And there was war in heaven

Balance

Instructions

A musical offering and other observations

[odeo=http://odeo.com/audio/17137793/view]

NTodd is wicked smart.

Waiting for Friedman

a tragicomedy in infinite acts
by William K. Wolfrum.

Whose mission?

Hat-tip Ellroon.

Late show

This is a six part series, one episode per day.

Previous episode:

• Episode five.

This is episode six.

Late show

This is a six part series, one episode per day.

Previous episode:

• Episode four.

This is episode five.

Late show

This is a six part series, one episode per day.

Previous episode:

• Episode three.

This is episode four.

Late show

This is a six part series, one episode per day.

Previous episode:

• Episode two.

This is episode three.

Late show

This is a six part series, one episode per day.

Previous episode:

• Episode one.

This is episode two.

Late show

This will be a six part series, one episode per day.

This is episode one.

Should poor people be denied music, or even poetry, unless by corporate consent?

for anne sexton

looking down on empty streets, all she can see
are the dreams all made solid
are the dreams all made real

all of the buildings, all of the cars
were once just a dream
in somebody’s head

she pictures the broken glass, she pictures the steam
she pictures a soul
with no leak at the seam

lets take the boat out
wait until darkness
let’s take the boat out
wait until darkness comes

nowhere in the corridors of pale green and grey
nowhere in the suburbs
in the cold light of day

there in the midst of it so alive and alone
words support like bone

dreaming of mercy st.
wear your inside out
dreaming of mercy
in your daddy’s arms again
dreaming of mercy st.
‘swear they moved that sign
dreaming of mercy
in your daddy’s arms

pulling out the papers from the drawers that slide smooth
tugging at the darkness, word upon word

confessing all the secret things in the warm velvet box
to the priest;he’s the doctor
he can handle the shocks

dreaming of the tenderness, tremble in the hips
of kissing Mary’s lips

dreaming of mercy st.
wear your insides out
dreaming of mercy
in your daddy’s arms again
dreaming of mercy st.
‘swear they moved that sign
looking for mercy
in your daddy’s arms

mercy, mercy, looking for mercy
mercy, mercy, looking for mercy

Anne, with her father is out in the boat
riding the water
riding the waves on the sea

Recommended listening:

• To Bedlam and part way back

I YouTube, you decide

Hat-tip pyrrho.

Here’s the unannotated video.

What do you think?

Little Amsterdam

for RAINN.

Too busy for poetry?

Don’t click.

Advice from Kurt Vonnegut

Wear sunscreen.

Click.

Update: I have been hoaxed, as Ombudsben points out in the comments below. The commencement address was never given, and it was not by Kurt Vonnegut. Here is one account of the story.

Still, it’s good.

On “supporting the troops”

Maryscott O’Connor:

It’s a fucking nightmare, man. You know that expression, “War is hell?” You never really understand that until you’re in it. There’s blood everywhere. Dead bodies everywhere. ALMOST dead bodies. You want to put them out of their misery but then it’s an execution. So you have to leave them there, dying, suffering, slowly, in agony — it ‘s fucking awful.

Taxonomy

It is because we were hunters, because
we killed for a living, because we matched
wits against the whole of the animal world,
that we have the wit to survive even in a
world of our own creation.
—Ardrey

Homo domesticus.

High society

Copyright be damned, and torturers go to hell real quick

Here is Terry Jones. Via Why Now?

Call that humiliation?

No hoods. No electric shocks. No beatings. These Iranians clearly are a very uncivilised bunch

Terry Jones
Saturday March 31, 2007
The Guardian

I share the outrage expressed in the British press over the treatment of our naval personnel accused by Iran of illegally entering their waters. It is a disgrace. We would never dream of treating captives like this – allowing them to smoke cigarettes, for example, even though it has been proven that smoking kills. And as for compelling poor servicewoman Faye Turney to wear a black headscarf, and then allowing the picture to be posted around the world – have the Iranians no concept of civilised behaviour? For God’s sake, what’s wrong with putting a bag over her head? That’s what we do with the Muslims we capture: we put bags over their heads, so it’s hard to breathe. Then it’s perfectly acceptable to take photographs of them and circulate them to the press because the captives can’t be recognised and humiliated in the way these unfortunate British service people are.

