Painting of Caligula

Ut enim ad minima veniam, quis nostrum exercitationem ullam corporis suscipit laboriosam, nisi ut aliquid ex ea commodi consequatur?

Sed ut perspiciatis unde omnis iste natus error sit voluptatem accusantium doloremque laudantium, totam rem aperiam, eaque ipsa quae ab illo inventore veritatis et quasi architecto beatae vitae dicta sunt explicabo. Nemo enim ipsam voluptatem quia voluptas sit aspernatur aut odit aut fugit, sed quia consequuntur magni dolores eos qui ratione voluptatem sequi nesciunt. Neque porro quisquam est, qui dolorem ipsum quia dolor sit amet, consectetur, adipisci velit, sed quia non numquam eius modi tempora incidunt ut labore et dolore magnam aliquam quaerat voluptatem. Ut enim ad minima veniam, quis nostrum exercitationem ullam corporis suscipit laboriosam, nisi ut aliquid ex ea commodi consequatur? Quis autem vel eum iure reprehenderit qui in ea voluptate velit esse quam nihil molestiae consequatur, vel illum qui dolorem eum fugiat quo voluptas nulla pariatur.

Ut enim ad minima veniam, quis nostrum exercitationem ullam corporis suscipit laboriosam, nisi ut aliquid ex ea commodi consequatur? Nemo enim ipsam voluptatem quia voluptas sit aspernatur aut odit aut fugit, sed quia consequuntur magni dolores eos qui ratione voluptatem sequi nesciunt. Sed ut perspiciatis unde omnis iste natus error sit voluptatem accusantium doloremque laudantium, totam rem aperiam, eaque ipsa quae ab illo inventore veritatis et quasi architecto beatae vitae dicta sunt explicabo. Neque porro quisquam est, qui dolorem ipsum. . .

Painting: Grey Alien No. 7

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Another Missing Kid (From The 19th Century)

Click Poster To Enlarge.

This child, abducted in 1894, is said to "have been abducted by an organ grinder[1] and may be touring the country with and collecting pennies for one of this class."


[1]
A musician who plays a hurdy-gurdy[2] and usually performs on the street. In popular images and accounts, the organ grinder is often accompanied by a trained monkey. The kidnapped child appears to have been snatched to perform the monkey's traditional duties.

[2] A musical instrument that makes music by rotation of a cylinder studded with pegs (like the music boxes you may have had when you were a child).

Instructions From The C.I.A.

Here are a couple of panels (translated) from a manual our C.I.A. distributed in Nicaragua.


The C.I.A. encouraged the Contras, and regular folks to rise up against the leftist Sandinista government at any cost. . .even by destroying and destabilizing the country's infrastructure.
---o0o---

Audioblog - Poem: The Prevaricator

He refurbished each retelling with new locales and personnel,
Variants and permutations to keep it fresh and new.
He turned the truth and the truth chicaned.
Those tall tales soared into the ozone

And came up gasping for air. When he told a whopper,
Great Moby rolled three times in Davy Jones' locker.
He needed a Croy to map whom he told what to
When and why, who they knew he knew and how,

Who had been where, and with whom when
Or why about whom, where and which,
When they knew what and how.
He peddled wholesale lies

When retail truths would sell undiscounted,
Adding loops and conditions
To those overloaded circuits humming
With crazed electrons. Soon enough,

Like a tree in the woods
When no one hears it fall,
A lie is just a mighty wind blowing
With no one to hear it at all.
---o0o---

Copyright (c) 2005 by Jack Brummet

Big Star Set To Release New Album In August, 2005

Big Star--Alex Chilton and Jody Stephens, together with members since 1993, The Posies' Ken Stringfellow and Jon Auer--have a new album set to be released by Rykodisc.

The great British magazine MOJO have this to say:

"...the resulting 12 track disc has a strong collaborative feel-Chilton sings on six trax, the others(Jon and Ken) split the others-that recalls Big Star's debut #1 Record, and production that mines the spontaneous approach of the Sister Lovers sessions. "We've done three studio albums and all three were different from each other," say Jody Stephens. "The new one fits in with that trend". . .More familiar fare comes in the form of Auer's edgy Lady Sweet, which hints at the old Radio City gem Life Is White-Stringfellow's layered Beach Boys pastiche I'll Turn My Back On The Sun and Stephens's Rubber Soul-inspired contributions February's Quiet and Best Chance We'll Ever Have."

---o0o---

Poem: Perspective

Step back
And the whole machine
Wheels by
In a Gaussian Blur.
---o0o---

Free Hitler Heads, While They Last

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A Long Ten Years Without The Grateful Dead

Jerry Garcia with The Grateful Dead,
Seattle, Friday May 26, 1995.

