"In the world..."

                                               view from the studios of F150

left lake have-a-shoot city and it was 96 degrees... got to coconino and it was 69 degrees and 25 degrees at night...lake h city is a nice area but when i turned to see a patron in the pawn shop pointing a pistol at my head i assumed that there was some hostilities in the community...this visit  however the two bullets that whizzed past the campsite seemed a bit amateurish...but there are some great thrift stores in the city the hospice thrift being one and the veterans thrift being the other...

saw two porcupines yesterday and the name porcupine hill behind the camp is well earned...awoke this morning at dawn when i heard a loud barking nearby...wasn't sure what it was until i recognized it as an elk...probably a female with a calf...a small herd was nearby last night and this morning grazing in the meadow...

called the doctor at one o-clock as i was told to do to get the prognosis on my biopsy...the receptionist said the computer was down and sometime next week they would call and arrange for another consultation by phone...and i had been thinking in dramatic and tragic terms for two weeks now...damn!

 anyhow i found a great DVD in the thrift last week and would like to recommend it "Led Zeppelin" this is a collection of film shot during concerts...starting in 1972 until 1979..."In My Day of Dying" from the Earls Court concert in 1975 was especially well shot and shows the consummate skill of the musicians and the vocalist (Robert Plant) now Zep has become a bit of a cliche but upon viewing these concerts i think the hype was well deserved...this tune is played on acoustic guitar with mandolin...how ever i must admit that "Stairway to Heaven" the last tune is the one that really melts my butter...now that tune is really made fun of but if you see these guys playing this tune for 9 minutes you will probably agree that it deserves to be a classic...despite the album entitled "Hairway to Stephen" by the Butthole Surfers...which is about as popular as "Yes we have no Bananas" which was big in its day... 

now this is important in a historical way...on the Jack Parr program of May 8, 1964 Richard Burton recited a speech made by Winston Churchill on march 5, 1946 about the soviet union and the Iron Curtain  and the english/american alliance needed to stop soviet aggression...it is chilling to hear this mans astute observations about Russia which still apply...

"In the world i fill up a place, which may be better supplied when I have made it empty." Shakespeare

"Some men wish evil..."

    couldn't help but notice that the seller of this sticker was somewhere in China...

i have come to believe that the extreme divisions of thought in this country may have a lot to do with not enough thinking going on...much to the detriment of civil society...i still fly my Earth flag as the only place i think i can defend is the planet i live on...USA has the great advantage of being a country where i can say that without fear of being "RE-EDUCATED" or sent to the gulag to work...

i would like to recommend a very good educational DVD..."Earth: the biography" with Dr. Iain Stewart it is excellent and keeps things in a historical perspective...it is 2 DVD's and put out by the BBC (2008) 230 minutes...it has lots of good information such as the fact that stromatolites were the main life on the planet for 2 billion years...when you watch these documentaries you realize that even if the humans are extincted there will be other life forms which will probably survive and evolve into neck-tie wearing and high heel shoe wearing civilized nin-com-poops...and the whole extinction thing will start again...one of the interesting segments in the "atmosphere" has to do with joe kettinger who in 1960 went up in a ballon to 19 miles and jumped out with a parachute...he reached speeds of 620 miles per hour...it is still the longest free fall on record...which was survived...

i would like to mention a movie i recently viewed called "Dead Man" with johnny depp...mr depp is laying down a lot in this movie...i don't know if it was in his contract or what but it does not  detract from his performance...much...this is a jim jarmusch movie so it is a little "quirky" it also has a super annuated robert michum playing a gangster type..also iggy pop has a small role as sally a transvestite trapper...it doesn't end well...neil young does the music...interesting but there will probably not be any "soundtracks" released...the most able character is the native american guy "Nobody" who i think is gabriel byrne...but i could be wrong...

