11.29.2005

Spent Years Unwaiting

We didn’t know which words came first
and were too young to read the messages of rain.

But chance bet on us
and we sold our all for air
and sometimes paper
or pints over pizza.

At times the wildness took us
and our mouths swallowed whole
the dreams we dared not live by day,
sparing us a few seconds of scattered thoughts
after the facts
to wonder if we was really us
if I was an arm and you were a leg
or if we were ourselves and what alone meant.

Under tattered covers we clutched the words to our breasts
as worlds drowned outside our door
and our days were spent crying hope to death
in classrooms bored of trying.

You read me Bukowski
and peeked thru your window late at night
to see if my light was still on
and now
too late
it is.

But that was before we took the plunge,
came up gasping for time and direction,
swam with the current for once and found the sea
but for you it was not me.

So we turned a page
and burned the stage we stood on
would have burned all the way up and out
if not for the words
that gasp of last words we never spoke
for fear of falling.
too deep
too deep
that now we drown each day in words
to hold back the emotions we cannot let go
for fear of failing him
or her
or us.

The words gave us a trust,
a well we cannot seem to drink dry.
But if this life’s a lie
then what should we have done?
did we lie too long in the sun
or not long enough?

Our words become us:
miserly wicked things with
shadowy subtleties
furious tempers
and ill-begotten dreams.

The world turns
and we watch from where we stand.
Words at the ready.
Ready to drown
or be drowned.
just thirsty.

11.28.2005

MANIFESTO FOR ESSENTIALISM


Solid little essay from Jeremy Faludi, Seattle's own eco-preneur artist, innovator and upcoming green design guru. Faludi's work may also be found at WorldChanging.

"Design must return to the simple, naked essential. In America 2001, we are inundated with a dizzying array of objects, of forms, of styles, of marketing, which has alienated us from the direct experience of the world. To remedy this assault of artifice, we must strip down the forms we create to lay bare their essential nature--if the object's nature be a mechanism, that mechanism must be shown; if the object's nature be a certain function, the object must speak entirely and solely of that function..." Read More...

11.27.2005

Bob Dylan's Musical Roots


Nice little site devoted to the musical roots of the Big D, folk and otherwise. Also an old interview about playing in Greenwich Village coffeehouses. Actually the folk archive where this interview is from is worth checking out as well. This site has some decent critical analysis of Dylan's lyrics and life.

11.26.2005

we write to set our words in stone
to gift wings to our ideas
to make known what is unknown

we bring light to places of darkness
throw sparks against old newsprint
bear that fire which mankind has carried for so long

by naming things we force ourselves to remember them
by remembering we grow and change
and through growth and change we are reborn

we write to fill the slate before clearing it
we write because there are no more wildernesses to explore
we write to keep hold of some semblance of sanity

n. scott momaday said:

by means of words alone
one may affect physical change on the universe.


i pray that he is right.

11.24.2005

reading 1984 for thanksgiving 2005

scary predictions from 1949 cast our world in a different light. why weren't we better able to prepare and safeguard against such atrocities? because the LOW never have the presence of mind to look up from their day-to-day activities and they are the only ones who truly seek the full equality of human-kind? happy corporate turkey, native american defamation day. we're going to slaughter two roosters today and drink guiness floats. boo-yah.

11.19.2005

Roused at dawn to daughters whispered whimpers
these days become instinctual terrain
I move thru with a vague stealth
as routine reiterates its lengthy lessons
over this habitual atrocity called time.

So that now I aim my apprehension
towards an indistinct notion of memento mori
the grand excursion of death
the end of this beginning.

Call it a neurosis symptomatic with compulsions to watch
synonomous with silence
a dis-ease enthralled with the morbid eventuality of self-pity
insufficient pith and pathos.

An involuntary appetite for words eats away
at the insides of my fingertips
but I am inept at channeling this disembodied adrenaline sprawl
thru the alleyways of blood and synapse and muscle
to the ink inside my pen clutched like a guilty secret hunger.

