Dearest Friends....

I owe some of you emails and other replies..... give me a few days to get my head out of coding in my web store and I will send love. Meanwhile, please do not subject your pets, no matter how cute you think they are, to costuming for Samhain/Halloween. They do not like it and will poop in your shoes.

A Free Gifting Post.....

I responded to Lunachick's post to get and then give something, so here is my part of the bargain:

For the first three people whom respond and repost this challenge, I will send you something. It might be something I've made, or something cool from my hidden stash, it might be a mixed cd or a rubber duck, or a book I think you will enjoy...or something else that is lovely...

Whatever it is, I promise I will get it to you in 30 days or less.

The only thing YOU need do in order to participate is to be one of the first 3 to reply AND post this very same thing... just cause it's fun to give people stuff...

Pay it forward......

Back Before Larry Burned His First Effigy....

... and the LNT principle was adopted, my homies and I were already "burners."

The newspaper article above was from my senior year and the "picnic" it mentions was in actuality a 13 keg free-for-all-non-school-sanctioned Senior Day party organized by myself and 3 of my girlfriends. Hundreds of people showed up including the local bikers who used the oval drive around the center of the park as a short course flat track for racing. The girls and I collected the money for the kegs, bought the kegs, got the permits for the use of the property and spent the night so we could clean the park the next day. Clean it we did..... all of our trash and any trash we could find left before our party.

This was not the only "event" I participated in either in an organizational manner or as an attendee.... there were the X-mas Tree burning parties and the Loggerhead events. Loggerhead was an extravaganza - pyrotechnics, stages & bands, hallucinogens and costumes because it was always in October. And all of these were 1982 or earlier.... and for the most part, all of the 10 Principles of BM could have been applied to them.

Ah, those were the days.... anyway, I thought the little blurb was kinda funny.....

Somebody Wake Up Orwell...

...and let him know he was off by just a few years. Or maybe it's just becoming apparent now.

tinyurl.com/yqwdst

Dragonfly or Insect Spy? Scientists at Work on Robobugs.

By Rick Weiss
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, October 9, 2007; Page A03
Vanessa Alarcon saw them while working at an antiwar rally in Lafayette Square last month.

"I heard someone say, 'Oh my god, look at those,' " the college senior from New York recalled. "I look up and I'm like, 'What the hell is that?' They looked kind of like dragonflies or little helicopters. But I mean, those are not insects."

Out in the crowd, Bernard Crane saw them, too.

"I'd never seen anything like it in my life," the Washington lawyer said. "They were large for dragonflies. I thought, 'Is that mechanical, or is that alive?' "

That is just one of the questions hovering over a handful of similar sightings at political events in Washington and New York. Some suspect the insectlike drones are high-tech surveillance tools, perhaps deployed by the Department of Homeland Security.

x-x-x-x-x-x

"Every war when it comes, or before it comes, is represented not as a war but as an act of self-defense against a homicidal maniac."

"All the war-propaganda, all the screaming and lies and hatred, comes invariably from people who are not fighting." - George Orwell

What's your favorite Orwellian quote?

Accepting Personal Responsibility

I was cleaning out my bookmark folder and ran across something I bookmarked a while back and promptly forgot about. It's relevant in so many ways, not just for me personally, but people/things/situations I see all around me. It's worth a read.....

www.coping.org/growth/accept.htm

Accepting personal responsibility includes:

* Acknowledging that you are solely responsible for the choices in your life.
* Accepting that you are responsible for what you choose to feel or think.
* Accepting that you choose the direction for your life.
* Accepting that you cannot blame others for the choices you have made.
* Tearing down the mask of defense or rationale for why others are responsible for who you are, what has happened to you, and what you are bound to become.
* The rational belief that you are responsible for determining who your are, and how your choices affect your life.
* Pointing the finger of responsibility back to yourself and away from others when you are discussing the consequences of your actions.
* Realizing that you determine your feelings about any events or actions addressed to you, no matter how negative they seem.
* Recognizing that you are your best cheerleader; it is not reasonable or healthy for you to depend on others to make you feel good about yourself.
* Recognizing that as you enter adulthood and maturity, you determine how your self-esteem will develop.
* Not feeling sorry for the ``bum deal'' you have been handed but taking hold of your life and giving it direction and reason.
* Letting go of your sense of over responsibility for others.
* Protecting and nurturing your health and emotional well being.
* Taking preventive health oriented steps of structuring your life with time management, stress management, confronting fears, and burnout prevention.
* Taking an honest inventory of your strengths, abilities, talents, virtues, and positive points.
* Developing positive, self-affirming, self-talk scripts to enhance your personal development and growth.
* Letting go of blame and anger toward those in your past who did the best they could, given the limitations of their knowledge, background, and awareness.
* Working out anger, hostility, pessimism, and depression over past hurts, pains, abuse, mistreatment, and misdirection.