It is also unacceptable that these British captives should be made to talk on television and say things that they may regret later. If the Iranians put duct tape over their mouths, like we do to our captives, they wouldn’t be able to talk at all. Of course they’d probably find it even harder to breathe – especially with a bag over their head – but at least they wouldn’t be humiliated.And what’s all this about allowing the captives to write letters home saying they are all right? It’s time the Iranians fell into line with the rest of the civilised world: they should allow their captives the privacy of solitary confinement. That’s one of the many privileges the US grants to its captives in Guantánamo Bay.

The true mark of a civilised country is that it doesn’t rush into charging people whom it has arbitrarily arrested in places it’s just invaded. The inmates of Guantánamo, for example, have been enjoying all the privacy they want for almost five years, and the first inmate has only just been charged. What a contrast to the disgraceful Iranian rush to parade their captives before the cameras!

What’s more, it is clear that the Iranians are not giving their British prisoners any decent physical exercise. The US military make sure that their Iraqi captives enjoy PT. This takes the form of exciting “stress positions”, which the captives are expected to hold for hours on end so as to improve their stomach and calf muscles. A common exercise is where they are made to stand on the balls of their feet and then squat so that their thighs are parallel to the ground. This creates intense pain and, finally, muscle failure. It’s all good healthy fun and has the bonus that the captives will confess to anything to get out of it.

And this brings me to my final point. It is clear from her TV appearance that servicewoman Turney has been put under pressure. The newspapers have persuaded behavioural psychologists to examine the footage and they all conclude that she is “unhappy and stressed”.

What is so appalling is the underhand way in which the Iranians have got her “unhappy and stressed”. She shows no signs of electrocution or burn marks and there are no signs of beating on her face. This is unacceptable. If captives are to be put under duress, such as by forcing them into compromising sexual positions, or having electric shocks to their genitals, they should be photographed, as they were in Abu Ghraib. The photographs should then be circulated around the civilised world so that everyone can see exactly what has been going on.

As Stephen Glover pointed out in the Daily Mail, perhaps it would not be right to bomb Iran in retaliation for the humiliation of our servicemen, but clearly the Iranian people must be made to suffer – whether by beefing up sanctions, as the Mail suggests, or simply by getting President Bush to hurry up and invade, as he intends to anyway, and bring democracy and western values to the country, as he has in Iraq.

· Terry Jones is a film director, actor and Python
www.terry-jones.net

Please help

I need some advice on how to continue to blog as I have been and still make a little bit more than nothing with two clients across the country one of whom may soon cease to be able to afford me due to the financial condition of his main client. I am in no risk of starving, between my wife’s graduate stipend and a bit we got for our condo when we moved we are okay, but we’re thinking we might want to have kids sometime and it can’t happen if we’re already running a small deficit every month.

This is my message to you.

Recommended listening:

• Even the hopeless sinner

Do you prefer plagues of locusts?

What is six times nine in base thirteen?

The act of writing is the means by which our consciousness can be focused and analyzed for coherence. If our thoughts are jumbled we would write in such a fashion. If we have a point to make, our thoughts can be arranged around that point. If we are searching for something which others could help find, our thoughts might be phrased as questions. If we already know the answer, it might be that in asking it of others we answer it to everyone.

What is the Ultimate Question?

You know. Life, the Universe and Everything.

Can you compute?

Following, the back of the Regional Transit Connection ID Center Processing Fee Receipt calculation, and verified by my wife, the graduate statistician.

And she cast a spell to bring down the Emperor and his works

Embed disabled link

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• Past is prologue
• Tech support

Shawn Colvin Cover

Down at the train they go to Independence everyday
Anywhere else now, it seems like a million miles away
And I must have been high to believe
that I would ever leave
No, I’m just a flat, fine line
Like the Wichita skyline.

I rode on the airstream to cross the great lonesome afternoon
And I wished hard enough to hurt, drove fast enough to catch the moon.
And I must have been dreamin’ again
Cus there’s nothin around the bend
Except for that flat, fine line
The Wichita skyline.

As far as Salina I can get that good station from LaRue
I’m searching the dial, scanning the sky for a patch of blue
And I watch the black clouds roll in
chasing me back again
Back to the flat, fine line…
the Wichita skyline.

A half dollar, a half dollar, a penny and two bits.

There’s a certain slant of light…

It’s been a weird day. There’s a quiet today, almost like the ceiling of the world is pressing down. I’m listening in, and everybody’s hushed. One thing happened, this happened, I’ve been given the ‘keys’ to post here on cannablog. This got me to fretting a little: What if I don’t write right? What if we have inextricably diverging visions? There wasn’t a lot of direction given, more like “Here you go. Sink or swim.”

