Conrad Aiken's Tombstone

, originally uploaded by daydream scream.

Here are two links for you: 1 & 2 oh and what the hell, 3.

Feeling forward

He says

• "Every judgment in science stands on the edge of error and is personal."
• "Science is a tribute to what we can know, although we are fallible."
  
• "We have to cure ourselves of the itch for absolute knowledge and power."
• "We have to touch people."

He steps into the pond of ashes, shoving his hand into the mud, touching the dead, bringing up the life that is them transmogrified, redefined, yet still lost because of drooling hate. Each life full of joys and fear and everything else gone with the gas, with the "itch" for ultimate knowledge and power.

Touching them. And he says he owes them. He owes them and us, perhaps, what? Respect? Care? Dare I say Love? No he owes them the right to live and to find their way in this world. He owes them the freedom to exists, which was denied them by people pretending to knowledge they did not have, nor ever pursued. He owes them, as we owe them, life.

Now that is humanity and that is exactly what no religion can give.

I'm still moved by this sequence. Bronowski's points apply equally as well today as they might have 38 years ago when this was filmed.

Update: Jacob Bronowski was also a poet. I had no idea. I thought he was just a mathematician and an all around brilliant human being.

While we're talking about foods that will make you fat

Idaho Spud!

Big Hunk!

What was that taffy they used to have that was grape flavored?

Paying for the bratwurst and the burger

Paying for the bratwurst and the burger, originally uploaded by Theorris.

How I'm going to gain back that 35 pounds I lost

How I'm going to gain back that 35 pounds I lost, originally uploaded by Theorris.

Did I tell you I lost 35 pounds? I don't want to hit middle age being a fat fuck. (I would have said "portly" but that is too precious and too mild of a word.) I wasn't grossly overweight, but if I would have kept up the trend, I would have been said fat fuck by the time I hit 50.

The weight-losing was actually a bet with Herd Cattleson. We either lost the weight or ended up funding an all-expense paid trip to visit in our respective cities. As an added bit of horror, we both agreed to donate $100 to a truly horrible person we both know if we didn't lose at least 20 pounds.

My tight-fisted Scots genes won out against my foodly desires and I lost the weight. Herd also lost the weight and it was a draw.

I'm going for another 10 pounds so I can sport that speedo at your nearest swimming hole. Just kidding. I am definitely NOT that guy.

Why they wanna see my spine Mommy? Why they wanna see my spine? A completely fucked up tribute

So I'm listening
to my random
shuffle
and they want to see my
spine
Mommy:


And suddenly

Freedom of the body
Freedom of the mind
A ho on South Street hired for tricks
Little girls pickin' up sticks
Freedom of '76

Wastee little weasel
Wants cheap tricks
Liberty bell cracked in half
A bacon steak
A perfect match
Freedom of '76

My girl Sasha
Lookin' good on the street
"Mannequin" was filmed at Woolworth's
Boyz II Men still keepin' up the beat, yeah
Freedom of '76

Fairmount Park in the summer
Lookin' good on the street
"Mannequin" was filmed at Woolworth's
Boyz II Men still keepin' up the beat, yeah
Freedom of '76, nah yeah, yeah
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah

Ohh, baby, yeah yeah, yea (Freedom 76, Ween.)

Well and also
So & so & so
It drops from the line up
To be heard only once
The freedom of that moment
Clear

And one of the most effective songs ever
"Spinal Meningitis (Got me down)" comes along
Next


Art! It is Art with the big A I tell you!

Try these lyrics on for size, Captain Beef Heart eat your beef heart out:

Why they wanna see my spine mommy?
Why they wanna see my spine?
It's gonna hurt again mommy
Much worse than last time
Am I gonna see God, mommy?
Am I gonna die?
It really hurts mommy!
Am I gonna die?

Smile on mighty Jesus
Spinal Meningitis got me down

I'm feelin' greasy mommy
Please don't let me die
Stinky vaseline mommy!
Please don't let me die
Am I gonna see God, mommy?
Am I gonna die?
It really hurts mommy!
Am I gonna die?

Smile on mighty Jesus
Spinal Meningitis got me down
Smile on mighty Jesus
Spinal Meningitis got me down (Ween, "Spinal Menangitis Got me Down")

Do you hear the cool
aural
link between

spinal meningitis
and Jesus?

Examine the words carefully
The words play.

Listen to the sound.

Oh and don't die, by the way.
I enjoy
living
people
much more than the dead.

Like he said
the dead will take care of
the dead

Don't you just love Art*?

*This
by the way
is one really
fucked up poem.
Because of this revelation,
I understand your reading will now change.
Do you feel
manipulated?


