"military discipline is not..."

things change...everything can get cracked...

some things even wobble...and get out of focus...

and we can often be little more than tracks in the sand...

we are little more than shadows in eternity...well thats about enough of temporal philosophic musings...but ms. Sabine Hossenfelder has a good presentation called "I believe the future already exists' (13 min)...some food for thought...Dr. Huberman has a good practical bit of advise called "optimize your workspace for maximum productivity" (30 min)...and since there seems to be some disagreement in the ranks of government a good historical acount of this is "Why american soldiers started killing their own officers in vietnam" by simon whistler at 'into the shadows'...this just in on the radio..european nations sending troops to greenland... interesting developement...also a good presentation but very well done is "3 best and 3 worst chicken breeds" opinions of a breeder and homesteader (10 min)i am not sure why she kept the worst chicken breed but this illustrates the several thousand year quest to improve domestic animal characteristics...also the third shakespeare play discussed by "Philosophize this" (#243)presenter steven west is about Hamlet..a deep dive into the philospophy and psychology of this play..very well done... you have to pay attention or the important stuff gets by you...and "the genetic history of europe" with j.Krause(20 min)this guy points out that immigration and migration has always been a part of human history...get over it!..."I built 50 boxes for wildlife-here's what happened" the wildlife homestead...a good look at what human enhancement of the environment can do to improve the lives of wildlife (we are the ones that made it worse for critters)...i heard on "birdnotes" that ms. Ricki Lee in new orleans is putting out water and groceries for the birds...glad to hear it!..."What reading does to your brain" on "closed stacks" (9min)..some good information here...and i must comment on music and its effects on my mood...the Adele song "someone like you" as presented at her royal albert hall concert always makes me cry...and apparently half the people in the audiance are similarly effected...the Santana @woodstock tune "soul sacrifice" always makes me inspired and the XTC tune "dear god" makes my angry ...i don't know why...most of the stuff on "postmodern jukebox" is well done and i really like "ain't no rest for the wicked" featuring Joey Cook and "all about that bass" is a good bit of music and vocals... "...military discipline is not a given, it is a fragile contract, based on legitamacy. When its moral authority, in the eyes of its own soldiers, when the mission seems pointless, the leadership seems indifferent, and the sacrifice seems unequal, that contract disolves." from "Why american soldiers started killing their own officers" on youtube

"Our ideal should be..."

my assistant the RAVEN...i was looking at some dates and the last time i posted a blog was on christmas...that hotel has been sold and the price of a room increased by $22 per night...so back here at the curryville arms...one of the things about living alone in the desert is one gets to better allocate ones time to such endeavors as one feels have priority...less people is more better... i thought a lot about the woman who was shot dead by the US government employee...my personal opinion is that there has been a "PHASE CHANGE" in our society...such as when ice turns to water and water turns to steam...same chemical make-up but sustantialy different materials...in the USA today the notion that "protests" however "legal" they might be are safe is exceptionaly short-sighted...i remember Pat Buchanan saying that at Kent State there were 18 year old national guard members and 18 year old protesters...the shootings that happened could have been predicted...group think is never the same as individual think...people behave differently when around other people...it is the responsibility of every person to be their own safety advisor...once a person is dead or maimed the chance to be safe is past...the commander in chief urging the Iranians to keep protesting is remakably ill advised...this country has turned its' back on others in similar situations...safety first...a dead protester is a good thing for the oppressors...safety first...

the temperature today was about 80 degrees which is warmer than average for here...the wind has been pretty steady for the last couple of weeks so less walking in the desert and more sitting in the drivers seat reading or looking at the screens (i have several screen options)fortunately i am able to avert my eyes a few inches and i can see for miles across the desert which makes my eyes and vision less damaged from eye strain...(i hope) i drove north to KOFA national wildlife refuge and went to the palm canyon entrance but the spot i usually stay at was occupied and i set up a couple of hundred yards to the west...

