Babyhead.01

babyhead

Pinky's string of blue Tuesdays

Pinky's got the blues. She's been waiting for a letter from Bunny for a couple of months but he hasn't sent a word. Admittedly Bunny's a bit of a goof but Pinky is head over heels for him. She wrote him a letter a while ago asking if he would like to meet her but, you know, zip. She's been sitting in the letterbox waiting to hear back from him ever since. She even sent him a pink, heart shaped answer card with yes or no check boxes to make it easier for him to reply. He's nearly illiterate. I don't know what's worse, a rejection or being completely ignored. Rejection is certainly painful but at least you get an answer, a little recognition. And I hate to even mention this but the brazen Mdme. Rollo may be after Bunny and, being a hot cabaret dancer, she has no problem asserting, flaunting, herself. She expects to get what, and who, she wants. I hope she hasn't made a move on Bunny. He'd be no match for her. I feel helpless watching this sad little drama. They say that true love wins in the end but does it?

Saturday at the Roxy - equinox celebration

Welcome to the Roxy.

Friday night marked the exact moment of the Autumn Equinox (21:03 hours) and therefore the official beginning of fall so I'm celebrating the occasion all weekend. Unfortunately, although people have observed this event for thousands of years, they haven't done many videos on the subject. At least I only found a few instructive clips on equinox mechanics and a couple of excepts from horribly saccharine "new age" circles jerks. I'm hoping instead that you will help out this week by participating in the festivities. If you will be so kind you can kick things off. All you have to do is ...

pretend you are made of pipe cleaners and
DANCE
(Buttons A - F for music. I like F.)

Dance lasts 00:01 or up until your fingers fall off.

Now on to the main feature.
This video is one of the top five shows
in Channel 102's last screening...

Viewing the Defenders of Stan
05:00




It's seems only fitting to end with more dancing.
After all the equinox is a festive occasion.

Little Superstar

01:28

Autumn Equinox

Summer's End

Happy Autumn!

Boiling mud pots and the Golden Shadow.

Mt. Lassen summit

We took a new route home from Oregon today, California Hwy. 89 through the Shasta Cascade region. The road took us right by the base of Mt. Lassen, an active volcano with a summit of 10,500 feet. It is the only mountain in the Cascades besides Mount St. Helens to have erupted during the 20th Century. It was not only a beautiful drive but a way to avoid road work in the mountains and traffic in Reno and Carson City. I made a short video for you of one of the mountain's many boiling mud pots. Over the sound of the wind you'll hear the mud bubbling in the hole. Don't worry. You're not missing anything from this angle. You can't see anything looking directly into the pit because of all the steam.





Okay. That's it for tonight. Now I've got to rejoin my little band of friends currently gathering in Otherland's City of the Golden Shadow. Things are very tense there at the moment. I've only got a few pages left in the book out of a four part set but I've got volume two ready to go.







Boiling mud pot - Mt. Lassen








mt. lassen otherland

Think, damn it!

We're off to Oregon in the morning for a brief family visit. While I'm gone, Keith will keep you company. Now Georgie, you be a good lil' buckaroo and do like Keith says, apologize to the country.



John Amato posted the complete transcript of Olbermann's comments at CrooksandLiars.

Party party

A couple of photos from
Mr. Lee's birthday party the other day.

First it was work work work then play play play.

That thing is a flying monkey wearing a cape and a mask.

I partially re-opened the Bird Park today as Mr. Lee is nearly done with all his backyard projects. He has just a few more details left on the trailer, reattach tail lights, hook the breaks back up etc. ... and there's one last section of fence that still needs weatherizing but he did the bird park today... first. He's alwasy a very thoughtful fellow. As soon as he finished I hung up two feeders. A couple of little birds dropped in at dusk and they each had one to themselves. Tomorrow I'm putting out treats for the BIG PARTY.

George W. Bush, torture chief

As any intelligent person you are no doubt aware that right now President Bush is feverishly trying to legalize torture ... to cover his own sorry ass. My son did a National Guard rotation overseas not long age so this fraud's latest craven, grandstand bullshit especially pisses me off.

