27/08/2006

Beta blogger


It's been out for a couple of weeks but I just switched to the new beta Blogger format. It's a mad thing for me to do but it had to be done. Mad because I will now waste even more time screwing around with templates but there's no going back. Once you switch, that's it. No return. I haven't started fiddling yet but I'm sure I'll be down in the rat hole soon enough. My kind a fun/nightmare. There's a helpful link on the upgrade at BotHack if you're interested.





26/08/2006

Saturday at the Roxy - Weird Day




Today is Weird Day at the Roxy. A few friends of mine just showed up from Mexico bound for Burning Man, reminding me it's that time of year again. Burning Man, for all it's strut and fret, sham and flim flam, is still a feast for the eyes and, if nothing else, the desert will restore some perspective on the ephemeral nature and tenuous hold we have in the universe. Also, Burning Man is in Nevada and therefore it is only right to honor this prestigious, local event. But first a word from one of today's fine sponsors...



Before going to Burning Man
you'll want to get a costume together
and for all your costume needs,
I always recommend ...



Shaye's Thrift Store
03:15 YouTube




Now on to...


Burning Man
06:42 YouTube



Today's Feature Presentation:

Elephants Dream



"Elephants Dream is the world's first open movie, made entirely with open source graphics software such as Blender, and with all production files freely available to use however you please. The short film was created by the Orange Open Movie Project studio in Amsterdam during 2005/2006, bringing together a diverse team of artists and developers from all over the world."












24/08/2006

Off-road dreaming



Today Mr. Lee is working on the off-road trailer he picked up a couple of months ago in Idaho. He's going to take the tent off the top of the jeep and put it on the trailer. That way we can make a base camp and explore further with the jeep without having to break camp to do it. All the birds are pissed. The little ones keep darting in and grabbing a few sunflower seeds but even they can't take the noise and comotion for long. It's causing me a bit anxiety as well, but not because of the noise. Fixing up this trailer means that now we will be able to get deeper and stay longer in the Great Basin than ever, a prospect over which I have mixed feelings.

I love and hate disappearing into Nevada's outback and disappear we do. I love it because it's fun, breathtakingly beautiful and it's a great cleansing for body, mind and spirit. A few days out and I finally get out my head and to my heart. Even Bush, if I think of him at all, resumes his true form, a mere bloodsucking tick painfully embedded in world's collective ass.

And I love seeing, being, knowing that I am walking on the living planet, not property. People who don't understand the desert think ugh ... brown dead wasteland. All the better. They must stay away. Go to the lovely beach resort. The clean, fun campground. Go visit relatives. Even those that do understand the glory of this wild solitude should go somewhere else. I want it all for us. It's fun pretending to be the only people on the planet ... explorers of a lost, living world in a universe far, far away. It's a great fantasy and finding thousands of years old human artifacts coughed up by spring flooding only adds a post-apocalyptic thrill of it all.

The problem is that we really are out there and, if we get hurt, break an ankle, wrench a knee, run out of gas, food and/or water it might as well be true.I think about these things. Of course Mr. Lee is a savvy outdoorsman. We are fucking prepared, I'll tell you that. And he reminds me of that when, after a day or two, I stop writing and snapping photos and begin silently staring at the horizon ringing us fifty miles out and start talking about how we are bugs cupped under a foreign sky and locked in a vanishing point were, if the slightest thing goes wrong, we will surely die. He reminds me we have food and water for a month but I'm never convince that's enough, that probably we'd die long before some desert rat or drunken hunter happens by. Which is to say I'm a chickenshit but it's been so long since we've camping that these days I catch myself visually following a dirt road up into the nearby hills. I don't talk about it much. Don't want to appear too eager. We'll be there soon enough but the truth is I miss it. Where else will I meet a team of noble Great While Pyrenees caring for their flock? They were so cool, I just wish I'd had some food handy. They seemed hungry.


















23/08/2006

Madame Rolla


As I have now done four political rants in a row, it seemed time to give the few, rare people who manage to make their way to the language barrier a break so, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, I give you ...


Madame Rolla, dancer extraordinare











Backfire in Iraq

Casualties in Iraq
2613



Bush's big gun war on terror totally backfired but this idiot hasn't got the brains or the balls to admit it. He led us into a dead end yet insists we "stay the course". He's too stupid to see that, like the government's war on drugs, this war on terror boomeranged, increasing rather than decreasing the problem. In fact, if you compare them, it's clear that both "wars" use the same strategy, blast the hell out of an enemy that multiplies on contact.



Regan's War on Drugs:
  • Making drugs illegal automatically fosters an insanely profitable, irresistible underground economy that will only deflate when drugs are legalized and regulated.
  • This so-called war spawned a costly yet ineffective bureaucracy that is now entrenched in a sick, symbiotic relationship with the underground drug culture.
  • This loop is self-perpetuating.

Bush's War on Terror:
  • Terror is a feeling. You can't wage a war on a feeling.
  • The Bushites nurture a culture of terror in order to get support and funding for their "war on terror".
  • Bush's "big gun" approach to the terrorist underground kills and maims more innocent citizens than terrorists.
  • The survivors feel resentment and rage towards us and sympathy for the terrorists as "freedom fighters".
  • People in other countries increasingly share this rage and resentment towards the US.
  • This loop is self-perpetuating.

There's no quick fix. Iraq is now mired in a civil war. Bush's legacy. It could last for generations. Oops. But I'm not one to pine in silence waiting for an invitation to share my opinion...


My action short list:
  • Bring our troops home now.
  • Leave diplomats there.
  • Clean house here.
  • Impeach Bush and Cheney now.
  • Throw them into a big hole like say ...
  • San Quentin
  • Throw fascist buddies including Rove and Rummy in after them.
  • Throw the key away.
  • Renounce US imperialism.
  • Rebuild America.



    My motto






    idiot

22/08/2006

Is Bush is an idiot?


The question in this CNN segment is whether or not President Bush is an idiot. If you haven't see it check it out. I'd say it's an historical and appropriate question.


YouTube link



The answer? Yes! Naturally. Bush is an idiot but he's so much more. He is a maniacal ChristoFascist with more destructive power at his command than any other human being on the planet. That's a hair-raising thought in itself, a horror compounded by the fact that his vision of Armageddon shapes and guides both is domestic and foreign policy. It wouldn't be so bad if Bush were merely the village idiot but he's also a fascist, criminal mob boss with unlimited wealth and power at his quivering fingertips. Lovely.