i don't know the name of these mountains but they are always dramatic to look at...then into quartzite where i bought 2 new pillowcases for 50 cent each then to the scratched and dented food store where i bought some necessities like whole bean coffee and chocolate...then back to the old site where i enjoyed the below average temps despite the gusty winds...i encountered several youtube presentations which joggled my brain and made me think...about sex...now for a guy like myself who has been deprived of testosterone for several years now to think about sex it has to be in the abstract...i was thinking i might put together a sort of description of myself and post it online to see if there might be any female persons who would be interested in spending time with me...so of course the "dickless" nature of my person might be described as "a feature, not a bug" so to speak...i was actually surprised at how many female persons would welcome a man without "turgidity"...another "feature" might be "intermittant dentation"...the lack of "disposible income" must also be mentioned as well as the minimal housing...a pick-up truck is however preferable to a tent perhaps...personality compatability seems unlikely as i have been without female companioship for...well, a damn long time...however...actually i cannot think of any positive aspects to spending time with me...and i do not take criticism well at all...i guess if i care to admit it the best thing i could do for a woman is stay away from her...damn!...the harsh light of reality shows a lot of room for improvement...but enough about me lets move on to sex...orion taraban posted another of his "one size fits all" evaluations entitled "Women are dirty: understanding their dark desires" (12 min) also there was post called "The dirtiest services ancient roman brothels listed on their walls" (27min)NSFW HIstorian...i am not sure but i think these references to "dirt" are not about soil. mud, or other impurities...i think these are subjective and biased views of people who are seeking voyeristic attention...the woman who posted the piece on the unearthd brothel in Pompeii repeatedly expressed the view that the women who were providing sex were somehow less than equal in every way to the other citizens...that does not make them "dirty"...as long as i am on the Pompeii subject i would like to recommend "The discovery that rewrote Pompeii" by "miniminuteman" AKA Milo (minderbender) Rossi...this presentation is packed to the brim with information and illustrates the need to be accurate in scientific investigations...and to close out the subject of relationships i would like to recommend Cal Smiths "An hour and a six-pack" for sentimental views..."Our ideals should be to make our battles a series of single combats, our ranks a happy alliance of agile commanders-in-chief." T.E. Lawrence "seven pillars of wisdom"

"You've learned the most important..."

