The Adventures and Diversions of Chickenofthewoods

Gloom, Doom, etc...

2009-02-10T12:00:00.000-08:00

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The body count is still rising.

http://www.alternet.org/workplace/123563/?page=entire

Got Food?

2009-02-10T08:36:00.000-08:00

I'm scared.

No, really.

It's kinda droughty.

I told ya ta get that D

2009-02-09T06:42:00.000-08:00

Recommended daily intakes of vitamin D should be raised to 2,000 International Units, says a group of 18 scientists from the University of California.

The “call to action” by the UC scientists, led by Anthony Norman, echoes a number of others from leading academics across the globe, and may increase the need for policy makers to review current guidelines for the vitamin. Such increases could also open opportunities for food fortification and supplements.

Current recommended daily intakes (RDIs) of vitamin D are 200 IU for people up to 50 years of age, 400 IU for people between 51 and 70, and 600 IU for over 70.

Here is a summary...

You do know that wild mushrooms are full of that stuff, right?

LSD AND DNA, DSL

2009-01-28T09:32:00.000-08:00

BY ALUN REES

FRANCIS CRICK, the Nobel Prize-winning father of modern genetics, was under the influence of LSD when he first deduced thedouble-helix structure of DNA nearly 50 years ago.

The abrasive and unorthodox Crick and his brilliant American co-researcher James Watson famously celebrated their eureka moment in March 1953 by running from the now legendary Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge to the nearby Eagle pub, where they announced over pints of bitter that they had discovered the secret of life.

Crick, who died ten days ago, aged 88, later told a fellow scientist that he often used small doses of LSD then an experimental drug used in psychotherapy to boost his powers of thought. He said it was LSD, not the Eagle's warm beer, that helped him to unravel the structure of DNA, the discovery that won him the Nobel Prize.

Despite his Establishment image, Crick was a devotee of novelist Aldous Huxley, whose accounts of his experiments with LSD and another hallucinogen, mescaline, in the short stories The Doors Of Perception and Heaven And Hell became cult texts for the hippies of the Sixties and Seventies. In the late Sixties, Crick was a founder member of Soma, a legalise-cannabis group named after the drug in Huxley's novel Brave New World. He even put his name to a famous letter to The Times in 1967 calling for a reform in the drugs laws.

It was through his membership of Soma that Crick inadvertently became the inspiration for the biggest LSD manufacturing conspiracy-the world has ever seen the multimillion-pound drug factory in a remote farmhouse in Wales that was smashed by the Operation Julie raids of the late Seventies.

Crick's involvement with the gang was fleeting but crucial. The revered scientist had been invited to the Cambridge home of freewheeling American writer David Solomon a friend of hippie LSD guru Timothy Leary who had come to Britain in 1967 on a quest to discover a method for manufacturing pure THC, the active ingredient of cannabis.

It was Crick's presence in Solomon's social circle that attracted a brilliant young biochemist, Richard Kemp, who soon became a convert to the attractions of both cannabis and LSD. Kemp was recruited to the THC project in 1968, but soon afterwards devised the world's first foolproof method of producing cheap, pure LSD. Solomon and Kemp went into business, manufacturing acid in a succession of rented houses before setting up their laboratory in a cottage on a hillside near Tregaron, Carmarthenshire, in 1973. It is estimated that Kemp manufactured drugs worth Pounds 2.5 million an astonishing amount in the Seventies before police stormed the building in 1977 and seized enough pure LSD and its constituent chemicals to make two million LSD 'tabs'.

The arrest and conviction of Solomon, Kemp and a string of co-conspirators dominated the headlines for months. I was covering the case as a reporter at the time and it was then that I met Kemp's close friend, Garrod Harker, whose home had been raided by police but who had not been arrested. Harker told me that Kemp and his girlfriend Christine Bott by then in jail were hippie idealists who were completely uninterested in the money they were making.

They gave away thousands to pet causes such as the Glastonbury pop festival and the drugs charity Release.

'They have a philosophy,' Harker told me at the time. 'They believe industrial society will collapse when the oil runs out and that the answer is to change people's mindsets using acid. They believe LSD can help people to see that a return to a natural society based on self-sufficiency is the only way to save themselves.

'Dick Kemp told me he met Francis Crick at Cambridge. Crick had told him that some Cambridge academics used LSD in tiny amounts as a thinking tool, to liberate them from preconceptions and let their genius wander freely to new ideas. Crick told him he had perceived the double-helix shape while on LSD.

'It was clear that Dick Kemp was highly impressed and probably bowled over by what Crick had told him. He told me that if a man like Crick, who had gone to the heart of human existence, had used LSD, then it was worth using. Crick was certainly Dick Kemp's inspiration.' Shortly afterwards I visited Crick at his home, Golden Helix, in Cambridge.

He listened with rapt, amused attention to what I told him about the role of LSD in his Nobel Prize-winning discovery. He gave no intimation of surprise. When I had finished, he said: 'Print a word of it and I'll sue.'

Poverty an asset; assets a burden.

2009-01-27T16:20:00.000-08:00

Very few people in these countries under the age of about 80 remember anything about what it means to have to survive somehow in the environment, from that environment. Look to the evidence online; how many sites are telling people to stock up on guns and ammo or to stockpile massive amounts of food? The guns will attract violence, the ammo will make those using it targets for those who have less ammo; the food will perish, attract rodents and thieves. In comparison, how many are teaching how to build suburban gardens, recycle small power and methane generators, and other practical adaptations?

From Cub Orlov (click to read)

What's really going on?

2009-01-27T16:11:00.000-08:00

2008-12-12T08:24:00.000-08:00

They'll be reading our thoughts at a distance soon enough.

Better clean up your mind!!!

http://www.boingboing.net/2008/12/11/scientists-extract-i.html

(The original went down, too much traffic...)

Digital Drugs Are Here

2008-11-17T21:48:00.001-08:00

I still love xkcd.

2008-11-17T09:30:00.001-08:00

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xkcd

Warning.

2008-11-13T19:54:00.000-08:00

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And the crowd is eerily silent.

The Cognitive Benefits of Nature

2008-11-11T16:46:00.000-08:00

Thoreau would have liked this study: interacting with nature (at least when compared to a hectic urban landscape) dramatically improves improve cognitive function. In particular, being in natural settings restores our ability to exercise directed attention and working memory, which are crucial mental talents. The basic idea is that nature, unlike a city, is filled with inherently interesting stimuli (like a sunset, or an unusual bird) that trigger our involuntary attention, but in a modest fashion. Because you can't help but stop and notice the reddish orange twilight sky - paying attention to the sunset doesn't take any extra work or cognitive control - our attentional circuits are able to refresh themselves. A walk in the woods is like a vacation for the prefrontal cortex.

read the rest...

For Fun It's A Wonderful Toy

2008-11-10T18:46:00.001-08:00

Fungal Diesel!

2008-11-03T18:43:00.000-08:00

A fungus that lives inside trees in the Patagonian rain forest naturally makes a mix of hydrocarbons that bears a striking resemblance to diesel, biologists announced today. And the fungus can grow on cellulose, a major component of tree trunks, blades of grass and stalks that is the most abundant carbon-based plant material on Earth.

"When we looked at the gas analysis, I was flabbergasted," said Gary Strobel, a plant scientist at Montana State University, and the lead author of a paper in Microbiology describing the find. "We were looking at the essence of diesel fuel."

- from This Article at Wired.com

I Met A Butterfly The Other Day

2008-10-29T17:14:00.001-07:00

The Greatest Mushroom Show On Earth!

2008-10-24T10:57:00.000-07:00

Check out this page for more information.

Hundreds of species of mushrooms on display and tons of fun guys and girls who know their stuff at the ready to answer all your questions and identify your LBMs...

These videos don't do it justice, but you can get a sense of the size of it all, and the atmosphere.

I found that huge Cauliflower mushroom at 3:47.

Here's the first one, which doesn't even get into the wild mushrooms at all.

See y'all there!

