"Democracy is the idea..."

        the near mountain a few minutes ago...temps falling and snow predicted...then sunny on sunday...

 so i listen to WWOZ a lot when the contrast between desert and or mountains and swamp makes the experience all the more intense...on 4/20 of this year there was, as one might suspect, a music set about reefer...one of the better songs was by big al carson from the album "Take your drunken ass home" which is a great song also...one of the better tunes on the album is "Champagne and Reefer" which has a cautionary aspect to it... one of the things that may be happening with some of the current cast of cursers is the psychological condition called coprolalia=the obsessive use of obscene language (talking dirty) for sexual gratification or because of a psychological disorder...or not...i hear a lot about my notes which are a hot commodity in some circles...i should be able to get some help from the local constabulary but i am not loved by these folks...seems that my bringing corruption into the picture has made some folks turn sour...more sour by the hour...anyhow i don't choose to be a member or participant in any of the schemes which are afoot these days...but i find it especially distressing that with 18 intelligence agencies working tirelessly to save our country from the ravages of...whatever might ravage it...like corruption perhaps, one would think that the second amendment might leave a little room for the first amendment...you know, freedom of speech and all that...i heard this morning that the attorney general of arizona is pursuing several criminal charges against the former president and some of his staunch supporters...better late than never...also i think some of the more radically minded types may be suffering from "insular dwarfism" of the brain...whatever happens in the election for president...

"Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and they deserve to get it good and hard."  H.L. Mencken    

"The desire to grab attention..."

                                           yummy yummy yummy.....

back at 4200 feet and juniper and mesa land...weather supposed to change for the colder in the next few days...got my long underwear and my down jacket handy so i suppose i will not freeze to death...while i was viewing Utube a few days ago i saw something i have never seen before...a T. swift album..."the tortured poets department " i think is the name and something about phantom vinyl something etc. I saw there were 31 songs available to view...whoa, buddy that's a lot of swift...i watched the first three completely and a few seconds of the remainder of them ...one a day is about all i can handle...now i know this artist is pretty popular and i know that i am an old guy so the esoterica of this presentation is largely a mystery to me...but it was interesting anyhow...then i began to think about what music i would recommend and i think willie nelsons album "Phases and Changes" is his best and it is a "concept" album and i do not need to have any of his lyrics deciphered...and as long as i am exposing my old guy taste i might as well confess to my frequent indulgence in "Bubblegum" music...it is great stuff..

.and i think " you are not charles bukowski and i am not Johnathan Swift" would be good lyrics...

"The desire to grab attention seems to incentivize stylistic sin. The social-mediafication of writing has steered the tone from offence of euphemism to its twin offence exaggeration."  "The Economist" 2023  

 

"Absence, like death..."

                                      it is thrilling to watch these birds maneuver so adroitly in high winds...

           after months surrounded by dry sand and creosote bush being around water opens ones horizons

                     this guy probably will be satisfied even if he does not catch any fish

                          these boat-tailed grackles are common but have a beautiful vocalization

 these small flying insects added to the ambiance of the place...never saw them in the desert

actually this spot is called Mittry lake and is smack in the middle of the desert which makes it all the more beautiful...i fear that i am becoming too settled in my ways and need to travel to a place somewhat less familiar to me...but "comfort zone" has its appeals also...

watched some mind expanding youtube recently...there is a fellow named GIULIO TONONI who is a scientist of some flavor i forget but who thinks about consciousness and what INFORMATION is and has a talk about INTEGRATED INFORMATION...pretty deep stuff and when i hear some of the things smart people say about these subjects it sometimes seems like standing with your eyeball half an inch from the MONA LISA painting and saying you think you understand it...it misses the point...

with all the concern about Artificial intelligence being a menace to humanity (humanity is a menace to humanity!) there is some spectacular work being done with AI...google deep mind has an application sort of thingy which graphs networks for materials exploration...and they have managed to use AI with this GNOME app and figured out how to predict how to make millions of new crystals...some of which will be of great value to humans...there are other scientists who are doing similar things to greatly enhance the speed at which research is being done..i think we need to come to the obvious conclusion that our lives would be better not worse if AI was used more in government  beause...as i have said before ...artificial intelligence sure beat genuine stupidity...

i was beginning to panic somewhat from my truck sort of having problems but i watch youtube videos about all kinds of mechanical stuff and once a little knowledge is pounded into my brain it is a lot less like ghosts or monsters menacing me...just practical things that happen to mechanical apparatus..."FORD TECH MAKULOCO does a good job of explaining things and he is very thorough...

"Absence, like death, sets a seal on the image of those we love; we cannot realize the intervening changes which time may have effected."  Goldsmith

"An aggressive military..."

