Roadside Observations

lj-mood: calm

The man with the briefcase and the incredibly changing stoplight. Why does he hang out at the old run down gas station. Is he waiting for the bus? The police car hangs out at the station, is there a conection. The clothes, the hair, what looks in the briefcase. Questions without answers or does it matter to begin with, isn't that the way it always starts. The jealous husband/wife pursuing something that doesn't exist only later to find out it really truly does. The classic line that paranoia is nothing more than a heightened sense of awareness rings true sometimes. Exactly when does a conspiracy stop being just that. Fact is something we all agree on, right. If there are three people standing around and they can't agree on whether or not something is red yet a specterscope says it is, does that really make it red. Poor Roy G Biv hanging out minding his own business while people banter and complain about whether or not something is periwinkle blue. Let the music play that's all that matters in the end.

Liquid is definitely more exciting than solid matter. What beauty liquid holds as it flows and moves, accelerating and deaccelarting. Watch as it pools in wells and puddles. Creating streams of conscious and yet still I wonder. Liquids based on water, metals and other nastiness. All is not beautiful in nature though it may appear so. Mercury for example, is strikingly interesting and alluring yet deadly all the same. The games metals play is a cruel one. Is a metal all that precious, does it matter. Give me the money is the phrase that goes along with that.

Economics my dear. Make something scarce, make sure folks want it and voila instant cash. Then again there are those that keep making meth out on their farms so we'll have to revisit the wants and demands things later. Games are much fun then taking in something you've made from cold medicines. Look what I made Mom. Yeah whatever start the cooking Sid. Wonders of chemical bliss. Dreams are just as sweet, just look for heather and she'll be there for you. Dressed in angora and licking her lips. Tasty.

Thursday

Ok so the week is pretty much wrapped up. Got tommorow off... not for fun reasons mind but hey. Strange how there are good weeks, slow weeks and then time that truly flies. Speaking of weeks - 7 days and all that hocus pocus. Walking the hallowed halls here at work and what do my eyes spy on the floor. A video tape with a note secured by a rubberband. The note reads to watch the video and visit http://www.she-is-here.com/

The legend of Ringu continues. Actually it's pretty funny looking at how that movie ran in Japan and Korea. The endless spinoffs. Anyway the tape, the page and the note made for an entertaining day. My kirigami calendar is slowly being transformed into all manner of folded things. It's a good time, folding cutting, hole punching, much differenct than folding origami that's for sure.

I'm trying to write at least ten minutes a day even if it kills me. I brought in an observation deck that could help. Must discipline myself to explore the recesses of my mind and express myself. In the eyes of who knows what or who I shall express. The creative muse lurks somewhere like a nymph in the forest or rather like some imp playing jokes. Oh well it's time to go home, there is a play tonight of what I'm not sure but the little lady wants to go and being the good soul I am we are going.

too much time

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Driving on a deserted road - Timed Exercise 1

Five Minutes

Driving on a deserted road I feel the car begin to skid. It's pulling hard to the right. I mean really hard. The tires begin to squeal and in that instant I know the tire is going to blow. Stupid images from old cartoons flash through my mind. Mostly little woodland creatures, cute bunnies all doing the hear no, see no, speak no evil thing. Why did I take this journey and why did I end up in the desert. Man did I hate Bev at that moment. So sweet, so cute kind of like those bunnies. Yeah she acted like a bunny all right. Hopping through town and shacking up with every Tom, Dick and Harry and the emphasis would be on that second guy. In the end it really wasn't important it was just the lying and the wasted time.

The story goes back years and like all good stories it isn't that important as to the where but rather the why. How did the two of us merge together and when did it all go wrong. Christ am I really going to have to walk back to town. The car died in the middle of the asphalt jungle. Chunka chunka chunka kind of died. She wouldn't start and with the car dying so did my dreams.

Continue another exercise tommorow. Egg timer is kind of cool.

Writing Exercise 2 - 10 Minutes

Tuesdays that feel like Mondays blending into the future to become part of the past. What is time really. Linear. I don't think so, truly it's not some science fiction tale of a chrononaut blasting away through the universe. Rather time probably loops back and forth falling across itself. How water like but simple. Isn't it odd that fire and water are so similar and yet so different. The way both rush either up or down that hill. Both seem to amass more of themselves as time goes by. Fire fueling itself building, growing, roaring until it engulfs everything. Water rises up and gains momentum crashing down upon everything in it's path. Strange that creatures don't exist in fire the way water is. Fire seems to destroy things then out of ashes a Phoenix rises. Plants always pop out of ash covered ground. Beauty seems to abound after a fire, a strange calm embraces a land. Water is quite the opposite. A sickening nasty mess seems to be left. Everything helter skelter. Where does the energy come from to run these two things. Where indeed.

