Image: Blue Steel

click photo to enlarge
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Joni Mitchell Performs "Coyote: With The Band Circa 1976

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"Not suitable to live in this world" — A new collage of a grey alien (artist unknown)

click this grey image to enlarge. . .

I bumped into this collage/image on an Italian website. I ran the text through free translation which produced this bizarre (and unedited) Italian to English translation. It didn't tell me much about where the image came from, or what it meant, but it did provide a interestingly bent Italglish text:

"Awful days. rare the moments in which I take again myself from my autismo. in those moments - rare - I leave me. I is not suitable to live in this world. learned to do it. and the results are better of those of those who retain themselves native. but to live in this world does not stick to my nature..

"I like Isserly already. I like Isserly - That you are a sort of Mantis to hunting of vodsel I had had to long strokes the suspect. Then it dispels from the empathy. To find myself it it nude and raw here I confess you a little one puts the shudders. But you put however the shudders. "

The Itaian version:

"giorni pessimi. rari i momenti in cui mi riprendo dal mio autismo. in uei momenti - rari - mi abbandono.io non sono adatta a vivere in questo mondo. ho imparato a farlo. e i risultati sono migliori di quelli di coloro che si ritengono autoctoni. ma vivere in questo mondo non attiene alla mia natura..

"io come Isserlygià.io come Isserly

"Che tu sia una sorta di Mantide a caccia di vodsel ne avevo avuto a lunghi tratti il sospetto. Poi fugato dall'empatia. Ritrovarmelo nudo e crudo qui ti confesso un po' mette i brividi. Ma tu metti comunque i brividi. "sottopelle"

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Jumpers From Seattle's Aurora Bridge Become A Hazard On The Ground

An Associated Press story today by Donna Gordon Blankinship goes into the toll Aurora Bridge jumpers take on office workers in Seattle's Fremont neighborhood.

"Seattle is becoming hazardous to the mental health of the dot-com employees and other office workers below, who keep seeing people jump to their deaths from the span.

"Thirty-nine people over the past decade have committed suicide off the 155-foot-high Aurora Bridge _ eight in 2006 alone _ and counselors are regularly brought in to help office workers deal with the shock of seeing the leap or the bloody aftermath. "

The bridge now has numerous signs and billboards and ads for the local suicide prevention center.




Bridge graffiti "You are magnificent."
and "Don't jump."
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Poem: Changes 30/Clinging

click the sunset to enlarge

1
Fire has no form but clings
To the burning object.
Water pours down from heaven

And fire flames up from the earth.
What is dark clings to what is light.
A luminous body emitting light

Must have within itself
Straw for the fire,
Or it will burn itself out.

Everything that gives
Light depends on the object
To which it clings.

The sun and moon cling to heaven,
And the bugs, trees, and people
Cling to the earth.

2
The mind shut off from the outside
In sleep reconnects with the world
And the yellow light streaming down.

Later, in the setting sun
We bewail the approach of old age
And peek with dread

At the day
When all the revels
Are ended.
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Alien Lore No. 98 - UFOs Over Charlotte

PHOTO BY CHARLES MILLER;
cropped and lightened by Charlotte.com for clarity

According to Charles Miller: "Last night just after 8:30, I was in the backyard smoking a cig and saw a light coming in toward Kings Mountain from the south-southeast. ... I went in the house and got my camera and came back out in the front yard to shoot it. "

"Emergency dispatchers around Charlotte handle wacky 911 calls each night. But Wednesday, agencies got the same type of unusual call: A hovering light was in the sky. Others described it as a plane that might be in trouble. A blueish glow. A fire in the sky. A light moving too slow to be a plane. The calls came into Iredell, Lincoln, Mooresville and Huntersville emergency dispatchers around 8 p.m. -- with even a dispatcher's dad calling in a sighting and one Lincoln County officer reportedly seeing it. "

There were, however, "No immediate reports of little green men with ray guns." read the entire story in The Charlotte Observer.
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Why I Deleted The Comments From The Toxic Doctor Story

The editors of Al This Is That have deleted all 13 comments from this thread, as well as the stories that engendered all the comments. The whole thing has become a tilt-a-whirl ride of people pretending to be other people; people attacking other people who were pretending to be other people; people posting with aliases stating only who they were not; and a raft of accusations and cross-accusations; moves and countermoves; posing, posturing, lies, and delusion. You probably know I don't place a high premium on The Truth, or more accurately, what often passes for The Truth, because The Truth is usually not all it's cracked up to be.

If you know me "in real life," you know that truth may now and then take backstage to a knee-slapper or a twisted, 98% fictional, and often libelous, side-trip. There are some things better than the truth. No. 1?: The music of human laughter. This whole Michael Toubbeh trip suddenly became a karmic burden, and the vibes were beginning to stink the place up.

Once I start editing comments and removing stories, well. . .then, it's no longer All This Is That, but a blog for everyone who agrees with me, where those victims of parody, or targets of stories, can't respond. Democracy is for everyone, and I'm just not ready to change the name of the blog to Some Of This Is Sort Of That Sometimes.
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When you strike at a king, you must kill him

“When you strike at a king, you must kill him” - Ralph Waldo Emerson

"If you come at the king, you best not miss" - I can't figure out who said this (tell me!).