I guess my life is more prosperous
my storage unit appears to have been "appropriated" by criminal factions...I was in flagville two months ago or so when I left the post office with my USPO money order and put it into the envelope to mail and drove up to the mailbox and there was a fellow there who was standing behind the mailbox and he  stuck his hand out and took my envelope with the storage unit money order payment...I thought that was odd but I had not figured the criminal element in government was quit so overtly criminal...I got a returned envelope with a payment money order last month...wrongly addressed. For 25 years these payment have been made every month...that is more than a third of my life...anyhow I would have thought that an honest postman would (after 25 years) just put the envelope into the right mailbox...but no!...now I must admit for me to have been stalked to Australia and Mexico I should have known that there is no deed to dastardly for these folks to commit...I tried many times to call the storage facility  but apparently my number was being blocked...I pulled into Audubon Self Storage probably in 2001 and unloaded my holiday rambler motorhome into unit #152...on the first day the alpha male major unit renter... I think he had more than 22 units at the time...most of which he did not pay the rent on...was a metal salvage guy mostly and bought many pallets of computers at the state surplus auction every month...he had some compulsive addictive behaviors connected to his acquisitions...he validated his worth according to how much stuff he had...another fellow who had the same addictive personality had a large fenced in lot jammed full of similar auction stuff and he died unexpectidly and mr "sticky fingers" smith (he never used his real name) went to this guys place across town and attempted to steal some of this dead guys stuff...he was caught and held and I think charged with trespass and maybe attempted theft...he had a pretty raging pornography habit and was investigated for "improper" porn and I think made to get counseling...he was also investigated for shipping restricted computer parts to china...so despite all his blathering about his Christianity it was apparent to me that he was a victim of his own making...anyhow on day one mr smith informed me that the facility was "military" and he used to bang around metal components to impress me with that fact...he bought into a lot of current social conditioning...once he showed me a storage unit which was on the corner of a row and inside was a collections of things he said belonged to his "dead" brother...he failed to mention that it was his twin brother...the only people I know who use twins in their "intel" work is the military...but many of the 18 intel organizations may use twins also... I had seen this brother a couple of times but did not place him as a twin...he is a few pounds heavier and has a tattoo of a feather tied to his leg with a thong...you might have seen him around...or not...I do have a photo of mr smith which I took some years ago...the first manager named BOB was on good terms with mr smith as mr smith had his compulsive addictive stuff from one end of the property to the other...after bobs wife began staying away from home for days on end he got discouraged and left with an airstream travel trailer...good guy when he was sober...then the owners son-in-law arrived and started to clean the place up...he worked for years breaking his ass to get the property mowed and painted and put in security cameras  and do what is supposed to be done at a legit storage facility...eventually mr smith was banned from bidding at the auction perhaps due to non-payment...mr smith used to tell me that the owner did not pay taxes on all the money he took in... the new manager used to tell me that he had not got a raise since he started working there...the beer cans were piling up in the garbage every day...once I came to the placed there was a hispanic guy who appeared to be living there in a storage unit a few units down from my own...mr smith said he was there because his roommates were noisy and this guy also claimed to be in the military...army and marines specifically...some other latino men told me he had killed people...mr smith said the mans truck had been stolen with all of his identification...interesting...my theory is that this guy who was called "Roberto' by the latest manager...mr Roberto probably was on the run from charges of homicide which he committed while working for some Latin American military...maybe one of those guys who went in and killed all the villagers to get their land...anyhow records of any kind were scarce to non existent at this storage facility...mr smith was a criminal on many levels...the records for the place burned up in an electrical fire and in the flood of 2016 the records were destroyed in the flood...mr smith had a "special" friend who bought stuff compulsively and had two city busses in a fenced in part of the property...I think my payments were going to pay for his 'special' friends storage rent...once when I drove my van to my storage unit there was mr. smith and a fellow in an "Entergy" truck chopping electrical cables as large as my wrist into two foot lengths...mr smith said he got half of the money he made on the Entergy deals...probably unbeknownst to the utility company's management...when I was at a yard sale in Veneta Oregon I ran into mr smiths twin brother all he said was 'lets do this thing"...the point of all this storage unit remembering is because although my unit #152 had already been searched it was felt by the criminal class that I had "illicit" items in the unit...specifically illicit porn, illicit drugs and illicit weapons...all of these suspicions were based on very poor and prejudiced intel (and deep dis-like for me personally) I had one of those gunstock camera holders which when it was viewed while folks peeked into the unit from the unit behind mind and the porn delusion was just a shot (if not in the dark then in the fading light) and the drugs suspicion stemmed from my long association with pot as a pot addict...a porn addict also...anyhow the unit was recently broken into and searched and nothing criminal was found...unbelievably many folks thought I had a large sum of cash, money, dinero, moola even...right! I was going to wait until money was worth more...sound financial move eh?...anyhow,  after being victimized, scandalized and if mr smith had his way sodomized, I realized it was foolish of me to expect for my "stuff" to be safe...something in the christian bible about theft and rust and other calamities that will happen to stuff...but I must explain the photograph...when I was about 19years old I hitchhiked to Colorado...the guy I hitched with stayed there while I went back to la. and worked to save money and picked mushrooms, after a few months I had filled half a cooler with frozen 'shrooms and had rebuilt the top end of my 1962 ford falcon which I had bought from my friends dad for $25 and after some additional transmission shifting work I headed back to Colorado very little money, no spare tire , insurance probably not, no heater and when I hit a bump the window would fall down...this was in the fall and as everyone knows then you are 19 you are invincible...I got as far as Colorado Springs when the money was gone and I tried to trade some mushrooms for some gas...the cooler of mushrooms was stolen while I talked to the station attendant ...I realize there was nothing I could do...Call the police! I don't think so!...I drove up to the highway and parked on the side of the road and slept a fitful sleep....I awoke at dawn and started the car and saw that water was pouring out of the engine block...I assumed it was a cracked block...(it was actually a blown cold plug which I had never heard of...) ok ...I stand on the side of the road with my thumb out and my harmonica in my other had... I felt as free and unburdened then as I have ever felt in my life...so now I have three harmonicas and probably way too much stuff....but, I think it is the responsibility to expose criminality of the sort that has targeted me for so many years...I want payment for my lost property, I want payment for pain and suffering as I had unreplaceable items of a personal nature in my unit and punitive damages....I have tried to be patient and for nought...revenge is best served cold...eat up!