But my thoughts are truant
and definitely not in the mess nighttime makes of a diaper
wrapped around my daughter's fragile form.

Mine was an obligatory static
a fierce addiction to disconnect
was inevitable
a catastrophic gnawing anticipation for tomorrow
and the next storm.

Tolerant of other people's wars
tired of my own
faith in folly
but we learn from loss
recoup our words
wake to a new dawn.

11.18.2005

The Image Culture

by Christine Rosen

An excellent essay on contemporary Semiology and American culture on a global stage.

When Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast of Mississippi, Alabama, and Louisiana in late August, images of the immense devastation were immediately available to anyone with a television set or an Internet connection. Although images of both natural and man-made disasters have long been displayed in newspapers and on television, the number and variety of images in the aftermath of Katrina reveals the sophistication, speed, and power of images in contemporary American culture. Satellite photographs from space offered us miniature before and after images of downtown New Orleans and the damaged coast of Biloxi; video footage from an array of news outlets tracked rescue operations and recorded the thoughts of survivors; wire photos captured the grief of victims; amateur pictures, taken with camera-enabled cell phones or digital cameras and posted to personal blogs, tracked the disaster’s toll on countless individuals. The world was offered, in a negligible space of time, both God’s-eye and man’s-eye views of a devastated region. Within days, as pictures of the squalor at the Louisiana Superdome and photographs of dead bodies abandoned in downtown streets emerged, we confronted our inability to cope with the immediate chaos, destruction, and desperation the storm had caused. These images brutally drove home the realization of just how unprepared the U.S. was to cope with such a disaster.

But how did this saturation of images influence our understanding of what happened in New Orleans and elsewhere? How did the speed with which the images were disseminated alter the humanitarian and political response to the disaster? And how, in time, will these images influence our cultural memory of the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina? Read More...

link courtesy of: Arts & Letters Daily

11.17.2005

L. Ron Hubbard = Evil Genius or Annoying Nutball?

Do you want to buy a bridge? article by Mark Ebner - an excellent behind the scences look at Scientology published in Spy Magazine back in 1996. Thanks Raph for digging this one up.

"If you really want to enslave people,
tell them that you're going to give them total
freedom."
-- L. Ron Hubbard

Scientology Kills All the dirt you could want on why Scientology is a crock of shit.

And I have no idea what this means but it's still funny. I love stuff like that.
P.S. all you educators out there, these are front groups for the Church of Scientology, please do not accept materials for use in the classroom from them!
Applied Scholastics
The Way To Happiness

11.16.2005

Idaho Blows


This is the most hilarious thing I have ever seen. Granted I'm from Walla Walla, the town so white they had to name it after something Native and make me suffer mounds of ridicule for the remainder of my days here. This site is rather rude and blunt at points but that's how Idaho's landscape molds the minds there. There's some beautiful places in Idaho, but not many beautiful people. My buddy Luke offers a fine example of Idaho's kind: he's a hulking behemoth fueled by booze, potatoes and cheap thrills and has come to epitomize my idea of Idaho. Of course, Les Purce, our beloved president of Evergreen, hails from Boise I believe. I ran into a few people who knew him a couple years back, talked of his crazy ways, parties, politics, the whole she-bang. Les, you dog. Anyway, this site kicks ass. Not just because they linked to Last Word's Blog a while back, or because they regularly peruse Technoccult, just because their ego outstrips just about anything else I've come across recently. Please scope this site and toss one back for old Idaho, she needs it these days.

11.15.2005

La Casa Comics



From P-town with a twist of Oly, Theo and Ahniwa have a good thing going! Add this one to your list of webcomics to check out daily. Oh yeah, and their links page has some other online comics I haven't come across before. Also, anyone who's down with the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster can cuddle up to my bunker. All hail the noodly appendage!

11.14.2005

a shrewd wit is the sharpest blade a man may carry

11.13.2005

Loveseat made from airplane first-class seats


Thanks BoingBoing!

