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Wednesday, November 8th, 2006
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Tuesday, October 31st, 2006
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Tuesday, October 3rd, 2006
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Tert Card's mouth had been waiting a chance. He spoke to all, included the sweating waitress, the cook whose head showed in the order window. "If it was them days now, Mr. Pretty, you'd be dead. You forget the Chinese flu you got a few winters back, in the hospital with it. I seen you in that bed grey as a dead cod, I though, well he's had it. But they give you antibiotics and oxygen and all and you live to bite the hand that saved you. Nobody, nobody in their right mind would go back to them hard, hard times. People was only kind because life was so dirty you couldn't afford to have any enemies. It was all swim or all sink. A situation that makes people very sweet."
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Well-meaning but misinformed people think animals in the wild are "happy" because they are "free". These people usually have a large handsome predator in mind, a lion or a cheetah (the life of a gnu or of an aardvark is rarely exalted). They imagine this wild animal roaming around the savannah on digestive walks after eating a prey that accepted its lot piously, or going for callisthenic runs to stay slim after overindulging. They imagine this animal overseeing its offspring proudly and tenderly, the whole family watching the setting of the sun from the limbs of trees with sighs of pleasure. The life of the wild animal is simple, noble and meaningful, they imagine. Then it is captured by wicked men and thrown into tiny jails. Its "happiness" is dashed. It yearns mightily for "freedom" and does all it can to escape. Being denied its "freedom" for too long, the animal becomes a shadow of itself, its spirit broken. So some people imagine.
( longer than in sugarkat )
But I dont insist. I dont mean to defend zoos. Close them all down if you want (and let us hope that what wildlife remains can survive in what is left of the natural world). I know zoos are no longer in people's good graces. Religion faces the same problem. Certain illusions about freedom plague them both.
-from the book Life of Pi by Yann Martel
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Saturday, April 1st, 2006
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Photo by and post inspired by ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif?v=92.1) rachelrayns
I call you bad, my little child,
Upon the title page,
Because a manner rude and wild
Is common at your age.
The Moral of this priceless work
(If rightly understood)
Will make you -- from a little Turk --
Unnaturally good.
Do not as evil children do,
Who on the slightest grounds
Will imitate the Kangaroo,
With wild unmeaning bounds:
Do not as children badly bred,
Who eat like little Hogs,
And when they have to go to bed
Will whine like Puppy Dogs:
Who take their manners from the Ape,
Their habits from the Bear,
Indulge the loud unseemly jape,
And never brush their hair.
But so control your actions that
Your friends may all repeat.
"This child is dainty as the Cat,
And as the Owl discreet."
-Hilaire Belloc
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Saturday, March 11th, 2006
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How would I dance if I was an octopus?
Eight arms and no hips.
Hundreds of circular fingers.
Able to fluctuate my chromatophores to any rhythmic pattern.
Pulsing and gliding, taking advantage of the lack in gravity.
With my silky red skin, it strikes me as something that would need the beat of a tango.
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Tuesday, February 21st, 2006
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Monday, February 20th, 2006
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Death Cab was live on Austin City Limits this weekend. They didnt play this song, but I think its a pretty good example of why I love their lyrics.
It's a backwards attraction to your forward eyes
But you're so far-sighted that you can't place trust
In what or who you recognize
We sped the plymouth cross the banks of the mississippi river
Mary Timony was smaller then a super ball....
Chitter-chatter all these secrets started giving me the shivers
Plain and simply broken down near Olympia
I think your bruise was understated,
'Cause you can't feel this anymore
It's getting bluer and you can't keep faking
that you can't feel this anymore
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Thursday, February 16th, 2006
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We would come at length to the Mall, among whose tree-tops I could distinguish the steeple of Saint-Hilaire. And I should have liked to be able to sit down and spend the whole day there reading and listening to the bells, for it was so blissful and so quiet that, when an hour struck, you would have said not that it broke in upon the calm of the day, but that it relieved the day of its superfluity, and that the steeple, with the indolent, painstaking exactitude of a person who has nothing else to do, had simply - in order to squeeze out and let fall the few golden drops which had slowly accumulated in the hot sunlight - pressed, at a given moment, the distended surfaced of the silence.
- Marcel Proust
Swann's Way
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Wednesday, February 15th, 2006
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post inspired by a link drdougfir AIMed me
Boris Artzybasheff (1899-1965), As I See, Machinalia
Hydralic Press
Tapping a Heat of Steel
The Soaking Pit
Executive of the Future
"I am thrilled by machinery's force, precision and willingness to work at any task, no matter how arduous or monotonous it may be. I would rather watch a thousand ton dredge dig a canal than see it done by a thousand spent slaves lashed into submission. I like machines."
More Artzybasheff:
Eisner Museum
American Art Archives
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Sunday, January 29th, 2006
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Graceful Exits
Brought to you by:
In 2002, the last year statistics are available, 31,655 people committed suicide in the United States. Fifty-four percent of those folks used a gun. That's a lot of splattered brains. And that's just rude.
