the Cornell Lab of Ornithology is doing their annual bird count this weekend, February 16-19. go outside and look around, then go to their website and tell them what you saw. they'll take your word for it.
last year’s count brought in like 60,000 checklists and reported 7.5 million birds overall, 623 different species. one of the things revealed was the ongoing range expansion of introduced Eurasian Collared-Doves which are now living in my neighborhood too. entries are accepted until the end of the month and there are some prizes you can win like binoculars and, um, “cherry cobbler bird food.”
Wednesday, February 14, 2007
Tuesday, February 13, 2007
fishers of sharks
Reverend Kevin Thompson just got busted. he’d been recruiting fishermen from among his disciples instead of the other way around and now he’s going to jail for a year and a day. here’s the USDoJ release. when the faithful would ask if things were legit, he told them it was the will of God.
if you want to hear him talk about the operation and "some discovery channel stuff,” all in a light brogue, then you can easily download a terrific little 7 minute mp3 here. it’s an excerpt from a longer sermon where he gets into, as he puts it, a deep spiritual lesson he learned from sharks and the unique business of catching little baby sharks. he leaves out the part about baby leopard sharks growing to about 7 feet.
Thursday, February 01, 2007
happy birthday Galway Kinnell
Daybreak
On the tidal mud, just before sunset,
dozens of starfishes
were creeping. It was
as though the mud were a sky
and enormous, imperfect stars
moved across it slowly
as the actual stars cross heaven.
All at once they stopped,
and as if they had simply
increased their receptivity
to gravity they sank down
into the mud; they faded down
into it and lay still: and by the time
pink sunset broke across them
they were as invisible
as the true stars at daybreak.
The Gray Heron
It held its head still
while its body and green
legs wobbled in wide arcs
from side to side. When
it stalked out of sight,
I went after it, but all
I could find where I was
expecting to see the bird
was a three-foot-long lizard
in ill-fitting skin
and with linear mouth
expressive of the even temper
of the mineral kingdom.
It stopped and tilted its head,
which was much like
a fieldstone with an eye
in it, which was watching me
to see if I would go
or change into something else.
-Galway Kinnell
from Mortal Acts, Mortal Words
1980
On the tidal mud, just before sunset,
dozens of starfishes
were creeping. It was
as though the mud were a sky
and enormous, imperfect stars
moved across it slowly
as the actual stars cross heaven.
All at once they stopped,
and as if they had simply
increased their receptivity
to gravity they sank down
into the mud; they faded down
into it and lay still: and by the time
pink sunset broke across them
they were as invisible
as the true stars at daybreak.
The Gray Heron
It held its head still
while its body and green
legs wobbled in wide arcs
from side to side. When
it stalked out of sight,
I went after it, but all
I could find where I was
expecting to see the bird
was a three-foot-long lizard
in ill-fitting skin
and with linear mouth
expressive of the even temper
of the mineral kingdom.
It stopped and tilted its head,
which was much like
a fieldstone with an eye
in it, which was watching me
to see if I would go
or change into something else.
-Galway Kinnell
from Mortal Acts, Mortal Words
1980
Wednesday, January 31, 2007
happy birthday Daniel Tammet
in junior high they would call assemblies over all kinds of stuff. if a PG cover band was in town and friendly with the school board, they could find a captive audience of those students with good attendance or citizenship indices. student elections, drill team, talent shows and Jostens also got stage time.
once Kim Peek came to our school with his dad, and did some amazing parlor tricks for us all. after an introduction of his accomplishments, qualities, parts and passions, he told some of us what day of the week we were born on. then he performed some other pretty tangled calculus which was lost on most of us. that was a good assembly. since then I’ve run into him several times around town, mostly downtown at the main library.
then I hear about this guy, Daniel Tammet. he was in junior high about the same time I was, but was getting bullied slightly more. when this would happen he would sit down, put his fingers in his ears, and count in powers of 2. 2 4 8 16 32 64 128 256 512 1024 2048 4096 8192 16384 32768 65538 131072 262144 524288 … retreating back into his mind for miles.
numbers have become his personal friends. friends with textures, colors, sounds and movement. 11 is especially friendly. 11 and 1 are both brilliant white, like light pouring in, he says. 4 is shy and 5 is a loud thunderclap. 37 is lumpy like oatmeal and 89 is falling snow. Dave Letterman is 117.
9’s are especially exciting; they are immense like skyscrapers, elastic bands stretched way out. the 9’s are also blue and, when multiplied with other nines, grow more deeply blue. for Daniel, prime numbers are the lonely ones. they are smooth pebbles that stand out from the others like signposts. also, somewhere here I aught to mention that Daniel is an autistic savant. he’s drawn some pictures of how he sees numbers. as you can see, he doesn’t carry any ones.
