Poem: Changes 36/How to keep moving in the darkening of the light

1
The sun sinks
Beneath the earth
The sky darkens

2
You keep the inner light aflame
While outwardly yielding
Hide the light under a bushel no

You're going to let it shine
And not be shaken or swept
By circumstance

Play dumb play slow play luckless
Power is like fastening
A target to your back

When difficulty surrounds
You like a moat
You persevere

Spoof lie omit mislead spin
Don't awaken enmity
Be the stealthy smiler

With the knife beneath your cloak
Let things pass
Because all things must pass

3
With grandiose resolve
A man endeavors
To soar above all obstacles

The Lord of Light is subordinate to
And wounded by the Lord of Darkness
The injury is not fatal

But a hindrance
Help is on the way
The wounded man ignores himself

And thinks only of saving the others
Their great leader is captured
There is no longer hope

And you are able
To leave the scene of disaster
before the storm breaks

4
First he climbed up to heaven,
Then plunged into the depths of the earth.
Here the climax of the darkening is reached

The dark power
held so high a place
it could wound all on the side of the light.

5
In the end evil perishes in its own darkness
Like a squid simmered in its own ink
Because evil must fall at the moment

It has overcome the good,
And consumed the energy
To which it owed its duration.
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G.O.P. in league with Taliban and Al Qaeda?

click photo to enlarge

A New York man sometimes called Michael Mixon, and also known as Abdul Tawala Ibn Ali Alishtari, is accused of trying to help terrorists in Afghanistan, according to the Associated Press. Over the last several years he has donated $15,000 to the House Republicans' campaign committee.

From 2002 into 2004, Michael Mixon gave donations ranging from $500 to $5,000 to the Republican Congressional Committee. At the same time, Mixon a/k/a Abdul Tawala Ibn Ali Alishtari accepted money to transfer $152,000 to Pakistan and Afghanistan to support an Afghanistan terrorist training camp.

Does this mean that the Republican Party are in league with terrorists? I'm not sure, but let's make them deny it! After all, in April, 2006, a National Intelligence Estimate concluded that Bush's Iraq War had become the "cause celebre" that helped spread and germinate Islamic extremism around the globe.
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The Donner Party Was Rescued 160 Years Ago Today (Albeit A Little Late For A Few Members Of The Party)

click etching to enlarge

160 years ago today, in 1847, the first rescuers reached the surviving members of the Donner Party. These California-bound emigrants were stranded by snow in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, and famously resorted to cannibalism. The story appears today on History.com's This Day On History.

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painting: Torso

click to enlarge

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Video: The Beatles last performance--Get Back on a London rooftop (with Billy Preston on keyboards)

The Beatles final performance took place on a London rooftop outside their recording studio, with a few dozen people watching. Fortunately it was filmed, and it's on You Tube (at least until Apple Corps pulls it!).

The Beatles recorded Get Back (and performed this concert) with Billy Preston in April, 1969. The single—one of their last—was on the charts 23 weeks, and peaked at No. 1 for six weeks.


You may need to click play 2x

Get Back
by John Lennon and Paul McCartney

Jo Jo was a man
Who thought he was a loner
But he knew it couldn't last
Jo Jo left his home in Tuscon, Arizona
For some California grass

Get back, get back
Get back to where you once belonged
Get back, get back
Get back to where you once belonged
Get back Jo Jo

Go home

Get back, get back
Back to where you once belonged
Get back, get back
Back to where you once belonged
Ooh, get back Jo

Sweet Loretta Modern thought she was a woman
But she was another man
All the girls around her said she's got it comin'
But she gets it while she can

Get back, get back
Get back to where you once belonged
Get back, get back
Get back to where you once belonged
Get back Loretta

Go home

Get back, get back
Get back to where you once belonged
Yeah get back, get back
Get back to where you once belonged

whoooo

Get back Loretta
Your mummy's waiting for you
Wearing her high heel shoes
And her low neck sweater
Get back home Loretta

Get back, get back
Get back to where you once belonged
Yeah get back, get back
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Painting: Keelin Curran deconstructed/reconstructed

click keelin to enlarge

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The folk song "Side By Side"

Oh! We ain't got a barrel of money
Maybe we're ragged and funny
But we'll travel along
Singing a song, side by side

Don't know what's comin' tomorrow
Maybe it's trouble and sorrow
But we'll travel the road
Sharin' our load, side by side

Through all kinds of weather
What if the sky should fall
Just as long as we're together
It doesn't matter at all

When they've all had their quarrels and parted
We'll be the same as we started
Just travellin' along, singing a song
Side by side; side by side

________________________________

And then, there is a twisted British version:


Side By Side

We got married on, Sunday,
The party didn't finish till, Monday,
And when the guests had gone home,
We were all alone, Side by side.

Well we got ready for bed then,
And I very nearly dropped dead when,
Her teeth and her hair, she placed on the chair,
Side by side.

Well the shock did very near kill me,
When a glass eye did fall,
Then her leg and then her arm,
She placed against the chair (wall?),

Well this left me broken hearted,
For most of my wife had departed,
So I slept on the chair,
There was more of her there,
Side by side.
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Video and Lyrics: Elvis Costello Performs Nick Lowe's (What's So Funny 'Bout) Peace, Love, And Understanding?