"You've learned the most important jailhouse lesson and most valuable underground skill- you've learned to  "HOLD YOUR MUD".           ken Kesey "jailhouse journals"

 

"Our humanity were but a poor thing..."

                                                this animal seems to have lost its right foot to a trap
 

                                         no surface water for miles around so a small water bowl is nice

                                           this white tailed antelope squirrel likes a treat of peanuts

well the fox seemed to have a good coat and clear eyes and not too thin, the rather disgusting disfigurement of the coyote/wolf only shows the endurance these animals have...the native people said they would be "the last animals on earth"...or not...there is still a good population of kangaroo rats here also...

among some of the followers of Jesus of Nazareth this is the evening before his supposed birth...or Christmas Eve...I highly recommend an excellent and learned final lecture by Bart Herman from UNC where he taught...he is probably one of the best informed  "non-christians" around today....

I have been thinking about a problem for a few years now which is if the entire galaxy, solar system and the earth are moving at high rates of speed and so I guess so are we humans on this planet and if movement affects time can we as humans separate from these moving entities and have out relative age affected? anyhow this about that...

and remember Alan Kurdi...probably not...he is that little boy who was washed up dead on a beach wearing his little boy shorts and shirt and devoid of life...he was just trying to live...

"Our humanity were but a poor thing but for the divinity that stirs within us. Francis Bacon

"To embrace justice..."

spent the night in the Budgethell hotel or maybe the Budgetcartell hotel, the "in their pocket" management allowed persons to rent the room above me to insure there was noise all night from the upstairs mafia...not to mention the cops using their sirens as they drive by...same ol', same ol'...but on to more ambitious criminality...while at the desert site recently I kept hearing  gunfire coming from near the base of the Cargo Muchacho mountains and then a lot of fireworks but hidden in the fireworks there were explosions...either these folks are mining illegally or they are testing their weaponry...either way if the people on the payroll to "serve and protect" don't keep a sharp eye out there will be another 9/11 incident sure enough...did I mention I spotted some ISIS flags flying in a Southern California border town? anyhow I don't imagine that the criminal element intend to "cease and desist"... now or ever...

"To embrace justice by a multiplicity of laws, or to hazard it by confidence in judges, are the opposite rocks on which all civil institutions have been wrecked, and between which legislative wisdom has never found an open passage." Samuel Johnson

 

"Little things console us..."

loggerhead? shrike which always sits on this nearby branch (I think it has broken off recently) not a chicken hawk!

so I see on the BBC news this early morning there is more aftermath being revealed about the "Epstein files"...yeah right...I will now reveal the worst kept secret about human behavior...men like young puss...wow what  a revelation...I imagine that for every female who considers herself "maltreated" by the high profile jet setting sexual opportunists who managed to discombobulate the lives of a whole lot of male associates there are thousands more females who would jump  at the chance to offer up their feminine charms (and bodies) to a wealthy male person...according to O. Taraban all relationships are negotiations and all sexual relationships are a form of bartering...the question I have, have had, and will have is quite simply; were these "exploited" females promised compensation for their lovely company and did they receive said compensation? "Little things console us, because little things afflict us."B. Pascal

