Quote of the Day:Talking Snakes, Cosmic Jewish Zombies

“(Christianity) …the belief that a cosmic Jewish Zombie who was his own father can make you live forever if you symbolically eat his flesh and telepathically tell him you accept him as your master, so he can remove an evil force from your soul that is present in humanity because a rib-woman was convinced by a talking snake to eat from a magical tree…”

Middle Eastern Supreme Court Judge?

Bess's Cat Does Research, Their Dog Is Nervous

The lovely and Talented Bess sent me this.

Her roommates are going to Vet school.

Her roommate's dog seems nervous these days.

Wrong Tool for the Job!

Via RiotClitShave's fine photo page. Her page is in my links. I have no idea who took the photo.

Folks, never, ever use a microwave to cook something this large.

I prefer a large grill for something this big and tender.

Slow roast it, and be sure to remove any flammable objects first, because you don't want to be eating fireproof clothing residue. That would be wrong.

Quote of the Day:
"Whole nations depends on technology. Stop the wheels for two days and you'd have riots. No place is more than two meals from a revolution. Think of Los Angeles or New York with no electricity. Or a longer view, fertilizer plants stop. Or a longer view yet, no new technology for ten years. What happens to our standard of living?... Yet the damned fools won't pay ten minutes' attention a day to science and technology. How many people know what they're doing? Where do these carpets come from? The clothes you're wearing? What do carburetors do? Where do sesame seeds come from? Do you know? Does one voter out of thirty? They won't spend ten minutes a day thinking about the technology that keeps them alive." - Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, Lucifer's Hammer

The new garden space at Lisa's house

I'm gonna be busy as hell.

Lisa offered up her backyard, which was trashed by trucks this spring, so we decided to till it into a garden plot.

Then a pal of hers on a mission showed up and tilled the whole damn thing.

I'm gonna plant a ton of flowers, a ton of veggies and share the booty with Lisa.

And I'm doubling the number of tomatoes. I'm puttin' in fifty five!

Gonna make so much salsa and tomato sauce I'll be giving it away.

Oh, wait. I already do that. Never mind.

Quote of the day: Lincoln, Abraham

Photo by the amazing Dorthea Lange from the WPA projects of the great depression.

"I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and cause me to tremble for safety of my country; corporations have been enthroned, an era of corruption in High Places will follow, and the Money Power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the People, until the wealth is aggregated in a few hands, and the Republic destroyed."
ABRAHAM LINCOLN, letter to Col. William F. Elkins, Nov. 21, 1864

Gutted and Smelly

The rebuilding effort just goes deeper and deeper into a complete gutting.

We ripped out the seats and carpet, then the cabover sleeping area, now I'm finding myself rebuilding the walls and part of the cieling.

One thing I have noticed, it doesn't smell as baaaaad as it was, all smoke and musty 1987 vintage carpet.

I'm regluing the panels, some in situ, some like this side piece out in the shop.

I think if we don't road trip in this thing when it's done I'm just going to move into it in the driveway.

I can't decide if I should paint it all stripey like Eddie Van Halen's guitar, or paint it up like a stucco looking tropical color scheme, or do it in leopard skin. Then again, I may skip the "search me at the border" paint job and just go with bland light colors.

False Advertising!

This is not made from baby humans. Imagine my disappointment.

My Band's Rock Video

So, I'm 51 years old, and finally, I get to be in a rock video.

They say the camera adds five to ten pounds, but I swear I look a lot more glam and skinny here.

Must be the lovely Mr. MikeF-7'd camera work.

He really busted buttocks to finish and film this one.

Rotten Teeth, Rotting Motorhome

One of the drawbacks of being nearsighted is that when you take your glasses off, things that are very close to your eyes become very, very sharply focused.
Like that dentist in the mask with the needle leaning over you. You know, the one who's giving you your fifth or sixth crown.
Today I realized how skinny my dentist is, and how many wrinkles are in his neck.
He's a handsome dude, though, for a sixty something guy. I just hate that feeling you get when he jabs you with a needle full of a mix of Novocaine and epinephrine.
You do know that a shot from your dentist gives you a jolt of speedy drugs, right? The epinephrine makes the area around the shot squeeze up and stop bleeding, but it's for me, it's like taking a hit off a crack pipe.
My heart races and I want go into fight or flight mode.
I'm just glad he's got nitrous oxide pumping into my nose, although he could crank that stuff up higher. The gas and the LOUD headphones (if you want them that way) it takes a lot of the fear factor out of dentistry.
Of course, it also helps to do a shot of everclear tincture of herb before you go in for pain, too.
I still got all my crappy Northern European teeth. Barely. Better than my dad's. He lost all of his before he was forty.
I been busy. My garden and my rotting motor home have absorbed my brain.
And my handsome pal Lisa just rototilled her back yard, and I have to plant the whole damn thing. That seems daunting and really fuckin' fun.
nuff' said. Garden pictures to come, and more ugly RV fun all week. One of these days I'm actually going to build a guitar again.

