how was yer weekend in Hollywood?

Well, I'm ending the weekend in Hollywood with a little too much Seagram's for a school night... while Cassandra whips out the final edit of our first puppet movie on the Mac G4/Final Cut Pro sweet ass set up we've got here in Formosa Canyon.

We are cable deprived, so Friday night our playwright friend had us over for Tivo'd Wonder Showzen episodes (how behind the curve are we?) and good lord almighty that show is wicked, wicked, wicked funny. Wish I'd thought of it, but it sets the bar for Jesuspuppet, don't it?

Saturday we were homebound. Cassandra had me dismantle the garage sale dog fur fan for a thorough cleaning, whilst I worked on the laboratory/gynasium/garage we possess here in the heart of Hollyweird.

Later we dined on Food For Less steaks and watched pirated episodes of Six Feet Under. My life is not unlike an episode of Entourage...

Sunday I hiked the wilds of Fryman Canyon on a Taoist battery charge with V and the bhikku Lucas (so what if I've been reading Kerouac? We should all revisit Kerouac at various stages of our life because he chased the dragon's tail for us in the face of 50's America, the air-conditioned nightmare, which has only spread like a virus until our souls have become so corrupt that we have "no idea why they hate us")- followed by a sojourn to the Internationalist House of Pancakes (I'll have the Colorado Omelette, because I've given up hope!), then Cassandra and I went out to find Angel City Books where the helpful longhair bhodisattva of literature offered to open the first editions cabinet but I was too shy and too broke to afford a $4.95 used copy of the Tao Te Ching- oh Jesus my Taoist brother you have no idea how much I could use that right now- I am trying to accept that The Tao Flows but My God the world is falling apart everyday...graceful, helpful old hippie bookshop clerk- when you stepped outside I thought you were communing with a beachbum shiva friend, but upon exit I find that you were on the sidewalk solely for the fresh air and she was on her cell phone barking at the moon... we stopped at 7-11 and I bought M & M's that were bigger than usual and now we are home and Cassandra just asked Final Cut Pro to please give her a"fucking break" followed by ironic, angry laughter and if my old man is reading this blog today (cuz' I bookmarked it as a favorite in his IE last week) I would say to him "Don't worry- I'm happy and I don't drink like this very often I just thought tonight it's no big deal because I work hard for a living just like you did and tomorrow is another workday. "

Thank you, Lucas the Dog, for your speechless wisdom today on the trail.

Message received.

G'night everybody!

whatchoo bloggin bout ?

Someone at work asked me if I was going to blog about the Bill Frist stem-cell switcheroo OR Bush allegedly flipping the bird at the press (as much as I want to believe it, I think it was a thumbs up- from a dumb, evil-minded motherfucker, mind you) , but I don't have the energy.

I was even going to dig deep into the theory that God might be punishing the Boy Scouts of America for their anti-gay stance, but that would mean I believe in a cruel and punishing God.

And I don't.

I don't believe God gives a fig.

But I do think these space shuttle pictures are neat. Hope they land ok.




My unemployed friends are going to see a Robert Williams exhibit. I wish I was unemployed, at least for a day or two...

Fantasy interview...

Oh please oh please, now that Jessica Simpson has seen for herself that Iraq is FUBAR, could Amy Goodman please have her on Democracy Now! ?


That would be awesome.

The Dharma Bums

About 20 years after buying a paperback of Jack Kerouac's The Dharma Bums, I'm just reading it now. Maybe it would have changed my life if I had read it then. Maybe I wouldn't have understood a word. In my Penguin paperback edition circa 1987 , page 139 is my favorite page of all the pages... it reads:

When I’d go to the country store to buy bread and milk the old boys there sitting around bamboo poles and molasses barrels’d say, “What do you do in those woods?”