Art
Say it out loud
Say it out strong

Funny how you like to visualize
words.

Too bad they are not like a
riff.

Too bad they won't bring
Anyone back from the dead.

Too bad they won't stay




put.

How's that?

Horse at dusk

Horse at dusk, originally uploaded by Theorris.

I lost, but only by an E.

Verily I say unto you, there will be much gnashing of teeth

Oh my, Christopher Hitchens takes on the LDS Church.

I expect a great tumult. It should be interesting to watch. No doubt it will be fraught with cries of persecution of the people, who, I was once told by a zealous student writer, are "the most persecuted people of all time!" (complete with exclamation point.) That person apparently forgot about, oh let's say, black people, the Jews, and Armenians for a really sad, and small, sampling of the history of human atrocities.

Verily.

[The land of lost notes] Note 38: Apples in Stereo Play List (authentic)

Found on stage at the Depot in Salt Lake City after their show, March 31, 2007.

Keen!

Now this is a keen idea: Flexcar or Zipcar. Something tells me, however, it is going to be a long time before they offer this service in SLC.

The big finish

The big finish, originally uploaded by Theorris.

I would like to say that I ran the SLC marathon, but all I did was watch as they ran through my hood and then trucked it down to the Gateway to watch the big finish. My friend's sister ran the whole thing in 4 hours 26 minutes. I would make the joke that it took me 4 hours 26 minutes to get out of bed, but that would be a lie.

Still it is a good joke.

Salt Lake City Marathoners

Salt Lake City Marathon #1, originally uploaded by Theorris.

Dad's last Christmas

Dad's last Christmas, originally uploaded by Theorris.

That's Ben--the best dog ever. Dad was dying of cancer at this point.

I don't like to look at this picture, but I find I must.

EEFFOC

EEFFOC, originally uploaded by Theorris.

This view will soon be gone.

Goodbye Sugarhouse.

The great post of woe and intrigue

Ok, I've been through a fair number of romantic relationships in my time, but I've just experienced a new one: I've been pre-dumped. Basically that is when you like someone and she seems to like you but before you can screw up the courage to ask her out, she snips you right out of her life. Details! Details! I hear you clamor. Give us details of this non-salacious un-relationship! (We even had a talk about said un-Relationship--capital R and all).

Sorry, I don't not kiss and tell.

Why I will not write on the death of Kurt Vonnegut

Vonnegut is dead. I was wondering when it was going to happen, given that he proclaimed he was retired from writing (although he seems to have still kept putting some smaller pieces out.) He stuck around a good long while (although of course not long enough, but such is the nature of our frail lives.)

Slaughterhouse Five comes to mind immediately when thinking about his death, given that Billy Pilgrim lived in and out of time, and perhaps Vonnegut did himself. Time slips back and forth so seamlessly when you are exposed to death and destruction like Vonnegut was (like Pilgrim was). Time, in fact, ceases to make much sense at all; it is no longer linear. As a depressed, bereft college freshman I knew this because not long before my father had been ripped out of the time line. Vonnegut knew about time and death. Time becomes compressed for those whose lives are shaped by death: one minute your an 18-year-old and the next minute your 80.

I too had become unstuck in time.

I remember being asked once (and I had been reading a lot of Vonnegut) "What are you going to be doing when you are 80?"

"I don't know what I'm going to be doing next week, let alone in 60 years," was my smart-ass reply. Of course I sort of knew what I would be doing when I was 80--if I ever reached it. We who are unstuck in time, however can't tell, as Billy Pilgrim can't tell anyone, up there with the aliens (who are trying to figure we strange creatures out.)

Somehow I like to think of Vonnegut himself up there with the Tralfamadorians in a luxuriously appointed glass geodesic dome.

If you don't have anything nice to say....

So I've been out of town since Wednesday of last week at a conference. It was not that I didn't have Internet access nor that I was super-busy at said conference, but that I really found nothing interesting in the host city to comment upon. Everything I could think of ended up being a bitch, so I'll forgo all that just to say I was out of town and that is that. I might post some pictures.
Maybe.

Or maybe you want to read my bitching about city sterility, lack of humanity, no ATMs ANYWHERE, empty-headed planning, urban decay, pointlessness, unhappy race-relations, and an overall sense of urban banality that goes on, and on, and on?

Guess which city I was in, and win a prize of sheer exuberance. (No cheating those of you who know where I went.)

Dogs and us

Having grown up with packs of dogs (literally at one time we had 6 dogs all at once), I have often thought of getting a dog of my own, particularly now that I am living in a house where a big dog would have some room and a yard to play in as needed. Will Self, however, defines why I will never be a dog owner again:

Then came children of my own and the push-me, pull-you of swings and roundabouts. Initially, I found children to be poor dog substitutes. They didn’t come when you called them, and they were very slow – particularly the males – to be house trained.