Is nature a beauty or merely a force of odds not to be reckoned with. You'll never win when it comes to battling Mother Nature, just ask Parkay. Blow me I say butter is truly a more blissful situation. A nice piece of toast with just the right amount of butter is pure heaven. Little brown, oh so crunchy, you know before you even bite down that you are going to enjoy this small ride. Sure it's no e ticket full blown raging hard on, sweat dripping moment. But still, in that moment it sure is bliss. Mental note, bake some bread tonight.

Bread like all good things is simple. A little flour a little water, throw in some yeast and voila there you go. A little salt and oil doesn't hurt but hey in the end it still doesn't matter you will still have bread. Snap crackle pop give me the crusty stuff. Oh well the ten minutes has gone back to homework and the grind. What will the saltmines deliver who knows. I must continue with these exercises, perhaps they will evolve into something new but for now they get me thinking. The world waits outside but time is up for now.

Appleseed the Movie

Hoping this movie, http://www.appleseedthemovie.com/ comes to town... if not guess there is always the roadtrip to Chicago. Still looking forward to the upcoming convention. It's about time good old St. Louis put on a convention. That aside must remember to look into Anime Central as well. Skipped out of the last two AnimeStack meetings. Looks like it's the last meeting in January for I. Oh well back to the grind.

Tuesdays that feel like Mondays

Vacations and days off always throw me off. The vacation is definitely a trip, more or less a disorentation thing really. Am I still where I thought I was or perhaps time shifted on me and I have no idea where I am. In actual truth reality and a violent awake state comes over me and voila I'm in my own house again, the cat meowing and life moving on. All in all I can honestly say I have no complaints. There are a couple of letters I need to mail and some friends I should contact but all in all things are good. Class starts tonight and that's good. Have to go by the library and drop off books. Then again there is also the dentist but that like Dustin Hoffmain in Marathon Man can wait, now can't it.

Things without wires

OK so it wasn't any big deal but I got my momma to finally grab a labtop. The thing is the thing needed updates and wifi being so well free I'm doing updates in the background. My folks are out shopping and I'm babysitting a laptop. Thank someone for the Internet because what else can truly eat the time. Strange really to sit in some coffee shetel and type away on a plastic and metal machine while the world whizs by. Tonight is new year's eve, I owe some friends a letter and someone special overseas a care package. I don't think I'm a terrible person or anything but I can be a rather unthoughful friend. Too much for the moment or living in the present. The world rushes by and I'm still dreaming of the road that is paved with good intentions. Here's to a new year hopefully more promising than the year before. May I have the self determination to improve myself and those around me. I hope anyway. Anyway a virtual toast and here's to next year.

Glimmer: You're a young heart but a wise soul. You're responsible and strong-minded. You get lost in worlds of fantasy but you never let your feet leave the ground. You never give up on a challenge.



Which www.davidgoughart.com Fairy Are You?

Hump Day

lj-mood: calm
lj-music: ChickPop Radio

It's funny how thoughts, images and ideas dance around in your head and poof just like that vanish into the air. Walking into work, humming a song, brilliant idea enters my head. Score a mental note to add it to this thing. So now it's going on noon and the notion is now dust. Something to do with people, porn and other bits of blissful integrety. Strange don't you think how some of us want credit and glory and others just look for well just look. Observe things around you and who knows what you will gain from it. Scary how you can distance your self from things and yet be able to work with things all the same. Focus, concentration, centering your self on one idea and going with it. The idea of multi tasking is inheretintly flawed. Sorry can't spell today. Back to the flaw... think about when you create something with your heart, soul and mind you have put everything into that one moment. You weren't playing guitar, baking brownies and splitting atoms while you banged out the perfect story or painting now did you. Rather you set about a task and did it. Did it well too didn't you. Anyway ignore minor flaws of people take them for what they are and enjoy the good parts of them. Express things not in some neo spirtual waka waka way but through yourself. Give time to those things that matter and feel.

One day away to the weekend.

So the week has zoomed on by, playing with that evil art site. Family can be pretty entertaining especially when it comes to the old technology thing. Anyway after a day of playing with favicon and everything else it's time to go home. The weather is definitely turning though and winter is in the air and in the bones. Funny how time moves - most definitely not the linear bliss most people confess to, I wouldn't say that it's circular either. Rather, in my humble opinion, it moves around and around, ebbing and flowing, waxing and waning like the moon until you end up somewhere. Why else does time fly and then crawl. Tacking human like characterstics to time the man crawled out of the box. Final is hopefully next week and I need to watch more cartoons. Oh and bake some more stuff. Later.