I'm Conflicted

2008-10-20T21:53:00.001-07:00

I just chatted with my pops this morning, and he said he doesn't like either of the candidates, but he's scared of the "redistribution of wealth" and has trouble with socialized medicine because of his experiences in Texas with access to healthcare and competition for limited resources, which are negatively impacted by illegal immigrants in Texas especially.

I don't think people are being honest in public. I'm afraid McCain has more support than the media knows.

This guy gives me some hope, though.

:)

Booker White - Aberdeen Mississippi Blues HIFI

2008-10-18T19:33:00.000-07:00

Some of these videos aren't floating around on the net, so I thought I'd link to them.

The 11th Hour

2008-10-17T18:03:00.000-07:00

Well, I've certainly been watching too many documentaries lately (if that's possible). This one has a good message, and the answers are in there, somewhere, too. Leonardo DiCaprio is a bit retardo, but the rest of the faces actually seem to have something compelling to say. I'd give this one a 7 if it weren't for the appearance of Paul Stamets, which elevates this to an 8 or 9.

Anyway, here it is:

Everyone should see this film before they are allowed to vote.

2008-10-14T18:36:00.001-07:00

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(EDIT: I HAVE NO IDEA HOW THEY GET THAT POP-UP IN THERE! CLOSE IT QUICKLY IF YOU ARE OFFENDED BY SUGGESTIVE ADVERTISEMENTS.)

Liquidity

2008-10-14T10:35:00.000-07:00

- from Sinfest, by Tatsuya Ishida

Money and the Crisis of Civilization - Charles Eisenstein

2008-10-14T04:30:00.000-07:00

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...The whole system of interest-bearing money works fine as long as the volume of goods and services exchanged for money keeps growing. The crisis we are seeing today is in part because new money has been created much faster than goods and services have, and much faster than has been historically sustainable. There are only two ways out of such a situation: inflation and bankruptcies. Each involve the destruction of money. The current convulsions of the financial and political elites basically come down to a futile attempt to prevent both. Their first concern is to prevent the evaporation of money through massive bankruptcies, because it is, after all, their money...
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Read the article at Reality Sandwich

Michael Pollan - An Open Letter To The Farmer In Chief

2008-10-12T21:23:00.000-07:00

I truly love this man. I'm too tired to comment on this, had a long day.
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Dear Mr President-elect...
It's NYT again. You'll have to use BugMeNot or just register an account... Either way, everyone should read this!!!

My Hat is Suddenly Fashionable.

2008-10-11T20:19:00.001-07:00

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MAKE YOUR OWN TIN-FOIL HAT!

Heads adorned with aluMINium are so hot.

Vomit

2008-10-09T21:18:00.001-07:00

Interview - Naomi Wolf - Give Me Liberty

2008-10-07T00:43:00.001-07:00

Zeitgeist - Addendum

2008-10-06T10:37:00.000-07:00

If you haven't seen the first one, click here. It is worth your time.

Mushoween

2008-10-04T22:20:00.000-07:00

Super Mario Bros. Multi LED Mushroom Pumpkin! - Click here for more free videos

Surprise!

2008-10-04T15:45:00.001-07:00

Tragically Comic

The bailout was quite a coup...d'etat.

2008-10-03T17:20:00.000-07:00

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Apparently the motivation to vote for the bill wasn't just tax breaks and loot...

Damn. I wanna be this kid.

2008-09-26T19:19:00.000-07:00

Posted mostly for use of the word "Dickass"...but also for logic (!)

2008-09-25T14:19:00.001-07:00

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from overcompensating.com

Television? Neat!

2008-09-21T16:51:00.000-07:00

Little Lasse (not Gjertsen)

2008-09-17T01:27:00.000-07:00

Testing

2008-09-16T15:57:00.000-07:00

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This one will test your ability to discern hues at a very fine resolution. I only got a twenty.

This one tries to determine what kind of American accent you have. I got "Midland accent", Which is apparently "no accent." This is what I have heard most of my adult life. "You don't sound like you're from the south..."

What'd y'all get?

Escape de Sofia

2008-09-13T16:30:00.000-07:00

Why We Drink

2008-09-12T23:01:00.000-07:00

Blizzard of Lies

2008-09-12T11:45:00.000-07:00

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Scoundrels!

Google is your friend.

If these people take office, I think I'll lose my conscience.

Fairy Tales

2008-09-12T11:16:00.000-07:00

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Cinderella

Little Red Riding Hood

Sleeping Beauty

Miwa Yanagi

Damn. Almost as sad as the day Robert Anton Wilson died on me.

2008-06-23T00:29:00.000-07:00

This was a great man.

Heart failure. I mean, heart attack. R.I.P. George Carlin.

War is Justice

2008-06-12T19:16:00.001-07:00

I'm voting Republican!!!

2008-06-10T21:02:00.000-07:00

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But who is this guy they're calling "B.O." anyway...

At least McCain doesn't have a chance... does he?

Why Piggy, Why!?

2008-05-30T17:05:00.000-07:00

I love Monsanto. Erotically. I'd like to ...

The Dead Grand Fir Model

2008-05-27T21:47:00.002-07:00

Oh!
Tee-he-he.

And the Booty:

But these guys, they like em live!

The Cascade Mycological Society had their annual morel foray on Sunday the 18th. It was a scorcher, and conditions had been dry for a while, despite the heavier than "normal" snow pack this year. As i posted before, the blondes made a rare show of force at the lower elevations, but the blacks weren't as spry as they could have been. The forayers had some odds against them.

Some folks got skunked. If only we'd waited another week, and took the procession up the hills to where the snow had melted off the week before, we might have had a bonanza! But alas, planning a foray months in advance doesn't allow for such precision.

After the dismal foraying, which was quite pleasurable nonetheless considering the company, my partner and I headed to the Metolius for some cooling off and flower ogling. We never expected to find the king boletes or the bounty of blonds and blacks that awaited us there... I guess we were lucky!

Graffiti Moves

2008-05-27T21:47:00.001-07:00

Songs from my week - Playlist...

2008-05-24T07:12:00.000-07:00

SeeqPod - Playable Search

I'm not sure how well this will work, or whether anyone can tolerate my eclectic taste, but, well, WHATEVER.

Enjoy.

Blondes!

2008-05-16T10:40:00.000-07:00

These are mountain blondes. They are delicious.

I'm not much of a blogger during mushroom season, sorry for that... been busy plantin taters and corn, too.

Hope you all don't abandon me cuz I'm inconsistent!

Morelling last Monday, the 28th

2008-05-06T11:52:00.000-07:00

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Only a couple!

These are in the Coast range!!! Look at the trees, and the ground cover. Sweet.

And these esculentas weighed five pounds in the bag. And this is an urban area, near a well-traveled road. I was lucky to stumble on it last year at the right time, and this year they just BLEW UP! YAY! I fricken love these! If only the pounds I will pick in the Cascades tasted as sweet as these.

Enjoy!

2008-05-05T19:30:00.000-07:00

-from Chris Harding's WE THE ROBOTS

The World According to...

2008-05-05T18:40:00.000-07:00

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...our favorite purveyor of toxins!

Untitled from Jim Jam on Vimeo.

Ok, so the video is of poor quality. And the audio seems to be out of sync. Oh, well, I couldn't find this anywhere, so I did it myself, and it's budget. Enjoy.

I'm glad I don't have to watch TV to get the juicy bits.

2008-05-03T21:12:00.000-07:00

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I really like this guy!

The Long Emergency 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

"A Bitch-slap upside the head!" ... WERD!

While I'm away, click here.

2008-04-28T08:16:00.000-07:00

Ten ways to prepare for a post-oil society

Even Americans (gasp!) are hungry.

The kitty who walks around like my ex-girlfriend.

I am an entertainer. Alan Watts?

Dog Diary, Cat Diary.

An Alternative Agriculture is Possible

The Wall Street Journal says stock up on food, it's a good investment

Oil too expensive to feed the Hungry?

