1. How do you find your own personal peace/nirvana?
Finding a place in nature to be alone. Primarily the beach, but a walk in the woods practicing Zen mindfullness also works well. Sometimes it’s just sitting in the grass on a warm day with the sun in my face.
2. Where do you go to find respite and solace? Is there a particular place, city, country, room in your house? The beach, without question, especially in the twilight hours as the sky turns orange and purple and lights start popping on in the beach front houses. When a sandy shore is not within reachable distance I have two CDs that do the trick…One is 60 minutes of ocean waves and the other is 75 minutes of gentle rain.
3. Who is the most peace-loving person you know? What makes them so?
Hmmm…define peace-loving. If you mean peaceful in personality and action that would be my friend Anita. If you mean peace-loving in terms of anti-war, I seem to be surrounded by Hawks….probably Randy.
4. What do you do when your inner peace is threatened?
Do you have a strategy, a routine, religious faith, a mantra……to calm yourself down? Prayer, a short walk, a plan to walk through whatever is doing the threatening.
5. What is your favorite comfort food? Cake. Just about any kind (as long as it has frosting). Then there is always fried chicken, pizza and pot roast….
6. Do you have a pet that brings you happiness and peace? If not, what type of animals bring you peaceful thoughts? Dogs…love dogs.
This is Sydney whom you’ve met previously.
7. What is your favorite peace song?
Snoopy’s Christmas
8. Did you post a peace globe on November 5th and participate in BlogBlast For Peace?
Unfortunately, no.
First, I’m doing NaNoWriMo this year. I haven’t done it since 2005; the results of that effort is the novel that is oh so close to being shopped around. We’ll see if I can make it this year…a lot of other shit going on that wasn’t before, time will tell.
TOT: I was on chocolate dispensing duties last night with the Mrs. out-of-town. A passel of kids were able to sneak in some candy grabs before the heavens opened up around 7:30. As some of you may know I live in a culturally diverse neighborhood; that is to say the majority of residents are split between Asian, Middle Eastern, a smattering of Ukrainian and a few of us WASPs for good measure. What struck me last night was how polite the Asian and Middle eastern kids were, saying ‘thank you’ and wishing me a happy Halloween. It was impressive. Not that everyone else was surly, that was left for the WASP teenagers who didn’t even bother to costume up. But then again I have to remember that in Roget’s handy book the first entry under “surly” is “teenager”…and vice versa.
Health Care – I spent some time trying to digest the House bill on health care now being flogged in DC. An impossible task at best. The friggin’ thing is over 1900 pages long and appeared to have a sufficient amount of special interest handouts. But trying to get a grasp on how the system will work and how it will be paid for? This thing was written to keep us average schmucks in the dark. After an hour of perusal I still didn’t know any more than I did before I started other than the Native Americans in Montana have their own special rules based on tribe size and that employers are going to get hammered.
1. Supper’s Ready – Genesis In college my friend Keith and I majored in figuring out the lyrics to this opus…prayer capsule indeed…
2. The Revealing Science of God – Yes Spiritual and philospohic hogwash set to music. Each side of Tales could have been chopped into a 10 minute ditty making a half decent single album. Rolling Stone’s initial review in 1974 was correct…Tales was just too long. Even Wakemen couldn’t stand it (he left soon after the Tales tour ended). Nonetheless, memorizing the opening and closing chants of side 1 was another area of study in college.
3. They’re Coming To Take Me Away Ha-Ha! – Napoleon XIV
Especially while driving with the windows open.
4. Tubular Bells – Mike Oldfield Go figure…
5. Bohemian Like You – Dandy Warholes Only because it took me forever to memorize the lyrics…
Seriously. What crazed mind decided that every single micro second of each day had to have a number assigned to it? Right now the clock reads 12:14…who in their infinite wisdom decided that this precise moment of this day and all the days throughout the existence of the universe was twelve fourteen? Why not 36? or 129? or Q? or garden rat wrinkle? why “twelve fourteen”?
Thinking back pre-clock, what pre-historic wack job looked at a phallic shaped rock casting a shadow in the dirt and said to him (or her) self, “Hmm …I call this 3.” or I guess may be III to be roman numerically correct. But why does there have to be a numeric designation to existence? I can’t imagine the inspiration behind that. If I go to the beach at dusk…my favorite time…and stand on the pier watching the waves roll in, the first thing on my mind is not, “That’s it! Seven Eighteen! It’s perfect.”
I have to believe some evil Phoenician slave driver devised a system to keep all his sheep droids from wandering aimlessly when they should have been dragging massive boulders to the sacrificial temple. “You will be here when the shadow of the dick rock (rhyming slang ‘tick-tock’??) points toward Canaan.”