I can sort of imagine this method. at St. Timothy’s elementary I would count in terms of dots in simple formation, like dominoes, and then fit them together like legos. but nothing like this.
about 3 years ago Daniel spent 5 hours reciting pie at Oxford. he made it down to the 22,514th decimal place and had the public onlookers in tears. he speaks English, Spanish, Icelandic, Welsh, Esperanto and a bunch of other Indo-European languages. these days he’s working on his own language called Mänti.
once Kim Peek came to our school with his dad, and did some amazing parlor tricks for us all. after an introduction of his accomplishments, qualities, parts and passions, he told some of us what day of the week we were born on. then he performed some other pretty tangled calculus which was lost on most of us. that was a good assembly. since then I’ve run into him several times around town, mostly downtown at the main library.
then I hear about this guy, Daniel Tammet. he was in junior high about the same time I was, but was getting bullied slightly more. when this would happen he would sit down, put his fingers in his ears, and count in powers of 2. 2 4 8 16 32 64 128 256 512 1024 2048 4096 8192 16384 32768 65538 131072 262144 524288 … retreating back into his mind for miles.numbers have become his personal friends. friends with textures, colors, sounds and movement. 11 is especially friendly. 11 and 1 are both brilliant white, like light pouring in, he says. 4 is shy and 5 is a loud thunderclap. 37 is lumpy like oatmeal and 89 is falling snow. Dave Letterman is 117.
9’s are especially exciting; they are immense like skyscrapers, elastic bands stretched way out. the 9’s are also blue and, when multiplied with other nines, grow more deeply blue. for Daniel, prime numbers are the lonely ones. they are smooth pebbles that stand out from the others like signposts. also, somewhere here I aught to mention that Daniel is an autistic savant. he’s drawn some pictures of how he sees numbers. as you can see, he doesn’t carry any ones.
I can sort of imagine this method. at St. Timothy’s elementary I would count in terms of dots in simple formation, like dominoes, and then fit them together like legos. but nothing like this.about 3 years ago Daniel spent 5 hours reciting pie at Oxford. he made it down to the 22,514th decimal place and had the public onlookers in tears. he speaks English, Spanish, Icelandic, Welsh, Esperanto and a bunch of other Indo-European languages. these days he’s working on his own language called Mänti.
Saturday, January 20, 2007
3 winter haiku
I mistook a cold
fanbelt, chirping down main street
for a canyon wren
hoarfrost, each morning
twenty-four below zero
encrusts my doorknob
this is when they crack
last year's water balloon lips
and fall off the tap
fanbelt, chirping down main street
for a canyon wren
hoarfrost, each morning
twenty-four below zero
encrusts my doorknob
this is when they crack
last year's water balloon lips
and fall off the tap
Tuesday, January 16, 2007
Tiktaalik
last year they found Tiktaalik up in Nunavut, Canada and since then it’s made its way into museums, Nature, PBS and the Colbert Report. so I’ve really been scooped here. but as the bones have been sleeping in late Devonian sandstone for about 375 million years, 10 months hardly seems an issue anymore. the name was suggested by the locals (Inuit elders) and it means “large shallow-water fish.”Ted Daeschler, Neil Shubin and Farish Jenkins were the guys who found it there. here's what Ted looks like in his natural habitat as simulated by PBS in the backdrop.
some people have trouble with the name Tiktaalik so there are other catchy things they’ve been calling it. so far, fishapod seems to be catching on the best but I guess we’ll see. there’s a spirited debate on taxonomy, semantics, etymology and the naming of things as applied to ichthyopods on crooked timber. they get into legfish, lungfish, tetrapods and the possibility of organisms with actual fish for feet or even the number 4 attached to the ends of each of thier legs; and how, cladistically speaking, we’re all a bunch of fish.
“Literary comedy and biological evolution share in common the view that all change is conservative. Organisms and comic heroes change their structure or behavior only in order to preserve an accustomed way of life which has been threatened by changes in the environment. The ancient fish that developed lungs when its home in the sea became untenable was not a radical revolutionary, but a public-spirited preserver of his genetic heritage… To evolution and to comedy, nothing is sacred but life itself.”
-Joseph W. Meeker
The Comic Mode
for some great photos and a little text, the University of Chicago has set up a virtual home for Tiktaalik. all of this has catapulted the creature up into the pantheon with archaeopteryx and hobo hamilis.
Wednesday, January 10, 2007
army ants
The whirligig beetles are wary and fast with an organ to detect the ripples.
The arachnid moths lay their eggs inside other insects along the borders of fields or rows in clusters of white cocoons.
The red pine borer is a longhorn beetle. Their antennas are half the length of their body and they feed on dead red pine.
Robber flies with their immobile heads inject a paralyzing fluid into their prey that they snatch from life in midair.