“Oh I just go in there to study.”
“Ain’t you kinda old to be a college student?”
“Well I just go in there sometimes and just sleep”

But I’d watch them rambling around the fields all day looking for something to do, so their wives would think they were real busy hardworking men, and they weren’t fooling me either. I knew they secretly wanted to go to sleep in the woods, or just sit and do nothing in the woods, like I wasn’t too ashamed to do. They never bothered me. How could I tell them that my knowing that the substance of my bones and their bones and the bones of dead men in the earth of rain at night is the common individual substance that is everlastingly tranquil and blissful? Whether they believed it or not makes no difference, too. One night in my rain cape I sat in a regular downpour and I had a little song to go with the pattering on my rubber hood: “Raindrops are ecstasy, raindrops are not different from ecstasy, neither is ecstasy different from raindrops, yea, ecstasy is raindrops, rain on, O cloud!” So what did I care what the old tobacco-chewing stickwhittlers at the crossroads store had to say about my mortal eccentricity, we all get to be gum in graves anyway. I even got a little drunk with one of the old men one time and we went driving around the country roads and I actually told him how I was sitting out in those woods meditating and he really rather understood and said he would like to try that if he had time, or if he could get up enough nerve, and had a little rueful envy in his voice. Everybody knows everything.

just part of the collection...

i thought i was tripping

oh wisdom

For some reason I have decided to try to rectify a situation tomorrow... I'm seeking wisdom from all angles- Dharma, Tao, Medical Marij...no- forget the last one... Wish me luck

UPDATE:

It worked- better than I could have imagined. A little Taoism applied to conflict resolution has left me feeling downright positive and optimisitc about life, the universe, and everything...

John Brown!

The lovely Cassandra sent me a link to screwthegovernment.com , as well as a quote from one of my heroes, John Brown. (Hero? Wasn't he a terrorist? Um, ask an American slave circa 1859...)

John Brown, to the court, at his trial:

I have, may it please the Court, a few words to say. In the first place, I deny everything but what I have all along admitted: of a design on my part to free slaves . . . Had I interfered in the matter which I admit, and which I admit has been fairly proved . . . had I so interfered in behalf of the rich, the powerful, the intelligent, or the so-called great . . . and suffered and sacrificed, what I have in this interference, it would have been all right. Every man in this Court would have deemed it an act worthy of reward rather than punishment.

I see a book kissed which I suppose to be the Bible, or at least the New Testament, which teaches me that all things whatsoever I would that men should do unto me, I should do even so to them. It teaches me further to remember them that are in bonds as bound with them. I endeavored to act up to that instruction. I say that I am yet too young to understand that God is any respecter of persons. I believe that to have interfered as I have done, as I have always freely admitted I have done in behalf of His despised poor, I have done no wrong, but right. Now if it is deemed necessary that I should forfeit my life for the furtherance of the ends of justice and mingle my blood further with the blood of my children and with the blood of millions in this slave country whose rights are disregarded by wicked, cruel and unjust enactments, I say, let it be done.

June in Iraq

A blood stained bullet cartridge is fed into a heavy caliber machine gun a top an armoured vehicle after a US convoy was hit by a road side bomb while on patrol in southern Baghdad 11 June 2005. (Yuri CORTEZ/AFP/Getty Images)


Link: CrisisPictures

Not Afraid...

See http://www.werenotafraid.com/ and the CNN.com article about it.

London...

Ken Livingston's (London Mayor) statement in response to the attacks:


. . . I want to say one thing specifically to the world today. This was not a terrorist attack against the mighty and the powerful. It was not aimed at Presidents or Prime Ministers. It was aimed at ordinary, working-class Londoners, black and white, Muslim and Christian, Hindu and Jew, young and old. It was an indiscriminate attempt to slaughter, irrespective of any considerations for age, for class, for religion, or whatever.


That isn't an ideology, it isn't even a perverted faith - it is just an indiscriminate attempt at mass murder and we know what the objective is. They seek to divide Londoners. They seek to turn Londoners against each other. I said yesterday to the International Olympic Committee, that the city of London is the greatest in the world, because everybody lives side by side in harmony.