Grow Furniture

And, KING CORN:

Mountains, here I come.

Laugh some, it's Ok.

2008-04-26T12:17:00.000-07:00

ADAPTATION -
4. Biology.
a. any alteration in the structure or function of an organism or any of its parts that results from natural selection and by which the organism becomes better fitted to survive and multiply in its environment.
b. a form or structure modified to fit a changed environment.
c. the ability of a species to survive in a particular ecological niche, esp. because of alterations of form or behavior brought about through natural selection.

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I haz fath in mah fillo huminz.

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This is where cats come from.

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Chicken of the Chicken.

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We are very tiny.

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Hope everyone's weekend is awesome!!!

Esoteric Agenda

2008-04-25T23:46:00.000-07:00

This video is a bit long.

I don't agree with everything contained therein, but I feel very strongly about most of it. I find it an adequate summary of about 100 links that I might otherwise post. If you can find the patience, and the 2 hours, it is well worth it.
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Enjoy.

Contemplations of Bears, Fungi, Adders and Frogs...

2008-04-23T21:11:00.000-07:00

"Every morning, I'd take my first cup of coffee and wander about checking out the previous night's bear story. Naive me, I expected to see signs of a cub taking a tentative chomp or playful cuff of a poisonous mushroom. Never. Not so much as a smudge. The amanitas and the other questionable mushrooms remained untouched."

- Jerry George The SF Chronicle

I distinctly recall my astonishment at the realization that in the spring, around Mt. Shasta, when the Boletus pinophilus commence to fruiting, that the bears were after the same quarry as I. It's quite awesome that they can eat just about anything they want, yet they know that porcini are THE STUFF!

Poisonous snakes eat poisonous frogs! Go figure.

Moron food. I mean, more on food.

2008-04-22T13:40:00.000-07:00

"Due to the limited availability of rice, we are limiting rice purchases based on your prior purchasing history," a sign above the dwindling supply said.

Shoppers said the limits had been in place for a few days, and that rice supplies had been spotty for a few weeks. A store manager referred questions to officials at Costco headquarters near Seattle, who did not return calls or e-mail messages yesterday.

An employee at the Costco store in Queens said there were no restrictions on rice buying, but limits were being imposed on purchases of oil and flour. Internet postings attributed some of the shortage at the retail level to bakery owners who flocked to warehouse stores when the price of flour from commercial suppliers doubled."
- The New York Sun

I know this is a bit alarmist, but startling nonetheless. Does it make you worry at all? What if in six months your personal food expenditures increased by 100%? What would you give up? And how does your budget math incorporate the increasing cost of fuel? Which of your expenses are expendable?

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Also, Japan recently ran out of butter.

"I went to another supermarket, and then another, and there was no butter at those either. Everywhere I went there were notices saying Japan has run out of butter. I couldn't believe it — this is the first time in my life I've wanted to try baking cakes and I can't get any butter," said the frustrated cook.

Japan's acute butter shortage, which has confounded bakeries, restaurants and now families across the country, is the latest unforeseen result of the global agricultural commodities crisis."

This is real. We depend on the eggs, butter and flour to just be there when we pop into the local market. But what if the increasingly monopolized industries that supply us with these commodities simply don't have any more? Do you know your neighbors? Do they have chickens? Does anyone you know have the skills to grow wheat? Corn? How does one even make butter?

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Sadly, the consequences in the short-term look to be legitimizing the "necessity" of GMOs. As food shortages loom over large populations, the luxury of refusing genetically modified corn, wheat, rice and rapeseed is becoming more and more tenuous. Monsanto is overjoyed. Farmers are scared.

This boom/bust trend is precisely why we have so few small farms in the U.S. right now. Remember the farm crisis of the 80's? Rising grain prices encourage investment, and the subsequent market corrections bankrupt the few people qualified to grow our grains...

The Biotech industry rejoices.

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I want to be encouraged by the idea that these increasing prices reflect the true cost of our global food production system, and that this trend can be good for us, for the planet, and for the overall quality of life for those of us who can survive. But I have my doubts. This stuff is volatile, and the farmers are taking huge risks to get out of their increasing debts.
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Ahhh. The pastoral economy. Farm life. Maybe it can be profitable once again. Soon.

Technology

2008-04-21T16:59:00.000-07:00

A reminder of the human body and it's amazing abilities. From physical strength to mental acuity; ingenuity is technology. When oil no longer makes sense, we must not forget that it is new, costly, burdensome, and unnecessary.

Buggin'

2008-04-20T20:27:00.001-07:00

Price of Oil steady...if your currency is gold.

2008-04-20T20:25:00.000-07:00

Michael Pollan in the New York Times today.

2008-04-20T18:36:00.000-07:00

"There are so many stories we can tell ourselves to justify doing nothing, but perhaps the most insidious is that, whatever we do manage to do, it will be too little too late. Climate change is upon us, and it has arrived well ahead of schedule. Scientists’ projections that seemed dire a decade ago turn out to have been unduly optimistic: the warming and the melting is occurring much faster than the models predicted. Now truly terrifying feedback loops threaten to boost the rate of change exponentially, as the shift from white ice to blue water in the Arctic absorbs more sunlight and warming soils everywhere become more biologically active, causing them to release their vast stores of carbon into the air. Have you looked into the eyes of a climate scientist recently? They look really scared.

So do you still want to talk about planting gardens?

I do."

--- from New York Times

Again, I use Bugmenot for registration...

"It helps me to get my frustrations out."

2008-04-19T10:59:00.000-07:00

Uhm, this is just great. Except I can't just grab a whole wad at a time and have "rapid-fire".

Just click here, then pop, pop, pop. (Not a pop-up)

My Firsts for the Year

2008-04-16T17:10:00.000-07:00

The above was my first of the year. I was stuck in downtown Corvallis for a few hours on Saturday, and this little guy offered himself up from the mulch in front of a relatively new business, a whole block away from the Allan Bros.

C'est une fleur de saison...

The find today on the river in Willamette Park was a surprise! Twenty-two mushrooms all in a small area on the disturbed root-zone of a fallen cottonwood. The pictures are quite large, if you click on the last one to view it full size, you will be able to see how many there are in such a tight area.

They seemed to be in great shape; only a couple had burnt tops, and they didn't seem to have suffered much from the most recent rains.

I didn't see ONE Verpa bohemica or conica... Hmmmm.

This is only the second time I've found more than one or two blacks in a riparian zone with cottonwoods.

Seems like it was perfect timing!

Mushrooms Vs. Cancer

2008-04-15T15:45:00.000-07:00

"Laboratory tests using human breast cancer cells show the mushroom called Phellinus linteus has a marked anti-cancer effect, probably by blocking an enzyme called AKT. AKT is known to control signals that lead to cell growth."
- Reuters

Stuck in my head for decades.

2008-04-15T13:16:00.000-07:00

I sing/hum/chirp this song while traipsing through the forest in search of fungi.

Pig Jacking

2008-04-14T10:06:00.001-07:00

"Soaring pork prices in the People's Republic have sent thieves roaring off with truckloads of hogs—and sometimes with smaller hauls, as was the case with the gang that was busted last year in Shenzhen trying to make off with 275 pounds of pork on a motorbike. A local newspaper valued the meat at upwards of $420, or roughly three times what a stolen motorbike might fetch in the city. Police easily caught the getaway bike; it couldn't handle all that weight."

-Newsweek

Rice Rustling

2008-04-14T09:52:00.000-07:00

"I've never heard of it happening before, that people have stolen rice," said Lung Choop, 68, who grows rice on his smallholding. "But it's happening now because rice is so expensive. I guess I'll have to guard my own distant fields when they're ready."

Can you imagine illegally harvesting your neighbors rice, at night?

Rock Time

2008-04-13T14:14:00.001-07:00

Eight. Thousand. Years. OLD.

2008-04-12T22:30:00.000-07:00

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Swedish spruce trees found to be the world's oldest trees...
Eight

Thousand

Years.