The snow flea’s mode of locomotion is strange and odd with a spiny tail mechanism with hooks and a protracted tube from the abdomen to enable moisture absorption.
The female praying mantis devours the male while they are mating. The male sometimes continues copulating even after the female has bitten off his head and part of his upper torso.
Every night wasps bite into the stem of a plant, lock their mandibles into position, stretch out at right angles to the stem and, with legs dangling, they fall asleep.
If one places a minute amount of liquor on a scorpion it will instantly go mad and sting itself to death.
The bombardier beetle, when disturbed, defends itself by emitting a series of explosions, sometimes setting off 4 or 5 reports in succession. The noises sound like miniature popgun blasts and are accompanied by a cloud of reddish-colored vile smelling fluid.
It is commonly known that ants keep slaves. Certain species, the so called sanguinary ants in particular, will raid the ants of other ant tribes and kill the queen, then kidnap many of the workers. The workers are brought back to the captors’ hive where they are coerced into performing menial tasks.
And as we discussed last semester the army ants will leave nothing but your bones.
Perhaps you’ve encountered some of these insects in your communities displaying both their predatory and defense characteristics while imbedded within the walls of flesh and passing for what is most commonly recognized as human.
-Tom Waits
Army Ants
from Orphans, 2006
The arachnid moths lay their eggs inside other insects along the borders of fields or rows in clusters of white cocoons.
The red pine borer is a longhorn beetle. Their antennas are half the length of their body and they feed on dead red pine.
Robber flies with their immobile heads inject a paralyzing fluid into their prey that they snatch from life in midair.
The snow flea’s mode of locomotion is strange and odd with a spiny tail mechanism with hooks and a protracted tube from the abdomen to enable moisture absorption.
The female praying mantis devours the male while they are mating. The male sometimes continues copulating even after the female has bitten off his head and part of his upper torso.
Every night wasps bite into the stem of a plant, lock their mandibles into position, stretch out at right angles to the stem and, with legs dangling, they fall asleep.
If one places a minute amount of liquor on a scorpion it will instantly go mad and sting itself to death.
The bombardier beetle, when disturbed, defends itself by emitting a series of explosions, sometimes setting off 4 or 5 reports in succession. The noises sound like miniature popgun blasts and are accompanied by a cloud of reddish-colored vile smelling fluid.
It is commonly known that ants keep slaves. Certain species, the so called sanguinary ants in particular, will raid the ants of other ant tribes and kill the queen, then kidnap many of the workers. The workers are brought back to the captors’ hive where they are coerced into performing menial tasks.
And as we discussed last semester the army ants will leave nothing but your bones.
Perhaps you’ve encountered some of these insects in your communities displaying both their predatory and defense characteristics while imbedded within the walls of flesh and passing for what is most commonly recognized as human.
-Tom Waits
Army Ants
from Orphans, 2006
Tuesday, January 09, 2007
sea slugs, bombardier beetles and megapods
Lanny Johnson at the Alpha Omega Institute has prepared some information on sea slugs, bombardier beetles, and megapod thermometer birds on the kids page.
Here are some highlights
“Girls, would this sea slug look good in your hair to wear as a barrette on Sunday morning?”
“Consider, how many times did the sea slug have to die from the poison darts before he got it right?... Not only is our God a designer, He is Awesome!”
there are also coloring book pages.
Here are some highlights
“Girls, would this sea slug look good in your hair to wear as a barrette on Sunday morning?”
“Consider, how many times did the sea slug have to die from the poison darts before he got it right?... Not only is our God a designer, He is Awesome!”
there are also coloring book pages.
Monday, January 08, 2007
back to schools
A fish, like the tuna or the sardine, which live in a school, would be less likely to vary than this lonely horned shark, for the school would impose a discipline of speed and uniformity, and those which would not or could not meet the school’s requirements would be killed or lost or left behind. The overfast would be eliminated by the school as readily as the overslow, until a standard somewhere between the fast and slow had been attained. Not intending a pun, we might note that our schools have to some extent the same tendency. A Harvard man, a Yale man, a Stanford man—that is, the idea—is as easily recognized as a tuna, and he has, by a process of elimination, survived the tests against idiocy and brilliance. Even in physical matters the standard is maintained until it is impossible, from speech, clothing, haircuts, posture, or state of mind, to tell one of these units of his school from another. In this connection it would be interesting to know whether the general collectivization of human society might not have the same effect. Factory mass production, for example, requires that every man conform to the tempo of the whole. The slow must be speeded up or eliminated, the fast slowed down. In a thoroughly collectivized state, mediocre efficiency might be very great, but only through the complete elimination of the swift, the clever, and the intelligent, as well as the incompetent. Truly collective man might in fact abandon his versatility…
The light, piercing the surface, showed the water almost solid with fish—swarming, hungry, frantic fish, incredible in their voraciousness. The schools swam, marshaled and patrolled. They turned as a unit and dived as a unit. In their millions they followed a pattern minute as to direction depth and speed. There must be some fallacy in our thinking of these fish as individuals. Their functions in the school are in some as yet unknown way as controlled as though the school were one unit. We cannot conceive of this intricacy until we are able to think of the school as an animal itself, reacting with all its cells to stimuli which perhaps might not influence one fish at all. And this larger animal, the school, seems to have a nature and drive and ends of its own. It is more than and different from the sum of its units. If we can think in this way, it will not seem so unbelievable that every fish heads in the same direction, that the water interval between fish and fish is identical with all the units, and that it seems to be directed by a school intelligence. If it is a unit animal itself, why should it not so react? Perhaps this is the wildest of speculations, but we suspect that when the school is studied as an animal rather than as a sum of unit fish, it will be found that certain units are assigned special functions to perform; that weaker or slower units may even take their places as placating food for the predators for the sake of the security of the school as an animal.
