I cannot say enough about the undergrowth of the Pac. Northwest
I've got a pretty good idea of the ID for a few of these...but if anyone reading this has thoughts on the fungi depicted, please leave a comment. Macro settings on cameras are really quite rewarding.
wint-r-storms
Winds were slamming into my window at 60 MPH last night. Brutal. Rain, rain, and rain. My shoes have fallen completely apart and have been shoe-gooed back together about 5 times, and are dreadfully prone to waterlogging in their perforated state.
Thank you Slate, you fucking centrist NPR clone. Double Kristopher Hitchens references in the article. Why is this "drink-soaked Trotskyist popinjay" the darling of all center-left organizations (Bard, I'm looking at you too).
Interesting statistical massaging in this article. I am waiting for some biologists to assay the acuity of tastebuds in veg*ns and meat types. The researcher would obviously be conducting the study for the sole reason of using the phrase "vegetarians do indeed taste better," or "as it turns out, vegetarian's don't in fact taste better." The shitty article would be reported on Slate's front page. Fuckers almost beat me to the idea with this saucy article on semen tasting and such. "Organic vegetarians taste the best." No mention of cigarette smoking and its deleterious effect on semen/vag fluids.
Brigette is a microbiologist who works for a clinical lab in Utah. One sample she just recieved for analysis came in a test tube with only the writing "source: vag." I think that's very funny for some reason.
Here are some sweet vids from the Huun Huur Tu concert I saw in Salem the other month.
I wish this clip was way way longer. God damn, if you ever have a chance to see this group in concert, drop everything and go. During the show, some 60-yr old tripper behind me leaned forward and said, "They're playing notes we can't hear that are psychoactive." I believe it. Every person I have spoken with that has seen their performance claim very visual effects. I left the performance feeling giddy, drugged, and having mysteriously improved the tone of my own kargyraa a million percent.
Hot Dance Jam by Huun Huur Tu on Vimeo
...then, "dude, you got the tuvans high!"
Tuvan Soundscaping on Vimeo
Dude second from the left is playing a hunting tool. The drummer uses a horse hoof and a yak scrotum in addition to his drum. He made all these percussion tools himself. This was actually a glorious glorious song, even though it seems like an especially racist electro-acoustic ensemble "practice."
In very exciting news, the Fun Making Club, which in a way started the ball rolling for the idea of lasercave is being ressurected by Daniel Fishkin and RJ Skypala. Very cool.
Thank you Slate, you fucking centrist NPR clone. Double Kristopher Hitchens references in the article. Why is this "drink-soaked Trotskyist popinjay" the darling of all center-left organizations (Bard, I'm looking at you too).
Interesting statistical massaging in this article. I am waiting for some biologists to assay the acuity of tastebuds in veg*ns and meat types. The researcher would obviously be conducting the study for the sole reason of using the phrase "vegetarians do indeed taste better," or "as it turns out, vegetarian's don't in fact taste better." The shitty article would be reported on Slate's front page. Fuckers almost beat me to the idea with this saucy article on semen tasting and such. "Organic vegetarians taste the best." No mention of cigarette smoking and its deleterious effect on semen/vag fluids.
Brigette is a microbiologist who works for a clinical lab in Utah. One sample she just recieved for analysis came in a test tube with only the writing "source: vag." I think that's very funny for some reason.
Here are some sweet vids from the Huun Huur Tu concert I saw in Salem the other month.
I wish this clip was way way longer. God damn, if you ever have a chance to see this group in concert, drop everything and go. During the show, some 60-yr old tripper behind me leaned forward and said, "They're playing notes we can't hear that are psychoactive." I believe it. Every person I have spoken with that has seen their performance claim very visual effects. I left the performance feeling giddy, drugged, and having mysteriously improved the tone of my own kargyraa a million percent.
Hot Dance Jam by Huun Huur Tu on Vimeo
...then, "dude, you got the tuvans high!"
Tuvan Soundscaping on Vimeo
Dude second from the left is playing a hunting tool. The drummer uses a horse hoof and a yak scrotum in addition to his drum. He made all these percussion tools himself. This was actually a glorious glorious song, even though it seems like an especially racist electro-acoustic ensemble "practice."
In very exciting news, the Fun Making Club, which in a way started the ball rolling for the idea of lasercave is being ressurected by Daniel Fishkin and RJ Skypala. Very cool.
mas mappery
More interesting geography stuff.
My second best high school teacher (after Ed "The Red" Trout, US history, leftist-pacifist who had such a quiet voice that he spoke only through a microphone) was Mr Jay Phythyon, World History, a very charismatic blade prone to vaguely good-touch backrubs and scatological threats. Sr. Phythyon was big on maps, and his tests were pretty brutal. One test included all of the countries of North and South America, cut up, and randomly arranged on a piece of paper. The task was to identify every country, although you lacked distinct borders, and most of the countries were rotated to abstraction. During said test, struggling to identify Panama, Mr. Phythyon slammed his pencil down on my desk, shocking the hell out of me, but aptly gouging a hole directly through one country's outline. He gave me the canal hint. Nice dude, clever teacher.
