Notes

I'm wondering what I might have to say to you. The man I overheard in the store telling someone on the phone that he was tired of being on pain medication, tired of being slow and dull. Or the fat woman in the next rack over bragging about big money real estate on her cell, her bleached white hair and strained white suit while rummaging through the discount goods jammed together in aisles so narrow empty sleeves catch and drag along behind. Or the younger obese woman leaning distractedly elbowing her grocery cart down the middle by the meat. Another woman at the grocery store trying to back her motorized shopping cart into its parking place like she's got something to prove, sausage thighs straining their stretch denim casings. My fellow citizens. The only one who dared make eye contact all day the guy strung out on pain meds, in the cammo pants and baseball cap, looking every bit like he'd give the distance a shot. For a moment I thought he might say something to me, put his question to somebody else for a change but no. A mechanical voice called me from the library tonight to inform me that my "materials are in". I don't remember which book it might be. I returned "Accordion Crimes" unfinished. Couldn't take two Proulx in a row. The brutality displayed like a nerve pulled out from under a tooth and left to writhe in the open air, punished because it is alive and can, therefore should, suffer. We get enough of that in daily life, don't we? "Suttree", the book I'm reading now is depressing enough. And these two coming not long after reading McCarthy's "The Road" makes the whole world seem hopeless. Dark into dark. My dreams, at least, are better these days after cutting back on the caffiend.

Sweet for bitters

As I posted several disturbing articles this week, here's pallet cleanser. Now I've got to get to work.

Sweet_sweet_sweet

Karl Rove - caught on tape

Wondering what Jason Alexander has been up to lately?

04:52

Roses, scars and traveler's return

M. Lee will be back late Friday night. Naturally they just got San Carlos all figured out, all the important things that is like who sells the best Flan. I use a capital there because Flan is holy. Besides the fact that I am definitely ready for him to come home, I think it's in their own best interest. Last night he and Greg were drunk from Flan and whipped cream. It can only get worse.

When they first got to San Carlos they went shopping in Guaymas, the next town over where the real markets are. He told me about a sad little carnival there and I made him promise he'd photograph it for me. So he made a special trip back there yesterday and took some pictures. I don't expect it to look like much. After all, it is a sad carnival but I'm always drawn to rundown places and things like that. In past lives I must have been an actor in a traveling theatre troupe or two.

As for the month of creative experimentation, I don't have much to show for it but I did make a little progress. At least as the time draws to a close, I am back to showering in the morning, something I'd gotten away from over the summer. It's hard working at home. And I am expanding the stage of the Invisible Theatre. But I haven't written much or done any comics. And only kept a couple clips of the poetry readings, although I did several. But I learned something about lighting and and which room has the best sound and that, if I'm going to be in front of the camera, I should probably comb my hair first.

Here are a couple of photos from the day. My hand is doing pretty good but I have to massage the scars as hard as I can stand 3-5 times a day. It helps break down the scare tissue. Stings like hell! If the body is a world made up of different countries, by the end of the day, the country known as the Right Hand is very annoyed with the country known as the Left Hand.

Right Hand telling the Left Hand to BACK OFF.

A rose
is a rose
is a rose
even when it's a rose bud.

Teachers and learners

I've got an attitude. Perhaps you've noticed. I can't remember a time I didn't. Unfortunately I'd be lying to say I'm not a little proud of it even though I suspect swagger is inversely proportional to competence. I'll leave that to critics and historians. Anyway, my 'tude got me in trouble again yesterday. Not trouble as in suffering consequences from others but in that it's a filter, I nearly missed a good thing. Well what I think is a good thing. Luckily, someone challenged me and I could admit they were right. Tell me you'd be amazed to hear that it took years before I was able to consider that I might be wrong when I am so RIGHT. Anyway, as a result I found my new favorite site today. Here's a video from it which I hope you will enjoy as well.

Aside to M. Lee: This clip illustrates why I continue to post those rants you hate.