No matter that he's an idiot, as President of the United States, George W. Bush is ultimately responsible for the gruesome, ongoing torture of POWs in US prison camps wherever they're located. The fact that the Geneva Convention classifies torture as illegal has never stopped him but it's finally beginning to catch up with the bastard. Sane people are demanding Bush be stopped and brought to justice. Naturally Bush expects the Republicans ruling Congress to do what they always do, rubberstamp his actions and retroactively make whatever criminal thing he's doing ... legal.

If Congress goes along with this coward they are worse than he is. You can't put the toothpaste back in the tube. Passing Bush's pro-torture legislation would simultaneously sanction the torture of American troops. Abu Ghraib would a model rather than a national disgrace. Once again Keith Olbermann stands up to the madness. Thank you. My response is less measured but then hell has no fury like a mother's rage. If Congress does support Bush's scheme, I hope the fuckwits rot with him in the same very special hell he's already created for himself.








bush geneva convention detainee treatment act abu ghraib congress keith olbermann

Saturday at the Roxy - from Orson Wells to Salad finger and beyond

Welcome to the Roxy. Our host today is none other than 20th Century great Orson Wells - actor, writer, director, producer, artist, genius, alcoholic. His performance in the 1938 radio broadcast of H.G. Wells "War of the World's" the day before Halloween is legendary. Millions of people, the greater part of the nation, believing his simulated live news broadcast, panicked thinking Earth had been invaded by mechanized war machines from Mars.

Orson Wells acting out his famous
War of the Worlds radio broadcast
for Mercury Theatre on the Air.
(ARCHIVE PHOTOS, INC.)


Now a word from Orson

01:13





The News

04:11

The latest from Salad Fingers at Fat-Pie...
PULCE: The Good Times

over 5 minutes



And to wrap things up for today here's a new release from
Half Moon Theatre Company:
Wonderful World

roxy orson wells salad fingers pulch news half moon theatre

Bird park - 2 weeks later

It's cold now and still no bird park. This has gone on too long. The descendants of the dinosaurs are getting pissed.

The critique

I finally got the critique of the poems I entered in the Nevada Arts Council Artist Fellowship Program last spring. It took long enough. If you are one of the rare regular readers here you perhaps remember I was not awarded the $5000 grant but you may have been on the edge of your keyboard waiting for the judge's commentary to arrive. Well, probably not. I'd forgotten all about it myself. At any rate, in keeping with my dedication to truth and transparency here at the language barrier, I'm posting the panels comments (there were two judges), as is (including typos) just as I did last year. If nothing else, it's another item for the alien's data bank who cleverly gave us this technology knowing we will freely pour our hearts out into the void.

ARTISTS FELLOWSHIP FY07
LITERARY ARTS APPLICATIONS

Application Number 331
Discipline / Category Literary Art - Poetry


Panel Comments

Found these poems intriguing, mysterious. Especially liked "Skin Trade"


Some strong imagistic details: "an old man...gulping like a fish," the synesthesia of "leathery squeak," "dusty clods of petals and wax." These poems are strongest when centered in image; where rhetoric outweighs image, they become slightly less so. The poems are consistent in tone: ominous, detached. The poet should trust in his/her image making to convey this surreal landscape without the need for flatter discursive passages such as the opening lines of "Road's Eye View" and "Skin Trade."


Interesting since (their misuse of word) of mystery remind me of some surrealist French poems. The musically did not work for me. There was not much effort to create a song pattern that work as part of the package.


Stunning images very surreal, but at the heart surreal there is a process of uncovering a deeper reality, a deeper meaning. I'm not quite sure what the poems were cohesively adding up to. The language was inventive and creative thematically but not quite there.

"Discursive passages"? Okay. But "not much effort to create a song pattern that work as part of the package"? Package? As in word product? I'm glad these guys don't get it.