-John Steinbeck
The Log from the Sea of Cortez
1941
The light, piercing the surface, showed the water almost solid with fish—swarming, hungry, frantic fish, incredible in their voraciousness. The schools swam, marshaled and patrolled. They turned as a unit and dived as a unit. In their millions they followed a pattern minute as to direction depth and speed. There must be some fallacy in our thinking of these fish as individuals. Their functions in the school are in some as yet unknown way as controlled as though the school were one unit. We cannot conceive of this intricacy until we are able to think of the school as an animal itself, reacting with all its cells to stimuli which perhaps might not influence one fish at all. And this larger animal, the school, seems to have a nature and drive and ends of its own. It is more than and different from the sum of its units. If we can think in this way, it will not seem so unbelievable that every fish heads in the same direction, that the water interval between fish and fish is identical with all the units, and that it seems to be directed by a school intelligence. If it is a unit animal itself, why should it not so react? Perhaps this is the wildest of speculations, but we suspect that when the school is studied as an animal rather than as a sum of unit fish, it will be found that certain units are assigned special functions to perform; that weaker or slower units may even take their places as placating food for the predators for the sake of the security of the school as an animal.
-John Steinbeck
The Log from the Sea of Cortez
1941
Monday, December 25, 2006
God is Born
The history of the cosmos
is the history of the struggle of becoming.
When the dim flux of unformed life
struggled, convulsed back and forth upon itself,
and broke at last into light and dark
came into existence as light,
came into existence as cold shadow
then every atom of the cosmos trembled with delight.
Behold, God is born!
He is bright light!
He is pitch dark and cold!
And in the great struggle of intangible chaos
when, at a certain point, a drop of water
began to drip downwards
and a breath of vapour began to wreathe up
Lo again the shudder of bliss through all the atoms!
Oh, God is born!
Behold, He is born wet!
Look, He hath movement upward! He spirals!
And so, in the great aeons of accomplishment and debacle
from time to time the wild crying of every electron:
Lo! God is born!
When sapphires cooled out of molten chaos:
See, God is born! He is blue, he is deep blue,
he is forever blue!
When gold lay shining threading the cooled-off rock:
God is born! God is born! bright yellow and ductile
He is born.
When the little eggy amoeba emerged out of foam and nowhere
then all the electrons held their breath:
Ach! Ach! Now indeed God is born! He twinkles within.
When from a world of mosses and of ferns
at last the narcissus lifted a tuft of five-point stars
and dangled them in the atmosphere,
then every molecule of creation jumped and clapped its hands:
God is born! God is born perfumed and dangling and with a little cup!
Throughout the aeons, as the lizard swirls his tail finer than water,
as the peacock turns to the sun, and could not be more splendid,
as the leopard smites the small calf with a spangled paw, perfect.
the universe trembles: God is born! God is here!
And when at last man stood on two legs and wondered,
then there was a hush of suspense at the core of every electron:
Behold, now very God is born!
God Himself is born!
And so we see,
God is notuntil he is born.
And also we see
there is no end to the birth of God.
-D. H. Lawrence
is the history of the struggle of becoming.
When the dim flux of unformed life
struggled, convulsed back and forth upon itself,
and broke at last into light and dark
came into existence as light,
came into existence as cold shadow
then every atom of the cosmos trembled with delight.
Behold, God is born!
He is bright light!
He is pitch dark and cold!
And in the great struggle of intangible chaos
when, at a certain point, a drop of water
began to drip downwards
and a breath of vapour began to wreathe up
Lo again the shudder of bliss through all the atoms!
Oh, God is born!
Behold, He is born wet!
Look, He hath movement upward! He spirals!