Lacking any structured geographical curriculum, I've turned to computer's to help my chances if I ever make it to the last round of the Carmen Sandiego tv show. I found World of Where, an OSX game that is so nice that it desperately should have existed during the OS9 days. I played with the demo for a bit, and after mastering the countries of Europe (the only area available in the demo) I used the trusty old Serial Box to open-r-up. After typing in the [k] sn, a dialogue box came up saying "G'day! This is a serial number that's distributed widely on the internet, and not valid. We understand that people don't like to pay for software and stuff, so how about a discount? We'll give it to you for 4 bucks!"
Way to go. I in fact paid the four bucks. The "company" that made the game is an Aussie university student. Two days later, I have been able to name every country in the world with 100% accuracy, save those countries in Oceania (soon). It's very fun. You can also zoom into a few countries and learn the states/provinces. An incredibly sweet aspect is the solar system quiz, complete with flags:
For free, albeit rather limited map fun, you can check out das map
Increased geography skills are vital to more thorough understanding of lots of stuff. Really.
My second best high school teacher (after Ed "The Red" Trout, US history, leftist-pacifist who had such a quiet voice that he spoke only through a microphone) was Mr Jay Phythyon, World History, a very charismatic blade prone to vaguely good-touch backrubs and scatological threats. Sr. Phythyon was big on maps, and his tests were pretty brutal. One test included all of the countries of North and South America, cut up, and randomly arranged on a piece of paper. The task was to identify every country, although you lacked distinct borders, and most of the countries were rotated to abstraction. During said test, struggling to identify Panama, Mr. Phythyon slammed his pencil down on my desk, shocking the hell out of me, but aptly gouging a hole directly through one country's outline. He gave me the canal hint. Nice dude, clever teacher.
Lacking any structured geographical curriculum, I've turned to computer's to help my chances if I ever make it to the last round of the Carmen Sandiego tv show. I found World of Where, an OSX game that is so nice that it desperately should have existed during the OS9 days. I played with the demo for a bit, and after mastering the countries of Europe (the only area available in the demo) I used the trusty old Serial Box to open-r-up. After typing in the [k] sn, a dialogue box came up saying "G'day! This is a serial number that's distributed widely on the internet, and not valid. We understand that people don't like to pay for software and stuff, so how about a discount? We'll give it to you for 4 bucks!"
Way to go. I in fact paid the four bucks. The "company" that made the game is an Aussie university student. Two days later, I have been able to name every country in the world with 100% accuracy, save those countries in Oceania (soon). It's very fun. You can also zoom into a few countries and learn the states/provinces. An incredibly sweet aspect is the solar system quiz, complete with flags:
For free, albeit rather limited map fun, you can check out das map
Increased geography skills are vital to more thorough understanding of lots of stuff. Really.
UC Berkeley Free Speech Movement
Yeah, but different. More like, free speeches. UC Berkeley is doing a pretty sweet thing. While I have no real desire to pursue higher education in the near/future, I have felt slightly academically understimulated. I live with a 30 yr old woman and her 2 yr old, which kindof keeps the conversation in the realm of the toddler, for good and bad. I was getting a good fill when I was reading Saral Sarkar's Ecocapitalism or Ecosocialism, but I took a break from that book's rather dry, statistical introduction for the throwaway fun of the Illuminatus Trilogy. Pure candy. To compliment that, I need a meal. Now I've found that UCB has made podcasts out of many of their classes. So real. It's like night school for internet voyeurs.
I'm "taking"
Psych 119 Drugs and Human Behavior (I took an identically named class at Bard. This one is way better. Very cool professor...I bet he's cute!)
PACS 164A Intro to Nonviolence
ESPM 160AC American Environmental and Cultural History
Anyone interested in taking a class together and talking about it somewhat regularly? Foundations of American Cyberculture would be apropos.
LINK TO COURSE CATALOG
What Would Jesus FSU?
Mr Benny Hinn. Here's the banner from his website.
Anyone who has read bad 1980's Marvel Comics can see through this quite easily. The soul harvest itself is most likely orchestrated by Dormammu, and if not by the Dread One, most likely Mephisto. He's been pissed since Thor took his soul back out of that magic bag under Walt Simonson's pen.
I just watched Jesus Camp, a rather good documentary about the inculcation of the youth of today into the mondo-creepy realm of apocalyptic far-right Xtianity. Great scenes of grade schoolers blessing a GWB cutout, chanting for war (if only Howard Shore had scored it), and expressing desires for the christian youth to commit suicide bombing attacks on those who do not know the truth.
While you were handing out hosts and tranfiguring water into wine, we were doing spin kicks and jumpin' off peoples' heads. This is your ministry, know your ministry.
The Most Radical Program of Ultimate Intensity Indeed! Outstanding Achievement in the Field of Excellence!
The Power Team picks up were Benny Hinn leaves off. Rather than breaking up sermons with sweet sport-jacket haduken's on parishoners, the Power Team is all power!
The Power Team communicates Biblical truths & scripture utilizing explosive and stunning feats of strength like: breaking baseball bats like twigs, bending horseshoes & steel bars, crushing concrete walls, rip phone books like pieces of paper and many other incredible power demonstrations.
See, they rent themselves out to churches to bodyslam the love of god back into the audience, er, churchgoers. Interested in bring TP2.com to your church? Should be! They claim:
20% Average Church Growth (Measured by BMI, not attendance)
60% Attendees are Un-Churched (I don't fucking get this one)
20%+ Salvation Response, over 1/2 are Adults (Sounds dirty)
I'm gonna go speak in tongues for a while until I can think of something constructive to do.