A. E. Housman

2008-04-12T21:59:00.001-07:00

I to my perils
Of cheat and charmer
Came clad in armour
By stars benign.
Hope lies to mortals
And most believe her,
But man's deceiver
Was never mine.

The thoughts of others
Were light and fleeting,
Of lovers' meeting
Or of luck or fame.
Mine were of trouble,
And mine were steady,
So I was ready
When trouble came.

- A. E Housman
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‘TERENCE, this is stupid stuff:
You eat your victuals fast enough;
There can’t be much amiss, ’tis clear,
To see the rate you drink your beer.
But oh, good Lord, the verse you make,
It gives a chap the belly-ache.
The cow, the old cow, she is dead;
It sleeps well, the horned head:
We poor lads, ’tis our turn now
To hear such tunes as killed the cow.
Pretty friendship ’tis to rhyme
Your friends to death before their time
Moping melancholy mad:
Come, pipe a tune to dance to, lad.’

Why, if ’tis dancing you would be,
There’s brisker pipes than poetry.
Say, for what were hop-yards meant,
Or why was Burton built on Trent?
Oh many a peer of England brews
Livelier liquor than the Muse,
And malt does more than Milton can
To justify God’s ways to man.
Ale, man, ale’s the stuff to drink
For fellows whom it hurts to think:
Look into the pewter pot
To see the world as the world’s not.
And faith, ’tis pleasant till ’tis past:
The mischief is that ’twill not last.
Oh I have been to Ludlow fair
And left my necktie God knows where,
And carried half way home, or near,
Pints and quarts of Ludlow beer:
Then the world seemed none so bad,
And I myself a sterling lad;
And down in lovely muck I’ve lain,
Happy till I woke again.
Then I saw the morning sky:
Heigho, the tale was all a lie;
The world, it was the old world yet,
I was I, my things were wet,
And nothing now remained to do
But begin the game anew.

Therefore, since the world has still
Much good, but much less good than ill,
And while the sun and moon endure
Luck’s a chance, but trouble’s sure,
I’d face it as a wise man would,
And train for ill and not for good.
’Tis true, the stuff I bring for sale
Is not so brisk a brew as ale:
Out of a stem that scored the hand
I wrung it in a weary land.
But take it: if the smack is sour,
The better for the embittered hour;
It should do good to heart and head
When your soul is in my soul’s stead;
And I will friend you, if I may,
In the dark and cloudy day.

There was a king reigned in the East:
There, when kings will sit to feast,
They get their fill before they think
With poisoned meat and poisoned drink.
He gathered all the springs to birth
From the many-venomed earth;
First a little, thence to more,
He sampled all her killing store;
And easy, smiling, seasoned sound,
Sate the king when healths went round.
They put arsenic in his meat
And stared aghast to watch him eat;
They poured strychnine in his cup
And shook to see him drink it up:
They shook, they stared as white’s their shirt:
Them it was their poison hurt.
—I tell the tale that I heard told.
Mithridates, he died old.

- A.E. Housman, A Shropshire Lad
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WHITE in the moon the long road lies,
The moon stands blank above;
White in the moon the long road lies
That leads me from my love.

Still hangs the hedge without a gust,
Still, still the shadows stay:
My feet upon the moonlit dust
Pursue the ceaseless way.

The world is round, so travellers tell,
And straight though reach the track,
Trudge on, trudge on, ’twill all be well,
The way will guide one back.

But ere the circle homeward hies
Far, far must it remove:
White in the moon the long road lies
That leads me from my love.

-A.E. Housman, A Shropshire Lad

What the Heck?

2008-04-11T20:51:00.000-07:00

Swarm of Earthquakes Detected Off Oregon

By JEFF BARNARD – 3 hours ago

GRANTS PASS, Ore. (AP) — Scientists listening to underwater microphones have detected an unusual swarm of earthquakes off the central Oregon Coast.

Scientists don't know what the earthquakes mean, but they could be the result of magma rumbling underneath the Juan de Fuca Plate — away from the recognized earthquake faults off Oregon, said geophysicist Robert Dziak of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and Oregon State University's Hatfield Marine Science Center in Newport, Ore.

They hope to send out the OSU research ship, Wecoma, to take water samples, looking for evidence that sediment on the ocean bottom has been stirred up and chemicals in the water that would indicate magma is moving up through the crust, Dziak said.

There have been more than 600 quakes over the past 10 days in a basin 150 miles southwest of Newport. The biggest was magnitude 5.4 and two others were more than magnitude 5.0, OSU reported. They have not followed the typical pattern of a major shock followed by a series of diminishing aftershocks, and few have been strong enough to be felt on shore.

It looks like what happens before a volcanic eruption, except there are no volcanoes in the area, Dziak said.

The Earth's crust is made up of plates that rest on molten rock, which are rubbing together side to side and up and down. When the molten rock, or magma, erupts through the crust it creates volcanoes. That can happen in the middle of a plate. When the plates lurch against each other, they create earthquakes along the edges of the plates.

In this case, the Juan de Fuca Plate is a small piece of crust being crushed between the Pacific Plate and North America, Dziak said.

On the hydrophones, the quakes sound like low rumbling thunder and are unlike anything scientists have heard in 17 years of listening, Dziak said. Some of the quakes have also been detected by earthquake instruments on land.

The hydrophones are leftover from a network the Navy used to listen for submarines during the Cold War. They routinely detect passing ships, earthquakes on the ocean bottom and whales calling to each other.

- stolen from the Associated Press story here.

What do you know...

2008-04-10T15:34:00.000-07:00

Food Riots? What are you talking about?

2008-04-09T13:04:00.000-07:00

Yeah. Hungry people do get, uh, desperate.

"Bread is getting more expensive. People are worried about that and most don't care about politics," said Medhat Abdel Nasser, a 20-year-old student, who walked by a polling station in Cairo without a pause.

--------------------------------------

What will you do? I'm not trying to incite horror, although I myself am horrified.
Hunger leaves few options. We are counting on reserves. Do you have personal reserves? I know, it's crazy. I don't either. These people didn't either.

--------------------------------------

Well, what if? I know I don't live in Africa. But what if?
--------------------------------------

Bolivia?
(use bugmenot, or register...) Yemen?
Uzbekistan?
Indonesia?

--------------------------------------

"Just thinning the herd"
- sincerely,
The Illuminati

.

.

.

.

.

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!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Food Riots

2008-04-08T22:52:00.000-07:00

.

Hungry people are unhappy people.

Edit:
Link, Link

Ethanol, anyone?

Eye Candy from Chris Matherly's Website

2008-04-07T20:41:00.000-07:00

April 7th, 2008:jerry gray, yellow morel - general location = oklahoma pittsburgh conty, canadian river area
Growing Conditions = cedar groves, mayapple plants,dogwood trees sandy loam. Additional Comments = my first outing, i already reported to you i found 150 morels isent picture, that was on march 28 o8,here is yesterdays report being april 6 08 i found 275 morels,

*o.O*
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April 6th, 2008: GTB, yellow morel - general location = Fairfiled county in mid state South Carolina
Growing Conditions = Sandy creek bottom with lots of Sycamore and tulip poplar trees with a dense bed of decaying leaves, etc.Additional Comments = I have seen them in alone or in pairs over the years in this location. Yesterday I found more than thirty without looking hard! More than I've ever seen at one time. Some were large and decaying, some were small and new. I've never eaten them (was afraid too) but we picked about 10. Saute'd half of them in butter last night and gave the rest to my gourmet cook sister in law. Left the small ones. Will check back next weekend,
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April 5th, 2008: I found this odd mushroom in my garden and after a short search found morel hunting sites. My initial reaction was to identify, assuming it to be poisonous, but that does not seem to be the case. I am not an experimenter of food so this has little significance to me. It would however be interesting to see how this fits with the overall distribution as most references I’ve read are in the states.Found today in Andover Hampshire UK.Regards Rob O’Neill

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It's perhaps to torture myself in the spring that I take to gazing at virtual morels on the interwebs, but it certainly helps to saturate my thoughts and dreams with the little spongy easter-egg surrogates.

