Tide turned a lot time ago, really.

But this headline is still enough to turn heads and look wistfully at remaining open space outside of Salem town:

Mayday 23: World Population Becomes More Urban Than Rural

Hot damn, what a busy time to be alive. We got to see three zeros line up in a calendar year date, get to see a violent endgame playing itself out every single day, we may very well get to see 12/21/2012, and we may have "seen" the urban population surpass the rural pop.

The only big picture upside that I can see about this is that there is not the practical push for having shitloads of children in cities (smaller space, less chance of immediate employment) as there is in rural areas.

Not much of a mood lifter, overall, for me. Fortunately, this cute little guy, however threatened by the toxic creations of the aforementioned populations, is.



Salamanders are such gentle, sweet animals. Soft as can be, and so so mellow. Saw this little gent (you can't really see his adorable bulgy scrote) up at Opal Creek, an old growth wilderness area. A couple of Vietnam vets inherited the area from their parents, and hoped to keep open the claims on the unprofitable mines in order to keep the area free of logging and building. While nursing their psychic wounds, they found the forest littered with logging signs from Weyerhauser or Boise Cascade or some other supervillian. There was only one bridge into the area, so the awesome vets loaded it with explosives and dared the loggers to come across. I am pretty sure there was a gun battle too. Excellent work. Now only a specific act of congress could allow these 1000+ yr old trees to be killed. The forest is very very integral and beautiful up there. Very biodynamic:



Such a nice place. The mines are still open. You can go in and check them out, even though they are scary, the air is nastily stagnant (a breath-ring just kindof hangs there), and there are so many advertised dangers. Look at the many ways to die.




I quit coffee a while ago, but while in SLC, how could I refuse a dubba drip?



I couldn't. Utah is great. I spent a nice amount of time at the Salt Lake Public Library while Brigette was prepping for her enviable three-month Mexi-tip. So many excellent graphic novels, zines, books, and movies to hang with. Far better than the reading selection at the SLC airport. I think some magazines must have moles working for the cause, just trying to make them look to ridiculous to purchase.

Exhibit A (No Hype, No Ads)


Exhibit B (Content Driven)


Airports are fine except they are completely terrifying in every way.


I found this poster odd. I have always wondered how drug war warriors and prohibition types can refer to entheogens as "consciousness/mind expanding" and not realize that that makes them sound totally sweet. Doesn't that imply that the mind, unexposed to power plants is less realized than that or a psychonaut's?



I mean, it's the Economist. The most boring, dry shit (tied with The Week (out of resentment for that rag's waste of paper on a service provided by more democratic time-sinks like Digg, except updated weekly, not instantly) getting printed. Are they also infiltrated by agents?

Too much typing. Here is a few pictures from an airplane. I love taking pictures from airplanes. These are all from the Salt Lake and the hinterlands to its West.








,
Tim

man this place is so sweet.