Poem: Vision, education, and the clock

The more I see,
The more there is to see.
---o0o---

Poem: One of those days

It was one of those days
Where the darkside Jiminy Cricket

Kept landing on my shoulders
To whisper redrum redrum...

You don't have to take that.
It was one of those days

Where my smile felt like a rictus
and I lied every time someone asked

How are you?
It was one of those days

I'd rather have skipped
But I trudged on

Dragging my wooden leg
Behind me.

It was one of those days
Where I wouldn't have been shocked

To have a Buddhist tell me
Don't get mad; get even.
---o0o---

Poem: Weather Report

Life is a raindrop
Sizzling as it skitters
Across the universal griddle.
---o0o---

Poem: Delusion

Between what we do
And what we'd like to think we do
Lies a vast bay of denial and delusion

We make believe
There is war in our bones
That growth is the child of destruction

That we are the chosen ones
God's boys and girls given carte blanche
To make war

We make believe
We are right or wrong
That it doesn't matter

In this world
And we'll take a flier
It doesn't matter in the next.
---o0o---

South King County is in the news again--not Enumclaw beastiality, but ghostiality in Federal Way

Otherworldy sex offender?

All This Is That earlier provided extensive coverage of the Enumclaw Horse Sex death, in my old stomping grounds of South King County. Now that the Enumclw beastiality case has settled down, Southeast King County is the site of some hot and heavy ghost sex.

From the Federal Way police information log:

At 4:02 p.m. April 10, two women went into the Federal Way police station claiming that over the past two years, a paranormal person has been placing sensors on their bodies and visiting them in their house at 28600 block of 25th Place South. They said that the ghost has been having sexual intercourse with them. One woman said that these incidents started in Kent and continued when she moved here. The other woman said that this just started now.

---o0o---

Video: Red State Update

One of the many Red State Updates available from http://www.redstateupdate.com/

Red State Update is Jackie Broyles and Dunlap broadcasting from a bunker underneath Jackie's Market in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. This is an especially choice example of their work...

"Y'all feel free to look at our latest videos, buy stuff with our face on it, hell, stay all night with us if you like-- we'll make y'all a pallet on the floor. "


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Toast! Hillary's Last Dance

The End Of The Line For Senator Clinton?

click hillary to enlarge

If she won only North Carolina or Indiana, Hillary Clinton would probably drop out of the race, or at least so I thought. When I saw sun-burned Bill and the ever-poised (except if you ask about Monica) Chelsea walk on stage at the speech, I was sure she would bow out. But from her first three words, it seemed like she would not. She made a valiant speech, spinning her momentum and thanking all the voters, friends, and hacks that had just helped Obama come within 200 delegates of nailing down the nomination.

Various people--including MSNBC--were reporting last night that Hillary has cancelled her appearance on various television programs tomorrow. She has a huge fundraiser tomorrow night in Washington, D.C. She made a blatant plug for donations to Hillaryclinton.com

Pundits on at least two cable news outlets and dozens of blogs and websites speculated that Hillary was just hanging in another day or two to close out her debts. Her campaign's largest debt by far is, of course, the Five Million Dollars she loaned to the campaign.

It's a tantalizing idea....we let her cash out to drop out.

I'll bet it's happened, but I don't remember a politician holding a major fundraiser and dropping out within the week. It seems kind of greasy doesn't it?
---o0o---

TBTL Lives! Too beautiful to live? Not yet.

Luke and Jen

Blatherwatch has just reported on Too Beautiful To Live's beating the odds. This is possibly my favorite radio show of all time; a show without T & A, or people ranting about gasoline and taxes, and it miraculously survives. This show is all over the map, from tedious to sublime, and it's the best "talk" radio I've ever heard, except for Jean Shepherd's sublime run of shows for 20 years on WOR in New York City.

"TBTL: it lives!
Everyone wants to know: Is KIRO's show Too Beautiful to Live?

Seems the KIRO suits were high-fiving each other Monday: "We're the highest rated show on the station in the 18-34 demo," says Luke Burbank, the host of the new low-concept show (m-f, 7-10p). "

Read the full article here.


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Poem: The Variations (newly revised)

The Variations

1.
I don't know which is better
The thing itself
Or the chicanes lacunae variations
Selections shadings emendations
Redactions prevarications blurring
And sharpening that transmogrify
The tale with time

2.
I don't know which is better
To see the baby emerge
Or to see who the baby becomes

3.
I don't know which is better
To keep pondering the variations
Or to not

4.
My rogue and rococo thoughts
Skitter sideways
Like a side-shuffling crab

Using evasive tactics
In case anyone locks on
And attempts to impose

A framework
Of coherence and congruence
On these fitfully nuanced palabra

5.
If you actually understand
What I am writing
We have all missed the point

Sometimes I don't know
What it means
Until someone else tells me

6.
Sometimes I don't know
If it's better to pull your leg
Or my own

7.
I don't know which is better
The fog and detours
Or the thing itself.
---o0o---

Happy Birthday to the universe

click the universe to enlarge

I never actually got around to posting this at the end of April, but on April 27th, in 4977 B.C., the universe was created, according to German mathematician and astronomer Johannes Kepler, considered a founder of modern science. Kepler is best known for his theories explaining the motion of planets.

Kepler was born on December 27, 1571, in Weil der Stadt, Germany. He studied Copernicus' theories of planetary ordering. Copernicus (1473-1543) believed that the sun, not the earth, was the center of the solar system, a theory that contradicted the prevailing view of the era that the sun revolved around the earth, and a theory that earned him the title "heretic."

In 1600, Kepler went to Prague to work for Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe, the imperial mathematician to Rudolf II, emperor of the Holy Roman Empire. Kepler's main project was to investigate the orbit of Mars. When Brahe died the following year, Kepler took over his job and over the next decade, Kepler learned about the work of Italian physicist and astronomer Galileo Galilei (1564-1642), and another heretic, who invented a telescope with which he discovered lunar mountains and craters, the largest four satellites of Jupiter and the phases of Venus.

Kepler corresponded with Galileo and obtained a telescope of his own. In 1609, Kepler published the first two of his three laws of planetary motion, which held that planets move around the sun in ellipses, not circles, and that planets speed up as they approach the sun and slow down as they move away. In 1619, his third law came out, which used mathematical principles to relate the time a planet takes to orbit the sun to the average distance of the planet from the sun.

Kepler's research was central to Sir Isaac Newton's (1643-1727) law of gravitational force.

In our century, we developed the Big Bang theory, which showed that his calculations were off by about 13.7 billion years.
---o0o---

Those Minority Report Cooties Are Almost Real: BAE Systems Bugs To Be Deployed This Year

BAE Systems Photo

British defense giant BAE Systems has created a series of tiny electronic spiders, insects and snakes that could become the eyes and ears of soldiers and maybe even save thousands of lives.

BAE Systems and the U.S. hope to have their prototypes on the front line by the end of the year, entering booby-trapped buildings or enemy hideouts to transmit location data back to the "good guys" quartered out of harm's way, or even to Pocket PCs used by soldiers in the field.



BAE Systems recently signed a $41 million dollar contract to develop the robot insects for the US Army.

Researchers hope to also create machines that can fly like a butterfly. Some of the creatures will be fitted with small cameras, others will be equipped with sensors that will be able to detect the presence of chemical, biological or radioactive weapons.

"The idea is to get a number of these working together — some tiny, some maybe up to a foot in length, and all going into a building together carrying out different tasks. Eventually we hope to have animals flying and slithering," said a Program Manager, Steve Scalera.
---o0o---