Chris Matherly, who maintains a website devoted to the pleasures of foraging for fruitbodies, is a swell guy. His website, the Morel Mushroom Hunting Club, has been around since at least 1999 (!) and has always provided a tantalizing look at the state of landfish emergence across the U.S., as well as across the globe. I'm always enchanted by the personal nature of the posts, and the photographs are often simply documentary, but an occasional beaut shines from the mix.

He has a club, now, mind you, and he does have membership fees for full access to his site. But the morel finds page is public, as are the invaluable maps and the not-so-active-yet message board. Like I said, Chris is a really swell guy.

He organizes Mushroom Forays! He's even doing one here in the Cascades, on May 1st! There are recipes, pictures, ID info and if you fill out his submission form, he'll post your finds at his site. He's even gonna be on TV. May 6th, 5:00 pm. The Travel Channel's Cash and Treasures: Morel Mushrooms - Michigan. Awesome.

And did I mention he's making a comedy movie about mushroom hunting? Well, he says so. Really.

Awesome.
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I can't wait to get up in them mountains!

You are getting sleepier....

2008-04-07T18:42:00.000-07:00

So pretty!

This one is possibly more meditative, but creepy, for sure.

Also, microtones and stereo invoke dreamy goodness. Funs!

Leonard Cohen - How to Speak Poetry

2008-04-06T22:27:00.000-07:00

Take the word butterfly. To use this word it is not necessary to make the voice weigh less than an ounce or equip it with small dusty wings. It is not necessary to invent a sunny day or a field of daffodils. It is not necessary to be in love, or to be in love with butterflies. The word butterfly is not a real butterfly. There is the word and there is the butterfly. If you confuse these two items people have the right to laugh at you. Do not make so much of the word. Are you trying to suggest that you love butterflies more perfectly than anyone else, or really understand their nature? The word butterfly is merely data. It is not an opportunity for you to hover, soar, befriend flowers, symbolize beauty and frailty, or in any way impersonate a butterfly. Do not act out words. Never act out words. Never try to leave the floor when you talk about flying. Never close your eyes and jerk your head to one side when you talk about death. Do not fix your burning eyes on me when you speak about love. If you want to impress me when you speak about love put your hand in your pocket or under your dress and play with yourself. If ambition and the hunger for applause have driven you to speak about love you should learn how to do it without disgracing yourself or the material.

What is the expression which the age demands? The age demands no expression whatever. We have seen photographs of bereaved Asian mothers. We are not interested in the agony of your fumbled organs. There is nothing you can show on your face that can match the horror of this time. Do not even try. You will only hold yourself up to the scorn of those who have felt things deeply. We have seen newsreels of humans in the extremities of pain and dislocation. Everyone knows you are eating well and are even being paid to stand up there. You are playing to people who have experienced a catastrophe. This should make you very quiet. Speak the words, convey the data, step aside. Everyone knows you are in pain. You cannot tell the audience everything you know about love in every line of love you speak. Step aside and they will know what you know because you know it already. You have nothing to teach them. You are not more beautiful than they are. You are not wiser. Do not shout at them. Do not force a dry entry. That is bad sex. If you show the lines of your genitals, then deliver what you promise. And remember that people do not really want an acrobat in bed. What is our need? To be close to the natural man, to be close to the natural woman. Do not pretend that you are a beloved singer with a vast loyal audience which has followed the ups and downs of your life to this very moment. The bombs, flame-throwers, and all the shit have destroyed more than just the trees and villages. They have also destroyed the stage. Did you think that your profession would escape the general destruction? There is no more stage. There are no more footlights. You are among the people. Then be modest. Speak the words, convey the data, step aside. Be by yourself. Be in your own room. Do not put yourself on.

This is an interior landscape. It is inside. It is private. Respect the privacy of the material. These pieces were written in silence. The courage of the play is to speak them. The discipline of the play is not to violate them. Let the audience feel your love of privacy even though there is no privacy. Be good whores. The poem is not a slogan. It cannot advertise you. It cannot promote your reputation for sensitivity. You are not a stud. You are not a killer lady. All this junk about the gangsters of love. You are students of discipline. Do not act out the words. The words die when you act them out, they wither, and we are left with nothing but your ambition.

Speak the words with the exact precision with which you would check out a laundry list. Do not become emotional about the lace blouse. Do not get a hard-on when you say panties. Do not get all shivery just because of the towel. The sheets should not provoke a dreamy expression about the eyes. There is no need to weep into the handkerchief. The socks are not there to remind you of strange and distant voyages. It is just your laundry. It is just your clothes. Don't peep through them. Just wear them.

The poem is nothing but information. It is the Constitution of the inner country. If you declaim it and blow it up with noble intentions then you are no better than the politicians whom you despise. You are just someone waving a flag and making the cheapest kind of appeal to a kind of emotional patriotism. Think of the words as science, not as art. They are a report. You are speaking before a meeting of the Explorers' Club of the National Geographic Society. These people know all the risks of mountain climbing. They honour you by taking this for granted. If you rub their faces in it that is an insult to their hospitality. Tell them about the height of the mountain, the equipment you used, be specific about the surfaces and the time it took to scale it. Do not work the audience for gasps ans sighs. If you are worthy of gasps and sighs it will not be from your appreciation of the event but from theirs. It will be in the statistics and not the trembling of the voice or the cutting of the air with your hands. It will be in the data and the quiet organization of your presence.

Avoid the flourish. Do not be afraid to be weak. Do not be ashamed to be tired. You look good when you're tired. You look like you could go on forever. Now come into my arms. You are the image of my beauty.

-from Death of a Lady's Man

Any excuse to listen to Cocorosie

2008-04-06T22:18:00.000-07:00

And the painting is pretty sick as well.

How y'all are?

The John Cage

2008-04-05T12:43:00.000-07:00

"Some years ago on May 30, Mary Fleming noticed a strange amanita
growing near her house in Upper Nyack. She picked the plant,
volva and all, and put it to dry in the sun on top of her station
wagon. A little later before driving into town she took the
mushroom off the car and put it up on an outside window sill,
also in the sun. When she did this, she may have been thinking,
consciously or unconsciously, of putting the mushroom out of the
reach of her cats. She had, at the time, nine of them. At any
rate, when she returned home after having run an errand in Nyack,
two Siamese cats, Poom Poom, a mother, and One Yen, her kitten,
were busy eating the amanita. Three other cats, not Siamese,
were standing nearby interested in what was going on. Only about
a third of the amanita remained uneaten. Six hours later, the
Siamese became ill. They vomited and had diarrhea. Instead of
walking, they staggered around. They suffered peristalsis.
Eventually they were quite unconscious. They couldn’t move at
all. When Mary Fleming took them to the doctor, they were “like
two fur boards.” They were given injections of atropine. They
recovered completely. Twelve days later there was a
thunderstorm. One Yen, the kitten, died in the driveway. Autopsy
showed that the cause of death was heart attack. The mother, Poom
Poom, still lives but has never had another litter. ¶ That’s one
story. Another version is quite different. It wasn’t a cat that
died in the driveway, but a dog. What happened was that five days
before the thunderstorm, Mary Fleming went to Trinidad where her
husband was collecting snakes. She stayed there for a month.
Back home in July she found that three of the cats that had
recovered from the mushroom poisoning were sick. This means —
since One Yen was already dead — that at least two of the
ordinary cats not only observed the Siamese eating the amanita
but themselves partook. 2 − 1 + 2 = 3. The three cats who were
sick in July were taken to the doctor who said they had
enteritis. He was able to cure them. The cause of One Yen’s death
is unknown. Perhaps it was the atropine. Since Mary Fleming was
in Trinidad there was no autopsy. One thing is certain: Poom Poom
is sterile."

This is one of hundreds of one paragraph stories written by the famous composer, who just so happened to be a mushroom fancier of some repute. You can peruse a collection of these musings at Indeterminacy.