Breathe...... Grow.... and Grow UP.

DNA Discovered Under the Influence iof LSD

Francis Crick, the Nobel Prize-winning father of modern genetics, was under the influence of LSD when he first deduced the double-helix structure of DNA nearly 50 years ago.

The abrasive and unorthodox Crick and his brilliant American co-researcher James Watson famously celebrated their eureka moment in March 1953 by running from the now legendary Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge to the nearby Eagle pub, where they announced over pints of bitter that they had discovered the secret of life.

Crick, who died ten days ago [2004-07-28], aged 88, later told a fellow scientist that he often used small doses of LSD, then an experimental drug used in psychotherapy, to boost his powers of thought. He said it was LSD, not the Eagle's warm beer, that helped him to unravel the structure of DNA, the discovery that won him the Nobel Prize.

Despite his Establishment image, Crick was a devotee of novelist Aldous Huxley, whose accounts of his experiments with LSD and another hallucinogen, mescaline, in The Doors Of Perception and Heaven And Hell became cult texts for the hippies of the Sixties and Seventies. In the late Sixties, Crick was a founder member of Soma, a legalise-cannabis group named after the drug in Huxley's novel Brave New World. He even put his name to a famous letter to The Times in 1967 calling for a reform in the drugs laws.

Cont... www.serendipity.li/dmt/crick_lsd.htm

Awesome.

Look What I Can Do....

I'm thinking about taking misprinted posters and making more of these to take to Bonnaroo next year. They take about an hour each to make, and they are tricky as the dickens to get to fold just right..... but they are pretty. Great mood lighting.

Friday, Saturday.... Nebraska and Wyoming

I've been through the desert on a horse with no name
It felt good to be out of the rain
In the desert you can remember your name
cause there aint no one for to give you no pain
La, la ...

After our breakfast at the Bobber's Cafe in rural MO, we headed west close to the MO state line where we turn north towards Nebraska..... it's an OK drive, but would be much better if the roads weren't in such a state of disrepair. Seems like almost every state we've traveled through has this same issue; either the interstates are in a constant state of repair or the roads are just FUBAR. Anyway, we get into NE and decide to stop outside of Lincoln for lunch. We make the mistake of asking for soda water and a wedge of lime when the waitress asked what we wanted to drink. You would have thought we asked for a cup of uranium.

If anyone ever cracks on the South in regards to the backwards living conditions, they're going to get an earful from me. I've lived in 4 Deep Southern states and traveled the others fairly extensively and I got to tell you, the South is culturally leagues ahead of much of the rest of rural America - at the very least in the area of cuisine. By damn, you BETTER like biscuits and gravy, hamburgers, french fries, chicken fried steak, chicken fried chicken, brown lettuce out of a bag and fast food if you're traveling in the rural midwest. That or you'd better bring your own lunch. If you're lucky, you'll at least find a burger joint where they've nearly perfected the process.

After lunch, we push on, landing somewhere for the evening in midstate. This town is larger and we head to the familiar menu of a Ruby Tuesday's before hitting the campground. As we're settling into the camp site, I head toward the bathroom.... then I hear the Jeep's Panic alarm....... before I can get back to the car to see what's up, the horn stops. Jeff comes walking around the side of the camper muttering something about his "damn keys in his pocket" and "bending over." Hahahahahaha.....