Nothing to hide, everything to protect

Excerpt from "The Grave"

"Oft in the lone church yard at night I've seen,
By glimpse of moonshine chequering thro' the trees,
The school boy, with his satchel in his hand,
Whistling aloud to bear his courage up,
And lightly tripping o'er the long flat stones,
(With nettles skirted, and with moss o'ergrown,)
That tell in homely phrase who lie below."

by Robert Blair

"I have nothing to hide."

This is the standard answer when someone defends Republicans spying on us without a proper warrant. Otherwise intelligent people totally miss the point thinking it doesn't matter as long as the person spied on is innocent. I marvel at their ignorance. Their passivity stuns me. Either these people are whistling past the graveyard or they are as clueless as animals chew their cuds in the slaughterhouse.

Our Constitutional guarantee of privacy is violated when the government spies on us without a warrant and that, my friend, is a Big Deal. It should be a clue that the conservatives do not want anyone monitoring them when they spy on us. This is because they want secret, full, unrestricted access to all our phone conversations, emails, downloads, credit and banking records. They want to know what we buy, what books we check out at the library, the groups we belong to, and the people with whom we spend personal time. They want to be able to imprison anyone, at any time, for no stated reason, deny the accused access to the evidence held against them and even deny the defendant the right to attend their own trial. Far fetched? You bet it is. It's totalitarianism, baby. Fascism.

Bush & Co are bringing America Fascism on the installment plan. Their illegal actions and our passiveness have created an environment toxic to democracy and freedom. When we stand on the sidelines and let the Republicans disassemble our Constitution we are letting them destroy the very thing that defines and protects us as free people.

"What does it matter? I have nothing to hide." We may have nothing to hide but we sure as hell have something to protect.










fascism Bush republicans NSA warrentless spying constitution

Countdown 9/11 Special Commentary

Keith Olbermann blasts Bush calling him and his supporters "grasping, opportunistic dilettantes at best and at worst idiots." I say screw the either/or because they're all that.People are so mesmerized by the Republican spin machine but the fact is emperor has no brain and he's driving the bus off the cliff. Check out CrooksandLiars.com for the link. The complete transcript of speech is also available at crooksandliars.

Bush, our pet goat

September 11, 2006

2666: current US death toll in Iraq
20000 - 48100: estimated US wounded in Iraq
41650-46318: Iraqi civilian death toll

9/11: Why did Bush sit reading "My Pet Goat" and ignore the news that the country was under attack? And why did he mire us in this trumped-up war on Iraq instead of going after Osama bin Laden who was the master mind behind 9/11?

Watch our pet goat read as America burns.

bush 9/11 my pet goat osama bin laden

Bird Park blues

The Bird Park is a sad place these days. The trailer is taking much longer than expected. It shouldn't surprise me how long a do-it-yourself project ends up taking but it always does. The bed liner is on. It looks great and now the only thing left is to paint the outside and Mr. Lee is doing the prep for that today.

At this point the bird feeders have been down for over a week but every morning a little band of pigeons continue to gather just after day break on the roof of Dick's house to see if their world has been restored. I guess all pigeons are homing pigeons. When the feeders are up the finches gobble away at them from dawn to dusk and spew seed chips on the ground for everybody else. Mr. Lee assures me that it should only a few more days before the trailer is done and my little artifical environment can return to it's own form of normal. I hope so. Otherwise it's pretty quiet here in suburblandia.

Tonopah Nevada, one more time

Here are a few photos from my weekend in Tonopah.


Proud home of the Tonopah Muckers


World weary lama
downtown Saturday afternoon "petting zoo"



Main Street, downtown Tonopah

"The Last Picture Show"
Th film was supposed to be about a desperate little town
in Texas but many of the scenes were filmed in Tonopah,
including the street scene used on the official poster for the film,
hanging in Tonopah's Convention Center.



One block off of Main

Thrift shop



Outhouse



Miner's house
located just north of the outhouse, also one block of Main St.


View of Mizpah Hotel on Main St.
as seen from cabin next door.