These are awesome!

"Years ago in Chicago I was asked to accompany two
dancers who were providing entertainment at a
business women’s dance party given in a hall of the
YWCA. After the entertainment, the
juke box was turned on so everybody could dance:
there was no orchestra (they were saving
money). However, the goings-on
became very expensive. One of the arms in
the juke box moved a selected record on to the
turntable. The playing arm moved to an
extraordinarily elevated position. After
a slight pause it came down rapidly and heavily
on the record, smashing it.
Another arm came into the situation and removed the
debris. The first arm moved another
selected record on to the turntable.
The playing arm moved up again,
paused, came down quickly,
smashing the record. The debris was
removed by the third arm. And so
on. And meanwhile all
the flashing colored lights associated with
juke boxes worked perfectly, making
the whole scene glamorous."

I want to hunt morels with Alexander Smith!

"While hunting morels with
Alexander Smith in the
woods near Ann Arbor,
I mentioned
having found quantities of
Lactarius deliciosus in the
woods in northern Vermont.
He
said, “Were
the stipes viscid?”
I said,
“Yes, they were.” He
said, “It’s
not deliciosus; it’s thyinos.”
He went on to
say that people go through
their entire lives thinking
that things are that when
they are actually this,
and that
these mistakes are necessarily
made with the
very things with which they
are the most familiar."

Ahhh, So true. Mistakes with fungi, unfortunately, are scary indeed.

This John Cage is the very same John Cage who composed performances involving bathtubs and radios. In 1960, he performed live on television a composition that involved a pressure cooker, 5 radios, ice, a bathtub, whiskey(?), a vase full of flowers, and a piano:

John Cage is friggin' amazing. Here is is with a basket, red-handed:

Look! He's tasting!

All that and a new concept of what composition meant, new ways to create music, AND a bowl of grits.

Leaky Blood-Brain Barrier?

2008-04-04T20:48:00.000-07:00

Well, then, drink coffee.

This article states that according to the Journal of Neuroinflammation, drinking coffee helps to maintian the integrity of the blood-brain barrier, thereby mitigating some of the nasty effects of high cholesterol, including Alzheimer's Disease.

I never wanted anything to do with my brain being leaky. I'm glad I have caffeine to protect me from losing it.

By the way, if you truly love coffee, you owe it to yourself to see this movie:

It is a full length documentary. The link may not last long, all the rest have been taken down, so I won't mention it's name.

And now for some coffee porn...

2008-04-04T20:21:00.000-07:00

Feta Cheese Made From Raw Milk Has Natural Anti-food-poisoning Properties

This comforts me, and I no longer have to cringe when I hear someone speak of raw milk as a "living thing". It really is a living thing. Lactic acid bacteria identified as belonging to the genus Enterococcus seem to have the ability to kill virulent pathenogenic bacteria like Listeria, which is the errand-boy du jour of raw milk persecution.

Interestingly enough, the wikipedia entry for Enterococcus sounds pretty scary, as it has been implicated in pathenogenic clinical infections of the urinary tract, it can infect our very blood, and amazingly, it is highly resistant to antibiotics. But it is likely to have beneficial effects similar to those of other friendly gut-bacteria, and in fact is resident there anyway.

I'm just happy about anything that helps me feel better about drinking this whole raw milk that I enjoy every day now as a staple of my diet...

...also, bacteria are beautiful...

Enterococci

Listeria

Lactobacilli

Raw, raw, raw!

2008-03-31T23:26:00.000-07:00

BBC camera crews discover amazing flying penguins!

2008-03-31T18:03:00.000-07:00

Here is a link to a very in-depth look at the current state of the culture of elephants.

The idea that culturally, herds are suffering from psychopathologies that we recognize readily in humans is at once sensible and disturbing. Reading through this article I found myself questioning, as I did upon viewing the various videos of elephants painting, whether I would ever have a firm grasp on the concept of suffering in animals. There is no hierarchy; We are no better simply because of our syntactical abilities, nor because of our self-awareness, nor are we the sole possessors of that elusive species-cohesion we call culture.

Rampant gangs of adolescent male elephants are stomping out crops, murdering people, raping rhinoceri, and generally running amok. The trend in the wild is mimicking the sort of sensationalized behavior we have heard of from time to time with captive elephants. This article suggests that the sum of our information points unequivocally to the idea that the remaining elephants are mentally scarred, suffering in many cases to a kind of post-traumatic stress-disorder, due to the dissolution of their tribal ways, the loss of elders, and the brutality of human culling.

It's a bit of a read, but very good reading.

And if you can't get past the log-in page for N.Y.T. check out the Firefox extension Bug-me-Not, which will provide you with a working log-in when you need it., or simply go to bugmenot.com, type http://www.nytimes.com in the box, and get a working log-in...

Comedy is Therapy.

2008-03-31T17:47:00.000-07:00

Winston Rowntree makes comicses. I don't know about the rest of the collection , but I thought this one was funny.

Think: "The Media"

2008-03-31T01:50:00.000-07:00

Gotta love 1972.

"Chicken On The Rocks" from Jean-Jacques Perrey... appropriate song, moogy.
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I love ALL of this guy's stuff.

I'm riveted by the use of infinity, simple looping of impossibility, and such sweet choice of a tune...
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I'm also riveted by "People-watching" and it's various manifestations on the innertubes. Flickrvision is one such entity. Pretty nifty.

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Hope the new template looks alright. I'm trying.
hearts, chickenofthewoods

2008-03-29T22:48:00.000-07:00

David Firth makes animationses. This one is great. Mainly because of the awesome cat.

We are arrogant.

2008-03-28T15:37:00.000-07:00

Can you believe that is possible? I honestly hadn't a clue that this was possible. I was impressed enough with these crows and these crows. And maybe these other crows, too. But this elephant changes the way i think. Animals, food? I oscillate....
--------------------------------
This CG stuff is creepy. Why does she have to be so baked looking?
--------------------------------
This may be somewhat gross, and is entirely fictional, I presume, but it made me laugh. And who doesn't like a good poop laugh?
--------------------------------

Tron
by freres-hueon

--------------------------------

--------------------------------

Holy Crap!!!

Bob Odenkirk and David Cross are doing it again!
I've been a big fan of Mr. Show for a few years now, and always thought they were brilliant. I'm happy to know that they'll be working together again, because it worked so well before.

A Video Movie could improve your life.

2008-03-25T18:13:00.000-07:00

It's a lazy afternoon

2008-03-25T16:26:00.000-07:00

Here's some morel action fo ya, courtesy of Randy Marchand.

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Who knew? I did!

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America, love it or ... What are my options again?
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Don't miss
My hovercraft is full of eels..
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Internetisseriousbusiness.com

2008-03-24T22:22:00.000-07:00

Does this ad make you want to eat mushrooms?
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Asian Carp - That's gonna leave a mark!
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Radioactive cats make for a great story, if not surreal.

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Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee! I'm a mantis!
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Livin on the edge.
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Don't try to make sense of it. There may be some in there somewhere, but it's shrouded in evil.
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Lazy

2008-03-22T23:18:00.001-07:00

Whatever, I laughed.

2008-03-21T13:15:00.000-07:00

(Be Forewarned: The following videos may be unsettling, disturbing, offensive, gross, and entirely unnecessary to some of you. I pity you.)

Mushrooms appear several times throughout. Some of these ideas are just fantastic!
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This next one i feel it necessary to WARN YOU YET AGAIN. You're eyes may burn.

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This one is just fun. No warnings, except that you and I may have different tastes... Simple. Powerful. Short.

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That's all for today.

@@@@@@@@@hearts@@@@@@@@@@@

Robots, Mercury, and Androgenous anadromous

2008-03-19T14:49:00.001-07:00

Whew. Deep breath. I'm using ScribeFire to post this blog, here, and, uhm, I, uh. I just lost all the writing from the last few hours. If you use Scribe Fire, and you have a composition in the window, selecting a saved note or post in the control panel on the right makes the current composition inaccessible. Meaning, it's gone. Poof!