We get up and leave the nice little campground and get a short distance down the road when the engine light comes on in the Jeep. Mind you, we just took it in and had our dealership give it the once-over for our trip, i.e., check the tow fan, engine, oil, other fluids and belts. We tell them how long we'll be on the road and where we're going. As usual, our preventative measures may not have helped..... Hoping it's only a glow plug, I start lining up a visit to the Ogallala Jeep dealership to have it checked out.... as suspicioned, it's a glow plug. We should be able to complete our trip with no problem. Right.

Next stop is the Kearney, NE Cabela's.... the 35,000 sq ft bastion of retail splendor that sports a massive trophy collection that would make Ted Nugent wet his pants. This is where the savvy sportsman goes to fulfill his every hunting, fishing and outdoor gadget and accessory needs - guns, clothing, photography, trail food, tents, etc., ad nauseum. Here hunters can buy $40.00 bags of Elk jerky just in case all the other equipment they purchase still doesn't help them get their own elk.

Jeff and I hit the bathrooms first. Jeff comes out with a funny look on his face and tells me, " I hope their aim (the hunters) is better in the woods than it is in that bathroom." Jeff's funny like that sometimes.

We buy jerky, cinnamon sugar coated nuts (mmmmm) and a couple of misc items and hit the road again. If we're to keep on schedule, we have to make it to Rock Springs, WY to spend the night. The rest of the day is uneventful, though the terrain starts to morph a little the further west we get. Rock Springs is in the mountains and the surrounding areas are really just breathtaking. I think a lot about the early pioneers and the hardships they must have faced crossing the country to get to the west coast. It's difficult to imagine driving a horse and wagon through the landscape I see before me. And how beautiful these hills must have been when herds of buffalo roamed the area. How strong and brave the Native Americans were who lived and survived here.......

We check in late to the campground and crawl in to get some shut eye. I can't remember what it was now, but by the time we parked, we weren't talking. OK, so sleep it is... I get up in the morning, grab my toiletries and head off for a shower. After the shower, I go to the office and buy us both a nice chocolaty mocha. I figure whatever Jeff was mad at me about last night will be forgotten over the delightfully creamy caffeinated drink. As I get out to the camper, Jeff is walking around in sort of a mild panic...... we discover that the camper door will lock itself if the little lock lever is not all the way open. Of course, both sets of camper keys are, you guessed it, in the camper. Luckily we slept with a window cracked, and Jeff attempts to reach in to get his pants with the keys in them. No dice. The window is waaay too small. Reassessing the situation and short of renting someone's kid to get in the window, it seems we'll be needing a locksmith. Not willing to pay the stupid fee to the locksmith or walk around the campground looking for a small child to borrow, I offer to try my luck with the window. Jeff laughs and tells me my shoulders are bigger than his and if he can't do it, neither can I. Ahem. I *do* hope he meant "shoulders." Using the step stool, I wedge my upper half into said small window and realize I can't reach anything to leverage pulling myself the rest of the way in. For a brief moment, I feel like Winnie the Pooh the time he gets himself stuck in the honey tree and I'm certain someone somewhere in the campground is laughing their ass(es) off. Jeff grabs my feet and gives a mighty push. I'm not sure who is more surprised, Jeff or myself, that I actually made it in, but hey, I'm in and seeing as Jeff is still feeling a little sore over locking the keys in in the first place, I think I won't rub it in.

We stop at Cruel Jack's (highly recommended if you're in the Rock Springs area around chow time) for a super breakfast and a great conversation with a fella a little older than us. He's a somewhat conservative looking truck driver, but we struck a common chord discussing how our current govt. has sold us down the river. Interestingly enough, we've had this same conversation all over the nation with a variety of different folk all with essentially the same thoughts; it's going to take something major to fix the mess we're in fiscally. "Armed revolutiion" has come up several times. Interesting.

To be cont....

Retroblog: Thursday and a Nation in Decline....

....The first thing I met was a fly with a buzz
And the sky with no clouds
The heat was hot and the ground was dry
But the air was full of sound.....

After our little tire adventure Wednesday, we managed to make it to Columbia, MO before we decided to find a place to pull in and rest for the evening.