Polaroid of a guy drinking a beer
found in this shack. Yes, I left the photo there.
It's waiting for you.



Back side of heaven



Wild hot springs a few miles from town.
The water was too hot in the middle of the day
to do anything but soak our feet.


Local newspaper clippings 1907 - 1911
Tonopah museum

An incredibly different style of journalism.

1909


1911


1907



Old Tonopah graveyard

revisited again


Baby William's doll
Something moved the doll since my last visit in the spring



Unknown baby
the wind has rubbed the name away

tonopah nevada the last picture show graveyard miner's cabin old west

Saturday at the Roxy - 09.09.06

Today the Roxy matinee is coming to you from the lovely town of Tonopah located in the geographic center of the Great Basin, aka Nevada. This link takes you to some poetry by a few friends of mine that you might enjoy. At any rate, I'll post photos of the Tonopah trip later. I hope you enjoy the show. Last Saturday was basically Werner Herzog day here at the Roxy. First we watched him eat his shoe and then saw his video of aboriginals in the Amazon. Naturally they were both pretty intense, so today I've chosen lighter fare.

To kick off today's matinee here's
Bengal cat Zimba treading Richard Norton's...

Evil Cat Wheel

This next video is for dog lover's.
or you might say lover dogs..

Puppy Love

I found this video by Falconer & Tom (sorry no link) on Channel 101.
It didn't make it very far in the voting but I kind of like it and hope you do too...

Stripey #1

saturday roxy

Tonopah in the morning

I'm leaving for Tonopah in the morning and will be gone until Sunday. For the last couple of years I've been attending meetings there but, after this trip, I rotate out of the service position I've been in and that's it. I'm done and I'm a bit sad about it.

I love to wander around photographing Tonopah's remains which the desert is quickly consuming, but otherwise there's not much else going on there besides the gas station, which must make about a million dollars a month, and the two prisons which will eventually be buried by the sand. Otherwise Tonopah belongs to the dead.







tonopah

Victory for Horses!

Mare and two colts, members of a small band of
wild horses in the Nevada desert.

Horse protection bill passes House!

I got this email from the Humane Society today and want to share it with all of you who called your Representatives yesterday to speak up for wild horses:

Dear Asha,

I am thrilled to share with you truly historic news: Today, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the American Horse Slaughter Prevention Act (H.R. 503) by a vote of 263-146. Our opposition tried to introduce two "poison pill" amendments that, if passed, would have killed the bill. But thanks to your calls and emails, these amendments were soundly defeated, and the House passed the legislation. Your work carried the day for America's horses!

I can't stress enough how crucial the support of dedicated advocates like you has been in this long fight to close down the brutal and foreign-owned horse slaughter industry. Each time you made a phone call, met with your legislators, sent an email, and told your friends and family about this issue, you helped the horses win. All of these efforts have led us to this historic win in the House.

Your actions have also paved the way for a victory in the Senate. To ensure final passage of this vital legislation, please contact your two U.S. Senators (Harry Reid and John Ensign) and urge them to immediately pass the American Horse Slaughter Prevention Act (S. 1915).

We are closer than ever to protecting nearly 100,000 horses a year from a grim and painful end, just so they can be turned into foreign delicacies. Please stay with us in this fight as we reach toward final victory for the horses.

Please share this good news with your friends and family, and urge them to take action by contacting their U.S. Senators, too.

Now the bill has to pass the Senate and that fight is yet to be fought, but that's for another day. Today is a day to celebrate. Thanks for your help! We did together what we could not do alone!







H.R. 503 wildhorses slaughter

Republican plan

"Yada yada woof woof" - President Bush

campaign conservatives congress election iraq

Stop slaughter of America's wild horses

Today's the day!

Homestretch for Horses

With the U.S. House of Representatives set to vote on a permanent horse slaughter ban, animal advocates and lawmakers rally to keep American horses off the menu. more

• Video: Be part of the national rally to ban horse slaughter.

• Take Action: Join the charge, and call today.