Instead of pulling the trigger—or slashing yourself and leaving a bloody bathroom, or drowning yourself and leaving a gross, bloated corpse—try one of these cleaner, safer (for those around you), even environmentally friendly options for offing yourself. Mind you, we're not advocating suicide. But if you must: Here are several options, from worst to best.
Hanging, while relatively neat and self-contained, is not a quick-and-easy thing. Unless you break your neck (unlikely), you'll slowly suffocate. Starvation and dehydration are also less-than-optimal methods. While ranking high in environmental friendliness (you're saving resources!), it's slow. And there's always a risk of a Shiavo-style intervention.
Carbon monoxide poisoning leaves a pretty corpse. Unfortunately, while simple sounding—start up the old emission-spewing auto in the garage, close the door, and wait—this method is actually ineffective (and also bad for the ozone). Catalytic converters have reduced the amount of CO in car exhaust, so it may not even work. The more effective solution, firing up a charcoal grill in an enclosed space, carries fire hazard risks for your neighbor, can leave soot stains on the ceiling, and the fumes could knock out the person unlucky enough to find your body.
Instead, try asphyxia with a plastic bag. You're recycling, you'll contain any byproducts of suffocation (like vomit, especially if you combine this method with an overdose), and you won't hurt anyone else.
Nine grams of pentobarbital would be swell, if you can get your hands on it (it's what Oregon docs prescribe for assisted suicides). If it's good enough for medical professionals, it's good enough for us. But unless you're apt at faking a terminal illness, you're out of luck.
Which leaves death by exposure, an A+ method of ending it all. Portlanders are fortunate to live within spitting distance of Mount Hood and Mount Rainier, two places that meet your hypothermia needs practically year-round. For best results, wear a thin layer (or get naked), and get above the timberline. Take public transportation (more enviro points!), so rangers don't find your abandoned car and launch a search. It might take a day or two (unless you're wet), but it's a painless way to go
-Amy Jenniges
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Monday, January 23rd, 2006
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I'm sure many of you have already seen PostSecret, this is just in case you havent. Anonymous strangers will send in a postcard to this guy who puts it up for the whole internet to see. Some can be a bit depressing, but many just surprise you with crazy things you thought you were the only one thinking.
If you really like it, you can add it to your friends page: ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/syndicated.gif?v=92.1) postsecret here.
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Sunday, January 22nd, 2006
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Theres a really mesmerizing video (at the bottom of the page) I found on digg involving liquified metal called Ferrofluid that has fascinating properties when exposed to magnetic fields. Someone named Sachiko Kodama has turned its movement into an art form, though I personally would have added some music to the movie.
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Comments: Read 2 or Add Your Own.
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Thursday, January 19th, 2006
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damn
my cactus died
i'm less nuturing than a desert
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This was not to say, however, that she did not experience some of those exceptional moments when one thirsts for something other than what is, and when those who, through any lack of energy or imagination, are unable to generate any motive power in themselves, cry out, as the clock strikes or the postman knocks, for something new, even if it is worse, some emotion, some sorrow; when the heartstrings, which contentment has silenced, like a harp laid by, yearn to be plucked and sounded again by some hand, however rough, even if it should break them; when the will, which has with such difficulty won the right to indulge without let or hindrance in its own desires and woes, would gladly fling the reins into the hands of imperious circumstance, however cruel.
- Marcel Proust
Swann's Way
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My girl warrioress has a deviantART and I really like a few of her pieces so I want to share them.
FEMME - Flower Hair
FEMME - Wind Hair
Mufkins - Suspects You
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Tuesday, January 17th, 2006
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From the first chapter of A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson:
No matter how hard you try you will never be able to grasp just how tiny, how spatially unassuming, is a proton. It is just way too small.
A proton is an infinitesimal part of an atom, which is itself of course an insubstantial thing. Protons are so small that a little dib of ink like the dot on this i can hold something in the region of 500,000,000,000 of them, rather more than the number of seconds contained in half a million years. So protons are exceedingly microscopic, to say the very least.
Now imagine if you can (and of course you can't) shrinking one of these protons down to a billionth of its normal size into a space so small that it would make a proton look enormous. Now pack into that tiny, tiny space about an ounce of matter. Excellent. ( You are ready to start a universe. )
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Thursday, January 12th, 2006
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Between July 1945 and November 1962 the United States is known to have conducted 216 atmospheric and underwater nuclear tests. After the Limited Test Ban Treaty between the U.S. and the Soviet Union in 1963, nuclear testing went underground. It became literally invisible - but more frequent: the United States conducted a further 723 underground tests until 1992. 100 SUNS documents the era of visible nuclear testing, the atmospheric era, with 100 photographs drawn by Michael Light from the archives at Los Alamos National Laboratory and the U.S. National Archives in Maryland.
Crossposted to sugarkat
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impressed.
amused.
geeky.