(What's So Funny 'Bout)Peace, Love And Understanding?
by Nick Lowe

As I walk through
This wicked world
Searchin' for light in the darkness of insanity.

I ask myself
Is all hope lost?
Is there only pain and hatred, and misery?

And each time I feel like this inside,
There's one thing I wanna know:
What's so funny 'bout peace love & understanding? Ohhhh
What's so funny 'bout peace love & understanding?

And as I walked on
Through troubled times
My spirit gets so downhearted sometimes
So where are the strong
And who are the trusted?
And where is the harmony?
Sweet harmony.

'Cause each time I feel it slippin' away, just makes me wanna cry.
What's so funny 'bout peace love & understanding? Ohhhh
What's so funny 'bout peace love & understanding?


So where are the strong?
And who are the trusted?
And where is the harmony?
Sweet harmony.

'Cause each time I feel it slippin' away, just makes me wanna cry.
What's so funny 'bout peace love & understanding? Ohhhh
What's so funny 'bout peace love & understanding? Ohhhh
What's so funny 'bout peace love & understanding?

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Harry Potter: Hey mates! Look at me bum! Daniel Radcliffe Nude Onstage In Equus

click on Daniel Radcliffe's bum to zoom in

"Warner Bros have been building up their publicity machine for Harry's first - chaste - screen kiss when the next Potter film (Harry Potter And The Order Of The Phoenix) comes out in the summer. "Now our star is out there doing full-frontal sex. We've been blown completely out of the water by this."

In what is one of the most memorable examples of career suicide ever committed, Daniel Radcliffe began starring in Equus in the U.K., appearing nude in a long scene. Executives at Warner Bros, the studio behind the film versions of the Potter books, were"utterly dismayed" by publicity shots of Radcliffe naked. Studio chiefs are petrified this could possibly put the skids to their multi-million-dollar cash cow. Some folks even alluded to Radcliffe being replaced as the young wizard. His naked sex partner in the play, Joanna Christie, 24, plays the stablegirl with whom he has a relationship.

You think the suits at Warner freaked out about the publicity stills? How do they feel abut Radcliffe airing out his willie for a full ten minutes on stage?

Equus previewed in London last night, and opens February 27th.


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House of Representatives Tells The President To Take His Surge, And. . .Uh. . .Insert It Into A Place Where "The Sun Don't Shine"

Click The White House Bummer Flag To Enlarge

The Democratic-controlled House lobbed a toothless, but still stinging, rejection of President Bush's Surge™ into Iraq today, according to the AP.

So begins a potentially hairy showdown between the executive and legislative branches over The President's madness prosecuting an unpopular war and unjust war, with acceptable losses of 3,100 American boys and girls (and climbing).



It was a bi-partisan and non-binding vote: 246-182.
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Evolution by an unknown artist

Frank Zappa & The Mothers of Invention—If We'd All Been Living In California "lyrics"

FZ put a tape of a band meeting on his album Uncle Meat. The band was obviously struggling--making a few hundred bucks a month each. I don't know which band member Frank was talking to, but it was one of these guys:

Ray collins (vocals)
Jimmy carl black (drums)
Roy estrada (electric bass)
Don preston (electric piano)
Billy mundi (drums)
Bunk gardner (piccolo, flute, clarinet, bass clarinet, soprano saxophone, alto saxophone, tenor saxophone, bassoon)
Ian underwood (electric organ, piano, harpsichord, celeste, flute, clarinet, alto saxophone, baritone saxophone)
Arthur tripp (drums, timpani, vibes, marimba, xylophone, wood blocks, bells, small chimes)
Motorhead sherwood (tenor saxophone, tambourine)
Ruth komanoff (marimba, vibes)

"If We'd All Been Living In California"
Frank Zappa and an unknown Mother of Invention

FZ: Ok, now you still want to get your name in the magazines. And he wants 500 dollars a month.

Unknown Mother: Where does it come from? We worked one gig this month. And thats....so what do we get? Two hundred dollars for this gig up here if we're lucky. If we're lucky, we'll get two hundred. And it will be two weeks before we get it.

FZ: Probably.

Unknown Mother: I mean after all, what is all this sh*t in the newspaper? If we got such a big name, how come. . .we're starving man! This f**king band is starving! And we've been starving for three years. I realize it takes a long time but God damn it! Does it take another five, ten years from now.

FZ: There's some months when you're not going to work as much as other months. There's some months when you're going to make a lot of money and if you average it out, you do make more than two hundred dollars a month.

Unknown Mother: Expenses are sure high too. If we'd all been living in California, it would have been different.

FZ: If we'd all been living in California, we wouldn't have worked at all.

Unknown Mother: Oh, that's true. Well, we're not working now anyway. We worked one gig this month Frank. What's wrong with getting two months in a row of this good money? Or three months in a row? Then we could afford to take three of four months off and everybody can. . .After the first month I can get just enough ahead, but if I had two more months man, I'll get ahead. Because I'm not living very extravagantly, I'll tell you for sure.
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