Why Open Mics Turn Me Into A Creep

We just got back from the open mic at Brocach downtown. It was packed. Mikey broke two strings, Fry played with his usual subtle weird grace, and I gnarled and twanged the crap out of that hacked cheap Les Paul copy my old band mate Doug left here when he split for the west coast of England.

Open mics are weird. They turn me into more of an asshole than I usually am. I get bored and restless and a little bit fascist watching the performers.

It's hard to be patient and forgiving when you know what dynamics and tone could be. More often than not it's people playing too many chords and not leaving any air in the music. I got spoiled playing with Bess and with Michael, both of them understand music and that the spaces you don't fill are as important as the ones you fill up with your playing.

It's not a cheap bar to drink in. Tap beers go for five bucks or more, but they do give you one free beer if you play. It could be worse.

And sometime in the last year downtown Madison filled up with homeless people, a lot of them with brain parts missing or damaged. Tonight I saw people sleeping in front of office buildings on cardboard

All those empty buildings and houses foreclosed and we still can't find a place for the botched, bungled or just plain down and out.

So much for the myth that we're the greatest and best country in the world.

Reiki Evil! Dead Guy On A Stick God Good!

"A declaration by the U.S. bishops’ Committee on Doctrine that Reiki is based on superstition and incompatible with Christian faith could force scores of U.S. congregations of women religious who run Catholic retreat centers to reevaluate programs that teach or use Reiki therapy.
[snip]
It says that “a Catholic who puts his or her trust in Reiki would be operating in the realm of superstition, the no-man’s-land that is neither faith nor science.”
The statement says that on the medical level, Reiki is “a technique that has no scientific support — or even plausibility.”
[snip]
Many women in Catholic religious orders have become Reiki masters or practitioners and regularly teach or practice Reiki therapy at their orders’ retreat facilities or spiritual centers around the country. A Web search showed scores of such U.S. centers as well as several retreat centers run by women religious in Canada offering similar programs. (National Catholic Reporter)

Ha!

Shorter Version:

Your spiritual practice- evil and suspect!

Our woman hating, young -boy loving -closeted -control freak -dead guy on a stick worshiping mumbo-jumbo- is the same as science!

Black Swan Proofing The World

Nassim Taleb suggests ways to make economic life closer to our biological environment: smaller companies, richer ecology, no leverage. The risk takers of the economy should be entrepreneurs, not bankers; Companies shouls be born and die every day, without making the news.

Ten principles for a Black Swan-proof world
1. What is fragile should break early while it is still small. Nothing should ever become too big to fail.
2. No socialisation of losses and privatisation of gains. Whatever may need to be bailed out should be nationalised; whatever does not need a bail-out should be free, small and risk-bearing. We have managed to combine the worst of capitalism and socialism.
3. People who were driving a school bus blindfolded (and crashed it) should never be given a new bus. The economics establishment (universities, regulators, central bankers, government officials, various organisations staffed with economists) lost its legitimacy with the failure of the system.
4. Do not let someone making an “incentive” bonus manage a nuclear plant – or your financial risks. Odds are he would cut every corner on safety to show “profits” while claiming to be “conservative”.
5. Counter-balance complexity with simplicity. The complex economy is already a form of leverage: the leverage of efficiency.
6. Do not give children sticks of dynamite, even if they come with a warning.
7. Only Ponzi schemes should depend on confidence. Governments should never need to “restore confidence”. Be robust in the face of them.
8. Do not give an addict more drugs if he has withdrawal pains. Using leverage to cure the problems of too much leverage is denial.
9. Economic life should be definancialised. Citizens should not depend on financial assets or fallible “expert” advice for their retirement.
10. Make an omelette with the broken eggs. We need to rebuild the hull with new (stronger) materials; we will have to remake the system before it does so itself.