Times of the Season

So Thanksgiving has come and gone. All in all a good thing, that is the holiday being gone. In reality, I'm not too keen on the whole overstuffing and rooting for the white guys that took over some territory as if they had a bigger better purpose. Such is the ways of "civilazation" and a fairly ugly thing that can be. This week started off all right. Strange discussions of accounts and other things. Basically just answered a bunch of emails and worked on some junk. The brother went back to LA. Hopefully he'll expound on his site, http://paul.stangellman.com/. It kind of blows coming from a family of artists but then again you don't have to worry so much that you are a die hard conservative. Looking forward to Friday, art shows and openings galore. Cookie baking starts this weekend and that is a truly wonderful thing. Something about baking, not sure what -- kind of like chemistry but better tasting and no pretty colors.

Water Worlds

lj-mood: annoyed

I want to be part of the no umbrella nation. Talk to the world on my cell phone and feel the coolness of water on my unprotected head. But still, I don't want to get sick and truly do enjoy the gentle sound of the rain hitting then sliding down my nylon protected self. Could it be, should it be so. What makes a person wet and another dry. Is it the deodarant they where or an incredebily cute person strolling by, these are the questions that remain to be asked and answered. Water is a boiling it's time to make tea.

Notes from corners of mind

So I'm cruising into work and as usual somehow end up behind some behometh of a truck. This one though proclaims to the world that it is hauling Wholesale Lubricants. Naturally my mind in it's noncaffienated too early in the morning begins to wander. Is this lubricant for cars, trucks, small mammals. Are we talking grease here from the vats of some seriously ill fast food joint or perhaps, just perhaps. Could this be the motherlode of Astroglide. Doomed to travel the highways and byways of the sexual universe providing lube to all who need and enjoy the good ride. Crikeys got to go to a meeting. Later.

Days Off

So I've got a couple of days off. I do like the old job when they send you off to training. For some reasons my thoughts turned to my bro and thought I'd upload a painting of his. My folks have a show coming up in December. If anyone is curious check out http://www.stangellman.com/ for a look. Nice looking watercolors, prints and what nots. Anyway Madako my car is calling my name and I need to go home. Take it easy and work on stuff.

Brave the slovenly trails

Ah the world revolves and so does space. Actually the world revolves around hoop earrings and fuck me pumps. The accessory of street walkers and fellow workers everywhere. Women's clothing boggles my mind. Not that what guys wear doesn't but it's more or less an instance of degrees. Sweet and sexy or smart and full of hate. Looking glass do your worst. I do apologize for starting on what could turn into an incredibly stupid rant but hey. All in all no complaints really. Yes there are issues with the world and yes there is internal strife but I am not going to vent at least not today. Just wanted to hear my fingers typing before dashing off to class. Work hard, practice like you mean it and don't forget to share a smile every now and then.

History Junk

I'm not sure how I ended up with this entertaining blip of historical junk but it's fun none the less.

Next time we think "Poor Me", consider this.

Next time you are washing your hands and complain because the water temperature isn't just how you like it, think about how things used to be...

Here are some facts about the 1500s:

Most people got married in June because they took their yearly bath in May and still smelled pretty good by June. However, they were starting to smell so brides carried a bouquet of flowers to hide the body odor. Hence the custom today of carrying a bouquet when getting married.

Baths consisted of a big tub filled with hot water. The man of the house had the privilege of the nice clean water, then all the other sons and men, then the women and finally the children - last of all the babies. By then the water was so dirty you could actually lose someone in it - hence the saying, "Don't throw the baby out with the bath water."

Houses had thatched roofs - thick straw piled high, with no wood underneath. It was the only place for animals to get warm, so all the dogs, cats and other small animals (mice, bugs) lived in the roof. When it rained it became slippery and sometimes the animals would slip and fall off the roof -hence the saying "It's raining cats and dogs."

There was nothing to stop things from falling into the house. This posed a real problem in the bedroom where bugs and other droppings could really mess up your nice clean bed - hence, a bed with big posts and a sheet hung over the top afforded some protection. That's how canopy beds came into existence.

The floor was dirt. Only the wealthy had something other than dirt, hence the saying "dirt poor."