And so, in the great aeons of accomplishment and debacle
from time to time the wild crying of every electron:
Lo! God is born!
When sapphires cooled out of molten chaos:
See, God is born! He is blue, he is deep blue,
he is forever blue!
When gold lay shining threading the cooled-off rock:
God is born! God is born! bright yellow and ductile
He is born.
When the little eggy amoeba emerged out of foam and nowhere
then all the electrons held their breath:
Ach! Ach! Now indeed God is born! He twinkles within.
When from a world of mosses and of ferns
at last the narcissus lifted a tuft of five-point stars
and dangled them in the atmosphere,
then every molecule of creation jumped and clapped its hands:
God is born! God is born perfumed and dangling and with a little cup!
Throughout the aeons, as the lizard swirls his tail finer than water,
as the peacock turns to the sun, and could not be more splendid,
as the leopard smites the small calf with a spangled paw, perfect.
the universe trembles: God is born! God is here!
And when at last man stood on two legs and wondered,
then there was a hush of suspense at the core of every electron:
Behold, now very God is born!
God Himself is born!
And so we see,
God is notuntil he is born.
And also we see
there is no end to the birth of God.
-D. H. Lawrence
Saturday, December 23, 2006
Ernst Haeckel: a brief and selective abstract
here he is on Christmas, 1860
and why he named a jellyfish after his first wife:
"Mitrocoma Annae belong to the most charming of all the Medusae… Its tentacles hung like blonde hair ornaments of a princess…"
his sea squirts &c.
other plates, including hummingbirds, bats, spiders, frogs, flatworms, reptiles, liverworts, gazelles and insectivorous plants are in his Kunstformen der Natur.
Friday, December 08, 2006
hasta nunca güey
“...Two days before Salvador Allende was gunned down, Pablo Neruda, dying of cancer, woke at Isla Negra, to find the walls of the room where he lay covered in clinging starfish.”-Ray Gonzales
The Walls
sooner or later it all gets disappeared, even the rotary club
Saturday, December 02, 2006
ward book exchange
last night, after the Ephraim City holiday light parade, they had the ward Christmas party. and after the Christmas party, on the way out of the building, there was a surprise ward Christmas party book exchange! dusty boxes were laid out over all the tables in the primary room. full with funeral potatoes and whipped cream jello, we browsed, heads down, necks tilting right and left.
it’s a rare joy to hear a baffled deacon, hoping maybe for something on 4-wheelers, sound out “The Maaaaarxsss - ist Reader?”
Aside from Saturday’s Warrior and the regulars, other titles included:
Jane Fonda’s Workout Book (hardcover)
The Way Things Ought to Be – Rush Limbaugh
Blood and Money – Thomas Thompson
Limnology
The Lion of Wall Street: The Two Lives of Jack Dreyfus
I Wish I Could Give my Son a Wild Raccoon- Eliot Wigginton
and a Thomas Pynchon novel
I picked up:
A Natural History of Termites
Collected Poems - Marianne Moore
Defending and Legally Establishing the Good News w/ notes inside cover
All About Dinosaurs - illustrated by Thomas W. Voter
and an old journal/ledger of sorts, the first several pages an inventory of knives, swords & tomahawks?
Kelly found:
The Magic Moscow – Daniel Pinkwater
A Gift So Rare book of sentimental religious poems dedicated "in rainbow love" to someone's chaplain
along with the crown jewel of the whole spread
A Treasury of American Folklore - B.A. Botkin (tremendous!)
…and they all agreed, it was the best ward Christmas party book exchange ever
~the end~
it’s a rare joy to hear a baffled deacon, hoping maybe for something on 4-wheelers, sound out “The Maaaaarxsss - ist Reader?”
Aside from Saturday’s Warrior and the regulars, other titles included:
Jane Fonda’s Workout Book (hardcover)
The Way Things Ought to Be – Rush Limbaugh
Blood and Money – Thomas Thompson
Limnology
The Lion of Wall Street: The Two Lives of Jack Dreyfus
I Wish I Could Give my Son a Wild Raccoon- Eliot Wigginton
and a Thomas Pynchon novel
I picked up:
A Natural History of Termites
Collected Poems - Marianne Moore
Defending and Legally Establishing the Good News w/ notes inside cover
All About Dinosaurs - illustrated by Thomas W. Voter
and an old journal/ledger of sorts, the first several pages an inventory of knives, swords & tomahawks?
Kelly found:
The Magic Moscow – Daniel Pinkwater
A Gift So Rare book of sentimental religious poems dedicated "in rainbow love" to someone's chaplain
along with the crown jewel of the whole spread
A Treasury of American Folklore - B.A. Botkin (tremendous!)
