...more recent posts
Unhappy people make the best workers. Boy, that really makes a lot of things clear. (via plastic)
dave on strike?
Richard Helms's niece and the Taliban.
After all, the American Right and Islamic Fundamentalism have a lot of common ground.
Wren's Nest
Pagan weblog.
Marijuana after age 45 harder on heart than sex
Deutsche Presse-Agentur (dpa)
June 12, 2001
New York (dpa) - Smoking pot after age 45 puts more stress on the heart than strenuous sex, leading to a five-fold increase in the likelihood of a heart attack for about an hour afterwards, Canadian and U.S. scientists said in media reports Tuesday.
JIMWich has a bunch of links to treehouses. (That's not really a permanent link. I'm guessing that this will be the permanent link after the end of this month.)
"Dave's Not Here !?"
Decent article on the Tolkien phenomenon from the Voice.
The importance of the material must be recognized. LOR drew the template for virtually every epic fantasy since. It may appeal to adolescents, but they represent the last, best, hope of the imagination, before the compromises of adulthood. Such compromises may be the subject of "grown-up" literature, but the unstoppable spring of Tolkienesque fantasy evidences a basic facet of our being. The template fits sci-fi futurism just as well as medievalism: the generality of a truly mythic chord being sounded. Tolkien does not fall into the typical cliches of pulp-fiction type fantasy. Violence, sex, and magic are central, but are consistently underplayed. His overwhelming nostalgia and melancholy are alien to Hollywood's understanding of the heroic epic. Scale is different than size, and this is where many followers have lost the way. The vastness of his tale is not so much a matter of length, as it is the implication of an entire world of untold tales, fleshed out by the extensive pseudo-scholarly appendices. This presentation of the material as some sort of discovered text links the work to things like Borges and Pynchon, and even Poe's early detective stories. It seems to be a gloss on a larger truth, which supersedes the author.
And the reader. Unlike the comic books, and other fantasy forms I've enjoyed over the years, Tolkien never fed my ego-fantasies, but served to weave me into something larger; a frame of reference in which the ego was but the focal point of loss. In this sense, his work is about as serious and adult as stories get. It triggers a nostalgic pain so acute that growing up becomes the escape. The sixties, the heyday of Tolkien-mania, has often been similarly critiqued, and I'd make a similar defense. I always think of Tolkien when I hear this song by the Incredible String Band, exemplars of the Hobbit-swilling hippies of yore.
You Know What You Could Be
by Mike Heron
Read your book and lose yourself
In another's thoughts.
He might tell you 'bout what is
Or even 'bout what is not.
And if he's kind and gentle too,
And he loves the world a lot,
His twilight words may melt the slush
Of what you have been taught.
You know what you could be.
Tell me my friend,
Why you worry all the time
What you should been.
Listen to the song of life.
Its rainbow's end won't hold you.
Its crimson shapes and purple sounds,
Softly will enfold you.
It gurgles through the timeless glade,
In quartertones of lightning.
No policy is up for sale,
In case the truth be frightening.
You know what you could be.
Tell me my friend,
Why you worry all the time
What you should be.
Amorphophallus titanum webcam. All the fun of being there, minus the smell.
texas snakeman
Bibby, who lives southwest of Fort Worth in Wheatland, broke the record for crawling into a sleeping bag with rattlesnakes. He shared the sleeping bag with 109 rattlers, besting his old record by two.
"I'm ready to do what I do almost anytime," he boasted. "I'm like lunchmeat - I'm always ready."
Didn't like him as a child? Try him as an adult.
(Courtesy of Bad Pun Preservation Foundation)
Smarter Times: All the news that's fit to correct.
here's my librarian deed of the day
4 sites account for half of web sufing
photograhica.org: a metafilter for photography. (from kottke)
What did happen in Nepal?
Here's one story, but gossip Cindy Adams has another.
86 year old woman survives two days underwater
She was on the Today Show this morning, and talked about her hallucinations: "I'll never be able to see an elf again without thinking about them."
Recovery from recent DMTree event impeded by troublesome image of august compiler of news statistics struggling through recitation of The Owl and the Pussycat. Not sure how things came to such a pass (absinthe?), but have developed theory based on overheard conversation fragments regarding Meet Me in St Louis, suggesting confounding of Bong, Bam, and Boo trees (Sweeny Agonistes unavailable due to corpseywright restrictions). Regardless, if he moves on to The Dong with a Luminous Nose, I'm outta here.
WFMU: totally pure and unselfish and good.
Went to Hampton Beach NH with the family and had a trip down memory lane--have not been in 23 years but went every summer for 17--the same lady is working the exquisite air gun twisted target shoot with all these wacky objects to shoot at, its now light sensative but was pellets 23 years ago, still has its biker feel and and wacky shops with tea shirts that say "dont drink and drive--you might hit a bump and spill your drink", i guess its somewhat like the NJ shore, caramel corn, fried dough, salt water taffy, minature golf, arcades--great fried seafood too:>)
Banshees, including Imelda O’Reilly.
woooooooOOOOOOOoooooooooOOOOOOOooooooooooo...
Strategic Forecast: Indonesian government heading for a fall.