Of course, this was before the plastic-bag-gloved hand became a mandatory canine accessory. After the legislation, human babies began to look positively continent – what with their neat little absorbent poo-pads – compared with these hairy shitters. Indeed, the whole notion of being responsible for a creature that requires me to pick up its excrement seems a curious inversion of what I always understood about the interspecies relationship.

You see it is the dog that owns you, not the other way around. Self goes on to write that

I thought dogs were domesticated by humans, and that over many millennia we selectively bred them as hunting companions, guards, herders and so forth. We fed them and in return they did our bidding. There was no doubt about which was the subordinate species. The shit thing has completely altered my perspective. It now seems that far from us selectively breeding them, it’s been the other way round. Over many millennia, dogs, by providing human dog lovers with an adaptive advantage (the ability to take dull walks whatever the weather, the gumption to open fiddly tin cans, the capacity to pay exorbitant vets’ bills), have been selectively breeding us.* (will-self.com � Blog Archive � Dog days)

So maybe I will be owned again by a hairy shitter. I kind of pine for the old days on the farm where I could unleash my pack of dogs onto the fields. I think it might be that I started all those plants, or that I've been dreaming of rolling fields of grain.

For now the housemate's cat will have to do, although he mostly just ignores me even when I have to feed him.

*(While it strikes me that George Carlin has a comedy bit very much like this, I still find Self's way of putting it to be very funny.)

Why I don't write about the Catholics occupying channel 3 on Comcast or How to piss another religious group off

Channel 3 on my loverly Comcast[TM] cable network is current showing nothing but the ever-famous ETWN (Eternal Word Network) a.k.a. the angry Nun channel. I used to watch ETWN for fun when it was on channel 72 or whatever on Comcast[TM], but after being removed from the cable network for a year or so, they are back, decidedly so, on channel 3 where they used to show Park City TV and a ton of fun snowboarding and skiing highlights.

Now I salute Comcast[TM] for being committed to religious diversity, especially since they offer 2 channels devoted to LDS concerns and one (channel 72) devoted to fundamentalist concerns, but come on! Put ETWN back on the high end of the dial where I can surf between evolution and poker.

In any case, I was very amused while wandering around between the Simpsons (who had a great slam on Utah, by the way) and Family Guy, to find either a Benedictine or an Augustine Monk (can't tell the difference between their gray garb) proclaiming that "Jesus was offensive to all the religions of his day" since he proclaimed himself or was proclaimed the son of God. He also mentioned that Mohamed would have been very offended by such a proclamation, because (like the Jews) followers of Islam believe that God is one god and that there can be no "son" of god.

Now all of that is sound, in that both Islam and Judaism proclaim that. His next claim, however, was extraordinarily specious: pagans (i.e. the Roman/Greek religion) would also never accept that a man could be god.

I stood (yes I was standing), stunned, not thinking of my next hit of the button to change channels. I had to wonder if this monk really believed that. Did he not know that Julius Caesar was declared a god by the Romans? Did he not know that Augustus (while seemingly denying his elevation in lifetime) was also declared a god?

What about the ever-problematic Caligula? He proclaimed himself to be Jupiter himself.

Nero too.

Claudius, the god.

Ignoring cultural context and proclaiming something unique seems to be a rather human foible.

Gadzoom and Wookie

Gadzoom and Wookie, originally uploaded by catinlap.

Planting out

Planting out, originally uploaded by Theorris.

Yeah they look a little weak and spindly, but they will soon be robust, fruit and veg producing machines! Boo yah!

St. Amen Hotep XVI of Arc

Oops:

The charred bones that were long believed to be remains of St. Joan of Arc don't belong to the French heroine but are instead the remains of an Egyptian mummy, a new study has shown. (Joan of Arc Relics Are Actually Egypt Mummy Remains, Research Reveals)

Clearing the air or why I don't write about the predominant faith in Utah

I just posted this on Fiddley Gomme, Pete Dunn's entertaining blog in response to a commenter who felt the need to criticize Pete in writing about various things that most folks putting the LDS religion aside write about:

OK I won't be facetious, anonymous. Bascially what you are saying is that "ex" mormons act in a certain way. Yes, they do. It is a part of being human to act like each other and to react to a system that you put full faith in by focusing on all the things you suggest. I too am not a Mormon, given that my father is the one who had the balls to stand up to his pioneer family (yep I am a progeny of one of the orignal elite who trucked it across the very dangerous middle of America to find Nirvana in Utah) and tell them it was all rot. He was a hell of a lot tougher than me, that's for sure and put up with a lot of crap.