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Ok. So we are all getting accustomed to extinction by now, right? Googling gives me varying estimates and arguments about how many species are saying goodbye forever, but i think we all agree that we are directly responsible for species losses and the reduction of biodiversity, whatever the magnitude. We take up too much damn space to save everything. I have accepted that this is happening. I don't have a solution, and that's not quite the point.

I am also clamoring dietarily for more and better sources of Omega-3 fatty acids, because the fish populations aren't looking so spry. I love seafood. I grew up in the Gulf Coast region, and was satiated almost daily by the over-abundance of gumbo, po-boys, boudin, and crawfish boils. Living in the northwest affords me the opportunity to have a wild salmon boat with waffle fries at the Fisherman's Market, and the Pacific is full of food. But after carrying around a safety guide at all times, and studying the fishing regulations guide, I'm finding it increasingly difficult to partake of my favorite superfoods.

Take for instance this recent article in the Seattle Post. Apparently, now even the trout from remote, high-mountain wilderness lakes have toxic levels of PBDEs. We're talking Mount Rainier and Olympic National Park. These chemicals do some wacky stuff to animals, including us. But wait, there's more. You knew there was.

Now, despite the fact that seafood is suspect, whether farmed or wild, inland or ocean, NOW it seems as if it may not matter much anyway. This article in the New York Times uses the word "vanish" in the title. Alarmist? Well, think about the nitrogen in the forests. This is no small failure. All the creatures of our great forests depend on this mining of nutrients from the sea and it's deposition in the forests. Our anadromous fish are inseparable from our Doug-firs, our Martens, our porcini, or our louseworts.

How did these chemicals get into the remote trout? By helicopter, as well as by plane, of course. We pay millions to have it dumped by the ton all over our last vestiges of "clean". Where does the argument start? Agriculture? Monoculture? Smokey the bear? Fire suppression? Corporate land ownership? The privatization of the forest service?

Can i reasonably, conscionably, harvest mushrooms and herbs from these public lands? I have personally walked over these fires, crunched my way over red ash saturated in these chemicals, and seen the mad dash to cut trees out and plant new ones, all doug-fir... Something is wrong with this picture. I'm at a crossroads.

----------------------------------------------------------------

Worries about mercury laced, feminized, disappearing trout notwithstanding, other threats to my sanity lurk on the horizon.

This thing fricken TERRIFIES me.

I'm not particularly prone to incapacitating paranoia, but i do think long and hard about our progression, as humans, towards a future of voluntary enslavement. These things could certainly induce many different "involuntary" reflexive reactions, dontcha think? Imagine one thousand of them, fully encased in armor and toting around these, creeping silently across the mountains, through the streets, up to your doorstep. What if you don't have your RFID? OHNOES!

------------------------------------------------------------------

This is just AWESOME. I love "street art". Especially that which incorporates the surrounding environs into the composition, blurring the distinction between the art and the environment. And especially that which uses light to do so.... SICK!

Both of the above from the Wooster....

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The above all from THEBLOGWEEMADE

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And soon a blog on Grass-fed foodstuffs, fatty acids, serotonin, happiness, raw milk, and nomadicism.

i r borkened

2008-03-19T00:17:00.001-07:00

Damn, massive failure. Just lost all days worth of blog. Have to reconstruct tomorrow. Too sleepy. Argh. Aaargh.

@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@

Opioids from Browsing the Internet

2008-03-16T13:44:00.001-07:00

I've been struggling with this insane compulsion, feeling guilty and bewildered at my inability to get to sleep at a reasonable hour, at the incoherence of my overall thought patterns, and at my voracious appetite for Intarweb stimulation. Thankfully, someone is working on that for me. Dr. Irving Biederman, a neuroscientist at the University of Southern California, is illuminating this process of information lust, and the link to opioids produced in my brain when I learn something new. Whew. I just thought i was addicted.

We want to learn. Our capacity for it is astounding. Flashing lights are merely a part of it. The internet is the new campfire. The internet gets us high.

I want to help people get high! Don't we all want others to share in our elation? Being excited and stimulated alone is, well, kinda gross and empty. I don't want this blog to be just another Youtube channel, or a lame poetry blog. I want to spur people to thinking, the kind of thinking that leads to action. I know, lofty goals, but what can i do but be honest?

I'm afraid of over-shooting my goals by running the gamut a bit too heavily. I want to talk about Grass Farming. I want to chronicle the progress of mushroom season. I want discourse on renewable energy and sustainable living practices. And i also want to share pretty pictures and crazy animation and funny stuff.

I just don't want to alienate anyone. I'm sure that some of my potential mushroom folks will stop in, have a look, and step out, never to return, simply because i haven't posted anything relevant to their interests. I'm sure that serious poets wouldn't revisit simply because the blog is a cluster-fuck of random bits. I'm sure that my foodie brothers and sisters will move along without regrets because i haven't posted any recipes or culinary reviews of fantastic ingredients. My foraging cohorts may just see this blog as a childish internet game of recycle-the-links.

That's ok. It is, I am, all of the above and more. I will not try too hard to clear this up. This blog is my whimsy, and i ain't trying to sell nothin, not even ads. So bear with me. I'm just getting started. I hope you're enjoying yourself.

2008-03-14T16:23:00.000-07:00

Shameless. Harsh. Tasty.

Really. Don’t blame me, I’m just a messenger of the messenger.

I am totally wiping my hands of this. I’m not even typing these words.

Truly sorry, but there must be one more. There is no alternative.

- from "Get Your War On"
, by David Rees. See also my new fighting technique is unstoppable.
----------------------------------------

And
I’d planned on being brilliant, but it turns out my planning is
severely lacking, thus the lackluster LED-style low-glow. But i have
stuff to share anyway.

What are these things, how did they get souls anyway, and why does the monster have such advanced technology?
..

This is going to be made into a full-length feature.

More of Shane Acker at his site.
----------------------------------------

God i love this guy. I must have a thing for Poles.
..
My commentary is sparse because the beauty is ineffable, and that’s my excuse for everything. ;}

-------------------------------------------

And
this via a friend’s comments a while ago. I watched it twice then, and
just now, again, because i like the song, and the blood.

..

Awesome. More by the same band, but sooo serene and delicate. And no blood. Lots of birds and Aurora Borealis.
..

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One more, for love, for you, and for me.
..

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And i know, i should stick to writing bad poetry, but i am practicing being me right now.

Just because the flowers are opening, and i get to till the soil, and plant garbonzos; just because the vitamin D is flowing, and the clover smells sweet, and the daffing-down-dillies are multiflorus; just because life is long, and it’s tremendous... doesn’t mean that i can’t pretend, while i wait to sleep, and steal my kisses in oblivion, that the world is young like the me i once was.

And the crowd is eerily silent.

2008-03-14T16:07:00.001-07:00

"My career as an artist began when I was a child of 3 or 4."
"And I conceived a dream to absorb the space into myself, to reach the edge of the earth- in the north, where the White Sea begins, or on the south, where Black Sea - Pontus Euxinus of Ancient Greeks - laps the steppes." -Vladimir Kush, from his online biography at VladimirKush.com.

Navigation friendly exhaustive collection here.
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And this brilliance emanates from my side of the country...

Jeannie Lynn Paske

is from Portland, Oregon, and her "Obsolete World" of haunting, animated dreams transports me to the hidden forest glade inside my mind where everything is super real and interdependent.

I love this cat^^^

Here’s her Etsy...
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Long day. Cold, swollen, too many minutes in it, gravel.

Swimming in Lacto-bacillus cultured in the juice of rind after rind.

I am left-overs.

This place is not where i am!

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photos by Megan.

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I’m a loon.

I need to go take a good look wordpress. I can’t do this Myspace thing. The pop-up for external links is ridiculous.

Hope you enjoy the scatterednesses anyway.

Say something.

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Happy Birthday Ivan, who blogs like THIS!