                                            a rather nice looking insect which may be a fly

                                              i have seen several of these always near ant holes

            i put a shovel into the ground and saw a bunch of webbing and this spider crawled out

 before being coaxed into the bottle this spider jumped and ran (could stretch its legs and touch the edges of a 50 cent piece...big but not scary big)

                                     one of these fellows ambles through the camp every day

                                     desert iguana loving the 95 degree weather...not me too hot

listened to joan armatrading last night as i looked out into cloudless desert sky...if there is a better female vocalist ain't heard her...particularly like "Willow" and the lyrics on "The Weakness in me" are killer...

watched a good "Firing Line" segment called "Was Gandhi for Real" with a couple of gandhi experts...interesting look into the complicated life of a so called saint...

so now an Olympic gold medal will be worth $50,000...it should be interesting what shows up to get the loot...i heard that one school (maybe all school) will not allow students to have cell phones while in class...i was told to "confiscate" the phones of the people under my tent when i was working as a safety "advisor" on the BP oil spill...i refused to do so and mentioned the constitution (little things like that) and they wanted to fire me for "disobeying a direct order"...things got weirder and eventually i had to leave due to the harassment...phones are very useful tools and should be respected as such...

i picked up a big (1187 pages) book on the english lanuage...which has some rather obscure information in it...such as.."Hamartia"=a tragic flaw that causes the death of the hero in a play or novel                                                "Rhotacism"=uvular northumbrian burr= a special excessive or idiosyncratic use of rolling "rs"

heard with disbelief that due to the baltimore bridge collapse a company which services boats has had an increase in business and now will 'ASPHALT 40 ACRES!" to facilitate this increase..damn thats a lot of asphalt!

"An aggressive military strategy is also an effective evolutionary strategy" Nicholas Longridge evolutionary biologist writing on the dominance of Homo sapiens (it is probably also an undoubtedly effective way to implement the extinction of said species)

 

"What charcterizes neurotics..."

                                           tough to see this lovely green eyed insect...

                                           lots of clouds and some rain to make the desert bloom

                                          lots of small flowers to feed the green eyed bugs 

I did not make the forbes list of billionaires again...damn!...there are supposed to be 2781 of them around now...ms swift is now officially a billionairess...i hope she knows that mr bezos gave 100 million bucks to dolly partons charity so she may have to find a suitable place to spread her fortune...i would like to see her provide musical instruments to children...

i watched a good interview with truman capote on firing line and for a guy who only had a high school education mr capote holds his own with mr. buckley...but james balwin also was never college educated and he did well in his interview with buckley...capote gained fame for his book "In cold blood' about two guys who murdered a whole family out in kansas and he spent months interviewing them...he said he interviewed hundreds of murderers in prison and he and buckley talked about the death penalty...tim cahill told me while sitting around a campfire in yosemite national park that he interviewed a murderer in prison (j.w. gacey?) and he had nightmares for years...i was pretty young when i read capotes book and i was pretty creeped out about it for a long time...i dont feel any need to get the first hand information from the participants...

i watch the "Hat Historian" on youtube and recommend his short histories..."Boss of the Plains" was the first cowboy hat made by the philidelphia hatters the Stetsons...

i read about a woman super athlete named hazel hotchkiss wightman (1886-1974) who was a tennis player (as well as a few other sports) and she won 45 national championships the last one at age 68 years...i feel a little wimpy after reading that...

"What characterizes neurotics is that they prefer psychical to factual reality and react just as seriously to thoughts as normal people do to realities." Sigmund Freud   (by that definition most of us are neurotic!)

  
 

"He who establishes...

 So I got information concerning this blog...it seems my reader numbers went way up...like to 12...but I am not sure if 12 people read it one time..or one person read it 12 times or three people read it four times or two people read it six times or six people read It two times or just what the situation is except I am obviously on The right track...so I studied a lot of people's online content and decided I needed merch...as I heard it called...now when I go to thrift stores and swap meets i see lots of what was once so called merch that now is destined to be landfill...I am going to offer biodegradable merch that has been around for a while and is likely to be around for a while longer

"He who establishes his argument by noise and command shows his reason is weak." Montaigne

"Great actions..."

seen this a few times...probably a reasonable explanation...like space aliens or musk trying to escape earth

                                          perhaps a rare butterfly...but it is rare where i am

                                      probably a mated pair of spiders...large one is probably the female

          why are more spider designs not used on clothing...very exquisite

maybe a young zebra-tail but not like the one in my book

 only saw two of these flowers...i think they are rare...at least here

rained a few times this week and if you want to see the plants in their prime now is the time

more atrocities in gaza..."fog of war" my ass..

.found some good stuff on you tube.."Malankovitch Cycle" is a good thing to know about as it explains why the earths temperature changes due to "eccentricity", "tilt" and "elongated orbit"...as proposed by Serbian Milutin Milankovitch around 1920...also i read about epigenetic modifications...when i heard linsays  explanation about how the spider-tailed horned viper evolved a tail to look like a spider i thought the resulting evolutionary changes seemed too extensive for a slow transformation...since i have always been a bit of a Lamarkian i seek other than the regular route to changes...

watched "Cat People" last night (1982) some of this movie was shot in New Orleans and some of it was shot in the zoo...i was at the zoo in 1984 and only recognized the elephant exhibit...but most of the "new" zoo was around in 1982...never saw the beautiful red-head though...anyhow i could accept most anything in the movie except the scene where ms. kinski disrobes to take a stroll in the marsh...the mosquitoes would have left here bereft of blood within minutes...

"Great actions, the lustre of which dazzles us are represented by politicians as the effects of deep design; whereas they are commonly the effects of caprice and passion. Thus the war between Augustus and Anthony, supposed to be owing to their ambitions to give a master to the world, arose probably from jealousy."  Rochefoucald