Stolen from The Big Picture blog. Go there. Read him if you want a more realistic view of our meltdown.

Blast from the Past: Old Band Poster

My old bandmate, transformed a few years back.

We had dinner the other night at Dexter's, a place on the corner of North and Johnson streets you should check out. Their beer selection rocks.

He even picked up the tab for Kori and I. And we didn't even get in fight like we used to.

Not so different from us. Me, anyway

http://www.flickr.com/photos/richu/3196188065/

Shot in india by RedEyeRex , via BoingBoing

Slouched over, contemplative, naked, funny how much I feel like this folicle free primate sometimes.

Today I made another downpayment on the future. I planted lettuce, spinach, chard, marigolds, four kinds of sunflowers, cosmos, nastursuims and mesclun lettuce, whatever the hell that is. One row of the garden done, a whole hell of a lot more to do.

And I played music with Michael and had the first gin and tonic of the season on the deck with Ellyn.

A fine day, all in all.

Teh Gaypocalypse is upon us! (via SadlyNo!)

In the wind

There's some big set of changes in the wind, I can feel it coming. Not huge changes like TEOTWAWKI, otherwise known as The End Of The World As We Know It, but this really feels like one of those years where the cosmos decides to rearrange my life.
I've had a few like that. 1975, when I went off to college, leaving that tiny little township where I grew up a mile off the road, when I gave up smoking dope and went to school to learn upholstery.
In 1983 the same thing happened, my dad died and I moved to Oshkosh with an old sweetheart and got a few photography jobs.
Things stayed pretty stable for another ten years, then in one year I found myself getting the boot from my whole damn life, losing my job, partner, house, band and a bunch of friends and even my sense of who I was, and I wound up a few thousand miles away in Seattle, where I found myself cleaning houses.
I met Kori there, we had a fine first five years, but in 1999 everything changed again and we wound up moving here to Madison after another big change year.
I'm not sure what is in the wind this time, although the oncoming economic and ecological storm does color it.
I know that Micheal leaving is part of it, and last night the other trio I'm in shifted around with Tim bowing out leaves me wondering where to go.
But I also feel like there's other stuff coming, although only my monkey brain seems to have a clue what or where things are going, and it's not being too verbal.
I do know I feel like going for a long trip into the woods or out east to visit folks I haven't seen in a long time. I feel adrift and unsure for the first time in a long time about what to do or chase after. I'm never sure what to do with that feeling. Doubt and indecision are not usually something I have to deal with. I've been lucky that way in my life.

Quote of the Day: Confucius

“Tell me and I will forget. Show me and I will remember.

Involve me and I will understand.”-Confucius

Iowa Gets It Right

Me and sweetie, not long after we met. We're the kind of people this law makes almost equal in Iowa.

This is not an abstract concept. It's our lives, and at least some folks in Iowa have the sense to realize us being married is no threat to hetero marriage.

And to my brother who claimed that the anti gay marriage amendment wouldn't effect Kori and I when it passed, I have to offer the immortal words of the guy he voted for, Dick Cheney:

GO FUCK YOURSELF.
You, the entire Fox Valley who votes for thugs, and all those good Christian folks who want us either back in the closet or worse, dead or in jail.

And now, a fine quote via my pal Bill:

Iowa Senate Majority Leader Mike Gronstal, from his speech, declining to attempt to reverse the Iowa Supreme Court's decision legalizing gay marriage:

"One of my daughters was in the workplace one day, and her particular workplace at that moment in time, there were a whole bunch of conservative, older men. And those guys were talking about gay marriage. They were talking about discussions going on across the country.

And my daughter Kate, after listening for about 20 minutes, said to them: 'You guys don't understand. You've already lost. My generation doesn't care.' I think I learned something from my daughter that day, when she said that.

And I've talked with other people about it and that's what I see, Senator McKinley. I see a bunch of people that merely want to profess their love for each other, and want state law to recognize that. Is that so wrong? I don't think that's so wrong. As a matter of fact, last Friday night, I hugged my wife.

You know I've been married for 37 years. I hugged my wife. I felt like our love was just a little more meaningful last Friday night because thousands of other Iowa citizens could hug each other and have the state recognize their love for each other. No, Senator McKinley, I will not co-sponsor a leadership bill with you