…and they all agreed, it was the best ward Christmas party book exchange ever
~the end~
Friday, November 24, 2006
where jettisoned turkey timers go to die
it’s days like these when my thoughts are turned to eddying tides of superflux out on our periphery. today I would definitely be remiss if I just went out to make snow angels without saying a word. I might find it equally peaceful adrift in the horse latitudes, and comforting to be greeted by such familiar articles as Air Jordans and coat hangers.
the desert is probably the nearest I’ve seen to being that far out at sea. dry expanses where dragons and owls burrow, ostriches nest and jackals sleep in half-buried truck tires, winged dengue breeds in the water pooled in plastic bags. consulting the wisdom of hobos & trolls who live under the bridge in their cardboard and tar paper; these materials are temporary, transient, passing. but plastics are forever, so we say it with plastics.
word has been coming back that this is the case out there in the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre; cuttlefish & prawns frolic like fawns in an enormous trash vortex, where fingerlings and phytoplankton take up residence in Tide with bleach bottles and other flotsam. these things, likewise, take up residence in them; with hungry albatrosses shuttling bottle caps, GI Joes and cigarette lighters across thousands of miles of ocean. teredo navalis shipworms can’t eat through a cathode-ray tube, but they might ride it a few knots to other waters.
surrounded as we are by incessant decay, there may be cause for moderate rejoicing in knowing that we are creating something permanent. and that with the forces of entropy working tirelessly on every molecule, still there are other forces that conspire to guide and gather all this furniture into what Captain Charles Moore has been calling a gentle maelstrom.
…into a Pirates of the Caribbean ride, an entire disneyland the size of Texas, in plastic garbage, immediately animated by tidal power. vertebrate jellyfish run discarded condoms through the filter feeders. flying fish hurtle over mile-long ghost nets drifting recklessly through a haunted forest of autotrophic algae and hockey pads. one creature’s trash is another’s casino.
there’s definitely something pathetically flattering about how they all move in to the bleach bottle bird houses that have fallen from our fingers. here at home the snow is covering everything for awhile.
the desert is probably the nearest I’ve seen to being that far out at sea. dry expanses where dragons and owls burrow, ostriches nest and jackals sleep in half-buried truck tires, winged dengue breeds in the water pooled in plastic bags. consulting the wisdom of hobos & trolls who live under the bridge in their cardboard and tar paper; these materials are temporary, transient, passing. but plastics are forever, so we say it with plastics.
word has been coming back that this is the case out there in the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre; cuttlefish & prawns frolic like fawns in an enormous trash vortex, where fingerlings and phytoplankton take up residence in Tide with bleach bottles and other flotsam. these things, likewise, take up residence in them; with hungry albatrosses shuttling bottle caps, GI Joes and cigarette lighters across thousands of miles of ocean. teredo navalis shipworms can’t eat through a cathode-ray tube, but they might ride it a few knots to other waters.
surrounded as we are by incessant decay, there may be cause for moderate rejoicing in knowing that we are creating something permanent. and that with the forces of entropy working tirelessly on every molecule, still there are other forces that conspire to guide and gather all this furniture into what Captain Charles Moore has been calling a gentle maelstrom.
…into a Pirates of the Caribbean ride, an entire disneyland the size of Texas, in plastic garbage, immediately animated by tidal power. vertebrate jellyfish run discarded condoms through the filter feeders. flying fish hurtle over mile-long ghost nets drifting recklessly through a haunted forest of autotrophic algae and hockey pads. one creature’s trash is another’s casino.
there’s definitely something pathetically flattering about how they all move in to the bleach bottle bird houses that have fallen from our fingers. here at home the snow is covering everything for awhile.
Tuesday, November 21, 2006
where does turkey come from?
sorry, still no braille. funding constraints persist until Norbest or someone picks us up for corporate sponsorship. in the mean time you’re more than welcome to take the situation into your own hands. do I have to do everything around here? there really seems to be something about the holidays that feeds this attitude of entitlement.
I’ll tell you where they come from - here. I am surrounded by hundreds of turkey farms. the ragged white feathers of domestic turkeys blow through my yard, into my mailbox, my mouth and tomato cages. and reeking airborne molecules of turkey excrement often hang in a haze around the towns in Sanpete valley. sometimes this haze is visible. here are some turkeys in my neighborhood, in my neighborhood.
I’ve deliberately delayed posting this until after the holiday so nobody gets any ideas about political timing events or overly-punctual news releases. it’s too late and nobody wants your vote anymore. if you know anyone who ran for office, will you please tell them to come clean up their big signs now. wouldn’t it be embarrassing if Jesus came and your name was up all over the place, printed on corrugated plastic.
and this is where all the magic happens: the turkey processing plant up the road from where I live.
look around a little, it’s all here:
I’ll tell you where they come from - here. I am surrounded by hundreds of turkey farms. the ragged white feathers of domestic turkeys blow through my yard, into my mailbox, my mouth and tomato cages. and reeking airborne molecules of turkey excrement often hang in a haze around the towns in Sanpete valley. sometimes this haze is visible. here are some turkeys in my neighborhood, in my neighborhood.