So. In just such a situation I think whig himself would go relax with some herbal remedies. My solution is to just write. It’s a good combo, really. He’s major on the visuals, I’m crazy on the words. I guess if this doesn’t suit, I’ll just congenially hand the keys back.

And for today, such a weird, silent day, a dead hermit and favorite poet said it better than I ever could.

There’s a certain slant of light,
On winter afternoons,
That oppresses, like the weight
Of cathedral tunes.

Heavenly hurt it gives us;
We can find no scar,
But internal difference
Where the meanings are.

None may teach it anything,
‘Tis the seal, despair,-
An imperial affliction
Sent us of the air.

When it comes, the landscape listens,
Shadows hold their breath;
When it goes, ‘t is like the distance
On the look of death.

-Emily Dickinson

When in danger or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout.

Remembering the future

Where do you think you’re going?

First the words, and then the music

And then more words.

A song of seeds, the food of love

“She’s trying to stop me from helping you!” Click the video to watch it elsewhere, it won’t embed.

Late show

A frog is a frog.

4:20 of Woodstock ’99

A change of perspective — understand highness.

Related post:

• Awesome-o

An eye for a spine on the side of the road

No music now, unless you read it

ARTIST: The Beatles
TITLE: Golden Slumbers/Carry that Weight/The End
Lyrics and Chords courtesy Gunther Anderson

[ Ebdim7 = ]

Once there was a way to get back homeward
Once there was a way to get back home
Sleep pretty darling do not cry
And I will sing a lullaby

/ Am7 – – – Dm7 – – – / G7 – – – / C Em Am Dm9 – / G7 – C – /

Golden slumbers fill your eyes
Smiles awake you when you rise
Sleep pretty darling do not cry
And I will sing a lullaby

/ C – F – C – / C – F – / C Em Am Dm9 – / G7 – C – /

Once there was a way to get back homeward
Once there was a way to get back home
Sleep pretty darling do not cry
And I will sing a lullaby

{Refrain}

Boy, you’re going to carry that weight
Carry that weight a long time
Boy, you’re going to carry that weight
Carry that weight a long time

/ C – G – / – – C – / 1st / G – C Am7 /

I never give you my pillow
I only send you my invitations
And in the middle of the celebrations
I break down

/ Am7 – Dsus2 Dm / G – Csus4 C / Fmaj7 – Dm E7 / Am – G – /

{Refrain, ends with / C A / C A /}

Oh yeah, all right
Are you going to be in my dreams
Tonight

/ D – E – / A – Ebdim7 – / A – /

And in the end
The love you take
Is equal to the love you make

/ A – – – / G – – – / Bb – – F – G / C – /

And now, for something completely different

Judge the tree by the fruit thereof

You do not have to eat poison, and you can be sure that if you consume enough of some things you will die.

Some things are so benign you can eat them without limitation and become healthier.

Recognize the difference.

For GenX, this is Woodstock.

I just cried, listening.

Shakespeare’s nephew

You could define E-Prime as the English language written or spoken without use of the words, “to be.” The statement, “To be or not to be, that is the question,” could have as one possible translation, “I question my existence.” Everyone does, of course. You could think of U-Prime as E-Prime without the use of “I.” So much seems unexpressible. If “I” does not exist, then how can these thoughts have value? Because in reading them, they become your thoughts.

Habeas. You have.

Taste, Feel, Smell, Sound, Grow, Remain, Stay, Turn. Others exist, these came first to mind from childhood.

Move, Slide, Rearrange, Smile, Love.

Create.

You’ll do, the movement you need is on your shoulder

Spice for the recipe

No time, like the present

And later he fell upon a sea of hands, who supported him and lifted him up

Free concert up on the roof

Rock the Casbah.

Do the right thing, John

This is an historic time. We do not have the luxury to hope for opportunities in the future to correct what must be fixed now.

You are connected with a third rail, the blogosphere is powerful and can shock you if you are not properly grounded.

Choose your adventure.

Behold Atlantis!

Sunk beneath a frozen ocean, and soon to emerge: one effect of global warming.

Who will go and populate this new continent where people once lived? Those first who cannot live where they are now should always have the right of return.

Those who know how to live in harsh environments will be essential.

Related post:

• Global warming a reality

System of music