Call your Representative today.
The vote is tomorrow!

If you need a script here's the one I used. It's the one provided by the Humane Society. Do it. It only takes a couple of minutes. Swamp 'em!


"I am a constituent and I am calling to ask that my Representative please protect American horses from slaughter and support H.R. 503, the Horse Slaughter Prevention Act. I also urge my Representative to oppose any amendments to H.R. 503. I am very concerned about American horses and I don't want them slaughtered."



If you'd like to read more there's a lot links on the subject here: Lexidiem: Barbaro Burgers Legal after Thursday?






H.R. 503 wild horses

End wild horse slaughter

Sept. 6, 2006:
National Call-In Day for Horses

The wild horses need your help. The House of Representatives is scheduled to vote Thursday, Sept. 7 on the Horse Slaughter Prevention Act! Please help. Call your U.S. Representative directly or call the Congressional switchboard at (202) 224-3121. If you don't know what to say, here's a script courtesy of The Humane Society. Please help.

"I am a constituent and I am calling to ask that my Representative please protect American horses from slaughter and support H.R. 503, the Horse Slaughter Prevention Act. I also urge my Representative to oppose any amendments to H.R. 503. I am very concerned about American horses and I don't want them slaughtered."






wild horses end slaughter H.R. 503 humane society

Bird Park moritorium - Day 3

Strange goings on in the Bird Park today but I am assured that the project is going well. Supposedly the trailer bed is ready to be sprayed with some kind of tufftufftuff coating tomorrow and rumor has it that the outside will be painted and done on Wednesday. I hope so. The natives are getting restless.

Steve Irwin, one of the good guys

So sorry to hear Steve Irwin died today but it doesn't seem appropriate to add RIP after his name. If there is life beyond I doubt he's ordered up a fluffy cloud or rocking chair. I'll miss him. I really appreciate that with his life he brought so much awarness and compassion to creatures worldwide. He was a joy.


Steve Irwin / UF Gators - YouTube




Cries over dead croc - YouTube







steve irwin crocodile hunter crocodile uf gators

Moratorium, Day 2

Evening and Day 2 of no seed in the Bird Park but birds are still occasionally dropping by, some drinking a little water before taking off again. Otherwise, it's pretty quiet out there.

I spent some time in the morning working on the Coda for Three Cockroaches, not writing it, it's been done for months, but playing it in different voices on the keyboard. I must say some where kind of nice. I got a mixer and microphone for my birthday last month so I would like to record and upload it to the Cockroach Diary but I still lack one set of cables.

I also spent some time at the drawing board today. Like all of my projects, that's going very slowly. I've become self-conscious about what I'm doing and every other line now looks wrong. I'm much better when I don't think about these things but seems the mind always finds a way to intruded. Then begins the hard part.

The sky is blue here in Nevada this evening with elongated white clouds tethered to the desert by invisible ropes. Inside the window I am completely surrounded by things — 360° of stuff — in front of me brain coral from the Caribbean, Crow Stone, the Mayan leopard, then to the right the camera cradle, book holder, lamp, microphone, printers, scanner, bookshelf crammed with boxes of paper, notebooks, photographs, CDs, then the small table with books and drawing paraphernalia, the drawing table, then another bookshelf, file cabinet, another table with shelving holding my minuscule puppet theatre, and shelves of pens, tape, glue, rubber stamps, paper clips, scissors, post office stickers, labels etc. and so on, then the window in front of me again and the big table at which I sit typing. The clutter is contained compared to other days but it is the open blue sky on the other side of the glass toward which I lean like a plant bound in a pot that is too small.

When I began writing this post I was listening to a CD by woman called Sada Sat Kaur, an American disciple of Yogi Bajan. A friend loaned it to me. It's horrible. I knew it would be. I can't complain about an American taking initiation and wearing robes. I have a guru. Did. Do. Did. ...do... in an abstract way ... so I can't fault Kaur for that but god! her syrupy synthesized muzak just doesn't cut it.