"For $1500, you can buy this pair of used first-class plane-seats to use as a sofa in your living room. You know, I've gotten the occassional first-class flight, and while the seats are infinitely preferable to cattle-class's torture-chairs, they're nowhere near comfortable enough to consider replacing a decent sofa with."

11.10.2005

Notes on HAARP & Increasing Tsunami/Hurricane/Earthquake Frequency

i'm just going to toss this up here for now while I do some more research and find a few more sites

http://educate-yourself.org/pnl/neworleansdowse05sep05.shtml - skeptical dowse
http://www.freepress.org/columns/display/3/2005/1243 - solid

The United States, more than any other nation except perhaps Russia, embraces the techno-fix of weather modification. The infamous U.S. Air Force Academy research paper “Weather as a Force Multiplier: Owning the Weather in 2025,” published in August 1996, noted that, “2025 is a study designed to comply with a directive from the chief of staff of the Air Force to examine the concepts, capabilities, and technologies the United States will require to remain the dominant air and space force in the future.”

First presented on June 17, 1996, the paper’s disclaimer states the study does “. . . not reflect the official policy or position of the United States Air Force, Department of Defense or the United States government.” The paper goes so far as to emphasize that, “This report contains fictional representations of future situations/scenarios.”

http://www.cyberspaceorbit.com/indexback178.html
http://www.abbaswatchman.com/Hurricane%20Katrina%20and%20Wilma.htm - excellent site
http://omega.twoday.net/topics/HAARP/
“Holes in Heaven; HAARP and Advances in Tesla Technology” - doc narrated by martin sheen?
http://www.nasa.gov/vision/earth/lookingatearth/rita_hot_towers.html
http://www.coasttocoastam.com/shows/2005/01/23.html
http://www.skolnicksreport.com/ootar80.html - more on PUTIN ties - overclass chess match?
most of these were via Google

11.09.2005

Twenty Interesting Facts About Voting Here in the Good Ole USA!

Did you know....
1. 80% of all votes in America are counted by only two companies: Diebold and ES&S.
http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting/042804Landes/042804landes.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diebold

2. There is no federal agency with regulatory authority or oversight of the U.S. voting machine industry.
http://www.commondreams.org/views02/0916-04.htm
http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting/042804Landes/042804landes.html

3. The vice-president of Diebold and the president of ES&S are brothers.
http://www.americanfreepress.net/html/private_company.html
http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting/042804Landes/042804landes.html

4. The chairman and CEO of Diebold is a major Bush campaign organizer and donor who wrote in 2003 that he was "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year."
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/07/28/sunday/main632436.shtml
http://www.wishtv.com/Global/story.asp?S=1647886

5. Republican Senator Chuck Hagel used to be chairman of ES&S. He became Senator based on votes counted by ES&S machines.
http://www.motherjones.com/commentary/columns/2004/03/03_200.html
http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting/031004Fitrakis/031004fitrakis.html

6. Republican Senator Chuck Hagel, long-connected with the Bush family, was recently caught lying about his ownership of ES&S by the Senate Ethics Committee.
http://www.blackboxvoting.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=26
http://www.hillnews.com/news/012903/hagel.aspx
http://www.onlisareinsradar.com/archives/000896.php

7. Senator Chuck Hagel was on a short list of George W. Bush's vice-presidential candidates.
http://www.businessweek.com/2000/00_28/b3689130.htm
http://theindependent.com/stories/052700/new_hagel27.html

8. ES&S is the largest voting machine manufacturer in the U.S. and counts almost 60% of all U.S. votes.
http://www.essvote.com/HTML/about/about.html
http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting/042804Landes/042804landes.html

9. Diebold's new touch screen voting machines have no paper trail of any votes. In other words, there is no way to verify that the data coming out of the machine is the same as what was legitimately put in by voters.
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0225-05.htm
http://www.itworld.com/Tech/2987/041020evotestates/pfindex.html