I’ve deliberately delayed posting this until after the holiday so nobody gets any ideas about political timing events or overly-punctual news releases. it’s too late and nobody wants your vote anymore. if you know anyone who ran for office, will you please tell them to come clean up their big signs now. wouldn’t it be embarrassing if Jesus came and your name was up all over the place, printed on corrugated plastic.and this is where all the magic happens: the turkey processing plant up the road from where I live.
look around a little, it’s all here:
- the turkey/egg paradox
- tertiary sources regarding Warr with the Heathen Natives and digging a pits for neighbors
- Mexicans are to turkey processing as Koreans are to dry cleaning
where do turkeys come from?
so your Sunday school class has been getting curious. they look to you for answers, sound direction. the following is a brief and selective report. before anyone gets their hopes up, I want you to know that due to funding constraints and virtual irrelevance, this post will not be available in braille, ever. so if there are any blind kids in your Sunday school class you’ll just have to read aloud to them and hope they trust you. but you don’t have to take my word for it. de-ne neh!
I realize how tangled this all seems right now; good luck. fortunately you don’t have to get into birds and bees, because turkeys can reproduce asexually. yes, that’s correct. so I guess that means there are some turkey clones out there. of course you can present this positively so as to not frighten them; these are benevolent clones that are more scared of you than you are of them.
Monday, November 13, 2006
Cyrillic email
awesome! I just got my first spam email in Cyrillic.
anyone know what BЛAДA or РАссылка means?
refinance? viagra? work from home? mailorder bride?
anyone know what BЛAДA or РАссылка means?
refinance? viagra? work from home? mailorder bride?
Friday, November 10, 2006
Thursday, November 09, 2006
Sunday, November 05, 2006
Cavity-Nesting Birds of North American Forests
Lord God Bird
monogamous whistling ducks
"Spirits are also attracted to their graves and to the crematorium by the love of the body which they had thought was their only self, but which in fact was merely the instrument of experience. In fact there is not one inch of space, whether on land or on the water, free from the influence of spirits."
-Hazrat Inayat Khan
"No, dear believer, there is not one inch of God's kingdom over which Satan exercises dominion, not one circumstance in your life over which he reigns."
-John David Clark, Sr.
"There is no square mile of the surface of our planet, wet or dry, that has not been crossd by the shadow of a bird - except, perhaps, parts of the Antarctic continent"
-James Fisher
Thursday, October 26, 2006
10 foot terror bird
so you thought this was going to be more baloney about migratory birds as terrorist bioweapons. calm down, this is just in case you need ideas for a halloween costume, or have run out of material for nightmares.
we'll see how the liberal media spins that one.
we'll see how the liberal media spins that one.
Tuesday, October 24, 2006
Thursday, October 19, 2006
Wednesday, October 18, 2006
Tuesday, October 17, 2006
free agency highway (yeah!)
oh boy, a convertible! only in America could this unique model of the highway as an allegory for salvation come about. the freedom of the open road, destination-driven, parking lots without number. and for all of us who have often found ourselves at the arcade, wondering about the infinite concentric circles of being and whether there is ski-ball in heaven. well, now we know. but if you want to make it to the Glory, the Rand McNally roadmap is indispensable. that’s the trouble with interstate freeways anymore: you miss one exit and you’re kinda screwed, at least for a while. “DETOUR, 1,000 years in Hell” etc. this sorta happened to me last year. when hell turned out to be a day in Rock Springs, Wyoming between the taco time parking lot and a haliburton compound; a real bummer.anyway, you’re welcome to print this out and make whatever you can of it with dice and game-pawns.
it’s from 1950 (c) Leonidas DeVon Mecham, whose address in Salt Lake City actually appears off-screen along with the following disclaimer:
The bibliography to this chart is listed on the reverse side. The basis for the illustration was inspired from a flannel board lecture developed by Elder John A. Freestone of Queen Creek, Arizona entitled “Unto The House of The Lord.”
what are we waiting for? let’s turn the page . . . (beep)
looks like a couple prototypes with some text* to back them up; some of which is canonical and some anecdotal.
from that real skin-and-bones chart of chutes and ladders we move on to REALMS OF DIETY/REALMS OF SATAN. you can see why they scrapped that rickety old model for this one in 1927. it’s got meticulously shaded dark matter and an earnestly laid out network of subterranean chambers, canals, locks and dams for the processing of our mortal and spiritual humors. either you rise to the top of the aquifer, or sink deeper into Parisian sewers. like Mario Brothers when he goes from bouncing along the surface and into the underworld warp zone.as our life on this earth is spent in the open air until we’re dead in the ground, so the diagram inverts mortality. now we’re making progress.
