to any parallels with “primitive religion”. Our priests are supposed to be superheros, not sufferers. Another Cardinal, insisting on the necessity of celibacy, said it was “God’s gift to the Church”, but it seems more like the tax exacted for being a little too close to God. It’s a funny idea for a species reliant on sexual reproduction, but it keeps coming up. Every culture seems to think someone should be celibate. Not you or me, of course, but someone...
Anyway, we can’t let them blame the whole thing on celibacy, or homosexuality as a vector of evil, so I’ve got a modest proposal. Allow the gay priests. Encourage it. Require it. Think of it as a shamanic ritual enforcing the distance between clerical and lay culture. They already comprise a special sexual class, this way is just more honest; the priests admit to their sin, instead of pretending to be above it all. And after vespers they can all get together and, you know, forgive each other. If it’s all out in the open there’ll be fewer problems. People will respect the Church for this sort of genuine reform. And they’ll keep a eye on their children.
Aung San Suu Kyi released!
heres a link to some info on ESG following our disco conversation of last friday evening.
how deadicated are you? got a spare half mil?
an independent web designer is hired to design, build, host and maintain a commercial website which has mainly photo and video content. relationship continues for three years.
then the website company says, thanks for all your great work, but i now have someone who is going to take over maintenance of the site for free, please hand everything over. independent contractor says no way, this is my work, i own it. here's all your original content back, good luck.
should he have to hand everything over or does he have ownership rights on the site?
big game hunting
"Nay, I'll have a starling shall be taught to speak nothing but 'Mortimer' ...." -- Henry IV
The story goes that some guy released in Central Park all the birds mentioned by Shakespeare. The European starling , released in 1890, now occurs throughout much of North America. The English house sparrow, like the house fly, house mouse, and Norwegian rat, followed Europeans throughout the world, currently occupying a greater range of habitat than any other bird on earth. Some claim exotic species should be welcomed due to their ability to occupy habitat so disturbed that native species are struggling, but the most successfull invaders are known to outcompete and displace native species. One year i cleared out some starlings nesting in cavities in an old box elder tree in the front yard, and some northern flickers nested there instead, succesfully hatching out two chicks. I felt pretty proud watching over them with an air rifle. The monk parakeet though .....
The ballad of John Henry came up the other night. We dated it to the late 1800's since it involves railroads, but it seems to be more freighted than that (sorry). It's not a railroad song the way Casey Jones is, though it relates to the building of the railroads. It's not really a work song, either, though it bears some similarity to Take This Hammer (both songs sung by Lead Belly). TTH would have been sung while actually swinging a hammer, with an appropriate exclamation for each strike, even as the singer dreams of walking away from the job. John Henry is more of a story song, and a complex one at that. Man versus machine is the main theme, and man wins, but kills himself in the process. Seems like a theme that would appear earlier in the Industrial Revolution, but I'm not coming up with any examples off hand. Anybody know any tales of weavers outpacing the new mills, or suchlike? Beyond that, there are racial and sexual angles that have sometimes been bowdlerized. This page goes over some of the ground. Apparently there's some basis in fact, and the West Virginia tunnel in question is certainly real, but the truth gets harder to discern over time (oh wait, that's a work of fiction?). Although JH is almost always assumed to be a black man, the song seems to have had more resonance in the 30s than the 60s. Perhaps his noble victory in defeat was more appealing to the labor unionizers than to the civil rights movement?
another reason to hate IRWIN
Dud of the Month
THE LANGLEY SCHOOLS MUSIC PROJECT Innocence and Despair (Bar/None)
Hans Fenger was a gifted teacher on a mission. Cutting keepsake vinyl for his kiddie choir was a great way for him to reward past involvement while inspiring more. Irwin Chusid is a tedious ideologue with a hustle. Turning that vinyl into a collectible CD is the latest way for him to remind the converted that artistic intention is reserved for the beholder in these postmodern times—especially if the beholder has a hustle. A few of these songs were great, a few of them sucked, and every one was more innocent and/or desperate in its original version except Barry Manilow's (but not the Bay City Rollers'). A special annoyance is the reportedly tear-jerking "Desperado" by a 10-year-old who doesn't seem to have any idea what the song means, which is to her credit as a human being but not as a singer. The sole revelation is Brian Wilson, whose six songs still sound like themselves. C MINUS
-christgau
Waitaminnit, is this what one has to look forward to in Montana?
Blizzards, hunger, scorching sun, forest fires, the neighbors, and more…
"One was a species of falcon called the Eurasian kestrel (Falco tinnunculus), a long-tailed, swift-flying bird about a foot long or longer. The other was a shorebird called a Pacific golden plover (Pluvialis fulva), a plump creature about 10 inches long, with a black belly and golden highlights in its feathers."
Legendary ad man, and media screamer, Jay Chiat is dead.
pre-vu lou
Jacques Yves Cousteau with some interesting views on population, envioronmental activism, dolphins, global warming and an optimistic statement about the world's fish populations.
i am amazed that it took me this long to get a backyard space....yes it involved moving out of NYC due to costs but now i have a 20 foot forsithia(sp?), lilac, roses, roderdendrums (sp?), herb garden, violets, etc besides cahirs, tables, bugs, and soon a grill....