“What happens if it’s cloudy?”
“Oh, hell..call it 8. And rip his tongue out for speaking back, slave-dog.”
you’ve heard me mention The Band, specifically MY band – Jo Wymer & The Itty Bitty Band…well we had someone, and I don’t rightly know whom, make a video of bits of our last gig in Neptune. Here’s a little blues number he posted on you tube….note that this is 4/5’s of the band…our lovely violin/guitar/vocalist could not be with us that evening..
I will try to summarize this with minimum snark..but it will be difficult.
Health care – you know, that thing that everyone is screaming about? – well, there is a bill known as the Baucus Bill floating around the hallowed DC halls. The bill is so named for the Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee Sen. Max Baucus. The highlight of this bill is a massive increase Medicaid programs to cover the nation’s uninsured. But here’s the rub; the Feds (essentially you and me and our money) are only picking up a portion of the cost. The rest is being pushed down to the state level, the rest being an additional $37 billion…let’s say that again…B..B…Billion (let’s see…37 divided by 50…that’s roughly $740 million each state has to cough up (again..you and me and our money) to cover the expenses.)
But hold the phone here…let’s just say, for the sake of argument, that certain deals are cut, palms are greased, votes garnered, amendments amended, so that, say, Nevada for example, doesn’t have to pay their share for the next five years…or New York…or Michigan. Why, you ask? And well you should. Let’s take Nevada…to quote and article on this very subject in the Wall Street Journal…
Nevada! Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who is worried about losing his seat next year, worked out a deal by which the federal government will pay all of his home state’s additional Medicaid expenses for the next five years. Under the majority leader’s very special formula, only three other states—Oregon, Rhode Island and Michigan—qualify for this perk, on the grounds, as Mr. Reid put it recently on the Senate floor, that they “are suffering more than most.”
And little Chuckie Schumer, our pal in NY, saw this and went “wait a minute! That’s not right. I want NY exempted as well.” So another deal was cut. And there’s a further deal involving Michigan and Massachusetts, large labor union states, where the respective senators got together so the union members would not be affected by this bill. New Jersey’s Bob Melendez is just as bad…
So, unless you have a powerful Senator in DC, looks like your share just might be a tad higher than expected…let’s see 37 billion divided by, oh, 40…and counting….
UPDATE: To give The House some equal time: During lunch I turned on C-SPAN (yes, I have no life) and was witness to 25 minutes of YOUR (and my) elected Representatives giving speeches concerning one of the toughest issues facing the country; congratulating…well, I’m not sure who…on the 40th Anniversary of the George W Bush International Airport in Houston Tx. Now THERE’s money well spent….
Each year Neiman Marcus offers a handful of gifts that only the super-wealthy (or super-insane) person can afford. Four, five and sometimes six digit gifts for that person who lights $100 bills to flame up a cigar.
This year, I’ll take this one, although the cupcake car is a close second (not really).
Lawrence Livermore Laboratories has discovered the heaviest element yet
known to science.
The new element, Governmentium (Gv), has one neutron, 25 assistant
neutrons, 88 deputy neutrons, and 198 assistant deputy neutrons, giving it
an atomic mass of 312.
These 312 particles are held together by forces called morons, which are
surrounded by vast quantities of lepton-like particles called peons..
Since Governmentium has no electrons, it is inert; however, it can be
detected, because it impedes every reaction with which it comes into
contact.
A tiny amount of Governmentium can cause a reaction that would normally
take less than a second, to take from 4 days to 40 years to complete.
Governmentium has a normal half-life of 2- 4 years. It does not decay, but
instead undergoes a reorganization in which a portion of the assistant
neutrons and deputy neutrons exchange places.
In fact, Governmentium’s mass will actually increase over time, since
each reorganization will cause more morons to become neutrons, forming
isodopes. This characteristic of moron promotion leads some scientists to
believe that Governmentium is formed whenever morons reach a critical
concentration. This hypothetical quantity is referred to as critical
morass.
When catalyzed with money, Governmentium becomes Administratium, an
element that radiates just as much energy as Governmentium since it has
half as many peons but twice as many morons.
1. How do you find your own personal peace/nirvana?
Dogs…love dogs. 
First, I’m doing NaNoWriMo this year. I haven’t done it since 2005; the results of that effort is the novel that is oh so close to being shopped around. We’ll see if I can make it this year…a lot of other shit going on that wasn’t before, time will tell.
Seriously. What crazed mind decided that every single micro second of each day had to have a number assigned to it? Right now the clock reads 12:14…who in their infinite wisdom decided that this precise moment of this day and all the days throughout the existence of the universe was twelve fourteen? Why not 36? or 129? or Q? or garden rat wrinkle? why “twelve fourteen”?