10. Diebold also makes ATMs, checkout scanners, and ticket machines, all of which log each transaction and can generate a paper trail.
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0225-05.htm
http://www.diebold.com/solutions/default.htm

11. Diebold is based in Ohio.
http://www.diebold.com/aboutus/ataglance/default.htm

12. Diebold employed 5 convicted felons as consultants and developers to help write the central compiler computer code that counted 50% of the votes in 30 states.
http://www.wired.com/news/evote/0,2645,61640,00.html
http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2004/10/301469.shtml

13. Jeff Dean was Senior Vice-President of Global Election Systems when it was bought by Diebold. Even though he had been convicted of 23 counts of felony theft in the first degree, Jeff Dean was retained as a consultant by Diebold and was largely responsible for programming the optical scanning software now used in most of the United States.
http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0312/S00191.htm
http://www.chuckherrin.com/HackthevoteFAQ.htm#how
http://www.blackboxvoting.org/bbv_chapter-8.pdf

14. Diebold consultant Jeff Dean was convicted of planting back doors in his software and using a "high degree of sophistication" to evade detection over a period of 2 years.
http://www.chuckherrin.com/HackthevoteFAQ.htm#how
http://www.blackboxvoting.org/bbv_chapter-8.pdf

15. None of the international election observers were allowed in the polls in Ohio.
http://www.globalexchange.org/update/press/2638.html
http://www.enquirer.com/editions/2004/10/26/loc_elexoh.html

16. California banned the use of Diebold machines because the security was so bad. Despite Diebold's claims that the audit logs could not be hacked, a chimpanzee was able to do it! (See the movie here: http://blackboxvoting.org/baxter/baxterVPR.mov.)
http://wired.com/news/evote/0,2645,63298,00.html
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4874190

17. 30% of all U.S. votes are carried out on unverifiable touch screen voting machines with no paper trail.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/07/28/sunday/main632436.shtml

18. All -- not some -- but all the voting machine errors detected and reported in Florida went in favor of Bush or Republican candidates.
http://www.wired.com/news/evote/0,2645,65757,00.html
http://www.yuricareport.com/ElectionAftermath04/ThreeResearchStudiesBushIsOut.htm
http://www.rise4news.net/extravotes.html
http://www.ilcaonline.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=950
http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0411/S00227.htm

19. The governor of the state of Florida, Jeb Bush, is the President's brother.
http://www.tallahassee.com/mld/tallahassee/news/local/7628725.htm
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A10544-2004Oct29.html

20. Serious voting anomalies in Florida -- again always favoring Bush -- have been mathematically demonstrated and experts are recommending further investigation.
http://www.yuricareport.com/ElectionAftermath04/ThreeResearchStudiesBushIsOut.htm
http://www.computerworld.com/governmenttopics/government/policy/story/0,10801,97614,00.html
http://www.americanfreepress.net/html/tens_of_thousands.html
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/1106-30.htm
http://www.consortiumnews.com/2004/110904.html
http://uscountvotes.org/

please distribute this information freely

11.07.2005

Olympia Activist Joe Carr Returns to U.S. from Palestine


Joe has been working in Palestine off and on for some time now, most recently with the International Solidarity Movement and CPT (Christian Peacemaker Team) His work is a monument to contemporary social revolutions across the globe and his words will burn into your soul. His site is excellent, be sure to read his archived reports and journals from his work in Palestine, Israel, and Iraq. Good to have you back Joe.

From December to March, 2005, Joe Carr will be bringing his stories and organizing skills to select cities on the East Coast and in the Mid-West. In order to educate and inspire folks in your community, he will be giving presentations and performances about his work organizing direct action resistance to US Empire in Iraq, Palestine, and the US. He will also be sharing the skills he’s learned by offering workshops for local activists organizing against US policies at home and abroad. Help organize a talk and/or workshop for your community! Dates and organizing info is below, contact Joe immediately if you’re interested! joecarr@riseup.net

I think ISM's website is currently down but it does this fairly frequently as they publish some controversial material and death reports that a lot of powerful people don't want us free first-worlders to wrap our little hungry minds around, we might actually notice that we're starving
11.20.2005 - UPDATE: ISM's site is fully operational! Thanks.