Animal Magnetism

03:24

Via Collateral News. Visit them.

Open mind, insert facts

I hate to interrupt your regular Sunday morning routine (or whatever day, week or year it might be that you are reading this). I hope you will be a good sport and indulge me for the next few minutes. There are several documentaries and papers on the subject available online (you can research that for yourself) but, after you read this intro, I want you to read the short article posted below. Other than the fact that a contradictory message has been embedded in the basement of our brains, set to repel this information and make it feel extremely tedious and unnecessary, even dangerous, the article is a quick and easy read. But I want you to be prepared. If you have the courage, for one second, to take this information seriously the feelings of displacement, powerlessness and disorientation could be enormous. Nothing you won't survive and, though it leaves you with questions rather than answers, in admitting that there is even a slight possibility that this information is true, it will leave you with a much more sober view of the the century. So I hope that for the next 2 or 3 minutes you will jam open the doors to your mind and plow forward.

Steel Ignores Jet Fuel

by Edward Mitchell

I am not a scientist, nor a physicist, nor structural engineer. I am a Boilermaker, Shipbuilder, and Blacksmith Forger. Union. Now a contractor on military facilities. I build steel storage tanks for jet fuel. A few years ago, a typhoon blew through, and I got to watch a Mobil AST, with 1,000,000 gallons of diesel in it, get hit with lightning. The grounding failed, and the million gallons blew up.

Well, for a diesel fire that is. It didn’t “blow up”. It simply caught fire, burned itself out after 4 days, blackened the steel. Catch that? One million gallons of diesel fuel, burned for 4 days, and didn’t melt a thing.

The tank, 1/4″-thick steel, never melted.

Yet the 47 HUGE box-section core columns, the main structural supports of the WTC towers, are said to have melted?

Stop, I’ll wet my britches laughing.

I’ve melted, welded, forged, bent, twisted, repaired, sheared, punched, formed, plated, blasted and coated just about every metal you see used commonly in industry and construction, for over 32 years. I’ve welded many a steel I-beam: purlin clips, joining plates, you name it.

Do you recall the explosion you see after the second plane hits the tower? What caused that?

It was the JP-8 [jet fuel] contained in the aircraft’s tanks.

Did you see that huge fireball? What was that?

It was the kerosene (JP-8 is nothing more than refined kerosene, the same stuff you use in your camping stove).

It burned OUTSIDE the towers!

How could this fuel then have reconstituted itself after exploding, and put itself back inside the building?

And then?

It ran down 90 floors to melt the “un-insulated I-beams”? What? “Shook” the insulation off by jet impact? Are you kidding me? When the jet hit, it did not even knock folks down in the building below it! What nonsense!

Because I KNOW the dimensions of a 14,000 gallon fuel tank. It’s about 11’x11’x11’ — About the size on one of the many small offices on the floor that got hit. That’s all. The size of one little office the size of a 11-foot-cube.

Let’s look at this another way: The volume of each of the towers was roughly 50 MILLION CUBIC FEET.

The volume of the fuel was a relatively insignificant 1,300 cubic feet, about 0.003 percent!

Yet, you would have me believe NOT my own eyes, that see an explosion of huge proportions caused by the impact of the jet plane, but rather a tale that says exploded fuel turned back into liquid form, and less than 14,000 gallons, a ridiculously small amount of fuel, ran 90 stories down the stairways (the stairwells the firefighters used to come up to see “small fires”) and caused the beams to melt because the impact “knocked off the insulation”.

I have only one reply to that: What about WTC 7. Not hit. there goes THAT THEORY.

Steel at higher temperatures may bend, but it NEVER melts or turns to dust. Never. No, not ever.

Say, how about this for an argument: From now on, Controlled Demolition, Inc. never needs to use sophisticated computer analysis on where to place the explosives, amounts, sequences…oh no. We can simply pour 10,000 gallons of diesel fuel in the basement, stand back, and watch a PERFECTLY SIMULATED controlled demolition. Right?