Click photo to enlarge



In many reviews, people describe 5-26-95 as the last great Dead show, and one of the best of the 90's after the departure of Bruce Hornsby. It's been ten long years since this final Seattle Dead show. After leaving Seattle, they played 25 more times, with their final show on 7-9-95. In this picture from that day, Jerry looks happy, and healthy (angelic almost, with his halo of white hair and beard in the spotlights); he smiled throughout the show. He was in the zone.

Dave Hokit and I went to the Thursday and Friday shows. Thursday, we each brought our oldest children (then ranging from 8 to 10 1/2). Thursday, The Dead played another good set and played one of my favorites, The Wheel, for the last time ever. Friday we hooked up with a show buddy we'd witnessed with some envy the previous night; we merged our commisaries, with us kicking in copious amounts of gin, tonic, bitters and a backpack full of ice we smuggled in. The temperature was in the 80's and I don't think I ever anticipated a show as much in my life. They opened with the sacred trilogy Help-->Slipknot-->Franklin's Tower. Halftime was a frantic, zoo. And it was on to a great second set and encore.

The music lives on. The band still frequently releases selected shows and DVD videos of the band. There are hundreds of stellar shows, and about 2,900 entire shows available for downloading (legitimate and free) on archive.org.

Setlist for 5-26-95: Help On The Way-> Slipknot!-> Franklin's Tower, The Same Thing, Loose Lucy, Eternity*, Don't Ease Me In Scarlet Begonias-> Fire On The Mountain-> Playin' In The Band-> Uncle John's Band-> Drums-> Space-> Easy Answers, Stella Blue-> Good Lovin', Encore: Liberty
---o0o---

President Ronald Reagan On War And Aliens

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To the students of Fallston High School in Fallston, Maryland, on December 4, 1985, he said:

"I couldn't help but say to him [General Secretary Gorbachev], just think how easy his task and mine might be in these meetings that we held if suddenly there was a threat to this world from some other species from another planet outside in the universe. We'd forget all the little local differences that we have between our countries and we would find out once and for all that we really are all human beings on this earth together.

"Well, I don't suppose we can wait for some alien race to come down and threaten us...."

To the 42nd General Assembly of the United Nations, September 21, 1987, he said:

"In our obsession with antagonisms of the moment, we often forget how much unites all the members of humanity. Perhaps we need some outside universal threat to make us recognize this common bond. I occasionally think how quickly our differences worldwide would vanish if we were facing an alien threat from outside this world. And yet, I ask you, is not an alien force already among us? What could be more alien to the universal aspirations of our peoples than war and the threat of war?"

---o0o---

The Sandra Day O'Connor Bummer

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As LBJ once said "better the S.O.B. we know than the S.O.B. we don't know." Justice O'Connor started out on the hard right, and moderated her position over time. She has been the crucial swing vote many times now.

You can lay big money down on President Bush not naming a centrist to fill her shoes. President Clinton pulled toward the middle on his Supremes choices, but I just don't have the same faith in POTUS.

With his increasingly weak-seeming Majority Leader, Dr. Frist, and his polling numbers in the toilet, he may just have to moderate his course. We'll know soon.
---o0o---

Sasquatch And Bigfoot Sightings In Washington State

click photograph to enlarge...

I live in Seattle, in the heart of Sasquatch country. King County, of which Seattle is the county seat, had some of the highest numbers of sightings (King County in fact runs right up to the Cascade Mountain foothills, where there must be armies of Bigfoot!). I wrote about camping and fishing in Bigfoot Country in "Fishing With The Old Man" - see the January 2005 All This Is That archives.

Sightings of Bigfoot by county in Washington State:

county-# sightings-last reported sighting
Adams - no data
Asotin - no data
Benton 2 11/16/2004
Chelan 10 5/16/2005
Clallam 9 4/7/2005
Clark 8 10/13/2004
Columbia 4 10/4/2001
Cowlitz 9 5/16/2004
Douglas - no data
Ferry 1 9/10/2004
Franklin - no data
Garfield - no data
Grant - no data
Grays Harbor 20 5/21/2005
Island 1 10/15/2004
Jefferson 12 5/16/2005
King 29 11/21/2004
Kitsap 6 11/16/2004
Kittitas 11 12/21/2004
Klickitat 6 5/12/2005
Lewis 19 5/31/2005
Lincoln 2 10/13/2004
Mason 12 2/18/2005
Okanogan 10 5/16/2005
Pacific 1 1/18/2001
Pend Oreille 5 7/17/2003
Pierce 32 5/31/2005
San Juan - no data
Skagit - 5 5/16/2005
Skamania 47 3/25/2005
Snohomish 28 5/5/2005
Spokane 3 3/20/2005
Stevens 8 10/17/2004
Thurston 11 10/10/2004
Wahkiakum 2 3/23/2005
Walla Walla 14 11/26/2003
Whatcom 14 5/16/2005
Whitman - no data
Yakima 17 10/15/2004

---o0o---