The drive was fairly uneventful, but a reminder of what I see every time we take a long trip.... our interstates are in bad repair and when they are being worked on, it seems it's the same stretches of road for 3+ consecutive years that are under construction with little visible advancement even with a year between trips. The urban decay is all too apparent in cities like St. Louis where so many buildings along the interstate are abandoned or crumbling, one loses count as you drive silently by.

There is a certain strange beauty in the crumbling structures. All in one thought I can imagine a past filled with ordinary people's history - their triumphs and failures, their sadness and happiness, children laughing, children crying...... I've always had the gift of being able to "feel" the entities in old buildings. Never focused, and very likely a good portion of what I feel may be simply a product of my own very fertile imagination, but it moves me whatever it is.

I see the decay all across America in both rural and urban communities.... the faded billboards advertising every vice imaginable and then more billboards advertising churches that will save you from those vices. Businesses with faded and almost unreadable signs beckoning for passersby to stop and spend their dollars. Houses long abandoned with collapsing walls ans sagging roofs begging for an explanation of why the former owners just left. Fast food packaging punctuates the landscape like so many discarded toys of childhood..... but we never grow up, we just keep throwing out the toys.

There is a part of me that longs for the nostalgia of a seemingly more prosperous time in our history when all the cars were shiny and new, not rusted sitting on blocks. And when grand old buildings still shone with the light of their carefully handcrafted chandeliers. That's the dreamer in me I guess..... but I have to ask the question.... are we a Nation in decline?

Anyway, something I *have* found this trip is my love for campgrounds and RV parks. Maybe I'm getting old, but as we set up camp the first time with our little camper in the campground in Columbia, I noticed something I have not seen in Jeff's and my other music fest camping adventures. There is a refreshing air to most of the RV parks..... the people in them are seemingly self reliant and the parks are CLEAN. Even the bathrooms. Like almost everyone cares that they not leave a mess and everyone is either really polite or they just keep to themselves. So unlike staying in a hotel.

So, onward..... we woke up Thursday morning and repacked the camper with all the stuff we had to move the night before so we could sleep, and hit the road. Breakfast would be at Bobber's Cafe where we found a very vocal group of older men gossiping and cackling like old hens. I giggled all through breakfast.... each story more fantastic than the last with the one statement, "I told him to kiss a good man's ass," being my favorite quote from the morning. Jeff's Dad would have fit right in with this ragtag bunch.... swapping stories and telling lies, or at least very good exaggerations.

Next: Jeff locks the keys in the camper..... by accident.

The pic: Our little camper next to a motor home in the campground we will be staying at in WY on Thursday night. Hahahahaha!

RetroBlog: On the first part of the journey.....

I was looking at all the life
There were plants and birds and rocks and things
There was sand and hills and rings........

We got a late start for BMan due to a broken tail light issue, so instead of leaving on Sunday, August 19 as planned, we pulled out at 9pm on Tuesday. We were so tired we only got to Monteagle, TN where I had an interesting encounter with 2 drunk locals. I ended up telling them to "Shut up" and proceeded to tell Jeff we had to push on to find a more hospitible place to sleep.

At the next exit, we picked a delightfully dirty truck stop where we pulled our heavily laden camper in between 2 big truck rigs and crawled in to sleep for a few hours. Jeff takes me to all the best places. Since the camper was so packed with stuff only useful on the playa, we had to first move a bunch of shit before we cold blissfully find the bed. We awoke the next morning, less than rested and pushed on. Anew dat a'dawnin' and all that.

We made it through TN and KY, but as we crossed over into southern IL, we heard a sickening "pop." Yup, you guessed it, one of the "new" tires on the camper had just blown out. Whoops. But, seeing as our traveling with a trailer was not Jeff's first time out with that sort of load, we had become Good Sam's members before we left and made haste to call the emergency road service. Oh, we could have changed the tire ourselves if we had not packed the car with with the jack under the seat.... which was under the ice chests and costume trunks. Road Service let us know help was on the way....

About 25 minutes later, "Roy" showed up..... we assessed the situation and judged the spare trailer tire to also be of questionable quality. It was decided that we would limp the trailer in behind Roy to his shop back over the border in KY. We doubled back and followed Roy to an exit with no visible town..... and down a long and winding country road to a gravel dirt road where Roy turned off..... Jeff and I gave each other the "glance" but followed Roy obediently as we really had no choice at this point.