11.06.2005

Northwest Comics Kick Ass!


This is the home page of Ezra Clayton Daniels, author of my new favorite self-published comic book: The Changers. Evidently he lives in P-Town just south of our fair city of Olympia. Check out his site, he's a talented man. Futuristic philosophy, cultural criticism, bohemian style. A cool, crisp, inspiring young voice.

from Ezra's site:

"SYNOPSIS: Two young men (Bisso and Geaza) from an apexed Human society in the distant future are sent back in time to the year 2027 to catalyze a leap in Human evolution. When a mutated 'visitor' from this altered future is sent back on behalf of his people to formally thank them, the events that follow and the things they learn about this new future of 'higher cultural potential' convince one of the men that their Mission will be a success, and the other that it will be a failure.

'The Changers' is a unique epic of subtle realism that reverentially embraces the conceptual foundations of the Science Fiction genre. The story's drama arises from the acute psychological conflict manifesting between Bisso and Geaza, and the lengths to which each will go to make the other submit. Their positions staked firmly on morally unstable grounds, these are not heroes and villains, but simply people made remarkable by nothing more than their places of origin - and the emotionally crippling burden set upon them by those they left behind.

Thematically, 'The Changers' is an exploration of the nature of perfection. When the Human race finally achieves its highest aspirations, what will be left to strive for? Bisso and Geaza collectively represent the culmination of all Human ambition, but the tension between them ultimately stems from their fundamental difference in personality. The conflict itself is in the definition of the Human ideal: Both of these men are supposedly perfect, but being so rudimentarily different, only one of them truly can be..."

11.04.2005

Peter Russell - Business Meditation Guru or Nut-Job?

Okay, so this guy is obviously very intelligent... and he's held amazing sustainable business oriented workshops with huge corporations... does he have to pose as a new ager to get them to hire him or is all this fairy dust just icing on the cake we have to take when we deal with geniuses? Check out his site and calculate how many days old you are! This dude was interviewed by Disinfo's original censored T.V. series (thanks for the link Klint!) And the dude's into swimming with dolphins, how can you diss that?


"Peter Russell is a fellow of the Institute of Noetic Sciences, of The World Business Academy and of The Findhorn Foundation, and an Honorary Member of The Club of Budapest.

At Cambridge University (UK), he studied mathematics and theoretical physics. Then, as he became increasingly fascinated by the mysteries of the human mind he changed to experimental psychology. Pursuing this interest, he traveled to India to study meditation and eastern philosophy, and on his return took up the first research post ever offered in Britain on the psychology of meditation.

He also has a post-graduate degree in computer science, and conducted there some of the early work on 3-dimensional displays, presaging by some twenty years the advent of virtual reality.
...
his corporate programs have focused increasingly on self-development, creativity, stress management, and sustainable environmental practices. Clients have included IBM, Apple, Digital, American Express, Barclays Bank, Swedish Telecom, ICI, Shell Oil and British Petroleum.
...
As one of the more revolutionary futurists Peter Russell has been a keynote speaker at many international conferences, in Europe, Japan and the USA. His multi-image shows and videos, The Global Brain and The White Hole in Time have won praise and prizes from around the world. In 1993 the environmental magazine Buzzworm voted Peter Russell "Eco-Philosopher Extraordinaire" of the year.

His age is 21730."

11.01.2005

EcoFuture: Dave Foreman, a Dialogue with Derrick Jensen

(At-the-time) Fledgling anarcho-primitivist Derrick Jensen interviews Earth First! co-founder Dave Foreman way back last century some time. It's in Jensen's book of eco-interviews Listening to the Land But it's badass as a standalone too.
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