* yes, the print is small but I’ll offer some highlights-
2-TEMPORAL LAWS– Men spend a life searching out NEW laws to obey. Industries and Governments spend untold billions for same purpose.
a-EXAMPLE–through learning laws of electricity and obeying them man has made it a servant…
EXAMPLE: if we were given only one bright new car for life, it is certain we would give it the best of care. The finest oil, the highest grade gasoline, keep it waxed and polished, give it shelter and care, take it over the best highways and the shortest routes possible that it might last us our entire life.
LIKEWISE: With our body (Temple) –It should receive the same care.
1-THE FREEWAY: Entrance through baptism…the filling stations are FREE. Priesthood-Sacrament Meetings, Stake Quarterly and General Conferences, the great Auxiliaries of the Church all feeding us…
3-THE LOW WAY: This is the filthy (cess -pool) way of life and drink is always associated with this way-Sins of scarlet. While many fine and honorable people may drink a little, smoke and have tea and coffee, etc., these indulgences are all tools that help turn their lives over to Satan…
FREEWAY–Show a beautiful young woman, neatly dressed (long sleeves, high neck line, etc.) radiant in health.
BROADWAY – A lady in modern attire (way of the world) low neck line etc., inviting disaster.
LOW WAY–Clothed in suggestive and lewd dress, highly painted (make up) to hide a life of dissipation…
BTW, here are some more recent models.
cosmic, like photos taken from the hubble telescope before they fixed the lens.
complicated
Albanian!
most recent, from “Preach My Gospel” A Guide to Missionary Service, p.54
complicated
Albanian!
most recent, from “Preach My Gospel” A Guide to Missionary Service, p.54
Sunday, October 15, 2006
further epic from the improvement era
Harris Webergmurals from the LA creation room and so on. pretty blakean, these two. with clouds of projected dawn being spooled up into Kant’s spinning orb. counter-clockwise.
you won’t see any ichthyosaurus, pterodactyls or proboscideans here. you may have to go elsewhere and self-consciously crane your neck a bit. look back through the rows of sleepy witnesses. I didn’t post any of Minerva Tiechert’s murals either, though they’re my favorites.
over here is the garden room.
a riparian area where terraculture and aquaculture converge and a small swan paddles around the water feature. as she approaches the light-switch, does she sense its presence occupying a more robust and material plane of existence? intersections of various dimensions, the electric current running through? or just the dangling willow playing tricks on her?
mammals nostalgically fulfill prophecy in the foreground.
a fawn looking back under low hanging fruit in the sappy light. here is innocence preserved and fermenting, with no opposable thumbs for fruit-picking.
into the world-room
a flaming sword brandished from just off-screen evicts first actors into the thorny, phallic landscape of monument valley. this first frontier stretches out eastward over the alkali badlands of the west.
watch out for dirt bikers.
Edward Grigware
Saturday, October 14, 2006
500 mile pedestrian
this month Sergeant Marshall Thompson is walking across the state of Utah, the long way. I just returned from going several rainy miles with him. check him out here, and go walk a while with him if you can. he's headed south.
Friday, September 29, 2006
stanley meltzoff
I was first drawn to this guy by his monstrous and goyaesque depictions of primitive subhumans butchering large game. people with heads like burnt matches and smeared faces. but I had no idea he was the fishpainter!
unfortunate initials, yes. but he makes quite a cool signature of it.
unfortunate initials, yes. but he makes quite a cool signature of it.
Zdenek Burian, “paleoartist”
yeah, I got your vistas right here. straight society, heading cross country into the Americas. the fellas here are also movin’ on up the east side. here they come, with even more purpose than Columbus. this and the rest are by Z. Burian (1905-1981) who people have called “the best paleo-painter” around. I don’t know if that includes all the unnamed cave painters but I do know that he’s Czech. people also say he’s the best at proboscideans so I’ve included an example.
some of my favorites are the ones he does of wooly rhinos and ibexes jumping wide chasms. from what I can tell, he got his start illustrating an encyclopedia of prehistoric life during World War II; when the nazis shut down all the universities and so a lot of people went off to write and illustrate books. aside from his paleo-stuff, Z also illustrated the Tarzan books for Edgar Rice Burroughs as well as books for Jules Verne and Rudyard Kipling. he illustrated over 500 books.
it seems a lot of fantasy artists are really into him too. he’s got a real handle on the epic. and I think he’s got this great kind of Arnold Friberg touch for romanticizing all these creatures and guys. for example, this gentleman-hunter down here conveys a kind of tousled but self-assured, Tom Selleck-esque dignity.
here’s a gallery
and if you go to Stramberk, he’s got a museum
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