Down the gravel/dirt road past several very neglected trailers, of which we never determined whether they were inhabited or not, we followed Roy about a mile to his shop. Stephen King would have loved this shit. We get out of the Jeep and Roy told us we wold have to wait until his Daddy, "Moses'" brought the replacement tire from Paducah. Oh boy. As Roy was graciously extending the air conditioned office for our wait, an Australian Shepard looking dog came ambling up to check us out - me in particular. As I am wary that all dogs can be biters, and as if to read my mind, Roy says, "He wouldn't bite a flea." I extend my hand for said dog to sniff, letting him know I was being subservient on his property, then rolled my hand upward to pat the sweet pup's head. It was then, and all in a split second as Roy was finishing the "bite a flea" sentence that the dog snapped his teeth down on my hand. It was a warning bite, not enough to break the skin, but I decided that the air conditioned office and the chance to chat up Roy's Granpa was sounding real good......

There are times when I thank the grace of the Goddess that I was raised in the South as it gives me special insight and abilities to communicate with other Southern folk. Adopting my best drawl, I sat down to engage "Gene" in conversation. It took just about 3 minutes before I knew the entire family history all the while keeping up with some soap opera on the telly. Gene was super nice in a good ol' boy sort of way, taking his breaths on his oxygen tank between his sentences. I like older fellas and the stories they tell, so I interjected enough to keep him going and by the time Roy's sister got back to relieve Gene of phone duties, I not only knew the family history, but also the reasons why Roy's shop was no longer located in the non-visible town among other things.

Meanwhile, Moses arrived with the tire, and still having a half hour or so to go before we would e road ready, I strike up a convo with the sister. I ask what soap opera she's watching to which she looked at me like I had just landed from Mars and was speaking Swahili. She informed me that I was watching The Young and Restless.... um, OK, I haven't had a TV in the house since shortly after 9/11 and even though I was an ardent watcher at one time, the cast was completely different. You do the math.

The conversation somehow got turned to teen pregnancies. Believe me, I did NOT instigate this one for a change.... anyway, apparently there are some very young girls in whatever county we were in who were knocked up. Apparently, I would have also known this if I had been paying attention to the news. Mokay. About this time, Roy walks in to figure our bill and joins the conversation. He asks me if I know what is causing this rash of teen pregnancies across the nation. Jeff has also joined the group and we look at each other and in that silent way that couples who have been together for longer than a week communicate, we both decide to let Roy tell us what is causing teen pregnancies across the nation. I look at Roy, and in my most sincere questioning voice say, "No, I don't know... what do you think?" Hold on, are you ready? His answer is, "It's all these teachers sleeping with their students." Well there it is, folks.... the answer to teen pregnancy.

His sister joins in in a decibel that only candy ravers can tolerate with a story about a local teacher who had been a stripper to pay her way through college. Not quite understanding if she was outraged by or championing the stripper/teacher's cause, I ask, "So, where do you stand on that?" The ensuing cacauphany of both Roy's and the sister's loud support of the Stripper/teacher engulfed Jeff and myself in a wave of redneck logic. As the explanations of why they supported the poor teacher who had been fired for her choice of college funding, I looked at Jeff and said, "I think I need a cigarette." As Roy finished out our billing, we walked outside to get some air.

Jeff looks at me and says something to the effect of "Can you imagine travelers from New York getting dragged back here to get their tires fixed?" I laugh nervously and again thank my lucky stars I am able to chameleon into most situations especially in rural areas.

Roy gives us the bill and for good measure I tip him an additional $20. Did I mention I got the entire story on his ex and why he couldn't see his little boy any more? Something about a head injury while in Roy's supervision. I told Roy to buy his kid something with the extra $20.

As we pulled out of the drive a mere two hours after the trip to Roy's garage, the dog gave us an anemic glance of dismissal. As the sound of banjos faded with each turn of the wheel, Jeff and I settled back thinking that our trip had been somewhat pre-disastered. That's when you get the worst of it out of the way early. Right.

Thus ends the first leg of our journey. Stay tuned for the rest......

Oh, that's a picture of Jeff in front of the tire shop. Looking very uncomfortable.