Alien Lore No. 151 - Ed Anger says "Shut down NASA"

Ed Anger, the Weekly World News' columnist, recently published a piece saying that we should shut down NASA.

"First, let’s shut down NASA. I call it NO-SAW. We’re been at it forty years, and a jillion dollars later, NASA hasn’t come up with one single solitary blue, bigheaded spaceman. All we’ve got for our money is Tang and a box of rocks."

Click here to read Ed's entire editorial.

"If I was Teleprompter Jesus, I’d tell NO-SAW they’ve got 24 hours to show us some little green men or every McDonald’s in the country’s gonna have rocket scientists asking, 'You want fries with that?' "

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painting: First Lady

click to enlarge

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This Page Intentionally Left Blank

I've written the poems I had waiting. I don't have the energy to paint. My long backpocket piece on Kent's Bus Depot was already used. Pablo hasn't sent in anything political, and my latest Alien Lore article isn't finished yet. I have nothing to say politically or sociologically. Therefore, let's leave this page more or less blank. . .

I don't even have the will to dig up an old piece and present it under the "Reheated" label.

In a few hours, I am flying back to San Francisco after just returning at midnight Wednesday. I'll attempt to make this right on my return. Blank pages=not good.
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Poem: Who Are We?/Put Your Finger In The Dike

I almost always believe otherwise,
But on a bad news day,
It's like we're not all in this together,
That we are just the latest edition
Of a complex species
Drawn together tenuously
In a social order
That masks our genetic disposition
To competition and selfishness
And puts the lie to any notion
Of compassion, altruism, and love.
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Poem: You in your hole

You are away and apart
On the high, lonesome ridge you built—

Like a lone climber bivouaced
In the blue ice and snow

Halfway up the mountain.
Beneath gathering black clouds,

Sinister fog banks and night lumber in,
Choking off the light

And the only way out.
There is no going up and no going down today—

Just you in your hole,
Listening to Satan and Jiminy Cricket

Debate from each of your shoulders
In the muffled still of the snow cave.
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Visual poem - The Foghorn

I created this in Image Chief from this poem published a few weeks back:

I hear three moaning foghorns tonight,
Probably at Bainbridge Island,
Point No Point, and Alki.

I can't detect a pattern.
The foghorns sing to each other
Back and forth across the murky Puget Sound. . .

There will come a time
When we will likewise
All sing to each other.

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Kindly Be Aware. . .

I am sitting in my room at the St. Francis on Powell Street in San Francisco. The minibar has this very strange sign posted prominently. Does it mean that each item--chips, alcohol, sodas, candy bars, etc. is wired? Do they all have a little magnetic or radio tag attached?

If I pick up, say, that bottle of red wine and look at it for 12 seconds, does it automatically get charged to my room? This is a new one on me. . .
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Jack in SF 11:00 pm

Poem: The earth in motion

The mountain is the youngest child
Of heaven and earth,
Striving ever upward

And simultaneously tumbling down,
Like the five volcanoes
That surround me.
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28 Composite Identikit faces...

click to enlarge

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Painting: Colum at the ruins in Rhodes

click to enlarge

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"Not In My Neighborhood" Welcoming a new neighbor. . .The Jail

click to enlarge The Tombs

click to enlarge

I was walking near my work the other day, when I stumbled on this sign at a site that is currently a garbage truck depot. This neighborhood is a mix of office parks and industrial. If this sign went up in my, or your neighborhood, no telling what kind of a brouhaha it would raise. But in the anonymous area where I work, near the borders of Kirkland, Woodinville, and Redmond. . .well, really?, what better place to put a jail than a spot where the nearest house is at least a mile away.

click to enlarge the Brooklyn House of Detention for Men

We lived across the street from the Brooklyn House of Detention for Men on Atlantic Avenue for two years. It never seemed unsafe, and there were no escapes as far as I can remember. You would see girls and women on the street yelling up at the windows sometimes, and there were usually plenty of police coming and going. . .all in all, it probably made for a little safer neighborhood. It was a grim structure...but nothing like, say The Tombs.

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Video: Mind by The Talking Heads

A music video culled from a strange documentary on The Talking Heads. It's worth watching--despite the somewhat muddy sound--for the opening religious bit, and for David Byrne's always awesomely bizarre dancing. Mind is one of my favorite TH songs.




Mind
by The Talking Heads

Time won't change you
Money won't change you
I haven't got the faintest idea
Everything seems to be up in the air at this time
I need something you change your mind
Drugs won't change you
Religion won't change you
Science won't change you
Looks like I can't change you
I try to talk to you, to make things clear
but you're not even listening to me...
And it comes directly from my heart to you...
I need something to change your mind.
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