spotted some feathers floating groundward and looked up to see this hawk plucking a pigeon..."The falcon cannot hear the falconer..." from "The second coming" by W.B. Yeats...and sure enough the center will not hold...some of the better YouTube presentations I have seen in recent times are as follows..."Crime pays but botany doesn't" is a site from an interesting well educated (way much latin) thick accented (east coast urban? mucho tattooed fellow who delights in plants and finding them in their habitat...desert mostly..."little Chinese everywhere" are taking their reward for the intrepid journeys under harsh conditions and were comped with $500 dollar a day luxury train travel in china...much food but not much adventure...they deserve a good rest...I heard that a famous female vocalist has the top mucsial offering which she recorded some time ago namely "Last Christmas" but I would like to recommend the same song by none other than "Miss Bellamy Clark (miss "B")..she sounds a lot like miss T. Swift!..."How this guy folds and flies world record paper airplanes" is a good presentation from Wired and may allow you to construct some of his amazing single paper aircraft..."The Genius and Mysterious life of Augustus Pablo" from "Reggae appreciation society...I recently bought a "melodica" from the thrift store because I was inspired by this guy...he was always infirm in health and died pretty young but not before he inspired the world with his "mystical" introverted influence on Dub and reggae music...good stuff...of Course Dr. Andrew Huberman has had some good health advice in his interviews with experts such as "Build a healthy gut microbiome" with dr Justin sonnenburg...I heard and interview with a hip-hop performer named jeezy on Sunday morning NPR and this fellow mentioned that he was in the record books for having the largest symphony in any hip hop recording...I miss the importance of this...but he did  say it was the first symphony he had ever seen or heard...holly moly!...talk about learn as you go!...I looked up his work online and came up with "Money real long"...I don't listen to much hip hop but it sounds like it has not changed much in the last couple of decades...more Mystic less plastic please..."philosophize this" has two Shakespeare inspired presentations and I must say these are some of the most erudite reviews of Shakespeare I have ever heard...Mr. West is to be commended for his studious but lucid evaluation of these works...bravo!...I picked up a DVD of "Stagecoach" with John Wayne directed by John Ford...good movie...however the interview with mr ford by a couple of British guys was very interesting...eventually they asked him whether he had racist views...he denied having any...he said his favorite movie was "The sun shines bright"( one hour thirty minutes-1953) which has a lot of stereotypes of blacks (and also southerners I might add) I heard mr Tarantino say he also thought Ford was a racist...it might be helpful to keep the actions in the historical contexts in which they were made...a very good and emotional charged musical presentation I came across is "NINA SIMONE on david bowie and janis Joplin"...neither of these artist are in this conversation...her vulnerable presentation is worth the ten minutes...also there is a "Molly Tuttle and Golden Highway" presentation of "White Rabbit"complete with costumes which is fun...and last but not least is a Ralph Nader radio hour presentation (#609) called "The AI prompt that could end the world"...of course you should listen to this to learn what this prompt is...sometimes I think alarmism sells too danmed well!...if as a species we cannot protect ourselves from our creations we deserve to be extinct!...

"If it were the apocalypse..."

 big news in the desert...started raining this afternoon which is good...I watched some good videos in the last couple of weeks...I do not often describe a movie as "stunning" but I was stunned by this indie movie...I would say it is a "masterpiece" but it is actually a "mistresspiece" since it was made by two women...namely Hannah Leder and Alexandra. Kotcheff...I might as well expose their background...they met in the third grade and were the only two girls ever to be sent out of class for being "trouble makers"..yeah buddy! sounds like my kind of creatives...ms. Leder has family members in the film industry...I don't think ms. Kotchoff does...these women starred in directed and produced the film "The Planters"...they lived-in a trailer in Palm Springs for 5 months and took 127 days to shoot the film...they had no film crew and the camera shots were always stationary...they busted ass to make this film and I consider it to be one of the best I have seen...ever...this film is about two women who have to accept one another for all their "flaws" and idiosyncrasies...and they aint small quirks...there is only one scene of violence which is when Alexandras character tries to commit a triple murder...but decides not to..."If it were the  apocalypse and I could only save one thing, I'd save my shovel."...Martha

                                    my canine friends appeared once again...glad to see them!