People claim Machiavelli said: "It's the downside of conspiracies that they have to succeed." I don't think downside was au courant in Machiavelli's time. It's either a bogus quote, or a shabby translation.


click Old King by Georges Rouault to enlarge...

Every one of these quotes are really about the consequences of failure. I've seen this dilemma in office politics more than once. If you're going to attempt to take out the guy above you, or many levels above you, you do not want to strike to wound. When you wound your target, the consequences of failure are catastrophic.

We're often told that police are trained to shoot to kill. Or you don't shoot.
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Happy Birthday to canned beer!

It was 72 years ago today that canned beer was first sold to the public. Eventually canned beer led to the demise of the literally thousands of local breweries, as the big national breweries were now able to ship their product all over the country.

In 1935, the Gottfried Krueger Brewing Company delivered 2,000 cans of Krueger's Finest Beer and Krueger's Cream Ale to the thirsty in Richmond, Virginia. It mushroomed from there, and today half the beer sold in this country comes in cans.



To learn more, go to This Day On History. They even have a canned beer video. Indeed, there is even a Canned Beer History website.
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Lyrics to Jimmy Driftwood's Tennessee Stud

Here are the lyrics to one of my favorite bluegrass songs by one of my favorite bluegrass performers. Doc Watson performed a masterful version with the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band on their "Will The Circle Be Unbroken?," the album that hooked me on the 'grass.


Tennessee Stud
by Jimmy Driftwood


Along about eighteen and twenty-five
I left Tennessee very much alive
I never would have got through the Arkansas mud
If I hadn't been a-ridin on the Tennessee stud

I had some trouble with my sweetheart's pa
One of her brothers was a bad outlaw
I sent her a letter by my Uncle Fud
And I rode away on the Tennessee stud

CHORUS:
The Tennessee stud was long and lean
The color of the sun and his eyes were green
He had the nerve and he had the blood
And there never was a hoss like the Tennessee stud

One day I was ridin' in the beautiful land
And ran smack into an Indian band
They jerked their knives with a whoop and a yell
But I rode away like a bat out of hell

Well I circled their camp for a time or two
And showed what a Tennessee hoss could do
And them redskin boys never got my blood
'Cause I was a-ridin' on the Tennessee stud

CHORUS

We drifted on down into no man's land
We crossed the river called the Rio Grande
I raced my hoss with the Spaniards bold
Till I got me a skin full of silver and gold

Me and a gambler we couldn't agree
We got in a fight over Tennessee
We jerked our guns, he fell with a thud
And I got away on the Tennessee stud

CHORUS

Well, I got as lonesome as a man can be
Dreamin' of my girl in Tennessee
The Tennessee stud's green eyes turned blue
'Cause he was a-dreamin' of a sweetheart too

We loped on back across Arkansas
I whipped her brother and I whipped her pa
I found that girl with the golden hair
And she was ridin' on a Tennessee mare

CHORUS

Stirrup to stirrup and side by side
We crossed the mountains and the valleys wide
We came to Big Muddy and we forded the flood
On the Tennessee mare and the Tennessee stud

Pretty little baby on the cabin floor
Little hoss colt playin' 'round the door
I love the girl with golden hair
And the Tennessee stud loves the Tennessee mare

CHORUS

©1958 Warden Music Company, Inc. (BMI)
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The Seattle Olympic Sculpture Park Opens!

Last weekend's New York Times article told the story. NYC has sculpture park envy! And well they should. Somehow Seattle assembled nine acres of prime land and beach north of Pier 70. We couldn't get our act together to build a train or subway system, or to fix our decrepit Viaduct or the Rosselini Floating Bridge, but that's another rant. This is a time to celebrate. The park is a home run, as much for the sculpture as the park itself—a tour de force of architectural landscaping. WEISS / MANFREDI Architecture created this z-shaped park running from Western Avenue to Elliott Bay. The PACCAR Pavilion has sweeping views of the Olympic Mountains. My only regret about the park is that they couldn't somehow level one office building so you could view the Seattle P.I. globe, just up the block from the park. It's a nineteen-ton pop masterpiece.

We attended the park's grand opening on Sunday. Online, you can take an interactive tour or visit the Seattle Art Museum's web site.

Unfortunately, none of the photographs I've seen of the park do it justice. If you follow the trails, the park leads, eventually, to a beautiful pebble beach, with piles of driftwood to arrange and rearrange into forts and ad hoc sculptures. The beachfront includes a salmon haven (habitat?) of some sort.

There are three levels of art at work: bridges over the road and railroad tracks, trellises, native plantings (I think Salal and Oregon Grape, etc.) , cool benches and walkways and paths up the hills and down to the beach; sculptural works by the likes of Louise Nevelson, Mark di Suvero, Alexander Calder, Richard Serra, and many others, and installations and exhibits in the pavillion. Is this cool, or what?
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Poem: Changes 29/The Abysmal

1
Every step forward or backward
Leads into danger
With no hope of escape

Only survival
Like a manacled prisoner
Behind grey concrete walls

2
The abyss
Is filled to the rim
And action only mires

You in danger
Plunging you further
Into the abyss

3
To survive you must be like water
Surging in over around and through
Filling up all the places

Through which it flows
From the cataracts
To the waterfalls

In your cage you must be you
Where nothing makes you
Lose the way

Where nothing
Makes you
Lose yourself.
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