"Some men wish evil and accomplish it/ But most men, when they work in that machine,/ Just let it happen somewhere in the wheels,/ The fault is no decisive, villainous knife/ But the dull saw that is the routine mind." Stephen Vincent Benet

"Some people mistake weakness..."

    wild turkey came to visit in the campsite...a rather friendly bird...needs another turkey friend

5 days in the chaparral  bio-type lots of green grass unlike last july and august...just heard that the state of california somehow forgot to implement the forest conservation plans that they have on the books...too damned bad because the drought is only going to make the forest and the chaparral much more likely to burn and i heard of a nearby fire only this morning...saw something moving fast on the road yesterday evening and saw that it was a small bobcat...probably a female...she might have been looking for the many rodents in the area...the usual clown brigade showed up to be obnoxious and invade my privacy...otherwise a very nice experience...found some water running over from the solar powered water tank so there was at least some water for a few days...i noticed the drip drip drip was a bit faster so i left a cake pan filled with water...decided it would be ok and not promote too much disease...

the news is getting depressing...like a slow motion train wreck...heard the commander in chief say that he thought Putin needed to removed from his job...and then his staff tried to "walk it back"...no he was right...when the world comes together and forms a military alliance to remove those leaders whose decisions affect the whole world in a negative way then...and only then...will this planet have a chance of reducing the effects of the inevitable weather changes which are fast effecting human capacity to exist and prosper on this planet...i think too many people have tried to be "diplomatic" and "tactful" and it will not get the job done...time is not on our side...

"Some people mistake weakness for tact. If they are silent when they ought to speak and so feign an agreement they do not feel, they call it being tactful, cowardice would be a much better name." Sir Frank Medlicott

"I do not know the man..."

        COLORADO DESERT SIDEWINDER RATTLESNAKE-Crotalus cerastes laterorepens

after 5 winters in the desert, much of it spent on sidewinder road i was beginning to think that they should have named it Lizard lane or Rodent road...but NO! there along the edge of the dry wash there was a sidewinder stretched out enjoying the morning sun...at last! perhaps 14 to16 inches long

so i watched a film a few days ago...actually finished watching it...i watched it over several days...i think it is one of the best films i have ever seen...i had never heard of it and it was released in 2009 i think and it was produced by peter jackson a very well known guy in the film industry...but mr jackson was not the genius behind this film..."District 9" by name...i watched the first half hour and went shopping the next day...i bought some crawfish...i think that the "Prawns" in the film were in my sub-conscious as they look a lot like crawfish...the genius in this film is probably the result of guy potgieter the lead set director and mike berg and emilia weavind the art directors and trent opaloch the director of photography...the director was neill blomkamp...and sharlto copley was the main actor...at least the main actor that was not a 'prawn"...they way i felt about the "prawns" in the beginning of the film changed by the end of the film...prawns need loving too... i recommend that you watch the additional interviews with the film makers as it sheds a lot of light on how the film was made near Johannesburg south africa...it was shot in a large landfill (dump) and the set has a distinctive look...of decay!

"I do not know the man so bold/ He dare in lonely Place/ That awful stranger Consciousness/ Deliberately face/   Emily Dickenson (1874) 

 

"A fat kitchen..."

 my raven friend spending quality time with a peanut

there were a pair of ravens that frequented the small tree near southeast camp at sidewinder road but now this one shows up alone...it makes sounds i have never heard before but comes much closer than the pair used to...either this is not one of that pair...or the other is sitting on a nest with eggs now...or i fear that the other of the pair has been shot dead by one of the malicious desert dwellers near me who see the ravens and consider them vermin...anyhow this one is a good animal and i like to see them all...all day there is the noise of high flying military jets and helicopters overhead  and in the distance the boom of artillery shells going off...i guess it is artillery...the army proving ground is several miles north and they prove or test whatever the military is going to purchase before they buy it ...sounds like a good idea to me...i watched a movie a while back that in my opinion is one of the best performances by Humphrey Bogart in his film career...it is not as well known as his other big films but is quite riveting...it is called "In a Lonely Place" and is about a guy who is on the edge of sanity after he returns from being a combatant in world war two...this is before the term PTSD was in use but this is obviously what his problem is...a great performance of a man on the edge...and over the edge...i bought 3 pounds of crawfish last week and boiled them up and enjoyed one of the favorite foods from the swamps and rice fields of louisiana...them i had hot sausage po-boys later in the week...and ate several too many chocolate covered cherries...must be the spring air that got to me....i would like to recommend a song that i heard from a texas fellow entitled "Choctaw Bingo" by ray wylie hubbard...the version from the album is the one i have heard....killer lyrics...he is still around and just released another song which i heard on the radio...they smell like goat cooked in a hole filled with mesquite coals...very texas...

"A fart kitchen, a lean will." Benjamin Franklin "Poor Richards Almanac"