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And I’m Icarus.

Bunnyballs und Cadaverines

2008-03-14T16:02:00.001-07:00

How does one explain a Buckminster Fuller?

Bunnyball
...
Putrescine, Cadaverine, Spermine and Spermidine

Putrescine originates in putrefying and rotting flesh, and is quite literally, the smell of death. It is one of the breakdown products of some of the amino-acids found in animals, including humans. Although the molecule is a poisonous solid, as flesh decays the vapour pressure of the putrescine it contains becomes sufficiently large to allow its disgusting odour to be detected. It is usually accompanied by cadaverine (named after the cadavers that give rise to it), a poisonous syrupy liquid with an equally disgusting smell. Putrescine and cadaverine also contribute towards the smells of some living processes. Since they are both poisonous, the body normally excretes them in whatever way is quickest and most convenient. For example, the odour of bad breath and urine are 'enriched' by the presence of these molecules, as is the 'fishy' smell of the discharge from the female medical condition bacterial vaginosis. Putrescine and cadaverine also contribute to the distinctive smell of semen, which also contains the related molecules spermine and spermidine.

Other favorites include "Traumatic Acid","Sparassol"(from Cauliflower Mushrooms, Sparassis spp.
), "Angelic Acid", and
Furfuryl Furfurate-n.
molecule, derived from bran, odoriferous, used as a vapor phase polymerization inhibitor. A related molecule, furfural alcohol is in the fabrication process of the Reinforced Carbon-Carbon (RCC) sections used in the space shuttle.
orig.-Latin "furfur", meaning "bran" ).
-from Molecules with Silly Names.
------------------------

And i might as well keep on playing with physics. Key word here is "play". This game allows you to play and draw stuff with crayon-mouse at the same time. And the music is really mel-low, too...Crayon Physics...Deluxe Model coming soon. I also played around with this Phun little app for a while, but the learning curve is a bit steeper than with Crayon Physics. Armadillo Run is super fun as well. All of these links bring you to applications that necessitate installation, but i've tested these three, and they are fun and easy and run on my P.O.S. computer, so you should have no trouble, unless you have a crappier more P.O.S. computer than i do. Or you're on a Mac! HaHa.

--------------
What fun.

Happy birthday to people born today...Leroy Jenkins was born today. If you don't know why that matters (it doesn't, actually, to me, at all), you probably don't care, but you could check it out anyway. (I have NEVER played that game. I swear.)
Today is also Johnny Appleseed day.

------------
Words are good. I like to read them, and write them, and analyze them, but mostly i love playing with them. Freerice let's you hone your vocab skills while simultaneously donating rice through the U.N. World Food Program. It's one of those sites that generates revenue by exposing you to ads, and uses that revenue to do good deeds. I'm not necessarily an advocate of the idea, per se, but the game is addictive enough to spur me to donate thousands of grains of rice (yes, your donations are measured in grains.)

And I'm off.

The box that arrived on my porch this morning had the word "EARTH" scrawled across it in big, goofy, cartoon-esque letters... reminded me of Zim.

Inside was one of these:
And the lovely, beautiful
I certainly shouldn't neglect to mention the arrival of the hoes... momentous, nay, Epic.

Love,
COW

I’m saving up for some therapy!

2008-03-14T15:58:00.001-07:00

Change is good.

I don't need any Cat-Butt gum, though.

I could, however, use 5 ounces of "Deluxe Therapy."

And, I'm not a big fan of bacon, but this is fucking crazy. Who knew? Also, don't miss Jimmy's Hat!

I'm trying to make this blog entry as interesting as i possibly can, although i realize spring is taking care of the doldrums for a lot of you. At least it's here, if you need it.

Embeds coming...

Anybody have an idea of the software used to do this kind of editing? Or more precisely, something free? Fricken AWESOME.
And this as well...

SNAP, another:

Well, i love the internets. I don't want to burden my fans with too much stimulation... I'm thinking of starting a multi-faceted blog to assault folks with all my stolen and worthless linkages. Should I?

This may be taking things a bit too far, but the phenomenon so intrigues me that i MUST participate - consider that as a warning of sorts. Don't get mad!

And here's the president of the global body politic for the year 2045.

I wish i had a poem for you guys. I think i can tug at your heartstrings nonetheless:
Wake up every morning and remember she's not coming back.
She doesn't want to be saved.
Just float.

Hmmmm.

I just finished "We", by Yegevny Zamyatin. Fun. Cute, even.

The daffodils are getting ready to splode in the yard. There's a tulip. The Violas have been up for weeks. Suddenly, there are flowers everywhere... so sublime.

Anybody dreaming about morels nightly? (Oooh - oooh! Call on me!)

And we trudge on.

Bored and lonely, drinking rejuvelac, sniffing my truffles when i get depressed, finished off the last of the black trumpets with some creme fraiche and wild duckies. Drank too much hooch. Lost a whole day to throbbing and metallic shards. Not enough milk lately to keep up with the kefir. The fermented beets are coming along NICELY, however.

Somebody give me a cookie.

Cantankerisms

2008-03-14T15:34:00.005-07:00

Man alive, man dead

Certainty blows dust over the fire

tiny specks of which ignite

lament

harrowed by doldrums

this wind arouses suspicion

fuels instinctual apprehensions

the wind is devoid of preference

the stones of humanity bear

grains of memory wear away

foundations precipices supports

portions remain

thin loose arrangements of self

constricted at the veins

pulsing methodically with the rise

and fall

of each moment's arrival

leaning into the pressure

there is balance

one false move

and tumbling

like weeds in the desert

we are set adrift

rolling down

accumulating new debris

shedding forgotten slights

becoming, as ever

dilution and resurrection

via movements simple

and effortless

nothing is to be done

that is not undone

the sparks above

are the sparks below

the stillness gains velocity

in these winds

infiltrating

our very tissues

liverworts and mosses

proliferate

the eye becomes solid

the hands, balloons

filled with algae

murkiness

settles into clarity

the reaction is complete

mountains have been moved

volumes of time

displaced

the sun rises

every few minutes

and collapses

it's ellipses

a tiny point of dark

where once

was a spark

Damned Up

2008-03-14T15:34:00.003-07:00

clustered around the base

loose but concisely arranged

shimmering

damned up and swelling

time-lapse kitten-events

in dream-state hunger-quest

scratches are real

sounds are real

desire, though, seems translucent here

a layer easily removed

a shadow-puppet

or a gel that casts a false light

pecking and nibbling

senses infirm wrestle and writhe

confounded in torment

of certain distance

intransigence naturally

engulfs the willing

subdues the open

stark disposability

of honesty and trust

a tick mark for loss

an addition of subtraction

and thusly arranged

carefully imposed

the sparks begin to fly

fire yet again consumes

blank slate of ash and black

on which to paint

basil, rosemary, quince

nepenthes, mitella, oplopanax

a host of pyrrolic juice makers

lush and vivid

pushing away memories and creating them

anew

with the scent of persistence

Disembodiment

2008-03-14T15:34:00.001-07:00

Thin light escapes the edge of the horizon
pacifies somnambulists
gratifies the night greedy
black shiny plastic reverberates on a dull whistle
distant ridges windy faces
herbs fall
green leaks away
water prepares for phase change
remember quiet 3 am monoliths stacked side by side
and lusty cats flipping under rotten staircases
glow of magic flat crumbly facades
eyes twisted up high and unfocussed
the snag afoot unseen
sloped to the ground instead, the acorns
the sidewalk chalk of leaf-stains and paper paper
the overhang creeps down to greet the scanner
it's a doorway
lack of oxygen
the shakes
the light becomes it's complement
and everything is blue and grey-green
the saturation comes and shivering is all there is
falling down
falling down
an enclosed tube slide with dank muck at the exit
and the moment quickly becomes the past
just like ever and ever
the future becomes now
lacks the luster of your imagination
some creator
every moment a bubble
little dots on the shore
where once a foot sank
grow smaller
move silently into the naked cold