The wealthy had slate floors that would get slippery in the winter when wet, so they spread thresh (straw) on the floor to help keep their footing. As the winter wore on, they kept adding more thresh until when you opened the door it would all start slipping outside. A piece of wood was placed in the entranceway - hence, a "thresh hold."

In those old days, they cooked in the kitchen with a big kettle that always hung over the fire. Every day they lit the fire and added things to the pot. They ate mostly vegetables and did not get much meat. They would eat the stew for dinner, leaving leftovers in the pot to get cold overnight and then start over the next day. Sometimes the stew had food in it that had been there for quite a while - hence the rhyme, "Peas porridge hot, peas porridge cold, peas porridge in the pot nine days old."

Sometimes they could obtain pork, which made them feel quite special. When visitors came over, they would hang up their bacon to show off. It was a sign of wealth that a man "could bring home the bacon."They would cut off a little to share with guests and would all sit around and "chew the fat."

Those with money had plates made of pewter. Food with high acid content caused some of the lead to leach onto the food, causing lead poisoning and death. This happened most often with tomatoes, so for the next 400 years or so, tomatoes were considered poisonous.

Bread was divided according to status. Workers got the burnt bottom of the loaf, the family got the middle, and guests got the top, or "upper crust."

Lead cups were used to drink ale or whisky. The combination would sometimes knock them out for a couple of days. Someone walking along the road would take them for dead and prepare them for burial. They were laid out on the kitchen table for a couple of days and the family would gather around and eat and drink and wait and see if they would wake up - hence the custom of holding a "wake."

England is old and small and the local folks started running out of places to bury people. So they would dig up coffins and would take the bones to a "bone-house" and reuse the grave. When reopening these coffins, 1 out of 25 coffins were found to have scratch marks on the inside and they realized they had been burying some people alive. So they thought they would tie a string on the wrist of the corpse, lead it through the coffin and up through the ground and tie it to a bell

Someone would have to sit out in the graveyard all night (the "graveyard shift") to listen for the bell; thus, someone could be "saved by the bell" or was considered a "dead ringer."

And that's the truth ... Who said that History was boring?

Passing Along a Voting Tidbit

Received from a very good friend and thought it worry to pass on:


At about the time our original 13 states adopted their new constitution, in the year 1787, Alexander Tyler (a Scottish history professor at The University of Edinborough) had this to say about "The Fall of The Athenian Republic" some 2,000 years prior.

"A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, (which is) always followed by a dictatorship."

"The average age of the worlds greatest civilizations from the beginning of history, has been about 200 years. During those 200 years, these nations always progressed through the following sequence:

From Bondage to spiritual faith;
From spiritual faith to great courage;
From courage to liberty;
From liberty to abundance;
From abundance to complacency;
From complacency to apathy;
From apathy to dependence;
From dependence back into bondage"

Professor Joseph Olson of Hamline University School of Law, St. Paul, Minnesota, points out some interesting facts concerning the most recent Presidential election:

Population of counties won by:
Gore=127 million
Bush=143 million

Square miles of land won by:
Gore=580,000
Bush=22,427,000

States won by:
Gore=19
Bush=29

Murder rate per 100,000 residents in counties won by:
Gore=13.2
Bush=2.1

Professor Olson adds:
"In aggregate, the map of the territory Bush won was mostly the land owned by the tax-paying citizens of this great country. Gore's territory mostly encompassed those citizens living in government-owned tenements and living off government welfare..."

Olson believes the U.S. is now somewhere between the "complacency and "apathy" phase of Professor Tyler's definition of democracy; with some 40 percent of the nation's population already having reached the "governmental dependency" phase.

Pass this along to help everyone realize just how much is at stake in this Election Year and that apathy is the greatest danger to our freedom.

November 2

November 2

Vote. Four letters that mean so much to some folks but little to others. You have the privledge and honor to do something so simple. Ensure your freedom and the freedom of others. It's the little things that make all the difference. This I truly believe. The little things that later on life you realize aren't that little. There are times when it's easier to just "suck it up" than blast someone to little pieces. This isn't a rant about who is better or if hate is a family value or any of that bumper sticker, look at me look at me brouhaha bs it's simply this. Time is a concept that's all, but in this lifetime with it's standard of time enforcing itself on you, you can work your magic for better - worse - or nothing. Sorry about the punctuation going to hell here but hey . Anyway, smile at someone... greet folks with a gentle good morning. Don't ask how they are just say hey. Who knows but tommorow will come and perhaps I'll be a better person but hopefully I'll just be working on it like everyone else. Get out there and vote. Peace and beauty with you.