Londoners will not be divided by this cowardly attack. They will stand together in solidarity alongside those who have been injured and those who have been bereaved and that is why I'm proud to be the mayor of that city.

Finally, I wish to speak directly to those who came to London today to take life.

I know that you personally do not fear giving up your own life in order to take others - that is why you are so dangerous. But I know you fear that you may fail in your long-term objective to destroy our free society and I can show you why you will fail.

In the days that follow look at our airports, look at our sea ports and look at our railway stations and, even after your cowardly attack, you will see that people from the rest of Britain, people from around the world will arrive in London to become Londoners and to fulfil their dreams and achieve their potential.

They choose to come to London, as so many have come before because they come to be free, they come to live the life they choose, they come to be able to be themselves. They flee you because you tell them how they should live. They don't want that and nothing you do, however many of us you kill, will stop that flight to our city where freedom is strong and where people can live in harmony with one another. Whatever you do, however many you kill, you will fail.

(found at MyDD)

Frogmarch that TRAITOR...

"At the end of the day, it's of keen interest to me to see whether or not we can get Karl Rove frog-marched out of the White House in handcuffs. And trust me, when I use that name, I measure my words." -- Joseph Wilson, August 21, 2003

(Fantasy image of justice from Needlnose, DailyKos entry about it here)

An actual indictment for Turd Blossom? Maybe...O'Donnell points out why here.


And in case we forget what's at stake here, what the CRIME involved is and just how disgusting it is, let's remember what Poppy Bush had to say about it:

RAW STORY: Flashback: First President Bush called those who outed CIA agents 'the most insidious of traitors'

Lookout Ballerinas! Angry Conservatives want to push you off your bicycles!

God bless conservative hero Ted E. Schelenski of the Heritage Foundation.

He saw a ballerina on her bicycle, blocked her path with his car, got out, and pushed her to the ground!

What a MAN!

Obviously being a young ballerina on a bicycle she was A) planning a lifelong career sucking off the national teat in the subsidized "arts" in addition to B) ignoring the national call to burn fossil fuels in order to make the Iraq war "worth it."

Read all about this heroic Conservatives bold actions on the front lines of the Culture War, here.

It began as a shouting match on a busy Capitol Hill
street corner during the frenetic morning commute, a bike-vs.-car incident not uncommon in a big city.

But then the silver-haired, retired Navy lieutenant
got out of his car, approached the red-headed ballet dancer riding a bike and allegedly shoved her to the ground, authorities said. He got back into his car and, as bystanders followed him, drove down the block to his nearby office, the bicyclist said.

The man was identified as Ted E. Schelenski, 64, vice
president for finance and operations at the Heritage Foundation, a think tank that promotes conservative policies. He pleaded not guilty this week to a charge
of simple assault.

(Go Navy)

R.I.P. Luther

I like to think I've got varied musical taste, although as I've aged I've started to realize that those people who thought the music I liked as a teenager was deriviative and a little crappy might have been right, because the stuff the kids listen to today (Emo?) is pretty derivative and crappy.

There was a time during my journey as a music lover when I couldn't get enough of Luther Vandross' "Never Too Much". I took pride in memorizing all the lyrics and singing it to myself. I just got hooked on that song, and can still entertain myself imitating his sweet, sweet voice.

It's bad enough Sandra pulled the SCOTUS trigger today for the Further Rise of The Right Wing Nuttery formerly known as the United States...

But for now I'm just going to be sad because Luther Vandross died today.



"I can't fool myself I don't want nobody else to ever love me
You are my shining star my guiding light my love fantasy
There's not a minute hour day or night that I don't love you
You're at the top of my list cuz I'm always thinking of you

Oh my love... a thousand kisses from you is never too much
A million days in your arms is never too much
And I just don't want to stop
Never too much
Never too much
Never too much
Never too much"