I know, therefore, a lot about Mormons and those who have left that church from some sort of weird second generation stand point. I too love my still "active" relatives (what a funny word to choose for people who are true believing members of your church) and I don't let that get between me and them. Unfortunately, they let it get between me and them.

I'm not even bothered by the church, as it were. I rarely think about it these days, although I know I sure did when I was growing up and feeling isolated and like some freak heathen or whatever. I don't write about Mormon shit because, ultimately, it really doesn't matter to me. It does, however, matter to Pete and many folks who have decided that the LDS religion is a bunch of bunk brought to you, as Richard Dawkins (famous British Scientist) by an "enterprisingly mendacious inventor" (see Dawkins' the God Delusion page 201).

I suppose it is about recovery. When you've been denying something for so long (sex, alcohol--you name the laundry list) of course you are going to write about it. You are also going to be writing about the people who still try to guilt-trip you into following their messed-up view of reality.

In other words, go Pete, go!

I'm still kind of stunned at my reaction to the LDS religion.

Farmer Jack

Farmer Jack, originally uploaded by Theorris.

I don't have a pitchfork or a wife.

Sad.

Dry your eyes, mate

ksl.com - Some Christians Celebrated Palm Sunday

Oy, with a decidedly insular view, KSL informs us that Some Christians Celebrated Palm Sunday. Yes while most Christians did not? Gimme a break, KSL. It should read "Most Christians Celebrated Palm Sunday While a Small Percentage Tuned Their TVs to LDS General Conference and Went About Cleaning Their Houses or General Not-paying-attention-related-activities-but-still-the-tv-is-on-Bishop-Christiansensonson!"

At least they didn't really keep up the intentional or unintentional snootiness in the body of the story:

Christians around the world celebrated Palm Sunday today. Christians of many denominations marched through their churches throughout Utah, carrying palm fronds and singing hymns at the official beginning of the Easter week.

Let's have fun with photos, kids! or where're you going, fancy boots?

I haven't laughed this hard in at least 33 hours.

Life's surreal moments

Life's surreal moments, originally uploaded by Theorris.

They don't stop. They just keep coming. A glove. A CD. A coster. A beer. A cat. A computer. A Rock. A pen. An eaphone box on another computer. A CD case.

Progress report

Progress report, originally uploaded by Theorris.

Everything has sprouted and is growing. The tomatoes, as you see, are doing the best. The plants will be going outside during the day when I'm home for hardening off. When I'm sure the last frost has passed (hell it just snowed last week, right?) I 'll put them in their containers. The growing will commence in earnest at that point. I expect to have parsley and cilantro by June; tomatoes and peppers by July; and eggplants by August.

(Note my expert use of the semicolon as a a comma substitute in the above sentence. As Myth Busters say, I'm an expert. Don't try this at home. Ever.)

Bus stop

So I'm standing across from my abode waiting for the bus to go downtown to the Depot to see Apples in Stereo and a car suddenly pulls up. I'm thinking that it is someone visiting the grandma who lives by the bus stop, but no. Out of the car pops a regular looking joe who asks "are you a blogger?"

"Uh, yes," I reply flicking my cigarette, feeling slightly self conscious about smoking, feeling that this fine upstanding citizen does not need to see me smoking.

"Theorris?"

"Yes."

"I'm Capital Carnage. I recognized you from your picture."

The wookie picture? Oh wait, I've posted various pictures of my fine visage over the years, I guess.

How odd, I think, wondering about the logistics of this chance happening.

1. A car.
2. A person waiting for a bus.
3. A person driving a car.
4. Said person notices a fellow blogger.
5. Said person pulls over.
   

It doesn't necessarily add up, but I'll go with the flow, particularly since I'm headed out for a night of fun on the town. I shake his hand, and he introduces himself to the other inmates of the Wilhelm. Catinlap asks him if he is going to the Depot.

"Where's the Depot?"

"Way downtown," I reply. "We're going to see a show."

"What show?"

"Apples in Stereo!" Catinlap exudes energetically. He's had a few beers and is quite loquacious.

"It is a great band," I add.

Capital Carnage laughs. I laugh. Catinlap laughs. The Croin laughs.

Capital Carnage asks my real name and shakes my hand again. It was a pleasure to meet him.

Talk about surreal moments. The Croin likes to talk about surreal moments.

I prefer talking about broccoli or some shit like that.

Apples in Stereo

Apples in Stereo, originally uploaded by Theorris.

This was a solidly entertaining show to a very small SLC crowd. You missed out, SLC. You missed out.