"For an ambiguous refusal..."

I watched an almost 4 hour interview with David Choe on Andrew Huberman's podcast...It was pretty adrenaline producing as mr. Choe has some "ISSUES!"...like more issues than the readers digest...he is known for his art work...he was asked to paint the offices "Facebook" before they had much money and he took stock in the company instead of cash...he created a lot of graffiti style art which was pretty controversial...he says he is 10 years sober now but his meds failed him  in this 4 hour "extreme" interview...I disagree with much of the approach to "recovery" when I involves a lot of "human interaction"...more nature and less people is more healing for a troubled mind..."For an ambiguous refusal/ is but a weak acceptance..." Khalil Gibran ... from "Do not love half lovers.." a prose poem

"...chasing a supposed centrism..."

 this is an optical illusion....what appears to be lines on an angle are actually parallel lines....

after a day in Yumertonville washing my laundry, buying groceries and getting my mail it did not escape my notice that at every turn there was a cop car (city, not sheriff) so my life and lifestyle has incurred the wrath of some of the more "soiled" constabulary...unfortunately this indicates a lot of rot in the system...there is a great interest in making me a felon due to the restrictions which go with this conviction...it seems to me that this attitude is similar to the German SS and the Gestopo and the East German Stasi as well as many other "secret police " types throughout history....I am guilty of much in the way of "non-conformity" but the best thing about living in the USA is the  (supposed) freedom to not be regimented and ordered about...I guess my listening to Thoreau's "Walden" and "Civil Disobedience" makes me a dangerous character...or not...

this is the only coyote I have seen in this part of the desert in a month or more...the gun goobers insist that these animals are vermin...also ravens, foxes and probably "longhairs" (as we un-trimmed used to be called) the current political climate gives license to extreme social views...quite unrealistically....

this is Algodones, Mexico which is a few miles away and this proximity to another country makes for a constant awareness of the political differences which exist in the world...and also the awareness that an arbitrary border does nothing to separate the physical realities of the "sameness" of the people...

I found some very good YouTube offerings from "Back 2 Basics Adventures" which is a couple of Aussis who go to the Solomon islands and Papua New Guinea and such places as that and fish and pick local fruit and eat the occasional kangaroo...these guys are the real deal or maybe the reel deal...also much excitement on the "Little Chinese everywhere" as Yan and Flo battle the cold to cross the 15 thousand foot mountains and the last three episode are fantastic adventures..Yan admits to breaking down and crying at the hardships but big Flo is there to comfort her and they persevere...what a tough couple!...when they encounter some young people across the river on the border of Afghanistan their excitement seems to indicate a thirst to know the "outside' world...maybe allowing the females of this country to enter the USA would be an better alternative to the banning of all Afghanis...

this mode of observation is not effective...but neither are the helicopters...these people are not serious about patrolling the US/Mexican border as they appear to have ignored the use of drones...every time they send up a helicopter they risk the life of the crew and the loss of the machine...when a person can sit safely on the ground and see just as much or more...there seems to be much bogus stuff on the border...

I came across these bones nearby which may be human...however, as many episodes of "Bones" as I have seen I do not claim any expertise in this area...I am more interested in the rocks which may be tools of thousands of years ago inhabitants...

I found Robert Frost reading his poem "The death of the hired man"...which I have always found to be extremely "disconcerting"...as I get closer and closer to "shuffling off this mortal coil" I think about the multitude of situations that might be encountered when the time comes for there to be no more time...and Robinson Jeffers reading his poem "Hurt Hawks" is quite moving also...

seeing more of these since there was a lot of rain in recent months...not a dragon..not a fly...go figure...Sabine Hossenfelder has an excellent episode on "the next big thing' which is "spintronics" so now we can have machines that can run the machines that run the machines that run the machines ad infinitum...as long as nature does not get excluded in the equations humanity is safe...

"....chasing a supposed centrism that avoids the conflicts that have to be faced and the choices that have to be made..."from the article "Second Coming" about the 2nd trump presidency in 11/7/24 N.Y.book review